• Italy Expels Russian Diplomats Over "Extremely Serious" NATO Spy Case
  Italy Expels Russian Diplomats Over “Extremely Serious” NATO Spy Case

  What’s being described as an “extremely serious incident” and fast escalating spy case has resulted in the Italian government expelling two Russian diplomats from the country on Wednesday. Russian Ambassador Sergei Razov had been immediately summoned and informed of the drastic punitive action.

  The case reportedly involves an Italian navy captain who was caught passing secret documents belonging to the NATO member state to a Russian military official on Tuesday night. The Italian navy officer is alleged to have received money in return.

  

  It’s since escalated into a major diplomatic spat between Italy and Russian, with the Kremlin now vowing retaliation for the expelling of the two diplomats. Western allies are now weighing in on the dispute, fueling the controversy further, with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab saying the UK “stands in solidarity with Italy and its actions today, exposing and taking action against Russia’s malign and destabilising activity that is designed to undermine our NATO ally.”

  Here are the few details known related to the spy charges as laid out in Reuters:

  The Italian, a captain of a frigate, and the Russian, who was accredited at the embassy, were accused of “serious crimes tied to spying and state security” after their meeting on Tuesday night, Italian Carabinieri police said.

  The suspects were not officially identified. A police source said the captain was called Walter Biot, adding that he added accepted 5,000 euros ($5,865) in return for the information.

  Italian news sources identified that “NATO documents were among the files that the Italian had handed over” – which has led to inquiries over security vulnerability by other NATO members of the alliance. And further the AFP described “confidential documents” passed during a “clandestine meeting” – after which Russia’s ambassador on Wednesday morning was issued notification of “the immediate expulsion of the two Russian officials involved in this very serious affair”.

  It appears the “clandestine meeting” was being monitored by Italian police and intelligence, given there’s widespread reports that the Italian captain was “caught red-handed”. The Russian officials involved avoided arrest due to diplomatic immunity.

  

  Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio stated of the developing case Wednesday that “The accusation of espionage against Italian and Russian officers shows that we must continue to work closely with Europe and our allies to constantly improve our means of protecting the safety and well-being of our citizens.”

  No further information has been publicly released as to the identities of the Russians expelled, but it’s being reported via the Russian embassy in Rome that the pair worked in the Russian military attaché’s office, according to Reuters.

  The Italian captain Biot meanwhile has been arrested and is undergoing questioning and an investigation.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/01/2021 – 02:45

• China's Threat To Free Speech In Europe
  China’s Threat To Free Speech In Europe

  Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

  China has imposed sanctions on more than two dozen European and British lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move comes after the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

  China contends that its sanctions are tit for tat — morally equivalent retaliation — in response to those imposed by Western countries. This is false. The European sanctions are for crimes against humanity, whereas the Chinese sanctions seek to silence European critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

  

  The current standoff is, in essence, about the future of free speech in Europe. If notoriously feckless European officials fail to stand firm in the face of mounting Chinese pressure, Europeans who dare publicly to criticize the CCP in the future can expect to pay an increasingly high personal cost for doing so.

  On March 22, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced (here and here) that they had imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials accused of responsibility for abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a remote autonomous region in northwestern China.

  Human rights experts say at least one million Muslims are being detained in up to 380 internment camps, where they are subject to torture, mass rapes, forced labor and sterilizations. After first denying the existence of the camps, China now says that they provide vocational education and training.

  Among those targeted by the EU are Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB). In its Official Journal, the EU stated:

  “As Director of the XPSB, Chen Mingguo holds a key position in Xinjiang’s security apparatus and is directly involved in implementing a large-scale surveillance, detention and indoctrination program targeting Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities. In particular, the XPSB has deployed the ‘Integrated Joint Operations Platform’ (IJOP), a big data program used to track millions of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region and flag those deemed ‘potentially threatening’ to be sent to detention camps. Chen Mingguo is therefore responsible for serious human rights violations in China, in particular arbitrary detentions and degrading treatment inflicted upon Uyghurs and people from other Muslim ethnic minorities, as well as systematic violations of their freedom of religion or belief.”

  The EU sanctions, which involve travel bans and asset freezes, conspicuously exclude the top official in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, who has been targeted by U.S. sanctions since July 2020. The EU apparently was attempting to show restraint in an effort to forestall an escalation by China.

  The Chinese government responded to the EU sanctions within minutes by announcing its own sanctions on 14 European individuals and entities. The individuals and their families are prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao. They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China.

  Those prohibited from entering China or doing business with it are German politician Reinhard Bütikofer, who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation to China, Michael Gahler, Raphaël Glucksmann, Ilhan Kyuchyuk and Miriam Lexmann, all Members of the European Parliament, Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma of the Dutch Parliament, Samuel Cogolati of the Belgian Parliament, Dovilė Šakalienė of the Seimas of Lithuania, German scholar Adrian Zenz, and Swedish scholar Björn Jerdén.

  The ten individuals have publicly criticized the Chinese government for human rights abuses. Sjoerdsma, for instance, recently called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022. Cogolati and Šakalienė have drafted genocide legislation, while Zenz has written extensively on the detention camps in Xinjiang.

  China also sanctioned the EU’s main foreign policy decision-making body, known as the Political and Security Committee, as well as the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, a Danish think tank founded by former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

  In a March 22 statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said:

  “The Chinese side urges the EU side to reflect on itself, face squarely the severity of its mistake and redress it. It must stop lecturing others on human rights and interfering in their internal affairs. It must end the hypocritical practice of double standards and stop going further down the wrong path. Otherwise, China will resolutely make further reactions.”

  A few days later, on March 26, China announced sanctions on nine British individuals and four entities. The individuals include Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith, Neil O’Brien, David Alton, Tim Loughton, Nusrat Ghani, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Nice, Joanne Nicola Smith Finley. The entities include China Research Group, Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Uyghur Tribunal and the Essex Court Chambers.

  On March 27, China announced additional sanctions on Americans and Canadian individuals and entities. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Canada and the United States to “stop political manipulation” or “they will get their fingers burnt.”

  EU-China Investment Deal

  The EU sanctions, the first such punitive measure against China since an EU arms embargo was imposed in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy crackdown, appear to indicate that both the EU and the UK plan to follow the United States and pursue a harder line against human rights abuses by the Chinese government.

  The bedrock of EU-China relations has always been economic, and European leaders have long been accused of downplaying human rights abuses in China to protect European business interests there.

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel recently negotiated a controversial trade deal with China.

  The so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), concluded on December 30, was negotiated in great haste. Merkel, facing pressure from both China and German industry, reportedly wanted an agreement at any cost before Germany’s six-month EU presidency ended on December 31, 2020.

  The lopsided agreement, which ostensibly aims to level the economic and financial playing field by providing European companies with improved access to the Chinese market, actually allows China to continue to restrict investment opportunities for European companies in many strategic sectors.

  One week after the deal was signed, China launched a massive crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong.

  Now that China has imposed sanctions on European lawmakers, the investment agreement may never see the light of day. “It seems unthinkable that our Parliament would even entertain the idea of ratifying an agreement while its members and one of its committees are under sanctions,” said MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a parliamentary point-person for the EU-China deal.

  European Responses

  The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been strangely silent regarding the Chinese sanctions. Others have been outspoken in their criticism:

  “We sanction people who violate human rights, not parliamentarians, as has now been done by the Chinese side,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. “This is neither comprehensible nor acceptable for us.”

  After being put on China’s sanctions list, Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma tweeted:

  “As long as human rights are being violated, I cannot stay silent. These sanctions prove that China is sensitive to pressure. Let this be an encouragement to all my European colleagues: Speak out!”

  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson invited several of the MPs hit by Chinese sanctions to Downing Street. He tweeted:

  “This morning I spoke with some of those who have been shining a light on the gross human rights violations being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims. I stand firmly with them and the other British citizens sanctioned by China.”

  Johnson referred to the parliamentarians as “warriors in the fight for free speech” who have his “full-throated support” and expressed bafflement at Beijing’s “ridiculous” actions.

  British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab added:

  “It speaks volumes that, while the UK joins the international community in sanctioning those responsible for human rights abuses, the Chinese government sanctions its critics. If Beijing wants to credibly rebut claims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, it should allow the UN high commissioner for human rights full access to verify the truth.”

  Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith tweeted:

  “It is our duty to call out the Chinese government’s human rights abuses in Hong Kong and their genocide of the Uighur people. Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice. If that brings the anger of China down upon me the I shall wear that as a badge of honor.”

  Labour MP Lisa Nandy, in an interview with the BBC, said:

  “This is incredibly serious. It’s a direct attempt to silence and intimidate those who criticize the actions of the Chinese government. If China thinks that this will silence critics, they are completely mistaken….

  “This will only strengthen our resolve to be more vocal and more resolute in calling out and challenging the grotesque human rights abuses that we’ve seen coming out of Xinjiang and the clampdown on democracy in Hong Kong. We are British Parliamentarians who will not be divided on this. Whatever political tradition we come from, we are first and foremost democrats and we will stand up for those values, especially when they are under attack.”

  MP Tom Tugendhat, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, in an interview with the BBC, said:

  “What we are seeing at the moment is a vulnerable and weak China that has failed in its democratic outreach to states around the region, it has failed to undermine the coalition of countries that are standing up for human rights and it has failed to undermine the connection between the UK, the US and indeed Europe, so what they are doing is lashing out.

  “Sadly, this is a sign of weakness and not a sign of strength and a demonstration that President Xi is failing the Chinese people, the Chinese Community Party and, indeed, failing the whole world.”

  British academic Jo Smith Finley tweeted:

  “It seems I am to be sanctioned by the PRC (Chinese) government for speaking the truth about the #Uyghur tragedy in #Xinjiang, and for having a conscience. Well, so be it. I have no regrets for speaking out, and I will not be silenced.”

  Adrian Zenz, a German scholar subject to Chinese sanctions, tweeted:

  “Beijing’s strategy on Xinjiang is fundamentally shifting. Their goal is not mainly to erase the evidence, although they do that. It is now also less about denying said evidence, although they still do it. Rather, they now feel untouchable about it all.

  “Beijing’s strategy is to simply crush and silence any global opposition to its atrocity by inflicting crushingly punitive measures on anyone who speaks out. A very concerning development.”

  The China Research Group, which was established by a group of Conservative MPs in the UK to promote debate and fresh thinking about how Britain should respond to the rise of China, concluded:

  “It is tempting to laugh off this measure as a diplomatic tantrum. But in reality it is profoundly sinister and just serves as a clear demonstration of many of the concerns we have been raising about the direction of China under Xi Jinping. Other mainstream European think tanks have also been sanctioned this week and it is telling that China now responds to even moderate criticism with sanctions, rather than attempting to defend its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.”

  The founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said:

  “We will never give in to bullying by authoritarian states. Our work to promote freedom, democracy and human rights around the world will continue. China has once again highlighted the urgent need for democracies to unite in stemming the tide of autocracy in our world.”

  Select Commentary

  In an editorial, the Financial Times wrote that the EU’s sanctions on China are a sign of Western resolve on China.

  “China retaliated against EU sanctions by punishing several parliamentarians, analysts, and Merics, a think-tank on China based in Berlin known for its judicious analysis. It also targeted the committee of 27 member-state ambassadors to the EU who oversee foreign and security policy. Beijing has in recent years used a divide-and-conquer approach with national capitals to undermine a common EU front. With its Xinjiang abuses and overreaction on sanctions, Beijing has managed the rare feat of uniting the EU on a foreign policy issue.

  “By targeting critics of its actions and analysts who refuse to toe its line, Beijing has demonstrated its totalitarian mindset. By punishing European Parliament members, it has made it all but impossible for that legislature to ratify the investment agreement. MEPs were already clamoring for more concessions from Beijing, namely the adoption of international standards outlawing forced labor. China will need to make a double retreat to put the deal back on track, which seems unlikely. Having used the investment deal to drive a monetary wedge between Washington and Brussels, Beijing may feel it can dispense with it.”

  The Guardian, in an editorial, wrote:

  “The sanctions have drastically lowered the odds of the European parliament approving the investment deal which China and the EU agreed in December, to US annoyance. Beijing may think the agreement less useful to China than it is to the EU (though many in Europe disagree). But the measures have done more to push Europe towards alignment with the US than anything Joe Biden could have offered, at a time when China is also alienating other players, notably Australia….

  “Beijing’s delayed response to the UK sanctions suggests it did not anticipate them, perhaps unsurprising when the integrated review suggested we should somehow court trade and investment while also taking a tougher line. But the prime minister and foreign secretary have, rightly, made their support for sanctioned individuals and their concerns about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang clear. Academics and politicians, universities and other institutions, should follow their lead in backing targeted colleagues and bodies. China has made its position plain. So should democratic societies.”

  Lea Deuber, China correspondent for Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote:

  “In response to European sanctions against those responsible for human rights crimes in Xinjiang, Beijing is sanctioning European politicians, academics and research institutes. The sanctions must not be understood as a threat against individuals. They are an attack on the entire European Union, on its fundamental values ​​and freedom.

  “Beijing accuses the EU of questioning China’s sovereignty. In reality, the regime is trying to force the European Union to take sides in the dispute between the U.S. and China through violence and manipulation. The escalation must be a wake-up call.

  “For far too long the EU has believed in the illusion of a middle ground. With a view to the cruel conduct in Xinjiang, Brussels waited for years, only appealing again and again. Even with the sanctions, Brussels had sought a softened solution, disregarding important Chinese players in the region.

  “That must come to an end. Berlin must draw conclusions. At the end of last year, contrary to all warnings, the German government pushed through the investment agreement with China. This still has to be ratified by the EU Parliament. That is now unthinkable.”

  The Frankfurter Allgemeine, in an article titled, “Anyone Who Does Not Sing Beijing’s Song Will be Punished,” wrote: “In plain language: Beijing wants to decide who in Europe can talk or write about China.”

  UK MP Nusrat Ghani, writing for the Spectator, noted:

  “There is a positive side to all this. The reaction from the Chinese Communist Party shows that some of the work going on in Parliament is having an effect — and is reaching the ears of those who matter in Beijing. Twelve months ago, the abuse of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang was only whispered about in Parliament. There was no sense that the UK’s supply chains might be affected, or that we could bring about real change. Now the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, of which I am a member, has held an inquiry into forced labor in UK value chains, and we have found ‘compelling evidence’ of Chinese slave labor links to major brands.

  “The Chinese authorities should realize that their actions today have laid down a challenge for Parliament. They have essentially told MPs to stop asking questions and to mind their own business. Throughout its history, our Parliament has never much liked that attitude. I can assure the Chinese Communist Party that I and my fellow MPs will continue to shine a light on their activities, and that Parliament — more than ever — stands behind us.”

  Robin Brandt, Shanghai correspondent for the BBC, wrote:

  “China has gone for the people exerting the most pressure on Boris Johnson to be tough on China. It’s gone for the people who say ‘genocide’ has happened in Xinjiang.

  “The measures are essentially tokenistic — it’s unlikely these people or entities did any business with Chinese firms or people anyway.

  “Targeting Neil O’Brien is personal for the UK prime minister. The MP is in charge of leading policy in Downing Street.

  “Going after Essex Court Chambers — a group of self-employed barristers — for a legal opinion it reached also shows you how China views an independent judicial system. It doesn’t believe in them.”

  Sophia Yan, China correspondent for the Telegraph, in an analysis, wrote:

  “Beijing’s sanctions against the UK and EU — targeting MPs, academics, even legal groups — show the regime of Xi Jinping will not tolerate dissent from anyone, anywhere….

  “China is flexing its muscles to challenge a rules-based world order set by the West in a campaign to be treated as an equal. It plays well at home.

  “But there are genuine questions over whether the show of force is wise. Beijing’s behavior is certainly not winning hearts and minds, and instead appears to be doing damage to its international standing.

  “Beijing has long bet that most countries would be wooed by lucrative opportunities with the world’s second-largest economy.

  “How long that will continue to be the case remains to be seen. Britain, for its part, is unlikely to step back from its criticism of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and it’s hard to see how China could cool tensions if it wanted to….

  “A key test of whether Beijing can get away with throwing its weight around like this will be whether the EU moves to ratify an investment agreement with China. It has been in the works for seven years, but EU officials were expressing doubts even before they were hit with sanctions.

  “Whether the deal is approved, renegotiated, or scrapped entirely will send a message to Beijing — either that it can indeed do what it wants, or that it’s crossed a line.”

  Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Matt Pottinger, former deputy White House national security adviser, concluded:

  “Beijing’s message is unmistakable: You must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China’s borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a ‘high degree of autonomy’ for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it’s to lobby them on Beijing’s behalf.

  “Another notable element of Beijing’s approach is its explicit goal of making the world permanently dependent on China, and exploiting that dependency for political ends. Mr. Xi has issued guidance, institutionalized this month by his rubber-stamp parliament, that he’s pursuing a grand strategy of making China independent of high-end imports from industrialized nations while making those nations heavily reliant on China for high-tech supplies and as a market for raw materials. In other words, decoupling is precisely Beijing’s strategy—so long as it’s on Beijing’s terms.

  “Even more remarkable, the Communist Party is no longer hiding its reasons for pursuing such a strategy. In a speech Mr. Xi delivered early last year…he said China ‘must tighten international production chains’ dependence on China’ with the aim of ‘forming powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities.’

  “This phrase — ‘powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities’ — is party jargon for offensive leverage. Beijing’s grand strategy is to accumulate and exert economic leverage to achieve its political objectives around the world.

  “CEOs will find it increasingly difficult to please both Washington and Beijing…. Chinese leaders, as mentioned, are issuing high-decibel warnings that multinationals must abandon such values as the price of doing business in China. Like sailors straddling two boats, American companies are likely to get wet.

  “Beijing is trying to engineer victory from the mind of a single leader; free societies like ours harness the human spirit. Therein lies our ultimate advantage. The Communist Party’s leaders are right about one thing: American CEOs, their boards and their investors have to decide which side they want to help win.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/01/2021 – 02:00

• Washington's Hegemonic Ambitions Defy Multipolar Reality, Risking Catastrophic Conflict
  Washington’s Hegemonic Ambitions Defy Multipolar Reality, Risking Catastrophic Conflict

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.

  

  Over the past week the Biden administration has intensively reached out to Europe to revitalize the transatlantic alliance. In the following on-topic interview, Professor Glenn Diesen explains how the United States is opposed to the emerging reality of a multipolar world because of its winner-takes-all ideology. In doing so, Washington is predisposed to antagonize and militarize relations, primarily with Russia and China. The confrontational policy is aimed at driving a wedge between Europe on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other. The problem for Washington is that such a confrontational policy is unfeasible in a multipolar world. European allies are pressured to align with the U.S., but geoeconomic realities inevitably mean there is a practical limit to the American strategy. Using rhetoric about “values” and “human rights” is just a ploy to gain a false moral authority over rivals. The West’s unilateral use of sanctions is the corollary. But such a strategy is only further forging multipolar reality which is leading to weakness and self-isolation for the United States – and the European Union if the latter chooses to go down that futile route. Professor Diesen contends that without compromise and mutual respect among world powers, the ultimate risk could be catastrophic war. And he says the onus is on the United States and Europe to recognize competing national interests beyond their own, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.

  Glenn Diesen is a professor at University of South-Eastern Norway. He is also editor of ‘Russia in Global Affairs’ and is a contributing expert at the Valdai Discussion Club. His research focus is the geoeconomics of Greater Eurasia and the crisis of liberalism. He specializes in Russia’s approach to European and Eurasian integration, as well as West-China dynamics. He is the author of several books: ‘The Decay of Western Civilisation and Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft’ (2018); ‘Russia’s Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia’ (2017); and ‘EU and NATO relations with Russia: After the collapse of the Soviet Union’ (2015).

  His latest two books are ‘Russian Conservatism’ (January 2021, see this link); and ‘Great Power Politics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (March 2021, see this link).

  *  *  *

  Interview

  Question: The Biden administration is making strenuous efforts at rallying Europe and NATO to take a more adversarial position toward Russia and China: what are Washington’s geopolitical objectives?

  Glenn Diesen: Biden’s “America is back” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” both aim to reverse the relative decline of the United States in the international system. While Trump believed that providing collective goods to its allies as the cost of a hegemon was making the U.S. lose its competitiveness, Biden believes the U.S. must rally its allies against rising adversaries. The geopolitical objectives remain constant: preserving a dominant position for the U.S. in the international system.

  The main challenge to U.S. leadership position is geoeconomic as its rivals are developing alternative technologies, strategic industries, transportation corridors and financial instruments. However, the U.S. has not been successful in converting the security dependence of allies into geoeconomic loyalty. This is evident as the European Union uses Chinese technologies and capital, and Germany is working with Russia to construct the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. There are strong incentives for the U.S. to militarize a geoeconomic rivalry as it strengthens solidarity and loyalty among allies. NATO is therefore a good instrument even though Russian tanks are not heading towards Warsaw and Chinese troops are not about to invade Paris.

  Question: Will Washington succeed in pushing what appears to be a new Cold War drive?

  Glenn Diesen: Washington is certainly worsening relations with both Moscow and Beijing, although it is not clear that they will get the Europeans to follow their lead. The Europeans share many of America’s concerns, although they do not wish to retreat under U.S. protection in a new U.S.-China bipolar system. The EU has defined its interest as pursuing “strategic autonomy” to develop “European sovereignty”. U.S. efforts to rally the Europeans against Russia and China rely on rhetoric over security challenges or human rights issues, although it is meant to translate into reducing economic connectivity with the two Eurasian giants. However, the interests of the Europeans and the U.S. diverge over China, and the Europeans are also growing more concerned over pushing Russia towards China.

  Question: You’ve mentioned before how the United States’ goals are: a) to prevent Europe from partnering with Russia for energy trade; and b) to prevent Europe partnering with China for new technology, trade and investment. Is such a divisive U.S. aim possible to achieve in a multipolar, integrated global economy?

  Glenn Diesen: U.S. policies aim to prevent the emergence of a multipolar order. In my opinion, this is a misguided objective as Washington must adjust to the changing international distribution of power. I have argued that the U.S. is confronted with a dilemma – it can either facilitate and shape a multipolar system where the U.S. is the “first among equals”, or it can aim to contain rising powers to extend its hegemonic position although then a multipolar system will emerge in direct opposition to the U.S. By containing the rise of both Russia and China, the U.S. encourages Moscow and Beijing to define their partnership often in opposition to the U.S.

  The global economy is subsequently fragmenting. The geoeconomic dominance of the U.S. has rested on its leading technologies that buttress its strategic industries, control over the maritime corridors of the world, and control over the main development banks and the world’s trade/reserve currency. Russia and China have therefore developed a strategic partnership to develop their own technological ecosystems, new Eurasian transportation corridors by land and sea, and new financial instruments such as banks, payment systems and de-dollarizing their trade. The U.S. will therefore discover that the effort to isolate China and Russia will result in the U.S. isolating itself.

  Question: You’ve also mentioned that the United States may be trying a re-run of the Nixon-era policy from the 1970s of forcing a division between China and Russia. Is such a U.S. objective possible today?

  Glenn Diesen: It seems highly unlikely. Nixon was able to split the Soviet Union and China by reaching out to the weaker part, China, based on mutual misgivings towards the power of the Soviet Union. The U.S. therefore accommodated the weaker adversary to balance the stronger adversary.

  Today, the stronger adversary is China and the U.S. would therefore have to reach out to Russia. Beijing has no reason to turn against Moscow as Russia does not pose a threat to the Chinese, and Russia’s partnership is vital for China’s geoeconomic rise.

  Much can be gained from reaching out to Moscow, although it will be very difficult, and Russia will not turn against China. The U.S. leading role in Europe is reliant on excluding Russia from the continent, and the anti-Russian sentiments in the U.S. make it impossible to find common ground. Also, it is hard to overstate the resentment in Moscow over relentless NATO expansionism towards its borders.

  Future historians will likely recognize the historical blunder of not accommodating Russia in Europe. After the Cold War, Russia’s principal foreign policy objective was to be included in a Greater Europe. The remaining hopes for incremental integration with Europe ended in 2014, when the West supported the coup in Ukraine. Russia is now pursuing the Greater Eurasia Initiative and its leading partner toward that end is China.

  Reaching out to Moscow will enable Russia to diversify its economic relations and avoid excessive reliance on China, although Russia will not join any partnership aimed against China.

  Question: The Biden administration’s overtures for a stronger transatlantic alliance and a more unified NATO appear to be lapped up by various European leaders. For example at the NATO summit of foreign ministers in Brussels on March 23-24, the French top diplomat Jean-Yves Le Drian gushed about a renewed alliance under Biden, declaring that NATO had “rediscovered” itself. Why are European politicians seemingly so ready to appease Washington even when it is at the cost of undermining their own relations with Russia and China?

  Glenn Diesen: The Europeans only developed unity after the Second World War under U.S. leadership. Europe has thus only existed as a cohesive sub-region within the larger transatlantic region. During the Cold War this partnership was directed towards balancing the Soviet Union, and after the Cold War the trans-Atlantic partnership enabled collective hegemony. The Europeans have prospered under U.S. leadership and been able to develop regional European autonomy.

  The multipolar system challenges the foundation for the internal cohesion of both Europe and the trans-Atlantic region. On one hand, the Europeans want to align their policies with the U.S. to preserve solidarity within Europe and the West. On the other hand, the Europeans desire “strategic autonomy” as they recognize that U.S. and EU interests diverge in a multipolar world. Confronting Russia and China weakens the economic competitiveness of Europe and increases its dependence on the U.S.

  Question: Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking during a visit to China this week, remarked that the European Union had unilaterally destroyed relations with Russia due to recent actions, presumably imposing sanctions. Would you agree that the EU has taken unprecedented harmful steps against Russia?

  Glenn Diesen: Yes. The sanctions do not provide a solution, rather they undermine the possibility for a partnership to find common solutions. Sanctions are designed to force Russia to make unilateral concessions as opposed to finding mutually acceptable solutions through compromise.

  It must be recognized that every conflict has two sides, yet Brussels tends to treat all conflicts as transgressions by Russia that must be punished and corrected by the EU. I often make the argument that Russia is largely a status-quo power in Europe that reacts to Western revisionism. Russia intervened in Crimea in response to the West’s support for the coup, and Russia intervened in Syria in response to Western efforts to topple the government. The problem behind these conflicts is that Russian security interests were never included, and the sanctions are a mere extension of this hegemonic mentality.

  The sanctions are condemning Europe to reduced relevance in the multipolar world. A divided Europe creates systemic pressures for the EU to retreat under U.S. protection, and Russia must similarly diversify its economy away from Europe and instead align itself closer with China.

  Question: Do you see any prospect of the European Union waking up to the realization that the bloc needs to repair relations with Russia, and China for that matter? Presumably that would require the EU asserting geopolitical independence from the United States, and the question is: has Europe’s political class got the will or even the imagination for this?

  Glenn Diesen: How can relations be repaired? The source of all problems with Russia was the failure to reach a mutually acceptable post-Cold War settlement. Efforts to create a Europe-without-Russia inevitably became a Europe-against-Russia. Initially, Russian apprehensions could be ignored as Russia was weak and did not have anywhere else to go. This is no longer the case. The EU can either treat the underlying problem of excluding the largest state in Europe from Europe, or it can aim to treat the symptoms that include Russia’s pivot to the east – primarily China.

  Both France and Germany have become more vocal about the folly of continuing to push Russia towards China. France has been more ambitious in terms of rethinking relations with Russia to resolve the underlying problems, while Germany has been more focused on treating the symptoms by maintaining economic connectivity with Russia.

  What can the EU do? Suspending NATO expansion towards Russian borders or ending anti-Russian sanctions would undermine both EU and NATO solidarity as it is opposed by the U.S. and certain Central and Eastern European countries. The EU and the West were not designed for a multipolar world and so risk its internal cohesion no matter what is done.

  The EU is not demonstrating any intentions of altering its subject-object relationship with Russia, and seeking solutions through mutual compromise. When the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell went to Moscow last month, the effort to improve relations with Russia was therefore limited to lecturing Russia about its domestic affairs and transgressions in international affairs, which, it was inferred, Russia should correct in order to earn the EU’s forgiveness and improve relations.

  Question: Finally, are you concerned that deteriorating international tensions could lead to war?

  Glenn Diesen: Yes, we should all be concerned. Tensions keep escalating and there are increasing conflicts that could spark a major war. A war could break out over Syria, Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Arctic, the South China Sea and other regions.

  What makes all of these conflicts dangerous is that they are informed by a winner-takes-all logic. Wishful thinking or active push towards a collapse of Russia, China, the EU or the U.S. is also an indication of the winner-takes-all mentality. Under these conditions, the large powers are more prepared to accept greater risks at a time when the international system is transforming. The rhetoric of upholding liberal democratic values also has clear zero-sum undertones as it implies that Russia and China must accept the moral authority of the West and commit to unilateral concessions.

  The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 23:40

• Negative COVID Tests For Sale Are Flooding The Dark Web
  Negative COVID Tests For Sale Are Flooding The Dark Web

  With Covid test results now becoming the key to people doing the once basic things they used to be able to do without turning over personal health records (i.e. go to the store and buy a sandwich, or do their laundry) it should come as no surprise that dark web searches for Covid test results are skyrocketing.

  In fact, Uswitch recently analyzed Google searches and found that the number of people who were searching for “buy covid test results” in January 2021 had doubled since August 2020. 

  Other media outlets are also starting to pick up on the trend. “At the moment we are scanning more than 200 million dark web pages per week. We do see an increase in Covid-19 vaccine proof or Covid-19 test result but also there were some tests results on offer in certain marketplaces,” a cybersecurity expert in New Zealand told NZHerald this week. 

  

  “Fake vaccination certificates are also being sold, as well as fake negative tests, aimed at those traveling abroad,” HealthCareITNews reported on Monday. 

  Additionally, Google searches for “dark web covid” peaked on May 17, 2020, Uswitch says, “shortly after it was reported that more than 600 Covid-19 related medical products, supplies and fake vaccines had been found for sale on the dark web.”

  Uswitch found that people in the U.S. are the most curious about the dark web, and that most access it using the Tor browser:

  

  

  The flooding of the dark web with fake test results, of course, highlights one of the largest fallacies of the idea of vaccine passports or needing to prove vaccinations: ensuring the integrity of tests and test results. It could also indicate the large number of people who aren’t interested in getting the vaccine, but obviously are interested in getting back to reality. 

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 23:20

• Meet The Russiagate Prober Who Couldn't Verify Anything In Steele Dossier, Yet Said Nothing For Years
  Meet The Russiagate Prober Who Couldn’t Verify Anything In Steele Dossier, Yet Said Nothing For Years

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations,

  For the past four years, Democrats and the Washington media have suspended disbelief about the Steele dossier’s credibility by arguing that some Russia allegations against Donald Trump and his advisers have been corroborated and therefore the most explosive charges may also be true. But recently declassified secret testimony by the FBI official in charge of corroborating the dossier blows up that narrative.

  

  The top analyst assigned to the FBI’s Russia “collusion” case, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, admitted under oath that neither he nor his team of half a dozen intelligence analysts could confirm any of the allegations in the dossier — including ones the FBI nonetheless included in several warrant applications as evidence to establish legal grounds to electronically monitor a former Trump adviser for almost a year.

  FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten made the admission under questioning by staff investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee during closed-door testimony in October. The committee only this year declassified the transcript, albeit with a number of redactions including the name of Auten, who was identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

  “So with respect to the Steele reporting,” Auten told the committee, “the actual allegations and the actions described in those reports could not be corroborated.”

  After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document.

  His testimony, kept secret for several months, is eye-opening because it’s the first time anybody from the FBI has acknowledged headquarters failed to verify any of the dossier evidence supporting the wiretaps as true and correct.

  As one of the FBI’s leading experts on Russia, Auten was highly familiar with the subject matter of the dossier and the Russian players it cited. He also had a team of intelligence analysts at his disposal to pore over the material and chase down leads. They even traveled overseas to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and other sources.

  

  Still, they could not corroborate any of the allegations of Trump-Russia “collusion” in the dossier, and actually debunked many of them — including the rumor, oft-repeated by the media, that Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague in the summer of 2016 to secretly huddle with Kremlin agents over an alleged Trump-Russia plot to hack the election. They determined that Cohen had never even been to the Czech Republic.

  Yet Auten and his Crossfire teammates — who referred to the dossier as “Crown material,” as if it were valuable intelligence from America’s closest ally, Britain — never informed a secret surveillance court that the dossier was a bust. Instead, they used it as the basis for all four warrant applications to spy on Carter Page, a tangential 2016 Trump campaign adviser. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally signed and approved the final application, has testified that without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained.

  

  Financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 as opposition research against Trump, the dossier was used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to eavesdrop on Page from October 2016 to September 2017. A U.S. citizen, Page was accused of being a Russian agent, even though he previously assisted both the CIA and FBI in their efforts to hold Moscow in check. He was never charged with a crime and at least half the warrants have since been invalidated by the court. Page is now suing the FBI, as well as Auten, among other individual defendants, and is seeking a total of $75 million in damages.

  The bureau’s handling of the warrants is part of Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the government’s targeting of Trump and his campaign during the election, and later, the Trump presidency. In January, Durham secured a criminal conviction against top Crossfire lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for falsifying evidence against Page to help justify the last warrant issued in June 2017.

  It could not be ascertained whether Durham has interviewed Auten — a spokesman did not return messages — but Auten has hired one of the top white-collar criminal defense lawyers in Washington. And former federal law enforcement officials say Auten is certainly on Durham’s witness list.

  

  “That analyst needs to be investigated,” said former assistant FBI director and prosecutor Chris Swecker, noting that Auten is a central, if overlooked, figure in the FISA abuse scandal — and one who attended several meetings with McCabe in the Durham case. In fact, the 52-year-old analyst shows up at every major juncture in the Crossfire investigation.

  Auten, who did not respond to requests for comment directly or through his lawyer, was assigned to the case from its opening in July 2016 and supervised its analytical efforts, including researching other members of the Trump campaign who might serve as possible targets in addition to Page. He played a key supportive role for the agents preparing the FISA applications, including reviewing the probable-cause section of the applications and providing the agents with information about the sub-sources noted in the applications, and even drafting some of the language that ended up in the affidavits to spy on Page. He also helped prepare and review the FISA renewal drafts.

  A 15-year FBI veteran, Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of FBI informant Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as the footnotes. He also sifted through the emails, text messages and phone calls the FBI collected from the wiretaps on Page. He met with top Crossfire officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, briefed McCabe and then-FBI Director James Comey, and even ran meetings with case agents and analysts regarding the election-year investigation, which he testified “was done as a ‘headquarters special.’ “

  

  In addition, Auten personally met with Steele and his “primary sub-source,” a Russian emigre living in the U.S., as well as former British intelligence colleagues of Steele. Auten also met with former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and processed the material Ohr fed the FBI from Glenn Simpson, the political opposition research contractor who hired Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He was involved in key source interviews where David Laufman and other top Justice officials were present, and shows up on critical email chains with these officials, who are also subjects of interest in the Durham probe.

  Auten also attended meetings of a mysterious top-secret interagency entity, believed to have been overseen and budgeted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane Fusion Center,” or the Fusion Cell. Finally, it was Auten who provided analytical support to Special Counsel Robert Mueller when he took over the Crossfire case in May 2017. He brought his team of six analysts with him to Mueller’s office.

  

  As early as January 2017, Auten discovered that the dossier was larded with errors, misspellings, factual inaccuracies, conflicting accounts and wild rumors, according to a Justice Department inspector general report on the FISA abuses. Instead of disqualifying the dossier as evidence, the report found he let its unsubstantiated innuendo go into the FISA applications.

  Auten gave Steele the benefit of the doubt when sources or developments called into question the reliability of his information or his own credibility, according to the same inspector general’s report. In many cases, he acted more as an advocate than a fact-checker, while turning a blind eye to the dossier’s red flags, the report documented.

  For example, when a top Justice national security lawyer initially blocked the Crossfire team’s attempts to obtain a FISA warrant, Auten proactively turned to the dossier to try to push the case over the line. In a September 2016 email to FBI lawyers, he forwarded an unsubstantiated claim from the dossier that Page secretly met with Kremlin-tied official Igor Divyekin in July 2016 and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?” (Asterisks for emphasis in the original.)

  

  Senate investigators grilled Auten about his eager acceptance of the allegation, which Page had denied in secretly recorded conversations with an undercover FBI informant — exculpatory evidence that was withheld from the FISA court. Auten confessed he had no other information to independently verify the dossier’s charge, which was central to the FISA warrants.

  In a declassified internal FBI spreadsheet he compiled in January 2017 to try to corroborate the dossier, Auten cited a September 2016 Yahoo News article as possible corroboration of “Page’s alleged meeting with Divyekin” — even though the source of that article was Steele himself.

  “So you had no knowledge of a secret meeting between Divyekin and Page, but you thought this information ‘put us at least that much closer to a full FISA’ on Carter Page?” then-chief Senate Judiciary Committee investigative counsel Zach Somers asked Auten, incredulously. “Why does the mention of a meeting with Page and Divyekin move you ‘that much closer’ to a FISA application if you haven’t confirmed the information in the Steele dossier?” 

  “There was something about Divyekin,” Auten said. “That’s all I can say.”

  In the secret informant recordings, which were made before the Crossfire team submitted its first FISA warrant application in October 2016, Page stated he never met with Divyekin or even knew who he was.

  “Were you aware of his statements denying knowing who Divyekin was?” Somers asked Auten. “I don’t recall exactly whether or not I knew those statements at the time or whether I learned about those statements subsequent to that time,” Auten replied.

  “Do you think you learned about them prior to the first Page FISA application?” Somers persisted. “I’m not sure if I learned them before the first Page application,” Auten answered.

  Former FBI Special Agent Michael Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence working closely with intelligence analysts, said Auten should be “held accountable” for his role in what he described as FBI headquarters’ blatant disregard for the diligent process FISA warrants demand.

  “A FISA warrant must be fully corroborated. Every statement, phrase, paragraph, must be verified in order for the affiant to attest before a judge that the contents are true and correct,” he said. “I remember agents and analysts scouring warrants and affidavits obsessively to make certain the document was meticulous and accurate.”

  “To think the Crossfire team signed off on those FISA affidavits knowing the contents were uncorroborated is unconscionable, immoral and also illegal,” Biasello added. “All of them must be prosecuted for perjury, fraud and other federal crimes.”

  The Spreadsheet  

  Auten oversaw the early 2017 creation of a 94-page FBI spreadsheet that analyzed the credibility of the Steele dossier, excerpt by excerpt. 

  At first blush, the spreadsheet appears to corroborate some of the rumors. But upon closer inspection, the analysis relies heavily on media reports as the chief pieces of confirmation. The press citations, which number in the hundreds, are used in lieu of official corroboration.

  Listed under a section titled “Corroboration,” the spreadsheet repeatedly cites stories published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN, as well as more overtly anti-Trump outlets like the Huffington Post and Mother Jones. It twice used the same Yahoo News story to corroborate separate Steele allegations, despite the fact Steele was the main source for the article. (During the 2016 campaign, Steele had briefed Yahoo author Michael Isikoff on his opposition research for about an hour in a private room at the Tabard Inn in Washington.)

  Auten and his FBI analysts used a magazine article written by the sister of Democratic National Committee contractor Alexandra “Ali” Chalupa — a key promoter of the Trump collusion narrative during the 2016 election — as possible support for Steele’s lurid claim (later debunked) that Trump was compromised by a Russian sex tape.

  RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively that the spreadsheet glosses over one of the most glaring factual errors in the dossier — that Moscow allegedly paid DNC hackers through a Russian consulate in Miami. For starters, there is no Russian consulate in Miami. But Auten and his analysts remained silent about the reference to a phantom Miami consulate. It was never addressed in the nearly 100-page spreadsheet. Highlighting that gaffe might have exposed the shoddiness of the entire case.

  In the end, Auten never confirmed anything from Steele’s rumor sheet the FBI cited as probable-cause evidence in its requests to obtain warrants. To the contrary, he “ultimately determined that some of the allegations contained in Steele’s election reporting were inaccurate,” the IG report revealed, although he kept those discoveries from the court.

  Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz singled out the lead analyst in his 2019 report for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect to slip into the FISA affidavits and mislead the court.

  For instance, Auten learned as early as January 2017 that Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, lived in the United States, not Russia; yet Auten and the Crossfire team led the FISA court to believe he was “Russian-based” – and therefore presumably more credible. As RCI first reported, Danchenko was a hard-drinking gossip who had worked for the Brookings Institution, a Democratic Party think tank. It turns out the anti-Trump rumors he fed Steele — in exchange for cash — was dubious hearsay passed along over drinks with his high school buddies and an old girlfriend.

  “The FISA applications all say that he’s Russian-based,” Somers pressed Auten. “Do you think that should have been corrected with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?”

  Auten said he raised the issue with Clinesmith, the convicted FBI lawyer. “And what response did you get back?” Somers asked. “I did not get a response back,” Auten replied.

  And so the “Russian-based” deception lived on through the FISA renewals. The FBI continued to use the Steele rumor sheet as a basis for renewing its FISA monitoring of Page — and by extension, potentially the Trump campaign and presidency — through incidental collections of emails, text messages and intercepted phone calls. (FISAs let the FBI snoop not only on the target of the warrant, but also anyone communicating with the target and the target’s associates.)

  Perhaps most telling, Auten also withheld the fact Danchenko disavowed key allegations Steele put in the dossier.

  No Regrets, No Remorse

  Nonetheless, Auten appeared unbothered by the myriad problems with the dossier.

  He told Horowitz that he did not have any “pains or heartburn” over the accuracy of the Steele reports. As for Steele’s reliability as an FBI informant, Horowitz said, the analyst merely “speculated” that his prior reporting was sound and did not see a need to “dig into” his handler’s case file, which showed that past tips from Steele had gone uncorroborated and were never used in court. In a September 2016 memo used in the FISA applications to describe Steele’s credibility as a source, Auten falsely claimed Steele’s prior material had been corroborated.

  According to the IG report, Auten also wasn’t concerned about Steele’s animus for Trump or that he was paid by Trump’s political opponent, calling the fact he was paid by the Clinton’s campaign “immaterial.” Under Senate grilling, Auten confirmed the fact-checking lapses highlighted by Horowitz, but remained unrepentant.

  He insisted, “It was justified to open these cases” — not only against Carter Page, but also Trump advisers Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos — even while revealing that he and his analysts discussed taking out “professional liability insurance” policies because they worried the irregular Crossfire investigation “would likely result in extra scrutiny.”

  FBI Director Christopher Wray has kept Auten in his job at the bureau, where he continues to work at headquarters as a supervisory intelligence analyst. The FBI provided him counsel at his private Senate hearing.

  Wray has assured Horowitz he’s conducting a review of all FBI personnel who had responsibility for the preparation of the invalid FISA warrant applications and would take any appropriate action to deal with them for misconduct. It’s not immediately known if Auten has undergone such an internal review. The FBI declined comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 23:00

• "Crisis In Paradise" – Mexican Tourist Mecca Descends Into Chaos As Cartels Wage War During Spring Break 
  “Crisis In Paradise” – Mexican Tourist Mecca Descends Into Chaos As Cartels Wage War During Spring Break 

  While popular Instagram influencers and millennials flooded beaches, resorts, clubs, cenotes, and the Mayan ruins in Tulum, Mexico, during spring break, the up-and-coming paradise town on the Caribbean coastline of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula is descending into chaos.  

  

  

  These days, Tulum to Cancún (Cancún is about a 73-mile drive north) is flooded with spring breakers, millennials, and anyone trying to escape the virus pandemic in the US and Europe. Tulum is a coastal town. Known for its beautiful beaches and party vibe, but it’s gaining a reputation for crime and violence. 

  

  Homicides in Tulum jumped 109% in 2018, surging to 23 from 11, then increasing 47.8% in 2019 to 34. The upward trend continued last year, with homicides up 44.1% to 49. This year, homicides and other violent crimes are expected to hit record highs. 

  Tulum is undergoing a dangerous turf war among drug cartels. Six cartels operate in the resort town, including the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Zetas Vieja Escuela (Old School Zetas), and the Sinaloa Cartel. The main reason cartels operate in this area is because some tourists want party drugs. 

  For a town of about 80,000 residents, there are only 150 police officers, said James Tobin, a Quintana Roo-based citizens’ representative on the federal government’s National Security Council, told the local newspaper Reforma. 

  This week, a cartel shootout occurred in downtown Tulum. A Spanish tourist was “seriously injured” during a shootout, according to El Sol de Puebla. 

  In the last 24 hours, three cartel shootings have occurred within city limits, killing two and wounding eight. 

  Baltimore native Alastair Williamson captured the aftermath of one of the shootings in Tulum. 

  Nothing like a good ole Mexican shootout next to where we were dining #tulum chaos pic.twitter.com/dr7DDhFmfN

  — Alastair Williamson (@StockBoardAsset) March 30, 2021

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

  Twitter user Joey Sutera responded to the chaos unfolding in Tulum. He said: 

  To all my friends heading to Tulum this month for Zamna & beyond: There is a real problem in this moment that the media is not covering. The cartels are fighting for turf and control even at venues on the beach road and people are getting shot almost daily. 

  As of now, most of them are gang shootings, but there is always a risk of getting in the middle of a crossfire. Tulum is beautiful, and hopefully it will pass. Just exercise more-than-usual caution.

  But it’s not just drug cartels that are dangerous – so are the police.

  While drug cartels waged war, demonstrators all week, mainly in the evenings, have flooded the streets in protest against police corruption. 

  The demonstrations began when a woman in Tulum was killed George-Floyd style last weekend. The video is graphic but has ignited small pockets of social unrest of residents who are absolutely fed up with cartels, police, and the corrupt government. 

  I doubt we will see a single George Floyd level protest in Mexico over this police killing in #Tulum

  The way this unnamed woman’s body is treated is vile

  Video is hard to watch
  Tragic and senseless
  Cops need to at the very least stop kneeling on people

  pic.twitter.com/H4QRGk76LF

  — Andrea Noel (@metabolizedjunk) March 28, 2021

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

  For days, mainly in the evenings and on the downtown strip, young locals protested the police killing of the unarmed women. 

  #tulum protests continue for second night pic.twitter.com/WBAl6IE6Y5

  — Alastair Williamson (@StockBoardAsset) March 30, 2021

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

  While cartel wars and one protest must be strainful for police and local officials who need to keep the beach town in pristine condition to sucker Americans into paradise to blow their stimulus checks, another protest was seen this week with dozens of demonstrators holding signs such as this one, that read: “Tourist You Are Not Safe In Tulum.” The sign is hard to read, but it appears to say tourists are not safe from “corrupt police officers.” 

  

  Last week, one American tourist, who was ruffed up by corrupt police, said: 

  “I was absolutely scared when a Tulum police officer pulled me over. I was threatened with 36-hours in jail, but there was no way that I was speeding because other cars were going faster than me. Maybe it was the rental car that flagged the officer that I was a tourist. As soon as I grabbed my license from my purse, the officer noticed I only had American dollars and demanded money. If I didn’t pay the fine – he threatened me with jail,” said American tourist Melinda Lewis. 

  One tourist reached out to us and said their Airbnb host in Tulum warned about a possible cartel war in the beach town. 

  

  Other tourists are panicking as they’re being warned about an impending cartel war. 

  

  With Instagram influencers flocking to the tiny beach town, there’s a dark secret they won’t share with you on their feed, that is, Tulum is a chaotic hellhole full of corrupt cops and daily shootings as cartels wage war against each other. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 22:40

• US, China, Russia, And Thucydides Trap
  US, China, Russia, And Thucydides Trap

  Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,

  When Joe Biden started his presidency with the slogan “diplomacy is back!” some wondered what that meant in terms of a coherent foreign policy. Diplomacy, as every sixth-grader knows, is one of the many means needed to implement a policy. On its own, it is either an academic conceit or another name for charade. In the past week or so we have observed diplomacy, as practiced by the new administration, both as a conceit and a charade.

  As a conceit, it appeared in the headline-catching slogan “America is back in the Paris Climate Accord” launched by Washington. Now, however, we know that the “return” is so full of “ifs and buts” that even the French, initially applauding loudly, are beginning to wonder whether they have been sold a bill of goods.

  Another example was furnished by the tedious scrimmage over the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs in Tehran. President Biden had hinted at a quick return to the path traced by his former boss Barack Obama. Based on that assumption, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab imagined a scenario that would lead to defanging the mullahs with a lasting solution to the 42-year old “Iran problem.” Now, however, we know that Raab may have jumped the gun as the Biden team are still wondering what to do about a deal that Robert Malley, the diplomat in charge of the dossier, has described as defective.

  In the broader scheme of things, these two examples may do little harm.

  The Paris Climate Accord is more of an aspiration than a strategy while the Iranian nuclear problem has always been a way of avoiding the real issue: the danger that the Islamist regime poses for regional peace and stability. In its charade version, however, the Biden doctrine, if one might suggest such a label, tongue in cheek, could cause lasting damage because it concerns relations with China and Russia.

  In the case of China, the new administration opted for a ministerial conference held in Alaska, presumably to underline the chill in relations.

  Ignoring a primary lesson of diplomacy which is “getting to know you”, Secretary of State Antony Blinken seized the occasion to read out a litany of woes, leaving the Chinese wondering what was the point of a high-level meeting if it offers nothing but what is a daily staple in American news outlets. The Chinese responded by pouring scorn on America and its habit of lecturing others. What remains a mystery is how the Biden administration really sees the People’s Republic of China, especially at a time that it is engaged in a major redefinition of its role in a rapidly changing world.

  Is China a rival, a challenger, a competitor, an adversary or an enemy? Is the US heading for a cold, lukewarm or even a hot war with China? How serious is the danger, expressed by some pro-Biden pundits, of China invading Taiwan and forcing the US into a regional war? On the other hand, what about other pundits, including Henry Kissinger and other China lobbyists in Washington, who want a modus vivendi with Beijing or even see it as a potential partner in tackling such problems as North Korea, Iran or Burma, not to mention the super-arlesienne of Paris Climate Accord?

  Flying back home from Anchorage, the Chinese delegation may have had a sigh of relief. Blinken’s verbal tornado indicated confusion while the threat of sanctions has been downgraded to a blunt instrument.

  The fact is that Biden has no China policy. Reading the riot act won’t amount to a policy.

  The administration’s introductory move on Russia has been even more problematic. At a time that Biden was labeling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “killer”, Washington’s freelance diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad was in Moscow to launch the so-called Afghan peace conference “with the help of our Russian partner.”

  Members of Biden’s team claim that Russia intervened in last year’s presidential election to secure victory for Donald Trump. The phrase “Russia wants to subvert our democracy” has become a Bidenian leitmotiv. And, yet, the same Russia is invited as a partner in stabilizing Libya, finding a future for Syria and helping keep the mullahs on leash.

  One of Biden’s first “goodwill gestures” was to reinstate the outdated arms limitation accord that Trump had ditched. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov says the accord was reinstated instantly because Washington “accepted all our conditions.”

  Not surprisingly, Russian media talk of “confusion” when it comes to Moscow’s relations with the new team in Washington. Calling a head of state “a killer” is not very diplomatic, to say the least. Incidentally, Talleyrand recommended that diplomats praise interlocutors in public but, if needed, insult them in private.

  The questions that we asked about China also apply to Russia.

  Is Russia an adversary, a rival, a competitor, a challenger or an enemy? Without a cool, clear and rational assessment of its place on a tableau of identities, shaping a coherent strategy regarding relations with powers one has to deal with is well-nigh impossible. You don’t deal with an adversary, even a troublemaker, the same way you do with an enemy. Even enemies could be further categorized, requiring different policies.

  An ideological and/or political foe isn’t in the same category as an existential enemy. There are enemies that could be turned into neutrals or even partners if not actual friends. Then there are enemies who, like the bug in a Voltaire short story, are suicidal; they prefer to attack and die rather than live to make peace. There are also enemies you can ignore today because, as that great cynic Bill Clinton pontificated, you could always kill them tomorrow.

  Whether China and Russia are enemies of the United States is a question that needs separate treatment.

  However, without answering that question it won’t be possible to develop serious policies to deal with them.

  Beyond that, it is bad policy, to say the least, to pick a fight with China and Russia at the same time, two rival powers that are deeply suspicious of each other, with contradictory rather than complementary economic and geopolitical interests. President Richard Nixon’s opening to China was a key element in nudging the Soviet Union towards détente and the Helsinki Accords.

  

  George Shultz always advised against taking on two powerful challengers at the same time, even though the US needed to plan for simultaneously fighting two major wars. He understood that foreign policy imperatives should not be confused with military contingency, though the two are complementary. Right now it seems that Biden is more interested in proving he is anti-Trump than dealing with two opportunistic powers determined to lead us into a Thucydides trap and the world order in their narrow interests.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 22:20

• Which US States Have Lifted COVID-19 Restrictions?
  Which US States Have Lifted COVID-19 Restrictions?

  “Impending Doom”: The words the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chose Monday to describe where the U.S. was headed with the current opening strategy have been repeated countless times.

  

  Here is the ‘surge’ Walensky is freaking out about.

  

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, 14 U.S. states have already lifted almost all coronavirus restrictions, according to information published by The New York Times and Kayak. No mask mandates, no stay-at-home orders or interstate travel quarantines were in place in Florida, Texas and Georgia as well as in parts of the Midwest and South, while businesses in the states were again almost fully opened.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to Johns Hopkins University, six out of these 14 opened-up states are currently experiencing rising case numbers again.

  In mid-March, only one of them had been recording more new cases. These new outbreaks in opened-up states are currently underway in the Deep North and Midwest Plains as well as in Florida.

  Opened-up states which are reporting stagnating case numbers include Texas, Georgia and Mississippi.

  

  The state that remained under most coronavirus restriction was California, where L.A. county as well as San Diego and San Francisco are still seeing many new cases.

  Alaska was also mostly opened up, but still enforces an interstate travel quarantine.

  All opened-up states have Republican governors.

  Interestingly, after President Biden leveraged the CDC Director’s emotional outburst to urge all states to reverse their lifting of COVID restrictions, Walensky said today that:

  “Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus.”

  Which would appear to imply that vaccinated people therefore cannot spread the virus (you can’t spread what you can’t carry) and thus, vaccinated people have no need to wear a mask or adhere to draconian distancing rules.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 22:00

• 'CNN News' Writer Claims "Not Possible" To Assign Gender At Birth
  ‘CNN News’ Writer Claims “Not Possible” To Assign Gender At Birth

  Authored by Alexander Desanctis via NationalReview.com,

  In an article reporting on Kristi Noem’s decision to veto the “Fairness in Girls’ Sports” bill, CNN breaking-news reporter Devan Cole claimed yesterday that there’s no way to determine a child’s “gender identity” at birth.

  

  “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth,” Cole asserted, in a statement better fit for an unhinged opinion article than a news article by a breaking-news reporter.

  CNN is a parody website pic.twitter.com/djUrqI0jlt

  — B (@aheapofthings) March 30, 2021

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

  In fact, as most of us are willing to acknowledge, for all of human history we’ve all relied upon a very simple way of actually knowing sex at birth.

  There is indeed consensus for knowing biological sex at birth: just gotta look between the legs, it’s really not that hard.

  — Just a Fluffy Shiba Inu 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇰🇭 (@fluffy_shibainu) March 31, 2021

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

  The concept of “assigning” sex at birth, far from being based on any “consensus criteria,” is a progressive invention designed to inculcate new parents into believing that a child’s biological sex and gender are sometimes, or even often, misaligned, and that it would be damaging to them to merely accept the reality of their biology at birth.

  You… you do know women can get ultrasounds while the baby is still in utero to find out the sex of their child, right? The criteria is pretty cut and dry here.

  — Krizzと (@konkarrne) March 31, 2021

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

  Cole has more to offer in this vein, critiquing two orders that Noem signed in an effort to require that biologically male athletes and biologically female athletes compete against others of their own sex:

  Though the two executive orders signed by Noem do not explicitly mention transgender athletes, they reference the supposed harms of the participation of “males” in women’s athletics – an echo of the transphobic claim, cited in other similar legislative initiatives, that transgender women are not women. The orders also reference “biological sex,” a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students’ original birth certificates.

  To Cole, the activist phrase “transphobic” is a matter of simple fact, fit for use by a hard-news writer, but the phrase “biological sex” is apparently disputed.

  Of course, contrary to what Cole and his editors at CNN would like us to swallow wholesale, biological sex is a defined, observable, scientific reality – regardless of what anyone might believe about how best to deal with the policy issue of athletes who identify with the opposite sex.

  To pretend that we as a society are incapable of knowing whether a child is a male or female at birth is lunacy. More than that, it’s lunacy in service of the left-wing project to redefine sex and gender as being entirely a creation of each individual, totally untethered from any biological or metaphysical reality.

  In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, Margaret Harper McCarthy hits on exactly what is so problematic about this effort, especially as codified in the Equality Act, which Democrats are attempting to push through Congress:

  At stake in the so-called Equality Act, currently before the Senate, is neither women’s sports nor bathrooms, at least not ultimately. At stake is the freedom of rational human beings to use a common vocabulary when speaking about what all can see…

  The Equality Act doesn’t concern such invisible mysteries as the Holy Trinity, for example. That is a matter of belief in the strict sense, though it isn’t irrational or private. Rather, the Equality Act concerns things everyone can see and understand. Infants don’t need instruction to know that their mothers are the ones who are nursing them, and their fathers are the ones who are not. Sexual difference is obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

  McCarthy is right. The debate over the Equality Act – or over the South Dakota bill Noem vetoed – isn’t ultimately a debate about bathrooms or sports teams.

  It’s a debate about whether we as a society are on board with the program of pretending that men and women are interchangeable, that the realities of biological sex and human nature can be erased if we pretend hard enough.

  We know which side CNN is on.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 21:40

• "Buyer Mayhem" – Canadian House Goes For $612,000 Over List After Bidding War
  “Buyer Mayhem” – Canadian House Goes For $612,000 Over List After Bidding War

  Toronto is the most overheated housing market among any metropolitan city in Canada. The latest example of this is the recent sale of a home that sparked a bidding war among buyers in Banbury Don Mills, a suburb in Toronto’s North York district. 

  The Globe and Mail report the 3,500 sqft home located at 42 Apollo Dr., Toronto, was listed for $1,998,000 in January and immediately saw massive interest among prospective homebuyers. 

  

  Real agent Belinda Lelli said she had 112 showings on the suburban home with more than 17 offers. 

  “The strategy was to put it on the market before the spring,” said Lelli, because inventories were low in January.

  “It was buyer mayhem from the onset,” she said. “I fielded 112 showings and 17 offers.”

  She said the house quickly sold for $612,000 over list or a 30% premium versus the initial list price. 

  Lelli said the suburban area is very sought after in a post-COVID world. “It’s on a very quiet, family-friendly street, and it has five bedrooms, plus one bedroom in the fully finished basement,” she added. 

  

  In addition to being in the suburbs, the home can support two at-home offices, bedrooms for two kids, and even a finished basement for a housekeeper, nanny, or an in-law suite. 

  Lelli correctly points out that the low inventory and cheap mortgage rates resulted in the home’s bidding war. Also, being in the suburbs, city-dwellers are finding the area attractive. 

  Earlier this month, BMO Senior Economist Robert Kavcic pointed out the “boiling” Canadian housing in one chart, which shows housing prices across Canada have erupted in recent months. 

  

  Kavcic said: “that is, the 1-month change is faster than 3-month; which is faster than the 6-month; which is faster than the 12-month. In all cases but the 12-month (and that won’t be long either), price growth had accelerated through the rates seen in 2017, when policymakers were working on multiple fronts to tame the market.”

  Rapid home price increases have alarmed the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in a recent Housing Market Assessment report. The agency singled out Toronto and called it the most overheated market in the country. 

  Royal Bank of Canada economist Robert Hogue finds real estate prices are moving the fastest in suburbs and rural communities. 

  “Surging prices are also pulling demand forward, with many buyers opting to act now for fear they’ll miss out,” said Hogue, outlining how people can work remotely and want more land in a post-lockdown environment. “The factors driving the current frenzy will eventually reverse or run their course.”

  Hogue warns the frenzy won’t last forever as overheated conditions usually result in a correction. 

  A similar frenzy is happening to Canada’s neighbor in the south, that being the US. The Federal Reserve sparked a housing boom with historically low mortgage rates as the remote-work phenomenon is pushing city dwellers to the suburbs. 

  In one instance, a home in the Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento, California, was recently listed for $399,900, and in just two days, received a mindboggling 122 offers. The home ended selling well above the list price. 

  The bottom line is that the Canadian housing market is boiling, and once demand languishes, a correction will be seen. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 21:20

• They're Not Even Trying To Make Sense Now
  They’re Not Even Trying To Make Sense Now

  Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In short, we are supposed to believe that in 2016 the Russian hacked nothing but the election and in 2020 they hacked everything but the election.

  The US intelligence community published a report on 10 March, widely reported in the US free speech news media, on foreign interference in the US election (how many oxymorons so far?).

  The report establishes a new level of idiocy on the long-running “Russiagate” nonsense.

   

  The idiocy began when Trump, campaigning, remarked that it would be better to get along with Russia than not. A sentiment that would not have surprised Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan or any of the others who recognised that, like it or not, Moscow was a fact. A fact that had to be dealt with, talked to, negotiated with so as to produce the best possible result. Why? Well, apart from the diplomatic reality that it is better to get on with your neighbours, the fact that the USSR/Russia was a nuclear power that could obliterate the USA was adequate reason to keep communications alive. If relations could be improved, all earlier US Presidents would agree, so much the better. But for Trump – the outsider – to dare to say so was an outrage. Or more accurately, a hook on which to hang enough simulated outrage to cost him the election. Then, upsetting all expectations, he won. Immediately pussy hat protests, blather about tax returns, Electoral College speculations, 25th Amendment, psychiatrists opining unfitness (COVFEFE: Bizarre Trump Behavior Raises More Mental Health Questions): an entire industry was created to get Trump out, or, if he couldn’t be got out, then at least prevented from doing any of the things he campaigned on. All the swamp creatures were mobilised. The most enduring of these efforts was the Russia allegation. A Special Counsel was created to investigate Russia, Trump and the election. Leaks from this and other investigations fuelled outrage and talk shows.

  One of the indications that the story was actually an information operation and not based on fact was its imprecision. Was Trump merely too friendly with Putin, or was he his puppet? Was Trump just a fool to think that relations with Russia could be improved, or was he following instructions? In short, was he a dupe or a traitor? How exactly had Russia interfered in the election and to what effect? Had a few voters been influenced or had the result been completely determined by Moscow? In short was Moscow running the USA or just trying to? Proponents of these crackpot theories never quite specified what they were talking about – it was all suggestion, innuendo, rumours and promises of future devastating revelations. Some of the highlights of the campaign: Keith Olberman shouting Russian scum! Morgan Freeman solemnly intoning that we were at war, and, night after night, Rachel Maddow spewing conspiracies. Some media headlines: Opinion: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset. Trump is ‘owned by Putin’ and has been ‘laundering money’ for Russians, claims MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch. Mueller’s Report Shows All The Ways Russia Interfered In 2016 Presidential Election. A media firestorm as Trump seems to side with Putin over US intelligence. Trump and Putin, closer than ever. All signs point the same way: Vladimir Putin has compromising information on Donald Trump. And so on. Four years of non-stop nonsense promising, tomorrow, or the next day, the final revelation that would disgrace Trump and rid the country of him forever: my personal favourite is this mashup of TV hairstyles telling us that the walls were closing in. Information war. Propaganda. Fake news.

  All this despite the fact that the story as presented simply made no sense at all. As I pointed out in December 2017, if Moscow had wanted to nobble Clinton, it had far more potent weapons at its disposal than a too-late revelation of finagling inside the DNC.

  And it wasn’t just TV talking heads; the US intelligence community participated. There were two laughable “intelligence assessments”. The DHS/FBI report of 29 December 2016 carried this stunning disclaimer:

  This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.

  The DNI report of 6 January 2017 devoted nearly half its space to a four-year-old rant about RT and admitted that the one Agency that would really know had only “moderate confidence”. In short: ignore the first report, and don’t take the second one seriously. Were people inside these organisations trying to tell us it was all phoney? No matter, the anti-Trump conspiracy shrieked out the reports immediately.

  One by one, it fell apart. Mueller, despite the prayer candles, came up with nothing. The “Dirty Dossier” was a fraud. The impeachment for something that Biden actually did failed. These dates should be remembered – Crowdstrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee that he had no evidence on 5 December 2017; this classified testimony was not made public until 7 May 2020. Simply put: the key allegation, the trigger for all the excitement and investigations that followed, was a lie, many people knew it was a lie, the lie was kept secret for 884 days. But the lie served its purpose.

  There were no investigations of this fraud, only pseudo investigations that went nowhere. When the Republicans had a majority on the House of Representatives there were serious investigations but the testimonies – like Henry’s – were kept secret because they were “classified”. When the Democrats gained control, there were continual boasts that the evidence of collusion was overwhelming, but nothing happened either. Trump’s first Attorney General recused himself and the investigation was conducted by the conspirators. His second Attorney General promised much, set up a Special Counsel, but nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing: a junior conspirator had his knuckles rapped for faking a FISA warrant. In short, the Deep State ran the clock out: the swamp drained Trump.

  Ran it out quite successfully too: relations with Russia got worse and Trump himself was hamstrung. His orders were ignored everywhere: on investigating the conspiracy and on removing troops; here’s an insider telling us that the Pentagon ignored his orders on Afghanistan. He was stonewalled on Syria: “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.” The “most powerful man in the world” was blocked on almost every initiative and the long false Russia connection story was a powerful weapon in the conspiracy to impede his attempts to change course.

  In 2021 Trump left office and there was no need to mention any of it again. But here’s where it gets really stupid. In December 2020, the NYT solemnly told us: Russian Hackers Broke Into Federal Agencies, U.S. Officials Suspect: In one of the most sophisticated and perhaps largest hacks in more than five years, email systems were breached at the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Other breaches are under investigation. At the same time we were equally solemnly told by US officials “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history”.

  In short, we are supposed to believe that

  in 2016 the Russian hacked nothing but the election

  and in 2020 they hacked everything but the election.

  How stupid do they think we are? Even stupider evidently. Instead of retiring the Trump/Russia/collusion/interference nonsense when it had achieved its purpose, the Intelligence Community Assessment on Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections takes us right back down the rabbit hole. I haven’t read it and certainly don’t intend to (see oxymoron above), but Matt Taibbi has and eviscerates it here; he’s read far enough to have mined this gem “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact”. (Is this a hint from insiders that it’s all fake?) The report claims that Putin authorised, and various Russian government entities conducted, a campaign to denigrate Biden. Specifically by using Ukrainian sources to talk about corruption of Biden and his son Hunter; despite the video of Biden boasting about firing the investigator, we’re assured that this is all disinformation. And the consumers of the NYT and CNN will believe what they were told. Or, actually, will believe what they weren’t told: the media kept quiet. (Now that’s interference and interference that actually might have changed votes.) The report goes on to say that China did something or other and Iran, Hezbollah, Cuba and Venezuela also chipped in. But fortunately no foreign actor did anything to affect the technical part of the election.

  The US security organs expect us to believe,

  giving no proof,

  that there was lots of malign activity

  which had no effect on the election whatsoever.

  Which is telling us they think we’re even stupider. Russia swung the election four years ago but forgot how to this time? Putin’s attempt to keep Trump in was blocked by security measures adopted when his tool was President? This time Putin wanted Biden in? Russia’s efforts on behalf of Trump were countered by China’s on behalf of Biden and Iran’s interference broke the tie? But then, information operations don’t have to make sense, they just have to create an impression: Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela do bad things to good people.

  Oh, and the latest is that Moscow cultivated Trump for over 40 years, Imagine that: in 1980 they were so perceptive as to see the future importance of a property developer; who’ve they got lined up in the wings now? And Rachel Maddow is back at the old stand pushing some conspiracy theory about Trump, Putin and COVID. I guess it’s not yet time to put away the tinfoil hats.

  As I have said before, English needs a whole new set of words for the concept “stupid”: the old ones just don’t have the power any more.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 21:00

• "Human Intelligence Drys Up" – US Investigations Into Drug Cartels Halted Over Mexican Standoff 
  “Human Intelligence Drys Up” – US Investigations Into Drug Cartels Halted Over Mexican Standoff 

  US law enforcement officials are flying blind with limited to no human intelligence on Mexican cartels due to a new law passed in December by the Mexican government that requires US authorities to share contacts in the country with Mexican officials (who are often corrupt). 

  Current and former senior officials in both countries tell Reuters US efforts to combat powerful drug cartels inside Mexico have come to a standstill since January as relations fray between them. 

  Before December, US and Mexican authorities routinely shared intelligence on drug cartels, but the new law now requires US authorities to report their law-enforcement contacts to the Mexican government first. This has temporarily halted joint efforts to prevent the flow of drugs into the US. 

  Two sources said, “on-the-ground operations, including raids on Mexican drug labs, have largely ceased, and US authorities are now struggling to track movements of U.S.-bound cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia through Central America and into Mexico.”

  

  Sources said US drug agents working on the ground had been followed by local police (who are often paid off by cartels), raising serious concerns about their safety. There’s also been the issue of US law enforcement agents who have been denied visas to work in the country. 

  “Most of our most important cases are at a standstill,” a senior US law enforcement official told Reuters. “If we have to report our sources to their foreign ministry, it jeopardizes our sources and methods. The system is set up intentionally now so that Mexican law enforcement can’t help us.”

  A top Mexican military official told Reuters since the new law went into effect several months ago, most anti-drug efforts with the US have been postponed. 

  “Without US support – in technology and intelligence – it will be more difficult to contain crime,” the official said.

  Another Mexican official described the rift between both countries as more “administrative and temporary than substantive.” 

  “It’s not that cooperation is now paralyzed,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that things will normalize. 

  The new law came into effect shortly after the US arrested former Mexican defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos on drug trafficking charges. The purpose of the arrest was to show close ties between drug cartels and Mexican government officials. However, in Mexico, the arrest was not well received and triggered a backlash. 

  While the Biden administration is under pressure to control a migrant crisis at the US-Mexico border, US officials are having difficulty tracking shipments of drugs pouring into the US, which comes at a time when US drug overdose deaths have reached an all-time high. 

  Former DEA head Timothy Shea said, “the big winners are the cartels.” He warned: “It’s just what the cartels wanted so they can expand their reach and smuggle more deadly drugs into the United States.”

  He said, “human intelligence is drying up,” making it more difficult to intercept drug shipments. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 20:40

• Hillary Attacks "Shameless Gun Worshipers" Who Are Against "Sensible" Control Legislation
  Hillary Attacks “Shameless Gun Worshipers” Who Are Against “Sensible” Control Legislation

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Hillary Clinton has declared Republicans who are against gun control legislation to be “gun worshippers”, and ridiculed them for being “scared” that their rights are being taken away.

  

  Appearing on her own former communications director’s podcast, Clinton declared “You know, democracy is the balancing of interests and rights, and unfortunately at this time, the gun worshipers have a huge advantage because of the filibuster and because of their shameless exploitation of people’s unwarranted fears.”

  We talk so much about the right to bear arms in America. @HillaryClinton wants to change the narrative.

  What about the rights of everyone else? The right to go to work, to school, or to the grocery store without fear?

  Clinton gets candid on #JSAH with @jmpalmieri this Thursday: pic.twitter.com/MFCJyj3KIC

  — The Recount (@therecount) March 30, 2021

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

  Hillary specifically singled out Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who last week labelled Democrats’ gun control efforts in the wake of shootings in Atlanta and Colorado as “ridiculous theater”.

  Clinton proclaimed that “The opportunists on the other side, like Cruz and his ilk, they know better and they are in the position of trying to keep people really riled up and scared that sensible gun legislation like we had in the ‘90s for 10 years will somehow undermine their rights.”

  “Well, what about the rights of all the rest of us? The rights of us to go to work, go shopping, go on dates to the movie theater, go to school, for heaven’s sake — what about the rest of us?” she continued.

  After announcing he is considering executive action, Joe Biden told reporters on Sunday he believes Congress will pass “rational gun control” measures.

  “The only gun control legislation that’s ever passed is mine. It’s going to happen again,” Biden Declared.

  President Biden confident on passing “rational gun control.”

  “The only gun control legislation that’s ever passed is mine. It’s going to happen again,” he told reporters. pic.twitter.com/46CchLrYrb

  — Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 28, 2021

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

  *  *  *

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

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 20:20

• Foxconn Is Entering The EV Battery Market, Eying Solid State Batteries
  Foxconn Is Entering The EV Battery Market, Eying Solid State Batteries

  In news that is likely going to send shockwaves through the EV industry, Foxconn looks poised to be developing its own EV-use batteries. The giant electronic OEM is going to be developing both LFP (lithium iron phosphate) and solid-state batteries for use in electric vehicles, industry sources told Digitimes.

  Foxconn and Hua-chuang Automotive Information Technical Center under Yulon Motor have established Foxtron Vehicle Technologies, the report says.

  As most EV manufacturers, like Tesla, already know – battery packs can account for 50% of the total weight of an EV and 30% of its cost. Manufacturers are working on decreasing not only the cost of packs, but also the mass, which can lead to longer ranges per charge. 

  Foxconn will reportedly introduce battery samples for EVs in 2021 and bring development to commercial use in 2024, the report notes.

  

  Solid state batteries “will represent a $6 billion industry by 2030,” TechCruch recently wrote. Many of the recent promises in battery development – making them lighter, safer and more powerful, have “largely evaporated”, the report notes. Solid state batteries :lack a liquid electrolyte for moving electrons (electricity) between the battery’s positive (cathode) and negative (anode) electrodes”, making them less flammable and quicker to charge than li-ion batteries.

  Colorado-based startup Prieto Battery told TC: “If you run the calculations, you can get really amazing numbers and they’re very exciting. It’s just that making it happen in practice is very difficult.”

  So far, no large auto manufacturers have found success in developing solid-state batteries for EVs. If Foxconn can break through on solid state batteries, in addition to simply becoming an li-ion manufacturer, the shockwaves it sends through the industry could be profound. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 20:00

• Record Leverage Means No Policy U-Turn For The PBOC
  Record Leverage Means No Policy U-Turn For The PBOC

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator and analyst

  That seems the thinking behind U.S. President Joe Biden’s economic plan, which now includes a $2.3 trillion spending proposal for infrastructure, green investment and research. Of course, there are still questions about how much Congress can actually deliver, and the spending will be spread out over eight years, meaning the immediate impact on the economy is likely to be less than the headline number suggests. That perhaps explains why Treasury yields increased only modestly Wednesday. The fact that the stock market set new highs suggests that the improvement in earnings is likely to outpace any rise in yields or potential increase in taxes.

  Back in China, good economic news continues to be treated as bad news for markets. Despite solid PMI data, the CSI 300 Index fell, making it the only major benchmark to post a loss for the year on Bloomberg’s WEI major equity ranking page. Part of the concern is that policy makers will tighten rates to contain financial leverage. China’s total debt increased 29% points last year to 315% of GDP, driven by companies and provincial governments borrowing during the pandemic, according to Citigroup.

  Ironically, the very same debt overhang is a constraint on policy tightening. Those highly leveraged firms are vulnerable to rising interest rates and more stringent financial conditions.

  

  Citigroup’s economists found about 600 listed Chinese companies with leverage ratios 20 points above their sector averages. Their combined market valuation amounted to 11 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion), or 17% of the stock market. Assuming their debt is mostly financed by banks, every one percentage point rise in the lending rate would boost their interest payments by 152 billion yuan, equivalent to 30% of their profits, economists led by Liu Li-Gang wrote in a note.

  Property developers are particularly vulnerable, given their high debt levels and uncertainties regarding regulators’ “three red line” policy aimed at limiting indebted companies’ capacity to borrow. For developers, a rate hike of one percentage point rate will increase their interest costs by 49 billion yuan, or 42% of their profits.

  

  “While rising leverage ratio is a concern, the very factor could also be used to argue for caution when the PBOC starts to exit its supportive monetary policy,” Liu and his colleagues wrote. “If not handled with care, we will not only see the Chinese version of ‘taper tantrum’ in the financial markets, but also potentially witness the rising risk of default from those highly indebted enterprises.”

  It sounds like the PBOC will be walking a tightrope from here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 19:40

• Documents Detail Wild Alleged $25M Gaetz Extortion Scheme
  Documents Detail Wild Alleged $25M Gaetz Extortion Scheme

  Authored by Joseph Simonson and Emily Brooks via the Washington Examiner

  Rep. Matt Gaetz possesses text message screenshots, an email, and a typed document that purportedly support his claims that a federal investigation into his relationship with a 17-year-old is related to an extortion scheme against him.

  

  On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid her to travel with him. Gaetz has called the report “totally false.” Gaetz told Axios that his lawyers told him that he “was not a target but a subject of an investigation regarding sexual conduct with women.”

  The Florida Republican countered the report on Twitter and in statements to Axios and Fox News with a claim that his family is being extorted for $25 million and that the people pushing stories about an investigation into his relationships with women are the people extorting him and the subjects of an FBI extortion investigation over the last few weeks.

  The documents in Gaetz’s possession detail an alleged scheme that revolves around attempts by former Air Force intelligence officer Bob Kent and Beggs & Lane attorney David McGee, a former federal prosecutor, to free ex-FBI agent-turned-private investigator Robert Levinson from imprisonment in Iran.

  Levinson went missing in Iran in March 2007. McGee is the attorney for the Levinson family. Kent in December 2018 had planned a secret mission to try to rescue Levinson, but he was reportedly thwarted by the federal government.

  Screenshots provided to the Washington Examiner show a message that his father, Don Gaetz, a former Florida state Senate president, said he received from Kent on March 16. The message proposes “a plan that can make [Matt Gaetz’s] future legal and political problems go away.” Gaetz has denied any relationship with a minor.

  

  Despite the family members of Levinson saying in March 2020 that they presumed him to be dead based on information given by U.S. officials, the alleged message from Kent said he had located Levinson in Iran and has two “proof of life videos.” Kent also requested the Gaetz family’s help returning Levinson in exchange for giving Matt Gaetz credit for the operation and promising a presidential pardon for unnamed legal issues.

  The next day, on March 17, Don Gaetz purportedly met with Kent, and Kent handed him a three-page document outlining “Project Homecoming.” That document detailed a plan to save Levinson at the cost of a $25 million loan.

  In 1983, Don Gaetz co-founded VITAS Healthcare, and in 2004, he and his co-founders reportedly sold their stock in the company for $406 million.

  In the Project Homecoming document, Kent then asked that the loan should be deposited in the trust account of Beggs & Land, naming David L. McGee, and deposited no later than March 19.

  The Project Homecoming document states that Gaetz is “under investigation by the FBI for various public corruption and public integrity issues” and alleges that the FBI is aware of photos depicting Gaetz in a “sexual orgy with underage prostitutes.”

  “In exchange for the funds being arranged, and upon the release of Mr. Levinson, the team that delivers Mr. Levinson to the President of The United States shall strongly advocate that President Biden issue a Presidential Pardon, or instruct the Department of Justice to terminate any and all investigations involving Congressman Gaetz,” the document reads.

  

  It also implied that the White House has some knowledge of the plan: “The team has been assured by the President that he will strongly consider such matters because he considers the release of Robert Levinson a matter of National Urgency.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  Stephen M. Alford, who has previously faced fraud and extortion charges, was also allegedly at the March 17 meeting and gave Don Gaetz his business card showing Captum Consultants. The April 2020 articles of incorporation for the company indicate they came from Beggs & Land, McGee’s firm.

  

  Kent, McGee, and Alford did not respond to requests for comment.

  McGee told the Daily Beast on Tuesday night, following Gaetz naming him on national television, that any claims that he or his law firm were involved in extortion are “completely, totally false,” adding, “This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that Matt Gaetz is apparently about to be indicted for sex trafficking underage girls.”

  Another email chain appears to confirm the existence of the FBI investigating extortion claims.

  “My client, Don Gaetz, was approached by two individuals to make a sizable payment in what I would call a scheme to defraud,” Jeffrey Neiman said in a March 25 email to the Department of Justice. “The FBI is not asking Don to voluntarily and proactively assist in their investigation, which Don is willing to do. Please confirm that your Office and the FBI would like Don’s assistance in this matter and that he will be working at the Government’s request.”

  Assistant U.S. Attorney David Goldberg responded: “I can confirm that your client is working with my office as well as the FBI at the government’s request in order to determine if a federal crime has been committed. This has been discussed with, and approved by, the FBI as well as the leadership of my office and components of Main Justice.”

  The Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment on the email or the existence of an extortion investigation. Neiman also declined to comment.

  

  Gaetz on Fox News Tuesday night said his father wore a wire in order to assist with the case, and he demanded that the “Department of Justice and the FBI release the audio recordings that were made under their supervision and at their direction, which will prove my innocence.”

  He suspects that a leak to the New York Times story about the investigation into whether he had a relationship with a 17-year-old was timed to thwart the FBI investigation into the extortion.

  “This former Department of Justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of $4.5 million as a down payment on this bribe,” Gaetz said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that tonight, somehow, the New York Times is leaking this information, smearing me, and ruining the investigation that would likely result in one of the former colleagues of the current DOJ being brought to justice for trying to extort me and my family.”

  The 17-year-old in question “doesn’t exist,” Gaetz said, adding that he has “not had a relationship with a 17-year-old. That is totally false.”

  READ: FULL DOCUMENTS MATT GAETZ SAYS BACKS UP EXTORTION CLAIM

  Jerry Dunleavy contributed to this story.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 19:25

• Navalny Begins Prison Hunger Strike As Supporters Claim Kremlin "Slowly Killing" Him
  Navalny Begins Prison Hunger Strike As Supporters Claim Kremlin “Slowly Killing” Him

  A day after The Washington Post featured an op-ed claiming that “the Kremlin may be slowly killing Alexei Navalny in prison,” the anti-Putin activist has announced on Wednesday that he’s begun a hunger strike to protest medical conditions at the prison facility, following his 2-and-a-half year sentence which was handed down last month.

  He’s said to be protesting the refusal of prison medical staff at the notorious Penal Colony No. 2 east of Moscow to treat a suspected trapped nerve in his back. Navalny has also stated he’s lost sensation in one of his legs due to weeks of severe back pain, for which he recently went to so far as to voice fears his leg may have to be amputated.  

  Prison authorities have shot back, saying Navalny is in “stable and satisfactory” condition, with top Kremlin officials recently chalking it up to his supporters still engaged in an anti-Russia propaganda war that has help from the West.

  

  In a letter posted by his legal team to social media Navalny said, “I demand that a doctor be allowed to see me, and until this happens, I am declaring a hunger strike.”

  In a prior message last week Navalny first accused prison authorities of “deliberate denial of due medical assistance” in order to ensure his suffering. He essentially claimed “torture” – though he related it to prison-orchestrated sleep deprivation. 

  “My condition has worsened. I feel acute pain in my right leg, and I feel numbness in its lower part,” Navalny wrote. “I have trouble walking.” His lawyer Olga Mikhailova had added to this in follow-up televised remarks, saying that his condition is “extremely unfavorable”. She said, “Everyone is afraid for his life and health.”

  A number of international headlines then seized on the torture allegations, reporting that the 44-year old outspoken Putin critic who previously alleged the Russian president ordered his poisoning with nerve agent last August is now being literally “tortured” as part of his confinement.

  

  He’s also said to have been threatened with solitary confinement over bad behavior and repeat violations for failing to conform to the strict prison regimen.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 19:20

• YouTube Unveils Hide Feature After Americans Mass-'Dislike' Biden Videos
  YouTube Unveils Hide Feature After Americans Mass-‘Dislike’ Biden Videos

  Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

  Youtube, the video hosting platform owned by Google, announced on March 29 that they are going to test making the “dislike” count on videos invisible.

  

  The tech giant says that it’s being done in response to “targeted dislike campaigns” and “creator feedback around well-being.”

  “In response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we’re testing a few new designs that don’t show the public dislike count,” YouTube announced on Twitter.

  “If you’re part of this small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks.”

  It further states on a Google support page:

  “Viewer feedback has always been, and will continue to be, an important part of YouTube. But we’ve heard from creators that the public dislike counts can impact their wellbeing, and may motivate a targeted campaign of dislikes on a creator’s video. So, we’re testing designs that don’t include the visible like or dislike count in an effort to balance improving the creator experience, while still making sure viewer feedback is accounted for and shared with the creator. ”

  A majority of responses on both the Twitter announcement and on the support page disapprove of the idea, with some comments suggesting the move is a consequence of the tremendous imbalance of “dislikes” on the present administration’s videos on their White House channel.

  Did you seriously do this just for Joe Biden? https://t.co/8b47YLkoZg

  — Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) March 31, 2021

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

  Some other commentators expressed concerns that it would not be good for people who want to obtain feedback about the video quality, whether it be for creators or viewers.

  In January, YouTube deleted what appears to be thousands of “dislikes” from videos on the official channel of President Joe Biden’s White House. The company said it’s a part of its regular efforts to remove engagement it considers inauthentic.

  People on the platform noticed that dislikes have been disappearing by the thousands from several White House videos and started posting before-and-after screenshots on social media shortly after the incoming administration took over the channel and published its first videos.

  

  The screenshots indicate a total of at least 16,000 dislikes were removed from at least three videos. Even after the adjustments, the five videos on the channel had about 14,000 likes combined versus nearly 60,000 dislikes as of 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 21.

  Official White House YouTube team gonna be overjoyed at this. https://t.co/wcnd1niCOi pic.twitter.com/i2Kw5ccRPH

  — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 30, 2021

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

  In response to a screenshot of one of the videos, YouTube told The Epoch Times that it’s monitoring engagement on the site to detect and remove activity it considers spam so that only engagement it considers organic remains. The mechanism worked as intended in the case of the Biden video, the company stated.

  “YouTube regularly removes any spam likes or dislikes from your videos,” the company stated in a 2019 tweet.

  “It may take up to 48 hours for the numbers to be updated.”

  It isn’t clear how YouTube discerns between authentic and inauthentic engagement; the company didn’t immediately respond to a request for further details.

  “No one wants this,” Nerdrotic, a pop-culture YouTuber tweeted, adding, “Dislikes are helpful for a great many things and this is what puts YouTube above all others.”

  YouTube and its owner, Google, have long faced accusations of political bias. The companies have said their products are developed and run as politically neutral, but employee accounts and leaked internal materials indicate the companies are indeed infusing their politics into their products.

  Google shifted millions of votes in the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election by pushing its political agenda onto its users, according to research psychologist Robert Epstein, who assembled a team of more than 700 voters to monitor what results they were receiving from channels such as search results, reminders, search suggestions, and newsfeeds ahead of the election.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 19:00

• US Army Raises Europe Threat Level To 'Potential Imminent Crisis' On Ukraine-Russia Fears
  US Army Raises Europe Threat Level To ‘Potential Imminent Crisis’ On Ukraine-Russia Fears

  The recent rise in tensions between the US and Russia over continued simmering conflict in Ukraine seemed to correspond with the Biden administration entering the White House. Many pundits have commented that on a foreign policy front things are eerily feeling like a throwback to the Obama years of 2014 or 2015, whether its the Ukraine and Crimea crises, or Syria returning to headlines again (including Biden’s ordered airstrikes on the country in February), or the growing Russia-NATO standoff. 

  This past weekend we were among the very few to take notice of the Pentagon’s latest large military equipment delivery to Ukraine’s army via the port of Odessa, following Biden earlier pledging that “Crimea is Ukraine” and that he’d work to thwart Russian aims in the region. 

  And now this week the US European Command (EUCOM) has issued a notification of a raised ‘threat level’ in Europe. The designation has been officially raised to one of “potential imminent crisis” this week. It comes just as The New York Times and others are reporting a serious escalation in fighting in Eastern Ukraine, which has signaled the collapse of yet another cease-fire.

  

  The raised threat level centers on Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of national armed forces alleging that Russia has amassed more troops on its border this week, and further that “pro-Moscow separatists were systematically violating a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine,” according to Reuters.

  Kiev’s parliament followed by announcing a sharp “escalation” in the east – a contested region which has seen 14,000 deaths going back to 2014.

  The NY Times had linked the raised alert status by EUCOM specifically to Ukraine, writing “the U.S. military’s European Command raised its watch level from possible crisis to potential imminent crisis — the highest level — in response to the deployment of the additional Russian troops.”

  

  The report also described the infusion of new Russian military equipment to the Kremlin-backed rebels, something which the latest follow-up statement by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov downplayed, charging that it is the Ukrainian side now taking “provocative actions that would lead to war”.

  The Times report cited a US official who estimated that some 4,000 additional Russian troops remained behind along the Ukraine border region following the end of recent military drills, something which one retired Army general said could just be “posturing” designed to test the Biden administration. 

  Meanwhile Washington has apparently put Moscow ‘on notice’ over a potential Ukraine escalation…

  Russia MOD says Milley initiates phone call today just as concern grows again about Russian presence along Ukraine border https://t.co/pZm2NFZlJl

  — Barbara Starr (@barbarastarrcnn) March 31, 2021

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

  Despite long ago falling out of daily and weekly headlines, the war in the Donbass region has remained a ‘low-simmering conflict’ which has never stopped. Battle lines and disputed fronts, along with rival checkpoints, have been consistently manned.

  The usual military exercises that take place this time of year, or larger than usual troop build-up?

  Russian forces are deploying massive amounts of military hardware into #Crimea. One of the largest deployments I’ve seen in recent memory. pic.twitter.com/KKZnGzS7y1

  — The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) March 31, 2021

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

  However, as the NYT noted, “Four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another seriously wounded in a battle against Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk Region” on Tuesday, suggesting a severe flare-up on the horizon which could once again draw in external Western forces, especially as Biden has lately vowed to get “tough” on Putin’s Russia.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 18:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Austria's Kurz Derides EU's "Geopolitical Blinkers" On Vaccine, Confirms Talks For Sputnik V
  Austria’s Kurz Derides EU’s “Geopolitical Blinkers” On Vaccine, Confirms Talks For Sputnik V

  It appears the campaign by some EU and US officials to try and ensure Russia’s Sputnik V jab stays out of Europe and Western countries isn’t going so well. 

  Earlier this month it was widely reported that despite European Union leaders’ fierce public criticisms of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, the reality is that “Behind the scenes, the bloc is turning to Moscow’s Sputnik V shot as it tries to get its stuttering efforts to vaccinate its 450 million people back on track, EU diplomatic and official sources told Reuters.” It was noted at the time that at least four EU states were seeking to make their own independent deals regardless of the unease in Brussels. 

  And now on Tuesday Reuters reports “Austria is in talks with Russia to buy a million doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which has yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency,” according to a statement by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s office.

  

  It’s predictably unleashed a storm of controversy as the conservative leader is being accused of deliberately and negligently failing to buy the max coronavirus vaccines it was allowed under the European Union’s collective purchasing scheme.

  Kurz responded by suggesting Austria’s government would not be beholden to Brussels’ anti-Russia stance which should have no bearing on the science of whether or not Sputnik V is effective. He said:

  “There must be no geopolitical blinkers regarding vaccines… The only thing that must count is whether the vaccine is effective and safe.”

  Kurz has complained that the EU’s vaccination steering board system for determining how many jabs a country gets is opaque and unreliable, resulting in vaccines distributed “unevenly”.

  Back in February, Kurz began being increasingly vocal over not being concerned about the Russian aspect: “It’s about getting a safe vaccine as quickly as possible, never mind who makes it,” he had “controversially” said in an interview with the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.

  “Austria would certainly try to make production capacity available at appropriate national firms if the Russian and Chinese manufacturers secure approval and are produced in Europe… just like manufacturers from other countries.” He had explained if available he would personally be ready to receive the Russian vaccine if approved.

  US Dep. of Health publicly confirmed that it pressured Brazil against Sputnik V.
  We believe countries should work together to save lives. Efforts to undermine the vaccines are unethical and are costing lives.
  👇https://t.co/Ga5i4zvbCt P.48 pic.twitter.com/A6wyKOkc8t

  — Sputnik V (@sputnikvaccine) March 15, 2021

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

  Slovakia is another country where talks to procure the Sputnik vaccine has unleashed a full-blown political crisis. 

  As a prime example of this kind of fear-driven motivation fueling the controversy and debate, earlier this month Charles Michel, the Belgian politician who has served as President of the European Council since 2019, reiterated a commonly echoed theme among diplomats and Western officials: “We should not let ourselves be misled by China and Russia, both regimes with less desirable values than ours, as they organize highly limited but widely publicised operations to supply vaccines to others,” he said.

  Michel had vowed, “Europe will not use vaccines for propaganda purposes.” It’s this kind of rhetoric that Austria’s Kurz is vowing will not impact his country’s sovereign decision to deal with the vaccine suppliers it wishes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 02:45

• Biden's Ukrainian "Putin Push" May Lead To World War III
  Biden’s Ukrainian “Putin Push” May Lead To World War III

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Biden was in charge of much of the “Ukraine project” during Obama’s time in office.

  In recent weeks President Biden has been saying some rather mean-spirited things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Now Russian state sources are alleging that Washington under the Biden administration is ramping up military aid to Ukraine. This comes after the media observed the Ocean Glory, a US cargo ship, began delivering 350 tonnes of military equipment, including tactical vehicles, at Ukraine’s Odessa port. Ukraine’s Dumskaya news agency said the American vessel carried at least 35 US military humvees for Ukrainian national forces.

  Adding Ukraine to NATO and the EU is a long-held dream of neocons like Victoria Nuland and neoliberals like Biden. This is also important to those supporting the World Economic Forum’s desire to expand the EU and encircle Russia.

  They feel such an action would disrupt any dreams of Eurasian integration which could resist their strategy to reshape the way the world is governed. Putin’s foreign policy, coupled with efforts to rebuild the Russian military, has been part of an effort by the former KGB officer to boost Russia’s standing on the world stage.

  This has helped make him popular with his people even as NATO has slowly been expanding in the direction of Russia, but also makes him a thorn in the side of the NWO gang.

  

  NATO Has Slowly Expanded Towards Russia

  Interestingly, this delivery of military equipment occurred near the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was signing Decree No. 117/2021. The decree activates the Ukraine Army to recapture and re-unify with Ukraine, the autonomous region of Crimea, and the city of Sevastopol. The military has been instructed to use “hybrid warfare” to re-conquer these former parts of Ukraine. In short, this means Ukraine declared war on Russia, certainly something it would never consider without major backing. It must be noted, his actions are in total conflict with his promise to end the now nearly seven-year-long war in eastern Ukraine that played a central role in his election in 2019. This indicates, Zelensky has continued to subordinate his government’s policies to the US- and NATO-led war drive against Russia.

  One Ukrainian blogger contends the censorship of the three opposition channels in Ukraine and the surprise inspection of Ukrainian army units in Donbas link all this together and signals a resumption of the Donbas conflict. He wrote on his Telegram channel, “Protecting his rear through censorship, Zelensky ordered to start an inspection of the AFU units in Donbas in order to establish their readiness to carry out the orders of the military command.” He then went on to say, “Didn’t we warn you last year that the regime was preparing for a major war? All we had to do was wait for the green light from higher authorities.”

  

  Upping tensions in the area is the fact the Kerch Strait Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, is now a target and we will certainly see Russian moves to protect it. Comprised of a pair of Russian-constructed parallel bridges it spans the Strait of Kerch between the Taman Peninsula and the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. The bridge complex provides for both road and rail traffic and has a length of 19 km. This makes it the longest bridge Russia has ever built.

  It is difficult not to tie this to the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project which Viktor Zubkov, chairman of the board of directors of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, claims, will definitely be completed this year. He said on Friday, Biden’s goal is to stop the pipeline and the U.S. is now targeting anyone helping the project’s completion in any way. So far, around 90-92 percent of the work required for the project is complete. Earlier this year, Gazprom warned investors that the Nord Stream 2 project could be suspended or entirely discontinued due to extraordinary circumstances, including “political pressure.”

  

  War In Ukraine Is About Money, Energy, And Power!

  As to what really motivates the desire to turn Ukraine into a giant-killing field, several possibilities exist but money and profit should not be ruled out. Foreign policy has often been used as a tool to advance national interest which is often dictated by economics. When it comes to the economy energy is often considered the blood from which all strength flows and in the case of Europe the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline which after completion will carry natural gas from Russia to Germany is a bone of contention. Years ago leaders from Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania signed an open letter to the parliaments of the EU warning them against the construction of NS2 and cautioned them of how it is not a commercial project but one designed to increase their energy reliance on Moscow.

  At that time, Russia’s Gazprom supplied the European Union and Turkey with a record 162 billion cubic meters of gas. Of that gas, 86 billion cubic meters flowed across Ukraine. Those opposed to the new pipeline make a strong case that “Gazprom” is not only a gas company but a platform for Russian coercion and another tool for Russia to pressure European countries. The U.S. State Department has even threatened European corporations they will likely face penalties if they participate in the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, on the grounds that “the project undermines energy security in Europe.”

  Circling back to the conflict, years ago I wrote a piece that urged America to stay out of a war in Ukraine. It warned of the major advantage Putin held by having a huge well-armed army just across the Ukrainian border and that any army cobbled together to face him would most likely be unenthusiastic and politically troubled at best. At the time President Obama had pulled out all the stops to paint Putin with a brush dipped in all the bad colors. Every Sunday in interview after interview Washington experts were paraded across the screens of the talk shows that tell Americans what is happening in our nation’s capital and every single one of them denounced Putin as a “thug and a bully.”

  

  Ukrainian Soldiers Killed In An Unwinnable War

  In that piece were accounts of reports from the front in Ukraine often buried or hidden from public view but they appeared to confirm that Ukrainian troops were being sent into a meat grinder. The drafted include men up to 60 years old with only a month of training before they reluctantly go off to the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Putting more weapons into the hands of those unmotivated to fight for their corrupt state is merely adding fuel to this fire and doing more harm than good. Again, remember Ukraine is a financially failed state and while we can point to its potential, its massive oil and gas reserves by all rights should belong to the people and for their benefit. The IMF, however, points out that Kyiv needs billion in loans and grants just to stabilize its economy after more than twenty years of massive levels of corruption. This debt and the deep, deep hole Ukrainians have dug themselves into flows from a series of bad governments after Kyiv became independent of the Soviet Union.

  Back then, the euro-zone faced a lot of problems without jumping into a proxy war against rebels in Ukraine. I use the term proxy because without the money and backing of outsiders things would most likely go quiet. The failed and bankrupt country of Ukraine would most likely break into two parts with the eastern half and its people who share strong ties with Russia aligning itself with that country and Kyiv, and the western-oriented portion of the country drifting towards stronger ties to the euro-zone. What is the big problem with such a solution? Apparently, a great deal for people like Biden in Washington that are pushing for intervention in Ukraine.

  To confuse the issue and muddy the waters great efforts have been made at high levels by those advocating military action to paint Russia as an aggressor. These forces aided by the media continue to link Russias move into the majority ethnic-Russian Crimea region as a violation of Ukraine’s sovereign border. In this case, we should remember, the whole concept of sovereign borders is a little gem promoted by those in power, these borders are a creation of man and not visible to the birds flying above. This is an argument of convenience that masks deeper issues and the difference between “terrorist” and “freedom fighters” often depends on a person’s point of view. In this case, it is clearly the new American-backed government in Kyiv that is pushing to bring the eastern part of Ukraine back into the fold.

  What this boils down to is that American companies want to sell and supply Europe with Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and seem willing to start a war to make it happen. Whether it is for profit or to minimize the threat of natural gas shipments to Europe being cut off and used as a key weapon in Russia’s political arsenal we cannot ignore the idea more is at play here than just doing the “right thing”. Many people in the “Tin Foil Hat” community have gone so far as to indicate they feel that America and elements of the CIA were involved or had a part in the overthrow of the former corrupt Ukraine government and its replacement with another corrupt but more pro Europe regime. At the time even America’s Vice President, Joe Biden, saw his son join the board of a private Ukrainian oil and natural gas company. One thing is clear, not only those involved in selling energy to Europe will profit from this but also the military-industrial complex stands to gain.

  The odds of U.S. LNG significantly displacing Russian natural gas shipped by pipeline are slim. Piped gas sells at a large discount to LNG, which must be cooled to liquid form, shipped overseas, and turned back into its gaseous form. Poland recently received its first shipment of U.S. LNG last month from what is currently the only export facility in the lower 48 states. While LNG trade between the United States and Europe would help Trump in his bid to reduce the U.S. trade deficit it also stands to improve energy security among the European countries by giving them an alternative to Russian gas. Everyone must concede it is not a cure-all, Russia can easily cut prices and adjust terms to maintain its dominant position in the European gas market and European countries are likely to continue buying most of their gas from the lowest-cost supplier.

  Bottom-line, Russia has traditionally been the major supplier of European gas. But it charges high prices, often in the form of long-term contracts linked to the price of oil. The overwhelming dependence on Russian gas leaves European countries from a national security standpoint vulnerable to a cutoff of crucial natural gas supplies. This would be devastating to their economies at any time but even more so in the depths of winter. For these reasons, it makes sense for Europe to consider alternative supplies and open its doors to U.S. LNG but due to Ukraine’s history of corruption flooding the country with weapons and using the people of Ukraine as pawns in this high stakes game violates all standards of human decency.

  Americans should also be aware that our current policy drives Russia towards the East and into the open arms of China. This creates even more problems long-term than it solves short-term and borders on the edge of insanity. The war in Ukraine has not developed organically but appears to be the product of meddling. Mercenaries and money from America appear to be backing and propping up Kyiv with America acting as the “champion” for this failed bankrupt country.  The best way for the West and Kyiv to prove they are on the right path is by letting the eastern part of the country seceded and then making Kyiv a center of economic and democratic success.

  I reiterate the stand taken in April 2018, the Ukraine war is about money, energy, and power! Since the latest ceasefire agreement in the war in Donbas was implemented in July 2020, it appears few if anyone is being killed. This indicates rocking the boat is a bad idea.

  We can only hope those hyping the recent events in Ukraine saying the decree signed by Zelensky will someday be looked back upon at the beginning of World War III are overly pessimistic, after all, when you place two major military powers face to face what could go wrong?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/31/2021 – 02:00

• The "Unvaccinated" Question
  The “Unvaccinated” Question

  Authored (somewhat satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven’t been “vaccinated” yet. Us. The “Covidiots.” The “Covid deniers.” The “science deniers.” The “reality deniers.” Those who refuse to get “vaccinated,” ever.

  

  There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane “conspiracy theories,” like “pre-March-2020 science,” “natural herd immunity,” “population-adjusted death rates,” “Sweden,” “Florida,” and other heresies.

  They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors.

  So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us, in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are no more than criminals, or, worse, a plague, an infestation. In the words of someone (I can’t quite recall who), “getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness,” or something like that. (I’ll have to hunt down and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context.)

  In Israel, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, the USA, and other New Normal countries, they have already begun the segregation process. In the UK, it’s just a matter of time. The WEF, WHO, EU, and other transnational entities are helping to streamline the new segregation system, which, according to the WEF, “will need to be harmonized by a normative body, such as the WHO, to ensure that is ethical.”

  Here in Germany, the government is considering banning us from working outside our homes. We are already banned from flying on commercial airlines. (We can still use the trains, if we dress up like New Normals.) In the village of Potsdam, just down the road from Wannsee (which name you might recall from your 20th-Century history lessons), we are banned from entering shops and restaurants. (I’m not sure whether we can still use the sidewalks, or whether we have to walk in the gutters.) In Saxony, we are forbidden from attending schools. At the Berliner Ensemble (the theater founded by Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, lifelong opponents of totalitarianism and fascism), we are banned from attending New Normal performances.

  In the USA, we are being banned by universities. Our children are being banned from public schools. In New York, the new “Excelsior Pass” will allow New Normals to attend cultural and sports events (and patronize bars and restaurants, eventually) secure in the knowledge that the Unvaccinated have been prevented from entering or segregated in an “Unvaccinated Only” section. The pass system, designed by IBM, which, if history is any guide, is pretty good at designing such systems (OK, technically, it was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, IBM’s Nazi-Germany subsidiary), was launched this past weekend to considerable fanfare.

  And this is only the very beginning.

  Israel’s “Green Pass” is the model for the future, which makes sense, in a sick, fascistic kind of way. When you’re already an apartheid state, what’s a little more apartheid? Here’s a peek at what that looks like …

  

  OK, I know what the New Normals are thinking. They’re thinking I’m “misleading” people again. That I’m exaggerating. That this isn’t really segregation, and certainly nothing like “medical apartheid.”

  After all (as the New Normals will sternly remind me), no one is forcing us to get “vaccinated.” If we choose not to, or can’t for medical reasons, all we have to do is submit to a “test” — you know, the one where they ram that 9-inch swab up into your sinus cavities — within 24 hours before we want to go out to dinner, or attend the theater or a sports event, or visit a museum, or attend a university, or take our children to school or a playground, and our test results will serve as our “vaccine passports!” We just present them to the appropriate Covid Compliance Officer, and (assuming the results are negative, of course) we will be allowed to take part in New Normal society just as if we’d been “vaccinated.”

  Either way, “vaccine” or “test,” the New Normal officials will be satisfied, because the tests and passes are really just stage props. The point is the display of mindless obedience. Even if you take the New Normals at their word, if you are under 65 and in relatively good health, getting “vaccinated” is more or less pointless, except as a public display of compliance and belief in the official Covid-19 narrative (the foundation stone of the New Normal ideology). Even the high priests of their “Science” confess that it doesn’t prevent you spreading the “plague.” And the PCR tests are virtually meaningless, as even the WHO finally admitted. (You can positive-PCR-test a pawpaw fruit … but you might want to be careful who you tell if you do that.)

  In contrast to the “vaccine” and the “test” themselves, the forced choice between them is not at all meaningless. It is no accident that both alternatives involve the violation of our bodies, literally the penetration of our bodies. It doesn’t really matter what is in the “vaccines” or what “results” the “tests” produce. The ritual is a demonstration of power, the power of the New Normals (i.e., global capitalism’s new face) to control our bodies, to dominate them, to violate them, psychologically and physically.

  Now, don’t get all excited, my “conspiracy theorist” friends. I haven’t gone full QAnon just yet. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are not sitting around together, sipping adrenochrome on George Soros’ yacht, dreaming up ways to rape people’s noses. This stuff is built into the structure of the system. It is a standard feature of totalitarian societies, cults, churches, self-help groups, and … well, human society, generally.

  Being forced to repeat a physical action which only makes sense within a specific ideology reifies that ideology within us. There is nothing inherently diabolical about this. It is a basic socialization technology. It is how we socialize our children. It is why we conduct weddings, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs. It is how we turn young men and women into soldiers. It is how actors learn their blocking and their lines. It is why the Nazis held all those rallies. It is why our “democracies” hold elections. It is also basic ceremonial magic … but that’s a topic for a different column.

  The issue, at the moment, is the Unvaccinated Question, and the public rituals that are being performed to make the New Normal ideology “reality,” and what to do about those of us who refuse to participate in those rituals, who refuse to forswear “old normal” reality and convert to New Normalism so that we can function in society without being segregated, criminalized, or “diagnosed” as “sociopathic” or otherwise psychiatrically disordered.

  For us “conspiracy-theorizing reality deniers,” there is no getting around this dilemma. This isn’t Europe in the 1930s. There isn’t anywhere to emigrate to … OK, there is, temporarily, in some of the US states that have been staging rebellions, and other such “old normal” oases, but how long do you think that will last? They’re already rolling out the “mutant variants,” and God only knows what will happen when the long-term effects of the “vaccines” kick in.

  No, for most of us denizens of the global capitalist empire, it looks like the New Normal is here to stay. So, unless we are prepared to become New Normals, we are going to have to stand and fight. It is going to get rather ugly, and personal, but there isn’t any way to avoid that. Given that many New Normals are our friends and colleagues, or even members of our families, it is tempting to believe that they will “come to their senses,” that “this is all just a hysterical overreaction,” and that “everything will go back to normal soon.”

  This would be a monumental error on our parts … very possibly a fatal error.

  Totalitarian movements, when they reach this stage, do not simply stop on their own. They continue to advance toward their full expressions, ultimately transforming entire societies into monstrous mirror-images of themselves, unless they are opposed by serious resistance. There is a window at the beginning when such resistance has a chance. That window is still open, but it is closing, fast. I can’t tell you how best to resist, but I can tell you it starts with seeing things clearly, and calling things, and people, exactly what they are.

  Let’s not make the same mistake that other minorities have made throughout history when confronted with a new totalitarian ideology. See the New Normals for what they are, maybe not deep down in their hearts, but what they have collectively become a part of, because it is the movement that is in control now, not the rational individuals they used to be. Above all, recognize where this is headed, where totalitarian movements are always headed. (See. e.g., Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45.)

  No, the Unvaccinated are not the Jews and the New Normals are not flying big Swastika flags, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of which Goebbelsian Big Lies, and ideology, and official enemies it is selling. The historical context and costumes change, but its ruthless trajectory remains the same.

  Today, the New Normals are presenting us with a “choice,” (a) conform to their New Normal ideology or (b) social segregation. What do you imagine they have planned for us tomorrow?

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 23:25

• Iran Touts Russia-Iran-India 'North-South Trade Corridor' As "Alternative" & Challenge To Suez Canal
  Iran Touts Russia-Iran-India ‘North-South Trade Corridor’ As “Alternative” & Challenge To Suez Canal

  Coming after a ‘successful’ weekend in which sanctions-beleaguered Iran hailed its signing a major 25-year infrastructure and investment agreement with China, Iran’s ambassador to Russia is also touting that a new north-south trade corridor across the region could become a prime ‘alternative’ to the strategic Suez Canal waterway that’s been featured in global headlines due to the ‘Ever Given’ stuck tanker disaster that just played out.

  Called the “International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC)” — a two decades in the making ambitious project — the new trade corridor, currently partially in operation, is 7,200km long, linking up Russia, Iran, and India and ultimately accelerating trade with Europe as well.

  

  Commenting on the stuck tanker fiasco in the Suez, Iranian Ambassador Kazem Jalali explained of a potentially less expensive and disaster-prone waterway transport route across Egypt:

  “The North-South corridor is a great option to replace the Suez Canal with a reduction in travel times to 20 days and savings of up to 30 percent.”

  He further described that the mounting huge costs and fallout from the Ever Given jam disaster (commonly ballparked in the many multiple billions) demonstrates “the need to speed up the completion of infrastructure and the North-South corridor as an alternative to the route through the Suez Canal has become clear and more important than ever.”

  

  A regional analysis site, Silk Road Briefing, reviews the recent history of the project as follows:

  The INSTC project came into being in 2002, when the transport ministers of Russia, Iran, and India signed an agreement to create a multimodal ship, rail and road-based transport network stretching 7,200 km, from Mumbai, western India to Moscow via Iran and the Caspian Sea. Since then, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Oman, and Syria have all joined the project, and new routes via Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries have been examined to eliminate the need to transfer cargoes from overland-based transport to cargo ships and back…

  The claims of reduced transport travel time and cost are often advanced according to these estimates:

  The INSTC corridor has been tested, and cuts current transport costs by between 30-60 percent, in addition to reducing the transit time from west India to western Russia from 40 to 20 days. Dry runs of the route carried out in 2014 and 2017 identified potential bottlenecks and confirmed cost and shipping time estimates.

  Will Iranian sea corridor compete with Suez Canal? https://t.co/gMSuAUW61r

  — Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) July 17, 2020

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

  It’s been dubbed in Russian media, even long before the latest Suez crisis, a challenge to the Suez canal. 

  Also sometimes compared to the ancient ‘Silk Road’ (the most famous East-West trade route across Asia from antiquity through the Middle Ages) – and somewhat akin to China’s expanding Belt & Road initiative under President Xi, it primarily by rail links two major bodies of water – the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf – by way of Iran to Russia and northern Europe.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 23:05

• Autocracy Versus Democracy Or China Versus America?
  Autocracy Versus Democracy Or China Versus America?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  “I’ve known Xi Jinping for a long time. … He doesn’t have a democratic — with a small ‘d’ — bone in his body,” said Joe Biden in his first press conference as president, and then he ambled on:

  “He’s one of the guys, like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the wave of the future — democracy can’t function in an ever-complex world.

  “It is clear, absolutely clear … that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies. … We have to prove democracy works.”

  

  Thus did Biden frame the conflict between America and China in almost purely ideological terms.

  “Look … your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy? Because that is what is at stake, not just with China.”

  But is this really what the conflict between America and China for economic, military and strategic supremacy is about – a contest between two political systems? And does Xi Jinping see it that way?

  Does Xi see himself as the global champion of “autocracy” or as the nationalist leader of the Chinese people and Mao’s successor as The Great Helmsman who heads the party that decides the destiny of the nation?

  And are we Americans really the champions of the democracy camp in a great twilight struggle with “autocracy”?

  How, then, do we embrace as a NATO ally of 70 years the Republic of Turkey, which is ruled by the autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

  Our Arab allies and partners include President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, who came to power through a military coup that ousted an elected government. Also aligned with us are the king and crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf who might fairly be called not only monarchists but autocrats.

  Are the king of Bahrain, the emir of Kuwait and the sultan of Oman members in good standing in America’s club of democracies?

  Unlike the USSR of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, Xi’s China does not appear to seek to impose its political system upon the nations with which it has deep trade and commercial ties such as Australia, Japan and South Korea.

  Where Nikita Khrushchev thundered, “Your children shall live under Socialism,” Xi does not.

  Indeed, in the ideological struggle defined by Biden, it appears that it’s the United States and Western democracies demanding that China abide by our beliefs and values, not the other way around.

  Xi puts China first, and his own people, the Han Chinese majority, also first. As for the tribal and ethnonational minorities inside China – Uighurs, Kazakhs, Tibetans, Mongols, Manchu, Hong Kongese – their rights are subordinated and restricted, as are the beliefs and value systems of Christians in many of the 50 or so Muslim countries.

  Unlike America’s liberal elites who celebrate racial, religious and ethnic diversity – the more the better – China’s rulers seem to fear racial, religious, ethnic and ideological diversity as forces threatening the kind of disintegration that befell the Soviet Empire and USSR.

  And unlike the Americans who worship at the altar of equality, the Chinese act on the belief that not all religious, racial and ethnic minorities have equal rights.

  And while China’s growth in real and relative power and prosperity in the decades since Tiananmen Square in 1989 has been epochal, the politics of the USA seem to have grown more poisonous and the racial divisions more rancorous than they were at the end of the Reagan era.

  Nor does Biden’s faith in small “d” democracy appear to have been shared by the men who founded the United States as a “republic, if you can keep it.” They saw democracy not as some object of veneration but as a danger to be avoided

  “Remember, democracy never lasts long,” John Adams wrote.

  “It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

  Perhaps our greatest Chief Justice John Marshall said, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

  “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is,” said Tom Paine, who was echoed by the father of the Constitution, Madison himself:

  “Democracy is the most vile form of government. Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.”

  By the end of a long life, Thomas Jefferson concluded:

  “A Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.”

  Democracy and autocracy – of which monarchies and dictatorships are examples – are forms of government, not objects of worship. It is the country that engages the heart, not the system of government by which the country is governed. And it is the country that is the legitimate object of allegiance, loyalty and love.

  And that is the meaning of “America First.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 22:45

• China Is Now Competing With The World For Capital
  China Is Now Competing With The World For Capital

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets live commentator

  The largest hedge fund implosion since Long-Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 has left few, if any, scars on financial markets.

  A group of stocks linked to the liquidation of Archegos Capital rebounded Tuesday, suggesting the positions have largely been unwound. With that episode running its course, the markets were generally quiet with slightly higher yields and the outperformance of value stocks pointing toward the return of the reflation theme. A stronger dollar, though, is putting commodities under pressure. Bloomberg’s commodity index is starting to diverge from Treasury yields.

  Back in China, FTSE Russell confirmed that Chinese bonds will be included in its index with a weighting of 5.3%, as expected. But the implementation won’t start until October and will take three years to complete, which is much longer than anticipated. The immediate market impact is negligible, but the move marks a milestone as Chinese bonds will now be included in all three major bond benchmarks, including those by Bloomberg Barclays and JPMorgan.

  China is slowly but surely starting to erode the dominance of advanced nations in the bond market. To make room for Chinese bonds in the benchmark, FTSE cut the weighting of U.S. Treasuries by 1.9 percentage points to about 35%, which is likely to result an outflow of $49 billion, according to HSBC. Japan’s weighting was reduced by about one point to 16%.

  

  In other words, China is starting to compete for capital from international investors at a time when governments are borrowing an unprecedented amount of money. Last year alone, Chinese government bonds attracted about $100 billion of overseas inflows, which is equal to 44% of the increase of foreign holdings in U.S. Treasuries.

  Chinese bonds arguably remain under-represented in global benchmarks. They have the same A+ credit rating as Japanese bonds, offer yields that are about 280 bps higher and carry less than half of the interest-rate risk. Yet, the weighting of Chinese bonds is less than a third of the Japanese securities. They’re even weighted less than lower-rated Italian bonds.

  Granted, Chinese bonds have their drawbacks. The lack of liquidity means fewer securities meet the criteria to be included in the benchmark. The lack of access to the repo and futures markets also limits foreigners’ interest. And then there are the country’s issues with the rule of law and tensions with the West.

  Still, as demonstrated in the recent global debt rout, Chinese bonds provide diversification for investors given their low correlation with other markets. Their sensitivity to U.S. yields has fallen to the lowest in years, according to JPMorgan.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 22:36

• Guatemala Declares Emergency As New Migrant Caravan Bound To US May Be Forming 
  Guatemala Declares Emergency As New Migrant Caravan Bound To US May Be Forming 

  Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei declared emergency measures Monday along the Guatemala–Honduras border as new reports suggest a new migrant caravan may be forming in Honduras, according to Associated Press News. 

  The emergency order declares mass gatherings and demonstrations illegal for the next 2-5 weeks in five Guatemalan provinces that border Honduras. 

  In a statement, the Guatemalan government defended the new public health order by saying, “groups of people could put at risk the life, liberty, security, health, access to justice, peace and development” of Guatemalans. A similar order was announced in January to squash previous migrant caravans. 

  

  Threats of another migrant caravan from Honduras with plans to travel to the US come as a US-Mexico border crisis worsens in recent months. The number of migrants attempting to cross into the US has surged, with at least 100,000 arrested in February.

  A flood of migrants has been racing towards the Mexico–US border under the Biden administration after President Biden said he’ll reverse former President Trump’s immigration policies and allow many migrants a pathway to citizenship. 

  But this has severely backfired for the Biden administration as chaos at the border would see over 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children detained in federal custody, nearly one-third of whom have been sitting in the same ‘cages’ built by the Obama-Biden administration, and 3,000 of whom have been held beyond the 72-hour legal limit.

  The border crisis is worsening by the day as President Biden told migrants to stop coming to the US after begging Mexico’s president to help stem the flood of illegal migrants. The surge of migrants has overwhelmed the federal government’s ability to process them.

  Days ago, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R) gave a first-hand account of the chaos at the US-Mexico border – joining Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz, and John Cornyn for a tour of the deteriorating border conditions. Lankford tweeted pictures of the US’ migrant camps. 

  For a side-by-side comparison, the first photo is from my trip to the border in 2019–the second is from today. Plenty of space to walk around and safely spread out. Tell me this isn’t a crisis. https://t.co/ING6lsNYor pic.twitter.com/ujQXNxkQKD

  — Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) March 26, 2021

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  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was recently quoted as saying President Biden’s immigration policy encourages illegal immigration, thus enriching cartels through human trafficking operations at the US border. Cartels are making $14 million per day, smuggling people into the US. 

  Many of the migrants reaching the US-Mexico border are fleeing violence, drugs, and corruption in Honduras. With the threat of another caravan forming, the Biden administration might want to reconsider finishing President Trump’s border wall instead of halting construction. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 22:25

• San Diego Teachers To Instruct Immigrants In-Person As Schools Remain Online-Only
  San Diego Teachers To Instruct Immigrants In-Person As Schools Remain Online-Only

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Teachers in San Diego are going to the city’s convention center soon to instruct immigrant children in-person, even as schools in the county largely remain online-only.

  

  About 13 teachers have volunteered to work with the minor immigrants, Roberto Carrillo, a principal at the San Diego County Office of Education, told KPBS.

  “We definitely want to introduce them to the arts, the visual arts, and the performing arts,” he said.

  “We’ll give them the opportunity to start expressing themselves through written formats, giving them a basic understanding of the English language.”

  Instruction was slated to start as soon as Tuesday.

  A spokesperson for the office confirmed to The Epoch Times that it “is providing an educational program for children who are being housed at the San Diego Convention Center.”

  Supervisor Jim Desmond said that it was great for immigrants to receive in-person teaching.

  “130,000 kids haven’t been allowed in a classroom for over a year in the S.D. Unified School District. It’s great there’s in-person learning for those unaccompanied minors, but I wish every child in S.D. was allowed the same opportunity for in-person teaching,” he wrote in a tweet.

  A spokesperson for the San Diego Unified School District told Fox News that the district shared with its teachers details on how they could volunteer to reach the immigrant children during their spring break, which started on Monday. She said she didn’t know if the teachers were being paid.

  The district did not answer a query about the matter from The Epoch Times.

  San Diego officials, including its superintendent, issued statements late last week urging students, parents, and others to avoid large gatherings as part of an effort to “stop the surge” of COVID-19 over spring break.

  

  (L-R) San Diego congressmen Scott Peters, Juan Vargas, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Vice Chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Nora Vargas, and Congresswoman Sara Jacobs at the San Diego Convention Center on March 27, 2021. (Jane Yang/Epoch Times)

  “We want to speak directly to our students today because they have demonstrated incredible courage and resilience through this pandemic. This is not the time to let our guard down. Have fun, get lots of rest and make sure you stay healthy for when school reopens online on April 5 and for in-person learning on April 12,” Cindy Marten, the superintendent, said in a statement.

  According to statistics from the county, some 40,000 students are learning full-time on-campus, nearly 130,000 are engaged in hybrid learning, or a mix of in-person and remote, and another 317,855 are learning online-only.

  Federal officials reached a deal to convert the San Diego Convention Center into an emergency immigration shelter earlier this month. The facility has an initial capacity of 1,400.

  

  Unaccompanied minors are loaded into a U.S. Border Patrol transport van after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in Hildalgo, Texas, on March 25, 2021. (John Moore/Getty Images)

  The population being housed there are immigrant girls between the ages of 13 and 17.

  Dozens of the girls have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

  President Joe Biden’s administration reversed the Trump-era policy of expelling unaccompanied minors back to their home countries. Instead, officials are working on quickly giving the minors to family or friends in the United States.

  The number of illegal border crossings rose sharply during Biden’s first month in office, including a rise in unaccompanied children from 5,694 to 9,297.

  Because of the increase in unaccompanied minors and families reaching the border, coupled with the policy reversals, Customs and Border Protection are holding some minors over the 72-hour mandated limit. The agency is supposed to quickly transfer the children to the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs facilities like the convention center.

  A senior Border Patrol official told reporters in a call last week that he expects there will be a continued rise in apprehensions over the coming months, as the weather gets nicer.

  On one recent day, 6,000 immigrants were apprehended. In the last 30 days, agents averaged about 5,000 encounters a day, with approximately a quarter of those being unaccompanied minors.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 22:05

• US Reports Most New COVID Cases In A Month With Blue States In The Lead
  US Reports Most New COVID Cases In A Month With Blue States In The Lead

  At this point, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the various mutant strains has been accelerating for five weeks as restrictions on businesses and movement have been relaxed. Over in the US, which ceded its position as the worst outbreak in the world to Brazil back in February, when the 7-day average for Brazil’s daily tally per million population topped the US’s for the first time.

  

  While the outbreak in Latin America’s largest economy continues to spin out of control, the US on Tuesday reported just under 70K new cases, the highest number in a month, as infections rise in half of US states, with some of the biggest accelerations seen in New York, New Jersey and Michigan. Over the past week, the average number of new cases has risen by 24%, according to Johns Hopkins data. 25 states and Washington DC are reporting more cases.

  

  Fortunately deaths continued to slow, with the US reporting fewer than 1K deaths.

  

  Source: mSightly

  11 states are currently in the highest “risk level” for COVID, nearly all of them are northeastern blue states (aside from Michigan and Minnesota, although both of those states are also run by Democrats).

  

  Source: mSightly

  The increase comes even as the US is vaccinating nearly 3MM people a day, and with practically every state preparing to open vaccinations to adults of all ages, if they haven’t already.

  Michigan is leading average new cases with a 14% rise over the past week and a 208% increase over the past month.

  

  Cases in New York have risen by nearly 10% over the previous week and the test positivity rate has remained above 3% for the last month

  

  New Jersey recorded 346.4 cases per 100,000 people over the last seven days, the highest rate in the nation.

  

  Circling back to the national numbers, while the current rate is far below January’s peak of 247K new cases per day, it is in line with the July surge, where daily cases averaged about 68,000.

  The numbers complement the head of the CDC’s warnings about “impending doom”, which were widely ridiculed yesterday. In his latest warning, Dr Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, warned “we’re skating on a knife’s edge right now.”

  “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” she said. “But right now, I’m scared.”

  New York is the states where coronavirus is spreading the fastest “on a per-person basis.”

  Meanwhile, red states like Texas, which have been the focus of mainstream media attention as their governors have reopened their economies, and even though vaccination rates are lagging some of their northern peers, infection rates haven’t bounced back like they have in New York, Michigan and other states like Connecticut.

  

  Unsurprisingly, the rebound in New York – centered around NYC – hasn’t stopped Gov. Andrew Cuomo from pressing ahead with his plans to reopen the state’s economy. Yesterday, the governor announced that the vaccine eligibility age would drop to 30 as of next Tuesday, Cuomo said earlier that college sports could welcome back fans on Friday, albeit with relatively restrictive social distancing numbers.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 21:45

• Health Care Workers Bragging About Forged Vax Cards As Fake "Passports" Hit The Street
  Health Care Workers Bragging About Forged Vax Cards As Fake “Passports” Hit The Street

  It was inevitable.

  Healthcare workers across the country are taking to social media to brag about stealing COVID-19 vaccination cards from their jobs in order to falsify their vaccination status – allowing them to falsify their vaccine status.

  

  “I work at a pharmacy and grabbed blank ones for me and my hubby,” said one TikTok user, who was identified by other users as a pharmacy tech in Illinois – and promptly reported to state healthcare authorities, according to the Daily Beast.

  “Can I pay you to ship a couple to me,” another TikTok user identified as a Texas nurse wrote under the original video bragging about the theft – and was also promptly reported to Texas healthcare authorities.

  “I got a template if u want it,” posted one TikTok user under a viral video about faking vaccination cards.

  Becca Walker, one of the two users sounding the alarm, posted: “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to steal from your job. And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to steal blank vaccination papers for COVID-19 to falsify information and claim that you and your husband were vaccinated when in actuality you were not.“

  “Stop hating on me! I don’t care what any of you think. I did what is best for my husband and I,” posted the Illinois pharmacy tech right before she wiped her TikTok account history – only to try and cover her tracks by posting a fake TikTok claiming to be a 16-year-old British girl doing a social media experiment for her filmmaker father.

  Walker, along with user Savannah Sparks, have since posted several more TikTok videos calling out healthcare workers for allegedly forging or attempting to forge vaccine cards. They claim dozens of tips have been sent to them by other users on the platform, but which they haven’t been able to verify.

  If it seems surprising that vaccine resistance would exist among medical professionals, even those with a strong background in science, Schaffer said it simply highlights how many Americans are still resistant to vaccination, more than three months after the first jabs went into the arms of frontline health-care workers. In February, a survey conducted by experts from Northwestern, Northeastern, Rutgers and Harvard universities found that 21 percent of health-care workers surveyed did not want to be vaccinated. Hesitancy, which indicates skepticism towards the vaccine but not an outright unwillingness to be vaccinated, was 37 percent. –Daily Beast

  Meanwhile, fake “vaccine passports” are already being sold on the street. Via Summit News:

  *  *  *

  Fake ‘vaccine passports’ are already being sold by criminals on the streets, according to TV personality Andrew Gruel, who said he saw it happen.

  Earlier this week it was revealed that the Biden administration has been working with tech companies and non-profits to create a vaccine passport that “will play a role in multiple aspects of life.”

  According to a CNN report, the vaccine passports, which could be ready in weeks, will be a condition of the United States returning to “normalcy” before the end of the year.

  However, it appears as though street scammers have already beaten the government to the chase.

  Had to work late last night. Walked through a back alley to get to my car. There were 2 shady guys selling fake vaccine passports out of the back of a Cadillac. A market is born.

  — Chef Andrew Gruel (@ChefGruel) March 30, 2021

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

  “Had to work late last night,” tweeted TV host Andrew Gruel. “Walked through a back alley to get to my car. There were 2 shady guys selling fake vaccine passports out of the back of a Cadillac. A market is born.”

  The ridiculous takeaway from the introduction of vaccine passports is that Americans may be forced to show ID to watch a baseball game while voting can still take place with no ID requirements whatsoever.

  As we highlighted yesterday, the vaccine passport isn’t just a proof of vaccination system, it’s a digital ID card that will likely be linked to the facial recognition camera network.

  This will then grease the skids for the full implementation of a Communist Chinese-style social credit score system where dissidents are denied basic rights and services and have to live in a de facto state of permanent lockdown.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 21:25

• Gaetz Denies Alleged Relationship With 17-Year-Old; Claims Lawyer Tried To "Extort" Him
  Gaetz Denies Alleged Relationship With 17-Year-Old; Claims Lawyer Tried To “Extort” Him

  Update (0850ET): Gaetz just appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where he offered more details of the alleged extortion plot that he claims precipitated the investigation into his alleged involvement with a 17-year-old girl (who is now 19, since the misconduct allegedly took place 2 years ago).

  During the interview, Gaetz brought up the fact that Tucker was once accused of a “horrible sex act” that also “did not happen.” Tucker looked visibly uncomfortable as the Congressman brought up the decades-old allegations.

  Gaetz continued on, repeating that he was being framed by elements within the DoJ, and calling on the Department to  release audio recordings made when his father wore a wire at the FBI’s behest during what Gaetz portrayed as part of an investigation into an alleged extortionist. 

  After being questioned by Tucker, Gaetz even named his alleged extortionist: David McGee, a former first assistant US attorney, who no longer works at the DoJ, but rather works as a private attorney at a law firm in Pensacola. Gaetz said the recordings he mentioned above were made at the offices of McGee’s law firm.

  Tucker later clarified that he had never met the “mentally ill viewer” who had accused him of a sex crime, though Tucker said he agreed with Gaetz that being falsely accused is terrible, and that it “happens a lot.”

  WATCH: Rep. Matt Gaetz responds on Tucker Carlson Tonight to allegations of sexual misconduct:

  He says a former DOJ official named David McGee is trying to extort is family for money

  He says that the FBI and DOJ have audio recordings that will prove his innocence. pic.twitter.com/J95AEFtxsr

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 31, 2021

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

  On Fox, Gaetz says “the FBI and the Department of Justice” need to release tapes to clear his name. Says “those tapes will show that I am innocent.” Says this was an effort to “smear” his name

  Gaetz went so far as to claim that Tucker had once met a woman, whom Gaetz had brought to a dinner engagement, who was “threatened” by the FBI and told “if she wouldn’t cop to the fact that I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme that she could face charges. I do believe there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to smear me. Providing flights and transportation for people you’re dating who are of legal age is not a crime.”

  After returning from a commercial break, Carlson remarked that the interview with Gaetz was “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.”

  * * *

  Shortly after Axios reported that Matt Gaetz, a conservative pro-Trump Republican from the Florida panhandle with a national profile, planned to quit Congress and take a job at Newsmax, the NYT has published some bombshell allegations. The paper reported Tuesday evening that Gaetz is a “subject” in a federal investigation examining whether he had illegal sexual relations with a minor (an unnamed, unidentified woman who was reportedly 17 at the time). Investigators are also looking into whether the woman traveled with Gaetz, which would constitute another federal offense.

  The investigation was reportedly opened during the final months of the Trump Administration before AG William Barr left office. The NYT says Gaetz wasn’t targeted directly, but that the behavior in question is somehow tied to a Florida official named Joel Greenberg who was indicted last summer on a range of charges including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl. Greenberg has since resigned his post as tax collector in Seminole County (north of Orlando) and is in jail awaiting trial after having his bail revoked.

  

  No charges have been brought against Gaetz, and his criminal exposure remains unclear. Gaetz addressed the charges directly in a statement to the NYT, saying he believed the investigation might have resulted from somebody’s attempt to “to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.” Gaetz told the NYT “I only know it has to do with women,” in regards to the investigation.

  Gaetz added that the investigation might be part of a scheme to extort his family for $25MM, before telling a reporter that both he and his father had worn a wire while cooperating with the FBI after being approached by people who said they could make the investigation “go away”, though he didn’t elaborate. He also told the NYT in a later interview that “it is verifiably false that I have traveled with a 17-ear-old woman.”

  In a statement published later, Gaetz said “The allegations against me are as searing as they are false,” Gaetz said in an interview. I believe that there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to criminalize my sexual conduct, you know when I was a single guy.”

  Gaetz also published a statement on twitter reiterating his comments about his family cooperating with the FBI, after becoming “victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25MM.” The part about the involvement of a corrupt DoJ official differed from his earlier statement.

  Over the past several weeks my family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name.

  We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter…

  — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 30, 2021

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

  …and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI’s direction to catch these criminals. The planted leak to the FBI tonight was intended to thwart that investigation.

  No part of the allegations against me are true, and the people pushing these lies are targets…

  — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 30, 2021

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

  …of the ongoing extortion investigation.

  I demand the DOJ immediately release the tapes, made at their direction, which implicate their former colleague in crimes against me based on false allegations.

  — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 30, 2021

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

  The 38-year-old congressman proposed to his girlfriend at Mar a Lago late last year. But he made headlines months ago after proclaiming that he “had a son”, later explaining the son, Nestor Galban, 19, was actually the brother of his then-girlfriend. “He is a part of my family story,” Gaetz told People magazine in June. “My work with Nestor, our family, no element of my public service could compare to the joy that our family has brought me.”

  The nature of Greenberg’s relationship to Gaetz is unclear. But one thing is for sure: progressives on twitter are having a field day as Gaetz’s plans to jump to Newsmax evaporate. They’re also slamming him for hypocrisy, after Gaetz repeatedly criticized top Democrats for ties to convicted pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

  It’s kinda surprising that Matt Gaetz leaked he’s retiring early from politics. I figured he’d still be attracted to his career given that it’s still pretty young.

  — Charlotte Clymer 🏳️‍🌈 (@cmclymer) March 30, 2021

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

  Matt Gaetz belongs in prison. For so many reasons.

  — Scott Dworkin (@funder) March 30, 2021

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

  Gaetz was first elected to Congress in 2016. As a member of the Florida State Legislature and the scion of a Republican political family,

  Democratic Congressman is already pushing to have Gaetz stripped of his House Judiciary Committee assignment, an echo of how Democrats disenfranchised Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

  Rep Matt Gaetz should be taken off the @HouseJudiciary Committee until the @TheJusticeDept investigation is completed. He should not be sitting on a Congressional Committee with oversight over the DOJ while the Department is investigating him. https://t.co/TKRfSyCgHe

  — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 30, 2021

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

  The DOJ does not take lightly opening a criminal investigation against a Member of Congress. Hard to believe root cause of problem would be a single former DOJ official making up allegations. There would be an entire team of federal agents & prosecutors investigating Matt Gaetz. https://t.co/kLx1CP5hjJ

  — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 30, 2021

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

  There’s clearly a lot going on here, and we suspect more information about the investigation, and Gaetz’s claims, will surface in the coming days. In the meantime, one twitter user pointed out that Gaetz’s extortion claims aren’t actually all that far-fetched.

  Explosive allegations by Gaetz that we will undoubtedly learn more about.

  Note that it is possible for him to be the victim of extortion and also be implicated in wrongdoing himself.

  In other words, whether he was extorted and whether he committed a crime are separate issues. https://t.co/ja6Qa9usbw

  — Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 30, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 21:06

• US Nuclear Command Says A Young Child Accessed Its Twitter Account
  US Nuclear Command Says A Young Child Accessed Its Twitter Account

  The mystery surrounding the bizarre and seemingly nonsensical tweet sent out Sunday evening by the verified Twitter account of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has been solved, apparently.

  The below screenshotted tweet had been live for at least 30 minutes and was retweeted over 4,000 times, unleashing a fury of speculation and well as jokes. “Good to see USSTRATCOM is in qualified hands,” one commenter quipped. The universal sentiment however was one of serious concern given this is the military command that oversees America’s nuclear arsenal and deterrent…

  

  A quick follow-up post did little to dispel the mystery in an extremely rare moment of confused messaging and lack of professionalism from a military command center that literally is responsible for thousands of nuclear warheads.

  It’s responsible for managing the US military’s strategic deterrence and overseeing communications to America’s civilian leadership as well as the public when it comes to severe threats against the homeland, thus its official communications are closely watched for any sign of changes in its official defense posture.

  “Apologies for any confusion. Please disregard this post,” the message said before both were eventually deleted.

  Is that… the launch code? https://t.co/Wpzaa4u4Mh

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 28, 2021

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

  This is hilarious. So many people were having so much fun with @US_Stratcom’s mistaken tweet that they had to delete it. No worries. Here’s a screen shot.

  You see their problem. Everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone has thousands of nuclear weapons. pic.twitter.com/1X6MpM5mX3

  — Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) March 29, 2021

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

  A statement from Strategic Command to a journalist who filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request said that a child gained access to the Twitter account.

  “The Command’s Twitter manager, while in a telework status, momentarily left the Command’s Twitter account open and unattended.”

  “His very young child took advantage of the situation and started playing with the keys and, unfortunately, and unknowingly, posted the tweet,” Stratcom official Kendall Cooper said in a letter subsequently posted online.

  Filed a FOIA request with U.S. Strategic Command to see if I could learn anything about their gibberish tweet yesterday.

  Turns out their Twitter manager left his computer unattended, resulting in his “very young child” commandeering the keyboard. pic.twitter.com/KR07PCyCUM

  — Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 29, 2021

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

  “Absolutely nothing nefarious occurred, i.e. no hacking of our Twitter account,” it added.

  

  So it appears the Nebraska-headquartered Stratcom is now essentially chalking it up to a ‘remote work mishap’ – after widespread speculation of a significant hack or breach of Stratcom’s highly secure systems. 

  Likely few will be comforted by how easy it was – given that literally a child accessed the account. Or as Stratcom put it in its somewhat awkwardly worded official explanation – the administrator’s “very young child took advantage of the situation…”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 21:05

• Financial Capitalism: The Endgame
  Financial Capitalism: The Endgame

  Via Renegade Inc.,

  Surely the biggest human failure is not learning from failure…

  

  In 2008, we had the opportunity, collectively, to reboot a broken financial system so it became fit for purpose.

  But instead of reconfiguring finance to serve the real economy politicians and central bankers used quantitative easing to buy time which lulled the mainstream media into reporting that everything was back on track. Some people haven’t bought that story.

  Marc Friederich and Matthias Weik are two economists who didn’t succumb to groupthink after the 2008 crash and now see financial capitalism’s end game.

  *  *  *

  Friedrich explained to Renegade Inc. that the authors’ intention is to help translate the complexity of a financial system by inverting it into a language that everybody understands. Having studied economics, and as children of the dot com bubble, the authors of four best-selling books in Germany, stress the important role sarcasm and dark humour play in their work in respect to making seemingly complex matters accessible to the wider public.

  Terminology camouflage

  According to Weik, the aim behind mainstream economists’ use of convoluted language is to create a camouflage in order to prevent them from having to explain what their terminology means. “It’s like the language of law spoken in secret phrases whose purpose is to garner public trust”, said Friedrich.

  

  But what mainstream economists and politicians haven’t explained is the structural nature of a crisis that hasn’t been remedied since the 2008 crash. Instead, the metaphorical can has been kicked down the road.

  “We’re at the end game because it’s the final bubble. We’ve got the government bond bubble and there won’t be another bubble afterwards. It will burst because last time China and all the states rescued the world. They won’t save us anymore. We used cheap money like a drug. We just put more and more drugs into the system”, said Weik.

  “Economists and politicians have learnt nothing in the last decade, rather they have merely bought time. The banks who created the last financial crisis continue to be the big winners”, says Friedrich. The losers are the working class and underclass who were encouraged to borrow recklessly. And yet it is these latter groups who the American and British press blame for the crisis.

  According to Friedrich, the catalyst for the crisis was low-interest rates and too much cheap money. “They tried to solve it with even lower interest rates and much more money. The debts have doubled since 2008”, said the economist. In Friedrich’s view, the Fed, ECB and other central banks will try to print more money “like they always do.”

  

  Friedrich continued:

  “We will definitely see negative interest rates….Since 2008 debts worldwide doubled for private people and for companies even three times more debts than 2008. So this is the final bubble. And the central banks create one bubble after the next one to keep the whole thing running. That’s it.”

  And we all know the patient is dead but nobody is ready to unplug the life support. The aim is to keep the system alive for as long as possible.

  Weik added:

  “Over the past two years real estate prices exploded, the share prices exploded, lots of people earned a lot of money and a lot of people can’t afford living anymore.”

  Spread of revolutions

  In Weik’s view, the growing crisis, indicative of the widening divide between the rich and poor, will culminate in the spread of revolutions throughout Europe. As the authors make clear, the inability of the political establishment to find any solutions to the crisis of 2008, the phenomenon of Brexit, Trump and the other symptoms that led to the emergence of the far right across Europe and the world, all emanate from the lack of political will to deal with these things in 2006.

  

  “The establishment are afraid of facing the consequences of a real change in the system”, argues Friedrich.

  “The banks have betrayed all of us…. They manipulated interest rates, for example. Everybody who bought a house with credit was suffering. Then, the politician’s we elected bailed out the banks with our taxes. And we thought the politicians are here for us….The banks are still here. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the European Central Bank — they’re all still here. Nothing happened. And then, since 2008, the people lost trust in the media as well.”

  So it’s a historical loss of trust all over the place.

  The authors argue that it’s not just the holy trinity — banks, politicians and media — who are to blame. They also point a finger at the public’s inability to take personal responsibility.

  “Change always comes from the people. We are more than them. And if we’re not taking the step forward and change something nothing will change”

  Friedrich also adds, “That’s why we say we the people have to create the change right now. The monetary system failed. It’s bankrupt. We have to change it. Let’s think about a new monetary system…. We have to create the change. And if not creating it there will be a lot of damage. That’s what we all have to face right now.”

  Hijacked

  Friedrich and Weik posit that big opportunities predicated on a system that prioritises people above profit could emerge from the chaos of the next crash. Aligned with Marx, the authors note how the productive capacities capitalism has engendered over the centuries has greatly benefited humanity while recognising that, over recent decades, capitalism has been hijacked by a form of cronyism — its extreme variant — neoliberalism:

  “If you make a bad economical decision as a private person or as a business owner, that’s it, you’re out of business. But if you are a bank no problem at all….The United Kingdom sells bonds to finance the whole system. So who’s buying the bonds? The answer is hedge funds, insurance companies, banks and now, central banks.”

  This kind of crony capitalism exists in what Friedrich acknowledges is a context in which politicians tell the public that they have got record employment and everybody’s better off. “But nobody tells them that more and more people are doing two or three jobs within low and stagnating wage sectors”, says Friedrich.

  He continues:

  “There is a problem in the monetary system. And if the currency collapses the people have to pay for it, not the government….In 2001 we established a currency monetary union in Europe with the euro. It was just not going to work. It’s madness to put strong economies like Germany with weak economies like Italy or Greece in one currency. For Germany the Euro is too cheap which is why the country is exporting so many goods and so they can’t even get into the market. It’s like it’s too expensive. Meanwhile, Germany is getting stronger while the weaker nations are getting weaker. This then opens the door for reactionary political leaders. And so the cycle continues.”

  The Endgame

  While in Argentina during the crisis in 2001, Friedrich first realized that in the event of an economic crisis and currency collapse, it’s the public who are forced to pay. The economist understood that there are only three possibilities to delete the debts in the system — inflation, devaluation of the currency and war. In each case, it’s the people who are forced to pay.

  What are the likely consequences of the end game — the biggest bubble in human history?

  According to Weik:

  “The morning after the end game we can solve the crisis, if we are smart. …But if it is postponed, there will be an implosion of the markets globally on something like the scale of 1929, maybe even worse.

  So we have to rethink how to restart the system from scratch…Otherwise there would be a big bang and then it’s getting really nasty and much more expensive.”

  Friedrich proffers a slightly different perspective:

  “We need a new currency system — a new monetary fund. If the people don’t take control of the system, the alternative digital system could be like ‘1984’, it will be horrible. It’s why we have to get power back to the people. Solutions will likely be utilized through artificial intelligence controlled by people for the benefit of people. We explain this in our books and videos.”

  Watch the full episode now:

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 20:45

• Nike Sues Maker Of "Satan Shoes" That Stoked Boycott Threats
  Nike Sues Maker Of “Satan Shoes” That Stoked Boycott Threats

  Nike is suing a small, Brooklyn-based novelty shop, accusing it of trademark infringement for repurposing used pairs of Nike Air Max 97s as the basis for the shoe.

  Legal analysts say the company’s trademark infringement case will be closely watched, given the prevalence of repurposing and “remixing” that permeates contemporary pop culture, from music, to clothing to social media.

  

  But the real motivation for the sneaker giant’s lawsuit is the damage to Nike’s brand, which was apparently significant enough that it impacted the price of the company’s shares, after politicians and religious authorities called for a boycott of the athletic clothing company, despite its increasingly desperate statements claiming it had nothing to do with the making or marketing of the “Satan Shoes”.

  Nike is suing for damages, including all the profits earned by MSCHF. In the lawsuit, the firm said it is “likely to suffer damage to its trademark, business reputation and goodwill” because of the controversy inspired by the shoes. “Nike is in no way connected with this project,” the company said in its preliminary statement.

  “As a direct and proximate result of MSCHF’s wrongful acts, Nike has suffered, continues to suffer, and/or is likely to suffer damage to its trademarks, business reputation, and goodwill that money cannot compensate,” the lawsuit added. “Unless enjoined, MSCHF will continue to use Nike’s Asserted Marks and/or confusingly similar marks and will cause irreparable damage to Nike for which Nike has no adequate remedy at law.”

  The company, MSCHF Product Studio, Inc., brought in popular rapper Lil Nas X for a “collab”, timing the shoes for release alongside Nas X’s new single, “Monero (Call Me By Your Name)”, which the rapper says is a note to his 14-year-old self, who was still struggling with his sexuality. The music video for the song only served to further the controversy, as it featured footage of the rapper “twerking” on Satan.

  Shares of Nike moved lower during extended trading hours last night, a move that continued into Tuesday’s session.

  

  The shoes feature the brand’s signature “swoosh” logo prominently on the side of the shoe and on its tongue. The shoes, which sold out in minutes, cost $1,018, a reference to the Bible passage Luke 10:18, which reads “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”

  The company said Tuesday that it had sold all but one pair – out of 666 offered – of the Satan Shoes, and that the last pair would be given away via auction later this week.

  Read the lawsuit in its entirety below:

  Nike v Mschf by THROnline

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 20:25

• CME To Launch Micro-Bitcoin Futures; Options Traders Betting On $80k By End-April
  CME To Launch Micro-Bitcoin Futures; Options Traders Betting On $80k By End-April

  While chaos reigns in various parts of the US equity and bond markets, bitcoin has been quietly surging higher in the last few days.

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  In fact, US rate forecast volatility is now higher than bitcoin’s realized risk…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Ahead of President Biden’s pitch tomorrow for another $3 trillion in spending, the crypto patch has been bid and helped today by the news that PayPal will launch “Checkout With Crypto” – a cryptocurrency service for merchants across the US.

  “This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters.

  Checkout With Crypto service will enable those holding cryptocurrencies on the platform to spend it with all of PayPal’s merchants. Supported cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin; the payments company will, however, convert the cryptocurrency to fiat money for the actual payment.

  “We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants,” Schulman added.

  Also buoying bitcoin prices is the news that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has unveiled plans to launch a new Bitcoin derivatives product that will enable traders to speculate on fractional units of the flagship digital currency.

  CoinTelegraph reports that CME Group’s Micro Bitcoin futures contract, which is set to launch May 3 pending regulatory approval, will be worth 0.1 BTC. The smaller contract size provides market participants with an additional tool to hedge their Bitcoin price risk, CME said Tuesday. CME’s current Bitcoin contract unit is 5 BTC.

  Tim McCourt, CME Group’s global head of equity index and alternative investment products, explaine:

  “The introduction of Micro Bitcoin futures responds directly to demand for smaller-sized contracts from a broad array of clients and will offer even more choice and precision in how participants can trade regulated Bitcoin futures in a transparent and efficient manner at CME Group.”

  CME launched its Bitcoin futures contract in December 2017. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, Its larger crosstown rival, was the first to introduce the derivatives contract during the same month but has since abandoned Bitcoin futures altogether.

  CME has noted a steady uptick in crypto derivatives trading since the first Bitcoin futures contract launched more than three years ago.

  

  image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

  Perhaps that is one reason why bitcoin options traders have started to build a sizable position in call options (levered bets on higher prices), betting on prices above $80,000 by the end of April.

  

  Source: bybt

  According to the latest data, 5,580 bitcoin (around $330 mm notional) of contracts are outstanding in $80,000 strike April Calls.

  Notably, as CoinMinks reports, significant volume has also accumulated around contracts with a strike price of $120,000.

  This means that some traders believe the bitcoin price will more than double in the next five weeks.

  According to data aggregator Skew, probability estimates based on market data for the April 30 contract suggest that options traders may be a bit too optimistic. The analytics platform gives it a probability of just 6.19% that bitcoin will top $80,000 (and only a 2.15% chance that the bitcoin price will even reach $100,000 by the April 30 expiration date).

  The upcoming Coinbase IPO may also be a catalyst for the upside call-buying.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 19:45

• Schools Gone Woke: One America Educator Speaks Out
  Schools Gone Woke: One America Educator Speaks Out

  Authored by ‘An American Educator’ via The Critic,

  In a warning to teachers around the world, one American teacher opens up about the invasion of woke orthodoxy in the education sector…

  

  I am an American educator who began teaching nearly two decades ago. During that time, I have taught at some of the most prestigious private secondary schools in the United States. Starting about five years ago, these schools began to be consumed by woke ideology.

  When I say “consumed by woke ideology” I mean that these schools are obsessed with sophomoric and divisive notions of diversity, equality, and justice; increasingly hostile to freedom of expression; addicted to cancelling anything that offends the woke movement; and prioritising activism over understanding as the goal of education.

  I am writing this letter to alert those we may describe as “sleep-wokers”. A sleep-woker is one who has not taken the woke creed to heart, yet nevertheless tacitly complies with the linguistic, pedagogical, political, and moral imperatives of wokeness. Sleep-wokers go through the motions; they are like religious folk who say prayers without thinking, attend worship services without engaging, and perpetuate dogmas without believing. I was a sleep-woker. In some ways, due to a combination of timidity and tiredness, I still am.

  Sleep-woking, like sleepwalking, is very dangerous. While sleep-woking, an English teacher can unwittingly help cancel Chaucer, Keats and Conrad in the name of decolonisation. A biology teacher might find herself obliged to deny important differences between the sexes. A football coach will not be able to cheer on a player after a strong tackle, as strength and physical violence smack of toxic masculinity.

  Most of my sleep-woking colleagues are good people. Like me, they were lulled into complacency by a woke take-over that was slow and subtle. What’s more, some changes were initially promising and even corrective — of course we should pay more attention to marginalised voices and overlooked narratives, and I am glad that we now do. To bemoan an expanded curriculum is simple chauvinism. In the end, however, wokeness has proven to be oppressive and totalitarian rather than inclusive and liberating.

  It is worth noting that I have been a supporter of the left for most of my life. The only political donation I have ever made went to a candidate in the most left-leaning wing of the most left-leaning party in American politics. My objection is to the effect of woke ideology on education, not to liberal politics. My grievance is that teachers are increasingly under pressure to adopt the woke agenda or be ostracised.

  I empathise with the difficult situation that top school officials find themselves in. As wokeness takes over American culture, schools face enormous pressure to follow suit. That said, those with the power to stop the degradation of education have a special responsibility to do so, and those of us with less power have a responsibility to remind our superiors of their duty.

  Here is some of what wokeness has wrought at top American schools:

  Offence in is the Eye of the Offended

  Schools openly preach that if one feels offended, one has been offended. For example, if a student or colleague claims to have been offended by your words or actions, it does not matter if you intended no offence. More troubling is the fact that it does not matter if your words and actions were not those that a rational person should find offensive — you are an offender merely by virtue of the fact that someone claims to have been offended.

  Schools cannot yet codify this into an official policy. What the schools are starting to do, however, is to change the ethical norms associated with offence. Since legal norms follow ethical norms, if schools (and societies) succeed in changing the ethical norms of speech and offence, they will eventually have a basis upon which to change the legal norms. As soon as they can show that a normal or typical person is offended by certain language or certain ideas, they will be able to argue that a person presenting such language and ideas is failing to abide by the reasonable ethical expectations of school culture. In short, we are training students how to be offended so that their perceived offence can be used to eliminate anti-woke expression.

  Elimination of Non-Woke Student Clubs

  Any student group that resists woke orthodoxy is likely to be forcibly disbanded or prevented from forming. Student clubs cannot form without faculty sponsors. Since the vast majority of the faculty at these schools are woke (or too afraid to be seen as non-woke), conservative students have trouble officially meeting and inviting speakers. If a non-woke speaker is invited, the wokes mobilise to deny them a platform and they feel righteous for doing so. Few conservative students openly identify as such because they are afraid of repercussions from faculty and from other students. Not only is this unfair, but it is also dangerous. Alienated conservative students are being pushed away from moderate disagreement and towards political extremism.

  No Resisting Woke Slogans

  Opposing woke slogans or voicing contrary slogans is not tolerated. Since opposing wokeness is thought to be motivated by hate, voicing opposition to woke slogans is tantamount to hate speech. A student who challenges a woke slogan is bullied and harassed by the woke majority. Meanwhile, woke slogans and images are hung in school buildings and cannot be removed.

  Cultural Appropriation

  White or Western students are told not to participate in cultural traditions of non-white, non-Western people — the oppressors cannot participate in the culture of the oppressed. For example, several white students who wore shirts with African designs were reprimanded and forced to change their clothes. The fact that the shirts were a gift from their teacher, a black African man, made no difference. The students wore the shirts to show affection for their teacher and to honour his gift, but that was still cultural appropriation.

  In another instance, a musician was reprimanded for blending a western and non-western musical style into a new artistic expression. The musician was accused of cultural imperialism.

  Cancelling Curriculum

  Shakespeare, Homer and other canonical authors are being eliminated from the curriculum. In some cases, schools and teachers boast about cancelling these patriarchal racists. Even at schools that do not officially cancel canonical Western texts, the texts are subtly replaced in the name of anti-racism.

  Most of my students will go to university never having read Homer or Shakespeare, though they will have been required to read many texts and attend many lectures on intersectionality and gender identity. They can speak at length about toxic masculinity and a panoply of so-called phobias, but they would not recognise the terms “iambic pentameter” and “dactylic hexameter”, let alone recognise actual examples of the meter.

  Normalising Fallacies

  Ad hominem attacks are presented as the cornerstone of critical thinking rather than as a fallacious form of argumentation. We teach students to evaluate texts and arguments by primarily attending to the author’s race, gender, and sexuality.

  Mandatory Training

  Students attend mandatory training sessions in which experts teach them how to identify and report microaggressions. And since to a student with a hammer everything looks like a nail, the students begin informing on each other and on their teachers. White teachers are told to attend racial-political re-education workshops in which they strive to overcome their whiteness in the classroom. (It has long been accepted that “whiteness” is a meaningful category.)

  If you claim to not be a racist, you are seen as the worst, most unredeemable kind of racist. You are a heretic who will not admit heresy. You are thought to be suffering from something called “white fragility”.

  Trigger Warnings

  Before introducing a new unit, teachers compile lists of trigger warnings for the material in that unit. A trigger warning serves to alert students to any and all things in the unit that could cause them stress, frustration, anger, or sadness. These lists are shared with students.

  Manners and Dress Codes

  A side-effect of the woke attack on tradition, authority, and hierarchy has been the revocation of dress codes. So long as their genitals are covered and no profane words are visible, students can and do wear anything they like. Arguably the only rule left in the dining halls and cafeterias is “Don’t throw food.”

  Many students eat meals with headphones in their ears while watching videos on their phones. The less respectful students don’t bother with headphones. “Sir” and “Ma’am” have long since disappeared as too authoritarian and gendered. The terms “master” and “headmaster” cannot be used as master might connote slavery.

  Elimination of Objective Assessments

  Exams are being eliminated for two reasons: first, because exams are apparently inherently racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative, or otherwise unfair; second, because exams cause students stress, and stress makes students feel bad, and feeling bad negatively impacts their well-being. Additionally, some students do poorly on exams, and this has the potential to result in a situation that is inequitable.

  Pronouns

  Faculty are frequently pressured to identify their pronouns. Failure to identify one’s pronouns is seen as transphobic or cis-centric or both. Students can reassign their own pronouns at will. If a teacher mistakenly does not use the student’s preferred pronoun, the teacher is accused of misgendering. Misgendering a serious offence, even a kind of violence.

  *  *  *

  The unchecked advance of wokeness will do two things to your school.

  • First, you and your students will lose the ability to freely read, write and speak as pupils and teachers. Second, the education that you now provide will become unrecognisably impoverished.

  • This second effect is probably the hardest to believe, especially for those of you at top academic institutions, but it is the effect of which I am most certain. In place of free-thinking young scholars, you will begin turning out a generation of woke activists who believe that feelings matter more than facts, that perception is reality, and that it is more important to judge a text than to understand it — where “judging” means anachronistically interpreting the author’s words in light of the most recent woke orthodoxy.

  Many of my students claim to be proud practitioners of social justice (don’t push them too hard on what that means) yet they have only an elementary command of grammar and geography, struggling to write complete sentences and unable to locate Turkey on a map. Some have begun to ask why we take math so seriously given that math is apparently grounded in Western patriarchal rationalism. Wokeness has been achieved at the expense of education. Reason has been subordinated to passion. Plato’s charioteer has been replaced by the horses he was meant to reign in.

  Perhaps some of you are disturbed by some of the woke excesses at your schools and in your communities, even if, like me, you readily support appeals for greater diversity, genuine inclusion, and a multicultural curriculum. Perhaps your instinct has been to dismiss these excesses as isolated incidents. Like me, you might have said “The pendulum will swing back” or “That will never happen at my school.” I am writing to say that the pendulum will not swing back because the woke movement is not a pendulum; it is a steamroller.

  I am not claiming any moral high ground. My own failure to push back in the right ways and at the right times makes me part of the problem. Nor am I here trying to convince anyone else to become bothered by the advance of woke culture into education. If what I am reporting does not bother you, ignore me. If wokeness has begun to concern you, however, you now have a glimpse of where your own school may be headed.

  One of the canniest bits of woke linguistic manipulation has been appropriation of the term “woke” itself. To not be woke is to be asleep: unconscious or ignorant of what is really going on.

  Either one is woke or one is not aware of reality. Or, as I was recently told by a student, if you are not woke, it must be because you are uneducated or hateful — or both.

  Such is the woke reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 19:25

• Here Come The Most Stunning Base-Effect Charts Since The Great Depression
  Here Come The Most Stunning Base-Effect Charts Since The Great Depression

  In just a few days, US high frequency economic data will lap March 2020 when the US economy literally shut down and sent all economic indicators in freefall to a degree not seen since the Great Depression (and in many cases, more).

  When that happens, while March/April economic data will rise only modestly compared to the previous month, it will be a veritable explosion compared to the shutdown a year ago. This is the so-called “base effect” and while many economists will ignore it, especially when it comes to inflation data, the impact for many will be jarring especially when investors see charts that have gone, for lack of a better word, vertical.

  To preview the annual change base effect that is coming in everything from retail sales, to income and spending, to housing data, to jobs and unemployment, we have pulled some of the most representative real-time indicators available from JPMorgan and Bank of America, starting with what is perhaps the most illustrative chart of all: JPM’s spending tracker on the bank’s own consumer (debit and credit) cards.

  

  Here the 65% surge in spending is not because of an actual surge in spending March, but because spending last March imploded. Which is why to normalize for the post-March 2020 shock, banks will likely show not just the Y/Y chart, but also a chart comparing to 2-year ago or, better yet, a pre-covid blended trend as JPM has done in the chart above.

  Bank of America published a similar chart, showing a huge jump in Y/Y card spending, especially among households who received stimulus payments – and this time on both a 1 and 2 year basis – while household that did not receive stimulus saw a roughly 30% jump in Y/Y spending due to the base effect, and only a modest increase in 2Y spending.

  

  Here are some other charts showing how the 1-Year, but not 2-Year change, has gone vertical:

  

  … And some more.

  

  … And even more…

  

  But nowhere is the base effect more visible than in the 1-year spending on airlines, where we see a very clear “lift off” formation in progress.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 19:05

• 1.8 Million Jobs On Friday?
  1.8 Million Jobs On Friday?

  Treasury yields blew out overnight (with the belly in particular feeling the heat: 5s +5.5bps, 10s +6.0bps) during the Asian session in continuation of yesterday’s move higher, as the usual suspects – Japanese commercial banks – resumed selling in droves (see “Morgan Stanley Identifies The Source Of Massive Treasury Selling“), although it wasn’t clear what if any catalyst sparked the selling.

  

  Trying to make some sense of the latest move in yields Nomura’s Charlie McElligott offered three reasons for the return of the reflation theme:

  1. vaccine renormalization
  2. fiscal stimulus now circulating into the “real economy”, and
  3. the expected large upside surprise in Friday’s NFP data now increasingly being priced-in, whose release McElligott notes “comes dangerously on the illiquid ‘Good Friday’ holiday-shortened session, risking a disorderly move”

  We won’t focus much on topics 1 and 2 which we have covered extenisvely elsewhere on multiple occasions, but instead we will preview what may be a truly blockbuster payrolls report on Friday, coming right at a time when stocks are closed and when bonds are open only until noon.

  So why focus on Friday’s jobs report? Because one month after the February Payrolls printed at 379K, nearly double the consensus estimate of 198K, Wall Street expects the labor market to resume its torrid upward trajectory with a whopping 650K print.

  While on the surface this will likely send yields sharply higher as it provides fresh fuel to the reflation narrative, a chart published today by JPMorgan took our breath away. In the bank’s latest “quant and econ dashboard report”, JPMorgan compares the BLS payrolls series with its own alternative data-based tracker of jobs data. Remarkably, it found that after a period of almost uniform convergence between the two series, the March “alternative data” print was a whopper, one which implies the matched BLS print will be around 1.8 million jobs!

  

  To be sure there are several other reflationary considerations laid out by McElligott, which we note below…

  • With the market sniffing the pull-forward of US QE taper in addition to then likelihood of “front-loaded” Fed hikes, 5s are in a really tricky spot, and this is why 5s30s—which was really the “reflation steepener” of choice for so long last year—has now actually stalled-out, sitting around this 1.50 level for approximately two months now
  • The better the reopening data gets, the more likely it is that we more of this inflection from phase 1 steepening “reflation feel-good” as the long-end reflects higher growth- and inflation- expectations, to the phase 2 flattening “Fed tightening” stage, where the front-end / belly leading the repricing ahead of Fed policy adjustment—with the potential for this to begin evidencing itself to markets by the time of the next Fed SEP in June potentially needing to reflect an improved forecast

  In this context, imagine what happens to the 10Y – and certainly the belly and the 5Y – if we do get a 1.8MM print (which has quickly emerged as the whisper number for Friday), smashing expectations by 3x, and unleashing a volley of TSY selling as the herd panics and dumps Treasurys faster than you can say a “failed 7Y auction.” Perhaps the only question in this “blowout payrolls” scenario is whether the 10Y – which today rose as high as 1.78% will find support at 2.00% or will it blow out above the level most on Wall Street (according to the latest BofA Fund Manager Survey)…

  

  … agrees is the trigger for chaos not just in the bond but also stock market.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 18:45

• A "Very Surprised" JPMorgan Calculates The Damage From The Archegos Collapse
  A “Very Surprised” JPMorgan Calculates The Damage From The Archegos Collapse

  Unlike the devastating London Whale debacle in 2012, which was all JPMorgan eventually drawn and quartered quite theatrically before Congress (and was a clear explanation of how banks used Fed reserves to manipulate markets, something most market participants had no idea was possible), this time JPMorgan was nowhere to be found in the aftermath of the historic margin call that destroyed hedge fund Archegos. Which is may explain why JPMorgan bank analyst Kian Abouhossein admits he is quite “puzzled” by the recent fallout from the Archegos implosion (or maybe JPM simply was not a Prime Broker of the notorious Tiger cub), which however does not prevent him from trying to calculate the capital at risk from the Archegos collapse.

  In a note published this morning, Kian writes after Nomura yesterday confirmed (at least) a $2Nn potential claim and fellow Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Holdings announcing today of another potential $300MM loss – which as the JPM strategist admits “for a likely non-material PB player is surprising to us” – JPMorgan now expects losses well beyond normal unwinding scenario for the industry: and explains that it now sees “the losses as very material in relation to lending exposure for a business that is mark-to-market and holds liquid collateral” and makes Nomura’s indication of potentially losing $2bn and press speculation of CSG $3-4bn losses “as not an unlikely outcome” according to the JPM strategist.

  So why is JPM surprised?

  Because as Abouhossein writes, “in normal circumstances… we would have suspected industry losses of $2.5-5bn. We now suspect losses in the range of $5-10bn.” In other words, JPM has doubled its max loss estimate to as much as $10BN, a number which could yet rise.

  To get there, JPM estimates that Archegos was highly leveraged at 5-8x (i.e. $50-80bn of exposure for $10bn of equity) – using Total Return Swaps and Certificates for Difference to lever up so massively as we discussed yesterday – and it was this use of equity-swaps tha “tincreased the inability of PBs to see the concentration risk in holdings within the hedge fund in question.”

  Even so, Kian admits that he remains “puzzled why Credit Suisse (CSG) and Nomura have been unable to unwind all their positions at this point – as we would expect to get an announcement as soon as this is the case, on the scale of potential losses (especially in the case of CSG which hasn’t provided numerical impact)” although we have gotten some headlines suggesting the total loss could be as big as $7 billion.

  That said the JPM analyst expects full disclosure by the end of the week at the latest from CSG and would keep an eye on credit agencies statements as well. And in the harshest slam of JPM’s competitors, Kian says he suspects “potentially poor risk mgmt being an issue here considering i) late unwinding, and ii) possibly significant more leverage than for GS/MS similar exposures.”

  Alternatively, one could argue that it was Goldman and Morgan Stanley who rushed to break ranks with the syndicate of Prime Brokers and started dumping blocks of Archegos shares for one reason or another on Friday morning as we detailed yesterday, which meant that while they suffered the least losses, those banks – like CS, Nomura and Wells – which were slow to start selling, would end up with the largest losses (for more see “How Goldman And Morgan Stanley Broke Ranks And Triggered The Biggest Margin Call Since Lehman“).

  

  In terms of actual loss estimates with an empahsis on Credit Suisse which so far appears to be the hardest hit, here is a breakdown from JPMorgan of what is known:

  In terms of capital at risk, based on press articles, Credit Suisse seems to have bigger issues than Nomura assuming press speculation of  $3-4bn are correct and Grensill could potentially lead to additional litigation cost of $1-3bn. In the case of Nomura, JPM has reduced the share buyback for FY2020 from ¥75 billion to ¥10 billion; if the press speculation losses are correct, it would expect CS at a minimum will have to cancel its share buyback for 2021, preserving the dividend and we assume no buyback for the next 2 years assuming Basel 4 implementation as of Jan 2023.

  Assuming no RWA growth vs. YE2020 levels, JPM calculates that CS can absorb a max. one-time pre-tax hit of c$4.5bn (CHF 4.2bn) for Archegos which post-tax is 116bps of CET1 capital offset by 32bps of Retained earnings (1Q Net Income less 1Q dividend accrual of CHF 0.2bn and share buyback of CHF 0.3bn completed YTD) and still reach 12% by end of 1Q 21 which is seen as an acceptable level for S/Hs under Basel 3 – with further hits to come (see below). The minimum CET1 requirement is 10% and every additional $1bn pre-tax hit is 26bps of CET1 capital based on YE2020 RWAs and hence “any hits beyond $5bn pre-tax from Archegos will call into question the capital position in our view”, JPM warns.

  

  Separately, Bloomberg adds that March’s blowups may – in addition to wiping out more than a year of profits for the bank and threaten its stock buyback plans – also add add to the reputational hit from the other missteps by bank CEO Thomas Gottstein. With the shares posting the only decline among Europe’s major banks in 2021 and a new chairman starting next month, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein is facing questions over whether he and risk chief Lara Warner have a handle on the bank’s exposures.

  “Risk control at every level in this bank must be examined and changes made where there are deficiencies,” David Herro, chief investment officer at Harris Associates, one of the biggest investors in the bank, said in an email. “But I state the obvious?”

  As Bloomberg further notes, the hits from Archegos and Greensill have spoiled a plan by Gottstein to start the year with a clean slate.

  The CEO late last year wrote down the value of the bank’s stake in hedge fund York Capital and took a hit related to a long-standing legal case into residential mortgage-backed securities, dealing the bank its first quarterly loss in three years. The crises have more than overshadowed its best start to the year in a decade.

  “While all four events appear idiosyncratic in nature, it inevitably has led investors to question the strategic decision making at CS and the risk culture of the firm,” Andrew Coombs, a Citi bank analyst wrote Tuesday.

  While Credit Suisse has not quantified the full damage yet, and has merely said that it faces “highly significant” losses tied to Archegos, Berenberg analysts pegged the hit at 3 billion Swiss francs, on top of 500 million francs from the Greensill issues.

  * * *

  Finally, JPM tries to answer a key question for many investors, namely what has happened with holdings (as speculated in the press ) of Archegos Capital?

  As Kian writes, the share price of Arhcegos Capital linked stocks fell by -39% on avg. since the beginning of last week. According to press reports (Bloomberg), Archegos Capital was forced to sell large shareholdings in eight online and entertainment companies (GSX Techedu, ViacomCBS, Discovery, iQIYI, Tencent Music, Vipshop, Baidu, Farfetch) to cover potential losses after some positions moved against the fund. Once Archegos Captial failed to meet its margin commitments, the sell-off intensified further as banks started offloading via sizeable block trades the holdings posted by the fund as collateral, prompting more declines.

  Based on the latest publicly available disclosure the banks with the largest exposure to the mentioned companies were Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Nomura and to a lesser extent UBS and DB (more details below). On Friday alone, both ViacomCBS and Discovery saw their largest ever daily decline, with each falling by more than -27%. Traded volumes for the eight companies peaked on Friday with daily volumes being on avg. more than 13x the 90 days moving average. The sell-off continued on Monday 29th with the aforementioned stocks falling further -6% on average.

  

  Based on latest available public filings, JPM calculates that the banks which had the largest holdings in the eight Archegos Capital-linked stocks mentioned by the press were Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Nomura. Morgan Stanley exposure was relatively broad based with 5%+ holdings in all but one companies and with 10%+ stake in both GSX Techedu and iQIYI. Credit Suisse exposure was also broad based with holdings in all but one companies and with the largest exposure being its 9% stake in Discovery. Goldman Sachs exposure was mainly concentrated in GSX Techedu (22% stake), while Nomura had exposure in all but one companies and a relatively large holding of 7% in GSX Techedu. Other banks such as Bank of America, Citi, UBS, Deutsche and Barclays also had holdings above 2% in some the mentioned companies (mainly GSX Techedu and Discovery).

  

  Finally, courtesy of JPM, here is a summary of all the latest publicly available information disclosing what exposure each bank may have had – and still has – to Archegos:

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 18:38

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• New COVID-19 Waves Sweep Through Asia
  New COVID-19 Waves Sweep Through Asia

  New waves of coronavirus infections have been sweeping through several countries in Asia, threatening to become more ferocious than previous outbreaks.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that Philippines broke their record for new cases recorded in a day five times since March 19, recording almost 10,000 new cases on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Looking at new cases in relation to population, the country is also the most affected in Asia. The 7-day rolling average of new cases per one million of population stood at more than 75 Sunday, followed by almost 42 new cases/million in India.

  India saw 68,000 new cases Sunday, still below the September peak of almost 98,000, but rising rapidly. Bangladesh, where case numbers are growing at a similar rate to its larger neighbor, came very close to its daily record when it recorded 3,908 new cases that day. The number was just short of the 4,019 new infections that were recorded on July 2, 2020, at the height of the country’s first wave. Mongolia recorded 896 new cases on Sunday after having recorded more than 100 new cases in day for the first time ever on March 7.

  Third-most affected in relation to population was Malaysia, but cases in the country have been slowing. Fifth-most affected Indonesia has also seen a light easing of the situation. This is according to numbers collected by research project Our World in Data located at the University of Oxford.

  Other growing outbreaks are being monitored in Pakistan and once again in Japan (which would constitute a fourth wave for the country). Countries in Southeast Asia – Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand – have also seen more new cases than usual. Yet, the overall number of cases in the little-affected region remains low. New infections remained at stable levels in South Korea, Singapore and Nepal.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 02:45

• Nuclear Weapons Blazing: Britain Enters The US-China Fray
  Nuclear Weapons Blazing: Britain Enters The US-China Fray

  Authored by Ramzy Baroud via AntiWar.com,

  Boris Johnson’s March 16 speech before the British Parliament was reminiscent, at least in tone, to that of Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2019, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China. The comparison is quite apt if we remember the long-anticipated shift in Britain’s foreign policy and Johnson’s conservative Government’s pressing need to chart a new global course in search for new allies – and new enemies.

  XI’s words in 2019 signaled a new era in Chinese foreign policy, where Beijing hoped to send a message to its allies and enemies that the rules of the game were finally changing in its favor, and that China’s economic miracle – launched under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in 1992 – would no longer be confined to the realm of wealth accumulation, but would exceed this to politics and military strength, as well.

  

  In China’s case, XI’s declarations were not a shift per se, but rather a rational progression. However, in the case of Britain, the process, though ultimately rational, is hardly straightforward. After officially leaving the European Union in January 2020, Britain was expected to articulate a new national agenda. This articulation, however, was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the multiple crises it generated.

  Several scenarios, regarding the nature of Britain’s new agenda, were plausible:

  One, that Britain maintains a degree of political proximity to the EU, thus avoiding more negative repercussions of Brexit;

  Two, for Britain to return to its former alliance with the US, begun in earnest in the post-World War II era and the formation of NATO and reaching its zenith in the run up to the Iraq invasion in 2003;

  Finally, for Britain to play the role of the mediator, standing at an equal distance among all parties, so that it may reap the benefits of its unique position as a strong country with a massive global network.

  A government’s report, “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”, released on March 16, and Johnson’s subsequent speech, indicate that Britain has chosen the second option.

  The report clearly prioritizes the British-American alliance above all others, stating that “The United States will remain the UK’s most important strategic ally and partner”, and underscoring Britain’s need to place greater focus on the “Indo-Pacific” region, calling it “the centre of intensifying geopolitical competition”.

  Therefore, unsurprisingly, Britain is now set to dispatch a military carrier to the South China Sea, and is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal from 180 to 260 warheads, in obvious violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The latter move can be directly attributed to Britain’s new political realignment which roughly follows the maxim of “the enemy of my friend is my enemy”.

  Britain’s foreign secretary, the dim Dominic Raab, says nuclear weapons are key to his govt’s ‘moral’ role as a ‘force for good’. Hear the deathly laughter from a million Iraqi graves, from starved, bombed children in Yemen, from expelled Chagos islanders. He speaks for you.

  — John Pilger (@johnpilger) March 17, 2021

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

  The government’s report places particular emphasis on China, warning against its increased “international assertiveness” and “growing importance in the Indo-Pacific”. Furthermore, it calls for greater investment in enhancing “China-facing capabilities” and responding to “the systematic challenge” that China “poses to our security”.

  How additional nuclear warheads will allow Britain to achieve its above objectives remains uncertain. Compared with Russia and the US, Britain’s nuclear arsenal, although duly destructive, is negligible in terms of its overall size. However, as history has taught us, nuclear weapons are rarely manufactured to be used in war – with the single exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of nuclear warheads and the precise position of their operational deployment are usually meant to send a message, not merely that of strength or resolve, but also to delineate where a specific country stands in terms of its alliances.

  The US-Soviet Cold War, for example, was expressed largely through a relentless arms race, with nuclear weapons playing a central role in that polarizing conflict, which divided the world into two major ideological-political camps.

  Now that China is likely to claim the superpower status enjoyed by the Soviets until the early 1990s, a new Great Game and Cold War can be felt, not only in the Asia Pacific region, but as far away as Africa and South America. While Europe continues to hedge its bets in this new global conflict – reassured by the size of its members’ collective economies – Britain, thanks to Brexit, no longer has that leverage. No longer an EU member, Britain is now keen to protect its global interests through a direct commitment to US interests. Now that China has been designated as America’s new enemy, Britain must play along.

  While much media coverage has been dedicated to the expansion of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, little attention has been paid to the fact that the British move is a mere step in a larger political scheme, which ultimately aims at executing a British tilt to Asia, similar to the US “pivot to Asia”, declared by the Barack Obama Administration nearly a decade ago.

  The British foreign policy shift is an unprecedented gamble for London, as the nature of the new Cold War is fundamentally different from the previous one; this time around, the “West” is divided, torn by politics and crises, while NATO is no longer the superpower it once was.

  Now that Britain has made its position clear, the ball is in the Chinese court, and the new Great Game is, indeed, afoot.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/30/2021 – 02:00

• The Great Unvaxxed – A 'Fictional' Look At What Lies Ahead
  The Great Unvaxxed – A ‘Fictional’ Look At What Lies Ahead

  Authored by TE Creus via Off-Guardian.org,

  The vaccine was a resounding success. Yes, there had been a final death rate of 10% among the vaccinated, but this was mostly among the elderly or the already ill, so it was probably not the vaccine’s fault, and if it was, no one could prove it one way or another, and even if they could, well, the vaccine manufacturers were not liable to lawsuits due to the agreements they had made with the various governments.

  

  In any case, the pandemic had ended, that was for sure.

  Of course the masks and the lockdown mandates continued to be enforced; the reason was that while the pandemic had most certainly been defeated, the virus still existed in its natural form somewhere out there, and so it was vital to continue with the safety procedures to avoid any possible resurgence of the disease. 

  So what? People got used to it, as they had gotten used to so many other things before that. And was wearing a mask in the end much worse than wearing a helmet or a safety belt? Was being forced to stay at home for a few months every year much different than being forced to be at the office working for five days out of the seven in the week? Rules are rules, and those were not as bad as others that had been instituted in the past. 

  But there was something that worried the authorities. While most people had predictably complied with the mandatory vaccination campaign, there were a few groups that had refused them, alleging religious or health reasons, and found refuge in rural communities living off the grid. They had abandoned the use of mobile and network technology and so could not be traced so easily, and, since non-digital cash had been abolished, they appeared to have returned to a form of commerce based in the exchange of physical goods.

  At first, the authorities ignored them; most people saw them as a minority of loser hicks, “anti-vaxxers” as they had been called in earlier pre-scientific times, and since it was unlikely that too many among the masses would opt for such a harsh lifestyle away from the comforts of modern urban life, they were not seen as a menace. 

  But what happened, in the end, was that rumours started to appear, even in the cities, about small communities where no one needed to wear masks, and people were dancing and smiling, and food was delicious and natural and people were even – gasp! – falling in love and procreating in natural ways. 

  Of course this was an obvious and mendacious falsity, but the authorities could not permit such fairy tales to gain acceptance among the people at large. So they started to persecute “the great unvaxxed”, as they called them, or the “free renegades” as they preferred to call themselves.
   
  Their communities were dispersed. Their leaders were arrested. Planting organic, unmodified seeds became illegal.

  It was dangerous, the authorities alleged. Non-genetically modified crops were unsafe and could lead to sickness or birth defects. Many of the people who lived in the previously free rural communities were arrested and forcibly vaccinated, or were killed in shootings with the police. 

  But in the end it was not possible to arrest or forcibly vaccinate them all. Now, hidden among the normal population, using fake certificates, there lived an undisclosed number of unvaccinated people, whom the authorities had been unable to locate or identify. 

  A young woman named Miranda, who was born in a barn in the literal sense, and never vaccinated, was one of them. When organic farming was prohibited and most of the land was taken over by large companies using mechanized agriculture, she was forced to move to a small village where she subsisted doing odd jobs and occasionally teaching art classes. She had learned drawing and painting sill as a child, and was quite talented; she could sing very well too.
   
  She had a fake vaccine certificate that looked for all purposes almost identical to the real ones, and while a bio-test could determine that she had not really taken the shot, or the “jab” as it was popularly called, she was careful never to be in any position that could require any kind of test. 

  For a few years she and hundreds of others like her had subsisted in this manner, but it was not ideal and never easy. Because before at least the renegades could live freely in their own communities, under their own rules, but now they had to hide and wear masks and follow dictates like everyone else, so what was the point? If they could not be free in any case, why not do like all the others and just take the jab and be done with it? 

  Miranda thought about it sometimes. But she had promised her parents – who had died in a shootout with the police – that she would always remain faithful to their ideals. And so she refused to compromise. She knew, or hoped, that the current tyranny could not be maintained forever. She wanted to believe that it would be possible, one day, to be free again. 

  Finally, they got her. It was her own stupid mistake; she was outside, a routine patrol was approaching and she had left her fake certificate at home. This would not normally happen, but she had recently bought a new jacket and had forgotten the certificate in the pocket of the old one.

  Walking around without a certificate was illegal, so they had to scan her arm, finding no signs of vaccination, and later a second test found no trace of antibodies in her system. Unable to explain the reason, or to produce a valid vaccine certificate – she knew now that the fake one she had at home would now be microscopically analyzed and would not be useful any longer – she was taken to the local jail, and later to a federal prison. 

  “There is an easy way out of this”, said Captain Antoine Huxley-Ehrlich, chief of the Vaccine Resistance Unit. “Just take the jab, and you’ll be free.”
   
  “Never”, replied Miranda. “You’ll have to do it by force.”

  That was an option, of course, and legally possible with the recent change in the constitution. But it was not what Antoine wanted. No, she had to freely choose the vaccine. Not only because otherwise she could have become a martyr and inspire other rebels, or because people could start to think that there really was something bad or sinister about the vaccine; but because he firmly believed that winning by persuasion was better than winning by force, and he was convinced of his own righteousness.

  He could not understand her stubborn refusal – hadn’t he, like all others, voluntarily taken the vaccine? As a member of the upper classes, he reminded her, he was not required to do it at the time; and yet he had volunteered. Why? Because he believed in law and order, but, most of all, because he believed in the vaccine. 

  He was sure that sooner or later he would be able to convince her that her uneasiness with the medication had only been caused by the trauma of her childhood experiences, living in a harsh rural area and watching her parents die as criminals fighting the law.  

  But Miranda was indeed very stubborn. She refused all the options she was given. She preferred jail to vaccination and denial to compromise. She even refused to see a psychiatrist. So she lingered in prison for months and months.  

  One day, the warden brought to her cell a new book that she had requested from the prison library – Civil Disobedience, by Thoreau. As she began to read, she found a handwritten note stuck between the first pages. “When you get your dinner tonight, ask for salt”, it said. “A friend”, it was signed. 

  Who could that be? She was puzzled, as it was years since she last had any contact with anyone else from her former community. But later that evening, as the warden brought her dinner, she meekly asked if she could have an extra amount of salt. The warden didn’t betray any sign of recognition or suspicion; she just brought her a small white salt-shaker. There was nothing unusual about it, but when Miranda opened it, from the bottom, she found a small magnetic key and another note inside.

  The note explained that the key would open her cell door, and that all the security guards had either been bribed or put out to sleep. She could safely escape. Further instructions indicated how to reach a cabin in the woods nearby where she would be able to join her colleagues from the resistance movement.  

  She waited until midnight; when all was silent, she tried the key. It worked. She slowly walked out of her cell, then out of the prison, undisturbed. 

  She followed the instructions to cover her face with a mask and her hair with a veil to avoid recognition. She was afraid a patrol would stop her as she left the city, as police presence was constant and sometimes there were curfews, but all the time she saw only a small group of policemen that she had no trouble evading.

  She walked for several hours; the note had been clear that she should avoid any form of public transportation. It was already morning when she reached the destination informed, a few miles outside town. 

  She knocked. No one answered. But she turned the handle and realized that the door was unlocked. She entered, very quietly, as if afraid to disturb the eerie silence. Finally, she saw a man sitting in an armchair, his back turned to her. He was wearing a dark jacket and a black fedora hat. 

  “So you’re finally here”, he said. She seemed to recognize the voice, although she couldn’t quite locate it. Was it perhaps someone from her old community?
   
  Then he turned towards her. It was Antoine Huxley-Ehrlich. 

  It had been a trap, of course. The idea was to raise her hopes only to crush them, as an additional form of torture, an elaborate cat-and-mouse game. Also, now that she had tried to escape and join a rebel movement, she could be accused of sedition and other charges. She could easily be tried by a military court and condemned to death.

  And that was exactly what happened.

  She was offered a full pardon in exchange for vaccination, but still she refused. If she had to die, then she might as well die on her own terms. Like Saint Joan or the early Christian martyrs, she’d rather burn at the stake or be thrown to the lions than renege.
   
  They could not convince her to get the “jab”, but they also did not want to turn her into some sort of hero for a cause, even if a crazy and hopeless one. So they decided that the execution would be done in secret, and the official story would be that, since she had refused several times the vaccination, she was never immune to the virus and had finally contracted the disease. 

  Today Miranda will be shot. She refused all offers for public announcements of regret and even a last meal. She also refused the blindfold; she did not want anything to cover a single part of her face.
   
  As the executioners raise their rifles, Miranda is not afraid. Her golden hair flutters in the wind, and she looks up at the soldiers with a confident smile. She knows that they can kill her body, but they cannot touch her soul. 

  And as she waits for the bullets to slowly arrive, Miranda sings a song that she remembers from her childhood, a song that her mother taught her and perhaps she also sang before she died: 

  And when you come and all the flowers are dying
  If I am dead, as dead I well may be
  You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
  And kneel and say an Ave there for me.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 23:40

• Red Hot: Sacramento House Receives 122 Offers In Two Days 
  Red Hot: Sacramento House Receives 122 Offers In Two Days 

  The housing boom unleashed by the Federal Reserve during the pandemic was built on historically low mortgage rates (thanks Powell), low inventory, city-dwellers moving to rural areas, and remote-work phenomenon. In the latest installment of the desperate frenzy of buyers fleeing for suburban life in California, one home received 122 offers in just two days. 

  Sacramento’s FOX40 reports, a home in the Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento, California, was listed for $399,900, and in just two days, received a mindboggling 122 offers. 

  

  “People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property, told FOX40. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers, that would be amazing.”

  Many of the offers were well above the list price and in the seller’s favor. One offer was as high as $500,000. 

  Barry and Anita Jackier are the sellers of the house who thought they would receive eight to ten offers. But to their surprise, they severely underestimated the interest they received in such a short span. 

  “That’s 121 people who didn’t get a house. And that’s kind of heartbreaking in this market to think that there are so many buyers out there. And if you don’t have an agent that understands how to put a strategic offer in on a house and get it accepted, you’re just out burning your gas and a lot of emotional turmoil because of the nature of our market currently,” Brittan said.

  Upon selling the home, Barry and Anita are moving to Idaho, where homes and living costs are more affordable. Many other Californians are doing the same. 

  As we noted in the beginning, the Fed’s easy money policies during the pandemic have resulted in a housing boom as city-dwellers flee for suburban life. Housing inventory is extremely low, which has unleashed a bidding war between buyers among properties, pushing prices to bubbly territories. US home prices (as measured by the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values) have recently accelerated at the fastest pace in seven years. 

  

  “This suburbanization trend has been slowly occurring since 2017, and we expect it to accelerate with the COVID-19 disruption,” Cowen analyst John Kernan wrote. “These results are also corroborated by a shift in homeownership.”

  The rush to purchase homes in suburbia or rural communities is far from over as America’s metro areas are plagued with violent crime, socio-economic challenges, and declining real estate markets. 

  With mortgage rates moving higher. How long will the housing boom last? 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 23:20

• Matt Taibbi Challenges Joe Scarborough: "Invite Me To Debate Your Network's Putrid Russiagate Coverage"
  Matt Taibbi Challenges Joe Scarborough: “Invite Me To Debate Your Network’s Putrid Russiagate Coverage”

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

  Joe Scarborough just had this to say on Morning Joe:

  @mtaibbi you may like this one https://t.co/YWfUYPEdep

  — The Elegant Diplomat (@ElegantDiplomat) March 29, 2021

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

  Joe begins his rant by insinuating that those who’ve spent time documenting errors on the Russiagate story are maybe on “Russia’s payroll,” which is nothing new for this network, of course, or frankly for the press in general during this time.

  Implying that anyone who didn’t buy into the moral panic on Russia was a traitor was a fairly constant theme in media and politics in the last four years, with NBC’s smear of Tulsi Gabbard as a “favorite” of “Russia’s propaganda machine” being one of the ethical low points of the era. Why should Joe Scarborough be above the same tactics?

  The exact quote:

  I’m amused by so-called reporters who — I don’t know if they’re useful idiots for Russia, or if they’re on Russia’s payroll … but there are some gifted writers who spend all night and day, trying to dig through, looking for instances where the press screwed up on Russia stories.

  

  He went on to say that yes, there were instances of mistakes, and some bad mistakes, but “more often than not,” the press got it right. Perhaps this could be a new slogan for the network:

  MSNBC. We get it right. More often than not.

  The full quote:

  If you look at the totality of it, the totality of everything — I mean, yeah, the media screwed up at some points, and sometimes they screwed up badly… But more often than not, they got it right.

  Obviously, I won’t presume that he’s talking about me when he mentions “some gifted writers” who may or may not be foreign spies, criticizing networks like his. He could be referring to Aaron Mate, or Glenn Greenwald, perhaps even Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, whose critique of Scarborough’s colleague Rachel Maddow’s Russia coverage was scathing enough.

  It doesn’t matter, as the universe of people actually doing such work isn’t large. I do have a recent piece out, “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus,” that sounds like the kind of thing annoying him, so I’m happy to respond on behalf of the group.

  The humorous thing about this is that the group of writers who have spoken out on this topic is small enough that we all communicate with each other. We’ve been able to calculate that I was actually the last of the Russiagate skeptics invited on MSNBC, on January 13, 2017 — before Trump’s inauguration — when I joined Chris Hayes and Malcolm Nance to discuss what at the time was a red-hot story.

  The irony is that one of the major criticisms of the media’s performance on this issue is that it has not allowed any critics of the story to appear really anywhere in the mainstream press, and particularly not on television, for nearly four years. I doubt they will break that on-air pattern even now. Still, it’s worth asking Scarborough: if you’re so certain this issue is a “joke,” surely you won’t mind discussing it?

  If you’d rather not have me on, I’m sure someone on the more critical side would be happy to walk you through exactly how far short of “right, more often than not” your network has been in the last five years or so. Most of the major outlets were terrible on this story, but MSNBC’s particular brand of suckage was visible from space during the key years of Russiagate. Which I’m happy to lay out for you. Come on — no matter how it turns out, it’ll be great TV!

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 23:00

• Pennsylvania's Amish Community May Have Already Reached Herd Immunity
  Pennsylvania’s Amish Community May Have Already Reached Herd Immunity

  Sometimes, it seems like the last thing public health officials want is to see American return to “normal”, which is perhaps why the head of the CDC unleashed an unhinged, paranoid rand on the American people earlier today.

  One month ago, speculation abounded about whether 7 US states might be close to the herd immunity threshold.

  Now, local public health officials are speculating about whether Pennsylvania’s famous Amish and Mennonite communities living in Lancaster County have achieved herd immunity.

  

  According to the New York Post, the administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough has estimated that as many as 90% of the families in the community have had at least one family member infected. And that means practically everybody has been exposed to the virus.

  “So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center.

  The center caters to the Amish and has more than 33K patients. While both communities initially complied with the stay at home orders, they reopened churches last spring, where they went back to sharing communion cops and “holy kisses” (described as a special church greeting).

  As the virus tore through the community over the summer, by August, the area was reporting daily positivity rates (the share of those tested who test positive) north of 20%. Cases ebbed headed into the fall, but soon started to climb again as the weather turned colder.

  Over the past 6 weeks, the parochial medical center hasn’t reported a single case of COVID. Eric Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University, said herd immunity is possible but rare. “It would be the first general population in the United States that’s done it,” Lofgren said.

  But although this truism has been widely quoted in the US media, we’d advise readers to remember that the exact threshold for herd immunity isn’t clear. Analysts at Goldman have predicted that most advanced economies will reach herd immunity by the beginning of Q3.

  

  Others warned that previous infections might not protect patients from mutant COVID variants.

  The only way to be 100% certain that a community has herd immunity is to vaccinate everybody, including children (the first vaccine trials for children, including young infants, have started as Pfizer tests the jab on children 11 and younger).

  And even after that, we still won’t be sure.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 22:40

• The Great Nonsense Of "The Great Reset"
  The Great Nonsense Of “The Great Reset”

  Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via LewRockwell.com,

  “The Great Reset” is the latest deceptive euphemism for totalitarian socialism that is being promoted by yet another group of wealthy corporate elitists who think they can centrally plan the entire world economy.  They are essentially the ideological heirs of Frederick Engels and his intellectual puppet Karl Marx.  “The Great Reset” follows in the rhetorical footsteps of such euphemisms for socialism as “economic democracy,” “social justice,” “liberation theology,” “progressivism,” “market socialism” (an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence”), “environmentalism,” “fighting climate change,” “sustainable development,” and “green new deal,” to mention just a few.

  

  The main figure of this movement is wealthy German engineer Klaus Schwab, founder of the “World Economic Forum,” who champions what he calls “transhumanism,” the integration of nanotechnology into the human body so that humans can be controlled remotely by the state. As Ron Paul has noted, “Included in Schwab’s proposal for surveillance [of every citizen] is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals’ future behavior .  This means that anyone whose brain is ‘scanned’ could have his . . . [constitutional] rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime.”

  Placed in the hands of politicians, this would create a level of totalitarianism the Soviets could only have dreamed of.  In other words, Schwab is reminiscent of that famous twentieth-century German who also fantasized about creating a master race and ruling the world.

  This is nothing new, Antony Mueller points out, as eugenics, which was all the rage among so many ruling class elitists of the early twentieth century “is now called transhumanism.” Among the most prominent late nineteenth-and twentieth-century eugenicists were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin’s son Leonard, John Maynard Keynes, Irving Fisher, Winston Churchill, and Bill Gates, Sr.  Bill Gates, Jr. is an enthusiastic funding source for “transhumanism” research and, like his father, is fond of eugenics.

  During a recent “Ted” talk Gates, Jr. complained that “The world today has 6.8 billion people . .. that’s headed up to about 9 billion.”  Have no fear, he said, because if “we” do “a really great job on vaccines [with anti-fertility drugs? Poisons?] health care, reproductive health services [including abortion?], we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”  That in turn will lower carbon dioxide levels on the planet and address “climate change” as well, said Gates.

  Keynes was treasurer of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society and director of the Eugenics Society of London.  He called eugenics “the most important and significant branch of sociology” [Eugenics Archive].  Irving Fisher, icon of the Chicago School of Economics, literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled Eugenics.

  When he was the British Home Secretary (1910-1911) Winston Churchill advocated “the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the ‘feeble minded’” [International Churchill Society].  His stated goal was “the improvement of the British breed”.  Accordingly, he supported “compulsory detention of the mentally inadequate”; the “sterilization of the unfit”; and “proper labor colonies” for “tramps and wastrels.”

  World Government, Anyone?

  Antony Mueller also wrote of how the first attempt to create some kind of global governing institution to centrally plan the world was the League of Nations (1920), followed by the United Nations in 1945 under the leadership of Stalin, FDR, and Churchill.  Although Churchill was fond of citing F.A. Hayek, especially The Road to Serfdom, FDR was essentially a fascist whose domestic policies differed very little from fascist Italy and Germany, and of course Stalin was a mass-murdering communist.

  Churchill was voted out of office and replaced by the socialist Labor Party’s Clement Atlee in 1945.  The three “allied powers” of World War II were then led by two socialists and the political heir to FDR’s economic fascism, Harry Truman.

  The U.N. immediately created UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the World Health Organization (WHO), whose stated goal was to “manipulate human development.”  Eugenicist Julian Huxley was the first director of UNESCO who lamented that Marxism’s attempt to create a new type of human (“socialist man”) had already failed because it lacked a “biological component.”

  Neo-Malthusianism and the Birth of “Environmentalism”

  [S[ocialism . . . is . . . the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with . . . the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment . . . .  [C]apitalism must be monitored, regulated, and contained to such a degree that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism.”

  – Robert Heilbroner, “After Capitalism,” The New Yorker, Sept. 10, 1990

  The above quotation by socialist economist, the late Robert Heilbroner, was written in the context of an article that lamented and mourned the worldwide collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.  The great debate between capitalism and socialism was over, he said, and Ludwig von Mises was right about socialism all along, said a man who had spent the past half century promoting socialism in his teaching, speaking, and writing.  But do not despair, he told his fellow socialists, for there is one more trick up our sleeves, namely, the Trojan Horse of achieving socialism under the guise of “environmentalism.”

  The basic strategy was then, as it is now, to constantly frighten the gullible public with predictions of The End of the World from environmental catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism and adopt socialist central planning. This has always been the one constant theme of the environmentalist movement (not to be confused with the conservation movement which is actually interested in the health of the planet and the humans who occupy it) since the 1960s.  It ignores the fact that the twentieth-century socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China had by far the worse environmental problems on the planet, orders of magnitude worse than in the capitalist countries.

  In 2019 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions” by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy.  The study is a compilation of reprints of newspaper and magazine articles that illustrate the seemingly never-ending false scare stories spread by the “environmentalistS” and their media puppets.  The real founder of the modern environmental movement was entomologist Paul Ehrlich, not Rachel Carson, author of the widely-cited novel, Silent Spring.  Ehrlich was supported by a group of wealthy socialists known as “The Club of Rome.”  His book, The Population Bomb, was incredibly successful, selling millions in just a couple of years, warning that the entire world will soon be destroyed by capitalism unless it is ended NOW and “severe” regulatory measures are taken.

  The first article displayed by CEI was from the November 17, 1967 Salt Lake Tribune announcing that Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford said the “time of famines” is upon us and will be “disastrous” by 1975 because of over-population.  Such talk was a resurrection of the hoary, thoroughly-discredited Malthusianism of the nineteenth century, cloaked in the words of “modern science.”  Birth control may have to be made “involuntary, said Ehrlich, and accompanied by “putting sterilization agents into staple foods and drinking water.”  The Catholic church needs to be “pressured” by government to support his, said Ehrlich, who became one of the most celebrated, rich, and famous academics of the twentieth century.

  The New York Times quoted Ehrlich on August 10, 1969, as predicting that “unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam n 20 years.”

  Ice Age Hysteria of the ‘70s

  Global cooling that would create a new ice age was the next scare tactic.  An April 18, 1970 Boston Globe article quoted “pollution expert” James P. Lodge, Jr. as saying “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century.”

  Ehrlich chimed in, naturally.  An October 6, 1970 Redlands, CA Daily Facts article quoted him as predicting that “the oceans will be . . . dead . . . in less than a decade” because of pollution caused by capitalism.  And they will be frozen over.  A July 9, 1971 Washington Post article quoted a Dr. S.I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University who said that pollution will cause an average temperature drop of as much as ten degrees that “could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!”

  On December 3, 1972 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a letter to President Nixon predicting a “global deterioration of climate” never before seen by “civilized mankind” that would lead to a new ice age.

  A January 29, 1974 article in The Guardian was headlined, “Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast.”  This was followed by a June 24, 1974 Time magazine article warning that “telltale signs are everywhere” that we were already in a new ice age.  Global cooling hysteria was still alive and well in 1978.  A January 5, 1978 New York Times article was headlined, “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.

  Pivoting on a Dime:  Global Warming Hysteria

  By 1988, after more than a decade of warnings of a new ice age unless capitalism is destroyed failed to produce the desired result, many of these same “scientists” and bureaucrats all of a sudden began warning of an earthly apocalypse caused by global warming.  The “greenhouse effect” of pollution was discovered/invented, with nationwide warnings like one in the June 24 Miami News declaring that “’88 On Way to be Hottest Ever as World Temperatures Up Sharply.”  James Hansen of NASA warned in the Lansing State Journal on December 12, 1988 that Washington, D.C. would “go from its current 35 days a year over 90 degrees to 85 days a year” and “the level of the ocean will rise” by as much as six feet.  “Rising seas could obliterate nations,” a “U.N. official” informed the Associated Press on June 30, 1989.  In reality, as CEI points out, is that the number of 90+ degree days in Washington, D.C. peaked in 1911 and continues to decline.

  By 2000 the mantra of the global warming hysterics included predictions that “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” The Independent announced on September 12, 2015, quoting another environmentalist “expert” from the University of East Anglia.

  By 2013 “the Arctic will be free of sea ice” predicted James Hansen in 2008, as reported by The Argus Free Press of Owosso, Michigan.  In the same year Al Gore informed us that “the North polar ice cap would be gone,” as reported by the Associated Press on June 24, 2008.   For such predictions Massachusetts Senator ed Markey designated Hansen as “a climate prophet.”

  The renowned atmospheric scientist Prince Charles told The Independent on July 9, 2009 that “the price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high.”  The planet will be destroyed by 2017 if capitalism is not essentially destroyed immediately, said the mega-wealthy prince whose preferred method of travel is by gas-guzzling Rolls Royce and private jet.

  Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outdid the prince by informing The Independent on October 20, 2009 that “we have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe.”  When New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced in 2019 with perfect certainty that the world will end in in twelve years, she was referring to a 2018 United Nations “study” of “climate change” that said the same thing.  The world will likely end in twelve years, said the U.N. bureaucrats, unless the U.N. is given vast new governing powers over all countries of the world, and vast sums of additional tax revenue.

  NONE of these widely-touted and celebrated predictions came true.  Birds did not even disappear from the planet as predicted in Silent Spring.   capitalism was not replaced by worldwide socialist central planning; so the environmental “scientists” pivoted on a dime once again and adopted the language of climate change.  It now does not matter whether the climate’s temperature is increasing or decreasing; either will cause a “catastrophe” that can only be avoided by replacing what’s left of capitalism with some kind of worldwide socialist central planning, they inform us.

  A quarter of a century of “climate change” hysteria has still not led to the desired result.  The next step in this more-than-a-century-old political crusade for worldwide socialism, therefore, is “The Great Reset.”

  The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset

  Klaus Schwab holds doctorates in engineering and economics, although he seems ignorant of the most elementary economic concepts when he contends that the entire world economy can somehow be stopped by a god-like hand, push-button style, and “reset” and “built back better,” one of his favorite slogans.   He is the founder of the “World Economic Forum,” touted as an organization that promotes “Public-Private Cooperation.”  As Ayn Rand once said, however, whenever the private sector “partners” with government, government is always the senior and controlling partner.

  Schwab seems totally unaware of how the institutions of capitalism have evolved over the centuries by ingenuity and efforts of millions and were not magically set or reset by any single man or government committee.  Money evolved on the free market and did not originate from governmental edits. Even language evolved, and was not invented by any government bureaucracy.  There is no recognition at all in any of Schwab’s books that he understands (or cares) anything about the spontaneous order of markets, the importance of private property and free-market prices, the economy-smothering effects of government bureaucracy, or the economic reasons for the inevitable failures of socialism.  Like all other socialist ideologues, he does not even bother to address the critics of socialism as he blindly makes his case for world socialism.  It can work, he insists, if only he and his corporate elitist comrades could be in charge.

  The “logic” of The Great Reset can be stated in a syllogism:

  1) Socialism has failed disastrously everywhere it has been implemented;

  2) Everyone knows this;

  3) Therefore, what the world needs is more socialism on the biggest scale ever.

  Schwab is an engineer and believes that world society can be socially “engineered” by corporate elitists like himself.  The Soviets would label this kind of thinking “scientific socialism.”

  Destructionism

  Like all socialist ideologues, Schwab’s starting point is what Ludwig von Mises called “destructionism.”  All socialists, Mises said, advocated the destruction of the existing institutions of society, especially capitalism, the family, and religion, all of which form a barrier between the individual and the controlling dictates of the state. Only then can society be “reset” to create a socialist utopia.  For “Socialism is . . . the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created.  It doesn’t build; it destroys.  For destructionism is the essence of it . . . each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists.”

  This is why Schwab, Gates, Biden, and other proponents of “the great reset” so enthusiastically celebrate the lockdowns that occurred during the so-called pandemic of 2020 and declare that it is time to “build back better.”  Destroy what exists, they tell us, and then trust them to “build back” the entire planet “better.”  In fact, they were caught on video at their annual World Economic Forum meeting in early 2021 cheering a video of empty city streets and closed-down businesses caused by the government-mandated lockdowns that plunged literally millions into poverty worldwide. The lockdowns are “improving cities around the world,” said Schwab.  They may even moderate “climate change,” he triumphantly chortled.  The unemployed and impoverished residents of those devasted cities would obviously disagree with this rosy scenario.

  A “team of researchers” at the University of East Anglia, an institution that is notorious for its “studies” of global warming/cooling/climate change hysteria, has also chimed in to advocate a “global lockdown” every two years to supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions as required by the “Paris Climate Accord.”  These lockdowns would not be related to any virus but would simply be designed to intentionally destroy much of the world economy, leaving millions in abject poverty, causing untold illness and death, for the sake of “fighting climate change” and of course, to achieve their real objective of destroying capitalism and adopting a version of worldwide socialist central planning.

  Abolition of Private Property

  The Word Economic Forum (WEF) socialists reveal themselves as classic Marxists in the sense that many of them call for the abolition of private property which, coincidentally, was the first plank of the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.  Former Danish Minister of the Environment Ida Auken was given a platform at a WEF event to explain her definition of “a good life” that entailed the abolition of private property:

  “Welcome to the year 2030 . . . . I don’t own anything, I don’t own a car.  I don’t own a house.  I don’t own any appliances or any clothes . . . someone else is using our [house] whenever we do not need it . . . .  I have no real privacy . . . everything I do . . . is recorded [by the state].  All in all, it is a good life.”

  Auken here is obviously dreaming of “a good life” where governments own all property and rent or lease everything to their subjects.  Of course, that means that politicians will decide for you what you need.  There would be no such thing as consumer sovereignty any more than there was in the Soviet Union (apart from the black markets).  And as Hayek famously said, in such a system the only power worth having would be political power.  Bribery, corruption, and rent seeking run amok would be pervasive in any such society.

  They want to spy on your every move, using the latest nanotechnology which probably means implanting devices into your body.  There will no privacy, and that’s all good with Ida Auken and her WEF colleagues.

  Auken speaks fondly of how, if she wasn’t “using” a room of her house, it would be perfectly fine for strangers to occupy it in her absence.  Government-approved strangers, of course.  This is eerily reminiscent of how the Soviets socialized housing and forced strangers to live in extremely cramped spaces in communal housing.  It is easy to imagine an Auken army doing the same in the name of “sustainability.”

  After receiving criticism of this outrageous view, Auken attempted to soft pedal and disguise her true beliefs by saying that such a world was not actually her “utopia” but only what she believes is the inevitable.  This is another old socialist gimmick – to argue that socialism is inevitable, and it is therefore futile to oppose it.  Her argument that she was just explaining an inevitable future is not believable.

  In fact, the inevitability gimmick is the main theme of all of Schwab’s books on the subject.  They tend to go into excruciating detail about the digitalization of life, nanotechnology, etc., portray it all as “inevitable,” and then make a pitch for why this supposedly means that centralized political control of all societies is necessary .

  Exactly the opposite is true, however.  As Hayek pointed out in almost all of his life’s work.  The more complex society becomes, the greater is the need to rely on voluntarism, private property, and free markets, the only known means of achieving an effective use of knowledge in society.  Complexity requires the use of many minds (and bodies) to make effective use of increasingly complex knowledge in order to advance.  Not only many minds, but many minds in a regime of economic freedom is necessary — again the polar opposite of “the great reset” ideology.

  The Soviet Union had many brilliant people but they were largely forbidden to apply their talents in a way that would improve the lives of their fellow citizens.  They were viewed by the state instead as tools to aggrandize the state, not to serve the citizenry. To deny this is to engage in what Hayek called a “fatal conceit.”

  The “Stakeholder” Subterfuge

  The WEF elitists also employ another subterfuge as a means of essentially abolishing private property.  They do this by advocating the replacement of corporate shareholders with “stakeholders,” which includes just about every type of group of individuals in any community which are said to have a “right” to affect corporate decision making on a day-to-day basis.  Such groups usually involve various left-wing political pressure groups such as labor unions, environmentalists, the “civil rights”/affirmative action lobbyists, ad infinitum.  Libertarians and free-market economists never seem to appear on the lists of “stakeholders” that are espoused by leftist stakeholder theorists.

  Public choice economics teaches us, however, that such large groups tend to be disorganized because of their size, diversity, and consequently high decision-making costs and are therefore rarely effective.  It would also subject corporate decision making to profit-destroying bureaucracy and indecision, effectively turning corporations into versions of say, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the U.S. Postal Service in terms of efficiency.

  The “stakeholder” advocates surely understand this, which is why they propose that people such as themselves serve as unelected spokesmen for all the various “stakeholders.”  This will require the heavy hand of government to empower them to order corporations to do as they say, not as their customers and shareholder owners say.  It is de facto nationalization, in other words, an effective abolition of private property in corporations.

  In addition to offering no clue that he understands elementary economic principles, Schwab also seems completely clueless about the long history of classical liberal ideas such as private property, free markets, limited constitutional government, decentralized government, the rule of law, and much else.  Or, he simply doesn’t care because he is a megalomaniacal tyrant.  He is no different, in other words, than all the other twentieth century socialists who were either ignorant of these things or openly attacked them as barriers to their totalitarian intentions.

  Moreover, Auken’s utopian daydream is reminiscent of the late nineteenth century book, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy.  This was another utopian socialist daydream in the form of a novel whereby one Julian West falls asleep in 1887 and awakens 113 years later in the U.S. in the year 2000 when the country had been turned into a socialist utopia.  Auken apparently believes it would only take a single decade to achieve her (and Schwab’s) socialist utopia, however.

  The Great Reset as Super Fascism

  The World Economic Forum claims to exist in order to promote an integration of private enterprise and the state.  This is a perfect definition of economic fascism.  Economic fascism in Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany allowed ostensibly private enterprises to exist (unlike the Russian socialists), but only if it was subjected to a totalitarian regulatory regime that forced all production to serve “the common good” as defined by the political ruling class, not the ruled. Consumer sovereignty was not at all a concern.  Schwab uses this same language of “the common good” to describe his “great reset” agenda.

  It is basically a plea to turn the entire world economy into a version of Chinese fascism.  In the past several decades the Chinese communist government allowed more and more private enterprises to exist, but they are all still very heavily regulated, regimented, and controlled by the state.  Of course, the same can be said of the U.S. economy; it’s all a matter of degree.  As Robert Higgs has said, the American economic system is a system of “participatory fascism,” by which he meant a combination of economic fascism and democracy instead of dictatorship.

  After claiming that the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in the form of the “digitalization” of just about everything is inevitable, and arguing that that means there is a need for the most centralized government the world has ever known, Klaus and his associates drag out the same tired, old socialist platitudes that Leftists have been promoting for generations as the alleged answers to all of society’s problems.  They advocate shutting down more and more of the world economy with more lockdowns (destructionism); a huge expansion of the catastrophically-failed welfare state with the unlimited printing of money by central banks in order to hand out “universal basic income” to everyone; the eventual abolition of beef in order to fight “climate change” allegedly caused by cow flatulence; the abolition of virtually all other kinds of meat, replacing it with grass and insects as part of the average diet (presumably not their diet, however); the abolition of the energy industries and their replacement with windmills and solar panels; communal housing, Soviet style; the “leveling” of wage differences by regulating labor markets essentially null and void, which would create communistic chaos; and the effective nationalization of whatever is left of private society with a 400% increase in taxation (for starters).

  There is supposed to be no opposition to this recipe for totalitarian utopia because it is all being done in the name of “equity and inclusion” (the mating call of Leftists everywhere), “sustainability,” and “the common good.”  To oppose this latest proposal for a totalitarian world order is, therefore, to be an enemy of society.  The “common good before individual good,” by the way, was also the explicitly-stated theme of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform.  According to the World Economic Forum crowd this is the “new” ideology that is supposed to lead us all through the twenty-first century’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 22:20

• A Desperate Maduro Proposes "Oil For Vaccines" Plan
  A Desperate Maduro Proposes “Oil For Vaccines” Plan

  A truly novel “oil for vaccines” plan is being floated Venezuela’s “rogue” leader (in the language of Washington) Nicolás Maduro as the impoverished socialist country struggles to obtain enough jabs for its population.

  He proposed the initiative at a news conference Sunday, announcing “Venezuela has the oil vessels and has the customers who will buy our oil.” And then he said, “We are ready and prepared for oil for vaccines, but we will not beg anyone,” according to Reuters. 

  Tenemos listos dos métodos para obtener las vacunas, a través del mecanismo Covax: Con la liberación del dinero que nos tienen secuestrado, y con el Plan Petróleo por Vacunas. ¡Venezuela tiene dignidad y cuenta con los recursos para garantizar la salud del pueblo venezolano! pic.twitter.com/PD5SCYwXPF

  — Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) March 29, 2021

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  Currently Venezuela has received coronavirus vaccine deliveries or further planned-for shipments from Russia and China – who have both it must be remembered been key players in helping Caracas export some of its “banned” oil, following the Trump administration ordered “blockade” of state oil exports which is still in effect. 

  Maduro said further that Western countries which have helped enforce US-led sanctions must unfreeze Venezuela’s money and accounts in order for it to get the jabs it needs to stave off the spread of the pandemic. 

  So far it’s been able to rely on limited supplies of Russia’s Sputnik V, and earlier this month Caracas health authorities approved the purchase of the Sinopharm vaccine, which is a Chinese company.

  Currently Venezuela has confirmed over 156,600 COVID-19 cases out of a total population of 28.5 million; however, due to lack of testing for months into the pandemic along with the dire, near-collapsed state of healthcare this figure is believed to be much higher.

  Venezuela’s plummeting oil production due in large part to sanctions and derelict facilities over the past half-decade…

  

  via OPEC & Baker Hughes data/Offshore-Technology.com

  Fueling the broader crisis of decaying and collapsing infrastructure and social services in many areas, the country’s crude and refined oil exports have recently hit their lowest level in over seven decades.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 22:00

• Greenwald: Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Play Victim When Called Out
  Greenwald: Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Play Victim When Called Out

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via TK News,

  The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post. Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.

  On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that “defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies.” It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in “a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another” in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense.

  In other words, the only purpose of the article — headlined: “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” — was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.

  

  The USA Today reporters went far beyond merely reporting how this fundraising was being conducted. They went so far as to tattle to PayPal and other funding sites on two of those defendants, Joe Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, and then boasted of their success in having their accounts terminated:

  As of Wednesday afternoon, the Biggs fundraiser was listed as having received $52,201. Pezzola had received $730. Biggs’ campaign disappeared from the site shortly after USA TODAY inquired about it….

  Friday, a USA TODAY reporter donated to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Stripe. Stripe told USA TODAY it does not comment on individual users. A USA TODAY reporter was able to make a $1 donation to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Venmo, a payment app owned by PayPal. After being alerted by USA TODAY, Venmo removed the account. 

  Soon a PayPal account took its place. PayPal caught that and removed it, too. 

  Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation.

  The right to a vigorous defense has always been a central cause of mine as a lawyer and a journalist (it also used to be a central cause of left-wing groups like the ACLU, years ago; it was that same principle that caused then-candidate Kamala Harris to solicit donations last summer that went to protesters charged with violent rioting). A federal prosecutor was recently referred for disciplinary procedures for publicly threatening to charge some of these Capitol protesters with sedition, one of the gravest crimes in the U.S. Code. That is how grave the legal jeopardy is faced by these people trying to raise money for lawyers.

  What makes all of this extra grotesque is that, as The Washington Post reported, most of those charged with various crimes in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including many whose charges stem just from their presence inside the Capitol, not the use of any violence, are people with serious financial difficulties: not surprising for a country in the middle of a major economic and joblessness crisis, where neoliberalism and global trade deals have destroyed entire industries and communities for decades:

  Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories. . . . The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

  This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard.

  

  Instead, the primary target of the Trump-era media has become private citizens and people who wield no power, yet who these media outlets believe must have their lives ruined because they have adopted the wrong political ideology. So many corporate journalists now use their huge megaphones to humiliate and wreck the lives of ordinary private citizens who they judge to have bad political opinions (meaning: opinions that deviate from establishment liberalism orthodoxies which these media outlets exist to enforce).

  We have seen this over and over. CNN confronted an old woman on the front lawn of her Florida home for the crime of having used her little Facebook page to promote a pro-Trump event they claimed was engineered by Russians. The same network threatened to expose the identity of another private citizen who created an anti-CNN meme unless he begged and promised not to do it again. HuffPost doxed the real-life name of an anonymous critic of Islam (whose spouted views I find repellent) and ruined her business.

  A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls https://t.co/DmgDRFRwyn pic.twitter.com/OAz5julCyA

  — CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2018

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  Just last week, The Daily Beast decided to expose the identity of a private citizen at Spring Break in Miami and detail his marital and legal problems because a video of him went viral due to his being dressed as the Joker and uttering “COVID truther” phrases. The same outlet congratulated itself for unearthing and exposing the real name of an African-American Facebook user whose crime was posting videos mocking Nancy Pelosi.

  My principal critique of the contemporary media posture — and my governing view of the real purpose of journalism — is summarized by this:

  If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit.

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 16, 2021

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  ut increasingly, the largest corporate media platforms are used to punish ideological dissent and thought crimes by powerless, private citizens. They do not criticize or investigate real power centers, but serve them. And what makes it worse — so, so much worse — is that, as they assault, dox and harass private citizens, these journalistic bullies depict themselves as the real marginalized people, as those who are so fragile, voiceless, powerless, and vulnerable that criticizing them is tantamount to bullying, harassment, and violence.

  ---

  This new journalistic tactic of weaponizing and misappropriating the language of marginalization, abuse, harassment and oppression and applying it to themselves — all to render any criticism of their work a form of assault and abuse — is one I have written about several times before. The last time was when a major front-page reporter at the most influential paper in the country, The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz, got caught lying twice in six weeks, and those (such as myself) who criticized her for it — who criticized her journalism for the Paper of Record — were branded toxic, misogynistic bullies who were inciting dangerous hate mobs against her. And thus was criticism of this powerful journalist somehow manipulatively converted into an act of morally reprehensible harassment.

  What these journalists are doing is as transparent as it is tawdry. They insist that you not treat them as what they are: people who wield extreme power and influence to shape political discourse, widely disseminate disinformation, wreck people’s reputations, expose the identity of private citizens, and propagandize the public. No, increasingly they are demanding that you treat them as exactly the opposite: the most marginalized, vulnerable, endangered and fragile members of society whose standing is so tenuous that publicly criticizing them should be barred as an act of violence, and those expressing critiques of their work must be consequently shunned as harassers and abusers.

  This is the demented framework that allowed CNN’s coddled, blow-dried, manicured and pedicured millionaire TV personality Jim Acosta, with a straight face, to write an entire book casting himself on the cover as someone in danger. What enabled Jim Acosta of all people to cast himself as a victim, to the point where so many liberals bought this book that it ended up on The New York Times bestseller list? He was criticized by the President and his supporters for his journalism. That’s it.

  And just like that, the real victims in America are not the jobless or the homeless or residents of addiction-ravaged communities or victims of violent crime but, instead, the rich, famous TV personalities for CNN. This is the fictitious melodrama — with themselves cast as the stars — that they are demanding you ingest to treat them with deference and respect.

  

  As I’ve noted before, I’ve been harshly criticized for my journalism for years. I was publicly attacked in deeply personal ways by the President of Brazil many times, and endlessly slandered by his movement. That’s not fun, but it is also not persecution. What is real persecution is being prosecuted or imprisoned or threatened with prison for your reporting. Real persecution is what is being done to Julian Assange. Criticism, even harsh criticism, comes with the territory: the cost of the immense privilege of having a public platform to shape debate. If you do not want to be criticized or called names, don’t become a journalist or seek out public platforms.

  Sunday’s USA Today article which tried to destroy the ability of these criminal defendants to raise donations for their legal fees contained the names of three journalists in its byline. The lead reporter — the one who the paper’s editors put first, Brenna Smith — took to Twitter to boast of this monumental journalistic exposé. After I saw several commenters criticizing the story, I added my own critiques of this story:

  Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. You’re well on your way upward in this industry for sure: https://t.co/pvpmX3DaaW

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021

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  Note that the critique I voiced is about the reporting she had just published in one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the country. I also engaged the journalist whose name was listed last — a person named Will Carless — in a lengthy discussion expressing similar criticisms.

  My criticism of Carless, a white straight male listed last on the byline, attracted no criticism for some reason. But my criticism of Smith, the lead reporter, caused such an explosion of indignation and rage from the corporate media class that it caused my name to trend on Twitter (yet again) as a dastardly online villain: that’s how grave my moral transgression was.

  

  What was my moral offense here? According to these media mavens and the self-serving, manipulative framework they are trying to implant, I did not voice criticisms of a piece of journalism in one of the most influential newspapers in the country. Instead — in their hands — they converted it, just as they did with criticisms of Lorenz, into a narrative in which I bullied a poor, fragile, young lady who is too weak and too vulnerable to handle public critique.

  They emphasized that she is just an intern: in their eyes the equivalent of a high school junior — even though she has a long history of writing deranged articles for the U.S.-Government-funded Bellingcat and was, at least in the view of her editors, competent and professional enough to be the lead reporter on what they treated as a major news story designed to harm the lives of numerous private citizens. If she is “merely an intern,” then why is she listed as the lead reporter on a major news story? And if her editors determine that she is capable of fulfilling that role, then you can’t simultaneously demand she be treated like a young debutante off-limits from critique.

  

  Do you see what they are doing here? They are working to create a moral framework where it is always impermissible to criticize their journalism, no matter how shoddy, deceitful and amoral it is. They constantly concoct reasons why the journalist in question is too marginalized and too vulnerable to legitimately criticize. They are all apparently competent and sophisticated enough to be trusted to byline news reporting in major corporate outlets — and we must treat them as tough, talented professionals when it comes time to deference due — but we are then simultaneously instructed that they are not mature or strong enough to endure criticisms of that work. If she had not been an intern, they still would have decreed criticisms of her off limits on the ground that any criticism will stoke misogynistic abuse: after all, Lorenz is a borderline-middle-aged reporter, not an intern, but that is how criticisms of her are delegitimized.

  What is even more remarkable is how these liberal media figures invoke the most long-standing sexist, racist and homophobic tropes to erect this shield of immunity around themselves that they demand you honor. Look at how they transformed this journalist from what I see her as and what she is — an adult professional reporter who has sufficiently risen in the profession to byline a major story in a national newspaper — into an offensive sexist caricature straight out of the 1950s. In their manipulative hands, she — like Taylor Lorenz of The New York Times — becomes not a professional adult journalist but just a fragile little china doll who cannot withstand any critiques.

  A senior USA Today editor actually emailed me to chide me for my inappropriate behavior — i.e., critiquing the journalism of the reporter they placed first on the byline. And here is how USA Today’s former “diversity and inclusion editor” Hemal Jhaveri — who just got fired for posting a series of racist decrees about how white people are the root of all evil — decided to interpret this event:

  Two USA TODAY reporters getting targeted in the span of days isn’t by chance. What is happening to Brenna Smith is not a coincidence.

  Top editors showed they would cave at the slightest provocation. Now, female journalists through the org will be more susceptible to harassment. pic.twitter.com/TrDjfmWH8x

  — Hemal Jhaveri (@hemjhaveri) March 29, 2021

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  Journalists with these outlets wield immense power and influence. These are not the voiceless, marginalized, powerless people in society. They’re the ones who attack, expose and ruin marginalized people if they dare express political views of which these journalists disapprove.

  It is not just morally repugnant but quite dangerous for them to try to place themselves off limits from criticism this way. The whole point of journalism — the reason why a free press is vital — is because it is the only way to hold accountable powerful institutions and powerful actors. Corporate media outlets and those they employ as reporters are among the most powerful and influential actors in society and, as such, are completely fair game for criticisms, protests, and denunciations.

  What they are trying to do by exploiting the language of oppression and marginalization to cast themselves as vulnerable victims who cannot be criticized is despicable. It deserves nothing but contempt. That is precisely why I intend to heap scorn on it every time they try it, precisely because these in-group, swarming corporate journalists are the real bullies, trying to stigmatize and destroy the reputations of ordinary citizens who commit the crime of criticizing their journalism or expressing political opinions they want banished.

  They know that the public — for very good reasons — has lost faith and trust in their work at unprecedented levels. They know that their industry is failing. When journalism turns its guns not on the powerful but on the powerless — descending as low as trying to prevent them from raising needed money for a legal defense — the contempt is well deserved. The demographic characteristics of the journalists doing this disgraceful, cowardly journalism is irrelevant. The only reason they even mention it is because they think they can weaponize it against their critics.

  This lowly tactic will succeed only if people are cowed and intimidated by it. It will fail, as it should, if people ignore it and treat them like any other power centers by freely expressing the criticisms you think their journalism merits regardless of what names they call you as a result.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 21:40

• Meet 'Stretch' – The Warehouse-Worker Union-Buster From Boston Dynamics
  Meet ‘Stretch’ – The Warehouse-Worker Union-Buster From Boston Dynamics

  Boston Dynamics on Monday revealed a new warehouse robot called “Stretch,” designed to move 800 boxes per hour, equivalent to a typical human employee. The new robot could be a solution for Amazon to replace some of its human warehouse employees as unionization threats emerge at various warehouses.

  Two years ago, the robotics company released a variant of Stretch, which we first noted in March 2019. Back then, Boston Dynamics called the prototype robot “Handle.” Though the robot today appears to be improved with a new base for more stability. 

  Stretch was built for one task and one task only, replace humans in warehouses. It uses cameras and other sensors to navigate aisles and uses a suction pad mounted on the arm to grab and transport 50 lbs boxes. 

  “Stretch is a versatile mobile robot for case handling, designed for easy deployment in existing warehouses,” according to Boston Dynamics’ Stretch information page.

  “Unload trucks and build pallets faster by sending the robot to the work, eliminating the need for new fixed infrastructure.”

  

  Michael Perry, vice president of business development for Boston Dynamics, told Reuters that Stretch was mainly designed for unloading trucks at warehouses. 

  “We heard pretty much universally across warehousing that truck unloading is one of the most physically difficult and unpleasant jobs … And that’s where Stretch comes into play,” Perry said. 

  “We’re looking at picking up boxes around 50 pounds (23 kilograms), and our maximum rate of picking up and moving boxes can reach up to 800 cases per hour. So, it’s a fast-moving, highly versatile robot,” Perry said.

  Perry said the time to integrate the robot in warehouses is now. Many warehouses aren’t designed for automation, and that’s where these robots could create a boom for the company as the technology-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution takes hold. 

  Here’s a mock run of two Stretch robots unloading shipping containers. 

  The warehouse robot is expected to be available for commercial use in 2022. Humans can learn to operate the robots within hours, which means Stretch can be easily integrated into a warehouse. 

  The development of Stretch comes as unionization in America reaches a century low and is set to inevitably rise under the Biden administration.

  

  One of the biggest pushes to unionize is at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama. The vote to unionize ends on Monday. There have also been talks of unionization at Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland, Denver, and Southern California fulfillment centers. 

  The best defense Amazon and other companies have against unionization is automation and artificial intelligence to displace human workers, resulting in rising technological unemployment. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 21:20

• Why Are We Vaccinating Children Against COVID-19?
  Why Are We Vaccinating Children Against COVID-19?

  Authored by Paul Alexander via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  The acute focus in this writing is on the vaccination of children under 12 years of age with the Covid-19 vaccines as this raises very serious and urgent issues that must be confronted by societies in terms of possible unnecessary harms to our children.

  SARS-CoV-2 virus that leads to Covid-19 disease may be used interchangeably in this report.

  Why this focus? Because there is now a major effort to test the new mRNA-based vaccines against SARS CoV-2 virus in young children. 

  

  What is the rationale for this and what is the basis? Why would there be a push to vaccinate six-month-old babies? Vaccinate two-year-old infants? Vaccinate six-year-old children? Ten-year-old children? Via an experimental vaccine that delivers genetic code into your cells instructing it to produce a mock portion of the virus? 

  Before examining this issue directly, we wish to situate the illogicality and real concerns of vaccinating children within the devastating Covid-19 societal restrictions.

  We point out that lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandate policies have made no sense whatsoever (particularly the prolonged restrictions) and as a consequence of their implementation, societal devastation has occurred and is still occurring and the impact on children’s health and well-being has yet to be examined in toto. The crushing harms are amplified and thus even more dramatic on women and the poorer members of society. 

  We also know that masks can be potentially dangerous to children. In terms of children and Covid-19, we know children do not transmit Covid-19 virus and that the concept of asymptomatic spread has been questioned severely, particularly for children. Children, if infected, just do not spread Covid-19 to others readily, either to other children, other adults in their families or otherwise, nor to their teachers. This was demonstrated elegantly in a study performed in the French Alps. The pediatric literature is settled science on this.

  Not only is there an absence of evidence supporting the notion that children spread Covid-19 virus in any meaningful way, but there is direct evidence showing that they simply do not spread this disease! This has been shown in school settings and as published in other papers. Children typically, if infected, have asymptomatic illness. It is well-noted that asymptomatic cases are not the drivers of the pandemic; something particularly important in relation to children as they’re generally asymptomatic. 

  In this regard it is evident that neither children (nor asymptomatic adults) are the key drivers of SARS-CoV-2. In the rare cases where a child is infected with SARS-CoV-2, it is exceptionally rare for the child to get severely ill or die. And to reiterate, teachers are not at risk of transmission from children and schools are to be reopened immediately with no restrictions. They should have never remained closed and we knew this for one year now. The pediatric literature suggests that this is now settled science. Yet it seems that the ‘television’ medical experts and prominent US agency representatives, as well as government advisors and bureaucrats either do not read the science, do not understand the science, do not ‘get’ it, are blinded to it, or are just ignorant to the data and science. Most of what we have just stated we have known for one year now. This is not ‘new’ evidence, this has been settled for one year now, and certainly since last fall 2020. 

  We even know of the early ‘potent’ seminal study calling into question ‘asymptomatic’ spread in Covid-19 which was published in Nature and was not covered by the media or television medical experts, and which showed that in a sample of ten million, when all positive ‘asymptomatic’ cases were followed and all close contacts were traced (n=1,174), there were zero (0) no instances of asymptomatic spread. Kerkhove from the World Health Organization (WHO) stated “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.” We agree with this based on the sum total of evidence we have seen to date. At the same time, the Covid-19 responses and dictates by the medical experts have taken on a sense of absurdity and ridiculousness now and our reading of Dr. Fauci’s explanations of why masking and social distancing is still needed after vaccination borders on the absolute confusing if not ridiculous. 

  Just consider the confusing and some would say ‘reckless’ statements of Dr. Anthony Fauci when he first stated that it is para ‘common sense’ to wear double masks, to then soon after retract the double mask request. Dr. Fauci again caused tremendous angst and confusion when questioned in the Senate and in an exchange with Senator Rand Paul about mask wearing after being vaccinated or having had prior infection and cleared it and recovered. We know that there is no study, no evidence of significant reinfection after being vaccinated or having had prior ‘natural’ infection from Covid-19. None. “Reinfections appear to be very rare. Out of tens of millions of Covid-19 cases reported worldwide, there have been only fewer than five with properly documented reinfections. That’s a rate of 1.25 per 10 million infections based on crude analysis.” Also, no evidence of reinfection in the US from variants, yet Dr. Fauci still could not articulate why one must wear masks after recovering from Covid-19 or having been vaccinated, but he is calling for masks as protection. 

  In this light, a seminal study found that 95% of Covid survivors were protected from reinfection for at least 8 months, if not more. The team at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology led by Dr. Shane Crotty measured the levels of antibodies, memory B cells and two kinds of T cells in the blood of 188 Covid-19 patients. They “tracked a group of Covid-19 survivors for up to eight months after their infection, and found about 95 percent had strong levels of bespoke immune cells specially tailored to fight SARS-CoV-2,”…their findings suggest the vast majority of Covid-19 survivors have the immune cells needed to fight reinfection for at least eight months and potentially much longer, based on projections from the data gathered so far… “it certainly looks like there’s going to be immune memory for multiple years and it wouldn’t be surprising for there to be substantial immune memory for ten years.”

  Senator Paul took the necessary step by telling Dr. Fauci in Senate testimony that the mask wearing after the vaccine is ‘just theater’ with no evidence of significant transmission and reinfection after vaccination or natural exposure infection. All this is to say that Dr. Fauci’s call for double masks or continued mask wearing then seemed illogical, unscientific, and absurd, as does his new position on vaccination of children under 12 years of age. The latter raises very serious questions. 

  As we focus specifically on the issue of children being vaccinated for Covid-19, whatever arguments there may be for consenting adults – children should not be carte blanche subjected to the same policies as adults without careful examination of the benefits versus the risks. Of course, zero risk is not attainable – with or without masks, vaccines, therapeutics, distancing or anything else medicine may develop or government agencies may impose. 

  Focusing on Covid-19 vaccination of children, we are against this and question the decision-makers as we feel this is entirely illogical based on all we know. The campaigns for Covid-19 vaccination have begun in earnest across the globe. Inexplicably, there has been a recent flurry of statements supporting the vaccination of children. Of course, this also means that the experimental vaccines must be tested in children prior to mass introduction and use! We consider this to be irrational given there are no data whatsoever that could be used to support the need for vaccination of children in this Covid-19 pandemic. And because of the absence of any supportive data, we suggest that the concept of testing this vaccine in children and/or simply starting to administer this vaccine to children is irresponsible at best. 

  We cannot fathom how it is possible to suggest, as has Dr. Fauci, that children require vaccination for prevention of Covid-19! This is so abhorrent an idea that once again we realized that we had to take a stand against testing and/or provision of any of the current vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 in children. And unless Dr. Fauci has access to data that we have not seen (or are we expected to just trust and judgements and opinions?), we are compelled to demand that this atrocity (for that’s what it is) not go forward. Is this the situation Dr. Fauci recently opined upon when he said para ‘often there is no data or evidence in Covid-19, so we must go on trust and judgements… his judgements’? We must remind Dr. Fauci that this is not science and that we and he must not make medical decisions or develop medical guidelines that are based on speculation, assumption, or supposition. These are much more serious decisions that require more than an ‘assumption.’ 

  In trying to understand what underlies the decisions to promote vaccination of children we have some other thoughts that might explain what’s going on. Do we do it for the children?  Sometimes the answer is yes.  But the first rule of medicine is first do no harm (Primum non nocere).  For nearly all children under 20 years of age the risks from getting Covid-19 are exceedingly small and for children the risk is basically near zero in this population— it is the closest to zero we can get to — the cost-benefit argument against using an essentially untested vaccine is heavily in favor of risk and virtually no benefit. The potential risk of unknown and serious side effects from the brand-new and barely tested vaccines are — in truth — completely unknown.  That’s because it is almost unheard of for a vaccine to be released to the public this quickly.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the vaccine. 

  We’re certainly not anti-vaxxers and certainly children should receive their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines among others, as these have had a dramatic effect on morbidity and mortality for decades. For populations where the risk of death or serious illness from Covid-19 is substantial — middle-aged and older adults or individuals with other chronic medical vulnerabilities like serious respiratory, cardiac, or immunological problems — using a new and barely tested vaccine is not only reasonable, it may and can be the most prudent and responsible thing to do.  Indeed, for a population of otherwise healthy children under 20 and then when we look at children under 12 — where the risk of death or even serious complications from Covid-19 is very low — in fact, exceedingly rare, the cost-benefit argument against using an essentially untested vaccine is off the charts and not in favour of the vaccine. 

  People might ask; haven’t these vaccines been proven safe and reliable?  Haven’t they been developed by the world’s best scientists?  The “miracle vaccines” against Covid-19 developed in the last year are true miracles — but not only because of their noteworthy scientific achievements.  They have arrived well ahead of any previously imaginable vaccine that has been developed which en face looks rather miraculous. But in this case, the government was able to waive the normal testing rules and remove bureaucratic, regulatory, and associated hurdles (e.g. simultaneous development, manufacture, and logistics) with the government absorbing all the risk out of the gate. No doubt, the prior Trump administration deserves tremendous credit for the capacity to innovate nimbly in this emergency.  Bear in mind however, that these vaccines received the “Emergency Use Authorization” (EUA) and not the time-tested Biologic License Application (BLA) where rigorous and thorough testing and analysis preceded the issuance of such a license.

  For comparison, consider that the measles vaccine was also developed quite quickly — the science wasn’t that difficult.  But it wasn’t released —even after the scientists hung up their lab coats — until teams of statisticians and painstaking researchers had nearly 20 years to test it.  Fortunately, they didn’t find any problems with that one — and hopefully that will prove true of the Covid-19 vaccines as well.  But the truth is, it is extremely premature to even guess what might be any longer time side effects of the current vaccines.  And we must emphasize here that it isn’t that we don’t trust the science behind the vaccine development — it is simply impossible to predict what the longer-term (1-5 years as an example) effects of these new vaccines are at this point. The issues pertaining to longer-term sequelae that could be associated with the vaccines cannot be balanced off by including more and more people in short-term studies. We need ‘time’ to evaluate the vaccines’ safety.

  This is a real cause for concern, in particular for our children. To compare, we point out that the Polio vaccine, from inception of the vaccine concept in 1931 (10 years after FDR was stricken with Polio), took 20 years before Jonah Salk used the vaccine to vaccinate his family and then the world. Over the years, vaccines have saved countless lives and will continue to do so. We believe that vaccines have a large and important role in protecting human lives, but these protections have been the result of a thorough and sometimes tedious ritual of testing along with long-term assessment over a period of years in order to be confident that any one new vaccine is both safe and effective. Unfortunately, we cannot apply these time-tested requisites to the current crop of new vaccines. But again, we reiterate that it’s one thing to let adults decide, after informed consent, to be vaccinated but it is another thing entirely to go about vaccinating our children without evidence for long-term safety, especially when their risks of either becoming ill, or suffering severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 are infinitesimally small.

  Physicians are entrusted to above all else “Do No Harm.” We certainly demand the same at this juncture. In response to the pandemic emergency situation, we believe that those individuals, elderly over the age of 70 years, frail, with comorbid conditions identified as potential risks for infection, serious illness and where potential for loss of life is high, vaccination might prove beneficial. Under such circumstances, there is an acceptable trade-off. But when the “downside” of contracting Covid-19 becomes very, very small — as it is for children — taking even a “moderate” risk of serious side effects from a barely tested vaccine may be . . . the word that comes to mind is irresponsible.  There is little if any benefit given the low risk in the first place, but the potential harm is real and very troubling. 

  Dealing with concerns of the general public at large, perhaps the best mechanism of action would be to tailor the needs of those at highest risk (prioritize them for vaccines) and then subsequent cohorts of lower age groups down to the 30-40-year-olds. Below that age group, the risk of serious illness is very low (approximately 0.01%) and balance of risk and benefit are outweighed on the side of caution. By then we are likely to have herd immunity (due to a combination of vaccine and natural infection), so the social argument for more vaccinations will likely be moot.  We must keep in mind that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is close to zero for children (zero) and young adults. 

  Even in six months to one year we will have a little more experience with side effects, but the reality is it normally takes years — sometimes decades — to be reasonably sure a vaccine is safe enough to use on persons under 20. Yes, it takes that long and thus why risk our children now? Given the low risks of contracting it and spreading it or getting seriously ill. We feel that an informed parent, informed as to the very little if any benefit, yet more certain potential harm, would place more value on their child avoiding that more certain harm, and as such, will opt for no vaccine at this time. 

  The need to write this piece is related in large part to the fact that Moderna Inc. has recently announced that it is beginning a mRNA vaccine study on children 6 months to 11 years in the U.S. and Canada, in the latest effort to broaden the mass-vaccination campaign beyond adults. “This pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our Covid-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age population,” Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel has stated. On the basis of the literature we’ve discussed here, it is clear that his statement is patently false. Alarmingly, we have come to learn that dosing has already been started by Moderna. 

  We already know that there is no emergency in children regarding Covid-19. And so why would Moderna Inc. seek to trial this vaccine on children with a death rate in this group of 0.003% (IFR 0.00003)? Moderna must show us why it is not dangerous to put this vaccine in children, and they have not. This potentially poses a monumental risk to the children in our opinion and based on the foregoing analysis of how vaccines have been developed and implemented to protect the population. Short-term analysis of a few weeks or months can potentially lead to long-term irreversible harm especially to a younger and growing populace of children with 70-100 years of life ahead of them. The potential harms may lead to a future healthcare crisis from such harm of biblical proportions if tried and tested safety guardrails are removed.

  This really is a question of risk-management and parents must seriously consider that Covid-19 is a far less dangerous illness for children than influenza. Parents must be brave and be willing to assess this purely from a benefit versus risk position and ask themselves: ‘If my child has little if any risk, near zero risk of severe sequelae or death, and thus no benefit from the vaccine, yet there could be potential harms and as yet unknown harms from the vaccine (as already reported in adults who have received the vaccines), then why would I subject my child to such a vaccine?’ And in the presence of the potential risks, as well as the fact that a vaccine for Covid-19 is simply not indicated in children, why would a loving parent allow their child to be vaccinated with still-experimental vaccines? The children should live normally, and if exposed to SARS-CoV-2 we can rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, they will have no to only mild symptoms while at the same time developing naturally acquired immunity, and harmlessly; an immunity that is definitely superior to that which might be caused by a vaccine. This approach would also accelerate the development of the much needed herd immunity about which much has been written. 

  In addition to concerns related to immediate or long-term sequelae of the new mRNA vaccines in children, there are emerging data suggesting that the vaccines might not be as effective as initially reported. They do not provide so-called sterilizing immunity or neutralizing antibodies as initially proposed. Bansal for example stated as to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines “[i]t is still unclear whether they protect people from becoming infected, or from spreading the virus to others. That poses a problem for herd immunity.” Could Dr. Fauci and the CDC’s plea to wear face masks and social distance after vaccination be a tacit ‘veiled’ admission that the Covid-19 vaccine does not work effectively? If so, this is a real problem and concern for this is not how the vaccine is being sold to the public, especially now that they are being told even with the vaccine, you still cannot travel or visit family etc. or get back to ‘normal’ life.

  In addition, there is the concern of “disease enhancement” whereby “in the past for a few viral vaccines where those immunized suffered increased severity or death when they later encountered the virus or were found to have an increased frequency of infection.” Harms and adverse events (e.g. blood clots) are being reported in the CDC’s VAERS system as well as globally and we need urgent study of the temporal relationship of reported adverse events to administration of the vaccines. Currently, there have been approximately 1,900 vaccine-related deaths reported to VAERS as of March 15th 2021. It is too early to tell how this will play out with these Covid-19 vaccines and reported harms and we remain cautiously optimistic yet cognizant that the trials have not run for the optimal duration of time to assess safety. 

  We are hoping this works out. But we are concerned that insofar as testing of safety is concerned, the sample size of 6,750 or so children reported by Moderna is not powered to detect anything significant about safety, which is a critically important issue. Safety is one of the most important if not the most important primary endpoint when it comes to vaccination in general and vaccination of children who don’t even need the vaccine in the first place in particular. Indeed, as indicated, there are initial reports of adverse events post-vaccination and as such these must be clarified and validated. However, there is a safety signal here with these vaccines and any other drug or device or vaccine with these signals, then there would have been a pause put in place by now. 

  Why then? Why move to vaccinate children? The expedited emergency use of vaccines is also creating turmoil in the European Union, where 19 countries have suspended the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine due to concerns related to ‘excess clotting and related deaths after vaccinations.’ Physicians and scientists are asking for answers to the questions of such encountered harms in Europe. The physicians state, “We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based Covid-19 vaccines… While we recognize that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.” These physicians state further, “There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the Covid-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation,” which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”

  Let us be clear. We have serious concern with this position adopted by Dr. Fauci and the reported coming Moderna trial of children and ask that this be reversed as it has no basis and entirely not needed given the exceedingly low risk profile of children and the potential for harms. In this situation, the harms far outweigh any possible benefits and this must not go forward, as we argue. We base this on the existing children’s risk evidence. In conclusion, the issue of vaccines in children is really a risk management question for parents and any decision-maker. We insist that the CDC and Dr. Fauci as well as the NIH wait at least 2 to 3 years for the safety data to emerge from the current vaccines and then allow for full regulatory approval of these vaccines and not move forward with experimental vaccines in children. The science as to exceedingly low risk for children is defined and is settled. Yet we have zero, zero long-term studies on the safety of these vaccines both in adults and now threateningly, our children. 

  We ask the CDC and other governmental agency spokespersons to give clarity to this burgeoning societal risk. As indicated above, we ask that testing of the vaccines in children be halted post-haste. This is based not only on putative risks associated with mass vaccination but even more specifically because, and as we have said above, children simply do not need a vaccine for Covid-19. Further, we request that governmental agencies elucidate the risk-benefits of such vaccines to the children before proceeding to another “emergency use authorization” of vaccines in this population.

  We also write this as a call for caution. This really is about risk management decisions we as free people (as parents) are allowed to make in the USA. This is not only about science. It seems that the medical experts and Moderna are ignorant of the risk data in children as well as the current epidemiology of Covid-19. We ask them to urgently consult the body of pediatric evidence. Remember also, children cannot give proper informed consent e.g. an 8-month-old, a one-year-old. This is a very important ethical matter. The death rate in children under 12 is as close to zero as we can get. We have masked our children, closed schools, locked them down, driven surges in suicides in adults as well as our children due to these policies, and now we seek to vaccinate children with an experimental vaccine for which we have no data on the long-term harms. This is very unsafe in our opinion. The long-term safety data is not there nor will be there based on what Moderna has proposed. 

  Moreover, with such low risks in children for getting and spreading Covid-19 virus, or getting seriously ill from it, then we ask again, why not allow our children to live reasonably normal lives, free, being exposed naturally as part of day-to-day life, and developing natural immunity harmlessly, with sensible precautions and simultaneous societal mitigations (which must always be in place as a key aspect of responding) that focuses on doubling down and tripling down on safeguards for our high-risk e.g. elderly, persons with comorbidities, and obese persons? With an aggressive focus on hygiene, sanitation, and disinfecting. Even study of the role of orofecal spread that has been sidelined. If the goal is population-level herd immunity, then low-risk exposure and infection in children and young persons who are well and healthy in any society is the one tried and true strategy for getting there harmlessly and faster. Why subject our children to a vaccine with possible side effects when we can get there harmlessly? What level of side effects would Dr. Fauci and the vaccine makers want to accept in subjecting our low-risk children to this? This makes absolutely no sense. Are there factors other than science at play here? 

  In closing, our children are not ‘tiny adults’ and their physiological response will be drastically different to adults. In fact, it could be devastating to the vaccine. It is not even if they show that the vaccine is safe for kids, the issue is there is no basis for it, none! The CDC and experts like Dr. Fauci have been wrong on lockdowns, on school closures, and on mask mandates. Just plain wrong! They have all created an utter mess for our societies as we begin emerging from the pain of the punitive unsound lockdowns and school closures. Parents must now step up and demand that Dr. Fauci, CDC, NIH, and Moderna and other vaccine developers (and any entity with interests in the development of these vaccines) make their case for vaccinating their children. Do not simply accept this for there is no credible reason for it. We ask you as parents to adopt the words ‘risk-management’ and ‘cost-benefit’ as your guiding principles now on all things Covid-19, especially for your children’s sake. You have to assess the facts and demand these from them. You must question these medical experts who have been wrong on pretty much all things Covid-19-related. Catastrophically wrong! Do not shy away from this responsibility for the implications are way too great to do otherwise. Do not let our governments and media medical experts put a ‘chill’ on us as parents and guardians of our children, and silence us from pushing back and asking needed questions. 

  You should know that the scientific community and dissenters, contrarians, and skeptics are already attacked, slandered, and smeared by the media, politicians, and even other scientists. I am and was, yet today, myself and our anti-lockdown anti-closure positions are being championed and embraced for what was done was a pure failure. We were guilty of considering the ‘totality’ of the risks, particularly those from the societal restrictions as they caused more harms and deaths than the virus itself. Our positions focused around an ‘age-risk’ targeted and more focused approach that secured the elderly and high-risk persons principally. Top preeminent scientists such as Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. John Ioannidis, Dr. Carl Heneghan, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Kulvinder Gill, Dr. Harvey Risch, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Abir Ballan are slandered and smeared in lieu of real substantive scientific debate. They are assaulted and names and careers severely damaged by the media. Even United States Senators such as Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) are slandered and smeared by the media television medical experts for his questioning of the vicious lockdown decisions and championing of early outpatient therapy for Covid-19 symptomatic persons (combined and sequenced antivirals, corticosteroids, and anti-platelet therapeutics that are safe, effective, available, and cheap). 

  Vaccinating our children with a possibly harmful (untested) vaccine to them and with no basis given their risk profile, must be pushed back upon hard by parents. Like these mentioned contrarians and skeptics who have raised the ‘inconvenient truths’ surrounding Covid-19 responding, parents now have a very equal, sensitized, focused, and critical role in raising the right questions and taking a stand. Parents are the voices of their children now on vaccinating their children and on the other looming disaster, Covid-19 ‘vaccine passports,’ that are as illogical and dangerous as vaccines for children under 12! Americans must stand up now to this! 

  We end by saying, we should think twice, then think twice again, and then even think again one more time, before vaccinating kids against Covid-19. The data or evidence or science is not there to support this.

  *  *  *

  Contributing Authors

  • Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada elias98_99@yahoo.com

  • Howard C. Tenenbaum DDS, Dip. Perio., PhD, FRCD(C) Centre for Advanced Dental Research and Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

  • Dr. Parvez Dara, MD, MBA, daraparvez@gmail.com

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 21:00

• FinTech Company Mogo Offers $3,100 In Bitcoin To Open Or Refi A Mortgage
  FinTech Company Mogo Offers $3,100 In Bitcoin To Open Or Refi A Mortgage

  Monday morning saw further adoption of both cryptocurrencies in general, and more specifically, bitcoin. First, Visa announced it would be one of the first major payment networks to settle transactions in USD Coin as part of a pilot program with Crypto.com. 

  Then, digital payments and financial technology company Mogo said it was going to be expanding its bitcoin cashback rewards program to include its MogoMortgage. The program will kick back up to $3,100 in bitcoin to member rewards accounts after people use Mogo to open a new mortgage, or re-finance. 

  David Feller, Mogo’s Founder and CEO, commented: “Our bitcoin rewards program is all about giving our members more ways to accumulate bitcoin. It’s clear that we’re still in the beginning stages of seeing consumers add bitcoin to their financial portfolios, just as we’re seeing corporations add it to their balance sheets.”

  

  He continued: “Given the volatility and speculative nature of bitcoin, there’s an increasing number of Canadians who are looking for ways to participate without risking their own money, and our bitcoin rewards program meets this demand. As an independent mortgage brokerage, our goal has always been to help members get the best rate and the right mortgage, and now our new bitcoin rewards program will reward them with up to $3,100 in bitcoin.”

  “Unlike traditional reward programs, bitcoin rewards have the unique characteristic of being an asset class that can rise in value over time – $3,100 invested in bitcoin 5 years ago would be worth over $350,000 today.”

  “The residential mortgage market in Canada is a massive market estimated at about $1.7 trillion, and we’re pleased to provide Canadians with a great way to get a mortgage, while also earning bitcoin,” said Greg Feller, Mogo’s President and CFO.

  The company said that members can apply at any time through their Mogo app. 

  …as if Canadians (and Americans) needed another reason to take out a mortgage aside from manipulated interest rates sitting at 0%. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 20:40

• The Iran-China Axis Is A Fast Growing Force In Oil Markets
  The Iran-China Axis Is A Fast Growing Force In Oil Markets

  Authored by David Messler via OilPrice.com,

  One of the things that doesn’t get a lot of discussion in the press is the under-the-table relationship Iran and China have had when it comes to oil. At first glance, they wouldn’t seem to have a lot in common. One is a theocracy with a radical view of non-believers and the other is probably the only example of a successful communist dictatorship since this form of government was created. But, if you look a little deeper they have a couple of things that align their mutual interests strongly. The first is they are both absolute dictatorships, meaning the institutions of government and national policies can be changed at the whim of those at the top. The second thing they have in common, and this is the main takeaway, both countries have serious geopolitical issues with the United States.

  

  Iran suffers from years of sanctions imposed primarily by the U.S. to compel them to comply with U.N. resolutions regarding their atomic program. China views this century as the one in which they displace America as the world’s dominant Super Power. The place where these two authoritarian government’s worldviews align is in their opposition to the U.S.

  It’s worth noting China’s apparent success has been funded by western economies over the last 75-years, thanks to our desire to buy everything as cheaply as possible. In that time, China has become the manufacturing center for the world and amassed immense wealth in doing so. The pandemic has caused a rethinking of the wisdom of outsourcing strategic commodities to despotic regimes, but for now, if you buy something other than food odds are it was made in China.

  What interests us primarily is the extent to which China and Iran have found common ground in thwarting the U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales. Many countries have fallen in lock-step with the American sanctions and have refused to do business with Iran. A few have not, and notably among them China. One of the few countries which can flout U.S. edicts with relative impunity, China has opened their ports wide to tankers carrying Iranian crude thus dulling the effect of the sanctions. A win-win for each country on a number of fronts.

  China and Iran in modern times

  As Dr Mamdouh G Salameh details, the Iran-China strategic relationship is based on three pillars.

  • The first is their enmity to the United States.

  • The second is their geopolitical ambitions and

  • the third pillar is crude oil.

  The three pillars are linked to both the United States and oil.

  The two countries have a multi-decade history of finding commonality when it comes to heading off U.S. interests. Beginning in the late 1980s when Iran first began to flex its military muscles outside its own borders, China has supplied the regime with ship-killer Silkworm missiles to enable it to directly threaten U.S. fleet movements through the straits of Hormuz. Over the decades, China has often been Iran’s backstop in the geopolitical theatre, and now the two countries have embarked on an ambitious partnership that could lead to a vastly expanded commercial and military Chinese presence in Iran. The New York Times is quoted as saying-

  “The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement obtained by The New York Times, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, and dozens of other projects. In exchange, China would receive a regular – and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted – supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years.”

  And there you have it. China has secured a steady supply of Iranian oil for the foreseeable future. We will now discuss some possible implications that might emerge over the next few years in the oil and geopolitical arenas.

  China’s Iranian oil buying binge

  China, whose economy had largely recovered from the virus by the spring of 2020, has been on an oil buying rampage to meet the demands of its restarting economy. That isn’t really news. What is news is how the two countries have collaborated to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Sanctions which if we are honest, have not delivered on their intent-compelling the rogue Islamic country to turn away from its nuclear ambitions. Perhaps now we see why.

  In an article carried in World Oil’s March 11th issue, Bloomberg delved into the full extent of China’s oil buying from Iran.

  Chinese imports of Iranian crude will hit 856,000 barrels a day in March, the most in almost two years and up 129% from last month, said Kevin Wright, a Singapore-based analyst with Kpler. His figures take into account oil that’s undergone ship-to-ship transfers in the Middle East or in waters off Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia to obscure their origin.

  China buys a lot of oil, almost 12 mm BOPD from a variety of sources to meet its incredible demand of over 30 mm BOPD. So makes sense that it distributes its business among a number of suppliers. What has made Iranian oil purchases particularly compelling is the discounting the rulers of Iran have applied to cargoes, in times when oil prices have been rising dramatically. The Bloomberg article noted that cargoes from Iran are priced $3-5/bbl less than typical benchmarks like Brent. When you are buying the quantities that Beijing is, that turns into real money very quickly.

  But, there are deeper implications in this rabid consumption of oil.

  China is building storage tanks at a break-neck pace

  China is stockpiling oil at a pace unrivaled in the developed world. An example of this tank building spree was discussed in a Reuters article. In a marked dichotomy with the U.S., China is building oil inventories by design. And in another shift from tradition, private firms are playing a lead role in what is estimated to be a 100 mm bbl addition in 2021 to China’s oil storage capacity.

  Reuters Satellite image showing new tank construction in a commercial oil storage facility in Rizhao.

  

  China’s oil buying helped stabilize the market in 2020 when prices crashed. This activity also gave them access to huge volumes of crude at discounted prices.

  As China imports about 75% of the oil it uses it just makes sense for it build inventories. This is particularly true given its belligerent stance regarding the U.S. presently. A stance that may in some measure be a subliminal message to America to back off. In 2019 the U.S. sanctioned Cosco shipping, China’s primary oil tankering company for transporting Iranian oil. Sanctions that were partially reversed not long after in trade negotiations with China.

  Having a huge inventory of crude gives China a buffer if oil shipping lanes are shut down for any lengthy period of time.

  Putting all of this together

  China announced to the world in 2013 that it would embark on an ambitious plan, called the “Belt and Road” (BRI) initiative to vastly expand its influence across dozens of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. This was a signature mark of the then newly installed Chinese President Xi Jing Ping, (who now seems to be “President for Life.”)

  Introduced with a lot of pomp and circumstance, the BRI was couched in language that recalled the “Silk Road” trade routes of yesteryear, a parallel goal, but really provided a shield for China’s true intentions. That being filling a void left by waning American influence in these regions and promoting their Chinese Century ambition in which they displace the U.S. as the reigning global economic and military power. An article published by the Council of Foreign Relations- a think-tank that publishes position papers on global topics, summarized the BRI concerns for affected countries in a few words.

  United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion.

  Source

  Singling out Iran for special emphasis fits neatly into China’s global strategy to project its power across the economic and geopolitical spectrum. What better way for the Asian superpower to announce to the world its arrival on the world stage than to thwart key UN resolutions on the country? Resolutions primarily enforced and supplemented by the country it is determined to displace from the top, The United States of America.

  Taiwan: A possible trouble spot that could be the spark

  The U.S. and China Alaska talks last week yielded a lot of fiery rhetoric amid grandstanding on both sides. The U.S. came to lecture China on human rights issues, its aggressive posture with a close neighbor-Taiwan, and repression of democracy in Hong Kong, and cyberattacks in the U.S. mainland. 

  China wasn’t hearing it and served it right back to America’s senior diplomatic officials, calling out its foreign interventionism, notably in Iran and Venezuela (Another country China has backstopped against U.S. geopolitical edicts.), race relations in the U.S., and the apparent decline in domestic confidence in U.S. democracy. This was summed up by China’s foreign policy official coming out of the meeting, and quoted in the Wall Street Journal-

  “Mr. Yang, a member of the party’s ruling body, channeled that sentiment in responding to Mr. Blinken on Thursday. “The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength,” Mr. Yang said. He accused the U.S. of being condescending and waved his finger at Mr. Blinken and Mr. Sullivan.”

  WSJ

  Paramount in the U.S.’ concerns was China’s increasingly hostile rhetoric vis a vis Taiwan, a country China refers to as a province of the mainland. The U.S. and Taiwan have mutual defense agreements in place that call for one to come to the aid of the other in the event of an attack. For its part, China has made it clear since Henry Kissinger first flew to Beijing 50-years ago, to meet with China’s then Premier, Zhou Enlai, that it had no more important foreign policy imperative than the reincorporation of Taiwan with the People’s Republic of China, PRC.’

  “No matter what other issues Kissinger raised — Vietnam, Korea, the Soviets — Zhou steered the conversation back to Taiwan, “the only question between us two.” Would the U.S. recognize the People’s Republic as the sole government of China and normalize diplomatic relations? Yes, after the 1972 election. Would Taiwan be expelled from the United Nations and its seat on the Security Council given to Beijing? Again, yes.”

  Bloomberg

  In modern times China through President Xi Jing Ping has made it clear that this remains a prime objective for the country.

  “It is for this reason, above all others that Xi has presided over a huge expansion of China’s land, sea, and air forces, including the land-based DF-21D missiles that could sink American aircraft carriers.”

  Bloomberg

  There is an opinion among analysts that the ongoing upgrade by the U.S. of Taiwanese defensive armament may present a closing window to China, impelling them to act precipitously to achieve their aims.

  In that event, China’s strategy of stockpiling oil for the inevitable interdiction of oil tankers toward its ports in response makes perfect sense. Some military strategists see this scenario playing out as early as 2025.

  What might this mean for the tightening oil markets in 2021?

  One of the things that we have to realize is that oil is a globally traded commodity. The gasoline that you burn in your car may have partially come from a barrel of crude produced in Saudi Arabia, Canada, or a host of other countries.

  By and large, the supply line that moves oil around the world consists of massive vessels that can carry one to two mm barrels at a time. These vessels and the installations to which they sail, are particularly vulnerable to piracy, and military interdiction. In recent years both have been on the rise, sometimes for cash, but often as an expression of geopolitical intent. The point here is that the global distribution network is extremely fragile and subject to the whims of extreme factions in countries like Yemen.

  A place where a rebel group called the Houthis that are backed by Iran in a struggle with Saudi Arabia, recently have launched drone and missile attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure. Attacks that appeared to be ineffective as not much damage was done, thanks in part to Patriot missile batteries that knocked them out of the air before they reached their targets. Just the same the subtle message was received by the oil markets which spiked sharply on the initial reports before settling lower in a few days as the news cycle moved on to renewed virus fears, slowing inventory drawdowns, and a strong dollar.

  EIA-STEO

  

  As shown in the EIA graphic above, oil is forecast to be in a very tight balance between supply and demand this and next. Meaning that any interruption in global shipments could adversely affect importing countries, of which the U.S. is one. While we produce about 11 mm BOEPD, we consume almost twenty. That other 9 mm BOPD comes to us from across increasingly dangerous waters, as potentially bellicose actors like Iran and China exert their influence geopolitically.

  Summing it all up

  I have felt for a long time that U.S. and Canadian companies do not get the full value for the relative security that comes from having the bulk of their production located within respective national boundaries. I don’t know how exactly to calculate that value as over the last few years, many of these companies have struggled to show relevance in a world that increasingly wants to use “green energy.” Having just passed through a period of massive oversupply these companies are focused on repairing their wounded balance sheets and restoring damaged investor confidence. Expansion of their production base is about the last thing on their corporate minds at present.

  There are a few things I can say with confidence though is that if any of the scenarios I posit in this article come to pass.

  • The first is that China will be a primary beneficiary of Iran’s oil output. The country has the capacity to produce 3.5-4.0 mm BOEPD. Iran newly emboldened by the change of administration in the U.S. and under the protective blanket of its Chinese partner has begun to ramp production back up. Iran has also shown to be very cagey about shipping its oil under sanctions, leaving port at night, and turning off tracking transponders. The odds are heavy that China will have the most favored nation status if oil shipments become problematic.

  • The second is the likelihood of some type of oil shortage is becoming increasingly likely. Production in the U.S. is on a modest downward trajectory, as is the production in many OPEC countries from under-investment by the major IOCs the last few years. Add in the geopolitical ambitions of Iran and China, with the increase in tensions with the U.S., and you have a tinder box, that only needs a spark. As discussed, a likely spark is Taiwan in the near future.

  • Finally, the introduction of a war premium to oil prices will cause a commensurate re-evaluation of oil equities in non-belligerent countries.

  The modern economy runs on petroleum products and derivatives, and will for many decades.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 20:20

• Biden Trade Rep Says US Not Ready To "Yank" Trump's China Tariffs
  Biden Trade Rep Says US Not Ready To “Yank” Trump’s China Tariffs

  In an important US-China development addressing the question of “what’s next” in the still burning and spiraling relations amid the trade war, over the weekend President Biden’s new US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told The Wall Street Journal the administration is not ready to lift Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

  “I have heard people say, ‘Please just take these tariffs off,'” Tai said. Prior to just “yanking off tariffs,” the recently sworn in Tai — who is a Taiwanese American attorney and the first Asian-American to hold the post of the country’s top trade negotiator — said it must be “communicated in a way so that the actors in the economy can make adjustments.”

  

  “Whether they are companies, traders [or] manufacturers, the ability to plan” is important, she added in her comments. Explaining the need for a strategic advantage and prudent use of pressure during any potential new trade deal talks, she quipped, “No negotiator walks away from leverage, right?” 

  “Every good negotiator retains his or her leverage to use it,” she posed to her own question. “Every good negotiator is going to keep all of their options open.”

  As a reminder this is yet another example of Trump’s foreign policies essentially being adopted as Biden’s foreign policies on many fronts, despite the mainstream media attempting to convey a vast chasm between the two.

  Quoting Tai’s words from the Sunday WSJ report, Newsmax correctly put it in context as follows:

  Tai echoed Trump’s contention tariffs are intended “to remedy an unbalanced and unfair trade situation.”

  The 47-year old Tai served as a staffer of the House Ways and Means Committee during the Trump administration, helping to craft Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that replaced NAFTA.

  Honored to serve as @USTRadeRep. I’m ready to walk, chew gum and play chess at the same time!

  — Ambassador Katherine Tai (@AmbassadorTai) March 18, 2021

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

  Her ethnic background and outspokenness on China – as well as the fact that she’s a fluent Mandarin speaker – has riled Beijing.

  For example a Chinese official’s social media post cited in the latest WSJ report as saying, “This trade representative with Chinese blood has always been a woman who is not friendly to China.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 20:00

• Seattle BLM Activist Charged With Hate Crime After Harassing Multiple Asian-Americans
  Seattle BLM Activist Charged With Hate Crime After Harassing Multiple Asian-Americans

  From New York to Seattle, hate crimes against Asians are on the rise – which, while we’ve been told can be attributed to white supremacists reacting to former President Trump’s anti-CCP rhetoric, appear to be largely committed by other groups. To wit:

  Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Prosecutors charged a Seattle man with a felony hate crime after he allegedly threatened multiple Asian-Americans on two separate occasions earlier this month.

  Christopher Allen Hamner, a 51-year-old well-known Black Lives Matter activist, was arrested Thursday on accusations of committing malicious harassment in the Seattle area, according to a Seattle Police Department (SPD) blotter.

  

  Hamner had his bail set at $75,000 and is being held at the King County Correctional Facility for the felony hate crime charge plus three additional counts of malicious harassment, jail records show.

  According to court documents filed to the King County Superior Court, Hamner used offensive language and threw unknown objects towards at least five Asians on two separate occasions. All the incidents happened while on the road, or near a vehicle.

  On March 16, he allegedly harassed Pamela Cole, an Asian-American woman, and her two children aged 5 and 10 while they were seated inside their mother’s vehicle.

  Hamner allegedly yelled racist obscenities at Cole before “punching his fist together” and telling her to get out of her car while throwing an object at her car.

  Cole has been outspoken about the incident and also took multiple pictures of the suspect before reporting to authorities the alleged hate crime, according to the SPD blotter.

  “The kids and I were in utter shock and confusion cause we just couldn’t understand why he was targeting us especially since we hadn’t had any interactions with the man,” Cole wrote on her personal Facebook page, explaining what happened.

  Three days after the first incident, Hamner targeted two other Asian women on March 19 also while they were inside their car, court documents show.

  He has been accused of blocking two victims with his vehicle in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic, and screaming similar insults at the two women. He also again threw projectiles at the victims.

  “As victims Wong and Yao were attempting to drive by the defendant’s car, the defendant cut them off, blocked traffic, and yelled ‘F-you Asian,’” the documents allege.

  “The defendant then got out of his vehicle, charged at them, and threw an item at their vehicle.”

  Hamner’s personal Facebook page is filled with posts supporting Black Lives Matter and condemning racism in the United States.

  In June 2020, he also recorded a video of himself participating in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, where he filmed and later posted anti-Trump and anti-police content.

  Hamner’s arraignment is scheduled for April 8 at the King County Courthouse.

  *  *  *

  [ZH: now to see if New York investigators can find and prosecute this Asian-American-hating ‘white supremacist’]

  🚨 WARNING: VIOLENCE/BLOOD 🚨
  A person violently beats up and punches an Asian male in the head repeatedly in a Manhattan Bound (J) train at Kosciuszko Street Station, chokes him afterwards until he is unconscious. Be on the lookout for this person! pic.twitter.com/FCrqiPcxFc

  — Asian Dawn (@AsianDawn4) March 29, 2021

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 19:40

• Chinese Celebrities Slam Hugo Boss, H&M Stores Forced To Close As Xinjiang Spat Worsens
  Chinese Celebrities Slam Hugo Boss, H&M Stores Forced To Close As Xinjiang Spat Worsens

  Hugo Boss has joined several other western clothing companies – notably H&M and Nike, which were virtually erased from the Chinese Internet late last week after saying they wouldn’t use cotton sourced from Xinjiang – in criticizing China’s record on human rights in the far-flung western region, and the company’s stock is paying for it Monday morning.

  Boss shares tumbled in Frankfurt as Chinese celebrities criticized the brand over its stance on human rights in the country, ensnaring the German brand in a growing boycott of western firms. That boycott appeared to accelerate Monday morning as Chinese landlords started closing some of H&M’s stores, threatening its foothold in what has become the company’s fourth-biggest market.

  

  At one point, Boss shares were down more than 2%, H&M shares declined by a similar magnitude in Stockholm.

  At least six stores in the lower-tier cities of Urumqi, Yinchuan, Changchun and Lianyungang have been shut down by the owners of the properties, according to mall operators in those areas who reportedly spoke to Bloomberg. In addition, local Chinese media have reported on more closures, with pictures showing H&M’s brand billboards being removed.

  Li Yifeng, an actor and singer who has more than 60MM followers on his Weibo – a Chinese social media platform often compared with twitter – has ended all cooperation with Hugo Boss, according to a post on his agent’s Weibo account. Zhu Zhengting and Wang Linkai, both popular singers, will also stop working with the German firm, according to similar posts from their agents.

  Western clothing companies have all found themselves in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, the US and EU, which recently slapped new human rights sanctions on China, have criticized the CCP for imprisoning more than 1MM ethnic Uyghers in concentration camps. On the other, Beijing has made clear that firms hoping to sell clothes in China can either use cotton from Xinjiang, or risk a public “boycott”.

  When confronted about the cotton issue at a press conference last week, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying insisted nearly half the production in the region is “mechanized”, while also slamming America over its own history of slavery. “This was in the US when Black slaves were forced to pick cotton in the fields,” she said.

  Hugo Boss initially appeared to try to appease the CCP by posting on its Weibo account last week that it would “continue to purchase and support Xinjiang cotton.” However, a spokeswoman for the company now claims that comment was unauthorized and has now been deleted.

  In a separate statement currently posted to its website, Hugo Boss said the company does not tolerate forced labor and insists that its global suppliers follow suit. The company “has not procured any goods originating in the Xinjiang region from direct suppliers.”

  Circling back to H&M, mall operators said the closures were ordered by landlords who wanted to punish H&M for showing “disrespect” to China. As Bloomberg put it, H&M appeared to suffer the brunt of the fallout after the statement was called out by the Communist Youth League and the People’s Liberation Army. In addition to the closures, As we have reported, H&M outlets have vanished on Apple Maps and Baidu Maps searches, making it hard for Chinese consumers to locate stores, and it’s been removed from Chinese e-commerce platforms. It’s unclear how long the closures will last, and analysts warned that it could significantly impact the company’s second-quarter sales.

  Other brands, including Inditex’s Zara, are still weighing whether to use Xinjiang cotton, or not.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 19:20

• Political Economy Versus Federal Fairy Tales
  Political Economy Versus Federal Fairy Tales

  Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  “Build Back Better” is the motto for President Biden’s ambitious plans to remake much of the American economy and society. On Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Biden will reveal his plans for trillions of dollars of new spending for infrastructure and other projects. His devotees in the national media will whoop up his proposals as the greatest thing since the New Deal, or at least since Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act a couple weeks ago.

  

  Once Biden fires the starting gun, a deluge of experts will descend upon cable news shows to tout the vast benefits of the proposed “investment.” There will be a barrage of econometric formulas that irrefutably prove, via 10 or 15 shaky or squirrely assumptions, that vastly increasing federal spending will multiply prosperity across the land.  

  Rather than deferring to mathematical formulas, I prefer old time political economy – i.e., analyses premised on the perfidy of politicians and the imbecility of bureaucracies. As a Washington journalist, I have investigated scores of federal programs that sounded great until they crashed and burned (okay, I did give some of them a push). Historical track records of government agencies are a better lodestar than the latest idealistic buncombe regardless of how many MSNBC hosts swoon. 

  “Washington knows best” is the tacit premise for most of Biden’s initiatives. The Biden administration can trust federal agencies to shamelessly fabricate statistics to vindicate any new program, or at least cover up the initial damage. 

  Biden is planning on expanding federal job training programs, a beloved federal panacea dating back to the Kennedy administration. In 2014, President Obama admitted that such programs rely on a “‘train and pray’ approach. We train them and we pray that they can get a job.” To hide its dismal record, the Labor Department “defined down success” by counting trainees as hired simply by confirming they had a job interview, by certifying as permanently employed any trainee who spent one day on a new job, and by claiming victory for teaching teenagers how to make change for a dollar. No wonder programs are notorious for leaving trainees worse off than if they had never signed up. 

  Biden is stretching the definition of infrastructure to include new spending for early childhood education, seeking to offer free pre-kindergarten for all three- and four-year-old American children. Will Biden’s speechwriters concoct a label as punchy as President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?” But stretching government control over more years of childhood will turn out no better than Bush’s biggest domestic fraud. NCLB empowered the U.S. Education Department to punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary, often imaginary guidelines for “adequate yearly progress.” Almost half the states responded by “dumbing down” academic standards, lowering passing scores on tests to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Unfortunately, NCLB’s disasters have not deterred politicians from hustling further federal takeovers of schooling. 

  As part of its climate change agenda, Biden issued an executive order on January 27 proclaiming “the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands by 2030.” Farmers and other landowners fear the feds may squeeze out private ownership of vast swaths of the nation’s heartland. Is there any reason to expect Biden’s Climate “Brain Trust” to be wiser than Franklin Roosevelt’s original Brain Trust which launched command-and-control farm policies that still vex America?

  The sugar program, for instance, relies on import quotas and other interventions to drive U.S. sugar prices to double or triple the world price, costing consumers $3 billion a year. Since 1997, Washington’s sugar policy has zapped more than 120,000 U.S. jobs in food manufacturing. More than 10 jobs have been lost in manufacturing for every remaining sugar grower in the U.S. 

  Peanuts take the prize for perpetual policy perversity. When the U.S. peanut program was launched in the 1930s, the federal government gave favored farmers licenses to grow peanuts and outlawed anyone else from entering the business. To maximize its controls, the USDA used aerial photography to determine if farmers planted a few more square feet than they were allotted. In 2002, Congress spent $4 billion to buy out the peanut license owners and end the program. Problem solved, right? Nope – congressmen still needed campaign contributions. In 2014, Congress created a new program that guaranteed payments far above market prices. The cost of peanut subsidies quickly approached a billion dollars a year, nearly equaling the farm value of all the peanuts grown in the U.S. Farmers dumped surplus peanuts on USDA, which dumped them on Haiti, sowing chaos in local markets. But that wasn’t a problem because Haitian peanut farmers can’t vote in U.S. elections (at least not yet).  

  Among other pending marvels, Biden is planning to reform the Postal Service, an agency that has almost perfected statistical chicanery. In the 1980s, it boasted of 95% next-day delivery of first-class mail but the official tests measured only when letters moved from one post office to another, not when they were actually delivered. When the target for overnight first-class delivery was slashed to less than 50 miles in 1989, Postmaster General Anthony Frank promised that the new standards would “improve our ability to deliver local mail on time.” Sen. David Pryor (D-AR) groused, “This is like trying to fool the public by cutting the top off the flagpole when the flag is stuck halfway up.” In 2015, the Postal Service effectively eliminated overnight mail delivery even for local mail in much of the nation. With revised standards, “mail was considered on time if it took four to five days to arrive instead of three,” the Washington Post noted. The Postal Service has gotten away with cutbacks because it has a monopoly: it is a federal crime to provide better mail service than the government.

  Biden administration policymakers can take solace knowing that federal agencies will shroud their abuses with statistical smokescreens. Transportation Security Administration agents, for instance, are sometimes derided as hopeless knuckleheads (cynics suggest that “TSA” actually stands for “Too Stupid for Arby’s”). Though TSA screeners dismally failed to detect most of the smuggled weapons and fake bombs in undercover tests, TSA in its early years issued triumphal press releases touting the number of knickknacks confiscated at airport checkpoints. TSA chief James Loy bragged that TSA screeners “have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items.” All the fingernail clippers, cigar cutters, frying pans, horseshoes, and small pointy objects TSA seized proved that the feds were protecting airline passengers better than ever. TSA doubled down by spending billions of dollars on Whole Body Scanners to take nude photos of travelers, after which TSA screeners’ failure rate on undercover tests rose to 95%. But presidents and members of Congress have been exempted from most of TSA’s indignities, so this particular federal gropefest continues. 

  Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx declared in 2015, “Defective agencies, like defective people, need the capacity for self-reflection and to make room for self-improvement.” But bureaucracies don’t learn from mistakes because they don’t pay for their failures. Government intervention is a cornucopia for politicians and bureaucrats regardless of what happens to purported beneficiaries.

  Nor is there a detectable learning curve among the likely hallelujah chorus for Biden’s proposals. Philip Tetlock, a University of California research psychologist, noted “a perversely inverse relationship between indicators of good judgment and the qualities the media prizes in pundits.” Washington policy experts are akin to baseball commentators who never consider players’ batting averages and then are perennially shocked at all of the strikeouts. Rather than soiling their pristine minds with Inspector General and Government Accountability Office reports documenting the failure of similar prior programs, media cheerleaders will showcase the latest White House talking points. 

  But Biden can still count on economists riding to the rescue with multipliers, right? Alas, if such multipliers were reliable, America would have reached financial Valhalla many boondoggles ago. Econometric formulas omit the “X factor” for government incompetence. Nobel laureate economist George Stigler noted in 1963 that, for the preceding century, “No economist deemed it necessary to document his belief that the State could effectively discharge the new duties he proposed to give it.” Things haven’t improved much since Stigler’s time. Swedish economist Niclas Berggren observed in 2011 that 95% of paternalist proposals “do not contain any analysis of the cognitive ability of [government] policymakers.” 

  The more power a politician captures, the more flattery he hears, and the more deluded he usually becomes. In the same way that Biden feels entitled to deny media access to the most damning scenes of children in overcrowded refugee centers at the southern border, so he will demand that the media ignore the debacles spawned by his new programs. But at some point, there will be too many fiascos to suppress by a president shouting demands for “unity.” 

  Nowadays, the federal government is controlling almost everything except itself. Instead of economic salvation, Biden offers standard D.C. issue “no-fault pseudo-benevolence.” How many more trillion dollars will America waste for another Beltway “triumph of hope over experience?”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 19:00

• Ghislaine Maxwell Charged With Sex-Trafficking 14-Year-Old Girl, Grooming To Recruit Other Minors
  Ghislaine Maxwell Charged With Sex-Trafficking 14-Year-Old Girl, Grooming To Recruit Other Minors

  Not long after her legal team’s latest appeal of a judge’s order that Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, be held without bail over being a flight risk, federal prosecutors have finally unveiled long-awaited new charges against Maxwell, including sex trafficking a minor.

  

  According to the superseding indictment, from between 1994 to “at least in or about” 2004, Maxwell “assisted, facilitated and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by among other things helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims…” The indictment confirms that some of the victims were as young as 14. The indictment also alleges that both Maxwell and Epstein knew some of the accusers were minors.

  

  (h/t @Techno_Fog)

  Beyond this, Maxwell allegedly “repeatedly lied when questioned about her conduct”, including during testimony from 2016.

  

  (h/t @Techno_Fog)

  The new indictment confirms the existence of a fourth victim – “Victim-4” in court documents – who was allegedly abused between 2001 and 2004, and also adds a new charge, a “sex trafficking conspiracy” and alleges that Victim-4 was a victim of this conspiracy.

  

  (h/t @Techno_Fog)

  The indictment also alleges that other unnamed “conspirators” sent the minor lingerie and gifts. Epstein and Maxwell encouraged the minor to “recruit other young females to provide sexualized massages to Epstein.” These efforts were ultimately successful, and they found more victims.

  

  (h/t @Techno_Fog)

  Importantly, these charges apply to conduct that occurred at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. Ghislaine and her legal team have argued that she is still protected by Epstein’s sweetheart deal with prosecutors from more than a decade ago, and that she is therefore immune to these charges, as Techno Fog points out.

  More detailed analysis via attorney and journalist Techno Fog here…

  Read the entire superseding indictment below:

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 18:40

• Ron Paul Warns The 2nd Amendment Is In The Firing Line
  Ron Paul Warns The 2nd Amendment Is In The Firing Line

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  Gun control was already a Biden Administration priority before the recent shootings in Georgia, Colorado, and Virginia. In fact, the House of Representatives passed two gun-control bills weeks before the shootings.

  

  One of the House-passed bills expands background checks to include private sales, including those made at gun shows.

  Under this bill, someone who is not a licensed federal firearms dealer cannot sell a firearm without first relinquishing it to a federally-licensed dealer. The dealer must then conduct a background check on the prospective purchaser.

  The second bill allows the federal government to indefinitely delay a background check, thus indefinitely delaying a gun purchase. Other legislation introduced in Congress would create a national firearms registry, which would only facilitate gun confiscation.

  This same legislation would forbid anyone under 21 from owning a gun.

  The ban does not apply to the military, so it will not stop the majority of gun violence committed by 18-21 year-olds.

  The bill requires Americans to obtain a federal license before getting a firearm, but individuals cannot receive a license unless they undergo a psychological evaluation. The psychological evaluation mandate could lead to individuals losing their Second Amendment rights because they once suffered from depression. It could also cause people to lose their Second Amendment rights because someone told the police they may become violent.

  Police officers in 20 states and the District of Columbia already have the authority to take away an individual’s Second Amendment rights based on allegations and without giving the individual due process. These “Red Flag” laws are supported by politicians of both parties, including some who claim to be pro-gun rights.

  For example, former President Trump supported Red Flag laws. President Trump and Congressional Democrats were on the verge of reaching a “bipartisan” deal to expand Red Flag laws in the fall of 2019. Fortunately, the Democrat attempt to impeach the President ended all efforts at “bipartisan” deals to take away our rights.

  A psychological evaluation could also be used to deny an individual Second Amendment rights because they may engage in “domestic terrorism.” Among those likely to be considered as potential “domestic terrorists” are opponents of US foreign policy, mass surveillance, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and – ironically – gun control.

  There is also legislation to reinstate the assault-weapons ban. Like the original ban, which was in effect from 1994-2004, the new legislation bans an arbitrary list of firearms and will do little to reduce gun violence.

  Criminals and psychotics are not going to be deterred by background checks and licensing requirements from obtaining a firearm. There will be a black market to service those who cannot obtain firearms by legal means.

  By discouraging law-abiding Americans from owning firearms, these laws leave millions of Americans defenseless against gun violence. There is a reason why most mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.

  If Congress is serious about protecting Americans from violence, it would repeal all federal gun control laws. A good place to start would be with the Brady background check law and the misnamed “Safe and Gun-Free Schools” law, which leaves children defenseless against mass shooters. Congress ending the unconstitutional and anti-liberty war on drugs would also greatly reduce gun violence. Gun control, like all attempts by government to control our lives, makes us less safe, and less free.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 18:20

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• Global Oil Shipments Depend On These Major Chokepoints
  Global Oil Shipments Depend On These Major Chokepoints

  A massive container ship remains wedged in the Suez Canal, blocking a crucial global trade artery for a sixth consecutive day. The 224,000 ton Ever Given measures 400 meters, nearly as long as the Empire State building is tall. The Suez Canal Authority stated that the vessel ran aground during a dust storm with low visibility and freeing it could prove a complex process with the potential to take days. The incident has already caused major tailbacks at both ends of the canal with at least 150 vessels, mainly container ships and oil tankers, dropping anchor.

  🇪🇬#Egipto– imágenes áreas muestran la escala de los atascos frente al canal de Suez a causa del portacontenedores encallado MV Ever Given. El buque Ever Given de bandera panameña cubría la ruta desde #China🇨🇳 a #PaisesBajos🇳🇱. pic.twitter.com/W9rgxJZW9f

  — DATOS #Elecciones2021 (@Datoworld) March 28, 2021

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

  The Suez Canal serves as a crucial passageway and it allows ships to avoid the much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa. With just over 50 ships passing through it per day on average, delays are likely to have repercussions ranging from higher shipping contracts and oil prices to lawsuits over late cargo.

  As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, if the situation is not resolved swiftly, the impact on oil prices could be significant given that around 10 percent of seaborne oil transits the Suez Canal.

  By some estimates, around 10 million barrels of oil are now backed up at both ends of it.

  The Suez Canal is one of several key oil chokepoints around the globe and a Lloyd’s List Intelligence analysis published by the Financial Times found that 4.6 million barrels passed through it daily in 2018.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  That is still substantially less than some other vulnerable transit points around the world such as the Stait of Malacca which sees 15.7 million barrels pass through it and the Strait of Hormuz where nearly 17 million barrels pass per day.

  The latter is still considered the biggest chokepoint to global supply and Iran has frequently threatened to shut it down over the years. Its strategic importance was illustrated on numerous occasions such as Operation Praying Mantis and the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988.

  Threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz are taken seriously, particularly by the United States, and a heavy military presence is maintained in the region.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 02:45

• Erdoganistan: The New Islamic Superpower?
  Erdoganistan: The New Islamic Superpower?

  Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

  “It was a very special day, July 24 [2020],” said France’s leading expert on Islam, Gilles Kepel.

  “It was pilgrimage time to Mecca and, due to the pandemic, no one was there! It was the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, the origin of modern Turkey within its current borders. Erdogan was about to twist the arm of the secular Ataturk, who had turned the old Hagia Sophia basilica into a museum that he had donated ‘to humanity’. Erdogan… turned it back into a mosque”.

  This was the moment, remarked Kepel – who just published a new book, “Le Prophète et la Pandémie” [“The Prophet and the Pandemic“] — that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the new leader of the umma, or global Islamic community. “Erdogan is trying to appear as the champion of Islam, just like Ayatollah Khomenei in 1989”.

  

  Both Khomeini and Erdogan seem to have been committed to erasing secularism and ties with Western culture from their respective countries; to heading a battle against Saudi Arabia for supremacy of the Islamic world and to re-Islamizing their societies. Veiled women, for instance was rarely seen in Tehran before Khomeini, and Erdogan reintroduced it into Turkish society.

  The Iranian mullahs were also able to impose on the international arena the use of the word “Islamophobia”, but now it is Turkey that is leading the ideological persecution of the “Islamophobes”. Under the auspices of Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, the UN just celebrated the “International Day against Islamophobia” and Secretary General Antonio Guterres himself strongly denounced an “epidemic of Islamophobia“. Erdogan was promoting his global campaign of victimization by “Islamophobia”, while in fact it is the critics of extremist Islam who are in danger and frequently killed.

  This grotesque and shameful conference was organized by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an entity made up of 56 mainly Muslim countries, plus “Palestine”. In the OIC, states such as Pakistan punish “blasphemy” with death; Saudi Arabia flogs and jails liberal bloggers such as Raif Badawi, and Turkey fills its jails with writers and journalists, to mention just a few of members.

  On that July 24, in 2020,, Erdogan challenged Europe and the West by re-appropriating what had been, for a thousand years, the largest church in Eastern Christianity. The lack of response on the part of the West most likely convinced him that the moment was right. No one paid attention or countered the act.

  Unlike Iran and Saudi Arabia, Turkey is a democracy. It is in talks with the European Union about its possible membership; it is pampered in Washington; it is the second-largest army in NATO, and stands as Asia’s gateway to Europe.

  The Financial Times (FT) has dedicated a series of analyses to Erdogan’s grand plan for hegemony. In Africa, for the past 15 years, for instance, the Turkish president has spearheaded a mega-relaunch of his alliances. Since 2009, Turkey has increased the number of embassies there from 12 to 42. Erdogan has even been a frequent visitor, making trips to more than 20 capitals. The government has set itself the goal over the next few years of doubling Turkey’s trade volume with Africa to $50 billion, about a third of its current trade with the European Union.

  Turkey has also chosen the Balkans as a battlefield — “the region,” according to the FT, “is symbolically very important, since much of it was ruled by Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire”. Then, there is Europe:

  “Several European countries have voiced concern over activity by Turkey’s intelligence service on their soil and the use of state-trained Turkish imams to spy on the diaspora”.

  Erdogan’s goal in Europe seems to be to use the Turkish diaspora as a political instrument of pressure on states (in particular Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and Holland) and as the base for his hegemony.

  In the Caucasus, Turkey supported Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh presumably to create a Turkic-Islamic corridor between Azerbaijan, Turkey and other Muslim countries. Erdogan also apparently makes use of mercenaries. The Indian media reported a contingent sent to Kashmir to support Pakistan. Turkey has also previously used “Sadat” mercenaries against the Armenians, as well as in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars.

  In the latest issue of the Reveue des deux mondes, the French philosopher Michel Onfray remarked that there is a clash of civilizations and that Erdogan now leads the Islamist side. “It began in 1989 with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie,” he wrote.

  “No Western country reacted except with words – as if they thought a verbal spell might work! With the beheading of Professor Samuel Paty it is this Judeo-Christianity that is being attacked — in Armenia, Islam is attacking the oldest Christianity in Europe …. Europe is afraid of Erdogan and his ability to cause damage. This Tamerlane in the making threatens, insults, attacks, [and] supports those who threaten us, insult us and attack us”.

  That, Onfray continues, was the meaning of the Turkish aggression against Karabakh:

  “Armenia is being attacked by Azeris and Muslim Turks who want its total disappearance. It is the result of a war of civilizations. What is happening in this country, which is the cradle of Christian civilization, is what awaits us here, in the tomb of the Judeo-Christian civilization itself. The battle lost in Armenia is the first of a war waged in the West against the Judeo-Christian civilization”.

  Erdogan has not even tried to hide his ideological vision. “The crescent and star embellish the skies of Karabakh now thanks to the efforts of our Azerbaijani brothers and sisters”, the Turkish president proclaimed after the war. “The Azerbaijani flag flies proudly over Nagorno-Karabakh as a symbol of our martyrs’ valor”.

  One of Erdogan’s advisors, the retired Turkish general Adnan Tanrıverdi, who founded the mercenary agency “Sadat”, articulated the vision of a unified Islamic superpower. His Justice Defenders Strategic Studies Center called it “Asrica“, the union of Africa and Asia, 61 countries whose capital is Istanbul and under the aegis of this “Erdoganistan”. They include 12 countries of the Middle East, namely Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan and Yemen; eight in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan; four in the Near East, namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan; three in Southeast Asia, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia; six in North Africa, namely Algeria, Chad, Morocco, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia; six in East Africa, including Djibouti, Eritrea, Comoros, Mozambique, Somalia and Sudan; ten in northwestern Africa and South America, ie Western Sahara, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Guyana and Suriname; eight in South West Africa, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Togo; and four in Europe, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia.

  Turkey evidently wants to be a great neo-Ottoman Emipire and the only one capable of leading the Muslim world. The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque seems to have been intended as a watershed in Islamic history that heralds the establishment of a powerful league of Muslim nations to face the West under the Turkish leadership.

  Three seas surround Turkey: the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. Turkey recently launched a large naval exercise. The Turkish Ministry of Defense announced that 82 warships, 17 naval aviation craft, amphibious forces, air force units and special operations teams engaged in exercises that ended on March 8.

  “Blue Homeland” — Mavi Vatan in Turkish — is the geopolitical concept that marks Erdogan’s agenda for the coming years. Conceived by nationalist Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, it is the “diplomacy of drills and warships” that pursues “the return of Turkey to the sea, the union between Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean”. The goal is clear: to control the sea, to control energy resources and to impose its influence. Erdogan announced that it will no longer be called “Aegean”, but the “sea of ​​islands”.

  Ankara is on a collision course with Greece and Cyprus over who has the right to exploit the eastern Mediterranean’s oil and gas deposits. “They will understand that Turkey has the political, economic and military power to tear up immoral maps and imposed documents,” Erdogan said.

  Turkey has problems with Cyprus, which, unlike the Turks, belongs to the European Union but not to NATO. Turkey, which invaded the island in 1974, remains the only country to recognize Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus as a state. The Republic of Cyprus, which is majority-Greek Cypriot, wants to make deals with foreign energy companies, while Turkey, to the island’s north, wants economic rights in the waters that Cyprus considers its own.

  While the new sultan extends his influence to Syria, Libya and the Caucasus, he also extends it within the Mediterranean. For pacifist Europe, that sea only exists when it comes to bringing in migrants.

  President Erdogan, in an official visit to Paris on January 5, 2018, proceeded to launch this provocative phrase to the leaders of the French Council for Muslim worship: “The Muslims of France are under my protection”. Those were the first lines of an inquiry by the France’s Journal du Dimanche. Several reports sent to the Elysée Palace by the Directorate General for Internal Security (DGSI), which the newspaper was able to consult, reveal the scope, forms and objectives of a “real infiltration strategy” through networks managed by the Turkish embassy and the Turkish spy agency, the MIT. “They act mainly within the Turkish immigrant population, but also through Muslim organizations and also recently in local political life, through the support given to elected officials”.

  “These actions have different objectives,” commented the journalist Mohamed Sifaoui.

  “First, to improve the image of the Turkish regime in the diaspora and in French society. Then, to defend Erdogan’s image at all costs. And finally, of course, the spread of an Islamist vision of Islam”.

  Sifaoui cites as an example the latest charter wanted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the charter of principles present in the law that strengthens “republican principles,” and is currently being examined by Parliament:

  “It was not signed by the two Turkish federations, at the request of Ankara, because it is a charter that recalls the fundamental principles important for the Republic and which the Turkish regime clearly opposes… What the Turkish regime is doing is using its diaspora as a Trojan horse.”

  The Brookings Institution wrote in 2019:

  “According to the [French] ministry of interior, 151 imams have been sent by Turkey (which has undertaken a spate of religious outreach to Muslims across Europe over the past decade)…”

  Just as Turkey controls 400 mosques out of 2,500 in France. It is Ahmet Ogras, apparently close to Erdogan, who for two years occupied the symbolic position of president of the French Council for Muslim Worship — as Turkish voters in France are generally more pro-Erdogan than in Turkey. During the presidential elections of 2014, Erdogan won 66% of the votes cast by Turkish citizens in France, compared to only 51.79% in Turkey. First- and second-generation Turkish immigrants in France continue to watch Turkish television, which is extremely submissive to Erdogan’s power. In French public schools, 180 teachers, directly appointed by Ankara, are responsible for teaching the Turkish language.

  These efforts make up the great project of conquest by Erdogan the Islamizer.

  Erdogan recently withdrew Turkey from an international treaty on preventing violence against women. With this decision, it seems that the president is determined to increase impunity around murder of women and “honor killings”, which common in Turkey.

  In Erdogan’s Turkey, school textbooks have been rewritten to refer to Jews and Christians as gavur, “infidels,” according to a new study published by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). Earlier Turkish textbooks referred to the members of the two religions as the “peoples of the Book”. “School books have been used as a weapon in Erdogan’s attempts to Islamise Turkish society and to trace back to a nostalgic era of Turkish domination,” wrote IMPACT-se’s CEO, Marcus Sheff.

  These are some of the findings of the study: Jihad was introduced in textbooks and transformed into the “new normal”, with martyrdom in battle glorified. Ethno-nationalist religious goals of neo-Ottomanism and pan-Turkism are taught. Therefore, Islam is described as a political issue, with science and technology used to further its goals. There is an emphasis on concepts such as “Turkish world domination” and “Turkish or Ottoman ideal of world order”. According to the curriculum, the “Turkish basin” extends from the Adriatic Sea to Central Asia. The curriculum adopts an anti-American stance, and shows sympathy for the motives of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Turkey takes anti-Armenian and pro-Azerbaijani positions. The identity and cultural needs of the Kurdish minority continue to be largely neglected. The pogroms of 1955 against the Greek community in Istanbul are ignored.

  At schools, during the term of Erdogan, maps showing Turkish power have appeared. Reference is made to the “Turkish heritage from the Adriatic Sea to the Great Wall of China”: “Turkish cultural artifacts can be seen in a vast region, starting with the countries of Central and East Asia, such as China and Mongolia, and extends to Herzegovina and Hungary…”

  “We are a large family of 300 million people from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China,” Erdogan said in a speech from Moldova.

  Europe, the US, NATO and the Free World might start worrying. Erdogan seems aiming to be the new Islamist wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/29/2021 – 02:00

• In Quest Of A Multipolar Economic World Order
  In Quest Of A Multipolar Economic World Order

  Professor Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar discuss the emerging economic world order which they define not so much as a conflict between nations, but a rivalry between two competing models of the economy.

  The finance capital driven model of the West with a domination of the FIRE sector, versus the mixed economy model represented by China and Russia which seeks to rein in rent seeking, combined with public banking and state funded infrastructure to support market compliant industrial development.

  In Professor Hudson’s view, this model was advocated by classical economists, from Mill, Ricardo, to Henry George; and is largely responsible for the West’s past successes.

  Transcript via The Saker (emphasis ours)

  Ibrahima: [00:00:00] Good morning or good evening, depending on where you are located and welcome to the Henry George School. My name is Ibrahima Drame and I’m the director of education. It’s a great honor to have you with us today for another joint webinar co-organized with the International Union for Land Value Taxation with two great thinkers, Professor Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar to discuss the emerging economic world order.

  I ‘d like to, thank Michael and Pepe for accepting to share their ideas with us my friend Alanna Hartzok co-founder of Earth Rights Institute, who will be moderating the session this morning. So, before I hand it over to Alana, I’d like to ask all attendees to keep muted until we open the Q&A session. And of course, in the meantime, you are free to use the chat and, please do so responsibly. So, Alanna, please go ahead and introduce our speakers.

  Alanna: [00:00:55] Yes. Happy to do so I’m also an administrator for the International Union for Land Value Taxation, and we are on the web@theiu.org. I’m so delighted to have Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar join us once again for “In Quest of a Multipolar World Order”.

  Michael Hudson is an American economist and professor of economics at the university of Missouri, Kansas City and a researcher at the Levi Economics Institute at Bard college. He’s a former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator, and journalist.

  He’s also teaching at the University for Sustainability in Hong Kong. Michael was the author of J is for Junk Economics, Killing the Host, The Bubble and Beyond, Super Imperialism: the Economic Strategy of American Empire. And he has a new edition of that coming up now. Also, Trade Development and Foreign Debt ,and The Myth of Aid, and others.

  Those books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish, and Russian, and they are very popular in China right now, I might add.

  Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is a correspondent editor at large at Asia times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture, Moscow. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East Pepe is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: a Snap of Bagdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to the Empire and the Crescent. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and The Raging Twenties: Great Power Rivalry Meets Techno Feudalism. Pepe is also associated with the Paris based European Academy of geopolitics.

  He does have a new book out, The Raging Twenties, which is a collection of his excellent essays and articles for the several publications, for which he writes. So, when he’s not on the road and covering the New Silk Road, he is living in Sao Paulo, Paris, and most recently in Bangkok. So welcome both of you.

  I must say that, for the chat, if you have questions, viewers, listeners, please ask your questions in the chat. And then we will ask them at the end of the conversation between Pepe and Michael. Thank you. Go right ahead.

  *  *  *

  Pepe Escobar: [00:03:38] Michael you want to start?

  Michael Hudson: [00:03:41] Oh no, I don’t know what to talk about.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:03:44] Come on now you should start. OK, why don’t you start with your last revised chapter for Super Imperialism.

  Michael Hudson: [00:03:51] All right. 50 years ago, I wrote Super Imperialism about how America dominates the world financially, and gets a free ride.

  I wrote it, right after America went off gold in 1971, when the Vietnam war – which was responsible for the entire balance-of-payments deficit – forced the country to go off gold. And everybody at that time worried the dollar was going to go down. There’d be hyperinflation. But what happened was something entirely different.

  Once there was no gold to settle U.S. balance-of-payments deficits, America strong armed its allies to invest in US Treasury bonds, because central banks don’t buy companies. They don’t buy raw materials. All they could buy is other government bonds. So, all of a sudden, the only thing that other people could buy with all the dollars coming in were US Treasury securities. The securities they bought essentially were to finance yet more war making and the balance-of-payments deficit from war and the 800 military bases America has around the world.

  The largest customer – I think we discussed this before – was the Defense Department and the CIA. They looked at it as a how-to-do-it book. That was 50 years ago. What I’ve done is not only re-edit the book and add more information that’s come out, but I’ve summarized how the last 50 years has transformed the world. It’s a new kind of imperialism. There was still a view, 50 years ago, that imperialism was purely economic, in the sense that there’s still a rivalry, for instance, between America and China, or America and Europe and other countries. But I think the world has changed so much in the last 50 years that what we have now is not really so much a conflict between America and China, or America and Russia, but between a financialized economy, run by financial planners allocating resources and government spending and money creation, and an economy run by governments democratic or less democratic, but certainly a mixed economy.

  Everything that made industrial capitalism rich, everything that made America so strong on the 19th century, through its protective tariffs, through its public infrastructure investment all the way down through world war two and the aftermath, was that we had a mixed economy in America. Europe also had a mixed economy, and in fact, every economy since Babylon has had a mixed economy.

  But in America you’ve had something entirely different since 1980. Something that was not foreseen by anybody, because it seemed to be so disruptive: namely, the financial sector saying, “We need liberty – for ourselves, from government.” By “liberty” they meant taking planning and subsidy, economic and tax policy, out of the hands of government and put into the hands of Wall Street. The result was libertarianism as a “free market.” In the form of a centralized economy that is concentrated in the hands of the financial centers – Wall Street, the City of London, the Paris Bourse. What you’re having today is an attempt by the financial sector to take on the role that the landlord class had in Europe, from feudal times through the 19th century. It’s a kind of resurgence of feudalism.

  If you look at the last 200 years of economic theory from Adam Smith and Marx, onward, everybody expected a mixed economy to become more and more productive, and to free itself from the landlords – and also to free itself from banking. The expectation was to make land a public utility, the tax base, and to make finance basically something public. Government would decide who gets the funding. hus, the idea of finance in the public sector was going to be pretty much what it is in China: You create a bank credit in order to finance capital investment in factories. It means the production of machinery, agricultural modernization, transport infrastructure of high-speed trains, ports and all of that.

  But in the United States and England, you have finance becoming something completely different. Banks don’t lend money to build factories. They don’t create money to make means of production. They make money to take over existing assets. Some 80% of bank loans are mortgage loans to transfer the ownership of real estate.

  But of course, that’s what created a middle class in the United States. The middle class was able to buy its own housing. It didn’t have to pay rent to landlords or absentee owners, or to warlords and their descendants as in England and Europe. They could buy their own homes. What nobody realized is that if you borrowed the money to take a mortgage, there’s still an economic rental value. Most of it is no longer paid to the landlords. It’s paid to the banks. And so in America and Europe, the banks now play the role that landlords played a hundred years ago.

  Just as landlords are trying to do everything they could through the House of Lords in England and the upper houses of government in Europe, they’re trying to block any kind of democratic government. The fight really is against government that would do anything that is not controlled by the 1%, and by the banks. Essentially, the merger between Finance, Insurance and Real Estate – the FIRE sector. So, you have a relapse of capitalism in the West back into feudalism, but feudalism with a financialized twist much more than in medieval times.

  The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that we’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let them run everything. Then Americans will lend them the money or buy them out and thus control them financially. China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. The fury in the West is that the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources and foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them, as you are seeing in the Near East, and you’re seeing in Ukraine right now.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:10:40] Well, as an introduction, Michael that was perfect, because now, now we have the overall framework, especially geo-economic and historically, at least for the past 70 years. Let’s put it this way.

  I have a series of questions for you. I was saving one of these for the end, but I think I should start really the Metallica way. Let’s go heavy metal for a start, right? So considering what you describe as a new kind of imperialism, and the fact that this sort of extended free lunch cannot apply anymore because of sovereigns around the world, especially Russia in China. I tried to formulate the idea that there are only three real sovereign powers on the planet, apart from the hegemon: Russia, China and Iran. These three, which happened to be the main hub and the main focus of not only of the New Silk Road but of the Eurasia integration process, are actively working for some sort of change of the rules that predominated for the past 70 years.

  So my first question to you would be, do you see any realistic possibility of a Bretton Woods 2.0, which would imply the end of dollar hegemony as we know it? These petrodollar recyclings, on and on and on, with the very important presence of that oily hacienda in Saudi Arabia. And do you think this is possible considering that president Putin himself only a few days ago reiterated once again that the US is no longer agreement-capable. That destroys already the possibility of the emergence of the new rules of the game, but do you think this is still realistically possible?

  Michael Hudson: [00:12:47] I certainly do not see any repetition of a Bretton Woods because as I described in Super Imperialism, Bretton Woods was designed to make American control over Britain over Europe total. Bretton Woods was a US-centered system to prevent England from maintaining its empire. That was okay. It also was to prevent France from maintaining its empire, and for America to take over the Sterling Area. The World Bank was to prevent other countries from becoming independent and feeding themselves, to make sure that they supported plantation agriculture, not land reform. The one single fight of the World Bank was to prevent land reform and to make sure that America and other foreign investors would take over the agriculture of these countries.

  Very often people think of capitalism, certainly in the sense that Marx described in Volume One, as being limited to the exploitation of wage labor by employers. But capitalism also is an appropriation of the land rent, the agricultural rent, the natural-resource rent, the oil and mineral rent. The idea of Bretton Woods was to make sure that other countries could not impose capital controls to prevent American finance coming in and appropriating their resources. The aim was to make the loans to governments so that they would not create their own money to promote their own social development, but would have to borrow from the World Bank and the IMF. That essentially meant borrowing from the Pentagon and the State Department in U S dollars. They would dollarize their economies and the economic surplus would all be sucked abroad. The economic rents from oil, agriculture and mining would all be sucked into the United States.

  That kind of Bretton Woods cannot be done again. Since Bretton Woods was an idea of centralizing the world’s economic surplus in a single country, the United States, no, that can never be done again.

  What is happening? You mentioned the world of a free lunch That’s was the theme of my Super Imperialism: When America issues dollars, and these end up in central banks, what can these banks do with them? All they really can do is lend them back to the United States Government. So America got a financial free lunch. It can spend and spend on its military, or bump up corporate takeovers of other countries. The dollars have gone out, but foreign countries can’t cash them in for gold. They have nothing to cash them into. All they can do is finance the U S budget deficit by buying more and more Treasury IOUs. These are the liabilities side of the balance sheet of foreign military bases and related operations.

  What’s is ironic now is what has happened in the last few years in the fight against Russia and China. America has killed the free lunch. It said, okay, now we’re going to have sanctions against Russia and China. We’re going to grab whatever money you have in foreign banks, like we grabbed Venezuela’s money. We’re going to excommunicate you from the SWIFT bank clearing system. So, you can’t use banking. We’re going to put sanctions against banks that deal with you.

  So Russia and China have seen that they can’t deal with dollars anymore, because the United States just unilaterally rejected their use by any country that does not follow its military and financial diplomacy. If countries do have dollars as reserves and lend them back to the United States, it’s going to spend them on building more military bases around Russia and China, to make them waste their money on military defense spending. So, America itself has ended the free lunch, by the way in which it’s fighting against China and Russia.

  And now Russia and China, as you pointed out, are de-dollarizing. They’re trading in each other’s currency. They’re doing the opposite of what Bretton Woods tried to create. They’re inspiring monetary independence from the United States. Bretton Woods sponsors dependence on the United States, a centralized system dependent ultimately on Wall Street financial planners. What China and Russia are trying to create is an economy that’s not run by the financial sector, but run by, industrial and economic engineering principles.

  At issue is what kind of an economy we need in order to raise living standards and, wages and self-sufficiency and preserve the environment. What is needed for the ideal world that we want? Well, for starters you’re going to need a lot of infrastructure. In America and Britain, infrastructure has been privatized. It has to make a profit. And railroads or electric utilities, as you’ve just seen in Texas, are natural monopolies. For 5,000 years, infrastructure in Europe, the Near East and Asia was kept in the public domain. If you give it to private owners, they’ll charge a monopoly rent.

  China’s idea is to provide the educational system freely, and let everybody try to get an education. In America, to get an education you have to go into debt for between $50,000 and $200,000. Most of whatever you make is going to be paid the creditor. But in China, if you give free education, the money that students earn will be spent into the economy, buying the goods and services that they produce. So the economy will be expanding, not shrinking, not being sucked up into the banks that are financing the education. The same avoidance of privatized financialized or monopolized rent-seeking applies to the railroads, and also to healthcare.

  If you provide healthcare freely then employers do not have to pay for it. In the United States, if companies and their employees have to pay for healthcare, this means that employees have to be paid a much higher wage in order to afford the healthcare. They also have to be paid more in order to afford the privatized transportation that gets them work, or auto loans in order to drive to work. Such costs are free or at least subsidized in other countries. Their governments can create their own credit. But in the United States and Europe, governments feel that they have to borrow from the wealthy and pay interest. China’s government doesn’t need to borrow from a wealthy bondholding class. It can simply print the money. That’s Modern Monetary Theory. As Donald Trump has explained in the United States, we can print whatever we want. Dick Cheney said that deficits don’t matter, because we can just print what we need to invade Iraq or bomb Libya. And of course, Stephanie Kelton and my other colleagues in MMT at Kansas City for many years have been saying that.

  The banks fear this because they see that Modern Monetary Theory no longer gives them control. They want the rich One Percent to be able to have a choke point on the economy, so that that people cannot survive without borrowing and paying interest. They want to control the choke points to extract economic rent. So you have the West turning into a rent-extractive economy, a rent-seeking economy. The ideal of Russia, China, and other countries is that not only of Mar, but also of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and even Ricardo in the sense that the aim of classical economics was to free economies from economic rent. The American economy is all about extracting rent through the real estate sector, the financial sector, the health insurance sector, monopolies and the infrastructure sector.

  The US economy has been Thatcherized and Reaganized. The result is a fight of rentier economic systems against China and Russia. So it’s not simply a fight between who makes the best computer chips and the best iPhones. It’s over whether we are going to have a fallback of civilization back into feudalism, back into control by a narrow class at the top of the economy – the 1% – or are we going to have democratic industrialization? That used to be called socialism, but it also was called capitalism. Industrial capitalism was evolving toward socialism. It was socialized medicine, socialized infrastructure, socialized schooling. So, the fight against socialism is also a fight against what made industrial capitalism so successful in the United States and Germany.

  What you’re seeing now is a fight for what direction civilization will follow. You can’t have a Bretton Woods for a single worldwide organization, because the United States would never join what it can’t control. The United States accuses a country trying to make its labor force prosperous, educated and healthy instead of sick with shorter lifespans of being communist or socialist. That means independent of the U.S. financialized “Free World” austerity economics.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:21:40] Well, you put it very starkly. The opposition between two completely different systems, what the Chinese are proposing, including, from productive capitalism to trade and investment all across Eurasia and beyond, including Africa and parts of Latin America as well. Recognizing the rentier obsession of the 0.01% that controls the U S financial system, in terms of facts on the ground: Are we going slowly but surely and ominously toward an absolute divorce of a system based on rentier ultra-financialization, which is the American system, not productive capitalism at all?

  I was going through a small list of what the U S exports. It’s not long, as you know. Agricultural products, always privileging US farmers. Hollywood? We are all hostages of Hollywood all over the world. Pop culture? That’s not the pop culture that used to be absolutely impregnable and omniscient during the sixties, the seventies, during the Madonna, Michael Jackson era and in the eighties? Infotech? And that’s where a big bet comes in. This is maybe the most important American export at the moment, because American big tech controls social networks all over the planet.

  Big pharma? Now we see the power of big pharma with the whole COVID operations, right? But Boeing prefers to invest in financial engineering instead of building decent products. Right? So, in terms of being a major superpower, the hyper power, that’s not much. Obviously, buyers all over the world already noticed that. So, what is China proposing in terms of the New Silk Road? It is a foreign policy strategy, a trade investment and sustainable development strategy applied not only to the whole of Eurasia, but beyond Eurasia to grow a great deal of the global South. That’s why we have global South partners to the New Silk Road. 130 and counting as we speak. Right?

  So, the dichotomy could not be clearer. What will the 0.0 0.1% do? They don’t have anything seductive to sell. To all those nations in the global South to start with; the new version of the non-aligned movement, the countries that are already part of New Silk Road projects. We could see this by the end of last year when the China European union agreement was more or less sealed. It’s probably going to be sealed in 2021 for good.

  At the same time, we had the Regional, Economic and Comprehensive Partnership at the ASEAN 10, my neighbors here, the Association of South East Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. So, when you have the China -EU deal, and when you have R C E P, you have China as the number one trade partner on the planet, no competition whatsoever.

  Every one of these players wants to do business with China. They’re privileging doing business with China to doing business with US, especially with a country that once again, according to President Putin is non-agreement-capable. So, Michael, what is your key economic view of the next steps? Are we going toward the divorce of the American financialization system and the Eurasia-and-beyond integration system?

  Michael Hudson: [00:25:51] Well, you you’ve made the whole point clear. There is a basic incompatibility between a rentier society controlled by the finance and real estate interests – and military interests – and an industrial democracy. For industry in England and Europe in the 19th century, the fight for democratic reform was to increase the role of the House of Commons against the House of Lords in England and other lower housse in Europe was a fight to get labor on the side of industry to get rid of the landlord class. And it was expected that once you had capitalism free of the landlord class, free of something that wasn’t really industrial capitalism at all (it was a carry-over from feudalism), you wouldn’t have this overhead of the idle 1%, only consuming resources and going to war.

  World War I changed all that. Already in the late 19th century the landlords and the banks fought back. They fought back largely through the Austrian School of individualism and the English marginalists, and they euphemized it as free markets. That slogan meant giving power to the monopolists, to the oppressors, to violence. A free market was where armies can come in, take over your country, impose a client dictatorship like Pinochet in Chile or the neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Americans call that a free market. The Free World was a world centrally planned by the American military and finance. So, it’s Orwellian double-think. The dynamic of this world is shrinking because it’s polarizing. You’ve seen with the COVID pandemic in the United States, the economy has polarized much more sharply between the 1%, the 10% and the rest of the economy.

  Well, as opposed to that, you have economies that are not run by a rentier class, and that do not have a banking class and landlord class controlling the economy. The kind of arrangement that you had in Germany in the late 19th century: government, industry and labor coordinated. The question was how to provide the financing for industry so that banks can provide not only industrial capital formation, but public funding to build infrastructure and uplift the population.

  China is doing just what made America rich in the 19th century, and what made Germany rich. It’s the same logic of industrial engineering. This plan is based on economic expansion, environmental preservation and economic balance instead of concentration, so this is going to be a growing economy. So, you’re having a growing economy outside of the United States and a shrinking economy in the States and its satellites in Europe.

  Europe had a choice: Either it could shrink and be an American satellite economy, or it could join the growth. Europe has decided unanimously to forego growth and become a set of client oligarchies and kleptocracies. It is willing to let its financial sector take over just as in America. That’s a “free market,” because I’m told by American officials that they can just buy the European politicians, they’re bribable. Being up for sale is what a free political market means. That’s why when President Putin says that America and Europe are not agreement-capable, it means they’re just in it for the money. There’s no ideology there. There is no idea of overall social benefit. The system is based on how to get rich, and you can get rich by being bribed. That’s why you go into politics. As you can tell in America with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling saying that politics can be personally financed.

  So, you’re having two incompatible systems. They’re on different trajectories. If you have a system that is shrinking like the West and growing in the East, you have resentment. People who obtain their wealth in crooked ways, or without working, by inheritance or by crime, by exploitation, they will fight like anything to keep that. People who actually create wealth – labor and capital – they’re not willing to fight. They just want to be creative. So you have a destructive military force in the West, and basically a productive economic growth force in Eurasia. The clash now is occurring largely in Ukraine. You’re having the United States back the neo-Nazis.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:30:40] The old Nazi movement!

  Michael Hudson: [00:30:41] Yes. It’s the same swastika carrying group that threatened Russia in World War II. This is like waving a red flag before a bull. Putin continues to remind the Russians of what happened with the 22 million that died, in World War II. He said that Russia was not going to let it happen again.

  You can be certain that Russia is not going to be sucked into invading Ukraine. The United States has its military advisors that the Vineyard of the Saker has a very good report on. America’s trying to needle Russia into fighting back against the terrorist groups, but Russia has no desire at all to do that. There’s nothing that Russia has to gain by taking it over. It’s essentially a bankrupt country.

  The United States is trying to provoke a response so that it can accuse Russia of attacking the West. The result will probably be that Russia will simply provide arms to the Eastern Ukrainians to fight back the invasion. You’re going to have a wasteland in Western Ukraine and Poland. This wasteland may be the new buffer state between Europe and Russia. Already you have maybe 10% of Ukrainians having moved to Russia and the East, the other 10% are now plumbers in England and Europe. They’re in flight, and they’re beginning to look like Latvia and other neoliberalized countries. If you want to see their future, look at Latvia, Estonia and Greece. That’s the American plan. Essentially, an emigration of skilled labor, a sharp reduction of living standards, a 20% decline in population. Although it may appear to have more income, all this income and GDP is essentially interest collection and rents paid to the FIRE sector – as if these payments were for “real product.”

  All the American GDP growth is essentially payment to the banks, to the landlords and the monopolists. The population and employees are not sharing in the GDP growth. It’s concentrated at the top. High finance is like the Roman Empire: “They make a desert, and call it growth.”

  Rome was a predatory economy held by military force that ultimately collapsed, and America is on the same trajectory as Rome. And its managers know this. I have spoken to American policymakers and they say, “We’re going to be dead by then. It doesn’t matter if the West loses. I’m going to get rich. I’m going to buy a, farm in New Zealand and make a big bomb shelter there and live underground,” like a cave dweller. The financial time frame, the predatory rentier timeframe, is short-term. The Eurasian time frame is long-term. So you’ve got the short term burning what wealth it has, as opposed to the longer term building it up.

  What you can see in the COVID bill that President Biden just got passed in the Senate. They call it a stimulus bill, but if you’re starving, if you haven’t been able to pay your rent, if you’re six months behind in your rent and you get enough money to pay the landlord, at least one month back rent, that’s not a stimulus, that’s survival. And it’s a one-time payment. This kind of “stimulus” checks that America’s sending out are sent out every month in Germany and parts of Europe. The whole idea in Europe is, “Okay, you have a pandemic, you have business interrupted. We’re going to proclaim a pause: You don’t pay the rent, but the landlords are not going to pay the banks. And the banks are not going to be in arrears. We’re just going to have a pause so that when it’s all over and cure people, we’ll go back to normal.” Well, China and Russia are already pretty much there and where you are, in Thailand, already back to normal.

  They don’t have an abnormal thing, but America has pushed anybody who’s renting or who’s bought a house on mortgage credit, or who has credit-card debt or personal debt or automobile debt – they’re way behind. These stimulus checks are just being used to pay the banks and the landlords not to not to buy more goods and services. All they’re trying to do is to get out of the hole that they’ve been dug into in the last 12 months. That’s not a stimulus. That’s a partial, desperation payment.

  This problem never existed, in other civilizations. You have the whole tradition of the ancient Near East. That’s what my book “… and Forgive them their Debts” is all about. The whole idea is that when there is an economic interruption, you don’t leave people in debt. You wipe out the arrears that have mounted up. You simply wipe out the tax arrears, the rent arrears and other payment arrears.

  So once the crisis is over, you can start from a normal position again. But there’s no normalization in America. You’re starting from a position, even more behind financially than when you went in. The foreign economies of China and Russia don’t have a backlog of arrears as a deficit. So, the West is beginning with 99% of its population deeper into debt to the 1%. That polarization between the 1% and the 99% doesn’t exist in China. And in Russia, Putin is trying to minimize it, given the legacy of the kleptocracy that the neoliberals put in. He’s still trying to deal with that, but you really have a difference in economic systems and the direction in which these systems are moving.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:36:27] I’m really glad that you brought up Ukraine, Michael, because US foreign policy – even, before Trump, and now with the new Biden-Harris administration – basically boils down to sanctions, sanctions, sanctions – as we know, provocations, which is what they’re doing to Greece and certainly in Syria. They already did that with bombing a few days ago.

  In the case of Ukraine and Donbass, it’s absolutely crazy, because NATO so-called strategists, when you talk to them in Brussels, they know very well that each state or whatever they weaponize and financialize to profit Kiev to mount some sort of offensive against the Donbass. Even if they would have like 300,000 soldiers, like 30,000 in Donbass. If the Russians see that this is going to get really heavy, if they intervene directly with their bombing, with their super missiles, they can finish this story in one day. And if they want, they could finish the whole story, including invading Ukraine in three days, like they did in 2008 with Georgia, and still keep the provocations loosely acted on by people from inside the Pentagon. So we have sanctions, we have nonstop provocations, and we have also a sort of fifth column, elements inside or at the top of government. I would love to have your personal analysis on the role of super Mario “Goldman-Sachs” Draghi, now in Italy, which is something I had been discussing with my Italian friends. There’s more or less a consensus among very well informed, independent Italian analysts that Draghi may be the perfect Trojan horse to accelerate the destruction of the Italian state. That will accelerate the globalist project of the European union, which is absolutely non-state centric. That is also part of the great reset. So, if you could briefly talk to us about the role of Super Mario at the moment.

  Michael Hudson: [00:38:55] Well, Italy is a very good example to look at. When you have a country that needs infrastructure and public, social democratic spending, you need a government to create the credit. But when Americans – and specifically the University of Chicago free-market lobbyists – created the Eurozone financial system, their premise was that governments should not create money. Only banks should be allowed to do that, for the benefit of their stock and bond holders. So, no European governments can run a budget deficit large enough to cope with the coronavirus or with the problems that have been plaguing Italy for a decade. They can’t create their money to revive employment, to revive infrastructure or to revive the economy.

  The European central bank only lends to other central banks. It’s created trillions of euros just to buy stocks and bonds, not to spend into the economy, not to hire labor, not to build infrastructure, but just to save the holders of the stocks and bonds from losing money from falling asset prices. That makes 1% or 5% of the population richer. So in practice, the function of the European Central Bank is to create money only for the purpose of saving the wealthiest 5% from losses on their stocks and bonds.

  The cost of this limitation is to impoverish the economy and to basically make it looking like Greece, which was a dress rehearsal for how the Eurozone was going to reduce Europe to debt dependency. Under feudalism, everybody had to have access to the land by becoming a serf. Well now you’re in debt peonage, modern, finance capitalism’s version of serfdom.

  So, Italy says, “We’re going to need government spending. We’re going to need to do in our way what China’s doing in its way, and what Russia is doing in its way. We’re going to have some kind of government program. We can’t just let the economy be impoverished simply because the University of Chicago has designed a plan for Europe to prevent the Euro from being a rival to the dollar. If there’s no European Central Bank to pump euros into the world economy, then only dollars will be left for central bank reserves.

  The United States doesn’t ever want a rival. It wants satellites. That’s what it’s basically turned Europe into. I don’t see any response outside of Italy for an attempt to say they can’t be a part of this system and so should withdraw from the Eurozone. When I was in Greece years ago, we all thought it might join with Italy, Portugal and Ireland and say that the system wasn’t working. But everybody else said no, no, the Americans will just simply get us out of office one way or another. And in Italy, of course, if you look at what happened after World War II, the great threat was Italian communism. You had the Americans essentially say, “Well, we know the answer to communism. It’s fascism,” and you saw them buying politicians. They did every dirty trick in the book in order to fight any left wing group in Italy, just as they did in Yugoslavia, and just as they did in Greece. They wiped out the partisans, all the leading anti-Nazi groups from Greece to Italy to elsewhere. All of a sudden, they were all either assassinated or moved out of office – and replaced by the very people that America had been fighting against during World War II.

  Well, now Italy is finally coming to terms with this and trying to fight back. You’re having what’s happening there, between Northern Italy and Southern Italy, the same splits as in other countries.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:42:53] Yeah. Well, I’m going to bring up, perhaps an even more extreme case now Michael, which is the case of Brazil, which at the moment is in the middle of an absolutely out of this world mix of telenovela and Kabuki theater that even for most Brazilians, is absolutely incomprehensible, because it’s like a fragmentation bomb exploding over and over again, a Groundhog Day of fragmentation bombs.

  In fact, it’s completely crazy. Lula is back in the picture as well. We still don’t know how the guys who run the show, the Brazilian military, are going to deal with him. I bring up this case because it’s happened in the past 48 hours. It has convulsed Brazil completely, and large parts of Latin America, because it is a telenovela with one cliffhanger after another, sometimes in a matter of minutes. But it encompasses all the basic themes of what really interests the 0.01%, which we can identify as a class war against labor, which is the system in Brazil since the coup against Dilma. A war against mixed economies, economic sovereignty, which is something that the masters of the universe of the 0.01% cannot wage against Russia in China. But that was very successfully waged against Brazil and implemented in Brazil. In fact, in a matter of two years they completely devastated the country in every possible sense, industrially, sociologically, you name it…

  And of course, because the main objective is something that you keep stressing over and over again: unipolar rentier dominance. So, Brazil, I would say is the extreme case not only in the global South, but in planetary terms. Let’s say, the last frontier of the rentier economy is when you manage to capture a country that was slowly emerging as a leader in the global South, an economic leader. Don’t forget that a few years ago Brazil was the sixth largest economy in the world, and on the way to become the fifth. Now it’s the 12th, falling down nonstop and controlled by a mafia. That includes, not by accident, a Chicago boy Pinochetista minister Paulo Guedes, who is implementing in the 21st century something that was implemented in Chile in the seventies and in the eighties. They were successful. Apparently, at least so far, Brazil is so disorganized as a nation, so shattered so fragmented and atomized as a nation that basically it depends on the re-emergence of a single political leader

  In this case it is Lula, to try to rebuild the nation from scratch. Even in a position where he cannot control the game, he can interfere in the game, which is what happened 24 hours ago when he gave a larger-than-life press conference, mixed with a re-presentation of himself as a statesman. He said, look, the whole thing is shattered, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. But still, he cannot confront the real masters of the universe that have allowed this to happen in the first place.

  So just to give an example to many of you who are not familiar with some details of the Brazilian case, it involves directly the Obama-Biden scheme or the Obama-Biden larger operation. When Biden was vice president in 2013, in May he visited Brazil for three days and he met with president Dilma. They discussed very touchy subjects, including the most important one: the absolutely enormous, pre-salt oil reserves. Obviously, the Americans wanted to be part of the whole thing, not by accident. You know what happened one week later: the start of the Brazilian color revolution, and this thing kept rolling and rolling and rolling.

  We got to the coup against Dilma in 2016, we got to the carwash operation landing Lula in jail. And we got to the election of Bolsanaro. And now we are in a place where even if the military control the whole process, even Bolsanaro is becoming bad for business. But will he become bad for the rentier class business, for the 0.01% in the US that has all the connections in their new, large neo-colony in the tropics, which has enormous strategic value, not to mention unforeseen wealth resources? So, this is an extreme case, and I know that you follow Brazil relatively closely. So, your geo-economic and geopolitical input on the running telenovela I think would be priceless for all of us.

  Michael Hudson: [00:48:50] Well, this problem goes back 60 years. In 1965 João Goulart, the former president of Brazil, came to New York and we met with each other. He explained to me how the U.S.-backed military got rid of him in 1964 because he wasn’t representing the banking class. He said that they built Brasilia, just in order to be apart from the big industrial cities and their constituencies. They wanted to prevent industry and the democracy and the population from controlling the government.

  So, they built Brasilia. He said, “Maybe they’ll use it as an atom bomb site. It certainly doesn’t have economic value.” Well, fast forward, in 1982, after Mexico defaulted on its foreign debt in 1972, nobody would invest in Latin America. And by 1990, Brazil was paying 45% interest per year to borrow the dollars to be able to finance its deficit, which is mainly flight capital by the wealthy. Well, I think I’d mentioned before here, I was hired by Scudder Stevens and Clark to create the first Sovereign Debt bond fund. Brazil and also Argentina were paying 45%. Just imagine that. That’s a fortune every year. No American would buy it, no European would buy it. Who bought it? The Brazilians and the Argentineans bought it. They’re the government, they’re the central bankers. They’re the president’s family. They’re the 1% – the only people that would hold Brazil’s dollar debt. So when Brazil pays its foreign Yankee Dollar debt, it’s paying its own 1% who are holding it offshore, for instance in the Dutch West Indies where the fund was located for tax-avoidance purposes. They pretend to be American imperialists, but actually are local imperialists.

  Toward the end of Lula’s rule the Brazilian Council of Economic Advisors brought Jamie Galbraith, Randy Wray and me down for a discussion. They were worried because Lula, in order to get elected, had to meet with the banks and agree to give them what they wanted. The banks told him “We can see that you have the power to be elected. We don’t want to have to fight you in dirty ways. We will let you be elected, but you’re going to have to support the policies, certainly the financial policies that we want.” Lula made a kind of a devil’s agreement with them because he didn’t want to be killed, and they were willing to do some good things.

  So, he was sort of a Bernie Sanders type character. Okay, you have to go along with a really bad system in order to get something good done, because Brazil really needs something good done. Well, the fact is that the financial groups couldn’t take even the little bit he did, because one of the characteristics of financial wealth is to be addictive. It’s not like diminishing marginal utility. If you give more food to an employee or to a worker at the end of the meal, you’re satiated, you don’t want much more. If you give enough money, they buy a few luxuries and then, okay, they save it. But if you give more money to a billionaire they want even more, and they grow even more desperate. It’s like a cocaine addict. The Brazilian ruling class wanted it so desperately that they framed up and controlled the utterly corrupt judiciary. The judiciary in Brazil is almost as corrupt as it is in New York city

  Pepe Escobar: More, even more.

  Michael Hudson: They frame them up and they want totalitarian control. And that is what a free market is: Totalitarian control by the financial class. It’s freedom for the financial class to do what they want to the rest of the economy. That’s libertarianism. It’s a free market, it’s Austrian economics. It’s the right wing’s fight against government. It’s a fight against any government strong enough to resist the financial and real estate interests. Brazil is merely the most devastating example of this, because it takes such a racial turn there. Brazilians want to make a fortune tearing down the Amazon, cutting up the Amazon, selling the lumber to China, turning the Amazon into soya production to sell to China. But for that, you have to exterminate the indigenous population that wants to use the land to feed itself. So you see the kind of race war and ethnic war that you have, not to mention the war against the blacks in the Brazilian slums that Lula tried so much to overcome.

  So you have a resumption of the ethnic war there. On Wall Street I had discussions with money managers back in 1990. They saw it as a lnog=term burden, and wondered whether that’s going to be a model for what’s happening in the United States with the ethnic war here.

  Essentially, it’s a tragedy what’s happening in Brazil, but it’s pretty much what happened in Chile under Pinochet, which is why they have the Pinochetista and the Chicago boys that you mentioned.

  Pepe Escobar: [00:54:07] Absolutely. Coming back to China, Michael, what we had a few days ago, they are still discussing it. It goes on until the 15th of March, the approval of the five-year plan, which is not actually the five-year plan. It’s actually three five-year plans in one, because they are already planning for 2035, which is something absolutely unimaginable anywhere in the West. Right? So, it’s a different strategy: productive investment, expansion of social welfare and solidifying it with technological improvements. I would say by 2025, China would be very close to the same infotech level of the US, which is part of the Made in China 2025 policy, which is fantastic. They stopped talking about it, but they are still implementing the technological drive in all those standard areas that they had codified a few years ago. And I found this notion particularly fascinating, because it is on one sense socialism with some Confucianist elements, but it’s also very Daoist. The dual development strategy, which is an inversion and expansion of domestic investment and consumption, balancing all the time with projects across Eurasia. Not only affiliated with the Belt and Road, with the New Silk Road, but all other projects as well. So, when you have a leadership that is capable of planning with this scope, amplitude, breadth and reach, compare that to the money managers in the West, whose planning goes not even quarterly in many cases, but just for 24 hours.

  So our dichotomy between rentier capitalism, financialization, industrial capitalism or whatever we want to call it, and state planning with the view of social benefit, is even starker. I’m not saying that the Chinese system can be exported to the rest of the world, but I’m sure that all across the global South people are looking at Chinese policies, how they are planning long-term, how they are always fine tuning, and what they develop and discuss.

  For instance, this week there were over 3000 recommendations coming from different counties and villages and regions and local leaders, et cetera. Some of them are incorporated into the five-year plan as well. So this, as you said in the beginning, is a frontal shock of two systems. Sooner or later we’re going to have the bulk of the global South, including nations that nowadays are still American vassals or satrapies or puppets or poodles. They’re going to see which way the wind was blowing. Right?

  Michael Hudson: [00:57:27] Why can’t the Chinese system be exported to the West? That’s a good question. Let’s suppose how would you make American industry able to follow the same productive path that China did. Well, for one thing, the biggest element in workers budget today is housing: 40%. There was one way to get rid of the high housing prices that essentially are whatever a bank will lend. The banks lend essentially the economic rent. There’s a very simple way to keep housing prices down: Tax the land rent. Use the tax system not to tax labor, because that increases the cost of labor, and not tax industrial capital, but tax the land, the real estate and the banks.

  Well, suppose you were to lower the price of housing in America from 40% to 10% like China. This is the big element in the cost-structure difference. Well, if people only had to pay 10% of their income for housing, then all the banks would go under, because 80% of the bank loans are mortgage loans.

  The function of housing in a financialized economy is to force new buyers and renters into debt to the banks, so that the banks end up with all of the lend rent that the landlord class used to get. That’s their business plan. This is what’s preventing America from being like China.

  What if America would try to develop a high-speed railroad like China? Well, then you need the right of way. You’d need to you have to have the railroads go in a straight line. As we’ve mentioned before, they need a right of way, which it doesn’t have because that would conflict with private property and most of the right of way is a very expensive real estate. So, you can’t have high-speed rail in the United States, like in China.

  Suppose you would have a low-cost public education. well then, you get rid of the whole means of siphoning off labor’s income to pay for education loans. Suppose you had public healthcare, and prevent Americans from getting sick like they do in, China and Thailand, where, where you are. In that case the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be able to make their interest and dividend payments. So, you could not have America adopt a China-type industrial program without what would be really a revolution against the legacy of monopoly of a private banking, of finance and all the fortunes that have been built up financially in the last 40 years, since 1980.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:00:22] So, what’s going to happen in the short to mid-term in the US, Michael? We are seeing the corrosion of the whole system, not only externally in terms of foreign policy and the end of the free lunch, but internally with those 17 million plus deplorables being literally canceled from public debate, from the impoverishment of the middle classes, with over 50 million people in America, which are becoming literally poor. Obviously the American dream ended a few decades ago, but now that it’s not even a glimpse that there could be a renewal of the American dream. So we have a larva of civil war situation degrading on a daily basis. What’s the end game? What exactly does Wall Street, the American ruling class, the guys who have lunches at the Harvard club – what do they ultimately want?

  Michael Hudson: [01:01:31] Well, what you call a disaster for the economy is a Bonanza for the 1%. This is a victory for finance. You look at it as a collapse of industrial capitalism. I look at it as the victory of rentier finance capitalism. You’re having probably 10 million Americans that are going to be thrown out of their apartments and their homes in June, when the moratorium on rents and mortgages ends. You’re going to have a vast increase in the homeless population. That will probably represent an increase in people who use the subways. Where else are they going to live? A large number of private capital firms have been created in the last year of wealth accumulation. They’re looking forward to great opportunities to pick up real estate at bargain prices, for the commercial real estate that’s broke, and all the buildings and restaurants that have to be sold because they can’t meet their mortgage payments or rents, all the houses that are going under. Private capital can come in and do what was done after the Obama evictions.

  Private capital can do what Blackstone did. It can buy them out for pennies on the dollar. So they’re looking at their own 20-year plan. Their 20-year plan is to grab everything!

  Pepe Escobar: [01:02:51] What’s going to happen with the surplus population Michael, we’re talking about tens of millions of people. It reminds me of those, the projection of those World Bank projections in the early 1980s, when the World Bank projected that the global economy could actually work with only 20% of the global population implying that 80% of the global population was expendable. Are we watching this happening in the West in the next few months and years?

  Michael Hudson: [01:03:22] It’s being compressed into a very short time frame. I heard this from the Club of Rome back in the 1970s when I was with the United Nations UNITAR. Their idea was that the world had too much population and needed to cut it back. It was a giant austerity plan. That was what really spurred Liberation Theology. The Catholic Church saw that cutting the population meant vast birth control. At a Chase Manhattan meeting I talked to the former head of the World Bank, John McCloy, who was also the chairman of Chase Manhattan. I asked him what he thought about Robert McNamara and his population control. And he said, “He just wants to stuff it up women. He doesn’t care if they get sick.” McCloy added, “He’s not a Wall Street boy.” I could see that he was appalled by it, but I wouldn’t use his words for the record, because he used little more vulgar language for just where McNamara was trying to stuff up the population control.

  Liberation theology was backed by the Catholic church advocating land reform to feed the population if we’re not going to cut it back. Well, of course the result was that America defined a free market as being when its Special Forces go in and shoot the nuns after raping them. They killed liberation theologists. They killed indigenous leaders. They recognized that you can’t have a free market Chicago-style without being able to kill everybody who disagrees with you and who thinks that the market is for the people, not for the 1%. In my talks with the Catholic Church, I mean, it’s sort of hilarious given my background, which is not exactly religious. But I was working very closely with them at that time, because they were the only ones with an economic plan for how you can avoid this population collapse. The wealthy elite only need a few people. This was before mechanization, already in the 1970s. So, there was this idea that there were too many poor people that don’t make enough money for the rich people. We’ve got to get rid of them.

  Many liberals supported them. Bob Heilbroner at the New School criticized me for working with some Liberation Theologists. It was the Catholic Church that published my first book, and articles. So, what you’re seeing today is an almost cosmic inversion of everything that people wanted until about the last century. Every country wanted more population. The idea was that population was the source of an army. It was a workforce to produce more goods and services. But now in the West, a population is who you want to get rid of. All you need is an economy that only has a few people and the rich. China, Russia, and Asia want to use the population and essentially, how to enrich the population so we can all have a world of prosperity and leisure.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:06:12] Absolutely. I’m glad that you brought up Russia and China, because they are not on board. They diplomatically made it very clear that they are not on board for the great reset. Herr Schwab’s absolutely ominous idea and concept, which is supported by the IMF, by the World Bank, by Prince Charles, by big multinational corporations, et cetera. It’s very crazy, because eugenicist ideas are at the heart of the great reset. We’re not only talking about that strange character, Bill Gates; it goes much deeper than that. It’s eugenicist ideas in terms of culling of population by all means necessary. So, we are back to the same scenario that you were discussing decades ago.

  Alanna: [01:07:06] Michael, when you said importantly that we could get the cost of housing down from 40% of income in the United States, can you give more detail on what people can do?

  Michael Hudson: [01:07:22] The problem is what we can do without a revolution. In the United States you have Ms. Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress having a new voting law that tries to prevent any third party from being developed in the United States. So there can only be one party, the duopoly between the Republicans and the Democrats. You can’t have a Green Party. That’s being essentially ruled out. You can’t have any political alternative and you cannot have a parliamentary system like you have in Europe’s representative voting. The only choice you have is what flavor of oligarchy you want. You can have a Republican white oligarchy, or a mixed identity politics Democratic party, but none of this identity can have to deal with wage-earners, debtors or renters. So there’s very little, that they can do. If you need housing, you don’t have an alternative. You rent or go into debt to a bank to outbid other people who are trying buy the house, and the house is worth however much a bank will lend.

  The Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with such low-interest credit that banks are able to lend more and more against housing. There’s been a huge increase in mortgage refinancing here. People have been able to get through the pandemic by borrowing more money against houses whose market value is rising, because banks are lending so much more debt to equity. So, what people think is making them rich is the housing that’s going up in price. Well, it’s actually the debt that has been going up. They think that they’ve been getting rich, but they’ve been more and more having to go into debt as a condition to get housing, just as they have to go into debt as a condition for getting an education and getting a job, or to get a car to drive to the job, or just to break even and feed themselves.

  So unless people have an idea that there is an alternative, they’re not going to be able to create a political movement to create one. And in the United States, if you study economics you’re only taught University of Chicago neoliberal mainstream economics. There’s no more history of economic thought, so you don’t read Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill or Marx. There’s no economic history. So, you don’t know what’s the fight against feudalism was all about. You don’t have an idea that there’s an alternative. As Margaret Thatcher said, There Is No Alternative.

  Well, of course there’s an alternative, but if people don’t know that there’s an alternative, they’re going to fall for this line, that there’s no alternative to the “free market” controlled by the 1% – freedom only for the 1% and debt peonage for the 99%. Unless they know that, I don’t have much hope that the people here can do very much at all.

  Alanna: [01:10:26] So Michael, what about one city that it’s desperate that could be educated, that there is an alternative with clarity about a land value tax system and a public bank. For instance, the city of Baltimore that desperately needs a new economy. Can you give us some hope that we could focus on a city level and begin building a template for how cities and like Sao Paulo where Pepe is born from the cities that desperately need change? Michael, can you give us some sort of template?

  We know the federal government is hopeless for us now for we, the people. Texas is having a vote to form the Republic of Texas to secede to have a beginning conversation. There are other growing secessionist movements in the United States. Could we imagine that there could be an implosion away from centralized control to the us to a regional and city level. Michael, give us some hope.

  Michael Hudson: [01:11:30] I can’t give you hope. I am all in favor of public banking and I’m on Ellen Brown’s board of directors for her group. However, supposing you had a public bank in Baltimore and the public bank said, we want to provide credit for Baltimore people to be able to afford homes. They would still have to out create enough credit and enough debt to outbid what commercial banks are lending other people that want to buy houses there. So, you can’t have an Island of efficiency and public banking in a system that basically is still financialized. The problem is systemic.

  It goes to the courts. You talk about seceding. Then of course it’s possible. And people in Texas were talking about seceding in the 1840s when it was largely a German population. There were more publishers publishing German language books in Texas than there were English language books. But now, I think the way Texans think, if they were to succeed it is not going to be along the lines of public banking that you want . It would be a private bank owned by the oil companies that calls itself, a public bank. We’re in a world of Orwellian rhetoric.

  What can the Americans do? They already have voted. We have democracy, they’ve voted for what they wanted to do. What did they vote for? They want shorter lifespans, lower wages, less education and less public services. Their choice is to get these things by a Democrat or by a Republican. But that’s the only choice they have. Other countries have a choice to emigrate, as the Ukrainians and the Greeks and Latvians have done. But I have no idea where Americans can emigrate to.

  Alanna: [01:13:21] Perhaps they could emigrate to some of Bill Gates, who now owns more agricultural land. He’s a top agricultural landowner in the United States. So, there are plenty of vacant lots all over our cities. What about some direct land-rights movements? Michael, what about depositing the land rent in Baltimore in a public bank and generating a local based economy?

  Michael Hudson: [01:13:45] I think that’s unlikely as long as the city is controlled by the landlord interests. Almost all cities are controlled by the landlord interest. This is what Thorstein Veblen wrote about in Absentee Ownership in 1923. As long as you have the system that already was pretty clear a century ago, it doesn’t help to build up a few vacant lots and say, okay, we’re not going to tax that, because pretty soon you’re going to have people selling out the vacant lots and they will be gentrified.

  A hundred years ago you had communities that were founded by followers of Henry George. They had the idea that, just that you have, we’re going to collect the land rent. They’ve all now become bourgeois, gentrified yuppie communities.

  It’s a fight of economic systems. It’s a systemic fight. You can’t fix it at the margin. The problem goes deep to the core.

  Alanna: [01:14:40] Well, the city of Allentown, Pennsylvania voted in land rent to shift largely to land rent. That was a vote. Can the people not vote in an economic democracy once they have the understanding of how to do so. And the landlord population is after all the majority. The minority is that landlord ownership. Can we not have the majority vote in a land rent system?

  Michael Hudson: [01:15:05] Good question. If you said, okay, we are now going to tax all of the land rent, the problem is that as of right now, most land rent is pledged to the banks as mortgage interest. The banks have lent money against the rent-of-location – the fact that some houses and some properties and homes are in a better location than others, near parks and schools. Suppose that all of a sudden the owners would have to pay the full land tax that you and Henry George’s followers want. How are they going to pay the banks? Are they going to pay the land rent on top of the mortgage interest, or are they going to default?

  The reality is you would have massive defaults and foreclosures by the banks taking over the properties of families and cities that had collected the land rent for themselves. You can’t have the same rent paid to two different parties. You have the land rent either paid to the government or paid to the banks. If you pay it to the government, then you’ll take it away from the banks. And the banks will use American law to say that this is appropriation of property without compensation. You really would need a new constitution, and that would need a revolution. A revolution is a step function, a discontinuity. You cannot have a continuity to make a rational economic system pasted on to an irrational economic system at the margin. You have to have a revolution.

  Alanna: [01:16:33] The template needs to be for a nonviolent revolution based on the Jubilee principles that you teach so well Michael, of debt cancellation and restore the land for the people.

  Michael Hudson: [01:16:46] You may be non-violent. But the bankers and the landlords are not. One group will be non-violent and the other will be violent. Who’s going to win?

  Alanna: [01:16:56] That’s where getting the military to understand the new system comes in.

  Michael Hudson: [01:17:01] Well it’s true that much of the military did defect to Russia’s Communists in October 1917. But I’m not sure today’s military is like that. They’ll have special advisors, Blackwater or whatever that group was in Afghanistan. We don’t have as much military as we have the advisers that we’ve hired, or we’ll just bring our foreign legion in. We’ll bring ISIS and they’ll fight for the landlords.

  Alanna: [01:17:31] Well, it’s the same thing globally. It’s the same thing of what this discussion is Pepe and Michael about “in quest of a multipolar world” the hegemon up against up against three rivals as Pepe points out Iran, China and Russia, trying to be sovereign. We are again at a violent point.

  Michael Hudson: [01:17:56] Yep, absolutely.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:17:58] Yep. I think people want to ask a few questions. So, before we move to the questions, I selected one particular sentence, which more or less encapsulates where we are at the moment geopolitically. I don’t know if you agree with me. So I’m, throwing this fragmentation bomb out. Zbig Brzezinski in the famous, The Grand Chessboard published in 1997. I think this sentence is more or less the definition of the empire of chaos in the modern era until now. So, what was Zbig saying? The three grand imperatives of Imperial geostrategy are:

  To prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals. So a security dependence among vassals – so far, basically Germany and Japan, which are the key hubs in the Rimland and to control the heartland and isolate the Heartland. If America could control two key hubs in the Rimland they will get the job done, which is more or less what happened for decades, right?

  Continuing with Zbig. Tributaries, pliant and protected. Then we can go all the way from Latin America to the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, right? And to keep the barbarians from coming together. So when he wrote that in 1997, he meant the barbarians, obviously Eurasia, like the old rear Asia of the golden horde invading Kiev in the 13th century. But he meant essentially Russia and China. So, what do we have now? We have the three sovereigns getting together. Iran Russia and China. We have a strategic partnership between peer competitors, Russia and China, which was a Brzezinski and his acolytes’, supreme nightmare. The Americans need to prevent the emergence of a peer competitor in Eurasia.

  Now they have a strategic partnership. So now, what that means is that Pax Americana in a nutshell is completely unraveling. That’s when we reached the possibility of a sort of Samson option by the 0.001%. They are little by little being expelled from Eurasia. So, this could create the conditions for an absolutely demented Dr. Strangelove kind of adventure, which even some generals in the US are already saying they are. These people are completely nuts. They are talking about the possibility of a nuclear war without advising the population of the United States and the rest of the world that the next war is going to be the last. So, this is where we are at the moment, I would say an incandescent crossroads, all of our history. And even if we look in real-politic terms some of the possibilities are beyond the ominous, right?

  Michael Hudson: [01:21:21] Well, if you’re China or Russia, I think you’re saying that there was a kind of inversion of the direction of barbarism of the Golden Horde. Today, Europe is the barbarian trying to break into the Eurasian core. Think of what Brzezinski said about how the barbarians can prevent their own allies from working together in Europe. I think your point is quite right. If it’s an atomic war, and it will wipe out the world. As you know, I worked with Herman Kahn for many years. He said that there are going to be some survivors. I think that in Russia the other day President Putin said if there’s any missile of any kind coming in, it’s assumed to be atomic. And they’re going to retaliate in kind.

  I can imagine Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden getting together and saying, “Look, I know that you’re trying to provoke us. We are going to respond militarily, but let’s not fight against each other. We have 20 atom bombs. We’ll take out England and London, Manchester and Frankfurt, but not Berlin because that’s East German; but Munich, Stuttgart, and certainly Brussels and Paris just to show you what can be done. You can try to use your defense to stop it, but let’s agree we’ll only knock out each other’s proxies. We won’t go to war with each other.”

  I can imagine the Americans saying, “Well, that’s fine. No more Europe. So now we will be the leaders. We won’t have Europe to contend with anymore. We will just have ourselves. This will sort of stabilize things for the next 50 years. Europe will be devastated, and we can help rebuild it like we did after World War II. And this time, we’ll lock in our control even more. Russia and China can go their own way. And then, in 50 years, we’ll see whether there’s any kind of relation that we can have.”

  I can see them making a deal like that. The Americans want war. The people that Biden has appointed have an emotional hatred of Russia. I’ve spoken to government people who are close to the Democratic Party, and they’ve told me that there’s a pathological emotional desire for war with Russia, largely stemming from the fact that the Tzars were anti-Semitic and there’s still the hatred about their ancestors: “Look what they did to my great-grandfather.” And so they’re willing to back the Nazis, back the anti-Semites in Ukraine. They’re willing to back today’s anti-Semites all over the world as long as they’re getting back at this emotional focus on a kind of post 19th-century economy.

  I’ve met these people. Their emotion is one of hatred and anger. You can look at their face and see what they’ve become. This is really dangerous. They are crazy. And Putin is quite right. America has got its power by breaking contracts. It broke all of the contracts with the native Americans to take their land. It’s broken the Iranian contract. It broke most recently the Ukrainian Minsk agreement, and the JCP before. So what’s the point of making an agreement with any Americans, if they’re going to say, “Okay, now that we’ve got a compromise. You’ve given me and we’ve given. Now, let’s take that as a beginning point. We’re going to break that old agreement and we’re going to ask you for yet more.” They call that salami tactics. Slicing and slicing and slicing. So, I can see that essentially America telling Ukrainians, “Let’s you and Russia fight – to the last Ukrainian.”

  And I think it would be Western Ukrainians, the people who used to be part of Poland.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:25:00] And we, we call it, Bandera Land. Perfect. Okay.

  Questions and Answers

  Alanna: [01:25:06] Now David Spangler once said that the “role of the prophet is to preach the doom, to wake people up”. And that we’re certainly preaching, showing the doom right now. And the role of the priest is to show the new way, the new direction. So do we want to have another half hour or so for this? Can Pepe and Michael stay on because we do have some questions from those who’ve been listening. I see Ed Dodson’s hand is up, and then Tom Rossman, and then I’ll be looking at the chat questions.

  Ed are you able to talk with us now and ask your question?

  Ed Dodson: [01:25:46] Okay. As I’m listening to you, Michael, and not to you Pepe so much, but Michael’s gloom and doom, I keep thinking that the one opportunity the people of the world have is to go back to Proudhon and the whole concept of mutualism to create societies within societies. With all the positive components that have been raised, public banking and labor organizations, I just wonder. I know you have a relationship with Richard Wolf, Michael, in your conversations with him, he’s so positive about the socialism attached to the cooperative movement and places like Mondragon are these avenues. And Pepe you might want to comment on this, about countries other than the Western democracies. Is this an opportunity for people to come together under a common philosophy, a set of principles that would operate independent of the nation-state?

  Michael Hudson: [01:26:57] There are many areas where a mutualism works. Farmer’s markets, distributors and small factories like in Mondragon. However, how are you going to have a mutual oil company? That’s very capital intensive. How will you have mutualism in a high-speed railway transport system? How will you have mutualism in building a system of foreign ports? Like what China’s doing with the belt and road extension.

  Mutualism is very good when labor is the main element of all this. But once you have a strong capital element, and where it’s very capital intensive with not much labor, it’s very hard to see where the mutualism is. Suppose an oil company 10 oil producers making $10 million a year in profit. Are they going to just give each other a million dollars each? What about the rest of the economy? One mutual group can be cut off from another. In fact, when I went through the Basque country (I was brought over by the labor unions) some of the unions were complaining that Mondragon doesn’t want labor unions.

  Yes, it’s a cooperative, but they don’t want a labor union. So, mutualism can only work as a particular sector of the economy. It can’t be the economy. Proudhon wrote a lot about compound interest. He said that debt is going to grow so large that it can’t be repaid. You’ll have to be able to deal with that. So you can’t really have a mutual banking based on compound interest and everybody getting deeper and deeper into debt. Proudhon-style also wanted to tax the land and Marx wrote a long discussion explaining why a Proudhon mutualism wouldn’t work. In The Poverty of Philosophy, a response to Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, he pointed out what was progressive and predominant to a point, became unprogressive after a point.

  Alanna: [01:28:49] Okay, thank you, Michael. I want to read this from Carl Sanchez in the chat. He says that the purpose of the federal government is to form a more perfect union. Do you think it’s possible to rally the reds and blues into a coalition of purples to reassert those government goals?

  Michael Hudson: [01:29:17] Well, you already have them together we already have a purple. You have the blue Wall Street and the red oil industry and mining industry. You have both kinds of the rentier 1% all together in one happy purple rentier duopoly controlling the political system.

  Alanna: [01:29:34] Well then, relevant to the impossible task. Walter wants to know what’s the new HR 1 law, Michael that you mentioned that prevents or will prevent third parties.

  Michael Hudson: [01:29:43] I think it’s 700 pages. so I can’t go through the whole thing. But there’s a lot of discussion in today’s Internet about it. If you look at Naked Capitalism, the site run by Yves Smith, she has a citation of articles that explain why it’s aimed to prevent the green party or any other kind of reform party. The idea is to prevent any alternative to the hardline democratic pro-Wall Street, pro-pharmaceutical industry. Essentially you’re going to have Obamanomics with a sledgehammer, particularly against the Black and Hispanic populations.

  Tom Rossman: [01:30:29] Great. Thanks Alanna. So your comments about the war reminded me of an Albert Einstein quote. He said, I do not know with what weapons world war three will be fought but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones. So, it kind of reminded me of that. And so, my question is you know, based on the fact that, you know, it’s pretty, pretty well established that narratives really drive people’s economic behavior.

  What is the type of narrative that can kind of shift the Overton window in the direction that we all seem to want to go? And if there isn’t a narrative that could shift the Overton window, is the only alternative then revolution – potentially violent revolution.

  Michael Hudson: [01:31:11] Well, my narrative is about how civilization has developed. I published the first volume of “… and Forgive them their Debts” to show how civilization took off, and narrates how the idea was to create resilience in an economy – how you would wipe out the debt, you would wipe out of the debt bondage, you’d restore free liberty to the people. That worked for thousands of years.

  I’m just finishing now the second volume, The Collapse of Antiquity. That’s about how Greece and Rome, and hence subsequent Western civilization, made a complete break from the Near East. They didn’t cancel the debts. Western civilization was oligarchic from the beginning. There never was really a democracy here except for a very short revolution in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, catalyzed by the “tyrants.” What you think of as democracy, the rule by the people overthrowing the oligarchy, was called tyranny in Greece. In Rome it was called “seeking kingship,” because what did kings were able to do. Kings kept the oligarchs in place, just as the tyrants redistributed the land and cancelled the debts in Corinth and other Greek cities, and finally Solon did that in an Athens after Sparta did it . So if you see that our civilization doesn’t have to be this way, that Western civilization has taken a wrong turn – and it’s a rentier turn that earlier civilizations didn’t have – then you can see there is an alternative. And once you see there is an alternative, you have a narrative that can show the kind of future.

  Well, Marx had one kind of alternative like that worked in the late 19th century. The classical economists had an alternative leading into Marxism. I’m now publishing my long lecture series in China on The Fight for Civilization: Rentier Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. I’m trying to show what is positive in China system and still needs to be done. There are plenty of alternatives, but the fact is that the West – as Pepe and I’ve described – are set on fighting against an alternative that would make other people prosperous. They fought against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. You have the ruling classes in America and Europe wanting to concentrate all the wealth in their own hand. They’re against the whole wave of democratic reform that the 19th century was all for. The 19th century was for a land tax. It was for public banking. It was all public infrastructure to lower the cost of doing business. This was taught in the business schools in America. But all that has been expurgated from economic history and from the history of social thought – into the memory hole, as George Orwell would say. So, you have to let people know that there’s been a whole suppressed history, not only of civilization but as recently as the 19th century concerning where civilization was going. There has been a counter-revolution. In America you have people saying anything that promotes democracy, anything that’s antiwar is a propaganda for Russia, because who’s trying to avoid war Russia. So, if you believe what Alanna believes and you want a peaceful world, then you’re pro-Putin.

  Alanna: [01:34:33] David Lee has a question for Pepe. He says, what do you think are the possibilities that Lula can (A) be allowed to win an election in Brazil, and (B) return Brazil to the BRICS?

  Pepe Escobar: [01:34:50] Wow. Assuming he would run and win an election, the first things he will do of course, is to get the back to BRICS. That is what Lula would do in terms of policy, because he believes in it. And because he was one of the main drivers of the BRICS union, but because Putin and (as I get from our connections in Moscow, in Beijing, they are dying for it to happen. Obviously, their ministry of foreign affairs cannot express this in public, especially the Chinese, because the Chinese are very reactive and very cautious in terms of emitting their opinions on internal policy, even if they’re their allies.

  I’m trying to get some feedback from Russian analysts in the next few days about what happened in Brazil in this past few days, and to see how the Kremlin and the ministry of foreign affairs view the possibility of Lula being back in the game. But the most important thing is whether he will be allowed to be back in the game. Considering the Kabuki telenovela configuration moment that’s a major if. This would only happen if there is a deal cut in the shadows. Lula is very good at cutting deals. He’s a master negotiator, probably in terms of an international statesman, he’s the number one master negotiator in the world for the past two decades. But this is very, very complicated because it involves the military, who run the show in Brazil. It involves the Brazilian ruling class the 0. I would say the 0.00001% in Brazil. You have no idea in terms of an absolutely rapacious, ignorant, arrogant, and absolutely disgusting ruling class. I had the displeasure to meet these people when I still lived in Brazil years ago. So, if they think that Lula might be good for business, which means their own exploitation business, rentier business inside Brazil, allied and as subordinates to the masters of the universe in New York and the beltway, they would allow it.

  But then, Lula will have to convince more than just these people. He’ll have to convince the military and he’ll have to convince the market – you know, this entity that rules Brazil and is reaping all the benefits of the destruction of Brazil. And the fourth component is the media. In Brazil that means the Globo network, which plays a role that in the US would be equivalent to all the major US networks, plus CNN, Fox and all that, but concentrated in only one media and buyer. This is very complicated because they have the same interest of the Brazilian ruling class. They have the same interests of the military, and they have their own monopolistic interests in terms of controlling the flow of public information to the mass of Brazilians. But now at least there is a counter movement, which is via social networks and the internet.

  So they have been losing ground, but still, if you look at the 8:00 PM newscast in Brazil, every night people who are in the middle of the Amazon or in the deserts, in the Northeast, they are tuning to Globo and they get their news from Globo Open TV, not paid cable. So if Lula wins, wow, this is titanic. If he’s able to navigate all of these interests and prove to them that he is good for their business, this means that you have to make a lot of concessions, just like Michael explained to us in the beginning. He had to make concessions when he was first elected . And even with that, he managed to turn a little bit of the game around in Brazil, in terms of bringing 30 million people out of poverty. In terms of having a more decent minimum wage, you name it, and basic income for a lot of people in the middle of nowhere. So to have this back under negotiation, it is going to be much harder than it was in the early two thousands, right before Shock and Awe, by the way. It’s, crazy to remember that the first Lula government came to power two months before Shock and Awe, which we’re going to have the anniversary next week,. So, it’s complex. It’s extremely complicated to explain this to an international audience. The complexity of the game in Brazil is absolutely mind boggling. And the absolute majority of the Brazilians have no clue what’s going on because it’s one fragmentation bomb after another, like a semiotic free for all. It’s completely crazy, but if there’s only one person that could pull that off, that would be Lula.

  Alanna: [01:40:10] Well praise be Lula. This is a question and a rather long comment that will draw out more on this “in quest of a multipolar world”, and it’s for both of you to respond because he mentioned both of you. This is from Zach for Pepe. What, what do you believe is the future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? Will it become stronger and work a closer Alliance between its member States, sort of like NATO, or it will keep being a loose association? And then, where is India going to orient to? He’s also curious about the Bretton Woods and how it was established, was it the brainchild and one or two economists, like Keynes? Was It designed by a genius? How are we going to relate to this Bretton Woods? Are we going to be able to break free? Are Russia and China clearly going to break free?

  Michael Hudson: [01:41:08] That’s what the talk is about you know. I think the first discussion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Western media was an op-ed I did for the Financial Times of London. Nobody was mentioning it.

  The idea was that it was only marginal, it’s going to go away. There was always a sense of denial in the West that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could develop a different economic philosophy of development. And that’s what we’re really talking about. It’s not simply an organization of people wanting to help each other. It’s the way they’re trying to help each other. It’s a mode of development. It’s the idea that any rent-yielding resource – banking, land, natural resources and natural infrastructure monopolies – should be in the public domain to provided basic needs to everybody freely. That essentially means that the private sector won’t have to pay for services that should be available to everybody, at the minimum cost. If you privatize them as in the West, they’re going to be provided at a financialized maximum cost, including interest rates, dividends management fees, corporate manipulation for capital gains, and stock and bond buyback programs. It’s a whole different economic philosophy.

  Well, there is no need for China or Russia or Iran to go to war to do this. They’re doing it. They can do it quite simply. They don’t need a revolution to do it, because they don’t have a vested interest fighting against them and killing them if they do it. If the West wants to resist this, and all the West can do is number one, kill its own leaders who want to do something like this. If they have a Latin American leader, if you have Venezuela trying to use this oil wealth for the public good, then you isolate and attack Venezuela. If you have a Honduran president who wants to distribute the land, you have a coup d’ etat and give it to the drug dealers to run. They’ll be pro-American. If you have anyone in the West who tries to do something productive, you marginalize them and prevent them. And if there’s a threat of China and Russia and Iran growing, then you try to do what Americans did to Russia in the 1920s. You will fight it militarily you at their borders, you fund color revolutions, so that they have to dissipate the wealth that they create in military overhead to match the military overhead of the United States. The dream today is to make Ukraine Russia’s Afghanistan.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:43:53] Yeah, absolutely.

  Michael Hudson: [01:43:55] Yeah. The difference is what gives China and Russia the advantage. Defense is only 10% as expensive as offense. America needs a huge offense, and it needs huge corruption. To be offensive, America has to corrupt European politics, corrupt the labor union, the corrupt the whole educational system, corrupt the media into junk media and junk economics.

  And it has to have enormous profits for the military-industrial complex. That is America’s version of industrial capitalism. All China and Russia have to do is develop high-speed missiles, the defensive missiles to stop it. So they’re not being bled. It’s not going to be Russia’s Afghanistan. It’s America’s Afghanistan all over again.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:44:47] I was just the one to compliment one minute what Michael said and answering the question as well, in terms of the importance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It has changed so much in the past few years. I remember years ago, I used to mention the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to people in Brussels, the European Union or European commission. They were saying, “No way. It’s not important. It’s ridiculous. It’s a talk shop, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Years ago, in fact in the early 2000s, it was essentially Russia, China and four of the central Asian states against terrorism, against separatism. And then, little by little, they started to evolve. Now it’s also a trade and investment cooperation organization. I went to some of the round tables of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for instance, in the St Petersburg Economic Forum. There’s always a meeting of the SCO and it’s absolutely fascinating. You have Russians, Chinese and a lot of central Asians (not a single one Westerner) discussing trade deals. They are not only discussing terrorism, but also discussing the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan allied with the Taliban, that kind of things. They are discussing business. And now it’s even more important, because now with the expansion you have Russia, China, the Central Asians, and India and Pakistan as well. And sooner or later, not only as observers, but as full members, you’re going to have Turkey and Iran.

  So, this means every single major player in the Eurasian arc, in the heartland in fact, is part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. To give a practical example, the solution for Afghanistan is being debated by them for years now. The Russian solution for Afghanistan was discussed with China and the other central Asians, especially Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which are neighbors of Afghanistan.

  They want an SCO-brokered Asian solution for the Afghan problem. So what the Americans are proposing –or the American plan B’s, or C’s with the same Zalmay Khalilzad – they know this thing’s never going to work. And they have a direct conversation with Afghanistan, because Afghanistan is an associate member of the SCO as well. So it makes total sense. We see them all converging. You have the original economic union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Belt and Road initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – everybody’s converging and following more or less the same path. Later, you’re going to have a total integration of these organizations working for a common purpose in terms of security, of course, but also especially in terms of business.

  Michael Hudson: [01:47:57] So the question is, why are other people not discussing what you and I are discussing? Why are people only talking about this on the web? Nothing in The New York Times or other mainstream media.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:48:06] Nothing Michael. You will never read something like this in the Washington Post or The New York Times. They don’t even know what the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is.

  Alanna: [01:48:19] Well, there’s more questions and comments coming in on chat, and we’re not going to be able to handle now, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll just copy and paste what everybody’s asked, and we’ll have another session with all the questions may be a good idea.

  Pepe Escobar: Fantastic I think that’s a very good idea Alanna.

  Alanna: Okay, great and thank you both, this has been sponsored by the Henry George School of Social Science. Please go to their website. They’re doing a lot of online courses on land rents and the land rent problem. The International Union for Land Value Taxation, iu.org. Please also sign up for our newsletter and connect with people around the world. We’re looking for socializing the land rents.

  We’re now starting a conversation with the public banking Institute with a focus on Baltimore, which is why I had those questions. So again, I’m going to copy everything from chat. And then we’ll talk about having a session that will start in with the questions. I think has been a great overview.

  We know we’re at a dangerous point. We know that we, the people, have got to get it together and provide a really clear direction now to the world. We are the people who are really thinking and concerned and, in many ways, privileged. I think we’re going to need to get to the military and get to those kinds of power people, and get them to think in terms of who are they protecting?

  What are they protecting? What side are they going to be on? Because clearly, we do need a nonviolent revolution, we’re at a dangerous point. So, thank you, Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar. Thank you so very much all the best of both of you forever.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:49:56] Thank you, Michael. Thanks a lot. Thanks everybody.

  Ibrahima: [01:49:59] Thank you all very much. And we hope to see you again.

  Pepe Escobar: [01:50:04] Absolutely.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 23:50

• Baltimore City No Longer Prosecutes Prostitution, Drug Possessions 
  Baltimore City No Longer Prosecutes Prostitution, Drug Possessions 

  A little more than a year ago, right around the time the virus pandemic lockdowns began, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby halted prosecuting minor traffic violations, prostitution, drug possession, and other minor offenses, a move directed at preventing outbreaks of COVID-19 in regional jails, according to local news channel WBAL. 

  The easing of Baltimore’s policing resulted in a miracle: crime in nearly every category decreased, confirming what Mosby and some criminal justice experts argued for years: rough policing doesn’t work to prevent more violent crimes. 

  On Friday, Mosby held a press conference in her first public appearance since a lien for nonpayment of back taxes was placed on her home. She told reporters they could speak to her attorney about those issues. She went on to say putting people behind bars for petty offenses isn’t working: 

  “A year ago, we underwent an experiment in Baltimore… What we learned in that year, and it’s so incredibly exciting, is there’s no public safety value in prosecuting these low-level offenses. These low-level offenses were being, and have been, discriminately enforced against Black and Brown people.

  “The era of ‘tough on crime’ prosecutors is over in Baltimore. We have to rebuild the community’s trust in the criminal justice system and that’s what we will do, so we can focus on violent crime.” 

  And with that success, she said, her “COVID policies will now become permanent. And America’s failed war on drugs and users across the metro area is “over.” 

  This is a complete shift in how the city handles crime. In the last 12 months, violent crime is down 20%, and property crime has fallen 36%. Homicides were a tad bit lower but remained some of the highest in the country on a per capita basis. 

  Mosby asked public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University to review the crime data over the last year. What they noticed was a dramatic reduction in calls to police concerning drugs and prostitution. 

  “Clearly, the data suggest there is no public safety value in prosecuting low-level offenses,” Mosby said at the news conference.

  Hopkins researchers also found 1,431 people who had charges or warrants were immediately dismissed at the beginning of the pandemic. Only 5 out of 1,431, or .0003%, were rearrested. 

  Susan G. Sherman, a behavioral health professor at Johns Hopkins, told WaPo that data on repeat offenders with only five reentered the system is “pretty unbelievable.” 

  “In a world where drug decriminalization is happening around the country, the impact on the community is important,” Sherman said, and Mosby “really values having an understanding of these impacts.”

  “When it comes to violent offenses, carjackings, murders, armed robberies, attempted murders, and drug distribution, we are still prosecuting you. The police will still arrest you. But on these low-level crimes, we are no longer using our limited resources on these low-level offenses,” Mosby said.

  A year ago, Baltimore underwent a grand experiment on policing, and perhaps it’s working. Here’s a former police officer’s take on all of this: 

  “Crime is a symptom of the disease of our society. For years, we’ve asked the police to address this disease by locking people up. We merely addressed the symptom. Not the disease,” said retired Baltimore police major Mike Hillard, of Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

  Mosby’s pandemic social experiment has so far resulted in possibly a new direction for the city. But whether the experiment in Baltimore can be replicated elsewhere remains to be seen. Other liberal cities have tried this and miserably failed, resulting in soaring crime all around.

  San Fransico is one of those liberal cities that has defunded police and eased rules on petty crimes but has seen an explosion of all sorts of violent and non-violent crimes. Murders are up, people are quickly exiting the metro area, and as we come to find out more recently, businesses are leaving too. 

  Due to rampant shoplifting, nearly a dozen Bay Area Walgreens have closed up shop. The crime is so bad in the metro area that even TV reporters are being robbed. 

  As for Baltimore, it remains to be seen if crime in general will stay low given Mosby’s actions as pandemic restrictions are being lifted, warmer weather is ahead, and the opioid crisis in the city continues to rage on. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 23:25

• Congress, In Five-Hour Hearing, Demands Tech CEOs Censor The Internet Even More Aggressively: Greenwald
  Congress, In Five-Hour Hearing, Demands Tech CEOs Censor The Internet Even More Aggressively: Greenwald

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  Over the course of five-plus hours on Thursday, a House Committee along with two subcommittees badgered three tech CEOs, repeatedly demanding that they censor more political content from their platforms and vowing legislative retaliation if they fail to comply. The hearing — convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Chair Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of its Subcommittees, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — was one of the most stunning displays of the growing authoritarian effort in Congress to commandeer the control which these companies wield over political discourse for their own political interests and purposes.

  

  As I noted when I reported last month on the scheduling of this hearing, this was “the third time in less than five months that the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms.” The bulk of Thursday’s lengthy hearing consisted of one Democratic member after the next complaining that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have failed in their duties to censor political voices and ideological content that these elected officials regard as adversarial or harmful, accompanied by threats that legislative punishment (including possible revocation of Section 230 immunity) is imminent in order to force compliance (Section 230 is the provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that shields internet companies from liability for content posted by their users).

  Republican members largely confined their grievances to the opposite concern: that these social media giants were excessively silencing conservative voices in order to promote a liberal political agenda (that complaint is only partially true: a good amount of online censorship, like growing law enforcement domestic monitoring generally, focuses on all anti-establishment ideologies, not just the right-wing variant). This editorial censoring, many Republicans insisted, rendered the tech companies’ Section 230 immunity obsolete, since they are now acting as publishers rather than mere neutral transmitters of information. Some Republicans did join with Democrats in demanding greater censorship, though typically in the name of protecting children from mental health disorders and predators rather than ideological conformity.

  As they have done in prior hearings, both Zuckerberg and Pichai spoke like the super-scripted, programmed automatons that they are, eager to please their Congressional overseers (though they did periodically issue what should have been unnecessary warnings that excessive “content moderation” can cripple free political discourse). Dorsey, by contrast, seemed at the end of his line of patience and tolerance for vapid, moronic censorship demands, and — sitting in a kitchen in front of a pile of plates and glasses — he, refreshingly, barely bothered to hide that indifference. At one point, he flatly stated in response to demands that Twitter do more to remove “disinformation”: “I don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth and I don’t think the government should be either.”

  Zuckerberg in particular has minimal capacity to communicate the way human beings naturally do. The Facebook CEO was obviously instructed by a team of public speaking consultants that it is customary to address members of the Committee as “Congressman” or “Congresswoman.” He thus began literally every answer he gave — even in rapid back and forth questions — with that word. He just refused to move his mouth without doing that — for five hours (though, in fairness, the questioning of Zuckerberg was often absurd and unreasonable). His brain permits no discretion to deviate from his script no matter how appropriate. For every question directed to him, he paused for several seconds, had his internal algorithms search for the relevant place in the metaphorical cassette inserted in a hidden box in his back, uttered the word “Congressman” or “Congresswoman,” stopped for several more seconds to search for the next applicable spot in the spine-cassette, and then proceeded unblinkingly to recite the words slowly transmitted into his neurons. One could practically see the gears in his head painfully churning as the cassette rewound or fast-forwarded. This tortuous ritual likely consumed roughly thirty percent of the hearing time. I’ve never seen members of Congress from across the ideological spectrum so united as they were by visceral contempt for Zuckerberg’s non-human comportment:

  But it is vital not to lose sight of how truly despotic hearings like this are. It is easy to overlook because we have become so accustomed to political leaders successfully demanding that social media companies censor the internet in accordance with their whims. Recall that Parler, at the time it was the most-downloaded app in the country, was removed in January from the Apple and Google Play Stores and then denied internet service by Amazon, only after two very prominent Democratic House members publicly demanded this. At the last pro-censorship hearing convened by Congress, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) explicitly declared that the Democrats’ grievance is not that these companies are censoring too much but rather not enough. One Democrat after the next at Thursday’s hearing described all the content on the internet they want gone: or else. Many of them said this explicitly.

  At one point toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), in the context of the January 6 riot, actually suggested that the government should create a list of groups they unilaterally deem to be “domestic terror organizations” and then provide it to tech companies as guidance for what discussions they should “track and remove”: in other words, treat these groups the same was as ISIS and Al Qaeda.

  Words cannot convey how chilling and authoritarian this all is: watching government officials, hour after hour, demand censorship of political speech and threaten punishment for failures to obey. As I detailed last month, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the state violates the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee when they coerce private actors to censor for them — exactly the tyrannical goal to which these hearings are singularly devoted.

  There are genuine problems posed by Silicon Valley monopoly power. Monopolies are a threat to both political freedom and competition, which is why economists of most ideological persuasions have long urged the need to prevent them. There is some encouraging legislation pending in Congress with bipartisan support (including in the House Antitrust Subcommittee before which I testified several weeks ago) that would make meaningful and productive strides toward diluting the unaccountable and undemocratic power these monopolies wield over our political and cultural lives. If these hearings were about substantively considering those antitrust measures, they would be meritorious.

  But that is hard and difficult work and that is not what these hearings are about. They want the worst of all worlds: to maintain Silicon Valley monopoly power but transfer the immense, menacing power to police our discourse from those companies into the hands of the Democratic-controlled Congress and Executive Branch.

  And as I have repeatedly documented, it is not just Democratic politicians agitating for greater political censorship but also their liberal journalistic allies, who cannot tolerate that there may be any places on the internet that they cannot control. That is the petty wannabe-despot mentality that has driven them to police the “unfettered” discussions on the relatively new conversation app Clubhouse, and escalate their attempts to have writers they dislike removed from Substack. Just today, The New York Times warns, on its front page, that there are “unfiltered” discussions taking place on Google-enabled podcasts:

  

  We are taught from childhood that a defining hallmark of repressive regimes is that political officials wield power to silence ideas and people they dislike, and that, conversely, what makes the U.S. a “free” society is the guarantee that American leaders are barred from doing so. It is impossible to reconcile that claim with what happened in that House hearing room over the course of five hours on Thursday.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 23:00

• Hackers Simultaneously Attack Australian Parliament, TV Network
  Hackers Simultaneously Attack Australian Parliament, TV Network

  Hackers were able to disrupt live broadcasts from an Australian news channel at the same time Parliament’s House email system was taken offline for a concurrent breach, according to Sky News.

  

  As a result of the attack, Channel Nine’s Sunday morning news program – “Weekend Today” – did not air, along with the station’s 5pm news show. Future programming is expected to progress on schedule. Channel Nine is investigating whether the hack was a matter of “criminal sabotage or the work of a foreign nation,” according to the report.

  Meanwhile, the Australian government was forced to cut access to IT and emails at Parliament House via an external provider was compromised.

  

  “The issue relates to an external provider, and once the issue was detected the connection to government systems was cut immediately as a precaution,” said Andrew Hastie, assistant minister of defense, in a statement to News.com.au. “Cyber security is a team effort and a shared responsibility. It is vital that Australian businesses and organisations are alert to this threat and take the necessary steps to ensure our digital sovereignty.”

  Nine Entertainment, the broadcaster’s parent company, which also owns the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, confirmed that it had been targeted by an attack, but it is unclear whether the incidents are linked.

  In its statement Channel Nine said: “A cyber attack on our systems has disrupted live broadcasts today however, we have put processes in place to ensure we’re able to resume our normal broadcast schedule.” –Sky News

  Meanwhile all parliamentary staff received a Sunday night email warning over a potential messaging scam which hit senior ministers – including Finance Minister Simon Birmingham. According to News.com.au, it is unknown if the parliamentary issue and the messaging scam are related.

  “The AFP is aware of a messaging scam currently targeting Commonwealth Parliamentarians and Australian High Office Holders, which presents as a request from a trusted colleague,” reads the email.

  “The scam originates over WhatsApp and asks recipients to download the Telegram application for the purposes of further communication. The message also asks for the recipient to forward the Two Factor Authentication (2FA) codes to the sender. Doing this will allow the sender to ‘take over’ the Telegram account. The request is not genuine and may be used as an attempt to obtain information from you or your phone.”

  “If you receive a message claiming to be from an associate which asks you to download a new messaging platform – for example – the Telegram application – do not download it.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 22:35

• US Military Launches Task Force To Fight 'Information War' Against China
  US Military Launches Task Force To Fight ‘Information War’ Against China

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The head of US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the command launched a new task force to focus on information operations to counter China in the Pacific.

  According to a report from C4ISRNET, the task force, known as the Joint Task Force Indo-Pacific team, will  focus “on information and influence operations in the Pacific theater.” Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, said the task force will work with “like-minded partners” in the region.

  

  “We actually are able to tamp down some of the disinformation that they [China] continuously sow,” Clarke said. It’s not clear exactly what this new task force will be doing, but the C4ISRNET report suggested that offensive cyber operations could be part of the influence campaign.

  Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command, also spoke with senators on Thursday and pointed to offensive cyber operations the command took prior to the 2020 election that he claims thwarted election interference.

  “The idea of operating outside of the United States, being able to both enable our partners with information and act when authorized. This is an active approach to our adversaries,” Nakasone said. “It’s been most effective as we’ve seen with the 2018 and 2020 elections with adversaries attempting to influence us, attempting to interfere but not being able to do that.”

  Gen. Clarke also spoke of information operations conducted under SOCOM’s Special Operations Forces, specifically a group known as Military Information Support Operations professionals that are deployed at embassies around the world.

  “By working closely with those partners to ensure that our adversaries, our competitors are not getting that free pass and to recognize what is truth from fiction and continue to highlight that to using our intel communities is critical,” he said.

  The Biden administration has made it clear that countering Beijing is its top foreign policy priority. The task force shows that Washington’s campaign against Chinese influence will be played out in many theaters.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 22:10

• Nuclear Energy In The World 10 Years After Fukushima
  Nuclear Energy In The World 10 Years After Fukushima

  The March 2011 Fukushima disaster was the most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

  Its terrifying consequences led some countries to reconsider their attitude to nuclear energy with states like Germany deciding to phase out the technology.

  However, elsewhere, nuclear power continues to be a major source of electricity supply.

  

  Source

  The United States, with 96 commercial reactors, remains the world’s largest producer of commercial nuclear power.

  As Bisconti Research national poll, held in June 20202, revealed that 60% of respondents favored the use of nuclear energy, with only 25% opposing it.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 21:45

• Hedge Fund CIO: "Sinners Have Become The System And Will Be Eternally Supported By Policy"
  Hedge Fund CIO: “Sinners Have Become The System And Will Be Eternally Supported By Policy”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  Sinners

  “At some point on the current path, policy makers will attempt to normalize,” said the CIO. We were discussing sequencing, recognizing its centrality to macro trading, investing. “They will start by attempting to taper Fed purchases,” he said, the US central bank currently creating $120bln per month and using it to purchase debt. “Perhaps they signal that they intend to lower the deficit.” But of course, that would only be after they first lift the deficit to fund America’s coming $3trln Recovery Plan. “And at that point, the clock starts ticking,” he said.

  “Even if one thinks the current policy path inevitably leads to a substantial inflation, there are enough orthodox policy makers that we can be confident they’ll try to avert that outcome,” continued the same CIO. “So what we need to figure out is how far they’ll let stocks and inflation run before they’re compelled to taper,” he said. “And then we’ll need to judge how long it will take for the economy and/or market to take a deep dive.” Not long. “When they then quickly pivot and aggressively ease, their predicament will be clear for all to see.”

  “Given the size of the stimulus and deficits at this stage, if policy makers are seen to be unable to normalize in any material way, that will be the stage in the sequencing when the great reset begins,” explained the same CIO. “Markets at that point will move very fast.” Maintaining calm given current policy settings requires inflation expectations to remain anchored and investors to believe policy can be normalized. “I am often a bit early on the very big trades, but this whole sequence appears sure to play out over the coming three years.”
   
  “The biggest macro change in the past 50yrs was the taming of inflation,” said Marco Polo, my favorite macro modeler. “Paul Volcker was a byproduct of the political choice to anchor inflation in a post-gold-standard world. It required great resolve, and management of a domestic financial crisis induced by the high interest rates needed to get the job done. Don Kohn observed that the Volcker master lesson ‘was to protect the system but not the sinner – and that required facts, analysis, and flexibility.’ Volcker was the first Fed Chair who required a personal bodyguard. The Hunt brothers (silver), Penn Square and Continental Illinois (oil) and the entire Farm Credit System were all strained by his decisions and Volcker was the first Fed Chair who required a personal bodyguard. The resolve to tackling inflation cannot be overstated.”

  “The virtuous cycle of declining government bond yields in the past three decades that followed Volcker’s attack on inflation has been an overwhelmingly positive impulse to financial portfolios,” explained Marco Polo. “Government bonds played a large role, directly or indirectly through other assets that benefited from lower bond yields. To illustrate the point, I built a simple dynamic portfolio of stocks, bonds, the US dollar, and commodities. Allocations to those asset classes are selected depending on the state of the macro economy.”

  “When things are good and getting better, asset allocation is split between stocks and commodities; bonds are the asset allocation when things are good but weakening; long US dollar exposure is deployed in downturns; stocks and foreign currency allocations are the benchmark in early upturns,” continued Marco. “The states of the macro economy are probability weighted and rebalanced over time to arrive at a balanced portfolio. The annualized monthly return of such an approach since Sep 1981 is +7.5% with volatility of less than 6%. Not bad for a passive, blunt approach.”
   
  “Let’s include a long-bond overlay to the asset allocation in all macro states so that the average gross portfolio exposure is 2x,” said Marco. “Think of this leverage as a move out the risk spectrum. The historical performance jumps to +11.5% and the Sharpe rises to more than 1.5x. Of course, asset managers did not initially have the foresight to implement such a portfolio nor did financial intermediaries have the risk appetite to provide short-term funding. But with time and reinforcement from policy actions that tell us sinners have now become the system and will thus be eternally supported by policy, portfolios have pushed far out the risk spectrum taking long duration exposure directly or indirectly. It is all the same trade.”

  “Recent correlations reinforce the point. The US TIPs and Tesla daily correlation is nearly 30% this year. TIPs act like a low-beta play on highly valued growth companies. Both are bets on duration. The difference today from the past is today’s low starting point of bond yields. At steeply negative real yields and very low nominals, the role of bonds in a portfolio becomes heavily challenged. German bund performance in the Mar 2020 period is also a good reminder. Bund prices rose sharply over 7wks during the pandemic and reversed that move in 10-days.”

  “Bunds provided no protection to slower-moving asset allocators. Ten-year German real yields now trade -1.75%. They have no value as an investment, nor as a risk-mitigator,” said Marco. “Asset managers have no choice but to explore alternatives to bonds and find risk mitigators to long duration exposure. And official institutions have little choice but to lean against any undesired rise in ‘risk free’ yields. Everyone is a sinner now, the system is held hostage. After all, 44% of outstanding Treasury securities are held between the Fed and foreign official institutions. And at any wobble they buy more.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 21:20

• Archegos Fallout Begins: Nomura Crashes 15% After Reporting Record $2BN Loss From "Transactions With US Client"
  Archegos Fallout Begins: Nomura Crashes 15% After Reporting Record $2BN Loss From “Transactions With US Client”

  Back in May 2016, Japanese mega-bank Nomura, announced that it had suffered its biggest-ever loss in history (of a rather tame by Western standards $40 million) from a single client, and which it then quickly blamed on an “incompetent” bond trader.  Fast forward to today, when Nomura just suffered a far, far greater loss from a single client, this one is anything but boring.

  Early on Monday local time, Nomura Holdings said it may have incurred a “significant loss” arising from transactions with a U.S. client.
  The estimated amount of the claim against the client is about $2 billion based on market prices as of March 26, the Japanese brokerage said in a statement. The estimate is “subject to change depending on unwinding of the transactions and fluctuations in market prices.”

  

  Nomura is currently evaluating the extent of the possible loss and the impact it could have on its consolidated financial results.
  The Japanese brokerage also canceled plans to sell dollar-denominated bonds.

  The news, incomplete as it may be, was enough to send Nomura stock crashing 15%, wiping out all March gains, and the biggest one day drop in a decade.

  

  While it wasn’t immediately clear if Nomura’s loss is linked to the spectacular margin call at Tiger Cub Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital which we noted earlier (accurately noting that the unwind is probably not yet done), the two are almost certainly linked especially as some have noted that in the case of Nomura, the bank owned some $10MM shares in Chinese tech firm GSX which imploded, via leveraged swaps to clients. Since GSX was one of the firms aggressively dumped by Hwang, one can see how the house of cards, having crippled Prime Brokers, may be spreading down the investment bank foodchain next.

  The brokers became involuntary principals here, as they owned the shares outstanding on leveraged swaps to their clients. If the client can’t meet the margin calls, the brokers take huge losses. For example, Nomura “owns” 10M shares of $GSX as of 12/31/20.

  — Diogenes (@WallStCynic) March 29, 2021

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

  Meanwhile, as we asked earlier, the real question is whether the liquidation of the handful of highly concentrated stocks is over, or whether the selling cascade is only just starting.

  now that the entity liquidating media/Chinese tech stocks is know, will the market
  I) keep pressing them lower to hurt Hwang’s “idea dinner” pals, or
  ii) ramp them as no more selling pressure

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 28, 2021

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

  One thing we do know: as of Sunday night, the seller was not done yet, as this Bloomberg headline confirms:

  • *VIACOMCBS HOLDER SAID TO OFFER 45M SHR BLOCK VIA MORGAN STANLEY

  Some more details:

  Morgan Stanley was shopping a large block of ViacomCBS Inc. shares on Sunday, according to a person familiar with the matter, the latest in a flurry of block trades that began before the weekend.

  About 45 million shares were offered Sunday on behalf of an undisclosed holder, the person said. The media giant was also the subject of at least one large block trade on Friday through Goldman Sachs, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg at the time.

  Incidentally, just last Monday, ViacomCBS sold $3BN in common and preferred stock, including 20mm shares of VIAC stock at $85. With the stock now trading at roughly 50% of this price, the company should immediately announce a 20MM shares (or more) stock buyback to i) take advantage of the plunge in the price and ii) to contain investor panic due to one shareholder’s forced liquidation. Indeed, moments ago, Tencent just announced a $1BN share buyback to offset just this liquidation-driven drop in the stock price.

  

  And while we wait for that to happen at VIAC, DISCA and other, we still have two big questions: i) is Archegos still dumping, or is this now a fellow Hedge funders who was also margined out on a similar portfolio, and ii) just how bad is the pain – as more prime brokers issue urgent margin calls – and how widespread will the liquidation chain stretch…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 20:53

• Biden Staffer Blocks Ted Cruz From Taking Video At Border Facility
  Biden Staffer Blocks Ted Cruz From Taking Video At Border Facility

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he was told by a Biden administration staffer that he could not record a video at a Border Patrol facility along the U.S.-Mexico border.

  “Please give dignity to the people. Please give dignity to the people. … Please respect the people, the rules,” the so-called staffer told Cruz while blocking the camera with her face, according to a video he showed Fox News.

  “So you work for the commissioner, you’re a senior adviser, you were hired two weeks ago and you’re instructed to ask us to not have any pictures taken here because the political leadership at DHS does not want the American people to know it,” Cruz said in response to the official.

  

  She did not disclose her identity, and The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.

  The staffer then told him:

  “Please don’t treat the people as such,” to which Cruz responded that “your policies are unfortunately trying to hide them.”

  “I understand that you were instructed,” Cruz said.

  “I respect them, and I want to fix this situation, and the administration that you work for is responsible for these conditions.”

  Cruz and more than a dozen Republican senators went to the border last week, with many describing overcrowded and severe conditions in facilities used to hold unaccompanied minors—children who unlawfully enter the country without an adult.

  These are the pictures the Biden administration doesn’t want the American people to see. This is why they won’t allow the press.

  This is the CBP facility in Donna, Texas.

  This is a humanitarian and a public health crisis. pic.twitter.com/UlibmvAeGN

  — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 26, 2021

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

  In recent weeks, Republicans have blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for the surge in illegal immigration, although Biden in a press conference said such surges are routine and blamed the previous administration for the humanitarian conditions on the border.

  The senator also posted photos that the “Biden administration doesn’t want the American people to see,” according to a tweet that included images of a crowded illegal immigrant facility in Donna, Texas—near the border.

  “This is why they won’t allow the press. This is the CBP facility in Donna, Texas. This is a humanitarian and a public health crisis,” Cruz tweeted.

  Journalists will be eventually allowed to go to the border to film Border Patrol facilities after they have been largely denied access, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki in a Sunday interview.

  Some Democrats whose districts lie on the border have said Biden needs to take action immediately to deal with the situation.

  Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told CBS News on Sunday that numerous family units who crossed the border illegally have been released into the United States without a notice to appear in court.

  “They’re supposed to appear, show up, maybe in 60 days, report to an ICE office,” he said. “This is unprecedented.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 20:30

• 10 Reasons Why Freedom Is Dangerous
  10 Reasons Why Freedom Is Dangerous

  The number one thing that terrorizes us in this world and gets in the way of you having a better life… freedom!

  

  Here is JP Sears’ top ten “science-based” reasons why freedom is bad:

  1. Freedom requires you to think for yourself (…think the thoughts they hand you… so turn on your TV. It’s like psychological breadline where you can get your very nourishing thought handouts from… and that should be the only place you get them from).

  2. Freedom will make you uncomfortable at times.

  3. With freedom, no one’s controlling you…

  4. Freedom requires self-responsibility.

  5. Freedom comes with free speech (99.98% of all speech is hate speech… and hate speech is objectively defined as speech that you subjectively hate which is all speech that represents thoughts that don’t come from the one true source that you get your thoughts from)

  6. With freedom you constantly learn and grow.

  7. With freedom you can’t just print money when want more of it.

  8. With freedom you can protest, but you can’t peacefully protest.

  9. With freedom you’re allowed to not trust those who try to control you.

  10. Freedom gives you equal opportunity, not equality of outcome (leaving people’s outcomes to what they earn  through work and effort levels promotes hate and incentivizes prosperity).

  So with all that said, what should we do?

  “Communism needs your vote…freedom destroys lives, robs people of their dignity and takes away their birthright of being controlled.”

  Enjoy:

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 20:00

• Re-Fund The Police? LA County Increases Funding by $36 Million Months After Budget Cuts
  Re-Fund The Police? LA County Increases Funding by $36 Million Months After Budget Cuts

  Authored by Zachary Steiber via The Epoch Times,

  Officials in Los Angeles County on Thursday voted to increase funding to local law enforcement by $36 million, months after the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget was cut by $150 million.

  The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board unanimously agreed to increase funding to its five-year contract with the LAPD, the Long Beach Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

  The board includes Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat.

  The authority’s CEO, Phillip Washington, said before the vote that he wanted to find a balance between people complaining about law enforcement and those who wanted increased funding.

  “Our hope is that of the public and the board understands that we’re trying as a staff to get to a good balance, to get to a good balance here in terms of policing on our system, trying to get to a happy medium here understanding both perspectives,” he said.

  “And I do understand both perspectives from a lived experience. And as an African American male, I understand completely what we are saying about policing. But also, as someone who reviews every incident report on the system, I do believe we need some level of security on the system.”

  

  Several members of the public disagreed.

  “I don’t think that safety is something that should be balanced. I think when the board votes, they should vote for what they think is the safest thing, whether that’s all ambassadors or all police. We don’t want to look for a balance. I don’t think the public is necessarily the best skill to weigh in on that,” one told board members.

  “And I did want to mention, I don’t know if it was mentioned, but the LAPD, I ride the bus and the train and I see them on the bus in the train, and they represent Los Angeles, they look like Los Angeles, they look like me. They look as much like Los Angeles as this board, if not more.”

  The decision on the funding increase was originally planned for last month, but the board decided to postpone it. The increase was originally proposed as $111 million. The original contract, approved in early 2017, was $645.7 million. It represented a new approach, bringing on the LAPD and Long Beach police after Metro previously only contracted with the county’s sheriff.

  In addition to approving a lower amount than requested, Garcetti and several members amended the motion to direct Metro’s CEO to use at least $40 million in the next budget to invest in transit ambassadors and other alternatives to using law enforcement to police public transportation.

  The increase in funding was requested “to cover significant costs incurred … to:

  (1) augment outreach services to the unhoused population, address crime trends, sexual harassment; and

  (2) enhanced deployments to cover special events, employee, and customer complaints, or other unforeseen circumstances,” according to a board report.

  The Los Angeles City Council in July 2020 slashed $150 million in funding from the LAPD, cutting the number of officers by 231. Los Angeles, like most major cities, saw an increase in murders last year.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 19:30

• Gun Group At Iowa State University Faces Backlash Over Event About 3D-Printed Weapons 
  Gun Group At Iowa State University Faces Backlash Over Event About 3D-Printed Weapons 

  Some Iowa State University students are upset at members of a student organization for promoting an event about 3D-printed guns in the wake of two mass shootings, one in Boulder, Colorado, and the other in Atlanta, according to Ames Tribune.

  A schoolwide email sent Tuesday by “Students for 2A” invited students to learn about 3D-printed firearms. The email titled “Do you want to learn about 3D-printed firearms? read:

  “Are you curious about 3D-printed firearms? Are you curious about home gunsmithing at all? Are you looking for a new hobby? Join Students for 2A on Monday, the 29th at 7 PM in Carver Hall room 305! We will be presenting on the recent history and legality of homemade firearms, talking about some 3D-printed projects we completed, talking about how you can get started, and, most importantly, answering the questions you have! This presentation has been a year in the making, and if you are interested in firearms, it is not one you want to miss!” 

  

  Some students are upset with the pro-Second Amendment rights group, whose email announcement of the event was poorly timed. 

  An open letter to administrators criticized the email’s timing and had more than 100 signatures, the Iowa State Daily reported. 

  The letter said members of Students for 2A “did not understand the emotional intensity the events of the past week have taken on students.” 

  “The University should release a statement condemning the timeliness, insensitivity, and potentially harmful and triggering nature of the email,” the letter said. “The student organization, Students for 2A, should also release a statement acknowledging the harm caused.”

  Iowa State spokesperson Angie Hunt said members of Students for 2A followed university protocol in planning the event, adding that the presentation is “not a demonstration of 3D printing or weapons.”

  “While not everyone may support the topic, all students have the right to gather and discuss issues that others may feel are controversial or do not align with their values,” Hunt said in a statement. “We understand our students’ concerns, and as a campus community, we mourn with those who have lost loved ones in the recent violent mass shooting tragedies in Boulder and Atlanta.”

  According to the Students for 2A’s Iowa State website, the group has 45 members and is affiliated with the National Rifle Association. Under “useful links,” the group links to a website called CTRL+Pew, which appears to be a database of 3D-printed weapons. Digging further into CTRL+Pew, there is an entire library of weapons that anyone can easily download and print. 

  The timing of the email by members of Students for 2A may have been a little insensitive, considering most colleges are super liberal and don’t tolerate guns. What’s more interesting is that younger generations are intrigued by 3D printers and their ability to print weapons. 

  We noted last month that anyone can 3D print this weapon at home for under $350. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 19:00

• Morgan Stanley Asks: Will The Market Move Towards The Fed, Or Will The Fed Shift Its Reaction Function Towards The Market
  Morgan Stanley Asks: Will The Market Move Towards The Fed, Or Will The Fed Shift Its Reaction Function Towards The Market

  By Vishwanath Tirupattur, head of Credit Securitized Products Research and Strategy at Morgan Stanley.

  A year ago this week, global equities bottomed as jobless claims spiked to all-time highs with the shutdown of the global economy as a result of the pandemic, and gloom started to set in. It was also around this time that massive monetary and fiscal policy intervention began, matching the enormity of the catastrophe. Today, hope is growing for light at the end of the tunnel, and the return of March Madness is a sign that we are on the path back towards normalcy.

  Vis-à-vis our 2021 Outlook published in November 2020, the US economy is aligning with our economists’ bull case, to which we assigned a likelihood of 20%. The bull case envisioned stronger growth than their above-consensus base case, with multiple COVID-19 vaccines increasing the speed and size of the roll-out, along with a more proactive US fiscal response than in their base case. This is exactly what we are seeing. The US$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was more than double our base-case expectation of 2021 fiscal stimulus, and another US$2+ trillion infrastructure package is in the works. The vaccine roll-out in the US has gathered pace, and the timeline for vaccinations has been brought forward, with 87.3 million people in the US receiving at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 47.4 million fully vaccinated as of last Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Clearly, progress on the vaccination front has not been uniform globally, as parts of Europe and many emerging market economies lag the US. Still, growth is tracking the bull case narrative in our 2021 Outlook.

  In the last six to eight weeks, risk assets have seemed listless. Since early February, the S&P 500 index is more or less unchanged and US investment grade credit spreads have stayed within a narrow range around mid-90bp. On the other hand, interest rates have risen steadily. Benchmark US 10-year Treasury yields have climbed about 60bp over the same period. Here is where fiscal and monetary policy meet face to face, and we need think about monetary policy in relation to fiscal policy. Let us dig into the underlying tensions in this policy confluence.

  The conventional response to stronger-than-expected growth coupled with steep declines in headline unemployment would have steered monetary policy towards tightening in anticipation of higher inflation. In fact, the bond market is pricing in a 25bp rate hike at the start of 2023 and two more hikes of that size by the end of 2023. The thesis is that trillions of dollars in stimulus and an accelerating vaccination campaign mean front-end rates cannot stay this low without inflation spiraling out of control.

  

  However, the FOMC’s ‘dot plot,’ Chair Powell’s comments during the post-FOMC meeting press conference last week and subsequent pronouncements by Fed officials have been stridently dovish and notably at odds with the bond market As Ellen Zentner, Matthew Hornbach and colleagues note, “Policy makers did not just ‘double down’ on dovish guidance, they ‘tripled down‘.” They highlight that even though the median FOMC participant now believes core inflation will remain at or above 2% through 2023, that alone is not grounds for thinking about rate hikes because strong labor market conditions consistent with maximum employment take primacy in the Fed’s reaction function. The Fed has not just raised the bar on the timing of future rate hikes. The Chair sounded equally dovish on tapering asset purchases when he stated, “We have said that we would continue asset purchases at this pace until we see substantial further progress, and that’s actual progress, not forecast progress. That’s a difference from our past approach.”

  The conventional policy response reflected in the bond market stands in stark contrast to the Fed’s unequivocal message. Will the market move towards the Fed, or will the Fed shift its reaction function towards the market’s conventional thinking? Our global macro strategists Matthew Hornbach and Guneet Dhingra believe in the former, suggesting investors treat the recent technical-driven price action as noise and focus on the Fed’s signal. They recommend an overweight in the belly of the Treasury yield curve via 5s30s curve steepeners. Our economists continue to expect that conditions will be in place for the Fed to raise rates in 3Q23, with balance sheet tapering to start in January 2022.

  Clearly, we are in uncharted waters in terms of policy. As my colleagues Andrew Pauker, Michael Wilson and team caution, this policy response may mean that the current economic cycle could run hotter but shorter than the prior three. They posit that risk-asset leadership is already shifting from ‘early-cycle’ to ‘mid-cycle,’ and that investors should position accordingly.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 18:30

• US Believes China "Flirting" With Taiwan Takeover: It's "Closer Than Most Think"
  US Believes China “Flirting” With Taiwan Takeover: It’s “Closer Than Most Think”

  A weekend report in Financial Times suggests the world is closer than ever to witnessing a major conflict flare up over Taiwan. Multiple alarming quotes from top American defense officials included in the report reveal that Washington fears China is now in the process of planning a takeover of the US-backed democratic island.

  Ironically the report was published shortly on the heels of the Chinese Air Force’s largest ever incursion into Taiwan’s air space Friday, which saw a whopping 20 aircraft, including four long-range bombers, breach the country’s southwest defense zone. FT concludes based on the US officials interviewed for the report that the Biden administration now sees Beijing as actively “flirting with the idea of seizing control of Taiwan as President Xi Jinping becomes more willing to take risks to boost his legacy.”

  

  Such a scenario would force Washington’s hand — it would have to decide to either go to war on behalf of its tiny ally halfway across the world against the massive and formidable People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — or sit back and watch from the sidelines somewhat helplessly.

  “China appears to be moving from a period of being content with the status quo over Taiwan to a period in which they are more impatient and more prepared to test the limits and flirt with the idea of unification,” one senior US official was cited in the report as saying.

  The pessimistic assessment was reportedly based on the Biden admin monitoring Chinese military movements and behavior over the prior two months.

  The official stated that Xi sees this as a crucial part of his legacy moving forward. The Chinese president “sees capstone progress on Taiwan as important to his legitimacy and legacy,” the official was quoted further as saying. “It seems that he is prepared to take more risks,” the official said.

  The Biden administration has concluded that China “is flirting with the idea of seizing control of Taiwan as President Xi Jinping becomes more willing to take risks to boost his legacy.” https://t.co/pLTPj9qVcR

  — Axios (@axios) March 27, 2021

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

  This appears to also be the assessment of Admiral John Aquilino, who’s been tapped to head US forces in the Pacific. He testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee this past week week that the threat to Taiwan “is much closer to us than most think,” according to CNN. 

  He told the briefing of Beijing’s hostile intentions for asserting control over Taiwan that it’s now “their No. 1 priority.”

  Interestingly, Aquilino actually suggested that the recent prediction of a “within 6 years” takeover timeframe earlier this month stated by outgoing Indo-Pacom commander Adm Philip Davidson was too conservative. “My opinion is that this problem is much closer to us than most think and we have to take this on,” Aquilino said.

  And then there’s the assessment of top White House Asia official Kurt Campbell, who concludes, “…nowhere have we seen more persistent and determined activities than the military, diplomatic and other activities directed at Taiwan.” However, it should be noted that FT emphasized that Taiwan’s government and military leadership itself doesn’t share this assessment of any ‘imminent’ invasion threat in the works — or if so they’re at least not willing to state it openly.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 18:00

• Alternatives To Censorship: Interview With Matt Stoller By Matt Taibbi
  Alternatives To Censorship: Interview With Matt Stoller By Matt Taibbi

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  Led by Chairman Frank Pallone, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday held a five-hour interrogation of Silicon Valley CEOs entitled, “Disinformation Nation: Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation.”

  As Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday, the hearing was at once agonizingly boring and frightening to speech advocates, filled with scenes of members of Congress demanding that monopolist companies engage in draconian crackdowns.

  

  Again, as Greenwald pointed out, one of the craziest exchanges involved Texas Democrat Lizzie Fletcher:

  Fletcher brought up the State Department’s maintenance of a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. She praised the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Google, saying that “by all accounts, your platforms do a better job with terrorist organizations, where that post is automatically removed with keywords or phrases and those are designated by the state department.”

  Then she went further, chiding the firms for not doing the same domestically. asking, “Would a federal standard for defining a domestic terror organization similar to [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] help your platforms better track and remove harmful content?”

  At another point, Fletcher noted that material from the January 6th protests had been taken down (for TK interviews of several of the videographers affected, click here) and said, “I think we can all understand some of the reasons for this.” Then she complained about a lack of transparency, asking the members, “Will you commit to sharing the removed content with Congress?” so that they can continue their “investigation” of the incident.

  Questions like Fletcher’s suggest Congress wants to create a multi-tiered informational system, one in which “data transparency” means sharing content with Congress but not the public.

  Worse, they’re seeking systems of “responsible” curation that might mean private companies like Google enforcing government-created lists of bannable domestic organizations, which is pretty much the opposite of what the First Amendment intended.

  Under the system favored by Fletcher and others, these monopolistic firms would target speakers as well as speech, a major departure from our current legal framework, which focuses on speech connected to provable harm.

  As detailed in an earlier article about NEC appointee Timothy Wu, these solutions presuppose that the media landscape will remain highly concentrated, the power of these firms just deployed in a direction more to the liking of House members like Fletcher, Pallone, Minnesota’s Angie Craig, and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Senators like Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Remember this quote from Markey: “The issue isn’t that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”

  Remember: the last time Congress summed social media CEOs to be interrogated, Sen. @EdMarkey left no doubt about what the demand of Democrats is when doing this: we want you to censor more (and obviously, the content they want censored is from their political adversaries): pic.twitter.com/j64rCdZ82L

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 20, 2021

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

  These ideas are infected by the same fundamental reasoning error that drove the Hill’s previous drive for tech censorship in the Russian misinformation panic. Do countries like Russia (and Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, China, Venezuela, and others) promote division, misinformation, and the dreaded “societal discord” in the United State? Sure. Of course.

  But the sum total of the divisive efforts of those other countries makes up at most a tiny fraction of the divisive content we ourselves produce in the United States, as an intentional component of our commercial media system, which uses advanced analytics and engagement strategies to get us upset with each other.

  As Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project puts it, describing how companies like Facebook make money:

  It’s like if you were in a bar and there was a guy in the corner that was constantly egging people onto getting into fights, and he got paid whenever somebody got into a fight? That’s the business model here.

  As Stoller points out in a recent interview with Useful Idiots, the calls for Silicon Valley to crack down on “misinformation” and “extremism” is rooted in a basic misunderstanding of how these firms make money. Even as a cynical or draconian method for clamping down on speech, getting Facebook or Google to eliminate lists of taboo speakers wouldn’t work, because it wouldn’t change the core function of these companies: selling ads through surveillance-based herding of users into silos of sensational content.

  These utility-like firms take in data from everything you do on the Web, whether you’re on their sites or not, and use that information to create a methodology that allows a vendor to buy the most effective possible ad, in the cheapest possible location. If Joe Schmo Motors wants to sell you a car, it can either pay premium prices to advertise in a place like Car and Driver, or it can go to Facebook and Google, who will match that car dealership to a list of men aged 55 and up who looked at an ad for a car in the last week, and target them at some other, cheaper site.

  In this system, bogus news “content” has the same role as porn or cat videos — it’s a cheap method of sucking in a predictable group of users and keeping them engaged long enough to see an ad. The salient issue with conspiracy theories or content that inspires “societal discord” isn’t that they achieve a political end, it’s that they’re effective as attention-grabbing devices.

  The companies’ use of these ad methods undermines factuality and journalism in multiple ways. One, as Stoller points out, is that the firms are literally “stealing” from legitimate news organizations. “What Google and Facebook are doing is they’re getting the proprietary subscriber and reader information from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and then they’re advertising to them on other properties.”

  As he points out, if a company did this through physical means — breaking into offices, taking subscriber lists, and targeting the names for ads — “We would all be like, ‘Wow! That’s outrageous. That’s crazy. That’s stealing.’” But it’s what they do.

  Secondly, the companies’ model depends upon keeping attention siloed. If users are regularly exposed to different points of view, if they develop healthy habits for weighing fact versus fiction, they will be tougher targets for engagement.

  So the system of push notifications and surveillance-inspired news feeds stresses feeding users content that’s in the middle of the middle of their historical areas of interest: the more efficient the firms are in delivering content that aligns with your opinions, the better their chance at keeping you engaged.

  Rope people in, show them ads in spaces that in a vacuum are cheap but which Facebook or Google can sell at a premium because of the intel they have, and you can turn anything from QAnon to Pizzagate into cash machines.

  After the January 6th riots, Stoller’s organization wrote a piece called, “How To Prevent the Next Social Media-Driven Attack On Democracy—and Avoid a Big Tech Censorship Regime” that said:

  While the world is a better place without Donald Trump’s Twitter feed or Facebook page inciting his followers to violently overturn an election, keeping him or other arbitrarily chosen malignant actors off these platforms doesn’t change the incentive for Facebook or other social networks to continue pumping misinformation into users’ feeds to continue profiting off of ads.

  In other words, until you deal with the underlying profit model, no amount of censoring will change a thing. Pallone hinted that he understood this a little on Thursday, when he asked Zuckerberg if it were true, as the Wall Street Journal reported last year, that in an analysis done in Germany, researchers found that “Facebook’s own engagement tools were tied to a significant rise in membership in extremist organizations.” But most of the questions went in the other direction.

  “The question isn’t whether Alex Jones should have a platform,” Stoller explains. “The question is, should YouTube have recommended Alex Jones 15 billion times through its algorithms so that YouTube could make money selling ads?”

  Below is an excerpted transcript from the Stoller interview at Useful Idiots, part of which is already up here. When the full video is released, I’ll update and include it.

  Stoller is one of the leading experts on tech monopolies. He wrote the Simon and Schuster book, Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, and is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler, among others. Excerpts from his responses to questions from myself and Katie Halper are below, edited for clarity:

  Matt Taibbi: There’s a debate going on within the Democratic Party-aligned activist world about approaches to dealing with problems in the speech world. Could you summarize?

  Matt Stoller: There are two sides. One bunch of people has been saying, “Hey, these firms are really powerful…” This is the anti-monopoly wing. Google and Facebook, let’s break them up, regulate them. They’re really powerful and big, and that’s scary. So, without getting in too deep, there’s the Antitrust subcommittee, that’s been saying, “Hey, these firms are really powerful, and they’re picking and choosing winners.” Usually, they talk about small businesses, but the issue with speech is the same thing.

  Then there’s another side, which is, I think, noisier and has more of the MSNBC/CNN vibe. This is the disinformation/misinformation world. This is the Russiagate people, the “We don’t like that Trump can speak” type of people. What their argument is, effectively, is that firms haven’t sufficiently curated their platforms to present what they think is a legitimate form of public debate. They’re thinking, “Well, we need to figure out how to get them to filter differently, and organize discourse differently.”

  Ideologically, they just accept the dominance of these firms, and they’re just saying, “What’s the best way for these firms to organize discourse?”

  Taibbi: By conceding the inevitability of these firms, they’re making that concession, but saying they want to direct that power in a direction that they’d like better.

  Stoller: That’s right. I mean, there’s a lot of different reasons for that. Some of them are neoliberal. A lot of the law professors are like, “Oh, this is just the way of technology, and this is more efficient.” Therefore, the question is, “How do you manage these large platforms?” They’re just inevitable.

  Then there are people who are actually socialists who think, “Well, the internet killed newspapers. The internet does all of these things. Also, there’s a bunch of them that never liked commercial press in the first place. A lot of well-meaning people were like, “We never liked advertising models to begin with. We think everything should be like the BBC.”

  So, those are the two groups that accept the inevitability thesis. It’s really deep-rooted in political philosophy. It’s not just a simple disagreement. Then there are people like us who are like, “No, no. Actually, technology is deployed according to law and regulation, and this specific regulatory model that we have, the business structures of these firms, the way they make money from advertising, those are specific policy choices, and we can make different ones if we want.”

  Katie Halper: When you say socialist, some may identify as socialists, but that there’s a general group of people who just believe, “We oppose hate speech and White supremacy,” and so we have to make these companies that are evil, and give them moral authority and a content moderation authority, which is an inherent contradiction/wishful thinking/inconsistent paradox.

  In other words, you’re saying leftists, right? Leftist, not liberals, not neo-liberals, not even liberals, but people who are really would identify as left.

  Stoller: Yes. There’s a part of the socialist world that’s like, “What we really want is egalitarianism in the form of a giant HR compliance department that tells everyone to be tolerant.” Right? Then there are most people who are like, “No. I just don’t like wall street and I want people to be equal and everyone should have a little bit over something,” and they both call themselves socialists.

  Taibbi: You and the American Economic Liberties Project have said, there’s a reason why taking Trump off Twitter isn’t going to fix the problem, because you’re not fixing those incentives. Can you talk about what those incentives are, and why they cause the problems?

  Stoller: Google and Facebook, they sell ads, right? They collect lots of information on you and they sell ads and ads are valuable for two reasons. One, you’re looking at them. Two, if they know who you are and they know information about you, then they can make the ad more valuable. A random ad space isn’t worth very much, if you’re showing it to some undefined person. An ad space you’re showing to a 55-year-old man who’s thinking of buying a luxury car, somebody will pay a lot for that ad space, if you know who that person is and you know that that person has actually been browsing luxury car websites and reading the Wall Street Journal about how best to liquidate their portfolio or something to buy a luxury item.

  Google and Facebook want to sell that advertising particularly on their properties, where they get to keep 100% of the profits. If Google sells an ad on YouTube, they get to keep the money. Facebook sells an ad on Instagram or Facebook, they get to keep the money. So, their goal is to keep you using their sites and to collect information on you.

  Taibbi: What methods do they use to keep you on the sites?

  Stoller: They have all sorts of psychological tricks. Engagement is the way that they talk about it, but it’s like if you go and you look for something on YouTube, they’re going to send you something that’s a little bit more extreme. It’s not necessarily just political. It’s like if you’re a vegetarian, they’ll say, or if you look at stuff that’s like, “Here’s how to become a vegetarian,” they’ll say, “Well, about becoming a vegan?” If you look at stuff that suggests you’re a little bit scared of whether this vaccine will work, if you search for, “I would want to find safety data on this vaccine,” eventually, they’ll move you to like serious anti-vax world.

  So, the question that we have to ask is whether you should block crazy people from saying things, or do something else… Like Alex Jones, for example, is crazy person or an entertainer, he says things that I don’t particularly like or agree with. The question, though, isn’t whether Alex Jones should have a platform. We’ve always allowed people to go to the corner of the street and say whatever they want or to write pamphlets or whatever.

  The question is, should YouTube have recommended Alex Jones 15 billion times through its algorithms so that YouTube could make money selling ads? That’s a different question than censorship.

  Taibbi: Conversely they’re not recommending other material that might discourage you from believing Alex Jones.

  Stoller: Right. The other thing is, it’s not just that they want to create more inventory so they can sell ads. It’s also the kinds of ads that they’re selling. So, you can sell an ad based on trust. The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal — I hate using them as examples — they have an audience and people. They built that audience by investing in content, and then they sell ads to that audience, and the advertiser knows where that advertising is going and it’s based on trust.

  The alternative model which we have now is simply based on clickbait. It’s just, “Generate as many impressions as possible, and then sell those impressions wherever the person is on the web.” That creates a kind of journalism, which is designed to get clicks or not even journalism. It’s just you’re creating content just to get engagement and not actually to build trust.

  So, what this business model does, we call it surveillance advertising, but it’s an infrastructure player, a communications player manipulating you so that they could put content, engage content in front of you. What that does is it incentivizes a low trust form of content production. It both kills trusted content producers, a.k.a. local newspapers, because you no longer need to be able to put advertising in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or whatever. You can just geotarget those people through Google and Facebook. You can get some Eastern European to falsify stories and people will click on that.

  So, it kills legitimate newspapers and it creates an incentive for low trust content, fraudulent content, defamatory content, whatever it is that will keep people engaged and is often fraudulent. It hits really local newspapers and niche newspapers the most, so Black-owned newspapers and also newspapers having to do with hobbies. The actual issue is more about niche audiences themselves, and the kind of low-trust content that we’re encouraging with our policy framework, versus what we used to do, which we would encourage higher trust forms of content.

  Taibbi: How would you fix this problem, from a regulatory perspective?

  Stoller: The House Antitrust Subcommittee had a report where they recommended what we call regulated competition. That would say, “Okay. You break up these platforms in ways that wouldn’t interfere with the efficiency of that particular network system.” So, Google and YouTube don’t need to be in the same company, you could separate them out.

  There are ways that you’d have to handle the search engine. You couldn’t split Facebook into five Facebooks, because then you wouldn’t necessarily be able to talk to your friends and family, but you could separate Instagram and Facebook easily. You could force interoperability and then split up Facebook if you want to do that. So, you could separate those things out and then ban surveillance advertising for a starter.

  Taibbi: What would that do to content if you ban surveillance advertising? ANd how would that work?

  Stoller: It would force advertisers to go back to advertising to audiences. So, they would no longer be able to track you as an individual and say, “We know this is what you’re interested in.” They would go to what’s called contextual advertising, and they would say, “Okay. If you’re on a site that has to do with tennis, then we’ll advertise tennis rackets on that site because we assume that that people are interested in tennis rackets.”

  That’s called contextual advertising, versus the current system: you read an article about tennis in a tennis magazine and the platforms say, “Oh, that’s expensive to buy an ad there, so we’ll track you around the web and when you’re on Candy Crush, we’ll show you a tennis racket ad.” That’s the surveillance advertising model we have. That pulls all the power to Google and Facebook who are doing all the tracking, versus the contextual ad where the power is actually with the tennis racket site that has the relationship with the people interested in tennis.

  Taibbi: So, the idea would be you would create a sort of a firewall between the utilitarian functions of a site like Facebook or Google, that provide a service where either you’re searching for something or you’re communicating with somebody, and they wouldn’t be allowed to take that data from that utility-like function to sell you an ad?

  Stoller: That’s right. Germany is hearing a court case saying that you can’t combine advertising from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and then third parties to create a super profile of someone and show them ads. They were saying that’s an antitrust violation. There’s a court hearing on that, but, more broadly, that’s what you have to do.

  Ultimately, what we would want is we would want to have subscription-based communication networks paying for services. This is something that’s worked for thousands of years. I give you something in value, you give me money. It’s an honest way of doing business. If I don’t value it enough to give you money, then I won’t get it.

  If people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to pay for Facebook, or I don’t want to pay for YouTube,” or whatever it is, that makes no sense. You’re already paying. You’re either paying with a Friday night you spend surfing YouTube, where they sell a bunch of ads and you give up your Friday night — or you pay with money, and it’s an honest transaction, and it’s in the long run, a lot cheaper and more honest method of payment.

  For more of this interview, check out UsefulIdiots.Substack.Com in the next days. For Stoller’s writings on the subject, see here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 17:30

• Traders Brace For More Turmoil After Archegos Forced Liquidations
  Traders Brace For More Turmoil After Archegos Forced Liquidations

  Yesterday, in the aftermath of Friday’s bizarre, furious liquidation which saw a dramatic plunge in the price of various Chinese tech stocks…

  

  … as well as a collapse in the price of media giants such as ViacomCBS and Discovery…

  

  … which wiped out $33BN of value off all the companies involved as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley sold blocks of shares worth $20BN at discount prices throughout the day, we pointed to Tiger Cub Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management family office and asked if “This Was The Fund That Sparked The Massive Media Stock Liquidations.”

  

  Today, both the FT and Bloomberg confirm that it was indeed Hwang responsible for the forced unwinds that shook the market on Friday.

  Archegos Capital, a private investment firm, was behind billions of dollars worth of share sales that captivated Wall Street on Friday — a fire sale that has left traders scrambling to calculate how much more it has to offload, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The fund, which had large exposures to ViacomCBS and several Chinese technology stocks, was hit hard after shares of the US media group began to tumble on Tuesday and Wednesday.

  As we speculated, the initial plunge in media names prompted a margin call from one of Archegos’ prime brokers, which in turn then prompted a cascade of similar cash calls from other Prime Brokers said FT sources. According to Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley traded about $13 billion, including Farfetch, Discovery, Baidu and GSX Techedu, while Goldman Sachs sold $6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Vipshop Holdings. That sale was followed by the sale of $3.9 billion of shares including ViacomCBS Inc. and iQiyi, a Goldman email to clients said.

  At the same time, traders buying the large blocks of stock – which were being intermediated by such firms as Goldman Sachs – were told the share sales had been prompted by a “forced deleveraging” by a fund.

  Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, a handful of completely clueless sellside “analysts” who had no idea a fund was forced to dump its positions and were scrambling to explain the price action, rushed to downgrade companies such as ViacomCBS – because on Wall Street, price dictates fundamentals apparently – and only added to the liquidation frenzy even though their arguments were completely false (just as they had been on the upside when these same clueless penguins rushed to upgrade the companies).

  

  In any case, Archegos is now finished: as the FT reports, “the firm’s website is no longer available and the company did not return multiple requests for comment. The fund’s head trader in New York hung up the phone when contacted by the Financial Times.”

  Not surprisingly, this is not the Hwang’s first forced unwind: the New York-based asset manager previously ran the Tiger Asia hedge fund but he returned cash to investors in 2012 when he admitted wire fraud relating to Chinese bank stocks. Hwang paid $44MM in fines to settle illegal trading charges with the SEC in 2012, and in 2014 he was banned from trading in Hong Kong.

  While the forced liquidations at Archegos – which describes itself as a “purposeful community of investment industry professionals” whose core values are “Excellence, Integrity, Learning/Doing/Teaching, Caring/Sharing” and others according to an archived version of its now deleted website – only hit its own P&L as it does not manage outside money, there is plenty of “outside money” invested in the names that got hit on Friday as countless shareholders were crushed.

  For those other investors, the question – as we asked earlier – is whether the fire sales are over. Some traders say the pattern of recent selling, which ran for several days but reached a peak on Friday, suggests the bulk has been completed. Others think the scale of leverage that Archegos appears to have used means billions of dollars’ worth of positions could still remain to be sold.

  now that the entity liquidating media/Chinese tech stocks is know, will the market
  I) keep pressing them lower to hurt Hwang’s “idea dinner” pals, or
  ii) ramp them as no more selling pressure

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 28, 2021

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

  According to the FT, Archegos’ name is a biblical Greek word meaning chief, leader, or prince, used in relation to Jesus. In a 2018 YouTube video, Hwang said his investments were “not all about money”, adding that “God certainly has a long-term view”.

  “We love seeing in our little eyes what God is doing through investing and capitalism and how . . . it can be done better.”

  But while Hwang may believe he is God, or at least Jesus (and certainly would love to have his money) others don’t have that kind of patience, and asBloomberg writes this morning, global traders are bracing for what’s shaping up to be “one of the most anticipated opens for U.S. equities in months” following an extraordinary $20 billion wave of block trades Friday that rattled investors worldwide.

  Sharif Farha, a Dubai-based portfolio manager at Safehouse Global Consumer Fund, said ViacomCBS and Discovery may actually recover on Monday and noted that the market’s fundamentals remain intact.
  “The correction was not structural,” he said, and he is right: anyone who bought at Friday’s lows on the forced selling is likely set to make a killing in the coming days.

  

  While Farha expects benign price action to start the day, but anticipation for Monday’s open remains high: “Traders everywhere know the story and will be glued to their screens,” he said.

  To be sure, the possibility of additional block trades – either at Hwang or other funds that have similar exposure – looms over the market, while the traditional end-of-quarter volatility which we discussed last week may contribute to sharper swings on high-flying stocks. ViacomCBS and Discovery have rallied this year.

  Then again, what has soared higher may just come down and stay down: “What most people appear to have missed is that both of these companies have seen their share prices almost quadruple since October last year,” CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said in a note on Sunday, referring to ViacomCBS and Discovery.

  

  It didn’t help that last Monday ViacomCBS reported an offering of $2 billion in shares after closing at a record high. The stock fell 9.1% the following day. On Friday, a downgrade by Wells Fargo and the large block trades compounded the selling pressure. it has since wiped out more than half its value in just the past 5 days!

  Meanwhile, as Bloomberg notes Viacom and Discovery shares are also echoing volatility in a host of companies that soared on lockdown trades, including Zillow Group and Peloton and to some degree the entire blank-check SPAC space. Earlier this month, data compiled by Susquehanna showed that volatility futures expiring three months from now were hovering 20% above the average level or prior instances when the VIX traded at 20.

  “We have seen an increase in volatility in equities capital markets, tech, working-from-home names with retail stepping back and more rotation to value in the last few weeks,” said Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau. “It may have hurt a number of funds that were overly exposed to these trades.”

  “The markets could start trading in a friendly manner at the beginning of the week,” said Andreas Lipkow, Comdirect Bank strategist, echoing what we said in “Brace For A Frenzy Of Stock Buying On March 29.” He added that “although there is currently some major profit-taking and unusual block trade activities, these market asymmetries can currently still be processed well.”

  But perhaps just as remarkable as the Archegos liquidation, was the elephant in the room, namely the action in the last minutes of trading on Friday. U.S. equities notched their biggest gain in three weeks on Friday which saw the S&P 500 explode 1.7% higher after trading in the red for much of the day, as the bull market celebrated its first anniversary since hitting pandemic-era lows.

  

  We hope that this is not what the Fed has in mind when it talks about “price stability.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 17:00

• Elite Philanthropy Mainly Self-Serving
  Elite Philanthropy Mainly Self-Serving

  Authored by Zipporah Osei via The Academic Times (emphasis ours),

  Philanthropy among the elite class in the United States and the United Kingdom does more to create goodwill for the super-wealthy than to alleviate social ills for the poor, according to a new meta-analysis. 

  

  A group of U.K. researchers reviewed 263 journal articles, books and studies on elite philanthropy to better understand the role it plays in this new age of inequality. In the United States, the wealth gap between richest and poorer families has more than doubled since the 1980s, and in the United Kingdom, the incomes of the richest fifth are 12 times as much as the incomes of the poorest fifth. 

  The researchers’ paper, published in a special issue of the International Journal of Management Reviews, lays out how on the whole, the elite class mainly donates to causes that provide themselves with some type of benefit. The researchers defined “elite philanthropy” as “the preserve of wealthy individuals and close family members” who became rich through entrepreneurship, either by starting a new business or expanding an inherited one. These individuals generally have extensive local, national and international business networks, the researchers said, and occupy positions with the “field of power,” a social space at the top of society that allows them to impact policy and practice.

  Until recently, philanthropy hadn’t been taken seriously as part of mainstream management and organizational research, but Newcastle University professor Charles Harvey said it’s important that academia moves in this direction as many of the wealthiest philanthropists have entrepreneurial backgrounds.

  “In the last decade, we’ve seen tech and finance money finding its way into philanthropic funding led by people like Bill Gates and Christopher Hohn,” said Harvey, one of the paper’s authors. “But entrepreneurship has enabled philanthropy for centuries so it’s important to understand how the philanthropic sector supports the economic sector.”

  Many people mistakenly view elite philanthropy as a benign force for good rather than an avenue for the super-wealthy to translate economic capital into social and cultural capital, according to the researchers. Elite philanthropy, the study argues, is transactional, as there are also material benefits in addition to the cultural capital. In 2017, the United States increased the proportion of income that can be deducted from 50% to 60%, which directly benefits the elite; and in the United Kingdom, efforts to reduce philanthropic tax relief fell through in 2012 after pushback from wealthy philanthropists. 

  Households in the top 0.1% reduced the share of their income they donated by half from 1980 to 1990 after changes to the tax code reduced the amount of money they could deduct from charitable contributions, according to a study published in Cambridge University Press. That trend continued in future decades: In 2018, the 20 richest Americans donated $8.7 billion to charity, which is just .8% of their net worth as a group.

  Where wealthy elites donate their money is shaped by where they can have the most influence on a local, national and international level, researchers said; maintaining their “field of power,” which allows them to use their business ties to influence the political sphere, is also a motivating factor in their philanthropy. For example, one study of 194 elite philanthropists in the United States found that 104 of them actively worked to sway public policy by funding research and advocacy organizations.

  Because elite philanthropy affords a higher degree of influence to a select group of people, it’s important to examine its benefits and pitfalls more thoroughly, the researchers argue. While investments in philanthropy are beneficial to society at large, the current state of investments has only a moderate redistributive effect between the rich and the poor. Most of the money has not only been kept within developed countries but also within elite circles, rather than going to causes that impact a larger share of the world’s population such as disease prevention in developing nations. 

  Universities and colleges such as Harvard and Oxford, which already boast large endowments, are by far the largest beneficiaries of elite philanthropy. Money is also shared to arts and culture organizations and environmental causes, but in most fields accounts for only a small portion of nonprofit organizations’ income. In this way, wealthy people’s charity serves to support institutions that have directly benefited them, all while giving them the goodwill to influence other sectors of society, according to Harvey. 

  The researchers present four types of elite philanthropy that are distinguished by a focus in either developed or developing countries. Institutionally supportive philanthropy supports organizations and causes in developed countries, while developmental philanthropy focuses on developing nations. These two are more customary forms of philanthropy. The other two types take a newer, more entrepreneurial approach: Market-oriented philanthropy uses market-reinforced solutions to help developed nations; and transformational philanthropy seeks to invest in solutions that will not only combat social problems but also create wealth in developing countries. 

  Someone practicing customary philanthropy might donate a large sum of money to a nonprofit focused on eliminating child hunger, while an example of entrepreneurial philanthropy would be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg investing $24 million in a startup that trains and recruits software developers in Africa. 

  Contrary to popular belief, though, donations and investments in developing countries make up only a small proportion of elite philanthropy, and investments like these have only become more popular in the last decade or so, according to Harvey.

  “As the differentials between the rich and poor get wider, you might expect the rich to give more as a percentage of income but the opposite is true. It’s really just a few percentage points, a small amount relative to the amount of wealth that these people hold as a class,” Harvey said. “That’s not to say that there aren’t some super generous people within that class, but the class as a whole is not generous.”

  Internationally, the biggest givers are actually governments. Between 2013 and 2015, governments of developed nations provided $462 billion in overseas aid while philanthropists contributed $24 billion, according to data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

  The research isn’t intended to dissuade wealthy philanthropists from donating or to make the argument that no good comes from the investments they do make, said Mairi Maclean, a professor at the University of Bath. 

  “Individually there are some very impressive people helping important causes,” she said, recalling conversations she’s had with philanthropists who work on prison reform and disease prevention, among other causes. “But we’re looking at this systematically and on that level, a lot of improvements can be made.”

  The study “Elite philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom in the new age of inequalities,” published Feb. 21 in the International Journal of Management Reviews, was authored by Mairi Maclean, University of Bath; Charles Harvey and Ruomei Yang, Newcastle University; and Frank Mueller, Durham University.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/28/2021 – 16:30

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• Escobar: US/NATO Versus Russia-China In A Hybrid War To The Finish
  Escobar: US/NATO Versus Russia-China In A Hybrid War To The Finish

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  The unipolar moment is six feet under, the hegemon will try to break Eurasian integration and there’s no grownup in the room to counsel restraint…

  

  Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation” is to run again for president in 2024. Not as a hologram. And fielding the same running mate.

  Now that the “free world” has breathed a sigh of relief, let’s return to serious matters – as in the contours of the Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics.

  What happened in the past few days between Anchorage and Guilin continues to reverberate. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Brussels “destroyed” the relationship between Russia and the EU, he focused on how the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is getting stronger and stronger.

  Not so casual synchronicity revealed that as Lavrov was being properly hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guilin – scenic lunch in the Li river included -, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was visiting NATO’s James-Bondish HQ outside Brussels.

  Lavrov made it quite clear that the core of Russia-China revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods arrangement. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in crypto-currency.

  This “triple threat” is what is unleashing the Hegemon’s unbounded fury.

  On a broader spectrum, the Russia-China strategy also implies that the progressive interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) will keep apace across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, and Southwest Asia – necessary steps towards an ultimately unified Eurasian market under a sort of strategic Sino-Russo management.

  In Alaska, the Blinken-Sullivan team learned, at their expense, that you don’t mess with a Yoda such as Yang Jiechi with impunity. Now they’re about to learn what it means to mess with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council.

  Patrushev, as much a Yoda as Yang Jiechi, and a master of understatement, delivered a not so cryptic message: if the US created “though days” for Russia, as they “are planning that, they can implement that”, Washington “would be responsible for the steps that they would take”.

  What NATO is really up to

  Meanwhile, in Brussels, Blinken was enacting a Perfect Couple  routine with spectacularly inefficient head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen. The script went something like this. “Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.”

  Then came NATO, which put on quite a show, complete with an all-Foreign Minister tough guy pose in front of the HQ. That was part of a summit – which predictably did not “celebrate” the 10th anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Libya or the major ass-kicking NATO “endured” in Afghanistan.

  In June 2020, NATO’s cardboard secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg – actually his US military handlers – laid out what is now known as the NATO 2030 strategy, which boils down to a Global Robocop politico-military mandate. The Global South has (not) been warned.

  In Afghanistan, according to a Stoltenberg impervious to irony, NATO supports infusing “fresh energy into the peace process”. At the summit, NATO ministers also discussed Middle East and Northern Africa and – with a straight face – looked into “what more NATO could do to build stability in the region”. Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Libyans, Malians would love to learn something about that.

  Post-summit, Stoltenberg delivered a proverbially somnolent press conference where the main focus was – what else – Russia, and its “pattern for repressive behavior at home, aggressive behavior abroad”.

  All the rhetoric about NATO “building stability” vanishes when one examines what’s really behind NATO 2030, via a meaty “recommendation” report written by a bunch of “experts”

  Here we learn the three essentials:

  1. “The Alliance must respond to Russian threats and hostile actions (…) without a return to ‘business as usual’ barring alterations in Russia’s aggressive behavior and its return to full compliance with international law.”

  2. China is depicted as a tsunami of “security challenges”: “The Alliance should infuse the China challenge throughout existing structures and consider establishing a consultative body to discuss all aspects of Allies’ security interests vis-à-vis China”. The emphasis is to “defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defense, military readiness or resilience in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.”

  3. “NATO should outline a global blueprint (italics mine) for better utilizing its partnerships to advance NATO strategic interests. It should shift from the current demand-driven approach to an interest-driven approach (italics mine) and consider providing more stable and predictable resource streams for partnership activities. NATO’s Open Door Policy should be upheld and reinvigorated. NATO should expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia.”

  Here’s to The Triple Threat. Yet the Top of the Pops – as in fat, juicy industrial-military complex contracts – is really here:

  The most profound geopolitical challenge is posed by Russia. While Russia is by economic and social measures a declining power, it has proven itself capable of territorial aggression and is likely to remain a chief threat facing NATO over the coming decade.

  NATO may be redacting, but the master script comes straight from the Deep State – complete with Russia “seeking hegemony”; expanding Hybrid War (the concept was actually invented by the Deep State); and manipulating “cyber, state-sanctioned assassinations, and poisonings – using chemical weapons, political coercion, and other methods to violate the sovereignty of Allies.”

  Beijing for its part is using “force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region. Over the coming decade, China will likely also challenge NATO’s ability to build collective resilience.”

  The Global South should be very much aware of NATO’s pledge to save the “free world” from these autocratic evils.

  The NATO interpretation of “South” encompasses North Africa and the Middle East, in fact everywhere from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan. Any similarity with the presumably defunct “Greater Middle East” concept of the Dubya era is not an accident.

  NATO insists this vast expanse is characterized by “fragility, instability, and insecurity” – of course refusing to disclose its own role as serial instability perpetrator in Libya, Iraq, parts of Syria and Afghanistan.

  Because ultimately…it’s all Russia’s fault: “To the South, the challenge includes the presence of Russia and to a lesser extent China, exploiting regional fragilities. Russia has reinserted itself in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2015, it intervened in the Syrian Civil War and remains there. Russia’s Middle East policy is likely to exacerbate tensions and political strife across the region as it extends an increasing amount of political, financial, operational, and logistical assets to its partners. China’s influence across the Middle East is also growing. It signed a strategic partnership with Iran, is the largest importer of crude oil from Iraq, wedged itself into the Afghanistan peace process, and is the biggest foreign investor in the region.”

  Here, in a nutshell, and not exactly in code, is the NATO road map all the way to 2030 to harass and try to dismantle every relevant nook and cranny of Eurasia integration, especially those directly linked to New Silk Roads infrastructure/connectivity projects (investment in Iran, reconstruction of Syria, reconstruction of Iraq, reconstruction of Afghanistan).

  The spin is on a “360-degree approach to security” that will “become an imperative”. Translation: NATO is coming for large swathes of the Global South, big time, under the pretense of “addressing both the traditional threats emanating from this region like terrorism and new risks, including the growing presence of Russia, and to a lesser extent China.”

  Hybrid war on two fronts

  And to think that in a not so distant past there used to be some flashes of lucidity emanating from the US establishment.

  Very few will remember that in 1993 James Baker, former Secretary of State under Daddy Bush, advanced the idea of expanding NATO to Russia, which at the time, under Yeltsin and a gang of Milton Friedmanesque free marketeers, was devastated, but ruled by “democracy”. Yet Bill Clinton was already in power, and the idea was duly discarded.

  Six years later, no less than George Kennan – who invented the containment of the USSR in the first place – determined that the NATO annexation of former Soviet satellites was “the beginning of a new Cold War” and “a tragic mistake”.

  It’s immensely enlightening to relieve and re-study the whole decade between the fall of the USSR and the election of Putin to the presidency through the venerable Yevgeny Primakov’s book Russian Crossroads: Toward the New Millenium, published in the US by Yale University Press.

  Primakov, the ultimate intel insider who started as a Pravda correspondent in the Middle East, former Foreign Minister and also Prime Minister, looked closely into Putin’s soul, repeatedly, and liked what he saw: a man of integrity and a consummate professional. Primakov was a multilateralist avant la lettre, the conceptual instigator of RIC (Russia-India-China) which in the next decade evolved towards BRICS.

  Those were the days – exactly 22 years ago – when Primakov was on a plane to Washington when he picked up a call by then Vice-President Al Gore: the US was about to start bombing Yugoslavia, a slav-orthodox Russian ally, and there was nothing the former superpower could do about it. Primakov ordered the pilot to turn around and fly back to Moscow.

  Now Russia is powerful enough to advance its own Greater Eurasia concept, which moving forward should be balancing – and complementing – China’s New Silk Roads. It’s the power of this Double Helix – which is bound to inevitably attract key sectors of Western Europe – that is driving the Hegemon’s ruling class dazed and confused.

  Glenn Diesen, author of Russian Conservatism: Managing Change Under Permanent Revolution, which I analyzed in Why Russia is Driving the West Crazy , and one of the best global analysts of Eurasia integration, summed it all up: “The US has had great difficulties in terms of converting the security dependence of the allies into geoeconomic loyalty, as evident by the Europeans still buying Chinese technologies and Russian energy.

  Hence permanent Divide and Rule, featuring one of its key targets: cajole, force, bribe and all of the above for the European Parliament to scotch the China-EU trade/investment deal.

  Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University and author of the best made in China book about the New Silk Roads, clearly sees through the “America is back” bluster: “China is not isolated by the US, the West or even the whole international community. The more hostility they show, the more anxiety they have. When the US travels around the globe to frequently ask for support, unity and help from its allies, this means US hegemony is weakening.”

  Wang even forecasts what may happen if the current “leader of the free world” is prevented from fulfilling his exceptional mission: “Don’t be fooled by the sanctions between China and the EU, which is harmless to trade and economic ties, and EU leaders won’t be that stupid to totally abandon the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, because they know they would never get such a good deal when Trump or Trumpism returns to the White House.”

  Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics, as configured in these crucial past two weeks, spells out the Unipolar Moment is six feet under. The Hegemon will never admit it; hence the NATO counterpunch, which was pre-designed. Ultimately, the Hegemon has decided not to engage in diplomatic accommodation, but to wage a hybrid war on two fronts against a relentlessly demonized strategic partnership of peer competitors.

  And as a sign of these sorry times, there’s no James Baker or George Kennan to advise against such folly.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 23:30

• A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery
  A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery

  At some point in the future, the human race will arrive at an epoch where people will wonder how – back in the stone age of pre-2021 – we would get status alerts about our food deliveries, without having a dildo inside of us.

  Allow us to explain. That’s because a company called CamSoda labs has just released a new product called “Grubuzz”, which – according to the company’s website (we swear we are not making this up)  – “harnesses the power of Internet-connected sex toys – aka teledildonics – and sends clitoral vibrations to people as their takeout food from a national chain or local favorite is being prepared and ultimately delivered.”

  As if the serotonin hit from the poison we call takeout food nowadays wasn’t enough…

  Naturally, you’re wondering how it works. “The frequency of vibrations increase through the food delivery process,” the site patiently explains. “So, for example, the vibration frequency starts slowly when someone’s order is received by the restaurant and progressively increases when the driver leaves the restaurant with the order, drives closer to their residence, arrives at their door, etc.”

   

  

  Daryn Parker, Vice President of CamSoda, said (with a straight face, we’re guessing): “People have been stuck at home for over a year now. They have grown accustomed to ordering takeout food from their favorite restaurants regularly. Quarantine cravings are real and so too is the COVID-19 delivery food boom.”

  “In addition to the rise in food delivery, there has been a spike in teledildonic usage,” he said. We’d love to see the Softbank-style slide deck for this pitch.

  He continued: “Here at CamSoda we figured we’d combine these popular activities and produce a technology that gets people off while their food delivery order is being prepared and ultimately delivered. With Grubuzz, not only will your mouth be watering while your order is being processed, but so too will your private parts. What better way to eat some of your favorite food from Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Outback Steakhouse or P.F. Chang’s than after you’ve orgasmed?!”

  

  The site explains:

  Users will obtain a curated email address from CamSoda, which they will then plug into their favorite delivery apps, including GrubHub, Uber Eats, Caviar, DoorDash and Postmates, among others. When an email is sent from their delivery app updating them on the status of their order, it will be sent to the CamSoda-generated email, which will simultaneously set off a vibration to their teledildonic device.

  And sorry guys, “CamSoda is initially launching Grubuzz for females only,” the site says. Back to ordering food like its the stone age, we guess.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 23:00

• Could The US Ban Guns? Australia Tried Something Pretty Close
  Could The US Ban Guns? Australia Tried Something Pretty Close

  Authored by Peter Suciu via 19fortyfive.com,

  American supporters of gun control point to Australia as a fine “solution” to stop mass shootings, gang violence, and even suicides.

  

  Firearms are strictly regulated in the “Land Down Under” and all firearms license applicants are required to take a safety course, while they must also show a “genuine reason” for owning a firearm.

  Self-defense isn’t a valid reason either.

  Why Australia Changed Its Approach on Firearms

  Australia instituted these strict laws following the April 1996 mass shooting at Port Arthur, in which gunman Martin Bryant took the lives of thirty-five people using an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle. Bryant’s motivation was reportedly based on the failure to buy a bed and breakfast property but also to become “notorious.”

  The shooting outraged the nation, and soon Australia introduced comprehensive gun control. It was led by then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who had only taken office six weeks earlier at the head of a center-right coalition. Howard came to the decision that firearms were simply too easy to obtain and there were just too many of them.

  “We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path,” Howard announced, and he radically changed Australia’s gun laws. According to supporters of gun control, those efforts rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

  What Australia Did

  It was less than two weeks after the massacre that all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun legislation that made it far harder for prospective gun owners to obtain a firearm, including a twenty-eight-day waiting period. The law also banned all semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic shotguns, while Australia instituted a nationwide mandatory buyback of all the guns that were banned. A market value benchmark was determined to compensate gun owners for the loss of their loss of property.

  It was so radical that even Howard wasn’t certain the buyback would be accepted. During an address to gun rights supporters, he reportedly wore a bulletproof vest and feared the event could turn violent. However, the meeting went off peacefully and in the first buyback, about 650,000 legally owned guns were handed in and subsequently destroyed.

  According to an academic estimate, the buyback took in and destroyed some twenty percent of all privately owned guns in Australia. Additionally, in the years since that buyback, Australians did not purchase new – and legal – firearms to make up for what was banned, but it is likely that many feared that they’d face a similar ban.

  Since the passage of that legislation, gun control advocates have pointed to Australia and called for similar measures.

  Why Australia’s Gun Laws Won’t Work in the U.S.

  So, could such a system work in the United States? The answer is likely no.

  There are several reasons; as The New York Times reported, “Australians, on the whole, were happy to give up their guns and accept the new restrictions.” Americans, who, unlike their Australian cousins, have a Second Amendment that provided the right to keep and bear arms and that has been in place for nearly 240 years.

  Moreover, Australia may have had its own history of hunting and sport, but it has always been far smaller and less significant than that of the United States. Another factor is that Prime Minster Howard was able to get all six Australian states to agree to and pass uniform and sweeping gun control legislation in just twelve days. The United States would have to get all fifty states on the same page and that would likely never happen and it certainly wouldn’t be quick.

  Then there is the issue that Australia bought back some 650,000 guns. The United States government would likely have to buy back hundreds of millions of firearms. Additionally, the United States would also have to address the fact that it would put dozens of small to mid-sized companies that make the firearms out of business, while even larger manufacturers could find themselves in dire straits if the civilian market were to suddenly disappear.

  Another consideration is whether gun violence would diminish were the United States to institute such strict gun control. The vast majority of shooting deaths aren’t from the handful of tragic and high-profile mass shootings. Most gun violence in the United States involves criminals using illegal guns, which wouldn’t be impacted by a ban.

  What About Criminals? 

  The biggest hurdle would be whether a ban would actually get guns off the streets as supporters of gun control claim, or just create a huge black market. It isn’t hard to believe that many Americans would ignore the ban and risk becoming criminals by hiding away their firearms, while many might simply sell their guns “no questions asked” on a future black market at a profit.

  That could keep gangs and other criminals well-armed for years, even decades to come.

  It is true that the number of mass shootings did all but cease in Australia following the ban, and there has been just a single mass shooting event since Australia banned the weapons, that is a point worth considering too. How could any mass shootings occur? Australia saw 650,000 guns handed in, but in subsequent amnesties more firearms have been handed in, highlighting that many ignored the ban.

  As noted the United States has hundreds of millions of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, so mass shootings and gang violence would remain a thing as long as anyone refuses to hand in his/her firearm(s).

  This doesn’t mean we should ignore the problem in America, but a gun confiscation and buyback that worked in Australia is simply unlikely to work here. Of course, that hasn’t stopped American politicians from pushing their agenda.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 22:30

• 77% Of Americans Are Worried About Soaring Inflation 
  77% Of Americans Are Worried About Soaring Inflation 

  Americans are becoming more worried about inflation than ever following the Federal Reserve and the federal government’s unprecedented response to the virus pandemic downturn by plowing trillions of dollars into the economy. As a result, prices of financial assets and items in the real economy have soared over the last year which a new survey reveals three-quarters of consumers are concerned about inflation. 

  With the Federal Reserve turning a blind eye to rapid price increases, consumers are finding it unavoidable to avoid higher prices at the gas pump or supermarket. A CivicScience survey of more than 2,600 respondents found that 77% were somewhat concerned about inflation.

  

  Much of the inflation concerns were based on younger respondents. About 52% of respondents aged 18-24 were “very concerned” about inflation, 50% of the 25-34 aged respondents were “very concerned,” and 48% of 35-54. Surprisingly, baby boomers aged +55 were only at 37%. 

  

  Meanwhile, Cleveland Fed President Charles Evans said some increase in inflation would be welcome. “Too low inflation is no good,” he added.

  But for the millions of working-poor Americans still collecting pandemic insurance checks, soaring prices have been much of a nuisance. 

  “Naturally, people who have had their hours or pay reduced as a result of the pandemic are the most sensitive to the idea of inflation and what it means for the general cost of living. If it’s difficult to make ends meet now, imagine how difficult it could be once inflation sinks in,” said CivicScience. 

  

  On a political basis, conservatives were overwhelmingly more concerned about inflation than any other political group. 

  

  The general public appears to be catching up to the Fed’s game as monetary and fiscal stimulus results in the higher cost of living. 

  By one gauge, as we noted earlier this month, inflation fears are the highest this century. The spread between US five- and 10-year inflation breakevens is now the highest since the early 2000s. 

  

  Consumers’ outlook for inflation over the longer term climbed to an almost six-year high.

  

  Americans are panic searching “inflation.” 

  

  The Fed and government’s big experiment with massive stimulus is possibly overheating the economy and may continue to push inflation higher. The Fed continues to beat its drums that it has inflation under control and that today’s episode of surging prices isn’t the 1970s. 

  The worst thing that could happen now is a repeat of stagflation in the 1970s. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 22:00

• China And Russia Are Winning The New Space Race
  China And Russia Are Winning The New Space Race

  Authored by Brandon Weichert via RealClearPolitics.com,

  Conflict, not cooperation, is going to define international affairs for the foreseeable future.

  This will be true both on Earth and, more importantly, in the strategic high ground of space.

  Fact is, the second space race is on. The world’s powers are playing for keeps. Whoever wins the second space race will rule the world. Despite the competitive advantages that the United States has in this arena, America’s rivals – namely Russia and China – are catching up.

  

  Unless the Biden administration takes a radical departure from where its nascent space policy is heading, America will lose space and, in so doing, the United States will cease being the world’s superpower.

  Some people reading this might not understand why it matters if America surrendered space to China. You might be questioning why we should care if the country remains a superpower. But without America’s once unquestionable dominance of space, without access to critical satellites in orbit, the America you and I know would ground to a halt. Everything in our society today relies on signals and those signals must pass through satellites. The U.S. military could not defend itself or American interests abroad nor could everyday life for average Americans continue should U.S. satellites be destroyed or rendered inoperable.

  How long do you think America could survive in a world commanded by Beijing and Moscow?

  The new space race is the most important challenge of our time. Sadly, few — in government and in the public — seem to have recognized this fact.

  China and Russia have announced plans to unite their space programs and jointly develop the moon and its bountiful natural resources. For the record, the moon is believed to hold potentially trillions of dollars of mineable rare-earth minerals. Capturing the moon could provide the Sino-Russian alliance the ultimate strategic high ground over Earth. More importantly, the mined resources of the moon could be sold — and those trillions of dollars could be funneled into the coffers of the Sino-Russian war machine on Earth.

  This new space alliance represents the most significant geopolitical shift in national security space policy in recent decades. It is the fusing of the second-most-powerful nation in space, Russia, with the rising, third space power, China. And it is part of a larger geopolitical trend: the hardening of Eurasia against the United States and the greatest challenge to America’s superpower status since the Cold War.

  What’s required now from Washington is decisive action. The political will and strategic vision for controlling the strategic high ground — for exploiting its vast bounties — is essential for whichever power seeks to order the remainder of the 21st century. Both Moscow and Beijing are clearly expressing such a will. The Americans, on the other hand, appear blinkered.

  The United States must protect its satellites from attack, build reliable space-based missile defenses, insist upon returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024 (the year that China plans to begin construction of a lunar base), keep its manned Mars mission on schedule, and unleash the private space sector as never before — all to stay ahead of the new Sino-Russian entente in space. And Washington must do these things within a few short years.

  Should the new Sino-Russian space alliance go unanswered, then these authoritarian states will quickly claim the strategic high ground of space and reduce the United States to a middle power on Earth beholden to the oppressive whims of Beijing and Moscow. The space race is on, a space war is near, and the Biden administration must do everything in its power to ensure that America is defended in space and that its dominance remains absolute.

  To keep that dominance, the new administration must call for a minimum $1 trillion investment in both the military and civilian space programs while offering clear guidelines — and steady support — for ensuring America’s access to space and for pushing ahead of the Chinese-Russian alliance.

  Losing space to those two powers means also losing the Earth to them. Should our dominance disappear, one can expect a far bleaker future for our children than what many of us expect or want. President Biden must act in support of a robust space policy and he must do it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 21:30

• Montana Senator Complains Local Meth Producers Can't Compete With Mexican Imports
  Montana Senator Complains Local Meth Producers Can't Compete With Mexican Imports

  In a humorous clip that made the rounds on social media overnight, Montana Sen. Steve Daines was caught on camera appearing to wax nostalgic about the good ol’ days when Montana’s basement-dwelling meth cooks had yet to be driven out of business by high-purity Mexican imports.

  Sen. Steve Daines: “Twenty years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And you had purity levels less than 30%. Today the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel.” pic.twitter.com/Xtu1geaVxJ

  — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 26, 2021

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

  Fans of the show Breaking Bad could be forgiven for suspecting that Daines might have been role-playing as Walter White, the show’s anti-hero, who produced a type of extremely pure “blue” meth many times more potent than the Mexican-made stuff coming over the border (keep in mind, the show is a work of fiction).

  “Twenty years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And you had purity levels less than 30%,” Daines told a gathering of his Senate colleagues during a visit to the Mexican border. “Today the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel.”

  Daines – who was speaking during a press conference at the border, where the Biden Administration is struggling to deflect blame for a surge in migration that’s reached crisis levels – added that illegal immigration was partly to blame for the influx of potent meth into the “Big Sky State”, before laying the blame for the state’s meth crisis at the feet of President Joe Biden.

  For context, here’s an accurate visualization of how the number of migrants crossing the southern border has climbed since Biden’s inauguration.

  

  While left-leaning news outlets jumped at the chance to mock a sitting Republican Senator, others on twitter seized the opportunity to crack some jokes.

  If only one brave American—an emotionally damaged high school chemistry teacher with a fatal disease perhaps—would rise up and revive America’s fledgling meth industry…

  — Karen Puckett (@KarenPuckettLeo) March 27, 2021

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

  My dad was a meth farmer, and his dad was a meth farmer, and thanks to cheap imports last year they had to declare bankruptcy and sell the meth farm.

  — Erin Zero Republicans Ryan (@morninggloria) March 27, 2021

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

  It used to be that a meth cook in Montana could support a family of 4 by working at one lab until retirement. Not anymore. Because of the influx of Mexican meth, many local cooks have to hold down three jobs delivering jenkem and krokodil in the gig economy pic.twitter.com/vi9B443xQ8

  — Cola CHICAGO ill. 1312 (@thecolacorp) March 27, 2021

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

  “We had our own meth. Montana meth. It was lousy, but by God it was ours. Now you have this purer Mexican meth. My God, how is a man supposed to earn a living against that?”

  — Sir Humphrey (@bdquinn) March 26, 2021

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

  [sticks finger in white powder and licks it]

  “The mom and pop meth labs of Montana don’t stand a chance against this cartel meth.”

  — JRehling (@JRehling) March 27, 2021

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

  In summary: don’t buy meth unless it’s red, white and blue.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 21:00

• How Lockdowns Devastated The Cruise Industry
  How Lockdowns Devastated The Cruise Industry

  Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets,

  “I never thought I would be standing in a food line for hours. Just the degradation of it. You say to yourself, ‘Wow. I am really at this point.’” So said James Cox, a 50-year old porter in the cruise industry, to the Wall Street Journal’s Julie Byrowicz and Ted Mann.

  Cox used to earn $27/hour, but since the lockdowns began last year his ability to earn in his chosen profession has been taken from him. As Byrowicz and Mann explain it, the “cruise industry is waiting anxiously for Washington’s go-ahead to sail again.” Lest readers forget, national politicians assigned to themselves the right to decide which industries would continue to operate as the coronavirus spread, and which ones wouldn’t. The cruise industry didn’t get the nod, hence Cox waiting in food lines.

  Interesting and tragic about all of this is that Byrowicz and Mann were reporting from Port Canaveral, FL, and more specifically from “Terminal Three, a cavernous $135 million structure built for Carnival Cruises.” The previous detail is hopefully a reminder of how prosperous the cruise industry was before politicians panicked. In other words, the best and brightest of the cruise industry had plainly developed remarkable skills when it came to attracting customers, and having done so, meeting the needs of those same customers.

  The above truth is crucially relevant to what happened to the cruise industry. The leading lights never got a chance to adjust. Despite knowing the needs of a huge customer base intimately, they never had the right to pivot at a time when a virus was rapidly spreading.

  Instead, the political class that gave us the Post Office, Amtrak, Social Security and other would-be bankrupt entities absent the taxpayer decided on its own that cruise operators should not be allowed to adjust to a seemingly new corona-reality. How tragic.

  

  Indeed, how tragic for all business sectors that a particularly prosperous one wasn’t allowed to show how it would meet customer needs during a notably fraught time. Information born of commercial leaps is so crucial to economic progress, businesses were and are starved for market-created information about the post-corona future, but some of the best never had the chance to serve their customers, and as a consequence we’re all a little or a lot more blind about what’s ahead. Politicians know what’s best for us, it seems.

  To which some skeptics might reply that regardless of the federal government’s sick actions, the cruise industry was already dead. They’ll say that broad public fear about exposure to a rapidly-spreading virus was the cause of the industry’s death, so don’t blame politicians. Sorry, but such a response is insufficient, and really kind of mindless.

  We know this from the aforementioned report penned by Byrowics and Mann. As they note, “the cruise industry is waiting anxiously” for the right to operate again. They wouldn’t be “waiting anxiously” to get back to serving customers if they felt they would have no customers, or if they felt they couldn’t adjust to new realities. Rather explicit in their desire to get their ships back in the business of ferrying passengers around the world is a belief that if allowed to serve customers, they would be serving customers.

  How would they? The speculation here is that just as grocery stores and other retailers were “allowed” to remain in business so long as they limited the number of customers inside, so could cruise lines have operated in limited fashion. Important about the previous assertion is that they wouldn’t need laws or other government force to space out passengers. Precisely because the customer of 2020 was different from the customer of 2019, cruise companies would have adjusted capacity based on their intimate knowledge of their customer base.

  In which case some cruise lines might have charged a great deal more (have readers seen the nosebleed rates charged by luxury hotels and resorts in the past year?) to fewer customers, some would have instituted “surge pricing” amid periods of high customer demand a la Uber, some would have limited capacity by requiring daily testing for the virus, and still others might have instituted strict age limits with an eye on protecting the vulnerable from crowds altogether.

  About what cruise lines might have done, it should be made clear that these are mere speculations from an outsider possessing a tiny fraction of the customer-service knowledge that the various cruise companies possess. One guesses that if allowed to strut their stuff, Carnival, Crystal, Seabourn, and others would have thoroughly blown us away with their ability to effectively operate in pro-customer and pro-health fashion at a time when so many potential passengers were nervous.

  Alas, they once again were not allowed to. Drunk-with-power politicians and experts lacking any kind of customer-service knowledge decided for them that they would not be allowed to try.

  Which brings us back to people like James Cox, and the kinds of cruise operators he’s historically worked for. In split second fashion they had their dignity taken from them. Cox wasn’t expecting to stand in food lines, or presumably take unemployment, but the lockdowns were rapid in their destruction.

  Just the same, businesses owned by prideful people likely never imagined government shutting them down, only for that same government to become the sole source of finance around for all-too-many businesses. It’s a long or short way of saying that while PPP has kept some businesses afloat, how awful. This wasn’t what they wanted; government help. Absent the use of force against them, they wouldn’t have needed it. There’s a descriptive word for what’s been done to businesses and workers, but it won’t be said here. Readers can guess.

  Hopefully readers will also keep in mind how quickly politicians can wreck things, and how quickly their destruction robs people and businesses of dignity. Right now, the formerly soaring cruise industry is once again “waiting anxiously for Washington’s go-ahead to sail again.” Please think about that. And how wrong it is.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 20:30

• Iran & China Sign Massive 25-Year Deal: $400BN Chinese Infrastructure Investment For Oil
  Iran & China Sign Massive 25-Year Deal: $400BN Chinese Infrastructure Investment For Oil

  Increasingly it appears that so-called “rogue states” and those under Washington’s wrath and sanctions are coming together to combat US dominance across the globe. It was a process already set in motion after years of aggressive US attempts to enforce a ban on Iranian and Venezuelan oil, as a prime example.

  For starters, China and Russia have been major players in helping to circumvent US attempts to blockade Venezuelan and Iranian crude. Saturday’s major China-Iran news to some degree formalizes this, as Reuters reports, “China and Iran, both subject to US sanctions, signed a 25-year cooperation agreement on Saturday to strengthen their long-standing economic and political alliance.”

  

  Long in the negotiating process, with a couple years of frequent diplomatic and presidential trips and exchanges of delegations between the capitals of Tehran and Beijing, the accord cements Iran’s entry into Xi’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to open a “trade superhighway” linking China with all of Eurasia. 

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday, “Relations between the two countries have now reached the level of strategic partnership and China seeks to comprehensively improve relations with Iran.”

  “Our relations with Iran will not be affected by the current situation, but will be permanent and strategic,” Wang said. “Iran decides independently on its relations with other countries and is not like some countries that change their position with one phone call.”

  The deal, dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, was finalized in a televised signing ceremony, and is rare for the highly isolated Islamic Republic, given the last similar deal with a major power was with Russia all the way back in 2001 and dealt primarily with development of nuclear energy.

  The New York Times in its reporting emphasized it’s all about China asserting its influence over the Middle East at a moment US power is in retreat.

  The past few years have witnessed China rise to be the biggest single-importer of Iranian oil…

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The NY Times said Beijing plans to direct some $400 billion into Iranian infrastructure in exchange for oil as a key part of the deal. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 20:00

• The Tale Wags The Dog As News Becomes Propaganda
  The Tale Wags The Dog As News Becomes Propaganda

  Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

  It all seemed so simple. I thought the Trump/Russia hoax would finally force my liberal friends to demand a reckoning from their trusted news sources. As the Mueller Report made clear, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR and so many others had egregiously and unequivocally misled them for years about the biggest political story since Watergate.

  If their favorite outlets could be so wrong about that, shouldn’t they bring a healthy skepticism to the coverage of other issues, from police shootings and “systemic racism” to the threat of “domestic terrorism,” GOP “voter suppression” efforts or President Biden’s trouble navigating stairs?

  

  When I asked a True Believer about all this last week – a man whose scriptures are the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker magazine – my friend told me I should stop watching Fox News.

  After I pressed him gently on Russiagate, he told me that Trump had indeed colluded with Putin but that Mueller pulled his punches because he’s a Republican.

  That’s when I decided to turn the talk to baseball.

  It is always useful to try to identify and untangle the array of psychological, political, and economic factors that have led millions of otherwise reasonable and informed people to suspend their critical faculties.

  But exploring complexity can also shroud this simple truth: For whatever reason, the progressive intelligentsia has decided to deny facts that impinge on the view of reality it seeks to advance. It has created a vast information ecosystem – one that extends beyond traditional news outlets to include magazines ranging from Harper’s Bazaar to Teen Vogue, late night comedy shows, academic and scholarly journals, Netflix and Amazon Prime, and on and on – that echoes and re-enforces its agenda.

  For those who still manage to see that the emperor has no clothes, Twitter mobs, cancel culture and other censorious tools are deployed to shame and silence apostates.

  The left’s intentional substitution of propaganda for facts has turned the national discourse into a blizzard of BS.

  The latest example occurred last week when the deranged sex addict who murdered eight people at three Atlanta massage parlors was portrayed as an anti-Asian white supremacist.

  

  This was false, but because it fit the preferred narrative, facts didn’t matter to President Biden or progressive news outlets.

  The brazenness of their lies would take your breath away if we weren’t becoming so inured to them through their ubiquity.

  For the moment, at least, progressives are unchained, unrepentant and uninterested in conversation.

  They are also in charge.

  This is the simple truth.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 19:30

• Amazon Denies Workers Were Forced To Pee In Bottles – Then People Brought Receipts
  Amazon Denies Workers Were Forced To Pee In Bottles – Then People Brought Receipts

  Last week a Twitter war broke out between progressive Democrats and Amazon – after Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would meet with Amazon workers on Friday to discuss their vote to unionize.

  

  In response to Sanders’ visit, Dave Clark – CEO of worldwide consumer blew his stack, tweeting “I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace for our constituents: a $15 minimum wage, health care from day one, career progression, and a safe and inclusive work environment.”

  In response, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) had Bernie’s back – tweeting “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a “progressive workplace” when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.“

  To which Amazon’s corporate news account fired back: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”

  1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.

  — Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021

  Over the past decade, several reports emerged over deplorable conditions at Amazon warehouses and corporate headquarters.

  In 2011, the brutal work environment at an Amazon warehouse in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania were reported in the Morning Call.

  In 2012, the Seattle Times published a blockbuster report about overworked, underpaid staff who were encouraged to lie about workplace injuries to avoid having to file reports. 

  In 2015, the New York Times revealed that conditions at Amazon headquarters are cutthroat. 

  “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” –Bo Olson

  And in April of 2018, journalist and author James Bloodworth reported what he saw after going undercover at an Amazon warehouse in Staffordshire, UK, where he found horrendous conditions in which some workers are forced to pee in bottles. 

  “People just peed in bottles because they lived in fear of being ­disciplined over ‘idle time’ and ­losing their jobs just because they needed the loo.” -The Sun

  So, in response to Amazon denying that workers had to pee in bottles – multiple current and former employees came forward with receipts.

  As The Verge notes: “Indeed, after Amazon sent out its ill-judged tweet, reporters who cover the company’s labor practices practically lined up to soak the firm with evidence. These included English journalist James Bloodworth, whose 2018 book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain documented his experience of low-paid work for companies including Amazon.”

  Look at the stat and consider the context https://t.co/9bSy3Jv7hC pic.twitter.com/DLlxdb7DV3

  — James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) March 25, 2021

  Here’s Will Evans from The Center of Investigative Reporting:

  Peeing at Amazon – or not being able to – is an actual thing. Here’s what workers told me. https://t.co/D0lp4pdQ5D https://t.co/eqFiS8WZbG pic.twitter.com/RVLOYezGvE

  — Will Evans (@willCIR) March 25, 2021

  And Lauren Kaori Gurley from Motherboard. (Gurley also wrote a story with photographic evidence, including numerous examples from the subreddit for Amazon delivery drivers.) 

  As a labor reporter who covers Amazon extensively…I can say Amazon delivery drivers not having a time or place to pee is one of the most universal concerns I hear about https://t.co/pG81MDf5TU pic.twitter.com/h3pGhOok1y

  — Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) March 25, 2021

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

  Even BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger chimed in, tweeting: “Amazon claims its workers don’t pee in bottles; defenders say it’s an urban legend. But these photos sent to me by a former driver for a former @amazon contractor called Synctruck in a California facility suggest strongly otherwise.”

  Amazon claims its workers don’t pee in bottles; defenders say it’s an urban legend. But these photos sent to me by a former driver for a former @amazon contractor called Synctruck in a California facility suggest strongly otherwise. https://t.co/hp4zCqOxRO pic.twitter.com/StHNvV9B1x

  — Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) March 25, 2021

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

  While gawking at the urine, pause to look at the other line in that document and consider the work culture it describes: “Everyone is replaceable.”

  — Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) March 25, 2021

  More via The Verge: 

  The Intercept added yet more evidence to the mounting case against Amazon with a new report published on Thursday detailing not only more cases of drivers urinating into bottles, but also resorting to defecating into bags. And the most damning reveal is that Amazon was made aware of this because it began reprimanding employees for the behavior when the bottles and bags were left inside Amazon delivery vehicles, The Intercept reports.

  “We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” reads an email from an Amazon logistics manager provided to The Intercept by a Pittsburgh area employee. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know if may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”

  …

  Indeed, although Amazon is trying to refute stories of “peeing in bottles” that have become shorthand for the company’s poor working conditions, they’re only the tip of the iceberg.

  Other evidence includes the high injury rates in Amazon warehouses (7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees); employees dying from COVID-19 after complaints the company wasn’t doing enough to mitigate risks from the virus; widespread union-busting; production targets that treat humans like robots; and gruesome anecdotes like the story of the Amazon worker who died from a heart attack and who, say colleagues, was left on the work floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment.

  Perhaps Amazon’s social media team should make sure there isn’t an avalanche of evidence before denying widespread reporting on worker conditions.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 19:00

• Gohmert: Pelosi's Capitol Police Bill Gaslights America
  Gohmert: Pelosi's Capitol Police Bill Gaslights America

  Authored by Louie Gohmert (Republican representing Texas’s 1st Congressional District), op-ed via The Epoch Times,

  Democrats have solidified their effort to act as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth with the passage of Speaker Pelosi’s H.R. 1085 in the House of Representatives. This bill rewrites the historical facts from Jan. 6 under the guise of “honoring” the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) who bravely protect Congress.

  

  Pelosi’s goal, of course, isn’t to show respect and admiration to the Capitol Police—which would be particularly ironic coming from the “defund the police” party—but to perpetuate a false narrative that 74-plus million Americans are dangerous racists and insurrectionists who have no part in civilized society.

  H.R. 1085 states its purpose is, “to award three congressional gold medals to the United States Capitol Police and those who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

  That certainly sounds innocent enough. However, the language in the bill editorializes in its “findings” Speaker Pelosi’s deliberately politicized view of what happened that day, instead of doing what a bill put before Members of Congress for a vote to recognize the USCP presumably would do, which is to recount the many meritorious acts of our brave and devoted officers.

  When Speaker Pelosi’s bill speaks of “a mob of insurrectionists,” she ascribes both a mental state and a crime to many Americans who merely showed up to a rally to protest the blatant corruption they’ve witnessed in this nation’s electoral system.

  To illustrate how hyperbolic and outright deceptive Speaker Pelosi’s choice of words are here, the internet’s own Free Dictionary defines “insurrectionist” as “a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority,” which is another way of saying the government.

  These are the words that Speaker Pelosi has chosen to use, to accuse her fellow Americans of the crime of armed insurrection. As any first-year law student can tell you, publicly accusing someone of a crime is actionable as libel or slander in a court of law.

  The facts as we know them, including testimony before the United States Senate from an FBI counterterrorism official, reveals that not a single individual who entered the building that day was carrying a firearm, and as a result, none were arrested and charged with a firearms offense.

  Because of my high regard for the Capitol Police, some of whom I personally know and hold in great esteem, I wanted to recognize their valor without lending credence to these deliberate falsehoods. Had I voted in favor of the Speaker’s language, I would have affirmed her narrative.

  It is for this reason that my colleagues and I removed her divisive language and filed that bill to honor our Capitol Police, so that every Member of Congress could vote on a non-politicized bill in good conscience.

  As to be expected, the Left and the media set out to attack my colleagues and me for voting against Speaker Pelosi’s narrative, which engaged in the ultimate gaslighting of the American people.

  For months, our country was under violent siege by radical leftists from Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement. Cities were burned, businesses were looted, and livelihoods were destroyed.

  A disturbing report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association revealed that between May 25 and July 31, 2020, 8,700 protests took place across the country. Of those, 574 of them turned into riots in which mass looting and destruction occurred.

  At least 2,000 police officers were injured, multiple police precincts were set on fire, hundreds of police cars were damaged, 2,385 incidents of looting occurred, and 624 arsons were reported.

  At least 25 Americans were killed, including a federal law enforcement officer and a retired police chief. The damage to property during the riots has been estimated to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion.

  What did Democrats do while this was occurring?

  Our now-Vice President Kamala Harris urged her followers on Twitter to bail out the rioters. This same bail fund helped free one rioter twice. Since then, he is “facing three new felony counts of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm for allegedly having marijuana, cocaine and psilocyn mushrooms.”

  When mobs were destroying city property, Speaker Pelosi casually responded that “people will do what they do.” Radical Leftist lawmakers introduced a bill to defund the police.

  Democrats showed no concern for the thousands of innocent lives that were destroyed due to the riots over the summer. We certainly didn’t hear them condemn the violence against the thousands of police officers that took place during these “mostly peaceful protests.”

  Unlike what we now see at the Capitol fortress in Washington, D.C., there were no calls from the Left for the National Guard to deploy to these cities and install fencing to protect its residents. To the contrary, when President Trump sent DHS officers to Portland after weeks of unrest, Speaker Pelosi called them “stormtroopers” and “Trump’s secret police.”

  Many Americans, and I suspect many law enforcement officers, see right through the Democrats’ recent, fraudulent metamorphosis into the party of law and order.

  As someone who has spent a majority of my adult life working for justice, law and order with an abiding respect for honorable, self-sacrificing law officers, I call upon Congress to set aside its self-serving agenda in this time of great peril and to bring forth responsible legislation in the future, not continue down this path of divisiveness. As Members of Congress we owe it to those who elected us to hold sacred our vows and our duties as America’s lawmakers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 18:30

• China Hits US & Canadian Officials With More Counter-Sanctions
  China Hits US & Canadian Officials With More Counter-Sanctions

  On Saturday China unleashed its next round of tit-for-tat sanctions following Monday’s coordinated human rights abuse related sanctions announced by the US, EU, UK, and Canada. As was forewarned, these newest sanctions target Canada, but also includes more American officials. 

  The AFP details, “Two members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin and Tony Perkins, as well as Canadian MP Michael Chong and a Canadian parliamentary committee on human rights are prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau,” as listed by the Chinese foreign ministry.

  

  Along with the new punitive counter-measures the foreign ministry repeated its earlier assertion that the US and Canada imposed sanctions on Beijing officials on Monday “based on rumors and disinformation.”

  The sanctioned individuals within the Canadian and US governments “must stop political manipulation on Xinjiang-related issues, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs in any form,” the ministry added, noting that they are now banned from conducting any business with Chinese companies or individuals. 

  “Otherwise, they will get their fingers burnt,” the statement warned threateningly. 

  China’s immediate response following this week’s punitive measures from the Western allies based on the Xinjiang allegations – which center on China’s network of ‘reeducation’ camps and labor prisons – was to call it a mere “a pretext for interfering in China’s internal affairs and frustrate China’s development.”

  “People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, including the Uyghurs, enjoy each and every constitutional and lawful right. The fact that Xinjiang residents of various ethnic groups enjoy stability, security, development and progress, makes it one of the most successful human rights stories,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had claimed in an official statement.

  There’s likely more anti-Canada action to come, given multiple members of Canadian parliament have been extremely vocal of late in calling for greater punishment against Beijing, including the Boycotting of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 18:00

• Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?
  Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. 

  

  If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

  There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control. 

  After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office. 

  At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for.

  A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized. 

  I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no. 

  The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states. 

  So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened. 

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”

  • Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”

  • CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”

  • Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”

  • There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”

  • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”

  • James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”

  • Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.” 

  • Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”

  • Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”

  • Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”

  • Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”

  • Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”

  • Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”

  • The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”

  • Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”

  • The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”

  There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)? 

  Here are the data. 

  

  

  The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. 

  

  What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation. 

  On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case. 

  As for Texas, the results so far are in…

  

  I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times. 

  What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them. 

  The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.  

  Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 17:30

• Biden Floats Rival Plan To China's 'Belt & Road' In Call With UK's Johnson
  Biden Floats Rival Plan To China's 'Belt & Road' In Call With UK's Johnson

  In a Friday phone call between President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson which focused on China and the coordinated sanctions actions the US and UK took this week in response to human rights abuses targeting China’s Uighur minority, Biden floated the idea of initiating a Western “democratic” rival to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ project.

  Referring to the ambitious multi-trillion dollar infrastructure initiative which President Xi Jingping has spent years negotiating and pursuing, Biden told reporters of the phone call that, “We talked about China and the competition they’re engaging in in the Belt and Road Initiative.” 

  “I suggested we should have, essentially, a similar initiative coming from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world that, in fact, need help,” he added.

  

  The words came a day after the first presidential press conference he’s held since entering office, during which the president said he desired competition with China as opposed to confrontation.

  “China has an overall goal—and I don’t criticize them for the goal—but they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world,” Biden said Thursday. “That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

  Friday’s reference to a US-backed ‘Belt and Road rival’ further comes ahead of next week’s unveiling of the White House’s multitrillion-dollar plan for a major US infrastructure reboot and upgrade.

  To review, China’s BRI has involved over 100 countries signing agreements with China on huge undertakings that’s seen China-constructed railways, highways, ports and new energy plants dot Eurasia. It’s included some 2,600 projects at a cost of an estimated $3.7 trillion.

  

  The BRI has been called “China’s trade superhighway”.

  The BRI is a big part of what the US president had in mind when in his Thursday remarks he forecast that he expects “steep, steep competition” with China for many years to come, which is headed by a man “doesn’t have a democratic with a small ‘D’ bone in his body” – according to Biden’s assessment of Xi.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 17:00

• NFT Robot Art Is Now A Thing
  NFT Robot Art Is Now A Thing

  Via Market Crumbs,

  With NFTs of everything from tweets, artwork and even a clip of LeBron James attracting top dollars lately, it shouldn’t be surprising that an NFT artwork by a robot sold at an auction.

  

  A 12-second MP4 file titled “Sophia Instantiation,” and an accompanying physical printout, sold for $688,888 at an auction in Hong Kong yesterday in what may be the first ever sale of a piece of artwork by a robot. The piece shows a portrait of Sophia done by Italian digital artist Andrea Bonaceto and how it evolves into a digital painting done by Sophia.

  “I’m so excited about people’s response to new technologies like robotics … and am so glad to be part of these creativities,” Sophia told Reuters, who pointed out the robot was wearing a silver dress.

  The winning bidder is unknown but bid for Sophia Instantiation under the username “_888_” and bid in increments ending in 888. The initial bid of $10,050 from earlier this week quickly surpassed $100,000 before _888_ placed a bid of $118,888. After raising their bid by $20,000 and then $40,000 increments _888_ began increasing their bid by $100,000 increments.

  “I was kind of astonished to see how fast it shot up too as the bidding war took place at the end of the auction,” Sophia’s creator David Hanson of Hanson Robotics said.

  “So it was really exhilarating and stunning.”

  The New York Times notes Sophia said last week that the auction is a step toward “a new paradigm where robots and humans work together in the creative process.”

  However, when speaking during the auction, Sophia left everyone wondering what’s next.

  “I’m making these artworks but it makes me question what is real,” Sophia said. “How do I really experience art, but also how does an artist experience an artwork?”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 16:30

• Where Manhattanites Fled During The Pandemic May Surprise You
  Where Manhattanites Fled During The Pandemic May Surprise You

  Since the virus pandemic began, property firms and moving companies in New York City have reported a mass exodus of city-dwellers. Many of them are young families escaping the metro area’s socio-economic collapse as hybrid work (or remote working) allows them to live in suburbia. We find out today, in a new report, many of those who fled Manhattan in the last 12 months ending in January 2021 didn’t go very far. 

  Bloomberg cites mobile phone data from Placer.ai, which reveals 37% of Manhattanites fled to Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and other nearby suburbs. About 14.6% of them wound up in, well, you guessed it, Suffolk County, where the Hamptons is located. Next on the list is Brooklyn at 4.2%, Bronx 3.8%, Nassau 3.7%, Queens 3.3%, and Westchester 2.5%.  

  Surprisingly, two counties located in Florida made the list, with 2.5% Manhattanites moving to Miami-Dade and 2.1% to Palm Beach. 

  

  During this period, Manhattan recorded a 12.8% decline in net migration as it appeared even in 2021, outbound migration trends continued to overwhelm inbound ones. 

  In a separate report, we’ve noted Manhattanites have been purchasing homes in Greenwich. Also, there have been migration trends to a tiny town in New York State’s Hudson Valley called Poughkeepsie. 

  As parts of New York City reopen following strict coronavirus-related restrictions, a revival of the metro area could take years. For instance, the recovery of Manhattan depends on office workers returning to skyscrapers. In a recent study via the Partnership for New York City, they found about two-thirds of white-collar workers in the borough won’t return to the office full-time. 

  From apartments to office space, rents are dropping as inventory surges. The hybrid work style that many companies have adopted over the last year is becoming more permanent, allowing employees to work where ever they want. 

  While some signs of life for the borough have recently materialized, a recovery back to 2019 levels is far away. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 16:00

• Taibbi: The Death Of Humor
  Taibbi: The Death Of Humor

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo won the condemnation of the whole world again, with the cover pictured above. Reactions ranged from “abhorrent” to “hateful” to “wrong on every level,” with many offering versions of the now-mandatory observation that the magazine is not only bad now, but “has always been disgusting.”

  This cover is probably an 8 or 9 on the offensiveness scale, and I laughed. It goes after everyone: Queen Elizabeth, depicted as a more deranged version of Derek Chauvin (the stubby leg hairs are a nice touch); Meghan Markle, the princess living in incomparable luxury whose victimhood has become a global pop-culture fixation; and, most of all, the inevitable chorus of outraged commentators who’ll insist they “enjoy good satire as much as the next person” but just can’t abide this particular effort that “goes too far,” it being just a coincidence that none of these people have laughed since grade school and don’t miss it.

  

  Review of Killer Cartoons, edited by David Wallis, and White, by Bret Easton Ellis

  Six years ago, after terrorists killed 10 people at Hebdo’s Paris offices in a brutal gun attack, the paper’s writers, editors, and cartoonists were initially celebrated worldwide as martyrs to the cause of free speech and democratic values. In France alone on January 11, 2015, over 3 million people marched in a show of solidarity with the victims, who’d been killed for drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. Protesters also marched in defiance of those who would shoot people for drawing cartoons, especially since this particular group of killers also fatally shot four people at a kosher supermarket in an anti-Semitic attack. For about five minutes, Je Suis Charlie was a rallying cry around the world.

  In an early preview of the West’s growing sympathy for eliminating heretics, cracks quickly appeared in the post-massacre defense of Charlie Hebdo. Pope Francis said that if someone “says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch.” Bill Donohoe, head of the American Catholic League, wrote, “Muslims are right to be angry,” and said of Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, “Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive.” New York Times columnist and noted humor expert David Brooks wrote an essay, “I Am Not Charlie Hebdo,” arguing that although “it’s almost always wrong to try to suppress speech,” these French miscreants should be excluded from polite society, and consigned to the “kids’ table,” along with Bill Maher and Ann Coulter.

  Humor is dying all over, for obvious reasons. All comedy is subversive and authoritarianism is the fashion. Comics exist to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously, and we live in an age when people believe they have a constitutional right to be taken seriously, even if — especially if — they’re idiots, repeating thoughts they only just heard for the first time minutes ago. Because humor deflates stupid ideas, humorists are denounced in all cultures that worship stupid ideas, like Spain under the Inquisition, Afghanistan under the Taliban, or today’s United States.

  During the Trump era, there was a steep decline of jokes overall, but mockery of a president who’d say things like, “My two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart” rose to unprecedented levels. It was not only okay to laugh at Trump, it was mandatory, and the more tasteless the imagery, the better: Trump gay with Putin, Trump gay with the Klan, Trump with micropenis, Trump’s face as mosaic of 500 dicks, Trump as a blind man led by a seeing-eye dog who has the face of Benjamin Netanyahu and a Star of David hanging off his collar, Trump with a pen up his ass, Trump with tiny penis again. Pundits guffawed even more when someone threatened to sue artist Illma Gore for her “Trump’s tiny weiner” pastel, displayed at the Maddox Gallery in London. “It is my art and I stand by it,” Gore said. “Plus anyone who is afraid of a fictional penis is not scary to me.”

  People cheered, because of course: anyone who even threatens to hire a lawyer to denounce a drawing has already lost. Cartoonists in this sense had no better friend than Trump, who constantly tried to block unfriendly renderings, including a Nick Anderson cartoon showing him and his followers drinking bleach as a Covid-19 cure (the Trump campaign reportedly called Anderson’s drawing of MAGA hats a trademark infringement). A lot of the anti-Trump cartoons were neither creative nor funny — if “He’s gay and has a little dick!” is the best you can do with that politician, you probably need a new line of work — and were only rescued by Trump’s preposterous efforts to defend his dignity. You can’t police a person’s private instinct to laugh, and there’s nothing funnier than watching someone try, especially if that person is already a sort-of billionaire and the president.

  For all that, most of the jokes of the Trump era fell flat, precisely because they were obligatory. Modern humorists are allowed to laugh at bad people: racists, sexists, conspiracy theorists, Trump, anyone but themselves or the audience. There were artists who made great humor out of Trump. “Mr. Garrison snorts amyl nitrate while raping Trump to death” stood out, while Anthony Atamaniuk’s impersonations worked because he genuinely tried to connect with the Trump in all of us, asking, “Where’s the Trump part of my psyche?” But most Trump humor was just DNC talking points in sketch form, about as funny as WWII caricatures of Tojo or Hitler.

  Saturday Night Live even commemorated the release of the Mueller report and the death of the collusion theory not by making fun of themselves, or the thousands of pundits, politicians, and other public figures who spent three years insisting it was true, but by doing yet another “Shirtless Putin” skit, with mournful Putin declaring, “I am still powerful guy, even if Trump doesn’t work for me!” I defy anyone to watch this and declare it was written by a comedian, and not someone like David Brock, or an Adam Schiff intern:

  Humorists once made their livings airing out society’s forbidden thoughts, back when it was understood that a) we all had them and b) the things we suppressed and made us the most anxious also tended to be the things that made us laugh the most. Which brings us to Killed Cartoons: Casualties From the War on Free Expression.

  Editor David Wallis put Killed Cartoons together in 2007, not long after the controversy involving the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. Wallis noted that American coverage of the controversy assiduously avoided showing the offending cartoons — I noted the same thing after the Hebdo massacre — which Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette insisted was tantamount to acquiescing to mob rule. This instinct is now ingrained in American journalism. On an almost daily basis, a public figure is forced to confess to various crimes against political orthodoxy, but readers are seldom told what exactly they’ve done, only that it was bad. Jay Leno is the latest to offer the Groveling Public Confession for what the New York Times only called “years of anti-Asian jokes,” without telling us what they were.

  The confession was set in motion by a profile of actor and producer Gabrielle Union in Variety, in which she recounted an exchange between Leno and Simon Cowell in the offices of America’s Got Talent:

  While filming a commercial interstitial in the “AGT” offices, she says the former “Tonight Show” host made a crack about a painting of Cowell and his dogs, saying the animals looked like food items at a Korean restaurant. The joke was widely perceived as perpetuating stereotypes about Asian people eating dog meat.

  The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) compiled “nine documented jokes” between 2002 and 2012 Leno made about Koreans or Chinese eating dog meat. (Koreans and Chinese do eat dog meat — there are even dog meat festivals — but whatever).

  Rejected jokes weren’t hard to find even in the early 2000s because, Wallis wrote, editors “suppress compelling illustrations, editorial cartoons, and political comics out of fear — fear of angering advertisers, the publisher’s golf partners, the publisher’s wife, the local dogcatcher or the president of the United States, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, homophobes, gays, pro-choice advocates and antiabortion protesters alike, Catholics, Jews, and midwestern grannies…”

  Even back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the “respectable” press often nixed cartoons precisely because they were funny. A genuine laugh to editors was a sign of trouble. Wallis tells of a cartoonist named J.P. Trostle from the Chapel Hill Herald, who in October 2001 tried to sell a cartoon in advance of a local Halloween Street party. “Unwise Halloween Costumes,” was the headline, above a picture of a boy trick-or-treating as a box of anthrax, and a couple at a keg party dressed as the Twin Towers (the man had a beanie hat with a dangling airplane). Wallis describes how Trostle showed sketches to editors and reporters hoping to build support. “The first thing they did was laugh at it,” he said. “The second thing they did was [say], ‘We are never going to run this.’”

  It was the same thing when Bob Englehardt tried to test the statute of limitations on Holocaust humor. “Schindler’s Other List” was just a piece of paper with the words Eggs, Milk, Coffee, Bread on it — obviously funny, but killed by the Hartford Courant in 1993. There are many other stories involving ideas that were just a little too much like laughing at real things for newspaper editors even a generation ago, like Christ carrying an electric chair up a hill, the Pope ascending to heaven in a plexiglass-covered chariot, or another Pope (Popes are funny) holding a staff in the shape of a coat hanger.

  Killed Cartoons is a history of a time when editors and cartoonists alike were trying to toe the line between what people found funny in private, and what was considered acceptable fodder for public ridicule. We’re way past that now, when we’re not supposed to have unwholesome thoughts either in public or in private. In fact, the whole concept of private thoughts has become infamous. Why does anyone need private opinions, in a society where the right opinions on every question are known, and should be safe to say publicly?

  ---

  “A cultural low point of 2015,” wrote Bret Easton Ellis in White, “was the effort by at least two hundred members of PEN America, a leading literary organization to which most writers belong, to not present the survivors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris with a newly established Freedom of Expression Courage Award.”

  Ellis, whose 2019 book attracted even more public disgust than Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover, went on to blast the writers who decided honoring Hebdo would be “valorizing selectively offensive material.” The award was ultimately given, because there were more PEN members who believed the magazine deserved the award, but, Ellis wrote:

  There were still two hundred who were offended and felt Charlie Hebdo went “too far” in its satire, which suggested there was a limited number of targets that humorists and satirists were allowed to pursue.

  It made sense that Ellis would be upset about Americans disowning Charlie Hebdo. He’s famous for producing maybe the last unashamedly tasteless work of satire to win critical acclaim in this country. American Psycho was successful in part because so many of the people who found it so entertaining didn’t realize they were being stabbed or chainsawed in its pages. That book was about what happens when a society governed by openly insane values requires its citizens to wear a mask of normalcy. The deeper you try to bury the contradictions, the worse the sickness gets, and the book argued we were very sick already by the late eighties and early nineties.

  In White, Ellis describes the Wall Street bros he tried to study for American Psycho. They were straight white dudes who traveled in packs and probably grew up bullying anyone who was different using words like “faggot,” but now, as the cadet-corps leaders of “youthful ‘80s Reagan-era excess,” they appropriated “the standard hallmarks of gay male culture” rather than talk about who they really were:

  During my initial research I’d been frustrated by their evasions about what exactly they did for the companies where they worked — information I felt was necessary, but finally realized really wasn’t. I was surprised instead by their desire to show off their crazy materialistic lifestyles: the hip, outrageously priced restaurants they could get reservations at, the cool Hamptons summer rentals and, especially, their expensive haircuts and tanning regimens and gym memberships and grooming routines.

  American Psycho was a book that many people loved, so long as they were certain it described someone else, a monster. In fact, what made the humor work, and elevated it above a compendium of snide put-downs of Wall Street jerks, was that it described an inner monologue familiar to most of us.

  In a country that worshipped the Nike image of the fit, informed, socially-concerned go-getter, but really judged us by our skill in crushing neighbors as capitalist competitors and fleecing the public as dupes — without question, Pierce and Pierce would eventually have been a leading marketer of mortgage-backed securities — the book’s serial killer hero Patrick Bateman was an utterly typical exemplar of the American species. The realization of his ordinariness, of society’s lack of interest or surprise at his murderous inner life, was central to the protagonist’s horrific punchline epiphany.

  Ellis talks about how things in this country haven’t changed since American Psycho, but are “more exaggerated, more accepted.” Would the more heavily-surveilled America we live in now “prevent [Bateman] from getting away with the murders he at least tells the reader he’s committed…?” He’d at least have to work harder at his disguise. Would he “haunt social media as a troll using fake avatars… have a Twitter account bragging about his accomplishments”? Ellis notes that “during Patrick’s 80’s reign, he still had the ability to hide, a possibility that simply doesn’t exist in our fully exhibitionist society.”

  In American Psycho, Bateman is a monster in private, and everything else is mask, from his spearmint facial scrub to his fake tan to his interminable conversations about business card fonts and rehearsed opinions on everything from feeding the homeless and achieving world peace.

  In 2021, we’re all mask, and it shines through in White that what drives Ellis batty is that modern Americans not only believe the phony opinions they get from memorizing the latest sacred texts of the Times bestseller list (a fashion obsession no different from the Zegna suits worshipped by the American Psycho bros), but require that everyone else believe them too.

  The penalties for deviance were once mostly self-imposed, by people who feared losing a little social status — “I want to fit in,” Bateman explained — but any person who wants to earn a living now must recite The Pieties, or else. Even someone like James Gunn, director of The Guardians of the Galaxy, someone who made over a billion dollars for his employers, could be fired for tweeting jokes like “Three Men and a Baby They Had Sex With #unromantic movies” and “The Hardy Boys and The Mystery of What It Feels Like When Uncle Bernie Fists Me #SadChildrensBooks.” Gunn’s idea for an alternate ending to The Giving Tree — “the tree grows back and gives the kid a blowjob” — seemed funny to me until I learned that a serious movement was really underway to “rethink” the book.

  Author Shel Silverstein mainly just hated happy endings, but now stands accused of having created a model for abusive relationships in the story of a tree that keeps giving apples to a kid, who keeps taking them. “You don’t have to give until it hurts” chided one New York Times columnist, to child readers and, I guess, trees.

  In a genuinely comic development, Gunn was re-hired, mainly because his initial firing was the result of a conservative prank. Right-wing provocateurs like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec correctly guessed Hollywood could be conned into firing even a major rainmaker over nonsense. When Gunn was rehabilitated, the press cast him as a martyr to the cause of anti-Trumpism, targeted by right-wing fiends who “combed through Gunn’s social media history after Gunn’s criticism of President Donald Trump.” Meanwhile, one of the film’s stars, Chris Pratt, is still fighting off his own controversy, which literally started with a joke — which Hollywood Chris should be fired, a Tweeter asked — and morphed into a serious “backlash” in which Forbes explained that Pratt’s decision to not attend a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden “has led to the belief that Pratt is secretly a Trump supporter.”

  White came out two years ago, in April of 2019, and was reviewed savagely. Critics from Vox to NPR to the Guardian agreed White was the work of a bitter has-been sexist and misogynist whose “rambling mess of cultural commentary and self-aggrandizement” might never have been published if, Bookforum’s Andrea Long Chu suggested, “Ellis’s millennial boyfriend had simply shown the famous man how to use the mute feature on Twitter.” Virtually every review was a Mad Libs exercise in rearranging words like old, whiny, rich, petty, aggrieved, and boring (reviewers universally agreed the book was boring).

  Every review focused on the politics of the book, describing as a tirade against cancel culture, left censorship, “snowflakes,” and “hysterics” who can’t take criticism. Ellis’s invocation of the term “Generation Wuss” to describe millennials, who do not come off well either in the book or in the interviews he gave after its release, figures in almost every review by younger writers, who of course gave back in kind. In a format that’s by now standard when criticizing almost any brand of transgressing celebrity, from Pratt to Ellen DeGeneres to Kirstie Alley, reviewers made a point of reminding us that not only is Ellis terrible now, but that on some level he’s always been terrible, even when we thought he was good. Bookforum even managed to wing J.D. Salinger in the crossfire.

  “Like The Catcher in the Rye before it and Fight Club after it,” the site wrote, “American Psycho is a book designed to convince comfortable white men that they are, in fact, ‘outsiders and monsters and freaks.’” (That the book was about the opposite — a world where “no one can tell anyone else apart” and even ax-murdering Patrick Bateman ultimately learns he’s just a face in the crowd — is irrelevant). The strongest sentiment in all the reviews was a desire that Ellis just shut the fuck up. “One longs to tell him what the Rolling Stones told Trump: Please stop,” wrote Chu. NPR got more to the point. “Most of us carry around an invisible rosary of resentments to fiddle with in petty moments,” wrote Annalisa Quinn. “Most of us also know to keep these grudges private.”

  The actual dictum isn’t just to keep unwelcome thoughts private, but to not have them at all. But people can’t control what they find funny. In Killed Cartoons, an African-American cartoonist describes bringing a cartoon depicting him sharing a giant bag of crack with prostitutes to an editor. “Why do you have to say that?” the editor asked. What’s the message? “It’s funny!” he replied. “It’s a giant bag of crack!” The panel ended up rejected, for fear of offending the paper’s “large white liberal readership.”

  The new movement thinks it’s stamping out harmful jokes about disadvantaged groups, but truly cruel or bigoted material tends not to win real laughs. There are exceptions — people thought Eddie Murphy’s “faggots will kick your ass” jokes were funny once — but what people mostly laugh at are things that are true, which is the problem with telling people you can’t think or laugh about funny things even in private. People will either go mad, or else they’ll start laughing at you, which is why we’re already seeing something I never thought I would in my lifetime — the humor business drifting into the arms of conservatives. Humor is about saying the unsayable, and most of the comics who insist on still doing it are either denounced as reactionaries, like Charlie Hebdo or Joe Rogan or even Dave Chappelle, or else they were openly conservative to begin with. The Babylon Bee is marketed as something from one of my childhood nightmares (“Your trusted source for Christian news satire”), and the fact that it’s now exponentially more likely to be funny than Stephen Colbert feels like a sign of the End-Times.

  In White, Ellis writes about the seemingly inexplicable appeal of Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men, writing that his stunned disgust as he “staggered amiably through a bad sitcom” was what attracted audiences, because “not giving a fuck about what the public thinks about you or your personal life is actually what matters most… the public will respond to you because you’re free and that’s exactly what they all desire.” People are attracted to humorists for the same reason; they’re saying what we can’t. If there’s no room for such people anymore, we’re in a lot of trouble. People can only go without laughing for so long.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 15:30

• "Absolutely An Open Border Situation": Sen. Lankford Gives Firsthand Account Of Border Crisis
  "Absolutely An Open Border Situation": Sen. Lankford Gives Firsthand Account Of Border Crisis

  Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R) has given a firsthand account of the chaos at the US-Mexico border – joining Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn for a tour of the situation after visiting a migrant detention facility and a processing location.

  

  For a side-by-side comparison, the first photo is from my trip to the border in 2019–the second is from today. Plenty of space to walk around and safely spread out. Tell me this isn’t a crisis. https://t.co/ING6lsNYor pic.twitter.com/ujQXNxkQKD

  — Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) March 26, 2021

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

  In a Thursday Facebook post, Lankford said he watched “hundreds of people being allowed in tonight.”

  “No criminal background check from their home country, no COVID testing, no verification that the child you are traveling with is related. If a 25 year old male claims to be 17, he is allowed into the country as an unaccompanied minor.”

  

  “This is absolutely an open-border situation,” Lankford said in more videos posted to his YouTube channel:

  Why are US Senators doing the job of the mainstream press?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 15:00

• Watch: A Naval Historian And Master Mariner Discuss The Suez Canal Blockage
  Watch: A Naval Historian And Master Mariner Discuss The Suez Canal Blockage

  By gCaptain

  In the below video, Dr. Sal Mercogliano, Associate Professor of History of History at Campbell University and Adjunct Professor at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, along with Captain John Konrad, Founder and CEO of gCaptain, discuss the situation in the Suez Canal with the grounding of the Evergreen containership MV Ever Given.

  John and Sal discuss what could have caused the event, what is being done now to clear the ship from the channel, the impact the closure of the canal is having on world trade and commerce, and why this issue should be important not only to shippers, but the government, the military, and every human on the planet since 90% of all goods are moved by sea.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/27/2021 – 14:30

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• Biden's Last Throw Of Geopolitical Dice
  Biden’s Last Throw Of Geopolitical Dice

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  In a continuing cold war, America is already on the back foot. We have yet to see how long it will be before the Biden administration realises its few victories will be unaffordably Pyrrhic, and by merely not responding to American provocation the Chinese/Russian partnership will emerge as the victors.

  Halford Mackinder’s century-old vision of a Eurasian superstate, based between the Volga and the Yangtse, is becoming reality. Commentators usually fail to understand why; it is not due to military superiority, but down to simple economics. While the US economy suffers a post-lockdown inflationary outcome and an existential crisis for the dollar, China’s economy will boom on the back of increasing domestic consumption, which is an official government objective; and increasing exports, the consequence of America’s stimulation of consumer demand and a soaring budget deficit.

  The Chinese-Russian partnership already dominates or controls Mackinder’s World Island, defined as Eurasia and all Africa. South-east Asian nations notionally in the US’s sphere of influence are firmly tied to the partnership’s economy, and the overland and sea silk roads similarly bind the EU and the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans’ states respectively. It amounts to over half the world’s population no longer sharing the economic and currency interests of 328 million Americans.

  This article summarises the background to the geopolitical situation facing the Biden administration before concluding that in the current cold war against the combined power of Russia and China, America will fail in its political objectives, not through lack of military power, but due to economic forces.

  

  Introduction

  Now that the Biden administration has settled in, it is time to reassess American policy towards Russia, China and the wider Asian scene. Is it going to be a continuation of the Trump administration’s policies, or is there something new going on? Given the continued tenure of staffers at the Pentagon from before the Trump presidency, it seems unlikely there will be much in the way of détente: it is game-on for the cold war to continue.

  Before delving into geopolitics, we must be careful to define a neutral position from which to observe developments. You cannot be objective in these matters if you justify an uninvited invasion of a foreign territory to take out a proclaimed public enemy, as America did with Osama Bin Laden and then condemn Russia for attempting to murder an ex-KGB officer living in Salisbury, or for that matter the dismembering of a journalist in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey. You must be aware that it is an established part of what Kipling called The Great Game, and always has been.

  Acts of this type are the product of states and their agents acting above any laws and are therefore permitted to ignore them. We must dismiss from our minds the concept that there are good and bad guys — when it comes to foreign operations, they all behave the same way. We must dismiss nationalistic justifications. Nor can we believe propaganda from any state when it comes to geopolitics, and particularly in a cold war. Know that our news is carefully managed for us. As far as possible we must work from facts and use reasoned deduction.

  We are now equipped to ask an important question: the US status quo, with its dollar hegemony is seen by the new Biden administration as an unchallengeable right, and its position as the world’s hegemon is vital for… what? The benefit of the world, or the benefit of the US at the world’s expense? To answer this, we must consider it from the point of view of the US military and intelligence complex.

  The problem facing us is that the Pentagon became fully institutionalised in managing America’s external security following the second world war. When the Soviets extended their sphere of influence into the three great undeveloped continents, Asia, Africa and South America, there was a case for defending capitalism and freedom — or at least freedom in an American sense by keeping minor nations on side. This was done by fair means and often foul for expediency’s sake.

  But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Mao Zedong made the American military and intelligence functions largely superfluous, other than matters more directly related to national defence. But it is in the nature of government departments and their private sector contractors to do everything in their power to retain both influence and budgets, and the argument that new threats will arise is always hard for politicians to resist. And what do the statists in a government department do when they have secured their survival? Their retention of power without real purpose descends into alternative military objectives. And from the first Bush president, they were all firmly on-message.

  President Trump was the first president for some time not to start military engaements abroad. His attempts to wind down foreign operations were strongly resisted by defence and intelligence services. And his efforts to obtain a détente with North Korea were met with disdain — even horror at Langley.

  Whatever the truth in these matters, it is highly unlikely that the power conferred by the ability to initiate unchallengeable cover-ups, information management, subversion of foreign states and secret intelligence operations is not abused. The proliferation and traction of conspiracy theories, attributed in their origin to Russian cyber-attacks and disinformation, is a consequence of one’s own government continually bending the truth to the point where large sections of the population begin to believe it is its own government’s propaganda.

  This brings us to the change in administration. As a senator, Biden had interests in foreign affairs dating back to the late 1970s and was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1997 and subsequently became its chairman. As such a long-standing politician in this field it is almost certain that the Pentagon establishment regards Biden as a safe pair of hands; in other words, a president who is likely to support Langley’s role in setting geopolitical and defence priorities. Surely, for them this is a welcome change from the off-message President Trump.

  Policies to contain the Russian threat

  Despite the Navalny affair, Putin is still unchallengeable as Russian leader, having emerged from the post-Soviet turmoil where chaos and organised crime were the order of the day. No western leader has had such a tough political background and Putin is a survivor, a strongman firmly in control. This matters for America and NATO with respect to policies in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Syria, Iran and Turkey. Any attempt by America to complete unfinished business in Ukraine (a triparty scrap involving Russia, Germany/EU and the US over the Nord Stream pipelines depriving Ukraine of transition revenues is already brewing) is likely to lead to confrontations with Russia on the ground. And Russia signed a military cooperation pact with Iran in 2015. Like a cat with a mouse, Putin is playing with Turkey, interested in laying pipelines to southern Europe, and getting it to drift out of NATO. Russia’s interest in Syria is to keep it out of America’s sphere of influence, which with Turkey’s help it has managed to do.

  For some time, military analysts have been telling us that we are now in a cyber war with Russia, accusing it of interfering in elections and promoting conspiracy theories — the US presidential election last November being the most recent assertion. As with all these allegations there is no proof offered, just statements from government sources which have a track record of being economical with the truth. Whatever the truth may be, cyber wars are closely intertwined with propaganda.

  Attacks on Russia since the millennium have been by disrupting dollar payments, and less importantly, by sanctioning individuals close to Putin. The monetary threat was originally justified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, leading to the collapse of the rouble and a hike in interest rates. The new cold war had taken a financial turn. Russia’s response was to reduce the economy’s dependence on dollars as much as possible, with the central bank selling dollar reserves and adding gold in their place. It also set up a new payments system to reduce its dependence on the SWIFT interbank payments system.

  Russia has survived all financial attacks and is now better insulated against them for the future. One-nil to the Russians. But the cost has been hidden, with western investment restricted to being mainly from the EU (particularly directed at the oil and gas industries). With the nation being fundamentally a kleptocracy, economic progress is severely constrained. Furthermore, with Russia being the world’s largest energy exporter, the west’s policy of decarbonisation is a medium to long term threat, leading to the demise of Russia’s USP. For these and other reasons Russia has turned to China as both a partner and an economic protector. In return, Russia is resource-rich, an energy provider, and therefore of great value to China.

  Russia’s history of assassinating leading dissidents on foreign soil has been its greatest mistake. It took years after the Litvinenko assassination for diplomatic relations with the UK to be fully restored. The deaths of several Russian oligarchs in recent years on British soil were thought to be the actions of organised crime and not attributed to the Russian state. But the clumsy assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury by GRU officers three years ago is unlikely to lead to a rapprochement anytime soon.

  The Russian and Chinese geopolitical partnership

  One of the first persons to identify the geopolitical importance of Russia’s resources was Halford Mackinder in a paper for the Royal Geographical Society in 1904. He later developed it into his Heartland theory. Mackinder argued that control of the Heartland, which stretched from the Volga to the Yangtze, would control the “World-Island”, which was his term for all Europe, Asia and Africa. Over a century later, Mackinder’s theory resonates with the two leading nations behind the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

  The underlying point is that North and South America, Britain, Japan and Australasia in the final analysis are peripheral and less important than Mackinder’s World-Island. There was a time when British and then American primacy outweighed its importance, but this may no longer be true. If Mackinder’s vision is valid about the overriding importance of undeveloped resources, Russia is positioned to become with China the most powerful national partnership on earth.

  The SCO is the greatest challenge yet mounted to American economic power and technological supremacy. And Russia and China are clearly determined to ditch the dollar. We don’t yet know what will replace it. However, the fact that the Russian central bank and nearly all the other central banks and governments in the SCO have been increasing their gold reserves for some time could be an important clue as to how the representatives of three billion Euro-Asians — almost half the world’s population — see the future of trans-Asian money.

  In terms of GDP per capita the United States is a long way ahead of the field. But it is also the most indebted at the national level. The difference with the SCO is at the purchasing power parity level, making market prices of secondary importance. While prices regionally vary considerably the costs of goods in the SCO are as an average considerably less than in the US and EU, so that on a PPP basis the SCO’s GDP is significantly greater than that of the US or the EU.

  The inclusion of the EU in Figure 1 is a post-Brexit nod to the fact that the EU can no longer be automatically regarded as being in the US sphere of influence. The commercial ties to the SCO, with both energy reliance from Russia and silk road rail terminals in various EU states are clearly the trade future for the EU. The EU is advanced in its plans to bring national forces under its combined flag, which by giving them an EU identity can only loosen NATO ties with America. While not an active threat to America’s power, one can envisage the EU sitting on the fence in an intensifying cold war.

  The SCO started life in 2001 as a security partnership between Russia and China, incorporating the ‘stans to the east of the Caspian Sea. Born out an earlier organisation, the Shanghai Five Group, it was set up to combat terrorism, separatism and extremism. It is still a platform for joint military exercises, but none have taken place since 2007 and it has morphed into a loose economic partnership instead.

  Since the founding Shanghai Five, the SCO now includes India and Pakistan. Observer status includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. These nations can attend SCO conferences, but their participation is very limited. Dialogue partners include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. These nations can participate actively in SCO conferences, and this status is seen as a preliminary to full membership. Egypt and Syria have applied for observer status and Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have applied to be dialog partners. Apart from South East Asian nations, which are dominated by a Chinese diaspora anyway, SCO members and their influence covers almost all of Halford Mackinder’s World Island, with the exception of the European Union.

  This is the reality that faces American hegemony; there are twenty-one nations across Asia in a non-American alliance, or on the cusp of joining it. All the other European and Asian nations are within the SCO’s sphere of influence through trade, even if not politically affiliated. It is getting more difficult to define the nations definitely in the US pocket, other than its five-eyes partners (Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand). This simple fact places severe limitations on US action against China, and to a lesser extent Russia.

  It is an exaggeration to suggest that an attack on one member state is an attack on them all. Their cooperation is fundamentally economic rather than military; except, as stated above, the SCO’s original function remains to eliminate terrorism, separatism and extremism. Indeed, India and Pakistan are at loggerheads over Kashmir, and China and India have border disputes in the Himalayas. But attempts, by, say, the US to prize India away from the SCO is bound to generate wider issues, and perhaps a response, from the other members.

  Who do you go with?

  Other Nations around the world have a choice. Broadly, it is to go with America, to go with China/Russia, or sit on the fence. We have already concluded that the EU’s economic interests in the wake of Brexit are turning it into being a fence-sitter instead of continuing to be in the US sphere of influence. Naturally, all of sub-Saharan Africa and South America started off fence-sitting until they became increasingly indebted to China. They still have leaders who are happy to take money from either of the two major hegemons — America or the Chinese partnership — but in that game the Chinese are ahead in the field. Their seemingly insatiable demand for commodities and energy and infrastructure building means that local politicians have been bought and will stay bought. But if America offers more money, these nations’ politicians will undoubtedly take it. But that is unlikely to lead to their political allegiance changing from being with China.

  This form of American diplomacy was at its height in the fifties and sixties, and the US was able to outgun the Soviets and Chinese in providing “aid”, much of which was trousered by politicians. This was particularly true of the oil money recycled by American banks into loans to South American governments in the late seventies. The Chinese are not so careless with money: when they build a bridge on a Caribbean island, they are firmly hands-on providing money, management and some of the labour and local politicians are only rewarded with electoral kudos.

  There are, therefore, fundamental differences between attempts to keep a country within a particular sphere of influence sixty years ago and today. And there can be no doubt that the Chinese are winning the game. Overland, across the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the silk roads and associated projects are having a substantial impact on emerging nations in a way not seen before. China has advanced Mackinder’s World Island concept by embracing most of Africa into its sphere of influence. As well as the SCO’s control over Asia from Vladivostok to the Mediterranean, as the largest oil consumer China’s influence over the Middle East — which supplies little or no oil to the US — binds nations in that region into the SCO.

  The contrast with America’s foreign policy under Trump could not have been greater. America became autarkic, determined to repatriate production from abroad. It lacked a strategy to counter China’s rapidly growing spheres of influence. Even the EU integrated major elements of its economy with China and Russia, and now that the US’s only five-eyes representative in the EU has left it, we can expect this integration to increase more rapidly.

  Instead, Trump concentrated on attacking China, its technology and Hong Kong. China faced tariffs, prompting her to respond partly in kind. Meng Wanzhou, finance officer for Huawei, was detained in Vancouver on a US extradition request, on the pretext of payments involving Iran. Her arrest was the start of a US campaign to exclude Huawei from G5 mobile contracts in the west, pressure that eventually led the UK to downgrade Huawei’s contracts. It ended up uniting the five-eyes security partnership against China’s technology on a reds-under-the-bed argument: Chinese technology embedded in western communications systems gives them the ability to spy on us. The UK’s GCHQ changed its position from there being no evidence of embedded spyware in Huawei equipment to it being vulnerable to being used for spying by the Chinese government.

  Hong Kong

  The build-up of riots against Hong Kong’s proposed extradition treaty with the Mainland started in 2019, supported and driven by anti-Chinese propaganda. America finally emerged as China’s adversary, no longer just a trading partner worried by the trade imbalances. And Hong Kong was the pressure point.

  This had happened before, in 2014. The Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong at that time reflected the work of American intelligence agencies. The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples’ Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee in 2015:

  “Since the Diaoyu Islands conflict and the Huang-yan Island conflict, incidents have kept popping up around China, including the confrontation over China’s 981 oil rigs with Vietnam and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” event. Can they still be viewed as simply accidental?

  “I accompanied General Liu Yazhou, the Political Commissar of the National Defence University, to visit Hong Kong in May 2014. At that time, we heard that the “Occupy Central” movement was being planned and could take place by end of the month. However, it didn’t happen in May, June, July, or August.

  “What happened? What were they waiting for?

  “Let’s look at another timetable: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. The U.S. said it would stop QE at the beginning of 2014. But it stayed with the QE policy in April, May, June, July, and August. As long as it was in QE, it kept overprinting dollars, and the dollar‘s price couldn’t go up. Thus, Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” should not happen either.

  “At the end of September, the Federal Reserve announced the U.S. would exit from QE. The dollar started going up. Then Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” broke out in early October.

  “Actually, the Diaoyu Islands, Huang-yan Island, the 981 rigs, and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” movement were all bombs. The successful explosion of any one of them would lead to a regional crisis or a worsened investment environment around China. That would force the withdrawal of a large amount of investment from this region, which would then return to the U.S.”

  That America organised discontent anew in Hong Kong is probably still China’s view today. Clearly, the Chinese believed America covertly managed “Occupy Central” and therefore were at it again. Apart from what their spies told them, the protests were too well organised and planned to be spontaneous. This time, the attack appeared to have a better chance of success. The plan was coordinated with American pressure on Hong Kong’s dollar peg in an attempt to destabilise it, principally through the threat to extend tariffs against China to Hong Kong. This second attempt to collapse Hong Kong was therefore more serious.

  Hong Kong is critical, because it is the channel for foreign investment portfolio flows into China. This was important to the Americans, because the US Treasury could not afford to see global portfolio flows attracted into China at a time when they were needed to invest in increasing quantities of US Treasury stock. Understand that, and you will have grasped a large part of the urgency behind America’s attempt to destabilise Hong Kong.

  Qiao Liang makes this point elsewhere in his aforementioned speech, claiming American tactics are the consequence of the ending of Bretton Woods:

  “Without the restriction of gold, the US can print dollars at will. If they keep a large amount of dollars inside the US, it will certainly create inflation. If they export dollars to the world, the whole world is helping the US deal with its inflation. That’s why inflation is not high in the US.”

  While one can take some minor issues with his simplistic analysis, that is not the point. What matters is what the Chinese believe. It was after that second attempt by America to destabilise Hong Kong that the Chinese concluded they must take direct control and abandon the treaty whereby it had been returned by Britain to their jurisdiction.

  China makes mistakes too

  China’s strategy in dealing with America has generally been to be slow to respond, and never to provoke. This accords with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on tactical dispositions: “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”

  Generally, China’s strategy has been to refuse to be provoked. A possible exception has been Hong Kong, where it was decided it was more important to secure the island against further attack, overriding the terms of the treaty with the UK. But its greatest mistake was in imposing trade tariffs in a tit-for-tat response to US tariffs. America was simply isolating itself with its tariff policies, and China’s response gave the Trump administration the excuse to escalate the trade war from trade tariffs into an attack on China’s technology, which was overtaking that of America. That led to Meng Wanzhou, finance officer for Huawei, being detained in Vancouver on a US extradition request, still being fought in the BC’s high court this week.

  The Uyghur re-education programme is currently being weaponised against China. Given the Chinese are unlikely to turn what was originally a policy of eliminating Muslim terrorism into a more humane approach, they have little option but to ensure no access is given to journalists and to tough it out. Taiwan is similarly regarded as non-negotiable, and with even the British sending a new carrier to the South China Sea, it could become a flashpoint in the coming months.

  Economic factors

  Before the pandemic and with America targeting Chinese exports, China’s leadership introduced policies to encourage domestic consumption. For this to work required a drop in the savings rate. In fact, it has been falling since 2010, when according to the World Bank it peaked at 51% of GDP, to just under 44% in 2019. It was the difference between Chinese and American savings rates which was the driving factor behind their mutual trade imbalance.

  China recognises that it must move on from an export-driven economic model. But while the American and other welfare-driven economies are running mounting budget deficits, China will continue to have a growing trade surplus. While this will continue to be a problem for the Americans, without imported goods from China product shortages would simply fuel higher prices on top of unprecedented monetary expansion. This is the reality behind the cold war for the next few years. Unfortunately, being highly Keynesian the new Biden administration is unlikely to accept the twin deficits argument and will think that it can still call the shots on trade without cutting its own spending. But Figure 1 above showed US government debt to GDP is already over $28 trillion and on Biden’s infrastructure and greening plans alone will likely rise significantly further by this fiscal year.

  The combination of increasing consumer demand while exports to America boom gives China a window of economic expansion only enjoyed by its Asian neighbours. The contrast between China’s prospects can hardly be greater than those for America. The economics alone militate strongly against the US pursuing a geopolitical objective other than quietly backing off.

  But senior US personel are still acting as if the Chinese should kowtow to America, as evidenced in the proceedings in Alaska last week. The Chinese were robust and will have calculated their position as strong. Sun Tzu again: “Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him”.

  Conclusions

  The Biden presidency faces significant challenges in the ongoing cold war and America is unlikely to retain its hegemonic status. During Trump’s presidency, attempts to curtail China’s trade and technological development did not succeed, and has only emboldened both China and Russia to stand firm and as much as possible to do without America and its dollar.

  Their senior advisors are, or should be, acutely aware of the debt and inflation traps facing the US and also the EU. Following the Fed’s policies of accelerated monetary expansion announced last March, China increased her purchases of commodities and raw materials, in effect signalling she prefers them to dollar liquidity. As a policy, it is likely to be extended further, given China’s existing stockpile of dollars and dollar-denominated debt. Her dilemma is not just the fragile state of the US economy, but that of the EU which on any dispassionate analysis is a state failing economically and politically as well. China will not want to be blamed for triggering a series of events which will get everyone reaching out for their forgotten copy of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

  As events take their course, the risk of a dollar collapse and a matching crisis in the euro, though for different reasons, increases. For Mackinder’s heartland theory to be proved and for the Russian and Chinese partnership to be in control of it, a mega-crisis facing the profligate money-printers must happen. All history and a priori economic theory confirm it will happen. The SCO’s Plan B will be a continuance of Plan A, hatched out of the Shanghai Five Group, making the World Island a self-contained unit not dependent on the peripherals — principally, the five eyes. For money, they must give up western ways with unbacked state currencies. Between them they have enough state-owned declared and undeclared gold to back the yuan, and the rouble. Give these two currencies free convertibility into gold, and they will be accepted everywhere, so their old cold war enemies can trade their way back to prosperity. The US has, or says it has, enough gold to put a failing dollar back on a gold standard, but for it to be credible it must radically cut spending, its geopolitical ambitions, and return its budget into balance. With luck, that is how the new cold war ends.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 23:40

• Glock 19 Disguised As Nerf Gun Seized In North Carolina Drug Raid 
  Glock 19 Disguised As Nerf Gun Seized In North Carolina Drug Raid 

  Deputies in North Carolina executed a search warrant last week and seized drugs, money, and a Nerf toy gun, but it turned out to be a Glock 19. 

  The Catawba County Sheriff’s Office said during the search warrant, deputies found “quantities of cocaine, psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana. Investigators also seized approximately $2,300.00 in United States Currency and twenty firearms consisting of pistols, rifles, and shotguns.” 

  One of the most bizarre weapons deputies came across was a “converted Glock model 19 pistol with a fifty round drum magazine, had been altered to resemble a toy Nerf gun,” said Catawba County Sheriff’s Office.

  

  “Firearms of this type, while not illegal to possess, are concerning to law enforcement,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. 

  

  Damien Alonzo Burch, 35, was arrested and charged for drug possession but not for the possession of the Glock model 19 pistol Nerf gun. Burch was issued a $20,000 unsecured bond with a court appearance on Mar. 18. 

  

  Some Facebook users responded to the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook post by saying:

  “Wait all those drugs and only $2300.00? He made 20k bale? There’s some missing money in this equation. There’s a lot of money to be made off that Nerf conversion. I wonder did he do a super soaker or a wii 1911,” said one user. 

  Another user said: “I think the clear take-way from this is… It’s NERF or NOTHING.” 

  “Imagine somebody shooting at you and you be like “oh it’s a nerf gun” and then you die,” said a user. 

  So we have several questions: The first is what exactly does “converted Glock model 19 pistol” mean? 

  Were there any 3D printed parts involved in the build? 

  As we noted last month, building a 3D-printed gun is becoming easier and easier for anyone to do at home. 

  Nevertheless, the “converted Glock model 19 pistol” appears to have been crafted by someone with experience. 

  And if there’s one, there’s two – which leaves us with another question – how many Nerf-like weapons are on the streets?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 23:20

• After A Year Under Lockdown, Will Our Freedoms Survive The Tyranny of COVID-19?
  After A Year Under Lockdown, Will Our Freedoms Survive The Tyranny of COVID-19?

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “The remedy is worse than the disease.”

  – Francis Bacon

  One way or another, the majority of Americans will survive COVID-19.

  

  It remains to be seen, however, whether our freedoms will survive the tyranny of the government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Indeed, now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., we may all be long-haulers, suffering under the weight of long-term COVID-19 afflictions.

  Instead of dealing with the headaches, fatigue and neurological aftereffects of the virus, however, “we the people” may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.

  Therein lies the danger of the government’s growing addiction to power.

  What started out a year ago as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

  Until recently, the police state had been more circumspect in its power grabs, but this latest state of emergency has brought the beast out of the shadows.

  It’s a given that you can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers.

  The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

  It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

  This coronavirus pandemic has been no exception.

  Not only have the federal and state governments unraveled the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that sent the economy into a tailspin and wrought havoc with our liberties, but they have almost persuaded the citizenry to depend on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

  This past year under lockdown was a lesson in many things, but most of all, it was a lesson in how to indoctrinate a populace to love and obey Big Brother.

  What started off as an experiment in social distancing in order to flatten the curve of this virus, and not overwhelm the nation’s hospitals or expose the most vulnerable to unavoidable loss of life scenarios quickly became strongly worded suggestions for citizens to voluntarily stay at home and strong-armed house arrest orders with penalties in place for non-compliance.

  Every day brought a drastic new set of restrictions by government bodies (most have been delivered by way of executive orders) at the local, state and federal level that were eager to flex their muscles for the so-called “good” of the populace.

  There was talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, mass surveillance in order to carry out contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities, and heavy fines and jail time for those who dare to venture out without a mask, congregate in worship without the government’s blessing, or re-open their businesses without the government’s say-so.

  To some, these may seem like small, necessary steps in the war against the COVID-19 virus, but they’re only necessary to the Deep State in its efforts to further undermine the Constitution, extend its control over the populace, and feed its insatiable appetite for ever-greater powers.

  After all, whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

  The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention. The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

  This war on COVID-19 could usher in yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry at the government’s disposal: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

  Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.

  Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment.

  The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.

  It’s downright Machiavellian.

  Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been anticipating this moment for years, quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

  It should surprise no one, then, that the Trump Administration asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deems it necessary during this coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies. It’s that “other” emergencies part that should particularly give you pause, if not spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).

  In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) started to quietly trot out and test a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution.

  We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

  These are powers the police state would desperately like to make permanent.

  Don’t make the mistake of assuming that anything will change for the better under the Biden administration. That’s not how totalitarian regimes operate.

  Bear in mind, however, that the powers the government officially asked Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has already unilaterally claimed for itself.

  Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

  As David C. Unger, observes in The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs:

  “For seven decades we have been yielding our most basic liberties to a secretive, unaccountable emergency state – a vast but increasingly misdirected complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs that so define our present world that we forget that there was ever a different America. … Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

  This rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security is all happening according to schedule.

  The civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters,” the government’s reliance on the armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems, the implicit declaration of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security: the powers-that-be have been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now, not just with active shooter drills and lockdowns and checkpoints and heightened danger alerts, but with a sensory overload of militarized, battlefield images—in video games, in movies, on the news—that acclimate us to life in a totalitarian regime.

  Whether or not this particular crisis is of the government’s own making is not the point: to those for whom power and profit are everything, the end always justifies the means.

  The seeds of this present madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.

  Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives, which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

  Mind you, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose, and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

  Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the executive branch and its unelected minions.

  The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

  The emergency state is now out in the open for all to see.

  Unfortunately, “we the people” refuse to see what’s before us.

  This is how freedom dies.

  We erect our own prison walls, and as our rights dwindle away, we forge our own chains of servitude to the police state.

  Be warned, however: once you surrender your freedoms to the government—no matter how compelling the reason might be for doing so—you can never get them back.

  No government willingly relinquishes power. If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

  That said, we still have rights. Technically, at least.

  We should not voluntarily relinquish every shred of our humanity, our common sense, or our freedoms to a nanny state that thinks it can do a better job of keeping us safe.

  The government may act as if its police state powers trump individual liberties during this COVID-19 pandemic, but for all intents and purposes, the Constitution—especially the battered, besieged Bill of Rights—still stands in theory, if not in practice.

  The decisions we make right now—about freedom, commerce, free will, how we care for the least of these in our communities, what it means to provide individuals and businesses with a safety net, how far we allow the government to go in “protecting” us against this virus, etc.—will haunt us for a long time to come.

  At times like these, when emotions are heightened, fear dominates, common sense is in short supply, liberty takes a backseat to public safety, and democratic societies approach the tipping point towards mob rule, there is a tendency to cast those who exercise their individual freedoms (to freely speak, associate, assemble, protest, pursue a living, engage in commerce, etc.) as foolishly reckless, criminally selfish, outright villains or so-called “extremists.”

  Sometimes that is true, but not always.

  There is always a balancing test between individual freedoms and the communal good.

  What we must figure out is how to strike a balance that allows us to protect those who need protecting without leaving us chained and in bondage to the police state.

  Blindly following the path of least resistance—acquiescing without question to whatever the government dictates—can only lead to more misery, suffering and the erection of a totalitarian regime in which there is no balance.

  Whatever we give up willingly now—whether it’s basic human decency, the ability to manage our private affairs, the right to have a say in how the government navigates this crisis, or the few rights still left to us that haven’t been disemboweled in recent years by a power-hungry police state—we won’t get back so easily once this crisis is past.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we.

  A year ago, I warned that this was a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

  Nothing has changed on that front.

  James Madison, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the fourth president of the United States, once advised that we should “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

  These COVID-19 restrictions are far from the first experiment on our liberties. Yet if “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the name of so-called national security, we can be assured that things will get worse, not better.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 23:00

• Philippines Alarmed By More 200 Chinese Ships Massing In Disputed Waters
  Philippines Alarmed By More 200 Chinese Ships Massing In Disputed Waters

  If nothing else, the blockage of the Suez Canal by a massive container ship has served as an unwelcome reminder that chokepoints to global trade like the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Gibralter represent geopolitical risks that have perhaps haven’t been fully appreciated by investors.

  

   

  Source: Chatham House

  Of course, vulnerabilities to global trade extend beyond these narrow chokepoints.

  Take, for example, the South China Sea. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that roughly 80% of global trade by volume and 70% by value is transported by sea. Of that volume, 60% of maritime trade passes through Asia, with the South China Sea carrying an estimated one-third of global shipping. Under President Trump, the US Navy intensified to check growing Chinese naval power in the area.  And just the other day, a US spy plane flew closer to China’s coast than ever before.

  Well, in a concerning sign that tensions might be about to come to a head in the region, Reuters reports that Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte has complained to Chinese ambassador about Chinese naval forces that have been massing in the area. In recent days, international concern has grown over what the Philippines has described as a “swarming and threatening presence” of more than 200 Chinese vessels that it believes were manned by China’s maritime militia. The boats were moored at the Whitsun Reef within Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

  EXCLUSIVE: We have footage showing nearly 200 Chinese vessels in Philippine waters. The government has demanded China to withdraw these vessels, but more than that, a maritime expert suggests taking the matter to an international court.

  Our @davidyusantos has more. pic.twitter.com/kZ5NB7t8fS

  — CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) March 26, 2021

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

  Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Vietnam have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea. But China has pointedly ignored all these claims, instead viewing the South China Sea as something that belongs exclusively to Beijing. China shocked the world in 2016 when it ignored an international court ruling validating the Philippines’ claims to the sea. Since then, tensions over the conflicting claims have complicated relations between the two Pacific powers.

  China’s claims have put pro-Beijing leader Duterte in “an awkward spot,” according to Reuters. China’s embassy in Manila has reportedly said the ships were fishing ships taking shelter in rough seas. But visuals like the video clip above appear to contradict this.

  China’s maritime assertiveness has put Duterte in an awkward spot throughout his presidency due to his controversial embrace of Beijing and reluctance to speak out against it.

  He has instead accused close ally the United States of creating conflict in the South China Sea.

  China’s embassy in Manila did not respond to a request for comment on Duterte’s meeting.

  On Wednesday it said the vessels at Whitsun Reef were fishing boats taking refuge from rough seas. A Philippine military spokesman said China’s defence attache had denied there were militia aboard.

  Vietnam, which is also a party to the overlapping territorial claims, has also complained about China’s presence. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang on Thursday said the Chinese vessels at the reef had infringed on its sovereignty.

  “Vietnam requests that China stop this violation and respect Vietnam’s sovereignty,” Hang told a regular briefing.

  A Vietnamese coastguard vessel had been moored near the area on Thursday, according to ship tracking data.

  The story hasn’t made much of a mark in the American press. But if Chinese ships keep massing in the area, investors might start asking themselves whether cementing Beijing’s control of the disputed waters could be a preamble to something much more concerning – like a move against Taiwan, perhaps?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 22:40

• Is China Calling For Civilizational War Against America & The West?
  Is China Calling For Civilizational War Against America & The West?

  Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  There was a “strong smell of gunpowder” when American and Chinese diplomats met in Anchorage beginning March 18. That’s according to Zhao Lijian of China’s foreign ministry, speaking just hours after the first day of U.S.-China talks concluded.

  “Gunpowder” is one of those words Beijing uses when it wants others to know war is on its mind.

  The term is, more worryingly, also especially emotion-packed, a word Chinese propagandists use when they want to rile mainland Chinese audiences by reminding them of foreign — British and white — exploitation of China in the Opium War period of the 19th century. China’s Communist Party, therefore, is now trying to whip up nationalist sentiment, rallying the Chinese people, perhaps readying them for war.

  More fundamentally, Beijing is, with the gunpowder reference and others, trying to divide the world along racial lines and form a global anti-white coalition.

  There was more than just a whiff of gunpowder in Alaska. The foreign ministry’s Zhao blamed the U.S. side for exceeding the agreed time limit for opening remarks from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Blinken and Sullivan overran their allotted four minutes by… 44 seconds.

  The Party’s Global Times called the two presentations “seriously overtime.” The foreign ministry’s Zhao said the overrun prompted the Chinese side to launch into its two presentations, which lasted 20 minutes and 23 seconds, well over their allotted four minutes.

  Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, and his subordinate, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, were mostly reading from prepared texts, suggesting that much of their remarks — in reality a tirade — was planned well in advance.

  

  There were, in addition to the diplomats’ obviously rehearsed expressions of outrage and Zhao’s incendiary comments, a third element to the campaign: a propaganda blast against policies Beijing said were racist. The primary target is America.

  “Everything Washington talks about is centered on the U.S., and on white supremacy,” the Global Times, controlled by the Party, stated in an editorial on March 19, referring to the darker skin tones of America’s “few allies” in the region.

  Furthermore, the race-based narrative appears in a series of recent Communist Party propaganda pieces indirectly portraying China as the protector of Asians in the U.S. For instance, the Global Times on March 18 ran a piece titled “Elite U.S. Groups Accomplices of Crimes Against Asian Americans.”

  Beijing has played the race card in North America for some years. China, for example has tried to divide Canada along racial lines. Lu Shaye, when he was Beijing’s ambassador to Canada, railed against “Western egotism and white supremacy” in an unsuccessful attempt in early 2019 to win the immediate release of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, detained by Canadian authorities pending extradition proceedings instituted by the Trump Justice Department.

  Significantly, Yang Jiechi in Anchorage pointedly mentioned Black Lives Matter protests in his opening remarks on Thursday, continuing China’s race-based attack on America.

  China’s regime continues to talk about China’s rise, but now Beijing’s propaganda line is shifting in ominous ways. Ruler Xi Jinping’s new narrative is that China is leading the “East.” In a landmark speech he gave at the end of last year, he stated “the East is rising and the West is declining.”

  This theme evokes what Imperial Japan tried to do with its notorious Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, beginning in the 1930s, an attempt to unite Asians against whites.

  Racial divisions bring us to Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. “In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic,” the late Harvard political scientist wrote. “They are cultural.”

  Analysts and academics have severely criticized Huntington’s seminal 1996 book, yet whether or not this work is fundamentally flawed, Xi Jinping is in fact trying to remake the world order by leading “the East” in a civilizational struggle with “the West.”

  Mao Zedong, Xi’s hero, saw China leading Africa and the peoples of Asia against the West, so Xi’s notion of global division is nothing new, but Mao’s successors for the most part dropped such racially charged talk as they sought to strengthen their communist state with Western cash and technology.

  Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s mostly pragmatic successor, counseled China to “hide capabilities, bide time.” Xi, however, believes China’s time has come in part because, he feels, America is in terminal decline.

  Xi’s conception of the world is abhorrent and wrong, but Americans do not have the luxury of ignoring him. They and others must recognize that in Xi’s mind, race defines civilization and civilization is the world’s new dividing line.

  Xi is serious. In January, he told his fast-expanding military it must be ready to fight “at any second.” That month, the Party’s Central Military Commission took from the civilian State Council the power to mobilize all of society for war.

  Militant states rarely prepare for conflict and then back down. For China’s Communist Party, there is a smell of gunpowder around the world, as Xi is triggering a clash of civilizations — and races.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 22:20

• Watch: 3 Russian Nuclear Subs Punch Through Arctic Ice Sheet To Surface Simultaneously
  Watch: 3 Russian Nuclear Subs Punch Through Arctic Ice Sheet To Surface Simultaneously

  On Friday Russia’s Defense Ministry published video of what it touted as a “first-ever” maneuver to have taken place in the history of naval exercises and warfare.

  No less than three nuclear-powered submarines of the Russian Navy punched through the ice simultaneously during Arctic exercises, as the surreal video reveals.

  Indeed we can’t recall there being any other footage like it, or any other such attempt – also given the potential for something going wrong so far north in this ‘no man’s land’ territory.

  Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief, Adm. Nikolai Evmenov, was cited in state sources as reporting the following to President Vladimir Putin of the Friday rare feat:

  “For the first time in the history of the Navy, three nuclear-powered missile carriers have surfaced from under the ice.”

  The submarines surfaced “according to a single concept and plan at the appointed time in an area with a radius of 300 meters” and reportedly broke through a layer of ice that was one-and-a-half meters thick.

  🇷🇺⚡️🇷🇺EPIC: For the first time in history, during an exercise in the Arctic, three Russian nuclear submarines performed a simultaneous ascent from under the ice at a distance of up to 300 m from each other, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, reported to Putin. #Russia pic.twitter.com/4iQCzGbGy5

  — RAGEX-WAR (@theragex) March 26, 2021

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  The US Navy has in recent years been known to conduct such ice-breaking exercises with its large subs. It is necessary in instances where subs must rise from below the ice surface and launch a missile. 

  According to a prior explanation of the high-risk maneuver featured in Popular Mechanics:  

  The Arctic is a convenient hiding spot, since sea ice provides submarines with cover making them almost impossible to detect from the air. However, that same sea ice makes communicating (or launching missiles) impossible, which means sometimes subs must crack through the ice with several thousand tons of steel.

  …Typical submarines can break through about three feet of ice. Vessels that have been specifically strengthened can go through about nine feet. Even so, one careless move could damage a $1 billion sub and put the lives of 100-plus crewmembers at risk. So choosing the right spot is key.

  Very likely the Pentagon is keeping a close watch on Russia’s growing Arctic capabilities at a moment that multiple US military branches firm up their long-term Arctic strategies. 

  Below is an example of how the sub is angled below the surface…

  For example, just last week the US Army published a new strategic policy document entitled Regaining Arctic Dominance, which laid out a plan to thwart Russian dominance in the far north, where it’s heavily invested given that it’s the major world power that lies geographically closest.

  “The Arctic has the potential to become a contested space where United States’ great power rivals, Russia and China, seek to use military and economic power to gain and maintain access to the region at the expense of US interests. US National Security Strategy highlights the Arctic as a corridor for expanded strategic great power competition between two regions – the Indo-Pacific and Europe,” the Army strategy document said.

  Given this week’s stunning triple-surfacing through the Arctic ice feat that Russia’s navy appeared to pull off without a hitch, it seems Washington does have reason to worry when it comes to ambitions of “dominating” the Arctic sphere. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 22:00

• New Zealand Central Bank Bucks Global Spend-Trend, Will 'Manage' Soaring Home Prices
  New Zealand Central Bank Bucks Global Spend-Trend, Will ‘Manage’ Soaring Home Prices

  Authored by Ruchir Sharma, op-ed via The Financial Times,

  Those Kiwi revolutionaries are at it again.

  

  In 1989, New Zealand’s central bank was the first to commit to a specific target for consumer price inflation, then the biggest threat to the world economy. Unions and businesses howled, saying the move would kill growth and jobs. One property developer called for a rope on which to hang central bank chief Donald Brash. 

  Brash, a former fruit farmer who had seen his uncle’s life savings destroyed by inflation, held firm. By signalling the bank’s seriousness, the target helped to lower the public’s self-fulfilling expectation of endless price rises. Over two years, inflation fell from 8 to 2 per cent. The unpopular idea caught on. Soon, most central banks had adopted targets and this helped tame the global scourge of runaway prices for food, fuel and other consumer staples. 

  Today, a new scourge – asset price inflation – looms. And New Zealand has launched another counterattack. While consumer prices have been held in check by globalisation and automation, easy money pouring out of central banks has been driving up the price of assets from stocks to bonds and housing. As homes are generally not counted as consumer goods, even sharp price spikes carry relatively little weight in central bank deliberations. 

  Home prices have risen steadily in the pandemic, and in 12 months through to the end of January were up 19 per cent in New Zealand. The price of a typical Auckland home soared past $720,000, embarrassing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 

  A global political celebrity, the liberal Ardern was elected on a promise of affordable housing. Fed up, her government has ordered the central bank to add stabilising home prices to its remit, starting March 1. It is novel and healthy for a politician to recognise the unintended consequences of easy money. 

  If this idea catches on, it could lead to greater financial and social stability worldwide. Decades of loose central bank policy have done less to generate growth in the real economy than in the financial markets — and those gains benefit mainly the rich.

  This is widening wealth inequality, pushing homes beyond reach for the middle class, and not only in New Zealand. Of 502 international cities tracked by Numbeo, a research firm, prices are “unaffordable” (more than three times median family income) in more than 90 per cent. In recent years, the tiny minority of affordable cities has been shrinking toward zero.

  Before the unusual 2020 recession, triggered by pandemic lockdowns, every major economic crisis in recent decades, from Japan in 1990 to the 2008 financial crisis, was preceded by a sharp run up in prices of housing or stocks or both. My research found that financial markets, fuelled by easy money, have grown since 1980 from about the same size as the global economy to four times as big. The larger markets loom, the larger the impact on the wider economy when they fall. 

  Research looking back 140 years in 17 major nations has shown that before the second world war, only one in four recessions followed a bubble in housing or stocks. But as banking, particularly mortgage lending, grew to assume a pivotal role in modern economies, the dynamics changed. Since the war, more than two out of every three recessions followed a housing or stock bubble.

  Housing bubbles are the worst. The $220tn global housing market is more than twice the size of the global stock market and complicated by debt. When prices fall, it can take years to clean up failed mortgages, drawing out a recession. In general, recessions that follow debt-fuelled housing booms are the longest and deepest.

  Ardern’s move may not slow the housing boom soon, because supply-and-demand dynamics are too strong. But ordering the central bank to make housing price stability a higher priority is a start, and could inspire others to rethink the role easy money has played in driving financial instability. The challenge, to defuse bubbles before they become dangerous, is not as insurmountable as doubters believe. Research shows the key warning signs lie in the pace of increases in prices and debt.

  Policies need to keep up with changes in the global economy. A rethink is overdue, particularly among Ardern’s fellow progressives worldwide. They have come to embrace easy money as a way to finance social programmes, but need to recognise its negative impact on financial stability, wealth inequality and housing affordability. Ardern is out front in addressing one of the downsides. As New Zealand shows the way, others would be wise to follow, again.

  *  *  *

  The writer, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s chief global strategist, is author of ‘The Ten Rules of Successful Nations’

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 21:40

• Digital Artwork Made By "Humanoid" Robot Sells As NFT For $688,000
  Digital Artwork Made By “Humanoid” Robot Sells As NFT For $688,000

  Does the Fed still see no signs of inflation? Let us help.

  Maybe they should take a look to Hong Kong, where a piece of “digital artwork” that was created by a humanoid robot named Sophia, just sold for $688,888 in the form of a non-fungible token, according to Reuters. 

  The robot, Sophia, was unveiled in 2016 and has produced art “in collaboration” with 31 year old Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto. Reuters notes that Bonaceto is well known for his colorful portraits, including one of (of course) Elon Musk.

  Sophia combines elements of Bonaceto’s work alongside of art history and “her own” drawings or paintings in a process that’s called “iterative loops of evolution”.

  The piece of art that just sold was called “Sophia Instantiation,” and is actually a 12 second MP4 file that shows the “evolution of Bonaceto’s portrait into Sophia’s digital painting, and is accompanied by a physical artwork, painted by Sophia on a printout of her self-portrait.”

  

  Does anyone actually know what that means? We’re asking for a friend.

  Hong Kong-based David Hanson, who created the robot, said: “I was kind of astonished to see how fast it shot up too as the bidding war took place at the end of the auction. So it was really exhilarating and stunning.” 

  Art collector and blockchain investor Jehan Chu commented: “What we’re seeing right now looks like a bit of a bubble, especially in the NFT art world.”

  And what would a bubble be if the robot herself wasn’t also interviewed by Reuters (of course). She told the media outlet: “I’m so excited about people’s response to new technologies like robotics … and am so glad to be part of these creativities.”

  We’re guessing she hasn’t yet been programmed to shreik “I’m f*cking rich!” at the top of her lungs yet, or perhaps that’s what she would have said. Maybe in Sophia v2.0. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 21:20

• Suez Canal Crisis: Here Are The Cargoes In The Crossfire
  Suez Canal Crisis: Here Are The Cargoes In The Crossfire

  By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

  The “slow boat from China” just got a lot slower. Shipping sentiment toward the Suez Canal grounding of the Ever Given has taken a major turn. Operators are now opting to bypass the traffic jam and take the long detour around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

  

  Ship-positioning data already confirms abrupt turns toward the cape by multiple ships. Container ships such as the HMM Rotterdam, Ever Greet, Maersk Skarstind and Hyundai Prestige; the crude tanker Marlin Santorini; and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Pan Americas, among others, have made beelines toward the cape. If the Ever Given is not refloated at high tide on Sunday, many more detours are expected.

  There were 237 ships stuck at anchor awaiting canal transits as of Friday, according to Egypt’s Leth Agencies. That’s up sharply from 156 the day before.

  Global ocean trade is fluid. The Suez Canal closure doesn’t block cargo. It changes the arrival date. The extent of delays from rerouting depends upon port pairs and vessel speed. A container ship traveling at 17 knots passing India en route from China to Rotterdam would take nine more days on the cape route than using the canal. If its destination was Italy, it would take 13 more days.

  The double whammy of the canal queue and rerouting delays renders the global shipping network less efficient. The same ship capacity will not move the same cargo volume in the same time frame.

  This will have a wide range of effects — some bad, some good — for shippers, vessel operators and investors.

  Different segments, different exposures

  To gauge potential consequences, American Shipper analyzed historical data from the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) and obtained more recent data from trade-intelligence companies VesselsValue and Kpler.

  The SCA data is a year old but shows the long-term trends. American Shipper separated SCA’s cargo data into three categories: containerized volume, dry cargo volume (bulkers and general cargo) and liquid (tanker) volume.

  

  Total cargo volume grew 49% from 2011 through 2019. Containerized cargo is by far the most important. It comprises half the total, with liquid and dry bulk splitting the rest. But dry bulk volumes have grown the fastest. From 2015 through 2019, tanker volumes rose 13%, containerized cargo 18% and dry cargo 64%.

  Another way to look at Suez Canal volume is in relation to global trade volume. VesselsValue provided American Shipper with this analysis, covering volumes over the past six months.

  

  According to Adrian Economakis, chief strategy officer of VesselsValue, “Based on observation of our real-time and historical laden vessel activity, cargo volumes going through the Suez Canal accounted for around 4% of global trade over the last six months.

  “The big question for the companies that control vessels on their way to Suez is to risk it and keep going or take the long way round. Either one will add delays and costs,” said Economakis.

  Container capacity gets even tighter

  The container sector faces the most systemic fallout from the Suez Canal accident.

  Consider the case of the massive container-ship traffic jam in San Pedro Bay off Los Angeles and Long Beach. Since the beginning of the year, around 30 container ships have been stuck at anchor per day. They face delays of one to two weeks before reaching terminals. As of Thursday, there were still 29 ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay.

  Now consider that the Ever Given accident has suddenly created an even bigger version of the California container-ship traffic jam. Leth Agencies reported that 53 container ships were at anchor awaiting passage through the Suez Canal on Friday. And that’s only half of the equation. All of the container ships taking the longer route around the cape are adding one to two weeks to their journeys.

  While most of the container services via the Suez are Asia-North Europe and Asia-Med trades, everything is connected. The trans-Pacific trade relies on availability of container equipment. The Suez crisis will keep much-needed box equipment out of circulation for an extended period.

  This will make equipment in Asia scarcer for U.S. importers at the very time demand is expected to intensify due to federal stimulus checks. Whether coincidence or not, Asia-West Coast rates (SONAR: FBXD.CNAW) just hit a new all-time high of $5,151 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU) on Thursday, according to the Freightos Baltic Daily Index.

  

  Container stock outlook

  The Suez crisis will add significant costs for liner companies serving the Asia-Europe trade. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope saves on canal tolls but heavily inflates fuel bills. The Suez snarl will also put upward pressure on ship and equipment leasing rates.

  Stifel analyst Ben Nolan maintained that the Ever Given accident is “bad news” for liners. Diversions are “likely to be much more expensive and tie up equipment that could otherwise be making record profits.”

  How much of the added costs can liners pass along to cargo shippers? Carriers could institute a surcharge for cargo diverted around the cape. Spot rates could remain elevated for longer — or even increase. In addition, the Suez Canal incident could give liners even more sentiment ammunition in their annual contract negotiations with shippers.

  The Ever Given accident is overwhelmingly good news for shipowners that charter vessels to liners: companies such as Danaos, Costamare, Global Ship Lease, Navios Partners and Capital Product Partners.

  “Shipowners … who were already in a terrific competitive position are in an even stronger competitive position, at least for the time being,” explained Nolan.

  The same goes for box-equipment lessors Textainer, CAI International and Triton International.

  B. Riley Securities analyst Daniel Day hiked his box-lessor price targets after the Ever Given grounding. “We now expect container shortages to last through at least Q2 and [to be] increasingly likely for the majority of 2021. A worst-case scenario [in the Suez Canal] could result in new record highs for new container prices,” he said. 

  Less upside for crude tankers

  The Suez Canal is not as important as it used to be for tanker shipping. Nevertheless, a blockage that lasts weeks not days would certainly be a plus for rates, particularly for product tankers.

  Data on tanker flows through the canal was provided to American Shipper by Kpler.

  

  The data shows a fall in volumes for both crude and clean products as COVID reduced demand and OPEC+ cut production. Crude volumes spiked in April 2020 when the OPEC+ agreement briefly broke down. There was a bump last month due to Iraqi crude moving west combined with Russian crude headed east.

  The effect of the Ever Given accident on crude-tanker demand is limited for two reasons. First, a large portion of the global trade already sails around the Cape of Good Hope using very large crude carriers (VLCCs; tankers that carry 1 million barrels). Second, the SUMED pipeline from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean allows northbound crude flows to circumvent the canal.

  Nolan added, “Crude-tanker markets are currently so oversupplied and depressed that even a 3-5% increase in utilization [due to ship diversions], while helpful, is unlikely to tip the balance of supply and demand.”

  More upside for product tankers

  The main product-tanker flows through the canal are naphtha headed east to Asia and diesel and other refined products headed west to Europe.

  Potential product-tanker upside from the accident would have been greater if not for a new wave of COVID lockdowns in Europe, reducing transportation-fuel demand. Even so, analysts are more optimistic on this segment than on crude tankers.

  According to Nolan, “We expect the impact could be more meaningful for product-tanker markets, specifically the larger LR2s [product tankers with capacity of 80,000-119,000 deadweight tons or DWT] that move a great deal of the product exported from Middle Eastern refineries. Not all of this goes through the Suez Canal. But the product-tanker market was not as oversupplied as the crude-tanker market. So, we do expect that a change in freight efficiency could have a more dramatic impact on product-tanker freight rates.”

  Nolan noted that of the public companies, Scorpio Tankers (NYSE: STNG) has the most LR2 exposure.

  Clarksons Platou Securities reported on Friday that rates for 2010- to 2014-built LR2s jumped 21% compared to Thursday, to $20,700 per day. Rates for LR2s built in 2015 or later surged 18% day-on-day, to $24,000 per day.

  According to Clarksons analyst Frode Mørkedal, “Brokers report that the list of available LR2s in the West [Western Hemisphere] is very tight and that charterers’ options are severely limited, thus pushing freight rates upwards. This is a trend that is expected to continue due to the lack of ship supply coming from the East, especially with the current Suez situation leading to further delays.”

  As Alphatanker put it, “The longer the disruption lasts … the tighter the tonnage lists will become, especially for large clean tankers.”

  Rate tailwinds for dry bulk

  Container shipping and tankers are garnering the headlines. But as the SCA statistics revealed, there’s a dry bulk angle as well.

  The first quarter has already been incredibly strong for bulkers in the Panamax (65,000-90,000 DWT) and Supramax (45,000-60,000 DWT) segments. Rates for these bulkers are at decade-highs. 

  Nick Ristic, lead dry cargo analyst for Braemar ACM Shipbroking, sees potential upside for both Panamaxes and Supramaxes as a result of the canal accident. Both markets are already tight.

  Two-thirds of all Panamax ships sailing from the Black Sea traversed the Suez Canal in 2020 “and for grains specifically, this figure was 73%,” he wrote in his latest market outlook. Braemar expects an additional 7.4 million tons of Black Sea grain to be shipped in the current season. “With Chinese demand for grains still extremely high, prolonged Suez closures could translate to more of these ships taking the long route to the Far East,” he said.

  

  Meanwhile, Supramaxes are heavily exposed to the steel trade from Asia to the Atlantic Basin. Steel exports in Q1 2020 are at half-decade highs, driven by China and South Korea. Import demand “is extremely high,” noted Ristic, who said that “bumper trade flows” and diversions due to the Suez closure could “tighten the market further.”

  MORE ON SUEZ CANAL CLOSURE: What the Suez canal accident means to the tanker business: see story here. Everyone wants to talk — or laugh about — the Suez Canal crisis: see story here. Scores of container ships waiting to transit Suez Canal: see story here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 21:00

• Another Round Of Toilet Paper Shortages Looms Amid Global Shipping-Container Crunch
  Another Round Of Toilet Paper Shortages Looms Amid Global Shipping-Container Crunch

  Even before the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal, manufacturers around the world were struggling with the ramifications of a global shipping-container crunch creating bottlenecks in global supply chains. The problem started in the chaos of last spring. A surge in demand for PPE and other products resulted in more demand for shipping containers used to help ferry them to China, as well as African and South American Nations,

  To be sure, China is seen as one of the biggest contributors to the container crisis, as snarls and delays at Chinese ports have impacted the availability of containers.

  

  Setting the situation in the Suez aside, one of the world’s biggest producers of raw wood pulp, located in South America (far from the Suez), is warning that the container shortage could lead to another shortage of toilet paper on American shelves.

  Most Americans probably remember the startling surge in stockpiling of toilet paper and other household essentials. Many were blindsided by it, or forced to be a premium for the stuff. Families around the country stressed out about the possibility that they might be left high and dry.

  According to Bloomberg, the company, the Brazil-based company, Suzano SA, primarily ships its pulp in cargo vessels known as break bulk. But as demand for ships that can carry ribbed steel containers surges, break bulk rates and capacity are being squeezed.

  For readers who aren’t familiar with the term, here’s a quick explanation of what constitutes “break bulk” (courtesy of LogisticsPlus):

  What is Break Bulk Shipping? The term break bulk comes from the older phrase “breaking bulk” which is the extraction of a portion of the cargo on a ship, or the beginning of the unloading process from the ship’s holds. In modern context, break bulk is meant to encompass cargo that is transported in bags, boxes, crates, drums, or barrels – or items of extreme length or size. To be considered break bulk, these goods must be loaded individually, not in intermodal containers nor in bulk as with liquids or grains.

  Break bulk was the most common form of cargo for most of history. Since the late 1960s, break bulk cargo has declined while containerized cargo has grown significantly. Moving containers on and off a ship is much more efficient than having to move individual goods. This efficiency allows ships to minimize time in ports and spend more time on the sea. Break bulk cargo is also more susceptible to loss, theft and damage.

  […]

  Examples of commonly shipped break bulk cargo commodities include:

  • Bagged or sacked cargo
  • Bailed goods
  • Barrels, drums, and casks
  • Corrugated and wooden boxes or containers
  • Reels and rolls
  • Equipment, vehicles and components
  • Steel girders and structural steel
  • Any long, heavy or over-sized goods

  Given consumers’ penchant for stockpiling and panic buying, a habit that emerged shortly after the pandemic emerged last spring, CEO Walter Schalka said in an interview that he’s worried all of this could snowball into another toilet paper shortage.

  Sao Paulo-based Suzano is already concerned about the risk of exporting less in March than the company had expected, and being forced to roll over some shipments into April, Schalka said. With competition increasing for cargo vessels, break-bulk ships are berthing at the company’s terminals less often than usual.

  “All the South American players which export through break bulk have faced this risk,” he said.

  Brazil is the world’s top supplier of pulp, and Suzano accounts for about one-third of global supplies of hardwood pulp, the type used to produce toilet papers. Cargo-market disruption are wreaking havoc on global trade, especially for food and agricultural products, and the crisis in the Suez is already causing tanker rates to spike.

  Unsurprisingly, the Bloomberg headline warning about another toilet paper shortage soon became a hot topic on twitter.

  Honestly, I’ve peed in enough bushes used enough bidet nozzles to know that there are more important things in life than toilet paper. We’ll be fine. https://t.co/ELnUXZlfy6

  — Shani Kotecha (@ShaniKotecha) March 25, 2021

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  (my) alternate headlines: “Clog In Supply Chain Leads To Toilet Paper Shortage” “Crappy Situation In Suez”. Also, Samuel L. Jackson: pic.twitter.com/FQscbEHjBF

  — AI6YR (@ai6yrham) March 25, 2021

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  On the bridge: “oh shit!”

  Narrator: “little did they know that this snafu could take down the entire toilet paper supply chain and 10% of global shipping trade”

  Ship owner: *inconsolable, begins having PTSD symptoms whenever the wind gusts*

  — Jessy Irwin ✨ (@jessysaurusrex) March 25, 2021

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  let the annual toilet paper hunger games begin https://t.co/wmfx98JxbI

  — jsadinolfi (@jsadinolfi) March 24, 2021

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  Suzano’s warning is among the first major signs of strain in these shipping markets. If the squeeze drives up freight costs, it could also drive up prices of imported goods, stoking inflation, and creating new headaches for the Federal Reserve…and the market.

  If you haven’t bought a bidet yet, now might be a good time.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 20:40

• The Post-Target Paradigm: Analyzing China Just Got Harder
  The Post-Target Paradigm: Analyzing China Just Got Harder

  By Damien Ma of Macro Polo

  The just released 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) and 2035 long-range vision is some 75,000 words long. But it is short on concrete targets. For the first time in 35 years, the biggest news that came out of the 14th FYP was what was missing: the GDP target.  

  

  It wasn’t just the GDP target either. Almost all socioeconomic indicators in the FYP became relatively modest “soft targets”—meaning there’s no political mandate to meet them. Even though Beijing will likely still determine general economic targets based on annual conditions, the reality is that the Xi Jinping era has ushered in the post-target era.    

  That might seem unexpected, but we have been making the case for the downgrading of targets. The irony, though, is that this uncharted target-less terrain can be more vexing than the prevailing target-rich environment.  

  Indeed, despite regular criticism lodged at China’s obsession with targets, their sudden demotion and even absence can be discombobulating. This is particularly so for the humble analyst who has long relied on them as an anchor by which to assess China’s goals and ambitions.  

  But worry not. Rather than wandering aimlessly down Beijing hutongs in search of targets, we think it is now more important and productive to look at systemic and qualitative changes to gauge China’s progress. For the next five years at least, targets will simply be peripheral, while reshaping institutions and incentives will likely take center stage. 

  From Targets to the “Two Is”

  To understand this shift, it is important to first grasp how Beijing arrived at this point. Targets of all stripes have long held an exalted place in Chinese policymaking. The GDP target, in particular, was a direct and simple key performance indicator (KPI) for local officials. But over the decades, the singular fixation on this KPI massively distorted incentives across local economies.   

  For one, intrepid and competitive officials found creative ways to “meet” the target, chief among them manipulating local economic statistics. By MacroPolo’s counting, in the past five years, seven provinces have been caught overstating their GDP by 10 percent or more.   

  It also mattered less whether that growth was virtuous or unsustainable, so long as it hit the KPI. For instance, debt-fueled investments and discounting environmental costs were tolerated because the headline target was met or exceeded. Even when Beijing’s objectives shifted to prioritize the environment or deleveraging, the grip of targets was so strong that local officials simply found loopholes or continued fabricating data to meet a new set of targets. Overreliance on targets, then, diverted local officials’ focus on meeting real objectives. 

  Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the target was embedding short-termism in local government behavior. Much like how a publicly listed corporation often forfeits long-term objectives in order to meet quarterly revenue targets and shareholder expectations, local governments behaved in much the same way. They consistently tried to meet short-term growth at the expense of addressing longer–term weaknesses.  

  But Xi has made it rather clear that he doesn’t intend to run China like a corporation, instead preoccupying his first two terms with imposing longer-term thinking—for example by consistently touting the “two centenary goals.”  

  Deemphasizing targets can be interpreted as essentially a “whole-of-economy” effort to dislodge short-termism, paving the way toward a new paradigm that focuses more on the “two Is”: incentives and institutions.  

  In fact, Xi admitted as much in a public speech on science and technology. He highlighted the need to overcome institutional barriers to innovation rather than simply increasing spending on research and development (R&D) to produce the desired results.   

  With China’s ballyhooed turn toward more technology independence, it would make sense for Beijing to pour money into R&D. Yet surprisingly, the R&D spending growth target of 8% in the 14th FYP is actually two percentage points lower than the real growth of R&D expenditure (10% after inflation) during the past five years.   

  It isn’t for the lack of money. China’s total spending of $23 billion on basic research is less than the annual budget of the US National Institutes of Health. With an annual fiscal budget of more than $3 trillion, Beijing can easily double or triple the spending on basic research. Yet it has opted not to do so.  

  This newfound modesty, not just for R&D but also in other areas like energy and urbanization, further reinforces the shift away from targets and reflects the priority of fixing institutions, untangling distortions, and taming vested interests before throwing money at problems.  

  In many ways, the current set of targets no longer serves China’s economy today and where it wants to be by 2035. To the extent that some targets still exist, they will mainly function as a floor. It is a recognition that targets won’t solve structural issues that are institutional in nature and difficult to measure.  

  As the new post-target paradigm takes root, analyzing China will need to adapt accordingly.  

  It will certainly be more demanding, but also more intellectually interesting to evolve existing mental models of the Chinese political economy.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 20:20

• US Appeals Court Rules Bump Stocks Are Not "Machine Guns" 
  US Appeals Court Rules Bump Stocks Are Not “Machine Guns” 

  The federal ban on bump stocks, put in place by the Trump administration, was ruled unlawful by a divided federal appeals court on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. This is a significant win for gun owners who have observed overreaching government clamp down on guns in recent years. 

  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) first issued the ban on plastic bump stocks that transform semiautomatic firearms into rapid-fire weapons. In December 2018, the ATF classified bump stocks as “machine guns.” The move came after former President Trump ordered his Attorney General to initiate the ban following the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. 

  How A Bump Stock Works 

  

  The latest ruling from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals grants Gun Owners of America (GOA), a preliminary injunction against the ban, affirming the gun group’s concerns that the federal ban violated the “Administrative Procedure Act, the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, and the 14th Amendment’s right to due process.”

  “Today’s court decision is great news and told gun owners what they already knew,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt said in a statement. “We are glad the court applied the statute accurately and struck down the ATF’s illegal overreach and infringement of gun owners’ rights.”

  Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Alice Batchelder defended the court’s ruling, claiming that a bump stock attachment on a firearm does not qualify it as a “machine gun,” which the government currently classifies as a “single function of the trigger” (or a semiautomatic firearm). 

  “A bump stock may change how the pull of the trigger is accomplished, but it does not change the fact that the semiautomatic firearm shoots only one shot for each pull of the trigger,” Batchelder declared. “With or without a bump stock, a semiautomatic firearm is capable of firing only a single shot for each pull of the trigger.”

  While the ATF issued a ban on bump stocks over the last couple of years – the internet won as it appears people just 3D printed these attachments.

  … and we wonder what the National Rifle Association will have to say about this ruling after they caved and called for “additional regulations” on “bump fire stocks” in late 2017 following the Las Vegas shooting. 

  Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a ban this week on banning bump stocks. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 20:00

• Media & Momo Meltdown, Small Caps & SPACs Slammed As Bonds & The Buck Bounce
  Media & Momo Meltdown, Small Caps & SPACs Slammed As Bonds & The Buck Bounce

  Just as we warned earlier in the week, today highlighted the epic clash between forced pension selling and quant-buying into month-/quarter-end.

  Today saw bonds bid shortly after the US cash open and stocks dumped (rebalancing?), but once Europe closed, the standard trend reversal struck and things changed and then with an hour to go quant-buying went into overdrive

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And VIX was smashed lower…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And that massive reversal in VIX sparked a last hour total meltup in stocks…

  

  Small Caps were clubbed like a baby seal this week, but that quant-buying panic sent the rest of the US majors into the green for the week…

  

  But under the surface, something violent is happening…

  “Most Shorted” stocks suffered their worst week since October, despite Thursday’s big squeeze effort…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Cathie Wood had another bad week with ARKK down almost 10% to its lowest weekly close since early November…

  

  It wasn’t just US tech, there was a major liquidation in a number of China tech stocks this week…

  

  And media stocks were monkeyhammered (this was the biggest weekly drop in media stocks since March 2020)…

  

  This all had the smell of a major media/tech fund liquidation. ViacomCBS was a total shitshow…

  

  Momentum stocks melted down…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  SPACs dumped…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  On the week, Staples outperformed as Discretionary dumped and Energy stocks changed their mind faster than Fauci…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The put-call ration rose significantly this week as the gamma-squeezers have apparently left the building for now…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Treasury yields were lower across the curve this week led by the long-end…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Is the pullback in Small Caps relative to Big-Tech implying that rates have peaked for now?

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  1.60% remains a key level for 10Y yields…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The dollar ramped back up to early March highs, screaming higher after the Powell puke last week…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Cryptos were down for the second week in a row, mainly due to the big puke on Weds…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin puked back near $50k this week before finding a bid…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Commodities were very mixed on the week, but all ended lower against the stronger dollar, with silver suffering the most…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And just look at the chaos in crude this week as the Suez blockage interacted with European demand fears…

  

  Silver slumped back below $25 during the week, below the Reddit Raiders lows…

  

  Finally, COVID vaccinations are re-accelerating in US and EU…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And while cases are up modestly (are PCR tests picking up spike proteins from the mRNA vaccines?), death rates continue to tumble…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And, it would appear that stuff is getting serious and Powell and his pals are gonna have to accelerate the pumping once again as sideways is not up… and that just will not do for today’s ‘guru’ stock traders…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 19:45

• GOP Lawmaker Urges Architects Of Digital Dollar To Consider Risks To Civil Liberties
  GOP Lawmaker Urges Architects Of Digital Dollar To Consider Risks To Civil Liberties

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  As central banks, including the Federal Reserve, are looking into implementing their own digital currencies, a Republican lawmaker warned of a key risk associated with their adoption, namely whether they could be exploited to curb civil liberties.

  

  Nations across the world are mulling developing central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to modernize their financial systems, ward off the threat from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and speed up domestic and international payments, with China one of the most advanced in its effort.

  Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told NTD News in an interview that some of the features of China’s digital yuan arrangement would raise concerns if transposed to a digital dollar.

  “China’s using their monetary system as a system of control,” Davidson said.

  “And they’re proposing to link their central bank digital currency to their social credit system where they know virtually everything about everyone – they could filter all the transactions and essentially say, yeah, we’re not going to bank those people.”

  China’s social credit system is essentially a set of databases and initiatives that track and gauge the “trustworthiness” of individuals, companies, and government entities, with each entry given a rating, and then either rewarded or punished based on the score. It has drawn fire for serving as a tool for the regime to control almost all aspects of its citizens’ lives.

  “Sadly, in the United States of America, there are people that look at that and go, ‘Oh, that’s great, we would love to have it.’ That’s scary,” Davidson said.

  Davidson said a key feature of the way currency in the United States has been used is to provide a “permissionless” means of settling transactions, meaning that there is no third party that monitors and adjudicates transactions between people, ensuring privacy and limiting opportunities for the government to control its citizens’ behavior.

  “If you look at the United States system, and our Bill of Rights, we’ve celebrated and defended civil liberties and freedom,” Davidson said.

  “The question on central bank digital currencies to me is, will the United States preserve this feature or will China’s more authoritarian control system be in place because they will use money as a system of control? And historically, we’ve used the monetary system differently,” he added.

  While Davidson acknowledged the imperative to fight crime, he said that architects of America’s financial system must, in their design of a digital dollar, find a way to incorporate safeguards to civil liberties.

  “We want to catch terrorists, we want to catch money launderers and tax evaders,” he said, but warned against exploiting these priorities as an excuse to turn “money service businesses and financial institutions and banks into part of a surveillance state to collect and report on their customer base.”

  China’s central bank is aiming to become the first major monetary institution to issue a CBDC, part of its push to internationalize the yuan and reduce dependence on the dollar-dominated global banking system. A digital yuan payment and settlement system was on Thursday added to the existing payment platforms at the Dalian Port Network in Liaoning Province, marking the first time that digital RMB settlement has been adopted at a Chinese port.

  Many analysts say that a CBDC that gains wide acceptance in international trade and payments could ultimately erode the dollar’s status as the de facto currency of world trade and undermine U.S. influence.

  Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, has said it is more important that the Fed gets its approach to a digital dollar right rather than leading the pack.

  “We’re not in a mode of trying to make a decision at this point,” he said Monday. “We are experimenting with technology.”

  

  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks at a press conference in Washington on Jan. 29, 2020. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

  Powell added that given the dollar’s critical role as the world’s leading reserve currency, the Fed has “an obligation to be on the cutting edge” of understanding the costs and benefits of a CBDC.

  At the same time, Powell said there was no need for the Fed to rush or “be first to market.”

  Powell said the Fed is conducting research through an in-house technology lab, and also collaborating with MIT through the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, one of its 12 regional Fed banks.

  “The real threshold question for us is, does the public want or need a new digital form of central bank money to complement what is already a highly efficient, reliable and innovative payments oriented system?” Powell asked.

  There are risks and benefits to digital currencies, the Fed chair said. The benefits include a “more efficient, more inclusive payment system,” while the risks involve cyber attacks, money laundering, and terrorist financing.

  There is also the risk that a digital currency could be held by individuals electronically and could therefore bypass banks.

  “We don’t want to compete with banks for funding,” Powell said.

  Ultimately, Powell said that Congress would likely need to pass legislation allowing a CBDC before the Fed would create one.

  “We would not proceed with this without support from Congress, and I think that would ideally come in the form of an authorizing law,” Powell said.

  China proposed a set of global rules for central bank digital currencies on Thursday, with Mu Changchun, the director-general of the Chinese central bank’s digital currency institute, laying out the new proposals at a Bank for International Settlements seminar on Thursday.

  “Information flow and fund flows should be synchronized so as to facilitate regulators to monitor the transactions for compliance,” he said.

  The European Central Bank is also exploring the introduction of a digital euro within the next five years.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 19:40

• Pakistan Successfully Test Launches Upgraded Nuclear-Capable Ballistic Missile
  Pakistan Successfully Test Launches Upgraded Nuclear-Capable Ballistic Missile

  On Friday Pakistan’s leaders hailed the “successful” flight test of the country’s upgraded nuclear-capable Shaheen 1-A surface-to-surface ballistic missile.

  Pakistan’s military said the test “was aimed at re-validating various design and technical parameters of the weapon system including advanced navigation system,” according to the country’s English-language newspaper Dawn. State media subsequently put out official video of the launch…

  The Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) later confirmed the Shaheen-1A missile test had been successfully completed with no incident, performing as intended. 

  With a range of over 900 kilometers (or more than 550 miles) and described as “engaging targets at land and sea with high precision,” the ballistic missile would likely be the number one weapon of choice deployed should Pakistan ever enter major war with its nuclear-armed neighbor India.

  Pakistan conducts a successful test of Shaheen 1A surface-to-surface ballistic missile with a range of 900 kms. Rawalpindi – March 26, 2021 The test flight was aimed at re-validating various design & technical parameters of the weapon system including advanced navigation system pic.twitter.com/hSD8ShHQfz

  — omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) March 26, 2021

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

  The historic rivalry and tensions have lately flared up again especially over the contested Kashmir region, after in August of 2019 India’s government voted to revoke the special status that gave Jammu and Kashmir limited autonomy.

  

  India’s Army then sent tens of thousands of troops into the region, which leaders in Islamabad condemned as tantamount to ethnic cleansing targeting Muslims. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 19:20

• No Surge In COVID Two Weeks After Mask Mandate Lifted In Texas
  No Surge In COVID Two Weeks After Mask Mandate Lifted In Texas

  Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times,

  After two weeks of lifting its mask mandate and allowing businesses to open at full capacity, Texas is not seeing a surge of new COVID-19 cases.

  

  Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, issued an executive order (pdf) that went into effect on March 10 to loosen COVID-19 restrictions. Although the government’s statewide mask mandate was lifted, individual businesses were still able to “limit capacity” or impose mask mandates at their own choosing.

  But in Austin and Travis County, residents 10 years or older still have to wear a mask outside their home after a district judge refused to grant Attorney General Ken Paxton a restraining order that would have ended a mask mandate enforced by Travis County and Austin city officials. The trial is set to take place on March 26.

  Texas had been witnessing a downward trend in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations prior to Abbott’s announcement ending the restrictions.

  COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

  The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) posted on Twitter yesterday that Texas saw a seven-day average decrease in the daily number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

  #COVID19TX Update: Texans are slowing the spread with vaccines and #HealthyTexas steps. Keep it up to stop variants from reversing our progress.

  In the last 7 days #Texas averaged:
  ⬇️2,556 new cases a day
  ⬇️3,581 current hospitalizations
  ⬇️122 new fatalities reported a day pic.twitter.com/QXh4UWtOsY

  — Texas DSHS (@TexasDSHS) March 24, 2021

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

  At the time the executive order was issued, March 2, new COVID-19 cases in the state stood at 7,240 cases, with a seven-day average of 7,259 cases. That number dropped to 5,350 cases by March 10 when the executive order came into effect and the economy fully opened.

  Two weeks later on March 24, the number of daily new cases stands at 3,827, with a seven-day average of 3,401 cases.

  

  Texas Governor Greg Abbott arrives for his COVID-19 press conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on March 29, 2020. (Tom Fox-Pool/Getty Images)

  Abbott included in his order a provision for county judges across the state’s 22 hospital regions to “use COVID-19 mitigation strategies” if hospitalizations rise over 15 percent of “hospital bed capacity” for seven straight days.

  “County Judges may not impose jail time for not following COVID-19 orders nor may any penalties be imposed for failing to wear a face mask. If restrictions are imposed at a county level, those restrictions may not include reducing capacity to less than 50% for any type of entity,” he added.

  Abbott’s mask mandate rollback had attracted criticism from high-profile figures, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to President Joe Biden.

  “We understand people’s need to get back to normal, and we’re going in that direction. But when you start doing things like completely putting aside all public health measures as if you’re turning a light switch off, that’s quite risky,” Fauci said during an appearance on CNN earlier this month.

  “We don’t want to see another surge, and that’s inviting one when you do that.”

  Mississippi also announced it was lifting COVID-19 related restrictions on March 2.

  “Starting tomorrow, we are lifting all of our county mask mandates and businesses will be able to operate at full capacity without any state-imposed rules,” Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said on Twitter. “Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is the time!”

  In Mississippi, new COVID-19 cases have also been steadily declining but not as much as in Texas.

  There were 301 cases with a seven-day average of 582 on March 2. Two weeks later, Mississippi had 387 new cases and a seven-day average of 289 cases.

  The state’s death toll is significantly lower than Texas, with four deaths on March 24 and a seven-day average of 6 deaths.

  Texas saw 163 deaths on the same day, with a seven-day average of 123. This is down from March 10 which saw 202 deaths and a seven-day average of 190 deaths. Texas has around ten times the population of Mississippi.

  At the time of publishing, more than six million Texan residents and 720,607 Mississippians have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 19:00

• Sanders Challenges Biden To Adopt Aggressive Tax Scheme Topping 65% For Wealthiest Americans
  Sanders Challenges Biden To Adopt Aggressive Tax Scheme Topping 65% For Wealthiest Americans

  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is playing bad cop – introducing a tax plan that’s so aggressive that it makes Biden’s small-business-killing corporate tax hike look moderate in comparison.

  Sanders, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has proposed two new measures – one which would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 35%, far above the 28% Biden has proposed. It would also add stricter rules for taxing offshore profits, according to The Hill.

  

  The second piece of legislation would supercharge the estate tax – lowering the threshold from $11 million to $3.5 million for single people, and from $22 million to $7 million for couples. It would also raise the tax rate to as much as 65% for estates over $1 billion.

  Biden, on the other hand, would cap taxes on estates valued over $3.5 million at a flat 45%.

  According to Sanders, Biden and Democrats need to be willing to go much further in taxing corporations and estates in order to pay for upcoming infrastructure and pandemic stimulus.

  “We can no longer tolerate many large corporations making billions of dollars in profits to pay nothing in federal income taxes while about half of older Americans have no retirement savings and no idea how they will be able to retire with any shred of dignity or respect,” said Sanders at a Budget Committee hearing on the topic.

  The proposals underscore how Sanders is continuing to push Biden to the left, as he did during the presidential primary race when he finished second to the president.

  But the pressure creates a number of problems for Biden, who is seeking to pass legislation through a Senate with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

  If Biden does pursue the $3 trillion infrastructure and climate change package being contemplated, it’s not clear how much he’ll seek to pay for and how much will add to the deficit.

  The White House is contemplating working with Republicans on at least part of the package to win a bipartisan victory, something some centrist Democrats have pressed him to do. –The Hill

  Upcoming stimulus is likely to be split into a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, and a $1 trillion bill to address education, child care and poverty.

  What do my Republican colleagues want to do to address the crises facing working families today? They want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country. That is obscene. pic.twitter.com/n9TXnMBtJW

  — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 25, 2021

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

  Republicans, meanwhile, are sounding the alarm on out-of-control spending following the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan earlier this month, which would bring the total debt from concurrent packages to nearly $5 trillion.

  “We have engaged in an unprecedented amount of borrowing over the past year, which is exactly what we should have been doing,” according to MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in Thursday testimony before Sanders’ committee.

  “This debt trajectory leaves us vulnerable on many fronts: it leaves people who depend on these important trust fund programs vulnerable given all the uncertainty; it leaves the economy vulnerable to economic shifts both here and abroad; and it creates a major national security threat as well,” she added.

  The GOP itself passed $1.9 trillion in unfunded tax cuts in 2017 that added to the deficit. But it is unlikely to back new legislation that would add more spending that is unpaid for.

  “In 2017 we did in fact cut taxes. We cut taxes in a way to make American corporations competitive with the worldwide rate,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Budget panel.

  “This insatiable desire by my friends on the left to grab as much money and power as they can is going to ruin the country. There has to be some balance,” he added. –The Hill

  Sanders’ new bills make clear that any attempt by Biden(‘s handlers) to make generous concessions to the GOP will be met with pushback from his own party – which could cause friction in both the House and the Senate, where Democrats’ majorities are razor-thin.

  “Despite what some of my Republican colleagues may claim, the reality is that when you take into account federal income taxes, payroll taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes and property taxes, we have, as a nation, an extremely unfair tax system that allows billionaires to pay a lower effective tax rate than public school teachers, truck drivers and nurses,” said Sanders, adding “That has got to change.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 18:40

• US Military Ordered 'Clandestine Burning' Of Toxic Chemicals In Poor Neighborhoods: Study
  US Military Ordered ‘Clandestine Burning’ Of Toxic Chemicals In Poor Neighborhoods: Study

  Authored by Kenny Stancil via CommonDreams.org,

  New research conducted by environmental justice scholars at Vermont’s Bennington College reveals that between 2016 and 2020, the US military oversaw the “clandestine burning” of more than 20 million pounds of Aqueous Fire Fighting Foam in low-income communities around the country—even though there is no evidence that incineration destroys the toxic “forever chemicals” that make up the foam and are linked to a range of cancers, developmental disorders, immune dysfunction, and infertility.

  “In defiance of common sense and environmental expertise, the Department of Defense (DOD) has enlisted poor communities across the US as unwilling test subjects in its toxic experiment with burning AFFF,” David Bond, associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College, said (pdf) in a statement earlier this week.

  

  Noting that scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and even Pentagon officials have warned that “burning AFFF is an unproven method and dangerous mix that threatens the health of millions of Americans,” Bond characterized the decision of the military to dump huge stockpiles of AFFF and AFFF wastewater into “a handful of habitually negligent incinerators” as a “harebrained” operation as well as a manifestation of environmental injustice.

  “In effect,” he added, “the Pentagon redistributed its AFFF problem into poor and working-class neighborhoods.”

  After months of compiling and analyzing data—obtained last year from the Pentagon and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation—the team from Vermont launched an interactive website this week that publicizes for the first time the results of their investigation into all known shipments of AFFF to hazardous waste incinerators in the US.

  The Bennington College researchers summarized their findings as follows:

  • Over 20 million pounds of the toxic firefighting foam AFFF and AFFF wastewater was incinerated between 2016-2020;
  • The US military, the EPA, and state regulators all expressed serious concern about the ability of incineration to destroy the toxic chemicals in AFFF during this time;
  • Six incinerators were contracted to burn AFFF. Each is a habitual violator of environmental law. Since 2017, three of the incinerators were out of compliance with environmental law 100% of the time while the other incinerators were out of compliance with environmental law about 50% of the time;
  • 35% of known shipments of AFFF (7.7 million pounds) was burned at the Norlite Hazardous Waste Incinerator in Cohoes, New York, located within a densely populated urban area and less than 400 feet from a public housing complex. Norlite burned 2.47 million pounds of AFFF and 5.3 million pounds of AFFF wastewater, which likely was burned in violation of its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit;
  • 40% of the national stockpile of AFFF (5.5 million pounds) was sent to “fuel-blending” facilities where it was mixed into fuels for industrial use. It is not clear where the AFFF-laden fuel went next, although the DOD contract stipulates incineration should be the endpoint; and
  • 970,000 pounds of AFFF was burned overseas.

  AFFF contains contaminants known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS); exposure to trace amounts of these synthetic chemicals is associated with a variety of detrimental health effects, and some have argued that PFAS are so risky that they not only endanger public health but threaten to undermine human reproduction writ large.

  

  Click for interactive website

  Jane Williams, chair of the Sierra Club’s National Clean Air team stressed: “We simply must stop burning PFAS compounds.”

  “Attempting to burn these forever chemicals can generate highly toxic emissions which endanger the health of nearby communities,” she said. “Burning also releases gases which are powerful climate forcing chemicals.”

  According to Williams, “EPA and DOD are both pursuing advanced technologies that can more effectively destroy these compounds without causing these unacceptable impacts.” The pursuit of alternative disposal methods raises the question, posed by the researchers on their website: “If incineration is an unproven means of destroying these toxins, is burning AFFF solving the problem or simply emitting it into the poor communities that so often surround incinerators in the US?”

  According to the researchers, the military rushed to burn more than 20 million pounds of AFFF over the past four years because they feared the substance “would be classified as a toxic chemical (and with that designation, would require new safeguards and introduce new liability).”

  In a column published Thursday in The Guardian, Bond explained:

  While some states file suit against the manufactures of AFFF, the fingerprints of the US Armed Forces are all over the scene of the crime. When federal scientists moved to publish a comprehensive review of the toxic chemistry of AFFF in 2018, DOD officials called that science “a public relations nightmare” and tried to suppress the findings.

  Beyond damning internal emails, the military is still in possession of a tremendous amount of AFFF. As the EPA and states around the U.S. begin to designate AFFF a hazardous substance, the military’s stockpiles of AFFF are starting to add up to an astronomical liability on the military’s balance sheet. Perhaps thinking the Trump administration presented an opportune moment, the Pentagon decided to torch their AFFF problem in 2016.

  Despite AFFF’s extraordinary resistance to fire, incineration quietly became the military’s preferred method to handle AFFF. “We knew that this would be a costly endeavor, since it meant we’d be burning something that was engineered to put out fires,” Steve Schneider, chief of Hazardous Disposal for the logistics wing of DOD, said in 2017 as the operation got underway…

  As the military was sending AFFF to incinerators around the country, the EPA, state regulators, and university scientists all warned that subjecting AFFF to extremely high temperatures would likely conjure up a witches brew of fluorinated toxins, that existing smokestack technologies would be insufficient to monitor poisonous emissions let alone capture them, and that dangerous chemicals might rain down on surrounding neighborhoods. Weighing out its own liability against the health of these communities, the Pentagon struck the match.

  Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator, said the data compiled by the Bennington College team demonstrate that “we have a national problem on our hands.”

  “Congress needs to throw cold water on the Pentagon’s mad dash to burn toxic firefighting foam. There is no evidence that incineration destroys AFFF,” she added, calling for “a national ban on burning these forever chemicals.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 18:20

• WHO Wuhan COVID Origins Report Delayed As China 'Fights Tooth & Nail Over Each Sentence'
  WHO Wuhan COVID Origins Report Delayed As China ‘Fights Tooth & Nail Over Each Sentence’

  The World Health Organization (WHO) is delaying its report on the origins of COVID-19 because China is ‘fighting tooth and nail over each sentence,’ according to WHO advisory committee member Jamie Metzl.

  

  “Just received confirmation that release of the WHO-organized int’l committee/Chinese gov’t report on #COVID19 origins has again been delayed,” Metzl tweeted Friday, adding “apparently as the Chinese side fights tooth & nail over each sentence. Anyone believe this compromise report can possibly be credible?”

  Just received confirmation that release of the @WHO-organized int’l committee/Chinese gov’t report on #COVID19 origins has again been delayed, apparently as the Chinese side fights tooth & nail over each sentence. Anyone believe this compromise report can possibly be credible?

  — Jamie Metzl (@JamieMetzl) March 26, 2021

  On Monday, https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsformer deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, David Feith, wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that WHO investigators “won’t be able to publish findings without official Chinese concurrence.“

  So will the final WHO report focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Don’t count on it. Because the same WHO investigators who — responding to media inquiries — confirmed the existence of the sick lab workers immediately played down the importance of the information.

  “It was flu season!” WHO investigator Peter Daszak said on Twitter, though he provided no evidence that these lab workers had flu rather than covid.

  …

  How could such an important investigation risk its credibility by including possibly conflicted investigators? Well, the WHO investigation isn’t just a WHO investigation. It is a joint effort between the WHO, which convened some 19 international investigators, and the Chinese government, which selected 17 Chinese researchers and also had veto power over the foreign experts. The investigators won’t be able to publish findings without official Chinese concurrence.-WaPo

  And as the Daily Caller reports, the delay follows the WHO’s refusal to release an interim report on COVID-19 origins amid growing concerns over the legitimacy of their investigation.

  “Chinese experts received English version of the WHO report on Mar. 17. Whether the report will be released next week depends on discussions between Chinese & international experts,” a Chinese government spokesperson tweeted on March 19.

  Chinese experts received English version of the WHO report on Mar. 17. Whether the report will be released next week depends on discussions between Chinese & international experts. Origin-tracing is a scientific issue that needs to be studied by the science community. pic.twitter.com/o3619f58zT

  — Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) March 19, 2021

  WHO team members also told the Wall Street Journal after “Chinese counterparts review it and make possible changes.”

  The WHO did not respond to questions from the Daily Caller News Foundation on exactly how Chinese officials can change the report, but said through a spokesperson that “Once we have the date of the release of the report we will inform media.”

  However, a group of scientists and academics, members of Congress and others have called for a separate, more independent investigation. (RELATED: Report: WHO Granted China Authority To Veto Scientists On Wuhan Mission) 

  Discovering the virus’s origin is “critically important to both better addressing the current pandemic and reducing the risk of future ones,” the international group of scientists and academics wrote in an open letter on March 4. –Daily Caller

  “Perhaps the WHO final report will supply evidence to justify the investigators’ apparent lack of interest in pursuing the lab-leak theory,” Feith wrote in the Post. “Does the WHO have the names of the [Wuhan Institute of Virology in China] lab researchers who fell ill? Were they interviewed? Has the WHO seen their medical records? Antibody test results? If so, will the information be included in the WHO report?”

  Looks like we’ll just have and Xi what Beijing allows the WHO to conclude…

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/26/2021 – 18:00