Today’s News 18th August 2021

• Macron In Provocative Afghan Remarks Warns Europe Must "Protect" Itself Against New Refugee Wave
  Macron In Provocative Afghan Remarks Warns Europe Must “Protect” Itself Against New Refugee Wave

  After the last 72 hours of mayhem and shocking scenes of tens of thousands of Afghans who previously assisted US and NATO occupying forces attempting to desperately catch any departing plane out of Kabul’s airport as the Taliban’s grip closed in, Turkey, Europe and the US are bracing for a new refugee wave akin to the 2015 crisis.

  Turkey is expected to feel the shock first, given it’s already long been a jumping-off point for Afghans making the arduous trip to Europe. The past decade alone has seen some 600,000 Afghans settle in Turkey – all the while a mass wave of Syrian refugees exited there as well, many which are still along Turkey’s southern border (over 3 million).

  

  “The country’s easternmost province of Van abuts northern Iran and serves as a waypoint in the grueling migratory path for Afghans hoping to start a new life in Turkey or to reach Europe,” a report in Asia Times notes.

  Recent figured cited by UNHCR officials indicate that some 20,000-30,000 Afghans had already been pouring out of the war-torn country on a weekly basis. Likely this is about to ramp up at least tenfold, also as FT writes that “the world must be ready for an Afghan exodus.”

  The first European leader out of the gate to warn about what’s coming was French President Emmanuel Macron, who in surprisingly blunt Monday comments warned that Afghanistan is about to once again become a “sanctuary for terrorism”. It was his statement on Europe embracing itself for “irregular migratory flows” that immediately evoked most controversy: 

  Speaking on Monday in a televised address from his summer residence, Macron described the situation in Afghanistan as an “important challenge for our own security”.

  “We must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds,” he said.

  Emmanuel Macron sur la situation en Afghanistan: “Nous devons anticiper et nous protéger contre des flux migratoires irréguliers importants” pic.twitter.com/YylLSysGR6

  — BFMTV (@BFMTV) August 16, 2021

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

  Macron: “We must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows…”

  A number of pundits were angry that Macron said this “on the day that Afghans fell to their deaths clinging to planes” – with his words being subject of angry denunciations from the Left on Tuesday.

  Macron continued in his remarks on the security challenge posed by an unraveling Afghanistan: “This is key for international security and peace… we will do everything for Russia, the United States and Europe to cooperate efficiently as our interests are the same,” he said.

  NEW: Johnson and Macron talked this afternoon about Afghanistan

  PM wants to host a virtual meeting of G7 leaders in the coming days to discuss it

  UK and France may also propose a joint UN Security Council resolution

  — Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) August 16, 2021

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

  He further urged “reasonable and unified” response from the UN security council and western allies. He called for joint action against international terrorism, suggesting it will only increase in the wake of recent Afghan events and the Taliban takeover.

  “Our actions will above all be aimed at fighting actively against Islamist terrorism in all its forms,” said Macron. “Terrorist groups are present in Afghanistan and seek to profit from the instability.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/18/2021 – 02:45

• British Requests For $3 Billion In US Treasury Gold: The Trigger That Closed The Gold Window
  British Requests For $3 Billion In US Treasury Gold: The Trigger That Closed The Gold Window

  Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

  “I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States.” 

            – Richard Nixon, Sunday 15 August 1971

  Exactly 50 years has passed since the US Government famously suspended the convertibility of US dollars into gold on 15 August 1971 in a speech announced by then US president Richard Nixon.

  This convertibility of US dollars into gold applied to US dollars held by foreign governments and foreign central banks, which based on the rules of the Bretton Woods monetary system, allowed them to legally show up anytime at the ‘gold window’ of the US Treasury and exchange their excess US dollars for physical US Treasury gold.   

  There will be much written this month about the 50^th anniversary of the closure of the US gold window, but less so about what exactly triggered it and why the timing had to be 15 August.

  So without further ado, here is why, and it all revolves around the British ambassador to the US. the 3rd Earl of Cromer, a.k.a. George Rowland Baring, showing up at the US Treasury offices in Washington D.C. on 12 August 1971 and demanding that US dollars held by Britain be converted into gold.

  A Weakening Dollar – The System under Strain

  Early 1971 saw a noticeably growing US balance of payments deficit, with governments and central in major economies accumulating ever larger quantities of US dollars in volumes far exceeding the US Government’s (US Treasury’s) stock of gold. The US trade balance also moved into deficit.

  In April 1971, major currencies began to appreciate against the US dollar in the forward markets, and currency volatility increased as central banks outside the US (chiefly in Europe) tried to stabilize their currencies against the US dollar by taking in large amounts of dollars and selling their domestic currencies (after expanding their own money supplies), which at the same time added to inflationary pressures in their economies.

  This volatility caused Eurodollar interest rates to rise, which attracted further speculative dollar inflows into European countries led by West Germany, and triggered wider European currency trading bands as these currencies strengthened against the US dollar. On 10 May 1971 the Bundesbank was forced to float the Deutschemark, and the US dollar began falling in value against the West German currency.

  This in turn led to the belief that the US dollar would be formally devalued, which in turn caused further speculative inflows into other currencies and out of the US dollar, and led to central banks in Europe holding huge amounts of unwanted US dollars.

  On Friday 6 August 1971, Henry Reuss, Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee on Exchange and Payments, said that the US dollar was overvalued and the next day his Committee released a report reiterating this statement. This in turn caused further turmoil on the financial markets when they reopened on Monday 9 August 1971.

  Panic about a Gold ‘Drain’

  Given the limited amount of gold that the US Treasury held, or claimed to hold, versus the far larger amount of US dollars in the hands of ‘foreign’ central banks all over the world, this naturally caused panic in the US government and the US Treasury that the remaining US gold stockpile would be ‘drained’ by foreign central banks converting their huge US dollar balances into gold at the US Treasury gold window.

  This 2 August 1971 discussion is fascinatingly explained in a 2009 University of Delaware thesis submission paper by Scott W. Ohlmacher titled “The Dissolution of the Bretton Woods System, Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, August – December 1971”

  Ohlmacher writes:

  “Connally continues to stress just how important it is to stop the gold drain.”

  Connally [direct quote]: ‘In the international field the problem is one – the convertibility of dollars into gold and we’re going to have to stop that at some point…Everybody, I say ‘everybody’, most people tend to think that ten billion dollars [in gold reserves] is the point below which we should not go.’

  Much later in the conversation, Nixon and Connally are joined by Haldeman. Connally and Haldeman detail just how serious the gold drain has become. Haldeman notes that the United States has lost $850 million in gold reserves in the week of August 2, 1971 alone.”

  Connally continues that the French have called in over $1 billion in reserves in the past few weeks and that the Germans and the Dutch are looking to call in some $200-250 million more. Connally thinks that the President could hold on a decision until mid-September, but not later.”

  [Source: Tape – August 2, 1971 (Conversation Number 553-6) Nixon with Connally and Shultz. White House Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman enters later. “The Dissolution of the Bretton Woods System, Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, August – December 1971” By Scott W. Ohlmacher, 2009. Thesis submission, University of Delaware]

  “In official transactions this month…the U.S. Treasury sold $50 million equivalent of gold to Switzerland.”

  “In August the U.K. and France will be repaying $638 million and $600 million equivalent, respectively, to the IMF. France has already notified the U.S. Treasury of its intention to purchase the $191 million in gold required for its [IMF] Fund repayment.”  

  (Source – Fed Greenbook 21 July 1971)

  This $191 million gold sale to France did definitely go through in early August as the August 1971 Fed Greenbook states that:

  “Late in the afternoon of Friday, August 6, the U.S. announced its Fund drawing of $862 million equivalent in Belgian francs and Dutch guilders plus the sale of $191 million in gold to France.”

  Source – Fed Greenbook 18 August 1971)

  A sum of US $191 million at $35 per troy ounce would mean France purchased 5.457 million ozs of gold (169.74 tonnes). This could have been the same gold which the French are said to have then transported back to France by military ship from the east coast of the United States (see below). As the Banque de France is an IMF gold depository, it would still be logical to bring the gold back to Paris since the gold purchase was intended to pay back the IMF and could be transferred into the IMF gold holdings at the Banque de France.

  In addition to this $191 million gold purchase by France, it appears that in early August 1971, the French wanted to buy even more US Treasury gold and maybe did so. The French had also, according to US Treasury Secretary Connally (see above) “called in over $1 billion in reserves in the past few weeks.“

  But beyond this, the British request for US Treasury gold was the main event of August 1971.  There is ample evidence in everything from archives to academic papers to the memoirs of the US Government officials involved, that it was French but crucially British requests to exchange US dollars for gold in the week prior to 15 August that forced the US government to close the gold window and suspend US dollar convertibility into physical gold.

  “In the second week of August 1971, the British ambassador appeared before the United States Treasury and asked that $3 billion be converted into gold to act as “cover” for all their dollar assets.

  It was then, in the midst of impending economic calamity, that Nixon had to confront the major crisis.”

  In 2017, a NBER working paper by Michael D. Bordo, tells us that:

  “The decision to suspend gold convertibility by President Richard Nixon on August 15 1971 was triggered by French and British intentions in early August to convert dollars into gold.”

  [Source: “The Operation and Demise of the Bretton Woods System; 1958 to 1971” Michael D. Bordo, Working Paper 23189, National Bureau Of Economic Research (NBER)]

  In 2011, the well-known Yanis Varoufakis (who would go on to be Greek Minister of Finance in 2015) in an article about currency unions and recycling dollar surpluses tells us that:

  “In August of 1971 the French government decided to make a very public statement of its annoyance at the United States’ policies: President George Pompidou ordered a destroyer to sail to New Jersey to redeem US dollars for gold held at Fort Knox, as was his right under Bretton Woods!

  A few days later, the British government of Edward Heath issued a similar request, though without employing the Royal Navy, demanding gold equivalent to $3 billion held by the Bank of England. Poor, luckless Pompidou and Heath: They had rushed in where angels fear to tread!”

  A 2016 paper by Michael J Graetz of Columbia Law School, titled “A ‘Barbarous Relic’: The French, Gold, and the Demise of Bretton Woods”, also covers the French and British maneuvers saying that:

  “In August 1971, French president Pompidou sent a battleship to New York harbor to remove France’s gold from the vault of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and to transport it to the Banque de France in Paris. Soon thereafter, gold accounted for 92 percent of French reserves.

  On August 11, the British requested that the Treasury remove the $3 billion of gold from the U.S. depository of Fort Knox to the New York Federal Reserve vault, where the gold of foreign governments was stored.”

  The British request to the US Treasury is reiterated in the monetary history book titled “The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy” by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw (1997) in which they write:

  “In the second week of August 1971, the British ambassador turned up at the Treasury Department to request that $3 billion be converted into gold.”

  Further evidence comes from a 1993 book by Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten titled “Changing Fortunes: The World’s Money and the Threat to American Leadership”. Paul Volcker was at that time in 1971 the US Treasury Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, and states that:

  “On Thursday, August 12, the Bank of England requests unspecified devaluation cover for its dollar reserves of about $ 3 billion. The Federal Reserve draws $2.2 billion on its swap lines, including $750 million for the Bank of England.”

  Volcker, who was at the heart of the matter, then makes clear that this unspecified devaluation cover that the British requested was in the form of gold:

  “If the British, who had founded the system with us, and who had fought so hard to defend their own currency, were going to take gold for their dollars, it was clear the game was indeed over.”

  This massive sum of $3 billion in gold would have been equivalent to 2,666 tonnes of gold, and the US Treasury at that time claimed to hold less than 10,000 tonnes of gold. That would be over 25% of all claimed US Treasury gold.

  While the Americans did not want to agree to one foreign central bank request for US dollar conversion into gold for fear of setting off a stampede of other central bank gold requests, it’s also possible that the US Treasury did not have all the gold at claimed to have in Fort Knox or at the New York Fed vault in Manhattan (at least not in Good Delivery gold bars), and that the Americans balked at a demand for 2,666 tonnes simply because they did not have enough gold to sell.

  The Bank of England knew back in March 1968 when the London Gold Pool collapsed that the Americans had run out of Good Delivery gold, as is clear from a Bank of England memo from 14 March 1968 which said:

  “It has emerged in conversations with the Federal Reserve Bank that the majority of the gold held at Fort Knox is in the form of coin bars, and that in certain cases these bars have a gold content of less than 350 fine ounces. If the drain on U.S. stocks continues it is inevitable that the Federal Reserve Bank will be forced to deliver what bars they have.”

  “It would appear that the circumstances might well be such that very few bars of the current acceptable fineness could be found“

  [Bank of England file C43/323/49] 

  [See BullionStar article “The Keys to the Gold Vaults at the New York Fed – Part 3: ‘Coin Bars’, ‘Melts’ and the Bundesbank” for details of this March 1968 Bank of England memo.]

  So the Bank of England, more than any central bank in the world, would know the real truth about US Treasury gold holdings, as the scramble for US Treasury gold accelerated in August 1971. 

  In fact, Rowland Baring ran Baring Brothers bank between 1949 and 1959. Other strings in Rowland Baring’s bow included being Governor of the Bank of England between 1961 and 1966, being a previous economic minister of the British embassy in Washington, being previous head of the United Kingdom Treasury and Supply Delegation, being an Executive Director of the World Bank in Washington, and being a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army (like my grandfather).

  The Earl of Cromer was thus very familiar with both the Bank of England and the HM Treasury (British Treasury), as well as the way politics and economics  worked in Washington DC. Baring had additionally also previously worked at JP Morgan & Company, Morgan Stanley & Company, and Kidder, Peabody & Company so was totally immersed in and connected to the New York – London axis of the ‘old wealth’ banking elite. In fact, he was the ‘old wealth’ banking elite.

  So when The Earl of Cromer (who lived in the British Embassy in Washington DC between 1971 and 1974) strolls into the US Treasury offices in DC and says “Hello chaps, we’d like US$ 3 billion in gold on behalf of Her Majesty”, the yanks are going to sit up and take notice.

  And that is exactly what happened. On 12 August 1971, The Earl of Cromer (Rowland Baring) turned up in the US Treasury in Washington DC on behalf of the Brits (HM Treasury and Bank of England), requesting that the US Treasury convert US $3 billion held by Britain into gold. This figure was then seemingly negotiated down to US$ 750 million, because the Americans were shell shocked.

  In his 1976 book, “The Arena of International Finance”, Charles Coombs refers to the Cromer visit on page 217-218, quoting Treasury Secretary John Connally (page 218). Connally said:

  “What’s our immediate problem? We are meeting here today because we are in trouble overseas. The British came in today to ask us to cover $3 billion, all their dollar reserves. Anyone can topple us – anytime they want – we have left ourselves completely exposed.”

  Why was it a problem? Why could anyone topple the monetary system of the United States at any time? Perhaps it was because the Americans did not have as much gold as they claimed to have. 

  Coombs then comments that:

  “Connally’s citation of the eleventh-hour British request for $3 billion of exchange cover as an example of imminent foreign attacks on the dollar is a travesty on the facts.

  The Bank of England request for cover, quickly agreed in the amount of $750 million rather than $3 billion, was a direct consequence of justifiable British suspicion that the Treasury was on the verge of closing the gold window.“

  Charles Coombs isn’t just any author as he had a 30-year career at the New York Fed, where he rose to be Head of Foreign Exchange Operations of the New York Fed, and he also for 16 years, was manager of the Open Market Committee for the overall Federal Reserve System.

  What’s $3 Billion or $750 Million between friends

  Coombs’ comment implies that what started as a request for US$ 3 billion by the Earl of Cromer was ‘quickly agreed’ at $750 million, which at $35 per troy oz would be 666.5 tonnes of gold. Still a huge amount of gold.

  There is substance to the Coombs version of events, since there is a HM Treasury file in the National Archives in Kew, London (which I have visited and have read) titled “Report that 15 Aug measures had been forced on US administration by Bank of England’s demand for conversion of $750 million into gold: Prime Minister sought further information“. (File ref PREM 15/838 can be seen on the National Archives catalogue website here).

  This file confirms that British ambassador, Rowland Baring (The Earl of Cromer) turned up at the US Treasury offices in Washington DC, and refers to the US$ 750 million request to be converted into gold.

  “Great Britain planned to submit a massive request to convert US $3 billion into gold [footnote 93].

  The request was received by Charles Coombs of the Federal Bank of New York on August 13, while visiting the Treasury Department in Washington [footnote 94].

  The British request caused panic in the [US] Treasury and prompted Connally’s early return to Washington. The request indicated that the British government presciently understood that the time for remaining gold conversions was short. The United States was forced to act.

  Should the British request be granted, the publicity of such a large transfer of gold would cause a European run on the Federal Reserve at the worst possible moment.  …With less than 10 billion in gold reserves, before the British request, an American default loomed.”

  Footnote 93 of Nicther’s book states that there are multiple memoirs of the people involved which mention the British request, including the memoirs of Connally, Haldeman, Stein, and William Safire.

  The UK National Archives PREM 15/838 file also contains a letter from 13 August 1971 from the British Treasury (HMT) to the British Prime Minister’s office (Edward Heath’s office), denying that the gold conversion request had ever been made, saying that:

   “at no time did the Bank of England ask for conversion of US dollars into gold/ nor is there any basis for a figure of $3 billion.”

  [This 13 August 1971 letter is from Alan Bailer, Office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (HM Treasury) to Robert Armstrong, 10 Downing Street (Prime Minster’s Office)]

  As you can see from the carefully crafted wording of Bailey’s letter, this denial by HM Treasury did not say that HM Treasury didn’t ask for conversion of US$ 3 billion into gold on behalf of Britain’s Exchange Stabilisation Fund (EEA), nor that the British Government didn’t ask for conversion of US$ 3 billion into gold, merely that the Bank of England did not request conversion of US$ 3 billion. On a technical point, the Bank of England does not own any of Britain’s gold, it merely stores it. It’s the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, administered by HM Treasury, which owns British reserve assets, including US dollars and gold.

  Also, given the fact that the dollars for gold request did take place (since there is a huge amount of evidence above to prove it), this HM Treasury denial can be taken as par for the course for weasel words governments, which, as we all know, lie all the time, even inter-departmentally to each other.

  First up is a Bank of England internal paper from 19 July 1971, marked ‘Secret’, and titled “Some Possible Consequences of the Americans Formally Going Off Gold‘. This paper, which was written by Bank of England expert John Sangster (JLS) and circulated among senior executives of the Bank, discussed the scenario of the US closing the gold window and the alternatives the British had to chose from if that outcome occurred. See screenshot below.     

  

   

  “11. The more immediate question is how do we protect the $4.1 bn of reserves held in US dollars. Admittedly we have long term debts in US dollars of $5.5 bn but substantial losses on our short-term assets would weaken our intervention ability…:

  See screenshot below:

  “Obviously asking the Americans for gold or SDRs would only precipitate the action we are seeking to avoid“. 

  See screenshot below:

  On Tuesday 10 August 1971, the Bank of England circulated another internal Top Secret memo, with a similar title “The Possibility of the US Going Off Gold“. This time the Bank listed the options available to protect the British reserves from the eroding value of the US dollar, including the first option  ‘Demand a massive amount of gold from the Americans’ They actually used these exact words:   

  “The Reus Sub-Committee Report published last Friday has brought the US dollar under heavy pressure. The possibility of the Americans formally going off gold has been advanced. It may even be imminent.

  We need urgently to consider whether action should be taken to protect the reserves. The EEA [Exchange Equalisation account] holds US $3.5 bn, either in New York ($2.75 bn) or in the Euro-market via the BIS ($0.75 bn).

  Against these short term assets are long term liabilities of $4.5 bn in respect of the US end-year loans, Exim and ECA/MSA loans (another $1 bn is outstanding for the Canadian loan).

  There are four main protective steps available –

  (i) Demand a massive amount of gold from the Americans – but this in itself would probably be sufficient to force the Americans off gold.”

  The memo then listed options (ii) pay IMF obligations so as to reduce dollar balances, (iii) ask the US to draw $ 2 billion on the inter-central bank swap lines, and (iv) put any remaining funds into Rossa bonds denominated in sterling. 

  The memo said that option “(i) can be disregarded. The Americans would probably refuse and close the gold window“.

  Option (ii) could not be done quickly, said the memo. That left options (iii) and (iv) which would protect sterling in the event of a dollar devaluation.

  See screenshot below of Page 1 of this memo: 

  See screenshot below of Page 2 of this memo:

  Which is preciously why the Earl of Cromer, Rowland Baring, strolled into the US Treasury offices 2 days later and asked that US$ 3 billion of Britain’s US dollar holdings be converted into gold bars. 

  Recall the use of the word COVER in various quotes above:

  Barber (2016) – “In the second week of August 1971, the British ambassador appeared before the United States Treasury and asked that $3 billion be converted into gold to act as “COVER” for all their dollar assets.” 

  Volcker and Gyohten (1993) – “On Thursday, August 12, the Bank of England requests unspecified devaluation COVER for its dollar reserves of about $ 3 billion. The Federal Reserve draws $2.2 billion on its swap lines, including $750 million for the Bank of England.

  ..If the British… were going to take gold for their dollars, it was clear the game was indeed over.”

  Coombs (1976) – quoting Connally “The British came in today to ask us to COVER $3 billion, all their dollar reserves

  Coombs again – “The Bank of England request for COVER, quickly agreed in the amount of $750 million rather than $3 billion, was a direct consequence of justifiable British suspicion that the Treasury was on the verge of closing the gold window.“

  And that is how the British bankers via the Earl of Cromer triggered the US to close the gold window at that precise time on 15 August 1971, knowing that “The Americans would probably refuse and close the gold window“.

  Which is what the Americans then did. This gold window closure then ushered in the US dollar fiat era, a 50 year period of a fake and eroding world reserve asset, the fallout of which we see right up to this day, and which has been responsible for totally altering the world’s monetary and economic landscape, and not in a good way. (See the fantastic visual charts website  https://wtfhappenedin1971.com for details of why this is so.)

  An important question arising from Cromer’s request to the US Treasury is who was working for who, and who benefited from the gold window closure.

  Was it the outcome of a random set of events? Or was there a joint US-British decision to orchestrate the end of gold convertibility under the guise of a monetary crisis? Were there shadowy and powerful private banking interests influencing events behind the scenes? And did the US close the gold window because they had far less gold than they claimed to have?

  A 19 March 1973 US State Department cable, marked secret, refers to a 16 March 1973 meeting in Bonn between then US Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz and then West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, in which Shultz says that:

  “huge deficits in the US balance of payments had occurred and had drained our gold reserves.

  The week before August 15, 1971, a rush on those reserves forced the closing of our gold window bringing the end of convertibility.”

  Very Interestingly, the word  ‘drained’ is specifically used. ‘Drained’ is defined as ‘to deplete gradually, especially to the point of exhaustion‘, or ‘to become empty by the drawing off of‘. So, did the US Treasury even have half the gold it claimed to have in August 1971 or was Fort Knox already empty, and was this another reason for the sudden gold window closure?

  These, however, are questions for another day.

  One final point to note is that while the temporary suspension of the US Treasury gold window has been on-going for 50 years now and is a source of ridicule for the US Government due to the wording ‘temporary’, the last laugh is on the foreign central banks, since under international law, all of their billions of US dollar holdings prior to the 15 August 1971 gold window closure are still valid and legal claims against US Treasury gold holdings. Think about that for a moment.

  Last Word to Arthur Burns

  For now, the last word goes to Arthur Burns. the then chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System during August 1971, who wrote in his Green Notebook journal on 12 August 1971 that:    

  “My efforts to prevent closing of the gold window – working through Connally, Volcker, and Schultz – do not seem to have succeeded.

  The gold window may have to be closed tomorrow [13 August] because we now have a government that seems incapable, not only of constructive leadership, but of any action at all. What a tragedy for mankind!”

  This article was originally published on the BullionStar website under the same title “British Requests for $3 billion in US Treasury Gold – The Trigger that Closed the Gold Window”.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/18/2021 – 02:00

• The Propaganda War (And How To Fight It), Part II
  The Propaganda War (And How To Fight It), Part II

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  The column you are about to read is propaganda. Yes, that’s right … propaganda. It isn’t political satire or commentary, or objective news or information, or unbiased, verified scientific fact. It is propaganda, pure and simple.

  

  That isn’t a confession, a disclaimer, or a warning. I am not ashamed of writing propaganda. Most everything you see and read on the Internet, and in newspapers, and on television, and in textbooks, and novels, and on advertising billboards, and everywhere else, is propaganda. There is nothing wrong with propaganda. The question is who is doing it, and what they are doing it for. Here’s the definition in the Cambridge Dictionary:

  “information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions”

  That is what the column you are reading is … an attempt to influence people’s opinions.

  Of course, that isn’t all it is. Nothing is ever only one thing. But it is absolutely propaganda. And so is everything else that you will read today.

  I’m terribly sorry if this comes as a shock, but there is no “objective” fantasy-land in which no one is trying to persuade you of anything or pressure you or otherwise influence you to do something. It does not exist, this “objective” dreamworld, where “authoritative sources” report “the facts,” where “the facts” are “verified” by “neutral” “fact checkers,” where ex-NSA and CIA spooks are hired as commentators by MSNBC and CNN because they care about “the truth,” where “science” is immune to manipulation. This fantasy is the alibi of authoritarians, cult leaders, and assorted other control freaks, and the people they have brainwashed into believing in it.

  Everyone — and I do mean literally everyone — is trying to persuade or convince you of something. Your friends, family, colleagues, your boss, advertisers, lobbyists, government officials, the media, artists, teachers, doctors, journalists, bloggers, Twitter bots, etc. This isn’t cause for paranoia. It’s a natural part of human social behavior. It is happening right now as you read this sentence. I’m trying to convince you of something. In a moment, I’m going to urge you to do something.

  This is how we create “reality,” collectively, by persuading and influencing each other, or allowing ourselves to be persuaded and influenced, mostly by powerful ideological forces that do not care about us, and just want to control us, but also by each other, moment by moment, with every word we speak and every action we take.

  Every choice we make is an advertisement, a political statement, a profession of faith … a small contribution to a work of art we are collectively creating, which is what “reality” is. You and I are doing it right now. I’m trying my best to influence you, and you’re deciding whether to let me do that, whether you trust me … whether we share the same “reality.”

  This process (or this negotiation, if you will) is never-ending, and there is no escape from it. Pretending that it isn’t happening — that we are not creating “reality” together with every choice we make — is childish, and is particularly dangerous at a time like this, when a new form of totalitarianism is being rolled out all across the world. This is not the time to retreat into fantasies. As I noted in Part I of this piece, we are in a propaganda war, and we are losing. GloboCap is manufacturing a new “reality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “reality.” Either you accept it, and conform to it, or you oppose it. Those are the choices. There are no other choices.

  All right, now that we’ve got that straight, let’s get down to the propaganda at hand, and what it is that I am urging you to do.

  My name is CJ Hopkins. I live in Germany. I am banned from eating at restaurants, traveling by plane and train, attending religious ceremonies, school, cultural events, and otherwise participating in society, because I refuse to convert to the new official ideology. #NewNormal pic.twitter.com/QJlHdKdooM

  — CJ Hopkins (@CJHopkins_Z23) August 11, 2021

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

  I think the young people call this a “meme.” It is something everyone can do. Make a tweet or a post like this, with your name, face, country, and details, whatever restrictions apply to you. Use the hashtag. Circulate it. Encourage others to do the same. Don’t even mention the virus or the “vaccines.” Focus on the totalitarianism. Make it visible. Make it personal.

  We need the New Normals to see the faces of the people they are demonizing because we won’t convert to their new “reality.”

  No, it will not make the slightest difference to the fanatics, but most of them are not fanatics.

  Most of them are simply scared and confused, and utterly mindfucked … as in their brains are not working. Literally. They are no longer able to think. Challenge them, and they will either become aggressive or start robotically repeating propaganda at you like the members of an enormous cult. Anyone who has interacted with them (and I have a feeling that you probably have) knows that they are totally unreachable with facts, argumentation, and basic reasoning, not to mention common sense, which is why I have mostly given up on that and am focusing on propaganda.

  Propaganda programmed these people, and propaganda can deprogram them … or at least it can interfere with their current programming, even if just for a fleeting moment, maybe even enough to start them thinking, which might lead them to questioning the official “reality” … which, as any cult deprogrammer will tell you, is the first step toward disengaging from the cult.

  Yes, it is just a picture and some words, but, if you doubt the power of visual propaganda, consider what GloboCap has achieved in the relatively short span of 17 months. They have imposed a new official ideology (in other words, a new “reality”) on societies all across the world.

  Seriously, think about that for a moment … they have literally implemented a new global “reality.” They have done this primarily with propaganda, much of it visual propaganda, which functions on a primal, instinctual level. They inundated the public with images of disease, hospitals, patients on ventilators, body bags being stacked in death trucks, mass burials, and people dropping dead in the streets. They forced everyone to wear medical-looking masks and to perform an ever-changing series of pointless, paranoid compliance rituals to generate an atmosphere of “deadly contagion.” Basically, they transformed the entire planet into an inescapable pandemic-theater production in which the terrorized performers are also the audience. They did this mostly with visual propaganda, images and observed behavior. (The nonsense the New Normals robotically recite at us isn’t meant to believed; it is meant to be memorized and repeated verbatim, like religious dogma, or a customer-service-representative’s script.)

  And, if you think your tweet or post doesn’t matter … well, it’s now a week since I posted mine, and thousands of people all over the world are joining in with tweets and posts of their own. (OffGuardian is collecting some of them here and inviting people to add their voices.) Twitter is suppressing the #NewNormal hashtag and slapping “sensitive content” warnings on the tweets.

  Fanatical New Normals, furious at being shown the faces of the people they are demonizing, are shrieking insults, death wishes, threats, mockery, and other vitriolic abuse at us, and demanding that the authorities censor us, and desperately attempting to disappear us by adding the hashtag to random gibberish.

  That wouldn’t be happening if our voices didn’t matter.

  What we’re doing is basically an online version of classic non-violent civil disobedience. We are disrupting the new official narrative, the official ideology, the official “reality,” even if just marginally, and just for a moment. Join in. Ignore the fanatical New Normals shrieking hatred at us on the Internet. Interrupt the “pandemic-theater” performance. Make the new totalitarianism visible. Make it personal … for them, and for us.

  If you need a reminder of what the stakes are, here is a recent photo of some lovely graffiti from an unknown location somewhere in New Normal Germany.

  

  For those of you who don’t read German, it translates as … “GAS THE UNVACCINATED.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/18/2021 – 00:05

• Anonymous Bidder Offers $120 Million For Surfside Condo Collapse Land
  Anonymous Bidder Offers $120 Million For Surfside Condo Collapse Land

  An anonymous bidder has offered up to $120 million for the site of the Surfside condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla. 

  The Miami Herald reports an offer was made late last week during a hearing before Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman, overseeing lawsuits filed since the condo building collapsed on June 24, killing 98 people. 

  Judge Hanzman authorized negotiation of the site with an anonymous bidder.

  Real estate broker Michael Fay told the judge the bidder offered $110 million for the property but is willing to pay up to $120 million. 

  Here’s the latest image of the cleared site. 

  

  Hanzman replied this is “the best news I’ve heard so far today.” He asked Fay:

  “They’re a viable company [bidder] that has the wherewithal to close on a transaction of this magnitude?”

  “We do believe that to be true,” Fay responded.

  Hanzman directed Fay to continue with the “short auction process” as soon as possible so that the money can be used to “compensate” victims.

  There are very few details on who the bidder might be or their plan for the property if the purchase goes through.

  Last month, Hanzman ruled that the victims and families would receive a minimum compensation of $150 million, with the settlement from the tower’s insurance company and the final sale of the property. 

  Some families hope the government would purchase the property and transform the site into a memorial/park rather than residential or commercial development.

  “People lost their lives there. It’s a tragedy and should be preserved as a memorial,” Linda Hedaya, who lost her daughter in the collapse, told local news WPLG. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 23:45

• Pepe Escobar: The 'New Great Game' In Eurasia Has Just Been Reloaded
  Pepe Escobar: The ‘New Great Game’ In Eurasia Has Just Been Reloaded

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back with a bang

  The US ‘loss’ of Afghanistan is a repositioning and the new mission is not a ‘war on terror,’ but Russia and China

  

  Wait until the war is over
  And we’re both a little older
  The unknown soldier
  Breakfast where the news is read
  Television children fed
  Unborn living, living, dead
  Bullet strikes the helmet’s head
  And it’s all over
  For the unknown soldier

  The Doors, “The Unknown Soldier”

  In the end, the Saigon moment happened faster than any Western intel “expert” expected. This is one for the annals: four frantic days that wrapped up the most astonishing guerrilla blitzkrieg of recent times. Afghan-style: lots of persuasion, lots of tribal deals, zero columns of tanks, minimal loss of blood.

  August 12 set the scene, with the nearly simultaneous capture of Ghazni, Kandahar and Herat. On August 13, the Taliban were only 50 kilometers from Kabul. August 14 started with the siege of Maidan Shahr, the gateway to Kabul.

  Ismail Khan, the legendary elder Lion of Herat, struck a self-preservation deal and was sent by the Taliban as a top-flight messenger to Kabul: President Ashraf Ghani should step out, or else.

  Still on Saturday, the Taliban took Jalalabad – and isolated Kabul from the east, all the way to the Afgan-Pakistan border in Torkham, gateway to the Khyber Pass. By Saturday night, Marshal Dostum was fleeing with a bunch of military to Uzbekistan via the Friendship Bridge in Termez; only a few were allowed in. The Taliban duly took over Dostum’s Tony Montana-style palace.

  By early morning on August 15, all that was left for the Kabul administration was the Panjshir valley – high in the mountains, a naturally protected fortress – and scattered Hazaras: there’s nothing there in those beautiful central lands, except Bamiyan.  

  Exactly 20 years ago, I was in Bazarak getting ready to interview the Lion of the Panjshir, commander Masoud, who was preparing a counter-offensive against … the Taliban. History repeating, with a twist. This time I was sent visual proof that the Taliban – following the classic guerrilla sleeping cell playbook – were already in the Panjshir.   

  And then mid-morning on Sunday brought the stunning visual re-enactment of the Saigon moment, for all the world to see: a Chinook helicopter hovering over the roof of the American embassy in Kabul.  

  

  A US military helicopter flying above the US embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2021. Photo: AFP / Wakil Kohsar

  ‘The war is over’

  Still on Sunday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem proclaimed: “The war is over in Afghanistan,” adding that the shape of the new government would soon be announced.

  Facts on the ground are way more convoluted. Feverish negotiations have been going on since Sunday afternoon. The Taliban were ready to announce the official proclamation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in its 2.0 version (1.0 was from 1996 to 2001). The official announcement would be made inside the presidential palace. 

  Yet what’s left of Team Ghani was refusing to transfer power to a coordinating council that will de facto set up the transition. What the Taliban want is a seamless transition: they are now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Case closed.

  By Monday, a sign of compromise came from Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen. The new government will include non-Taliban officials. He was referring to an upcoming “transition administration,” most probably co-directed by Taliban political leader Mullah Baradar and Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former minister of internal affairs who was also, in the past, an employee of Voice of America.  

  In the end, there was no Battle for Kabul. Thousands of Taliban were already inside Kabul – once again the classic sleeper-cell playbook. The bulk of their forces remained in the outskirts. An official Taliban proclamation ordered them not to enter the city, which should be captured without a fight, to prevent civilian casualties. 

  The Taliban did advance from the west, but “advancing,” in context, meant connecting to the sleeper cells in Kabul, which by then were fully active. Tactically, Kabul was encircled in an “anaconda” move, as defined by a Taliban commander: squeezed from north, south and west and, with the capture of Jalalabad, cut off from the east.

  At some point last week, high-level intel must have whispered to the Taliban command that the Americans would be coming to “evacuate.” It could have been Pakistan intelligence, even Turkish intelligence, with Erdogan playing his characteristic NATO double game.

  The American rescue cavalry not only came late, but was caught in a bind as they could not possibly bomb their own assets inside Kabul. The horrible timing was compounded when the Bagram military base – the NATO Valhalla in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years – was finally captured by the Taliban. 

  That led the US and NATO to literally beg the Taliban to let them evacuate everything in sight from Kabul – by air, in haste, at the Taliban’s mercy. A geopolitical development that evokes suspension of disbelief. 

  Ghani versus Baradar

  Ghani’s hasty escape is the stuff of “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing” – without the Shakespearean pathos. The heart of the whole matter was a last-minute meeting on Sunday morning between former President Hamid Karzai and Ghani’s perennial rival Abdullah Abdullah.

  They discussed in detail who they were going to send to negotiate with the Taliban – who by then not only were fully prepared for a possible battle for Kabul, but had announced their immovable red line weeks ago – they want the end of the current NATO government.   

  Ghani finally saw the writing on the wall and disappeared from the presidential palace without even addressing the potential negotiators. With his wife, chief of staff and national security adviser, he escaped to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. A few hours later, the Taliban entered the presidential palace, the stunning images duly captured.

  

  A screengrab from a video showing Taliban leader Mullah Baradar Akhund, front, center, with his fellow insurgents, in Kabul on August 15. Born in 1968, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, also called Mullah Baradar Akhund, is the co-founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was the deputy of Mullah Mohammed Omar. Photo: AFP / Taliban / EyePress News

  Commenting on Ghani’s escape, Abdullah Abdullah did not mince his words: “God will hold him accountable.” Ghani, an anthropologist with a doctorate from Columbia, is one of those classic cases of Global South exiles to the West who “forget” everything that matters about their original lands. 

  Ghani is a Pashtun who acted like an arrogant New Yorker. Or worse, an entitled Pashtun, as he was often demonizing the Taliban, who are overwhelmingly Pashtun, not to mention Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, including their tribal elders.  

  It’s as if Ghani and his Westernized team had never learned from a top source such as the late, great Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth (check out a sample of his Pashtun studies here).

  Geopolitically, what matters now is how the Taliban have written a whole new script, showing the lands of Islam, as well as the Global South, how to defeat the self-referential, seemingly invincible US/NATO empire.

  The Taliban did it with Islamic faith, infinite patience and force of will fueling roughly 78,000 fighters – 60,000 of them active – many with minimal military training, no backing of any state – unlike Vietnam, which had China and the USSR – no hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO, no trained army, no air force and no state-of-the-art technology.

  They relied only on Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and Toyota pick-ups – before they captured American hardware these past few days, including drones and helicopters.  

  Taliban leader Mullah Baradar has been extremely cautious. On Monday he said: “It is too early to say how we will take over governance.” First of all, the Taliban wants “to see foreign forces leave before restructuring begins.”

  Abdul Ghani Baradar is a very interesting character. He was born and raised in Kandahar. That’s where the Taliban started in 1994, seizing the city almost without a fight and then, equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and a lot of cash to bribe local commanders, capturing Kabul nearly 25 years ago, on September 27, 1996.

  Earlier, Mullah Baradar fought in the 1980s jihad against the USSR, and maybe – not confirmed – side-by-side with Mullah Omar, with whom he co-founded the Taliban. 

  After the American bombing and occupation post-9/11, Mullah Baradar and a small group of Taliban sent a proposal to then-President Hamid Karzai on a potential deal that would allow the Taliban to recognize the new regime. Karzai, under Washington pressure, rejected it. 

  Baradar was actually arrested in Pakistan in 2010 – and kept in custody. Believe it or not, American intervention led to his freedom in 2018. He then relocated to Qatar. And that’s where he was appointed head of the Taliban’s political office and oversaw the signing last year of the American withdrawal deal.

  Baradar will be the new ruler in Kabul – but it’s important to note he’s under the authority of the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, Haibatullah Akhundzada. It’s the Supreme Leader – actually a spiritual guide – who will be lording over the new incarnation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

  

  Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada posing for a photograph at an undisclosed location in 2016. Photo: AFP / Afghan Taliban

  Beware of a peasant guerrilla army

  The collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) was inevitable. They were “educated” the American military way: massive technology, massive airpower, next to zero local ground intel.

  The Taliban is all about deals with tribal elders and extended family connections – and a peasant guerrilla approach, parallel to the communists in Vietnam. They were biding their time for years, just building connections – and those sleeper cells.

  Afghan troops who had not received a salary for months were paid not to fight them. And the fact they did not attack American troops since February 2020 earned them a lot of extra respect: a matter of honor, essential in the Pashtunwali code.

  It’s impossible to understand the Taliban – and most of all, the Pashtun universe – without understanding Pashtunwali. As well as the concepts of honor, hospitality and inevitable revenge for any wrongdoing, the concept of freedom implies no Pashtun is inclined to be ordered by a central state authority – in this case, Kabul. And no way will they ever surrender their guns. 

  In a nutshell, that’s the “secret” of the lightning-fast blitzkrieg with minimal loss of blood, inbuilt in the overarching geopolitical earthquake. After Vietnam, this is the second Global South protagonist showing the whole world how an empire can be defeated by a peasant guerrilla army.

  And all that accomplished with a budget that may not exceed $1.5 billion a year – coming from local taxes, profits from opium exports (no internal distribution allowed) and real estate speculation. In vast swaths of Afghanistan, the Taliban were already, de facto, running local security, local courts and even food distribution.  

  Taliban 2021 is an entirely different animal compared with Taliban 2001. Not only are they battle-hardened, they had plenty of time to perfect their diplomatic skills, which were recently more than visible in Doha and in high-level visits to Tehran, Moscow and Tianjin.

  They know very well that any connection with al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS/Daesh, ISIS-Khorasan and ETIM is counter-productive – as their Shanghai Cooperation Organization interlocutors made very clear.

  Internal unity, anyway, will be extremely hard to achieve. The Afghan tribal maze is a jigsaw puzzle, nearly impossible to crack. What the Taliban may realistically achieve is a loose confederation of tribes and ethnic groups under a Taliban emir, coupled with very careful management of social relations.

  Initial impressions point to increased maturity. The Taliban are granting amnesty to employees of the NATO occupation and won’t interfere with businesses activities. There will be no revenge campaign. Kabul is back in business. There is allegedly no mass hysteria in the capital: that’s been the exclusive domain of Anglo-American mainstream media. The Russian and Chinese embassies remain open for business.

  Zamir Kabulov, the Kremlin special representative for Afghanistan, has confirmed that the situation in Kabul, surprisingly, is “absolutely calm” – even as he reiterated: “We are not in a rush as far as recognition [of the Taliban] is concerned. We will wait and watch how the regime will behave.”

  The New Axis of Evil

  Tony Blinken may blabber that “we were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose – to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11.”

  

  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Photo: AFP / Patrick Semansky

  Every serious analyst knows that the “overriding” geopolitical purpose of the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago was to establish an essential Empire of Bases foothold in the strategic intersection of Central and South Asia, subsequently coupled with occupying Iraq in Southwest Asia.

  Now the “loss” of Afghanistan should be interpreted as a repositioning. It fits the new geopolitical configuration, where the Pentagon’s top mission is not the “war on terror” anymore, but to simultaneously try to isolate Russia and harass China by all means on the expansion of the New Silk Roads.

  Occupying smaller nations has ceased to be a priority. The Empire of Chaos can always foment chaos – and supervise assorted bombing raids – from its CENTCOM base in Qatar.

  Iran is about to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a full member – another game-changer. Even before resetting the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban have carefully cultivated good relations with key Eurasia players – Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian ‘stans. The ‘stans are under full Russian protection. Beijing is already planning hefty rare earth business with the Taliban.

  On the Atlanticist front, the spectacle of non-stop self-recrimination will consume the Beltway for ages. Two decades, $2 trillion, a forever war debacle of chaos, death and destruction, a still shattered Afghanistan, an exit literally in the dead of night – for what? The only “winners” have been the Lords of the Weapons Racket.

  Yet every American plotline needs a fall guy. NATO has just been cosmically humiliated in the graveyard of empires by a bunch of goat herders – and not by close encounters with Mr Khinzal. What’s left? Propaganda.

  So meet the new fall guy: the New Axis of Evil. The axis is Taliban-Pakistan-China. The New Great Game in Eurasia has just been reloaded.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 23:25

• "Everything Ready To Burn" – High Winds Stoke California Wildfires Burning At Record Pace
  “Everything Ready To Burn” – High Winds Stoke California Wildfires Burning At Record Pace

  Northern California is battling one of the worst blazes in years as the wildfire threat across the state continues to increase. 

  As of Tuesday morning, California broke the 1 million acres burned mark, the earliest in a fire season on record. The largest wildfire is Dixie Fire, which already burned 604,000 acres, and is the state’s largest blaze to date. The fire is only 31% contained as of 0846 local time. 

  

  A National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento, Emily Heller, said low humidity and high winds would help fuel wildfires through late Wednesday. 

  “Everything is just ready to burn,” Heller said. “We have a trough passing to the northeast, and when that happens, we get northerly winds which tend to dry out portions of our area even more.” 

  JTF 578 hand crews are hard at work on the Dixie Fire with our @CAL_FIRE partners. The Dixie Fire has burned over 600,000 acres and is California’s largest single wild fire. #calguard #alwaysreadyalwaysthere #DixieFire pic.twitter.com/b7BGgOPF2w

  — The California National Guard (@CalGuard) August 17, 2021

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

  Utility operator California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E, warned Monday it might have to cut power to nearly 50,000 customers to prevent additional wildfires. In July, PG&E filed documents that their equipment may have started the Dixie Fire.

  Dixie has been burning for well over a month, and nearly 6,000 firefighters are battling the blaze. Damage reports already indicate 1,000 homes, businesses, and other structures have been destroyed. The damage might strain the state’s fire fund. 

  Taken from Hwy 395 and Painters Lane. Several homes being lost. #DixieFire

  On assignment for @nytimes pic.twitter.com/Gh3YLhWB9t

  — Christian Monterrosa (@chrismatography) August 17, 2021

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

  Across the state, firefighters are battling ten large blazes, including the Dixie Fire. 

  

  Nationally, 104 large fires have been reported in 12 states, burning more than 2.2 million acres, the National Interagency Fire Center said Tuesday. 

  The wildfire situation is rapidly escalating this evening across NorCal, with multiple large wildfires spreading dangerously fast, forcing new evacuations, including the #DixieFire, #MorganFire, #MonumentFire, #McFarlandFire and #CaldorFire. pic.twitter.com/LVn58dGnNe

  — US StormWatch (@US_Stormwatch) August 17, 2021

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

  California’s fire season may be a record-setting year as the megadrought and constant heatwaves continue to fuel fires. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 23:05

• Fired Tennessee Vaccine Chief Allegedly Bought Leather 'Muzzle' For Hate-Crime Hoax
  Fired Tennessee Vaccine Chief Allegedly Bought Leather ‘Muzzle’ For Hate-Crime Hoax

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News (emphasis ours),

  After Tennessee vaccine official Dr Michelle Fiscus asserted that someone had mailed her a muzzle in an attempt to intimidate her, it subsequently emerged that the item was purchased with a credit card in Fiscus’ name.

  

  Whoops.

  Fiscus, who was fired from her role as Tennessee’s vaccine chief, originally claimed that someone was trying to get her to “stop talking about vaccinating people” and had sent the muzzle as a threat.

  I’m also told she said this – “They must not know me, this is for a beagle, but I’m a pit bull!”

  — Kyle Horan (@KyleHoranNC5) July 14, 2021

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

  This prompted health department official Paul Peterson to alert the Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security and a full investigation was launched.

  However, according to Axios, evidence clearly suggests that Fiscus purchased the item herself.

  NEW: A Tennessee investigation found evidence that the state’s fired vaccine chief Michelle Fiscus, who claimed that someone had mailed her a dog muzzle in an attempt to intimidate her, had in fact purchased the muzzle. https://t.co/91BeQWxA2C

  — Axios (@axios) August 16, 2021

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  “The Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security found through a subpoena that the Amazon package containing the muzzle traced back to a credit card in Fiscus’ name,” states the report.

  “When asked by investigators, Fiscus provided information for an Amazon account in her name. It was a different account than the one used to purchase the muzzle.”

  “The investigation concluded that “the results of this investigation that purchases from both Amazon accounts were charged to the same American Express credit card in the name of Dr. Michelle D. Fiscus.”

  Investigation: fired vaccine official Michelle Fiscus sent dog muzzle to herself amid controversy. This is still developing. pic.twitter.com/GEgt7MvdSw

  — Alexandra Koehn (@NC5_AKoehn) August 16, 2021

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

  Fiscus denies purchasing the muzzle and is claiming that someone else made the Amazon account in her name and stole her credit card details.

  Regarding the muzzle: I ASKED Homeland Security to investigate the origin. Just provided a redacted HS report by Axios Nashville. Report says a second account was made under my name from a phone in WA? Waiting on unredacted report. Hold tight. No, I didn’t send it to myself.

  — Michelle Fiscus MD,FAAP (@drfixus) August 16, 2021

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

  As we recently highlighted, Baylor College of Medicine Professor Peter Hotez published a paper suggesting it should be a “hate crime” to criticize Dr Anthony Fauci and other scientists who are promoting mass vaccination.

  The Department of Homeland Security also recently claimed that Americans who are unhappy with COVID lockdown measures and mask mandates represent a domestic terror threat.

  Fiscus herself recently complained about vaccine hesitancy amongst white conservatives.

  “Our most hesitant population in Tennessee is the white, male, rural conservatives,” she told PBS. “They feel that if they get the vaccine, then they have placated the left.”

  “Our most hesitant population in Tennessee is the white, male, rural conservatives…They feel that if they get the vaccine, then they have placated the left,” says Tennessee’s ousted vaccine chief, Dr. Michelle Fiscus. https://t.co/TbG6C6QAHd@AmanpourCoPBS #AmanpourPBS pic.twitter.com/fxc3U4jDlR

  — PBS (@PBS) August 11, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 22:45

• China's Top Port Shuttered For Seventh Day As Congestion Crisis Spreads
  China’s Top Port Shuttered For Seventh Day As Congestion Crisis Spreads

  Massive port backlogs continued to build for the seventh day in China at the world’s third-busiest container port. Vessels are being diverted away from Ningbo Meishan Container Terminal due to suspended operations following the COVID-19 Delta variant outbreak. This is having a profound impact on nearby ports in Shanghai and Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. 

  Port congestion in nearby Shanghai and Hong Kong is increasing once again due to the closure of the Meishan terminal at Ningbo port, a major port and industrial hub in east China’s Zhejiang province, which lies south of Shanghai. Last week, a dock worker at the port became infected with the virus and forced the Meishan terminal closure. 

  

  At least a quarter of the port’s capacity has been brought offline, forcing some of the world’s biggest shipping lines to divert vessels to other surrounding ports. 

  Simon Heaney, senior manager of container research at Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd., said Moller-Maersk A/S and CMA CGM SA, the world’s largest shipping line, is skipping Ningbo port after the closure has stretched into the seventh day.  

  The average count of container ships anchored off Xiamen, a port city on China’s southeast coast, across a strait from Taiwan, was 24 on Tuesday, up from 6 at the beginning of the month. Ships anchored off Shanghai and Ningbo ports were more than 141, 60 more than the average from April to August. 

  

  Ningbo is the third-largest container port globally after Shanghai and Singapore, but the busiest container port in the world by volume. 

  

  The consequences of limiting capacity at Ningbo are already apparent and are rippling through surrounding ports, causing massive congestion. 

  The week closure of the terminal results in cargo diversion to other ports, putting a strain on their operations and exacerbating capacity challenges that have led to record shipping rates ten times greater than normal for specific routes.

  Michael Every, Head of Asia-Pacific Financial Markets Research at Rabobank, recently said Delta leads to further disruption to shipping at China’s busiest ports. The virus is impacting even Vietnamese and Thai production. In short, shipping snarls are going to get worse. Anecdotes are of shippers telling clients they will not deliver except at a premium; of smaller firms, and countries, being pushed down the priority list; of ships refusing to pick up goods exports from some locations; and of a structural supply-demand mismatch of sought-after shipping containers.

  “Most ports are already experiencing congestion or delays, so any additional and uncatered for volumes will heap on more pressure,” said Drewry’s Heaney.

  We’ve discussed the latest meltdown down of the trans-pacific supply chains in “Supply-Chains Brace For Collapse: Port Of LA Fears Repeat Of “Shipping Nightmare” As China Locks Down” and “Shippers Frantic After China’s Busiest Port Shuts Container Terminal Due To Covid.” 

  Goldman Sachs has explicitly warned that “port closures or stricter control measures at ports could also put further upward pressure on shipping costs, which are already very high.”

  Increasing port congestions in China is bad news for US importers who may experience longer shipping times and incur higher shipping costs on products that will be passed onto consumers. There’s also the risk of product shortages developing. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 22:25

• Luongo: What If Afghanistan Is More Than Just A Failed War?
  Luongo: What If Afghanistan Is More Than Just A Failed War?

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  The U.S. Empire is in freefall. Good. Afghanistan has reverted to nativist control as expected. The ‘goat-herders’ there remain unconquered. The speed of the Taliban’s takeover doesn’t surprise me because the groundwork for it has been in process for years.

  Only the U.S. State Department under both Mike Pompeo and now Antony Blinken opposed this. If you’re angry this morning you can thank Russian diplomats who started this process in December 2016 by opening up the dialogue between the Taliban and the Asian powers with Pakistan leading the talks.

  I can’t say I’m shedding any tears here except for all the losses on both sides. War is never righteous.

  So, while I’m happy to see this end I am also sad to also see this end for what it is, a planned act of geopolitical vandalism by the Biden Obama Administration to ensure a complete collapse of the U.S. political system.

  We are being liquidated by The Davos Crowd at the precise moment when their Great Reset is at its most vulnerable.

  

  20 Years a Slave to War

  For 20 years we libertarians warned this day would come and now it’s here. Is it a case of better late than never?

  I think that question is irrelevant. The costs are incalculable. They always are.

  You’ll hear a lot of utilitarian nonsense about $2.2 trillion etc. but that’s just the price tag you see. What you don’t see, as Harry Hazlitt reminds us, is where the real costs are — the lost opportunities, the Afghan and American lives spent, the bureaucracy empowered, the capital diverted from productive work — that come with prosecuting endless war for impossible democracy.

  Before Afghanistan was there a Dept. of Homeland Security? The Patriot Act? The Military Commissions Act? A Global War on Terror?

  Are those part of that $2.2 trillion? No. They aren’t. And yet we paid them anyway.

  It wasn’t like America wasn’t already fighting a slew of unwinnable wars of ideology (Drugs, Poverty, Democracy, Individualism) in the pursuit of the neocon/neoliberal ideal of ‘exceptionalism’ which was sold to too many of us as a path to a world without sin. Sadly, too many believed this out of loyalty to a government which cannot do anything except lie.

  Those sins are reflected in the generation of men and women who fought the wrong war for the right reasons, serving their country and their families. Everyone’s heart should ache at the enormity of everyone’s losses.

  We are all poorer today in body, mind and spirit because of this war.

  The late Justin Raimondo spent a lifetime warning us about this:

  Raimondo taught me to understand that foreign policy is just war by other means, and it was the most important part of our national policy. The foreign policy orthodoxy can never be challenged in the public sphere.

  It is verboten.

  Because it is that which drives the Empire and all the perks that come with that for those in charge of it.

  For a generation we’ve sent young men and women into a meat grinder for no real-world reason other than to protect the CIA’s opium trade and have troops ready to attack Iran if the right circumstances arose.

  And those who did so have proven they have no right to speak on this ever again. They are the villains here.

  Every time I take my shoes off and get porno-scanned at the airport I’m reminded of this abject failure, not of policy, but of basic governing philosophy. We Americans (yes even libertarians who warned everyone about this) are culpable for the failures not only in Afghanistan but every other place we use to pressure Iran and, by extension, Russia into submission.

  For what? An outdated geopolitical theory about the world –Makinder Heartland Theory — which those in power cling to like Linus’ blanket to justify their naked bloodlust and avarice?

  

  It’s time to put away these childish things and return to our own centers, our homes.

  I welcome the mimetic collapse for millions in the center of the U.S. political spectrum. They are asking the right question, “What in god’s name was this all for in the end?”

  The anti-interventionist crowd I’m proud to be a part of are getting their schadenfreude on right now but this is the exact wrong time for gloating.

  This is their moment to prove you empathize with our losses so that no one should have to die again for such an ignoble cause as a pipeline or democracy. That the urge to fight for your family, your country is noble but that nobility ends at the shoreline. The message now is we want what you want, to rebuild the bonds of civil society these villains bombed without remorse and threw your children onto the altar of their evil, gutted and threw away.

  You can start by remembering these 2 minutes from Ron Paul in 2009.

  Ron Paul’s #WhatIf speech. pic.twitter.com/1K0ZpYFGsu

  — Being Libertarian (@beinlibertarian) August 15, 2021

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

  The Return of the Tribal King

  This is the first lesson from this failure in Afghanistan that has everyone in a state of shock.

  Humans are loyal to their tribes.

  We spent 20 years building a government and military occupation through destruction, bombing and bribery with the goal of undermining Afghanistan’s tribal structure.

  Not one whit of it remains. And yet, after 20 years of propaganda saying it was working, we’re shocked the moment we announce we’re leaving those same people, who never loved us, reverted to their tribal roots?

  No amount of violence creates that. In fact, it only hardens that which is there. Vague notions of democracy and women’s rights are not compelling.

  If what we offered Afghanistan’s people wanted, it wouldn’t have taken 20 years to build it. As always, the neocons were wrong. The proof is in the 72 hour collapse of the entire edifice.

  The morons in power didn’t believe the goat herders wouldn’t read the tea leaves and pledge allegiance to the next most powerful group, the Taliban?

  This is why I wasn’t surprised by the speed of the collapse of the Afghan government and its 300,000 strong army.

  They took our money and used it to survive the occupation.

  History is replete with examples of quickly deposed Viceroys after their rule breaks down.

  I hope the Taliban are as good as their word to the Russians per the Moscow talks in July. If so, the chaotic period will be as brief as it possibly could be. The further bloodshed minimized and something close to order can emerge. We should all cheer for that.

  When you push a people to the brink of extinction, when you force them back to their basic units of community, in Afghanistan’s example, their tribal identity, you find the limit to which they will retreat.

  Having lost everything else they will always, and without fail, fight for their families to the death. Why would you expect anything else? Wouldn’t you? Nothing else matters if not your family.

  This is why everyone who has gone into Afghanistan over the past 150 years has failed. Only hubris and the kind of solipsism that comes from unlimited perceived power sings a different tune.

  The people who made up Afghanistan’s ‘army’ were faced with a real choice, fight for something they had no loyalty to or submit to the Taliban who now see this as the ultimate victory over the West.

  The Road Back from Serfdom

  That same choice is rapidly being put in front of us here in America, if not the entire West. We are ruled by stateless and foreign occupiers. There is a viceroy sporifying in the White House. There are looters and vandals running wild on Main Street, K Street and Wall Street.

  They have the courts running scared, destroying the rule of law, while Congress has run out of money to bribe us with.

  And it feels like we have precious few friends or even temporary allies. But we have also seen a massive wave of counter moves by those that still believe in such quaint notions as family, community and, yes, tribe.

  In my last article I said it was time to strike at the root of confidence. Not the confidence of the values of our institutions but our confidence in those that rule us.

  The collapse of our Afghanistan adventure is supposed to deeply shame us and humiliate us. The vandals in D.C. are chuckling in their version of Collapsitarian.

  It has done that.

  The media that has been their stenographers and our enemies have been stunned into a rare silence, some even imploring us to self-censor images of their failures.

  The anger over this collapse is just settling in for millions of people now.

  But, we have to move past that shame quickly. Now we must take that humility, which used to be the ethos of pre-empire America, and realize who the architects of this were and remove them from the public discourse. They no longer get to speak in hallowed halls and drone incantations of death and destruction, dressing it up as a righteous cause.

  They no longer get to bamboozle with prepared talking points which are as pathetic as they are deceitful.

  

  Because if we do that then those who enforce the viceroy’s chaos will also face a stark choice. I ask them openly, “Is this order?”

  Is this what you are willing to die to protect?

  Change is coming. You can be a part of it or run for the airports with your mask on and your vaccine QR code at the ready. Davos has tried to break our spirit by breaking our families and our tribes.

  They have us fighting among ourselves while they try to run the table over the flu shot. We think ourselves superior to those Afghan goat-herders. But they still have their identities.

  And now they have their country back.

  I’ve herded goats, it’s a tough job. Far tougher than the work most Americans do today. So, stow the exceptionalism, back away from the shadows projected on the cave wall and reconnect with the light of reality.

  Two weeks ago I implored law enforcement to see things as they were and remind themselves who it is they protect and serve.

  Now is your opportunity to prove to us, in our time of need, that you are our friends and not the enemies of civil society. You have the opportunity to help restore real order. Don’t make the mistakes our soldiers and their families made, sacrificing your lives for people who despise you.

  Wars of all forms are rackets.

  Because the big reveal in Afghanistan is that what happened there can happen here, quickly. Those goat-herders just showed us how to defeat an Empire abroad. Now it’s time to defeat the empire within.

  *  *  *

  Fuck war. Join my Patreon

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 22:05

• Mob Rule? Twitter Rolls Out New Tools For Speedy Reporting Of COVID "Misinformation"
  Mob Rule? Twitter Rolls Out New Tools For Speedy Reporting Of COVID “Misinformation”

  Big Tech and big social media have already tried censorship by committee with Facebook’s oversight board and the decision to permanently bar former President Trump from the platform. Now, they’re circling back to good old fashioned mob rule.

  Twitter on Tuesday announced that it’s preparing to test a new feature that will allow users to report any COVID misinformation they spot on the platform. Users can already flag content they deem inappropriate (including misinformation). This new feature will allow them to specify the type of misinformation (is it political, perhaps COVID related?). All of this information will help twitter’s algorithms justify its removal from the platform more expeditiously, saving more readers from being exposed to harmful information that might lead them to question the official narrative.

  According to the Verge, which got the scoop from Twitter, the new feature will be available starting Tuesday for most users in the US, Australia, and South Korea. Twitter said it expects to test-run it for a few months before deciding to roll it out to “additional markets.“

  

  Twitter insists reports will all be “reviewed” by a human, but in the past social media companies haven’t followed through on promises to review material before banning it, citing the imperative of acting quickly. If something gets enough complaints, or a call-out from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is struggling to combat “misinformation” raised by Sen. Rand Paul about the NIH’s financing of illegal gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of virology, we suspect it will quickly be removed. As the Verge also points out, even the Surgeon General’s office has gotten in on the Biden Administrations’ propaganda push.

  Twitter says whatever data it gleans from the test run will be used to calibrate its algorithms over the next few weeks. The project will focus particularly on tweets that have the potential to go viral.

  The Verge article also mentions the White House has been ramping up its campaign to pressure Big Tech to censor COVID “misinformation” now that the delta variant has arrived. President Biden even went so far as to accuse Facebook of “killing people” by helping to spread misinformation, before White House press secretary walked back the comment after it provoked an uproar from the press (which depends on Facebook for clicks ie money). Oddly, most of this harmful speech focuses on the origins of the virus, not its impact or spread so how it’s contributing to the demise of anyone isn’t exactly clear.

  Sen. Amy Klobuchar has even proposed legislation to threaten Big Tech with the removal of its Section 203 protections if it doesn’t make good on the Democrats’ censorship Demands.

  And with President Biden now dealing with the embarrassment that was the Afghanistan pullout, we suspect this won’t be the last time a major tech firm ramps up its censorship efforts. After all, censorship by algorithm and mob rule would probably be the cheapest strategy since hiring people to review memes and tweets is expensive (even if it would be the perfect job for most millennials).

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 21:45

• "Unprecedented" Police Operation Underway In Sydney To Enforce COVID Restrictions
  “Unprecedented” Police Operation Underway In Sydney To Enforce COVID Restrictions

  Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,

  New South Wales (NSW) Police have issued nearly 600 infringement notices, or fines, on individuals found breaching public health orders on the first day of a three-week crackdown on COVID-19 non-compliance.

  

  Deputy Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said it was “disappointing” that there were issues with compliance even after Australia’s most populous state recorded 452 new COVID infections on Aug. 16.

  “Yesterday, we issued 579 infringement notices which is disappointing. It shows that people are still not complying; 34 people received court attendant notices,” he told the Nine Network.

  According to Lanyon, police conducted 3,800 “welfare checks” to see if residents were following stay-at-home orders.

  One COVID positive man in Sydney’s Fairfield was found to have breached his health order after police arrived at his home and found he wasn’t there. The man was unable to provide a reason for vacating his home.

  The entire state of NSW is now under lockdown to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

  

  Police conduct public health order compliance checks as people arrive at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 15, 2021. (Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

  Under current restrictions, residents are kept within a 5km radius of their homes. They can only leave their homes for essential reasons, including work, shopping, exercise, and to get the vaccine or tested.

  To ensure compliance, authorities have amped up fines from $1,000 to $5,000 for breaches of “self-isolation” rules. Perceived loopholes in public health orders have also been closed, including removing the phrase “recreation” from the few essential reasons that allow residents to leave home.

  Police began spearheading Operation Stay at Home from midnight on Aug. 16, which saw authorities dispatch 1,400 additional highway patrol officers to enforce compliance. Moreover, 800 Australian Defence Force troops will now patrol the city after an additional 500 soldiers were dispatched to the Greater Sydney area, in addition to the 300 already deployed.

  Deputy Commissioner Mick Willing said, “The unprecedented operation will see thousands of police officers from police districts and police area commands across the state working alongside our colleagues from the Australian Defence Force.”

  While Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told reporters these were some of the “strongest powers” in the history of NSW Police.

  NSW Police Minister David Elliott is urging the public to tip-off police as to any family gatherings or visits that breach health orders.

  “I implore members of the community to consider Crime Stoppers as one of the most useful and important weapons in the war against COVID,” Elliott told the Sydney Morning Herald.

  “Do not underestimate its ability to gather vital intelligence for police.”

  NSW State Premier Gladys Berejikilian has set a target of six million vaccinations before restrictions are relaxed.

  

  This picture taken on Aug. 14, 2021, shows a man riding his bike through an empty Cahill expressway in Sydney as Australia’s biggest city implementing tighter Covid-19 restrictions. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

  Peter Kurti, director of the Culture, Prosperity, and Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) said the NSW government was sending “very mixed messages” with its approach.

  “Easing of restrictions has been almost promised as the prize for boosting vaccination rates, and now those rates are going up quickly,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

  “Yet even as people ‘do the right thing,’ with the hope that businesses can re-open, kids can return to school … the police are given dramatically new powers to crackdown on any kind of non-compliance with public health orders.”

  NSW Premier Berejikilian has conceded that reaching zero-COVID transmission in the community was unlikely, yet Kurti noted that the police crackdown suggested otherwise.

  “There is a real danger that as the goal of zero transmission slips ever further out of reach, the police will seek and be given even more powers to use against the locked-down, weary citizens of NSW. What next? Victorian-style curfews?” he said.

  Kurti also warned that encouraging more public tip-offs, or “dobbing-in,” posed a real risk of disrupting community harmony.

  “There is a real risk that by turning neighbour against neighbour, encouraging spying on one another, and using heavy-handed police tactics to enforce compliance with health orders, great long-term damage is being done to Australian society,” he said.

  “A successful, cohesive society, such as we have known until now, depends on high levels of mutual trust and mutual obligation. Once these are undermined and eroded, it will be very hard to repair the damage done.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 21:25

• Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, The Largest Hike In The Program's History
  Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, The Largest Hike In The Program’s History

  Having solved domestic problems like inflation and foreign problems like the complete and total collapse of Afghanistan in minutes after the U.S. withdrew from the country, President Biden is now focused on offering the largest long-term increase in food stamp benefits in the program’s history. 

  The program adds “billions of dollars in costs” to the government, Bloomberg noted in a writeup this weekend. But, in Biden’s defense, what are dollars anymore, after all?

  Benefits are set to rise more than 25% from pre-pandemic levels for some 42 million people enrolled in the program. Average monthly benefits will rise $36 per person, from $121, according to the report. 

  Yet despite the rise, there are still “anti-hunger advocates” that believe it isn’t enough. The Agriculture Department is responsible for the hike in benefits – which can be done without congressional approval – but adjusting the estimated costs of food. The USDA makes a “shopping list” to determine benefits which, when updated, can adjust the amount of benefits issued to recipients.

  

  The basket of food items used for the list was started in 1961 and then updated in 1975. Its latest review was in 2006. 

  Benefits were set to drop prior to the planned update as a result of a September 30 expiration of a 15% boost in pandemic relief. 

  Even with the boost, the USDA budget for a family of four amounts to about $22 in food per day. 

  As Bloomberg notes, food stamps used to be bipartisan common ground, but have since “evolved into a partisan flashpoint”.

  Biden’s plans stand at odds with how President Trump attempted to limit eligibility for the aid. Trump’s attempts were overturned by courts. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 21:05

• Grace To Strengthen Into Hurricane As Storm Eyes Landfall Near Cancun
  Grace To Strengthen Into Hurricane As Storm Eyes Landfall Near Cancun

  As Tropical Depression Fred traverses the US Southeast, forecasters also are closely monitoring two tropical storms. 

  

  National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Tropical Storm Grace to strengthen into a hurricane over the northwest Caribbean and possibly make landfall over the Yucatan Peninsula later on Thursday. 

  Grace is the same storm that dumped between 5 and 10 inches and swept across southern Haiti on Monday, days after the Caribbean island was struck by a deadly 7.2 magnitude quake. 

  A hurricane warning has been issued for a portion of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, including popular tourist destinations, such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, and Tulum. 

  The cone of uncertainty shows Grace could be upgraded to hurricane status Wednesday afternoon and make landfall around Cozumel early Thursday morning. Once over the Yucatan Peninsula, the system will lose momentum but only regain hurricane strength after re-entering the southwest Gulf of Mexico (Bay of Campeche) early Friday. 

  By late Friday or early Saturday, Grace will make its final landfall in northeast Mexico. 

  

  The second tropical storm NHC is watching is Tropical Storm Henri, located about 135 miles south-southeast of Bermuda. The storm is expected to be upgraded to a hurricane Friday afternoon and ride up the US Northeast coast ride through the weekend. 

  

   Earlier this month, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) upgraded the number of named storms to 21 from its prior forecast of 15 in May. 

  NOAA expects at least ten hurricanes and up to five major ones with winds above 100 mph. 

  

  Statistically speaking, the busiest part of the hurricane season has just begun and will peak sometime in mid-September. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 20:45

• Now Deleted Senator Cornyn Tweet Lists "30,000 US Troops In Taiwan" – Evoking Fury From Beijing
  Now Deleted Senator Cornyn Tweet Lists “30,000 US Troops In Taiwan” – Evoking Fury From Beijing

  Senator John Corbyn, who sits on the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, caused a huge stir resulting in angry denunciations in Chinese state media when he tweeted out early on Tuesday via his verified account that the United States has 30,000 American troops stationed in Taiwan.

  The tweet was quickly deleted – all which was later confirmed by Newsweek and other sources. It prompted an article from CCP state mouthpiece Global Times (GT) which warned this is equal to ‘declaring war on China’ if it’s true…

  

  Cornyn’s tweet appeared an attempt to address Biden’s botched Afghan troop withdrawal and chaotic evacuation, still unfolding.

  One nervous political party based in Taiwan, no doubt wary of inviting Chinese military response issued a public statement saying, “There are not 30,000 US troops in Taiwan! The last U.S. soldier left Taiwan on 3 May 1979.” But the Cornyn tweet also of course unleashed speculation over whether Washington is actually “hiding” a real US force presence.

  China’s GT speculated along these lines, while also issuing a severe threat:

  If the tweet is correct, it is a military invasion and occupation of China’s Taiwan and equivalent to the US declaring war on China. China could immediately activate its Anti-Secession Law to destroy and expel US troops in Taiwan and reunify Taiwan militarily, some experts noted. 

  Some others believe the news leaked by the US senator cannot be true because 30,000 is not some small amount that the US Army could hide and not being noticed in the island, and the US has nothing to gain by stationing the US Army in the island. Sacrificing its own interests to satisfy Taiwan separatists also does not fit with US foreign policy, just like the US did in Afghanistan.

  Interestingly, the op-ed characterized it as a “leak” while at the same time casting doubt on its veracity. The publication went so far as to cite “shocked” social media commentators who said “so the US army has a secret division in Taiwan.”

  More likely it appears a simple numerical error in composing the tweet, hence the hasty deletion…

  A now-deleted tweet from Sen. @JohnCornyn has caused quite the ruckus as Chinese-state media is now reporting on his incorrect statement that the U.S. has 30,000 military members in Taiwan. The U.S. left Taiwan in 1979.

  Cornyn deleted the tweet without correction or explanation. pic.twitter.com/Myv8AS8wEd

  — Travis Akers (@travisakers) August 17, 2021

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

  But a big mistake to make from Beijing’s eyes and already on edge US-China relations, no doubt.

  Meanwhile, Chinese media is still on a celebratory mood over the fiasco that is America’s retreat in humiliation from Afghanistan…

  Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan around 5pm local time, Aug 17. Chinese national flag is flying as usual. Ambassador Wang Yu took these pictures personally. pic.twitter.com/rDtdCv4LLO

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) August 17, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 20:25

• FBI Allegedly Told Informant In Whitmer Kidnapping Plot To Lie, Delete Messages
  FBI Allegedly Told Informant In Whitmer Kidnapping Plot To Lie, Delete Messages

  Authored by James Anthony via The Post Millennial (emphasis ours),

  Michael Hills, an attorney for Brandon Caserta, one of six charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has claimed that the FBI told an informant to lie and entrap group members.

  

  Hills claims that an agent from the FBI directed a man named “Dan” to lie to people in the group he had infiltrated and possibly even implicate an innocent third party as part of his duties.

  Hills wrote, “These text messages indicate the FBI was pushing their paid agent to actively recruit people into an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy,” according to Just The News.

  The transcript submitted by Hills reads:

  “Counsel has found further text messages between [FBI special agent] Impola and Dan indicating Dan should destroy his text messages and instruct[ing] Dan to lie and accuse an innocent 3rd party of being a federal agent spy to the founder of Wolverine Watchmen.”

  Then the response from “Dan”:

  “Copy. Best thing to do is deny and accuse somebody else like Trent.”

  “The FBI is instructing a paid FBI informant to lie and paint an innocent citizen as an undercover federal agent to a man they claim is the head of a domestic terrorist organization, who they claim is paranoid about being infiltrated by the feds, who they claim has bragged about tossing a Molotov cocktail into a police officer’s house,” Hills continued.

  “This behavior, evidenced by the telephonic communication between FBI handler Impola and Dan, casts a dark shadow over the credibility of this investigation and demonstrates the need for immediate disclosure as demanded.”

  Hills has also asked for a complete record of all communications between “Dan” and everybody in the FBI.

  Famous podcaster Dinesh D’Souza has mentioned on one more occasion how, in his opinion, the FBI’s heavy-handed and deceitful tactics often go way over the line of what should be permitted in the course of a criminal investigation.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 20:05

• USDA Crop Tour Warns: Megadrought Impacting Corn And Soybean Yields
  USDA Crop Tour Warns: Megadrought Impacting Corn And Soybean Yields

  Crop conditions for soybeans and corn have worsened in the latest crop tour findings in the US which confirmed hot and dry weather this summer has taken a toll on yields

  According to the U.S.Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest crop tour, soybeans in good to excellent condition dropped three percentage points from the previous week to 57%. The figure missed analyst estimates of 60%. 

  USDA found that corn in the same condition fell two percentage points to 62%, missing expectations of 64%. 

  The data is suggestive that this summer’s megadrought and back-to-back heat waves across the northwest of the U.S. and Midwest are taking a toll on crops. The latest drought monitor data shows the US West continues to experience a severe drought. 

  

  Last week, the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report showed declining grain supplies would keep food inflation elevated. 

  The closely watched supply and demand report slashed estimates for corn yields and stockpiles. World inventories for wheat were reported near a five-year low. 

  Soybeans and corn in Chicago have been rising for the last several days post WASDE. 

  

  Wheat in Chicago is up for a fourth day and trading near a decade high, after the WASDE report showed global inventories were near a five-year low

  

  The Bloomberg Grains Index is up 81% since the beginning of the virus pandemic. 

  

  Diminished crop yields and inventories due to adverse weather conditions mean food inflation will be sticking around well through 2022. 

  … and what does this all mean for the average consumer? Well, grocery prices are expected to surge later this year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 19:45

• Carafano: Joe Biden's Afghanistan Speech Proves He Will Be President Chaos
  Carafano: Joe Biden’s Afghanistan Speech Proves He Will Be President Chaos

  Authored by James Jay Carafano via 19fortyfive.com,

  Before President Joe Biden addressed the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan, someone should have reminded him of the adage “When you are in a deep hole, stop digging.” Because on top of his strategic failures in Afghanistan, he has now made a massive political misjudgment.

  

  Here is the problem with a White House rebuttal that just blames anybody other than Biden for the collapse in Afghanistan: Every claim can be fact-checked. Military and intelligence leaders can be asked to testify. Documents can be reviewed. None of this will make the administration or Biden’s abrupt and irresponsible decision look good.

  Remember when certain politicians found out that just blaming President George W. Bush for 9/11 and believing Michael Moore’s documentary didn’t work so well after the September 11 commission started calling witnesses and showing there was plenty of blame to go around for both Republicans and Democrats? Likewise, the Biden team will discover that truth finds a way, and a cover-up won’t cut it.

  Biden’s speech was a categorical disaster. His remarks were the equivalent of President Reagan claiming that Iran-Contra never happened. Of course, Reagan didn’t do that. He took responsibility. He fired people. He tried to be as transparent as possible and to cooperate with the subsequent investigation. He structured the crisis so he could move on and govern.

  By denying responsibility, Biden solidly made his decision-making the issue. He will have to live with the tsunami of inquiry that will follow.

  Now that Biden has put himself in the cross-hairs, he doesn’t have a lot of options. He can’t easily shift responsibility and fire people or have them resign. Anyone he tries to throw under the bus might well turn and point out the obvious — it was the president’s call to run away, not theirs.

  Biden will have to keep the team members he has. That’s also a problem because they’re terrible. This is not like the Jimmy Carter presidency, where inexperienced advisors made rookie mistakes. This is an experienced team of Obama veterans.

  Unfortunately, they are making the exact same kinds of missteps they made under Obama, ignoring risks, underestimating enemies, and being unprepared for the whirlwind that followed. The crisis mismanagement we are seeing play out in real-time today looks like an instant replay of Iraq, Syria, and Libya—where we got ISIS, a genocide, and a dead ambassador as payback for bad calls by the White House.

  Sure, Biden can now go back to his vacation, but the nightmare scenario will be waiting when he returns to the Oval Office. The failure in Afghanistan won’t look any better then. He will face massive political blowback. And he will have a demoralized, defeated team that doesn’t know how to turn defeat into victory.

  This is fixable. Biden could admit he screwed up and immediately commit to fixing his failures. He could start by dealing with the very real possibility of a near-term resurgence of transnational terrorism. There are demonstrable steps he can take right now to show he is getting ahead of the next 9/ll — like instead of demonizing Trump supporters, have the Homeland Security Department focus on its real job of hunting real terrorists.

  Unfortunately, the odds of a Biden presidency opting to fix problems instead of just shifting blame and dodging responsibility are pretty low. Months after making disastrous decisions triggering the worst border crisis in modern history, the Biden team is still in denial. The president has still not fixed THAT problem. In fact, the Oval Office has simply been a bystander while the border problem gets bigger.

  The White House may have thought abandoning Afghanistan was low-risk. Biden may have thought Americans didn’t care — but he forgot that Americans also don’t like to be lied to. They don’t like to be humiliated. They don’t like to have their safety and security jeopardized.

  Maybe they didn’t care before Biden’s folly, but they care now. If Biden does not address their concerns and deliver real fixes to the real mayhem he has created, they may conclude he’s just not up to the job.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 19:25

• CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Admits "There's No Basis To Prosecute" Trump
  CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Admits “There’s No Basis To Prosecute” Trump

  First, CNN was actually critical of the job President Joe Biden was (wasn’t) doing related to the collapse of Afghanistan. Now, the network has offered up an unlikely ally for former President Trump in Jeffrey Toobin, who has called on Attorney General Merrick Garland not to pursue charges against Trump.

  Toobin penned an op-ed that was published on CNN this week. It was then picked up by Mediaite. 

  In it, he writes:

  “It’s one thing to describe the former president’s behavior as disgraceful and wrong — and I’d share that view — but quite another to argue that Trump should be criminally prosecuted. Based on the available evidence, there is no basis to prosecute Trump and little reason even to open a criminal investigation.”

  Toobin defended Trump against the Insurrection Act, claiming that there are “two insurmountable problems” with the argument. The Act prohibits anyone who “incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.”

  Toobin argued:

  “First, Trump’s words were ambiguous. He urged a march to Capitol Hill, but he also discouraged violence,” Toobin contended.

  “Second, he could argue that he was seeking to uphold the rule of law by obtaining an accurate count of the election results, not seeking to rebel against the authority of the United States.”

  

  He also said Trump couldn’t be charged with claims of election fraud:

  “Trump would assert that he was seeking to uphold the law, not violate it, and prosecutors would have a hard time proving otherwise.”

  Toobin continued:

  “He had a First Amendment right to protest the count of the electoral vote, as did the protesters. It could be said that Trump encouraged the protesters to ‘impede’ the electoral count, but he would argue that he was doing so to make the count more accurate, not more corrupt.”

  Toobin also shot down claims that Trump should be criminally charged under the Hatch Act, stating: “Notwithstanding the Hatch Act, presidents and their staffs have engaged in partisan political activities since the birth of the Republic. And Trump could argue that he was not ordering [Jeffrey] Rosen to engage in political activity, but rather to enforce the law. Again, this criminal provision has rarely been invoked, and it seems unfair to raise it in connection with Trump’s dealings with his acting attorney general.”

  Finally, he concluded: “Investigations of presidential wrongdoing, by Congress and others, are wise and even necessary. But actual prosecutions are not, and Donald Trump should be the beneficiary of this tradition, even if he himself would surely not offer such grace to others.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 19:05

• Free Society Dwindles As Permission Requirements Grow
  Free Society Dwindles As Permission Requirements Grow

  Authored by J.D.Tuccille via Reason.com,

  Many things once done as a matter of right are now privileges to be dispensed or withheld by those in power…

  

  The COVID-19 pandemic has been a bonanza for government officials, allowing them to extend authority that they then exercise with relatively little oversight or restraint in ways that would have been inconceivable in the past. It has accelerated the transformation of previously free societies into permission-based states, where things once done as a matter of right are now considered privileges to be dispensed or withheld by those in power. Case in point: the Biden administration reportedly discussed making travel within the United States conditional on vaccination status but is holding back out of fear that the public has yet to be sufficiently softened-up for such an intrusive restriction.

  “While more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment,” the Associated Press reported last week after discussions with administration insiders.

  “That’s not to say they won’t be implemented in the future, as public opinion continues to shift toward requiring vaccinations as a means to restore normalcy.”

  The AP emphasizes that “White House officials say Biden wanted to initially operate with restraint to ensure that Americans were ready for the strong-arming from the federal government.” The piece is unusually blunt in the glimpse it offers of an administration that embraces coercive measures to achieve its goals but is trying to co-opt businesses and localities as its proxies until Americans are more ready to do as they’re told.

  This isn’t the first time that conditions have been imposed on travel and other activities in the name of public health during the pandemic. The administration had already announced that it plans to require foreigners traveling to the United States to be vaccinated, a restriction likely to excite little opposition in an age when border controls are popular and other countries have similar rules. Before that, states and localities imposed testing and quarantine rules on visitors and even travel bans, though most were haphazardly enforced. Hawaii, surrounded as it is by a natural moat, has most successfully imposed a masked-and-gowned version of the iron curtain. But that’s just evidence of how far we’ve already gone down the path of turning travel from the right it once was into a privilege. 

  “As a general rule, until 1941, U.S. citizens were not required to have a passport for travel abroad,” reports the National Archives.

  “Airline travel in the early 1960s was still fairly carefree: If you had a ticket, you could board a plane,” the Los Angeles Times noted in 2014.

  Invoking security concerns, officialdom imposed documentation requirements and subjected people and their luggage to the extensive screenings with which we’re now all too familiar. Starting in 2009, Americans had to show passports to be readmitted to the United States on their return from journeys beyond the border. So, the federal government making interstate travel a privilege granted only to those in its good graces would be just one more step down a path traveled before—but a big one.

  Note that this isn’t about the wisdom of getting vaccinated; let’s stipulate that vaccination for COVID-19 is effective and generally a good idea. But traveling within the country has historically been treated as a right to be freely exercised without the need to seek permission from the government, no matter how wisely (improbable though that is) officials exercise their discretion.

  “Freedom of movement within and between states is constitutionally protected,” Georgetown Law’s Meryl Justin Chertoff noted last year after states and localities began imposing travel restrictions.

  “The right of Americans to travel interstate in the U.S. has never been substantially judicially questioned or limited.”

  But Chertoff acknowledged that governments tend to enjoy more leeway in exercising authority when they invoke the words “public health,” and civil liberties advocates often let them get away with it.

  It’s not just the freedom of travel at risk of becoming a conditional privilege.

  “Through vaccination requirements, employers have the power to help end the pandemic,” Jeff Zients, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, said last Thursday as part of the effort to get employers, businesses, and local governments to impose rules that Americans aren’t yet prepared to accept from Washington, D.C. Localities including New York City and San Francisco have obliged by making many indoors activities, such as dining in restaurants, attending performances, and exercising in gyms, conditional on vaccination.

  Again, the issue isn’t the effectiveness of vaccination or of other public health measures. The concern is the conversion of everyday activities like travel, work, and shopping into privileges to be permitted only to those who please the powers that be.

  To be certain, the permission society isn’t new. Roughly 30 percent of workers in the United States now need a license—permission from the government—to do their jobs. That permission can be revoked for reasons having nothing to do with work responsibilities, meaning that it becomes just another tool for controlling people by denying them the ability to make a living unless they submit.

  “States must adopt laws that allow them to suspend driver’s, professional, occupational, and recreational licenses of individuals who owe overdue support,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services, citing the requirements of a law intended to ensure payment of child support. And who could object to making parents meet their obligations to their kids? But that’s how rights become privileges, one ostensibly well-intentioned incursion at a time.

  If the Biden administration does eventually require proof of vaccination as a condition for traveling within the United States, it will be moving just a little bit further down the path to making this country one based not on individual rights exercised at will, but on permission dispensed from above. With every step, we lose a little more of our freedom to do as we please and find ourselves stuck with the crumbs of whatever we’re allowed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 08/17/2021 – 18:45

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