• UK Unveils Harsh $13,000 Fine For Breaking Quarantine Amid Covid 2nd Wave
  UK Unveils Harsh $13,000 Fine For Breaking Quarantine Amid Covid 2nd Wave
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 09/21/2020 – 02:45

  The UK witnessed new record coronavirus case numbers reported in a single day since May on Saturday, logging over 4,420 confirmed infections. 

  And now authorities are getting desperate, threatening severe law enforcement measures and penalties, with the latest being that those who test positive but refuse to self-quarantine can be hit with a fine up to $13,000 (or 10,000 pounds).

  It comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed the country is undergoing an “inevitable” second wave of infections on Friday.

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  “Obviously, we’re looking carefully at the spread of the pandemic as it evolves over the last few days, and there’s no question, as I’ve said for several weeks now, that we could expect, and we are now seeing, a second wave coming in,” Johnson said.

  He referenced case number spikes seen in nearby Spain and France, saying that it’s “absolutely inevitable, I’m afraid, that we would see it in this country.”

  The new harsh penalty of the equivalent of a $13,000 fine takes effect by the end of this month, per the AP:

  The new rule obliges people to self-isolate if they test positive for the coronavirus or are traced as a close contact. The rule comes into effect on Sept. 28.

  The government will help those on lower incomes who face a loss of earnings as a result of self-isolating with a one-time support payment of 500 pounds ($633).

  Amid continuing protests in London by Britons fed up with restricted freedoms, including mask and social distancing mandates and security crackdowns, PM Johnson’s latest comments also strongly hinted that a second lockdown is on the table, such as Israel is experiencing.

  “I don’t think anybody wants to go into a second lockdown, but clearly when you look at what is happening, you’ve got to wonder whether we need to go further than the rule of six that we brought in on Monday,” Johnson said.

  

• Trump & The Nobel Prize: "Make Deals, Not War!"
  Trump & The Nobel Prize: “Make Deals, Not War!”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 09/21/2020 – 02:00

  Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,

  Do Norwegian politicians have a sense of humor after all? Or are they being deliberately provocative by nominating President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in the middle of the biggest campaign of character assassination faced by any Western politician in recent times?

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  At first glance, Trump may actually have a claim to the dynamite-maker’s prize. He has brokered normalization between Israel and two of its erstwhile Arab enemies, with more expected to follow. He may have also cleared the last foyer of conflict in former Yugoslavia by mediating a settlement between Serbia and Kosovo.

  In both cases he has managed to jump historic, emotional and ideological hurdles that many, including this writer, believed could not be crossed in the foreseeable future. How he did it and what underhand measures he employed to clinch the deals is a matter for speculation. But what matters, as far as the Nobel judges are concerned, is that he did it; he brought peace where there was conflict.

  Trump the peacemaker? The liberal elites on both sides of the Atlantic react to that phrase with a hearty “Ha! Ha! Ha!” or an angry cry of “scandal”.

  But, wait a minute, a closer look may tell a different story.

  First, with the exception of Dwight Eisenhower, Trump is the only US president since World War II not to have led his nation into a war, big or small.

  President Harry Truman took America into the Korean War. John F. Kennedy got the US involved in the Vietnam War. His successor Lyndon Johnson extended the war into Laos. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford prolonged the war and extended it into Cambodia. Ronald Reagan had his mini-war in Grenada plus proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua while also helping British allies in the Falklands conflict.

  George H. W. Bush led the invasion of Iraq plus a mini but costly incursion in Somalia. Bill Clinton dragged the US into the Yugoslav conflict. George W. Bush drew a double by invading first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Leading from behind, Barack Obama got the US involved in the Libyan war while starting the largest drone war in history in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. He also incited the Arabs to rebellion against their governments but then refused to raise a finger to help them, thus lighting the fire of civil wars, notably in Syria. His support for the mullahs of Tehran also encouraged them to speed up their empire-building efforts, plunging much of the Middle East into violence and war.

  In contrast, Trump the dealmaker, ignoring hawkish advisers, refused to take military action against North Korea. He even accepted to demean himself in the eyes of many by treating the North Korean despot Kim Jung-un with decorum. Trump also pulled the plug on a series of planned airstrikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  Last but not least, Trump tried to broker a deal with the Afghan Taliban.

  One may or may not approve of those acts, and in some cases, notably legitimizing the Taliban, one may even have a sense of betrayal. But, as far as Nobel judges are concerned, all those acts were aimed at making peace.

  I doubt that, in the end, the liberal elites in control of the Nobel game will go for Trump. But if they do, he will be the fifth US president to gain the accolade. And if he does, he would be the most deserving of them all.

  • The first to win the Nobel was Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, for mediating a ceasefire in the Russo-Japanese war, which Russia had lost. The mediation did not remove the core of the conflict over the Sea of Okhotsk, with Russia recovering its losses in World War II and annexing the Japanese Kuril archipelago. Roosevelt, endearingly known as “Teddy”, was far from a “peace and love” icon. He waged war to complete the conquest of the Philippines and campaigned for joining the First World War. Worse still, the dear “Teddy” was a promoter of eugenics, ordering that “criminals should be sterilized and mentally retarded be forbidden to have descendants.”

  • The second of the four was President Woodrow Wilson, in 1919. Hailed for his “liberal internationalism,” Wilson had led the US into World War I, at the end of which he published a 14-point declaration promising self-determination to numerous “nations” and proto-nations in Europe and the Middle East. Britain and France ignored the declaration and went on to expand their empires with a series of treaties from Versailles to Lausanne and Montreux.

  • During his presidency, Wilson the peace laureate had led several wars, notably an invasion of Mexico to seize Vera Cruz and destabilize the despot Victoriano Huerta in favor of the “liberal” Venustiano Carranza. Wilson’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan talked a good talk for liberal elites but achieved little. Had he been around today, Wilson’s thinly disguised racism alone would have disqualified him.

  • The third Nobel laureate was Jimmy Carter for “his decades of untiring efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts and advance democracy.” Since Carter was president only for four years, it is not clear where those “decades of efforts” came from. In any case, by arming, training and financing the first Mujahedin, Carter started a war that is still going on in Afghanistan. Carter’s Keystone Cops-style mini-invasion of Iran to release US hostages showed that was not shy about using force; he just didn’t know how to do it.

  • The fourth Nobel winner was Barack Obama, who was chosen even before he had become president. His case illustrated what in 1817 Coleridge called “a suspension of disbelief” with Nobel judges deciding to honor Obama for what he might do in the future. That Obama did not turn out to be the champion, of “make love, not war,” as Nobel judges had expected, is beside the point. His fans like him because he talked their talk without walking the walk.

  Trump’s message of “make deals, not war” isn’t intellectually sexy enough for the liberal elites who set the norm for Nobel-style gimmicks. He may yet win the Nobel, but don’t hold your breath.

  

• CJ Hopkins Exposes The Final Act In 'The War On Populism'
  CJ Hopkins Exposes The Final Act In ‘The War On Populism’
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 23:20

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

  So, it appears the War on Populism is building toward an exciting climax. All the proper pieces are in place for a Class-A GloboCap color revolution, and maybe even civil war. You got your unauthorized Putin-Nazi president, your imaginary apocalyptic pandemic, your violent identitarian civil unrest, your heavily-armed politically-polarized populace, your ominous rumblings from military quarters … you couldn’t really ask for much more.

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  OK, the plot is pretty obvious by now (as it is in all big-budget action spectacles, which is essentially what color revolutions are), but that won’t spoil our viewing experience. The fun isn’t in guessing what is going to happen. Everybody knows what’s going to happen. The fun is in watching Bruce, or Sigourney, or “the moderate rebels,” or the GloboCap “Resistance,” take down the monster, or the terrorists, or Hitler, and save the world, or democracy, or whatever.

  The show-runners at GloboCap understand this, and they are sticking to the classic Act III formula (i.e., the one they teach in all those scriptwriting seminars, which, full disclosure, I teach a few of those). They’ve been running the War on Populism by the numbers since the very beginning. I’m going to break that down in just a moment, act by act, plot point by plot point, but, first, let’s quickly cover the basics.

  The first thing every big Hollywood action picture (or GloboCap color revolution) needs is a solid logline to build the plot around. The logline shows us: (1) our protagonist, (2) what our protagonist is trying to do, and (3) our antagonist or antagonistic force.

  For example, here’s one everyone will recognize:

  “A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.”

  In our case, the logline writes itself:

  “After America is taken over by a Russian-backed Hitlerian dictator, the forces of democracy unite to depose the tyrant and save the free world.”

  Donald Trump is our antagonist, of course. And what an antagonist he has been! As the deep-state spooks and the corporate media have been relentlessly repeating for the last four years, the man is both a Russian-backed traitor and literally the resurrection of Hitler! In terms of baddies, it doesn’t get any better.

  It goes without saying that our protagonist is GloboCap (i.e., the global capitalist empire), or “democracy,” as it is known in the entertainment business.

  Now, we’re in the middle of Act III already, and, as in every big-budget action movie, our protagonist suffered a series of mounting losses all throughout Act II, and the baddie was mostly driving the action. Now it’s time for the Final Push, but, before all the action gets underway, here’s a quick recap of those previous acts. Ready? All right, here we go …

  Act I

  (status quo/inciting incident)

  There democracy (i.e., GloboCap) was, peacefully operating its de facto global capitalist empire like a normal global hegemon (i.e., destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing everything it hadn’t already destabilized and privatized, and OK, occasionally murdering, torturing, and otherwise mercilessly oppressing people), when out of nowhere it was viciously attacked by Donald Trump and his Putin-Nazi “populists,” who stole the 2016 election from Clinton with those insidious Facebook ads. (For you writers, this was the Inciting Incident.)

  (new situation/predicament/lock-in)

  GloboCap did not take this well. The deep state and the corporate media started shrieking about a coming “Age of Darkness,” “The death of globalization at the hands of white supremacy,” “racial Orwellianism,” “Zionist anti-Semitism,” the “Bottomless Pit of Fascism,” and so on. Liberals festooned themselves with safety pins and went out looking for minorities to hide in their attics throughout the occupation. According to GloboCap, every “populist” that voted for Trump (or just refused to vote for Clinton) was a genocidal white supremacist undeserving of either empathy or mercy. Somewhere in there, the “Resistance” was born. (This is the plot point known as the Lock-In, where the protagonist commits to the struggle ahead.)

  Act II (a)

  (progress/obstacles)

  As is traditional at the opening of Act II, things were looking promising for GloboCap. The “Resistance” staged those pink pussyhat protests, and the corporate media were pumping out Russia and Hitler propaganda like a Goebbelsian piano. Yes, there were obstacles, but the “Resistance” was growing. And then, in May of 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, and “Russiagate” was officially launched. It appeared that Donald Trump’s days were numbered!

  (rising action/first culmination)

  But, no, it was never going to be that easy. (If it was, feature films would be less than an hour long, not to mention incredibly boring.) There was plenty of action (and an endless series of “bombshells”) throughout the ensuing two years, but by the end of March 2019, “Russiagate” had blown up in GloboCap’s face. “Populism” was still on the rise! It was time for GloboCap to get serious. (This was the classic first culmination, sometimes known as The Point of No Return.)

  Act II (b)

  (complications/subplots/higher stakes)

  In the aftermath of the “Russiagate” fiasco, the GloboCap “Resistance” flailed around for a while. An assortment of ridiculous subplots unfolded … Obstructiongate, Ukrainegate, Pornstargate (and I’m probably forgetting some “gates”), white-supremacist non-terrorist terrorism, brain-devouring Russian-Cubano crickets, Russian spy whales, and other such nonsense. Meanwhile, the forces of “populism” were running amok all across the planet. The gilets jaunes were on the verge of taking down Macron in France, and gangs of neo-nationalist boneheads had launched a series of frontal assaults on Portlandia, GloboCap Anti-Fascist HQ, which Antifa was barely holding off.

  (second culmination/major setback)

  All wasn’t totally lost, however. GloboCap sprang back into action, successfully Hitlerizing Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of leftist “populism,” and thus preventing the mass exdodus of Jews from Great Britain. And the US elections were on the horizon. Trump was still Russian-agent Hitler, after all, so he wasn’t going to be too hard to beat. All that GloboCap had to do was put forth a viable Democratic candidate, then let the corporate media do their thing. OK, first, they had to do Bernie Sanders (because he was another “populist” figurehead, and the point of the entire War on Populism has been to crush the “populist” resistance to global capitalism from both the Left and the Right), but the DNC made short work of that.

  So, everything was looking hunky-dory until — and you screenwriters saw this coming, didn’t you? — the pivotal plot-point at the end of Act II, The Major Setback, or The Dark Night of the Soul, when all seems lost for our protagonist.

  Yes, implausible as it probably still seems, the Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden, a clearly cognitively-compromised person who literally sucked his wife’s fingers on camera and who can’t get through a two-minute speech without totally losing his train of thought and babbling non-sequiturial gibberish. Exactly why they did this will be debated forever, but, obviously, Biden was not GloboCap’s first choice. The man is as inspiring as a head of lettuce. (There is an actual campaign group called “Settle for Biden!”) GloboCap was now staring down the barrel of certain swing-voter death. And as if things weren’t already dire enough, the “populists” rolled out a catchy new slogan … “TRUMP 2020, BECAUSE FUCK YOU AGAIN!”

  Act III

  So, all right, this is part where Neo orders up “guns … lots of guns.” Which is exactly what our friends at GloboCap did. The time for playing grab-ass was over. Faced with four more years of Trump and this “populist” rebellion against global capitalism and its increasingly insufferable woke ideology, the entire global capitalist machine went full-totalitarian all at once. Suddenly, a rather undeadly virus (as far as deadly pestilences go) became the excuse for GloboCap to lock down most of humanity for months, destroy the economy, unleash the goon squads, terrorize everyone with hysterical propaganda, and otherwise remake society into a global totalitarian police state.

  And that wasn’t all … no, far from it. GloboCap was just getting started. Having terrorized the masses into a state of anus-puckering paranoia over an imaginary apocalyptic plague and forced everyone to perform a variety of humiliating ideological-compliance rituals, they unleashed the identitarian civil unrest. Because what would a color revolution be without rioting, looting, wanton destruction, clouds of tear gas, robocops, and GloboCap-sponsored “moderate rebels” and “pro-regime forces” shooting each other down in the streets on television? (In an homage to Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, the corporate media, with totally straight faces, have been describing this rioting as “mostly peaceful.”)

  *

  That brings us up to speed, I think.

  The rest of Act III should be pretty exciting, despite the fact that the outcome is certain.

  One way or another, Trump is history. Or do you seriously believe that GloboCap is going to allow him to serve another four years?

  Not that Trump is an actual threat to them. As I have said repeatedly over the past four years, Donald Trump is not a populist. Donald Trump is a narcissistic ass clown who is playing president to feed his ego. He is not a threat to global capitalism, but the people who elected him president are. In order to teach these people a lesson, GloboCap needs to make an example of Trump. Odds are, it’s not going to be pretty.

  See, they have him between a rock and a hard place.

  As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria explains, on election night, Trump will appear to have won (because the Democrats will all be mailing in their votes due to the apocalyptic plague), but later, once the mail-in votes are all counted, which may take weeks or even months, it will turn out that Biden really won. But, by then, it won’t matter who really won, because one of two scenarios will have already played out.

  • In Scenario Number One, Trump declares victory before the mail-in votes have been tallied and is “removed from office” for “attempting a coup.”

  • In Scenario Number Two, he doesn’t declare victory, and the country enters a state of limbo, which the Democrats will prolong as long as possible.

  Either way, rioting breaks out. Serious rioting … not “peaceful” rioting. Rioting that makes the “BLM protests” we have witnessed so far look like a game of touch football.

  And this is where the US military (or the military-industrial complex) comes in.

  I’ll leave you with just a few of the many ominous headlines that GloboCap has been generating:

  “This Election Has Become Dangerous for the U.S. Military” — Foreign Policy

  “Al Gore suggests military will remove Trump from office if he won’t concede on election night” — Fox News

  “Former ambassador warns of election violence” — The Guardian

  “All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: An Open Letter to Gen. Milley (“If the commander in chief attempts to ignore the election’s results, you will face a choice.)” — Defense One

  “Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?” — The Nation

  “Trump could refuse to concede” — Washington Post

  “What happens if Trump loses but refuses to concede?” — Financial Times

  “White Supremacists, Domestic Terrorists Pose Biggest Threat Of ‘Lethal Violence’ This Election, DHS Assessment Finds” — Forbes

  “Trump’s Attacks Put Military In Presidential Campaign Minefield” — NPR

  “Trump’s Election Delay Threat Is a Coup in the Making” — Common Dreams

  “What If Trump Won’t Leave?” — The Intercept

  “How to Plan a Coup” — Bill Moyers on Democracy

  “It can happen here: A Trump election coup?” — Wall Street International Magazine

  “Whose America Is It?” — The New York Times

  Does it sound like GloboCap is bluffing? Because it doesn’t sound like that to me. I could be totally wrong, of course, and just letting my imagination run away with itself, but if I were back home in the USA, instead of here in Berlin, I wouldn’t bet on it.

  In any event, whatever is coming, whether this is the end of the War on Populism or just the beginning of a new, more dramatic phase of it, the next two months are going to be exciting.

  So, go grab your popcorn, or your AR-15, and your mask, or full-body anti-virus bubble suit (which you might want to have retrofitted with Kevlar), and sit back and enjoy the show!

  

• Taiwan FM Blasts China's Military Drills: "After Hong Kong, Taiwan Might Be Next"
  Taiwan FM Blasts China’s Military Drills: “After Hong Kong, Taiwan Might Be Next”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 22:55

  Over the past two weeks there’s been multiple Chinese fighter jet incursions over Taiwan, which Beijing has expressly declared as severe ‘warnings’ amid two back-to-back high level US diplomatic official visits to Taipei.

  In follow-up to a particularly large Chinese group of aircraft buzzing the island on Friday (no less than 18 military planes conducted the provocative maneuvers), Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in a weekend interview with France24 that after the mainland’s Hong Kong crackdown “Taiwan might be next”.

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  According to a summary of his comments Wu warned that “China was ramping up its military pressure and that the threat of a military intervention against Taiwan had ‘intensified’.”

  “Taiwan might be next” he warned, saying China’s PLA military drills along the Taiwan Strait have been significantly ramped up, leading to the potential for an “accidental war”.

  According to France24:

  Wu pointed to recent military drills by China as evidence that Beijing was eager to fulfill the commitment of President Xi Jinping to “reunify” China by taking control of Taiwan. He said Taiwan was beefing up its military in order to respond to the threat and welcomed US moves to warn China against using military force. He also said that the potential for an accidental war with China was escalating. 

  And further, he cited the Hong Kong example, specifically the oppressive national security law rolled out this summer as strongly suggesting the next ‘reunification’ goal is Taiwan:

  The Taiwanese foreign minister said the mood in the European Union via-à-vis China and Taiwan was “changing”, stressing that China’s expansionist moves in the South China Sea, at the border with India and in Hong Kong had changed the perception.

  PLA’s Eastern Theater Command conducts a live-fire drill in the Taiwan Strait starting from Friday, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Ren Guoqiang said Fri, adding that the action is necessary to safeguard national sovereignty due to the current situation in the region. pic.twitter.com/lTOT6Q6WXi

  — People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) September 18, 2020

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  Meanwhile, upon the start of yet more PLA military drills which kicked off Friday, Beijing has warned the United States “not to play with fire”.

  

• Stephen Cohen Is Dead: Never Forget His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War
  Stephen Cohen Is Dead: Never Forget His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 22:30

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.

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  As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen’s expert analysis many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what’s really going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions against Moscow.

  In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding.

  Very sad. A huge loss. America’s leading expert on Russia, Stephen Cohen, has died, aged 81. Stephen was subjected to a horrible smear campaign when he questioned US-policy towards Moscow after the 2014 estrangement. Condolences to @KatrinaNationhttps://t.co/3PNLdl758f

  — Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) September 19, 2020

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  I don’t know how long Cohen had cancer. I don’t know how long he was aware that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.

  The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019’s War with Russia?, detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016 cold war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.

  “We’re in a new cold war with Russia that is much more dangerous than the preceding cold war for various reasons,” Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017.

  “One is that there are at least three cold war fronts that are fraught with hot war: that would be Ukraine, that would be the Baltic Black Sea region where NATO is undertaking an unprecedented military buildup on Russia’s border, and of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft are flying in the same airspace. And I would add to those three cold war fronts what is now called Russiagate, because the accusation that Trump needs to be impeached because he’s somehow a Russian agent so distorts and cripples the possibility of the White House making Russia policy that I think it’s a cold war front.”

  Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where anything could happen in the chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as nearly happened many times during the last cold war.

  “I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017.

  “And arguably, it’s more dangerous, because it’s more complex. Therefore, we — and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these — and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who’s being politically crippled by the worst imaginable — it’s unprecedented. Let’s stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we’re talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason.”

  “Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen added.

  “Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”

  “A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived,” Cohen wrote last year.

  “Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements, often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today’s American Cold Warriors blame only Russia, specifically ‘Putin’s Russia,’ leaving no room or incentive for rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991.”

  “Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold War,” Cohen added.

  “This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere.”

  “A major factor is, of course, ‘Russiagate’,” Cohen continued.

  “As evidenced in the sources I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless response to President Trump’s pledge to find ways to ‘cooperate with Russia’ and to the still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party in regard to the new Cold War.”

  “Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world,” Cohen wrote in another essay last year.

  “No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take — in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia’s electric grid — to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight.”

  And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life was nearing its end.

  And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase.

  We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so.

  Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.

  *  *  *

  Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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• Hunter Biden Is "Riding The Dragon": Bombshell Film Explores Shady Deals With China's Military
  Hunter Biden Is “Riding The Dragon”: Bombshell Film Explores Shady Deals With China’s Military
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 22:05

  In the lead-up to the November election political investigator and author Peter Schweizer, who currently heads the Florida-based Government Accountability Institute, has unveiled a bombshell exposé presenting damning evidence of Hunter and his father Joe Biden’s shady and hidden financial dealings with China.

  Directed by Matthew Taylor, whose prior works include Clinton Cash and Creepy Line, the 41-minute film entitled “Riding the Dragon: The Bidens’ Chinese Secrets,” details a pile of corporate records, financial documents, legal briefings as well as court papers which tie Hunter’s firm with a major Chinese defense contractor, namely Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC), and multiple other PLA linked companies. 

  “It’s a relationship that grew while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States and shortly after he was appointed the point person on U.S. policy towards China,” Schweizer, who narratives the film, described upon the documentary’s release earlier this month. “This new firm started making investment deals that would serve the strategic interests of the Chinese military.”

  “It’s the story of the second most powerful man in the world at the time and how his family was striking deals with America’s chief rival on the global stage, the People’s Republic of China,” he added.

  Watch the full length “Riding the Dragon” below:

  

• The 'Gender-Feminist/New-Left/Marxist' Axis Attacks All Civil Society
  The ‘Gender-Feminist/New-Left/Marxist’ Axis Attacks All Civil Society
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 21:40

  Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute,

  Gender feminism, the New Left, and Marxism (FLM) are often said to be politically aligned, and, certainly, there is significant overlap. But does a political FLM axis exist?

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  The answer is important. A surreal dynamic has politicized every crevice of society and decent people now need to defend themselves against groundless accusations of racism, misogyny, and other “hate” crimes in order to keep their jobs, their reputations, and their futures.

  An understanding of where the dynamic originates gives them more of a fighting chance. The answer begins with defining FLM and describing their interconnection.

  (Of necessity, the ensuing analysis is highly simplified.)

  Gender feminism became prominent in the 1970s and ’80s. It is called “gender” feminism because this form of feminism explains the world by dividing men and women into antagonistic classes. Also known as third wave feminism, its ideological successor is sometimes called fourth wave feminism; it focuses on equity for women and minorities, the use of social media as a political weapon, and on intersectionality.

  The New Left was a broad coalition of liberals, radicals, and unorthodox Marxists in the 1960s. The word “New” distanced it from pure Marxism and the Old Left which focused on labor. By contrast, the New Left championed cultural causes such as feminism and gay rights. This is a Maoist approach to revolution—a cultural revolution to change “the system” by upending the traditions and institutions upon which everything else rests. That’s why the New Left was sometimes called the counterculture. Social justice emerged in its wake.

  Marxism is the theory and practice of communism; it advocates class warfare as a path to a society in which there is no private property and goods are available based on need. The different schools of communism are united by some core beliefs. Two of them: capitalism is exploitation, and people are defined by their class affiliation.

  All three movements condemn capitalism and believe that people are their “identity”—their race, for example. “Identity” is now the word preferred over “class” but the words mean basically the same thing. Because class is a fundamental concept to FLM and their successors, examining how it is handled can test how closely they are aligned politically.

  A class is a group of people who share a common characteristic that serves the purpose of whoever is doing the grouping. A cancer researcher may group subjects according to types of cancer, for example. FLM all approach class for the purpose of forging ideology and political revolution. They all use relational class analysis, in which a class is defined by its relationship to an institution. Marx used the relationship to ownership of production to divide people into capitalists and workers.

  The influential gender feminist Catharine MacKinnon called herself a “post-Marxist feminist.” The word “Marxist” indicated the movement’s embrace of anticapitalism, class warfare, and the redistribution of wealth and power. The “post” means they stumbled over Marx’s class theory of capitalists and workers.

  Gender feminists rebelled against this division because men and women were to be found in both categories; this made gender irrelevant to class analysis. And so, while accepting the other basics of Marxism, they used a different dividing line: Are you male or female? In her book Of Woman Born (1976), Adrienne Rich argued that women’s class nemesis is the “social, ideological, political system” through which men control women. Today, this is called “the patriarchy” or male capitalism. Thus feminist class analysis fused with Marxism, giving it an ideological twist as it did so.

  The New Left also deviated from Marxist class theory and spoke instead of the “power elite” or the military-industrial state—that is, state capitalism, which they viewed as capitalism itself. The power elite consisted of leaders in the military, business, and politics who manipulated average people into oblivious compliance; this middle class might include many workers, but they had been subsumed by the power elite. The true revolutionary class consisted of radical intellectuals who led marginalized groups, such as minorities or gays, into political battle. Thus the New Left fused with Marxism but put its own spin on class theory.

  How do FLM’s successors view class?

  Gender feminism’s successor relies heavily on intersectionality, which is a complex form of class analysis. It is the way in which a person’s different identities interconnect to define that person’s level of oppression. For example, a woman is said to be subjugated by men. A black woman is doubly subjugated, by both men and whites, and has a louder voice. A transgendered black woman…and so on. In calculating a person’s total oppression, different aspects of her or his identities are added together. A black male gains points because of his race. A white feminist loses points because her race. But the enemy of them all remains the same—white male capitalism.

  The New Left’s successor is social justice, which wants to redistribute wealth, opportunities, and privileges in order to enrich those who are viewed as oppressed. Raising the subjugated, however, requires grinding down white male capitalists, who are responsible for the oppression. One class must lose for the other to gain. This means that the real goal is not equality, but what is known as “equity”—a form of political, social, and economic egalitarianism—which is enforced through the state and by law.

  In short, the conclusions of these movements align well with Marxism. It is their methodologies that differ.

  Theory is a wonderful thing but—assuming the theory is sound—does it translate into practice? This is akin to asking whether understanding of a problem makes solving it easier. Consider one example.

  Those who have not been called racist, sexist, or the product of privilege are living on borrowed time. When the accusation does happen, its mere utterance can threaten livelihoods, reputations, and prospects for the future. If the claim is true, then an apology is due. If it is not, then it is important to understand the context from which such an accuser proceeds, and how she or he views the exchange. They proceed from class analysis, whether consciously held or absorbed from the culture. The exchange is not between two individuals but between two identities with irredeemably antagonistic interests. Reason, appeasement, and proof of innocent are not defenses. Simply by being white, male, or part of some other “privileged” class, the accused is guilty and an act of violence on two legs.

  This verdict will not change, because it is foregone.

  The dynamics established by concepts like intersectionality are a direct threat to any person who lacks a high score on the FLM axis of oppression. Unfortunately, the way of today’s world means that such concepts cannot receive the treatment they deserve—to be ignored. They need to be understood.

  

• Former FDA Director Expects "At Least One More Cycle" Of COVID-19 Before Vaccine Approval 
  Former FDA Director Expects “At Least One More Cycle” Of COVID-19 Before Vaccine Approval 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 21:15

  Former FDA Director Dr. Scott Gottlieb has been one of the most prominent ‘expert’ voices since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, writing op-eds about how the FDA can safely speed up approval of a vaccine, and appearing daily on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.

  On Sunday, Gottlieb appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation, where he shared that he expects the US to experience one more round of COVID-19 before a vaccine becomes widely available.

  “Well I think we have at least one more cycle with this virus heading into the fall and winter…if you look around the country right now there’s an unmistakable spike in new cases and the declines in hospitalizations that we were achieving have started to level off.”

  It’s possible it could be a “post-Labor Day bump,” and Saturday’s Sunday’s numbers could suggest that perhaps US cases are already leveling off again. But it’s clear that “we’re seeing a resurgence in infections,” Gottlieb said, adding that “there’s a lot of risk” heading into the fall season because that’s when “respiratory illnesses” like to spread.”

  #COVID LOOKAHEAD: “I think we have at least one more cycle with this virus, heading into the fall and winter,” @ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan, highlighting an increase in infections in various states heading into the new season pic.twitter.com/6gJiwOcKUs

  — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 20, 2020

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  Gottlieb also weighed in on President Trump’s latest claim on vaccine timing – that a vaccine will be widely available by April. Gottlieb, who is on the board of Pfizer, said that he doesn’t expect a vaccine will be approved for general use until the end of the 2nd quarter, or perhaps even the beginning of the third quarter, of next year.

  “I don’t believe a vaccine will be licensed for general use by the population until the end of the 2nd quarter of 2021, or perhaps a little later than that…what you really want is a vaccine available by the fall of 2021,” Gottlieb said.

  Whether the vaccine is approved in April or June of next year, ultimately, shouldn’t make much difference, Gottlieb added. The outbreak should have mostly tapered off by then. But there will always be a risk of a comeback heading into the fall in the US. 

  While there’s a possibility that the vaccine could be made available to “select groups” who are particularly vulnerable to the virus, such exceptions will only be made “on a very limited basis”.

  .@ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan it’s possible that @realDonaldTrump’s claims of ample #covid19 #vaccine by April are “possible,” but stresses it won’t be licensed for wide use by the general population until the end of Q2 2021. pic.twitter.com/aIwEpqpmYj

  — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 20, 2020

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  Dr. Gottlieb is best known for leading the push to combat teenage vaping during his time leading the FDA. He left last fall, just a few months before the outbreak hit.

  

• Central Banks Tell Markets: "You’re On Your Own Now"
  Central Banks Tell Markets: “You’re On Your Own Now”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 20:59

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator

  Three things we learned last week:

  1. Major central banks prefer the status quo, for now.

  The Fed and BOJ joined other major central banks, including the ECB, to stay put as the global economy recovers. The Fed signaled that rates will remain near zero through at least 2023, but stopped short of adjusting its QE program. Only the Bank of England bucked the trend, giving the strongest signal yet that it may wade into negative interest rates in preparation for a potentially messy Brexit.

  Besides the BOE, the other central banks are following in the footsteps of China, which is a global leading indicator given that its economy emerged from the pandemic first. The PBOC’s policy stance has shifted to neutral since May, leading to a bond selloff. On Monday, it is expected to keep the benchmark loan prime rate steady for a fifth month.

  Without additional monetary support, risky assets are left on their own now. It’s worth noting that China’s stock market has stood still since July. The lack of fiscal stimulus in the U.S. underscores the risk heading into the presidential election.

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  2. China’s bond flows have come into focus.

  Chinese regulators decided last week to increase the flexibility for bond settlements, increasing the chance that FTSE adds China’s debt to its World Government Bond Index on Sept. 24. Goldman Sachs estimates that the inclusion would add $140 billion of inflows to the Chinese bond market over time. There’s likely to be a grace period of 12 months, so the immediate flow impact would be limited, even if FTSE decides in China’s favor this week.

  Foreign inflows have been a key pillar for the appreciation in the yuan over recent months. Much of the argument for a strong yuan, including the growth and rate differentials, is still there. So far, the PBOC opted to not stand in the way of appreciation, but the yuan fixing will be closely watched to see if there’s any change in attitude.

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  3. Soybean futures show an olive branch from China.

  The U.S. moved to expel WeChat and TikTok from U.S. app stores last week, a reminder that the “getting tough on China” rhetoric is likely to get louder. For its part, China launched a fresh round of military maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait, including a rare incursion across its median line, in response to a top U.S. diplomat’s visit to Taiwan. Despite the deafening political noise, the real signal is that China’s been working hard to keep its commitment to the trade deal. China purchased a record amount of soybeans in the season that started Sept. 1. At least for soybean futures traders, the trade war is so 2018.

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• The Best And Worst States For Homeschool Freedom
  The Best And Worst States For Homeschool Freedom
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 20:50

  Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man

  Pennsylvania is among the most restrictive states when it comes to the freedom to homeschool your children. The state requires that parents teach their children state-mandated subjects for 180 days per year, for at least 900 hours. Tests must be administered, and the district must assess the child at the end of each school year. Immunizations are also required.

  You can hire a tutor instead, but it won’t be cheap because the state requires homeschool tutors to have teachers’ qualifications. Plus, the tutor must be teaching only children from the same immediate family.

  But this year with COVID closing down some schools and forcing others to learn remotely, the number of homeschooled children has doubled nationwide. Up to 10% of children are now homeschooled, according to Gallup polling— and this does not include remote learning.

  Some parents in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) opted to create homeschooling “pods” where they team up with other parents to homeschool a number of kids from different families.

  And Pennsylvania responded by issuing strict operating rules for these pods, starting with the requirement to inform the state of your intention to host a homeschooling pod.

  Now any parent who hosts children for a learning pod must undergo a background check, and make sure they are allowed to run a “residential daycare” in their area. They also must comply with state and CDC guidelines for social distancing while they homeschool.

  The state can cram as many kids into one classroom as it wants, but pods must have one adult for each 12 young children (or 15 older students).

  Pod parents have to open their home to DHS if child services come knocking, no warrant required. And they are considered mandatory reporters, meaning they could be prosecuted for failure to report signs of child abuse.

  What this means:

  Keep in mind that these pods aren’t generally made up of random strangers. A parent could host these same kids for a sleepover without requiring background checks and state permission. But for some reason, when it comes to learning, suddenly the state inserts itself into the relationship.

  And as usual, these regulations are much harder on families with limited financial means. So amidst a crumbling economy and the biggest upset in lifestyle in modern memory, parents also have to comply with regulations just to choose the best method for their family’s education.

  Luckily, not every state is as strict as Pennsylvania when it comes to homeschooling. In fact, most are much freer.

  What you can do about it:

  There are some states which don’t regulate homeschooling at all. You have complete freedom to educate your children as you see fit.

  • The freest “no notice” states: Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, (and surprisingly) Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey. These states allow No Notice/Regulation. This means that if you never enroll your children in school, you don’t have to inform the state that you are homeschooling. Generally, though, you do have to formally withdraw your child from public school if you intend to switch to homeschooling. And that’s it. Teach your children as you see fit.
  • 16 states have Low Regulation: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico fall into this category. These states generally require that you register your intention to homeschool with a school district (usually your local one) before the school year that your child turns 6 or 7, depending on the state. But there are generally very few other requirements.
  • 18 states have Moderate Regulation. This requires registration, often every year. They also generally have testing requirements. This category includes Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
  • The most restrictive states: Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. These generally require registration, testing, submission of an annual syllabus that aligns with subjects taught by the state, and sometimes proof of immunizations.

  Around the world, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK all allow homeschooling. Like in the United States, the requirements vary by region in each country. But it is an option.

  

• "He Needs Cash": Ron Perelman's Leveraged Empire Collapses In A Deluge Of Fire Sales
  “He Needs Cash”: Ron Perelman’s Leveraged Empire Collapses In A Deluge Of Fire Sales
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 20:25

  For billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, the time to cash in his chips is now. And, of course, by “cash in his chips”, we mean liquidate everything in a panic after Covid sends your highly leveraged empire into ruins. 

  In what will likely wind up as a microcosm of the United States economy as a whole, Perelman is currently in the process of selling his Gulfstream 650, his 257 foot yacht and “crates” of his artwork, according to Bloomberg. According to the report, he has already sold his stake in AM General, sold a flavorings company he has owned for decades and has hired banks to sell stock he owns in other companies.

  Among the art he is selling is Jasper Johns’s “0 Through 9,” worth about $70 million, Gerhard Richter’s “Zwei Kerzen (Two Candles),” worth about $50 million and Cy Twombly’s “Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves,” which is worth about $20 million.

  Art adviser Wendy Goldsmith said: “What he’s selling is as blue chip as it gets.”

  Perelman, under pressure due to his crashing stake in Revlon, has seen his fortune drop from $19 billion to just $4.2 billion over the last two years, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. His investment company, MacAndrews & Forbes, said it needed to “rework its holdings” back in July due to the pandemic.

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  That “reworking” looks more like a fire sale of – well – everything.

  Perelman said publicly: “We quickly took significant steps to react to the unprecedented economic environment that we were facing. I have been very public about my intention to reduce leverage, streamline operations, sell some assets and convert those assets to cash in order to seek new investment opportunities and that is exactly what we are doing.”

  He continued: “I realized that for far too long, I have been holding onto too many things that I don’t use or even want. I concluded that it’s time for me to clean house, simplify and give others the chance to enjoy some of the beautiful things that I’ve acquired just as I have for decades.”

  A friend of Perelman’s, Graydon Carter, told Bloomberg: “Often when people say this sort of thing, it’s masking something else. In Ronald’s case, it’s true. He has learned to love and appreciate the bourgeois comforts of family and home.” He described Perelman as “crazy about spending time at home”.

  Some of his sales will go to pay down loans from Citigroup, though Perelman’s spokesman says they are not “forced sales”. She also denied Perelman is selling his 57 acre estate in the Hamptons. 

  Perelman is best known being a fearless financial engineer in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Ken Moelis said of Perelman’s track record: “He was imaginative, aggressive and innovative in ways that changed the financial landscape.”

  But the $1.74 billion valuation Revlon had back in the 1980’s when he purchased it has now fallen to just $365 million. Perelman loved the business and said it “defined him”. He had offered it several loans and had catalyzed several executive changes to try and keep the business afloat. Revlon is now losing to smaller cosmetic shops that advertise through social media – while dealing with the effects of Covid. 

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  Some Revlon bonds trade at 14 cents on the dollar and the company has $3 billion in debt. 

  He used some of his massive stake in Revlon as collateral for debt in MacAndrews & Forbes. Revlon shares are down 68% this year, likely triggering the deluge of selling Perelman is doing. 

  All told, “at least nine banks” have claims against his assets, including his art collection, house in the Hamptons and “various aircraft”. There are $267 million in mortgages linked to his Upper East Side headquarters for MacAndrews & Forbes.

  Currently, Perelman’s art collection makes up about a third of his fortune. And that can be tricky, for assets that have an illiquid market. Recently, one painting he tried to sell was pulled from auction at the last minute due to lack of interest. 

  MacAndrews & Forbes saw its general counsel, spokesman, head of capital markets and CFO all depart over the last few months. 

  And despite the spin on Perelman’s fire sales as being a way to spend more time with family, Perelman has his skeptics, including Richard Hack, who wrote a book about him in 1996. 

  Hack concluded: “If you want a simpler life, you go buy a farm in Oklahoma, not sell a painting out of your townhouse in Manhattan. If he’s selling his art, it’s because he needs cash.”
   

  

• California Burnin' – A Warning Against One-Party Rule
  California Burnin’ – A Warning Against One-Party Rule
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 20:00

  Authored by Niall Ferguson, op-ed via Bloomberg.com,

  Fires, blackouts, high taxes, poverty, scarce housing, urban squalor, lousy schools – it’s a wonder anybody stays.

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  “California, folks, is America fast forward.” Thus Governor Gavin Newsom, hoarsely, amid brown smoke at the North Complex Fire on Sept. 11.

  “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to a community all across the United States of America… unless we get our act together on climate change.”

  I was with him all the way until he said the words “on climate change.”

  As my Hoover Institution colleague Victor Davis Hanson put it last month, California is “the progressive model of the future: a once-innovative, rich state that is now a civilization in near ruins. The nation should watch us this election year and learn of its possible future.”

  Let’s start with the fires. So far this year, they have torched more than five times as much land as the average of the previous 33 years, killing 25 people and forcing about 100,000 people from their homes. At one point, three of the largest fires in the state’s history were burning simultaneously in a ring around the San Francisco Bay Area. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, of the 10 largest fires since 1970, five broke out this year. Nine out of 10 have occurred since 2012.

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  No doubt high temperatures and unusual thunderstorms bear some of the responsibility for this year’s terrifying wildfires on the West Coast. It is deeply misleading to claim, as some diehard deniers still do, that temperatures aren’t rising and making wildfires more likely. But it is equally misleading to claim, as the New York Times did last week, that “scientists say” climate change “is the primary cause of the conflagration.”

  In reality, as Stanford’s Rebecca Miller, Christopher Field and Katharine J. Mach argue in a recent article in Nature Sustainability, this crisis has at least as much to do with disastrous land mismanagement as with climate change, and perhaps more. Anyone who thinks solar panels, Teslas and a $3.3 billion white elephant of a high-speed rail line will avoid comparable or worse fires next year (and the year after and the year after) doesn’t understand what the scientists are really saying.

  Most measures proposed by environmentalists to reduce carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas” emissions will pay off over 50 to 100 years, as the International Panel on Climate Change has long made clear. Even a best-case scenario of “stringent mitigation” (what the IPCC calls Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6) would not bring carbon dioxide emissions down to 1950 levels until around 2050. Nor would it lower global average temperatures; it would merely stop them rising.

  And that’s only if the whole world — including China and India — takes action. California’s wildfire problem cannot be solved by the state’s citizens “getting their act together on climate change,” in Newsom’s words. The problem needs immediately effective action — and that means a return to sane forest management, if such a return is still possible. For decades, Democratic leaders in California have presided over a policy of leaving dead trees to rot, instead of the old and rational system of prescribed or controlled burns, not least because environmental and clear air regulations, as well as problems of legal liability, made controlled burns harder and harder to do.

  In prehistoric California, according to a recent analysis in ProPublica, between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year.

  California’s land managers burned about 30,000 acres a year on average between 1982 and 1998. Over the next 18 years, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The result has been a huge accumulation of highly flammable kindling.  

  Miller, Field and Mach concluded that a total area of around 20 million acres – roughly one-fifth of the state’s territory – was in urgent need of “fuel treatment,” meaning prescribed burns, mechanical thinning and managed wildfire. It is hard to imagine anything remotely close to that happening under the current political dispensation. (The authors politely called for “fundamental shifts in prescribed-burn policies, beyond those currently under consideration.”) Or rather, it is going to happen, but at a time of Nature’s choosing, with catastrophic consequences.

  A case in point: For a year and a half, red tape slowed down a forest-thinning project in Berry Creek, Butte County. The project covered just 54 acres but, thanks to the burdensome provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act, work had yet to start when the North Complex wildfire struck, devastating the town and killing 10 people.

  I have some skin in this game.

  Four years ago, I moved from Harvard University to Stanford University. My family traded a solid, century-old professorial residence in Cambridge for a wooden house in a wooded area that to our wooden heads seemed most idyllic. A few weeks ago, our neighborhood was on the edge of the evacuation zone.

  However, I have less skin in the game than Victor Davis Hanson. He lives on the fruit and nut farm near Selma, in the Central Valley, that his family has owned since the 1870s. The air quality index in Stanford rose above 170 on three days in the last month. In Selma last week it was 460. (Anything above 301 qualifies as “emergency conditions.”)

  I write these words over 1,000 miles from our California home, but it’s no good: in recent days the smoke has found us, too. Hotel parking lots full of vehicles with CA license plates confirm that we are not the only eastward migrants. It’s like Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” in reverse: Now that the Golden State is the Char-Grilled State, Californians have become the new Okies, though a good deal less impecunious.

  Yet wildfires are only one of the reasons people are fleeing California.

  In addition, the wrongheaded environmental policies of the sages of Sacramento have so undermined the power grid (for example, by shutting down gas-fired power plants and refusing to count hydroelectric energy as renewable) that residents have been subjected to rolling blackouts this year. The same policies have largely killed off the oil and gas industry. Newsom & Co. have failed to upgrade the water system to keep pace with the last half-century of population growth.

  It’s not that California politicians don’t know how to spend money. Back in 2007, total state spending was $146 billion. Last year it was $215 billion. I know, I know: In real terms California’s GDP increased by nearly a third in the same period. And I know: If it were an independent nation it would be the fifth-largest economy in the world, ahead of India’s. But for how much longer will that be true?

  California’s taxes aren’t the highest in the country — for the median household. But the tax system is one of the most progressive, with a 13.3% top tax rate on incomes above $1 million — and that’s no longer deductible from the federal tax bill as it used to be. The top 1% of taxpayers (those earning more than $500,000) now account for half of personal income-tax revenue. And there’s worse to come.

  The latest brilliant ideas in Sacramento are to raise the top income rate up to 16.8% and to levy a wealth tax (0.4% on personal fortunes over $30 million) that you couldn’t even avoid paying if you left the state.

  (The proposal envisages payment for up to 10 years after departure to a lower-tax state.)

  It is a strange place that seeks to repel the rich while making itself a magnet for illegal immigrants by establishing no fewer than 20 “sanctuary” cities or counties.

  And the results of all this progressive policy? 

  A poverty boom.

  California now has 12% of the nation’s population, but over 30% of its welfare recipients. By the official measure, based mainly on income and family size, California’s 11.4% poverty rate in 2019 was close to the national average over the past three years. However, according to a new Census Bureau report, which takes housing and other costs into account, the real poverty rate in California is 17.2%, the highest of any state. (Newsom gets one thing right when he says, “We’re living in the wealthiest as well as the poorest state in America.”)

  About a third of California’s poverty can be attributed to housing and other living costs such as clothing and utilities. As everyone who resides there knows, there’s a chronic housing shortage in the Bay Area (the median-priced home in San Francisco costs about $1.5 million), mainly because a plethora of regulations make the construction of affordable housing well-nigh impossible. In blithe disregard of all we know about rent controls — which discourage landlords from providing housing — that is, predictably, the solution the Democrats propose.

  But that’s not all. The state’s public schools rank 37th in the country overall and have the highest pupil-teacher ratio.

  “Only half of California students meet English standards and fewer meet math standards, test scores show,” was a headline in the Los Angeles Times last October.

  Health care and pension costs are unsustainable. Oh, and they messed up on Covid-19, despite imposing the nation’s first shelter-in-place orders. Having prematurely claimed victory, California now leads New York in terms of cases, though not deaths.

  Back in the 1960s, California was the world’s fantasy destination. “California Dreamin’,” “California Girls,” “Going to California” — you know the songs. But reputations have a way of outliving reality. Despite the economic miracle wrought in Silicon Valley, beginning with the genesis of the internet back in the 1970s, and despite the continuing strength of the state’s universities, the dream in terms of quality of life has slowly died.

  When I first visited San Francisco in 1981, it was still one of the loveliest cities I had ever beheld. Now its streets are so filthy – human feces and syringe needles are the principal hazards – that I avoid it. (I was going to say “like the plague,” but that’s Lake Tahoe.)

  Yet the Bay Area and its southern sister Los Angeles are only one of the two Californias.

  As Hanson argued 10 years ago, the Central Valley is another country, more “Caribbean” or Latin American, where “countless inland communities … have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income.”

  The principal reason for California’s decline is that the Golden State became a one-party state.

  The Republican candidate won California in every election but one (1964) between 1952 and 1988. But the Democrat has won California in every election since, with the Democratic vote share rising from 46% in 1992 to 62% in 2016.

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  Democrats now have 61 out of 80 seats in the California State Assembly. The last time Republicans had a majority (of one) was in 1994, but that was an anomaly. The Democrats have essentially controlled the State Senate since 1958, with rising majorities since the 1990s. Apart from 1994, the only other year since 1958 when they did not win a majority of seats in the Assembly was 1968.

  When regular voting has no effect, people eventually vote with their feet. From 2007 until 2016, about five million people moved to California but six million moved out to other states. For years before that, the newcomers were poorer than the leavers. This net exodus is surging in 2020. And businesses (for example, Charles Schwab Corp.) are leaving too. Silicon Valley is going virtual, with many big tech companies thinking of making work from home permanent for at least some employees. (One tech chief executive told me last week that his engineers were pleading not to return to the office.)

  People are getting out of the Bay Area as much and perhaps more than they are getting out of New York City. Texas is only one of the favored alternatives. Realtors in Montana are reporting record demand from West Coast refugees. The hotels are full, which is unheard of at this time of year. I also know a number of eminent Californians who are now Hawaiians.

  The conservative writer and broadcaster Ben Shapiro, born in L.A., just announced that he is heading to Nashville, Tennessee.

  “I love the state, grew up in the state, married in the state and have had children in the state,” he told Laura Ingraham.

  But California was “not a great place to raise children and not a great place to build a company.”

  Now we know the true meaning of Calexit. It’s not secession. It’s exodus.

  I cannot blame the leavers. When I moved West in 2016, it was in the naive belief that California was Massachusetts without snow and Stanford was Harvard with September weather all year round. How wrong I was.

  But am I leaving? Well, maybe there’s no point. As Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown put it last week:

   “There are going to be problems everywhere in the United States. This is the new normal. It’s been predicted and it’s happening … Tell me: Where are you going to go? What’s your alternative?” 

  Great question, but — as with Newsom’s prophecy — wrongly framed.

  The big problem is not that climate change is coming to every state. It is, though most states will mitigate it better than California. The problem is that Democratic governance could be coming to the nation as a whole, starting on Jan. 20. And with the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, turning 78 two weeks after election day, it is not a little troubling to me that his vice-presidential pick is a Californian, just as so many of his plans to spend, tax and regulate have “designed in California” all over them. 

  Yes, folks, California is America fast forward. Can someone please hit pause?

  

• "Protesters" In Philadelphia Chase Down And Assault Random Citizens For Being "Nazis"
  “Protesters” In Philadelphia Chase Down And Assault Random Citizens For Being “Nazis”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 19:35

  Just when we thought we had seen peak boredom from America’s misinformed Marxists disguised as some kind of anti-fascist freedom fighters, three new videos out of Philadelphia have surfaced showing that now, more than ever, there’s too many art students and unemployed millennials that need to find hobbies.

  The first video shows a group of several people chasing a man through a park.

  “Holy shit you made a bad mistake,” one ‘protester’ says before another, cloaked in a hood of what appears to be a $500 REI jacket, tries to kick the man they’re chasing and then falls over. 

  Protesters chasing a man through the park they accuse of being a Nazi #Philly #PhillyProtests #Antifa #AntiFascist pic.twitter.com/SfCuUSCSQ0

  — Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 19, 2020

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

  The man then jogs in the other direction and appears to get away from his “bad mistake”, whatever it was, scot-free.

  A second video out of Philadelphia shows a man that a mob reportedly chased to his car. And by “mob”, we naturally mean a group of what appears to be kids in their early 20s, replete with the full Antifa halloween costume of black hoods and masks. 

  “Fuck off Nazi scum,” the supposed “protesters” can be heard saying. 

  Protesters chased a man to his vehicle, then threw rocks, smashed windows and dented the doors as he drove away from Clark Park #PhillyProtest #Philly #Antifa pic.twitter.com/CHvLEG8fH8

  — Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 19, 2020

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  “Get the fuck out of here!” someone yells while other mob members kick and dent the person’s car repeatedly. When the car drives off, after being dented and damaged, someone throws a rock at its back window.

  A third video shows a different angle of the assault, showing there was a dog in the back of the SUV at the time.

  “F*ck you and your dog!”

  Philadelphia: Antifa attacks a targeted individual, destroys his vehicle, and puts his dog’s (in the car) life in danger.

  Reminds me of a scene from Wizard of Oz. pic.twitter.com/qOOkn8e4k2

  — Kalen From Scriberr (@FromKalen) September 19, 2020

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  The group can then be heard whooping and congratulating each other after the person drives away.

  One more “Nazi” taken care of, right?

  Keep fighting the good fight, Antifa. 

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• Record Numbers Of Companies Drown In Debt To Pay Dividends To Their Private Equity Owners
  Record Numbers Of Companies Drown In Debt To Pay Dividends To Their Private Equity Owners
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 19:10

  One week ago we used Bloomberg data to report that in the latest Fed-fuelled bubble to sweep the market, now with Powell buying corporate bonds and ETFs, private equity firms were instructing their junk-rated portfolio companies to get even deeper in debt and issue secured loans, using the proceeds to pay dividends to owners: the same private equity companies. Specifically, we focused on five deals marketed at the start of the month to fund shareholder dividends, which accounting for half of the week’s volume, and the most in a week since 2017, according to Bloomberg.

  Now, a little over a week late, the FT is also looking at these dividend recap deals which have become all the rage in the loan market in recent weeks, among other reasons because they are “ringing alarm bells since they come on top of already high leverage and weak investor protections and against a backdrop of economic uncertainty.”

  Having updated our calculation, the FT finds that in September a quarter (24% to be exact) of all new money raised in the US loan market has been used to fund dividends to private equity owners, up from an average of less than 4% over the past two years: that would be the highest proportion since the beginning of 2015, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

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  As we wrote a little over a week ago, while the loan market — where PE firms fund the companies they own by selling secured first, second, third and so on lien debt — had until recently not seen the same volume of issuance as other parts of the financial markets. That changed after the Fed stepped into the corporate bond market sending yields crashing to record lows, and forcing US investors into the last corner of the fixed income world to still offer some modest yields: leveraged loans. And since this is the domain of PE firms which desperately need to extract as much cash as they can from their melting ice cubes (another names for single-B and lower rated portfolio companies which will likely all be broke in the next 3-5 years), everyone is rushing to market with dividend recaps to pay as much to their equity sponsor as they can before the window is shut again.

  According to Jessica Reiss who heads leveraged loan research at Covenant Review, investors have been accepting divi recaps because “there isn’t a ton going on” while “from the lender’s perspective they are looking for deals, so if sponsors and their companies can refinance and get a dividend up to their owners they will try it.”

  In the latest example, cloud computing company ECi Software, which is owned by Apax Partners, will raise $740MM in new loans, of which $118MM will be used to pay for a dividend to its owner.

  It follows a similar deal from snack foods maker Shearer’s Foods, which in turn is a portfolio company of Wind Point Partners and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which raised over $1BN in the loan market on Tuesday and used more than a third, or $388MM, ro pay for a dividend to its owners. The news deal, which will help its PE sponsors maximize their IRR on their LBO investment, will also accelerate Shearer’s inevitable bankruptcy as its debt/EBITDA will surge from 5.1x to 6.6x. Meanwhile, at ECi, default is not a matter of if but when: leverage there is now almost 10x after the latest debt-funded check to the company’s sponsor.

  Finally, broadband company Radiate Holdco was also in the market this week to fund a $500m payment to its owner TPG.

  “If private equity sponsors can take money off the table then they are doing it” said John Gregory, head of leveraged finance capital markets at Wells Fargo Securities. “There’s going to be more coming for sure.”

  He’s right: as long as the Fed manipulates corporate bond markets by picking winners and losers, deciding whose debt it will buy (and whose it won’t), Wall Street will find ways to maximize its profits and PE firms will make out like bandits even as their portfolio companies drown in so much debt that bankruptcies – and mass layoffs at the company level – are just a matter of time.

  In total, a little over a quarter, or $4bn of the $15bn borrowed in the loan market this month, will be paid out in dividends; another $2 billion in divi recap deals are currently in the market and will price before the end of the month.

  While the FT tries to mitigate the insanity, noting that “investors, bankers and analysts noted that the opportunity for private equity companies to pull cash out of the groups they control has been limited largely to higher-quality borrowers” we fail to see how a pro forma leverage of 10x is even remotely “higher-quality.”

  “You have some very high leverage deals,” said Wells Fargo’s Gregory. “But if it’s a good company that people are familiar with and investors have money that they need to invest then transactions tend to go through. It’s a bull market trade for sure.”

  Yes indeed, and all the billionaires currently in charge of private equity firms who are about to get even richer by milking zombies that would be long gone if it wasn’t for the Fed, thank Powell from the borrom of their heart.

  However, investors express concern over loose documentation underpinning the loans, offering little protection to investors should a company end up in trouble.

  Still, not everyone is acting like a 16-year-old Robinhood trader during a Softbank-fueled Tesla meltup: some are warning that this year’s market turmoil and subsequent debt-issuance euphoria is as a missed opportunity to improve lending standards after years of seeing them whittled away.

  “It’s a shame,” said John Bell, a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles. “I wished this pandemic could have reset the clock for a while but it doesn’t look like that is happening.”

  No, it doesn’t, and in fact the opposite is happening as both sovereign and corporate debt is now at all time record highs…

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  … comfortable with the assumption that when the next crisis inevitably hits, far stronger than what took place in March, the Fed will eventually end up buying it all.

  

• Massive FinCEN Leak Exposes How Biggest Western Banks Finance Drug Cartels, Terrorists & Mobsters
  Massive FinCEN Leak Exposes How Biggest Western Banks Finance Drug Cartels, Terrorists & Mobsters
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 18:45

  In what looks like one of the biggest leaks of private banking records since the Panama Papers, Buzzfeed News has published a lengthy investigation into how the world’s biggest banks allow dirty money from organized criminals, drug cartels, and terror groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban to flow through their networks.

  The “FinCEN Files”, as Buzzfeed calls them, offer “a never-before-seen picture of corruption and complicity.” A lengthy investigation by Buzzfeed and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – the same group that handled the Mossack Fonseca leaks –

  Instead of combating financial crime, the current system of requiring banks to report all suspicious transactions to FinCen simply allows money laundering to flourish, while ensuring that any enforcement will be of the ‘whack-a-mole’ variety.

  These documents, compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees.

  Money laundering is a crime that makes other crimes possible. It can accelerate economic inequality, drain public funds, undermine democracy, and destabilize nations — and the banks play a key role. “Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world,” said Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia.

  Laws that were meant to stop financial crime have instead allowed it to flourish. So long as a bank files a notice that it may be facilitating criminal activity, it all but immunizes itself and its executives from criminal prosecution. The suspicious activity alert effectively gives them a free pass to keep moving the money and collecting the fees.

  The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, is the agency within the Treasury Department charged with combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. It collects millions of these suspicious activity reports, known as SARs. It makes them available to US law enforcement agencies and other nations’ financial intelligence operations. It even compiles a report called “Kleptocracy Weekly” that summarizes the dealings of foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  What it does not do is force the banks to shut the money laundering down.

  In response to Buzzfeed‘s questions about the leaked trove of SARs, the Treasury Department warned that the company’s decision to publish information gleaned from the leaked SARs could make banks more hesitant to file them, because inevitably hundreds of thousands of reports are filed every year involving transactions that are legitimate. The program was first created in 1992, but it has changed substantially over the last 20 years.

  Congress created the current SAR program in 1992 making banks the frontline in the fight against money laundering. But Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is a national security and privacy expert, said that after 9/11, “the SAR program became more about mass surveillance than identifying discrete transactions to disrupt money launderers.” Today, he said, “the data is used like the data from other mass surveillance programs. Find someone you want to get for whatever reason then sift through the vast troves of data collected to find anything you can hang them with.”

  It also warned that leaking SARs is illegal, and that the Treasury Department’s inspector general would be looking into the leaks.

  Since we must give credit where credit is due, Buzzfeed does point out that in addition to being a powerful law-enforcement tool, the SAR system is a “nightmare” of surveillance overreach. Particularly after 9/11, the system evolved into a tool of mass surveillance, creating a massive trove of data that could be weaponized against anybody, according to a former FBI special agent who spoke to Buzzfeed.

  Congress created the current SAR program in 1992 making banks the frontline in the fight against money laundering. But Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is a national security and privacy expert, said that after 9/11, “the SAR program became more about mass surveillance than identifying discrete transactions to disrupt money launderers.”

  Today, he said, “the data is used like the data from other mass surveillance programs. Find someone you want to get for whatever reason then sift through the vast troves of data collected to find anything you can hang them with.”

  When it came time for Robert Mueller to investigate the Trump Campaign’s ties to Russia, and whether the president knowingly colluded with a foreign government – a narrative, we later learned, with zero basis in fact – Mueller was able to access reams of SARS filed on Manafort, Michael Cohen and other members of Trump’s circle.

  What did any of this have to do with Russia? Nothing, apparently.

  They requested SARs on Deutsche Bank, which had loaned Trump money; Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who wrote the so-called Trump dossier; an array of Russian oligarchs; Trump’s former campaign chairperson Paul Manafort; and even a small casino in the Pacific run by a former Trump employee. All told, they were looking for information on more than 200 entities.

  Many of the 1,000-plus SARS received by Buzzfeed were apparently requested by the Mueller team. However, none of the SARS included any direct information on Trump or the Trump Organization.

  FinCEN unearthed tens of thousands of pages of documents. Those documents, along with a few additional SARs requested by federal law enforcement authorities, make up the majority of the FinCEN Files. Some were never turned over to the committees that requested them.

  A person familiar with the matter blew the whistle to multiple members of Congress. The collection does not include any SARs about Trump’s finances. (A source familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News that FinCEN’s database did not contain SARs on either Trump or the Trump Organization.) And though the documents show suspicious payments to people in Trump’s orbit before and after key moments in the 2016 presidential campaign, they do not provide direct information on any election interference.

  When banks settle AML violations with regulators, typically, they’re asked to improve their controls – and in most cases, that means filing more SARs. The way the system is set up, banks are required to detail transactions, but have no say in prosecuting them, and staff cuts at FinCEN mean only a very small percentage of notices every get read.

  However, since all of this data is stored, prosecutors can bring it to bear whenever a particular person or organization catches their interest.

  Buzzfeed saved the banks’ statements on their investigation for a separate article (one that most of its readers will probably never see). But in a series of statements, the banks explain that its not their place to investigate these types of crimes. Buzzfeed reports that banks’ compliance workers are often shunted away in backwater offices in places like Jacksonville Florida (where many of Deutsche Bank’s compliance employees are situated).

  More than 2 million SARs were filed over the past year, a massive increase over the past decade, according to Buzzfeed. That’s because, as banks have been filing more reports to cover their own backsides, regulators have endured staff cuts that left far fewer people there to examine them.

  But some of the most egregious financial frauds in recent memory never generated a single SAR, including Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. When the reckoning with authorities came, JPM got off with a slap on the wrist.

  PMorgan Chase got a deferred prosecution deal of its own. For years, it was the primary bank of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemer, Bernie Madoff. Despite multiple warnings from its own employees, the bank never filed a suspicious activity report on him and allegedly collected $500 million in fees. For punishment, the bank was required to pay a $1.7 billion fine and promise to improve its money laundering defenses. But after it settled the Madoff case, the bank’s own investigators said they suspected it had opened its accounts to an alleged Russian organized crime figure who is known for drug trafficking and contract murders, as well as businesses tied to the repressive North Korean regime, which the US has placed off-limits.

  Buzzfeed’s sources argue that the only way to fix the problem is to arrest the executives of banks that break laws.

  “The bankers will never learn until you start putting silver bracelets on people…Think of the message you’re sending to repeat offenders.”

  […]

  “These guys know what they’re doing,” said Thomas Nollner, a former regulator with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “You break the law, you should go to jail, period.”

  Of course, the report also pointed out why this hasn’t yet happened – and why it probably never will. Because thanks to the Fed and the Treasury, ‘too big to fail’ also means ‘too big to prosecute’.

  In 2012, Standard Chartered and HSBC were facing criminal prosecution. George Osborne, at that time the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, wrote to the chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss his “concerns” that a heavy-handed response could have “unintended consequences.” He warned of a “contagion.” The implication: Close one bank and the whole economy could suffer.

  Because while money might come from unsavory places – Russian organized criminals, the Taliban, etc – it still contributes to economic growth, and puts dollars into the banking system.

  One ex-federal agent told Buzzfeed there’s a “mosaic” of reasons why banks are rarely prosecuted for AML violations: “Even if it’s bad wealth, it buys buildings,” he said. “It puts money into bank accounts. It enriches the nation.”

  

• How To Tackle The Depression Head On
  How To Tackle The Depression Head On
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 18:20

  Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

  “I want to see people get money.”

  – Donald J. Trump, U.S. President, September 17, 2020

  “Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet.”

  – Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, September 14, 2020

  Money for the People

  The real viral contagion that has infected the American populace is not an illness of the body.  It’s something far worse than COVID-19.  The American populace is suffering from an illness of the mind.

  The general malady, as we diagnose it, is the unwavering belief that the government has an endless supply of free money, and the expectation that everyone, except the stinking rich, has claim to it.  Why pursue self-reliance and independence when a series of stimulus acts promises the more abundant life?  This viral contagion’s really ripped through the population in 2020.

  For example, just a year ago, the American populace thought they could all live off the forced philanthropy of their neighbors.  That to pay Paul you had to first rob Peter.  The CARES Act proved to Boobus americanus that, without a shadow of a doubt, there’s free ‘money for the people’ in Washington.  Sí se puede!

  This week the Congress did its part to further the greatest show on earth.  The people want stimulus.  Congress intends to get to them, in good time.

  Of course, the need to sprinkle the Country with printing press money was already a foregone conclusion.  There was no discussion of the wisdom of not having a stimulus bill.  The debate at hand was centered on how much.

  Crazy Nancy wants $3.4 trillion.  Senate Republicans want $500 billion.  Something called the House Problem Solvers Caucus wants $2 trillion.

  President Trump wants Republicans to “go for the much higher numbers.”  His rationale: “it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).”

  Extreme Intervention

  There are only 12 days left in the U.S. 2020 fiscal year.  The budget deficit’s already well over $3 trillion – more than double the previous $1.4 trillion record deficit set in 2009.  With a little luck, the March to Common Ground stimulus agreement will not be reached.

  Fiscal year 2020 finances are a disaster.  Why start FY 2021 with another massive stimulus bill?  What good would it do?  The longer Congress dithers the better.

  In the meantime, the Federal Reserve’s fully committed to extreme intervention in financial markets.  By this, the Fed promises to keep credit cheap and abundant forever.

  On Wednesday, following a two day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, the Fed released new projections showing the federal funds rate would remain near zero through 2023.  The Fed, via quantitative easing (QE) also promised to buy more Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities; at least $120 billion per month.

  We’ll have to wait several weeks for the FOMC meeting minutes to confirm.  But we presume there was no discussion of the wisdom of ending QE, reducing the Fed’s balance sheet, and raising the federal funds rate.  Such contrary measures are off the table until at least 2024.

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  The unwritten objective of this now endless QE is to further inflate stock prices in the face of economic catastrophe.  Once again, Wall Street and the big banks are being given an endless supply of cheap and abundant credit.  Where does this all lead?

  How to Tackle the Depression Head On

  By and large, the challenges facing the economy have everything to do with central government.  Over the last 40 years, as the Fed and the Treasury colluded to rig the financial system in totality, wealth has become ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer insider hands.  The effect over the last decade has been a disparity that’s so magnified few can ignore it.

  Obviously, something has gone horribly wrong.  The main cause, as best we can explain, is the near total abandonment of the rules of common sense in the dealing of money and credit.  Old standards, old principles, and honest thinking have given way to quack economists, shameless political swindlers, and a burgeoning citizenry of dependents.

  Indeed, we live in a world of deception.  A world that will only become more deceitful as policies of desperation are rolled out in earnest to keep the price of money cheap, the price of assets high, the government swindlers in Washington flush with printing press money, and the masses of dependents well supplied with bread and circuses.  But make no mistake, deceit will lead to greater deceit.

  More bread is needed.  The masses have grown sick and tired of wealth being concentrated at the top of the wealth spectrum.  Moreover, they’re sick and tired of having their noses rubbed in the mud.

  To be clear, these are not failures of capitalism.  They’re failures of America’s brand of a centrally planned economy.  The tertiary impediments of fake money, regulatory insanity, and government dependency cannot be overcome.

  However, there is another way.  Steve Forbes, in a January 22, 2014 article, offered an alternative to the current paradigm:

  “Vibrant economies, not central banks, create real money, and wealth is abundantly created when tax rates are low, money is stable and regulations are reasonable.”

  Stop the deceit.  Stop the stimulus.  Stop the QE.  Stabilize the money supply.  Let markets determine the rate of interest.

  No doubt, an epic depression would be immediately upon us.  But the depression will come regardless.  In fact, it’s already here.  Better to tackle it head on, with honesty, than to attempt to shirk it with deceit and pretense.

  

• Portland Neighbors Frustrated After Police Take 90 Minutes Responding To Hostage Situation Involving 12-Year-Old
  Portland Neighbors Frustrated After Police Take 90 Minutes Responding To Hostage Situation Involving 12-Year-Old
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 17:55

  Residents of a Southeast Portland neighborhood are furious after police took 90 minutes to respond to a bizarre hostage situation last week, when a man ran into an apartment with a 12-year-old boy inside, grabbed a knife, and eventually fled after a standoff with the boy’s father. Neighbors chased the man down and cornered him, but he ran off again before police arrived.

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  “I was so scared,” said Henry Kirim, who was searching for a missing bank card in his car when the man ran inside. After Kirim went back inside, the man charged at him with a knife and a 20-pound dumbbell he found in the apartment.

  When Kirim sprinted back to the apartment and unlocked the door, he saw the man grab a large knife from his kitchen counter. Kirim’s son, trembling and crying, was behind the stranger.

  …

  More than a half-dozen calls had come into 911 over the course of the bizarre ordeal. But that apparently didn’t speed the response.

  The wait confounded and angered Kirim and his neighbors. They wondered what it would take for police to respond if not an armed man placing a child in jeopardy.

  “Every neighbor here was expecting the police to come. We called about a million times, and the police would not show up,” Kirim said. –Oregon Live

  The police have acknowledged that the delay was unacceptable – however they cited a record number of retirements and fatigued officers who have been covering months of BLM protests.

  “This is not the service our community expects, nor is it what we want to provide,” said Deputy Police Chief Cris Davis.

  That said, 49 officers have retired and nine have resigned since July. According to Davis, other officers are injured or on vacation – leaving the bureau with around 310 officers on patrol divided between three precincts. 102 of those officers don’t have full training, Davis added.

  In this case, officers were simultaneously responding to a tactical call in East Precinct which required a special team, as well as monitoring a violent clash between protesters downtown and preparing for chaos that evening.

  The priority now is to respond to emergency calls “when there’s an active threat or a life safety issue,” he said, often leaving 80 to 100 lower priority calls holding during mass gatherings or what have been regular protests before historic wildfires gripped the state and hazardous air quality kept people inside in the last week. –Oregon Live

  Kirim’s neighbor, Deja Sieles, was one of the people who called police during the knife incident – telling a dispatcher that several neighbors were holding the intruder down near her apartment.

  “I told them what was going on, and the operator seemed to know because he had received so many other calls,” said Sieles. “I think it’s pretty sad because like anything could have happened to anybody here. It scares me because I can’t rely on the police to help us out.”

  The first emergency call, presumably from a neighbor, came in at 12:41 p.m.: Intruder in the house. Has a knife. Boy still inside.

  “They said police would be here,” Kirim said. “And no police came.”

  Dispatch noted at 12:49 p.m.: “No units avail,” meaning no officers available to respond.

  Over the next 15 minutes, the man with the knife ransacked the two-bedroom apartment. Then he suddenly ran out the back of the apartment, breaking down a screen door.

  Neighbors and Kirim chased after him. They caught him less than a block away in a nearby driveway after he tried to enter another home.

  Calls to 911 poured in. –Oregon Live

  Read the rest of the report here.

  

• Goldman: A Biden Win Will Accelerate Dollar Weakness
  Goldman: A Biden Win Will Accelerate Dollar Weakness
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 17:30

  In a Friday note from Goldman’s FX strategy team, strategist Zach Pandl previews what is sure to be a “November to Remember” (even more so now in the aftermath of RBG’s death and the SCOTUS vacancy which has profound implications for capital markets as discussed overnight), and frames in a generally optimistic note (similar to Morgan Stanley), expecting more cyclical upside despite possible near-term weakness through an eventful autumn, to wit: “despite recent risk obbles, we continue to see our central growth forecast as consistent with further strength in cyclical assets, including equities, and more depreciation for the US Dollar.” Pandl dismisses the recent – and still ongoing – tech-led sell-off, saying that the latest correction was more a position adjustment than a broader fundamental shift: “significant flows into cash and options helped drive the Nasdaq to a stellar August without much fresh news, outperformance that has now largely reversed.” Meanwhile, the announcement of the Fed’s framework review at Jackson Hole, though largely as expected, also resulted in an additional move in real rates and breakeven inflation whose reversal presaged the equity drops. Meanwhile, on the positive side, Pandl writes that the global growth recovery “while flattening out in places, has also been broadening.”

  So, the Goldman strategists concludes, the “central case is that equity markets will revisit the September high over the next couple of months, but driven this time more by an upgrade to the market’s cyclical view” with the caveat that early vaccine approval remains central to the bank’s pro-cyclical outlook, while noting that “investors may be too pessimistic about risky assets under a Democratic election sweep, due to the prospect of substantial fiscal easing next year.”

  Echoing Morgan Stanley’s latest thoughts (which we brought readers yesterday), while Goldman is optimistic, it does warn of a variety of potholes “from here to there”, most of which are identical to the list presented previously by MS:

  • First, with the school reopening season now properly underway across much of the northern hemisphere, it will be important to watch if new economy-wide lockdowns (as has been the case in Israel) can be avoided.

  • Second, investor expectations from the latest round of US fiscal negotiations are already low, but it will still be a negative surprise to markets if no agreement is reached, or if partisan tensions threaten a government shutdown at the end of September.

  • Third, after a surprisingly unified response to the pandemic in Europe, political risks are rearing their head again. The constitutional referendum and regional elections in Italy this weekend—which may result in some losses for the governing coalition—will be a test of political stability. That said, without a new election, which seems unlikely, it is hard to see a major shift in political direction or a major selloff in BTPs. More importantly, Brexit has thrust itself back on the screen of global investors. Despite provocative legislation that would “break international law”, we think it is too early to completely dismiss the possibility of a negotiated “thin deal.”

  Which brings us to the election, where Goldman focuses on the potential impact to two asset classes: equities, volatility and currencies.

  Starting with stocks, Pandl writes that a Democratic sweep “would present a complicated mix for headline US equity indices” with the potential increase in corporate taxes from a Democratic sweep would be the most direct consequence for equity markets. But the prospect of larger fiscal stimulus and of more predictability in trade policy in that outcome push, at least modestly, in the other direction. While the net effect for US equity indices is probably a modest negative, Goldman notes that the uncertainty around that judgment is high, particularly since it is still unclear which policies will emerge as priorities for the possible Biden Administrations and how much has already been priced (the relative performance of “high-tax” and “low-tax equities” suggest, unsurprisingly, that the market has already shifted to some degree to price a possible Biden win).

  Meanwhile, with worries about an extended delay over election results, a swift resolution in either direction may also reduce risk premia although now that we also have a SCOTUS vacancy to fill an optimistic outcome here looks unlikely. At the same time, and as in 2016, shifts in perceptions of the race around the Presidential debates may serve as a helpful barometer for the market’s initial reactions. But 2016 is also a reminder that the initial reaction may quickly reverse as the market reassesses the winner’s policy priorities. The more obvious shifts may be in relative performance, where Goldman thinks expansionary Democratic fiscal policy could support the outperformance of cyclicals over defensives, while non-US cyclical indices may benefit too (albeit less directly) from a stronger US fiscal impulse, and without facing the drag from higher US taxes.

  Next, the Goldman strategist looks at volatility, writing that while it remains sticky, it is “vulnerable beyond the big events” as the election and vaccine events have important implications for the pricing of volatility and options risk:

  For a broad range of assets, it is true both that implied volatility is unusually high relative to realized volatility and the slope of implied volatility between 1 and 3 months is unusually steep (in part because of the election “bump”). Both of these features are potentially important. Because the distribution of potential outcomes around the mix of vaccine and elections remains quite wide, options markets need to reflect that even if the day-to-day volatility is lower. But the experience around prior elections of the last few years and events like the 2016 Brexit referendum illustrates that resolution in any direction often leads to stickiness in implied volatility until that point and a sharp drop in implied volatility as one or other path is confirmed.

  If Goldman is right that we will know the outcomes of both the vaccine and the election by December – even assuming the “risk-negative” versions – there is a good chance that the VIX may be significantly lower than forward pricing assumes by year-end, according to Pandl: “Given the potential for both some vaccine news as Phase III trials progress and potential shifts in election views through the debates, we think that horizon presents potentially interesting opportunities to position for core themes.” (which likely means Goldman prop is buying long vol from its clients).

  Which brings us to the punchline, especially since this report is written by Goldman’s FX team. According to them, a Biden win should accelerate Dollar weakness. As Pandl explains, Goldman continues to see “a good case for sustained US Dollar  weakness, reflecting the greenback’s high valuation, deeply negative real interest rates in the US, and a recovering global economy (which tends to weigh on the currency’s because of its unique global role).” A Democrat sweep in the US elections would likely accelerate this trend:

  • First, Biden’s proposals to raise the US corporate tax rate would make domestic stocks less attractive compared to international markets, all else equal, which could result in Dollar selling if US equities underperform. Regulatory changes, especially anything targeting the technology sector, could have similar effects.
  • Second, a large fiscal stimulus would also likely weaken the Dollar, due to the Fed’s commitment to keep rates low. Normally currencies appreciate after fiscal stimulus, because it lifts rates, and higher rates in turn attract portfolio inflows from abroad. But academic research finds that currencies depreciate after fiscal expansions when unemployment is high and/or central bank policy rates are stuck at their effective lower bound.
  • Third, a more multilateral approach to foreign affairs should reduce risk premium in certain currencies, especially the Chinese Yuan. Goldman recently lowered its 12m target for USD/CNH to 6.50 for this reason: a Biden Administration would likely imply lower trade war risks, and therefore should allow the Chinese currency to gain alongside broad Dollar weakness.

  That said, other election outcomes would likely imply less Dollar weakness and affect the performance of certain crosses, according to Goldman. For example, if Democrats were to take the White House but Republicans maintain control of the Senate, the US policy approach toward China would likely change, but fiscal stimulus would become much less likely. This could result in Yuan outperformance vs the more risk-sensitive EM and G10 currencies. Alternatively, a Trump win plus Republican control of the Senate would likely benefit the Dollar, especially vs the Euro and Yuan.

  Finally, as discussed yesterday in Tug Of War Across Markets Hides “Trade Of A Lifetime“, Goldman agrees that “a potentially potent mix of vaccine approval and fiscal expansion” could lead to a rip-roaring value/cyclical/reflationary rally. Goldman explains:

  Implied probabilities for early vaccine approval and a Biden win in the US election—e.g. probabilities provided by Good Judgment Inc and FiveThirtyEIght, respectively—have been hovering around the 65%-70% mark. As these probabilities have consolidated, there have already been some signs of markets moving to price the most likely outcomes: cyclical stocks have held onto most of their August outperformance even with the Nasdaq selloff and EM high-yielding currencies (with the telling exception of the Russian Ruble) have displayed remarkable resilience. In the event that such procyclical probabilities inch higher, “markets should move further towards pricing the modal outcomes: a move higher in cyclical exposures in equities, higher breakeven inflation, and a broadening in the outperformance versus a weaker Dollar to include EM.”

  As Pandl concludes, “These remain our core cross-asset recommendations ahead of a very busy autumn. To state the obvious, the more the market moves to price either vaccine or election results with greater certainty, the worse risk/reward we would see in these expressions, and the greater the need to consider hedges.”

  

• Global Debt Is Exploding At A Shocking Rate
  Global Debt Is Exploding At A Shocking Rate
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sun, 09/20/2020 – 17:05

  The primary reason why the global financial system is on the verge of daily collapse, and is only held together with monetary superglue and central bank prayers thanks to now constant intervention of central banks, is because of debt. And, as BofA’s Barnaby Martin succinctly puts it, much more debt is coming since “the legacy of the COVID shock is debt, debt and more debt.” In short: use even more debt to “fix” a debt probem.

  So in this world of explosive credit expansion coupled with tumbling economic output where helicopter money has become the norm, central banks – and specifically the ECB – are scaling their QE policies to monetize and absorb much of this debt (relieving the pressure on private investors to buy bonds), more debt “hotspots” mean more vulnerabilities for the global economy.

  We won’t preach about the consequences of this debt binge which has catastrophic consequences – we do enough of that already – but below we lay out some of the more stunning facts of global debt levels at the end of Q1 2020 as compiled by the BIS, courtesy of Martin:

  • Global debt/GDP surged to an all-time high in Q1 ’20, with overall debt for the non-financial sector now worth 252% of global GDP. This is up from 241% at the end of 2019, the biggest quarterly jump ever according to BIS data.

    <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>
    The chart also confirms that central bank inflation targets are higher, much higher than the “”official 2%: to erase this debt, central banks needs inflation to be in the 10%+ range. Anything below that would require debt defaults instead of inflation to wipe away the debt… and that is unacceptable.

  • This increase reflects the fallout from the first few weeks of the COVID crisis, with most advanced economies implementing total or partial lockdowns in March. Hence, the historical contraction in GDP growth observed worldwide in Q2 and the debt surge from both governments and non-financial corporations will translate into an even bigger rise in the global leverage ratio in Q2 ’20.

  • Pre-existing vulnerabilities have been laid bare by the nature of the COVID shock. While both advanced economies (DM) and emerging markets (EM) have seen their leverage ratios jump, the latter have observed a rapid increase since 2012 (Chart 13). The relatively deeper COVID recession expected for some EM economies – the OECD Sep ‘2020 Economic Outlook sees India and South Africa GDP falling by 10.2% and 11.5%, respectively – will likely magnify the jump in some EM’s leverage ratios.

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  • By sectors, governments drove the big uptick in debt/GDP in Q1 ’20. The global sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio has reached 89%, up 10 percentage points, the largest quarterly rise on record.
  • Debt service ratios ticked up, but only marginally, reflective of the tremendous QE support unleashed by central banks this year.

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  Total non-financial debt/GDP across countries and segments is shown in the BofA chart below; it shows that…

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  • The total leverage ratio for Euro Area, China and the US are mostly in line now;
  • In Europe, a number of core countries (Belgium, Finland and Norway) saw a bigger increase in their total debt/GDP ratio than in the periphery in Q1 ’20;
  • While the rise in household debt has generally been more modest as consumers have moved into wait-and-see mode, China household debt/GDP rose 3.1% QoQ in Q1 ’20

  Finally, the table below show global debt/GDP leverage ratio across the globe, broken down by countries and segments.

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• The Possible Limits Of China-Russia Cooperation
  The Possible Limits Of China-Russia Cooperation
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 23:30

  Authored by Lawrence Franklin via The Gatestone Institute,

  China and Russia’s coordinated policies in foreign affairs and economic endeavors belie deep-seated fissures that might well prevent their current period of cooperation from evolving into a sustained alliance.

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  Despite China’s planned participation in Russia’s annual Caucus 2020 exercises on September 21-26, Sino-Russian history is so replete with war, unequal treaties and racism, there seems little probability that their present military cooperation will succeed in developing into a military alliance.

  The current Russo-Chinese cooperation seems loosely rooted in the notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Both countries apparently believe that checking U.S. power is in their national interests. China wants the U.S. to withdraw from its military and diplomatic commitments in the Western Pacific, thereby allowing Beijing to assert primacy in Asia, at least for a start. Russia seems to want the U.S. to decouple itself from the decades-old NATO alliance, thereby enabling Moscow to re-assert its dominance in the Baltic region and Eastern Europe.

  Russia’s drive eastward in the late 17th century already brought Russians into conflict with China’s Qing Dynasty. After a series of clashes in the 1680s, the two empires temporarily settled on a boundary along the banks of the Amur River, separating Manchurian China from the Russian Far East. The Chinese, however, apparently resented Russia’s intrusion into a region Beijing considered its backyard. The Chinese also seem to have felt humiliated by defeats in subsequent wars with Russia and by having been coerced into signing what Beijing still refers to as “unequal treaties.” The ill will generated between China and Russia over several military conflicts in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a fierce ideological rivalry in the late 20th century, might also be an obstacle to an enduring bilateral alliance. Some Chinese commentators allege that Russia still occupies hundreds of thousands of square miles of Chinese territory seized in Tsarist times. China even recently claimed that Vladivostok, the most prominent city in Russia’s Far East, is historically Chinese territory.

  China and Russia’s profoundly different cultures might also help to limit a bilateral honeymoon. A portion of Russia’s self-image is that of protector of the Slavic World, guardian of the Orthodox Christian faith, and the lead society in the Eurasian landmass from the Urals to the Pacific. Moscow’s historical view of China further seems conflated with a contempt for the Mongols, who cruelly subjugated Russian Slavdom for centuries. Ethnic tensions took a dark turn in July 1900, when Russian soldiers in the Amur River territory of Blagoveshchensk executed a racist rampage with forced deportation, and killing roughly 5,000 Chinese in the operation.

  China sees itself as synonymous with civilization and calls itself “Jungwo” or center country. The Great Wall was continuously maintained by Chinese dynasties to keep out what China viewed as the “northern barbarians”: the Russians and earlier marauders. Chinese racism seems to extend to everyone outside its civilization’s values, such as China’s current concentration camps holding more than a million Uighurs, who are Turkic, as well as against Africans doing business in China.

  Today, most Russians who live in Siberia reside less than 150 miles from the Chinese border, and the Russian population in these border provinces is in decline. Siberia, larger than the continental United States and India combined, is home fewer than 35 million people, with hundreds of millions of Chinese just over the border. At some point, China may start eyeing this energy- and mineral-rich region of Russia. Chinese investors have already leased large swathes of land in Russia’s Far Eastern realms.

  The only major link that connects European and Asian Russia is the Trans-Siberian Railroad. China is now building more roads and more rail connectivity.

  President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is clearly the junior partner in the Sino-Russian anti-American “alliance of convenience”: China’s growth is nearly five times that of Russia. Bilateral trade is increasing with the hoped-for goal of reaching $200 billion by 2024. Most of their joint projects are being carried out in agriculture, light industry, and energy. Last month, the two countries agreed to initiate two new joint projects: a gas processing plant and a bilateral insurance company. China’s investments in Russia are largely in energy, agriculture, forestry, construction materials, textiles, and household electric goods.

  China seems to see Russia less as an economic partner than as a source for extraction of energy and raw materials. In 2019, Russian exports to China consisted almost entirely of oil, mineral ores, and wood. China appears to favor procurement of technically advanced products from the West rather than from its Eurasian ally. China, for instance, awarded contracts for hydroelectric products for its massive Three Gorges Dam to two European consortia, one headed by Germany’s Siemens Corporation, the other by the British/French GEC-Alstom, evidently preferring western designs to bids by Russia’s “Energomashexport.” Additionally, the trading branch of a major Chinese oil refining enterprise has been turning down Russian crude oil exports since Moscow’s state petroleum institution, Rosneft, was sanctioned by the United States.

  There seem to be problems even in the most vibrant dimension of Sino-Russian cooperation: arms sales. While China in the past purchased billions of dollars of fighter and bomber aircraft from Russia, Beijing has quickly been developing its own arms industry, sometimes reverse engineering Russian weapons systems. Russia, perhaps annoyed at China’s aggressive pattern of copying its weapons systems — such as the SU-27 fighter and the S-300 surface to air missile system — has delayed a planned shipment of its premier S-400 air defense system. Moscow, it seems, decided to deliver the system to China’s regional arch-rival India instead. China’s development of its most modern stealth fighter aircraft, the Chengdu J-20, resembles a cancelled variant of a Russian fighter aircraft.

  China is already successfully challenging Russia for influence among the post-Soviet states in Central Asia, particularly in Tajikistan. China’s establishment of a military base inside Tajikistan near its border with Afghanistan appears to have bested Russia’s effort to provide the Tajik government with security against Afghanistan-based jihadists just across the border.

  Another area of disagreement is China’s opposition to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its subsequent invasion of Ukraine.

  A major plank of disingenuously articulated Chinese foreign policy is the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. While disapproving of Russia’s assaults on sovereign states, China seems to have no problem asserting its own will in and around other states, for instance, in the South and East China Seas, India and the Galapagos Islands.

  Russia, in turn, has not supported China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea, in an attempt not to alienate Vietnam, the Philippines or Malaysia.

  Mainly, this bilateral condominium might be doomed to collapse because there is no trust in the relationship. Russian security officers recently arrested a Russian scientist accused of spying for China. Russia and China act far more like competitors than allies. Their common antipathy for the United States most likely presents a distorted image of a coordinated policy agreement. These two authoritarian rivals could eventually assume their normal historical role as adversaries, even enemies. Consequently, Western intelligence agencies and policymakers might want to be wary of not overestimating the solidity and longevity of the Chinese-Russian friendship.

  

• Popular Children's App Allegedly Requests Minor To Take Naked Pictures
  Popular Children’s App Allegedly Requests Minor To Take Naked Pictures
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 23:00

  A shocking claim, made by one parent in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, alleges a popular smartphone app designed for children asked a  5-year-old user to take naked pictures of themselves and siblings while in the bathroom and threatened to strangle the child if they didn’t comply, reported WBAL Baltimore. 

  Anne Arundel County police learned about the incident on Wednesday (Sept. 16), said the child had several apps “Talking Angela,” “Talking Angela 2″, Talking Tom 2”, and “Talking Ben 2” on their smartphone device. The complaint, filed by one of the parents, though the report did not specify which one (mother or father), called police after the incident. Police are now warning parents in the county, just outside Washington, D.C., to monitor their children’s online activity of apps and social media. 

  “The parent reported that the app requested the child remove clothing and take photos while in the bathroom,” Anne Arundel County police Sgt. Kam Cooke said. “We are not really sure as to, did the app actually say that? Or was that some sort of other entity within that app that was able to request that?”

  WBAL downloaded the popular apps but did not find “any verbal commands, only written messages or symbols pointing out what to do next.” 

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  The local television station interviewed one parent in the county, Victoria Rodriguez, who said she would not let her young kids use smartphone apps. 

  “I feel it’s weird, like someone is watching my child through the game or through the camera. It gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Rodriguez said.

  A Patch report said the tech company behind the app, Outfit7, has denied the claims:

  “The claims have no factual basis and are completely untrue,” company spokesperson Daša Rankel told Patch in an email.

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  However, one of the apps, Talking Tom, was in hot water in 2015 in the U.K., after the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints from two parents that their 7-year-old and 3-year-old children saw porno ads on the app. One ad read,” “Wanna f**k?”

  Besides police warning about apps possibly requesting children to take pictures of themselves and or others, there’s been a massive problem of hackers disrupting virtual classes for children with porn, guns, and threats, all across the country. 

  

• Taibbi: The Post-Objectivity Era
  Taibbi: The Post-Objectivity Era
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 22:30

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via taibbi.substack.com

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  From a speech given this week to the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Penn State University:

  We live in a time of incredible political division. Many of us have had the experience of talking to someone whose idea of reality seems to be completely different from our own. It’s become difficult to have an argument in the traditional sense. People with differing opinions are often no longer even working from the same commonly-accepted set of facts. It’s a problem that has a lot to do with changes in how we receive and digest information, especially through the news media.

  I’ve worked in the press for thirty years. In my lifetime the core commercial strategy of the news business has changed radically. At the national level, companies have moved from trying to attract one big audience to trying to capture and retain multiple small audiences.

  Fundamentally, this means the press has gone from selling a vision of reality they perceive to be acceptable to a broad mean, to selling division. For technological, commercial, and political reasons this instinct has become more exaggerated with time, snowballing toward the dysfunctional state we’re in today.

  A story that illustrates how the old system worked involves the first major national news broadcast, the CBS radio program anchored by the legendary Lowell Thomas.

  History buffs will know Thomas. His was the iconic voice on those old WWII newsreels:

  Read the rest here.

  

• ByteDance Shocked By Trump Claims TikTok Deal Partners Will Seed $5BN Federal Education Fund
  ByteDance Shocked By Trump Claims TikTok Deal Partners Will Seed $5BN Federal Education Fund
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 22:19

  Update (2240ET): It appears that the “pledge” unveiled earlier by Trump of a $5 billion educational fund set up by TikTok, Oracle and WalMart was nothing more than a mirage. According to wire sourcesand the Chinese local press, today’s White House/media announcement of this $5 billion education was the first time Bytedance had heard of such an arrangement where it was going to pay the US government:

  In response to some media reports that #TikTok will set up a $5bn education fund in the #US, TikTok’s parent company #ByteDance said Sunday that it heard about this for the first time from the news. pic.twitter.com/dyIVd2GtVG

  — The Business Source (@GlobalTimesBiz) September 20, 2020

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  * * *

  In an announcement made during a Saturday White House briefing with reporters, President Trump announced a plan that would effectively satisfy his demands, made during a seemingly improvised comment during a press briefing last month, that the deal include something for the American taxpayer.

  Enter: A $5 billlion pledge made collectively by TikTok, Oracle, Wal-Mart and the deal’s other backers that will seed a fund dedicated toward financing American education. The fund would go toward teaching American children “the history of the real America.”

  As Bloomberg reminds us, Trump delivered a speech at the National Archives in Washington on Thursday where he attacked the NYT’s pulitzer prize-winning 1619 project. In response, Trump said he wanted to establish “a national commission to promote patriotic education” that he calls the “1776 Commission”.

  The companies have agreed to terms with Trump for new TikTok Global to give $5 billion to an education foundation that will be established, sources tell me. Trump told press: “They’re going to be setting up a very large fund…That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for.”

  — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 19, 2020

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  TRUMP wants the $5 billion from the Tiktok Global deal to pay for “patriotic education” via his envisioned “1776 Commission.”

  — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 19, 2020

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  NEWS: Trump wants $5 billion from companies creating a new U.S.-based TikTok venture directed toward teaching American children “real history, not the fake history.”

  Story by me, @MarioDParker @josh_wingrove https://t.co/EqzpnqtSjj

  — Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 20, 2020

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  Reporters immediately responded that this kind of federal intervention was totally inappropriate, and possibly illegal, yet, here we are. How will all this work? It’s not exactly clear. Details were scant.

  Trump apparently used “the fund” as fodder for an appearance in North Carolina on Saturday evening that followed the briefing with reporters.

  Later, during a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Trump said “we’re going to be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youth.” He told his rally audience that in conversation with leaders of the companies, he said “do me a favor, could you put up $5 billion into a fund for education, so we can educate people as to real history of our country – the real history, not the fake history.”

  Of course, President Trump might as well pile it on thick with the election season promises. After all, as a trial balloon published by the SCMP last week suggested, any ‘deal’ that would satisfy Trump, CFIUS and a growing group of GOP senators probably wouldn’t pass muster with Beijing.

  As it stands, the Oracle-TikTok deal would involve spinning off TikTok into an independent US-based company with a plan to take it public some time next year. Oracle, Wal-Mart and a handful of American VC funds would be shareholders. ByteDance would also own a minority stake. The exact numbers aren’t clear, and GOP senators are insisting that Chinese ownership in the minority. Beijing also recently introduced new export controls on technology like the TikTok content-recommendation algorithm. Whether the new company would acquire the algorithm, build a new one, or lease back the algorithm from ByteDance, remains unclear.

  With all that’s transpired this year, the notion that President Xi would feel inclined to hand Trump another election season victory seems laughable. And Beijing has opposed the “smash & grab deal” from the beginning. So have many Americans – it’s the rare Trump play that has angered many on the left, and the right.

  Trump’s TikTok ban is a gross abuse of powerhttps://t.co/DnbKVxaPpx pic.twitter.com/jy2HW9mz3e

  — The Verge (@verge) September 19, 2020

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  President Trump’s proposed TikTok ban isn’t just bad for Gen Z. It’s bad for free speech, free markets, and US democracy.https://t.co/86F3geQfTo

  — WIRED (@WIRED) August 1, 2020

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  Critics are already slamming the fund as far-fetched, and some have speculated about whether Trump expects the deal to get spiked.

  That’s still not a given and given Trump approval you have to wonder if the details are such he expects Beijing to spike it

  — CCP Collaborator Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) September 20, 2020

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  Beijing has made its position pretty clear.

  Beijing has positioned itself against the deal quite clearly so far and some of my colleagues wrote that Beijing would rather see TikTok fold in the US than it be sold off. Would be quite a feat to get it past SAMR/MOFCOM etc

  — Vincent Lee (@Rover829) September 20, 2020

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  But the CCP isn’t the only threat to the deal. GOP senators working together with AG Barr could still sink the deal between now and tomorrow night. A US court in Washington, where ByteDance has filed its latest complaint about the impending ban, could also step in. In fact, one could argue that by tying the deal to his ‘education’ plan, Trump just sealed its fate in the eyes of the courts.

  * * *

  During a briefing with reporters at the White House on Saturday, President Trump confirmed that he had signed off on a proposed deal that would involve spinning off TikTok’s global business into a standalone, US-based company owned by Oracle, ByteDance, Wal-Mart, a group of Silicon Valley VC firms and other investors from China.

  “I have given the deal my blessing, if they get it done that’s great, if they don’t that’s fine too,” President Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday.

  Of course, CFIUS still needs to technically sign off on the deal. But that’s not the only obstacle remaining in the way of a spinoff that company insiders say could lead to a US public offering roughly one year from now if everything works out.

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  Trump’s comments come after the Commerce Department on Friday issued regulations prohibiting American companies from providing downloads or updates for TikTok after 11:59 pm on Sunday. The order also applies to WeChat, another popular Chinese-owned messaging and payments app, that will be subjected to the ban – at least in the US market (the administration has promised that any restrictions won’t apply to American companies doing business in foreign markets like China).

  In a statement, TikTok said its “proposal” to Washington included “unprecedented levels of transparency.”

  During an earlier briefing on Friday, Trump called TikTok “a pretty incredible asset” and said that the companies appeared close to a deal that would ameliorate security concerns from a group of GOP senators.

  If the deal is ultimately structured like a spinoff, regulators in Beijing will likely need to sign off as well, which could create problems. However, there’s been some talk about ByteDance selling TikTok without the content recommendation algorithm at its heart. Beijing has already confirmed, via a leak to the SCMP, that it won’t allow an American company to walk away with TikTok’s algorithm.

  ByteDance has already sought help from American courts, arguing that President Trump’s ban was illegal under American law. Unfortunately for the company, invoking “national security” gives Trump broad latitude to act; the courts don’t have much latitude to restrain him, according to Bloomberg.

  Following the Commerce Department’s latest order, the company filed another lawsuit late Friday seeking to stop the Commerce Department’s order forcing Apple and Alphabet to drop TikTok from their app stores. TikTok owner ByteDance said it dropped its lawsuit against the Trump Administration, which it filed in California, and filed a new lawsuit in Washington. The company argued that Trump’s ban is “political” in nature, and that Trump is only using national security as a ruse.

  TikTok also claimed that the ban violates first amendment protections on free speech.

  

• "Nobody Is Here!" – Movie Theaters Reopen, Audiences Stay Away
  “Nobody Is Here!” – Movie Theaters Reopen, Audiences Stay Away
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 22:00

  “If you build it, they will come.” That moto was popularized by Kevin Costner’s character in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, but such advice today in a post-pandemic world is bullshit.

  Take, for, example, Christopher Nolan’s movie Tenet, released on Sept. 3, was supposed to mark the revival of the movie theater industry, according to NYT. 

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  Ahead of the opening, Robinhood traders in August piled into movie theater stocks, including Cineworld and AMC, in anticipation Americans would rush back to theaters. 

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  But theater stocks dumped into corrections days after the movie was released, due to the fact the film collected $9.4 million in its first weekend in North America and just $29.5 million over its first two weeks. The disappointing turnout has made one thing clear: 

  “We have no way of forecasting how long it will take for consumer comfort with indoor movie theaters to return,” Rich Greenfield, a founder of the Lightshed Partners media research firm, wrote in a note on Monday.

  Even with theater capacity limited to 50% in most of the country, and 68% of theater chains reopened by Labor Day, the promotion of Tenet still did not entice Americans to return to indoor movie theaters as coronavirus cases continue to rage in late summer, heading into fall. 

  We noted in May how a massive shift from indoor to outdoor movie theaters would be a hot trend for 2020. 

  • Walmart Is Turning Its Parking Lots Into Drive-In Movie Theaters For Its Customers

  • Struggling Mall Owner Transforms Parking Lots Into Drive-In Movie Theaters

  • COVID Has Transformed America Into The ‘Drive-In’ Nation

  For some comparison, Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of distribution, said Nolan’s past films – Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk – opened in the $50 million range in North America and collected between $527 million and $837 million worldwide. The latest movie sales for Tenet suggest the public is not convinced they should be returning to movie theaters anytime soon. 

  Movie theaters have yet to persuade customers that indoor theaters are safe. Even before theaters started to reopen in late summer, there should’ve been an information campaign to educate the public about the millions of dollars theater operators spent to upgrade facilities to mitigate the virus spread. 

  Mark Zoradi, Cinemark’s chief executive, doesn’t expect a “sense of normality” for theaters until 2022, calling 2021 a “transition year.” 

  “We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars getting this stuff right,” Zoradi said. “If we can convince the consumer that we have done all of these things, they are much more likely to want to come back.

  And if readers haven’t figured out, movie theaters will be dead for the next couple of years. Alastair Williamson, who was at a Regal movie theater in the Baltimore metro area on Saturday (Sept. 12), tweeted: “Nobody is here!” 

  Nobody is here! pic.twitter.com/Qu7EwWw84h

  — Alastair Williamson (@StockBoardAsset) September 13, 2020

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  In another tweet, Williamson shows the ticket counter, which by the way, appears to be automated, say goodbye to a few low-wage, low-paying jobs permanently displaced by automation, shows absolutely no one is at the cinema on a primetime Saturday evening. 

  No one at the movie theater. pic.twitter.com/uJrDo7KZZp

  — Alastair Williamson (@StockBoardAsset) September 12, 2020

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  The moral of the movie theater story is if theaters reopen with top-notch movies by big-time producers, well, the American public is still not interested because they believe facilities are not safe from the virus. To bring consumers back, a lot of convincing by theater operators will be needed. 

  

• Too Much Centralization Is Turning Everything Into A Political Crisis
  Too Much Centralization Is Turning Everything Into A Political Crisis
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 21:30

  Authored by Porter Burkett via The Mises Institute,

  Is American politics reaching a breaking point?

  A recent study by researchers from Brown and Stanford Universities certainly paints a grim picture of the state of the national discourse. The study attempts to measure “affective polarization,” defined as the extent to which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than their own, in nine developed countries, including the United States.

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  The study authors concluded that affective polarization has risen much faster and more drastically in the United States than in any of the other countries they studied (figure 1). They then speculated on possible explanations of increasing polarization, suggesting that changing party composition, increasing racial division, and 24-hour partisan cable news are convincing possible causes. Notably, the research was completed before the coronavirus pandemic or the police killing of George Floyd, two events that have only deepened political division.

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  While the study is interesting and well written, the authors completely fail to consider a more fundamental potential explanation of increasing polarization, one that is likely to be understood well by libertarians and federalists, who have long railed against the trend toward ever more usurpation of local and state sovereignty in American politics.

  I propose that the real culprit behind worsening polarization is the gargantuan federal government that has turned the entire country into an unceasing political battleground. When virtually all political issues are settled at the national level, the whole nation becomes a source of potential political opponents. Centralization changes the scale and with it the locus of political debate and conflict. For the average political participant, it is probably true that people with differing ideas live near you, in your city or state, but the mathematical reality is that the vast majority of your political opponents live relatively far away (spread throughout the rest of the country) and thus have no material connection to your life or your community.

  Political opposition becomes just numbers on a cable news screen: 49 percent for this, 51 percent for that. Sixty-two million votes for one candidate, 65 million for another. These numbers, without names or faces, become simple objects; some are pawns to be moved around, while others are obstacles to be pushed aside. This is not just speculation: previous research has indicated that partisanship is correlated with the use of tactics to dehumanize political opponents. Centralized political decision-making amounts to a systematic dehumanization of anyone who might participate in the political process.

  The effects of such a disastrous form of organization are already evident. Political polarization is not confined to academic papers, but has now manifested in the streets of Kenosha and Portland. As the 2020 election approaches, politically charged killings between members of rival factions will only become more likely. What was formerly a central promise of democratic politics—the peaceful transfer of power—has been abandoned in favor of direct action and blood.

  If centralization is the cause of our problems, then decentralization is the cure. Pushing decision-making power down to state and local levels as much as possible, closer to the people actually affected by the decisions, is the only way forward. Of course, it will not solve all the problems of political culture today. Policy debates and disagreements could still be just as intense at the local level as at the federal. But it is harder to dehumanize someone who might be a part of your community. Those numbers on the screen are on your local news now, not the national news. Those percentages and vote tallies might include your neighbor down the street, your Uber driver, the person ahead of you in line at the grocery store, or the old man you saw out walking his dog this morning. Technically, this has always been true, and we would do well to remember the humanity of the people we disagree with even while political focus is at the national level. This fact is simply harder to ignore when the primary nexus for political decisions is more immediate and local.

  Admittedly, I do not know exactly how decentralization can happen. There is no magic blueprint. Maybe the worst pessimists are right, and we are doomed to fight some sort of second civil war before we remember that those with whom we disagree are people too. I think the future is brighter than that. Perhaps, as Mises Institute president Jeff Deist has pointed out, de facto decentralization has already begun. Fortunately, nobody has to know exactly what the new political structure will look like, and – arguably the best part of decentralization – it does not have to look the same everywhere. Both major parties, and people of all ideological persuasions, will probably have to give up some preferred victory or vanquishing of the “other side.” Many Democrats would love to prevent all abortion laws in the state of Georgia for the rest of time. Some Republicans would love to lock down California’s southern border with an airtight seal.

  A new era of decentralization means that neither of these things can be accomplished by federal imposition, and their proponents are not going to be happy about that. The task ahead is to demonstrate that whatever the sacrifices required to achieve more localized decision-making might be, centralization is too dangerous to continue.

  

• "Peak" SPAC: Playboy Enterprises Considering Going Public Through Blank Check Company
  “Peak” SPAC: Playboy Enterprises Considering Going Public Through Blank Check Company
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 21:00

  Just because Playboy magazine no longer exists shouldn’t mean that the company shouldn’t have access to tap the capital markets in what is becoming the trendiest way on Wall Street: a SPAC.

  Playboy Enterprises could be the next company to go public through a blank check company as the company looks to shift its model away from its magazine and onto sexual wellness products, spirits and cannabis, according to the Post.

  The deal would come nine years after Hugh Hefner and Rizvi Traverse Management took the company private for $207 million. Hefner died in 2017 and his mansion in LA was divided into parcels of land. His son, Cooper, exited the business last year. 

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  The leading SPAC candidate appears to be Mountain Crest, which has raised about $50 million and is led by Dr. Suying Liu, who is head corporate strategist at Hudson Capital, which is based in Beijing.

  The company’s CEO, Ben Kohn, said Playboy would stop producing its iconic magazine in March of this year. Playboy remains a “media company” and has a website that carries much of the same content as the magazine did. The company now also focuses on Playboy branded products, including sex gels and CBD sprays. 

  As the Post notes, “the brand has been losing momentum in the U.S. for awhile now” – which makes it an obvious candidate to go public again.

  After all, if the public markets aren’t for access to capital and socializing the losses of your cash burning company, what are they for?

  

• Newton, Physics, & The Market Bubble
  Newton, Physics, & The Market Bubble
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 20:30

  Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

  I have previously discussed the importance of understanding how “physics” plays a crucial role in the stock market. As Sir Issac Newton once discovered, “what goes up, must come down.”

  Andy Kessler, via the Wall Street Journal, recently discussed a similar point with respect to the momentum in stock prices. To wit:

  “Does this sound familiar: Smart guy owns stock in March at $200, sells it in June at around $600, but then buys it back in July and August for between $900 and $1,000. By September it’s back at $200. Ouch. Tesla this year? Yahoo in 2000? Nope. That was Sir Isaac Newton getting pulled into the great momentum trade of the South Sea Co., which cratered 300 years ago this month. He lost the equivalent of more than $3 million today. Newton, whose second law of motion is about the momentum of a body equaling the force acting on it, didn’t know that works for stocks too.”

  To understand what happened to the South Sea Corporation, you need a bit of history.

  The South Sea History

  In 1720, in return for a loan of £7 million to finance the war against France, the House of Lords passed the South Sea Bill, which allowed the South Sea Company a monopoly in trade with South America.

  England was already a financial disaster and was struggling to finance its war with France. As debts mounted, England needed a solution to stay afloat. The scheme was that in exchange for exclusive trading rights, the South Sea Company would underwrite the English National Debt. At that time, the debt stood at £30 million and carried a 5% interest coupon from the Government. The South Sea company converted the Government debt into its own shares. They would collect the interest from the Government and then pass it on to their shareholders.

  Interesting Absurdities

  At the time, England was in the midst of rampant market speculation. As soon as the South Sea Company concluded its deal with Parliament, the shares surged to more than 10 times their value. As South Sea Company shares bubbled up to incredible new heights, numerous other joint-stock companies IPO’d to take advantage of the booming investor demand for speculative investments.

  Many of these new companies made outrageous, and often fraudulent, claims about their business ventures for the purpose of raising capital and boosting share prices. Here are some examples of these companies’ business proposals (History House, 1997):

  • Supplying the town of Deal with fresh water.

  • Trading in hair.

  • Assuring of seamen’s wages.

  • Importing pitch and tar, and other naval stores, from North Britain and America.

  • Insuring of horses.

  • Improving the art of making soap.

  • Improving gardens.

  • The insuring and increasing children’s fortunes.

  • A wheel for perpetual motion.

  • Importing walnut-trees from Virginia.

  • The making of rape-oil.

  • Paying pensions to widows and others, at a small discount. 

  • Making iron with pit coal.

  • Transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal.

  • For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.

  A Speculative Mania

  However, in the midst of the “mania,”  things like valuation, revenue, or even viable business models didn’t matter. It was the “Fear Of Missing Out,” which sucked investors into the fray without regard for the underlying risk.

  Though South Sea Company shares were skyrocketing, the company’s profitability was mediocre at best, despite abundant promises of future growth by company directors.

  The eventual selloff in Company shares was exacerbated by a previous plan of lending investors money to buy its shares. This “margin loan,” meant that many shareholders had to sell their shares to cover the plan’s first installment of payments.

  As South Sea Company and other “bubble” company share prices imploded, speculators who had purchased shares on credit went bankrupt. The popping of the South Sea Bubble then resulted in a contagion that spread across Europe.

  Newton’s Folly

  Sir Issac Newton, the brilliant mathematician, was an early investor in South Sea Corporation. Newton quickly made a lot of money and recognized the early stages of a speculative mania. Knowing that it would eventually end badly, he liquidated his stake at a large profit.

  However, after he exited, South Sea stock experienced one of the most legendary rises in history. As the bubble kept inflating, Newton allowed his emotions to overtake his previous logic and he jumped back into the shares. Unfortunately, it was near the peak.

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  It is noteworthy that once Newton decided to go back into South Sea stock, he moved essentially all his financial assets into it. In general, Newton was intimately familiar with commodities and finance. As Master of the Mint, his post required him to make many decisions that depended on market prices and conditions.

  The story of Newton’s losses in the South Sea Bubble has become one of the most famous in popular finance literature. While surveying his losses, Newton allegedly said that he could “calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

  For More On The History Of Speculative Bubbles: “Devil Take The Hindmost.”

  History Never Repeats, But It Rhymes

  Throughout financial history, markets have evolved from one speculative “bubble,” to bust, to the next with each one being believed “it was different this time.” 

  The slides below are from a presentation I made to a large mutual fund company.

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  What we some common denominators between all previous bubbles and now.

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  The table below shows a listing of assets classes that have experienced bubbles throughout history, with the ones related to the current environment highlighted in yellow.

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  It is not hard to see the similarities between today and the previous market bubbles in history. Investors are currently chasing “new technology” stocks from Zoom to Tesla, piling into speculative call options, and piling into leverage. What could possibly go wrong?

  Oh, by the way, the slides above are from a 2008 presentation just one month before the Lehman crisis.

  The point here is that speculative cycles are always the same.

  The Speculative Cycle

  Charles Kindleberger suggested that speculative manias typically commence with a “displacement” which excites speculative interest. The displacement may come from either an entirely new object of investment (IPO) or from increased profitability of established investments.

  The speculation is then reinforced by a “positive feedback” loop from rising prices. which ultimately induces “inexperienced investors” to enter the market. As the positive feedback loop continues, and the “euphoria” increases, retail investors then begin to “leverage” their risk in the market as “rationality” weakens.

  The full cycle is shown below.

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  During the course of the mania, speculation becomes more diffused and spreads to different asset classes. New companies are floated to take advantage of the euphoria, and investors leverage their gains using derivatives, stock loans, and leveraged instruments.

  As the mania leads to complacency, fraud and manipulation enter the market place. Eventually, the market crashes and speculators are wiped out. The Government and Regulators react by passing new laws and legislations to ensure the previous events never happen again.

  The Latest Mania

  Let’s go back to Andy for a moment:

  “When bull markets get going, investors come out of the woodwork to pile in. These momentum investors—I call them momos—figure if a stock is going up, it will keep going up. But usually, there is some source of hot air inflating stocks: either a structural anomaly that fools investors into thinking ever-rising stock prices are real or a source of capital that buys, buys, buys—proverbial ‘dumb money.’ Think of it as a giant fireplace bellows, an accordion-like contraption that pumps in fresh oxygen to keep flames growing.” – Andy Kessler

  We have seen these manias repeated throughout history.

  • In 1929 you could buy stocks with as little as a 5% down payment

  • The 1960s and ’70s had the Nifty Fifty bubble.

  •  In 1987 it was a rising dollar, portfolio insurance, and major investments by the Japanese into U.S. real estate.

  • In 2000, it was the new paradigm of the internet and the influx of new online trading firms like E*Trade creating liquidity issues in Nasdaq stocks. Additionally, record numbers of companies were being brought public by Wall Street to fill investor demand.

  • In 2008, subprime mortgages, low interest rates, and lax lending policies, combined with a litany of derivative products inflated massive bubbles in debt instruments.

  In 2020?

  What about today? Look back at the chart of the South Sea Company above. Now, the one below.

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  See any similarities.

  Yes, that’s Tesla

  However, you can’t solely blame the Federal Reserve as noted by Andy:

  “Most simply blame the Federal Reserve—especially today, with its zero-interest-rate policy—for pumping the hot air that gets the momos going. Fair enough, but that’s only part of the story. Long market runs have always allured investors who figure they’re smart to jump in, even if it’s late.

  Everyone forgets the adage, ‘Don’t mistake brains for a bull market.’”

  This Time Is Different

  As stated, while no two financial manias are ever alike, the end results are always the same.

  Are there any similarities in today’s market? You decide.

  • Robinhood Investors Discover 3x Leverage

  • SPAC’s – Why Investors May Have Wished They Sold Sooner

  • So Far In 2020, There Have Been 113 IPOs.

  • Surge In Options Trading Drives Wall Street Gains

  “From SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, which are modern-day blind pools that often don’t end well. Today’s momos also chase stock splits, which mean nothing for a company’s actual value. Same for a new listing in indexes like the S&P 500. Isaac Newton could explain the math.” – Andy Kessler

  You get the idea. But one of the tell-tale indications is the speculative chase of “zombie” companies which are only still alive primarily due to the Federal Reserve’s interventions.

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  Fixing The Cause Of The Crash

  Historically, all market crashes have been the result of things unrelated to valuation levels. Issues such as liquidity, government actions, monetary policy mistakes, recessions, or inflationary spikes are the culprits that trigger the “reversion in sentiment.”

  Importantly, the “bubbles” and “busts” are never the same.  

  I previously quoted Bob Bronson on this point:

  “It can be most reasonably assumed that markets are efficient enough that every bubble is significantly different than the previous one. A new bubble will always be different from the previous one(s). Such is since investors will only bid prices to extreme overvaluation levels if they are sure it is not repeating what led to the previous bubbles. Comparing the current extreme overvaluation to the dotcom is intellectually silly.

  I would argue that when comparisons to previous bubbles become most popular, it’s a reliable timing marker of the top in a current bubble. As an analogy, no matter how thoroughly a fatal car crash is studied, there will still be other fatal car crashes. Such is true even if we avoid all previous accident-causing mistakes.”

  Comparing the current market to any previous period in the market is rather pointless. The current market is not like 1995, 1999, or 2007? Valuations, economics, drivers, etc. are all different from cycle to the next.

  Most importantly, however, the financial markets always adapt to the cause of the previous “fatal crash.”

  Unfortunately, that adaptation won’t prevent the next one.

  Yes, this time is different.

  “Like all bubbles, it ends when the money runs out.” – Andy Kessler

  

• US Sends More Armored Infantry Units Into Syria Amid Increased Russian Presence
  US Sends More Armored Infantry Units Into Syria Amid Increased Russian Presence
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 20:00

  Amid increasing tense encounters between American and Russian military convoys in northeast Syria, which in at least one recent encounter ended in a ramming incident, additional US mechanized infantry units have been ordered into Syria on Friday, including Bradley Fighting Vehicles. 

  “CJTF-OIR plans to position mechanized infantry assets, including Bradley Fighting Vehicles, to Syria to ensure the protection of Coalition forces and preserve their freedom of movement so they may continue Defeat Daesh operations safely,” the Pentagon said in a press release.

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  Ostensibly the counter-ISIS mission was offered as the prime rationale, but it’s clear it has more to do with the ratcheting cat-and-mouse encounters between US and Russian forces, which could at any moment result in an exchange of fire incident. 

  Ironically Trump at the same time told White House reporters that “we are out of Syria” but troops only remain solely with a mission of “guarding the oil.”

  Following recent collisions b/n #US & #Russia/n troops in east of #Euphrates,US military now opts to accompany RU mil convoys from the air.The latest encounter feats 2 AH-64 Apaches flying over RU mil police in #Syria‘s Hasakah. RU military said it deems the moves as provocations pic.twitter.com/NrFwFMhhwj

  — Maxim A. Suchkov (@m_suchkov) September 16, 2020

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  Meanwhile Russia is appearing to get more involved in determining the future political fate of Syria, as reported by The New Arab this week:

  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Syria last week has been interpreted as another turning point in Moscow-Damascus relations that could have fundamental implications for Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, analysts have said.

  Post-meeting comments made by the Russian delegation – 
  headed by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov – appeared in conjunction with the Syrian regime’s own uncompromising stance towards the opposition.

  Amid a rapidly deteriorating economic situation given far-reaching US-led sanctions, Moscow apparently wants to arrive at a final political solution fast, ensuring stability but in a way that might end Damascus’ international isolation in order to revive the economy.

  Syrian Sanctions are beginning to bite

  Gasoline in Syria in short supply. This line of cars has formed in Tartus on the coast. Imports have been targeted by sanctions and Syrian oil has been impounded by US order. https://t.co/aQp4ZjrXjn

  — Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) September 19, 2020

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  “Russia has now thrown its weight behind the UN supported Syrian Constitutional Committee, which involves members of the regime, opposition, and civil society and viewed as perhaps the best solution on offer to ending the war,” The New Arab report concludes. 

  

• David Stockman: How The Stock Market Got To Be So Out Of Touch With Reality
  David Stockman: How The Stock Market Got To Be So Out Of Touch With Reality
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 19:30

  Via InternationalMan.com,

  International Man: Thanks to the shutdowns, economic activity on main street is at a standstill. Government, corporate, and personal debt is skyrocketing. Yet, the stock market is in a mania. Has the stock market become out of touch with reality, and if so, what are the consequences of that?

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  David Stockman: Both ends of the Acela Corridor have lost their marbles. This year, Uncle Sam borrowed $4 trillion in six months, the Fed printed $3 trillion in three months, and Wall Street drove the S&P 500 to 52X reported LTM earnings in the context of a deeper economic plunge than occurred in the worst quarter of the 1930s.

  Therefore, Washington has become disconnected from any semblance of fidelity to sound money and fiscal rectitude, while Wall Street has turned into an outright casino, valuing stocks based on endless Fed liquidity injections and the delusion that momentum chasing is an investment strategy.

  With respect to the rampant folly in the Imperial City, Treasury Secretary Stevie Mnuchin has always reminded us of Alfred E. Neuman of “Me Worry?” fame at Mad Magazine. Recently, he more than earned that moniker when, in the context of the current monetary and fiscal lunacy, he proclaimed that, “Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet.”

  That was the so-called Conservative Party speaking, and it is a shrill reminder that the Trumpified GOP has gone utterly AWOL when it comes to its true job in American democracy, namely, resisting the Government Party (Dems) and its affinity for feeding the Leviathan on the Potomac.

  That is to say, according to even the Keynesian deficit apologists at the CBO, Uncle Sam will spend $6.6 trillion during the current fiscal year (FY 2020) while collecting only $3.3 trillion in revenue. That’s Banana Republic stuff—borrowing 50% of every dollar spent.

  Yet the advisory ranks of the potentially incoming Kamala Harris regency are even worse. They are loaded with “deficits don’t matter” ideologues and MMT crackpots who noisily argue that massive monetization of the public debt is not just a virtue, but utterly imperative.

  Needless to say, this bipartisan commitment to all-in stimulus is financial catnip to the Wall Street gamblers because they are actually capitalizing into today’s nosebleed stock prices, not the present drastically impaired economy on Main Street but a pro forma simulacrum of future prosperity based on the delusional presumption that massive debt and money-pumping actually create economic growth and wealth.

  The fact is, industrial production in August posted at a level first achieved in March 2006, and manufacturing output weighed in at levels originally attained in December 2004. So the misbegotten lockdowns and COVID-hysteria have cost the US economy 14–16 years of industrial production growth, yet this massive setback was not caused by some mysterious Keynesian-style faltering of “demand” that can allegedly be compensated for by new Fed credits plucked from thin air.

  To the contrary, the current depression is the result of the visible shutdown and quarantine orders of the state, which are likely to linger for months to come or even intensify as the fall-winter flu season arrives. Undoubtedly, the Virus Patrol will spur further outbreaks of public fear based on “bad numbers” from the CDC, which are actually an agglomeration of cases and deaths from normal influenza, pneumonia, and a myriad of life-threatening comorbidities, not pure cases of the COVID alone.

  But beguiled by “stimulus” and hopium, Wall Street completely ignores the contradiction between over-the-top demand stimulus and what amounts to supply-side contraction owing to economic martial law.

  So, at 3400 on the S&P 500, the current LTM price-to-earnings ratio ranges between 52.1 times the earnings CEOs and CFOs certify on penalty of jail time ($65 per share) or 27 times the Wall Street brush-stroked and curated version ($125 per share), from which all asset write-offs, restructuring charges, and other one-timers/mistakes have been finessed out.

  Of course, these deleted GAAP charges reflect the consumption of real corporate resources, such as purchase price goodwill that gets written off when a merger or acquisition goes sour, or the write-down of investments in factories, warehouses, and stores that get closed. As such, they absolutely do diminish company resources and shareholder net worth over time.

  But for decades now, Wall Street has so relentlessly and assiduously ripped anything that smells like a “one-timer” out of company earnings filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it no longer even knows what GAAP earnings actually are.

  And it pretends that these discarded debits (and credits) to income are simply lumpy things that even out in the wash over time. They do not.

  If ex-items reporting was merely a neutral smoothing mechanism, reported GAAP earnings and “operating earnings” would be equal when aggregated over several years, or even a full business cycle.

  Yet during the last 100 quarters, there have been essentially zero instances in which reported GAAP earnings exceeded “operating income.”

  So, in aggregate terms, several trillions of corporate write-downs and losses have been swept under the rug.

  During the second quarter of 2020, for example, GAAP earnings reported to the SEC totaled $145.8 billion for the S&P 500 companies, while the ex-items earnings curated by the street posted at $222.3 billion. That amounts to the deletion of nearly $77 billion of write-downs and mistakes, and it inflated the aggregate earnings number by more than 52%.

  The game is all about goosing the earnings number in order to minimize the apparent price-to-earnings multiple, thereby supporting the fiction that stocks are reasonably valued and that nary a bubble is to be found, at least in the broad market represented by the S&P 500.

  Still, valuing the market at 52 times trailing-12-month earnings during the present parlous moment in time—or even 27 times if you want to give the financial engineering jockeys in the C-suites a hall-pass for $77 billion of mistakes and losses this quarter alone—is nothing short of nuts.

  Yet, the gamblers in the casino hardly know it.

  Wall Street has already decided that current-year results don’t matter a whit: the nosebleed-level trailing P/E multiples currently being racked up are simply being shoved into the memory hole on the presumption that the sell side’s evergreen hockey sticks will come true about four quarters into the future, and if they don’t, a heavy dose of ex-items bark-stripping will gussy up actual earnings when they come in.

  Still, if you think that a forward P/E multiple of, say, 17.5 times is just fine and that flushing the one-timers is OK, then you still need $193 per share of operating earnings by the second quarter of 2021 to justify today’s index level.

  Then again, a 54% gain in operating earnings over the next four quarters ($193 per share in the second quarter of 2021 versus $125 per share in the second quarter of 2020) is not simply a tall order; it’s downright delusional.

  International Man: What could derail the Fed’s ability to pump up the stock market casino with all this easy money? They simultaneously want zero interest rates and more inflation. It seems something has to give.

  David Stockman: Yes, what’s going to “give” sooner or later is the entire house of monetary cards erected by the Fed and its fellow-traveling global central banks over the last several decades. What they are doing is based on the triple error that inflation is too low, that deeply repressed and falsified interest rates fuel real growth, and that private savers are a hindrance to optimal economic function and need to be euthanized via confiscation of the real (after-inflation) value of their capital.

  In the first place, as Paul Volcker pointedly reminded, there is nothing in the pre-1990 textbooks that says 2.00% inflation is desirable and is to be pursued with fanatical intensity—even if actual inflation comes in only a few basis points below the magic target.

  Indeed, if the 2% target is zealously pursued via prolonged pegging of interest rates to the zero bound and the massive purchase of bonds and other securities, the result is actually inimical to economic growth and sustainable gains in real wealth.

  That’s because falsified interest rates and inflated financial asset values lead to massive malinvestment via rampant financial engineering in the corporate sector and reckless borrowing to fund transfer payments and economic waste in the public sector.

  Nor is that a mere theoretical possibility. The rolling 10-year real GDP growth rate has now fallen to just 1.5% per annum, or barely one-third of the 3–4% per year rolling averages which prevailed during the heyday of reasonably sound money and fiscal rectitude prior to 1971.

  Beyond that, there really hasn’t been any inflation shortfall from the 2% target, unless measured by the Fed’s flakey yardstick called the PCE deflator. For instance, since December 1996, when Greenspan uttered his irrational exuberance warning, the CPI is up by 2.09% per annum and the more stable 16% trimmed-mean CPI is up by 2.12% per annum.

  That hardly constitutes a “shortfall” from target, but the Eccles Building money-printers make the claim anyway because the PCE deflator gained slightly less over that 23 year period, averaging an increase of 1.71 per annum.

  The truth is, no one except groupthink besotted central bankers would think that a mere 30 basis point shortfall over more than two decades justifies the massive financial fraud of pumping trillions of fiat credit into the financial system.

  That’s especially the case because the PCE deflator drastically underweights shelter costs and doesn’t even measure the purchasing power of money against a fixed basket of goods and services over time, anyway. Instead, it is actually a tool of GDP accounting that reflects the changing mix of goods and services supplied to the household sector.

  That is to say, if someone chooses to live in a tepee and spend nearly all of their paycheck on computers, TVs, and other high-tech gadgets that have been rapidly falling in price, that doesn’t improve the exchange value of the dollar wages they earn; it just means that their tepee may be getting crowded with tech gadgets.

  The same is true of the aggregate level. Just because the mix of goods and services changes over time, that doesn’t miraculously rescue the purchasing power of the dollar from the ravages of inflation.

  Nor does it alleviate the savaging of lower- and middle-class living standards that are the direct product of the Fed’s misguided commitment to inflation targeting. In fact, during that same 23-year period, the annual rate of increase for professional services, shelter, food away from home, medical services, and education expense has been 2.6%, 2.7%, 2.8%, 3.5%, and 4.5%, respectively.

  So once you set aside the foolishness of 2% inflation targeting and the Fed’s sawed-off inflation measuring stick (the PCE deflator), what you really have is growth stunting monetary madness. There is no other way to explain a Fed balance sheet that went from $4.2 trillion on March 4 this year to $7.2 trillion by June 10.

  After all, the first $3 trillion of Fed balance sheet took nearly 100 years to generate, from its opening in 1914 to breaching the $3 trillion marker for the first time in March 2013. That the Fed has now become a monetary doomsday machine, therefore, is no longer in doubt.

  *  *  *

  The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

  

• Glenn Greenwald Shocks With Explanation On Why Mainstream Media Is Ignoring Assange Trial
  Glenn Greenwald Shocks With Explanation On Why Mainstream Media Is Ignoring Assange Trial
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 19:00

  Well-known journalist Glenn Greenwald has once again sparked intense debate on the Left by refusing to conform to any level of group-think.

  On Friday he mused about the ongoing Julian Assange extradition trial in London, offering an explanation as to why mainstream US media has seemingly dropped Assange from its radar, despite during the early years of the most bombshell WikiLeaks revelations working closely with Assange in terms of corroborating coverage.

  It’s true that one reason that the Assange prosecution – despite its extreme dangers and consequences – is receiving so little media attention is that it doesn’t have a partisan angle.

  But another is that many liberals believe their political adversaries deserve to be in prison. https://t.co/bViOmUAKDi

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 18, 2020

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  Greenwald started with a tweet acknowledging that Assange’s plight, which includes the possibility of being extradited to the United States where he faces certain life in prison, has received “little media attention” ultimately because it doesn’t have an easy partisan angle.

  “But another is that many liberals believe their political adversaries deserve to be in prison,” Greenwald stated, going on the offensive.

  And that’s where the most famous founding journalist at The Intercept began going off on liberals’ exaggeration of what Trump represents and how he came to power:

  “If you start from the premise that Trump is a fascist dictator who has brought Nazi tyranny to the US, then it isn’t that irrational to believe that anyone who helped empower Trump (which is how they see Assange) deserves to be imprisoned, hence the lack of concern about it,” Greenwald said.

  If you start from the premise that Trump is a fascist dictator who has brought Nazi tyranny to the US, then it isn’t that irrational to believe that anyone who helped empower Trump (which is how they see Assange) deserves to be imprisoned, hence the lack of concern about it.

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 18, 2020

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  Essentially Greenwald is saying, ‘no, Trump is not a Nazi’ — and this flawed belief will only compound errors when it comes to other pressing issues such as Assange’s fate.

  Greenwald previously addressed the “authoritarian arguments” which claimed the WikiLeaks founder does not deserve journalistic protections.

  One of the most dangerous and authoritarian arguments you’ll hear from those who support Trump DOJ’s attempt to imprison Assange is that it doesn’t endanger press freedoms because “Assange is not a journalist.” Leave side the huge stories he’s broken & journalism prizes he won… pic.twitter.com/J94n5E5tMO

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 9, 2020

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  Earlier this month President Trump shocked many national security state insiders by suggesting be might be open to pardoning Edward Snowden.

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  While the Assange case would no doubt be a much higher hurdle for Trump in terms of the ‘deep state’ fierce pushback that would be sure to follow any similar consideration, it remains a possibility, especially were to Trump take the White House again after November.

  

• Nuclear Scenario For Markets Emerges In 'Jaw-Dropping' SCOTUS/Election Plot-Twist
  Nuclear Scenario For Markets Emerges In ‘Jaw-Dropping’ SCOTUS/Election Plot-Twist
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 18:00

  “If the script were being written, this would be the plot-twist that would drop jaws in the theater…”

  That is the dramatic (and rightfully so) introduction to a tweet thread by Jake Sherman describing the potential playbook for the next few months as election campaigning and the SCOTUS-nomination-process mutate into what could potentially be a “nuclear option” for markets into year end… and the start of 2021.

  Here are the highlights from Sherman’s view on the potentially cataclysmic events over the next few weeks:

  45 DAYS before Election Day, the Notorious RBG — the left’s most-beloved and celebrated jurist — dies, and @senatemajldr, the left’s most-hated lawmaker who is also up for re-election, vows a floor vote on President DONALD TRUMP’S nominee to the Sup Court. 

  THE U.S. CAPITOL will be center stage over the next 15 weeks until the end of 2020, as the Congress considers this open Supreme Court seat. 

  THIS IS, QUITE LITERALLY, a mesh of MCCONNELL’S most animating interests: power and judicial nominees. The left frequently says that MCCONNELL is obsessed with power — and nothing but power. There is some truth to that — MCCONNELL is acutely aware of what is afforded to him by being the majority leader, and he says it quite frequently: He controls what comes up for a vote, and what doesn’t and when. 

  HE USES THAT POWER and that leverage with maximum impact. you should expect that here, w a chance to reshape the court for decades to come & a better than even chance of slipping into the minority, @senatemajldr will leverage every ounce of power afforded to him to fill this seat 

  MCCONNELL has made his promise plain:“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” 

  PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT MCCONNELL DOESN’T SAY: He doesn’t say when. Rushing the nomination could hurt some vulnerable senators. But it could also guarantee Republicans a Supreme Court seat. As WaPo’s put it:“[T]his is a rare moment where a congressional caucus leader’s short-term & long-term interests seriously diverge, his/her immediate interests vs legacy. Fascinating political power play ahead.” 

  HOW HE’S FRAMING IT TO HIS COLLEAGUES: MCCONNELL wrote GOP senators:“This is not the time to prematurely lock yourselves into a position you may later regret. … I urge you all to be cautious and keep your powder dry until we return to Washington.”

  SO, EXPECT a nomination and hearings before the election, but not necessarily a vote.

  • IS IT POSSIBLE that he tries to squeeze a vote in before Election Day? Yes. Absolutely — especially if TRUMP demands it 

  • IS IT POSSIBLE that he pushes the vote until after the election, both as a practical matter to help his vulnerable colleagues, and a motivating factor for his base? Yep. Absolutely. 

  • IS IT POSSIBLE JOE BIDEN wins the presidency, Republicans lose the Senate and MCCONNELL jams through the nominee in the lame duck? Yes, you bet. Can Democrats do anything besides bellyache? No. They can’t. 

  Despite what you will hear from the left in the coming days, CHUCK SCHUMER’S power is exceedingly limited. Senate Dems have scheduled a 1 p.m. caucus call (h/t MARIANNE LEVINE) to discuss their options. 

  REMINDER: If MARK KELLY beats MARTHA MCSALLY in Arizona, he could be sworn in at the end of November, altering the tight majority that MCCONNELL has to work with. It would then be 52-48. This seems like a very live option. 

  YES, Lindsey Graham has said a number of times that Senate should not consider a nominee in the last year of a president’s term. He said it in 2016 during a Judiciary hearing. He said it to @JeffreyGoldberg in 2018 — if a nominee comes in TRUMP’S last term, he wanted to wait 

  DOES THAT MEAN, that GRAHAM – in a neck-in-neck race for re-election – will stay true to that? No. Absolutely not. In July, he appeared to walk back his 2018 comments in an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju:

  Asked about his past opposition to moving a nominee in a presidential election year after the primary season, Graham said:

  “After Kavanaugh, I have a different view of judges,” referencing the brutal 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

  “I’d like to fill a vacancy. But we’d have to see. I don’t know how practical that would be,” Graham told CNN Monday. “Let’s see what the market would bear.”

  YOU WILL HEAR A LOT OF REPUBLICANS say it’s dangerous to have a 4-4 court going into an election, but there was a 4-4 court going into the last election… There are a number of Republican senators to watch very closely in the coming days. They will get peppered with several questions: Should the SENATE wait until next year to confirm a nominee? And, would you vote no if MCCONNELL put it on the floor? Is a lame-duck vote appropriate?

  While the script above is key, the punchline for markets is the all too real possibility of a deadlocked 4-4 SCOTUS vote deciding what may be the most contested election in US history should Republicans fail to gather the votes to fill the vacant supreme court seat before the election.

  And sure enough, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has already fired the proverbial first shot, confirming she would not vote to replace a Supreme Court justice until after the inauguration.

  “When Republicans held off Merrick Garland because nine months prior to the election was too close, we needed to let the people decide,” Murkowski said in August, according to The Hill.

  “And I agreed to do that. If we say now that months prior to the election is OK when nine months is not, that is a double standard and I don’t believe we should do it.”

  Now where have we seen this before?

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  Murkowski’s statements echo that of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow moderate and the only other pro-choice Republican in the Senate.

  “I think that’s too close, I really do,” Collins said when asked whether she would vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice in October. Collins also said that she would oppose seating a justice in the lame duck session of Congress if President Donald Trump loses the election in November.

  Collins made her position official in a Saturday tweet saying the Senate should wait until after the election for the vote (although as some have noted, she doesn’t make any promises on how she would vote if/when a vote is called).

  My statement on the Supreme Court vacancy: pic.twitter.com/jvYyDN5gG4

  — Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) September 19, 2020

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  Add to this the outcome risk from the Mark Kelly vs Martha McSally special election in Arizona (where Kelly has a steady lead), and a 4-4 SCOTUS deciding the next president suddenly looks very real.

  Simply put, the political quagmire unleashed by the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaves the market in an even more precarious position since if a contested election was a source of great uncertainty before, a 4-4 SCOTUS extends that uncertainty even further as we already know there will be no concessions for weeks, and the extensions of mail-in ballots will merely add fuel to the fire of what is shaping up as the most contested election in US history.

  In short, this is the “worst case scenario” – that JPMorgan just warned about last week  when envisioning a contested election’s impact on markets – on steroids, since The Fed has nothing new to offer and fiscal stimulus will definitely be off the table now until an election decision is made, a decision that may not comes for months without a SCOTUS tiebreaker vote.

  Back in July, Goldman’s David Kostin wrote that one of the key concerns expressed by its clients is that a contested election could drag on, resulting in little clarity for weeks if not months, in a rerun of the contested 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, when it took a Supreme Court challenge and 34 days for the winner to be decided. This is what Goldman said then:  

  Health concerns and social distancing protocols suggest that more voters than ever will decide not to cast ballots at traditional polling stations on Election Day and instead vote by mail. In the case of a close election, it will take time to count – and invariably re-count – all the absentee and mail-in ballots. The deadline for each state to certify its result and finalize electors is December 8th (35 days after the election) or six days before the Electoral College convenes on December 14th (first Monday after the second Wednesday in December).

  Echoing this, Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte wrote that the pricing of VIX futures with November and December expiries are likely too sanguine that there will be a quick and clear outcome of the elections.

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  Then last week, JPM’s chief equity strategist Misla Matejka joined this chorus of warnings about a contested election result, which he sees as the “worst-case scenario” for the market (Matejka also sees a contested election as the top risk for market performance into the year-end), adding that potential legislative paralysis could be “even more damaging” than Bush vs Gore for economy, as key stimulus measures to support economy could be delayed until well after the election:

  The 2000 US presidential election between Bush and Gore provides a precedent for this. Equity markets struggled in the period following elections, with S&P500 dropping close to 12%.

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  Fast forward 20 years, when “in the current scenario,” JPM believes that “the potential legislative paralysis could be even more damaging for the economy, as key stimulus measures to support the economy might be delayed, and the partisanship is very elevated.”

  Finally, the same point was underscored by Artemis Capital CIO who earlier today also wrote that “vol markets value the US election as a massive binary risk event that occurs at one point-in-time (like earnings in a stock)” However, “the real risk is a contested election and US constitutional crisis that occurs throughout time.  If the latter comes to pass, forward vol is very mispriced.“

  Vol markets value the US election as a massive binary risk event that occurs at one point-in-time (like earnings in a stock)

  The real risk is a contested election and US constitutional crisis that occurs throughout time

  If the latter comes to pass, forward vol is very mispriced

  — Christopher Cole (@vol_christopher) September 14, 2020

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  Putting all this into one chart, this is what the confusion and uncertainty heading into the election looked like before the death of RBG:

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  And now to all this add the potential “nuclear option” for markets of a contested election AND a deadlocked 4-4 SCOTUS (as  Roberts again makes a “surprise” flip) failing to declare a winner, unlike the Bush v Gore 2000 election. What happens then? For the presidency, for the economy, for geopolitics, and for the stock market?

  * *  *

  The script – as bizarre at it appears – has now been written and stocks just have to start “weighing” the risks more efficiently; Sunday night futures open will be fun to watch.

  

• ActBlue Raises Record $50 Million Following Ginsburg Death
  ActBlue Raises Record $50 Million Following Ginsburg Death
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 17:30

  Left-wing fundraising organization ActBlue raised a staggering $50 million by 4 p.m. ET on Saturday following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to the Associated Press.

  Hey reporters wondering if this SCOTUS news is motivating Democrats. Here is a chart of donations to our fund to help elect Democrats to the Senate. Donate (or watch the number go up) here: https://t.co/KGWmpELi2L pic.twitter.com/XCEk21Wnyh

  — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) September 19, 2020

  According to their online web tracker, donations flew in at over $100,000 per minute just hours after Ginsburg’s death – accelerated after Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that the Senate would hold a vote on Ginsburg’s seat, according to Breitbart.

  “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” said McConnell on Friday evening.

  Joe Biden’s presidential campaign also appeared to use Ginsburg’s death to raise money ahead of the election in November via an email that vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) sent. The email also reiterated that “voters should pick a President, and that President should select a successor” for Ginsburg. –Breitbart

  “We cannot let them win this fight. Millions of Americans are counting on us to stand up, right now, and fight like hell to protect the Supreme Court — not just for today, but for generations to come,” stated the email from Harris. “The work of holding Senate Republicans accountable to the standard they set in 2016 starts now. To Joe and me, it is clear: The voters should pick a President, and that President should select a successor to Justice Ginsburg.”

  “But we know, like you do, that the most important thing we can do to protect that legacy is not just winning the White House, but electing a Senate majority that will confirm fair-minded Supreme Court appointees who believe in equal justice under the law …  That’s why I’m asking you today to fight alongside me and to make sure that when the time comes, President Joe Biden can appoint a justice to Justice Ginsburg’s seat who will uphold the rule of law and fight for all of us “

  ActBlue has come under fire in recent weeks after nearly half of the group’s 2019 donations were revealed to be from anonymous donors who listed themselves as unemployed.

  “After downloading hundreds of millions of [dollars in] donations to the Take Back Action Fund servers, we were shocked to see that almost half of the donations to ActBlue in 2019 claimed to be unemployed individuals,” said John Pudner, president of conservative political group, Action Fund. “The name of employers must be disclosed when making political donations, but more than 4.7 million donations came from people who claimed they did not have an employer. Those 4.7 million donations totaled $346 million ActBlue raised and sent to liberal causes.“

  “It is hard to believe that at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate was less than 4 percent, that unemployed people had $346 million dollars to send to ActBlue for liberal causes,” Pudner continued, adding that “4.7 million donations from people without a job … raised serious concerns.”

  Notably, by mid-June, ActBlue had contributed $119,253,857 to Biden – a figure which remained unchanged until at least July. As of this writing, they have contributed $194 million – an increase of $75 million.

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  They’ve also been scrutinized for taking a boatload of anonymous gift card donations valued at $100 or less.

  The recent surge in donations related to RBG, however, may just be from panicked Democrats who desperately want Joe Biden to win in November.

  Idk where this came from, but Jesus Christ this lady is unhinged. Why is it that every time something upsets leftists, they act crazier than my psych patients?#RBG #RBGFreakout #freakout #rage #RuthBaderGinsburg #RBGRIP #Election2020 #publicfreakout #WORLDSTAR pic.twitter.com/O54rANoyHc

  — NCK Liberty (@NCKLiberty) September 19, 2020

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• France Suffers Another Daily COVID-19 Record As New York Reports Most Cases Since Early June: Live Updates
  France Suffers Another Daily COVID-19 Record As New York Reports Most Cases Since Early June: Live Updates
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 17:14

  Summary:

  • As COVID cases rise, mortality falls
  • California suffers 100 new COVID deaths
  • Arizona surge eases
  • ULK cases top 4k for 2nd day
  • NY reports most new cases since early June
  • US on track for second day of 49k cases
  • US reports nearly 50k cases
  • France sees sudden jump in deaths
  • Russia tops 6k new cases for first time since mid-July
  • UK PM considers whether to “go further” with new restrictions
  • Indonesia reports record jump in new cases

  * * *

  Update (1645ET): Some of the biggest COVID-19 news out of the US and Europe on Saturday is coming out of California and France. In the Golden State, new cases came in slightly above the 14-day average: The state reported 4,304 new coronavirus cases, compared with the 14-day average of 3,350. The state reported 100 new deaths, compared with 91 yesterday. California has counted a total of 14,912 cases.

  France’s daily coronavirus cases surged to the highest since the national lockdown ended in May. Another 13,498 cases were reported on Saturday, the second straight day of 13,000+ new cases. The higher numbers reflect increased testing to a degree, as the country runs 5x the number of tests seen in May.

  New York reported 986 cases, the most since early June, while Arizona’s recent spike tapered as the state added 610 infections, compared with double that number reported Friday and nearly triple the day before. The 0.3% rise on Saturday was slightly less than the average 0.4% daily increase of the previous seven days. Total cases are now 213,551. The death toll declined to 16, the lowest in five days, for a total of 5,467.

  Finally, in the UK, officials reported 4,422 new cases on Saturday, reporting the most new infections since May 8 for the second day. Another 27 people died.

  * * *

  Update (1615ET): Early readings on the number of new COVID-19 cases reported Saturday suggests that the US outbreak has continued to accelerate, with another daily reading just shy of 50k new cases. Reuters reported an increase of 49,575 cases bringing the total to 6,706,374. The number of deaths in the US increased by 983 to 198,099, placing it even closer to the 200k threshold.

  While the number of confirmed cases appears to be accelerating in the US and Europe, around the world, the number of deaths from the virus has remained subdued. As Bloomberg reports, since COVID-19 first arrived in the US, doctors have gone from “fumbling in the dark” to developing a better understanding of which drugs work.

  They’ve also learned new techniques, and discovered some early misconceptions may have had deadly consequences. For example, doctors have learned not to place patients on ventilators so quickly.

  “Health-care preparedness today is much better than it was in February and March,” Badley said in an interview. “We have better and more rapid access to diagnosis. We have more knowledge about what drugs to use and what drugs not to use. We have more experimental treatments available. All of those contribute to possible improvements in the mortality rate.”

  Treating patients with steroids or blood thinners early on can also help, doctors have found, as can positioning patients on their stomachs, a technique known as prone positioning.

  The report comes one day after the EU’s medical regulator, the EMA, endorsed dexamethasone as the EU’s second approved treatment for COVID-19.

  Globally, some 230k+ new COVID-19 cases were confirmed yesterday. We’re still waiting for the initial reading on Saturday’s number.

  * * *

  US cases accelerated again on Friday, with the US adding nearly 50k, or 49,299 new cases (+0.7%), bringing the total for the country to 6,688,827. However , the spike appears to be driven largely by an increase in testing rates, as schools reopen, and states including Texas and Hawaii roll back more social distancing restrictions.

  The 0.7% increase is slightly higher than the 7-day average of +0.6% for the daily spike, according to Bloomberg.

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  Outbreaks are flaring in states across the Midwest including Wisconsin, Missouri and the Dakotas, while some states that have gotten outbreaks under control have seen cases edge higher again. Still, the US outbreak has slowed substantially from its springtime peak.

  Globally, cases topped 30 million earlier this week, with the global death toll rapidly closing in on the 1 millions mark. Meanwhile, deaths in the US are right around 200,000 (depending on whose numbers one uses). The chart above, courtesy of the Atlantic’s COVID-19 Tracking Project, includes all probable and confirmed cases.

  As the situation worsens in Europe, Germany added more than 2,000 new cases for the second consecutive day. Germany added 2,179 cases on Friday as infections increasing at a pace not seen since April.

  In Southeast Asia, Indonesia reported another daily record on Saturday, recording 4,168 new infections, bringing the total figure to 240,687. The death toll, meanwhile, has hit 9,448.

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  The health ministry reported a sudden jump in the country’s COVID-19 death toll on Friday, reporting 154 new deaths, bringing its total to 31,249. That’s a four-month high in the daily death, according to Reuters, and triple the level of daily deaths from the last three weeks.

  That figure included 76 deaths registered in a hospital near Paris, according to an explanatory note issued online by Santé Publique France, the French health agency. This isn’t the first time the country has retroactively added a bunch of deaths all at once, leading to several massive spikes in the country’s daily totals, which must be explained.

  “This data catch-up concerns 237 admission files, including 76 deaths…which explains the increase in the number of deaths reported to date,” the health agency said.

  Rising daily totals in the UK have prompted London Mayor Sadiq Khan to consider a “local” lockdown, even though the city’s downtown streets remain mostly empty. An upsurge of cases in the UK prompted Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon to request an emergency four-way meeting of the constituent countries to coordinate their policy response. UK PM Boris Johnson said that he’s weighing whether to “go further” with new COVID-19 restrictions.

  Further east, Russia reported 6,065 new cases, the first time the country has topped the 6k mark since July 19.

  Finally, Argentina extended a nation-wide lockdown to Oct. 11, allowing provincial authorities to determine the specific measures. As Argentina struggles, Brazil continued to report nearly 40k new cases (39,797 to be exact), bringing the total to almost 4.5 million, while deaths increased by 858 to 135,793.

  President Jair Bolsonaro responded to the news by proclaiming that “stay-at-home is for weak people,” during an event in Mato Grosso state.

  

• Amazon Keeps Spreading Across America, Plans 1000 Warehouses In Suburban Neighborhoods
  Amazon Keeps Spreading Across America, Plans 1000 Warehouses In Suburban Neighborhoods
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 17:00

  Amazon is doubling down on ultra-fast deliveries with plans to open 1,000 small delivery centers across U.S. metro areas and suburbs, according to Bloomberg. The expansion will allow the e-commerce giant to take on Target and Walmart. 

  “The facilities, which will eventually number about 1,500, will bring products closer to customers, making shopping online about as fast as a quick run to the store. It will also help the world’s largest e-commerce company take on a resurgent Walmart.” 

  The small warehouses would support Amazon’s efforts to provide customers with two-day and or one-day deliveries for specific items, even if a demand surge is seen. The primary strategy here is to compete with Walmart and Target’s same-day delivery schemes. 

  Bloomberg explains the strategy behind additional micro warehouses: 

  “Historically, Amazon gnawed away at brick-and-mortar rivals from warehouses on the exurban fringes, where it operated mostly out of sight and out of mind. That worked fine when the company was promising to get products to customers in two days. Now Walmart and Target Corp. are using their thousands of stores to beat Amazon at its own game by offering same-day delivery of online orders. Walmart also recently started is own Prime-style subscription service, upping the competitive ante.” 

  The new strategy is already working at a fulfillment center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, situated near a dead mall, and down the street from more than 600,000 people.

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  Amazon’s plan to add micro fulfillment centers is in response to its handling of the virus pandemic. The company had to suspend many non-essential items to deal with the increased demand following the coronavirus outbreak. This created a public backlash for slow shipping times. Customers started to abandon the e-commerce giant for quicker shipping options with Walmart and Target. 

  During March and April, Amazon announced 175,000 new hires to keep up with demand. Even after lockdowns eased, people continued to order online as the coronavirus cases surged in the summer. Amazon hired 100,000 additional workers in September ahead of the holiday season. 

  “In just a few years, Amazon has built its own UPS,” said Marc Wulfraat, president of the logistics consulting firm MWPVL International Inc., who estimates Amazon will deliver 67% of its own packages this year and increase that to 85%. “Amazon keeps spreading itself around the country, and as it does, its reliance on UPS will go away.”

  Amazon has also been in talks with the largest mall owner in the U.S., Simon Property Group, where anchor department stores could be transformed into Amazon distribution hubs. Bloomberg noted:

  “Department stores such as J.C. Penney are often two stories and lack sufficient loading capacity, they said, meaning they require extensive remodeling to accommodate an Amazon delivery hub. Moreover, mall leases with existing tenants often prohibit the owner from introducing a delivery hub that could spoil the shopping experience, and city officials might not quickly approve an industrial use in a retail area. It’s more likely that dead malls will be bulldozed to make way for an Amazon warehouse, as they have in the Midwest, than for an Amazon delivery station to sprout in a half-vacant mall to coexist with Kay Jewelers and Cinnabon.” 

  If Amazon does, in fact, sign a deal with Simon to transform some of America’s dead malls into micro fulfillment centers, this could be bad news for investors betting against CMBX 6.

  Along with plans for micro fulfillment centers, Amazon was recently granted federal approval to operate fleets of delivery drones. This could mean, one day, Amazon Prime Air will make last-mile trips from small fulfillment centers to customers’ homes in 30 minutes to a few hours.

  

• 'Bias Virus'? Legal Org Warns Universities Against "Unconstitutional" COVID Policies
  ‘Bias Virus’? Legal Org Warns Universities Against “Unconstitutional” COVID Policies
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 16:30

  Authored by Ben Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

  Southeastern Legal Foundation sent letters to three public universities, demanding they stop discriminating against students because of their conservative viewpoints.

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  SLF, a public interest law firm that advocates limited government, individual liberty, and free enterprise, is asking Florida Atlantic University, East Carolina University, and the University of South Florida to consider how its selective COVID-19 enforcement confuses and discriminates.

  According to SLF, Florida Atlantic University is currently preventing students from tabling on campus to recruit for their extracurricular clubs, while administrators praise in-person protests about racial inequality.

  Our student-athletes, coaches and staff are committed to creating 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚.

  📍 The Voice of Change Protest pic.twitter.com/xyHUyTIjyA

  — #WinningInParadise (@FAUAthletics) September 10, 2020

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  “It is unclear to students whether the University seeks to ban tabling on campus outright, or whether the University has alternative locations that it wants students to use,” SLF’s letter to FAU states.

  “If the former, the University would run afoul of the Constitution and Florida law, which demand that public areas of campus be available for speech subject to reasonable restrictions. Banning tabling outright—for COVID or other reasons—is not reasonable.”

  Likewise, East Carolina University has banned all events with more than 50 people, even referring 17 students to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities “for violations of rules against large gatherings in off-campus locations,” SLF’s letter to that school states.

  Just weeks before, the letter continues, athletes, coaches, and administrators hosted a large outdoor protest during which six feet of separation was not maintained. SLF asserts that this points to viewpoint discrimination.

  “Unless a university can demonstrate a compelling government interest, content-based restrictions cannot survive judicial review,” the letter explains.

  “A university must show that its speech restriction is content-neutral and only restricts the time, place, or manner of speech.”

  The University of South Florida similarly prohibits all student organizations from meeting in-person, yet allowed the Students for a Democratic Society club to host a protest in honor of Jacob Blake, SLF alleges. The SFL reminds the university that “protecting the public health is paramount during these unprecedented times, but these protections must not come at the expense of our Constitution.”

  University of South Florida Director of Media Relations Adam Freeman provided Campus Reform with a response to the SFL’s letter. 

  The university’s general counsel says that the school’s “existing use of space policies were developed as viewpoint neutral, the reopening policy continued that practice and was developed to focus on ensuring the best possible learning environment in compliance with state and federal guidance.”

  The university says it is committed to applying COVID-19 regulations “equitably and in the interest of the health of the university community.”

  FAU and ECU did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication. 

  

• Tug Of War Across Markets Hides "Trade Of A Lifetime"
  Tug Of War Across Markets Hides “Trade Of A Lifetime”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 16:00

  Another day, another set of market takes, warning that the recent advent of helicopter money – which resulted in a mind-boggling $21 trillion in policy stimulus, roughly a quarter of global GDP, in just the past 6 months – will lead to a 1970’s style stagflation,  runaway inflation and – perhaps for some – the trade of a lifetime.

  In his latest Bear Trap Report, author Larry McDonald writes that “the trade of a lifetime is found in a growing tug of war across markets.” He is referring to the ongoing clash – and most important topic in finance today – between inflation and deflation. As he adds, investors are focused on obvious deflation risk, “but the side effects of the $15 Trillion of fiscal and monetary spending globally are underappreciated” (it’s really $21 trillion according to BofA but at that number of zeroes does it really matter).

  And while everybody knows the COVID-19 tragedy poses a significant deflation risk – the signs are on every street corner, in McDonalds’ view, “the ‘unexpected’ we must be positioned for is Trillions in fiscal stimulus oozing into the economy after this virus has been snuffed out.” This is a topic we touched on last week in “Trump Agrees With Powell: “Much Higher” Fiscal Stimulus Is Needed… And Why That Could Crash Stocks“, in which we pointed out that Powell’s clear invocation of more fiscal stimulus during the FOMC presser is what catalyzed the break in the market’s upward momentum as tech names were furiously sold off.

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  And while going into the FOMC reflation was largely “left for dead” as the sharp rebound in the QQQs following the early September swoon showed, McDonald now sees last week’s outperformance of the XME Metals & Materials ETF as the first heartbeat of a Phoenix coming back to life, “the GENESIS of a significant leg higher.”

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  Furthermore, he notes, “we don’t even need real inflation for commodities to shine looking forward. The consensus is so skewed to further deflation that even the slightest change in expectations will lead to meaningful outperformance from commodity-sensitive risk assets relative to the S&P 500.”

  There’s more: Powell himself may be sending markets a message and not just in the Fed’s sudden halt of corporate bond and ETF purchases in August. This is what McDonald said about the key message from last week’s FOMC:

  We believe the most important takeaway from this week’s FOMC meeting comes down to Chairman Powell feebly attempting to parse between QE and forward rates guidance. On Wednesday, the Fed gave “powerful forward guidance” of zero rate hikes for as far as the eye can see, but was unable to provide any forward guidance on asset purchases – Powell refused to answer the question twice in the press conference. With conviction, we believe this is significant and the probability of a Nasdaq crash has risen meaningfully.

  In our view, Chair Powell is sending Congress and SoftBank a very clear message. The last thing the FOMC wants right now? To get back into a “2010-2016” like-situation where politicians keep piling all the heavy lifting on central banks. Now, that would be deflationary (Sequestration, Tea Party)! The second last thing the FOMC wants right now is excessive speculation in the Nasdaq – if it pops like the dot-com bubble, it would require even more help from the Fed. They want to let some air out of the balloon, without disrupting financial conditions on Main St.

  And while the Fed also gave the ducks doves what they wanted by indefinitely extending QE (which remains at a tune of $120BN/monthly), the question that Powell refused to answer is what is the definition of indefinitely: 3 months? 12 months? 3 years?

  Not only did the Fed NOT answer the question, but Powell left the door open for LESS balance sheet accommodation. This ladies and gentleman, is the sword thrusted into the side of the beast that is the Nasdaq. A ferocious bull is wounded.

  To be sure the market is clearly starting to appreciate the growing double threat of a potential reflationary spillover from tens of trillions in stimulus and the Fed’s “not so dovish” twist Powell didn’t offer investors certainty on the balance sheet expansion policy path, which according to Bear Traps “was a shot across the bow” and “the bottom line, for big tech to command today’s lofty valuations, balance sheet expansion certainty is needed from the Fed.”

  The result: the worst September for the Nasdaq since Q4 2018:

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  At this point, and likely true to its name, the Bear Traps report turns fatalistic warning that “A lot of pain has been inflected, the bulls will try and buy the dips into quarter-end, September 30th. We see a crash by October 10th, sell EVERY rally.”

  That may be a bit extreme, because the muscle memory of traders is still buzzing with the expectation that a market crash will merely prompt the Fed to go back to its monetary stimulus roots, and as such instead of selling traders may well resume buying having already priced in the necessary step of Fed intervention (which however requires another market crash). So the sequence of events, especially with Trump desperate to demonstrate a strong stock market into the election, is not quite so clear to us.

  However, one thing that is clear is that the market remains solidly in the deflation camp, which in turn reveals what the Bear Traps report contends is the story of the month, namely “the growth to value tremors have been revisiting with intensity, the ‘quake’ is coming.”

  This can be seen in the chart of Russell growth to value below…

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  … and zoomed in, where said tremors have seen the ratio peak at an all time high in arly September, and then quickly reversing to three month lows in what may be the start of an epic mean reversion.

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  So is long Value/short Growth the trade of a lifetime?

  According to McDonald as long as the RLG Russel Growth vs. RLV Russell Value ratio stays under 1.85, “the long value trade is a home-run” as more and more investing legends – Druckenmiller, Einhorn, Melkman, Greenspan, Sherman/Gundlach, and co – publicly talk-up inflation risk:

  “The natives are restless, real money asset managers are listening. Capital is starting to exit growth, nearly $1T last 10 days.”

  And the cherry on top: a Bridgewater implosion:

  “In our view, the modern risk-parity model is about to collapse and is in store for a colossal face-lift (risk parity = long equities and extra-long bonds).”

  Why? Because a “convexity climax” would mean that by the time we actually see inflation, it will be far too late to protect a bond portfolio.

  Today, an extra $70T in fixed income globally sits with less than 1.0% in yield, this comes with a steep price. After a long decade of austerity, Brexit, trade wars, and Covid19; bond investors have fallen into a deep sleep. Every extra dollar placed in this ocean of risk changes the formula. The market’s reaction function will join us FAR before inflation actually appears. It’s already happening today. Hence, the latest commodity bid, you don’t see 35% one-month moves in Silver very often.

  Without going into too much depth, there are countless underlying inflation drivers which both the Fed and Congress have already put in play.

  A shift from just in time global supply chain to increased domestic manufacture as a counterpoise to China’s Belt and Road policy is a safe forecast. This will cause a huge demand for labor. The Phillips Curve won’t remain flat under that scenario. The younger generations as a rule are sensitized to environmental concerns. As the USA and Europe become more green, associated costs will cause extra price pressure. In sum, inflation is a quite complex phenomenon, and thus is unlikely to have a simple, obvious cause. This explains why academia has failed to arrive at a nice, neat simple explanatory model for inflation.

  Right now we have massive money creation, massive fiscal stimulus, and strong social forces combining to create an inflation juggernaut. Stocks and bonds will both enter a secular bear market, debt as a percentage of GDP will continue to climb, nominal tax rates on the rich will increase, Central Banks will remain accommodative at least for the medium term, and money supply will continue to expand. Most important of all, wages will go higher. The risk-parity trade is dead. Over the next twelve months we will bury it and read its last rites.

  It’s not just McDonald: another inflationary prediction comes from BofA CIO Michael Hartnett who gives two reasons why inflation assets will outperform:

  • Gold vs Treasuries at critical US/EU debt crises highs of 2011/12 (Chart 2); new highs in gold & Chinese renminbi = US dollar debasement (Chart 13); lower gold & higher real yields (last trough was 2012) = Great Rotation; in both scenarios inflation assets would outperform.

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  • Oil vs US stocks close to 90-year lows; today 1 share of SPY ETF buys 8 barrels of oil, was just 1 barrel in 2008.

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  Finally, in evaluating a near-term trigger, McDonald notes that “as Congress delivers the next fiscal care package, hand in hand with a vaccine cocktail coming to market in the months ahead, it will be a reflation investors delight. These two engines will be the trade’s rocket fuel, propelling the investment thesis from the early to “middle innings.” Months from now, Powell may look very wise in NOT offering up “certainty in balance sheet accommodation” ahead of Congress and Vaccines. He kept his powder dry.”

  But what if Congress fails to deliver this year as the constant bickering between Pelosi and McConnell strongly suggests? Well, then the deflation camp has another party, potentially resulting in a 10-20% drawdown. However, it is precisely that market stress that will force the classic policy response out of Capital Hill. The conclusion: “This New Deal on roids will have one anchor tenant as large scale infrastructure spending will join us early next year – next, commodities and value crush growth stocks in 2021.”

  

• Secret Service Intercepts 'Highly Toxic' Poison Ricin Mailed To White House
  Secret Service Intercepts ‘Highly Toxic’ Poison Ricin Mailed To White House
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 15:45

  Just as the presidential race has been upended by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Secret Service has intercepted a piece of mail addressed to the White House containing the lethal poison ricin, according to media reports.

  It’s not clear where or when the mail was intercepted, though authorites are saying the letter may have been sent from Canada, per the NYT.

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  Ricin is made from the by-products of producing castor oil, which is made from the castor oil plant, otherwise known as Ricinus communis. It’s a highly potent toxin, and it has no known antidote. The poison gained renewed notoriety after being featured in a notable plot arch from the TV show “Breaking Bad”.

  The White House hasn’t yet commented on the news, which was first reported by the NYT and a handful of other media organizations citing unidentified sources who have reportedly been briefed on the matter.

  Though the identity of whoever sent this substance has yet to be ascertained, some on the right couldn’t help but note the timing, coming so soon after the death of Justice Ginsburg, and amid an outpouring of hysteria accusing Trump of ‘destroying American Democracy.’

  BREAKING:

  The Secret Service just intercepted a package addressed to President Trump which contained Ricin

  These are the lengths the left is willing to go to stop him from filling a Supreme Court seat.

  Pray for the president.

  — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 19, 2020

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  To be sure, some of the videos shared to social media have been pretty disturbing.

  REEEEEEEEE pic.twitter.com/FHi1vXpWbr

  — Chief “Groyper” Trumpster (Support Kenosha King) (@ChiefTrumpster) September 19, 2020

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  Back in 2013, a Mississippi man sent ricin to the White House, and a Republican senator, in a bizarre attempt to frame a rival. The lurid story got plenty of play in the press, but the culprit, James Everett Dutscke, was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.

  

• Mostly Non-Peaceful? Princeton Study Finds BLM Responsible For 91% Of Riots Over Last 3 Months
  Mostly Non-Peaceful? Princeton Study Finds BLM Responsible For 91% Of Riots Over Last 3 Months
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 09/19/2020 – 15:30

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A new study by Princeton University’s US Crisis Monitor shows that the U.S. experienced 637 riots between May 26 and Sept. 12, and 91% of those riots were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.

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  In other words, BLM was responsible for 9 out of 10 riots across the country.

  Riots are defined by the project as “demonstrations in which any demonstrators engage in violently disruptive or destructive acts (e.g. violence, looting, vandalism, etc.), as well as mob violence in which violent mobs target other individuals, property, businesses, or other groups.”

  “Forty-nine states, not counting Washington, D.C., experienced riots during that time period, the study found. California led the nation with 86 riots during that time, closely followed by Oregon with 79 riots during that time period, the data show,” reports the Daily Caller.

  Mainstream media talking heads have repeatedly asserted that the riots were either not happening on any large scale or were “mostly peaceful.”

  The statistics suggest otherwise.

  Despite attempts to spin the riots as peaceful protests, more and more Americans aren’t buying it.

  “A majority of U.S. adults (55%) now express at least some support for the movement, down from 67% in June amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd,” reported Pew.

  “The share who say they strongly support the movement stands at 29%, down from 38% three months ago.”

  When one considers the level of intimidation and bullying metered out to those who refuse to express support for BLM, the real figures are probably much lower in terms of support for Black Lives Matter.

  It’s no surprise that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are only now condemning riots, arson and looting after 4 months of mayhem.

  After initially ignoring or justifying the violence, Democrats have seen the polls and performed a total 180.

  *  *  *

  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. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

  

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• China Is Killing The Dollar
  China Is Killing The Dollar
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 23:40

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  In the wake of the Fed’s promise of 23 March to print money without limit in order to rescue the covid-stricken US economy, China changed its policy of importing industrial materials to a more aggressive stance. In examining the rationale behind this move, this article concludes that while there are sound geopolitical reasons behind it the monetary effect will be to drive down the dollar’s purchasing power, and that this is already happening.

  More recently, a veiled threat has emerged that China could dump all her US Treasury and agency bonds if the relationship with America deteriorates further. This appears to be a cover for China to reduce her dollar exposure more aggressively. The consequences are a primal threat to the Fed’s policy of escalating monetary policy while maintaining the dollar’s status in the foreign exchanges.

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  Introduction

  On 3 September, China’s state-owned Global Times, which acts as the government’s mouthpiece, ran a front-page article warning that

  “China will gradually decrease its holdings of US debt to about $800billion under normal circumstances. But of course, China might sell all of its US bonds in an extreme case, like a military conflict,” Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics told the Global Times on Thursday”.

  Do not be misled by the attribution to a seemingly independent Chinese professor: it would not have been the frontpage article unless it was sanctioned by the Chinese government. While China has already taken the top off its US Treasury holdings, the announcement (for that is what it amounts to) that China is prepared to escalate the financial war against America is very serious. The message should be clear: China is prepared to collapse the US Treasury market. In the past, apologists for the US Government have said that China has no one to buy its entire holding. The most recent suggestion is that China’s Treasury holdings will be put in trust for covid victims — a suggestion if enacted would undermine foreign trust in the dollar and could bring its reserve role to a swift conclusion. For the moment these are peacetime musings. At a time of financial war, if China put her entire holding on the market Treasury yields would be driven up dramatically, unless someone like the Fed steps in to buy the lot.

  If that happened China would then have almost a trillion dollars to sell, driving the dollar down against whatever the Chinese buy. And don’t think for a moment that if China was to dump its holding of US Treasuries other foreign holders would stand idly by. This action would probably end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency with serious consequences for the US and global economies.

  There is another possibility: China intends to sell all her US Treasuries anyway and is making American monetary policy her cover for doing so. It is this possibility we will now explore.

  China’s commodity strategy: it’s also about the dollar

  Most commentators agree that China has a long-term objective of promoting the renminbi for trade settlement. While China has made progress in this objective, they also agree that the renminbi will not challenge the dollar’s status as the reserve currency in the foreseeable future. Any changes in the relationship between the dollar and renminbi is therefore believed to be evolutionary rather than sudden.

  Recent developments have dramatically altered this perspective. China is now aggressively stockpiling commodities and other industrial materials, as well as food and other agricultural supplies. Simon Hunt, a highly respected copper analyst and China-watcher put it as follows:

  “China’s leadership started preparing further contingency plans in March/April in case relations with America deteriorated to the point that America would try shutting down key sea lanes. These plans included holding excess stocks of widgets and components within the supply chains which meant importing larger tonnages of raw materials, commodities, foods stuffs and other agricultural products. It was also an opportunity to use up some of the dollars which they have been accumulating by running down their holdings of US government paper and their enlarged trade surpluses.

  Taking copper as an example, not only will they be importing enough copper to meet current consumption needs but in addition 600-800kt to meet the additional needs of their supply chains and a further 500kt for the governed owned stockpile. The result of these purchases will leave the global copper market very tight especially in the next two years.’’

  Other than the spread of Covid-19 lockdowns outside China, there was no specific geopolitical development to trigger a change in policy towards commodities, though admittedly relationships with America are on a deteriorating path. Rather than indulging in state piracy on the high seas, fears that the US could blockade China’s imports would possibly be achieved by American action to prevent Western corporate commodity suppliers from supplying commodities — in the same manner as America controls with whom the global banking system transacts.

  China has already agreed import targets for American soya and maize, only partially delivered, due one presumes, to waiting for this year’s harvest. She has been buying soya from other cheaper sources, such as Brazil, but it is too early to say China is holding back on American imports as part of a trade negotiation strategy. It is the timing of China’s policy to enact more aggressive purchases that is interesting: it coincided with or swiftly followed the Fed’s monetary policy change in late-March embarking on an infinitely inflationary course. Figure 1 points to this relevance.

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  The pecked line divides 2020 into two parts. First, we experienced the intensifying deflationary sentiment leading to the Fed’s rate cut to zero on 16 March, and then its promise of unlimited inflation in the FOMC statement which followed on 23 March. The second part is the inflationary period that commenced at that time as a consequence of those moves. The S&P 500 index then reversed its earlier fall of 33% and started its dramatic move into new high ground, and the dollar’s trade weighted index peaked, losing about 10% since then. Gold took the hint and rose 40%, while commodities turned higher as well, gaining a more moderate 20% so far. The gold/silver ratio collapsed from 125 to 72 currently, as the monetary qualities of silver resumed an importance. The S&P GCSI commodity index was initially suppressed by the WTI futures contract delivery debacle in April, but crude oil’s recovery has resumed. Both gold and commodities are clearly adjusting to a world of accelerating monetary inflation, where bad news on the economic front will accelerate it even more.

  If China’s decision to increase the rate of importation for commodities and raw materials did occur at that time, it is very likely that rather than solely based on geopolitical reasons, the decision was driven by China’s reading of prospects for the dollar. When all commodity prices are rising, there can only be one answer, and that is the currency common to them all is losing purchasing power. And from its timing that is what appears to be at least partially behind China’s decision to accelerate purchases of a wide range of industrial and agricultural materials.

  With a reasonable level of commodity stockpiles before 23 March, China might have taken the more relaxed view of buying additional imported commodities as and when needed. But the one stockpile she has in enormous quantities is of dollars, of which about forty per cent is invested in US Treasuries and agency debt. A short trillion or so has been loaned to trading partners, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and South America, as well as partners in the land and sea silk roads. The indebtedness to China of her commodity suppliers makes further protection from American interference more difficult perhaps, supporting the thesis of China dumping dollars. Furthermore, we should add it is possible that China has hedged some of her dollar exposure anyway. If so, against what is not known but important commodities such as copper would make sense.

  That China owns and is owed massive amounts of dollars confirms her primary interest was in a stable dollar. In March she will have found that position no longer tenable. She has cleared the decks with the Global Times front-page article, which assumes America will continue to escalate trade and financial tensions, thereby ignoring China’s warning.

  The likelihood that she has now abandoned a stable dollar policy has been missed by the mainstream commentary cited at the beginning of this article, yet the consequences for the dollar will be far-reaching. China is only the first nation using dollars for its external purchases to take the view it should get out of dollars as money and into something tangible. Others, initially perhaps other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, seem bound to follow.

  The monetary consequences for America

  The switch from a deflationary outlook to one of indefinite monetary inflation commits the Fed to purchase US Treasuries without limit. For this to be achieved will require the continued suppression of the cost of the government’s funding, which in turn will assume that the consequences for prices are strictly limited, and that existing holders of US Treasuries do not turn into net sellers in unmanageable quantities. If the Fed is to succeed in its monetary objectives it will be required to absorb these sales as well, which could be on a scale to ultimately defeat the Fed’s funding efforts.

  According to the latest US Treasury TIC figures, out of a total foreign ownership of $7.09 trillion US Treasuries, China owns $1.073 trillion of which according to the Global Times $300bn will definitely be sold.[iv] But then there is the other matter of $227bn in agency debt, and $189bn in equities, which added to the remaining $800bn Treasuries after China’s planned sales tells us that there is a further amount of $1.2 trillion of securities that will be on the market “if China sells all of its US bonds in an extreme case, like a military conflict”. When an important holder begins to liquidate, others are sure to follow.

  Until recently, the US Government’s funding has not presented a problem, because the trade deficit has not been translated into a balance of payments deficit. Foreign exporters and their governments have held onto and even added to their dollars, which is how they have ended up with $20.534 trillion in securities, together with additional cash at end-June as well as T-bills and commercial bills totalling a further $6.227 trillion.

  We know the relationship between trade and deficit nations’ demand for recycled monetary capital, because the relationship between the deficits and net savings form an accounting identity, summed up by the following equation:

  (Imports – Exports) ≡ (Investment – Savings) + (Government Spending – Taxes)

  The trade deficit is equal to the excess of private sector investment over savings, plus the excess of government spending over tax revenue. In basic English, if expenditures in the domestic economy exceed the incomes produced in it, the excess expenditures will be met by an excess of imports over exports. This is further confirmed by Say’s law, which tells us we produce in order to consume. If we decrease our savings and the government increases its spending, there will be less domestic production available relative to enhanced consumption. The balance will be made up by imports, giving rise to a trade deficit.

  It follows that a decline in the currency can only be deferred for as long as importers are prepared to increase their holdings, in this case of US dollars, instead of selling them.

  So far, we have not adequately addressed the impact on monetary policy, and how it affects prices in the context of trade imbalances and capital flows. We know from the relationship of the budget deficit with the trade deficit that other things being equal the rapid increase in the US budget deficit will lead to an equally dramatic increase in the trade deficit. This is not something the US Government is prepared to tolerate, and China would become even more of a whipping boy with regard to trade.

  In terms of capital flows, China is disposing of dollars and buying commodities just at the moment the US’s budget and trade deficits are spiralling out of control. At the same time, she is adjusting her economic policies away from reliance on export surpluses to enhancing living standards for its population by promoting infrastructure spending and domestic consumption. By encouraging consumers to spend rather than save, the accounting identity discussed above tells us that China’s trade surpluses will tend to diminish, and consequently exchange rate policies will move from suppressing the renminbi exchange rate to make exports artificially profitable.

  We can see this effect in Figure 2. Given the time between a central government directive and its implementation, the turn in the yuan’s trend in May seems about right in the context of a change of commodity purchasing policies initiated by central government a month or two before.

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  In the case of the US, the accounting identity which explains how the twin deficits arise informs us that in the absence of the balance of payments surplus which America has enjoyed heretofore we must consider new territory. If foreign importers dump their dollars there are two broad outcomes. Either the quantity of dollars in circulation contracts as the exchange stabilisation fund intervenes to support the exchange rate, thereby taking them out of circulation. Or they are bought by domestic buyers, at the expense of the exchange rate but remaining in circulation. It should now be apparent that attempts to maintain the exchange rate and accelerate monetary stimulation, which is the Fed’s post-March policy, are bound to fail.

  Whether America decides to increase tariffs or ban Chinese imports altogether is immaterial to the outcome. The problem is rapidly becoming one of increasing quantities of inflationary money chasing a reducing quantity of American produced goods while imports are tariffed or blocked. And domestic production is also hampered by coronavirus lockdowns and the desire of bankers to decrease lending risk to the non-financial sector.

  Anything the US Government does in an attempt to reduce the trade deficit without reducing the budget deficit is bound to lead to additional price inflation, or put another way, a reduction in the dollar’s purchasing power. We don’t know for sure, but it is reasonable to assume the planners in Beijing will have worked at least some of this out for themselves. If so, America’s exorbitant monetary privilege will no longer be at China’s expense.

  It is increasingly difficult to see how a cliff-edge for the dollar can be avoided. Decades of benefiting from Part 1 of Triffin’s dilemma, whereby it is incumbent on the provider of a reserve currency to run deficits in order to ensure adequate currency is available for that role, is coming to an end. Those who cite Triffin tend to ignore the stated outcome; that Part 2 is the inevitable crisis that arises from Part 1. And with over 130% of current US GDP represented by dollars and securities in foreign hands, Triffin’s cliff-edge beckons.

  China’s forward planning

  If China is to prosper in a post-dollar world it must be ready to adapt its mercantile model accordingly. The evidence is that it planned a long time ago for this eventuality. Its Marxist roots from the time of Mao informed China’s economists and planners that capitalism would end inevitably with the destruction of western currencies.

  Since those days, China’s economists have adapted their views towards the macroeconomic neo-Keynesianism of Western governments. While this is a natural process, the extent to which their earlier Marxian philosophy has been changed is not clear. And while this leaves a potentially dangerous lack of theoretical understanding of money and credit, we can only assume Western currencies are still viewed as inferior to metallic money.

  It was Deng Xiaoping who led China following Mao’s death until 1989 and authorised monetary policy. And it was he who set China’s policy on gold and silver. On 15 June 1983 the State Council passed regulations handing the state monopoly of the management of the nation’s gold and silver and all related activities, with the exception of mining, to the Peoples Bank of China. Ownership of both metals by individuals and any other organisation remained unlawful until the establishment of the Shanghai Gold Exchange in 2002, since when it is estimated on the basis of withdrawals from the SGE’s vaults that publicly owned gold has accumulated to over 15,000 tonnes.

  Since then, China has moved gradually but surely to gain control over physical gold markets and to become the world’s largest miners, both in China and through the acquisition of foreign mines. The Shanghai Gold Exchange dominates physical markets both directly and through ties with other Asian gold exchanges. Joining these dots leaves one dot concealed from us; and that is the true extent of physical gold owned by the Chinese state.

  We can assume that China started from a position of some gold ownership when the 1983 regulations were enacted. The fact that precious metals other than gold and silver were excluded is in accordance with the Chinese view of gold and silver as monetary metals. And the permission for the general population to buy gold and silver on the establishment of the Shanghai Gold Exchange in 2002 suggests that in the nineteen years since 1983 the state had accumulated sufficient gold and silver for its anticipated needs.

  In Deng’s time, foreign exchange activity at the Peoples’ bank was frenetic, with inward capital flows as foreign corporations established manufacturing operations in China. From the 1990s, while these flows continued, they were more than compensated by growing trade surpluses. Taking into account these flows and the contemporary bear market in gold prices, it is possible (though not provable) that the state accumulated as much as 20,000 tonnes.

  Whatever the actual amount, little or none of this is declared as monetary gold. A strict policy of no gold exports has been enforced ever since — with the sole exception of limited quantities for the Hong Kong jewellery trade, which ends up being bought and reimported by day-trippers from the Mainland.

  Even though state economists have increasingly used neo-Keynesian policies to artificially stimulate China’s economy, we should be in no doubt about China’s Plan B. It is not for nothing that she has deliberately taken control of physical gold and even run advertising campaigns through state media, following the Lehman crisis, urging her people to acquire it.

  We cannot yet say when, how or if China will introduce gold-backing to ensure the yuan survives intact the problems faced by the dollar. But for now, with the new policy of a rising yuan illustrated in Figure 2 above, the impact on domestic costs for imported raw materials will be reduced and we can expect the yuan/dollar rate to continue to increase accordingly.

  The implications

  China’s threat to dump US Treasuries “in an extreme case, like a military conflict” is an important development for the dollar. It was a clear shot across America’s bows, and will have been seen in that context by the American administration. We have yet to see a response.

  A firm plank of American monetary policy has been to suppress the price effects of monetary inflation. In the case of commodity prices, this has been achieved through the expansion of derivative substitutes acting as artificial supply. For the moment, the deteriorating outlook for the global economy persuades the macroeconomic establishment that demand for industrial commodities and raw materials will ameliorate, leading to lower prices. But this view does not take into account the changing purchasing power of the dollar.

  At some point the threat to the dollar will be taken seriously. But before then, the political imperative in the run up to the presidential election is likely to continue and even intensify pressure on China. But China’s renewed determination to dump both dollar denominated bonds and dollars is a developing crisis for America and the Fed’s monetary policy. We can expect further threats to materialise from the Americans to China’s ownership of US Treasuries and agency bonds. It is a situation that could threaten to escalate rapidly out of control before China has disposed of the bulk of her dollar-denominated bonds.

  The certain victim will be the dollar. And as the dollar sinks, China will be blamed and tensions are bound to escalate between China and her Asian partners on one side, and America and her security partners on the other. The start of this additional crisis was the turning point last March, when the Fed publicly stated its inflation credentials. With nearly $3 trillion in its reserves, it is not surprising that China is acting to protect herself.

  With so much dollar debt and dollars in foreign ownership, it is hard to see how a substantial fall in the dollar’s purchasing power can be avoided and the Fed’s funding of the budget deficit badly disrupted.

  

• Military Confirms It Mulled Deploying Experimental 'Heat Ray' To Protect White House
  Military Confirms It Mulled Deploying Experimental ‘Heat Ray’ To Protect White House
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 23:20

  An experimental Pentagon weapon which was intended for use in varying scenarios from deterring pirates on the high seas to riot control in city streets in cases of mass unrest is subject of fresh controversy after documents of its field trials surfaced. 

  Two decades ago the DoD revealed a weapon called an Active Denial System (or ADS), nicknamed the ‘pain ray’ or also ‘heat ray’ which was capable of inflicting an invisible zap of pain upon protesters failing to disperse, or alternately could deter hostile boats approaching a battleship. 

  It works by directing a blast of energy at a target, causing subjects brief but excruciating pain – as if skin is on fire – which leaves no lasting or permanent injury. It essentially hits a subject with a blast of intense, searing heat. A 2007 field test later leaked to Wired revealed however that an airman serving as test subject was severely burned by the device.

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  This despite Raytheon scientists who developed it attempting to assure that it is completely safe and only induces temporary discomfort.

  “The nonlethal device works by emitting a microwave beam at 95 gigahertz, a specific frequency that penetrates the outermost layer of skin, creating an intense burning sensation, but not powerful enough (in theory) to cause a burn,” Yahoo News reports this week, after defense officials reportedly looked into using the pain ray to deter recent hostile rioters near the White House.

  After failing to be effective in either Iraq or Afghanistan, in part reportedly because it takes so long to power up, and it must be operated from a platform no smaller than a Humvee or other large military vehicle, Pentagon officials mulled the potential for it to be used to deter increasingly violent protests such as hit American cities this summer.

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  But it’s yet unknown what effects it might have on young children, the elderly, or on people with pre-existing health issues.

  And this is why an NPR report this week is causing so much controversy: 

  A spokesperson for Joint Forces Headquarters Command in Washington, D.C., confirmed to NPR that hours before federal police officers cleared a crowded park near the White House with smoke and tear gas on June 1, a military police staff officer asked if the D.C. National Guard had a kind of “heat ray” weapon that might be deployed against demonstrators in the nation’s capital.

  Col. Robert Phillips, a spokesperson for the Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region, or JFHQ-NCR, said the inquiry was made “as a matter of due diligence and prudent military planning.”

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  That was during the height of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests which inundated D.C. streets and especially areas around the White House.

  A prior active demonstration of how the ADS works:

  It turns out the Joint Forces Headquarters Command was informed that no heat ray weapon was available.

  The revelation still outraged civil rights activists who worry federal and state law enforcement will increasingly revert to harsher methods in repelling protests and rioting.

  

• Pepe Escobar On The Assange Trial: The Mask Of Empire Has Fallen
  Pepe Escobar On The Assange Trial: The Mask Of Empire Has Fallen
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 23:00

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  The concept of “History in the making” has been pushed to extremes when it comes to the extraordinary public service being performed by historian, former UK diplomat and human rights activist Craig Murray.

  Murray – literally, and on a global level – is now positioned as our man in the public gallery, as he painstakingly documents in vivid detail what could be defined as the trial of the century as far as the practice of journalism is concerned: the kangaroo court judging Julian Assange in Old Bailey, London.

  Let’s focus on three of Murray’s reports this week – with an emphasis on two intertwined themes: what the US is really prosecuting, and how Western corporate media is ignoring the court proceedings.

  Here, Murray reports the exact moment when the mask of Empire fell, not with a bang, but a whimper:

  “The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information.” (italics mine).

  “All journalists” means every legitimate journalist, from every nationality, operating in any jurisdiction.

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  Interpreting the argument, Murray added, “the US government is now saying, completely explicitly, in court, those reporters could and should have gone to jail and that is how we will act in future. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the “great liberal media” of the US are not in court to hear it and do not report it (italics mine), because of their active complicity in the “othering” of Julian Assange as something sub-human whose fate can be ignored. Are they really so stupid as not to understand that they are next?

  Err, yes.”

  The point is not that self-described paladins of “great liberal media” are stupid. They are not covering the charade in Old Bailey because they are cowards. They must keep their fabled “access” to the bowels of Empire – the kind of “access” that allowed Judith Miller to “sell” the illegal war on Iraq in countless front pages, and allows CIA asset and uber-opportunist Bob Woodward to write his “insider” books.

  Nothing to see here

  Previously, Murray had already detailed how “the mainstream media are turning a blind eye. There were three reporters in the press gallery, one of them an intern and one representing the NUJ. Public access continues to be restricted and major NGOs, including Amnesty, PEN and Reporters Without Borders, continue to be excluded both physically and from watching online.”

  Murray also detailed how “the six of us allowed in the public gallery, incidentally, have to climb 132 steps to get there, several times a day. As you know, I have a very dodgy ticker; I am with Julian’s dad John who is 78; and another of us has a pacemaker.”

  So why is he “the man in the public gallery”?

  “I do not in the least discount the gallant efforts of others when I explain that I feel obliged to write this up, and in this detail, because otherwise the vital basic facts of the most important trial this century, and how it is being conducted, would pass almost completely unknown to the public. If it were a genuine process, they would want people to see it, not completely minimize attendance both physically and online.”

  Unless people around the world are reading Murray’s reports – and very few others with much less detail – they will ignore immensely important aspects plus the overall appalling context of what’s really happening in the heart of London. The main fact, as far as journalism is concerned, is that Western corporate media is completely ignoring it.

  Let’s check the UK coverage on Day 9, for instance.

  There was no article in The Guardian – which cannot possibly cover the trial because the paper, for years, was deep into no holds barred smearing and total demonization of Julian Assange.

  There was nothing on The Telegraph – very close to MI6 – and only a brief AP story on the Daily Mail.

  There was a brief article in The Independent only because one of the witnesses, Eric Lewis, is one of the directors of the Independent Digital News and Media Ltd which publishes the paper.

  For years, the process of degrading Julian Assange to sub-human level was based on repeating a bunch of lies so often they become truth. Now, the conspiracy of silence about the trial does wonders to expose the true face of Western liberal “values” and liberal “democracy”.

  Daniel Ellsberg speaks

  Murray provided absolutely essential context for what Daniel “Pentagon Papers” Ellsberg made it very clear in the witness stand.

  The Afghan War logs published by WikiLeaks were quite similar to low-level reports Ellsberg himself had written about Vietnam. The geopolitical framework is the same: invasion and occupation, against the interests of the absolute majority of the invaded and occupied.

  Murray, illustrating Ellsberg, writes that “the war logs had exposed a pattern of war crimes: torture, assassination and death squads. The one thing that had changed since Vietnam was that these things were now so normalized they were classified below Top Secret.”

  This is a very important point. All the Pentagon Papers were in fact Top Secret. But crucially, the WikiLeaks papers were not Top Secret: in fact they were below Top Secret, not subject to restricted distribution. So they were not really sensitive – as the United States government now alleges.

  On the by now legendary Collateral Murder video, Murray details Ellsberg’s argument:

  “Ellsberg stated that it definitely showed murder, including the deliberate machine gunning of a wounded and unarmed civilian. That it was murder was undoubted. The dubious word was “collateral”, which implies accidental. What was truly shocking about it was the Pentagon reaction that these war crimes were within the Rules of Engagement. Which permitted murder.”

  The prosecution cannot explain why Julian Assange withheld no less than 15,000 files; how he took a lot of time to redact the ones that were published; and why both the Pentagon and the State Dept. refused to collaborate with WikiLeaks. Murray:

  “Ten years later, the US Government has still not been able to name one single individual who was actually harmed by the WikiLeaks releases.”

  Prometheus Bound 2.0

  President Trump has made two notorious references to WikiLeaks on the record: “I love WikiLeaks” and “I know nothing about WikiLeaks”. That may reveal nothing on how a hypothetical Trump 2.0 administration would act if Julian Assange was extradited to the US. What we do now is that the most powerful Deep State factions want him “neutralized”. Forever.

  I felt compelled to portray Julian Assange’s plight as Prometheus Bound 2.0. In this poignant post-modern tragedy, the key subplot centers on a deadly blow to true journalism, in the sense of speaking truth to power.

  Julian Assange continues to be treated as an extremely dangerous criminal, as his partner Stella Moris describes it in a tweet.

  Craig Murray will arguably enter History as the central character in a very small chorus warning us all about the tragedy’s ramifications.

  It’s also quite fitting that the tragedy is also a commentary on a previous era that featured, unlike Blake’s poem, a Marriage of Hell and Hell: GWOT and OCO (Global War on Terror, under George W. Bush, and Overseas Contingency Operations under Barack Obama).

  Julian Assange is being condemned for revealing imperial war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet in the end all that post-9/11 sound and fury signified nothing.

  It actually metastasized into the worst imperial nightmare: the emergence of a prime, compounded peer competitor, the Russia-China strategic partnership.

  “Not here the darkness, in this twittering world” (T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton).

  An army of future Assanges awaits.

  

• NASA To Spark "Lunar Gold Rush" In Move To Break China's Monopoly On Rare Earth Metals 
  NASA To Spark “Lunar Gold Rush” In Move To Break China’s Monopoly On Rare Earth Metals 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 22:40

  NASA wants to spark a “lunar gold rush” by paying companies to extract rare earth metals (REM) from the moon. 

  NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine recently tweeted that the space agency “is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider! It’s time to establish the regulatory certainty to extract and trade space resources.”

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  The moon holds hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars of untapped resources, including fifteen lanthanides, as well as scandium and yttrium – used in modern electronics. There’s also an abundance of Helium-3, a very rare gas, with the potential to fuel clean nuclear fusion power plants. This infographic from 911Metallurgist.com explains why NASA has set its eyes on the moon: 

  “Across history, human development has relied upon the finite resources available on Earth. But the moon – a seemingly barren rock – may actually be a treasure trove of rare resources vital to Earth’s future. And now, nations are looking upwards to a potential lunar gold rush,” 911Metallurgist.com states in the infographic’s intro. 

  ​In a blog post, Bridenstine said NASA’s Artemis project “will lay the foundation for a sustained long-term presence on the lunar surface and use the Moon to validate deep space systems and operations before embarking on the much farther voyage to Mars.” He said the push to mine moon rocks would fully comply with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which outlines no country has a sovereign claim to the moon or other celestial bodies.

  Bridenstine said, “we’re taking a critical step forward by releasing a solicitation for commercial companies to provide proposals for the collection of space resources.” 

  Adding that “when considering such proposals, we will require that all actions be taken in a transparent fashion, in full compliance with the Registration Convention, Article II and other provisions of the Outer Space Treaty, and all of our other international obligations. We are putting our policies into practice to fuel a new era of exploration and discovery that will benefit all of humanity.”

  “This is one small step for space resources, but a giant leap for policy and precedent,” Mike Gold, NASA’s chief of international relations, told Reuters.

  “They are paying the company to sell them a rock that the company owns. That’s the product,” Joanne Gabrynowicz, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, said. “A company has to decide for itself if it’s worth taking the financial and technological risk to do this to sell a rock.”

  NASA’s attempt to begin mining the moon in 2025 could be an attempt to break China’s monopoly on REMs. 

  

• Dershowitz: Why I Am Suing CNN
  Dershowitz: Why I Am Suing CNN
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 22:20

  Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

  I love the First Amendment, I support the First Amendment, I have litigated cases defending the First Amendment. I have written and taught about the First Amendment. And I was a law clerk for the Supreme Court when it rendered its landmark 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which “protects media even when they print false statements about public figures, as long as the media did not act with ‘actual malice.'”

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  But I also understand the limitations of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is designed to promote the marketplace of ideas. It is not a license for giant media companies to deliberately and maliciously defame citizens, even public figures. So when CNN made a decision to doctor a recording so as to deceive its viewers into believing that I said exactly the opposite of what I actually said, that action was not protected by the First Amendment. Here is what CNN did.

  I was asked to present the Constitutional argument against President Trump’s impeachment and removal to the United States Senate this past January. For an hour and seven minutes, I argued that if a president does anything illegal, unlawful, or criminal-like — if he commits treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors — he satisfies the criteria for impeachment under the Constitution. But if a president engages in entirely lawful conduct motivated in part by the desire to be reelected, which he believes is in the public interest, that would not constitute grounds for impeachment. Everybody seemed to understand the distinction I was drawing. Some agreed, others disagreed. But the distinction was clear between illegal conduct on the one hand, and lawful conduct on the other hand.

  Two days later I returned to the Senate to answer questions put to the lawyers by the senators. The first question to me came from Senator Ted Cruz. He asked whether a quid pro quo constituted an impeachable offense. My response was consistent with my argument two days earlier: I said that what “would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were in some way illegal.” If it was, it could constitute an impeachable offense. But if it wasn’t illegal or unlawful, the president’s political motives could not turn it into an impeachable offense. That was quite clear. Indeed, the next question from the senators was directed to the Democratic House Manager who was asked to respond to my answer. Congressman Adam Schiff, disagreed with my answer, but understood the distinction between lawful and unlawful. So did CNN. When they first showed my answer, they showed it in full, including my statement that a quid pro quo would not be impeachable so long as it was not “in some way illegal.” I then went on to say that if a president was motivated in part by his desire to be reelected, which he believes was in the public interest, that motive would not turn a lawful act into an impeachable offense.

  But then CNN made a decision to doctor and edit my recorded remarks so as to eliminate all references to “unlawful” or “illegal” conduct. They wanted their viewers to believe that I had told the Senate that a president could do anything — even commit such crimes as “bribery” and “extortion” — as long as he was motivated by a desire to be reelected. That, of course, was precisely the opposite of what I said. And that is precisely the reason by CNN edited and doctored the tape the way they did: namely to deliberately create the false impression that I had said the president could commit any crimes in order to be reelected, without fear of impeachment.

  CNN then got its paid commentators to go on the air, broadcast the doctored recording and rail against me for saying that a president could commit crimes with impunity. Joe Lockhart, former White House Press Secretary under President Clinton, said that I had given the president “license to commit crimes” and that:

  “This is what you hear from Stalin. This is what you hear from Mussolini, what you hear from authoritarians, from Hitler, from all the authoritarian people who rationalize, in some cases genocide, based what was in the public interest.”

  No one corrected him by pointing out that I said exactly the opposite in the sentence that CNN had edited out. Nor did anyone correct Paul Begala when he wrote:

  “The Dershowitz Doctrine would make presidents immune from every criminal act, so long as they could plausibly claim they did it to boost their re-election effort. Campaign finance laws: out the window. Bribery statutes: gone. Extortion: no more. This is Donald Trump’s fondest figurative dream: to be able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.” (Emphasis added)

  CNN is, of course, responsible for the decision to edit and doctor the recording to reverse its meaning and they are also responsible for how their paid commentators mischaracterized what I said.

  So I am suing them for a lot of money, not in order to enrich myself, but to deter CNN and other media from maliciously misinforming their viewers at the expense of innocent people. I intend to donate funds I receive from CNN to worthy charities, including those that defend the First Amendment. Every American will benefit from a judicial decision that holds giant media accountable for turning truth on its head and for placing partisanship above the public interest. So I will continue to defend the First Amendment as I have for the last 55 years (I am now consulting with Julian Assange’s legal team). But I will insist that giant media not abuse their First Amendment rights in the way that CNN did.

  

• The New Normal In 'Virtual Classrooms': Porn, Guns, & Racism?
  The New Normal In ‘Virtual Classrooms’: Porn, Guns, & Racism?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 22:00

  While classrooms across the Chicago Public School (CPS) district are empty, due to the virus pandemic, remote learning between teachers and their students has been met with challenges, especially with virtual classes, some of which have been interrupted by hackers, pranksters, and or disorderly students, reported Chicago Tribune. 

  “The kids were in the class and all of a sudden you see porn, you see things that they shouldn’t see,” said Valerie Carroll, a parent whose child attends Chicago’s Nicholson Elementary. 

  Carroll said on the first day of virtual class, her daughter was exposed to porn and guns via the live feed. 

   “They learned about porn, guns and threats, when they should have been learning about science, math, literacy,” she said. 

  Carroll said someone with access to the Google Meets link commandeered the virtual classroom from the teacher. Similar incidents have been reported in the last few weeks across the school district. 

  “They’re supposed to have this stuff on lockdown,” Carroll said of CPS. “That is something that kids are not supposed to be seeing. … What are you doing about it? How are you protecting your students?”

  Besides hackers, prankers, and or even unauthorized people disrupting virtual classes, not just at Nicholson Elementary but at several other CPS schools, there was one incident of a higher schooler brandishing a firearm during a virtual class. 

  CPS spokesman James Gherardi told The Tribune “a number of disruptive incidents” have occurred “in virtual classrooms” during this “unprecedented school year.” 

  Gherardi added, “the district has provided school staff with guidelines on how to prevent disruptions and is working with Google to expand functionality to allow for additional controls during class time.”

  CPS noted that “hacking” into virtual classes wasn’t the issue; it resulted from “improperly shared links to virtual classrooms.” 

  Similar breaches have been reported at suburban schools in Chicago and all over the country. 

  Take, for, example, KIRO-TV Seattle reported hackers broke into a virtual Zoom classroom at a school in the Edmonds School District, located in Lynnwood, Washington State, messaged students the “n-word” during one virtual class. 

  Another incident was at a New York City school, where one parent tweeted graphic scenes of porn her child saw the first day of classes: 

  “Day one of remote learning. 5 minutes into my daughter’s Google meet with her first class, and several “students” have hijacked the meeting, the first posting Trump pics, and then someone streamed PORN!!” 

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  In New Jersey, according to ABC7 New York, hackers hijacked online classes with pornography and waged threats against teachers. 

  The malicious hack attacks, bombing virtual classes with mostly porn, appears to be widespread, even happening on a university level. 

  John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, outlines a whole list of other dangers virtual classes posses on America’s youth.  

  

• A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip To Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets By 2021
  A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip To Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets By 2021
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 21:40

  Authored by Raul Diego via MintPressNews.com,

  The most significant scientific discovery since gravity has been hiding in plain sight for nearly a decade and its destructive potential to humanity is so enormous that the biggest war machine on the planet immediately deployed its vast resources to possess and control it, financing its research and development through agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and HHS’ BARDA.

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  The revolutionary breakthrough came to a Canadian scientist named Derek Rossi in 2010 purely by accident. The now-retired Harvard professor claimed in an interview with the National Post that he found a way to “reprogram” the molecules that carry the genetic instructions for cell development in the human body, not to mention all biological lifeforms.

  These molecules are called ‘messenger ribonucleic acid’ or mRNA and the newfound ability to rewrite those instructions to produce any kind of cell within a biological organism has radically changed the course of Western medicine and science, even if no one has really noticed yet. As Rossi, himself, puts it: “The real important discovery here was you could now use mRNA, and if you got it into the cells, then you could get the mRNA to express any protein in the cells, and this was the big thing.”

  It was so big that by 2014, Rossi was able to retire after the company he co-founded with Flagship Pioneering private equity firm to exploit his innovation, – Moderna Inc., attracted almost a half billion dollars in federal award monies to begin developing vaccines using the technology. No longer affiliated with Moderna beyond his stock holdings, Rossi is just “watching for what happens next” and if he’s anything like the doting “hockey dad” he is portrayed to be, he must be horrified.

  Remote control biology

  As early as 2006, DARPA was already researching how to identify viral, upper respiratory pathogens through its Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) program, which led to the creation of the agency’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), as reported by Whitney Webb in a May article for The Last American Vagabond. In 2014, DARPA’s BTO launched its “In Vivo Nanoplatforms” (IVN) program, which researches implantable nanotechnologies, leading to the development of ‘hydrogel’.

  Hydrogel is a nanotechnology whose inventor early on boasted that “If [it] pans out, with approval from FDA, then consumers could get the sensors implanted in their core to measure their levels of glucose, oxygen, and lactate.” This contact lens-like material requires a special injector to be introduced under the skin where it can transmit light-based digital signals through a wireless network like 5G.

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  A penny aside a 3D printed hydrogel model of a lung-mimicking air sac in Rice University’s Houston BRC lab. Melissa Phillip | Houston Chronicle via AP

  Once firmly implanted inside the body, human cells are at the mercy of any mRNA program delivered via this substrate, unleashing a nightmare of possibilities. It is, perhaps, the first true step towards full-on transhumanism; a “philosophy” that is in vogue with many powerful and influential people, such as Google’s Ray Kurzweil and Eric Schmidt and whose proponents see the fusion of technology and biology as an inevitable consequence of human progress.

  The private company created to market this technology, that allows for biological processes to be controlled remotely and opens the door to the potential manipulation of our biological responses and, ultimately, our entire existence, is called Profusa Inc and its operations are funded with millions from NIH and DARPA. In March, the company was quietly inserted into the crowded COVID-19 bazaar in March 2020, when it announced an injectable biochip for the detection of viral respiratory diseases, including COVID-19.

  A wholly-owned subsidiary

  In July, a preliminary report funded by Fauci’s NIAID and the NIH on an mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, concluding that mRNA-1273 vaccine. provided by Moderna for the study, “induced anti–SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all participants, and no trial-limiting safety concerns were identified,” and supported “further development of this vaccine.”

  A month earlier, the NIH had claimed a joint stake in Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, citing a contract signed in December, 2019, stipulating that the “mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates [are] developed and jointly owned” by both parties. Moderna disputes the federal government’s position, stating that the company “has a broad owned and licensed IP estate” and is “not aware of any IP that would prevent us from commercializing our product candidates, including mRNA-1273.”

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  A poster seeking volunteers to take part in a COVID-19 vaccine study by the NIH and Moderna Inc., July 27, 2020, in Binghamton, N.Y. Hans Pennink | AP

  The only obstacle is a delivery system, which though Moderna claims to be developing separately, is unlikely to get FDA approval before the federal government’s own DARPA-developed hydrogel technology, in tandem with Profusa’s DARPA-funded light sensor technology, which is expected to receive fast track authorization from the Food and Drug Administration by early 2021 and, more than likely, used to deploy a coronavirus vaccine with the capacity to literally change our DNA.

  In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is currently investigating Moderna’s patent filings, claiming it failed to disclose “federal government support” in its COVID vaccine candidate patent applications, as required by law. The technicality could result in the federal government owning a 100 percent stake in mRNA-1273.

  

• Trump 'Approved' Assange Pardon In Exchange For Source Of DNC Leaks: Court Testimony
  Trump ‘Approved’ Assange Pardon In Exchange For Source Of DNC Leaks: Court Testimony
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 21:20

  A new bombshell came out of the seventh day of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London: President Trump was “aware of and had approved of” a controversial plan that would offer Assange full pardon in exchange for revealing the source of the famous DNC leaks, according to his legal team on Friday.

  This contradicts prior claims of then US Congressman Dana Rochbacher who controversially met with Assange in 2017 to discuss the issue of his pardon. It also puts in doubt longtime Democratic claims that the hack was the work of Russian intelligence, and not a Democratic National Committee insider with access to the emails, as many believe.

  Defense witness @suigenerisjen #AssangeCase: ‘Rohrabacher proposed a ‘win-win’ situation, Assange can get ‘get on with his life’ – a pardon in exchange for information about the source’ ‘Information from Mr Assange about the source of the DNC leaks would be of value to Mr Trump’. pic.twitter.com/6yjSow50XU

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 18, 2020

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

  UK journalist Mohamed Elmaazi was present during Friday proceedings and detailed the following:

  US President Donald Trump was “aware of and had approved of” US Congressman Dana Rochbacher and Mr Charles Johnson meeting with Julian Assange in order to secure the source of the DNC Leaks, in exchange for some form of “pardon, assurance or agreement” which would “both benefit President Trump politically” and prevent a US indictment against and extradition of Mr Assange, the Old Bailey heard on Friday.

  WikiLeaks subsequently tweeted that this was indeed the hugely revelatory assertion presented in open court on behalf of barrister Jennifer Robinson, eyewitness to the alleged Aug.15, 2017 meeting while Assange was still confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy.

  “Rohrabacher explained that he wanted to resolve the ongoing speculation about Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) leaks to WikiLeaks,” Robinson said.

  “He said that he regarded the ongoing speculation as damaging to U.S.-Russian relations, that it was reviving old Cold War politics, and that it would be in the best interests of the U.S. if the matter could be resolved,” she said.

  However this wasn’t the first time Assange’s defense team has made the allegation, as Reuters recounts:

  Assange’s legal team first said at hearings in February that Rohrabacher had conveyed a pardon offer to Assange. At the time, the White House called the assertion that Trump had tried to reach a deal with Assange “a complete fabrication and a total lie”.

  Rohrabacher also emphasized amid the controversy that he was acting on his own and was not sent on behalf of the White House, but merely offered to ask Trump for an Assange pardon.

  “#JulianAssange‘s lawyer @suigenerisjen‘s statement was read to the court & it shows the political nature of this indictment saying how a representative of #Trump was sent to the Ecuadorian Embassy to offer #Assange a deal of a presidential pardon in exchange for the DNC Source.” pic.twitter.com/ujqWMk7VgS

  — Don’t Extradite Assange (@DEAcampaign) September 18, 2020

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  Assange’s lawyers are offering it as proof to the court that fundamentally the American extradition request is political in nature and not a matter of violating US laws.

  If true, Assange obviously didn’t go for it, likely in line with the firmly established WikiLeaks policy of never revealing any source no matter the level of pressure the leaks organization comes under. 

  

• Are The COVID-Lockdowns An Election 2020 Ransom Note?
  Are The COVID-Lockdowns An Election 2020 Ransom Note?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 21:00

  Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets.com,

  “We don’t realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier 2 or reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, in early November.”

  Those are the words of a west coast health director. No in-person schooling until after the election? Hmmm.

  Please think about what was said. It reads as kind of a ransom note. Vote for science-reverent candidate Joe Biden, or else…

  Really, what else could the utterance mean? What does November 3rd have to do with re-opening schools? Why would it be safer to open on the 4th of November versus the present?

  Unless the implicit point is that corona-reverence is far more political than the believers have previously felt comfortable admitting. If so, what’s happening borders on child abuse. Kids will be held hostage by an election?

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  Think about what this means.

  For one, not every parent can afford a babysitter. More than some want to acknowledge, there’s a “day care” quality to schooling. And when school isn’t in person, parents without the means to hire babysitters either must reduce work hours, leave their kids without supervision, or quit work altogether.  

  Day care aside, what about the kids? While there’s an argument that the learning aspect of education is a tad overstated, does anyone think virtual learning will be very effective? With kids? For the adult readers done with school, think back to how attentive you were on substitute teacher days. Does anyone think a lot of learning is happening remotely?

  What about kids with disabilities? How can they be instructed effectively via Zoom?

  On a Frontline episode from last week titled “Growing Up Poor In America,” one of the impoverished kids had an ADHD problem. She was expected to learn virtually. Anyone want to guess how this will turn out? Some may respond that ADHD says much more about young people than it does a specific affliction, which is precisely the point. Young people need the structure of a classroom. They need to know they could be called on in class only to face the stares of fellow students if they lack an answer. Pressure concentrates the distracted mind.

  The girl with attentiveness problems has an older sister. Understand that the Frontline episode followed three poor families during the spring. Her older sister was supposed to attend the prom. It was going to be her first date. Compassionate politicians and teachers took this exciting first from her.

  Is the point that public school teachers don’t feel safe? If so, isn’t the right answer to give those uncomfortable returning to work an out, as opposed to discontinuing in-person schooling altogether?

  Of course, if teachers don’t feel safe, a not unreasonable question is why they don’t? It’s not unreasonable to ask simply because retailer Target recently reported its strongest quarterly sales growth in decades. Target was “allowed” to remain open during the lockdowns, and while the political picking of winners and losers brings new meaning to reprehensible, the fact remains that Target has done very well amid the economic contraction forced on us by witless politicians. Translated more clearly, Target stores have at times been very crowded. So have Walmarts, Safeways, Ralph’s, Whole Foods, etc. etc. etc.

  That they have raises an obvious question: have workers at those stores been falling ill or dying with any kind of frequency? Half-awake readers know the answer to this question, as should teachers reluctant to return to the workplace. Those employed at the major retailers have largely avoided illness and death. If they hadn’t, media members and politicians desperate to promote a blood-in-the-streets narrative would be letting us know the horrid stories in detail.

  Who knows why, but it probably goes back to the statistics reported by the New York Times deep within articles that are proceeded by alarmist headlines, but those who pass with the virus tend to be quite a bit older. Or in nursing homes. According to the Times, over 40 percent of U.S. coronavirus deaths have been associated with nursing homes. The latter isn’t meant to minimize the cruelty of a virus as much as at least as of now, virus deaths skew toward the much older who also have pre-existing conditions. In short, just as retail workers have largely been spared illness and death, so logically would teachers who would be exposed to exponentially fewer people each day than retail workers. There’s also the distance thing. Instructors tend to be at the front of a classroom. Get it?  

  One more thing about businesses that have remained open: another impoverished child profiled in the aforementioned Frontline episode talked of missing being with his friends. Missing playing sports with them. It’s not allowed. There’s that distance thing. One bright spot in his day is McDonald’s. The one near his family’s home in The Plains, OH offers free lunches for school-age kids. Hopefully readers have this truth internalized the next time some know-nothing decries big business, or “excessive profits,” or calls for increased taxation on the big and successful.

  They somewhat uniquely have the means to help those who can’t always help themselves.

  Back to the quote that begins this piece, some with the ability to keep schools closed are literally tying their re-opening to the presidential elections. This is shameful on too many levels to list; the most obvious being that kids shouldn’t be the victims of political brawls. It’s really very sickening.

  And it yet again raises a question about the why behind the continued limits placed on people, schools and businesses. They’ve never made sense in consideration of how thankfully rare death (or even serious illness) has been as a consequence of the virus, especially in recent weeks. 

  Unless it’s always been political; as in, the most actively corona-reverent have been stoking ongoing virus fear as a veiled ransom note. If so, those who would mess with people, schools and businesses for political reasons are truly the sick ones. 

  

• Minneapolis Voters Line Up To Cast Ballots As Early Voting Begins In Several States
  Minneapolis Voters Line Up To Cast Ballots As Early Voting Begins In Several States
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 20:40

  Minneapolis voters lined up on Friday to cast their ballots ahead of the first presidential debate, as early voting began in several states including Minnesota.

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  In the first 30 minutes alone, some 44 people cast ballots in Minneapolis’ lone polling center, according to Reuters.

  Meanwhile, voters in Wyoming, South Dakota and Virginia cast in-person ballots on Friday. Virginia elections officials in Fairfax and Arlington counties reported heavy turnout and lines out the door, while voters in Minnesota said they wanted to avoid Election Day crowds and get an early jump on the process.

  “I just wanted to come get it done,” said 33-year-old painter Jason Miller, who lined up to cast a vote for Biden, according to Reuters – who didn’t interview any Trump supporters.

  “I was a little inspired to come here the first day,” Miller added. “In fact, probably 3-1/2 years ago I thought I would be here the first day I could.”

  All of the voters lined up in Minneapolis wore masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus.

  Margie Rukavina, 72, said she was “revved up” to vote for Biden but also was concerned about voting on Election Day given health concerns.

  “We want to come early to avoid a super-spreader event, like our president is so happy to do,” she said. Trump has been criticized for holding crowded campaign rallies, often with people not wearing masks. –Reuters

  If one is inclined to believe the polls, Trump trails Biden in both national polls, as well as in Minnesota, which he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just 1.5 percentage points.

  On Friday evening, Trump will hold a rally at an airport in Bemidji, MN, while Biden will tour a union training center in Duluth before delivering a speech.

  

• Riots Only Help Fuel Urban Impoverishment
  Riots Only Help Fuel Urban Impoverishment
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 20:20

  Authored by Lipton Matthews via The Mises Institute,

  In a recent interview Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizer Ariel Atkins argued that lootings are reparations for African Americans.

  Atkins denounced the suggestion that anything can be gained from peaceful protests.

  “Winning has come through revolts, winning has come through riots,”she said.

  Unfortunately, the belligerence of people like Atkins has been nurtured by mainstream intellectuals, who originally downplayed the malevolent intentions of dangerous activists. Therefore, as adults, we have no alternative but to remind these youngsters that sparking riots is an ineffective strategy to advance the cause of African Americans.

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  A striking case against riots is clearly expressed in the findings of Professor Mary C. King, whose research demonstrates “little relationship between regional progress for African Americans and relatively proximate race riots.”

  Riotous behavior often results in businesses fleeing minority communities, thus depriving residents of employment and income. Racism is an extremely sensitive matter; however, sensitivity must be tempered by logic.

  African Americans have experienced substantial progress over the past century. Eroding these gains is a possibility if rational adults refrain from correcting misguided activists. Such was the impact of the race riots of the 1960s. Examining the effects of civil disorder on small businesses in inner cities, sociologists Howard Aldrich and Albert Reiss found that riots not only inflicted serious property damages but in the long term they made it prohibitive to operate in inner cities, driving up insurance costs. As a result, businesses migrated to more nurturing environments. Low-income residents are the major beneficiaries of entrepreneurship in the inner city, so when emotions trump logic and businesses exit these communities, the losers are poor black people.

  Current agitators also seem oblivious to the impact of riots on black property owners. Eminent economists Robert Margo and William Collins in their assessment of the effects of the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. argue that “the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Analysis of household-level data suggests that the racial gap in the value of property widened in the riot inflicted cities during the 1970s.”

  Housing is a contributor to the racial wealth gap, therefore if properties depreciate due to the risk of riots, how can African Americans make headway in closing the wealth gap? The long-term implication of riots is that they stigmatize African American communities as hotbeds of social unrest. Homes in such neighborhoods will not be purchased by progressive people interested in building wealth. What this means is that African Americans are deprived of the social capital and networks required to succeed in a competitive environment.

  In another study, the authors indicate that riots reduced earnings for black employees in impacted cities; they write:

  “the findings suggest that the riots had negative effects on blacks’ income and employment that were economically significant and that may have been larger in the long run (1960–1980) than in the short run (1960–1970).”

  Their results are unsurprising. Inner-city businesses provide poor blacks with an opportunity to obtain employment and build relevant skills. Employment in a small business is a stepping stone to greater opportunities. When low-skilled citizens are robbed of these options, it becomes harder for them to establish themselves in a dynamic environment.

  Another negative effect of riots is that they move public opinion to favor oppressive social control measures as a crime-fighting strategy, thereby establishing Republican hardliners as attractive candidates. As Princeton’s Omar Wasow notes in a recent study:

  Evaluating black-led protests between 1960 and 1972, I find that nonviolent activism, particularly when met with a state of vigilante repression, drove media coverage, framing, Congressional speech, and public opinion on civil rights. Counties proximate to nonviolent protests saw presidential Democratic vote share among whites increase 1.3–1.6%. Protester-initiated violence, by contrast, helped move news agenda, frames, elite discourse, and public concern toward social control….In 1968, I find that violent protests likely caused a 1.6–7.9% shift among whites towards Republicans and tipped the election.

  Kelly Anne Conway beautifully illustrated this point when she told Fox News that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and order.”

  Evidently, the effects of riots on African Americans are destructive. Therefore, adults in the room must speak the truth—riots never redound to their benefit and neither does it make sense to enable the unrealistic demands of the BLM movement and its naïve supporters. It would be irresponsible for the American people to nurture the desires of activists seeking to destroy the fabric of their republic. We must reject not only vandalism, but also the radicalism of the BLM movement

  

• Chicago Logs Whopping 52% Jump In Homicides From 2019: 'Five Times Any Prior Year'
  Chicago Logs Whopping 52% Jump In Homicides From 2019: ‘Five Times Any Prior Year’
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 20:00

  A new disturbing investigation by USA Today this week found that Cook County in Chicago has seen homicides spike by a whopping 52% compared to the same time frame last year.

  What’s more is that this second largest county in the country has seen more homicides already this year than in all of 2019, and still with months to go. Alarmingly this includes dozens of children under 10 who were gunned down, often in gang-related cross fire incidents, according to police records. 

  USA Today wrote that among the jump in 2020 homicides, the majority, as much as “95% – were people of color, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office announced this week.”

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  Chicago witnessed also the single largest mass shooting in recent history this summer — though one might not have noticed by major media network coverage, or lack thereof — when 15 people were shot at a funeral. 

  One community anti-crime activists cited in USA Today, Katya Nuques, said that COVID-19 combined with rampant unemployment is taking its toll: “Facing illnesses, facing deaths, facing also the higher rates of unemployment and loss of income in our communities has also, unfortunately, played a role in the levels of violence we’ve seen throughout the year,” she said.

  Simultaneously new FBI figures also confirm a significant jump in murders in Chicago, but interestingly a drop in other violent crimes:

  According to the FBI crime report, 335 murders reported in Chicago from January to June 2020, a huge increase from the 244 murders tallied during that time period a year ago. Arson in Chicago is up even more: a 52.9% increase from 2019. Aggravated assault and burglary in Chicago are also up over last year.

  Other crime categories tracked by the FBI were actually down: including rape and robbery, enough so that the overall violent crime number in Chicago is down 1.4%.

  Commentators cited in the USA Today report not only chalk up the increase in homicides to unemployment and harsher conditions brought on by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, which literally means more people loitering around what are known as high crime streets and caught up in crossfire, but that repeat felons are being released to the streets.

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  Police Superintendent David Brown told a press conference Monday:

  “There’s not a comparable year. That’s five times any previous year anyone can recall,” he said. “We’re risking everything.”

  Analysts have tracked a noticeable uptick in re-arrests of repeat offenders let out of jail early. Brown confirmed this during his prior statements: “Violent offenders need to spend more time in jail in this city,” he said. “They need to be held more accountable.”

  Ironically and disturbingly, this also comes as months of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests and unrest have sought to put front and central the unjust deaths of people of color. Yet the grim trend out of Chicago of black on black shootings seems to have gone unnoticed by the movement.

  

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead At 87
  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead At 87
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 19:45

  Justice Ruth Bader Gisnburg is dead at the age of 87, the Supreme Court announced on Friday, which added that she died of “complications of metastatic pancreas cancer.”

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  The court said in a statement:

  Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died this evening surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87 years old. Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993. She was the second woman appointed to the Court and served more than 27 years. She is survived by her two children: Jane Carol Ginsburg (George Spera) and James Steven Ginsburg (Patrice Michaels), four grandchildren: Paul Spera (Francesca Toich), Clara Spera (Rory Boyd), Miranda Ginsburg, Abigail Ginsburg, two step-grandchildren: Harjinder Bedi, Satinder Bedi, and one great-grandchild: Lucrezia Spera. Her husband, Martin David Ginsburg, died in 2010.

  Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. said of Justice Ginsburg: “Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her — a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”

  Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15,1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959-1961. From 1961-1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963-1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972-1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977-1978. In 1971, she was instrumental in launching the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973-1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974-1980. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. During her more than 40 years as a Judge and a Justice, she was served by 159 law clerks.

  While on the Court, the Justice authored My Own Words (2016), a compilation of her speeches and writings.

  A private interment service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery.

  *  *  *

  As a reminder to our regular readers, President Trump unveiled his list of potential Supreme Court picks  less than two weeks ago:

  1. Bridget Bade, a judge on 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

  2. Daniel Cameron, the attorney general of Kentucky

  3. Paul Clement, former solicitor general of the United States

  4. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)

  5. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

  6. Stuart Kyle Duncan, a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals

  7. Stephen Engel, assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel in the Trump administration

  8. Noel Francisco, former solicitor general of the United States

  9. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

  10. James Ho, a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals

  11. Gregory Katsas, a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals

  12. Barbara Lagoa, a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals

  13. Christopher Landau, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

  14. Carlos Muniz, a justice on the Florida Supreme Court

  15. Martha Pacold, a judge on the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

  16. Peter Phipps, a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals

  17. Sarah Pitlyk, a judge on the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri

  18. Alison Jones Rushing, a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals

  19. Kate Todd, a deputy assistant a deputy counsel to the president

  20. Lawrence VanDyke, a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

  “Every one of these individuals will ensure equal justice, equal treatment, and equal rights for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed,” Trump promised.

  “Together we will defend our righteous heritage and preserve our magnificent American way of life.”

  The most serious nominee, however, is believed to be Judge Amy Coney Barrett – who Trump nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

   

  

• When Government Incompetence And Overreach Turns Deadly
  When Government Incompetence And Overreach Turns Deadly
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 19:40

  Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

  Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty and risks to your prosperity.

  Today, we are starting with some stories that are not amusing, but simply tragic.

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  Unborn baby dies due to absurd Covid lockdown rules

  This one highlights the sad reality of crushing people’s basic rights.

  An Australian woman was in childbirth a few weeks ago when it became clear she needed highly specialized medical care.

  Unfortunately her small town of Ballina, located in the Australian state of New South Wales, did not have sufficient medical care options to treat her pregnancy complications.

  Ballina is very close to the border of the neighboring state of Queensland, where two much larger cities– Gold Coast, and Brisbane– are fairly close by.

  And prior to Covid, the woman would have simply been quickly transported to one of those two cities in the neighboring state for a multitude of top quality medical options.

  But now Australians are no longer able to travel across their own state lines without special permission from the government.

  The woman was told that she would have to undergo a 14-day quarantine, simply for crossing the state line, before she could access medical care in Queensland. Incredible.

  This was obviously unacceptable. So her next best option was to fly to Syndey (which is at the opposite end of New South Wales, a state that’s bigger than Texas). Except that the next flight was SIXTEEN HOURS later.

  Needless to say, she didn’t receive the care she needed in time, and one of her twin babies died as a result of the travel restrictions.

  They say all the lockdowns are worth it if it saves just one life.

  What about the lives the lockdowns take?

  Click here to read the full story.

  American facing $569,000 fine and six months jail for sightseeing in Canada

  Canada is currently closed to most Americans due to COVID.

  But an exemption allows Americans to drive through Canada to reach Alaska.

  The rules state that the traveler must take the most direct route to their destination, and only stop for essentials like food and gas.

  But one criminal mastermind did not take the most direct route, and instead decided to check out a national park along the way

  He was arrested after his car with Ohio plates was reported to police at a sightseeing gondola at Sulphur Mountain.

  So clearly some brave hero spotted this nefarious terrorist, and saved his fellow Canadians by ratting the man out to authorities.

  And now he is facing a $569,000 fine, plus six months in jail. Because he stopped at a park.

  Click here to read the full story.

  University professor cancelled for watching a pro-police rally

  Students at Skidmore College are boycotting an art professor, David Peterson, and demanding he be fired.

  His crime? Watching a “back the blue” pro-police protest for about 20 minutes.

  Peterson was not actually attending the rally, holding signs, or wearing a pro-police shirt. He simply listened to the pro-police protesters (AND the counter protesters) in his own community for a bit, and then went out to dinner with his wife.

  So, simply just listening to an unwoke opinion is now a thoughtcrime. And that is all it takes these days to lose a career.

  Click here to read the full story.

  Court awards unmarried woman $50,000/month in alimony

  An Ontario court granted a woman $50,000 per month for the next decade in spousal support.

  The strangest part though, is that she didn’t have a spouse. There was no divorce, because she was never married to the man who must now pay her alimony.

  This woman and the wealthy businessman she fleeced dated for years, but they were never married.

  They never lived together, and have no kids together.

  But the court said they were “common law married” anyway.

  Ironically, the court used the fact that he had spent so much money on her during their time as a couple as proof that he should be forced to continue his support.

  Click here to read the full story.

  US Customs & Border Patrol seizes ‘counterfeit’ Apple earbuds

  Relax and breathe easy, your government is on the case protecting you from evil dangers lurking around the world.

  According to an official press release from US Customs and Border Patrol, “officers seized 2,000 counterfeit Apple Airpod Earbuds from Hong Kong destined for Nevada at an air cargo facility located at John F. Kennedy International Airport [in New York City].”

  CBP went on to brag via their Twitter account that these ‘counterfeit’ earbuds would have been worth nearly USD $400,000.

  But it turns out that the earbuds are, in fact, NOT counterfeit. In fact they’re not even Apple earbuds.

  These earbuds are specific to another mobile phone manufacturer called OnePlus. You’d think that the CBP officers would have been able to figure that out given that the earbuds actually have “OnePlus” Buds” printed on the freaking boxes!

  It’s unclear whether the officers who seized these earbuds are completely illiterate, or cannot imagine a world where there are other mobile phone companies besides Apple.

  (OnePlus is actually a pretty good sized company and generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year…)

  But rather humorously, OnePlus responded to CBP’s Tweet earlier this week saying “Hey, give those back!”

  You’d think the story would end there, and CBP would admit its mistake. But no.

  Now CBP is saying, in its sole discretion, that the earbuds violate Apple’s trademark, so they’re keeping the seized product.

  This is completely ridiculous, and I’m not sure if this agency even understands what a trademark actually is. And if ‘trademark’ was even the issue here, then the agency’s initial press release would have stated so. But instead they called the earbuds counterfeit.

  It’s also rather interesting that there has been no court injunction against OnePlus, no warrants, and not even a lawsuit.

  Yes, not even Apple (whose ‘trademark’ has supposedly been violated) thinks this is a problem. Apple has earbuds. OnePlus has earbuds. Big deal.

  Click here to read the full story.

  *  *  *

  On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

  

• California Crackdown On Benefits Fraud Sparks 72% Plunge In Pandemic Jobless Claims
  California Crackdown On Benefits Fraud Sparks 72% Plunge In Pandemic Jobless Claims
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 19:20

  The last few weeks have seen improvements in jobless claims data stall at extremely high levels, gravely disappointing those expecting a continued v-shaped recovery back to the old normal…

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  The leading ‘culprit’ for these elevated levels of unemployment benefits seekers has been California.

  The last two weeks have seen Cali claims far above other states…

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  And at an aggregate level, the biggest driver of composite jobless claims levels across America has been the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) – a federal relief program intended for self-employed workers and independent contractors…

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  So, what is going on?

  The answer is simple:

  It’s fraud!

  As Bloomberg reports, between mid-August and the first week of September, applications for PUA doubled in California to more than 524,000, far above claim levels when the federal program first launched in April, the state’s Employment Development Department said Thursday.

  But, EDD admitted rather stunningly that after taking action to deter suspected scammers from filing false applications in hopes of getting payments, PUA applications dropped sharply to 145,790, a decline of more than 72%.

  In addition, Bloomberg reports that California’s figures show a wide discrepancy with nationally-reported data on continuing PUA claims in California. While the federal Department of Labor reports that more than 6 million Californians are claiming PUA benefits each week…

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  …the state’s labor department shows that figure below 2 million, pointing to further data-reporting issues.

   

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  Some have suggested that the national figures may reflect states catching up with backlogs rather than representing the most recent levels of actual job losses.

  No matter what – or who – is to blame, the fraud issue in California underscores the widespread unemployment data challenges – including clerical errors and double counting – that state employment departments have faced since the pandemic began in March.

  “Aggressive efforts to fight fraud are yielding results in curbing the recent uptick in suspicious Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims in California,” the state’s employment department said.

  Fed Chair Powell even admitted on Wednesday that all this data was full of noise and little signal when he cast doubt on the reliability of the national PUA figures, saying during a press briefing that the “actual counting of the claims is volatile” and it’s difficult to “take much signal about the particular level.”

  Or put another way – hold your nose and buy stocks, ignore the terrible data, ignore the fraud!!

  

• "Inflation" And America's Accelerating Class War
  “Inflation” And America’s Accelerating Class War
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 19:00

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  Those who don’t see the fragmentation, the scarcities and the battlelines being drawn will be surprised by the acceleration of the unraveling.

  I recently came across the idea that inflation is a two-factor optimization problem: inflation is necessary for the macro-economy (or so we’re told) and so the trick for policy makers (and their statisticians who measure the economy) is to maximize inflation in the economy but only to the point that it doesn’t snuff out businesses and starve workers to death.

  From this perspective, households have to grin and bear the negative consequences of inflation for the good of the whole economy.

  This narrative, so typical of economics, ignores the core reality of “inflation” in America: it’s a battleground for the class war that’s accelerating. Allow me to explain.

  “Inflation” affects different classes very differently. I put “inflation” in italics because it’s not one phenomenon, it’s numerous phenomena crammed into one deceptively simple word.

  When “inflation” boosts the value of homes, stocks, bonds, diamonds, quatloos etc. to the moon, those who own these assets are cheering. When “inflation” reduces the purchasing power of wages, those whose only income is earned from their labor suffer a decline in their lifestyles as their wages buy fewer goods and services.

  They are suffering while the wealthy owners of soaring assets are cheering.

  The Federal Reserve and federal authorities are not neutral observers in this war. The Fed only cares about two things: enriching the banking sector and further enriching the already-rich.

  The banking sector makes money by lending newly created currency to borrowers. No borrowers or new loans–banks go broke. So the Fed must generate the right kind of “inflation”: it must lower the cost of borrowing money (deflating the cost of borrowing) by reducing the rate of interest borrowers pay, and it must “inflate” the market value of the collateral banks and Wall Street need to support more debt: commercial buildings, homes, stocks, bonds, etc.

  This “inflation” of asset valuations makes those who already own these assets richer, while impoverishing those who must buy them with wages that are losing purchasing power. The Fed doesn’t care if small businesses go broke or households slide into poverty; the Fed’s only concerns are maintaining “inflation” in asset valuations and “deflation” in the cost of borrowing, so that debt-serfs, zombie corporations, local and federal government–everyone–can borrow more money, further enriching banks and Wall Street.

  This is the sole goal of the Fed. Everything else is distracting PR.

  There are downsides to this, of course, but they fall on “the little people” so economists, the Fed and federal officials don’t bother to even track the downsides. Thus we have the nonsensical games government statisticians play to keep official measurements of “inflation” low. This serves to obscure the reality that real-world “inflation” in the cost of education, childcare, health insurance, rent, and so on–all the big-ticket household costs–is soaring, stripping away the purchasing power of wages.

  Here’s an example of how wages and purchasing power can be understood. Back in the day, I could rent my own studio apartment for half a week’s pay. I was young and not well-paid, but I could still rent a crummy apartment for half a week’s pay: 2.5 day’s wages.

  Try finding an apartment for half a week’s pay in a major city. Young workers are paying two week’s pay just to rent a room. This is a massive loss in the purchasing power of labor.

  Meanwhile, those with the right kind of assets are experiencing fantasic increases in their unearned income. These increases in income (and wealth) far exceed the modest impacts of real-world inflation on these owners of the right kind of assets.

  Let’s start with the the wrong kind of asset: a savings account. Where savers earned 5.25% on their savings as a regulatory requirement in the 1960s, now they earn less than nothing: even the bogus “official inflation” is 2%, while savers get 0.1% or less on savings. So savers lose money every day.

  Those who bought bonds and stocks and real estate–the right kind of assets–have scored enormous gains in wealth and income. There’s just one little tiny problem with the right kind of assets: the vast majority are owned by the top 5% of households, with the top 1% owning 40% and the top 0.1% owning 20%–more than the bottom 80% own.

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  There aren’t just wealth-income classes –those who own these assets and those who don’t– there are demographic and age classes, too. Young wage earners are mostly priced out of buying these assets with wages, unless they borrow staggering sums of money and devote most of their income to servicing their debts (student loans, auto loans, mortgage, etc.).

  Retirees have been forced into gambling their retirement funds in the Fed-rigged casinos, which just so happen to crash every decade or so, wiping out the naive punters who believed “the Fed has our backs.”

  “Inflation” isn’t an abstract debate –it’s class war. And it’s not just between two classes, those who depend on wages/earned income and those reaping the trillions in unearned income and wealth; there are warring classes fractured by age, demographics, political loyalties and issues of who’s hoarding what: every one of these fractured classes is competing for scarce resources, scarce income and scarce security.

  Those who don’t see the fragmentation, the scarcities and the battlelines being drawn will be surprised by the acceleration of the unraveling. As noted here previously, The banquet of consequences is being laid out, and there won’t be much choice in the seating.

  *  *  *

  My recent books:

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

  Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
  (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

  Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

  The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

  Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

  *  *  *

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

  

• Schumer, Warren Introduce Resolution To Cancel $50,000 In Student Loans To "Close Racial Wealth Gaps"
  Schumer, Warren Introduce Resolution To Cancel $50,000 In Student Loans To “Close Racial Wealth Gaps”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 18:40

  Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rolled out a proposal on Thursday which calls for the next president of the Untied States to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt in 2021.

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  The plan would call on the next president to “take executive action to administratively cancel up to $50,000 in Federal student loan debt for Federal student loan borrowers using existing legal authorities…”

  The plan would also call on the next president to ensure “no tax liability for Federal student loan borrowers resulting from administrative debt cancellation.” Moreover, it asks the next president to pause student loan payments and interest accumulation “for the entire duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  Doing so, according to the plan, would “ensure that administrative debt cancellation helps close racial wealth gaps.“

  Whoa. @SenSchumer and @SenWarren just dropped a resolution calling for executive action on federal student loan debt. Up to $50k cancelled by proclamation! https://t.co/DQzCF40hAb pic.twitter.com/betfvqA6Hd

  — Stephanie Kelton ステファニー・ケルトン (@StephanieKelton) September 17, 2020

  According to The Hill, the Democrats are essentially handing Joe Biden a talking point – as President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have flatly opposed earlier attempts to forgive student debt. 

  “We know that President Trump and [Education] Secretary [Betsy] DeVos have been totally against things like this. We understand that. But the next president could easily do this,” said Schumer, adding “We want to start getting people focused on this issue as a major issue that could be dealt with early next year.”

  The $3.4 trillion HEROES Act passed in May included a provision to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt for a limited number of people. 

  The measure introduced by Warren and Schumer Thursday calls on the president to take executive action to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student debt for every borrower in the United States, which would wipe out the student debt obligations for more than three-quarters of Americans who owe them.

  An estimated 44 million Americans owe about $1.6 trillion in student loans. 

  Schumer said the plan would protect student loan borrowers from having to pay taxes on forgiven loans.

  “The president can use the IRS code to ensure federal student loan borrowers won’t have tax liabilities resulting from administrative debt cancellation,” he said. –The Hill

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

  Warren raised the issue last Thursday during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, noting that the committee had yet to hold any discussions on “the student debt crisis.”

  “I think we ought to focus on how to deal with the $1.6 trillion dollars in debt that is crushing millions of people,” she said.

  As Jonathan Turley also warns, the proposals may be a foreshadowing of a greater push to use unilateral executive powers under Joe Biden if he wins the election.

  The senators insisted that the Secretary of Education has “broad administrative authority” granted by Congress to cancel federal student loan debt under section 432(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Thus, they are arguing for the president to simply wipe out the debt by taking “executive action to broadly cancel up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt.”

  I have long been critical of such unilateral executive actions to order massive increases in debt or the negation of federal laws. We need a serious debate over the leveraging of the future on the mounting debt for this rising generation. I am worried about this college debt but I am also worried about these students facing decades of debt that must be paid off by the government. We need a comprehensive debt plan.

  Politicians are casually referring to trillion dollar increases in a variety of different packages. Many long-standing goals are being refashioned as “stimulus measures” but they would pile more debt on an economic recovery that could already be difficult after the pandemic.

  

• 1920: The Crash That Cured Itself
  1920: The Crash That Cured Itself
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 18:20

  Authored by Pedro Almeida Jorge via AustrianCenter.com,

  The Spanish flu of 1918 is an event that, unsurprisingly, is being revisited by many observers today. And yet, at the same time, another major event occurred a century ago which we would also do well to remember: namely the largely forgotten economic depression of 1920.

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  We all hear, from time to time, about the ghost of the 1929 crash, of the dreadful decade of the thirties, of the Great Depression from which the world (supposedly) only recovered at the cost of a new world war. In the covid-19 context of today, it is even likely that many people believe that unless all national and international governments and organizations move ahead with drastic measures, we are condemned to a similar fate. Nonetheless, the depression of 1920 can provide us with a starkly different picture.

  The end of World War I was followed by some months of high profits and renewed expectations. Unfortunately, due to the gigantic inflation and government controls introduced during the war, as well as the deaths caused by that same war and the pandemic that followed, a great economic readjustment was unavoidable, which eventually came along in 1920.

  Renowned financial analyst James Grant, author of the book The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself, provides shocking data for the United States. Grant tells us that the Federal Reserve index of industrial production fell by 31.6 percent from 1920–21. In comparison, in the crisis years 2007–09, it “only” fell by 16.9 percent. Grant estimates that the unemployment rate may have reached as high as 15.3 percent.

  Meanwhile, “over the course of 12 months, wholesale prices plunged by 36.8 percent, consumer prices by 10.8 percent and farm prices by 41.3 percent (for speed of decline, not even the Great Depression would match the break of 1920–21). The Dow Jones Industrial Average, then comprising 20 stocks rather than today’s 30, crested in November 1919 at 119.62 and bottomed in August 1921 at 63.9, for a peak-to-trough decline of 46.6 percent.”

  It seems abundantly clear that the situation was dire. Profits drastically fell, companies were liquidated and taken over in a wave of bankruptcy procedures until…it all reverted. As professor, banker and “Austrian” fellow traveler Benjamin M. Anderson (1886–1949) described it in his memoirs,

  “in 1920–1921 we took our losses, we readjusted our financial structure, we endured our depression, and in the month of August, 1921, we started up again. By the spring of 1923 we had reached new highs in industrial production and we had labour shortages in many lines.”

  Historian Thomas E. Woods Jr. concurs:

  “by the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.”

  The economy was ready for the Roaring Twenties.

  What had happened? What did the government do to push the economy out of the ground? The answer is: nothing. Or better still: it cut spending to balance the budget and reduce public debt. There were no massive liquidity “bazookas” shot by central banks, no giant stimulus programs from the Ministry of Economy, no price or profit margin controls. President Wilson had suffered a severe stroke at the end of 1919, which left him practically disabled for the rest of his presidency, while his successor, Warren G. Harding, declared the following in his 1920 acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination:

  Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic. There hasn’t been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless spending and heedless extravagance have marked every decay in the history of nations.

  Thus, the federal budget was reduced from $18.5 billion in 1919 to $3.7 billion dollars in 1922, and public debt fell from $26 billion at the end of 1919 to $22.3 billion dollars in June 1923. One can easily see why Grant described this depression as “the crash that cured itself.” As he ironically notes, “by the lights of Keynesian and monetarist doctrine alike, no more primitive or counterproductive policies could be imagined.”

  But wouldn’t it have been better if the government had “softened” things a little bit? That would probably have been achieved at the cost of stagnation, as in the case of the thirties, and of greater problems in the future, as in the case of Japan, described by Anderson:

  early in 1920, the great banks, the concentrated industries, and the government got together, destroyed the freedom of the markets, arrested the decline in commodity prices, and held the Japanese price level high above the receding world level for seven years. During these years Japan endured chronic industrial stagnation and at the end, in 1927, she had a banking crisis of such severity that many great branch bank systems went down, as well as many industries. It was a stupid policy. In the effort to avert losses on inventory representing one year’s production, Japan lost seven years, only to incur greatly exaggerated losses at the end. The New Deal began in Japan in early 1920.

  The First World War was seen by the state bureaucracies of the West as definitive proof of how tasteful an extensive state control of the capitalist engine could be. On the other hand, the disintegration of the classical gold standard and the return to a blatant use of central banks to finance war debts at the cost of inflation had marked the end of the classical liberal world order based on international commerce and financial discipline. Still, some traces of the cultural values and traits that had led to its extraordinary ascension could still be found, especially in the American population. One need only remember that both the Federal Reserve and the income tax as we know it today had only been established in the United States a few years before, in 1913.

  Since then, much has changed, including, of course, the legal, institutional, and even cultural context of our economies. Economy means people—and modern society does not seem to have the cultural and institutional “anchors” that would allow it to endure, like in the 2020–21 shock, so drastic a recipe as that circumstantially applied a century ago. And yet the “forgotten depression” can still teach us important lessons: that there was once a time when individuals and communities used to overcome even the worst depressions, by making use of their freedoms, and that the interventionist and spendthrift state is often more part of the problem than it is of the solution. These are important insights we need to keep in mind especially today.

  

• Daily Briefing – September 18, 2020
  Daily Briefing – September 18, 2020

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 18:10

  Real Vision CEO and co-founder, Raoul Pal, is joined by senior editor, Ash Bennington, to look forward to the future of markets as well as Real Vision. After they evaluate how the market interpreted the Fed’s latest FOMC meeting, Raoul broadens the conversation beyond equities to make sense of the flatness in bond yields and credit spreads. Raoul and Ash then discuss the upcoming two-week exploration on Real Vision, “Has Everything Changed,” as well as discuss how Real Vision’s new platform, “The Exchange,” is allowing Real Vision members to connect with each other and form a “hive mind.” In the intro, Jack reviews market price action and gives a sneak peak of “Has Everything Changed.”

  

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• Australia Pushes New Measure To Detain COVID "Conspiracy Theorists" 
  Australia Pushes New Measure To Detain COVID “Conspiracy Theorists” 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 02:45

  Weekend demonstrations have flared up in Australia over the last month, as Aussies have vented their frustrations and attempted to take back control of their communities after a surge in virus cases prompted the government to re-implement some of the world’s most draconian social-distancing measures.

  And if there is one thing that terrifies increasingly tyrannical governments, it’s a loss of control of the narrative, which is why the Australian government is getting a jump start on curbing any so-called “conspiracy theorists” daring to spread information that questions the fear-mongering being used to keep Aussie citizens under lock and key.

  

  A new bill is expected to be debated by the Victorian government in the State Parliament this week. It gives local authorities the power to detain “conspiracy theorists” and people who refuse to self-isolate, reported Caldron Pool. 

  If passed, the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) allows the government to detain anyone labeled as a “high risk” or likely to spread COVID-19 negligently.

  A state government spokesman told The Age that the rule could be applied to “conspiracy theorists who refuse to self-isolate or severely drug-affected or mentally impaired people who do not have the capacity to quarantine.” Those arrested under the new rule will be housed in quarantine facilities. 

  Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said the new bill would “allow us to continue responding to the challenges the pandemic presents, so we can keep protecting Victorians and delivering the services they rely on.”

  So far, many of the anti-lockdown demonstrations have been held on the weekends. At least 200 people were fined and 74 arrested at a protest in Melbourne on Sunday. If the bill is passed, some protesters would be rounded up and arrested, and could spend time in a quarantine facility. 

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  Clearly, the government’s intent to extend powers and detain conspiracy theorists and those who pose a risk of spreading the virus should be alarming to readers.

  In a glimpse of what is ahead, authorities have already arrested a Melbourne woman for allegedly writing pro-anti lockdown posts on social media. 

  Notably, after widespread social media account deletions, TheConversation notes that QAnon has attracted a lot of followers in Australia, so what comes next? ‘Re-education centers’ for QAnons? 

  

• Lord Sumption: Boris Johnson's "'Rule Of Six' Is Pointless, Arbitrary, And Unnecessary"
  Lord Sumption: Boris Johnson’s “‘Rule Of Six’ Is Pointless, Arbitrary, And Unnecessary”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 02:00

  Via 21stCenturyWire.com,

  This week former UK Supreme Court justice took to the airwaves to strongly criticise the government’s latest laws designed to tighten restrictions on social interactions which came into force on Monday.

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  According to Lord Jonathan Sumption, the government’s cryptic ‘Rule of Six’ law which prevents more than six people, children, from gathering socially in both indoor and outdoor settings, and homes, gardens, pubs and parks – is “pointless, arbitrary and unnecessary.”

  “This one size fits all approach is deeply destructive… it’s much more efficient for everybody to make their own decisions in a responsible way,” says Lord Sumption.

  On the issue of legality of the government’s policy he remarked,

  “I think it’s very unlikely that the courts are going to decide whether it’s necessary because this is not only a difficult question – a technical and scientific question, but it has to be weighed against all sorts of other social considerations unrelated to health – the social damage, the collateral medical damage, the educational, and economic damage, and so on.

  This is an exercise which courts are not well placed to carry out and I suspect that the courts will recognize that.”

  Watch his recent segment with TalkRadio host Julia Hartley-Brewer:

  

• Netflix's "Cuties": It's Not The First Attempt By Hollywood To Normalize Pedophilia
  Netflix’s “Cuties”: It’s Not The First Attempt By Hollywood To Normalize Pedophilia
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 09/18/2020 – 00:00

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  After studying and exposing the agendas of establishment elites for the past 14 years, I can say with some authority that by watching these people you quickly begin to understand the reality of evil. Anyone who dismisses the concept of evil as nothing more than a “social construct” or a matter of “perception” is suffering from either naivety or bias.

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  They have either been lucky enough to have avoided a run-in with the resident psychopaths in their town, or, they have certain secret tendencies they will not reveal.  One thing that I have found most disturbing is the habit of evil people to quickly come to the defense of other evil people they don’t even know.  That is to say, I was initially shocked to discover the extreme level of fraternity predatory people feel and display when other predatory people are being exposed.  It is as if they are an unspoken brotherhood, and they don’t like it when their kinsmen are being punished for their crimes.

  Yes, there are such things as ignorance, greed, jealousy, unhealthy desire, etc., and all of these frailties can lead to evil deeds. That said, in the majority of cases you will find that MOST people feel guilt, regret, empathy and remorse that prevent them from following through with their basest instincts. This is what we commonly call “conscience”, and a greater number of people have it. Without it, our species would have self-destructed and gone extinct thousands of years ago.

  With psychopaths, however, it’s not only about a complete lack of empathy and conscience; they also often take JOY in the destruction, debasement and exploitation of others. Standard sociopaths harm people in the process of getting what they want because they do not have the capacity to care. Psychopaths harm people because THAT IS THEIR GOAL. Think of it as a kind of kink; they lust after control over others, they get high from it. And, their most sought after drug of choice is the violation of innocence.

  In my lifetime I have met epic liars, con-men, rapists, murderers and even pedophiles, and their habits and mannerisms all tend to be the same. With every encounter you receive a crash course in evil and begin to learn how to identify them by their character ticks and broken thought processes. It gets to the point where they actually become boring and predictable.

  While Hollywood loves to romanticize psychopaths as eternally interesting, in real life they are more like robots or mindless machines. Most of them are good at what they do, which is to be predatory or parasitic, but it’s their ONLY skill set – It’s the only thing that defines them. Otherwise, they have no capacity for imagination or creativity and all of their thoughts and ideas are stolen from others and recycled. In fact, you will find that if you are near a psychopath for an extended length of time, he/she will start to talk and act just like you.  This is what they do; they seek to blend in.

  Some people have a hard time grasping the nature of psychopathy and evil because they have lived sheltered lives and remain blissfully unaware of the danger.

  It is certainly possible to bumble through life without encountering such aberrant individuals. Full blown psychopaths (also known as narcissistic sociopaths) are rare in the grand scheme of human society. They represent around 1% of the population statistically, with narcissists and people with sociopathic tendencies representing around 5% of the overall public. And it’s a good thing, because a stunning majority of violent crimes tend to be committed by pyschopathic people. They are, by far, the primary drain on criminal justice resources and the biggest threat to social stability and safety.

  If someone really wanted to change humanity for the better they could NOT do it without first removing psychopaths from the equation. This means, most importantly, removing them from positions of power and cultural influence. The problem is, there is no way to accurately and easily test for psychopathic traits preemptively.  Extensive psychological observation in a controlled environment is required.

  Standard psychological tests can be fooled, and brain-scan tests are highly suspect (there are people who have tried to make a career out of the pyschopath brain-scan game but there is still no proof that the tests do anything to preemptively identify such traits). Ultimately, psychopaths have to be judged on their actions and behavior over time by someone who is very familiar with their universal personality traits.

  That said, once these people identify themselves through action something has to be done about them. If they are allowed to continue without resistance they will follow their path to its natural conclusion, which means terror and carnage for anyone they come in contact with.

  In order to protect themselves and their activities, psychopaths do indeed organize together. It has happened over and over again through history and the more intelligent or cunning members usually group together within the upper echelons of society by infiltrating institutions of power. Again, the concept of the “lone psychopath” is a Hollywood creation that does not represent real life. As long as there is mutual gain to be had and there are plenty of victims to go around, psychopaths can easily unify.

  Hollywood has proven itself over the years to be a haven for evil people. Not so much in terms of the celebrities (though many of them are narcissistic and sociopathic), but more in terms of the people that control the industry. The entire edifice was designed as a haven for subhuman tendencies. They have celebrated this openly in the past, though these days they pretend as if they are cleaning house.

  The machine of Hollywood is a vampire’s trap, a shining beacon luring in talented (or at least hopeful and starstruck) people, draining them of all life and then spitting them out once the feeding has finished. This is particularly true of children, and the number of cases of child abuse in the industry is staggering.  If it were any other business, the media would be up in arms in terms of the number of convictions and allegations.  If the fast food industry had as many pedo charges as Hollywood, the MSM would be writing thousands of articles a year admonishing the burger barn molestation epidemic.  But when it comes to Hollywood, mainstream journalists rabidly defend the people at the top and attack critics as “conspiracy theorists”.

  The propensity for psychopaths to value children as their most sought after targets is well known. It’s not necessarily always sexual, sometimes it’s only physical or mental abuse. But, children are a delicacy to them none-the-less. What could be more enthralling to evil than to destroy the life of a purely innocent person and take their childhood away?

  It is only in recent years that pedophilia in Hollywood has been taken more seriously by the general public. The Hollywood elites that dominate high level corporate positions have been the purveyors and controllers of America’s cultural expression for almost a century, and yet they are rarely subject to scrutiny. It is their own actions that have created the recent groundswell movement to root out organized child abuse.

  Psychopaths are driven by crooked and twisted desires, but they are also driven by a desperate need to “prove” that the rest of society is as evil or as disturbed as they are if given the right “push”. This is one of their greatest weaknesses, because it causes them to make mistakes and expose their true natures.

  Enter the Netflix film ‘Cuties’…

  I have now watched portions of this film, including dramatic story scenes to get a fair sense of the total content as well as come clips of the notorious scenes that have enraged the public. And, I can say WITHOUT A DOUBT, this film is in fact child pornagraphy according to the Department of Justice’s legal definition.  A warning – I do NOT recommend watching this movie yourself, but if you do, be warned that the content is highly upsetting.

  If you heard from the mainstream media that the reaction to this film was “overblown” and part of a “right wing conspiracy”; then I’m here to tell you that you were lied to. While I continue to hold to my position that Qanon is a joke and a psyop that has been wrong about almost every single prediction they have made, you don’t have to be a part of the Q-cult to see the attempt to normalize pedophilia at the foundation of Cuties.

  Arguments made by the predominantly social justice media have exposed where they really stand on the issue of evil, and they are all for it!  Once again, the hard political left exposes its true nature when it comes to the defense of terrible content.  There have been hints of this in previous campaigns by the media, such as left-wing outlet Salon and an article they published in defense of pedophilia written by a self-professed pedophile.  Their argument?  That pedophilia should be treated with more empathy as long as pedophiles do not act on their impulses.  Salon later took down the article, but other media outlets argued that they should have left it published.

  Initially, the criticism of the Cuties movie trailer was met with jeers from media pundits, the only people who had yet seen the film in its entirety. They claimed that critics had no idea what they were talking about and that the trailer did not convey the true message of the film, which is supposedly that sexual exploitation of children is “bad”. Yet, when the film was released it became clear this was a lie.

  You can wrap child porn in as many declarations of “art” and “discourse” as you like, but at the end of the day it’s still child porn. The fact that it was directed by a woman from western Africa that migrated to France is irrelevant. African women migrants can be pedophiles and psychopaths, too. And yes, anyone that would expose 11 year old girls to this kind of filmmaking is indeed a psychopath.

  The cinematography methods and camera angles are what give it away, and anyone that has studied film understands how this works. Sexualized film subjects tend to lend themselves to a certain form of cinematography which is designed to glamorize and entice.

  For example, watch the film ‘Dancing At The Blue Iguana’ (a disturbing movie which I actually like), a movie about the sordid lives of strippers trying to survive in Los Angeles. Take note of the camera work in that movie, and then, if you can stomach it, compare it to the dance scenes in Cuties. The camera work is THE SAME, hovering over certain body parts voyeuristically. The difference is that ‘Dancing At The Blue Iguana’ stars ADULT WOMEN, not 11 year old girls.

  Cuties is often defended by the media as being a Sundance “award winning” film; meaning, if the art-house elites sign off on it, it is therefore socially and morally acceptable material. It’s just “too smart” for the plebeians to grasp, right? Well, I am a long-time film buff myself and I know when I am looking at “art” and when I am looking at exploitation, and Cuties is clear-cut exploitation.

  It should also be noted that the co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival plead guilty to child sex abuse charges only a year ago. So, maybe having the Sundance award emblem on a film is not a free pass for pedophilia.

  Of course, the movie Cuties is not the first time Hollywood has tried to normalize the sexualization of children. In 1932 and 1933, right at the onset of the Great Depression, producer Jack Hays and director Charles Lamont released a series of at least eight films which would be dubbed “Baby Burlesque”. The films featured extremely young actors and actresses, including Shirley Temple before she was a box office juggernaught, acting out adult stories and scenes, dressed in adult costumes.  The movies contained pervasive sexual overtones, and if you are familiar with the ways Temple was viciously abused by Hollywood producers during her time as an actress the films have an added darkness to them.

  The formula for Baby Burlesque movies was to portray young actors in adult situations and then label it “parody”.  This included a young Temple playing a hooker dressed in revealing “street clothing” and discussing how much she costs.  Temple’s later films would portray a young child, often an orphan, adopted by or spending the entire film with a rich benefactor. Parents usually do not make an appearance in the films or are killed in some tragic way, leaving the child alone and vulnerable. The dances and even songs in the movies are semi-erotic, especially for the era. The relationships between the children and the adult benefactors is bizarre, and is usually portrayed as an almost romantic interaction instead of a normal adult/child caretaker interaction.

  Hollywood has been doing this for a LONG time.  Cuties is nothing more than a modernized version of Baby Burlesque.

  To be clear, Netflix did not make the film, they only bankrolled the distribution of it.  That said, their promotional trailer for the movie directly showcased the sexual elements and not much else, which indicates to me what they REALLY cared about, and it wasn’t the story.  Once the movie was released to the public it became obvious that the trailers for the film didn’t even scratch the surface of the actual pedophilic content.

  The casting for the film took 6 months to complete and over 700 girls were “auditioned” for the starring roles.  Director Maïmouna Doucouré continues to defend the film, calling it a “feminist” project.  This is not surprising; the unhinged and mentally disturbed nature of the social justice movement lends itself to all kinds of disorders.  The biggest problem is their infatuation with moral relativism and their ability to rationalize any number of crimes in the name of “diversity” or “equality” or “intersectionality”.  These are hollow buzzwords made up by hollow people; they don’t excuse bad behavior.

  As with Baby Burlesque, child pornography is often masked as something else.  In the case of Cuties, child exploitation is masked as a loose commentary on child exploitation.  Is it blind irony?  No, not really.  Rather, in my opinion, it was planned.

  I do find it interesting that the pedophile networks in Hollywood seem to choose the most unstable moments in history as a springboard for introducing child sexualization into the public consciousness.  They flooded the entertainment market with Baby Burlesque films right at the beginning of the Great Depression.  Now they are pushing the envelope even further during a pandemic, riots and economic crisis today.  My theory?  They see the widespread weakness and uncertainty in our society and view it as an opportunity to fundamentally change our moral boundaries.  The elites really want us to look at films like Cuties and say “Gee, this pedophilia thing isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be…and maybe it’s not wrong to be aroused by 11 year old children…”  Some people are in fact saying this on YouTube right now as they come to the defense of the film.

  Bottom line:  If you are aroused by 11 year old children then you are psychologically defective and should be separated from the rest of society for the good of all.  There are certain behaviors that cannot and should not ever be adopted by society as tolerable.  This is one of them.

  If there is anything positive to be had from the elitist establishment’s obsession with getting us to accept child abuse as “normal”, it is that they continue to expose the demons that they are. Luckily, it seems America and much of the world has rejected Cuties outright, and any interest in the film seems to be due to morbid curiosity about how such a disaster could have been produced and distributed.  Hollywood is NEVER going to convince the public that child abuse is okay, but they will continue to try until we put them out of business.

  *  *  *

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• US Air Force Deploys Robo-Hounds During Base Security Exercise
  US Air Force Deploys Robo-Hounds During Base Security Exercise
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 23:40

  The U.S. Air Force deployed “robot dogs” during an exercise in early September at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to scout for threats before soldiers exited an aircraft. 

  The Ghost Robotics Vision 60 robot, a four-legged autonomous unmanned ground vehicle, with similar characteristics to Boston Dynamics’ spot robotic dog, was tested under the Advanced Battle Management System, an Air Force project designed to provide commanders with the ability to control smart military assets in real-time.  

  The robots were deployed from an Air Force LC-130 Hercules cargo plane that flew from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado to Nellis, carrying airmen and the robot dogs. Once the plane landed, the robo-hounds were released to conduct inspection, surveillance, and or mapping missions of the base perimeter. The robot dogs also patrolled the perimeter of the base once the airman stabilized the area during the war exercise. 

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  “Our defenders employed the robot dogs,” said Master Sgt. Lee Boston, 321st CRS loadmaster and the C.R. team chief for the exercise. “These robot dogs are a new technology that we’re testing as part of the exercise. The dogs give us visuals of the area, all while keeping our defenders closer to the aircraft.”

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  Details are scant on Ghost Robotics’ website about Vision 60, but calls the robot “unstoppable” and says it is “highly-agile and fast,” along with “autonomous” features. Also, the dogs cannot be killed and can stealthily patrol wider areas than real dogs due to the use of optical sensors and artificial intelligence. 

  The company also mentions a wide range of U.S. and allied military, homeland, intel, and public safety agencies are customers that are using these robots. 

  So despite dystopian warnings about robot killer dogs, such as scenes featured in Black Mirror, the military’s Vision 60 is helping soldiers stay alive … but maybe that’s the case right up to the point Skynet turns on us all. 

  … Robot dogs were also spotted in Singapore earlier this year, enforcing social distancing. 

  

• 'Virtual School' Dangers: The Hazards Of A Police State Education During COVID-19
  ‘Virtual School’ Dangers: The Hazards Of A Police State Education During COVID-19
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 23:20

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

  – George Orwell, 1984

  Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day, their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way, and out of trouble.

  Back then, if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school or suffering through a parent-teacher conference about your shortcomings.

  Of course, that was before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon.

  As a result, over the course of the past 30 years, the need to keep the schools “safe” from drugs and weapons has become a thinly disguised, profit-driven campaign to transform them into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, school resource officers, strip searches, and active shooter drills.

  Suddenly, under school zero tolerance policies, students were being punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest for childish behavior and minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight.

  Things got even worse once schools started to rely on police (school resource officers) to “deal with minor rule breaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes.”

  As a result, students are being subjected to police tactics such as handcuffs, leg shackles, tasers and excessive force for “acting up,” in addition to being ticketed, fined and sent to court for behavior perceived as defiant, disruptive or disorderly such as spraying perfume and writing on a desk.

  This is what constitutes a police state education these days: lessons in compliance meted out with aggressive, totalitarian tactics.

  The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another troubling layer to the ways in which students (and their families) can run afoul of a police state education now that school (virtual or in-person) is back in session.

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  Significant numbers of schools within the nation’s 13,000 school districts have opted to hold their classes online, in-person or a hybrid of the two, fearing further outbreaks of the virus. Yet this unprecedented foray into the virtual world carries its own unique risks.

  Apart from the technological logistics of ensuring that millions of students across the country have adequate computer and internet access, consider the Fourth Amendment ramifications of having students attend school online via video classes from the privacy of their homes.

  Suddenly, you’ve got government officials (in this case, teachers or anyone at the school on the other end of that virtual connection) being allowed carte blanche visual access to the inside of one’s private home without a warrant.

  Anything those school officials see—anything they hear—anything they photograph or record—during that virtual visit becomes fair game for scrutiny and investigation not just by school officials but by every interconnected government agency to which that information can be relayed: the police, social services, animal control, the Department of Homeland Security, you name it.

  After all, this is the age of overcriminalization, when the federal criminal code is so vast that the average American unknowingly commits about three federal felonies per day, a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law.

  It’s a train wreck just waiting to happen.

  In fact, we’re already seeing this play out across the country. For instance, a 12-year-old Colorado boy was suspended for flashing a toy gun across his computer screen during an online art class. Without bothering to notify or consult with the boy’s parents, police carried out a welfare check on Isaiah Elliott, who suffers from ADHD and learning disabilities.

  An 11-year-old Maryland boy had police descend on his home in search of weapons after school officials spied a BB gun on the boy’s bedroom wall during a Google Meet class on his laptop. School officials reported the sighting to the school resource officer, who then called the police.

  And in New York and Massachusetts, growing numbers of parents are being visited by social services after being reported to the state child neglect and abuse hotline, all because their kids failed to sign in for some of their online classes. Charges of neglect, in some instances, can lead to children being removed from their homes.

  You see what this is, don’t you?

  This is how a seemingly well-meaning program (virtual classrooms) becomes another means by which the government can intrude into our private lives, further normalizing the idea of constant surveillance and desensitizing us to the dangers of an existence in which we are never safe from the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother.

  This is how the police sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause and a court-issued warrant in order to spy us on in the privacy of our homes: by putting school officials in a position to serve as spies and snitches via online portals and virtual classrooms, and by establishing open virtual doorways into our homes through which the police can enter uninvited and poke around.

  Welfare checks. Police searches for weapons. Reports to Social Services.

  It’s only a matter of time before the self-righteous Nanny State uses this COVID-19 pandemic as yet another means by which it can dictate every aspect of our lives.

  At the moment, it’s America’s young people who are the guinea pigs for the police state’s experiment in virtual authoritarianism. Already, school administrators are wrestling with how to handle student discipline for in-person classes and online learning in the midst of COVID-19.

  Mark my words, this will take school zero tolerance policies—and their associated harsh disciplinary penalties—to a whole new level once you have teachers empowered to act as the Thought Police.

  As Kalyn Belsha reports for Chalkbeat, “In Jacksonville, Florida, students who don’t wear a mask repeatedly could be removed from school and made to learn online. In some Texas districts, intentionally coughing on someone can be classified as assault. In Memphis, minor misbehaviors could land students in an online ‘supervised study.’”

  Depending on the state and the school district, failing to wear a face mask could constitute a dress code violation. In Utah, not wearing a face mask at school constitutes a criminal misdemeanor. In Texas, it’s considered an assault to intentionally spit, sneeze, or cough on someone else. Anyone removing their mask before spitting or coughing could be given a suspension from school.

  Virtual learning presents its own challenges with educators warning dire consequences for students who violate school standards for dress code and work spaces, even while “learning” at home. According to Chalkbeat, “In Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis, that means no pajamas, hats, or hoods on screen, and students’ shirts must have sleeves. (The district is providing ‘flexibility’ on clothing bottoms and footwear when a student’s full body won’t be seen on video.) Other rules might be even tougher to follow: The district is also requiring students’ work stations to be clear of ‘foreign objects’ and says students shouldn’t eat or drink during virtual classes.”

  See how quickly the Nanny State a.k.a. Police State takes over?

  All it takes for you to cease being the master of your own home is to have a child engaged in virtual learning. Suddenly, the government gets to have a say in how you order your space and when those in your home can eat and drink and what clothes they wear.

  If you think the schools won’t overreact in a virtual forum, you should think again.

  These are the same schools that have been plagued by a lack of common sense when it comes to enforcing zero tolerance policies for weapons, violence and drugs.

  These are the very same schools that have exposed students to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

  Zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students have turned students into suspects to be treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, while criminalizing childish behavior.

  For instance, 9-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns.

  A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement).

  Even imaginary weapons (hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention. Equally outrageous was the case in New Jersey where several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of “cops and robbers” during recess and using their fingers as guns.

  With the distinctions between student offenses erased, and all offenses expellable, we now find ourselves in the midst of what Time magazine described as a “national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer.” Students have actually been suspended from school for possession of the fizzy tablets in violation of zero tolerance drug policies. Students have also been penalized for such inane “crimes” as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades.

  A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.

  Acts of kindness, concern, basic manners or just engaging in childish behavior can also result in suspensions.

  One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

  In South Carolina, where it’s against the law to disturb a school, more than a thousand students a year—some as young as 7 years old—“face criminal charges for not following directions, loitering, cursing, or the vague allegation of acting ‘obnoxiously.’ If charged as adults, they can be held in jail for up to 90 days.”

  Things get even worse when you add police to the mix.

  Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). What this means, notes Mother Jones, is greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

  Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.

  The horror stories are legion.

  One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting in the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury.

  In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

  A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. Another 12-year-old was handcuffed and jailed after he stomped in a puddle, splashing classmates.

  On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

  In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

  Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

  For example, a 4-year-old Virginia preschooler was handcuffed, leg shackled and transported to the sheriff’s office after reportedly throwing blocks and climbing on top of the furniture. School officials claim the restraints were necessary to protect the adults from injury.

  A 6-year-old kindergarten student in a Georgia public school was handcuffed, transported to the police station, and charged with simple battery of a schoolteacher and criminal damage to property for throwing a temper tantrum at school.

  This is the end product of all those so-called school “safety” policies, which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers.

  Yet these police state tactics did not made the schools any safer.

  As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, police state tactics never make anyone safer so much as they present the illusion of safety and indoctrinate the populace to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

  Now with virtual learning in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, the stakes are even higher.

  It won’t be long before you start to see police carrying out knock-and-talk investigations based on whatever speculative information is gleaned from those daily virtual classroom sessions that allow government officials entry to your homes in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

  It won’t take much at all for SWAT teams to start crashing through doors based on erroneous assumptions about whatever mistaken “contraband” someone may have glimpsed in the background of a virtual classroom session: a maple leaf that looks like marijuana, a jar of sugar that looks like cocaine, a toy gun, someone playfully shouting for help in the distance.

  This may sound far-fetched now, but it’s only a matter of time before this slippery slope becomes yet another mile marker on the one-way road to tyranny.

  

• Esper Touts China Is Too Far Behind US Navy Superiority To Ever Close The Gap
  Esper Touts China Is Too Far Behind US Navy Superiority To Ever Close The Gap
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 23:00

  In Wednesday remarks Secretary of Defense Mark Esper touted complete US naval superiority over China, stating firmly, “I want to make clear that China cannot match the United States when it comes to naval power.”

  Esper addressed a RAND Corporation event and underscored the major communist power which the US Navy is increasingly butting up against in the South China Sea is ultimately too far behind to close the gap in terms of maritime capability, despite it leading the world in simple ship numbers. He reminded his audience that numbers aren’t everything.

  “Even if we stopped building new ships, it would take the [People’s Republic of China] years to close the gap when it comes to our capability on the high seas,” Esper said. “Ship numbers are important, but they don’t tell the whole story.”

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  “They do not address the types of ships and the capabilities of the vessels being counted; the skill of the crews that operate them; the prowess of the officers that lead them; or the ways in which we fight and sustain them,” Esper added.

  He further emphasized that the Department of Defense remains resolved in maintaining that clear dominance, as there are navy plans to expand its overall number of ships, saying “We must increase funding for shipbuilding and the readiness that sustains a larger force.”

  On the future of unmanned military vehicles, he said: “This fleet will need to be made up of more and smaller surface combatants; optionally manned, unmanned, and autonomous surface and subsurface vehicles; unmanned carrier-based aircraft of all types; a larger and more capable submarine force; and a modern strategic deterrent.”

  His comments raised eyebrows also given it’s widely acknowledged that China has the largest navy in the world, as the Pentagon’s recently issued annual China Military Power report underscored.

  “China has already achieved parity with — or even exceeded — the United States in several military modernization areas,” the Pentagon report stated. “The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants,” the report said.

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  The report said that China is “the top ship-producing nation in the world by tonnage.”

  But considering aircraft carriers alone, for example, it’s easy to visualize America’s superiority.

  The US Navy has 21 total aircraft carriers, among these 11 large nuclear-powered fleet carriers, while China has a mere two with a third on the way.

  

• 12 Steps To Create Your Own Pandemic
  12 Steps To Create Your Own Pandemic
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 22:40

  Authored by Nils Nilsen via Off-Guardian.org,

  12 Steps to Create Your Own Pandemic (Or How to Turn a Harmless Virus into Boundless Profits for You and Your Friends)

  Imagine that you had the resources and influence sufficient to create a global pandemic, what would you need to do? How would you get started? And how best to turn it to your advantage and boost your profits?

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  We have the answers right here.

  A simple 12 step plan.

  1. Find some vague criteria for what constitutes the symptoms that you want people to look for. Anything subjective that a lot of people can identify with is ideal. Let us take memory problems and/or confusion + a few common ones from the Covid list. Tiredness, aches and pains are common and subjective enough. (For covid19 the symptoms are: fever, dry cough, tiredness. Less common symptoms: aches and pains, sore throat, diarrhoea, loss of taste or smell, a rash, or discolouration of fingers or toes)

  It would be a good idea to take something that is very common in old people so that we can use death from old age as proof of the lethality of the new virus.

  2. Then we would need something biological to test. Any RNA sequence would do, as long as it is not present in the whole population. If it were, someone might claim herd immunity very quickly. Actually it could be an RNA sequence that does not really exist in humans but something that could exist as contamination in labs, e.g. in dust or water.

  That would be enough for a RT qPCR test to pick up as a false positive. Many RT PCRs have false positive rates of 3-5 % and that would be plenty to create a scare. (When it comes to Covid, the false positive rate is impossible to know for sure, since we don’t have a gold standard to check against, but for many other similar tests, the average false positive rate is over 3%. And different labs are testing for different sequences.

  We can count on over-stressed labs to be more prone to contamination than labs taking part in research knowing they will be checked for accuracy, the ones that gave over 3% false positives. Maybe the error rate for the average stressed lab is as high as 8%. BMJ counts 5% as a reasonable estimate. With 8% we would have all positive tests in the US explained by false positives)

  3. Then we are all set to go. We just have to claim that we have discovered a new cluster of symptoms and that is related to a new RNA sequence. It starts with memory loss, and confusion. In other words this is a neurotoxic virus, and it leads to death in all the ways old people can die, by strokes, heart attacks, pneumonia, kidney failure, sepsis, organ failure, dehydration.

  It doesnt matter if the patient was close to deaths door anyway, because of existing problems. We can always claim that without our new virus, they would not have died. Who could counter that?( just like Covid; People die from all kinds of disorders that they already had before the got the Covid test).

  4. By some miracle we have already discovered exactly the virus that is responsible among the millions of different viruses that exist in any cubic centimeter of air. So we already have a RT PCR test read to go. This makes us look like very competent researchers. Of course we have bought stock in the major testing labs ahead of time.

  We’ve bought stocks in the biggest vaccine manufacturers also of course. That will be the biggest money maker finally, hopefully for years since it will be difficult to get antibodies to something that doesn’t really exist.

  5. So now we just have to spread the news that a new deadly pandemic is spreading all over the world, and every country has to start testing. We can count on the 5% hypochondriacs in the general population to come forth to be tested first.

  It will always take some time for each country to get started ramping up their testing, so the graphs are guaranteed to look exponential in the beginning.

  6. All you need now is for people to bring their old and confused elderly in for testing, and with 5% false positives, we will soon have most hospital beds filled with old sick confused patients.

  We can count on doctors to treat them aggressively. Most of these old people will be on a coctail of drugs already, so adding a few more drugs as “heroic treatment” will be sure to push them over the edge.

  Many will have pneumonia from the seasonal flu, so we can just prolongue this by putting them on ventilators. Then they will die a month later and we can say it wasn’t the flu since the flu season should have stopped a month earlier.

  7. The graphs of numbers tested positive will be exponential in the beginning, but flatten off as the testers reach their max level. After some time the lab technicians will be exhausted and tend to become sloppy, the pressure for testing will be relentless and the labs will get dirtier and dirtier, and we will get higher and higher false-positive rates.

  Usually the media will be satisfied with reporting just the number of positive tests, but in case anybody should think of checking proportion of positive tests compared to total number of tests, they would get higher number each week because of overworked, error prone lab workers.

  Eventually, society will run out of hypochondriacs who will come for tests voluntarily, and many will have understood that should they test positive, they will be put together with really sick people, unprotected, since they all have the same virus…So the curves will flatten and start going down.

  8. If you want to destroy the economy during the pandemic, you will get some programmer to make a prediction of millions of deaths (actually 70 million die every year anyway, so that is not really difficult) if we don’t lock down society.

  We just have to scare them to lock down right before the curve flattens (when we are running out of the 5% hypochondriacs) and all the politicians will think they saved their country.

  9. Just for fun, to see how strangely we could make gullible people act, we could invent different strategies for protection. Social distancing can look really funny in a supermarket, and all the original ways of saluting is interesting , leg touching elbow touching (even if we cough in our elbows now).

  We could make a lot of money on masks, gloves and sanitisers too.

  10. In order to make money on vaccines, we will start testing antibodies. Here the false-positive error rate is even greater, so we may easily get 10% with antibodies just from false positives. But on retest, we will statistically get only one percent testing positive if we test the same people.

  That means that we can claim that we will need many boosters of the vaccine. In order to maximise the profit, we may put something in the vaccine that makes people sick and then we can cure them with a very expensive drug produced by a company we have already invested in. But to be sure maximum number of countries will pay almost any price for the vaccine, we have to wait until they are really desperate.

  11. We can always count on several waves of the virus since the common flu and colds will come every year and kill hundreds of thousands like every year, and 3-10% of them will test false positive for our virus every time.

  So we have a fantastic moneymaker for years: Expensive tests, expensive drugs, and expensive vaccines for 7 billion people every year.

  12. We can count on doctors being sure that they are right in all they do. They will counter each other in every turn, and since there is no real new disease to cure, the research will run into endless blind alleys. This will prime all doctors for accepting a vaccine.

  We just have to make sure there is no cheap effective drug commonly available. If so, we can always pay some doctors to make up some numbers to publish (like the fake negative Hydroxychloroquine research in the Lancet).

  

• Goldman CEO David Solomon Tries For Second Time In 3 Years To Sell $25 Million Aspen Mansion
  Goldman CEO David Solomon Tries For Second Time In 3 Years To Sell $25 Million Aspen Mansion
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 22:20

  Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is hoping to “sell the rip” in the suburban real estate market that has taken place as wealthy families move further out of major U.S. cities.

  The investment banking CEO, who doubles as a nightclub DJ, is attempting to sell his massive estate in Aspen for the second time in 3 years.

  The property was built to look like a typical log cabin, but features enormous outsized windows that open up to the view of “sweeping vistas”. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The 83 acre home has an “estimated value of $25 million” according to Bloomberg. Solomon has been speaking to potential buyers over the course of the summer, according to the report.

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  The property is 13,000 square feet and was completed in 2009 after Solomon purchased it in 2005 for $4 million. It boasts 7 full bathrooms and two half baths.

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  The property’s listing in 2017 called the house both “classy” and “comfortable”. It also has a cinema, pool, sauna and hot tub. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  As we noted, Solomon is having his second go at trying to sell the property – recall, he tried to sell his home for $36 million back in 2017. Perhaps he is hoping to take advantage of a real estate market that is seeing an exodus from cities and crowded areas as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  This shift seems to have lifted property values in Aspen. Bloomberg noted that the “dollar value of single-family home sales in Aspen surged 440% in August from a year earlier”. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Solomon was unable to find buyers at the $36 million listed price in 2017.

  Perhaps with trillions of dollars in PPP money floating around the nation, he’ll have better luck this time. 

  

• How Much Money Do Communications Majors Make?
  How Much Money Do Communications Majors Make?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 22:00

  Submitted by Priceonomics,

  For those who are considering a career in communications, a key question to understand is how much money you’ll be making when you graduate. Furthermore, will that salary be sufficient to pay for the debt involved with getting your degree?

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  While predicting one’s future income is subject to uncertainty, especially in the current economic climate, there is luckily a lot of data out there. Along with Priceonomics customer MastersInCommunications.org, we analyzed and collected data by the US Department of Education about how much money communications majors earn.

  Using data from the College Scorecard, a data resource about the earnings and debt of graduates of US colleges, we looked at which undergraduate communications programs produced the graduates with the best and worst financial prospects.

  We found that communications majors from Georgia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania have the highest earnings while Shaw University has the lowest-earning graduates. Colleges like Devry and Grambling State University produce communications graduates with the highest debt while the City University of New York (CUNY) has graduated with the lowest levels of debt.

  ***

  Before beginning the analysis of colleges where communications graduates earn the most and least, let’s look at the overall data. According to the most recent data from the US Department of Education College Scorecard, the median college graduate with a communications degree earns $31,400, approximately the same as the median US worker.

  Not all communications programs are created equal, however. And you have ample reason to consider an online masters in communication program. Below shows the distribution of undergraduate communications programs segmented by median annual salary:

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  55.6% of graduates from college communications programs earn between $30K and $40K per year. In total, nearly 95% of communications majors earn under $40K per year. No undergraduate institution reported communications majors earning above $60K per year. Which colleges produce communications majors that earn the most and least? The following chart shows the schools reporting the highest median earnings among their undergraduates who studied communication:

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Communications majors from Georgia Institute of Technology earn the most in the country with a median salary of $57,600 per year. In second place is the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school where graduates earn just under $50,000 per year. In third place is the Mitchell Technical Institute, a technical college in South Dakota.

  Communication graduates from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina earn just $14,900 per year, the lowest in the country. SUNY Broome and Technical Career Institute graduates earn the second and third lowest salaries respectively.

  When it comes to debt, which schools communication graduates emerge with the highest and lowest burdens?

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Communications majors from Devry University emerge with $42,430 in debt, the highest in the country. Grambling State and Lane College communications majors also graduate with more than $40,000 in debt. On the other hand, a number of community colleges graduate communications majors with less than $10,000 in debt.

  Having high levels of debt can be a problem, but that can be made up for with having a high income. Which colleges produce communications majors with high debt to income ratios and which ones come out with high incomes relative to their debt? The chart below shows the schools with the best and worst debt to income ratios (Total Debt / Annual Income):

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Some of the schools whose students graduate with debt also have the least favorable debt to income ratios. Grambling State University and Shaw University produce communications graduates with the highest debt to income ratios by a considerable margin. On the other hand, schools that produce graduates with low debt relative to their income are a mix of community colleges (CUNY), lower-priced private schools (Brigham Young), higher-priced private schools (Cornell), and state schools (University of California). For a communication major who looks to graduate with a strong income relative to debt, all types of schools may fit the bill.

  

• Soybean Futures Hit 27-Month High On Increased Chinese Demand 
  Soybean Futures Hit 27-Month High On Increased Chinese Demand 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 21:40

  CBoT soybean futures entered a new bull market in September, soaring 21% in the last five months, with most of the gains (+18%) over the previous 23 sessions as strong demand from China comes online. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  According to Reuters, there’s a lot to be excited about in soybean fundamentals as the demand outlook story brightens with China increasing soybean purchases: 

  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed private sales of 327,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans to China. The USDA has announced U.S. soy sales to China in each of the last nine business days.

  • A Farm Futures producers’ survey conducted in late July and released on Wednesday projected a 4.9% rise in U.S. 2021 soybean seedings and a 0.3% drop in corn acres.

  Agriculture leaders, including Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Sept. 10 that “outlook demand for the next six months or so is pretty good.” 

  Sutter said, “U.S. farmers are feeling much more optimistic than they said, a year or even six months ago,” adding that China has been buying U.S. soybeans as part of the phase one trade deal signed between both countries in January. 

  “Now, as we get into the time of the year, when China is more typically purchasing soybeans from the northern hemisphere — the United States in particular — we are seeing them make significant purchases … we have a record amount of new crop sales open to China at this time, so we are thinking that it is a successful trade deal,” Sutter said.

  China is committed to buying $12.5 billion of U.S. farm products under phase one agreement, with another $19.5 billion in 2021. 

  “I continue to believe that the phase one agreement is very important and is being executed well,” said Sutter.

  We noted, in late August, the “prospects of strong Chinese demand pushed Chicago soybean futures prices to a seven-month high this week.” 

  “China has been stepping up purchases of American agricultural goods since the end of April, with soybean sales for delivery next season currently running at their highest level for this time of year since 2013.”

  And of particular note is the fact that this surge in prices – on apparent demand – is against the typical seasonal pattern in soybean price action…

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  While China’s demand for U.S. soybeans appears to be increasing, partly because the country’s hog herd numbers are recovering from the African swine fever outbreak, overall trade deal commitments under the phase one deal will likely not be met this year.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  China’s increased soybean purchases is good news for President Trump ahead of the presidential elections on Nov. 03. 

  

• Biden's Gun Control Claims At Odds With Crime Stats
  Biden’s Gun Control Claims At Odds With Crime Stats
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 21:20

  Authored by John Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics.com,

  After two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies were shot and critically wounded on Saturday, Joe Biden warned, “Weapons of war have no place in our communities.” And within just hours of the attack, Biden tweeted in praise of the original bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which lasted from 1994 to 2004. “These bans saved lives, and Congress should never have let them expire,” he wrote.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  A handgun, not an assault rifle, was used to shoot the deputies. But it seems that Biden never misses an opportunity to deceptively complain about “weapons of war.”

  In the past, Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris have applied this label to AR-15 semi-automatic rifles.  But these guns function exactly as small-game, semi-automatic hunting rifles. Though it looks like the M16 machine gun made famous in the Vietnam War, no military in the world uses the AR-15.

  Gun control advocates commonly pose the question:

  “Why do people need a semi-automatic AR-15 to go out and kill deer?”

  The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon. Semi-automatic weapons are also used to protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require you to physically reload the gun may not do people a lot of good when their first shot misses or fails to stop an attacker. Or, for that matter, if they are facing multiple assailants.

  What about Biden’s claims that the assault weapons ban saved lives?

  Since the ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people. The murder rate never returned to that level, and fell to 5.0 per 100,000 people by 2018.

  If the ban had any effect, one would think that it would reduce the number of murders committed with rifles. But the percentage of firearm murders that were committed with rifles was at 4.8% prior to the ban starting in September 1994, and averaged 4.9% from 1995 to 2004. In the 10 years after the ban, the figure averaged just 3.9%. This pattern is the opposite of what gun control advocates predicted.

  Many academic studies have examined the original federal assault weapons ban.  

  They consistently found no statistically significant impact on mass public shootings or any other type of crime. Clinton administration-funded research by criminology professors Chris Koper and Jeff Roth confirmed as much in a 1997 report for the National Institute of Justice.

  “The evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect (i.e., that the effect was different from zero),” they wrote. 

  Koper and Roth suggested at the time that it might be possible to find a benefit after the ban had been in effect for more years. In 2004, they published a follow-up NIJ study with fellow criminologist Dan Woods.

  “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” they concluded.

  “And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

  Gun control advocates often cite work by Louis Klarevas, but his non-peer-reviewed methodologies are highly flawed. For one thing, Klarevas looks only at the total number of mass public shootings, whether they were committed with assault weapons or with other types of guns. While the share of mass public shootings that utilized assault weapons fell during the ban, it fell even more sharply in the 10 years after the ban ended in 2004. And any reduction that the ban caused in attacks with assault weapons may simply have meant more attacks with other types of guns.

  Biden’s tweet also touted large-capacity ammunition magazine bans. Contrary to common perception, ordinary hunting rifles can hold just as large a magazine as “assault weapons.” Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles. Magazines are basically metal boxes with springs, and are easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. The 1994 legislation banned magazines that could hold more than 10 bullets, yet had no effect on crime rates.

  Biden is making it clear that gun control is near the top of his agenda. So it’s little wonder that gun control zealot Michael Bloomberg just pledged to spend at least $100 million in Florida alone on behalf of the Biden campaign. But no matter how much Biden wishes it were true, guns bans won’t make American’s safer. With Democrats promising to eliminate the Senate filibuster if they win, gun bans will be an integral part of the radical agenda that they will quickly enact. To his credit, Biden is not hiding it.

  

• World Bank Warns Recovery Could Take "Five Years"
  World Bank Warns Recovery Could Take “Five Years”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 21:00

  Global economic activity around the world has stabilized in mid-September, though far below pre-COVID-19 levels as recoveries risk reversing if monetary and fiscal stimulus is not continued at rates seen in the first half of 2020. We noted Wednesday, a new OECD report offered some hope the global downturn is not as severe as previously thought but is still viewed as an “unprecedented” decline. 

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  We also noted the OECD report is problematic for policy-makers who have unleashed easy-money policies during the pandemic to artificially inflate economies and boost risk assets, as policy support in the second half of the year might not be as great as what was seen earlier in the year (as is currently playing out in Washington with the prospect of a slimmed-down stimulus bill getting slimmer).

  So with waning support from central banks and fiscal stimulus from governments, the quick rebound seen in the global economy has likely stalled, and the shape of the recovery will no longer resemble a “V” but more of a “W” or “U” or “L.”  

  For more color on the shape of the global recovery, or rather perhaps how long the recovery will last, chief economist of the World Bank, Carmen Reinhart, warned Thursday, a full recovery could take upwards of five years, reported El País.

  “There will probably be a quick rebound as all the restriction measures linked to lockdowns are lifted, but a full recovery will take as much as five years,” Reinhart said, while speaking at a conference in Madrid, Spain. 

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  Reinhart said (as quoted by Reuters), “the pandemic-caused recession will last longer in some countries than in others and will increase inequalities as the poorest will be harder hit by the crisis in rich countries and the poorest countries will be harder hit than richer countries.”

  “Central banks have tried to provide liquidity to avoid affecting more households. But as much as central banks give support, there are businesses that will not return, there are closed restaurants or stores that will not reopen, there are homes that will take a long time to find employment, there are airlines or hotels that will not survive a long period without normal mobility. There are going to be a lot of bankruptcies: if you look at the credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s, Fitch, the amount of reduction in credit quality that has been seen since the beginning of the year, both at the corporate and sovereign levels, has been a record. And central banks are not all-powerful either: no matter how much credit support is given, at some point you have to face the deterioration in the financial system, and that is not a criticism: it is inevitable because of the deep drop in the economy. Under these conditions, we have to think about cuts that allow new credits for recovery,” she said. 

  She added, “this crisis did not start as a financial crisis. But given the depth of this decline we are experiencing, it is turning into a financial crisis. For very obvious reasons: many households have lost a job that they will not get back, they have difficulties in paying their debts, many businesses have closed their doors and will not reopen them, the shopping centers are paralyzed and half empty.” 

  This comes as 29.7 million people around the world have been infected with COVID-19 and 938,820 have died, according to the latest Johns Hopkins University figures. High frequency data (via Bloomberg) is showing the recovery around the world has stabilized but risks a reversal if more policy support, if that is from central banks or governments is not seen. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Readers should be asking: What happens when Wall Street misreads the shape of the recovery?

  To answer that, Gary Shilling, the president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., told CNBC’s Elizabeth Schulze in a July interview that once investors realize the shape of the recovery is an “L” rather than the overhyped “V,” it would trigger a 1930s stock market decline. 

  

• "Everyone Involved Should Face Jail Time": Trump Jr. Slams Nashville Officials For Concealing Low COVID-19 Numbers
  “Everyone Involved Should Face Jail Time”: Trump Jr. Slams Nashville Officials For Concealing Low COVID-19 Numbers
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 20:44

  Donald Trump Jr. has weighed in over Nashville officials concealing the low number of COVID-19 cases in bars and restaurants.

  In a Thursday tweet, the president’s son said “The Dem Mayor of Nashville KNOWINGLY LIED ABOUT COVID DATA to justify shutting down bars & restaurants, killing countless jobs & small businesses in the process,” adding “Everyone involved should face jail time. How many other Dem run cities is this happening in?”

  The Dem Mayor of Nashville KNOWINGLY LIED ABOUT COVID DATA to justify shutting down bars & restaurants, killing countless jobs & small businesses in the process.

  Everyone involved should face jail time. How many other Dem run cities is this happening in?https://t.co/8anzs5Jgba

  — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 17, 2020

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

  * * *

  Leaked emails between the senior adviser to Nashville’s Mayor and a health department official reveal a disturbing effort to conceal extremely low coronavirus cases emanating from bars and restaurants, while the lion’s share of infections occurred in nursing homes and construction workers, according to WZTV Nashville.

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  On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

  Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?“

  “Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. –WZTV

  Four weeks later, Tennessean reporter Nate Rau asked the health department: “the figure you gave of “more than 80” does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?“

  To which health department official Brian Todd scrambled for an answer – asking five health department officials: “Please advise how you respond. BT.”

  The response – from an official whose name was omitted from the leaked email: “My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site,” adding “We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be “because that number is increasing all the time and we don’t want to say a specific number.””

  According to a metro staff attorney asked by city councilmember Steve Glover to verify the authenticity of the emails, “I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real.”

  Glover told WZTV: “They are fabricating information. They’ve blown there entire credibility Dennis. Its gone i don’t trust a thing they say going forward …nothing.”

  Glover says he has been contacted by an endless stream of downtown bartenders, waitresses, and restaurant owners. Why would they not release these numbers?

  “We raised taxes 34 percent and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes their apartments etcetera and we did it on bogus data. That should be illegal!” he says.

  Again, we weren’t told by the mayor’s office this wasn’t true. We were told to file a freedom of information act request. –WZTV

  

• Doug Casey: Six Reasons Why The Wrong Party Will Win The Most Important US Election Since 1860
  Doug Casey: Six Reasons Why The Wrong Party Will Win The Most Important US Election Since 1860
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 20:40

  Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

  The upcoming election may be the most important in US history. At least as important as that of 1860, which led directly to the War Between the States.

  In 2016 I believed Trump would win and placed a money bet on him.

  This time I’m not so sure, despite Trump’s “incumbent advantage” and the fact the Democrats could hardly have picked two worse candidates.

  I see at least six reasons why this is true, namely:

  1. The Virus

  2. The economy

  3. Demographics

  4. Moral collapse of the old order

  5. The Deep State

  6. Cheating

  The consequences of a Democrat victory will be momentous.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Let’s look at why it’s likely.

  1. The Virus

  Despite the fact COVID is only marginally more deadly than the annual flu, and the fact it’s only a danger to the very old (median death age 80), the hysteria around it is changing the nature of life itself. It’s proven much less serious than the Asian flu of the late ’60s or the Hong Kong flu of the late ’50s. And not even remotely comparable to the Spanish flu of 1918-19. None of those had any discernable effect on the economy or politics. COVID is a trivial medical event but has created a gigantic psychological hysteria.

  The virus hysteria is, however, a disaster from Trump’s point of view for several reasons. None of them have anything to do with his “handling” of the virus—apart from the fact that medical issues should be a matter between a patient and his doctor, not bureaucrats and politicians.

  First, the virus hysteria is severely limiting the number and size of Trump’s rallies, which he relies on to keep enthusiasm up.

  Second, more people are staying at home and watching television than ever before. However, unless they glue their dial to Fox, they’ll gravitate towards the mainstream media, which is stridently anti-Trump. People who are on the fence (and most voters are always in the wishy-washy middle) will mostly hear authoritative-sounding anti-Trump talking heads on television, and they’ll be influenced away from Trump.

  Third, older people have by far the heaviest voter turnout, but roughly 80% of the casualties of the virus are elderly. And over 90% of those deaths are related to some other condition. Be that as it may, fear will make older people less likely to vote in this election. The COVID hysteria will still be with us in November. Older people tend to be culturally conservative and are most likely Trumpers.

  Fourth, in today’s highly politicized world, the government is supposed to be in charge of everything. Despite the fact there are thousands of viruses, and they’ve been with us thousands of years, this one is blamed on the current government. Boobus americanus will tend to vote accordingly.

  2. The Economy

  Keeping his voters at home is one thing. But the effects the hysteria is having on the economy are even more important. The effect of COVID on the economy should be trivial since only a small fraction of the relatively few Covid deaths are among people who are economically active.

  Presidents always take credit when the economy is good and are berated when it’s bad on their watch, regardless of whether they had anything to do with it. If the economy is still bad in November—and I’ll wager it’s going to be much worse, despite the Fed creating trillions of new dollars, and the government handouts—many people will reflexively vote against Trump.

  In February, before the lockdown, there were about 3.2 million people collecting unemployment. Now, there are about 30 million. So it seems we have over 30 million working-age people who are . . . displaced. That doesn’t count part-time workers, who aren’t eligible for unemployment but are no longer working.

  The supplementary benefits have ended. If they return, it will be at lower levels. The artificial good times brought on by free money will end too. It will be blamed on the Republicans.

  Worse, the public has come to the conclusion that a guaranteed annual income works. This virus hysteria has provided a kind of test for both Universal Basic Income and Modern Monetary Theory—helicopter money. So far, anyway, it seems you really can get something for nothing.

  An important note here: Trump—whatever his virtues—is an economic ignoramus. He’s supported both helicopter money and artificially low-interest rates since he’s been in office. But especially now, because he knows it’s all over if today’s financial house of cards collapses on his watch.

  I’ll wager that, out of the 160 million work-force Americans, 30 million will still be out of work by voting day. The recognition that the country is in a depression will sink in. The virus hysteria was just the pin—or sledgehammer, perhaps—that broke the bubble. But that’s another story. What’s for sure is that the average American will look for somebody to blame. As things get seriously bad, people will want to change the system itself, as was true in the 1930s.

  The only economic bright spot for Trump is the stock market. But it’s at bubble levels. Not because the economy is doing well, but because of the avalanche of money being printed. Where it is in November is a question of how much more money the Fed will print, and how much of it flows into the stock market. Even then, there’s an excellent chance it could collapse between now and the election.

  For reasons I’ve detailed in the past, the economy is now entering the trailing edge of a gigantic financial and economic hurricane. The Greater Depression will be much different, longer-lasting, and nastier than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946. And people vote their pocketbook. Bill Clinton was right when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” If stocks fall, it will compound this effect. A high stock market just gives the illusion of prosperity. And, at least while stocks are up, contributes to the atmosphere of class warfare. Poor people don’t own stocks.

  3. Demographics

  Since the gigantic political, economic, and social crisis we’re in will be even more obvious come November, people will want a radical change. Since that—plus lots of free stuff—is what the Democrats are promising, they’re likely to win. But there are other factors.

  The last election was close enough, but now, four years later, there are four more cohorts of kids that have gone through high school and college and have been indoctrinated by their uniformly left-wing teachers. They’re going to vote Democrat overwhelmingly.

  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and people like her, are both the current reality and the future of the Democratic Party—and of the US itself. She knows how to capitalize on envy and resentment. The Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements have added the flavor of a race war to the mix. Racial antagonism will become more pronounced as whites lose their majority status over the next 30 years.

  Nobody, except for a few libertarians and conservatives, is countering the purposefully destructive ideas AOC represents. But they have a very limited audience and not much of a platform. Arguing for sound money and limited government makes them seem like Old Testament prophets to Millenials. Collectivism and statism are overwhelming the values of individualism and liberty.

  It’s exactly the type of thing the Founders tried to guard against by restricting the vote to property owners over 21, going through the Electoral College. Now, welfare recipients who are only 18 can vote, and the Electoral College is toothless.

  For the last couple of generations, everybody who’s gone to college has been indoctrinated with leftist ideas. Almost all of the professors hold these ideas—as well as high school and grade school instructors. They place an intellectual patina on top of emotional, fantasy-driven leftist ideas.

  When the economy collapses in earnest, everybody will blame capitalism. Because Trump is rich, he’s incorrectly associated with capitalism. The country—especially the young, the poor, and the non-white—will look to the government to “do something.” They see the government as a cornucopia.

  A majority of Millennials are in favor of socialism, as are so-called People of Color. By 2050, whites will be a minority in the US. A straw in the wind is that a large majority of the people who commit suicide each year are middle-class white males—essentially, Trump supporters. The demographic handwriting is on the wall. Trump’s election in 2016 was an anomaly. No more than a Last Hurrah.

  4. Moral Collapse

  There’s now a lot of antagonism toward both free minds and free markets. A majority of Americans appear to actually support BLM, an openly Marxist movement. Forget about free minds—someone might be offended, and you’ll be pilloried by the mob. Forget about free markets—they’re blamed for all the economic problems, even though it’s the lack of them that caused the problem. The idea of capitalism is now considered undefendable.

  Widespread dissatisfaction with the system is obviously bad for the Republicans and good for the Democrats, who promote themselves as the party of change.

  It used to be pretty simple—the Republicans and the Democrats were just two sides of the same coin, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Traditionally, one promoted the warfare state more, the other the welfare state. But it was mostly rhetoric; they were pretty collegial. Now, both the welfare and the warfare state have been accepted as part of the cosmic firmament by both parties. The difference between them is now about cultural issues. Except that polite disagreement has turned into visceral hatred.

  The Dems at least stand for some ideas—although they’re all bad ideas. The Republicans have never stood for any principles; they just said the Dems wanted too much socialism, too fast, which is why they were always perceived—correctly—as hypocrites. Antagonism between the right and the left is no longer political or economic—it’s cultural. That’s much more serious.

  Look at the 20 Democratic candidates that were in the primary debates last summer. They were all radical collectivists, dedicated statists. The Republicans were all—with one exception—mealy-mouthed nonentities.

  Unlike Trump and the Reps, the Dems actually have a core of philosophical beliefs—and that counts during chaos. It doesn’t matter that they’re irrational or evil. People want to believe in something. The Dems give them a secular religion that promises a better world. The Reps only represent the withering status quo—which is not very appealing.

  There’s no political salvation coming from the Republican party. Like Trump himself, it doesn’t have any core principles. It just reacts to the Dems and proposes similar, but less radical alternatives to their ideas. It doesn’t stand for anything. It’s only capable of putting forward empty suits, pure establishment figures like Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, or Bush. Or a nobody like Pence. That’s a formula for disaster in today’s demographic and cultural environment.

  Incidentally, I’m not a fan of Trump, per se. He’s an opportunist who flies by the seat of his pants. He’s essentially an American Peron, whose economic policies are disjointed and inconsistent. His foreign policies are dangerous, provoking the Iranians and the Russians and starting a cold war with China that could easily spin out of control and turn into a major hot war.

  But on the bright side, he’s a cultural conservative. And that’s why people support him. He wants to see the US return to the golden days of yesteryear, the world of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie, and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. We’d all like to see domestic tranquility and rising prosperity. But that’s not the world we’re going to be living in, not just for 2020, but the whole decade.

  For years, I’ve joked that I planned on watching riots on my widescreen from a secure location, not out my front window. Things have now become so predictable that when I turn on the news, I kill the audio and just put the Stone’s “Street Fighting Man” on a continuous loop.

  Anyway, conservatives are completely demoralized. They’re grasping at cultural and moral straws from a bygone era. It’s impossible to defend being a white person anymore; propaganda has made it shameful to be white. If you object to the race-baiters, you’ll be shouted down in the media—especially by white “liberals.” Everything you grew up with and thought was part of the cosmic firmament is being washed away as unworthy.

  As an example, recently, in Stone Mountain, Georgia, 1,000 uniformed, armed black men went out of their way to say that they were looking for a fight. “Where are the rednecks that want to fight with us?”

  It would have been out of the question at any time in the past, but no rednecks showed up to the party. That’s partially because they’ve been psychologically cowed, and partially because they recognize that if they did when law enforcement arrived, they’d be the ones that were prosecuted, not the black men.

  It’s a complete inversion of what would have been the case only a generation ago. Then the blacks would have been too psychologically cowed to turn up for a fight, and the legal system would have railroaded them.

  Just to be clear, I’m opposed to any kind of identity politics, regardless of the group. The point is that there’s been a sea change in mass psychology.

  The demoralization of the ancien regime is why the destroyers of scores of statues of national heroes, from Columbus on down, are not being prosecuted. Nor do any citizens come out to oppose them. It’s a matter of psychology. Whites and conservatives no longer believe in themselves. When that’s true, it’s game over. Yes, I know it’s not true of all of them—but I believe it’s a fair generalization.

  This was spelled out very presciently by late Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent who fled to Canada in 1970. Bezmenov stated in the mid-1980s that there were four stages of collapse: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization. Demoralization takes decades. Bezemov said in 1985 that the process of demoralization—an undermining of a target nation’s values that makes it ripe for revolutionary takeover—was “basically completed already” in the United States. Destabilization, which we’ve seen, especially since the crisis of 2008, is now reaching a climax. I believe a Crisis that changes everything is coming in November.

  5. The Deep State

  The president is important. But the fact of the matter is that the Deep State—which is to say the top senators and congressmen, heads of the Praetorian agencies, generals, top corporate guys, top academic guys, top media people—really runs the country.

  Since the Deep State supports Biden and despises Trump, they’ll do everything in their power to defeat him. You’ve seen this with numerous commercials that don’t sell products so much as promote Woke and SJW ideology. Almost all corporations, universities, sports franchises, and media now make diversity hiring and social activism high priorities.

  The 2016 election took them by surprise; they didn’t think it was possible. This time they’re going to be organized, and the Deep State is going to be working actively against Trump’s reelection. Whether it’s through active “de-platforming” by Google, Twitter, and Facebook, or the more subtle influence of how they present things, this time, they’re going all out to derail Trump. They have immense power and can use it in many ways.

  They didn’t do much in 2016 because it hardly seemed worth the trouble; the election was thought to be in the bag for Hillary. This time it’s going to be different.

  6. Cheating

  The first five factors are important; they represent megatrends, tidal size influences. But let’s be candid. This election is going to hinge on who cheats the best. And the Democrats have, over the years, developed far greater expertise in cheating than the Republicans. I grew up in Chicago, and it was a joke even then. Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” wasn’t written for the kind of people who vote Republican.

  For one thing, there’s now an emphasis on mail-in votes, which makes it easier to cheat. You can register dead people as voters. You can register your dog as a voter. You could probably register 50 million Nigerian princes and get away with it. If the fraud is ever even discovered, it won’t be until long after the election. Which means it’s likely to be a contested election long after Nov 3rd.

  That’s only part of it, though. A high percentage of voting machines are computerized. Fraud by hacking voting machines is apparently easy to do—and it’s pretty untraceable. It’s just a matter of planning and boldness.

  One of the consequences of these widely acknowledged dysfunctions is to delegitimize the whole idea of voting. That’s possibly not a bad thing. Mass democracy inevitably degrades into a system where the poorer citizens vote themselves benefits at the expense of the middle class. Basically, mass democracy is mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. But if the populace loses faith in “democracy” during a serious economic crisis—like this one—they’re going to look for a strong man to straighten things out. The US will look more and more like Argentina. Or worse.

  Remember what Stalin said: “Who votes doesn’t count. What counts is who counts the votes.”

  But what about the idea of democracy itself? What does it matter the US starts to resemble a Third World country if that’s the will of the people? I’ve got to say that I don’t believe in democracy as a method of government. I understand how shocking that is to hear. Let me explain.

  There’s something to be said for a few people who share traditions and culture and generally agree on how the world works, voting on who will speak for them when it’s appropriate. That’s one thing—and it can make sense. But it’s very different from a gigantic agglomeration of very different, even antagonistic, people fighting for control and power.

  Winston Churchill said two things about democracy that are apposite.

  • One is that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I would argue that’s simply not true. The alternatives are worth discussing.

  • The other thing that he said was, “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” He’s absolutely right in that quip.

  Getting back to cheating: Will foreign interference in US elections be part of the cheating? Kind of. There already are millions of foreign citizens—illegal aliens orchestrated by the left—interfering directly in the outcome by voting. That’s much more of a change than some random Russians making political comments on Facebook allegedly during 2016. Although the Russian thing isn’t even a tempest in a toilet bowl. So what if some Russian kids played around on their computers to see what they could do? It was totally trivial and meaningless.

  In a way, it just proves the old saying, turnabout is fair play. For many years, the US government has cultivated regime change in foreign countries by interfering very overtly in their elections.

  Why should Americans act surprised if it happens in the US?

  A Counter Argument

  What are the chances Trump could win, despite the six points I’ve just mentioned? There are two factors I can think of.

  • One is that the Dems may have overplayed their hand by first supporting, and now not denouncing the “mostly peaceful protest” (aka, riots), Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the like. People can approve or not—but they don’t want to be scared or have their lives disrupted. It may send the silent majority to the Republicans.

  • Second is the immense enthusiasm of Trump’s supporters. When he goes somewhere, they disrupt their lives and line-up, waiting for hours to get into the venue. It seems Biden and Harris can barely fill a coffee shop. Millions of middle Americans support Trump as if their lives depended on it. And in a way, they do.

  If Trump loses the election—or more exactly, if the Democrats win—it is, in fact, going to change the nature of the US drastically and permanently. Unfortunately, that’s going to be the case even if Trump wins.

  Next week I’ll follow up with what’s going to happen after the election. Stay tuned.

  *  *  *

  Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed. The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. It will help you understand what is unfolding right before our eyes and what you should do so you don’t get caught in the crosshairs. Click here to download the PDF now.

  

• Black Lives Matter Protesters In Pittsburgh Charged After Harassing, Cursing Out Diners
  Black Lives Matter Protesters In Pittsburgh Charged After Harassing, Cursing Out Diners
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 20:20

  Three Black Lives Matter protesters in Pittsburgh are now facing charges from police after they were identified as people involved in viral videos that showed them cursing out diners at an outdoor restaurant. One protester even chugged a person’s beer, according to Fox News. 

  Pittsburgh police brought the charges on Monday against Shawn Green, Kenneth McDowell and Monique Craft for the incident that took place at a restaurant called Sienna Mercato. 

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  In video of the incident, Craft can be seen wearing a shirt that says “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter”, walking up to an older white couple, grabbing their beer off the table, and chugging it. That should help move along race relations in the country! Great thinking, Monique.

  For his/her efforts (Craft is non-binary), Monique was issued a summons for theft, conspiracy and simple trespass. Craft told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the video “only shows one side of the story”.

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  McDowell – who screamed obscenities at diners using a megaphone – was charged with possessing instruments of a crime, conspiracy, harassment and two counts of disorderly conduct. A complaint against McDowell says he swore at diners and gave them the middle finger. 

  You can watch video of the “protest” from CBS here:

  

• How COVID-19 Is Transforming The World's Sovereign Wealth Funds
  How COVID-19 Is Transforming The World’s Sovereign Wealth Funds
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 20:00

  Authored by Oxford Business Group via SafeHaven.com,

  The IMF predicts that the global economy will contract by 4.9% this year, down from growth of 2.9% in 2019, while the World Bank has forecast a fall of 5.2%, the worst contraction since the Second World War.

  With national economies suffering from revenue shortages, and populations in need of additional government support to mitigate the impacts of the crisis, SWFs have in many cases seen their roles transformed.

  As a result of reduced income, many governments have been tapping SWFs to help balance budgets and provide stimulus to businesses or households.

  This development has changed the conventional wisdom surrounding SWFs, which have combined assets estimated of around $6trn globally.

  Before the pandemic the funds were seen as having limited – or a total lack of – liabilities. However, Covid-19 has seen SWFs called on to meet the implicit liabilities associated with economic shocks.

  Among some SWFs, there is a growing realisation that they are no longer standalone institutions, but rather fiscal policy tools that are fully integrated into the macroeconomic management of their respective countries.

  This shift has also brought about significant challenges for SWFs as they adapt to the new economic environment.

  For commodity-based funds, many of which are underpinned by significant hydrocarbons exposure, the reduction in economic activity associated with Covid-19 has combined with persistently low oil prices to create twin challenges.

  Meanwhile, for funds primarily based on trade surpluses, the deceleration in global trade and subsequent logistical and transport challenges have created similar hurdles.

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  Asset sell-off

  Covid-19 has forced many of the less liquid SWFs to offload assets to generate cash.

  The trend is expected to be particularly prevalent in countries with a heavy reliance on oil revenue.

  For example, in Norway, where the government expects net cash flows from petroleum activities to fall by 62% this year to the lowest level since 1999, the country is expected to withdraw some $37bn in assets from its SWF, more than four times the previous record of $9.7bn in 2016.

  This development is also expected to affect the Middle East, where funds will be called on to bridge fiscal deficits, which international credit ratings agency Fitch expects to constitute between 10% and 20% of GDP this year.

  In Abu Dhabi, where the deficit is forecast to total 12% of GDP, the agency expects a $20bn drawdown on sovereign savings, while in Oman, tipped for a 19% fiscal deficit, analysts say as much as $8bn could be withdrawn from its SWFs.

  In light of this, JP Morgan estimates that SWFs in the MENA region could dump up to $225bn in equities this year.

  In addition to selling off assets to pay for budgetary spending, some SWFs have been called on to make other forms of investment.

  In June Temasek, Singapore’s SWF, recapitalised domestic shipbuilding and repair conglomerate Sembcorp Marine with $1.5bn. This came after the fund channelled $13bn into flag carrier Singapore Airlines.

  Such investment is a prime example of the increasing attention SWFs are paying to their home markets since the outbreak of the pandemic. While most investments remain international, domestic deals are increasing in size and frequency.

  According to the International Forum of SWFs (IFSWF), domestic deals accounted for 21% of the total value of SWF investment in 2019, with this trend increasing over the past six months.

  Opportunities amid disruption

  While some funds have sought to offload assets, others are looking to take advantage of lower share prices during the pandemic.

  Among them is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which – despite the downturn in the global hydrocarbons industry and its stated goal of spurring diversification – has recently made investments in international energy giants.

  In April the PIF acquired around $1bn worth of stakes in European energy majors Royal Dutch Shell, Eni and Total, which was followed by a $200m investment in Norway’s Equinor.

  The fund also acquired stakes in other sectors affected by the pandemic, including an 8.2% stake, valued at $369m, in US cruise ship operator Carnival, and a $300m investment in events company Live Nation.

  The PIF is not the only active investor among SWFs in this difficult environment. According to data from capital markets data company PitchBook, SWFs poured $17bn into venture capital companies in the first half of the year, exceeding the 2019 full-year levels.

  Chinese tech companies Tencent and Kuaishou were both significant beneficiaries, while Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company put $3bn into Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving technology arm.

  Among some funds, there has been a broader shift towards tackling issues related to the pandemic. 

  “We reshuffled our priorities based on Covid-19,” Ayman Soliman, CEO of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, told OBG.

  “We looked at the issues that were emerging in the region – food security, medical security and medical supplies – and realised that these should be our top priority.”

  Looking ahead

  Although it can be difficult to assess the losses accrued by SWF portfolios since the outbreak of the pandemic given the opaque nature of their investments, in April JP Morgan estimated that funds would suffer total equity losses of around $1trn.

  However, this recent contraction seems to be accelerating a pre-existing trend that has seen the amount of equity invested by SWFs fall from $54.3bn in 2017 to $35bn in 2019, according to the IFSWF.

  In a report released in August, Bernardo Bortolotti and Veljko Fotak from the Sovereign Investment Lab, along with Chloe Hogg from the London School of Economics, wrote that “the golden age of SWFs is over”.

  “Declining oil prices, mounting protectionism and increasing barriers to international capital flows have halted the spectacular rise of SWFs of the last two decades. The double whammy of the Covid-19 shock and of the new macroeconomic reality represents a quintessential challenge for an industry,” the trio wrote.

  “Yet, with $6trn under management, SWFs remain major players in global finance and have the potential to mitigate some of the worst financial consequences of the current crisis.”

  As countries recover from the economic recession, recent developments suggest the funds will be seen as a key tools in building resilience against future economic shocks.

  

• "Alone In The World": US Vows "Full" Iran Sanctions Snapback Begins Saturday Morning
  “Alone In The World”: US Vows “Full” Iran Sanctions Snapback Begins Saturday Morning
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 19:40

  Another Iran showdown is coming at the United Nations at the end of this week after the United States finds itself isolated in claiming authority to impose ‘snapback’ sanctions on Iran:

  Virtually alone in the world, the Trump administration will announce on Saturday that U.N. sanctions on Iran eased under the 2015 nuclear deal are back in force. But the other members of the U.N. Security Council, including U.S. allies, disagree and have vowed to ignore the step. That sets the stage for ugly confrontations as the world body prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary at a coronavirus-restricted General Assembly session next week.

  On Wednesday the Trump administration pledged it will move to impose “full” US sanctions on any international entity or arms company doing deals with Iran.

  Per the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal brokered under Obama, a 13-year old arms embargo on Iran is set to expire October 18 of this year.

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  The US failed in a recent bid weeks ago to get the UN Security Council to back its efforts to extend the embargo. On Aug. 20 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at UN headquarters that the US will activate snap back sanctions, which even US allies say it has no authority to do, given Trump withdrew from the deal in May 2018.

  “These will be valid U.N. Security Council (actions) and the United States will do what it always does, it will do its share as part of its responsibilities to enable peace,” Pompeo said Wednesday. “We’ll do all the things we need to do to ensure that those sanctions are enforced.”

  The White House is ready to go it alone, promising that all prior UN sanctions will “snap back” at 8 p.m. EDT on Saturday, according to remarks this week by newly appointed special envoy for Iran Elliott Abrams.

  “We expect all U.N. member states to implement their member state responsibilities and respect their obligations to uphold these sanctions,” Abrams said at a Wednesday press briefing.

  “If other nations do not follow it… I think they should be asked … whether they do not think they are weakening the structure of U.N. sanctions,” he added.

  

• President Trump's Ban On Critical Race Theory, Explained
  President Trump’s Ban On Critical Race Theory, Explained
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 19:20

  Authored by Dan Sanchez, Tyler Brandt, and Brad Polumbo via The Foundation for Economic Education,

  Does Critical Race Theory promote racial harmony or does it “sow division” as the Trump administration claims? And what is its relation, if any, to Marxism?

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  With the November election just around the corner, it’s only to be expected that President Trump would seek to rally conservative voters and drive his supporters to the polls. So, when his administration, on September 4, instructed the federal government to eliminate all training in “Critical Race Theory,” some thought it was just a red-meat stunt to excite the Republican base. Others saw it as an act of right-wing censorship and an obstruction of racial progress.

  In truth, there’s much more to this development than mere politicization and censorship.

  Here’s a breakdown of what the administration is doing and why it’s a welcome move.

  The Executive Memo

  “It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote in the executive memorandum.

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  “Employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism,’” Vought explained.

  “According to press reports, in some cases these training [sic] have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.”

  The order instructed federal agencies to identify and eliminate any contracts or spending that train employees in “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”

  The days of taxpayer funded indoctrination trainings that sow division and racism are over. Under the direction of @POTUS we are directing agencies to halt critical race theory trainings immediately.https://t.co/dyMeJka9rt

  — Russ Vought (@RussVought45) September 4, 2020

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

  The Exposé

  How did it “come to the President’s attention,” and what press reports is Vought referring to?

  Well, President Trump is known to watch Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. And days before the memo was issued, Carlson had on journalist Christopher Rufo to discuss his multiple reports uncovering the extent to which Critical Race Theory (CRT) was being used in federal training programs.

  “For example, Rufo claimed, the Treasury Department recently hired a diversity trainer who said the U.S. was a fundamentally White supremacist country,” wrote Sam Dorman for the Fox News web site, “and that White people upheld the system of racism in the nation. In another case, which Rufo discussed with Carlson last month, Sandia National Laboratories, which designs nuclear weapons, sent its white male executives to a mandatory training in which they, according to Rufo, wrote letters apologizing to women and people of color.”

  Rufo challenged President Trump to use his executive authority to extirpate CRT from the federal government.

  As I told @TuckerCarlson tonight: I call on President @realDonaldTrump to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory from the federal government.

  There is no place for this toxic, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology in our public institutions. pic.twitter.com/78J0CwNjfh

  — Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) September 2, 2020

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  The Debate

  CNN’s Brian Stelter (as well as Rufo himself) traced Trump’s decision directly to the independent investigative journalist’s self-proclaimed “one-man war” on CRT, of which the recent Carlson appearance was only the latest salvo.

  “It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

  Came to Trump’s attention, how?

  Oh you know how…https://t.co/7sD6ifL2zP pic.twitter.com/UnlOH33MQ1

  — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 7, 2020

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  Selter characterized Trump’s move as a reactionary attack on the current national “reckoning” on race. He cited the Washington Post’s claim that, “racial and diversity awareness trainings are essential steps in helping rectify the pervasive racial inequities in American society, including those perpetuated by the federal government.”

  So which is it? Is CRT “divisive” and “toxic” or is it “rectifying” and “anti-racist”?

  Intellectual Ancestry

  To answer that, it would help to trace CRT to its roots. Critical Race Theory is a branch of Critical Theory, which began as an academic movement in the 1930s. Critical Theory emphasizes the “critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” as Wikipedia states. Critical Race Theory does the same, with a focus on racial power structures, especially white supremacy and the oppression of people of color.

  The “power structure” prism stems largely from Critical Theory’s own roots in Marxism—Critical Theory was developed by members of the Marxist “Frankfurt School.” Traditional Marxism emphasized economic power structures, especially the supremacy of capital over labor under capitalism. Marxism interpreted most of human history as a zero-sum class war for economic power.

  “According to the Marxian view,” wrote the economist Ludwig von Mises, “human society is organized into classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition.”

  Mises called this view a “conflict doctrine,” which opposed the “harmony doctrine” of classical liberalism. According to the classical liberals, in a free market economy, capitalists and workers were natural allies, not enemies. Indeed, in a free society all rights-respecting individuals were natural allies.

  A Bitter Inheritance

  Critical Race Theory arose as a distinct movement in law schools in the late 1980s. CRT inherited many of its premises and perspectives from its Marxist ancestry.

  The pre-CRT Civil Rights Movement had emphasized equal rights and treating people as individuals, as opposed to as members of a racial collective. “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” Martin Luther King famously said.

  In contrast, CRT dwells on inequalities of outcome, which it generally attributes to racial power structures. And, as we’ve seen from the government training curricula, modern CRT forthrightly judges white people by the color of their skin, prejudging them as racist by virtue of their race. This race-based “pre-trial guilty verdict” of racism is itself, by definition, racist.

  The classical liberal “harmony doctrine” was deeply influential in the movements to abolish all forms of inequality under the law: from feudal serfdom, to race-based slavery, to Jim Crow.

  But, with the rise of Critical Race Theory, the cause of racial justice became more influenced by the fixations on conflict, discord, and domination that CRT inherited from Marxism.

  Social life was predominantly cast as a zero-sum struggle between collectives: capital vs. labor for Marxism, whites vs. people of color for CRT.

  A huge portion of society’s ills were attributed to one particular collective’s diabolical domination: capitalist hegemony for Marxism, white supremacy for CRT.

  Just as Marxism demonized capitalists, CRT vilifies white people. Both try to foment resentment, envy, and a victimhood complex among the oppressed class it claims to champion.

  Traditional Marxists claimed that all capitalists benefit from the zero-sum exploitation of workers. Similarly, CRT “diversity trainers” require white trainees to admit that they “benefit from racism.”

  Traditional Marxists insisted that bourgeois thoughts were inescapably conditioned by “class interest.” In the same way, CRT trainers push the notion that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” as a result of their whiteness.

  Given the above, it should be no wonder that CRT has been criticized as “racist” and “divisive.”

  Reckoning or Retrogression?

  Supporters of CRT cast it as a force for good in today’s “rectifying reckoning” over race.

  But CRT’s neo-Marxist orientation only damages race relations and harms the interests of those it claims to serve.

  In practice, the class war rhetoric of Marxism was divisive and toxic for economic relations. And, far from advancing the interests of the working classes, it led to mass poverty and devastating famines, not to mention staggering inequality between the elites and the masses. 

  Today, the CRT-informed philosophy, rhetoric, and strategy of the Black Lives Matter organization (whose leadership professed to be “trained Marxists”) is leading to mass riots, looting, vandalism, and assault. The divisive violence has arrested progress for the cause of police reform, destroyed countless black-owned small businesses, and economically devastated many black communities.

  Those who truly wish to see racial harmony should dump the neo-Marxists and learn more about classical liberalism. FEE.org is the perfect place to start.

  Is Trump’s Ban a Form of Censorship?

  So much for CRT being a force for good. Of course, even horrible ideas are protected by the First Amendment. The government should never use force to suppress people from expressing ideas, speech, or theories it dislikes.

  Critics insist that President Trump is engaged in this kind of censorship by targeting CRT.

  Not so.

  No one is banning White Fragility, the blockbuster CRT manifesto. No one is locking up those who preach CRT or ordering mentions of it stripped from the internet.

  The memo simply says that taxpayer dollars will no longer be spent promulgating this theory to federal government employees. As heads of the executive branch, presidents have wide latitude to make the rules for federal agencies under their control. Deciding how money is spent certainly falls under their proper discretion—and it is always done with political preferences in mind, one way or the other.

  It is not censorship for Trump to eliminate funding for CRT, anymore than it was “censorship” for the Obama administration to choose to tie federal contracts to a business’s embrace of LGBT rights.

  Elections have consequences, one of the most obvious being that the president gets to run the executive branch. If we don’t want the president’s political preferences to be so significant in training programs, then we should simply reduce the size of government and the number of bureaucrats.

  In the meantime, stripping the federal government of the divisive, toxic, and neo-Marxist ideology of Critical Race Theory is a positive development for the sake of racial justice and harmony.

  *  *  *

  Join us in preserving the principles of economic freedom and individual liberty for the rising generation. Support FEE here…

  https://fee.org/Scripts/fee-repub.js

  

  

• "Not Ideal" – Fox Offers Non-Apology To Newt Gingrich After Awkward George Soros Rebuke
  “Not Ideal” – Fox Offers Non-Apology To Newt Gingrich After Awkward George Soros Rebuke
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 19:00

  Fox News host Harris Faulkner addressed an awkward moment on Wednesday, when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich correctly pointed out that billionaire George Soros has influenced local races for district attorney around the country, who have in turn been soft on leftist criminals causing violence and mayhem throughout the country.

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  “Look, the number one problem in almost all these cities is George Soros-elected, left-wing, anti-police, pro-criminal district attorneys who refuse to keep people locked up,” said Gingrich, adding “Just yesterday they put somebody back on the streets who’s wanted for two different murders in New York City.”

  “You cannot solve this problem — and both [Kamala] Harris and [Joe] Biden have talked very proudly out what they call ‘progressive district attorneys’. Progressive district attorneys are anti-police, pro-criminal, and overwhelmingly elected with George Soros’s money,” he added. “And they’re a major cause of the violence we’re seeing because they keep putting the violent criminals back on the street.”

  Gingrich was then shut down, after commentator Melissa Francis interjected “I’m not sure we need to bring George Soros into this.“

  “He paid for it!” shot back Gingrich, adding “I mean, why can’t we discuss that fact that millions of dollars….”

  “No he didn’t,” insisted Marie Harf, another panelist – adding “I agree with Melissa. George Soros doesn’t need to be a part of this conversation.”

  “Okay, so it’s verboten,” Gingrich replied. Awkward silence ensued…

  Watch:

  Fox News panel melts down when Gingrich calls out Soros pic.twitter.com/fntofzyMh4

  — Jewish Deplorable 🇺🇸 (@TrumpJew) September 16, 2020

   On Thursday, host Harris Faulkner addressed the incident – saying “So, we had a little incident on the show yesterday that was not smooth.”

  “And while I was leading that segment we had interruptions and I sat silently while all of that played out, also not ideal.“

  “Our guest, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is beloved and needed to be allowed to speak with the openness and respect that this show is all about, was interrupted,” Faulkner continued. “Do we debate with fire here? Yes! But we must also give each other the space to express ourselves. As the only original member of this six-year-old amazing daytime ride known as Outnumbered — I especially want to rock and roll with every voice and perspective at the table.”

  Faulkner ended with “We don’t censor on this show.”

  OMG

  Fox anchor Harris Faulkner APOLOGIZES for the hosts interrupting Newt Gingrich’s Soros rant yesterday.

  “We had interruptions, and I sat silently while all of that played out. Not ideal! Gingrich is beloved and needed to be allowed to speak… we don’t censor on this show.” pic.twitter.com/HyU7898RyB

  — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 17, 2020

  Meanwhile, Gingrich was right. As we reported in 2016, Soros openly expressed his intention to ‘reshape the American justice system’ by pouring funds into ‘powerful’ District Attorney races.

  As we noted at the time: “So far, Soros has funneled $3 million into seven local DA races over the past year but his support is “expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment.”  In general, Soros looks to fund progressive DAs running on platforms to “reduce racial disparity in sentencing” and support prison “diversion programs” for drug offenders instead of trials that could result in jail time.“

  So why is it “verboten” to discuss?

  Disgraceful that Harris Faulkner allowed the tart Marie Harf to shut down Newt’s comments. Soros is seeking to overthrow our form of government and bring socialism to the US. Is Harris hushed because the bulk of Soros’ “buys” are black radicals ?

  — Jim Fincher (@norm101020) September 17, 2020

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• Russia's Foreign Spy Chief Says US Is "Stage Managing" Belarus Unrest
  Russia’s Foreign Spy Chief Says US Is “Stage Managing” Belarus Unrest
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 02:35

  Just after Moscow announced Tuesday that Russian force reserve units would be withdrawn from the Lithuanian border, top Russian officials have slammed NATO “flexing its muscle” during the ongoing ‘Tobruq Legacy 2020’ drills in Lithuania. 

  A top official, Alexander Kanshin, who heads the Association of Unions of Reserve Officers said that while “alarming,” it’s not expected that NATO will take “any real military action against Belarus,” according to his comments in TASS.

  But it was the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, who issued the most directly provocative comments Thursday. The powerful intelligence chief charged that the United States is “stage managing” the unrest in Belarus, which has since the Aug.9 reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko sought to topple him.

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  He described that US intelligence, NGOs, and Western state linked media had funded ground protests to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Over prior weekends protests in the streets of Minsk alone have swelled to 100,000 people according to most estimates. 

  “Though publicly Washington tries to keep a low profile, once the massive street demonstrations began, the Americans stepped up funding to the Belarusian anti-government forces bountifully to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” Naryshkin said, also calling US and Western involvement “obvious” – however, not presenting any specific evidence or intelligence, only outlining the scenario he said is already long in action.

  Tweet from a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and self-described “media trainer”:

  #Belarus. Excellent video from today’s March of Heroes in #Minsk.Absolutely peaceful people are demanding justice and democracy,but the authorities are responding with force and repressions.This scale, this consistency are unprecedented in modern Belarus.This can’t be for nothing pic.twitter.com/8337NQPExa

  — Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) September 13, 2020

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  “The demonstrations have been well organized from the very outset and coordinated from abroad,” he said. “It is noteworthy that the West had launched the groundwork for the protests long before the elections. The United States in 2019 and early 2020 used various NGOs to provide about $20 million for staging anti-government demonstrations,” Naryshkin alleged.

  He said “ostensibly independent bloggers” were organizing social media campaigns at the behest of more powerful interests.

  Describing a classic ‘color revolution’ scenario, the SVR director highlighted the involvement of US and EU NGOs which were providing training in eastern European countries and border states with Russia.

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  “Some of them underwent training in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, where experienced US instructors coached them to stage ‘non-violent’ protests,” Naryshkin said.

  He also noted that the US is “closely mentoring former presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and other opposition activists, whom they try to present in the guise of ‘popular leaders’ and future top officials of a ‘democratic Belarus’.”

  On Tuesday in a meeting between Putin and the embattled Lukashenko, Putin emphasized in statements to the press that Belarus must resolve its own issues internally, but without any foreign interference. 

  However, it’s unclear the degree to which Putin would get more involved on an overt level, so long as any alleged Western meddling remains under the surface. 

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  Of course, Western intelligence and media no doubt see Russia’s own covert meddling at work in propping up Lukashenko, but at this point it doesn’t appear either side wants to take things toward a costly, full-blown Ukraine scenario. 

  

• China Poses "The Greatest Threat To World Order": UK Military Intel Chief
  China Poses “The Greatest Threat To World Order”: UK Military Intel Chief
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 02:00

  Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

  The Chinese regime “poses the greatest threat to world order,” Britain’s Chief of Defence Intelligence told British media this week.

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  Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull, speaking at the first media briefing at the UK’s Defence Intelligence hub based at the Royal Air Force base in Wyton, Cambridgeshire, discussed how “global players such as Russia and China continually challenge the existing order without prompting direct conflict, operating in the expanding grey-zone between war and peacetime,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

  While Hockenhull saw Russia as posing “the greatest military and geopolitical threat to European security,” he reserved the starkest warning for China’s communist regime, The Telegraph reported.

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  People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take part in a performance during an open day at Stonecutters Island naval base in Hong Kong, on June 30, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

  China is “increasingly authoritarian and assertive,” he said. “It poses the greatest threat to world order, seeking to impose Chinese standards and norms and using its economic power to influence and subvert, backed up by massive investment in modernizing its armed forces.”

  According to The Sun, Hockenhull said that Beijing had accelerated its modernization of the military since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.

  The Chinese military now boasts “an array of leading-edge weapons systems that are fast eroding Western military advantages,” he said, according to The Sun, adding, “Its growing fleet of Renhai-class destroyers are the most capable of any navy.”

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  A Chinese navy formation, including the aircraft carrier Liaoning (C), during military drills in the South China Sea, on Jan. 2, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  The shifting global picture has changed the character of warfare in ways that will challenge the West to keep pace with adversaries who do not play by the rules, Hockenhull said, according to the Ministry of Defence.

  He warned that conflict is bleeding into new domains such as cyber and space, threatening Britain’s cohesion, resilience, and global interests.

  “Whilst conventional threats remain, we have seen our adversaries invest in Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and other ground-breaking technologies, whilst also supercharging more traditional techniques of influence and leverage,” he said.

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  A Long March 3B rocket carrying the Beidou-3GEO3 satellite lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province on June 23, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  The UK government is conducting a comprehensive review of its foreign, security, and defense policy.

  As part of the review, Britain’s Ministry of Defence is planning to pivot away from traditional defense and “operate much more in the newest domains of space, cyber, and sub-sea,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in July.

  Both Russia and China have been developing offensive space weapons and upgrading their capabilities, Wallace wrote in The Telegraph.

  Cyber-attacks by hostile state actors are also seen as posing a heightened risk to the UK, especially during the pandemic caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

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  Medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for the COVID-19 coronavirus, in a street in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on May 15, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  On July 22, UK’s Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said he was “deeply concerned” over evidence that “China is engaged in malicious cyber attacks against commercial, medical and academic institutions, including those working to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.”

  A day earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two Chinese hackers had been indicted for targeting businesses and government agencies in several countries, including the UK, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Australia, and Japan, for stealing millions of dollars worth of trade secrets and other sensitive information, and attempting to steal research on COVID-19.

  On May 5, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency (CISA) issued a joint advisory, exposing malicious cyber campaigns targeting international health-care and medical research organizations involved in the coronavirus response.

  To counter cyber threats, the UK government announced that health-care businesses will be able to get government-funded training in order to boost their cyber-security and protect sensitive data.

  

• Nashville Officials Concealed Low COVID-19 Numbers Coming From Bars And Restaurants: Emails
  Nashville Officials Concealed Low COVID-19 Numbers Coming From Bars And Restaurants: Emails
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 01:07

  Leaked emails between the senior adviser to Nashville’s Mayor and a health department official reveal a disturbing effort to conceal extremely low coronavirus cases emanating from bars and restaurants, while the lion’s share of infections occurred in nursing homes and construction workers, according to WZTV Nashville.

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  On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

  Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?“

  “Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. –WZTV

  Four weeks later, Tennessean reporter Nate Rau asked the health department: “the figure you gave of “more than 80” does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?“

  To which health department official Brian Todd scrambled for an answer – asking five health department officials: “Please advise how you respond. BT.”

  The response – from an official whose name was omitted from the leaked email: “My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site,” adding “We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be “because that number is increasing all the time and we don’t want to say a specific number.””

  According to a metro staff attorney asked by city councilmember Steve Glover to verify the authenticity of the emails, “I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real.”

  Glover told WZTV: “They are fabricating information. They’ve blown there entire credibility Dennis. Its gone i don’t trust a thing they say going forward …nothing.”

  Glover says he has been contacted by an endless stream of downtown bartenders, waitresses, and restaurant owners. Why would they not release these numbers?

  “We raised taxes 34 percent and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes their apartments etcetera and we did it on bogus data. That should be illegal!” he says.

  Again, we weren’t told by the mayor’s office this wasn’t true. We were told to file a freedom of information act request. –WZTV

  

• Trump Says He Would Sell Other Gulf Countries Same Advanced Weapons Given To Israel
  Trump Says He Would Sell Other Gulf Countries Same Advanced Weapons Given To Israel
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Thu, 09/17/2020 – 00:45

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  In an interview ahead of the signing ceremony for the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Trump said he would be willing to sell other countries in the Middle East “the same advanced weapons” the US sells to Israel.

  “They’re very wealthy countries for the most part,” Trump told Fox News. Trump also mentioned the UAE’s desire for US-made F-35s and said he would “personally not have a problem” with the UAE acquiring the warplanes.

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  Since the normalization agreement was announced, there have been reports that the UAE F-35 sale was part of the deal. The treaties that were signed on Tuesday made no mention of F-35s, but the sale is clearly still on the table.

  He noted that the UAE wanted to buy some fighter jets, adding: “I personally would have not problem with it. Some people do, they say… maybe they go to war.” — Reuters

  President Trump is a big fan of selling weapons to Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. The president has boasted about the billions of dollars in weapons the Kingdom has purchased and has vetoed efforts by Congress to end such sales.

  Congress tried to prohibit arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in an effort to end US support for the war in Yemen, where the US-backed Saudi-led coalition regularly kills civilians.

  Israeli PM Netanyahu with “key to the White House” presented to him by President Trump and Melania Trump pic.twitter.com/uj3TMuvn4F

  — Steve Holland (@steveholland1) September 15, 2020

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  The atrocities in Yemen are so bad that US officials in the State Department fear being arrested overseas for war crimes for their role in facilitating the weapons sales.

  

• Dr. Strangelove's Spoon-Benders: How The US Military Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
  Dr. Strangelove’s Spoon-Benders: How The US Military Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 23:30

  Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  It is the belief held by top officials within the U.S. military industrial complex that their ideology of appropriate morality is to prevail and that one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.

  “MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe…through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth…State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword of Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”

  – “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory” by Col. Paul Vallely and Maj. Michael Aquino, a document written to increase the influence of the “spoon-benders” in the U.S. military.

  On Sept 4th, an unprecedented show of force aimed at Russia occurred, with U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bombers flying from the UK to Ukraine airspace. After arriving in Ukraine airspace they orbited for an extended period right at the edge of the Ukraine-Russian border.

  These B-52H bombers are capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

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  In addition, a number of U.S. and UK aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets were operating in the area at the time, including a RC-135V/W spy plane, a RAF Airseeker and a RAF Sentinel R1 radar jet. No doubt to gather information on Russia’s integrated air defense networks and other command nodes.

  Last month, Russia announced in their official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that any ballistic missile launched at its territory will be perceived as a nuclear attack that will warrant a nuclear response. In the article, senior officers of the Russian military, General Staff, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sterlin and Col. Alexander Khryapin, stated that in the case of an incoming ballistic missile towards Russia, there would be no way to determine whether it were fitted with a nuclear or conventional warhead and thus Russia is giving forewarning that any missile attack will be perceived as a nuclear attack.

  The Krasnaya Zvezda article emphasized that the announcement in June of the new nuclear deterrent policy is intended to unambiguously explain what Russia sees as aggression: “Russia has designated the ‘red lines’ that we don’t advise anyone to cross…If a potential adversary dares to do that, the answer will undoubtedly be devastating.”

  Some may consider this an over-reaction on the part of Russia, however, just six months ago the U.S. military conducted a simulation of a “limited” nuclear exchange with…Russia. This was strange news on several accounts. For one, this sort of thing is not typically announced in the candid detail U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper described to journalists, giddy that he got to “play himself” in this war game scenario as if he were preparing for a Hollywood movie doing his best John Wayne impression: “If you got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”

  However, the most concerning revelation of this simulated exercise was the announcement to the American people that “it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict.”

  In other words, throw your cares to the wind, that is, the “spirit wind” known as kamikaze, because we are going for it.

  In the transcript of a background briefing on the war game exercise, senior Pentagon officials described their tactic further, explaining that their confident calculation on being “victorious” in this exercise completely relied on the supposition that such a confrontation would remain “limited” in its nuclear exchange.

  “It’s a very reasonable response to what we saw was a Russian nuclear doctrine and nuclear capability that suggested to us that they might use nuclear weapons in a limited way,” a senior official stated.

  It seems what senior Pentagon officials are really saying here about the predictability of the Russians, is that there seems to be a line the Russians won’t cross in the case of a nuclear conflict…but the Americans sure will.

  Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists tried to play down the “rodeo circus” and reduce the high profile announcement of the U.S. military exercise as simply a marketing gimmick to “justify” the new nuclear weapons since we are entering the new budget phase. “So all of this has been played up to serve that process.” stated Kristensen.

  I don’t know about you but I am getting some serious déjà vu. Didn’t we already go through all of this with the disastrous JIC-502 spookery?

  JIC-502 intelligence report titled “Implications of Soviet Possession of Atomic Weapons” drafted in Jan 20th 1950, turned out not to be an intelligence report at all but rather a sales pitch, claiming that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union had introduced the notion that “a tremendous military advantage would be gained by the power that struck first and succeeded in carrying through an effective surprise attack.” For more on this refer to my paper.

  It was JIC-502 which would be the first to put forward a justification for the preventive first strike concept, supported by a massive military buildup under the pretence of pre-emptive war.

  NSC-68 would be drafted the same year and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger,” the year JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S.

  But the Soviets never did launch such a war, and all claims of their capabilities let alone their intentions turned out to be entirely fraudulent… so what was it all for?

  Did the U.S. have to put everything into expanding their military, turning away from the concept of a nation at peace made up of citizen soldiers and instead towards a nation in perpetual war made up of the Nietzschean fantasy of Übermensch (Beyond-Man) super soldiers, the very thing that Eisenhower warned against?

  Did this all have to happen in defense of “peace and security” of the free world?

  Why were the predictions of the JIC-502 completely unfounded? Were the predictions based off of corrupted data? Did the Soviets simply change their mind? Or was it never about a pre-emptive war but rather was always about global dominance.

  What would the American people think if they knew the truth, that their entire military industrial complex was never built for the protection of the “free world” in opposition to dictators and despots but rather the very opposite? That it simply thought its ideology the superior one, the only lawful dictatorship that had the right to rule, even if it meant by force.

  In the words of Vallely/Aquino: “If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”

  This may look like just a “rodeo circus” but it is far far worst. As Edgar Poe elaborated in his “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”, the asylum is quite literally being run by the lunatics.

  What do Jedi Warriors, Spoon-benders, the First Earth Battalion and Men Who Stare at Goats Have in Common?

  For those who need a refresher of the film Dr. Strangelove’s synopsis, it is about what could happen if a lunatic had the authority to bypass the U.S. president and cause a nuclear escalation between the U.S. and USSR. In the movie, it is U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper who initiates a nuclear attack to destroy the USSR under the premise that once the U.S. government is briefed on the situation, they would have no choice but to commit 100% towards a hostile attack against the USSR, in order to prevent nuclear retaliation.

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  The reason why General Jack Ripper is fully convinced that it is absolutely necessary to destroy the USSR is because he believes that the communists are conspiring to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people. Gen. Jack Ripper goes on to describe how he first discovered this Soviet ploy, after sexual relations with a woman and how he felt empty inside but that luckily he was astute enough to be able to accurately deduce the cause of this feeling of emptiness as due to being drained of his “life essence”, all part of the communist conspiracy for sure. In other words, Gen. Jack Ripper is unequivocally insane.

  Unfortunately, this type of thinking in the U.S. military is not reserved to pure fiction.

  Sometime in the late 1980s then Col. Paul Vallely, Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group and then Maj. Michael Aquino, PSYOP Research & Analysis Team Leader authored a paper titled “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”, which discusses the necessity to wage perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people. As stated in the paper:

  “MindWar must target all participants to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war…There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves.”

  Of course the terms “enemy” and “national interest” are not elaborated on, nor is the matter of free will even considered but rather that mind control is not only “natural”, it is essential. Besides the overtly fascist and occultist content in the paper, the proposal had a disturbing similarity to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program launched by the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon. TIA was a global propaganda and mega-data-mining plan that was supposedly scraped after a series of negative news stories.

  On Aug 17th, 2005 The New York Times published an article that discussed how “a military intelligence team repeatedly tried to contact the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ring leader of the Sept. 11 attacks” as reported by veteran Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.

  The information came from the highly classified intelligence program “Able Danger”, which had successfully identified the terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers of the 9/11 terrorist attack in mid-2000, well over a year before the actual 9/11 attack.

  According to New York Times article, Shaffer learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the FBI meetings “because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.” (Able Danger was linked in its function to the TIA program)

  However, this is only part of the truth, the by far uglier truth is that they were already fully aware of the 9/11 terrorist ring and didn’t want a wrench thrown into the gears so to speak.

  Gen. Vallely, Lt. Col. Aquino and Col. Alexander (author of “The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock”) are leading figures within the Special Operations community. In addition, Gen. Stubblebine III, Gen. Schoomaker, Gen. Downing and Gen. Boykin are the four names most often cited as promoters of programs like the “Goat Lab,” “Jedi Warriors,” “Grill Flame,” “Task Force Delta,” (aka the spoon-benders) and the “First Earth Battalion,” and have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands.

  These were the programs that promoted the idea that one could learn to bend a metal spoon, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats with the use of “mind over matter” techniques.

  In 1979, Lt. Col. Channon presented a 125 page document called “The First Earth Battalion,” which outlined “non-lethal” techniques that would soon be adopted by the military including the use of atonal noises as a form of combat psychological warfare and widespread experimentation with psychoelectronics and other means of debilitation.

  On March 10th, 1991, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz while serving as chief policy advisor to then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, wrote the memo “Do We Need a Non-Lethal Defense Initiative?” in which he wrote, “A U.S. lead in non-lethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post-Cold War world.” Though no mention was made of Col. Alexander, who spear-headed the non-lethal weaponry campaign, Alexander at the time of the memo had retired from active duty and was heading the Non-Lethal Weapons Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

  In 1990, Col. Alexander published “The Warrior’s Edge” and states its goal as to:

  “unlock the door to the extraordinary human potentials inherent in each of us. To do this, we, like governments around the world, must take a fresh look at non-traditional methods of affecting reality. We must raise human consciousness of the potential power of the individual body/mind system – the power to manipulate reality. We must be willing to retake control of our past, present, and ultimately, our future.” (emphasis added)

  Investigative journalist Jon Ronson, in his book “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, goes through how ‘psychic warriors’ such as Uri Geller and Jim Channon were called back into government service after 9/11, and that a series of meetings in 2004 were held between Gen. Schoomaker and Jim Channon to start a think tank which would utilise “First Earth Battalion” techniques in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  The Non-Lethal Techniques of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and al-Qa’im

  According to a 1998 International Committee of the Red Cross presentation before the European parliament intended on evaluating how “non-lethal” the non-lethal technologies promoted by Alexander, Channon et al. actually are in reality, it was found that non-lethal weapons are simply defined as weapons with a less-than 25% fatality rate.

  Perhaps this is what the senior Pentagon officials were referring to in their “limited” nuclear exchange scenarios.

  Included in the list of non-lethal weapons now widely used in the U.S. military are lasers, extremely low frequency (ELF) weapons, and various chemical, biological and audio stun weapons that can cause permanent damage such as blindness, deafness and destruction of the gastrointestinal system.

  According to Ronson and The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, many of the torture techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the less-well-known al-Qa’im near the Syrian border in Iraq, are based on Channon and Alexander’s non-lethal conceptions. Jim Channon actually confirmed this in an email correspondence with Ronson.

  At one point in his investigation, Ronson asks Stuart Heller, friend of Jim Channon, if he could name one soldier who was “the living embodiment” of the First Earth Battalion, to which Heller responds unhesitatingly “Bert Rodriguez.” Ronson continues in his book, “In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah.” Rodriguez taught Jarrah “the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you’d die for, a do-or-die desire.” Rodriguez added, “Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it’s there…Yeah, Ziad believed it. He was like Luke Skywalker.” Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months.

  On Sept 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of the United Airlines flight 93 as part of the orchestrated 9/11 terrorist attack.

  Meet Dr. Strangelove

  At the end of the film Dr. Strangelove we are finally confronted with the “top lunatic” so to speak who was really in charge this whole time. For all the “top brass” in the war room, nobody was really in control of the situation this entire time since the entire “war scenario” was set-up as a positive feedback loop within the doomsday plan of a lunatic.

  You see, the belief that one can bend spoons, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats is not the problem, it is the belief held by top officials within the U.S. military industrial complex that their ideology of appropriate morality is to prevail and that one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.

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  That somehow “it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict,” and if not…we may all die for a lunatic’s dream in the process.

  

• Trump Agrees With Powell: "Much Higher" Fiscal Stimulus Is Needed… And Why That Could Crash Stocks
  Trump Agrees With Powell: “Much Higher” Fiscal Stimulus Is Needed… And Why That Could Crash Stocks
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 23:18

  One can clearly see the moment the market’s mood reversed today during Powell’s FOMC press conference: it took place just as Powell warned that “more fiscal stimulus is likely to be needed”, noting that while the recovery has been faster than expected in the past 60 days, “there’s certainly a risk” the economy could slow without more stimulus. After all there are about 11 million people still out of work, small businesses are struggling and state and local governments have seen revenues drop (this is the same Fed that claimed that it is doing $120 billion in monthly QE for the benefit of US households).

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  Yet this is hardly the first time Powell has made that claim, in fact he has said on countless previous occasions that monetary policy alone would be insufficient (even though for the past 10 years until covid, monetary policy was in fact sufficient if nothing else than at least to push stocks higher), and that the Fed desperately needs Congress to unlock trillions in fiscal stimulus.

  Why was this time different? Because in a curious schism within the republican party earlier in the day, none other than president Trump split ranks with the “conservative” republican senators when the White House gave a clear indication on Wednesday that it is willing to increase its pandemic-relief offer in talks with Democrats and that Senate Republicans should go along in order to seal a stimulus deal in the next week to 10 days. After all elections are coming, and Trump desperately needs to talk up the economy – what better way than to flood the middle-class with another trillion. Or $1.5 trillion to be exact.

  Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the President is open to the compromise $1.5 trillion stimulus proposal from a bipartisan group of House lawmakers that was an effort to break a months-long deadlock over bolstering the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

  Trump himself took to his favorite medium on Wednesday morning, and when he had a clear message for Senate republicans: “Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway.”

  Democrats are “heartless”. They don’t want to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money, and whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China. Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 16, 2020

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  Then on Wednesday evening, during a White House press conference on Wednesday Trump repeated that he liked “the larger numbers” in a compromise $1.5 trillion stimulus proposal from a bipartisan group of House lawmakers that tried (and so far failed) to break a months-long deadlock over bolstering the U.S. economy.

  “I agree with a lot of it,” Trump said of the plan. “I heard Nancy Pelosi say she doesn’t want to leave until we have an agreement” and “she’s come a long way.” It’s remarkable how quickly Trump ended up siding with “Crazy Nancy.”

  However, even that compromise number – which was about $1 trillion more than the latest official republican proposal – was not be high enough for Nancy Pelosi who called it insufficient, while Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, said that large a stimulus would cause “a lot of heartburn” among GOP lawmakers.

  After initially proposing a $1 trillion stimulus at the end of July, Senate Republicans attempted to advance a bill providing $650 billion in economic aid, without the direct payments to individuals that the president – and Democrats – want. Naturally, getting thrown under the bus by the president, has left quite a few of the Republicans startled and confused, as Bloomberg reports:

  Trump’s new push for a deal highlights continuing divisions among Republicans, some of whom are reluctant to spend more money on stimulus with the national deficit reaching $3.3 trillion this year.

  Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt said a number higher than $1 trillion could be the basis for an agreement, if it can be done quickly.

  “I think there is a deal to be had here,” he told reporters at the Capitol. “My concern is that the window probably closes around the end of this month. And we need to get busy finding out what we can all agree on.”

  But other senators resisted the idea.

  Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the Senate GOP bill, which costs about $300 billion when its cuts to Federal Reserve loan authority are counted, is the right amount.

  “The president has his opinion. We have ours,” he told reporters.

  At the same time, Democrats are understandably playing hardball. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday that Democrats shouldn’t agree to less than $2 trillion. A group of House Democratic chairmen issued a statement criticizing the Problem Solvers proposal as inadequate. Pelosi earlier on MSNBC Wednesday reinforced her demand for $2.2 trillion.

  And at this rate, Trump may demand a $2+ trillion stimulus as well.

  Yet even as the Democrats continued the charade – knowing well they won’t concede to a major Trump poll-boosting stimulus just 48 days before the election – Pelosi and Chuck Schumer took a victory lap and released a statement saying they were “encouraged” by Trump’s endorsement of higher spending. “We look forward to hearing from the president’s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway,” they said.

  And so did Powell, who by now has realized that the Fed is hopeless in sparking the much needed inflation (that the Fed needs to inflate away the debt), and instead is punting to Congress, whose direct stimulus funds have a far higher chance to spark the much desired reflationary wave.

  The problem, as the market made it very clear, is that whereas continued deadlock in Congress – with Trump backing Republicans – would mean more monetary stimulus, another $1.5 or $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus actually stands a good chance of generating a sharp (albeit fleeting) reflationary episode. And since the Fed will be there to monetize all the newly issued debt to pay for all this stimulus it’s win-win (for everyone but the US debt which is now exploding at a record pace that has surpassed World War II). In fact, as Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett said last week, a $1.5-$2 trillion fiscal stimulus deal, coupled with an October vaccine represents the “most dangerous combo for Treasury and equity bulls” and represents “a messy inflection handoff to higher rates, inflation & inflation assets.” In the process, such deflationary assets as tech stocks and Treasurys would get clobbered, something we are already seeing this evening as the Nasdaq slides amid fears that fiscal stimulus-driven inflation may indeed be coming.

  As a further reminder, BofA is merely the latest voice to caution that a transition from a Nasdaq-led market to a “value” driven one will not come without major market turbulence, with Morgan Stanley and Goldman both warning previously that a deflation to reflation rotation would lead to turmoil.

  But what we find especially paradoxical is that Trump – who has repeatedly touted the repeated records in the stock market as the most objective scorecard of his presidency – is now pushing for precisely the two events, along with an accelerated vaccine, that could catalyze a sharp market correction, if not far worse. In effect, Trump is willing to sacrifice a major market drop in exchange for direct stimulus handouts and the hope that a covid vaccine is here (which is also paradoxical, since most Trump supporters will refuse to be vaccinated).

  We doubt that Trump has realized just what the tradeoffs are in his latest position flip-flop, although if the president indeed sided with the Democrats in seeking a far greater stimulus over that proposed by Senate republicans, the November election outcome will almost certainly be the one that Democrats desire as well.

  

• "Sci-Fi Awesome" – Hypersonic "Smart Bullet" Fired From Tank Downs Cruise Missile 
  “Sci-Fi Awesome” – Hypersonic “Smart Bullet” Fired From Tank Downs Cruise Missile 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 23:10

  The U.S. Air Force used a hyper velocity projectile (HVP), capable of traveling Mach 7.3, or about 5,600 mph, fired from an Army M109 howitzer tank, to shoot down a fast-moving cruise missile over a missile range in New Mexico. 

  “Tanks shooting down cruise missiles is awesome,” Dr. Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told reporters, who was quoted by Asia Times. “Video game, sci-fi awesome.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to shoot down a cruise missile with a tank. But, yes, you can, if the bullet is smart enough, and the bullet we use for that system is exceptionally smart,” Roper said. 

  Main battle tanks, nevertheless a self-propelled 155 mm howitzer, are not designed to destroy fast-moving cruise missiles, suggests the HVP “smart bullet” is ground-breaking technology that could revolutionize the modern battlefield. 

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  The successful firing of the HVP was conducted at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, destroyed a “surrogate” Russian cruise missile target using the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System that’s designed to detect incoming missiles. 

  HVP was initially developed in 2013 to fire out of the electromagnetic railgun. However, the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office has shifted to firing the HVP out of more conventional guns, such as common artillery pieces found on the battlefield. 

  The advantage of the HVP over conventional missile defenses is a dramatic decline in cost-per-kill. Each HVP costs around $85,000, opposed to $1.5 million Tomahawk missiles, $155,000 Hellfire rockets, and or $147,000 Javelin shoulder-rocket. 

  So what does this mean? Well, the Pentagon can shoot a lot more of these smart bullets and not feel bad they’re robbing taxpayers. There’s also a strategic component to HVP, that is, precision-guided short-range defense at hypersonic speeds to take out enemy missiles. 

  

• Self-Censorship Soars In The US
  Self-Censorship Soars In The US
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 22:50

  Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by Cato Institute/YouGov found that 62% of Americans say “the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive”.

  This is up from 2017, when 58% agreed with this statement.

  “Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share”.

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  People who defined themselves as staunch liberals self-censored considerably less:

  “Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe”.

  If truly representative, the numbers are chilling: The US nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Yet the average number of Americans who self-censor is slowly beginning to approximate that of Germany, where a survey on self-censorship a year ago concluded:

  “Nearly two-thirds of citizens are convinced that ‘today one has to be very careful on which topics one expresses oneself’, because there are many unwritten laws about what opinions are acceptable and admissible”.

  The difference, however, is that Germany has some of the most draconian hate speech laws in Europe. The US does not have any hate speech laws.

  “Nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known”, according to the Cato survey.

  “Americans across the political spectrum share these concerns: 31% of liberals, 30% of moderates, and 34% of conservatives are worried their political views could get them fired or harm their career trajectory… Those with the highest levels of education are most concerned. Almost half (44%) of Americans with post‐​graduate degrees say they are worried their careers could be harmed if others discovered their political opinions, compared to 34% of college graduates, 28% of those with some college experience, and 25% of high school graduates”.

  There is a noticeable difference between highly educated Democrats and highly educated Republicans:

  “About a quarter of Republicans with high school degrees (27%) or some college (26%) worry their political opinions could harm them at work—but this number increases to 40% among Republican college graduates and 60% of those with post‐​graduate degrees”.

  The survey also found that younger Americans under 30 were more concerned than older Americans that their political opinions could harm their careers.

  That young people especially are afraid to speak their minds — the survey suggests this is because they “have spent more time in America’s universities” — is particularly worrying for the future robustness of American democracy. It is, however, not surprising. American campuses have steered a “leftist” course for decades. The tilt has had familiar consequences: the proliferation on campus of “safe spaces”, trigger warnings, de-platforming of conservative voices and a “cancel culture” aimed at professors and students who do not conform to an on-campus political orthodoxy that has become increasingly totalitarian. Most recently, the dean of University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Nursing, Leslie Neal-Boylan, was fired by the school after writing “Black lives matter, but also everyone’s life matters” in an email to students and faculty.

  Cancel culture has moved from campus into American society. The topics no longer acceptable as legitimate subjects of unconditionally free and open public debate keep growing: Race, gender, the merits of Western history and civilization, and climate change currently top the list of taboo subjects. In addition, there are uncountable words and concepts that are no longer considered legitimate, even names of food products. Those who publicly offer dissenting views on any of these issues risk immediate “cancellation”, especially since the killing of George Floyd and the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests across the US, as reported by Gatestone. Cato’s poll is more evidence that the chilling effects that these “cancellations” have on people are severe and should not be underestimated.

  When citizens stop voicing their concerns in public about current events, policies and ideas out of fear that they will lose their livelihoods and social standing, it is — or should be — a huge problem in a democracy. The free exchange of opinions and ideas is the bedrock of free and healthy democracies worthy of their name. How much speech can you shut down — and how many people can you “cancel”– before public discourse is destroyed altogether?

  A democratic society of fearful citizens who dare not speak about what is on their minds – often important issues of their time — is doomed to succumb to the will of those who bully the hardest and shout the loudest.

  

• China & India In Major Himalayan Border Troop Build-Up Expected To "Extend To Winter"
  China & India In Major Himalayan Border Troop Build-Up Expected To “Extend To Winter”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 22:30

  After a summer of high level military to military talks appear to have unraveled — though they’ve prevented another major border breach like the June 15 brutal hand-to-hand combat clash which saw 20 Indian troops killed — multiple reports confirm a new build-up of thousands of Indian and Chinese troops on either side of the Ladakh region.

  “Thousands of Indian and Chinese troops are still locked in an impasse across the mountain passes of the Himalayan region of Ladakh and the banks of the glacial lake Pangong Tso, with neither side backing down despite their foreign ministers having agreed five days ago to improve mutual trust and de-escalate tensions,” South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.

  And amid the blame game for the renewed mobilization of forces and the potential for more high altitude fighting, China’s state-run Global Times says to expect Sino-Indian border tensions to likely “extend to winter”. 

  An @IAF_MCC #Mirage2000 at Leh airfield. #Ladakh.
  India and China begin deployment for three months harsh winter beginning November when all the connecting roads block due to heavy snow.
  China moved 10000 additional troops. pic.twitter.com/l80Wm9Hkhn

  — Rishikesh Kumar (@rishhikesh) September 16, 2020

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  And citing Indian sources, Russia’s Sputnik reports China’s PLA military recently moved 10,000 more troops to the region, despite multiple rounds of talks with the Indian side briefly resulted in a pull-back from the immediate Line of Actual of Control.

  “As tensions continue to soar between the two nuclear-powered rivals, China has moved an additional 10,000 troops forward since the past week along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, government sources in New Delhi revealed,” Sputnik wrote.

  Thread.

  Since tensions escalated with China this summer, India has moved thousands of additional troops to Ladakh.

  That’s been backed up by a massive military logistics operation.

  Yesterday, we got a glimpse into how it works.https://t.co/Rdh76GdtCS

  Below: A C-17 lands. pic.twitter.com/FZohkz8eMo

  — Devjyot Ghoshal (@DevjyotGhoshal) September 16, 2020

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  “The additional hauling of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to the border has taken the Chinese deployment to approximately 52,000 with 150 fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles (SAM),” the report added. 

  There does appear to be heightened build-up in the area based on both local reports and social media videos circulating. 

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  Meanwhile Reuters has cited India’s defense minister to say the conflict “remains unresolved” with “fears of a broader conflict” remaining high as ever, given that “the scale of deployment of troops and the number of disputed areas was much more than in previous years,” according to the report.

  Reuters cited Indian defense minister Rajnath Singh in an interview as saying Tuesday:

  As of now, the Chinese site has mobilized a huge number of army battalions and armaments along the LAC and inner areas. Our armed forces have made appropriate counter deployments in response to the actions by China, in eastern Ladakh and [INAUDIBLE] and Kongka La and Pangong Lake’s north and south banks, and many areas where there is friction, so that India’s security interests are fully protected.

  Below is rare video showing Indian troops and supplies being transported into the difficult to reach region:

  In recent months, the military has brought vast quantities of ammunition, equipment, fuel, winter supplies and food into Ladakh – more than 150,000 tonnes, via two highways and a fleet of large transport aircraft.

  You can spot two below. pic.twitter.com/QPuTz0L3XO

  — Devjyot Ghoshal (@DevjyotGhoshal) September 16, 2020

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  The Indian side is busy conducting a large-scale logistical operation observed resupplying Indian troops in the high, remote region.

  The fact that on both sides troops and supplies have been seen pouring into the region strongly suggests we’re in for a long haul. When winter hits, all roads leading to the area are blocked. It appears the rival militaries are digging in for the long harsh winter. 

  

• Paul Craig Roberts: The Democrat Ticket Is Puzzling
  Paul Craig Roberts: The Democrat Ticket Is Puzzling
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 22:10

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  I am puzzled, as I assume my readers are, why the powers-that-be chose the two least electable candidates for the Democrat nominations for president and vice president.  

  It makes no sense to choose people who have little chance of winning – unless the globalists intend to rig the election and elect them, or install them after a color revolution, in order to make the US a laughing stock throughout the world as a way of removing the US, a hegemonic power, as an obstacle to the global elite.

  Really, once you see Biden in action, it is difficult to believe that even white liberals can vote for the Democrat ticket:

  Imagine the ridicule that would be heaped upon Biden by the presstitute media if he were the Republican candidate.  

  Those of you old enough to remember President Reagan will remember all the presstitute insinuations about Reagan being senile and falling asleep at cabinet meetings.  Of course, the presstitutes were never at cabinet meetings.  

  Reagan successfully confronted the two major problems of his time—stagflation and the nuclear armageddon that could result from misunderstood intentions or a warning system error.  Reagan’s supply-side policy deep-sixed stagflation—the simultaneous rise of inflation and unemployment—and his negotiations with Soviet President Gorbachev ended the Cold War.

  The Establishment has buried both achievements, and today Reagan is understood as the president who made Americans feel good while he cut taxes for the rich and poured money into the Pentagon and defense contractors. Reagan’s “star wars” was more illusion than real. It’s purpose was to convince the Soviets to end the Cold War.  This was also the purpose of his military interventions against leftish takeovers in the US “sphere of influence.”  The reason for these interventions was to give the message to Moscow that there would be no further territorial gains for communism.  

  Americans today, especially the youth, know nothing about how the Reagan administration gave us two decades of economic growth without having to pay for it with rising inflation, and they do not know that Reagan ended the Cold War.  

  Today the rightwing and Russians themselves believe that Reagan won the Cold War. That was not Reagan’s goal.  President Reagan told those of us involved that the purpose was “to end, not win, the Cold War,” and that we must never act or speak in any way that implied that we had prevailed over the Soviets.  Wikipedia, a disinformation website, opens its account of Reagan’s foreign policy with a blatant lie:  “The foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1981 to 1989. The main goal was winning the Cold War.”  The ignorance of whoever wrote this is extraordinary. The Soviets never would have agreed to losing the Cold War.  President Reagan understood this, which is why he emphasized that our purpose was to end, not win, the Cold War.

  Everything President Reagan accomplished by creating trust between Washington and Moscow has been destroyed by successor US administrations.  As Stephen Cohn, myself, and a few others emphasize, the danger of both accidential and intentional nuclear war at the present time is substantially greater than during the Cold War.

  It is difficult to reconcile Washington’s pursuit of hegemony with the divisiveness that has been created in American society.  The Democrats and the presstitutes have made it clear that the November election will be used to deepen the divisiveness.  For the rest of the world, the silver lining in America’s internal conflict is the end of US hegemony.

  

• Yelp Reveals 60% Of Business Closures Are Now Permanent 
  Yelp Reveals 60% Of Business Closures Are Now Permanent 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 21:50

  The virus pandemic shock is generating deep economic scarring, the likes of which many have never seen before. The virus-induced downturn has led the economy into a “liquidity trap,” in which interest rates will likely reside on the zero lower bound until 2023, and monetary policy could have trouble stimulating the real economy besides artificially inflating asset prices. As Washington pumps fiscal injection after fiscal injection into the real economy, creating unstable artificial growth, the latest lapse of fiscal support, now 46 days, has sent the economy into another slump.

  For more color on the deep economic scarring, not just a deterioration in the labor market, we turn our attention to a Yelp report published Wednesday that revealed as of Aug. 31, 163,735 businesses have closed on the platform, a 23% increase since mid-July.

  Yelp pointed out an increase of permanent business closures over the past six months, now reaching 97,966, or about 60% of closed businesses will never reopen their doors again.  

  “As of August 31, 163,735 total U.S. businesses on Yelp have closed since the beginning of the pandemic (observed as March 1), a 23% increase since July 10. In the wake of COVID-19 cases increasing and local restrictions continuing to change in many states we’re seeing both permanent and temporary closures rise across the nation, with 60% of those closed businesses not reopening (97,966 permanently closed).” 

  “Overall, Yelp’s data shows that business closures have continued to rise with a 34% increase in permanent closures since our last report in mid-July,” Justin Norman, Yelp’s vice president of data science, told CNBC. 

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  Yelp notes restaurants, shopping and retail, and beauty and spas have been damaged the most with temporary and permanent closures since March 1. About 32,109 restaurants closed on Yelp, with 19,590 of those permanent, or about 61%. Shopping and retail saw 30,374 business closures, with 58% of those permanent. Beauty and spas saw 16,585 closures, with 42% of which are permanent. 

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  Professional services, like roofing, landscaping, accountants, and lawyers, experienced some of the smallest declines. Meanwhile, restaurants and retail businesses have been struggling the most. Readers may recall, dying restaurants have been panic selling assets on Facebook Marketplace as the industry remains in a bust cycle. 

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  Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco were three metro areas that saw the most closures and permanent closures.

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  And what does this all mean? Well, policy tools, if that is monetary of fiscal, are producing diminishing returns that will likely result in a recovery that does not resemble a “V.” The road to recovery could take years as the latest analysis from Opportunity Insights of US business activity reveals the number of small businesses open is plunging. 

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  And by the way, the fiscal cliff, which we’ve warned about since late July (see: here) – is finally showing up in economic data as online spending growth hit a wall. Lower spending by consumers will pressure businesses and lead to more closures.  

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  What this all means is that America’s coming double-dip recession could be dead ahead.  

  

• Tyranny Down Under: From Blue Shirts To Brown
  Tyranny Down Under: From Blue Shirts To Brown
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 21:30

  Authored by Alan Hamilton via Off-Guardian.org,

  “On at least 3 or 4 occasions in the past week we’ve had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there so they could provide their details – because they weren’t telling us where they were going; they weren’t adhering to the chief health officer’s guidelines, they weren’t providing their name and their address.”

  – Shane Patton, Victorian Chief Police Officer 04/08/2020

  On Saturday 5th of September a national day of protest occurred in cities around Australia against the unnecessary and draconian lockdowns that have been occurring across the country and which are still occurring in Victoria. Similar protests have occurred in cities around the world, most especially in Europe.

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  These protests are a legitimate and rational response to despotic and often unconstitutional laws that unscientifically characterize every member of society as a bio-security risk to everyone else. They are also a protest against law enforcement bureaucracies that identify responsible, civic-minded citizens as criminals if they dare to question such laws or even worse, step out of their homes in defiance of the lockdown to register their dissent.

  The Australian protests occurred peacefully and without incident in most places, including Brisbane where I participated. But it was not the case in Victoria where a State of Disaster has been declared due to the ‘extraordinarily high’ number of active Covid cases there.

  On the eve of the nationwide protests, mainstream news reported on the harrowing state of affairs in Victoria which was suffering from hundreds of active cases but, as it turns out, had only 20 people in intensive care suffering from covid-related illnesses. This is in a state of 6.35 million people that has 58 metropolitan hospitals and 69 rural hospitals and District Health services.

  Despite the ‘extraordinarily low’ incidence of people who were actually sick from Covid 19, the Victorian Premier decided that new case numbers (>100 per day) were just too high to tolerate anyone leaving their homes for any reason other than the four exemptions provided by the government.

  What he neglected to mention when insisting on preserving his lockdown was that most new cases are occurring in the under-30 age bracket: a demographic that is almost always asymptomatic to SARS CoV-2 and which has more chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident than of Covid19.

  Undeterred by inconvenient truths like this, the Premier announced he had to protect the public from the potentially catastrophic medical emergency that would doubtless result from masked people walking down St Kilda Road to the Cenotaph in a socially distanced manner, so he banned all participation in the national day of protest.

  Just days earlier the Assistant Police Commissioner for the North West Metro Region, Luke Cornelius, warned everyone in Victoria against participating in the Saturday protests. He referred to people who planned to protest against lockdowns as “boof heads”, calling them an “anti-vax, anti-mask, tinfoil hat-wearing brigade who were batshit crazy”.

  This oddly extreme language from one of the State’s most senior police officers is not accidental. It serves a specific purpose.

  In order to get ordinary well-adjusted police officers – who may have joined the force out of a desire to be of public service – to brutalize a population whose only crime is that they object to being locked in their homes for 23 hrs a day for months on end, you need to demonize dissent. If your officers on the ground can identify in any way with the people they are being told to terrorize, they might not follow orders.

  This is a perennial problem for martial leaders everywhere. It’s particularly problematic when the rules being enforced are arbitrary or unjust. Hence the need to malign.

  As Saturday rolled around, the police were out in force across Victoria on horseback with cuffs, batons, tasers and guns ready to intimidate, arrest and fine anyone unfortunate enough to attract their attention within the vicinity of a protest in any town in the State – even those towns where not a single case of Covid-19 has been recorded.

  And here we get to the crux of the SARS-CoV-2 scam. Sure, there’s a virus out there. It’s real and it certainly kills people but we know enough about it now to know that the draconian response taken by Premier Danial Andrews is scientifically indefensible. So why is he persisting with the lockdowns?

  My personal opinion is that the global program of lockdowns is a mechanism for reorganizing societies around the world along the lines of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset” agenda and all that this entails. It seems Daniel Andrews is fully on board with this agenda. But make no mistake, its coming to your state and country next.

  I believe that sustained lockdowns are a “Stanley Milgram-style” experiment designed to see just how far bureaucrats in authority will exceed the moral limits of their power and how much abuse the Australian public will tolerate before they push back.

  As part of this experiment, the algorithms that once monitored every nuance of our social media interactions to make frighteningly accurate predictions about us have been extended to track and predict our off-line experience as well. It should come as no surprise that both the Azure and AWS cloud eco-systems have expanded by 50% since the beginning of the pandemic.

  The purpose of all this surveillance is not to better understand us as potential marketing targets (the standard explanation) but rather to better control us as victims in a system of profound inequality. Such a system is already in place across much of the world and under the guise of a health pandemic, it is rapidly being expanded to developed countries as well.

  So far as I can see the whole experiment is going spectacularly well for the globalists, billionaires, and authoritarians, and very poorly for free citizens everywhere: mostly due to the effectiveness of media propaganda in driving public passivity.

  A SCIENTIFIC DICTATORSHIP

  Many medical practitioners are aware that Victoria’s management of the SARS CoV-2 pandemic is based on highly selective medical advice which doesn’t stand up to serious scientific scrutiny.

  Recently a group of doctors wrote an excellent letter to the Premier advocating an alternative response to disease management, noting that more than 41,000 people die every year in Victoria, roughly 10,000 each from cardiovascular disease and cancer, yet in 7 months of a supposed pandemic less than 600 Victorians have died of Covid-19: 90% of them over 65 years of age and most with multiple co-morbidities.

  The problem with the doctor’s alternative advice is that it assumes the government is merely mistaken or misinformed in its policymaking and implementation. The idea that the exercise of political power in Victoria has become pathological never seems to occur to them – despite a wealth of evidence supporting such a notion.

  When governments pass laws that are extreme or unjust or which by-pass constitutional constraints, it is rarely by accident. As doctors they ought to be the first to appreciate what a pathological exercise of power means to the cultural and institutional bonds that hold a society together:

  • As bio-security increasingly substitutes for health care, doctors will find that the personal confidences of their patients are no longer inviolate and that the Hippocratic obligations they once held so dear can be easily compromised by legal mandates to force-medicate people regardless of need or consequence.

  • When politicians rule by executive decree the police force morphs from a public service comprised of citizens in uniform to the enforcement arm of a political clique. When this happens, public trust in the police is lost and this loss of legitimacy results in a loss of respect. Eventually this loss of respect becomes mutual and the police start to despise the people they victimize and abuse the power they have. The opening quote being a perfect example.

  • Similarly with the military: when the exercise of our democratic rights is pathologized by those in power, our servicemen and women eventually find they’re being asked to apply, at home, the counter-insurgency training and urban warfare tactics they learned for battlefields abroad. This is something that has occurred since the time of Thucydides and it’s happening again.

  • Even the tools we use to make sense of the world, such as the scientific method, cease to function properly when our governments become toxic. Once everyone in a society has been force-vaccinated by government decree, it will become legally impossible to prove a link between mandated vaccines and any potential vaccine-related injury. Not because the manufacturers will have immunity from liability (they will), but because there will no longer be a non-vaccinated control group left against which randomized double-blind control studies can be conducted.

  Not one of these developments is accidental. All of them are known, predictable outcomes of policy decisions being taken today. And these policy decisions rob everyone of their integrity; health workers, academics, the police and the military.

  When those in power have a pathological relationship to the people they rule, you know you are on a road to perdition. We can see such a pathology evolving among our politicians most clearly in Victoria with its home invasions, curfews and lock downs but it is also evident in the overreach of governments around the country.

  Western Australia’s recent dispute with mining magnate, Clive Palmer, over the State’s Covid border closure is a case in point. According to the WA Law Society the Government’s anti-Palmer legislation violates several of the fundamental legal principles that underpin the rule of law in a civilized society. Such overreach is also apparent in the ASIO Amendment Act 2020, introduced into Federal Parliament by Peter Dutton in May this year – right at the height of the Covid panic while most members were not even in Canberra.

  This legislation is the latest in a succession of Bills that have been passed by our Federal government since 9/11 (85 and counting) which have vastly expanded the powers of law enforcement and security agencies in Australia while limiting public oversight. The legislation effectively criminalizes the free exercise of our basic democratic freedoms.

  The Dutton amendment extends powers normally applied to terrorists, to any group or person engaged in any kind of civil disobedience or protest that could possibly result in ‘politically motivated violence’. That would include the anti-lock down protests that I participated in last week.

  Among a raft of frightening provisions this bill allows police and intelligence agencies to track, apprehend and question children as young as 14 yrs of age as though they were terrorists. It suspends the rules of habeas corpus and allows the State to arbitrarily restrict a defendant’s access to legal representation.

  This is the sort of legislation you’d expect to find in China or Saudi Arabia, not Australia.

  The permanent changes to our society that are now in place in Australia following the SARS CoV-2 pandemic mean we qualify as proto-fascist State by any measure of political freedom. This thought is anathema to most Australians and would be vociferously denied by paid-off mainstream media pundits – but probably not constitutional lawyers – because the legislative reality is that we are now much closer to full-blooded fascism than we are to the liberal democracy that existed when I was born in 1963. And we are a very far cry from the nation our diggers returned to in 1945.

  The only way we will arrest and/or reverse this trend is if we all take direct, non-violent, physical (not digital) action to exercise our civic and democratic rights at every opportunity we can. The time to speak up and stand up is now. It will be too late tomorrow.

  

• US Pushes Unprecedented 7 Major Weapons Systems Sales To Taiwan At Once
  US Pushes Unprecedented 7 Major Weapons Systems Sales To Taiwan At Once
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 21:10

  Despite Beijing’s threats centered on the ‘red line’ of the Taiwan issue, Washington only looks to ramp up its arms sales, which will no doubt earn more condemnations alleging violation of the ‘One China’ policy. 

  Reuters points out the US is content to further build up ‘Fortress Taiwan’ while “needling China” – as it “plans to sell as many as seven major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles and drones to Taiwan, four people familiar with the discussions said, as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on China.”

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  The Trump administration is throwing caution to the wind, given the reality is that this many sales at once is “a rare departure from years of precedent in which U.S. military sales to the island were spaced out and carefully calibrated to minimize tensions with Beijing.”

  Here’s Taiwan’s shopping list, in various phases of passing US legal hurdles and discussions, according to the new Reuters report:

  • Drones that can see over the horizon for surveillance and targeting, coupled with advanced missiles and coastal defenses that include smart mines and anti-submarine capabilities to impede a sea invasion…
  • A Lockheed Martin-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), essentially a truck-based rocket launcher, is among the weapons Taiwan wants, people familiar with the negotiations said.
  • at least four large sophisticated aerial drones to Taiwan for what could be about $600 million.
  • under discussion are land-based Boeing-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles to serve as a coastal defense against cruise missiles.
  • Other systems include “underwater sea mines and other capabilities to deter amphibious landing, or immediate attack,” Taiwan’s de facto ambassador here to United States said in July.

  Anti-tank missile systems are also said to be under consideration, at a moment Chinese PLA naval and aerial drills near the island have been on the uptick.

  Beijing has repeatedly signaled that it considers reunification as a landmark mission and won’t stand idly by as external forces intervene in what it sees as inter-China affairs.

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  And as South China Morning Post recently warned, “Unlike other areas of territorial contention, such as in the South China Sea, analysts say Beijing will show no flexibility on this issue and has not ruled out force to reunify Taiwan with the mainland.”

  

• Dalio Sheds Light On Chinese Thinking On Trade Deal
  Dalio Sheds Light On Chinese Thinking On Trade Deal
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 20:50

  Authored by Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator and analyst

  There were few surprises at the FOMC meeting as the Fed signaled it plans to leave rates near zero for at least three years, even as it upgraded growth forecasts. The fact that bond yields and the dollar erased earlier declines perhaps reflected the positioning of a minority of investors who were looking for more. In the bigger picture, though, the macro backdrop remains the same – accommodative monetary policy with continued economic recovery, coupled with both upside risks (a vaccine) and downside risks (fiscal, virus and the presidential election).

  In China, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said Beijing is “seriously” implementing the phase-one trade deal with the U.S. even as it faces difficulties caused by the pandemic and complexities in the relations between the two nations.

  So why does Beijing bother to stick to the deal when the conflicts extend everywhere from technology to human rights and capital markets?

  In a long article published this week to promote his upcoming book, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio shed some light on the thinking of Chinese policy makers: It’s really about avoiding a real war.

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  Dalio, who has connections with senior policy makers since the 1980s, recounted a meeting between him and China’s top negotiator Liu He during the first round of trade talks:

  “He explained that going into his meeting with Trump, he was concerned about how it would go, not because of the trade negotiations, which he was confident didn’t have any issues that couldn’t be worked out, but because he was concerned about the worst-case scenario where tit-for-tat escalations could get out of control and lead to more serious consequences.”

  China has long said that trade is the anchor for the Sino-U.S. relationship. Without it, relations could slip into a military confrontation. To Dalio, the U.S. conflicts with China rose in a way that was “analogous to the rise of Japan and Germany to challenge the then-existing powers in the 1930s,” which eventually led to World War II.

  ​<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>​

  To some extent, the tension is inevitable, given the two sides’ different understandings of the role of the state in the economy. In fact, Dalio said he “would have done almost the exact same things as they did if I were in their shoes,” given the constraints China faces. He urges the U.S. to abandon the stereotype of “communist China” to really understand what Beijing is actually doing.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  So where do we go from here? Dalio left his conclusion for the next chapter of his book. From what we’ve learned, though, he seems to believe that gold is something that one must have in the current chaotic global environment. After all, 12 of the past 16 global transitions of rival powers in the last 500 years ended in war, the ominous curse of the “Thucydides Trap.”

  

• Hamas Rockets Rained Down On Southern Israel At Moment UAE Peace Deal Signed
  Hamas Rockets Rained Down On Southern Israel At Moment UAE Peace Deal Signed
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 20:30

  During the signing of the Abraham Accords Peace Agreement at the White House Tuesday, which is the first ever historic Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations and Full Normalization Between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel, Hamas rockets rained down on communities in southern Israel. 

  “Thirteen people were injured after two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Ashkelon and Ashdod in southern Israel on Tuesday,” The Jerusalem Post reports. “Rocket sirens sounded as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. One of the rockets was intercepted by the IDF.”

  Israel was quick to respond in airstrikes overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

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  Considering that during past volleys of rocket fire out of the Gaza Strip, most projectiles fail to hit any target and instead fall into the desert, the high injury rate from Tuesday night’s attack points to most of these rockets striking residential areas in Israel. 

  Gaza’s Islamist armed factions confirmed the rocket fire was in response to the Israeli-UAE deal, which includes Bahrain as well, and had declared Tuesday a Palestinian “day of rage”:

  Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem responded to the normalization deals shortly after the rockets were fired from Gaza, saying that “the normalization agreements between the UAE and Bahrain with the Zionist entity are not worth the ink with which they were written – and our people, with their insistence on the struggle until the full recovery of their rights, will deal with these agreements as if they were non-existent,” according to Palestinian media.

  “A question to the United States of America, Israel, Bahrain and the UAE: Will the signing of the normalization agreement at the White House now prevent these missiles from leaving Gaza tonight to Israel?” asked senior Fatah official Monir al-Jaghoub in response to the deals and rocket fire. “Peace begins in Palestine and war begins in Palestine.”

  In the early hours of Wednesday morning the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it responded by conducting at least ten air strikes on Hamas targets throughout the strip.

  At least two people were wounded in the southern coastal city of #Ashdod, #Israel, by rocket fire from Hamas-controlled #Gaza, emergency services confirm, as Israel signed normalization deals with Bahrain and the UAE.https://t.co/SQfNXJt2qO pic.twitter.com/RowCw1PTBX

  — Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 15, 2020

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  Hamas rockets continued just before dawn on Wednesday, and given the escalating tit-for-tat are likely to continue. 

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliation and charged Hamas with attempting to “turn back the peace”. 

  Video of the rocket impact this evening in #Ashdod, #Israel. pic.twitter.com/6pbhhqaECm

  — Aurora Intel (@AuroraIntel) September 15, 2020

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  “I’m not surprised that the Palestinian terrorists fired at Israel precisely during this historic ceremony,” Netanyahu told reporters before leaving Washington where he had been personally presented a “key to the White House” by President Trump and the first lady after signing the Abraham Accords.

  “They want to turn back the peace. In that, they will not succeed,” he added. “We will strike at all those who raise a hand to harm us, and we will reach out to all those who extend the hand of peace to us.”

  The text of the UAE-Israel Normalization Agreement has been released by the White House. It’s four pages long and makes no mention that Israel is obligated to halt its annexation of Occupied Palestinian Territories. pic.twitter.com/JSENKXkiI5

  — Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) September 16, 2020

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  However, Palestinian leadership considers that it’s being sold out by the Arab gulf states which in past decades have resisted Israeli expansion.

  

• "The Virus Isn't Going Away… Campuses Need To Reopen", Northeastern Uni President Warns
  “The Virus Isn’t Going Away… Campuses Need To Reopen”, Northeastern Uni President Warns
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 20:10

  Authored by Leana Dippie via Campus Reform,

  With many colleges and universities across the country shifting to remote learning for the fall semester, and even the spring semester, one college president is arguing that campuses need to reopen.

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  Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern University in Boston wrote in a Washington Post op-ed titled, “The virus isn’t going away. That’s why campuses need to reopen,” that he believes schools need to reopen, and explained why he himself worked tirelessly to ensure Northeastern students could return to their classrooms this fall.

  He argues that the coronavirus is going to be a constant threat, and states that the world cannot hit the pause button.

  “The pandemic, we realized, is going to be endemic: an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history, cleanly wiped out by a miracle vaccine. The science will take time. But the world cannot,” Aoun explains after consulting with various epidemiologists, biologists, and scientists from the Northeastern faculty.

  “Manufacturing enough doses to vaccinate the entire country, let alone the world, will take many months. And we don’t yet know the strength and duration of the immunity that will be conferred, making it likely that the world will experience covid-19 outbreaks, albeit at lower levels, for years,” Aoun continued.

  Auon states that the coronavirus will likely be a “four-to-five-year problem” and explains that putting a pause on in-person learning would “be devastating to colleges and their students.”

  “This will likely make COVID-19 at least a four-to-five-year problem, epidemiologists say. Pausing in-person education that long would be devastating to colleges and their students. And even a one-year delay would be a substantial challenge.

  It would disproportionately hurt low-income students who spent the spring continuing their studies online, without adequate technology, sometimes in overcrowded and even traumatic living conditions. And it would impair universities’ ability to discover solutions that would make the world safer — from this pandemic, and from ones that are yet to come.”

  Campus Reform reached out to Northeastern students to get their takes on Aoun’s stance.

  One student, Tess Dufour, a sophomore at Northeastern told Campus reform that she “absolutely” agrees with her university president.

  “I absolutely agree with his push to reopen,” Dufour said.

  “I agree with the principle that this is an ‘endemic’ virus that will not be erased within one year. I acknowledge how serious and high risk the coronavirus is, however, I also acknowledge the importance of college students being able to thrive within a new normal. We have the benefit of seeing other colleges go back before us. We have learned from their mistakes and plan to handle this pandemic way better.”

  Bernardo Costa is an international student about to embark on his second year at Northeastern.

  When asked whether he agrees with Aoun’s push to reopen schools this fall, he said that international students are disadvantaged by remote learning, stating that if they stay home, they risk losing their visas.

  “Many international students have worked their whole lives towards studying in the U.S. Taking classes at home could be a very big time difference for them. Many times they cannot watch the classes live and it hurts their academic performance. We also risk losing visas, scholarships, and things like that.”

  “These are things we can’t afford to lose,” Bernardo continued.

  “By reopening campuses, they’re giving people a choice on whether they’d prefer to come back and continue their educational journey where they intended to be from the beginning – in the United States.”

  

• "Where Are The Police?" After Voting To Defund Cops, Minneapolis City Council Baffled Over Recent Crime Wave
  “Where Are The Police?” After Voting To Defund Cops, Minneapolis City Council Baffled Over Recent Crime Wave
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 19:50

  In the wake of George Floyd’s death while in the custody of the Minneapolis police, the city council – nearly all Democrats, made the brilliant decision to defund the city’s police department and embark on a “police-free future.“

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  “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweeted Council Member Jeremiah Ellison on June 4, pledging to “dramatically rethink” the city’s approach to emergency response.

  We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.

  And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.

  We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.

  It’s really past due. https://t.co/7WIxUL6W79

  — Jeremiah Ellison (@jeremiah4north) June 4, 2020

  Now, via The Blaze, a development that we promise isn’t from the Babylon Bee: Minneapolis lawmakers are baffled over the recent crime wave sweeping the city.

  “During a two-hour meeting with Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo this week, the Democratic city council, in brazen fashion, demanded to know why city police are not responding to the violence with enhanced law enforcement measures,” Writes Chris Enloe.

  From Minnesota Public Radio:

  The number of reported violent crimes, like assaults, robberies and homicides are up compared to 2019, according to MPD crime data. More people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Property crimes, like burglaries and auto thefts, are also up. Incidents of arson have increased 55 percent over the total at this point in 2019.

  “Residents are asking, ‘Where are the police?‘” Councilman Jamal Osman said, MPR reported. “That is the only public safety option they have at the moment. MPD. They rely on MPD. And they are saying they are nowhere to be seen.”

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAnti-police Council President Lisa Bender claims the cops are being “defiant,” adding “This is not new.”

  Democratic council member Phillipe Cunningham called out his colleagues for their hypocrisy.

  “What I am sort of flabbergasted by right now is colleagues, who a very short time ago were calling for abolition, are now suggesting we should be putting more resources and funding into MPD,” he said.

  Police Chief Arradondo insisted that Minneapolis PD has taken measures to combat the crime wave, such as adding more officers to patrols, devoting additional resources to investigative duties, and discussing the spike in crime with department leadership.

  That said, over 100 officers have left the department this year, over double the typical number.

  What did they expect?

  

• The Portland Riots Just Stopped… Why?
  The Portland Riots Just Stopped… Why?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 19:30

  Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,

  Have Portland’s Professional Protesters™ been smoked out?

  Since May 29th, Portland has been the back drop of more than 100 nights of antifa, anarchist and Black Lives Matter, Inc™ terroristic riots. They set fires, looted, and intimidated people by threatening to burn them alive in their homes.

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  But after the millions of dollars of destruction, criminality and thuggery it stopped last week. Poof!

  Why?

  I certainly don’t want to tempt these thugs, but it can’t go without saying that Portland’s 100 plus days of riots appeared to end after Wednesday, September 9th.

  That was the last time the Portland Police Bureau warned about protests.

  SW Jefferson to SW Salmon from SW 1st to SW Broadway is closed to pedestrians but open for vehicular traffic. All people must leave the area to the west now. Champman and Lownsdale Squares are now closed.

  — Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) September 9, 2020

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  The usual live-streamers decamped to other riots and fires.

  By September 10th, the overworked cops from Portland Police Bureau were offered out to assist other agencies. Suddenly, instead of being required to work the riots lines, they were free.

  I have offered @ClackCoSheriff and @ORStatePolice PPB officers to assist with emergencies related to fires. PPB recognizes the need for us all to come together as a state to assist one another in this time of need.

  — Chief Chuck Lovell (@ChiefCLovell) September 10, 2020

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  Why?

  On September 7th to the morning of the 8th, the Pacific Northwest experienced a major “wind event.” Winds gusted through Oregon and Washington at more than 60 miles per hour. Fires that had been allowed to crackle along, such as the Beachie fire, flared up. Power lines were downed. The fires kicked up.

  And then came the reports.

  Clackamas County Sheriff’s officials reported that people had seen antifa protester types reportedly stashing gas cans, looting, and looking ridiculously out of place. They were taking pictures and giving locals grief for trying to keep them out of closed neighborhoods. Locals wondered if there was a connection between the fires and the sightings of these folks.

  BLM was seen there. The original BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, not the group that borrowed the acronym.

  Preventable wildfires threaten lives, property, & precious resources every year. During the #COVID19 pandemic, firefighters are needed more than ever to keep Americans safe, so please, do your part to prevent human-caused wildfires. #WildfirePrevention pic.twitter.com/POm4nfr3W1

  — Bureau of Land Management Fire and Aviation (@BLMFire) September 14, 2020

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  And just as suddenly, such sightings and reports were dismissed as rumors and lies. Myriad law enforcement agencies begged people to stop sharing such stories, as I reported on PJMedia.

  I reached out to the Portland Police Bureau for a comment on the lag in riots, but didn’t receive a reply before publication.

  Riot-weary Oregonians aren’t necessarily mollified by the concerted effort to shut down these reports. Until last Wednesday night, they’d seen the antifa rioters and arsonists in action on the news every night in Portland. And now some of them swore they saw those people in Estacada, Sandy, Molalla and other parts of the burning Clackamas County.

  Indeed, documents from the Department of Homeland Security show that whatever antifa rioters are doing, they’re doing in concert, organizing with other like-minded people.

  #Whistleblower #PortlandProtest Breaking: According to this @DHSgov internal email, obtained @CBSNews, former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis Brian Murphy wrote colleagues on July 25th that the Portland violence was not “opportunistic” but “organized” citing pic.twitter.com/K7Aoe0yFbB

  — Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) September 14, 2020

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  are organized and show up night after night, and share common TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures)..”

  “Threat actors who are motivated by Anarchists or ANTIFA (or a combination of both) ideologies to carry out acts of violence against State, Local and Federal authorities..”

  — Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) September 14, 2020

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  The internal document leaked yesterday from the Department of Homeland Security reads:

  According to this @DHSgov internal email, obtained @CBSNews, former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis Brian Murphy wrote colleagues on July 25th that the Portland violence was not “opportunistic” but “organized” citing “Anarchists or Antifa”

  “We can’t say any longer that this violent situation is opportunistic. Additionally, we have overwhelmingly(sic) intelligence regarding the ideologies driving individuals toward violence + why the violence has continued.

  A core set of Threat actors are organized and show up night after night, and share common TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures).. Threat actors who are motivated by Anarchists or ANTIFA (or a combination of both) ideologies to carry out acts of violence against State, Local and Federal authorities..”

  They’re organized, share the same tactics and talk to each other. Why are they so quiet right now?

  Oregonians might well wonder that these “threat actors” are doing their arsons in the tinder dry woodlands of the state instead of nearby downtown Portland.

  The riots have stopped. Did they go to San Francisco or Lancaster, Pennsylvania to raise hell? Did they stop because of the smokey skies and air quality numbers that are off the charts?

  It seems unlikely that a group that spawned a murderer, multiple arsonists and police assaulters would be dissuaded by smoky quality air.

  Is it because the media are busy covering the wildfires and there’s nothing in rioting for the terrorists? Or is it because of something else?

  The riots are over for now. Why?

  

• Trump Opposes TikTok-Oracle Deal, Demands Majority US Ownership
  Trump Opposes TikTok-Oracle Deal, Demands Majority US Ownership
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 19:10

  Update (1900ET): Trump said during Wednesday’s meandering, impromptu press briefing that he won’t make a decision on the TikTok-Oracle deal until Thursday, following a briefing on the subject. CFIUS has reportedly finished its review, but it’s waiting on the president to make a decision.

  WSJ followed up the Bloomberg reported noted earlier with a more comprehensive report of where things stand. The central conflict is that a group of China hawks are demanding that Oracle and the other US investors in the deal walk away with at least a majority combined stake, to ensure that ByteDance (and, by extension, Beijing) can’t install any “backdoors” or otherwise make the company’s data accessible to Beijing.

  Reports claim that the two sides are working to hash out a deal whereby the new entity would include all of TikTok’s assets, including its “golden goose” algorithm. This would in theory make it easier for Oracle to monitor all of TikTok’s network while also handling most of its IT infrastructure. This would ideally act as a safeguard against Beijing getting its hands on the data.

  Of course, one can never completely eliminate that risk.

  After days earlier expressing his appreciation for Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Trump told reporters Wednesday evening that he’s not comfortable with the deal as it stands.

  “Conceptually, I can tell you, I don’t like that,”\” he said, adding that he had not been briefed on that element of the deal.

  While the Trump Administration officials quoted anonymously in the WSJ’s report projected optimism about the deal, they ultimately offered no plan for winning the approval of Chinese regulators, which have said they would rather see TikTok shuttered than be coerced into selling.

  The deadline is Sept. 20, so we have until the end of the weekend for the two sides to work out another stop-gap “deal”, only for everything to fall apart again once it’s blocked by Beijing.

  * * *

  Update (1730ET): New details about the new ByteDance and Oracle-backed, US-headquartered newly independent TikTok have emerged in the latest Bloomberg report, as the administration scrambles to try and convince or mollify a group of GOP senators who remain suspect of ByteDance’s majority control of the new venture.

  Over the past few hours, Sen. Ted Cruz has joined Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and others in opposing the deal, penning his own letter claiming that any deal that doesn’t 100% address national security concerns should be rejected.

  2020.09.15 — TikTok Letter Final – FSV PDF by Zerohedge on Scribd

  Complaints about Oracle not having access to TikTok’s core algorithm have metastasized into concerns that ByteDance will leave Oracle in the dark. However, Bloomberg is reporting that Oracle will have complete access to TikTok’s source code as part of the deal. Specifically, the report adds more context on the meaning of the phrase “trusted security partner,” one of the initial complaints from Hawley & Co. Trump added that he “doesn’t like” that Oracle won’t be outright buying the US business, something that Beijing would prohibit.

  Oracle Corp. will get full access to TikTok’s source code and updates to make sure there are no back doors used by the company’s Chinese parent to access data on the video-sharing app’s 100 million American users, according to terms of a proposed deal submitted to the U.S. government over the weekend and reviewed by Bloomberg.

  The new details of the deal with TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. shed light on what the companies and security officials mean when they call Oracle a “trusted technology partner,” which goes beyond just housing data inside Oracle’s U.S. cloud servers, according to people with knowledge of the terms, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

  Oracle will be able to check all source code from the algorithms that decide which videos get shown to which users to ensure there are no back doors and will be able to continue to review the technology as updates come in to make sure there are no new points of access, the people said.

  Commenting on the administration’s internal talks, CNBC’s Kayla Tausche said it’s believed that Trump and Mnuchin support the deal, while Pompeo, Barr and the GOP senators – among others, like Peter Navarro – have continued to harp on the national security issue.

  President Trump said during a press briefing Wednesday evening that the deal needs to be “100%” and that there will be more information Thursday morning. Though that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that CFIUS’s decision could leak tonight. Trump also said there’s no way to “guarantee” that money from TikTok will pay off the Treasury.

  * * *

  Hours after former presidential candidate Marco Rubio came out against the new TikTok-Oracle deal, which would spin off TikTok into a US-headquartered independent company majority owned by ByteDance, with Oracle holding a major stake and a contract to supervise the hosting and back-end technology while ByteDance continues to manage TikTok “at arm’s length.”

  Earlier, a senior reporter from Fox Business said the deal was on track to be approved by CFIUS, the Commerce Department board that reviews deals for national-security concerns. After their initial proposal faced pushback, Oracle and ByteDance worked with the administration to devise the new deal, which was unveiled on Monday. Despite some complaints about ByteDance retaining majority control, the deal appeared set to sail through.

  However, Marco Rubio came out against the deal a few hours ago. Now, Bloomberg is reporting that the deal is now facing opposition from a group of GOP senators led by Rubio , a group who have presumably been lobbying CFIUS and Trump.

  Per Bloomberg, several high-ranking officials, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, are now concerned that after a potential transaction, TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance could still access user data from its 100 million or so users in the US, its sources claimed. 

  Oracle Corp.’s bid for TikTok falls short of resolving concerns of Trump administration officials that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app poses a risk to U.S. national security, according to people familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump has the authority to sign off on a deal, but continuing concerns from national security officials could sway his decision. The agreement remains on the table, with discussions continuing between administration officials and the companies, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. Addressing those remaining issues could pave the way for U.S. approval, the people said.

  Many remain wary of the new ownership structure, which Rubio and Sen Josh Hawley have criticized for ceding too much control to ByteDance, Of course, anything less would likely be unpalatable for Beijing.

  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and AG Barr are also examining the deal. Both have some say in the final decision, since both of their departments are part of CFIUS. While Mnuchin has reportedly reviewed the deal, Barr hasn’t yet had the time. Officials first expressed their doubts to CFIUS Tuesday night, and the committee is expected to meet again on Wednesday.

  We’re still waiting on the final word from CFIUS, but if the past is any guide, a rejection would no longer come as a surprise.

  

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• Pompeo Vows US Will Never Let Iran Acquire Russian & Chinese Weapons
  Pompeo Vows US Will Never Let Iran Acquire Russian & Chinese Weapons
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 02:45

  Weeks ago the United States lost its bid to get the UN Security Council to extend the international arms embargo on Iran, which is set to expire October 18.

  And now on Tuesday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is vowing to never let Iran acquire Chinese and Russian weapons, but it remains unclear precisely how he hopes to make this happen. 

  Pompeo said during an interview with European radio broadcaster “France Inter” on Tuesday that “Nothing has been done so far to enable the extension of this ban, and therefore the United States assumed its responsibilities.” He’s of course referencing the fact that the Europeans have by and large sought to uphold the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, or JCPOA.

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  Pompeo added: 

  “We will act in this manner. We will prevent Iran from acquiring Chinese tanks and Russian air defense systems, and after that, selling weapons to Hezbollah undermines the efforts of French President Emmanuel Macron in Lebanon.”

  Washington has stood isolated over its decision to enact so-called “snapback” sanctions on the Islamic Republic in late August. 

  Ironically the snapback option is available to participants in the JCPOA, which the US formally withdrew from in May 2018. 

  #Видео Расчеты С-400 Западного военного округа провели боевые пуски зенитных управляемых ракет по учебным воздушным целям на полигоне Ашулук в Астраханской области.

  #Минобороны #ЗВО #ПВО #С400 #БоеваяПодготовка pic.twitter.com/fGz9K4UXpe

  — Минобороны России (@mod_russia) September 15, 2020

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  Meanwhile, over the past year there’s been talk of Moscow actually supplying Iran with its advanced S-400 anti-air defense system, something which the Trump administration might almost treat as an act of war. 

  Interestingly, on the very day Pompeo made is new statements vowing to never let Russian weapons come into Iran’s hands, the Kremlin was busy show off the S-400’s capabilities. 

  …caused over so many years. Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2020

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  Iran has also come back into headlines this week after it was alleged leaders in Tehran are plotting to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa in revenge for the January US drone strike on Gen. Qasem Soleimani. 

  In response, Trump vowed that any such aggression out of Iran would be met with an American response “1,000 times greater in magnitude!” However, Trump did not exactly confirm the alleged plot, instead he merely cited “press reports” suggesting that it may be true.

  

• How The British Government Is Wading Into The Swamp Of Despotism… One Muzzle At A Time
  How The British Government Is Wading Into The Swamp Of Despotism… One Muzzle At A Time
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 09/16/2020 – 02:00

  Authored by Peter Hitchens,

  The Government has no legal right to impose the severe and miserable restrictions on our lives with which it has wrecked the economy, brought needless grief to the bereaved and the lonely and destroyed our personal liberty.

  This is the verdict of one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, the retired Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption.

  He said last week in a podcast interview: ‘I don’t myself believe that the Act confers on the Government the powers that it has purported to exercise.’

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  Lord Sumption’s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country have somehow not noticed it. So, as has been the case from the start, you have to get it from me.

  He was referring to the Public Health Act of 1984, the basis for almost all the sheaves of increasingly hysterical decrees against normal life which the Health Secretary Matt Hancock has issued since March. I promise you that it is not usual for a retired senior judge to use such language in public.

  This 1984 Act was drawn up mainly to give local magistrates the power to quarantine the sick.

  Nothing in it remotely justifies these astonishing moves – house arrest, travel restrictions, harsh limits on visiting family members, interference with funerals and weddings, closure of churches, compulsory muzzles, bans on assembly and protest.

  English law just does not allow an Act of Parliament to be stretched so far.

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  Lord Sumption was referring to the Public Health Act of 1984, the basis for almost all the sheaves of increasingly hysterical decrees against normal life which the Health Secretary Matt Hancock (above) has issued since March. I promise you that it is not usual for a retired senior judge to use such language in public.

  Magistrates are never given such powers. It is a principle of our law that fundamental freedoms cannot be invaded or overruled unless the law specifically allows it.

  As he is one of the most distinguished legal minds of our time, Jonathan Sumption’s opinions on this matter are surely important.

  Let us hope that the Courts of England, which have so far been content to let the Government do what it likes, will listen to what he says when they look at the matter again later this month, in the case brought by Simon Dolan, a businessman who is seeking a judicial review of the Government’s policy on Covid-19.

  It is extraordinary for such a person as Lord Sumption to go public in this fashion. And he went on to say another astonishing thing.

  He pointed out that powers do exist – in the shape of the formidable Civil Contingencies Act – under which the Prime Minister could do all the things he has done. But the CCA requires regular parliamentary scrutiny and renewal.

  The Government’s team of lawyers must know this. So why wasn’t the CCA used? We can only guess that the Prime Minister and his Health Secretary feared that if they had to keep coming back to Parliament, even the dim, slumbering and gullible MPs we have nowadays would eventually have spotted, and halted, the immense power grab now under way.

  Lord Sumption’s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country have somehow not noticed it.

  So, as has been the case from the start, you have to get it from me. But believe me, it is an indication of just how deep into the swamp of despotism this Government has already waded.

  Let us escape soon, before we are so far in we can never get out again.

  Bare-faced state bullies

  The most terrible warning of what lies ahead of us – if we cannot smash the Government’s lies – is in Melbourne, Australia, where a vain little despot called Daniel Andrews has locked his subjects in their homes, banned demonstrations against this policy, and unleashed heavy-handed police against protesters and dissenters.

  At this rate, Melbourne will soon be twinned with Minsk, capital of Belarus. The treatment of protesters on the streets of both cities is remarkably similar. I was most struck by what happened to a young woman demonstrator at the hands of Melbourne police, after they had grabbed and restrained her, so that she was powerless.

  An officer actually put a covering over her mouth. It was not the only such incident that day and it explains, to those who object, why I call these things muzzles.

  They are there to humiliate, to cancel individuality and to indicate assent – forced or otherwise – to the crazy policy of trying to treat a virus with naked state power.

  If US police forced handcuffed Left-wing protesters to wear Trumpoid ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps it would be about the same.

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  Humiliation: Police officers in Melbourne, Australia, restrain a protester and force her to wear a face mask

  Now hiking’s a crime, but dope is fine

  One of my rules is that the more political the police become, the more useless they are against actual crime. Here is a good example. Police who have over the past few months pursued sunbathers, hikers, people going into their own front gardens or showing their naked faces on trains, now plan a new extra-soft line on marijuana.

  Even though this terrible drug is increasingly linked with lifelong mental illness and violence, liberal police chiefs are still lost in a Sixties-style haze of dope, believing dubious claims that it is a medicine.

  Legalisers have long privately admitted these claims are a red herring to give pot a good name. How can something which makes many of its users mentally ill be a medicine?

  But lo, police chiefs are backing a new ‘cannabis card’ that will provide de-facto decriminalisation of the drug for millions of people with health conditions. Officers, who have already almost given up arresting people for possession, say it will give them a new excuse for failing to enforce the law.

  Too busy on granny patrol, making sure children can’t see their grandmothers, I expect.

  Schoolboy Johnson’s lies keep getting bigger

  Imagine a naughty schoolboy afraid to admit what started as a minor misdeed. Such a schoolboy, having broken the headmaster’s window with his catapult, and trying to evade punishment, might invent a story about a gang of yobs bursting into the school grounds.

  So the police are called and he deepens the falsehood. The longer it goes on, the more embarrassing it will be to confess. Innocent people are rounded up, arrested and charged on the basis of his claims.

  He gives false evidence against them. They lose their freedom, perhaps have their lives ruined.

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  Rather than admit he hugely overestimated the danger of Covid, he continues to insist it is a deadly plague and that it will be back soon in a terrible second wave

  The lie is now even worse. He must either confess or elaborate the false story of the gang, for ever. And the worse it gets, the harder it is to own up. So he lies and keeps lying.

  So it is with our Prime Minister. He panicked in March, on the basis of poor advice. He did immense damage and knows it.

  But rather than admit he hugely overestimated the danger of Covid, he continues to insist it is a deadly plague and that it will be back soon in a terrible second wave.

  The official Covid death and hospitalisation figures, declining ever since April 8, are now bumping along the bottom of the graph, close to zero.

  Hence the false epidemic of so-called Covid ‘cases’, which the Government is trying to pretend exists. How simple-minded do you need to be not to see the great flaw in this?

  On Monday, the media reported new coronavirus cases in the UK had risen to 2,988 on Sunday, the highest daily total since May. Panic! Or perhaps not.

  I searched the Government’s own spreadsheets and what did I find? More than 1.1 million tests each week but fewer than 10,000 positive results. Judging by the state of the hospitals and the death rates, I think we may assume most were just fine, as most who catch this disease are.

  So, for this, we propose to stop people gathering in groups of more than six? I sense even those who have, up till now, put up with this rubbish are beginning to tire of it.

  Good, for until you do and demand truthful explanations of why your children’s education has been ruined, why legions of people will lose their jobs, why daily life is an intensifying misery of jobsworths and bureaucracy, and why hundreds of businesses built up with years of sweat and risk are now dying, you will just get more lies.

  

• Benghazi: The Forgotten "September 11th" Attack On The US Consulate In Libya
  Benghazi: The Forgotten “September 11th” Attack On The US Consulate In Libya
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 23:45

  Authored by Sam Jacobs via Ammo.com,

  If you say “September 11” most people automatically think of the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. What they probably don’t even remember happened on September 11, were the attacks on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

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  Once the Libyan Revolution began in February 2011, the CIA began placing assets in the region, attempting to make contacts within the region. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, whose name and image would soon become synonymous with the Benghazi attacks, was the first liaison between the United States and the rebels. The task before the American intelligence community at that time was securing arms in the country, most notably shoulder-fired missiles, taken from the Libyan military.

  Eastern Libya and Benghazi were the primary focal points of intelligence-gathering in the country. But there was something else at work here: The CIA was using the country as a base to funnel weapons to anti-Assad forces in Syria, as well as their alleged diplomatic mission.

  Early Rumblings of Disorder in Benghazi

  Trouble started in April 2012. This was when two former security guards of the consulate threw an IED over the fence. No casualties were reported, but another bomb was thrown at a convoy just four days later. Soon after, in May, the office of the International Red Cross in Benghazi was attacked and the local al-Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility. On August 6, the Red Cross suspended operations in Libya.

  This was all part of a troubling escalation of violence in the region. The British Ambassador Dominic Asquith was the victim of an assassination attempt on June 10, 2012. As a result of this and of rocket attacks on convoys, the British withdrew their entire consular staff from Libya in late June of that year.

  American military and consular personnel on the scene were increasingly troubled by the situation and communicated their concerns to top brass through official channels. Two security guards in the consulate noticed a Libyan police officer (or at least someone dressed as one) taking pictures of the building, which raised alarms. Indeed, consular officials had been requesting additional security as far back as March.

  On June 6, 2012, a large hole was blown in the wall of the consulate gate. It was estimated that 40 men could go through the hole in the wall. In July, the State Department informed officials on the ground that the existing security contract would not be renewed. On August 2, Ambassador Stephens requested additional security detail. The State Department responded by completely removing his security detail three days later. Three days after this, his security detail had left Libya entirely. On August 16, the regional security officer warned then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the security situation in Libya was “dire.”

  The Day of the Attack on Benghazi: The Cover-Up Begins

  The September 11, 2012 attack was actually two attacks by two separate militias. The first was the attack on the diplomatic mission, the second was a mortar attack on the CIA annex. But the attacks themselves were effectively watched in real time by the White House, thanks to security drones in the region. By 5:10pm ET, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta were watching real-time footage via a drone deployed to the area. 

  Half an hour later, the State Department officially refused to deploy the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST). FEST exists specifically for rapid response to terrorist attacks around the world and have special training with regard to defending American embassies. Within three hours, an Islamic group in the region had claimed responsibility for the attack. Approximately six hours after the first shots were fired, two former Navy SEALs who constituted the only serious defense forces for the consulate were killed by enemy fire. The surveillance drone had been watching them fight on their own for over two hours.

  At 10:30 that night, Hillary Clinton nebulously blamed “inflammatory material on the Internet” for the attack. The notion that the attack was motivated by Innocence of Muslims was absurd: On the day before the attack, the leader of al-Qaeda in the region called for vengeance due to the death of his secretary. Three days after the attack, Stephens’ personal diary was found unsecured, along with all the other sensitive intelligence information in the compound.

  For days, the film was blamed despite the White House having full knowledge that it was a terrorist attack. Indeed, on September 14, Barack Obama promised the father of one of the slain Navy SEALs not that he would bring to justice those who planned the attack, but the man who made the movie.

  On September 20, 2012, the White House spent $70,000 on apology videos for the film. One day later, ten days after the attack, Clinton admitted to the public what she had known for over a week: That this was a coordinated terrorist attack. However, on the 25th, President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations once again blaming the video, giving what is perhaps one of the more memorable quotes of his presidency: “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

  On September 27, 2012, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was arrested in Los Angeles for parole violations, all of which were related to his production of the film and served a year in jail. He was later sentenced to death in absentia by the Egyptian government.

  Barack Obama did not attend his daily intelligence briefing for six consecutive days prior to the attacks, instead campaigning for re-election against Mitt Romney.

  Susan Rice, then acting as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, made the rounds on no fewer than five major Sunday morning talk shows, a process known as “the Full Ginsburg.” On these shows, she was armed with a set of talking points from the CIA. These talking points included the false assertion that these were spontaneous protests inspired by similar protests against the American Embassy in Cairo, with no connection to institutional terrorism.

  The Rice appearances and the talking points she was provided with further confirm a general pattern: The Obama Administration was fundamentally incapable of acknowledging who the real enemy was. And when things went wrong, the focus was not on setting them right to protect Americans in the future, but on protecting the image of the Obama Administration – most notably the President and the Secretary of State. Hence the blame was shifted from Islamic terrorist groups onto a YouTube video.

  The (Seemingly Endless) Benghazi Investigations

  There were no fewer than 10 investigations of the attack on Benghazi, none of which found evidence of wrongdoing, despite several of them having been run by Republicans.

  However, the American public did get some valuable information out of these hearings, not least of all that Hillary Clinton doesn’t value the lives of American servicemen. For example, the attention of Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails first came to the State Department and the United States Congress thanks to these investigations. Indeed, approximately 30 of the “gone with the wind” emails from her private, home-brewed server related to the non-response to the attack on Benghazi. This is according to the State Department itself.

  But still the question remains: Why let these men die? And why lie about it for days after the fact?

  The answer lies in two political concerns: First, the re-election of Barack Obama, second the planned candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

  The date of the attack is very important: This was the final weeks of a presidential election campaign. And while Obama won handily (in no small part due to the aloof, patrician image of Bain Capital principal Mitt Romney), he is nothing if not a savvy politician. An attack on the United States Consulate in Libya was not something he wanted in public consciousness during an election season, not least of all if it were the result of a terrorist attack from what had formerly been a stable nation, slowly coming into the fold of what is euphemistically called “the International Community.”

  For Clinton, the situation was even more dire. She effectively “owned” the situation in Libya, as the remaking (and ultimately destruction) of North Africa was one of the signature projects of her tenure at State. What’s more, she certainly owned the security situation on the ground, which likely was never secure.

  The building was given the designation of “temporary,” largely to get around a number of regulations that apply to permanent State Department buildings. The request for more security from Ambassador Stephens might have been ill advised not because it was impossible to secure the location in any kind of long-term and sustainable way. The right move might very well have been to remove American personnel entirely, but this would have gone against the official narrative that everything was going swimmingly in Libya.

  Other countries and organizations (such as the Red Cross) were leaving because they could not protect their people. The Clinton State Department saw this as unthinkable, because it would represent a failure and contradict the narrative.

  And while Republican-led committees did not find any wrongdoing, it’s important to note that they also complained of being stonewalled by the administration at every turn. It’s hard to uncover evidence of wrongdoing when there is an institutional campaign to prevent you from getting any evidence at all.

  A number of whistleblowers and other sources show that there were additional forces ready to go in the region to defend the consulate. So why were none of them deployed? Why were four American lives lost due to inaction at the highest levels of government?

  Why no one was deployed is perhaps down more to incompetence and bad policy than any kind of a conspiracy. Our article on 9/11 is instructive on this matter: sometimes the cover-up is a conspiracy to conceal idiocy and failure of the actual event. In the case of Benghazi, while there is evidence to point toward a politically motivated cover-up, the actual event, like the 9/11 attacks, seems mostly to be a result of bad policy and incompetence rather than malice.

  In this case, the bad policy was the Obama Administration’s desire to avoid even the appearance of “boots on the ground” and hand wringing about getting the permission of Libya (and about 12 other countries) to deploy assistance to the consulate. This was part of the general political philosophy of appeasement of Islamic terrorists that marked the Obama Administration.

  This explains the stand-down orders which official sources have denied, but which have been confirmed by a number of whistleblowers and leaked documents since the attacks.

  Both the President and the Secretary of Defense issued orders to deploy forces, but none were deployed. Once the Ambassador was confirmed as missing, a two-hour meeting ensued where top men within the Obama Administration came up with a number of action items, mostly revolving around the YouTube video (fully five of ten action items were related to the video) and hand wringing regarding a lack of permission from the Libyan government to protect our own forces.

  The Americans in the CIA Annex were eventually evacuated to the airport by members of a militia comprised of former Qadaffi regime loyalists, not the opposition militias that were nominally allied with the United States. Meanwhile, actual American forces spent a bunch of time putting on and taking off their uniforms and tactical gear because the instructions from Washington changed by the minute.

  It was a total paralysis of action on the ground by the top brass in D.C., because they were afraid of it looking like ground forces were being deployed, both from the perspective of the political response at home and the political response in Libya. As a result, four Americans died and a massive cover-up was rolled out to protect those responsible for grossly negligent inaction.

  After the fact, emails were sent out, the purpose of which was less about finding out what went wrong to prevent it from happening again and to assign responsibility, than it was about making sure everyone was on the same page with regard to talking points.

  The attack on Benghazi, the deaths of four Americans and the ensuing cover-up are an insightful view into the reality lurking behind many so-called “conspiracy theories.” What began as bureaucratic bungling and ideologically driven hamfistedness became a cover-up and, in a sense, a conspiracy after the fact. None of this is meant to let Obama-Clinton off the hook. Indeed, none of the criticisms of Obama-Clinton become any less sharp when they are considered as incompetence and butt-covering.

  

• Trump Confesses He Wanted To Assassinate Syria's Assad But Mattis Stopped Him
  Trump Confesses He Wanted To Assassinate Syria’s Assad But Mattis Stopped Him
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 23:25

  In an extremely rare, if not absolutely unprecedented confession from a sitting American president, Trump stunned a news panel on Tuesday morning in saying he wanted to assassinate President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

  “I would’ve rather taken [Assad] out. I had it all set. Mattis didn’t want to do it,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Fox & Friends.

  “I would have rather taken him out” — Trump says he wanted to assassinate Bashar al-Assad, but Mattis stopped him pic.twitter.com/pUcFTSW2w9

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2020

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  The question has persisted over the past years of war in Syria after Bob Woodward first reported in 2018 that Trump was pursuing it.

  At the time Trump had vehemently denied it: “No, that was never even contemplated, nor would it be contemplated and it should not have been written about in the book,” he had previously stated. 

  But Trump casually described Tuesday that in fact he was seriously considering it, only to be stopped by his Secretary of Defense at the time, Marine general Jim Mattis, which Trump added “was a highly overrated general”.

  The Fox hosts quickly followed by asking whether Trump “regretted” not taking out Assad. Trump responded:

  “No, I don’t regret that. I could have lived either way with that. I considered [Assad] certainly not a good person. But I had a shot to take him out if I wanted but Mattis was against it.”

  The real quote from Woodward’s book regarding #Syria ‘s Assad is that @realDonaldTrump told Mattis:

  The military should “f – king kill” Assad

  Trump called the above account “fiction” pic.twitter.com/Fkii7e22Yf

  — EHSANI2 (@EHSANI22) September 15, 2020

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  However, considering the Russian military has been deeply entrenched in Syria since 2015, and as Putin vowed not to allow the West to complete its push for regime change, we wonder how exactly Trump “had a shot to take him out”.

  Recall that Trump has bombed Syria on two occasions after allegations Assad used chemical weapons, with the 2018 attack involving over 100 tomahawk cruise missiles on Damascus. During the first instance, in April 2017, his daughter Ivanka reportedly influenced the decision.

  NBC reported in April 2017: Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Syria was influenced by his daughter, Ivanka, being “heartbroken and outraged” at the country’s alleged chemical weapons attack, one of the president’s sons told a British newspaper.

  Interesting that Trump wanted to assassinate Assad only to be advised against it and then reach out directly to Assad a few years later to discuss Austin Tice only to be rebuffed by the Syrian leader, crazy politics.

  — Danny Makki (@Dannymakkisyria) September 15, 2020

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  She reportedly showed her father pictures of suffering children while making the plea. Trump’s Syria policy has since then been all over the map – on the one hand he’s consistently voiced a desire to “bring the troops home” while more recently touting that “we’re securing the oil”.

  

• "Tens Of Thousands" Received China Mystery Seeds In The Mail, And Many Planted Them
  “Tens Of Thousands” Received China Mystery Seeds In The Mail, And Many Planted Them
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 23:05

  Last month we highlighted a mysterious trend that was sweeping the U.S.: citizens were receiving unsolicited packages of seeds, with return addresses from China, for apparently no reason at all.

  Official word from various government agencies, including the USDA, was to not plant the seeds and instead alert their local authorities. But plant the seeds is exactly what many people did, according to a new follow up report from Vice. They found that hundreds, if not thousands of people planted the seeds. 

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  Vice filed 52 FOIA requests to obtain the information and pored through “thousands of pages” of e-mails, spreadsheets and documents to try and figure out what, exactly, what going on. They estimate from their finding that “tens of thousands” of Americans received these seeds. 

  States like North Carolina had more than 1,000 people contact its Department of Agriculture about the problem. About 60 people in the state planted the seeds. 

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  One New Mexico resident left a voicemail to her local state Department of Agriculture that said: “About a month ago, I did receive seeds from China. I guess China because it looks like Chinese writing. I thought, ‘Oh cool, maybe Burgess seeds or one of the seed companies sent me some seeds.’ And, umm, like a dumbass, I planted them, not knowing there was a problem.”

  It continues: “And now, I’ve been battling this for a couple weeks. Now, where I planted them, and I remember where I planted them, everything that’s in the garden where I planted them are having a hard time and are starting to die … I really don’t know what to do at this point, so could somebody call me back and give me a little bit of direction about this? I know I’m a dumbass.”

  One report from North Carolina said: “Received many shipments. Planted some and clover came up. She indicated that she planted the bulbs. Planted one pack and ate the oregano that grew. Has some left.” 

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  A New Hampshire resident said: “I received this package from China. Unfortunately I through the envelope away. It said they were stud earrings. I had ordered onions from amazon and thought they got them from China. The more I looked at them they don’t even come close to onions I just figured they sent the wrong thing. No I didn’t plant or open the package. What should I do with them.”

  A spokesman for the USDA’s Smuggling Interdiction and Trade Compliance said complaints were “starting to explode”. 

  “Look’s like it’s all across the country,” stated an Indiana resident who also received seeds in the mail unsolicited. 

  We had followed up on the initial report of these seeds last month, noting that the U.S. had started to identify “14 types of plants” that the seeds belonged to, revealing a “mix of ornamental, fruit and vegetable, herb and weed species,” according to the NY Times. Cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage have all been identified. 

  The Vice report confirmed that some of the seeds were found to be “noxious weeds” that exist in huge numbers in the U.S., such as oxeye daisy, and hedge bindweed.

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  Osama El-Lissy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said: “This is just a subset of the samples we’ve collected so far.”

  Art Gover, a plant science researcher at Penn State University had previously the “risk is low” of the plants being involved in biological warfare, but that the seeds “can be troublesome because they can introduce problematic weeds and diseases”.

  Lisa Delissio, a professor of biology at Salem State University in Massachusetts, said: “If any of the unidentified seeds turned out to be invasive species, they could displace native plants and compete for resources and cause harm to the environment, agriculture or human health.”

  Bernd Blossey, a professor in the department of natural resources at Cornell University commented: “Obviously planting rosemary or thyme in your garden isn’t something that will endanger our environment. But there may be other things in there that have not been identified yet. Any time you gain something unknown, my suggestion is burning them, not even throwing them in the trash.”

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  In our initial report on the seeds, we suggested the mailings could be some sort of agricultural warfare brewing between the U.S. and China – where agriculture remains a key point of trade tensions – and where a cold war of sorts appears to be bubbling up under the surface. 

  After multiple reports in the U.S. media regarding the seeds, China’s Foreign Ministry responded last month by saying that China Post (the country’s state owned mail service) “has strictly followed regulations that ban the sending and receiving of seeds,” according to Bloomberg.

  Further, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin says that the parcels were “forged” and “not from China”. China has supposedly requested that the U.S. mail the seeds back to China so they could investigate further.

  We noted last month that the response is anything but re-assuring. We’re not postmaster generals but we find the idea of being able to forge mailing labels – and get products to their final destination – in this day and age where even the decrepit U.S. postal service is mostly digital, as a difficult one. 

  Amazon has also since said it is banning the sale of seeds on its platform.

  Anyone who has received seeds in the mail can report them to the United States Department of Agriculture by visiting their website here. The site says:

  If individuals are aware of the potential smuggling of prohibited exotic fruits, vegetables, or meat products into or through the USA, they can help APHIS by contacting the confidential Antismuggling Hotline number at 800-877-3835 or by sending an Email to SITC.Mail@aphis.usda.gov.

  USDA will make every attempt to protect the confidentiality of any information sources during an investigation within the extent of the law.

  

• Trump Vs The Military-Industrial-Complex: Coup Concerns Escalate
  Trump Vs The Military-Industrial-Complex: Coup Concerns Escalate
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 22:45

  Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Saker blog,

  At last week’s Labor Day conference, President Trump threw down the gauntlet in opposition to the Anglo American military industrial complex when both inspired hope in many onlookers that the age of America’s “endless wars” might finally come to an end, but also fear that an emergence Military Coup danger was nigh. This danger was enunciated by State Senator Richard Black (a former Colonel and intelligence officer) during a September 5 conference.

  In his powerful speech which won the ire of top Pentagon brass, Trump called for finally bringing America’s troops home, and ending the “endless wars” saying:

  “I’m not saying the military is in love with me; the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t, because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs, and make the planes, and make everything else, stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars…. Let’s bring our soldiers back home.”

  For those devout Trump haters who are unwilling to accept the possibility that there has been an active coup run against the President for the past 3.5 years, or that the oncoming economic meltdown (unleashed under the cover of COVID-19) and general civil war danger within the USA might usher in a coup d’etat… think again.

  The fact is that America has come closer than many think to total military dictatorship under Wall Street/London controls on more than one occasion, and unless the lessons of history are quickly internalized, then not only will this happen again, but it will accompany a new world war from which very few lives rich or poor would be spared.

  The Fascist Economic Miracle Solution of 1932

  1932-1934 was a period of history that saw the world torn down into a deep depression which the people of Europe and America were told by their media, could only be solved by the “economic miracle solution” of a new system of governance known as “fascism”.

  This “fascist economic solution” took hold in Europe with the quick rise of Nazism, Franco and Mussolini’s Corporatism as well what later became Vichy France. In English Canada, the League for Social Reconstruction was ready to take power in 1932 and French-speaking Canada was quickly embracing the Nazi-inspired political party of Adrien Arcand. The British governing class, led by the royal family were fully backing Nazism, and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was rising faster than ever. All of these movements came in different flavors but were united under a cold utilitarian philosophy of government, a devout love for eugenics (the racist “science” of population control) and addiction to City of London/Wall Street money.

  In the United States however, things weren’t going as smoothly.

  The Rise of Franklin Roosevelt

  Even though the financial elite of Wall Street had pulled the plug on the system four years earlier, the population had still not been broken sufficiently to accept fascism as the solution which Time magazine told them it was. Instead, the people voted for one of the few anti-fascist presidential candidates available in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt was elected under the theme of taking the money lenders out of power and restoring the constitution.

  In his March 4, 1933 inaugural address FDR stated: 

  “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

  During FDR’s famous 100 Days, an all-out war was declared on the “economic royalists” that had taken over the nation. Audits and investigations were conducted on the banks in the form of the Pecora Commission, and the biggest financial houses which had spent billions on fascist parties of Europe were broken up while speculation was reined in under Glass-Steagall. Meanwhile a new form of banking was unveiled more in alignment with America’s constitutional traditions in the form of productive credit and long term public works which created real jobs and increased the national productive powers of labor.

  Many people remain totally ignorant that even before his March 4, 1933 inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in Florida which saw 5 people struck by bullets and the mayor of Chicago dying of his wounds 3 weeks later. Within days of the mayor’s death, the assassin Giuseppe Zingara was speedily labelled a “lone gunman” and executed without any serious investigation into his freemasonic connections. This however was just a pre-cursor for an even greater battle which Wall Street financiers would launch in order to overthrow the presidency later that year. This effort would only be stopped by the courageous intervention of a patriotic marine named Smedley Darlington Butler.

  Who was General Butler?

  Born in 1881 to a family of patriotic Quakers, Smedley Butler quickly rose through the ranks of the military becoming the most decorated military figure of U.S. History- a record he holds to this day with multiple medals of honor, an Army distinguished service medal and Marine Corps Bruvet medal (to name just a few).

  By the end of the British-orchestrated meat grinder known as WWI, the General had become an activist patriot giving speeches across America in denunciation of the private financiers steering America’s war-driven economy. Speaking to veterans in August 1933, the general said:

  “I have spent 33 years being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped rape half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… In China, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested… I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents…”

  In spite of his outspoken criticism of crony capitalism, Wall Street’s elite simply presumed all men had their price, and Butler was probably just indignant because he was never given a big enough piece of pie.

  The Wall Street Putsch is Launched

  These financiers needed someone like Butler to channel the rage of the striking veterans of WWI across America who had been fighting for the bonus pay promised them years earlier but which didn’t exist due to the 1929 collapse. A force of hundreds of thousands of disgruntled seasoned soldiers was exactly what was needed to overthrow Roosevelt, but leadership was sorely lacking, and General Butler was their man for the job. He was a war hero who was seen as honest and loved by the veterans. He was perfect.

  Under the guiding hand of JP Morgan’s Grayson Prevost Murphy, two representatives of the American Legion (Commander Bill Doyle and bond salesman Gerald MacGuire) approached Butler in July 1933 for the job of rallying the Legion’s veterans and began dropping hints of a larger coup plot. Butler became suspicious, but continued playing along with the plan to see how far this went up the ladder of power.

  Over the course of the next several months, Butler discovered that America’s financial elite centered around John Pierpont Morgan Jr., the Harrimans, the Melons, Warburgs, Rockefellers and Duponts were at the heart of the plot. These men used their agents such as Gerald MacGuire a Morgan-affiliated bond salesman, Democratic Party controllers John W. Davis and Thomas Lamont (both occupying directorships in the House of Morgan), Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune), Grayson Prevost Murphy and Harriman Family investment banker Prescott Bush. All of these characters had become well known “investors” in European fascism, owned the biggest media platforms including Fortune and Time Magazine (both of which promoted Mussolini extensively for years), and controlled the levers of industry.

  Luckily, the 1932-1934 Pecora Commission exposed these forces publicly as the architects of the great depression, making their ability to acquire popular support and sympathy more than a little difficult.

  Outlining his Committee’s findings Pecora had written publicly:

   “Undoubtedly, this small group of highly placed financiers, controlling the very springs of economic activity, holds more real power than any similar group in the U.S.A.”

  Butler Blows the Whistle

  When the time was right, Butler blew the whistle by approaching the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) which began an investigation on November 20, 1934. Unlike the Committee on Un-American Activities which made its reputation destroying patriotic lives under the communist witch hunt of McCarthyism, this earlier version was aligned to FDR and dedicated solely to identifying Nazi activity in America.

  At first sceptical of the general’s claims, the committee soon  substantiated everything over the course of  a month long investigation and made their findings public to FDR and congress on December 29, 1934. An invaluable part of the hearings were the testimonies of journalist Paul Comly French whom Butler recruited to act as the general’s intermediary with the bankers.

  Butler told the committee that MacGuire stated it “wouldn’t take any constitutional change to authorize another cabinet official, somebody to take over the details of the office—to take them off the President’s shoulders” and that “we’d do with him what Mussolini did to the King of Italy”.

  When French asked MacGuire how the coup would help solve unemployment, MacGuire responded: “We need a fascist government to save the nation from the Communists… It was the plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight.”

  Although the full transcripts were not made public, Butler did get the message to the population by giving his story to as many journalists as possible and recorded a message to the people in 1935 which should be listened to in full.

  The Aftermath of the Exposure

  This exposure, alongside the Pecora Commission findings, and earlier failed assassination attempt gave FDR the ammunition he needed to force America’s deep state into submission (at least for a while). As I outlined in my recent paper, FDR’s fight to stop a central bankers’ dictatorship started from the earliest days of his presidency to his dying breath on April 14, 1945.

  Incredibly, after the sanitized and redacted 1934 report was published, the committee was disbanded (to be reformed later under a fascist mandate), and the thousands of pages of transcripts were buried for years- only officially made public in the 21st century- the contents of which can be found here with censored testimony in red.

  The coup plotters lost no time forming a new organization on August 22, 1934 called the American Liberty League which spent the next decade sabotaging FDR’s New Deal. This group made every effort to promote an American alliance with Axis powers (until 1941’s Pearl Harbor attack), widely financed eugenics, and after FDR died, acted as the driving force behind the McCarthyite police state in America during the Cold War. This deep state coup in America overthrew the FDR/Wallace vision for a post-war anti colonial world order founded upon a US-Russia-China strategic alliance which I illustrated in a recent seminar:

  This Anglo-American fascist organization also gave birth to such think tanks as the American Enterprise Association, Heritage Foundation and CATO institute which incrementally made Austrian school economics a part of the American right. Anyone wishing to understand what created the Frankenstein Monster called “neo-conservativism” during the last 60 years would not get very far without understanding the role of the American Liberty League and its hell spawn.

  In the early years of the Cold War, certain elder statesmen of WWII still held power and rallied to educate an incoming young President Kennedy who was about to show a short but valiant resistance to this cancerous imperial growth within America.

  The Deep State Plot Against JFK

  The danger of World War and a military coup arose again during the short lived administration of John F. Kennedy who found himself locked in a life or death struggle not with Russia, but with the Military Industrial Complex that had become dominated by the many Dr. Strangeloves of the Joint Chief of Staff and CIA who fanatically believed that America could win a nuclear war with Russia. Kennedy’s valiant efforts to achieve dialogue with his Soviet counterparts, move towards peace in Vietnam, support of colonial liberation, promotion of space exploration and advocacy of a Nuclear Test Ban treaty made him a target of the Deep State of his time. During this period, this effort was led from the top by JFK’s two most powerful American opponents: Allan Dulles (director of the CIA) and General Lyman Lemnitzer (head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), both of whom were proponents of pre-emptive nuclear war, architects of the Bay of Pigs regime change trap and advocates of Operation Northwoods (an ultimate “inside job” precursor to 9/11 which JFK subverted).

  As historian Anton Chaitkin recently reported: “Lemnitzer had displayed what his faction viewed as his qualifications for this role back in August 1960, when, as Army chief of staff, he announced that the Army was all ready to “restore order” in the United States after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union—to bring back normalcy just as the military does after a flood or a riot”

  This plot was detailed in a quasi-fictional book written by investigative journalists Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey published in 1962 entitled Seven Days in May and swiftly made into a famous film with unprecedented support by JFK himself who gave the film crew and director John Frankenheimer full access to the White House, advisors and materials for the film which he believed every American should see.

  In the story, a patriotic lieutenant discovers the plans for the coup which is scheduled to take place during a vast military drill whereby a President who is close to finalizing a de-armament treaty with Russia will be incapacitated in a bunker while a military regime takes over America.

  Tragically, where the lieutenant is able to expose the plot and save the nation in the story, by the time of the film’s 1964 release, JFK had been deposed by other means. Now 56 years later, history has begun to repeat itself with distinctly 21st century characteristics… and a viral twist.

  Today, a new systemic meltdown of a $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble has similarities to the 1929 crash and other similarities to the 1923 hyperinflation of Weimar. While the coronavirus may or may not be used to trigger this new blowout, one thing is certain: a new fascist coup should be taken more seriously than ever. President Trump’s repeated calls to revive the policies of Abraham Lincoln, end regime change operations and endless wars abroad and work with other sovereign nation states in opposition to world government ideologues is more important than most people realize.

  So rather than stressing about who might be on the 2020 ballot, it is wiser to ask the question: Where are the General Butlers today?

  

• Mask-Enforcing Humanoid Robots Set To Invade Office Spaces 
  Mask-Enforcing Humanoid Robots Set To Invade Office Spaces 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 22:25

  As some Wall Street banks have summoned traders and other employees back to offices, their ability to enforce social distancing measures will be challenging unless human-like mask-detecting robots are deployed. 

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  Pepper, designed by SoftBank Robotics, is the world’s first social humanoid robot able to recognize faces and basic human emotions. The robot stands 120 cm (47 inches) uses optical sensors and artificial intelligence to recognize if people are wearing masks.

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  Pepper features voice interaction to warn people if they’re not wearing a mask, telling them: “You always have to wear a mask properly.”

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  The robot then identifies someone responding to the request to put on their mask – it then says: “Thank you for having put on your mask.”

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  The idea of having a humanoid robot patrolling office buildings, or maybe trading floors, or research departments, searching for mask violates makes a whole lot more sense compared to employing humans, which are more costly to do the same job. Plus, why have a low-level employee, looking over traders shoulders as sensitive data could be on trading terminals. 

  Pepper can even alert management of repeated non-mask offenders. Here’s the robot in action:  

  With JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks requesting employees to return back to the office, where some of these folks spent the summer partying in the Hamptons without masks, it’s going to be difficult to enforce mask-wearing, unless policing robots are deployed.

  

• Tunneling Under The Media's Berlin Wall Of Truth Suppression
  Tunneling Under The Media’s Berlin Wall Of Truth Suppression
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 22:05

  Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

  You would think that with the miracle of modern technology and the insistence on transparency in government affairs, it would be possible for both the American people and the American president to share the same baseline on certain important facts.

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  Unfortunately, that doesn’t take account of the role of the mainstream media as the self-appointed protectors of the people. The press can promote any agenda they choose and destroy any person who gets out of line. Needless to say, Donald Trump gets “out of line” every day — he marches to the beat of his own drummer, as Thoreau said, and the press can’t stand it. So they engage in a near constant attack to destroy him and his presidency.

  Jeffrey Goldberg’s reliance on unverified anonymous sources for his Atlantic hit piece accusing the president of being disdainful of slain American soldiers by calling them “losers” and “suckers” is a typical tactic. The media exploit and exacerbate public misperceptions of Trump that they themselves planted in the first place. Did Trump call John McCain a loser? Undoubtedly. Has he ridiculed the generals who have gotten us into forever wars that have cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers? Yes, frequently. But is there any evidence he said the things Goldberg alleges? Yeah, the testimony of five sources so brave they won’t go on the record with their complaints — claims that have been refuted by 19 real people with real names who were actually with the president in France when the alleged incidents occurred.

  Of course, the media don’t stop with the initial hit job. Without missing a beat, they use the refuted stories by Goldberg and others to create the illusion that there is a united front of opposition to Trump. Showing interviews with random soldiers or veterans saying they are not “losers” promotes a “party line” version of the truth that is intended to shame the administration, and especially weak-kneed Republican senators, into bowing to the far-left agenda. But it is not news, and it is not fair.

  The New York Times, NBC, and the rest of the major media have taken it upon themselves to adopt the role of the guardians of orthodoxy. Their goal is to create the illusion that mainstream America hates Trump just as much as the media does. That requires amplifying any story that attacks Trump and ignoring those that benefit him. This has been going on for five years now. You’ve seen the numbers. More than 90% of all news coverage about Donald Trump is negative. Satan gets more respect.

  As a journalist, I have no problem condemning the repressive and manipulative tactics of the Washington press corps, but the good news is there are ways around their attempts to suppress the truth. First of all, there is social media. That’s why Trump loves Twitter. He can tell his own story, and he does, but of course the media vultures circling his Twitter feed every day eagerly pounce on any typo, misspelling, or politically incorrect pronouncement. Typically, more people will hear the media’s denunciation of the president’s tweets than will read the originals and decide for themselves. Again, it’s evidence of how news reporters see themselves as the wall between the people and the president. 

  The only other broad avenue for the people to get unbiased information is from a few news shows that don’t toe the liberal line — most notably “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. Since the riots began at the end of May, Carlson has taken it upon himself to expose the corruption of not just the media but the liberal elected establishment that has implicitly endorsed violence, racism, and disorder in the name of what is perversely called social justice. I’ve called Carlson a modern-day Cassandra because his clear-eyed assessment of the danger America faces has been met with scorn, denial and derision. But name-calling, advertising boycotts, and continued threats of violence against him and his family have not deterred Carlson from his declared mission to be “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.”

  In that regard, Carlson has long used his show to ferret out information hidden in the bowels of government and get it to the people — bypassing the media guards who increasingly see it as their sworn role to restrict the free exchange of ideas. On Carlson’s Sept. 1 show, author Chris Rufo discussed his research into how critical race theory has infiltrated the federal government. I was shocked by just how bad the situation is, something we would never learn from CNN or MSNBC.

  “It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government,” Rufo told Carlson.

  “What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.”

  He gave three examples of what he called “cult indoctrination.” For instance, he told of a trainer who “told Treasury [Department] employees essentially that America was a fundamentally white supremacist country and … ‘virtually all white people uphold the system of racism and white superiority.’”

  When Rufo explicitly urged Trump “to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical-race-theory training from the federal government,” I thought to myself how that was a smart move. It just might work. It’s no secret that Trump watches Fox News. So why not make a direct appeal to the president while you are on one of those shows? It’s the only way most guests would ever have a chance to get the president’s attention. And in this case it worked.

  Just three quick days later, Trump did exactly what Rufo proposed — he issued an executive order through the director of the Office of Management and Budget to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund [the] divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions” where federal employees are told that “virtually all White people contribute to racism.”

  When Trump reacted to Rufo’s revelations the same way that I and millions of people watching Tucker Carlson’s show reacted – with outrage – I realized just how dangerous Carlson is to the hegemony of the far left. His show is metaphorically the tunnel under the Berlin Wall that allows direct communication between the pro-liberty, pro-American middle class and the freedom fighters in the White House, bypassing both the bureaucracy and the stunningly dishonest media that control the flow of information in and out of the Trump administration.

  In order to keep our metaphor geographically, if not politically, correct, we should think of the mainstream media as the Stasi, the East German secret police who were notoriously brutal — and effective — in suppressing free thought and dissent from the party line. They were not just the “enemy of the people,” as Trump has labeled the worst of the modern media; they were the “enemy of the truth.”

  That role has never been clearer than it was last week when Bob Woodward, the legacy commander of the media’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, issued his report on what he found when he infiltrated the White House. Or at least what he purported to find.

  According to Woodward, Trump perfidiously misled the American public about the scope and danger of the China virus because he called the virus “deadly stuff” in February before any Americans had died. Also because Trump knew “it goes through the air.” I mean you have to be notoriously stupid, or just plain incurious, not to have figured out by February that COVID-19 was a deadly peril. Does Woodward think that Trump shut down air travel from China at the end of January just because he wanted to hurt the tourist industry?

  Of course the new virus was deadly, but as Trump patiently explained to the thick-headed Woodward then, and still has to explain to the rest of the White House press corps virtually every day, there is no purpose served by terrifying the public. The president told Woodward that the virus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” That turned out to be true, but flus are also kept under control by widespread vaccination and therapeutics. Does Woodward need to be reminded that the much more deadly pandemic of 1918 was caused by the Spanish flu?

  Of course he does, because it’s not helpful to the media’s narrative that Donald Trump is a dangerous buffoon who must not be reelected. How could the country survive another four years with a president who insists on doing things his own way, who won’t be cowed by the Stasi media, who considers it his duty to improve on conventional wisdom instead of surrendering to it.

  Which brings us back to Chris Rufo and his pipeline — or should I say tunnel access — to the president. The obstinacy of Tucker Carlson, his unwillingness to take a knee to orthodoxy, has made him the most dangerous person in America (after Trump) to the far-left overlords. And when Trump acted on Rufo’s entreaty regarding critical race theory, it led to near hysteria as the Stasi media realized that its Berlin Wall had been breached.

  As Carlson himself reported on Tuesday, Sept. 8, “To the news media, all of this was a disaster. They claim to be journalists, but they despise actual reporting like Chris Rufo’s. His coverage showed that they are complicit in an anti-American lie that is deeply unpopular with actual Americans, and they didn’t take it well.”

  Among the many critics of Carlson for providing the president with accurate information about what is being done in his name in the federal bureaucracy, perhaps the loudest was CNN’s Brian Stelter, the virtual communications director for the Stasi media.

  “The ‘Tucker’ show gets results,” Stelter ranted. “No more talk about white privilege. No more examination of systemic racism. The Trump administration doesn’t want it inside federal agencies — even though 2020 is being defined in part by this long overdue reckoning about race. Trump doesn’t want it to happen.”

  No he doesn’t, and neither do the American people.

  “Systemic racism” is a meaningless phrase that blames everyone for the despicable actions of a few. “White privilege” is a rhetorical cudgel to justify redistribution of wealth and violence against white people. “The long overdue reckoning about race” has been ongoing since before the country itself started, and it will never end, nor should it. Facts are facts. Slavery was evil. Jim Crow was evil. Racism is evil. But teaching white people to hate themselves does not resolve that evil; it just compounds it.

  Blaming Tucker Carlson because President Trump found out about an inherently unacceptable and unjust practice within the federal government is in a sense the media’s confession that its main purpose today is to build a wall between the truth and the people. Just as most mainstream reporters will never ask Joe Biden about anything that doesn’t conform to their own hatred of Trump, they will never tolerate anything anywhere that exposes their own bias and anti-American agenda.

  So sad.

  

• GW University Reports 17% Enrollment Drop As Students Opt Out Of COVID-Restricted Campus Life
  GW University Reports 17% Enrollment Drop As Students Opt Out Of COVID-Restricted Campus Life
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 21:45

  Still within the first month of most of the nation’s universities and colleges reopening their campuses, albeit with severe restrictions and social distancing measures, administrative leaders are awaiting with bated breath just how bad the pandemic impact will be in terms of a financial hit and decline in student enrollment.

  A number of campuses told students to go home a mere couple weeks after reopening, transitioning to all online classes after an immediate observed rise in COVID-19 cases. Others are struggling on, with entire ‘quarantine dorms’ that resemble prisons for those that get sick, uncertain about what the rest of the fall semester holds. 

  But the numbers are starting to trickle in. Bloomberg reports that one prominent campus in the nation’s capital, George Washington University, has witnessed its enrollment tumble, already down 17% from last year.

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  Bloomberg underscores that it’s “an early indication of the impact of Covid-19 on U.S. higher education” given that families are struggling with the combination of paying pricey tuition and fees for a college experience severely regulated by masks, coronavirus tests, plexiglass barriers, and harsh rules that prevent spending time with groups of friends. 

  “President Thomas LeBlanc told a faculty senate meeting that preliminary undergraduate enrollment is about 1,000 students below its target of 10,126, a spokeswoman said Monday,” Bloomberg writes of George Washington University.

  Broadly, most other institutions of high learning are expected to report similar declining numbers as well as tuition revenue. 

  A recent poll in National Association of College and University Business Officers finds 67% of colleges expect enrollment to noticeably decrease, but are awaiting final tallies next month. 

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  A separate report underscored that tuition accounts for 70% or more of revenue at the vast majority of small US colleges, which means many are in a struggle for their very survival.

  Schools hosting large international programs are also expected to suffer, given also travel restrictions related to both their home countries and especially the latest US student visa measures aimed at China. 

  

• "I Am The Target": Silenced Chinese Virologist Tells Tucker COVID-19 Intentionally Released, CCP Trying To 'Disappear' Her
  “I Am The Target”: Silenced Chinese Virologist Tells Tucker COVID-19 Intentionally Released, CCP Trying To ‘Disappear’ Her
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 21:25

  Hours after her unceremonious Twitter ban for, we assume, presenting evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Wuhan lab, Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where she told the Fox News host that the virus is a “Frankenstein” which was designed to target humans which was intentionally released.

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  “It could never come from nature,” she Yan – an MD/PhD who worked with coronavirus at the University of Hong Kong

  “There is evidence left in the genome” – which Yan detailed in a 26-page scientific paper co-written with three other Chinese scientists. “They don’t want people to know this truth. Also, that’s why I get suspended [from Twitter], I get suppression. I am the target that the Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared.”

  When Carlson asked her why she believes the virus made it’s way out of the Wuhan lab, Dr. Yan said “I worked in the WHO reference lab, which is the top coronavirus lab in the world at the university of Hong Kong. And the things I got deeply into such investigation in secret from the early beginning of this outbreak – I had my intelligence through my network in China, involved in the hospitals, institutes and also government.“

  “Together with my experience, I can tell you – this is created in a lab.“

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

  Dr. Yan fled Hong Kong on April 28 on a Cathay Pacific flight to the United States. She believes her life is in danger, and that she can never go back home.

  “The reason I came to the U.S. is because I deliver the message of the truth of COVID,” Yan told Fox News in July.

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  As we reported at the time:

  Yan said that discussion between colleagues in China about the disease took a sharp turn after “doctors and researchers who had been openly discussing the virus suddenly clammed up.” Contacts in Wuhan went completely dark and others warned not to ask them about the virus – telling Yan “We can’t talk about it, but we need to wear masks.”

  “There are many, many patients who don’t get treatment on time and diagnosis on time,” said Yan, adding “Hospital doctors are scared, but they cannot talk. CDC staff are scared.“

  She said she reported her findings to her supervisor again on Jan. 16 but that’s when he allegedly told her “to keep silent, and be careful.”

  “As he warned me before, ‘Don’t touch the red line,'” Yan said referring to the government. “We will get in trouble and we’ll be disappeared.”

  She also claims the co-director of a WHO-affiliated lab, Professor Malik Peiris, knew but didn’t do anything about it.

  Peiris also did not respond to requests for comment. The WHO website lists Peiris as an “adviser” on the WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee for Pneumonia due to the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

  Yan was frustrated, but not surprised –Fox News

  “I already know that would happen because I know the corruption among this kind of international organization like the WHO to China government, and to China Communist Party,” said Yan. “So basically… I accept it but I don’t want this misleading information to spread to the world.”

  WHO denies that Professor Malik Peiris directly works for the organization, telling Fox in a statement “Professor Malik Peiris is an infectious disease expert who has been on WHO missions and expert groups – as are many people eminent in their fields,” adding “That does not make him a WHO staff member, nor does he represent WHO.”

  Read the rest of the report here.

  

• America's Largest Landlord To Make $550 Million Bet On Trailer Parks
  America’s Largest Landlord To Make $550 Million Bet On Trailer Parks
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 21:05

  A decade ago, Blackstone Group Inc. became America’s largest landlord, purchasing tens of thousands of single-family homes during the foreclosure crisis. Now the private equity firm has spotted the next big opportunity as the virus-induced recession crushes the working poor, that is, betting on mobile-home parks. 

  Blackstone Said to Boost Mobile-Home Bet With $550 Million Deal: BBG

  Having become the biggest landlord in the world, Blackstone is now moving downmarket.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 14, 2020

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

  The alternative asset manager has made a drastic shift in investment focus in the last 12 months. This time last year, Blackstone was bidding on a portfolio of luxury hotels – now they’re in talks to purchase up to 40 mobile-home parks from Summit Communities for $550 million, according to Bloomberg, who spoke with several people with direct knowledge. 

  Sources said Blackstone could make the purchase through a vehicle known as Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT). If the private equity firm purchases the portfolio, many of the properties will undergo upgrades. 

  “Though our investments in this asset class are very limited, we are proud to partner with a best in class operator and plan to invest significant capital into these communities – which are largely occupied by seasonal residents and retirees – to create high-quality housing in places where people want to live,” Blackstone said in a statement. 

  One source said the deal has yet to be finalized and could still fall through. Interest among Blackstone to acquire mobile-home parks comes as it acquired seven parks, worth $200 million, in Florida and Arizona, earlier this year. 

  Real estate company JLL said mobile-home parks have been the hottest space within commercial real estate this year. Many firms, like Blackstone, are avoiding malls, hotels, and other retail properties. 

  2018 marked the year when Blackstone dove headfirst with a bet on mobile-home parks, purchasing 14 communities sold by Tricon Capital Group Inc. The private equity firm owns a little less than 1% of the manufactured housing market.

  Blackstone is set to capitalize on the trend of working-poor Americans downsizing into doublewide trailers. 

  Next stop, securitize tiny homes?

  

• Saudi Air Force Leveling Yemeni Capital In Response To Houthi Strikes On Riyadh
  Saudi Air Force Leveling Yemeni Capital In Response To Houthi Strikes On Riyadh
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 20:45

  Submitted by SouthFront,

  The Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen with a renewed energy following the recent missile and drone strikes on the Kingdom’s capital by the Ansar Allah movement (also known as the Houthis).

  According to pro-Houthi sources, Saudi warplanes conducted over 60 airstrikes on different targets across the country during the past few days. They insist that the most of the targets that were hit were objects of civilian infrastructure. At the same time, Riyadh claims that it has been precisely bombing Houthi military positions.

  For example, on September 12, the Saudi-led coalition announced that it had carried out a series of airstrikes on the Military Engineering Complex in the Sa’wan Suburb, east of the Yemen capital of Sanaa. According to pro-Saudi sources, the Yemeni Armed Forces loyal to the Houthi government, which controls Sanaa, were “manufacturing and assembling” ballistic missiles and combat drones. The pro-Houthis al-Masirah TV confirmed that Saudi-led coalition warplanes had targeted the Military Engineering Complex with six airstrikes.

  On the next day, the new wave of Saudi airstrikes hit the countryside of Sanaa. They allegedly targeted Four drones at Al Dailami Air Base, a military research facility in the Weapons Maintenance Camp, a number of barracks and military posts in the districts of Bani Harith and Arhab, and a headquarters in the al-Sawad Camp.

  On September 14, additionally to the Yemeni capital, the Saudi Air Force also conducted raids against Houthi forces in the province of Marib, where the defense of pro-Saudi groups has been collapsing. Clashes between Saudi-led forces and the Houthis have been ongoing across the districts of al-Jubah and Rahbah. However, the main target of the Houthi advance is still the Maas base. Yemeni sources claim that as soon as the base falls, Houthi units will launch an advance on the provincial capital. The Saudi-led coalition captured it in April of 2015 and since then it has successfully kept it under its own control.

  Nonetheless, in late 2019 and early 2020, the course of the conflict with no doubt turned to favor the Houthis and Saudi Arabia found itself in conflict even with the main formal ally in the intervention coalition, the UAE. So, the Houthi government now has a good chance to take back the city and the entire province.

  This development will become a panful blow to the Saudi leadership and became yet another piece of smoking gun evidence showcasing the failure of its military campaign in Yemen. In response, the Saudi Air Force will likely continue its intense bombing campaign aiming to level Sanaa and other big cities in the hands of the Houthis. The problem with this approach is that this very campaign forces the Houthis to conduct more intense and regular missile and drone attacks on targets inside Saudi Arabia itself.

  

• California Cities Using Their Streets As Collateral To Pay Down Pension Liabilities With Debt
  California Cities Using Their Streets As Collateral To Pay Down Pension Liabilities With Debt
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 20:25

  What happens when your state or city has massive unfunded pension liabilities, no direct access to the Fed’s money printer and can’t tax your state any further because you’re driving people out in droves?

  You take on more debt, using whatever you can think of as collateral. 

  Such was the case in West Covina this July, where the city is paying off its $205 million debt to CalPERS by issuing bonds using its city streets as collateral, according to Forbes. The city of Torrance has done the same thing; it will issue $350 million in bonds using its streets as collateral, as well.

  Both cities are using something called “lease revenue bonds” which means that:

  Torrance and West Covina are each using these bonds to, in principle, lease their city streets to a special Financing Authority, which will pay the city their up-front money, and “rent” the streets back to the city for the 25 year term of the agreement, in order to pay off the bonds.

  In this structure, however, the bondholders don’t actually have rights to lay claim to the streets. Rather the mechanism is described as a loophole to get around the voter approval that comes with “general obligation bonds”. 

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  The purpose of the bonds is that they can be implemented quickly while still functioning as pension obligation bonds, the report notes. The trade-off is that lease revenue bonds are not rated as highly as a traditionally POBs.

  “Depending on the legal structure, there may be added flexibility for use of proceeds to CalPERS or more strategic timing of investing in the market… These things aren’t possible under a traditional POB structure,” said Mike Meyer of NHA Advisors. 

  The cities are in a rush to refinance while rates are low while, at the same time, CalPERS is in a desperate push to boost its returns, most recently taking on $80 billion in leverage to do so, as we noted this summer. 

  As of now, the state of both cities’ pension liabilities is as follows, according to Forbes:

  • The city of West Covina pension plan is 71% funded, but to pay down its underfunding and fund new accruals, must pay 44% of payroll.

  • The West Covina public safety plan is 62% funded and requires a contribution of 74% of payroll to fund new accruals and pay down underfunding.

  • The Torrance city pension is 79% funded with 24%-of-payroll contributions; the Torrance fire pension, 65% funded, 68%-of-payroll contributions; and the Torrance police pension, 62% funded, 78% of payroll contributions.

  Hilltop Securities, who underwrote the West Covina bonds, said: “This is the fastest form which the city would be able to use and issue bonds.”

  

• Facebook Plunges On Report FTC Preparing Possible Antitrust Lawsuit By Year End
  Facebook Plunges On Report FTC Preparing Possible Antitrust Lawsuit By Year End
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 20:05

  It’s been a rough day for Facebook: first the world’s biggest social network was dumped by Kim Kardashian who called on her tens of millions of global followers to boycott Mark Zuckerberg’s cash cow, and now the WSJ reports that the FTX is preparing to file a possible antitrust suit against the company, sending its stock plunging after hours, and dragging the Nasdaq lower.

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  The report reveals that the FTC has spent more than a year investigating concerns that Facebook “has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition” and may file a suit before the end of the year to challenge the company’s monopoly in social media. The inquiry is part of a broader antitrust effort by authorities examining the conduct of a handful of dominant tech companies.

  The WSJ reports that the probe, which is in its late stages and which was previously discloses by the company last year, included taking testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, something the commission didn’t do during a prior probe of the company’s privacy practices, and which resulted in a record-breaking $5 billion settlement. In other words, this time around either the monetary penalty will be materially higher, or the FTC may in fact pull a Standard Oil on Facebook, and split up the company.

  The key FTC concerns and questions revolves around Facebook’s prior acquisitions, “as well as about issues related to how Facebook manages its platform with regard to app developers.” For its part, Facebook has countered that its acquisitions aren’t anticompetitive and have improved products and experiences for its users, although in light of today’s market moving snub by none other than Kim Kardashian that approach may be in jeopardy. One almost wonders if Kim’s tweet and the WSJ report weren’t coordinated.

  Facebook has not yet held discussions with the FTC’s commissioners, which would likely happen at the very final stage of the process. At that point, the decision whether to sue Facebook will be in the hands of republicans, as a majority on the five-member FTC would need to vote in favor of any lawsuit. Currently that commission consists of three Republicans, including Chairman Joseph Simons, and two Democrats.

  So far, no final decision has been made on whether to sue Facebook, and the WSJ notes that the commission doesn’t always bring cases even when it is making preparations to do so, such as when it decided against filing an antitrust complaint against Google Inc. in 2013 after a lengthy investigation.

  Should the FTC sue Facebook and win, it could seek a range of remedies designed to promote competition against the company, from restrictions on how Facebook operates to breaking off pieces of its business. “The commission can’t unilaterally dictate such changes; it would first have to prove in legal proceedings that the company violated federal antitrust law, and that such changes were necessary.”

  The FTC has a pair of options if it sues Facebook: It could bring a case in federal court or it could file a complaint in its in-house legal system, where the case would first go before an administrative law judge. The commission itself would then review that judge’s work and issue a decision, which Facebook then could challenge in a federal appeals court. If the commission wants to seek an interim injunction blocking certain Facebook practices before the end of litigation, it would have to go to federal court.

  As part of its antitrust pursuit, the Trump administration will hardly stop with Facebook. The DOJ which shares antitrust authority with the FTC, is also planning to file an antitrust lawsuit soon against Google, the WSJ previously reported.

  In any event, since a legal case against either company could likely take years to resolve, the officials who bring a lawsuit will likely not be around to see its conclusion. Furthermore, the Nov. 3 election could impact the future of any case, though both Republicans and Democrats have been critical of tech-company practices even if Facebook has been focusing its recent crackdown exclusively on posts emerging from the Trump campaign.

   

  

• Manhattan Rental Market Sees Another Record Plunge For August With 15,000 Empty Apartments
  Manhattan Rental Market Sees Another Record Plunge For August With 15,000 Empty Apartments
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 19:45

  As expected given the new pandemic driven ‘escape from New York’, the big apple’s rental market has witnessed another record plunged for the month of August. The numbers are staggering according to new analysis featured in CNBC, with the number of apartments sitting empty in once hot and sought-after Manhattan nearly tripling compared to the same month last year. 

  “There were more than 15,000 empty rental apartments in Manhattan in August, up from 5,600 a year ago, according to a report from Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel,” CNBC writes. “The inventory of empty units is the largest ever recorded since data started being collected 14 years ago,” it emphasized. 

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  The surge in empty apartments was widespread across the borough. Declines in new leases were seen across the board, from the high to low end segments. The plunge continues from July numbers which registered at 13,000 empty apartments, which was already a record. The average rental price of a two-bedroom apartment sits at about $4,756/month.

  In April at the height of pandemic fears, we reported that New York City lease agreements had plunged 38% in March y/y, the second largest drop in 11 years. The trend clearly continued given the flood of workers telecommuting instead of vying for limited rental space downtown.

  And the prior shuttering of restaurants, bars, and other once popular night venues, also given the nearly unprecedented levels of day-to-day subway service cuts as ridership plummeted — all of which has removed many of the “benefits” of living in the more expensive city (making the suburbs look increasingly more attractive as the numbers bear out) — is contributing to pandemic slump in the once booming rental market.

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  Here’s more from the report, detailing it looks to get worse entering what is already a typically slower fall season: 

  Hopes for a rebound in the fall or the end of 2020 look increasingly unlikely. Although rental prices have come down — median rental prices fell 4% in August — the discounts are not steep enough yet to lure new renters back to the city. The average rental price for a two-bedroom in Manhattan is still $4,756 a month.

  The fall is generally a slow period in the Manhattan rental market, especially before an election, Miller said.

  Landlords are offering ever-larger incentives to try to entice renters, with the largest share of landlords offering concessions in history. On average, landlords were offering 1.9 months of free rent to new renters in August. The weakest segment of the rental market is the lower end, for one bedrooms and studios, partly a result of the pandemic’s greater impact on lower earners.

  Last month, report author Miller Samuel warned: “This could be a difficult couple of years for landlords.” 

  To review here’s how things looked after merely the first two months of the pandemic, which saw NYC emerge as the early US virus epicenter:

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  Via Statista: New leases and sales have rapidly fallen since March, when COVID-19 restrictions in the city put a halt to one of the largest real estate markets in the world. Open houses and showings have been non-existent, and the mass exodus of wealthy New Yorkers has curbed any recovery for the months of May and June. Brokers were allowed to resume showing apartments on June 22, which has given prospective renters just two weeks to begin sales again.

  * * *

  With landlord rental streams quickly evaporating, many will have trouble paying their mortgages and could result in a wave of selling over the next couple of years, sending real estate prices citywide into a possible correction. 

  

• Twitter Suspends Account Of Chinese Scientist Who Published Paper Alleging Covid Was Created In Wuhan Lab
  Twitter Suspends Account Of Chinese Scientist Who Published Paper Alleging Covid Was Created In Wuhan Lab
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 19:44

  On Sunday afternoon we asked how long before the twitter account of the “rogue” Chinese virologist, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who yesterday “shocked” the world of establishment scientists and other China sycophants, by publishing a “smoking gun” scientific paper demonstrating that the Covid-19 virus was manmade, is “silenced.”

  How long before the @LiMengYAN119 account is silenced

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 13, 2020

  We now have the answer: less than two days. A cursory check of Dr Yan’s twitter page reveals that the account has been suspended as of this moment.

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  The suspension took place shortly after Dr Yan had accumulated roughly 60,000 followers in less than 48 hours. The snapshot below was taken earlier in the day precisely in anticipation of this suspension.

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  It was not immediately clear what justification Twitter had to suspend the scientist who, to the best of our knowledge, had just 4 tweets as of Tuesday morning none of which violated any stated Twitter policies, with the only relevant tweet being a link to her scientific paper co-written with three other Chinese scientists titled “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route” which laid out why the Wuhan Institute of Virology had created the covid-19 virus.

  While we appreciate that Twitter may have experienced pressure from either China, or the established scientist community, to silence Dr Yan for proposing a theory that flies in the face of everything that has been accepted as undisputed gospel – after all Twitter did just that to us – we are confident that by suspending her account, Jack Dorsey has only added more fuel to the fire of speculations that the covid virus was indeed manmade (not to mention countless other tangential conspiracy theories).

  If Yan was wrong, why not just let other scientists respond in the open to the all too valid arguments presented in Dr. Yan’s paper? Isn’t that what “science” is all about? Why just shut her up?

  Because if we have already crossed the tipping point when anyone who proposes an “inconvenient” explanation for an established “truth” has to be immediately censored, then there is little that can be done to salvage the disintegration of a society that once held freedom of speech as paramount.

  For those who missed it, here is our post breaking down Dr. Yan’s various allegations which twitter saw fit to immediately censor instead of allowing a healthy debate to emerge.

  We hope Twitter will provide a very reasonable and sensible explanation for this unprecedented censorship.

  For those who missed it, her paper is below:

   

  

• So You Want To Overthrow The State: Ten Questions For Aspiring Revolutionaries
  So You Want To Overthrow The State: Ten Questions For Aspiring Revolutionaries
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 19:25

  Authored by Art Carden via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  A professor at Washington and Lee University is offering a writing seminar called “How to Overthrow the State,” which “place(s) each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society.” Students are charged with writing their own revolutionary manifesto in light of readings from revolutionaries like Che Guevara. The right-wing outrage machine, as you can imagine, is feasting on it and offering it as an example of the radical takeover of higher education.

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  I’m intrigued by the class because I tend toward free-market anarchism myself and think that states are neither necessary nor sufficient for prosperity. There’s a burgeoning academic literature on this with books like Peter T. Leeson’s Anarchy Unbound exploring the theory and history of statelessness and AIER’s own Edward Stringham’s Private Governance looking at how institutions and organizations that protect people and property have emerged without coercion. There’s a lively and ongoing debate in these circles about whether or not one would push a button that would allow us to wake up tomorrow morning without governments. WLU’s course represents an excellent opportunity for students to take the revolutionaries’ arguments seriously, and if they do their due diligence, to think really hard about their shortcomings. I offer, therefore, ten questions for the young leaders of these revolutionary movements.

  1. Do I have the facts straight?

  Karl Marx said that “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” I doubt very much that you will know which changes you need to make if you don’t have a very good idea about your starting point. In his book Factfulness and in his many excellent online presentations, the late Swedish Professor of International Health Hans Rosling identifies a lot of the ways things have gotten better, especially for the world’s poorest.

  Suppose, for example, that you encounter the name “Milton Friedman,” perhaps in connection with lamented “neoliberalism” and maybe in connection with human rights abuses perpetrated by the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Friedman has been denounced as the “father of global misery,” and his reputation has taken another beating in the wake of the fiftieth anniversary of his 1970 New York Times Magazine essay “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” which I suspect most people haven’t read past its title. But what happened during “The Age of Milton Friedman,” as the economist Andrei Shleifer asked in a 2009 article? Shleifer points out that “Between 1980 and 2005, as the world embraced free market policies, living standards rose sharply, while life expectancy, educational attainment, and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined.” Things have never been so good, and they are getting better, especially for the world’s poor.

  In 2008, there was a bit of controversy over the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, which operates today as the Becker Friedman Institute (it is also named for Friedman’s fellow Chicago economist Gary Becker). In a blistering reply to a protest letter signed by a group of faculty members at the University of Chicago, the economist John Cochrane wrote, “If you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and the opening of China and India are ‘negative for much of the world’s population,’ you just don’t have any business being a social scientist. You don’t stand a chance of contributing something serious to the problems that we actually do face.” Nor, might I add, do you stand much of a chance of concocting a revolutionary program that will actually help the people you’re trying to lead.

  2. What makes me so sure I won’t replace the existing regime with something far worse?

  I might hesitate to push the aforementioned button because while the world we actually inhabit is far from perfect, it’s not at all clear that deleting the state overnight wouldn’t mean civilization’s wholesale and maybe even perpetual collapse. At the very least, I would want to think long and hard about it. The explicit mention of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara in the course description suggest that students will be approaching revolutionary ideas from the left. They should look at the results of populist revolutions in 20th century Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The blood of many millions starved and slaughtered in efforts to “forge a better society” cries out against socialism and communism, and macroeconomic populism in Latin America has been disastrous. As people have pointed out when told that “democratic socialists” aren’t trying to turn their countries into Venezuela, Venezuelans weren’t trying to turn their country into Venezuela when they embraced Hugo Chavez. I wonder why we should expect WLU’s aspiring revolutionaries to succeed where so many others have failed.

  3. Is my revolutionary program just a bunch of platitudes with which no decent person would disagree? 

  In 2019, Kristian Niemietz of London’s Institute of Economic Affairs published a useful volume titled Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies, which you can download for $0 from IEA. He notes a tendency for socialists and neo-socialists to pitch their programs almost exclusively in terms of their hoped-for results rather than in terms of the operation of concrete social processes they hope to set in motion (on this I paraphrase my intellectual hero Thomas Sowell).

  Apply a test proposed a long time ago by the economist William Easterly: can you imagine anyone seriously objecting to what you’re saying? If not, then you probably aren’t saying anything substantive. Can you imagine someone saying “I hate the idea of the world’s poor having better food, clothing, shelter, and medical care” or “It would be a very bad thing if more people were literate?” If not, then it’s likely that your revolutionary program is a tissue of platitudes and empty promises. That’s not to say it won’t work politically–God knows, nothing sells better on election day than platitudes and empty promises–but you shouldn’t think you’re saying anything profound if all you’re saying is something obvious like “It would be nice if more people had access to clean, drinkable water.”

  4. Is my revolutionary manifesto really any better than the Underpants Gnomes’ business plan from this 1998 episode of South Park?

  In 2011, I wrote that a lot of policy proposals are “‘Underpants Gnomes’ Political Economy” after an episode of South Park in which the Underpants Gnomes’ business plan had three phases. Phase 1 was “collect underpants.” Phase 2 was a question mark. Phase 3 was “profit.”

  Most revolutionary proposals are like that. Phase 1 is “abolish private property” or “Build That Wall” or something. Phase 2 is a question mark. Phase 3 is “equality and superabundance” (from the left) or “America has been made Great Again” (from the Trumpist right). There are more than a few very important details missing.

  5. In other words, how is this actually going to work? 

  I’m not a socialist not because of antipathy toward poor people or callous selfishness. I’m not a socialist because it doesn’t work in practice and doesn’t even work in theory. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, among many others, have argued that private property, market prices, and market-determined profits and losses are necessary for rational economic calculation. Marx summarized the program of the communists as “abolition of private property.” Mises countered that socialism, or abolition of private property, would mean “abolition of rational economy.” Marx (in)famously never spelled out exactly how socialism would work; he just knew it would. Vladimir Lenin didn’t appreciate the calculation problem and thought that managing an entire economy as if it was just one big factory didn’t require much more than arithmetic and receipts. He was grievously, tragically wrong. I think Mises and Hayek, ultimately, were the ones vindicated by theory and history.

  6. Does my argument for how it will work rely on people discarding self-interest, becoming a lot less horrible, and/or becoming a lot smarter? 

  In a famous cartoon by Sidney Harris, two scientists are standing at a chalkboard. There are equations on the left and right sides of the board with “THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS” between them. One scientist says to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.” If you’re relying on a change in human nature to make your program work, be prepared for a very long wait. Or be prepared to spill oceans of blood like those who tried to create a “New Socialist Man” in the twentieth century. The socialists and communists wanted to run the economy as if it were one big factory. For the most part, they have also wanted to run the rest of society as if it were one big family. This brings us to a problem that vexed Friedrich Hayek his whole career. The rules, norms, traditions, and other practices that make families or very small communities work well don’t scale. Similarly, if you tried to run your life with family and friends according to a “market logic” in which you try to do everything via literal price-mediated exchanges–charging your kids to rent the TV when they want to watch a movie, for example–it’s probably going to backfire spectacularly. You can’t run your family as if it’s the Chicago Board of Trade. You also can’t run a society of millions of people as if it’s one big happy family.

  7. How has it worked the other times it has been tried? 

  Are you considering “land reform,” whether land expropriation and redistribution, or straight up collectivization? Satellite images of the effects of land reform in Zimbabwe should make you think twice.

  Years before the Russian Revolution, Eugene Richter predicted with eerie prescience what would happen in a socialist society in his short book Pictures of the Socialistic Future (which you can download for $0 here). Bryan Caplan, who wrote the foreword for that edition of Pictures and who put together the online “Museum of Communism,” points out the distressing regularity with which communists go from “bleeding heart” to “mailed fist.” It doesn’t take long for communist regimes to go from establishing a workers’ paradise to shooting people who try to leave. Consider whether or not the brutality and mass murder of communist regimes is a feature of the system rather than a bug. Hugo Chavez and Che Guevara both expressed bleeding hearts with their words but used a mailed fist in practice (I’ve written before that “irony” is denouncing Milton Friedman for the crimes of Augusto Pinochet while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Pinochet was a murderous thug. Guevara was, too). Caplan points to pages 105 and 106 of Four Men: Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba. On page 105, Lazaro Benedi Rodriguez’s heart is bleeding for the illiterate. On page 106, he’s “advis(ing) Fidel to have an incinerator dug about 40 or 50 meters deep, and every time one of these obstinate cases came up, to drop the culprit in the incinerator, douse him with gasoline, and set him on fire.”

  8. Are people moving toward or away from the kind of society I want to establish? 

  We get a lot of information from how people “vote with their feet” for different policies. If you’re advocating some version of socialism, you have to deal with the fact that so many people are trying desperately to leave socialist countries. The East German government did not build the Berlin Wall to keep westerners out, and pretty much all of the traffic between Cuba and the United States moves in one direction. It isn’t toward the Castros’ workers’ paradise.

  9. What will I do with people who aren’t willing to go along with my revolution? 

  Walter Williams once said that he doesn’t mind if communists want to be communists. He minds that they want him to be a communist, too. Would you allow people to try capitalist experiments in your socialist paradise? Or socialist experiments in your capitalist paradise (Families, incidentally, are socialist enterprises that run by the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”)? Am I willing to allow dissenters to advocate my overthrow, or do I need to crush dissent and control the minds of the masses in order for my revolution to work? Am I willing to allow people to leave, or will I need to build a wall to keep people in?

  10. Am I letting myself off the hook for questions 1-9 and giving myself too much credit for passion and sincerity? 

  The philosopher David Schmidtz has said that if your best argument is that your heart is in the right place, then your heart is most definitely not in the right place. Consider this quote from Edmund Burke and ask whether or not it leads you to revise your revolutionary plans:

  “A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He would feel some apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play, without any sort of knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance, that it is directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which, in the depths of its wisdom, tolerates all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgusting, than an impotent helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, without a consciousness of any other qualification for power but his servility to it, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to fight, contending for a violent dominion which he can never exercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, in order to render others contemptible and wretched.” (Emphasis added).

  A lot of colleges and universities have first-year writing seminars that try to teach students to write by exploring a particular set of issues, and as long as the course actually teaches students how to become better writers, we should welcome new experiments. A course that asks students to put themselves in the positions of aspiring revolutionaries and to prepare their own revolutionary manifestoes is extremely creative. I think it’s the kind of course from which students can benefit mightily–if, of course, they ask the right questions.

  

• Scientists Isolate Coronavirus Antibody In Breakthrough That Could Lead To New Treatment
  Scientists Isolate Coronavirus Antibody In Breakthrough That Could Lead To New Treatment
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 19:05

  In the latest scientific triumph to offer new insights into the immune system’s response to the coronavirus that’s on the cusp of sickening more than 30 million people worldwide, a team at the University of Pittsburgh has successfully isolated an “antibody component” to the virus in a breakthrough that, scientists say, could be used in a new therapeutic.

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  The University of Pittsburgh announced in a press release that students from its medical school had isolated the smallest biological molecule yet that “completely and specifically neutralizes” SARS-CoV-2.

  According to the release, the antibody component, which is 10x smaller than a full-sized antibody, has been used to construct a drug – known as Ab8 – that will potentially be use as a therapeutic and prophylactic against the virus.

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  Findings from the study were published Tuesday in the journal Cell. In the abstract, the scientists said that the “Bivalent V-sub-H” showed a “high affinity” to bind to the cells of hamsters, preventing them from infection with SARS-CoV-2.

  The finding could help Ab8 become a powerful therapeutic for COVID-19, as the administration takes heat for its unbridled – and, as some argued, premature – support for convalescent plasma, the world is looking for the next “hot” experimental therapeutic.

  “Ab8 not only has potential as therapy for COVID-19, but it also could be used to keep people from getting SARS-CoV-2 infections,” said co-author John Mellors, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Pitt and UPMC. “Antibodies of larger size have worked against other infectious diseases and have been well tolerated, giving us hope that it could be an effective treatment for patients with COVID-19 and for protection of those who have never had the infection and are not immune.”

  Read the “pre-proofed” report from Cell below:

  Pi is 009286742031148 x by Zerohedge on Scribd

  

• Are The Forever Wars Really Ending?
  Are The Forever Wars Really Ending?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 09/15/2020 – 18:45

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  “There is no… sound reason for the United States to continue sacrificing precious lives and treasure in a conflict not directly connected to our safety or other vital national interests.”

  So said William Ruger about Afghanistan, our longest war.

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  What makes this statement significant is that President Donald Trump has ordered a drawdown by mid-October of half of the 8,600 troops still in the country. And Ruger was just named U.S. ambassador to Kabul.

  The selection of Ruger to oversee the U.S. withdrawal came as Gen. Frank McKenzie of Central Command announced plans to cut the U.S. troop presence in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 by the end of September.

  Is America, at long last, really coming home from the forever wars?

  A foreign policy analyst at the libertarian Charles Koch Institute and a Naval officer decorated for his service in Afghanistan, Ruger has long championed a noninterventionist foreign policy.

  His nomination tends to confirm that, should Trump win a second term, his often-declared goal of extracting America from the forever wars of the Middle East, unachieved in his first term, would become a priority.

  Yet, we have been here before, bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, only to send thousands back when our enemies seemed to be gaining the upper hand at the expense of the allies we left behind.

  Still, this time, Trump’s withdrawals look to be irreversible. And with the U.S. deal with the Taliban producing peace negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban, America seems to be saying to both sides of this endless civil war:

  The destiny of Afghanistan is yours. The choice of war or peace is up to you. If talks collapse and a fight to the finish ensues, we Americans are not coming back, even to prevent a Taliban victory.

  Speaking in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Trump made a remarkable declaration:

  “We don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. … There was a time we needed desperately oil, we don’t need that anymore.” If Trump means what he says, U.S. forces will be out of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan early in his second term.

  But how to explain the continued presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Diego Garcia?

  Another indication of where a Trump second term is pointing is the naming of retired Col. Douglas Macgregor as ambassador to Germany.

  The winner of a Bronze Star for valor in the 1991 Gulf War, Macgregor speaks German and is steeped in that country’s history. He has been highly visible on cable TV, calling for the transfer to our allies of the primary responsibility for their own defenses, and elevating the security of America’s Southern border to a far higher national imperative.

  In 2019, Macgregor was quoted:

  “The only solution is martial law on the border, putting the United States Army in charge of it and closing it off would take about 30, 40,000 troops. We’re talking about the regular army. You need robust rules of engagement. That means that you can shoot people as required if your life is in danger.”

  That Macgregor’s priorities may be Trump’s also became evident with the president’s announcement this summer of the withdrawal of 12,000 of the 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.

  Yet, at the same time, there is seemingly contradictory evidence to the notion that Donald Trump wants our troops home. Currently, some 2,800 U.S., British, and French troops are conducting “Noble Partner” exercises with Georgian troops in that country in the Caucasus bordering Russia.

  In Trump’s first term, his commitment to extricate America from the forever wars went unrealized, due in part to the resistance of hawks Trump himself appointed to carry out his foreign policy agenda.

  Clearly, with the cuts in troops in Germany, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the appointments of Ruger and Macgregor, Trump has signaled a new resolve to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy in an “America First” direction, if he wins a second term. Will he follow through?

  Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been in an extended argument with itself over America’s role, America’s mission in the world.

  George H. W. Bush’s New World Order is ancient history, as are the democracy crusades his son George W. Bush was persuaded to launch.

  But what will Trump’s foreign policy legacy be, should he win?

  Joe Biden has signaled where he is headed — straight back to Barack Obama:

  “First thing I’m going to have to do, and I’m not joking: if elected I’m going to have to get on the phone with the heads of state and say America’s back,” Biden said, saying NATO has been “worried as hell about our failure to confront Russia.”

  Trump came to office pledging to establish a new relationship with the Kremlin of President Vladimir Putin.

  Is that still his goal, or have the Beltway Russophobes prevailed?