May 27

Today’s News 27th May 2021

  • "They Didn't Even Try To Respect The Contract" – EU Demands Massive Fine In Lawsuit Against AstraZeneca
    “They Didn’t Even Try To Respect The Contract” – EU Demands Massive Fine In Lawsuit Against AstraZeneca

    After suing AstraZeneca for falling far short of its promise to deliver 300MM doses of its vaccine to the EU by the end of the year (so far, it’s only on track to deliver roughly one-third of that due to manufacturing hiccups and other issues).

    The vaccine, which is still in widespread use despite evidence of rare but sometimes deadly cerebral blood clots, was designed by Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant with cooperation from Oxford University. The EU took the company to court back in April after the company confirmed that deliveries would likely fall far short of expectations.

    The EU’s struggle to compensate for this shortfall has at times led to hostility with its neighbors, including the newly independent UK. The EU’s ruling body, the European Commission, nearly ordered a ban on all exports produced on the continent to claim more supplies for Europeans, but ultimately that plan was quashed.

    Still, Brussels wants the company to deliver at least 120M doses by the end of June. AstraZeneca had delivered only 50M doses as of the beginning of May, though it has likely delivered at least a few million more by now. Still, 50MM is only a quarter of the 200MM that were expected to be delivered by now.

    A lawyer for the EU told Reuters that the bloc is seeking monetary compensation for each promised dose that wasn’t delivered. The rate proposed by the EU would be roughly €10 ($12) per day of delay per dose, starting July 1. At that rate, the fine would amount to $12M per million vaccines per day, or roughly $2.4 billion per day if the number missing is still 200MM.

    Brussels wants the company to deliver at least 120 million vaccines by the end of June. AstraZeneca had delivered 50 million doses by the beginning of May, just a quarter of the 200 million vaccines foreseen in the contract by then.

    “AstraZeneca did not even try to respect the contract,” the EU’s lawyer, Rafael Jafferali, told a Brussels court in the first hearing on the substance of the legal case.

    He said the EU was seeking 10 euros ($12.2) for each day of delay for each dose as compensation for AstraZeneca’s non-compliance with the contract. This penalty would apply from July 1, 2021, if the judge accepted it.

    Jafferali said the EU was seeking an additional penalty of at least 10 million euros for each breach of the contract that the judge may decide.

    A lawyer for AZ denounced the accusations as “shocking” and argued that manufacturing vaccines is fraught with complexities that sometimes can’t be anticipated.

    “This is not a contract for the delivery of shoes or T-shirts,” AstraZeneca’s lawyer Hakim Boularbah told the court later on Wednesday, stressing the complexity of manufacturing a new vaccine.

    The EU accusations were “shocking”, Boularbah said, noting the company had formulated its delivery targets based on early estimates of production capacity. He added that the vaccine was sold at cost.

    AstraZeneca has repeatedly said the contract was not binding as it only committed to make “best reasonable efforts” in delivering doses.

    Jafferali said that principle had not been respected because the drugmaker had not delivered to the bloc 50 million doses produced in factories that are listed in the contract as suppliers to the EU, including 39 million doses manufactured in Britain, 10 million produced in the United States and 1 million in the Netherlands.

    AZ’s factories in Britain, and their refusal to export vaccines, is central to the lawsuit. The company claims that it fulfilled its commitments by alerting the EU to production delays.

    AstraZeneca’s lawyer said the British factories were mentioned in the EU contract for information, but there was no commitment to use them. They were expected to produce vaccines solely for Britain until February 2021, when the company expected to deliver 100 million doses to London. It has not yet completed its deliveries to Britain.

    Jafferali said AstraZeneca had pledged in the EU contract not to have other engagements that would prevent it from abiding by the terms of the deal.

    The lawyer also said AstraZeneca had failed to communicate to the EU in a timely manner the magnitude of its supply problems because it repeatedly sent messages, including publicly, that it was able to meet its targets, before finally admitting there were large shortfalls in March.

    The company had warned the EU in December of production problems, but communicated only at the end of January, just before the start of deliveries, a much larger cut than initially expected for the first-quarter.

    Boularbah said AstraZeneca had continuously kept the EU informed about its production plans and problems.

    A verdict is expected next month.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/27/2021 – 02:45

  • Massive War Study Shows 91% Of All Global Casualties From Explosives Were Civilians
    Massive War Study Shows 91% Of All Global Casualties From Explosives Were Civilians

    Authored by Jessica Corbett via Common Dreams,

    On the heels of Israel’s recent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a London-based charity revealed Tuesday that civilians accounted for 91% of people killed or injured when explosive weapons were used in populated areas worldwide from 2011 to 2020.

    The new Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) report (pdf) is based on data collected as part of the group’s Explosive Violence Monitoring Project. It emphasizes that the data, taken from English-language media reporting, “is not an attempt to capture every single casualty of every incident around the world.”

    Aerial bombing of Sanaa, Yemen. Via Reuters

    However, the report provides insight on the devastating impact of using explosive weapons—including air-dropped bombs, artillery shells, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and mortars—in densely populated areas and demands global commitments to end such violence.

    “Since the monitor began, AOAV has recorded the appalling suffering caused across the globe by both manufactured and improvised weapons,” the report says. “We call on states and other users to commit politically to stop using explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas. The harm recorded over the last 10 years and reflected in this report illustrates the stark urgency needed for a political declaration detailing such a commitment.”

    AOAV tallied 357,370 deaths or injuries in 28,879 incidents across 123 countries and territories—and at least 262,413 of those casualties or 73% were civilians. Overall, explosive weapons killed 155,118 people—of which 92,588 or 60% were civilians—and injured 202,252 people, of which 169,825 or 84% were civilians.

    Source: The International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW)

    As the report details:

    Civilians were most at risk when explosive weapons were used in populated areas—a well-established pattern of harm.

    60% of all recorded incidents took place in populated areas. In those attacks, AOAV recorded 263,798 casualties. Civilians accounted for 91% (238,892) of those killed or injured in populated areas. This compares to 25% of victims being reported as civilians when explosive weapons were used in areas not identified as highly populated areas.

    AOAV executive director Iain Overton told The Guardian the report clearly demonstrates that “when explosive weapons are used in towns and cities, civilians will be harmed.” That conclusion, he added, was “as true as it is today in Gaza as it was a decade ago in Iraq and beyond.”

    The highest numbers of civilian deaths and injuries were recorded in Syria (77,534), Iraq (56,316), Afghanistan (28,424), Pakistan (20,719), and Yemen (16,645). Though Gaza and Lebanon ranked ninth and 13th in terms of civilian casualties by numbers, they had the highest percentages of deaths and injuries endured by civilians—90% and 91%, respectively.

    IEDs were responsible for 52% of all deaths and injuries while manufactured explosive weapons accounted for another 47%. In other events, both types were used.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    AOAV points out that the consequences of such incidents are not limited to immediate deaths and injuries, highlighting that “further casualties have been caused by the reverberating impacts.”

    “Explosive remnants of war contaminate the land, posing a risk to civilians for generations and frequently preventing local populations from returning or using the land for livelihood activities,” explains the report. “The destruction of civilian infrastructure takes years to repair and can leave civilians without access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities or prevent access to services such as healthcare,” AOAV continues. “Such impacts cost further lives, exacerbate the mental health impact for survivors, and see rises in poverty and disease.”

    In an effort to prevent future casualties and damage, Ireland put forth a “Draft Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians From Humanitarian Harm Arising From the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas” (pdf) in January, and has welcomed comments on the proposal.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross is among the parties that have offered comments (pdf), stating that “in the ICRC’s view, the revised draft provides a solid basis for further work towards clear and concrete political commitments to strengthen the protection of civilians from harm caused by these weapons,” and detailing some recommendations aimed at “clarifying and strengthening the text.”

    Aftermath of a 2004 bomb attack on a US base in Iraq, via AP.

    The Guardian reports that though the draft “has won the support of Belgium and will be considered at a U.N. meeting in Geneva later this year,” countries including the U.S., U.K., Israel, and France have reservations “while Russia, accused of repeated breaches of humanitarian law during indiscriminate bombing in Syria, has not participated.” According to AOAV’s report, “For civilians living in conflict zones this declaration cannot come soon enough—states and civil society must ensure that stronger standards are not watered-down by states that reject the need for constraint.”

    “States should also seek to improve their policies and practices in light of the harm that is predicted when explosive weapons are used in populated areas,” the group adds. “The international community must not only take note of the scale of the figures we have included in this report but be cognizant of the fact that each number represents a life, frequently young, and almost always a civilian.”

    Earlier this month, Israel’s assault of Gaza—which included the destruction of medical facilities and apartment buildings, one of which housed international media offices—killed at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded over 1,900 people, according to local health officials. Although Palestinian groups also launched rockets toward Israel, most were stopped by the nation’s air defenses; 13 people have been killed in Israel.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/27/2021 – 02:00

  • "I Don't Know Of A Bigger Story In The World" Right Now Than Ivermectin: NYTimes Best-Selling Author
    “I Don’t Know Of A Bigger Story In The World” Right Now Than Ivermectin: NYTimes Best-Selling Author

    Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

    So why are journalists not covering it?

    Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author , has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them.

    Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use.

    For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.

    “I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments.

    But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.

    That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor.

    It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.

    As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”

    Total News Blackout

    On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin.

    A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.

    A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.

    Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.

    Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.

    In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.

    “The Most Powerful Entity on Earth”

    Malcom X once called the media “the most powerful entity on the earth.” They have, he said, “the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses”. Today, that power is now infused with the power of the world’s biggest tech and social media companies. Together social and traditional media have the power to make a medicine that has saved possibly millions of lives during the current pandemic disappear from the conversation. When it is covered, it’s almost always in a negative light. Some media organizations, including the NY Times, have even prefaced mention of the word “ivermectin” — a medicine that has done so much good over its 40-year lifespan that its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 — with the word “controversial.”

    Undeterred, many front-line doctors have tried to persuade their respective health regulators of the unparalleled efficacy and safety of ivermectin as a covid treatment. They include Dr. Tess Lawrie, a prominent independent medical researcher who, as Capuzzo reports, evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs for the WHO and the National Health Service to set international clinical practice guidelines:

    “[She] read all twenty-seven of the Ivermectin studies Kory cited. The resulting evidence is consistent and unequivocal,” she announced, and sent a rapid meta-analysis, an epidemiolocal statistical multi-study review considered the highest form of medical evidence, to the director of the NHS, members of parliament, and a video to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “the good news… that we now have solid evidence of an effective treatment for COVID-19…” and Ivermectin should immediately “be adopted globally and systematically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

    Ignored by British leaders and media, Lawrie convened the day-long streaming BIRD conference—British Ivermectin Recommendation Development—with more than sixty researchers and doctors from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. They evaluated the drug using the full “evidence-to-decision framework” that is “the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines” used by the WHO, and reached the conclusion that Ivermectin should blanket the world.

    “Most of all you can trust me because I am also a medical doctor, first and foremost,” Lawrie told the prime minster, “with a moral duty to help people, to do no harm, and to save lives. Please may we start saving lives now.” She heard nothing back.

    Ivermectin’s benefits were also corroborated by Dr. Andrew Hill, a renowned University of Liverpool pharmacologist and independent medical researcher, and the senior World Health Organization/UNITAID investigator of potential treatments for COVID-19. Hill’s team of twenty-three researchers in twenty-three countries had reported that, after nine months of looking for a COVID-19 treatment and finding nothing but failures like Remdesivir— “we kissed a lot of frogs”— Ivermectin was the only thing that worked against COVID-19, and its safety and efficacy were astonishing—“blindingly positive,” Hill said, and “transformative.” Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 mortality by 81 percent.

    Why All the Foot Dragging?

    Yet most health regulators and governments continue to drag their feet. More evidence is needed, they say. All the while, doctors in most countries around the world have no early outpatient medicines to draw upon in their struggle against the worst pandemic in century. Drawing on his own experience, Capuzzo describes the absence of treatments for COVID-19 as a global crisis: 

    When my daughter Grace, a vice president at a New York advertising agency, came down with COVID-19 recently, she was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” in Times Square with homeless people and quarantining travelers. The locks on her room door were removed. Nurses prowled the halls to keep her in her room and wake her up every night to check her vitals—not to treat her, because there is no approved treatment for COVID-19; only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move her to the hospital, where there is only a single eective approved treatment for COVID-19, steroids that may keep the lungs from failing. 

    There are three possible explanations for health regulators’ refusal to allow the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:

    • As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.

    • Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin. They include ivermectin’s original manufacturer, Merck, which has an antiviral compound, molnupiravir, in Phase 3 clinical trials for COVID-19. That might explain the company’s recent statement claiming that there is “no scientific basis whatsoever for a potential therapeutic effect of ivermectin against COVID-19. 

    • If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines. One of the basic conditions for the emergency use authorisation granted to the vaccines currently being used against covid is that there are no alternative treatments available for the disease. As such, if ivermectin or some other promising medicine such as fluvoxamine were approved as an effective early treatment for Covid-19, the vaccines could be stripped of authorisation.

    This may explain why affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs are not repurposed for use against Covid despite the growing mountains of evidence supporting their efficacy. 

    Ivermectin has already been approved as a covid-19 treatment in more than 20 countries. They include Mexico where the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, recently said that the medicine had reduced hospitalisations by as much as 76%. As of last week, 135,000 of the city’s residents had been treated with the medicine. The government of India — the world’s second most populous country and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of medicines — has also recommended the use of ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment against covid-19, in direct contravention of WHO’s own advice.

    Dr Vikas P. Sukhatme, the dean of Emory School of Medicine, recently wrote in a column for the Times of India that deploying drugs such as ivermectin and fluvoxamine in India is likely to “rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.” 

    Four weeks after the government included ivermectin and budesonide among its early treatment guidelines, the country has recorded its lowest case count in 40 days.

    In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.

    One of the outliers of this trend is the state of Tamil Nadu, where cases are still rising steeply. This may have something to do with the fact that the state’s newly elected governor, MK Stalin, decided to exclude ivermectin from the region’s treatment protocol in favor of Remdesivir. The result? Soaring cases. Late last week, Stalin reversed course once again and readopted ivermectin. 

    For the moment deaths in India remain extremely high. And there are concerns that the numbers are being under-reported. Yet they may also begin to fall in the coming days. In all of the countries that have used ivermectin widely, fatalities are the last thing to fall, after case numbers and hospitalizations. Of course, there’s no way of definitively proving that these rapid falloffs are due to the use of ivermectin. Correlation, even as consistent as this, is not causation. Other factors such as strict lockdowns and travel restrictions no doubt also play a part.

    But a clear pattern across nations and territories has formed that strongly supports ivermectin’s purported efficacy. And that efficacy has been amply demonstrated in three meta-analyses.

    India’s decision to adopt ivermectin, including as a prophylaxis in some states, is already a potential game-changer. As I wrote three weeks ago, if case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities fall in India as precipitously as they have in other countries that have adopted ivermectin, it could even become a watershed moment. But for that to happen, the news must reach enough eyes and ears. And for that to happen, reporters must, as Capuzzo says, begin to do their job and report both sides of this vital story.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 23:40

  • Lukashenko Lashes Out After BBC & Others Admit Detained Activist's Ukrainian Azov Battalion Ties
    Lukashenko Lashes Out After BBC & Others Admit Detained Activist’s Ukrainian Azov Battalion Ties

    Belarus’ long time leader Alexander Lukashenko has spoken out on Wednesday over the Ryanair diverted flight saga, pushing back against widespread accusations coming from the former Soviet satellite country’s opposition but especially Western leaders that his security services engaged in “state hijacking” of the airliner carrying activist and blogger Roman Protasevich. Promises of EU and US additional sanctions were swift after Protasevich and his girlfriend were detained on charges of inciting riots and publishing the personal information of police and officers of the state online. State airline Belavia is also facing an airspace ban over Europe and carriers out of the EU are avoiding flying over Belarus. 

    Instead of concealing the ordeal or downplaying the detention which has attracted international media scrutiny and outrage, Lukashenko has gone on the offense, lashing out at his critics while justifying the detention of Protasevich, calling him an “extremist” who was ultimately taking cues from a foreign entity in his activism and journalism, or even “inciting riots” – as he’s being charged with. “One extremist with his female accomplice. So let his numerous Western patrons answer this question: Which intelligence services did this individual work for?” Lukashenko said as quoted by the Belarus Segodnya newspaper.

    Via EPA

    “Not only him but his accomplice as well. These Western advocates should answer one more question: who paid him for taking part in the war in Donbass?” Belarus’ president added, “Perhaps, they fear this the most. So they’re making a fuss. His experience as a mercenary is huge.“

    It’s long been reported and a subject of controversy in Belarusian and Eastern European media that Pratasevich was indeed in war-torn Donbas in Ukraine at the height of fighting there in 2015. And BBC among others is now acknowledging:

    “Mr Protasevich confirmed in an interview last year that he had spent a year in the conflict-hit Donbas region and was wounded, but said he was covering the conflict as a journalist and photographer.” 

    He was “embedded” with the far-right and neo-Nazi linked Azov Battalion while they fought fierce battles against pro-Russia separatists. However, BBC notes that Protasevich has insisted he was only there as a journalist: “A former commander of the Azov unit has backed Mr Protasevich’s version of events, confirming that he spent time with them as a journalist and was wounded,” the report says.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Minsk is now accusing the young detained activist of essentially being a mercenary and “terrorist” who’s long plotted the overthrow of the legitimate government. Lukashenko added in his Wednesday comments:

    “These facts are well-known not only here, but in brotherly Russia, and also throughout the world. And he did not hide this. Well, here, in Belarus, he and his accomplices also plotted a massacre and a bloody coup,” Lukashenko said further.

    Photographs of Protasevich’s time in Eastern Ukraine increasingly point to him having been more than a mere journalist in the conflict…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Belarusian president stressed and claimed further that “there was a terrorist on that plane.”

    Via Sky News

    Instead of skirting the issue, Lukashenko owned up directly to authorizing Protasevich being removed from the plane along with his girlfriend:

    “According to the law, this person had been put on a terrorist list, and his organization is recognized as an extremist one. Who does not know this? And that we detained him, a Belarusian national, and his partner who holds our residence permit at the airport, this is our sovereign right to do so,” he said.

    However, the president stated the Ryanair flight was not initially diverted because of efforts to apprehend Protasevich, but because there was a bomb threat. The West has accused the bomb threat of being a ruse orchestrated to force the plane’s emergency diversion and landing.

    Via TASS

    “As we predicted, ill-wishers from outside and inside the country have changed their ways of attacking our country,” Lukashenko said, according to state media. “They crossed many red lines, crossed the boundaries of common sense and human morality.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 23:20

  • How Zuckerberg Paid Millions For Progressives To Work With 2020 Vote Officials Nationwide
    How Zuckerberg Paid Millions For Progressives To Work With 2020 Vote Officials Nationwide

    Authored by Steve Miller via RealClearInvestigations (emphasis ours),

    In the months leading up to November’s election, voting officials in major cities and counties worked with a progressive group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its allies to create ballots, strategically target voters and develop “cure” letters in situations where mail-in ballots were in danger of being tossed out.

    The Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, provided millions of dollars in private funding for the elections that came from a $350 million donation from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.  The CTCL gave “COVID-19 response” grants of varying amounts to  2,500 municipalities in 49 states.

    In exchange for the money, elections divisions agreed to conduct their elections according to conditions set out by the CTCL, which is led by former members of the New Organizing Institute, a training center for progressive groups and Democratic campaigns.

    A CTCL partner, the Center for Civic Design, helped design absentee ballot forms and instructions, crafted voter registration letters for felons and tested automatic voter registration systems in several states, working alongside progressive activist groups in Michigan and directly with elections offices in Georgia and Utah.

    Still other groups with a progressive leaning, including the Main Street Alliance, The Elections Group and the National Vote at Home Institute, provided support for some elections offices.

    Facebook, with the CTCL, was also part of the effort, providing a guide and webinar for election officials on how to engage voters. Included were directions to report “voter interference” to Facebook authorities. The company also provided designated employees in six regions of the U.S. to handle questions. Together, the groups strategically targeted voters and waged a voter assistance campaign aimed at low-income and minority residents who typically shun election participation, helping Democratic candidates win key spots all over the U.S.

    The little-explored roles of CTCL and other such groups emerged in emails and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations and public documents secured by conservative litigants and groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has filed more than 800 public records requests with elections offices accepting the grants.

    Previously, the Zuckerberg-funded effort has been described in generally positive terms, notably when NPR reported in December on “How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election” — in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s doubts about the legitimacy of the process and “Congress’ neglect.”

    Conservatives take a more critical view the effort. “This private funding has never been done before,” said Hayden Dublois, a researcher at the Foundation of Government Accountability. ”We hear about dark money and corporations buying ads, but never have we seen hundreds of millions of private dollars going into the conducting of elections. And states didn’t have any laws on the books to stop it.”
     
    Numerous Trump supporters contend that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or even stolen but have produced little concrete evidence to prove it. But their suspicions aren’t likely to be dispelled by the efforts of the private progressive groups, however legal.
     
    They are among other notable instances of monied interests underwriting public governance and affairs for political ends. In 2018, RCI reported that a New York University School of Law program funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg had placed environmentally minded lawyers in the offices of Democratic state attorneys general to challenge Trump administration policies. And examples of private efforts to steer cash-strapped public education are numerous, from the Koch charities on the right to more recent race-conscious programs on the left emphasizing the legacy and centrality of white racism in society.

    Zuckerberg did not respond to an emailed request from RCI for comment. In a post-election interview, he praised Facebook’s security work during the election and singled out its policing of “misinformation.” He noted working with polling officials to watch for information that might lead to “voter suppression” and said Facebook had strengthened its enforcement “against militias and conspiracy networks like Q-Anon.” 

    Facebook has banned Trump from its platform and has delisted individuals – many of them conservatives — for espousing views about the election that it insists are “misinformation.”

    ‘Curing Absentee Ballots’

    According to court documents filed by the Thomas More Society, a conservative law firm, the Zuckerberg-funded CTCL allowed elections departments to use grant money to buy vehicles to transport “voter navigators.”  The group filed unsuccessful lawsuits in several states before the election, contending the private funding created unconstitutional public-private partnerships. Several other suits remain active.

    The election department in Green Bay, Wis., promised as part of its CTCL grant of $1 million that it would employ the vote navigators to “assist voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions … and witnessing absentee ballot signatures,” according to documents filed in legal complaints in Wisconsin by Erick Kaardal, a Minneapolis-based lawyer who has worked on the Thomas More Society lawsuits.

    Caleb Jeffreys, one of at least two voter navigators in Green Bay, described his duties as including “curing absentee ballots.” Jeffreys, now a city employee in Green Bay according to his LinkedIn profile, did not respond to an interview request.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 23:00

  • Canadians Overwhelmingly Support Leaving US Border Closed Until September
    Canadians Overwhelmingly Support Leaving US Border Closed Until September

    Even as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has moved to roll back some of the COVID-19-inspired restrictions to allow Canadians to enjoy their all-too-brief summer, the latest reports suggest that the US-Canada border – the world’s longest undefended frontier – will remain closed until at least September. And even once it does reopen, most Canadians appear to support requirements for proof of vaccination before any unvaccinated American heathens are allowed to enter Canada.

    According to Bloomberg, roughly half of the respondents to a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute said that the border should remain shut until September, and more than three quarters of respondents said they would support a vaccine passport.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The border with the US has been closed for more than a year, but now that Canada is accelerating its vaccination program, Trudeau is facing growing pressure from business groups (not to mention the opposition Conservatives) to come up with a concrete reopening plan. And as Trudeau mulls whether to trigger an early election in an attempt to win back his parliamentary majority, the politics of the border reopening are suddenly critical.

    More than half of Canadian adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the country’s three largest provinces – Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia – have announced phased reopening plans.

    During a recent press briefing, Trudeau stressed that Canada still has a long way to go toward reopening.

    “There are lots of reasons to be hopeful but that doesn’t mean we can let our guard down yet,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.

    “Ultimately, the freedoms of a ‘one-dose summer’ may prove inadequate to a pandemic fatigued country, and that may well extend to border reopening timelines as well,” Kurl said. “The next month will be telling.”

    Last week, Trudeau’s government announced another month-long extension of border restrictions until June 21. According to the poll, there isn’t much support for an immediate reopening after a recent flareup in cases last month. But as case numbers continue to slow, and vaccination tallies rise, public opinion might shift sooner than the PM expects – especially as Canadians are forced to watch as their American peers return to a state of near-normalcy, which is already happening across all 50 states.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 22:40

  • New Zealand Worried That China "Storm" On Horizon, Urges Diversity Of Exports
    New Zealand Worried That China “Storm” On Horizon, Urges Diversity Of Exports

    New Zealand officials have of late looked at their much larger Aussie neighbor and expressed concern that the island could soon find itself in the middle of a similar trade war with China and generally a target of Beijing’s wrath. New Zealand is after all part of the 70-year old “Five Eyes” intelligence grouping of English-speaking nations that includes the US, UK, Australia and Canada – all of which have been increasingly vocal against China’s human rights abuses and coercive trade and spy measures abroad.  Wellington is under growing pressure from its bigger, influential allies to get more vocal. 

    In April New Zealand’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, sought to distance her country from the “pressure” and controversy as they spotlighted human rights abuses connected with the Uyghur Muslim population as well as Hong Kong, and other anti-democracy malfeasance, calling such criticisms “uncomfortable”. But despite the conciliatory attempts to stay somewhat “neutral” on the China criticism and growing antagonism, Mahuta is now warning the tiny nation could soon find itself in the center of a “storm” of anger from China in “only a matter of time”.

    New Zealand’s Prime Minister President Xi Jinping in 2019, file image.

    She’s now openly pushing for greater diversity of exports before that day comes after witnessing the Australia example and the devastation wrought by a trade war with its single biggest export destination – vocalizing something which itself is sure to gain Beijing’s scrutiny. 

    “We cannot ignore, obviously, what’s happening in Australia with their relationship with China. And if they are close to an eye of the storm or in the eye of the storm, we’ve got to legitimately ask ourselves – it may only be a matter of time before the storm gets closer to us,” she said in a Guardian interview this week.

    “The signal I’m sending to exporters is that they need to think about diversification in this context – Covid-19, broadening relationships across our region, and the buffering aspects of if something significant happened with China,” she said, and posed further, “Would they be able to withstand the impact?” 

    An estimated 30% of all New Zealand’s exports now goes to China (accounting for over $33 billion), a clearly massive enough chunk for Beijing to unleash real damage if it wanted to, after a past decade of steady reliance on China as NZ’s “big buyer”, stemming back to the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement signed in 2008.

    For now it appears Beijing is desirous of keeping things in accord with FM Mahuta’s April assessment of wanting to stay away from hurling “uncomfortable” accusations, or staying far away from “distractions”. 

    In reaction to Mahuta’s Monday published interview statements, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, expressed hope that the two countries can work in “the same direction, make the pie of cooperation bigger, rise above external distractions.” The Chinese statements were made Wednesday.

    New Zealand’s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta (left), via AFP

    The Chinese statement laid out that progress in relations can only be achieved “on the premise that the two sides have long been committed to mutual respect, mutual trust and win-win results” – ultimately toward a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.

    Of course Beijing has alternately lately voiced that it’s precisely “mutual respect and trust” that is fundamentally lacking in the current state of deteriorated relations with Washington.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 22:20

  • Two Million Evacuated As "Severe Cyclonic Storm" Hits India's Eastern Coast
    Two Million Evacuated As “Severe Cyclonic Storm” Hits India’s Eastern Coast

    Torrential rains, howling winds, and tidal surges from Cyclone Yaas wreak havoc in eastern India as the virus-stricken country experiences its second cyclone in less than two weeks, according to Bloomberg. 

    More than two million people were evacuated from the eastern states of Odisha and West Bengal as Yaas made landfall Wednesday morning, destroying homes, farms and affecting ten million people. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Yaas had destroyed more than 300,000 homes in the state, adding that crops have been swamped, livestock farms have been devastated, and river embankments have been breached. He said around 1.5 million were evacuated ahead of landfall. In neighboring Odisha, more than 500,000 people were evacuated. 

    The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) continues to define Yaas as a “very severe cyclonic storm.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Landfall process of Cyclone Yaas is complete. Between 1030 am (05:00 GMT) to 11.30 am (06:00 GMT), it crossed 20km (12 miles) south from the Balasore coast,” IMD director-general Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told Al Jazeera.

    “The cyclone is now moving towards Mayurbhanj district and Jharkhand (state),” he said.

    This is the second storm in ten days to batter India. Last week, cyclone Tauktae, categorized as “extremely severe,” barreled through the country’s western coast and sank a drilling rig, killing dozens. 

    The twin disasters come as India is battling the second wave of COVID-19, increasing pressure on hospitals and medical workers. 

    “This cyclone spells double trouble for millions of people in India as there is no respite from COVID-19,” said Udaya Regmi, the South Asia head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

    Hazra said it would be near impossible to maintain social distancing in the emergency shelters.

    … and it’s a good thing India is preparing to unleash another stimulus package as the latest surge in infections and cyclones could hamper the nation’s economic recovery.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 22:00

  • "Descending Into A Farce": Chaos Erupts After Stiffed UniCredit Bondholders Get Fat-Fingered Payment
    “Descending Into A Farce”: Chaos Erupts After Stiffed UniCredit Bondholders Get Fat-Fingered Payment

    Step aside Citigroup, and your erroneous $500MM transfer to Revlon bondholders: there is an even dumber “fat finger” in town.

    Late last week the financial world was shocked when Andrea Orcel, the new CEO of Italy’s second largest bank UniCredi, decided not to make a €30MM debt coupon payment on the grounds that the bank made a loss last year, even though investors had been assured of the cash. Then, on Tuesday, the financial world was even more shocked when the news broke that despite the bank’s decision, some bondholders said they had received notice of payment after all. And while UniCredit insists it didn’t pay it, raising Citigroup-esque dejavi questions about how the payment was made, Orcel’s calculated show of strength has “rapidly descended into a farce“, according to Bloomberg.

    What happened?

    It all started last Friday when UniCredit made the shocking decision to skip the payment of coupons on some financial instruments, in a U-turn that sent he bond in question into a tailspin and hurt some other debt sold by Italy’s No. 2 bank. Just back in February, when presenting full-year results, Finance Chief Stefano Porro had told analysts the bank expected to pay a coupon on the legacy bond it issued over a decade ago, as well as on Additional Tier 1 bonds. But a spokesman on Friday said UniCredit would not do so after posting a 2.79 billion euro ($3.4 billion) loss last year.

    As Reuters noted, UniCredit has withheld coupon payments on the CASHES notes in the past after ending the year in the red, but the latest decision, taken by new Chief Executive Andrea Orcel barely a month after his arrival, took bond investors by surprise.

    However, some bond investors were even more surprised when they woke up on Tuesday to find that their bank accounts had been properly debited with the required coupon payment from the UniCredit bonds.

    Initially there was much confusion who was responsible for the payment or where it came from, even if the confusion was understandable: the 2.98 billion euro bond’s complicated structure meany that there are several players involved, and the error could have come from any one of them. The CASHES, short for Convertible and Subordinated Hybrid Equity-Linked Securities, have different banks serving as depository and fiduciary for the instruments.

    The confusion went away this morning when we learned that Euroclear – Europe’s largest bond custodian and settlement agent of securities transactions – said it had mistakenly credited client accounts with funds for a coupon payment on UniCredit bonds that the bank had decided not to honor. The flub by Euroclear added a fresh – and confusing – twist to the surprise decision by new UniCredit Chief Executive Officer Andrea Orcel not to pay the debt coupon of about 30 million euros.

    In response, the bonds fell 0.5 cents on the euro to about 51.2 on Wednesday, while UniCredit shares fell 0.6% to 10.29 euros as of 10:38 a.m. in Milan. The bank’s Additional Tier 1 bonds, a newer-style capital security, were little changed. The CASHES are quoted almost 10 cents on the euro lower than prior to the news of the coupon skip last week.

    “It’s embarrassing for them of course, even if it isn’t their fault,” said Jerome Legras, a managing partner and head of research at ‎Axiom Alternative Investments. “But the truth is this happened because they took everyone by surprise.”

    For Orcel, the fat finger debacle is denting what would have been another signal of a high-energy start to his tenure. In just over a month in charge the Italian has already slimmed down the management ranks and cut down on co-head structures to simplify decision making – all while embroiled in a high profile court case in Spain over millions of dollars in lost pay.

    In any case, now that the source of the mistake has been isolated, the question is what happens next: does UniCredit pull a Citigroup and try to recover the funds (it didn’t work too well for Citi), or does it slink away with its tail folded between its legs.

    it would raise questions over whether investors will need to return the funds — and who will be on the hook for the payment if not.

    “Even if it isn’t their fault, but of the depositary or fiduciary bank, the timing is very unfortunate,” said Paola Biraschi, an analyst at CreditSights. “They already incurred some reputational damage given the inconsistent market communication around the intention to pay the coupon. Investors will now want to understand the reasons behind the alleged payment of the coupon. And if any money was transferred, I imagine they will attempt to claw it back from bond holders.”

    Since a clawback appears unlikely especially in the aftermath of the Citi cash study, an angry UniCredit may just take out its anger and frustration on more bondholders and refuse to pay future coupons. According to Bloomberg, given the notes’ terms the bank could also skip the next three coupons, even though UniCredit took steps last year to update terms of the CASHES allowing it to pay the coupons after reporting a loss or without distributing a dividend.

    The notes are a legacy of the financial crisis, highly complex securities issued more than a decade ago. Investors in this type of legacy bond contend not only with unpredictable decisions by lenders, but also labyrinthine regulations and often-tortuous terms that can be interpreted in different ways. As Bloomberf notes, They’ve already been the subject of controversy after a London hedge fund accused the bank of boosting its capital strength by misclassifying them. The issue fizzled after the European Banking Authority sided with the bank, saying it found “no clear evidence” to support the hedge fund’s claim.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 21:40

  • Ireland Rejects US Plan For Global Minimum Tax, Will Keep 12.5% Rate
    Ireland Rejects US Plan For Global Minimum Tax, Will Keep 12.5% Rate

    Following reports that an agreement between the G-7 and the White House on a global minimum corporate tax rate is almost ready, Ireland – which isn’t a G-7 member, but is a member of the OECD and the EU, and therefore must also assent to these changes – is speaking out against a new minimum level agreed to by the White House.

    According to Sky News, Ireland has no plans to increase its 12.5% corporate tax rate, which is already one of the lowest in the developed world, and which has been a tremendous boon for its economy. The latest iteration of the agreement as envisioned by the US set the global minimum rate at more than 15%.

    Source: Sky

    While the OECD is supportive of proposals for a global minimum corporate tax, it has also pointed out that reforms should also include more clear treatment of where and how taxes are assessed.

    Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said that he had “significant reservations” over American plans to encourage countries around the world to adopt a minimum corporate tax rate in order to prevent companies from shifting their profits and avoiding payments in future, especially as President Biden tries to engineer one of the biggest tax hikes in decades.

    In an interview with Sky News, Donohoe said “we do have really significant reservations regarding a global minimum effective tax rate status at such a level that it means only certain countries, and certain size economies can benefit from that base – we have a really significant concern about that.”

    The international agreement being hammered out by the US and the G-7 would be the biggest such overall in a century, when the current rules on international corporate taxes were hammered out. Back then, it was much more difficult for corporations to use accounting and legal loopholes to reduce their tax burden.

    Today, it’s commonplace for companies to shift billions of dollars of profits around the world to countries with lower tax rates, something the Biden administration has vowed to combat. The US is planning on raising its own corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, and is increasing the rates for American companies working overseas. And the UK has its own plans for tax hikes.

    Donohoe’s comments will raise the stakes during negotiations at the upcoming G-7 summit in England. The OECD has been pushing for corporate taxation reform for many years, and the US proposal for a global accord is building off of that.

    Of course, if Ireland refuses to lower its tax rate, that will make it extremely difficult for the UK to agree to the US plan, since British firms are already seeing unprecedented pressure to move across the border and back into the EU single market.

    “I absolutely support and will be making the case for our 12.5% tax rate,” Donohoe said. “I believe a rate like that – a low rate – should be a feature of an agreement in the future. “Our friends and partners in the United States understand our concerns in these matters, but the best kinds of partnerships – the best kinds of friendships – are ones in which you can talk about these matters openly and engage with each other, professionally, and that’s what we’re going to be doing.”

    The US has already pitched concessions like surrendering more tax revenue from American tech giants that operate internationally. Apparently, whatever they’re offering, it’s not going to be good enough for Ireland, which essentially holds the power to scuttle a global agreement simply by making its neighbors unwilling to tolerate Ireland’s notoriously low tax rates.

    In other words, just when US diplomats were proclaiming to the press that a deal was as good as done, it looks like talks have a long way to go.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 21:20

  • Iran Bans Crypto Mining As Blackouts Grow Into Summer: "85% Of Mining Farms Are Unlicensed"
    Iran Bans Crypto Mining As Blackouts Grow Into Summer: “85% Of Mining Farms Are Unlicensed”

    On Wednesday Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced efforts to combat the growing trend of rampant and unpredictable blackouts experienced across parts of the country of over 80 million people at the start of a hot summer, particularly in already strained major cities. By many accounts what was somewhat already a “norm” under American sanctions has come early this year – namely the sporadic blackouts, increasingly angering the population just ahead of a key presidential election in June.

    “The ban on the mining of cryptocurrencies is effective immediately until September 22… Some 85 percent of the current mining in Iran is unlicensed,” Rouhani said in a cabinet address aired by state TV. 

    There are an estimated 50 officially licensed mining farms sucking up a total of at least 200 megawatts of power, according to the most recent analysis. Iran’s state-controlled power generation company recently made public its data showing colossal increases in energy consumption far beyond this – mostly due to miners, leading to a nationwide strain that includes periodic blackouts, indeed confirming mining operations that far exceed the aforementioned 50 legal large-scale operations. 

    “Rouhani said legal crypto mining operations in Iran consume about 300MW of electricity, which is very insignificant. But illegal operations consume up to 2,000MW,” Al Jazeera noted of the speech announcing legislation enacting the four month ban.

    Rouhani did, however, appear to make a passing acknowledgement of the benefit to the country that crypto mining represents (which reportedly netted the country over $1 billion a year in recent years amid its isolation), saying “Now everybody has a few miners laying around and are producing Bitcoins” – which reportedly got some laughs out of top officials, but at the same time slammed illegal mining as coming at the cost of the citizenry’s well-being. 

    As we previously detailed, both private and public crypto mining has exploded in Iran over the past few years, putting it according to one recent study among the top ten bitcoin mining countries in the world – accounting for 4.5% of all bitcoin globally – primarily as a means of paying for imported goods and as an easily available way to soften the impact of sanctions amid a hard cash shortage – also given foreign currencies are hard to come by as a result of the prior US-led economic war against the Islamic Republic.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    While Iran has relied on ‘legal’ and authorized mining farms to soften the US sanctions blow, it’s in recent months cracked down on private and undisclosed operators seeking to profit from state subsidized electricity.

    And now with the Islamic Republic on the cusp of achieving a renewed JCPOA nuclear deal in Vienna, and with sanctions expected to quickly be rolled back including vitally on the oil and banking sectors, priorities are shifting, also as a presidential election is set for June, and further as Tehran appears to be following China’s example.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 21:00

  • Biden Panics After CNN Reveals He Canceled COVID Origins Investigation, Orders 90-Day Report From US Intel Agencies
    Biden Panics After CNN Reveals He Canceled COVID Origins Investigation, Orders 90-Day Report From US Intel Agencies

    Update (1522ET): Less than 24 hours after CNN threw Biden under the bus for canceling a State Department effort launched under Trump to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19, the Biden administration has backpedaled – and has ordered the US intelligence community to conduct a 90-day investigation into how the pandemic began.

    In a statement via the White House website, the Biden administration claims that officials have been pursuing various possibilities – including “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” it’s clear that the administration is in full damage control mode.

    “I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” said Biden in the announcement.

    *  *  *

    The Biden administration pulled the plug on a Trump-era State Department investigation into whether COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to a Tuesday evening report by CNN.

    The effort, led by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also sought to determine whether China’s biological weapons program may have played a role in the pandemic. According to the report, it was met with internal opposition from officials who thought it was simply a politicized witch hunt to blame China for the virus.

    According to three unnamed sources, when Biden was briefed on the investigations’ findings in February and March, he pulled the plug – and instead opted to trust the findings of the World Health Organization, which conducted an ‘investigation’ earlier this year which turned out to be nothing more than political theater, the cast of which included the highly conflicted Peter Daszak, the Fauci-funded virologist who was studying bat viruses at the Wuhan lab.

    “The way they did their work was suspicious as hell,” said one former State Department official who (we’re guessing was rooting for team Schiff during Trump’s impeachment).

    Pompeo, meanwhile, said in May 2020 that there was “enormous evidence” and a “significant amount of evidence” to support the lab-escape theory. And according to former senior State Department official David Feith, “People in the US government were working on the question of where Covid-19 came from but there was no other effort that we knew of that took the lab leak possibility seriously enough to focus on digging into certain aspects, questions and uncertainties.“

    The revelation that Biden shut down the inquiry is awkward at best, after the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were so sick in November of 2019 that they sought hospitalization, citing the intelligence report that Biden rejected.

    The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”

    The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins. -WSJ

    And of course now we know that the ‘venerable Dr. Fauci’ was involved in funding research in Wuhan via EcoHealth Alliance, and now admits “there’s no way of guaranteeing” that American taxpayer funds didn’t go towards “gain-of-function” research to make bat coronaviruses better-infect humans.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The lab leak theory, floated by Zero Hedge and several other outlets in early 2020, was promoted heavily by former President Trump, who blamed China for unleashing the virus on the world and derailing historic economic growth following three years of ‘America First’ international negotiations, along with generous tax breaks.

    “I said it right at the beginning, and that’s where it came from,” Trump told Newsmax Tuesday night, taking somewhat of a victory lab over the MSM’s ‘come to Jesus’ moment over the mounting lab leak hypothesis. “I think it was obvious to smart people. That’s where it came from. I have no doubt about it. I had no doubt about it. I was criticized by the press.”

    Trump also said he remains confident that the lab leak theory is correct.

    “‘People didn’t want to say China. Usually they blame it on Russia,” he continued. “I said right at the beginning it came out of Wuhan. And that’s where all the deaths were also, by the way, when we first heard about this, there were body bags, dead people laying all over Wuhan province, and that’s where it happened to be located.”

    “To me it was very obvious. I said it very strongly and I was criticized and now people are agreeing with me, so that’s okay.“

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 20:44

  • Dutch Court Orders Shell To Aggressively Cut Carbon Emissions In Landmark Decision
    Dutch Court Orders Shell To Aggressively Cut Carbon Emissions In Landmark Decision

    There’s been a lot of speculation this year about what it might take for western governments like the US to meet the carbon emissions targets laid out in the Paris Accords, which President Biden has enthusiastically rejoined. One study by the IEA concluded that all oil and gas firms would have to halt new projects in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

    While progressives increasingly demand more aggressive change, moderate Democrats and Republicans have long insisted that markets would naturally wean society off of its dependence on fossil fuels as renewables, nuclear and other alternatives to fossil fuel become more affordable. As COVID led to a memorable drop in demand that sent spot oil prices into negative territory last spring, investors have made clear that ESG investing and carbon credits are growing increasingly popular, alongside divestment movements. A recent runup in gas prices has also helped spur interest in alternatives.

    However, over in Europe, EU courts are stepping in to force one of the world’s biggest energy companies to accelerate its green commitments. Royal Dutch Shell has just lost a landmark case brought by environmental activists in Dutch courts in the Hague. The court ruled that the company must cut its greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively: by 2030, Shell’s net carbon emissions needed to be 45% lower than 2019 levels. The FT said the ruling could have “far-reaching consequences” not just for Shell, but for its competitors as well. Though Shell said it expects to appeal the decision.

    Previously, Shell had promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% within a decade, and to net-zero before 2050.

    If it stands, the ruling would set a precedent for similar cases against the world’s biggest corporate polluters who could now be exposed to similar lawsuits that could force an ESG reckoning that oil firms have repeatedly tried to delay.

    Judge Alwin, who handed down the decision on Wednesday, said it would require the company to accelerate “a change of policy” from Shell that could “curb the potential growth of the Shell group”.

    “The interest served with the reduction obligation outweighs the Shell group’s commercial interests,” she added.

    The big change here is that until now oil companies have mostly faced lawsuits related to environmental damages that they specifically caused, like an oil spill. Now, court rulings could allow activists to influence energy company policy more directly, with courts threatening massive fines if the firms don’t comply.

    One analyst who spoke with Bloomberg said the decision could have far-reaching ramifications for oil companies.

    “This is big news for carbon emitters everywhere, not just in the oil industry,” Angus Walker, an environmental lawyer at BDP Pitmans in London, said. “This may spread from large emitters to small, and from the Netherlands to other countries, at least in terms of challenges, if not successful ones.”

    Shell has poured billions of dollars in investment into low-carbon energy, including electric vehicle charging, hydrogen, renewables and biofuels. Even so, the firm has insisted it wouldn’t set targets for fossil fuel reduction targets saying they would be arbitrary given that demand is the ultimate factor. Other firms, like European rival BP, have agreed to reduction targets, thought whether they will be met remains to be seen.

    Shell’s lawyers argued in its case that society and the market must change before Shell does. But the judge countered that the company “must do more than monitoring developments in society and complying with the regulations in the countries where the Shell group operates.”

    And although Shell had no input and never agreed to the Paris Climate Accord, Judge Alwin ruled that the company must still shoulder the burden since the Netherlands, which is one of its parent companies, has agreed to the deal.

    “Companies have an independent responsibility, aside from what states do,” Judge Alwin said in her decision. “Even if states do nothing or only a little, companies have the responsibility to respect human rights.”

    The ruling followed a legal campaign led by Milieudefensie, the Dutch wing of activist group Friends of the Earth, which celebrated the decision, with one spokesman for the group declaring it “a monumental victory” for the climate movement.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 20:40

  • Facebook Stops Removing Posts Claiming COVID-19 Man-Made After Lab-Leak Hypothesis Finally Goes Mainstream
    Facebook Stops Removing Posts Claiming COVID-19 Man-Made After Lab-Leak Hypothesis Finally Goes Mainstream

    After nearly 18 months of punishing anyone who suggested that COVID-19 might have originated in a Wuhan lab, Facebook has decided to stop removing posts which claim the virus was man-made or manufactured, a company spokesperson told Politico on Wednesday.

    The move comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that three lab workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in late 2019 with symptoms consistent with the virus – building on previous reporting by the Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin. Both articles cast doubt on the mainstream media’s unsupported claim that COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans through an intermediary species – as opposed to the far more plausible theory that the virus escaped from a lab known for manipulating bat coronaviruses to better infect humans, in the same town which became ground zero for the pandemic. As we noted last week, there were very obvious clues to anyone able to think for themselves.

    As the mainstream media parroted CCP talking points throughout 2020 and punished anyone who strayed from the official narrative, Facebook banned Zero Hedge articles and policed COVID ‘disinformation’ based on the word of so-called “fact checkers” who insisted that the new disease could only have emerged via yet-to-be discovered animal intermediaries.

    Of course, one of Facebook’s “fact checkers” also worked at the Wuhan lab, and was defending her former colleagues in a giant undisclosed conflict of interest.

    Former Wuhan lab worker and Facebook fact checker, Danielle Anderson, who collaborated nine times with bat-covid researcher, Peng Zhou

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, Politifact was caught quietly editing an article ‘debunking’ the lab-leak hypothesis.

    VOX was similarly caught stealth-editing an article “debunking” the lab origin.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    No apologies. No introspection. Just spineless stealth edits and quiet policy changes such as Facebook’s recent decision. Perhaps most disturbing is the complete rejection of the lab-leak hypothesis by the MSM, social media giants, and liberal leaders because President Trump promoted it.

    What’s more, last night we learned from CNN that President Biden canceled aTrump-era State Department investigation into the origins of COVID-19, which also sought to determine whether China’s biological weapons program may have played a role in the pandemic. According to the report, it was met with internal opposition from officials who thought it was simply a politicized witch hunt to blame China for the virus.

    After news broke of Biden’s pro-China decree to cancel the investigation, his administration scrambled to do damage control, announcing that US intelligence agencies have 90 days to “redouble” their efforts to find out the virus’ origin and report back.

    Facebook flip-flop

    As Politico notes, “Facebook announced in February it had expanded the list of misleading health claims that it would remove from its platforms to include those asserting that “COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured.” The tech giant has updated its policies against false and misleading coronavirus information, including its running list of debunked claims, over the course of the pandemic in consultation with global health officials.”

    Now, according to a spokesperson, the origin language has been stricken from that list due to the renewed debate.

    “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps,” said the spokesperson in an email. “We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.”

    Now maybe they can unblock ZeroHedge posts and realize they have no place as the arbiters of anything.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 20:20

  • Apple Seeks 'Experienced BizDev Manager' To Negotiate Alternative Payments Partnerships, Must Have 'Crypto Experience'
    Apple Seeks ‘Experienced BizDev Manager’ To Negotiate Alternative Payments Partnerships, Must Have ‘Crypto Experience’

    Apple is looking to hire an ‘experienced’ business development manager to spearhead Alternative Payments partnerships for the company’s Apple Wallets, Payments and Commerce (WPC) team, in a sign that the technology giant is getting more serious about mainstreaming cryptocurrencies for practical purposes.

    Per a Wednesday job posting highlighted by Coindesk.

    The Apple Wallets, Payments, and Commerce (WPC) team is seeking an experienced Business Development Manager to lead Alternative Payments Partnerships. We are looking for a proven professional in global alternative and emerging payment solutions. We need your help forming partnership framework and commercial models, defining implementation paradigms, identifying key players and managing relationships with strategic alternative payment partners. This position will be responsible for the end to end business development, including screening partners, negotiating and closing commercial agreements and launching new programs.

    The ideal candidate will have more than 5 years of experience working in or with alternative payment providers, “such as digital wallets, BNPL (buy now, pay later), Fast Payments, cryptocurrency and etc..”  They will also need to have “Deep knowledge of the alternative payments ecosystem, understanding the complexities of funds flow, roles/responsibilities for settlement, relevant regulations and industry standards and the wide spectrum of FinTech products.“

    As Coindesk’s Danny Nelson notes, “Apple has long maintained an ironclad grip over payments, especially in its App Store, which has never accepted customers’ crypto and forces all catalog apps to use Apple’s commerce rails and play by Apple’s rules.”

    That tightly-controlled ecosystem is the focus of a blockbuster court fight launched by Fortnite developer Epic Games. Epic alleges Apple’s rules violate antitrust laws and stifle payments innovation. App developers could accept “bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies” if not for Apple’s restrictions, Epic claimed in the suit.

    Apple has made no public statements about its plans for the crypto space. -Coindesk

    Meanwhile, according to MacRumors, Coinbase included an Apple Pay logo in a recent update regarding its Coinbase Card. Perhaps negotiations have already begun?

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 20:00

  • "Don't You Live In The Ghetto?" – Bill Gates Ignored Complaints About Top Money Manager's Racist, Sexist Behavior
    “Don’t You Live In The Ghetto?” – Bill Gates Ignored Complaints About Top Money Manager’s Racist, Sexist Behavior

    Since Bill and Melinda Gates first announced their divorce earlier this month, barely a day has passed without some unflattering new revelation, as the American media apparently scrambles to compensate for all those years where it treated Bill Gates with kid gloves.

    It’s bad enough that Melinda reportedly divorced Bill over his insistence on maintaining ties with Jeffrey Epstein, something that has stoked speculation about whether Gates might face more sexual harassment allegations (sure enough, reports have emerged claiming he was essentially pushed out at Microsoft over improper behavior involving a female subordinate) or that he might be caught up in the Epstein drama.

    Larson

    While that so far hasn’t happened, the allegations of sexual improprieties have been enough to shatter his “dad geek” image. And now, the NYT has published a #MeToo-style report alleging that Gates’ main money man, Michael Larson, has a long history of sexual harassment and Scott Rudin-style abuses, and that Gates has repeatedly been warned about Larson’s antics, but neglected to act. Perhaps because Larson helped Gates grow his assets from $10 billion to $130 billion-plus through a strategy of low-profile investments, including buying up so much land that Cascade is believed to be the largest owner of farm land in the US.

    Larson has managed Gates’ money since the early 90s; before that, he was a portfolio manager at Putnam Investments. Cascade was incorporated in 1995 in Washington State. The generic-sounding name allowed Larson to runa  vast investment operation with a relatively low public profile. The perception that Larson had Gates’ unwavering support allowed him to do essentially whatever he pleased. And his employees, most of whom were hired directly out of college, never felt empowered to speak up.

    The list of allegations is pretty typical: Larson was accused of sexual harassment, racist remarks, acting extremely vindictive toward employees who left the company as well as his extremely blunt and degrading comments made in meetings, which his staffers described as “Larson bombs”. Overall, he was described as a “bully”.

    But what’s more, Bill and even Melinda Gates had been made aware of Larson’s behavior as early as the mid-2000s.

    But Mr. Larson, 61, also engaged in a pattern of workplace misconduct at Mr. Gates’s money-management firm, Cascade Investment, according to 10 former employees as well as others familiar with the firm.

    He openly judged female employees on their attractiveness, showed colleagues nude photos of women on the internet and on several occasions made sexually inappropriate comments. He made a racist remark to a Black employee. He bullied others. When an employee said she was leaving Cascade, Mr. Larson retaliated by trying to hurt the stock price of the company she planned to join.

    Cascade paid off at least seven people , including former employees, who witnessed or were the victim of Larson’s inappropriate behavior. The fact that Gates was so reluctant to reprimand Larson is “at odds with his image as a roving global do-gooder and champion of women’s empowerment,” the NYT said.

    While spokespeople for Larson and Cascade denied the allegations, a representative for Melinda Gates offered a cryptic statement saying she was unaware of “most” of these allegations, but at any rate had zero power to do anything about it since she had zero control over Cascade.

    Courtney Wade, a spokeswoman for Ms. French Gates, said, “Melinda unequivocally condemns disrespectful and inappropriate conduct in the workplace. She was unaware of most of these allegations given her lack of ownership of and control over B.M.G.I.”

    One particular incident, where Larson made a joke about a black employee living in “a ghetto”, was even brought to the Gates’ attention back when it happened in 2005. The employee who was the subject of the joke was also targeted with other harassing behavior, including Larson allegedly shorting the stock of a company that made her a competing offer.

    Ms. Ybarra, then 30, had joined Cascade three years earlier as an investor relations analyst. After she announced her planned departure, Mr. Larson became so angry that he shorted the stock of InfoSpace, according to three people familiar with the episode. (Short selling involves placing bearish bets on the company’s shares, which sometimes causes the stock to fall.) Two of the people said they saw Mr. Larson’s trades on their computer terminals.

    Mr. Larson told Ms. Ybarra and others that he had shorted InfoSpace’s stock out of spite, according to the three people, who heard about his remarks at the time.

    Mr. Giglio confirmed that Cascade shorted the stock but denied that Mr. Larson did it to spite Ms. Ybarra.

    At the same time, Mr. Larson repeatedly pressured Ms. Ybarra to remain at Cascade. She ultimately agreed to stay.

    On Election Day that November, Mr. Larson asked some Cascade employees in the office about the best time to go vote. Ms. Ybarra, who is Black, replied that she had voted that morning without having to wait in line. Mr. Larson responded: “But you live in the ghetto, and everybody knows that Black people don’t vote.” The scene was described by two people who heard the comment and a third who was told about it later.

    Mr. Giglio denied that Mr. Larson made the remark.

    At least one employee at Cascade complained to human resources about Mr. Larson’s remark. The complaint made its way to Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates, who later spoke to Ms. Ybarra as part of an internal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

    In January 2005, she quit Cascade, received a small payout and agreed to not speak about the firm in the future.

    Another anecdote used in the report involves California fund manager Robert Sydow, who had been close friends with Larson until he tried to confront Larson about his behavior, at which point Larson retaliated by allegedly pulling money he had with Sydow’s firm.

    In November 2006, Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates were sent another complaint about Mr. Larson. This one was from Robert E. Sydow, a California fund manager who had been close friends with Mr. Larson and whose firm, Grandview Capital Management, Mr. Larson had hired to manage a $1.6 billion slice of the foundation’s endowment.

    Mr. Sydow wrote a six-page letter to the Gateses accusing Mr. Larson of abruptly severing Cascade’s ties with Grandview after a dispute between him and Mr. Sydow. (The dispute, Mr. Sydow wrote, came after Mr. Sydow warned Mr. Larson that he needed “to stop using his power to hurt others in anger.”) The letter, reviewed by The Times, said Mr. Larson had harmed Grandview’s reputation in part by spreading “false and defamatory” lies about it in the market.

    Mr. Sydow, the godfather to one of Mr. Larson’s children, went on to describe multiple instances of Mr. Larson seeking to punish employees who left Cascade and retaliating against those who cooperated with the investigation into his treatment of Ms. Ybarra, among other things.

    Mr. Larson has “the potential to greatly embarrass both you and the foundation,” Mr. Sydow wrote.

    “We exit agreements with third-party investment managers for a variety of reasons,” Mr. Larson said in a statement sent by Mr. Giglio.

    The sexual harassment allegations involving employees chiefly revolve around two incidents:

    • At a work Christmas party in the mid-2000s, Mr. Larson was seated outdoors with a small group of male employees after dinner, according to one of the men. Three female colleagues were standing about 20 feet away. “Which one of them do you wanna” have sex with? Mr. Larson asked the men, using a profane verb.
    • On at least one occasion in recent years, with employees looking on, Mr. Larson displayed photographs of naked women on his phone and compared them to Ms. Berman, the human resources executive, according to a former employee who witnessed the incident and another person who was told about it. (Ms. Berman left Cascade in 2015.) Another woman who worked at Cascade said Mr. Larson asked her if she would strip for a certain amount of money.

    Larson apologized for using “harsh language”, but said he only did so early in his career.

    But by far the most egregious allegations involved Larson’s alleged harassment of a bike shop manager, who eventually received a monetary settlement after she hired a lawyer who sent a letter to the Gates’s attorneys warning them about Larson’s behavior.

    Around the time of the complaints involving Ms. Harrington, Mr. Larson was repeatedly propositioning, and being rebuffed by, the manager of a local bicycle store that was mostly owned by a firm, Rally Capital, that Cascade had invested in.

    In 2017, the manager hired a lawyer, who sent a letter to Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates warning them that if Mr. Larson did not stop harassing her, she would sue them. The letter said Mr. Larson had exposed himself to the manager and had told her that he wanted to have sex with her and another woman, according to someone who read the letter.

    Mr. Gates agreed to settle the matter by having a payment made to the bike store manager. Ms. French Gates insisted that an outside investigator review the incident and Cascade’s culture, people familiar with the matter previously told The Times. In 2018, Mr. Larson went on paid leave while the investigation took place.

    When Larson left Cascade on a temporary leave in 2018, Gates confided in another senior employee that Larson likely wouldn’t return. However, he did return the following year, after an investigation into the bike shop manager’s allegations found that they could not be substantiated.

    Rumors about Larson’s behavior have percolated for years, but now that the NYT has targeted him with a #MeToo-style expose, it’s likely his days atop Cascade are numbered. The last money manager fired by Gates was Andrew Evans, who served a six-month prison sentence for bank fraud (Gates even visited him in jail). When WSJ published a front-page story about Evans’ criminal record in 1993, Gates was forced to seek out somebody else to manage his personal fortune. That’s when he met Larson.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 19:55

  • Illinois Constitutional Amendment Is "A Monstrous Giveaway To Public Unions"
    Illinois Constitutional Amendment Is “A Monstrous Giveaway To Public Unions”

    Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

    Most Illinoisans are unaware, but their General Assembly is poised to pass a resolution for a state constitutional amendment, the consequences of which are hard to overstate. It would vastly expand union power, permanently, particularly public union power that is already extreme.

    Limited media coverage so far characterizes the amendment mostly as an attempt to permanently ban right-to-work and lock in current worker protections. That would be bad enough, since the majority of states are now right to work including nearby competitors Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Iowa. And Illinois is already an outlier in how much power it has given to public unions, particularly in collective bargaining rules.

    But that’s just the start. Think hard about what the short amendment, shown here, would do.

    Read it and consider the following:

    The first sentence, by itself, creates a new, personal constitutional right. That right would take all covered matters described in that sentence out of the hands of the legislature and local governments, subjecting it all, instead, to collective bargaining.

    Both the scope of that right and the rules for how the collective bargaining would be conducted are sweeping and open-ended. Note in particular that all matters of “economic welfare” would be forced into collective bargaining, and those matters of economic welfare apparently need not be tied to the workplace (though that’s not entirely clear).

    What isn’t a matter of “economic welfare”? Practically nothing. The Chicago Teachers Union has attempted in the past to include matters like affordable housing in its bargaining. Under the amendment it would clearly have a strong case for demanding any number of such policies as part of its contract negotiations. Same for any other union.

    The broad, new right would override extensive law already in place. Today, public union negotiation is covered by the lengthy Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and the Illinois Education Labor Relations Act. Private unions are governed by both federal and state law.

    But constitutional rights trump all state law, so claims based solely on the new amendment would be asserted. Public unions would have a field day in Illinois courts. The amendment would throw everything open to a new standard that only the courts would define, and we know that Illinois’ political courts routinely rule as unions want.

    The second sentence is irrational surplus on its face. Since a constitutional right is already created by the first sentence, why bother saying that “no law shall be passed” that contradicts the things for which a constitutional right is already created in the first sentence?  Note also that there’s no reference to existing rights, so this is not about locking in current law. The key is that first sentence, which creates something entirely new.

    One example of how the amendment would work is pension reform. Suppose the legislature some day goes back to the courts to try again claiming the facts have changed  (as they already have) since the courts last ruled against reform. Or perhaps the composition of the Illinois Supreme Court changes in favor of reformers. As before, the legislature would then pass a reform bill that the unions wouldn’t like. But the unions, under the amendment, would answer that reforms could only be made through collective bargaining. It wouldn’t be a matter legislation could change. The amendment would thereby create an additional bar to pension reform, just as it would to any other change in labor law.

    Trial lawyers, too, would have a field day with the amendment. Because the proposed amendment is so open-ended and horribly worded, the claims they might assert would be limited only by their imagination.

    I have focused so far on the proposed amendment’s impact on public unions for two reasons.

    First, let’s just stipulate that much of Illinois’ problems derives from their excessive influence over Illinois government, because every informed Illinoisan knows that.

    Second, the powers behind the proposal have basically admitted that it’s intended to benefit public unions.  Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) is lead sponsor of the measure in the Senate.

    As reported by Capitol News Illinois, Villivalam said it would have minimal impact on private-sector workers because the National Labor Relations Act governs organizing and collective bargaining in the private sector. He said the intent was to protect the right to collective bargaining that is already established under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act and the Illinois Education Labor Relations Act, and those are for public unions.

    Villivalam’s admission is probably right, but he’s wrong to disregard the impact the amendment might also have on private sector labor.

    One lawyer we heard from on that is Jeff Risch, who chairs the labor and employment group at the SmithAmundsen law firm. He primarily represents small and mid-size employers that occasionally are able to voluntarily reach agreements to remain union-free. The amendment would apparently make that impossible, he said, by giving any employee a constitutional right to bargain collectively. For that and other reasons, “This amendment will seal Illinois’ fate forever,” he says.

    Also, much of private sector collective bargaining is controlled by federal law. Insofar as the amendment purports to override it, complex questions of preemption would have to be litigated, which is another mess the amendment would create.

    To summarize, drafters of the proposal have made it deliberately and deceptively ambiguous and misleading, but also radically broad and open-ended. By creating a new constitutional right for themselves and their agenda they would be throwing a cluster bomb toward everything in their way. The amendment’s full impact may not be entirely certain but it would, for sure, clear a path to new, unimagined public union power.

    *  *  *

    The Illinois Senate has already passed the resolution and it has passed out of committee in the House. The House is likely to vote on the resolution this month. The amendment would then be presented to voters for approval in the 2022 election.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 19:40

  • Global Chip Hub Taiwan Hammered By Triple Blow Of Drought, Blackouts And COVID Surge
    Global Chip Hub Taiwan Hammered By Triple Blow Of Drought, Blackouts And COVID Surge

    The calm of a sunny May afternoon in Taiwan was broken by what the Nikkei describes as a crescendo of smartphones buzzing due to a national emergency alert: electricity blackouts were coming due to a malfunction at a power plant in the south of the island. People had no time to prepare. There were more than 30 reports of people being trapped in elevators half an hour after the warning in the capital city.

    “I was talking to my clients… but our building suddenly blacked out. The air conditioning as well as WiFi crashed completely, so I went home early,” a manager with the surname of Lin working in the Neihu Science Park in Taipei, where many top tech companies have offices, told Nikkei Asia. “Many traffic lights on my way home were out and my home was dark too.”

    “We could only use candles and have instant noodles for dinner, and there was no hot water for showers,” a resident in the southern city of Tainan told Nikkei. “It’s been like living in ancient times.” Or Texas during a cold blast.

    More than four million households on the island, which has a population of 24 million, were affected by six rounds of rolling one-hour power suspensions on May 13 before power was fully restored around 8 pm. Taipower, the state-owned electricity operator, said human error at Hsinta Power Plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung caused a malfunction in the power grid, tripping four generators and cutting about 13 megawatts of electricity supply. This dragged Taiwan’s total power supply below a critical security level and triggered the outages.

    The nation’s phones buzzed again just four days later with another blackout warning. That evening, up to 659,000 households had their power cut. Taipower said that, with temperatures warmer than usual, there was a shortage of electricity supply because they had not anticipated demand for electricity to be so high.

    “Power demand at 2:09 p.m. broke another historic record in May and the demand around 7:30 p.m. was far higher than usual in the evening,” Taipower said in a statement.

    The two blackouts did not affect Taiwan’s crown jewel semiconductor industry. But they still put production continuity at risk because chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp said they experienced a sudden voltage dip, which could have a small impact on semiconductor production, industry sources said.

    After the two massive power outages, Taiwan endured another small-scale power suspension in Taipei City on Friday and experienced temporary power generator malfunctions at two separate coal-fired power plants on Sunday and Monday respectively.

    Maintaining production is crucial at a time of global chip shortage, with political tensions and pandemic-induced lockdowns affecting supply chains and remote working increasing demand for electronic devices.

    People in Taipei eat using the light from their phone while experiencing a blackout due to an outage at a power plant on May 13.  

    The outages have triggered serious concerns over whether the island’s electricity infrastructure is sufficient to sustain its booming economy.

    Taiwan’s economy grew more than 8% in the January-March quarter from a year earlier. National Development Council Minister Kung Ming-hsin said the island could see economic growth of more than 5% in 2021, the highest in more than a decade, if “all industrial production can stay intact.”

    The power problems come as Taiwan sees a surge in local COVID cases, after being a model of COVID control in 2020.

    The government has raised the alert level for the whole island, demanding that all schools close for two weeks and urging businesses to adopt contingency plans such as asking employees to divide into groups and work from home. The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen said on Monday it is considering extending the two-week level 3 alert — one stage below a de facto lockdown — after reporting more than 3,000 local cases in just nine days.

    * * *

    Another headache is Taiwan’s worsening water shortage. The island is suffering its most serious drought in more than five decades — another factor that may stymie economic growth.

    As of Thursday afternoon, the water reserve rate at the Nanhua Reservoir only stood at 10.6%, suggesting the water supply from this reservoir could last only 23 days if without any more rainfalls. 

    Ministry of Economic Affairs officials on Wednesday described the drought as the “worst ever,” saying they planned to implement a new round of water-reduction plans from June should rainfall be insufficient. The affected cities include Hsinchu, where top chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics have headquarters. Taoyuan, a major hub of print circuit board production sites and home to Taiwan’s biggest memory chip maker Nanya Technology, is also included in water rationing plans.

    The government also plans to impose stricter water supplies for major industrial users in the southern Taiwanese cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung, where TSMC operates its most cutting-edge plant. It has ordered several central cities, including Taichung, to suspend residential water use for two days a week since early April.

    “It never rains but it pours,” a chip industry executive told Nikkei Asia.

    “We suddenly face a chain of crises: we are short on water, and then we are short of electricity, and we are also short of vaccines amid surging local COVID cases,” the executive said. “The only thing we are not short of is business orders that are full and bright at least until the year end and beyond thanks to surging demand across sectors. But those orders cannot be fulfilled without sufficient water and electricity.”

    Powertech Technology, the world’s biggest memory chip packaging and testing house, is based in Hsinchu, and some of its plants will be subject to a planned two-day suspension of water use for industry and residential use starting in June.

    CFO Evan Tseng said the company stored water in its basement and could transfer some water between plants. “We now only offer bento boxes in our cafeterias and we don’t serve soup or noodles with soup as that could consume more water,” Tseng told Nikkei Asia. “So far we think production could still run normally.”

    Powertech’s CEO told Nikkei in an interview that he expected the robust orders to last at least until the end of this year.

    TSMC spokesperson Nina Kao told Nikkei Asia that the latest water-reduction plan would not affect the company’s production, but the company would “mobilize more water trucks” to support manufacturing to overcome the stricter water rationing. TSMC said in April that the global chip shortage could last until 2022 based on robust demand.

    A woman walks past a closed open-air gym in Taipei on Friday following the recent rise in COVID-19 in Taiwan

    The water and power issues highlight some key vulnerabilities in basic infrastructure for Taiwan, one of the world’s most important sources of the advanced chips that power everything from cars to smartphones, computers and servers to games consoles.

    Lin Faa-Jeng, dean of the college of electrical engineering and computer science at National Central University and adviser to the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s administrative organ, told Nikkei Asia that Taipower had not anticipated the impact of climate change in making the weather so hot at this time of year.

    “The power company has to adjust all the planning for annual maintenance and take into account some new factors that they had not considered… But I think the power supply will be alleviated when some annual maintenance on power generators is completed from next week.”

    Chen Chao-shun, chair professor at I-Shou University and a specialist on power infrastructure, told Nikkei Asia the two massive blackouts were both due to a sudden loss of power supply that triggered the system’s automatic under-frequency load shed to protect the power grid.

    “The two power outages were all related to the supply and the incidents highlight that Taipower needs to improve its capability to schedule backup generators to quickly support the system,” Chen said. “Taipower also has to readjust the system to keep vital equipment such as traffic lights and elevators operating. You can’t unexpectedly cut off the power and trap people in elevators.”

    “Before Taipower can improve its agility to schedule power generation and respond to any sudden supply loss, we are likely to face a power suspension triggered by the automatic under-frequency load shed again this summer,” Chen said.

    By way of contingency plans, the government has been drilling wells and building new water pipes to draw water from the north of the island to the south. But, while suppliers in the science parks are minimizing their use of water, the change is far from sufficient.

    The water level is extremely low in the Nanhua Reservoir in the mountainous area of southern Taiwan — one of the key water reserves for Kaohsiung and Tainan Science Park. Areas of sand that used to be under water have been exposed under the tropical sun and are now sand dunes.

    “It’s really too hot…the temperature can reach more than 40 Celsius around noon now and we haven’t seen a drop of rain in months,” a local resident told Nikkei Asia. “We are all worried that the water reserves here can only last for about a month.”

    Multiple cities across Taiwan welcomed heavy rain on Monday afternoon, however, as of evening, the water reserve rate at the Nanhua Reservoir stood at just 8.8%, suggesting the water supply from this reservoir could last only 19 days without any rainfall, according to open data provider Taiwanstats, citing data from the Water Resources Agency.

    Soldiers in protective suits disinfect a metro station in Taipei on May 20.  

    Tsengwen Reservoir, another key water resource for Tainan Science Park and the largest in Taiwan, had a water reserve rate of just 6% as of Thursday, the data showed. The rate at Shihmen Reservoir, one of the key reservoirs that supplies northern Taiwan, dipped to 11.1% as of Thursday.

    Wu Ray-shyan, executive vice president of the National Central University and a hydrology and water resources expert, said if the monsoon season did not bring sufficient rain this month, then Taiwan would have to wait until the typhoon season, which generally starts in July, to ease the drought.

    “I don’t mean to be alarmist, but if typhoons are delayed, as they were last year, we will have to rely on groundwater resources,” Wu told Nikkei Asia. “Water supply not only needs management and conservation measures, but also an increasing capacity of storage facilities to meet demand, which is rising in tandem with economic growth.

    “Taiwan is not like Israel, where the rainfall is really scarce. We [in Taiwan] sometimes on the one hand deal with floods in typhoon season and on the other hand deal with droughts…Taiwan’s problem is that we don’t have enough storage capacity to really store this rainfall,” Wu said.

    Taiwan’s First Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City used to be one of the pillars for Taiwan’s power generation. The plant was retired in 2019.

    On power infrastructure, the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen plans to phase out nuclear power by 2025 and to use natural gas and coal-fired power to fill the gap before the planned installation of solar and offshore wind power comes online.

    The government is building a third and large natural gas terminal off the coast of Taoyuan to increase the use of liquefied natural gas as a key source of electricity. Local environmental groups, however, oppose the plan, meaning it could be delayed by years or forced to locate elsewhere on the island.

    In 2020, Taiwan’s power usage reached 271.1 billion kilowatt-hours, up 2.1% from the previous year, while total power generation was 279.8 billion kilowatt-hours, according to Economics Ministry data released this month. Coal-fired electricity contributed 45% of the total power generated last year, while natural gas accounted for 35.7% and nuclear power 11%. Renewable energy, however, contributed a mere 5.4%.

    The government forecasts that electricity demand will grow by 2.5% each year from 2021 to 2027, after factoring in inbound investments amid the U.S.-China trade war and the massive investment plans by semiconductor companies.

    National Central University’s Wu said Taiwan needed better infrastructure planning for the long run.

    “The last time Taiwan built large infrastructure for either power plants or reservoirs was a very long time ago,” Wu said. The last time a large reservoir was created was in 1994 when the Nanhua Reservoir, which supplies the Tainan Science Park, was dug, he added.

    “Large infrastructure takes 10 or even 20 years from planning to completion,” he said. “What Taiwan needs is long-term development planning — undisrupted by the rotation of political parties — for utilities over the next 30 to 50 years.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 19:20

  • Are Chinese Stocks Ready To Outperform?
    Are Chinese Stocks Ready To Outperform?

    By Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at SaxoBank

    Summary: Chinese equities were rallying 3.6% today on signals from the Chinese government to curb inflationary pressures from rising commodity markets reducing inflation expectations and boosting the earnings outlook. US equities are currently valued at a valuation premium to Chinese equities which suggest historically that Chinese equities could outperform over the next 26 weeks. The two country’s technology sectors are equally valued on a 2-year forward basis on EV/EBITDA but with a valuation skew on Chinese technology mega caps making them more attractive on valuation. The long-term growth outlook is better for Chinese technology companies and thus we expect the market to begin leaning into Chinese technology stocks.

    As we alluded to in today’s podcast, CSI 300 futures (tracking mainland China equities) broke out higher up 3.6% during the session. The Chinese government’s signaling that it would curb excesses in commodity prices pulled technology stocks globally higher as lower commodity inflation means less pressure on interest rates which in turn means less pressure discount rates on future cash flow. Lower input prices also lift future profit margins and earnings growth.

    Chinese companies operate generally at lower profit margins and thus respond more to expectations about inflation and interest rates as the marginally change on profits are bigger for low margin businesses. China’s stimulus has also been limited this year as the country is enjoying the tailwind from stimulus in the US and Europe, but it is our expectation that as that growth momentum slows down the Chinese government will take over a launch more stimulus to keep the economy humming. This should underpin the earnings growth outlook for Chinese equities.

    Last Friday, we wrote about how cheap mega cap Chinese technology stocks have become measured on FY22 free cash flow yield which is almost twice some of the largest US technology stocks. On a 2-year horizon Chinese technology stocks (Hang Seng TECH) are valued at the same equity valuation as US technology stocks (Nasdaq 100) which is cheap in a historical context because of the better growth outlook for Chinese technology companies. Broadening out the scope US equities are right valued at a 6% valuation premium to Chinese equities compared to a historical 5% discount for US equities.

    Chinese equities were beginning to get back to their historical valuation premium over US equities in the beginning of the year, but the hedge fund Archegos’ collapse and the Chinese crackdown on the technology sector have for now negatively impacted investor sentiment. The current US equity valuation premium suggest that Chinese equities could outperform over the coming 26 weeks, but this prediction comes with a wide prediction interval and the key assumption of this trade is that Chinese equities will move back into premium. Helped by better growth outlook and a weaker USD we believe that is most likely the trajectory.

    For inspiration on Chinese technology and consumer stocks looks at our China consumer and technology equity theme basket consisting of 40 stocks.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 19:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 26

Today’s News 26th May 2021

  • Visualizing The Copper Intensity Of Renewable Energy
    Visualizing The Copper Intensity Of Renewable Energy

    The world is moving away from fossil fuels, towards large-scale adoption of clean energy technologies.

    Building these technologies is a mineral-intensive process. From aluminum and chromium to rare earths and cobalt, as Visual Capitalist details below, the energy transition is creating massive demand for a range of minerals.

    Copper is one such mineral, which stands out due to its critical role in building both the technologies as well as the infrastructure that allows us to harness their power.

    The above infographic from Trilogy Metals highlights the role of copper in renewable energy, and how the adoption of wind and solar energy will affect its demand going forward.

    Copper’s Role in Renewable Energy

    Copper has one of the highest thermal and electrical conductivity of all metals. As a result, it’s the most widely-used mineral among energy technologies and is essential for all electricity-related infrastructure.

    According to Navigant Research, here’s how much copper wind and solar farms use per megawatt:

    Solar photovoltaics (PV) primarily rely on copper for cabling, wiring, and heat exchange due to its efficiency in conducting heat and electricity. Wind energy technologies make use of the red metal in their turbines, cables, and transformers. Offshore wind farms typically use larger amounts because they are connected to land via long undersea cables that are made of copper.

    In addition, copper is also a key part of the grid networks that transmit electricity from power plants to our homes. With the increasing adoption of renewable energy, the demand for copper will only grow.

    Copper Intensity of the Energy Transition

    According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), solar and wind energy installations need to scale up significantly under their REmap scenario, in which efforts are made to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees by 2050.

    Based on the copper content figures from Navigant Research and IRENA’s required capacity projections, here are the copper requirements for annual solar and wind installations in 2020 and 2050:

    Copper content figures were calculated by multiplying copper content per MW in tonnes with annual installed capacities in 2020 and 2050.

    Relative to 2020 levels, annual copper demand from solar PV installations could more than double by 2030, and almost triple by 2050. The largest percentage increase in copper requirements comes from offshore wind farms. IRENA’s REmap scenario requires 45,000 MW of annual offshore wind installations in 2050, which translates into 432,000 tonnes of copper—a 648% increase from 2020 levels.

    By 2050, annual copper demand from wind and solar technologies could exceed 3 million tonnes or around 15% of 2020 copper production. However, it isn’t clear whether we will have enough supply of copper to meet this growing demand.

    Will Supply Meet Demand?

    According to Citigroup, the global copper market is expected to be in a 521,000 tonne deficit in 2021—and the transition to renewables is still in its early stages.

    While the demand for copper comes from a range of industries, the majority of its supply comes from a few regions, making the supply chain susceptible to disruptions. Mine shutdowns in 2020 exemplified this, as copper production fell by around 500,000 tonnes.

    Additionally, average ore grades in Chile, the largest producer of copper, have fallen by 30% over the last 15 years, making it more difficult to mine copper.

    Although copper is available in abundance, declining ore grades and concentrated production are a cause for concern, especially as demand rises. Therefore, new sources of copper will be valuable in meeting the growing material needs of the clean energy transition.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 02:45

  • Alternative Version Of Who May Be Behind The Minsk Special Operation
    Alternative Version Of Who May Be Behind The Minsk Special Operation

    Via South Front,

    On May 23, a plane of RyanAir airlines flying from the Athens to Vilnius carried out an emergency landing at the Minsk airport, following a bomb alert. This is widely claimed to be a special operation ordered by President Alexandr Lukashenko aimed at arrest of one of opposition figures Roman Pratasevich, who was on board. However, a closer look at the incident and the newly-released data prove that other forces could be behind this ‘special operation’.

    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) and his Belarus’ counterpart Alexander Lukashenko walk in as they attend a session of the Supreme State Council of the Union State at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 3, 2015. AFP PHOTO / POOL / SERGEI KARPUKHIN (Photo credit should read SERGEI KARPUKHIN/AFP/Getty Images)

    Reports about the explosive device on board were not confirmed. Passengers took another flight. Everyone except Protasevich, his girlfriend to whom he handed his personal belongings, including a laptop and a phone, and four Russian citizens, “who were GRU officers for sure “.

    Roman Protasevich is one of the main figures of Belarus opposition, a co-founder of the Telegram channel Nexta that was used for coordination of mass protests since August 2020.

    One of the main proofs that the incident was a planned operation of Belarus special forces is the publication on his Telegram channel of his private message, where cautious Protasevich described a suspicious Russian man, who tried to take a photo of his documents before landing. The authors of the channel consider this as proof that Roman Protasevich began to be followed back in Athens.

    “I was silent, and he turned to me in Russian with some stupid question,” – Protasevich wrote to his friends.

    “Such a middle-aged, fit, with a bald head. In one T-shirt, in light-colored pants and a leather case.”

    A closer look at the chronology of events casts doubts on the claims of a “special operation” of special forces.

    The crew commander of the aircraft of the RyanAir company informed Minsk about the mining on May 23, at 12:50 local time. At that moment the plane was already near the Lituanian border, but the pilots decided to act in accordance with the international security instructions and requested a landing in Minsk.

    A recording of the pilots’ call with the dispatcher has been recently published online. It confirmed that it was pilots’ decision to land in Minsk. At this moment, Minsk airport received an e-mail about the bomb on board. The crew’s decision to land in Minsk was also confirmed by reports from the communications department of the Lithuanian International Airport.

    Immediately after the call, the information was reported to President Lukashenko, who gave the command to take measures and secure the landing. The air forces of Belarus reacted to the emergency in according with international standards. The MIG-29 was following the aircraft in order to provide assistance if necessary.

    As soon as the plane landed, passengers were evacuated, after which sappers and rescue services were deployed. At the same time, passengers were screened in accordance with safety standards.

    Exactly at that moment, a photo of Protasevich appeared online with reports about his arrest. It was published by the assistant of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on his Twitter account. According to reports, the photo was allegedly sent to the “opposition team” by Protasevich’s girlfriend, who was flying with him, for internal use, but they rushed to post it on the Internet even before official reports of his arrest.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, the so-called ‘special operation’ was carried out right on the eve of the first offline European Summit, where the European diplomats are going to have a strategic debate on Russia. What a coincidence!

    The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, following the results of the EU summit on May 24, will have to prepare a report on relations with Russia.

    Hype in global media platforms based on accusations of Lukashenko in neglecting international norms and in ‘international terrorism’, is aimed to have an impact on the results of the summit. European countries were going to discuss new restrictions against Minsk before the incident, but after an international scandal, this topic may become the main one on the forum’s agenda.

    The European Union is considering the closure of not only air, but also ground communication with Belarus in response to the actions of President Lukashenko, Bloomberg reported, citing a senior European official close to negotiations on new EU sanctions against Belarus…

    Read the rest of the ‘alternative version’ here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 02:00

  • CJ Hopkins: Greetings From "New Normal" Germany!
    CJ Hopkins: Greetings From “New Normal” Germany!

    Authored (mostly satirically-ish) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    On April 1, 1933, shortly after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany. Members of the Storm Troopers (“die Sturmabteilung,” or the “Storm Department,” as I like to think of them) stood around outside of Jewish-owned stores with Gothic-lettered placards reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!”

    The boycott itself was a total disaster — most Germans ignored it and just went on with their lives — but it was the beginning of the official persecution of the Jews and totalitarianism in Nazi Germany.

    Last week, here in “New Normal” Germany, the government (which, it goes without saying, bears no resemblance to the Nazi regime, or any other totalitarian regime) implemented a social-segregation system that bans anyone who refuses to publicly conform to the official “New Normal” ideology from participating in German society. From now on, only those who have an official “vaccination pass” or proof of a negative PCR test are allowed to sit down and eat at restaurants, shop at a “non-essential” stores, or go to bars, or the cinema, or wherever.

    Here’s a notice from the website of Prater, a popular beer garden in Berlin:

    Of course, there is absolutely no valid comparison to be made between these two events, or between Nazi Germany and “New Normal” Germany, nor would I ever imply that there was. That would be illegal in “New Normal” Germany, as it would be considered “relativizing the Holocaust,” not to mention being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” or whatever. Plus, it’s not like there are SA goons standing outside shops and restaurants with signs reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t sell to the Unvaccinated and Untested!” It’s just that it’s now illegal to do that, i.e., sell anything to those of us whom the media and the government have systematically stigmatized as “Covid deniers” because we haven’t converted to the new official ideology and submitted to being “vaccinated” or “tested.”

    Protesting the new official ideology is also illegal in “New Normal” Germany. OK, I think I should probably rephrase that. I certainly don’t want to misinform anyone. Protesting the “New Normal” isn’t outlawed per se. You’re totally allowed to apply for a permit to protest against the “Covid restrictions” on the condition that everyone taking part in your protest wears a medical-looking N95 mask and maintains a distance of 1.5 meters from every other medical-masked protester … which is kind of like permitting anti-racism protests as long as the protesters all wear Ku Klux Klan robes and perform a choreographed karaoke of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama.

    Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humor?

    I don’t mean to single out the Germans. There is nothing inherently totalitarian, or fascist, or robotically authoritarian and hyper-conformist about the Germans, as a people. The fact that the vast majority of Germans clicked their heels and started mindlessly following orders, like they did in Nazi Germany, the moment the “New Normal” was introduced last year doesn’t mean that all Germans are fascists by nature. Most Americans did the same thing. So did the British, the Australians, the Spanish, the French, the Canadians, and a long list of others. It’s just that, well, I happen to live here, so I’ve watched as Germany has been transformed into “New Normal Germany” up close and personal, and it has definitely made an impression on me.

    The ease with which the German authorities implemented the new official ideology, and how fanatically it has been embraced by the majority of Germans, came as something of a shock. I had naively believed that, in light of their history, the Germans would be among the first to recognize a nascent totalitarian movement predicated on textbook Goebbelsian Big Lies (i.e., manipulated Covid “case” and “death” statistics), and would resist it en masse, or at least take a moment to question the lies their leaders were hysterically barking at them.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    Here we are, over a year later, and waiters and shop clerks are “checking papers” to enforce compliance with the new official ideology. (And, yes, the “New Normal” is an official ideology. When you strip away the illusion of an apocalyptic plague, there isn’t any other description for it). Perfectly healthy, medical-masked people are lining up in the streets to be experimentally “vaccinated.” Lockdown-bankrupted shops and restaurants have been converted into walk-in “PCR-test stations.” The government is debating mandatory “vaccination” of children in kindergarten. Goon squads are arresting octogenarians for picnicking on the sidewalk without permission. And so on. At this point, I’m just sitting here waiting for the news that mass “disinfection camps” are being set up to solve the “Unvaccinated Question.”

    Whoops … there I go again, “relativizing the Holocaust.” I really need to stop doing that. The Germans take this stuff very seriously, especially with Israel under relentless attack by the desperately impoverished people it has locked inside an enormous walled ghetto, and is self-defensively ethnically cleansing.

    But, seriously, there is no similarity whatsoever between Nazi Germany and “New Normal” Germany.

    Sure, both systems suspended the constitution, declared a national “state of emergency” enabling the government to rule by decree, inundated the masses with insane propaganda and manipulated “scientific facts,” outlawed protests, criminalized dissent, implemented a variety of public rituals, and symbols, and a social segregation system, to enforce compliance with their official ideologies, and demonized anyone who refused to comply … but, other than that, there’s no similarity, and anyone who suggests there is is a dangerous social-deviant extremist who probably needs to be quarantined somewhere, or perhaps dealt with in some other “special” way.

    Plus, the two ideologies are completely different.

    One was a fanatical totalitarian ideology based on imaginary racial superiority and the other is a fanatical totalitarian ideology based on an imaginary “apocalyptic plague” … so what the hell am I even talking about? On top of which, no swastikas, right? No swastikas, no totalitarianism! And nobody’s mass murdering the Jews, that I know of, and that’s the critical thing, after all!

    So, never mind. Just ignore all that crazy stuff I just told you about “New Normal” Germany. Don’t worry about “New Normal” America, either. Or “New Normal” Great Britain. Or “New Normal” wherever.

    Get experimentally “vaccinated.” Experimentally “vaccinate” your kids. Prove your loyalty to the Reich … sorry, I meant to global capitalism. Ignore those reports of people dying and suffering horrible adverse effects. Wear your mask. Wear it forever. God knows what other viruses are out there, just waiting to defile your bodily fluids and cause you to experience a flu-like illness, or cut you down in the prime of your seventies or eighties … and, Jesus, I almost forgot “long Covid.” That in itself is certainly enough to justify radically restructuring society so that it resembles an upscale hospital theme park staffed by paranoid, smiley-faced fascists in fanciful designer Hazmat suits.

    Oh, and keep your “vaccination papers” in order. You never know when you’re going to have to show them to some official at the airport, or a shop, or restaurant, or to your boss, or your landlord, or the police, or your bank, or your ISP, or your Tinder date … or some other “New Normal” authority figure.

    I mean, you don’t want to be mistaken for a “Covid denier,” or an “anti-vaxxer,” or a “conspiracy theorist,” or some other type of ideological deviant, and be banished from society, do you?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/26/2021 – 00:05

  • Eating Meat Is The Norm Almost Everywhere
    Eating Meat Is The Norm Almost Everywhere

    On average, 86 percent of people surveyed for the Statista Global Consumer Survey in 39 countries said that their diet contained meat – highlighting, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, that despite the trend around meat substitutes and plant-based products, eating meat remains the norm almost everywhere in the world.

    In only five out of the 39 countries – Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, China and India – fewer than 80 percent of respondents said that they ate meat.

    The latter country had the lowest score at 43 percent meat eaters. China, which had the second-lowest result in the survey, still counted 75 percent of respondents saying they ate meat.

    Infographic: Eating Meat Is the Norm Almost Everywhere | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    India’s penchant for vegetarian fare is connected to Brahmanism or Vedic religion, a belief system connected to the caste of Brahmans, which are highly regarded in the Indian caste system, making vegetarianism equally desirable.

    In Western countries, vegetarianism is more often tied to environmental concerns or concerns over unethical practices in meat production.

    To satisfy the hunger for meat, 333 million tons of meat were produced worldwide in 2020. Because meat consumption typically increases as countries grow wealthier, that number has been rising.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 23:45

  • Fusion GPS Is Losing The Fight To Keep Its Records Secret
    Fusion GPS Is Losing The Fight To Keep Its Records Secret

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    There’s a fight brewing in a DC federal court over Fusion GPS’s internal correspondence and records. And they’re losing.

    Background

    In 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank (we’ll call them Alfa Bank for the purposes of this article) sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for their publication of false statements accusing Alfa Bank of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

    Now, the Alfa Bank is on offense. They have filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce nearly 500 critically important documents improperly withheld as privileged.

    Fusion/Simpson have fought the production of the documents, arguing that they are subject to the “attorney-client privilege” and otherwise privileged and not subject to production.

    These are weak legal arguments – and the attorneys for Alfa Bank recognize it. First, Fusion/Simpson previously admitted the purpose of their work was political, and not for the purposes of any ongoing litigation.

    Alfa Bank further observes that Glenn Simpson has even testified that the purpose of his work was pure politics, saying his goal was to “to expose an opponent’s vulnerabilities, provide source material for the media, and feed attack ads.”

    As their motion argues:

    Perkins Coie did not engage Defendants to perform legal or litigation-focused work; rather, Defendants have admitted (and publicly boasted) that Perkins Coie engaged Defendants in a “political context” to perform “political work.”

    Second, even if these 500 documents were subject to the attorney-client privilege (and they most certainly are not), that privilege was waived when Simpson/Fusion leaked their research to third parties, including the media and government officials.

    One has to be curious about exactly why Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson are putting up such a fight to keep these 500 documents hidden. We think it’s because thus far, the public hasn’t seen the communications between Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson or the internal Fusion GPS correspondence.

    What are they hiding? Let’s take a look.

    During the Alfa Bank litigation, attorneys for Fusion/Simpson have filed “privilege logs,” which give brief explanations on the type of document and the privilege that prevents its disclosure.

    By their very nature, privilege logs don’t reveal much information.

    What we see in the latest court filings, however, is that Fusion/Simpson want to keep secret e-mails and attachments that include their ongoing research and likely their internal observations about strategy and the veracity of their work/sources.

    For example, recall that Christopher Steele was the source of a Mother Jones article titled “A Veteran Spy has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.”

    The David Corn article (which led to the FBI’s “termination” of Steele as an “official” source) was a cause of a lengthy e-mail chain (excerpt below) at Fusion GPS. This discussion even included the obtuse anti-Trump/Barr writer Lloyd Green. (Not that Lloyd Green is important, but more that the outsider included in the e-mails defeats their privilege argument.)

    The privilege log further reveals Fusion GPS correspondence on August 30, 2016 regarding the Alfa Bank/Trump allegations. Internal Fusion GPS e-mails mention the“Alfa Playbook.” Two months later, Slate would run the false allegations that a Trump server having nefarious communications with Alfa Bank servers.  

    The Slate article would become a popular topic within Fusion GPS.

    Additionally, the privilege logs reveal the existence of May 2016 correspondence among Fusion GPS employees/principals, including Glenn Simpson, regarding their early work on Trump/Russia.

    Fusion/Simpson are also keeping secret the communications from January 11, 2016 between Fusion GPS and Michael Sussman of Perkins Coie, which would reveal the history of the relationship – and possibly any prior work – that Fusion GPS did on behalf of the DNC’s law firm.

    The privilege logs show us the early work on the Carter Page research from late July 2016. (This was after the FBI met with Christopher Steele in early July 2016 and before the FBI “officially” opened Crossfire Hurricane.)

    Other Info

    Documents filed in support of Alfa Bank’s efforts to compel production of the Fusion GPS records show a timeline of the Fusion leaks to reporters. (Much of this info on the leaks is public knowledge.) This was provided by the attorneys for Fusion/Simpson.

    Final Thoughts

    We find it highly likely that Alfa Bank gets their hands on most of the 500 documents they believe to be critically important. The Fusion/Simpson privilege arguments are rather weak.

    We’ll continue to follow this case closely. If Fusin/Simpson are required to produce these documents, there’s no telling if Alfa Bank will file them with the court or otherwise release them. But we’ll be publishing them if they do.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 23:25

  • Pilots Tell Israeli News Channel They Flattened Gaza Buildings To "Vent Frustration"
    Pilots Tell Israeli News Channel They Flattened Gaza Buildings To “Vent Frustration”

    According to a report in Israel’s prominent Channel 12 news outlet, multiple Israeli pilots which were engaged in bombing operations over Gaza during this month’s eleven days of fighting voiced that they often leveled entire buildings to “vent frustration”. 

    A series of pilots were interviewed under anonymity so they’d be willing to speak more freely on things like the controversial ‘roof tapping’ procedure which warns residents in buildings to get out minutes before they are pummeled, as well as the air force’s techniques for entirely flattening buildings. 

    Al-Sharouk tower collapses, via AFP/Getty

    A total of nine high-rise buildings had essentially collapsed in their own footprints during the bombardment, including the al-Jalaa media building which housed Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices. This would often involve a series of precision strikes at specific angles aimed at a structure’s base. Additionally multiple hospitals and other health facilities had also been hit during the aerial campaign which in all took 248 Palestinian lives, among these 66 children, and wounding close to 2,000 more. 

    One Israeli pilot, identified only as “Major D” in the Channel 12 report, stunned by saying he sought to intentionally level entire towers as “a way to vent frustration” over Hamas’ rocket fire and attacks on Jewish Israelis. 

    “I went on a mission to carry out air strikes with a feeling that destroying the towers is a way to vent frustration over what is happening to us and over the success of the groups in Gaza,” the pilot explained according to a translation in Middle East Eye. Major D added: “We failed to stop the rocket fire and to harm the leadership of these groups, so we destroyed the towers.”

    The report further detailed that Israel’s military says the intent of such tower-leveling actions is “to damage Hamas assets” but also “to deter the terrorist organizations in Gaza from continuing to launch rockets at Israeli cities.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As for the rocket count from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israel’s defense ministry has tallied nearly 4,000 rockets over the period between May 10 and May 21 – after which the current ceasefire (which is over 5 days in) took effect.

    While many of these rockets were brought down by the Iron Dome anti-air system, which the US has committed to replenishing for its closest Mideast ally, an unprecedented number scored hits in urban and residential areas, killing 12 civilians and injuring hundreds. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 23:05

  • Bhandari: Inside India's "Hunger Games"
    Bhandari: Inside India’s “Hunger Games”

    Authored by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com,

    Scavengers Out in Full Force

    I have just returned from a visit to my family in India. It was hard to escape. To get to the US from India, I needed a COVID test. The Indian government has seriously restricted who can provide COVID testing, treatment, and vaccination. Private doctors and hospitals that are not approved face brutal legal consequences if they provide COVID treatment.

    India’s experience with the COVID pandemic was particularly unpleasant… [PT]

    Emergency powers were centralized early last year in the hands of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. He gave himself direct control over the bureaucrats of the states, making local governments largely impotent and dependent on him.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In their supreme wisdom, government bureaucrats concluded that because the prefix “COVID-” exists in treatment, vaccination, and testing, they must all be performed at the same place. For my test, I sat in a petri dish of COVID, with those coming out positive sitting right next to me. Desperate, vulnerable old people, who merely wanted to get their jabs, sat among us. Those who were sick for reasons other than COVID were among us too, for the government has required everyone who is sick to be tested for COVID first .

    A microcosm of how everything is done in India, the tests were given haphazardly, with samples getting mixed up, nurses spending most of their time fighting among themselves, and — lacking a lineup system — people crowded together, pushing and breathing into the mouths of one another.

    A few days earlier, the government had given notice of the rate of tests and further restricted where they could be performed. A bribe-taking system would have been my preference to bypass government restrictions, but no such system has evolved yet. Nevertheless, corruption has exploded, and self-centeredness, apathy, a dog-eat-dog environment has come to the surface. You see this everywhere; the scavengers are out in full force.

    I went to a private COVID hospital. The situation in government hospitals is far worse, beyond my capacity to cope with it.

    The World’s Worst Lockdown

    Yet the story of COVID in India is hardly about COVID as such, which is nothing more than a trigger. More than twice as many people died of fairly easily treatable tuberculosis in 2020 than of COVID. Instead, this is a story of foolish rulers, completely hollowed out institutions, and a pathetically irrational and tribal society.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The lockdown that India declared in March 2020 was the world’s most atrocious. It was a nationwide curfew, with no-one allowed to leave home, not even to shop for groceries. The police destroyed grocery shops that dared to open. It took the government a couple of days to realize that people needed to buy food — the original decision had been a shot from the hip, completely bereft of any effort to think things through. During the four-month curfew, the police ruthlessly beat up people, particularly those who looked poor. Trains, flights, and all transportation had come to a complete, grinding halt.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Many people relished to no end that they were allowed to restrict and abuse others, doing so by masquerading as do-gooders with the support of the law, inflicting pain on those who did not resist and taking the appalling results in stride. They then experienced elevated, sadistic, perhaps even sexual pleasure. As always, the exploiters and the exploited were two sides of the same coin, though forever interchangeable — the reason why India never finds an escape from its drudgery.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    When people were allowed to go out grocery shopping, the government required shops to open for limited hours each day, as if the virus were more dangerous at other hours. This led to overcrowding — so the opening hours were restricted further! Soon shops were instructed to open only for a limited number of days each week. After a year of this policy, the government is still unsure why crowding has continued to worsen.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The country has actually been barricaded, making it look like a war zone, with many roads and highways entirely closed off. The remaining streets have only one side open for two-way traffic, leading to numerous head-on collisions. The barricades are not fluorescent, a technology that Indian safety experts have yet to appreciate.

    Train services are minimal, and only a very limited number of security lineups is open at airports. The government believes this promotes social distancing. Wherever one is permitted to go, one is facing neck-to-neck over-crowding.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    With the city barricaded, it took me forever to get to the airport. To protect politicians (from COVID and increasingly from irate citizens), large areas where they live have been completely closed off. Sick people cannot find a way to get to the hospital, although only those keen on dying should actually go there.

    Shortages Everywhere

    No hospital that is allowed to dispense COVID treatment has the beds, oxygen, or medicine available. Not one. A single dose of critical medicine, otherwise sold for $10, is selling for as much as $1,000. I even heard a price of $7,000. Oxygen cylinders, usually priced at around $10, today go for as much as $1,000, if you can find them. It is worth remembering that more than 80% of Indians live on less than $2 a day.

    While people are desperately looking for oxygen cylinders, those savvy enough have stockpiled them and medicines at home. What would have been a slight shortage has snowballed into a complete disappearance from the market. So bad is the situation that people in top political positions are pleading for them on social media. One person I know had to get the governor of his state to let his relative be given priority in cremation.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Getting an ambulance (which is no more than a broken taxi with a metallic stretcher) for a short ride, can cost many hundreds of dollars, in some cases running into thousands. Those who haven’t lived in India may find it hard to imagine, but this is not unique to these COVID days. India has never had a functioning ambulance system. That is why hundreds of thousands lacking help to get to the hospital die in the streets every year.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But this is not a compassionate country. I was brought up in India, but I learned the meaning of “compassion” only when I left the country. During the past year, the police have brutalized many people in India, but not one Indian court has taken a suo motu interest in charging the police. Justice is merely some words scribbled on parchment.

    Early this year, when Indian COVID cases were falling rapidly, there were talks about how the use of turmeric in Indian food, cow urine and dung in “treatment,” the “goodness of Indian genes,” and India’s “ancient, spiritual civilization” were behind the success. India was advertising itself as the savior of the world.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In fact – if facts mean anything –  the Indian diet is among the worst in the world, full of carbohydrates, sugar and oil, and poor in nutrients and proteins. It is the kind of diet that makes one susceptible to chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. And a year of lockdown has seriously reduced the health of everyone. Those who could afford to sit at home gained weight, lost general immunity, and did not exercise. Poor people became much poorer, victims of massive unemployment and relatively high inflation. The beggars on the street remind one of the impoverished 1980s.

    Hospitals Are For Dying

    India has 0.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people, a fraction of what is required — only 5% of hospital beds are in ICUs. Even before COVID hit, Indian hospitals were overflowing with patients. They occupied every single bed, often with more than one person in every bed, and the space in corridors and between the gate and the buildings. I have never seen this any other way.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Doctors and nurses are very ill-trained, lack competence, and are arrogant and heavy-handed. It is natural selection; the better ones tend to leave for the West. I have never been to a hospital — not even a private one — where work flowed correctly. My earliest memory of visiting a hospital is of two nurses giggling when one had given a wrong injection to a patient.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Many years ago, someone I was helping out ended up in a government hospital. The doctor wanted to amputate his hand, for it was the easiest thing to do. We had to smuggle him out by bribing the policeman to a private hospital where his bones, with some work, could be set in place. Also, many years back, my granddad died, struggling for oxygen. He had gone to a private hospital, in his scooter, for a minor checkup. They ended up doing a few operations on him. While he struggled, the two doctors argued about how the pressure difference provided oxygen and drained urine.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Indian medical system is one big orgy of doctors exchanging commissions for cross-referring to each other and getting laboratory tests done, making it the most corrupt sector of Indian society, worse than the government itself. Organ harvesting is not unknown. You go to an Indian hospital to die — and absolutely every Indian has stories to tell about this.

    Lacking a functioning legal system, killer hospitals and doctors face no consequences. Today, given the new rules, COVID patients are removed from the sight of their families, ensuring that apathetic medical workers can do whatever they want.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Oxygen is very easy and cheap to produce, but even that has been in shortage forever. The sight of patients sitting outside hospitals with their oxygen cylinders is common and always has been. One must have government approvals to run, operate, and supply oxygen. Indian hospitals — even the big ones — do not have oxygen-producing plants.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Merchants of Death and Grotesquely Stupid Rulers

    India, of course, doesn’t have a clue what crisis management is about, which is the primary reason behind today’s crisis. COVID is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. Lacking a crisis management unit or reflective thought, “managers” miss the fact that a slight shortage of critically needed items can create massive deficits as people start hoarding these essentials. Indians who are sane are ensuring that they keep their sick relatives outside the hospital system and are setting up improvised ICUs at home.

    A few years ago there was a lot of talk about India providing medical tourism. Then it disappeared from the map, for those who did go to India for treatment realized that they were taking huge risks with their lives. Indian government hospitals exist only in name; Indian private hospitals are cesspits of corruption, incompetence, and utter apathy. I know no Indian who does not have a close relative who died because of the mess Indian hospitals are in. But they still cost a fortune to use, bankrupting millions of Indians every year. The COVID crisis is minting money for the merchants of death, leaving millions in desperate financial situations.

    Let us do some simple math. India has approximately 700,000 hospital beds, very few of which are in ICUs, and a large number of which are reserved for politically connected people. For beds that are available, oxygen supply and doctor availability have always been a problem. With 400,000 new COVID cases happening every day, the system had to fall apart, regardless of the fact that only a tiny proportion of the population required hospitalization.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The problem isn’t the number of cases, which is negligible as a proportion of the population, but the shiver of fear that the nonexistent medical infrastructure has sent down the spine of society. The country is drowning in fear and mourning, and this crisis can hardly be blamed on COVID. It must be blamed on the grotesque — almost incomprehensible — stupidity of its rulers. The government has no plans. Worse, it is doing the exact opposite of what should be done.

    Modi centralized everything in precisely the opposite way from what he should have done. After a year, he still has no clue that limiting opening hours of grocery stores does not decrease crowding but increases it. Similarly, he doesn’t know that it makes no sense to send those looking for vaccination and testing to places where COVID patients are. Yet, over a month ago, he declared a win over COVID. He organized massive gatherings for election canvassing — just the thing to celebrate vanquishing an epidemic, right?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Merely a Symptom

    About 28,000 Indians die every day. These days, 3,000 people extra people die of COVID, a slight increase in overall deaths. The blame doesn’t go as much to COVID for filling up India’s crematoria as it goes to a lack of excess capacity. People have always waited in line for cremation. While the international media shows how packed crematoria are, this is nothing unusual, except that a 10% increase in cremations has clogged the system.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But COVID is real, and there are cases everywhere. Entire families are affected. Many people my family knows have died. The death rate is guaranteed to increase as time goes by. India has stopped treating people for anything other than COVID. People are dying of kidney failures, heart attacks, lack of trauma care, etc. And COVID patients cannot get oxygen.

    Those who get into the hospitals are getting overdosed for COVID by the clueless medical staff. Those who should get expensive medicine get something else instead, while what they paid for gets smuggled out by nurses — when the patients are removed from the sight of their relatives, there is no one to check on what is happening.

    Those lucky enough to find a bed in a private hospital are spending at American rates. But this isn’t just the problem in COVID days. This has always been a problem.

    India’s prime minister,  Narendra “Teflon” Modi – despite his numerous blunders, he has yet to suffer a backlash from voters. In fact, his popularity appears to be perfectly intact so far, which is quite astonishing. [PT]

    Over the last year, Modi spent a lot of time making noise, patting himself on his back, and destroying the economy, sending at least 75 million new people into desperate poverty. But he and his yes-men failed to organize such simple things as oxygen, new beds, and logistics for essential medicine. It would have made a lot more sense to quadruple beds in Indian hospitals rather than destroy at least 10% of the economy, as Modi did in 2020. He should have set up a system to make the medical profession accountable. Had he done these things, the recent COVID spike would not have been much of an event.

    After years of a love affair with Modi, the international media have left him as rats leave a sinking ship. All fingers are now pointing at him, as if India, the biggest democracy in the world, would change course if only he were to be removed. Alas, all this pain and suffering is nothing unusual for India. The West is simply overreacting to the visible aspects of COVID.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Indian government is merely a symptom of India’s tribal culture. Indians vote along the lines of their caste, their religion, a politician’s offer of freebies, etc. They lack moral and social consciousness, thus it is hard to believe that they would elect a government in possession of same — Modi is just a symptom.

    India does not have a COVID crisis. India has a government crisis. More fundamentally, it has a crisis of irrationality. There is never any planning and forward-thinking, neither at the individual nor at the institutional level. The nation is always at the precipice of disaster. Over the past 73 years of so-called independence, Indians have hollowed out the institutions the British left behind. These fragile institutions are now collapsing.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    India’s population is ten times larger than it was before the British arrived. With all benefits bestowed on India by the British slowly getting neutralized, it does not take great mathematical skills to realize that eventually the Indian population will, without continual help from the West, revert to its former equilibrium, 10% of what it is today. COVID or whatever else will merely be the catalyst.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 22:45

  • Every Nerf Gun Could Be Turned Into "80% Or Greater Receiver" Under New ATF Rule 
    Every Nerf Gun Could Be Turned Into “80% Or Greater Receiver” Under New ATF Rule 

    A Twitter user who appears well rounded with 3D-printing technology tweeted Saturday about the consequences if every “Nerf gun/foam dart gun were to suddenly become an 80% receiver.” 

    Twitter user “00MEAT” said while the Biden administration is going after ghost guns and unserialized weapons. There could be a “list of consequences if every Nerf gun/foam dart gun were to suddenly become an 80% receiver, and if the ATF were to suddenly consider 80% receivers as firearms. I’ll just let you imagine what the below image is.” 

    00MEAT continued: “I mean, think of the children, does the ATF really want to go after every kid once they have an 80% sbr?” 

    With some fiddling around with basic computer-aided drafting software, 00MEAT was able to create the “Nerf .22 adapter,” which could theoretically “make every foam dart gun everywhere into an 80% receiver.” 

    They even built a Nerf .22 adapter and attached it to the child’s play weapon that can easily be bought at Walmart or Amazon. 

    “There we go. Every nerf gun is now an 80% or greater receiver. If you have a kid with a nerf gun, please let the ATF know you don’t want your kid charged with purchasing a firearm while under 21.”

    00MEAT responds to someone asking, “What do I need to make this?” 

    They said: “A 3d printer, a washer, and a nail. I used a little epoxy to glue the nail in and put the new head on the dart. Also 2 small screws. to attach the barrel. The blowback is definitely going to be a problem and I don’t know of the dart will hit it hard enough to set it off.” 

    What it appears is the lower receiver of the Nerf gun fires the dart with a modified firing pin at the bullet in the slightly modified barrel. 

    00MEAT ranted some more:

    “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest FFL of them all? That’s right, it’s Walmart. With aisles full of nerf guns that are “readily convertible to a firing state”. What does that proposed new rule say that FFLs have to do with such devices again? Serialize and record them?” 

    They concluded: “Don’t they also have to do a background check? and also cannot sell to anyone under 21? That’s not good for sales. Somebody with lots of lawyers should do something about this rule, 2021R-05. @Hasbro @Walmart.” 

    The takeaway, in 00MEAT’s view, is that big-box retailers have aisles of Nerf guns that, under ATF’s proposed new rule Definition of “Frame or Receiver” and Identification of Firearms, could be classified as a weapon “readily convertible to a firing state.” 

    Just imagine if the new rule was proposed – would that mean, besides 80% lowers bought online or at gun stores, Nerf guns could also be serialized? That would crush sales of big-box retailers and Amazon and piss off many parents who have kids that all they want to do this summer is play Nerf with their friends with no masks. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 22:25

  • Mystery Gain Makes Chinese Stocks Exciting Again
    Mystery Gain Makes Chinese Stocks Exciting Again

    By Bloomberg reporter and commentator Sofia Horta e Costa

    China’s battle to maintain stability in its financial markets took a surprising shift on Tuesday when stocks surged the most since July, buoyed by record buying via exchange links in Hong Kong. Traders will be keen to see whether the gains extend on Wednesday.

    There were few obvious catalysts for the rally, which came after an almost three-month stretch where the CSI 300 Index appeared stuck in a tight trading range. It may be that investors shifted cash from the commodities market as authorities intensified their efforts to cool price gains in raw materials. Mutual funds may be looking to juice their returns to make up for a lackluster few months. Perhaps traders are betting officials want to see a strong market leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1.

    Bullish technicals added grease to Tuesday’s gains, with the CSI 300 closing 77 points above its 100-day moving average — a difficult resistance level for the index since March. The CSI 300 last breached that line almost exactly a year ago, just before one of the fastest rallies in Chinese stocks of the past decade. The yuan punched past 6.4 per dollar in offshore trading — also a key level for chart watchers — further enticing overseas buyers of Chinese assets.

    Whatever the trigger — and in China, such outsized gains are often driven by sentiment — the sudden stock rally is another example of how quickly a trading frenzy can start in China. Imported inflation and capital inflows are complicating monetary decisions for the central bank, which has pledged to stick to its tightening path with no “sharp turn” in policy. Endorsing an even stronger yuan to offset inflation — an idea floated by one official before the article was deleted — would be a risky strategy if Beijing wants to avoid one-way bets. Ensuring a “basically stable” currency remains a key priority for financial stability.

    For now, kicking the ball of money into the stock market and away from commodities may be the lesser of two evils. At least higher stock prices won’t pressure inflation, and the wealth effect might even provide a much-needed boost to consumer confidence. For a government obsessed with control, an overheating stock market would be more easily tamed than an overheating economy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 22:05

  • Jobs Are Only Barely Starting To Trickle Back In New York
    Jobs Are Only Barely Starting To Trickle Back In New York

    Among the hardest hit cities from the Covid pandemic was New York: it was a hotbed for cases early on, much of the city relies on tourism and hospitality for income, and the Mayor – well, he’s the slightest bit in over his head.

    As we move past the one year anniversary of when those in government finally figured out that Covid could be a problem, the country – including New York – is finally starting to re-open. But the pace of that re-opening is modest, at best, the New York Times pointed out this week. 

    While trends are moving in the right direction – for example, New York City’s official unemployment rate declined slightly to 11.4 percent in April, from 11.7 percent in March – the speed with which the recovery has taken hold isn’t accelerating anywhere near as quickly as the city was shut down. 

    Of those additions, 15,000 restaurant jobs came back last month and the city’s restaurants had 3 times as many employees last month as they did in April 2020, during the worst of the shut down. 

    Barbara Byrne Denham, senior economist at Oxford Economics, told the NYT: “For the restaurants, we have two very strong forces at work. Most of them are allowed to reopen, and many people are very eager to eat out.”

    Heading into May, New York has added back about 375,000 of the 900,000 total jobs it lost due to Covid. Economists think it will still take “at least a couple years” for those numbers to go back to normal. James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, thinks a full recovery may not come until 2023 or 2024. He called April’s gains in New York a “relatively strong rebound”. 

    New York had “been on a decade-long expansion that produced more jobs and lower unemployment than at any time on record” heading into the pandemic. Unemployment was below 4% for 11 straight months and wages were rising at a “robust rate” for several years. 

    But in those two months in 2020, government lockdowns were successful in shuttering all of those gains, and unemployment spiked to 20%.

    Denham continued: “New York City has trailed the rest of the U.S. every single month on every single measure. The city lost more jobs and a higher share of its jobs than any other city did, and only Las Vegas has recovered more slowly than New York.”

    Nationwide, the U.S. added just 266,000 jobs last month. Elena Volovelsky, a labor market analyst for the state Department of Labor, still thinks New York City’s rate of recovery lacks the nationwide pace. “In the next few months, the recovery of jobs in hotels and other business that cater to tourists could become more robust,” she said. “Hotel employment has yet to rebound and remains weak, having lost about 37,000 jobs since last year.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 21:45

  • Pentagon Now Says China Is Top "Pacing Threat" Not Only On Earth But Also Space
    Pentagon Now Says China Is Top “Pacing Threat” Not Only On Earth But Also Space

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The head of US Space Command said Saturday that the “Chinese” are the top “pacing threat” facing the US not only on Earth but also in space. “Our pacing threat is the Chinese, so we are watching how they are growing their space capability,” said Army Gen. James Dickinson said in Tokyo during a visit to US Forces Japan.

    Space Command is different than the military branch known as Space Force. The command integrates other military branches for space operations and would oversee any future wars in space. “The Space Force is responsible for organizing and equipping space forces. We are about warfighting,” Dickinson said, explaining the difference between the two organizations.

    Army Gen. James Dickinson via Space News/USASMDCARSTRAT

    The Pentagon recently identified China as the top “pacing threat” facing the US military, a phrase US military leaders are now repeating.

    Beijing is serving the Pentagon as a reason to justify massive military spending. After President Biden requested an all-time high military budget of $753 billion for 2022, the Pentagon said its share of $715 billion was needed to confront China.

    When it comes to space, competition with China, as well as Russia, is the focus of US Space Command and Space Force leaders to justify the new branch and command’s existence. “Space is very important right now,” Dickinson said.

    “We are seeing what our competitors are doing in space.” Dickinson said the US is watching China’s space program “very closely.”

    US Air Force Space Command, image via US Air Force

    President Biden has made it very clear that China is the foreign policy priority of his administration. In his first address to Congress, Biden said the US is in competition with Beijing to “win the 21st century.” He’s framed the relationship as an ideological battle between “autocracy” and “democracy.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 21:25

  • Zoltan's Latest Shocker: The Taper Will Be Bullish If…
    Zoltan’s Latest Shocker: The Taper Will Be Bullish If…

    Ask around on Wall Street (or any street) what the biggest bogeyman to capital markets is and 11 times out of 10 the answer will be “the taper“, even though the fact that everyone is fully aware of the risks from the Fed’s looming announcement, also means that it is more than fully priced in.

    Which is why, in light of the fact that the market’s true biggest risk is runaway, out-of-control, inflation, we previously suggested that far from being a crash catalyst, the taper may well end up being a trigger for further market gains especially since it would mean that the unprecedented flood of liquidity in the market which has sent the Fed’s reverse repo facility to near record levels…

    … as banks simply no longer have a place where to store all the Fed’s reserves, will finally ease.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Incidentally, we are not the first ones to make that argument: back in 2013, just around the time Ben Bernanke spooked the market with the first “Taper Tantrum”, none other than hedge fund titan David Tepper made the same argument:

    Regarding Fed policy, Tepper said investors shouldn’t fret about the central bank tapering its $85 billion monthly bond-buying program. In fact, he hopes the Fed starts pulling back on the stimulus sooner than later.

    “There better be a true [Fed] taper or else you might be back into the last half of 1999,” Tepper said. “…”If the Fed doesn’t taper back, we’re going to get into this hyper-drive market. It’s a backwards argument. To keep the markets going up at a steady pace the Fed has to taper back.”

    Tepper said he expects the central bank to find a “natural” way to ease its way out of its bond buying program. There should be no “hand-wringing” by markets over concern about a tapering, he said.

    “Guys that are short, they better have a shovel to get themselves out of the grave,” Tepper said.

    Fast forward to today when the same logic applies: the longer the Fed does nothing, the more likely it is to lose control of inflation altogether (not to mention flooding the repo system with liquidity beyond repair) and so we expect that within the next few weeks ahead of the Fed’s September “Taper bomb”, the narrative will change accordingly.

    Which brings us to the first indication thereof: in his latest Global Money Dispatch note, repo guru Zoltan Pozsar (formerly the NY Fed’s market plumbing wunderkind and currently at Credit Suisse), the Hungarian provides a rather technical and more nuanced, if altogether similar argument: the taper could well lead to lower rates (i.e., no bond market tantrum when then jumps to stocks) provided that at the same time, the Fed announced the end of Wells Fargo’s asset growth ban, activating some $500 billion in unused balance sheet capacity, or more than enough to offset many months of declining Fed purchases courtesy of a brand new private sector entity.

    For those curious how the groundwork is being set to paint the taper in a positive light, here is the full Pozsar note:

    There is the QE problem, the Wells Fargo problem, and the taper problem…

    The QE problem has to do with the Fed buying way too many mortgages, richening MBS relative to Treasuries. The Fed is buying $40 billion of MBS a month, and Bank of America is providing a tailwind by buying as many MBS as the Fed.

    What will fix this issue is either the Fed buying less MBS and more Treasuries, or Bank of America doing the same – the Fed for “market functioning” reasons and Bank of America for relative value reasons. Either way, fixing the QE problem will require one of these banks to buy more Treasuries before taper commences.

    If you are concerned about the MBS float, the last thing you need is the Fed suddenly lifting Wells Fargo’s asset growth ban. Well Fargo has an unused balance sheet capacity of more than $500 billion, and after years of no growth and a shrinking loan book, it would be stepping into duration markets with force.

    If the QE problem is bad enough for MBS and leads to a bid for Treasuries, the QE problem plus freeing Wells Fargo now would mean MBS trading even richer and, by extension, an even stronger bid for Treasuries. Timing is everything…

    …and getting it right can turn a problem into an opportunity.

    While lifting Wells Fargo’s asset growth ban now would do more harm than good, it could come in handy when the Fed commences taper later this year or next. The market assumes that taper will lead to a sell-off in rates, like in the past – but that need not be the case. The Fed could announce its plans to taper, while at the same time announcing the end of Wells Fargo’s asset growth ban, so that fewer purchases by the Fed would be offset by more purchases by Wells.

    Less buying by the Fed and more buying by Wells Fargo…

    …and rates don’t have to sell off, provided there is coordination at the Fed. The monetary and regulatory arms of the Fed typically do not coordinate, but never say never. Using the Wells Fargo “option” could help the Fed make taper a smoother affair than the 2013 experience, which wasn’t smooth to begin with. It’s one thing to taper against a boring fiscal backdrop like during 2013, and another to taper against a backdrop painted with cumulonimbi of fiscal issuance – given the fiscal outlook, the Fed should be creative with the Wells Fargo option.

    Then there is the consensus problem, which is that everyone expects rates to go up from here, and “if everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking”: the macro reasons for higher rates make sense, but the potential for more Treasury purchases either by the Fed or banks before taper commences, and Wells Fargo deploying $500 billion of balance sheet after taper commences, could set off a rates rally from here. Consider these problems at least as risks…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 21:11

  • Lumber Firms Applaud, Home Builders Angry As U.S. Moves To Double Canadian Lumber Tariffs
    Lumber Firms Applaud, Home Builders Angry As U.S. Moves To Double Canadian Lumber Tariffs

    by Robert Dalheim of Woodworking Network

    The U.S. Department of Commerce says it will seek to double tariff rates on most Canadian softwood lumber, angering home builders. New rates vary by company. West Fraser goes from 9 percent to 11.4 percent, Canfor from 4.6 to 21 percent, Resolute Forest from 20.3 to 30.2 percent, and J.D. Irving from 4.2 to 15.8 percent.

    The overall increase is from 9 percent to 18.32 percent.

    Home builders, who had been urging for a removal of tariffs, expressed their disappointment.

    “At a time when soaring lumber prices have added nearly $36,000 to the price of a new home and priced millions of middle class households out of the housing market, the Biden administration’s preliminary finding to double the tariffs on Canadian lumber shipments shows the White House does not care about the plight of American home buyers and renters who have been forced to pay much higher costs for housing,” said National Association of Home Builders chairman Chuck Fowke.

    “The administration should be ashamed for casting its lot with special interest groups and abandoning the interests of the American people. It knows that the lumber tariffs are nothing less than a tax on American home buyers, renters and businesses that rely on lumber products and they could not have come at a worse time. Lumber prices are already up more than 300 percent from a year ago. If the administration’s decision to double tariffs is allowed to go into effect, it will further exacerbate the nation’s housing affordability crisis, put even more upward pressure on the price of lumber and force millions of U.S. home buyers and lumber consumers to foot the bill for this ill-conceived protectionist action.

    U.S. lumber producers on the other hand, applauded the decision.

    “A level playing field is a critical element for continued investment and growth for U.S. lumber manufacturing to meet strong building demand to build more American homes,” said Jason Brochu, U.S. Lumber Coalition Co-Chair and Co-President of Pleasant River Lumber Company.  “The U.S. Lumber Coalition applauds the Commerce Department’s continued commitment to strongly enforce the U.S. trade laws against subsidized and unfairly traded Canadian lumber imports.”

    Canada, as one would predict, was also unhappy.

    “U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber products are a tax on the American people,” said Mary Ng, Canadian Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade. “We will keep challenging these unwarranted and damaging duties through all available avenues. We remain confident that a negotiated solution to this long-standing trade issue is not only possible, but in the best interest of both our countries.”

    The decision comes as somewhat of a surprise. Home builders had been lobbying hard for a temporary removal of tariffs. Many Republicans had championed the NAHB’s claims. They had asked trade chief Katherine Tai to eliminate the tariffs.

    It’s unclear how much the new tariffs will affect lumber prices.

    Lumber companies say tariffs hardly make an impact.

    “Lumber only makes up 4 percent of the cost of a new home— with near-zero impact on homebuyers,” the Lumber Coalition wrote in an opinion article published on Woodworking Network. “The NAHB’s claim that import duties cause today’s high lumber prices and therefore drive up the cost of homes is false. Supply and demand, not import duties, cause price fluctuations.”

    The article was controversial, drawing in heavy scrutiny online.

    The NAHB argued back, saying the Coalition was severely and intentionally underrating the cost of lumber in a home.

    “If you walk into a home, you may notice that cabinets, windows, doors, and trusses are also often made of wood. And if you watch a home being built, you will see a lot of plywood and OSB being used for sheathing, flooring underlayment, siding, and interior wall and finishing, just to name a few uses. Also, builders do not in general buy lumber from sawmills, but from an intermediary like a lumber yard that operates with a profit margin.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 20:45

  • Russell Brand In Viral Video Destroys MSM & Silicon Valley For Hiding "Troubling" Hunter Biden News
    Russell Brand In Viral Video Destroys MSM & Silicon Valley For Hiding “Troubling” Hunter Biden News

    In a rare and refreshing interview which on YouTube has garnered 100,000 views in less than 24 hours, British comedian and actor Russell Brand and former Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald teamed up to explain last year’s scandalous coordination by the mainstream media and social media companies to ensure the Hunter Biden laptop story and accompanying revelations over the Hunter-Ukrainian Burisma energy company scandal never reached broader public view. 

    “I’m not a pro-Republican person,” Brand introduced while talking to Greenwald on his YouTube channel. “I don’t see myself that way. I don’t see myself as conservative, or that I’m in a Trump, or Giuliani, or the  kind of media establishments that were reporting on these revelations [about Biden’s family]. They are not my cultural, social, or political allies. That’s certainly not how I see myself.” And then he blasted away: “However, it seems to me — what reason is Hunter Biden sat on the board of an energy company in… Ukraine?” he questioned. “What reason is James Biden sat on the board, or receiving payments from an energy company, in China?”

    Recall that The New York Post among others saw their Twitter account suspended for a whopping 16 days over the news story, while Facebook also aggressively cracked down on users’ ability to share any content related to Burisma, the Biden family’s Ukraine dealings, or the infamous laptop archive. 

    Brand said further in the interview, according to a transcript:

    “We’re talking about sleaze, corruption, financial misdemeanors, and relationships between corporations, big business, and politicians — let’s face it, unless you’re bloody stupid, you know that’s going on all the time.”

    “For me, revelations that there are financial connections between energy companies in… Ukraine, energy companies in China, and the Biden family are troubling. That should be public knowledge.”

    Brand emphasized “That should be public knowledge.” He went on to discuss Silicon Valley’s efforts at controlling and blatantly censoring the political conversation in order to “protect” a crucial election… or rather to outright prevent a Trump victory. 

    “And it’s even more troubling that Twitter, and Facebook and the media at large deliberately kept it out of the news because they didn’t want it to influence the election,” Brand told Greenwald.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And more…

    What is democracy then? It suggests to me that democracy is, ‘We want you to vote for this person. We don’t want you to vote for that person.’ 

    As I’ve said, Donald Trump, you know, I don’t think Donald Trump’s the answer, but I’m sad to realize that I can no longer even claim to believe Joe Biden or the Democratic Party might be the answer, because look at how they behave. And look at the relationships between media, social media, and that party.

    Using word choice that clearly denotes his concluding that there was a choreographed plot among big media and big tech to sanitize information before it reached the public, Brand concluded, “They conspired to keep information away from you because it was not convenient to their agenda.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And Greenwald later commented of the new interview with Brand: “US media and tech giants united to bar millions of Americans from hearing this reporting before they voted” – in reference to the Biden Family laptop archive.

    Meanwhile it will be interesting to see how long YouTube actually leaves up the new Brand-Greenwald interview, or whether it gets slapped with a restrictive “warning” label. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 20:25

  • Romney First GOP Senator To Say He Would Back Current Jan. 6 Commission Bill
    Romney First GOP Senator To Say He Would Back Current Jan. 6 Commission Bill

    Authored by Janita Kan via The Epoch Times,

    Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Monday said he was willing to support a Democrat-led bill that was passed by the House to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

    Romney answered that he “would support the bill” when asked by reporters how he would vote if Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) starts a debate on the House bill, according to multiple congressional reporters. He is the first Republican in the Senate to do so.

    The Utah senator’s comments come on the same day that Schumer vowed to bring the bill for a vote on the Senate floor.

    “I will bring to the Senate floor the legislation passed by the House to create an independent commission to investigate and report on the January 6th attack on the Capitol,” Schumer said in a statement on Twitter.

    Currently, Democrats are short on the 60 votes required to defeat a likely filibuster from Republicans, who have expressed opposition to the bill in its current form.

    During the House vote, most Republicans voted against the measure, with only 35 Republicans crossing the aisle to approve the bill.

    The National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act, also known as HR 3233, is modeled after the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The proposed measure would create in the legislative branch an independent, 10-member commission to investigate “relevant facts and circumstances relating to the attack on the Capitol,” and “evaluate the causes of and the lessons learned from this attack.”

    The commission must also submit reports of their findings, alongside recommendations to “improve the detection, prevention, preparedness for, and response to targeted violence and domestic terrorism and improve the security posture of the U.S. Capitol Complex.”

    The bill will grant the commission powers such as the authority to hold hearings, receive evidence, and issue subpoenas. It also enables the commission to appoint staff.

    Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who says she backs the creation of a commission but has reservations, has begun suggesting amendments to the House’s proposal. In an interview on Sunday, Collins said her support is conditional on bipartisan staffing and a report issued no later than by the end of this year.

    “I think that both sides should either jointly appoint the staff or there should be equal numbers of staff appointed by the chairman and the vice-chairman,” Collins told ABC’s “This Week.” She also expresses optimism that Congress would be able to get past the issues.

    In a separate interview, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he believes Senate Republicans are likely to decide that it’s “too early” to establish a commission. Blunt also said he is opposed the establishment of such a commission over concerns of delays and effectiveness.

    “I’ve actually opposed the idea of a commission from the very first because I think we’ll start waiting for a commission rather than moving forward with what we know we need to do now,” Blunt told Fox News.

    “There’s a bipartisan effort in the Senate with two committees to produce not only a report but also a number of recommendations, and we should be able to do that in the first full week of June, and we haven’t even waited for that to decide what a commission should do,” he added.

    Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would oppose the House-passed bill, characterizing the proposal as a “slanted and unbalanced” study of the Jan. 6 incident.

    “After careful consideration, I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats’ slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of Jan. 6,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on May 19.

    Meanwhile, top Democrat leader House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday issued a statement calling for the Senate to quickly act on the bill, saying that “there is no time to waste or room for partisanship in keeping our Capitol and Country safe.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 20:05

  • Easing Of Vessel Congestion At LA Ports Reverses As More Ships Join Queue
    Easing Of Vessel Congestion At LA Ports Reverses As More Ships Join Queue

    Last week’s good news of easing vessel congestion earlier this month outside the busiest U.S. gateway for trade with Asia showed a glimmer of hope that supply chain disruptions could subside had flipped last week as more containerships join the queue.  

    Bloomberg data shows the number of containerships queuing off the coast of Los Angeles reached the highest in two weeks.

    As of Sunday, 21 containerships were anchored waiting for entry into L.A.-Long Beach, compared with 19 a week earlier. The bottleneck peaked at around 40 vessels in the queue in early February and has steadily declined ever since, but the latest data shows progress could be reversing. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Shipping data shows another 16 vessels are expected to arrive at L.A.-Long Beach over the next few days, with ten of those scheduled to be moored offshore and join the queue. 

    On Friday, the average waits for berth space, a designated location in a port used for mooring vessels when they are not at sea, was 5.9 days, compared with 6.1 a week earlier. That number peaked in April around eight days.

    Readers may recall the collapse of the trans-pacific supply chains has been among the main reasons for soaring prices. It’s also hardly a secret that the most vulnerable section of supply chains are West Coast ports where congestion remains off the charts (as recently discussed in “It’s About To Get Much Worse”: Supply Chains Implode As “Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore” and “Port Of LA Volumes Are “Off The Charts.””) Which is why the first, and most critical step to restoring normalcy in both supply chains – and prices – will come from stabilizing and normalizing shipping congestion and backlog… at some point.

    But as new data suggest, shipping congestion and backlogs are reversing and could result in even higher prices for any product that has to cross the Pacific before ending up in an Amazon warehouse or Walmart store shelf. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 19:45

  • Iran Kicks Off Large-Scale Electronic Warfare And Air Defense Exercise
    Iran Kicks Off Large-Scale Electronic Warfare And Air Defense Exercise

    Via South Front,

    On May 25th, the Iranian Army kicked off a large-scale military drill to practice electronic warfare tactics, this drill on electronic warfare is dubbed ‘Separ-e-Aseman 1400’ (Sky Shield 1400).

    According to a statement, this joint drill is being held by the strategic electronic warfare forces of the four forces of the Army and covers large areas of Iran. Rapid response and electronic warfare units of the Army’s Ground Force, Air Force, Navy and Air Defense are participating in the joint aerial maneuvers, codenamed Sky Shield 1400, whose headquarters will be located in Iran’s central province of Isfahan.

    According to Deputy Chief of Iran’s Army for Coordination Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the drill is the most practical exercise in the field of military electronic warfare in recent years. He said the Iranian Army is going to use its latest achievements and combat capabilities during the drill, with offensive as well as defensive electronic warfare tactics to be put into practice.

    Sayyari also pointed out the high significance of electronic warfare in both operational and intelligence aspects of present-day military encounters, stressing that the Iranian Army has developed the necessary infrastructure for defense and electronic warfare. Sayyari said aerial interception and cyber defense operations will also be conducted in the drill.

    Participants in the drill practice using electronic defense tactics against small aircraft and intruding drones as well as, perform cyber defense maneuvers and evaluate function by eavesdropping, electronic jamming and target detection systems. During the drill, drones and smart micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) will also strike predetermined targets using electronic warfare cover, he said.

    Accuracy and speed in detection of aircraft will be analyzed, and electronic eavesdropping and jamming systems monitored.

    According to Iranian state media, in recent years, Iranian military experts and technicians have made great progress in indigenously developing and manufacturing a broad range of equipment, making the armed forces self-sufficient in this regard.

    Iran’s Air Defense holds annual war games in order to enhance capabilities to defend the country’s airspace.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 19:25

  • "For Our Health & Safety" – No COVID-Vaccinated Guests Allowed At This Montana Airbnb
    “For Our Health & Safety” – No COVID-Vaccinated Guests Allowed At This Montana Airbnb

    An Airbnb listing hidden deep within western Montana’s woods has been taken down after it discriminated against vaccinated people with “COVID misinformation.” 

    “WE ARE RESTRICTING THE CABIN TO NON-COVID VACCINATED GUESTS ONLY,” the listing read. 

    “For the health and safety of not only other guests but also ourselves, all COVID vaccinated guests are asked to find another vacation rental that allows vaccinated guests,” it said.

    The listing continued: “It has now been scientifically proven and is clearly stated on the vaccine manufacturers web sites, that the MRNA protein in the ingredients SHED through the vaccinated persons skin, breath etc, and will be passed along to non-vaccinated people.” 

    Charlie Warzel, a former reporter at BuzzFeed News, brought attention to the listing on Twitter on Sunday. He direct messaged the owners of the property and asked about their vetting process. The owners replied by saying they abide by the honor system. 

    “We are not able to prove we have not taken the shots so it’s all on the honor system. We just have to all trust each other. If you say you haven’t taken the shots we trust you and you are more than welcome here,” one of the owners told Warzel. But the conversation ended quickly as Warzel believes the owners saw his tweets about the property, which had gone viral. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    An Airbnb spokesperson told BuzzFeed the listing for the Montana cabin was suspended Sunday night “for promoting COVID misinformation in violation of our content policy.”

    The continued canceled movement has reached new levels. Any opposition to vaccines and big tech will censor, suspend, or delete opposition accounts. The division between vaxxed and non-vaxxed continues to grow as the country is more fractured than ever. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 19:05

  • Capitalism Can't Fix An Artificial Labor Shortage
    Capitalism Can’t Fix An Artificial Labor Shortage

    Authored by John Tamny via RealClear Markets (emphasis ours),

    If you want to act in movies or on television in Hollywood, you must be a member of the Screen Actors Guild. That’s why the accession of a “SAG” card is such a momentous achievement for actors. It means they’re Hollywood legal as it were.

    So why does acting professionally require union membership? The answer is very simple: SAG wants to prevent those yearning to be stars from flooding the market, and subsequently bidding starting wages down to zero.

    It’s as old as the hills for actors and actresses to wistfully proclaim that “I just want a chance to show them what I can do.” Since they’re all looking for a break, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that most actors would take next to nothing (or nothing) just to be in a television show or a movie. If it’s all about getting in the door, why not give the labor away for free with the long-term in mind?

    In reality, a wholly free market for actors would likely result in negative wage minimums. Any ambitious entertainer would logically and happily pay Steven Spielberg for the opportunity to act in one of his films. Why not? The exposure achieved in a film directed by someone known to helm blockbusters would be much more valuable than negative wages endured amid production.

    All of this explains why SAG limits the number of actors legal to work, all the while pushing up minimum wage floors for its limited membership. In a figurative sense “everyone” wants to work in movies and television, so SAG erects barriers to supply and price so that excessive supply combined with a willingness to work for “anything” doesn’t push down actor pay. 

    The Screen Actors Guild stands athwart market forces in order to keep entertainment compensation artificially high. Capitalism is not fully at work in the movie business.

    This came to mind while reading a recent piece by New York Times economics writer, David Leonhardt. The columnist believes he’s got an easy answer to the present labor shortage in the U.S.: capitalism. The problem, one not diagnosed by Leonhardt, is that the present labor shortage he’s writing about has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with the fleecing of capitalists.

    To see why, let’s stop and consider why there’s a shortage of labor in the first place. It’s a consequence of a much-too-belated opening of the U.S. economy after over a year of needless lockdowns. With them finally ending, labor-intensive businesses are finding it exceedingly hard to hire workers.

    Leonhardt says the presumed shortages are nonsense, that the “capitalism” he routinely attacks in his column is ready-made for fixing the shortage. In Leonhardt’s words:

    “When a company is struggling to find enough labor, it can solve the problem by offering to pay a higher price for that labor — also known as higher wages. More workers will then enter the labor market. Suddenly, the labor shortage will be no more.”

    Leonhardt’s diagnosis is much more than naive. 

    Stated simply, labor is a price like any other. Just as SAG keeps the price of hiring an actor artificially high by limiting supply, so has government to some degree done the same over the past year. With unemployment benefits abnormally high due to Congress’s generosity with the money of others, the incentive to work isn’t as great as it was before the lockdowns began in March of 2020.

    Put another way, generous unemployment benefits are bidding workers to the sidelines. The able-bodied have a choice right now: they can either resume working again, or they can receive unemployment checks that in all-too-many instances are greater than what they would earn if they were working. In which case capitalists are hit hard in two ways: government intervention has made it artificially expensive to hire, plus that same government is also limiting supply of workers; thus making it more expensive to hire from a shallower pool of labor.

    Leonhardt believes that the labor shortage problem is as simple as businesses offering better pay, that increasing compensation to lure individuals back to work is the capitalist way, but he conveniently ignores that the labor shortage is a direct consequence of a lack of capitalism. Government has intervened in the labor market, and created an artificial shortage. Much more galling about the shortage is that it was created by government taking from the capitalists. 

    Lest readers forget, governments have no resources. They only have spending power and faux swagger insofar as they arrogate to themselves a rising percentage of the production created by capitalistic endeavor. In other words, capitalism is the source of congressional largesse. In 2020, Congress chose to use the wealth extracted from capitalists in order to make hiring quite a bit more expensive for capitalists.

    The mystery about all this is why Leonhardt can’t see the obvious contradiction in his thesis. Government is paying individuals not to work, and more than a few are biting. Labor shortages are the result.

    In short, a lack of capitalism is behind the labor shortages and the higher cost of labor. If Leonhardt doubts this truth, he need only visit left leaning Hollywood. It’s there that unions long ago perfected the art of artificial labor scarcity that Congress is foisting on us now through its own interventions.

    John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Vice President at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). His new book is titled When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason. Other books by Tamny include They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers, The End of Work, about the exciting growth of jobs more and more of us love, Who Needs the Fed? and Popular Economics. He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 25

Today’s News 25th May 2021

  • Russian Vessel Enters German Waters For Last Leg Of Nord Stream 2 Pipelaying
    Russian Vessel Enters German Waters For Last Leg Of Nord Stream 2 Pipelaying

    Late last week the Biden administration slapped yet more sanctions on Russian entities, including 13 vessels and their owners, which are in the final stretch of laying the Russia to German natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 (said to be well over 90% complete). Just days prior the administration sent contradictory signals when it removed sanctions against the German overseer of the project Nord Stream 2 AG and CEO Matthias Warnig, in an attempt to mend relations with Berlin.

    As expected, the conflicting actions has thwarted neither side of the project, as on Monday for the first time the Russian vessel Fortuna began laying pipes in German waters. While the Fortuna itself is under US sanctions, initially put in place under the Trump White House, Germany’s Waterway and Shipping Authority proudly confirmed that it’s begun work on this final section.

    Via MarineTraffic.com

    “All works are performed in accordance with the available permits,” Nord Stream 2 said a statement, according to Reuters. “Fortuna will be working in German waters from May 22 to June 30, having earlier laid pipes in Denmark.”

    On the Russian side state energy giant Gazprom has overseen the $11 billion dollar project, and months ago warned that should the US sanctions noose tighten further, the pipeline could see significant delays.

    Germany has along with Russia fought back against Washington efforts to see the construction halted, long rejecting US punitive measures as interference in its domestic affairs, but with last Wednesday’s removal of sanctions for the German overseer of the project – this served to drastically ease tensions with Berlin over the matter, with German foreign minister Heiko Maas thanking the Biden administration for doing so. 

    “We understand the decisions that have been taken in Washington as taking into account the really extraordinarily good relationship that have been built with the Biden administration,” Maas had said.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But as we noted at the time, Biden was immediately slammed for the act of “capitulation” after long vowing to get “tough” on Russia by Republicans but also Democrat hawks, including in conservative and independent media outlets which pointed out that Trump would have no doubt been accused of being under “Russian influence” had he been the one to relax sanctions.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 02:45

  • UK Health Secretary Suggests Critics Of Vaccine Passports Are "Crazies"
    UK Health Secretary Suggests Critics Of Vaccine Passports Are “Crazies”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested critics of the vaccine passport policy were “crazies” after he retweeted a post which disparaged those who have security and privacy concerns about the program.

    Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges urged people to “ignore the crazies” as he effusively praised the NHS tracking app for being a centralized surveillance hub.

    “OK, ignore the crazies. Just downloaded the NHS App,” tweeted Hodges.

    “It’s amazing! You take a photo of your drivers licence, do a cool face scan, and everything’s there. Covid records, medical records, everything. I now want Covid passports just so I can use it…”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Hodges subsequently suggested that the app was a “fantastic” way of avoiding anti-vaxxers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    His tweet was subsequently retweeted by Matt Hancock, who over the last year has become the face of the UK’s coronavirus response.

    “Why did @MattHancock RT a contrarian, ratioed tweet disparaging “crazies”?” asked Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “He shows profound disrespect to the MPs, many from his own party, who reject Covid passes & want a serious debate; & the anti-ID British public. His attitude will fall down on him like a ton of bricks,” she added.

    As we document in the video below, attempts have been made to discredit opposition to the vaccine passport by demonizing critics as anti-vaxxer extremists.

    However, the program would serve to introduce a Chinese Communist-style social credit score system with potentially horrendous implications for basic liberties and freedoms.

    The British government lied for months in claiming that no vaccine passport was being developed for domestic events, despite that being the plan all along.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 02:00

  • Leaked State Department Memo Indicates Official Support For BLM Agenda
    Leaked State Department Memo Indicates Official Support For BLM Agenda

    Authored by Jack Posobiec via HumanEvents.com,

    A source within the Biden State Department wishing to remain anonymous has shared with Human Events News a document that indicates that all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” are being encouraged to display shows of support for Black Lives Matter on Tuesday, May 25, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death.  The memo reads in part, “The Department supports the use of the term ‘Black Lives Matter’ in messaging content, speeches, and other diplomatic engagements with foreign audiences to advance racial equity and access to justice on May 25 and beyond (italics added) We encourage posts to focus on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact.”

    The memo, which is in part a woke statement on social justice, part an apology for U.S. actions, and part an endorsement of all BLM materials, expressly encourages the display of the BLM flag or banner at U.S. facilities (except on the actual flagpole that holds the American flag). It reads, in part:

    This cable constitutes a blanket written authorization for calendar year 2021 from the Under Secretary for Management (M) to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole to any Chiefs of Mission who determine such a display is appropriate in light of local conditions.

    Despite the documented actions of BLM protestors during the riots of 2020, and despite the New York Times reporting on their organization’s declining popularity with American voters, our federal  government has nonetheless decided to endorse and promote an organization with admitted Marxist roots as one having ties to our official foreign offices.

     

    The entirety of the State Department memo has been reproduced below. 

     

    *  *  *

    UNCLASSIFIED Action Office: ALDACS, PAS, POL, MGT, ECON_EXPANDED, HR, DAO, LEGAT MRN: 21 STATE 53304 Date/DTG: May 22, 2021 / 222307Z MAY 21 From: SECSTATE WASHDC Action: ALL DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR POSTS COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE E.O.: 13526 TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PHUM, PREF, SMIG, SOCI, EAID, KDNI, APER, AMGT, KPAO, KWMN, KLGBT, KJUS, KDEM Reference: A) E.O. 13985 B) 21 STATE 47544 Subject: COMMEMORATING GEORGE FLOYD: DIPLOMATIC ENGAGEMENT AND USE OF BLACK LIVES MATTER (BLM) LANGUAGE AND MATERIAL 

    1.  (U) This is an action request. Please see paragraphs 13 – 15. 2. (U) 

    Summary: May 25 marks one year since the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year, the horrific video of Mr. Floyd’s final 9 minutes and 29 seconds went viral and spurred Black Lives Matter protests worldwide, in response to his senseless killing and to demand an end to systemic racism and police brutality. One year later, many in the international community will honor Mr. Floyd and acknowledge the long journey nations face to advance racial justice. Leading up to May 25, the Department has issued guidance on the use of Black Lives Matter language, banners, and flags. End Summary.

     Context 

    1.  (U) May 25 marks the one-year commemoration of George Floyd’s murder. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the world saw firsthand how police officers brutally took the life of an unarmed Black man in the United States. These viral images ignited national and global Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and demonstrations. This tragedy joined a long line of Black men and women who have suffered at the hands of police brutality. These national and global protests sparked a movement to confront systems perpetuating deep-seated inequities rooted in colonialism and the oppression of racial, tribal, ethnic, and other minority communities. Mr. Floyd’s murder prompted an international outcry to seek racial justice and equity by dismantling systemic racism and eradicating police brutality affecting communities of color, most acutely, people of African descent. 

    2.  (U) On January 20, as one of his first official actions, President Biden issued Executive Order 13985 to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities (reftel 21 STATE 47544). This effort is a top priority for the Administration’s domestic and foreign policy; the United States cannot credibly message on human rights abroad if it does not address these same issues at home. To achieve his policy objectives, President Biden issued several additional executive actions to support underserved communities and advance racial equity, which notably include: • Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States • Executive Order #14020 on Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council, and • Presidential Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Persons Around the World. 

    A National Security Priority: Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities 

    1.  (U) The Department’s policy efforts with respect to advancing racial equity as part of supporting our national security interests are as follows:  • Partnering with like-minded nations and civil society stakeholders to counter disinformation, propaganda, and the concerted malign influence of state and non-state actors which sow racial discord among communities, undermining democratic norms. • Promoting democratic principles, fighting corruption, increasing access to justice through reform efforts, and raising awareness of the prevalence and effect of discrimination against members of racial, ethnic, and underserved communities. • Combating violence and discrimination against members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities. • Building coalitions of like-minded nations and engaging international organizations in the fight against systemic racism and discrimination, to include swift and meaningful responses to human rights abuses and violations of racial, ethnic, and other underserved and mainstream racial equity issues throughout the multilateral system. • Expanding efforts to ensure regular U.S. federal government engagement with foreign governments, citizens, civil society, and the private sector promotes respect for the human rights of members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities. • Empowering local movements to advance the human rights of members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities through efforts that strengthen the capacity of civil society. 

    Press Guidance and Statements: Black Lives Matter and Commemoration of George Floyd’s Murder 

    1.  (U) The documents below provide talking points and press guidance on racial inequity and discrimination: • Press Guidance: Racial Justice in Foreign Policy in Content Commons, dated 1/28/2021. • Press Guidance: Thematic Guidance – Human Rights Report and Toplines for the Human Rights Reports in Content Commons, both dated 4/2/2021. • Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, Human Rights Council 46th Session, dated 3/19/2021. • Statement During the Adoption of the Third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States, as delivered by Lisa Peterson, DRL Acting Assistant Secretary, dated 3/17/2021.• Remarks by Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, dated 3/19/2021. 

    Background of Black Lives Matter Movement

    1.  (U) According to the Office of U.S. Special Counsel, “As a social movement, BLM gained prominence following a series of high-profile killings of Black Americans in 2013 and 2014 and, in particular, the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The movement appears to have begun organically on social media. The phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ then became a rallying cry for protesters and organizations seeking to raise awareness of, and respond to, issues associated with racism in the United States. BLM is thus an umbrella term for a constellation of ideas, objectives, and groups. There is no ‘leader’ of the BLM movement. Rather, there are numerous organizations that use BLM terminology to varying degrees, including some whose names include the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Of these, the most prominent is the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN).” 

    Use of Black Lives Matter Language in Diplomatic Engagements

    1.  (U) The United States remains concerned about the racial inequities of underserved communities, both domestically and abroad. The Department supports the use of the term “Black Lives Matter” in messaging content, speeches, and other diplomatic engagements with foreign audiences to advance racial equity and access to justice on May 25 and beyond. We encourage posts to focus on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact. 

    Participation in Black Lives Matter-related Activities 

    1.  (U) As outlined by 2020 guidance from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the “Hatch Act generally allows employees to engage in BLM-related activity while on duty or in the workplace. But, as described below, employees are still prohibited from combining BLM-related activity with ‘political activity’ while on duty or in the workplace and from engaging in partisan political fundraising in connection with BLM-related organizations. ‘Political activity’ is an ‘activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.” 

    Guidance on Black Lives Matter Banner Displays 

    1.  (U) Any BLM-related displays within the interior of the mission, or exterior displays other than the display of a BLM flag on the flagpole (e.g., a banner over the door, BLM spotlights, projections, etc.) are at the Chief of Mission’s discretion. 

    2.  (U) As outlined below, Chiefs of Mission may decide to hang BLM flags, as appropriate and depending on local context. This cable constitutes a blanket written authorization for calendar year 2021 from the Under Secretary for Management (M) to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole to any Chiefs of Mission who determine such a display is appropriate in light of local conditions. This is an authorization, not a requirement. 

    3.  (U) U.S. law at 4 U.S.C. section 7(f) provides that “[w]hen flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs, the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to the right of the U.S. flag.” The Black Lives Matter flag, and/or any other types of affinity flags, should be treated as pennants of societies in accordance with this provision, and accordingly, when displayed alongside the U.S. flag either indoors or outdoors, should always be placed in a subordinate position. Regarding the external, public-facing flagpole of all U.S. missions, the written approval of the Secretary, through the Under Secretary for Management (M), is necessary to display any flag other than the U.S. flag, a Foreign Service flag, or a POW/MIA flag. As noted above, this cable constitutes blanket written authorization to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole during calendar year 2021. 

    Action Request 

    1.  (U) Posts are strongly encouraged to make full use of Department and Interagency tools and resources to promote policy objectives to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities throughout the year, including with a particular focus on May 25 and during June to commemorate Juneteenth and lesser-known racially motivated attacks such as the Tulsa Race Massacre – the 100th anniversary of which will take place May 31 – June 1, 2021. On May 24, GPA will release a compilation video featuring messages from activists around the world on the importance of global racial justice as part of a playbook with language for the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. This video compilation will also feature senior Department leaders to demonstrate the Administration’s commitment to racial equity and support for underserved communities. 

    2.  (U) Posts may pull from DRL’s library of evergreen content, including its civil rights toolkit and its Juneteenth toolkit, the latter of which will have new material in early June. DRL is creating a mini toolkit to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre and will send that to Posts during the last week of May. Posts should also look for articles from GPA’s Share America office on both topics. Content Commons may also contain resources. Public Affairs sections should leverage ECA programs to advance this priority at post. The following are a few programming suggestions: • Use resources at American Spaces, including digital resources; • Work with Alumni Coordinators to engage networks of alumni and current U.S. and incountry exchange participants to draw on their experience and expertise; • Hold open conversations with target audiences using ECA-curated racial inclusion films; • Request an in-person or virtual expert from the ECA U.S. Speaker Program, actively recruit professionals for International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and IVLP On-Demand Programs from underserved communities as well as those working on efforts advance racial equity incountry. It is important for us to continue planning events, activities, and messages to demonstrate the commitment of the U.S. government and efforts by American communities to overcome racism, including by acknowledging historical events and tragedies and their lasting impact today. 

    3.  (U) The Department stands ready to assist Posts in their efforts to develop and implement equity-related programming, outreach, and events.  Posts are requested to use the Diversity and Inclusion (KDNI) tag when reporting these activities via front-channel as appropriate. The Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, and regional bureaus will collect information to be included for reporting to the White House required by E.O. 13985 to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities.  Posts may contact D-MR staff with questions at equity@state.gov. 

    Signature: Blinken

    *  *  *

    You can read the original document here.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:50

  • Wisconsin Police Tell Residents "Do Not Call 911" When Starlink Satellite Train Passes By
    Wisconsin Police Tell Residents “Do Not Call 911” When Starlink Satellite Train Passes By

    The Outagamie County Sheriff’s office told residents of Appleton, a city just north of Lake Winnebago, to avoid calling the police when a train of lights appears in the night sky because they’re just satellites. 

    “We have seen a lot of questions about the long strings of lights appearing in the night sky lately. These lights are satellites, and are part of a new internet service called, Starlink. Starlink provides internet to rural and typically hard-to-service areas,” Outagamie County Sheriff Facebook post read. 

    The post continued: “There is no concern to the publics safety and we ask that you please do not call the Outagamie County Communications Center – 911 about them.” 

    The Facebook post was likely prompted by an uptick in 911 calls when a train of Starlink satellites illuminate the night sky that may frighten some people into believing an alien invasion is imminent. 

    Starlink satellites are providing internet to rural America and are reportedly faster than land-based internet. But with the Starlinks so bright, it hasn’t just frightened some people but also become an optical nuisance to astronomers. 

    Over the next few years, SpaceX plans to launch at least 12,000 Starlink satellites. The increase of UFO sightings could due to Starlink satellites gliding through low Earth orbit at thousands of miles per hour. 

    Here’s footage of Starlink satellites over the skies of Mississauga, a city neighboring Toronto on Lake Ontario.

    To the average person unfamiliar with Starlink could easily mistake the satellites for an alien invasion and warrant a 911 call. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:30

  • The Real Big Lie: You Can't Question Elections
    The Real Big Lie: You Can’t Question Elections

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Liz Cheney doesn’t get to decide what is true for the rest of us; neither, as hard as it is for some of them to believe, do the media pundits and philosopher-kings whom our society breeds like rats in a junkyard.

    But they sure do try, and for the most part they have gotten away with it for decades.

    Cheney has become the darling of the oligarchs the last several months because she first voted to impeach Donald Trump and because she then elected to condemn the Republican Party for disagreeing with her.

    Cheney, the lone Wyoming representative in Congress, has deemed herself the conscience of the GOP. Of course, what is obvious is that she is the latest in a long line of self-appointed saviors of the party who believe the way to save the village is to first destroy it.

    Her pretend friends in the media take offense when Cheney is described as a traitor, but anyone who still thinks the Republican Party stands for something fundamental and principled certainly is within their rights to question her loyalty, as her obsession with destroying Donald Trump and excising the 75 million Americans who voted for him has only one effect — to give aid and comfort to the Democrat Party and to its agenda of transforming America into a post-constitutional Marxist regime.

    Listen to her preening speech the night before she was stripped of her title as chair of the House Republican caucus:

    “We must speak the truth. Our election was not stolen. And America has not failed. Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

    Cheney’s arrogance is only exceeded by her ignorance. The only truth is Cheney’s truth, which just so happens to coincide with the Democrats’ truth. “Our duty as Americans” is apparently to accept election results without question, and to sacrifice our rights and responsibilities on the altar of the “rule of law.” But despite her certainty that the 2020 election was not stolen, many of us remain unconvinced. According to Cheney and her media champions, we are being deceived by the former president. Apparently, it is impossible for the elitist establishmentarian to conceive of an electorate that thinks for itself.

    There have always been politicians like Liz Cheney, those who see their role as protecting the people from themselves, but it is a much more recent phenomenon for the media to take the side of politicians over the people, and in particular to accept the word of politicians without testing it against the evidence. The Watergate break-in’s connection to President Nixon never would have been discovered if the media were as obeisant to authority then as they appear to be now, but there is virtually no mainstream reporter who has done a deep dive into the many anomalies that marred the last election.

    What we have instead are dutiful pundits who parrot the official party line of Democrats and call it journalism. They never tire of repeating the provocation that this was the most secure election in American history. You can read their mournful condemnations of Trump and anyone who still believes in him virtually every day at RealClearPolitics and other political websites.

    At the heart of every such story or column lies one fundamental fact — the authors were too lazy (or too biased) to investigate the evidence of a corrupt political process for themselves. It’s as if they had never heard of Watergate, or the alleged weapons of mass destruction that justified a deadly invasion of Iraq, or the Steele dossier. Last week, I read one such condemnation of Trump — and paean to St. Cheney — by an author who should have known better.

    Elizabeth Drew covered Watergate, and hundreds of other stories of political and government malfeasance, in a long and celebrated career as someone with a reputation for objectivity and common sense. I grew up watching her on PBS and “Meet the Press” and thought I could trust her to keep her head when others were losing theirs. But it turned out that Drew was more in love with Washington than with her job. When Donald Trump came into office on a pledge to rip the guts out of the bureaucratic Deep State that was auctioning off our American heritage, she instinctively sided with the politicians over the man she called bombastic, crude, and “manifestly unprepared” to be president.

    Her lengthy list of articles attacking Trump was unknown to me at the time I read her recent column, but the title of her new piece told me everything I needed to know about Drew’s politics: “The Big Lie and Its Consequences.” The teaser declared that “By questioning the very integrity of America’s electoral system, [the Republican Party] now represents an open threat to the U.S. constitutional order.”

    Talk about a Catch-22! If you fear that someone is tampering with elections, you are a threat to the Constitution, but if you actually are tampering with elections, you have nothing to worry about because those who figure it out will be denounced as enemies of the Constitution. That’s a sweet deal for the bad guys.

    Still I plowed on, hoping that this childhood hero of mine wasn’t completely out of touch with reality. That hope was dashed by the second paragraph when Drew informed a gullible public that “the U.S. constitution’s promise and central premise — that the people elect the president — has never been totally fulfilled.” I have two issues with that sentence. First, Drew and/or her editors lower-cased “Constitution,” which gives some suggestion of how low a view they hold of that remarkable document. Second, what bizarre theory is she advancing when she claims that popular election of the president is the “central premise” of the Constitution?

    That proposition does not exist in the Constitution, not even as a “promise,” and certainly not as a “central premise.” It is well known – Drew certainly knows it — that the nation’s Founders feared the results of allowing direct election of the chief executive, and installed the Electoral College as a protective mechanism to guard against demagogues and democratic (small d) mobs.

    So here we have Elizabeth Drew, who can’t even tell the truth about a basic historic fact, scolding millions of Americans for supposedly promoting a “Big Lie” because we have questions about what happened on Nov. 3, 2020. The underlying assumption of Drew’s column, like that of all the columns that paint Trump as the author of the so-called Big Lie, is that election fraud is impossible, and that therefore anyone who tries to prove it is a fraud or worse. In Drew’s case, this is not a guess. She admits it:

    “To question the veracity of the official election result is to undermine the assumption of the integrity of the election system.”

    To me, that sounds like top-down Soviet-style orthodoxy. But that is what the Democrats and their fawning phalanx in the media most passionately desire. In their perfect world, they talk and the rest of us just shut up and listen. Or even better, we are supposed to dutifully embrace the party line and become true believers like Liz Cheney. Free thought and free speech be damned.

    Drew ends her column by invoking the “rule of law” as her presumed ally, just as Cheney did in her speech to Congress. But Drew makes it clear that for her, the rule of law is nothing but the yoke of subservience. For her, “democracy cannot succeed without voluntary cooperation, trust and restraint.” What she doesn’t grasp is that the same can be said much more accurately about dictatorship.

    The real Big Lie is that America is great because Americans are obedient. In fact, America is great because Americans are independent, rebellious and rowdy — just like Donald Trump. “Voluntary cooperation” be damned. Let the evidence speak for itself, and let the people make up their own minds. We certainly don’t need Liz Cheney and Elizabeth Drew to tell us what to think.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:10

  • Prosecution Can Argue Elizabeth Holmes' "Lavish Lifestyle" Motivated Her To Commit Fraud, Judge Rules
    Prosecution Can Argue Elizabeth Holmes’ “Lavish Lifestyle” Motivated Her To Commit Fraud, Judge Rules

    When it comes to the forthcoming trial of disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, her “appetite for fame and fortune” can and will be used against her as a potential motivator to commit fraud, a judge ruled late last week.

    Holmes’ trial, which has already been delayed several times (due to the pandemic and to Holmes’ pregnancy), is finally set to commence in August. Prosecutors are keen to paint a picture of Holmes as someone who traveled on private jets, stayed in luxury hotels and relied on multiple personal assistants, Bloomberg Law wrote late last week.

    Her association with celebrities and “other wealthy and powerful people” could be used as evidence she had incentive to commit fraud, the government wants to argue.

    And that seemed OK with U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who agreed to allow that line of prosecution, but for “some limitations”. 

    The judge’s ruling, issued Saturday, said the government could compare Holmes to other tech CEOs. The judge wrote: “This includes salary, travel, celebrity, and other perks and benefits commensurate with the position. Each time Holmes made an extravagant purchase, it is reasonable to infer that she knew her fraudulent activity allowed her to pay for those items.”

    The judge did, however, ask that the government refrain from getting into the weeds and “referring to specific purchases, brands of clothing, hotels and other personal items”.

    Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney who teaches at the University of Michigan law, commented that the ruling was fair: ”People should not be punished merely for being wealthy, just as they should not be punished merely for being poor, but if someone profited from a crime, then the fruits of their crime is fair game to show their guilt and motive.” 

    Holmes’ lawyers had argued that using her wealth against her would “inflame” the jury and that it should be off-limits: “The real value of the evidence to the government is to paint a misleading picture of Ms. Holmes as a woman who prioritized fashion, a luxurious lifestyle, and fame, and to invite a referendum on startup and corporate culture.”

    The government countered: “Theranos’s stock — both literal and figurative — soared as a result of” Holmes’s fraud, prosecutors said in a court filing. “The evidence at trial will show that these benefits were meaningful to the defendant, who closely monitored daily news to cultivate her image.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:50

  • Imagining The Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, & The CDC
    Imagining The Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, & The CDC

    Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets.com,

    People didn’t need government, or entities created by government. They also didn’t require force to protect themselves. Let’s never forget this.

    Better yet, let’s make this truth clear over and over again.

    Ok, what truth? The truth that the American people along with people around the world adjusted to the spreading coronavirus much more quickly than did their self-appointed political minders.

    As I point out in my new book When Politicians Panicked, New York City mayor de Blasio was encouraging increasingly cautious New Yorkers to go see movies at a time when more and more of them were staying home, plus he was riding the city’s subways to encourage ridership that was on decline as a consequence of fear about the virus.

    In the U.S.’s allegedly science-denying red states, as in the states that locked down last, citizens had become more than cautious well before the wholly superfluous and destructive lockdowns reared their ugly heads. They were dining out less, washing their hands more, avoiding crowds more. It’s funny how fear of potential hospitalization or death focuses the mind on avoiding either outcome. 

    Notable about this very human desire to cheat illness, it wasn’t just an American thing. Holman Jenkins pointed out last summer that masks and hand sanitizer were scarce in Germany at a time when Angela Merkel was still downplaying the virus.

    The people are a market. Repeat this truth too, over and over again. While processing limited information, they began to take precautions. Government force in 2020 was wholly unnecessary.

    XPhyto Therapeutics Corp.

    This company is on its way to being a market leader in the psychedelic industry

    Which raises a basic question about Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, USIAID and the CDC.

    What if the two political bureaucrats lacked their well-funded taxpayer-funded perches? Would Americans have dropped dead in high numbers? The question itself insults the American people, along with human nature.

    Up front, people respond to incentives. They respond to reality. If the virus had been an indiscriminate killer, the lengths Americans would have gone to in order to avoid infection would have well exceeded what any politician or government drone could have ever imagined. At the same time, it’s worth pointing out that if the virus had been a rabid life ender, we would have known it well in advance of it reaching the U.S. Think the internet. Think the smartphone. China is dense with them. If its people had been dying en masse, there’s no way this could have been hidden.

    After which, it’s useful to point out the obvious; that Redfield and Fauci didn’t invent communications, the internet or smartphones, so without the two functionaries word about a spreading virus would have just as easily reached the American people. Some will point out how contradictory Fauci has been over the last 14 months about the virus, masks and other things related, but that’s shooting fish in a barrel.

    The better answer is that Fauci, Redfield, USIAID and the CDC weren’t needed in the first place. No doubt such a statement would cause the heads of lefties like David Brooks to explode, but Brooks’s feelings don’t alter reality. In Brooks’s case, “national plans” excite him endlessly, which means national government organizations excite him, but it perhaps hasn’t occurred to Brooks to consider a world without Fauci et al. Better yet, Brooks might ask himself if dead Americans would be piled up on city streets around the country absent Fauci et al. Probably not. Actually, definitely not.

    That’s the case because the same profit motive that continues to bring us closer to cancer cures (along with advances that make it possible to live with cancer) also ensures that capitalism would have produced all manner of virus-mitigating strategies. Ludwig von Mises described profits in Human Action as being a consequence of the motivated removing “unease” from our lives, so does anyone seriously think the wealth-focused would punt on creating information about and solutions for a situation like the one that was presented to us in 2020 when a globally spreading pathogen had red and blue state Americans alike on edge, along with the rest of the world? The question answers itself.

    What form would a private version of the USIAID or CDC take? There’s no way of knowing, and that’s the point. Government is constrained by a static known, while the desire for profits always and everywhere results in the unexpected. All anyone really need say is that a capitalist system capable of producing Amazon, or Apple and its iPhones, could put together myriad innovative ways to deal with a virus.

    Which brings us to the tragedy that was and is Fauci, Redfield, USIAID and the CDC. Not constrained by market signals, or profits, Fauci and Redfield quite simply “felt things.” Emotion guided them. So did fear. In possession of swagger that was not their own, they created fear all the while pushing the easily gulled (think politicians) toward panic. In other words, government creates the very crises it aims to avoid by trying to avoid them. Please think about this.

    The virus had been in the news for months, and had been spreading for months. During this time American stock markets reached all-time highs as the virus spread. Free people don’t cause crises. Crises are born of panicky politicians “doing something” that always and everywhere involves replacing the marketplace that is the people with the narrow knowledge of the very few. It’s called central planning, and its imposition always creates a crisis.

    So it did. Scared of their own shadow politicians let experts like Fauci and Redfield terrify them into a command-and-control stance.

    The rest is tragic history as jobs and businesses vanished in a climate of fear created by politicians and bureaucrats who would never miss a paycheck or a meal.

    So what would the world and life have been like sans Fauci et al? Your answer can be found in February of 2020 before expert-reverent politicians panicked.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:30

  • Dems Urge Justice Breyer To Step Down Before Midterms To "Avoid Another 'RBG' Situation"
    Dems Urge Justice Breyer To Step Down Before Midterms To “Avoid Another ‘RBG’ Situation”

    As President Biden and Nancy Pelosi slow-roll Democrats’ plans to pack the Supreme Court (even as they insisted that they don’t have a position on the issue but agree it should be “studied further”), the Democratic grass roots is trying to ensure that Democrats don’t make the same mistake twice.

    The mistake we’re referring to here is, of course, the decision by former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to stay on after President Obama left office (though, to be fair, the fact that Obama couldn’t get a vote on Merrick Garland, it’s unclear whether her retirement would have ultimately stopped the seat from being filled by a Republican).

    Still, a growing number on the left see RBG’s decision as a critical error and a strike against her legacy. While few Democratic lawmakers have spoken out directly in support of Breyer retiring now, progressive groups are growing increasingly vocal about suggesting him to “consider” stepping down before the next election, to ensure that President Biden and the Democrat-controlled Senate have a chance to confirm his replacement before the start of campaign season.

    At 82, Breyer is the eldest justice on the court.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The campaign to oust Breyer is being led by a group called “Demand Justice”. According to Bloomberg, DJ is “using social-media hashtags to get its point across, and also drove a truck-mounted electronic billboard around Capitol Hill last month, urging Breyer to retire.”

    In an interview with Bloomberg, “Demand Justice’s” founder Christopher Kang, a veteran of the Obama White House, said the campaign isn’t so much about forcing Breyer out as it is about galvanizing progressive attention (and, of course, donations) for the cause of pushing the Supreme Court back toward the progressive end of the spectrum and undoing President Trump’s most enduring legacy.

    “I don’t suspect that Justice Breyer is going to look out the window of the Supreme Court and see one of our trucks driving by and say, ‘They’re right! I should retire now!'”

    Instead, Kang said he and co-founder Brian Fallon, press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, want the group to focus liberal voters on the “importance of every single vacancy, and the need to start building a more enduring bloc on the court.”

    But we suspect he’s being facetious. In reality, Demand Justice sees itself as a kind of ersatz Federalist Society: Liberals have long envied the political machine that the GOP built up around building a conservative majority on the nation’s highest courts. This infrastructure was leveraged to great effect during Trump’s presidency, as he filled hundreds of federal court vacancies. Democratic justices, by comparison, have marched to the beat of their own drum, instead of doing the right thing for Dems’ overall political strategy.

    Democrats had no such grass-roots effort with voters or with judicial-minded think tanks before 2020, except to sound the alarm when a confirmation fight was brewing, like after Ginsburg’s death in September.

    “It’s about reminding people that the Supreme Court is an inherently political institution. And in this moment, when we have a 50-50 Senate, part of this is about preserving Justice Breyer’s legacy and making sure that he’s succeeded by a like-minded justice,” Kang said.

    And at least as far as Democrats are concerned, the most important issue that progressive politicians deploy to scare voters to the polls is the undoing of Roe v. Wade. The court’s decision just to hear a case about a Mississippi abortion law has once again got pro-choice activists up in arms, even as the conservative Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to embrace the most restrictive path available when it comes to shifting abortion rights.

    As one twitter user pointed out, Dems need to avoid “another RBG situation”.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Notably, the push for Breyer to consider retirement is escalating just as the Supreme Court’s term is ending (it will end late nest month). Typically, decisions about retirement have been held until after the end of session.

    Should he chose to stay on, Breyer might be forced to retire mid-term, or shortly after the next term ends in the summer of 2022, right in the middle of campaign season.

    Bloomberg noted that the pressure campaign “is unusually high profile for the judicial branch, an arena that has typically been seen as beyond the realm of politicking. So far, only two Congressional Dems, NY’s Mondaire Jones and California’s Jared Huffman, have suggested that Breyer should retire. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has offered a more subtle hint, saying that Breyer should consider the political reality during a recent interview with the Washington Post.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:10

  • "Man-Made Catastrophe" – China Race Organizer Blamed After 21 Ultrarunners "Froze To Death" In Extreme Weather
    “Man-Made Catastrophe” – China Race Organizer Blamed After 21 Ultrarunners “Froze To Death” In Extreme Weather

    Authored by Nicole Hao via The Epoch Times,

    The Chinese communist regime announced on May 23 that 21 athletes, including China’s marathon champions, died at the Gansu ultramarathon due to the extreme weather.

    The death list includes Liang Jing, 31, China’s ultramarathon record holder, Huang Guanjun, 34, winner of the men’s marathon for hearing-impaired runners at China’s 2019 National Paralympic Games, and famous ultramarathon runners Huang Yinbin and Cao Pengfei.

    “All elite ultramarathon runners died,” a Chinese netizen wrote on Weibo on Sunday.

    From videos and photos that surviving sportsmen shot onsite and shared on social media, the athletes dressed in shorts were stuck in no man’s land and couldn’t procure clothes to stay warm or food to keep going.

    “This is definitely a man-made catastrophe!” a Chinese netizen from Guangdong Province commented on a news report of the official’s statement on May 23.

    “These 21 people were frozen to death!” wrote Chinese media The Economic Observer in a commentary on Sunday asking the Chinese regime to reflect on the tragedy. “If the organizer can set  up a medical tent every five kilometers, the disaster can be avoided to a large extent.”

    Tragedy

    The Gansu ultramarathon is held at Yellow River Stone Forest Park in Baiyin city, northwestern China’s Gansu Province by the local government, together with a five-kilometer and a 21-kilometer run.

    The mountain race is 100 kilometers (62.14 miles) long, and is between 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet above sea level, according to the official announcement. The race started at 9:00 a.m. on May 22, and the organizer estimated that all athletes could finish the race on the second day.

    “At around noon, the high-altitude section of the race between 20 and 31 kilometers was suddenly affected by disastrous weather,” Baiyin Mayor Zhang Xuchen said at Sunday’s press conference.

    “In a short period of time, hailstones and ice rain suddenly fell in the local area, and there were strong winds. The temperature sharply dropped.”

    Chinese runner Jing Liang competes during the 170 kilometres Mont Blanc Ultra Trail (UTMB) race around Mont-Blanc, crossing France, Italy and Swiss, in Chamonix, France on Aug. 30, 2019. (Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP via Getty Images)

    State-run The Time Weekly on Sunday interviewed three surviving runners who presented a more complete picture.

    There were 172 athletes who participated in the ultramarathon. All of them are professional runners because “the mountain race needs to be finished within 20 hours. Non-professional ones can’t make it at all,” Gao Shuang told the outlet.

    It was windy and cloudy in the early morning, but the organizer didn’t suggest the runners carry warmer clothes, such as outdoor jackets.

    “The weather wasn’t good when we started. But I followed others because they kept on running,” Feifei (anonymous) told the Weekly. “At 1:00 p.m., the rain became heavier and the wind was likely to blow me away at any time.”

    The best runners were at the phase between station CP2 to CP3 of the race, which “is the most difficult part. It’s about eight kilometers (4.97 miles) long, but the altitude increased 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). The road is very steep, mixed with rocks and mud. We had to use both hands and feet to climb,” Gao said.

    Li Liang (anonymous) was between station CP 1 to CP2 and was among the runners who decided to leave the race as soon as the weather got bad. He ran into the CP2, where he could find hot water and food as quickly as possible.

    “The rain hit my back like needles. We (runners at CP2) shared our concerns and decided to quit,” Li said.

    Tourists ride the camels in the Gobi near the famed tourist attraction Jiayuguan Pass, in China’s northwestern Gansu Province on Oct. 13, 2005. (Liu Jin/AFP via Getty Images)

    At that time, Gao was in the middle between CP2 and CP3 with many better runners in front of him. He didn’t give up because he didn’t receive the notice from the organizer that the race should be stopped, and he wanted to win.

    However, Gao quickly changed his mind due to the cold.

    “All my ten fingers lost their sensation. I put my finger into my mouth, but my tongue was cold as well,” Gao said. He decided to go back to CP2 because “even motorbikes can’t cross the road, so there’s no supplement at CP3.”

    On the way back to CP2, Gao met many runners who were on the edge of death.

    “I saw a large number of them lying on the ground who couldn’t stand any more. About six or seven of them had white foam in their mouths.”

    Gao said he was sad that he couldn’t help others because he himself was almost frozen and had limited energy to keep going.

    “The runners who were rescued were the ones who were still conscious and could walk back themselves,” said Feifei. She went back to rescue others after warming up.

    The race was called off by 2 p.m. Saturday, but it was too late.

    On the afternoon of May 23, local time, Baiyin city government announced 21 athletes had died, eight had been injured and hospitalized, and others were rescued.

    Peng Jianhua celebrates after crossing the finish line to win first place in the men’s category during the 2021 Beijing Half Marathon at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China on April 24, 2021. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

    Man-Made or Natural

    On May 23, state-run media tried to explain that the disaster was caused by weather and that forecasters were wrong. However, a large number of Chinese netizens started to question the organizers’ preparation.

    The Economic Observer compared the Gansu ultramarathon with other cross-country races. In the Gobi desert marathon in Mongolia, organizers prepared watermelon and other food and drinks for athletes along the way. But in Gansu, the athletes had nothing for most of the race.

    The article pointed out that local weather is unstable in spring and the organizers know clearly that some parts of the race can’t be reached by any vehicles. However, they didn’t arrange standby helicopters either.

    Private media Kuai Tech reported on Sunday that shepherd Zhu Keming was herding goats nearby when the catastrophe happened. He set up a fire in a cave that he owned, and rescued six runners by moving them to the warm cave and covering them with quilts.

    The Economic Observer suggested the regime reflect on the tragedy and organize the competition in a professional way in future.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:50

  • Morgan Stanley Settles High-Profile Lawsuit Alleging It Discriminated Against Black Women
    Morgan Stanley Settles High-Profile Lawsuit Alleging It Discriminated Against Black Women

    Just days after anointing four white men as the most likely contenders to succeed CEO James Gorman…

    …Morgan Stanley has settled a lawsuit filed by the bank’s former chief diversity officer alleging that the bank discriminated against black women. The terms of the settlement (including the dollar amount) weren’t immediately disclosed.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It wasn’t immediately clear how much Morgan paid to settle the lawsuit, which was filed against the bank and two top executives by Marilyn Booker, the former diversity chief who claimed she was fired in December of 2019 after pushing for a plan that she said would help promote career advancement for Morgan Stanley’s Black employees.

    The suit, filed roughly one year ago, alleged that Booker’s firing reflects a pattern of widespread discrimination against Black and female employees at the investment bank.

    “Clearly, Black lives did not matter at Morgan Stanley,” the suit stated.

    The original complaint included allegations about instances where Booker was allegedly discriminated against during her 26 years at the firm, including one time when she and another black employee brought in a deal, only for white colleagues to get the credit.

    The suit notes that, until recently, just three of Morgan Stanley’s operating committee are women, and none are Black. As for its board of directors, the suit says that 10 of 14 board members are men, while only one is Black.

    The settlement likely won’t go unnoticed by the financial press, just as Morgan Stanley’s recent personnel shift notably bucked the trend at American megabanks to promote women to take over as the next generation of CEOs. Citi’s Jane Fraser took the reins earlier this year becoming the first female CEO of a Wall Street megabank. And JPM’s latest shakeup suggests that a woman will likely succeed CEO Jamie Dimon.

    But as both Investment News and Bloomberg pointed out, Morgan “defied the diversity trend.”

    In an editorial published Monday afternoon, shortly before news of the Morgan diversity settlement hit, Bloomberg excoriated Morgan for being too white and too male, asserting it was “not a good look” while declaring that improving diversity should be “an urgent task.”

    But in an era in which executives are being judged not just for their ability to turn a profit but also for their firm’s role in society, a lack of diversity among senior managers in a position to lead the firm in the future is not a good look. Contrast Morgan Stanley’s top CEO candidates with JPMorgan’s, where two women are competing head to head for the No. 1 job. While the potentially combative setup isn’t ideal, at least there has been a concerted effort to groom a CEO beyond the usual suspects.

    Improving diversity is an urgent task Gorman needs to tackle well before his successor takes over, if the data is anything to go by. As of 2018, the firm’s most recent numbers, of about 1,700 executives, just 23 were Black men and 14 were Black women. Women held about 18% of those jobs. And the firm’s operating committee is still dominated by White men, as is the next level of management, where 60% are White men.

    To be sure, Morgan’s recent slate of promotions didn’t completely neglect women: Sharon Yeshaya, the head of investor relations, will become Morgan’s new CFO. But her photo wasn’t included with the four men who are likely to succeed Gorman, because she’s very clearly not in the running.

    That doesn’t mean she won’t ever be CEO of Morgan Stanley. But definitely expect to see more of Yeshaya as the bank rolls out the next wave of its diversity PR response.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:30

  • 17 GOP Attorneys General Back South Dakota's Lawsuit Over Mount Rushmore July 4 Fireworks Cancellation
    17 GOP Attorneys General Back South Dakota’s Lawsuit Over Mount Rushmore July 4 Fireworks Cancellation

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Seventeen Republican attorneys general have filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit brought by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem against the Biden administration over its decision to deny a request to hold a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in July to celebrate Independence Day.

    The Biden administration made the decision to cancel the fireworks display in March. Herbert Frost, a regional director for the National Park Service, cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a key factor in making his decision, stating that public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “currently recommends that large gatherings be avoided, particularly those in which physical social distancing cannot be maintained between people who live in different households.”

    Noem is suing the administration over the decision, calling Mount Rushmore “the very best place to celebrate America’s birthday and all that makes our country special.”

    In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 26, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

    Now her lawsuit has the backing of 17 attorneys general, including the top legal officers from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. In a court document (pdf), filed on May 21, the attorneys general called the Biden administration’s decision to cancel the fireworks display “arbitrary and capricious.”

    “Given the importance of the Fourth of July holiday and the special role of Mount Rushmore as a national monument, amici States have an interest in seeing the fireworks display take place again this year,” the attorneys general said in the document, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota.

    They argued that there is a strong public interest in holding a Fourth of July fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, while “the Department of Interior’s flimsy and unsupported rationale for refusing to allow a fireworks display is arbitrary and capricious.”

    They argued that last year’s celebration at Mount Rushmore was held when the pandemic was worse and before vaccines were developed.

    “More than seven thousand visitors attended, and contact tracing has failed to identify even one case of COVID-19 tied to the event,” they wrote.

    President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pay their respects as they listen to the National Anthem during the Independence Day events at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D., on July 3, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    The National Park Service also cited opposition from local tribes as factors in rejecting South Dakota’s bid to display fireworks.

    The attorneys general acknowledged tribal objections, but argued that “the mere fact that some people may oppose a fireworks display is not a sufficient justification for cancelling an important national celebration.”

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment following the filing of Noem’s lawsuit in April.

    Following the announcement of the lawsuit, Ian Fury, communications director for Noem, told The Epoch Times via email that the governor “is going to do everything in her ability to ensure that we can celebrate America’s birthday with fireworks at Mount Rushmore.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:10

  • Biden Staffers Issue Open Letter Demanding "Accountability" For Israel As Blinken Heads To Region
    Biden Staffers Issue Open Letter Demanding “Accountability” For Israel As Blinken Heads To Region

    At this point the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears to have held firm for four days, and now US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is en route to the region in hopes of solidifying the truce. His itinerary beginning Tuesday will include Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo and Amman – and through Thursday he plans to hold separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. 

    Just ahead of his embarking from the US on Monday the White House said that Blinken will stress to Israeli leaders “our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” President Biden said in a Monday morningn statement: “Following up on our quiet, intensive diplomacy to bring about a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas … Blinken will meet with Israeli leaders about our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He will continue our administration’s efforts to rebuild ties to, and support for, the Palestinian people and leaders, after years of neglect.”

    However, there’s growing pressure within his Democratic administration to get “tougher” on Tel Aviv – especially given the huge civilian death toll in Gaza from the eleven days of fighting: “At least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes during this month’s conflict, including 66 children. Hamas rocket attacks killed 12 people in Israel, including one child; Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system blocked many salvos,” France24 tallies.

    Via the AP\

    Following last week’s revelation that Biden had approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel just ahead of this month’s outbreak of hostilities, there’s been anger and disunity within Democrat Congressional ranks, particularly by progressives including ‘the Squad’.

    But it should have come with little surprise given official US policy and actions have long appeared to be a “blank check” approach to Israel across administrations stretching back decades. The some $3.8 billion in annual foreign military aid given to the Jewish state doesn’t appear to come with any strings attached in terms of human rights.

    And now increasing numbers of influential Democrat voices, including many who helped get Biden into office, have issued an open letter demanding accountability, as The Guardian details:

    More than 500 Biden campaign alumni and Democratic staffers have signed an open letter calling for the president to do more to protect Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its actions in and over Gaza, where a ceasefire currently holds.

    The staffers and former staffers write that they “commend [Biden’s] efforts to broker a ceasefire. Yet, we also cannot unsee the horrific violence that unfolded in recent weeks in Israel/Palestine, and we implore you to continue using the power of your office to hold Israel accountable for its actions and lay the groundwork for justice and lasting peace.”

    …We should note that we struggle to see in what ways he’s “used his power” at all to hold Israel accountable.

    Further the letter emphasized that a “power imbalance” exists, which the authors said should naturally result on more US pressure on Israel to reign in its devastating civilian casualties during Gaza airstrikes, not less. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s more from the open letter:

    The very same values that motivated us to work countless hours to elect you demand that we speak out… we remain horrified by the images of Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed or made homeless by Israeli airstrikes. We are outraged by Israel’s efforts to forcibly and illegally expel Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. We are shocked by Israel’s destruction of a building housing international news organizations. We remain horrified by reports of Hamas rockets killing Israeli civilians.

    While Israelis had to spend nights hiding in bomb shelters, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had nowhere to hide. It is critical to acknowledge this power imbalance — that Israel’s highly-advanced military occupies the West Bank and East Jerusalem and blockades the Gaza Strip, creating an uninhabitable open-air prison.

    Blinken’s trip is unlikely to produce this desired “accountability” but appears an exercise perhaps in “saving face” with regional allies like Jordan and Egypt while appearing to be “doing something” before the increasingly skeptical Democratic progressives back home, and then there’s also the task of seeking to better the current horribly deteriorated relations with the Palestinian Authority. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:50

  • Google Aims For Commercial Quantum Computer By 2029, What Would That Do To Bitcoin?
    Google Aims For Commercial Quantum Computer By 2029, What Would That Do To Bitcoin?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Let’s explore quantum computing, problems it might solve, and what it will do to current security protocols and blockchain.

    What is a Quantum Computer?

    The New Scientist answers the question What is a Quantum Computer?

    Classical computers, which include smartphones and laptops, encode information in binary “bits” that can either be 0s or 1s. In a quantum computer, the basic unit of memory is a quantum bit or qubit.

    For instance, eight bits is enough for a classical computer to represent any number between 0 and 255. But eight qubits is enough for a quantum computer to represent every number between 0 and 255 at the same time. A few hundred entangled qubits would be enough to represent more numbers than there are atoms in the universe.

    In situations where there are a large number of possible combinations, quantum computers can consider them simultaneously. Examples include trying to find the prime factors of a very large number or the best route between two places.

    That last paragraph above exposes the problem for not just Bitcoin security but virtually all public-private key password encryption. 

    How Can 7 Bits Represent So Much?

    Technology review describes superposition.

    Qubits can represent numerous possible combinations of 1 and 0 at the same time. This ability to simultaneously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate them using precision lasers or microwave beams.

    Researchers can generate pairs of qubits that are “entangled,” which means the two members of a pair exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state of one of the qubits will instantaneously change the state of the other one in a predictable way. This happens even if they are separated by very long distances.

    Nobody really knows quite how or why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described it as “spooky action at a distance.” But it’s key to the power of quantum computers. 

    It takes supercooled computers and vacuum chambers to keep qubits stable long enough to perform a complex calculation. 

    The potential is immense. 

    Airbus, for instance, is using them to help calculate the most fuel-efficient ascent and descent paths for aircraft. And Volkswagen has unveiled a service that calculates the optimal routes for buses and taxis in cities in order to minimize congestion. 

    Google’s Aim 

    The Wall Street Journal reports Google Aims for Commercial-Grade Quantum Computer by 2029

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google plans to spend several billion dollars to build a quantum computer by 2029 that can perform large-scale business and scientific calculations without errors, said Hartmut Neven, a distinguished scientist at Google who oversees the company’s Quantum AI program. The company recently opened an expanded California-based campus focused on the effort, he said.

    “We are at this inflection point,” said Dr. Neven, who has been researching quantum computing at Google since 2006. “We now have the important components in hand that make us confident. We know how to execute the road map.”

    Google is interested in many potential uses for the technology, such as building more energy-efficient batteries, creating a new process of making fertilizer that emits less carbon dioxide and speeding up training for machine-learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, Dr. Neven said.

    For those and other use cases, Google says it will need to build a 1-million-qubit machine capable of performing reliable calculations without errors. Its current systems have less than 100 qubits.

    What About Bitcoin?

    Deloitte discusses Quantum Computers and the Bitcoin Blockchain.

    Since Google announced that it achieved quantum supremacy there has been an increasing number of articles on the web predicting the demise of currently used cryptography in general, and Bitcoin in particular. The goal of this article is to present a balanced view regarding the risks that quantum computers pose to Bitcoin.

    All known (classical) algorithms to derive the private key from the public key require an astronomical amount of time to perform such a computation and are therefore not practical. However, in 1994, the mathematician Peter Shor published a quantum algorithm that can break the security assumption of the most common algorithms of asymmetric cryptography. This means that anyone with a sufficiently large quantum computer could use this algorithm to derive a private key from its corresponding public key, and thus, falsify any digital signature.

    The prerequisite of being “quantum safe” is that the public key associated with this address is not public. But as we explained above, the moment you want to transfer coins from such a “safe” address, you also reveal the public key, making the address vulnerable. From that moment until your transaction is “mined”, an attacker who possesses a quantum computer gets a window of opportunity to steal your coins.

    In such an attack, the adversary will first derive your private key from the public key and then initiate a competing transaction to their own address. They will try to get priority over the original transaction by offering a higher mining fee. 

    In the Bitcoin blockchain it currently takes about 10 minutes for transactions to be mined (unless the network is congested which has happened frequently in the past). As long as it takes a quantum computer longer to derive the private key of a specific public key then the network should be safe against a quantum attack. Current scientific estimations predict that a quantum computer will take about 8 hours to break an RSA key, and some specific calculations predict that a Bitcoin signature could be hacked within 30 minutes. 

    There’s much more to the article including some advice for Bitcoin holders about public keys that needs to be addressed now.

    But if quantum computers ever become fast enough, the security of the entire blockchain will melt down.

    Deloitte notes the only solution is ‘post-quantum cryptography’ to build robust and future-proof blockchain applications.

    That caution applies not only to Bitcoin but to any existing application that uses public-private keys.

    [ZH: We agree Mish’s fears are warranted and maybe yet another driver behind the push for proof-of-stake over proof-of-work blockchain platforms]

    How Does This Work?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Post Quantum Cryptography

    Wikipedia has an excellent discussion of Post-quantum cryptography

    One of the simple proposed solutions is to double the key size but there are practical considerations.

    A practical consideration on a choice among post-quantum cryptographic algorithms is the effort required to send public keys over the internet.

    The Open Quantum Safe project was started in late 2016 and has the goal of developing and prototyping quantum-resistant cryptography. It aims to integrate current post-quantum schemes in one library.

    The Open Quantum Safe project currently supports 6 algorithms. 

    Beyond that, Forward Secrecy allows the use of one-time keys, generated at random.

    Forward secrecy protects data on the transport layer of a network that uses common SSL/TLS protocols, including OpenSSL, when its long-term secret keys are compromised, as with the Heartbleed security bug. If forward secrecy is used, encrypted communications and sessions recorded in the past cannot be retrieved and decrypted should long-term secret keys or passwords be compromised in the future, even if the adversary actively interfered, for example via a man-in-the-middle attack.

    The value of forward secrecy is that it protects past communication. This reduces the motivation for attackers to compromise keys. For instance, if an attacker learns a long-term key, but the compromise is detected and the long-term key is revoked and updated, relatively little information is leaked in a forward secure system.

    Things may not be quite as simple as simply saying double the key size.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:30

  • Thousands Of TikTokers Have "Project X" Style Party In Huntington Beach
    Thousands Of TikTokers Have “Project X” Style Party In Huntington Beach

    What started as a birthday party in Huntington Beach, California, quickly descended into chaos over the weekend. 

    A TikTok video promoting a birthday party went viral, and thousands of people showed up on the beach and in the streets Saturday night. Riot police were called as the unruly crowd launched fireworks and threw rocks and bottles. An emergency curfew was implemented through early Sunday with 150 arrests. 

    A TikTok post (now taken down) called Adrian’s Kickback by user “adrian.lopez517” swelled to more than 2,500 people on Saturday night. In the days before the meetup, the post went absolutely viral, gaining more than 200 million views on the app. 

    The post read: “Date:may 22nd, Time:7:30pm, BYOE!! Slide thru this Saturday we finna turn up!! !!” 

    Police arrested 150 people Saturday night. Jennifer Carey, a police spokesperson, told NBC Los Angeles that the charges ranged from vandalism to failure to disperse to curfew violations to launching dangerous/illegal fireworks. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Huntington Beach Police Department was well aware of the prospects of the party: 

    As is the case with ALL large gatherings in #HuntingtonBeach, we have taken steps to prepare for a potential increase in visitors this weekend due to a promoted gathering that has received significant interest on social media.

    Then by early Sunday morning, the police department declared an emergency curfew in an attempt to disperse the crowd. 

    Unlawful assembly has been declared in #HuntingtonBeach due to unruly crowds. An emergency curfew has been put into place effective 5/22 at 11:30pm through 5/23 at 5:30am for all individuals within the downtown area.

    TikTokers were trying to leave their mark on Huntington Beach – in a very similar way to the 2012 movie “Project X” where a couple of teens threw an unforgettable party that spiraled out of control.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:10

  • Washington Reality Versus American Reality
    Washington Reality Versus American Reality

    Authored by Newt Gingrich, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    Washington reality reflects the fevered conversation over lunch, cocktails, and dinner between the Washington press corps, lobbyists, and government officials.

    Washington reality reflects the narcissistic self-absorption of the Imperial Capital.

    Rep. Liz Cheney’s fate consumes days and days of gossip and speculation. Is her dismissal as House Republican Conference Chair a sign of House Republican unity or an alienating event that will weaken the GOP?

    House dictator Nancy Pelosi’s fight over wearing masks with pro-freedom Republicans is a major chapter in the evolution of Washington.

    Washington says when 35 House Republicans bolt to vote with Democrats for the Pelosi Commission to investigate Jan. 6, it brings into question Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s control of the House GOP. Of course, when McCarthy gets Senate Republicans to agree to block the investigation, it highlights Speaker Pelosi’s partisanship and failure. Which narrative is more important?

    All these Washington-centered conversations are like a mild spring rain behind which a mammoth hurricane is building.

    That hurricane is the concerns and attitudes of the American people over what’s happening in the American reality.

    The fiercest band of the hurricane is the looming acceleration of inflation. One report compared the average price of various commodities in May 2020 under President Donald Trump to those in May 2021 under President Joe Biden. Here are some staggering numbers:

    • Gasoline: $1.77 under Trump vs. $3 under Biden.

    • Lumber: $332 per 1,000 board feet under Trump vs. $1,570 per 1,000 board feet under Biden.

    • Home sales: $283,500 under Trump vs. $329,100 under Biden.

    • Coffee: $0.96 a pound under Trump vs. $1.50 a pound under Biden.

    • Wheat: $5 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.42 under Biden.

    • Corn: $3.19 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.22 a bushel under Biden.

    • Copper: $2.33 a pound under Trump vs. $4.76 a pound under Biden.

    This is an exhaustive list—verging on overkill because I want to drive home that the rising inflation is across the board. Yes, some of the increase in prices is due to pent up demand and hamstrung supply chains. However, the sheer volume of cash the government has poured into the economy over the last year-and-a-half is now driving rising costs. The inflation rate has tripled from 1.4 percent in January to 4.2 percent in April.

    The gas lines triggered by the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline (probably by a Russian-based group) led millions of Americans to flashback to the President Jimmy Carter years. One woman said to me, “I remember sitting in line with my parents as they hoped to get gasoline before the station ran out.”

    Inflation is real in people’s lives. The Cheney gossip, the Pelosi Commission, and the squabble over masks on the House floor simply do not matter. Washington trivia is in the Washington reality—not in American reality.

    The behavior of the schools, however, is part of the American reality, because it affects people and their children.

    • First, the culture of work in America is built around the assumption that schools would be available to watch children. When this breaks down, American lives are reshaped in a way which particularly impacts women, who are the most likely to stay home with children. (This is not a statement of misogyny or any sort of “ism,” it is a statement of American reality.)

    • Second, the quality of education will affect children for their entire lives. The decay of the big city schools has been devastating for poor children. The current pattern of trying to eliminate magnet schools so no one will feel bad because all will be equally mediocre is a mortal threat to the economic future of American children.

    • Third, the new cycle of radical indoctrination of left-wing values about race, American history, sexual issues, and “wokeism” directly threatens parents, who find their own personal beliefs being ridiculed and attacked by teachers who are authority figures in the classroom.

    The erosion of education and teachers’ union arrogance, radicalism, and incompetence are driving more and more people to favor the right to pick what school they send their children to (81 percent of Americans favored school choice in a recent McLaughlin & Associates survey).

    It is this gap between the triviality, pettiness, and partisanship of the Washington reality and the personal impact of American reality which explains why—despite everything the media has done to prop up Biden and the Democrats—two polls in the last week (one Democrat and one Republican) have shown the generic vote for the House tied.

    Larry Sabato now has 19 incumbent Democrats in toss-up races and only two Republicans.

    If inflation, education, and other real-world issues continue going badly for the Democrats, the Washington reality will be drowned by the American reality. In that world, McCarthy will be Speaker of the House and Sen. Mitch McConnell will once again be Majority Leader.

    The challenge for Republicans is to ignore the Washington gossip and focus on the potentially giant hurricane of anti-leftwing repudiation looming on the horizon. American reality must drown the Washington reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:50

  • Robert Shiller: "In Real Terms, Home Prices Have Never Been So High" 
    Robert Shiller: “In Real Terms, Home Prices Have Never Been So High” 

    “In real terms, home prices have never been so high. My data goes back over 100 years, so this is something,” Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” 

    Shiller is the co-founder of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index. He is worried about a housing bubble forming where the “Wild West” mentality pushes prices higher. He also is concerned about stocks and cryptocurrencies.

     “I don’t think that the whole thing is explained by central bank policy. There is something about the sociology of markets that are happening,” he said. 

    Shiller has noticed that housing starts drive home prices. But last week, despite a shortage of homes and buildable property, home builders are easing production, paralyzed by surging commodity prices. 

    In April, single-family housing starts plunged 13% compared with March. This was the sharpest downward move since last April when the pandemic began. Despite Shiller’s euphoric housing bubble warning, the latest data shows an emerging pattern in housing starts that is quite ominous from the past. 

    However, Shiller points out there’s “a lot of upward momentum in housing markets and prices may not come down in a year.” He believes the current housing market environment is similar to 2003, five years before the housing market crash in 2008. 

    “If you go out three or five years, I could imagine they’d [prices] be substantially lower than they are now, and maybe that’s a good thing,” he added. “Not from the standpoint of a homeowner, but it’s from the standpoint of a prospective homeowner. It’s a good thing. If we have more houses, we’re better off.”

    Meanwhile, on an intermediate basis, Glenn Kelman, CEO at Redfin, told Bloomberg last week that housing prices are set to cool. He said the housing market is in a frenzy, with most houses selling above the asking prices, which has never happened before. 

    After record gains in the first quarter, some home prices may stall. 

    According to the National Association of Realtors, nationwide, the median existing-home sales price rose 16.2% in the first quarter to $319,200, a record high in data going back to 1989.

    According to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we recently reported that home sales prices in the country’s hottest markets had risen by their highest level since 2006. The index showed home prices in 20 major cities are up a shocking 11.10% year-over-year.

     

    But outside the major metro markets, demand was even more robust, translating into the most significant YoY increase in median sales since 2006.

    Kelman warned: “I think you’re going to see a little bit of air come out of the ballon,” referring to the housing market bubble the Federal Reserve engineered by sending mortgage rates to record lows at the start of the virus pandemic in 2020. 

    Shiller’s and Kelman’s warning comes as home-buying sentiment has collapsed to its weakest since 1983…

    Between Shiller and Kelman, both believe housing prices are in a frenzy. However, Kelman’s view is that housing prices will cool on an intermediate timeframe, and Shiller is on a multi-year view. The broad consensus is that today’s environment is not sustainable. But as we all know, the Fed can sometimes maintain bubbles for quite sometime. 

    … and who may deflate today’s housing bubble?

    Well, the Fed, of course, who has been hinting about tapering of bond purchases. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:30

  • "Fact-Checking" Takes Another Beating: Taibbi
    “Fact-Checking” Takes Another Beating: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    The news business just can’t stop clowning itself. The latest indignity is an international fact-checking debacle originating, of all places, at a “festival of fact-checking.”

    The soul of rectitude testifies in the Senate

    The Poynter Institute is perhaps the most respected think tank in our business, an organization seeking to “fortify journalism’s role in a free society,” among other things through its sponsorship of the fact-checking outlet PolitiFact. A few weeks back, it held a virtual convention called the “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.”

    The three-day event featured special guests Christiane Amanpour, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Brian Stelter, and Senator Mark Warner — a lineup of fact “stars” whose ironic energy recalled the USO’s telethon-execution of Terrance and Phillip before the invasion of Canada in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Tickets were $50, but if you wanted a “private virtual happy hour” with Stelter, you needed to pay $100 for the “VIP Experience.”

    During the confab, PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders asked Fauci, “Are you still confident that [Covid-19] developed naturally?” To which the convivial doctor answered, “No, I’m not convinced of that,” going on to say “we” should continue to investigate all hypotheses about how the pandemic began:

    Conservatives in particular were quick to point out that Fauci last year said, “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.” At that time last May, of course, the issue of the pandemic’s origin had already long since been politicized, with Donald Trump’s administration anxious to point a finger at China for causing the disaster. Mike Pompeo went so far as to say there was “enormous evidence” the disease had been created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci was touted as a hero for pushing back on this and many other things.

    Fauci’s new quote about not being “convinced” that Covid-19 has natural origins, however, is part of what’s becoming a rather ostentatious change of heart within officialdom about the viability of the so-called “lab origin” hypothesis. Through 2020, officials and mainstream press shut down most every discussion on that score. Reporters were heavily influenced by a group letter signed by 27 eminent virologists in the Lancet last February in which the authors said they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and also by a Nature Medicine letter last March saying, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct.”

    The consensus was so strong that some well-known voices saw social media accounts suspended or closed for speculating about Covid-19 having a “lab origin.” One of those was University of Hong Kong virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who went on Tucker Carlson’s show last September 15th to say “[Covid-19] is a man-made virus created in the lab.” After that appearance, PolitiFact — Poynter’s PolitiFact — gave the statement its dreaded “Pants on Fire” rating.

    About a half-year later, in February, 2021, the WHO made a visit to China. Apparently some of the delegation left with a few doubts about the natural origin of the virus, even though the WHO’s report declared a lab-origin theory “extremely unlikely.” From there came a procession of scientists demanding that the lab origin possibility be taken seriously, including a letter signed by 18 experts in Science. When the Wall Street Journal came out with a story that a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report detailed how three Wuhan researchers became sick enough to be hospitalized in November of 2019, the toothpaste was fully out of the tube: there was no longer any way to say the “lab origin” hypothesis was too silly to be reported upon.

    That’s not to say the “lab origin” theory is correct, at all. However, that’s irrelevant to issue at hand. Despite what you might have been led to believe, fact-checkers don’t exist to get things right 100% of the time. They’re there as a threadbare, last-ditch safety mechanism, which news organizations employ as a means of preventing public face-plants.

    In any case, by May 17, just days after its “Festival of Fact-Checking,” Poynter/PolitiFact had to issue a correction to its September, 2020 “Pants on Fire” ruling on the “lab origin” story, writing:

    When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact’s sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review.

    Fact-checkers probably saved my career on at least a dozen occasions. When I was just starting to report on Wall Street, Rolling Stone often had to assign multiple people to to go through every line of my articles to make sure I didn’t make a complete ass of myself. I joked once that an RS fact-checker nearly flunked the infamous line about Goldman, Sachs being “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood-funnel into anything that smells like money” by correctly pointing out that squids don’t have blood-funnels. That happened, but the bulk of the work those poor checkers did for me was a lot less humorous and more thankless. The person who had to review my pathetic explanation of a Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) in this article probably deserved hardship pay and a lifetime supply of Thorazine. Like all writers I complain about fact-checkers, but I’d be the last one to say their jobs aren’t important.

    However, the public is regularly misinformed about what fact-checkers do. In most settings — especially at daily newspapers — fact-checking, if used at all, is the equivalent of the bare-minimum collision insurance your average penny-pinching car renter buys. There’s usually just enough time to flag a few potential dangers for litigation and/or major, obvious mistakes about things like dates, spellings of names, wording of quotes, whether a certain event a reporter describes even happened, etc.

    For anything more involved than that, which is most things, fact-checkers have to scramble to make tough judgment calls. The best ones tend to vote for killing anything that might blow up in the face of the organization later on. Good checkers are there to help perpetuate the illusion of competence. They’re professional ass-coverers, whose job is to keep it from being obvious that Wolf Blitzer or Matt Taibbi or whoever else you’re following on the critical story of the day only just learned the term hanging chad or spike protein or herd immunity. In my experience they’re usually pretty great at it, but their jobs are less about determining fact than about preventing the vast seas of ignorance underlying most professional news operations from seeping into public view.

    Unfortunately, over the course of the last five years in particular, as the commercial media has experienced a precipitous drop in the public trust levels, many organizations have chosen to trumpet fact-checking programs as a way of advertising a dedication to “truth.” Fact-checking has furthermore become part of the “moral clarity” argument, which claims a phony objectivity standard once forced news companies to always include gestures to a perpetually wrong other side, making “truth” a casualty to false “fairness.”

    Here’s how Amanpour put it at the Poynter Festival:

    [Objectivity] is not about taking any issue, whether it be about genocide, or the climate, or U.S. elections, or anything else happening around the globe — Covid, for instance — and saying, ‘Well, on the one hand, and on the other hand,’ and pretending there is an equal amount of fact and truth in each basket…

    Amanpour went on to note her career took off reporting in Bosnia, where one side was being “aggressed” and another side was not, and it would have been an offense against decency to say otherwise. This is a nod to the “objectivity doesn’t mean giving equal time to Republicans” bit that has become so popular in the industry of late (Fox institutionalized the same argument in reverse three decades ago).

    But objectivity was never about giving equal time and weight to “both sides.” It’s just an admission that the news business is a high-speed operation whose top decision-makers are working from a knowledge level of near-zero about most things, at best just making an honest effort at hitting the moving target of truth.

    Like fact-checking itself, the “on the one hand and on the other hand” format is just a defense mechanism. These people say X, these people say Y, and because the jabbering mannequins we have reading off our teleprompters actually know jack, we’ll let the passage of time sort out the difficult bits.

    The public used to appreciate the humility of that approach, but what they get from us more often now are sanctimonious speeches about how reporters are intrepid seekers of truth who sleep next to God and gobble amphetamines so they can stay awake all night defending democracy from “misinformation.” But once you get past names, dates, and whether the sky that day was blue or cloudy, the worst kind of misinformation in journalism is to be too sure about anything. That’s especially when dealing with complex technical issues, and even more especially when official sources seem invested in eliminating discussion of alternative scenarios of those issues.

    From the start, the press mostly mishandled Covid-19 reporting. Part of this was because nearly all of the critical issues — mask use, lockdowns, viability of vaccine programs, and so on — were marketed by news companies as culture-war narratives. A related problem had to do with news companies using the misguided notion that the news is an exact science to promote the worse misconception that science is an exact science. This led to absurd spectacles like news agencies trying to cover up or denounce as falsehood the natural reality that officials had evolving views on things like the efficacy of ventilators or mask use.

    When CNN did a fact-check on the question, “Did Fauci change his mind on the effectiveness of masks?” they seemed worried about the glee Trump followers would feel if they simply wrote yes, so the answer instead became, “Yes, but Trump is also an asshole” (because he implied the need to wear masks is still up for debate). By labeling whatever the current scientific consensus happened to be an immutable “fact,” media outlets made the normal evolution of scientific debates look dishonest, and pointlessly heightened mistrust of both scientists and media.

    Fact-checking was a huge boon when it was an out-of-sight process quietly polishing the turd of industrial reportage. When companies dragged it out in public and made it a beast of burden for use in impressing audiences, they defamed the tradition.

    We know only a few things absolutely for sure, like the spelling of “femur” or Blaine Gabbert’s career interception total. The public knows pretty much everything else is up for argument, so we only look like jerks pretending we can fact-check the universe. We’d do better admitting what we don’t know.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:10

  • Tow "Range Anxiety" Builds For Ford's All-New F-150 Electric Truck  
    Tow “Range Anxiety” Builds For Ford’s All-New F-150 Electric Truck  

    There was a ton of hype last week when Ford Motor Company unveiled its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. As of Friday, Ford secured more than 44,000 reservations for the new truck. 

    Ford’s first all-electric truck is expected to have a targeted range between 230 and 300 miles depending on the version the customer chooses. Ford said the truck could haul up to 10,000 pounds. 

    Auto blog Jalopnik points out that Ford failed to release data on how hauling or towing would affect range last week. 

    In an emailed response, Vice News had a similar question and asked a Ford spokeswoman. 

    Here’s the response:

    Ford spokesperson Said Deep did not share any specifications regarding the vehicle’s range when towing or hauling, but said the F-150 Lightning will “come equipped with ‘Intelligent Range’, which more accurately predicts range with factors including payload, towing information and weather so the customer knows how many miles they have left.”

    The Ford spokesperson skirted around the question without giving specifics. Still, there are no estimates of how different payloads would affect the vehicle’s range. 

    Jalopnik believes the reason Ford hasn’t release those figures is that it will likely affect the range “a lot.” 

    Ford is aware decreased range while hauling or towing could cause complications for drivers, hence this Intelligent Range system, but the seriousness of those complications in part depends on how much shorter the range is. The truck is already pretty beefy, coming in at 6,500 pounds (according to MotorTrend); increasing weight the motors need to push forward to 16,500 pounds — the weight of the truck itself plus up to 10,000 pounds being towed behind it — is going to require significantly more power.

    Of course, it’s not just about weight. Many trailers aren’t particularly aerodynamic and, to get the biggest range possible, aerodynamics is very much on the mind of EV designers these days (ask Mercedes).

    Designing an EV to tow is tricky. A big difference in the electric F-150 compared to the ICE version, is that the battery alone is very heavy, or 1,800 pounds, according to Joe Biden. Increasing battery size might improve towing range, but it will also add even more weight, weight that the truck’s electric motors will also need to push around. It will also add more cost. So that leads us to the question: Is it worth compromising the vehicle’s packaging space, weight (and thus efficiency), and cost in order to produce a stellar tow vehicle with lots of range? Modern trucks do require buyers to make compromises in order to have a good tow vehicle (suspensions are a bit stiff in the rear, frames are a bit heavier/stronger, tanks take up a bit more space), but with an EV, the compromises to achieve good range would likely be too large. – Jalopnik

    For a reference point, Jalopnik said there had been multiple examples of Tesla-powered vehicles losing anywhere from 30% to 60% of range while towing a trailer. 

    I would expect that the big drop-off in range on Teslas is in part because towing anything with a Tesla adds weight but also disrupts the car’s aerodynamics, but aerodynamics on the F-150 Lightning already look pretty compromised. – Jalopnik

    For the everyday driver, range anxiety is unlikely a problem, but if you’re towing or hauling things around town, range anxiety could be your worst nightmare. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 18:50

  • Support For Black Lives Matter Drops To Two Year Low
    Support For Black Lives Matter Drops To Two Year Low

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Despite relentless positive promotion by the media and political elites, support for Black Lives Matter in America has dropped to a two year low.

    An essay written by academics Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson published by the New York Times analyzes how support for BLM soared to +20% in mid-2020 but rapidly dropped to only +5% – which is where it was in mid-2019.

    The authors note that the figures serve to contradict “the idea that the country underwent a racial reckoning.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The academics note that despite a high level of outrage at what happened to George Floyd amongst whites and Republicans, such groups subsequently “actually become less supportive of Black Lives Matter than they were before the death of George Floyd.”

    Gee, I wonder why that happened?

    The collapse in support began at around the time when violent BLM riots spread to 140 cities around the U.S. – despite the media erroneously reporting the disorder as “mostly peaceful protests.”

    As Joel B. Pollak notes, while blaming Donald Trump’s the academics completely omit the real reason for the massive decline in support.

    “They do not seem to consider the effect of violence, rioting, murder, and looting — except as reflected in Trump’s rhetoric — in alienating potential support,” writes Pollak.

    As we highlighted last week, BLM suffered another political defeat after it was announced that a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford’s Oriel College won’t be removed.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 18:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 24

Today’s News 24th May 2021

  • Eurovision Winners Inspire Others To Ditch English (And Snort Cocaine?)
    Eurovision Winners Inspire Others To Ditch English (And Snort Cocaine?)

    In the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, around a third of all entries from the 39 participating countries contain a language other than English. Countries have been free to choose the language in which they sing since 1999 and after that date, many have opted for lingua franca English to get their message across to the international audience of the annual song competition, whose final is held in Rotterdam on Saturday. But, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports that, as a detailed analysis by blog Johnthego.com shows, winning titles in languages other than English have in the past inspired more countries to present a song in their native tongue.

    Infographic: Eurovision Winners Inspire Others to Ditch English | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In 2007, winning title Molitva (“Prayer”) performed by Serbian Marija Šerifović was one of 36 percent of titles which featured languages other than English. In the following year, more than half of artists suddenly wanted to give a language other than English a go. But it was more likely Šerifović’s emotional performance and the song’s powerful choral chorus that earned her the title, since the following years’ focus did not earn another local-language song a title. Interest waned and reached a low of less than 20 percent of songs offering language variety between 2015 and 2017.

    2016’s winner, 1944 by singer Jamala, contained some Ukrainian verses, but things only changed again after the surprise win of contestant Salvador Sobral with his quirky Portuguese ballad Amar Pelos Dois (“To Love for the Both of Us”) in 2017. Language variety shot up again to 33 percent the next year, but again, non-English winning songs have not materialized since then.

    Chances are good in this year’s final, however, as half of the 20 qualified performers feature languages other than English, meaning that an above-average numbers of local language songs have moved on from semi-finals.

    Not included in the count is the trend of spicing English songs up with foreign language titles, like Cyprus’ El Diablo, Malta’s Je me Casse or San Marino’s Adrenalina. Serbia employs a similar tactic for its entry Loco Loco, which contains mostly Serbian, but mixes in Spanish and English.

    The record for most languages featured in a single Eurovision song stands at four. Israel’s 2020 entry by singer Eden Alene featured Hebrew, English, Arabic and Amharic, a language from her parents’ home country of Ethiopia. The second Eurovision song containing four languages is also tied to Israel. Germany’s 1999 entry for the competition held in Jerusalem was sung in German, English, Turkish and Hebrew.

    And this weekend, the lead singer of the Italian winners of the Eurovision Song Contest had to defend himself from suspicions of drug use, after he was seen leaning towards a table in a way that viewers found suspicious.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    When asked about the episode during a media conference, a bare-chested David rejected the accusation. “I don’t use drugs, please guys, do not say that,” David said. “No cocaine, please.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 02:45

  • Lithuania Withdraws From China's "17+1" Cooperation Platform
    Lithuania Withdraws From China’s “17+1” Cooperation Platform

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    The Lithuanian government has pulled out of Beijing’s “17+1” platform, a Chinese initiative that the Baltic nation signed up to in 2012.

    The Chinese regime officially launched the platform—which was initially named the “16+1” platform—in April 2012 to intensify cooperation with 11 European Union member states and five Balkan countries. The platform was renamed “17+1” after Greece signed up for the initiative in April 2019.

    The initiative calls for participating countries to cooperate with China in many fields, including finance, health, trade, and technology. Modeled after the platform, Beijing rolled out another project in 2013, which is called the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road), in an effort to build up trade routes linking China and other parts of the world.

    On May 22, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said in a statement that the Baltic nation does not see itself as a “17+1” member any more and will not participate in the initiative’s activities, according to the Baltic News Service.

    Landsbergis added that the Chinese platform was “divisive” from the EU’s point of view. He called on EU members to pursue “a much more effective 27+1 approach and communication with China.”

    “Europe’s strength and impact is in its unity,” Landsbergis added. Currently, there are 27 member countries in the EU after the UK left the political and trading bloc in January 2020.

    Lithuania’s decision to pull out of the Chinese platform was not unexpected. In March, Landsbergis told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the “17+1” platform had fallen short of their expectations, in particular about investments that served mutual interests.

    Taking part in the platform also came with negative consequences. Landsbergis explained to the German paper, “This format was accompanied by divisive tendencies in the EU and greater political pressure from China.”

    Lithuania’s Homeland Union and Lithuanian Christian Democrats party leader Ingrida Simonyte delivers her speech at the parliament in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Nov. 24, 2020. (Petras Malukas/AFP via Getty Images)

    Xinjiang and Taiwan

    Lithuania’s move is the latest indication of a souring tie between the two countries.

    On May 20, the Lithuanian parliament passed a non-binding resolution, condemning Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur minority in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang as “genocide.” The resolution was passed by 86 to one vote and seven abstentions.

    In Xinjiang, which is home to about 11 million Uyghurs, at least 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz have been detained in internment camps for political indoctrination.

    Parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK have passed similar resolutions. In January, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has committed “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

    The Lithuanian resolution also called on the CCP to “immediately end the illegal practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, release all prisoners of conscience in China, including members of the Falun Gong.”

    In response to the resolution, the Chinese Embassy in Lithuania slammed the Lithuanian parliament for a “shoddy political show based on lies and disinformation” in a statement released on May 20.

    Beijing also reacted angrily when Lithuania voiced support for Taiwan, a de-facto independent country that Beijing claims is a part of its territory. In November 2020, the Lithuanian government stated that it was committed to supporting “those fighting for freedom” around the world including Taiwan.

    The public support for Taiwan drew the ire of Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of China’s hawkish mouthpiece Global Times. In his opinion article published days later, Hu demanded the Lithuanian government “to behave” with regards to Taiwan issues.

    “If the government in Vilnius [Lithuania’s capital] continues to behave crazily, it is bound to suffer consequences,” Hu threatened.

    Taiwan and Lithuania are not formal diplomatic allies but officials from the Baltic nation have voiced support for the self-ruled island to take part in the World Health Organization (WHO). Taiwan is not a member of the WHO due to Beijing’s opposition.

    In March, Lithuania stated it wanted to advance ties with Taiwan by setting up a representative office on the island.

    Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei on Oct. 10, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

    Espionage

    Lithuania has also previously warned about China’s increasing intelligence activities inside the Baltic nation.

    “From Lithuanian citizens, Chinese intelligence may seek to obtain sensitive or classified national or NATO and EU information,” stated Lithuania’s 2019 National Threat Assessment report, according to the Estonian newspaper The Baltic Times.

    “Chinese intelligence-funded trips to China are used to recruit Lithuanian citizens.”

    The report was put together by Lithuania’s State Security Department and the Second Investigation Department under the country’s Defense Ministry. It named two Chinese agencies—the Ministry of State Security, China’s chief intelligence agency, and the Military Intelligence Directorate of China’s People’s Liberation Army—for their increasing operations in Lithuania.

    “Chinese intelligence looks for suitable targets—decision-makers, other individuals sympathizing with China and able to exert political leverage. They seek to influence such individuals by giving gifts, paying for trips to China, covering expenses of training and courses organized there,” the report stated.

    Some of the particular interests to Chinese intelligence officials included Lithuania’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as the country’s economy and defense sector. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 02:00

  • Trump's 1776 Commission To Reassemble, Tackle Critical Race Theory In History Education
    Trump’s 1776 Commission To Reassemble, Tackle Critical Race Theory In History Education

    Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

    Members of the 1776 Commission, which President Joe Biden disbanded on his first day in White House, are reportedly set to meet again with a renewed focus on combating the teaching of U.S. history based on the Marxist critical race theory.

    The advisory commission was established by the Trump administration in November 2020 to celebrate and promote the principles enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. It is commonly seen as a response to The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project, which argues that the United States was founded as, and remains today, a racist nation.

    Nearly four months after its dissolution, the commission regained attention when a leading member spoke against a Biden administration’s proposal to prioritize funding education programs that promote the 1619 Project and critical race theory, an ideology rooted in Marxist class struggle but with an emphasis on race, with the goal of dismantling all institutions of American society, which it deems as tools of racial oppression.

    “The Proposed Rule should be withdrawn, just as individual states, which actually have the authority over the nation’s K-12 educational system, should oppose race-based pedagogy as part of their curricula and even if attempted to be imposed by the federal government,” Matthew Spalding, the executive director of the 1776 Commission, wrote in a letter to the Education Department.

    “On behalf of my fellow Commissioners, I submit and draw your attention to Appendix III of The 1776 Report,” Spalding added.

    The appendix explains why race-focused narratives like the 1619 Project and critical race theory are “fundamentally incompatible” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which connects liberty-loving Americans everywhere regardless of their race.

    “Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression they have experienced at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them,” the document reads.

    “While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, this new creed creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities.”

    In an interview with Washington Examiner, Spalding said that members of the 1776 Commission will convene next week in Washington on the campus of Hillsdale College. One of their topics will be critical race theory, which sees racism in all aspects of American life.

    “When we start going about dividing people by groups, by social identities, and especially by identities that deal with race, and we’re starting to make those kinds of divisions, all Americans should get very nervous,” said Spalding.

    “It’s a departure away from the historic grounding of civil rights in America, which is that we all are equal.”

    The commission’s first and last report, commonly referred to as the 1776 Report, was taken down after Biden’s inauguration. It can still be found on the publicly archived Trump White House and Hillsdale College websites.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 23:30

  • Goldman Steamrolls Iran Oil Output Fears, Sees Crude Hitting $80 In Months
    Goldman Steamrolls Iran Oil Output Fears, Sees Crude Hitting $80 In Months

    Toward the end of Q1, Goldman Sachs along with virtually every other major bank, predicted that oil had nowhere else to go but up, with bank after bank hiking their oil forecast. It also top-ticked the market, as Goldman’s Damien Courvalin writes in a note published on Sunday discussing “the path to higher oil prices”, in which he admits that despite the bank’s “balls to the wall” bullish stance on crude, “the oil rally has given way to sideways volatility since March, due to concerns over vaccination pace, EM Covid waves and the return of Iranian barrels, with the latter pushing Brent prices down from $70 to $65/bbl last week.” Or, as the bank calculates, “last week’s large sell-off was equivalent to bringing forward by 3 months a 1 mb/d increase in global production, leaving the market likely pricing the return of Iranian barrels by late summer.”

    After such a retracement, the Goldman commodities strategist predicts that while the market is now “pricing a return of Iranian barrels by late summer” it is again “underestimating the upcoming demand rebound, too pessimistic a view on both accounts.” Which, of course, is someone that is bullish on oil would say.

    Anyway, here is Courvalin’s math explaining why the market is too pessimistic in his view:

    • On Iran, while comments suggest significant progress has indeed been made, the timelinen is still uncertain as according to press reports, negotiations appear focused on an agreement on the conditions for reinstating the JCPOA, implying a lag (or potential impasse) in lifting US secondary oil sanctions, or conditions that could limit the size of such a restart.

    • On demand, Goldman says that the recovery in DM mobility and travel is on track to exceed its expectations, helping offset the recent hit to South Asia and Latin America demand: “Mobility is rapidly increasing in the US and Europe, as vaccinations accelerate and lockdowns are lifted, with freight and industrial activity also surging. This DM recovery is in fact larger than we had assumed, helping offset the recent hit to demand and the likely slower recovery in South Asia and Latin America.”

    • On supply, Goldman is lowering its non-OPEC+ production forecasts to account for still depressed activity levels and a slower expected rebound from shale. Given the current global deficit of 1.8 mb/d in 2Q21, Goldman believes that this demand impulse will not only absorb remaining excess inventories and a potential July ramp-up in Iran supply…


      … but still require a cumulative additional 2.8 mb/d increase in OPEC+ production by Dec-21 (requiring an early exit from their April 2020 agreement).

    Putting these three together, Goldman assures its clients that the “case for higher oil prices therefore remains intact given the large vaccine-driven increase in demand in the face of inelastic supply.”

    Assuming this is accurate, Courvalin’s next argument is that the path to higher prices is the key uncertainty and to address this, he runs scenarios on Goldman’s updated supply-demand balance, adjusting the OPEC+ and shale responses to various timings of Iran’s potential export recovery: “Even aggressively assuming a restart in July, we estimate that Brent prices would still reach $80/bbl in 4Q21, with our new base case for an October restart still supporting our $80/bbl forecast for this summer.”

    Goldman’s conclusion is some humble… ” despite the global market deficit coming in line with our forecasts in recent months, we under-estimated the weight of such demand and Iran uncertainties, keeping prices trading below our $75/bbl 2Q21 fair value” before trying to convince the market that it will be right, damn it: “With growing evidence of the demand rebound, and imminent clarification on the likelihood of an Iranian return, we now see a clearer path for the next leg higher in oil prices, with the sell-off offering opportunities to position for the rally to $80/bbl.”

    To be sure, this is not the first time Goldman has had outrageous predictions about oil prices, with the current forecast nowhere near Goldman’s $200/bbl prediction from the summer of 2008. On the other hand, with prices across all goods and services already surging, there will be nobody more relieved if Goldman is wrong on this one, than Joe Biden…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 23:00

  • The Murph Challenge: A Memorial Day Tribute To The Fallen
    The Murph Challenge: A Memorial Day Tribute To The Fallen

    Authored by Andrew Thomas via The Epoch Times,

    Every Memorial Day, fitness enthusiasts and newcomers around the country and across the globe prepare to honor fallen Navy SEAL Michael P. Murphy and many others who have made the ultimate sacrifice by completing “The Murph Challenge.”

    LT. Michael P. Murphy was killed during Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005. (Courtesy of Dan Murphy)

    The grueling workout consists of a one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and another one-mile run.

    Murphy originally dubbed the workout “Body Armor” as he executed the routine with a 20-pound protective vest. He developed the workout as a functional routine that was practical for his work as a SEAL. While his average time was between 32 and 34 minutes, his best time was reportedly just over 28 minutes. The workout would prove invaluable in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan.

    Operation Red Wings

    On June 28, 2005, Murphy and three other SEALs, Matthew Axelson, Danny Dietz, and Marcus Luttrell, were on a reconnaissance mission, code name Operation Red Wings, in eastern Afghanistan.

    But when they were discovered by unarmed locals, their mission became compromised. The SEAL team let them go, knowing that they would most likely inform the Taliban of their presence.

    LT. Michael P. Murphy created the Body Armor workout. Now, it’s called The Murph in his honor and memory. (Courtesy of Dan Murphy)

    As the three SEALs attempted to return to base, scores of Taliban fighters reached their position, and a firefight ensued. The unforgiving terrain made it impossible to get a connection to call for a quick reaction force to come to their aid.

    Murphy, having already been gravely wounded, left his covered position and went out into the open to get a signal. As he exposed himself to enemy fire, he was able to call for assistance before being shot again. He returned to cover, and continued to fight until he was killed. Only Luttrell would survive the battle.

    The Murph Challenge

    Years later, Michael Murphy’s father, Dan Murphy, approached former SEAL Michael Sauers regarding the LT. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation that was established in the aftermath of Operation Red Wings. Sauers, the founder of FORGED, an apparel company, served on active duty for 13 years and seven years as an instructor and had crossed paths with Murphy several times throughout his service.

    Dan Murphy knew about Sauers’s work with the veteran community, and they discussed a fitness fundraiser for the foundation—the Murph Challenge. They worked on how to promote the challenge and prepare participants for it. Since 2014, FORGED has garnered more than $1.25 million from the challenge for the foundation, which has sponsored 33 scholarships this year alone. In total, since 2007, the foundation has sponsored more than 400 scholarships. Every year, the challenge is able to raise enough to sponsor one or two more.

    “Michael’s favorite saying was ‘Education will set you free,’” Dan Murphy explained. “Education removes superstition, prejudice, rumor mongering. He said education brings us together as a people—all Americans.”

    Dan Murphy established the LT. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation in the aftermath of Operation Red Wings. (Courtesy of Dan Murphy)

    Since 2014, FORGED and the CrossFit community have expanded the tradition across the country and the world. Actor Taylor Kitsch, who played Murphy in “Lone Survivor” has promoted the workout and made it a staple in fitness culture. Other influential athletes and celebrities, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, have further popularized the event. Every Memorial Day weekend, Dan Murphy travels throughout his Long Island community and beyond to promote the challenge, but also to tell participants about his son’s story.

    “What I always try to instill in my comments to everybody is that when they’re doing this, the idea is to think about all those fallen heroes, including Mike, who sacrificed for our freedom,” Dan Murphy said.

    Michael Sauers (L) and actor Chris Pratt (R) promote The Murph Challenge. (Courtesy of Michael Sauers)

    While participants try to complete the challenge as fast as they can, Sauers stressed how the event isn’t about getting the best time. The challenge isn’t a competition, but rather a way to honor Murphy and the many others who have been killed in combat. And while the workout is intense, Sauers encourages everyone to participate even if they have to modify the routine.

    “Murph would have been the guy who finished, wouldn’t even have made a big deal about it, and he would’ve helped all of the other people who were struggling, and he would’ve motivated them and helped them go through the Murph Challenge,” Sauers explained.

    Participants

    Liz Gilroy, 52, of East Hanover, New Jersey, has completed the workout multiple times. She first learned about “The Murph” in 2012 from FORGED, and she had read both Luttrell’s “Lone Survivor” and Gary Williams’s biography on Murphy entitled “SEAL of Honor.” After a little bit of research, the CrossFit enthusiast was drawn to the challenge. Many of her brothers, uncles, and cousins have served in the military, and attempting the workout was her way of showing appreciation for the service.

    “The whole never quit, never give up, and never out of the fight kind of thing really hit home,” Gilroy said.

    After completing the workout for the first time, Gilroy was exhausted. But she’s kept at it, and she tends to do the challenge multiple times per year. Over the past year during the pandemic, she’s done the workout four times. This year, she’ll be adding the weighted vest.

    “I don’t care if it takes me three days. I’ll just do it until I’m done,” Gilroy said.

    Michael Sauers is a former Navy SEAL and co-founder of The Murph Challenge. (Courtesy of Michael Sauers)

    Joe Romano is the owner of Mission Fitness, where Gilroy exercises and performs the challenge. He learned about The Murph when he started doing CrossFit in 2009 and hosts the event every Memorial Day at his gym.

    “It just reminds me how privileged, grateful, and thankful I am to live in this country. There are men and women out there that throughout our history have sacrificed everything for us to be able to do a Murph, to be free,” Romano explained.

    Romano has tremendous respect for the military, and he wanted to be able to pay tribute to Murphy and so many others who have died for our way of life. He’s been hosting the event at his gym since 2014. Like Sauers, Romano tells his members that the event isn’t about getting a stellar time. The challenge on Memorial Day is about teamwork.

    “That’s really the essence of Michael Murphy, what he did for his teammates, and just how that organization operates. They all rely on each other,” Romano said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 22:30

  • On Friday A PBOC Official Called For A Stronger Yuan; One Day Later His Article Was Deleted
    On Friday A PBOC Official Called For A Stronger Yuan; One Day Later His Article Was Deleted

    By Sofia Horta e Costa, Bloomberg reporter and commentator

    China’s rising inflation is putting focus on the role of the yuan, which is trading near a three-year high.

    On Friday, a central bank official in the Shanghai branch said China should allow the yuan to appreciate to offset the impact of rising import prices.

    “As an important consumer of commodities globally, China is inevitably impacted by international market prices through imports,” Lyu Jinzhong, director of the research and statistics department at the central bank’s Shanghai branch, wrote in an article published Friday by China Finance, a magazine run by the PBOC.

    The comments were unusually blunt, and the article has since been deleted.

    On Sunday, People’s Bank of China Vice Governor Liu Guoqiang appeared to counter that view, saying the exchange rate will be kept at “basically stable” levels. Local media also chimed in with a front-page commentary, saying the exchange-rate mechanism is expected to stay stable for some time.

    A stronger yuan would cut the cost of imports, such as commodities, which have been a major component of increasing prices. But the strength of the yuan means additional gains may fuel speculation that authorities are letting go of the currency — thereby spurring traders to bet on further appreciation. Such one-way bets have long been resisted by the PBOC, while a too-strong yuan would also hurt the nation’s global competitiveness by making exports more expensive.

    If Beijing was serious about letting go of the yuan or making it more international, more effort would need to be made to take down capital controls. So far, there’s little sign of that. A botched mid-2015 move to let the market have a greater role in setting the yuan spooked global investors, eventually pushing Beijing to adopt its current framework: welcoming inflows of overseas capital while limiting the outflow of domestic money.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 22:15

  • An RV Attachment For Tesla's Cybertruck, Which Isn't Even In Production Yet, Already Has $50 Million In Pre-Orders
    An RV Attachment For Tesla’s Cybertruck, Which Isn’t Even In Production Yet, Already Has $50 Million In Pre-Orders

    An RV attachment for Tesla’s Cybertruck, that pops out of the the truck’s bed and turns it into a living space, already has $50 million in pre-orders. This is despite the fact that the Cybertruck isn’t in production (and may never be).

    And still, the Fed sees no signs of excess. 

    Las Vegas-based analytics company Stream It has created the CyberLandr, which turns a Cybertruck into a portable home for “weekend trips or even emergencies”. 

    The space also “has a water-filtration system, voice automation, and Starlink dish for internet access,” according to Insider. The company is working with Munro and Associates to help it “cater to high demand, while delivering a high quality product.” 

    The company took in pre-orders of $40,000 and $50,000 beginning in early April. Customers placed more than 1,000 pre-orders in the first 15 days. 

    Lance King, Stream It CEO, said: “We conservatively estimate demand for CyberLandr at more than 10,000 units in 2022.”

    This video, provided by Stream It, shows how the CyberLandr is supposed to protrude from the back of the Cybertruck and turn into a living space. Forgive us if we’re a bit – skeptical – that any of this is ever going to come to fruition.

    But lets not let that get in the way of a nice rendering:

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 22:00

  • "Shocking Act" Of "State Hijacking" Of Civilian Plane: US & EU Demand Belarusian Journalist's Immediate Release
    “Shocking Act” Of “State Hijacking” Of Civilian Plane: US & EU Demand Belarusian Journalist’s Immediate Release

    update(9:30pm): It didn’t take long for a flurry of condemnations from both EU and US officials in the hours after the Ryanair incident over Belarus, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich’s immediate release. Multiple EU leaders described Sunday’s detention of Pratasevich after his commercial aircraft with 170 international passengers on board (including Americans, apparently) was diverted to Minsk complete with Belarusian MiG fighter escort as tantamount to “hijacking a civilian plane”…

    “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter. 

    And Greece’s Foreign Ministry agreed (the aircraft had departed from Athens en route to Lithuania), calling the incident “state hijacking”: “Greece strongly condemns the state hijacking that took place today and resulted in the forced landing of Ryanair FR 4978, which operated the Athens-Vilnius route, in Minsk, Belarus,” the statement said.

    Top EU officials were unanimous in their outrage and condemnation…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The US statement from Secretary Blinken underscored that there had been Americans on board:

    “This shocking act perpetrated by the Lukashenka regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens,” he said late in the day Sunday.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “Initial reports suggesting the involvement of the Belarusian security services and the use of Belarusian military aircraft to escort the plane are deeply concerning and require full investigation,” the US statement added.

    But at the same time some are pointing to some not-so-distant history where US and European allies did essentially the same thing…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    * * *

    A bizarre and alarming incident which officials are calling unprecedented unfolded over the skies of Eastern Europe on Sunday. A Ryanair flight which had departed Athens and was en route to Vilnius – the capital of Lithuania – was forced to land in Belarus to allow state intelligence and security services to detain a journalist who’s long been critical of President Alexander Lukashenko.

    Bloomberg has identified the detained journalist is Raman Pratasevich, described as “the former editor-in-chief of the most popular Telegram news channel in Belarus” who was “arrested in the Minsk airport after the plane landed, according to the Minsk-based human rights center Viasna, which is not officially registered by the country’s authorities.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Neighboring Lithuania had earlier issued Pratasevich asylum after Belarusian authorities had put him on a “terror watch list” related to his journalistic activities, given the 26-year old blogger and activist helped spearhead last year’s anti-Lukashenko demonstrations which at times shut down large parts of central Minsk following the disputed August 2020 election which resulted in prolonging the autocrat’s rule to a sixth term (which will see him into three decades in power).

    The journalist has been dubbed an “extremist” for his role in covering and participating in protests which officials also alleged there was a “foreign hand” behind which had covert NATO support. Pratasevich now faces a severe sentence – if he even goes to trial at all, with some supporters going so far as to suggest a possible death penalty case.

    Astoundingly, Belarus’ military had scrambled MiG fighter jets in order to divert the plane to Minsk. Bloomberg continues, “The plane, which was flying over Belarus en route to Lithuania, was escorted to Minsk by a MiG-29 fighter jet after a bomb threat, Belarusian state news agency Belta reported, citing the Minsk airport’s press service.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The bomb threat, however, is being widely perceived as but a ruse which ensured the plane would be on Belarusian soil in order to facilitate the controversial detention. 

    Germany’s Deutsche Welle details:

    An airport spokesperson told the agency that although authorities did not find any explosive devices on the plane, it was unclear when it would be allowed to take off again.

    The opposition Telegram channel Nexta also reported that the plane was searched and that authorities detained the outlet’s former editor, Roman Protasevich.

    “The plane was checked, no bomb was found and all passengers were sent for another security search,” said Nexta. “Among them was… Nexta journalist Roman Protasevich. He was detained.”

    Image via NEXTA

    The episode is quickly gaining international attention and raising alarm in NATO and the European Union, with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda issuing a statement on Twitter condemning the “unprecedented” and “abhorrent” action of Lukashenko’s government.

    President Nauseda also said in a written statement released to international press agencies that: “I call on NATO and EU allies to immediately react to the threat posed to international civil aviation by the Belarus regime.” He added, “The international community must take immediate steps that this does not repeat.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Also interesting will be the added pressure on both Belarus and Lukashenko-ally Putin over the brazen intervention in a foreign airline’s flight path (Ryanair DAC is based in Ireland and did not immediately comment in the hours after the incident), given especially the two leaders are expected to meet again in Sochi this week, Rossiya-1 television reported.

    Putin has been widely seen in the West as enabling Lukashenko’s dictatorial rule, with Russian officials also seeing recent protests in the former Soviet satellite state as West-backed ‘color revolution’ activity fueled by external powers designed to expand NATO influence by seeking overthrow of Russia-friendly governments.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 21:35

  • With China's Digital Yuan, Think Surveillance
    With China’s Digital Yuan, Think Surveillance

    Authored by Milton Ezrati, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    Ever since China launched its digital yuan in 2019, western commentary has reacted to the initiative with waves of nonsense. Many of these articles suggest that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has stolen a march on the West. Many claim that China’s digital effort will secure the yuan global status and enable it to supplant the dollar as the world’s premier currency for international reserves and transactions.

    The venerable Economist magazine forecast that soon everyone everywhere will be using the digital yuan. The most recent wave of such commentary emerged after the Federal Reserve (Fed) and other central banks announced that they, too, are looking into digital versions of their own respective currencies. Media attention has suggested that the Fed and others are playing catch up.

    These claims are overblown to say the least, entirely misplaced, in fact. A digital yuan hardly constitutes a basis for a global currency. Many countries, including the United States, have laws against transacting domestic business in any currency other than their own. Besides, a digital yuan could add only marginally to existing digital arrangements in which credit and debit cards, Apple watches, PayPal, easy wire transfers, and the like have long-provided efficient and convenient ways to manage both international and domestic transactions. All the digital yuan would do is add a new layer to this fully functioning system. That addition hardly constitutes a revolution, any more than if American Express were to issue a new kind of card. Nor will a digital version of the yuan overcome all the many impediments in the way of its ability to become the premier global reserve currency.

    What should have been clear at the onset is that rather than creating a global upset, the digital yuan, in a manner entirely consistent with so much else Beijing does, aims at domestic surveillance.

    Issuing a digital currency—whether a yuan, a dollar, a euro, a yen, whatever—takes a big step toward supplanting paper currency and coin, and thereby the main way people can transact business anonymously.

    There is, of course, Bitcoin and other cybercurrencies, but they are less a factor than paper and coin, at least for most populations. In any case, China has already closed off these avenues for its population by banning Bitcoin and other cybercurrencies.

    Representations of the Ripple, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin virtual currencies are seen on a PC motherboard in this illustration picture, on Feb. 14, 2018. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

    Paper and coin are about the only way people in China can evade strict controls and get assets out of the country or into an alternative currency. By using the digital yuan to eradicate paper and coin, or at the very least severely limiting their role, Beijing will have closed off any ability of its citizens to move assets and transact business unobserved. Once this happens, the authorities will have the ability to track every citizen’s transactions, how much each person spends, on what, where he or she spends it, as well as when.

    Central banks, even in less authoritative systems, could do the same with their digital currencies once they take hold, but they will likely be less ambitious than the PBOC and think mostly in terms of money laundering and tax evasion. Whether the government’s focus is narrow or broad, surveillance of one kind or another is the objective.

    To be sure, the authorities everywhere have the option of using existing digital networks to track most people’s transactions, whether through credit card, bank, or equivalent records. But accessing these still largely private sources is cumbersome and, in some places, faces numerous legal hurdles. Beijing might face additional impediments because today much of this information resides abroad. Accessing the elements of this system would also have a hit or miss quality that would prevent the authorities amassing an all-but-complete picture of people’s transactions.

    But a digital currency would have it all in one easily accessible government computer. The arrangement could even enable the authorities to develop algorithms to cull transactions and flag anything suspicious, something that is all but impossible with current arrangements. Besides, it is already clear that current digital arrangements, for all their convenience and efficiency, have not driven out paper and coin as effectively as digital currencies are likely to do.

    Beijing does indeed have grand global ambitions. It clearly wants to make China the world’s leading economy and see the yuan supplant the dollar’s global position. It wants to dominate world trade, a clear objective of the Belt and Road initiative. And it wants the political, diplomatic, and military advantages that goes along with such economic and financial dominance. The digital yuan might have a role in this grand scheme but only after Beijing has put into place other, needed, and much more significant elements.

    For now, the digital currency is neither part of such grand designs nor the “revolution” described by less-than-thoughtful western reports. It is instead a straightforward if innovative way to secure still more complete domestic control and thereby ensure that nothing the Chinese people do, even inadvertently, can threaten the authorities in Beijing.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 21:30

  • CA Lawmaker Mocked After After Finding "Semi-Automatic" Glock Packaging — For BB Gun
    CA Lawmaker Mocked After After Finding “Semi-Automatic” Glock Packaging — For BB Gun

    A California lawmaker demonstrated why liberals are totally unqualified to opine on the 2nd Amendment, much craft legislation restricting citizens’ rights.

    In a now-deleted tweet, California Assemblyman David Chiu dramatically posted: “Finding the discarded packaging of a semi-automatic on a leisurely weekend walk was disturbing, particularly during this month’s surge of gun violence in San Francisco.”

    Except… if David had maybe looked at the packaging, he would have noticed it’s for a .177 caliber C02 powered BB gun.

    The replies, as expected, were hilarious before Chiu deleted the tweet.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And for the uninitiated: 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 21:00

  • How A $1 Billion Cryptocurrency Fund Is Trading The Crash
    How A $1 Billion Cryptocurrency Fund Is Trading The Crash

    Back in December, vol-specialist hedge fund One River Asset Management surprised its peers when long before Elon Musk arrived on  the scene, it became one of the first major asset managers to disclose it had purchased $600 million in bitcoin and ethereum and said it would own more than $1 billion in cryptos in early 2021. It wasn’t along in this pioneering effort: Brevan Howard Asset Management co-founder Alan Howard had taken an ownership stake in One River Digital and was helping provide the company with backend trading services. Another prominent backer was British hedge fund Ruffer, which last December also revealed that 2.5% of its total AUM were in bitcoin.

    And since the last big bitcoin plunge took place last March, that makes the current crypto crash the first major stress-test for One River, not to mention a majority of the 14% of Americans who owned crypto at the end of 2020.

    So how is the hedge fund trading the current crash? Below, are some digital market comments from Marcel Kasumovich, the fund’s head of research, as of May 19, so much of the selling indicated here has taken place in the 72 hours subsequent to this note:

    This is a broader crypto trading washout. It is worth benchmarking the Bitcoin downturn to previous ones. We are approaching the percentage drawdown of the Feb-Mar 2020 period. A price decline to $23,700 or so would replicate the initial 2017-2018 downturn. The patterns thereafter of those two downturns were vastly different obviously. After the initial bottom in 2018, Bitcoin fell another 55% and it took nearly four years to recover the 2017 high-water. It took only months to recover the 2020 downturn.

    The role of Grayscale lockups remains poorly understood. This was arbitrage demand for Bitcoin that now needs to be absorbed. In the next ten days, 33mm shares become unlocked and will need to be sold as the unwind of the original trade. Through the end of August, 151mm shares will be unlocked (22% of total supply). At a Bitcoin price of $33k, that is $3.2bln of supply to be absorbed. There can be high profile stresses in the ecosystem of players engaged in this trade. The Grayscale discount is fairly stable around 20% discount through the latest downturn, suggesting some institutional demand willing to absorb supply at prevailing prices.

    We learn a lot from the ecosystem data. Take stablecoin prices. USD.T and USD.C are incredibly steady through this downturn. Dai shows a bit more volatility, trading to as low as 0.995 (to put into real world numbers, on $1mn of collateral we’re talking about a $5k haircut from Dai at the low in prices, which was quite brief). It is not nothing, particularly in violent markets. But overall, this element of the ecosystem is performing very well. Trading volumes in USD.T are running $64bln in the past 24 hours, roughly 3-times the start of the year.

    The liquidity shock in leveraged trading markets is easily evident. Deribit is a good example. The bid-offer pricing on $10mn Bitcoin in the perpetual swap market (leveraged forwards) was wider than 30% earlier today and is currently around 10%. Other exchanges were trading at a fraction of this price tiering. You see the same in implied yields across exchanges. The 1-month annualized yield on the Deribit exchange plunged to -75% annualized at its worst point today. Ether is similar, though not as extreme as Bitcoin relative to last March.

    There has been a rapid inflow of Bitcoin back to exchanges. This is an indicator of holders preparing to sell. In turn, cash holdings through markets like USD.T also show a rise. Large wallets or “whales” are not responsible for flows in the past month. Flipside Crypto does a terrific job of documenting these flows day by day. Smaller wallets and exchanges overwhelm the flow, accounting for 550k of Bitcoin token flows compared to 17k for whales. Ether flows are an entirely different architecture, even though the outcomes are correlated. The moves are between decentralized exchanges and smart contracts, such as ETH embedded in Dai.

    Where do we go from here? The speed of moves and ecosystem make it clear this is a speculative risk move, with a liquidity component. Is the macro backdrop intact? Yes. Are there near-term challenges to overcome? Absolutely. Grayscale locks and FATF (Financial Action Task Force) guidance on decentralized finance are big ones. Not a crypto winter, more of a cold front from Washington. A recovery slower than March 2020, but much faster than 2018 would be my benchmark.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 20:30

  • David Rosenberg: "A Whole Bunch Of People Are Really, Really Wrong" About Inflation
    David Rosenberg: “A Whole Bunch Of People Are Really, Really Wrong” About Inflation

    With so much focus on the macro environment as stocks struggle to return to their all-time highs, MacroVoices invited seasoned Wall Street economist David Rosenberg, the chief economist and chief strategist of Rosenberg Research, on the show this week to discus the market’s topic du jour: inflation, and whether or not it will be “transitory,” like the Federal Reserve says.

    What followed was a thorough critique from Rosenberg, who just a couple of months ago was warning that rising Treasury yields would soon push the market to a “breaking point,” of what he sees as flaws in the market’s pricing of lasting inflationary pressures.

    Instead, Rosenberg essentially agrees with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell that the recent acceleration in inflation seen in April will be temporary.

    What’s going on isn’t a fundamental “regime shift”, but rather a “pendulum” swinging back to the opposite extreme following the sudden deflationary demand shock caused by the pandemic. We had three consecutive months of negative CPI prints last year, Rosenberg pointed out. To offset all that, April saw the biggest MoM jump in consumer prices since 1981.

    Rosenberg argues that the factors that contributed to this surge in prices are already starting to fade. Commodity prices are falling back to earth, supply chain shortages are slowly being addressed, and leading indicators already show a dramatic increase in exports out of Korea and Taiwan, critical sources of semiconductors. Meanwhile, container ships that are “filled to the brim” are lingering outside the ports of LA and Long Beach, the two busiest ports in the country, as COVID concerns continue to delay the unloading of these ships. With all these signs that supply chain snarls are quickly being worked out, “to suggest that the supply will not come back to me is ridiculous,” Rosenberg said.

    On the demand side of the equation, federal stimulus has created a sugar high that Rosenberg expects will wear off by the fall. Around that time, Rosenberg believes, all the workers being kept out of the labor pool by generous government benefits will be forced to look for work again, and the “fiscal withdrawal” will emerge to suppress aggregate demand just as supply levels are normalizing. “The fiscal policy and the short term nature of the stimulus has just accentuated the volatility in the data. So I actually believe that come the fall, we will start to see the reopenings having a positive impact on aggregate supply at a time when we’re gonna see fiscal withdrawal having a downward impact on demand. And so a lot of the inflation we’re seeing today is going to reverse course I expect either by late summer or early fall.”

    Moving on, Rosenberg criticized economists calling for an inflationary “regime change” under the Democrats, claiming that similar arguments were made when both Trump and Obama took office. And while professional economists like to talk about the M2 money supply, Rosenberg argued there’s little correlation between Money Supply and inflation: “for the past 20 years, the money supply numbers have had no correlation with anything except maybe asset prices. And you’re quite right. We’ve had dramatic asset inflation. Well, look, there’s different ways even regulatory, that we can deal with that. That’s a big problem.

    He then pointed to another theory of inflation that’s increasingly gaining credibility among economists: the notion that inflation isn’t correlated with money supply, but money velocity, which has been contracting for decades. 

    “But you cannot predict inflation with just the money supply because you have to take a look at money velocity and money velocity has been contracting for decades because we’re choking on too much debt. And it has impaired the credit multiplier. So I don’t see that that’s changed.”

    And as for all those claiming that McDonald’s and Wal-Mart hiking wages will lead to inflation on that end, Rosenberg joked that they clearly have forgotten a similar wave of wage-hike announcements a few years back after President Trump passed his tax cuts.

    “Money supply against money velocity is not leading right now to an inflationary conclusion, oh, people are now saying, well look at wages. Look at all these companies announcing wage increases. And then of course, to lure these people that work in the consumer cycle industries, whether it’s restaurants, or in the hotel business, or theme parks. You know, once again, a little history goes a long way. I remember back after Trump cut taxes on the corporate side and allowed companies to repatriate tax free their earnings from abroad back home and all these companies. I listed 20 them in my morning note the other day. 4% of the corporate sector announced wage and bonus increases back in early 2018, some bellwether companies too. So where was the big inflation coming out of that?”

    Moving on from all the inflation talk, Rosenberg said he’s more interested in productivity, which actually increased in 2020 as millions of workers retreated to their home offices. It’s a phenomenon that deserves more attention.

    “So here we have a situation which nobody talks about what’s really important, which is that we just got last week, a first quarter productivity number that’s showing that productivity is running over a 4% annual rate. Now, whether that’s a secular or structural change, I’m not sure. But you know, everybody talks about regime change in an inflationary way. But nobody talks about the fact that in the weakest year for the US economy since 1946, it was the best year for productivity in a decade. Companies actually realized for all the lamenting of shortages and job shortages and job shortages and job shortages. The reality is that the corporate sector actually had its best productivity performance in a decade in the same year that we had the worst year for employment since the 1930s.”

    Still, “it’s really hard to tell if that’s noise, or a more fundamental shift,” Rosenberg added.

    But the takeaway for all this is that, as Rosenberg sees it, the big focus on an inflationary “regime shift” has caused the market narrative to shift in a way that Rosenberg believes is somewhat overzealous.

    We’ve got some inflation right now, because the economy is having trouble getting started up and responding quickly to demand, it’ll all come back out and we’ll be back to what we’ve been used to for the last several years. That’s the way you see this playing out. If that’s right, it means a whole bunch of people are really, really wrong. And that means market opportunity, because a whole bunch of things have moved quite a long ways in a inflation is coming and not just inflation, but secular inflation is coming. If people are wrong about thinking that, and we don’t really have secular inflation coming. What’s the best trade to kind of play the crowds got it wrong? Well let me just say that I’m not gonna actually say that the markets have anything particularly wrong. What I’m saying is that the narrative that you’re reading and hearing about day in day out, that narrative is wrong. You know, look, The Wall Street Journal runs with an editorial that uses as its inflationary thesis, the one year, the one year inflation expectation component out of the University of Michigan index, which just came out on Friday for May.

    A quick glance at the TIPS market shows that most inflation expectations being priced in are still “very near term”, and that spreads between twos and fives, fives and tens, and twos and 30s shows there’s been “no big outbreak of longer term inflation expectations.”

    What they don’t tell you is that if you back out the two to five year inflation expectation, because the one year is just if you plot the one year inflation expectation against gasoline prices, that’s your story. But the two to five year, the two to five year hasn’t moved, it’s still in the range. For that particular metric, it’s 2.7%. It’s still in the range. The two to five years, if you go into taking a look at the TIPS market, or the breakeven inflation levels out of the bond market, you’ll see that most of the inflation expectation is still a very near term. Like really out to the next two years. If you take a look at the breakeven spreads between twos and fives and fives and 10s and twos and 30s. You’ll see that there’s been no big outbreak of longer term inflation expectations. That’s actually very encouraging. They’re just telling you that right now we have a tremendous dislocation. And yes, it’s going to probably gonna last a few more months. It’s not just your base effects. There is some real price increases coming into the fore. But what would you expect? I mean look, we just had a 10% increase in airfares and the CPI index, they’re still down 20% from where they were pre-COVID. You know, the sports tickets and the like that were up 10% in April. You know they’re down significantly for where they were pre-COVID. And so there’s still tremendous amount of distortions.

    In a chart-filled slide deck shared alongside the interview, Rosenberg argues that neither inflation or an early Fed taper are the main risks to the stock market and other risk assets. In reality, Rosenberg expects a post-stimulus growth shock in Q4 could lead to widespread re-pricing.

    Source: Rosenberg Research, MacroVoices

    For what it’s worth, a quick glance at the “stale” Fed minutes released this week show Fed insiders still see inflationary risks as “balanced.”

    More confirmation that inflation is just “transitory”

    The staff continued to view the risks around the inflation projection as balanced.

    … even as some concede that supply chain collapse can lead to higher prices for longer:

    A number of participants remarked that supply chain bottlenecks and input shortages may not be resolved quickly and, if so, these factors could put upward pressure on prices beyond this year. They noted that in some industries, supply chain disruptions appeared to be more persistent than originally anticipated and reportedly had led to higher input costs.

    But investors like Jeff Gundlach aren’t so sure, arguing that the Fed’s “transitory” rhetoric is the result of mere guesswork.

    Readers can listen to the full interview below:

    And find the transcript here:

    MV272 David Rosenberg Interview on Scribd

    For a look at Rosenberg’s chart book, check out MacroVoices.com.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 20:00

  • Rand Paul First Senator To Announce He Won't Get COVID-19 Vaccine
    Rand Paul First Senator To Announce He Won’t Get COVID-19 Vaccine

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced this weekend that he will not get vaccinated against COVID-19, explaining that he already contracted the virus last year and has “natural immunity.”

    Paul, who is an ophthalmologist, said that he has not seen evidence proving the vaccine is more effective than having survived the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, otherwise known as the novel coronavirus, so he won’t get the shot.

    “Until they show me evidence that people who have already had the infection are dying in large numbers, or being hospitalized or getting very sick, I just made my own personal decision that I’m not getting vaccinated because I’ve already had the disease and I have natural immunity,” Paul, who appears to be the first senator to announce he won’t get vaccinated, told WABC 770 AM on Sunday, according to news reports.

    Paul has made similar remarks in the past when interviewed about vaccines. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also recovered from COVID-19, suggested he wouldn’t get vaccine earlier this year.

    Paul tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, becoming the first senator to contract the virus. At the time, Paul said he did not develop any notable symptoms and wasn’t hospitalized.

    The senator also noted that the pressure from various institutions to get vaccinated flies in the face of individual liberty.

    “In a free country you would think people would honor the idea that each individual would get to make the medical decision, that it wouldn’t be a big brother coming to tell me what I have to do,” Paul said in the interview, suggesting that the pressure campaign around vaccines could be an attempt to manufacture consent for other power grabs.

    “Are they also going to tell me I can’t have a cheeseburger for lunch? Are they going to tell me that I have to eat carrots only and cut my calories?” the Kentucky senator said.

    “All that would probably be good for me, but I don’t think big brother ought to tell me to do it.”

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that people who have recovered from the CCP virus get vaccinated, arguing that health officials don’t know how long natural immunity lasts.

    “Even if you have already recovered from COVID-19, it is possible—although rare—that you could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 again,” the CDC says on its website.

    Paul’s comments come as some states and municipalities have attempted to place pressure on businesses trying to reopen by ascertaining whether their employees have been vaccinated.

    Last week, Oregon became the first state to require that individuals in workplaces, businesses, and houses of worship show proof of vaccination before entering facilities without wearing masks. And in Santa Clara County, California, health officials issued an order that stipulated businesses are now required to determine the vaccination status of employees.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 19:30

  • Goldman Lists The Three "Gray Rhinos" Haunting The Market
    Goldman Lists The Three “Gray Rhinos” Haunting The Market

    Confirming that “selling in May” is there for a reason, virtually every bank has turned cautious if not outright downbeat on the market following a blockbuster earnings season when despite record earnings beats, the S&P is down compared to where it was a month ago. So now that Wall Street is back to its favorite activity of “explaining” events after the fact, here is Goldman strategist Chris Hussey listing the three key “grey rhino” events the market is grappling with.

    As Hussey writes in the “end of week” market intel note, “gray rhino” risks have proliferated around markets this week, helping to sustain the tepid return range that the S&P 500 has been stuck in all of May (now down 0.2% mtd). Incidentally, for those unaware, Gray rhinos – not to be confused with black swans – refer to black swan type of events (bad things) but ones that we know about but still don’t do anything about (similar, perhaps to the 800 lb gorilla in the room). Some have referred, for example, to the COVID-19 pandemic as a Gray Rhino event (especially now that the lab escape hypothesis is once again all the rage).

    In any case, according to Goldman, among the gray rhino events markets are grappling with this week include:

    • The run-up in commodity prices, including cryptocurrencies. Copper is downn3%+ for the week, iron ore down 1%, and front month oil futures are down~3%.  Additionally, some cryptocurrencies are down as much as 50% for the week.
    • Inflation. Last week’s CPI and PPI releases continue to garner attention. And at Goldman’s Global Staples Forum this week, participating CPG companies called out inflation headwinds that are likely to only grow stronger
    • S&P 500 valuations.  The S&P 500 continues to trade near a P/E of 22X — very high by historical standards and a valuation level that is unlikely to expand from here even as earnings climb higher writes chief strategist David Kostin.

    When one thinks about what can be done to cut these gray rhino’s off at the pass, Goldman notes that there are some developments. China has already started to introduce regulations aimed at curbing excessive speculation and asset prices as Hui Shan addresses in “China’s digital economy.”  And the Fed, of course, is positioned to step in with tighter monetary policy to curb a sustained increase in inflation expectations should it develop — although Goldman’s David Mericle does not believe that the current “temporary” spike in inflation is likely to cause the Fed to act. Here is Goldman’s chart of the week for an illustration of when the bank sees inflation peaking.

    As for the market’s ‘high’ valuation, Goldman’s strategist suggests that perhaps this week’s trading action is a sign that investors are willing to address this gray rhino by being a bit more selective even on the back of extremely strong earnings growth.

    Interestingly, investors do not appear to be as shaken by the market concentration we have been experiencing for quite some time. The FAAMG complex is performing in-line with the broader S&P 5000 index on average this week — in other words, the market remains as concentrated as it was to start the week, something we noted on Friday when we highlighted how 4 of the 5 FAAMG stocks are also among the 5 most widely owned hedge fund stocks.

    The one non-FAAMG stock in the HF top-5? BABA.The one FAAMG stock that is not in the HF top-5? AAPL.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 19:11

  • How Hard Will Biden Press For A Probe Of Wuhan Knowing That A Lab Leak Will Require Political Response
    How Hard Will Biden Press For A Probe Of Wuhan Knowing That A Lab Leak Will Require Political Response

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    The world’s worst disaster in a century killed 7.1mm-12.7mm across the planet. The total continued rising. No one knew exactly when it would end, only that the poorest nations would bear the brunt. They always do. European and Asian countries lost more citizens than they had since WWII. The US lost more than in any war. Children fell behind. Economic costs spiraled, leaving each nation’s finances forever changed. Monetary and fiscal policy merged in the West. Inflation reappeared. Despots tightened their grip. America’s president was voted out.  

    In the emergency of the moment, the world’s leaders mostly kept their nations focused on dealing with the disaster. But as the crisis in the developed world subsided, focus turned to the origin of it all. The world’s leading biologists felt that the preliminary analysis lacked scientific rigor and appeared incomplete. To prevent a repeat of such tragedy, they insisted on doing what they are trained to do. And in this search for the truth, they had to seriously explore the possibility that the disaster was not of natural origin, but an accident.

    Having suffered the consequences, people throughout the world rightly sought the truth. But the hunt for truth in epidemiology is a rather different matter than the search for truth in geopolitics. The former is infinitely cleaner and easier than the latter. And to compound that difficulty, the geopolitical consequences of this disaster having been a laboratory accident are so vast that it is difficult to quite imagine. Would nations hold China to account? If so, how? War reparations? How would international debts be treated? Equity? These barely scratch the surface.

    Every person on the planet should hope the truth is the virus struck humanity naturally, unluckily (I sure do). Beijing certainly wants this to remain the explanation. They rebuked Australia for questioning it. So how hard will Western leaders press for a thorough investigation knowing that if it were to conclude a lab leak, it would require a political response that could turn the world upside down? And yet, if they do not press hard, how will Western governments retain their already diminished credibility when it comes to national security?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 18:30

  • "The Amazon Of Information": Goldman Initiates On Crypto, Sees Ethereum Overtaking Bitcoin
    “The Amazon Of Information”: Goldman Initiates On Crypto, Sees Ethereum Overtaking Bitcoin

    When Goldman officially announced two weeks ago that it was re-launching a previously rumored cryptocurrency trading team on May 6…

    … some joked that this was the top-tick for the crypto space: after all, the last time Goldman launched a bitcoin trading desk, the sector imploded and just a few months later Goldman killed its expansion plans, sending cryptos tumbling even more, and starting the infamous crypto winter which lasted over two years.

    In retrospect, such cynicism wasn’t too far off, because bitcoin did plunge more than 40% since the day Goldman decided to relaunch its trading effort.

    However, poor recent price action notwithstanding, we doubt that Goldman would let it go 2 out of 2 on catastrophic crypto crashes as soon as it officially gets involved.

    Confirming this is an aggregate report published by Goldman late on Friday which is as close to an initiation by Goldman on the asset class as one can hope (last month Goldman already revealed its favorite “crypto-exposed” stocks), and which includes not only a handful of both “pro” crypto interviews (with Mike Novogratz leading the cheerleaders) as well as “anti” (Nouriel Roubini not surprisingly is the lead hater), but more importantly Goldman reveals its own thoughts on:

    • Bitcoin as a macro assets
    • Crypto as its own asset class
    • What is a digital store of value, and
    • The role of crypto in balanced portfolios

    While the full report can be found in the usual place (for pro subscribers)…

    … we wanted to highlight the one thing we found notable in the 40 page report, is the bank’s preference for ethereum (an entirely new technological platform) over bitcoin (a store of value and an alternative payment system) which is not really surprising: as Mike Novogratz points out, “the three biggest moves in the crypto ecosystem—payments, DeFi, and NFTs—are mostly being built on Ethereum, so it’s going to get priced like a network. The more people that use it, the more stuff that gets built on it, and the higher the price will ultimately go.” And since for the past five years much of the world has largely associated crypto with bitcoin, it will take some time for conventional wisdom to realize that there is much more to crypto than just bitcoin.

    Which incidentally brings up the question, of just what is crypto, and conveniently none other than the head of commodities at Goldman, Jeff Currie, has dedicated an entire section discussing this, which also reveals how Goldman is approaching the various constituents of the crypto space: Currie argues that cryptos are a new class of asset that derive their value from the information being verified and the size and growth of their networks. Here are the details:

    The term “cryptocurrencies”—which most people take to mean that crypto assets act as a digital medium of exchange, like fiat currency—is fundamentally misleading when it comes to assessing the value of these assets. Indeed, the blockchain that underlies bitcoin was not designed to replace a fiat currency—it is a trusted peer-to-peer payments network. As a cryptographic algorithm generates the proof that the payment was correctly executed, no third party is needed to verify the transaction. The blockchain and its native coin were therefore designed to replace the banking system and others like insurance that require a trusted intermediary today, not the Dollar. In that sense, the blockchain is differentiated from other “digital” transactional mechanisms such as PayPal, which is dependent upon the banking system to prevent fraud like double-spending.

    In order to be trustworthy, the system needed to create an asset that had no liabilities or contingent claims, which can only be a real asset just like a commodity. And to achieve that, blockchain technologies used scarcity in natural resources—oil, gas, coal, uranium and hydro—through ever-increasing computational-power consumption to “mine” a bit version of a natural resource.

    From this perspective, the intrinsic value of the network is the trustworthy information that the blockchain produces through its mining process, and the coins native to the network are required to unlock this trusted information, and make it tradeable and fungible. It’s therefore impossible to say that the network has value and a role in society without saying that the coin does too. And the value of the coin is dependent upon the value and growth of the network.

    That said, because the network is decentralized and anonymous, legal challenges facing future growth for crypto assets loom large. Coins trying to displace the Dollar run headlong into anti-money laundering laws (AML), as exemplified by the recent ransoms demanded in bitcoin from the Colonial Pipeline operator and the Irish Health service. Regulators can impede the use of crypto assets as a substitute for the Dollar or other currencies simply by making them non-convertible. An asset only has value if it can either be used or sold. And Chinese and Indian authorities have already challenged crypto uses in payments.

    As a result, the market share of coins used for other purposes beyond currencies like “smart contracts” and “information tokens” will likely continue to rise. However, even these non-currency uses will need to be recognized by courts of law to be accepted in commercial transactions—a question we leave to the lawyers.

    The network creates the value, unlike other commodities

    Unlike other commodities, coins derive their entire value from the network. A bitcoin has no value outside of its network as it is native to the Bitcoin blockchain. The value of oil is also largely derived from the transportation network that it fuels, but at least oil can be burned to create heat outside of this network. At the other extreme, gold doesn’t require a network at all.

    Derived demand leaves the holder of the commodity exposed to the risk of the network becoming obsolete—a lesson that holders of oil reserves are now learning with decarbonization accelerating the decline of the transportation network, and, in turn damaging oil demand. Likewise, bitcoin owners face accelerated network decay risk from a competing network, backed by a new cryptocurrency.

    As the demand for gold is not dependent on a network, it will ultimately outlive oil and bitcoin—gold entropy lies at the unit, not the network, level. Indeed, most stores of value that are used as defensive assets—like gold, diamonds and collectibles—don’t have derived demand and therefore only face unit-level entropy risk. This is what makes them defensive. The world can fall apart around them and they preserve their value. And while they don’t have derived demand, they do have other uses that establish their value, i.e. gold is used for jewelry and as a store of value.

    Transactions drive value, creating a risk-on asset

    Crypto doesn’t trade like gold and nor should it. Using any standard valuation method, transactions or expected transactions on the network are the key determinant of network value. The more transactions the blockchain can verify, the greater the network value. Transaction volumes and the demand for commodified information are roughly correlated with the business cycle; thus, crypto assets should trade as pro-cyclical risk-on assets as they have for the past decade. Gold and bitcoin are therefore not competing assets as is commonly misunderstood, and can instead co-exist. Because the value of the network and hence the coin is derived from the volume of transactions, hoarding coins as stores of value reduces the coins available for transactions, which reduces the value of the network. Because gold doesn’t have this property, it is the only commodity that institutional investors hold in physical inventory. Nearly all other commodities are held in paper inventory in the form of futures to avoid disrupting the network. This suggests that, like oil, crypto investments will need to be held in the form of futures contracts, not physically, if they are to serve as stores of value.

    Crypto assets aren’t digital oil, either, as they are not non-durable consumables and can therefore be used again. This durability makes them a store of value, provided this demand doesn’t disrupt network flows. The crypto assets that have the greatest utility are also likely to be the dominant stores of value—the high utility reduces the carry costs.

    So what is crypto? A powerful networking effect

    The network provides crypto an extremely powerful networking externality that no other commodity possesses. The operators—miners, exchanges and developers—are all paid in the native coin, making them fully vested in its success. Similarly, users—merchants, investors and speculators—are also fully vested. This gives bitcoin holders an incentive to accommodate purchases of their own products in bitcoin, which in turn, creates more demand for the coins they already own. Similarly, ether holders have an incentive to build apps and other products on the Ethereum network to increase the value of their coins.

    Because the coin holders have a stake in the network, speculation spurs adoption; even during bust periods, coin holders are motivated to work to create the next new boom. After the dot-com bust, the shareholders had no commodity to promote. In crypto assets, even when prices collapse, the coin holders have a commodity to promote. They will always live for another boom, like an oil wildcatter.

    It’s all about information

    As the value of the coin is dependent on the value of the trustworthy information, blockchain technology has gravitated toward those industries where trust is most essential—finance, law and medicine. For the Bitcoin blockchain, this information is the record of every balance sheet in the network, and the transactions between them—originally the role of banks. In the case of a smart contract—a piece of code that executes according to a pre-set rule—on Ethereum, both the terms of that contract (the code) and the state of the contract (executed or not) are the information validated on the Ethereum blockchain. As a result, the counterparty in the contract cannot claim a transfer of funds without the network forming a consensus that the contract was indeed executed. In our view the most valuable crypto assets will be those that help verify the most critical information in the economy.

    Over time, the decentralized nature of the network will diminish concerns about storing personal data on the blockchain. One’s digital profile could contain personal data including asset ownership, medical history and even IP rights. Since this information is immutable—it cannot be changed without consensus—the trusted information can then be tokenized and traded. A blockchain platform like Ethereum could potentially become a large market for vendors of trusted information, like Amazon is for consumer goods today.

    Crypto beyond this boom and bust cycle

    By many measures—Metcalfe’s Law or Network Value to Transactions (NVT) ratio —crypto assets are in bubble territory. But does the demand for “commodified information” create enough economic value at a low enough cost to be scaled up in the long run? If the legal system accommodates these assets, we believe so. While many overvalued networks exist, a few will likely emerge as long-term winners in the next stage of the digital economy, just as the tech titans of today emerged from the dot-com boom and bust. This transformation is happening now—there are already an estimated 21.2 million owners of cryptocurrencies in the US alone. However, technological, environmental and legal challenges still loom large.

    Ethereum 2.0 is expected to ramp up capacity to 3,000 transactions per second (tps), while sharding—which will scale Ethereum 2.0’s Proof of Stake (PoS) system through parallel verification of transactions—has the potential to raise capacity to as much as 100,000 tps. For context, Visa has the capacity to process up to 65,000 tps but typically executes around 2,000 tps. PoS intends to have validators stake the now scarce and valuable coins to incentivize good behavior instead of having miners expend energy to mine new blocks into existence, as under Proof of Work, making crypto assets more ESG friendly. PoS also can significantly boost computational time in terms of transactions per second, which will further incentivize technological adoption. Ironically, this is likely where the value of and demand for bitcoin will come from—being used as the scarce resource to make the PoS system work instead of natural resources.

    While overcoming the economic challenges will likely be manageable, the legal challenges are the largest for many crypto assets. And this past week was challenging for crypto assets with confirmation that the 75 bitcoin ransom over the Colonial Pipeline was actually paid. This is a reminder that cryptocurrencies still facilitate criminal activities that have large social costs.

    For Ethereum, new companies which aim to disrupt finance, law or medicine by integrating information stored on the platform into their algorithms are likely to run into problems with being legally recognized. If crypto assets are to survive and grow to their fullest potential, they need to define some concept of “sufficiently decentralized” that will satisfy regulators; otherwise, the technologies will soon run out of uses.

    In short: bitcoin is good, and “ironically” will be used as the “scarce resource” to make PoS systems work “instead of natural resources”, but while bitcoin may end up being a one-trick pony (if quite valuable) it is the new blockchain platforms – like Ethereum – that will serve as the basis for a marketplace of trusted information, as Goldman puts it “like Amazon is for consumer goods today.”

    Since this is a Goldman report, it was naturally chock-full of charts and images, and below we reproduce the main ones, first, focusing on bitcoin…

    …  then ethereum…

    … a snapshot of all cryptos…

    … and recent price performance.

    And with that background in place, here is why Goldman believes that “ether has high chance of overtaking bitcoin as the dominant digital store of value.” Here is Goldman explaining what is a digital store of value:

    Based on emerging blockchain technology that has the power to disrupt global finance, yet with limited clear use today, bitcoin has been labeled a solution looking for a problem. Many investors now view bitcoin as a digital store of value, comparable to gold, housing, or fine wine. But all true stores of value in history have provided either income or utility, and bitcoin currently provides no income and only very modest utility.

    However, unlike bitcoin, several other crypto assets have clear economic rationales behind their creation. Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage is also fragile; crypto remains a nascent field with shifting technology and consumer preferences, and networks that fail to adjust quickly could lose their leadership. We therefore see a high likelihood that bitcoin will eventually lose its crown as the dominant digital store of value to another cryptocurrency with greater practical use and technological agility. Ether looks like the most likely candidate today to overtake bitcoin, but that outcome is far from certain.

    What is a store of value?

    A store of value is anything that preserves its value over time. While financial stores of value like equities and bonds hold their value because they produce a given cash flow, yield is not a prerequisite for value. Art, wine, gold, and non-yielding currencies are widely used as stores of value too. Yet all of these non-yielding assets have a clear material use besides being stores of value. This usefulness generates a “convenience yield”—the incentive for people to own them—that reflects both the utility a consumer derives from using these assets and the relative scarcity of that utility—a fact captured by Adam Smith’s famous Diamond-Water paradox.

    We place assets on a continuum across time by their store of value properties. We identify stores of future value, like financial assets that offer the owner the right to future yields or the promise of growing value over time, stores of present value, like consumable commodities such as oil and grains for which the utility of driving and eating today imparts a convenience yield, and stores of past value, like gold, art or even housing in which the assets store value generated in the past because of their duration.

    Value always stems from use

    The key to stores of past value like gold and houses is that someone demanded these assets in the past and placed value in them by exchanging something of value, usually currency, for them. Indeed, all important non-yielding stores of value developed real uses before becoming investment assets. For instance, gold was first used as jewelry to signal permanence, commitment or immortality. The economic problem was a need to signal permanence, and gold’s durable and inert elemental properties solved that problem. Given the state of technology at the time, gold was the only solution for this problem, which explains why so many societies adopted it for this use.

    And when societies began to conquer each other and needed a means to standardize international trade, gold was the natural choice to solve this economic problem as most societies already owned gold and it was divisible. Real use is important for stores of value because consumption demand tends to be price-sensitive and therefore provides some offset to fluctuations in investment demand, tempering price volatility. For example, jewelry demand is the swing factor in the gold market, falling when investment demand for gold pushes prices higher, and vice versa.

    Ether beats bitcoin as a store of value

    Given the importance of real uses in determining store of value, ether has high chance of overtaking bitcoin as the dominant digital store of value. The Ethereum ecosystem supports smart contracts and provides developers a way to create new applications on its platform. Most decentralized finance (DeFi) applications are being built on the Ethereum network, and most non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued today are purchased using ether. The greater number of transactions in ether versus bitcoin reflects this dominance. As cryptocurrency use in DeFi and NFTs becomes more widespread, ether will build its own first-mover advantage in applied crypto technology.

    Ethereum can also be used to store almost any information securely and privately on a decentralized ledger. And this information can be tokenized and traded. This means that the Ethereum platform has the potential to become a large market for trusted information. We are seeing glimpses of that today with the sale of digital art and collectibles online through the use of NFTs. But this is a tiny peek at its actual practical uses. For example, individuals can store and sell their medical data through Ethereum to pharma research companies. A digital profile on Ethereum could contain personal data including asset ownership, medical history and even IP rights. Ethereum also has the benefit of running on a decentralized global server base rather than a centralized one like Amazon or Microsoft, possibly providing a solution to concerns about sharing personal data.

    A major argument in favor of bitcoin as a store of value is its limited supply. But demand, not scarcity, drives the success of stores of value. No other store of value has a fixed supply. Gold supply has grown nearly ~2% pa for centuries, and it has remained an accepted store of value. Plenty of scarce elements like osmium are not stores of value. In fact, a fixed and limited supply risks driving up price volatility by incentivizing hoarding and forcing new buyers to outbid existing holders, potentially creating financial bubbles. More important than having a limited supply to preserve value is having a low risk of dramatic and unpredictable increases in new supply. And ether, for which the total supply is not capped, but annual supply growth is, meets this criterion.

    Fast-moving technologies break first-mover advantage

    The most common argument in favor of bitcoin maintaining its dominance over other cryptocurrencies is its first-mover advantage and large user base. But history has shown that in an industry with fast-changing technology and growing demand, a first-mover advantage is difficult to maintain. If an incumbent fails to adjust to shifting consumer preferences or competitors’ technological advances, they may lose their dominant position. Think of Myspace and Facebook, Netscape and Internet Explorer or Yahoo and Google.

    For crypto networks themselves, active user numbers have been very volatile. During 2017/18, Ethereum was able to gain an active user base that was 80% the size of Bitcoin’s within one year. Ethereum’s governance structure, with a central developer team driving new proposals, may be best suited for today’s dynamic environment in which crypto technology is changing rapidly and systems that fail to upgrade quickly can become obsolete.

    Indeed, Ethereum is undergoing much more rapid upgrades to its protocol than Bitcoin. Namely, Ethereum is currently transitioning from a Proof of Work (PoW) to a Proof of Stake (PoS) verification method. Proof of Stake has the advantage of dramatically increasing the energy efficiency of the system as it rewards miners based on the amount of ether holdings they choose to stake rather than their processing capacity, which will end the electricity-burning race for miner rewards. Bitcoin’s energy consumption is already the size of the Netherlands and could double if bitcoin prices rise to $100,000. This makes bitcoin investment challenging from an ESG perspective.

    While PoS protocols raise security concerns due to the need for trusted supervisors in the verification process, Bitcoin is also not 100% secure. Four large Chinese mining pools control almost 60% of bitcoin supply and could in theory collude to verify a fake transaction. Ethereum too faces many risks and its ascendance to dominance is by no means guaranteed. For instance, if the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is delayed, developers may choose to move to competing platforms. Equally, Bitcoin’s usability can potentially be improved with the introduction of the Lightning Network, a change of protocol to support smart contracts and a shift to PoS. All cryptocurrencies remain in early days with fast-changing technology and volatile user bases.

    High vol is here to stay until real use drives value

    The key difference between the current rally in crypto and the crypto bull market of 2017/18 is the presence of institutional investors—a sign that financial markets are starting to embrace crypto assets. But bitcoin’s volatility has remained persistently high, with prices falling 30% in one day in just this past week. Such volatility is unlikely to abate until bitcoin has an underlying real, economic use independent of price to smooth out periods of selling pressure. Indeed, more recently, institutional participation has slowed as reflected in lower inflows into crypto ETFs, while the outperformance of altcoins indicate that retail activity has once again taken center stage.

    This shift from institutional adoption to increasing retail speculation is creating a market that is increasingly comparable to that of 2017/18, increasing the risk of a material correction. Only real demand that solves an economic problem will end this volatility and usher in a new mature era for crypto—one based upon economics rather than upon speculation.

    Goldman’s conclusion: ethereum is the platform that solves economic problems here and now, while bitcoin is “a solution looking for a problem.” It’s also why two weeks ago, JPMorgan also laid out a bullish case for eth even as it has continued to slam bitcoin. As a reminder, JPMorgan’s quant Nick Panigirtzoglou laid out six reasons why ethereum is set to continue its ascent even if there is a crackdown on bitcoin by either China or the US:

    1. The European Investment Bank (EIB) used the ethereum blockchain to issue €100mn in two-year zero-coupon digital notes last week, its first ever digital bond. The transaction involved a series of bond tokens on the ethereum blockchain, where investors purchase and pay for the security tokens using traditional fiat. The EIB digital bond is surely very significant as it represents the endorsement of the ethereum blockchain by a major official institution.
    2. The first ethereum ETF (ETHH) was launched on April 20th by Purpose Investments in Canada and three more ethereum ETFs launches followed during the same month.
    3. The structural decline in ethereum supply from the pending introduction of protocol EIP1559 in the summer. EIP 1559‘s objective is to make transaction fees on the ethereum blockchain more predictable by introducing an automatically calculated base fee for all transactions depending on network activity. Once paid with ethereum, this fee would be immediately burned, implying reduced supply of ethereum in the future. Ethereum’s theoretically unlimited supply had been a concern in the past, with ethereum in circulation rising by 5% per year over the past three years. Via burning ethereum through base fees, EIP1559 could potentially reduce the annual change of ethereum in circulation to 1-2% per year.
    4. The greater focus by investors on ESG has shifted attention away from the energy intensive bitcoin blockchain to the ethereum blockchain, which in anticipation of Ethereum 2.0 is expected to become a lot more energy efficient by the end of 2022. Ethereum 2.0 involves a shift from an energy intensive Proof-of-Work validation mechanism to a much less intensive Proof-of-Stake validation mechanism. As a result, less computational power and energy consumption would be needed to maintain the ethereum network.
    5. The sharp growth of NFTs and stablecoins in recent months are increasing the usage of the ethereum which is already dominating the DeFi ecosystem.
    6. The rise in bond yields and the eventual normalization of monetary policy is putting downward pressure on bitcoin as a form of digital gold, the same way higher real yields have been putting downward pressure on traditional gold. With ethereum deriving its value from its applications, ranging from DeFi to gaming to NFTs and stablecoins, it appears less susceptible than bitcoin to higher real yields.

    In short, while one doesn’t have to agree with Goldman or JPMorgan, these represent the institutional take. In other words, bitcoin and ethereum can co-exist and ostensibly become even more popular and eventually hit new all time highs (as a reminder FundStrat sees bitcoin hitting $100,000 and Ethereum rising to $10,500), but if the hammer hits and central banks in collaboration with local regulators decide to crackdown on crypto, what they will in fact be eliminating is the tax-evasion/money-laundering threat that bitcoin represents, while ethereum – and its various de-fi spinoffs – is left untouched. While that might mean ethereum has to find use within the demand confines of the so-called “establishment”, we doubt those who are long it will complain if Goldman is proven right and it becomes the “Amazon of trusted information”, one token trading at $20,000 or much more.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 18:25

  • "Air's Coming Out Of The Balloon" – Redfin CEO Says Home Price Gains Set To Cool
    “Air’s Coming Out Of The Balloon” – Redfin CEO Says Home Price Gains Set To Cool

    Glenn Kelman, CEO at Redfin, spoke with Bloomberg Radio’s Denise Pellegrini on Wednesday about the state of the US housing market. He said the latest surge in home prices could subside. 

    Kelman said the housing market is a frenzy, with most houses selling above the asking prices, which has never happened before. 

    After record gains in the first quarter, some home prices are likely to stall. 

    Nationwide, the median existing-home sales price rose 16.2% in the first quarter to $319,200, a record high in data going back to 1989, according to the National Association of Realtors.

    We recently reported that home sales prices in the country’s hottest markets had risen by their widest level since 2006, according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a closely watched measure of home prices in the US which offers a breakdown by region, as well as nationally. According to Case-Shiller, US home prices in 20 major cities are up a shocking 11.10% year-over-year.

    But outside the major metro markets, demand was even more robust, translating into the most significant YoY increase in median sales since 2006.

    So back to Kelman, who told Pellegrini that people placing bids well over the asking price might find their loan denied because the appraisal level will come in so much lower than what the house is worth. 

    Kelman warned: “I think you’re going to see a little bit of air come out of the ballon,” referring to the housing market bubble the Federal Reserve engineered by sending mortgage rates to record lows at the start of the virus pandemic in 2020. 

    He still believes some inland markets will continue to see price increases because of the migration of people from large metro areas settling in small towns where home prices are low in their eyes. 

    Kelman’s warning comes as home-buying sentiment has collapsed to its weakest since 1983…

    Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs believes by 2024 home prices will be rising at a pace far faster than the widely recognized 2006-2007 housing bubble. 

    So the question we are asking in the intermediate timeframe: will Kelman’s warning play out? 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 18:00

  • Apples-to-Apples, Consumer Price Inflation Is Nearing 1970-Type Numbers
    Apples-to-Apples, Consumer Price Inflation Is Nearing 1970-Type Numbers

    By Joseph Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein

    Apples-to-apples, consumer price inflation nowadays is running close to the high inflation readings of the late 1970s. That should be a red flag for policymakers as monetary decisions are focused on actual outcomes, not forecasted. But reported inflation statistics do not show the 1970s inflation-style inflation because they no longer include actual house prices.

    The old consumer price index included house prices in measuring the owner’s housing cost, whereas the present-day price index base owners’ housing cost on an arbitrary, non-market rent measure. The only way to make a price series strictly comparable over time is to use the same measurement process.

    In April, the median price for existing homes increased 20.3% in the past twelve months, a new record and far above the 1970s high-reading of 17.4%. More importantly, the increase in existing house prices is ten times greater than the 2% increase in non-market rents in the consumer price index.

    Owners rent index accounts for nearly one-quarter of the overall consumer price index and a full one-third of the widely followed core index. Inserting actual house prices in place of the non-market rents would add roughly five percentage points to 4.2% headline and 3% core inflation readings. The last time the US consumer price inflation ran that high was during the 1978 to 1982 time frame.

    Just because reported inflation statistics no longer include actual house prices does not mean a rise in house price is not a sign of increased inflation and higher inflation expectations. If an increase in house prices is not inflation, then what is it?

    One would think the current generation of policymakers would include house prices in their policy framework since it is an inflation-related outcome directly linked to monetary policy.

    Inflation cycles don’t end well, and the odds of a bad outcome should be measurably higher when policymakers are unaware that monetary policy is fueling an unsustainable price cycle.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 17:30

  • Wuhan Lab Workers Were 'So Sick They Sought Hospitalization' According To US Intelligence
    Wuhan Lab Workers Were ‘So Sick They Sought Hospitalization’ According To US Intelligence

    Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were so sick in November of 2019 that they sought hospitalization, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a previously undisclosed US intelligence report “that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the COVID-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.”

    Photo: hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

    The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”

    The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins. -WSJ

    “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” one source told the Journal, while another person said the information, provided by an “international partner,” was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and corroboration.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Wuhan lab has notably refused to share raw data, safety logs and lab records of its extensive experiments with bat coronaviruses, which a US-funded NGO, EcoHealth Alliance, collaborated with.

    Beijing, meanwhile, has repeatedly denied that COVID-19 escaped from one of its labs – going as far on Sunday as to cite a WHO-led team’s conclusion that a lab leak was unlikely. A WHO team, mind you, which included EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak, the guy paid $666,000 per year by Anthony Fauci’s NIH to collaborate with the WUhan lab.

    “The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory,” China’s foreign ministry told the Journal in response to a request for comment. “Is it actually concerned about tracing the source or trying to divert attention?”

    Maybe Beijing – with its sophisticated tracking techniques – can explain the whereabouts of still-missing WIV lab worker Huang Yanling?

    Missing Chinese researcher Huang Yanling. Photo / news.com.au

    Huang Yanling, who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was one of scores of doctors, scientists, activists and journalists who disappeared during the Chinese Communist Party’s suspected cover-up.

    During the early weeks of the outbreak last February, rumours swirled on Chinese social media that the graduate student was “patient zero”, creating a direct link between the controversial lab and the virus outbreak.

    Chinese officials quickly stepped in to censor the reports from the internet.

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology denied she was patient zero and insisted, without evidence, that she was alive and well elsewhere in the country – while scrubbing her biography and image from its website. -NZ Herald

    The Biden administration, meanwhile, has gone from scoffing at the lab-leak hypothesis to a more neutral ‘wait-and-see’ stance.

    “We continue to have serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “We’re not going to make pronouncements that prejudge an ongoing WHO study into the source of SARS-CoV-2,” she added.

    The Journal, playing devil’s advocate, notes that “It isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner,” and that COVID-19 shares a multitude of symptoms with the flu despite being very different illnesses.

    “Still, it could be significant if members of the same team working with coronaviruses went to hospital with similar symptoms shortly before the pandemic was first identified,” the report continues.

    That said, former US State Department official David Asher, who led a task force on the origins of COVID-19, told a Hudson Institute seminar in March that he doubted the lab workers were infected with an ordinary flu.

    “I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers who fell ill may represent “the first known cluster” of COVID-19 cases.

    Long characterized by skeptics as a conspiracy theory, the hypothesis that the pandemic could have begun with a lab accident has attracted more interest from scientists who have complained about the lack of transparency by Chinese authorities or conclusive proof for the alternate hypothesis: that the virus was contracted by humans from a bat or other infected animal outside a lab.

    Many proponents of the lab hypothesis say that a virus that was carried by an infected bat might have been brought to the lab so that researchers could work on potential vaccines—only to escape.

    While the lab hypothesis is being taken more seriously, including by Biden administration officials, the debate is still colored by political tensions, including over how much evidence is needed to sustain the hypothesis. -WSJ

    That’s a nice way of saying the CCP and the anti-Trump establishment politicized the most logical theory and wasted nearly 18 months covering for Beijing.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    During the last week of the Trump administration, the State Department issued a fact sheet which drew on classified intelligence stating that the “U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and seasonal illnesses.”

    The Jan. 15 fact sheet added that this “raises questions about the credibility” of Wuhan bat researcher Shi Zhengli, and criticized Beijing for its “deceit and disinformation.”

    Thus far the Biden administration hasn’t disputed a single aspect of the fact sheet.

    And now the United States, along with the European Union and several other governments, have called for a more transparent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 05/23/2021 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 23

Today’s News 23rd May 2021

  • Escobar: The Disintegrated States Of America
    Escobar: The Disintegrated States Of America

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. A third wave baby boomer, born in the early 1960s in Baku, in the Caucasus, then part of the former USSR, he’s arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere, living and working in the US, writing in English for a global audience, and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.

    I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Martyanov’s previous two books. In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, nearly three years ago he conclusively proved, among other things, how the missile gap between the US and Russia was a “technological abyss”, and how the Khinzal was “a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically”.

    He extensively mapped “the final arrival of a completely new paradigm” in warfare and military technology. This review is included in my own Asia Times e-book Shadow play.

    Then came The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, where he went one step beyond, explaining how this “revolution”, introduced at the Pentagon by the late Andrew Marshall, a.k.a. Yoda, the de facto inventor of the “pivot to Asia” concept, was in fact designed by Soviet military theoreticians way back in the 1970s, as MTR (Military-Technological Revolution).

    His new book, Disintegration, completes a trilogy. And it’s a stunning departure.

    Here, Martyanov, in meticulous detail, analyzes the imperial decline thematically – with chapters on Consumption, Geoeconomics, Energy, Losing the Arms Race, among others, composing a devastating indictment especially of toxic D.C. lobbies and the prevailing political mediocrity across the Beltway. What is laid bare for the reader is the complex interplay of forces that are driving the political, ideological, economic, cultural and military American chaos.

    Chapter 3, on Geoeconomics, is a joy ride. Martyanov shows how geoeconomics as a field separate from warfare and geopolitics is nothing but an obfuscation racket: good old conflict “wrapped in the thin shroud of political sciences’ shallow intellectualism” – the stuff Huntington, Fukuyama and Brzezinski’s dreams are made of.

    That is fully developed on Chapter 6, on Western Elites – complete with a scathing debunking of the “myth of Henry Kissinger”: “just another American exceptionalist, mislabeled a ‘realist’”, part of a gang that “is not conditioned to think multi-dimensionally”. After all they’re still not capable of understanding the rationale and the implications of Putin’s 2007 Munich speech that declared the unipolar moment – a crude euphemism for Hegemony – dead and buried.

    How not to win wars

    One of Martyanov’s key assessments is that having lost the arms race and every single war it unleashed in the 21st century – as the record shows – geoeconomics is essentially a “euphemism for America’s non-stop sanctions and attempts to sabotage the economies of any nation capable of competing with the United States” (see, for instance, the ongoing Nord Stream 2 saga). This is “the only tool” (his italics) the US is using trying to halt its decline.

    On a chapter on Energy, Martyanov demonstrates how the US shale oil adventure is financially non-viable, and how a rise in oil exports was essentially due to the US “pickin up’ quotas freed chiefly as a result of Russia and Saudi Arabia’s earlier cuts within OPEC + in an attempt to balance the world’s oil market”.

    In Chapter 7, Losing the Arms Race, Martyanov expands on the key theme he’s the undisputed superstar: the United States cannot win wars. Inflicting Hybrid War is another matter entirely, as in creating “a lot of misery around the world, from effectively starving people to killing them outright”.

    A glaring example has been “maximum pressure” economic sanctions on Iran. But the point is these tools – which also included the assassination of Gen Soleimani – that are part of the arsenal of “spreading democracy” have nothing to do with “geoeconomics”, but have “everything to do with the raw power plays designed to achieve the main Clausewitzian object of war – ‘to compel our enemy to do our will’”. And “for America, most of the world is the enemy”.

    Martyanov also feels compelled to update what he’s been excelling at for years: the fact that the arrival of hypersonic missiles “has changed warfare forever”. The Khinzal, deployed way back in 2017, has a range of 2,000 km and “is not interceptable by existing US anti-missile systems”. The 3M22 Zircon “changes the calculus of both naval and ground warfare completely”. The US lag behind Russia in air-defense systems is “massive, and both quantitative and qualitative”.

    Disintegration additionally qualifies as a sharp critique of the eminently post-modernist phenomenon – starring infinite cultural fragmentation and the refusal to accept that “truth is knowable and can be agreed upon” – responsible for the current social re-engineering of the US, in tandem with an oligarchy that “realistically, is not very bright, despite being rich”.

    And then there’s rampant Russophobia. Martyanov sounds the definitive red alert: “Of course, the United States is still capable of starting a war with Russia, but if it does so, this will mean only one thing – the United States will cease to exist, as will most of the human civilization. The horrific thing is that there are some people in the US for whom even this price is too small to pay.”

    In the end, a cool scientific intellect cannot but rely on sound realpolitik: assuming the US avoids complete disintegration into “separatist territories”, Martyanov stresses that the only way for the American “elite” to maintain any kind of control “over generations increasingly woke or desensitized by drugs” is through tyranny.

    Actually techno-tyranny.

    And that seems to be the brave new dysfunctional paradigm further on down the road.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 23:30

  • US Army Shows Soldier's New View With Futuristic Night-Vision Goggles 
    US Army Shows Soldier’s New View With Futuristic Night-Vision Goggles 

    The US Army continues to modernize its forces as a great power competition between China rages. The latest technology the service branch revealed to enhance nighttime lethality on the modern battlefield is next-generation night vision goggles. Such goggles resemble something from Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon video game. 

    The video was posted by the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery’s Facebook page on Monday. The battalion is assigned to the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division. Members of the battalion were recently firing 155mm artillery pieces out of an M777 Howitzer under cover of darkness at Yakima Training Center in Washington state.

    Scenes from the live-fire exercise were shot via the Army’s new Enhanced Night Vision Goggles – Binocular (ENVG-B).

    ENVG-Bs have more of a white phosphorus background than traditional night vision goggles that illuminate the darkness with a green tint. Soldiers in the video appear to have an outline like from the movie Tron. The reasoning is to allow warfighters better distance and depth perception at night to be one step ahead of enemy combatants. 

    Other videos show solider’s using ENVG-Bs during a recent live-fire training exercise at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

    The goggles are also capable of being wirelessly integrated into the soldier’s weapon sights.  

    The Army began fielding ENVG-Bs in late 2020 at Fort Riley in Kansas to replace older night vision devices.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 23:00

  • DeSantis On Critical Race Theory: "Offensive" To Expect Taxpayers To Pay To Teach Kids To "Hate Their Country"
    DeSantis On Critical Race Theory: “Offensive” To Expect Taxpayers To Pay To Teach Kids To “Hate Their Country”

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he opposes teaching critical race theory in the state’s public schools, calling the ideas pushed by its advocates as “based on false history” and “teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Juno Beach, Fla., on May 7, 2021. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

    DeSantis made the remarks at a Friday press conference in Pensacola, where he announced the signing of a bill temporarily establishing several statewide tax-free periods on items like storm supplies and back-to-school products.

    “It’s offensive to the taxpayer that they would be asked to fund critical race theory, that they would be asked to fund teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other,” DeSantis said.

    Floridа Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen during a meeting at the governor’s office in Tallahassee, Fla., on April 1, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

    In a recent interview on NTD’s “Focus Talk,” Yiatin Chu, an Asian mother of two and co-chair of the New York chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), described critical race theory as pushing the idea that disparate outcomes, such as academic competency scores, can be reduced to a single variable—race.

    Advocates of the theory, which she said is increasingly being taught at pre-college levels, push the socialist notion of equality of outcome, and blame differences in outcomes on entrenched privilege while dividing people into “oppressors” and their victims, the “oppressed.”

    Republicans across the nation are trying to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms.

    Recently, South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem took aim at both the “1619 Project” and critical race theory and, like DeSantis, voiced opposition to their incorporation in school curriculums.

    “The 1619 Project relies upon the concept of Critical Race Theory to further divide students based on the color of their skin,” Noem wrote in a series of tweets Friday.

    “This is inappropriate and un-American. It has no place in South Dakota, and it certainly has no place in South Dakota classrooms.”

    In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 26, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

    The “1619 Project,” inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, attempts to cast the Atlantic slave trade as the dominant factor in the founding of America instead of ideals such as individual liberty and natural rights. The initiative has been widely panned by historians and political scientists, with some critics calling it a bid to rewrite U.S. history through a left-wing lens.

    Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, responded to the GOP criticism of the project during an interview with MSNBC on May 3, saying the 1619 curriculum being allowed in schools is a matter of free speech.

    “This isn’t a project about trying to teach children that our country is evil, but it is a project trying to teach children the truth about what our country was based upon, and it’s only in really confronting that truth—slavery was foundational to the United States, we, after the slavery, experienced 100 years of legalized discrimination against black Americans,” said Hannah-Jones.

    “Mitch McConnell and others like him want for our children to get a propagandistic, nationalistic understanding of history that is not about facts, but it is about how they would want to pretend that our country is.”

    Proponents of critical race theory have argued that it’s needed to demonstrate what they say is “pervasive systemic racism” and facilitate rooting it out.

    Critics draw parallels between critical race theory and Marxism, arguing that the concept advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the critical race theory ideology.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 22:30

  • Subscription Law Enforcement Service Piloted In LA Amid Defunding Police 
    Subscription Law Enforcement Service Piloted In LA Amid Defunding Police 

    This year, violent crime across liberal-run Los Angeles County is out of control amid the “defund the police” movement. A private security firm that describes itself as a “subscription law enforcement service” has launched a pilot program in the metro area to fix this. 

    Motherboard reports Citizen, a neighborhood watch app, partnered with LAPS, or Los Angeles Professional Security, a private security firm, to provide a “subscription law enforcement service” to residents and businesses. 

    From neighborhood watch app to now a Citizen-branded vehicle driving around Los Angeles, providing security services to clients is a business idea that will likely flourish considering defund the police has crushed Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), unable to manage the metro area as shootings and murders skyrocket so far this year. 

    On its website, LAPS defines itself as a “subscription law enforcement service.” An internal email observed by Motherboard said the company is “an additional response partner.” 

    A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard that “LAPS offers a personal rapid response service that we are testing internally with employees as a small test. For example, if someone would like an escort to walk them home late at night, they can request this service. We have spoken with various partners in designing this pilot project.”

    Subscription law enforcement services will probably flourish in liberal-run cities as defunding the police movement is backfiring as these metro areas become more dangerous. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 22:00

  • Is The Pentagon's UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?
    Is The Pentagon’s UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?

    Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There are reasons to be skeptical. After decades of stonewalling on the issue, suddenly American military chiefs appear to be giving credence to claims of UFOs invading Earth.

    Several viral video clips purporting to show extraordinary flying technology have been “confirmed” by the Pentagon as authentic. The Pentagon move is unprecedented.

    The videos of the Unidentified Flying Objects were taken by U.S. air force flight crews or by naval surveillance and subsequently “leaked” to the public. The question is: were the “leaks” authorized by Pentagon spooks to stoke the public imagination of visitors from space? The Pentagon doesn’t actually say what it believes the UFOs are, only that the videos are “authentic”.

    A Senate intelligence committee is to receive a report from the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force next month. That has also raised public interest in the possibility of alien life breaching our skies equipped with physics-defying technology far superior to existing supersonic jets and surveillance systems.

    Several other questions come to mind that beg skepticism. Why does the phenomenon of UFOs or UAP only seem to be associated with the American military? This goes back decades to the speculation during the 1950s about aliens crashing at Roswell in New Mexico. Why is it that only the American military seems privy to such strange encounters? Why not the Russian or Chinese military which would have comparable detection technology to the Americans but they don’t seem to have made any public disclosures on alien encounters? Such a discrepancy is implausible unless we believe that life-forms from lightyears away have a fixation solely on the United States. That’s intergalactic American “exceptionalism” for you!

    Also, the alleged sightings of UFOs invariably are associated with U.S. military training grounds or high-security areas.

    Moreover, the released videos that have spurred renewed public interest in UFOs are always suspiciously of poor quality, grainy and low resolution. Several researchers, such as Mick West, have cogently debunked the videos as optical illusions. That’s not to say that the U.S. air force or naval personnel were fabricating the images. They may genuinely believe that they were witnessing something extraordinary. But as rational optics experts have pointed out there are mundane explanations for seeming unusual aerial observations, such as drones or balloons drifting at high speed in differential wind conditions, or by the crew mistaking a far-off aircraft dipping over the horizon for an object they believe to be much closer.

    The military people who take the videos in good – albeit misplaced – faith about what they are witnessing are not the same as the military or intelligence people who see an opportunity with the videos to exploit the public in a psychological operation.

    Fomenting public anxieties, or even just curiosity, about aliens and super-technology is an expedient way to exert control over the population. At a time when governing authorities are being questioned by a distrustful public and when military-intelligence establishments are viewed as having lost a sense of purpose, what better way to realign public respect by getting them to fret over alien marauders from whom they need protection?

    There is here a close analogy to the way foreign nations are portrayed as adversaries and enemies in order to marshal public support or least deference to the governing establishment and its military. We see this ploy played over and over again with regard to the U.S. and Western demonization of Russia and China as somehow conveying a malign intent towards Western societies. In other words, it’s a case of Cold War and UFOs from the same ideological launchpad, so to speak, in order to distract public attention from internal problems.

    However, more worrying still is that there is a dangerous reinforcing crossover of the two propaganda realms. The fueling of UFO speculation is feeding directly into speculation that U.S. airspace is being invaded by high-tech weapons developed by Russia or China.

    U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Pentagon about whether the aerial “encounters” are advanced weaponry from foreign enemies who are surveilling the American homeland at will. Some U.S. air force aviators have recently expressed to the media a feeling of helplessness in the face of seeming superior technology.

    At a time of heightened animosity towards Russia and China and febrile talk among Pentagon chiefs about the possibility of all-out war, it is not difficult to imagine, indeed it is disturbingly easy to imagine, how optical illusions about alien phenomena could trigger false alarms attributed to Russian or Chinese military incursions.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The stoking of UFO controversy appears to be a classic psyops perpetrated by U.S. military intelligence for the objective of population control. Its aim is to corral the citizenry under the authority of the state and for them to accept the protector function of “our” military. The big trouble is that the psyops with aliens are, in turn, risking the exacerbation of fears and tensions with Russia and China.

    With all the Pentagon-assisted chatter, it is more likely that an F-18 squadron could mistake an errant weather balloon on the horizon for an alien spacecraft. And amid our new Cold War tensions, it is but a small conceptual step to further imagine that the UFO is not from outer space but rather is a Russian or Chinese hypersonic cruise missile heading towards the U.S. mainland.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 21:30

  • Doctors Claim A Cocktail Of Cheap Drugs Could Help India Extinguish COVID Crisis
    Doctors Claim A Cocktail Of Cheap Drugs Could Help India Extinguish COVID Crisis

    Last week, we reported that several increasingly desperate communities across India have been embracing a controversial (at least, in the US) strategy for trying to mitigate the fallout from the crisis. Communities have been doling out inexpensive anti-malaria drugs as a prophylactic against COVID-19, citing scant data showing it could help lower mortality and hospitalization rates – which is critical given India’s nationwide shortage of hospital beds and oxygen to sustain seriously ill patients.

    The drug in question, ivermectin, is in some ways similar to hydroxychloroquine, which also showed some evidence of being an effective prophylactic to protect the most vulnerable against COVID-19 (President Trump memorably informed the press that he was taking it daily at one point). But since India is mostly cut off from adequate supplies of vaccines and therapeutics like Gilead’s remdesivir (which studies have shown isn’t all that effective anyway), public health officials have been forced to improvise.

    The Times of India published an editorial this week signed by Dr. Vikas Sukhatme and Vidula Sukhatme, two American academics and medical professionals,  suggesting a handful of cheap, commonplace drugs that could be taken as prophylactics by the most vulnerable patients in India. The drugs aren’t approved to treat COVID, but nevertheless have shown “remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus.” Deploying them would likely reduce mortality and hospitalizations. While some of the drugs are currently being tested in large-scale randomized trials, there’s no time to wait for the outcome.

    Instead, Indian health authorities should issue guidelines recommending use of the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to prescribe them as interventions. The resulting data should of course be tracked for any insights it might show.

    The two main drugs cited by the doctors, ivermectin and fluvoxamine, have proven effective, and anecdotal unpublished data from more than 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients suggests that prescribing fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

    While daily case numbers have retreated from the peak in India, hospitalizations and mortality remain near all-time highs. Of course, as developing nations fight to waive IP protections for COVID vaccines, the notion that cheap existing drugs might be effective at combating COVID would represent yet another threat to Big Pharma’s bottom line.

    Read the full editorial below:

    The COVID-19 humanitarian calamity unfolding in India is on a scale not seen in this pandemic. This is an extraordinary situation – and it may benefit from an extraordinary response.

    There exist affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs approved for non-COVID-19 use which show remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus. Deploying these drugs in India is likely to rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.

    Some of these drugs are being tested in large-scale randomized clinical trials in the US and abroad but in most cases, definitive efficacy data is pending. With the current COVID-19 situation in India, we do not have time to wait for results of these studies. Importantly, currently available safety and outcomes data on these drugs is strong enough that it is time to incorporate them into national practice guidelines. Indian authorities should issue such guidelines on the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to use these interventions. The resulting real world data from a few healthcare settings in select cities should be tracked in real time and guidelines suitably revised. If such measures were adopted, we could see effects in 3-4 weeks. This strategy might be unusual but it is not unheard of: France has the Temporary Recommendation for Use, a “regulatory instrument which aims to allow, on a temporary basis, the use of a medicinal product to allow its effectiveness to be evaluated on the basis of its use.”

    The choice of drugs is critical. We have worked closely with personnel at the Food and Drug Administration and have connected with the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the merits of repurposed drugs. Based on a mechanistic rationale, data in animal models, human retrospective analyses, clinical trials (some randomized, others not) and anecdotal human data, we created a prioritized list of interventions that hold the greatest promise and that could be deployed at scale. For instance, there is strong data from a randomized trial and a real-world study that administering fluvoxamine sharply reduces the need for hospitalization in COVID-19 outpatients. Moreover, anecdotal unpublished data in over 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients from several community practitioners suggests that administering fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

    Intervention as early as possible after symptom onset is key. Ivermectin is already listed as a “MAY DO” on the ICMR and Indian government guidelines for treatment of acute mild COVID-19 and we suggest that fluvoxamine be added in this category. Also, ivermectin in the prophylactic setting merits serious consideration. For the hospitalized, there are treatments currently used for other conditions that might reduce the need for ventilator support and lower the risk of death. These include inhaled adenosine, cyproheptadine and dipyridamole. For ideas for which there is rather limited human data, the government should offer pre-approved pilot protocols and funding for rapid implementation in select centers rather than issue a recommendation for use.

    To be clear, it would be ideal to pursue large clinical trials to test the efficacy of all promising interventions. A randomized adaptive design could efficiently sift through the many possibilities. It may be possible to rapidly set up parallel protocols in India if government authorities can expedite the regulatory process and offer funding. US trial investigators can be persuaded to provide protocols and web-based data collection tools.

    We hope that the Indian government will take advantage of repurposed drug research and use temporary use authorizations or guidelines to rapidly promote the most promising therapies at a national level while in parallel aggressively encourage pilot studies and large-scale clinical trials with shovel-ready protocols and funding. Given the current situation, India has little to lose in piloting these approaches: the potential gains could benefit not just the country but the world.

    * * *

    Source: Times of India

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 21:00

  • Happy Anniversary, Taper Tantrum
    Happy Anniversary, Taper Tantrum

    By Nick Colas of DataTrek Research

    Three Markets topics to discuss today:

    Issue #1: What are US markets trying to tell us? It would be tempting to say “Nothing” … That we’re only 3 percent off the S&P 500’s record close of 4,233, set all of 8 trading days ago. That there’s plenty of good news to come. That Europe is just now reopening … All these are true, but they are also broadly known and therefore already in asset prices.

    The way we see it, the real issue simply is that US equities are seemingly priced for perfection in a world that investors know will always be imperfect.

    • The S&P 500 is up 60 percent since the start of 2019, just 29 months ago.
    • Corporate earnings power, assuming Wall Street’s 2022 estimates are reasonably correct ($163/share 2019A, $210/share 2022E), is up just 29 percent.
    • That 2x differential reflects optimism about everything from Federal Reserve policy to a fiscal stimulus-charged US economy and corporate earnings leverage.

    Takeaway (1): as we’ve been discussing with you recently, seeing an S&P 500 materially higher than today at the end of 2021 is a tall order. Three years of double-digit gains are relatively rare in the historical record, and we’ve just had 2 (31 pct in 2019, 18 pct in 2021). Year to date the S&P is up 9.7 percent, and it has stalled out every time it has breached a 10 percent YTD gain. We remain optimistic on US large cap (but not small cap) equities because we believe earnings estimates are too low. But we’ll repeat our message from last week: if you want to lighten up on equity exposure here, history is on your side.

    Takeaway (2): if you’re of the mind to trade this market, then watch the CBOE VIX Index for reasonable entry points. The numbers to look for are 28 and 36-40. These are 1 and 2 standard deviations from the long run mean, and VIX closes at/above these levels have been a good entry point over the last year.

    Takeaway (3): we’ll remind you of our “5 percent rule”, namely buy every S&P 500 close where the index sees a 5 percent one-day decline after the first such drop. See the first one, don’t buy it. See the second, third and so forth – those are your opportunities for buying when there’s the proverbial “blood in the streets”. This approach worked well on a one-year forward basis both in 2008/2009 and 2020.

    * * *

    Issue #2: The latest money flow data for US-listed mutual/exchange traded funds as a barometer for retail investor confidence in asset prices. (Information courtesy of the Investment Company Institute’s weekly flows report).

    The key fact about the most recent data (week ending May 12th) is that fund investors are back to buying US equity funds. Last week saw $9.7 bn of inflows into these products, and the prior week had $5.1 bn of inflows. That puts the MTD total at $14.9 bn, enough to offset April’s $7.8 bn of outflows. February and March flows were both strongly positive ($45 bn, $53 bn), so for the moment we’re back to seeing fund investors embrace US equities.

    Also notable in this week’s flow data: commodity funds (mostly physical gold) are catching some retail investor interest again. Inflows totaled $1.1 bn for the week ending May 12, following on from $550 mn of inflows in the prior week. We see that as consistent with increasing investor concerns about inflation and, as mentioned in last night’s note we do like gold as a hedge against rising prices.

    * * *

    Issue #3: The 2013 “Taper Tantrum” – a brief history.

    How it started (8 years ago this Saturday): At a Congressional hearing on May 22, 2013, then-Fed Chair Bernanke said in response to a question: “If we see continued improvement, and we have confidence that it is going to be sustained, in the next few meetings we could take a step down in our pace of asset purchases.” This was the first time the Fed had discussed tapering, and it wasn’t even in Bernanke’s prepared remarks of that day.

    Important: The Fed then spent the rest of the year deliberating when and how to curtail asset purchases. It did not actually start “tapering” until December 2013, and Treasury yields actually fell in 2014 from 3 percent at the start of the year to 2 percent by the end. The 2013 “Taper Tantrum” happened before anything actually “happened”. It’s fair to say it was a tantrum about Fed miscommunication rather than actual Fed policy.

    How it went:

    The chart below shows that 10-year Treasury yields (the solid red line, left axis) broke 2 percent the day Chair Bernanke uttered those words (highlighted by the info box) and essentially went directly to 3 percent by early September 2013.

    The S&P 500 (dotted black line, right axis), which had already rallied 16 pct YTD, stalled out from May 22nd all the way to October 8th (same price both days, 1655) before rallying another 12 percent into the end of the year. The maximum drawdown from “Taper Day” was 5 percent – the low you see in late June.

    Takeaway: 2013’s capital markets “tantrum” was in Treasuries much more than US equities. The rapid rise in Treasury yields did throw a little cold water on stocks, yes. But let’s keep some perspective about that: 2013 as a whole was the best year for US stocks of the entire 21st century to date.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 20:30

  • Cactus If You Can: Traffickers Are Cleaning Out Deserts Of Rare Succulents 
    Cactus If You Can: Traffickers Are Cleaning Out Deserts Of Rare Succulents 

    Some of the world’s rarest cacti are found in the deserts of South America. A recent raid in Italy uncovered a smuggling network of thorny succulents, according to NYTimes. 

    The year’s long operation, dubbed “Operation Atacama,” was a collaborative effort that began in February 2020 by Italian and Chilean authorities to return some of the rarest cacti to Chile. 

    Andrea Cattabriga, a cactus expert and president of the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation, told NYT that Operation Atacama was absolutely stunning when 1,000 of some of the world’s rarest cacti (all from Chile) were seized in Italy. 

    Cattabriga said the 1035 seized cacti from genera Copiapoa and Eriosyce were worth $1.2 million on the black market. All of the cacti were protected plants in Chile and were illegally exported to Italy. Some of the plants were more than a century old. 

    NYTimes said most of the cacti had been returned to Chile, calling it “the biggest international cactus seizure in nearly three decades. It also highlights how much money traffickers may be earning from the trade.” 

    From seizure to repatriation, the succulents were housed in the Città Studi Botanical Garden of Milan, Italy, then shipped in boxes to Servicio Agrícola y Ganadero and Corporación Nacional Forestal in Santiago de Chile on April 19. 

    The massive seizure highlights the growing black market for rare cacti – comes when 30% of the world’s 1,500 cactus species are nearing extinction. 

    And who is to blame for smugglers clearing out deserts of rare cacti? Well, social media, of course. 

    These prickly succulents have been trending on social media for a few years, promoted by indoor plant influencers promoting cactus plants as the hottest look for any hipster home. The work-at-home transition during the pandemic only accelerated demand for cacti. But the average hipster’s cactus collection won’t include the rarest ones like ones seized in Italy because those plants cost thousands of dollars. Seasoned collectors from the US, Europe, Japan, and China demand the rarest cacti.    

    So add rare cacti to the black market of living wild animals, birds, and reptiles, along with body parts of rhino horns, elephant tusks, antelope scarves, and tiger bones. 

    “Just about every plant you can probably think of is trafficked in some way,” said Eric Jumper, a special agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said rare cacti and other succulents extremely sought after, along with orchids and, more frequently, carnivorous species.

    NYT points out the black market for plants is overlooked, calling it “plant blindness” because humans focus more on animals. 

    “The basic functioning of the planet would effectively grind to a halt without plants, but people care more about animals,” said Jared Margulies, a geographer at the University of Alabama who studies plant trafficking. “A lot of plant species are not receiving the amount of attention they would be if they had eyes and faces.”

    Virtue-signaling hipsters who seek rare cacti in their homes as a fashion statement don’t realize that their demand in other parts of the world incentivizes smugglers to find these plants and consequently destroy the local ecosystem. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 20:00

  • CDC's Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian "Fun"
    CDC’s Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian “Fun”

    Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities,

    The Center for Disease Control’s major easing of its mask-use recommendations was a welcome development, giving Americans hope that logic can triumph over the CDC’s bureaucratic inertia and its Covid-era tendency to push the most severe restrictions on human activity at every turn.

    Next, let’s hope this outbreak of rationality proves contagious within the CDC, and brings a major overhaul of the agency’s absurd guidelines for summer camps.

    Via North Carolina Health News

    CDC Trapped in March 2020 Mindset

    In April, the CDC published guidance for operating youth camps that was the latest eye-rolling example of CDC maximalism that conflicts with what we’ve learned about Covid-19.

    Before we examine the CDC guidance, let’s review some of the key things that we now know about Covid-19 that we didn’t in March 2020:

    • Covid-19 presents little risk at all to children. According to CDC data, only 295 children age 0-17 have died with Covid-19. Compare that to the CDC’s estimation that 600 died of the flu during the 2017-18 season.

    • Outdoor transmission pretty much never happens. An Irish study of more than 232,000 Covid-19 cases found only 0.1% of cases were transmitted outside.

    • Surface transmission isn’t a material source of spread. The CDC has declared the risk of contracting the virus by touching surfaces or objects is low, and that rather than cleaning with disinfectant, “soap and water is enough to reduce risk” (unless there’s a known or suspected Covid-19 case in a community setting).

    • Vaccines are abundantly available. According to the CDC’s vaccination data, 60.5% of U.S. adults have have received at least one vaccine dose, and 48.4% are fully vaccinated. Gone are the days when finding the vaccine was a challenge; today, anyone who wants the vaccine can readily find it.

    • Covid-19 cases and deaths are in a free fall. The 7-day averages for cases and deaths have respectively fallen 89% and 83% from their peaks. On Sunday, the entire state of Texas reported not a single death from the virus. Today, San Francisco General Hospital has no Covid-19 patients for the first time since March 2020.

    With that knowledge in mind, here are some key ingredients in the CDC’s recipe for dystopian summer fun:

    • Two-layer masks should be worn at all times—indoors and out—except for eating, drinking and swimming

    • Don’t allow close-contact games and sports

    • Avoid sharing of objects such as toys, games and art supplies

    • Separate children on buses by skipping rows

    • Divide children into “cohorts” and then keep them away from other cohorts

    • Children should stay three feet away from kids in their cohort and six feet away from those outside their cohort; campers and staff should stay six feet from each other, as should fellow staff members

    • While eating and drinking, stay six feet away from everybody—even your own cohort

    Who exactly are these draconian, fun-killing guidelines meant to protect? The children aren’t in any meaningful danger—the number of children who typically drown in a given year is more than double the number of child Covid deaths we’ve observed in 15 months.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, against a backdrop of rapidly-vanishing Covid-19 infections across the country, camp staff will have had more than ample opportunity to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before the first kids arrive.

    We’re told to “follow the science,” but what is the CDC following? The agency’s guidelines read like they were written during the early dark ages of the Covid outbreak, when the peril was still filled with overwhelming mystery, and “erring on the side of caution” still had a trace of credibility.

    As Columbia University pediatric immunologist Mark Gorelik told New York Magazine, “We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain the spread of illness. However, the CDC’s recommendations cross the line into excess and are, frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a mask. Period.“

    Read more and subscribe at https://starkrealities.substack.com/

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 19:30

  • Australia's Defense Chief Bans All "Woke" Events Which "Distract" From Military's Mission
    Australia’s Defense Chief Bans All “Woke” Events Which “Distract” From Military’s Mission

    After last month’s hugely embarrassing raunchy and cringeworthy twerking dance routine incident at a formal military ceremony attempted by top officers in Sydney, Australia’s military is apparently attempting to crackdown on appeasing “wokeness” and awkward attempts at ‘keeping up with the times’ – especially when it comes to those things that have nothing to do with training, defense preparedness, and national security. 

    The latest controversial or perhaps even embarrassing incident to draw media attention reportedly involved a Monday morning tea event attended by top brass of the Defense Ministry to mark the “International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia” (or “IDAHOBIT”…no really). Attendees were encouraged to wear rainbow clothing to mark the occasion, or also “ally pins” in order to show “support for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) colleagues, friends and family,” according to a memo that was circulated.

    Not a fan of rainbow clothes: Defense Minister Peter Dutton

    “Defence ADF and APS employees are encouraged to acknowledge IDAHOBIT in a COVID-safe manner. Examples for activity include hosting morning teas, encouraging discussions regarding the importance of IDAHOBIT, raising awareness of LGBTI rights and wearing visible rainbow clothing or ally pins,” the memo had said.

    “As this circular notes, the public service serves the community and it should therefore reflect what our community looks like,” the directive had read. “Diversity strengthens us and celebrating our diversity encourages safer and respectful workplaces.”

    But Defense Minister Peter Dutton in response issued a blanket ban on such “woke” events within the military. He circulated a strongly worded memo on Friday which has unleashed a storm of controversy as it was seen as a “sin” against diversity. Previously Dutton vowed to “refocus” the defense department on its core mission of protecting the country, and slammed the “woke tea” event as having nothing to do with the military’s essential values…

    “To meet these important aims [of defense readiness], changing language protocols and those events such as morning teas where personnel are encouraged to wear particular clothes in celebration are not required and should cease.”

    “I’ve been very clear to the chiefs that I will not tolerate discrimination. But we are not pursuing a woke agenda,” Dutton wrote in the order. “Our task is to build up the morale in the Australian Defence Force and these woke agendas don’t help.”

    Via ABC.net.au

    As for those accusing the defense chief of not representing “diversity” well, his response as spelled out in the ban order pointed out that the nation’s military “represents the people of Australia” and therefore “must at all times be focused on our primary mission to protect Australia’s national security interests.”

    Dutton emphasized, “We must not be putting effort into matters that distract from this” – suggesting that ‘rainbow tea events’ certainly do distract from the mission.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 19:00

  • India Demands Social Media Networks Remove References To "Indian Variant" Of COVID
    India Demands Social Media Networks Remove References To “Indian Variant” Of COVID

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Authorities in India are now demanding that social media networks remove references to the “Indian variant” of COVID-19, despite the fact that it originated in India.

    New Delhi’s information technology ministry is claiming that mentions of the Indian mutant strain are misleading and “without basis” because there is no scientific reason to link it to India.

    “It has come to our knowledge that a false statement is being circulated online which implies that an ‘Indian variant’ of coronavirus is spreading across the countries. This is completely FALSE,” the letter said.

    That claim itself is manifestly false given that the B.1.617 strain was first reported in India.

    Other countries such as South Africa and the UK (with the so-called ‘Kent strain’) have also had their name attached to mutant variants of the coronavirus.

    Despite the stupidity of India’s demand, some left-wing politicians are already acquiescing to it.

    On Friday, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would no talk about an “Indian variant” and would instead refer to it as “April 02”.

    However, during the same press conference, Sturgeon went on to refer to the ‘Kent variant’ – thereby completely contradicting herself.

    Health Secretary Humza Yousa also insisted that the Indian variant shouldn’t be called the Indian variant because it is “important for us not to allow this virus to divide us as communities and people.”

    The WHO and the establishment media in America blasted President Donald Trump for referring to the original outbreak of COVID-19 as the “China virus” despite China being the origin of the virus.

    The notion that correctly pinpointing where a virus originated is somehow bigoted or racist even extended to travel bans in the early weeks of the pandemic, which the WHO warned against, saying it could lead to the “stigmatization” of Chinese people.

    As we highlighted last week, an independent scientific panel ruled that the World Health Organization could have saved 3 million lives if it had advised countries to impose border controls earlier.

    Apparently, not being seen to be racist was more important at the time.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:30

  • ​​​​​​​"Evacuation Activated" After Nyiragongo Volcano Erupts In Eastern Congo
    ​​​​​​​”Evacuation Activated” After Nyiragongo Volcano Erupts In Eastern Congo

    All of a sudden, volcano activity worldwide has increased in recent months. The latest eruption occurred on Saturday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reported BBC News. 

    Lava from the Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the eastern part of sub-Saharan African country is spewing into the night sky. Panicked residents of Goma, a city of 2 million people located 6 miles from the volcano, are being evacuated. 

    “The evacuation plan for the city of Goma has been activated. The government is discussing urgent measures to take now,” a government spokesman Patrick Muyaya tweeted. 

    Dario Tedesco, a volcanologist based in Goma, told Reuters that a new fracture has formed, and the lava flows south toward the city. 

    The last eruption occurred in 2002 where more than 250 people were killed, and 120,000 were left homeless. 

    The New Times in Rwanda tweeted a short clip of the eruption. The close proximity of Goma to the volcano could result in disaster. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu tweeted a stunning video of the lava flow.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Lava is flowing onto streets. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    From afar, the eruption is terrifying. 

    Building structures burned by lava flows. 

    Some say lava flows are moving towards the Rwanda border, and the main road from Goma to Rutshuru has possibly closed. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    People are fleeing Goma. 

    Goma residents headed in droves to Rwanda to escape the eruption. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *This story is developing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:15

  • DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who 'Stormed Capitol' And Sold The Footage
    DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who ‘Stormed Capitol’ And Sold The Footage

    US authorities have seized approximately $90,000 from a far-left BLM organizer who ‘stormed the capitol’ right alongside Trump supporters and sold footage he took of US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt being shot dead by a Capitol Police Officer.

    John Earle Sullivan of Provo, Utah, was also hit with additional criminal charges and now faces a total of eight criminal counts, including weapons charges, according to Reuters. Sullivan is one of more than 440 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 ‘insurrection’ in which Trump supporters who rejected the outcome of the 2020 US election stormed the Capitol with the full support of several Capitol Police officers – some of whom took selfies with the protesters.

    After breaking into the Capitol through an open window, Sullivan was heard encouraging protesters to climb a wall to gain entrance.

    During one conversation with others while inside, Sullivan said, “We gotta get this [expletive] burned.” At other times, he said, among other things, “it’s our house [expletive]” and “we are getting this [expletive].”

    h/t @Cernovich

    Sullivan told U.S. Capitol Police officers to stand down so that they wouldn’t get hurt, according to the court filing (pdf). He joined the crowd trying to open doors to another part of the Capitol, telling people “Hey guys, I have a knife” and asking them to let him get to the front. He did not make it to the doors. He later tried to get the officers guarding the Speaker’s Lobby to go home, telling them: “Bro, I’ve seen people out there get hurt.”

    Following the riot Sullivan appeared on several mainstream television networks CNN and MSNBC, which paid him for the footage.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:00

  • Four Myths About Money That Ought To Die Forever
    Four Myths About Money That Ought To Die Forever

    Authored by Robert Murphy via The Mises Institute,

    With the possible exception of international trade, no topic in economics contains more myths than monetary theory.

    In the present article I address four popular opinions concerning money that suffer from either ambiguity or outright falsehood.

    One: “Money represents a claim on goods and services.”

    Although there is a grain of truth in this view, it is quite simplistic and misconceives what money really is. Money is not a claim on goods and services, the way a bond is a legal claim to (future) cash payments or the way a stock share is a claim on the net assets of a company. On the contrary, money is a good unto itself. If you own a $20 bill, no one is under any contractual obligation to give you anything for it.

    Now of course, in all likelihood people will be willing to exchange all sorts of things for your $20 bill; that’s why you yourself performed labor (or sold something else) to obtain it in the first place. Nonetheless, if we wish to truly understand money, we must distinguish between credit liabilities on the one hand, and a universally accepted medium of exchange (i.e., money) on the other.

    Two: “The purchasing power of money equals the supply of real output divided by the supply of money.”

    As with the first view, this one too has a grain of truth. Specifically, if everything else is held equal, then the “price level” (if we ignore the problems with measurement and arbitrariness) will go up if the money supply grows by more than real output, and will go down if real output grows by more than the stock of money.

    However, other things need not be equal, in particular the demand to hold money. As with every other good, the “price” of money (i.e., its purchasing power—or how many units of radios, televisions, etc. people offer in order to receive units of money) is determined by the supply of dollars and the community’s demand to hold dollars. A given stock of money can be consistent with any price level you want, so long as you are allowed to change the demand for money.

    For example, even if output and the stock of money stayed constant, all prices could double if everyone in the community wanted to cut in half the purchasing power of his or her cash balance. How is this possible? Initially everyone thinks he or she is holding “too much” cash and so tries to spend it. But since the merchants too think they are holding too much, they agree to sell only at higher prices. (If this seems odd to you, consider: Even if you are uncomfortable with $1000 in your wallet—maybe you just won big at the casino—if someone walked up and offers you another $1000 for your shoes, you’d probably accept.)

    If we ignore all of the real world complications caused by timing issues, it’s easy to see that in the new equilibrium, where everyone is content with his or her cash holdings, nothing “real” will have changed. Instead, the unit price of everything (in terms of dollars) will have doubled, so that even though the per capita quantity of dollar bills is still the same, now the average person can only buy half as much real stuff with the money in his wallet. Of course this type of example (which I picked up from Milton Friedman) is very unrealistic, but it does serve to illustrate the point that prices are not a mechanical function of physical stocks of goods and dollar bills. On the contrary, people’s subjective valuations are also critical.

    Three: “Under a gold standard the money is backed by something real, whereas under our present system dollar bills are backed up by faith in the government.”

    Again, I sympathize with this type of view, but when my upper-level students write such things on their exams, I have to take off points for imprecision. Strictly speaking, under a gold standard the money isn’t backed by anything; the money is the gold. Now if we have a government that issues pieces of paper that are 100% redeemable claims on gold, I wouldn’t classify those derivative assets (i.e. the pieces of paper) as money, but perhaps as money certificates. Yet this is a minor quibble.

    My real objection to the view quoted above is that it denies that our current fiat currency is really money. Although (as a libertarian, Austrian economist) I fully condemn the monetary history of the United States, and deplore the means by which the public was forcibly weaned from the gold standard, nonetheless it is simply misleading and inaccurate to deny that the green pieces of paper in our wallets and purses are genuine money. They satisfy the textbook definition: They are a medium of exchange accepted almost universally in a given region. No one is forcing you to accept green pieces of paper when you sell things. (If you don’t want anyone foisting pictures of US presidents on you, then just charge a billion US dollars for everything you sell.) The fact that government coercion (past and present) is necessary to maintain this condition is irrelevant; cigarettes really circulated as money in World War II P.O.W. camps, even though this wouldn’t have occurred without the artificial and coercive environment in which those traders found themselves.

    Four: “Deflation is undesirable because it cripples investment. If prices in general are falling, no one will invest in real goods because he can earn a higher return holding cash.”

    Although this last myth is understandable when espoused by the layperson, it is inexplicable that some trained economists believe it. (For three examples: An NYU professor used it to “shoot down” my Misesian friend in class, Wikipedia’s entry on deflation mentions this argument, and even Gottfried Haberler advances a version of it in this essay.) For one thing, the argument overlooks the fact that there were many years of actual deflation in industrial economies on gold or silver standards; I don’t think investment fell to zero in every single such year. So clearly something must be wrong with the argument.

    Specifically the argument fails because it carelessly assumes that the relevant data for an investor are the spot prices of a particular good from one year to the next. But this is wrong. For example, suppose someone is considering investing in bottles of fermenting grapes that will be ready for sale as wine in exactly one year. The rate of return on this investment concerns the 2005 price of the grapes and the 2006 price of wine. So let us further refine the example and suppose that all prices fall 50% every year; i.e., there is massive deflation and presumably no one should be willing to invest in wine or anything else.

    Yet there is no reason to jump to this conclusion. For example, the 2005 price of the bottle of fermenting grapes might be $100 and the 2005 price of a wine bottle might be $400, while the 2006 price of the bottle of grapes will be $50 and the 2006 price of a wine bottle will be $200. (Notice that, as stipulated, all prices have fallen by 50% per year.) Would our investor prefer to hold his cash, which in a sense appreciates at a real rate of 100% per year? Not at all! With our numbers, the investor would earn a 100% nominal (not just real) return on his money if he invests in the wine industry: He pays $100 for a bottle of fermenting grapes in 2005, then waits one year and sells the resulting bottle of wine for $200.

    Had our investor sat on his $100 in cash in 2005, its purchasing power would have risen from 1/4 of a bottle of wine (in 2005) to 1/2 of a bottle of wine (in 2006). But by investing the cash, his purchasing power goes from 1/4 of a bottle in 2005 to 1 bottle in 2006. Once we allow for the prices of capital goods and raw materials to adjust to expectations of deflation, there is no reason for falling prices to hamper investment whatsoever.

    Conclusion

    Most of the myths concerning money are easily exposed when we consider what money is. Some of the more subtle myths, especially those concerning price deflation, are exposed once we consider the intertemporal price structure. On both counts, the Austrian School of economics serves us well.

    *  *  *

    [Originally published February 28, 2006, as “What Money Isn’t”]

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 17:30

  • China's Mars Rover Rolls Off Lander, Begins Probing Mission 
    China’s Mars Rover Rolls Off Lander, Begins Probing Mission 

    Around 10:40 a.m. Saturday Beijing time, China’s first Mars rover officially drove down its landing platform ramp and began roaming the Red Planet, China National Space Administration (CNSA) said. 

    CNSA release another photograph (here’s the first) of the rover, called Zhurong, which touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a large plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars, last Saturday. 

    Landing on the Red Planet is dangerous – CNSA said last week it was “nine minutes of terror” as the lander descended toward the planet’s surface at a high rate of speed, and the thin atmosphere didn’t have enough friction to slow the descent. 

    Only NASA has reached the surface of Mars intact on multiple occasions. According to the diagram below, the lander (with Zhurong encased inside) relied on parachutes and rocket engines to slow the descent. This method is similar to NASA’s, who has landed Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars.

    Space is no longer limited to the original Cold War superpowers (US & Russia). China has to been thrown into the mix after being the second country to land a rover on Mars. 

    China is becoming more active in space, especially on the Red Planet, alongside the US, which already has NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance probing for life. The US rover recently launched a helicopter, called Ingenuity, already performing five successful flights. 

    Zhurong will spend three Martian months, about 92 Earth days, probing the surface of Mars for evidence of life. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 17:00

  • Oregon First State To Require Vaccination Proof For Maskless Entry Into Businesses, Workplaces, & Churches
    Oregon First State To Require Vaccination Proof For Maskless Entry Into Businesses, Workplaces, & Churches

    Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

    The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is requiring that people in workplaces, businesses, and religious sites show proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to be allowed maskless entry to the facilities.

    The state’s health authorities updated their masking guidance on May 19, following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) rollback of strict mask mandates.

    “Businesses, employers and faith institutions now have the option to adjust their masking guidance to allow fully vaccinated individuals to no longer wear a mask in their establishments,” the OHA declared in a statement.

    “Businesses, employers and faith institutions doing so must have a policy in place to check the vaccination status of all individuals before they enter their establishment. Businesses, employers and faith institutions who do not create such policies will maintain the same masking guidance listed below, regardless of an individual’s vaccination status.”

    The statewide policy is the first of the kind in the country and is raising concerns for those who don’t want to wear masks or take the vaccine due to a number of concerns including safety, side effects, efficacy, mistrust in pharmaceutical companies, and a lack of full FDA approval. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in late March flagged vaccine passport systems’ potential problems in an opinion piece, arguing they would create two tiers of unvaccinated and vaccinated people.

    A spokesperson for business group Oregon Business and Industry, Nathaniel Brown, told the New York Times that they “have serious concerns about the practicality of requiring business owners and workers to be the enforcer.”

    “We are hearing from retailers and small businesses who are concerned about putting their frontline workers in a potentially untenable position when dealing with customers,” Brown said.

    On May 16, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that local governments, but not federal, will be driving “vaccine mandates” of this type.

    “We’re not counting on vaccine mandates at all. It may very well be that local businesses, local jurisdictions will work toward vaccine mandates. That is going to be locally driven and not federally driven,” Walensky told NBC.

    New York, which is offering free vaccination and incentives to get the shot, released in March an application that could act as a COVID-19 vaccine passport.

    The application is named “Excelsior Pass,” and local authorities are thinking about requiring it for sports events, weddings, and businesses.

    In this undated photo, provided by NY Governor’s Press Office on March 27, 2021, is the new “Excelsior Pass” app, a digital pass that people can download to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. (NY Governor’s Press Office via AP/File)

    “New Yorkers have proven they can follow public health guidance to beat back COVID, and the innovative Excelsior Pass is another tool in our new toolbox to fight the virus while allowing more sectors of the economy to reopen safely and keeping personal information secure,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement.

    With the move, Oregon is the first state to implement a system that requires people entering workplaces, businesses, and religious sites to show proof of vaccination.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 16:30

  • GOP Congressman 'Forgot' To Cast Proxy Vote Which Would Have Tanked Democrats' $1.9B Security Spending Bill
    GOP Congressman ‘Forgot’ To Cast Proxy Vote Which Would Have Tanked Democrats’ $1.9B Security Spending Bill

    California GOP Rep. Ken Calvert somehow “forgot” to cast a proxy vote last week on behalf of Texas GOP Rep. John Carter which would have tanked the Democrats $1.9 billion supplemental security bill in response to the Jan. 6 ‘insurrection,’ according to Just The News.

    ‘Forgetful’ Rep. Ken Calvert (R?-CA)

    Carter authorized Calvert to cast the proxy vote for him in a May 14 letter to the House Clerk, Cheryl Johnson – and successfully had a proxy vote cast for him on “the motion to recommit” which preceded the final vote that Calvert ‘forgot’ to cast.

    A spokesperson for Carter told Just The News that “The congressman included a statement in the record that he would’ve voted no,” while a Calvert spokesperson said he “had been voting by proxy for Rep. Carter throughout the week,” adding “Rep. Calvert made a mistake and simply forgot to cast Rep. Carter’s vote.“

    “Simply forgot” to kill the Democrats’ virtue signaling legislation intended to cast Trump supporters as violent criminals. Right.

    More via Just The News:

    House members now have the option to vote by proxy in lieu of in-person voting due to rule changes that the House passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    In the House, a tied vote can sink a bill, so a no vote from one or two of the GOP members who didn’t vote would have blocked the bill from passing. 

    Florida Republican Rep. Daniel Webster was against the measure, but he’s opposed to using proxy voting and was unable to vote in-person on the bill.

    “Rep. Webster missed votes because he was unavoidably detained in the district and wasn’t able to make it to D.C. in time to make the votes,” a spokesperson for Webster told Just the News on Friday. “He likely would have opposed the bill — he didn’t proxy vote on principle as he is on the record opposing proxy-voting and was part of the original lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.”

    Aside from the two GOP members whose votes were not recorded, all other Republican House members voted against the bill. The Democrat-led House passed the bill 213-212 on Thursday. There were three Democrats that voted against the bill and 3 Democrats that voted present. 

    Of course, the bill would have also died had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a spine. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 16:00

  • China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief's Attempts To Hold Military-To-Military Talks
    China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief’s Attempts To Hold Military-To-Military Talks

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    According to a report from Reuters, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been unable to speak with China’s top military official despite multiple attempts to set up talks.

    Tensions have been high between the militaries of the two nations due to the increased US military activity in sensitive areas like the South China Sea. US warships are regularly patrolling the disputed waters and frequently shadow Chinese ships. US spy planes are also constantly buzzing near China’s coast.

    Via USNI News/PLAN

    An unnamed US official told Reuters that there was a debate within the Biden administration about whether Austin should speak with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe or the vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, Xu Qiliang. Xu is a member of China’s politburo and is said to have more influence with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    US officials told the Financial Times that Austin had made three requests to speak with Xu, but China has decided not to engage. While a high-level military meeting has not happened between the two countries during the Biden administration, there has been communication between the armed forces at lower levels.

    Beijing certainly has reasons to be hesitant to engage with Austin. In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a high-level meeting with China’s top diplomats in Alaska. Blinken opened the talks by accusing China of threatening the “rules-based order,” and things quickly fell apart from there.

    The rhetoric out of the Biden administration has been harsh when it comes to Beijing, and the Pentagon has identified China as the top “pacing threat” facing the US military. In his first address to Congress, President Biden said the US was in a competition with China to “win the 21st century.”

    He also said that he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US will militarize the Indo-Pacific “just as we do with NATO in Europe.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 15:30

  • Utilities Are Building New Gas Plants Despite Biden's Promise Of 'Zero-Emission' Electric Grid
    Utilities Are Building New Gas Plants Despite Biden’s Promise Of ‘Zero-Emission’ Electric Grid

    As a recent study from the IEA showed, achieving the emissions goals laid out in the Paris Accords would require oil and gas companies to halt all new projects. Among other things, the report included a daunting timeline of milestones that must be met to achieve net zero by 2050.

    But if anything, the world is moving in a different direction, as a Bloomberg story published Friday shows. Because while President Biden has decided to re-enter the Paris Climate Accords and vowed to take steps to place the US electric grid on the path to net zero emissions by 2030, American utilities are continuing to pursue new gas projects that would far outlast Biden’s administration. Expansions have even been authorized for goal and oil plants.

    It’s just the latest evidence that Biden’s green rheotic doesn’t square up with reality.

    The red-and-white flue stacks of the James M. Barry Electric Generating Station tower over the Mobile River, belching steam into the Alabama sky. The sprawling complex of coal and natural gas plants already spews more than 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent every year. Now it’s about to get even bigger, with a seventh unit estimated to cost $635 million by the time it starts service in 2023.

    The new gas plant, and others like it, has a 40-year lifespan. That means it will still be there in 2035, the year that President Joe Biden has promised a zero-emission electricity sector, and in 2050, the deadline set by its owner, Southern Co., to reach carbon neutrality. It could even burn past 2060, more than a century after the first coal facility opened on the site — making the complex a testament to the endurance of fossil fuels.

    The decision by one of the biggest U.S. power companies to develop new fossil fuel assets is hard to square with a low-carbon future. But it’s not unusual. At least eight large utilities in the U.S. are building new gas plants right now, and another five are thinking about doing the same. That lays bare an uncomfortable truth about the sector’s commitment to fighting climate change: All those carbon-neutral pledges don’t necessarily mean quitting fossil fuels.

    “It seems like false advertising or greenwashing,” said Drew Shindell, a professor at Duke University who studies climate change. “We can’t be building gas infrastructure in the 2020s and 2030s. We need to be closing it down.”

    As BBG notes, if all of the plants under consideration are ultimately completed, they would release 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the emissions of every car in Florida.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Source: Bloomberg

    Why is this? Power companies insist that gas is an important “transition fuel” since it’s both relatively cheap and reliable. California learned the hard way that aggressive restrictions on gas capacity feeding the state power grid can lead to problems: the state was forced to resort to rolling blackouts last summer when a heatwave taxed the electric grid at night when solar was offline.

    Solar simply isn’t reliable enough to be relied upon, as one source pointed out.

    “Cloud cover comes and goes,” said Katharine Bond, vice president of public policy and state affairs at Dominion Energy Inc. “The winds slows. We’ve got to have something that we can ratchet up.” Dominion, which has a 2050 net-zero pledge and is required by Virginia to be 100% carbon free by 2045, is also considering building a new natural gas-fired plant.

    At least one of these plants – Southern’s new Barry plant – will support the 2050 goal because it’s designed for both carbon capture and mixing hydrogen, said CEO Tom Fanning.

    Utilities claim they’re committed to getting “to zero”. Southern, Dominion and others say they plan to eventually invest in green technology to capture and dispose of their emissions, or rework those facilities to burn cleaner fuels like biogas or hydrogen made from renewable sources. However, neither of these strategies has been implemented at scale, and both remain uneconomic at today’s prices. Which means the exact plan for getting to zero still isn’t clear. And two companies, DTE Energy and Xcel Energy, have acknowledged that their carbon goals are based on technology that doesn’t really exist.

    Another option being considered by at least one utility is retiring these gas plants after 25 years instead of 40. Duke Energy, the biggest utility in the US by customer count, is weighing considering building 15 more gas plants, but if the company moves forward with these plants, it will set its climate policy goals to retire them early.

    Amusingly, Duke customers like Apple, Facebook and Google have complained that these new plants could become a “financial albatross” for decades.

    So far, utilities have announced plans for over $70 billion-worth of new gas-fired power plants through 2025, nearly all of which will cost more than clear energy projects,according to a 2019 RMI report. As the cost of clean energy falls, these plants are all expected to become uneconomic to operate by 2035. Despite this, alternatives just aren’t ready yet to stand on their own, so utilities have no choice but to continue investing in natural gas, even as the steady transition to renewables appears unlikely to reverse.

    The takeaway: ignore politicians’ lofty targets. The reality is that by forcing utilities to transition to clean energy before the technology is ready and prices have adjusted will force consumers to incur higher power costs while also putting energy grids at greater risk for a Texas-style collapse.

    Only progressive wingnuts like AOC would be willing to risk the political blowback that might ensue.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 22

Today’s News 22nd May 2021

  • Total Tyranny: We'll All Be Targeted Under The Government's New Pre-Crime Program
    Total Tyranny: We’ll All Be Targeted Under The Government’s New Pre-Crime Program

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America.”

    – James Bamford

    It never fails.

    Just as we get a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be a chance of crawling out of this totalitarian cesspool in which we’ve been mired, we get kicked down again.

    In the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that police cannot carry out warrantless home invasions in order to seize guns under the pretext of their “community caretaking” duties, the Biden Administration announced its plans for a “precrime” crime prevention agency.

    Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back.

    Precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such as Minority Report, aims to prevent crimes before they happen by combining widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs to enable police to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

    This particular precrime division will fall under the Department of Homeland Security, the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.

    The intent, of course, is for the government to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful in its preemptive efforts to combat domestic extremism.

    Where we run into trouble is when the government gets overzealous and over-ambitious and overreaches.

    This is how you turn a nation of citizens into snitches and suspects.

    In the blink of an eye, ordinary Americans will find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.

    Of course, it’s an elaborate setup: we’ll all be targets.

    In such a suspect society, the burden of proof is reversed so that guilt is assumed and innocence must be proven.

    It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

    What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate.

    Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks, all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

    In this way, with the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

    It works the same in any regime.

    As Professor Robert Gellately notes in his book Backing Hitler about the police state tactics used in Nazi Germany: “There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”

    Here’s the thing as the Germans themselves quickly discovered: you won’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

    In fact, all you will need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious to a neighbor, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

    The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

    Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates: The Department of Homeland Security has an expansive list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats. While you’ll definitely send up an alert for using phrases such as dirty bomb, Jihad and Agro terror, you’re just as likely to get flagged for surveillance if you reference the terms SWAT, lockdown, police, cloud, food poisoning, pork, flu, Subway, smart, delays, cancelled, la familia, pirates, hurricane, forest fire, storm, flood, help, ice, snow, worm, warning or social media.

    Use a cell phone: Simply by using a cell phone, you make yourself an easy target for government agents—working closely with corporations—who can listen in on your phone calls, read your text messages and emails, and track your movements based on the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone. Mention any of the so-called “trigger” words in a conversation or text message, and you’ll get flagged for sure.

    Drive a car: Unless you’ve got an old junkyard heap without any of the gadgets and gizmos that are so attractive to today’s car buyers (GPS, satellite radio, electrical everything, smart systems, etc.), driving a car today is like wearing a homing device: you’ll be tracked from the moment you open that car door thanks to black box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems that can monitor your speed, direction, location, the number of miles traveled, and even your seatbelt use. Once you add satellites, GPS devices, license plate readers, and real-time traffic cameras to the mix, there’s nowhere you can go on our nation’s highways and byways that you can’t be followed. By the time you add self-driving cars into the futuristic mix, equipped with computers that know where you want to go before you do, privacy and autonomy will be little more than distant mirages in your rearview mirror.

    Attend a political rally: Enacted in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

    Express yourself on social media: The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. A decorated Marine, 26-year-old Brandon Raub was targeted by the Secret Service because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for having “dangerous” opinions, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

    Serve in the military: Operation Vigilant Eagle, the brainchild of the Dept. of Homeland Security, calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” Police agencies are also using Beware, an “early warning” computer system that tips them off to a potential suspect’s inclination to be a troublemaker and assigns individuals a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—based on a variety of factors including one’s criminal records, military background, medical history and social media surveillance.

    Disagree with a law enforcement official: A growing number of government programs are aimed at identifying, monitoring and locking up anyone considered potentially “dangerous” or mentally ill (according to government standards, of course). For instance, a homeless man in New York City who reportedly had a history of violence but no signs of mental illness was forcibly detained in a psych ward for a week after arguing with shelter police. Despite the fact that doctors cited no medical reason to commit him, the man was locked up in accordance with a $22 million program that monitors mentally ill people considered “potentially” violent. According to the Associated Press, “A judge finally ordered his release, ruling that the man’s commitment violated his civil rights and that bureaucrats had meddled in his medical treatment.”

    Call in sick to work: In Virginia, a so-called police “welfare check” instigated by a 58-year-old man’s employer after he called in sick resulted in a two-hour, SWAT team-style raid on the man’s truck and a 72-hour mental health hold. During the standoff, a heavily armed police tactical team confronted Benjamin Burruss as he was leaving an area motel, surrounded his truck, deployed a “stinger” device behind the rear tires, launched a flash grenade, smashed the side window in order to drag him from the truck, handcuffed and searched him, and transported him to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and mental health hold. All of this was done despite the fact that police acknowledged they had no legal basis nor probable cause for detaining Burruss, given that he had not threatened to harm anyone and was not mentally ill.

    Limp or stutter: As a result of a nationwide push to certify a broad spectrum of government officials in mental health first-aid training (a 12-hour course comprised of PowerPoint presentations, videos, discussions, role playing and other interactive activities), more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported for having mental health issues by non-medical personnel. Mind you, once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, or a dissident watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there. For instance, one 37-year-old disabled man was arrested, diagnosed by police and an unlicensed mental health screener as having “mental health issues,” apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait, and subsequently locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will and with no access to family and friends. A subsequent hearing found that Gordon Goines, who suffers from a neurological condition similar to multiple sclerosis, has no mental illness and should not have been confined.

    Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad: According to the Transportation Security Administration’s 92-point secret behavior watch list for spotting terrorists, these are among some of the telling signs of suspicious behavior: fidgeting, whistling, bad body odor, yawning, clearing your throat, having a pale face from recently shaving your beard, covering your mouth with your hand when speaking and blinking your eyes fast. You can also be pulled aside for interrogation if you “have ‘unusual items,’ like almanacs and ‘numerous prepaid calling cards or cell phones.’” One critic of the program accurately referred to the program as a “license to harass.”

    Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance: No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. John Crawford was shot by police in an Ohio Wal-Mart for holding an air rifle sold in the store that he may have intended to buy. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a California police officer who mistook the boy’s toy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the Wii remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest. Another police officer repeatedly shot 70-year-old Bobby Canipe during a traffic stop. The cop saw the man reaching for his cane and, believing the cane to be a rifle, opened fire.

    Stare at a police officer: Miami-Dade police slammed the 14-year-old Tremaine McMillian to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and handcuffing him after he allegedly gave them “dehumanizing stares” and walked away from them, which the officers found unacceptable.

    Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government: You might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you: express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers); exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership); read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books; show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies); fear an economic collapse; buy gold and barter items; subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation; voice fears about Big Brother or big government; expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties; or believe in a New World Order conspiracy. This is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced or declared unfit for society. 

    Attend a public school: Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.” From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement. Additionally, as part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the FBI—the nation’s de facto secret police force—has been recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist” as part of its “Don’t Be a Puppet” campaign.

    Speak truth to power: Long before Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon who were being singled out for daring to speak truth to power. These men and others like them had their phone calls monitored and data files collected on their activities and associations. For a little while, at least, they became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

    Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

    All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 00:00

  • Watch Postmates Robot In The Wild Of Downtown Los Angeles 
    Watch Postmates Robot In The Wild Of Downtown Los Angeles 

    A new video that surfaced on TikTok showed what appeared to be a Postmates Serve delivery robot cruising down the sidewalk of Los Angeles, dodging a homeless man laying on the pathway, and continued on its route to deliver food to a customer. 

    If you had to ask us, this video is a glimpse of the dystopic future in liberal-run cities where automation displaces low-skilled workers and the homeless population continues to increase. 

    @supersnacksupreme

    ##postmates ##postmatesrobot ##delivery ##melrose ##losangeles ##la ##fyp ##foryoupage ##foodiemobbb

    ♬ original sound – supersnacksupreme

    https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js

    TikTok was awash with comments about the dystopic world ahead: 

    “This is the future, and it’s looking pretty bleak,” said glassfox. 

    “This is so dystopian,” Kendall Tichner said. 

    Another person said, “when are people going to realize they are replacing people’s jobs with robots this is the start.” 

    Someone else added: “There definitely something wrong with this” video. 

    This is a taste of the dystopic world ahead where automation displaces millions of humans. Some of them will wind up homeless or perhaps be given generous UBI checks as technological unemployment is set to soar by the end of this decade. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 23:40

  • Caught Red-Handed: CDC Changes Test Thresholds To Virtually Eliminate New COVID Cases Among Vaxx'd
    Caught Red-Handed: CDC Changes Test Thresholds To Virtually Eliminate New COVID Cases Among Vaxx’d

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    New policies will artificially deflate “breakthrough infections” in the vaccinated, while the old rules continue to inflate case numbers in the unvaccinated.

    The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

    They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

    The trick is in their reporting of what they call “breakthrough infections” – that is people who are fully “vaccinated” against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

    Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

    1. False-positive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)

    2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of “Covid case”, used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a “Covid19 case”, even if they never experienced any symptoms.

    Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all, and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

    Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected “breakthrough infections”.

    From the CDC’s instructions for state health authorities on handling “possible breakthrough infections” (uploaded to their website in late April):

    For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

    Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.

    Essentially labs were running as many cycles as necessary to achieve a positive result, despite experts warning that this was pointless (even Fauci himself said anything over 35 cycles is meaningless).

    But NOW, and only for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept samples achieved from 28 cycles or fewer. That can only be a deliberate decision in order to decrease the number of “breakthrough infections” being officially recorded.

    Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as “covid cases”.

    That’s right. Even if a sample collected at the low CT value of 28 can be sequenced into the virus alleged to cause Covid19, the CDC will no longer be keeping records of breakthrough infections that don’t result in hospitalisation or death.

    From their website:

    As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance. Previous case counts, which were last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only and will not be updated moving forward.

    Just like that, being asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – will no longer count as a “Covid case” but only if you’ve been vaccinated.

    The CDC has put new policies in place which effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis. Meaning, from now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with Covid19 than vaccinated people.

    Consider…

    Person A has not been vaccinated. They test positive for Covid using a PCR test at 40 cycles and, despite having no symptoms, they are officially a “covid case”.

    Person B has been vaccinated. They test positive at 28 cycles, and spend six weeks bedridden with a high fever. Because they never went into a hospital and didn’t die they are NOT a Covid case.

    Person C, who was also vaccinated, did die. After weeks in hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems. Only their positive PCR test was 29 cycles, so they’re not officially a Covid case either.

    The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

    To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

    If you apply them only to the vaccinated, but keep the old rules for the unvaccinated, the only possible result can be that the official records show “Covid” is much more prevalent among the latter than the former.

    This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number, and systematically minimise the other.

    What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 23:20

  • "Mask Up To Keep It Up" – Study Finds Links COVID To Erectile Dysfunction
    “Mask Up To Keep It Up” – Study Finds Links COVID To Erectile Dysfunction

    A new study published in The World Journal of Men’s Health says aftereffects of contracting COVID-19 could cause erectile dysfunction in men.

    “Our research shows that COVID-19 can cause widespread endothelial dysfunction in organ systems beyond the lungs and kidneys. The underlying endothelial dysfunction that happens because of COVID-19 can enter the endothelial cells and affect many organs, including the penis,” said Ranjith Ramasamy, M.D., associate professor and director of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Reproductive Urology Program.

    “In our pilot study, we found that men who previously did not complain of erectile dysfunction developed pretty severe erectile dysfunction after the onset of COVID-19 infection,” Ramasamy continued. 

    Ramasamy and researchers from UMiami discovered long after recovery, the virus may stay in mens’ penises for months on end. And if that wasn’t scary, researchers further hypothesize that the “widespread blood vessel dysfunction” caused by COVID could contribute to erectile dysfunction. 

    “The blood vessels themselves malfunction and are not able to provide enough blood to enter the penis for an erection,” Ramasamy said. “We found that the virus affects the blood vessels that supply the penis, causing erectile dysfunction.”

    The virus has been associated with damaging other organs, such as the lungs, kidneys, and brain. But now, after collecting penile tissue samples from two men with a history of COVID infections, UMiami researchers believe erectile dysfunction “could be permanent.”

    This isn’t the first study that has claimed COVID can cause erectile dysfunction. 

    In March, researchers from the University of Rome published a study in the medical journal Andrology titled “”Mask up to keep it up”: Preliminary evidence of the association between erectile dysfunction and COVID‐19,” which said those who contracted the virus were 5.6x more likely to have erectile dysfunction. 

    Ramasamy said more data is needed to understand better how widespread erectile dysfunction is post-COVID infection. 

    Both studies come as one of the biggest deflationary threats looms over the global economy: US birth rates have fallen to their lowest level in a generation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 23:00

  • Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, And Why It Matters
    Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters

    Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearEnergy.com,

    On January 8, 2014, at New York University in Brooklyn, there occurred a unique event in the annals of global warming: nearly eight hours of structured debate between three climate scientists supporting the consensus on manmade global warming and three climate scientists who dispute it, moderated by a team of six leading physicists from the American Physical Society (APS) led by Dr. Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist at New York University. The debate, hosted by the APS, revealed consensus-supporting climate scientists harboring doubts and uncertainties and admitting to holes in climate science – in marked contrast to the emphatic messaging of bodies such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    At one point, Koonin read an extract from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report released the previous year. Computer model-simulated responses to forcings – the term used by climate scientists for changes of energy flows into and out of the climate system, such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – “can be scaled up or down.” This scaling included greenhouse gas forcings.

    Some forcings in some computer models had to be scaled down to match computer simulations to actual climate observations. But when it came to making centennial projections on which governments rely and drive climate policy, the scaling factors were removed, probably resulting in a 25 to 30 percent over-prediction of the 2100 warming.

    The ensuing dialogue between Koonin and Dr. William Collins of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – a lead author of the climate model evaluation chapter in the Fifth Assessment Report – revealed something more troubling and deliberate than holes in scientific knowledge:

    • Dr. Koonin: But if the model tells you that you got the response to the forcing wrong by 30 percent, you should use that same 30 percent factor when you project out a century.

    • Dr. Collins: Yes. And one of the reasons we are not doing that is we are not using the models as [a] statistical projection tool.

    • Dr. Koonin: What are you using them as?

    • Dr. Collins: Well, we took exactly the same models that got the forcing wrong and which got sort of the projections wrong up to 2100.

    • Dr. Koonin: So, why do we even show centennial-scale projections?

    • Dr. Collins: Well, I mean, it is part of the [IPCC] assessment process.

    Koonin was uncommonly well-suited to lead the APS climate workshop. He has a deep understanding of computer models, which have become the workhorses of climate science. As a young man, Koonin wrote a paper on computer modeling of nuclear reaction in stars and taught a course on computational physics at Caltech. In the early 1990s, he was involved in a program using satellites to measure the Earth’s albedo – that is, the reflection of incoming solar radiation back into space. As a student at Caltech in the late 1960s, he was taught by Nobel physicist Richard Feynman and absorbed what Koonin calls Feynman’s “absolute intellectual honesty.”

    On becoming BP’s chief scientist in 2004, Koonin became part of the wider climate change milieu. Assignments included explaining the physics of man-made global warming to Prince Philip at a dinner in Buckingham Palace. In 2009, Koonin was appointed an under-secretary at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration.

    The APS climate debate was the turning point in Koonin’s thinking about climate change and consensus climate science (“The Science”).

    “I began by believing that we were in a race to save the planet from climate catastrophe,” Koonin writes in his new book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters.”

    “I came away from the APS workshop not only surprised, but shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed.”

    “Unsettled” is an authoritative primer on the science of climate change that lifts the lid on The Science and finds plenty that isn’t as it should be.

    “As a scientist,” writes Koonin, “I felt the scientific community was letting the public down by not telling the whole truth plainly.”

    Koonin’s aim is to right that wrong.

    Koonin’s indictment of The Science starts with its reliance on unreliable computer models. Usefully describing the earth’s climate, writes Koonin, is “one of the most challenging scientific simulation problems.” Models divide the atmosphere into pancake-shaped boxes of around 100km wide and one kilometer deep. But the upward flow of energy from tropical thunder clouds, which is more than thirty times larger than that from human influences, occurs over smaller scales than the programmed boxes. This forces climate modellers to make assumptions about what happens inside those boxes. As one modeller confesses, “it’s a real challenge to model what we don’t understand.”

    Inevitably, this leaves considerable scope for modelers’ subjective views and preferences. A key question climate models are meant to solve is estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide (ECS), which aims to tell us by how much temperatures rise from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet in 2020, climate modelers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute admitted to tuning their model by targeting an ECS of about 3° Centigrade. “Talk about cooking the books,” Koonin comments.

    The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Self-evidently, computer projections can’t be tested against a future that’s yet to happen, but they can be tested against climates present and past. Climate models can’t even agree on what the current global average temperature is. “One particularly jarring feature is that the simulated average global surface temperature,” Koonin notes, “varies among models by about 3°C, three times greater than the observed value of the twentieth century warming they’re purporting to describe and explain.”

    Another embarrassing feature of climate models concerns the earlier of the two twentieth-century warmings from 1910 to 1940, when human influences were much smaller. On average, models give a warming rate of about half of what was actually observed. The failure of the latest models to warm fast enough in those decades suggest that it’s possible, even likely, that internal climate variability is a significant contributor to the warming of recent decades, Koonin suggests. “That the models can’t reproduce the past is a big red flag – it erodes confidence in their projections of future climates.” Neither is it reassuring that for the years after 1960, the latest generation of climate models show a larger spread and greater uncertainty than earlier ones – implying that, far from advancing, The Science has been going backwards. That is not how science is meant to work.

    The second part of Koonin’s indictment concerns the distortion, misrepresentation, and mischaracterization of climate data to support a narrative of climate catastrophism based on increasing frequency of extreme weather events. As an example, Koonin takes a “shockingly misleading” claim and associated graph in the United States government’s 2017 Climate Science Special Report that the number of high-temperature records set in the past two decades far exceeds the number of low-temperature records across the 48 contiguous states. Koonin demonstrates that the sharp uptick in highs over the last two decades is an artifact of a methodology chosen to mislead. After re-running the data, record highs show a clear peak in the 1930s, but there is no significant trend over the 120 years of observations starting in 1895, or even since 1980, when human influences on the climate grew strongly. In contrast, the number of record cold temperatures has declined over more than a century, with the trend accelerating after 1985.

    Notes Koonin, “temperature extremes in the contiguous U.S. have become less common and somewhat milder since the late nineteenth century.” Similarly, a key message in the 2014 National Climate Assessment of an upward trend in hurricane frequency and intensity, repeated in the 2017 assessment, is contradicted 728 pages later by a statement buried in an appendix stating that there has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones “nor has any trend been identified in the number of U.S. land-falling hurricanes.”

    That might surprise many politicians.

    “Over the past thirty years, the incidence of natural disasters has dramatically increased,” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen falsely asserted last month in a pitch supporting the Biden administration’s infrastructure package. “We are now in a situation where climate change is an existential risk to our future economy and way of life,” she claimed.

    The sacrifice of scientific truth in the form of objective empirical data for the sake of a catastrophist climate narrative is plain to see. As Koonin summarizes the case:

    “Even as human influences have increased fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose.”

    Koonin also has sharp words for the policy side of the climate change consensus, which asserts that although climate change is an existential threat, solving it by totally decarbonizing society is straightforward and relatively painless.

    “Two decades ago, when I was in the private sector,” Koonin writes, “I learned to say that the goal of stabilizing human influences on the climate was ‘a challenge,’ while in government it was talked about as ‘an opportunity.’ Now back in academia, I can forthrightly call it ‘a practical impossibility.’”

    Unlike many scientists and most politicians, Koonin displays a sure grasp of the split between developed and developing nations, for whom decarbonization is a luxury good that they can’t afford. The fissure dates back to the earliest days of the U.N. climate process at the end of the 1980s. Indeed, it’s why developing nations insisted on the U.N. route as opposed to an intergovernmental one that produced the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances.

    “The economic betterment of most of humanity in the coming decades will drive energy demand even more strongly than population growth,” Koonin says.

    “Who will pay the developing world not to emit? I have been posing that simple question to many people for more than fifteen years and have yet to hear a convincing answer.”

    The most unsettling part of “Unsettled” concerns science and the role of scientists.

    “Science is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected,” Karl Popper wrote nearly six decades ago.

    That condition does not pertain in climate science, where errors are embedded in a political narrative and criticism is suppressed. In a recent essay, the philosopher Matthew B. Crawford observes that the pride of science as a way of generating knowledge – unlike religion – is to be falsifiable. That changes when science is pressed into duty as authority in order to absolve politicians of responsibility for justifying their policy choices (“the science says,” we’re repeatedly told). “Yet what sort of authority would it be that insists its own grasp of reality is merely provisional?” asks Crawford. “For authority to be really authoritative, it must claim an epistemic monopoly of some kind, whether of priestly or scientific knowledge.”

    At the outset of “Unsettled,” Feynman’s axiom of absolute intellectual honesty is contrasted with climate scientist Stephen Schneider’s “double ethical bind.” On the one hand, scientists are ethically bound by the scientific method to tell the truth. On the other, they are human beings who want to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.

    “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest,” Schneider said.

    “Being effective” helps explain the pressure on climate scientists to conform to The Science and the emergence of a climate science knowledge monopoly. Its function is, as Crawford puts it, the manufacture of a product – political legitimacy – which, in turn, requires that competing views be delegitimized and driven out of public discourse through enforcement of a “moratorium on the asking of questions.” This sees climate scientist gatekeepers deciding who can and cannot opine on climate science. “Please, save us from retired physicists who think they’re smarter and wiser than everyone in climate science,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, NASA acting senior climate advisor, about Koonin and his book. “I agree with pretty much everything you wrote,” a chair of a university earth sciences department tells Koonin, “but I don’t dare say that in public.” Another scientist criticizes Koonin for giving ammunition to “the deniers,” and a third writes an op-ed urging New York University to reconsider Koonin’s position there. It goes wider than scientists. Facebook has suppressed a “Wall Street Journal” review of “Unsettled.” Likewise, “Unsettled” remains unreviewed by the “New York Times,” the “Washington Post” (though it carried an op-ed by Marc Thiessen based on an interview with Koonin) and other dailies, which would prefer to treat Koonin’s reasoned climate dissent as though it doesn’t exist.

    The moratorium on the asking of questions represents the death of science as understood and described by Popper, a victim of the conflicting requirements of political utility and scientific integrity. Many scientists take this lying down. Koonin won’t. For his forensic skill and making his findings accessible to non-specialists, Koonin has written the most important book on climate science in decades.

    *  *  *

    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of  Green Tyranny and Capitalism, Socialism and ESG. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 22:40

  • US Hits Russian Entities With More Nord Stream 2 Sanctions After Removing Them For German Side
    US Hits Russian Entities With More Nord Stream 2 Sanctions After Removing Them For German Side

    In the continuing saga of contradictory US efforts to thwart the Russia to Germany natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, the US Treasury on Friday hit Russia with more sanctions – specifically announcing that three more Russian entities and 13 vessels will come under sanction for their work on the project.

    “Among the sanctioned vessels are the Akademik Cherskiy, the Vladislav Strizhov, the Yury Topchev and the Baltiyskiy Issledovatel, along with others,” Treasury announced. “The sanctioned companies are Russia’s Marine Rescue Service, Mortransservice, and the Samara Heat and Energy Property Fund.”

    Via Moscow Times/TASS

    Of course, the bizarre thing about this is that it was only on Tuesday of this week that the Biden administration revealed it would actually remove Trump-era sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG and CEO Matthias Warnig (considered a personal friend of Putin) – which is the German company overseeing the project.

    The removal of the punitive actions took place Wednesday and Axios’ Jonathan Swan wrote of the decision that it “indicates the Biden administration is not willing to compromise its relationship with Germany over this pipeline, and underscores the difficulties President Biden faces in matching actions to rhetoric on a tougher approach to Russia.”

    Germany had long rejected Washington’s punitive measures over the project as interference in its domestic affairs, but Wednesday’s removal for the overseer of the project served to drastically east tensions with Berlin over the matter, with German foreign minister Heiko Maas thanking the Biden administration for doing so: 

    “We understand the decisions that have been taken in Washington as taking into account the really extraordinarily good relationship that have been built with the Biden administration,” Maas said.

    Biden was immediately slammed for the act of “capitulation” after long vowing to get “tough” on Russia by Republicans but also Democrat hawks, including in conservative and independent media outlets which pointed out that Trump would have no doubt been accused of being under “Russian influence” had he been the one to relax sanctions.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 22:20

  • 14 Cities In LA County Issue No-Confidence Resolutions Against Soros-Backed DA
    14 Cities In LA County Issue No-Confidence Resolutions Against Soros-Backed DA

    Authored by Vanessa Serna via The Epoch Times,

    Fourteen cities in Los Angeles county have issued no-confidence resolutions against District Attorney George Gascon, claiming his reforms went too far.

    Diamond Bar’s city council passed a no-confidence motion during its May 18 meeting, with some councilmembers wishing to address Gascon’s perceived leniency to horrific crimes throughout the county.

    “Gascon is making it less safe for our residents and businesses,” Diamond Bar Mayor Nancy Lyon told The Epoch Times.

     “He’s more concerned about the criminals than the victims. You can’t do special enhancements on things like hate crime, elder abuse, child physical abuse, trauma, [or] human trafficking.”

    Lyon added, “Even if they’re 17-and-a-half-year-old and they committed a double murder and tortured people, they can’t be tried as an adult… and he’s no longer going to seek the death penalty in any case.”

    The residents’ response to the agenda item was “overwhelming,” Lyson said, adding she has never seen the community more involved. While most residents were in favor of the no confidence vote, a few voiced opposition to it.

    One Diamond Bar resident said council should vote against the notion, as Gascon’s sweeping reforms were justifiable.

    “The common practice of conditioning freedom solely on whether an arrestee can afford bail is unconstitutional,” the speaker said.

    “DA Gascon’s policy encourages the use of diversion programs, which provide treatment rather than prosecution in jailing for many minor offenses.”

    The resident continued, “Public expense jails, prisons, and courts are not the best way to manage the root causes of many misdemeanors, we must step up the availability of community support services…We must stop thinking that imprisoning people longer reduces crime or addresses issues that our society fails to address…Depriving people of life and liberty after serving a sentence only keeps them from becoming productive members of society.”

    Conversely, some Diamond Bar residents who said they originally voted for Gacon expressed disappointment in the district attorney.

    “While I voted for him initially his truth was really a lie and he proved it on his first day in office,” a speaker said.

    “[We] did not elect him to destroy our system of justice.”

    The City of Manhattan Beach also voted in favor of no confidence for the district attorney on May 18.

    “We share the DA’s desire for criminal-justice reform,” Mayor Suzanne Hadley told The Epoch Times.

    “Our Concern is that the DA is choosing not to enforce the law—rather than tackle the necessary, difficult, and legislative work of true reform.”

    The no confidence votes from 14 cities came less than a year after the district attorney took office last December. Other cities to pass symbolic no confidence resolutions include Covina, Azusa, Beverly Hills, Lancaster, La Mirada, and Whittier, Santa Clarita, Pico Rivera, Redondo Beach, Arcadia, Rosemead, and Santa Fe Springs.

    On his first day in office, Gascon signed a special directive that announced policy changes including potential sentence reductions for inmates, a ban on sentence enhancements, and elimination of the death penalty.

    Gascon received $2 million in funding for his district attorney campaign from Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who is known for financing leftist causes.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 22:00

  • "Xi Who Must Not Be Named": Ordinary Chinese Are Increasingly Afraid To Talk About Their Leader
    “Xi Who Must Not Be Named”: Ordinary Chinese Are Increasingly Afraid To Talk About Their Leader

    It’s a dynamic familiar to fans of the Harry Potter franchise: a villain so powerful that ordinary people fear to even mutter his name aloud. In Harry Potter world, characters use phrases like “You Know Who” to reference the series arch-villain, Voldemort. But in China (where Harry Potter is, unsurprisingly, banned), ordinary citizens (even those who genuinely support the CCP) are afraid to utter the name of President Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Mao.

    An interesting piece published in the latest issue of the Economist pointed to the dynamic:

    Open criticism of the most important man in China is taboo. Last year Ren Zhiqiang, a retired property tycoon and vocal critic of the government, published an essay about a speech by Mr Xi in which Mr Ren said he was not an “emperor” showing off his new clothes but a naked “clown”. Shortly afterwards, Mr Ren was sentenced to 18 years in prison for corruption.

    Chinese citizens’ euphemisms for President Xi – which include, most notoriously, comparing the leader to “Winnie the Pooh” – are evolving so fast by necessity that China’s online censors are having trouble keeping up.

    Earlier this month, Meituan CEO Wang Xing posted a classic ninth-century poem mocking an ancient Chinese emperor. While Wang insisted the poem was an oblique jab at the company’s competitors, too many people interpreted it as a jab at China’s leadership. Meituan’s stock subsequently slumped, wiping $2.5 billion off Wang’s net worth. The company, China’s largest food-delivery app, has since been caught up in the CCP’s anti-trust crackdown.

    Even at pro-Beijing media outlets and private gatherings of pro-government diplomats and executives, people take excessive precautions as soon as discussions veer toward the politically sensitive. In conversation, Chinese citizens use phrases like “you know who,” “big number one” and our “eldest brother” or “big uncle” to reference Xi.

    Others insist on turning off their mobile phones when the subject of Chinese politics arises.

    Such is the current climate that even those who broadly support the government are sometimes nervous about mentioning Mr Xi’s name. Some employees at a state-run media group have taken to substituting the word “Trump” for Mr Xi in chat groups. At small social gatherings, people frequently stop short of uttering the name, even in the most benign contexts. They use instead phrases such as “you-know-who”, “big number one”, “the eldest brother” or “our big uncle”.

    When, at a recent private gathering that included diplomats, executives and bankers, the talk turned to Chinese politics, it was suggested that all switch off their mobile phones. No one thought it likely that government snoops were really listening in and no one had anything particularly controversial to say. But all agreed it was better to be safe.

    Electronic eavesdropping isn’t the only tactic employed by China’s censors and secret police. Beijing is once again popularizing a tactic used during theCultural Revolution and Stalin’s Red Terror: encouraging people to snitch on their friends and neighbors.

    Electronic eavesdropping is not the only concern. The old-fashioned sort is also encouraged. Last month, the government launched a new system, with a website and hotline, for citizens to snitch on one another for making “harmful” political commentary. This can include “denying the excellent traditional Chinese culture, revolution culture and advanced socialist culture” as well as attacks on political leaders or their policies.

    If this trend continues, pretty soon, ordinary Chinese citizens will risk jail time just for mentioning Harry Potter, or Winnie the Pooh, or Xinjiang.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 21:40

  • Rochester Mayor Vowed To Take "Illegal Guns Off The Street"; Police Just Found One In Her Home
    Rochester Mayor Vowed To Take “Illegal Guns Off The Street”; Police Just Found One In Her Home

    By Cam Edwards of BearingArms,

    Rochester, New York Mayor Lovely Warren is a typical Democrat politician when it comes to gun control. She’s complained about the number of “illegal guns on the streets” of the city, supported the state’s draconian gun control laws, and even announced a gun “buyback” earlier this week, claiming once again that “getting guns off our streets must be a priority.”

    “That’s why I’m glad our police department is partnering with the Attorney General’s Office and our churches to host a gun buy-back event next week. I know Chief Herriott-Sullivan and her team are working with their partners in law enforcement to stop the flow of illegal guns into our city. We must continue working together with our citizens to take these guns off our streets so our residents can feel safe in their neighborhoods and live the lives they deserve.”

    Turns out Warren should have been more concerned about illegally possessed guns in her home. On Wednesday, the New York State Police raided the home that Warren shares with her husband Timothy Granison and allegedly discovered him to be in possession of 31 grams of cocaine as well as a firearm, which is a no-no since Granison was convicted of armed robbery 24 years ago.

    Lovely Warren, AP Photo/Adrian Kraus, File

    According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Granison was one of seven people arrested as part of an ongoing drug investigation that’s been going on for months.

    New York State Police stopped Granison’s vehicle Wednesday afternoon on Birch Crescent in Rochester and cocaine was found inside his car, said New York State Police Major Barry Chase.

    On Wednesday evening, New York State Police conducted a search at the home that Warren and Granison share at 93 Woodman Park.

    New York State Police on Wednesday and Thursday executed search warrants at seven locations within city limits, including Mayor Warren’s home. More than two kilos of powder and crack cocaine were recovered, as were three firearms and a semi-automatic rifle and more than $100,000 cash said Doorley.

    One unregistered hand gun, a loaded magazine and the semi-automatic rifle were recovered from the mayor’s house, New York State Police Major Barry Chase said. It was not yet clear if the rifle is illegal.

    For the moment, the only gun charge that Granison faces is possession of an unregistered firearm, though his felony conviction back in the 1990s makes him ineligible to legally own a firearm, regardless of whether or not it’s registered with the state of New York, as required under the terms of the state’s draconian SAFE Act. During a court hearing on Thursday, Granison pleaded not guilty to the drug and gun charges, and so far his wife has been silent about his arrest and the guns found in the couple’s home.

    In the past, however, Warren’s been a vocal supporter of the SAFE Act and other restrictions on legal gun owners in the state, even as she’s sought to cut the Rochester Police Department’s budget amidst a sharp increase in violent crime in the city. Last August, she even lauded the Rochester PD for confiscating hundreds of guns, and vowed to keep up the pressure against those possessing them illegally.

    “But we can’t legislate morality,” Warren said. “We can’t… We legislate consequences. So. The thing is. We are focusing on bringing these people do justice that are picking up these weapons but also getting the weapons off the street.

    Well, I suppose the good news for Warren is that there are two fewer guns in Rochester today. Too bad for her that they were seized from her own home. I wonder if Warren is still big on ensuring that there are consequences for possessing a gun illegally in the city she oversees, or if she’s suddenly had a change of heart over the past 24 hours.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 21:20

  • US Special Forces Seek Amphibious Transport Plane For Pacific Combat
    US Special Forces Seek Amphibious Transport Plane For Pacific Combat

    The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) explores options for transforming Lockheed Martin’s C-130 Hercules four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft into an amphibious plane that would support operations in the Indo-Pacific area as great power competition between China continues to gain steam, according to military intelligence website Janes. 

    USSOCOM revealed the interest in Lockheed’s MC-130J Commando II fitted with floats during a presentation at the virtual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference on Wednesday. 

    USSOCOM wants the MC-130J Amphibious Capability, or MAC, to operate from water and traditional land-based runways. An artist rendering of the concept plane is shown below. 

    MAC’s Program Executive Officer, Colonel Ken Kuebler, suggested during the virtual conference that the new plane could “land and take off” from land and sea during the same mission.

    USSOCOM’s Fixed Wing Technology Insertion Roadmap, which was illustrated at the event, said a timeline of the plane’s development and when it could operate would be between 2022–25. 

    Kuebler suggested there was “enough command interest” at USSOCOM to pursue building the MAC. 

    “There is enough of a focus on peer and near-peer as we look at emerging threats. Is it going to be cost effective? That’s why we have several lines of effort early on and there will be plenty of off-ramp [opportunities] along the way to determine if we move forward,” he said.

    USSOCOM is focusing on the great power competition in the Indo-Pacific region against China. The importance of an amphibious transport plane for special forces is imperative if conflict breaks out. 

    According to the foreign policy and national security website “War On Th Rocks,” the US currently operates zero military seaplanes. Japan and Russia operate a small number of seaplanes, but China has unveiled the largest and most modern operational seaplane, the AG-600.

    In a great power competition, one that is underway in the Pacific, the US is in desperate need of seaplanes if conflict breaks out because it currently has none.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 21:00

  • Georgia Gov. Urges Educators Not To Teach Critical Race Theory’s ‘Dangerous Ideology’
    Georgia Gov. Urges Educators Not To Teach Critical Race Theory’s ‘Dangerous Ideology’

    Authored by Isabel Van Brugen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Thursday wrote a letter to the state Board of Education opposing the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its “dangerous ideology” in public schools.

    “This divisive, anti-American agenda has no place in Georgia classrooms,” the Republican governor said in a statement on Twitter.

    He urged educators in his letter “to take immediate steps to ensure that Critical Race Theory and its dangerous ideology do not take root in our state standards or curriculum.”

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp holds a news conference in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 24, 2020. (Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

    Kemp said that parents, students, administrators, and educators in Georgia have come to him in recent weeks with concerns about the teaching of CRT in state schools.

    “Like me, they are alarmed this divisive and anti-American curriculum is gaining favor in Washington D.C. and in some states across the country.”

    CRT has gradually proliferated in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world. It redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors”—white people—and the “oppressed”—everybody else—similar to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.” It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as racist and “white supremacist.”

    Like Marxism, CRT advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the theory’s ideology.

    Proponents of CRT have argued that the theory is merely “demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism truly is.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in March denounced critical race theory as hateful, while Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, and West Virginia have said that they aim to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools, workplaces, and government agencies.

    Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law a bill mandating the teaching of CRT in schools, while Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill banning its teaching in the state’s public and charter schools.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has proposed a grant priority that seeks to promote controversial racial concepts in the classroom. The proposal, known as the “Proposed Priorities: American History and Civics Education,” would incentivize schools to teach the quasi-Marxist critical race theory to its students.

    One of the priorities encourages schools to “incorporate culturally and linguistically responsive” teaching approaches that would contribute toward what the department calls an “identity-safe” learning environment.

    Referring to the proposal, Kemp said in his letter that it is “ridiculous” that the Biden administration is considering using taxpayer funds to push a “blatantly partisan agenda” in Georgia classrooms.

    The state must instead focus on its goal of providing the highest quality education to every child in Georgia “without partisan bias or political influence.”

    “Education in Georgia should reflect our fundamental values as a state and nation—freedom, equality, and the God-given potential of each individual,” the governor wrote.

    The State Board of Education didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

    Richard Woods, Georgia’s elected Republican state superintendent, said in a May 11 Facebook post for his campaign that the Georgia Department of Education has no current or proposed standards that include “CRT concepts.”

    “We will not be adopting any CRT standards nor applying for or accept any funding that requires the adoption of these concepts by our state, schools, or classrooms. We will not provide trainings that seek to promote these teachings to educators and support staff,” he said.

    Petr Svab contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 20:40

  • Police Recruiting Plummets Ahead Of Violent Summer
    Police Recruiting Plummets Ahead Of Violent Summer

    Police departments across the country fail to attract new recruits after a year of social justice warriors and liberal-run city councils defunding police and the leftist media throwing the men and women in blue under the bus. 

    Recruiting deficits come ahead of what is expected to be another violent summer. Reduced funding and a hard time recruiting potential officers could cause overtime or burnout among law enforcement agencies, Axios reported Wednesday. 

    Demonstrations demand police reform last year crushed departments’ recruitment efforts leading to widespread pressure. The recruitment deficit could send some law enforcement agencies into crisis this summer: 

    “The warmer months always usually give us more problems when it comes to violence,” NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison said, the WSJ reported.

    Axios noted officer applicants at several law enforcement agencies across the country had seen drastic drops compared to last year. 

    For instance, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department told Axios that applications plunged 26% during the first four months of 2021 compared to the same period last year.

    In Des Moines, Iowa, the metro’s police department received 300 applicants last month for its newest round of recruits, approximately 50% fewer than a year ago. 

    The Fayetteville Police Department in Northwest Arkansas hardly received any applicants this year. 

    There’s also the issue of officer exodus. In Minneapolis, the metro area where the police-killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide social unrest in spring 2020, has seen more than 105 officers leave, more than twice as normal.

    Over the past year and a half, about 20% of Seattle cops have quit. The revelation comes after police in the metro area have been battling anti-police protesters from BLM and Antifa, and a city council that has neutered cops’ ability to use crowd control devices. 

    In Denver, where police funds are running short, the city could not meet its goal in hiring the required quota of yearly officers it needed. 

    A tweet by the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police recently disclosed the city is 500 cops short of what is needed to keep the city safe. 

    The bottom line is the systematic dismantling and shaming of police across the country ahead of what is expected to be a summer of violence continues to transform the county into a violent mess. 

    So it comes as no surprise that gun and ammo sales are through the roof and urban flight is at a record. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 20:20

  • Two Ways To Push Back Against The Cultural Revolution
    Two Ways To Push Back Against The Cultural Revolution

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Fourteen year old Gao Yuan was attending a boarding school in China when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. And that’s when his life changed forever.

    Even though the communists had won the Chinese Civil War and been in total power since 1945, Chairman Mao still believed that there was too much capitalist influence in China.

    So he decided to completely rewrite literature, history, and the entire education system.

    School instruction switched from teaching math and science, to activism.

    Students like Gao Yuan were encouraged to find and punish “revisionists” who sought to undermine the revolution’s progress, including their own parents and teachers.

    One teacher fell under suspicion because, even though he routinely spoke of China’s natural beauty, he didn’t ever praise Chairman Mao.

    Other teachers were denounced for wearing western clothes or engaging in borgeois activities—  like drinking wine or buying an expensive radio.

    Gao Yuan liked his teachers and hesitated to participate. But he was even more afraid of being labeled an evil revisionist himself. So he joined the mob and began accusing teachers and parents.

    The assistant headmaster committed suicide when accused of revisionism. Gao Yuan found his body, and even though he had liked him, Gao assumed the suicide proved the man must have been guilty of thought crime.

    Another teacher died under mysterious circumstances. Soon the rest of the faculty fled, and the school fell under the control of the students.

    That’s when the situation really turned bizarre.

    Factions quickly formed like rival gangs, and the students turned against one other. Each group accused the other of failure to live up to the full revolutionary spirit, finding micro-transgressions everywhere.

    Students were killed— one suffocated after have had a sock stuffed in his mouth. Another was tortured to death. One girl committed suicide rather than be captured by a rival student group. Several children died in an accidental explosion while attempting to make bombs.

    This was NOT an isolated incident; as the Cultural Revolution spread, similar incidents occurred across China in government offices, factories, schools, and the military.

    Gao Yuan eventually fled the school, only to find that his father had been “canceled” by local students for caring too much about farming and economics, and not enough about party politics. He lost a prominent position in county government.

    When Gao Yuan finally returned to his school months later, he found the campus destroyed— shattered windows, unmarked graves, bombed out buildings, and utter chaos.

    Years later he recounted his experience in a book called Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution.

    Now the US is entering its own Cultural Revolution. While any rational person can see many forms of discrimination that still exist, we are being force-fed a narrative that White Supremancy is at the core of everything.

    It has become so ridiculous that, according to one California state math education group, saying 2+2=4 perpetuates white supremacy.

    The only way to fix it is for “anti-racists” to identify and punish the oppressors, i.e. people who believe that 2+2=4.

    This is among the many lessons that now dominate school curiccula in many districts in the Land of the Free.

    Kids are being taught Critical Race Theory, and a brand new history based on the New York Times’s 1619 Project.

    Books that have been at the cornerstone of literature classes for more than a century are now being cancelled. Math and science are blasted as racist and transphobic.

    Students at an elite private school in Manhattan called Grace Church High School now dedicate hours each week to “anti-racism” instruction.

    Segregated sessions force white students to attend classes which teach them that objectivity and individualism are features of white supremacy.

    They are taught to find and report racial “micro-aggressions” of their teachers and peers— for instance, if someone insists they don’t care about someone’s skin color.

    Challenging, questioning, or engaging in discussion about systemic racism is taken as proof that the transgressor is racist.

    A former teacher at the school, Paul Rossi, attempted to introduce debate about the topic in a segregated, ‘whites only’ learning session.

    He was accused of harassment, and told his failure to accept as gospel the critical race narrative created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.”

    This is what educators honestly believe— that differing opinions and constructive discussion are literally harmful to students’ brains.

    Rossi was forced to resign. But it’s not just teachers who are cancelled.

    Students are also punished for questioning Critical Race Theory, and they are reprimanded if they don’t speak up in support of it.

    Teachers suggested that the school “officially flag” students who remain silent, believe in meritocracy, or suggest that everyone be treated with respect regardless of skin color.

    Incredibly, a new government regulation proposed by the US Department of Education last month will prioritize special federal funding to schools which focus on this sort of thought control .

    The national media reinforces this dogma. When parents speak out against Critical Race Theory being taught in their children’s schools, the media blasts them as white supremacists.

    Recently, 70% of a Texas town voted for school board members vehemently opposed to Critical Race Theory, in a local election where about three times as many voters as usual turned out.

    Yet NBC reported it was a “bitterly divided election”.

    Really?

    Does a 70% to 30% victory with massive voter turnout sound bitterly divided?

    It’s clear based on these (and other) election results that the majority of the population opposes this cultural revolution.

    The people who are trying to cancel Western Civilization are just a small, extremely vocal minority. The problem is, they control the media, the big tech companies, the universities, and most of the federal government, so their message seems much more popular than it really is.

    This revolution has even spread to the military and intelligence agencies, with everyone from the CIA to US Special Operations Command prioritizing wokeness over national defense.

    And of course, dozes of major corporations from Disney to Coca Cola have jumped on the bandwagon too.

    History has much to teach us. And the key lesson from China’s cultural revolution is that these movements don’t suddenly disappear.

    Now, you might be surprised to hear me say that the strongest way to fight back against this movement is to VOTE.

    But I’m not talking about the broken political process.

    I’m talking about the vote you make with your money.

    If you disagree with a company’s woke politics, stop buying their products. Honestly. If you hate the fact that Disney is ultra-woke, but you’re not willing to give up your Disney+ membership, then you may need to rethink your priorities.

    Same goes for Woka Cola, or any other major brand.

    There’s also the vote you can make with your feet.

    If your state or local government has totally lost its mind, consider moving. You can’t fix your neighbors’ way of thinking, but you can might be able to find greener pastures elsewhere.

    *  *  *

    On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 20:00

  • Handful Of Black COVID Survivors Experience Massively Enlarged Tongues
    Handful Of Black COVID Survivors Experience Massively Enlarged Tongues

    Doctors in Houston, Texas are scratching their heads after a handful of COVID-19 survivors developed massively enlarged tongues.

    The condition, called macroglossia, makes it impossible for patients to eat, drink or talk. Last fall, KHOU reported that there were two documented cases in the United States, which has swelled to nine patients – eight of whom are black, according to Dr. James Melville of the UTHealth School of Dentistry, who has become an expert in the condition.

    Two of the patients had suffered strokes, while the other seven were hospitalized with COVID-19 before developing the rare condition.

    More via KHOU:

    Melville says the patients who had survived COVID-19 had inflammatory cells in their tongue tissue, which means there’s something about the virus that is making certain people more prone to the rare condition.

    “I think it has a lot to do with where the virus is attaching itself and the body’s immune response to it,” said Dr. Melville.

    He is now doing a study to figure out if there’s a common link in those patients’ genes. If doctors can answer that question, they hope they can also figure out how to prevent it.   

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 19:40

  • The Government's Emergency Powers Myth
    The Government’s Emergency Powers Myth

    Authored by Andrew Napolitono, originally published at Creators.com,

    “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.”

    – Ex Parte Milligan, Supreme Court of the United States, 1866.

    Last week, the media in New Jersey began to ask Gov. Phil Murphy when he would surrender his emergency powers. He claimed emergency powers in March 2020, and he also claimed that those powers are not limited by the Constitution when he said on Fox that the Bill of Rights is above his pay grade. His reply to the media inquiries was that he will surrender them when he surrenders them!

    I am using the example of Murphy in order to address the concept of emergency powers, but there is no hyperbole here. Murphy quite literally issued executive orders barring folks from doing what the Constitution guarantees them the right to do, and he imposed criminal penalties for violating his orders, and he had folks who defied him arrested and prosecuted. Stated differently, he assumed the powers of the state legislature — which is to write the laws — and he violated his oath to uphold the Constitution.

    He claimed that somehow he can interfere with the exercise of basic human freedoms — like going to church, going to work, shopping for food, operating a business, assembling and traveling — because he declared a state of emergency.

    If the government declares an emergency, can it thereby acquire the lawful power to interfere with constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? In a word: No.

    Here is the backstory.

    When the states formed the federal government in 1789, they did so pursuant to the Constitution. The Constitution was written to establish and to limit the federal government. In 1791, just two years later, the Constitution was amended to add the Bill of Rights. The original understanding of the Bill of Rights was that it restrained only the federal government by articulating negative rights.

    A negative right restrains the government from interfering with the exercise of a preexisting right. Thus, the First Amendment does not grant the freedom of speech — because it comes from our humanity — but it does prohibit Congress from infringing upon it.

    After the War Between the States, Congress sent the 14th Amendment to the states for ratification. Its history is tortuous, and in part repellant, but it was ratified, and it is the law of the land. It has been interpreted and applied by the courts as imposing the Bill of Rights upon the states. Thus, any right expressly or arguably protected from federal interference by the Bill of Rights is protected from state interference as well.

    The Ninth Amendment — which today restrains the feds and the states — is the work of James Madison’s genius. Madison, who chaired the House of Representatives committee that wrote the Bill of Rights, wrestled along with his colleagues about the best way to protect unenumerated rights.

    The big-government crowd in Congress did not want any enumerated rights to be expressed. They argued that by listing a few, the unlisted rights would be subject to government assault.

    The small-government crowd argued that by listing no rights as immune from government interference, the Constitution would invite the government to assault whatever rights it wished.

    Madison’s solution to all this was to add a Bill of Rights and include the Ninth Amendment. That amendment recognizes that we all have pre-political, fundamental, natural rights — too numerous to enumerate — and prohibits all government from disparaging them.

    During the War Between the States, Abraham Lincoln did more than disparage them. He ordered the military to arrest newspaper editors and even public officials in the North and confine them without trial because he disapproved of their criticism of him. One of them, Lambdin P. Milligan, sued for his freedom, and he won.

    In a unanimous decision, cited hundreds of times, the Supreme Court rejected the concept that “emergency” somehow creates or increases government power. The court condemned “emergency” as a doctrine the fruits of which none is “more pernicious.” This condemnation is still the law of the land today, and it applies to the states as well as to the feds.

    Thus, no matter the exigency — war, floods, pandemic, fear, myth — individual natural rights, protected from government interference by the Ninth Amendment, trump the unconstitutional words of government officials and invalidate their efforts to enforce compliance. Murphy’s orders contain empty words because they do not have the force of law since they were not legislatively created and they directly contradict the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s most definitive interpretations of it.

    When Murphy became the governor of New Jersey, he took an oath to enforce the Constitution. Whatever personal ignorance or mental reservations he may have had, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and every public official, federal and state, is bound by it.

    If government officials could declare an emergency whenever they wished and thereby be relieved of the obligation to defend the Constitution — and the rights it guarantees — then no liberty is safe.

    Because our rights are natural and individual and because we did not all consent to their suspension, no government may morally or constitutionally suspend them, and we must resist all efforts to do so. Of course, there is a dark side to this. The government that has destroyed liberty and property has also immunized itself from financial liability for the consequences of those destructions.

    Yet, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, whenever any government destroys liberty and property, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 19:20

  • Afternoons Running Errands In The Suburbs Are The New "Rush Hour"
    Afternoons Running Errands In The Suburbs Are The New “Rush Hour”

    With everybody moving out of cities and into the suburbs to work from home during the pandemic, there’s officially a “new rush hour”.

    Gone are the days of waiting on the interstate to get in and out of your local metro area around the edges of the nine to five workday. Here now are the days of a different kind of rush hour: one where running errands in the afternoon, while working from home, has suburban streets filling up.

    Afternoon traffic has “come roaring back” while traditional rush hour times across the U.S. still show traffic below pre-pandemic levels. 

    Marjorie Crosbie, profiled in a new Wall Street Journal article, experienced this change firsthand. The 10 mile trip to pick up her daughter at an after-school program recently took her 45 minutes instead of the usual 22-23 minutes. Crosbie works as a senior finance manager for PwC and has been working from home full time since the pandemic. 

    In her area, Tampa, afternoon vehicle trips are at 105% of levels they were at pre-pandemic. “In more than 40 of the 100 biggest U.S. metros, roads are more congested on weekday afternoons than they were pre-pandemic,” the report notes.

    Tim Rivers, Florida market director for commercial real-estate firm JLL, told the Journal: “People are working from home, so the suburbs have tremendous traffic. They’re going out for a morning coffee at Starbucks to take their Teams or Zoom call, or going for a workout midday.”

    Traffic in the afternoon has come back quicker in metro areas that have reopened earlier, the report notes. 7 of the top 10 trafficked areas have been in Florida, with notable upticks in areas like Fort Myers and Sarasota. In places like San Francisco, New York and Detroit, afternoon weekday trips are still below 80% of pre-pandemic levels, the report notes.

    Whit Blanton, executive director of Forward Pinellas, a land-use and transportation planning agency in Pinellas County, said: “As other states did more of a lockdown and more long-term restrictions on restaurants and indoor events, people flocked to Florida.” 

    Jeff Gabriel, 39, vice president of strategy at 23 Restaurant Services, said: “I have been stuck in traffic within 2 or 3 miles of my house.” He claims his commute takes longer in his neighborhood than on highways, which are still less congested than before the pandemic. 

    And of course, traffic is starting to pile up as people make their way to the beach in an effort to have a somewhat normal summer. Amanda Payne, president and CEO of Amplify Clearwater, a chamber of commerce, said: “It seems like it’s busier in the evening trying to get to the beach. You kind of time your trip across that bridge in the not-so-busy times. It is very crowded. Parking is a challenge. There are vehicles everywhere.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 19:00

  • Watch: Rep. Jordan Exposes Democrats' Efforts To Stifle COVID Origin Investigation
    Watch: Rep. Jordan Exposes Democrats’ Efforts To Stifle COVID Origin Investigation

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    During a hearing Wednesday in the House, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan succinctly highlighted how everyone EXCEPT House Democrats wants answers to legitimate questions regarding the possibility of the coronavirus leaking from a Chinese lab.

    Republican lawmakers, intelligence officials, Journalists, and even members of the Biden administration have all said that there is credible evidence behind the theory.

    However, as Jordan outlines, House Democrats have stymied investigations and dismissed the notion as a ‘distraction’.

    “Where did this thing start? Did it jump from animal to humans or was it a leak from a lab, a lab in Wuhan china?” Jordan asked.

    “The American people would probably like to know, after all, they’ve had their liberties assaulted for the past year” Jordan asserted.

    Jordan quoted former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wafe who wrote :

    “It’s a stretch to get the pandemic to break out naturally outside of Wuhan and then without leaving a trace to make its first appearance in Wuhan. But he says this for the lab escape scenario, a Wuhan origin for the virus is a no-brainer.”

    Jordan continued:

    “Wuhan is home to China’s leading center for coronavirus research. Researchers were genetically engineering bat coronaviruses to attack human cells. They were doing so under minimal safety conditions. If the virus with an uninspected infectiousness had been generated there, its escape would be no surprise.”

    Jordan notes that it is unfathomable why Democrats are blocking efforts to find answers, unless they are seeking to protect Anthony Fauci from having to answer difficult questions about his involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the Obama/Biden years.

    Watch:

    This week, GOP representatives on the House Intelligence Committee demanded an update from the White House and the Director of National Intelligence on the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from the lab in Wuhan.

    The Republicans, led by Ranking Member Devin Nunes also want access to any intelligence on the “gain of function” research that was undertaken at the Wuhan lab in conjunction with US agencies.

    Even Biden’s own CDC Director said this week that there is a “possibility” that the COVID-19 virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab.

    Leftist media and ‘fact checking’ outlets have repeatedly dismissed the notion as a ‘conspiracy theory’, but are now doing an about face on the matter.

    As Infowars reported in April 2020, the NIH awarded a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct coronavirus gain of function research.

    Additionally, the results of the US-backed gain of function research at Wuhan was published in 2017 under the heading, “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”

    White House Medical advisor Dr Anthony Fauci has come under increased scrutiny as the NIH’s involvement with the Wuhan lab is being called into question.

    As we reported earlier in the year, top US National Security officials have indicated that they believe the most credible theory on the origin of COVID-19 is that it escaped from the Chinese laboratory.

    The development also comes in the wake of a group of the world’s leading scientists penning an open letter urging more investigation into the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic was caused by a leak from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology, saying that the World Health Organisation has dismissed the notion without proper consideration.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 18:40

  • 63% Of Millennial Buyers Regret Purchasing New Home During Pandemic
    63% Of Millennial Buyers Regret Purchasing New Home During Pandemic

    As it turns out, buying at the market top can quickly lead to feelings of remorse.

    With prices of single-family homes soaring the most on record…

    …one recent survey found that millennials who decided to take advantage of low mortgage rates and buy a home during the COVID pandemic have mostly come to regret their decision.

    As the survey from BankRate pointed out, buyer’s regrets are even more of a factor in the pandemic, as agents compete even more ruthlessly for deals. Leave it to the millennial generation to normalize buying a home sight-unseen, and waiving contingencies that might allow them an escape hatch once problems emerge.

    Unsurprisingly, the rush to buy is leading some to settle for properties that aren’t quite right for them. Homebuyer regrets fell into two broad categories: financial and physical.

    Also of interest: the survey found that, generally speaking, older buyers had fewer complaints about their purchases. Perhaps that’s a reflect of the fact that older people have a better idea of what they want.

    In total, 64% of millennial homebuyers, aged 25 to 40, have some regrets about their purchase compared with just 33%of baby boomers, aged 57 to 75.

    By far the biggest regret among recent homebuyers was being unprepared for the cost of maintenance. More than 20% of millennial homeowners said they felt the costs of homeownership were too high, and that number jumped to 26% among those ages 25-31.

    Millennials, well known for being fickle trend-followers, also reported finding that their home wasn’t a good fit for them.

    That those who buy during a market boom end up disappointing isn’t surprising, since they have less time to make decisions, and are competing against a much larger pool of potential buyers.

    “Because the market is so competitive, you have less time to make a decision on a homebuying purchase than you do on a laptop at Best Buy,” said Olmsted. “You’ve already had, possibly, a couple of offers not accepted, you feel that pressure to make a decision and put an offer in.”

    For those looking to avoid being similarly dissatisfied, BankRate offered a list of helpful tips:

    • Work with an agent who understands the market.
    • Be ready to make some concessions, but stick to your guns on must-haves.
    • Focus on whether a home is somewhere you’d be comfortable living, even if it’s not your dream property.
    • Make a budget and keep it.
    • Don’t rush into a deal just because you’re frustrated.

    Another suggestion: remember, those who own their own homes are in the minority in the millennial generation. They should be grateful they aren’t being forced to move back into their childhood bedrooms with their partner – because that’s what some millennials are being forced to do to save for a down payment.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 18:20

  • University Research Finds AOC, Bernie Sanders Highly Ineffective
    University Research Finds AOC, Bernie Sanders Highly Ineffective

    Authored by Alex Munguia via Campus Reform,

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are some of the least effective members of Congress, according to a new study by researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

    The researchers, who generated their data using computers and basing their scores on 15 criteria, say the proof is in the math.

    Their equations factored how many of a congressman’s bills pass committee, make it to the other house, and eventually become law. They established a benchmark score of 1.5 and above as “Exceptional” and scores of .50 and below as “Below Expectations.”

    Among the lowest scoring House Democrats were Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (0.209) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (0.058).

    They also identified several senators who were ineffective, with Sen.  Bernie Sanders of Vermont scoring 0.136, and Vice President Kamala Harris scoring just 0.512.

    The average score was 1.0.

    The highest scoring senators were Gary Peters (D-Mi.), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Roger Wicker (R-Ms.), who scored 5.015, 3.589, and 3.558.

    Congressmen who practice bipartisanship are the most effect legislators, the study also said.

    “Collectively, these results imply that engaging in bipartisan behaviors contributes to a virtuous cycle: those who cosponsor across party lines attract cross-party cosponsors to their own bills, which translates into greater legislative success for their agendas.”

    And it found that regardless of political affiliations “those who acquired degrees from elite educational institutions tend to be more liberal than others in their respective parties.”

    Rep. Rashida Talib  had the highest score of the “squad” at 1.411, beating both Representatives Ilhan Omar (0.328) and  Ayanna Pressley (0.670).

    Speaking to Campus Reform Vanderbilt University Professor Alan Wiseman, who helped to organize the study, said bipartisanship is still a path to becoming a successful lawmaker in Congress. 

    Wiseman said that there is a “very strong relationship between bipartisanship and lawmaking effectiveness for our top 10 Democratic House and Senate members holds.”

    “Even in these politically challenging times,” he continued. “Bipartisanship appears to pay off for those who seek to advance their legislative initiatives.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 21

Today’s News 21st May 2021

  • Dogs More Effective Than PCR Tests At Detecting COVID
    Dogs More Effective Than PCR Tests At Detecting COVID

    Scientists and public health officials have been looking at all different kinds of alternatives to individual rapid COVID-19 tests to detect the presence of the virus, and in their search, they’ve landed on some strange alternatives. Some have resorted to testing poop in public sewers to detect traces of the virus, a method that has proven reliable in detecting outbreaks.

    And as it happens, dogs – which have been used to sniff out everything from drugs to bombs – are also effective at sniffing out COVID-19, according to a new French study published by Bloomberg.

    The dogs’ ability to detect the virus was clocked at 97% sensitivity, a level that puts this method on par with the most reliable rapid antigen tests. The sniffing method was also found to be 91% specific – a technical measure of the dogs’ ability to correctly identify negative samples. This ‘sensitivity rating’ is higher than that of many 15-minute antigen tests, which tend to be better at ruling out infection than at finding it.

    And with Europe reopening its economy to vaccinated tourists on Wednesday, these study results couldn’t have come at a better time. As Bloomberg points out, virus-sniffing dogs could be widely deployed in airports, train stations or anywhere crowds amass to screen people, much like they’re used for detecting drugs or bombs. Using dogs also means COVID could be identified at just a fraction of a second in a non-invasive manner, and in an extremely inexpensive manner (in theory, it wouldn’t cost all that much to train the dogs, and the methods would be simple to those used to train drug and bomb-sniffing dogs).

    The trial was carried out at France’s National Veterinary School, according to Bloomberg, which shared some more details about the trial.

    The trial, which was conducted at France’s National Veterinary School in Maisons Alfort near Paris, collected sweat samples from the armpits of the participants with cotton pads that were locked into jars and gave them to at least two different dogs for sniffing. None of the dogs had prior contact with the volunteers. There were 335 people tested, of which 109 were positive in a PCR test that served as a control. Nine dogs participated, and the researchers didn’t know which samples were positive.

    In July, German researchers showed trained dogs were able to distinguish between saliva sampled from people infected with the virus and those who were not more than 90% of the time. Finland, Dubai and Switzerland have started training dogs to sniff out infections.

    The latest study was conducted between March 16 and April 9, and the Ile-de-France region helped fund the trial, contributing 25,000 euros ($30,500).

    Efforts to train dogs to sniff out COVID are underway across Europe, and the world. In the UK, a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are training six dogs in the hope that they will be able to detect COVID-positive people, even if they have no symptoms. In Finland, sniffer dogs have been working to detect infected travelers at Helsinki Airport since September.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 02:45

  • Anti-Israel Protests Across Europe Descend Into Anti-Semitism
    Anti-Israel Protests Across Europe Descend Into Anti-Semitism

    Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

    Pro-Palestinian demonstrations in cities across Europe have descended into unrestrained orgies of anti-Semitism after protesters opposed to Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip openly called for the destruction of Israel and death to Jews.

    The protesters, numbering in the tens-to-the-hundreds of thousands, include a hodgepodge of anarchists, hard-left anti-Israel activists and immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Many demonstrators — carrying flags of Muslim countries, including Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey and Syria, as well as the green flag of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas and the black flag of global Jihad — have shouted Islamist chants such as ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (‘Allah is the Greatest’), and have openly called for Jews to be murdered or raped.

    The anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Israel protests is further evidenced by there having been no anti-China protests, despite overwhelming evidence that massive human rights abuses are being carried out by the Chinese Communist Party against millions of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

    Pro-Palestinian protesters, who also have been silent about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria or Yemen, among other places, clearly are exercising selective outrage with their single-minded concern for Muslim human rights in Gaza.

    The spiraling anti-Semitism, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of European governments to stop it, has sounded alarm bells among Jewish communities in Europe, where anti-Jewish hatred is reaching levels not seen since the Second World War.

    The violence has also shed renewed light on the consequences of mass migration to Europe from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and especially on the failure of governments to require newcomers to integrate into European society.

    Some European lawmakers and security officials are now calling for migrants who commit anti-Semitic hate crimes to be deported back to their countries of origin. Given the iron grip of political correctness in Europe, this is unlikely to happen. In any event, it may be too little, too late for Europe’s Jewish communities. The current crisis of anti-Semitism is a testament to the failure of European multiculturalism, which is making Jewish life in Europe increasingly unviable.

    Germany: Ground Zero for Anti-Semitism in Europe

    Since the clashes between Israel and Hamas began on May 9, anti-Semitic protests have been held in dozens of cities across Germany, where mostly Arab and Turkish protesters have been chanting anti-Israeli slogans, burning Israeli flags and threatening Jews.

    The current wave of protests appears to have begun in earnest on May 13, when a highly aggressive group of at least 200 people brandishing Palestinian and Turkish flags and shouting anti-Semitic slurs gathered in front of a synagogue in Gelsenkirchen. Police were deployed to prevent the mob from entering the building.

    North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul vowed to prosecute the perpetrators:

    “I find it unbearable when anti-Semitic slogans are chanted on German soil. Our police are pursuing the perpetrators with all resoluteness so that they can be punished.”

    Synagogues and Jewish memorials have also been attacked in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Münster and Solingen.

    In Berlin, on May 15, at least 3,500 protesters gathered in different parts of the city to denounce Israel and Jews. Some brandished anti-Semitic slogans — “Israel Child Killers” and “Stop Doing What Hitler Did to You” — and chanted “Bomb Tel Aviv!“

    Some held banners describing Israel as a “genocidal settler state” and Zionism as racism. Others openly rejected Israel’s right to exist. A large red banner stated: “Palestine is sick and tired of paying the price for Europe’s Holocaust of the Jews.” Other banners called for the total elimination of Israel, which would be replaced by a “free Palestine” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Protesters attacked an Israeli film crew reporting on the protests.

    Nearly 1,000 police officers were deployed to break up the demonstrations. They were pelted with stones, bottles and firecrackers. A total of 93 officers were injured in the melees.

    Correspondent Peter Wilke, who was assaulted by the mob, said that most of the protesters were Arabs or Turks. Writing for the German newspaper Bild, he reported that the protests in Berlin were “a new dimension of hatred and violence.” He added: “Open, disgusting hatred of Jews and Israel, but not only: It was also hatred of our free, tolerant democracy. Uninhibitedly displayed!”

    Anti-Israel protests also took place in Bremen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Göttingen, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Osnabrück and many other German cities, where demonstrators chanted anti-Jewish slogans and burned Israeli flags.

    Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is partially responsible for the anti-Semitic protests taking place in Germany:

    “These protests are predominated not by the far right, but rather by those who are Muslim oriented and provoked by the brutal speeches of President Erdoğan and others who believe that clashes must spread to German streets. If they do not possess German citizenship or permanent residence permits and if the laws allow, these people should leave our country.”

    Gerhard Schindler, a former head of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service, warned that a red line of anti-Semitism had been crossed and that it cannot be ignored. In an interview Bild, he urged the government to deport migrants who commit anti-Semitic hate crimes in Germany:

    “The developments of the last few days are frightening and unbearable because they violate the German raison d’etre [Staatsräson]. Burning flags, throwing stones at synagogues, shouting anti-Semitic hate slogans on German soil — this is simply incompatible with our history.

    “Of course, we must not downplay anti-Semitism within the German population. But the anti-Semitism that we are seeing now among migrants is a fact that we have to face.

    “These people disregard our hospitality in two ways. On the one hand, by committing anti-Semitic crimes — insulting, threatening, depriving Israel of its right to exist. And secondly, by violating our basic socio-political consensus, namely that no anti-Semitic agitation should take place on German soil.

    “This is not a trivial offense. It affects the DNA of the German understanding of the state.

    “The security authorities can only address the symptoms. The basic cause of this problem is a social problem that everyone must address.

    “It is not enough that we address this fact openly. We also have to get those who abuse our hospitality out of the country.

    “We need these people to be better integrated. They are here, and we have to take care of them. But those who do not allow themselves to be helped must be removed from the country.”

    Scores of German political leaders have condemned the anti-Semitism. Apart from platitudes, however, few appear able or willing to take effective measures to remedy the problem — presumably because it would require them to admit that German multiculturalism is a failure.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose open-door migration policies have greatly contributed to the current situation, has so far refused to personally make a statement on the anti-Semitic violence raging in Germany. Instead, she had her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, issue an anodyne declaration, summarized in the following tweet:

    “Chancellor #Merkel sharply condemned the missile attacks against #Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in Germany. Our democracy will not tolerate anti-Semitic rallies.”

    German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said:

    “Our Basic Law guarantees the right to freedom of expression and freedom of demonstration. But anyone who burns flags with the Star of David on our streets and shouts anti-Semitic slogans not only abuses the freedom to demonstrate, but also commits crimes that must be prosecuted.

    “Nothing justifies the threat to Jews in Germany or attacks on synagogues in German cities. Hatred of Jews — regardless of whom — we do not want and will not tolerate in our country.”

    German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, one of Europe’s leading apologists for Iran’s Islamic regime, which is dedicated to the elimination of Israel, said:

    “All of us are called on to make it very clear that it is unacceptable if Jews in Germany — either in the streets or on social media — are made responsible for the events in the Middle East.”

    German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer issued a vague threat to crack down on anti-Semitism:

    “We will not tolerate the burning of Israeli flags on German soil and attacks on Jewish facilities. Anyone who spreads anti-Semitic hatred will feel the full force of the law. Germany must not be a safe haven for terrorists. The security authorities are wide awake and do everything to protect the people in our country. Jews in Germany must never again live in fear.”

    German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said:

    “This anti-Semitic hatred is shameful. I condemn the most recent attacks on Jewish synagogues and the burning of Israel flags here in Germany. The perpetrators must be identified and held accountable. Synagogues and Jewish institutions must be consistently and comprehensively protected.”

    Wolfgang Schäuble, Speaker of the German Bundestag, added:

    “Our country protects the freedom of expression and people can criticize Israel’s policies and protest against them, but there is no justification for anti-Semitism, hatred and violence. We will not allow the conflict to be carried on here at the expense of Jewish Germans.”

    Berlin Mayor Michael Müller, a major proponent of mass migration to Germany, tweeted:

    “The violent riots at the demonstrations in Neukölln are unacceptable and intolerable for a free and cosmopolitan metropolis — and they have no place in our society. We will take a resolute stand against violence, anti-Semitism, hatred and agitation and protect the people who are affected by it.”

    Meanwhile, Germany in 2021 is marking 1,700 years of Jewish life in the country, which is now home to approximately 200,000 Jews. Andrei Kovacs, a Jewish-Hungarian descendant of Holocaust survivors, and who is managing director of the association, “321-2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany,” questioned the continued viability of a Jewish presence in Germany:

    “Sadly, what we are experiencing these days is part of a recurring pattern. Unfortunately, living with anti-Semitically motivated hostility to Israel is part of the everyday normality for German Jews. For many years it has been tolerated and often even supported by numerous people and organizations. As soon as Israel is forced to defend its existence, these forms of anti-Semitism break out again.

    “It is astonishing that, only 76 years after the Shoah, many people fail to understand that the Jewish state cannot accept a threat to its existence without being able to defend itself.

    “The anti-Semitic attacks of the past few days have once again made it clear how fragile Jewish life is in Germany — and how resentments can be misused for political purposes…

    “Unfortunately, when you see the pictures from Gelsenkirchen and other cities in Germany, it doesn’t feel like a respectful coexistence.”

    United Kingdom

    In London, a motorcade of cars with Palestinian flags drove past a Jewish community center on Finchley Road. A man, using a megaphone, shouted: “F*ck the Jews, f*ck their daughters, f*ck their mothers, rape their daughters and free Palestine.”

    At the same time, an estimated 100,000 people gathered in downtown London, where many chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” One protester was filmed tearing apart an Israeli flag after he was unable to light it on fire because it was raining. An on-duty uniformed female police officer joined the protesters and shouted, “Free, free Palestine!”

    Later, dozens of members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist movement dedicated to establishing an Islamic caliphate, waved the black flag of Islamic Jihad and held signs calling for “Muslim Armies” to “liberate” Jerusalem. A large banner stated: “Whole of Palestine is occupied and all of it must be liberated.” One protester openly called for jihad:

    “This goes out to the Muslim armies. What are you waiting for? Jihad is your responsibility. Wipe out the Zionist entity. How dare they occupy Muslim lands. How dare they. Have you no honor? We, the Muslims in the West, are with you. We don’t fear anyone but Allah.”

    In Manchester, a mob carrying Palestinian flags gathered in front a bagel shop at Arndale Center, a large shopping mall, where the crowd appeared to be targeting Jewish shoppers.

    As in Germany, politicians in Britain have condemned the anti-Semitism, but few appear to know how to stop it from spreading.

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted:

    “There is no place for antisemitism in our society. Ahead of Shavuot [a Jewish holiday], I stand with Britain’s Jews who should not have to endure the type of shameful racism we have seen today.”

    Conservative MP Christian Wakeford said:

    “As the Member with the largest Jewish community outside of London, I have been contacted by constituents scared to take their children to synagogue due to the appalling scenes on the streets of the UK over the weekend.”

    MP Robert Jenrick added:

    “As the father of Jewish children it shocks me every time I take my children to synagogue or to their nursery to see individuals stood there in stab proof vests guarding the entrance to those places.”

    Elsewhere in Europe

    • Austria: In Vienna, pro-Palestinian protesters held signs stating, “Well done Israel, Hitler would be proud” and “The Nazis are still around, they call themselves Zionists now.” Other signs read: “F*ck Zionism,” “End Zionism,” and “It is Kosher to boycott Israel.” One protester shouted at pro-Israel counter-demonstrators: “Shove your Holocaust up your ass!”Dozens of people, including many youths, burst into applause.

    • Belgium: In Brussels, protesters chanted, “Khaybar, Khaybar, Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Mohammed is returning.” The chant refers to the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. It is a battle cry for attacking Jews. Protesters also shouted, “Death to Jews.”

    • France: In Paris, thousands of people disobeyed a ban on protests. Mobs chanted slogans including “Death to Israel.” Police used water cannons to disperse the crowds.

    • Greece: In Athens, police used tear gas and water cannons against hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the American and Israeli embassies. Protesters held signs accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” Other signs said: “Stop doing what Hitler did to you.” A protester tweeted: “Until we free Palestine from the river to the sea, we will not stop.” In Thessaloniki, leftist groups and anarchist collectives organized anti-Israel protests that were attended by at least 700 people.

    • The Netherlands: In Amsterdam, thousands of people protested against Israel at Dam Square, a central plaza that is the country’s main monument in remembrance for those who died in the Second World War. They carried signs accusing Israel of genocide and vowed that, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In The Hague, protestors shouted anti-Semitic slogans, including “Jews are a cancer” and “Heil Hitler.”

    • Spain: In Madrid, thousands of hard left and Arab protesters, some chanting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (‘Allah is the Greatest’), gathered in the city center and falsely accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. In Oleiros, a municipality in the northern Spanish region of Galicia, local officials, misusing outdoor municipal billboards, posted messages stating, “Zionist Terrorism in Palestine,” called for Israeli leaders to be investigated for war crimes.

    Select Commentary

    Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper, in an essay titled, “Our Country is in Peril,” wrote:

    “What we saw on our streets on Saturday was nothing less than a historical threat. Enabled by our government, belittled by our public media, an anti-Semitic mob, which was clearly Arab-Muslim, marched through almost all major German cities and hatefully demanded the erasure of Israel.

    “On Saturday I took my own pictures of the demos and came to the bitter realization: We who want Jewish life in our country are losing. We may be more numerically. But those who want Israel and Jewish life erased from us rule the streets whenever they want.

    “They do not fear the police, they have nothing to fear from our federal government, they bring their children to these demonstrations and raise the next generation of Israel haters in Germany. Their youth culture and their rap music conjures up the murderous myths that Hamas also glorifies. Their idols fire rockets from Gaza at Tel Aviv while they hunt kippah wearers in Berlin and other cities.

    “It is not Islam, but rampant Islamism, that is making German cities an inhospitable, dangerous country for Jews, as has already happened in France and Sweden. Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, which no longer bothers to identify true war refugees, has imported hundreds of thousands of times an ideology that focuses on the Jew as an eternal enemy. Here she has fallen on the fertile ground of failed integration.

    “Their identification mark is a map from which Israel has been wiped out, and their followers carry this mark roaring through German cities. To be clear: you cannot carry these banners and at the same time pretend to recognize our constitutional state, one of the foundations of which is Israel’s right to exist. Only one or the other is possible. Too many streets were in the hands of people at the weekend who want a different Germany, a country without Jews.

    “‘We can do it!’ was Angela Merkel’s most famous refrain in the refugee crisis. It was also her promise that our country would not change fundamentally, would not be shaped by political-religious ideologies that sow death and annihilation elsewhere.

    “This promise was broken a thousand times over this weekend. I would finally like to hear what the Chancellor intends to do about it, what her personal, unequivocal words are to these Jew haters, what she wants to DO against the rise of this extermination ideology, before she leaves office.

    “Angela Merkel should take responsibility for what has become a threat to our liberal society and oppose it with all her might.”

    The chairwoman of the Liberal Jewish Community in Hanover, Rebecca Seidler, in an interview with Norddeutscher Rundfunk, said:

    “The escalating situation in Israel… has massive effects on the Jewish communities and institutions here in Germany. Jews are seen as representatives of the State of Israel and are held responsible…. I would like to emphasize that these anti-Semitic incidents in Germany are not about expressing criticism of the political actions of the State of Israel, but that we are dealing with massive anti-Jewish threats, which must be condemned in the strongest possible way….

    “Ultimately, it’s not a new phenomenon. It has always been the case that the situation in Israel always has an impact on Jewish life outside of Israel. As I mentioned, we are always seen as representatives of the State of Israel. It should also not be denied that the hatred of Jews is very strongly represented and anchored in Islamist milieus and is thus also expressed in Germany. Anti-Semitism has many faces, occurs in many social environments, and also has links between them, which can generate enormous energy. This aggressiveness, which we are experiencing here these days, is very worrying for us as a Jewish community.”

    In an interview with Die Welt, German-Egyptian political scientist and author Hamed Abdel-Samad said:

    “One can of course criticize the action of the Israeli police in Jerusalem and also the settlement policy. I have done this in the past. But when this criticism is used as a pretext to stir up hatred against all Jews, then the problem begins. If you criticize Israeli politics but glorify Hamas, the problem begins. And that’s exactly what happens in Germany. I think it has nothing to do with solidarity with Muslim victims. Muslims are victims every day in the Arab world: in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen. A few days ago, a school in Afghanistan was bombed; 50 children died as a result of Taliban terror and there were no demonstrations by Muslims on the streets in Germany. And they didn’t shout: ‘F*ck the Taliban!’

    “There is a high level of emotionalism in this conflict. For Muslims, it is not the victims that are important, but rather: who is the perpetrator? If the perpetrators are Muslim terrorists, then it stays in the family. If the perpetrators are Israel or America, then this staged indignation occurs.

    “Turkish politics also play a role in this. Erdogan’s speeches, the Islamic associations here, Milli Görüs and so on. They stir up this hatred of Jews, even though they constantly complain about anti-Muslim racism or Islamophobia.

    “German politicians have not understood that immigration from Iraq and Syria, from the Arab countries, also brings more anti-Semitism to Germany. Anyone who says that is immediately branded as right wing and there is no fair discussion or debate about it. For me this is a racism of lowered expectations. Let us imagine that after every terrorist attack by Muslim terrorists, Germans take to the streets, besiege mosques and shout ‘Sh*tty Muslims.’ That would be right-wing extremism. That would be a Nazi, but when it comes from Muslims, they say: yes, the poor things. They are emotionally charged. No, that is racism of lowered expectations. I don’t expect the same from them what I expect from normal German young people. And that’s part of the problem.”

    When asked about anti-Semitism in the Arab world, Abdel-Samad replied:

    “People who come here also carry in their baggage many conflicts from their home countries. Anti-Semitism is part of the educational policy in the Arab world, so to speak. Hitler’s books are sold there as bestsellers. Conspiracies like the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ are among the best sellers there. And these people come here. And you are not allowed to even talk to them about such conflicts in schools or in integration courses. The anti-racism debate is also part of this problem, because Muslims or migrants are generally seen as a group as victims and only the White man is considered to be the perpetrator.

    “In the end, not even schools can talk about anti-Semitism or the Middle East conflict. Or about Erdogan or about Islamism. Even at universities, Muslim students refuse to speak about such topics. Universities should be a safe haven for opinions. But for many Muslim students, universities are now safe spaces from opinions and criticism, even though that is where we have to start. We need to talk to each other. We have to have controversial discussions on all issues, not just the Middle East conflict. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. We have a very poisoned culture of debate in Germany. You get the stamp of racist or Nazi if you address any grievances in immigrant milieus or with minorities. The racist is always White, but never a Muslim or a Black or a migrant. For me that is racism of lowered expectations.”

    On his Facebook page, Abdel-Samad elaborated:

    “Let’s imagine a mob made up of German youths shouting ‘Sh*tty Muslims’ and throwing stones and fire at mosques in Germany after a terrorist attack in Paris, London or Berlin. What would we call these youngsters? Correct: Nazis! What would the anti-fascists and anti-racists do then? They would stir up outrage and fear that the return of the little man with the funny mustache is imminent.

    “But why don’t you hear from them now? Why do they consider terms like ‘Gypsy Sauce’ [the name of a German gravy] to be racist, but ‘Sh*tty Jews’ to be harmless? Why do they freak out when you ask someone with a migration background where they come from, but do nothing when people are insulted and beaten because of their origin?

    “A. Because for them it’s not about people, it’s about ideology!

    “B. Because in their racism industry, minorities can only be victims, and only the White man can be Nazi and racist.

    “C. Because their anti-racism is deeply intertwined with anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism, so some of them even sympathize with Hamas.

    “This is not just a double standard in dealing with the issue of racism, it is racism by definition. Because the White man is generally regarded as a person who was born with the original sin of racism, while all other ethnicities and cultures are acquitted of this charge. This, too, is racism against minorities, who are only viewed as objects of the White man and do not have to take responsibility for themselves. It is racism of lowered expectations when one demands something different from German young people than from Muslim young people.”

    Writing for the German blog Tichys Einblick, commentator Michal Kornblum noted:

    “A large part of this mob consists of people who came here as refugees and brought their hatred of Jews with them and continued to expand it here. It is no secret that many mosques and also left-wing German associations provide the breeding ground for this. In Germany, the most diverse social currents converge in anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel.

    “Another indication of the failure of politics and the judiciary is that many young Muslims from families who have been living here for two or three generations are more radical and anti-Semitic than their parents and grandparents, who often maintain a more Western view of the world. When the acquired ‘made in Germany’ hatred of Jews meets up with the imported anti-Semitism from Arab countries, it results in the explosive atmosphere on German streets that we are currently experiencing….

    “In reality, we are still moving from phrase to phrase in the anti-Semitism debate. The popular saying ‘no place for anti-Semitism’ turns out to be one of the biggest lies, since anti-Semitism obviously takes up a lot of space in Germany. Repeating a phrase like a prayer wheel does not change the realities. In the same way, ‘whoever lives here must accept the Basic Law and Israel’s right to exist’ tends only to be said. I am not aware of any cases of expulsions or deportations for these reasons. The deportation of all anti-Semitic rioters who do not have German citizenship would be a logical step.”

    Writing for the blog Achgut, the German-Israeli writer Chaim Noll blamed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany:

    “The open hatred of Jews has returned to Germany, from a direction that surprised many unsuspecting people. Gradually, the word ‘Jew’ has again become a swear word, an epitome of the contemptible, in schoolyards dominated by Muslims. This time the anti-Jewish resentment is not rooted in Europe’s anti-Semitic tradition, but in a different one. Which only a few Europeans took notice. Who would have bothered to study the Koran, the hadith or the Hamas charter twenty years ago? Who knew the countless passages in the religious literature of Islam that call for the contempt, persecution or extermination of the Jews?

    “The few who read about it remained silent, or if they voiced their concerns, were declared ‘Islamophobic’ and ostracized. In the meantime, in thousands of mosques and Koran schools, what Germans have for decades mutually been forbidden to do with heavy prison sentences, has spread unhindered. All the while, the same demon was allowed to flourish with impunity in its new environment. Numerous reinforcements have arrived since 2015, and hatred of Jews is in renewed bloom. The shouting at the demonstrations is getting louder from year to year. So far, no German Muslim has been punished for hating Jews or for openly inciting the murder of Jews, although this has happened again and again….

    “The pictures that are now going around the world document Germany’s new shame. Angela Merkel can take credit for the fact that in a country where hatred of Jews, although it existed, remained quiet or inaudible, the roar of pogroms can be heard again. She betrayed and sold out the German Jews. And not just the Jews. Also many Germans, for example, everyone who feels sympathy for Israel or for whom hatred of Jews is unbearable. By demonstratively abstracting critics of Islam in Germany, she created an atmosphere of fearful silence. Which, not unlike in the later years of the Weimar Republic, makes the roar of the Jew haters all the louder.

    “Angela Merkel will go down in history as the Chancellor who made open hatred of Jews in Germany possible again. She simply brushes aside decades of ‘coming to terms with the past,’ of popular education and trying to overcome a traumatic German defeat. Under her government one can in Germany again openly call for the murder of Jews and at the same time be subsidized by the state. In the small as in the large. Just as thousands of Jew-haters raging on German streets are supported by state funds, so is the terrorist organization Hamas on a large scale via obscure ‘relief organizations’ and NGOs, so that in the end every rocket that hits Israel also contains a part of German money. Angela Merkel is also silent on this.”

    The inimitable blog, Elder of Zion, wrote:

    “This isn’t about Gaza. We’ve never seen such hate after any Western action in Syria or Afghanistan. No British crowds marching through malls to protest airstrikes in Iraq.

    “This is bigotry in its most ugly, rawest form.

    “Gaza is an excuse to find a socially acceptable way to publicly express Jew-hatred while pretending that your hate is righteous.

    “And while it is more subtle, that is exactly what is behind nearly all the obsessive hate of Israel we see every day of every year. Nothing else explains this level of hate, and clearly it isn’t because of the supposed victims — Arab persecution of Palestinians is ignored by the anti-Israel crowd as well.

    “The way we know that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is that the anti-Israel Leftists who swear up and down that they are against antisemitism have not said a word about these incidents. And certainly, none of them have popped up and said they would protect the Jewish right to counter-protest or even walk around unmolested.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 02:00

  • Brandon Smith: There Will Never Be A "Woke" US Military, Here's Why…
    Brandon Smith: There Will Never Be A “Woke” US Military, Here’s Why…

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    The social justice cult never sleeps, they are forever “woke”, and they want to own the US military. They want it so bad they are frothing at the mouth over it. Whether or not they actually get what they want is another matter entirely. The induction of Joe Biden into the White House has opened the door to a new propaganda narrative, and it goes a little something like this:

    “The military is rife with ‘white supremacists’ and extremists, and it needs to be purged to make way for more diversity…”

    One of Biden’s first actions upon entering the Oval Office was to use Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as a foil to preach the critical race theory gospel and attack the current military framework as “racist”. Austin is black and he was a four-star general in the Army, so clearly there is not much racism holding minorities back in the armed forces. But ultimately this situation is not really about racism…

    The language of leftists and globalists can be rather confusing because they never mean exactly what they say. The word “diversity” generally means “more leftists/Marxists”, not more brown people. Leftists are incredibly racist towards any minority person that argues from a conservative or moderate position. The phrase “white supremacist” is usually a hatchet reference to all conservatives. So, to translate their woke gibberish, the goal of the Pentagon under Biden will be to divest the ranks of the military of conservatives and replace them with more regime friendly leftists.

    The goal of propaganda is often to create false word associations in the minds of the masses. The mainstream media constantly mentions “white supremacists”, “neo-nazis” and “extremists” within the same articles they mention “conservatives”. Though there is no evidence whatsoever to link the majority of conservatives with race identity groups, the hope within the establishment is that the conservative base in the US can be dismantled through guilt by manufactured association.

    Anyone who stands against the social justice mob is labeled “white supremacist”. Therefore, all conservatives are white supremacists, because the social justice cult controls who gets labeled. The social justice cult thus becomes the self anointed arbiters of who gets canceled and who does not. See how that works?

    As far as the military is concerned, the obvious intent is to link all conservative views with “extremism and racism”, thereby creating an artificial rationale for removing conservatives from the ranks or denying them the ability to sign up in the first place. The Pentagon is already openly discussing plans to comb through the social media histories of troops in order to root out those with “extremist backgrounds” (conservatives and constitutionalists). In theory, this would only leave devout social justice warriors behind. It is a political and ideological cleansing of the armed forces.

    The Cult of Woke is like a hive of parasitic termites that feeds its way through the various pillars of western society until they crumble; once a pillar is hollowed out, they move onto the next one, and the next one until the nation or civilization breaks apart completely. As the nation is destabilized, they then offer their own social model as a solution to the problem. Invariably, their model is one that eliminates all individual freedom and inherent rights in the name of collective “safety” and “equity”. It is totalitarianism posing as compassion.

    To be sure, the Department of Defense is fast-tracking the woke agenda. There’s no denying it after the latest promotional campaigns for military recruitment (not to mention the CIA’s bizarre ad campaign). Here is an example below which truly boggles the mind:

    Straight white men are noticeably absent from the Pentagon’s new series of commercials, and the people represented are a perfect pie chart of diversity hiring, even though the US is around 70% white and around 96% straight (according to Gallup).

    But who are these commercials really made for?  The Army admits they had to search a worldwide roster of soldiers, obtaining only 100 submissions that fit their woke criteria, and then filtered those submissions down to just a handful that met the diversity requirements of the marketing campaign. Some of the commercials are subtle, and some of them are not. The US campaign seems to be mimicking the “Snowflake” ad campaign used by the UK military in 2019 in a bid to attract what they call “Me Me Me Millennials”.

    Clearly, the percentage of soldiers that check most or all of the woke boxes is tiny. The commercials are also notably in cartoon form, because SJWs have a hard time absorbing information unless it is animated.

    Admittedly, there has been a quiet softening of military standards, including the reduction of boot camp training requirements. This is apparently meant to attract more women to the armed forces outside of the Air Force and Navy, as a majority of females have consistently failed basic physical standards. The US Army had to halt the “gender neutral physical fitness test” this year because women were failing at a rate of over 65% according to the Pentagon (they were failing at a rate closer to 85% according to instructors). The Army is now trying to establish a new “crossfit inspired” training routine in order to increase the success rate of women in boot camp.

    Women make up only 15% of active duty personnel among all the branches combined and are far more likely to leave service earlier than men. The data is cut-and-dry; trying to overtly appeal to women is a non-starter, particularly for the Army and the Marines.

    US Army training facilities have also recently been forced to remove the traditional “Shark Attack” from the first day of boot camp. The Shark Attack is basically a psychological wake up call, a way to send a message to recruits that they are no longer living in mommy and daddy’s basement and everything they do will now be scrutinized. Army brass felt that this tradition was “too abrasive” and that it needed to be “updated” with a kinder gentler first day program. In other words, the army wants to avoid upsetting people with weak dispositions so that they can increase recruitment stats.

    Within conservative and liberty movement circles there are rising concerns that globalists and leftists within our government are seeking to eliminate the principles of personal strength and merit because these elements are repellent to leftists. There is also the concern that the establishment intends to use a revamped “woke military” to subjugate the American public. While this might be the overall intention, I’m not all that worried, and here are the reasons why…

    The Numbers For A Woke Military Don’t Exist

    Globalists are very mindful of statistical realities, and they know that the current military dynamic is against them; hence their growing thirst for the wokification of our branches of defense. I want to remind conservatives that this is a good thing. They are trying to force social justice politics into the military because the military is the exact opposite of what they want it to be.

    For example, polling in 2016 showed that around 31% to 35% of the US military is Republican, while around 25% to 29% votes Democrat. But what about the remainder? The media often calls the remaining current serving voters “moderates” or “independents”. As it turns out, up to 40% of the military is actually libertarian or constitutionalist leaning according to polls.

    The mainstream media tries to hide this fact by only talking about “Republican votes” and “Democrat votes”, but the reality is that the vast majority of the military is conservative oriented, with values based in personal freedom and constitutionalism. That 40% of libertarians and constitutionalists is what the elites are really worried about. This is who they are referring to when they talk about “extremists” in the military.

    And what about the 25% to 29% of Democrats? That is the extent of the left’s hold within the general ranks of the military and it is improbable that most of these democrats are hard leftists. Further studies also show that the majority of veterans leaving the military identify overwhelmingly as Republican, conservative or “independent”, not as Democrat or leftist.

    This is probably why the latest social justice recruitment commercials by the Army are getting ratioed into oblivion by soldiers and the public alike. In response the Army YouTube page has shut down comments. Last I checked, the new LGBTQ and feminist inspired “Emma: The Calling” Army video had only 700 up-votes and over 33,000 down-votes. This is an epic fail. Where are all the hardcore social justice warriors just itching to join the military and “get some”? They don’t exist. The establishment is trying to appeal to a phantom demographic.

    The fact is, the only place you will find a preponderance of woke lunatics in the military is among the brass and sometimes in the officer corps; the leadership within the pentagon has been carefully groomed to create a leftist/globalist consolidation, and this has been going on for decades. Generals are for the most part politicians, not warriors (SPECIAL NOTE: Never trust retired generals or retired CIA agents, even if they claim to be on the side of liberty).

    While military leadership might go woke, this does not mean the rest of the military will, nor does it mean that troops will follow unconstitutional orders from such people.

    Leftists Don’t Want To Join Because They Cannot Cope With Meritocracy

    Not all of us are made for the military. To be clear, the military serves one basic purpose: It is a machine for killing people. The job of the military is to train the most efficient killers possible for the effective defense of the nation. It is not the job of the military to focus on “inclusion” or “intersectionality”. Anyone that says anything different is delusional or has an agenda.

    There are people that are born with the psychological traits and physical traits needed to fight effectively, and there are a whole lot of people out there who will never hack it. Finding the people with the right traits is something that the US military has mastered. This is undeniable.

    I also think that in our modern era of helicopter parents and equity training and participation trophies that the newest generation of Zoomers has been conditioned to be incredibly narcissistic as well as weak in mind and spirit, and the military is one of the last options left for these people to break that conditioning and become real adults instead of overgrown children. If you want to erase Woke cultism from our society just send all these kids to boot camp and they will be cured of their snowflake tendencies in a matter of months.

    There are of course constitutional concerns for military structure. America was never supposed to have a standing army in the first place; we were supposed to have local militias made up of every able bodied male citizen in a community. That said, I’ll be the first to admit that even within a militia system a warrior class is going to develop naturally. There will always be people who are set apart from everyone else in this regard.

    Another concern is the problem of leadership. As noted, today’s military leadership and American political leadership are not to be trusted, and for most warriors the question will always be this:

    “Will I be sent to fight and possibly die for a just cause, or a corrupt cause?”

    Under the current establishment war is indeed a racket, and most warriors will long for a real fight, a fight that is honorable. My personal conflict with the military is not the institution so much as the people in charge. I cannot fight for corrupt people.

    However, for leftists that avidly supported Barack Obama during his massive expansion of wars in the Middle East, the conflict is not about principles of leadership. No, their conflict is with the core values that make the military what it is. Trying to remove the merit based model from the US military will be extremely difficult. Social justice ideology and military standards of achievement are mutually exclusive; they cannot coexist in the same space. So, in order for the military to go full-on puritan the establishment would have to remove all the elements that make the military effective. They would have to destroy the military in order to “diversify” it.

    And maybe this is the ultimate goal. Maybe the globalists WANT to undermine the foundation of the US military with the intent to make America weak and easier to conquer. But then again, wherever there is a void, the physics of civilization seeks to fill it.

    The Establishment Is Unwittingly Creating A Counter-Military

    One positive outcome from the long running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that hundreds of thousands of veterans with extensive combat experience have come back home over the past 20 years, and most of them are conservatives. They are also very wary of the political dynamics in Washington DC. They know exactly what is going on in this country. Beyond this, any attempt to force social justice propaganda on the current serving is going to alienate more than 60% of soldiers. And while they are not legally allowed to speak out politically, they will not necessarily follow the Woke cult blindly and turn against their own.

    The establishment is now faced with a massive conundrum; by pressing their agenda within the military they are by default creating a separate and opposing military, one that could erase them from existence. Who would you put your money on? An army of limp-wristed, diversity obsessed progressives with velvet glove training? Or an army of battle hardened conservatives who walked through the pyre and came out the other side?

    Even if the objective is to debase the US military until it breaks apart, this does not mean America will go undefended. We would reorganize, perhaps as an unofficial militia system outside of federal control. In the end, a woke military cannot survive nor would it thrive; it would only inspire the revitalization of a liberty minded and free military force that would act as a counterpoint to the globalist agenda.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/21/2021 – 00:00

  • People Are Printing Weapons Disguised As Nerf Guns
    People Are Printing Weapons Disguised As Nerf Guns

    A couple of months ago, we noted deputies in a North Carolina drug raid seized cocaine, psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, money, and a Glock 19 disguised as a Nerf toy gun. We weren’t quite sure if the seizure of the pistol, made to look like a harmless children’s gun, was an anomaly, but it appears today people are 3D-printing weapons that resemble Nerf guns. 

    Case in point, Twitter account “YoungBreezy” has printed a working 3D-printed gun that looks exactly like a Nerf gun. The weapon has a similar color scheme and even the Nerf logo printed on the side. 

    YoungBreezy appears to have taken the 3D-printed weapon to a range where he ran through an entire clip without the gun failing. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    He said, “What it looked like before. Muzzle thing (not a suppressor) and brace broke off. Had a couple of failures to extract, and towards the end, the trigger wasn’t resetting reliably. Other than that, the test went well. Bolt didn’t break this time, and it was pretty consistent.” 

    The gun appears to be the FGC-9, which stands for “f**k gun control 9 mm.” As we’ve noted, the FGC-9 can be printed entirely at home for the cost of $350, including the printer’s cost. During the print, YoungBreezy used plastic filament to mimic Nerf gun colors and added the Nerf logo on the side of the weapon. 

    Democrats and gun control activists have been terrified of a decentralized network of 3D printed gun advocates quickly mobilizing online, revolutionizing gun designs, sharing blueprints, advising, and building a community. There’s no easy way the federal government can halt this movement as President Biden, not too long ago, declared war on ghost guns.

    Last Friday, the Justice Department proposed a rule that changes the definition of a firearm to require 80% lower kits to include serial numbers. Lawmakers have also reintroduced a bill that they say would ban ghost guns. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 23:40

  • Victor Davis Hanson: Why Does The Left Seemingly Hate Israel?
    Victor Davis Hanson: Why Does The Left Seemingly Hate Israel?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    With more than 3,000 rockets having been fired into Israel by Hamas recently, the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war.

    It’s not just that they fear that “The Squad,” Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and woke institutions such as academia and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel.

    They are also terrified that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism.

    And soon, the Democratic Party will end up as disdained as the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

    The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and occasionally has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants.

    The left in general believes we should judge harshly even the distant past without exemptions. Why then, in venomous, knee-jerk fashion, does it fixate on a nation born from the Holocaust while favoring Israel’s enemies, who were on the side of the Nazis in World War II?

    It wasn’t just that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi sympathizer. Egypt, for example, welcomed ex-Nazis for their hatred of Jews and their military expertise, including infamous death camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim and Waffen-SS henchman Otto Skorzeny. The Hamas charter still reads like it is cribbed from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

    The left claims it champions consensual government and believes the United States must use its soft-power clout to isolate autocracies. But the Palestinian Authority and Hamas refuse to hold free and regularly scheduled elections. If an Israeli strongman ever suspended free elections and ruled through brutality, U.S. aid would be severed within days.

    If history and democratic values can’t fully explain the apparent hatred of Israel on the left, perhaps human rights violations do. But here, too, there is another example of radical asymmetry. Arab citizens of Israel enjoy far greater constitutional protections than do Arabs living under either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

    Is the left bothered by the allies of Hamas? After all, most are autocracies such as Iran and North Korea.

    We return, then, to other reasons for the woke contempt directed toward Israel.

    In part, the Western left always despises the unapologetically successful—as if they are inevitably beneficiaries of unfair privilege. Underdog Israel was not so hated from 1947 to 1967. Then, it was poorer, more socialist, and in danger of being extinguished by its many neighboring enemies.

    But after the victories in the 1967 and 1973 wars, the Israeli military proved unconquerable in the region, no matter how large the numbers, wealth, and armaments of its many enemies.

    For the left, Israel’s current strength, confidence, and success mean it cannot be seen as a victim, but only as a victimizer. As its Iron Dome missile defenses knock down the flurry of Hamas rockets, and as its planes take out the military installations that launched those rockets, the left bizarrely believes Israel wins too easily and acts “disproportionately.”

    The left also has a strange idea of current “imperialism” and “colonialism.” The general rule is that Westerners cannot settle in numbers in the non-West. But the reversal is certainly not true. Millions of Middle Easterners are welcomed into Belgium, France, Germany, the UK, and the United States. Yet, Jews have been in what is now Israel since nearly the dawn of civilization. And their 1947 borders only grew after they were attacked and threatened with extinction.

    The left claims that its anti-Israelism has had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. But it is almost impossible now to make that distinction, when woke criticism obsesses over democratic Israel and ignores far greater oppressors and oppressed elsewhere.

    Why are there no demonstrations in major Western cities damning the Chinese government for putting 1 million Muslim Uyghurs in camps? Why are the world’s millions of former refugees—the Volga Germans, the East Prussians, the Cypriot Greeks—long forgotten, and yet the Palestinians alone are deified for being perpetually displaced?

    Our formal NATO ally, Turkey, received little global pushback for its treatment of the Kurds, or its frequent intolerance of religious minorities. Why does Israel alone always earn such venom?

    Hating democratic Israel while it’s under attack is not just a reflection of the new woke and ethically bankrupt left. It is also a symptom of a deeper pathology in the West, one of moral equivalence, amoral relativism, and self-loathing.

    [ZH: Victor Davis Hanson’s perspective is noteworthy given the fact  that today saw Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduce a resolution opposing the U.S. sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to the Israeli government, the Washington Post reports.]

    “At a moment when U.S.-made bombs are devastating Gaza, and killing women and children, we cannot simply let another huge arms sale go through without even a congressional debate,” Sanders told the Post in a statement.

    “I believe that the United States must help lead the way to a peaceful and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians. We need to take a hard look at whether the sale of these weapons is actually helping do that, or whether it is simply fueling conflict.”

    Last week, before this bill, controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz called Senator Bernie Sanders an “anti-Semite” and a “self-hating Jew” following an op-ed in the NYTimes titled, “The U.S. Must Stop Being an Apologist for the Netanyahu Government.”

    “But look what the internet allows us,” Dershowitz continued. “…you get the social media, supporting Hamas, The New York Times supporting Hamas, and it sends a very powerful message: do it again, kill children…kill civilians…commit war crimes, you’ll prevail on this because of the anti-Semitism…you can be a Jew and an anti-Semite. Biden has made some statements positively I commend them for that. But Bernie Sanders—who’s Jewish—is a self-hating Jew, a self-hating Jew who is willing to see Israel be defeated militarily by a terrorist group because he’s on the hard left.”

    [ZH: Which brings up one question we have seen raised numerous times in comments here and elsewhere online is various derivatives of “why do American jews democrat?”]

    The best – and least politically incorrect – explanation we have seen came from a Twitter thread by John Hayward:

    American Jews who vote Democrat should look at Dems rooting for Hamas and understand: this is all Critical Race Theory for them. It’s the brain rot that has utterly consumed their collective hive-mind. Oppressed brown people vs. evil rich white oppressors. 

    Jews are evil rich white oppressors to the left-wing hive mind – and yes, that includes American Jews who currently vote for them. They will grudgingly give you a limited parole from Critical Race Theory as long as they need your money and votes, and you pay tribute to CRT. 

    It should be more clear than ever, after the events in Israel and Gaza, that Jews are White Oppressors to the CRT hive mind. You’ll NEVER be People of Color. You’ll never sit atop the intersectional totem pole. You’re like Woke CEOs, receiving indulgences because you pay tribute. 

    The cost of that tribute will increase until you can’t pay it any more, the same way left-wing Israelis ought to have learned the “peace” they bought with concessions and giveaways was like a bubble mortgage. Now they have rockets flying at them from the land they gave away. 

    It will be the same way in America, as prosperity collapses and desperate left-wing groups scrabble for money and power. One day Jews will refuse to pay the tribute demanded by the Left, and you’ll snap back into the Evil White Oppressor slot reserved for you by CRT. 

    It already happens in Democrat cities during times of “civil unrest.” Soon all times will be times of civil unrest, and all American Jews will find themselves playing the Knockout Game with Critical Race Theorists. They’re telling you something by rooting for Hamas. Listen.

    [ZH: Sadly the hate from the Middle East has already spread to both coasts of the US]

    Authorities are investigating whether an attack on diners that occurred outside a Beverly Grove restaurant late Tuesday night was a Jewish hate crime.

    And jews on New York City’s Upper East Side were also attacked…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    [ZH: Former NYTimes writer Bari Weiss attempts to explain the anti-semitism of newly progressive leftists]

    *  *  *

    As Victor Davis Hanson concludes, hating Israel has become the surrogate Western way of hating oneself.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 23:20

  • First Images Of China Rover On Mars Released 
    First Images Of China Rover On Mars Released 

    The next battleground between the US and China is Mars. While space has always been a domain for superpower rivalry, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) successfully landed a rover, called Zhu Rong, on the Red Planet. Now two images have been sent back to Earth to show the success. 

    CNSA released a couple of pictures on its website of the rover, which touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a large plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars. Here are the first images from the rover since it landed on the Red Planet last Saturday. 

    “The first photograph, a black and white image, was taken by an obstacle avoidance camera installed in front of the Mars rover. The image shows that a ramp on the lander has been extended to the surface of Mars. The terrain of the rover’s forward direction is clearly visible in the image, and the horizon of Mars appears curved due to the wide-angle lens,” CNSA said. 

    “The second image, a color photo, was taken by the navigation camera fitted to the rear of the rover. The rover’s solar panels and antenna are seen unfolded, and the red soil and rocks on the Martian surface are clearly visible in the image,” CNSA said. 

    Space is no longer limited to the original Cold War superpowers (US & Russia). China has to been thrown into the mix after being the second country to land a rover on Mars. 

    NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated China for successfully landing a rover on Mars and warned Congress of China’s competitive threat to US leadership in space.

    China is becoming more active in space, especially on the Red Planet, alongside the US who already has NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance probing for life. The US rover recently launched a helicopter, called Ingenuity, already performing five successful flights. 

    Mars will become the next domain for superpower rivalry because the planet has an abundance of rare metals that will power tomorrow’s economy. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 23:00

  • Biden Hollows Out Trump-Era COVID Protections At The Border
    Biden Hollows Out Trump-Era COVID Protections At The Border

    Authored by Joseph Simonson via The Washington Free Beacon (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration is preparing to gut COVID-19 safety restrictions on illegal immigrants and asylum seekers and essentially reverse the Trump administration’s pandemic health protections without public notice, according to documents circulating within U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    President Biden delivers speech on Afghanistan on Apr. 14 / Getty Images

    While the Trump administration took a hardline approach to turning away immigrants to avoid “a serious danger of introduction of [a communicable] disease,” at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Customs and Border Protection is now quietly walking much of that guidance back. A May memo, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, highlighted a potential work-around of the safety measures. The memo, authored by senior staff at CBP, emphasizes the ability of “customs officers [to] determine [who] should be allowed into the United States.”

    Customs and Border Protection officials say the Biden administration is looking to liberally interpret that provision, which was initially meant for migrants with extenuating circumstances related to humanitarian concerns or political repression. Broadening the humanitarian exemption would constitute a de facto reversal of the Trump administration’s guidance on limiting migration into the country. The shift in policy would come as border patrol agents encountered 178,622 migrants in April, among the highest-trafficked months on record.

    “They’re keeping in place Trump’s order while broadening it enough to please left-wing activists,” a senior Customs and Border Protection official told the Free Beacon. “If they rescind Title 42, they can’t deport single men.”

    The memo says the federal officials “will be relying” on immigrant-related, nongovernmental organizations “to identify undocumented individuals potentially amenable to be exempted on humanitarian grounds.” Customs and Border Protection officials say essentially outsourcing immigration processing to NGOs could flood the country with migrants, many of whom never attend their immigration court hearings. Critics say activists from border organizations like the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society coach migrants on how to gain asylum status, rather than seek out the most vulnerable.

    Trump invoked Title 42, a little known provision that enables the executive branch to curtail border crossings during a public health crisis, in a March 2020 executive order. Left-wing advocacy groups call Title 42 a violation of international human rights treaties and have demanded the Biden administration reverse his predecessor’s invocation of it. The Biden administration claims the “streamlined” process of admitting immigrants will combat COVID-19 by reducing “the amount of time undocumented individuals spend in congregate settings, thereby reducing the risk of COVID-19.”

    Using an expansive view of the pandemic exemptions and partnering with NGOs will ensure that more illegal immigrants and asylum seekers will enter the country, according to the senior CBP official.

    “What the Biden administration is doing is giving them the ability to play both sides,” the official said.

    President Biden fulfilled a campaign promise by publicly instituting Title 42 exemptions for all migrant children, a decision many have blamed for the surge of unaccompanied minors at the southern border. Border agents could soon face a secondary surge—broad humanitarian exemptions would allow most families and children to claim asylum, regardless of whether they test positive for COVID-19 or other diseases. Single men, Customs and Border Protection officials say, would likely still face deportation unless they say they fear for their safety in their home country.

    The release of the memo comes as border patrol agents increasingly see what the New York Times dubbed “pandemic refugees” from countries as far away as India on the southern border. April numbers released by the government showed 30 percent of families found on the border came from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—a 22.5 percent increase from April 2019.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 22:40

  • Pentagon Marches Towards AI Taking The Kill Shot 
    Pentagon Marches Towards AI Taking The Kill Shot 

    Dozens of autonomous war machines capable of deadly force conducted a field training exercise south of Seattle last August. The exercise involved no human operators but strictly robots powered with artificial intelligence, seeking mock enemy combatants. 

    The exercise, organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a blue-sky research division of the Pentagon, armed the robots with radio transmitters designed to simulate a weapon firing. The drill was conducted last August and expanded the Pentagon’s understanding of how automation in military systems on the modern battlefield can work together to eliminate enemy combatants. 

    “The demonstrations also reflect a subtle shift in the Pentagon’s thinking about autonomous weapons, as it becomes clearer that machines can outperform humans at parsing complex situations or operating at high speed,” according to WIRED. 

    Its undeniable artificial intelligence will be the face of warfare for years to come. Military planners are moving ahead with incorporating autonomous weapons systems on the modern battlefield. 

    General John Murray of the US Army Futures Command told an audience at the US Military Academy in April that swarms of robots will likely force the military to decide if a human needs to intervene before a robot engages the enemy. 

    Murray asked: “Is it within a human’s ability to pick out which ones have to be engaged” and then make 100 individual decisions? “Is it even necessary to have a human in the loop?” he added.

    Michael Kanaan, director of operations for the Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator at MIT and a top voice on artificial intelligence in the military, told a crowd at the conference in the Air Force last week that computers are rapidly evolving in how they are identifying and distinguishing potential targets while humans decide to engage. 

    Lieutenant General Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements at the Pentagon, who was also speaking at the same event, said the great debate of the early 2020s is whether a soldier can be removed from the decision-making of an autonomous weapon.

    Timothy Chung, the Darpa program manager in charge of the swarming project, told WIRED that last year’s exercise was to explore when a human should be involved in the decision-making of autonomous systems. When faced with complex attacks, Chung said the robots could perform the mission better than humans because people aren’t quick enough to react. 

    “Actually, the systems can do better from not having someone intervene,” Chung added.

    Even as artificial intelligence is rapidly developing capability, keeping a person in the loop may be necessary for the time being as algorithms still need to improve where they can identify enemies with enough reliability. 

    This all comes down to the reliability of the algorithms to have a high level of accuracy when identifying and engaging the enemy. So far, the Defense Department policy on autonomous weapons states that these systems need to have human oversight. 

    … and for some forecasted timelines of when robots surpass human intelligence, Ray Kurzweil, Googles chief of engineering, said a few years back, it could be around 2029. 

    By the end of the decade, or even earlier, the Pentagon may allow autonomous weapons to take the kill shot without any human intervention. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 22:20

  • Boom To Bust: How Inflation Turns Into Deflation
    Boom To Bust: How Inflation Turns Into Deflation

    Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

    In order to understand the effects of inflation it is helpful to understand that inflation is not a general rise in prices as such, but an increase in the supply of money which then sets in motion a general increase in the prices of goods and services in terms of money.

    Consider the case of a fixed stock of money. Whenever people increase their demand for some goods and services, money is going to be allocated toward these goods and services. In response, the prices of these goods and services are likely to increase—more money will be spent on them.

    Since we have an unchanged stock of money, less money can now be allocated toward other goods and services. Given that the price of a good is the amount of money spent on the good, this means that the prices of other goods will decline, i.e., less money will be spent on them.

    In order for there to be a general rise in prices, there must be an increase in the money stock. With more money and no change in the money demand, people can now allocate a greater amount of money toward all goods and services.

    According to Mises in Economic Freedom and Interventionism,

    Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today use the term “inflation” to refer to the phenomenon that is an inevitable consequence of inflation, that is the tendency of all prices and wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that there is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages. There is no longer any word available to signify the phenomenon that has been, up to now, called inflation. (p. 99)

    Inflation is a process in which the last recipients of newly created fiat money are impoverished while the early recipients of this money are enriched. This process of impoverishment is set in motion as a result of an increase in the money supply.

    This increase activates an exchange of nothing for something. This amounts to the diversion of real savings from the last recipients of the newly generated money to the early recipients.

    Now, if the growth rate of money supply stands at 10 percent while the growth rate of the production of goods and services also stands at 10 percent, the prices of these goods and services on average will increase by 0 percent. In popular thinking, this will be seen as if there is no inflation here.

    However, knowing that inflation is an increase in money supply, it’s clear that the rate of inflation is 10 percent. What matters here is not changes in the prices of goods and services but the increase in money supply. This increase sets the process of impoverishment in motion.

    How Much Inflation Is There?

    So what is the present status of inflation? By popular thinking, represented by the yearly growth rate in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation stood at 2.6 percent in March, against 1.7 percent in February and 1.5 percent in March 2020. However, in terms of money supply, the growth rate of inflation stood at 69.2 percent in March against 13.4 percent in March 2020. Massive monetary increases have weakened the process of real savings formation. As a result, businesses’ ability to grow the economy has been severely impaired.

    Moreover, the ability of businesses to grow the economy has weakened further because of massive government spending, which has diverted real savings from businesses toward various nonproductive government projects. Note that government spending is only likely to strengthen in the near term. Because of this massive fiscal and monetary spending, the pool of real savings—the heart of economic growth—could be in serious trouble.

    Thus, a likely decline in the pool of real savings is expected to significantly weaken economic activity ahead; subsequently, the quality of banks’ assets will likely deteriorate. Therefore, the yearly growth rate of banks’ inflationary credit, or lending out of “thin air,” is poised to weaken visibly, thus putting pressure on the growth rate of money supply. This happens because as bank assets decline in quality, and as potential borrowers decline in value, banks lend less and put downward pressure on the money supply.

    Note that the yearly growth rate of money supply has already eased to 69.2 percent in March from 79.1 percent the month before. In the midst of a financial bubble—as we likely are now—even a slight softening in the growth rate of money supply could be fatal.

    Note: this graph shows changes in the TMS money supply measure.

    This is because bubble activities cannot stand on their own feet; they require support from increases in money supply that divert to them real savings from wealth generators. Also, note again that a major cause behind the possible decline in the pool of real savings is unprecedented increases in money supply and massive government spending. While the pool of real savings is still growing, the massive money supply increase is likely to be followed by an upward trend in the growth rate of the prices of goods and services. This could start early next year. Once the pool of real savings starts to decline, however—because of massive monetary pumping and reckless fiscal policies—various bubble activities are will plunge. This, in turn, is likely to result in a large decline in economic activity and in the money supply.

    Ironically, although money supply growth is immense right now, as a result of the possible burst of bubble activities the prices of goods and services could actually decline in coming years. That is, deflation will come as industry bubbles pop. This could occur as early as the second half of 2022. Yet the possibility of deflation hinges on whether the pool of real savings is declining, and this is notoriously difficult to observe.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 22:00

  • Lawmakers Demand Reinstatement Of Space Force Officer Removed For Denouncing Critical Race Theory
    Lawmakers Demand Reinstatement Of Space Force Officer Removed For Denouncing Critical Race Theory

    Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

    A group of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday sent a letter to the acting secretary of the U.S. Space Force, urging him to immediately reinstate a lieutenant colonel who was relieved of his command after publishing a book that warned of the spread of Marxism and critical race theory (CRT) in the military.

    Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a former instructor and fighter pilot, was relieved as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead,” the Space Force said over the weekend.

    It came after he took part in podcasts to discuss his self-published book, titled “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military,” that warns against the spread of Marxism and CRT in the military.

    During an appearance on the podcast “Information Operation,” he criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s agenda. The department deemed Lohmeier’s comments to be “partisan political activity.”

    In their letter (pdf), the two dozen Republicans expressed their alarm over the decision to relieve Lohmeier. They said it appears to reflect the development of an “increasingly politicized environment” in the Department of Defense, which has now manifested in the Space Force.

    The lawmakers criticized the use of euphemisms such as “diversity training” in describing CRT. Such terms, they said, are “grotesque distortions of reality.”

    CRT has gradually proliferated in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world. It redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similar to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.” It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as racist and “white supremacist.”

    Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the CRT ideology.

    Proponents of CRT have argued that the theory is merely “demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism truly is.”

    “Those leaders who are complicit with this poisonous philosophy which promotes racial essentialism and collective guilt in our beloved military will be judged by history accordingly,” the lawmakers wrote.

    “Promoting critical race theory will disrupt the good order and discipline in the Space Force and eviscerate our nation’s ability to attract patriotic talent to serve in uniform and fight our wars.

    Signatory Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) said in a statement that the military should focus on threats to U.S. national security and “not pandering to one political ideology.”

    “I can’t imagine a better way to weaken ourselves in the midst of a great-power competition with China and Russia,” he added.

    “Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeier listened to the Secretary of Defense and stood up against extremism on the left. He should be praised for his courage.”

    Space Force officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 21:20

  • Wharton Receives Anonymous $5 Million Bitcoin Gift
    Wharton Receives Anonymous $5 Million Bitcoin Gift

    Blink and you missed the biggest crypto crash since last March: having plunged as much as 40% on Wednesday, bitcoin is up 40% on Thursday almost wiping out all its previous day’s jarring losses, with ether up more than 50% off its lows. Which is good news not only for Tom Brady who BTFD, but for UPenn which according to Bloomberg was set to announce it received its largest ever donation in a cryptocurrency — $5 million in Bitcoin to support the activities of a research center at its Wharton school of business. Naturally, the donation which was anonymous, would have been much worse had bitcoin failed to rebound.

    Even though the majority of the gift is still in the form of Bitcoin, John Zeller, Penn’s senior vice president for development and alumni relations, was unmoved despite the surge in volatility.

    “There is protection for us on the downside,” Zeller told Bloomberg. “We have what we needed to support the budget and we’ll just see where it goes in the future.” Penn’s approach differs from that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has accepted Bitcoin donations since 2016, and which immediately liquidates gifts received in the cryptocurrency.

    As Bloomberg notes, while Colleges typically sell gifts such as real estate and stocks right away to eliminate risks that come with holding and managing assets, in this case, the structure of the donation, which was received a few weeks ago, “allows Penn to capture any gains if the price of Bitcoin rises and protects it from losses if the value of the currency drops below that of the initial gift”, Zeller said.

    The portion of the $5 million still held in Bitcoin will be monetized over the coming years to meet the budgetary needs of the Stevens Center, which promotes education and research in the field of financial technology and is named after Ross Stevens, the chief executive officer of Stone Ridge Asset Management.

    “The beauty of this is the donor wanted to use Bitcoin as a vehicle and also had an interest in promoting it,” Zeller said. “For us, it is a bit of an experiment.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 21:00

  • Beware The Rise Of Scamerica
    Beware The Rise Of Scamerica

    Authored by Roibert Wright via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Scams, frauds, flim flams, and grifts are nothing new to America. In fact, confidence games were old hat when Clifton Wooldridge published his 1906 classic, The Grafters of America: Who They Are and How They Work, which describes common cons in fin de siecle Chicago. The recent death of notorious investment scamster Bernie Madoff should remind Americans that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 

    As America descends into policy disarray, the scamming of others is increasing. Wire fraud is rampant, as is the impersonation of government workers, apparently because Americans now expect government officials to accost them for quick cash at least occasionally. I focus here on a much more insidious type of scam that also seems to be on the rise, something that I will politely refer to as “substandard work,” but that in informal adult conversation usually goes by a fecal four-letter word followed by “job.”

    Much of the substandard work being conducted across the country right now ultimately is the government’s fault, specifically a set of policies seemingly deliberately designed to induce Americans not to work: extra unemployment pay; major school systems remaining virtual until fall; bizarre summer camp masking requirements. The first entices lower income people to stay out of the labor market and the latter two make parents think twice, or thrice, about returning to work.

    As a result, many usually reliable businesses cannot find any workers, much less good ones. Robin Jones, a regional manager for a major fast food chain in the Upper Midwest, recently told me that April and May of this year have been the tightest labor market he can remember in his 43-year restaurant career, which includes stints in Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. His back is giving out because his desk job has turned into a role as a stopgap line worker in the cheap taco wars. While he does what he can, he is only one man. The extreme dearth of workers means much longer wait times than usual and substandard service overall.

    A restaurant in a resort town in New Jersey recently purchased a robot called Peanut to deliver food to customers. It reportedly “can open kitchen doors, deliver orders to tables, and bus the dishes when everyone is done eating.” It works until it breaks down and doesn’t demand tips.

    The labor shortage is hardly restricted to food services. The pool business pictured below, for example, had a good reputation until recently, when it charged a friend of mine $260 to remove the cover from her pool. Just a regular cover. U.S. dollars, not Zimbabwean ones. Inflation is relatively high, but it ain’t that high! If the company had added some suddenly hyper-expensive chlorine to the pool, maybe it would have been okay but it appears the workers were inexperienced newbs flummoxed by simple problems. They removed and stored the cover successfully (bravo!) but couldn’t figure out how to get the pump pumping, got frustrated, and left. But they didn’t want to tell their new boss about their pathetic failure so they charged for the full spring opening service even though they didn’t provide it. Not so smart.

    All manner of employee malingering and moral hazard appear to be on the rise because every low wage worker knows that they can get fired one morning but hired elsewhere that same day, usually at higher pay. Although full official statistics are available only through 2019, it appears that sexual harassment and other types of employment-related complaints have increased of late. Some of the increase is due to stricter laws and enforcement and more awareness of workplace harassment issues but some may be due to employees hoping for a quick, lucrative settlement, confident that they will be able to find work elsewhere even if their claims are found meritless after investigation. Even remote workers are pressing harassment claims. Unwarranted harassment complaints are simply a more sophisticated type of pilfering than taking home office supplies or using Zoom rooms for personal use, which is also likely on the rise.

    Unlike the hapless pool company described above, some companies deliberately overbill lots of their customers less flagrantly, in the hopes that many won’t notice or care enough to complain. When some inevitably ask for refunds, such companies stall repayment or simply credit customers on the next bill and thereby finagle free loans. Investment bank Morgan Stanley got spanked for overbilling in 2017 but if inflation increases nominal interest rates will rise along with it, or if lending tightens due to various new banking regulations now in the works, more companies may give in to the temptation of cheap short-term financing by overbilling.

    Yet other companies with even deeper problems push boundaries between sharp business practices and outright fraud. They need to book business today or go under tomorrow and hence are unconcerned about bad reviews or negative publicity in the short run. 

    One such company that I personally recently fell victim to is a long distance moving and storage broker based in America. A portion of my possessions eventually made the long trip from South Dakota to the east coast but pickup was two weeks late, which cost me dearly, and dropoff was delayed several times as well, which inconvenienced my poor, hard working spouse. Maybe some bad luck was actually involved but over the month it took to complete the job, the moving broker told me more half-truths than Fauci has about Covid. An industry insider revealed to me its original sin: when they get a mark, I mean customer, on the phone, they pretend like they have scheduled a pickup when in fact they have simply estimated when they expect to be able to sell the contract to a long-haul shipper, who then gets blamed for the inevitable delays.

    Large, unexpected increases in the prices of inputs, from gasoline to timber, means that many construction contractors are also getting hit hard. They want to pass along the added costs, so owners need to watch out for “change order artistry,” sundry excuses contractors use to increase the contract price. When owners push back hard on change orders the contractor might not show up at all, or do substandard work/use substandard materials, so often it is better to negotiate a new price or not contract in the first place until some stability returns.

    The recent ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline is more malicious than substandard work but the purported perpetrator, a shadowy group called DarkSide, claims to be a business that gives its “customers” incentives to improve their cybersecurity protocols. While the precise vector of the ransomware infection remains unknown or under wraps, Covid restrictions and/or the tight labor market is likely the root cause of the colossal cluster. As AIER’s Peter C. Earle pointed out last year, lockdowns make countries more vulnerable to attack and, as freezing Texans learned this past winter, more vulnerable to natural shocks as well.

    Natural immunity and vaccines have scotched Covid, at least in the U.S. If only Americans would develop immunities against overreaching government! Right now, Uncle Sam is more likely to stab you in the back than to have your back. Scamerica will grift ever more fraudulently until government sheds its paternalistic mask and once again lets children be children, employers employ, innovators innovate, teachers teach, and workers work.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 20:40

  • Survey Shows Half Of Non-Mask Wearers Will "Definitely Not" Consent To Being Vaccinated
    Survey Shows Half Of Non-Mask Wearers Will “Definitely Not” Consent To Being Vaccinated

    This looks like bad news for the CDC and the Biden Administration, which are desperate to entice more Americans to get vaccinated before international pressure forces the president to give away the entire US stock of vaccines (Biden announced yesterday that the US would send 20MM doses of vaccine that are authorized for emergency use in the US abroad for the first time as pressure from the international community grows).

    A recent survey found that half of Americans who don’t wear masks say they “definitely won’t” get vaccinated, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.Half of non-mask wearers said they would “definitely not” get vaccinated, according to a survey taken the week of March 15.

    By comparison, the data, which was leaked to Bloomberg, found that 13% of those who wear a mask some of the time or never said they had gotten vaccinated, while 34% of those who do wear masks all or most of the time said they had been vaccinated. Half of non-mask wearers said they would “definitely not” get vaccinated, versus 7% of those who wear masks regularly.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The findings follow an announcement by the CDC allowing fully vaccinated people to ditch masks in most settings.

    President Biden celebrated the decision as offering Americans a stark choice: Either get vaccinated, or wear a mask.

    The only problem with this is that many of those who are skeptical of the vaccine also don’t wear masks.

    One analyst who spoke to Bloomberg said she was surprised by the resistance to the vaccine.

    “But I think what stands out is the share that say they definitely won’t get the vaccine among those who say they don’t wear masks,” Hamel said in an interview.

    What’s more, the survey data support what many Americans probably see as common sense – although nobody apparently told the White House or the CDC.

    The findings already indicate that people who say they don’t want the vaccine are much less likely to believe that masks are effective. “And so certainly that relationship between the attitudes towards the vaccine and attitudes towards other sorts of protective measures exist, particularly among that group that says they’re just definitely not going to get vaccinated,” she said.

    The CDC was widely criticized for spurring confusion with its latest guidance for individuals and businesses, as states are now deciding whether they will follow the CDC guidance or opt to wait.

    Some employers are already saying they will require new hires to be vaccinated, although most employers still concede that it would be illegal to require all employees to go out and get the vaccine. Ultimately, however, they might still be forced to rely on the honor system as medical privacy laws might prevent them from asking to see evidence of the shot.

    The polling company, KFF, which has been running polling data through its COVID Vaccine Monitor, used data on self-reported masking behavior and people’s belief in whether wearing a mask prevents the spread of the vaccine as the basis for these findings.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 20:20

  • To Get America Back To Work, Congress Needs Courage
    To Get America Back To Work, Congress Needs Courage

    Authored by Tarren Bragdon via RealClearPolitics.com,

    You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You also don’t need an economist to know what happens when the government pays people to stay home. Unemployment rose to 6.1% in April despite thousands of U.S. businesses desperate to hire — especially in the restaurant and hospitality industries.

    If you are a business owner in the United States, you already know exactly what’s happening. Employers nationwide are reporting empty job fairs and job interview no-shows. Local shops and restaurants have closed their doors to give exhausted employees a break from covering extra shifts indefinitely.

    In New Jersey, a mom-and-pop deli recently closed for good, “not because business is bad,” the owners explained. “We just can’t find anyone to work.” Restaurants ranging from McDonald’s to the high-end restaurants are offering cash to get people to show up to interviews, and they’re giving away hundreds of dollars in signing bonuses to encourage people to fill open positions.

    People are staying home because it pays more, thanks to the $300 weekly federal unemployment check bonus. Can you blame them? The weather is getting warmer, lockdowns are loosening, and they are collecting their highest paycheck in years without having to leave the couch.

    There are more job openings right now than before the pandemic hit the United States, yet in March there were 8.4 million fewer job positions filled and the number of applications was 13% below the pre-pandemic level.

    People are not in a hurry to go to work because the government is paying them to stay home. If Congress wants people to return to the real workforce, it needs to give them a pay cut.

    Allowing the $300 weekly unemployment bonus to expire this fall would immediately incentivize people to get back to work and would light a match under the economy. We’ve seen this before — in 2013, there was a federal extension program in place similar to today. In the middle of the Great Recession, people could collect unemployment benefits for as long as 99 weeks — almost two years. Congress expanded and extended these benefits nearly a dozen times between 2008 and 2012.

    When Congress finally refused to extend the program in 2013, unemployment dropped to the regular state maximum durations overnight, around 26 weeks in most states, fewer in some. Research shows 2.1 million to 2.6 million people went back to work due to the duration cut. More than half of people taking advantage of the extended benefits wouldn’t have participated in the labor market at all if the unemployment extension had stayed in place.

    Contrary to the myth that losing extended unemployment benefits would make people drop out of the labor force, millions of Americans began providing for their families once again. A majority — up to 80% — of all job growth in 2014 was attributed to Congress having the courage to end the federal unemployment extension.

    The economy kicked into overdrive almost immediately. Job growth accelerated by 50% and more than 3 million jobs were added in 2014 alone. The number of new job openings outpaced even the best pre-recession years by nearly 30%. As more people joined the workforce, the unemployment rate dropped, people started spending more money, businesses thrived, and employers ramped up hiring efforts.

    Economists called the economic boom an “employment miracle,” but it doesn’t take an expert to know why people suddenly returned to work. The government finally stopped paying them to stay home.

    Like most things in Washington, the best action government can take to accelerate the recovery is no action at all.

    Allowing the $300 weekly unemployment bonus to expire on time in the fall won’t require complicated legislative action — just courage.

    *  *  *

    Tarren Bragdon is the chief executive officer at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 20:00

  • "That F*cking Lunatic": New Book Reveals Obama's 'Candid' Thoughts About President Trump
    “That F*cking Lunatic”: New Book Reveals Obama’s ‘Candid’ Thoughts About President Trump

    A new book called “Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump” by Edward-Isaac Dovere, a staff writer at the Atlantic, offers an inside look at what Barack Obama really thought about Donald Trump heading into the 2020 election.

    Obama, who had mostly remained publicly cordial with Trump after handing over the presidency to him in 2016 was, behind the scenes, being “candid” with his donors and advisers, the book says.

    This meant reportedly calling Trump a “madman”, a “racist, sexist pig”, “that fucking lunatic” and a “corrupt motherfucker”, according to The Guardian, who obtained a copy of the book that is set to be published next week.

    The book also says that Obama preferred Trump to Cruz as President, because “Trump was nowhere near as clever as the hard-right Texas senator”. Then, Trump won, prompting outrage from Obama, who reportedly said: “He’s a madman.” 

    Dovere also reported Obama as saying “I didn’t think it would be this bad” and “I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig.” 

    This was mixed in with the occasional comment calling Trump “that fucking lunatic”.

    Upon news breaking that Trump was speaking to foreign leaders, including Vladimir Putin, Obama reportedly said: “‘That corrupt motherfucker.”

    Conversely, Trump’s distaste for Obama is also well known, with the 45th President suggesting on more than one occasion that Obama’s incompetence was the sole reason he ran for President. Trump’s skepticism of Obama dates back to controversy he drummed up about the 44th President’s birth certificate after he won the presidency. 

    The book’s author, Dovere, has been known for his “candid” reporting, including once reporting that first lady Jill Biden suggest Kamala Harris “go fuck herself” after attacking President Biden during the Democratic Primaries. 

    Sounds like one big happy political family. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 19:40

  • One Bank's Case For Bitcoin $500,000: The Fed's Balance Sheet Will Hit $40 Trillion In 2050
    One Bank’s Case For Bitcoin $500,000: The Fed’s Balance Sheet Will Hit $40 Trillion In 2050

    Yesterday, when bitcoin was crashing, ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood sparked some laughter (especially among the crypto bears) when in her interview with Bloomberg TV she presented her bitcoin price target: $500,000.

    While this was in keeping with Wood’s traditionally hyperbolic forecasts (like Tesla to $3,000 for example), one could make the argument that at least in 2020, the market did give Wood’s crazy forecasts the benefit of the doubt (if not so much in 2021). But more importantly, one could also make the argument that Wood may be right… even if she herself has no idea why.

    The real reason why one can make a case for bitcoin $500,000 (hardly very shocking: JPM’s “fair value” bitcoin price target has been $146,000 for months) comes from Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid who in his Thursday chart of the day mocks the market’s taper fears, saying that “even after a taper this is far from the end of balance sheet expansion”, and forecasts that “if the Fed balance sheet to debt ratio stays at the post GFC average (c.30% vs c.38% current) then the Fed balance sheet would be around $40tn in 2050 from just under $8tn today.“

    In other words, we are looking at a 5x increase in the Fed’s balance sheet, one which would unleash an unprecedented tsunami of liquidity and even more unprecedented destruction of the fiat system (which is also why the Fed is planning on rolling out the digital dollar in coming years). And since the Fed’s balance sheet growing 5x means that other central banks would have to keep pace or else see their own currencies soar, we are looking at global central bank liquidity of roughly $100 trillion by 2050.

    Seen in this light, is a bitcoin market cap of $10 trillion (which is what it would be at $500,000), or just 10% of global central bank balance sheets, really that crazy?

    Here is Reid’s full note:

    Thinking about thinking

    Did the Fed minutes last night give the first hints that the Fed is thinking about thinking about tapering? Even the subtle language shift was enough to prompt an immediate c.7bps sell off in 10yr real yields. In this very heavily indebted world real yields are crucial to financial stability so it’s slightly concerning that “thinking about thinking” could have such an impact. It hints that the taper may not be straight forward when it eventually arrives.

    Having said that, I strongly suspect that even after a taper this is far from the end of balance sheet expansion. Today’s CoTD shows the path of US public debt in recent years with the CBO’s forecast out to 2051. We also show the Fed balance sheet.

    The debt will need to be funded and if the Fed balance sheet to debt ratio stays at the post GFC average (c.30% vs c.38% current) then the Fed balance sheet would be around $40tn in 2050 from just under $8tn today.

    Clearly the realized outcome won’t be a smooth upward line, but it’s hard to imagine what is likely to be a heavily-indebted future without substantial increases in the Fed’s balance sheet, irrespective of what happens in the next few quarters.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 19:20

  • Peddlers Of Russiagate Won't Take Truth For An Answer
    Peddlers Of Russiagate Won’t Take Truth For An Answer

    Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

    The Biden administration is vigorously pursuing key figures from the phony Trump/Russia collusion scandal that roiled the nation for four years. But instead of trying to punish the liars who perpetrated that fraud, it is targeting the truth-tellers who challenged and exposed the conspiracy to negate the 2016 election.

    Working from the same playbook used to smear dozens of Trump associates, the administration and its allies are planting stories based on blind quotes in friendly media outlets to seek revenge.

    On April 16, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that the Justice Department is investigating Kash Patel – who had worked with Rep. Devin Nunes and later the Trump administration to reveal the Russiagate hoax – for the “possible improper disclosure of classified information.” Ignatius said he received the tip from “two knowledgeable sources” who “wouldn’t provide additional details.”

    Violating the bedrock principles of American justice and journalism, this article is an exercise in thuggery as the government uses a powerful media outlet to intimidate and besmirch a citizen without evidence. With nothing to respond to, how can Patel defend himself? If Patel is lucky, the federal government has only placed a sharp sword over his head that may not fall. If not, he might be dragged into a lengthy court battle that could drain his finances and also cost him his freedom.

    We don’t know if Patel broke the law, but note that the administration has shown no interest in pursuing former FBI leaders such as James Comey and Andrew McCabe, who improperly disclosed information regarding Russiagate.

    Trump’s former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani is also in the “cross hairs of a federal criminal investigation,” according to an April 29 article in New York Times that relied on “people with knowledge of the matter.”

    At issue, those anonymous sources say, is whether Giuliani was serving two masters when he counseled Trump to remove Marie L. Yovanovitch as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019. “Did Mr. Giuliani go after Ms. Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Mr. Trump, who was his client at the time?” the Times reports. “Or was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her removed for their own reasons?”

    I’ll leave it to the lawyers to determine the wisdom of bringing a case based on the parsing of tangled motives. What is clear is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion. As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations, just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies.

    And note, the FBI’s zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president’s son Hunter Biden, who, Paul Sperry reported for RCI, “failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials.” It appears that we have two tiers of justice: one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends.

    The targeting of Giuliani looks especially suspect and politically motivated after three main news outlets that have driven much of the false Russiagate coverage – the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News – were forced to correct a recent story, once again based on anonymous sources, claiming the FBI had warned Giuliani in 2019 “that he was a target of a Russian disinformation campaign during his efforts to dig up unflattering information about then-candidate Joe Biden in 2019.” Giuliani was never given such a briefing.

    Considering the numerous instances in which the press published bogus information from “informed sources” during Russiagate, one has to ask why they continue to serve as vehicles for falsehoods. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a dozen times and you’re not fooling me – we’re acting in concert.  As RCI editor Tom Kuntz has argued, journalistic integrity demands, at the very least, that these organizations tell their audience who exactly had misled them. Confidentiality agreements should not protect liars.

    A third example of the Biden administration’s effort to punish Russiagate figures is its renewed effort to put former Manafort associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik behind bars. In an extensive new article for RCI, Aaron Maté reports that the Treasury Department provided no evidence to support its recent claim that Kilimnik is a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.” It also refuses to explain how it was able to discover the truth of Kilimnik’s identity, which the two most extensive Russiagate investigations – the 448-page Muller report and the 966-page Senate Intelligence report – failed to uncover.

    This absence of evidence has not stopped the peddlers of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory from claiming vindication. Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff casts Treasury’s unsubstantiated claim as smoking-gun evidence of collusion. The New York Times reports that the claim demonstrates that “there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year before the [2016] election.”

    Who needs proof when the government says it’s so?

    The FBI is also putting the screws to Kilimnik, offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest on witness-tampering charges involving text messages he sent in 2018 to two people who have only been identified as “potential witnesses” involving Manafort’s lobbying work for Ukraine, not Russiagate.

    In an exclusive interview, Kilimnik told Maté, “I don’t understand how two messages to our old partners who helped us get out the message about Ukraine’s integration aspirations in [the] EU, and asking them to get in touch with Paul, can be interpreted as ‘intimidation’ or ‘obstruction of justice.’”

    Maté also reports that the $250,000 bounty on Kilimnik is more than double the amount the FBI is offering for information leading to the arrest of murder suspects.

    The Biden administration’s campaigns against Patel, Giuliani and Kilimnik suggest how the winners of the 2020 election are attempting to rewrite the history of Russiagate. Having been debunked and rebuked by their own investigators, the conspiracists are taking a second bite at the poisoned apple.  Using anonymous sources to make unsubstantiated charges in the nation’s most influential news outlets, they are seeking to punish people for the crime of exposing their malfeasance.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 19:00

  • 22 States Now Dropping $300 Weekly Unemployment Boost Amid Mounting Job Shortage
    22 States Now Dropping $300 Weekly Unemployment Boost Amid Mounting Job Shortage

    Republican governors in nearly half of US states have all announced plans to scrap beefed-up federal unemployment benefits they say have disincentivized workers to reenter the workforce.

    The shift away from the $300-per-week handout started earlier this month with Montana and South Carolina ending the boost. This week, Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas joined the fray to bring the total number of states to 22.

    According to the Epoch Times, “Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming—all plan to end the $300 boost, along with other federal unemployment benefit programs, at some point this summer.”

    On Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the Biden administration that his state is “booming” and that employers are hiring in communities throughout the state.

    “In fact, the amount of job openings in Texas is far greater than the number of Texans looking for employment, making these unemployment benefits no longer necessary,” he wrote.

    Other states, meanwhile, have announced hiring incentives to get people back to work.

    New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said in a Wednesday tweet that “today we launched our SUMMER STIPENDS program to get people back to work, and announced we’re ending our participation in federal unemployment programs.”

    The Summer Stipends program offers $500 to $1,000 one-time bonuses for individuals who get a job that pays $25 an hour or less, and stay in that job for at least eight weeks.

    “Let’s get back to work,” Sununu said. –Epoch Times

    As we noted earlier today, despite the dismal payrolls print, initial jobless claims are just about to pre-COVID levels, with a better than expected 444,000 Americas filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week despite 8.1 million job openings.

    Source: Bloomberg

    In an open letter to the nation’s governors, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and several colleagues urged states to “put America back to work” by ending the weekly pandemic stipend.

    “Unfortunately, we are now seeing the negative consequences of these misaligned economic incentives,” reads the letter. “An estimated 40 percent of the unemployed now earn more staying at home than working, causing severe labor shortages across the country” and impacting several industries.

    And according to a recent report by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a record number of small businesses couldn’t find enough workers to hire in April.

    According to economists at Wells Fargo, on average, anyone who made less than around $34,000 per year was better off collecting unemployment benefits than returning to work.

    According to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), “It’s not because people are lazy — not accusing anyone of being lazy — it’s because people are logical, because it’s logic that if you’re going to make close to or as much and in some cases more than what you do when you’re at work, you’ll go back to work when that expires.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 18:40

  • Robinhood Introduces New Product To Give Retail Traders Direct Access To IPOs
    Robinhood Introduces New Product To Give Retail Traders Direct Access To IPOs

    A couple of months ago, we heard the first reports about Robinhood, SoFi and potentially other rival brokerages developing platforms to allow retail traders something that has, until now, been off-limits to mom and pop investors: access to IPO allocations of newly public companies.

    It looks like Robinhood is winning the race: According to CNBC, Robinhood will soon roll out a new product called “IPO Access” that will do just that: give amateur investors access to IPO shares. It’s the latest move to help “democratize” finance, as Robinhood likes to argue. CNBC reported that the company aims to “antagonize” Wall Street by breaking down one more artificial barrier for retail traders.

    Demand for IPO access among retail traders is high: IPO stock pops on the first day averaged 36% in 2020, according to Dealogic. Until now, these gains have been off-limits to retail traders.

    Traditional IPOs have also been criticized for being broken, with investment banks allotting shares to the same big clients who reap instate first-day gains. But with IPO Access, Robinhood clients will be able to request to buy shares at their IPO price range, and when the final price is set, clients will be able to follow through with the purchase, change their order, or cancel.

    The product will be rolled out over the coming weeks, and medical scrubs company Figs will be the first company to go public with some of its allocation delivered through Robinhood Access.

    Medical scrubs company Figs — which filed its paperwork to go public to the SEC on Thursday — will be the first company to offer its share on the Robinhood app.

    “We currently anticipate that up to 1.0% of the shares of Class A common stock offered hereby will, at our request, be offered to retail investors through Robinhood Financial, LLC, as a selling group member, via its online brokerage platform,” Figs said in its S1 filing document.

    “This is the first initial public offering to be included on the Robinhood platform and there may be risks associated with the use of the Robinhood platform that we cannot foresee, including risks related to the technology and operation of the platform, and the publicity and the use of social media by users of the platform that we cannot control,” the company added.

    To be clear: Robinhood won’t be underwriting deals; instead, it plans to partner with investment banks to gain access to the share allocation.

    SoFi announced similar plans to offer IPO allocations to retail traders, but unlike Robinhood, SoFi plans to act as an underwriter.

    Robinhood’s launch of Robinhood Access also raises questions about whether Robinhood customers will be able to purchase shares of the brokerage’s hotly anticipated IPO via the platform.

    If trading on Robinhood’s IPO day goes poorly, the company can just pull the plug.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 20

Today’s News 20th May 2021

  • Mapping The World's Top Countries For Military Spending
    Mapping The World’s Top Countries For Military Spending

    By practically any measure, the world today is more peaceful and less war-torn on a global scale, relative to the past.

    For instance, declarations of war between nations and soldier casualties have both dropped drastically since the 20th century. Yet, as Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali notes, military spending has not followed this trend.

    The Top 10 Military Spenders

    According to SIPRI, global military spend reached almost $2 trillion in 2020. The top 10 countries represent roughly 75% of this figure, and have increased their spending by $51 billion since the year prior.

    Here’s how the worlds top 10 military spenders compare to each other:

    The U.S. isn’t labeled as a global superpower for nothing. The country is by far the largest military spender, and its $778 billion budget trumps the remainder of the list’s collective $703.6 billion. On its own, the U.S. represents just under 40% of global military spending.

    This year, Saudi Arabia has lost out on a top five seat to the UK, after a 7.1% decline in spending compared to a 21.5% increase for the UK.

    Military Spend as a Percentage of GDP

    Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP can be used to compare military spending relative to the size of a country’s economy.

    When looking at things this way, many of the top spenders above do not appear. This may be an indication of their economic prowess or a demonstration that the money might be used for other vital areas such as education, healthcare, or infrastructure.

    It’s pretty rare for countries to reach double digits for military spending as a percentage of GDP. In this case, Oman is an outlier, as the Middle Eastern country’s spending relative to GDP grew from 8.8% last year, to 11% in 2020.

    Many of the countries with the highest military spending to GDP are located in the Middle East—a reflection of the escalating conflicts that have persisted in the region for well over two decades.

    It’s worth noting that some data for the Middle Eastern region are estimates, due to the aforementioned regional instability.

    More Spending to Come?

    Global military spending figures are at a 32-year high, despite the pandemic’s effect on shrinking economic output.

    Although a major war hasn’t occurred in some time, it’s not to say the geopolitical mood hasn’t been tense.

    The last 12 months or so have witnessed some nail-biting moments including:

    • Border disputes between China and India

    • Heightening tensions between China and Taiwan

    • Russia’s military presence in eastern Ukraine

    • The hacking of SolarWinds, a Texas-based company, by Russia

    • The ongoing Yemen crisis

    • An Israel-Iran feud

    Will 2021 extend the trend of peace, or will rising military spending mean even higher tensions?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 02:45

  • 71% Of French Say "We're Full": No More Immigration
    71% Of French Say “We’re Full”: No More Immigration

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    A new poll has found that 71 per cent of French people think the country has had enough immigration and that it can’t take any more.

    The 2021 Fraternity Barometer, a joint effort by the polling firm Ifop and le Labo de la Fraternité, found that almost three quarters of respondents desired to see no more immigration, while a clear majority of 64 per cent said France should no longer accept refugees because of the threat of terrorism.

    France has suffered numerous terror attacks carried out by jihadists who were let into the country as “refugees,” including the majority of the Paris massacre terrorists.

    As we previously highlighted, even so-called “moderate” Michel Barnier, who was the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, is calling for a 3-5 year total ban on all immigration into the EU.

    Perhaps reflecting the doublethink that still plagues people’s views on migration, although 74 per cent acknowledged that “diversity” creates problems and conflicts in society, 85 per cent of respondents still said it was a “good thing.”

    However, the poll results will make satisfying reading for populist National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen, who is likely to once again face off against Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential election.

    A recent poll found that 60 per cent of military and police officers would vote for Le Pen over Macron in a hypothetical second round run off.

    The survey results arrive amidst a national controversy in France prompted by two letters written by both retired and active duty military servicemembers.

    They warned that the country was headed towards “civil war” unless President Macron dealt with the “disintegration” of France being caused by Islamists and the “anti-racism” movement.

    “If a civil war breaks out, the military will maintain order on its soil because it will be asked to do so,” stated the second letter.

    A third letter written by 93 former police officers also warned that the country is on the brink of widespread social disorder.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 02:00

  • How COVID Put An End To Your Right To Due Process
    How COVID Put An End To Your Right To Due Process

    Authored by Daren Wiseley via The Mises Institute,

    Over a year ago, the covid panic shook the world. We were told it would only be “15 days to flatten the curve” as businesses were locked down, “nonessential” employees were forced out of work (I’ve written about the myth of the nonessential employee here), masks were mandated, and individuals were not allowed to gather in groups or attend religious services.

    In typical fashion, a government-mandated “temporary” usurpation of liberty turned into an indefinite infringement, as shown by the fact that we’re still under covid orders four hundred days later. Regardless of the length of time, the question remains that few have asked: What authority does the government have to lock us down and force us out of work?

    This brings us to the issue of due process, which at minimum requires the right to appear in front of a judge and represent oneself to a jury of his peers before being stripped of essential liberty. Did the thousands of businesses closed and millions put out of work get this opportunity? Of course not. They were unilaterally stripped of their ability to put food on the table and pay their bills without any opportunity to object.

    Sick until Proven Healthy

    The concept of “quarantine” has been well established in American jurisprudence for well over one hundred years. When an individual is sick, and at risk of infecting others, the individual could be put in quarantine or isolation by a court until they are no longer infectious. Quarantine still requires basic due process. The individual subject to potential quarantine is still entitled to a court proceeding and evidence must be established of the individual’s risk to public health.

    The past year has placed the entirety of the United States in de facto quarantine under the perceived threat of spreading covid. While quarantine is for the sick, most of those subject to the long list of restrictions have been healthy. Not a single person affected has had the opportunity to get in court and object. These blanket measures have denied every single citizen the constitutional right to due process they supposedly possess. Deemed sick until proven healthy, unfortunately, no one has had the opportunity to even prove their health. Governments have argued that “stay-at-home” orders are not quarantine as a way to end-run the issue. If that is the case, where do they get their authority? Neither the US Constitution nor that of any of the states provides an exception to due process in the case of a pandemic. Many states have relied on ambiguous statutes meant for use in a foreign invasion to justify these actions, but anyone who looks at the scenario objectively can see that there are no “pandemic exceptions” to due process of law. These powers were made up out of thin air, with absolutely no authority to grant itself this power.

    Eviction Moratorium

    If the lockdowns weren’t enough, all but seven states issued moratoriums on evictions or foreclosures, allowing tenants to squat on landlord property rent-free until further notice. It gets worse: landlords are still stuck with fulfilling the basic legal duties of landlord-tenant law, such as the warranty of habitability, even though they are receiving nothing in return. A landlord is not receiving rent for someone staying on his property, and is not allowed to evict a squatter from the land, stuck without the ability to use his property.

    The landlord’s property is essentially taken as a result of his deprivation, clearly a government “taking.”

    In a saner world, this would be regarded as a violation of the property rights ostensibly protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The basic idea there is that a property owner must be provided “just compensation” when private property is taken by a government agency. This can be violated in at least two ways. First, the landlord has his property taken and given to someone else without ANY compensation as a result of the moratoriums, flying in the face of the idea of “just compensation.” Second, the landlord is denied the right to a hearing to contest the taking, even though this is typically permitted in an eminent domain case. Certainly, the lack of ability to object to the property taken without a hearing is a violation of due process of law. Where does the authority rest to take property with no compensation and deny a hearing on the matter? As previously stated, there is no “pandemic exception”—another example of government granting itself authority out of thin air.

    Compounding these issues are violations of the right to a speedy trial (as mentioned in the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.) Courts around the country closed during the covid lockdowns, and since opening up have been left with an incredibly lengthy backlog. Many are still only doing proceedings via video after reopening. Defendants wait months and months in jail, as Ryan McMaken has written about here. The threat to basic due process rights should be obvious. 

    With states starting to end their eviction moratoriums, many landlords are still not receiving rent for those on their property. While they should be allowed to evict a delinquent tenant, the court backlog makes this impractical. With court proceedings delayed months due to the shutdowns, landlords are stuck with their property occupied by squatters indefinitely. The legal system prohibits a landlord from exercising the right of eviction on his own, requiring the landlord to do so via the courts. The delay on the landlord’s ability to use his own property until an indefinite court date, on which the court may still rule against him or grant the tenant a stay for more time, is another way landlords are deprived of due process under the covid orders.

    Conclusion

    The essential liberties Americans are told are protected by the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of assembly and religion, the ability to redress government, the right to a speedy trial, and due process of law, whatever they were prior to, have been routinely ignored in response to covid.

    The past year has made it ever more clear that due process and property rights—no matter how explicitly protected in both the federal and in state constitutions—are mere inconveniences to governments imposing their will on residents within their jurisdictions. These arms of the state will always use lawyers and judges to twist the law to achieve the ends they desire, granting the state whatever power is necessary to accomplish a desired goal. This abomination to natural rights shreds apart the fantasy that Americans live under a “limited government” system. Government power is instead limited only by the ambitions of those that occupy it. I’m sure Lysander Spooner would be saying, “I told you so.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/20/2021 – 00:00

  • US Army Reveals Range Of New Hypersonic Weapon
    US Army Reveals Range Of New Hypersonic Weapon

    The US Army has revealed the official range of its hypersonic boost-glide missile, otherwise known as the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW. 

    “The Long Range Hypersonic Weapon provides a capability at a distance greater than 2,775 km (1,727 miles),” an Army spokesperson said, according to Breaking Defense. This means the hypersonic missile could be stationed in Guam and surgically bombard the Chinese if they invade Taiwan. 

    For comparison, the Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile has a distance of approximately 1,118 miles. The LRHW’S 1,727 miles range gives the Army about 600 miles of additional striking distance. 

    The LRHW missile system consists of a rocket booster with a boost-glide warhead on top. The rocket launches the boost-glide vehicle to the desired altitude, and the vehicle then zooms to its target at hypersonic speed (or above Mach 5). 

    Hypersonic boost-glide vehicles can outmaneuver some of the world’s most advanced missile defense shields due to their high degree of maneuverability. 

    The Army keeping the weapon’s range under wraps for so long is unsurprising. If the LRHW were deployed in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or India, it could easily strike targets on Mainland China. 

    Meanwhile, China is building a wall of hypersonic missile launchers across from Taiwan. What this suggests is Beijing is accelerating the timeline for a possible invasion of Taiwan. 

    China and the US, already locked in a great power competition, quickly develop and deploy hypersonic weapons as Thucydides Trap brings these countries closer and closer to conflict. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 23:40

  • Blinken Accuses Russia Of Making "Unlawful" Claims In The Arctic
    Blinken Accuses Russia Of Making “Unlawful” Claims In The Arctic

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of making “unlawful” claims in the Arctic, a region that the US military is increasingly focused on. Blinken made the comments from Iceland, where he is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later this week for the first high-level in-person meeting between US and Russian officials of the Biden administration.

    “We’ve seen Russia advance unlawful maritime claims, particularly its regulation of foreign vessels transiting the Northern Sea Route, which are inconsistent with international law. And that is something that we have and will respond to,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with Iceland’s foreign minister.

    While in Iceland, Blinken will attend meetings of ministers of the Arctic Council, a group of eight Arctic nations, including the US and Russia. While he had harsh words for Moscow, Blinken also recognized the importance of cooperation with Russia in the Arctic and the danger of increased military activity in the region.

    “We have concerns about some of the increased military activities in the Arctic that increases the dangers or prospects of accidents, miscalculations, and undermines the shared goal of a peaceful and sustainable future for the region,” he said.

    Militarizing the Arctic is a key strategy in Washington’s confrontational approach to Moscow. Each branch of the US military has released strategy papers that call for more focus on the Arctic.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    When the US Navy released its Arctic Strategy in January, then-Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite said the US could counter Russia’s claims by sailing warships through waters near Russia’s coast, similar to how the US challenges Beijing in the South China Sea.

    Braithwaite said at the time that “near-peer competitors” believe certain bodies of water in the Arctic belong to them. “Well, the international community recognizes that those are international waters we’re gonna operate there,” he said. “That’s the more bold posturing that we feel is our right, and our responsibility, frankly, as the predominant naval force in the world.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 23:20

  • New Cases Of H5N8 Bird Flu Confirmed In Tibet
    New Cases Of H5N8 Bird Flu Confirmed In Tibet

    As Beijing and the world keep an eye out for any new emerging diseases out of China, the country’s agriculture ministry on Wednesday said it had confirmed an outbreak of H5N8 avian influenza in a flock of wild birds at a wetlands park in the city of Nagqu in Tibet.

    The highly infectious disease has been detected among wild birds in two areas of Nagqu, including a national wetland park. So far, 268 wild birds have been infected and killed, according to the ministry. Local authorities have activated an emergency response, sterilized the area and disposed of all dead birds safely, in accordance with protocols, per Reuters.

    H5N8 isn’t nearly as harmful to humans as the H1N9, but it is highly lethal to wild birds and poultry posing a serious threat to China’s farmers and meat supplies.

    As we reported earlier this year, Russian authorities reported the first human infections of H5N8 back in February, just in time for President Joe Biden to confront his old nemesis.

    News of the latest bird flu threat is arriving just in time. As an Ebola outbreak in West Africa has finally subsided, financial authorities around the world are looking for their next excuse to unleash another flood of stimulus money.

    Michael Snyder at the Economic Collapse blog opined back in March that bird flu could be one of seven emerging “plagues” to afflict humanity (along with earthquakes, droughts, volcanic eruptions and swarms of locusts).

    #6 H5N8 Bird Flu In Russia

    When cases of H5N8 bird flu started to pop up in Russia, many experts started to become extremely concerned that it could start being transmitted from human to human.

    Because if it starts spreading widely among humans, the percentage of victims that will die will be far higher than for COVID.

    Unfortunately, one of the top experts in Russia says that there is “a fairly high degree of probability” that it is now being passed from one person to another…

    A mutating strain of bird flu that has emerged in Russia has “a fairly high degree of probability” of human-to-human transmission, the head of the country’s health watchdog warned in a report.

    Anna Popova, who heads Rospotrebnadzor, made the worrying prediction almost a month after scientists detected the first case of H5N8 transmission to humans at a southern Russia poultry farm, the Moscow Times reported.

    Russian authorities said that the virus spread from poultry to the humans infected, but in China scientists have insisted there’s no evidence of animal-to-human transmission. Sound familiar?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 23:00

  • Border Officials Seize $685,000 In Counterfeit Currency From China
    Border Officials Seize $685,000 In Counterfeit Currency From China

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Chicago recently stopped several shipments containing counterfeit currencies totaling $685,000 from China, the agency announced on Tuesday.

    The shipments arrived at Chicago’s International Mail Facility (IMF) between May 15 and 17, destined for cities in several states including Illinois, Indiana, New York, and Kentucky. The fake currencies came in the form of $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills.

    One shipment was destined for the Bronx, New York containing 976 $100 bills. Another shipment was headed to Louisville, Kentucky containing 101 $20 bills and 103 $50 bills. All of these shipments were manifested as prop money.

    “Our CBP officers are always on the alert watching for any type of prohibited shipments that come through the IMF,” said Shane Campbell, area port director-Chicago, according to a statement.

    He added, “By stopping these shipments we are protecting our financial institutions, businesses, and the public.”

    China remains the top source of fake goods entering the U.S. market. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CBP made 27,599 seizures in the fiscal year 2019. These goods would have had an estimated retail price of over $1.5 billion if they were genuine.

    Among these seizures in 2019, 13,293, or 48 percent, originated from China, followed by Hong Kong with 9,778 seizures, or 35 percent. The top category of seized products was counterfeit watches and jewelry, at 15 percent, followed by apparel and accessories at 14 percent.

    The fake money seized by CBP officers in Chicago was hardly an isolated incident.

    On April 23, CPB officers in the city announced a recent seizure of 281 shipments containing counterfeit bills and coins at Chicago’s IMF. Ninety-five percent of these shipments originated from China.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In total, the 281 shipments consisted of 39 fake 50-cent coins, 6,345 fake $1 coins, 283 fake $2.5 coins, and 1,589 fake $100 bills.

    “Counterfeiting is a lucrative business which is often used to finance illegal activities such as trafficking in human beings, drugs, and even terrorism,” stated Mike Pfeiffer, assistant area port director-Chicago, in a statement following the seizure of the fake bills and coins.

    Just weeks earlier, on April 6, CBP officers in Chicago also announced that they seized more than 100 shipments—nearly all coming from China—containing counterfeit currency totaling more than $1.64 million. The shipments arrived in the United States between Jan. 1 and March 31. The fake currency included U.S. bills, U.S. coins, and euros.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    For the fiscal year 2020, which spanned from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020, CPB officers in Chicago stated that they seized more than $10.6 million in fake money.

    Chicago was not the only area where counterfeit money was being stopped. In June 2020, CPB officers in Milwaukee stopped a shipment from Shanghai to a residence in Milwaukee. Inside the shipment were 3,515 fake $100 bills.

    In May 2020, CPB officers at an Express Consignment Operations hub in Cincinnati announced the seizure of a shipment containing 2,523 fake $100 bills. The shipment originated from Shenzhen, a city in southern China, and was headed to Guthrie, Oklahoma.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 22:40

  • James Dean's Crashed Porsche 550 Spyder Transaxle Is For Sale 
    James Dean’s Crashed Porsche 550 Spyder Transaxle Is For Sale 

    James Dean’s career as an actor and racer was tragically cut short when his Porsche 550 Spyder collided with another car at an intersection in Cholame, California, in 1955. 

    Dean’s car, which he’d nicknamed the “Little Bastard,” was parted out and transplanted into other Porsches. 

    Appearing on car auction website “Bring A Trailer,” is probably the “most expensive four-speed transaxle ever sold,” according to car blog Jalopnik. That is because this transaxle belongs to the 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder Dean died in. 

    “The transaxle was reportedly stored for several decades prior to acquisition from Massachusetts by its current owner in 2020. It is now fitted to a steel display stand with axles, axle tubes, drum brake assemblies, and a starter. This 550 Spyder transaxle is offered by the seller on behalf of its current owner in New York with a copy of a letter from Porsche verifying its origin and a documentation file,” the auction website said. 

    During the summer of 1955, Warner Brothers banned Dean from motorsport activities while filming the epic Western drama film “Giant,” which debuted in 1956. At the end of filming, Dean bought a new 550 Spyder to further his passion for Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) racing. 

    “The wrecked car was reportedly sold by Dean’s insurance company to another Southern California racer, and the transaxle was later separated from the vehicle before being placed in storage for several decades. The piece was acquired by its current owner in March 2020, and is now installed on a steel display stand that rolls on casters,” the auction listing said. 

    The seller provides official documentation from the California DMV, Porsche, and public records to authenticate the transaxle.

    Paperwork From Porsche 

    California DMV Documentation 

    The current bid is $100,000 with eleven days left on the auction. Still, most of the car, including the body, remains missing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 22:20

  • "Governing As Looting" In Washington & Beyond
    “Governing As Looting” In Washington & Beyond

    Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    At what point does a democracy become a kleptocracy? That type of degeneration routinely happens in Third World regimes but the same blight can occur in the United States. Few things epitomize “governing as looting” like the automated traffic ticket cameras that hundreds of local governments have inflicted on drivers across the nation.

    In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down St. Louis’s red light camera ticket regime for violating the U.S. Constitution because drivers were forced to prove they were innocent. But elsewhere, mayors and bureaucrats have not permitted constitutional rights to impede their fervent pursuit of revenue. 

    Some of the most brazen abuses occur in the District of Columbia, which issues almost a million speed camera tickets each year. The American Automobile Association (AAA) denounced one D.C. speed camera near the Maryland border as “an old-fashioned, money-making, motorist rip-off speed trap right out of the ‘Dukes of Hazzard.” A single camera in D.C. generated more than a hundred thousand tickets and $11 million in fines.

    The combinations of speed cameras and shameless bureaucrats can cast citizens into a Kafkaesque hell. Last November 2, Doug Nelson, a 73-year-old Postal Service employee and Vietnam veteran, was carjacked as he returned home from a late shift. Nelson quickly surrendered his vehicle to the pistol-wielding assailants. He filed a police report and his car was eventually recovered but the license plates were stolen by the thieves. 

    In the following weeks, Nelson was stunned to receive thousands of dollars in tickets for speed camera violations spurred by the thieves who stole his car. Nelson and his wife repeatedly notified the D.C. government of the unjust fines but their complaints were ignored. Because of the fines, they were prohibited from getting a new license plate and thus banned from driving their only vehicle. They were told they would have to pay the entire fine – which quickly rose to $5,000 – before they were permitted to formally challenge the penalties.

    Nelson’s experience exemplifies how “due process” nowadays means any damn process government does. The District has a Ticket Adjudication Ombudsman to deal with cases of gross injustice. But because Nelson failed to speedily file a “Reconsideration or a Motion to Vacate,” he was prohibited from any relief. A local television station put its “I-Team” on the case but D.C. government officials refused to sit down for a televised interview. But the embarrassing publicity finally spurred the city to finally cancel the fines. As Hannah Cox of the Foundation for Economic Education observed, “The District of Columbia unjustly deprived the Nelsons of the use of their car for far longer than the carjackers did.”

    The District is one of the more than 400 municipalities, including most of the nation’s largest cities, that have imposed red light cameras on their streets in recent decades. Red light cameras are notorious for increasing traffic collisions because they spur drivers to seek to stop suddenly to avoid being fined. In 2005, six years after the District of Columbia set up a red light regime that generated more than 500,000 tickets, a Washington Post analysis revealed that “the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled.” The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles analyzed traffic crash data and reported in 2016 that “fatalities from accidents doubled” at intersections with red-light cameras. A Virginia Department of Transportation study concluded that cameras were associated with a 29% “increase in total crashes.” But policies that needlessly kill some citizens are worthwhile if they boost government revenue, at least according to the political morality prevailing in many cities. 

    Numerous federal studies have shown that the most effective step to reduce collisions at traffic lights is to lengthen the time of the yellow light to allow drivers more time to stop. A Federal Highway Administration report concluded that “a one second increase in yellow time results in 40 percent decrease in severe red light related crashes.” But in 2015, the District shortened the yellow lights at many intersections and the number of red light tickets skyrocketed. Some of the private companies that install and maintain red light cameras have contract provisions prohibiting cities from extending yellow lights because it would hurt their profits. 

    The vast majority of red light tickets are slapped on drivers who make right turns on red without coming to a dead stop. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that zero fatalities occurred nationwide in 1998 “from an accident resulting from a right hand turn on red when the driver yielded to oncoming traffic.” AAA spokesman John Townsend labeled right-turn-on-red cameras as “the biggest scandal in automated traffic enforcement.” 

    Despite a blizzard of automated penalties, traffic fatalities sharply increased in D.C. in recent years. So the mayor and City Council last year voted to triple the number of red light cameras and slashed the speed limit on most city streets to 20 miles per hour, creating new Yukon Territories for speed cameras. Mayor Muriel Bowser is a zealous champion of “Vision Zero” policies and she proclaimed a goal of zero traffic fatalities by 2024. That will never happen but her bogus idealism sanctifies tyrannizing drivers regardless. 

    Foul play is fair play as long as government profits. In 2018, the City Council enacted the Clean Hands Law, which prohibited driver license renewals for anyone with more than $100 in debt to the D.C. government. But local officials are not required to have “Clean Hands.” The D.C. Inspector General found that the automated ticketing system was so out of control that “drivers get speeding tickets for violations they don’t commit and for vehicles they’ve never owned.” The IG slammed the government for issuing tickets “without conclusive identification of the violating vehicle.” City bureaucrats were proud of how the ticketing system was rigged. A senior D.C. government official declared, “You are guilty until you have proven yourself innocent… That has worked well for us.” D.C. police and transportation officials responded with a statement scoffing that complaints “generally come from those relatively few people who feel entitled to speed on District streets or run red lights.” But hundreds of thousands of drivers have been nailed by a regime that is intentionally reckless and unjust.

    Mayor Bowser is a proud champion of social justice and last year renamed a street in front of the White House as “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and painted that slogan on the asphalt in giant yellow letters. But Bowser, like other D.C. politicians, ignores how their ticketing racketeering punishes the city’s neediest residents. According to a 2018 report by D.C. Policy Center, a think tank, “Neighborhoods where 80 percent or more of residents are black on average paid $322 per capita in automated traffic tickets compared to just $20 per capita in 80 percent white neighborhoods. Residents in black neighborhoods were 17 times more likely to receive a photo ticket.” But black neighborhoods did not have a higher rate of auto crashes than other neighborhoods. 

    Unnecessary and unjust tickets disrupt lives and destroy people’s ability to feed their families. A 2019 study by the Federal Reserve concluded that almost half of Americans “could not afford an unexpected expense of $400 or more.” The National Motorist Association warned, “The practical results for many poor people may be a lot like putting them in debtor prisons, unable to legally drive to work.” In 2018, the D.C. government created a “community service option” where low-income traffic violators could pay off tickets by working unpaid for the city at the minimum wage rate. At least the city has not yet created chain gangs sweating to pay their speed cameras debts. 

    The depredations of automatic ticket enforcement presume that government revenue is a magic wand that solves all problems. But surging revenue has done nothing to prevent the D.C. government from dismally failing its residents. The murder rate is soaring and the schools were dismally failing to educate low-income students even before the pandemic. The city would have collapsed to Baltimorean-levels of debility if not for the endless revenue streams from the federal government and its accompanying graft.

    Ticket cameras epitomize how democracy provides no protection against politicians willing to force citizens to pay any price to boost government revenue. The Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law noted last month, “Automated enforcement has also failed at the ballot box; red light and/or speed cameras were voted down in 39 of 43 local elections where the initiative appeared as a referendum.” But local politicians insulate themselves, buying support from other groups and blocking citizens from having a chance to pass judgment on at the polling booths. 

    Automatic ticket regimes have turbocharged many politicians’ lifestyles. Bribery scandals have enveloped automated ticketing regimes in Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere. The former top salesman for Redflex, one of the largest providers of red light cameras, testified that his company had “sent gifts and bribes to officials in at least 14 states.” (Redflex denied the allegation.) Last year, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza condemned red light ticket regimes as “a program that’s broken and morally corrupt” and recommended ending them across the state.

    Automatic ticketing regimes provide a stark refutation to the illusion that governments automatically serve the people. Especially for policies shrouded in sanctimony, government agencies are almost always more wasteful or oppressive than the media portrays. How much longer will local politicians be permitted to plunder drivers and subvert safety with impunity?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 22:00

  • Third Largest US Chicken Producer Runs Out Of Chicken Wings
    Third Largest US Chicken Producer Runs Out Of Chicken Wings

    At this point, shortages of everything from microchips to potato chips are forcing American businesses to adjust to higher prices and supply shocks, while consumers are forced to pay higher prices at the store. And while high commodity prices (which have come off their highs in recent days as lumber, oil and iron prices declined) have retreated in recent days, we noted that these shortages are expected to last a long time.

    One reason is that high prices are good for producers, and it’s too expensive for many companies to build out new production capacity right now. This dynamic is contributing to a looming chicken wing shortage in the US, which might remind some of the bacon-shortage hysteria that has occasionally gripped the US in the past.

    Case in point: Sanderson Farms, the third-largest poultry producer in the US (whose engineering firm likely recommended them to suspend plans for plant expansion because prices on everything from lumber to steel to concrete to plastic to copper to machinery to labor skyrocketed, making building unaffordable) has decided that it will pass on expanding its operation despite surging demand for its product that has put it on the cusp of running out of chicken wings.

    “I need a plant to open up next week, but it is not a good time to be building,” said Chief Executive Joe Sanderson, who Bloomberg quoted. 

    As we have reported, demand for chicken in the US is through the roof. Without expansion, the nation’s third largest poultry plant can’t take any new orders: 

    “We’re totally sold out and we’ve had people call us to service them and we cannot take on anymore business, and that’s not a good place,” Sanderson said.

    Sanderson said construction of the new chicken plant was expected to begin in the first half of the year. He said we’ve been “look very hard” at surging building costs and is mulling over plans to shelve the expansion until raw material costs come down. 

    Meanwhile, everyone from the White House to the Fed has downplayed blistering inflation in commodities as ‘transitory.’ However, it’s only now where hyperinflating prices are beginning to affect the recovery by pausing commercial construction builds.

    We urge readers to read the transcript from Warren Buffet’s address to shareholders earlier this month who warned: “We see very substantial inflation.” 

    Clearly, the world Buffett lives in is much different than the clueless career economists of the Fed Reserve and White House propagandists who act as everything is just fine. 

    “The costs are just up, up, up. Steel costs, you know, just every day, they’re going up,” Buffet told shareholders earlier this month. 

    Of course, producers’ reluctance to expand is a product of the same topsy-turvey markets inspired by the alliance between the Fed and the Treasury, that has stuffed the economy full of cheap money, making it more profitable for workers to stay at home, and more advantageous for producers to simply accept higher prices for their products – until the next plague shuts down the economy again, forcing another round of stimulus.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 21:40

  • US Stimulus Has Created A Boom… In China
    US Stimulus Has Created A Boom… In China

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Maybe maximizing corporate profits isn’t all that matters. Maybe national security and resilience matter, too, and if they do, then reshoring critical supply chains should be a higher priority than Corporate America’s (mostly tax-free) profits.

    As America’s trade deficit explodes higher and the costs of offshoring supply chains mount, the apologists for globalization are out in full force, attempting to shout down reality with their usual specious claims about how amazingly wunnerful globalization has been for America.

    Allow me to tote up the real-world cost savings:

    • Cost of cheap ill-fitting jeans dropped $10.

    • Cost of low-quality TV that will only last a few years dropped $50.

    • Cost of healthcare, annual increase: $3,000 per household

    • Cost of rent, annual increase: $1,200 per household

    • Cost of child care, annual increase: $1,300 per household

    • Cost of college tuition and room and board, annual increase: $1,500 per household

    So while domestic costs rose $6,000 annually due to predatory cartels, over-regulation, taxes, etc., we saved $60 by offshoring supply chains. Excuse me for being underwhelmed by the wunnerfulness of offshoring jobs and supply chains.

    Yes, the benefits of free trade, blah-blah-blah, I get it; but there is no such thing as free trade, there are only versions of managed trade, the vast majority of which are beneficial to corporations and elites on both sides of the trade.

    Trade is always about maximizing profits. That’s the only reason to bother with trade, though there are geopolitical considerations as well. The U.S. opened its vast markets to Western Europe and Japan and the Asian Tigers in the Cold War to strengthen their economies, as a means of suppressing the appeal of Communism in their domestic politics.

    This mercantilist strategy worked well, ushering in rapid growth in West Germany, Japan and other allied nations, but the problem is those economies never transitioned out of being mercantilist, export-dependent economies. The U.S. has remained the dumping ground for the world’s surplus production since the early 1950s.

    While it’s all too easy to blame China for soaring trade deficits, nobody forced Corporate America to transfer supply chains to China; it was all done to maximize profits, because that’s all that matters, right?

    If we examine the chart of U.S. corporate profits, we notice they were around $700 billion annually in the high-growth 1990s when America’s trade deficit in goods and services fluctuated between $100 billion and $175 billion annually. Once China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, corporate profits — and trade deficits — skyrocketed.

    This is not coincidence. Corporate America reaped trillions in profits by offshoring production and supply chains. Three points need to made here: one is that trade in goods is grossly distorted by outdated rules for calculating imports and exports. Analysts estimate that as little as $10 of the value of every iPhone or iPad actually ends up in the Chinese economy, in the form of income paid directly to Foxconn or other contractors. But the iPhone–assembled in China with parts sourced globally–is counted as a $250 import from China when it arrives at the port of Long Beach, California.

    The other is that China paid a steep price for its rapid economic growth as the sweatshop for global corporations. The environmental damage of rapid industrialization has been immense, many workers were cheated by contractors who promised impossibly low prices to Western corporate buyers, and profit margins were razor thin for many suppliers.

    The American workforce paid a steep price, as did U.S. national security, as valuable intellectual property was lavished on China in exchange for those all-important quarterly increases in corporate profits.

    Corporate America made out like bandits. Everyone else–not so much. Thanks to fancy legalized looting footwork, most American corporation reaping staggering profits from overseas production pay little or no taxes that benefit the American citizenry.

    Let’s look at the charts of U.S. imports and exports. If trade deficits had risen along with U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in the 24 years since 1997, it would have risen 2.5-fold, to an annual rate of about $240 billion.

    The actual trade deficit is $600 billion higher: $850 billion annually. $600 billion here, $600 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.

    Notice that thanks to trillions in stimulus, imports have soared back up while exports have lagged. That’s what happens when you offshore your critical supply chains.

    My insightful blogger colleague Wolf Richter recently posted an illuminating chart of service surpluses and goods deficits: it’s obvious that much of the stimmy spent at WalMart bought stuff from China.

    He added these thought-provoking comments in his post Just Keeps Getting Worse: Services Trade Surplus, the American Dream Not-Come-True, Falls to 9-Year Low, Total Trade Deficit Explodes to Worst Ever:

    “Note that during the Financial Crisis, the overall trade deficit improved substantially. Consumers cut back buying imported durable goods, while the trade surplus of services declined only briefly.

    The opposite happened during the Pandemic where stimulus fired up US consumer demand, boosted foreign manufacturing, but did nothing for US exports.

    Every crisis in the US over the past two decades has caused Corporate America to cut costs further by pushing offshoring to the next level. And after each crisis subsides, the trade deficits and US dependence on foreign manufacturing plants (no matter who owns them) are worse than before.

    This dependence has become painfully obvious in some of the shortages, including the semiconductor shortage now rippling through the US economy. The US, which for decades had led the world in semiconductor design and manufacturing, now makes only 12% of global semiconductors.”

    Maybe maximizing corporate profits isn’t all that matters. Maybe national security and resilience matter, too, and if they do, then reshoring critical supply chains should be a higher priority than Corporate America’s (mostly tax-free) profits.

    *  *  *

    If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    *  *  *

    My recent books:

    A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

    The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

    Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 21:20

  • Walgreens Closes 17 San Francisco Stores Due To "Out Of Control" Shoplifting
    Walgreens Closes 17 San Francisco Stores Due To “Out Of Control” Shoplifting

    The effects of allowing chaos to prevail in Democrat-controlled cities across America might not be evident to liberals and social justice warriors now, but when businesses close up, it’s going to be very transparent then. 

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 17 Walgreens Pharmacy locations have shuttered their doors in San Francisco during the past five years. At least ten of the stores in the city have closed since 2019. 

    Like many other retailers, Walgreens is blaming Proposition 47, which lowered penalties for thefts under $950 and sparked dramatic increases in shoplifting across the metro area over the last several years. Prop. 47 is supported by criminal justice reformers and the liberal establishment, who have also managed to defund the local police. 

    Combining the two has allowed professional shoplifters, homeless, and drug addicts to easily work the system and steal items under the monetary threshold from store to store with limited penalties. 

    Walgreens San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí told the Chronicle that the situation is “out of control,” adding:

    “People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly.”

    The cost of business and shoplifting is staggering for Walgreens. Despite closing 17 stores, the company still has 53 open in the metro area but could close more by the end of the year. 

    Thefts at Walgreens’ in the city are four times the average for other stores across the country. The pharmacy chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere, said Jason Cunningham, regional vice president for pharmacy and retail operations in California and Hawaii. 

    To address the widespread shoplifting problem, Safaí held a hearing Thursday, May 13, with other retailers, local police, District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and probation departments. The Chronicle said retailers at the hearing blamed “professional thieves instead of opportunistic shoplifters who may be driven by poverty.”

    The penalty for shoplifting is a “nonviolent misdemeanor” that carries a maximum sentence of 6 months. But in most cases, for simple shoplifting, the criminal is released with conditions. Stay under the $950 threshold, and repeat offenders can continue running amuck in shopping districts. 

    Other retailers are likely to follow Walgreens’ lead and exit the city as it descends into a socio-economic hellhole. San Francisco has likely peaked. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 21:00

  • US Blocks Shipment Of Japanese Shirts On Suspicion They Were Made In Xinjiang
    US Blocks Shipment Of Japanese Shirts On Suspicion They Were Made In Xinjiang

    In the first confirmed case of US retaliation against allegations of Chinese quasi slavery, a shipment of shirts for Japan’s Uniqlo chain was blocked from entering the U.S in January on suspicion they were made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing protested the block, claiming that all the cotton involved was grown outside of China, but the US denied the protest because there was not sufficient evidence to disprove the claim.

    A Customs and Border Protection document dated May 10 shows that the agency confiscated the shirts at the Port of Los Angeles, suspecting they were made by Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and follows a US ban in December of all cotton product shipments made by XPCC due to suspicions of forced labor in the region.

    In response, Fast Retailing – Japan’s sixth most valuable listed company – on Wednesday called the U.S. customs decision “very regrettable.”  In its customs document, Uniqlo said the raw cotton used in the shirts was produced in Australia, the U.S. and Brazil, with no connections to Uyghur labor.

    In response, the U.S. agency ignored the protest, and said Uniqlo failed to provide enough evidence that its products were free from forced labor, citing a lack of information on the production process and insufficient production records.

    CEO Tadashi Yanai declined to comment on questions regarding cotton in the Xinjiang region during a news conference in April, but the company addressed the matter in an August 2020 statement.

    “No Uniqlo product is manufactured in the Xinjiang region,” Fast Retailing said in the statement. “In addition, no Uniqlo production partners subcontract to fabric mills or spinning mills in the region.”

    While North American sales make up only small percentage of Fast Retailing’s total, and the blocked shipment is expected to have a minimal impact on the company’s earnings, the Nikkei notes that , “the seizure highlights how allegations of Chinese human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang have become a risk for Japanese companies.”

    And in the context of already snarled supply chains which have sent the prices of countless products soaring, Rabobank’s Michael Every cautions, “think how tricky this will make exporting textiles ahead” if all it takes for a block at the US border is the mere suspicion that it originates in the contentious Chinese region.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 20:39

  • Biden Condemns Erdogan's Gaza Tirade As "Anti-Semitic" & "Reprehensible"
    Biden Condemns Erdogan’s Gaza Tirade As “Anti-Semitic” & “Reprehensible”

    On Monday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a fiery speech to supporters which blasted Biden’s “inaction” over the Gaza crisis, addressing Joe Biden to specifically say the US president has “blood on his hands”. He was further reacting to the recent reports that Biden approved a $735 million dollar weapons sale from the United States to Israel, essentially accusing the US of supporting genocide against the Palestinians. Erdogan had also lashed out at Europe, accusing Austria in particular trying to make Muslims “pay the price of their own genocide against the Jews” – after an Israeli flag was seen flying over a federal building. 

    In response the State Department has come out swinging, condemning “Erdogan’s recent anti-Semitic comments regarding the Jewish people” which the US finds “reprehensible,” according to State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday.

    Some of Erdogan’s rhetoric had included the following: “They are murderers, to the point that they kill children who are five or six years old. They only are satisfied by sucking their blood,” the Turkish president had stated earlier, AFP reported.

    Via AFP

    Price had further characterized Erdogan’s statements as follows: “Anti-Semitic language has no place anywhere,” the US spokesman continued. “The United States is deeply committed to combatting anti-Semitism in all of its forms. We take seriously the violence that often accompanies anti-Semitism and the dangerous lies that undergird it. We must always counter lies with facts and answer crimes of hate with justice.”

    To recap, Erdogan had focused much of the rebuke on the US president personally, saying:

    “Now, unfortunately, you (Biden) are writing history with your bloody hands with this event (in which) Gaza is being attacked with seriously disproportionate force causing the martyrdom of thousands of people. You have forced us to say this.”

    And specifically on the issue of Biden-approved weapons sales to the Jewish state, Erdogan scolded further:

    “Today we saw Biden’s signature on weapons sales to Israel,” Erdogan said in reference to US media reports of a new arms shipment approved by the Biden administration.

    “Palestinian territories are awash with persecution, suffering and blood, like many other territories that lost the peace with the end of the Ottomans. And you are supporting that,” Erdogan said.

    No doubt much of the outrage of Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party party also stems from the recent formal Biden administration recognition of the Armenian Genocide of last month.

    Previously on the campaign trail and since taking office, Biden has further vowed to get tough on Erdogan, while also generally condemning what was widely perceived as Trump and Erdogan’s close relationship, which critics say allowed Turkey to escape well-deserved sanctions and other punitive measures. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 20:20

  • State Department Issues Warning After Chinese Skycraper Wobbles Violently In Mysterious Incident
    State Department Issues Warning After Chinese Skycraper Wobbles Violently In Mysterious Incident

    The US Consulate in Guangzhou has issued a security alert to all US citizens to avoid the SEG tower in Shenzhen after footage of the tower shaking. The tower is located in the Huaqiangbei area  of Shenzhen, the fast-growing Chinese tech hub just across the border from Hong Kong.

    At 984 feet, the SEG Plaza is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Shenzhen. The tower houses a large electronics market, as well as numerous offices. Several video clips posted to social media showed the building swaying back and forth. One clip purportedly filmed inside the building showed the interior shaking in a dramatic way. The building was evacuated shortly after the shaking started.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    At one point, the skyscraper’s wobbling caused a near-stampede as people fled the area. Shouts and honking horns could be heard as residents, some periodically turning around to look at the skyscraper, fled. After everyone was evacuated, the building was sealed shut.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to Bloomberg, tower owner Shenzhen Electronics Group said that tenants felt the building shake at 1231 local time Tuesday and building management immediately organized an evacuation. No signs of cracking on the ground or damaged curtain walls were detected, it said in a statement on its website.

    Emergency management officials said in a statement that no earthquake was registered in the city today, and that relevant government agencies were looking into what caused the skyscraper to wobble. Shenzen has seen a boom in skyscraper construction over the last two decades as the number of buildings more than 150 meters tall has exploded to nearly 300. Given the haste to build new office space and housing, the notion that some short-cuts may have been taken seems possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 20:09

  • Chip Shortage Enters "Danger Zone" As Lead Times Reach New Record
    Chip Shortage Enters “Danger Zone” As Lead Times Reach New Record

    Semiconductor lead times, the time it takes for a company to order a chip and taking delivery, increased to 17 weeks in April, indicating shortages of these critical components are intensifying, according to Bloomberg. 

    Companies that use semiconductors in their end products use lead times to gauge the balance between supply and demand. Rising levels suggest customers are racing to secure chips. If leads exponentially jump, as what has been happening since December, some customers will purposely order more chips to avoid future supply shortfalls. Inventory accumulation can also exacerbate chip shortages. 

    Susquehanna Financial Group reports chip lead times increased to 17 weeks in April, a level that surpasses the all-time high in 2018 and is described as a “danger zone.” The firm began tracking lead times in 2017. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Susquehanna analyst Chris Rolland told clients in a Tuesday note that “all major product categories up considerably,” citing power management and analog chip lead times were up the most. “These were some of the largest increases since we started tracking the data,” he added. 

    Chip shortages could result in global automakers losing upwards of $110 billion in sales this year. Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., and other vehicle makers are idling plants as critical tiny chips cause supply chain bottlenecks. 

    We obtained satellite imagery showing Ford has parked thousands of trucks with missing chips at a Kentucky Speedway. There’s no timeline when the trucks will return to the Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville to have chip components installed. 

    Besides autos, the chip shortage also affects the farming industry, where farmers cannot source new tractors and machinery. Besides vehicles and equipment, anything from game consoles to refrigerators has also been affected. 

    “Elevated lead times often compel ‘bad behavior’ at customers, including inventory accumulation, safety stock building and double ordering,” Rolland wrote. “These trends may have spurred a semiconductor industry in the early stages of over-shipment above true customer demand.”

    Industry insiders are warning the shortage may last for years. 

    Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has been the latest in a chorus of voices to warn about the ongoing semiconductor shortage that will last for a “couple of years.”

    Gelsinger said U.S. dominance in the chip industry had dropped so much that only 12% of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing is made in the U.S., down from 37% about 25 years ago.

    “And anybody who looks at supply chain says, ‘That’s a problem.’ This is a big, critical industry and we want more of it on American soil: the jobs that we want in America, the control of our long-term technology future,” he said.

    Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is also warning that the shortage will continue throughout this year and maybe extended into 2022. 

    Whenever there’s a problem in the economy, the Federal Reserve and big Wall Street banks, and especially the corrupt politicians on Capitol Hill, love the quick-fix solutions of bailouts and helicopter money. This time, however, that solution will not work to solve the shortage. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 19:00

  • The Dystopian Future In Which Almost No One Owns A Car
    The Dystopian Future In Which Almost No One Owns A Car

    Authored by Zachary Yost via The Mises Institute,

    By this point readers are more than familiar with the previously unthinkable infringements on our traditional rights and liberties due to “health and safety” lockdowns that the state has inflicted upon us over the last year. While thankfully more and more restrictions are being lifted, it is important not to forget the period of veritable universal house arrest that was enacted in many states, in which even the freedom to go for a drive was denied to us. It unfortunately seems inevitable that we will face such scenarios again when a convenient excuse comes along, though I fear that the next time will be even worse thanks to the advent of self-driving cars.

    Self-driving cars seem like a truly amazing advancement in human technology. As someone who is not particularly fond of driving, I once followed their development with great interest and hopeful anticipation. However, the advent of lockdowns as an acceptable government policy has shown just a taste of the kind of dangers that would come with their widespread adoption. While they would liberate us from many of the dangers of the road and free up time in which to work or enjoy ourselves on a ride, the price of this liberation is actually an unprecedented level of government control.

    Some advocates of self-driving cars argue that their adoption would mean that very few people would actually own a vehicle anymore, and that instead everyone would basically Uber everywhere. Oftentimes such predictions are espoused by people who lament how evil American prosperity is and cringe at the thought of our car culture’s carbon footprint.

    It is not difficult to see how this could go very wrong. Can you imagine how much worse government lockdowns would have been at their height last year if the state merely needed to apply pressure to Uber-like ride services to cease general operation to stop people from moving? Ride services would almost certainly be forced to require government-issued documents in order to book a ride in such a scenario, leaving the vast majority of the population completely stranded and unable to go anywhere.

    Fortunately, there are many reasons to believe that without massive government intervention America is not likely to willingly let go of its deeply ingrained car culture in favor of ubiquitous Ubering.

    However, even if people do own their self-driving cars, the danger remains.

    Tesla is a case in point. Unlike a “traditional” car that drives off the lot and disappears into the traffic, Tesla cars are perpetually connected to the internet and Tesla itself. As the pioneer in self-driving cars, it seems likely that other manufacturers will also build around Tesla’s concept, which is itself similar to numerous other “smart appliance” trends in everything from house lighting to fridges, ovens, and washing machines. While this connectivity has great uses, such as allowing repairs to be completed remotely, the danger is obvious.

    Customers have complained about having features of their Tesla being removed without their notice or authorization, prompting one reporter to remark that “if someone buys a used car with cruise control, there isn’t an expectation that the manufacturer will then arrive and ask to remove it,” yet something similar has already happened. Similarly, Tesla collects vast amounts of data from its cars, which is no doubt useful and needed for continuing to improve the system and work out kinks, but it is dangerously naïve to believe that such data would remain outside the reach of the government if it wanted it.

    Finally, the same danger with universal Ubering still remains. Tesla or any self-driving car that would naturally require some level of internet connection can be remotely shut down. As cool as Tesla may seem, the odds are very slim that it would defy a state order to render its fleet inoperable in the name of “public safety” or any other excuse the government may come up with.

    Think back to the hysteria of last spring. You are kidding yourself if you believe that people like Governor Whitmer of Michigan wouldn’t have ordered all cars rendered inoperable until “essential workers” were granted permission to drive if such a thing had been within her power.

    The picture becomes even more bleak if one thinks of the nefarious uses such control could be used for beyond “public health” lockdowns. What if our current cancel culture craziness were to continue into a death spiral that resulted in something akin to the Chinese social credit system? Such a thing seems unthinkable—“this is America,” after all. But if in 2019 we had been visited by a time traveler who told us that in a year Americans would be forbidden from leaving their homes or going to church and that businesses would be forced to close en masse, we likely would have thought such a person was crazy. Yet here we are.

    It is easy to see all the benefits that would come with self-driving cars, but at the end of the day the potential for dramatically increased government control and abuse is horrifying to contemplate.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 18:40

  • Nearly 20% Of Seattle Cops Quit Amid National Protests, Budget Cuts
    Nearly 20% Of Seattle Cops Quit Amid National Protests, Budget Cuts

    Just under 20% of Seattle police have quit the force over the past year and a half, according to CBS News, citing the city’s interim Chief of Police.

    The revelation comes after more than a year of violent clashes with anti-police protesters from BLM and Antifa, and a city council which has neutered the Seattle PD’s ability to use crowd control devices that social justice activists say didn’t go far enough.

    To review the last 18 months of policing in Seattle:

    In short, the situation is abysmal, leading to roughly 260 officers packing it up for good.

    “The support that we had in my generation of policing is no longer there,” said Seattle officer Clayton Powell, who is retiring three years before his 30th year on the force. “When you see businesses get destroyed and families lose their livelihood because of that destruction and we can’t do anything about it. We’re not allowed to intercede.”

    Last summer’s protests over the killing of George Floyd led to violent clashes with Seattle police. Powell said the stress on officers was compounded by city leaders’ decisions to abandon a police precinct and letting demonstrators, some armed, occupy an entire neighborhood for a whole month. As a result, Powell said he and other officers had rocks, bottles, and in some cases, cinder blocks thrown at them, and they had to “stand there and take it.”

    City leaders allowed the police-free zone after protesters were repeatedly hit by tear gas but closed it down after weeks of violence. City Councilwoman Tammy Morales voted for a 13% cut in the police budget in November — and $5 million of funding cuts are still on the table for the police department.

    Meanwhile, the money cut from the police budget has yet to be re-allocated. In other words, it was done out of spite to appease the public.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 18:20

  • Johns Hopkins Doctor: Closed-Schools Are An "American Disgrace"
    Johns Hopkins Doctor: Closed-Schools Are An “American Disgrace”

    Authored by Ben Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

    A Johns Hopkins University medical professor said that closed schools are an “American disgrace.”

    Dr. Marty Makary — a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s prestigious School of Medicine and a Fox News contributor — said during an interview with “Coffee With Closers” ripped public health officials’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    During the interview, Makary explained his thinking on herd immunity and his correct prediction that the United States would see a slowing of COVID-19 infections by April of 2021.

    “What we’re seeing is a divergence in the data right now. You’re going to see two pandemics — one among at-risk people and the other is among young people who are healthy,” he said.

    Makary also challenged Dr. Fauci’s representation of herd immunity.

    “When people say we need to vaccinate 70-85% of the population in order to reach herd immunity — which is a quote you’ll hear again and again, especially coming from Dr. Fauci — that’s not true,” he remarked.

    “Because half the country has natural immunity from prior infection. And some doctors — especially the old school doctors — have dismissed that.”

    Makary was particularly critical of medical officials’ decisions to close schools and slammed groupthink in the medical community.

    “Why do adults get their bowling alleys and restaurants, but kids are shut out of their livelihoods?” he said.

    “It’s an American disgrace. And I think what we’ve lost a little bit in the medical profession is to speak your mind. Too many people are worried about what folks are gonna think of you.”

    Noting that self-harm claims among children have risen several hundred percent since the beginning of the pandemic, Makary said that “from a medical standpoint, from a public health standpoint, kids need to be in school.”

    Campus Reform recently reported that the editorial team of a student newspaper at Johns Hopkins retracted an article featuring a university study claiming that COVID-19 did not significantly increase the death rate in 2020.

    One editor said that the article was being used to spread “dangerous inaccuracies” online.

    Campus Reform reached out to Makary for comment; this article will be updated accordingly

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 19

Today’s News 19th May 2021

  • "Tough On Russia" Biden Blinks – Waives Sanctions On Company Overseeing Nord Stream 2 Pipeline
    “Tough On Russia” Biden Blinks – Waives Sanctions On Company Overseeing Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

    In his continuing drive to show that he’s getting “tough” on Russia, Biden has blinked. Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports a major development Tuesday related to Washington’s push to prevent the Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 from being completed: the US administration has moved to waive previously imposed sanctions on the company overseeing construction of the NS2, as well as its CEO. So much for the big “threat” to Europe’s “energy security” – as the refrain has been endlessly for years…

    Swan writes, “The decision indicates the Biden administration is not willing to compromise its relationship with Germany over this pipeline, and underscores the difficulties President Biden faces in matching actions to rhetoric on a tougher approach to Russia.”

    Image: Ria Novosti/EPA

    While the State Department still considers the corporate entity – Nord Stream 2 AG and CEO Matthias Warnig (who is said to be close to Putin) – to be engaged in “sanctionable activity”, it now plans to waive the implementation of the sanctions, Axios’ sources say.

    Currently the “controversial” pipeline which reaching back into the Trump administration saw US officials accuse the Kremlin of attempting to “punish” Ukraine by denying it vital gas transit fees is estimated to be at 95% completion.

    Aggressive Trump-era sanctions did little to actually thwart construction even after major Swiss and other European companies bowed out under the pressure, given Russian energy giant Gazprom vowed to push through with the final construction by outfitting additional of its vessels as pipelaying ships. 

    “This planned move also sets up a bizarre situation in which the Biden administration will be sanctioning ships involved in the building of Nord Stream 2 but refusing to sanction the actual company in charge of the project,” Axios continues.

    And again this clearly contradicts the longtime US and Biden administration position that NS2 constitutes a “threat” to Europe’s energy security – this despite leading EU member Germany certainly not seeing it that way. The driving fear has remained that those nefarious Russians! are always looking for major leverage over Europe and the West, and the joint pipeline will give them plenty of that.

    * * * 

    It didn’t take long at all for the Russia hawks to get raging angry.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And imagine if guess who had gone this “soft” on Russia…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 02:45

  • EU Has A New Crisis… A Frenchman Named Barnier Who Has Held It Hostage
    EU Has A New Crisis… A Frenchman Named Barnier Who Has Held It Hostage

    Authored by Martin Jay via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Curiously, it might well be Michel Bernier who emerges as a veiled presidential anti-EU runner in France’s presidential elections in 2022 as his latest whacky idea could be the demise of the entire project.

    Hardly a day passes since Brexit, when the EU doesn’t appear to be in some kind of political tailspin. The constant petulant attacks on the UK by both France and Brussels, which only make the EU look like a really sour loser, are trumped by the relentless comical calamity of a vaccine crisis.

    Trade wars with the EU is probably what the hardline Brexiteers in the cabinet of Boris Johnson were expecting all along. A whole new crisis of confidence, which EU folk think will push non-Eurozone countries in the EU towards their own exit strategies, while even threatening the giants themselves like France, is happening. And at quite some speed.

    Consequently the highest echelons of the EU itself are panicking and are desperate for a solution.

    On the 8th of May, the EU launched a grandiose new talkshop which aims to find a roadmap for the EU itself. Given that the EU needs to find a new identity it is perhaps worrying enough, but we shouldn’t forget the last time it did this, exactly twenty years ago, when it was called The European Convention, and it failed. Under the auspices of Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, the only French President refused membership of the freemasons due to him faking his own aristocratic credentials, it imploded under a cloud of graft allegations about the former French president and his dodgy expenses while in the Belgian capital.

    What finally did emerge was a new European Constitution but which in the end didn’t make it over the line after French and Dutch referendums.

    Take more power

    And now Brussels is at it again. Few could argue with its argument that it has a new pile of problems which need to be tackled head on. But the hardcore federalist mentality in the Belgian capital will always argue that the way out of the EU’s problems is always to take more power. This time around, this jaded mindset though met with considerable opposition from a dozen EU member states who wanted the whole conference to be played down and made distinctly low key. In the end, they couldn’t even agree on a former president to run the whole circus. Macron would have been an obvious choice but curiously he was not the man of the moment

    Perhaps some in the EU believe that Macron’s inept anti Brexit stunts and blinded dogma that the EU with more power (in particular around the world) is more part of the problem rather than the solution.

    The EU has massive problems which stem from its own diabolical management and growing discontent from smaller member states who previously used Britain’s power to do its bidding. Sure, climate change is a huge subject it needs to grapple. But way more importantly are the economies and immigration policies of its own vanguard member, France.

    Immigration both in Germany and France has come with huge political consequences on the elite and how they govern. While Germany can weather the storm on the impact of almost 1 million Syrian refugees, Macron is showing signs that he is prepared to get tougher on all immigrants simply to stop Marine Le Pen from taking what everyone expects will be huge gains in the first round of the next presidential elections.

    But he stops short of calling the EU’s Schengen policy to be scrapped.

    The 1985 accord, which on paper looks like a great solution to Europeans who want free access to move around Europe but in reality is a nightmare for controlling huge swathes of migrants looking for the best asylum deal they can find.

    Which is why EU darling Michel Barnier, who is planning to stand as a candidate in France’s presidential elections in 2022, has dropped a bombshell both on the EU and France by his latest declaration: he wants a five-year freeze on immigration in France.

    While hacks may argue over whether there is any strong argument that this would help the French economy – some taking the view that it would at least prevent a Le Pen win – others might say that it could help France, but at the EU’s expense. If France can renegotiate its place in the EU immigration deal, then others will follow and the overall implications will be an even bigger crisis for the EU. Critics will say: “If Schengen isn’t working and we can opt out of it, what else should we opt out of?”. It will make the EU look incredibly weak and ineffective. The well worn cliché of the EU being an arbiter of the “free movement of goods, services and people” will have to be downgraded to just goods and services – which many Eurosceptics have argued for years is its best option for long term survival. A trade block. Nothing more, nothing less.

    And then there is even the bigger problem of the widening gap between southern EU member states and Brussels itself. A reworked Schengen – or a scrapped one – will mean that EU member states like Italy will be obliged to contain all of their refugees themselves, rather than allow them to cross the border into other countries in their search for a better deal. That alone, could be the spark which ignites a full-on Eurosceptic momentum in Italy which calls for an exit altogether from the European Union.

    Jobs for the boys

    Combined, the Barnier stunt represents a new nadir for the European Union and its apparatchiks in Brussels. With a radical emergence of far-right parties already threatening to take a majority stake in the next EU elections, lowest ever confidence in the EU in key member states like Italy and Spain and a very real worry that at least one EU heavyweight will follow Britain (watch Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands), the EU will fall on its knees with a shattered Schengen.

    The end of Schengen could mark the end of the EU as we know it. And all for the political ambitions of Michel Barnier who wants to have his cake and eat it in Brussels. Like any good Europhile, Brussels has its own distinct role to play in giving jobs to the boys and this final act of getting the ultimate job at the EU’s expense is certainly going to set a new precedent; usually the EU gets its main officials from member states as politicians lose their seats and look to their own political party to give them a cosy retirement present in the Belgian capital. But Barnier is doing the opposite. The EU actually propelled him into the media limelight via the Brexit so-called “negotiations” and he’s milking it for all he can get. The huge question in the coming weeks will be how the French press treat him and how Brussels will react to this new storm on the horizon. Now the European Union has a new migraine to add to the headache of Brexit. Its demise is guaranteed if more of the big thinking is to keep on pushing for a bigger power grab. A new European constitution is not the answer if the aggregate of this delusional pontificating is that the EU somehow gets bigger. And there simply isn’t time. Something’s got to be done about Barnier.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 02:00

  • Alliance Of Democracies Summit: The Glass House Where The Power Elite Gather To Throw Stones
    Alliance Of Democracies Summit: The Glass House Where The Power Elite Gather To Throw Stones

    Authored by Alan Macleod via MintPressNews.com,

    The lineup of presidents, generals and CEOs makes it clear that what was stated is effectively the collective view of the world’s elite and a window into their thinking and the debates they are having. What they decide will affect all of us, whether we realize it or not.

    The United States is the nation that most threatens democracy worldwide, far more than Russia or even China. That is the headline finding from a new worldwide poll of 53 countries commissioned by the Alliance of Democracies (AoD). The poll also found that the global public considers rising inequality and the increased power of the super rich to be the greatest threat to liberty and democracy.

    This was likely not the response the Alliance of Democracies wished to hear as it opened its third annual Democracy Summit in Copenhagen this week — precisely because the organization represents the U.S. government and the wealthy elite more generally. Featuring an all-star panel of American officials, Western heads of state and military leaders, this year’s summit was somber in tone and focused on the “urgent need” for Western nations to unite and come up with a “transatlantic response” to counter both Russia and China. To that end, there was talk of building an “Asian NATO” and of further controlling what can be said online, all in the service of defending and upholding democracy from these foes.

    The Alliance of Democracies was founded in 2017 by former Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen. As Secretary General of NATO between 2009 and 2014, he also oversaw the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, as well as the attack and regime-change operation in Libya, which saw ISIS-affiliated jihadists take control of the country. Together with future President Joe Biden and former Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Rasmussen also founded the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity (TECI), an AoD body at the forefront of accusing Russia of election meddling in the U.S. Biden was one of the inaugural speakers at the first Democracy Summit in 2018.

    The great and the good — including presidents, journalists and business magnates — gathered both in person and virtually to discuss the supposed threats to the democratic order, with Rasmussen in particular pushing for a more formal military, political and economic alliance among the world’s “democracies” against Russia and China. The well-dressed and soft-spoken Dane also introduced lineups of speakers who argued for regime change in states the alliance does not feel are democratic enough for their liking.

    The AoD’s 2021 conference featured a who’s who of the world’s elite representing the public and private sectors and the media

    The Alliance of Democracies is indirectly funded by the United States government through both the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, as well as by the European Endowment for Democracy, Europe’s version of the National Endowment for Democracy. It also takes money from the Atlantic Council, a NATO cutout organization, as well as a host of big tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook. Other key sources of funding include the Taiwanese government, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, named after the anti-Putin Ukrainian oligarch.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Both Rasmussen and then-Vice President Biden were key players in the Western-backed Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, with Biden himself traveling to the country, successfully uniting the opposition. Meanwhile, Rasmussen, as head of NATO, developed a “Readiness Action Plan” for the nation, drastically ramping up tensions, as well as the likelihood of a hot war. Soon after, Rasmussen was appointed as a formal advisor to the new anti-Moscow president, Petro Poroshenko. Together, Biden and Rasmussen set up TECI’s Ukraine task force, dedicated, in their own words, “to exposing foreign [i.e., Russian] meddling in Ukraine’s Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.” Needless to say, they did not see their own actions as outside interference.

    Yellow peril

    While Russia remains a target, the Alliance of Democracy’s attention this year was chiefly devoted to China and ways to counter the Asian powerhouse’s rise. Virtually every panel mentioned Beijing, and many were directed towards it entirely.

    In a panel entitled “Protecting Democracy from Authoritarianism: Views from the Asia Pacific,” longtime speechwriter for the British Crown and European Commision turned Politico Senior Editor Ryan Heath described the current era as a global “battle between democracy and [Chinese] authoritarianism.” Former Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani was of a similar opinion, calling for an all-out economic war against Beijing, suggesting Japan and other countries could help Australia cut itself off from China economically by assisting in the import substitution of Chinese goods.

    Later, Heath asked Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s national security advisor, what he saw was the number one threat to the world and to democracy. McMaster responded, “It is certainly the Chinese Communist Party, I would put that at the very top.” “The whole world’s problem is China’s promotion of its authoritarian mercantilist model, its stifling of human freedom,” he added, accusing China of creating a “technologically enabled Orwellian police state.”

    McMaster, who represented a government that spies on its citizens and even such allies as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, painted China as trying to control the internet and called for a more aggressive strategy of democracy promotion worldwide as a counter to it. “It’s not just an exercise in altruism, it is actually the best way to compete with this very dangerous authoritarian model that China is promoting,” he said.

    If viewers were expecting Heath to push back on the idea that the U.S. had a long history of altruistic interventions, they were disappointed. In fact, Heath went further, floating the idea of creating “an Asian NATO” against China and even suggesting that if China “bullies” other nations economically, democratic nations should band together to counter it — invoking the creation of a sort of economic charter akin to NATO’s Article 5, which states that if one NATO member is attacked, it is deemed an attack on all of them.

    China has been the top concern among war planners and policymakers in Washington for some time now. In 2012, President Barack Obama signaled the beginning of this with his “Pivot to Asia” strategy, which entailed winding down U.S. forces in the Middle East in order to redeploy them to the Pacific. Today, there are over 400 American bases encircling China. The military has taken a number of provocative steps in recent months, including conducting war games in the South China Sea with Beijing’s adversaries. In July, the U.S.S. Peralta sailed to within 41 nautical miles of the coastal megacity of Shanghai, while in December the Navy flew nuclear bombers over Chinese ships near Hainan Island.

    In February the Atlantic Council, the NATO think tank that sponsors the Alliance of Democracies, released an anonymous, 26,000-word study advising President Biden to draw a number of red lines around China that, if broken, should result in a military response. These included cyber attacks or attempts to further its control of Taiwan. Others have suggested conducting an extensive psychological war against China, including publishing “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels designed to paint China as an aggressor and demoralize its citizens with tales of defeat. A recent Director of National Intelligence report notes that China and its supposed “push for global power” represent an “unparalleled priority,” for the U.S., something that is invoking the “very real possibility” of a hot war, according to Admiral Charles A. Richard, the head of Strategic Command.

    The resentment of China in Washington is being consciously stoked by the independence-minded government of Taiwan. A recent MintPress study found that the Taiwanese embassy is spending millions of dollars yearly in donations to influential think tanks, such as the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institute, the Hudson Institute and the Center for American Progress, all of which have pushed a particularly hawkish line against Beijing. Taiwanese agents have also made 143 contributions to U.S. politicians and had contact with almost 90% of the members of the House of Representatives.

    The Taipei-backed Taiwan Foundation for Democracy also gave an undisclosed sum to the Alliance of Democracies. Considering that its name appears in a more prominent position on the Alliance’s list of backers than even Google, BMW, and the European Endowment for Democracy, one could infer that the sum was considerable.

    Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was a prominent speaker at the conference, and was given an entire event to herself, in which she called for the democracies of the world to come together to defend Taiwan from foreign threats, stating:

    Taiwan’s commitment to freedom and democracy has made us a target of disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, and even military intimidation. Many in the international community are concerned about the potential for conflict caused by these anti-democratic tactics, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Our government is fully aware of the threats to regional security and is actively enhancing our national defense capabilities to protect our democracy.”

    Throughout the talk, Ing-wen was very careful never to utter the word “China,” although it was clear to all listening that this was exactly who the threat was. Indeed, the Alliance of Democracies’ moderator, former CNN and ABC correspondent Jeanne Meserve, gave the game away, introducing her by stating:

    China is taking an increasingly aggressive stand towards Taiwan, both rhetorically and military, raising concerns that it could move some time soon to try and take control of the island. Here to address the need to strengthen democracy and the alliance of democracies is Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.”

    Ing-wen also called for a European Union-Taiwan free-trade deal and for Western nations and organizations to recognize the island’s independence, something that none currently do. She concluded: “We are determined never to surrender these freedoms. With liberty and democracy once again under threat, we in the international community must come together to address the challenges of a new era.”

    After Ing-wen, Hong Kong protest leader Nathan Law spoke, and described the “complete crackdown on the democratic system” in the city by the “Communist Party dictatorship.” “Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China became much more authoritarian, exporting authoritarianism through its global initiative,” he said, accusing Western nations of being “complacent” and calling for worldwide sanctions on China.

    Twisted democracy promotion

    The anti-China rhetoric was broken up by a talk from the self-declared President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, entitled “Fighting for Freedom and Democracy: Reports from the Frontlines.” Guaidó claimed that his country was filled with terrorists and drug traffickers and asked for a worldwide boycott of Venezuelan goods and an economic blockade of his nation. “We must not allow the world banking system to accept blood-stained money,” he explained. Guaidó then asked the International Criminal Court to charge President Nicolas Maduro with crimes against humanity. He also presented himself as the leader of a democratic majority in Venezuela, stating:

    We Venezuelans are fighting. We have built a majority. We have organized and mobilized… The situation is critical because we have lost our democracy. I have an essential message for countries around the world: democracy is always at stake. It is only through the strengthening of institutions, the promotion of human rights, the empowerment and strengthening of society, of citizens and of youth that we can defend our democracy, but also make it last.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    While the elite audience appeared impressed by his words, it is less clear whether Guaidó’s countryfolk, already living under crippling sanctions that have killed more than 100,000 people,  would be so enthused. His approval ratings inside Venezuela are often in the single digits and, for all the talk of democracy and building a majority, he has attempted six coup attempts since January 2019, the last of which included his employing American mercenaries to conduct an amphibious invasion of his country, shoot their way to the presidential palace, and install him as dictator. Guaidó’s contract for the job was leaked, and showed he had agreed to pay the ex-Green Berets over a quarter-billion dollars — presumably from public funds — and that the mercenaries would become a private death squad that answered only to him, crushing any and all dissent to his rule once he was in power. The attempt ended in a fiasco, as the elite force of commandos was immediately overpowered by local fishermen carrying box cutters and old revolvers.

    Controlling the internet

    Day two of the conference focused more on the coronavirus and the threat to democracies posed by fake news and disinformation online. In one panel titled “Regulating Social Media and Protecting the Public From Harm,” participants discussed how the U.S. and Europe could come together to formulate a united approach to controlling digital communications. The discussion was particularly notable because panelists included Michael Chertoff, co-author of the PATRIOT Act, which stripped Americans citizens of a wide range of rights under the guise of national security and fighting terrorism. Also on the panel were two British conservative members of parliament, an advisor to the executive vice president of digital affairs for the European Commission, and a member of Facebook’s oversight board, the body that regulates what the platform’s 2.6 billion people see in their news feeds. These individuals are so influential that their opinions and decisions could well affect virtually the entire world.

    Together, they agreed that more cooperation between big tech and big government was necessary in order to reduce the amount of false information and harmful content online. This in itself is little new: in 2018 Facebook announced that it had partnered with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab to help regulate and curate its newsfeeds, effectively giving up partial control to the NATO-aligned organization. It also hired a former NATO press officer as its intelligence chief earlier this year.

    The AoD conference pushed an agenda encouraging even more cooperation between tech and media

    Other big social media companies like Reddit have similar ties to the military alliance. When organizations like the Atlantic Council, whose board features no fewer than seven former CIA directors, control what the world sees and reads online, it becomes difficult to see where the fourth estate ends and the deep state begins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the entire conference was sponsored by Facebook and Google, there was little talk of breaking up or nationalizing these online behemoths.

    While very few people actually watched any of these events (the livestream rarely had more than 30 viewers at any time), that does not mean it was not important. The lineup of presidents, generals and CEOs makes it clear that what was stated is effectively the collective view of the world’s elite and a window into their thinking and the debates they are having. What they decide will affect all of us, whether we realize it or not.

    A threat to democracy, not its champion

    The entire premise of the conference —  that China is a threat to global democracy and that Western business and political leaders must rally together to save it —  was heavily undermined by its own study, published just days before the event.

    The poll showed that only around 53% of people worldwide think they actually live in a democracy, including fewer than half of Americans. Fewer than 50% of respondents in other key Alliance of Democracy countries such as Italy and Belgium felt their countries were democratic. Embarrassingly for the AoD, Chinese people were among the most confident in the world that their country is democratic — far more so than most of the countries the Alliance of Democracies would like to represent. Almost three-quarters of Chinese people polled claimed to live in a democracy, more than in Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and even famously “democratic” Sweden. Indeed, the only states of the 53 scoring significantly higher on the democracy scale with their citizens than China were Norway, Switzerland and Denmark. Vietnam, another country ruled by a Communist Party and also labeled a dictatorship by Western NGOs, scored as highly as China did. Acknowledging this enormous contradiction with its own position, the Alliance of Democracies report explained that, “people don’t think their countries are very democratic — even in democracies,” a statement equal parts Orwellian and patronizing at the same time.

    Another, even more embarrassing finding for the study, which polled more than 53,000 people in countries representing more than three-quarters of the world’s population, was that despite global media concern over China’s aggressive actions, the international public still considers the United States to be a considerably greater threat to their democracy than China, with 44% of the planet identifying the U.S. as such.

    Across East Asia, in countries openly hostile to China (such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea), populations still see the U.S. as the chief danger. Therefore, the AoD summit’s calls for an Asian NATO to protect the continent from a rampaging China are likely to alarm Asians rather than assuage their fears. And although more Taiwanese see China as a threat, still 58% of the population considers the U.S. a serious danger to their democracy. So when President Ing-wen asks for more Western intervention in the South China Sea, it is far from clear that the Taiwanese population is behind her.

    Even among the U.S.’ closest allies — such as Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and Ireland — Washington is seen as a far greater threat than Beijing by their populations. The study also showed that fear of the U.S. is rising year-on-year.

    Also undermining Nathan Law and the U.S.’ argument on Hong Kong is the finding that only slightly more than one third of Hong Kongers say their nation is not democratic enough. There has also been a notable decline in Hong Kongers stating they want to see more “democracy” on the island.

    However, by quite some way the biggest threat to democracy, according to the world’s population, is economic inequality and the power and influence of the super wealthy. The malign influence of Russia and China were the least threatening, with the U.S. higher and inequality higher still — with 64% of respondents identifying it as a chief problem. This is another embarrassing finding for the AoD, which is funded by giant corporations belonging to Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and many of the other richest and most powerful people on the planet and featured a number of extremely wealthy and well-connected speakers.

    Upside down world

    We live in an upside down world, where those responsible for destroying the Middle East can present themselves as defenders of liberty everywhere, proudly proclaiming their intentions to bring their visions of democracy worldwide. As Secretary General of NATO, Rasmussen said he was “proud” of his achievement in bringing freedom and democracy to Libya in 2011 — that liberty apparently including open-air slave markets and the complete destruction of society.

    Rasmussen’s Orwellian conference brought together the people and organizations his own polling data shows the planet thinks are the chief threats to democracy and freedom, so they could wax lyrical about upholding and enforcing their twisted view of democracy over the entire planet. The world does not want this version of “democracy” that these tech billionaires, senior politicians and military generals are offering. But, considering their overwhelming power and the lack of an organized opposition to it, we might just get it anyway.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 00:05

  • China Resisting US Attempts At Nuclear Talks, Says UN Envoy
    China Resisting US Attempts At Nuclear Talks, Says UN Envoy

    In recent years the Trump administration had attempted to bring China into so-called trilateral arms control negotiations, which Beijing consistently balked at. Trump had considered landmark 20th century arms treaties with Russia to be “weak” due to not accounting for China’s rapidly advancing defense technology and arsenal. 

    For example, in summer of 2019 the US announced its formal withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, citing that a “new, better” agreement was needed which will bring in China. Also of note is that the INF had prevented the US from deploying ground-based intermediate-range missiles in Asia. The New START nuclear arms control agreement had also reportedly been on the chopping block by the tail end of the Trump administration, but among Biden’s first major actions in office was to extend it by five years. 

    But it now appears that Biden agrees with Trump’s fundamental principal of the urgency to bring China to the nuclear negotiating table. Trump’s central rationale was articulated in one July 2020 statement as follows: “The president believes that it shouldn’t just be the U.S. and Russia… The days of unilateral American disarmament are over.”

    Via US Navy

    On Tuesday US disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood indicated in new statements that China is still “resisting” nuclear talks:

    “Despite the PRC’s dramatic build-up of its nuclear arsenal, unfortunately it continues to resist discussing nuclear risk reduction bilaterally with the United States,” Woods told a United Nations conference.

    “To date Beijing has not been willing to engage meaningfully or establish expert discussions similar to those we have with Russia,” Woods said. “We sincerely hope that will change.”

    At the same conference focused on the “Prevention of Nuclear War” which was held by 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, China’s envoy appeared to reject the US accusation, saying the Beijing is indeed “ready” for “positive” dialogue. 

    “We stand ready to carry out positive dialog and exchange with all parties to jointly explore effective measures to reduce nuclear risk and to contribute to global strategic security,” Chinese envoy to the conference Ji Zhaoyu said.

    The exchange comes after last month the head of US Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, briefed Congress on the faster than expected modernization rate of both China and Russia’s nuclear arsenals. “It is easier to describe what they are not modernizing — nothing — than what they are, which is pretty much everything,” he had described. 

    Most Western estimates put China’s arsenal at about 320 warheads at the high estimate range, while the US and Russia each have over 1,500 deployed; however, the US is believed behind in terms of modernizing and updating its nuclear weapons systems, including ICBM capabilities. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:45

  • Will 2020 Prove To Be The Beginning Of The End Of Modernity?
    Will 2020 Prove To Be The Beginning Of The End Of Modernity?

    Authored by Daniel Boudreaux via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Daniel Hannan – Lord Hannan of Kingsclere – is today among Britain’s wisest and most articulate champions of classical liberalism.

    He’s also today very pessimistic about the future of liberalism. This pessimism is on full display in this recent video.

    Hannan predicts that the post-Covid-19 world “will be poorer, colder, grayer, more pitched, more authoritarian.”

    I ardently wish that I found his stated reasons for pessimism to be unpersuasive, but this wish is not granted.

    Hannan’s pessimism, to me, seems warranted.

    I urge you to watch the entire video. At under seven minutes, it’s short.

    But I believe that my summary here of Hannan’s point is accurate:

    We humans are evolved to put our trust in hierarchy, for hierarchical methods of decision-making were quite effective at protecting the small tribe, as it roamed the countryside, from predators and privation. And our deep past was in fact fraught with dangers that, when not quickly avoided, killed us. In that long-ago era, anyone refusing to follow the leader’s commands was indeed a threat to the survival of the tribe. As a result, fellow tribe members turned on renegades. ‘Renegadeness’ was thus largely drained from the gene pool and replaced with the instinct to conform, especially whenever there was a perception of danger, which there was quite often.

    Confidence in hierarchy, hair-trigger alarm, and fear of strangers (who back then usually were sources of real danger) helped our ancestors to survive. And survive they did for 300,000 years, nearly all of which time was spent hunting and gathering in small tribes. But these genetically encoded instincts that are so useful to members of the always-imperiled tribe do not support a liberal, open society of the sort that arose in the West over the past few centuries.

    We humans have been around for at least 300,000 years. Nearly all – 97 percent – of this time was spent as hunters-gatherers in a perilous world. Yet only in the past two or three centuries have we stumbled upon a set of beliefs and institutions that suppressed many of our primitive instincts in a way that encouraged the emergence of modernity. By historical standards, the world that we know today is freakishly abnormal.

    And while the material blessings of modernity – the likes of indoor plumbing, endless supplies and varieties of food, dwellings with solid floors and roofs, artificial lighting, faster-than-galloping-horses transportation, and miracle medicines – are easily noticed, all of these blessings as we know them today require a deep and globe-spanning division of labor. This division of labor is more unlikely and (hence) more of a marvel than are any of its most stupendous fruits, such as antibiotics, airplanes, and astronauts.

    Modernity is not normal; it has been around for a paltry 0.1 percent of humans’ time on earth. And the reason modernity is not normal is that liberalism – the source of the division of labor and, thus, of modernity – is not normal. We humans are not genetically encoded to be liberal. Therefore, Hannan argues, there is every reason to expect that we humans will revert to our historical norm – the norm that is in our genes.

    The reaction to Covid-19 is powerful evidence that our primitive instincts remain alive and ready to reestablish their dominance over the happy accident that is the culture, and resulting institutions, of liberalism.

    The hysterical fear that Covid stirred in so many people – including in many who are highly educated, of a scientific mindset, and, until Covid, of a liberal bent – and the sheepishness with which people followed the “leaders” who promised protection from Covid prompts Dan Hannan to worry that 2020-2021 is the beginning of the end of modernity.

    Chances are high that he’s correct. And if he is, civilization as we know it will end.

    Modernity Is Not Natural

    My Hannan-like pessimism on this front is only furthered by reading Notre Dame philosopher James Otteson’s remarkable new book, Seven Deadly Economic Sins. This must-read work is not about Covid; nor is Otteson himself especially pessimistic. But in his luminous explanation of some of the foundational features of modern society, Otteson identifies the thinness of the reed upon which modernity rests. His Chapter 4 (“Progress Is Not Inevitable”) is worth quoting at length:

    What has changed over humanity’s recent history is not biology, psychology, physiology, ecology, or geography. What has changed, instead, is their attitudes. As economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has demonstrated in her magisterial three-volume investigation under the general title The Bourgeois Era, the most salient factor distinguishing the post-1800 era from anything that went before is the attitudes people held toward others. Before that period, the standard background assumption people had was that some people are superior to others – more specifically, one’s own people are superior to those other people – and hence people believed they were under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to treat all human beings as their moral equals. What began as an inkling in the sixteenth century, gained some traction in the seventeenth century, and then began to spread in the eighteenth century was the idea that cooperation was not only allowable, but morally appropriate; and not only with some people, but with ever more people and ever more groups of people. As that idea spread, more and more cooperative behavior was engaged in, leading to mutually beneficial exchanges and partnerships, which launched world prosperity on the precipitate upward slope we have seen since.

    If people are to engage in voluntary transactions and partnerships with one another, however, they also need to trust one another….

    [C]ulture is critically important for growing prosperity, but culture can change – and quickly. The culture that enabled the growth in worldwide prosperity we have experienced over the last two centuries is not only recent but rare. And it is fragile…..

    People have gone from a default of regarding people different from them with suspicion and as likely enemies to a default of viewing them at least neutrally and even as opportunities. They have gone from viewing trade, commerce, and mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange as unworthy of virtuous human beings, to viewing it neutrally, to, finally, viewing it as at least possibly worthy of dedicating one’s life to. They have gone from viewing human beings as fungible atoms in undifferentiated masses to seeing them as unique and precious individuals possessing moral dignity and deserving both liberty and respect. They have gone from viewing violence and torture as acceptable, even natural, ways to treat and engage with others to believing that violence should be a regrettable last resort – and that torture is inhumane and should be minimized, if not abandoned altogether. And they have gone from automatically distrusting everyone they meet but do not know to increasingly being willing to extend to others, even strangers, the benefit of the doubt.

    Modernity is impossible without widespread peaceful engagement with strangers. And such engagement is impossible without mutual trust. Yet abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were told to abandon our modern, liberal sensibilities.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago we were warned not to trust strangers and not to engage with them commercially or socially. Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were instructed to see strangers – indeed, to see even members of our extended families – as being chiefly carriers of death. Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were initiated into the cult of pathogen avoidance; we were urged to behave as if avoiding a headline-grabbing virus is not only the main responsibility of each individual, but a responsibility that should be pursued at all costs.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, modern men and women were not only given license to revert to atavistic dread of strangers, but positively encouraged to harbor such dread and to act on it. Such atavistic attitudes and actions came all too naturally.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, humanity was encouraged to hold in contempt – even to censor – the relative few persons who refused to abandon liberal sensibilities.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we prostrated our panicked selves before our “leaders,” begging that they use their god-like knowledge and powers (called “the Science”) to safeguard us from one particular source of illness, believed to be demonic.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, there quite possibly began the end of liberal civilization.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:25

  • Which Jobs Are Seeing The Fastest Wage Growth
    Which Jobs Are Seeing The Fastest Wage Growth

    While it is a well-known fact that most prices are surging, serving as the basis for the “transitory” inflation argument, it has been far more difficult to pinpoint what is really going on with wages as a result of the rapidly transforming fabric of the labor market where the lowest paid workers are dropping out fast thanks to Biden’s generous unemployment benefits, in the process distorting conventional wage metrics such as average hourly wages (as a reminder, prices have to feed through to wages to make inflation permanent).

    Which is why a key question for the US labor market as the economy emerges from the pandemic is the outlook on wage growth. To isolate signal from the noise, BofA has introduced a novel dataset on job postings and salaries from Revelio Labs to glean insight. The biggest advantage of this dataset compared to publicly available JOLTS data is that it provides salary information for job openings.

    At the aggregate, the data reveals that annual salary of job openings on online job boards fell meaningfully during the pandemic but in the latest few readings salaries are starting to trend higher, with BofA’s industry-weighted annual salary measures stands at $50,150 as of April 2021 compared to a low of around $47,400 during the pandemic.

    While the aggregate salary measure is still below pre-Covid levels, data broken out by industry and occupation show significant variation in salary. In industries where persistent chronic labor shortages have been reported during the reopening phase (e.g. construction, real estate, rental & leasing, accommodation & food services and other services), salaries have been quicker to recover on new job postings compared to other industries.

    Similarly, wage growth has been the strongest in occupations where there has been the greatest demand during the pandemic. Occupations related to transportation (e.g. drivers) and housing (e.g. realtors, home loan officers, agents) have seen both a surge in new job postings and higher annual salaries compared to pre-pandemic levels.

    Drilling down into the average salary of job postings by 2-digit industry North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes reveals wide dispersion of wage trends. While almost all sectors saw a drop in average salary on job postings, some sectors have recovered faster than others. In particular, housing-related (e.g. construction, real estate, rental & leasing) and manufacturing sectors, where demand was robust throughout the pandemic, saw less of a dip in salaries during the pandemic and have recovered almost back to prepandemic levels.

    Service related industries (e.g. educations services, healthcare &  social assistance, and accommodation & food services) have seen stronger wage gains of late as demand has recovered amid the reopening process. Meanwhile, retail trade and professional & business services sectors continue to lag behind.

    By occupation, a similar story plays out where we see the greatest wage increase in roles that experienced the highest demand throughout the pandemic. For example, job postings for “drivers”, “agents”, “realtors”, and “mortgage loan officers” surged during the pandemic relative to prepandemic levels and saw the strongest boost in salary in job postings.

    Looking ahead, BofA sees good reason for wages to rise further in coming months as the economy reopens. The latest JOLTS data show the job openings rate at an all-time high since the series began in 2000 while labor supply lags behind demand, which will take time to clear. Moreover, wage growth tends to move contemporaneously with a rise in job openings.

    These dynamics suggest we should see even stronger wage growth in coming months, solidifying the case that the surge in inflation is anything but transitory.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:05

  • Organ Donation Worker Exposes China’s Money-Driven Transplant Industry
    Organ Donation Worker Exposes China’s Money-Driven Transplant Industry

    By Frank Fang of Epoch Times

    In China, state-run media have been promoting a job called “organ donation coordinators,” trumpeting how people in this line of work are making a difference in society. Their role is to convince families of dying patients to agree to donate their loved one’s organs—needed to supply China’s booming transplant industry. The families that agree, in return, are paid for their consent.

    Doctors carry fresh organs for transplant at a hospital in Henan province, China, on Aug. 16, 2012

    Due to deeply-rooted cultural beliefs that hold that the human body must be kept intact even after death, Chinese people are generally reluctant to donate their organs. The creation of this role appears to be an attempt to lessen such a barrier to the country’s organ donation program.

    But the job is less noble than it is depicted by the Chinese regime, according to an account by Liang Xin (a pseudonym), a former organ donation coordinator from northeast China. The work was more akin to being a salesperson, Liang told The Epoch Times, and much of it involves using money to manipulate the poor into agreeing to donate their dying relatives’ organs.

    The coordinators’ methods are unethical and violate internationally recognized principles on transplantation that forbid the payment of money for an organ donor’s consent, according to an organ transplant expert.

    Liang’s revelations further shine a light on abuses in China’s organ transplant system—which already attracts heavy scrutiny over the communist regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. The former coordinator said he decided to speak out about his job in the hopes that more people will know the truth behind it.

    Targeting the Poor

    Organ donation coordinators mainly targeted poor families, in particular those of rural migrant workers, Liang said. These people often did not have enough money to pay for the expensive medical bills, and were therefore more susceptible to the coordinators’ monetary offers.

    Liang recounted one case involving a very poor family. Their dying family member could still have been saved with proper medical treatment. But the family decided not to proceed with this. Instead, they chose to starve him—and cash out.

    “After the person was deprived of food for a week, he was in the right condition for organ donation,” Liang said.

    This case, according to Liang, was among many where patients were declared brain dead—a precondition to organ extraction—but did not strictly meet the criteria for it.

    Liang and his colleagues were good salespeople. To the relatives, they sold organ donation as an act of “all-encompassing love” and “devotion to a greater cause.” But in reality, the coordinators thought of the donor’s organs as nothing more than “merchandise,” he said.

    The coordinators, Liang said, had one specific strategy in their playbook that was particularly effective: They would target the most “greedy” family member. After these soft targets were converted to the cause, they could then be relied on to convince the other immediate family members who may have been less open to the idea of organ donation.

    China’s official organ donation program requires the consent of the donor, or that of their immediate kin if the donor is already dead. While the Chinese regime claims all organs used for transplant are sourced from this donation system, mounting research and an independent people’s tribunal have found that Beijing has been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs on a “significant scale,” with detained Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

    The Job

    Liang didn’t have a medical background before taking up the role; the same as many of his colleagues. He got the job through his mother, who was already working at the hospital where Liang was hired. It is a major transplant hospital in a city in northeastern China’s Liaoning province.

    Whenever a dying patient in the region was determined to be suitable for organ donation, Liang’s team would be contacted. They would then send Liang or another team member to the hospital to talk to the patient’s immediate family. If they managed to successfully convince the family to agree to the donation, then the doctor overseeing the patient would also be paid a small commission.

    According to China’s state-run media, there were about 2,800 organ donation coordinators in the country as of the end of 2020. Like Liang, some of these worked for hospitals, while others worked for China’s Red Cross, which unlike its international counterparts is funded and operated by the Chinese regime.

    China has in place a so-called humanitarian aid policy to support impoverished families of organ donors. According to China’s state-run media, the provincial Red Cross in central China’s Hubei province implemented a payment plan of between 50,000 yuan to 90,000 yuan ($7,720 to $13,880) per family in 2015.

    In January 2020, Hubei’s Red Cross announced that it paid a total of 9.77 million yuan ($1.5 million) to 128 families in 2019.

    Liang, who worked in the job for six months before quitting, likened his role to a sales representative—he earned about 2,000 to 3,000 yuan ($310 to $460) every time he was able to get a family to sign up to organ donation.

    What the hospital paid Liang and what the families received accounted for only a tiny fraction of what hospitals charged for transplant surgeries. According to Liang, hospitals in China charged about 550,000 yuan ($84,870) for a liver transplant surgery, and 450,000 yuan ($69,440) for a kidney transplant surgery.

    Therefore, a donor who gave up both of their kidneys and liver would generate an income of about 1.45 million yuan ($223,760) for a hospital. That amount, after accounting for the hospital’s medical expenses to procure the organs and carry out the surgeries, would leave the hospital with the tidy sum of 700,000 yuan ($108,010), according to Liang.

    A small portion of this money would be used to pay the donor’s family, while the rest would go to the chief surgeon carrying out the transplants, Liang said.

    The surgeon would also use some of this money to pay the local police. In return, the police would turn over the patient’s personal information, including their financial situation. The doctors would then pass this information on to the organ donation coordinators. The family’s financial details helped the coordinators find out if certain families were more susceptible to pressure.

    China’s transplant industry is also rife with bribery. Liang said he knew that chief doctors at hospitals’ transplant centers would accept bribes to move people up the waiting list.

    The Money

    Liang recalled a specific incident in October 2020 involving a 28-year-old single man who had a brain hemorrhage. The man was admitted to the intensive care unit of a local hospital and was later declared brain dead.

    The man’s organs were identified as very valuable, given his young age and his O blood type, according to Liang. People with O type blood can donate to every other group.

    Liang’s coworker then got to work. The man’s older sister was identified as the soft target—she needed money as she had been footing her brother’s medical bill. The coworker was successful. In effect, they were able to convince the sister to “sell her younger brother for money to pay off her debt,” Liang said.

    The sister then went on a mission, telling her parents that they should agree to donate their son’s organs since it was for the “greater good.” Despite their initial rejections, the parents eventually relented and agreed to donate their son’s two kidneys and liver.

    In the end, the son’s heart was also donated, to the dismay of his mother who hadn’t agreed to it.

    Sometimes organ donation coordinators and donors’ immediate families would haggle over the amount of the payment. In another incident around October 2020, Liang said that he and his colleague jointly worked on a case involving a prisoner from southwestern China’s Sichuan province. The prisoner was a member of China’s Yi ethnic minority.

    Liang and his coworker located the prisoner at a hospital in Shenyang, the capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province. Liang had no idea how the prisoner ended up in hospital and where he was imprisoned, but suspected that the man was beaten while in detention.

    The initial negotiation resulted in the coordinators agreeing to pay the prisoner’s family 50,000 yuan ($7,720) for their consent to donate the prisoner’s organs. However, the family then demanded more money, eventually being paid an additional 50,000 yuan.

    While the negotiations were pending, doctors at the Shenyang hospital used medication to keep the prisoner alive for about five days. Eventually, his liver and two kidneys were retrieved and donated.

    ‘Ruthless’

    Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of Washington-based medical ethics advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said China’s organ donation system has for years relied on using monetary incentives to induce donations. Liang’s account, according to Trey, shows that the Chinese regime continues to fail to abide by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) transplantation principles.

    “In five out of the 11 guiding principles there is explicit mention that NO PAYMENTS should be made in exchange for organs,” Trey said in an email to The Epoch Times.

    “The examples show that China pays for organs,” he added. “Even more so, they approach families in their greatest moments of sorrow, when a relative is about to die, that they offer money for his organs. That is unethical and ruthless.”

    Trey also criticized the global health body for not holding the Chinese regime to account for these breaches .

    “The WHO betrays its own ethical guidelines by failing to call out China for its breaking of WHO ethical guidelines,” Trey said. “The WHO would not hesitate to scold other countries if they would systematically pay money for organs.”

    He urged the international community, and particularly the global transplant community, to demand the regime end the practice.

    “We need to uphold ethical standards in medicine,” Trey said.

    The lack of ethics in China’s transplant system extends far beyond using financial incentives to induce organ donations, Trey added, citing the regime’s state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience, in particular Falun Gong adherents. Liang said he was never personally involved in any organ donation cases involving Falun Gong. However, he suspected that their organs continue to be a source for transplants since he’s seen Falun Gong mentioned in doctors’ reports.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:45

  • India Reports 50 Doctors Dead In A Single Day As COVID Mortality Peaks
    India Reports 50 Doctors Dead In A Single Day As COVID Mortality Peaks

    As the number of confirmed cases in India has pulled back in recent days, but that didn’t stop India from reporting a record jump in daily deaths attributed to the virus on Tuesday as the total number of confirmed cases in the country finally topped 25 million.

    Some 260K new cases were registered, along with the record 4,329 deaths. In a promising sign, the number of active cases also declined. Still, over the past month, the number of daily cases has tripled, while the number of daily deaths has risen 6x.

    Earlier today, media reports claimed that India’s Serum Institute, one of the world’s largest vaccine producers, will be so preoccupied producing jabs for the Indian citizenry that it won’t be able to continue with exports until the end of the year, extending an earlier freeze.

    “We continue to scale up manufacturing and prioritise India,” said Serum CEO Adar Poonawalla on Tuesday. “We also hope to start delivering to Covax and other countries by the end of this year,” he added, a reference to the WHO’s woefully under-funded program to distribute vaccines to the developing world.

    Now, an Indian TV station is reporting that a record 50 doctors died across India in the span of a single day this week.

    According to the Indian Medical Association, 244 doctors have lost their lives due to COVID in the second wave. Of these, some 50 deaths were recorded on Sunday alone. The highest number of fatalities have been reported from Bihar (69) followed by Uttar Pradesh (34) and Delhi (27). Only 3% of the deceased were fully vaccinated, which stems from the shortage in vaccine supplies. Five months into India’s vaccination drive, only 66% of the country’s healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated. The IMA said it is making all possible efforts to encourage doctors to take the jab.

    Dr. Jayesh Lele, the General Secretary of IMA, told NDTV: “It is very unfortunate that we lost 50 doctors yesterday across India and 244 in the second wave since the first week of April.” The IMA, he said, has found that many doctors have not taken the vaccine and the organisation will do everything it can to ensure that all doctors who are on the frontline take the jab.

    “Secondly we want to highlight that doctors are understaffed and overworked. They sometimes work for 48 hours at a stretch without any rest. This adds to the viral load and they ultimately succumb to the infection. The government needs to take measures to boost the healthcare workforce,” he added.

    One young doctor who died in New Delhi was only 26 – a junior resident at Delhi’s Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital. The doctor, Anas Mujahid, is the youngest of the 244 doctors who have died since the start of the year. Mujahid had minor symptoms like sore throat and tested positive in an antigen test at the hospital. But in a rare case of sudden progression, he collapsed soon after and died due to an outbreak of intracranial bleeding. He had no comorbidities.

    Since last spring, the IMA has counted at least 1,000 deaths of physicians due to the virus, though NDTV warned the actual number is likely higher, as many deaths haven’t been accurately recorded.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:25

  • Think Gas Shortages Are Bad? Buckle Up
    Think Gas Shortages Are Bad? Buckle Up

    Authored by Jason Isaac, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    If the gas shortages plaguing the Southeast left you high and dry last week, buckle up. This is just a taste of our future under President Joe Biden’s energy policies.

    Though these shortages were largely driven by panic buying, rather than by actual supply constraints due to the Colonial Pipeline hack, they demonstrate just how much energy—something the average American likely doesn’t think much about during their normal daily routine—defines our lives.

    If the Green New Deal becomes a real deal, whether through Congress or by executive fiat (which is apparently Biden’s preferred strategy), gas shortages and skyrocketing prices at the pump are just the beginning.

    If Biden succeeds, we can kiss energy independence goodbye. In 2019, the United States finally achieved the mission that founded the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1960s—freedom from dependence on foreign oil—when we became a net energy exporter. Just over 100 days into the Biden administration, our claim to that title is already fading.

    Problems with just one pipeline led to a significant increase in oil imports; imagine how the global balance of power would shift if the federal government tried to recklessly shut down all U.S. fossil fuel production. We would once again become dependent on Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other unstable nations for our energy needs—ceding negotiation power, weakening our national security, and enabling irresponsible overseas producers with shoddy environmental and labor standards.

    We could also expect the cost of living to rise dramatically. Consumer goods prices are already rising at the highest rate since the 2008 Great Recession, with inflation over 4 percent. An energy shortage would make inflation even worse—and affect the poorest Americans the most.

    Low-income households—which represent nearly 44 percent of the American population—already spend nearly three times the percentage of their income on energy bills than non-low-income citizens. In some communities, energy burdens are as high as 30 percent of household income. Families struggling to make ends meet have less room in their budget to afford higher energy prices—or the resulting higher prices for everything we do.

    Every product we use, from our smartphones to the food in our fridge to the clothes we wear, depends on energy. We don’t just need electricity to power manufacturing facilities and fuel for delivery trucks, planes, and farm equipment; the chemicals derived from oil and gas are also critical to our everyday lives. Petrochemicals including plastics, rubber, synthetic fabrics, inks and dyes, and more are the building blocks for nearly everything in the room around you right now—not to mention our health care facilities, technology and communication infrastructure, public safety and military systems, and more.

    Ironically, if Biden’s so-called green energy agenda succeeds, we can also expect our environment to get worse, not better. While the media trumpets that the planet is dirty and getting dirtier—and that we’re to blame—America is leading the world in environmental protection. We have the cleanest air on record, with air pollution down 77 percent in the last 50 years (far safer to breathe than most other highly populated nations), and rank number one in the world for clean drinking water.

    Wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars might sound environmentally conscious, but these power sources are anything but. They rely heavily on mining (not for bitcoin, but for rare minerals) to produce parts that can rarely be recycled, instead piling up in landfills and leaching toxic chemicals all the while. And renewables produce a tiny fraction of energy per unit of land compared to fossil fuels. This low energy density means going 100 percent renewable would require clearing vast swaths of land, destroying private property and wildlife habitat. So much for “green.”

    Wind and solar have proven decade after decade they are incapable of providing more than a tiny fraction of our energy, even after receiving tens of billions in subsidies funded by our tax dollars.

    The gas shortages following the Colonial Pipeline hack should be a stark wake-up call to the Biden administration, whose ignorance of the numerous flaws of the Green New Deal agenda is a real threat to our economy, national security, and way of life.

    *  *  *

    The Honorable Jason Isaac is director of Life:Powered, a national initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:05

  • Pelosi Joins Call To Boycott 2022 Winter Games Over China's Human Rights Abuses
    Pelosi Joins Call To Boycott 2022 Winter Games Over China’s Human Rights Abuses

    With the Tokyo Summer Olympics expected to be the most underwhelming event in the history of the modern games (that is, if safety officials from the IOC ultimately allow it to continue), pressure for an international boycott of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing is growing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just became the first senior American official to call for a boycott of the China games over Beijing’s treatment of Uygher Muslims in the far-flung northwestern province of Xinjiang.

    Heads of state who go to China for the Olympics in light of genocide would not have moral authority to speak out about human rights, Pelosi insisted according to a newswire report.

    She also called out the corporate sponsors of the game for “looking the other way” at China’s human rights abuses.

    “How sad it is to see the Olympic corporate sponsors look the other way on China’s abuses out of concern for their bottom line.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Beijing has responded to accusations that it’s carrying out a genocide of the Uyghers have turned accusations back around on the US, citing instances of police brutality, and America’s history of slavery, as signs of hypocrisy.

    Pelosi’s decision follows an even more forceful call from a group representing other other minorities who have been oppressed by Beijing. The group explicitly accuses those who support the Games of giving tacit approval of genocide representing the people of Hong Kong, Uyghur Muslims and Tibetans, released a statement calling for the boycott on Monday. It also accused the IOC of deciding “to put profit before human lives and turn a blind eye to genocide,” according to the Daily Caller and Associated Press.

    Support for a boycott is bipartisan, with high-profile Republicans like former UN Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikke Haley responding to calls from the group mentioned above by endorsing their call and saying it would be “unthinkable” for the world to ignore what Beijing has done to the Uyghers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The statement said that the time for negotiations with Beijing over its abuses has passed, and that a full-on boycott is the only moral option available. “The time for talking with the IOC is over,” Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute said in an exclusive interview with the AP. “This cannot be games as usual or business as usual; not for the IOC and not for the international community.”

    Human Rights groups have met several times in the past year with the IOC, asking that the games be removed from China. A key member in those talks was Zumretay Arkin of the World Uyghur Congress.

    And just last week, human rights groups and Western nations led by the US, the UK, and Germany accused China of massive crimes against the Uyghur minority and demanded unimpeded access for UN experts. At the meeting, Britain’s UN Ambassador, Barbara Woodward, called the situation in Xinjiang “one of the worst human rights crises of our time.”

    “The evidence points to a program of repression of specific ethnic groups,” Woodward said. “Expressions of religion have been criminalized and Uyghur language and culture are discriminated against systematically and at scale.”

    While President Joe Biden is probably a little too cozy with China to openly call for a boycott of the Winter Games, we wouldn’t be surprised to see President Trump, or other senior GOP, to highlight the president’s hypocrisy when it comes to China by joining with their own calls to back the boycott.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 21:45

  • The $392,000 Lifeguard: "Baywatch" As Union Shop
    The $392,000 Lifeguard: “Baywatch” As Union Shop

    Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com,

    Being a lifeguard isn’t easy, but in Los Angeles it can be lucrative. Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 82 county lifeguards earning at least $200,000 including benefits and seven making between $300,000 and $392,000. Thirty-one lifeguards made between $50,000 and $131,000 in overtime alone.

    A lifeguard keeps watch in Huntington Beach, Calif., June 29, 2020.

    After 30 years of service, they can retire as young as 55 on 79% of their pay. The Los Angeles County Lifeguard Association makes all this possible. Since 1995 the union has bargained for better wages, hours, benefits and working conditions.

    Over the past five years, lifeguard captain Daniel Douglas brought home $630,000 in overtime alone. His total employment costs in 2019 were $368,668—$140,706 base bay, $131,493 in overtime, $21,760 in “other pay” and $74,709 in benefits.

    In 2009 the city of Santa Monica signed a 10-year, $25 million contract with the county for lifeguard services. In 2019 the city extended the contract for five years and $17 million. There were no identified competitors and the contract wasn’t put out for bid.

    To be sure, being a lifeguard isn’t all fun in the sun: Some are EMTs and paramedics, and some are part of an underwater recovery team and participate in diving operations. Some are marine firefighters with specialized training for fireboat operations. Some are on duty for 24 hours at a time—though they’re allotted eight hours for sleep, and if they have a call that interrupts their slumber after five hours or less, “the entire 24-hour period shall be counted as hours worked,” the contract states.

    Still, they’re handsomely paid beyond what virtually all other EMTs receive. By comparison, the top-paid public lifeguard in Florida made $118,000, including benefits—though the pay goes further in the Sunshine State, which has no income tax. Even in New York City, the top-paid lifeguard made only $168,000.

    Think of the Los Angeles Country Lifeguard Association as the teachers union of “Baywatch.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 21:25

  • Two Months After Biden Blasted "Neanderthal Thinking", Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths
    Two Months After Biden Blasted “Neanderthal Thinking”, Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott elicited criticism from Dr. Fauci and a host of Democrats when he decided to drop all COVID-19-linked restrictions in the Lone Star State back in March. Now, as states across the country are falling in line with President Biden’s aggressive new mask guidance (clearly intended to encourage more holdouts to accept the vaccine) Texas is reporting a milestone that many of these critics once believed unthinkable: On Sunday, the state’s Department of State Health Services reported its first day without a single COVID-19 deaths since March 21, 2020.

    Confronted in an interview last month, Dr. Fauci finally acknowledged that he couldn’t explain Texas’ success. And President Biden memorably slammed Republicans in Texas (and in other southern states like Mississippi that followed Texas’ lead) as “Neaderthal-thinking” Republicans.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    That good news was quickly overshadowed when state officials reported 23 new deaths on Monday, the highest daily count in two months.

    Still, as the Houston Chronicle admits, it’s clear Texas has “turned a corner” and that the takeaway from the zero-death day is that the state has done remarkably well in combating COVID.

    And in a social media post, Gov. Abbott recently rattled off a host of stats illustrating just how successful the state has been.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Adding to this, the state reported a record low seven-day positivity rate of 3.9% last week, and cases and hospitalizations have fallen to their lowest marks since last summer.

    Funeral homes in the area rejoiced at finally seeing business return to a more normal pace.

    Bradshaw-Carter Funeral Home owner Tripp Carter said they haven’t had a COVID-related service since early March, which she credited in part to Houstonians abiding by precautionary measures.

    “We are right in the heart of the city, and so it’s just great that we haven’t seen any more cases,” Carter said. “Houstonians, or at least certainly in the inner loop, were very conscious about following CDC guidelines.”

    Texas counted only 624 new confirmed infections on Wednesday according to state data, with a seven-day average of 2,072 new cases per day.

    Source: State of Texas

    To put this all in context, Texas was reporting nearly 30,000 new cases per day and upward of 400 deaths a day earlier this year. It once was home to the worst outbreak in the country, and last summer became the first state to top 1 million confirmed cases.

    Deaths finally began to slow in March, as vaccine eligibility was gradually expanded. To date, 41% of Texans have received at least one vaccine dose, and nearly one in three are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, which lags the rate in many other states.

    Now, the state can focus its attention on the new crisis of 2021: the fester crisis at the southern border caused by a surge in migrants responding to Biden’s pledge to welcome immigrants.

    At least now, with the COVID numbers down, maybe Biden will deem it safe enough to hold more photo-ops at the border where he lectures the GOP on immigration policy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:55

  • 'Sickcare' Is The Knife In The Heart Of Employment… And The Economy
    ‘Sickcare’ Is The Knife In The Heart Of Employment… And The Economy

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

    American Healthcare is a growth industry in the same way cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which in the case of healthcare is the U.S. economy.

    While a great many individuals in the system care about improving the health of their patients, the healthcare system itself only cares about one thing: maximizing profits by any means available, including sending many patients to an early grave via medications which corporations declared “safe” and rigged the political-regulatory-research systems to comply.

    I call this maximizing profits by any means available system sickcare, for obvious reasons: this system profits by managing sickness, i.e. chronic diseases, rather than addressing the causes, which in most chronic disorders trace back to lifestyle: SAD (standard American diet), poor fitness and a generally unhealthy lifestyle of convenience (i.e. sedentary), heavy work/financial stress and addictions to meds, drugs, social media, etc.

    Sickcare’s single-minded profiteering would be bad enough if we could afford its spiraling ever higher cost, but we cannot: as I noted way back in 2011, Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation all by itself. three years ago I noted that U.S. Healthcare Isn’t Broken–It’s Fixed (5/26/18), as generic meds that cost $22.60 for a month’s supply are pushed by Big Pharma as branded meds for $1,120 per month. Such a deal!

    I’ve been discussing employment recently, and one of my patrons pointed out the enormously negative impact sickcare costs have on employment. I covered the incredibly negative impact of soaring sickcare insurance costs on small business back in 2011: Here’s Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring, and Won’t be Hiring (7/11/11), but the same soaring-costs dynamic makes Corporate America reluctant to hire anyone in America, too.

    You’d have to be insane to pick America as your global base, given the grossly asymmetrical cost of healthcare in the U.S. compared to our developed-world competitors in Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Sadly, the treatment for your insanity will be so costly in America that your psychiatric problems will soon be exacerbated by financial ruin.

    Those with heavily subsidized healthcare insurance may not realize that insurance for a family can cost more than a wage earner’s entire monthly net income. This generates a perverse incentive (from the perspective of a healthy economy, as opposed to a corrupt, rigged economy run for the exclusive benefit of profiteers, fraudsters, speculators and political fixers) for one spouse to quit their jobs or cut their hours to reduce the household income to the point that federal subsidies (ObamaCare) kick in and pay much or most of the insanely overpriced sickcare insurance tab.

    The subsidies are of course ultimately paid by the taxpayers; sickcare profiteers thank you.

    Needless to say, employers facing monthly healthcare insurance costs of $1,500 for an employee earning $2,500 will be looking for automation or overseas alternatives. How can the employer afford to keep paying healthcare insurance costs that spiral far above the Consumer Price Index (CPI)? Ultimately these higher costs come out of the employee’s paycheck, as employers could have given raises but instead had to fork over all the dough to the sickcare profiteers.

    One driver of wages’ ever-declining share of the national income is trillions of dollars have been siphoned off by sickcare. As the comparison chart below shows, the U.S. pays roughly $5,000 more per capita (per person) per year for healthcare than other equally developed nations: the U.S. pays $10,966 per person per year and the average paid by other developed nations pay roughly half: $5,697 per person per year.

    330 million Americans X $5,000 is $1.65 trillion a year. No wonder wages have gone nowhere for decades and corporations couldn’t wait to offshore jobs in America. (Not that the Corporate America needed much more of an incentive to offshore U.S. jobs, but let’s recognize that sickcare costs put American companies at a huge global disadvantage.)

    Please examine the chart below of healthcare expenses per capita (per person) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2018 (the last year available on the St. Louis Federal Reserve database). I’ve marked up the chart to indicate where healthcare costs per capita would be if healthcare had tracked the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the past two decades.

    Strikingly, the cost had U.S. healthcare risen by the same percentage as everything else–$5,852 per capita per year–is very close to the average costs in comparable developed nations: $5,697 per capita per year. Instead, U.S. healthcare costs per person were $9,000 per year as of 2018.

    The third chart shows that the results of this asymmetric expenditure on health hasn’t done much in terms of life expectancy or other broad measures of national health and well-being. America is Number One in costs but far down the list of life expectancy and other measures of well-being.

    The human and financial costs of this sick system are pervasive. Those trying to provide care within the sickcare system’s perverse incentives are burning out (see last chart), and businesses are crushed by ever-higher costs for everything related to healthcare. The “solution” for employers is to push more of the insane cost increases onto employees, who are already staggering under the weight of stagnant wages and skyrocketing inflation in sectors other than healthcare.

    Small business entrepreneurs end up not hiring any workers because they can’t afford to provide the mandated healthcare. Having to do all the work needed to keep the business afloat burns out the owners and they close the business, to the detriment of their community and the local government, which loses the tax revenues generated by the enterprise.

    Here’s a real-world example of how healthcare has become unaffordable for employers: in the mid-1980s I could buy comprehensive healthcare insurance for my single employees (mostly young) for 6 hours’ pay for the average employee and 4 hours of my pay. (My partner and I paid all the healthcare insurance costs, the employees paid zero, I’m just using the hours and pay as a means of measuring the cost of healthcare in terms of the purchasing power of wages.)

    Can an employer buy equivalent comprehensive healthcare insurance today for 6 hours’ of the employees’ pay? No, not even close. (Note that I’m talking about real insurance, not bogus simulacra of insurance, i.e. catastrophic coverage.)

    Sickcare is a win for the sickcare profiteers and a loss for employers, employees, communities, government and the nation. Like cancer, sickcare will keep growing until it kills the host. We’re getting close.

    Sickcare is the knife in the heart of employment. Sickcare puts the nation at a tremendous competitive disadvantage, crushes small businesses and generates perverse incentives to automate and offshore jobs just to get out from underneath the dead weight of ever-higher sickcare costs.

    We need a whole new approach to healthcare that includes every aspect of American culture, society, education, economics and governance. We need to ditch SAD (standard American diet) and our unhealthy lifestyle, and incentivize improving health from the ground up rather than generating chronic lifestyle diseases such as metabolic disorders and then managing these disorders as a means of maximizing profits. The national goal should not be profiting from an over-medicated populace, it should be eliminating the need for medications. (A healthy person has no need for handfuls of medications.) Rather than profit from 74% of the populace being overweight and 40% being obese, the national goal should be to eliminate lifestyle diseases entirely by changing behaviors and incentives, not costly procedures and medications. That would free healthcare to serve those suffering from non-lifestyle diseases.

    As Charlie Munger famously noted, “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” That’s how humans operate: we respond to the incentives presented, even if they diminish the health of the populace and bankrupt the nation. We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

    *  *  *

    If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    *  *  *

    My recent books:

    A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

    The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

    Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:45

  • Silicon Chip Shortage Leads To Potato Chip Shortage: Farmers Halt Equipment Shipments To Dealers
    Silicon Chip Shortage Leads To Potato Chip Shortage: Farmers Halt Equipment Shipments To Dealers

    Readers have been briefed on the ongoing semiconductor shortage that may last a “couple of years.” The auto industry has grabbed the spotlight as the hardest-hit industry, with some of the world’s biggest manufacturers restricting production. 

    According to a new report, the worldwide chip shortage is impacting the agriculture industry that may last for a couple of years and has already impacted the price of potato chips.

    Hoosier Ag Today reports, “The biggest factor impacting the ability of US farmers to produce the food we need has nothing to do with the weather, the markets, trade, regulations, or disease. The worldwide shortage of computer chips will impact all aspects of agriculture for the next two years and beyond… farm equipment manufacturers have halted shipments to dealers because they don’t have the chips to put in the equipment… not only have combine, planter, tillage, and tractor sales been impacted, but even ATV supplies are limited. Parts, even non-electric parts, are also in short supply because the manufacturers of those parts use the chips in the manufacturing process. As farmers integrate technology into all aspects of the farming process, these highly sophisticated semiconductors have become the backbone of almost every farming operation.” 

    Rabobank’s Global Economics & Markets desk commented on the Hoosier Ag Today report and cautioned on the “technological wonders of a global economy based on just-in-time supplies of a few key inputs from only a few locations; and then demand surged due a virus that ran rampant through said global economy; and supply chains got snarled for that, and other reasons; and now a lack of silicon chips even impacts on the price of potato chips (in the US) and chips (in the UK).” 

    The shortage has caused Reynolds Farm Equipment, one of Indiana’s largest John Deere dealers, to inform customers that order times are unknown at the moment because production for specific equipment has been disrupted because of the lack of chips. 

    Bane Welker Equipment, which carries Case farm equipment and several other notable brands with dealerships in Indiana and Ohio, urged customers to plan ahead. The dealership warned customers that combine harvesters, planters, tillages, and tractor supplies have been limited because of the chip shortage. They even said ATV supplies are limited. All of this has severely dented sales for the dealership. 

    Farmers have been rapidly integrating technology into the farming process for the last decade. Agricultural technology has enabled farmers to produce higher crop yields, decrease water, fertilizer, and pesticides, which keeps food prices down and saves the environment. Though as Rabobank described earlier when chips go missing the technological wonders of a global economy come crashing down. 

    “In the U.S., we love our quick-fix solutions, which usually involve federal government bailouts. This time, however, that solution will not work to solve the shortage,” said Hoosier Ag Today. 

    Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has been the latest in a chorus of voices to warn about the ongoing semiconductor shortage that will last for a “couple of years.”

    Gelsinger said U.S. dominance in the chip industry had dropped so much that only 12% of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing is made in the U.S., down from 37% about 25 years ago.

    “And anybody who looks at supply chain says, ‘That’s a problem.’ This is a big, critical industry and we want more of it on American soil: the jobs that we want in America, the control of our long-term technology future,” he said.

    Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is also warning that the shortage will continue throughout this year and maybe extended into 2022. 

    The worsening shortage is not just crushing the auto industry. It’s also spilling over into farming, where some farmers are unable to source new equipment. What this means is used farm equipment prices are about to skyrocket in price. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:25

  • BLM Founder Who Went On Property-Buying-Spree Complains About "White Supremacy" In Housing Market
    BLM Founder Who Went On Property-Buying-Spree Complains About “White Supremacy” In Housing Market

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    After going on a personal home buying spree, including one property located in one of the whitest areas of California, BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is now complaining about “white supremacy” in the housing market.

    Cullors recently spent a total of $3.2 million on four homes, including a $1.4 million property in L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon, which has a black population of just 1.6 per cent.

    Another of the homes, a “custom ranch” located in Georgia, is surrounded by “3.2 rural acres” and features a “private airplane hangar with a studio apartment above it” in addition to an indoor swimming pool.

    Over the weekend, Cullors highlighted a story by NPR on the low rate of black home ownership in areas like Compton, which is 33% black.

    “Thank you @npr for highlighting the history of racism inside of the housing market and why Black homeownership has always been a way to disrupt white supremacy,” wrote Cullors.

    //www.instagram.com/embed.js

    “Over the last 15 years, Black homeownership has declined more dramatically than for any other racial or ethnic group in the United States,” the NPR report states, adding that black homeownership in 2019 was as low as it was in the 60s.

    However, for Cullors, who has generated significant wealth for herself grifting off of race baiting and divisive Black Lives Matter agitating, she has no such worries.

    After her spending spree was revealed, the establishment went into full panic mode, with Facebook blocking links to a New York Post report about the issue and a black conservative activist being suspended by Twitter for highlighting the matter.

    After an African-American BLM activist demanded an investigation into how the money was being spent, the national BLM organization threatened legal action before Cullors went on to claim that questions over her property buying spree were a “false and dangerous story” being pushed by “right wing forces” and “white supremacists.”

    Cullors is a self-described “Marxist” who apparently thinks she’s the only one exempt when it comes to the sharing of private property.

    BLM as a whole raked in a staggering $90 million dollars in donations last year alone, with the national organization being accused by local chapters of hiding “untold millions of dollars” while keeping the cash away from grassroots activists.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:05

  • Predatory Lenders Charging Up To 589% Interest Posted Record Profits In 2020 Thanks To "Stimulus"
    Predatory Lenders Charging Up To 589% Interest Posted Record Profits In 2020 Thanks To “Stimulus”

    “I can’t even think about how much money I just paid in interest,” 44 year old Jamie Johnson said, thinking back to a payday loan he took out in April 2020.

    His $5,000 loan – which eventually accrued interest at a clip of up to 589% annualized – was the topic of a new Bloomberg article on payday and predatory lending.

    “It was just a big mess,” Johnson said, telling Bloomberg he used pandemic-relief unemployment insurance checks of $965 each week to hurriedly help pay back the debt for fear of being trapped in a neverending cycle of compounding interest and fees.

    It’s stories like his that are the driving force behind payday and other high interest loan companies “emerging from the pandemic stronger than perhaps ever before”. The lenders raked in record earnings while Americans suffered during the pandemic. 

    Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center, a non-profit that advocates for low-income borrowers, said: “Debt collectors had a big year, and so did predatory lenders. The idea that any company could keep charging 100% or 200% interest or more during this time of crisis is really outrageous.”

    Additionally, studies have shown these types of loans are disproportionately targeted to black and Latino communities. In Michigan, where Johnson is from, “areas that are more than a quarter Black and Latino have 7.6 payday stores for every 100,000 people, or about 50% more than elsewhere,” the report notes.

    The irony is that it was the trillions in government stimulus that allowed these predatory companies to prosper. As we noted throughout 2020, many consumers used their stimulus to save and pay down debt. The New York Fed estimates about 33% of all cash received from stimulus checks was used to pay down debt. This equates directly to a boon for companies like Enova International Inc. and Elevate Credit Inc., who engage in these types of loans.

    Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said: “Earnings were definitely higher than we would have expected because they benefited from an improvement in the credit environment. Consumers tended to pay back debt with funds they were given by the government.”

    Kimberly Richardson found herself in an equally ugly scenario: she fell into a debt trap that caused her to go from borrowing $1,500 to bankruptcy. Interest on her $1,500 loan was accumulating at a rate of 276% and she was prompted by her loan provider to take additional borrowings under her credit line. She paid CashNetUSA more than $10,000 on the $1,500 loan and then filed for bankruptcy.

    Elevate told Bloomberg “it is committed to serving those with non-prime credit scores who are locked out of traditional financial products.” Enova told Bloomberg “its policy is to provide customers with flexibility and to help them be successful with their loan.”

    The kicker is that the National Consumer Law Center had urged Congress to cap these types of rates after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. But just the opposite happened: in July 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “repealed substantial portions of a 2017 rule that would have required lenders to determine consumers’ ability to repay loans.”

    This rule could have wiped out as much as 68% of the industry’s revenue from payday loans.

    Now, more than 12 states have caps limiting payday loans to 36% or less. Michigan and Tennessee remain excluded from this list, however.

    And while there are some indications that the Biden administration may try to reverse course and regulate these loans further, the reality is that companies like Enova are once again licking their chops at a post-Covid boom.

    Enova Chief Executive Officer David Fisher said on an April conference call: “As the economy opens back up, we believe that consumers will raise their spending potentially to elevated levels due to increased activity and pent-up demand. We saw the same dynamic following the financial crisis, which led to strong origination growth in 2010 and 2011.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:45

  • Lumber, Labor, & Gas Markets Tell SAD Stories
    Lumber, Labor, & Gas Markets Tell SAD Stories

    Authored by Art Carden via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    The hits just keep coming. First, lumber prices exploded. Second, there was a terrible jobs report. Third, there was a gas shortage. These are all SAD stories–Supply And Demand. They are also, of course, stories about adaptation, adjustment, resilience, and unintended consequences.

    First, consider the lumber market. As my AIER colleague Peter C. Earle points out, lumber prices at the beginning of May 2021 were about six-and-a-half times what they were at the beginning of April 2020. On the supply side of the lumber market, lockdowns have limited production. In August, the Financial Post reported that “A plague of tiny mountain pine beetles…has already destroyed 15 years of log supplies in British Columbia, enough trees to build 9 million single-family homes.” Good, old-fashioned protectionism is at play, as well, but the Wall Street Journal reports that tariffs and trade restrictions on Canadian lumber don’t play that large a role.

    On the demand side, the US is in the middle of another housing and construction boom. Zillow is calling it “The Great Reshuffling” and reports that about 11% of Americans “have already moved during the pandemic.” My family is among them: we moved this past fall in search of more space, home office space in particular. Not long after moving, we added stairs to our back deck in no small part because we expect to be spending more of our time with friends outdoors. Moving, new building, and remodeling is being driven at least in part by low interest rates–we knocked our rate down from 3.75% to 2.49% when we moved–and, I suspect, aggressive Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities during the pandemic. The Fed has added about $800 billion in mortgage-backed securities to their holdings since March 11, 2020:

    It will be a while before people have done the empirical work that will untangle and measure the contributions of these different causes, but at a fundamental level, it’s a Supply And Demand story. The massive increase in lumber prices, of course, has some people worried, but as Thomas Sowell constantly reminds people, “There are no solutions. Only trade-offs.” People adjust to the new reality by making incremental substitutions that might not be terribly revolutionary or that might not be especially easy to see but that still reflect exactly how people respond to the signals they are getting from rising prices. High lumber prices say “Are you sure you need to do that project right now?” Sometimes, the answer is yes and other times the answer is no. We considered buying lumber and building a doghouse, but at current prices, we’re going to delay that project for a while.

    Second, there is the labor market. The rhetorical battle is between people outraged by the laziness and moral failings of people who “don’t want to work anymore” and people outraged by the rapacity and callousness of people who expect others to go back to work for low wages. Maybe it is a sudden explosion of laziness. Maybe it is a sudden development of class consciousness that finally has us on the brink of Solidarity Forever.

    Or maybe it’s a change in people’s incentives–specifically, the extension of high unemployment benefits. As David R. Henderson points out, “Paying people an extra $400 a week as long as they’re unemployed is a bad idea.” In a post for EconLog, Henderson notes that he got this wrong–”it’s ‘only’ $300,” but with these extra benefits, it shouldn’t be surprising that people aren’t jumping at employment opportunities. In his article on unemployment in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Lawrence Summers explains:

    “…government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment…by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’–the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.” 

    Why? A sign at a local fast food place advertises starting wages of $11 per hour. That doesn’t sound like much, but two people each working 35 hours per week at that rate would have a household income of $40,040. That’s about 80% of the Alabama median household income of about $50,000 and well above the federal poverty guideline of $26,500 for a family of 4.

    According to this unofficial unemployment benefits calculator, someone in Alabama who earned $20,020 by working in fast food would, upon becoming unemployed, be eligible for $193 per week in unemployment benefits for 20 weeks. If you add to that the additional $300 per week in the new stimulus bill, you get $493 per week. Is it any surprise that fewer people want to work 40 hours a week at $11 an hour when they could take home about $50 a week more than that by remaining unemployed?

    Scott Sumner offers an interesting hypothesis: “Because millions of unemployed workers in low pay service sector jobs earn more on unemployment than they did on their previous jobs, and because most of those jobs are unpleasant, employment will likely remain quite depressed all summer, before bouncing back in the fall.” Alabama is ending the payments on June 19, but that’s still more than a month from this writing of reservation wages propped up by high unemployment benefits.

    Third, a cyberattack shut down an oil pipeline. This led to panic buying at gas stations, a tweet from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission saying, “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the usual social media hand-wringing about people panic-buying gasoline and storing it stupidly, and, of course, the usual sabre-rattling about “price gouging,” which I’ve previously called “knowledge embargoes.”

    Once again, supply and demand does the explanatory work–and if we had left the mechanism alone and let prices rise after the pipeline shutdown, we wouldn’t have had the mess we were in (or, it must be admitted, the entertaining memes). People who don’t pay attention to current events would get the message that they need to conserve gas pretty quickly, and we wouldn’t be dealing with shortages. It’s a minor inconvenience, but when your gas light comes on (as mine did the other day), it’s cold comfort to pull into a gas station and discover that there is no gas at $2.89 a gallon rather than some gas at $5 a gallon. A station across the street had gas, fortunately–but they had run out of premium (which I don’t need for my Toyota Corolla) and customers were limited to $20 purchases. As economists emphasize whenever price gouging rules kick in, ignoring what supply and demand analysis has to teach us usually means making the problem worse rather than better.

    An apparently apocryphal curse says “May you live in interesting times.” Alas, we do. We needn’t be confused, however. I tell my students that I love economics because it gives me a simple set of tools that makes a lot of sense out of seemingly-disparate situations. Are we wondering what is going on with lumber? It’s a SAD story. Labor? Also a SAD story. Gas? Another SAD story made genuinely sad by politicians ignoring the story’s lesson. While I wish I could say “They’ll know better next time,” it saddens me to say “They won’t.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:25

  • China Furious As Japan Refuses To Address Its Radioactive Fukushima Water Dumping Concerns
    China Furious As Japan Refuses To Address Its Radioactive Fukushima Water Dumping Concerns

    Angry that Japan has yet to respond directly to the concerns of the international community, China again urged Japan on Monday to face up to its responsibility and refrain from “wantonly” disposing the radioactive, polluted Fukushima water before reaching consensus with all stakeholders and international agencies through consultations.

    China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily news briefing when asked to comment on Seoul’s request to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) calling for exploring ways to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog to ensure safety in Japan’s planned release of Fukushima nuclear polluted water.

    Tanks storing treated radioactive water on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

    Zhao expressed China’s understanding and support for the South Korean side’s actions, saying the international community as well as within Japan have expressed deep concern and opposition over the past month after Japan announced its decision.

    And in the most harshly worded indication that China will not stand idly by as Tokyo releases 1 million tons of radioactive Fukushima water into the Pacific, Zhao said that “Regrettably, the Japanese government has turned a deaf ear to the protests from many governments, international organizations, environmental groups and people in various countries and has to date refused to respond directly to the concerns of the international community.”

    He reiterated that Japan’s decision to dump the nuclear polluted water into the sea will endanger the global marine environment and international public health and safety.

    The spokesperson stressed that Japan’s move lacks transparency and is irresponsible, adding that its attempts would only serve its own selfish gains while leaving the international community and future generations with endless problems.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:05

  • PBS Journalist Implies That Ending Mask Mandates Is Racist
    PBS Journalist Implies That Ending Mask Mandates Is Racist

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    During a White House press briefing, a PBS journalist suggested that ending mask mandates was racist.

    Yes, really.

    Last week, the CDC disappointed face diaper extremists by lifting restrictions on mask wearing in numerous settings.

    This prompted a massive backlash from those who have adopted the face covering as a kind of cult symbol, with a PBS journalist attempting to argue that not masking up will lead to the deaths of more black people.

    “The CDC guidelines on masks is putting front line workers and especially people of color at risk and they’re calling for the CDC to reverse that, what’s the White House’s stance on…people of color (being) at risk,” said the journalist.

    Leftists continue to be infuriated that mask mandates are ending because for the past year, they’ve been able to use them as a justification to ostracize and publicly shame conservatives, while the entire time claiming masks “aren’t political.”

    Despite the CDC’s advice, authorities throughout liberal states are refusing to fully lift the mandates while zealots like AOC are insisting they will continue to mask up.

    Meanwhile, two months after lifting its mask mandate, Texas recorded zero COVID deaths, the first time that has happened since data began to be collected.

    Even after the pandemic ends, those who have cemented mask wearing as a signal of virtue, compliance and political obedience will fight tooth and nail to keep the mandates in place under any flimsy justification.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 18

Today’s News 18th May 2021

  • Sweden Records More Than 30K Cases Of Side Effects Tied To COVID Jabs
    Sweden Records More Than 30K Cases Of Side Effects Tied To COVID Jabs

    As Europe pushes ahead with its vaccination program, the Nordic countries are reporting a surge in damaging side effects. In the country, the tally has surpassed 30K with the majority of these reactions reported in patients who received the AstraZeneca jab.

    Sweden’s Medical Products Agency reported that as of last week, the Scandinavian nation had tallied 31,844 reports of adverse reactions linked to its vaccine rollout.

    Sweden presently offers 3 different COVID-19 jabs: Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, with the latter being the most widely available (while other European states like Germany have sought to offer substitutes to younger patients, who are more vulnerable to dangerous cerebral blood clots, which are a rare – but not unheard of – side effect).

    The number of suspected adverse reactions from the two shots seems relatively small when compared to the 19,961 reports linked to AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria, while the AstraZeneca shot only accounts for about 26% of the roughly 2.7MM vaccines that have been administered so far in Sweden, but makes up around 63% of the side effects reports.

    Ebba Hallberg, an official with the Medical Products Agency, told Swedish media that it was unusual to receive so many reports of side effects. She added that the tally was likely higher because of public focus on the new vaccines.To head off complaints that many of the incidences of side effects were minor, she said healthcare providers are likely only reporting the more “serious” side effects.

    One Swedish media outlet said the number of complaints filed in just a few months exceeded the number typically filed over 4 years, which underscores the public anxieties about the COVID vaccines.

    In March, Sweden was one of several nations to temporarily suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab, following reports of abnormal blood clotting in recipients. AstraZeneca, as well as the European Medicines Agency, have insisted that the vaccine is safe after it came under scrutiny.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 02:45

  • Government Scientific Advisors Admit Using "Totalitarian" Fear Tactics To Control People During Pandemic, Report
    Government Scientific Advisors Admit Using “Totalitarian” Fear Tactics To Control People During Pandemic, Report

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Scientists in the UK working as advisors for the government have expressed regret for using what they now admit to be “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of instilling fear in the population in order to control behaviour during the pandemic, according to a report.

    The London Telegraph reports the comments made by Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B), a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) the government’s chief scientific advisory group.

    The report quotes a briefing from March 2020, as the first lockdown was decreed, that stated the government should drastically increase “the perceived level of personal threat” that the virus poses because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”.

    One scientist with the SPI-B admits that “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.”

    The unnamed scientist adds that “The way we have used fear is dystopian.”

    The scientist further confessed that “The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

    Another separate scientist on the subcommittee professed “You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do… clearly we try and go about it in a positive way, but it has been used nefariously in the past.”

    Another scientist warned that “We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in,” adding “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise.”

    According to the report, another researcher with the group acknowledged that “Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon,” adding that “Psychology has had a really good epidemic, actually.”

    Yet another scientist on the subcommittee stated that they have been “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology” over the past year, and warned that “psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.”

    “They have too much power and it intoxicates them”, the scientist further warned.

    The comments were collected by author Laura Dodsworth, for her book A State of Fear, out today, that explores the government’s actions during the pandemic.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    When the Telegraph asked the subcommittee for comment on the findings, SPI-B psychologist Gavin Morgan replied “Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.”

    Morgan added that “By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.”

    Commenting on the revelations, Conservative Steve Baker, a member of a group of anti-lockdown MPs said “If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become.”

    “Do I fear that Government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is,” Baker urged.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The government state of fear continues minute by minute as government ministers are now suggesting that so called ‘freedom day’ in the UK (a situation where the government permits people to have basic rights is not freedom) on June 21st is under threat because a sizeable portion of the population is refusing to take the vaccine:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    *  *  *

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 02:00

  • "Blood On Your Hands": Erdogan Issues Worst Rebuke To Biden Since Taking Office
    “Blood On Your Hands”: Erdogan Issues Worst Rebuke To Biden Since Taking Office

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday blasted the Joe Biden administration for standing idly by while the civilian body count piles up in Gaza after one week of unrelenting Israeli airstrikes. And even more than this Turkey is outraged over new reports that Biden approved a $735 million dollar weapons sale from the United States to Israel.

    “You are writing history with your bloody hands,” Erdogan said in remarks addressed to President Biden. The stinging rebuke came after a meeting with this cabinet over the continuing Gaza crisis. Turkey has long been a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, though Erdogan’s rule has in recent years seen relations with Israel reach a low-point given the hardline Islamist leanings of his Justice and Development Party. The Hill reports of the massive US weapons sale to Israel that “A majority of the possible sale is of Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, equipment that can make unguided bombs dropped from aircraft into guided missiles, the aide confirmed.” 

    “The window for Congress to block this sale is for all intents and purposes closed,” The Hill wrote, also noting outrage among a handful of Democrat progressives.

    Following a meeting with his Cabinet, Erdogan issued a rebuke to the U.S. president, saying:

    “Now, unfortunately, you (Biden) are writing history with your bloody hands with this event (in which) Gaza is being attacked with seriously disproportionate force causing the martyrdom of thousands of people. You have forced us to say this.”

    And specifically on the new reports of Biden-approved weapons sales to the Jewish state, Erdogan scolded further:

    “Today we saw Biden’s signature on weapons sales to Israel,” Erdogan said in reference to US media reports of a new arms shipment approved by the Biden administration.

    “Palestinian territories are awash with persecution, suffering and blood, like many other territories that lost the peace with the end of the Ottomans. And you are supporting that,” Erdogan said.

    This apparently marks the end of previously reported attempts of Erdogan to reach out to the administration, following warmer (despite at times tense) personal relations with Trump, given that Monday’s comments mark the harshest words Erdogan has unleashed on Biden since his January arrival in the White House. 

    After all this, Erdogan apparently offered his vision for peace in the region…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But Turkey’s leader also went after some European countries, especially Austria – over reports of the Austrians flying an Israeli flag from a government building. He said Austria is trying to make Muslims “pay the price of their own genocide against the Jews” – a reference to the large number of Austrian Nazis that during WWII helped facilitate the Holocaust there.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 01:15

  • US And Its Allies Try To Split The World In Two
    US And Its Allies Try To Split The World In Two

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    America is using its post-WWII position of being the world’s hegemon, so as to compel every other nation either to join them (as a banana republic or vassal nation) or else to become their enemy by destroying them.

    America’s response to the increasing economic success of China and other nations that until recent decades were impoverished former colonies is to organize its own allies – especially the English-speaking countries – to become a totally separate global economic trading and military alliance standing against that “third world” – and thereby force all non-aligned nations to have to either choose to be allied with the United States or else become conquered by the U.S. and its allies. It’s “Us,” or “Them,” all the way. The top “enemies” (the “Them”) are the same countries that America and its allies were against during the anti-communist Cold War, Russia and China, even though Russia is no longer communist, and China has become a mixture between communism and capitalism.

    America has on its side Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, UAE, and all four of the fascist nations during World War II: Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain — as well as many other nations.

    Russia and China were both allies of the United States during the war against Hitler and his allies, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to fight against considerable American support for the fascist powers (overwhelmingly coming from Republicans) during the years before Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941. (In fact, on 23 November 1937, Hitler’s agents Kurt von Tippleskirch and Manfred von Killinger, two Barons, were secretly negotiating with top Republicans — including the racist Irénée du Pont — what would have been the Duponts’ second coup-attempt against FDR, but neither attempt succeeded.) As soon as Harry S. Truman (whom the Democratic Party’s billionaires chose to be FDR’s VP in 1944) became President on FDR’s death on 12 April 1945, the alliance with the Soviet Union ended, and the Cold War gelled in Truman’s mind on 25 July 1945 because of advice from General Dwight Eisenhower, whom Truman practically worshipped. On 19 June 1945, Truman wrote to his wife, Bess, “He’s done a whale of a job. They are running him for President, which is O.K. with me. I’d turn it over to him now if I could.” And, on 25 July 1945, Ike told Truman that either the Soviet Union would conquer the world or else America would — and this apparently convinced Truman to go for global empire and to conquer the Soviet Union.

    America’s increasingly used method for conquest is the method that was first done against Iraq starting in 1991: international sanctions, followed by coup-attempts that, if unsuccessful, are then followed by an outright military invasion — with or without U.N. approval. More recently, this stepwise method (sanctions, failed coup, then invasion) is being used against Syria, but America no longer applies its own troops for its invasions, and instead uses hired proxy-forces (mercenaries), such as, in Syria, jihadists who are hired from around the world and paid for by the Sauds, and also uses separatist Kurds are hired who have long wanted to break away from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey in order to establish their own Kurdistan nation, and who are controlled more directly from Washington (since the Sauds don’t control Kurdish forces). America’s troops in Syria train and arm (usually with money being supplied by the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar) the jihadists (who are Al Qaeda-affiliated) and the Kurds.

    Right now, America is using its post-WWII position of being the world’s hegemon or globally dominant nation, so as to, basically, compel every other nation either to join them (as a banana republic or vassal nation) or else to become their enemy by destroying them, as Washington and its allies have done to Syrians, Yemenis, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Bolivians, Ecuadorans, and, before that, Hondurans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Argentinians, Chileans, Iranians, and many others in what Washington calls “The Free World.” Ideology is no longer the excuse. Now the excuses are “democracy,” “human rights,” “fighting against corruption,” and, of course “national defense” (which likewise was Hitler’s main excuse).

    In other words: America is trying to do everything it can to avoid becoming downgraded to become the world’s #2 nation, in terms of power. America’s billionaires are behind this; America’s Government is controlled by them.

    The best single statement of America’s position is the speech that Barack Obama gave to the graduating cadets at West Point Military Academy on 28 May 2014, saying:

    The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

    America “responds” to the rising power of nations that formerly had been colonies, by means of offering them this choice: Join with us, or else be destroyed.

    As the U.S. Establishment presents and promotes this, it is ‘justified’ because only America is “indispensable”: all other nations are “dispensable.” (Hitler, too, felt that way about all other nations — and most Germans endorsed that supremacism then, just like most Americans support it today.) FDR had planned a non-fascist future for the world, but then he died and (because of whom FDR’s successor was) we got a fascist future, instead, and that’s what we have. Mussolini called fascism “corporationism.” And America is more and more corporationist every decade that passes.

    Under the bigoted Hindu-nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is now clearly part of the U.S.-UK-led alliance. On 4 March 2021, Munira Lokhandwala headlined “Google Invests Billions in India as Modi and Allies Stage Corporate Takeover of Agriculture” and reported that

    In particular, Google’s multi-billion dollar investment in the telecommunications company owned by oil and gas billionaire Mukesh Ambani shows how US Big Tech will stop at nothing to make a bigger profit, even if this includes legitimizing a key supporter of the authoritarian-leaning government that is now a target of mass revolt. Ambani is India’s richest man and a strong corporate ally to BJP leadership, perceived by many as a major beneficiary of the hated agricultural reforms.

    In September 2020, the Indian Parliament approved the Indian Agriculture Acts of 2020, also known as the “Farm Bills.” In response, Indian farmers who opposed these bills launched one of the largest protests and series of cross-sectoral strikes that the world has ever seen.

    It’s estimated that over 250 million people have participated in protests against the passage of these bills that Indian farmers see as another phase in the continued attack on their livelihoods and an attempt to deregulate the farming industry to allow for greater private-sector control of food distribution. These changes would favor large corporations like Ambani’s Reliance Industries, who would thrive under the free market conditions that these Farm Bills would create.

    India, in the Rhodesist plan, would be a major counter-weight to China.

    Japan is another. On 23 April 2021, Craig Mark bannered “From Five Eyes To Six? Japan’s Push To Join The West’s Intelligence Alliance”, and he reported that

    As tensions with China continue to grow, Japan is making moves to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance. This week, Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, told The Sydney Morning Herald he was “optimistic” about his country coming on board. “[I] would like to see this idea become reality in the near future.”

    This comes as New Zealand voices its concerns over using the Five Eyes process to pressure China.

    What is this spy alliance? And what are the benefits and risks to bringing Japan on board?

    What is the Five Eyes?

    Beginning as an intelligence exchange agreement between the United States and United Kingdom in 1943, it formally became the UKUSA Agreement in 1946. The agreement then extended to Canada in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956.

    UK has gotten Japan’s Ambassador to Australia to assist Australia to pressure progressive New Zealand to remain in the Rhodesist alliance and thereby help to bring Japan into the Rhodesist core as being the first-ever non-English-speaking country to be admitted into the Rhodes-core (and thereby turn the “Five Eyes” into six). That would achieve what David Rockefeller and his sidekick Zbig Brzezinski (who was a member of Poland’s nobility) had been attempting to do by means of their Trilateral Commission, which was intended to expand beyond the Bilderberg group of NATO countries so as to include also Japan.

    On 30 April 2021, the geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris headlined a video “Blinken Goes To Ukraine With A Tough Message For Zelensky” and explained that because Putin recently established “red lines” that would provoke a direct military conflict between Russia and the United States if violated by the U.S., Biden has refocused America’s top target to be conquered as being no longer Russia but instead now China. Mercouris says that Ukraine’s U.S.-stooge President Volodmyr Zelensky will probably now be forced to stop threatening to invade the breakaway formerly Ukrainian Donbas region.

    However, whereas the U.S. aristocracy’s main medium-term objective is to retain control over Ukraine so as to become enabled to blitz-launch missiles from there to eliminate Moscow’s ability to retaliate against America’s first-strike hit (the U.S. alliance’s updated version of the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa), the UK’s main medium-term objective is for the U.S.-UK-Saud-Qatar alliance to arm and train jihadists and separatist Kurds to conquer Syria so that the Sauds will control that country. The long-term objective, both of America’s and UK’s aristocrats, is their shared dictatorship over all nations.

    On 30 April 2021, the international investigative journalist Finian Cunningham interviewed at Strategic Culture the former UK Ambassador to Syria, the astoundingly courageous Peter Ford, and headlined “Syria Regime Change Still on Western Agenda – Ex-Ambassador Peter Ford”. This whistleblowing former UK Ambassador opened his comments by saying:

    The Western powers are like dogs with an old bone on the subject of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. There is no meat on it but they continue to gnaw away. Why? Because the trope that “Assad gasses his own people” has become a cornerstone of the whole Western propaganda narrative on Syria. Without it, justifying the cruel economic war on Syria, largely through sanctions, would be harder to justify. And with military efforts at regime change having failed, economic warfare is now the last hope for the Western powers of destabilizing Syria enough to topple the government. For this strategy to work the Western powers are more than ready to undermine the credibility of the OPCW by abusing their ability to manipulate it in the Syrian context.

    The interview closed with:

    Question: Finally, Syria is holding presidential elections on May 26 in which incumbent Bashar al-Assad is running for re-election. The Western powers disparage Syria as an “undemocratic regime”. How do you view Syria’s polity? Is Assad likely to win re-election?

    Peter Ford: Of course Assad will win and of course the Western powers will try to disparage his victory. But I can state with certainty that if you could offer the Conservative party in Britain a guarantee of achieving in the next general election anything anywhere near Assad’s genuine level of support, albeit some of it reluctant from a war-weary people, the Tories would bite your hand off for such an electoral gain. Much of the current Western propaganda effort against Syria is geared at trying to spoil Assad’s victory and deny it legitimacy. But inside Syria itself, the people will see the election as setting the seal on 10 years of struggle, and Assad will emerge strengthened as he faces the next phase in the Western war on Syria.

    Furthermore, just the same as the U.S. and their allies were funding, training, and arming jihadists (technically called “Salafist Muslims”) in order to bring about regime-change in Syria, they’re doing the very same thing in order to bring about regime-change in China — in that instance by propagandizing ‘human rights’ for Uyghur Chinese who have been indoctrinated with the Sauds’ extremist-Sunni variant of the Islamic faith (Salafism). (Many of those Salafists, because of their Turkic culture, have recently become more favorable to Turkey than to Saudi Arabia, and therefore on 18 July 2019, Reuters headlined “Saudi Arabia defends letter backing China’s Xinjiang policy”, and reported that the Sauds “defended signing a letter along with 36 other countries in support of China’s policies in its western region of Xinjiang, where the United Nations says at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.” The U.S. and UK were now backing pro-Turkish jihadists, instead of pro-Saudi ones. Turkey is a NATO nation; and, so, the Rhodesists don’t care which brand of jihad they are backing in order to break up, or bring regime-change to, China.)

    So, even if the U.S. regime might be placing Ukraine onto the back burner, the UK regime, apparently, is unwilling to place the conquest of Syria onto its back burner. And, for both American billionaires and UK billionaires, China is unrelentingly in the gunsights of both aristocracies, to conquer. In fact, on 10 April 2021, Strategic Culture issued an editorial, “Ukraine, Taiwan… Two-Prong U.S. Aggression Toward Russia, China”, which noted:

    Biden is advancing the same policy under the previous Trump and Obama administrations of military buildup near China’s territory. This week saw the fourth U.S. guided-missile destroyer passing through the Taiwan Strait since Biden took office. That narrow sea separates the breakaway island from China’s mainland. Beijing has sovereign territorial claim to Taiwan which is recognized by the vast majority of nations, including up until recently the United States under its so-called “One China” policy. Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, is deliberately eroding the One China policy by sending delegates to the island on official visits, increasing weapons sales and most provocatively making public declarations that the U.S. will “defend” Taiwan in the event of “an invasion” by Chinese forces.

    Similar to the Ukraine, the Biden administration’s rhetoric and conduct is serving to fuel an ever-more provocative stance by the Taiwanese leaders. This week, a senior official warned that the island’s forces would shoot down Chinese aircraft that approach the territory. This is nothing but a flagrant challenge to China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. As in the case of the Ukraine and Russia, it is Washington’s words and actions that are inflaming the tensions between Taiwan and China. Yet the Americans accuse others of “aggression” and claim to be providing “defense”.

    The only entity that could possibly stop all this would be the U.S.-created European Union. Either they will turn against their creator, and join with Russia and China against U.S. and UK (which would put an end to the Rhodesist team’s insanity), or there will be World War III (though probably not in the near-term future), in which the U.S. regime will blitz-nuclear attack Russia, though that would destroy the planet.

    If the EU does break away from the U.S., then it will also be able to relocate the U.N. out of NYC to Europe and reform the U.N. in what had been its inventor’s, FDR’s, intention, that the U.N. become the democratic global federation of nations controlling all nuclear and other geostrategic weapons and forces, and that serves as the sole and authoritative executive, legislative, and judicial, authority for all international-relations issues throughout the world, the democratic federal world government. That’s what Truman and Churchill prevented, and what would produce a world that will have no future world wars, no future wars between empires, because there would no longer be any empires, nor any imperialism.

    Either there will be FDR’s intention, or there will be nuclear annihilation. The EU will decide. For the EU to impose FDR’s intention would be for the EU to turn against its creator, which was Truman and all subsequent U.S. Presidents (and their Congresses, which likewise have been controlled by America’s billionaires). However, a likelier alternative would be for some nations to do as UK did and break away from the EU, but for them to do it as UK did not, to realign themselves with Russia, China, and Iran, and away from the U.S. That, too, might prevent WWIII and enable the U.N. to be reformed as FDR had been intending it to be: as the global democratic federal republic and sole source and judge and enforcer of international laws — the post-imperialist world, which FDR had planned for. If FDR’s plan doesn’t happen, then WWIII will happen, and this was the reason why he had been planning the U.N. as he did. But as soon as he died, on 12 April 1945, the billionaires’ agents worked on Truman, who finally, on 25 July 1945 (based on General Eisenhower’s advice), decided to go for America’s global conquest; and, so, the ceaseless string of subversions, coups, and invasions, by the U.S. (the permanent-warfare state), started. The first coup was 1948 in Thailand, in order to install rulers who would let the OSS-CIA skim from the international narcotics traffic so as to supply the needed off-the-books funding for the CIA’s Special Operations.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 00:30

  • Visualizing The History Of Psychedelics, Part 1
    Visualizing The History Of Psychedelics, Part 1

    Due to their counterculture connotations and rigid legal status, psychedelics were once considered a highly stigmatized topic.

    Over the last decade however, a steady stream of groundbreaking research has proven that these powerful substances have the potential to safely treat a wide range of diseases.

    Today, attitudes toward the industry have changed, and capital is flowing- resulting in a market that analysts predict could eventually be worth $100 billion.

    The graphic above from Tryp Therapeutics is the first in a two-part series that explores how psychedelics have evolved over the last 6,000 years.

    From Ancient Antidote to Breakthrough Medicine

    Before we dive into the history of psychedelics, it’s important to understand what they are and how they work.

    Psychedelics are drugs that alter cognitive processes and produce hallucinogenic effects. Broadly speaking, there are two categories that psychedelic substances fall into: entheogens, and synthetic drugs. Entheogenic psychedelics are derived from plants, while synthetic psychedelics are created in a laboratory.

    Here are some of the most well known psychedelic substances explained:

    Certain psychedelics work by binding to serotonin receptors in the brain which produces psychoactive effects. Research suggests that when this happens, the structure of the brain changes—such as the number of connections between neutrons. This means that psychedelics could have the potential to rewire or repair circuits in the brain, hence their reputation for having healing powers.

    Ancient Times

    While the science behind these mind-altering plants is only now beginning to become clear, they have in fact been used in rituals and ceremonies for thousands of years.

    As a result, psychedelic substances have been hugely influential in shaping certain cultures and religions dating back to 4,000 BC. These cultures, particularly in the Americas, learned how to utilize psychoactive plants and mushrooms for medicinal purposes or to reach an altered state of consciousness.

    With that being said, evidence of how psychedelics were used in ancient times is often anecdotal, and therefore widely debated.

    The Prohibition Era

    In the 1800s, scientists and psychiatrists began discovering new kinds of drugs such as psilocybin and subsequently became advocates of psychedelic medicine. Unfortunately, uncontrolled drug use for recreational purposes led to governments across the world debating their legal status, and clamping down on restrictions.

    Within decades, the recreational use of psychedelics undermined promising medical discoveries, and put the future of the industry into question, eventually triggering the War on Drugs.

    An Industry, Reborn

    With these strict legal changes around the world, the psychedelics industry became largely inactive. But today, an explosion of unprecedented research findings surrounding the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has triggered many countries to reassess their decision to criminalize.

    Now, the industry is back, and bigger than ever before. In Part 2 of The History of Psychedelics, we’ll dive into The Psychedelics Renaissance the industry is currently experiencing and discuss the exciting future of this promising sector.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 00:10

  • Liz Cheney: Biden Military Budget 'Too Low' Despite Being Highest Of All Time
    Liz Cheney: Biden Military Budget ‘Too Low’ Despite Being Highest Of All Time

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    President Biden requested a $753 billion military budget for the 2022 fiscal year, which would be the highest of all time. But this number is not enough for Republican hawks in Congress. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WI) said not increasing the budget by three to five percent would be a “red line” for Republicans. Biden’s budget request would be about a 1.6 percent increase from 2021.

    “In my view, that is a red line, and if the administration is not going to be proposing a budget that meets that requirement, then I think they will need to explain to the American people why they’re unwilling to fund defense at the levels the nation needs,” Cheney said at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference, which was held virtually last week.

    Via AP

    “I would clearly oppose budgets that were below that number, and I think we’re going to have a very healthy debate and discussion about the administration’s proposal because it is coming in significantly below that number,” she said.

    While Cheney might have fallen out of favor with the GOP over her criticisms of Trump and has been removed from her position as party leadership, her opinion on the military budget is still the prevalent view of Republicans in Congress. Leading Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have been urging Biden to increase the budget by three to five percent.

    The Pentagon has recently identified China as the top “pacing threat” to the US military, and Beijing is serving as the hawks’ justification to spend more.

    After Biden requested his $753 billion budget, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Richard Shelby (R-AL) released a joint statement calling for more spending.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The statement reads: “President Biden recently said, ‘If we don’t get moving, [China] is going to eat our lunch.’ Today’s budget proposal signals to China that they should set the table.” The senators claimed China “aspires to overtake America as the world’s dominant superpower.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 23:50

  • Illinois Jeep Factory Set To Lay Off 1,600 Workers Amid Global Semiconductor Shortage
    Illinois Jeep Factory Set To Lay Off 1,600 Workers Amid Global Semiconductor Shortage

    A Jeep Cherokee factory is cutting 1,600 jobs in Northern Illinois as the auto industry continues to struggle with the global shortage of semiconductors.

    The U.S. arm of Stellantis announced this week is was going to cut one of its two work shifts at the Belvidere Assembly Plant as of July 26. 1,641 workers could be affected, a local NBC affiliate reported over the weekend. 

    Company spokeswoman Jodi Tinson claimed that the company was trying to “balance sales with production,” and that the factory’s situation “has been further exacerbated by the unprecedented global microchip shortage.”

    This stands at odds with comments made by the company’s CFO earlier this month, when we reported that Chief Financial Officer Richard Palmer said the semi shortage impact would be higher in Q2, but also said it “is still very controlled”.

    The plant has been idled since late March, the report notes. Its re-opening has been delayed and isn’t expected until “at least” later this month. 

    Recall, we last wrote about Stellantis at the beginning of May, after the auto maker said there was “no end in sight” to the ongoing semi chip shortage. 

    The company said in its report earlier this month that it lost production of 190,000 vehicles due to the shortage. The world’s fourth largest carmaker said that 8 of its 44 plants were affected by the shortage, ultimately resulting in reductions in shifts and slowing, or shuttering, of vehicle lines. 

    The company had been making changes to its lineup, including changing the dashboard of the Peugeot 308, to try and adapt to the crisis. 

    “We don’t have great visibility. As such it would be imprudent to assume the issue is going to go away,” Palmer continued, sounding less like the issue is “still very controlled”. 

    Recall, Intel’s CEO, speaking on 60 Minutes earlier this month, said: “We have a couple of years until we catch up to this surging demand across every aspect of the business.” Days prior, we wrote that Morgan Stanley had also suggested the shortage could continue “well into 2022”. 

    Stellantis was created out of the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Peugeot.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 23:30

  • Common Sense Wins As Supreme Court Backs Energy Companies Over Baltimore In Climate Case
    Common Sense Wins As Supreme Court Backs Energy Companies Over Baltimore In Climate Case

    Via The Federalist Papers,

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of BP PLC, Chevron Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and other energy companies contesting a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore seeking monetary damages from them due to costs caused by global climate change.

    The 7-1 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, came on a technical legal issue that could help the companies in their effort to have the case heard in federal court, as they would prefer, instead of state court, which the city favors as it is seen as a more amenable venue.

    The high court decided that the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not correctly analyze whether the case could be heard in federal court.

    The Democratic-governed Maryland city’s lawsuit targeted 21 U.S. and foreign energy companies that extract, produce, distribute or sell fossil fuels, arguing that their activities contribute to emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases linked to climate change. An important port city, Baltimore noted that it is vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding driven by climate change.

    The Supreme Court’s ruling could affect around a dozen similar lawsuits brought by various U.S. states, cities and counties.

    Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in the ruling. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, did not participate in the case, likely because he owns stocks in two oil companies involved in the litigation.

    The legal question concerned a provision of U.S. law that puts limits on appeals courts reviewing decisions by federal district court judges to remand a case to state court. The companies have said that in this instance the 4th Circuit had broad scope to review a district court’s decision because of a provision that permits appeals of such rulings when a case directly concerns federal officials or government entities.

    The energy companies have argued that energy production is an inherently federal issue, meaning the case should be heard in federal court. Greenhouse gas emissions that cross state and international lines are likewise an issue that cannot be addressed under state laws, the companies added.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 23:10

  • India Sees Cases Slow As Outbreak Spills Into Nepal; Regional Mutant Arrives In US
    India Sees Cases Slow As Outbreak Spills Into Nepal; Regional Mutant Arrives In US

    It finally looks like India’s brutal second wave of COVID-19 is easing, as cases again slowed on Monday, while daily deaths remained near record highs. New cases dropped below 300K on Monday, to 281,386, while deaths remained stubbornly above 4K at 4,106. In total, India has counted 24,965,463 cases (with many more likely uncounted) and 274, 390 deaths.

    Vaccinations, meanwhile, have lagged with just 182M doses administered across the country of 1.4 billion.

    Source: Johns Hopkins

    However, there’s a new threat on the horizon that could cripple India’s health-care system at what is probably its most vulnerable moment: a cyclone called Cyclone Tauktae, which is hammering the western part of the country, including drenching the financial capital of Mumbai.

    In Gujarat, where on Sunday and overnight nearly 150,000 people from 17 districts were evacuated, all Covid-19 patients in hospitals with five kilometres of the coast were also moved. In some places, to ensure that hospitals are not faced with power outages, 1,383 back-up generators have been installed, according to local officials.

    Virus safety protocols such as wearing masks, social distancing and the use of sanitisers would be observed in the shelters for evacuees, officials added.

    Data released Monday showed new cases in Mumbai have declined 70% in the past week, from 11,000 daily cases to fewer than 2,000 in Mumbai.

    Across India, active cases number more than 3.6 million, meaning hospitals are still swamped by patients.

    Izhaar Hussain Shaikh, an ambulance driver in Mumbai, drove about 70 patients to the hospital last month. Two weeks into May, he’d carried only 10 patients, according to Newsweek. “We used to be so busy before, we didn’t even have time to eat.”

    Meanwhile, more signs that India’s outbreak is spreading beyond its borders emerged as the worsening outbreak in neighboring Nepal made headlines in the West. NBC News reported that cases have exploded in Nepal in recent weeks, which is one reason why China installed a border “line” at the summit of Mt Everest to warn mountaineers to stay out of China.

    Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed worry about the unfolding crisis.

    “India remains hugely concerning,” he said at a news briefing. “But it’s not only India that has emergency needs. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Egypt are just some of the countries that are dealing with spikes in cases and hospitalizations.”

    Others warned that the situation in Nepal might worsen in the coming days as some 9K cases are reported daily, while many more likely go undiagnosed.

    “We are in the initial phase,” said Sushila Pandit, a Nepalese aid worker with Mercy Corps, an international nongovernmental aid group. “I think the condition will be more critical in the the coming days.”

    Experts in Europe warned last week that mutant strain known as B.1.617 and some of its variants had been traced to parts of Europe and the UK. Well on Monday, scientists warned that B.1.617 had officially been tracked to the US, according to USA Today.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 22:50

  • The Corrupted January 6 Commission
    The Corrupted January 6 Commission

    Authored by Technofog via The Reactionary,

    Late last week, House Democrats unveiled their Bill to “establish the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex.”

    We previously warned about the Democrats’ roadmap to use their investigative authority to further their political goals. We advised that Democrats make the investigation broad enough to subpoena records from conservative groups and websites – and their investors. We warned that they would seek donor lists and personal communications from those having little to do with the events on January 6.

    The Democrats’ Bill – which elevates the January 6 “riot” to a “domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol” – proves us right.

    The Bill establishes a Commission of 10 members, five appointed by Democrats and five appointed by Republicans. It will be chaired by a Democrat nominee.

    The Commission will have powers to:

    “Issue subpoenas requiring the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence relating to any matter which the Commission is empowered to investigate.”

    From that language we look to what the Commission is “empowered to investigate.” This power is extremely broad. And this is where the trouble lies. It includes:

    “The facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex.”

    “The influencing factors that fomented such attack on American representative democracy while engaging in a constitutional process.”

    The Danger

    The dangerous part about all this is that the subpoena power is limited to the imagination of the Democrat appointees. (We assume the likelihood that at least one Republican member of the Committee will go along with anything the Democrats want, thus giving them majority vote for a subpoena.)

    We also note that the Commission is given the power to obtain information from “the intelligence community” to further its investigation.

    We cannot stress strongly enough the danger of such powers. The House Democrats – those who have leaked false intelligence to the press and lied to the public about the Carter Page FISA applications – will have access, via their appointees, to raw intelligence data. Their history shows they will not use this information responsibly.

    All this just proves that the Commission will be their instrument to inflict massive political harm on the Right. Remember Pelosi’s occupation of the Capitol?

    As I said on March 5, 2021:

    “If you question the seriousness of the game they’re playing, just look at the security around the Capitol. Currently, over 5,000 National Guard troops, along with fencing and razor wire, protect against a non-existent threat. The occupation is theater to make January 6 more than what it was to justify what is to come.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 22:30

  • World Economic Forum Cancels Annual Meeting After Moving It To Singapore
    World Economic Forum Cancels Annual Meeting After Moving It To Singapore

    After initially rescheduling the forum from May to the late-summer months, the World Economic Forum has decided to cancel its annual gathering of powerhouses in the worlds of markets, business and politics, which is usually held in Davos, Switzerland, but had been moved to Singapore in the face of the coronavirus, according to Bloomberg. 

    Back in February, the WEF announced that it would delay the week-long event until August, hoping that would give it enough time. But as India’s COVID-19 outbreak continues to spill across Asia, while a mutant strain first identified in India has finally been traced to the US.

    As Brits travel on their first international flights in more than a year, the WEF announced Monday that it would cancel its annual meeting in Singapore as the city-state sees a jump in COVID-19 cases.

    Singapore’s new restrictions announced over the weekend include requiring all primary, secondary and junior colleges to shift to full home-based learning from Wednesday until the end of the school year later this month.

    This comes after health authorities in the city-state confirmed 38 locally transmitted cases, the highest daily number since mid-September, with 17 currently unlinked. The cases included four children linked to a cluster at a tuition center.

    In recent years, the WEF and its attendees have taken up the twin causes of climate change and economic inequality (which are linked, scholars say, because the ‘global south’ will bear the brunt of the negative impact of climate, or at least that’s what they say). Which is ironic, since the best thing the WEF could possibly do to lower carbon emissions would be to cancel the annual event, which draws legions of private jets ferrying the global elite.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In other bad news for Singapore, a travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore that was due to start on May 26 has been postponed for a second time, according to officials on Monday, as new COVID cases spiked, derailing hopes for quarantine-free travel.

    Singapore, one of Asia’s trade and financial hubs with a tiny population of 5.7 million people, had until recently been reporting almost zero or single-digit new COVID cases until just last week.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 22:10

  • Newsom Turns To Bribery, Opens Up Big Bag Of Goodies To Californians In Bid To Head-Off Recall
    Newsom Turns To Bribery, Opens Up Big Bag Of Goodies To Californians In Bid To Head-Off Recall

    Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

    Politicians in trouble frequently wheel out the freebies ahead of a tough election.

    California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, is taking it to 11.

    Seems, he’s not all that confident that Democrats will be able to rig him into victory to keep him in office in this year’s coming recall referendum on him. Internals must be horrible.

    Which is why he’s now holding out monster goodie bag to angry voters as a last-ditch bribe to secure their votes.

    According to National Review:

    This week, Newsom began a statewide tour to brag about a $75.7 billion state “surplus” that is burning a hole in his recall jeans. That “surplus” alone is larger than the total expenditures of 44 other states in 2020. Combining substantial capital-gains revenues from the bank accounts of Big Tech billionaires and an embarrassing amount of federal stimulus funds, to the tune of $371 billion in total payments, the governor is taking credit for the windfall. Promising to hand out wads of cash and pay off overdue rent and utility bills while hoping middle-class voters will forget Newsom’s cavalier statewide lockdowns over the past year reeks of bribery.

    It comes from a one-time slush fund surplus coming from the federal government, courtesy of Joe Biden and his congressional Democrats, and ironically, as Sacramento legislators are proposing tax hikes on normal taxpayers. Nice.

    But he’s got a recall referendum coming in November, so like Hugo Chavez, he’s wheeling out the free washing machines and bags of beans, as Hugo and other corrupt Latin autocrats used to do to “win” elections.

    Here’s Newsom’s own tweet advertising the crowd-pleasers he’s holding out to voters; the electoral junk food:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    High as this spending is, and universal as these solutions are, they are nothing but Band-Aids onto the festering economic wounds he’s inflicted on the state last year, through high taxes, lockdowns, and police defundings, all problems which now require tourniquets.

    Anybody think the billions for the homeless he’s proposing are actually going to fix homelessness in this state? It should employ a lot of bureaucrats and probably backfill some bloated public pensions, as has been the story in the past.

    And where the heck is he going to get the permits to build all these free houses for the homeless in any case, given the state’s other NIMBY-inspired laws. Malibu?

    That’s just one problem, and there are a ton of others:

    Number one, it’s unsustainable. According to the Associated Press:

    But it is a budget on the edge. Nearly all of the $100 billion in extra money is a one-time surplus, meaning it won’t be available next year. Newsom and the Legislature have already approved a massive tax cut for small businesses that will reduce revenues by more than $6 billion over the next five years.

    In the years to come, budget officials predict the state’s revenue will grow slightly while its expenses keep increasing. For now, they say the two sides of the budget will balance and not cause a deficit. But that leaves no room for error in a time when the pandemic has made it impossible to predict the future.

    It’s enough for Keely Martin Bosler, Newsom’s budget director, to remark on “how incredibly uncertain things continue to be.”

    He’s basically proposing to spend now, get people addicted to freebie programs, and then either cut them off cold when the cash runs out, or drive the state into bankruptcy. Taxes, of course, already the nation’s highest, will go into the stratosphere.

    Number two, it sends terrible messages. The guy who practically killed himself in the pandemic to pay his rent after losing his job, maybe defaulting on his other bills in the process and paying that price through his credit rating, gets nothing. The deadbeat who didn’t pay even though he could pay, or who didn’t apply for otherwise free federal aid, taking advantage of the eviction moratorium instead, gets his back rent paid. And who knows if the landlords get paid. Based on Newsom’s tweet, he might just pass a law or issue an executive action declaring that nobody needs to pay and let the landlords eat the losses. The unpaid traffic fines, meanwhile, giving the nominally poor a pass for speeding, bad driving, endangering others, expired registrations, parking in the middle of the road, taking up handicapped spaces, parking in red fire zones, any number of nightmare violations, get wiped out, while once again, the guy who moved heaven and earth to pay his parking fines at the expense of food or something, gets the news from Newsom that he’s a sucker. The whole thing smacks of a program to increase contempt for rule of law. After all, if all you have to do is wait for relief from Newsom, same as if you’re waiting for the next subway to stop, why pay anything at all?

    Number three, there’s a heckuva lot that he didn’t mention. California is flooded with drug-addicted homeless, now seeping into ordinarily placid middle-class areas now. Yesterday I tried to cross a highway pedestrian bridge in San Diego into a poorer neighborhood to buy some fresh vegetables and was blocked at the entrance by three homeless people doing drugs together right in that pedestrian walkway, blocking it. Passing them by was so close that any of them could have pulled a knife on me and I went home by a longer way that involved a chancy highway underpass, which also could have been a home to bums, given that it was trash-strewn, meaning, it probably was at some point. I didn’t even call the cops, given the knowledge that they aren’t enforcing anything anymore. My conclusion from that is that it’s going to get worse, way worse, spilling into the placid, previously crime-free areas and Newsom has no intention of backing up the police to enforce this very necessary quality of life measure for the law-abiding taxpayers who pay his big-budget bills.

    Newsom also didn’t mention his big plan for free health care for elderly illegal aliens over the age of 60. Elderly people have the biggest of all medical bills, and rest assured, now with Joe Biden’s border surge on, the dinner triangle has just been rung for the nation’s illegals to bring in their ailing elderly relatives because the ride is now free. If you were a citizen of someplace like Honduras and heard this, and you will, you’d be a fool not to. California’s Gov. Gray Davis was fired by voters in a recall referendum back in 2003 over the issuing of drivers’ licenses to illegals. You can see why Newsom didn’t quite put that as a selling point to voters in his tweet. But rest assured, he’s got special interests who harvest ballots who are very, very happy with him.

    Number four, there’s a heckuva lot that he ought to be spending money on, yet he refuses to do. Where is the cash for more police to remove the riff-raff and criminal element that is plaguing both rich and poor areas now throughout California’s cities and making life unlivable? Where are the tax cuts in this highest-of-all high tax states? He considers that “his” money, so no tax cuts of any significance for the tax-battered. What’s he doing about monster health care costs for those who actually pay? Nothing, of course. Where is the housing and land-policy reform, which is keeping new housing from being built, and contributing to this state’s monster real estate bubble, which is pricing ordinary families out of homes? Price controls create shortages, Gav. And of course, this fool is clueless.

    It’s such a bad picture, so cynical, so Peronist, (or just see that 1999 Mexican masterpiece movie “Herod’s Law” about the “crumbling, rotting, 70-year old regime of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)” as one reviewer put it, to get a whiff) that one hopes that California’s voters might just see through it. The fact that Newsom’s doing this is proof, all by itself, that he’s unfit to be governor.

    Governors in this state, as National Review notes, are historically balancing elements who can say ‘no’ to spendthrift legislators, Jerry Brown before him being one example. The fact that Newsom also wrecked the state’s economy through his fanatic lockdowns while red-state governors showed real judgment and leadership in doing all they could to keep their state’s economies open is another strike against this clown. Now we have this budget-bankrupting spendfest to put the cherry on top of his rotten cake. He’s so bad even Caitlyn Jenner looks like a better potential governor than Newsom is.

    Throw him out.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 21:50

  • One Bank Spots "A Huge Worry On The Horizon"
    One Bank Spots “A Huge Worry On The Horizon”

    The big banks may be dismissing the current wave of soaring prices, which as we noted previously has been driven mostly economic reopening categories such as soaring used car prices where a pandemic-induced demand surge has run headfirst into temporary shortages, production bottlenecks, and supply chain disruptions…

    … but they are increasingly zeroing in on what may well be the source of non-transitory inflation over the coming years. Just last night, Goldman highlighted three such risks for longer-term inflation pressures including:

    • A sharper rise in wage growth: The first risk is that wage growth could rise to a much faster pace than reached last cycle if current signs of worker shortages and labor market tightness prove more persistent than many expect. The starting point for wage growth is unusually high for an economy emerging from a recession.
    • A multi-year boom in home prices boosts rent inflation: The second risk is that a multiyear boom in US home prices could drive shelter inflation much higher.
    • Temporary price spikes raise inflation expectations substantially: The third risk is that the current price spikes caused by temporary pandemic effects could have a more lasting impact if they raise long-term inflation expectations substantially (i.e. transitory proves to be non-transitory). Last week brought hints in this direction, including a 0.4% jump in the University of Michigan’s measure of long-term household inflation expectations, a modest increase in long-term inflation expectations in the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and further increases in market-implied inflation compensation.

    Of these three, Goldman is most concerned about the second one, and dedicated a separate research report (discussed here) precisely about the risk of sharply higher home prices.

    In a report from Goldman’s economists, the bank warned that “a national housing shortage will fuel substantial home price appreciation for at least a couple more years.” Goldman now expects that shelter inflation is likely to surge to 3.8% YoY by end-2022 — boosting core PCE by about 0.3% relative to today — and to exceed 4% in 2023 (!), a higher rate than at any point in the prior economic cycle. At that point anyone countering that (hyper)inflation is transitory will be laughed right out of the room.

    In other words, Goldman just predicted that by 2024 home prices will be rising at a pace far faster than the widely recognized 2006-2007 housing bubble, and that the spillover from this surge in prices will make the coming hyperinflation anything but transitory.

    We bring this up again because this morning another prominent bank analyst – Deutsche Bank’s chief credit strategist Jim Reid – published a similar note of caution regarding soaring home prices.

    Reid begins with the familiar background: “around many parts of the world housing markets have surged during the pandemic. Huge stimulus, low and suppressed interest rates, government tax incentives, demand for more space in the new world, and limited supply have created a boom that surely few could have predicted when the pandemic started.“

    Next, the credit strategist shows the US housing boom in perspective with his Monday Chart of the Day…

    … and writes that real home prices were the same in 1999 as they were in 1894. So, remarkably, besides being a good inflation hedge, home prices are little besides having been range bound around inflation for over 100 years. However, over the next 7 years they rose over 60% inflation adjusted before slumping 35% in the next 6 years when the housing bubble burst.

    Well, second time may be the charm because from these lows, they are now back up nearly 55% and less than 1% off their all-time real adjusted highs and over 10% above pre-pandemic levels. Indeed, as Reid predicts, they will probably hit record real adjusted highs when the latest data is released next week (they already have according to Black Knight and other pricing services).

    Reid’s ominous conclusion is that the recent surge in home prices “is nearly on the same national scale as it was in the lead-up to the US housing bust that precipitated the GFC”, and he concludes rhetorically: “a new paradigm or a huge worry on the horizon?”

    Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 21:30

  • Iran Preps Return To Oil Market As Vienna Talks "Within Reach" Of Agreement
    Iran Preps Return To Oil Market As Vienna Talks “Within Reach” Of Agreement

    US and Iranian diplomats which are still engaged in ongoing ‘indirect’ negotiations via intermediaries in Vienna (now over a month in) have signaled that a major nuclear agreement is now “within reach” – and now as Bloomberg reports, “Iran is preparing to ramp up global oil sales as talks to lift U.S. sanctions show signs of progress.”

    Following years of Trump-imposed biting sanctions which particularly targeted Iran’s oil exports, and with in some cases Iranian tankers even being seized, the Islamic Republic is actively prepping to get its global exports flowing once again. “State-controlled National Iranian Oil Co. has been priming oil fields — and customer relationships — so it can increase exports if an accord is clinched, officials said,” Bloomberg continues. “Under the most optimistic estimates, the country could return to pre-sanctions production of almost 4 million barrels a day in as little as three months. It could also tap a flotilla’s worth of oil that’s hoarded away in storage.”

    However, even with such positive momentum and optimism on both sides, it remains that the Trump administration “boxed-in” Biden in terms of what can and can’t be done rapidly. At issue is the “mine field” of sanctions and punitive actions slapped on over 700 entities and officials. Most notably this includes two dozen financial institutions at the heart of which is Iran’s central bank.

    This had also been designed to scare off even willing buyers, given the complex labyrinth of legal hurdles related to shipping insurance and other red tape. The Iranians are said to be expectant of an extended gradual process of undoing sanctions, yet hardliners and the Ayatollah himself have warned their patience will soon run out, and that talks cannot “drag on”. 

    Over the weekend Vienna talks continued without pause despite a fierce bombing campaign by Israel on Gaza reaching the end of a week, leaving about 200 Palestinians in the strip dead, and thousands wounded.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    There have been growing fears that the outbreak of fighting in Gaza, which saw Hamas and Islamic Jihad launch some 2,000 total rockets into Israel, killing ten Israel civilians, could derail the attempts to restore the JCPOA nuclear deal. Tel Aviv has consistently blamed Iran for supporting and supplying Hamas with its sizable missile stockpile. 

    Netanyahu as well as Mossad chief Yossi Cohen have lately personally attempted to intervene with the Biden White House, arguing that restoration of a “bad deal” will all but assure that Iran acquires nukes. Israel has also gone so far as to allegedly bomb and sabotage Iranian tankers delivering oil and fuel to its ally Syria. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 21:10

  • Welcome To The DarkSide: Why The Biden Administration Will Not Define The Pipeline Attack As Terrorism
    Welcome To The DarkSide: Why The Biden Administration Will Not Define The Pipeline Attack As Terrorism

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column on the recent Colonial Pipeline attack. President Joe Biden and his Administration (as well as the media) has referred to the actors as “criminals” and “hacker” but notably not “terrorists.” Many cyberattacks are forms of extortion. They seek money from businesses to release data.  This is different. This was an effort to coerce a population; to cause economic chaos.

    Notably, DarkSide announced that it would shutdown its operations after receiving the ransom, an announcement heralded by many. It is a dubious claim. First, the declaration serves assure the public and to tamp down calls for a global hunt for the culprits. Second, it is meaningless. Whether DarkSide continues as a moniker or as a functioning organization, we just paid off terrorists. We long maintained a policy not to yield to terrorism because it fuels more attacks. DarkSide and other such attacks have proven how ineffective we are in preventing such attacks or defying such demands. These are despicable people willing to cause deaths and social disarray, but they are also rationale actors. 

    For the moment, cyber terrorism works and the success of this attack is not going to lead to a unilateral ceasefire from cyber gangs.

    Here is the column:

    We’ve heard calls in recent years for an ever-widening category of “terrorists” to encompass groups from the Jan. 6 rioters to antifa to the the Ku Klux Klan. So it is surprising that the White House and the media have referred to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attackers simply as “hackers.” “DarkSide” is not just a collection of hackers — it’s a group of terrorists. And the only thing more concerning than the failure to label them correctly is the possible reason for not doing so.

    From the White House to The Washington Post, the mantra has been uniform: Gas to the East Coast was cut off by hackers who demanded — and reportedly received — $5 million in ransom to give us back control of a critical pipeline. The White House not only called these individuals hackers but — when pressed about its position on paying the ransom — insisted it was just a decision for a private company. Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger said, “Colonial is a private company, and we’ll defer information regarding their decision on paying a ransom to them.” She and others in the Biden administration insisted the ransom payment was a “private sector decision” and said that “the administration has not offered further advice at this time.”

    After the ransom was widely reported as having been paid and gas began to flow again, President Biden gave a “no comment” when asked if he was aware of the payment. It was a curious response since the media apparently knew. The company certainly knew, and, most importantly, DarkSide knew. Yet, the White House wanted to portray itself as a pure observer to a private decision on how to handle “hackers.”

    The reason is obvious: Colonial just paid a ransom to terrorists. Moreover, gas pipelines are not just “a private company” but a highly regulated industry that closely follows the government’s directions.

    The fact is that most of Washington wanted the company to pay off the terrorists because our East Coast was rapidly melting down over shortages. While The New York Times bizarrely issued (and later quietly deleted) a statement that the attack had not led to any gas station lines or higher prices, other news stories were filled with images of long lines, fights at pumps and cascading shortages.

    The White House narrative has been to treat this as a type of cost of doing business for Colonial. The problem is that this is not some nuisance cost but a terrorist demand for payment.

    While definitions vary, DarkSide meets key elements of terrorism crimes. Key provisions such as 18 U.S.C. 2331 focus less on the motivation of terroristic acts as opposed to the intent: “(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” Congress has extended domestic terrorism classifications to include drug gangs, but laws such as the Controlled Substances Act still refer to “premeditated, politically motivated violence.” The State Department uses the same definition to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Those definitions may have to be changed as groups seek to terrorize populations in economically motivated attacks. Cyber terrorism can have either economic or political motivations or both. Indeed, DarkSide has claimed to use the money for charity and suggested it has policy goals. Moreover, such gangs can be enlisted or enabled by foreign powers such as Russia or Iran to carry out such attacks.

    For those of us who have long opposed expansive definitions of terrorism, there remains a danger of converting everything from extortion to identity theft into terrorism. However, DarkSide clearly attempted to “intimidate or coerce” the entire population of the United States, and it succeeded. It used hacking as its means, but that does not change its status as a terrorist group — any more than the use of food poison would make al Qaeda a “food tamperer” rather than a terrorist organization. When you threaten an individual if they don’t pay you, you are an extortionist. When you seek to coerce an entire population, you are a terrorist — whether you claim to do so for Allah or for moolah.

    Once you acknowledge that DarkSide is a terrorist organization, however, it is harder for the White House to shrug and dismiss this as merely a “private sector decision.”

    We have long maintained a policy of not yielding to terrorists, and outsourcing ransom payments does not change the implications of this decision. DarkSide and other cyber terrorists now know they not only can succeed but can do so surprisingly quickly. Indeed, ransomware has been profitably used around the world for years with businesses. Indeed, my suspicion is that the vast majority of ransoms paid have not been made public by businesses but are known to the FBI. This incident, though, was different. It was designed to cause widespread social and political havoc among our population.

    If the Biden administration did not want to pay terrorists, it could have used a wide array of powers to pressure Colonial not to pay. Colonial is tied into our infrastructure and largely exists by the grace of federal and state agencies. If Biden declared publicly that the company should not yield to terrorists, he would have presented no less of an existential threat to the company than DarkSide did.

    It may be true that the Biden administration concluded we are defenseless to cyber terrorism despite years of ransomware attacks and hundreds of billions of dollars in cybersecurity programs. If that is the case, the public should be informed. The failure of Congress and our government to defend against such terror attacks is a national security failure of breathtaking proportions. The Colonial Pipeline attack was the cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. In both cases, we were caught unprepared and unable to deal with a threat we knew was coming. Yet President Roosevelt did not issue a “no comment” on the critical facts after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

    Back then, we believed FDR when he stated in his first inauguration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  If we are going to defeat this new form of terrorism, we must first call it for what it is. Not fear it, face it.

    What the Biden administration seems to fear most is public recognition that it is afraid — afraid of the vulnerability of our infrastructure, afraid that the public will learn what cyber terrorists already know.

    This should not be treated as just another political dodge, however. During the 2020 election, Biden simply refused to share his views on key issues such as packing the Supreme Court. Yet this is a far more serious matter, and we do not have time for another study commission to give the president cover. We need to call DarkSide what it is — a terrorist organization — and to acknowledge what we did: We paid off terrorists. Then, perhaps, we can get some answers as to whether our country remains only days away from another meltdown due to a failure to defend against ransomware.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 20:50

  • EV Anxiety? World's Largest Lithium Producer Crashes On Chilean Political Storm
    EV Anxiety? World’s Largest Lithium Producer Crashes On Chilean Political Storm

    As we detailed earlier, as Chileans overwhelmingly chose leftist and independent candidates for the country’s constitutional convention, the new non-free-market-friendly political regime is generating a lot of uncertainly in Chilean markets.

    One of the biggest equity losers on the session is Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile SA (SQM), the world’s largest producer of lithium, down more than 10% in the US cash session. 

    A new left-leaning constitution could include even tighter lithium mining operations in the country. 

    “Even, possibly, to the point that those old, grandfathered, licenses are revoked. Or the lithium operations (intimately tied in with the potassium and iodine ones, they’re not separable) might be taken back under direct state control. There are those, as above, who still would relitigate that initial privatization,” former Forbes writer Tim Worstall wrote in a Seeking Alpha piece in late 2020. Back then, he was writing about SQM’s path in light of a new constitution in 2021. 

    Worstall added:

    “The process here is a constitutional convention and it’s really difficult to predict what the end result of one of those is going to be. After all, they are, by there mere declaration of what they’re doing, insisting that they’re going to change the basic rules of the country. And SQM does have that slightly anomalous position – as does more strongly lithium mining in Chile – which means we might want to worry here.”

    A new constitution could change SQM’s position in the country and even affect their legal right to mine. No wonder the stock crashed. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 20:30

  • Taibbi: Is Slack Destroying American Companies? Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez
    Taibbi: Is Slack Destroying American Companies? Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

    ​

     

    Late last week, amid a Slack-driven furor over his confessional memoir Chaos Monkeys, Apple fired ads engineer Antonio Garcia-Martinez. I wrote Friday about the specific hypocrisy of Apple’s move — the company has the author of Bitches Ain’t Shit on its board but claimed it fired Garcia-Martinez as a statement of its devotion to “inclusivity” — but over the weekend spoke to Antonio about the larger issue of his case, which extends past his own predicament.

    “This business of Slack at work,” he said.

    After George Floyd’s death last summer, corporate leaders found themselves in an unusual position. With water-cooler conversations turbo-charged by chat programs like Slack, many firms saw outpourings of anger. Employees demanded their employers do something, or at least be seen doing something, to “confront racism.”

    In some shops, employers were asked to recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday. In others, there was a demand for more diverse hiring procedures. Significant donations to political organizations, scholarship funds, or product lines targeted to African-Americans were expected.

    Responses became more idiosyncratic. Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens pledged to stop putting “multicultural cosmetic products” behind locked cases in retail outlets. YouTube deleted 100,000 videos and 100 million comments as part of an expanded hate speech policy. HBO Max took down Gone With the Wind, then restored it with a disclaimer that it showed “ethnic and racial prejudices” that “were wrong then and are wrong today.” Disney later did something similar with The Muppet Show, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Swiss Family Robinson.

    In some places, the connections between the companies’ core businesses and structural racism were apparent. For instance, many of the banks that made the most ostentatious pledges of support for Black Lives Matter were the same firms that targeted black communities with exotic subprime mortgage products, Wells Fargo’s “ghetto loans” episode being among the more infamous.

    In other places, the connection was less clear. What should FitBit be doing to fix police brutality? How could Pinterest contribute? (They ended up removing ads on Black Lives Matter search results, so readers could “focus on learning about the movement”). Was it axiomatic that every company had a political role to play?

    Soon, a new type of controversy arose, ironically at some of the companies with the reputations for most progressive management. The questions were less about race than workflow. At cryptocurrency firm Coinbase, employees demanded that CEO Brian Armstrong make a statement in support of Black Lives Matter. Armstrong, for a while, demurred. Then some employees and executives began what Wired called a “virtual walkout,” in which “senior engineers encouraged junior staff to close their laptops in solidarity.”

    Armstrong quickly got religion, or so it seemed. He went on Twitter to announce, “I want to unequivocally say that Black Lives Matter.” Then, within weeks, Armstrong and Coinbase leadership flipped completely, announcing that the firm would no longer engage in “social activism,” and any employee who didn’t like the new policy could get the fuck out.

    Coinbase offered 4-6 months of severance (depending on service time) and six months of COBRA, in a statement saying — in the thickest corporate sarcasm — that the arrangement could be a “win-win” for the politically minded, as “life is too short to work at a company you’re not excited about.” Only about 60 of the company’s 1,200 employees took the buyout.

    At another tech firm, Basecamp, CEO Jason Fried — long the owner of a rep as a progressive corporate leader, as his company has published five books on workplace culture — put the kibosh on controversial talk at work, banning “societal and political discussions.” Shopify, an e-commerce firm that broke ground after the January 6th riots by closing online stores tied to Trump or MAGA merchandise, has now become a symbol of corporate pushback. CEO Tobi Lütke just sent an email to employees explaining that work is not life and life is not work, and employee demands should be adjusted accordingly:

    Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family. The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can’t un-family you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family but I see people, even leaders, casually use terms like “Shopifam” which will cause the members of our teams (especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else) to get the wrong impression. The dangers of “family thinking” are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family…

    Shopify is also not the government. We cannot solve every societal problem here.

    There’s a Frankensteinian irony to all this. Our biggest corporations spent decades steeping the public in weird Me Generation propaganda stressing the primacy of personal fulfillment, which fast became our real national faith as traditional religion lost influence. The result was a work-centric culture most of the rest of the world looked on as a kind of insanity. Alone among peoples who have a choice in such matters, Americans have long bragged about working themselves to death, feeling real pride in putting off distractions like marriage, kids, or “meaning” as they ran hamster wheels in pursuit of status and rock-hard abs, alone and at full speed toward the great beyond.

    Americans in my age group, Gen-Xers, were poorly prepared for corporate jobs in that a lot of us were somehow surprised to learn our ethnomusicology or (in my case) creative writing degrees were fairly useless for finding paying work. In conjunction with the huge sums many people borrowed to get those educations, the whole thing was a bit of a scam, though of course we should have known better.

    Millennials had it worse. They attended the same academic resort spas, and were handed the same oft-preposterous degrees, but were additionally indoctrinated in affirming ideological oat-baths stressing the righteousness of their lived experiences. If the big surprise my generation faced was that our educations were worth bupkes to employers, the next generation had to deal with the shock of corporate bosses being indifferent to their emotional needs.

    Meaning, we’ve come full circle. After training generations of Americans to forego personal lives and work their brains to mush in service of bigger profits, corporate leaders are waking up to find their companies staffed by people so psychologically dependent upon validation from work that they’re a net minus from a production standpoint, forcing bosses to beg them to shut up, go home, and get lives. Not many modern Americans know how to do any of those things, however, as can be seen in cases like that of Garcia-Martinez, where 2,000 employees claimed to be literally incapable of sharing a vast corporate structure with someone who once wrote a book containing passages they might have disagreed with, if they’d actually read it.

    “The thought of conflating your entire political, moral, social, family, and religious being with your professional persona,” Garcia-Martinez says, “I think is extraordinarily fraught and difficult.”

    Another irony: despite the progressive sheen of these campaigns, Slack agitation doesn’t represent a resurgence of labor. Unions used the strength of the whole workforce to protect the rights of the individual employee, among other things insisting that management not act without due process, evidence, etc. Slack, as has been seen in cases like Antonio’s, or the oustings at the New York Times of editor James Bennet and reporter Donald McNeil, often urges companies to bypass process and act in the heat of the moment. In any case, it’s a weird kind of liberalism that tries to override management to get employees fired, but that’s where we are in the modern American workplace.

    I asked Antonio about these and other issues, from his perspective:

    TK: You’ve had multiple careers, and clearly took writing seriously. How will episodes like this affect people who might try to write or take creative detours in their careers?

    Antonio Garcia-Martinez: Kat Rosenfield was tweeting about this and I love her and it’s great that she’s defending me. Do you want art? People are saying, “Well, you should have realized the consequences… I feel like saying: “Do you realize if an artist went into producing their art, whatever it is, literary or nonfiction or whatever, and thought about the consequences, the art would be total shit?”

    Looking at it bigger, there’s a lot of political ideologies like Nazism and communism that thought that art should be subservient to politics, and that art can only serve a political end. Those movements did not end well. I don’t think we want that in our liberal democratic society. I think that’s a bizarre ideological way of looking at the world, from the wokesters who treat this as a quasi-religion.

    This is an excerpt from today’s subscriber-only post. To read the entire article and get full access to the archives, you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.

    Subscribe Now

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 20:10

  • Lumber Industry Has No Interest In New Mills As They Reap Rewards Of Record Prices 
    Lumber Industry Has No Interest In New Mills As They Reap Rewards Of Record Prices 

    The problem with the North American lumber industry is that supply is controlled by just a few firms that can easily manipulate prices. For instance, WSJ reports lumber mills are in no rush to bring on additional capacity as they reap the rewards of consumers paying four times the average price. 

    North America’s sawmills, such as Weyerhaeuser Co., West Fraser Timber Co., Canfor Corporation, Interfor Corporation, and PotlatchDeltic, are in no hurry to boost new capacity as they rake in the cash as lumber prices soar. Consumers have been on the opposite side of the stick, and soaring lumber prices added nearly $36k to the cost of building a new home in less than one year. 

    Lumber executives told WSJ they “aren’t racing out to build new mills” as they are contempt with elevated prices boosting their quarterly net incomes. Usually, when commodity prices soar, new supplies flood the market, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. 

    By now, readers know soaring lumber prices have been due to a combination of factors, including record-low mortgage rates sparking a housing frenzy, home renovations, and, of course, sawmills reduced capacity at the beginning of the pandemic anticipating lower demand. 

    Executives at Weyerhaeuser Co. and West Fraser Timber Co. said they would increase budgets to boost efficiency and output at their existing mills in the South, where a glut of cheap timber resides. Some executives don’t mind accumulating a surplus amount of cash as the times are good but aren’t using the money to construct new mills. 

    “We are going to be ultra-cautious on what we do in those regards,” Canfor Corp. Chief Executive Don Kayne told investors last month when he announced record quarterly profits.

    “We don’t mind at all having a little extra cash around for sure, considering what this industry goes through.”

    Chad Hesters, who advises lumber executives and investors as managing partner in the Houston office of consulting firm Korn Ferry, told his clients not to build any mills during this cycle because “they are too late.” He said that by the time a new mill comes online, the industry’s cyclical nature could quickly turn, and new investments shift into “a good way to lose money.” 

    So in the meantime, the North American lumber industry has no incentive to bring on additional capacity as they remain cautious and enjoy the fact their quarterly net income is some of the highest in years – all at the expense of the consumer. 

    Source: WSJ

    Why would lumber companies ruin the profit-making party with added supply? 

    What’s concerning is that lawmakers on Capitol Hill are more concerned about GameStop retail daytraders in their parents’ basements than consumers paying four times the amount for lumber than a year ago. 

    Will there be an inquiry when this bubble bursts too?

    A Lumbear market.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 19:50

  • Biggest Shorting Of Tech Stocks By Hedge Funds In 5 Years: Goldman Prime
    Biggest Shorting Of Tech Stocks By Hedge Funds In 5 Years: Goldman Prime

    Last week we noted that one of the clear trends to emerge as a result of the recent horrific price action in tech stocks, was the continued aggressive selling – and shorting – of tech stocks by hedge funds. The latest weekly report from Goldman’s Prime Brokerage confirms this.

    Starting at the macro level, Goldman Prime writes that the GS Prime book “was net sold for the first time in three weeks (-1.3 SDs), driven by short sales outpacing long buys 2.4 to 1. Single Names saw the largest net selling in two months, while Macro Products (Index and ETF combined) saw the largest net buying in seven weeks. Nearly all regions were net sold led by North America and EM Asia, while Europe was net bought for a 7th straight week and saw the largest $ net buying since Feb ‘18. 7 of 11 global sectors were net sold led by Info Tech, Consumer Disc, Financials, and Comm Svcs, while Health Care, Industrials, and Utilities were the most net bought.”

    As noted previously, however, the real action was in the tech sector, with GS Prime noting that “Info Tech was net sold for a 4th straight week and saw the largest $ net selling in more than 5 years, driven entirely by short sales.”

    Far from a one-off event, the report then notes that “the sector has seen increased shorting in 4 of the past 5 weeks (8 of the past 10), which is in contrast to long flows which have seen buying in 7 of the past 10 weeks.“

    Drilling down, the Goldman Prime desk reveals that 4 of the 6 Info Tech subsectors were net sold on the week, led in $ terms by Semis & Semi Equip, Tech Hardware, and IT Services, while Software and to a lesser extent Comm Equip were net bought.

    As a result, and as the latest batch of 13F filings reveals, “hedge funds are now U/W Info Tech stocks by 1.5% vs. the MSCI World, the lowest level since last November and in the 2nd percentile vs. the past five years. By industry group, hedge funds are still O/W Software & Svcs by 4.7% (28th percentile) and U/W Semis & Semi Equip and Tech Hardware by 1.7% (8th percentile) and 4.4% (18th percentile), respectively.”

    What is remarkable is that even as the HF sector is now positioned uniformly bearish in the tech sector, the GS Equity Fundamental L/S Performance Estimate fell for a second straight week by -1.83% between 5/7 and 5/13 (vs MSCI World TR -1.96%),
    driven by beta of -1.44% (from market exposure and the market sensitivity factor combined) and to a lesser extent alpha of -0.39%. In fact, as shown in the chart below, hedge funds are now once again underperforming not only broader market indexes but are down on the year…

    … while being levered to the hilt: according to GS Prime, overall book Gross leverage rose another 1.3% to 248.4% – the highest on record – while Net leverage fell -1.7 pts to 86.6% (73rd percentile one year) as a result of continued pressing of tech shorts.

    In short, we are now at max pain levels for the hedge fund sector.

    And in light of the recent rebound in the FAAMG sector which has moved higher in the past 3 days amid a reassessment of reflation concerns with the “transitory” camp now winning, the question – as we asked a week ago – is when will this massive one-sided short position push max levered funds over the edge, and lead to a powerful squeeze higher in the tech sector.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/17/2021 – 19:35

Digest powered by RSS Digest