• The Problem Is Not Just Xi Jinping; It Is Communism
  The Problem Is Not Just Xi Jinping; It Is Communism

  Authored by David Flint, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

  To communists and their ilk, the truth is whatever line the party is now promulgating – that is, until it is superseded by a new line.

  

  This is the theme of George Orwell’s great novel, 1984. The protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, constantly amending historical records to be consistent with whatever is the current party line. In particular, those liquidated are made non-persons, just as though they never existed.

  The truth has been packaged precisely this way in Communist China continuously and consistently since 1949, just as it was from the birth to the collapse of the USSR. Accordingly, when Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, was executed by his successors, subscribers to the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia would receive instructions to replace pages eulogising Beria with additional material on the Behring Sea. Beria was made a non-person.

  But the fact is that the enemy of each and every communist regime is truth itself, as are the other values and principles of civilised society, especially the proposition at the very core of the Declaration of Independence. This is not just American. According to Winston Churchill, following the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, the Declaration is the third great title deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking people, the core of the West, are founded.

  

  “Declaration of Independence,” 1819, by John Trumbull. (Public domain)

  It states the fundamental principle that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, a principle which is inconsistent with communism, whoever is the paramount ruler.

  The latter is important. What we may call the “Communist China Lobby”—a powerful pressure group in the United States and many democratic nations—pretends Chinese leader Xi Jinping to be the sole source of present troubles with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

  Not so, the source of this evil is communism. Just as an egregious illustration, the wicked multi-billion-dollar trade in the organs of healthy people dates from well before Xi’s rise.

  The fact is that communism is and has always been alien to civilisation. We cannot rely on communist regimes to behave appropriately or honourably. We can place no trust in their word, even in the most elementary matters.

  Take, for example, the statistics on COVID-19 for which the CCP is responsible.

  We are told the deaths from the virus in Australia, a country of 26 million, will soon exceed those from Communist China, a country with a population of over 1.4 billion.

  Clearly, no wise person would ever take either their statistics, or their word, seriously, a counsel which curiously does not seem to apply whenever the subject is the reduction of CO2 emissions.

  Equally, any wise person must expect a hostile reaction when they demand a truth that will expose a matter that could embarrass the communists, as occurred when Australia dared to propose an international investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

  Australia’s only mistake was to allow an investigation to be led by the World Health Organisation, an organisation under the heavy influence of the CCP.

  

  A sign of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 24, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

  Australia should have proposed to the former U.S. administration to establish an ad hoc international tribunal to investigate its origins, assess liability and, if appropriate, damages.

  Were damages awarded and not paid, legislation could authorise their recoupment from assets in Australia under the ultimate control of the guilty state—the Port of Darwin comes to mind.

  As Australia came under increasing and unlawful economic punishment from Beijing in response to its calls for an investigation, there is little more the CCP could do if we were to seize such assets to satisfy a lawful international judgement. At least a range of premium and strategic assets could be recovered.

  The point is that not only can we not rely on the information or the truth from this regime, but it also controls a territory where there is no rule of law, no human rights, and no protection of workers’ rights.

  This did not come with Xi; it has prevailed since 1949.

  With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of European communist dictatorships, the CCP’s abiding object has been to avoid a similar fate.

  Then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping drew on former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) which had saved the Soviet Union from early collapse in 1922. He followed Lenin and moved the CCP towards a “socialist market economy” under “communism with Chinese characteristics.”

  Lenin never intended the NEP to be permanent. Words attributed to him illustrate the communist’s real intentions: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” Which they did, with Stalin reversing direction, socialising the economy, forcing collectivisation on the class enemy, including being forced to farm Kulaks, and brutally using famine to destroy them.

  Deng Xiaoping had more to offer the West than Lenin. It was something that dazzled Western elites, a market with a fifth of the world’s population.

  

  Containers are seen at the Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shanghai, China, on Oct. 19, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

  Bill Clinton gambled on welcoming the People’s Republic of China into the World Trade Organisation in 2000. Instead, he allowed access without the most elementary safeguard to ensure they could not do what communists do: ignore the rules, steal, or forcibly extract something far greater—than even the US$85 billion of modern weaponry recently gifted to the Taliban—America’s vast portfolio of intellectual property.

  From Europe to Australia, Western leaders and big businesses have blindly followed suit.

  As a result, these elites saved a tyrannical regime from the fate Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher delivered to the Soviet Union.

  They betrayed American, Australian, and Western workers by closing and transferring their industries to China.

  They betrayed Chinese workers by indecently profiting from the suppression of their fundamental rights.

  Yet, these same elites were too often taken for a ride by the communists who cheated them at every turn and allowed their nations to become dependent on the CCP.

  Only under the former U.S. administration was this trend briefly reversed.

  Now, from America to Europe and Australia, that same Communist China Lobby, who want Western industry back in China, are trying desperately to restore this dependency. They have a uniform justification for this. The problem, they say, is temporary. The problem will pass when paramount leader Xi passes.

  But that is not so.

  The problem is not whoever is the paramount leader. The problem is, as it has always been, that evil “plague bacillus,” which is communism.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 00:00

• The Best Selling Vehicles In America, By State
  The Best Selling Vehicles In America, By State

  From Ford trucks in the Midwest to Toyotas on the coasts, the best selling vehicles in America reveal a lot about the country.

  Compared to other countries with fewer highways or narrower roads, the U.S. is very much a truck-friendly country. Across the U.S., the most sold vehicle in 2019 was the Ford F-Series of trucks, primarily the F-150.

  As the home of the world’s pioneer automotive manufacturers, including Ford and GM, consumers primarily purchase local brands. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach notes, that hasn’t stopped Toyota, the largest foreign manufacturer in the world, from also gaining a foothold.

  This graphic uses 2020 sales data from automotive information resource Edmunds.com, breaking down the best selling vehicles in each state through new vehicle retail registration.

  

  What Are the Best Selling Vehicles in Each State?

  Despite a slowdown in vehicle sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a global chip shortage, Americans still bought plenty of trucks last year.

  In fact, 48 out of the 50 states had a truck or SUV as the top selling vehicle in 2020—and most states actually had trucks taking all of the top three spots. The only two with a car topping the leaderboard were California and Florida.

  

  The Ford F-Series was the clear leader in sales, primarily in the Midwest. With a top-selling spot in 60% of U.S. states, the F-Series was the best selling vehicle in America.

  Combined with the Chevrolet Silverado and Ram 1500-3500 series, the big three American truck brands accounted for 73% of the top three selling vehicles across all American states and territories.

  Japanese Automakers in the Mix

  Though American manufacturers had the best selling cars in most states, they had some overseas competition.

  Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda had the top-selling vehicle in 11 states (and D.C.). They primarily captured car sales along the coastlines, including in California, Florida, New York and Washington, some of the most populated states in the country.

  

  Despite many cars being available for sale in the U.S., only seven manufacturers made the top-selling vehicles list in 2020.

  • Ford

  • Ram

  • Chevrolet

  • Toyota

  • Honda

  • Subaru

  • Jeep

  With the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic yet to be reflected in the sales, and electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla on the rise, how will the best selling vehicles in America evolve?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 23:30

• The Importance Of Dune, Part 1: The Sleeper Has Awakened
  The Importance Of Dune, Part 1: The Sleeper Has Awakened

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

  Last year I wrote two editorials for the Newsletter in sympathy with Denis Villeneuve’s film, Dune, originally suppose to come out last December. This one was published in the September 2020 issue when the election was the dominant issue of the day. The movie is now out but won’t come to the U.S. next month and I think it appropriate to publish it now with everything happening in the world today. It’s been edited slightly to bring it up to date.

  

  There are few things I’m more looking forward to than the first of two films by Denis Villeneuve bringing to life Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel Dune.  And it isn’t just because I’m a big fan of the book, which is an intricately-plotted treatise on religion, gender, power and politics, but because its ideas are perfected suited for this period of history.

  Because this story, unlike a lot of recent blockbuster films, should scare the pants off our political leaders as they will see themselves onscreen in their various guises.  And that fear may be enough to waken the sleeper, in the parlance of the book, the silent majority now staring at a bleak future post COVID-19.

  In the hands of Denis Villeneuve, a film-maker perfectly suited to the material, we could be looking at a movie which becomes a turning point in the culture war.   Villeneuve is one of the few people working today who can marry bold visual storytelling with complex narrative while not browbeating his audience. Watch The Arrival, Sicario or, my favorite, Blade Runner 2049 (see my original thoughts/review here) to get a sense of what we’re in store for. 

  He reminds me of Ridley Scott at his best, which Scott hasn’t been at for decades.

  Dune is the story of a space-faring humanity at a time of crisis whose entire civilization, thanks to previous periods of barbarism, is dependent on a single commodity, the spice.  And spice can only be found on the planet Arrakis, or Dune. 

  The metaphor to oil is obvious since Herbert published the book in 1965.

  Dune is a pastiche of a number of genres, a classic hero’s journey from adolescence to adulthood for its protagonist, Paul Atreides, told in ways both intensely intimate but keenly aware of these events’ historical importance.  It is an intense political drama with six Houses vying for control against a rising religious jihad against their rule.

  Looking over our world as we approach the end of 2020 [sic], Dune is especially relevant because it shows us exactly where we are in the cycle of empires.  It will be hard for people to miss these things when they see the movie.  

  The film will make very clear, if told properly, what happens when the concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many becomes toxic.  The corruption of the Houses, their plotting and scheming against each other for control of the spice drives all the external action.

  It’s a deep look at a society coming unglued at the seams, where the political structures, in place for centuries, have become sclerotic.   But it is also a linear narrative that if stripped of its excesses tells a streamlined story about the rise of a new world on the ashes of the old one. 

  It’s a story about a desert world which is the source of life itself and whose unforgiving environment forges mere men into forces of nature.

  Because, ultimately, Dune is about the limits of power and how it corrupts everyone.  It reminds all of us that fear is what drives men to make desperate plays to maintain power.  Told mostly through Paul’s eyes as he grows into the man who will lead a revolution, it is the growing unrest of the people which forces the hand of the Emperor to set things in motion and who exists as a vague threat to come in an crush anyone stupid enough to cross him and his near unlimited power.  

  And yet he too, like every other tyrant, falls.

  After years of Dune languishing as a nearly dead property Villeneuve’s film will have to answer the most important question if it wants to succeed, “Why Now?”  It isn’t just because someone in Hollywood had the rights to it.  Those rights were tied up by Herbert’s son who had managed them into near irrelevance.  That’s how the project gets started.   

  They tried to tell this story back in the eighties with David Lynch’s unfortunate film, but it was the wrong time. 

  There was no resonance with current events during the height of the Reagan reboot of America when optimism was rampant and Ridley Scott had failed not two years earlier with Blade Runner, now a classic but hated on release.

  That’s the big fear they should have going into release.  And conquering fear is the key thing Paul must do to survive the task in front of him.  His story should become ours as we enter 2022 and, if that happens, that should scare the would-be tyrants of this world to death.

  *  *  *

  Since this was written a number of things have happened that validate my fears then. It was a call to action for us to begin hardening ourselves against a bleak and terrifying future. It was also a warning for us not to put our faith in the institutions we think protect us from them.

  Back then I was worried about the sequel to the Coronapocalypse, now confirmed for me as the rollout of the vaccines against COVID-9/11, as much as Trump being deposed through obvious and under-handed means. It’s why I was so adamant about the election being the inflection point for the world.

  Everything came down to it. It was a singularity where one world ended and another began. The sleeper awakened that day and those that didn’t see it or refused to see its importance are now complicit in the violence that has come since and is yet to come.

  The collapsing narrative surrounding the COVID-9/11 vaccines, their efficacy and honestly the dangers they represent to those in low-risk cohorts, it makes sense to see the headlines chocked to the gills with announcements of escalating stakes for us, the unwashed, unclean, unvaxxed and ungovernable.

  Biden is threatening dishonorable discharges for U.S. military. From what I’ve heard from military men I’ve talked to, that would be 90% of them.

  New York governor, Kathy Hochul is threatening medical workers with replacement by ‘foreigners’ if they don’t get the jab. It’s like she thinks her job gives her that power?

  In Australia they are now just shooting protestors in public.

  Tomorrow I will publish the companion piece, written after the stolen election. It’s called The Jihad. Tomorrow is the day the results of the election audit in Arizona are released. What happens if it proves fraud and Sen. Mark Kelly is recalled due to a decertified election?

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 23:00

• "Not Satisfied" – USAF Signals Hypersonic Weapon Program In Limbo
  “Not Satisfied” – USAF Signals Hypersonic Weapon Program In Limbo

  Hypersonic weapon development is among the highest priorities of global superpowers as a great-power competition rages between the US and China. 

  China is rapidly developing hypersonic weapon systems and has fielded some of these superfast weapons to its southeast coast and or militarized islands in the South China Sea – challenging the US’ air dominance in the Indo-Pacific region. 

  

  The problem is that for decades the US has been lightyears ahead of other countries in developing and fielding anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles but, for some reason, is having difficulty fielding hypersonic weapons. 

  On Monday, at the annual Air Force Association Air, Space & Cyber conference, USAF Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters that he is reassessing the USAF’s hypersonic program, according to Breaking Defense. “I’m not satisfied with the pace,” he said. “We’re making some progress on the technology; I would like to see it be better.”

  Kendall said he is “not satisfied with the degree to which we have figured out what we need for hypersonics — of what type, for what missions.”

  “The target set that we would want to address, and why hypersonics are the most cost-effective weapons for the US, I think it’s still, to me, somewhat of a question mark,” he said. “I haven’t seen all the analysis that’s been done to justify the current program.”

  Gen. Arnold Bunch, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, told reporters on Tuesday that “there are certain aspects, attributes that [have] not performed the way we need to,” while acknowledging the hypersonic program has hit obstacles. 

  “We are going to have to continue to put our focus there, and we will continue to take what are called educated risks as we move forward so that we can get a capability out in the field as quickly as possible,” Bunch said.

  While China and Russia have fielded hypersonic weapons, the US has not and recently experienced a failed air-launch test of a missile that can travel at Mach 5, or about 3,836 mph. 

  In terms of funding, the push for hypersonic weapon development occurred under the Trump administration and has continued under Biden. 

  

  America is trying to reassert its air dominance worldwide, but it’s having trouble developing hypersonic weapons as other superpowers soar ahead. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 22:30

• Rare Solar Superstorm Could Prompt ‘Internet Apocalypse’ Lasting Several Months: Study
  Rare Solar Superstorm Could Prompt ‘Internet Apocalypse’ Lasting Several Months: Study

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The “black swan” event of a solar superstorm directed at earth could prompt an “internet apocalypse” across the entire globe that could last for several months, new research (pdf) has warned.

  University of California Irvine assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi presented the new research, titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” last month during the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual conference for their Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM).

  “One of the greatest dangers facing the internet with the potential for global impact is a powerful solar superstorm,” Jyothi wrote in the new research paper.

  “Although humans are protected from these storms by the earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, they can cause significant damage to man-made infrastructure. The scientific community is generally aware of this threat with modeling efforts and precautionary measures being taken, particularly in the context of power grids. However, the networking community has largely overlooked this risk during the design of the network topology and geo-distributed systems such as DNS and data centers,” he continued.

  A solar storm, also known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), occurs when a large mass of plasma and highly magnetized particles violently eject from the sun. Large CME’s can contain up to a billion tons of matter and can get accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light.

  When the earth is in the direct path of a CME, these magnetized and charged solar particles interact with the earth’s magnetic field, producing geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) that can potentially disrupt communication satellites and long-distance cables that provide the world with the internet.

  According to Jyothi’s research, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, and networking cables are the most vulnerable to the impacts of GIC’s, while submarine cables, which span hundreds or thousands of kilometres, are even more vulnerable than land cables, due to their larger lengths.

  Owing to a lack of real world data on the impacts of GIC’s on these submarine cables, scientists still don’t know how long it would take to repair them if such an event were to occur, and—just like natural disasters such as earthquakes—CME’s are extremely difficult for scientists to predict.

  The research noted that the “distribution of internet infrastructure is skewed when compared to the distribution of internet users,” and high-latitude climates are more at risk if a solar storm were to occur.

  

  

  “The U.S. is one of the most vulnerable locations with a high risk of disconnection from Europe during extreme solar events. Intra-continental connections in Europe are at a lower risk due to the presence of a large number of shorter land and submarine cables interconnecting the continent,” the report notes.

  Meanwhile, if a severe solar superstorm were to occur, Singapore would maintain good connectivity to neighboring countries, while cities in China would be more likely to lose connectivity than India because China connects to much longer cables.

  Australia, New Zealand, and other island countries in the region would be at high risk of losing most of their long-distance connections.

  The research warns that a collapse of the internet—even one lasting a few minutes—could cause devastating losses to service providers and damage cyber-physical systems. The economic impact of an internet disruption for a day in the United States is estimated to be over $7 billion.

  While the likelihood of a solar superstorm hitting earth is rare—with astrophysicists noting that the probability of extreme space weather events that directly impact earth occurring are between 1.6 percent to 12 percent per decade—they can still happen.

  In 1921, a solar storm, driven by a series of coronal mass ejections, triggered extensive power outages and caused damage to telephone and telegraph systems associated with railroad systems in New York City and across the state.

  Years later, in 1989, a solar storm bought an electrical power blackout to the entire province of Quebec, Canada.

  “Although we have sentinel spacecraft that can issue early warnings of CMEs providing at least 13 hours of lead time, our defenses against GIC are limited. Hence, we need to prepare the infrastructure for an eventual catastrophe to facilitate efficient disaster management,” Jyothi said.

  The research pointed to “increasing capacity in lower latitudes for improved resiliency during solar storms,” and having “mechanisms for electrically isolating cables connecting to higher latitudes from the rest” at submarine cable landing points to prevent large-scale failures.

  The paper has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

  Katabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She covers news and business for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 22:00

• Iran Demands IAEA Closely Monitor Nuclear Fuel For Australia Submarines In Wake Of AUKUS Deal
  Iran Demands IAEA Closely Monitor Nuclear Fuel For Australia Submarines In Wake Of AUKUS Deal

  Iran is calling out a double standard when it comes to application of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) restrictions and monitoring of countries’ nuclear development and activity, joining China in condemning the US-UK-Australia defense pact recently unveiled.

  Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA said this week amid all the headlines and controversy over the AUKUS deal which will see the US transfer nuclear submarine technology to Australia that the IAEA must have access to all nuclear fuel to be used for Australia’s future submarines when the terms of the AUKUS are put in motion. 

  

  Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi told the international body this this must happen in a timely manner, according to Iranian state media.

  “For Australia, reaching safeguards arrangement with the Agency is of essence. The Agency should have access to the HEU [highly-enriched uranium] there at agreed and reasonable time and no excuse is accepted in this regard,” Gharibabadi stated. “The Agency should keep the BoG [Board of Governors] informed on this important [issue] regularly.”

  He reminded the monitoring body that nuclear-powered submarines require fuel to be enriched to above 90% purity, which is far above Iran’s current enrichment of up to 60%, which Gharibabadi claimed is only “for humanitarian and peaceful purposes.”

  The official further slammed the US, UK and Australia for what he called the “vulgar facade of double standard and hypocrisy”. This after Chinese officials have been charging Australia with violating its policy of having a nuclear free zone according to it’s decades ago signing on to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

  The Iranians are now echoing these charges, saying Washington will transfer the nuclear technology “under the pretext of the fabricated so-called strategic concerns.”

  Tehran has of late been in a war of words with the IAEA over monitoring nuclear sites inside the Islamic Republic. Earlier this month an agreement was belatedly reached to keep cameras on which remotely monitor sensitive sites to ensure Iran doesn’t ramp up uranium enrichment or other activities further.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 21:30

• Democrats In Congress Try To Abolish Space Force
  Democrats In Congress Try To Abolish Space Force

  Authored by Li Hai via The Epoch Times,

  Some Democrats in Congress are trying to abolish the Space Force at a time when China and Russia have been doubling down on expanding their military capabilities in space.

  

  On Wednesday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) introduced a bill named No Militarization of Space Act, trying to abolish the Space Force, a new military service branch created under former President Donald Trump.

  “The long-standing neutrality of space has fostered a competitive, non-militarized age of exploration every nation and generation has valued since the first days of space travel,” Huffman said in a statement.

  “But since its creation under the former Trump administration, the Space Force has threatened longstanding peace and flagrantly wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.”

  The Space Force was established in December 2019 and has been deemed by some to be one of Trump’s signature achievements. But its origin can be traced back to the beginning of the Cold War.

  “Our mission must be to support the American people, not spend billions on the militarization of space,” Huffman added.

  Huffman’s bill was co-sponsored by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Jesús García (D-Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

  The bill comes as Congress moves to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that authorizes funding for the military.

  Huffman’s bill is unlikely to succeed because the new military branch was established upon the National Defense Authorization Act (FY 2020), which received bipartisan support at the time. To cancel the Space Force, new legislation would need to be enacted.

  China and Russia have been trying to advance their military capabilities in space for years.

  China’s communist regime “has devoted significant resources to growing all aspects of its space program, from military space applications to civil applications,” reads the Pentagon’s latest annual report to Congress.

  In May, China placed a rover on Mars, becoming the second nation after the United States to do so, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. China has continued to develop its space station and explore the moon.

  According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Secure World Foundation reports, Russia performed multiple anti-satellite weapons tests in 2020. China and India have tested their own military capabilities in orbit in past years, too, Axios reported.

  On Monday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that the threats presented by China continue to grow, including those from space.

  On Tuesday, Gen. John “Jay” Raymon, chief of Space Operations, talked about the anti-satellite weapons China and Russia have owned.

  China has deployed satellites with a robotic arm that could be used to “grab” other satellites. Russia has a co-orbital, anti-satellite weapon that “is specifically designed to kill U.S. satellites,” Raymon said during the same conference.

  President Joe Biden hasn’t publicly shared his views on the future of the Space Force. His press secretary Jen Psaki dodged such a question in February, weeks after Biden took office.

  However, she took to Twitter to say that “we look forward to the continuing work of Space Force,” signaling that Biden had no intention to change Space Force’s status at the time.

  “We look forward to the continuing work of Space Force and invite the members of the team to come visit us in the briefing room anytime to share an update on their important work,” Psaki wrote.

  The Epoch Times has contacted the White House and the Space Force for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 21:00

• Hedge Fund Net Leverage At All Time Highs As No Dips Are Sold
  Hedge Fund Net Leverage At All Time Highs As No Dips Are Sold

  Two weeks ago, JPMorgan’s prime desk wrote about 2 main themes among the hedge fund community: elevated leverage levels and low exposure to cyclicals/value that tend to do better when rates are rising. However, over the past week, both of these things have come into sharper focus as US equities suffered one of their larger pullbacks in a while and rates globally jumped higher towards the end of this week. 

  So what has the largest bank’s prime brokerage desk seen in the past week? 

  According to the latest weekly Positioning Intelligence report published by the bank, at a high level, it seems that HFs are not that concerned about the broader market (nor is anyone else for that matter) with the bank finding that over the past few months, there’s been limited willingness to sell dips.  In line with this, the bank saw neutral flows globally over the past week with small buying on Monday, alongside retail BTFDers, even as professional sentiment tracked by AAII turned the most bearish since last October…

  

  … followed by small selling on Thursday.  But more generally, net flows globally have remained neutral to skewed towards buying in the past 2 weeks with Asia the only region to see some selling.

  Furthermore, as has been the case for much of 2011, net leverage remains near highs with little change in the past few weeks—net at 98th percentile (of all time) across All Strategies. While gross leverage has come down a little to the 76th percentile, that appears to be more derivatives related and there could be an element of Quadruple Witching that might be impacting this as the largest gross leverage reductions were among Multi-Strat funds. According to JPM, one reason why leverage and flows among HFs might be more neutral this month is that performance has held in relatively well MTD: long-short spreads have been improving over the past few months.  Looking at this month, longs are holding up well, while shorts are down in line with the market. This leaves HFs up slightly MTD, according to JPM estimates.

  Back to the topic of leverage, FINRA just came out with its latest statistics on Margin Debt which showed them at a new ATH. Given it is up almost 60% since the start of 2020, it begs the question Bank of America asked one month ago: should we be concerned? Not surprisingly, JPM dismisses this indicator and thinks “this alone is not something that is concerning when one breaks down the changes and behavior to account for how the market has been performing.” Furthermore the JPM prime desk notes that “this appears to be very different from the peaks in 2000 and 2007 when Margin Debt rose about 50% faster than the S&P 500 over a 12-month period.” Instead, to JPM the recent moves seem more reminiscent to what happened in the early 90s.

  At a more micro level, cyclicals / value / inflation / travel related stocks have all been doing better recently as COVID are falling once more, some travel restrictions are getting lifted, and rates are rising globally. 

  

  In line with this, JPM continued to see buying of NA Financials, something that has been noted over the past few weeks, but this week JPM saw Banks getting bought (vs. more Insurance and Div. Fins in prior weeks).  COVID recovery stocks have also been bought but there’s room for more to go as positioning and valuations remain low in many cases (especially among the US COVID – Domestic Recovery basket, JPAMCRDB).  EMEA Travel & Leisure stocks saw strong buying in the past week as the US prepares to drop its ban for transatlantic travel, and net positioning is getting a bit elevated vs. history; however, EMEA Airlines still has low positioning.  Finally, not everything cyclical is getting bought—HFs have continued to sell Energy into strength – despite the recent surge in oil and all other commodities – and have also sold Materials. 

  Below we share some more details on each of these core themes

  Main theme #1: Global Flows and Leverage: HFs Don’t Seem Too Concerned

  While markets have been volatile over the past week, due to the myriad concerns, HF flows remained quite calm.  The reason is that hedge funds have been reluctant to sell dips and that appeared to be the case again last Fri/this Mon as global flows were quite neutral.  However, at the same time, HFs are also not chase the rally as the JPM Prime net flows were fairly neutral on Wed and skewed towards selling on Thurs when markets rallied back.

  

  A notable observation is that there appears to be some strategy differences in the past 2 weeks as Equity L/S and Quant funds have been buyers while Multi-Strats have been net sellers across JPM prime.  The selling among Multi-Strats comes as gross and net leverage have started to pull back from peak levels. 

  

  The gross reductions among some Multi-Strat funds have been the main driver of the broader “All Strategies” gross leverage figure lower WoW.  However, net leverage was basically unchanged. Furthermore, it appears derivative positions might be driving some of the changes as notional LMV and SMV increased WoW while delta adjusted LMV and SMV fell.  

  Among Equity L/S funds, who have been moderate net buyers of equities most days MTD, net leverage actually rose slightly WoW and it’s now at the 93rd %-tile since Mar 2017.  

  

  #2:  US Margin Debt: New ATHs at End of Aug…Should We Be Concerned?

  FINRA just released the latest monthly stats on “Margin Debt” which showed a fairly large increase, following a decrease in July.  As Margin Debt is at new All-Time-Highs and is now up almost 60% since the start of 2020, it’s worth asking -as BofA did one month ago –  if this is something we should be concerned about.  

  In order to answer this, we’ve looked at the relationship between Margin Debt and the markets over time, augmenting the data FINRA has on it’s website with NYSE Margin Debt data that goes back to 1959.  What this shows is that while there is a very big increase recently, it is 1) in line with the markets and 2) seems to be following the general pattern of the past 60+ years.  

  

  Similar to discussions of rate-driven VaR shocks, JPM argues that it’s not so much the level of Margin Debt that one should be focused on, but rather the rate of change. On this point, the bank measured the 12M change in Margin Debt and the S&P 500 over the past ~60 years and what this shows is that there is typically a fairly strong correlation over time. In particular, this correlation has been very strong since the GFC, but there were a couple notable divergences in 2000 and 2007 when Margin Debt rose much faster than the market.

  

  In its attempt to mitigate concerns about record margin debt, JPM then notes that increases in Margin Debt (i.e. investors taking on more leverage) that exceed the market returns by a wide margin could indicate greater potential for future stress because it might suggest that investors are adding leverage at market highs, but not actually making much money while doing so. Thus, when markets start to pull back, the recent investments start to lose money more quickly than if they had been added when the markets weren’t at highs.

  Addressing this point, JPM notes that when looking at what’s happened in the past 2 years, we have seen Margin Debt increase faster than the markets on a 12M rolling basis with the difference reaching +28% at its recent high.  However, the recent high in the 12M difference metric was reached in January of this year (perhaps due to the fact that HFs had performed very well in 2020 and had been adding risk throughout 2H20 in particular). Thus, this difference has been falling for much of the past 7 months.  Furthermore, the recent rise follows a period when Margin Debt had generally lagged the market increases; since the start of 2018, margin debt is only up ~40% vs. the S&P up ~70% in price terms.

  

  When it looks back even further, JPM notes that there were periods in the 70s-80s when large increases in Margin debt were followed by market weakness, suggesting this isn’t only a 2000 and 2007 phenomenon (left chart below).  Furthermore, one could reasonably ask why the relatively large increase in the early 90s didn’t result in a market pullback.  While there are likely other contributing factors as well, one thing to note about Margin Debt was that it had gone through a period of relatively slower growth in the late 80s, so the rise in the early 90s was somewhat of a “catch-up” period for it.  Similarly, JPM argues that the rise into Jan of this year could also be considered a bit of a “catch-up” period, which appears to be different from 2000 and 2007 when Margin Debt was reaching new highs, even when measuring it relative to the S&P changes.  

  

  In light of the above it’s hardly a surprise that JPM thinks that while there are many potential reasons one could cite for market caution, “the level and changes in Margin Debt do not appear to be setting us up for extreme market drawdowns like we saw in 2000 and 2007.”

  #3:  Reopening/Recovery Trades Back in Focus?

  With COVID cases appeared to be on the decline globally, and travel restrictions getting lifted in some places, reopening/recovery themes have been more topical as they’ve started to perform better. On the HF side, JPM Prime has seen net buying over the past 2-3 weeks in both the Domestic Recovery basket (JPAMCRDB) and the International Recovery Basket (JPAMCRIB).  Positioning in both groups remains low on a YTD basis and very low on a multi-year basis for the Domestic basket.  In addition, JPM’s U.S. Equity Research Strategist, Dubravko, recently wrote about this in a recent note where he showed that the COVID Recovery – Domestic basket had seen relative valuations fall back to multi-year lows while COVID Beneficiaries were back near highs.

  

  In a similar vein, Travel & Leisure stocks have seen strong performance this week in both N. America and EMEA, along with HF buying as the US said it would remove its ban on EU travel for vaccinated passengers starting in November. The recovery in performance, relative to the market, still has more to go before getting back to  where we were earlier this year. In terms of where the recent buying and outperformance leaves HF positioning, net exposures are nearing average levels among US Travel & Leisure stocks, but are a bit closer to highs in EMEA.

  Where there appears to be more potential upside for positioning in EMEA is among the Airlines stocks where net exposures is still about 1z below average and JPM has yet to see shorts covered in the group, after persistent additions for the past 6 months.

  Among US stocks, the rise in rates was accompanied by further buying of Inflation Winners and Rising Bond Yield Winners. Despite the recent buying, net exposure to the Inflation winners remains quite low with net exposures about 1 std dev below average and for the Rising Bond Yield Winners, the net exposure is still slightly below average.  

  Similarly, a couple weeks ago JPM wrote about how positioning and flows in Value vs. Growth had done a “180” in the past few months as Value had underperformed. Perhaps not surprisingly, US Value seems to be getting a revival recently as the Value factor has been bought in the past 2 weeks. This is coming from both Value Longs getting bought and Value Shorts being sold/shorted.  In line with this, Growth stocks have seen some selling.

  #4:  Performance – HFs Holding Well in Sep

  With a risk-on backdrop of cyclicals outperforming defensives, small caps rallying, and rising rates this week (Rising Bond Yield Winners up +5% WTD), Hedge Funds find themselves in the rare position of outperforming broader equity market indices MTD. And with WSB’s short squeeze hunts fading, shorts are not detracting from performance as they are generally down in-line with the market; whereas, longs have fared better and protected to the downside. 

  Among Global Equity L/S funds, net returns continue to track positively with gains of +60-70bps MTD, outperforming MSCI ACWI (which is down -1.2%). The long-short spread has continued to improve since mid-August, driven more recently by shorts selling off faster in September than the market (down -1.3% on wgtd avg basis) and longs holding up relatively well (only down -15bps MTD).

  

  Non-Equity L/S funds are also up MTD and outperforming global equity indices, up between +30-85bps. In terms of alpha, longs have outperformed shorts throughout most of September (some reversion over the past 2 days).

  

  At a regional level, N. America L/S funds are flat to slightly up MTD, up around +0-30bps and are thus outpacing the SPX. The long-short spread has continued to improve steadily since mid-August but slowed yesterday as shorts outperformed. In EMEA, net returns among L/S funds are positive MTD, gaining around +0.5-1.3% and outperforming the headline European index.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 20:30

• Texas Moves To Divest From Ben & Jerry’s Over Israeli Settlement Ban
  Texas Moves To Divest From Ben & Jerry’s Over Israeli Settlement Ban

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Texas has added Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever to a list of companies that are “boycotting Israel” over the ice cream company’s decision to stop selling its product in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

  The firms have 90 days from being notified that they’re on the list to reverse the settlement ban, or Texas will remove about $100 million in pension funds that are invested in Unilever.

  

  While Ben & Jerry’s is accused of boycotting Israel, their policy only applies to illegal settlements in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the ice cream will still be sold in Israel. But Texas has a broad definition of what it considers to be boycotting the Jewish State.

  Texas law defines boycotting Israel as “refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory.”

  Other states have taken action against Unilver over the settlement ban. Florida and New Jersey have added Unilever to a similar list, and Arizona has already begun to pull millions out of Unilever.

  There are over 30 US states with laws against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that calls for international boycotts to put pressure on Israel over its crimes against the Palestinians. The laws prohibit states from doing business with companies and individuals that are determined to be boycotting Israel. Contractors wishing to do business with these states have to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel.

  After Ben & Jerry’s announced its move to stop selling ice cream in the occupied territories in July, Israel launched a “maximum pressure” campaign to influence the US and urged states with anti-BDS laws on the books to take action.

  Disclosure: Antiwar.com has received donations in the past from Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 20:00

• New York Gov. Hochul Launches Purge Of Cuomo Cronies
  New York Gov. Hochul Launches Purge Of Cuomo Cronies

  Last week, New York’s New Gov. Kathy Hochul threatened to fire all unvaccinated health-care workers and replace them with vaccinated foreign workers (‘we’re in talks with the State Department’, she said, perhaps not realizing how low vaccination rates are outside the US and Europe) as she tries to make her mark on the Empire State.

  While Hochul might have a little trouble ousting 20% of the state’s hospital and nursing-home workers, she’ll probably have a much easier time purging the last Cuomo loyalists still drawing a paycheck in Albany.

  The New York Post reports that Gov. Hochul has officially launched a purge of agency heads and other officials appointed by her disgraced predecessor. At least nine of these ‘Cuomo-crats’ – agency heads and other high-ranking officials – will either be resigning or told that they’ll be out of a job within the next few weeks according to the Post’s sources.

  At the top of the list of potential departures is Michael Hein, the former Ulster County Executive who was tapped by Cuomo in 2019 to oversee the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

  

  At the start of the pandemic, Hein was put in charge of the regional control room for the Hudson Valley. In that role, he monitored key health risks as the state tenatively reopened in the summer of 2020.

  More recently, Hein was supposed to oversee the distribution of $2.6 billion in federal money to at-risk tenants who needed help paying back rent and utilities. He was criticized for failing to hand out the money fast enough.

  Other officials who are about to be handed their walking papers include:

  • Dr. Theodore Kastner, commissioner of the state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities
  • Arlene González-Sánchez, head of the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services
  • Kenneth Theobalds, chair of the New York State Insurance Fund
  • Human Rights Division Commissioner Licha Nyiendo
  • Deputy Secretary for General Government and Technology Molly Reilly
  • Deputy Secretary for Civil Rights and Workforce Debra Alligood White
  • Director of Cannabis Program Norman Birenbaum
  • Deputy Secretary for Public Safety Jeremy Shockett

  But the purge truly began in earnest when Gov. Hochul sacked Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, whose handling of the pandemic in the state has been widely criticized. Zucker has also been accused of helping Cuomo minimize the death toll at nursing homes across the state (Zucker issued the infamous March 2020 order that all nursing homes must accept COVID-positive residents returning from hospitals. Amazing, Zucker also barred nursing homes from testing the returning residents for the virus.

  Per the NYP, Amit Singh Bagga, who has been appointed Hochul’s deputy secretary for intergovernmental affairs, will be charged with supervising the purge.

  Now it’s time for New Yorkers to sit back and watch the heads roll.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 19:30

• Judge Denies Police Union's Effort To Delay Vaccine Mandate in Massachusetts
  Judge Denies Police Union’s Effort To Delay Vaccine Mandate in Massachusetts

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  A Massachusetts judge has denied a bid by the state police union to delay mandatory vaccinations for all state employees.

  

  The State Police Association of Massachusetts, a union representing about 1,800 state police officers, filed a lawsuit (pdf) last week asking the judge to put the mandate on hold to give the union time to “negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment” before a deadline of Oct. 17.

  “The public interest is, unquestionably, best served by stopping the spread of the virus, in order to protect people from becoming ill, ensure adequate supply of medical services, and curtail the emergence of new, deadlier variants of the virus,” Judge Jackie Cowin said in the decision, reported The Associated Press.

  Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, issued an executive order last month that would require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for all executive department employees by Oct. 17.

  “Executive Department employees who are not vaccinated or approved for an exemption as of October 17, 2021 will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination … Management employees not in compliance as of October 17, 2021 will also be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.” Baker’s office said in a statement.

  His office also stated, “The Administration will continue to work with its union partners regarding this policy, and specific ramifications of non-compliance for staff represented by unions will be discussed well in advance of October 17 with each employee union.”

  The union had asked that troopers who don’t get the vaccine be allowed to wear a mask and undergo weekly COVID-19 testing instead.

  “We are disappointed in the judge’s ruling; however, we respect her decision,” Michael Cherven, the union’s president, said in a statement.

  “It is unfortunate that the Governor and his team have chosen to mandate one of the most stringent vaccine mandates in the country with no reasonable alternatives.”

  “Throughout COVID, we have been on the front lines protecting the citizens of Massachusetts and beyond. Simply put, all we are asking for are the same basic accommodations that countless other departments have provided to their first responders, and to treat a COVID related illness as a line of duty injury.

  “To date, dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork, some of whom plan to return to other departments offering reasonable alternatives such as mask wearing and regular testing,” he added.

  “The State Police are already critically short staffed and acknowledged this by the unprecedented moves which took troopers from specialty units that investigate homicides, terrorism, computer crimes, arsons, gangs, narcotics, and human trafficking, and returned them to uniformed patrol.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 19:00

• "A More Difficult Backdrop Is Emerging": 5 Reasons Why Goldman Is Starting To Turn Bearish
  “A More Difficult Backdrop Is Emerging”: 5 Reasons Why Goldman Is Starting To Turn Bearish

  Last week’s remarkable bounce in stocks from Monday’s lows which, as a reminder, prompted the first outflow from equities in 2021…

  

  … has sparked many questions among Wall Street’s elite where even some of the biggest bulls are puzzled by the market’s violent reversal (which, however, was predicted correctly by flow-tracking quants like Nomura’s Charlie McElligott).

  And it’s not just the market’s relentless ability to internalize any adverse market action and come out on top as a wave of BTFDers rushes in: as Goldman’s strategist Chris Hussey wrote late on Friday, “one thing that is increasingly drawing our attention and was ‘front and center’ this week is how the economy, policy, and earnings growth appear to be rapidly transitioning away from the initial post-pandemic explosion of accommodation and activity and towards a slower pace as the brakes are pressed on a variety of key parts of the growth machine.”

  As Hussey further notes, growth is fine for now and even robust, with Goldman’s economists forecasting over 4.5% GDP growth forecast to extend into 2022, but as he cautions “a developed economy like the US cannot grow at a 9% pace for very long –even as it catches up out of a pandemic.”

  Meanwhile, as he delineates below, a series of pieces may be falling into place to ‘tap the brakes’ on some of the torrid growth we have been seeing since vaccines were distributed earlier this year. Among these Goldman focuses on the impact of fading stimulus, supply chains, the virus, China, and even stock valuations which are “coalescing to create a more difficult backdrop for earnings growth and multiple expansion in the months, or at least years ahead.”

  Here are a few observations on all 5 of these potentially “braking” factors:

  1. Stimulus. The FOMC indicated that tapering ‘may soon be warranted’ at this week’s meeting and on the back of the statement, yields on 10-year Treasuries have risen 15 bp to 1.45% while front-end rates have reset notably higher as shown in the chart below.

  

  Interestingly, stocks also rose on the back of the Fed statement, consolidating the rebound from Monday’s sell-off. And while the Fed has not done anything yet — only suggested it is about to — the wheels do seem to now be in place to wind down the central bank’s latest QE program and to eventually start raising rates — as soon as one year from now. Adding to this point, BofA’s Michael Hartnett notes that global tapering has begun (ECB, BoE, BoC, RBA, Fed) which will see a sharp drop in global central liquidity which was $8.5 trillion in 2020, shrinks to $2.1trillion in 2021, and will be just $0.1 in 2022 (putting this in context, since the COVID outbreak central banks have bought $800MM of assets every hour, a number which shrinks to <$100MM in the second half of 2022).

  

  And at the same time monetary policy appears to be shifting from the gas pedal to the brakes, fiscal policy may be as well. As we noted last week, Goldman’s political economist wrote this week about the growing risks around the next US federal spending program and the debt limit extension in “Collision Course?” and “More Downside Risks from Washington.”

  2. Supply Chains. The inability of companies to source parts, people, and commodities has been a major reason why we have warned about the slowing growth momentum we have observed in recent week. While Goldman is confidence that supply chain constraints are mainly a function of too rapid a recovery in demand, and so see it as a temporary problem, but for homebuilders, automobile manufacturers, and truckers it is all a supply problem today that is putting upward pressure on pricing and potentially downward pressure on margins (although margins have held up quite well so far). Case in point, on August 30 we warned that a slew of profit warnings are coming in the coming weeks, and between FedEx, Nike, PPG, and many others that’s just what has happened.

  If MS and BofA are right on slumping consumer demand and margin contraction we should start seeing Q3 earnings warnings in the next 2 weeks.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2021

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  • Looking at the Homebuilders, Goldman highlights how DRI lowered its November quarter guidance due to an inability to get enough materials and labor while fellow builder LEN is also started fewer communities in the current environment.
  • In Autos, the bank writes that September car sales are tracking about 25% below year-ago levels – that’s versus September 2020 and the heart of the pandemic – as dealer inventories are at historically low levels. The good news for car makers: prices are strong — although this may not be so good for inflation and Fed policy (see #1 above).
  • And finally in Transports, FDX missed earnings this week as it is facing a shortage of truckers and shippers .

  3. The virus. In addition to supply chain disruptions, Goldman previously cited the Delta variant as a reason for why they were seeing slower 3Q21 GDP growth when they lowered the bank’s economic forecast back on Sep 6. Fast forward two weeks, and the summer wave of the virus does appear to have peaked…

  

  … even in the US South — as the chart below clearly shows.

  

  Commenting on the chart above, Goldman said that “what we might have learned this summer is that the virus still has the ability to disrupt the pace of growth even among populations with high rates of vaccination. Growth does not appear to have been derailed this summer, but it does appear to be trending slower than most thought it would back on Memorial Day.”

  4. China. We entered this week with a lot being written about how issues surrounding China’s property market are driving a global ‘risk-off’ sentiment shift. And we exit this week with no resolution to China’s property market issues, yet the S&P 500 is UP on the week. But while it turned out that China did not derail the bull market this week, China’s property market is still very big (see “The Housing Market Is Almost Frozen” – An Even Bigger Problem Emerges For China“). And uncertainties persist. Perhaps what we continue to discover is that China is no longer the sustained tailwind to global growth that it was back in the years following the Great Financial Crisis when the country was pushing double digit GDP growth rates (see “China Is Responsible For More Than A Third Of World GDP Growth – This Is A Problem“.)

  

  5. Valuation. According to Goldman’s Hussey, “stock market valuations rarely break under their own weight” and it typically takes some other more fundamental catalyst to cause earnings to decline and investors to pay less for earnings. But as Goldman’s Peter Oppenheimer highlighted in a fresh global strategy note this week, stock market returns are likely to be muted going forward relative to past cycles. Why? We are entering the current cycle with high valuations, ultra-low rates, and corporate margin headwinds from rising wages and regulation and the headwinds from de-globalization. And as the bank’s chart of the week below illustrates, historically forward 10-year returns for equities have trended lower when they have started at our current elevated valuation.

  Goldman’s chart of the week: Valuation is not typically the cause of a bubble bursting and stocks can stay ‘expensive’ for a long time. But over a long time, the returns that you might expect to get from investing in equities tend to be far smaller when you buy stocks at high  aluations than when you buy them when they are ‘cheap’.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 18:30

• Never Say Neigh: FDA Lists 'Horse Drug' As Approved COVID Treatment
  Never Say Neigh: FDA Lists ‘Horse Drug’ As Approved COVID Treatment

  While the media has spent more than a year ridiculing the widely-prescribed drug Ivermectin to treat Covid-19 – branding it a ‘horse dewormer for idiots,’ they’ve kept oddly silent about another widely prescribed drug that’s also used in horses, which is being pushed by official bodies worldwide to treat the disease.

  

  The NIH, CDC, WHO and FDA have all recommended dexamethasone – a corticosteroid which has shown efficacy in the treatment of severe covid. It’s also a commonly used drug to treat allergies in horses.

  The difference? One can be used to treat billions of mild-moderate cases – or as a prophylactic, while the other has a much more narrow use – those suffering from severe Covid.

  As Twitter user @DoRtChristians notes: “The FDA recently told the public not to take life-saving Ivermectin because “you’re not a horse”“

  

  

  

  

  Yet;

  

  Per Google (via Wedgewood pharmacy): “Dexamethasone commonly is used in horses to treat allergic reactions such as respiratory allergies, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (heaves), hives, itching and inflammatory diseases including arthritis.“

  But, but…

  You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4

  — U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021

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  We can only assume that because official bodies are recommending dexamethasone – and because it’s used in severe covid – a much smaller fraction of those looking at ivermectin as a prophylactic and early-stage treatment, the transitive properties of media outrage over people taking a ‘horse medication’ don’t apply.

  Ivermectin

  This widely prescribed anti-parasitic which is also used in horses has shown massive efficacy worldwide in the treatment of mild and moderate cases of Covid-19, plus as a prophylactic. India’s Uttar Pradesh province, with a population of over 200 million, says that widespread early use of Ivermectin ‘helped keep positivity [and] deaths low.’

  

  Separately, there have been several studies funded by the Indian government, primarily conducted through their largest govt. public medical university (AIIMS).

  • Role of ivermectin in the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study (source)

  Conclusion: Two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis at a dose of 300 μg/kg with a gap of 72 hours was associated with a 73% reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers for the following month.

  • Ivermectin as a potential treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 – A double blind randomized placebo-controlled trial (source)

  Conclusion: There was no difference in the primary outcome i.e. negative RT-PCR status on day 6 of admission with the use of ivermectin. However, a significantly higher proportion of patients were discharged alive from the hospital when they received ivermectin.

  • Clinical Research Report Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial (source, double-blind randomized, peer-reviewed)

  Discussion: In the present study, patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 infection treated with ivermectin in combination with doxycycline generally recovered 2 days earlier than those treated with placebo. The proportion of patients responding within 7 days of treatment was significantly higher in the treatment group than in the placebo group. The proportions of patients who remained symptomatic after 12 days of illness and who experienced disease progression were significantly lower in the treatment group than in the placebo group.

  

  Here are more human studies from other countries on the ‘horse dewormer’:

   

  Peru:

  • Sharp Reductions in COVID-19 Case Fatalities and Excess Deaths in Peru in Close Time Conjunction, State-By-State, with Ivermectin Treatments (source, peer-reviewed, University of Toronto, Universidad EAFIT)

  For the 24 states with early IVM treatment (and Lima), excess deaths dropped 59% (25%) at +30 days and 75% (25%) at +45 days after day of peak deaths. Case fatalities likewise dropped sharply in all states but Lima

  Spain:

  • The effect of early treatment with ivermectin on viral load, symptoms and humoral response in patients with non-severe COVID-19: A pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial (source, University of Barcelona, peer-reviewed)

  Findings: Patients in the ivermectin group recovered earlier from hyposmia/anosmia (76 vs 158 patient-days; p < 0.001).

  Bengladesh:

  • A Comparative Study on Ivermectin-Doxycycline and Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin Therapy on COVID-19 Patients (source – peer reviewed, though not govt funded)

  Conclusion: According  to  our  study,  the  Ivermectin-Doxycycline combination therapy has better symptomatic relief, shortened recovery duration, fewer adverse effects, and superior patient compliance compared to the Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin combination. Based on this  study’s  outcomes,  the  Ivermectin-Doxycycline  combination  is  a  superior  choice  for  treating  patients  with  mild to moderate COVID-19 disease.

  • A five-day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness (source, peer-reviewed double blind randomized, though small sample size)

  Discussion: A 5-day course of ivermectin resulted in an earlier clearance of the virus compared to placebo (p = 0.005), thus indicating that early intervention with this agent may limit viral replication within the host. In the 5-day ivermectin group, there was a significant drop in CRP and LDH by day 7, which are indicators of disease severity.

  Meanwhile, There are currently 76 ongoing or completed clinical trials on Ivermectin around the world. Below are the results of 32 which have been completed. One can visit ivermeta.com and dig down on any of these / read the entire study. The site recommends Ivermectin in conjunction with vaccines to confer the best protection against Covid-19, however we’ll leave that to you and your doctor to discuss.

  

  Why does Ivermectin, a ‘horse dewormer’ work? For starters, it’s a protease inhibitor. Interestingly, Pfizer’s 2x/day Covid-19 prophylactic they’re trialing right now is also a protease inhibitor.

  

  Yet doctors who advocate for Ivermectin are ridiculed by the media (more here and here and here).

  The MSM swarmed over ‘horse paste overdoses’  for weeks after a handful cases nationwide (and no deaths) – including an outright lie amplified by Rolling Stone which they were forced to correct after the hospital in question denied the claim.

  Meanwhile, the likes of Maddow, Don Lemon and Chris Hayes jumped right on the propaganda bandwagon – with Maddow promoting the debunked ER story in a tweet she refuses to delete – and Twitter refuses to censor for misinformation.

  Why would any doctor put their career on the line to publicly advocate for ivermectin when this is the result?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 18:00

• Female American Soldier Allegedly Assaulted By Afghan Refugees At Fort Bliss Camp
  Female American Soldier Allegedly Assaulted By Afghan Refugees At Fort Bliss Camp

  A group of Afghan evacuees have allegedly assaulted a female American soldier at a refugee camp at New Mexico’s Fort Bliss in what appears to be the first incident of Afghan refugees (most of whom were rescued by American forces during the chaotic final weeks before the Taliban assumed complete control of Kabul) attacking an American soldier on US soil.

  Republicans slammed the Biden Administration over the incident, claiming it represents a failure of the Administration to properly vet the Afghan nationals who were rescued during a mission that cost the lives of 13 Marines.

  

  Speaking to the Hill on Friday, the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss told the press that a female service member reported being assaulted by “a small group of male evacuees” while at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico on Sunday.

  The military said it’s looking into the allegations, and the FBI is also investigating.

  “We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the statement said.

  “The safety and well-being of our service members, as well as all of those on our installations, is paramount. We immediately provided appropriate care, counseling and support to the service member.”

  A spokesperson for Fort Bliss also said the military is “implementing additional security measures to include increased health and safety patrols, additional lighting, and enforcement of the buddy system at the Dona Ana Complex.”

  “We will cooperate fully with the FBI and will continue to ensure the service member reporting this assault is fully supported,” the statement said.

  Additionally, the FBI has confirmed that its El Paso office is investigating the incident.

  The assault occurred just weeks after the refugee camp was set up to house refugees offered SIVs for their work aiding the NATO combat effort in Afghanistan, which would have likely marked them for death by the Taliban.

  Joe Biden made a decision to shove tens of thousands people on planes to make it look like his botched evacuation was going well. The truth is he had no idea who he brought to the US. That’s why I led a letter today demanding accountability and answers. https://t.co/sTVqysGFla

  — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 24, 2021

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  While the statements issued by the military, FBI and Administration have used mostly sanitized language so far, it should be pretty obvious to all what just happened here. But will federal lawmakers raise a stink about the attack?

  Do not think for 1 second that @SenGillibrand or any other military sexual assault Democrat is going to get up in arms about this. This soldier’s claim will be brushed aside and hidden…https://t.co/tlmlVMib2J

  — Scott “McCarthy was Right about Ds and Liberals” (@ScottC20012) September 25, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 17:30

• Huawei CFO Gets Hero's Welcome In China While Canadians Land Quietly After Biden Acquiesced To 'Hostage Diplomacy'
  Huawei CFO Gets Hero’s Welcome In China While Canadians Land Quietly After Biden Acquiesced To ‘Hostage Diplomacy’

  China is essentially declaring ‘victory’ after the Biden DOJ struck a deal with Huawei Technologies CFO Meng Wanzhou for a deferred prosecution agreement, allowing her to go free from her Canadian confinement after nearly three years. 

  She was treated to a hero’s welcome in a major homecoming after her Air China plane touched down at Shenzhen’s Bao’an International Airport at about 10 pm local time on Saturday. State media gave the event major coverage and the city was decked out in celebratory banners of “Welcome Home” – and a sizeable crowd of supporters came out to greet her.

  

  A teary-eyed Meng while holding a bouquet roses gave a brief speech wherein she said to the crowd, “I am finally home after over 1,000 days of suffering.” She joyfully added, “Finally I am home”. State media said that about 60 million people watched the live-stream of the event.

  However, while in Vancouver her very loose form of house arrest wherein she was monitored 24/7 but still free to move about, had been dubbed by US media an “opulent detention”… so the reality was a far cry from “1,000 days of suffering.”

  “The motherland will always provide you with the most powerful support,” the airport tower had radioed to her inbound flight just ahead of touchdown. Supporters on the tarmac waived the national flag of China while holding huge banners.

  She must now spend two weeks at a hotel in isolation, based on the country’s strict quarantine requirement for any and all travelers from foreign countries. 

  According to a further description of the festive scene:

  She thanked the support from the Chinese government and people, and said she was touched by President Xi Jinping’s concern for her case. 

  After her speech, Meng sang along as the crowd burst into a patriotic Chinese song called “Ode to the Motherland.”

  But here’s what Bloomberg relates of the other side what’s being dubbed China’s hostage diplomacy concerning the “two Michaels” subsequently released from Chinese detention in tit-for-tat exchange: “In contrast, Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig arrived to a more low-key reception. The pair landed in Calgary before sunrise on Saturday, accompanied by Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China.”

  Welcome home, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. You’ve shown incredible strength, resilience, and perseverance. Know that Canadians across the country will continue to be here for you, just as they have been. pic.twitter.com/1UoLbBFGNv

  — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 25, 2021

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  “Dressed in blazers and face-masks, they were met by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who hugged the pair on the tarmac,” the report details. “Government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and the nation’s spy agency, tweeted welcome messages to the pair, who were expected to reunite with the families in private.”

  China’s state media didn’t miss the opportunity to claim a “triumph” for the nation in the face of US and Canada’s conspiring to keep the Huawei executive in a lengthy ‘illegal detention’, which both countries said was for illicit dealings with Iran under US sanctions.

  More than 60 million people watched livestreaming of #Meng Wanzhou’s arrival in Shenzhen. Yes, Chinese people regard Meng regaining freedom as victory of justice and we believe China’s powerful national strength has shaped this result. pic.twitter.com/uPmahPPoRr

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) September 25, 2021

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  People’s Daily for example titled an article hailing her return, “No Force Will Prevent China’s Progress” while claiming the ordeal as a major victory for China’s Communist Party in the face of Western aggression.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 17:00

• Elon Musk And Girlfriend Grimes Break Up After Three Years
  Elon Musk And Girlfriend Grimes Break Up After Three Years

  Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his girlfriend Grimes have ended their relationship after three years. And we thought this one was going to go the distance…

  The two are reportedly “semi-separated” and “still love each other” while remaining “on great terms”, according to an exclusive from the NY Post.

  Musk confirmed that the two would continue to co-parent their one year old son, X Æ A-Xii Musk.

  Musk told the NY Post: “We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms.”

  He continued: “It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She’s staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room.”

  

  While things appear to be amicable now, we can’t help but wonder interesting tidbits of information Grimes could spill about Musk if their “friendship” winds up eventually dissolving, too.

  Their son was born in May of 2020 and the couple was last seen in public together at the Met Gala in early September. Grimes walked the red carpet alone at the event, the report said.

  Musk then threw an afterparty at the club Zero Bond that Grimes attended. The two were spotted leaving New York together the next day.

  Musk had attended a party at the same club, the weekend prior, alone. 

  Grimes recently prattled on about her child with Musk to Vogue: “I think having a baby was a big kind of like rebirth for me, like artistically. Like, it just like, I don’t know.”

  We don’t know, either, Grimes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 16:30

• Just How Many Containers Of Cargo Are Stuck Off California's Coast?
  Just How Many Containers Of Cargo Are Stuck Off California’s Coast?

  By Greg Miller of American Shipper,

  With around 70 container ships loaded with cargo now waiting at anchor or drifting off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, how deep of a hole are the terminals actually in? To answer that question, American Shipper analyzed data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California on exactly which ships are out there and how much cargo they can carry.

  

  While the numbers fluctuate from day to day, there were 70 container ships in the queue on Monday with total capacity of 432,909 twenty-foot equivalent units. To put the enormity of that number in perspective, that’s more than the inbound container volume the Port of Long Beach handled in the entire month of August. It’s roughly what Charleston handles inbound in four months and what Savannah handles in two.

  The combined import throughput of both Los Angeles and Long Beach in August was 893,118 TEUs. Assuming ships waiting offshore are effectively full and capacity is a good proxy for volume, and that terminals are able to process vessels at the same pace they did in August, the anchorages and drift areas could only be completely cleared if no ships arrived for 14 days straight days.

  Not only would that never happen, but there is no letup in arrivals in sight. Vessel-positioning data from MarineTraffic confirms that a steady stream of container ships remains en route across the Pacific, destined for Los Angeles.

  

  How long ships wait for berths

  The Port of Los Angeles publishes the average waiting period for a ship to reach one of its berths. On Tuesday, that number rose to an all-time high of nine days (calculated on a 30-day rolling average basis).

  To gauge how much capacity has been stuck waiting for how long, American Shipper looked at aggregate TEUs by arrival date.

  Thirty-six ships with a total capacity of 230,803 TEUs arrived in port waters in the seven days through Monday. That’s 54% of the total TEU capacity waiting offshore. Another 27 ships with total capacity of 176,892 TEUs arrived between one and two weeks prior to Monday, representing a further 42%. The remaining few ships arrived in late August and early September.

  

  Arriving ships have gotten smaller

  A significant change over the course of this year’s congestion crisis is that the average capacity of ships calling in Los Angeles/Long Beach has decreased, meaning that terminals handle more ships to move the same throughput.

  In the current peak season, new trans-Pacific services have been introduced that use smaller vessels, pulling the average size down. The primary reason: Virtually no larger container ships have been available for sale or lease in recent months; operators are adding capacity via smaller ships by necessity, even if it means chartering them for short periods at astronomical day rates.

  During the congestion peak reached earlier this year, on Feb. 1, there were 40 container ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay, which at the time seemed enormous but now seems middling. The total cargo capacity of anchored ships then was 322,721 TEUs. Of ships at anchor on Feb. 1, 15 were 10,000 TEUs or larger, or 38% of the vessel count. The average capacity in the Feb. 1 queue was 8,068 TEUs.

  Several larger container ships have suffered waits of beyond one week. The 13,092-TEU Maersk Elba arrived Sept. 7; the 11,142-TEU MSC Avni on Sept. 9; the 11,356-TEU CMA CGM Callisto on Sept. 11; the 10,055-TEU Hyundai Neptune and 14,036-TEU MSC Livorno on Sept. 12; and the 14,026-TEU ONE Blue Jay on Sept. 13.

  In contrast, as of Monday, there were 17 ships larger than 10,000 TEUs at anchor or drifting, representing only 24% of the total ship count. The average capacity of all ships in the queue was down to 6,184 TEUs — 24% below the average ship size on Feb. 1.

  The change in ship size helps put the growth of the offshore queue in context. The news headlines focus on the total number of ships waiting for berths, which has risen from 40 in February to around 70 currently, an increase of 75%. Yet the aggregate capacity of ships in the offshore “parking lot” — a proxy for delayed cargo — has only risen by 34% over the same timeframe, because of the declining size of ships in the queue.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 16:00

• Taliban Hangs 4 Bodies In Public Square – Says Will Resume "Cutting Off Of Hands"
  Taliban Hangs 4 Bodies In Public Square – Says Will Resume “Cutting Off Of Hands”

  The Associated Press reports on Saturday that the Taliban has begun hanging dead bodies of executed criminals from the main square in Herat city in western Afghanistan, as a gruesome message to the public in order to deter crime and ensure conformity to Islam. 

  The AP report cited eyewitnesses, including “Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy on the side of the square” who told the agency that “that four bodies were brought to the main square and three bodies were moved to other parts of the city for public display.”

  

  The Taliban claims that the four were killed by police after a kidnapping incident was thwarted. A Taliban police statement said “the four were killed in crossfire” with security forces and a father and son were able to be rescued.

  This comes a day after the Taliban confirmed its religious enforcers of public conformity to strict sharia law would once again be enacting corporal punishment akin to the pre-2001 days, including mutilation such as cutting off of hands for certain offenses. A Taliban spokesman and overseer of sharia laws in Afghanistan after the August US pullout, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, explained in the following: 

  “Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” he said, saying it had a deterrent effect. He said the Cabinet was studying whether to do punishments in public and will “develop a policy.”

  In recent days in Kabul, Taliban fighters have revived a punishment they commonly used in the past — public shaming of men accused of small-time theft.

  On at least two occasions in the last week, Kabul men have been packed into the back of a pickup truck, their hands tied, and were paraded around to humiliate them.

  Turabi further defended the notorious soccer stadiums of death which shocked the globe during the prior Taliban rule over two decades ago. At that time the public would be invited to watch convicts having limbs hacked off, as well as people being shot at point-blank range.

  US denounces Taliban plans to resume executions: Actions “would constitute clear gross abuses of human rights” https://t.co/3PqPcf1ShE pic.twitter.com/rnSQDDvMNJ

  — The Hill (@thehill) September 24, 2021

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  “Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” the Taliban official told AP further. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”

  In the wake of the recent Taliban reconquest of the country, some Western officials including in the Biden administration suggested the hardline Islamist group had “moderated” – however this premature assessment is looking like mere wishful thinking.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 15:30

• "Pure Evil!" , "War Criminal!": Crowd Heckles Hillary During Installation As Chancellor Of Irish University
  “Pure Evil!” , “War Criminal!”: Crowd Heckles Hillary During Installation As Chancellor Of Irish University

  Hillary Clinton has finally been inaugurated… as the first female chancellor of Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland – but not before she was loudly heckled on the way to her coronation.

  

  As Clinton entered the university, protesters could be heard shouting: “pure evil!:” and “war criminal!” amongst other things, including:

  “You’re not welcome in Belfast! Go away, you war criminal scumbag!”

  “How many kids have you killed today?”

  “imperialist scum”

  “Yankee”

  Irishman screaming “pure evil” at Hillary today in Belfast pic.twitter.com/JhoeF3Ld0J

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 25, 2021

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  Protester shouts and calls Hillary Clinton a war criminal as she enters Queens University in Belfast: pic.twitter.com/GFQZuJ6h8k

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 24, 2021

  Here’s the full video posted by Lasair Dhearg, as left-wing socialist republican group.

  As the Western Journal notes:

  One man who addressed a crowd on the video shared online accused Clinton of being responsible for “over 400 drone strikes across multiple nations which overwhelmingly killed civilians and even children.”

  The man also blasted Clinton for labeling black men “superpredators when she helped lobby for the 1994 [U.S. crime bill].”

  Appointed in 2020, Clinton spoke at the event for around 15 minutes, during which she suggested that the people of Northern Ireland “work together to resolve their differences over Brexit and dealing with the legacy of past violence.”

  Clinton, as it stands, voted in favor of the war in Iraq – and as US Secretary of State was instrumental in the Obama administration’s decision to bomb Libya, “leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven,” according to the New York Times (h/t Daily Caller).  Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, meanwhile, promised in 2010 that he’d stop illegal African migration into Europe for a tidy sum of US$6.3 billion per year. Two months later, he was dead.

  When US-backed Salafi-jihadist fascists murdered Libya’s leader Qadhafi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gleefully replied, not at all like a sociopath: “We came, we saw, he died!”

  Those NATO-sponsored extremist “rebels” then ethnically cleansed and enslaved Black Libyans pic.twitter.com/Jqh0qFglfn

  — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 19, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 15:15

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• "Immunity As A Service" – The Snake-Oil Salesmen & The COVID-Zero Con
  “Immunity As A Service” – The Snake-Oil Salesmen & The COVID-Zero Con

  Authored by Julius Ruechel via Julius Ruechel.com,

  The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A Classic Bait-And-Switch for a Lifetime of Booster Shots (Immunity as a Service)

  If a plumber with a lifetime of experience were to tell you that water runs uphill, you would know he is lying and that the lie is not accidental. It is a lie with a purpose. If you can also demonstrate that the plumber knows in advance that the product he is promoting with that lie is snake oil, you have evidence for a deliberate con. And once you understand what’s really inside that bottle of snake oil, you will begin to understand the purpose of the con.

  One of the most common reasons given for mass COVID vaccinations is the idea that if we reach herd immunity through vaccination, we can starve the virus out of existence and get our lives back. It’s the COVID-Zero strategy or some variant of it.

  By now it is abundantly clear from the epidemiological data that the vaccinated are able to both catch and spread the disease.

  Clearly vaccination isn’t going to make this virus disappear. Only a mind that has lost its grasp on reality can fail to see how ridiculous all this has become. 

  But a tour through pre-COVID science demonstrates that, from day one, long before you and I had even heard of this virus, it was 100% inevitable and 100% predictable that these vaccines would never be capable of eradicating this coronavirus and would never lead to any kind of lasting herd immunity. Even worse, lockdowns and mass vaccination have created a dangerous set of circumstances that interferes with our immune system’s ability to protect us against other respiratory viruses. They also risk driving the evolution of this virus towards mutations that are more dangerous to both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike. Lockdowns, mass vaccinations, and mass booster shots were never capable of delivering on any of the promises that were made to the public. 

  And yet, vaccination has been successfully used to control measles and even to eradicate smallpox. So, why not COVID? Immunity is immunity, and a virus is a virus is a virus, right? Wrong! Reality is far more complicated… and more interesting.

  This Deep Dive exposes why, from day one, the promise of COVID-Zero can only ever have been a deliberately dishonest shell game designed to prey on a lack of public understanding of how our immune systems work and on how most respiratory viruses differ from other viruses that we routinely vaccinate against. We have been sold a fantasy designed to rope us into a pharmaceutical dependency as a deceitful trade-off for access to our lives. Variant by variant. For as long as the public is willing to go along for the ride. 

  Exposing this story does not require incriminating emails or whistleblower testimony. The story tells itself by diving into the long-established science that every single virologist, immunologist, evolutionary biologist, vaccine developer, and public health official had access to long before COVID began. As is so often the case, the devil is hidden in the details. As this story unfolds it will become clear that the one-two punch of lockdowns and the promise of vaccines as an exit strategy began as a cynical marketing ploy to coerce us into a never-ending regimen of annual booster shots intentionally designed to replace the natural “antivirus security updates” against respiratory viruses that come from hugs and handshakes and from children laughing together at school. We are being played for fools. 

  This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of other opportunists taking advantage of this crisis to pursue other agendas and to tip society into a full-blown police state. One thing quickly morphs into another. But this essay demonstrates that never-ending boosters were the initial motive for this global social-engineering shell game ― the subscription-based business model, adapted for the pharmaceutical industry. “Immunity as a service”. 

  So, let’s dive into the fascinating world of immune systems, viruses, and vaccines, layer by layer, to dispel the myths and false expectations that have been created by deceitful public health officials, pharmaceutical lobbyists, and media manipulators. What emerges as the lies are peeled apart is both surprising and more than a little alarming.

  “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Homes” 

  – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  

  Table of Contents:

  •     Viral Reservoirs: The Fantasy of Eradication

  •     SARS: The Exception to the Rule?

  •     Fast Mutations: The Fantasy of Control through Herd Immunity

  •     Blind Faith in Central Planning: The Fantasy of Timely Doses

  •     Spiked: The Fantasy of Preventing Infection

  •     Antibodies, B-Cells, and T-Cells: Why Immunity to Respiratory Viruses Fades So Quickly

  •     Manufacturing Dangerous Variants: Virus Mutations Under Lockdown Conditions — Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu

  •     Leaky Vaccines, Antibody-Dependent Enhancement, and the Marek Effect

  •     Anti-Virus Security Updates: Cross-Reactive Immunity Through Repeated Exposure

  •     The Not-So-Novel Novel Virus: The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship Outbreak Proved We Have Cross-Reactive Immunity

  •     Mother Knows Best: Vitamin D, Playing in Puddles, and Sweaters

  •     The Paradox: Why COVID-Zero Makes People More Vulnerable to Other Viruses

  •     Introducing Immunity as a Service – A Subscription-Based Business Model for the Pharmaceutical Industry (It was always about the money!)

  •     The Path Forward: Neutralizing the Threat and Bullet-Proofing Society to Prevent This Ever Happening Again.

  *  *  *

  Viral Reservoirs: The Fantasy of Eradication

  Eradication of a killer virus sounds like a noble goal. In some cases it is, such as in the case of the smallpox virus. By 1980 we stopped vaccinating against smallpox because, thanks to widespread immunization, we starved the virus of available hosts for so long that it died out. No-one will need to risk their life on the side effects of a smallpox vaccination ever again because the virus is gone. It is a public health success story. Polio will hopefully be next ― we’re getting close. 

  But smallpox is one of only two viruses (along with rinderpest) that have been eradicated thanks to vaccination. Very few diseases meet the necessary criteria. Eradication is hard and only appropriate for very specific families of viruses.

  Smallpox made sense for eradication because it was a uniquely human virus ― there was no animal reservoir. By contrast, most respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 (a.k.a. COVID) come from animal reservoirs: swine, birds, bats, etc. As long as there are bats in caves, birds in ponds, pigs in mud baths, and deer living in forests, respiratory viruses are only controllable through individual immunity, but it is not possible to eradicate them. There will always be a near-identical cousin brewing in the wings.

  Even the current strain of COVID is already cheerfully jumping onwards across species boundaries. According to both National Geographic and Nature magazine, 40% of wild deer tested positive for COVID antibodies in a study conducted in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania. It has also been documented in wild mink and has already made the species jump to other captive animals including dogs, cats, otters, leopards, tigers, and gorillas. A lot of viruses are not fussy. They happily adapt to new opportunities. Specialists, like smallpox, eventually go extinct. Generalists, like most respiratory viruses, never run out of hosts to keep the infection cycle going, forever.

  As long as we share this planet with other animals, it is extremely deceitful to give anyone the impression that we can pursue any scorched earth policy that can put this genie back in the bottle. With an outbreak on this global scale, it was clear that we were always going to have to live with this virus. There are over 200 other endemic respiratory viruses that cause colds and flus, many of which circulate freely between humans and other animals. Now there are 201. They will be with us forever, whether we like it or not.

  SARS: The Exception to the Rule?

  This all sounds well and good, but the original SARS virus did disappear, with public health measures like contact tracing and strict quarantine measures taking the credit. However, SARS was the exception to the rule. When it made the species jump to humans, it was so poorly adapted to its new human hosts that it had terrible difficulty spreading. This very poor level of adaptation gave SARS a rather unique combination of properties:

  1. SARS was extremely difficult to catch (it was never very contagious)

  2. SARS made people extremely sick.

  3. SARS did not have pre-symptomatic spread.

  These three conditions made the SARS outbreak easy to control through contact tracing and through the quarantine of symptomatic individuals. SARS therefore never reached the point where it circulated widely among asymptomatic community members. 

  By contrast, by January/February of 2020 it was clear from experiences in China, Italy, and the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship (more on that story later) that the unique combination of conditions that made SARS controllable were not going to be the case with COVID. COVID was quite contagious (its rapid spread showed that COVID was already well adapted to spreading easily among its new human hosts), most people would have mild or no symptoms from COVID (making containment impossible), and that it was spreading by aerosols produced by both symptomatic and pre-symptomatic people (making contact tracing a joke).

  In other words, it was clear by January/February 2020 that this pandemic would follow the normal rules of a readily transmissible respiratory epidemic, which cannot be reined in the way SARS was. Thus, by January/February of 2020, giving the public the impression that the SARS experience could be replicated for COVID was a deliberate lie – this genie was never going back inside the bottle.

  Fast Mutations: The Fantasy of Control through Herd Immunity

  Once a reasonably contagious respiratory virus begins circulating widely in a community, herd immunity can never be maintained for very long. RNA respiratory viruses (such as influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinoviruses, and coronaviruses) all mutate extremely fast compared to viruses like smallpox, measles, or polio. Understanding the difference between something like measles and a virus like COVID is key to understanding the con that is being perpetrated by our health institutions. Bear with me here, I promise not to get too technical.

  All viruses survive by creating copies of themselves. And there are always a lot of “imperfect copies” — mutations — produced by the copying process itself. Among RNA respiratory viruses these mutations stack up so quickly that there is rapid genetic drift, which continually produces new strains. Variants are normal. Variants are expected. Variants make it virtually impossible to build the impenetrable wall of long-lasting herd immunity required to starve these respiratory viruses out of existence. That’s one of several reasons why flu vaccines don’t provide long-lasting immunity and have to be repeated annually ― our immune system constantly needs to be updated to keep pace with the inevitable evolution of countless unnamed “variants.” 

  This never-ending conveyor belt of mutations means that everyone’s immunity to COVID was always only going to be temporary and only offer partial cross-reactive protection against future re-infections. Thus, from day one, COVID vaccination was always doomed to the same fate as the flu vaccine ― a lifelong regimen of annual booster shots to try to keep pace with “variants” for those unwilling to expose themselves to the risk of a natural infection. And the hope that by the time the vaccines (and their booster shots) roll off the production line, they won’t already be out of date when confronted by the current generation of virus mutations. 

  Genetic drift caused by mutations is much slower in viruses like measles, polio, or smallpox, which is why herd immunity can be used to control these other viruses (or even eradicate them as in the case of smallpox or polio). The reason the common respiratory viruses have such rapid genetic drift compared to these other viruses has much less to do with how many errors are produced during the copying process and much more to do with how many of those “imperfect” copies are actually able to survive and produce more copies. 

  A simple virus with an uncomplicated attack strategy for taking over host cells can tolerate a lot more mutations than a complex virus with a complicated attack strategy. Complexity and specialization put limits on how many of those imperfect copies have a chance at becoming successful mutations. Simple machinery doesn’t break down as easily if there is an imperfection in the mechanical parts. Complicated high-tech machinery will simply not work if there are even minor flaws in precision parts.

  For example, before a virus can hijack the DNA of a host cell to begin making copies of itself, the virus needs to unlock the cell wall to gain entry. Cellular walls are made of proteins and are coated by sugars; viruses need to find a way to create a doorway through that protein wall. A virus like influenza uses a very simple strategy to get inside ― it locks onto one of the sugars on the outside of the cell wall in order to piggyback a ride as the sugar is absorbed into the cell (cells use sugar as their energy source). It’s such a simple strategy that it allows the influenza virus to go through lots of mutations without losing its ability to gain entry to the cell. Influenza’s simplicity makes it very adaptable and allows many different types of mutations to thrive as long as they all use the same piggyback entry strategy to get inside host cells.

  By contrast, something like the measles virus uses a highly specialized and very complicated strategy to gain entry to a host cell. It relies on very specialized surface proteins to break open a doorway into the host cell. It’s a very rigid and complex system that doesn’t leave a lot of room for errors in the copying process. Even minor mutations to the measles virus will cause changes to its surface proteins, leaving it unable to gain access to a host cell to make more copies of itself. Thus, even if there are lots of mutations, those mutations are almost all evolutionary dead ends, thus preventing genetic drift. That’s one of several reasons why both a natural infection and vaccination against measles creates lifetime immunity ― immunity lasts because new variations don’t change much over time. 

  Most RNA respiratory viruses have a high rate of genetic drift because they all rely on relatively simple attack strategies to gain entry to host cells. This allows mutations to stack up quickly without becoming evolutionary dead ends because they avoid the evolutionary trap of complexity. 

  Coronaviruses use a different strategy than influenza to gain access to host cells. They have proteins on the virus surface (the infamous S-spike protein, the same one that is mimicked by the vaccine injection), which latches onto a receptor on the cell surface (the ACE2 receptor) ― a kind of key to unlock the door. This attack strategy is a little bit more complicated than the system used by influenza, which is probably why genetic drift in coronaviruses is slightly slower than in influenza, but it is still a much much simpler and much less specialized system than the one used by measles. Coronaviruses, like other respiratory viruses, are therefore constantly producing a never-ending conveyor belt of “variants” that make long-lasting herd immunity impossible. Variants are normal. The alarm raised by our public health authorities about “variants” and the feigned compassion of pharmaceutical companies as they rush to develop fresh boosters capable of fighting variants is a charade, much like expressing surprise about the sun rising in the East.

  Once you got immunity to smallpox, measles, or polio, you had full protection for a few decades and were protected against severe illness or death for the rest of your life. But for fast-mutating respiratory viruses, including coronaviruses, within a few months they are sufficiently different that your previously acquired immunity will only ever offer partial protection against your next exposure. The fast rate of mutation ensures that you never catch the exact same cold or flu twice, just their closely related constantly evolving cousins. What keeps you from feeling the full brunt of each new infection is cross-reactive immunity, which is another part of the story of how you are being conned, which I will come back to shortly. 

  Blind Faith in Central Planning: The Fantasy of Timely Doses

  But let’s pretend for a moment that a miraculous vaccine could be developed that could give us all 100% sterilizing immunity today. The length of time it takes to manufacture and ship 8 billion doses (and then make vaccination appointments for 8 billion people) ensures that by the time the last person gets their last dose, the never-ending conveyor belt of mutations will have already rendered the vaccine partially ineffective. True sterilizing immunity simply won’t ever happen with coronaviruses. The logistics of rolling out vaccines to 8 billion people meant that none of our vaccine makers or public health authorities ever could have genuinely believed that vaccines would create lasting herd immunity against COVID.

  So, for a multitude of reasons, it was a deliberate lie to give the public the impression that if enough people take the vaccine, it would create lasting herd immunity. It was 100% certain, from day one, that by the time the last dose is administered, the rapid evolution of the virus would ensure that it would already be time to start thinking about booster shots. Exactly like the flu shot. Exactly the opposite of a measles vaccine. Vaccines against respiratory viruses can never provide anything more than a temporary cross-reactive immunity “update” ― they are merely a synthetic replacement for your annual natural exposure to the smorgasbord of cold and flu viruses. Immunity as a service, imposed on society by trickery. The only question was always, how long between booster shots? Weeks, months, years? 

  Feeling conned yet?

  Spiked: The Fantasy of Preventing Infection

  The current crop of COVID vaccines was never designed to provide sterilizing immunity – that’s not how they work. They are merely a tool designed to teach the immune system to attack the S-spike protein, thereby priming the immune system to reduce the severity of infection in preparation for your inevitable future encounter with the real virus. They were never capable of preventing infection, nor of preventing spread. They were merely designed to reduce your chance of being hospitalized or dying if you are infected. As former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who is on Pfizer’s board, said: “the original premise behind these vaccines were [sic] that they would substantially reduce the risk of death and severe disease and hospitalization. And that was the data that came out of the initial clinical trials.” Every first-year medical student knows that you cannot get herd immunity from a vaccine that does not stop infection. 

  In other words, by their design, these vaccines can neither stop you from catching an infection nor stop you from transmitting the infection to someone else. They were never capable of creating herd immunity. They were designed to protect individuals against severe outcomes if they choose to take them – a tool to provide temporary focused protection for the vulnerable, just like the flu vaccine. Pushing for mass vaccination was a con from day one. And the idea of using vaccine passports to separate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated was also a con from day one. The only impact these vaccine passports have on the pandemic is as a coercive tool to get you to roll up your sleeve. Nothing more.

  Antibodies, B-Cells, and T-Cells: Why Immunity to Respiratory Viruses Fades So Quickly

  There are multiple interconnected parts to why immunity to COVID, or any other respiratory virus, is always only temporary. Not only is the virus constantly mutating but immunity itself fades over time, not unlike the way our brains start forgetting how to do complicated math problems unless they keep practicing. This is true for both immunity acquired through natural infection and immunity acquired through vaccination.

  Our immune systems have a kind of immunological memory ― basically, how long does your immune system remember how to launch an attack against a specific kind of threat. That memory fades over time. For some vaccines, like diphtheria and tetanus, that immunological memory fades very slowly. The measles vaccine protects for life. But for others, like the flu vaccine, that immunological memory fades very quickly.

  On average, the flu vaccine is only about 40% effective to begin with. And it begins to fade almost immediately after vaccination. By about 150 days (5 months), it reaches zero.

  

  Fading immunity after flu shot (Science, April 18th, 2019)

  The solution to this strange phenomenon lies in the different types of immune system responses that are triggered by a vaccine (or by exposure to the real thing through a natural infection). This has big implications for coronavirus vaccines, but I’ll get to that in a moment. First a little background information…

  A good analogy is to think of our immune system like a medieval army. The first layer of protection began with generalists – guys armed with clubs that would take a swing at everything – they were good for keeping robbers and brigands at bay and for conducting small skirmishes. But if the attack was bigger, then these generalists were quickly overwhelmed, serving as arrow fodder to blunt the attack on the more specialized troops coming up behind them. Spearmen, swordsmen, archers, cavalry, catapult operators, siege tower engineers, and so on. Each additional layer of defense has a more expensive kit and takes ever greater amounts of time to train (an English longbowman took years to build up the necessary skill and strength to become effective). The more specialized a troop is, the more you want to hold them back from the fight unless it’s absolutely necessary because they are expensive to train, expensive to deploy, and make a bigger mess when they fight that needs to be cleaned up afterwards. Always keep your powder dry. Send in the arrow fodder first and slowly ramp up your efforts from there.

  Our immune system relies on a similar kind of layered system of defense. In addition to various non-specific rapid response layers that take out the brigands, like natural killer cells, macrophages, mast cells, and so on, we also have many adaptive (specialized) layers of antibodies (i.e. IgA, IgG, IgM immunoglobulin) and various types of highly specialized white blood cells, like B-cells and T-cells. Some antibodies are released by regular B-cells. Others are released by blood plasma. Then there are memory B-cells, which are capable of remembering previous threats and creating new antibodies long after the original antibodies fade away. And there are various types of T-cells (again with various degrees of immunological memory), like natural killer T-cells, killer T-cells, and helper T-cells, all of which play various roles in detecting and neutralizing invaders. In short, the greater the threat, the more troops are called into the fight.

  This is clearly a gross oversimplification of all the different interconnected parts of our immune system, but the point is that a mild infection doesn’t trigger as many layers whereas a severe infection enlists the help of deeper layers, which are slower to respond but are much more specialized in their attack capabilities. And if those deeper adaptive layers get involved, they are capable of retaining a memory of the threat in order to be able to mount a quicker attack if a repeat attack is recognized in the future. That’s why someone who was infected by the dangerous Spanish Flu in 1918 might still have measurable T-cell immunity a century later but the mild bout of winter flu you had a couple of years ago might not have triggered T-cell immunity, even though both may have been caused by versions of the same H1N1 influenza virus.

  As a rule of thumb, the broader the immune response, the longer immunological memory will last. Antibodies fade in a matter of months, whereas B-cell and T-cell immunity can last a lifetime.

  Another rule of thumb is that a higher viral load puts more strain on your immune defenses, thus overwhelming the rapid response layers and forcing the immune system to enlist the deeper adaptive layers. That’s why nursing homes and hospitals are more dangerous places for vulnerable people than backyard barbeques. That’s why feedlot cattle are more vulnerable to viral diseases than cattle on pasture. Viral load matters a lot to how easily the generalist layers are overwhelmed and how much effort your immune system has to make to neutralize a threat.

  Where the infection happens in the body also matters. For example, an infection in the upper respiratory tract triggers much less involvement from your adaptive immune system than when it reaches your lungs. Part of this is because your upper respiratory tract is already heavily preloaded with large numbers of generalist immunological cells that are designed to attack germs as they enter, which is why most colds and flus never make it deeper into the lungs. The guys with the clubs are capable of handling most of the threats that try to make through the gate. Most of the specialized troops hold back unless they are needed.

  Catching a dangerous disease like measles produces lifetime immunity because an infection triggers all the deep layers that will retain a memory of how to fight off future encounters with the virus. So does the measles vaccine. Catching a cold or mild flu generally does not. 

  From an evolutionary point of view, this actually makes a lot of sense. Why waste valuable resources developing long-lasting immunity (i.e. training archers and building catapults) to defend against a virus that did not put you in mortal danger. A far better evolutionary strategy is to evolve a narrower generalist immune response to mild infections (i.e. most cold and flu viruses), which fades quickly once the threat is conquered, but invest in deep long-term broad-based immunity to dangerous infections, which lasts a very long time in case that threat is ever spotted on the horizon again. Considering the huge number of threats our immune systems face, this strategy avoids the trap of spreading immunological memory too thin. Our immunological memory resources are not limitless – long-term survival requires prioritizing our immunological resources.

  The take-home lesson is that vaccines will, at best, only last as long as immunity acquired through natural infection and will often fade much faster because the vaccine is often only able to trigger a partial immune response compared to the actual infection. So, if the disease itself doesn’t produce a broad-based immune response leading to long-lasting immunity, neither will the vaccine. And in most cases, immunity acquired through vaccination will begin to fade much sooner than immunity acquired through a natural infection. Every vaccine maker and public health official knows this despite bizarrely claiming that the COVID vaccines (based on re-creating the S-protein spike instead of using a whole virus) would somehow become the exception to the rule. That was a lie, and they knew it from day one. That should set your alarm bells ringing at full throttle.

  So, with this little bit of background knowledge under our belts, let’s look at what our public health officials and vaccine makers would have known in advance about coronaviruses and coronavirus vaccines when they told us back in the early Spring of 2020 that COVID vaccines were the path back to normality.

  From a 2003 study [my emphasis]:

  “Until SARS appeared, human coronaviruses were known as the cause of 15–30% of colds… Colds are generally mild, self-limited infections, and significant increases in neutralizing antibody titer are found in nasal secretions and serum after infection. Nevertheless, some unlucky individuals can be reinfected with the same coronavirus soon after recovery and get symptoms again.“

  In other words, the coronaviruses involved in colds (there were four human coronaviruses before SARS, MERS, and COVID) all trigger such a weak immune response that they do not lead to any long-lasting immunity whatsoever. And why would they if, for most of us, the threat is so minimal that the generalists are perfectly capable of neutralizing the attack.

  We also know that immunity against coronaviruses is not durable in other animals either. As any farmer knows well, cycles of reinfection with coronaviruses are the rule rather than the exception among their livestock (for example, coronaviruses are a common cause of pneumonia and various types of diarrheal diseases like scours, shipping fever, and winter dysentery in cattle). Annual farm vaccination schedules are therefore designed accordingly. The lack of long-term immunity to coronaviruses is well documented in veterinary research among cattle, poultry, deer, water buffalo, etc. Furthermore, although animal coronavirus vaccines have been on the market for many years, it is well known that “none are completely efficacious in animals“. So, like the fading flu vaccine profile I showed you earlier, none of the animal coronavirus vaccines are capable of providing sterilizing immunity (none were capable of stopping 100% of infections, without which you can never achieve herd immunity) and the partial immunity they offered is well known to fade rather quickly.

  What about immunity to COVID’s close cousin, the deadly SARS coronavirus, which had an 11% case fatality rate during the 2003 outbreak? From a 2007 study: “SARS-specific antibodies were maintained for an average of 2 years… SARS patients might be susceptible to reinfection >3 years after initial exposure.”  (Bear in mind that, as with all diseases, re-infection does not mean you are necessarily going to get full-blown SARS; fading immunity after a natural infection tends to offer at least some level of partial protection against severe outcomes for a considerable amount of time after you can already be reinfected and spread it to others – more on that later.)

  And what about MERS, the deadliest coronavirus to date, which made the jump from camels in 2012 and had a fatality rate of around 35%? It triggered the broadest immune response (due to its severity) and also appears to trigger the longest lasting immunity as a result (> 6yrs)

  Thus, to pretend that there was any chance that herd immunity to COVID would be anything but short-lived was dishonest at best. For most people, immunity was always going to fade quickly. Just like what happens after most other respiratory virus infections. By February 2020, the epidemiological data showed clearly that for most people COVID was a mild coronavirus (nowhere near as severe than SARS or MERS), so it was virtually a certainty that even the immunity from a natural infection would fade within months, not years. It was also a certainty that vaccination was therefore, at best, only ever going to provide partial protection and that this protection would be temporary, lasting on the order of months. This is a case of false and misleading advertising if there ever was one.

  If I can allow my farming roots to shine through for a moment, I’d like to explain the implications of what was known about animal coronaviruses vaccines. Baby calves are often vaccinated against bovine coronaviral diarrhea shortly after birth if they are born in the spring mud and slush season, but not if they are born in midsummer on lush pastures where the risk of infection is lower. Likewise, bovine coronavirus vaccines are used to protect cattle before they face stressful conditions during shipping, in a feedlot, or in winter feed pens. Animal coronavirus vaccines are thus used as tools to provide a temporary boost in immunity, in very specific conditions, and only for very specific vulnerable categories of animals. After everything I’ve laid out so far in this text, the targeted use of bovine coronavirus vaccines should surprise no-one. Pretending that our human coronavirus vaccines would be different was nonsense. 

  The only rational reason why the WHO and public health officials would withhold all that contextual information from the public as they rolled out lockdowns and held forth vaccines as an exit strategy was to whip the public into irrational fear in order to be able to make a dishonest case for mass vaccination when they should have, at most, been focused on providing focused vaccination of the most vulnerable only. That deception was the Trojan Horse to introduce endless mass booster shots as immunity inevitably fades and as new variants replace old ones. 

  Now, as all the inevitable limitations and problems with these vaccines become apparent (i.e. fading of vaccine-induced immunity, vaccines proving to only be partially effective, the rise of new variants, and the vaccinated population demonstrably catching and spreading the virus ― a.k.a. the leaky vaccine phenomenon), the surprise that our health authorities are showing simply isn’t credible. As I have shown you, all this was 100% to be expected. They intentionally weaponized fear and false expectations to unleash a fraudulent bait-and-switch racket of global proportions. Immunity on demand, forever.

  Manufacturing Dangerous Variants: Virus Mutations Under Lockdown Conditions — Lessons from the 1918 Spanish Flu

  At this point you may be wondering, if there is no lasting immunity from infection or vaccination, then are public health officials right to roll out booster shots to protect us from severe outcomes even if their dishonest methods to get us to accept them were unethical? Do we need a lifetime regimen of booster shots to keep us safe from a beast to which we cannot develop durable long-term immunity?

  The short answer is no. 

  Contrary to what you might think, the rapid evolution of RNA respiratory viruses actually has several important benefits for us as their involuntary hosts, which protects us without the benefit of broad lifelong immunity. One of those benefits has to do with the natural evolution of the virus towards less dangerous variants. The other is the cross-reactive immunity that comes from frequent re-exposure to closely related “cousins”. I’m going to peel apart both of these topics in order to show you the remarkable system that nature designed to keep us safe… and to show you how the policies being forced on us by our public health authorities are knowingly interfering with this system. They are creating a dangerous situation that increases our risk to other respiratory viruses (not just to COVID) and may even push the COVID virus to evolve to become more dangerous to both the unvaccinated and the vaccinated. There are growing signs that this nightmare scenario has already begun. 

  “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” 

  – President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

  Let’s start with the evolutionary pressures that normally drive viruses towards becoming less dangerous over time. A virus depends on its host to spread it. A lively host is more useful than a bedridden or dead one because a lively host can spread the virus further and will still be around to catch future mutations. Viruses risk becoming evolutionary dead ends if they kill or immobilize their hosts. Plagues came, killed, and then were starved out of existence because their surviving hosts had all acquired herd immunity. Colds come and go every year because their hosts are lively, easily spread the viruses around, and never acquire long-lasting immunity so that last year’s hosts can also serve as next year’s hosts ― only those who have weak immune systems have much to worry about. In other words, under normal conditions, mutations that are more contagious but less deadly have a survival advantage over less contagious and more deadly variations.

  From the virus’ point of view, the evolutionary golden mean is reached when it can easily infect as many hosts as possible without reducing their mobility and without triggering long-term immunity in most of their hosts. That’s the ticket to setting up a sustainable cycle of reinfection, forever. Viruses with slow genetic drift and highly specialized reproductive strategies, like polio or measles, can take centuries or longer to become less deadly and more contagious; some may never reach the relatively harmless status of a cold or mild flu virus (by harmless I mean harmless to the majority of the population despite being extremely dangerous to those with weak or compromised immune systems). But for viruses with fast genetic drift, like respiratory viruses, even a few months can make a dramatic difference. Rapid genetic drift is one of the reasons why the Spanish Flu stopped being a monster disease, but polio and measles haven’t. And anyone with training in virology or immunology understands this! 

  We often speak of evolutionary pressure as though it forces an organism to adapt. In reality, a simple organism like a virus is utterly blind to its environment — all it does is blindly produce genetic copies of itself. “Evolutionary pressure” is actually just a fancy way of saying that environmental conditions will determine which of those millions of copies survives long enough to produce even more copies of itself. 

  A human adapts to its environment by altering its behaviour (that’s one type of adaptation). But the behaviour of a single viral particle never changes. A virus “adapts” over time because some genetic copies with one set of mutations survive and spread faster than other copies with a different set of mutations. Adaptation in viruses has to be seen exclusively through the lens of changes from one generation of virus to the next based on which mutations have a competitive edge over others. And that competitive edge will vary depending on the kinds of environmental conditions a virus encounters.

  So, fear mongering about the Delta variant being even more contagious leaves out the fact that this is exactly what you would expect as a respiratory virus adapts to its new host species. We would expect new variants to be more contagious but less deadly as the virus fades to become just like the other 200+ respiratory viruses that cause common colds and flus. 

  That’s also why the decision to lock down the healthy population is so sinister. Lockdowns, border closures, and social distancing rules reduced spread among the healthy population, thus creating a situation where mutations produced among the healthy would become sufficiently rare that they might be outnumbered by mutations circulating among the bedridden. Mutations circulating among the healthy are, by definition, going to be the least dangerous mutations since they did not make their hosts sick enough to confine them to bedrest. That’s precisely the variants you want to spread in order to drown out competition from more dangerous mutations. 

  A host stuck in bed with a fever and not out dining with friends is limited in his ability to infect others compared to a host infected with a variety that only gives its host a sniffle. Not all bedridden hosts have caught a more dangerous mutation, but all dangerous mutations will be found among the bedridden. Thus as time goes by, dangerous mutations can only compete with less dangerous mutations if the entire population is limited in its ability to mix and mingle.

  As long as the majority of infections are among the healthy, the more dangerous variants circulating among some of the bedridden will be outnumbered and will become evolutionary dead ends. But when public health officials intentionally restricted spread among the young, strong, and healthy members of society by imposing lockdowns, they created a set of evolutionary conditions that risked shifting the competitive evolutionary advantage from the least dangerous variants to more dangerous variants. By locking us all up, they risked making the virus more dangerous over time. Evolution doesn’t sit around to wait for you while you develop a vaccine.

  Let me give you a historical example to demonstrate that this rapid evolution of a virus towards either more or less dangerous variants isn’t mere theory. Small changes to the environment can lead to very rapid changes in the virus’ evolution. The first wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu was not particularly deadly, with mortality rates similar to regular seasonal flu. However, the second wave was not only much deadlier but, rather unusually, was particularly deadly to young people rather than just the old and the weak. Why would the second wave be the deadly one? And what would cause the virus to evolve so quickly to become both more deadly and better adapted to preying on young people? At first glance it would seem to defy all evolutionary logic.

  The answer demonstrates just how sensitive a virus is to small changes in evolutionary pressure. The Spanish Flu spread in the midst of the lockdown-mimicking conditions of World War One. During the first wave, the virus found a huge population of soldiers trapped in the cold damp conditions of the trenches and a near endless supply of captive bedridden hosts in overflowing field hospitals. By the Spring of 1918, up to three-quarters of the entire French military and half of British troops had been infected. These conditions created two unique evolutionary pressures. On the one hand, it allowed variants that were well adapted to young people to emerge. But on the other hand, unlike normal times, the cramped conditions of trench warfare and field hospitals allowed dangerous variants that immobilize their hosts to spread freely with little competition from less dangerous variants that spread through lively hosts. The trenches and field hospitals became the virus incubators driving the evolution of variants. 

  Normally young people are predominantly exposed to less dangerous mutations because the healthiest do all the mingling while the bedridden stay home. But the lockdown conditions of war created conditions that erased the competitive advantage of less dangerous mutations that don’t immobilize their hosts, leading to the rise of more dangerous mutations. 

  Thanks to the end of the war, the lockdown-mimicking conditions also ended, thereby shifting the competitive advantage back to less dangerous mutations that could spread freely among the mobile healthy members of the population. The deadliness of the second wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu is inextricably linked to the First World War, and the end of the war is linked to the virus fading into the background of regular cold and flu season.

  

  Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, ill with Spanish flu at a hospital ward at Camp Funston

  It is therefore highly likely that the 1918 Spanish Flu would never have been more than a really bad flu season had it not been for the amplifying effect of lockdown conditions created by a world at war.

  It also raises the question, for which I don’t have an answer, whether the lockdown strategy during COVID was intentionally used to reduce spread among the healthy in order to keep the virus from fading into harmless irrelevancy. I use the word “intentionally” ― and it’s a strong word ― because the deadly second wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu and its causes are hardly secrets in the medical community. You’d have to be a completely reckless and utterly incompetent idiot, or a cynical bastard with an agenda, to impose any strategy that mimics those virus-amplifying conditions. Yet that’s what our health authorities did. And what they continue to do, while shamelessly hyperventilating about the risk of “variants” to force us to submit to medical tyranny based on mandatory vaccines, never-ending booster shots, and vaccine passports that can turn off access to our normal lives. This is cynicism at its finest.

  Leaky Vaccines, Antibody-Dependent Enhancement, and the Marek Effect

  The experience of the 2nd wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu also raises another question: What kind of evolutionary pressures are being created by using a leaky vaccine?

  A vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity prevents the vaccinated from being able to catch or transmit the virus. They become a dead end for the virus. However, as I’ve already mentioned, the current crop of COVID vaccines, which are meant to train the immune system to recognize the S-spike proteins, were not designed to create sterilizing immunity. By their design, they merely help reduce the risk of severe outcomes by priming the immune system. The vaccinated can still catch and spread the virus ― the definition of a leaky vaccine ― and epidemiological data makes it very clear that this is now happening all around the world. Thus, both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are equally capable of producing new variants. The idea that the unvaccinated are producing variants while the vaccinated are not is a boldfaced lie.

  

  Source: “Israel hopes boosters can avert new lockdown as COVID vaccine efficacy fades.” August 23rd, 2021, Financial Times, 

  From an evolutionary perspective, this is a potentially dangerous scenario. What has been done by temporarily blunting the risk of hospitalization or death, but without stopping infection among the vaccinated, is to create a set of evolutionary conditions where a variant that is dangerous to the unvaccinated can spread easily among the vaccinated without making the vaccinated very sick. For lack of a better term, let’s call this a dual-track variant. Thus, because the vaccinated are not getting bedridden from this dual-track variant, they can continue to spread it easily, giving it a competitive advantage, even if it is highly dangerous to the unvaccinated.

  Furthermore, since COVID vaccination only offers temporary short-term protection, as soon as immunity fades, the vaccinated themselves are also equally at risk of more severe outcomes. Thus, this creates the evolutionary pressure for the virus to behave as an increasingly contagious but relatively mild virus as long as everyone is vaccinated but as a dangerous but also very contagious virus as soon as temporary immunity wears off. The call for boosters every 6 months is already here. (Update: now it’s being revised down to 5 months.)

  So, the pandemic really does have the potential to become the Pandemic of the Unvaccinated (the shameless term coined by public health officials to terrify the vaccinated into bullying their unvaccinated peers), but reality comes with a twist because if a dual-track variant does evolve it would be the unvaccinated (and those whose boosters have expired) who would have reason to fear the vaccinated, not the other way around as so many frightened citizens seem to believe. And the end result would be that we all become permanently dependent on boosters every 6 months, forever.

  Hold on, you might say, the flu vaccine chart shown earlier also never provided sterilizing immunity. The flu vaccine is notoriously leaky but hasn’t gotten more dangerous, has it? The answer is complicated because the comparison is less useful than it first appears. As long as the majority of the population does not get the flu vaccine, more dangerous variants will face stiff competition from less dangerous ones circulating among the healthy unvaccinated population (average flu vaccination rates in most western countries are between 38-41%, with most other countries around the world doing very little vaccination against the flu). And since the vaccine is only 40% effective to begin with and since immunity fades rapidly after the shot, the flu vaccine doesn’t provide much protection to begin with, thus reducing the chance that separate mutations would circulate among the vaccinated. And public health frequently gets the strain wrong (influenza has many strains that are constantly evolving so there is a lot of guesswork that goes into creating the right vaccine formula each year). In other words, lack of universal coverage and poor protection are likely preventing the emergence of a dual-track variant. 

  Furthermore, flu vaccination is not evenly distributed across the population. It is mostly the vulnerable and those who work around them that get it while children, young adults and other healthy members of society don’t get it. So, even if more deadly variants were to arise in nursing homes or hospital settings, the high number of healthy unvaccinated visitors to those facilities would constantly bring less deadly more contagious variants with them, thereby preventing more dangerous variants from gaining a competitive edge in nursing home or hospital settings. But if the leaky flu vaccinations were to be extended to everyone, or if nursing home populations continue to be kept isolated from the rest of society during COVID lockdowns, things might begin to look a little different.

  However, what I am warning about is far from theoretical. There is a very clear example (well known to public health officials and vaccine developers) from the poultry farming industry where a universal leaky vaccine pushed a virus to evolve to become extremely deadly to unvaccinated chickens. It is called the Marek Effect. It began with a leaky vaccine that was rolled out to fight a herpes virus in industrialized high-density chicken barns. Vaccinated chickens were protected from severe outcomes but nevertheless continued to catch and spread the virus, so evolutionary pressure led to the emergence of a dual-track variant that become the dominant strain of this herpes virus. It continues to spread among the vaccinated chickens without killing them but kills up to 80% or more of unvaccinated birds if they get infected. Thus, a never-ending stream of vaccinations is now required just to maintain the status quo. I bet the pharmaceutical industry is smiling at all those drug-dependent chickens though — talk about having a captive audience!

  It’s not a certainty that this will happen with the COVID vaccines, but the longer this fiasco continues and the higher that vaccination rates rise around the world, the more likely it becomes that we re-create the conditions for some kind of Marek effect to develop. A leaky vaccine used sparingly to protect small pockets of vulnerable individuals is very different than a leaky vaccine applied to everyone. The rapid change in behaviour of the 1918 Spanish Flu should be a warning to us all that a virus can adapt very quickly in response to small changes in evolutionary pressure. The closer we get to universal vaccination, the greater the danger that leaky vaccines will lead to dual-track variants that become more dangerous to the unvaccinated.

  There is one other danger from leaky vaccines that is worth mentioning because researchers are already starting to see the first signs of it, as you can see discussed in this paper published on August 9th, 2021, in the Journal of Infection. It’s called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). It happens when a poorly designed vaccine trains antibodies to recognize a virus as an intruder without being strong enough to kill/neutralize them. Instead of the virus being neutralized inside the antibody when the antibody attacks and “swallows” it (antibodies envelope intruders in order to neutralize them), the virus takes over the antibody cell that attacked it and uses it as a host to start making copies of itself. Thus, the attacking antibody opens the door to the inside of the cell and becomes the virus’ unwitting host, thereby accelerating rather than stopping the infection.

  Antibody-dependent enhancement is a well-documented phenomenon in attempts to develop vaccines against the RSV virus, dengue fever, and other coronaviruses. This is one of the reasons why previous attempts to develop a human coronavirus vaccine against the SARS virus failed. It kept happening in animal trials. And many doctors warned from day one that it would happen with these vaccines as well as new variants gradually emerge that are sufficiently different from the original variant upon which the vaccine is based. ADE doesn’t show up on the day after vaccination. It emerges gradually as new variants spread that are different from previous variants.

  Quote from the aforementioned study: 

  ADE may be a concern for people receiving vaccines based on the original Wuhan strain spike sequence (either mRNA or viral vectors). Under these circumstances, second generation vaccines with spike protein formulations lacking structurally-conserved ADE-related epitopes should be considered.

  In other words, your previous vaccination protects you only until new variants arise, then the training that your previous vaccination gave your immune system becomes a liability as your immune system switches from protecting you to increasing your risk from the disease. Your only way to protect yourself is to dutifully get your next “updated” booster shot to protect you for next few short months. You become a permanent drug dependent vaccine customer. And you better hope next year’s formulation doesn’t get it wrong. And you better hope that updates can keep you safe indefinitely because there’s also the risk that updates will get less effective as the bad training from previous boosters begins to add up. 

  It puts a whole new spin on “trust the scientists.” Your life will literally be at their mercy. 

  I bet the pharmaceutical industry will be smiling at all those drug-dependent chickens loyal customers though — talk about having a captive audience! And what a sweet deal – vaccine makers have been granted an exemption from liability and, if it goes wrong, they are the go-to guy to solve it… with more boosters.

  And with every booster, you’ll get to play Russian Roulette all over again with side effects: death, autoimmune diseases, reactivation of dormant viruses, neurological damage, blood clotting, and more. Here’s where the reported side effects on the US VAERS system stand at the time of writing (August 28th, 2021).

  

  OpenVaers Search, August 28th, 2021

  Leaky vaccines are playing with fire. All vaccine makers and public health authorities were aware of the potential for ADE with the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Yet they pushed for mass vaccination, from day one, without completing the long-term trials that are meant to rule out this kind of risk. They knowingly gambled with your future in their eagerness to get you onto your regimen of never-ending boosters and vaccine passports. Why not, if more boosters are the solution if something going wrong. They can always blame it on the “variants”. The media won’t challenge them – not with billions of vaccine advertising dollars floating around.

  Anti-Virus Security Updates: Cross-Reactive Immunity Through Repeated Exposure

  And now we come to the second way in which our immune systems benefit from the rapid evolution of RNA respiratory viruses and to the sinister way in which public health policy is interfering with that system. 

  The once deadly 1918 Spanish Flu is still with us today; now it is part of the smorgasbord of viruses that cause colds and flus every winter precisely because subsequent variants evolved to be less deadly. As unpleasant as flu season is, for most of us it is not lethal unless we have weak or compromised immune systems. But each subsequent exposure teaches our immune system how to keep up with its gradual evolution over time. 

  In other words, each year’s fresh exposure to the latest strain of cold or flu virus functions as a sort of antivirus security update to partially prepare you for the next one. Fading immunity and changing mutations means you’ll never be 100% immune to the next one, but as long as updates are frequent enough, you’ll also never have 0% immunity. There will always be enough carry-over to protect you from the most serious outcomes unless you are unfortunate enough to have a weak immune system. That is why it is called cross-reactive immunity. 

  A broad smorgasbord of viruses cruising around during cold and flu season makes it less likely that we will die or get seriously ill when exposed to some new “variant” from London, India, or Brazil, or if we are exposed to a new “cousin”, like COVID, which crawls out of some bat cave or wet market or escapes from some lab in Wuhan. 

  

  Partial cross-reactive immunity requires periodic re-exposure. Modified from Nature, 4704, September 17th, 2020.

  But when we think about it for a moment, what was once dangerous when it was new soon becomes our most important ally for the future to protect us from the next dangerous new thing. As long as we are re-exposed frequently, before immunity fades to zero, cross-reactive immunity is the only realistic evolutionary strategy that humans have to protect us from the next viral variant or viral cousin of these fast-mutating respiratory viruses. 

  With sufficient leftover cross-reactive immunity from your last exposure, exposure to the latest variant of a virus may simply result in your immune system getting updated without you even noticing a single thing. That’s what it means to get an “asymptomatic” infection. Before we started tormenting the healthy with never-ending PCR tests to make us aware of all these “asymptomatic infections”, we were constantly getting lots of these “antivirus security updates” each time we encountered one of the more than 200 respiratory viruses circulating among us, often without even noticing the “infection”. 

  Many of these encounters are asymptomatic because our immune systems are able to neutralize them without even ruffling enough layers of our defenses to trigger any symptoms. Almost everyone gets a few immune system updates to the viruses that cause common colds, every single year, yet only a small percentage will ever get very sick. The rest may barely get a runny nose, or nothing symptoms at all. 

  Mass PCR testing during COVID created a massive freak-out over every single asymptomatic COVID update when we should have only been focused on those people who come down with severe symptomatic disease. There was never any justifiable reason to roll out PCR tests to asymptomatic citizens other than to heighten fear in the population in order to make them receptive to mass vaccination. 

  So, in a sense, those 201 respiratory viruses that cause our colds and flus are not just an inconvenience, they are nature’s solution to software updates ― even though they are dangerous to those with weak immune systems, for the rest of us our immune systems depend on them to give us partial protection against new strains that emerge through mutation or when new strains jump across species boundaries. Getting rid of those already circulating in society would make us more vulnerable to new variants that emerge. Adding another 200 will make us even safer once we get our first contact behind us.

  Eradicating a relatively benign respiratory virus is therefore not a desirable goal. But making it fade into the background is a desirable public health goal so that what was once dangerous can now keep protecting us against the next one through cross-reactive immunity. Focused protection for the vulnerable, not lockdowns, was always the only realistic public health response to this respiratory virus, unless someone wanted to seize the opportunity as a way to rope the public into mass vaccinations.

  Nature evolved this fascinating strategy of self-updating immunological countermeasures by continually testing us with mild versions of previous closely related respiratory viruses. Our immune system is therefore somewhat similar to an Olympic weightlifter whose muscles not only stay strong but get even stronger by routinely putting his muscles under a little bit of stress. Our immune system functions the same way ― it must be continually stress-tested with mild challenges to these fast-mutating viruses in order to develop the robust arsenal of defenses to keep us safe. It is a concept called anti-fragility, which was described in detail by Nassim Taleb in his ground-breaking book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder #Commissions Earned. Once you understand this concept, your fear of “variants” will rapidly dissolve.

  The eradication of these fast-mutating respiratory viruses is therefore not just unachievable, it would actually be dangerous if we succeeded because it would eliminate the security updates that we need to protect us against new variants that crawl out of bat caves or jump species boundaries. This year’s runny nose is your protection against COVID-23. Your cross-reactive immunity to last years annoying flu might just save your life if something truly dangerous arrives, as long as it is at least somewhat related to what your immune system has seen before. COVID could easily have turned out to be as dangerous to us as the Spanish Flu if it hadn’t been for the saving grace of cross-reactive immunity. As this study shows, up to 90-99% of us already had some level of protection to COVID thanks to partial cross-reactive immunity gained from exposure to other coronaviruses. The high percentage of infections that turn out to be asymptomatic bears that out.

  Someone needs to remind Bill Gates, his fawning public health bootlickers, and the pharmaceutical companies that whisper sweet-nothings in his ear that in the natural world of respiratory viruses, most of us don’t need a regimen of never-ending booster shots to keep us safe from COVID variants ― we already have a perfectly functioning system to keep bringing us new updates. Respiratory viruses are a completely different beast than smallpox, polio, or measles; and pretending otherwise is not just silly, it’s criminal because anyone with a background in immunology knows better. But it’s a fantastic and very profitably way to scare a wide-eyed population into accepting never-ending booster shots as a replacement for the natural antivirus updates that we normally get from hugs and handshakes. Protect the vulnerable. Stop preying on the rest of us.

  The Not-So-Novel Novel Virus: The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship Outbreak Proved We Have Cross-Reactive Immunity

  A truly novel virus affects everyone because no-one has pre-existing cross-reactive partial immunity to it. That’s why the diseases that accompanied Christopher Columbus to the Americas killed up to 95% of North and South America’s indigenous populations (see Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond #Commissions Earned). To them, these diseases were novel because they had no previous exposure to them and therefore lacked the antivirus security updates acquired through pre-existing infections. They would have benefited greatly from access to a vaccine prior to first contact.

  Thankfully, COVID-19 was not that kind of virus. Yet the media and public health officials shamelessly provoked fear that it was by using the scientifically accurate term novel to describe it, knowing full well that all scientists would understand this to mean a newly emergent strain while the general public would jump to the conclusion that this was an entirely new virus (also called a novel virus by scientists), like when tuberculosis or influenza accompanied Columbus to the Americas. This was a grotesque example of public health officials misusing scientific terminology, knowing full well that the public would misunderstand the term novel according to how we use the word in everyday language and not according to how the scientific community uses it. 

  That little game successfully sparked a wave of fear that is so strong that not only is everyone desperate for a leaky jab to lead them to safety, they are so scared that they won’t rest until all their friends, neighbors, and family members get one too, even if it requires extreme levels of coercion to get the job done. Canada has even recently gone as far as making vaccination mandatory for all federal employees, employees of Crown Corporations, employees of federally-regulated companies (i.e. utilities) and for all travellers on commercial airlines and trains (CBC, August 13th, 2021) !

  Despite the scary numbers put out by the Chinese government in the early days of the pandemic, the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship served as an inadvertent petri-dish to study the COVID virus. Thanks to that example, by the end of February 2020, we knew that COVID was not some monster virus like the 1918 Spanish Flu but was simply another coronavirus strain that was closely related to previous coronaviruses and that most of us already carried some level of cross-reactive immunity to protect us.

  How do we know that? The virus circulated freely onboard the ship, yet age corrected lethality remained between 0.025% and 0.625% (that’s on the order of a bad flu season and nothing at all like the fatality rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu, which was between 2% and 10%). Only 26% of the passengers tested positive for the virus and of those that tested positive 48% remained completely symptom free despite the advanced age of most of these passengers! 

  

  Diamond Princess Cruise Ship, Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0.

  The Diamond Princess didn’t turn into the floating morgue of bygone eras when ships carrying a disease were forced into quarantine. That should have been the first clue that this virus was anything but novel in the colloquial understanding of the term. Like most cold and flu viruses, only those with weak immune systems were in danger while everyone else got off with little or no symptoms. That is simply not how a truly novel virus behaves when it encounters a population without any pre-existing cross-reactive immunity. The only plausible explanation for that lack of deadliness (deadly for some, annoying for some, and asymptomatic for most others) is that most people already have sufficient pre-existing cross-reactive immunity from exposure to other coronaviruses. 

  Research subsequently confirmed what the Diamond Princess outbreak revealed. Cross-reactive immunity. As I mentioned before, studies like this one demonstrated that up to 90 – 99% of us already have some residual level of partial protection to COVID. And we also subsequently found out that most people who were exposed to the deadly SARS virus in 2003 have little to fear from COVID, again because of cross-reactive immunity. COVID was never a mortal threat to most of us.

  The important thing to remember is that the Diamond Princess data was already publicly available since the end of February of 2020. Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development initiative approved by President Trump, was nevertheless announced on April 29th, 2020. Thus, our health authorities knowingly and opportunistically recommended lockdowns and promoted vaccines as an exit strategy after it was already clear that the majority of us had some kind of protection through cross-reactive immunity. The Diamond Princess example provided the unequivocal proof that the only people who might benefit from a vaccine, even if it worked as advertised, were the small number of extremely vulnerable members of society with weak immune systems. Likewise, lockdowns should have been recommended only for nursing home residents (on a strictly voluntary basis to protect their human rights) while the pandemic surged through the rest of us.

  The only plausible explanation for why our international health authorities ignored the example of the Diamond Princess is if they wanted to stoke fear among the public and if they wanted to bamboozle credible politicians in order to opportunistically achieve some other public health agenda. They pushed vaccination on everyone knowing full well that most people don’t need it and that protection would fade quickly even if the vaccines had been 100% effective, which they also knew was not going to be the case either. And yet they continue to push these vaccines using the same deceitful tactics even today. Water does not run uphill.

  “We know they are lying, 

  they know they are lying, 

  they know we know they are lying, 

  we know they know we know they are lying, 

  but they are still lying.” 

  – Attributed to Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

  Mother Knows Best: Vitamin D, Playing in Puddles, and Sweaters

  Just like during other cold and flu seasons, the vulnerable to COVID are overwhelmingly those with compromised immune systems: those whose immune systems are shutting down as they approach death from old age and those whose immune systems are compromised due to severe pre-existing conditions that reduce immune function. 

  For everyone else with a strong immune system and cross-reactive immunity, we have little to fear from the virus and its never-ending stream of mutations unless our immune systems are temporarily suppressed through illness, environmental conditions, or nutritional deficiencies. 

  Your mother’s warnings about putting on a sweater, hat, and dry socks, tucking in your shirt to cover your kidneys, and not playing in puddles were not about preventing infection by a cold or flu, it was about preventing symptomatic infection. Research has demonstrated that getting chilled can temporarily suppress your immune system. Thus, getting chilled increases the chance that an infection leads to symptomatic disease rather than merely updating your immune system through an asymptomatic infection. Your sweater won’t prevent you from catching an infection. But it might prevent that infection from becoming a symptomatic disease. It could be the difference between experiencing nothing and ending up in bed with a fever.

  In the same way, topping up on vitamin C and D, eating properly, getting enough rest, getting hugs from loved ones, adopting a positive attitude in life, and smiling when you see a rainbow are all strategies that help keep your immune system strong. They don’t prevent infection, but they might reduce your risk of a bad outcome.

  

  Ask the staff in a nursing home what happens to their patients when any of these important ingredients is missing ― vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, poor sleep, loneliness, and depression lay out the welcome mat for the Grim Reaper. A temporarily suppressed immune system cannot mount an adequate immune response even when we do have cross-reactive immunity.

  Our public health authorities also all know this. This is not a mystery. Yet, instead of promoting these strategies as ways in which people could reduce their risk to severe outcomes, they have systematically downplayed, ignored, or labeled these strategies as “fake news“. Maximize the risk of death. Then promote the vaccine as the exclusive path to safety. Criminal.

  You cannot control other people forever to avoid getting exposed to a respiratory virus. COVID Zero is an authoritarian fantasy. But you can control your food, your sleep, and your attitude so that your immune system can mount the strongest attack it can muster. The odds are that you already have all the cross-reactive immunity you need to survive this virus without a hitch. Look inwards to find freedom from fear. Take good care of yourself. Go play in the sun with your friends. And listen to your mother —tuck in your shirt! 

  The Paradox: Why COVID-Zero Makes People More Vulnerable to Other Viruses

  As is so often the case when politicians try to run our lives for us, the government response to COVID is not just wrong, it is actually making us more vulnerable, both to COVID and to other respiratory viruses. Depriving nursing home patients of their loved ones, locking them in isolation, locking people in their homes, shutting down gyms, driving us into depression, and paralysing us with fear and uncertainty ensures that our immune systems will be working at suboptimal levels. Broken marriages, children deprived of social contacts, insomnia, the remarkable surge in obesity that occurred during COVID, and so many other consequences of these ill begotten strategies all have a toll on our ability to mount a strong immune response when we are inevitably exposed to any respiratory viruses.

  Equally devastating is that, by disrupting our normal social contacts, we have reduced how much training our immune system is getting through repeated exposure to other respiratory viruses. A computer that stops getting security updates becomes increasingly vulnerable to future versions of viruses. The same goes for our immune system. COVID is not the only risk. Remember, there are more than 200 other respiratory viruses that are also circulating. They may not be getting much attention and may be temporarily starved for hosts while we are cooped up at home, but they haven’t gone away. They are waiting. And when they find us, they find hosts whose antivirus security updates are out of date. 

  In other words, by breaking our ability to socialize with our peers, what was once relatively harmless is becoming more dangerous to us because our immune systems are out of practice. This isn’t some theoretical risk. We’re already beginning to see the fallout from that lack of updates, with deadly consequences. 

  For example, New Zealand was praised internationally for adopting a COVID-Zero policy and for the low COVID cases that resulted. But the lockdowns, social distancing measures, and border closures also had another effect  ― there was a 99.9% reduction in flu cases and a 98% reduction in cases of the RSV virus. Sounds good, right? Not so fast…

  Systems that depend on constant challenges to become antifragile will become fragile if those challenges stop happening. A tree that grows up sheltered from the wind will break when it is exposed to the storm.

  Now New Zealand’s myopic focus on COVID as the one and only risk is coming home to roost. Its hospitals are overflowing with children. But they’re not being hospitalized by COVID. They are falling ill with RSV virus because of the “immunity debt” that built up from not being continually exposed to all the respiratory viruses that make up normal life. These children are, quite literally, the next wave of victims of COVID-Zero. Being cut off from normal life has left them fragile. Instead of praise, it now is becoming apparent that New Zealand’s authoritarian strongwoman, Jacinda Ardern, and her public health advisors ought to be standing trial for gross negligence for ignoring the long-established research about how our immune systems depend on continual exposure to respiratory viruses in order to stay healthy.

  

  Source: The Guardian, July 8th, 2021.

  As long as our social contacts are restricted, we are all becoming increasing vulnerable to all these other respiratory viruses because of the “immunity debt” that has built up during lockdowns and social distancing rules. It turns out that handshakes and hugs are not just good for the soul. Our public health officials have blood on their hands for denying us our normal lives. 

  This heightened risk to other viruses isn’t an unexpected outcome; there were plenty of doctors who warned about precisely this risk as lockdowns were being imposed. For example, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr Artin Massihi warned about this phenomenon back in May of 2020. YouTube censored their video. Yet they were citing long-established science that was uncontested until society collectively lost its mind in 2020.

  Introducing Immunity as a Service – A Subscription-Based Business Model for the Pharmaceutical Industry (It was always about the money!)

  As you can see from everything I have laid out in this essay, this misbegotten vaccine-enabled fever dream was never a realistic solution to stop COVID. At best, if the vaccines worked as advertised, all they could ever have been was one tool among many to provide the vulnerable with focused protection while the rest of us went about our normal lives, largely unaffected by our periodic antivirus security updates through exposure to the natural virus.

  COVID-Zero in all its variations was a fantasy. 

  But it was not an accidental fantasy. 

  Water does not run uphill.

  Every single public health official in the world has the education to know that what they have been promoting, from day one, is gibberish. What I have laid out in this essay is pretty basic virology and immunology knowledge. Which raises a rather alarming question: how can any virologist, immunologist, vaccine maker, or public health official knowingly promote this lie? 

  Why is there such a blind obsession with getting us all to take a vaccine that most people do not need and that can never provide long-lasting herd immunity?

  It’s no mystery why pea-brained politicians might fall for this fantasy; they are only as good as the advisors they listen to. And politicians are shameless opportunists, so it is not surprising that they are now exploiting the situation to increase their powers and to harness this emerging command-and-control economy in pursuit of their own ideological goals — redistribution, carbon net zero, social credit score systems, you name it. In this Orwellian world, if you have a podium and a utopian dream, the world is your oyster, at least as long as the band keeps playing and the pitchforks can be kept off the streets. 

  “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” 

  – Rahm Emanuel

  “I really believe COVID has created a window of political opportunity…” 

  – Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada

  But our public health officials and international health organizations are trained to know better. Yet they nevertheless set this nightmare in motion in violation of all their own long-established pandemic planning guidelines. They know eradication is impossible. They know most of us already have cross-reactive immunity. They know most of us are healthy enough so that our immune systems will protect us against severe outcomes from this virus. They know about the negative consequences imposed on our immune systems when we are prevented from living normal lives. They know they are increasing our risk to other viruses by preventing us from socializing. It’s their job to know. And, as I have demonstrated, they have known since day one. 

  But what if a shameless pharmaceutical industry could manipulate public health policies by capturing politicians, policymakers, and public health agencies through generous donations? What if the boundaries between public health agencies, international public health organizations, and pharmaceutical companies have become blurred to such a degree that each benefits from reinforcing one another’s best interests? What if they have all come to believe that vaccines against respiratory viruses are the holy grail of public health (and of generous funding), even if they have to play fast and loose with the truth to get humanity to accept them and even if they have to do a little evil to achieve some imagined future “greater good”?

  What if the revolving door between pharmaceutical companies, public health, and international health organizations has created a kind of blind groupthink within this holy trinity? What if anyone caught up in that system is forced to bite their tongue because to speak out is a deathblow to their career? What if many of those caught up in the system genuinely believe the lies, despite a lifetime of training that should tell them otherwise? The powerful effect of groupthink, demonstrated by the Ash Conformity Experiments, can make people blind to what is staring them in the face. Even the medieval kings knew they needed a court jester to prevent the king from growing a big head. But what if, in the hallowed halls of this holy trinity, all the court jesters have long since been purged or cowed into silence?

  “It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” 

  – Voltaire

  A quote that best sums up the thinking inside many of our public health institutions comes from Peter Daszak, head of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit non-governmental organization that works closely with public health agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and intergovernmental organizations like the WHO (published in a 2016 report by the National Academy of Sciences):

  “Daszak reiterated that, until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, he said, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs [medical counter measures] such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process, Daszak stated.” [Emphasis mine]

  In the presence of so much conflict of interest, in the absence of the checks and balances provided by individual rights, in the censorious atmosphere of cancel culture that has infected all our public institutions, and with so many institutional donors (private and governmental alike) being enamored with social-engineering projects and blinded by their own arrogance, it would perhaps be more surprising if this vaccine-fueled hysteria hadn’t happened. 

  In view of the circumstances, what happened almost seems inevitable. To the eyes of profit-hungry pharmaceuticals and funding-hungry national and international public health institutions, this virus must look like manna from heaven. They must feel like a fox that has been invited into the henhouse by ripe chickens that are begging to be plucked.

  

  History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. What has emerged during COVID is simply a bigger, better, bolder replay of what happened during the 2009 swine flu hysteria. I’d like to share a few quotes with you – and keep in mind that these are about the 2009 Swine Flu scandal, not COVID:

  From a 2010 article entitled: European Parliament to Investigate WHO and “Pandemic” Scandal [Emphasis mine]:

  • “In his official statement to the Committee, Wodarg criticized the influence of the pharma industry on scientists and officials of [the] WHO, stating that it has led to the situation where “unnecessarily millions of healthy people are exposed to the risk of poorly tested vaccines,” and that, for a flu strain that is “vastly less harmful” than all previous flu epidemics.”

  • “For the first time, the WHO criteria for a pandemic was changed in April 2009 as the first Mexico cases were reported, to make not the actual risk of a disease but the number of cases of the disease [the] basis to declare “Pandemic.” By classifying the swine flu as [a] pandemic, nations were compelled to implement pandemic plans and also t[o] purchase swine flu vaccines.“

  And here are a series of even more revealing quotes from a 2010 report published by Der Spiegel called: Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria — The Swine Flu Panic of 2009:

  • “Researchers in more than 130 laboratories in 102 countries are constantly on the lookout for new flu pathogens. Entire careers and institutions, and a lot of money, depend on the outcomes of their work. “Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur,” says flu expert Tom Jefferson, from an international health nonprofit called the Cochrane Collaboration. “And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.“

  • “Does this mean that a very mild course of the pandemic was not even considered from the start? At any rate, efforts to downplay the risks were unwelcome, and the WHO made it clear that it preferred to base its decisions on a worst-case scenario. “We wanted to overestimate rather than underestimate the situation,” says Fukuda [Keiji Fukuda was the Assistant Director-General for Health, Security and Environment for the WHO at that time].“

  • “The media also did its part in stoking fears. SPIEGEL, for example, had reported at length on the avian flu. Now it devoted a cover story to the new “global virus,” a story filled with concerns that the swine flu pathogen could mutate into a horrific virus.”

  • “The pharmaceutical industry was particularly adept at keeping this vision alive.”

  • “We expected a real pandemic, and we thought that it had to happen. There was no one who suggested re-thinking our approach.“

  • “the vast majority of experts on epidemics automatically associate the term “pandemic” with truly aggressive viruses. On the WHO Web site, the answer to the question “What is a pandemic?” included mention of “an enormous number of deaths and cases of the disease” — until May 4, 2009. That was when a CNN reporter pointed out the discrepancy between this description and the generally mild course of the swine flu. The language was promptly removed.”

  • “‘Sometimes some of us think that WHO stands for World Hysteria Organization,’ says Richard Schabas, the former chief medical officer for Canada’s Ontario Province.”

  • “A party with strong connections in Geneva had a strong interest in phase 6 being declared as quickly as possible: the pharmaceutical industry.”

  • “Meanwhile, a debate had erupted over whether Germany had chosen the wrong vaccine, Pandemrix [it was later found to have caused narcolepsy in some patients, which is an autoimmune disease]. It contained a new type of agent designed to boost its effectiveness, known as an adjuvant, which had never undergone large-scale human trials in connection with the swine flu antigen. Were millions of people about to receive a vaccine that had hardly been tested?”

  • “But the contracts for Pandemrix had been signed in 2007, and they came into effect automatically when the WHO decided to declare phase 6.”

  • “The ministers felt pressured from all sides. On the one hand, the media were stoking fears of the virus. The German tabloid newspaper Bild, in particular, was printing new tales of horror almost daily. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies were upping the pressure and constantly setting new ultimatums.”

  • “Oct. 9, 2009: Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, an oncologist and chairman of the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association , says: ‘The health authorities have fallen for a campaign by the pharmaceutical companies, which were plainly using a supposed threat to make money.’“

  • “Oct. 21, 2009: A BILD newspaper headline, printed in toxic yellow, warns: “Swine Flu Professor Fears 35,000 Dead in Germany !” The professor’s name is Adolf Windorfer, and when pressed, he admits that he has received payments from the industry, including GSK and Novartis. Next to the BILD headline is an ad for the German Association of Pharmaceutical Companies.”

  • “According to Wodarg, the WHO’s classification of the swine flu as a pandemic have earned the pharmaceutical companies $18 billion in additional revenues. Annual sales of Tamiflu alone have jumped 435 percent, to €2.2 billion.”

  Rinse and repeat in 2020-2021.

  What if, upon recognizing the emergence of a new pandemic, those in the know opportunistically made vaccines the endgame? What if all the vaccine injuries recorded on VAERS and all the risks they are taking with our lives are simply collateral damage – a calculated investment risk – in order to turn their dream of subscription-based “immunity as a service” into reality. 

  In the words of Bill Gates, “we kind of caught mRNA half way to prime time.” Maybe we should believe him — and gape in awe at the recklessness and contempt they have shown for their fellow citizens in order to capitalize on this “window of opportunity”. Carpe diem (seize the day). Don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep your eye on the ball… and on the year-end bonuses.

  What if COVID-Zero, in all its variations, was merely a strategy to herd us together so we obediently line up for an endless string of booster shots as a trade-off for access to our lives? 

  In other words, what if someone could bamboozle our leaders into believing that the only way back to a normal life is for vaccines to replace the role that hugs and handshakes used to play in order to update us with the latest antivirus security updates? 

  What if, by depriving us of normal life, those who stand to gain from vaccines can forever cement themselves at the center of society by providing an artificial replacement for what our immune systems used to do to protect us against common respiratory viruses back when we were still allowed to live normal lives? 

  The headlines tell the story:

  “Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months.” (CNBC, April 15th, 2021)

  “Variants could be named after star constellations when Greek alphabet runs out, says WHO Covid chief.” (The Telegraph, August 7th, 2021)

  “Fauci warns Americans may face having booster shots indefinitely” (Daily Mail, August 13th, 2021, and Dr. Fauci in his own words on YouTube on August 12th, 2021)

  “Biden OKs booster shots 5 months after 2nd dose” (Boston Globe, August 27th, 2021)

  What if the fast mutation of RNA viruses ensures that no vaccine will ever be fully effective at providing lasting immunity, thus creating the illusion that we are permanently in need of vaccine boosters? 

  What if politicians could be convinced to make vaccination mandatory in order to prevent potential customers from opting out? 

  What if, by relying on lockdowns during the winter season, our vulnerability to other viruses increased, which could then be used to rationalize expanding the jab, via mission creep, to simultaneously vaccinate us against RSV, influenza, other coronaviruses, the common cold, and so on, despite knowing full well that the protection that these vaccines offer against respiratory viruses is only temporary?

  And what other social engineering goals can be rolled into your annual booster shot in the future once you are permanently bound to these annual jabs and vaccine passports? In an atmosphere of hysteria, it’s a system ripe for abuse by opportunists, ideologues, power hungry totalitarians, and Malthusian social engineers. The snowball doesn’t have to grow by design. Mission creep happens all on its own once Pandora’s Box is opened to coerced vaccinations and conditional rights. The road to Hell is frequently paved by good intentions… and hysteria. 

  So, what if COVID-Zero and the vaccine exit strategy is merely the global state-sanctioned equivalent of a drug dealer creating dependency among its customers to keep pushing more drugs? 

  What if it was all just a way of convincing society of the need for subscription-based “immunity as a service”? The subscription-based business model (or some version of it) is all the rage these days in the corporate world to create loyal captive audiences that generate reliable money streams, forever. Subscriptions are not just for your cable TV and gym membership anymore. Everything has been redesignated as a “consumable”. 

  • Netflix did it with movies.

  • Spotify did it with music.

  • Microsoft did it with its Office suite.

  • Adobe did it with Photoshop editing suite.

  • The smartphone industry did it with phones that need to be replaced every 3 to 5 years.

  • The gaming industry did it with video games.

  • Amazon is doing it with books (i.e. Kindle Unlimited).

  • The food industry is doing it with meal delivery services (i.e. Hello Fresh).

  • Uber is doing it with subscription-based ride sharing.

  • Coursera is doing it with online education.

  • Duolingo and Rosetta Stone are doing it with language learning.

  • Zoom is doing it with online meetings.

  • Monsanto and its peers did it to farmers with patented seed technology, which cannot legally be replanted, and is lobbying to try to legalize the use of terminator seed technology (GMO seeds that are sterile in the second generation to prevent replanting).

  • The healthcare industry is doing it with concierge medical services, fitness tracking apps (Fitbit), sleep-tracking apps, and meditation apps.

  • The investment industry is doing it with farmland, with investors owning the land and leasing it back to farmers in a kind of modern revival of the sharecropping system. (Bill Gates is the largest farmland owner in the USA – are you surprised?)

  • Blackrock and other investment firms are currently trying to do it with homes to create a permanent class of renters.

  • And public health authorities and vaccine makers have been trying to do it with flu vaccines for years, but we’ve been stubbornly uncooperative. Not anymore.

  Remember when the World Economic Forum predicted in 2016 that by 2030 all products would become services? And remember their infamous video in which they predicted that “You will own nothing. And you will be happy.”? Well, the future is here. This is what it looks like. The subscription-based economy. And apparently it now also includes your immune system in a trade-off for access to your life.

  

  Original video on Facebook, World Economic Forum, December 9th, 2016.

  Let’s revisit the Peter Daszak quote from earlier. A second read allows the message to really hit home:

  “Daszak reiterated that, until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, he said, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs [medical counter measures] such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process, Daszak stated.“

  Isn’t it ironic that he didn’t even care which vaccine was pushed? Influenza or coronavirus, it made no difference. It was always about funding. It was always about the money. It always was. It always is.

  The holy trinity of pharmaceutical companies, public health, and international health organizations, all egging each other on in their hunger for a reliable flow of cash: shareholder profits, larger budgets, and governmental donations. Their interests are perfectly aligned and the lines between them are blurred to such a degree that each benefits from reinforcing one another’s best interests.

  And why would politicians and media bow to the holy trinity?

  Big Pharma spent an average of US$4.7 billion per year between 1999 and 2018 on lobbying and campaign contributions, just in the USA!  

  Big Pharma also shells out $US20 billion each year to schmooze doctors and another US$6 billion on drug ads, just in the USA! So, it’s no surprise why legacy media and Big Tech are tripping over themselves not to ruffle the party line — they live and die by the almighty advertising dollar. Never bite the hand that feeds you.

  So, they are all dancing to the same tune while your pocket gets picked and your arm gets pricked, and everyone wins… except you and me. We are the cow that gets milked. We are the serfs that fund their largesse in this neo-feudal society where a few big boys own the assets and everyone else is beholden to those above them in the hierarchy for access to, well, everything — land, resources, rights, individual autonomy, and even immune systems. My body, their choice.

  What if, in an atmosphere of runaway hysteria, a police state founded on medical tyranny is creating itself, fueled by a toxic brew of self-serving opportunists who have seized the moment to superimpose their own goals on a fortuitous virus, until one day you wake up to find yourself chained and milked, like a cow in a dairy barn, under the absolute custody of a modern-day Louis the Fourteenth and his royal court full of drug pushers, ideologues, and militant devotees? The modern face of feudalism, updated for the 21st century. Neo-feudalism, enforced by a mandatory subscription-based “immunity as a service”.

  And what if a society that has lost its principles, a society that is eager to hand over individual responsibility to “experts,” a society that is held hostage to cancel culture mobs, a society that no longer has transparency into the decisions made by its experts, a society led by a censorious political class full of immoral opportunists, a society that has fallen so in love with big government that red tape and cronyism have completely erased the self-limiting checks and balances of a free and open society, and a society that has elevated safety to a new sort of religious cult is a society that has no immunity to protect itself from predators who treat us like cattle?

  No period in history has ever lacked in snake-oil salesmen, ideologues, and social engineers eager to take society for a ride. Most of the time, they are ignored. So, what if the only real mystery is why society has grown so willing to accept the collar and yoke? 

  What if all this really is just as simple as that? 

  The Path Forward: Neutralizing the Threat and Bullet-Proofing Society to Prevent This Ever Happening Again.

  Now we know we’ve been played, how we’ve been played, and why we’ve been played. Again. Just like during the 2009 Swine Flu con. Only bigger, bolder, and better. They learned from their mistakes. We didn’t.

  But now that you see the con, you can’t unsee it. And now that you understand the threat and how the game is being played, there is a weight that comes off your shoulders. 

  When you know there’s a threat, but you don’t know exactly what it is, every movement in the grass might be a tiger or a snake or a scorpion. It’s paralysing and exhausting to defend yourself against an invisible unknown and they have used that fear masterfully against us to keep us frozen. But once you spot the tiger in the grass, you know where to direct your focus, your feet become unglued, your voice becomes bold, and you regain the clarity of thought to defend yourself.

  The con is clear. It’s time to focus all our might on stopping this runaway train before it takes us over the cliff into a police state of no return. Stand up. Speak out. Refuse to play along. Stopping this requires millions of voices with the courage to say NO — at work, at home, at school, at church, and out on the street. 

  “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis & foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

  Compliance is the glue that holds tyranny together. Non-compliance breaks it apart. One person alone cannot stop this. But if millions find the courage to raise their voices and the courage to refuse to participate in the system on these tyrannical medical terms, it will throw the system into such a crisis and create such a tension that the community will be forced to confront the issue. Without enough truckers, no-one eats. Without enough medical staff, hospitals close. Without enough workers, supply chains break. Without enough policemen, laws cannot be enforced. Without enough garbage collectors, cities grind to a halt. Without enough cashiers, box stores cannot stay open. Without enough administrators, institutions cease to function. Without enough staff, corporations lose profits. Without enough servers, restaurants cannot serve their customers. And without enough customers, businesses are brought to their knees. 

  Tyranny is not sustainable if the system grinds to a halt. Make it grind by being a thorn in everyone’s side until they give us back our freedoms and end this ridiculous charade. They are trying to impose vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations. But we hold the cards… but only if we are bold enough to stand up even at the risk of finding ourselves standing alone. Courage begets courage. It was Martin Luther King’s secret power. It must be ours.

  Now that you see the con, you also know the simple recipe to make this virus go away before their reckless policies turn it a monster virus for real. Remember 1918. End the war on the virus. Let the young folks come out of the trenches. Let people go back to their lives. Provide focused protection for the vulnerable. That is how this virus fades into the history books. 

  It’s time to be bold. It’s time to call out the fraudsters. And it’s time to reclaim the habits, values, and principles that are required to fix our democratic and scientific institutions to prevent this from ever happening again. 

  Feudalism was one giant stinking cesspool of self-serving corruption. Individual rights, free markets, the democratic process, and limited government were the antidotes that freed humanity from that hierarchical servitude. It seems we have come full circle. The COVID con is a symptom, not the cause, of a broken system.

  Modern liberal democracy all around the world was inspired by the system of checks and balances that America’s Founding Fathers built to prevent government from being co-opted by the special interests of its leaders, institutions, corporations, and most influential citizens. The ink was barely dry when those principles began to be ignored by those with ever greater enthusiasm for an all-powerful referee to manage even the most intimate details of how everyone lives their lives. After two and a half centuries of effort the admirers of big government have achieved their heart’s desire. And what a glorious and rotten cesspool of self-serving corruption it is.

  But the principles laid out by America’s Founding Fathers remain as true today as the day they were written and are waiting to be rediscovered. If there is one culprit who deserves to shoulder more blame than any other for the fiasco of the last 18 months, it is society itself for allowing itself to fall prey to the siren song of big government, the illusion that there can ever be a benevolent, virtuous, and incorruptible referee. He who creates the red tape, he who has the keys to the treasury, he who wields the power of the tax collector, and he who commands those sent to enforce the laws will always have an entourage of self-serving charlatans, rent seekers, and parasites following him wherever he goes. So, keep his powers on a very short leash to keep other people’s hands off your money, your property, your freedom, and your body. You don’t need better leaders. You need less powerful institutions. That’s how you prevent this from ever happening again.

  Freedom of speech, individual rights, private property, individual ownership, competition, good faith debate, small government, minimal taxes, limited regulation, and free markets (the opposite of the crony capitalism we now suffer under), these are the checks and balances that bullet-proof a society against the soulless charlatans that fail upwards into positions of power in bloated government institutions and against the parasitic fraudsters that seek to attach themselves to the government’s teat. 

  Yes, we need a Great Reset. Just not the subscription-based version that the World Economic Forum imagined.

  

  “Just Say No to Drugs”

  “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

  – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark #Commissions Earned

  *  *  *

  If you enjoyed this Deep Dive, please consider donating to my Tip Jar to support my independent writing.  And I invite you to subscribe to my free email notifications to receive my latest articles in your inbox. I write about many things, but always with the goal of answering questions essential to science and democracy, and always in the hope of teasing a broader perspective from the mind-numbing noise. Subscribe for free email notifications for new articles:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/25/2021 – 00:00

• Visualizing The World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies
  Visualizing The World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies

  Some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies have played a central role in the COVID-19 pandemic.

  However, it’s likely no surprise that the pandemic has also been great for many healthcare businesses. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Anshool Deshmukh notes, in 2020 alone, the world’s 50 largest pharmaceutical companies still combined for a whopping $851 billion in revenues.

  In this graphic, using data from Companies Market Cap, we list the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world by market capitalization. It’s worth noting this list also includes healthcare companies that work closely with pharmaceuticals, including biotech, pharmaceutical retailers, clinical laboratories, etc.

  

  Editor’s Note: A previous version of this graphic was missing some key companies such as GSK and AbbVie. They were unfortunately not included in the original source and we are now working to make sure there were no other smaller omissions. Thanks to all that sent in corrections.

  The Pharmaceutical Leaders

  To start, here are the top five biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world at the moment by market capitalization:

  1. Johnson & Johnson

  The pharmaceutical and consumer goods giant is worth $428.7 billion in market cap. They developed the third vaccine authorized for use in the U.S. and were named among the TIME100 Most Influential Companies List in 2021.

  2. Roche

  The Swiss pharmaceutical giant is at the forefront of oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology, and neuroscience. In 2019, Roche’s pharma segment sales rose by a healthy 16% to $53 billion.

  3. Pfizer

  Despite being the leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer in North America, Pfizer slid in the rankings to third place. The company has recently gained momentum, especially in the past quarter, with Q2’2021 revenues of $19.0 billion, reflecting a 86% operational growth from 2020.

  4. Eli Lilly

  Eli Lilly has taken a significant step towards establishing itself as a pharmaceutical industry leader. Having a market cap value of $125 billion in 2019, Eli Lilly has jumped to a current value of $214.9 billion, a significant growth of 72%.

  5. Novartis

  The second-biggest pharmaceutical company out of Switzerland, Novartis has been the face of the pharma industry for about 25 years. The primary manufacturer for the most recognizable drugs on the market pulled in a revenue of over $48 billion in 2020, a 3% increase compared to 2019.

  Here’s how all the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world stack up against each other:

  

   

  World’s Largest Pharmaceutical Exporters and Importers

   

  According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), these countries exported the most number of pharmaceuticals in the year 2019:

  

   

  In contrast, here are the biggest importers over the same period.

  

   

   

  This position is hardly surprising for the U.S., where six of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies are headquartered. The country also captures 45% of the global market.

   

  The Future of Pharmaceutical Companies

  If the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that in building a patient-centered future, the pharmaceutical industry plays a key role. It has to constantly find new ways to customize medicines while researching and developing new tools and drugs.

  By embracing disruptive technologies like 3D printed drugs, artificial intelligence guided therapies, and preventive medicine while working with regulatory agencies, the pharmaceutical companies will benefit from having a digital revolution.

  Furthermore, emerging markets will have a more significant say in the global pharmaceutical market in the coming years. Even though ‘big pharma’ will keep raking in the massive profits they do every year, their reliance on countries like Brazil and India for research and drug production will significantly impact the years to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 23:40

• Is China Using Wokeism To Erode American Democracy?
  Is China Using Wokeism To Erode American Democracy?

  Authored by Frank Fang and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

  The communist regime in China is using “wokeism” as a geopolitical tool to undermine U.S. democracy, said Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”

  

  “They [China] are using that to divide us, to use that as a kink in our armor to divide us from within, by getting corporations to criticize injustice here, without saying a peep about injustice over there and deflecting accountability for their human rights abuses,” Ramaswamy said in a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

  He said U.S. companies like NBA and Disney—who criticize social issues in the United States but remain silent on China’s human rights abuses such as those in Xinjiang—are in fact empowering communist China.

  In 2020, Disney drew heavy criticism when it was revealed that it filmed a live-action remake of “Mulan” in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has locked up over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps. Several governments including the United States have characterized China’s oppression in Xinjiang as “genocide.”

  The NBA was in hot water in 2019 after Houston Rockets then-general manager Daryl Morey voiced support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters in a Twitter post. The Chinese regime, which cast the protesters as “rioters,” suspended airing NBA games in retaliation, while Chinese companies cut ties with the league.

  In an apologetic statement, the NBA said Morey’s tweet was “regrettable” and “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China.” However, the league did not bow to Chinese pressure to discipline or fire Morey.

  “What that has the effect of doing is creating a false moral equivalence between the United States and China,” he explained.

  He added:

  “And that actually erodes our greatest geopolitical asset of all, that is not our nuclear arsenal, it is our moral standing on the global stage.”

  Meanwhile, the Chinese regime has been “rolling out the red carpet” for companies that criticized injustice in the United States, Ramaswamy said. For example, he pointed to U.S. online lodging platform Airbnb, which has voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

  Ramaswamy argued that Airbnb paid “a dirty bribe” to Beijing when it shared its guest data with Chinese authorities in exchange for being able to do business in China.

  In March, over 190 global campaign groups wrote an open letter to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, asking the firm to withdraw its support for the 2022 Winter Olympics in China’s capital Beijing because of the communist regime’s horrific human rights records.

  “Airbnb should not be encouraging a wider tourist industry to be supported and allowed to flourish at the expense of Uyghur and Tibetan rights,” the groups wrote.

  Airbnb, who inked a partnership with the International Olympic Committee in 2019, is one of the organization’s 15 leading sponsors.

  Ramaswamy said, “The way in which they [China] have turned our own companies into Trojan horses to undermine us from within is the flip side of the modern Battle of Troy. They’ve sent the Trojan horse in.”

  The modern-day wokeism, which Ramaswamy characterized as a “culture of self-criticism,” has borne resemblance to old school Chinese communist politics, as well as former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, he explained.

  “This is a time of effectively living in a modern Red Guard revolution in America, except instead of the Chinese Red Guard pushing the philosophy of Marxism, the new Red Guard is pushing it through all of our major institutions, from the private sector to the public, they are pushing this new philosophy of wokeism,” he said.

  He added: “Someone inside needed to sound the alarm bell.”

  Mao instigated the Red Guards, who were Chinese high school and university students, to persecute those identified as “class enemies” of the communist regime, amid the Cultural Revolution that lasted 10 years until Mao’s death in 1976.

  Ramaswamy warned that “American greatness” would be coming to an end if Americans weren’t able to reverse the trend.

  He explained, “[We need to] harness and rediscover our own culture of excellence, our own culture of the unapologetic pursuit of excellence through our system of free enterprise, and through our democracy in ways that require seeing past the superficial demands of the woke movement.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 23:20

• Mysterious Stealth Boat In Mississippi Boatyard Linked To Special Forces Program
  Mysterious Stealth Boat In Mississippi Boatyard Linked To Special Forces Program

  A picture of a mysterious stealth boat has surfaced on social media. The catamaran was spotted in a boatyard in Gulfport, Mississippi, known for the high-tech manufacturing of vessels for US special forces.

  Defense analyst for USNI News, H I Sutton, geolocated the stealth boat, which appears to be in construction at US Marine Inc (USMI) on the river Bernard Bayou. He said USMI has a long history of “building high-specification riverine and inshore special forces vessels.”

  

  “One of their major customers has been USSOCOM, including Naval Special Warfare (NSW) which contains the US Navy SEALs. USMI previously supplied the SEALs with High-Speed Boats (HSB) and the better known Mk.V Special Operations Craft,” Sutton continued. 

  USMI was recently awarded a $108,000,000 contract to build USSOCOM Combatant Craft Assault (CCA) vessels. He said, “the new catamaran shares some major features with the CCA.” 

  

  Sutton said there were no definites about the customer of the mysterious stealth vessel, adding, “it may be a speculative build, or for export. Or that it fulfills a sensitive requirement for the US Navy.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 23:00

• US Air Force Official: China Might 'Strike From Space'
  US Air Force Official: China Might ‘Strike From Space’

  Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

  As Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said before, his priorities are “China, China, and China.” His keynote address at the Air Force Association Air, Space & Cyber Conference continued that trend, talking up the possibility of space warfare against China.

  Kendall warned China has the potential to “actually put weapons in space,” and likening the situation to the Cold War. He further warned China might be able to make attacks effectively undetectable for early warning systems.

  

  This is almost a perfect, tailor-made talking point for the US military, as it facilitates potentially endless spending on space warfare simply to counter what China might do. This was the whole justification for the US Space Force, and its appetite for wildly expensive weapons systems of dubious use, in the first place.

  “​​There is a potential for weapons to be launched into space, then go through this old concept from the Cold War called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System,” Kendall warned the conference, “which is a system that basically goes into orbit and then de-orbits to a target.”

  Space Operations Chief Gen. John Raymond has been talking up the growing capabilities of China to deny America access to space, vowing “we can’t let that happen,” and saying the US must be prepared for this fight.

  It’s not clear why the US military is so convinced China wants to either fight America in space or try to deny them access to space. Either way, the officials agree that the answer is expensive preparedness and amassing weapons for the presumptive battle.

  “We are being more effectively challenged militarily than at any other time in our history.”@USAirForce Secretary Frank Kendall warned about #China’s increasing military threats, including those from space. https://t.co/UWIZvnNNel

  — The Epoch Times – China Insider (@EpochTimesChina) September 22, 2021

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  As with the Cold War, this could go on more or less forever, or until one side just runs out of money.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 22:40

• Renewables Not So Reliable As US Hydropower Plunges 14%
  Renewables Not So Reliable As US Hydropower Plunges 14%

  The transition away from hydrocarbons is not a seamless as many hope. The latest data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows a significant decline this year in hydropower generation amid historic droughts. 

  

  The magical thinking about renewable energy and President Biden’s calls for the U.S. power grid to be 100% clean by 2035 is a pipe dream. 

  The problem with renewable energy is sustainability. California and states in the Pacific Northwest have found out that out the hard way this summer as droughts and back-to-back heat waves have led to a plunge in hydropower capacity. The region produces a bulk of U.S. hydropower capacity. 

  EIA estimates U.S. hydropower plants will be 14% lower in 2021 than it was in 2020. Hydropower generation in the Northwest, which includes the Columbia River Basin and parts of other Rocky Mountain states, is expected to be 12% lower than the prior year. Hydropower generation in California will be down a shocking 49% in 2021 than in 2020.

  

  The dry conditions have reduced water levels across large parts of the Columbia River Basin this summer, drought emergencies were declared in counties across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Some reservoirs in California halted hydropower generation due to declining water levels. 

  Between March and April, hydropower generation in Washington and Oregon was 10% below the 10-year range. Over the summer, hydropower generation in these states moved back within range. But in California, hydropower generation stayed below the 10-year range as the Edward Hyatt Power Plant at Lake Oroville went offline due to low water levels last month. 

  

  This summer, California’s energy challenges show the state’s aggressive push to slash carbon emissions by shifting to renewable energy has its disadvantages. The state’s top grid operator, California Independent System Operator (CAISO), requested and was granted an emergency measure by the federal government to fire up natural gas generation plants to prevent blackouts amid the loss of some renewable energy sources. 

  Maybe it’s time for California to admit their “green” push has been a complete disaster, and the transition is not going to be as seamless as once thought. But wait, they already have:

  • CAISO admitted in August that “significant swings in wind resource output” resulted in the grid operator to “shed load to maintain system reliability.” 
  • California’s government acknowledged in a recent bond offering that greenifying the economy could put the grid at risk. 

  The short-term strategy for California has been to fire up fossil fuel generation plants as renewable energy sources become unreliable. This is just one ugly truth about renewable power the progressives don’t want you to hear. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 22:20

• Black Lives Matter NYC Leader Promises "Uprising" Against City's "Racist" Vaccine Passports
  Black Lives Matter NYC Leader Promises “Uprising” Against City’s “Racist” Vaccine Passports

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  One of the leaders of a Black Lives Matter group in New York City promised an “uprising” against the city’s COVID-19 vaccine passports, decrying the system as racist.

  

  According to data provided by New York state, about 85 percent of black residents have not received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Data provided by New York City shows that 64 percent of black people between the ages of 18 and 44 are not fully vaccinated while 56 percent have received one shot.

  

  Hawk Newsome, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told the Washington Examiner that “I think, in a perfect world, [vaccine requirements] should be business by business. But it could be a slippery slope, so the mandate should be removed completely.”

  He added: “It’s not gonna be white men in suits on Wall Street who are gonna get stopped. There’s such hypocrisy in this thing.”

  Newsome said he believes that black Americans “have a natural distrust of the vaccine,” citing the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the 20th century for a reason why.

  “How dare they remove religious exemptions? It’s the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen,” Newsome said, adding that he believes that most vaccine mandates don’t allow religious exemption.

  “Now the government has decided your God doesn’t matter? I love God.”

  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, argued in a court filing this week that the state has no constitutional obligation to grant religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines for healthcare workers. Religious exemptions to the vaccines most commonly center on objections on how aborted fetal cells were used in the manufacturing and testing process. Medical exemptions usually include a doctor’s recommendation that a person not get the vaccine due to an underlying medical condition.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Black Lives Matter of Greater New York for additional comment.

  Another member of the group promised an “uprising” in New York City over the vaccine mandate.

  “We’re putting this city on notice that your mandate will not be another racist social distance practice,” Chivona Newsome, a leader of the group, told fellow protesters during a demonstration in Manhattan in front of Carmine’s restaurant on Monday.

  “Black people are not going to stand by, or you will see another uprising. And that is not a threat. That is a promise.”

  “The vaccination passport is not a free passport to racism,” she added.

  Black Lives Matter activists had accused Carmine’s of racially profiling three black women from Texas, who were arrested last week after a hostess allegedly demanded vaccination proof.

  A lawyer for Carmine’s denied their allegations.

  “Any claim that they were racially profiled is a complete fabrication, disingenuous, and outright irresponsible,” Carolyn Richmond, the attorney for the restaurant, told the New York Daily News.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 22:00

• Texas National Guard Urges Members To Volunteer Amid Border Crisis
  Texas National Guard Urges Members To Volunteer Amid Border Crisis

  The Texas Military Department seeks Guardsmen who are willing to volunteer their time to defend the Lone Star State amid the “unprecedented” migrant crisis along the Texas-Mexico border. 

  The Texas Military Department stated, “new full-time positions” are available for the Operation Lone Star border support mission. “Volunteers must be medically and administratively deployable and members of the Texas Military Department,” it said. 

  “We are still looking for Texas Guardsmen to support Operation Lone Star. Please help us stop human trafficking, smuggling, and illegal border crossings while we are securing texas. Lodging and per diem included,” the department’s Twitter said. 

  We are still looking for Texas Guardsmen to support Operation Lone Star. Please help us stop human trafficking, smuggling, and illegal border crossings while we are #securingtexas
  Lodging and per diem included.

  Click here for more information https://t.co/F3itNkXZar pic.twitter.com/bUZuZ6uc2S

  — Texas Military Dept (@TXMilitary) September 23, 2021

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  Operation Lonestar “integrates Texas Department of Public Safety with the Texas National Guard and deploys air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to high threat areas to deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas,” according to the Office of Governor Greg Abbott.

  Abbot joined Fox News’ Hannity Thursday to discuss the border crisis. He said his state took “unprecedented action” to secure the border amid the flow of at least 15,000 migrants who ended up under a Texas bridge earlier this week. 

  Texans ― & all Americans ― demand & deserve a secure southern border & the protection of our nation’s sovereignty.

  We know Biden isn’t going to do it.

  So, Texas will continue to take unprecedented action to secure the border. pic.twitter.com/VR7lk968ZL

  — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 24, 2021

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

  Days later, the Biden administration finally took action and forced thousands of Haitian migrants back to their own county despite political turmoil after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise and the most recent earthquake. 

  Scenes from the border in the last few weeks have been shocking as the Biden administration looked the other way. Even a Democratic judge in Texas bashed Biden for the handling of the crisis and said the president is the root cause of the problem.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 21:40

• What's Really Going On In China
  What’s Really Going On In China

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  Losses will be taken and sacrifices enforced on those who don’t understand the Chinese state will no longer absorb the losses of speculative excess.

  Let’s start by stipulating that no one outside President Xi’s inner circle really knows what’s going on in China, and so my comments here are systemic observations, not claims of insider knowledge.

  Many western observers have noted the centrality of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine in President Xi’s writings. This is somewhat akin to invoking America’s Founding Fathers to support one’s current policies: if you’re trying to modify state policy in China, you have to explain it in the context of the Chinese Communist Party’s history and doctrines. Never mind if the ideals were not met; what’s important is establishing continuity and resonance with the history of China, the core doctrines of Chinese Communism and the CCP’s leadership based on those doctrines.

  That said, we should be careful not to read too much into doctrinal evocations such as common prosperity, which are useful conceptual anchors and slogans but not the full story.

  What’s actually happening in China isn’t Marxist or Capitalist–it’s plain old non-ideological human greed, hubris and magical thinking manifesting as moral hazard running amok.. Moral hazard— the separation of risk and consequence, as speculators make increasingly risky bets because they know any losses will be covered by the state–is effectively the new State Religion in China: everyone is absolutely confident that every punter, especially all the rich, powerful, well-connected speculators–will be bailed out by the central government.

  Greed knows no bounds when a speculator is insulated from risk, for people have an insatiable appetite for risky bets when the gains will be theirs to keep but any losses will be covered by the government.

  This is the fundamental story of Evergrande: the implicit backstop of the Chinese government enabled near-infinite moral hazard which then fueled an explosion of debt-funded speculation with essentially zero connection to real-world risks, sales, return on capital, etc.

  Both the U.S. and China have been a utopian Paradises of moral hazard for the past 30 years. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve would bail out any losses / declines in the debt-asset bubble orgy.

  In China, the implicit policy was that the structural losses in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the speculative excesses of rapid development would be tolerated as long as real growth in employment, wages, profits and lifestyles was strong. Creating vast amounts of debt-money was necessary to support growth, and that it also supported speculative excesses was accepted as part of the price of explosive progress, much like environmental damage.

  After 30 years, the equation in China has changed: debt in the official banking sector and in the informal shadow-banking sector has soared along with purely speculative excesses while “good growth” has stagnated. That’s the problem with incentivizing moral hazard: the profits from speculation, corruption and fraud far outweigh the puny profits earned by legitimate enterprises. So where do you put the borrowed billions? In Evergrande and other conglomerates of speculation.

  Something else changed in 30 years of rapid development: inequality skyrocketed, and since inequality and corruption are mutually-reinforcing, corruption also reached new heights as inequality skyrocketed.

  A third factor emerged after 30 years of touting technology and speculation: the power of Chinese Big Tech and financiers began encroaching on the control of the Communist Party.

  All three factors inflated a debt-asset-speculative bubble of profound proportions, and President Xi grasped what the clueless Federal Reserve and other western central banks have not: Either pop the bubble when you still have some control over it or let it expand and pop when you’ve lost all control.

  

  In systems terms, when risk and fragility reach unstable levels in tightly-bound systems, there’s no controlling the supernova-like implosion of the system.

  Xi observed the skyrocketing power of Big Tech, moral-hazard-incentivized financiers and cryptocurrencies and concluded that the state must move decisively to crush these rivals, regardless of cost. This separates China from the American state, which is incapable of enforcing any sacrifices, limits or costs on the parasitic elite which dominates its economy and political order.

  Xi saw the danger of Big Tech and financiers being able to buy whatever influence they needed from corrupt CCP and state officials, and he realized that this is the crucial moment in history: either crush Big Tech and the financiers / speculators or risk losing control to their interests.

  Control is something the CCP and Xi want to retain, regardless of the cost to the nouveaux riche, the parasitic elites, the aspirational middle class and even the Party regulars who have supped too often and too gloriously at the corruption / moral hazard trough.

  Losses will be taken and sacrifices enforced on those who don’t understand the Chinese state will no longer absorb the losses of speculative excess. Those who don’t understand the reign of parasitic private-sector elites and excessively corrupt party officials in China is over might profitably ponder this Chinese proverb: “Whoever gets mixed up with garbage will be eaten by pigs.”

  *  *  *

  If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

  My recent books:

  A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 21:20

• Personal Tracking Devices Moving Toward A "Dangerous" New Era
  Personal Tracking Devices Moving Toward A “Dangerous” New Era

  Tracking devices can sometimes be useful: you can attach one to your phone or wallet and know where it is at all times, for example.

  But the Bluetooth and ultra-wideband (UWB) tracking devices are moving towards a “dangerous new era”, according to a new writeup by Android Authority. 

  The devices are getting so small, prominent and widely available that risks of both stalking and general surveillance using them can no longer be ignored, the piece argues. 

  It calls stalking the “biggest and most obvious threat”. It can happen when a tracker, usually a thin tile-like piece of plastic, gets slipped into someone’s bag, vehicle or clothing, tracking them everywhere they go. 

  One such instance of stalking took place in 2018 when  a woman in Houston said she found a Tile planted inside the console of her car, which her ex was using to follow her. The ex was charged with a misdemeanor as a result.

  Even overaggressive parents could take advantage of the trackers, the article argues: “An abusive husband could use trackers to follow their spouse to a shelter or the police. An overprotective mother could prevent their child from going anywhere but home or school.”

  

  Surveillance is another way trackers can be abused. Android Authority writes:

  The more items a person tracks through first- or third-party apps, the more comprehensive surveillance can theoretically become. Let’s say you have a tracker on your backpack or laptop. If your phone and the tracker leave for a specific place every morning, it’s not hard to guess that the origin is your home, and the destination is an office or worksite. Placing another tracker on a TV remote immediately confirms your home location, and if you’re monitoring headphones or a personal electric vehicle, hackers can pick out some of your favorite haunts, like parks or the gym.

  Hacking into a phone could even allow an attacker to figure out where in a building devices are kept, or where a specific person sits and sleeps, the report says: “In the wrong hands, this data could be used to plan burglaries or even murders.”

  Tracking apps could eventually even become the target of ransomware attackers, the piece suggests. And, with everything from shoes to cars in the future moving toward being trackable, you may not even know when or how you’re being watched. 

  Finally, the idea of government intrusion using such apps and trackers also becomes an obvious cautionary point. “More trackers translate into more data points for surveillance and suppressing dissent,” the piece concludes.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 21:00

• Los Angeles Homeless Moving Back Onto Street After Cleanups
  Los Angeles Homeless Moving Back Onto Street After Cleanups

  Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

  This month, Los Angeles resumed its CARE Plus homeless encampment cleanups in the city. Some Angelenos welcome the cleanups, saying it improves the quality and safety of their neighborhoods, while others are concerned about the unhoused who are left scrambling after their belongings are often completely thrown out by the city.

  

  Earlier this year, the city council voted to resume the cleanups, which require the homeless to take down their tents so the Los Angeles Sanitation Department can sweep and wash the streets and remove trash and waste from the area, beginning on Sept. 1.

  Peggy Lee Kennedy of Venice Justice and Service Not Sweeps told The Epoch Times previously that the CARE Plus cleanup crews put aside some of the people’s belongings in bins, but that other belongings are often destroyed by the crew.

  “The [cleanup crew] put the police tape up, and they really just went at it and started destroying everything with very minimal going through belongings,” Kennedy said.

  “They had, I guess for these four blue tubs that they stored people’s belongings in, but [everyone’s belongings were mixed up]. And a front loader was pushing things and sort of crushing them, and then a crane picked everything up and threw it in the trash truck—full tents and everything.”

  

  A homeless encampment in Venice Beach, Calif., on June 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  Julian von Loesch, founder of activist organization Sidewalk Society, decided to rent a U-Haul truck to help the unhoused store their larger belongings during the encampment cleanups. On Sept. 16, photojournalist Fabian Lewkowicz posted a video of von Loesch helping a homeless person unpack their things from the U-Haul truck after an encampment cleanup on Hampton Drive in Los Angeles.

  Lewkowitz told The Epoch Times that he saw von Loesch help people in the encampment load up their belongings into the U-Haul earlier that day before the city’s scheduled CARE Plus cleanup. After the cleanup, von Loesch and others helped people unpack their belongings.

  In the video, von Loesch said that part of what he’s trying to do is help people in encampments downsize.

  “A lot of people have lost a lot of stuff,” von Loesch said.

  “I want to transition people slowly. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to reduce this as much as possible … smaller tents less stuff, less clutter … The problem is, people have too much stuff, so it looks ugly.”

  Von Loesch said his organization was trying to “help people raise money for nice tents and [have] less stuff.”

  “So far what’s happening is a lot of money is being spent on the cleanups but like three hours later, the same [expletive] is there again,” he said.

  “So, slowly, we’re gonna raise money so we can get people whatever they need, housing, and save [lots of] dollars in taxpayer money.”

  

  Tents line the sidewalks on Skid Row, in Los Angeles on Sept. 6, 2011. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  The video led to outrage among some Venice Beach residents who expressed frustration that the encampments just returned after the cleanups – with some calling it “illegal dumping.”

  “[Von Loesch] isn’t helping anyone by moving them on the sidewalk. He is actually setting them up for their slow demise, especially if he is moving them into one of these large encampments,” resident James Baum commented on the video, which was also posted on the Venice Community Facebook page.

  “He is moving items onto a sidewalk in an encampment, which is technically illegal dumping. He says he is trying to make it so there is less clutter but in reality, he is doing the exact opposite.”

  Resident Rick Swinger, who advocates against illegal dumping in Los Angeles, said on his Facebook page, Stop Illegal Dumping, that von Loesch was “ignoring the facts that unregulated camping leads to pollution, rodent infestation, diseases and used bloody needles on our beach putting everybody in harm’s way especially our children playing in the sand.”

  Van Loesch didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 20:40

• China Is Responsible For More Than A Third Of World GDP Growth – This Is A Problem
  China Is Responsible For More Than A Third Of World GDP Growth – This Is A Problem

  As Deutsche Bank’s FX strategist George Saravelos writes in a recent research report he has been “on the pessimistic side of the reflation narrative for some time now.”

  In the note titled “three charts for pessimists”, he admits that there are many more things happening to the global economy than easy fiscal and monetary policy, including a large negative supply-shock, in turn leading to sizeable demand destruction; stronger than expected precautionary saving behavior from consumers pushing down r*; and massive structural economic change on the back of COVID-led digitization across multiple sectors. And now we have to add China to the mix.

  His first chart below highlights a simple observation: China has been acting as a massive global growth turbocharge since the start of the century, and is responsible for more than a third of world GDP growth. As Saravelos gloomily notes, “systemic risks of the unfolding property developer crisis aside, if the last few months experience are signaling a regime break in Chinese tolerance for what authorities have termed “low quality” growth, the world should take notice.”

  

  Back to the developed world, Saravelos’ second chart shows there is still a massive hole in the UK labor market. Total hours worked are a whopping near-10% below trend compared to pre-COVID. Yet the market is now fully pricing a Bank of England rate hike early next year. For sure, wages are rising, but as a recent IFS study showed there are still massive disruptions in the UK labor market. It will take a brave central bank to hike in to such a hole. Even if it does, it is hardly positive for the currency.

  

  Finally, there are two parallel universes. The global goods sector is overheated. Look no further than US consumption, which is half a trillion dollars above trend. But the US services sector is twice as large and half a trillion below trend. The analytical value of aggregate GDP metrics is severely lessened in the presence of such massive sectoral dislocations. In recent months, the goods sector has started decelerating faster than the services sector has quickened. How the consumer rebalances spending in coming months will be very important.

  

  We are only at the very beginning of trying to understand the true post-COVID steady state, it will be a long ride.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 20:20

• Ignored Warnings, Deferred Maintenance Caused Michigan Dams To Collapse
  Ignored Warnings, Deferred Maintenance Caused Michigan Dams To Collapse

  By Julie Strupp of ConstructionDive,

  Following the rare and dramatic collapse of the Edenville and Sanford dams in Midland County, Michigan, in May 2020 that forced 10,000 residents to evacuate, a newly released preliminary report sheds light into why they failed, and offers safety lessons for other aging, earthen infrastructure. 

  

  The independent investigation from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) covers the physical mechanisms involved in the accident but doesn’t place blame; a final report expected in several months will delve into human factors. 

  The report says poor construction and ignored upkeep, combined with intense rainfall, were the primary causes of the failure. Experts previously assumed that only an earthquake could cause a dam embankment to liquify the way it did in Edenville.

  A series of failures

  On May 19, 2020, water poured into the Wixom Lake reservoir, filling it to a record high. This waterlogged the dam’s embankment, which caused it to liquify and collapse, per the report. This overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam, causing it to fail as well. The problems started long before that day though: The two dams were built in the 1920s, but a key embankment wasn’t compacted the way it was supposed to be, setting it up for failure about 100 years later.

  Boyce Hydro bought the Edenville, Sanford, and two other central Michigan dams as tax shelters in 2006 and owned them at the time of the collapse, Bridge Michigan reported. 

  After the company failed for decades to repair spillways that are supposed to prevent flooding, the FERC revoked the license to generate power for the Edenville dam a year and a half before the accident. The Sanford Dam was an active hydroelectric facility at the time of the incident.

  A 2012 report by Boyce says that the company knew since at least 2012 that the section of the dam that failed lacked the tile drains that were supposed to line the entire bottom, leaving that soil vulnerable to saturation. The company disputes it is to blame. It also argues area landowners and federal regulators are responsible for rules that made it unable to preemptively drain the lake to make room for the additional rainwater.

  Other dams at risk

  While the liquification seen at Edenville is rare, dam failure is unfortunately not unique: The 2017 Oroville Dam incident in California forced 180,000 people to evacuate, and in 2019 the Spencer Dam failure in Nebraska killed one person. Both failures were also sparked by heavy rain.

  The Michigan dam failures caused about $175 million in damage to homes and buildings and left two lake beds empty. Victims of the incident are suing Boyce Hydro (as well as state and federal regulators) but the company has filed for bankruptcy, thus plaintiffs are unlikely to receive much compensation from it.

  Experts don’t know exactly how many U.S. dams might have the same issues as Edenville, said Mark Ogden, technical specialist for the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, and information is sparse about the many dams that were constructed a century ago.

  “We know there are likely about 4,000 high hazard-potential dams that have an assessment rating of poor or are not rated, and it’s likely that a good percentage of those require some remedial action,” Ogden said. “The need for action to get these dams upgraded and improved is really significant.”

  More than half of dams are privately owned, and lack of upkeep is sometimes an issue, according to Ogden. Plus, climate change-related extreme weather will put increasing stress on aging dams in coming years, and could cause more breakdowns unless remedial measures are taken, he said.

  Policy, engineering remedies

  Going forward, engineers will look for lessons from the incident, according to Ogden. 

  “Any time we see a failure or incident at a dam, it’s really important to investigate… I think that we will see that dam owners will look at these types of dams and will make decisions based on this new info to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Ogden. “There are definitely dams out there in a similar situation [as Edenville], and hopefully dam owners and regulators and others in the dam safety field can work together.”

  One of the issues with preventing dam failures is that there isn’t enough funding for inspections and upkeep, according to Ogden. The Twenty-First Century Dams Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in July, would provide $21.1 billion to rehabilitate, retrofit and remove dams as needed, as well as to fund inspections and state safety programs. States regulate about 70% of dams in the U.S.

  “Many dam safety programs are terribly under-resourced,” Ogden said. “[The 21st Century Dam Act] is an important piece of legislation that could help in terms of improving the safety of dams.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 20:00

• China Should Alter Nuclear "No First Strike Policy" To Counter US Pressure: Ex-Diplomat
  China Should Alter Nuclear “No First Strike Policy” To Counter US Pressure: Ex-Diplomat

  The AUKUS pact that was revealed last week to the shock and dispmay of France and the EU, which will involve the US transferring nuclear submarine technology to Australia, has resulted in continued nuclear jawboning out of China this week.

  First, as we detailed earlier in the week a Chinese state-linked analyst and expert announced to “23 million Australians” in a prime time interview with an Aussie national broadcaster that “Australia will lose that privilege of not being targeted with nuclear weapons by other countries” – as Victor Gao put it to the stunned interviewer. 

  Following these comments, former diplomat Sha Zukang – who previously served as the longtime Chinese ambassador for disarmament affairs to the UN – told a conference in Beijing on Thursday that China should review its “no first strike policy” in the wake of recent developments. 

  

  The speech, which was first reported in the South China Morning Post, called for China’s leadership to “fine tune” its nuclear policy as a counterweight to the ongoing pressure campaign coming from Washington and its allies in the Indo-Pacific. It follows Chinese officials denouncing plans for the US to deliver at least eight nuclear-powered subs to Australia.

  While Beijing is accusing Australia of reneging on its commitment to a nuclear free zone, particularly calling it out as a violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Canberra officials are differentiating nuclear-powered technology from the deployment of nuclear arms.

  Here’s what the influential and now retired ambassador Zukang said in part in his remarks:

  “The strategic pressure on China is intensifying as [the US] has built new military alliances and as it increases its military presence in our neighborhood,” he said.

  For the most part, Sha clarified that China ought to keep its “no first strike policy” for most countries, but may start thinking differently for the US. The policy, Sha said, may not apply between China and the US unless the two nations “negotiate a mutual understanding on no first use of nuclear weapons, or unless the US ceases to take any negative measures that undermine the effectiveness of China’s strategic forces.”

  

  So while suggesting the menacing prospect of a dramatic reversal of its current no first strike policy for some countries, it appears Zukang is arguing a reversal or at least tweaking of China’s stance would inevitably hasten a future nuke treaty with the US, though which in reality would obviously remain a huge gamble in terms of removing a key barrier to the prospect of nuclear confrontation. 

  Also recall, ironically enough, that this is happening as China lobbies Australia to support its entry into the CPTPP trade partnership – which would of course help Beijing prop up those soon-to-be-needed-even-more trade surpluses, structurally.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 19:40

• Heckler's Veto: 66% Of College Students Say Stopping Speech Is Free Speech
  Heckler’s Veto: 66% Of College Students Say Stopping Speech Is Free Speech

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  We have previously discussed the worrisome signs of a rising generation of censors in the country as leaders and writers embrace censorship and blacklisting. The latest chilling poll was released by 2021 College Free Speech Rankings after questioning a huge body of 37,000 students at 159 top-ranked U.S. colleges and universities. It found that sixty-six percent of college students think shouting down a speaker to stop them from speaking is a legitimate form of free speech.  Another 23 percent believe violence can be used to cancel a speech. That is roughly one out of four supporting violence.

  

  Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. Others are supporting actual book burning. Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll has denounced the “weaponization” of free speech, which appears to be the use of free speech by those on the right. So the dean of one of the premier journalism schools now supports censorship.Free speech advocates are facing a generational shift that is now being reflected in our law schools, where free speech principles were once a touchstone of the rule of law. As millions of students are taught that free speech is a threat and that “China is right” about censorship, these figures are shaping a new society in their own intolerant images.

  The most chilling aspect of this story is how many on left applaud such censorship. A prior poll shows roughly half of the public supporting not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation.” Perhaps the same citizens and academics will embrace the Chinese model on social scoring and praise actions that the reported move by Chase bank.

  We discussed this issue recently with regard to a lawsuit against SUNY. It is also discussed in my forthcoming law review article, Jonathan Turley, Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States, 45 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (2021).

  This has been an issue of contention with some academics who believe that free speech includes the right to silence others.  Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over the use of a heckler’s veto on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, even including a few speakers like an ACLU official.  Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech.  At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.  In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech.  CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,”  Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. (Bilek later cancelled herself and resigned after she made a single analogy to acting like a “slaveholder” as a self-criticism for failing to achieve equity and reparations for black faculty and students).

  We previously discussed the case of Fresno State University Public Health Professor Dr. Gregory Thatcher recruited students to destroy pro-life messages written on the sidewalks and wrongly told the pro-life students that they had no free speech rights in the matter.  A district court has now ordered Thatcher to pay $17,000 and undergo First Amendment training.  However, Thatcher remained defiant and the university appeared complicit in his actions by the lack of disciplinary action.

  The pro-life students had written messages on the sidewalk like “You CAN be pregnant & successful” and “Unborn lives matter” to “Women need love, NOT abortion.”  Thatcher got students from his 8 a.m. class to help remove the anti-abortion messages and that their chalk was taken away to write pro-choice slogans on the sidewalk. The students seem entirely unconcerned that they are censoring speech and engaging in a grossly intolerant act.  Instead, they refer to their teacher as telling them that they should do so.  Thatcher then walked up.    Thatcher invoked the controversial restriction of free speech to “zones” and says that there is no free speech right for this type of writing outside of that zone.  When the students explain that they have permission, he then proceed to rub out their messages and declared “you have permission to put it down — I have permission to get rid of it.”

  Thatcher is arguing that same Orwellian “Stopping free speech is free speech” position.

  A few years ago, I debated NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron who is a leading voice for speech codes. Waldron insisted that shutting down speakers through heckling is a form of free speech.

  I disagree. It is the antithesis of free speech and the failure of schools to protect the exercise of free speech is the antithesis of higher education.

  The added increase in embracing violence is particularly chilling. A quarter of those polled supported violence to prevent others from speaking. This is the core of the philosophy of the Antifa movement. It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech:

  “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’” Indeed, Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

  It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.

  Antifa has a long and well-documented history of such violence. Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

  Notably, when George Washington University student and self-professed Antifa member Jason Charter was charged as the alleged “ringleader” of efforts to take down statues in Washington, D.C., Charter declared the “movement is winning.” He is right and this poll shows the success.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 19:20

• Containers Quickly Pile Up At US Rail Terminals, Add To Port Strains
  Containers Quickly Pile Up At US Rail Terminals, Add To Port Strains

  The US continues to face an unprecedented shipping crisis as logjams at ports and railyards continue to worsen with no relief in sight. 

  The increasing volume of containers, combined with a labor shortage of dockworkers and truck drivers, rail and storage capacity, have left shipping networks with huge congestion problems that continue to increase.

  Currently, more than 100 container ships are waiting to enter US ports from coast to coast. Some of the largest congestion is in San Pedro Bay off the port of Los Angeles, with more than 61 vessels waiting to enter. Dwell time for vessels is six days, the wait time for on-dock rail is nearly 16 days, and then it takes an additional week to move the container on the street to warehouses. 

  What’s caught our attention is import congestion at railyards. Using data from Hapag-Lloyd AG, one of the world’s top shippers, we find that container dwell time at 11 major railroad terminals averages 9.8 days this month, up from 6.7 days in May and 5.9 days in February. 

  

  Noted above, the port of Los Angeles has the highest wait times out of all railyards. Delays are also increasing in Charleston and Detroit. 

  We recently said port officials had extended operating hours at truck gates to reduce a massive backlog of containers piling up retail, manufacturing, and agricultural supply chains. 

  Hapag-Lloyd said the delays at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are the most extreme and would “continue for the remainder of the year.” 

  Bloomberg points out that increasing demand for imports mixed with labor shortages of truck drivers is a very severe issue plaguing major companies’ supply chains, such as packaged good giant General Mills Inc.

  “So we have hundreds of disruptions in our supply chain literally, and it really changes on a daily and weekly basis,” said Jonathon Nudi, group president of North America retail at General Mills. “The bulk of our discussions right now with retailers are really around service and making sure that we can ship the product that our consumers are ultimately looking for.”

  Import congestion appears to be worsening, and the focus is now on railyards. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 19:00

• "It's A Ghost Town" – Shocking Images Show Downtown Chicago "Depressingly" Empty During Day
  “It’s A Ghost Town” – Shocking Images Show Downtown Chicago “Depressingly” Empty During Day

  Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

  “Have you been downtown lately? It’s nearly empty.”

  

  Canal Street

  We hear comments like that more and more often from alarmed readers in the Chicago area. We see it, too, and it’s worsening. So we’re putting up a few pictures for those who haven’t visited lately, and adding the perspective of one downtown restaurant owner.

  We took the pictures downtown on Thursday between 9:30 AM and 1:30 PM.

  Things seemed to be improving a bit over the summer, but no longer.

  Is it COVID, crime or the new trend to remote working?

  The recent surge in COVID began in the first week in July, and that’s undoubtedly a major cause. The trend toward remote work is real and may be permanent. But crime seems to be increasingly on people’s minds.

  

  Adams Street

  I checked in with somebody who is a kind of real time barometer of downtown activity. That’s Jesse Boyle, who owns two restaurants in the Ogilvie Transportation Center – Station Restaurant and Bar and Vinny’s Pizza Bar. Ogilvie is the primary commuter train station in downtown Chicago, so Boyle has a pretty good feel of the pulse of downtown activity.

  “In the spring and summer I was anticipating things to really come back after Labor Day,” Boyle told me.

  “I was hearing a lot of companies were scheduling their employee returns for the fall, and my group was excited to get closer to normal,” he says.

  And he had put his money where his hopes were, completing major renovations.

  “But there are two things that have converged,” Boyle says, that have set things back.

  “One is that the Delta variant has taken away a lot of that early enthusiasm for work gatherings and people getting reacquainted.”

  “A very close second” is crime, as Boyle sees it.

  “Overall crime is up again, and the stories we’re hearing and reading about suggest that downtown is not as safe as it used to be.

  It’s confluence of those causes, and whatever else has drained people from downtown, that’s most deadly. You can feel it, and it feeds on itself.

  “It’s a ghost town feeling that you have just walking down any downtown street,” as Boyle puts it.

  “It makes you a little uneasy, and it’s kind of shocking to me that we continue to see this for such an extended period. The offices are empty, and the energy is gone.”

  

  Jackson Street

  Boyle went on:

  It wasn’t like that prior to last year, and I’m hopeful that our city government pulls it together and helps us fix this. I’ve seen a sales dip from July to August, which is unusual.  Things in September continue to be flat or down from August.

  Just having more people around downtown will make all of us feel better, but at this point I have no sense of direction on when that will happen.  As a business owner this is very dispiriting and depressing.

  Our hearts are out to Boyle, his employees and all the others like them, in downtown Chicago and all places suffering like it.

  

  State Street

  This cannot go on. Chicago as we’ve known will not survive with as few people downtown as there are. And Illinois cannot survive without Chicago.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 18:40

• Here's How Many Shares Big Tech CEOs Have Already Dumped This Year
  Here’s How Many Shares Big Tech CEOs Have Already Dumped This Year

  When CEOs of major companies are selling their shares, investors can’t help but notice.

  After all, as Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali notes, these decisions have a direct effect on the personal wealth of these insiders, which can say plenty about their convictions with respect to the future direction of the companies they run.

  Considering that Big Tech stocks are some of the most popular holdings in today’s portfolios, and are backed by a collective $5.3 trillion in institutional investment, how do the CEOs of these organizations rank by their insider selling?

  

  Breaking Down Insider Trading, by CEO

  Let’s dive into the insider trading activity of each Big Tech CEO:

  Jeff Bezos

  During the first half of 2021, Jeff Bezos sold 2 million shares of Amazon worth $6.6 billion.

  This activity was spread across 15 different transactions, representing an average of $440 million per transaction. Altogether, this ranks him first by CEO insider selling, by total dollar proceeds. Bezos’s time as CEO of Amazon came to an end shortly after the half way mark for the year.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  In second place is Mark Zuckerberg, who has been significantly busier selling than the rest.

  In the first half of 2021, he unloaded 7.1 million shares of Facebook onto the open market, worth $2.2 billion. What makes these transactions interesting is the sheer quantity of them, as he sold on 136 out of 180 days. On average, that’s $12 million worth of stock sold every day.

  Zuckerberg’s record year of selling in 2018 resulted in over $5 billion worth of stock sold, but over 90% of his net worth still remains in the company.

  Satya Nadella

  Next is Satya Nadella, who sold 278,694 shares of Microsoft, worth $234 million. Despite this, the Microsoft CEO still holds an estimated 1.6 million shares, which is the largest of any insider.

  Microsoft’s stock has been on a tear for a number of years now, and belongs to an elite trillion dollar club, which consists of only six public companies.

  Sundar Pichai

  Fourth on the list is Sundar Pichai who has been at the helm at Google for six years now. Since the start of 2021, he’s sold 27,000 shares through nine separate transactions, worth $62.5 million. However, Pichai still has an estimated 6,407 Class A and 114,861 Class C shares.

  Google is closing in on a $2 trillion valuation and is the best performing Big Tech stock, with shares rising 60% year-to-date. Their market share growth from U.S. ad revenues is a large contributing factor.

  Tim Cook

  Last, is Tim Cook, who just surpassed a decade as Apple CEO.

  During this time, shares have rallied over 1,000% and annual sales have gone from $100 billion to $347 billion. That said, Cook has sold 0 shares of Apple during the first half of 2021. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t sold shares elsewhere, though. Cook also sits on the board of directors for Nike, and has sold $6.9 million worth of shares this year.

  Measuring Insider Selling

  All things equal, it’s desirable for management to have skin in the game, and be invested alongside shareholders. It can also be seen as aligning long-term interests.

  A good measure of insider selling activity is in relation to the existing stake in the company. For example, selling $6.6 billion worth of shares may sound like a lot, but when there are 51.7 million Amazon shares remaining for Jeff Bezos, it actually represents a small portion and is probably not cause for panic.

  If, however, executives are disclosing large transactions relative to their total stakes, it might be worth digging deeper.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 18:20

• DHS Touts Counter-Domestic Extremism Plan; Rights Groups Cite Threats To Civil Liberties
  DHS Touts Counter-Domestic Extremism Plan; Rights Groups Cite Threats To Civil Liberties

  Authored by Ken Silva via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is touting a raft of new programs aimed to combat domestic extremism—many of which are raising red flags among interest groups across the political spectrum.

  

  The new DHS plans follow a March intelligence community report that deems white supremacy and violent domestic extremism as the most dangerous terror threat to the homeland. Mayorkas made similar statements at a Sept. 21 Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on counterterrorism.

  “Today, U.S.-based lone actors and small groups, including homegrown violent extremists and domestic violent extremists—who are inspired by a broad range of ideological motivations—pose the most significant and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country,” he said.

  These “broad range of ideological motivations” include “racial bias, perceived government overreach, conspiracy theories promoting violence, and false narratives about unsubstantiated fraud in the 2020 presidential election,”

  He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by “perceived government overreach” or “conspiracy theories promoting violence.” He did, however, assure lawmakers that his department is working hard to combat these perceived threats.

  One of the major programs touted by Mayorkas is the newly branded DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), formerly known as the Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention. In conjunction with that, the DHS is in the midst of a $77 million grant program aimed to provide state and local institutions with tools to counter extremism.

  The DHS first announced CP3 in May along with a new dedicated domestic terrorism branch within the Department’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A). Mayorkas told the Homeland Security panel that CP3 is helping expand the department’s ability to prevent terrorism and targeted violence “through the development of local prevention frameworks.”

  “Through CP3, we are leveraging community-based partnerships and evidence-based tools to address early-risk factors and ensure individuals receive help before they radicalize to violence,” he said.

  However, Mayorkas didn’t offer details about other elements of CP3—elements that various interest groups say pose a threat to liberty.

  Among the details that weren’t discussed are what CP3 says on its own site—that it “leverages behavioral threat assessment and management tools, and addresses early-risk factors that can lead to radicalization to violence.”

  According to human rights activist Ed Hasbrouck, consultant to the nonprofit Identity Project, this mission amounts to a pre-crime program.

  “CP3’s attempts to predict future crimes are to be based on behavioral patterns— i.e., profiling—and on encouraging members of the public to inform on their families, friends, and classmates,” Hasbrouck wrote when CP3 was first announced.

  “The problem, of course, is that the law does not permit prosecution based solely on patterns of lawful behavior,” he wrote. “With good reason: ‘precrime’ prediction is a figment of the imagination of the creators of a dystopian fantasy movie, ‘Minority Report.’”

  The Brennan Center for Justice has expressed similar concerns. Far from a conservative group, the Brennan Center agrees with the DHS and FBI that domestic extremism is a rising threat.

  “Over the past five years, from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to El Paso, attacks by people who reject our multiracial democracy have shaken our country to its core and sparked conversation about how best to address far-right violence,” the group stated in a June report.

  “The Trump administration, which stoked the flames of white supremacy, ended with the ransacking of the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.”

  But the Brennan Center said CP3 and the Biden administration’s overall approach to countering domestic extremism—enhanced surveillance, profiling, and the like—are the same draconian tactics government used against Muslims post-9/11.

  “At a time when jurisdictions around the country are considering how to reduce law enforcement involvement in mental health and social issues, CP3 prevention activities take the opposite approach. They create structures to bring a broad range of concerns about mental health and socioeconomic conditions to the attention of law enforcement as indicators of criminality without normal safeguards,” the Brennan Center stated in its June 69-page report on the issue.

  Not only are the DHS-Biden plans a threat to civil liberties; they’re also proven to be ineffective, the Brennan Center said.

  The Brennan Center report paid particular focus to DHS “fusion centers”—law enforcement compounds scattered throughout the United States that seek to integrate federal, state, and local intelligence. The goal of fusion centers is to create partnerships between varying agencies and the private sector to share intelligence on threats to public safety so law enforcement has the whole picture and can “connect the dots.”

  Citing congressional reports from 2012, the Brennan Center stated that these fusion centers have proven to be ineffective. Those reports found that the DHS spent $289 million to $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003, with little results to show.

  “Instead of looking for terrorist threats, fusion centers were monitoring lawful political and religious activity. That year, the Virginia Fusion Center described a Muslim get-out-the-vote campaign as ‘subversive,’” the Brennan Center stated in its June report. “In 2009, the North Central Texas Fusion Center identified lobbying by Muslim groups as a possible threat.”

  Seemingly little has improved since then.

  Earlier in September, NBC News revealed an investigation into fusion centers. The report starts with an anecdote of Mike Sena, the president of the National Fusion Center Association, bragging that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) helped stop a mall shooting attack in Santa Clara.

  NBC News found that Sena was apparently stretching the extent to which his fusion center helped.

  “We don’t have any information showing that NCRIC was involved,” said Steven Aponte, a San Jose Police Department spokesperson.

  The Brennan Center stated in its June report that the Biden administration is inappropriately involving law enforcement in social problems and should focus on “community investment, not criminalization.”

  “Communities around the United States should not need to sign up for a counterterrorism program to get resources for their schools, universities, places of worship, or social institutions,” the Brennan Center stated.

  “Government commitments should directly address these as social problems rather than treat those experiencing them as potential violent criminals, and should wall off programs addressing social ills from law enforcement across levels of government.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Lithuania Tells People To Throw Away Chinese Smartphones Due To "Cybersecurity Risks"
  Lithuania Tells People To Throw Away Chinese Smartphones Due To “Cybersecurity Risks”

  Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Centre (NKSC) released a new report Thursday urging consumers to throw away their Chinese smartphones due to cybersecurity and censorship risks. 

  NKSC, which is part of the Defense Ministry, found that Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi had built-in censorship tools to detect and censor phrases such as “Free Tibet,” “Long live Taiwan independence,” “People’s daily newspaper,” and “democracy movement,” among others. It noted Xiaomi’s Mi 10T 5G phones had the software turned off for European customers, but the report stressed the tools could be remotely turned on at any time. 

  

  “This is important not only to Lithuania but to all countries which use Xiaomi equipment,” NKSC said in the report.

  Besides Xiaomi’s Mi 10T 5G, the security assessment examined Huawei’s P40 5G3 and found cybersecurity risks to users. There was no mention of risks for OnePlus’s 8T 5G. 

  

  Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevicius said consumers should discard these mobile devices and purchase new ones that are not from Chinese companies: 

  “We strongly recommend that state and public institutions not use those devices and plan to initiate legislation which regulates acquiring certain devices for the ministries and various state agencies,” Abukevicius said. 

  NKSC said the security assessment is intended “to ensure the safe use of 5G mobile devices sold in our country and the software they contain.” 

  When it came to Huawei’s P40 5G phone, the report found risks of cyber-security breaches: 

  “The official Huawei application store AppGallery directs users to third-party e-stores where some of the applications have been assessed by anti-virus programs as malicious or infected with viruses.”

  It’s crucial to note relations between NATO ally Lithuania and China have deteriorated as of recent. The Baltic country approved Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius, the capital, and be named the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania later this year. Beijing soured over the word “Taiwanese” in the name of the office because it contradicts the “One China” policy that Europe and the US follow. 

  The growing rift between Lithuania and China is a wake-up call for other European countries. 

  * * *

  Here’s the full report: 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 02:45

• The European Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global
  The European Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global

  Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

  It was only a matter of time, really. In a globalized world, energy crunches can hardly remain regionally contained for very long, especially in a context of damaged supply chains and a rush to cut investment in fossil fuels. The energy crunch that began in Europe earlier this month may now be on its way to America. For now, all is well with one of the world’s top gas producers. U.S. gas exporters have enjoyed a solid increase in demand from Asia and Europe as the recovery in economic activity pushed demand for electricity higher. According to a recent Financial Times report, there is a veritable bidding war for U.S. cargos of liquefied natural gas between Asian and European buyers—and the Asians are winning.

  

  Coal exports are on the rise, too, and have been for a while now, especially after a political spat had China shun Australian coal. But supply is tightening, Argus reported earlier this month. In July, according to the report, U.S. coking coal exports dropped by as much as 20.3 percent from June. The report noted supply was constrained by producers’ limited access to funding and a labor shortage that has plagued many industries amid the pandemic.

  All this should be good news for U.S. producers of fossil fuels. But it may easily become bad news as winter approaches. The Wall Street Journal’s Jinjoo Lee wrote earlier this week high energy prices could be the next hot import for the United States. Lee cited data showing gas inventory replenishment was running below average rates for this season, and gas in storage in early September was 7.4 percent below the five-year average.

  Coal inventories are also running low because of stronger exports, with prices for thermal coal three times higher than they were a year ago. According to calculations from the Energy Information Administration cited in the WSJ report, coal inventories in the United States could fall to less than half last year’s inventory levels by the end of the year. Last year, energy demand was depressed because of the pandemic. This year, the U.S. economy is firing on all cylinders once again. 

  No wonder electricity prices are already going up.

  In a way, the events in Europe could be seen as a trailer of what might happen in the United States. It is a trailer because it shows all the worst bits. The United States is much more energy independent than, say, the UK, and that’s a big plus. Yet exports bring in revenues, and it would require government intervention to make gas producers cut exports.

  In an alarming move, such intervention was requested last week by a manufacturing industry group. Industrial Energy Consumers of America, an organization representing companies producing chemicals, food, and materials, asked the Department of Energy to institute limits on the exports of liquefied natural gas in order to avoid soaring prices and gas shortages during the winter, Reuters reported on Friday.

  Opinions seem to differ on whether rising LNG exports are in fact hurting U.S. consumers. But the fact is that gas prices are already double what they were a year ago. According to the IECA, they are not, however, high enough to motivate a ramp-up in natural gas production. Therefore, in order to stockpile enough gas for the winter, the U.S. government must force a reduction in exports.

  The LNG industry is, of course, against this. The executive director of Center for Liquefied Natural Gas told Reuters most LNG exports are shipped under long-term fixed-price contracts that have no relation to benchmark gas prices and their movements. Yet some cargos are sold on the spot market.

  “Buyers of LNG who compete for natural gas with U.S. consumers are state-owned enterprises and foreign government-controlled utilities with automatic cost pass through,” Paul Cicio, president of IECA, said, as quoted by Reuters. “U.S. manufacturers cannot compete with them on prices.”

  Traders are already getting jittery, and this will likely contribute to price uncertainty; regardless of how the fundamentals situation develops. Again, Europe is at the heart of the uncertainty – or rather the certainty that prices have higher to climb. But now, China has added to concern about gas supply and the potential for shortages.

  For now, China’s biggest problem seems to be coal rather than gas. A recent Bloomberg report said that China coal power plant operators are struggling to buy enough coal to keep their plants running, and some are being forced to shut down their boilers because of insufficient coal supply. This, however, might lead to stronger gas demand to ensure enough electricity and heating for the winter. This will further exacerbate the difference between global demand and supply.

  The European energy crunch is spilling over into other regions. The blame game has begun with culprits ranging from years of underinvestment in local gas production to a Gazprom scheme to get Nord Stream 2 approved by Germany. For now, it is still unclear how much of the price surge is due to a gap between demand and supply and how much of it is due to market nervousness, at least according to RBC commodity strategist Christopher Louney, as quoted by the WSJ’s Lee. This question is less important than another, however, and it is a scary one:

  Just how bad could things get this winter?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 09/24/2021 – 02:00

• Brandon Smith: Organizing Patriots In The Face Of Government Informants And False Flags
  Brandon Smith: Organizing Patriots In The Face Of Government Informants And False Flags

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  There is a simple fact that must be understood when it comes to the fight for liberty: Such a fight cannot be won by lone individuals. Freedom requires organized resistance and it does not matter how many millions of people stand against an authoritarian regime, if they are completely isolated from each other they WILL lose. It’s a guarantee.

  

  This is why a considerable portion of establishment money, energy and propaganda is directed at defusing or sabotaging any semblance of conservative organization. This includes engineering false flag events and creating potential terror attacks from thin air so that they can be blamed on constitutionally minded groups. The strategy is called “4th Generation Warfare” and it is not conspiracy theory, this is conspiracy fact.

  For example, as we now know according to court documentation, the supposed scheme by a Michigan “militia” made up of anarchists to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer and “try her as a tyrant” was heavily infiltrated by at least a dozen FBI agents and informants. The group was so infiltrated, in fact, that the entire plot for the kidnapping was essentially planned out by the FBI. This is the very definition of a false flag. The corruption and entrapment involved in the operation was so egregious that even the leftist media has reported on it.

  I recall a very similar situation occurred during the Malheur incident when Ammon Bundy (son of Cliven Bundy) and a group of patriots decided to annex the wildlife refuge and its obscure ranger buildings as a launching point for a revolution. Though I was a supporter of the efforts at Bundy Ranch, I was vehemently against Malheur because the whole situation seemed grossly suspect. The strategy made no sense, the rationale made no sense, the site of the standoff made no sense and the public optics were terrible. It was an anti-Bundy Ranch; a situation in which all of the dynamics were in favor of the feds and against the liberty movement.

  And, not surprisingly, Malhuer had also been influenced and in some cases was arranged by federal informants and agents. These people were whispering in the ear of Ammon Bundy the entire time while the FBI authorized them to commit criminal acts. There were so many paid employees of the FBI at Malheur that jurors decided to drop all charges against most of the defendants involved.

  And what about the latest “J6” rally in Washington DC, which was planned by a virtually unknown former Trump aid and was quickly exposed as a potential “honeypot” designed to lure in conservatives? The army of plain clothes undercover feds was so prevalent that riot cops accidentally arrested an armed FBI agent thinking he was a protester.

  Now, there are many people in the alternative media that are breathing a sigh of relief that almost no one showed up for the J6 protest or “fell into the trap”. In fact, there were far more reporters and feds there than actual activists. However, I think we need to look at the bigger picture of why the government is staging such events in the first place, and it’s not just to entrap a few conservatives .

  If you think about it, the entire strategy is high cost/minimum reward if we only look at it in terms of actual arrests. If the idea is to catch and prosecute patriots, then they could infiltrate groups and engineer criminal actions for decades and achieve little to nothing. Obviously, this is not the purpose of informants. Rather, the strategy is not to invade groups unnoticed; the strategy is to BE NOTICED, to make sure the whole of the liberty movement believe that if they ever try to organize in any way the feds will be there to set them up. In other words, the primary goal of the FBI is to instill paranoia and fear among patriots and ensure they never effectively organize to resist.

  When we cheer the “failure” of J6, we need to keep in mind that the establishment does not care. Getting people to show up was not their main intent; making people afraid to show up for any other events in the future is what they want.

  The issue presents a Catch-22. If conservatives organize there is the chance that some groups will be infiltrated or set up and used to make the entire movement look bad. If we don’t organize, then we have lost the fight. It will be over before it even truly begins (and no, the real fight has not started yet). So what is the solution?

  I think it’s odd but maybe not surprising that the standoff at Bundy Ranch has been memory-holed by the media and is rarely mentioned even among conservative activists these days. Yet, it was probably one of the most successful patriot actions in the past couple of decades. There are a number of reasons for this:

  1) The action was spontaneous, not pre-planned and was in response to criminal activity by the FBI (including assaulting women that were protesting and the use of sniper positions to surround the Bundy property similar to Ruby Ridge). The movement took action to remedy a government trespass rather than creating a standoff out of nothing.

  2) There was no single person in charge. Groups showed up from all over the country; some of them squared away and some of them screw-ups. This might sound like a bad thing, but in terms of rebellion it is often better to avoid streamlined top-down leadership. Frankly, I am usually suspicious of anyone that tries to anoint themselves the “leader” of the liberty movement or the sole leader of a protest action. Cult of personality is the most useless thing I can think of when it comes to battling tyranny, and top-down leadership can be easily manipulated or controlled.

  3) Because of the decentralized nature of the response to Bundy Ranch, the feds had no way to influence or predict the outcome, and they really hate that. Without informants in key positions, the feds did not have the ability to adapt to the quickly changing circumstances. Contrast this with Malheur, where the feds were basically in control from the very beginning. The site itself was so isolated and ill conceived that the FBI was able to dictate every movement of patriots in and out of the area. It was pointless for any militia to occupy it, but it was a great spot for the feds.

  4) Patriots arrived at Bundy Ranch peacefully, but with the will to fight if necessary. The Bundy Ranch response had a clear objective – To stop the FBI from harming the Bundy family and to retrieve the stolen cattle if possible. Both of these objectives were accomplished and with no shots fired. A complete success. The group was motivated and unified by the objective, NOT a singular leadership. Without a clear objective there is no purpose to any action.

  It is important to understand the difference between a Lexington Bridge moment and a Fort Sumter moment – During Lexington Bridge, the revolutionaries took action to stop a British detachment from arresting colonial leaders and confiscating rifles and powder stores. The British were in the midst of an undeniable attempt to disarm and snuff out the resistance. At Fort Sumter, the Confederate attack was in response to an attempted resupply of the fort itself; which made sense strategically but looked like an act of pure aggression to the wider public. The concept of states rights (more prominent in the minds of the confederates than the issue of slavery) fell by the wayside.

  Eventually tyranny has to put boots on the ground. A totalitarian system can function for a time on color of law and implied threats, but it will crumble unless it is able to establish a physical presence of force. Once those jackboots touch soil in a visible way and the agents of the state try to expand oppressive measures, rebels then have a free hand to disrupt them or bring them down. But this only works if there are objectives and enough decentralization to prevent misdirection of the movement.

  Some organization is essential. It cannot be avoided. All the “Gray Men” and secret squirrel preppers out there that think they are going to simply weather the storm in isolation and pop out of their bug-out locations to rebuild are suffering from serious delusions. I can’t help but think of that moment in ‘Lord Of The Rings’ when the Ents refuse to organize to fight against the invading orcs. Pippen suggests to Merry that the problem is too big for them and that they should go back to the Shire to wait out the war. Merry laments:

  “The fires of Isengard will spread. And the woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once green and good in this world will be gone. There won’t be a Shire, Pippin.”

  If this fight is not pursued now, there will be no world worth coming back to, even if one was able to successfully hide from it. There will be a “new world order” as the globalists like to call it. There will be nothing left of freedom.

  So, organization must be accomplished, and it should be built at the local level. This is far more important than any dreams of a national organization, at least for now. There is no one we can trust to lead such a nationwide revolt, and that includes political leaders like Donald Trump.

  Will federal intrusions happen? Of course, but at the local level it is much easier to vet people according to their behaviors and root out bad actors. Hold your local meetings to discuss current events and create a place for people to network and get to know each other. Talk to local businesses or your county sheriff to see where they stand on issues like the vaccine passports and Biden mandates. Put things in motion now or you will regret it later when your community is completely disjointed and paralyzed by fear during crisis or government subjugation.

  And, what about the first guy at your meetings that starts talking about building bombs, drafting “kill lists” or kidnapping governors? Kick his ass out promptly and make sure everyone knows why you did it. Most likely he is a fed or he is on an informant payroll. As our national composure breaks down and the manure hits the fan, fed informants and agents will suddenly disappear from these groups without a trace. They are not going to stick around for what happens next; the government doesn’t pay them enough for that. And knowing who the patriots are will not help the federal government if the patriots are organized to defend themselves. This is the reality which they do not want us to wake up to.

  *  *  *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 23:40

• France: "Time & Action" Needed To Restore US Ties; PM Morrison Says Macron Giving "Cold Shoulder"
  France: “Time & Action” Needed To Restore US Ties; PM Morrison Says Macron Giving “Cold Shoulder”

  Following the tense Wednesday phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden wherein the two agreed to try and “restore trust” following the severe rift over the AUKUS defense pact which led Paris to pull its ambassador to Washington (which France has since vowed to restore), Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Thursday with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. 

  Suggesting that prior good relations have been strained if not broken, Le Drian said “time and actions” are needed to “fully” restore ties between the two typically close allies. He underscored:

  The way out of a diplomatic crisis between France and the US over a mega submarine deal will “take time and require actions”…

  

  A French government statement indicated the two met at the United Nations in New York to go through the “terms and main issues” to be addressed in upcoming consultations.

  The White House summary of the Blinken meeting indicated a big top of discussion was France’s recent charges that the US-Australia submarine pact supplanting a French deal worth at least $66 billion ultimately was a blow to France’s strategic cooperation with allies in the Indo-Pacific to counter China.

  In the Wednesday Biden-Macron phone call, the White House said the two leaders and NATO allies have agreed to meet by the end of October in Europe.

  “They discussed the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which the United States welcomes, and the need for close cooperation with France and other European allies and partners active in the region,” the readout said.

  While communications are apparently open between Paris and Washington, it’s not so with Canberra: 

  Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he is being given the cold shoulder by Macron after the scrapping of the submarine deal, but vowed to be “patient” in repairing frayed relations.

  Speaking in Washington late Wednesday, Morrison said he had tried to reach the French leader but the call had “not yet” happened.

  Meanwhile @LeDrien says they want to restore trust (…) that the crisis between FR and US will take time to fix (i.e.after US duped France’s €52 billion “deal of the century”).
  130 characters simply aren’t enough to paint over the facts. https://t.co/gLl62rVBZE pic.twitter.com/ePx6cSdL4P

  — Beth 🌺 (@m_beth) September 23, 2021

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

  This “cold shoulder” persists as France has even threatened to torpedo EU-Australia trade negotiations, which were scheduled to resume later this fall.

  * * * 

  According to Rabobank’s commentary…

  US President Biden and French President Macron are attempting to build bridges burned over AUKUS. The French ambassador is now to return to DC, and Biden to come to Europe for talks next month. However, word on the street is that France, and French agriculture, now have the excuse to kick the planned Australia – EU FTA into the long grass even if the rest of the EU is in favour. The UK has also been sent scuttling from any thoughts of joining the USMCA.

  However, geopolitics leads and trade usually follows in today’s atmosphere. Japan’s outgoing PM Suga has also been exceptionally forthright, stating China’s rapidly growing military influence and unilateral changing of the status quo could present a risk to Japan. That’s ahead of a first in-person Quad meeting to be held on Friday at the White House.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 23:20

• Freedom From Fear: Stop Playing The Government's Mind Games
  Freedom From Fear: Stop Playing The Government’s Mind Games

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

  – Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

  America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

  The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

  Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

  This plague on our nation – one that has been spreading like wildfire – is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert.

  Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

  We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

  The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

  Fear makes people stupid.

  

  Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

  Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

  This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.

  This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

  All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

  Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.

  America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored.

  These threats are not to be underestimated.

  Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

  Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

  So far, these tactics are working.

  An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America.

  Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.)—manufactured or legitimate—has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

  Sanchez continues:

  “I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

  “I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

  “Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.”

  As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes.

  It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

  A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

  The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

  • The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

  • The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

  • The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

  • The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

  • The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

  • The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

  • The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

  • The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

  • The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

  • The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

  The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

  “Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker.

  “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

  For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

  Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring.

  It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.

  For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports:

  In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling.

  The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”

  Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.

  Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

  In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm:

  [C]an human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love—that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 23:00

• Five B-21 Raider Stealth Bombers Are Now In Final Production
  Five B-21 Raider Stealth Bombers Are Now In Final Production

  The B-21 Raider – the US Air Force’s secretive, next-generation, long-range stealth bomber is allegedly in final assembly, with the debut expected in early 2022. 

  According to The Drive, there are five Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bombers in the final assembly. This was confirmed by the Air Force Association’s Air, Space, & Cyber Conference, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who said the five Raiders are being built at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. 

  

  There are no known images of the Raider in the public domain except for computer renderings. The first glimpses of the new stealth bomber could come as early as 2022. Test flights are expected in late spring or early summer. 

  In July, we noted the most recent rendering of the bomber was featured in a USAF tear-off sheet. It was the third official rendering of the B-21. The rendering showed a previously unseen cockpit windscreen configuration as the bomber takes off from Edwards Air Force Base, California. We noted several years ago that the bomber would be tested at Edwards AFB. 

  

  Officials have described the B-21 as the most advanced bomber to date, with complex nuclear long-range missions built into its airframe. It may even be able to carry hypersonic weapons. 

  “Nuclear modernization is a top priority for the Department of Defense and the Air Force, and B-21 is key to that plan,” Randall Walden, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director, said in a recent press release.

  Senior Air Force officials have testified before Congress that the service is desperate for new stealth bombers that would increase global competitiveness as China and Russia race to develop new bombers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 22:40

• Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied To Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme To Co-Opt CIA/FBI To Tar Trump
  Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied To Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme To Co-Opt CIA/FBI To Tar Trump

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

  

  Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan as Clinton campaign adviser for the 2016 election. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

  Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

  Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. After a months-long investigation, the FBI found no merit to the rumor.

  The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

  The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

  

  Alleged targets: Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page. YouTube/CNN/FNC/RCP

  To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well as university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”

  The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

  

  Michael Sussmann: Indicted former Clinton campaign lawyer allegedly coordinated with Jake Sullivan on dubious materials provided to the FBI and media. perkinscoie.com

  The indictment states that Sussmann, as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation, “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”

  One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016 – just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI – Marc Elias, his law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.

  The sources close to the case confirmed the “foreign policy adviser” referenced by title is Sullivan. They say he was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank, and was aware of the participants in the project. These included the Washington opposition-research group Fusion GPS, which worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Elias discussed with Sullivan, the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI. Fusion researchers were in regular contact with both Sussmann and Elias about the project in the summer and fall of 2016. Sullivan also personally met with Elias, who briefed him on Fusion’s opposition research, according to the sources.

  Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign.

  “Marc [Elias] … would occasionally give us updates on the opposition research they were conducting, but I didn’t know what the nature of that effort was – inside effort, outside effort, who was funding it, who was doing it, anything like that,” Sullivan stated under oath.

  

  Jake Sullivan’s December 2017 House testimony may put him in perjury jeopardy.  House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

  Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier. Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”

  “To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified.

  “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.”

  Although he acknowledged knowing Elias and his partner were marshaling opposition researchers for a campaign project targeting Trump, Sullivan insisted, “They didn’t do something with it.” In truth, they used the research to instigate a full-blown investigation at the FBI and seed a number of stories in the Washington media, which Elias discussed in emails.

  

  Marc Elias: Prominent Democrat lawyer allegedly also coordinated with Sullivan. Sullivan would later plead ignorance under oath about Elias’s role. Perkins Coie

  Lying to Congress is a felony. Though the offense is rarely prosecuted, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller won convictions of two of Trump’s associates on charges of that very offense.

  An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment. After the 2016 election, Sullivan continued to participate in the anti-Trump effort, which enlisted no fewer than three Internet companies and two university computer researchers, who persisted in exploiting nonpublic Internet data to conjure up “derogatory information on Trump” and his associates, according to the indictment.

  Prosecutors say the operation ran through at least February 2017, when Sullivan met with another central figure in the plot to plant the anti-Trump smear at the FBI. But now the goal was to compel agents to continue investigating the false rumors in the wake of the election, thereby keeping Trump’s presidency under an ethical cloud.

  

  Daniel Jones: One of the lead figures in helping resurrect the Trump-Russia collusion narrative after Trump’s election, Jones coordinated with Sullivan in hatching the effort. McCain Institute/YouTube

  On Feb. 10, 2017, Sullivan huddled with two Fusion operatives and their partner Daniel Jones, a former FBI analyst and Democratic staffer on the Hill, to hatch the post-election plan to resurrect rumors Trump was a tool of the Kremlin. As RealClearInvestigations first reported, the meeting, which lasted about an hour and took place in a Washington office building, also included former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group discussed raising money to finance a multimillion-dollar opposition research project headed by Jones to target the new president. In effect, Jones’ operation would replace the Clinton campaign’s operation, continuing the effort to undermine Trump.

  It’s not clear if Sussmann attended the Feb. 10 meeting, but he was apparently still involved in the operation, along with his crew of data miners. The day before the meeting attended by Sullivan, Sussmann paid a visit to the CIA’s Langley headquarters to peddle the disinformation about the secret server – this time to top officials there, according to the sources familiar with Durham’s investigation. During a roughly 90-minute meeting, Sussmann provided two officials at the intelligence headquarters “updated” documents and data he’d provided the FBI before the election, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.

  Then, on March 28, 2017, Jones met with the FBI to pass on supposedly fresh leads he and the cyber researchers had learned about the Alfa Bank server and Trump, and the FBI looked into the new leads after having closed its investigation a month earlier. That same month, FBI Director James Comey publicly announced the bureau was investigating possible “coordination” between Moscow and the newly sworn-in president’s campaign.

  Despite the renewed push by Jones, the FBI debunked the tip of a nefarious Russian back channel. Agents learned the email server in question wasn’t even controlled by the Trump Organization. “It wasn’t true,” Mueller confirmed in 2019 testimony.

  It turns out that the supposed “secret server” was housed in the small Pennsylvania town of Lititz, and not  Trump Tower in New York City, and it was operated by a marketing firm based in Florida called Cendyn that routinely blasts out emails promoting multiple hotel chains. Simply put, the third-party server sent spam to Alfa Bank employees who used Trump hotels. The bank had maintained a New York office since 2001.

  “The FBI’s investigation revealed that the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administrated by a mass-marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients,” Durham wrote in his indictment.

  Nonetheless, Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true.

  

  Democrat Senators Mark Warner and Ron Wyden: Conduits for TDIP’s Trump-Russia material. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

  With help from Sullivan and Podesta in 2017, Jones launched a nonprofit group called The Democracy Integrity Project, which raised some $7 million mainly from Silicon Valley tech executives. TDIP hired computer researchers, as well as Fusion opposition researchers and Christopher Steele, the British author of the now-discredited Steele dossier, to “prove” the rumors in the dossier. As they sought new dirt on Trump, they fed their information to media outlets, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee (namely Sens. Mark Warner and Ron Wyden), and the FBI. Jones previously worked on the Senate intelligence panel, which had launched a major investigation of Trump and Russia, and he provided a pipeline of information for the committee, according to the sources.

  As RCI first reported, Jones emailed a daily news bulletin known as “TDIP Research” to prominent Beltway journalists to keep the Trump-Russia “collusion” rumor-mill going, including the debunked rumor about the “secret server.” Durham has subpoenaed Jones to testify before his grand jury hearing the case, along with computer experts and researchers recruited by Sussmann for the Clinton campaign project, persons close to the investigation said. Attempts to reach Jones for comment were unsuccessful.

  In a statement, Durham said his investigation “is ongoing.”

  

  Special Counsel John Durham: Lengthy single count “speaking” indictment of Sussmann suggests a broader conspiracy case in the works. AP

  Indictments for a single-count process crime such as making a false statement normally run a page or two. But Durham’s filing charging Sussmann spans 27 pages and is packed with detail. FBI veterans say the 40-year prosecutor used the indictment to outline a broader conspiracy case he’s building that invokes several other federal statutes.

  “That is what we call a ‘speaking indictment,’ meaning it is far more detailed than is required for a simple indictment under [federal statute] 1001,” which outlaws making false statements and representations to federal investigators, former assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said in an interview with RealClearInvestigations.

  “It is damning,” he added.

  “And I see it as a placeholder for additional indictments, such as government grant and contract fraud, computer intrusion, the Privacy Act and other laws against dissemination of personally identifiable information, and mail fraud and wire fraud – not to mention conspiracy to commit those offenses.”

  

  Chris Swecker: The Sussmann indictment “is damning,” and “I definitely see more to come,” says the ex-top FBI investigator. Miller & Martin

  “I definitely see more [indictments] to come,” emphasized Swecker, who knows Durham personally and worked with him on prior investigations. The sources close to the case said former FBI general counsel James Baker, who accepted the sketchy materials from Sussmann and passed them on to agents for investigation, is cooperating with Durham’s investigation, along with former FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap, who has provided prosecutors contemporaneous notes about what led the bureau to open an investigation into the allegations Trump used Alfa Bank as a conduit between his campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election.

  According to the sources, Durham also has found evidence Sussmann misled the CIA, another front in the scandal being reported here for the first time. In December 2016, the sources say Sussmann phoned the general counsel at the agency and told her the same story about the supposed secret server – at the same time the CIA was compiling a national intelligence report that accused Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win.

  Sussmann told Caroline Krass, then the agency’s top attorney, that he had information that may help her with a review President Obama had ordered of all intelligence related to the election and Russia, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment. The review ended up including an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign.

  It’s not clear if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard. Before it was made public, several sections had been redacted. But after Sussmann conveyed the information to Krass, an Obama appointee, she told him she would consider it for the intelligence review of Russian interference, which tracks with Sussmann’s 2017 closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. (Krass’ name is blacked out in the declassified transcript, but sources familiar with Sussmann’s testimony confirmed that he identified her as his CIA contact.)

  

  Caroline Krass: Michael Sussmann also gave  Trump-Russia material to this CIA lawyer. CIA/Wikipedia

  “We’re interested,” said Krass, who left the agency several months later. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here.”

  It’s not known if Sussmann failed to inform the top CIA lawyer that he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, as he’s alleged to have done at the FBI. Attempts to reach Krass, who now serves as Biden’s top lawyer at the Pentagon, were unsuccessful.

  But in his return trip to the CIA after the election, Sussmann “stated falsely – as he previously had stated to the FBI general counsel – that he was ‘not representing a particular client,’ ” according to the Durham indictment, which cites a contemporaneous memo drafted by two agency officials with whom Sussmann met that memorializes their meeting. (The document refers to the CIA by the pseudonym “Agency-2.” Sources confirm Agency-2 is the CIA.)

  Remarkably, the CIA did not ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got several data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann told it about the false Trump/Alfa Bank connection.

  Attempts to reach Sussmann to get his side to the additional CIA allegations leveled by Durham were unsuccessful. The 57-year-old attorney pleaded not guilty to a single felony count and was released on a $100,000 bond Friday. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

  The prominent Washington lawyer quietly resigned from Perkins Coie, which has scrubbed all references to him from its website. And late last month, as rumors of the indictment swirled, the powerhouse law firm divested its entire Political Law Group formerly headed by Marc Elias – who commissioned the Steele dossier. Elias, who worked closely with Sussmann on the Trump-Alfa Bank project, also is no longer employed by the firm.

  Jake Sullivan’s Golf Cart Rounds

  In late July 2016, during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify” Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to hand-written notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.” That summer, Brennan had personally briefed Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on the Alfa Bank-Trump server rumors, according to congressional reports. Reid fired off a letter to Comey demanding that the FBI do more to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.

  During that convention, Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV-network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers and anchors a story that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election. CNN, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, as well as Chris Wallace of Fox News, all gave him airtime to spin the Clinton campaign’s unfounded theories. Sullivan also gave off-camera background briefings to reporters.

  “We were on a mission,” Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri later admitted in a Washington Post column. “We wanted to raise the alarm.”

  Then, on the eve of the election, Sullivan claimed in a written campaign statement that Trump and the Russians had set up a “secret hotline” through Alfa Bank, and he suggested “federal authorities” were investigating “this direct connection between Trump and Russia.” He portrayed the shocking discovery as the work of independent experts — “computer scientists” — without disclosing their attachment to the campaign.

  “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan claimed.

  Clinton teed up his statement in an Oct. 31, 2016, tweet, which quickly went viral. Also that day, Clinton tweeted, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia,” while attaching a meme that read: “Donald Trump has a secret server. It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”

  

  The Clinton campaign played up the bogus Trump-Alfa Bank story on the eve of the 2016 election. Twitter/@HillaryClinton

  It’s not immediately apparent if then-Vice President Joe Biden was briefed about the Alfa Bank tale or other Trump-Russia rumors and investigations.

  Biden has never been questioned about his own role in the investigation of Trump. However, it was the former vice president who introduced the idea of prosecuting Trump’s national security adviser appointee, Gen. Flynn, under the Logan Act of 1799, a dead-letter statute that prohibits private citizens from interfering in U.S. foreign policy and which hasn’t been used to prosecute anyone in modern times. According to notes taken by then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who attended a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with Obama and Biden, in which Trump, Flynn and Russia were discussed, Biden raised the idea: “VP: Logan Act,” the notes read.

  Although he’s not an attorney, Sullivan has argued in congressional testimony and elsewhere that Flynn violated the Logan Act, raising suspicions he may have put the idea in Biden’s head. Sullivan had advised the vice president before joining the Clinton campaign.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 22:20

• This Has To Be A Mistake
  This Has To Be A Mistake

  While we were digging through the data for today’s household net worth report we stumbled upon something that seem beyond ridiculous: the ratio of Household Net Worth to Disposable Net Income. At 786% in the latest quarter, the chart at first appears to be a mistake but we triple checked it, and… well, here it is.

  

  The latest, all-time high print is an increase from 698% in Q1 and also represents the biggest quarterly increase in history!

  

  This number is so ridiculous, it is almost 50% higher than the long-term average of 540%. More importantly, it means that the total net worth number we reported earlier today, which in Q2 hit a record high of $142 trillion, is massively inflated on the back of what is obviously the biggest asset bubble on record.

  

  It also means that if one were to strip away the asset bubble, and net worth was purely a reasonable function of disposable income, then total net worth worth be haircut by 31%, or some $43 trillion, which incidentally, is equivalent to the net worth of the top 1% of US society…

  

  … and which as we showed earlier today is a record 32% of total household net worth.

  

  As an aside, the fact that the top 1% have gained $10 trillion in wealth since the covid pandemic outbreak, is probably just a coincidence, and yet…

  Covid has been the best thing ever to happen to the wealthy and powerful. No wonder they don’t want it to end

  — Hipster (@Hipster_Trader) September 23, 2021

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

  As for the chart which clearly has to be a mistake, we are sad to report that it isn’t, and as politicians of both the Democrat and Republican party pretend to fight for the common man, all they are doing is enabling and accelerating the greatest wealth transfer in the world but not for nothing: they too want to be in the top 1%.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 22:00

• FOMC Voting Rotation Matters More Than A Hawkish Dot Shift
  FOMC Voting Rotation Matters More Than A Hawkish Dot Shift

  As excerpted from Michael Read, Bloomberg Markets Live Reporter and Commentator

  The hawkish dot plot should be treated with an even greater degree of skepticism than usual.

  Firstly, dots are individual projections, do not distinguish between voting and non-voting members and likely reflect views from policy makers whose terms will come to an end over the dot horizon. They aren’t really summary forecasts or a promise of action and are most certainly not fungible by any means.

  

  Secondly, while we undoubtedly had a technical shift in the 2022 median dot and 2023 snapping up to 1.5 hikes (we can put the new 2024 dot on the bench for the time being) the key point here is exactly who is going to do the voting. We can spend the next few weeks and months playing guess-the-dot, or we can look at the voting rotation on the FOMC to analyse the balance of power.

  In 2022, four hawkish regional Fed Presidents rejoin the voting roll (Bullard, George, Mester, Rosengren) with two doves (Evans, Daly) dropping off. The “year of the hawks“ gives the 2022 hawkish shift more credibility assuming the Fed’s accelerated tapering is completed mid-2022 with few hiccups along the way.

  Beyond that it gets a bit messy. In 2023, the FOMC voting bias is flipped on its head. Two hawks rejoin (Harker/Kaplan) but a broad range of the current hawkish contingent are benched as a flock of doves, including Evans/Kashkari assume voting positions… all while dots (currently) point to three hikes.

  

  Plausible? Sure. Probable? Less so.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 21:40

• "Hyperinflation" Tops List Of Fears For UBS Clients
  “Hyperinflation” Tops List Of Fears For UBS Clients

  With Democrats in Washington pushing for a $3.5 trillion ‘social infrastructure’ stimulus package and Speaker Pelosi perhaps hinting at the removal of the debt ceiling altogether for the US, it is perhaps no surprise that some are ‘worried’ that the idea of consequences is absent from any discussions.

  Pelosi called the debt ceiling vote a “tradition,” adding that there is some back and forth about whether they need to do it, before she dropped this bombshell: “There’s some doubt as to whether that should be the case.”

  Well no debt ceiling would certainly enable MMT – as long as The Fed can keep monetizing that malarkey – and perhaps that’s why USA sovereign risk is spiking…

  

  While US’s sovereign risk has been considerably higher than this before (like in 2013 during that debt ceiling debacle), the velocity of the move suggests more than a few investors are considering the chance of a US default.

  Who can blame anyone for at least considering that when US debt is literally exploding – with no signs of it abating…

  

  …and the Fed’s balance sheet having gone vertical…

  

  With Central Bankers constantly reassuring that there is nothing to fear here – some even pointing to Japan as proof that this can go on much longer before the pin is pulled from the global reserve currency’s grenade – it appears that, back in the real-world, real-life human beings investing their own hard-earned money are much more worried about Washington’s largesse.

  Specifically, clients of UBS Group AG are wondering whether central banks’ massive stimulus could trigger hyperinflation, according to a list of their top economic concerns…

  

  As Bloomberg notes, the concerns highlight the conundrum facing central banks as they continue to provide ultra-accommodative policy to help economies recover from the crisis.

  Commodity prices have spiked and other inputs are facing severe supply constraints, driving up inflation rates from Europe to the U.S.

  And remember “nothing lasts forever” in fiat make-believed-land…

  

  With the world now seemingly convinced The Fed is on its way to normalization (tapering into mid-2022, then rate-liftoff by end-2022) and a Democrat-run socialist utopia lies aheadwhere the rich pay “their fair share” of taxes and the citizenry gets to sit at home being “artistic” and “creative” thanks to our UBI (as long as we comply with vaccine mandates); some more pragmatic market-watchers – like the UBS clients – see a path that is a little less optimistic (think Mad Max).

  Peter Schiff warned that even if the Fed does begin to taper, it will eventually reverse course and ultimately expand QE.

  “It knows the only foundation this bubble economy has is the Fed’s easy money policies. And I don’t think they have any actual plans to taper. And even if they just kind of feign the process by beginning it, they’ll never complete it because soon after they start the taper, again, if they even ever start, they’re going to have to reverse the process. Because ultimately, the Fed Fed is going to expand the QE program and start to buy a lot more government Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities in the future than it’s doing right now.”

  They’re going to be tired of a boy crying wolf over and over and over again, and a wolf never actually showing up.

  At some point, the markets are going to figure this out, understand the Fed’s predicament, and then it’s going to hit the fan.”

  Perhaps that is why gold and crypto has soared so much…

  

  Remember the strength/weakness of the ‘dollar’ only exists relative to other fiat frauds – to truly comprehend its ‘weakness’ one needs to compare to ‘stores of wealth’.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 21:20

• Australian Government Shuts Down Melbourne Construction Sites Amid Protests Over Vaccine Mandates
  Australian Government Shuts Down Melbourne Construction Sites Amid Protests Over Vaccine Mandates

  By Jennifer Goodman of Construction Dive,

  Construction sites in and around Melbourne, Australia, have been shut down for two weeks after hundreds of construction workers and other protestors gathered Monday at the site of a union building, throwing bottles and damaging equipment.

  

  They were protesting the Victorian government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for construction workers that begins Thursday.

  Riot police used rubber bullets and pepper spray to disperse crowds, the BBC reported, and the headquarters building for the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union was damaged. Several people were arrested.

  The union released a statement saying it condemned the protests and the “mindless acts of violence” perpetrated by members of the crowd. The statement said that many protesters were not construction workers but members of neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups.

  “It is clear that a minority of those who participated were actual union members,” it said.

  Protests continued on Tuesday in Melbourne, with the crowd growing into the thousands and encompassing anti-vaccine activists and other types of workers. 

  Up to 2,000 protesters descended into the city’s central business district, according to The New York Times, which also reported that protesters threw bottles at the police and set off flares, while officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets and used pepper spray.

  Worker protests began last week when “tea rooms” where tradespeople congregate during breaks were shut down amid the rising delta surge and the government banned workers from consuming food or drink indoors. That prompted construction workers to take their lunch breaks outside in protest.

  They set up tables and plastic chairs in multiple intersections in central Melbourne, blocking roads and holding up traffic, according to NPR.

  Public health measures

  Following the protests, construction and state officials announced that jobsites in Melbourne and other areas in the region will be closed for at least two weeks beginning Tuesday. It cited Monday’s unrest and the increase in COVID-19 cases in the building and construction industry as the reasons.

  Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said that multiple outbreaks — as high as 13% of all cases, according to local media reports — have been linked to construction sites.

  Construction has been among the few industries that have largely stayed open throughout the pandemic in Victoria.

  “Construction workers are a mobile workforce who may work across multiple sites and travel longer distances to work than other permitted workers,” Andrews said in a statement. “Concerns have also been raised, and remain, about the sector’s compliance with public health measures and directions.”

  Minister for Industrial Relations Tim Pallas was even more forceful, saying that his office has seen widespread non-compliance across the industry.

  “We’ve been clear: if you don’t follow the rules, we won’t hesitate to take action,” he said in the statement.

  Workers will be required to show proof of at least one vaccine dose when sites reopen on Oct. 5, he added.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 21:00

• Taiwan Seeks Entry Into Key Trade Pact Before China, Says Simultaneous Bid "Quite Risky"
  Taiwan Seeks Entry Into Key Trade Pact Before China, Says Simultaneous Bid “Quite Risky”

  China and Taiwan are increasingly entering a war of words as both are within the last week seeking to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. The Pacific trade pact involves Japan, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and others among 11 total countries, which began in 2018 – though previous to that it was known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and ironically was long deemed a crucial economic counterweight to China’s regional influence. 

  On Wednesday, merely less than a week after Beijing announced its own bid for formal membership, Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Chern-chyi unveiled the application in a press conference while Cabinet spokesperson Lo Ping-cheng said, “Applying to join the CPTPP is an important economic and trade policy that the government has worked hard to promote for a long time.”

  Taiwan’s chief trade negotiator John Deng admitted on the same day that “it will pose a major obstacle for Taiwan to join the trade bloc if Beijing joins it first.” Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy has attempted to aggressively enforce the idea that Taiwan can’t join international trade pacts and institutions. 

  

  Deng followed up in Thursday statements by pointing out that China consistently attempts to obstruct Taiwan’s participation in global trade and entities, underscoring that, “So if China joins first, Taiwan’s membership case should be quite risky. This is quite obvious.”

  “I stress that Taiwan is an sovereign, independent nation. It has its own name. But for trade deals the name we have used for years is the least controversial,” Deng added. He explained further:

  But Taiwan has a different “system” from China, Deng added, pointing to Taiwan’s democracy, rule of law, transparent laws and respect for personal property.

  However he said there was no direct connection between Taiwan’s decision to apply and China’s, which has yet to comment on Taiwan’s application.

  “How mainland China comments on this is a matter for them,” Deng said.

  He added that Taiwan, a major semiconductor producer, has applied to join under the name it uses in the World Trade Organization (WTO) — the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Taiwan is a member of the WTO and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping.

  Last week Chinese state-run media hailed the Beijing’s own application application as affirming China’s leading role in global trade and success in resisting Washington pressures. For example Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times had this to say in a prior op-ed just hours after the announcement:

  The late-night announcement aims to cement China’s leadership role in global trade, while piling pressure on the US that has thus far stayed away from rejoining the revised version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a regional trade pact initiated by the US under former President Barack Obama that was widely believed to be aimed at containing China’s rise, experts said. 

  GT took further swipes, suggesting China represents multilateralism in the face of Washington bullying as follows:

  China is hoping for the CPTPP to put global trade and economic cooperation back on track, underscoring the need for multilateralism, thereby reviving both the Chinese economy and the global economy in the post-COVID-19 era.

  More importantly, watchers of international affairs stressed that China’s latest step that is set to steady its partnership with CPTPP members, would inevitably subject the US to what could be overwhelming pressure.

  So without doubt, officials in Beijing will see Taiwan’s bid for CPTPP membership as but yet more Washington meddling with a US ‘hidden hand’ challenging One China.

  On Thursday outspoken GT editor Hu Xijin weighed in with the following…

  Taiwan applied to join the CPTPP. If Taiwan wants to use this process to reinforce its impact on the one-China policy, I can say with certainty that it cannot enter the CPTPP.

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) September 23, 2021

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

  Currently Japan has the foremost visible leadership role in the CPTPP, which could further complicate things in terms of both China and Taiwan applying at the same time, given current rising Japan-China tensions are centered precisely on Tokyo’s recent willingness to take a pro-Washington line on the matter.

  Meanwhile, Britain began negotiations to enter the trans-Pacific trade pact in June, and its own case is front and center, said to be proceeding the fastest at the moment.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 20:40

• Unbiased, Mobility-Enabling, Open, Global Network: How Crypto Enables Economic Freedom
  Unbiased, Mobility-Enabling, Open, Global Network: How Crypto Enables Economic Freedom

  Authored by Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase,

  The following is an internal memo that I shared with Coinbase employees this week and would also like to share publicly to help people see how we’re working toward our mission of increasing economic freedom in the world.

  Tl;dr: Our core thesis is that greater adoption and usage of cryptocurrency will increase economic freedom in the world, because crypto solves many of the shortcomings of the current financial system that hinder economic freedom.

  

  Team,

  Every quarter at our company All Hands, we review our Mission (what we’re trying to achieve) and our Strategy (how we’re going to get there). One question I often hear from employees is: “How does cryptocurrency create more economic freedom in the world?” This is a great question, so I wanted to share my thoughts with all of you.

  First, a refresher: Economic freedom is a composite measure of 12 factors.

  It quantifies the rights of people to control their own labor and property in each country and globally. Economic freedom varies dramatically across the world, and while our economy is increasingly global, the government of any single country has significant control over the financial and economic freedoms of its people. Low economic freedom in a given country isn’t always due to malicious activity (e.g, fraud, oppression, etc) — it’s often due to mismanagement (poor monetary and fiscal policy) or simply bad infrastructure.

  Crypto and economic freedom

  The question to ask is: How can we build a global economy where anyone with an internet connection can participate, where property rights are enforced, and where money preserves its value? Crypto is the solution. Crypto can’t directly improve every facet of economic freedom (e.g., tax policies and government spending), but it can improve most of the underlying drivers (see below).

  

  Read more about each of the factors here.

  Why is crypto so uniquely positioned to increase economic freedom? Because it has these inherent properties:

  Crypto is an open, global network

  Crypto networks are open, removing the barriers of borders. It allows every person in the world to transact on shared networks, in the same way they communicate on a shared network (the internet). More importantly these networks themselves are not controlled by governments that can use their monetary systems to hinder economic freedom (and prosperity). This design principle leads to more open markets and increases trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, and monetary freedom.

  Crypto enforces property rights

  Property rights allow people to save their income, grow their wealth, and plan for the long term because they know the fruits of their labor are safe from unfair seizure or theft. Before crypto, your confidence in property rights was a function of the trust you had in your government and its respect for the rule of law. With crypto, anyone can acquire and grow their wealth without intervention from trusted 3rd parties like a government or a bank, or fear that their wealth could easily be seized. Property rights are also about the ability to enter contractual agreements. In some areas around the world, a contract has little value, because you can’t be confident in its enforcement. Smart contracts move enforcement from the courts to the blockchain, enabling gains from specialization and commercial exchange.

  Crypto is unbiased

  Crypto networks are often pseudonymous (or even anonymous). They don’t care where you live, what your race or gender is, or who you voted for in the last election. Unlike the current financial system they are inherently open and unbiased. Anyone with an internet connection can create a wallet, get paid in crypto, spend in crypto and accrue wealth in crypto. Service providers like Coinbase do have compliance programs as required by law, but we don’t control access to all crypto and we don’t own the network. Anyone can access crypto networks through other providers if we make a bad decision, or are forced into bad regulation. In addition, self custody wallets like Coinbase Wallet provide an ever greater degree of freedom when it comes to financial inclusion.

  Crypto enables mobility

  As I mentioned above, there are important components of economic freedom that cryptocurrency can’t directly benefit (e.g., government integrity, tax policies, fiscal health, etc.). However, cryptocurrency does provide the conditions for mobility by reducing switching costs, allowing people to both accrue wealth and bring it across borders. Cryptocurrency is the ultimate embodiment of the power of the individual, by significantly reducing the barriers to emigration / exit, and thus increasing economic freedom.

  Conclusion

  As you can see, cryptocurrency can impact many of the factors that lead to more economic freedom. It can both help build better-functioning economies in countries with less economic freedom, and make it easier to emigrate to a better life. This is why our core thesis as a company is that greater adoption and usage of cryptocurrency will increase economic freedom in the world.

  Technology is the longest lever we can pull to improve the human condition. At its core, cryptocurrency is a technology breakthrough that allows us to build a more free and open financial system that enables the rights of people to control their own labor and property. It is the best tool that exists to advance our mission of increasing economic freedom in the world.

  What does this mean for Coinbase? Crypto is in many ways still nascent. It’s still hard to use, crypto networks are plagued with scaling challenges, and the economy built on top of crypto infrastructure is in its early days. Our strategy and roadmap is geared towards solving these challenges: We’re focused on building easy-to-use products that abstract away the complexity of blockchains, and we’re building the primitives of a functioning financial system. We still have a long way to go, but the future is bright.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 20:20

• US Meat Prices To Remain Elevated Amid Depleted Reserves
  US Meat Prices To Remain Elevated Amid Depleted Reserves

  Beef, pork, and chicken in US cold storage warehouses have yet to recover from pandemic lows and could continue to support higher prices. 

  New United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows beef reserves dropped 7.7% from a year ago in August, poultry supplies fell 20%, and pork plunged 44% to their lowest levels since 2017, according to Bloomberg. 

  

  Jim Sullivan, commercial director for Stable USA, said low meat inventories would suggest meat prices will stay elevated. 

  “Prices remain very elevated compared to seasonal expectations,” Sullivan said. 

  Soaring supermarket prices have been on the radar of the Biden administration as working-poor families allocate a high percentage of their incomes to basic and essential items. Higher food inflation eats away their wages and is why Biden recently increased SNAP benefits by a quarter. 

  Earlier this month, the Biden administration finally addressed inflation as a concern but didn’t blame the trillions of dollars in fiscal and monetary policies and labor shortages on increased food inflation but instead placed responsibility on meatpackers. 

  White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said “pandemic profiteering” food companies are driving up supermarket costs for Americans. This is nothing more than a blame game and failed government policies that have not just increased food prices but have left supply chains reeling due to stimulus checks that disincentivized workers from working. 

  New data of low meat supply at US cold storage facility is more bad news for the Biden administration, who will have to develop a new narrative about why meat prices aren’t going down. If food inflation remains elevated into early next year, Americans might vote with their wallets during next year’s midterms. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 20:00

• "Ghost Guns": Why The Government Desperately Wants To Ban 3D-Printed Weapons
  “Ghost Guns”: Why The Government Desperately Wants To Ban 3D-Printed Weapons

  Authored by Aden Tate (Author of The Faithful Prepper and Zombie Choices) via The Organic Prepper,

  Nobody loves controlling others more than the government, so it’s no surprise that they’re desperate to ban 3-d printed guns. Right now, the US legislature has introduced two separate yet identical bills that would outright ban the creation of 3D-printed guns or the dissemination of the code for doing so.

  HR 4225 was introduced to the House Committee on the Judiciary on June 29 of this year by Representative Ted Deutsch (D-FL). A few short days later, an identical bill, S.2319, was introduced by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate. [Source]

  Officially, S.2319 is referred to as the 3-D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2021.

  They’re ready to take gun control to a whole new level with this.

  

  But you may know it as its mainstream media coined term: The Ghost Gun Ban

  According to the US government, the stated intention of S.2319 is “to amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the distribution of 3D printer plans for the printing of firearms, and for other purposes.” After the bill was introduced, 27 Senators throughout the US – all Democrat (with the exception of stated Independent, Bernie Sanders) – jumped on board to sign it. They are:

  •   Sen. Menendez, Robert [D-NJ]  

  •   Sen. Reed, John [D-RI]

  •   Sen. Schatz, Brian [D-HI]

  •   Sen. Casey, Bob [D-PA]

  •   Sen. Feinstein, Dianne [D-CA]

  •   Sen. Wyden, Ron [D-OR]

  •   Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT]

  •   Sen. Merkley, Jeff [D-OR]

  •   Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI]

  •   Sen. Duckworth, Tammy [D-IL]

  •   Sen. Durbin, Richard [D-IL]

  •   Sen. Sanders, Bernard [I-VT]

  •   Sen. Padilla, Alex [D-CA]

  •   Sen. Murphy, Christopher [D-CT]

  •   Sen. Van Hollen, Chris [D-MD]

  •   Sen. Smith, Tina [D-MN]

  •   Sen. Leahy, Patrick [D-VT]

  •   Sen. Kaine, Timothy [D-VA]

  •   Sen. Cardin, Ben [D-MD]

  •   Sen. Klobuchar, Amy [D-MN]

  •   Sen. Baldwin, Tammy [D-WI]

  •   Sen. Booker, Cory [D-NJ]

  •   Sen. Coons, Christopher [D-DE]

  •   Sen. Hirono, Mazie [D-HI]

  •   Sen. Gillibrand, Kirsten [D-NY]

  •   Sen. Brown, Sherrod [D-OH]

  •   Sen. Murray, Patty [D-WA]

   [source] 

  All these folks can’t wait to ban 3-d printed guns.

  What does this mean for aficionados if they ban 3-D printed guns ?

  Should this bill be passed to ban 3-D printed guns, it likely means that tens of thousands (if not more) of Americans would instantly become criminals overnight.  (This is nothing new for gun control aficionados in the government.) What was once legal for any free man would become criminal and likely result in the ATF being sent to the scene. 

  If you’ve purchased a 3D printer in the past, this bill could easily result in additional policies decreeing your need to register your printers, filaments, and other 3D printer-associated tools.

  Furthermore, this bill would make even posting the schematics for 3D printed guns online illegal. This is something that’s never been done before in American history.

  What do I mean by this?

  One has always been able to find gun blueprints in America. The United States has a long history of “backyard gunsmiths,” if you will, and it’s never been illegal before. Firearm schematics are readily available for those with a metal lathe, machining equipment, and the desire to craft their own weapon.

  But now that more people can engage in the act, it’s been decided it needs to be made illegal. Hence, it isn’t enough to ban 3D-printed guns alone. They must also ban all online 3D printed gun plans.

  Here’s the problem, though:

  3-D printed gun plans are free speech

  The founder of 3D printed guns, Cody Wilson, actually settled a hefty court case with the US State Department after successfully arguing that code is free speech and thus, he’d done nothing wrong by disseminating his code to the world. [source] 

  If such were made illegal, what type of code would follow?

  Would any form of encrypted messengers, such as Signal, soon be determined to be a ‘threat’ and thus made illegal? (Don’t think that can’t happen. It’s already been discussed.)  If you discussed how to reload ammunition online in a forum with a reloading newcomer, could you later be the subject of legislative action?

  What if you just taught a friend how to shoot at your farm? What if you teach your son how to hunt? In both cases, you’ve used words to instruct somebody else on how to use a firearm? Could that be subject to legislation down the road should this bill be passed? A similar bill about instructing others that was allegedly meant to discourage informal militias was brought up in Virginia back in 2020.

  Couldn’t every firearm book in existence that teaches people how to reload, shoot, clean a gun, etc., fall under the jurisdiction of such a decision?

  The Constitution has been forsaken

  We’ve already seen that the American justice system has a long history of resorting to case law rather than Constitutional law. The passing of this bill would only make the arguing for further infringements of human freedom even easier for these people. 

  Further examples would be how this bill could open the door for every conceivable firearm part or accessory out there now needing to be registered. Diagrams for any such part – say for something as simple as a pair of flip-up sights – could be rendered illegal overnight. Now, millions of Americans would be deemed criminals in need of punishment.

  What would this mean for the gunsmith industry?

  Would you be able to continue practicing your trade? Within the world of firearms, prices would reach such exorbitant levels that nobody would be able to afford guns or ammunition.

  Why is this?

  Well, if every firearm component has to be stamped and registered, you’re talking about forcing every manufacturer out there to invest money in stamping equipment. You’re talking about a considerable expense, extra employees, and extra training. The registration process would require additional time, likely include a tax of some sort, and would create a host of legal hoops to jump through. And nobody’s just going to eat that cost. They will send it directly to the consumer.

  The adjustable AR-15 stock you once bought for $60 could now easily be $100. The AK-47 you’ve had your eyes on could now be selling for 4x higher than in prior years. This would effectively mean that only those with enough disposable income, along with the capability and wherewithal to jump through a circus ring of obstacles, would be able to defend themselves.

  Single mothers, fresh college grads, and anybody running on hard times financially (such as those brought about by government-instituted lockdowns) would no longer be able to afford the weapons, ammunition, or training needed to defend themselves.

  Do you think the government will succeed in its efforts to ban 3-D printed guns?

  When the rights to free speech and self-defense are simultaneously attacked, the only thing coming down the road is slavery.

  But hey, F-15 jets, Blackhawk helicopters, and 600,000 rifles given away in Afghanistan?  [source]

  No big deal.

  Do you agree that these regulations would be an infringement on your Constitutional rights?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 19:40

• Evergrande Auto Hasn't Sold A Single Car, But Has Enriched Its Founder And His Friends Plenty
  Evergrande Auto Hasn’t Sold A Single Car, But Has Enriched Its Founder And His Friends Plenty

  While everyone has been focusing on Evergrande as a property developer, few know the story about how Evergrande Auto became worth $86.6 billion at one point without selling a single car. The company now trades at a fraction, about 4%, of its all time high. While shareholders were wiped out for the most part, insiders made out well. 

  On Tuesday of this week, the company did what it does best. No, not make vehicles: pay insiders. Evergrande Auto “granted 323.72 million share options worth HK$1.26 billion to three directors and around 3,180 employees of the company,” a new report from Caixin notes.

  Founder Hui Ka Yan and “friends” in his circle have made out the best from the fallen company. How well have they done? One “friend” of the founder bought 80 million shares in the company before it was renamed as Evergrande Auto for HK$0.30 each. They then sold them all for HK$50 per share, netting the friend more than HK$4 billion.

  Hey, it’s great work if you can get it. 

  Caixin reports that the primary purpose of Evergrande Auto was to raise capital for the group company Evergrande. While the parent company claimed it was investing some 47 billion yuan into the auto company, analysts are starting to wonder if the market funded these investments instead. 

  One analyst told Caixin: “Evergrande Auto had raised 30 billion yuan in two rounds, which means that the company mostly used investors’ money — instead of its own capital — to invest, and it managed to gain a high market value (for the auto company). Consequently, with its shares (in the auto company) at high price, it could use them as collateral to raise even more money.”

  The company focused more on M&A than it did on making cars, the report says. For example, it bought a major stake in Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Investment Group Co. Ltd. for 14.5 billion yuan in 2018. As Caixin notes, that company is a stakeholder in China Grand Automotive Services Group Co. Ltd., which is one of the largest auto dealers in the country.

  

  The stake was later sold off in 2019 when Evergrande needed cash. 

  In 2019, Evergrande Auto’s predecessor bought a 51% stake in National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB (NEVS) for $930 million, the report notes. Evergrande’s stock price rose as a result. 

  Part of the mechanics that helped Evergrande Auto’s predecessor rocket higher included the fact that 18 shareholders owned 19.83% of the company’s shares. When combined with the 74.99% of the issued shares held by the company, that only left 5.18% of Evergrande shares to be traded freely. 

  Evergrande also acquired a 51% equity stake in Fangchebao Group Co. Ltd. using its shares. Fangchebao then brought in 17 investors in March 2021 that helped it raise capital at a valuation of HK$163.5 billion. Evergrande made HK$8.175 billion upon selling its shares.

  Analysts, however, were baffled as to how Evergrande was able to bring in investors at the elevated valuation. The secret lied in a promise of a buyback from Evergrande.

  One investor told Caixin: “What we valued was its valuation adjustment mechanism (对赌协议). If Fangchebao failed to go public within a year, Evergrande would buy back our shares at a 15% premium to the prevailing market price. At least, through this mechanism, we could get out money back.”

  Those investors thought Evergrande could continue to push up Fangchebao’s valuation and that Evergrande wouldn’t fail within a year.

  Another investor said: “However, Fangchebao was a relatively poor quality company, much worse than Evergrande Property Services. In Fangchebao’s case, it was better not to go public. It would be more troublesome after the listing because its poor performance would become public knowledge.”

  Then there’s the question of who truly benefitted from Evergrande’s financial wheeling and dealing over the years. While investors and shareholders now suffer the consequences of the company’s poor decision making, Hui Ka Yan’s personal assets are now mysteriously being “transferred to new ownership”, the report says. In fact, Hui was easily the single biggest beneficiary of the dividends paid by Evergrande from 2011 to 2020. 53 billion yuan of the 69 billion yuan that Evergrande has paid in dividends since it listed have gone to Hui.

  You can read Caixin’s detailed report here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 19:20

• Tropical Storm Sam Forms In Atlantic Basin, Expected To Become Major Hurricane This Weekend
  Tropical Storm Sam Forms In Atlantic Basin, Expected To Become Major Hurricane This Weekend

  Tropical Storm Sam, the 18th named storm of the season, formed Thursday in the Atlantic Basin, is forecasted to become a major hurricane by the end of this weekend or early next week, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). 

  NHC said Sam formed Thursday morning from Tropical Depression Eighteen and is about 1,745 miles east-southeast of the northern Leeward Islands and moving west at 16 mph. 

  “Intensification is expected through the rest of this week and into the weekend, and Sam is expected to become a hurricane late Friday or Friday night,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Rob Miller said.

  The storm is expected to take a west-northwest track across the central Atlantic over the weekend, Accuweather said. It’s still uncertain whether it makes landfall, but NHC has urged caution for the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the US East Coast. 

  “Sam could approach the northern Leeward Islands by Tuesday of next week as a major hurricane,” Miller said, indicating this would mean the storm would have maximum sustained winds of more than 100 mph.

  

  Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach tweeted that this hurricane season has had 18 named storms, and there was only one other time that this happened by Sept. 23, which was last year. 

  Tropical Storm #Sam has formed in the eastern tropical Atlantic – the 18th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic #hurricane season to date. Only 1 season on record has had 18+ Atlantic named storms by 23 September: 2020. 2020 had 23 named storms by 23 September. pic.twitter.com/AGFg37ljxw

  — Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) September 23, 2021

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  On Sept. 10, Klotzbach called the “climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season,” indicating the number of named storms is well above average. 

  

  It’s still too early to tell Sam’s exact trajectory, but a better understanding of its path will be established in the coming days. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 19:00

• Pelosi Vows To Avert Shutdown As Dems Reportedly Cave To "Republican Blockade"
  Pelosi Vows To Avert Shutdown As Dems Reportedly Cave To “Republican Blockade”

  Yesterday, when we laid out the dynamics behind Biden’s game of debt limit chicken, we quoted Rabobank which explained why the stand-off between Democrats and Republicans ahead of the debt ceiling Drop Dead Date (the date when all emergency funding measures are exhausted and which falls some time in late October) is so precarious: unlike previous occasions, neither side has to back down due to political or ideological purposes. In fact the side that is seen as conceding first  will likely be punished by its electorate; it’s also why Goldman has repeatedly warned that the odds of a catastrophic outcome are especially high.

  Worse, the closer we get to the Drop Dead Date without a deal, the more likely a freefall outcome becomes as the two sides dig in with the only hope then becoming a deal after the fact.

  However, today a ray of hope emerged when Bloomberg reported that Nancy Pelosi signaled Democrats will avert a government shutdown by passing a stopgap spending bill without a debt ceiling increase in it, amid Republican opposition to linking the two measures.

  “Whatever it is, we will have a CR that passes both houses by September 30,” Pelosi said at a press briefing Thursday, referring to the continuing resolution that will be needed to fund the federal government at the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

  The House passed a stopgap spending measure this week that would keep the government open until Dec. 3 and suspend the debt ceiling until Dec. 16, 2022, but that measure is dead in the Senate where it needs 60 votes to move ahead and Republicans are expected block it in.

  At a news conference that included Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Pelosi said that the conversation on the debt limit would continue. Schumer separately announced that Democrats have a “framework” for a deal to pay for President Joe Biden’s economic plan, though neither he nor Pelosi provided any details.

  Adding to the confusion, due to the irregularity of Treasury revenues and outlayws, it is not yet clear when the US Treasury could be on the brink of a default, adding uncertainty to how quickly Congress has to act. Yellen has said the government will probably exhaust its ability to avoid breaching the limit at some point in October, which is in line with Goldman’s estimate of D-Date falling around October 27.

  

  Meanwhile, confirming that Senate republicans won’t touch the debt limit vote, top senate republican Mitch McConnell said Democrats have plenty of time to use a partisan approach to raise the debt ceiling without Republican votes.  He also said that it would take Democrats “about a week or a little more” to use the budget reconciliation procedure to raise the debt limit (reconciliation bills bypass the filibuster, removing the need for GOP votes in the 50-50 Senate, but have required procedures that take time to go through).

  Senate Democrats have so far resisted deploying that tactic, saying that the effort should be bipartisan as Democrats realize that raising the debt ceiling on their own could hurt the Democrats in the midterm elections in 2022, so they prefer sharing the blame with the Republicans by forcing them to support a suspension of the debt limit. In .

  “This may inconvenient for them, but it is totally possible,” McConnell said. “This Democratic government must not manufacture an avoidable crisis.”

  For once he was actually right: as Rabobank explained, “the Democrats have the power to raise the debt ceiling and adopt a spending patch, through budget reconciliation, without any Republican vote. Therefore it will be difficult to blame a government shutdown or even a default on the Republicans. The mainstream media may try to do so anyway, but conservative media – which are relevant to Republican voters – will explain the realities to their audience. Therefore, there is no electoral need for the Republicans to blink. If they have the stomach for it, they can win this game and force the Democrats to “own” their spending spree. What’s more, if the Democrats fail to stick together under pressure, Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda could dissolve in October.”

  McConnell’s comments challenge House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, who said Wednesday that Democrats probably do not have enough time to raise the U.S. debt ceiling on their own using the fast-track budget process before the default date. Actually they do – here is a calendar of fiscal policy deadlines courtesy of Rabo:

  

  An impartial budget expert agreed with McConnell’s view of the timetable: “They could do it in less than two weeks,” said former Senate Budget Committee staff director Bill Hoagland, now with the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It would be tight but I believe they could do it.”

  To be sure, not all Democrats are opposed to using the partisan path to raising the debt limit. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal said in an interview with CNN he’d be open to using reconciliation.

  “If we had to do it, I would do that,” Neal said, according to CNN. “I mean that the idea that America would default on debt is so far removed from everything I’ve ever entertained or thought of since I’ve been here.”

  Other Democrats on Thursday suggested the same: “I don’t draw lines in the sand. I want to get this done,” Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin said.

  Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said Democratic leadership is exploring alternatives for the debt limit. “I’m not going to let the government default,” Kaine said, adding that Democrats have voted under Republican presidents to suspend the debt ceiling. “But if they’re not going to be responsible, we still will be,” he added.

  Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said he expects “at the end of the day” the Senate will pass a stopgap government funding bill that doesn’t have a debt limit increase on it and that Democrats will move the debt-limit increase through reconciliation.

  Yet not everyone is confident that a debt ceiling deal will be reached on time, starting first and foremost with the market, where today’s 4-week and 8-week Bill auctions showed a dramatic preference for the latter at the expense of the former, which mature right around the Drop Dead Date and may suffer repayment complications if the US is in technical default. As shown below, the discount rate on the 4-Week Bills came 1.5bps higher than the 8-Week Bill, the widest differential since the March 2020 covid crisis.

  

  Additionally, there was a collapse in Indirect demand for 4-week bills, with Indirects taking down just 21.3% while taking home a much higher 67.3% of the eight-week offering, the most since June 17.

  Finally, one reason why Pelosi may be less than credible is because earlier today, WaPo reported that the White House budget office (OMB) told federal agencies on Thursday to begin preparations for the first shutdown of the U.S. government since the pandemic began.

  While administration officials stressed the request is in line with traditional procedures seven days ahead of a shutdown and not a commentary on the likelihood of a congressional deal, the market did not seem to accept that explanation. Both Democrats and Republicans have made clear they intend to fund the government before its funding expires on Sept. 30, but time is running out and lawmakers are aiming to resolve an enormous set of tasks to in a matter of weeks.

  More importantly, WaPo confirmed Bloomberg’s report reporting that privately Democrats also began to acknowledge they are unlikely to prevail in the face of what the Washington Post called, a Republican blockade: “Democrats have started discussing the mechanics of how to sidestep Republicans as soon as next week, according to lawmakers and aides, as they maintain they will not allow the government to shut down in a pandemic or the country to default for the first time in history.”

  In a sign of the early scramble to avoid a shutdown, the Senate’s two top appropriators — Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and top Republican Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) — are set to huddle at a meeting later Thursday to discuss issues potentially including a short-term agreement to keep the government funded. Such a measure could be moved independently of an increase in the debt ceiling, since Republicans including McConnell have an expressed an openness to supporting such a solution.

  Meanwhile Bill Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee, pointed out that parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health would be closed as part of the government shutdown. Hoagland said a very brief shutdown may occur but said he doubted it would go on for “any length of time.”

  “This would be the first shutdown during a declaration of national emergency,” Hoagland said. “In the midst of an ongoing pandemic and non-resolved issues related to the delta virus, to have a shutdown of some of the major federal agencies would add unbelievable complications to our ability to recover.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 18:40

• North Carolina Hospital System Suspends Hundreds Of Employees After COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
  North Carolina Hospital System Suspends Hundreds Of Employees After COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A North Carolina health care system said it suspended hundreds of its employees after the firm implemented a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, adding that workers who refuse to get vaccinated after five days will be fired.

  “Beginning this week, approximately 375 team members—across 15 hospitals, 800 clinics and hundreds of outpatient facilities—have been confirmed to be non-compliant and are not able to report to work,” stated a press release from Novant Health, which is based in North Carolina but operates in other states.

  “They will have an opportunity to comply over a five day, unpaid suspension period,” the release said.

  “If a team member remains non-compliant after this suspension period, he or she will have their employment with Novant Health terminated.”

  The firm then claimed that about 98.5 percent of its workforce are compliant with the policy, meaning they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Workers who started a two-dose vaccine series have until Oct. 15 to get the second shot, Novant said.

  

  Employees who have an exemption are required to get weekly COVID-19 testing, as well as wear N95 masks and eye protection, it added.

  In a similar move, 125 workers with Indiana University Health, the biggest hospital system in the state, parted ways with the company, according to a news release issued last week. Those workers, it said, did not comply with the firm’s vaccine mandate.

  “Indiana University Health has put the safety and well-being of patients and team members first by requiring employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 1,” the company said in a Sept. 16 statement. “After a two-week unpaid suspension period ending Sept. 14, a total of 125 employees, the equivalent of 61 full-time employees, chose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and have left the organization.”

  It comes as President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 announced he would direct the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to penalize companies with 100 or more employees if they do not comply with his administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Under the mandate, details of which have not been released, private-sector workers would have to either get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing.

  The president also said he would mandate that all health care workers who are employed at facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding get vaccinated.

  Republican leaders, as well as some union bosses, have criticized Biden for the announcement and said it’s tantamount to federal overreach. Some governors and state attorneys general have threatened to file lawsuits against the mandate.

  What happened to “heroes!”?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• UK Strikes Emergency Deal With CO2 Producer To Restart Operations Amid Shortage
  UK Strikes Emergency Deal With CO2 Producer To Restart Operations Amid Shortage

  US company CF industries will restart carbon dioxide (CO2) production this week at one of its two shuttered UK plants after the government offered financial support. CF closed both plants last week after soaring natural gas prices made it uneconomical to produce CO2, a byproduct of fertilizer that is derived from natural gas. 

  According to FT, CF’s ammonia plant at Billingham will “immediately restart operations” after the government signed an “exceptional short-term arrangement” with the company. 

  “The government will provide limited financial support for CF Fertilisers’ operating costs for three weeks while the CO2 market adapts to global gas prices,” the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said on Tuesday. Sources told FT, financial support could be upwards of £20 million. 

  British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the short-term financial agreement with CF will last for several weeks to increase the production of CO2 for critical industries.

  “This agreement will ensure the many critical industries that rely on a stable supply of CO2 have the resources they require to avoid disruption,” Kwarteng said.

  

  George Eustice, environment secretary, said with one plant coming back online, it would be enough to divert new CO2 supplies to industries that need it the most, such as the meat industry, food packaging industry, hospitals, and nuclear power plants, among others. 

  

  The closure of CF’s Billingham and Ince plants is about 45% of the country’s commercial production of CO2. The government warned with limited supplies. Companies could pay upwards of 500% more for the CO2. This will make the production or handling of products even more expensive for companies that will either eat costs and experience margin compression or pass the costs on to consumers. 

  COMMODITY INFLATION: UK government flags massive jump in industrial CO2 prices.

  “The food industry knows that there’s going to be a sharp rise in the cost of CO2 […] from £200 a ton, eventually closer to £1,000,” Environment Secretary George Eustice said pic.twitter.com/B36nO1KQ21

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) September 22, 2021

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

  With soaring natural gas prices, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week that his government would do everything in its power to prevent an energy crisis from severely disrupting the economy. 

  There’s also been destabilization in energy markets where smaller power companies are folding left and right as a bankruptcy wave appears to have begun. 

  The disruptive nature of soaring natural gas prices is rippling through the UK economy and may get worse ahead of winter.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 02:45

• The Afghanistan Debacle Was A Major Wake Up Call For NATO
  The Afghanistan Debacle Was A Major Wake Up Call For NATO

  Via Global Risk Insights,

  Overview of Prior EU Bureaucratic Actions 

  The vestiges of the Trump administration’s “America first” foreign policy have forced Europe to consider more autonomous defense initiatives. The EU lacks the military capabilities required to confront mounting geo-strategic concerns. Limited defense budgets increase Europe’s reliance on US expenditures, and uneven national allocations to NATO threaten the political viability of the alliance. 

  To rectify strategic shortcomings, the EU introduced the European Defense Fund (EDF). The EDF establishes the industrial foundation required for a resilient European defense program. The EU’s 2016 Global Strategy report included the EDF. The strategy sought to integrate Europe’s foreign policy and allocate resources toward external security threats.

  In 2018, the EU established The Capability Development Plan (CDP) to “address long-term security and defense challenges”.  The CDP encourages supranational cooperation and promotes capability cohesion with NATO.  In the midst of COVID’s economic disruption, bridging the capability gap remains an aspirational strategic objective. The notional budgetary allocations to the EDF and CDP (proposed within EU defense and security briefs prior to 2020) may decrease to account for the fiscal and political uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

  

  Military Realities

  Beyond the broad, rather philosophical debate surrounding European strategic autonomy, the Afghanistan imbroglio reveals military deficiencies that are unique to the EU. The disparity in military expenditures across Western states may prove unsustainable as geostrategic competition intensifies.  Inadequate defense budgets preceded the capability deficiencies that plagued NATO’s European member states in Afghanistan.

  In an interview with Foreign Policy, retired British General Richard Barrons states that without the US, “NATO is a very limited concept and very limited force”.  As the future strategic risks and threat perceptions of Europe and the US diverge, Europe will be responsible for defending its own interests. A shift toward a more autonomous European foreign policy will include improving the ability of the EU to intervene and protect their strategic priorities.

  Russian belligerence in Eastern Europe adds a measure of urgency to the question of strategic autonomy.  The lingering ambiguity regarding US willingness to fulfill Article V commitments remains a driver of EU security policy initiatives. NATO-Russia force balance improvements on NATO’s eastern flank will be a strategic priority as Russia calculates the cost of future belligerence. Improving force readiness and maintaining operative-forward deployment positions in Eastern Europe may support European defense autonomy and promote capability cohesion within NATO. 

  Political Implications

  Emmanuel Macron continues to advance his conception of ‘European Sovereignty’.  In a February interview with the Financial Times, Macron said that he defends strategic autonomy “not because I am against NATO or because I doubt our American friends…but because I think we need a fair sharing of the burden and Europe cannot delegate the protection of its neighborhood to the USA.”

  Angela Merkel agrees that Europe must “take [its] fate into [its] own hands”.  Macron faces reelection with an approval rating hovering around 40% and Merkel steps down as chancellor in September.  Therefore, transitional stability is a reasonable concern. Policy continuity among the EU’s principal members may determine the efficacy of Europe’s independent security agenda.

  The resurgence of the ‘America First’ mentality is a threat to transatlantic defense cooperation. Hardline voters in Republican strongholds may determine the extent to which US foreign policy reflects isolationist doctrine. A 2024 general election triumph by a viable Republican candidate might call into question America’s commitment to Article V and to NATO itself.

  Public opinion may determine how, and to what degree, European policymakers pursue strategic autonomy through increased budgetary expenditures. Though 61% of Europeans hold a favorable opinion of NATO, all but five member states oppose, in the majority, defending a NATO ally should Russia attack.  Such polling data suggests an overreliance on US protection, the aggregate fragility of Article V commitments, and the necessity of a more independent European security apparatus. 

  Outlook

  Theresa May, while addressing Parliament, framed the question of European strategic autonomy, “What does [the Afghanistan pullout] say about us as a country? What does it say about NATO, if we are entirely dependent on a unilateral decision by the U.S.?”.  Forward-facing policy proposals will address the capability disparities within NATO and without it. Public opinion and the political will of elites to increase military expenditures against possible political headwinds determine, in part, the ultimate impact of such initiatives.

  A more functional independent European security may inoculate the EU against the inherent uncertainty of quadrennial US presidential transitions. The volatility of US domestic politics will contribute to European skepticism regarding US commitment to the collective defense provision of the NATO charter.  Transatlantic incredulity will introduce urgency into policy planning and may provide political justification for increased defense spending.

  The Afghanistan pullout has renewed calls to improve EU intervention capabilities. France and Germany have proposed the creation of an “initial entry force”. The conceptual force includes 5,000 troops supported by aircraft and ships. Such an EU rapid-reaction force, employed in concert with increased global development expenditures, may provide stability for struggling democracies abroad. Pursuing a balanced, synergistic combination of hard and soft power projection will make the EU a more capable NATO partner and a more formidable international actor.

  US-Russia-China trilateral relations will play a large role in shaping the transatlantic alliance in the medium and long term. In the short term, while US and EU threat perceptions regarding Russia and China differ, regional NATO cooperation in the Middle East will be a necessity. It is unclear what the nature of Russian and Chinese influence will look like on the ground, but the willingness of the two powers to engage with the Taliban is telling. The urgency with which NATO and the EU respond to these developments may determine the scale of imminent irregular migration crises.

  In a September 1st guest essay for the New York Times, Josep Borrell Fontelles (the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy) underscores the instructive nature of the Afghanistan withdrawal. He writes that “Some events catalyze history: The Afghanistan debacle is one of them.” Whether Europe will pursue more efficacious security policies remains unclear. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 02:00

• Do The 'Global Managers' Really Want The Pandemic To End?
  Do The ‘Global Managers’ Really Want The Pandemic To End?

  Authored by Brian Jones via TheAmericanConservative.com,

  Early treatment of symptoms is the last remaining enemy of the global Covid consensus…

  

  In his March 17, 2020, article in Stat, Stanford epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis argued for a vast reconsideration of the societal response to the emerging SARS-COV-2 pandemic, commonly called Covid-19.

  For unknown reasons, the scientific and medical tradition forming the foundation for how to respond to pandemics was being quickly disbanded. Abandoning such previously established traditions entailed filling the void with the appearance of a new global consensus: The combination of unending non-pharmaceutical interventions (masks, social distancing, etc.) and universal vaccination was the key that would end the pandemic.

  The totalizing power of this new global pandemic consensus has certainly been effective over the last year and a half. However, the last month and a half has brought about a palatable instability to this apparently once-certain agreement.

  As one writer observes,

  Until now, Corona policy in every western country has unfolded more or less according to the same script, devised by the World Health Organization at the end of February 2020. The final act was supposed to be the wide-scale eradication of Corona after mass vaccination. It is now clear that this will never happen. For the first time since March 2020, there is no obvious international consensus on the way forward.

  The global political and health managers of Western nations and their media allies increasingly seem uncertain as to where to go next. Lurking behind the uncertainty of how to respond to the variants, however, is the last remaining consensus. And while it is the last remaining consensus, it has been a little-known, yet real, part of the script from the beginning. It is as simple as it is all-encompassing: Use every available means possible to assault early treatment of the virus. 

  Consider one of the latest displays of this charade.

  Many have now seen, or heard about, the American podcaster Joe Rogan’s recent experience with Covid-19. After recognizing some of the common symptoms of Covid-19, Rogan decided to “throw the kitchen sink at it.” Following the insights offered by Dr. Peter McCullough and his multi-drug treatment protocol, Rogan pursued infusion of monoclonal antibodies. Along with antibody infusion, Rogan took a cocktail that consisted of ivermectin, Azithromyicin, the corticosteriod Predinsone, and high doses of vitamin D (through drip line). Within 72 hours after beginning the treatment regimen, Rogan declared that he felt great, and had practically recovered from the virus.

  We would not have needed the gift of prophecy to have predicted what followed: The Covid machine was deployed to attack Rogan. The inspiration for the assault has been helped by a recent tweet from the FDA, which read: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” Moving on from its initial onslaught against the effective early use of hydroxychloroquine, the global consensus has now overwhelmingly shifted its ire to ivermectin. Coinciding with the attack on Rogan was a supposed news story from Rolling Stone, which claimed that access to emergency care for gunshot victims at an Oklahoma hospital was threatened due to the number of patients who had been poisoned by overdosing on ivermectin. The hospital offered a clarification that denied the claims, which had been made by a former employee. And yet, only updates have been added; thus far, the story has not been retracted.

  This widespread jettisoning of the principle and effectiveness of preventative and early treatment has been described as “therapeutic nihilism.” Nearly two years into this pandemic, getting early treatment for Covid-19 that can prevent hospitalization and death is still extremely difficult. Continued attempts to undermine early treatment protocols, as well as frequented campaigns against those who are skeptical of the prevailing narrative, give the impression that certain interested parties are hesitant to bring the pandemic to an end.

  The global managers writing and executing the Covid script are using it to manipulate the populace. I am reminded of the Polish philosopher and statesman Ryszard Legutko’s 2016 book The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. Following the collapse of totalitarianism regimes in 1989, Legutko began noticing something that was as confusing as it was unsettling. Supporters of communism appeared to find a somewhat comfortable home in liberal democratic societies. In an attempt to parse out and understand this political phenomenon, Legutko came to realize some shared similarities between the principles of communism and modern liberal democratic regimes:

  Communism and liberal democracy proved to be all-unifying entities compelling their followers how to think, what to do, how to evaluate events, what to dream, and what language to use. They both had their orthodoxies and their models of an ideal citizen. [Emphasis added]

  What Legutko’s diagnosis reveals is that the global response to the pandemic has been utilized to accelerate the conditions whereby rigorous and independent thinking may be snuffed out. The pandemic seems to have accelerated the project of Western nations transmuting into large, mechanizing systems oriented towards uniformity of thought and practice.

  Here is Stanford’s Ioannidis commenting upon this disturbing integration of rapidly declining transparency and collectivism:

  The retraction of a highly visible hydroxychloroquine paper from the The Lancet was a startling example: A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication. The New England Journal of Medicine, another top medical journal, managed to publish a similar paper; many scientists continue to heavily cite it long after its retraction.

  Such a situation reveals the emptiness of supposed concerns about “evidence.” Abused tropes such as “follow the science” are revealing themselves to be nefarious power grabs seeking to destroy nuance. “Good” citizens should not even consider the possibility of calling into question the prevailing narrative regarding Covid. More specifically, it is anathema to even fathom the thought that preventative and early treatment should be a fundamental pillar of the response to a pandemic.

  As the consensus equating vaccination with the elimination of the virus continues to weaken, Ioannidis’s original prediction continues to be persuasive: The response to SARS-COV-2 will eventually be seen as a “once in a century evidence fiasco.” But the citizens of Western nations must think critically for themselves if the coils of the Covid machine have a chance of being loosened.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/23/2021 – 00:00

• Bill Gross's Feud With His Neighbor Is A Cockroach That Just Won't Die
  Bill Gross’s Feud With His Neighbor Is A Cockroach That Just Won’t Die

  If you’re wondering what, exactly, Bill Gross and his wife have decided to take on as a hobby during their “retirement”, we might know. It appears the Gross household has made it the family’s life work to bicker with their neighbor, Mark Towfiq, until the end of time.

  That’s because the feud you may have foolishly thought ended with a court decision back in December 2020 has once again reignited, with Gross’s wife, Amy, claiming that Towfiq has “driven her from her oceanfront home,” according to Bloomberg. 

  

  “I fear going into my backyard. I couldn’t have my wedding reception there. I couldn’t have my birthday there,” the former tennis pro told Bloomberg. 

  The couple has once again found themselves in court after neighbor Towfiq asked a judge to find them in violation of a court order handed down in December that says the family can’t play music loudly when they are not outdoors. 

  Carol Nakahara, Towfiq’s wife, testified: “I thought this was over. What else are we supposed to do?”

  But Gross’ wife insists she’s the victim, stating she needs to announce every time she’s out back of her own home so the neighbors don’t call the police. She testified: “I’m being monitored 24-7 inside my home. I’m very frustrated.”

  

  Gross and Towfiq have a feud that’s as inane as it is lengthy. It was thought to have culminated in December of 2020, when Gross lost a lawsuit after Trowfiq and his wife sued the billionaire bond king over what court documents described as a coordinated campaign of harassment intended to coerce the couple into dropping a nuisance complaint involving a lawn statue and safety net owned by Gross.

  Gross also sued for installing cameras on his property. Towfiq initially sued for psychological distress, arguing that Gross subjected him to a form of “torture” for refusing to simply drop his complaint to the town about Gross’s lawn sculpture.

  Gross has a history of high-profile feuds, including with his ex-wife, whom he terrorized with fart spray and old fish. And that was before he retired from his day job as a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 23:40

• Escobar: Eurasia Takes Shape, Part 1 – How The SCO Just Flipped The World Order
  Escobar: Eurasia Takes Shape, Part 1 – How The SCO Just Flipped The World Order

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  As a rudderless West watched on, the 20th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was laser-focused on two key deliverables: shaping up Afghanistan and kicking off a full-spectrum Eurasian integration.

  The two defining moments of the historic 20th anniversary Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan had to come from the keynote speeches of – who else – the leaders of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

  Xi Jinping: “Today we will launch procedures to admit Iran as a full member of the SCO.”

  Vladimir Putin: “I would like to highlight the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed today between the SCO Secretariat and the Eurasian Economic Commission. It is clearly designed to further Russia’s idea of establishing a Greater Eurasia Partnership covering the SCO, the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI).”

  In short, over the weekend, Iran was enshrined in its rightful, prime Eurasian role, and all Eurasian integration paths converged toward a new global geopolitical – and geoeconomic – paradigm, with a sonic boom bound to echo for the rest of the century.

  That was the killer one-two punch immediately following the Atlantic alliance’s ignominious imperial retreat from Afghanistan. Right as the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15, the redoubtable Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, told his Iranian colleague Admiral Ali Shamkhani that “the Islamic Republic will become a full member of the SCO.”

  Dushanbe revealed itself as the ultimate diplomatic crossover. President Xi firmly rejected any “condescending lecturing” and emphasized development paths and governance models compatible with national conditions. Just like Putin, he stressed the complementary focus of BRI and the EAEU, and in fact summarized a true multilateralist Manifesto for the Global South.

  Right on point, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan noted that the SCO should advance “the development of a regional macro-economy.” This is reflected in the SCO’s drive to start using local currencies for trade, bypassing the US dollar.

  

  With Iran’s arrival, the SCO member-states now number nine, and they’re focused on fixing Afghanistan and consolidating Eurasia.

  Watch that quadrilateral

  Dushanbe was not just a bed of roses. Tajikistan’s Emomali Rahmon, a staunch, secular Muslim and former member of the Communist Party of the USSR – in power for no less than 29 years, reelected for the 5th time in 2020 with 90 percent of the vote – right off the bat denounced the “medieval sharia” of Taliban 2.0 and said they had already “abandoned their previous promise to form an inclusive  government.”

  Rahmon, who has never been caught smiling on camera, was already in power when the Taliban conquered Kabul in 1996. He was bound to publicly support his Tajik cousins against the “expansion of extremist ideology” in Afghanistan – which in fact worries all SCO member-states when it comes to smashing dodgy jihadi outfits of the ISIS-K mold .

  The meat of the matter in Dushanbe was in the bilaterals – and one quadrilateral.

  Take the bilateral between Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Chinese FM Wang Yi. Jaishankar said that China should not view “its relations with India through the lens of a third country,” and took pains to stress that India “does not subscribe to any clash of civilizations theory.”

  That was quite a tough sell considering that the first in-person Quad summit takes place this week in Washington, DC, hosted by that “third country” which is now knee deep in clash-of-civilizations mode against China.

  Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was on a bilateral roll, meeting the presidents of Iran, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The official Pakistani diplomatic position is that Afghanistan should not be abandoned, but engaged.

  That position added nuance to what Russian Special Presidential Envoy for SCO Affairs Bakhtiyer Khakimov had explained about Kabul’s absence at the SCO table: “At this stage, all member states have an understanding that there are no reasons for an invitation until there is a legitimate, generally recognized government in Afghanistan.”

  And that, arguably, leads us to the key SCO meeting: a quadrilateral with the Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran.

  Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi affirmed: “We are monitoring whether all the groups are included in the government or not.” The heart of the matter is that, from now on, Islamabad coordinates the SCO strategy on Afghanistan, and will broker Taliban negotiations with senior Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara leaders. This will eventually lead the way towards an inclusive government regionally recognized by SCO member-nations.

  Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was warmly received by all – especially after his forceful keynote speech, an Axis of Resistance classic. His bilateral with Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko revolved around a discussion on “sanctions confrontation.” According to Lukashenko: “If the sanctions did any harm to Belarus, Iran, other countries, it was only because we ourselves are to blame for this. We were not always negotiable, we did not always find the path we had to take under the pressure of sanctions.”

  Considering Tehran is fully briefed on Islamabad’s SCO role in terms of Afghanistan, there will be no need to deploy the Fatemiyoun brigade – informally known as the Afghan Hezbollah – to defend the Hazaras. Fatemiyoun was formed in 2012 and was instrumental in Syria in the fight against Daesh, especially in Palmyra. But if ISIS-K does not go away, that’s a completely different story.

  Particular important for SCO members Iran and India will be the future of Chabahar port. That remains India’s crypto-Silk Road gambit to connect it to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The geoeconomic success of Chabahar more than ever depends on a stable Afghanistan – and this is where Tehran’s interests fully converge with Russia-China’s SCO drive.

  What the 2021 SCO Dushanbe Declaration spelled out about Afghanistan is quite revealing:

  1. Afghanistan should be an independent, neutral, united, democratic and peaceful state, free of terrorism, war and drugs.

  2. It is critical to have an inclusive government in Afghanistan, with representatives from all ethnic, religious and political groups of Afghan society.

  3. SCO member states, emphasizing the significance of the many years of hospitality and effective assistance provided by regional and neighboring countries to Afghan refugees, consider it important for the international community to make active efforts to facilitate their dignified, safe and sustainable return to their homeland.

  As much as it may sound like an impossible dream, this is the unified message of Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and the Central Asian “stans.” One hopes that Pakistani PM Imran Khan is up to the task and ready for his SCO close-up.

  That troubled Western peninsula

  The New Silk Roads were officially launched eight years ago by Xi Jinping, first in Astana – now Nur-Sultan – and then in Jakarta.

  This is how I reported it at the time.

  The announcement came close to a SCO summit – then in Bishkek. The SCO, widely dismissed in Washington and Brussels as a mere talk shop, was already surpassing its original mandate of fighting the “three evil forces” – terrorism, separatism and extremism – and encompassing politics and geoeconomics.

  In 2013, there was a Xi-Putin-Rouhani trilateral. Beijing expressed full support for Iran’s peaceful nuclear program (remember, this was two years before the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the JCPOA).

  Despite many experts dismissing it at the time, there was indeed a common China-Russia-Iran front on Syria (Axis of Resistance in action). Xinjiang was being promoted as the key hub for the Eurasian Land Bridge. Pipelineistan was at the heart of the Chinese strategy – from Kazakhstan oil to Turkmenistan gas. Some people may even remember when Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was waxing lyrical about an American-propelled New Silk Road.

  Now compare it to Xi’s Multilateralism Manifesto in Dushanbe eight years later, reminiscing on how the SCO “has proved to be an excellent example of multilateralism in the 21stcentury,” and “has played an important role in enhancing the voice of developing countries.”

  The strategic importance of this SCO summit taking place right after the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok cannot be overstated enough. The EEF focuses of course on the Russian Far East – and essentially advances interconnectivity between Russia and Asia. It is an absolutely key hub of Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership.

  A cornucopia of deals is on the horizon – expanding from the Far East to the Arctic and the development of the Northern Sea Route, and involving everything from precious metals and green energy to digital sovereignty flowing through logistics corridors between Asia and Europe via Russia.

  As Putin hinted in his keynote speech, this is what the Greater Eurasia Partnership is all about: the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), BRI, India’s initiative, ASEAN, and now the SCO, developing in a harmonized network, crucially operated by “sovereign decision-making centers.”

  So if the BRI proposes a very Taoist “community of shared future for human kind,” the Russian project, conceptually, proposes a dialogue of civilizations (already evoked by the Khatami years in Iran) and sovereign economic-political projects. They are, indeed, complementary.

  Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal, is among the very few top scholars who are analyzing this process in depth. His latest book remarkably tells the whole story in its title:  Europe as the Western Peninsula of Greater Eurasia: Geoeconomic Regions in a Multipolar World. It’s not clear whether Eurocrats in Brussels – slaves of Atlanticism and incapable of grasping the potential of Greater Eurasia – will end up exercising real strategic autonomy.

  Diesen evokes in detail the parallels between the Russian and the Chinese strategies. He notes how China “is pursuing a three-pillared geoeconomic initiative by developing technological leadership via its China 2025 plan, new transportation corridors via its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, and establishing new financial instruments such as banks, payment systems and the internationalization of the yuan. Russia is similarly pursuing technological sovereignty, both in the digital sphere and beyond, as well as new transportation corridors such as the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic, and, primarily, new financial instruments.”

  The whole Global South, stunned by the accelerated collapse of the western Empire and its unilateral “rules-based order,” now seems to be ready to embrace the new groove, fully displayed in Dushanbe: a multipolar Greater Eurasia of sovereign equals.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 23:20

• Russia Uses AUKUS Spat To Highlight "Shock" Of Disunity For NATO
  Russia Uses AUKUS Spat To Highlight “Shock” Of Disunity For NATO

  Russia is now weighing in on the AUKUS agreement unveiled last week and which has enraged France given it effectively got cut out of its prior $66 billion deal to deliver submarines to Australia, and instead now Washington will give Canberra nuclear-powered submarines for the first time.

  The Russian Foreign Ministry highlighted NATO disunity and “shock” within the alliance after EU leadership said the bloc was caught completely off-guard, only learning about the pact when it hit the media. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out on Wednesday, “It came as a total surprise and a shock for NATO.”

  

  She continued: “It came as an absolute surprise not for those whom the US, Australia and the UK call their opponents and whom they are collaborating against, but for their allies and the military and political blocs that the US and the UK are part of,” as cited in TASS.

  “The developments that are unfolding around Australia, a seemingly a faraway land, what is happening there is not just interesting – though it is interesting indeed – but it also requires special attention from the political analyst community, including experts on international relations and military and strategic issues,” the Russian diplomat added.

  Reading between the lines, she appears to be suggesting a fragile or greatly weakened NATO alliance, given the major inter-NATO spat was unleashed by dealings in “a seemingly faraway land” – as Zakharova put it.

  After all, it led to France recalling its ambassador to Washington for what’s believed to be the first time in history (a move done also with the ambassador to Australia). Tensions are also running high between France and the UK over what Paris charged as ‘backroom dealing’ and “duplicity, disdain and lies”.

  Russia is not happy about AUKUS. Moscow’s top security official says the US/UK/Australia nuclear bloc a hostile step aimed not only at China, but it’s a threat to “the entire security architecture in Asia.”https://t.co/Ukxb6gJoIf

  — Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) September 21, 2021

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  China has been especially angered at the potential for a large US ally operating nuclear subs in its Indo-Pacific backyard. No doubt Moscow is unhappy too that Australia will join the small number of nations that possess them, which currently includes only the US, UK, France, China, India as well as Russia. The US will now transfer technology and help allowing Australia to construct at least eight nuclear powered submarines.

  But with the diplomatic fighting still unfolding between Europe on one side, and the UK and US on the other over the AUKUS, likely at the Kremlin they’re currently content to kick back and grab the popcorn.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 23:00

• Greenwald: A Definitive Account Of The CIA/Media/BigTech Fraud Over Hunter Biden Emails
  Greenwald: A Definitive Account Of The CIA/Media/BigTech Fraud Over Hunter Biden Emails

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com, (Watch Glenn’s podcast on this fiasco here),

  A severe escalation of the war on a free internet and free discourse has taken place over the last twelve months. Numerous examples of brute and dangerous censorship have emerged: the destruction by Big Tech monopolies of Parler at the behest of Democratic politicians at the time that it was the most-downloaded app in the country; the banning of the sitting president from social media; and the increasingly explicit threats from elected officials in the majority party of legal and regulatory reprisals in the event that tech platforms do not censor more in accordance with their demands.

  

  But the most severe episode of all was the joint campaign — in the weeks before the 2020 election — by the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party to censor and suppress a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Joe Biden. On October 14 and then October 15, 2020, The New York Post, the nation’s oldest newspaper, published two news reports on Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China that raised serious questions about his integrity and ethics: specifically whether he and his family were trading on his name and influence to generate profit for themselves. The Post said that the documents were obtained from a laptop left by Joe Biden’s son Hunter at a repair shop.

  From the start, the evidence of authenticity was overwhelming. The Post published obviously genuine photos of Hunter that were taken from the laptop. Investigations from media outlets found people who had received the emails in real-time and they compared the emails in their possession to the ones in the Post‘s archive, and they matched word-for-word. One of Hunter’s own business associates involved in many of these deals, Tony Bobulinski, confirmed publicly and in interviews that the key emails were genuine and that they referenced Joe Biden’s profit participation in one deal being pursued in China. A forensics analyst issued a report concluding the archive had all the earmarks of authenticity. Not even the Bidens denied that the emails were real: something they of course would have done if they had been forged or altered. In sum, as someone who has reported on numerous large archives similar to this one and was faced with the heavy burden of ensuring the documents were genuine before risking one’s career and reputation by reporting them, it was clear early on that all the key metrics demonstrated that these documents were real.

  Despite all that, former intelligence officials such as Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper led a group of dozens of former spooks in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Note that this phrase contains two separate assertions: 1) the documents came from Russia and 2) they are fake (“disinformation”). The intelligence officials admitted in this letter that — in their words — “we do not know if the emails are genuine or not,” and also admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” Yet it repeatedly insinuated that everyone should nonetheless believe this:

  

  But the complete lack of evidence for these claims — that even these career CIA liars acknowledged plagued their assertions — did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to censor this reporting from the internet. One of the first to spread this lie was the co-queen of Russiagate frauds, Natasha Bertrand, then of Politico and now promoted, because of lies like this, to CNN. “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared her headline in Politico on October 19, just five days after the Post began its reporting. From there, virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.

  On October 21 — exactly one week after the Post‘s first report — The Intercept published a false story under the melodramatic headline “We’re Not a Democracy” about these materials from former New York Times reporter James Risen. This propaganda assault masquerading as “news” mindlessly laundered the CIA’s lies about the laptop. This is what appeared in this outlet that still claims to do “adversarial” reporting:

  Their latest falsehood once again involves Biden, Ukraine, and a laptop mysteriously discovered in a computer repair shop and passed to the New York Post….This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.

  Note that even the intelligence officials, who acknowledged they had no evidence to support this claim, were more honest than The Intercept, which omitted that critical admission. Days later, this very same outlet — which I co-founded seven years earlier to be adversarial, not subservient, to evidence-free assertions from the intelligence community, and which was designed to be an antidote to rather than a clone of The New York Times — told me that I could not publish the article I had written about the Biden archive because it did not meet their lofty and rigorous editorial standards: the same lofty and rigorous editorial standards that led to uncritical endorsement of the CIA’s lies just days earlier. It was that episode, as Matt Taibbi recounted at the time, that prompted my resignation from the outlet I created in protest of this censorship, in order to report instead only on free speech platforms such as this one.

  But the media disinformation about the Post‘s documents — obviously designed to protect Joe Biden in the lead-up to the election — were not the worst aspect of what happened here. Far worse was the decision by Twitter to prohibit any discussion of this reporting or posting of links to the story both publicly and privately on the platform. Worse still was the immediate announcement by Facebook through its communications executive Andy Stone — a life-long Democratic Party operative — that it would algorithmically suppress the story pending a “fact check” by “Facebook’s third-party fact-check partners.” Despite multiple requests from me and others, Facebook never published the results of this alleged fact-check and still refuse to say whether it ever conducted one. Why? Because the documents they blocked millions of Americans from learning about were clearly true and authentic.

  While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

  — Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020

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

  

  As indicated, there was ample proof from the start that these documents were genuine and that the only ones engaged in “disinformation” and lies was this axis of the CIA, corporate media, and Big Tech. Yet the most dispositive proof yet emerged on Tuesday — not from a right-wing news outlet that liberals have been trained to ignore and disbelieve but from one of the most mainstream news institutions in the country.

  A young reporter for Politico, Ben Schreckinger, has published a new book entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power.” To his great credit, he spent months investigating the key documents published by The New York Post and found definitive proof that these emails and related documents are indisputably authentic. His own outlet, Politico, was the first to publish the CIA lie that this was “Russian disinformation,” but on Tuesday — without acknowledging their role in spreading that lie — they summarized Schreckinger’s findings this way: the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.” In his book, the reporter recounts in these passages just some of the extensive work he did to obtain this proof:

  A person who corresponded with Hunter in late 2018 confirmed to me the authenticity of an email in the cache. Another person who corresponded with Hunter in January 2019 confirmed the authenticity of a different email exchange with Hunter in the cache. Both of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of being embroiled in a global controversy.

  

  A third person who had independent access to Hunter’s emails confirmed to me that the emails published by the New York Post related to Burisma and the CEFC venture matched the substance of emails Hunter had in fact received. (This person was not in a position to compare the published emails word-for-word to the originals.)

  

  The National Property Board of Sweden, part of the Swedish Finance Ministry, has released correspondence between Hunter and House of Sweden employees to me and to a Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, under the country’s freedom of information law. Emails released by the property board match emails in the cache.

  

   

  Given what I regard as the unparalleled gravity of what was done here — widespread media deceit toward millions of American voters in the weeks before a presidential election based on a CIA lie, along with brute censorship of the story by Big Tech — and given that so much of what was done here took place on television, we produced this morning what I regard as the definitive video report of this scandal. I realize this report is longer than the standard video — it is just over an hour — but I really believe that it is vital, particularly with the emergence of this new indisputable proof, to take a comprehensive look at how the intelligence community, in partnership with Big Tech and the corporate media, disseminated massive lies and disinformation, using censorship and other manipulative techniques, to shape the outcome of what was a close election. (We will very shortly institute our new feature of producing transcripts for all videos above ten minutes in length, but I really hope that as many people as can do so will watch this video report).

  After observing what they did, I hope and believe you will have a similar reaction to the one I had after spending the day compiling and reporting it all. No matter how much you despise this sector of the corporate media, it is nowhere near close enough to the level of contempt and scorn they deserve. You can watch our video report on my Rumble page or on the player below.

  Watch:

  ---

  To support the independent journalism we are doing here, please obtain a gift subscription for others and/or share the article

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 22:40

• China Locks Down Northeastern City After Discovering First Outbreak Since February
  China Locks Down Northeastern City After Discovering First Outbreak Since February

  China’s latest COVID outbreak continued to smolder through the mid-Autumn festival. In the Northeastern city of Harbin, where authorities imposed a new round of lockdown restrictions after discovering a single case. Another 5 new local infections were confirmed on Wednesday, bringing the total cases in the city to 8.

  Officially, China has recorded fewer than 100K COVID cases and fewer than 5K deaths, although the true number may never be known. Recently, the country has seen a handful of outbreaks as new variants have finally invaded the country, overpowering China’s domestically produced COVID jabs. In total across the country, China reported a total of 16 cases Wednesday. It’s Harbin’s first outbreak since February.

  

  Despite the negligible number of cases, authorities in Harbin imposed travel restrictions ordering residents not to leave the city while a range of venues – including spas, cinemas, karaoke halls, dancing and gaming venues and mahjong salons – have been temporarily closed.

  In response to the outbreak, Harbin will conduct city-wide testing before Thursday while some venues will be shut in keeping with China’s “war-like” response to dealing with COVID. China’s virus outbreak was previously in southeastern province of Fujian..

  Those approved for essential travel will need to show a green health-code pass to prove they are “safe”.

  Religious sites, as well as large-scale conferences and events, have also been subject to close. Tourist attractions are required to work at half capacity and stagger the flows of people.

  In order to facilitate the mass testing in Harbin, vaccinations were suspended for three days. The outbreaks keep happening despite Beijing announcing earlier this month that it has fully vaccinated 1 billion of its population against the disease, with Chinese vaccines used at the forefront of the mammoth inoculation campaign.

  According to the SCMP, authorities haven’t linked the cases in Harbin to the delta variant outbreak in Fujian province, which is more than 1,400 miles away in the country’s southeast, where 13 new infections were recorded. No deaths were reported. Authorities have begun gene-sequencing efforts to determine the source.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 22:20

• Watch: 'Liberal Media Darling' George W. Bush Confronted By Iraq Veteran
  Watch: ‘Liberal Media Darling’ George W. Bush Confronted By Iraq Veteran

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  An Iraq veteran gave George W. Bush a stark reminder this past weekend that although he’s now a liberal media darling, there are plenty of Americans who remember the lies that led to millions of deaths.

  

  Corporal Mike Prysner was captured on video launching into a tirade against Bush during a speech in Beverly Hills.

  “When are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis who are dead because you lied?” Prysner yelled at Bush.

  “You lied about weapons of mass destruction! You lied about connections to 9/11! You sent me to Iraq! You sent me to Iraq!” Prysner continued.

  Bush can be heard responding “you said you’d behave yourself.”

  As he was bundled out of the room, Prysner demanded Bush “apologise” adding “my friends are dead, you killed people.”

  Watch:

  Following a 9/11 memorial speech in which he directly compared supporters of President Trump to Al Qaeda terrorists, Bush is being held up as an icon by the left.

  As journalist Glenn Greenwald noted last week, “it turned into this love-fest. I mean they dripped with effusive praise for him because of what he said, essentially that the 9/11 attacks are the same as the three hour riot on January 6th, and more importantly that the people who did 9/11, Al Qaeda, are similar or identical to ‘the same foul spirit’ as he put it, Trump supporters essentially.”

  “A domestic war on terror against your fellow citizens is music to the ears of American liberals because they want nothing more than treating their political adversaries, like the Bush administration treated Al Qaeda,” Greenwald asserted.

  Watch:

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 22:00

• JPMorgan Being Investigated By Brazilian Authorities Over Potential Oil Bribes
  JPMorgan Being Investigated By Brazilian Authorities Over Potential Oil Bribes

  Another day, another “cost of doing business” fine likely on its way for one of the big banks. 

  J.P. Morgan is being investigated by Brazilian authorities about whether or not the bank “played a role in an alleged bribery and money laundering scheme that dated back to 2011 and involved state-run oil company Petrobras”, according to a new exclusive from Reuters. 

  The probe is in preliminary stages, according to the report. 

  Authorities are looking at the purchase of 300,000 barrels of Petrobras fuel by the bank in 2011, according to court documents and sources.

  The documents included email messages, witness testimony and bank records. Regulators are in the midst of trying to decypher whether or not bribery continued in subsequent years. 

  

  Testimony from a former Petrobras fuel trader named Rodrigo Berkowitz was reviewed by Reuters. The trader makes note two fuel cargoes that were sold to a JPMorgan unit in his testimony. 

  The investigation is one piece of a larger look by Brazilian authorities into wrongdoing in the commodity trading space. Authorities are seeking to figure out if JP Morgan secured oil shipments at artificially low prices by sending bribes to employees at Petrobras’ trading desk using middlemen. 

  Investigations are also ongoing into some of the world’s largest commodity traders after years of probes looking into whether or not bribes were offered to win contracts in countries in Latin America. 

  No charges have been brought in the ongoing investigation. Petrobras told Reuters it has “zero tolerance in relation to fraud and corruption.”

  J.P. Morgan, on the other hand, declined to comment. 

  

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 21:40

• House Progressives Strip $1BN In Military Aid For Israel From Stopgap Funding Bill
  House Progressives Strip $1BN In Military Aid For Israel From Stopgap Funding Bill

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  House Democrats removed $1 billion for additional military aid for Israel from a stopgap funding bill that was passed in the House on Tuesday.

  The $1 billion would be on top of the $3.8 billion the US already gives Israel each year. Israel requested the additional amount after its bombardment in Gaza in May, which killed over 250 Palestinians, including over 60 children.

  

  The Israelis say they need the money to restock the iron dome missile defense system. But when the request was first reported, Israeli officials also said they would also use the money to purchase munitions, mainly precision-guided bombs for the Israeli Air Force.

  The stopgap bill is being pushed through to avert a government shutdown, but it could fail in the Senate. The $1 billion for Israel was removed over protests by progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

  Since no Republicans were expected to vote for the bill, Democratic leadership needed the support of the progressives to pass the legislation.

  US lawmakers were quick to assure Israel that it will get its money. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) promised to bring the extra $1 billion to a vote in the House as early as this week during a call with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

  This evening, I announced on the Floor that the House will consider legislation this week to fully fund Iron Dome. We will act to ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, and I expect strong, bipartisan support for this effort.

  — Steny Hoyer (@LeaderHoyer) September 22, 2021

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  “This evening, I announced on the Floor that the House will consider legislation this week to fully fund Iron Dome,” Hoyer wrote on Twitter. Other members of Congress said the extra $1 billion will be included in the 2022 defense appropriations bill.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 21:20

• Not The Onion: UN Mulling Taliban Request To Address General Assembly
  Not The Onion: UN Mulling Taliban Request To Address General Assembly

  A UN spokesman revealed late Tuesday that the Taliban has formally requested to address world leaders gathered this week in New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. 

  It comes after the international body received an official letter on Monday addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the group is “requesting to participate” in the high-level debate, according to AFP.

  “The credentials committee will now rule on the request,” the UN statement added, suggesting the body is actually taking the request seriously.

  

  As a now established government having control over all of Afghanistan following the late August US troop pullout and evacuation, the Taliban says it even has a permanent representative to the UN at this point, named as Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen, which means it’s challenging the legitimacy of the current representative, Ghulam Isaczai.

  AFP has more details of the letter’s contents as follows: 

  It was signed by Amir Khan Muttaqi as “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” the spokesman said. The letter also indicated that Ghulam Isaczai “no longer represents” Afghanistan at the United Nations.

  …The note, which had the letterhead “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said that former president Ashraf Ghani was “ousted” on August 15, the day he fled the country.

  The UN spokesman confirmed the letter had been submitted for consideration to the “credentials committee” to consider further action.

  That committee includes the US, Russia, China, South Africa, Sweden, Sierra Leone, Chile, Bhutan and the Bahamas. Likely China and Russia would push for allowing the Taliban’s participation at the UNGA, while Washington would no doubt see it as an embarrassment and deeply awkward. 

  #Taliban have challenged the credentials of Afghanistan’s former U.N. ambassador and are asking to speak at the #UNGA76…#UN says….https://t.co/oKPIUK5J9V

  — Sumaira Khan (@sumrkhan1) September 21, 2021

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  Continued US sanctions on the Taliban would prevent or at least complicate any Taliban official’s in-person trip to New York, so such a potential address to the assembly would take place via video link. This scenario is similar to the Iranian situation – with sanctions on him personally President Ebrahim Raisi was prevented from traveling and spoke via a pre-recorded video.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 21:00

• Stunning Interview Sees China Warn "23 Million Australians" That US Pact Now Makes Them "Target" For Nuclear Attack
  Stunning Interview Sees China Warn “23 Million Australians” That US Pact Now Makes Them “Target” For Nuclear Attack

  During an Australian TV primetime segment this week, the well-known China-based expert Victor Gao, who is vice president of the Center for China and Globalization and once served as communist leader Deng Xiaoping’s translator, issued a chilling scenario and shock to his Aussie audience over the controversial AUKUS defense pact between the US, Australia and the UK.

  Gao bluntly warned that the deal which will see Washington give Canberra nuclear submarine technology now makes all of Australia a target for nuclear strike:

  “The watershed moment will be if Australia is armed with nuclear submarines to be locally produced in Australia, Australia will lose that privilege of not being targeted with nuclear weapons by other countries,” Gao warned.

  He then appealed to the “23 million Australians” who will now live with this anxiety if the deal is completed in the coming years over “possible nuclear war” on their doorstep and over their cities.

  Gao posed that the stakes are incredibly high: “And that should be the wake up call for the Australians – the 23 million Australians. Do you really want to be a target in a possible nuclear war? Or do you want to be free from the ‘nuclear menace’ going forward?“

  Of course the subtext, almost unbelievably, is that Beijing is declaring that Australia will become fair game for nuclear first strike. The incredulous ABC Australia news host then questioned back at him: “It is extraordinary that you’re talking about nuclear war and attacks on Australia,” the anchor said.

  The questioning then turned to whether what Gao was saying reflects the position of Chinese government, to which he responded…

  Listen, as a general policy Australia is not targeted with nuclear warheads right now… now if the Australian government wants to… go nuclear, with nuclear submarines, they will lose that privilege of not being targeted with nuclear warheads going forward. It’s as simple as that… this is the most profound consequence.

  He charged that it’s a “gross violation” of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty by the US and UK, underscoring the “consequences” of this for Australia. 

  

  The ABC host questioned directly, “Are you saying that Australia will be targeted by China? Are you warning that Australia now is under threat?”

  Gao that repeated that his words have been “clear” – reiterating that China will see Australia as in breach of having a nuclear free zone and that this will carry with it profound consequences. He then repeated his “thinly-veiled threat that the AUKUS pact announced last week was a ‘gross violation of international law’ that will have ‘profound consequences’ for ‘brainless’ Aussies.”

  

  Meanwhile, here’s Rabobank’s take on the stunning interview and not so subtle threat….

  I have to share last night’s ABC interview with China’s Victor Gao as a sample of the current zeitgeist in this region. It is worth a watch in its entirety if you don’t live in the region: imagine if this was your prime-time TV slot last night.

  Gao was emphatic about Australia being “logically” targeted for a potential nuclear attack because it wants nuclear-powered submarines. Notably, he is correct in saying this threat is clear strategic logic. Yet geostrategists would point out that Australia wanting such subs is also clear strategic logic – of the need for a balance of power and deterrence against any threats.

  Also recall, this is happening as China lobbies Australia to support its entry into the CPTPP trade partnership – which would of course help Beijing prop up those soon-to-be-needed-even-more trade surpluses, structurally.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 20:40

• UBS Trader Sues Bank, Claims "Toxic Environment" Destroyed His Mental Health
  UBS Trader Sues Bank, Claims “Toxic Environment” Destroyed His Mental Health

  Sympathy for the junior bankers who have been overworked to the bone waned a bit yesterday when it was revealed that the leader of the original uprising of Goldman junior bankers was the son of a vice chairman at TPG, the private equity giant and longtime Goldman client.

  But as it turns out, twenty-something analysts aren’t the only ones struggling with long hours and deteriorating mental health. One trader from UBS’s London office says his job was so psychologically demanding that he’s now suing UBS for the psychic damage to which he was subjected.

  

  Simon Rope, a 35-year-veteran at UBS, is seeking $273K over alleged “negligence” by the bank’s management that led to him developing an anxiety disorder due to the extreme stress of the trading floor,

  According to Bloomberg, the case – which was filed in the UK – “offers a window into the stressful world of trading, and the mental toll it can have on workers under pressure to drive profits and not make costly mistakes.”

  Lawyers for Rope, who has been on medical leave and hasn’t been on a trading floor since 2018 (though Rope is still employed at the bank), claim their client was subjected to a “toxic environment” on the trading floor where “often bad tempered” traders would “shout across the trading floor and publicly shame” him. They added that this “generally pressured environment” represents “the unavoidable reality of the work of a City trader,” UBS lawyers said.

  By 2016, symptoms of a stress and anxiety disorder had begun to develop, and by 2018 he and his three colleagues were trading around 3,500 different stocks. “An exceptionally large number of companies for such a small team to cover,” they said in documents filed at the High Court in February.

  The trouble with Rope’s claim is that for years beforehand, Rope “not only coped but thrived in for decades, giving the bank a good basis for its belief that he was psychologically able to manage the demands” of his most recent role.

  Rope’s lawyers wrote that by the beginning of 2018, Rope was experiencing “exhaustion, finding it increasingly difficult to sleep, was no longer able to socialize, and was focusing all his efforts on functioning solely for work.”

  Most of the joy in Rope’s life at this point came from criticizing a group of UBS managers known as “the Shooting Party” (the nickname is related to a practice of leaving the office early on Friday to go “shooting”).

  Though we very much doubt the humor is intentional, UBS claimed in its defense papers that “disillusionment and discontent with management during times of structural change and rationalization is common on the workplace.”

  UBS did say that shouting sometimes occurred on the trading floor and that the language of traders was “intemperate” from time to time. The bank denies the claims made by Rope’s legal team, and claims he was not “drowning” in work.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 20:20

• Biden To Stick Haitian Immigrants In Gitmo, Seeks Contractor With 'Creole-Speaking Guards'
  Biden To Stick Haitian Immigrants In Gitmo, Seeks Contractor With ‘Creole-Speaking Guards’

  The Biden administration is looking for a private contractor to operate a migrant detention facility at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to NBC News, citing government records. One requirement – some of the guards must speak Spanish and Haitian Creole, and the contractor itself needs to be able to build temporary housing facilities.

  

  “The service provider shall be responsible to maintain on site the necessary equipment to erect temporary housing facilities for populations that exceed 120 and up to 400 migrants in a surge event,” reads the contract solicitation.

  A little-known immigrant holding facility on the base has a capacity of 120 people, the records say, and it “will have an estimated daily population of 20 people,” according to a solicitation for bids issued Friday by the Department of Homeland Security.

  The records provided no indication that the Biden administration is planning to transfer migrants from the southern border to Guantánamo Bay. In the recent past, migrants picked up at sea have been housed there for short periods. -NBC News

  What will Democrats say?

  In late 2019, then-anonymous Trump admin DHS official Miles Taylor claimed in a book that Trump proposed sending migrants to Guantánamo, leading to mass pearl-clutching on the left over the ‘inhumane’ president who was also both orange and bad.

  

  

  

  What will they say now?

  Gitmo’s history of housing immigrants

  In the early 90s during the George H.W. Bush administration, as many as 12,000 Haitians seeking asylum in Florida were sent to the Guantanamo Bay holding facility overseen by then-Attorney General William Barr. At the time, immigrants’ advocates said that the policy was driven in part by the fact that some Haitians were HIV-positive, according to the report.

  “It’s highly concerning that the administration may be considering using Guantánamo to detain Haitian asylum-seekers or others, according to Wendy Young, president of the immigrant advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense, who added “It’s a sense of déjà vu all over again.”

  According to Young, Guantánamo “was used in the early 1990s and proved highly deficient in terms of providing the services that migrant families and children urgently need, including legal representation,” and “Instead of defaulting to a law enforcement response grounded in deterrence, the administration should instead live up to our legal and ethical obligation to allow Haitians to apply for asylum. Conditions in Haiti underscore how essential that is.”

  The new DHS contract solicitation says that the winning bidder would have to supply tents and cots and that “the contractor must be able to have these assembled and ready with little notice,” adding, “In addition, the service provider must maintain a roster of at least 50 individuals who meet the minimum requirements of the unarmed custody officer job classification and have a viable contingency plan to deploy these individuals within 24 hours of notification.“

  “At least 10% of the augmented personnel must be fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole. Air transportation to/from the facility is the sole responsibility of the service provider,” the contract ads.

  Will AOC condemn Biden’s new kids in cages – island edition?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 20:00

• FDA Agrees With Advisors, Limits Booster Jabs To Older & Immunocompromised Americans
  FDA Agrees With Advisors, Limits Booster Jabs To Older & Immunocompromised Americans

  Following Friday’s decision by the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel to only recommend the use of boosters for patients who are a) immunocompromised, b) overweight or c) both, Bloomberg reports that the FDA has decided to accept the advisory panel’s conclusions, as expected – representing a major victory for “the science” over President Biden’s political priorities.

  

  The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee – also known as VRBPAC – is a panel of senior advisors for the FDA, and after a long public meeting on Friday, it voted overwhelmingly against approving a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab for every patient over the age of 16 (though it did leave a door open to approving booster jabs for all eventually).

  Now, the FDA on Wednesday has decided to accept VRBPAC’s recommendations, according to Bloomberg.

  FDA TO AUTHORIZE 3RD PFIZER SHOT FOR 65 AND OVER, HIGH-RISK

  In keeping with panel reco

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 22, 2021

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  NEW: The FDA is set to authorize Pfizer boosters tonight, in line with VRBPAC recommendations, per a source.

  Boosters for 65 and up, those at high risk of severe cases, or in workplaces with high exposure risk, per source. Announcement said to be imminent but not confirmed.

  — Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 22, 2021

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  The expected emergency clearance for the number of booster jabs will be for people 65 and older, those most susceptible to severe disease and people whose jobs put them at risk, Bloomberg’s source added.

  Most importantly, the FDA’s decision will scuttle – well, at least for now – the Biden Administration’s plan to start doling out third “booster” jabs to any American over the age of 16 (in Israel, they have been available to anyone over the ae=ge ofthat the Biden administration would have to forgo, temporarily, a wider rollout of boosters that it had proposed last month. Third doses are already authorized for certain people with compromised immune systems.

  While hundreds of thousands of Americans have already received a third dose (the CDC has allowed them for older, sick patients), only 54.8% of America’s adult population has been fully inoculated.

  Along with the Biden Administration, which is scrambling to do everything in its power to combat the delta variant (even if some of those moves, like mandatory masking, aren’t as effective as one might expect) Pfizer is also bound to be disappointed by the FDA’s decision.

  The FDA’s decision to defy Biden follows by nearly two weeks the president’s own decision to abandon his promise not to mandate vaccines, when Biden ordered all federal employees, as well as employees for government contractors and other private small and medium size businesses, to get vaccinated. Polls have shown nearly half of Americans disapprove of the rule.

  This isn’t the final word on whether the entire population will eventually be required – or aggressively “incentivized” – to get a third dose of one of the mRNA vaccines. The FDA has room to change its recommendations or decisions as more scientific data and research comes in.

  Looking ahead, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is expected to meet Thursday to make its own recommendations about who should receive the additional dose.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 19:40

• Biden's Debt Limit Game Of Chicken
  Biden’s Debt Limit Game Of Chicken

  By Philip Marey of Rabobank

  Summary

  • In October we could see both a government shutdown and a government default if the spending and debt bill approved by the House of Representatives yesterday does not pass the Senate.
  • This is a game of chicken in which the Democrats try to force the Republicans to share the blame for suspending the debt limit in light of the midterm elections in 2022.
  • This stand-off is completely unnecessary and if the Republicans don’t blink, the Democrats can still raise the debt limit and adopt a spending patch through budget reconciliation.
  • However, this will raise the internal pressure in the Democratic Party regarding Biden’s legislative agenda by adding another time constraint.

  Introduction: Pelosi is raising the stakes

  Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would fund the government through December 3, 2021, and suspend the debt limit through December 16, 2022. Note that this would remove the debt limit from the legislative agenda until after the midterm elections on November 8, 2022. There were 220 Democratic votes in favor of the bill, and 211 Republican votes against it. This bill is supported by the Democratic leadership, including President Biden. However, before he can sign this into law, the Senate has to vote on it. This is expected to happen later this week or early next week. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader McConnell said the Republicans will support a clean continuing resolution that includes disaster aid and refugee resettlement funding, but not legislation to raise the debt limit. If the spending and debt bill does not pass the Senate, we could see both a shutdown and a default of the US government in October, a probability that is growing by the day according to the T-Bill market.

  

  Each October, the start of the new fiscal year requires either a spending bill1 or a continuing resolution (a spending patch that does not last the entire fiscal year). If such a measure is not adopted before October 1, the federal government will have to shut down, because the authority to spend money is lacking. The House bill would delay this until after December 3, giving Congress more time to come up with a full fiscal year spending bill. However, if the Senate does not pass it, the government will partially shut down on October 1.

  Meanwhile, August 1 saw the return of the debt limit, which had been suspended in 2019. The Treasury is taking extraordinary measures to allow the federal government to keep fulfilling its obligations, but in a September 8 letter to House Speaker Pelosi, Treasury Secretary Yellen indicated that these measures will be depleted sometime “during the month of October.” If the debt limit is not raised before this occurs, the federal government will be in default.

  

  The bipartisan route or via budget reconciliation?

  The first observation we would like to make is that the possible standoff that could lead to a government shutdown and default is entirely unnecessary. The Democrats could have chosen to raise the debt limit through budget reconciliation. This would not require a single Republican vote. So keeping it out of budget reconciliation and asking the Republicans for support is a conscious decision by the Democratic leadership. The main reason is that raising the debt ceiling could hurt the Democrats in the midterm elections in 2022, so they prefer sharing the blame with the Republicans by forcing them to support a suspension of the debt limit. In other words, the Democrats have set up a game of chicken to get the Republicans’ fingerprints on the debt limit suspension. The Democrats are counting on business leaders to pressure the Republican Party into avoiding a government default. However, the Republican Party’s relationship with corporate America has suffered in recent years as the party has moved toward economic populism. Of course, Biden only needs 10 Republican votes. However, in August 46 Republican senators signed a letter that they would not raise the debt limit. Hence, at most 54 votes are available, which is not enough.

  As long as this spending and debt bill is not approved, the government will partially shut down on October 1 and “during the month of October” the government will no longer be able to meet all its obligations, thus being in default. So Congress has about a week to prevent a government shutdown and at most 5 weeks to avert a government default.

  If the Republicans don’t blink

  The Republicans have said they won’t raise the debt limit, because the Democrats are trying to pass a $3.5 trillion package through budget reconciliation and passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan earlier this year without any Republican votes. However, President Biden is calling their bluff by attaching the debt limit suspension to a spending patch and a hurricane relief bill. This will make it more difficult for Republicans to explain to the voters that they are going to shoot this down in the Senate. If they do, the federal government will be heading for default in October.

  However, if the Republicans don’t blink, the Democrats can still raise the debt limit and adopt a spending patch through budget reconciliation, without a single Republican vote. Of course, this implies an additional deadline on the $3.5 trillion health care, education and climate package. There is already a weaker deadline because Pelosi has promised to bring up the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill for a vote by September 27, which is also a time constraint on the $3.5 trillion package because progressives do not want to pass the infrastructure bill before the health care, education and climate bill. This is the second reason why the Democratic leadership has chosen this confrontational route to a game of chicken: it will give them more time for the $3.5 trillion deal.

  In table 1 we have summarized the four deadlines that are coming together in just a few weeks.

  

  The game

  If the US government shuts down or even defaults, this is entirely a self-inflicted event. In fact, this can be seen as a three stage game. Pelosi has made the move in the first stage, by choosing to attach debt suspension to the spending patch. If she had put forward a clean CR, the Republicans in the Senate were willing to accept. However, now she is triggering a game of chicken (stage 2) where the Republicans will either stick to their promise not to raise the debt limit or blink.

  If they blink, a government shutdown and default will be avoided. If they don’t, the Democrats will have to decide whether to shut down the government and risk a default or raise the debt limit through budget reconciliation (stage 3).

  In the final stage of the game, the Democrats have the power to raise the debt ceiling and adopt a spending patch, through budget reconciliation, without any Republican vote. Therefore it will be difficult to blame a government shutdown or even a default on the Republicans. The mainstream media may try to do so anyway, but conservative media – which are relevant to Republican voters – will explain the realities to their audience. Therefore, there is no electoral need for the Republicans to blink. If they have the stomach for it, they can win this game and force the Democrats to “own” their spending spree. What’s more, if the Democrats fail to stick together under pressure, Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda could dissolve in October.

  By forcing the debt limit legislation into the budget reconciliation process the Republicans will also increase the internal pressure in the Democratic Party regarding the Biden agenda, by adding another time constraint on the $3.5 trillion plan and the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. This is also an incentive for the Democrats to keep the debt limit out of budget reconciliation. From this perspective, we could draw the conclusion that the internal divisions in the Democratic Party are contributing to the choice of the Democratic leadership to play a game of chicken on the debt ceiling that could result in a government default. However, this plan could very well backfire and force the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling through budget reconciliation. The main challenge will then be to keep the Democratic Party together on the $3.5 trillion package, which could very well result in a substantial reduction of that number.

  Conclusion

  We could have called this special report “McConnell’s Game of Chicken.” After all, in August 46 Republican senators signed a letter that they would not raise the debt limit. However, the Democrats don’t need Republican support to adopt a spending patch and raise the debt limit: it can all be done through budget reconciliation. However, the Democrats made a conscious decision to take the bipartisan route, a route they usually shun. But they don’t want to be seen as the party that raised the debt limit and rather share the blame of suspending it, in light of the midterm elections in 2022. This appears particularly weird since the Democrats want to get a $3.5 trillion package through budget reconciliation, without the need of Republican votes. So the Democrats want to go on a spending spree, but they don’t want to be seen as the party that raises the credit card limit.

  This is why we call it “Biden’s Game of Chicken.” At first sight it would appear that the Republicans are up to their old tricks again of sabotaging Democratic policies through the debt limit, jeopardizing the reputation of US government debt. However, this is not a repeat of the Tea Party obstruction of the Obama administration. This time the Democrats are intentionally looking for a confrontation they can easily avoid. In fact, McConnell has already indicated that he would support a clean CR, without a debt limit suspension attached to it. The Democrats won the elections, they want to spend trillions on Democratic priorities without Republican support, and they can raise the debt limit in the same process.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 19:20

• China's Xi Jinping Promises No New Coal Plants Abroad As It Ramps Up Domestic Production
  China’s Xi Jinping Promises No New Coal Plants Abroad As It Ramps Up Domestic Production

  Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged at the United Nations General Assembly meeting on Tuesday to halt the construction of coal-fired power plants abroad. 

  “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad,” Xi said in a prerecorded video. The announcement comes one year after he said China is on a path to reach carbon-neutral by 2060. 

  

  Xi provided no timetable for ending overseas coal-fired power projects and didn’t address China’s increasing need to fire up domestic coal and fossil fuel power plants. 

  Watch part of Xi’s speech here:

  While China could hinder future coal development across Belt and Road Initiative countries, domestic coal consumption continues to boom at home amid increasing power demand. 

  Last month, China announced it would restart dozens of coal mines in the Inner Mongolia region and may produce as much as 44 million tons of coal, satisfying the growing calls for power amid the pick up in industrial activity this year. 

  The news of Xi’s support for emerging market countries in developing green and low-carbon energy contradicts what’s happening in Mainland China. 

  “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”

  President Xi at #UNGA

  — Chinese Mission to UN (@Chinamission2un) September 21, 2021

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  Remember when China promised to hit peak carbon emissions in 2030 and reach carbon neutrality in 2060? Maybe it will (spoiler alert: it won’t)…

  

  … but long before 2060, China plans on taking coal-based pollution on a domestic level to new heights to satisfy power demand. 

  Renewable energy has grown significantly in China, though coal power is cheap and will remain king and is expected to continue growing. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 19:00

• Space Force Unveils Prototypes Of Uniform For Guardians
  Space Force Unveils Prototypes Of Uniform For Guardians

  Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

  The very first group of Guardians on Tuesday unveiled the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF) first prototype service dress uniform, which features a dark navy color, an upturned collar, and a diagonal row of six buttons.

  During a speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond called two Guardians onto the stage to showcase the prototype. He noted that the service is open to “comments and tweaks” in the coming months before the uniform goes into wear testing.

  Today, @SpaceForceCSO Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond unveiled the Guardian Service Dress prototype a modern, distinctive, professional uniform during the @AirForceAssoc‘s #ASC21. pic.twitter.com/tnDJnMkCMo

  — United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) September 21, 2021

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  The coat’s six silver buttons, according to Raymond, are meant to represent the fact that the USSF is the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Services. Photos released by the official USSF Twitter account reveal more details, including the service’s delta emblem on the buttons and mirror-finished “U.S.” pins on the collar.

  Raymond also revealed the USSF’s physical training uniform, which is being wear-tested. A video shows the uniform and a gray T-shirt bearing the stylized words “Space Force” in white on the back, and black shorts with the delta emblem in white.

  The Guardians will continue to wear the Operation Camouflage Pattern (OCP) uniform as their combat uniform. The OCP is already in use by the Army and the Air Force.

  The uniform announcement comes after USSF Chief Master Sergeant Roger A. Towberman showed off the new insignia on social media.

  Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger A. Towberman announced today the new design of the #SpaceForce‘s enlisted rank insignia. #SemperSupra pic.twitter.com/2O6P441u8h

  — United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) September 20, 2021

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  “The delta is the foundation for all USSF enlisted insignia,” read an infographic shared by Towberman. “The six-sided border surrounding the insignia represents the USSF as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.”

  According to Towberman, each specialist stripe represents “terra firma, a solid foundation of skills” upon which Space Force operations are built. Changing the straight stripes to chevrons at higher ranks symbolizes the change Guardians go through as they take on greater responsibilities.

  “The placement of the Delta above the globe further signifies this higher level of responsibility, while the Delta breaking through the orbits shows their willingness to explore and innovate,” he explained.

  [ZH: we still think this is better…]

  

  Meanwhile, other sci-fi fans have pointed out the similarity to various shows:

  A friend just texted me: “Tell me the space force uniform isn’t a complete rip-off of battlestar galatica” and reader— https://t.co/UEyvBY573A pic.twitter.com/8teKYBPWC5

  — Valerie Insinna (@ValerieInsinna) September 21, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 18:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• IEA Demands Russia Deliver More Gas To A Reeling Europe
  IEA Demands Russia Deliver More Gas To A Reeling Europe

  Over the weekend, Morgan Stanley’s global energy head Martijn Rats shared comprehensive yet streamlined analysis of what happened in 2021 that has sent many commodity prices, including Europe’s nat gas and electricity prices, surging to never before seen levels.

  

  For those who missed it, Rats explained that A common set of factors has tied all these commodity rallies together. As often happens, the story starts in China.

  The combination of a post-COVID-19 recovery and unusually hot weather has increased consumption of electricity sharply this year. Most of China’s electricity is produced from coal, but domestic coal production is increasingly struggling to keep up – the result of regulatory reforms, under-investment and more stringent HSE inspections. Another important source of electricity generation in China is hydropower, but because of droughts in key parts of the country, hydropower has failed to grow this year too.

  Over the summer, this led to power crunches that forced regional governments to curtail consumption – street lights were even switched off at night in a number of regions. Another victim of these measures was aluminum smelting, which is a particularly electricity-intensive process. Normally, China supplies ~60% of the world’s aluminum. With its production curtailed and global demand continuing to grow, aluminum prices soared.

  China’s domestic coal shortage compelled it to turn to the seaborne market. However, coal production elsewhere has also had its issues – e.g., heavy rains and staff shortages in Indonesia, railway disruptions in Russia and unrest in South Africa. As the seaborne coal market tightened, global coal prices rallied.

  The same factors drove up China’s demand for LNG, but here China was not alone. For example, droughts in Brazil also curtailed its production of hydropower, driving up LNG demand as well. With a number of production outages at liquefaction terminals, the global LNG market has tightened severely in the last few months.

  Europe is usually the end market for a substantial share of the world’s LNG. However, with other regions pulling harder, European LNG imports declined sharply this summer. At the same time, power generation from offshore wind disappointed – it has not been that windy in Europe recently – boosting demand for natural gas. Yet, with gas supply from Russia and other regions constrained, Europe was unable to build natural gas inventories as much as it normally does in the summer. European gas inventories are now unusually low for this time of the year, with winter yet to start. As natural gas prices largely set electricity prices, they have surged in tandem.

  And while Europe, where electricity prices have hit stratospheric levels that have prompted street protests and forecasts of winter blackouts, has had lots of time to analyze all these factors, the continent which has been at the forefront of the “Green revolution” which is indirectly responsible for the collapse in legacy fossil fuel infrastructure and hence, for the surge in prices, decided to ignore everything else and focus on one single word: Russia.

  So, as a result, on Tuesday the International Energy Agency demand that Russia send more gas to Europe “to help alleviate the energy crisis” the FT report, noting that in doing so the IEA becoming the first major international body to address claims by traders and foreign officials that Moscow has restricted supplies.

  And so, once again, it’s all Russia’s fault.

  The Paris-based body admitted that while Russia was fulfilling its long-term contracts to European customers – in other words it wasn’t in breach of contract – it could always do more, and was supplying less gas to Europe than before the coronavirus pandemic.

  “The IEA believes that Russia could do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season,” said the IEA, which is primarily funded by OECD members to advise on energy policy and security. “This is also an opportunity for Russia to underscore its credentials as a reliable supplier to the European market.”

  This, coming from a continent that as recently as a few months ago was contemplating ending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, is hypocrisy at its most astounding; it is also a clear example that beggars can indeed be choosers.

  Taking a page out of the Hillary Clinton book where everything is Russia’s fault, some industry participants have accused Gazprom, Russia’s state-backed monopoly exporter of pipeline gas, of limiting top-up sales in the spot market to Europe — that has led to a historic surge in prices which is raising household bills and threatening industries across the continent. As the FT adds, the company has also unsettled energy traders by keeping the underground storage facilities it controls in Europe stocked at low levels compared with previous years.

  Translation: Europe’s politicians are so desperate – only this time instead of explaining Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss they have to explain why electricity hyperinflation is transitory – they have pulled the Russia bogeyman out of their sleeves again.

  Of course, Gazprom is free to do as it wishes: after all in a world where higher prices lead to more supply, any Gazprom attempt to ramp up prices would lead to more output. Only, in the virtuously green Europe, the continent suddenly finds not only does it not have spare capacity, but global interconnections mean that foreign LNG deliveries are backloffed, making Europe Russia’s bitch, just as Putin had intended all along.

  Meanwhile, Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller said last week that the company was meeting its supply obligations and was ready to increase production if needed, but warned that prices could rise further in the winter due to shortages in underground facilities. Gas prices rose even higher on Monday after Gazprom declined to book additional capacity for export via Ukraine for October and only reserved one-third of the available space on the Yamal gas pipeline via Poland.

  To be sure, Europe has a simple solution: start using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The only downside is that this will destroy any leverage Ukraine – the site of the CIA inspired 2014 presidential coup which meant to bring Ukraine closer to NATO but ended up going terrible wrong for Western countries – may have had. As the FT notes, Russia is looking to gain approval to start the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany, which remains contentious because it will redirect some of the gas that flows through Ukraine.

  Gazprom and Kremlin officials have said Russia could boost gas sales once Germany and the EU approve the start up of the pipeline. And even though its actions have added to suspicions that it has restricted sales in order to try to accelerate the decision, Russia has every right to lever its natural resources to achieve its geopolitical goals. And since the opportunity cost is half of Europe freezing this winter, Russia will get what it wants.

  What is truly hilarious, is that while Europe politicians have generally refused to blame Russia for contributing to the fact that gas prices have more than tripled this year, some members of the European parliament have called for an investigation into Gazprom’s role in the crisis ever since European electricity prices exploded. Needless to say, doing so will only lead to even higher prices in a continent which clearly appears unaware that the global realpolitik has shifted dramatically in the past year.

  The IEA’s call for more Russian gas comes as Russian president Vladimir Putin is considering allowing Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company, to supply gas to Europe via the pipeline. Russia’s energy minister Alexander Novak recommended allowing Rosneft to export 10bn cubic metres to Europe a year via Gazprom’s export transit facilities in a recent report to Putin. The amount is small compared with the 139 bcm that Gazprom has exported outside the former Soviet Union so far this year. But it would spell a highly significant end to Gazprom’s monopoly on gas exports, which are more lucrative than the domestic Russian market.

  Not that any of that would matter to Russia: both Rosneft and Gazprom are controlled by longtime allies of Putin.

  Amos Hochstein, senior adviser for energy security at the US state department, told the Financial Times this month he was worried that “lives are at stake” in Europe in the event of a severe winter in part because Russia had “under supplied the market compared to its traditional supplies”. Now if only Europe had thought just a few months ahead, secured the highly valuable commodity in advance and not gutted its existing energy infrastructure in the name of the most expensive “green virtue signaling” campaign of all time…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 02:45

• AUKUS Expedites The Coming EU Army & NATO's Irrelevance
  AUKUS Expedites The Coming EU Army & NATO’s Irrelevance

  Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  While AUKUS formally exists to counter China, it does so on the basis of shared history and spheres of influence. That means that the logic of containing China within such a framework also contains AUKUS.

  

  The surprise announcement of the new AUKUS alliance has predictably provoked an outcry from the European side of NATO, in particular France whose $90B plans with Australia were nixed without forewarning or mutual agreement. The entire fiasco only pushed the realization of a European continental army further along its path, a path that is all but inevitable and can only be either slowed or hurried by world events and political pressures.

  As we wrote towards the end of August in ‘NATO’s Obsolescence’, the NATO alliance is coming undone and what we are seeing internationally is the rise of multipolarity. Distinct from the yearnings of idealists, multipolarity does not necessitate, (nor does it exclude), that the rising global blocs operate in some symphonic harmony towards global peace. But there is a kernel of truth: because it implies a change away from often violent attempts to build a one-world system based on the wildest fantasies of the Western banking establishment (popularly referred to as the ‘New World Order’), it creates an opportunity for harmony, as multipolarity rests upon spheres of influence and mutual recognition of sovereign hegemony.

  AUKUS represents the failure of the Trans-Atlantic order rising after WWII (and emboldened by the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact) to transform into this ‘New World Order’ in the sense of a unipolar American century. But the solidifying of the U.S., UK, and Australia into something like AUKUS is also an entirely coherent development of the Five Eyes (UKUSA/FVEY) into something more.

  

  East Room of the White House, September 15, 2021, in Washington, D.C. President Biden delivered his remarks to present “AUKUS,”.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

  It further underscores how much Biden’s foreign policy sits in line with Trump’s. AUKUS tends to confirm that for reasons still not entirely known (but which engender fantastical theories), Trump’s foreign policy on EU, China, and Five Eyes carries on into the Biden administration.

  Not everyone is on board. The intelligence relationship already existing between A5 countries known as the Five Eyes has been challenged by the push to be decisive on China where previously it was clearer on the USSR – something where regarding China, New Zealand and Canada have decided to take a more nuanced and balanced approach.

  In short, we see Obama allies Trudeau and Ardern push-back against the Biden administration’s move to forge AUKUS. Ardern went so far as to say that Australian nuclear subs per the AUKUS alliance, will not be allowed in New Zealand’s waters. Recall that Chinese naval vessels have been allowed to dock in New Zealand’s waters as recently as 2019. As far as Trudeau appears to be positioned, Canada’s Global News reported, “Brett Bruen, a consultant and former U.S. diplomat, told The Canadian Press that Canada may want to keep its distance from the pact to avoid aggravating existing tensions with China.”

  The ugly economic details of AUKUS have left France and NATO countries with the realization that the U.S. has sent a much larger signal than that particularly problematic $90B detail would indicate. The U.S. under Trump had been shifting its strategic emphasis away from realistically deflecting a Russian military intervention into Western Europe as NATO existed originally to do. Rhetoric and a few additionally planned exercises aside, this has not changed under the Biden administration. Trump’s efforts to push forward on burden shifting from the U.S. to NATO members in Europe in the form of a 2% of GDP commitment on military spending is not one that Biden will roll back, despite his administration’s formal commitment to rebuild U.S.-EU strategic commitments apparently undermined by the 45th presidential administration. These developments, and more, have left France and Germany certain that an EU Army is a realistic security solution in the face of an unreliable U.S.

  The Coming EU Army

  When the UK left the EU on January 31st 2020 it removed a major obstacle to the building a continental army for Europe. Revealingly, the political forces campaigning on behalf of Brexit argued that the future of the EU would work against the special relationship that the UK has with the U.S. But why should this be the case, when the EU and U.S. are staunch allies, and since NATO is the child of this alliance?

  The answer to that question subverts expectations, and this is what makes it so worthy of our attention. The inclusion of the UK in the EU has always been a source and reflection of conflict between the UK and the continent. The persistence of the pound sterling and its precise position to the later development of the Euro, probably made Brexit a rather positive outcome for Europeanists among the long-term EU strategists at the very top, despite the entire Brussels bureaucracy and the EU media structure batting for Atlanticism through public declarations and electoral interference. After all, like any organization of scale, there are competing visions and competing commitments. The best way to change the alignment of these is to change the facts on the ground and the departure of the UK from the EU was a monumental one

  So many things then become possible with the UK out of the EU, like an EU Army.

  

  © Flickr / Rock Cohen

  Yet if NATO represents the keystone for security in Europe, then what need is there for an EU Army? The answer to this one is not pretty, because it directly confronts the definition of ‘security’, and more decidedly poses the question: Whose security does NATO actually represent?

  Indeed, the Euroscepticism which understandably had become the majority view in Britain by 2016, was not only opposed to the balance of matters effecting the UK the EU as it existed, but also the direction of things to come and the moves to further centralize and empower the Brussels bureaucracy in ways unacceptable.

  At the risk of stating the obvious, Eurosceptics oppose the further centralization of the EU as it would give rise to an EU Army, and would either be a ‘final blow’ to the sovereignty of European states or act as a rapid catalyst towards the same.

  The debate over the utility and necessity of a European Army is a difficult one to follow, because there is one side – the EU Army side – which really can’t say the quiet part out loud.

  And the quiet part is that NATO in Europe functions more like an occupying force that relies on indigenous enforcers, its command structure being effectively a comprador one. Because of that, the EU Army side of this debate has had to make specious claims that it would work in tandem with NATO, would not replace NATO, and would even strengthen NATO. All of these are ridiculous when unpacked, but as necessary to say as Biden’s anachronistic and demonstrably false statements that the U.S. holds NATO Article 5 as a “sacred commitment”. Turkish forces fighting U.S. advisors embedded with the U.S.-backed YPG would be surprised to hear that Article 5 was still relevant. As with the case of the Greece-Turkey strategic stand-off, the question arises again.

  When Merkel blasted Obama’s NSA in 2013 for spying on Germany, the quiet part was audible. But it would have been untoward to have publicly teased out the logical deduction any reasonable person would make from this.

  And this in itself represents a self-consciousness of the weaker and more difficult to articulate position. Not because the logic can’t be made clearer, but because the truth of it all – that multipolarity means that the EU and U.S. may not have the same strategic interests – threatens the entire post-WWII order of things.

  The pretext of course for the need for NATO is the existence of a Russian Federation existing as a single geopolitical entity, and not as an additional dozen states carved out of Russia’s existing oblasts, which is the openly professed fantasy of NATO’s media-intelligence wing, the Atlantic Council. Prizes have been awarded by Atlantic Council-supported ACTR to university students who developed schemes, maps, and socio-economy and political data towards the division of Russia into ten or so more states.

  But even as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg bemoaned on June 15 of this year that the NATO-Russia relationship, “is at its lowest point since the Cold War, and Moscow’s aggressive actions are a threat to our security.“, this is pure theatrics. It would be surprising if any leader of a European state believed this was really the case, knowing instead that the present state of EU-RF relations is the consequence of hyperventilating problems into existence.

  For many decades, the encroachment of the EU and NATO into Central and Eastern Europe were seen as one and the same. But in reality, NATO represented itself as the military enforcer of Trans-Atlanticism and trilateralism in Europe. This meant that an expanding EU was permissible within the strict rubric of also being advantageous to Trans-Atlantic banking in the form of the IMF, which acts like a tax or tithing upon European capital paid towards the City of London and Wall Street and ensuring that the Eurodollar – one of the parents of today’s EURO – was reliant on the Petrodollar as the reserve currency.

  Conclusion

  While France cries foul in defense of its own arms industry, certainly the brains behind Macron sees the rise of AUKUS as both a tremendous opportunity and pretext to justify the Franco-German agenda already in play.

  Liberal-idealist opposition to the creation of an EU Army seems to stem from some alternate reality where each European state doesn’t already possess an armed force. They argue as if foreign aggression upon the EU will be invited and not, as logic would inform us, be discouraged by the existence of a coherent and singular command structure such as the EU Army presents. There is a failure to understand that a disunited Europe invites any number of great powers to be able to play divide and conquer in and between European states, to the detriment of all European states.

  The primary and sacrosanct raison d’etre for the EU in the first place is to avoid the sorts of wars between European states which twice destroyed Europe in the 20th century, which led to the strategic advantage of the U.S. as a global hegemon.

  To wit, E.H Carr’s work exposed that for nearly three hundred years (writing from the 1940’s), the foreign policy of England (in its various iterations) was to divide continental European power by pursuing policies which created conflicts between Germany and France. Likewise, we see no small role in the financial schemes of the U.S. and England that led to both European conflicts in the 20th century.

  And so in looking at costs, of course always left out is the ‘cost of not’. The focus on costs of such a European Army fails to understand the relationship that the EU is in today with regard to the U.S. dollar. The EU must frame its expenditures in budgetary terms precisely because of the Atlanticist financial scheme, where the U.S. can create money at whim but the EU must operate within the rubric of monetary scarcity.

  So in thinking that the U.S. is presently paying for European security, what is ignored is a macroscopic view which accounts for opportunity cost, profit sharing, and liabilities that arise. The U.S. role in European security, as we have said, is to secure U.S. interests in Europe.

  Euroscepticism, a genus with numerous species, opposes the rise of an EU Army as mentioned, but not only in the UK. Across the EU, the thinking and rationale is – at face value – the same. But beneath the surface, as E.H Carr would likely agree, is a quite opposite dynamic.

  Nationalist Euroscepticism has been the most potent force, with other species whose skepticism is rooted in other matters often tagging along. The critical point here is that the more radical the nationalist Euroscepticism, the more likely it is that skeptic views positively a confederal type arrangement between European states on the basis of identity and shared history. They often paint their own alternate solution wherein European states are in some kind of organization that rings nearly identical to the EU itself, (“a single Europe of a hundred banners”), with some notable exceptions such as the financial structures in the EU in the form of the Troika.

  And that is the solution: the rise of an EU Army would also be able to support financial independence of the EU from the U.S.-UK financial grip. A truly sovereign EU would also have sovereign financial institutions, which today it lacks. And it is precisely the contemporary financial arrangement that inspires nationalist-driven Euroscepticism. It is only this that could make the EU into the kind of confederation that nationalist Eurosceptics would find acceptable, even desirable.

  AUKUS likewise is based on a common historical relationship to Britain, and while oceans still separate the member states, the alliance represents a turn to doctrines descended from spheres of influence as opposed to the universalist values schema which defined the now failed gambit to realize Trans-Atlanticism into a permanent unipolarity.

  Both AUKUS and the rise of an EU Army are manifestations of a growing multipolarity, and could be critical to stability and a decrease in the hostilities presently driven by the global ambitions of Atlanticism. While AUKUS formally exists to counter China, it does so on the basis of shared history and spheres of influence. That means that the logic of containing China within such a framework also contains AUKUS. Civilizational spheres such as an Anglo-sphere, or a Eurosphere, or like China (which by itself is a civilization) all set clear borders of legitimacy. This is entirely at odds with the disastrous attempt to build a single world order on the basis of abstract and universal values, dictated from an imperial center.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 02:00

• Air Force Secretary Says His Priorities Are "China, China, And China"
  Air Force Secretary Says His Priorities Are “China, China, And China”

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  On Monday, President Biden’s new Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made it crystal clear that China is his main focus during a speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. According to an Air Force press release, Kendall mentioned China 27 times in his remarks compared to a single mention of Russia.

  “So what are my intentions now that I have this job? At a breakfast on Capitol Hill shortly after I was sworn in, I was asked by Sen. Jon Tester what my priorities were. My answer was that I had three: China, China, and China,” Kendall said.

  

  Kendall, who assumed office on August 28th, said China is a threat to Washington’s global military dominance. “While America is still the dominant military power on the planet today, we are being more effectively challenged militarily than at any other time in our history,” he said.

  To counter China, Kendall wants to focus on military modernization. He’s previously said he wants the US to develop weapons that would “scare” China. As part of his modernization plan, Kendall wants to retire older military aircraft and focus on developing new ones.

  “We will not succeed against a well-resourced and strategic competitor if we insist on keeping every legacy system we have,” he said. “Our one team cannot win its one fight to deter China or Russia without the resources we need and a willingness to balance risk today to avoid much greater risk in the future.”

  Kendall served in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2017 as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. Before that, he worked as the Vice President of Engineering for Raytheon, a company with a keen interest in hyping up the threat of China to justify more military spending.

  Kendall said since 2010, he’s been “pounding the drum about how serious a threat” China is to Washington’s ability to “project power” in Asia.

  Kendall’s view is not unique among military leaders in Washington. During Senate confirmation hearings in July, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro vowed to focus “exclusively” on the so-called “China threat.” The Pentagon has also identified China as the top “pacing threat” facing the US military.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/22/2021 – 00:05

• New Iran Leader Gives Fiery UN Speech: Sanctions Are "New Means Of War" By "US Hegemon"
  New Iran Leader Gives Fiery UN Speech: Sanctions Are “New Means Of War” By “US Hegemon”

  For the first time newly installed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addressed the UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday afternoon, hours after Biden spoke wherein the US president said the White House still wants a full return to the JCPOA nuclear deal “if Iran does the same”. Raisi addressed the UN body via remote feed, given sanctions on him could make the trip into New York difficult.

  Raisi, who has long been described as more hardline than his predecessor Rouhani, wasn’t so conciliatory in his tone. He took the occasion to lash at the foreign policies of both Trump and Biden, saying “The world doesn’t care about ‘America First’ or ‘America is Back.”

  He blasted and mocked the “US hegemonic system” as having “failed miserably” while calling continued US-led sanctions initially imposed by former President Trump “crimes against humanity during the coronavirus pandemic.” He further took the opportunity to declare the failure of the US in Afghanistan.

  

  “One clear message was sent to the world: the United States’ hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country,” Raisi said. He added forcefully that “not only the hegemonist and the idea of hegemony, but also the project of imposing Westernized identity, have failed miserably.”

  “Sanctions are the U.S.’ new way of war with the nations of the world,” he said.

  Invoking the recent botched pullout and evacuation from Afghanistan, he further lambasted America’s “blood spilling and instability, and ultimately defeat and escape” abroad. He underscored US policy has been a failure across Asia.

  “Today, the US does not get to exit Iraq and Afghanistan but is expelled,” he added. 

  However, as Al Jazeera relates of the accusatory speech, he agreed that resumption of nuclear talks is vital:

  Iran wants a resumption of nuclear talks with world powers to lead to the removal of US sanctions, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told the annual UNGA in a pre-recorded address.

  WATCH LIVE: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses 2021 U.N. General Assembly https://t.co/0EgrpHDSJA

  — PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) September 21, 2021

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  Biden had earlier in the day while addressing the UNGA said that “The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.”

  But he also held out hope for the Vienna process, saying “The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. We are working with the P5+1 to engage Iran diplomatically and seek a return to the JCPOA. We are prepared to return to full compliance if Iran does the same.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 23:45

• With Clinton Lawyer Charged, The Russiagate Scam Is Now Under Indictment
  With Clinton Lawyer Charged, The Russiagate Scam Is Now Under Indictment

  Authored by Aaron Maté via TheGrayZone.com,

  In accusing Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI, Special Counsel John Durham offers new evidence of the fabrications behind the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.

  

  The indictment of Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann offers new evidence that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that engulfed Trump’s term in office was itself the product of fabrications involving Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

  Although Sussmann faces just one count on a false statement charge, the 27-page charging document offers an expansive window into how the Russiagate scam began, and how Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, and establishment media figures dishonestly fed it to the public.

  Inventing a Trump-Russia “narrative” to “please” Democratic “VIPs”

  Sussmann, until recently an attorney with Clinton campaign law firm Perkins Coie, is the second person to be charged by John Durham, the Special Counsel scrutinizing the Russia investigation.

  Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting in which he tried to raise alarm about “secret communications” between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann gave then-FBI attorney Jim Baker documents and data purporting to show that computer servers associated with Trump and Alfa Bank were in regular contact.

  This was evidence, Sussmann argued, of a possible covert back channel. According to Durham, Sussmann told Baker that he was not working “for any client,” and was simply passing on information that had been provided to him by “multiple cyber experts” who had come across the suspicious web traffic.

  But according to the detailed indictment, Sussmann was in fact cooking up a politically motivated scam.

  The theory of a purported covert Trump-Alfa channel had been concocted by an unnamed tech executive positioning himself for a top cybersecurity job in the anticipated Clinton administration. To spread the theory to the media and intelligence community, the executive and Sussmann “coordinated”, Durham says, with Mark Elias, a colleague of Sussmann’s at Perkins Coie and the top lawyer for Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

  Sussmann and Elias in turn coordinated with the private intelligence company Fusion GPS. Elias had already hired the firm – on Clinton’s behalf – to produce the Steele dossier, the collection of fabricated reports by ex-British spy Christopher Steele alleging a longstanding Trump-Russia conspiracy/blackmail relationship. According to Steele, it was Sussmann, in a July 2016 meeting, who first informed him about the Alfa Bank server story. Elias kept Clinton campaign members informed as well, including the “campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor.” In February 2017, Sussmann also met with a CIA official to push the Alfa Bank narrative.

  Sussmann concealed this plot from the FBI, along with the fact that he was billing Clinton for his involvement. The meeting with the FBI’s Baker, for example, was charged to the Clinton campaign as “work and communications regarding confidential project.” In fact, according to Durham, “all or nearly all” of Sussmann’s work on the Alfa Bank story prior to meeting Baker was “billed to the Clinton campaign.”

  (In Sussmann’s orbit, hiding the money trail was established Russiagate practice. His law firm Perkins Coie and the Clinton campaign concealed that they had funded the Steele dossier, until a subpoena from the GOP-controlled House Intelligence Committee forced them to admit the truth in October 2017. The FBI also concealed Steele’s Democratic funders from the FISA court when it used the dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.)

  Sussmann is charged for failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of Clinton’s team. But the indictment makes clear that Durham has uncovered a wider deception. For weeks prior to his meeting with the FBI, Sussmann worked with the unnamed technology executive (“Tech Executive-1”), who, like the Clinton campaign, was also Sussmann’s client. The executive’s “goal”, Durham says, was to create a “narrative” about Trump’s “ties to Russia” which would ultimately “please certain ‘VIPs’” – i.e., Sussmann’s clients in the Clinton campaign.

  

  To advance this goal, the executive took advantage of his ownership position at several companies to access “public and non-public” internet data, and tasked several people to assist him. Their efforts yielded a cache of purported DNS traffic between a Trump-adjacent marketing server and Alfa Bank in Russia. According to Durham, the tech executive’s researchers expressed misgivings about the project. One team member relayed “continued doubt” about the Trump-Alfa conspiracy theory that Sussman “would later convey to the FBI,” and concerns that the project was driven not by data, but by “bias against Trump.”

  To suggest even “a very weak association,” the researcher warned, “we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag.” At one point, the executive himself even admitted that the Trump-Alfa Bank traffic was not a secret channel but in fact a “red herring.” But that ultimately did not stop him from working with Sussmann to draft white papers and collect data that would be submitted to the FBI in the service of the “VIP”-catered “narrative.”

  The FBI would ultimately reach the same “red herring” conclusion that the executive had concealed. As Durham notes, “the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administered by a mass marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients.”

  For its part, Alfa Bank has filed suit against the computer researchers involved, accusing them of doctoring computer data in a deliberate smear campaign to tie the bank to Trump. A lengthy report commissioned by Alfa Bank posits that “threat actors may have artificially created DNS activity” between Trump and Alfa Bank “to make it appear as though a connection existed, for ‘discovery’ later.”

  After planting Trump-Alfa story, Clinton campaign hypes the “secret hotline”

  The FBI’s investigation of the Alfa Bank theory proved to be just as fruitless as every other of the fabricated Trump-Russia conspiracy theories chased by US intelligence officials, Congressional committees and media outlets for more than three years. But Sussmann’s effort ultimately served its purpose. The FBI meeting gave journalists a news hook to publish the Alfa Bank allegations just days before the November 2016 election.

  Weeks later, the DNC-funded Steele dossier would see a similar entry into public consciousness: after sitting on the salacious dossier for months, the US media was given a news hook to publish it when then-FBI Director Jim Comey – in concert with other intelligence officials – went to Trump Tower and briefed then-President-elect Trump about the alleged “pee tape.”

  On October 31st, Slate’s Franklin Foer, as well as Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers the New York Times, published stories about the Trump-Alfa Bank “secret channel.” The Times‘ story revealed that Trump campaign associates, as well as the Alfa Bank theory, was the subject of an FBI investigation. The Clinton campaign immediately promoted the story as part of its public campaign to portray Trump as a Kremlin stooge. “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” Hillary Clinton announced on Twitter. “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.”

  Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU

  — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 1, 2016

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  It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia. https://t.co/D8oSmyVAR4 pic.twitter.com/07dRyEmPjX

  — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 31, 2016

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  Clinton also shared a statement from her then-foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan. This “secret hotline”, Sullivan claimed, “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow” and “may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia.” To Sullivan, “it certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide.”

  But five year later, now we have confirmation that it was in fact the Clinton campaign that was hiding its role as the source of this story. As Glenn Greenwald notes:

  Both Hillary and Jake Sullivan were pretending that they had just learned about this shocking story from Slate when, in fact, it was Hillary’s own lawyers and researchers who had spent weeks pushing the story to both the FBI and friendly journalists like Foer. In other words, it was Hillary and her team who had manufactured the hoax, then pretended that — like everyone else — they were just learning about it, and believing it to be true, because a media outlet to which they had fed the false story had just published it.

  Indeed, the Clinton campaign’s role in planting the Alfa Bank story was so extensive that it appears to have influenced the day it came to light. As Durham recounts, on October 30th, a Fusion GPS employee wrote to Slate’s Foer and told him “time to hurry.” Foer responded by sharing what he called “the first 2500 words” of his article, and then published it the following day. He never disclosed that the story had come to him from Trump’s Democratic rival.

  “What more evidence do you need?”

  Comparing the indictment’s details to the way Foer and other credulous journalists spun the Clinton-fueled Alfa Bank “narrative” offers a window into how the media enabled the scam. Whereas Durham reveals that the Alfa Bank team was instructed to create a “narrative” about Trump-Russia ties that would please Democratic Party “VIPs”, the Alfa “researchers” gave the Clinton campaign’s media dupes an inverse cover story: they were simply well-meaning internet sleuths trying to protect Trump’s campaign too.

  “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” one of the unknown researchers told Foer. “We thought there was no way in the world the Russians would just attack the Democrats,” but the Republicans as well, another source told the New Yorker‘s Dexter Filkins. “We were trying to protect them.”

  Filkins’ story – published in October 2018, two years after Foer’s, and long after the FBI had privately concluded that there was nothing to it – gave the Alfa Bank story a new shelf life.

  

  Natasha Bertrand, now a correspondent for CNN, joined Foer on MSNBC in October 2018 to declare that the Alfa Bank-Trump connection was in fact a collusion smoking gun. “What more evidence do you need? It’s very, very obvious,” Bertrand said.

  “I mean, what more evidence do you need? It’s very, very obvious.” -Natasha on the Alfa Bank story in October 2018, to the approval of two other Russiagate disinformation actors. pic.twitter.com/JKr3IYlXML

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 16, 2021

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  That same night, Filkins was given an effusive reception from cable news’ leading Trump-Russia conspiracy theorist. “We are blessed as a country to have journalists as talented as you and Franklin Foer writing about this,” Rachel Maddow told Filkins from across the anchor desk.

  “We are blessed as a country to have journalists as talented as you and Franklin Foer writing about this.”

  –@maddow in 2018 to Dexter Filkins on his and Foer’s stories about secret Trump-Russian bank contacts — a DNC-funded scam that is now subject to a federal indictment. pic.twitter.com/hdlDy7ZweU

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 17, 2021

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  Predictably, the same media voices who parroted the Alfa Bank story and countless other Russia fantasies throughout the Trump era have now fallen silent or continued obfuscating.

  One day before Sussmann’s indictment, Maddow covered the story based on a leak to the New York Times from someone in the Sussmann’s camp. This allowed Maddow to avoid the damning details revealed in the indictment the following day, and instead portray the as-yet-uncharged case as a trivial charge from a Special Prosecutor desperate to show results. “The only hoax is the charge contained in this indictment,” Maddow’s guest, MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade declared.

  Neither Foer and Filkins have publicly commented on the indictment. If his past record is any indication, Filkins is not one for contrition. In October 2020 – two years after his initial story and more than one year after the Mueller report found zero evidence to support the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, including the Alfa Bank story — Filkins attempted a half-hearted defense.

  Filkins had discovered that Durham was eyeing the Alfa Bank researchers for possible criminal charges, and that Alfa Bank had itself filed associated lawsuits. He framed the legal activity as “troubling”, and warned that it “could aid the Kremlin.” Filkins even threw in a plug for Steele, whose “information”, he declared, “has been neither proved nor disproved.” Filkins may have missed the main sections of a scathing Department of Justice report of December 2019, which blasted the FBI for relying on Steele’s fabrications.

  With the Steele dossier now widely discredited and Sussmann’s indictment adding new details of a related deception, the Clinton campaign is now connected to yet one more documented scam in a sprawling effort to plant Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the media and trigger federal investigative activity.

  As we will turn to in the second part of this report, coming later this week, Sussmann’s role in the Alfa Bank fabrication raises new questions about the allegation at the heart of the Trump-Russia scandal: the claim that Russia stole emails from the Democratic Party and gave them to Wikileaks in a covert operation to help Trump’s campaign.

  This allegation was generated by a different private firm, Crowdstrike, which, like Fusion GPS, was also hired by Perkins Coie — specifically, by Michael Sussmann.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 23:25

• While Democrats Try To 'Kill Coal' In US, Asia Heads In The Opposite Direction
  While Democrats Try To ‘Kill Coal’ In US, Asia Heads In The Opposite Direction

  Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration are working towards an ambitious goal of eliminating coal-fired electricity and ‘decarbonize’ the US electric grid by 2035.

  To meet such an aggressive deadline, House Democrats unveiled a $150 billion ‘clean electricity’ program to incentivize utility companies to phase out fossil fuels for clean energy. The Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, would reward utility that boost their percentage of electricity supplied to the grid from green sources – such as solar, wind and hydro, between 2023 and 2030. 

  

  S&P Global explains more about the program: 

  To qualify for such a grant, electricity suppliers would have to boost the amount of clean electricity they supply to customers by 4% compared to the previous year. The supplier would receive $150 for each MWh of clean electricity provided that exceeds the amount supplied the previous year by 1.5%. Electricity supplies must use the grants exclusively to benefit customers, including for direct bill assistance, investments in qualified clean electricity and energy efficiency, and worker retention.

  An electricity supplier that does not meet the criteria by increasing its clean electricity percentage by at least 4% over the prior year would owe a payment to the Energy Department based on its shortfall. For example, if an electricity supplier only increases its clean energy by 2%, the supplier would owe $40 for each MWh that represents the 2% shortfall.

  In short, Democrats are asking power companies to take a huge gamble on renewable energy – which would effectively ‘kill’ coal-fired electricity in the US.

  “The CEPP would eliminate coal-fired electricity by 2030, if not sooner,” according to a letter to House reps by Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power – which represents top miners, who added that the program would also “eliminate or at least drastically curtail the use of natural gas to generate electricity.”

  Biden’s plans to decarbonize the power sector by 2035 is an enormous task, however according to America’s Power, utilities are already making the switch – rushing headfirst into solar and wind projects which have inherent stability risks.

  For example, there have been three significant grid issues this year involving renewables, the first in Texas, then California, and the UK. In Texas, a cold snap in early 2021 froze wind turbines and nearly crashed the entire power grid in the state. In California, wildfires strained the clean energy grid where state officials requested the federal government to relax air quality rules to burn natural gas turbines. And in the UK, wind power generation has dropped, straining the grid.  

  Not all Democrats agree

  In a break from Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin from the mining state of West Virginia mentioned last month that the coal industry “will be saved, has to be saved, because the country can’t survive without it.” He believes that there will eventually be “a transition” to other energy sources like atomic fusion, hydrogen gas, and nuclear power. 

  While coal generation has dropped by half over the past two decades, its use has sharply risen since the pandemic began –  increasing from 15% to 23%.

  

  And while US progressives may be able to ‘kill’ coal in the West (at potentially great cost to grid stability), Asia is headed in the opposite direction.

  Last month, TIME reported that China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces, despite the world’s largest polluter pledging to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

  China is leading the world in new coal power plants, building more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined in 2020. It isn’t alone in its reliance on coal, however. China and four other countries, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam, account for more than 80% of the coal power stations planned across the world, according to a June report by the think-tank Carbon Tracker. -TIME

  As FreightWaves‘ Greg Miller noted in July, bulk ships full of coal are headed to Asia.

  “Turns out the news of the demise of coal has been greatly exaggerated,” said Stifel analyst Ben Nolan in a new client note. “Despite an unseemly carbon footprint, coal demand is actually accelerating this year” across much of Asia.

  In other words, China is leading a coal recovery by restarting dozens of shuttered coal mines to increase power demand, while other Asian nations are engaged in their own coal projects.

  

  So as Democrats stage a dramatic ‘kill the coal’ campaign in the United States – an effort which will only be passed along to consumers (hurting low-income families the most), many other parts of the world, including China, Australia, South Africa, and South America, continue to use traditional energy sources as demand shows no signs of abating.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 23:05

• Milley's Calls To Chinese General Could Have Jeopardized US National Security: Former Military Officials
  Milley’s Calls To Chinese General Could Have Jeopardized US National Security: Former Military Officials

  Authored by J/M/Phelps via The Epoch Times,

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, could have jeopardized the national security of the United States in allegedly secret calls to Gen. Li Zuocheng of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to former U.S. military officers. Milley also overstepped his own authority while allegedly discussing the launch of nuclear weapons with senior military officials, they say.

  

  Endangering National Security

  According to a new book titled, “Peril,” Milley called Li once in October 2020 and another time on Jan. 8 to assure him that the United States wouldn’t attack the Chinese Communist Party, and if it was poised to attack, he would alert his counterpart.

  “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley reportedly said.

  Milley made those calls, the book has alleged, because he was fearful that then-President Donald Trump would carry out military action during the waning days of his presidency.

  Some U.S. lawmakers have described Milley’s actions as treasonous, saying the general overstepped his authority, and have called for President Joe Biden to fire Milley. Biden, in response, has backed the general.

  Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who was the commanding officer of the USS Cole when it was attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists in 2000, said he was incredibly concerned about Milley’s allegedly secret conversations with Li.

  That the nation’s top military officer has not denied any of the allegations, but defended his conversations, has shocked Lippold, who told The Epoch Times, “Milley may have purposefully—or inadvertently—created a window of strategic vulnerability.”

  Milley has since described the calls as “routine” and “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job. As chairman, Milley is the top military adviser to the president and to the defense secretary.

  Lippold said the call to Li could have easily called into question “America’s resolve and willingness” to safeguard itself and ensure its survival.

  The smallest misinterpretation could cause the Chinese regime to believe aggression from the communist-led country would be “met with acquiescence or acceptance from the United States rather than military action and resolve,” Lippold warned.

  Having served as a member of the War on Terrorism Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lippold said that Milley’s call could have “given the Chinese government the impression that the United States was hesitant or, at worst case, unwilling to use nuclear weapons to ensure our national survival.”

  According to the new book, Milley on Jan. 8 also conveyed instructions to senior military officials not to take orders regarding military strikes or launching nuclear weapons from anyone without the chairman’s approval.

  According to Lippold, it is far outside Milley’s normal chain of command to engage in a conversation about nuclear engagements.

  Robert Maginnis, a retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel and Pentagon analyst agreed, saying, “The chairman is little more than a presidential military adviser, who is prohibited by law from exercising executive authority and does not have nuclear release authority.”

  “Milley commands nothing,” Maginnis added.

  China’s Growing Nuclear Capabilities

  The risks posed by Milley’s calls with Li are heightened given that China is a nuclear-capable nation, according to Lippold. The repercussions of such revelations could have an effect on “the very survival of the United States,” he said.

  Nations possess nuclear weapons because their respective governments view them as “the ultimate guarantor of that nation’s survival,” Lippold pointed out. Since World War Two, nuclear weapons have served as a deterrent for wide-scale global conflict.

  

  China’s DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles are seen during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

  “The conversation undermined U.S. military credibility and capability by undermining the deterrent effect of U.S. firepower, both conventional and nuclear, that provides for the security of the nation,” he said.

  According to Lippold, it is unconscionable for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to speak about U.S. military readiness with the top military officer of another nuclear-capable nation, particularly “one that has expansive goals in mind, both regionally and globally.”

  The Chinese regime, Lippold said, is “going out of their way to modernize their nuclear triad across the board,” which includes the building up of land-based intercontinental ballistic missile, submarine-launched ballistic missile, and strategic bomber capability.

  Lippold called for a thorough accounting of the precise words of Milley’s conversations.

  “These types of phone calls are usually very tightly controlled, so there must be an investigation initiated by Congress to get a full accounting of exactly what was said during the course of the conversation,” he said.

  “If he intimated or indicated to the head of the PLA what the United States actions or intents might be,” Lippold said, “that would prove to be a very dangerous road to tread down.”

  This would amount to a “huge breach of trust,” indicating that Milley is not fit to serve in his role as the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and president, Lippold said. If this is found to be the case, then Milley should have the “moral integrity to lay his stars on the table” and resign, he added.

  Accountability

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which Milley chairs, said in a statement last week that Milley regularly talks with counterparts around the world, including counterparts in China and Russia.

  “His calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with these duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” a spokesman for the group said.

  “All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense and the interagency.”

  Trump and other former White House and Defense officials, however, have said they were not informed of the calls.

  “The fact that the acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller was not informed of the call—nor was his staff—indicates that the general had an agenda behind this phone call that was purposefully designed to mislead, or flat out not inform, the chain-of-command of what he was doing and thinking,” Lippold said.

  For Milley not to inform his superiors of the calls was “out of the norm” and “completely unprecedented,” according to Lippold. “His chain-of-command should have known everything about these calls—when they were going to be made, what was going to be discussed, and how he was going to frame his words.”

  Lippold believes that Milley is “banking on the fact that the American people and Congress do not understand how these types of conversations are conducted.”

  “Milley should not be able to have these conversations, couch them in the way he did, calling them ‘perfectly within the duties and responsibilities’ of his job, and get away with it,” he added.

  Maginnis said, “If this entire series of events hold true, it is arguably the closest the United States has come to a military coup—and elected leaders must not rest until the country gets answers and all those involved are held to account.”

  Milley is expected to appear before a Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 28 to speak about Afghanistan, but it is expected he will be forced to field questions under oath about the reports from the book.

  “Nothing can be more important than knowing whether or not a top military official committed treason and tried to take control of America’s nuclear arsenal from the former president of the United States,” Maginnis said.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 22:45

• Apple Begins To Research Whether iPhones Can Detect Mental Health Issues
  Apple Begins To Research Whether iPhones Can Detect Mental Health Issues

  Despite its marketing promise of privacy, Apple has become more creepy over the decade in the amount of data it collects from users. Some of that data includes location information, usage time, health data, and transaction data, among others. The company uses the data for targeted advertising.

  According to a WSJ, it wants to repurpose the data and determine if users are depressed, anxious, or experiencing a cognitive decline.

  Citing internal Apple documents and people familiar with the matter, WSJ said Apple is working with scientists to collect users’ health data that can easily be extracted from iPhone and other Apple devices that could one day warn if users are at risk of mental health problems. 

  

  The research is part of a new study with Apple and Biogen and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), announced earlier this year. Apple’s research with Biogen concentrates on cognitive deterioration while UCLA examines users for signs of stress, anxiety, and depression.

  UCLA researchers use an iPhone’s camera, microphone, keyboard, and Apple Watch to collect data on users. Citing documents and their sources, the researchers monitor heart and breathing rates, sleep patterns, how fast someone walks, and how users speak. They also measure the speed and frequency of typos. 

  During the study, users will fill out surveys about their current mental state, and researchers will measure stress hormones. 

  As for the Biogen and Apple study that will track the cognitive function of users, the study will include 20,000 people and last two years. The first of the research trials began Monday.

  While Apple’s intentions appear to be good and could help a lot of people who don’t realize they’re depressed or experiencing neurological decline, there’s always the risk that a “Minority Report” like detection system could be created that could alert authorities about unstable people and their risk of committing a crime. 

  Red flags are being raised as the company’s commitment to privacy has vanished as it plans to work with the government to scan iPhones for child pornography. 

  Besides privacy issues, there’s other research that suggests smartphone use coincides with increase mental health issues. It seems like researchers may have to rethink their trials for accurate results.  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 22:25

• Woke Was At Its Worst Last Week In Cook County
  Woke Was At Its Worst Last Week In Cook County

  Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

  Everything in Cook County government will be judged on “equity,” we learned last week. Everything.

  

  That’s what Toni Preckwinkle, president of the county’s board, said in a Chicago Tribune op-ed that kicked off the county’s Racial Equity Week.

  “We have encouraged our staff to use a racial equity lens with every policy and program,” she wrote. The op-ed and other materials released over the week linked to over a hundred pages of policy documents related thereto.

  What does equity mean? It includes equal treatment of everybody regardless of ability and regardless of, well, whatever – any “other characteristics.” Here’s the definition from their Racial Equity Policy Statement:

  Equity means full inclusion of all residents in the economic, social and political life of Cook County, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, age, ability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, neighborhood of residence or other characteristics. [Emphasis added.]

  Now, it would be unfair to label the whole week’s messaging as being that vague because it was in fact a clear, full-on endorsement of the worst of Critical Race Theory, or call it whatever you want – wokism, antiracism, white rage or something else.

  That includes the assault on merit and ability, as reflected in the definition above. It includes contempt for America for its supposed systemic racism. From Preckwinkle’s op-ed:

  We put these policies into place today because for centuries, racist government policies have ensured that huge swaths of our population did not have such access. These policies deliberately created a world that was not equal. In America, the playing field has never been level. If you are a woman, if you are Black, if you are Latinx, if you have a disability, if you speak another language, if you were born in another country — in other words, if you are most of the population of Cook County — the playing field has never been level.

  It’s as if affirmative action hasn’t been what’s truly systemic in America for over 50 years. It’s as if there aren’t any whites who aren’t just as disadvantaged as many minorities, such as white kids living in poverty with a single, crack-addicted parent, stuck in underperforming schools like so many in Cook County County. It’s as if there aren’t any minority members who are now in their second or third generation with middle or upper incomes who aren’t disadvantaged at all.

  Among the tragedies of that kind of mindset is the disincentive it creates for whites to go into public service. Suppose you’re deciding where to go after receiving a degree in public management or something requiring government contracts. If you’re a straight, white mail your chances of being hired and promoted fairly, or of being treated fairly when bidding for a government contract, are about as good as they would be for becoming a tenured professor at most universities – nearly zero.

  The documents released over the course of the week include the predictable, such as “mandatory equity and inclusion training” for county workers and extension of all benefits to illegal immigrants. They expressly say that equality of results, not equality of opportunity is the goal:

  “Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares,” says the Racial Equity Policy statement.

  Also predictably, the materials distributed during the week brim with the usual social justice jargon, meaningless platitudes and righteous buzzwords.

  Preckwinkle, for example, started her op-ed by telling us, “First, we must imagine what an equitable world looks like. Think about that for a moment,” she wrote.

  “For many of us, that can be difficult to imagine, because we know this work takes time — this future might not happen in the next 10 years. Or 20.”

  But we must go further, Preckwinkle teaches us.

  “Once we have imagined that world, we must think ‘intersectionally’ to create it.”

  “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “We have to think about who is affected by the work that we do.”

  Insightful, no?

  You can find dozens of pages with wisdom like that in the Racial Equity Policy statement, the Racial Equity Action Plan, the Five-Year Strategic Plan and several press releases, all of which were distributed over the course of last week. Presumably, they were prepared under the direction of the county’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, Denise Wilmer Baretto. Her LinkedIn profile describes her as a “Relationship Revolutionist, Intersectional Storyteller.”

  If you can’t follow the jargon, maybe the charts in the county’s materials will help. This “road map” summarizes the five-year plan.

  

  Maybe it’s just me, but I have some concerns about the design of that road.

  Keep in mind that Preckwinkle earlier this year wrote another op-ed, published nationally, touting the benefits of money-for-nothing in the form of a no-questions-asked cash assistance program run by the county. We wrote about that here. She sees the program as pilot for some form of UBI program – universal basic income.

  “Sustainability,” naturally, is another central policy goal discussed in last week’s documents. It’s mostly about environmental matters.

  Nice term, but it should be about more than the environment: Cook County is not sustainable on the path it is on.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 22:05

• Police Bust Gang Members With Car Trunk "Full Of KFC" Takeout Breaching 'Strict Lockdown'
  Police Bust Gang Members With Car Trunk “Full Of KFC” Takeout Breaching ‘Strict Lockdown’

  Like it’s much bigger Pacific neighbor Australia, New Zealand has recently seen a return to imposition of the some of the strictest pandemic lockdown measures on the planet. Australia, for example, has seen instances of police harassing and arresting people at quiet public parks, or even searching packages to ensure citizens’ “quota” of allowable alcohol is not being violated while in quarantine. 

  Seemingly endless absurd stories of brazen government overreach are coming out of the two countries under lockdown, even with relatively low infection numbers compared to more hard-hit countries like the United States. The latest out of New Zealand suggests that even gang members and criminals are now turning to things like “smuggling” fast food and taking risks to merely enjoy simple freedoms, according to CNN:

  Two alleged gang associates found with a car trunk “full of KFC” takeout were arrested as they tried to enter New Zealand’s largest city on Sunday in breach of strict coronavirus lockdown rules, according to police.

  

  It happened in the large metropolitan city of Auckland, which is currently under what the government is calling ‘Alert Level 4’ lockdown, which is the most far-reaching in the country. It requires residents to stay at home most of the time, with all ‘non essential’ services closed including bars, restaurants, gyms and even food takeout services. Essentially people can’t even order food to go.

  After nearly five weeks of Auckland in the strictest lockdown possible, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the restrictions are about to be lifted. Much of the rest of the country is at Level 2 – which means things like restaurants have remained open.

  Hence the absurdity of “gang members” now focusing their criminal enterprise on smuggling restaurant food from Level 2 areas into Level 4 zones to make some quick cash, apparently. More details of the offense are in CNN as follows:

  Police were patrolling back roads near the outskirts of Auckland when they noticed a suspicious looking vehicle, a New Zealand Police spokesperson said in a statement Monday.

  Upon seeing the officers, the vehicle did a U-turn and sped off before eventually pulling over, the statement said. When the car was searched, police found a large quantity of KFC, more than NZ$100,000 ($70,000) in cash, and “empty ounce bags.”

  And here was the offense that exposed the criminal conspiracy: “Police photos show at least three buckets of chicken, about 10 cups of coleslaw, a large package of fries, and four large bags containing other KFC items.”

  “An undisclosed quantity of fries”https://t.co/ssMIIcixQ6

  — James Shaw (@JGBS) September 21, 2021

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

  It’s not The Onion, but police were literally photographing a “crime scene” of buckets of Colonel Sanders’ finger lickin’ good extra crispy. This is the dystopian Black Mirror style bizarro world that NZ “health authorities” have erected and appear to even be boasting about – police are cracking down on alleged gang members and criminals driving back roads at night to make “illegal” chicken deliveries to deprived citizens in lockdown.

  The two men, which press reports identified as a 23 and 30-year-old, face multiple charges under the country’s “Covid-19 Public Health Response Act” including up to six months in jail and a fine equivalent to almost $3,000.

  

  According to the BBC, police in Auckland recently arrested a man seen in a social media video leaving the quarantined city to purchase large quantities of McDonald’s meals just outside the lockdown zone. BCC noted of this latest KFC incident that is part of a trend of people with cravings increasingly making “risky late night food runs” despite facing prosecution under Covid laws.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 21:45

• Offshore Creditors Remain In Limbo As Evergrande Agrees To Pay Thursday's Interest On Local Bonds Only
  Offshore Creditors Remain In Limbo As Evergrande Agrees To Pay Thursday’s Interest On Local Bonds Only

  Update (1015ET): US futures are giving back their kneejerk gains as the penny starts to drop that this is not the euphoric ‘all clear’ after all.

  As we detailed below – and traders are starting to realize –  Beijing may have just found a brilliant solution to the Evergrande problem, effectively rescuing the company and averting a systemic crisis all at the same time:

  • it will pay local bondholders and soft nationalize/bailout Evergrande,

  • but will avoid allegations of backsliding on tightening/deleveraging promises and improving “common prosperity” by stuffing foreign creditors.

  And that is not what the market wants to hear…

  

  Chinese stocks are fading back too (after reopening from the holiday)…

  

  The question is – will Beijing use this as a strawman to judge the impact of such a restructuring strategy? And what will be the impact on the foreign dollar bond market after this?

  We suspect Larry Fink wishes he had listened to George Soros now.

  *  *  *

  US equity futures markets and cryptos are surging higher as headlines from China that Evergrande Onshore Property Unit – Hengda Real Estate – would pay the bond coupon on Thursday September 23rd. This headline sparked panic buying in futures…

  

  And bitcoin spiked too…

  

  But the buy first, think later mantra may be in full play here as shortly after the first flashing red headline, Bloomberg reported that the September 23rd yuan coupon payment on local, yuan-bonds had been negotiated with bondholders (without clarifying the terms of the arrangement) but it was unclear what the fate of the upcoming Offshore bond coupon payment is.

  Morgan Stanley had previously suggested this plan of action, forecasting that Beijing may initiate a managed debt restructuring of “a troubled property developer” in the coming week, followed by policy easing in October to contain spillover to the broader economy.

  The world’s most indebted developer is supposed to pay bond interest totaling about $119.5 million on Thursday. Interest comes due Thursday on two Evergrande notes, even as it falls behind on payments to banks, suppliers and holders of onshore investment products:

  • There’s $83.5 million of interest due that day on an 8.25%, five-year dollar bond – i.e., EVERRE. Any missed payment would have a 30-day period before it’s considered a default, according to the bond covenants. So far we don’t know what the fate of this particular payment is.
  • But Evergrande also needs to pay a 232 million yuan ($36 million) coupon on an onshore note – i.e., EVERCN- the same day – this is the note in question whose interest is being paid.

  In other words, Evergrande’s onshore property unit, Hengda Real Estate, will make interest payment for its 5.8% 2025 bond Thursday, according to exchange filing, while the 8.25% offshore, dollar-denominated bond remains in limbo.

  

  Or shown via the company’s org chart, the TIANHL coupon payment is being made by the onshore unit Hengda Real Estate, so as to preserve the Keepwell agreement, while the EVERRE bonds, issued by China Evergrande Offshore, remain in limbo.

  

  So, to repeat, Evergrande has managed to negotiate the coupon payment of the onshore note – though we do not know what kind of haircut was applied if any – but more improtantly, we do not know about the coupon on the dollar bond. Also remember this comes after the firm missed interest payments due Monday to at least two of its largest bank creditors.

  But that wasn’t all: in a show of monetary forice, PBOC boosted its daily liquidity injection to 120 billion yuan – the biggest liquidity injection since January – and follows two 100 billion injections.

  

  “The PBOC kept its net injection against a possible market plunge,” said Zhaopeng Xing, senior China strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.

  “This will soothe the tightness and keep liquidity loose. Next week will see big fiscal spending flows, which will solve the quarter-end liquidity issue.”

  So the question is did Xi just convince Evergrande and its domestic creditors to work out a solution, in effect restructuring the company’s domestic bonds, and will the Evergrande plan leave foreign/dollar bondholders (and bank debtholders) in the hole while the domestic bonds are made whole?

  More importantly, Beijing may have just found a brilliant solution to the Evergrande problem, effectively rescuing the company and averting a systemic crisis all at the same time: it will pay local bondholders and soft nationalize/bailout Evergrande, but will avoid allegations of backsliding on tightening/deleveraging promises and and “common prosperity” by stuffing foreign creditors.

  For those confused, here is an explainer we published previously using data from Goldman on the difference between the offshore (EVERRE) and onshore (TIANHL) bonds:

  EVERRE bonds recovery prospects

  Assessing holding company level indebtedness. The $14.0bn of EVERRE offshore bonds are issued by the parent company, with a number of offshore subsidiaries acting as guarantors (see org chart above). Therefore, to assess the potential recovery, one needs to assess the amount of indebtedness at the parent company level and the value of the parent companys investments. Alas, as Goldman notes, that cannot be accurately ascertained, as Evergrande provides financial results on a consolidated basis, with the most recent financial results from June 2021. However, we are able to obtain financial results from a number of their consolidated subsidiary companies, including Hengda Real Estate (the 59.4% owned onshore property development company, which is also their main operating entity) and two of their listed consolidated subsidiaries (China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle and Evergrande Property Services Group). This allows us to map out the distribution of Evergrandes total debt, which totaled RMB 571.8bn ($88.6bn) at the end of June 2021.

  Assuming potential $21.5bn of debt at the holdco level. Exhibit 2 provides an estimated breakdown of Evergrandes total debt. In additional to the $14.0bn of EVERRE bonds, there is an RMB 8.2bn ($1.3bn) onshore bond issued by Hengda Real Estate (EVERCN 6.98% 8 Jul 2022) that has a repurchase agreement by the parent company. The rest of the indebtedness can be attributed to the various subsidiary companies, with the exception for an amount totaling $6.2bn of debts, which we term Other debts. If we conservatively assume that the $6.2bn of other debts and the RMB 8.2bn onshore bond are both parent company level debts, we arrive at a potential total amount of indebtedness at the parent company level at $21.5bn. Note that we do not assume any of the Hengda bank and trust loans have guarantees by the parent company. Based on Hengda Real Estates latest financial report, it does not state any of their indebtedness as guaranteed by the parent company.

  

  Lots of unknowns, therefore caution is warranted. Given the complexity of Evergrande Group, and the lack of sufficient information on the companys assets and liabilities, it is difficult to ascertain a more precise picture of the recovery prospects. On the positive side, there are other assets that could provide additional value, and the chart below provides a basic breakdown of the assets of China Evergrande Group and their major consolidated subsidiaries. On the negative side, there is the all too realistic possibility of additional liabilities we have not incorporated, such as off balance sheet items. For example, on a fully consolidated basis, the company has provided financial guarantees (excluding mortgage facilities) totaling RMB 29.5 at the end of 2020, of which RMB 23.7 were provided by Hengda Real Estate. This suggests there could potentially be guarantees provided at the parent company level. All in all, given the uncertainties, much caution is warranted.

  

  TIANHL bond recovery depends on Hendga Real Estate operations... One aspect of the recovery prospects for the $5.2bn of TIANHL bonds outstanding is the strength of the operations of Hengda Real Estate. In terms of book leverage (i.e., total debt divided by total debt plus book equity), Hengda Real Estate was at 56.0% at the end of June 2021, which is near the median level for China Property HY issuers. That said, the balance sheet is likely far more levered than indicated by the book leverage. The chart below lays out the balance sheet for Hengda Real Estate at the end of June 2021, and it indicates the company having RMB 755.9bn of trade payables and other current liabilities, rising from RMB 651.7bn at the end of December 2020. That tightness in onshore liquidity and in the credit markets meant that the company may have had to extend payment terms to their suppliers. Therefore, if one incorporates part of the payables as debt, the book leverage would increase substantially. For example, if 100% of the trade payables and other current liabilities are incorporated as debt, the book leverage would increase to 77.8%, and if 50% are included then it would rise to 70.5%.

  

  …as well as the strength of the keepwell agreement. In addition to the uncertainties surrounding the leverage at Hengda Real Estate, there are uncertainties regarding the structure of the TIANHL bonds. As shown in the org chart above, the TIANHL bonds are issued by an offshore special purpose vehicle (SPV), with credit support from a keepwell agreement and equity interest purchase undertaking (EIPU) from Hengda Real Estate. Yes, when analysts figure out that they’ve put their money into yet another Chinese SPV, their heads will spin come Monday when they actually start reading this stuff. The strength of the keepwell and EIPU structure is unclear, and in our previous report, we assumed recovery prospects for keepwell structure bonds to be 50% below that for senior unsecured debt of the same entity.

  Much will depend on the debt structure for Hengda. At the end of June 2021, Hengda Real Estate had RMB 405.5bn ($62.8bn) of debt outstanding, of which RMB 270.8bn ($42.0bn), or 66.8% of the debts, are secured borrowings (Exhibit 6). Another RMB 39.3bn of debts are guaranteed debt, which are debts that have guarantees provided by Hengda Real Estate, its subsidiary companies, or third parties, according to their latest financial results. The remainder consists of unsecured borrowings (RMB 10.9bn), onshore bonds (RMB 50.9bn) and offshore bonds (RMB 33.6bn). The company has also provided guarantees, possibly to non-consolidated subsidiary companies and to suppliers, which was RMB 31.8bn at the end of Jun 2021

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 21:33

• JPMorgan Makes An Unexpected Discovery: Delta Variant Only "Half As Infectious As Assumed"
  JPMorgan Makes An Unexpected Discovery: Delta Variant Only “Half As Infectious As Assumed”

  Now that the Delta variant in the US has peaked in terms of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, media fearmongering surrounding the latest round of the covid pandemic has understandably been quietly pulled from the front pages at least until such time the mu variant, or some other virulent strain du jour, makes a triumphant appearance and Fauci is again trotted across the mainstream media to distill a fresh round of fear and set the scene for a new round of restrictions and lockdowns, a cycle that will repeat at least until the mid-term elections which predictably will have to be conducted largely by mail.

  But while we wait, we wanted to bring attention to a remarkable new analysis from JPMorgan which found that contrary to developed nations, many of which imposed draconian lockdowns, most notably Australia…

  

  … developing nations saw a Delta wave that was “much milder” than anticipated. JPM’s discussion and conclusions as to why this may have happened are striking.

  Taking a step back, over two months ago in early July, JPMorgan wrote a note about EM vulnerabilities to the COVID-19 Delta variant in which it drew attention to seven countries – the Philippines, Peru, Columbia, South Africa, Ecuador, Thailand and Mexico – which at the time looked particularly vulnerable due to a combination of low prevalence of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.

  Given the widely accepted assumption that the Delta variant is much more infectious than prior strains of SARS-CoV-2, and given the prevailing trends in vaccination rates, JPMorgan then estimated that the spread of the Delta variant would push up the effective reproduction numbers (Re) significantly in these countries.

  JPMorgan’s concern was that these seven countries would see significant gains in COVID-19 infections which would prompt further restrictive measures on mobility and mixing in some countries (EM Asia) or lead to worsening in public health and confidence in others (Latin America): “we thought that Re in the Philippines would rise from 0.92 to 1.97 as the Delta variant became fully prevalent. At an Re of 0.92 new infections are falling, while at an Re of 1.97 new infections are doubling every six to seven days.”

  What happened next was unexpected: JPMorgan policy research analyst David Mackie found that “the Delta wave was much milder than expected: none of these countries saw the gains in Re that we anticipated.”

  This brings us to the latest note from JPM titled “What happened to the COVID-19 Delta wave in vulnerable EM countries?” in which the bank tries to explain just why it was so wrong with its modeling and assumptions.

  The bank starts off by showing the evolution of the reproductive numbers (Re) over the past couple of months for these seven countries. While Re did initially rise over the summer as the Delta variant spread, which led to an increase in infections, it was not by as much as expected.

  While on average, Re was expected to rise by 0.58 from the end of June to the time when the Delta variant was fully prevalent (from 1.07 to 1.65), the average rise was only by 0.24 (from 1.07 to 1.31); in other words, around half of the expected gain in Re did not occur.

  

  “How can we explain this shortfall?” JPMorgan’s Mackie asks, and answers: There are five areas which could contribute to an explanation: mobility; vaccinations; acquired immunity from infection and recovery, seasonality and the infectiousness of the Delta variant.

  Starting at the top, JPMorgan points out the obvious: mobility cannot explain the lower than expected Re. Mobility did decline sharply in July in the Philippines, South Africa and Thailand, but these declines were mostly reversed during August. “The short-lived nature of the decline in mobility in these countries implies only a temporary depressing effect on Re” JPM observes and adds that on average across the seven countries, higher mobility contributed 0.16 to the change in Re from the time of our original note to the moment that the Delta variant reached full prevalence.

  Another possible explanation for the far more moderate-than-expected rise in Re – the preferred explanation of Anthony Fauci – is that actual infections have been much higher than reported infections, which would have introduced more immunity into the populations. This is notable because as JPMorgan then notes, in its analysis the bank takes reported infections and assume that acquired immunity from infection and recovery is the same as from full vaccination. This assumption would make the Biden admin, which sternly refuses to discuss the impact of natural immunity and is desperately trying to force jabs on everyone, quite displeased. Yet this too is hardly the full story: according to JPMorgan, with these assumptions acquired immunity from infection and recovery has pushed down Re by just 0.02, and means that aAlthough actual infections are likely above reported infections, the under-reporting would have to be very large to make the contribution to the change in Re significant in size. That is unlikely.

  The most likely, and most politically problematic explanation, proposed by JPMorgan is that “the Delta variant may be less infectious than initially assumed.”

  As JPM explains, the impact of infectiousness comes through changes in the basic reproduction number (R0). In the bank’s framework, on a forward looking basis it makes assumptions about the level of R0, but on a backward looking basis R0 is the residual given the path of Re is already known. In the bank’s original, July  note, it had assumed an R0 of 3.0 for the original wild strain of SARS-CoV-2, 3.9 for the Alpha variant (an increase in infectiousness of 30%) and 5.2 for the Delta variant (a further increase in infectiousness of 33%), in line with what the accepted “science” claimed was reasonable. As JPM further notes, assuming that the Alpha variant was the previously dominant strain, the spread of the Delta variant should have added 1.3 to Re as it moved from zero to full prevalence. But in the event, the implied increase in R0 over the past couple of months has been much less than expected.

  Table 3 compares JPM’s original expectation of the contribution of R0 to the change in Re with its latest estimate of the contribution. On average, the bank finds that “the estimate of the contribution to the change in Re of increased infectiousness of the Delta variant has been 0.56, around half of our initial estimate.“

  

  What does this mean? Simple: as Mackie explains, “it is very possible that the Delta variant is around half as infectious as initially assumed.” While this – JPM exclaims optimistically – would be very positive going forward, and would limit any increase in infections in the coming months, it would be devastating for such institutions as the NIH, not to mention Biden’s chief covid advisor, Fauci, whose entire argument since the start is that the delta variant was far more infectious than any of the previous covid variants; it would also once again make a mockery of “the science” which had fully supported the theory that Delta had a far greater infectiousness.

  Of course by even getting this far, the JPMorgan analyst may have broken most of the most cardinal of taboos of delta variant discussion in “polite society”, so we are not surprised that he did not even dare breathe the word “ivermectin” and its use in Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Ecuador, Thailand and Mexico.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 21:25

• House Passes Debt-Limit, Government Spending Bill, Sends It To A Senate Showdown
  House Passes Debt-Limit, Government Spending Bill, Sends It To A Senate Showdown

  As expected, in a surprisingly close, 220-211 vote, the Democratic-controlled House passed a bill that would suspend the U.S. debt ceiling into December 2022 and provide the government funding to operate past Sept, 30 if it passes the Senate which it most likely won’t because Senate Republicans, even RINOs such as Mitt Romney, have vowed to block it over the debt limit provision which Democrats purposefully included in the provision.

  House approves bill to avert government shutdown/suspend debt limit. The vote was 220-211. Party line vote.

  — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 22, 2021

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

  The political standoff raises the chances of twin fiscal disasters — a government shutdown and a default — that could have devastating consequences for Wall Street and the broader American economy.

  It’s not yet clear what Democrats’ plan B would be if the effort to avert a shutdown and suspend the debt limit runs aground in the Senate, as it appears is on track to happen.

  If Machin sides with Senate Republicans to block the stop-gap funding measure over the debt limit, there could still be enough time to strip the debt limit measure out and pass a stand-alone spending bill to avoid a shutdown. But the vote would take place perilously close to the shutdown deadline – the drop dead date is sometime in mid/late October – and would likely require cooperation on both sides to process a quick Senate vote. It also would leave the debt ceiling problem unresolved, setting up yet another flashpoint issue to be dealt with by Congress in the weeks to come.

  

  And just to assure that the bill in its current format will not get the support of republicans, moments after the House vote, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Senator Richard Shelby introduced a new stopgap measure that keeps the U.S. government funded through Dec. 3 but does not suspend or increase the debt limit.  The Senate bill includes funding for disaster aid, assistance for Afghan allies and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, a provision which was struck from the Democrats’ bill to obtain support of progressive democrats.

  Earlier on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer left the door open on what measures the House would take if the Senate is not able to pass what the House sends over before the government runs out of funding next week.

  “We want to send it over to the Senate, and give the Senate an opportunity to consider it, figure out what they’re going to do and they may send it back to us, at which point in time we will have to make a determination, but we want to pass that bill,” he said.

  Meanwhile, as reported earlier, the current standoff in Congress makes a government shutdown and a debt ceiling breach increasingly likely according to Goldman, which said in a note published overnight that while “a shutdown October 1 is not the base case, in our view, because there is a fair chance that Democrats will shift strategy before the deadline. However, the longer Congress remains on this course, the more likely a shutdown becomes.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 21:19

• Evergrande's Impact On The Broader Junk Bond Market
  Evergrande’s Impact On The Broader Junk Bond Market

  Ahead of China’s reopening on Wednesday after a two-day holiday which has seen property stocks traded in Hong Kong tumble on fears that the Evergrande default will spark contagion both domestically and internationally, investors are closely watching what – if anything – Beijing will announce to ease investor nerves (they are also watching the first People’s Bank of China policy operation since the country’s holiday break). Meanwhile, international investors are just as closely tracking developments in China bond markets, not just the High Yield market where yields have soared to the highest level in 10 years, but also the investment grade sector, which is where the country’s banks reside. The good news here is that so far China’s IG market has barely budged, and as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid notes, “if  Chinese IG doesn’t care, the world shouldn’t. However, if that starts to widen we know the impact is starting to spread. Definitely one to watch.”

  

  And while traders wait to see if new developments impact China’s IG market, Deutsche Bank has released a detailed look at how Evergrande could impact the broader high yield market, where it is a dominant player, with estimates of Evergrande’s bonds ranging anywhere between 10% and 16% of total market size…

  

  Or, as Deutsche Bank puts it, “Evergrande is the largest corporate in the largest sector of the second-largest economy in the world” and as such the fact that this crisis has become a much wider global macro story shouldn’t be a surprise. To this end, in his note published this morning DB’s Craig Nicol seeks to answer some of the questions posed by investors in recent days, including scale and scope of contagion within HY, exposure to China risk within indices, and the ultimate end game.

  Starting with the topic of contagion, the first question to ask is why have we not seen any wider scale contagion within HY or even China $IG?

  As detailed in the chart below, which shows cumulative year-to-date total returns across HY markets as well as China $HY and $IG markets, the obvious point to make is that, while we’ve seen a significant decline in performance in China $HY, the wider impact on credit markets has been negligible. China $HY has seen YTD performance of nearly -18% which compares to returns of +3% to +5% across
  broader HY markets and +1% for China $IG.

  

  The next two charts show the scale of the spread moves for context. The first two charts focus on the China $ markets only.

  As we have observed recently, China’s dollar HY market has seen spreads widen back to the pandemic wides of last year at ~1600bps – and clearly very distressed levels – and recently even rose to decade wides from 2011. Spreads are 326bps wider MTD alone. In contrast, and as noted above although yesterday was the first real weak day for China $IG, spreads are only 7bps wider MTD and 10bps tighter versus the end of Q2. The chart with spreads tracked back to 2010 on the right hand side shows that there has been a clear dislocation between China $ IG and HY risk in recent weeks as the Evergrande situation has developed compared to what has historically been a tight correlation between the two markets.

  

  Chart 3 shows spreads for $HY and €HY only. Spreads were notably wider yesterday, particularly in $HY, however in the context of YTD spread performance we are still near the tights not only this year but also historically over the last decade. Most importantly, China $HY spreads have been widening for the best part of 4 months now but in that time we’ve seen $HY and €HY trade in a narrow range at historically tight levels with all-time low volatility. So, as Nicol notes, “whilst yesterday’s price action was eye-catching the broader spread moves since China $HY started widening aggressively has been anything but that. So, contagion has been incredibly limited and virtually non-existent so far at least.”

  

  One reason for the lack of contagion within the bond market is the relatively low exposure: according to DB, global HY has only 5% exposure to China, while €HY less than 1% and $HY no exposure, and as Nicol notes, “the fact that we’ve seen spreads remain so resolute in $HY and €HY in the face of China weakness is supported by the lack of direct China risk. In Figure 4, we show the breakdown of the main ICE HY indices with a focus on China country of risk and also Asia and broader EM exposure.”

  

  As shown above, given that $HY is a DM-only index, there is no exposure to corporates with a China country of risk whatsoever whilst €HY has minimal exposure at just 0.3% of the index notional spread across 2 issuers. Where there is greater exposure is within global HY funds where around ~5% of the index is directly China country of risk (excluded here are issuers that don’t have a China country of risk but may have significant revenue, earnings or even asset exposure to China. This will be more significant but requires more of a subjective overlay.)

  DB has also included distress ratios as an additional information point across all markets. Distress ratios are at historically low levels across HY markets (to be expected in a world that has injected $40 trillion in liquidity since Covid); however, unsurprisingly for China $HY, the distress ratio is alarmingly high at over 57%, although one should highlight that this is very much a real estate story.

  According to DB calculations, China’s real estate sector comprises over 80% of China $HY and has a distress ratio of 69%. In contrast, all other sectors combined have a distress ratio of just 6% and only just above that of the wider global HY market. This is further evidence that the contagion has been incredibly limited so far with China HY real estate really the only sector under any kind of distress, although when one considers the outsized impact of China real estate on China’s economy – 30% of GDP and 70% of household wealth are tied up in property – this should not be discounted.

  Uncertainty is high, contagion risks should not be discounted.

  While one could be tempted to discount the risk of contagion, Deutsche Bank cautions that “the sheer scale and complexity of Evergrande and the potential for contagion in a sector like real estate that provides core collateral for financial intermediation and complex webs and interlinkages between institutions rightly means markets are sensitive about the potential fallout.” Indeed, in recent days, the scale of concern has even ignited debate about Evergrande being “China’s Lehman” moment.

  That said, to counter some of the more extreme concerns, DB notes that the first important point to make is that the Evergrande situation has not happened overnight and it is a story that has been developing for some time now. Indeed, the $ bonds have been in what is a relatively steady decline since the end of May now as opposed to crashing in a matter of days (as was the case with Lehman, although there the stock did collapse heading into Sept 15, 2008). So, as Deutsche notes, “investors have had some time to digest the potential knock-on risks, price the risks and consider the wider ramifications for more domestic markets and sectors. That is considerably different to the global financial crisis over a decade ago where broader markets ultimately were unable to reprice quickly enough” (or rather they simply refused to accept the Lehman bankruptcy as a viable outcome until the actual bankruptcy filing itself).

  The second point is that we have seen little to no fallout beyond the real estate sector in China HY. As stated earlier, the non-real estate distress ratio in China $HY is just 6% and only slightly above broader global HY while there is no stress at all in China $IG. The latter is the next market to watch especially given exposure to banks, however here DB argues that a combination of stronger balance sheets and a level of state or local government backing does somewhat mitigate the risks.

  The third point and, where there appears to be some level of consensus, is that a wide-scale systemic issue is unlikely. Historically, there has been some level of belief that China’s government would not let a financial shock event unfold especially before contagion. However, as many have noted in recent weeks, it is not nearly as clear how much of a China “policy put” exists to support sectors, unless contagion gets much worse. This is especially the case given policy makers’ greater focus on reducing moral hazard. Ultimately, authorities have the tools to contain this, are incentivised to prevent this becoming a wider systemic issue and will likely prevent this being systemic, especially if market turmoil gets worse. If nothing else, the argument goes, problems have been too obvious for too long and the Evergrande shock is mostly policy-induced so all things equal policy makers should be more in control than a decade ago. While this may come via a managed restructuring of Evergrande’s debt as opposed to a direct bailout, the bigger unknown is how much longer are authorities willing to tolerate and the likelihood of a policy error going up.

  That all being said, Deutsche ultimately agrees with Goldman that whatever the ultimate timeline is on some level of policy support to prevent this becoming more widespread, it’s hard to argue against there being a further shift lower in growth expectations in China, especially when it comes to the slowdown in the property sector adversely impacting GDP (for those who missed it yesterday, the chart below shows Goldman’s three cases how significantly the property market slowdown will impact China’s GDP).

  

  Here DB’s China economists have also noted that the property sector is now in a cyclical downturn and that if the downturn this time were to follow historical patterns, the trough for property sales will likely be in end-2021 or early 2022. The bank also notes, similarly to Goldman, that previous downturns resulted in a negative impact on real GDP of ~1-2% and closer to ~5% during the GFC.

  As Deutsche Bank concludes, “much depends on contagion knock-on risks to other sectors; however, we should note that this is all coming as China also shifts to living with COVID and potential further waves, and smoothing trade relations with the US.”

  One final point: DB’s chief credit strategist Jim Reid held a flash poll asking clients’ opinion of what Evergrande will mean for global markets in a month had over 700 response in two hours. The result: only 8% felt it would be significantly impacting global financial markets by then with a combined 68% expecting limited or no impact.

  

  Bottom line: markets are fully of the view that contagion is virtually unlikely. Or as Jim Cramer would say, “Evergrande is fine.“

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 21:05

• India Seizes 3 Tons Of Heroin Allegedly Originating From Afghanistan
  India Seizes 3 Tons Of Heroin Allegedly Originating From Afghanistan

  Via Southfront.org,

  On September 21st, Indian officials said they had seized nearly three tonnes of heroin originating from Afghanistan worth an estimated 200 billion rupees ($2.72 billion).

  

  More than 2,988 kg of heroin was recovered in one of India’s biggest such hauls to date.

  According to DRI (Ahmedabad zone) officials, a consignment had been imported by Aashi Trading Company, a Vijaywada-based company, from Iran’s Bandar Abbas Port to Mundra Port. The company had declared the imported consignment as “semi-processed talc stones” which had originated from Afghanistan.

  “Specific intelligence was developed by the DRI that a consignment imported by Aashi Trading Company from Bandar Abbas Port is suspected to contain narcotics. Accordingly, officers of DRI detained the consignment of two containers with the weight of 40 tonnes in total, for examination under the provisions of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The examination was conducted in the presence of experts from the Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Gandhinagar. During the examination, suspected narcotics were recovered from both the containers and after testing, it was confirmed to be heroin. Accordingly, 1999.579 kg was recovered from the first container and 988.64 kg was recovered from the second container,” said a DRI official.

  “Searches have been conducted in Ahmedabad, Gandhidham and Mandvi as well as in Delhi and Chennai. Two persons have been arrested and a number of persons and entities are under investigation. The probe has also revealed the involvement of Afghan nationals. A Bhuj court has granted 10-day custody of the two accused,” said the official.

  Afghanistan is the world’s biggest illicit opiate supplier, but since taking power, the Islamist Taliban have said they plan to ban the drug trade, without giving details on how.

  Just two people had been arrested in connection with the haul and investigations were ongoing, an anonymous official in Gujarat said.

  The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India’s top anti-smuggling agency, seized two containers at western Gujarat’s Mundra Port on September 15th after receiving intelligence they contained narcotics, the official said.

  The containers had been imported by a firm in the southern coastal city of Vijayawada, the official added.

  “Investigation conducted so far has also revealed the involvement of Afghan nationals, who are under investigation.”

  This is entirely based on an anonymous recollection as the DRI refused to provide details.

  The narcotics were headed to Delhi and the two arrested people had sought an import-export licence based on a house address in Vijayawada, police in Vijayawada said in a statement on September 20th.

  The containers had been declared as containing semi-processed talc stones from Afghanistan and had been shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran to Gujarat Mundra port, the anonymous source said, adding that forensic tests confirmed the presence of heroin.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 20:45

• 'Team Transitory' Loses Another One – OECD Warns Of Higher Inflation For Next Two Years
  ‘Team Transitory’ Loses Another One – OECD Warns Of Higher Inflation For Next Two Years

  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its quarterly report Tuesday and warned about increasing inflation risks for the next two years as the growth rate of the economic recovery has stalled.

  “The economic impact of the Delta variant has so far been relatively mild in countries with high vaccination rates, but has lowered near-term momentum elsewhere and added to pressures on global supply chains and costs,” the Paris-based research body wrote, adding that “inflation has risen sharply in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and some emerging-market economies, but remains relatively low in many other advanced economies, particularly in Europe and Asia.” 

  

  The OECD expects price increases in 2021 and 2022 above its previously forecast for G20 countries. 

  Laurence Boone, the OECD chief economist, said taming inflation would be a juggling act for policymakers. 

  “The speed of the recovery has increased inflationary pressures, quickly pushing up prices to where we expected them to be before the pandemic,” the OECD said. “Policymakers in advanced economies should monitor these developments without delay.”

  

  The OECD’s forecast expects G20 inflation at 3.7% in 2021 and 3.9% in 2022. It also expects US inflation pressures to subside next year but be well above 3%. 

  “Inflation is expected to settle at a level above the average rates seen prior to the pandemic,” the OECD said. “This is welcome after many years of below-target inflation outcomes, but it also points to potential risks.” 

  The revised outlook was released ahead of the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference today after the two-day meeting. Investors are eagerly awaiting the Fed’s decision to taper monetary policy. 

  According to the OECD, global growth has lost momentum due to uneven economic growth – in return, this forced the research body to slash the global growth forecast for 2021 to 5.7% from 5.8%.

  “Sizable uncertainty remains,” it said. “Faster progress in vaccine deployment or a sharper rundown of household savings would enhance demand and lower unemployment but also potentially push up near-term inflationary pressures.”

  

  The question we have is if Powell’s “transitory” inflation narrative is falling apart at the seams, as US CEOs warned last week at the annual Morgan Stanley Laguna conference about “unprecedented” inflation becoming “structural.” 

  DoubleLine Founder Jeffrey Gundlach told investors in a webcast last week that he doesn’t believe the history books will say inflation was transitory. 

  The macro backdrop is starting to look like growth rates are decreasing, but inflation is either persistent or rising, an ominous sign of stagflation.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 20:25

• 'Nasser Was Not An Outlier' – Exposing The FBI's Incurable Rot
  ‘Nasser Was Not An Outlier’ – Exposing The FBI’s Incurable Rot

  Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness (emphasis ours),

  The incurable incompetence, corruption, and moral rot of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on full display last week.

  

  Within a 24-hour period, some of America’s toughest female athletes recounted to a Senate committee their painful tales of how the FBI ignored evidence that team doctor Larry Nassar was a sexual predator, and a powerful attorney who colluded with the FBI to concoct one of the most animating chapters of the Trump-Russia collusion fiction was indicted for lying to federal officials.

  Overlap in the two cases is more than ironic, it’s illustrative: Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Perkins Coie, the law firm that was working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, met with the FBI’s general counsel in September 2016 to plant a false story about Donald Trump’s financial ties to a Russian bank. That same month, the Indianapolis Star broke the story of how Nassar, the longtime physician for the USA Gymnastics team, had sexually abused several female gymnasts. One victim filed a lawsuit after the FBI refused to investigate complaints made to at least two FBI field offices in 2015 and 2016.

  But the FBI at that time was too preoccupied with protecting Hillary Clinton to deal with a monster who had systematically raped nearly 300 female American athletes. (As Lee Smith recently noted, the FBI “has been used for a quarter of a century as the place to clean up the Clintons’ dirt.”)

  Months before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI, led by James Comey, used its unchecked authority to sabotage Donald Trump. Meanwhile, elite American athletes, including Olympic gold medalists, could not get the bureau’s attention while a sexual abuser continued his rampage. Local FBI agents passed the buck and allegedly falsified reports; one agent reportedly tried to shake down a USA Gymnastics official for a job with the organization.

  The FBI’s political game-playing came with irreversible human cost. According to an analysis by the New York Times, at least 40 women and girls, including some of the youngest victims, were assaulted by Nassar between July 2015, the first contact with the FBI, and September 2016. Had the Star not published its exposé of Nassar that month, which finally prompted some action by the FBI, who knows how long his depraved predation would have continued?

  “If they’re not going to protect me, I want to know, who are they trying to protect?” McKayla Maroney, a two-time Olympic medalist and one of Nassar’s most frequent victims, asked the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 15.

  Maroney may or may not be surprised to learn the agency assigned with protecting the most vulnerable is actually in the business of protecting the most powerful.

  Nasser Was Not an Outlier

  FBI Director Christopher Wray, hired by President Trump in 2017, publicly apologized. The “fundamental errors” made in the Nassar case, Wray told the judiciary committee, would not happen again as long as he’s head of the agency. “I want to make sure the American people know that the reprehensible conduct . . . is not representative of the work that I see from our 37,000 folks every day.” The rank-and-file, Wray insisted, perform their jobs with “uncompromising integrity.”

  But Wray is wrong to claim that the Nassar case is an outlier. From the top of the command chain down, the FBI has trashed its reputation through a series of scandals. It’s not just the alarming texts between spousal cheats Peter Strzok and Lisa Page; the ambush of Lt. General Michael Flynn in the White House; Comey’s use of the shady Steele dossier to set up Donald Trump; or Andrew McCabe’s lies to his own FBI investigators.

  It’s not just the other set of “errors”—17 to be exact—found in the FBI’s four unlawful FISA applications on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Or the official email doctored by a top FBI lawyer cited as evidence on one of the applications. Or the fact that no one in the agency has gone to jail for perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in history on the American people.

  As seen in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, lowlifes populate the FBI’s rank-and-file. Richard Trask, the special agent in charge of the investigation, was arrested in July for physically assaulting and choking his wife after attending a swinger’s party. Trask was fired this month; he faces numerous criminal charges. Prosecutors decided not to use Trask as a witness after his social media account revealed numerous anti-Trump posts, including calling the president a “piece of shit.”

  Defense attorneys in the Whitmer case asked the judge to delay trial for 90 days as they investigate the conduct of at least a dozen other FBI agents involved in the conspiracy. The FBI gave one informant $24,000 and a new car for his services.

  Wray brags that every FBI field office is participating in the Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the breach of the Capitol. But reports of how his agents have handled more than 600 arrests do little to support Wray’s assurances of professional “integrity.” Defendants have been subjected to pre-dawn raids conducted by dozens of armed agents using military-style vehicles. I spoke with the spouse of one defendant who told me agents interrogated her about what cable news channel she watched, her views on illegal immigrantion, and who she voted for in 2020.

  The FBI raided the home of an Alaska couple then handcuffed and interrogated them in separate rooms for hours until investigators realized they had the wrong suspects. A 69-year-old man in New York City suffered a heart attack as FBI agents raided his apartment with a television news crew standing by; the man never was charged. FBI agents arrested a Florida man in front of his wife and young daughter, who asked why officers were “locking daddy’s hands.” Casey Cusick was charged only with misdemeanors for entering the Capitol on January 6.

  Agents seized as evidence a Lego set of the Capitol building during the raid of Robert Morss, an Army ranger with three tours in Afghanistan. Far from nefarious intent, Morss had the Lego set to use with his students as a substitute high school history teacher. (He was fired after his arrest.)

  And those are just a few stories.

  No Accountability

  Wray picked up where Comey left off, allowing his agency to be part of Democratic Party political spin. He recently issued a “threat assessment” on QAnon and disclosed that the FBI so far has arrested at least 20 “self-styled QAnon adherents” related to the Capitol breach investigation. Wray designated January 6 as an act of “domestic terror” and his agency regularly tweets out the faces of “most wanted” Trump supporters who were at the Capitol on January 6.

  Infuriatingly, Wray fired only one agent involved in the Nassar fiasco—and the man was fired the week before the Senate hearing, six years after he first interviewed Maroney. “Someone perhaps more cynical than I would conclude it was this hearing here staring the FBI in the face that prompted that action,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said to Wray.

  But what ails the FBI cannot be solved with a few firings. It cannot be solved with more congressional oversight or threats to cut federal funding. The moral rot that infects the agency from top to bottom renders the agency unsalvageable. 

  “This conduct by these FBI agents . . . who are expected to protect the public is unacceptable, disgusting, and shameful,” Maggie Nichols, the gymnast who first reported Nassar’s crimes to the FBI, told the committee.

  Her description, however, applies to the entire FBI—an institution with no shame, no remorse, and no accountability. There’s no fix for that.

  *  *  *

  About Julie Kelly

  Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 20:05

• Kyle Bass: President Xi Wants Evergrande Blowup To Help Lower Housing Prices
  Kyle Bass: President Xi Wants Evergrande Blowup To Help Lower Housing Prices

  Shortly before two Evergrande creditors confirmed to Bloomberg (under the guise of anonymity) that the Chinese developer-giant had missed bond payments due Monday, Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass returned to CNBC for an interview Tuesday morning for a telephone discussion with CNBC’s Joe Kernen to discuss the toxic Chinese economy and its unsustainable debt pile.

  Bass, one of the most vocal China hawks on Wall Street, has said it’s important to understand what, exactly, President Xi is looking for. According to Bass, China is “experiencing similar problems that we are in the US” when it comes to housing prices.

  Xi has been managing a broad-based crackdown on the Chinese economy all summer. Now, it’s time to confront the issue

  Now, China is entering this period of weakness with over $50 trillion worth of credit in their system, with their annual GDP at around $15 trillion.

  

  Compared with China, the US had GDP of $17 trillion with another $12 trillion off-balance-sheet when Lehman collapsed. China is at 3.6x ahead of its “Lehman moment”, while the US was only about 1.7x.

  What’s more, China is still a relative newcomer to the capital markets business, Bass said. China adopted a western-style financial system in 2001 after they joined the WTO.

  Around the same time, Beijing’s population-control policies started to really bite, as China saw its birth rate dwindle.

  There are now 1.3 births per woman in China and you need to be at 2.1 to actually just sustain your population, Bass said. So for many working-age Chinese males, population dynamics are at a critical level and the reason being is the Chinese men can’t afford houses so they’re all living with their parents and the fact that Evergrande went on a credit binge and built all of the housing and Chinese property took off because their central bank continued to print so much money. Now, it’s trying to rein in property prices and he’s trying to do it as quickly as possible because China’s on an unsustainable path lower.

  “Right now,” Bass says, everyone who believes China’s going to grow at 6% a year ad infinitum “is just dead wrong,” but if we just divorce ourselves from any value judgments about China and think about the the future of the plan of the globe – if we always think about the Chinese consumer and we all at one point wanted to move forward in a symbiotic way where we sell things to China, and their consumers buy things from us.

  It’s nice to think about, but this unfortunately just isn’t how China works. Investors must realize that they’re not investing  “in a real market.”

  Bass added: “You still have an economy with a closed capital account they have one-way capital flows dollars in. Now, imagine if dollars start heading out.”

  Watch most of the interview below:

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 19:45

• Subway Records Strongest August Sales In 8 Years After Brand Refresh
  Subway Records Strongest August Sales In 8 Years After Brand Refresh

  By Peter Adams of Restaurant Dive,

  Summary

  • Subway recorded its highest August sales since 2013 on the tails of rolling out a brand refresh campaign, according to an announcement.

  • The “Eat Fresh Refresh” initiative launched on July 13 represents the largest changes to Subway’s menu in company history with over 20 updates, as well as renewed commitments to digital technology. Total sales at U.S. restaurants were up 4% in August compared to 2019 figures, with Subway’s top-performing quartile — a group representing over 5,000 store locations — seeing transactions up 33% versus two years ago.

  • The sandwich chain now expects to surpass its 2021 sales plan by more than $1 billion, a needed boost after standing as a laggard in the category. But Subway is still contending with headwinds, including recent tensions around its pick of brand ambassadors.

  Subway is drawing a direct link between the “Eat Fresh Refresh” strategy and a sales boost in the summer period, including its highest weekly average unit volume transactions in eight years. The planned multiyear overhaul touches across the chain’s business, with a menu makeover consisting of 11 new and improved ingredients, six new or returning sandwiches and four revamped signature sandwiches. The brand at the same time is remodeling stores and introducing an updated visual identity, along with putting larger priority on digital capabilities that have become must-haves for restaurants during the pandemic, with adjustments to its ordering platform and the debut of a direct delivery service.

  

  Changes on the operational side of the business are complemented by what the company has billed as a “never-ending” marketing campaign. Subway tapped a roster of celebrity athletes such as Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Megan Rapinoe to promote the retooling to consumers. A series of TV ads titled “It’s Too Much for One Spokesperson” pokes fun at the scale of the campaign, with ambassadors stepping on each others’ lines.

  The effort also encompasses hundreds of new pieces of digital and social creative, in-store and print elements. Subway’s marketing is overseen by Carrie Walsh, who was appointed CMO in 2019 after stints at Pizza Hut and PepsiCo.

  Subway suggested that consumers have generally been receptive to the revamp. In a survey of 66,000 customers, 83% reported enjoying the menu updates, per the announcement.

  “We are getting an extremely positive reaction from our guests regarding all that is new at Subway,” said David Liseno, a multiunit franchisee in Central New York State, in a press statement.

  Some research has uncovered pushback against Subway’s spokespeople. An August survey by Piplsay revealed nearly half (45%) of U.S. consumers said Subway should drop Rapinoe, an outspoken member of the United States women’s national soccer team. Rapinoe generated outcry over her decision to kneel during the Tokyo Olympics as a protest against racism.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 19:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• A 'Cup Of Joe' Is About To Get A Whole Lot More Expensive
  A ‘Cup Of Joe’ Is About To Get A Whole Lot More Expensive

  Robusta coffee prices continued to soar to record-highs this week as concerns deepen over the outlook from Brazil, the world’s top producer. 

  “Cheaper robusta-coffee beans, used widely in instant-coffee beverages such as Nestle SA’s Nescafe brands, are sold out in Brazil. After drought and frost ruined crops of the higher-end arabica variety favored by cafes like Starbucks Corp., local roasters are racing for robusta replacements and driving prices to new records each day,” Bloomberg wrote.

  Spot prices for Brazil robusta Espirito Santo have nearly doubled this year, up 356 reais per 60-kg bag, or about 87% to 769 reais. 

  

  Much of the price appreciation came after a freak cold snap decimated Brazil’s coffee-growing regions in July/August. The unexpected weather was compounded by massive droughts, destroyed arabica crops, hence why robusta is being bought up in droves. 

  “There seems to be a consensus that 20% of all trees were affected,” Sholom Sanik, an analyst at Friedberg Mercantile Group Ltd., said in a note. “Although more than half of the crop was harvested before the first frost hit, much of the fruit that remained unharvested will be lost.”

  In the past, US importers would quickly source from Vietnam, the second-largest producer, if there were weather-related issues in Brazil. But this time around, COVID restrictions, shortage of shipping containers, exorbitant freight costs, and port congestion have made it difficult and expensive to source from the Southeast Asian country.

  According to a recent Barclays note, US importers like Starbucks are hedged out for more than a year to deal with price fluctuations. Though JM. Smucker, which owns the Folgers and Dunkin’ coffee brands, recently warned that supply chain disruptions are rising costs that will impact its business. 

  “As we came into the fiscal year, we were anticipating mid-single-digit cost inflation as a percent of our total cost of goods sold,” J.M. Smucker’s Chief Financial Officer Tucker Marshall said. “Now we see high single-digit cost inflation.”

  Earlier this year, we warned that cheap coffee is no more, and a global deficit is coming. Even cheaper beans are hyperinflating away. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 02:45

• Russia Aware Of Kiev's Military Preparations, Hopes It Won't Turn To Hostilities
  Russia Aware Of Kiev’s Military Preparations, Hopes It Won’t Turn To Hostilities

  Via Southfront.org,

  Russia knows about Kiev’s military preparations, hopes that reason will prevail and that it will not come to hostilities, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told reporters.

  

  The conference of the Valdai Club “Russia and Uzbekistan facing the challenges of development and security at a new historical stage of interaction” is being held in Tashkent on September 20th, organized in partnership with the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan.

  “We know about these military preparations (of Kiev), we know about the assistance that Kiev receives from the United States and other countries,” Rudenko said.

  According to him, “it is difficult to predict something with the current leadership in Kiev, nothing can be ruled out.”

  “But all these things are taken into account in our military planning. We hope that after all, reason will prevail in Kiev and that the military scenario, including the Donbass scenario, will not reach,” the Deputy Foreign Minister stressed.

  Meanwhile, Kiev should not count on Washington’s help in the event of a war with Russia, former US Ambassador to Kiev John Herbst said.

  He noted that the White House can provide Ukraine with equipment, but not with troops.

  “If the situation changes radically, maybe, but today I don’t see it,” the ex-diplomat said.

  However, he admitted the likelihood of Russia’s disconnection from the SWIFT international payment system.

  Speaking about Ukraine’s membership in NATO, Herbst noted that he does not see it among the members of the alliance neither in five nor ten years.

  However, in his opinion, this is possible if “something radically changes.”

  Russia has repeatedly stressed that it has no aggressive intentions towards any countries. At the same time, Moscow is observing unprecedented NATO activity at its borders. The North Atlantic Alliance regularly conducts exercises and simulates battles with the Russian army.

  Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov noted that Moscow does not pose a threat to anyone, however, it will not disregard actions potentially dangerous to its interests.

  Separately, there are reports that the US may deliver an Iron Dome defense system to Ukraine.

  The Iron Dome missile defense system, which the United States can transfer to Ukraine, will increase the combat capability of the Ukrainian army, said Oleksiy Arestovich, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, spokesman for the Kiev delegation to the contact group on Donbass.

  Earlier, Politico newspaper wrote that several US congressmen included in the defense bill for 2022 an amendment that provides for the sale or transfer of new air and missile defense systems to Ukraine, including the Iron Dome batteries, which are currently used by the US army.

  Arestovich expressed the opinion that obtaining such systems would be important for Ukraine.

  “The main thing here will be if it is reported that Ukraine receives weapons of the most modern models, an increase in the combat ability of the armed forces of Ukraine as a whole, and will be able to cover either two key cities, or two defense facilities, or two facilities, or maybe more, of critical infrastructure,” he said.

  According to Politico, the United States does not have many air and missile defense batteries that could be sent to other countries. An employee of the congress noted that the two batteries of the “Iron Dome” purchased from Israel are the main candidates for being transferred to Ukraine, the newspaper writes.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/21/2021 – 02:00

• Victor Davis Hanson: The Afghanistization Of America
  Victor Davis Hanson: The Afghanistization Of America

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  The United States should be at its pinnacle of strength. It still produces more goods and services than any other nation—China included, which has a population over four times as large. Its fuel and food industries are globally preeminent, as are its graduate science, computer, engineering, medical, and technology university programs. Its constitution is the oldest of current free nations. And the U.S. military is by far the best funded in the world. And yet something has gone terribly wrong within America, from the southern border to Afghanistan. 

  The inexplicable in Afghanistan—surrendering Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, abandoning tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban, and forsaking both trapped Americans and loyalist Afghans—has now become the new Biden model of inattention and incompetence. 

  Or to put it another way, when we seek to implant our culture abroad, do we instead come to emulate what we are trying to change?

  

  COVID Chaos

  Take COVID-19. Joe Biden in 2020 (along with Kamala Harris) trashed Trump’s impending Operation Warp Speed vaccinations. Then, after inauguration, Biden falsely claimed no one had been vaccinated until his ascension (in fact, 1million a day were being vaccinated before he assumed office). Then again, Biden claimed ad nauseam that he didn’t believe in mandates to force the new and largely experimental vaccinations on the public. Then, once more, he promised that they were so effective and so many Americans had received vaccines that by July 4 the country would return to a virtual pre-COVID normality. 

  Then came the delta variant and his self-created disaster in Afghanistan. 

  To divert his attention away from the Afghan morass, Biden weirdly focused on an equally confused new presidential COVID-19 mandate, seeking to subject federal employees, soldiers, and employees of larger firms to mandatory vaccinations—right as the contagious delta variant seemed to be slowly tapering off, given the millions who have either been vaxxed, have developed natural immunity, or both.

  Consider other paradoxes. American citizens must be vaccinated, but not the forecasted 2 million noncitizens expected to cross the southern border illegally into the United States over the current fiscal year. Soldiers who bravely helped more than 100,000 Afghan refugees escape must be vaccinated, but not the unvetted foreign nationals from a premodern country?

  Scientists now are convinced naturally acquired COVID-19 immunity from a previous infection likely provides longer and better protection than does any of the current vaccinations. 

  Yet those who suffered COVID-19, and now have antibodies and other natural defenses, must likewise be vaccinated. That anomaly raises the obvious logical absurdities: will those with vaccinations—in reciprocal fashion—be forced to be exposed to the virus to obtain additional and superior natural immunity, given the Biden logic of the need for both acquired and vaccinated immunity? 

  Tribal Lands 

  We have Afghanistanized the border as well, turning the United States into a pre-state whose badlands borders are absolutely porous and fluid. There is no audit of newcomers, no vaccinations required, no COVID-19 tests—none of the requirements that millions of citizens must meet either entering the United States or working at their jobs. Our Bagram abandonment is matched by abruptly abandoning the border wall in mid-course. 

  Yet where the barrier exists, there is some order; where Joe Biden abandoned the wall, there is a veritable stampede of illegal migration. 

  

  October 7, 2019. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

  Coups, Juntas and Such

  Third-World countries suffer military coups when unelected top brass and caudillos often insidiously take control of the country’s governance in slow-motion fashion. The latest Bob Woodward “I heard,” “they say,” and “sources reveal” mythography now claims that General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, discussed separating an elected commander-in-chief from control of the military. Woodward and co-author Robert Costa also assert that Milley promised his Chinese Communist military counterpart that he would tip off the People’s Liberation Army of any planned U.S. aggressive action—an odd paranoia when Donald Trump, of the last five presidents, has proved the most reluctant to send U.S. troops into harm’s way. 

  If that bizarre assertion is true, Milley himself might have essentially risked starting a war by eroding U.S. deterrence in apprising an enemy of perceived internal instability inside the executive branch, and the lack of a unified command. (So, Woodward wrote: “‘General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable, and everything is going to be okay,’ Milley said. ‘We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.’ Milley then added, ‘If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.’”)

  More germanely, when Milley called in senior officers and laid down his own operational directives concerning nuclear weapons, he was clearly violating the law as established and strengthened in 1947, 1953, and 1986 that clearly states the Joint Chiefs are advisors to the president and are not in the chain of command and are to be bypassed, at least operationally, by the president.

  The commander in chief sets policy. And if it requires the use of force, he directs the secretary of defense to relay presidential orders to the relevant theater commanders. Milley had no authority to discuss changing nuclear procedures, much less to convey a smear to an enemy that his commander in chief was non compos mentis.

  Milley has been reduced to a caricature of a caricature right out of “Dr. Strangelove”—and is himself a danger to national security. After Milley’s summer 2020 virtue-signaling “apology” for alleged presidential photo-op misbehavior (found to be completely false by the interior department’s inspector general); after leaked news reports that Milley considered resignation (promises, promises) to signal his anger at Trump in summer 2020; after his dismissal of the 120 days of rioting, 28 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and $2 billion in damage as mere “penny packet protests”; after his “white rage” blathering before Congress; after the collapse of the U.S. military command in Kabul; and after his premature and hasty assessment of a U.S. drone strike that killed 10 innocent civilians as “righteous,” Woodward’s sensationalism may not sound as impossible as his usual fare. 

  Milley should either deny the Woodward charges and demand a real apology or resign immediately. He has violated the law governing the chain of command, misused his office of chairman of the Joint Chiefs, politicized the military, proved inept in his military judgment and advice, and may well have committed a felony in revealing to a hostile military leader that the United States was, in his opinion, in a crisis mode. 

  Yet, Milley did not act in isolation. Where did this low-bar Pentagon coup talk originate? And who are those responsible for creating a culture in which unelected current and retired military officers, sworn to uphold the constitutional order and the law of civilian control of the military, believe that they can arbitrarily declare an elected president either incompetent or criminal—and thus subject to their own renegade sort of freelancing justice?

  As a footnote, remember that after little more than a week of the Trump presidency, Rosa Brooks, an Obama-era Pentagon appointee, published in Foreign Policy various ways to remove the newly inaugurated president. Among those mentioned was a military coup, in which top officers were to collude to obstruct a presidential order, on the basis of their own perceptions of a lack of presidential rectitude or competence. 

  We note additionally that over a dozen high-ranking retired generals and admirals have serially violated the uniform code of military justice in demonizing publicly their commander in chief with the worst sort of smears and slanders. And they have done so with complete exemption and in mockery of the very code they have sworn to abide. 

  Two retired army officers, colonels John Nagl and Paul Yingling, on the eve of the 2020 election, urged Milley to order U.S. army forces to remove Trump from office if in their opinion he obstructed the results of the election—superseding in effect a president’s elected powers as well as those constitutional checks and balances of the legislative and judicial branches upon him. 

  We know that these were all partisan and not principled concerns about an alleged non compos mentis president, because none of these same outspoken “Seven Days in May” generals have similarly violated the military code by negatively commenting publicly on the current dangerous cognitive decline of Joe Biden and the real national security dangers of his impairment, as evidenced by the disastrous skedaddle from Afghanistan and often inability to speak coherently or remember key names and places.

  In short, is our new freelancing and partisan military also in the process of becoming Afghanized—too many of its leadership electively appealing to pseudo-higher principles to contextualize violating the Constitution of the United States and, sadly, too many trying to reflect the general woke landscape of the corporate board to which so many have retired? Like tribal warlords, our top brass simply do as they please, and then message to us “so what are you going to do about it?”

  

  Achin, Afghanistan, 2011. John Moore/Getty Images

  The Constitution as Construct

  How paradoxical that the United States has sent teams of constitutional specialists to Iraq and Afghanistan to help tribal societies to draft legal, ordered, and sustainable Western consensual government charters that are not subject to the whims of particular tribes and parties. Yet America itself is descending in the exact opposite direction. 

  Suddenly in 2021 America, if ancient consensual rules, customs, and constitutional mandates do not facilitate and advance the progressive project, then by all means they must end—by a mere one vote in the Senate. It is as if the centuries of our history, the Constitution, and the logic of the founders were analogous to a shouting match among a squabbling Taliban tribal council of elders.

  Junk the 233-year-old Electoral College and the constitutional directive to the states to assume primary responsibilities in establishing voting procedures in national elections. End the 180-year-old Senate filibuster. Do away with the now bothersome 150-year nine-justice Supreme Court. And scrap the 60-year-old tradition of a 50-state union.  

  Impeachment was intended by the founders as a rare reset of the executive branch in extremis. Now it is to be a pro formaattack on the president in his first term by the opposite party as soon as it gains control of the House—without a special counsel, without witnesses and cross-examinations, without any specific high crimes and misdemeanors or bribery and treason charges. And why not from now on impeach a president twice within a year—or try him in the Senate when he is out of office as a private citizen? 

  When private citizen Joe Biden is retired from the presidency, will his political enemies dig up his sketchy IRS records alleging that he never paid income taxes on the “big guy’s” “10 percent” of the income from the Hunter Biden money machine?

  American Tribes

   We may think virtue-signaling pride flags, gender studies, and George Floyd murals in Kabul remind the world of our postmodern sophistication. Yet, in truth, we are becoming far more like Afghanistan in the current tribalization of America—where tribal, racial, and ethnic loyalties are now essential to an American’s primary identity and loyalty—than we were ever able to make Afghanistan like us.

  When we read leftist heartthrob Ibram X. Kendi’s endorsement of overt racial discrimination or academic and media obsessions with a supposed near-satanic “whiteness,” or the current fixations on skin color and first loyalties to those who share superficial racial affinities, then we are not much different from the Afghan tribalists. We in America apparently have decided the warring badlands of the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks have their advantages over a racially blind, consensual republic. They are the model to us, not us of the now-discredited melting pot to them.

  How sad in our blinkered arrogance that we go across the globe to the tribal Third World to teach the impoverished a supposedly preferrable culture and politics, while at home we are doing our best to become a Third-World country of incompetency, constitutional erosion, a fractious and politicized military elite, and racially and ethnically obsessed warring tribes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 23:40

• North Korea Says AUKUS Submarine Deal Will Trigger "Dangerous" Nuclear Arms Race
  North Korea Says AUKUS Submarine Deal Will Trigger “Dangerous” Nuclear Arms Race

  North Korea has weighed in on the major tussle among Western allies which has seen France become isolated in the Indo-Pacific as it lashes out against the “duplicity” of partner nations Australia and the US. The north’s foreign ministry said in statements carried by the official KCNA news agency that Washington’s intentions to transfer nuclear-powered submarines to Australia sets a “dangerous” precedent for the region which threatens to set off a nuclear arms race.

  “The US has recently struck the trilateral security partnership with Britain and Australia, and decided to transfer the technology of building a nuclear-powered submarine to Australia,” the statement began.

  

  “These are extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of nuclear arms race,” Pyongyang added.

  The AUKUS pact announced last week to the shock and consternation of France and the EU, given Canberra immediately canceled a deal to receive French-made conventional submarines, has also been met with condemnation in Beijing, which also warned of an arms race.

  The North Korea statement further called out comments by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who previously claimed that the AUKUS is not aimed at China or any other regional rival of the US. She said last Thursday when news of the agreement broke to the world that it’s “is not about any one country”.

  Pyongyang lashed out at this in the Monday statement, saying according to Reuters:

  Her comment “amounts to a stand that any country can spread nuclear technology if it is in its interests, and this shows that the U.S. is the chief culprit toppling the international nuclear non-proliferation system,” the ministry said.

  “We are closely looking into the background of the U.S. decision and will certainly take a corresponding counter-action in case it has even a little adverse impact on the security of our country.”

  Pyongyang also condemned Washington’s “double-dealing attitude” – accusing the US of ultimately fueling nuclear arms proliferation in the region across the globe.

  Just last week North Korea resumed cruise missile test after relative quiet in terms of major arms testing over the last six months. Likely the announced transfer of nuclear sub technology to Canberra will result in more such provocative ballistic missile tests out of the north.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 23:20

• Science Shaky On School Mask Mandates While Harms Ignored
  Science Shaky On School Mask Mandates While Harms Ignored

  Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

  Should children be required to wear masks at school?

  A review of the costs and benefits, including some of the latest science, does not add much to the case for mandating school masks.

  First, some basics… The risk of death from COVID-19 among schoolchildren is very, very low.

  How Low?

  A Nature study estimating the COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR), or proportion of those infected who die, found IFRs of just 0.001 percent in children aged 5–9, and IFRs well below 0.01 percent in all those aged 19 and under.

  That’s less than one in 10,000 among teenagers and less than one in 100,000 in 5- to 9-year-old children.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has advocated masking children aged 2 and up, found that only 460 children had died of COVID-19 between late May 2020 and Sept. 9, 2021 across 45 states, New York City, Guam, and Puerto Rico—0.08 percent of the total number of deaths they counted.

  Looking again across multiple states, the AAP found that COVID-19 cases among children have surged in recent weeks, growing by 10 percent from 4,797,683 to 5,292,837 between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9—a trend that could be related to the start of in-person schooling.

  Yet the AAP’s own data shows children are just 0.9 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations, a rate on par with previous weeks, and down from reported hospitalization rates of 3.8 percent in mid-2020.

  

  With all that in mind, what are the benefits of masking children?

  According to the AAP, those benefits include the “protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19,” as well as “reduc[ed] transmission.”

  Yet as described above, COVID-19’s risks for schoolchildren have been, and remain, extremely low.

  What’s more, vaccines have been made widely available or are even mandated among teachers, who belong to age groups more vulnerable to COVID-19 than children—and despite efforts to restrict access to ivermectin, individuals may still be able to obtain the drug, identified as an “essential medicine” by the World Health Organization, as well as other potential therapeutics.

  Like the AAP, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends universal masking in schools, a change from its previous stance that vaccinated students and teachers do not have to wear masks. (Neither the AAP nor the CDC mention natural immunity in their school masking guidance).

  They, too, point to transmission as a justification for universal indoor masking, citing the highly transmissible Delta variant.

  Concerns about transmission come down to two questions:

  • First, how much is widespread COVID-19 transmission driven by children in school, and

  • Second, how well do masks and mask mandates limit transmission?

  While some scientists have provided evidence that children might play a significant role in community spread, researchers generally agree that children, and especially young children, are not the primary drivers of it.

  An observational study in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that children up to the age of 9 attending school were not major contributors to COVID-19 spread, though the study’s findings on teenagers were more equivocal.

  A 2020 meta-analysis, or analysis of multiple studies, on COVID-19 susceptibility among young children and adolescents concluded susceptibility was lower in those groups than in adults and offered “weak evidence” that they play a lesser role in population-level transmission.

  More recently, a 2021 meta-analysis on COVID-19 transmission clusters concluded that children infected in school “are unlikely to spread SARS-CoV-2 to their cohabiting family members.”

  While the Delta variant appears to be more contagious, driving a rise in CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus-related cases and deaths, many have argued that it is less deadly than the original Alpha strain.

  This would be in line with the hypothesized trade-off between transmission and virulence, which suggests that pathogens evolve in the direction of spreading farther while also becoming less damaging to their hosts.

  The effectiveness of masks, and mask mandates, in schools is also a matter of dispute, with mask mandates for students apparently lacking clear support.

  In his July 30 executive order against mask mandates in Florida schools, Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that “forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification,” citing a 2021 preprint that found no correlation between mask mandates and COVID-19 case rates among students and faculty across schools in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts.

  Yet the authors of that study stressed that their research was limited to just three states, meaning their conclusions may not apply elsewhere. They also emphasized that the masking variation they identified in Florida schools could make their findings “even less generalizable to all U.S. students.”

  A 2020 report by the CDC itself on elementary schools in Georgia noted that “COVID-19 incidence was 37% lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks.”

  Crucially, however, the CDC found that mask mandates for students did not have a statistically significant impact on COVID-19 incidence.

  Here too, the study’s authors noted some limitations to their work; notably, their findings were based on self-reporting, and investigators did not directly examine whether people were using masks.

  What About Masks More Generally?

  An early randomized controlled trial of 4,862 adult participants from Denmark did not find that surgical masks reduced COVID-19 infection, although the authors noted that some results were “inconclusive.”

  On Sept. 1, however, researchers released a working paper detailing a cluster-randomized trial of mask promotion across communities in rural Bangladesh, which involved 600 villages and more than 300,000 individuals, that appeared to support masking.

  After surveying “all reachable participants” and testing blood from symptomatic individuals, the researchers linked mask promotion to a slight reduction in symptomatic COVID-19 infections.

  Yet similar to the Danish study, the Bangladesh study was explicitly intended to examine mask-wearing among those “who appear to be 18 years or older”—not the young children or adolescents to whom school mask mandates apply.

  What, then, are the potential costs of requiring children to be masked at school?

  An obvious one is cleanliness.

  “We were almost all taught as children that disposable tissues are good because handkerchiefs are unhygienic and disgusting,” wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty in an article for National Review Online. “But for young children, toddlers in particular, the cotton-jersey masks that they most often wear in schools are just that, a handkerchief pulled over their mouth and nose constantly. They often are disgusting at the end of a day of use.”

  Unsurprisingly, children’s masks may be a breeding ground for bacteria and other microorganisms, some of them potentially dangerous.

  One recent analysis from the University of Florida revealed that most masks worn by children in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat were contaminated with parasites, fungi, and bacteria, including a virus known to cause a fatal systemic disease in deer and cattle.

  Masks, particularly disposable masks, are also harmful to the environment. With billions of single-use masks being thrown out every day, researchers believe that discarded masks and respirators are adding to plastic pollution—a problem to which school mask mandates can only contribute.

  Masking and other interventions may also have knock-on effects related to the frequency of other respiratory diseases.

  The recent, out-of-season spike in pediatric hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has been tied to the COVID-19 response, with infants and young children who would have otherwise been exposed to RSV at an earlier age now falling ill from it.

  Masking may also have significant psychological and developmental effects on children.

  A 2004 article on masking in a pediatric hospital, authored long before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the scientific debate on masking, expanded on some of the psychological hazards for children.

  “Imagine the impact of a hospital filled with “faceless” people on a young child. Who is smiling? Who is frowning? How do I recognize my doctor? How does my nurse recognize me? Why is everyone so scared of me and my germs?…”

  “When wearing masks, goggles and/or face shields, non-verbal communication is impaired. Subtle facial cues are absent or can be misread and lip-reading is impossible.”

  More recently, in a roundtable with Governor DeSantis and other scientists, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Battacharya argued that masking children is both medically unnecessary and “developmentally inappropriate.”

  “I mean, how do you teach a child to read with a face mask on Zoom? I think children develop by watching other people,” Battacharya said.

  The controversy over the developmental impact of masking children has even impacted the AAP.

  In August, Internet users unearthed an AAP webpage emphasizing the developmental importance of face time between parents and babies that had apparently been removed from the organization’s website, along with other AAP webpages describing how babies and young children learn through looking at faces.

  The AAP responded by explaining that the web pages disappeared as a result of website migration, telling Just the News that “some content areas, including Early Brain and Child Development, are still being organized before they go live on the new platform.”

  Finally, the practice of mandating masks could be argued to compromise individual and parental autonomy.

  Advocacy groups such as Utah Parents United have spoken out against school mask mandates, saying that they undermine parental rights and are unnecessary for such a low-risk group, particularly given the availability of vaccines to adult teachers and staff.

  With all that we know so far, how can we answer these parents?

  If the benefits of mask mandates do not outweigh the costs, it’s hard to find fault with opposition, or at least skepticism—especially for young schoolchildren, who are at the lowest risk of serious illness and death, and who may be most vulnerable to the uncertain and understudied costs of universal masking and other stringent measures.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 23:00

• Didi Executive Plans To Step Down As Chinese Tech Giants Rattled By Crackdown
  Didi Executive Plans To Step Down As Chinese Tech Giants Rattled By Crackdown

  Once again on Monday, markets re-focused on Beijing as the CCP scrambled to deal with the teetering developer Evergrande. But elsewhere, Didi co-founder and President Jean Liu has told some of her closest associates that she intends to step down, two sources said, potentially making her the latest casualty of President Xi Jinping’s “community crackdown”.

  

  Ironically, Liu is a former Goldman Sachs banker who rose to become an MD at the Vampire Squid before jumping to Didi in 2014.  A few weeks ago, sources told Reuters, Liu told a couple of executives close to her in recent weeks – including those who had followed her to Didi from the Wall Street bank – that she planned to leave and encouraged them to start looking for new jobs as well, said one of the sources who was briefed on the matter, per Reuters.

  Some of those executives have since approached industry contacts for job leads, the source said.

  Reuters was unable to learn further details, including whether Liu had submitted a formal resignation letter or set a date to leave.

  Chinese authorities have launched a broad crackdown on private companies, including those that handle sensitive private data, while breaking down monopolistic practices.

  Billionaires minted by high-profile listings, such as Didi’s $4.4 billion debut, have fallen out of favor as President Xi Jinping warns against the country’s vast income inequality.

  Didi ran afoul of the powerful Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) when it pressed ahead with its debut on June 30, despite the regulator urging the company to put it on hold while it conducted a cybersecurity review of its data practices, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Soon after the listing, the CAC announced an investigation into Didi and subsequently ordered the removal of its apps for download in China. Officials from at least six other departments also got involved.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 22:40

• Supreme Court To Hear Oral Arguments Challenging Roe V. Wade In December
  Supreme Court To Hear Oral Arguments Challenging Roe V. Wade In December

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Arguments in a case challenging the validity of the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that access to abortion is a constitutional right are scheduled to take place in the nation’s highest court near the end of 2021.

  

  The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Dec. 1, the court announced on Sept. 20.

  Justices had agreed in May to hear the case, but it hadn’t been known before when the case would be heard.

  Mississippi enacted a law in 2018 barring abortions after 15 weeks outside of medical emergencies or the discovery of a severe abnormality in the unborn baby.

  U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, an Obama appointee, struck down the law, finding “it is a facially unconstitutional ban on abortions prior to viability.”

  A trio of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges later upheld the ruling.

  “In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and re-affirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability. States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions,” U.S. Circuit Court Judge Patrick Higginbotham, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the decision.

  That prompted a request in early 2020 for the Supreme Court to analyze the lower court decisions.

  In a brief to the court over the summer, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, said the court should overturn Roe v. Wade.

  “The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition,” Fitch wrote.

  Hillary Schneller, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, has said the legislation in question “defies decades of Supreme Court precedent.”

  Roe v. Wade made abortion lawful throughout the United States.

  The Supreme Court, in ruling on the 1992 case Parenthood v. Casey, said states can’t impose significant restrictions on abortion before a fetus becomes viable for life outside of the womb, though the justices didn’t specify when viability occurs.

  Pro-life groups have asserted that science has advanced since the decisions of decades ago, with findings including fetuses, or unborn babies, may be able to feel pain as early as 13 weeks into a pregnancy.

  The groups hope the makeup of the court could signal a favorable decision. The nine-justice court includes just three Democrat-appointed justices, with six appointed by Republican presidents. That includes three justices appointed by then-President Donald Trump, an avowed opponent of abortion.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 22:20

• How Evergrande Became Too Big To Fail And Why Beijing Will Have To Bail It Out
  How Evergrande Became Too Big To Fail And Why Beijing Will Have To Bail It Out

  While the world is obsessing with the fate of Evergrande, and more importantly when, or if, Beijing will bail it out, another just as interesting question is how did the company many call “China’s Lehman” get to the point of no return and become a global systematic risk. For a fascinating look into how we got here, we turn our readers’ attention to a recent article from Caixin titled “How Evergrande Could Turn Into ‘China’s Lehman Brothers‘,” and which provides one of the most comprehensive insights into why Beijing will have to, even if it is kicking and screaming, bail out Evergrande which, at its core, is just one giant shadow-banking black box whose time has finally run out.

  * * *

  For the past two months, hundreds of people have been gathering at the 43-floor Zhuoyue Houhai Center in Shenzhen, where China Evergrande Group’s headquarters occupy 20 floors. They held banners demanding repayment of overdue loans and financial products. Police with riot shields had to be on site to keep things under control.

  The demonstrators are construction workers at the property developer’s housing projects, suppliers providing construction materials and investors in the company’s wealth management products (WMPs). From paint suppliers to decoration and construction companies, Evergrande owes more than 800 billion yuan ($124 billion) due within one year, while it has only a 10th of that amount of cash on hand.

  As of the end of June, Evergrande had nearly 2 trillion yuan ($309 billion) of debts on its books, plus an unknown amount of off-books debt. The property giant is on the verge of a dramatic debt restructuring or even bankruptcy, many institutions believe.

  A bankruptcy would amount to a financial tsunami, or as some analysts put it, “China’s Lehman Brothers.” The venerable American investment bank’s 2008 collapse helped trigger a global financial crisis.

  Certainly Evergrande, one of China’s three biggest developers, has a giant footprint in China.

  

  Its liabilities are equivalent to about 2% of China’s GDP. It has more than 200,000 employees, who themselves and many of their families have invested billions of yuan in the company’s WMPs. The company has more than 800 projects under construction, more than half of them halted due to its cash crunch. There are thousands of upstream and downstream companies that rely on Evergrande for business, creating more than 3.8 million jobs every year.

  Like many of China’s “too big to fail” conglomerates, Evergrande’s crisis has fueled speculation over whether the government will step in for a rescue. Several state-owned enterprises, including Shenzhen Talents Housing Group Co. Ltd. and Shenzhen Investment Ltd., both controlled by the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), are in talks with Evergrande on its Shenzhen projects, according to people close to the talks. But so far, no deals have been reached.

  In a statement last week, Evergrande denied rumors that it will go bankrupt. While the developer faces unprecedented difficulties, it is fulfilling its responsibilities and is doing everything possible to restore normal operations and protect the legitimate rights and interests of customers, according to a statement on its website.

  The company hired financial advisers to explore “all feasible solutions” to ease its cash crunch, warning that there’s no guarantee the company will meet its financial obligations. It has repeatedly signaled that it will sell equity and assets including but not limited to investment properties, hotels and other properties and attract investors to increase the equity of Evergrande and its affiliates.

  Growth on borrowed money

  Over the years, Evergrande has faced liquidity pressure several times, but every time it dodged the bullet. This time, the crisis of cash flow and trust is unprecedented.

  Evergrande shares in Hong Kong plummeted to a 10-year low. Its onshore bonds fell to what investors call defaulted bond level. All three global credit rating companies and one domestic rating company have downgraded Evergrande’s debt.

  For many years, Chinese developers were driven by the “three carriages” — high turnover, high gross profit and high leverage. Developers use borrowed money to acquire land, collect presale cash before projects even start, and then borrow more money to invest in new projects.

  In 2018, Evergrande reported record profit of 72 billion yuan, more than double the previous year’s net. But behind that, it spent more than 100 billion yuan a year on interest.

  Even in good years, the company usually had negative operating cash flow, with not enough cash on hand to cover short-term loans due within a year with and presale revenue not enough to pay suppliers. In addition to borrowing from banks, Evergrande also borrows from executives and employees.

  When developers seek funds from banks, lenders often require personal investments from the developers’ executives as a risk-control measure, a former employee at Evergrande’s asset management department told Caixin.

  “At times like this, Evergrande would have an internal fund-raising campaign,” the manager said. “Either the executives would pay out of their own pockets, or they would set a goal for each division.”

  One crowdfunding product issued to executives was called “Chaoshoubao,” which means “super return treasure.” In 2017, Evergrande tried to obtain project financing from state-owned China Citic Bank in Shenzhen, which required personal investment from Evergrande’s executives. The company then issued Chaoshoubao to employees, promising 25% annual interest and redemption of principal and interest within two years. The minimum investment was 3 million yuan. China Citic Bank eventually agreed to provide 40 billion yuan of acquisition funds to Evergrande.

  In 2020, Chen Xuying, former vice president of China Citic Bank and head of the bank’s Shenzhen branch from 2012 to 2018, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for accepting bribes after issuing loans.

  A senior executive at Evergrande said he personally invested 1.5 million yuan and mobilized his subordinates to invest 1.5 million yuan into Chaoshoubao. Some employees would even borrow money to invest in the product because the 25% return was much higher than loan rates.

  When the Chaoshoubao was due for redemption in 2019, the company asked employees who bought the product to agree to a one-year extension for repayment. Then in 2020, the company asked for another one-year extension. One investor said buyers received an annualized return of 4% to 5% in the last four years, far below the 25% promised return.

  When Evergrande’s cash flow crisis was exposed, the company chose to repay principal only to current executives. From late August to early September, the company repaid current executives and employees about 2 billion yuan but still owed 200 million yuan to former employees, including Ren Zeping, former chief economist of Evergrande who joined Soochow Securities Co. in March.

  Evergrande’s wealth division also sells WMPs to the public. Most of these WMPs offer a return of 5% to 10%, with a minimum investment of 100,000 yuan, the former employee at Evergrande’s asset management department said. As the return is higher than WMPs typically sold at banks, many of Evergrande’s employees bought them and persuaded their families and friends to invest, an employee said. Usually, a 20 million yuan WMP could be sold out within five days, the employee said.

  The company also sells WMPs to construction partners. Evergrande would require construction companies to buy WMPs whenever it needed to pay them, a former employee at Evergrande’s construction division told Caixin.

  “If the construction companies are owed 1 million or 2 million yuan, we would ask them to buy 100,000–200,000 yuan of WMPs, or about 10% of their receivables,” the former employee said. Although it was not mandatory for construction companies to buy WMPs, they often would do so for the sake of maintaining a good relationship with Evergrande, the former employee said. In addition, Evergrande property owners were also buyers of the company’s WMPs.

  About 40 billion yuan of the WMPs are now due. “It is difficult for Evergrande to make all of the repayments at once at this moment,” said Du Liang, general manager of Evergrande’s wealth division.

  Evergrande initially proposed to impose lengthy repayment delays, with investments of 100,000 yuan and above to be repaid in five years. After heated protests by investors, the company tweaked its plan last week, offering three options. Investors can accept cash installments, purchase Evergrande’s properties in any city at a discount, or waive investors’ payables on residential units they have purchased.

  Some investors opposed the “property for debt” option, as many projects of Evergrande have been halted and there is a risk of unfinished projects in the future.

  “The proposals are insincere,” a petition signed by some Guangdong investors said. “It’s like buying nonperforming assets with a premium.” The petition urged the government to freeze Evergrande’s accounts and assets and demanded cash repayment of all principal and interest.

  Some investors chose to accept the payment scheme proposed by Evergrande. They selected Evergrande projects located in hot cities in the hope of making up for losses by resale in the future.

  As Evergrande owed large amounts to construction companies, more than 500 of Evergrande’s 800-plus projects across the country are now halted. The company has at least several hundred thousand units that have been presold and not delivered. It needs at least 100 billion yuan to complete construction and deliver the units, Caixin learned.

  Whether and how to repay WMP investors or deliver housing is Evergrande’s dilemma.

  Debt to construction partners and suppliers

  In August, the construction company that was contracted to build Evergrande’s Taicang cultural tourism city in Nantong, Jiangsu province, announced the halt of the project due to bills unpaid by Evergrande. The company, Jiangsu Nantong Sanjian Construction Group Co. Ltd., said it put 500 million yuan of its own funds into the project and Evergrande paid it less than 290 million yuan.

  Sanjian has other construction contracts with Evergrande and its subsidiaries. As of September, Evergrande owes the Nantong company about 20 billion yuan.

  As of August 2020, Evergrande had 8,441 upstream and downstream companies it was working with. If the flow of Evergrande cash stops, the normal operation of these companies will be disrupted, and some would even face the risk of bankruptcy.

  In Ezhou, Hubei province, five of Evergrande’s projects have been halted for more than a month, and it owes contractors about 500 million yuan.

  “Housing delivery involves not only hundreds of thousands of families, but also local social stability,” a banker said. The housing authorities in Guangdong province are coordinating with Evergrande and its construction partners, trying to resume construction, the banker said.

  Evergrande relies heavily on commercial paper to pay construction partners and suppliers. Among payments it made to Sanjian, only 8% was in cash and the rest in commercial paper.

  Initially, the commercial paper borrowings were mostly six-month notes with annualized interest rates of 15%–16%. Now most carry interest rates of more than 20%. Holders of such commercial paper can sell the notes at a discount to raise cash. In 2017–18, the discount rate on Evergrande paper could reach 15%–20%. Since May 2021, the few Evergrande notes that could still be sold have been discounted as much as 55%, according to a person familiar with such transactions.

  For small and medium-sized suppliers, holding a large amount of overdue Evergrande notes is a burden too heavy to bear. In recent months, a number of suppliers sued Evergrande for breach of contract but often settled the cases. A lawyer who represented Evergrande in related cases told Caixin that many plaintiffs chose to negotiate with Evergrande while fighting in court.

  Evergrande also offered a “property for debt” option to its commercial paper holders. The company said it’s in talks with suppliers and construction contractors to delay payment or offset debt with properties. From July 1 to Aug. 27, Evergrande sold properties to suppliers and contractors to offset a total of 25 billion yuan of debt.

  Selling assets, but not land

  Meanwhile, Evergrande has been offloading its assets to raise cash. Its biggest assets are its land reserves. As of June 30, it had 778 land reserve projects with a total planned floor area of 214 million square meters and an original value of 456.8 billion yuan. Additionally, it has 146 urban redevelopment projects.

  In the past three months, Evergrande has been in talks with China Overseas Land and Investment Ltd., China Vanke Co. Ltd. and China Jinmao Holdings Group Ltd. for possible asset sales. Shenzhen and Guangzhou SASACs have arranged for several state-owned enterprises to conduct due diligence on Evergrande’s urban redevelopment projects, a person close to the matter said. Evergrande has approached every possible buyer in the market, the person said.

  However, no deals have been reached. Several real estate developers that have been in contact with Evergrande told Caixin that while some of Evergrande’s projects look good on the surface, there are complex creditors’ rights that make them difficult to dispose of.

  Some potential buyers have said they could consider a debt-assumption acquisition, but Evergrande was reluctant to sell at a loss, Caixin learned.

  At an emergency staff meeting Sept. 10, the wealth management general manager Du said in a speech that most of Evergrande’s land reserve is not for sale, reflecting the position of his boss, founder and Chairman Xu Jiayin.

  “In China, land reserves are the most valuable assets,” Du said. “This is Evergrande’s biggest asset and last resort.

  “For example, for a land parcel, Evergrande’s acquisition cost is 1 billion yuan, and the land itself is worth 2 billion yuan, but the buyer may only offer 300 million yuan,” Du said. “If we sold at a loss, we would have no capital to revive.”

  For his part, Xu maintained that Evergrande could repay all its debts and recover as long as it turns land into houses and sells them.

  But even if Evergrande can quickly sell its houses, the revenue would be far from enough to pay down debt. The chance that Evergrande won’t be able to pay interest due in the third quarter is 99.99%, estimated by a banker whose employer has billions of yuan of exposure to the company.

  As of the end of June, Evergrande had total assets of 2.38 trillion yuan and total liabilities of 1.97 trillion yuan. Of the nearly 2 trillion yuan of debt, interest-bearing debt was 571.7 billion yuan, down about 145 billion yuan from the end of 2020. The decrease in interest-bearing debt was mostly achieved by deferred payables to suppliers.

  In addition to the 571.7 billion yuan of interest-bearing debt on its books, it’s not a secret that developers like Evergrande have huge off-balance sheet debt. But the amount at Evergrande is not known.

  In the early stage of projects, developers need to invest a lot of money, which could significantly increase the debt on the balance sheet. Companies often place these debts off their balance sheet through a variety of means. After the pre-sale of the project, or even after the cash flow of the project turns positive, these debts would be consolidated into the balance sheet in the form of equity transfer, according to a property industry insider.

  For example, 40 billion yuan of acquisition funds Evergrande obtained from China Citic Bank were invested in multiple projects. Among them, 10.7 billion yuan was used by Shenzhen Liangyang Industrial Co. Ltd. to acquire Shenzhen Duoji Investment Co. Ltd. As Evergrande doesn’t have an equity relationship with the two companies, this item was not required to be consolidated into Evergrande’s financial statement. Evergrande used leveraged funds to acquire equities in 10 projects, and none of them were included in its financial statement, the prospectus of its Chaoshoubao shows.

  Evergrande has sold equity in subsidiaries to strategic investors and promised to buy back the stakes if certain milestones can’t be reached in the future. Such equity sales are actually a form of borrowing, too. In March, Evergrande sold a stake in its online home and car sales platform Fangchebao for HK$16.4 billion ($2.1 billion) in advance of a planned U.S. share sale by the unit. If the online sales unit doesn’t complete an initial public offering on Nasdaq or any other stock exchange within 12 months after the completion of the stake sale, the unit is required to repurchase the shares at a 15% premium.

  Evergrande’s hidden debts also include unpaid payments to acquire equities. Dozens of small property companies have sued Evergrande demanding cancellation of their equity sales agreements with the company because Evergrande failed to pay them. They are Evergrande’s partners in local development projects. Evergrande usually paid them 30% down for equities but declined to pay the rest even after the project was completed, according to the lawsuits. A plaintiff’s lawyer told Caixin that Evergrande’s project subsidiaries don’t want to go sour with local partners, but they have no money to pay as sales from the projects have been transferred to the parent company.

  A total of 49 of Evergrande’s wholly owned local subsidiaries have been sued since April, according to Tianyancha, a database of publicly available corporate information.

  Evergrande also owes land transfer fees to some local governments. Some 20 Evergrande affiliates have not yet made payments to the city government of Lanzhou, the capital of Northwest China’s Gansu province, according to a list of 41 such firms issued in July by the city’s natural resources department.

  A potential default by Evergrande could spread to markets outside China as it has huge, high-interest offshore bonds. Some of its offshore bonds carry interest rates as high as 15%, a person close to the Hong Kong capital market said. UBS estimates that $19 billion of Evergrande’s liabilities are made up of outstanding offshore bonds.

  Evergrande has been frantically selling properties at discounts this year. In late May, it offered certain homebuyers 30% to 40% off if they paid entirely in cash. In the first half, the company reported 356 billion yuan of contracted sales, slightly higher than 349 billion yuan for the same period last year. Average selling prices in the first six months declined 11.2%. Meanwhile, payables increased 14.7% to 951 billion yuan, and sales and marketing expenses increased 30% to 17.8 billion yuan. In response to the market environment, the company increased sales commissions and marketing expenses, the company said.

  Compared with its competitors, Evergrande has higher capital and human costs but lower selling prices, an industry participant said. “How can it make money?” the person said.

  The developer reported a 29% slide in profit for the first half. Its 10.5 billion yuan of profit mainly reflected an 18.5 billion yuan gain from the sale of some shares and marked-to-market holding in internet unit Henten Networks. It reported a loss in its core property business of 4 billion yuan.

  Evergrande’s extremely high debt ratio, high financing cost and repeated delays in payments to suppliers, partners and local government show that its liquidity has always been tight, but on the other hand, the fact that it has survived years under this model indicates that it has always been able to generate money, a veteran investor said.

  Now everyone is watching whether it can dodge the bullet once again.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 22:00

• France Won't Let Go Of Submarine Dispute "Crisis" – Threatens To Torpedo EU-Australia Trade Talks
  France Won’t Let Go Of Submarine Dispute “Crisis” – Threatens To Torpedo EU-Australia Trade Talks

  Over the weekend France’s top diplomat continued calling out the United States and Australia over their “duplicity, contempt and lies” after “no warnings” were given ahead of the AUKUS pact, which led Australia to scrap a French submarine order for more than $60 billion.

  French President Macron will reportedly hold a phone call within the coming days with President Biden in order to seek clarification from the White House – this after late last week Paris for what’s believed to be the first time in history recalled its ambassador to Washington (a dramatic move France also made with Australia, and further canceled a high level defense meeting with the UK).

  French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian’s latest scathing criticisms were issued to France 2 television, where he said the move to recall the ambassadors “signifies the force of the crisis today” between France, the US and Australia.

  

  And France’s ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault, who has left his post and returned to Paris, said “we felt fooled”:

  “This was a plot in the making for 18 months. At the same time while we were engaged with making the best of this [submarine] program where France committed its most well-kept military secrets … there was a complete other project that we discovered, thanks to the press, one hour before the announcement. So you can imagine our anger – we felt fooled.”

  Significantly the dramatic word “crisis” was thrown out there ahead of planned EU-Australia trade talks for later this year which could now be torpedoed in the wake of Paris venting its rage, as CNN relates:

  “Keeping one’s word is the condition of trust between democracies and between allies,” France’s European affairs secretary Clément Beaune told Politico. His remarks were confirmed on Monday by a spokesperson. “So it is unthinkable to move forward on trade negotiations as if nothing had happened with a country in which we no longer trust,” Beaune added.

  Free trade negotiations have been ongoing since kicking off in June 2018, with eleven rounds having been held so far, and the next to come within months this fall. 

  Importantly EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell late last week had also expressed shock in support of France’s position, saying “This alliance we have only just been made aware and we weren’t even consulted,” also indicating he only found out through media reports. “As high representative for security, I was not aware and I assume that an agreement of such a nature wasn’t just brought together overnight. I think it would have been worked on for quite a while.”

  ‘We thought we were mates’: “We are not speaking about normal contracts; we are speaking about a strategic partnership where France was sharing state military secrets with Australia” #AUKUS https://t.co/ybphBUsajV

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 19, 2021

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

  “We regret not having been informed – not having been part of these talks,” Borrell added. “We weren’t included, we weren’t part and parcel of this.”

  According to background by Bloomberg: 

  The EU is Australia’s third-largest trading partner, with the total trade in goods accounting for 36 billion euros ($42 billion) last year 2020, according to the Commission. If Macron really wanted to make waves, he could try to block a pact being negotiated by the EU that could increase exports to Australia by up to a third. 

  Meanwhile, the EU Parliament Trade Committee Chair has admitted that the AUKUS certainly makes upcoming trade negotiations much more complicated in terms of the desired goal of an EU-Australia agreement.

  But at the same time statements out of the UK and Australian governments appear to be downplaying the whole ordeal, and have expressed hope of defusing tensions, also explaining decisions were made with sovereign defense and Australia’s best interests in mind. This hasn’t kept France from feeling that it’s been cut out of Indo-Pacific defense sharing and coordination in efforts to counter China’s influence in the region.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 21:40

• Louisiana State University Begins Disenrolling Students Not Compliant With Vaccine Rules
  Louisiana State University Begins Disenrolling Students Not Compliant With Vaccine Rules

  By Ben Zeisloft of Campus Reform

  Louisiana State University has begun unenrolling students who failed to comply with COVID-19 regulations.

  As Fox 23 reports, seventy-eight students were told that they had been “resigned” from the school and would be refunded 50 percent of their fees. Louisiana State media relations director Ernie Ballard confirmed on Twitter that the students are “being contacted that they are being unenrolled from the university.”

  “As a student, you were sent numerous notifications regarding the Entry Test Requirement and reminders to comply,” read an email sent to the students.

  “Should you want to re-enroll at the university, you must complete the Entry Test Verification Survey. You will then need to email the Office of Academic Affairs… stating your desire to be reinstated and added back to your courses.”

  The university’s website states that all students had to “meet entry protocols” before September 10 in order to remain enrolled. The protocols included providing a negative COVID-19 test result no more than five days prior to arrival on campus, proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, or proof of a positive COVID-19 test result no more than 90 days prior to arrival.

  On Wednesday, Louisiana State University announced that its president, William Tate, was invited by the Biden administration to discuss the school’s COVID-19 regulations. Executives from Disney, Microsoft, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and other organizations were also present.

  “It is an honor to present our successful COVID mitigation strategies to President Biden and the COVID Response Team, and we are proud that our multi-tiered approach to protecting our students, faculty and staff has been recognized at such an incredibly high level,” said Tate in the release. “Our strategies have worked, with more than 81 percent of our student body currently vaccinated, a monthly testing protocol that monitors the presence of the virus on our campus, wastewater testing that allows us to intervene before an outbreak occurs, and a vaccine/testing mandate at Tiger Stadium to keep our fans safe, too.”

  Ernie Ballard, the media relations director for Louisiana State University told Campus Reform that 78 students received an email stating that they were disenrolled from the university and must meet entry protocols by September 17 to re-enroll.

  

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 21:20

• "Not Transitory" – US CEOs Warn Inflation Is "Unprecedented" And Becoming "Structural"
  “Not Transitory” – US CEOs Warn Inflation Is “Unprecedented” And Becoming “Structural”

  Some of the biggest names in business virtually attended the annual Morgan Stanley Laguna conference last week and warned about the complex nature of soaring inflation. 

  Much of the discussion was centered around the soaring cost of raw materials, labor, and logistical nightmares. Corporate leaders from 3M Company to Trane Technologies to General Electric Co., among others, all warned about increasing inflationary pressures, according to Bloomberg. 

  

  3M’s Chief CFO Monish Patolawala shocked attendees by calling inflation “unprecedented.” He said the impact of higher commodity prices and soaring freight prices would impact its 2021 earnings. 

  Trane Technologies Plc’s CFO Chris Kuehn told a very similar story: “Unprecedented is the word we’d use around the inflation side.” 

  At the virtual event, Morgan Stanley analyst Josh Pokrzywinski joked that everyone could check the word “unprecedented” on their 2021 bingo cards. 

  But what has become an increasing concern, pointed out by General Electric’s CEO Larry Culp, is that inflationary pressures are “increasingly getting structural in nature.”

  David Petratis, CEO of lock maker Allegion Plc, said inflationary pressures might stick around two to three years. He said his company is preparing for more persistent inflation, adding “it’s not a transitory situation.”

  Diversified power management company Eaton Corporation’s CEO Craig Arnold said supply-chain bottlenecks are fueling price increase this quarter. “Much to our surprise, and to the surprise, really I think of everybody in the industry, we’ve seen that things actually got materially worse,” he said. “I’m hopeful that by the time we get to the end of this year, things have settled a bit,” he added. “But I’ll acknowledge as well — we got it wrong. I think we all got it wrong,” he said. Eaton expects revenue guidance for the current quarter to miss because of part shortages. 

  Another company is Carrier Global Corp, which warned persistent inflation is ahead. So far, the home appliances corporation can’t raise prices faster than inflation. 

  Raytheon Technologies Corp said higher commodity and labor costs are beginning to impact the company financially. CEO Greg Hayes said, “I wish I could tell you exactly how long this transitory inflation was going to last.” 

  Hayes said August’s 5.3% year-over-year gain in the headline consumer price index is a huge number and should be closely monitored. 

  After listening to some of the biggest names in corporate America, it’s becoming more apparent that current inflationary pressure exists well beyond commodities and is also found in complex supply chains. There has yet to be relief in shipping container or dry bulk costs in a highly interconnected world, and congestion at ports continues to build. This is all affecting companies’ ability to procure supplies. 

  One thing that corporate leaders didn’t touch on is the increasing threat of stagflation. BofA’s Michael Hartnett recently told clients his macro backdrop for the second half is one of higher inflation, hawkish central banks, weaker growth, i.e., stagflation.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 21:00

• BLM Protest Planned At New York Restaurant Where Vaccination Proof Was Demanded
  BLM Protest Planned At New York Restaurant Where Vaccination Proof Was Demanded

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A Black Lives Matter chapter confirmed it will hold a protest at a New York City restaurant to support three black women who were arrested after a melee with a hostess who allegedly demanded they present proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

  

  Black Lives Matter Greater New York confirmed to Fox News and other news outlets that they will side with the three women—identified by officials as Kaeita Nkeenge Rankin, 44, Tyonnie Keshay Rankin, 21, and Sally Rechelle Lewis—arguing that the city’s vaccine passport is being weaponized against black people.

  “I believe that this New York City vaccine passport will be used to keep black people out of spaces, and if we don’t stop it now then the police will use it as an excuse to harass and arrest our people,” a Black Lives Matter Greater New York spokesman told Fox News in a statement.

  Video footage posted online last week showed a hostess with Carmine’s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a scuffle with several people. Lawyers for Carmine’s on Saturday told Fox that the women did, in fact, show proof of vaccination and were seated inside when the fracas started, and the altercation started when two men from the women’s party were not able to provide proof.

  Carmine’s on the UWS says a hostess was assaulted after asking a group for proof of Covid vaccine to eat inside. “It’s a shocking and tragic situation when one of our valued employees is assaulted for doing their job – as required by city policies…” @NBCNewYork after football. pic.twitter.com/xrqZoNm74R

  — Adam Harding (@HardingReports) September 17, 2021

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

  But Justin Moore, a lawyer for one of the women, claimed they were racially profiled and demanded the hostess be fired.

  “This hostess clearly has some anger management issues and unfortunately her aggression and her violence led to something that three black women are being punished for,” Moore, of Texas, told the New York Daily News. He furthermore claimed that the hostess used a racial slur against the three and attacked one of the Rankins, sparking the melee.

  A lawyer for Carmine’s denied Moore’s allegations.

  “Any claim that they were racially profiled is a complete fabrication, disingenuous, and outright irresponsible,” Carolyn Richmond, the attorney, told the Daily News.

  Earlier, a spokesperson for the restaurant said that one of the women physically assaulted the hostess, who was not named.

  “It’s a shocking and tragic situation when one of our valued employees is assaulted for doing their job—as required by city policies—and trying to make a living,” the spokesperson told news outlets Friday. “Our focus right now is caring for our employee and the rest of our restaurant family. We are a family-style restaurant, and this is the absolute last experience any of our employees should ever endure and any customers witness.”

  The three women were given tickets for assault and released by the New York City Police Department, according to local reports.

  Hawk Newsome, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist in New York, wrote on Twitter and Instagram that the group will be “outside” Carmine’s restaurant on Monday at 5 p.m. “Those Sisters @CarminesNYC had proof of vaccination!” he also wrote.

  “Restaurants are using vaccine mandates to enforce their racist beliefs and excluding black patrons,” Newsome also told the New York Times last week.

  According to data provided by the New York City Department of Health as of Monday, 38 percent of black New Yorkers of all ages are fully vaccinated. Among the largest age group, 18 to 44, 35 percent are fully vaccinated.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Black Lives Matter and Carmine’s for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 20:40

• Nancy Pelosi, Estimated To Be Worth $114 Million, Says Capitalism Has "Not Served Us Well" And "Needs Improving"
  Nancy Pelosi, Estimated To Be Worth $114 Million, Says Capitalism Has “Not Served Us Well” And “Needs Improving”

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband must not be having the success with his daytrades that he once was. Otherwise, we can’t think of any other reason for Pelosi to come out last Friday and state in London that capitalism “has not served” the U.S. economy as well as it should.

  “In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should,” Pelosi said according to WaPo. “So what we want to do is not depart from that, but to improve it and to make sure that it serves us.”

  The statement is ridiculous on a number of levels, not the least of which is that Pelosi and her husband have been partaking in the system – exactly as it exists today – by executing meaningful options trades in U.S. listed public companies, many of which have had “interestingly timed” runs of fortune since Pelosi’s involvement.

  

  Pelosi’s criticism of capitalism was that it had “historically allowed workers’ wages, as well as management’s, to rise alongside productivity”. We wonder if she has taken a good hard look at the effect of the ongoing Democratic government dole on productivity as well?

  Doing her best Karl Marx impression, Pelosi said: “You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”

  Pelosi said that the economic shift has been to “shareholder capitalism” which caused “employee salaries to stagnate”. 

  So naturally we’re expecting that Pelosi will dump all of her investments where her and her husband are “shareholders” – lest she contribute to the very same system she is arguing is decimating America and the middle class. 

  Pelosi, meanwhile, is estimated to be worth $114 million.

  What’s it going to be, Nancy?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 20:20

• UN Warns Artificial Intelligence May Pose "Negative, Even Catastrophic" Threat To Human Rights
  UN Warns Artificial Intelligence May Pose “Negative, Even Catastrophic” Threat To Human Rights

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

  The United Nations has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) systems may pose a “negative, even catastrophic” threat to human rights and called for AI applications that are not used in compliance with human rights to be banned.

  

  U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Sept. 15 urged members states to put a temporary ban on the sale and use of AI until the potential risks it poses have been addressed and adequate safeguards put in place to ensure the technology will not be abused.

  “We cannot afford to continue playing catch-up regarding AI—allowing its use with limited or no boundaries or oversight and dealing with the almost inevitable human rights consequences after the fact,” Bachelet said in a statement.

  “The power of AI to serve people is undeniable, but so is AI’s ability to feed human rights violations at an enormous scale with virtually no visibility. Action is needed now to put human rights guardrails on the use of AI, for the good of all of us,” the human rights chief added.

  Her remarks come shortly after her office published a report that analyzes how AI affects people’s right to privacy, as well as a string of other rights regarding health, education, freedom of movement, and freedom of expression, among others.

  The document includes an assessment of profiling, automated decision-making, and other machine-learning technologies.

  While the report notes that AI can be used for good use, and can help “societies overcome some of the great challenges of our times,” its use as a forecasting and profiling tool can drastically impact “rights to privacy, to a fair trial, to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention and the right to life.”

  According to the report, numerous states and businesses often fail to carry out due diligence while rushing to incorporate AI applications, and in some cases, this has resulted in dangerous blunders, with some people reportedly being mistreated and even arrested due to flawed facial recognition software.

  Meanwhile, facial recognition has the potential to allow for unlimited tracking of individuals, which may well lead to an array of issues surrounding discrimination and data protection.

  

  An AI robot (L) by CloudMinds is seen during the Mobile World Conference in Shanghai on June 27, 2018. (-/AFP/Getty Images)

  As many AI systems rely on large data sets, further issues surrounding how this data is stored in the long-term also poses a risk, and there is potential for such data to be exploited in the future, which could post significant national security risks.

  “The complexity of the data environment, algorithms and models underlying the development and operation of AI systems, as well as intentional secrecy of government and private actors are factors undermining meaningful ways for the public to understand the effects of AI systems on human rights and society,” the report states.

  

  Visitors look at an AI smart city system by iFLY at the 2018 International Intelligent Transportation Industry Expo in Hangzhou in China’s eastern Zhejiang province in December 2018. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

  Tim Engelhardt, a human rights officer in the Rule of Law and Democracy Section, warned that the situation is “dire” and that it has only become worse over the years as some countries and businesses adopt AI applications while failing to research the multiple potential risks associated with the technology.

  While he welcomes the EU’s agreement to “strengthen the rules on control,” he noted that a solution to the myriad of issues surrounding AI won’t be coming in the next year and that the first steps to resolve these issue need to be taken now or “many people in the world will pay a high price.”

  “The higher the risk for human rights, the stricter the legal requirements for the use of AI technology should be,” Bachelet added.

  The report and Bachelet’s comments come following July’s revelations that spyware, known as Pegasus, was used to hack the smartphones of thousands of people around the world, including journalists, government officials, and human rights activists.

  The phone of France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire was just one of many being investigated amid the hack via the spyware, which was developed by the Israeli company NSO Group.

  NSO Group issued a statement to multiple outlets that did not address the allegations, but said that the company will “continue to provide intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world with life-saving technologies to fight terror and crime.”

  Speaking at the Council of Europe hearing on the implications stemming from the Pegasus spyware controversy, Bachelet said the revelations came as no surprise, given the “unprecedented level of surveillance across the globe by state and private actors.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 20:00

• Cuba Becomes First Country To Mass Vaccinate Children As Young As 2-Years Old
  Cuba Becomes First Country To Mass Vaccinate Children As Young As 2-Years Old

  Starting this week and within the past days Cuba has become the first country in the world to begin a mass COVID-19 vaccination program for all children. Though the campaign was initiated earlier in September, CNN reporting on Monday observed the large scale campaign in action for children two and up.

  “During a single day at a policlínico in Havana, where CNN and other media were invited to film the vaccinations, more than 230 children ages 3 to 5 were vaccinated, the clinic’s administrator said,” the report observed. 

  What’s more is that to be considered “fully vaccinated”, Cubans – including children – must receive three shots, which is also something unique globally (Israel is the only other country to officially push a third “booster” shot for its citizens to be deemed fully vaccinated).

  

  A recent summer spike in infections across Cuba with the rapid spread of the Delta variant caused authorities to delay the opening of the school year in September. For now, state TV channels provide school lessons to children watching from their homes, also as many Cubans can’t access internet service.

  The last months have seen an alarming rise in Covid infections in children; however, it remans unclear and undisclosed how many of these cases are severe or have resulted in hospitalization, as CNN explains further:

  So far during the pandemic at least 117,500 minors have been diagnosed with Covid in Cuba, according to official statistics. The government has not said how many children have died in Cuba during the pandemic. But since the beginning of August, 10 minors, children and infants have been listed as having died in daily press briefings given by the Health Ministry.

  Currently Havana authorities are administering three Cuban-manufactured vaccines that state health regulators gave “emergency approval” for, but have struggled to produce enough for the island’s 11+ million population.

  Cuba begins vaccinating children from the age of two with locally developed vaccines | DW News https://t.co/EQAe5sEsyQ pic.twitter.com/4X8KUno3K4

  — Albert Schram (@albertschram) September 19, 2021

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  The Cuban government has at the same time come under criticism by global health officials, including at the WHO, for “excessive secrecy” regarding its homegrown vaccine development and program.

  Vaccinating children as young as two remains hugely controversial among populations across the globe, particularly in the United States, where the FDA has yet to approve Covid vaccines for people under 12-years old. This is given that the majority of children are asymptomatic, or merely experience mild illness, according to the general consensus among doctors and health authorities.

  It’s further exceptional that Cuba would also administer a third shot to children, given most vaccines approved in other countries require a maximum of two shots.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 19:40

• "If You Come To US Illegally, You Will Be Returned" – Homeland Security Secretary To Travel To Mexico Border
  “If You Come To US Illegally, You Will Be Returned” – Homeland Security Secretary To Travel To Mexico Border

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas plans to travel to the U.S.–Mexico border amid the illegal immigration crisis there.

  “I will be traveling to the border myself,” Mayorkas said on CNN on Sunday.

  Mayorkas did not say when or where he would be going and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to emailed questions.

  

  Thousands of illegal immigrants, many from Haiti, have amassed in recent days under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, highlighting the Biden administration’s failure to stem the surge in illegal immigration since President Joe Biden took office in January.

  Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano, a Democrat, has repeatedly appealed to administration officials to take notice of what’s happening, singling out Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

  Lozano said he updated Mayorkas on the latest updates on Sunday morning and was “grateful to receive an immediate plan of action.”

  

  Illegal immigrants bathe and play on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, the international boundary with Mexico, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 18, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  DHS closed checkpoints in Texas on Friday and began expelling some of the immigrants over the weekend.

  The agency surged some 400 agents and officers to the area to try to get the situation under control. It also helped move thousands of the immigrants to other processing locations to alleviate the crush in Del Rio and started talks with the immigrants’ home countries on accepting them back. The White House, meanwhile, directed federal agencies to work with the Haitian government and other governments to provide assistance to immigrants once they’re flown back to where they came from.

  

  Thousands of illegal immigrants amass in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  Beyond those steps, “the Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey,” DHS said in a statement Saturday, adding, “Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion. Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”

  “We certainly are experiencing a challenging situation, but we are surging resources and we have a multi-pronged approach to this,” Mayorkas said on CNN. He also said the Department of Defense was going to provide resources; the department did not return an inquiry.

  Mayorkas said Haitians who arrived before July 29 would get temporary protected status but that those who arrived later would be repatriated.

  “If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday after briefing with state and local leaders on the migration situation at the Del Rio bridge in Texas. https://t.co/XyXGK44G2K pic.twitter.com/F0vUoq9Mwv

  — CBS News (@CBSNews) September 20, 2021

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  The White House has not commented on the situation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki did not hold a briefing on Friday. Biden left Washington Friday for a weekend vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he ignored questions from pool reporters. Harris appeared at a college football game in Washington on Saturday to do the coin toss.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 19:20

• There Is "Real Risk" The Government Will Shut Down At The End Of The Month
  There Is “Real Risk” The Government Will Shut Down At The End Of The Month

  In all the excitement surrounding the Evergrande crisis which hit risk assets like a ton of bricks today, market watchers may have forgotten that not only is the Fed scheduled to make a regular appearance on Wednesday but that the debate over the fiscal stimulus and the debt ceiling are still ongoing.

  So, as Goldman’s Alec Philips summarizes the latest newsflow out of the Beltway, there are two main risks out of Washington at the moment:

  First, the debt limit (late October deadline) and funding the government to avoid a shutdown Oct. 1 appear no closer to resolved. The House Rules Committee was due to move forward today on legislation addressing both issues, but it is still not clear whether the stopgap spending measure Democrats instead put forward to keep the government open past Sep. 30 will include a debt limit suspension. If it does, there is a real risk of a shutdown at the end of the month, since Republicans look likely to oppose it in the Senate. If the issues remain separate, a shutdown becomes unlikely but the risk around the debt limit increases somewhat. That decision, which should have come today, now looks likely tomorrow, though further delay is clear possible.

  NEW: House Rules Cmte will not reconvene today.

  Instead, Dems will unveil their govt funding/debt ceiling bill tomorrow AM, bring it to the Rules Committee & possibly floor tomorrow.

  Much more in @PunchbowlNews PM coming out shortly … https://t.co/dg451H5Vxt@bresreports & me

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) September 20, 2021

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  The other risk relates to the fiscal package the House has been working on. Axios reports that Sen. Manchin (D-W. Va.) told a group that he supported a “pause” on the broad fiscal package until 2022. While not completely surprising — he already said he supported a pause, but did not specify for how long — this suggests more risk to the fiscal package than his prior comments had. Separately, Sen. Sinema (D-Ariz.) is reported to have indicated that she would not vote for the broad fiscal package if the House does not pass the separate infrastructure bill when it is expected to come up for a vote on Sep. 27.  This comes as Democratic leaders have raised the prospect of delaying the vote on the infrastructure package, which was scheduled for Sep. 27 as part of an agreement with Democratic centrists in the House, in return for their support for the Democratic budget resolution that passed in August.

  In short, a mess, but as the Goldman strategist notes, while these appear to be important developments that could shape the outcome of the fiscal legislation Phillips still expects both fiscal packages to become law despite potential setbacks:

  It seems unlikely that any of these lawmakers will want to take responsibility for blocking their own party’s entire domestic policy agenda. Indeed, some of the centrists who have raised issues with the legislation are often in the most competitive congressional districts and are likely to want to be able to show an accomplishment between now and the midterm election. More generally, we would expect that even if the legislative process on both packages stalls, Democratic leaders would likely find a way to salvage many of the important pieces before year-end, when items like the expanded child tax credit expires.  

  That said, recent developments are another reason to believe that the size of the package will be scaled back (as discussed last week, Goldman expects the $3.5 trillion to be reduced to $2.5 trillion, and the risks lean toward an even smaller package, just as the US economy is rapidly slowing down) and that the tax hikes proposed to pay for it are scaled back as well (the bank expects $1.5 trillion in tax hikes, also with risks leaning toward a smaller figure).

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 19:00

• A Looming Crude Oil Showdown
  A Looming Crude Oil Showdown

  By Ryan Fitzmaurice, senior commodity strategist at Rabobank

  Summary

  • As expected, China’s recent attempt to pressure oil prices lower has so far been unsuccessful

  • All eyes will be on the next OPEC+ meeting to see if Saudi Arabia will surprise the oil market by slowing or pausing planned production increases in response to China’s SPR release

  • US CPI inflation data for August registered a +5.3% year-on-year gain in consumer prices

  • The broad-based commodity indices are signalling even more upside inflationary pressures ahead, as those indices reached new multi-year highs just this week

  Oil prices were strong last week, setting new multi-week highs much to the dismay of large oil consuming nations that are fighting soaring commodity price inflation. This is particularly true for China given that crude oil imports there have soared back above the 10mb/d mark in recent data.

  Moreover, China’s recent attempt to pressure oil prices lower by announcing its intention to release oil from its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) has so far been unsuccessful, a dynamic we discussed in detail in last week’s note. Further reinforcing our thesis, oil prices fell suddenly again on Tuesday morning as more details of the Chinese SPR release were announced, however, the bearish market reaction was very short-lived and oil prices went on to quickly recover and settle higher on the day, just as they did last week when news of the Chinese SPR plans first hit the wires. Notably, ever since the pandemic hit, OPEC+ holds a virtual conference call every month to adjust supply to current market conditions with the stated goal of reducing global stockpiles and the unstated goal of increasing oil prices and revenue.

  As such, all eyes will be on the next OPEC+ meeting, scheduled for October 4th, to see if Saudi Arabia will surprise the oil market by slowing or pausing planned production increases in response to China’s SPR release. This is a real possibility, as we see it, and especially in light of the Saudi Energy Minister’s recent comments indicating he still has “tricks up his sleeve” and suggesting he would inflict financial pain on those that seek to impede the OPEC+ mission.

  Importantly, if there were to be a surprise on the supply side, it would likely have a much bigger impact on oil than the Chinese SPR release has, given that OPEC+ controls nearly all of the available spare capacity. In addition to that, OPEC+ has the powerful herd of systematic algos on its side doing the heavy-lifting and bidding oil prices higher.

  

  Commodity inflation

  As we noted in the onset, soaring commodity price inflation has put large consuming nations on the defensive this year. Further to that end, US CPI data for August was released on Tuesday and registered a +0.3% month-on-month gain which equated to a +5.3% year-on-year gain in consumer prices. Moreover, this was the fourth consecutive month that consumer inflation has come in at or above 5% y/y with no signs of letting up. In fact, the broad-based commodity indices are signalling even more upside inflationary pressures ahead, as those indices reached new multi-year highs just this week, thanks in large part to the gains in oil and gasoline prices.

  The CPI data release also prompted comments from President Biden yesterday in which he suggested that gasoline prices were somehow being artificially propped up despite evidence that they should be lower, as he put it. The President did not provide any detail as to what evidence there is to suggest gasoline prices should be lower which left many traders and analysts scratching their heads. On the contrary, we see considerably more upside risks than downside risks to oil and gasoline prices into year-end and even beyond. As it stands, both fundamental and quantitative market signals are overwhelming bullish and the speculative positioning has plenty of room to grow from current levels as we discussed last week. Perhaps more important though, is the revival in commodity index investing that was such a key driver for commodity markets in the first half of the year. On that note, the massive capital inflows into commodity index products witnessed in the first half of the year have gone dormant in recent months, a dynamic we detailed here. However, in our view, it won’t be long before institutional investors and large asset managers are forced to increase commodity index allocations as surging inflation expectations and fear of missing out forces capital off the side-lines. As such, we fully expect to see a notable pick-up in commodity allocations in the coming weeks and months given the well-known inflation hedging benefits commodity indices have historically provided. Furthermore, commodity markets are the best performing asset-class year-to-date with gains of more than 25%, so those asset allocators that have remained underweight commodities have missed out on the strong risk-adjusted gains and are very likely underperforming their peers and benchmarks.

  

  Looking Forward

  Looking forward, we see real potential for a bullish OPEC+ surprise at the upcoming October meeting in response to China’s recent SPR release. As we noted, OPEC+ currently has the herd of systematic algorithms on its side helping to bid up prices. Further to that end, aggregate open interest for petroleum futures increased this week as prices rose, signalling new speculative “long” positions are likely being established.

  Furthermore, we see the potential for a large increase in commodity index allocations as a result of surging inflation worries coupled with fears of missing out (FOMO) on the strong absolute and relative performance of commodity markets this year.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 18:40

• Dear Joe, You Know It's Bad When Chuck Todd Turns On You…
  Dear Joe, You Know It’s Bad When Chuck Todd Turns On You…

  You know it’s bad for Joe Biden when establishment media operative Chuck Todd calls out Joe Biden for having a “pretty big credibility crisis on his hands.”

  “I think he’s got a pretty big credibility crisis on his hands. Because all of these problems, in some ways, showed up after he said something basically the exact opposite.

  Afghanistan withdrawal wasn’t going to be messy. This wasn’t going to look like Saigon. The booster shots, he came out and essentially said eight months, and even indicated maybe we should start it as soon as five months. Now we’re not sure if anybody under 65 is going to get a booster shot…

  Of course, the border has been, whether this is — we can talk about the border problems say there are years in the making, but it’s pretty clear we have a bigger problem now than we’ve had in years, and these policies have turned into becoming a magnet.”

  (h/t citizenfreepress.com)

  There is only so much denial…

  

  Joe needs help.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 18:20