• "Monster-Size Lava Fountain" Erupts In Iceland 
  “Monster-Size Lava Fountain” Erupts In Iceland 

  An Icelandic resident uploaded a stunning video on YouTube of a new volcanic eruption early Sunday morning. 

  YouTube “Sigfús Steindórsson“ has been following a new fissure vent that opened a couple of weeks ago and is visible from Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. 

  The latest development from the fissure was a “monster-size lava fountain, the biggest since the eruption started,” said Steindórsson. They said the eruption occurred around midnight local time and was filmed around 0200 Sunday. 

  Twitter handle “the 3D Podcast” caught a similar view of the eruption early Sunday morning. 

  

  We’ve noted the Reykjanes Peninsula has been dormant for a number of years, and volcanic activity sprung back to life in March after tens of thousands of earthquakes were recorded. 

  Here’s the current map of active volcanoes around the world. 

  

  There’s no telling when volcanic activity in Iceland will simmer down. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/03/2021 – 02:45

• Turkey: How Erdogan's Pledge For Reform Collapsed In Five Months
  Turkey: How Erdogan’s Pledge For Reform Collapsed In Five Months

  Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

  His critics often joke that when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledges democratic reforms, one should run away immediately. His latest charm offensive in November, aimed at repairing Turkey’s badly-strained ties with the West and Western institutions, has proven that the joke still holds value.

  “We don’t see ourselves elsewhere but in Europe,” Erdoğan said on November 21.

  “We envisage building our future together with Europe.”

  Two days later, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar described NATO as the “cornerstone of our defense and security policy” and said that Turkey was looking forward to cooperating with the incoming administration under Joe Biden in the United States. Erdoğan also promised a bold package of democratic reforms.

  

  Less than five months later, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi had to call Erdoğan a “dictator.”

  That was not because an experienced European politician wanted to insult a Muslim head of state.

  According to Turkish news site Gazete Duvar, a total of 128,872 people have been indicted in the past six years for insulting Erdoğan. Of those, 27,824 had to stand trial and 9,556 were convicted. By comparison, only 11 Turks had been convicted for insulting Ahmet Necdet Sezer, president between 2000 and 2007.

  After Erdoğan’s latest reform pledge, on March 21, Turkish authorities arrested a pro-Kurdish opposition MP who had refused to leave parliament for several days after his seat was revoked. Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu “was brought out by force while he was in pyjamas and slippers” by “nearly 100 police officers,” the leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said in a statement.

  On March 17, the Supreme Court Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against HDP for its closure on the grounds that it has links with “terror acts.” On April 14, state prosecutors asked for the removal of the parliamentary immunity of main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and nine MPs from his Republican People’s Party (CHP). Apparently, Erdoğan wants a democratic system without opposition.

  This month, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the right to liberty and freedom of expression of Turkish journalist and author Ahmet Altan had been violated due to his detention and imprisonment on charges related to a 2016 coup attempt. Altan, 71, has been in prison since September 2016, when he was detained over allegations that, during a TV program, he disseminated “subliminal messages” related to the coup attempt, as well as for articles he had written criticizing the government. Shortly after that ruling, the Turkish Court of Appeals released Altan. In other words, Altan had been unlawfully imprisoned for 55 months, nearly five years.

  That was “normal” in a country where an army of pro-government judges has the habit of announcing rulings in defiance of rulings from superior Turkish courts, including the Constitutional Court, and from the European Court of Human Rights. Those judges who dare make “undesirable verdicts” are probed and often get disciplinary punishments. Erdoğan’s coalition partner and staunchest political ally, ultra-nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli, has called for the closure of the country’s top judicial institution, the Constitutional Court.

  On April 5, Turkish prosecutors detained 10 retired admirals over their public criticism of Erdoğan’s multi billion-dollar Istanbul canal project, which will create a new artificial waterway from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea, to complement the Bosporus Strait. The arrest warrants came a day after a group of 104 former senior navy officials signed an open letter warning that the proposed canal could harm Turkish security by invalidating an 85-year-old international treaty (the Montreux Convention) designed to prevent militarization of the Black Sea. Pro-Erdoğan officials and prosecutors interpreted the statement as a direct challenge from the military to the civilian government, “echoing coup times.”

  The prosecutors’ move is in direct breach of the Article 26 of the Turkish Constitution:

  “Everyone has the right to express and disseminate his/her thoughts and opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media, individually or collectively. This freedom includes the liberty of receiving or imparting information or ideas without interference by official authorities. This provision shall not preclude subjecting transmission by radio, television, cinema, or similar means to a system of licensing.”

  But who cares about the Constitution in a country where the governing bloc is proposing to close down even the Constitutional Court, in addition to banning opposition parties?

  All these autocratic measures occurred in the less than half-year since Erdoğan pledged democratic reforms. But no story would be completely Turkish without an element of black humor: Where is the $128 billion?

  That sum refers to the US dollars sold by state banks to support the Turkish lira in foreign exchange markets. The policy began around the time of the March 2019 municipal elections and was ramped up in 2020, when the pandemic laid bare the lira’s vulnerability and Turkey’s reliance on external funding. Bankers have calculated that the sales totaled $128.3 billion in 2019-20.

  As government officials remain mute on the question, the main opposition CHP recently launched a campaign to embarrass Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) by hanging huge posters on CHP party buildings across the country with the simple question: Where is the $128 billion? Not one more word. Not one single comment or insult. Just a question, though annoying especially at a time of economic crisis.

  Turkish police started to rip down those posters without court orders. As one prosecutor confessed in a letter to a governor, “We cannot find a legal pretext to declare the posters illegal. You must rip them down citing administrative reasons.”

  In protest, a CHP MP hung the same poster outside his office office window in the parliament building. Parliament’s administrative directors had to send a fire truck to rip down the poster. The MP said he would hang it again.

  Erdoğan’s effort to hang onto power is taking uglier shapes every new day. A few years ago, then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had vehemently denied claims that Turkey was a second-class democracy. He was right. Turkey has since remained a third-class democracy.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/03/2021 – 02:00

• The Fourth Turning: Why America's "Crisis" May Last Until 2030
  The Fourth Turning: Why America’s “Crisis” May Last Until 2030

  Authored by ‘FreeSpeechFan’ via TheDuran.com,

  It is comforting that the Fourth turning is part of a natural cycle but also very disturbing that it is a period of crisis. As we know from previous cycles, many people suffer and die during a fourth turning.  However, I think we all know that a crisis is upon us as the corruption, collusion, scheming, propaganda, and self interest reaches its peak. 

  The worst of the baby boomers, Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, Bill Gates, are at their worst.  We don’t yet know what will take their place, but their chaos and selfishness will be swept aside as order, rules, truth, and structure takes its place. 

  The movement will be from Yin to Yang, Chaos to Order, Freedom to Self Control, Self Interest to the Collective, Corruption to Honor, Secular to Faith. 

  There will be a “New World Order” but not the one chosen for us by the Bush Cabal or the CCP Cabal or the Globalist Cabal.  They are the cause of the crisis but not the solution.  Gen X will help smooth the path of the crisis, but only the millennials hold the answer to the question of what will the New World Order look like. 

  I hope they choose well, as it does not have to be communism, fascism, or socialism. It won’t be!  These are tired old doctrines that don’t work, they are being used as facades for the corrupt to hide their true motives behind.  They will be swept away, too!

  

  *  *  *

  The Fourth Turning: Why American ‘Crisis’ May Last Until 2030

  Editor’s Note: Below is a 14-minute video narrated by Hedgeye Demography Sector Head Neil Howe describing the generational theory put forth in his 1997 classic “The Fourth Turning,” co-authored with William Strauss.

  Also below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. Neil’s work has influenced politicians from Newt Gingrich to Al Gore and all of it culminates in a grand theory advanced in The Fourth Turning which he elaborates on in the video and text below.

  NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.

  The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.

  The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”

  Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the Netherlands.

  Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.

  In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.

  At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.

  THE FIRST TURNING IS CALLED A HIGH.

  This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.

  America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.

  THE SECOND TURNING IS AN AWAKENING.

  This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.

  America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.

  THE THIRD TURNING IS AN UNRAVELLING.

  The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.

  America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.

  AND FINALLY WE ENTER THE FOURTH TURNING, WHICH IS A CRISIS.

  This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.

  In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030. If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.

  Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).

  To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.

  Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 23:40

• Something Fishy Happening In Miami As Thousands Of Koi Suddenly Die 
  Something Fishy Happening In Miami As Thousands Of Koi Suddenly Die 

  Something fishy is happening in Miami as thousands of pricy koi fish have turned up dead at several homes and a city park. It’s more than fish, birds, plants, and wild raccoons are mysterious dying, according to local news WPLG Local 10. 

  The epicenter of the thousands of dead koi is happening in Coconut Grove, a shoreline neighborhood in Miami bordering Biscayne Bay. Homeowners in the community report thousands of their fish have “all of a sudden died.” 

  “We’re not talking about a couple of fish or even hundreds of fish. We’re talking about thousands of fish that, all of a sudden, have turned up dead,” said WPLG. 

  

  No one seems to know why the koi are suddenly dying. What’s troubling is the sudden death of the fish is happening across the neighborhood. 

  Resident Lee Marks woke up Saturday morning to koi and other exotic fish dead in his pond. 

  “All these beautiful coy fish and other fish just dead,” he said. “It’s just awful. It’s horrible.”

  Marks and other residents are demanding answers as to why their fish in backyard ponds are dying. 

  “They just all don’t die at once like that,” he said.

  Pond Doctors, a Miami-based company focused on maintaining private ponds, told WPLG their crews have responded to “devastating fish kills” at four homes in the Coconut Grove neighborhood in the last two weeks. 

  

  “Thousands of fish have turned up dead from one day to the next, all in the same area,” said Jen Wheeler, the owner of Pond Doctors.

  “To have them suddenly pass away for some unknown reason is really scary because you also start to think what else is this affecting,” Wheeler said. “Other than the fish that we are in love with.”

  WPLG adds it’s more than fish. Local wildfire is also mysterious dying, including birds, plants, and mammals. 

  Marks said a raccoon convulsed and died in his yard. 

  “It came up right up the driveway and turned on its side,” Marks said. “It looked like it might be playful, but it was convulsing and just died.”

  

  Wheeler said the oxygen levels in all the neighborhood ponds were normal and serviced regularly. 

  “To have so many animals affected by this, something is going on,” she said.

  Wheeler called Miami-Dade County to see if mosquito companies had recently sprayed in the area. The answer local government officials gave her was that spraying last occurred in 2017. 

  Dead fish have also turned up in Miami’s Simpson Park. The common theme with all these ponds is the source of water is connected to a local aquifer. 

  “We’re still trying to figure out what’s in the groundwater and what is causing it,” Wheeler said.

  The “canary in the coal mine” is the sudden death of koi and other animals and how something toxic could be lurking in the area’s aquifer.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 23:15

• Biden Admin Cancels Military-Funded Border Wall Projects
  Biden Admin Cancels Military-Funded Border Wall Projects

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The Department of Defense (DOD) announced it is canceling U.S.-Mexico border wall construction efforts that were paid with funds that were initially allocated for the military.

  

  Work is done on a new border wall being constructed in Jacumba, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2021. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

  Former President Donald Trump ordered the diversion of billions of dollars in military and defense funds toward building the wall, using his emergency executive powers.

  “The Department of Defense is proceeding with canceling all border barrier construction projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military missions and functions such as schools for military children, overseas military construction projects in partner nations, and the National Guard and Reserve equipment account,” said Jamal Brown, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, in a statement.

  Brown said the returned funds will now be used for deferred military construction projects.

  “DOD has begun taking all necessary actions to cancel border barrier projects and to coordinate with interagency partners. Today’s action reflects this Administration’s continued commitment to defending our nation and supporting our service members and their families,” he said.

  The Department of Homeland Security also announced on Friday that it would take steps to address “physical dangers resulting from the previous administration’s approach to border wall construction.”

  The decision is expected to draw criticism from Republicans.

  GOP Congress members have previously accused President Joe Biden of illegally halting congressionally approved border wall construction projects, while the Government Accountability Office is investigating whether the administration acted illegally.

  Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) described Friday’s move as a national security threat.

  “Having a secure, defined border is important to our national security & public health efforts. This is an ill-advised decision at best,” he wrote on Twitter.

  Illegal immigration has become an issue for Biden as his administration has dealt with a surge of illegal immigrants and unaccompanied minors along the southern border. Several weeks after taking office in January, Biden signed executive orders rescinding several of Trump’s policies, including the “remain in Mexico” initiative.

  Even some Democrats have faulted the president for his messaging, including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who said the president has not laid out a comprehensive immigration plan so far.

  “While I share President Biden’s urgency in fixing our broken immigration system, what I didn’t hear tonight was a plan to address the immediate crisis at the border,” he stated, referring to Biden’s speech to Congress on Wednesday. “And I will continue holding this administration accountable to deliver the resources and staffing necessary for a humane, orderly process.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 22:50

• Ethereum Surges Above $3,000; Now Bigger Than BofA & Disney
  Ethereum Surges Above $3,000; Now Bigger Than BofA & Disney

  In the immortal words of Ron Burgundy, “that escalated quickly.”

  In 15 calendar days, Ethereum has gone from sub-$2000 puke to being over $3000 ($3028 highs)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Ether has quadrupled year-to-date (dramatically outperforming bitcoin, which itself has put in a none-too-shabby double YTD)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  ETH is now at its strongest relative to BTC since Aug 2018…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  As CoinTelegraph notes, the remarkable run has even prompted renewed speculation that Ethereum could “flippen” Bitcoin, overtaking BTC as the largest digital currency in the world.

  The first time we detailed Ethereum’s potential was in February 2017 (when ETH was at around $13)…

  “Because of its capacity for smart contracts — and other complicated computing capacities — Ethereum is viewed as more agile and adaptable than Bitcoin.”

  

  Ethereum is now bigger than Bank of America, Disney, and Home Depot:

  

  Source

  There are multiple catalysts behind Ethereum’s rise, as CoinTelegraph details:

  The first is an ongoing surge in activity on the chain, including from institutional entities: earlier in the week the European Investment Bank announced it would be issuing a two-year digital bond worth $121 million in collaboration with banking entities such as Goldman Sachs.

  Retail interest in DeFi has also been rising as of late, with total value locked numbers reaching astonishing highs above $100 billion.

  

  However, the “London” hardfork, which includes the EIP-1559 overhaul of Ethereum’s fee structure, as well as the subsequent looming ETH 2.0 transition to a proof-of-stake consensus model, may be the prime events investors are anticipating. These upgrades to the network are expected to significantly decrease fees, as well as reduce the amount of ETH rewarded to miners – which in turn is expected to decrease sell-side pressure on the asset.

  Billionaire Mark Cuban offered an interesting thread on the entire crypto-space this evening:

  Crypto succeeds when it’s a more productive implementation of it’s competition.

  BTC/Gold are both financial religions.

  BTC is easy to trade/store/create with no delivery issues. BTC also enables transfer of value locally and globally . Gold is a hassle.

  Just look at Ft Knox 

  Eth Smart Contracts are better, cheaper, faster at authenticating/buying/selling/delivering digital items than alternatives available. This makes it a viable currency and trading mechanism for all things digital. That’s powerful and will grow as applications are added 

  Eth Smart Contracts for De-Fi are better at enabling depositing/saving/trading of financial instruments than banks. One is automated and trustless and near immediate. The other is dependent on buildings full of people who add cost and friction to the same transactions 

  Where alt coins can offer rewards to their holders because they gain revenue for the more productive service they offer, they can succeed with enough users. It is VERY COMPETITIVE. Barriers to entry are minimal. Which is the risk to all participants. But rewards better solutions 

  Meme coins like Doge only work if they gain utility and users use them for that utility. As long as you can spend Doge , because we know it’s annual inflation rate is set at 5b coins, it can gain SOME value as the utility grows. It becomes like any other currency… 

  As long as more companies take doge for products/services, then Doge can be a usable currency because it MAY hold its purchasing value better than a $ in your bank. If interest rates skyrocket or the amount spent falls or stagnates, so will Doge. Yes, a joke is now legit 

  Crypto not just about being more productive and effective, but also no longer dependent on “trusted institutions” Ask PPP applicants how much they trust their big banks? Do you trust your health insurer?. Crypto is trustless and a better way to handle many transactions. 

  So when someone says they don’t get why crypto assets have value. Show them this.

  Between the enormous amount of activity on Ethereum, the economic improvements to Ether, and the promise of increased scalability with Ethereum 2.0, there is a lot for the Ethereum community to be excited about.

  Finally, we note that FundStrat’s Tom Lee maintains his $10,500 target for Ethereum as we detailed here (and suggests the possibility of a $35k target).

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 22:25

• FISA And The Still Too Secret Police
  FISA And The Still Too Secret Police

  Authored by James Bovard,

  The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens…

  

  The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).

  If you sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered for the  FBI “Citizens Academy” program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity.

  But the latest FBI offenses, like almost all prior FBI violations, are not a real problem, according to James Boasberg, presiding judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, among other purposes, is supposed to safeguard Americans’ constitutional right to privacy under FISA. FISA was originally enacted to create a narrow niche for foreign intelligence investigations that could be conducted without a warrant from a regular federal court. But as time passed, FISA morphed into an uncontrolled yet officially sanctioned privacy-trampling monster. FISA judges unleash the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI “to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target’s home, workplace and vehicles,” as well as “physical searches of the target’s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails.”

  In 2008, after the George W. Bush administration’s pervasive illegal warrantless wiretaps were exposed, Congress responded by enacting FISA amendments that formally entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up mass amounts of emails and other communication, a swath of which is provided to the FBI. In 2018, the FISA court slammed the FBI for abusing that database with warrantless searches that violated Americans’ rights. In lieu of obeying FISA, the FBI created a new Office of Internal Audit. Deja vu! Back in 2007, FBI agents were caught massively violating the Patriot Act by using National Security Letters to conduct thousands of illegal searches on Americans’ personal data. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) declared that an Inspector General report on the abusive searches “confirms the American people’s worst fears about the Patriot Act.” FBI chief Robert Mueller responded by creating a new Office of Integrity and Compliance as “another important step toward ensuring we fulfill our mission with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law.” Be still my beating heart!

  The FBI’s promise to repent after the 2018 report sufficed for the FISA court to permit the FBI to continue plowing through the personal data it received from NSA. Monday’s disclosure—a delayed release of a report by the court last November—revealed that the FBI has conducted warrantless searches of the data trove for “domestic terrorism,” “public corruption and bribery,” “health care fraud,” and other targets—including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. As Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Daily Beast, “The FBI continues to perform warrantless searches through the NSA’s most sensitive databases for routine criminal investigations.” That type of search “potentially jeopardizes an accused person’s ability to have a fair trial since warrantlessly acquired information is supposed to be inadmissible. The FBI claimed to the court that none of the warrantlessly queried material ‘was used in a criminal or civil proceeding,’ but such usage at trial has happened before,” Ackerman noted. Some illicit FBI searches involve vast dragnets. As the New York Times reported, an FBI agent in 2019 conducted a database search “using the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them had connections to an investigation.”

  In the report released Monday, Judge Boasberg lamented “apparent widespread violations” of the legal restrictions for FBI searches. Regardless, Boasberg kept the illicit search party going: “The Court is willing to again conclude that the . . . [FBI’s] procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.” “Willing to again conclude” sounds better than “close enough for constitutional.”

  At this point, Americans know only the abuses that the FBI chose to disclose to FISA judges. We have no idea how many other perhaps worse abuses may have occurred. For a hundred years, the FBI has buttressed its power by keeping a lid on its crimes. Unfortunately, the FISA Court has become nothing but Deep State window dressing—a facade giving the illusion that government is under the law. Consider Boasberg’s recent ruling in the most brazen FISA abuse yet exposed. In December 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General reported that the FBI made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived the FISA court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. The I.G. report said the FBI “drew almost entirely” from the Steele dossier to prove a “well-developed conspiracy” between Russians and the Trump campaign even though it was “unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page” in that dossier, which was later debunked.

  A former FBI assistant general counsel, Kevin Clinesmith, admitted to falsifying key evidence to secure the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, Clinesmith “changed an email confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source to one that said the exact opposite, explicitly adding the words ‘not a source’ before he forwarded it.” A federal prosecutor declared that the “resulting harm is immeasurable” from Clinesmith’s action. But at the sentencing hearing, Boasberg gushed with sympathy, noting that Clinesmith “went from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane… Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in government service—what has given his life much of its meaning.” Scorning the federal prosecutor’s recommendation for jail time, Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist slap—400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.

  The FBI FISA frauds profoundly disrupted American politics for years and the din of belatedly debunked accusations of Trump colluding with Russia swayed plenty of votes in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But for the chief FISA judge, nothing matters except the plight of an FBI employee who lost his job after gross misconduct. This is the stark baseline Americans should remember when politicians, political appointees, and judges promise to protect them from future FBI abuses. The FISA court has been craven, almost beyond ridicule, perennially. Perhaps Boasberg was simply codifying a prerogative the FISA court previously awarded upon FBI officials. In 2005, after a deluge of false FBI claims in FISA warrants, FISA Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So, FBI agents continue to lie with impunity to the judges.

  The FISA court has gone from pretending that FBI violations don’t occur to pretending that violations don’t matter. Practically the only remaining task is for the FISA court to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy. But if a sweeping new domestic terrorism law is passed, perhaps even that formal acknowledgement will be unnecessary. Beginning in 2006, the court rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling NSA data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.” FISA could become a peril to far more Americans if Congress formally creates a new domestic terrorism offense and a new category for expanding FISA searches.

  The backlash from Democrats after the January 6 clash at the Capitol showcased the demand for federal crackdowns on extremists who doubted Biden’s election, disparaged federal prerogatives, or otherwise earned congressional ire. If a domestic terrorism law is passed, the FBI will feel as little constrained by the details of the statute as it does about FISA’s technicalities. Will FBI agents conducting warrantless searches rely on the same harebrained standard the NSA used to target Americans: “someone searching the web for suspicious stuff”?  Unfortunately, unless an FBI whistleblower with the same courage as former NSA analyst Edward Snowden steps forward, we may never know the extent of FBI abuses.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 22:00

• "Enough Looting My People": Peru's Marxist Presidential Frontrunner Pledges To Seize Offshore Company Profits
  “Enough Looting My People”: Peru’s Marxist Presidential Frontrunner Pledges To Seize Offshore Company Profits

  US corporations are facing an increasingly tough run over the next few years: on one hand all their domestic profits are about to be taxed at much higher rates thanks to Bidenomics, on the other, they are facing an increasingly hostile socialist regime internationally, that seeks to confiscate most if not all of their offshore profits.

  Case in point, Peru, whose presidential front-runner, Marxist Pedro Castillo who favorably quotes Lenin and Castro, said he’ll do what leftists everywhere do, and intends to redistribute wealth – because socialism – by reviewing contracts with transnational companies in a move to increase onshore wealth.

  In a debate with Keiko Fujimori ahead of the June 6 runoff, Castillo said multinationals should expect to leave 70% of their profits in Peru. Which is just a little bit more than what leftist president Joe Biden proposes they leave in the US.

  “Enough of looting my people,” the 51-year-old school teacher said in his hometown region, Cajamarca.

  As part of his populist package, Bloomberg reports that Castillo will also seek to raise investment in education to 10% of gross domestic product. He also proposed lowering the pension age to 60 and cutting lawmakers’ wages by half, although it was unclear where he would find the money to fund the early retirement – probably just more wealth confiscation (he said he would decline compensation as president).

  Meanwhile, as Peru braces for the joys of socialism, Peruvian assets have fallen as the presidential election approaches with the sol touching record lows this week.

  Despite a modest drop in Castillo’s lead – he has of 44% the vote versus 34% for Fujimori, daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori according to a poll released Friday by Datum – he will almost certainly be the next president especially since Fujimori had been confined to campaigning in Lima because she is the subject of a criminal investigation. A full 11% of voters remain undecided, and 11% plan to cast blank or invalidated ballots, the survey found.

  As the WSJ notes, Castillo’s thinking is frighteningly similar to that of the late Hugo Chávez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chavismo strangled Venezuela’s democratic institutions, sent human capital fleeing, destroyed the economy, and generated widespread poverty. Venezuela was once one of the most advanced countries in the region. Today Venezuelans live primitively, often without running water, electricity or basic medical supplies.

  And in a few weeks, the miracle of socialism will strike its next target.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 21:35

• Bitcoin & A Lesson In Electricity Markets
  Bitcoin & A Lesson In Electricity Markets

  Authored by Joakim Book via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  In their desperation to find a reason for why bitcoin is terrible-bad-destructive-awful and morally reprehensible, the crypto-obsessed authors of the Financial Times blog Alphaville – Jemima Kelly, Jamie Powell, Izabella Kaminska – are quickly running out of good choices.

  

  Their latest one is the “environmental FUD” – a classic in our world of environmentally obsessed elites, where anything remotely associated with The Climate ensures moral supremacy. If all else fails, guilt-by-association will not. So, complain away about the environmental impact from the energy used by the Bitcoin network’s nodes and miners. 

  What’s so strange about this objection is that first, that impact is globally small, and second – who cares? Somebody, somewhere, is using energy in ways that you disapprove of (shocking, I know), to which the only reasonable response must be “Yes, and?” 

  Few free(ish) societies run around policing the use of energy, letting woke Establishment journalists decide on what’s permissible use, what’s harmful, and what needs to go. People drive cars, sometimes just because they want to, and sometimes just to compete to see who’s fastest; people go on vacation, mostly because they want to; people buy stuff, ride stuff, build stuff, enjoy stuff, almost all of which use energy and almost never require permission slips from their morally superior overlords. Not yet at least. 

  Throwing bitcoin into the mix somehow changes everything. Somebody, somewhere, is running their specialized hardware to validate the network, when they could have used those components (microprocesses, flash memories, fans, storage facilities) to, I don’t know, run a server hall to host all your incredible Instagram pictures. What is it about Bitcoin’s energy requirement that really triggers these people? If you think Bitcoin is a terrible payment mechanism, a subpar currency, a destabilizing base money, or a grand financial fad, those are arguments on their own merits – what’s energy got to do with it?

  On a first-pass observation it’s a perfect “gotcha” argument: if you think Bitcoin’s value-add is zero, or negative – Kelly happily calls it “a destructive asset class” – any amount of energy would be a waste, a climate nightmare, an environmental catastrophe. After all, we often hear that this monetary scam consumes electricity on par with small– or medium-sized countries. When the New York Times uses words like “enormous farms” and “endless racks of computers” we know it must be bad. 

  As usual when journalists talk about Big Terrible Things, we must dig a little deeper and probe a little more: ask those annoying questions – how much? Is that a lot? Compared to what? 

  Estimates for electricity use by the full Bitcoin network are all over the place, partly because nobody really knows how many miners there are and what exact equipment they’re using (and for environmental concerns, what electricity source powers their facilities). Low estimates hover around 40 TWh per year – a little less than Massachusetts used in 2019 – while high estimates report as much as 100 TWh per year – roughly the electricity generation of South Carolina or Louisiana. Let’s take the worst case and conveniently round number of 100 TWh. 

  That’s 2.5% of the 4,000 TWh of electricity that was used in America’s record year of 2018, or less than 0.4% of world electricity generation in 2019. Besides, if global electricity use fell by 1% last year because of the pandemic measures, the “savings” could power the entire Bitcoin network’s current use until 2024 (or 2028 at the lower estimate). If Bitcoin had not existed, it’s safe to say that our Alphaville electricity police would have found some other miniscule electricity user to complain about – maybe Christmas lighting (7 TWh), ski resorts (2-5 TWh), or online gaming (75 TWh). Perhaps the global banking system’s ATM networks (at something like 25 TWh)?

  Remember that we’re still only on electricity use; the sleight-of-hand involved in the Alphavillers’ magical trick is to equate use with “really bad for the environment.” By this same metric, the electricity generation used to power said writers’ computers qualifies – as does definitely the heating of their apartments (fossil fuels?) and the electricity that brightens their dark homes and runs their home appliances. While minuscule in proportion to thousands and thousands of miners upholding a decentralized monetary network, the Alphaville value add is clearly less than zero and so definitely a horrible waste of electricity. 

  If you live in a world of averages and aggregates – like Kelly, when she writes that since most mining is in China where “two-thirds of all electricity is generated by coal power” – Bitcoin mining must indeed be dirty. 

  Bitcoin mining is a cutthroat business, almost entirely determined by local electricity prices (though funding costs and legal risks matter). Thus, bitcoin miners are superbly positioned to seek out and find stranded energy, energy that cannot find its way to market, energy that has no opportunity cost: natural gas that otherwise would have been flared; hydro capacity that would have been flushed; wind turbines that otherwise would have turned off or detached from the grid.

  When ARK Invest and Square recently released a report on the renewable energy prospects for bitcoin miners, they offered mining facilities next to stranded energy as a supplement to overcome the intermittency problem. “Intermittency,” snarked Kelly, ridiculing the authors for not understanding that bitcoin consumes electricity without later bringing it back: it’s not the storage mechanism that solves renewable energy’s unsolvable problem.  

  A brief reminder of the three basic problems of renewables:

  1. they don’t produce much electricity when we need it: nights, evenings, and in the Northern Hemisphere, winter;

  2. they produce a lot of electricity when we don’t need it very much: days and summer;

  3. they produce this electricity geographically far from where we need it: rural plains, offshore, islands.  

  For each of these problems, what we end up doing in electrical grids with plenty of solar and wind is to:

  1. Have expensive backup power – mostly natural gas or coal plants – at the ready to start producing electricity when the wind or sun won’t suffice. This is the reason that electricity costs go up – not down – when more renewables are added to the grid.

  2. When sun and wind power are about to blow out their grids from overproduction, one of two things usually happen: small countries like Denmark can export its electricity to larger neighbors like Germany and Sweden (offloading the problem to someone else) or the renewables just shut off. Last year, wholesale electricity prices even dipped below zero to desperately induce industrial consumers to take the surplus electricity from the producers. 

  3. Our transmission lines are filled to capacity: in the short term, we go back to turning off intermittent sources, and in the long term we crisscross our countryside with more aluminum lines to accommodate trans-Continental sharing of excess electricity. 

  Institutional Bitcoin proponents like Cathy Wood of ARK Invest or Jack Dorsey, against whom the Alphavillers direct their current environmental FUD, did not imagine these problems. Producers of stranded energy, like the oversized hydro plants in the four Chinese provinces where most mining apparently takes place, cannot bring their goods to market – but they can offset some of their fixed costs by selling it to reliable bitcoin miners. Did Wood, Dorsey, and Brett Winton (research director at ARK) argue the case in a clumsy fashion, implying that bitcoin could help solar energy power the entire electricity grid? Yes. Are they therefore wrong to say that shedding excess electricity to willing miners helps financing renewable (or nonrenewable) electricity generation? Not at all.  

  On the contrary: Nic Carter, the master of environmental FUD-busting, writes

  “[c]ompletely off-grid natural gas is entirely nonrival with household or commercial energy consumption. It was never going to be monetized, captured, consumed, or delivered to households. Its fate was simply to be combusted or vented.”

  If some of that excess electricity – of the wrong kind, in the wrong place, at the wrong time – can be used to mine bitcoin and finance the electricity provider’s operations, isn’t that an efficiency improvement? The global crew of bitcoin miners vacuum the unused, stranded, and wasted energy of the world, providing extra dough for the marginal electricity generator whether renewable or not. Sounds good to me.  

  We should indeed be skeptical of financial fads, of everything in the Everything Bubble. And we should argue over bitcoin’s many monetary attributes – mostly because we therefore highlight how other monetary regimes work. But the environmental accusations of Bitcoin’s mining operations is like hitting your head against brick walls – not a very useful thing to do.

  Like the great JP Koning concluded this week, “It’s not the energy needs of these products that is the problem.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 21:10

• Biden Prepares For Stealth Food Stamp Increase Of Up To 20% Without Congressional Approval
  Biden Prepares For Stealth Food Stamp Increase Of Up To 20% Without Congressional Approval

  The Biden administration is planning to use an obscure US Department of Agriculture instrument to lay the groundwork for a long-term increase in food aid for tens of millions of Americans.

  

  The instrument, known as the ‘market basket,’ is a shopping list used to determine food stamp benefits, and which can be adjusted without risking an impasse in Congress from Republican lawmakers, according to Bloomberg.

  A review of the so-called Thrifty Food Plan, ordered by Biden two days after he took office, could trigger an automatic increase in benefits as soon as Oct. 1, a day after expiration of a temporary 15% boost in food stamp payments that Biden included in his $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package.

  James Ziliak, director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, said the re-evaluation “could result in an upward adjustment of 20% or more in the benefits.” That would amount to roughly a $136-a-month increase in the maximum benefit for a family of four, which was $680 before the temporary pandemic-related increase. -Bloomberg

  “This is really meaningful,” according to Harvard professor Jason Furman, who was chairman of former President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “It’s one of the bigger things government can do for poverty without Congress.“

  According to Furman, the Obama administration didn’t adjust the market basket because Republicans then controlled both houses of Congress.

  “We made a pragmatic decision that it not only could be overridden by a Republican Congress, but they could put something worse in its place. So we decided not to poke the bear,” he said.

  The decision follows a years-long campaign by anti-hunger advocates, after the basket hasn’t been adjusted for six decades aside from inflation. According to the report, “The move is emblematic of a broad commitment to anti-poverty programs across the Biden administration … In April, the Agriculture Department extended a universal free school lunch program tied to pandemic relief through the entire 2021-22 school year.”

  President Biden has been telegraphing the move for months – frequently reading his speechwriters’ descriptions of cars lined up for miles outside food banks for boxes of groceries. Most recently Biden invoked the imagery last week during his first address to Congress.

  “I didn’t ever think I’d see that in America,” he said.

  Advocates argue that the $22-a-day food budget USDA currently sets for a family of four is woefully inadequate and relies on outdated, unrealistic assumptions. The market basket assumes a family eats more than five pounds of beans a week, for example. And outside studies have found that the food plan requires spending about two hours a day preparing meals, largely from scratch, at a time the average American family spends just a half hour on daily food preparation.

  SNAP benefits are calculated on a sliding scale based on income and the number and age of people in a household. Recipients are expected to spend 30% of their net income on food, with food stamps making up the deficit from the USDA food budget. Benefits can only be used to purchase groceries. -Bloomberg

  According to a 2011 study, over 25% of SNAP recipients exhaust their monthly benefit within one week of issuance, while over half exhaust it by the second week.

  We can’t imagine why.

  While historical reviews of the market basket – the most recent being in 2006 – aimed to keep costs constant, this time the USDA won’t require it to be cost-neutral according to official Stacy Dean, who’s leading the review on behalf of Agriculture Secretary Tom VIlsack.

  “A core goal of the secretary is to assure nutrition security, not just food security,” said Dean. “We want to make sure the benefits we are providing really and truly can support a nutritious and healthy diet.”

  And according to March comments from Vilsack, “It’s fair to say that the SNAP benefit is in many cases not adequate enough to provide the help and assistance that is needed,” adding “I suspect that we’re going to find that the foundation of that program doesn’t meet the activities of normal American families today, and that may result in some adjustment in terms of the benefit.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 20:45

• How This Inflation Plays Out Will Be Different From Anything That Has Come Before It
  How This Inflation Plays Out Will Be Different From Anything That Has Come Before It

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  For nearly a century, gold had been pegged at roughly $20.67/oz. Then in 1934, FDR banned private holdings, confiscated people’s gold, and set the value at $35/oz for use in international trade/settlement. It remained anchored at that price for decades. But fiscal pressures of the Vietnam war and Johnson’s Great Society project stressed the pegged system. Johnson’s war on poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, urban renewal programs and so many others were costly. As they stressed America’s finances, the system’s circuit breakers were overwhelmed.

  On August 15, 1971, Nixon abandoned the gold standard, froze wages and prices for 90-days, and imposed a 10% import surcharge. Unemployment was a painful 6.1%, inflation was 4.6% and 10yr yields were 6.58%. All sorts of unique things were happening in the world economy. They always are. Which is why no time is the same. Back then, the Bretton Woods system that had served the post-war economy so well had come under intense pressure. Aided by the Marshall Plan, the rest of the world had been rebuilt, and was starting to catch up in earnest.

  Joe Biden was sworn in as a 30-year-old freshman Senator in Jan 1973. Seems like half a century ago, because it was. In the 1.5yrs between Nixon leaving the gold standard and Biden’s inauguration, the gold price jumped from $35/oz to $65/oz (in that same period, the S&P 500 rose 20%, while CPI fell from 4.6% to 3.7%). No doubt that jump in gold seemed like a big move to people. Having traded between $20/oz and $35/oz over the previous 150yrs, people were mentally tethered to historical prices. Humans struggle to process rapid change.

  As fate had it, the S&P 500 peaked the month of Biden’s 1973 inauguration with 10yr bond yields at 6.46%. The price of gold and the value of stocks, which had both risen in the 1.5yrs following Nixon’s exit from the gold standard, diverged radically as inflation started to rise in earnest. CPI had started rising before the oil embargo of October 1973. It was lifted in March 1974, with oil prices having jumped from $3/barrel to nearly $12/barrel. By the end of 1974, gold hit $181/oz, the S&P 500 fell 48%, 10yr bond yields rose to 7.48%. CPI had jumped to 12.3%.

  Inflation remained volatile for another decade after that. Oil prices too. Commodities in general. Gold hit $850/oz in January 1980. Bond holders got destroyed. Equity holders too. Generally speaking, agricultural commodities did reasonably well on an inflation-adjusted basis in the 1970s. But the really big winners were gold and oil, each for unique reasons, both of which were amplified by that monetary debasement. To this day, most people are mentally anchored to that experience, so that when they worry about inflation they buy gold.

  There are more differences between the 1970s and the 2020s than there are similarities. Demographics, technology, global trade, union membership, consumption patterns, environmental stresses, geopolitics, and domestic politics are all different. There are substantial similarities too. But one thing is identical – this planet remains inhabited by humans. And we never change. We despise iniquity. When Biden entered politics in 1973, the rich/poor divide in America had halved since the late 1920s high. It has since doubled. Returning to those highs.
   
  Anecdote:

  How this inflation plays out will be different from anything that has come before it. It is always so. Naturally, some aspects will resemble the past. This inflation will inevitably be volatile, such periods of price changes typically are. And in the early stages, nearly everyone will persuade themselves that it is transitory.

  In the late stages, those same people will conclude that it is permanent. Throughout the process, each of us, individually, will see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and believe what we want to believe. Those things are always true, perhaps now more than ever. We will also find the period ahead deeply unsettling. Change is hard to process. And more things are changing now than at any time in our lives – such is today’s utterly unprecedented pace of innovation and disruption.

  In such a state, it is natural to cling to our anchors:

  • Our policymakers will point to the inflation metrics that they themselves have engineered in such a way to ensure stability, even if they long ago diverged from reality.
  • Bond investors will look to the spreads between overnight rates and two-year bonds, five-year, ten, thirty. And despite the reality that the government has run 15% deficits for two years, funded by the Fed which simply creates the money, they will cling to the anchors that have governed the well-behaved yield curve for the course of their careers.
  • Equity investors will hold tight to the relationships that anchor their value relative to bonds.
  • Not a solitary investor in the mainstream will be prepared to deviate from the benchmarks to which they have anchored their careers.

  And yet, all of us will begin to increasingly wonder, whether digital assets, which have no real history, no anchors, are the first to provide a glimpse of what lays beyond the horizon. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 20:20

• 1 In 5 EV Owners In California Are Switching Back To Gas Because Charging Is A "Hassle"
  1 In 5 EV Owners In California Are Switching Back To Gas Because Charging Is A “Hassle”

  When people are inconvenienced for just the slightest bit of time, the virtue signaling flies right out the window as though it never existed. It’s almost as if the “green” energy cult exists in a world of their own cognitive dissonance, surviving off of recruiting new entrants to their “ideology”, rather than actually practicing its tenets. 

  For example, about 20% of all “planet saving EV owning visionaries” in California are defecting from their EVs back to gas-powered vehicles, according to a new report by Business Insider. The switch back to gas comes as a result of charging being a “hassle”, the report found. 

  The report cites a new study published in the journal Nature Energy by University of California Davis researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal. They surveyed people in California who purchased EVs between 2012 and 2018.

  1 in 5 switched back to avoid dealing with the lengthy time it took for their vehicles to charge. (Wait until they find out how the electricity was being generated to charge their cars in the first place!)”

  

  70% of those who switched lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, which can charge vehicles in about twice the time as a normal Level 1 plug. Level 1 charging from a standard home outlet puts out about 120 volts of power. Level 2 is twice that, whereas Tesla’s SuperChargers can offer 480 volts. 

  “If you don’t have a Level 2, it’s almost impossible,” said Bloomberg automotive analyst Kevin Tynan. It took him six hours to charge his Chevy Volt back to 300 miles of range using a Level 2 charger. 

  Two thirds of those surveyed also said they didn’t use public charging stations. Good thing Joe Biden is rolling out trillions in EV “infrastructure” for more of these. 

  Hardman and Tal wrote: “It should not be assumed that once a consumer purchases a PEV they will continue owning one. What is clear is that this could slow PEV market growth and make reaching 100% PEV sales more difficult.”

  Tynan concluded: “For all those legacy automakers, that profit and loss piece does matter. And that’s why you’re getting this half effort on electrification.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 19:55

• 'Follow The Science' Fallacy Exposed – Teachers Union Exerted Influence Over CDC School Reopening Guidelines
  ‘Follow The Science’ Fallacy Exposed – Teachers Union Exerted Influence Over CDC School Reopening Guidelines

  Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,

  In the Biden administration, “follow the science” takes second place to “follow the campaign donations from teachers unions”…

  

  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was heavily lobbied by the nation’s second-largest teachers union on when to reopen America’s schools, emails obtained by the New York Post show. There was extensive communication between the American Federation of Teachers, the CDC, and the White House in the lead up to the release of school reopening guidelines in February.

  The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the group Americans for Public Trust and provided to The Post.

  Anyone in the United States, any group, has a perfect right to lobby any federal agency they wish. But don’t you think it would have been nice to know that the CDC was being influenced by teachers in coming to the conclusion that schools should remain closed to in-person learning?

  The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.

  “Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the CDC’s “thought partner.”

  You can’t really say the teachers union was driving the discussion on when to open schools. Or can you?

  “We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” Trautner continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance documents.”

  Emails show a call between Walensky and Weingarten — the former boss of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers — was arranged for Feb 7.

  The lobbying paid off.

  In at least two instances, language “suggestions” offered by the union were adopted nearly verbatim into the final text of the CDC document.

  And in case anyone is confused about whose interests the teachers union was looking out for, they made it plain when pushing for “special remote work concessions” from the CDC.

  The AFT also demanded special remote work concessions for teachers “who have documented high-risk conditions or who are at increased risk for … COVID-19,” and that similar arrangements should extend to “staff who have a household member” with similar risks. A lengthy provision for that made it into the text of the final guidance.

  There was apparently some pushback from people who wondered why CDC was ignoring the science and giving in to teachers’ demands when there was plenty of evidence that schools were not a primary source of infections as long as they followed common-sense rules.

  I know folks have a lot of questions about COVID-19 mutations, our vaccination progress, and much more. @CDCDirector Dr. Walensky sat down to provide answers. pic.twitter.com/K0Rlkc4Ti2

  — President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2021

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

  The answer is plain and simple: politics.

  Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has written extensively on coronavirus, called the CDC-AFT emails “very, very troubling,”

  “What seems strange to me here is there would be this very intimate back and forth including phone calls where this political group gets to help formulate scientific guidance for our major public health organization in the United State,” Gandhi told The Post. “This is not how science-based guidelines should work or be put together.”

  This should be a major scandal. Outside of The Post and Fox News, however, no other major news outlet has bothered to report that government policy that should have been based on science, was in fact, based on recommendations from a bunch of political hacks.

  *  *  *
  ZH: Randi Weingarten has already tweeted her response to these ‘facts’ being exposed by FOIA-obtained emails… by gaslighting as aggressively as we’ve ever seen…

  We wanted kids in school.. I have been arguing for that since April 2020..

  — Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) May 2, 2021

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

  Social media were not about to let her get away with that bullshit…

  What a disgraceful, horrific lie…befitting the historical embarrassment of your conduct and your union’s conduct over the past year.

  — IM (@ianmSC) May 2, 2021

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

  It’s inappropriate to copy and paste verbatim ‘guidance’ from a political organization; rather than CDC using science and their own methods to form guidance. It’s clear the AFT was leveraging their power to keep kids out of school, regardless of science.

  — Kyle DeMarino (@KyleDeMarino) May 2, 2021

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

  Let’s be honest, no one believes that you or UFT have been trying to open schools since April 2020. No one.

  — Pam Schmidt (@Schmidt18Pam) May 2, 2021

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

  There was always a huge “,BUT” after that support followed by a laundry list of stupid, unscientific demands from you and other union leadership.

  You’re trying to rewrite history so that you’re not the villian.
  Good job @nypost

  — Contrarian Teach (@ContrarianTeach) May 2, 2021

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

  Liar liar pants on fire Randi

  — ErieCountyMom Tired of Hybrid School (@DanaMarie262) May 2, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 19:30

• Boeing Fires 65 Employees, Disciplines 53 More For 'Racist And Hateful Conduct' Following George Floyd Death
  Boeing Fires 65 Employees, Disciplines 53 More For ‘Racist And Hateful Conduct’ Following George Floyd Death

  In the last 12 months, Boeing has fired 65 employees and disciplined 53 others over ‘racist, discriminatory and hateful behavior,’ according to the Daily Mail, citing a Friday ‘Equity, Diversity & Inclusion’ report from the Chicag-based company’s CEO, David Calhoun.

  

  “As we have witnessed horrific images in the news and heard heartbreaking stories from our people, our determination to advance equity, diversity and inclusion has only become stronger,” reads the statement – which follows the company’s June 2020 ‘zero-tolerance’ policy implemented in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

  “There is no place for hate within our company, and we will keep expecting the best from everyone in their interactions with one another,” Calhoun continued.

  Meanwhile, the company outlined its diversity plans in its August 2020 “Racial Equity Action Plan.”

  Notably, of the company’s 140,000 employees, 66.8% are white, 6.4% are black, 14.2% are Asian, 7% are hispanic, and 3.6% are listed as ‘more.’

  According to Calhoun, the company will increase black representation to 20% by 2025, just 3.5 years from now. This means Boeing will hire over 19,000 black workers in either a massive expansion of headcount, or at the expense of workers of other races.

  

  “This work is a business imperative for us, because diversity and inclusion make us better in every way; when everyone has a voice, everyone is inspired to succeed together,” reads the report. “As we resolve to do better, the gaps we see in our representation show us where we must focus our efforts to address disparities.“

  Meanwhile, Boeing is currently being sued by a black employee claiming a hostile environment at a South Carolina plant because a supervisor assigned black employees to work in ‘undesirable’ and hazardous areas of a plant, while white employees were sent to more ‘desirable’ locations, according to Forbes.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 19:05

• Tesla, Revisiting The Issue Of What It's Worth
  Tesla, Revisiting The Issue Of What It’s Worth

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Now that Tesla’s most recent numbers are out it may be time to revisit what the company is worth. While the numbers came in solid and better than some analysts expected they did not blow the doors off the hinges and leave investors in awe. Lurking in the shadows are concerns at just how honest Tesla’s numbers really are. History has shown time and time again that markets can hide from reality for only so long. Tesla’s stock price continues to hang on but continuing signs of the company’s challenging path forward continue to leak out. 

  

  With over 100 different electric cars expected to hit the market by 2025, it is difficult for a realist to envision Tesla being able to remain in the position it is today. The rapid approach of real competition into the rather small Electric Vehicle market is occurring at a time when auto sales may be on the wane. This could translate into tight profit margins and a situation similar to what we witnessed in 2008 when the automobile industry fell off a cliff resulting in a government bailout of GM and Chrysler.  

  Needless to say, a great number of factors influence how a stock is valued. A huge part of the sugar high allowing Tesla’s valuation continues to be that climate change exists and the idea electric vehicles are a big part of the answer to halting it. It could be said that Elon Musk is the “Pied Piper” of  EVs leading society down a path that may eventually disappoint even his most loyal followers. Musk appears to have a great deal riding on government  favors paving Tesla’s way forward with generous subsidies. Whether EVs live up to their reputation of being environmentally friendly is a matter still being debated and many people have come to the conclusion that EVs do not live up to their promise. 

  Several other issues haunt Tesla, one has to do with China. A few days ago the video of a protestor at the Shanghai Auto Show “went viral” after he stood on top of a Tesla vehicle and decrying the car’s brakes. Shortly after the incident, a CCTV broadcaster has called for an investigation into Tesla’s brake failures, some people are taking this as a sign China’s love affair with Elon musk is coming to an end.

  

  Tesla Has Made China A Key Part Of Its Future

  This could have huge ramifications for the future of  both Musk and Tesla because of the huge investment the company has made in China. The notion that Chinese state media has turned negative and is looking for answers underscores the idea China may have initially embraced Tesla in order to steal its technology. 

  Also, issues concerning the overall quality of Tesla’s cars, or lack of it, have garnered a great deal of attention. While this has been brushed aside by the majority of Tesla lovers, Tesla’s US made vehicles are scoring in the cellar when it comes to quality. As Electrec reported earlier this year, Tesla ranked lowest on J.D. Power 2020 quality study, with 250 problems per 100 cars. The quality survey was based on roughly 1,250 Tesla owners with most of the respondents being the proud owners of a Model 3.

  Needless to say, much of the “aura” surrounding Tesla continues to flow from Musk himself. It appears many people view this man as almost god-like, a genius with superman qualities. Somehow they are able to overlook the fact the words coming out of his mouth often conflict with reality. Musk skeptics such as myself, are appalled at how so much of his empire has been grown from a foundation of government subsidies.  

  Government support is a major theme of all Elon Musk’s companies, and without it, none of them would exist. Woven into this is the issue of “corporate incest” and Tesla’s acquisition of ailing SolarCity in an all-stock $2.6 billion merger. At the time Musk owned 22% of SolarCity which was founded by his cousins. The merger was promoted on the idea that Tesla’s mission since its inception was part of Elon Musk’s overall “Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” to expedite the world’s transition to sustainable energy and away from a fossil fuel economy.

  Tesla’s valuation remains a bit over the moon considering on Friday it closed with the stock at a whopping P/E ratio of 710 times earnings and a market cap of over 649.8 billion dollars. Those of us without a great love for Tesla or Elon Musk see this as the poster child of absurdity. By comparison, Volkswagen, which sold over 10 million vehicles last year has a market cap of $79 billion and auto giant Toyota around $246 billion.

  While valued as the most valuable car company in the world, recent earning for Tesla indicates its profits were based on $518 mm of regulatory credit sales and a $101 positive gain from its Bitcoin position and sales. Strip these out and it seems that Tesla lost $181mm selling cars. Still, it is difficult to deny another major factor keeping Tesla aloft is the promise of a shit load of government money flowing from Biden’s new $2 trillion infrastructure package. Many Tesla enthusiasts are counting on this transfer of wealth to move the company forward. 

  While Tesla sported a valuable advantage by being the first big player in the electric vehicle (EV) category it is not protected by a great number of patents. The big advantage Tesla has enjoyed with other manufacturers being slow to release EV cars is not expected to last. Much of Tesla’s technology is easy to replicate and most auto manufacturers have lines of EVs finally rolling off their production lines this year and next. Many of these cars will come at far cheaper prices and Tesla’s competitors will also be offering their customers service shops and trade-ins.

  

  Ford’s New F-150 Will Challenge Tesla

  This means Tesla’s first mover advantage may vanish overnight. A great deal will depend on how Tesla’s new pickup truck fairs against such rivals as Ford’s new electric F-150. Any sign of failure on the part of Tesla could result in a major fall from grace and bring into question Tesla’s staying power in the industry.

  Ironically up until now, Musk’s greatest strength may have been that so many investors doubt his ability to perform. This means that a slew of impatient clowns have shorted Tesla stock in search of quick profits. These bearish investors have continually shot themselves in the foot by constantly finding reasons to rush to the exits in short-covering panics. This not only invariably brings the share price back up but has created a self-feeding loop accounting for much of the companies success and oversized profile in the automobile sector.   

  When all is said and done, the 64,000 dollar question remains, what is Tesla worth? Still more important is, what will it be worth in the future. Sadly, this article is not about to predict a number considering Elon Musk has proved he has more lives than a cat. Time and time again reports of his demise have proven to be premature. It seems every week creates a slew of new articles about Tesla and what is occurring in the highly speculated electric vehicle sector. Like many people that are predisposed to discount hype from the media, you should color me skeptical about how well Tesla will deal with the coming onslaught of competition. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 18:40

• You Know It's Bad When… CNN Calls Out Biden Over Anti-Science Mask Use
  You Know It’s Bad When… CNN Calls Out Biden Over Anti-Science Mask Use

  President Biden is coming under fire from both sides of the aisle for constantly wearing a mask despite announcing that vaccinated people no longer require face coverings when outdoors. In other words, it’s simply virtue signaling at this point.

  

  As The Hill (!?) notes, days later after announcing the loosened guidelines from the CDC, “Biden was spotted with a mask while walking outside to Marine One with first lady Jill Biden, even though both have been vaccinated and no others were around.”

  The president again donned a mask at a Georgia drive-in rally while his wife spoke a few feet away, despite nobody else being on stage.

  Biden has strived to set an example for Americans by wearing a mask in public frequently during his first months in office, pleading with the public that it was a key tool to end the pandemic. But health experts say the country is reaching a tipping point where Biden now must alter his behavior to reflect how vaccines can lead to a return to normal. –The Hill

  “I actually think it would do so much good for the president to be modeling at this point the really critical times when people should be wearing a mask, and letting people know here is the benefit of the vaccine: You don’t need to be wearing a mask during these other times,” said ER physician and former Baltimore health commissioner, Leana Wen.

  Biden, however, can’t seem to quit masks.

  Biden made a point to walk away from the podium without a mask after outlining the new guidance, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president and senior staff would abide by the CDC recommendations that no longer required masks outdoors for vaccinated individuals.

  But the president has been slow to put the updated recommendations into practice, as reflected by his trip to Georgia.

  Biden also wore a mask into and out of the House chamber for his speech to a joint session of Congress, despite most of those in attendance being distanced and vaccinated. -The Hill

  Now, even CNN‘s Jake Tapper is calling out the president for sending mixed signals over mask use while vaccinated.

  “Should the president start following these guidelines and stop wearing a mask outdoors, stop wearing a mask indoors when with small groups of other vaccinated Americans, to show the American people there is a benefit to getting the vaccine?” Tapper asked guest Anita Dunn – to which Dunn replied that Biden “has always taken his role as sending a signal to follow the science very seriously,” but that people should instead follow CDC guidelines.

  >> @JakeTapper to Anita Dunn: “Should the president start following these guidelines and stop wearing a mask outdoors, stop wearing a mask indoors when with small groups of other vaccinated Americans, to show the American people there is a benefit to getting the vaccine?” pic.twitter.com/3YiAs3nJlq

  — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 2, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 18:15

• "This Time Is Indeed Different" – Why Morgan Stanley Sees No Housing Bubble
  “This Time Is Indeed Different” – Why Morgan Stanley Sees No Housing Bubble

  By Vishwanath Tirupattur, Managing Director in Credit Securitized Products Research and Strategy at Morgan Stanley

  US housing is on a hot streak. Home prices as measured by the S&P Case-Shiller Index rose 12.2%Y, with prices surging across all 20 of the metropolitan areas tracked by the Index. That amounts to an increase of $35,000 in the median selling price for homes from just a year ago and marks the fastest pace of increase since 2006.

  Unsurprisingly, any comparison to the 2006 boom in home prices brings unhappy memories, considering the bust that followed, which culminated in the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. However, we argue that this time is indeed different. Unlike 15 years ago, the euphoria in today’s home prices comes down to the logic of demand and supply, and we conclude that the sector is on a sustainably sturdy foundation. We are not at all suggesting that home price appreciation will maintain its current torrid pace. Home prices will continue to rise, but more gradually. We have strong conviction that we are not experiencing a bubble in US housing.

  Much has been written about the run-up to the pre-GFC housing bubble. We would boil it down to layers upon layers of leverage in the housing sector that led to a spectacularly painful bust. But contrary to the narrative that loose lending to people with lower credit scores – the ‘sub-prime’ borrowers – was central to the excesses, we think it was more about the type of credit they had access to. Mortgage credit risk consists of (1) borrower risk and (2) mortgage product risk. Borrower risk captures the metrics we typically use to assess the likelihood of default on a mortgage, such as credit score, loan-to-value, and debt-to-income. Product risk lies in giving a borrower a type of mortgage that has a higher risk of default, even controlling for those borrower characteristics. These so-called ‘affordability products’ included mortgages where the payment could vary significantly throughout the life of the loan. As James Egan, our US housing strategist has explained, product risk increased significantly more than borrower risk during the pre-GFC housing boom. The affordability products were inherently risky because they effectively required home prices to keep rising and lending standards to remain accommodative so that homeowners could refinance before their monthly payment became unaffordable. When home prices stopped climbing, these mortgages reset to payments that borrowers could not make, leading to delinquency and foreclosure. As foreclosures and the subsequent distressed sales piled up, home prices fell further, creating a vicious cycle.

  Affordability products made up almost 40% of all first lien mortgages from 2004 to 2006. Today their share is down to 2%. Furthermore, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of credit standards, which peaked at nearly 900 in 2006, has stayed well below 200 for almost a decade and fell further to the low 100s post-COVID-19. Not only are lending standards much tighter this time around, but the leverage in the system has also been reduced dramatically. Prior to the GFC, the total value of the US housing market peaked at $25.6 trillion in 2006, with total mortgage debt outstanding of $10.5 trillion for an estimated loan-to-value (LTV) of 41.2% for the entire housing market. Today, the value of the housing market has jumped to $33.3 trillion, while total mortgage debt has only increased to $11.5 trillion with an estimated aggregate LTV of just 34.5%. These changes give us confidence that the current system of housing finance is healthy and on a sustainable footing.

  Demand and supply factors remain a tailwind for home prices. Thanks to the demographic dividend, millennials continue to drive household formation at a rate 30-50% above the long-run rate of new household formation. Thus, demand for shelter is likely to remain robust for some time to come. As James points out in his latest Housing Tracker, affordability remains good despite sustained increases in home prices and mortgage rates inching higher. Monthly mortgage payments as a percentage of income remain near the most affordable levels in the last five years. Against this backdrop, there is a nationwide shortage of supply. The number of existing homes available for sale has plummeted to historical lows while the supply of new homes remains muted, hence the overall supply of homes sits near record lows.

  

  Robust demand and highly challenged supply along with tight mortgage lending standards augur well for home prices. Higher interest rates and post-pandemic moves will likely slow the pace of appreciation, but their upward trajectory remains on course.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 17:50

• "The Costs Are Up, Up, Up. We're Seeing Substantial Inflation" Admits A Surprised Warren Buffett As Powell, Yellen See Nothing
  “The Costs Are Up, Up, Up. We’re Seeing Substantial Inflation” Admits A Surprised Warren Buffett As Powell, Yellen See Nothing

  We already touched on two of the more colorful exchanges from Saturday’s Berkshire annual videoconference, both of which incidentally starred the traditionally far more outspoken Charlie Munger, who first crushed a generation’s monetary dreams saying that today’s Millennials will have “a hell of a time getting rich compared to our generation”, and then infuriated tens of millions of cryptofans and diamond hands (such as Dan Loeb) when he said that “the whole damn development” of crytpocurrencies “is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”

  Yet while those two incidents may prompt the most Monday morning watercooler talk, what was most relevant from a macro and markets standpoint was Buffett’s observation of something the Fed and Treasury are terrified to admit: that a tidal wave of inflation has been unleashed upon the US and it’s only getting worse.

  Speaking to Berkshire’s millions of shareholders on Saturday, Buffett said that he was surprised by the “red hot” US economic rebound and warned the company was being hit by inflationary pressures.

  “We’re seeing very substantial inflation,” the 90-year-old billionaire who apparently does not have a Fed charge card, said in his nearly 6 hour long address to investors. But it’s what he said that was especially ominous:  “It’s very interesting. We’re raising prices. People are raising prices to us and it’s being accepted.”

  Why does this matter? Because the ability to pass on price increases and have them stick, means the surge in prices will not be transitory, no matter how many times the Biden admin, the Fed or the Treasury lie and vow the opposite.

  Buffett’s comments came one day after the US revealed that household incomes rose by the most in recorded history in March as the latest round of Biden stimmies hit bank accounts.

  

  This has also pushed the total amount of government transfer payments to a record 34%. That’s right: a third of all US household income is now from the state. Marx would be proud.

  

  The surge in income which for now has resulted in record excess savings of roughly $2 trillion, has sent reverberations throughout financial markets, with investors’ inflation expectations over the next decade rising to an eight-year high.

  “It just won’t stop,” Buffett added. “People have money in their pocket and they’ll pay the higher prices…. There’s more inflation going on that people would have anticipated six months ago or thereabouts” he added.

  We urge readers to go over the full exchange because the world Buffett lives in and the one populated by the clueless career economists of the Fed are apparently totally different:

  BECKY QUICK: I will ask this question from Chris Freed from Philadelphia. And whoever wants to take this on stage, “From raw material purchases by Berkshire subsidiaries, are you seeing signs of inflation beginning to increase?”

  WARREN BUFFETT: Let me answer that, then Greg can get more into that. We’re seeing very substantial inflation – it’s very interesting. I mean, we’re raising prices. People are raising prices to us. And it’s being accepted. Take home-building. I mean, you know, the cost of– we’ve got nine home builders in addition to our manufactured housing operation, which is the largest in the country.

  So we really do a lot of housing. The costs are just up, up, up. Steel costs, you know, just every day, they’re going up. And there hasn’t yet been because the wage– the wage stuff follows. I mean, the– the UAW writes a three-year contract, we got a three-year contract.

  But if you’re buying steel at General Motors or someplace, you’re paying more every day. So it’s an economy, really– it’s red hot. I mean, and we weren’t expecting it. I mean, all our companies, when they thought when they were allowed to go back to work at, well, various operations, we closed the furniture stores, I mentioned.

  You know, they were closed for six weeks or so on average. And they didn’t know what was going to happen when they opened. And they can’t stop people from buying things. And we can’t deliver them. They say, well, that’s OK because nobody else can deliver them either, and we’ll wait for three months or something of the sort.

  The backlog grows, and then we thought it would end when the $600– the payments ended, and I think around August of last year, it just kept going. And it keeps going and it keeps going and it keeps going. And I get the figures. Every week, we go over, day by day, what happened at the three different stores in Chicago and Kansas City and Dallas.

  And it just won’t stop. People have money in their pocket, and they pay the higher prices. And when corporate prices go up in a month or two– and that was the price increase for April 1– our costs are going up, supply chain’s all screwed up for all kinds of people. But it’s a buy– it’s almost a buying frenzy, except certain areas, you can’t buy at.

  You know, you really can’t buy international air travel. And so the money is being diverted from a little– some piece of the economy into the rest. And everybody’s got more cash in their pocket than– except for, meanwhile, it’s a terrible situation for a percentage of the people.

  I haven’t worn a suit for a year, practically. And that means that the dry cleaners just went out of business. I mean, nobody’s bringing in suits to get dry cleaned, and nobody’s bringing in white shirts the place where my wife goes.

  The small business person, if you didn’t have takeout and delivery services for restaurants, you got killed. On the other hand, if you’ve got takeout facilities, then, same-store sales at Dairy Queen are up a whole lot, and they adapted. But it is not a price-sensitive economy right now in the least. And I don’t know exactly how– what shows up in different price indices. But there’s more inflation going on than– quite a bit more inflation going on than people would have anticipated just six months ago or thereabouts.

  CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and there’s one very intelligent man who thinks it’s dangerous. And that’s just the start.

  WARREN BUFFETT: Greg, you probably are in a good position to comment.

  GREG ABEL: Yeah, well, Warren, I think you touched on it. When we look at steel prices, timber prices, any petroleum input, you know, fundamentally there’s pressure on those raw materials. I do think something you’ve touched someone, Warren, and it goes really back to the raw materials.

  There’s a scarcity of product right now, of certain raw materials. It’s impacting price and the ability to deliver the end product but, you know, that scarcity factor is also real out there right now, as our businesses address that challenge. And it may be the sum of that’s contribute– or arisen from the storm we previously discussed in Texas. When you take down that many petrochemical plants in one state that the rest of the country is very dependent upon it, we’re seeing it flow through both on price, but overall in scarcity of product, which obviously go together. But there’s challenges, that’s for sure.

  Buffett’s admission was also remarkable because it was in opposition to all the official manure spoon fed to the gullible peasants by the President and his economic henchmen (or is that sexist: perhaps henchpeople is more apt?). Case in point, today former Fed chair and current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that Biden’s multi-trillion economic plan is unlikely to create inflation pressure in the U.S. because the boost to demand will be spread over a decade.

  “I don’t believe that inflation will be an issue. But if it becomes an issue, we have tools to address it,” Yellen said Sunday on NBC’s leftist Meet the Press show. “It’s spread out quite evenly over eight to 10 years. So, the boost to demand is moderate,” she said of the proposed spending.

  Yellen also said the U.S. has the “fiscal space” to make investments in its economy, with interest rates low and likely to remain so, but over the long haul, budget deficits need to be “contained.”

  In other words, all those soaring prices, including the Costco shrinkflation seeking to mask a 14% price increase with small offerings… well, just ignore that for a few more years until the “transitory” period ends. Assuming it ends, of course. It didn’t quite end in the 1970s when inflation was also supposed to be transitory.

  Yellen said on that while the administration needs “fiscal space to be able to address” emergencies like the pandemic, it needs to do so with a long-term plan in mind. “We don’t want to use up all of that fiscal space, and over the long run deficits need to be contained to keep our federal finances on a sustainable basis,” she said.

  Asked about the proposed tax increases that would come with Biden’s spending plan, Yellen focused on the U.S. proposal for a global minimum corporate tax, and efforts to clamp down on tax loopholes in the U.S. “An important way of paying for this is increasing tax compliance,” she said. “It’s estimated that underpayment of taxes that are really due is costing us, the federal government, about $7 trillion over a decade.”

  While Yellen touched on rising taxes, there were several other items she refused to touch upon:

  How about the increased
  – deficits
  – national debt
  – resulting #QuantitativeEasing
  – resulting reliance on China to buy our debt
  – increased taxes resulting in 1.1MM lost jobs
  – stagnant econ growth

  Do any of those worry #Yellen https://t.co/slL66279lm

  — Peter J. Dawson (@PeterDawsonUSA) May 2, 2021

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  It wasn’t just Yellen lying to the people: another top Biden administration economic adviser said inflation now apparent in certain pockets of the economy is “transitory” as the nation exits the pandemic. Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said supply chain issues and labor market shortages are “bumps along the way” to recovery.

  There’s no sense for now that these price increases are becoming “de-anchored,” she said on “Fox News Sunday,” while promising to remain vigilant on inflation pressures.

  “For the time being we expect at most transitory inflation, that is what we expect coming out of a big recession,” she said. It wasn’t clear what would happen when her expectation was proven to be wrong.

  Yellen and Rouse spoke following last week’s unveiling of the latest economic plan from the Biden administration, which is proposing a combination of $1.8 trillion in spending and tax credits for areas such as education, child care and paid family and medical leave. This comes on top of almost $2.25 trillion in infrastructure, home health care and other outlays that the administration proposed at the end of March, not to mention the $5 trillion that the government has injected into the economy through the three pandemic relief packages passed by Congress during the past 14 months.

  In short, we are looking at $10 trillion in new government handouts in the coming years, give or take a few trillions.

  None of this matters to the “big man” himself – and no, not the nearly 80-year-old Biden, of course, who is merely a puppet for whoever writes the lines into his teleprompter – but Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who shrugged off such concerns last week, telling reporters that the reopening of the economy may lead to a single episode of price increases, but not a long-running bout of inflation.

  Which, of course, is a lie and for what is really coming please re-read “We Are At The Early Stage Of The Biggest Cobra Effect In The History Of Economics.“

  * * *

  Finally, for those who missed it, here are the main highlights from Berkshire’s nearly 6 hour Saturday tour de force annual meeting, (courtesy of Bloomberg):

  • SPACs, Robinhood and day trading. We got plenty of opinions from Buffett and Munger on these trends that have gripped the markets over the past year. Buffett called the SPAC boom a “killer” when it comes to creating more competition for Berkshire’s dealmaking desires. But he acknowledged that the stock market has become more of a casino with all the day trading and it creates its own reality for a while until it all blows up. On Robinhood, Buffett acknowledged that gambling isn’t bad but taking advantage of that instinct isn’t the most admirable part of society.
  • Buffett made some big moves last year, dumping airline stocks and paring back bank bets. He acknowledged today that airlines could have had a different outcome on federal relief if they had a super rich company as a top shareholder, but even then, he wouldn’t buy airlines given the slump in international travel.
  • Buffett admitted to a few missteps over the past year. Haven, the health care venture, failed eventually and Buffett said that they couldn’t really tackle the “tape worm” of health care. He added that last year, amid the airline sales, wasn’t Berkshire’s greatest moment. Plus, it was a mistake to sell some Apple stock last year, he added.
  • We only got a potential new clue about succession. At one point, Charlie Munger mentioned that Greg Abel would maintain the culture at Berkshire. Abel has been seen as the most likely successor — he’s younger and controls a lot of Berkshire businesses. But no successor has been publicly announced, so that little comment might be picked up by a few investors eager to know who will take over.
  • Two shareholder proposals — one on climate change and one on diversity — got a lot of attention ahead of the meeting with proxy advisers Glass Lewis and ISS pushing back against some of Berkshire’s views. But both of those ended up being voted down at the end of the meeting.

  And here is a detailed breakdown courtesy of @TheRationalWalk

  Starting a thread for the Berkshire Hathaway 2021 annual meeting which has just started. $BRKA $BRKB

  Abel and Jain are present on stage, although off to the side from Buffett and Munger.

  Buffett is spending a few minutes talking about Jain and Abel to introduce them to the shareholders.

  Very good to have all of them available for Q&A on the same stage.

  Buffett is pointing out how the accounting rule change a few years ago distorted quarterly (and annual) earnings by including unrealized gains and losses from investments in net income.

  This makes periodic earnings swing dramatically and misleads many investors.

  Buffett has a slide of the top 20 companies in the world by market cap, 5 of the top 6 U.S. based which led into a pep talk on the United States, which he does so well.

  “The system has worked unbelievably well.”

  Now Buffett puts up a slide of the top 20 companies in the world from 1989. None of the 20 from 30 years ago are on the present list. Zero. And 13 of the 20 were from Japan!

  The top company in 1989 had a market cap of $104 billion – Industrial Bank of Japan.

  Buffett is directing this very good history lesson at new investors, but most will just see an old man talking about Henry Ford and disregard his statements. Too bad for them.

  Buffett has a list of auto companies from the early 20th century that eventually went bust. Dozens of auto companies just starting with the letters “Ma”. Thousands of entrants. Incredible future. Most failed.

  “It’s not as easy at it sounds.”

  Referring to entering new and exciting markets that will change the world.

  First question asks why Buffett was defensive early in the pandemic. A lot of hindsight bias in that question. Of course it wasn’t the right call … given the history that played out.

  Buffett talks about his role controlling risk at Berkshire.

  Buffett implies that if Berkshire was still in the airlines, they might not have received the aid that they did. That’s very interesting. He’s implying that Berkshire’s exit from the airlines in some way facilitated the fact that government bailed them out.

  Next question is why Berkshire didn’t deploy more cash at the lows in March 2020. More hindsight bias in that question …

  Interestingly, Buffett notes that the $20 billion minimum cash balance is going to be increased given Berkshire’s current size.

  The day before the Fed acted, Buffett thinks that even Berkshire could not have issued debt. Markets were closed. He’s praising Powell for acting, praising Congress for acting. “It did the job.”

  Buffett did not think that it was a “sure thing” that government would act as they did. He was unwilling to COUNT on government acting as they did in March 2020. He won’t rely on the kindness of anyone. And that’s how I like it, and I suspect most shareholders agree.

  Munger says that the questioner is “out of their mind” to think that Berkshire could bottom tick the market in March 2020.

  Q: Should long term Berkshire shareholders diversify into an index fund?

  A: Munger prefers holding Berkshire to holding an index fund. Buffett recommends the S&P 500 index fund, has never recommended Berkshire to anyone.

  Buffett “likes Berkshire” but suggests that people who don’t know anything about stocks or no “special feelings” about Berkshire should buy the S&P 500 index.

  Buffett is going out of his way to not talk up Berkshire, which is fine, but I question the idea of suggesting the S&P 500 index at current valuations. I don’t think that does anyone any favors.

  In the context of dollar cost averaging into index over a long lifetime, S&P 500 is OK, but the question was from a longtime shareholder asking if he should diversify into an index. It would seem nuts to sell BRK to buy the S&P 500, in my opinion. Munger seems to agree.

  BREAKING: Munger would prefer to have a son-in-law who works at Chevron rather than as an English professor at Swarthmore.

  Buffett doesn’t use the word “asinine” often, but tears into the ESG proposals which I assume will be discussed more fully during the formal shareholder meeting when the matter comes up for a vote.

  “We don’t do things just because we have a department of this or a department of that … what’s important is what we are doing at BHE and the railroad…”

  Buffett is really fired up talking about renewables and how you can’t turn off the coal plant until you have transmission from wind power to where it is actually used.

  I can tell he’s pissed about Berkshire getting a bum rap on the environment.

  Buffett turns over the question to Abel who has slides prepared regarding Berkshire’s environmental record at the energy group. Goes back to a 2007 conference where he discussed climate change, policy, innovation, etc… These guys are prepared for the ESG proposals…

  Buffett asks “How many other energy companies were there” when Abel talks about a group of companies that made commitments regarding the Paris climate agreement. Abel says “none”.

  Buffett: “We’d spend $100 billion on infrastructure” referencing Biden’s speech on Wednesday stating that we need more infrastructure spending.

  If we get a 10% return, I’m all for it as well.

  Good question on prospects for insurance when Buffett and Jain are no longer involved. Should Berkshire then focus on short-tail lines?

  Jain talks about pricing for the unknowns unknowns – a good answer, but not really addressing succession.

  Buffett: “We are willing to lose $10 billion in a single event” if paid appropriately for taking on a risk.

  Sounds like a big number but not relative to Berkshire’s current size.

  “Warren and I don’t have to agree on every damn thing we do.”

  Charlie’s answer when asked about differences of opinion between him and Buffett on Costco and Wells Fargo.

  Having Jain and Abel on stage interacting with each other is quite valuable for shareholders.

  “In three more years, Charlie will be aging at 1% per year. No one is aging less than Charlie.”

  Very funny, Warren …

  Jain talking about GEICO and Progressive – very candid about Progressive as a formidable competitor and the relative advantages of GEICO and Progressive.

  I can tell Jain doesn’t engage in BS. At all.

  Buffett talking about $AAPL. Munger thought that Buffett selling a little was a mistake.

  Charlie: “Yes”

  Buffett is talking about how Apple products are indispensable to customers.

  He’s right about some people picking their phone over a car if they had to choose between the two.

  People are addicted to their damn phones.

  Buffett talking about how interest rates are like financial gravity when asked about stock valuations.

  Buffett looking for a clipping from a … paper WSJ … noting that the government sold 4 week t-bills at an average price of 100.000000. Free money for Uncle Sam.

  Buffett notes that there has been an incredible change in anything that produces money because the risk free rate is now zero.

  And of course he’s right. But for how long will this last? Is it “safe” to price stocks as if the risk free rate will be zero forever?

  “The most interesting movie we have ever seen.”

  Buffett characterizing the current economic environment.

  Buffett: Low interest rates reduce the value of float substantially but Berkshire has options for investing that others don’t have.

  As noted earlier today, Buffett shuns fixed income securities for this very reason.

  Buffett notes that most SPACs have a two year limit for deploying cash. If you have a gun to your head, then you’ll buy something.

  The meeting is half over and no Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Elon, or Crypto questions yet, unless I missed it.

  Buffett says that he has roughly $70-80 billion that he would love to put to work.

  $20 billion is not the minimum cash level anymore, as he alluded to earlier. It is probably double of that or more, but he has not specified.

  Charlie: “Bernie Sanders has won.” Referring to the millennials having trouble rising as far as earlier generations. Um….

  Buffett defends the logic of repurchases vs. dividends as a way of cashing out shareholders who want cash, leaving the rest of us alone to continue compounding.

  Tax efficiently, I might add.

  Munger: Critics are bonkers.

  Amen.

  I feel very good about not receiving a surprise dividend from Berkshire anytime soon.

  Which I suspect will remain the case as long as Buffett and Munger are around since they don’t want to pay the taxes any more than I do.

  Buffett stresses that he doesn’t speak for Berkshire when providing his personal views on taxes.

  He punts on tax questions. Although he certainly has spoken in the past on taxes at prior meetings.

  I like the new policy.

  Munger: “I wouldn’t move across the street to save my children $500 million in taxes.”

  But … “Who in the hell would drive out the rich people?”

  The government owns “Berkshire Class AA stock”. They can take a percentage of earnings without owning any of the company. Indeed.

  Buffett thinks that his wealth will accomplish more utility in private philanthropy run by smart people. It won’t make a “damn bit of difference” if it goes to the Federal government. I agree.

  I suspect (or at least hope) that Buffett has spoken to the President about tax policy, especially the folly of even thinking about thinking about taxing *unrealized* gains annually, one of the more bonkers ideas to ever be proposed in Washington. Truly nuts.

  Buffett: Valuation for Kansas City Southern deal would not be happening without interest rates at current levels. A combination would have a small impact on BNSF and Union Pacific.

  Buffett: Biggest single “risk factor” never appearing in a company filing is a CEO who is personable and everyone likes but doesn’t know what he or she is doing.

  CRYPTO/BITCOIN QUESTION!!!

  Buffett dodges the question. He doesn’t want 400,000 people mad at him and 2 people happy.

  Charlie: “You’re waving a red flag at a bull.” Rant follows on bitcoin and other things invented out of thin air … Disgusting, contrary to the interests of civilization…

  Q: Why is BRK’s proposal for TX grid better than Musk’s proposal?

  Abel: BRK’s proposal is the best they could come up with. If Elon’s proposal is better, then Texas should pursue it. Notes that battery solution isn’t as robust in terms of duration of power supplied.

  Buffett: We know what we can do for TX grid. If someone can provide a solution cheaper and faster, they should do it.

  Notes that Berkshire is backing proposal with $4 billion penalty if they fail to deliver.

  Q for Ajit: Would you underwrite an insurance policy for Elon Musk’s mission to Mars?

  “No thank you, I will pass.”

  Buffett: Depends on the premium. And on whether Elon is on the mission or not. Skin in the game.

  Ajit: “I would be very concerned about writing an insurance policy with Elon Musk on the other side.”

  Q: Why aren’t Ted and Todd available to answer questions?

  Buffett: Why would we make Ted and Todd available to talk stocks and share ideas with competitors?

  Munger is convinced that China will allow companies to flourish. They “changed communism” because they didn’t want to stay poor. A remarkable change coming from such a place. And it has worked like gangbusters. Munger very complimentary.

  This will trigger many people.

  Q:What happened to the joint health care initiative with Amazon and J.P. Morgan?

  Buffett: We learned more about health care in decentralized Berkshire subsidiaries and is one place where centralization could save some real money.

  Very hard to change the overall system.

  Buffett notes that when companies pay healthcare costs for employees, its an abstraction to employees. They don’t realize that they are really paying in the form of lower wages. And they like that.

  Munger: “No kidding”

  Buffett notes that U.S. pays 17% of GDP for healthcare while no other major country pays more than 11% yet we get poorer results.

  Rational Walk: “No kidding”

  Buffett on the failure of the joint healthcare initiative with J.P. Morgan and Amazon:

  “We were fighting a tapeworm, and the tapeworm won.”

  Question: What do Jain and Abel read on a daily basis?

  90% of Ajit’s reading is related to insurance. Abel focuses on the operating businesses he’s in charge of.

  Blocking and tackling.

  Buffett: Nothing illegal or immoral about gambling on Robinhood but you can’t build a society around it. Not admirable. Will read prospectus.

  Munger: “Waving a red flag at a bull.” Godawful. Deeply wrong. State lotteries: States pushed aside mafia in numbers game.

  Q: Signs of inflation in subsidiaries?

  Buffett: Very substantial. We are raising prices. People are raising prices to us. It’s being accepted. Take homebuilding. Cost up up up. Every day. cc @federalreserve

  Buffett is clearly seeing inflation pressure. Doesn’t sound like he thinks it is “transitory”.

  Who do you believe? Warren Buffett or Jay Powell and his army of phd economists?

  I am paraphrasing, but the transcript will be posted soon, the video will be available, and I’d encourage everyone to read his statements on cost pressures verbatim.

  “There’s more inflation going on that people would have anticipated six months ago or thereabouts.”

  Listening to that exchange just now makes me want to take out a large thirty year fixed rate mortgage as soon as possible even if I might be paying a high price for a property.

  Buffett notes that while rich people can change states relatively easily, a business with plants cannot change so quickly and must be very careful about the pension deficits in various jurisdictions.

  Q: Biggest lesson over the past year?

  Buffett: “Listen more to Charlie.”

  Munger: “We are in uncharted territory.”

  Buffett talks about the long term prospects for Berkshire over the next many decades, etc.

  No break between the 3 1/2 hour Q&A session and formal meeting. Buffett is 90. Munger is 97.

  The formal meeting is a foregone conclusion in terms of the outcome of the two shareholder proposals so I’ll conclude this thread here.

  The full annual meeting is here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 17:25

• $70,000 For A Part-Time Driver
  $70,000 For A Part-Time Driver

  By John Kingston of Freightwaves,

  David Parker is the CEO of Covenant Logistics and he was blunt with analysts who follow the company on its earnings call Tuesday.

  “How do we get enough drivers?” he said in response to a question from Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. “I don’t know.”

  

  Parker then gave an overview of the situation facing Covenant, and by extension other companies, in trying to recruit drivers. One problem: With rates so high, companies are encountering the fact that a driver doesn’t need to work a full schedule to pull in a decent salary.

  “We’re finding out that just to get a driver, let’s say the numbers are $85,000 (per year),” Parker said, according to a transcript of the earnings call supplied by SeekingAlpha. “But a lot of these drivers are happy at $70,000. Now they’re not coming to work for me, unless it’s in the ($80,000s), because they’re happy making $70,000.”

  

  What’s happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 “and stay home a little more.”

  The result is a tightening of capacity. Parker said utilization in the first quarter at Covenant was three or four percentage points less than it would have as a result of that development. “It’s an interesting dynamic that none of us have calculated,” he said.

  To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers’ 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000.

  Parker was firm that this was not a situation likely to change soon. “There’s nothing out there that tells me that drivers are going to readily be available over the medium [term in] one to two years,” he said. “And that’s where I’m at.”

  Paul Bunn, the company’s COO and senior executive vice president, echoed what other executives have said recently: Additional stimulus benefits are making the situation tighter. He said that while offering some hope that as the benefits roll off, “that might help a bit.”

  But what the government giveth the government can sometimes taketh away. Bunn expressed another familiar sentiment in the industry today, that an infrastructure bill adding to demand for workers would create more difficulty to put drivers behind the wheel. Construction, Bunn said, is “a monster competitor of our industry” and if the bill is approved, “that’s going to be a big pull.” 

  Labor is going to be a “capacity constraint” through the economy, Bunn said, while conceding that trucking is not unique in that.  And because of that labor squeeze, capacity in many fields is going to be limited. “The OEMs, the manufacturers are limited capacity,” Bunn said. “They’re not ramping up in a major, major way because of labor, because of commodity pricing, because of the costs.”

  All that means is that capacity growth is going to be “reasonable,” Bunn said. “It’s not going to be crazy, people growing fleets [by] significant amounts.”

  “It’s all you can do just to hold serve,” he added. 

  While the driver situation is tough, it didn’t notably hurt the first-quarter performance of Covenant. To open the call, Joey Hogan, Covenant’s co-president, highlighted some of the company’s first-quarter numbers: a 6% growth in operating revenue on a strategic reduction in the number of company tractors and the best first-quarter net income figure in its history. 

  Beyond the market for drivers, Parker said the freight market is “hot” and likely to stay that way.

  “We are at 7%, 8% GDP growth, that goes to 5%, well, probably, or it could stay 7% or 8%,” he said. “But it’s still going to be numbers that you and I have never sensed or felt from a freight standpoint. And so I don’t see that letting up, I see that a solid couple of years of being in that kind of environment.”

  Given that, Parker and other Covenant managers used the occasion of the earnings call to drive home with more detail a point the company made in its earnings statement a day earlier: It intends to get higher rates out of some of its Dedicated customers. While the company’s Expedited division saw its operating ratio improve to 91% from 102.3% a year earlier, the Dedicated division saw its OR remain above 100%. 

  The Dedicated division, Bunn said, has two types of customers. One is a group with high returns, “and we want more of those,” he said. “We’re going to go to the customers [where] we have that and say, ‘Can we have more of your business?’”

  The other are customers that Bunn referred to as “commoditized.” Those customers are going to need to “value” the Dedicated service provides “or we’re going to give those trucks to somebody who’s in the first bucket.”

  Trucks won’t just get “yanked” out, Bunn said. But “we’re not going to run Dedicated with a 98, 99 or 100 OR,” he added.

  But even though Covenant, like other carriers, has leverage in negotiations given the tight market for capacity, it does need to be handled with a certain degree of aplomb, Hogan said. Hogan was talking about the company’s Expedited division when he said that in price negotiations, a company needs to be “respectful” as prices get up to “that line where they say, ‘Well, I’m going to grow my own [transportation].’”

  Another possibility: rail. “When does the price push them to the rail?” he asked.

  However, the Expedited division is “in a good spot for at least a couple of years,” Hogan said. That’s aided by the fact that inventories are “stupid low” across the supply chain, he added. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/02/2021 – 17:00

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• China Has A Grand Carbon Neutrality Target… But Where Is The Plan?
  China Has A Grand Carbon Neutrality Target… But Where Is The Plan?

  Authored by Alicia García-Herrero and Simone Tagliapietra, both Senior Fellows at Bruegel,

  China’s new long-term targets, to reach peak emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, are yet to be matched with a consistent short-term action plan…

  

  As the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, China will make or break the global quest for climate neutrality by the middle of the century – the only way to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C. Consequently, President Xi’s announcement in September 2020 of China’s new objective to peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 was broadly welcomed. But President Xi offered no detail on how China could turn this vision into reality, and an examination of China’s current plans shows clearly the goal will not be achieved without major changes.

  

  Following Xi’s announcement of the goals at the United Nations General Assembly, some details of how China might approach its targets were provided at the December 2020 Climate Ambition Summit. Here, Xi outlined preliminary elements of the new Nationally Determined Contribution that China is due to submit – like all other Paris Agreement signatories – ahead of COP26 in late 2021. Xi stated that China would aim by 2030 to cut carbon intensity per unit of GDP by more than 65% from 2005 levels (compared to the existing target of 60%-65% by 2030), and would increase the share of non-fossil fuels in energy consumption to 25% by 2030 (compared to the existing target of 20%).

  As a continuation of the progress already being made by China, rather than an acceleration, these preliminary targets raised doubts about the feasibility of China peaking its emissions before 2030 and securing carbon neutrality by 2060. China’s continued investments in coal, the primary component of the county’s energy mix, have reinforced those doubts (Figure 2).

  

  Instead of cutting its reliance on coal, China put 38 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, equal to the entire coal-fired power generation capacity currently installed in Germany. While one could argue that the pandemic made 2020 a difficult year for China to focus on climate, it remains to be seen when and how China will reveal how it intends to peak emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

  The most obvious place to look for such information is China’s 14th Five Year Plan (FYP), which was announced at the National People’s Congress in March 2021. Five Year Plans are the main guiding force behind policy in China at all levels of government. Unfortunately, on climate measures, the 14th FYP falls short. It essentially outlines a continuation of existing trends, rather than an acceleration of climate action. Strongly focused on the development of the manufacturing sector (notably through strict targets on state-led innovation), the plan mentions neither a coal cap, nor an emissions cap (Table 1).

  

  The 14th FYP simply commits to reducing the carbon and energy intensity of China’s GDP growth. Current estimates are that China’s emissions will continue to rise every year, at a rate of 1% to 1.7% until 2025. It should also be noted that the 14th FYP makes several references to the development of coal, emphasising its “clean and efficient utilisation”. This is consistent with the broader structure of the plan, which is strongly oriented towards ensuring China’s self-sufficiency in the context of an increasingly hostile external environment and, in particular, US-China strategic competition. In other words, the 14th FYP does not include a coal-consumption reduction target, nor a clear target for emissions to peak by 2025. Interestingly, the plan also makes no reference to the target of 1,200 GW of solar and wind installed power capacity by 2030, mentioned by President Xi in December 2020.

  The lack of specific targets for the 2020-2025 period in the 14th FYP is worrisome, but does not mean President’s XI‘s commitment made at the UN is unachievable. It could still be achieved with much more stringent measures to cut emissions between 2025 and 2030, or with more stringent measures within the 14th FYP at central and local level, even if not imposed in the FYP. However, China’s recent economic history shows local government pushing for higher rather than lower growth, hampering progress in cutting carbon emissions.

  More detailed measures on energy, renewable energy, coal and electricity from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment are expected in late 2021/early 2022. It might be within these measures that we finally see a ‘coal cap’ for 2021-2025. As if this were not enough, both Chinese and international climate modelling studies state that China’s emissions should peak by 2025 at the latest for China to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 (see for example a December 2020 study coordinated by the Energy Foundation China and the University of Maryland, which highlighted the dangers of locking-in high-emission assets and the need for rapid action). If China’s emissions do not peak quickly, achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 will be challenging.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 23:25

• Guess Who's Testifying In Congress US Troops Must Stay In Afghanistan Forever?
  Guess Who’s Testifying In Congress US Troops Must Stay In Afghanistan Forever?

  When interventionists and national security deep state hawks need to prolong what’s already the longest war in in US history, who’re they gonna call?…

  “Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee they’re worried about President Biden’s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, with Rice suggesting the US may need to go back,” Axios reports.

  

  The pair’s “expert” testimony was given over Zoom and appears to have been kept relatively quiet, given it was a ‘closed door’ members only call, until Axios learned of it.

  Rice of course infamously served as George Bush’s National Security Advisor during the initial invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and crucially helped make the case for war to the American public, later serving as Bush’s Secretary of State through 2009.

  Having helped start two failed wars, both of which have long remained deeply unpopular among the American public, naturally Condi Rice as a pre-eminent neocon voice would be consulted as a “stay the course” point of view. It’s also deeply revealing that there’s no foreign policy space in terms of viewpoint whatsoever between Rice and Clinton – latter who pushed for the US-NATO invasion of Libya and planned covert regime change in Syria against Assad.

  Little is known about precisely what Hillary testified, but it’s not difficult to imagine. Here are a few key insights via Axios:

  • “Condi Rice is like, ‘You know, we’re probably gonna have to go back,’” amid a potential surge in terrorism, the member said.

  • Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the committee, told Axios: “With the potential for an Islamic State, coupled with what they’re going to do to our contractors in Yemen and Afghanistan is, sadly, it’s going to be tragic there and we all see it coming.”

  • Another member of the committee confirmed both Clinton and Rice raised concerns about the potential fallout from a quick removal of all U.S. troops.

  • Both also expressed concerns about protecting U.S. diplomats on the ground following the withdrawal and what the move will mean for the global war on terrorism.

  One unnamed committee member told Axios further that “they both agreed we’re going to need to sustain a counterterrorism mission somehow outside of that country.”

  Of course they want to keep troops in Afghanistan.

  Was 20 years not enough for you? @HillaryClinton @CondoleezzaRicehttps://t.co/MWcdK0ED0F

  — Young Americans for Liberty (@YALiberty) April 30, 2021

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

  Well of course!…there always needs to be a war going on somehow and somewhere – otherwise how would these warmongering ladies sleep at night?  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 23:00

• Niall Ferguson: How Ike's 1950s America Beat The 'Asian Flu' With Science & Common Sense
  Niall Ferguson: How Ike’s 1950s America Beat The ‘Asian Flu’ With Science & Common Sense

  This essay is adapted from Mr. Ferguson’s new book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” which will be published by Penguin Press on May 4. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

  In 1957, the U.S. rose to the challenge of the ‘Asian flu’ with stoicism and a high tolerance for risk, offering a stark contrast with today’s approach to Covid-19…

  

  “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!” Wordsworth was talking about France in 1789, but the line applies better to the America of 1957. That summer, Elvis Presley topped the charts with “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear.” But we tend to forget that 1957 also saw the outbreak of one of the biggest pandemics of the modern era. Not coincidentally, another hit of that year was “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” by Huey “Piano” Smith & the Clowns.

  When seeking historical analogies for Covid-19, commentators have referred more often to the catastrophic 1918-19 “Spanish influenza” than to the flu pandemic of 1957-58. Yet the later episode deserves to be much better known, not just because the public health threat was a closer match to our own but because American society at the time was better prepared—culturally, institutionally and politically—to deal with it.

  The “Asian flu”—as it was then uncontroversial to call a contagious disease that originated in Asia—was a novel strain (H2N2) of influenza A. It was first reported in Hong Kong in April 1957, having originated in mainland China two months before, and—like Covid-19—it swiftly went global.

  Like Covid-19, the Asian flu led to significant excess mortality. The most recent research concludes that between 700,000 and 1.5 million people worldwide died in the pandemic. A pre-Covid study of the 1957-58 pandemic concluded that if “a virus of similar severity” were to strike in our time, around 2.7 million deaths might be anticipated worldwide. The current Covid-19 death toll is 3 million, about the same percentage of world population as were killed in 1957–58 (0.04%, compared with 1.7% in 1918-19).

  True, excess mortality in the U.S.—now around 550,000—has been significantly higher in relative terms in 2020-21 than in 1957-58 (at most 116,000). Unlike Covid-19, however, the Asian flu killed appreciable numbers of young people. In terms of excess mortality relative to baseline expected mortality rates, the age groups that suffered the heaviest losses globally were 15- to 24-year-olds (34% above average mortality rates) followed by 5- to 14-year-olds (27% above average). In total years of life lost in the U.S., adjusted for population, Covid has been roughly 40% worse than the Asian flu.

  The Asian flu and Covid-19 are very different diseases, in other words. The Asian flu’s basic reproduction number—the average number of people that one person was likely to infect in a population without any immunity—was around 1.65. For Covid-19, it is likely higher, perhaps 2.5 or 3.0. Superspreader events probably played a bigger role in 2020 than in 1957: Covid has a lower dispersion factor—that is, a minority of carriers do most of the transmission. On the other hand, people had more reason to be afraid of a new strain of influenza in 1957 than of a novel coronavirus in 2020. The disastrous pandemic of 1918 was still within living memory, whereas neither SARS nor MERS had produced pandemics.

  

  High school students in Washington, D.C., September 1957. PHOTO: EVERETT COLLECTION

  The first cases of Asian flu in the U.S. occurred early in June 1957, among the crews of ships berthed at Newport, R.I. Cases also appeared among the 53,000 boys attending the Boy Scout Jamboree at Valley Forge, Penn. As Scout troops traveled around the country in July and August, they spread the flu. In July there was a massive outbreak in Tangipahoa Parish, La. By the end of the summer, cases had also appeared in California, Ohio, Kentucky and Utah.

  It was the start of the school year that made the Asian flu an epidemic. The Communicable Disease Center, as the CDC was then called, estimated that approximately 45 million people—about 25% of the population—became infected with the new virus in October and November 1957. Younger people experienced the highest infection rates, from school-age children up to adults age 35-40. Adults over 65 accounted for 60% of influenza deaths, an abnormally low share.

  Why were young Americans disproportionately vulnerable to the Asian flu? Part of the explanation is that they had not been as exposed as older Americans to earlier strains of influenza. But the scale and incidence of any contagion are functions of both the properties of the pathogen itself and the structure of the social network that it attacks. The year 1957 was in many ways the dawn of the American teenager. The first baby boomers born after the end of World War II turned 13 the following year. Summer camps, school buses and unprecedented social mingling after school ensured that between September 1957 and March 1958 the proportion of teenagers infected with the virus rose from 5% to 75%.

  The policy response of President Dwight Eisenhower could hardly have been more different from the response of 2020.

  Eisenhower did not declare a state of emergency. There were no state lockdowns and, despite the first wave of teenage illness, no school closures. Sick students simply stayed at home, as they usually did. Work continued more or less uninterrupted.

  With workplaces open, the Eisenhower administration saw no need to borrow to the hilt to fund transfers and loans to citizens and businesses. The president asked Congress for a mere $2.5 million ($23 million in today’s inflation-adjusted terms) to provide additional support to the Public Health Service. There was a recession that year, but it had little if anything to do with the pandemic. The Congressional Budget Office has described the Asian flu as an event that “might not be distinguishable from the normal variation in economic activity.”

  President Eisenhower’s decision to keep the country open in 1957-58 was based on expert advice. When the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) concluded in August 1957 that “there is no practical advantage in the closing of schools or the curtailment of public gatherings as it relates to the spread of this disease,” Eisenhower listened. As a CDC official later recalled:

  “Measures were generally not taken to close schools, restrict travel, close borders or recommend wearing masks….ASTHO encouraged home care for uncomplicated influenza cases to reduce the hospital burden and recommended limitations on hospital admissions to the sickest patients….Most were advised simply to stay home, rest and drink plenty of water and fruit juices.”

  

  Dr. Maurice Hilleman, seen here in the lab in 1963, played a key role in the development of a vaccine for the Asian flu in 1957. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

  This decision meant that the onus shifted entirely to pharmaceutical interventions. As in 2020, there was a race to find a vaccine. Unlike in 2020, however, the U.S. had no real competition, thanks to the acumen of one exceptionally talented and prescient scientist. From 1948 to 1957, Maurice Hilleman—born in Miles City, Mont., in 1919—was chief of the Department of Respiratory Diseases at the Army Medical Center (now the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research).

  Early in his career, Hilleman had discovered the genetic changes that occur when the influenza virus mutates, known as “shift and drift.” It was this work that enabled him to recognize, when reading reports in the press of “glassy-eyed children” in Hong Kong, that the outbreak had the potential to become a disastrous pandemic. He and a colleague worked nine 14-hour days to confirm that this was a new and potentially deadly strain of flu.

  Speed was of the essence, as in 2020. Hilleman was able to work directly with vaccine manufacturers, bypassing “the bureaucratic red tape,” as he put it. The Public Health Service released the first cultures of the Asian influenza virus to manufacturers even before Hilleman had finished his analysis. By the late summer, six companies were producing his vaccine.

  It has become commonplace to describe the speed with which vaccines were devised for Covid-19 as unprecedented. But it was not. The first New York Times report of the outbreak in Hong Kong—three paragraphs on page 3—was on April 17, 1957. By July 26, little more than three months later, doctors at Fort Ord, Calif., began to inoculate recruits to the military.

  Surgeon General Leroy Burney announced on August 15 that the vaccine was to be allocated to states according to population size but distributed by the manufacturers through their customary commercial networks. Approximately 4 million one-milliliter doses were released in August, 9 million in September and 17 million in October.

  This amounted to enough vaccine for just 17% of the population, and vaccine efficacy was found to range from 53% to 60%. But the net result of Hilleman’s rapid response to the Asian flu was to limit the excess mortality suffered in the U.S.

  A striking contrast between 1957 and the present is that Americans today appear to have a much lower tolerance for risk than their grandparents and great-grandparents. As one contemporary recalled,

  “For those who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing unusual about finding yourself threatened by contagious disease. Mumps, measles, chicken pox and German measles swept through entire schools and towns; I had all four….We took the Asian flu in stride. We said our prayers and took our chances.”

  D.A. Henderson, who as a young doctor was responsible for establishing the CDC Influenza Surveillance Unit, recalled a similar sangfroid in the medical profession:

  “From one watching the pandemic from very close range…it was a transiently disturbing event for the population, albeit stressful for schools and health clinics and disruptive to school football schedules.”

  Compare these stoical attitudes with the strange political bifurcation of reactions we saw last year, with Democrats embracing drastic restrictions on social and economic activity, while many Republicans acted as if the virus was a hoax. Perhaps a society with a stronger fabric of family life, community life and church life was better equipped to withstand the anguish of untimely deaths than a society that has, in so many ways, come apart.

  A further contrast between 1957 and 2020 is that the competence of government would appear to have diminished even as its size has expanded. The number of government employees in the U.S., including those in federal, state and local governments, numbered 7.8 million in November 1957 and reached around 22 million in 2020—a nearly threefold increase, compared with a doubling of the population. Federal net outlays were 16.2% of GDP in 1957 versus 20.8% in 2019.

  The Department of Health, Education and Welfare was just four years old in 1957. The CDC had been established in 1946, with the eradication of malaria as its principal objective. These relatively young institutions appear to have done what little was required of them in 1957, namely to reassure the public that the disastrous pandemic of 1918-19 was not about to be repeated, while helping the private sector to test, manufacture and distribute the vaccine. The contrast with the events of 2020 is once again striking.

  It was widely accepted last year that economic lockdowns—including shelter-in-place orders confining people to their homes—were warranted by the magnitude of the threat posed to healthcare systems. But the U.S. hospital system was not overwhelmed in 1957-58 for the simple reason that it had vastly more capacity than today. Hospital beds per thousand people were approaching their all-time high of 9.18 per 1,000 people in 1960, compared with 2.77 in 2016.

  In addition, the U.S. working population simply did not have the option to work from home in 1957. In the absence of a telecommunications infrastructure more sophisticated than the telephone (and a quarter of U.S. households still did not have a landline in 1957), the choice was between working at one’s workplace or not working at all.

  Last year, the combination of insufficient hospital capacity and abundant communications capacity made something both necessary and possible that would have been unthinkable two generations ago: a temporary shutdown of a substantial proportion of economic activity, offset by massive debt-financed government transfers to compensate for the loss of household income. That this approach will have a great many unintended adverse consequences already seems clear. We are fortunate indeed that the spirit of the vaccine king Maurice Hilleman has lived on at Moderna and Pfizer, because much else of the spirit of 1957 would appear to have vanished.

  

  Despite the pandemic, people thronged the beach and boardwalk at Coney Island in July 1957. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

  “To be young was very heaven” in 1957—even with a serious risk of infectious disease (and not just flu; there was also polio and much else). By contrast, to be young in 2020 was—for most American teenagers—rather hellish. Stuck indoors, struggling to concentrate on “distance learning” with irritable parents working from home in the next room, young people experienced at best frustration and at worst mental illness.

  We have done a great deal over the past year (not all of it effective) to protect the groups most vulnerable to Covid-19, which has overwhelmingly meant the elderly: 80.4% of U.S. Covid deaths, according to the CDC, have been among people 65 and older, compared with 0.2% among those under 25.

  But the economic and social costs, in terms of lost education and employment, have been disproportionately shouldered by the young.

  The novel that captured the ebullience of the Beat Generation was Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” another hit of 1957. It begins, “I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about.” Stand by for “Off the Road,” the novel that will sum up the despondency of the Beaten Generation. As we dare to hope that we have gotten over our own pandemic, someone out there must be writing it.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 22:35

• Biden Unveils New Strategy For North Korea & Wants You To Know It's "Not Trump's"
  Biden Unveils New Strategy For North Korea & Wants You To Know It’s “Not Trump’s”

  On Friday the Biden administration announced the completion of its major review of US policy toward North Korea, which revealed deep White House pessimism toward prior Trump efforts to strike a “grand bargain” with Pyongyang to persuade it to abandon its nuke program.

  Commenting on how “limited” the Biden admin sees its path forward with Kim Jong Un on this front, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday, “Our goal remains the complete de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula with a clear understanding that the efforts of the past four administrations have not achieved this objective.”

  Psaki further said to reporters while traveling aboard Air Force One that “Our policy will not focus on achieving a grand bargain, nor will it rely on strategic patience,” and further emphasized Biden will take a “practical approach” looking for diplomatic openings with the North based on “practical progress”.

  

  The Washington Post summarized the Biden strategy based on the policy review as seeking to strike “a balance between President Donald Trump’s grand-bargain, leader-to-leader diplomacy and President Barack Obama’s arm’s-length approach to the crisis,” according to an admin official.

  Ironically enough, to gain insight into the only team that ever made diplomatic “progress” on a “practical” level with the Kim regime, the Biden administration has been consulting Trump officials, as The Associated Press notes:

  Biden administration officials have been consulting with Trump administration officials who took part in the Singapore talks between Kim and Trump in June 2018 as well as a second meeting in February 2019.

  The last face-to-face talks between senior officials from the two countries were held in Sweden in October 2019, and efforts by the Biden administration to resume a dialogue have been rebuffed.

  All of this appears to essentially translate to something like… we don’t actually have a path forward but we don’t want Trump’s path.

  The plan is to offer sanctions relief for “particular steps” with the ultimate goal of full denuclearization, said a US official. “If the Trump administration was everything for everything, Obama was nothing for nothing. This is something in the middle.” 4/

  — John Hudson (@John_Hudson) April 30, 2021

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  Meanwhile, officials in Seoul see things differently after the multiple historic breakthrough face-to-face summits under Trump…

  The message is clear; in a nutshell, “don’t mess up the advancements former President Trump made with North Korea” https://t.co/DiKZ2mrOZ4

  — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 25, 2021

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  Perhaps we’re simply about to witness a few years of Kamala Harris getting on the phone with Korean officials, as has been the case with other world leaders in the opening months of Harris Biden foreign policy messaging.

  And in the meantime the North will no doubt keep up its pressure and leverage in the form of ever bigger ballistic missile tests and accompanying bellicose threats.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 22:10

• Safe Spaces Are Creating A Generation Of "Snowflake Tyrants": Dr. Everett Piper
  Safe Spaces Are Creating A Generation Of “Snowflake Tyrants”: Dr. Everett Piper

  Authored by Tom Ozimek and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times,

  Dr. Everett Piper, author of “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe But It’s Good,” told Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” Program that cancel culture’s relentless demand for safe spaces is making America’s youth emotionally fragile, less able to cope with hardship, and more prone to advocating for an ever bigger government role in allaying insecurity and providing safety at the expense of liberty.

  

  Piper, who served as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University for 17 years, said that his earlier warnings, that coddling America’s youth by acquiescing to demands for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” would lead to a sad and dangerous infantilization of the American spirit, are increasingly coming to pass.

  “The ‘snowflakes’ have graduated,” Piper said.

  “And they now have jobs at Google and Amazon and Apple and Twitter and even Major League Baseball, where they’re carrying their cancel culture, their demands for safety, into our country at large, and they’re silencing everyone who disagrees with them. This is ideological fascism, it is not intellectual freedom.”

  Piper’s complaint about “snowflakes” having a growing impact on the political tenor of major American corporations is part of what Republicans—and conservatives more broadly—have started to more vocally criticize as “woke capitalism,” or big business’s embrace of progressive positions on issues like LGBTQ and voting rights.

  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), fumed in a Sunday op-ed in The New York Post that “corporate America eagerly dumps woke, toxic nonsense into our culture, and it’s only gotten more destructive with time,” adding, “today, corporate America routinely flexes its power to humiliate politicians if they dare support traditional values at all.”

  

  Ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) questions witnesses during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

  “Multinational firms threaten boycotts over pro-life legislation. Cowardly sports leagues pull events out of states that dare pass legislation they don’t like. Firms like Delta parrot woke talking points, even as they cut deals with China, lending Beijing legitimacy and funding as it commits genocide in Xinjiang,” Rubio wrote, referring to the atrocities committed against the Uyghur community by the Chinese Communist Party, and to Major League Baseball pulling an event out of Georgia in protest against the state’s new election integrity law.

  A lobbying and communications outfit with deep ties to GOP leadership argued in a memo in mid-March that the rise of “woke CEOs embracing avant-garde social agendas” is fueling a populist surge in the Republican Party that threatens to upend its longstanding pact with big business.

  “These campaigns will be met with the same strength that any other polluter should expect,” Rubio wrote, suggesting that “woke” corporations would face Republican backlash for their activism.

  Much in the same tone, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on April 20 called for the Republican Party to reduce its financial dependence on big companies, while urging the breakup of some mega-corporations that exert too much power on American politics and seek “to run our democracy.” Already, Hawley has introduced the Bust Up Big Tech Act and the Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act, which would strengthen antitrust enforcement to pursue the breakup of dominant, anticompetitive firms.

  “A small group of woke mega-corporations control the products Americans can buy, the information Americans can receive, and the speech Americans can engage in. These monopoly powers control our speech, our economy, our country, and their control has only grown because Washington has aided and abetted their quest for endless power,” Hawley said in a statement.

  

  Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) looks on during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on voting rights on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 20, 2021. (Evelyn Kockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

  Piper said that, at its core, corporate “woke-ism” was a phenomenon closely related to and fueled by the “demand to be comfortable rather than have your character built.”

  “This trigger warning ideology, this demand for safety in the academy rather than being challenged, this demand to be comfortable rather than have your character built. This is not a recipe for maturity. It’s a recipe for childishness and perpetual adolescence,” he said.

  “We’ve set aside the higher values, the higher ideas, the higher ideals of freedom and liberty,” Piper said. “We’ve allowed our freedom to be stolen from us because as children, we want to cower in the corner and demand that we be safe. And we’ve been willing to do that at the expense of essentially everything that the western civilization has stood for, and that is individual liberty.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 21:45

• Massive Chinese Rocket Will Make Uncontrolled Reentry Within Days 
  Massive Chinese Rocket Will Make Uncontrolled Reentry Within Days 

  China successfully launched a key module of a new space station Thursday using the latest version of the Long March 5B heavy-lift booster. After completing its mission, the core stage of the rocket is still in orbit and could make an uncontrolled re-entry in the near term, according to SpaceNews. 

  The Long March 5B uses a core stage and four side boosters to launch heavy payloads into low Earth orbit. The rocket carries the payload up to orbit instead of separating at a lower altitude. This means that the Long March 5B booster is now uncontrollably tumbling back to Earth. 

  

  US military radars have detected the object and classified the rocket body as “2021-035B.” It’s a massive rocket body measuring more than 30 meters long and 5 meters wide, weighing 21 metric tons. The speed of the object is traveling at more than seven kilometers per second.

  

  Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, suggested the rocket is not under control as it makes its way back to Earth. 

  Still no TLEs for the Vega launch. One more TLE for object B from the Tianhe launch, whose slow decay rate confirms it is the CZ-5B core stage pic.twitter.com/0dVkUkcpjA

  — Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 30, 2021

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  This is the second launch for the Long March 5B, and the first occurred on May 5, 2020. Back then, the booster orbited for six days then shortly after made an uncontrolled re-entry. 

  “Where and when the new Long March 5B stage will land is impossible to predict. The decay of its orbit will increase as atmospheric drag brings it down into more denser,” said SpaceNews. 

  So, for now, look out above as an uncontrolled re-entry of a massive rocket plummets back to Earth could occur in the coming days. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 21:20

• Biden Admin Interfering In Mexico's Efforts To Block Genetically Modified Corn
  Biden Admin Interfering In Mexico’s Efforts To Block Genetically Modified Corn

  Authored by Jessica Corbett via Common Dreams,

  A coalition of 80 US agricultural, consumer, environmental, public health, and worker groups sent a letter Thursday to key figures in the Biden administration calling for them to “respect Mexico’s sovereignty and refrain from interfering with its right to enact health-protective policies”—specifically, the phaseout of the herbicide glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified corn.

  “Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador quietly rocked the agribusiness world with his New Year’s Eve decree,” Timothy A. Wise of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (ITAP) noted earlier this year. “His administration sent an even stronger aftershock two weeks later, clarifying that the government would also phase out GM corn imports in three years and the ban would include not just corn for human consumption but yellow corn destined primarily for livestock.”

  

  “Mexico imports about 30% of its corn each year, overwhelmingly from the United States,” Wise added. “Almost all of that is yellow corn for animal feed and industrial uses. López Obrador’s commitment to reducing and, by 2024, eliminating such imports reflects his administration’s plan to ramp up Mexican production as part of the campaign to increase self-sufficiency in corn and other key food crops.”

  The groups’ letter on the Mexican policies and U.S. interference—published in English (pdf) and Spanish (pdf)—is addressed to recently confirmed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Its lead author is Kristin Schafer, executive director of Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA).

  “We call on Secretary Vilsack and Trade Representative Tai, as key leaders in the new administration, to respect Mexico’s decision to protect both public health and the integrity of Mexican farming,” Schafer said in a statement. “It is completely unacceptable for U.S. public agencies to be doing the bidding of pesticide corporations like Bayer, who are solely concerned with maintaining their bottom-line profits.”

  Fernando Bejarano, director of Pesticide Action Network in Mexico, explained that “we are part of the No Maize No Country Campaign, a broad coalition of peasant organizations, nonprofit NGOs, academics, and consumers which support the presidential decree and fight for food sovereignty with the agroecological transformation of agricultural systems that guarantee the right to produce and consume healthy, nutritious food, free of pesticides and transgenics.”

  “We reject the pressure from corporations such as Bayer-Monsanto—and their CropLife trade association—which are working in both the United States and Mexico to undermine the presidential decree that phases out the use of glyphosate and transgenic corn,” Bejarano said.

  BREAKING: 80 orgs deliver letter to @USDA, @USTradeRep opposing U.S. interference in Mexico’s glyphosate phaseout https://t.co/m7M2o4sFmB

  — PAN North America (@pesticideaction) April 29, 2021

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  The letter highlights Guardian reporting on US government documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents revealed that CropLife America and Bayer AG—which acquired glyphosate-based herbicide developer Monsanto in 2018—worked with U.S. officials to lobby against Mexico’s plans.

  According to journalist Carey Gillam’s mid-February report:

  The emails reviewed by the Guardian come from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and other US agencies. They detail worry and frustration with Mexico’s position. One email makes a reference to staff within López Obrador’s administration as “vocal anti-biotechnology activists,” and another email states that Mexico’s health agency (Cofepris) is “becoming a big time problem.”

  Internal USTR communications lay out how the agrochemical industry is “pushing” for the U.S. to “fold this issue” into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal that went into effect July 1. The records then show the USTR does exactly that, telling Mexico its actions on glyphosate and genetically engineered crops raise concerns “regarding compliance” with USMCA.

  Citing discussions with CropLife, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) joined in the effort, discussing in an inter-agency email “how we could use USMCA to work through these issues.”

  The Guardian also noted correspondence involving the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

  As the letter to Vilsack and Tai points out: “This interference and pressure from the agrochemical industry is continuing. On March 22nd, industry representatives sent a letter directed to your attention as leaders of USTR and USDA, identifying Mexico’s planned phaseout of glyphosate and genetically modified corn as a ‘leading concern’ for agribusiness interests and the pesticide industry (represented by the pesticide industry’s trade group, CropLife America).”

  “We strongly object to any interference by U.S. government officials or agribusiness interests in a sovereign state’s right to enact policy measures to protect the health and well-being of its people,” the letter states. “We urge your agencies to resist and reject these ongoing efforts.”

  “We welcome the administration’s stated commitment to listening to the science, improving public health, protecting the environment, and limiting exposure to dangerous chemicals and pesticides, while holding polluters accountable and prioritizing environmental justice, particularly for communities of color and low-income communities,” it adds. “We trust that these stated commitments, as well as your dedication to ‘fairness for farmers,’ extend equally to other countries and include respect for other nations’ and peoples’ rights to self-determination.”

  Other signatories to the letter include the American Sustainable Business Council, Beyond Pesticides, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace USA, Indigenous Environmental Network, ITAP, and Organic Consumers Association.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 20:55

• Senate Intelligence Leaders Say Mystery 'Sonic Weapon' Attacks On US Officials Increasing
  Senate Intelligence Leaders Say Mystery ‘Sonic Weapon’ Attacks On US Officials Increasing

  After it was revealed Thursday that US intelligence is investigating at least two potential “directed energy” sonic attacks on White House personnel – one of which is alleged to have happened just off White House grounds – the US Senate Intelligence Committee weighed in on Friday, saying such mysterious incidents appear to be happening with greater frequency worldwide.

  Senators Mark Warner (D) and Marco Rubio (R) agreed that such microwave energy attacks have gone on for “nearly five years” and have targeted “US government personnel in Havana, Cuba and elsewhere around the world.” In a joint statement the two ranking members said, “This pattern of attacking our fellow citizens serving our government appears to be increasing. The Senate Intelligence Committee intends to get to the bottom of this,” according to Reuters. 

  

  As with the late 2016 into 2017 ‘Havana Syndrome’ attacks in which some 50 diplomatic personnel reported experiencing strange symptoms from vomiting to concussions to extreme nausea to chronic headaches, which was believed the result of some kind of undetected ‘directed energy’ weapon, the most recent incidents saw media reports speculate that Russia or China might be behind them. 

  It was starting last week that the mysterious incidents returned to national media spotlight after defense officials said they believe Russia is likely behind microwave energy weapon attacks on US troops in northeast Syria. Apparently some US troops occupying the country began reporting “flu-like symptoms” which caused the DoD to investigate possible linkage to microwave or directed energy weapons on the battlefield of Syria. Politico reported that “officials identified Russia as a likely culprit, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.”

  Despite instances of strange symptoms and even head injuries experienced by diplomatic personnel or troops abroad, no “energy weapon” has ever been found or uncovered that’s believed to have caused any of these alleged attacks. Most often US personnel report the symptoms enough time after the alleged attack took place for the “plot” and culprit to remain undetected. Naturally this has resulted in immense skepticism and pushback.

  Show Me a Directed Energy Weapon or Shut Your Anonymous National Security Official Mouth https://t.co/XpqGEiLVYo

  — lvl 46 dog-faced pony potus (@thetomzone) April 29, 2021

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  One deeply critical response to all the reporting late this week quipped: “Another day, another mostly anonymously sourced story about unidentified assailants supposedly assaulting U.S. government employees around the globe. This time, according to CNN, federal agencies are looking into something closer to home: symptoms suffered by a White House employee in Virginia and National Security Council staffer near the south lawn of the White House.”

  “Although a government report later concluded the most likely cause was instead some sort of ‘directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy’ (i.e. a microwave weapon), that conclusion was primarily based on a lack of evidence for other causes and received strong pushback from many others in the scientific community.”

  The commentary in Gizmodo pointed out further that “No hard evidence of any kind for the technology has ever been publicly presented by the US government. Reports citing government officials who suspect Russian intelligence to be involved have largely been anonymous and buoyed primarily by rumors the Russian government may have resumed Soviet-era research into experimental weapons.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 20:30

• McConnell Urges Biden Administration To Drop "Divisive, Radical" 1619 Project From Grant Programs
  McConnell Urges Biden Administration To Drop “Divisive, Radical” 1619 Project From Grant Programs

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  Thirty-seven Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday penned a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging him to remove the “1619 Project” from federal grant programs, arguing it skews American history for divisive political ends.

  “Our nation’s youth do not need activist indoctrination that fixates solely on past flaws and splits our nation into divided camps. Taxpayer-supported programs should emphasize the shared civic virtues that bring us together, not push radical agendas that tear us apart,” McConnell and his GOP colleagues wrote in the letter (pdf).

  The Republicans expressed concern that the Biden administration is seeking to prioritize funding educational programs that incorporate the ideas of the 1619 Project and critical race theory into their teaching of U.S. history and civics, reorienting bipartisan programs “away from their intended purposes toward a politicized and divisive agenda.”

  

  In a proposed new rule released April 19, the Education Department outlined new priority criteria for a $5.3 million American History and Civics Education grant, as well as exemplary materials for K-12 educators to use. Specifically, the Education Department cited the “1619 Project,” and critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi’s “antiracism” as leading examples for the kind of content it wants to use taxpayer dollars to promote in history and civics classrooms across the country.

  The “1619 Project,” inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, attempts to cast the Atlantic slave trade as the dominant factor in the founding of America instead of ideals such as individual liberty and natural rights. The initiative has been widely panned by historians and political scientists, with some critics calling it a bid to rewrite U.S. history through a left-wing lens. Some historians have criticized the project over inaccuracies such as the American Revolution having been fought to preserve the institution of slavery rather than for seeking independence from Britain.

  “Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it. Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil,” McConnell and his colleagues wrote.

  The Pulitzer Center, an advocate of the “1619 Project,” provides a series of lesson plans for use in classrooms and says the project “challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date,” referring to the date of 1619.

  That’s in contrast to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the traditional date when the foundational principles of the United States were framed.

  Some of the activities for children include directing them to read an essay by New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, which contains the central assertion that “the year 1619 is as foundational to the American story as 1776 … black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true ‘founding fathers.’”

  The curriculum urges students to read the essay and consider such issues as, “What evidence can you see for how ‘some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy?’”

  Thomas Mackaman, a history professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, told The Wall Street Journal that, in his view, the American Revolution didn’t establish a “slavocracy,” as Hannah-Jones suggests, but it instead “brought slavery in for questioning in a way that had never been done before” by “raising universal human equality as a fundamental principle.”

  In their letter, the Republicans characterized the “1619 Project” as “putting ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy,” arguing that it serves to “double down on divisive, radical, and historically-dubious buzzwords and propaganda.”

  “Actual, trained, credentialed historians with diverse political views have debunked the project’s many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution,” the letter states.

  The Republicans concluded their letter with a call for the Education Department to “withdraw these Proposed Priorities and refocus on civic education and American history programs that will empower future generations of citizens to continue making our nation the greatest force for good in human history.”

  According to the Education Department, the reasoning behind its choices of examples is President Joe Biden’s executive order that aimed to advance “racial equity” and better support “underserved communities.”

  “The Department recognizes that COVID-19—with its disproportionate impact on communities of color—and the ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism have highlighted the urgency of improving racial equity throughout our society, including in our education system,” reads the Education Department document, which is undergoing a 30-day public review period in the Federal Register.

  The proposed rule marks the Biden administration’s latest move to teach American students that historical racism remains deeply embedded in today’s America. On his first day in the White House, Biden dissolved the Trump administration’s advisory 1776 Commission and tossed its first and last report, which called for a return to “patriotic education” focusing on how generations of Americans overcame racism to live up to the nation’s founding ideals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 20:05

• "Bernie Sanders Has Won": Munger Says Millennials Will Have "A Hell Of A Time Getting Rich Compared To Our Generation"
  “Bernie Sanders Has Won”: Munger Says Millennials Will Have “A Hell Of A Time Getting Rich Compared To Our Generation”

  The Berkshire Hathaway Annual shareholder meeting which, saw a return of both Warren Buffett and his perpetual sidekick, Charlie Munger, to the podium after a one year covid hiatus, is over after almost six grueling hours of back and forth between the two billionaires, Becky Quick, and a cast of supporting characters, most of whom are probably also billionaires. We will do a full post-mortem shortly of all the highlights, but there were a handful of funny episodes (usually involving the traditionally outspoken Charlie Munger) as well as a selection of cringeworthy moments (also involving Munger).

  One of these involved a lengthy discussion of how investing has changed in the past year, specifically with the flood of new, young retail traders pursuing some extremely crappy stocks whose outperformance has blown away Berkshire A shares with their modest 19% return.

  However, instead of offering some support to these newly-hatched capitalists who dream of achieving Buffett’s success, however on a far more truncated timeframe, Charlie Munger had some stark words of discouragement when it comes to the next generation seeking to master the stock market.

  “Bernie Sanders has basically won,” the 97-year old said. “He did it by accident, but he won.”

  Munger then followed up with a sad truth which the largest US generation will hate to hear: “the millennial generation is going to have a hell of a time getting rich compared to our generation” the billionaire said, referring to its engagement with the stock market, where for now at least, millennials appear to be winning but Munger is confident that it will all end in tears.

  Munger then slammed the retail investing euphoria and froth seen across multiple assets, saying we have a lot to be ashamed of for current conditions. “It’s not just stupid, it’s shameful,” he says describing what’s going on.

  Buffett also piped up and countered that it’s not that shameful for the people who are doing it — gambling’s a human instinct, to which Munger then clarifies that he doesn’t mind the poor that gamble but he doesn’t like the professionals that push them into it.

  Buffett then quoted Keynes about speculators and bubbles, saying we’ve had a lot of people in the casino in the past year, where people are day trading and basically gambling (adding there’s nothing wrong with gamblers). The gambling impulse is very strong worldwide and sometimes it gets an enormous shove. But Buffett also warns that gambling “creates its own reality for a while and no one’s going to tell you when the clock strikes 12 and it all turns to pumpkin and mice.”

  Asked how Berkshire’s performance compares to some of the supernova stocks in the past year, the billionaire said that when the competition is playing foolishly with other peoples’ money or their own, they’re going to beat Berkshire… the implication of course being that when everything crashes, Buffett will eventually come out on top again.

  Watch a replay of the full shareholder meeting here. Considering the ages of the two hosts, it may well be the final one for either (or both) of them.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 19:40

• When Politicians Panicked
  When Politicians Panicked

  Authored by John Tamny via TheMarket.ch,

  Let’s travel back in time to March of 2020. It was then that predictions of mass death related to the new coronavirus started to gain currency. One study, conducted by Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson, indicated that U.S. deaths alone would exceed 2 million.

  The above number is often used as justification for the initial lockdowns. «We knew so little» is the excuse, and with so many deaths expected, can anyone blame local, state and national politicians for panicking? The answer is a resounding yes.

  To see why, imagine if Ferguson had predicted 30 million American deaths, and hundreds of millions more around the world. Imagine the global fear, which is precisely the point. The more threatening a virus is presumed to be, the more superfluous government force is. Really, who needs to be told to be careful if a failure to be could reasonably result in death?

  Death predictions aside, the other justification bruited in March of 2020 was that brief lockdowns would flatten the hospitalization curve. In this case, the taking of freedom allegedly made sense as a way of protecting hospitals from a massive inflow of sick patients that they wouldn’t have been able to handle, and that would have resulted in a public health catastrophe. Such a view similarly vandalizes reason. Think about it.

  Really, who needs to be forced to avoid behavior that might result in hospitalization? Better yet, who needs to be forced to avoid behavior that might result in hospitalization at a time when doctors and hospitals would be so short staffed as to not be able to take care of admitted patients?

  Translated for those who need it, the dire predictions made over a year ago about the corona-horrors that awaited us don’t justify the lockdowns; rather they should remind the mildly sentient among us of how cruel and pointless they were. The common sense that we’re to varying degrees born with, along with our genetic predisposition to survive, dictates that a fear of hospitalization or death would have caused us to take virus-avoidance precautions that would have well exceeded any rules foisted on us by politicians. Goodness, masks and hand sanitizers were selling out in Germany at a time when politicians were still downplaying the virus.

  Vital Signals Get Lost

  To which some will reply with something along the lines of «Not everyone has common sense. In truth, there are lots of dumb, low-information types out there who would have disregarded all the warnings. Lockdowns weren’t necessary for the wise among us; rather they were essential precisely because there are so many who aren’t wise.» Actually, such a response is the best argument of all against lockdowns.

  Indeed, it cannot be stressed enough that «low information» types are the most crucial people of all during periods of uncertainty. Precisely because they’ll be unaware of, misunderstand, or reject the warnings of the experts, their actions will produce essential information that the rule-followers never could. In not doing what the allegedly wise among us will, low information citizens will, by their contrarian actions, teach us what behavior is most associated with avoidance of sickness and death, and more important, what behavior is associated with it.

  One-size-fits-all decrees from politicians don’t enhance health outcomes as much as they blind us to the actions (or lack thereof) that would protect us the most, or not. Freedom on its own is a virtue, plus it produces crucial information.

  

  But wait, some will say, «how elitist to let some people act as Guinea Pigs for the rest of us.» Such a statement is naïve. Heroin and cocaine are illegal, but people still use both. Thank goodness they do. How could we know what threatens us, and what doesn’t, without the rebellious?

  Economic Growth Is the Best Medicine

  Still, there’s the question of «elitism,» or comment about it. The view here is that the lockdowns were the cruelest form of elitism, by far. The implied statement about the lockdowns was that those who had the temerity to have jobs that were destinations would have to lose them. The lockdowns destroyed tens of millions of destination jobs, destroyed or severely impaired millions of businesses, not to mention the hundreds of millions around the world who were rushed into starvation, poverty or both as a consequence of nail-biting politicians in rich countries that chose to take a break from reality. Talk about elitist actions, plus the very idea of wrecking the economy as a virus-mitigation strategy will go down in history as one of the most abjectly stupid policy responses the world has ever endured.

  That’s the case because economic growth is easily the biggest enemy death and disease have ever known, while poverty is easily the biggest killer. Economic growth produces the resources necessary so that doctors and scientists can come up with answers to what needlessly sickens us or shortens our lives altogether.

  If anyone doubts the above truth, it’s useful to travel back in time to the 19th century. A broken femur then brought with it a 1 out of 3 chance of death, while those lucky enough to survive the break had only one option: amputation. A child born in the 19th century had as good a chance of dying as living. A broken hip was a death sentence, cancer most certainly was, but most didn’t die of cancer because tuberculosis and pneumonia got them first.

  So what happened? Why don’t we get sick or die as easily as we used to? The answer is economic growth. Business titans like Johns Hopkins and John D. Rockefeller created enormous wealth, only to direct a lot of it toward medical science. What used to kill us became yesterday’s news.

  Even though freedom is its own wondrous virtue, even though freedom produces essential information that protects us, and even though free people produce the resources without which diseases kill with sickening rapidity, panicky politicians erased it in 2020 on the supposition that personal and economic desperation were the best solution for a spreading coronavirus. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the political class in 2020.

  *  *  *

  John Tamny is Vice President at FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of the new book «When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason.»

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 19:15

• "Extremely Successful" – World's Largest Aircraft Hits Skies For Second Time 
  “Extremely Successful” – World’s Largest Aircraft Hits Skies For Second Time 

  Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, founded by the late billionaire Paul G. Allen, flew the world’s largest aircraft named ‘Roc’ on Thursday for a second time. 

  “Today’s flight, at first review, has appeared extremely successful,” Stratolaunch’s chief operating officer Zachary Krevor told reporters. “We accomplished all test points as desired, we have not seen anything anomalous, and we are very pleased with the condition of the aircraft upon landing.”

  The Roc is a dual fuselage design and has a 385 feet wingspan. The purpose of the aircraft is to air-launch rockets into low Earth orbit. 

  

  The second flight was initially scheduled for April 19 but was terminated due to unfavorable weather. The last time Roc flew was two years ago, in April 2019. Back then, the airplane flew for 2.5 hours, achieved a maximum speed of 189 mph, and soared to an altitude of 17,000 feet. The first flight allowed pilots to evaluate the airworthiness of the aircraft. 

  On Thursday’s test, Roc reached an altitude of 14,000 feet at a maximum speed of 199 mph before landing successfully back at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California. 

  We are airborne! pic.twitter.com/6jTkkqfjKd

  — Stratolaunch (@Stratolaunch) April 29, 2021

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

  Recap from yesterday. Roc flew for 3 hours and 14 minutes at a max altitude of 14,000 ft. and a max speed of 178 kts. Beautiful shot from our chase plane. More tests in the works. pic.twitter.com/Ib9mYnqY1Z

  — Stratolaunch (@Stratolaunch) May 1, 2021

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

  Currently performing various flight test maneuvers. pic.twitter.com/u9uMWzfrEK

  — Stratolaunch (@Stratolaunch) April 29, 2021

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

  Just completely a low approach over the runway. pic.twitter.com/UCEINXBQBi

  — Stratolaunch (@Stratolaunch) April 29, 2021

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

  “We’re very pleased with how the Stratolaunch aircraft performed today, and we are equally excited about how much closer the aircraft is to launching its first hypersonic vehicle,” Krevor said. 

  If all goes well, the first air-launch test of a hypersonic vehicle named “Talon-A” could occur as early as next year. 

  

  Sratolaunch’s activities may soon be of interest to the US military. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 18:50

• Huge California Fire Last Year Was Arson Meant To Conceal Woman's Murder, Officials Say
  Huge California Fire Last Year Was Arson Meant To Conceal Woman’s Murder, Officials Say

  Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,

  A deadly 2020 wildfire in Northern California that killed two people and was one of the largest fires in state history was actually the work of a man who committed arson to conceal his murder of a woman, according to authorities.

  

  Victor Serriteno, 29, was arrested on Wednesday following an eight-month-long investigation by the Solano County Sheriff’s Office into the fire.

  Douglas Mai, 82, and Leon Bone, 64, were killed in the Markley Fire which began on August 18 near Lake Berryessa.

  Serriteno was arrested a month later and was held in jail without bail for the death of Priscilla Castro, 32, whose burned body was found on Sept. 2 near the same lake.

  Serriteno pleaded not guilty to her murder.

  Castro disappeared on Aug. 16 after she failed to return home following a date with Serriteno in Vacaville, according to authorities.

  The two met through an online dating app.

  An investigation by the Sheriff’s Office and CalFire officials has concluded that the fire was an arson and the deaths are now officially considered homicides.

  [ZH: So not ‘global warming’ then?]

  Within days, the Markley Fire merged with the Hennessey Fire and became a part of the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, the fifth-largest fire in state history.

  “Based on an extensive 8-month long investigation, we believe Serriteno deliberately set the Markley Fire in an attempt to conceal this crime,” said Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara at a news conference Wednesday.

  Serriteno will now face two additional counts of murder with special circumstances and arson charges, including committing arson during an official state of emergency.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 18:25

• "There Is No Shortage?" Train Loads Of Lumber Stacked As Far As The Eye Can See 
  “There Is No Shortage?” Train Loads Of Lumber Stacked As Far As The Eye Can See 

  One of the most important things we’ve learned over the past year is the vulnerability of global supply chains. Most notably, supply disruptions of lumber have catapulted prices to the moon. 

  The narrative touted in the public domain is that COVID-19 sparked a dramatic underestimate in capacity by sawmills early in the pandemic as the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to zero, sparking a housing boom. The influx of demand outpaced supply and has caused lumber prices to jump 340% from a year ago, according to Random Lengths. 

  In terms of output, the lumber industry is controlled by just a handful of firms, including Weyerhaeuser Co., Georgia-Pacific LLC, West Fraser Timber Co., Ltd., among others, which makes it easier for capacity to be controlled. 

  Maybe there’s more to the lumber story that we’re not being told and should be investigated more in-depth by journalists. 

  YouTube account “Ken’s Karpentry” recently published a video of “huge quantities” of lumber sitting and not in lumberyards. The exact location of the video is not mentioned but could be near Lyndonville, Vermont. 

  

  The narrator in the video, perhaps it’s Ken, but we’re not sure, explains that a train depot has been transformed into a makeshift lumber yard. He said train loads of lumber coming out of Canada are offloaded here and then transported by tractor-trailer to lumberyards across the country.  

  

  He said, “I am astounded by how much lumber is here, and I am wondering why there is such a problem at lumber yards.” He added the facility stretches 3/8 of a mile. 

  The video has more than 300,000 views and over 1,300 comments in just a few weeks. 

  One person said, “Gee, could it be to keep the price gouging and profits up?? This whole excuse that “it’s due to covid” b*llsh!t has got to stop!” 

  “It’s too bad there are no investigative reporters left in the world. This lumber story needs to be investigated and exposed,” some else said. 

  Another person said:

  “This is what happens when a few companies own the entire market.” 

  And this person makes an interesting point:

  “There is no lumber shortage. It’s just Weyerhouse and GP wanting to drive up profits.” 

  So could the lumber industry, controlled just by a few players, be pulling the playbook straight out of the diamond industry to limit supply to drive up prices?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 18:00

• Escaping Serfdom
  Escaping Serfdom

  Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

  The concept of government is that the people grant to a small group of individuals the ability to establish and maintain controls over them. The inherent flaw in such a concept is that any government will invariably and continually expand upon its controls, resulting in the ever-diminishing freedom of those who granted them the power.

  

  When I was a schoolboy, I was taught that the feudal system of the Middle Ages consisted of serfs tilling small plots of land that belonged to a king or lord.

  The serfs lived a meagre life of bare subsistence and were subject to the tyranny of the king or lord whose men would ride into their village periodically and take most of the few coins the serfs had earned by their toil.

  The lesson I was meant to learn from this was that I should be grateful that, in the modern world, I live in a state of freedom from tyranny, and as an adult, I would pay only that level of tax that could be described as “fair”.

  Later in life, I was to learn that, in the actual feudal system, some land was owned by noblemen, some by common men. The commoners typically farmed their own land, whilst the noblemen parcelled out their land to farmers, in trade for a portion of the product of their labours.

  As a part of that bargain, the nobleman would pay for an army of professional soldiers to protect both the farms and the farmers. Significantly, unlike today, no farmer was required to defend the land himself, as it was not his.

  There was no exact standard as to what the noblemen would charge a farmer under this agreement, but the general standard was “one day’s labour in ten”.

  This was not an amount imposed or regulated by any government. The nobleman could charge as much as he wished; however, if he raised his rate significantly, he would find that the farmers would leave and move to another nobleman’s farm. The 10% was, in essence, a rate that evolved over time through a free market.

  Modern Serfdom

  Today, of course, if most countries levied an income tax of a mere 10%, there would be dancing in the streets. And the days of one simple straightforward tax are long gone.

  Today, the average person may expect to pay property tax (even if he is a renter), sales tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, inheritance tax, and so on. The laundry list of taxes is so long and complex that it is no longer possible to compute what the total tax level actually is for anyone.

  And to this, we add the hidden tax of inflation. In the US, for example, the Federal Reserve has, over the last hundred years, devalued the dollar by 98%, a hefty tax indeed. And the US is not alone in this.

  Only 50 years ago, the average man might work a 40-hour week to support a wife who remained at home raising the children. He often had a mortgage on his home but might have it paid off in ten years. He paid cash for nearly everything else that he and his family owned or consumed.

  Today, both husband and wife generally must be employed full time. In spite of this, they can’t afford as many children as their parents could, and they generally remain in debt their entire lives, even after retirement. This is significant inflation by any measure.

  In contrast, in the Middle Ages, the cost of goods might remain the same throughout the entire lifetime of an individual.

  In light of the above, the 10% that was paid by the serfs is beginning to look very good indeed.

  However, the great majority of people in the First World are likely to say, “What can you do; it’s the same all over the world. You might as well get used to it.”

  Well, no, actually, it’s not.

  There are many governmental and economic systems out there and many are quite a bit more “serf friendly” than those in the major countries.

  Countries such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Bahamas have no income tax. Further, some have no property tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, inheritance tax, and so on.

  So how is this possible?

  The OECD countries state that it is largely accomplished through money laundering, but this is not the case. In fact, low-tax jurisdictions are known to have some of the most stringent banking laws in the world.

  The success of these jurisdictions is actually quite simple. Most of them are small. They have small populations and therefore need only a small government. Yet each jurisdiction can accommodate large numbers of investors from overseas. This results in a very high level of income per capita.

  But unlike large countries, the money that is deposited or invested there is overseas money, so it is not captive. Investors can transfer it out overnight if need be.

  So, even if the politicians are no better than those in larger countries (generally, they are of the same ilk), they’re aware that, like the noblemen of old, if they attempt to impose taxation, the business will dry up quickly.

  In fact, such a free market dictates that the jurisdictions keep on their toes and keep trying to outdo their competitors by being more investment friendly.

  Therefore, the politicians in these countries, who might be only too happy to promise entitlements to their constituents, then tax them to the hilt in order to pay for the entitlements, are kept restrained by their own system.

  Are there downsides to living in a low-tax jurisdiction? Yes.

  As most of them are small but require a very high standard of living in order to attract investors, they must import virtually all goods needed by residents. This means a higher cost of all goods, as compared to the cost in a country that produces such goods. However, the wage level is also higher, which tends to balance out the equation.

  But there are also upsides.

  Those who move to such a jurisdiction find that after the first year there (when the basics such as cars, televisions, etc., have been paid for), all further income that has been saved from taxation is beginning to get deposited in the bank.

  At some point, the deposit level becomes great enough that investment becomes advisable. And as low-tax jurisdictions tend to be naturally prosperous, there is generally no limit to the opportunities for investment within the jurisdiction.

  There is a further benefit to living in a low-tax jurisdiction that tends to become apparent over time. Any government that depends on major investments from overseas parties must, of necessity, be non-intrusive and non-invasive. Such a government stays out of people’s business, eschews electronic monitoring and most certainly is not given to SWAT teams crashing down doors for imagined wrongdoing.

  Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

  He was correct, but the level of tax can vary greatly from one country to the next. And just as important, the level of government intervention into the affairs of its citizenry varies considerably. In a country where the level of tax is low, the quality of life is generally correspondingly high.

  A thousand years ago, noblemen, from time to time, became overly confident in their ability to keep the serfs on the farmland and demanded taxes beyond the customary “one day’s labour in ten”. When they did, the serfs of old often voted with their feet and simply moved. Today, this is still possible.

  If the reader presently contributes more than one day’s labour in ten to his government, he may wish to consider voting with his feet.

  *  *  *

  The political and economic climate is constantly changing… and not always for the better. Obtaining the political diversification benefits of a second passport is crucial to ensuring you won’t fall victim to a desperate government. That’s why Doug Casey and his team just released a new complementary report, “The Easiest Way to a Second Passport.” It contains all the details about one of the easiest countries to obtain a second passport from. Click here to download it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 17:35

• How Costco Is Masking A 14% Price Jump With Shrinkflation
  How Costco Is Masking A 14% Price Jump With Shrinkflation

  The oldest trick in the retailer book is back.

  We have previously written about shrinkflation – the “creative” masking of higher prices whereby retailers sell a materially lower amount of products for the ‘same’ price, covering up what is often a significant price increase on a “per unit” basis (see “”Shrinkflation” – How Food Companies Implement Massive Price Hikes Without You Ever Noticing“, “Shrinkflation Hits The UK: Toblerone Shrinks By 10%, Price Stays The Same“, Shrinkflation Intensifies – Stealth Inflation As Thousands of Food Products Shrink In Size, Not Price), and we have a feeling that in light of the recent surge in commodity costs and food prices, we will be writing about it a whole lot more in the coming weeks.

  Take Costco, which as The Bear Traps report notes, is now charging the same price for paper towels but the roll has 20 fewer sheets. TBT refers to a recent post in a Red Flag Deals message board, where a member makes the following observation:

  Costco paper towels. Same price as the previous several times buying them. Now with 20 fewer sheets.

  140/160= .875

  

  The stealthy decline of 20 sheets per roll of towels from 160 to 140 for the “same price” is the functional equivalent of 14.3% inflation, and as TBT notes, “In our experience, only potato chip companies can get away with selling a half empty package.”

  Of course, once companies realize they can get away with such shrinkflation – and they will because as a RFD member responds…

  I tried telling the clerk at Costco about this, and they said “who cares, it’s just 20 sheets.”

  Will be the typical response.

  … the obvious next step will be to no longer bother with such attempts at masking double digit inflation, and to hike prices outright until there is an actual decline in supply, or as TBT predicts, “this is the precursor to real inflation next.” And sure enough, names from consumer giants from Kimberly-Clark to Clorox, Procter & Gamble, as well as food makers such as Hormel, JM Smucker, General Mills, Skippy and Hershey are already doing just that.

  But don’t worry, according to the Chairman, “it’s transitory.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 17:10

• Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its "Perilous Trifecta" …And Bungles The Cure
  Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its “Perilous Trifecta” …And Bungles The Cure

  Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite, and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed. In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.

  

  The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires, and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness. The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.

  Residents, property owners, and small businesses—who pay an enormous premium to live and work in San Francisco—have begun to erupt in frustration. Citizens tell pollsters that homelessness is the city’s most pressing issue and business owners tell pollsters that “conditions on [the] streets have progressively deteriorated.”

  

  Mayor London Breed of San Francisco: Trying to address the city’s problems by expanding institutions the chronically homeless keep cycling through.

  City Hall has begun coming to terms with the crisis. Mayor London Breed recently hired a director of mental health reform, Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, who compiled a statistical summary of the problem. People have long known that San Francisco has a homelessness problem, but Nigusse Bland discovered a population-within-a-population—the so-called “perilous trifecta”: 

  4,000 men and women who are simultaneously homeless, psychotic, and addicted to alcohol, meth, or heroin.

  About 70 % of them have been on the streets for more than five years; 40% have been on the streets for more than 13 years.

  This is the city’s fundamental predicament.

  How do you help people in the grips of the perilous trifecta? What interventions could make progress? Where do social workers even start?

  It’s almost impossible to understate the depths of this challenge.

  

  Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, city mental health director: Identified 4,000 suffering from the “perilous trifecta” of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction

  San Francisco’s current policy toward the perilous trifecta can be best described as compassionate neglect. Every year, the chronically homeless cycle through the institutions of the socialized state, from hospitals, jails, and shelters, to sobering centers, case management appointments, and 72-hour psychiatric holds. Local government provides enough to meet an outward standard of compassion, but not enough to alter the trajectories of the homeless. The result is a disaster, which has drawn criticism across the political spectrum. Progressives are demanding more funding for existing programs, while moderates are bewildered by the eternal recurrence of tents, needles, and feces in their neighborhoods.

  The current policy regime can be divided into three domains — the hospital, the jail, and the subsidized apartment.

  Together, these institutions represent the new orthodoxy of the modern urban approach: Homelessness is reduced to a set of social-scientific variables, to be manipulated through the intensive application of the medical and social sciences.

  As part of its medical system, San Francisco currently spends more than $255 million per year on mental health and substance abuse programs, many of which cater to the city’s homeless. In a recent audit of the behavioral health system, the city’s budget and legislative analyst found that 70% of all psychiatric emergency visits involved a homeless individual and that 66% of all visitors had co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. In total, the top 5% of “super-users,” totaling 2,239 adults, the majority of whom fall into the perilous trifecta, accounted for 52% of total systemwide service use. Doctors at San Francisco General see the same set of patients so frequently that they have developed an entire vocabulary to describe the population that circles in and out of their doors.

  The jail system is next. According to the San Francisco County Jail, the homeless account for 40% of all inmates — despite being less than 1% of the city’s overall population, and even after San Francisco decriminalized many quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness. Again, the perilous trifecta looms large. Inmates with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders are more likely to be homeless and more likely to be charged with a violent crime compared to the general jail population. The pithy observation about deinstitutionalization is largely true: The people who might have once lived in the state mental hospital have simply been transferred to the county jail.

  

  Neither hospitals, jails, nor public housing have solved San Francisco’s homelessness epidemic.

  Finally, the public-housing complex is the new great hope, and fastest-growing public expenditure, for the homeless. Like many major West Coast cities, San Francisco has gone all in on “Housing First,” the theory that the municipal government must provide free housing for the homeless in perpetuity, with no expectations of sobriety, work, or participation in rehabilitation programs. For a city with a recurring homeless population of 18,000, this is an enormous expense. In 2019, San Francisco spent $285 million on shelters and “permanent supportive housing,” plus $65 million on traditional public housing, vouchers, and SRO units. At the same time, voters passed an additional $600 million bond to build “affordable housing.” But still, 67% of the Bay Area’s homeless are unsheltered.

  Even as they tout “evidence-based interventions,” “data-driven solutions,” and “best practices,” leaders in San Francisco have recognized the failure of the current system and proposed an ambitious reform agenda. However, in broad terms, this agenda only deepens its dependency on the social-scientific model and doubles-down on its worst assumptions. It can be summarized this way: deinstitutionalization, destigmatization, and decriminalization.

  In 2019, Mayor Breed and Supervisors Matt Haney and Hillary Ronen championed legislation for sweeping “mental health reform.” The plan would increase total spending on mental health and substance abuse to $500 million per year, and prioritize the homeless, create a central service center, and pressure private insurers to cover more costs. When it passed unanimously through the Board of Supervisors, Ronen celebrated it as a progressive milestone: “We just created the first universal mental health and substance use system in the country.”

  

  San Francisco’s homeless problem can be traced back to the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill after Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel and this subsequent film.

  But this universality is only a theoretical formulation. The legislation does not include a funding source and, more important, simply expands the existing behavioral health system rather than reforming it. For the perilous trifecta, the problem is often not access to services, but participation in services. According to the latest one-night count, only 17% of the homeless reported using mental health services and only 11% reported using substance abuse services. For the unsheltered population, these figures are almost certainly lower.

  The problem is that members of the perilous trifecta are the least likely to seek services. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, approximately half the patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suffer from anosognosia, which is the inability to understand their own disorder, often leading to a refusal to enter treatment and take medication. Adding a serious addiction to methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and violent behavior, only compounds the problem.

  In the past, the solution to this paradox was compulsion. The state took custody of the “gravely disabled” and treated them in long-term residential institutions. However, with the exposure of civil rights abuses and the release of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the United States gradually dismantled its mental health system, reducing the number of mental health beds per capita by an astonishing 95% between 1955 and 2016. Today, California has fewer beds per capita than the national average, with San Francisco having only 219 adult psychiatric beds available at a given time — drastically insufficient for the number of people in need.

  Although Mayor Breed has tentatively moved towards a return to short-term “conservatorships,” a form of involuntary commitment for individuals who present a grave danger to themselves or others, the plan has neither the scope nor the force to significantly reduce the numbers of the perilous trifecta. Because of pressure from disability activists and the ACLU, which have called conservatorships “the greatest deprivation of civil liberties aside from the death penalty,” the plan is limited to individuals who have had eight or more involuntary psychiatric holds in the past year, which, in practice, would mean less than 100 people citywide.

  Mayor Breed did not return a request for comment.

  

  San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney faces recall efforts in response to rising crime.

  Many progressive socialists argue that there is too much force in the system, not too little. San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, took office in January 2020 pledging to substantially reduce the county jail population, end cash bail, and decriminalize quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness, including public camping, drug consumption, prostitution, and public urination. Boudin contends that the criminal justice system in San Francisco is a domain of persistent inequalities – locking up a disproportionate number of poor and minority residents – and has become the dumping ground for the addicted and mentally ill. Rather than continue this system, Boudin argues, the city must “implement a comprehensive transformation of the criminal justice system to decriminalize and treat mental illness, housing instability, and substance use as public health issues rather than criminal justice issues.”

  Boudin’s formulation does align with a single-day snapshot of the San Francisco County Jail population from 2016, which found that 48% of inmates were African American, 70% self-reported substance abuse, and 10% were deemed to have a serious mental illness. However, the narrative that the city is somehow targeting non-violent drug offenders and “criminalizing homeless” is specious. The snapshot also shows that 68% of inmates were arrested for violence, weapons possession, and serious felonies. Contrary to progressive rhetoric, only 4% were arrested for drug crimes — a vanishingly small number of people for a city in the midst of a heroin and methamphetamine epidemic.

  

  Authorities have enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin.

  The hard reality is that the perilous trifecta has fueled a boom in property crime and public disorder. In 2019, at least 1,120 individuals in the trifecta spent time in the county jail. Although the homicide rate remained static during Boudin’s first year office, burglaries have soared in a city that already had one of the highest property crime rates in the nation, while authorities enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, which is a central hub for the homeless population.

  The nexus between homelessness, addiction, and crime is clear: According to city and federal data, virtually all of the unsheltered homeless are unemployed, while at the same time, those with serious addictions spend an average of $1,256 to $1,834 a month on methamphetamine and heroin. With no legitimate source of income, many addicts support their habit through a “hustle,” which can include fraud, prostitution, car break-ins, burglaries of residences and business, and other forms of theft.

  Boudin’s plan to decriminalize such property offenses – the mirror opposite of the low-tolerance “broken windows” approach adopted in the late 1980s as crime rates began historic declines – has contributed to the sense that he is not holding criminals accountable. In 2019, the city had an incredible 25,667 “smash-and-grabs,” as thieves sought valuables and other property from cars to sell on the black market. The following year, rather than attempt to prevent or even disincentivize this crime, Boudin has proposed a $1.5 million fund to pay for auto glass repair, arguing that it “will help put money into San Francisco jobs and San Francisco businesses.” In literal terms, Boudin is subsidizing broken windows, under the notion that it can be transformed into a job-creation program.

  Boudin did not return a request for comment.

  Some San Franciscans are pushing back. Earlier this year, a group of residents and business owners launched a recall effort targeting Boudin, arguing that his policies have enabled crime and not done enough to protect victims.           

  The final plank of San Francisco’s policy platform is “destigmatization.” Public health experts in the city have gradually abandoned recovery and sobriety as the ideal outcome, preferring the limited goal of “harm reduction.” In a recent task force report on methamphetamine, the San Francisco Public Health Department noted that meth users “are likely to experience high levels of stigma and rejection in their personal and social lives,” which are “often reinforced by language and media portrayals depicting individuals who use alongside images of immorality, having chaotic lives, and perpetual use.”

  On the surface, this is a strange contention. If San Francisco’s perilous trifecta is any guide, methamphetamine use is heavily correlated with chaotic lives, perpetual drug abuse, crimes against others, and various transgressions against traditional morality. The harm reductionists’ argument, however, rests on the belief that addiction is an involuntary brain disease, akin to Alzheimer’s or dementia. In this view, addiction is better seen as a disability, and any stigma associated with it is therefore an act of ignorance and cruelty. According to the Department of Public Health, the goal of harm reduction policy is to reduce this unjustified stigma and focus public policy on “non-abstinence-based residential treatment programs,” “supervised injection services,” “trauma-informed sobering site[s],” and “training for staff on how to engage marginalized or vulnerable communities in ways that do not perpetuate trauma or stigma.”

  In practice, the task force recommendations would create an entire infrastructure to service addiction, rather than to reduce it. Although proponents of harm reduction claim the mantle of compassion, it’s a fatalistic theory. It assumes that most people cannot recover from serious addiction and, therefore, the social obligation is to provide the space and resources for addicts to pursue their own ends, which, for 40% of the perilous trifecta population, means 13 or more years in and out of homelessness. Activists have suggested that addicts can “reduce harms” by “[using] indoors instead of on the street,” “reducing how much [they are] using,” “transitioning from injecting to smoking,” and “continuing to use one type of drug but quitting another drug.” But in the face of the pathological overload of the perilous trifecta, these recommendations are negligently naïve, relegating a large portion of the homeless to a lifetime of chaos, sickness, and despair.

  In the long term, the real danger of destigmatization is that it would lead to the normalization of serious addiction and its consequences. In San Francisco, progressives have attempted to normalize the worst aspects of street homelessness, minimizing the drug use, toxic waste, psychotic episodes, and related crimes; they have blurred the lines between sickness and health, madness and sanity. Moreover, without a trace of irony, they have weaponized destigmatization itself, stigmatizing anyone who opposes the breakdown of public order as “fascists” and “homeless haters.” 

  

  An entire social media community has arisen documenting the descent of San Francisco’s streets. Twitter/homelessphilosopher/@PoopScoopSF/@sfstreets1/ @PowelMason415/@CleanUpWestSoma/@EsmeAlaki/@missmrm/@markdfabela

  The implicit wager of San Francisco’s policy is that the social-scientific apparatus can rescue people faster than the perilous trifecta expands its ranks. But the evidence suggests the opposite: that San Francisco has become a magnet for the troubled homeless. Methamphetamine deaths are up nearly 400% over the past five years; fentanyl overdoses doubled between 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, the socialized state has reached a point of near exhaustion. First responders, police officers, and emergency room nurses are burning out. Psychiatrists at San Francisco General Hospital despair about the mass migration of out-of-state residents in search of the “San Francisco Special”: “housing, a psychiatrist, case manager, primary care provider, and transfer of Medicaid or general assistance.”

  The political class has insisted on greater control over the corporations, developers, and landlords, while deregulating life at the bottom. The result has been a deepening inequality, and an even more anarchic world for the poor. There is an entire social media community of mostly anonymous accounts who document the squalor of the encampments and psychotic episodes in the streets; they are the last resistance to the normalization of the perilous trifecta, and maintain their anonymity, it seems, out of fear of retribution. It’s a dark reality, but perhaps a warning of what’s to come.

  In the end, San Francisco finds itself fighting a monster. “Homelessness isn’t just a problem; it’s a symptom,” says its mayor. “The symptom of unaffordable housing, of income inequality, of institutional racism, of addiction, untreated illness, and decades of disinvestment. These are the problems. And if we’re going to fight homelessness, we’ve got to fight them all.” But this is part of the reason homelessness has become so intractable — —the political class has haunted its own world with abstractions; it has projected its own ideological premises onto the brutal reality of the streets.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 17:01

• "This Is A Game-Changer For Uranium Stocks"
  “This Is A Game-Changer For Uranium Stocks”

  Submitted by Larry McDonald of The Bear Traps Report

  The Uranium Bull Thesis

  Uranium names are moving higher, breaking the recent downtrend just like energy names.

  

  Our copper thesis has played out nicely. But from a Washington policy perspective Uranium is the next trade.

  Last week we learned that Uranium Participation will be bought by Sprott. This is a large deal, game changer. A lot of hedge funds in our chat are discussing. I think Uranium prices double over the next 12 months. High conviction. It’s the pure, centrist green energy play, Nuclear power.

  Plays – Nexgen, Denison, CCJ, URA ETF

  This is BIG news. 

  U Participation Corp, was a company that was buying U and sitting on it, the original yellow cake. The market will now have daily price discovery and a retail / family office / small asset manager speculation vehicle. Game changer.

  Denison CEO was reluctant, didn’t think he could increase the pounds per share, now we have a new team taking over (Sprott). Very bullish for uranium. 

  1. We are getting a US listed vehicle with a physical redemption. Like a GLD for uranium. Look at PSLV and PHYS, equivalent.
  2. A new mechanism for retail, institutional. An at the market facility. Technically a closed end fund, NOT a GLD.
  3. Pounds come in, don’t go out. They could do a buyback if the market provides that opportunity.
  4. U Participation is tough to buy, pink sheet. RobinHood crowd cannot buy!!! Now there will be a new liquidity vehicle. 
  5. Mgmt transition from Dennison to Sprott. Think Industry player to real asset mgr. 
  6. When there is large premium, new buyers are vulnerable. This has suppressed upside momentum. NOW there is a liquid vehicle, large buyers can come in with a liquidity work out. 
  7. Next, Sprott does a big offering, to bring in new pounds into the fund. There was too much inventory of uranium in the system, this vehicle will eliminate this problem. Substantially reduce the problem. New size buyers of the fund will quickly translate into spot buying!
  8. Think CME and oil, this could be a new real franchise / a liquidity central facility. 
  9. Management take over might take 2/3 months. Then the premium U Part will come in, was 16% today. In a month or so, Dan Loeb can come in and buy $100m without the premium risk. Pounds will permanently be removed from the mkt. NOT at ETF, its a closed end fund. A discount may develop in the shares, but new buyers are in a much better spot. 
  10. When a large hedge fund sells, they come back, stay in fund.
  11. Closed end fund, pounds come in, don’t go out. Pounds will stay in the vehicle. It’s not a create and redeem situation like an ETF. Big seller will just create a discount. 

  Uranium bulls in our chat are calling the bottom with conviction.

  Transformational deal. 

  CCJ Cameco Breaking Out

  

  CCJ Cameco Corp is a) breaking downtrend consolidation b) almost back in the BULL uptrend. We remain long a 2/3 position in CCJ and a 1/3 position in the URA Uranium ETF.

  Uranium Participation Corp In Agreement with Sprott Asset Management to Modernize Business Structure and Pursue U.S. Listing

  Entered into an arrangement agreement with Sprott Asset Management LP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprott Inc. (NYSE/TSX: SII), pursuant to which UPC shareholders will become unitholders of the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust a newly formed entity to be managed by Sprott Asset Management.

  * * *
  Uranium News of the day 

  Sprott Asset Management taking over management of Uranium Participation Corp will light this market on fire and ultimately help drive the price of uranium much higher and faster than most realize. Our friend Kevin Bambrough actually conceived of uranium participation corp back in the mid 2000’s (over a sushi lunch) in the year leading up to that lunch he had aggressively pitched Eric Sprott on going big in uranium stocks and predicted a move from $11/lb to $140/lb. think of $140/lb simply as the inflation-adjusted price from the 70’s uranium bull market and over that year players bought 20% of most uranium juniors and a decent chunk of Cameco. We also invested in a few privates and helped some shell companies acquire uranium assets. The uranium price had run up from the teens to the low 20’s around that time and the spot market was very thin much like today. Over the course of that lunch Kevin was ranting about how certain he was that the uranium price would be moving up soon. Our pal was certain that the thin market was ripe to be squeezed higher and that our stocks would all rip as the price moved up.  A few hedge funds had recently bought a little physical uranium and were storing it with Cameco or Denison as req by law/regs. The lunch ended with the declaration that Kevin was going to pitch Eric Sprott to let him launch an uranium hold co ETF and Kevin did that very afternoon and it was an easy sell.  One thing people loved most about working with Eric is that there was no fucking around.  He made quick decisions.  Only thing was he didn’t want was ‘wasting time’ on the ETF. They were running billions in hedge fund and equity funds and we think that year heading towards $100mm plus in incentive fees. Some years they hit $200mm of incentives. The fees from a uranium ETF would be small. They called Chris Roy at Cormark (Sprott securities then) and said let’s work on this idea together. Being a brokerage you can do the raises and get 5 percent. Or $5mm in fees on the first $100mm and Eric had blessed a $20mm lead order. Anyhow, long story short, they launched it and just the news of it coming sent the uranium price up several dollars. As orders for the ipo grew and uranium was purchased the price when up a few more.  Moved near $22 to 28.50/lb in a few months as the prospectus got filed. The vehicle came out and kept trading at a premium and issue after issue swallowed up millions of lbs of uranium. Utilities felt incredible pressure knowing the vehicle was gonna keep gobbling up supply and this forced them to scramble and start entering into long term contracts. The spot price moving up over $100/lb and with little to no spot available forced them to sign contracts to try to get a discount and deals with $75/lb floors became the rage for miners. Those that signed long term fixed deals sub $50 took a look of flack from investors. So one thing to understand is utilities or fuel buyers will always avoid buying spot prices and pushing them higher. They have zero interest in doing that.  All they want to do is secure long term contracts for supply. They prefer to sign deals with ceiling prices. They also try when possible to sign deals centered around a price like $45/lb (like they have with Cameco) but if the spot price goes up they only pay a portion of the increase.

  URPTF Uranium Participation Corp

  

  Uranium Participation Corp’s US ADR is broke out to the upside out of the recent wedge on Wednesday. The company is now pursuing a US listing, which in our view, will prompt front-running inflows.

  Uranium Market

  Oversupplied market like we’ve had meant they could point to a weak spot price and contract as such. Back then UPC (Uranium Participation Corp) wasn’t able to issue shares at the market and needed to trade at a decent premium in order to be able to justify paying issuance fees and accretively purchase more uranium. So here we are today. About a year off the bottom of the uranium market. Yellow cake did an issuance and some miners bought some lbs. Well the big dog in the space is upc by a country mile and it’s been notably quiet for months cause they were obviously working on this deal. In order to change to the trust format and be dual listed in Canada and the USA they needed a licensed money manager. Enter Sprott 2021 and the physical ETF powerhouse it’s become. UPC will become much like the Silver and Gold etfs and be able do ATM issuance. This is a complete game changer. It means both retail and institutional investors will be able to cause physical uranium to be purchased like never before.

  UPC shares will be issued with just a slight premium and uranium will be purchased as close to real time as possible. Many of us uranium investors have a very positive view on physical uranium but often shy away from buying upc or yellowcake at a premium knowing well that any day a deal could be announced and the premium gets crushed and you can lose a quick 5 or 10 percent. Totally kills it. Demand has in my mind been incredibly pent up as a result of the lack of a clean structure.   Also, many institutions will only allocate on a deal if that. Liquidity and lack of ability to get in or out near NAV is a big concern (as it should be). Well very soon that’s solved. Not only that but consider the various uranium etfs that also hold a piece of Uranium participation corp or Yellowcake. Those etfs continually issue shares and basket buy their holdings. We imagine often pushing the premium up on upc and likely cause other shareholders to sell. So once the transition is complete when uranium stock etfs get inflows and buy upc it will directly cause uranium lbs to be purchased. This improved liquidity may end up causing some etfs to increase there weighting in upc as a result. (Btw say good bye to yellowcakes premium. We doubt yellow cake will raise much more money unless they can issue ATM as well and we don’t know AIM rules.

  So, carrying on with upc. Having it NYSE listed will give it much better exposure and make it eligible for many USA based funds that either cant or don’t invest in Canada. The total size of USA market is around $50 trillion vs Canada $3.5 trillion. 13x bigger.

  UPC has not done an issuance yet in this uranium bull market.  It was trading at a discount last year and actually sold uranium and bought back stock because it was accretive to do so. So the North American markets have been ‘underserved’ for a year.

  Bulls will be buying UPC as soon as it has the ATM ability and they know their purchase will go to new uranium purchase. High conviction bulls feel the uranium price will be double in a few years or less… It’s the biggest no brainer safe trade you can find. If only a double in 10 years that’s 7 percent per annum. And it will double in 2 years or less, bulls say.

  Institutions, high net worth, and retail investors will flock to it. So as some will argue.. that’s just noise. It was gonna happen anyhow.  Well on to the next part… it’s not just about soaking up the spot market it’s about releasing this a new beast and what it does to the market psychologically. Fuel buyers / utilities are going to soon panic as they see the UPC doing volume every day and issuing shares. They will be following the spot market and wondering like all of us where the price will go next.  How many more marginal lbs are available in the spot market? Potential sellers of spot will likely decide to hang on and ‘see’ what happens. It’s a totally new dynamic and it’s effect shouldn’t be under estimated.

  In the past, just prior to an issuance by a upc or yellow cake they would put a call into a trader or Denison on behalf of upc.

  Transformational deal.

  Utilities will learn they overplayed their hand, now they will PAY up. We can’t tell you how many times we have said that in an asset class this mispriced things just happen to realize the value. And this is one of those things.

  This deal between Sprott and UPC is transformational. It has the potential to be immense.

  If run like their other commodity trusts, which we see no reason why not, it now puts a daily bid in the market. It allows for pure price speculation on a daily basis – which heretofore has  not existed. It doesn’t require establishment of storage agreements by investors. They can just express their view in the market every day. This will take UxC’s bullshit broker average price that shows up daily based on bullshit trader bids and asks and render it useless as the price will be the last traded price . And with flows into a trust that buys uranium – well. That is new to this market. A constant bid in the market. This is what happens when something is absurdly cheap – it attracts capital.

  Utilities with spot referred contracts – good luck. They may not figure it out right away. They will when investors have a vehicle to buy uranium every day.

  Also, we assume that they will correct some of the features of UPC that held it back. For example, we assume they will maintain an evergreen prospectus and tap overnight markets to be agile. And, also we assume they will remove the restriction that procurement can only happen at a premium to NAV while buying uranium at a significant discount to market. That was always stupid.

  Also the WMC guys are sharp. They will bring credibility to the investor marketing. And, assuming their liaison role extends to procurement and sales (building a small book to cover fees) they are quite familiar with the principles a fund needs to follow in these areas to maximize value for its investors (versus maximizing value for traders and utilities).

  A Decade after Fukushima, Japan Restarting Nuclear

  Japan; Governor has officially approved restart of 3 more nuclear reactors in Takahama-1 & 2 and Mihama-3. Minister says Japan “will use nuclear power sustainably into the future” – promising grants for further restarts.

  Meanwhile…

  Japan’s Coal Pipeline is Bare After Last Planned Project Axed – Link Here

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 16:45

• Aussies Trying To Return Home From India Face Up To $66,600 In Fines Or Five Years Imprisonment
  Aussies Trying To Return Home From India Face Up To $66,600 In Fines Or Five Years Imprisonment

  Australians trying desperately to return home from COVID-stricken India will face fines and jail time, according to treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who defended the hardline approach as “drastic” but necessary, and denied it’s “irresponsible” to leave fellow Australians stranded.

  

  “https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/30/australian-gover…,” said Frydenberg, adding “We’ve acted on the medical advice.”

  “The situation in India is dire. It is very serious. More than 200,000 people have died and there are more than 300,000 new cases a day.”

  As The Guardian reports, the move comes after two Australian cricketers circumvented a travel ban after traveling from India to Qatar before returning home, after the government banning all direct flights from India.

  After Friday’s meeting of the national cabinet, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, issued a statement saying governments “noted the measures that have been put in place to restrict entry into Australia of people who have previously been in high-risk countries determined by the chief medical officer”.

  “National cabinet noted the chief medical officer’s assessment that India is the first country to meet the threshold of a high-risk country,” the statement said.

  It foreshadowed “further measures to mitigate risks of high-risk travellers entering Australia” but did not flag criminalising returns explicitly.

  Earlier in the day, Morrison told Sydney radio station 2GB a loophole whereby travellers could get around the India flight ban by transiting through a third country was closed on Wednesday evening. -The Guardian

  “That flight that those cricketers were on managed to get away just before that,” added Morrison. “We had information on Monday that that wasn’t possible.”

  Australian health minister, Greg Hunt, announced the strict measures late Friday night, adding that anyone attempting to sidestep the regulations would be hit with fines of up to $66,600 or five years in prison, or both.

  “The government does not make these decisions lightly,” said Hunt, invoking powers granted under the Biosecurity Act to introduce the measures. “However, it is critical the integrity of the Australian public health and quarantine systems is protected and the number of Covid-19 cases in quarantine facilities is reduced to a manageable level.”

  The new rule will take effect beginning Monday and will be reviewed on May 15.

  Biosecurity regulations invoked to manage public health during the pandemic already give government authorities sweeping powers.

  Biosecurity control orders currently allow authorities to require an individual to provide contact details, regularly update an officer of their health status, restrict movement by remaining at the individual’s place of residence for a specified period, undergo decontamination, provide body samples for diagnosis, undertake treatment or receive a vaccination, remain in Australia for up to 28 days, or be isolated at a medical facility.

  In addition to control orders, the regulations give the health minister scope to determine biosecurity emergencies. These powers allow the minister to “determine any requirement that he or she is satisfied is necessary” to prevent entry or spread of disease. -The Guardian

  Last week, Australia suspended direct commercial and government repatriation flights from India until mid-may, leaving around 9,000 Australian nationals who have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs in limbo. According to the report, around 650 of them are considered vulnerable.

  Approximately 20,000 individuals have returned to Australia from India since March 2020.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/01/2021 – 16:20

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• Biden's Anti-Eurasian Green Delusion And America's Race To Irrelevance
  Biden’s Anti-Eurasian Green Delusion And America’s Race To Irrelevance

  Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Many people couldn’t help but laugh when Biden told the Boris Johnson on March 26 that the USA and it’s NATO allies should create “an infrastructure plan to rival the Belt and Road Initiative” post haste. What would such a program look like? How would it be funded when the USA is so embarrassingly bankrupt? Who among the nations of the world would ever consider buying a ticket onto such a sinking ship?

  It took a few weeks for details to finally emerge, but by the end of the April 22-23 Climate Summit hosted by Biden, John Kerry and Anthony Blinken, it has become abysmally clear what delusions possessed the poor president.

  After having announced a 52% carbon reduction policy below 2005 levels by 2050, Biden swiftly committed the USA to what he called the most comprehensive infrastructure plan in history with a $2 trillion Green New Deal-like infrastructure program designed to revive the policy of America’s 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mirroring FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, Biden has even planned a Civilian Climate Corps, along with a Green Climate Bank to parallel FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

  The catch? Biden’s version was written by the same financial technocrats that FDR went to war with 80 years ago and unlike FDR’s version, the modern green version of the New Deal will have the effect of destroying the productive industrial powers and living standards of the nation once green grids are built.

  

  A Comparison of Two New Deals

  Where FDR’s New Deal was premised on the removal of Wall Street’s hegemony over national sovereignty via the Pecora Commission, Glass-Steagall, and SEC; Biden’s Green New Deal is shaped by Central Bankers’ Climate Compacts and green finance strategies authored by the richest oligarchs on the planet like the Bloomberg-Carney Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. In fact, it shouldn’t come as a coincidence that the first legislative effort to establish a Green New Deal, was not American at all, but was submitted by Britain’s Lord Adair Turner in 2009 while he was acting head regulator of the City of London which remains the nerve center of world finance today as it was a century ago. Up until 2019, Lord Turner was the chair of George Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking- an organization devoted to making Huxley’s Brave New World a practical reality and upon which he still serves as Senior Fellow.

  Where FDR created large scale infrastructure megaprojects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Project, Hoover Dam, Colorado River Basin programs, and St Lawrence Seaway which all had the effect of leap frogging to higher rates of industrial power than at any other time in history, Biden’s Green New Deal professes to do the opposite. Yes, jobs will be created in insulating a few million homes and building windmills and solar panels, however those jobs will be short lived. For once they are built there will be nothing left to do but maintain the solar panels with unionized squeegees in an imaginary world of no change and zero-technological growth that might look good in computer models, but has very little correspondence with humanity’s actual requirements for long term survival.

  It appears to be genuinely believed by ivory tower technocrats managing the Biden Administration that financing a green infrastructure program won’t be difficult. The 2020-21 pandemic showed the enlightened elite that money can always just be printed from thin air. The U.S. debt has already risen to 27 trillion, so what’s a few trillion more?

  Where that fails, just compensate by imposing Carbon Pricing onto all carbon sinners. Many nations have already gotten onboard that bandwagon with Sweden, Lichtenstein and Canada leading the race charging $129, $96, and $91 per ton of carbon emissions respectively. Coming out of Biden’s Climate Summit, Canada’s Justin Trudeau committed to raising this cost to $170/ton by 2030 while U.S. National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy announced will soon rise to $56/ton in the USA (a seven fold increase from the $1-7/ton price under Trump).

  Additionally, cap and trade schemes are always there for wealthy polluters to purchase unused carbon quotas from poorer polluters at home or abroad, so revenue can certainly be found that way. If all else fails, just raise taxes.

  In case poor nations of the world might feel like avoiding this sinking ship in order to work more closely with Russia and China, Biden was kind enough to announce a new international green finance strategy to assist the developing sector in their decarbonizing aspirations.

  The Problem with Green Energy

  For those who doubt the idea that the USA can or even should meet those 2035 carbon reduction targets, they might have solid reasons for their assumptions. For one thing, the USA currently relies upon 1,852 coal fired power plants which would mean that 11 plants would need to be shut down every month until 2035. What would compensate for this loss of capacity?

  Obviously not nuclear, since that has become politically-radioactive in the minds of most of Biden’s liberal constituency.

  Would it be green energy that fills the gap? Considering that green energy is magnitudes more costly, and unreliable relative to fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear power, that is also unlikely. The truth is, as Germany discovered recently, shutting down coal and nuclear at home, simply forces a nation to keep fossil fuel plants running as back up for the unreliable green energy grids while increasing imports of coal/natural gas-driven electricity from other countries. In Germany’s case, imports of nuclear and coal-generated electricity from Poland and the Czech Republic increased by 60% since the nation’s industrial base understood that green energy sources could never meet it’s needs. In the USA’s case, Mexico would most likely be the top supplier. Across the European Union where most nations have entirely submitted to pressure to “decarbonize” by 2050, coal, gas and crude oil imports now make up 2/3rds of all energy imports.

  While some advocates of the Green New Deal applaud the amazing breakthroughs in green energy tech over the past years which they say has reduced the price per kilowatt hour from an unreasonably high 35 cents to as low as 4 cents today… the truth is that the technology remains largely identical to the photovoltaic cells and windmills of yesterday with the only difference being the massively increased infusions of government subsidies given to private companies producing the green energy which the IMF calculated to be $5.2 trillion in 2017 alone (aka: 6.5% of the global GDP). And where do those subsidies come from? you guessed it. The tax payers.

  Lest we forget the oft-overlooked fuel source of bioethanol, over 40% of the USA’s corn production currently gets burned in the form of biodiesel and ethanol while billions starve and suffer food shortages around the world. The high cost of being green.

  Geopolitical Incompetence 101

  You might now be asking: Why would the USA which has admittedly chosen to define itself as an existential rival to Russia and China to the point of risking a full-scale nuclear war, be so intent on subverting its own economic foundations at a moment that both Russia and China (and over 136 nations of the world) have chosen to move on toward a diametrically opposing paradigm of large-scale infrastructure growth and scientific progress?

  If we take the old adage “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” as a truism, then signs for a bright future for the Green New Dealing western community poor indeed.

  Since Biden’s first days as president of the USA, the entire fabric of U.S. governance from top to bottom was completely overhauled in the form of omnibus executive orders designed to make the global climate emergency the top priority for all branches and levels of government- economic, military, intelligence, health and beyond. Under this green geostrategic paradigm, vast starvation, migration patterns, and wars have much less to do with imperial abuse, and everything to do with global warming.

  Biden created new directorates of climate policy with offices in the White House, demanded that the Director of National Intelligence and State Department overhaul their governance around dealing with the climate crisis and even passed executive orders banning all oil and natural gas drilling and exploration projects on land or offshore where government land is held. Biden even went so far as to assert that 30% of the entire surface of the USA would be brought off limits to all development by 2030.

  Sustained vs Sustainable Development

  Compare this with China which has simultaneously committed to building green energy systems without deluding itself into thinking that fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro could be taken out of their energy baskets.

  In fact, the primary fuel sources driving the large-scale development corridors of the New Silk Road are considered “dirty” sources verboten by the west like coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear and hydro. This fact even drove a delusional Biden to attempt to pressure Xi Jinping to speed up their phase out of coal by 2030 to which the Chinese leader responded “no”.

  Biden had earlier described China as the primary climate offender of the world saying: “China is far and away the largest emitter of carbon in the world, and through its massive Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is also annually financing billions of dollars of dirty fossil fuel energy projects across Asia and beyond.” He even demanded that leaders of the west “rally a united front of nations to hold China accountable to high environmental standards in its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects, so that China can’t outsource pollution to other countries.”

  In his remarks at the Climate Summit, President Putin re-emphasized to the western puppet heads of state who were busy massaging each other and chanting “build back better” in unison, that “green growth” should not occur at the expense of “sustainable growth”. Simply put, Putin is committed to putting people before ivory tower energy policies that may demand human sacrifices at the alter of Gaia, and emphasized Russia’s commitment to nuclear power, raising its fertility rate, raising average life expectancy which has already grown from 56 years/male and 61/female in the mid-1990s to 70 years today and plans are to increase that to 78 years by 2030.

  The irony about all of this is that China and Russia are increasingly adopting a system of political economy which is fundamentally OPEN and driven by scientific and technological progress without any supposed limits on its potential for improvement. This paradigm is fundamentally in harmony with the original New Deal policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt who himself envisioned a post-imperial world of win-win cooperation (in opposition to a dystopic closed-system world envisioned by Winston Churchill). The USA on the other hand, which professes to be the heir to the New Deal reforms of Franklin Roosevelt has come to embody the worst aspects of the Malthusian elite managing the British Empire for centuries which FDR devoted his life to stop.

  It was this empire that considered it “scientifically necessary” to subjugate India, China, Ireland, Africa and every other rival to lives of poverty, war, famine and stupidification.

  This was the empire which the republican revolution of 1776 aimed at overthrowing- not only from the Americas, but internationally. It is this same empire which was nearly destroyed by the Russian-U.S. alliance that shaped much of the 19th century and which again arose during WW2 as FDR and Stalin recognized they had much more in common with each other than either had with arch-racist Churchill. The British Empire was always run as a “closed system”, scientifically managed intelligence operation following Malthusian principles and adherence to strict mathematical equilibrium. In this formula for domination, military forces have typically been less important than control of nerve centers of finance, narcotics and other levers of corruption mental and spiritual corruption than many people- even among the most educated historians realize.

  And so we have come full circle. The gods have certainly made those elites managing the west mad, but whether or not the entire world will have to pay the price of their insanity yet remains to be seen.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:40

• NYPD Puts Down Robot Dog After Backlash 
  NYPD Puts Down Robot Dog After Backlash 

  The New York Police Department (NYPD) will part ways with its controversial robotic dog after mounting uproar from the public and lawmakers. 

  John Miller, the NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, told NYTimes that it ended a leasing contract with Boston Dynamics early for the four-legged robotic dog called “Digidog.” 

  

  A subpoena from City Councilman Ben Kallos and Council Speaker Corey Johnson revealed the NYPD’s leasing contract with Boston Dynamics, amounted to $94,000. The leasing agreement was terminated on April 22. The original lease agreement was through August.

  The termination of the lease was due to a series of incidents where the four-legged robot was deployed to a house invasion in the Bronx in February and a low-income housing project in Manhattan for patrol. Critics likened it to a surveillance robo-dog out of the dystopic TV series “Black Mirror.”

  Miller said the contract was terminated because the police force was improperly using the device to fuel heated discussions about race and surveillance. 

  “People had figured out the catchphrases and the language to make this evil somehow,” Miller said.

  He did not rule out the possibility of Digidog returning to the police force at some future date. 

  “But for now, this is a casualty of politics, bad information and cheap sound bytes,” he said. “We should have named it ‘Lassie.'”

  In February, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced the robot, saying police officers were targeting low-income communities. She also had an issue with the funds spent to lease the device. 

  

  “Please ask yourself: when was the last time you saw next-generation, world-class technology for education, healthcare, housing, etc consistently prioritized for underserved communities like this?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at the time.

  Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said he was “glad the Digidog was put down.”

  A spokesperson for Boston Dynamics said Wednesday its robots are not designed to be used as weapons nor used to intimidate people. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:20

• Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its "Perilous Trifecta" …And Bungles The Cure
  Blighted San Francisco Diagnoses Its “Perilous Trifecta” …And Bungles The Cure

  Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite, and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed. In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.

  

  The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires, and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness. The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.

  Residents, property owners, and small businesses—who pay an enormous premium to live and work in San Francisco—have begun to erupt in frustration. Citizens tell pollsters that homelessness is the city’s most pressing issue and business owners tell pollsters that “conditions on [the] streets have progressively deteriorated.”

  

  Mayor London Breed of San Francisco: Trying to address the city’s problems by expanding institutions the chronically homeless keep cycling through.

  City Hall has begun coming to terms with the crisis. Mayor London Breed recently hired a director of mental health reform, Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, who compiled a statistical summary of the problem. People have long known that San Francisco has a homelessness problem, but Nigusse Bland discovered a population-within-a-population—the so-called “perilous trifecta”: 

  4,000 men and women who are simultaneously homeless, psychotic, and addicted to alcohol, meth, or heroin.

  About 70 % of them have been on the streets for more than five years; 40% have been on the streets for more than 13 years.

  This is the city’s fundamental predicament.

  How do you help people in the grips of the perilous trifecta? What interventions could make progress? Where do social workers even start?

  It’s almost impossible to understate the depths of this challenge.

  

  Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, city mental health director: Identified 4,000 suffering from the “perilous trifecta” of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction

  San Francisco’s current policy toward the perilous trifecta can be best described as compassionate neglect. Every year, the chronically homeless cycle through the institutions of the socialized state, from hospitals, jails, and shelters, to sobering centers, case management appointments, and 72-hour psychiatric holds. Local government provides enough to meet an outward standard of compassion, but not enough to alter the trajectories of the homeless. The result is a disaster, which has drawn criticism across the political spectrum. Progressives are demanding more funding for existing programs, while moderates are bewildered by the eternal recurrence of tents, needles, and feces in their neighborhoods.

  The current policy regime can be divided into three domains — the hospital, the jail, and the subsidized apartment.

  Together, these institutions represent the new orthodoxy of the modern urban approach: Homelessness is reduced to a set of social-scientific variables, to be manipulated through the intensive application of the medical and social sciences.

  As part of its medical system, San Francisco currently spends more than $255 million per year on mental health and substance abuse programs, many of which cater to the city’s homeless. In a recent audit of the behavioral health system, the city’s budget and legislative analyst found that 70% of all psychiatric emergency visits involved a homeless individual and that 66% of all visitors had co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. In total, the top 5% of “super-users,” totaling 2,239 adults, the majority of whom fall into the perilous trifecta, accounted for 52% of total systemwide service use. Doctors at San Francisco General see the same set of patients so frequently that they have developed an entire vocabulary to describe the population that circles in and out of their doors.

  The jail system is next. According to the San Francisco County Jail, the homeless account for 40% of all inmates — despite being less than 1% of the city’s overall population, and even after San Francisco decriminalized many quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness. Again, the perilous trifecta looms large. Inmates with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders are more likely to be homeless and more likely to be charged with a violent crime compared to the general jail population. The pithy observation about deinstitutionalization is largely true: The people who might have once lived in the state mental hospital have simply been transferred to the county jail.

  

  Neither hospitals, jails, nor public housing have solved San Francisco’s homelessness epidemic.

  Finally, the public-housing complex is the new great hope, and fastest-growing public expenditure, for the homeless. Like many major West Coast cities, San Francisco has gone all in on “Housing First,” the theory that the municipal government must provide free housing for the homeless in perpetuity, with no expectations of sobriety, work, or participation in rehabilitation programs. For a city with a recurring homeless population of 18,000, this is an enormous expense. In 2019, San Francisco spent $285 million on shelters and “permanent supportive housing,” plus $65 million on traditional public housing, vouchers, and SRO units. At the same time, voters passed an additional $600 million bond to build “affordable housing.” But still, 67% of the Bay Area’s homeless are unsheltered.

  Even as they tout “evidence-based interventions,” “data-driven solutions,” and “best practices,” leaders in San Francisco have recognized the failure of the current system and proposed an ambitious reform agenda. However, in broad terms, this agenda only deepens its dependency on the social-scientific model and doubles-down on its worst assumptions. It can be summarized this way: deinstitutionalization, destigmatization, and decriminalization.

  In 2019, Mayor Breed and Supervisors Matt Haney and Hillary Ronen championed legislation for sweeping “mental health reform.” The plan would increase total spending on mental health and substance abuse to $500 million per year, and prioritize the homeless, create a central service center, and pressure private insurers to cover more costs. When it passed unanimously through the Board of Supervisors, Ronen celebrated it as a progressive milestone: “We just created the first universal mental health and substance use system in the country.”

  

  San Francisco’s homeless problem can be traced back to the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill after Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel and this subsequent film.

  But this universality is only a theoretical formulation. The legislation does not include a funding source and, more important, simply expands the existing behavioral health system rather than reforming it. For the perilous trifecta, the problem is often not access to services, but participation in services. According to the latest one-night count, only 17% of the homeless reported using mental health services and only 11% reported using substance abuse services. For the unsheltered population, these figures are almost certainly lower.

  The problem is that members of the perilous trifecta are the least likely to seek services. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, approximately half the patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suffer from anosognosia, which is the inability to understand their own disorder, often leading to a refusal to enter treatment and take medication. Adding a serious addiction to methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and violent behavior, only compounds the problem.

  In the past, the solution to this paradox was compulsion. The state took custody of the “gravely disabled” and treated them in long-term residential institutions. However, with the exposure of civil rights abuses and the release of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the United States gradually dismantled its mental health system, reducing the number of mental health beds per capita by an astonishing 95% between 1955 and 2016. Today, California has fewer beds per capita than the national average, with San Francisco having only 219 adult psychiatric beds available at a given time — drastically insufficient for the number of people in need.

  Although Mayor Breed has tentatively moved towards a return to short-term “conservatorships,” a form of involuntary commitment for individuals who present a grave danger to themselves or others, the plan has neither the scope nor the force to significantly reduce the numbers of the perilous trifecta. Because of pressure from disability activists and the ACLU, which have called conservatorships “the greatest deprivation of civil liberties aside from the death penalty,” the plan is limited to individuals who have had eight or more involuntary psychiatric holds in the past year, which, in practice, would mean less than 100 people citywide.

  Mayor Breed did not return a request for comment.

  

  San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney faces recall efforts in response to rising crime.

  Many progressive socialists argue that there is too much force in the system, not too little. San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, took office in January 2020 pledging to substantially reduce the county jail population, end cash bail, and decriminalize quality-of-life crimes associated with homelessness, including public camping, drug consumption, prostitution, and public urination. Boudin contends that the criminal justice system in San Francisco is a domain of persistent inequalities – locking up a disproportionate number of poor and minority residents – and has become the dumping ground for the addicted and mentally ill. Rather than continue this system, Boudin argues, the city must “implement a comprehensive transformation of the criminal justice system to decriminalize and treat mental illness, housing instability, and substance use as public health issues rather than criminal justice issues.”

  Boudin’s formulation does align with a single-day snapshot of the San Francisco County Jail population from 2016, which found that 48% of inmates were African American, 70% self-reported substance abuse, and 10% were deemed to have a serious mental illness. However, the narrative that the city is somehow targeting non-violent drug offenders and “criminalizing homeless” is specious. The snapshot also shows that 68% of inmates were arrested for violence, weapons possession, and serious felonies. Contrary to progressive rhetoric, only 4% were arrested for drug crimes — a vanishingly small number of people for a city in the midst of a heroin and methamphetamine epidemic.

  

  Authorities have enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin.

  The hard reality is that the perilous trifecta has fueled a boom in property crime and public disorder. In 2019, at least 1,120 individuals in the trifecta spent time in the county jail. Although the homicide rate remained static during Boudin’s first year office, burglaries have soared in a city that already had one of the highest property crime rates in the nation, while authorities enabled massive open-air drug markets in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, which is a central hub for the homeless population.

  The nexus between homelessness, addiction, and crime is clear: According to city and federal data, virtually all of the unsheltered homeless are unemployed, while at the same time, those with serious addictions spend an average of $1,256 to $1,834 a month on methamphetamine and heroin. With no legitimate source of income, many addicts support their habit through a “hustle,” which can include fraud, prostitution, car break-ins, burglaries of residences and business, and other forms of theft.

  Boudin’s plan to decriminalize such property offenses – the mirror opposite of the low-tolerance “broken windows” approach adopted in the late 1980s as crime rates began historic declines – has contributed to the sense that he is not holding criminals accountable. In 2019, the city had an incredible 25,667 “smash-and-grabs,” as thieves sought valuables and other property from cars to sell on the black market. The following year, rather than attempt to prevent or even disincentivize this crime, Boudin has proposed a $1.5 million fund to pay for auto glass repair, arguing that it “will help put money into San Francisco jobs and San Francisco businesses.” In literal terms, Boudin is subsidizing broken windows, under the notion that it can be transformed into a job-creation program.

  Boudin did not return a request for comment.

  Some San Franciscans are pushing back. Earlier this year, a group of residents and business owners launched a recall effort targeting Boudin, arguing that his policies have enabled crime and not done enough to protect victims.           

  The final plank of San Francisco’s policy platform is “destigmatization.” Public health experts in the city have gradually abandoned recovery and sobriety as the ideal outcome, preferring the limited goal of “harm reduction.” In a recent task force report on methamphetamine, the San Francisco Public Health Department noted that meth users “are likely to experience high levels of stigma and rejection in their personal and social lives,” which are “often reinforced by language and media portrayals depicting individuals who use alongside images of immorality, having chaotic lives, and perpetual use.”

  On the surface, this is a strange contention. If San Francisco’s perilous trifecta is any guide, methamphetamine use is heavily correlated with chaotic lives, perpetual drug abuse, crimes against others, and various transgressions against traditional morality. The harm reductionists’ argument, however, rests on the belief that addiction is an involuntary brain disease, akin to Alzheimer’s or dementia. In this view, addiction is better seen as a disability, and any stigma associated with it is therefore an act of ignorance and cruelty. According to the Department of Public Health, the goal of harm reduction policy is to reduce this unjustified stigma and focus public policy on “non-abstinence-based residential treatment programs,” “supervised injection services,” “trauma-informed sobering site[s],” and “training for staff on how to engage marginalized or vulnerable communities in ways that do not perpetuate trauma or stigma.”

  In practice, the task force recommendations would create an entire infrastructure to service addiction, rather than to reduce it. Although proponents of harm reduction claim the mantle of compassion, it’s a fatalistic theory. It assumes that most people cannot recover from serious addiction and, therefore, the social obligation is to provide the space and resources for addicts to pursue their own ends, which, for 40% of the perilous trifecta population, means 13 or more years in and out of homelessness. Activists have suggested that addicts can “reduce harms” by “[using] indoors instead of on the street,” “reducing how much [they are] using,” “transitioning from injecting to smoking,” and “continuing to use one type of drug but quitting another drug.” But in the face of the pathological overload of the perilous trifecta, these recommendations are negligently naïve, relegating a large portion of the homeless to a lifetime of chaos, sickness, and despair.

  In the long term, the real danger of destigmatization is that it would lead to the normalization of serious addiction and its consequences. In San Francisco, progressives have attempted to normalize the worst aspects of street homelessness, minimizing the drug use, toxic waste, psychotic episodes, and related crimes; they have blurred the lines between sickness and health, madness and sanity. Moreover, without a trace of irony, they have weaponized destigmatization itself, stigmatizing anyone who opposes the breakdown of public order as “fascists” and “homeless haters.” 

  

  An entire social media community has arisen documenting the descent of San Francisco’s streets. Twitter/homelessphilosopher/@PoopScoopSF/@sfstreets1/ @PowelMason415/@CleanUpWestSoma/@EsmeAlaki/@missmrm/@markdfabela

  The implicit wager of San Francisco’s policy is that the social-scientific apparatus can rescue people faster than the perilous trifecta expands its ranks. But the evidence suggests the opposite: that San Francisco has become a magnet for the troubled homeless. Methamphetamine deaths are up nearly 400% over the past five years; fentanyl overdoses doubled between 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, the socialized state has reached a point of near exhaustion. First responders, police officers, and emergency room nurses are burning out. Psychiatrists at San Francisco General Hospital despair about the mass migration of out-of-state residents in search of the “San Francisco Special”: “housing, a psychiatrist, case manager, primary care provider, and transfer of Medicaid or general assistance.”

  The political class has insisted on greater control over the corporations, developers, and landlords, while deregulating life at the bottom. The result has been a deepening inequality, and an even more anarchic world for the poor. There is an entire social media community of mostly anonymous accounts who document the squalor of the encampments and psychotic episodes in the streets; they are the last resistance to the normalization of the perilous trifecta, and maintain their anonymity, it seems, out of fear of retribution. It’s a dark reality, but perhaps a warning of what’s to come.

  In the end, San Francisco finds itself fighting a monster. “Homelessness isn’t just a problem; it’s a symptom,” says its mayor. “The symptom of unaffordable housing, of income inequality, of institutional racism, of addiction, untreated illness, and decades of disinvestment. These are the problems. And if we’re going to fight homelessness, we’ve got to fight them all.” But this is part of the reason homelessness has become so intractable — —the political class has haunted its own world with abstractions; it has projected its own ideological premises onto the brutal reality of the streets.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 23:00

• Ammo And Primer Shortages Continue Into 2021 
  Ammo And Primer Shortages Continue Into 2021 

  Readers have been well informed about multiple shortages of ammunition and firearms in the last year due to a massive demand pull from frightened Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest in cities around the US, and the prospect of an anti-gun Biden administration. Now another shortage has materialized: the lack of bullet primers, which is the device responsible for initiating the propellant combustion that pushes the bullet out of the barrel. 

  Besides the ammo shortage of last year, reloading components, like primers, and reloading tools, have become scarce. 

  “Primers are tough for reloaders to find, too, as more and more of them are being used in making factory ammo,” said gun website Wide Open Spaces. 

  

  Bullets are relatively easy to produce. Brass casings can be reused, and powder is still plentiful, but there’s a bottleneck in ammo production because of the lack of primers. 

  There are only four domestic manufacturers in the US: Federal, CCI, Remington, and Winchester. These firms supply primers to the military and law enforcement and the retail market. 

  So in 2020, when more than 7 million people became first-time gun buyers. They had to buy bullets too. And as a result of the unprecedented demand for ammo, selling out at Walmart, local gun shops, and online websites, the great primer shortage continues. 

  Gun owners are clearly frustrated with excessively high ammo and primer prices that have more than doubled the prices than pre-COVID times. 

  The fact is, ammo companies didn’t have enough capacity to meet demand last year. 

   President of ammunition for Vista Outdoors, Jason Vanderbrink, speaks more about the primer shortage. 

  Due to the ammo and primer shortage, the 3D-printed gun community develops electrical ignitions that replace primers due to the shortage. 

  There are no signs that ammo and primer shortages are abating anytime soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:40

• The American Right Is The New Target Of Washington's "War On Terror"
  The American Right Is The New Target Of Washington’s “War On Terror”

  Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

  The security walls around the US Capitol may be removed, but the federal response to the January 6 protests has only just begun. The Democrats in Washington are determined to treat the incident as on par with the events of September 11, which may explain a troubling report about the potential use of the famed No Fly List.

  

  Yesterday Nick Fuentes, a right-wing social media pundit who attended the January 6 protests in the capital, alleged that he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, preventing him from traveling to Florida for a political rally. While Mr. Fuentes shared on social media audio of an airline employee suggesting that his flying restriction did come from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), later that night Tucker Carlson informed his audience that his staff could neither confirm nor deny the report. While critics pointed to previous social media posts which documented his being removed from a plane for failing to comply with mask policies, Fuentes has noted that he had no problem flying to Washington in January.

  It is unclear whether federal authorities will be in any rush to clarify the situation, but there is no reason not to assume that federal authorities would attempt to use this war on terror tool against political opponents. From its inception, what originally began as sixteen names federal authorities had connected to potential future terrorist attacks quickly grew to over 1 million. As is the case with other surveillance tools handed over to the deep state, there is very little oversight or due process involved in how federal authorities handle potential “terrorist threats.”

  Since January there has been a concerted effort by Democrat leaders, former deep state officials, and America’s most despicable neoconservatives to push the Biden administration to utilize the power of the federal government against the supporters of Donald Trump. While the incidents at the Capitol on January 6 are used to justify these calls, the weaponization of federal power against political opponents goes back almost as long as the federal government itself. In more recent years, President Biden’s previous service in the White House saw a Democrat administration that used both the IRS and Department of Homeland Security to target conservatives.

  Another reason to expect escalation from the Biden administration against vocal figures like Fuentes is the unique critique of the current regime from the right. The majority of Republican voters do not simply oppose President Biden due to politics, but flatly reject his democratic legitimacy.

  As Murray Rothbard explained, it is precisely this sort of attack that the state fears most:

  The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.

  Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with its “legitimacy,” to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands….

  The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’être.

  This perspective explains the disproportionate treatment that mostly peaceful protesters at the Capitol in January have received in contrast to those arrested during riots in American cities throughout the past year. The state will always treat those who seriously threaten its perceived legitimacy with greater zeal than those guilty of simply destroying the livelihoods of its citizens.

  This also highlights the self-defeating nature of the modern American conservative movement.

  For decades now, the same political party that often gives lip service to “federalism” has often been the party directly responsible for the growth of federal power. As noted earlier, it took exactly one administration before the Department of Homeland Security, created by the Bush administration, began to target the very voters who elected him to office. It was just two election cycles before the PATRIOT Act was used to target a Republican presidential campaign.

  The biggest question that now lies in American politics is whether conservatives are capable of learning from these examples. If the American right is capable of fully absorbing the reality that the greatest threat to their lives, liberty, and prosperity lies domestically—and not abroad—perhaps there is potential for a political rollback of the American empire.

  If not, American conservatives will come to understand how little constitutional rights truly mean in the face of a hostile state.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:20

• US Intelligence Tells Congress China's Nuclear Arsenal "On Track To Exceed Our Previous Projection"
  US Intelligence Tells Congress China’s Nuclear Arsenal “On Track To Exceed Our Previous Projection”

  A hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week on the range of threats the United States faces globally focused on China and Chinese leadership viewing US power as “declining” while Beijing is “rising” on the world stage.

  Most notable from the testimony is US intelligence’s view of China’s expanding nuclear arsenal, which is projected to at least double over the next decade. While currently the Department of Defense estimates China’s warhead stockpile to be in the low-200s, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, told the Senate hearing on Thursday that a rapid expansion of its stockpile is a top priority for Beijing. To the surprise of lawmakers, he strongly suggested that the DIA’s most resent projections actually underestimated China’s true nuclear expansion and ambitions.

  China is growing more aggressive – expanding its power projection around the world, including in Africa. I’ve seen evidence of it myself. @DefenseIntel Director LTG Berrier confirmed today China is looking to place military forces in Africa, as well as in Latin and South America. pic.twitter.com/qB8RT54Tyl

  — Sen. Jim Inhofe (@JimInhofe) April 29, 2021

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

  “In the span of capabilities that they have, the nuclear piece has been one component. It has been a priority for them,” Berrier told the lawmakers in response to a question by Sen. Tom Cotton, a well-known foremost China hawk. “And I think they have racked and stacked that in the things that they think that they need to get done by 2030 or 2035,” the DIA director followed with.

  Gen. Berrier explained that US defense intelligence now sees China as seeking to outpace even the earlier Pentagon projections. He said:

  “China is expanding and diversifying its nuclear arsenal… Last year, we assessed that China had a nuclear warhead stockpile in the low-200s and projected it to at least double over the next decade.

  Since then, Beijing has accelerated its nuclear expansion and is on track to exceed our previous projection. PLA nuclear forces are expected to continue to grow with their nuclear stockpile likely to at least double in size over this decade and increase the threat to the U.S. homeland.”

  And he further warned China is “probably” seeking to “match” many of America and Russia’s more advanced nuclear warhead capabilities and delivery platforms:

  China probably seeks to narrow, match, or in some areas exceed U.S. qualitative equivalency with new nuclear warheads and delivery platforms that at least equal the effectiveness, reliability, and/or survivability of some U.S. and Russian warheads and delivery platforms under development. The PLA continues to improve its pursuit of a nuclear triad, and increasing evidence indicates that Beijing seeks to keep a portion of its nuclear forces on a “launch-on-warning” posture.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Berrier elsewhere in the testimony affirmed that China is “the long-term strategic competitor to the United States” and remains “as a pacing threat, [Beijing] poses a major security challenge.”

  

  He said Beijing is focusing its defense technology efforts “almost certainly” toward holding” US and allied forces at greater risk and greater distances from the Chinese mainland.”

  In 2020 the Illinois-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that China possesses 350 nuclear warheads, a number far higher than the more conservative DoD estimate. In its report at the time the think tank wrote, “We estimate that China has a produced a stockpile of approximately 350 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 272 are for delivery by more than 240 operational land-based ballistic missiles, 48 sea-based ballistic missiles, and 20 nuclear gravity bombs assigned to bombers. The remaining 78 warheads are intended to arm additional land- and sea-based missiles that are in the process of being fielded.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 22:00

• Majority Of US Companies Will Require Workers To Provide Proof Of Vaccination
  Majority Of US Companies Will Require Workers To Provide Proof Of Vaccination

  It looks like American colleges won’t be alone in making vaccination mandatory for any students who want to return to campus next semester. Despite the White House’s determination that vaccination shouldn’t be mandatory by law, more than 60% of American companies are reportedly leaning toward requiring proof of vaccination from their employees.

  

  According to a new survey from the Rockefeller Foundation, 65% of businesses will offer some kind of incentive for employees to get vaccinated, while 63% said they will require proof of vaccination before workers can return to the office.

  Another 35% said disciplinary actions are on the table, including the possibility of termination, for those who refuse vaccines.

  The survey, released Thursday, represents the responses of 957 businesses across 24 industries. Most of the respondents were US businesses with 250 employees or more.

  Even after employees have returned to the office, testing will remain a critical piece of the safety plan provided by most employers.

  Looking ahead, roughly two-thirds of employers are planning to allow employees to work from home full-time through 2021, and 73% intend to offer flexible work arrangements when the pandemic is over. However, 73% of businesses want employees to work from the office at least 20 hours a week.

  “This is not just a bubble that goes back to ‘normal’, there will be some positive flexibility after the pandemic ends and we go back to in-person work,” said Mara G. Aspinall, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions and one of the authors of the survey.

  As far as employee concerns go, most workers said they’re mostly worried about their personal health, risk of infection and safety of the workplace. And when it comes to returning to the office, 38% of employees want to return eventually but not immediately and about one quarter said they are reluctant to return at all.

  “The pandemic has changed the traditional office environment in many ways, possibly forever, yet a majority of employers are indicating they see real value in employees continuing to interact face-to-face,” Nathaniel L. Wade, a co-author of the study who is also affiliated with ASU’s College of Health Solutions. “We really wanted to make sure we’re giving public information to help people make good decisions.”

  Most employees, about 51%, would prefer to wait until the government or health agencies allow them to return to work, and about 47% said they would return to in-person work when the entire workforce is vaccinated.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:55

• The New Economic World Order After COVID-19
  The New Economic World Order After COVID-19

  Authored by Fred Dunkley via SafeHaven.com,

  “Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”

  – Chinese proverb.

  A few days ago, China’s President Xi Jinping issued a thinly-veiled attack on the United States, condemning its economic and military hegemony and calling for a new world order whereby “International affairs should be handled by everyone.” Although Xi did not explicitly name the U.S. in his 18-minute speech, he took aim at Washington’s efforts to decouple supply chains from China, specifically the Trump administration’s ban on American semiconductors and other high-tech goods from being sold to Chinese companies such as Huawei.

  Xi lamented the current unilateralism, saying the rules set by one or a few countries ‘‘should not give the whole world a rhythm.’’

  Interestingly, Xi made those comments just days after U.S. President Joe Biden and Japan’s prime minister Yoshihide Suga committed to work together to oppose Chinese coercion in the South and East China Seas. 

  Readers might be wondering which are these privileged economies that might be giving Xi hissy fits.

  Well, it’s mostly the usual suspects, apart from the usual exceptions.

  Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic has sent many economies into their worst economic recessions in recent history, the old world economic order remains mostly intact with the exception of a few notable changes. More importantly, the United States, China, Japan and Germany, in that order, still rank as the world’s largest economies.

  However, some countries have moved places as a result of the pandemic while others are no longer among elite company.

  The data is derived from CNBC, which compares nominal gross domestic product across countries provided in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database.

  So what are the biggest developments in post-pandemic economic rankings?

  

  Here we go:

  Brazil drops off

  For starters, Brazil has dropped out of Top 10.

  The big news in the New World Order is that Brazil went from being the ninth largest economy in 2019 to the 12th largest last year. Indeed, the South American powerhouse was the only country to fall out of the top 10 ranking.

  Even worse news for BRIC investors: The IMF says Brazil’s time in the cold is likely to last until 2026 when it might return to the Top 10.

  That revelation is hardly surprising, considering that Brazil is currently afflicted by the world’s third-largest caseload of Covid-19 infections, with the health secretary recently warning of an imminent collapse by the country’s health system.

  On a brighter note, the IMF has forecast that Brazil’s economy will expand 3.7% in FY 2021 after contracting 4.1% in 2020.

  South Korea rising

  Naturally, there’s a new entrant to the Top 10, which happens to be South Korea.

  With Brazil dropping out of the world’s 10 biggest economies, South Korea moved up to 10th place with the IMF predicting that it might maintain that spot till 2026.

  South Korea has recorded some success against Covid-19 though cases have been surging again this month.

  However, strong semiconductor exports have been instrumental in limiting economic contraction to just 1% in 2020.

  A global shortage in semiconductor chips has been wreaking havoc on the tech sector, automotive industry, consumer electronics industry, and everything in between. After years of tepid demand, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a huge tech buying spree with manufacturers of personal computers, tablets, laptops, and gaming consoles­ caught off guard. 

  Indeed, the PC industry has been enjoying a major revival thanks to the work-at-home phenomenon with computer sales in 2020 exceeding 302 million units, good for a 13% Y/Y increase and the most since 2014. At the same time, webcam sales surged almost 360% with video conferencing becoming the new buzzword of modern communication.

  The trade war between the United States and China has only served to make a bad situation worse.

  In a decision announced last fall, the U.S. Commerce Department declared Chinese chip manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International or SMIC, persona non grata after determining the company supplies the Chinese military with chips thus making it a threat to national security. The federal government restricted SMIC from obtaining some U.S.-regulated chip-making equipment leading to U.S. buyers cutting back orders from the company. SMIC is one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips, accounting for about 5% of global semiconductor supply.

  Luckily, South Korea’s chip manufacturers have largely remained in Washington’s good books.

  U.K. leapfrogs India

  Another piece of bad news for BRIC investors: India, the world’s fifth largest economy in 2019, slipped to sixth place after the U.K. leapfrogged it.

  Unlike Brazil though, the IMF says the South Asian country could regain fifth place as early as 2023. 

  India has struggled to contain the pandemic even amidst widespread lockdowns, with the IMF predicting that the economy contracted a whopping 8% in FY 2020 which ended in March 2021.

  On its part, the U.K. has rolled out the second-most most successful Covid-19 vaccination program after the U.S. In fact, businesses in the country are doing brisk business after lockdown reopening–another big plus for the economy.

  In the final analysis, the old order appears set to remain mostly unchanged especially at the top echelons. U.S. businesses remain eager to expand their operations in China after the Asian nation recorded 18.3% year-on-year economic growth in the first quarter of 2021 but are constrained by geopolitical tensions between the two nations remaining high with the Biden administration recently announcing that it will maintain most of the Trump-era tariffs. This is unlikely to change anytime soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:40

• Farm Robot Zaps Weeds With High-Powered Lasers, Eliminates Need For Toxic Herbicides
  Farm Robot Zaps Weeds With High-Powered Lasers, Eliminates Need For Toxic Herbicides

  In the same way, a self-driving car sees its surroundings on city streets, sensors that use machine learning technology allow farm robots to navigate fields. Automation is a growing presence in the farm industry, and a new generation of autonomous robots is helping farmers shape tomorrow’s crops.

  Crops that can be harvested with barely any or no herbicides would be beneficial not just to humans but also to the environment. An oddly-shaped autonomous farm tractor can eliminate the need for toxic herbicides by using high-powered lasers to weed about 20 acres per day to solve this dilemma. 

  

  Robotics company Carbon Robotics unveiled its newest weed elimination robot, Autonomous Weeder, which leverages artificial intelligence, sensors, and lasers to eliminate weeds on commercial farms.

  

  “Traditional chemicals used by farmers, such as herbicides, deteriorate soil health and are tied to health problems in humans and other mammals. A laser-powered, autonomous weed management solution reduces or eliminates farmers’ needs for herbicides,” Carbon Robotics’ website said. 

  

  Autonomous Weeder offers an economical path towards organic farming that is generally labor-intensive. The robot also reduces the highly variable cost of manual labor. 

  “AI and deep learning technology are creating efficiencies across a variety of industries, and we’re excited to apply it to agriculture,” said Carbon Robotics CEO and Founder Paul Mikesell. 

  Mikesell continued: “Farmers, and others in the global food supply chain, are innovating now more than ever to keep the world fed. Our goal at Carbon Robotics is to create tools that address their most challenging problems, including weed management and elimination.”

  Here’s a demo video of the farm robot zapping weeds in a field. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:20

• The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 2: Moral Hazards In Space
  The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 2: Moral Hazards In Space

  Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

  Read Part 1 here…

  “Insufficient facts always invite danger.”

  Is it right to let a small number of very wealthy entrepreneurs fill Earth’s already crowded orbital space to establish non-terrestrial internet monopolies? What are the risks, and are the costs justified? Should orbital space be a public good?

  

  A few years ago I read a Sci-fi novel where the moon breaks into three parts. Everyone oohs and ahhs at the beauty of the new multiple moon system until it becomes apparent the new moons are colliding, creating hundred of smaller pieces. The pace of collisions increases chaotically towards a tipping point as the number of rocks increases, until the space debris starts bombarding the earth, wiping out life on the planet. Devasting stuff, and very unlikely.

  But there is a genuine scientific parallel.

  There are already millions of pieces of space junk orbiting the planet – ranging from broken satellites to discarded space gloves, some spanners and lots of flecks of paint that’s broken off spaceships. These orbit at stupendous speed. If they hit anything, they have the potential to cause enormous damage. If they destroy anything, then a single piece of debris can create a whole cloud of debris, each piece of which can cause similar damage, raising the potential of critical out of control chain reaction and a cloud of debris making space travel very dangerous.

  Scary… if you are spaceman.

  Many smart Tech investors consider the most valuable private company on the planet is Elon Musk’s Space X and his internet constellation Starlink. There are a host of other firms also shooting for space-based coms dominance; including the UK government’s recently acquired OneWeb, Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper (funded by Amazon), ViaSat and Telesat. All of them want to launch satellites into low-earth-orbit to win a share of space-based internet.

  Space X is doing a superb job transporting astronauts to the ISS. They are perfecting reusable rockets. I’m excited they may fly to the moon. I’ll be even happier if Musk gets his way and goes to Mars. I’ve written about the company a number of times: To the Stars, But Mars First, and Rocketmen and Viruses.

  Despite my admiration… I am not convinced we actually need the Starlink system. The risk it might destroy the viability of future space-based businesses is very small. But do we really need multiple competing space-based systems? And if not, should not Orbital Space be a public good regulated for the good of all, rather than the enrichment of the few?

  Wouldn’t it be better environmentally, at a much lower cost to simply continue to improve current terrestrial connectivity, rather than lob up hundreds of nasty big polluting rockets on the basis some Nutjob prepper in isolation in the Rockies will be able to post insane hatred on the internet? Maybe all these rockets could be used for obtaining resources from the solar system, or learning more about space based threats like asteroids or solar flares?

  Space based internet is a reality. It’s interesting to note the French have now taken a stake in OneWeb, where the UK holds the golden share.

  Today there may be 4000 satellites in orbit – a number that has nearly doubled in just a few years. That number is set to increase quadratically as all the new Satellite constellations go up.

  It was once fun to spot the occasional satellite traversing the sky, or streaking across a telescope viewfinder. Astronomers increasingly report trains of satellites are obscuring their stellar observations. The new Starlink satellites are 99% brighter than other “objects of all types currently in Earth Orbit”, said a US University of Michigan astronomer. There are around 9000 visible stars – but they are increasingly fazed by clouds of satellites “crawling” across the skies.

  Who cares about Astronomers when there is money to be made? Well… I do!

  The Low Earth Orbital (LEO) space will become increasingly crowded with potentially 30-40,000 new active satellites to be launched in the next few years. The lower their orbits, the more dense and more concentrated orbital risks become – but the advantage is shorter latency, the time delay caused by distance. LEO satellites latency should compare with pre-5G terrestrial internet in terms of speed of communication.

  But, as I said in the intro, space debris is a rising risk. A malfunctioning satellite is just a lump shooting round the planet at 25k mph looking for something else to hit. The denser the space becomes, the riskier it gets. For years space geeks have warned about debris circling the planet. The proverbial fleck of paint has enough momentum to destroy a satellite or puncture the International Space Station (ISS).

  The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a request from Space X to lower the orbits of nearly 3000 licenced units from 1000 km to 550 km orbits, joining the 1400 Starlink birds already flying at 540-580 km. Jeff Bezos intends to layer his 3,236 unit Kuiper belt of satellites at 630km. Orbital Space is getting crowded.

  The UK’s OneWeb claim Space X had a near collision with its satellites in early April – which Space X says never happened.  A battle is underway – Kuiper and OneWeb are objecting to the lowered Starlink orbits, noting a collision would be like a “bomb” going off. Their argument makes sense – if satellites collide they break up into lots of smaller random pieces of debris, each a little bomb in its own right.

  Each little piece of debris has the potential to hit something else – a chain reaction creating more and more debris eventually obliterating all functional satellites in LEO, and potentially forming a barrier to future launches to higher orbits. It’s a doomsday scenario the boffins claim will happen.

  Of course, boffins always predict the worse. The sky may be full of junk, but collisions are very rare. During the last unpleasantness in Europe, there were multiple predictions that bomber streams raiding Germany in the dark would experience multiple collisions – which seldom happened. There are far more instances of bombers being hit by bombs dropped from above them.

  Musk also disagrees about the risks. His team say LEO is safer. Musk is very keen because he has identified that a vast constellation of LEO satellites covering the entire planet is his second road to riches. If he can charge $80 a month for access, he gets rich (see previous Morning Porridge:   He will also take a considerable subsidy from the US government ($20 bln over ten years) to provide rural internet services.

  But do we need to use satellites?

  The history of communications satellites goes back to Telstar in the 1960s. In the 1990s a host of telecoms companies including Globalstar and Iridium planned satellite coms networks, but with the rapid rollout and increasing speed of terrestrial internet and mobile phones left the ultra-expensive satellite systems floundering. They never found widespread adoption. (On the yacht I still have an Iridium phone – but I won’t renew any contract until I know I’m going to be miles offshore. A $89 Starlink connection might be a much better option.)

  LEO Starlink satellites will only stay in orbit 3-5 years and then need replaced before they burn up in the atmosphere. They are cheap and cheerful to manufacture – which makes them look a viable alternative to terrestrial internet. However, the apparent simplicity hides the reality. The biggest cost is launch – even Space X’s reusable Falcon rockets cost money. Generally, costs come in at $45-65K per kilogramme. Then there is the cost of Earth Station Antennas. The new sat firms all expect widespread adoption will bring down costs. Expectations are just another type of hope – which is never a good investment strategy!

  The bottom line is the evolving battle for Earth’s orbital space is another example where Tech is in danger of trumping common sense. Musk has first mover advantage, and he’s using his reusable rockets to establish himself as a monopoly supplier.

  I will admit… I find Musk…. distasteful. There is a great article on him in this morning’s WSJ: Elon Musk’s War on Regulators.  To quote: “Federal Agencies say he’s breaking the rules and endangering people.” The article sums him up well.. A toddler who will do anything to get his way. A narcissistic showman with a nasty streak – his appalling treatment and slander of a British cave-diver who laughed at his showboating plans to rescue stranded children in a cave demonstrated his contempt for others and sense of entitlement.

  I lost faith in Tesla around that time – it cost me the future stock upside when I dumped most of my position. I justify it because I ascribe to the view companies are part of society, and must follow social rules and conventions. Musk does not. He doesn’t do sorry, play by the rules or take responsibility for his actions. He gets away with it because he feels entitled to do so. He may or may not be a genius – that’s immaterial.

  What are the dangers? 2000 satellites per annum crashing back on to the planet? Crowded orbital space? Small. But would you trust the future to Musk? Is it right he’ll get to farm monopoly profits by taking away our view of the stars and future?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 21:00

• Soaring Copper Prices Send Crippling Shockwaves Across China's Economy
  Soaring Copper Prices Send Crippling Shockwaves Across China’s Economy

  As if China didn’t have (soaring) debt, (shrinking) demographic and (pent up) default nightmares to struggle with every night (and realistically, every day) it can now add one more splitting headache to its rosters of economic challenges: soaring prices in the one commodity that is absolutely critical for China’s rapidly growing economy. Copper.

  While commodity and copper bulls have enjoyed a tremendous start to the year with the price of copper surpassing $10K earlier this week and set to make new all time highs, Copper’s eyewatering price – which Goldman expects to keep rising for years due to an unprecedented supply/demand imbalance – is causing ripples of stress for industrial consumers in China, the world’s largest market for the metal. As Bloomberg reports, “some Chinese manufacturers of electric wire have idled units and delayed deliveries or even defaulted on bank loans, according to a survey by the Shanghai Metals Market.” Meanwhile, end-users such as power grids and property developers have also been pushing back delivery times, unable to pay for the metal, while producers of copper rods and pipes saw orders slump this week, said the researcher.

  Copper’s rally – which is fueled by soaring global demand resulting from trillions in stimulus, near-zero interest rates and the global economic recovery from Covid-19 – sent the price above $10,000 a metric ton on Thursday for the first time in a decade, making it among the best performers in a scorching surge in metals prices.

  “Domestic copper users are feeling the pain right now after the recent surge caught them off guard,” said Fan Rui, an analyst at Guoyuan Futures Co. “Electric wire producers are being hit the most, with smaller plants keeping run rates low as the spike is seen slowing the pace of investment by power grids.”

  In a clear indication that the laws of supply and demand still work somewhere, as the price of copper exploded, Chinese spot purchases of copper have weakened significantly amid the copper rally…

  

  … while the latest Chinese manufacturing PMI index slipped in April and the services sector also weakened, suggesting the economy is still recovering but at a slower pace. And while China – the biggest end user of physical copper may be approaching its demand limit  – analysts at banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are predicting further gains for the metal as the global economy picks up pace.

  To cynics who still remember Goldman’s $200 oil price target in the summer of 2008, Goldman’s copper euphoria is just a way to offload its own exposure to naive clients.

  Sure enough, Bloomberg notes that in a sign of potential weakness in Chinese physical demand, the spot contract traded at a discount of as much as 215 yuan a ton ($33) to Shanghai futures’ prices this week, the widest in about 10 months. The appetite for imports is also low, with the Yangshan copper premium, paid on top of benchmark LME prices, slumped to the lowest since data were first published in 2017.

  Furthermore, there is a precedent for demand destruction in China amid higher prices, according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Colin Hamilton. Hamilton pointed to 2006 where prices recorded the largest January-April gain on record and came amid a credit-fueled sudden acceleration in developed world demand.

  “2006 was the only year this century where annual Chinese copper consumption fell on a y/y basis, as marginal buyers simply stepped away,” Hamilton said in a note, hinting that 2021 may be the second such year unless copper prices don’t stabilize.

  Higher price levels also could see marginal buyers pull back in the near term and look to substitute in the medium term.

  “$10,000/t copper now is the biggest danger to future demand use, particularly in these nascent trends where material selection is still evolving,” said Hamilton. “There is no doubt copper may be best for electrical or heat transfer performance, but with the ratio to aluminium now well above the 3.5:1 level where we consider substitution accelerates, the risk is clear.”

  Copper fell 0.8% to $9,806 a ton on London Metal Exchange on Friday after reaching $10,008 on Thursday, the highest since February 2011. Aluminum also fell, while nickel rose.

  

  While physical demand may be reaching its limits, the financial demand for copper remains strong as speculators – who never plan to accept physical delivery – keep pushing the price higher on the back of generous leverage and trillions in central bank liquidity. The question is when does this artificial push higher reach its limits, and will the upcoming crash in copper be similar to the plunge in oil in the late summer of 2008, when brent collapsed from $150 to $30 right around the time of the Great Lehman Delevearging.

  Until then, we eagerly await for the new round of horror stories involving rehypothecated Chinese copper which as a reminder, is not only the most important commodity propping up China’s economy but also the key anchor behind hundreds of billions in Chinese Copper Financing Deals or CCFDs which we have discussed extensively in the past. One place we are closely watching is Chinese brokerage Dalu Futures which in late February amassed a $1 billion long position in copper contracts within just four days…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:40

• "The Social Contract Is Broken": Why Millennials Who Lack Rich Parents Feel Increasingly Hopeless
  “The Social Contract Is Broken”: Why Millennials Who Lack Rich Parents Feel Increasingly Hopeless

  The worsening precarity of the millennial generation has been a hot topic for the financial press over the last year, and it hasn’t failed to disappoint. Thinkpieces about crushing student loan debt, rising housing prices placing home-ownership further out of reach, and the soul-crushing intensity of formerly sought-after jobs in finance have abounded. And now, the Financial Times has launched a new series where it explores some of the biggest problems facing its millennial readers. And what the report discovered might come as a surprise to some. Picking up where that PowerPoint about the miserable working conditions of Goldman junior analysts left off, the FT reported that even millennials with strong resumes and “good jobs” who “did everything right” are “drowning in insecurity.”

  As the FT sees it, millennials’ fate will depend largely upon whether they’re the progeny of wealthy families, or not. Those who can depend on “the bank of mom and dad” for an interest-free loan (or a generous inheritance) will always have an advantage in procuring the best homes, jobs and school placement as entry to the upper echelon of society still largely depends on having access to the best schools and alumni networks. Millennials who don’t enjoy these advantages will be forced to compete in a market set up to cater to those who do.

  

  Source: FT

  But while that conclusion is relatively self-evident, an even more surprising detail from the FT’s report is that once-safe careers in investment banking and private equity no longer convey the same promise of long-term security. As an example of these phenomon, the FT introduces Akin Ogundele, who works in London’s financial sector, and lives in the city with his wife and young family. The fact that he’s struggling to pay his bills in a rental flat, with little hope of affording his own home any time soon, has given him a “sense that the social contract is broken for his generation…” something that’s shared by many young people “and not just in London.”

  Many of the story’s most striking examples are delivered with a quote. Here are a few of our favorites:

  • “If I carry on the way I am, I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pass down,” he says. “It can’t be good for the country — the disparities are just going to grow, the wealthy are going to grow wealthier and those that aren’t will get more and more removed.”

  • For Killian Mangan, who graduated during the pandemic last year and struggled to find a job, it feels as if “we are drowning in insecurity with no help in sight”. A twenty-something who works for a central bank says: “I sometimes have this feeling that we are edging towards a precipice, or falling in it already.”

  • A 30-something who works in private equity in the UK turns to collateralised debt obligations for a metaphor to describe the position of his generation. “The space I feel I occupy in the sociopolitical order is akin to being the first loss tranche in the debt stack,” he says. “Whenever anything bad happens I have no doubt that, because we lack political and economic clout, we will be left holding the bag.”

  • “At the moment, while the wealth is still held by older generations it shows up in the data as a difference between generations, but wealth doesn’t disappear, it’s going to flow down and [then] it moves on to being an issue about inequality within younger generations,” says David Sturrock, an IFS senior research economist. “It’s basically saying how much you stand to gain depends on who your parents are and the wealth they have.” Many developed countries share “a lot of the same dynamics”, he adds.

  • “I ate spaghetti for a month in 2009 because the company I worked for was owned by a private equity firm, which thought it best to cut me so it could buy out smaller competitors,” says Jim from California in the US. “They eventually hired me back for close to half the pay…way to develop talent, right?”

  • “After 30 or so rejections, I was chosen out of a pool of 2,500 applicants to undergo a psychometric test, followed by a video interview, followed by an assessment centre, followed by a week-long virtual scheme culminating in an interview before being offered a two-year training contract,” says Hadrien, a recent UK graduate. “We are competing with machines and bots, and an ever increasing population of skilled humans,” says another.

  But while some might dismiss these quotes as more whining from millennials who have nobody but themselves to blame for being duped into taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a four-year liberal arts degree, the FT also peppered the story with data supporting this vision of a downwardly mobile fate.

  It started with data showing fewer millennials will out-earn their parents.

  

  Source: FT

  And how feelings of career insecurity are shared by young people around the world, in both developing and emerging economies.

  

  Source: FT

  Millennials, meanwhile, struggling with a stubbornly low share of household wealth (partly a factor of the wealth-draining impact of student loans).

  

  Source: FT

  According to an editor’s note, the story is merely the first in a series about the myriad problems facing the millennial generation. While we’re sure its audience will appreciate the FT’s attempt to court more youthful readers, we suspect it might come off as a tad whiny. After all, millennials just had the opportunity to get in on one of the greatest wealth-creation engines of all time (crypto) while boomer CEOs were mostly left scratching their heads.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:22

• "3 Or 4" Senators Will Run For President In 2024: McConnell
  “3 Or 4” Senators Will Run For President In 2024: McConnell

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Several current Republican senators will run for president in the next election cycle, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday.

  

  McConnell during a Fox News appearance responded to former President Donald Trump, a possible candidate who again criticized the longtime senator earlier in the day.

  “We need good leadership. Mitch McConnell has not done a great job. I think they should change Mitch McConnell,” Trump said.

  The relationship between the two Republicans has frayed for months.

  McConnell responded by saying that Republicans are “looking in the future, not the past.”

  He pointed to Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s speech on Wednesday night, saying Scott “is the future” of the GOP and laid out where the Republican Party has arrived.

  Trump also said, “100 percent I’m thinking about running,” noting that he drew some 12 million more votes in the 2020 election than he received in 2016.

  

  Then-President Donald Trump speaks to the media after signing a bill for border funding in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on July 1, 2019. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  McConnell affirmed on Fox that he will back whomever voters choose as the GOP nominee in 2024.

  “I’m going to support the nominee of the Republican Party,” McConnell said.

  “I do predict, however, there’s going to be a robust competition for the nomination. I’ve got three or four members of the Senate who are going to be running for president in 2024, once that all sorts itself out, as the Republican leader of the Senate, obviously, I’ll be supporting the Republican nominee for president in 2024.”

  McConnell did not name which senators he was referring to, but Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and Scott are among the rumored potential candidates.

  Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are also considered possible candidates. Both ran in 2016.

  Others who have been mentioned as potentially running on the Republican side include former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

  Trump on Thursday said he is considering DeSantis as his running mate if he does run.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 20:20

• When Murray Rothbard Predicted The Menthol Ban
  When Murray Rothbard Predicted The Menthol Ban

  Murray Rothbard wrote the following article in August 1994…

  Quick: Which is America’s Most Persecuted Minority? No, you’re wrong. (And it’s not Big Business either: one of Ayn Rand’s more ludicrous pronouncements.)

  All right, consider this: Which group has been increasingly illegalized, shamed and denigrated first by the Establishment, and then, following its lead, by society at large? Which group, far from coming out of the “closet,” has been literally forced back into the closet after centuries of walking proudly in the public square? And which group has tragically internalized the value-system of its oppressors, so that they are deeply ashamed and guilty about practicing their rites and customs? Which group is so brow-beaten that it never thinks of defending itself, any attempt at which is publicly condemned and ridiculed? Which group is considered such sinners that the use of doctored statistics against them is considered legitimate means in a worthy cause?

  

  I refer, of course, to that once proud race, tobacco-smokers, a group once revered and envied, but now there are none so poor as to do them reverence.

  So low has this group sunk in the public esteem that, in rushing to their defense, I am obliged to point out that I myself am not and never have been a smoker. Can you imagine having to put in such a disclaimer against special pleading in behalf of the rights of blacks, Jews, or gays against oppression?

  The crusade against smoking is only the currently most virulent example of one of the most malignant forces in American life: left neo-Puritanism. Puritanism was famously defined by my favorite writer, H.L. Mencken, as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” The major problem with the Puritans is not so much that they were a dour lot, but that they were believers in the dangerous Christian heresy of “post-millennialism” that is, that it is man’s responsibility to establish a thousand-year (give or take a few centuries) Kingdom of God on Earth as a precondition of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. Since the Kingdom is by definition a perfect society free of sin, this means that it is the theological duty of believers to establish a sin-free society. But establishing a sin-free society, of course, means taking stern measures to get rid of sinners, which is where the rub comes in.

  Now I recognize that in being obliged to depict the crusaders as neo-Puritans, I am in a deep sense not doing justice to the original Puritans. The original seventeenth-century New England Puritans were not so much crusaders as people who wanted to establish their own sin-free Kingdom in their own new settlements, their own “city on a hill.” The original Puritans, too, were Calvinists, who believed in Christianity and a Christian commonwealth as a strict code of Biblical and God-determined law. But over the years, the original Puritanism was replaced, especially by a wave of pietist revivalism in the late 1820s, by a far more crusading and hence menacing version of Protestant Christianity: what is technically known as “post-millennial evangelical pietism” (PMEP). This PMEP took particular root among the ethno-cultural descendants of the old Puritans, people who became known as “Yankees,” and who had migrated from New England to populate such areas as upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois. (No, “Yankees,” as in “damn Yankees,” did not mean simply “Northerners.”)

  This new, and malignant, form of PMEP, of neo-Puritanism, which literally dominated all the mainstream Protestant churches in the North for literally one hundred years, had the following traits: (1) Creed, or liturgy, is formalistic and unimportant. So long as you are a Protestant, it doesn’t matter what church you belong to. Churches don’t matter; the only thing that matters is the individual’s salvation. (2) To achieve salvation, the individual must believe and must be free from sin. (3) “Sin,” however, is very broadly defined as virtually any practice that is enjoyable, in particular, anything which might “cloud your mind” so that you might not achieve salvation: in particular, liquor (Demon Rum); any activity on the Sabbath except praying, reading the Bible, and going to church (and not the Roman Catholic Church, the instrument of the Antichrist in the Vatican); (4) Since each individual is weak and subject to temptation, his salvation must be aided by the government, whose theological duty it is to stamp out such occasions for sin as liquor, activity of any secular sort on the Sabbath, and the Catholic Church. As one historian aptly summed up the PMEP attitude toward the State: “Government is God’s major instrument of salvation.” After all, how are liquor or Catholics to be stamped out by persuasion alone? (5) (the crucial icing on the cake): You will not be saved unless you try your darndest to maximize everyone else’s salvation (i.e., get the government to stamp out sin).

  

  Armed with this five-point world-outlook, the neo-Puritan PMEP hurled himself (and herself, and how!) into a devilishly energetic, hopped-up, unrelenting crusade to stamp out these evils, and to set up paternalistic Big Government on the local, state, and national levels to crush sin and to usher in a perfect sin-less Kingdom. In politics, this meant a full century of crusading against liquor, and to keep the Sabbath Holy. (Do you know that in libertarian, anti-neo-Puritan Jacksonian America, the Post Office used to deliver the mail on Sundays?) But since it would be clearly unconstitutional to outlaw the Catholic Church, the PMEP substitute was to try to force all children into a network of public schools, the object of which was to inculcate obedience to the State and, in the popular slogan of the day, to “Christianize the Catholic” kids, since Catholic adults were clearly doomed.

  It took archetypical neo-Puritan Woodrow Wilson not only to bring Prohibition to America, and thereby fulfill the PMEP’s most cherished dreams, but also to take PMEP crusading on to a world scale. For after the Kingdom was established in America, the next holy step was to bring about a worldwide Kingdom. (The Prohibitionist crusaders, however, soon found their dreams of a liquor-free Europe dashed beyond repair.)

  The ethno-religious group that felt the most severe oppression from the fanatical harridans of the PMEP (for yes, the most fanatic crusaders were Yankee women, especially spinsters) were the German-American Catholics and High-Church Lutherans. Both of these groups imported into America the charming and admirable custom of going to church on Sundays with their family in their best finery, and then repairing to a beer garden in the afternoon, where they could drink beer and listen to their beloved oom-pah-pah bands. You can imagine the reaction when hordes of PMEP harridans descended upon them crying “Sin! Evil! Smash!” for committing what to the Germans was harmless, but what to the PMEPs was the grave double sin of drinking beer, and on Sundays! And, furthermore, both the Catholics and the German Lutherans wanted to bring up their kids in their own parochial schools, and not in the secularist (or rather, PMEP) public school system!

  The high-water mark of PMEP crusading was, of course, the outlawing of all liquor (and by constitutional amendment, no less!). The result used to be common knowledge in America; absolute disaster: tyranny, corruption, black markets and more alcoholism as people went underground to get more intense “fixes” such as hard liquor rather than beer before the cops could close in. And, of course, organized crime, which was almost non-existent before Prohibition. But now, only groups willing to be criminals were available to supply a much desired and demanded product.

  This grim lesson used to be known to all Americans, but it has been lost in the enthusiasm for recent neo-Puritan crusades; against drugs, and now against smoking. What is little realized is that the current reason for the crusade was also present during the old PMEP war against liquor. As the decades wore on, the neo-Puritans used both theological and medicinal arguments; liquor will not only send you to Hell, but would also ruin your temporal body, your liver, your body-as-a-temple. Liquor would cause you to beat your wives, have more accidents, and, a little later, injure yourself and others on the road. Increasingly, over the years, the PMEPs married theology and Science in their crusade.

  So what happened to the aggressively Christian features of neo-Puritanism, to the emphasis on salvation and on the Kingdom? Interestingly, over the decades, the Christian aspect gradually disappeared. After all, if as a Christian activist, your major focus is not on creed or liturgy but on using the government to shape everyone up and stamp out sin, eventually Christ fades out of the picture and government remains. The picture of the Kingdom of God on Earth becomes secularized or atheized, and, in the Marxist version, the secular sin-free Kingdom is brought about by the terrible swift sword of the “saints” of the Communist Party. We have arrived at the grisly land of Left Puritanism, of a Left Kingdom which proposes to bring about a perfect world free of tobacco, inequality, greed, and hate-thoughts. We have arrived, in short, in the land of The Enemy.

  And so, smokers! Are you mice or are you men? Smokers, rise up, be proud, throw off the guilt imposed on you by your oppressors! Stand tall, and smoke! Defend your rights! Do you really think that someone can get instant lung cancer by imbibing a bit of smoke from someone sitting twenty feet away in an outdoor arena? How do you explain the fact that millions of people have smoked all their lives without ill effect?

  And remember, if today they come for the smoker, tomorrow they will come for you. If today they grab your cigarette, tomorrow they will seize your junk food, your carbohydrates, your yummy but “empty” calories. And don’t think that your liquor is safe either; neo-Prohibitionism has been long on the march, what with “sin taxes” (revealing term, isn’t it?), outlawing of advertising, higher drinking ages, and the neo-Puritan harpies of MADD. Are you ready for the Left Nutritional Kingdom, with everyone forced to confine his food to yogurt and tofu and bean sprouts? Are you ready to be confined in a cage, to make sure that your diet is perfect, and that you get the prescribed Compulsory Exercise? All to be governed by a Hillary Clinton National Health Board?

  Smokers, if you have the guts to form a Smokers Defense League, I will be happy to join a Non-Smokers Auxiliary! How about smokers as one important mass base for a right-wing populist counterrevolution?

  This article originally appeared at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and The Libertarian Institute.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:40

• Toyota Is Building Its Own Autonomous City Next To Mount Fuji
  Toyota Is Building Its Own Autonomous City Next To Mount Fuji

  Many auto executives have said the “missing link” for autonomous success has been cities being wired to funnel data to cars for them to be able to meaningfully drive themselves. So Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is now setting its sights on building an all-autonomous city. 

  Toyota President Akio Toyoda kicked off the idea by gathering with Shinto priests at the base of Mount Fuji and praying for success. At an area where the company recently shuttered a factory, the automaker’s focus has turned to the idea of a 175-acre community to test future technologies such as autonomous vehicles, according to Bloomberg.

  Toyoda said: “It’s a new chapter in our story and in our industry.”

  

  Toyota is calling it the “Woven City” and it’ll be located about a 2 hour drive from Tokyo. The city will hand pick its residents and will test not only autonomous vehicles, but autonomous deliveries and mobile shops. Construction is expected to be completed in 2024.

  Hiroki Kuriyama, senior vice president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., has said that cities feeding cars information will be the “the next big leap forward” for autonomous. His company is partnering with Toyota to develop the technology needed for the city. 

  Kuriyama notes that sensors and cameras built into infrastructure – and possibly even data from mobile phones – will make it easier to gather data that can then be “processed via optical networks” before being fed to cars, allowing them to navigate safely. 

  Toyota announced this week is was buying Lyft’s autonomous self-driving operations for $550 million. As a result of that deal, Toyota will take on 300 new employees and will ascertain tons of data that Lyft has already collected. 

  

  James Kuffner, Toyota’s chief digital officer and head of Woven Planet said the combination “can create a scalable solution that brings mobility beyond what we’re seeing today.” He continued: “Woven City will allow us to try out different city infrastructure. If cars and cities can communicate with each other in a smart way, I think we can build safer systems.”

  The city will also feature smart homes that take on their own trash and restock their own refrigerators. The city’s ecosystem will be powered by hydrogen. 

  Nakanishi Research Institute head Takaki Nakanishi said: “Mobility, living and cities are going to become connected, and control of that standardized software, that’s what everyone wants.”

  Kuriyama is confident the technology being used in the Woven City will be available within 5 to 10 years. “But what’s important is whether residents living in other cities will welcome those technologies,” he said. 

  

  Alexander Soley, an independent consultant focusing on autonomous vehicles, said: “When it comes to new technologies, you can’t just release them and expect them to get picked up, they need to sit with people for a good period of time.”

  “Elderly families are a group targeted to live in the city. How will they feel about stepping foot in a car without a driver? That’s what Toyota’s trying to figure out,” he continued.

  The town is going to house about 360 visiting scientists, Toyota employees, families and retirees. That number will eventually push into the thousands. The estimate costs is “upwards of a billion dollars” to build the city. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:20

• Oklahoma House Votes To Ban Teaching Of Critical Race Theory In Public Schools
  Oklahoma House Votes To Ban Teaching Of Critical Race Theory In Public Schools

  Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

  The Oklahoma House on Thursday voted to ban public schools and universities from teaching critical race theory in civics and history classes. After hours of discussion and debate, the GOP-controlled House voted 70-19 in favor of the bill, HB1775, which now heads to Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk to be signed into law.

  

  It would prevent a number of topics, including that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another,” and that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive,” from being taught in the state.

  The sponsor of the bill, Republican state Rep. Kevin West said in a statement that students are being taught that because they’re a certain race or sex, they’re “inherently superior to others or should feel guilty for something that happened in the past.”

  “We’re trying to set boundaries that we as a state say will not be crossed when we’re teaching these kinds of subjects,” West said.

  Democrats argued that the bill was a waste of time and addressed a problem that doesn’t exist.

  “Instead of focusing on the real issues facing Oklahomans, the majority party continues their attack on anyone in Oklahoma who might not look, think, love, or act like them,” said state House Minority Leader Rep. Emily Virgin, a Democrat from Norman.

  Critical race theory has gradually proliferated in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world. It redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similarly to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.”

  It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as racist and “white supremacist.”

  Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the critical race theory ideology.

  In February, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York condemned critical race theory, describing it as an outgrowth of the European Marxist school of critical theory that interprets American social and political life through the lens of a power struggle between the race of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.

  Proponents of critical race theory have argued that the theory is merely “demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism truly is.”

  In one of his first executive actions in the White House, President Joe Biden rescinded his predecessor’s ban of critical race theory in federal workplaces. Former President Donald Trump’s September 2020 executive order declared that diversity and inclusion training for federal employees should not promote “un-American” and “divisive concepts.”

  Biden instead issued an executive order stating that the federal government must pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”

  News of the Oklahoma vote comes days after Idado Gov. Brad Little signed into law a bill, H 377 (pdf), that would prevent the teaching of critical race theory in the Gem State’s public schools and universities.

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last month denounced critical race theory as hateful.

  “There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” he said, announcing that the state’s new civic curriculum will explicitly exclude critical race theory.

  “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

  Elsewhere, Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, and West Virginia have said that they aim to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools, workplaces, and government agencies.

  Gov. Stitt’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 19:00

• Chlorine Prices Explode Just In Time For Peak Pool Season
  Chlorine Prices Explode Just In Time For Peak Pool Season

  Here’s another example of the butterfly effect.

  By now everyone knows that a March fire at a plant owned by Japanese chipmaker Renesas was the straw that broke the semiconductor camel’s back, and what were already stretched chip supply chains collapsed, forcing countless companies – from carmarkers to defense contractors – to put production on halt indefinitely until chip inventories had restocked.

  But did you know that a fire at a factor last summer could make operating a swimming pool this year prohibitively expensive?

  Late last summer, a massive fire broke out at a chemical plant in Lake Charles, LA after Hurricane Laura passed overhead. The chemical blaze was extinguished after three days, and was quickly forgotten… until this week, when Goldman reported that the August 2020 fire had sparked industry-wide chlorine shortages and price inflation.

  In recent weeks this story has received more widespread attention as media outlets nationwide have begun covering the severity of the problem, highlighting the possibility of a chlorine shortage during peak pool season in the summer months. Back in March, Goldman surveyed 11 regional pool retailers who at the time unanimously indicated that chlorine prices were on the rise, with most expressing uncertainty with regard to whether or not they will have enough chlorine to sell for the upcoming pool season.

  In retrospect, the answer was a resounding no: according to IHS Markit, chlorine prices were up ~37% YoY in March 2021, with prices expected to surge 58% from June to August this year.

  

  To address the fallout, Goldman surveyed 26 pool supply shops across the country, with most respondents located in pool-centric markets like TX, CA, NV, NM, and AZ. Of the 26 pool shops the bank spoke to, 15 expressed uncertainty or doubt when asked about whether they will have enough chlorine for pool season.

  As if that wasn’t enough, adding to the pressure created by the chlorine shortage, respondents called out a plastic bucket shortage, driven by COVID-related manufacturing slowdowns, which has made procuring certain volume sizes of chlorine more difficult for retailers, and has led suppliers to deliver chlorine in either bags or in buckets with different colored lids, according to respondents.

  One respondent noted that suppliers are slowing production of smaller-sized buckets of chlorine tabs (8-lb, 12-lb), with the focus shifting to larger 50-lb buckets. With customers buying up the smaller-sized buckets of chlorine, this particular store plans to only have 50-lb buckets left to sell within the next week, which are slightly more profitable, according to the respondent.

  When asked about whether the cost and availability of chlorine have improved in the last month or so, several respondents noted that while the supply of chlorine has improved somewhat, cost has not.

  Commentary from the industry’s main pool equipment supplier Pool Corp. on its recent earnings day underscores the severity of the chlorine shortage.

  “I mean overall, I would tell you the price on dichlor and trichlor [chlorine tablets], which is the product that was impacted by the shortage, they’re up about 60%. So if you think about how that’s going to shake out for the balance of the year, it will probably remain at elevated level because I believe that the industry is going to be short for the season,” Pool Corp CFO Mark Joslin told analysts on an April 22 earnings call.

  The shortage will likely lead to pool owners to get creative on pool sanitization, Joslin said quoted by Yahoo Finance.

  “Now that simply means that people are going to move their method of sanitization to another product, either a granular product or a liquid product. But there’s no shortage of ways to sanitize the pool. It just simply means at a certain point people will shift. We’ve also seen certain parts of the country accelerating the use of salt as a method of sanitization too,” Joslin added.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:40

• COVID-19 Means Good Times For The Pentagon
  COVID-19 Means Good Times For The Pentagon

  Authored by Mandy Smithberger via TomDispatch.com,

  In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington has initiated its largest spending binge in history. In the process, you might assume that the unparalleled spread of the disease would have led to a little rethinking when it came to all the trillions of dollars Congress has given the Pentagon in these years that have in no way made us safer from, or prepared us better to respond to, this predictable threat to American national security. As it happens, though, even if the rest of us remain in danger from the coronavirus, Congress has done a remarkably good job of vaccinating the Department of Defense and the weapons makers that rely on it financially.

  

  There is, of course, a striking history here. Washington’s reflexive prioritizing of the interests of defense contractors has meant paying remarkably little attention to, and significantly underfunding, public health. Now, Americans are paying the price. With these health and economic crises playing out before our eyes and the government’s response to it so visibly incompetent and inadequate, you would expect Congress to begin reconsidering its strategic approach to making Americans safer. No such luck, however. Washington continues to operate just as it always has, filling the coffers of the Pentagon as though “national security” were nothing but a matter of war and more war.

  Month by month, the cost of wasting so much money on weaponry and other military expenses grows higher, as defense contractor salaries continue to be fattened at taxpayer expense, while public health resources are robbed of financial support. Meanwhile, in Congress, both parties generally continue to defend excessive Pentagon budgets in the midst of a Covid-19-caused economic disaster of the first order. Such a business-as-usual approach means that the giant weapons makers will continue to take funds from agencies far better prepared to take the lead in addressing this crisis.

  There are a number of ways the Pentagon’s budget could be reduced to keep Americans safer and better protected against future pandemics. As the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force has pointed out, the biggest challenges we now confront, globally speaking — including such pandemics — are not, in fact, military in nature. In truth, hundreds of billions of dollars could be cut with remarkable ease from U.S. military spending and Americans would be far safer.

  Recently, some members of Congress have started to focus on this very point. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), for instance, proposed diverting money from unnecessary intercontinental ballistic missile “modernization” into coronavirus and vaccine research. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has gone further, suggesting a 10% reduction in the Pentagon’s budget, while Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), the only member of Congress to vote against the post-9/11 war resolution that led to the invasion of Afghanistan, has gone further yet, calling for the cutting of $350 billion from that budget.

  But count on one thing: they’ll meet a lot of resistance. There’s no way, in fact, to overstate just how powerfully the congressional committees overseeing such spending are indebted to and under the influence of the defense contractors that profit off the Pentagon budget. As Politico reported years ago (and little’s changed), members of the House Armed Services committee are the top recipients of defense industry campaign contributions. Even the chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, which should be advocating for the strengthening of American diplomacy, has drawn criticism for the significant backing he receives from the defense industry.

  Focusing on Weaponry That Can’t Fight a Virus

  Defense contractors have consistently seen such investments pay off. As my colleague at the Project on Government Oversight, Dan Grazier, has pointed out, despite repeated warnings from independent watchdogs and medical professionals, even military healthcare has been significantly underfunded, while both the Pentagon and Congress continue to prioritize buying weapons over taking care of our men and women in uniform. Congress’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, warned in February 2018 that the health system of the Department of Defense (DOD) lacked the capacity to handle routine needs, no less the emergencies of wartime. As Pentagon spending has continued to escalate over the past 20 years, military healthcare funding has stayed largely flat.

  Under the circumstances, I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that Congress has also written additional arms contractor giveaways into its coronavirus relief bills. Though its CARES Act authorized trillions of dollars in spending, ProPublica unearthed a provision in it (nearly identical to one proposed by industry groups) that allows defense contractors to bill the government for a range of costs meant to keep them in a “ready” state. The head of acquisition for the Pentagon, Ellen Lord, estimated (modestly indeed) that the provision would cost taxpayers in the low “double-digit billions.” Additional language offered in the House’s next relief bill, likely to survive whatever the Senate finally passes, would increase such profiteering further by including fees that such companies claim are related to the present crisis, including for executive compensation, marketing, and sales.

  In such a context, it was hardly surprising that, during a recent hearing at the House Armed Services Committee on how the DOD was responding to the Covid-19 crisis, the focus remained largely on ways that the global epidemic might diminish arms industry profits. Representatives Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Mac Thornberry (R-TX) both argued that the Pentagon would need yet more money to cover the costs of any number of charges that defense contractors claim are related to the pandemic.

  Most ludicrous is the idea that an agency slated to receive significantly more than $700 billion in 2020 can’t afford to lose a few billion dollars to the actual health of Americans. Of course, the Pentagon remained strategically mum earlier this year when, in an arguably unconstitutional manner, the White House diverted $7.2 billion from its funds to the building of the president’s “great, great wall” on our southern border. In fact, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even admitted that it wasn’t exactly a major blow for the government agency with the largest discretionary budget. “It was not a significant, immediate, strategic, negative impact to the overall defense of the United States of America,” he assured Congress. “It’s half of one percent of the overall budget, so I can’t in good conscience say that it’s significant, immediate, or the sky is falling.”

  A Chicken Little Congress, however, doesn’t consider taking more funds from the Pentagon budget to shore up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) anywhere near as crucial as, for example, approving the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a slush fund that will be part of this country’s new Cold War with China — starting with a modest $1.4 billion in seed money, while the homework is done to justify another $5.5 billion next year. Similarly, even in such an economically disastrous moment, who could resist buying yet more of Lockheed Martin’s eternally troubled and staggeringly expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighters than the Pentagon requested? Comparable support exists, even among senators unwilling to fork over any more dollars to desperate out-of-work Americans, for the president’s Space Force, that new service now in the process of creating a separate set of rules for itself that should allow it free rein over future spending. That, of course, reveals its real mission: making it easier for contractors to profit off the taxpayer.

  If anything, the main congressional criticism of the Pentagon is that it’s been too slow to push money out the door. And yet, in an institution that has never been successfully audited, there are red flags galore, as a recent Government Accountability Office assessment of major weapons programs suggests. The costs of such new weapons systems have cumulatively soared by 54%, or $628 billion, from earlier GAO assessments. That, by the way, is almost 90 times this year’s budget request for the CDC.

  And that’s just the waste. The same report shows that any number of weapons systems continue to fail in other ways entirely. Of the 42 major programs examined, 35 had inadequate security to prevent cyber attacks. General Dynamics Electric Boat’s $126 billion nuclear submarine program has been plagued by faulty welding for two years. The new Ford class aircraft carrier, built by Huntington Ingalls for $13.2 billion, includes a General Atomics launch system that continues to fail to launch aircraft as designed. In addition, as Bloomberg first reported, the ship’s toilets clog frequently and can only be cleaned with specialized acids that cost about $400,000 a flush. As my colleague Mark Thompson has pointed out, “escalating costs, blown schedules, and weapons unable to perform as advertised” are the norm, not the exception for the Pentagon.

  That track record is troubling indeed, given that Congress is now turning to the Pentagon to help lead the way when it comes to this country’s pandemic response. Its record in America’s “forever wars” over the last nearly two decades should make anyone wonder about the very idea of positioning it as a lead agency in solving domestic public health crises or promoting this country’s economic recovery.

  Broken Oversight

  As the first wave of the pandemic continues and case numbers spike in a range of states, oversight structures designed to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to defense spending are quite literally crumbling before our eyes. Combine weakened oversight, skewed priorities, and a Pentagon budget still rising and you’re potentially creating the perfect storm for squandering the resources needed to respond to our current crisis.

  The erosion of oversight of the Pentagon budget has been a slow-building disaster, administration by administration, particularly with the continual weakening of the authority of inspectors general. As independent federal watchdogs, IGs are supposed to oversee the executive branch and report their findings both to it and to Congress.

  In the Obama administration, however, their power was undermined when the Office of Legal Counsel, the legal expert for the White House, began to argue that accessing the “all” in “all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material” didn’t actually mean “all” when it came to inspectors general. Under President Donald Trump, the same office typically claimed that then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson did not have the authority to forward to the House and Senate Intelligence committees a concern that the president had improperly withheld aid to Ukraine.

  In fact, in the Trump years, such watchdogs have been purged in significant numbers. Shortly after Department of Defense principal Deputy Inspector General Glenn Fine was named to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, for instance, the president removed him. Not only did that weaken the authority of the body overseeing trillions of dollars in spending across the federal government, but it jeopardized the independence and clout of the Pentagon’s watchdog when it came to billions already being spent by the DOD.

  In a similar fashion, the Trump administration has worked hard to stymie Congress’s ability to exercise its constitutional role in conducting oversight. A few months after the president entered the Oval Office, the White House temporarily ordered executive branch agencies to ignore oversight requests from congressional Democrats. Since then, the stonewalling of Congress has only increased. Mark Meadows, the president’s latest chief of staff, has, for example, reportedly implemented a new rule ensuring that executive branch witnesses cannot appear before Congress without his permission. In recent weeks, it was invoked to stop Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from appearing to justify his latest budget request or to answer questions about why his department’s inspector general was removed. (He was, among other things, reportedly investigating Pompeo himself.) Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley have both resisted calls from Congress to answer questions about the use of military force against peaceful protesters.

  Congress has a number of tools at its disposal to demand answers from the Pentagon. Unfortunately, the committees overseeing that agency have seldom demonstrated the will to exercise them. Last year, however, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) added an amendment to a defense bill limiting funds for the secretary of defense’s travel until his department produced a report on disciplinary actions taken after U.S. troops were abushed in Niger in 2018 and four of them died.

  That tragic incident was also a reminder that Congress has taken little responsibility for the costs of the endless conflicts the U.S. military has engaged in across significant parts of the planet. Quite the opposite, it continues to leave untouched the 2001 authorization for use of military force, or AUMF, that has been abused by three administrations to justify waging wars ever since. The Congressional Research Service estimates that it has been used in that way at least 41 times in 19 countries. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, that number should be 80 countries where the U.S. has been engaged in counterterror activities since 2001.

  And there are significantly more warning signs in this Covid-19 moment that congressional oversight, long missing in action, is needed more than ever. (Trump’s response, classically enough, was “I’ll be the oversight.”) Typically, among the trillions of dollars Congress put up in responding to the pandemic-induced economic collapse, $10.5 billion was set aside for the Pentagon to take a leading role in addressing the crisis. As the Washington Post reported, among the first places those funds went were golf course staffing, submarine missile tubes, and space launch facilities, which is par for the course for the DOD.

  Implementation of the Defense Production Act also betrayed a bizarre sense of priorities in these months. That law, passed in response to the Korean War, was designed to help fill shortfalls in goods in the midst of emergencies. In 2020, that should certainly have meant more masks and respirators. But as Defense One reported, that law was instead used to bail out defense contractors, some of whom weren’t even keeping their employees on staff. General Electric, which had laid off 25% of its workforce, received $20 million to expand its development of “advanced manufacturing techniques,” among things unrelated to the coronavirus. Spirit Aerosystems, which received $80 million to expand its domestic manufacturing, had similarly laid off or furloughed 900 workers.

  While Americans are overwhelmed by the pandemic, the Pentagon and its boosters are exploiting the emergency to feather their own nests. Far stronger protections against such behavior are needed and, of course, Congress should take back what rightfully belongs to it under the Constitution, including its ability to stop illegal wars and reclaim its power of the purse. It’s long past time for that body to cancel the blank check it’s given both the Pentagon and the White House. But don’t hold your breath.

  In the meantime, as Americans await a future Covid-19 vaccine, the military-industrial complex finds itself well vaccinated against this pandemic moment. Consider it a Pentagon miracle in terrible times.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:20

• Biden Mulls Vax Mandate For All US Military After Huge Numbers Refused
  Biden Mulls Vax Mandate For All US Military After Huge Numbers Refused

  President Biden told NBC News in an interview which broadcast Friday that he’s mulling ordering all US military personnel to get a COVID-19 vaccine as commander-in-chief. “I’m not saying I won’t” rule it out, he emphasized in the new interview.

  This would also mean that anyone wanting to enter military service would have to receive the jab as a requirement to get in, which would likely cause a blow to military recruitment in the near-term. However, he didn’t outright say he’s ready to pull the trigger on the policy, which if enacted would constitute the largest federal government-ordered mandate in terms of forcing the vaccine on some 1.3 million active duty service members, not to mention over one million more reserve personnel. 

  

  Describing the decision as a “tough call” he suggested it was being hotly debated. “I don’t know. I’m going to leave that to the military,” Biden told NBC News’s Craig Melvin.

  “I’m not saying I won’t. I think you’re going to see more and more of them getting it. And I think it’s going to be a tough call as to whether or not they should be required to have to get it in the military, because you’re in such close proximity with other military personnel.”

  In follow-up to Biden’s comments, national security advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that a DoD-wide vaccine mandate is “something the Department of Defense is looking at in consultation with the interagency process and [I] don’t have anything to add on that subject today.”

  The whole debate was sparked in earnest when multiple headlines earlier this month took note of the large numbers of military members who were rejecting the vaccine. 

  For example, one recent USA Today report noted that nearly 40% of US Marines who have been offered a COVID-19 vaccine have refused to recieve it, according to Pentagon figures. And an earlier report in The Guardian described that “Reluctance to be vaccinated for Covid-19 is now rife in the US military, with about a third of troops on active duty or in the national guard refusing to be administered the vaccine.” 

  

  The Hill notes of the latest numbers as of this week that “Roughly 780,000 service members, or close to one-third of the total force, are partially or fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the latest Department of Defense numbers.”

  The broad reluctance among America’s military members to receive the jab probably has a lot to do with the vast majority being young, fit, and healthy — obviously far above the average American. And it’s clear at this point that this health demographic tends to experience fewer or minor symptoms if they get infected, if any symptoms at all. 

  Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Terry Adirim earlier this month tried to combat this mentality among military ranks, however, calling the wealth of anecdotal evidence in the end “not true”. But so far it still looks like a large chunk of armed personnel are not convinced that the vaccine is worth getting, hence the Pentagon mulling the mandate.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• UK Will Release Digital "Vaccine Passport" & "Green List" Of Travel Destinations Next Month
  UK Will Release Digital “Vaccine Passport” & “Green List” Of Travel Destinations Next Month

  The British government’s effort to create a digital “vaccine passport” app has officially been embraced by the UK’s former Continental partners.

  As the EU scrambles to implement a vaccine-passport system that will enable tourists from wealthy vaccinated countries (like the US and UK) to flock to beaches in Greece and Spain over the summer, British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in a TV interview Thursday that he will be able to give details on which countries have made it on to the UK’s “green list” “in the next couple of weeks”.

  

  The introduction of the UK’s “Green List” follows a series of US State Department Travel Advisories that placed 80% of the world’s countries on the highest level travel advisory. But while the US advisory carries no restrictions, the UK’s “green list” will feature all the countries where Britons can travel without being required to quarantine upon their return (though they will still need to be tested for COVID-19 upon their return).

  “…in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be able to tell you about which countries will have made it into the traffic light system and that ‘green’ list in particular are the countries where you’ll be able to go to without needing to quarantine on your return.

  “You will still need to take a pre-departure test and one test on your return.

  “I think people are getting very used to testing now, not least because we provide testing up to twice a week for everyone in the country right now. So I don’t think a test itself is a big deal.

  Shapps also confirmed an NHS app will be used to allow Britons to demonstrate whether they have had a COVID jab, or tested negative for the virus, before traveling abroad.

  “It will be the NHS app that is used for people when they book appointments with the NHS and so on, to be able to show you’ve had a vaccine or that you’ve had testing,” he added.

  “I’m working internationally with partners across the world to make sure that system can be internationally recognised.”

  Government sources clarified the app would not be the NHS COVID app – currently used to “check in” to venues such as pubs and restaurants for contact-tracing purposes – but would instead be the NHS app used to book general appointments.

  Shapps added that he was awaiting data from the government’s Joint Biosecurity Center, which is necessary to state which countries would be deemed “green”, “amber” or “red” under the traffic light system.

  He also reiterated that there was a need to be “very cautious” about allowing Britons to freely travel abroad again.

  “Beyond our shores we are seeing the highest levels of coronavirus that we have seen so far in the entire pandemic, right now,” he added.

  “So we do need to make sure we do this very, very carefully – we don’t want to throw away the lockdown, we don’t want to throw away our remarkable rollout in this country of the vaccination.

  Meanwhile, European nations are eager to welcome British tourists as they hope this summer will see a significant improvement over last year. Portugal’s ambassador to the UK, Manuel Lobo Antunes, told Sky News he was “hopeful” British travelers would be able to return to Portugal by the middle of next month.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:45

• Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat
  Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling.

  

  Britain is fomenting a diplomatic crisis between the European Union and Russia, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Evidence and precedent indicate Lavrov has his sight well-trained.

  The British establishment’s notorious ability for machination and intrigue – hence the ancient moniker Perfidious Albion – can be seen as stirring the escalating row between the European Union and Russia in which diplomats are being expelled pell-mell.

  This week, Russia ordered the withdrawal of representatives from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. That came in response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from those countries. Russia has also ordered home more diplomats from the Czech Republic. Poland and Italy have also been caught up in diplomatic antagonism with Moscow.

  The row blew up last week when the Czech Republic accused Russian state agents of being responsible for twin explosions on its territory back in 2104. The blasts caused the deaths of two workers at an ammunition depot near the village of Vrbetice close to the border with Slovakia. Until recently, the Czech authorities had concluded that the explosions were an industrial accident.

  What prompted the Czechs to revise their ideas and to now blame Russia for sabotage is the interpolation of Britain in providing “new information”. Specifically, it was the MI6-sponsored media group Bellingcat (a so-called private investigatory agency) which appears to have furnished the disinformation which purports to show the involvement of Russian military intelligence (GRU). Incredibly, the British claim their “evidence” shows that two of the GRU agents were also the same individuals who were alleged to have been involved in poisoning the Russian traitor-spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. The British claim to have passport information to support their claims, but such methodology is rife with forgery – a black art that the British are all-too skilled at.

  On leveling the accusation against Russia, the Czech Republic then ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats. Moscow responded angrily, saying that the claims of sabotage were a “dirty fabrication” and pointing out that Prague did not provide any information for verification. Russia took swift reciprocal action by banishing 20 Czech diplomats from its territory.

  However, the row continues to flare with the Baltic states entering the fray by banning Russian officials in “solidarity” with the Czech Republic. The move by the Baltic states is predictable as they are supercharged by anti-Russian political sentiment. It’s a case of any excuse for them to inflame relations.

  The dispute comes at a fraught time when the European Union is discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over wider concerns about the conflict in Ukraine, the imprisonment of blogger Alexei Navalny and a Russian security crackdown on Navalny’s shadowy Western-backed “opposition” network.

  The skirmishing over diplomats is a convenient way to further damage relations between the EU and Russia, especially as the strategically important Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project nears completion – a project that Washington wants to eviscerate for its own selfish commercial reasons. Uncle Sam’s junior partner Britain may be obliging in that regard and thus trying to curry favor for garnering an American trade deal in the post-Brexit world.

  Certainly, Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov is clear about the stealthy British hand in recent events. In a media interview this week, Lavrov mentioned the United Kingdom in wary terms, saying: “As far as the relations between Russia and Europe are concerned, I still believe that the UK is playing an active and a very serious subversive role. It withdrew from the European Union, but we see no decrease in its activities on this track. On the contrary, they are trying to influence EU member states’ approaches to Russia to the maximum possible extent.”

  It should be recalled that Britain has played a starring duplicitous role in demonizing Russia and poisoning international relations.

  It was Bellingcat (MI6) that pushed the narrative that Russia was complicit in the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in 2014 over Eastern Ukraine with the loss of nearly 300 lives. Based on British “evidence” (which has been debunked as fabrication), a Dutch investigation into the disaster has accused Russia. That affair has hardened European prejudices against Russia which has fomented the imposition of sanctions.

  It was a former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele who was instrumental in promoting the Russiagate dossier around 2016 which destroyed bilateral relations between the United States and Russia, and which continues to fuel fabrications about Moscow’s interference in American and European politics (even those Steele’s “dirty dossier” is a risible load of rubbish and has been debunked).

  And it was the Skripal saga in Salisbury in March 2018 which Britain hatched to further poison international relations with Russia. That saga – with no proof against Russia – has become a concocted “standard proof” for the subsequent saga of “poisoning” the blogger conman Alexei Navalny. Western governments and media refer to the “Kremlin plot” to kill Skripal as “evidence” for another “Kremlin plot” to assassinate Navalny. This is tantamount to one fiction being used to prove another fiction. The same saga is now feeding into the Czech explosion row. And it all comes back to the devious ingenuity of Perfidious Albion.

  Foreign Minister Lavrov added a further incisive comment on the role of Britain. He said:

  “At the same time, you know, they send us signals, they propose establishing contacts. This means, they do not shy away from communication [with Russia], but try to discourage others. Again, probably [this can be explained by] their desire to have a monopoly of these contacts and again prove that they are superior to others.”

  The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling. Perfidious Albion par excellence.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:00

• European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For 'Russian Aggression'
  European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For ‘Russian Aggression’

  On Thursday European Parliament passed a resolution that calls for far-reaching EU sanctions on a number of fronts against Russia, and which most notably seeks to require a Russian ban on access to the SWIFT payment system if there’s ever a future move against Ukrainian sovereignty.  

  The European Parliament “Demands that the EU should reduce its dependence on Russian energy, and urges the EU institutions and all Member States, therefore, to stop the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to demand a stop to the construction of controversial nuclear power plants built by Rosatom,” the now approved resolution says.

  

  569 members of the European Parliament voted for approval while there were 67 against the resolution’s adoption. As we explained previously, it appears a ‘preventative’ and threatening measure in the instance of any future scenario of another major Russian troop build-up in Crimea and along Ukraine’s border such as occurred over the last month.

  “Should military build-up lead to an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU must make clear the consequences for such a violation of international law and norms would be severe, MEPs agreed,” a European Parliament press release stated. “Such a scenario must result in an immediate halt to EU imports of oil and gas from Russia, the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system and the freezing of assets and cancellation of visas for Europe of all oligarchs tied to the Russian authorities.”

  And further it underscored the EU member states must no longer be “welcoming places for Russian wealth and investments of unclear origin” as well as “the Kremlin’s strategic investments within the EU for the purposes of subversion.”

  #EuropeanParliament considers #Russia‘s disconnection from SWIFT, the international payment system, in a draft resolution that addresses a potential escalation in eastern #Ukraine.https://t.co/4o1GDSbSDE

  — Sonalika Kumar (@sonalika_kumar) April 29, 2021

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

  Needless to say, if the trigger were ever actually pulled on what are at this point these official threats to “require” immediate EU action in the face of “Russian aggression” – it would be all out economic and diplomatic war – or worse. 

  Previously the Kremlin warned that such a drastic move as cutting off Russia from SWIFT would indeed be considered an “act of war” – but this is precisely what officials in Kiev have been seeking to pressure Brussels to do.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/30/2021 – 01:00

• Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?
  Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The past year I have been writing extensively about what I call the “great conservative migration”; a shift in US demographics not seen since the Great Depression. Approximately 8.9 million Americans have relocated since the beginning of the covid lockdowns according to the US Postal service, and a large portion of these people are leaving left-leaning blue states for conservative red states in the west and the south. States like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey were at the top of the list of states people wanted to escape.

  

  The response from leftist states has been amusing. California, for instance, has tried to obscure the data on population loss and has dismissed the existence of the migration. They claim that the state population is actually rising, but fail to mention that most of California’s population “gains” have been from babies born along with an increase in illegal immigration. This has not offset the 267,000 individuals and families that left the state in the last three months 2020 alone. That’s an entire city of people, gone in 90 days.

  And where are these people going? Places like Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc. ALL red states that are fighting back against draconian covid mandates and other unconstitutional measures. The only outlier seems to be Oregon, which also has seen a population spike, and this indeed appears to be a migration of Californians to the north.

  This leads some conservative groups to believe there is an “invasion” going on of liberals into red states. After looking at the data and meeting many people moving to my own area in Montana, I find the “liberal invasion” narrative to be fraudulent.

  Leftists don’t relocate to red states, at least not very often. They do not run away from their safe spaces. Rather, they relocate an hour or two from the cities they are addicted to. This is what the data from San Francisco shows. With over 80% of people moving from the city staying within California. In other words, some leftists want to get out of the cities, but they don’t want to move far from their beloved progressive Utopias and they certainly don’t plan on embedding in conservative strongholds and trying to “take over”.

  Why this theory persists is beyond me as it has no basis in reality.

  No, the people moving across state lines today are mostly conservatives, they are congregating en masse in red states, and the effects have been rather dramatic. Home prices have skyrocketed due to extreme demand. In Montana, people are buying real estate sight unseen, a lot of it raw land that they are trying to build on. Lumber prices have tripled, and anyone in the construction business is booked a year and a half out. There are new residents actually scouring the message boards looking for ANYONE that can do work for them. There is nobody available. No one I know has seen anything like it in their lifetime.

  Luckily, a lot of these people seem to be on the same page in terms of principles. Those I have met are all conservative and the majority of them are preppers. They moved here because they know what is coming and they want to be surrounded by like minded neighbors when the manure hits the fan. Specifically, they do not want to be caught isolated in a blue state where vaccine passports, masks and lockdowns become a regular part of life for them and their children. They want to remain free.

  On the other hand, I am also hearing rumors that the relatively small number of leftists that live in my county want to leave. Some have expressed the need to “get out” and vacation in places like Portland, Oregon, where they “feel safe” because “everyone wears masks”. And I say, good for them. Hopefully they will stay there. These types of people are miserable excuses for human beings and they make everyone else around them miserable by constantly whining about how “no one follows the rules”.

  As a point of reference, there have been only 17 deaths from covid in my county in well over a year. The death rate is non-existent, and the virus already swept through the area with almost everyone either infected or asymptomatic. No one in Montana is afraid of this virus except a handful of weak minded progressives.

  My suspicion is that when all is said and done by the end of 2021 the US will essentially be split into two distinct nations: A leftist Marxist nation that continues to degrade into tyranny, and a conservative nation that people want to escape to so they can keep their liberties. Leftists won’t want to live near us, and we certainly will not want to live near them. Hypothetically, it should be a win-win situation, but there are other factors to consider.

  We must also take into account red counties. For example, the blue state of Virginia is actually only blue in a handful of counties. The majority are conservative and have stood in defiance of attempts by gun grabbing governor Ralph Northam, saying they will ignore any new gun laws Northam and the state legislature passes. County governments and county sheriffs are in agreement; Northam has no power in these places.

  In Eastern Oregon and Northern California, there is a push by multiple counties to actually join Idaho and become a part of the conservative state. The majority of voters in these counties supported the transition. The idea being that this is not a secession, and so the move will be far easier to accomplish with less legal obstacles. The decision will be voted on by county residents in May, and of course there will be attempts by congress to obstruct if the outcome is favorable.

  Even if the movement is not successful, the fact that voters in red counties are unified in their goal to get away from leftist political control should be taken very seriously. This is not just about states defying federal dictates, it’s also about counties defying state governments that do not represent their values.

  The bottom line is this – The leftist ideology is collectivist and totalitarian in nature. It is completely incompatible with the conservative principles of liberty, self determination, meritocracy, limited government and free market economics.

  The social justice cult has gone so far into extremism that reason and logic are actually vilified by them. They openly support mass censorship, mass violence against innocent people, mob intimidation against the citizenry, they argue in favor of economic lockdowns and unconstitutional covid mandates, they support draconian vaccine passports, and they are partners with Big Tech corporations as well as globalists institutions like the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. They are diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives and lovers of liberty hold dear.

  Honestly, it is unlikely that we will be able to share the same land mass, let alone the same cities and states, but I’ll get to that in a moment…

  At the state level, there has been a dramatic push-back against constitutional trespasses by the federal government under Biden, and these include measures which are aggressively promoted by the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions in the name of the “Great Reset”. Multiple red states have passed laws or executive orders making it illegal to require proof of vaccination (vaccine passports). Some blue states have also “claimed” they will not require vaccinations, but the devil is in the details when dealing with the political left.

  In Montana, the governor and the state legislature will not allow government enforcement of vaccine passports, AND, they also will not allow corporations to demand vaccine passports either. In blue states like Illinois, the government might keep its word on passports, it might not, but they don’t really need to enforce vaccinations; all they have to do is allow major corporations to do it for them.

  With colleges (public institutions posing as private), airlines, hotels, hospitals, and major retail chains requiring a vaccine passport for employment or to make purchases, the effect of medical tyranny will be the same.

  Without state legal protections in place to limit social engineering by corporate behemoths the establishment still has all the tools it needs to assert covid controls.

  These companies do not represent private business or free markets anymore. Instead, they are appendages of establishment power that receive billions in taxpayer dollars to finance their operations. They should no longer be treated as if they have the same rights as normal businesses.

  Another interesting development is the number of red states that are passing laws which prevent the enforcement of any new federal gun controls. In Montana, Greg Gianforte just signed a bill nullifying federal gun bans. Federal rules do not apply here and state law enforcement agencies are prohibited from helping federal agencies enforce such laws. Similar legislation has been passed or is being considered in other red states like Utah and Arizona.

  It is unclear what would happen if the ATF or FBI tried to make arrests within Montana based on federal gun restrictions. I suspect that without extra protection from local law enforcement these agencies would be much more vulnerable in their operations. If they met with stiff resistance, they would be on their own. I also would not be surprised if sheriffs in most Montana counties stood in their way.

  The mainstream media has been almost completely silent on these developments. They barely even acknowledge the conservative migration. I doubt they will speak of the separation at all until the latest census data and postal data is more thoroughly examined. However, the changes to our nation are going to have far reaching consequences, and the consequences will be obvious in the near term.

  The “Great Reset” is meant to be a global project; meaning, no one is allowed to opt out. Leftists and globalists are notoriously plantation-minded; they believe that society is involuntary, and their rules for society should apply to all people. Those who wish to leave are actually seen as traitors, because the very act of leaving suggests that the system is flawed, and doubt creates questions, and questions create demands, and demands lead to defiance, and defiance leads to rebellion.

  The progressive/globalist plantation becomes an exercise in antagonistic self affirmation – You cannot leave the system, because everything is fine, and if you left people might think something is wrong and then everything would not be fine, so why would you want to upset the balance and ruin what is already perfect?

  In my last article I noted that red states in the US are the ONLY places in the world where freedom from the Reset is ingrained and people have the means to fight back. I still stand by that assertion. Some conservatives assume countries like Russia are going to fight the Reset, yet Putin and the Russian government enforced extensive covid restrictions recommended by the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, just like every other government. The head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, stated that vaccine passports were “very important and needed in Russia”.

  Let’s face it, no major government is coming to save us; these delusional fantasies of Russia or any other foreign nation fighting against the Reset need to stop. The bottom line is this: The American red states are probably the only regions in the world that are resisting the reset agenda while also having the arms to back their resolve. If a rebellion is going to start against the globalists, it will start here.

  What does this mean for the future? It means we are going to be targeted. This is how I see the situation playing out…

  I have no doubt that the first step by the federal government under Biden will be to start cutting off federal funds to red states while flooding blue states with stimulus money. The strategy being that blue states will have unlimited free goodies while red states languish in poverty. Biden will be betting that red state citizens reliant on government checks will become despondent or angry. Of course, these taxpayer backed funds belong to all the states, but that won’t matter to Biden or to leftists; they will claim we are getting what we deserve.

  The logical response by red states will be to stop paying taxes, and to take over federal lands and the resources within their borders. Red states and red counties could also negate all EPA and BLM restrictions on resource usage and launch an epic revitalization of industry. In my area, I believe the logging industry which has been stifled by the federal government will return in full force. With lumber prices nearing hyperinflationary levels, it makes perfect sense. This will enrage the feds.

  The next step would be to make travel to and from certain red states difficult in order to isolate them. The feds may shut down airline flights while proclaiming that red states are “havens for covid infection”. This will not go over well with conservatives, and we will start demolishing any checkpoints that are meant to keep us in. Leftist controlled states and counties will start checking license plates and ID and harassing or arresting anyone from a conservative area. Travel will stagnate as people will not know which places are safe and which are dangerous.

  There will also be attempts to use federal agencies to insert into conservative areas to make arrests based on federal laws that have already been nullified. The goal will be to make examples out of some people, and send a message that conservatives “are not safe”, even in their own states. Eventually, the shooting will start and federal agents will die. Biden will demand a martial law response.

  If everything develops as described, the question arises, how many people in the military are actually willing to die for Biden? My guess is not that many, but with the right excuses and rationalizations who knows? Conservatives have been demonized for many years now, there may be a large enough chunk of the military that believes the propaganda, but I am doubtful.

  It could take two full terms of Biden for these events to happen. It could take far less time. I would not hold my breath for a 2022 or 2024 election to defuse matters. I think most conservatives learned their lesson on the futility of politics the last four years. The best possible outcome right now is that conservatives congregate, unify and organize from the local level to the state level to the point that we act as a deterrent to future tyranny.

  We all know one day the establishment is going to come for us, and if so then we’ll greet them with a long range love letter (if you get my meaning). But at least we will know where we stand. At least we will be living among kindred spirits, and at least there will be a glimmer of hope for the world. Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is to offer people an alternative, a place where the rules of tyrants hold no weight. Conservative states and counties are doing this today, and it is a beautiful thing.

  *  *  *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:50

• China Creates Countrywide 'No-Pig Zones' To Limit African Swine Fever 
  China Creates Countrywide ‘No-Pig Zones’ To Limit African Swine Fever 

  The African Swine Fever (ASF) decimated China’s hog population in 2018 and has since been brought under control as the country rebuilds its hog herd. China released a novel plan to reshape the entire hog industry to mitigate future spreading, according to Bloomberg. 

  The Chinese agriculture ministry recently announced that the country would split into five regions from May. Pigs in each region will not be transported into other areas to mitigate the potential threat of ASF spreading. 

  

  Senior analyst Lin Guofa at consultancy Bric Agriculture Group said approximately 20% of the country’s pigs, or about 140 million live animals, are transported across the country each year and increase the chances of spreading diseases. The main transportation route for farmers is from the northeast to the south to meet the large demand for fresh meat in metropolises. 

  With new guidelines expected to be in place in a matter of days, areas known for little or no pig farming will have to increase capacity. 

  “Some areas that used to call themselves no-pig counties or no-pig cities will have to build pig farms,” Guofa said. 

  Under the guidelines, the only way for pork to be transported across regions will have to be in frozen meat form, leading to an expansion of the cold-chain industry, added Guofa. 

  Pigs are a significant source of protein in China. According to data from the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the country is the world’s top consumer of pork, with annual sales of around $308 billion per year.

  Chinese consumers have caught a period of relief after nearly two years of elevated pork prices due to the culling of millions of pigs countrywide during the ASF outbreak. Wholesale pork prices are down 30% year-to-date. 

  

  “The controls will depress prices in the north in the short term and push them up in the south,” according to Wang Zhong, chief consultant at Systematic, Strategic & Soft Consulting Co. “That may eventually prompt big pork producers — including Muyuan Foodstuff Co., New Hope Liuhe Co. and Wens Foodstuff Group Co. — to build more hog farms in the south and more slaughtering facilities in the northeast and northwest,” Bloomberg said.

  The new guidelines are similar to ones in Brazil and Spain that limit farmers from transporting live animals around the country. Such a measure has been successful in eradicating ASF from both countries. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:30

• The Shaky Foundations Of LA's Housing "Entitlement" For The Homeless
  The Shaky Foundations Of LA’s Housing “Entitlement” For The Homeless

  Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  In 2016 influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness: build more housing. Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free “permanent supportive housing,” cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.

  

  In response, 77% of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city’s homeless. That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the “Housing First” approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities. Even before the passage of the bond, the concept’s creator, Sam Tsemberis, was lavished with praise by the national media. In 2015, the Washington Post wrote that Tsemberis had “all but solved chronic homelessness” and that his research “commands the support of most scholars.”

  

  Sam Tsemberis: He has been hailed by the Washington Post as having “all but solved homelessness.” But Los Angeles, above, challenges his “Housing First” model.

  In the years since, “Housing First” has taken even greater hold in California and the across the West. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently declared that “we need to have an entitlement to housing.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom went a step further, arguing that “doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin or antibiotics.”

  Five years in, the project has been plagued by construction delays, massive cost overruns, and accusations of corruption. The Los Angeles city controller issued a scathing report, “The High Cost of Homeless Housing,” which shows that some studio and one-bedroom apartments were costing taxpayers more than $700,000 each, with 40% of total costs devoted to consultants, lawyers, fees, and permitting. The project is a boon for real estate developers and a constellation of nonprofits and service providers, but a boondoggle for taxpayers. The physical apartment units are bare-bones — small square footage, cheap flooring, vinyl surfaces — but have construction costs similar to luxury condos in the fashionable parts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness has increased 41%, vastly outpacing the construction of new supportive housing units. Los Angeles magazine, which initially supported the measure, now wonders whether it has become “a historic public housing debacle.”

  Before completing a single housing unit, the city reduced its projected construction from 10,000 units to 5,873 units over 10 years, with the potential for further reductions in the future. But the long-term problem runs much deeper: Even if one accepts that permanent supportive housing is the solution, there are currently more than 66,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Under the best-case scenario, Proposition HHH will solve less than 10% of the problem over the course of a decade.

  

  Arrested development: Five years in, most of LA’s homeless projects are barely off the ground.

  Despite Housing First’s uncertainties, other West Coast cities desperate to solve homelessness, including Seattle and San Francisco, have been captured by its seductive messaging and promise of respite. As Los Angeles grapples with the unforeseen consequences of its big bet on “Housing First,” the federal, state, and local governments, especially in major metropolitan areas, are preparing to commit billions of dollars to the program, whose track record remains woefully underexamined.

  

  As Los Angeles’s “Housing First” program has failed to meet expectations, Mayor Eric Garcetti is now downplaying it as just one of several needed approaches to homelessness.

  Ever since clinical psychologist Tsemberis pioneered the model in New York City in the 1990s, political leaders, activists, and academics have insisted that Housing First is an “evidence-based” intervention that reduces homelessness, saves taxpayer money, and improves lives. Supporters frequently argue that the program reduced costs in a study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle, consistently demonstrates high retention rates in multiple academic surveys, and eliminated chronic homelessness in Utah. “We’re going to stem this crisis by building supportive housing in every neighborhood throughout Los Angeles,” City Council member Herb Wesson recently claimed.

  These studies, however, are not as persuasive as activists suggest. Although the study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle does show a net reduction in monthly social service costs of $2,449 per person, this figure does not include $11 million in capital and construction costs for the housing units themselves; in other words, Housing First saves money if the cost of housing is not included. Even on its own favorable terms, the study’s purported savings aren’t as dramatic as they appear: While the Housing First participants showed a 63% reduction in service costs over six months, a wait-listed control group that was not provided housing showed a 42% reduction in service costs over the same time period, raising questions about the specific effectiveness of the intervention.

  Claims that studies show one-year retention rates of roughly 80% for Housing First participants are open to question. In a meta-study of three best-in-class Housing First sites, researchers found that 43% remained in housing for the first 12 months, 41% were “intermittent stayers” who left and returned, and 16% abandoned the program or died within the first year. These findings challenge the argument that Housing First is a long-term solution to homelessness.

  Finally, advocates and the media have long touted Utah as the gold standard of Housing First. “The Daily Show” called the state’s program “mind-blowing,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that Utah “is winning the war on chronic homelessness,” and dozens of media outlets announced that the state “reduced chronic homelessness by 91%.” These miraculous results, however, were not the result of Housing First policies, but apparently clerical manipulation by state officials. According to the Deseret News and economist Kevin Corinth, “As much as 85% of Utah’s touted reductions in chronic homelessness … may have been due to changes in how the homeless were counted.” It’s not that all of the chronically homeless were housed; they were simply transposed onto a new spreadsheet. Moreover, between 2016 and 2018, the number of unsheltered homeless in Utah nearly doubled – hardly the victory that Housing First activists had declared.

  

  Media, including Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” hailed “Housing First” in Utah. But stats were fudged.

  The recent debate surrounding Housing First has predominantly been focused on the physical and budgetary metrics of housing retention and cost reductions. But these surface-level concerns obscure a deeper question: What happens to the human beings in these programs? The results, according to the vast majority of studies, point to a grim conclusion: Housing First does not meaningfully improve human lives.

  Although housing programs are often an effective solution for families experiencing a temporary loss of shelter, Housing First programs do not have a strong track record improving the lives of the unsheltered homeless — the people in tents, cars, and on the streets — who often suffer from more severe challenges. According to research by the California Policy Lab, 75% of the unsheltered homeless have substance abuse condition, 78% have mental health conditions, and 84% have physical health conditions. In theory, Housing First would address these problems. In every program, residents are offered a wide range of services. At the Pathways to Housing program in New York City, a flagship program founded by Sam Tsemberis himself, residents are served by an “interdisciplinary team of professionals that includes social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, and vocational and substance abuse counselors who are available to assist consumers 7 days a week 24 hours a day.” However, despite this massive intervention, the Pathways program shows no reduction in substance abuse or psychiatric symptoms over time – in fact, those conditions often worsened.

  This basic finding is confirmed by a range of studies showing that residents of Housing First programs show no improvement regarding addiction and mental illness. They are housed but broken, wracked by the cruelest psychoses, compulsions, and torments – all under the guise of medical care.

  

  Los Angeles’s “Housing First” produces homes, but fails to address the problems of the once-homeless.

  A Housing First experiment in Ottawa, Canada, illustrates this paradoxical outcome in stark terms. Researchers divided the study into two populations: an “intervention” group that was provided Housing First and access to primary care, medically assisted treatment, social workers, and on-demand services; and a non-intervention “control” group that was not provided housing or services – they were simply left on the streets. To the shock of the researchers, after 24 months the non-intervention control group reported better results regarding substance abuse, mental health, quality of life, family relations, and mortality than the Housing First group. In other words, doing nothing resulted in superior human outcomes than providing Housing First with wraparound services.

  One explanation may be that Housing First programs are deliberately not oriented toward recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal. They operate on the “harm reduction” model, which allows residents to continue using drugs such as alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamine, and does not require mental health treatment as a condition of residency. In theory, this permissive policy would help “reduce harm” to the individual; in practice, however, it may create a community-level effect that makes it hard for any individual to find recovery. Here is the basic chain of events: Homeless individuals with substance abuse and psychiatric disorders are placed together in a residential facility where they are allowed to continue the way of life they had on the streets. Despite the availability of services, there is no incentive to use those services and no disincentive to the problematic behavior associated with street homelessness. Consequently, widespread addiction often becomes the norm within Housing First programs. 

  Preferring Homelessness

  This chain of events is not just a thought experiment. In Birmingham, Ala., researchers inadvertently created this exact problem when they put participants of two different programs – one “recovery” program and one “harm reduction” program – in the same apartment complex. Immediately after beginning the experiment, the recovery group “began abandoning the provided housing, complaining that their proximity to persons not required to remain abstinent (i.e., the other trial group) was detrimental to their recovery. They claimed that they preferred to return to homelessness rather than live near drug users.” The researchers quickly stopped and reorganized the trial, writing that “this unexpected reaction shows one possible risk to housing persons with active addiction.”

  Still, Housing First advocates insist that their policy is working. When reached for comment, Tsemberis insisted that the Washington Post headline declaring that he had “solved homelessness” is true. “The most effective way to end homelessness for people with mental health and addiction is to provide housing and wraparound support,” Tsemberis said. He points towards rates of “housing stability” as the key metric, while conceding that Housing First does not provide “a cure for mental illness and addiction.” This is a suggestion that policymakers have “solved homelessness” simply by bringing people indoors, no matter their addictions, mental illnesses, and human torments.

  Advocates portray Housing First as a science that transcends politics. The policy was first adopted by the George W. Bush administration and has gained support from Republicans and Democrats alike. As the Washington Post observed, it is “a model so simple children could grasp it, so cost-effective fiscal hawks loved it, so socially progressive liberals praised it.

  However, the real-world evidence from cities such as Los Angeles challenges this narrative. If Housing First has demonstrated anything, it is this: It provides a stable residential environment for the homeless to live out their pathologies, subsidized by the public and administered by the social-scientific sector. It does, not however, address addiction, mental illness and other factors that limit human potential and lead to homelessness.

  

  A defensive Garcetti: “Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.” 

  In Los Angeles, despite the insistence that Housing First is the answer, some uncertainty is creeping in. Mayor Garcetti is now on the defensive, as homelessness in Los Angeles continues to increase despite billions in spending. After the federal government released a study questioning the premises of Housing First, Garcetti backed away from the unidimensional approach, telling reporters with irritation in his voice: “Sometimes people parody Housing First as ‘only housing.’ Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”

  In more bad news for public officials and supporters of Housing First, there is an emerging body of evidence that calls into question the “cost savings” of the program. A recent study in Massachusetts shows that Housing First does not reduce rehospitalization and service utilization, while another study in Chicago suggests that Housing First might increase overall costs. Furthermore, researchers have concluded that the purported cost savings in earlier Housing First studies would not apply to the 82% of the homeless population that is not chronically homeless.

  

  Ron Galperin: The Los Angeles controller has found the city’s housing program to be riddled with high costs and delays.

  In Los Angeles, this could spell disaster. In the most optimistic scenario laid out by the controller’s office, the city will build 5,873 supportive housing units at an initial cost of $1.2 billion, plus an estimated $88 million in annual service costs associated with the Housing First model. The recipients of this housing will not meaningfully improve their lives in terms of addiction, mental illness, and spiritual well-being — and there will still be 60,000 people on the streets across Los Angeles County. In other words, even under its own theoretical assumptions, Proposition HHH is doomed to fail.

  The City of Los Angeles did not return a request for comment.

  The potential silver living might be that a reconsideration of the Housing First approach could lead to a wider reckoning for policymakers and political leaders. At the end of the Housing First experiment in Los Angeles, the city will be responsible for thousands of wards of the state with little hope for recovery, as well as tens of thousands of campers in its public spaces. A few curious citizens will read through the academic literature and find a vast discrepancy between the ideological promises of Housing First and its real-world outcomes. They might then conclude that proponents should have known better.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:10

• "We've Seen Some Deaths" – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India
  “We’ve Seen Some Deaths” – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India

  If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that dealmaking doesn’t come to a stop just because of a once-in-a-century global pandemic. And although some have written the obituary for the SPAC boom, there’s clearly still enough dealmaking activity happening in India to warrant investment banks pushing ahead even as the second wave of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic leads to unprecedented devastation.

  

  And as banks work to ensure their employees can grind on regardless of the circumstances, Bloomberg reported that StanChart is attempting to buy medical grade oxygen for workers in its Indian offices who have become stricken with COVID-19.

  Chief Financial Officer Andy Halford says the London-based bank is “actively” attempting to find oxygen concentrators with hundreds of the company’s 20K-plus staff based in India infected.

  “I think we have got 800 cases currently of Covid and I think in total we have had some deaths among our employees in India to date,” Halford said in a phone interview after the bank published first-quarter earnings.

  “We are actively out there seeing what we can do make vaccine more available, and particularly offer more locations where staff can get it,” he said. However, he added the bank was reluctant to use “connections that would be inappropriate.”

  Standard Chartered is one of the biggest international banks operating in India. As well as providing banking and wealth management services in the country it also operates major back-office hubs in Bangalore and Chennai.

  StanChart CEO Bill Winters said that in reaction to the crisis, the bank is looking to transfer work away from India to service centers in Kuala Lumpur, Tianjian and Warsaw to help support employees within the country. “We are looking carefully at how we can rebalance loads,” Winters reportedly told the bank’s analysts on Thursday.

  “We have material case counts amongst our population, both in our services center and in the bank itself, consistent with what we are seeing across the country,” Winters said. “We’ve kept most of our branches open, banks are considered essential services, so we have had a disproportionate share of the cases in the branches’ staff, very unfortunately.”

  While most of the bank’s staffers are working from home, especially in hard-hit cities like Bangalore and Chennai, where the bank has thousands of employees, some 10% of front-office personnel are still working in the office at least part time.

  Their efforts helped the bank post an 18% jump in Q1 pre-tax profit as it cited the economic “recovery” seen in many of its key international markets (including India) as COVID-19 restrictions were loosened. To be sure, some of the bank’s strong quarterly performance was due to the bank dedicating less cash to offset feared loan losses, but trading, dealmaking and particularly strong performance in the bank’s wealth management business also contributed to the jump in profits.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:50

• "Election Panic" Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns "It's Going To Turn Violent"
  “Election Panic” Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns “It’s Going To Turn Violent”

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  According to a recent poll, 51% of Americans think Joe Biden cheated to get into the White House.  The breakdown is 74% Republicans and an astounding 30% Democrats think cheating played at least a part of the 2020 Election outcome.  In Arizona, the 2020 Election ballots are finally being audited as court battles to stop it continue.  Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is predicting an election “panic in 2022.”  

  

  Armstrong explains, “It means extremely high volatility…”

  ”  Despite whatever they want to say, there is a large proportion of the population that do not believe the election.  Polls are saying it’s at 51%, but it’s probably close to 60% or 70%.  You are also seeing that 60% of Americans want a third party, and you are talking about Democrats and Republicans…

  I think because we have such a high number of people who do not trust the election results, I don’t think they are going to be able to get away with rigging the elections again.  It’s going to turn into violence.  There is no question about that.”

  Armstrong also sees Biden Administration tax plans on things like capital gains causing problems in the not-too-distant future.  Armstrong says,

  “If they raise capital gains, I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, you are going to have to sell.  Your accountant is going to say if you don’t sell, you going to pay twice or three times as much in taxes next year.  So, they can create a serious, serious collapse in the world economy.  This is in addition to all this Covid nonsense that they have created.”

  Armstrong has been saying for months that deflation would be the overarching theme in the economy.  Is that going to continue or has there been a change?  Armstrong says, “Deflation is now over…”

  ”  People have to understand.  It has nothing to do with the supply of money. . . . If you don’t see a bright rosy future, what do you do?  You save your money. . . . One of the number one selling objects in Europe is a safe.  People are storing cash. 

  Biden was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  People are now seeing that things are going to cost more in the future than they do today.  They have also created shortages because of these lockdowns.  The inflation is just beginning to start now.  It’s based on shortages, and it will continue going into about 2024.”

  The bottom line on the cause of inflation, according to Armstrong, is “a loss of confidence in government.”

  Armstrong also predicts,

  “We are looking at the prospect of a serious war between 2025 and 2027.  All this is completely because of this great reset nonsense.  They have been using the Corona Virus as an excuse to try and shut down the economy.  If you look at rents in New York City, they are in a freefall.  Real estate is going crazy outside of the urban centers.  In Florida, what was a $500,000 house last year is now more than $1 million.”

  On Trump, Armstrong says, “I don’t see him returning to office before 2024.”

  But, if massive ballot fraud is proven with the Arizona audit going on right now, Armstrong predicts, “The state legislature can recall a Senator” who won by election rigging.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One in this in-depth interview (60 mins. in length) with Martin Armstrong of ArmstrongEconomics.com.  (What is written above is a very small sample of the actual interview.)

  *  *  *

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

  Martin Armstrong also told me there are a number of events that could cause the stock market to sell-off quickly and plunge deeply.  So, stay on guard, and stay hedged and protected for unforeseen developments. There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com. To get a copy of Armstrong’s latest book “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus,” click here. There is also a PDF version of “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus” you can get by clicking here.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:30

• White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun
  White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun

  Following the earlier this month Biden-ordered full troop exit from Afghanistan slated to be completed by Sept.11 of this year, the White House on Thursday announced the military withdrawal has now officially begun. 

  While traveling aboard Air Force One, the deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed to reporters that “A drawdown is underway,” but also added the caveat that, “While these actions will initially result in increased forces levels, we remain committed to having all of US military personnel out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2020.”

  

  “The President’s intent is clear, the US military departure from Afghanistan will not be rushed.… It will be delivered and conducted in a safe and responsible manner that ensures the protection of our forces,” Jean-Pierre explained.

  Previously Pentagon officials have described “increased forces levels” as constituting the security and personnel required to oversee a safe logistical exit from the country that includes a vast amount of military equipment and defense facilities that have accumulated over the course of the two-decade long war and occupation. 

  CNN details that “Fewer than 100 troops, along with military equipment, have been moved largely by aircraft to execute President Joe Biden’s order to begin the withdrawal process no later than May 1, according to several US defense officials.”

  “There have been about 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan that are openly acknowledged, plus several hundred additional special operations forces. All of them will depart under the President’s orders,” the report adds. NATO at the same time is signaling a full draw down within months.

  It’s likely these slew of new statements Thursday are intended to seek to assure the Taliban that an exit is indeed in motion. But Saturday could see a proverbial all hell breaking loose given May 1 is the deadline (from the Taliban’s perspective) based on the prior Trump admin-Taliban deal that was inked in February 2020.

  “There is remarkable consensus within the region and the international community against a military takeover by the Taliban.”

  I’m guessing the Taliban doesn’t care. https://t.co/hKUEd1qUiK

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) April 28, 2021

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

  The Taliban has vowed to strike at any American targets should troops remain in the country after that date. US leaders are now worried that the Taliban could hit hard just as the Pentagon is in the midst of its draw down; and in the medium to longer term it’s expected that entire major cities could once again fall to the hardline Islamic fundamentalist group.

  To protect the exiting US troops, over the past weeks the US has sent additional B-52 bombers to the region to safeguard the pullout, along with the presence in regional waters of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier. 

  Many pundits ultimately see this whole spectacle as just a recipe for continuing to stay far past Biden’s anticipated Sept.11 exit, given there’s a seeming endless number of ways this could go wrong. So it’s worth asking: will we still be seeing similar headlines of “drawdown has begun” a few years from now as the prior pattern has shown when it comes to America’s longest ever running war?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:10

• Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress
  Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald and Siraj Hashmi via Outside Voices Substack, (emphasis ours)

  Biden’s claim that the Capitol Riot was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is ahistorical garbage…

  

  As President Biden wrapped up a 65-minute joint address to Congress to mark his administration’s first 100 days, what was shared in the lead-up to his speech sowed discord over the entire affair:

  Biden to refer to Jan 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” in speech tonight. pic.twitter.com/rW6L2ybDRQ

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 28, 2021

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

  Sure enough, the President delivered on this. Opening his address, Biden stated, “I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

  Yes, the January 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol building, often alluded to as an “insurrection,” was an embarrassing day for our country. But to suggest that it was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is disingenuous at best. At worst, it’s a malicious attempt to whitewash the history of attacks carried out both by and on the government that have had much more catastrophic results.

  Apart from the September 11th terrorist attacks that targeted the country’s financial system, Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the defenders of our democracy when a hijacked American Airlines flight 77 flew into the Pentagon. Were it not for the heroes who resisted against the hijackers of United flight 93, Al Qaeda’s attempt to fly a commercial airline into the White House or U.S. Capitol building would have come to fruition. Despite being a horrific tragedy, 9/11 has been dismissed by some as being explicitly a “foreign attack,” not one from within.

  So, let’s explore attacks on our democracy from within.

  Following 9/11, the Bush administration, in conjunction with Congress, expedited the passage of the Patriot Act, a wide-sweeping national security law that infringed on the civil liberties of every American in the name of fighting terror. The Fourth Amendment became a relic of the past as the government’s power to surveil and spy on its own citizens reached its peak. Individuals who shared names with persons of interest or suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, landed on government no-fly lists, restricting their right to freely move about the country for dubious reasons and with no due process or recourse. And even worse, many had their right to due process eviscerated when they were detained by the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and found themselves at Guantanamo Bay without even being charged with a crime.

  Yet this is not the first time that American citizens, or even permanent residents for that matter, had their rights infringed upon by the government.

  As the FBI was formed in the early 20th century, Americans whose ideologies were at odds with the government’s interests were often targeted by the agency’s longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover. In the eyes of the FBI Director, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a suspected communist given his ties to Stanley Levison, whose suspected pro-communist activities were monitored by the FBI in the 1950s. Although Dr. King has been viewed as one of the most consequential leaders in American history due to his role in the civil rights movement, at the time, Hoover and many in the FBI viewed him as a threat to our democracy, ushering in communism under the guise of “civil rights.” The FBI infamously blackmailed Dr. King by sending him a letter advocating he commit suicide. 

  

  J Edgar Hoover (1895 -1972) points his finger while testifying before the House on Un-American Activities Committee, Washington, DC. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  The Red Scare was so severe in the United States that the government actively sought to chip away at Americans’ First Amendment rights to prevent the spread of such ideas. And through the Lavender Scare in the early 1950s, thousands of people were forced out of government service for simply for being suspected of being homosexual. 

  When the United States entered the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 into law, which then gave way to the Sedition Act of 1918. These two laws worked in conjunction to strip away the First Amendment rights of every American and demand undying fealty towards the U.S. government. Expressing even the slightest bit of criticism of the U.S. or associating with groups like the Communist Party could result in, at the very least, a government wiretap, and, at worst, a hefty prison sentence and possible execution. In the same token that President Franklin Roosevelt interned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II in fear that they might side with the Japanese Empire, the Espionage and Sedition Acts under President Wilson explicitly targeted German-born American residents during World War I, with over 2,000 arrested and sent to internment camps.

  While the FBI has had its fair share of attacking our democracy, its intelligence counterpart, the CIA, has interfered in the affairs of other countries countless times. As Americans decry countries like Russia, China, and Iran for interfering in our electoral process, the CIA has had a hand in interfering in the affairs of well over a dozen nations. For as many autocratic regimes as the CIA tried to topple in places like Cuba, Indonesia, and the Dominican Republic, the CIA had a hand in the overthrow of democracies as well in countries like Iran, Chile, and Guatemala.

  For decades, J. Edgar Hoover — the notorious FBI Director after whom the law enforcement’s DC headquarters continues to be named — assaulted democracy in every way imaginable. Hoover kept dossiers on political leaders to enforce his will over them. His agency tried to blackmail Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into suicide with threats to expose alleged adultery. FBI agents routinely infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups as part of its COINTELPRO program and other similar domestic spying activities. And the NSA notoriously spied on millions of American citizens without warrants.

  There is a strong argument to be made that the CIA is responsible for interfering in American democracy, too.

  The first impeachment of President Donald Trump in 2019 occurred when a whistleblower within the CIA filed a complaint after Trump had a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, in exchange for $400 million in military aid.

  But it didn’t end there.

  The story of the Russian Bounty program on U.S. troops in Afghanistan that broke publicly in the summer of 2020 made a significant impact in tipping the scales during the 2020 presidential election. The CIA produced the initial intelligence assessment in 2019, which later broke publicly in the summer of 2020, further cementing the perception that Trump was in the pocket of Russian President Vladimir Putin––a claim that was exacerbated when then-President Trump dismissed the allegations outright, calling it “fake news.” However, in April 2021, Trump would be vindicated as the U.S. government revealed that the Intelligence Community had “low to moderate confidence” in the intelligence assessment. In other words, there was little evidence to prove that it was real.

  On top of these government abuses that took place on a wide scale impacting every American, there was a long-drawn-out period since the Civil War that impacted millions of Americans that has had consequences that last to this day: Jim Crow.

  Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the implementation of Jim Crow laws in Southern former slave states not only segregated black people from the white population, but also barred them from fully participating in society as equal members. Through policies like poll taxes, literacy tests, and increased residency requirements, black people had their right to vote stripped away, essentially removing them from the political process, keeping them further ostracized from society. It was authoritarianism in the most sinister manner, targeting a racial group that was perceived to be subhuman to their white counterpart, all in the name of protecting democracy.

  

  A young boy drinks from the ‘colored’ water fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Hallifax, North Carolina, April 1938. (Photo by John Vacha/FPG/Getty Images)

  Despite all these examples in which our democracy––and the democracies of other nations––were attacked with our government playing the central antagonist, there were a half dozen times where the sitting U.S. president and, by extension, our democracy were attacked from within. Since the Civil War, four U.S. presidents were assassinated (Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901, and Kennedy in 1963) and two presidents were injured in assassination attempts (Roosevelt in 1912 and Reagan in 1981). These were six attacks on the duly elected leaders of the people of the United States. Not only does changing the leadership alter the trajectory for a nation, but due to its status, it has lasting effects for the rest of the world.

  If President Biden is to suggest that the siege on Capitol Hill on January 6th was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” then we should demand that our leaders be honest about what does and does not constitute an “attack on our democracy.” Attacks on our democracy aren’t just reserved for storming the U.S. Capitol and targeting U.S. lawmakers with historically low approval ratings. If that’s the case, that a certain set of rules only applies to the political elite and not the people, then it’s safe to say that we do not truly live in a democracy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:50

• China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide
  China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide

  For the 4th time in the last 5 months, China’s Services and Manufacturing PMIs missed expectations in April.

  China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index declined to 51.1 in April from 51.9 in March (and well below the 51.8 expectations), according to data released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics.

  The non-manufacturing gauge, which measures activity in the construction and services sectors, dropped to 54.9 (from 56.3 in March), compared to 56.1 projected by economists.

  

  While the trend is not the friend of the Chinese economy, we do note that both PMIs remain above the 50-level demarcating an expansion in output. The reading has now remained in expansionary territory for 14 straight months.

  The subindex measuring production fell to 52.2 from 53.9 in March. Total new orders also dropped to 52 from 53.6 in March, and new export orders fell from 51.2 in March to 50.4, but stayed in the expansionary territory for two straight months.

  Surveyed manufacturers said chip shortages, international logistics jams and rising delivery costs have weighed on their operations, the statistics bureau said.

  The non-manufacturing PMI again outpaced manufacturing, supporting the view of the services sector is catching up and manufacturing activity peaking.

  The one potential silver lining, looking ahead, is that China’s economy could be about to get a boost as Deutsche Bank notes that from June onward, the credit impulse -on a YoY basis – should mechanically rebound thanks to base effects. More importantly, as the chart below shows, higher frequency leading indicators are also consistent with a recovery in the credit impulse.

  

  Indeed, recent easing of financial conditions suggests the credit impulse should converge towardsa zero. In turn, this would be consistent with stable PMI manufacturing new orders. And even more notably, for those paying attention to supply chain disruptions and inflationary impulses worldwide, a stabilization of China’s manufacturing is key given that it tends to lead global manufacturing and is a key driver of global inflation expectations.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:38

• Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam
  Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam

  A Paris Mayor who was raised in a devout Muslim household by Algerian immigrant parents threw her support behind a controversial letter by current and former military chiefs who said that if nothing is done about the “laxist” policies on radical Islam, it would require “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilizational values.”

  

  “What is written in this letter is a reality,” Mayor Rachida Dati of Paris’ 7th arrondissement told France Info radio. “When you have a country plagued by urban guerrilla warfare, when you have a constant and high terrorist threat, when you have increasingly glaring and flagrant inequalities … we cannot say that the country is doing well.“

  “The hour is grave, France is in peril,” reads the letter, adding that failure to act against the “suburban hordes” would lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands.”

  The letter was signed by hundreds of retired soldiers, including 20 retired generals, as well as several active duty members of the military – 18 of whom are to be fired, the country’s armed forces chief confirmed on Thursday, according to the Daily Mail.

  

  “The police have become a target for terrorists” said Dati, 55, who served as justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2009. Her comments follow the fatal stabbing last week of a policewoman in the southwest Paris neighborhood of Rambouillet. The suspect, a Tunisian national, had been watching jihadist propaganda videos prior to the attack.

  “I am afraid that the police will break down one day,” Dati continued, adding “And if they crack, we go well beyond the disintegration of society.”

  Dati’s comments come as France’s Chief of Defense, François Lecointre, called the letter “absolutely revolting,” adding of the active-duty signatories: “I hope that their automatic retirement will be decided.”

  “This is an exceptional procedure, which we are launching immediately at the request of the Minister of the Armed Forces,” he added. “These general officers will each pass before a higher military council. At the end of this procedure, it is the President of the Republic who signs a decree expelling them.”

  President Macron’s government strongly condemned the letter, which was published on the 60th anniversary of a failed coup d’etat by generals opposed to France granting independence to Algeria, its former North African colony.

  Prime Minister Jean Castex said the letter by military figures was ‘against all of our republican principles, of honour and the duty of the army’.

  And Florence Parly, the Defence Minister, said: ‘This is unacceptable. There will be consequences, naturally.

  The soldiers behind the letter were all said to be anti-immigration activists with racist views and strong ties to the far-Right Rassemblement National (National Rally).

  The lead signatory was Christian Piquemal, 80, who commanded the French Foreign Legion before losing his privileges as a retired officer after being arrested while taking part in an anti-Islam demonstration in 2016. –Daily Mail

  Supporting the signatories was Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National leader, writing in response to the letter: “I invite you to join us in taking part in the coming battle, which is the battle of France.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:30

• China Population Still Growing… For Now
  China Population Still Growing… For Now

  Earlier this week, we highlighted an interesting article in the FT this according to which China’s population was set to decline for the first time since the 1950s when the national census data is released soon. However, in response to the report which prompted widespread speculation over implications of this demographic inflection point, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) best known for faking every possible piece of data, released a statement this morning saying that the population continued to grow in 2020 ahead of the official release. Watch for 2016-19 revisions though.

  So although a decline was avoided, the NBS recently said that China’s demographics “has reached an important turning point”.

  Here Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid reminds us that using UN population forecasts, China’s population is predicted to peak in 2031 at around 2% above 2019 levels, so expectations were already that the population was plateauing. With normal margins of error the peak could come notably before (maybe even now) or indeed after. For the record, on the UN’s data, India’s population is expected to climb above China’s in 2027 – to be the largest in the world – and will be 17% above by 2050.

  More interestingly, the working-age population peaked in China around 2015 (2013 using NBS data) having surged in the globalization era. In the forty years to 2015 this increased c.97% but is predicted to fall c.-12% over the next 20 years.

  

  As Reid concludes, we can only speculate whether this changes the global inflation outlook. Over the last few decades the surge of global workers and the integration of originally very cheap Chinese labor into the global system has had a very depressing impact on inflation. But as workers become relatively more scarce across the world, including the now much higher-paid Chinese, not to mention with countless supply chains permanently frayed or broken, will there be more pricing power for labor in the years ahead?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:10

• "Historic Moment!" – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station 
  “Historic Moment!” – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station 

  China successfully launched a key module of a new space station Thursday, a mission that shows the country’s ‘space dream’ of dominating low Earth orbit is quickly becoming a reality. 

  China National Space Administration announced Thursday morning that the Long March-5B Y2 rocket lifted off in the southern province of Hainan with the core capsule of the new Tiangong space station. 

  Historic moment! Just now #China launched the Long March-5B Y2 #rocket, sending the #Tianhe天和 core module of China’s #SpaceStation into the #space. Tianhe module is China’s first space station core module and the largest spacecraft China has ever made. pic.twitter.com/ey9GYCKOao

  — Ambassador Deng Xijun (@China2ASEAN) April 29, 2021

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  The next-generation space station will take 18 months to build in low Earth orbit, with a completion year sometime in 2022. The space station is designed as a scientific research outpost for China through the end of the decade since it has been excluded from using the International Space Station (ISS). 

  When completed, the Tiangong space station will be approximately one-fifth the mass of the ISS and weigh about 90-metric-ton in the shape of a T. The size will be comparable to the Russian Mir space station, which operated from 1986 to 2000. 

  

  “We did not intend to compete with the ISS in terms of scale,” Gu Yidong, chief scientist of the China Manned Space program, was quoted by Scientific American as saying.

  The ISS recently celebrated its 20 years in operation with an end of lifespan by 2030. Already, the space station has shown signs of wear and tear amid a series of malfunctions, including air leaks. 

  In early April, Russia said it would pull out of the ISS in 2025 and build a space station by 2030 if Russian President Vladimir Putin provides funding. If not, Russia could soon find itself working with the Chinese in space.

  President Xi Jinping has touted China’s space dream as he was cited by state media as saying it’s the path to “national rejuvenation.” 

  China has recent made no secret of its space ambitions. From the moon to Mars, the country has recently landed multiple spacecraft on these extraterrestrial bodies.

  Meanwhile, the US is doing the same as a space race between both countries heats up. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:50

• America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not "Systemic Racism"
  America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not “Systemic Racism”

  Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In what just might be the most misguided attempt at ‘utopian’ living ever conceived, progressive Democrats continue to demand the defunding and disbanding of police forces in cities around the country. Yet, like a doctor that has made the wrong diagnosis on a patient, such a radical idea will not bring peace and security to America’s ailing neighborhoods. In fact, it will make them virtually unlivable.

  

  The United States desperately needs a national debate on the root causes of police violence, which the political left has prematurely and wrongly attributed to “systemic racism.” Missing from the bigger picture are questions pertaining to economic hardship, broken homes, drug abuse and street gangs – and perhaps most importantly of all, poorly trained police – as just a few of the contributing factors that have placed law enforcement between a rock and a hard place.

  For every Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the murder of George Floyd, there are dozens of cops like Nicholas Reardon, who was forced to make a split-second decision after a Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, attempted to stab another teenager. Reardon, who shot and killed Bryant, has found himself something of a celebrity not for potentially saving the life of a young girl, but for being the fresh face of “white supremacy.”

  NBA star Lebron James led the charge against the cop when he unconscionably tweeted to his 46.5 followers a photograph of Nicholas Reardon with the caption, “YOU’RE NEXT, beside the emoji of an hourglass. Some people may consider that a threat.

  Facts do not matter. Only the narrative matters. pic.twitter.com/7yAp5X42Uu

  — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 22, 2021

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  In another incident, Kim Potter, a 26-year department veteran of the Minneapolis police force, shot and killed Daunte Wright, 20, just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. The similarities don’t end there. As was the case with Floyd, Daunte Wright, for whom the police had an outstanding warrant, struggled with the police and even managed to make it back inside of his vehicle before being fatally shot. Potter, who appears to have mistaken her gun for a taser in the chaos that ensued, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s death.

  In yet another highly publicized incident, Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy, was shot and killed last month by Chicago Police Department officer Eric Stillman following a foot chase down a dark alley. Footage from Stillman’s body cam appears to show Toledo dropping a handgun moments before turning and raising his hands, immediately prior to being killed.

  Is it fair to blame the phantom of “systemic racism” for these and other killings that occasionally occur between civilians and the police? That would seem ludicrous, yet that is how these tragic incidences are being framed in the media and by civil rights groups, like Black Lives Matter, who continue to bang the drum for disbanding the police. Would it not make more sense to fight not only for better training in the police ranks, but for getting the word out to the youth that resisting arrest is not the best strategy when confronted by a law enforcement officer? Yet such a rational plan of action would deprive the Democrats of the political points they receive every time a member of the minority gets killed during a run-in with the police. At the same time, it would dry up corporate donations to BLM, which has helped its co-founder and self-described Marxist, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, purchase four luxury homes in the United States alone.

  Getting back to the question of police training, why didn’t Nicholas Reardon opt to shoot a warning shot instead, or perhaps “aim low,” as a means to prevent Miss Bryant from stabbing that young lady? And why was Officer Stillman in pursuit of an individual down a dark alley in the West End of Chicago without any backup? And finally, how in the world was it possible for Kim Potter, a trained police officer, to confuse a weighty Glock-22 with a lightweight Taser? Brandon Tatum, a Black American political commentator and former police officer, offered as an alternative to the ‘systemic racism’ theory, the possibility that Potter was part of an affirmative action hiring program.

  “They are hiring people to meet quotas,” Tatum commented on his YouTube channel, “and they’re not hiring the best people for the job.”

  

  That is one possible theory to explain police violence that the mainstream media will not be entertaining anytime soon. The question is “why”? Why is the media, just like it is with so many major corporations, hyping and funding the idea of systemic racism as the source of police violence when there are many other far more plausible explanations? While the ultimate motivation for assuming such a dangerous position may never be known, it is clear that anyone who challenges the ‘racist’ narrative risks attracting the wrath of the woke brigade. This would include, perhaps more than anyone, the academics.

  In 2019, psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland examined 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to ask a simple question: did the race of the police officer or the civilian play any role in those tragic events? The answer: no they didn’t. Cesario and Johnson concluded there was “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.” Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. Would it surprise anyone to know that “citizen behavior,” i.e. resisting arrest, is the greatest determinate of police behavior?

  Perhaps equally unsurprising is the establishment came down hard on the two number crunchers, especially after their research was cited by author Heather MacDonald in an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism.

  “It set off a firestorm at Michigan State,” MacDonald wrote. “The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.”

  As par for course, various student groups took up petitions to have Hsu fired, while the school profusely apologized. In the end, the mob declared yet another victory as Hsu finally stepped down from his position.

  The controversial paper’s co-author Cesario told WSJ that he feared the activists would continue “pushing for a narrowing of what kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.”

  It appears that Mr. Cesario’s fears have materialized faster than he could have realized as a wall of censorship has been constructed around the world of academia, the one place where the truth on “systemic racism” was being exposed for the lie it is. Now that there is no one left to tell the people, aside from a handful of rigidly regulated and censored truth-seeking publications, America can expect a future of artificially induced racial tensions as a number of good cops are forced to take the blame for a “systemic racism” that only exists on the pages of the mainstream media.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:30

• Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart 
  Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart 

  Manhattan’s “prime” retail real estate market remained under pressure in the first quarter even as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available and public health restrictions eased. 

  According to Bloomberg, citing a report by Cushman & Wakefield, SoHo, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan known for designer boutiques, fancy chain stores, and high-end art galleries, experienced the worst slump in retail rents in the first quarter, down 20% from a year earlier to $279 a square foot. The latest surge in long-term leases barely put a dent in overhead supply that has been increasing since the beginning of the pandemic. About 30% of SoHo’s retail space is dormant and available for rent. 

  We noted in a piece titled “Manhattan Retail Rents Plunge In “Prime” Shopping Areas” that retail rents slid in the fourth quarter of last year. 

  

  Besides SoHo, Herald Square and Madison Ave.’s retail rents tumbled 19% over the same quarter last year. Madison Avenue had the most inventory available, with the availability rate at a whopping 40%.

  

  “The bad news is that first quarter of 2021 is showing the true impact of the pandemic on the market,” Steven Soutendijk, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, told Bloomberg. 

  Soutendijk continued: “The good news is that landlords are responding and adjusting rents even further downwards to spur leasing.”

  Mayor DeBlasio’s solution to mitigate the virus spread has doomed the city. A speedy economic recovery is now questionable.

  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently said DeBlasio has “ruined” the metro area through strict public health orders crushing businesses and liberal policies that have made the area more dangerous. 

  “Now he’s consistently doing horrible things and destroying my city,” Giuliani said. “He’s ruining it all, he’s doing it in a flash of an eye.”

  To revive the city, DeBlasio will spend $30 million on a tourism campaign this summer to attract tourists. 

  “It’s critical that we deliver the message that New York City is open and welcoming visitors once again,” Fred Dixon, president and chief executive officer of NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism organization, told WSJ. 

  Tourism accounts for hundreds of thousands of jobs – for a sustainable recovery, there needs to be an influx of tourists to visit attractions, shop at retail shops, eat at restaurants, and stay in hotels. 

  An exodus of office workers, companies, and residents also adds to the city’s economic woes. Without the uptick in foot traffic on streets, the city should prepare for a new reality, one where its economic recovery lags the rest of the country. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:10

• The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation
  The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation

  Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

  “Heaven is purpose and principle. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulation.”

  We had a slew of spectacular Big Tech results this week, but has the time come to regulate them more closely to avoid increasingly monopolistic behaviour, and to protect the population from the pernicious effect of the manipulation of big data? It’s as much an argument about the role of the state as it is about the success of companies. There will be winners and losers.

  

  As always there is lots going on in markets, but the run of superb Tech results has been truly spectacular. Many tech firms have successfully navigated the Pandemic, selling into bored WFH workers, and achieved staggering success. Let’s use the moment to ponder the difficult question of how should we value Tech, and should it be more thoroughly regulated?

  To the upside, new value and economic growth is created from new ideas creating new demand and markets. Invention leads to innovation – which is why everyone is so over-excited about the swift adoption potential of AI, Virtual Reality, 3-D printing, Meatless meat, Robotics, autonomous systems from drones to cars and all the other wonderful things we read about in the new tech space. The companies trade on extraordinary multiples based on their perceived potential – and is often exaggerated.

  In real reality, (as opposed to virtual), these ideas are often brilliant solutions in search of problems; they take time, effort, and travel many wrong paths on the road to monetisation. We see that repeatedly in the miserable negative profits generated by so many tech unicorns that promised so much. Some stuff works. Much doesn’t.

  There is nothing wrong with the Tech adoption process. The massive personal rewards Tech entrepreneurs can make for themselves is a major reason why the West is so innovative. Long may it be encouraged.

  On the downside, some Big Tech – most these most closely thriving off the back of the monetisation of data – have been massively profitable. Their success creates a completely different series of moral sentiment dilemmas, as Adam Smith may have put it.

  Where do limits on Big Tech need to come?

  It’s been said the goal of every entrepreneur is to become a monopoly and reap monopoly-like returns. The goal of legislators is to avoid it happening. Regulatory oversight of profits is not an attractive option for investors who’ve funded the entrepreneur on the basis they’ll get monopoly-like yields.

  Google’s results earlier this week were spectacular. So spectacular they have raised fears for the prospect of further government/interventions to rein back on Big Tech money making machines. Google’s success (nobody calls it Alphabet) came on the back of the pandemic spurring up user numbers, web advertising, YouTube and the stock rose to a new record on a $50 bln stock buyback plan – what else would a tech giant find to do with its money, aside from buying Waymo’s driverless car tech and building more data centres?

  Facebook posted a beat on earnings and $26 bln revenues on the back of a 30% rise in ad revenue, and an increase in the volume of ads. My Facebook pages are now 80% ads for leather desk mats, outdoor kitchens, light fittings, Scandinavian furniture, wine storage and all the other stuff She-who-is-Mrs-Blain and I have googled as we renovate the house. I barely use the thing any more. My kids don’t touch it. Facebook makes nearly $10 for every user from Ad revenue.

  Amazon reports later today, and its looking like another massive winner on the back of boosted pandemic sales, the lack of high street competition due to lockdowns, its increasing dominance, and the fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers it’s planning to use to host drone deliveries…. (Ok.. but soon..)

  Apple is different. It sells real stuff, and regular readers will know I’m an addict of its goods and services. Its results were stellar – double digit growth across the product range, revenues of $90 bln – half of which was iPhone sales, 42.5% margins and authorisation for a $90 bln stock buyback programme.

  However, Apple is under the regulatory cosh for the way in which it’s using its massively powerful App Store gateway to gouge profits from App Developers – the Fortnite maker Epic Games takes Apple to court next week. Apple can do that because iOS and Mac is its own ecosystem/tech-habitat, and if you want access to its Bright-Shiny-Things you play by their rules.

  The problem of Big Tech’s success is its sheer scale, and many firms have passed the innovation/inventive stage into the monetisation phase. That is when some of them will morph from moving society forward into a pure profit play as they seek monopoly status. They stop inventing stuff, and seek to make their stuff pay, becoming increasingly bureaucratic as they do so.

  I read recently Matt Stoller of the American Liberties Project pointing out:

  “What these firms are doing to get 20-30% returns is capturing market power, they are not creating wealth.”

  Many politicians now agree. They see Facebook, Amazon, Google et al as de-facto monopolies reaping unwarrantable windfall profits while creating untold harm to consumers and other firms from anti-competitive business policies. Its a factor legislators around the globe are determined to address. (Especially if it makes them look strong to voters.)

  The question is – how much should government intervene to regulate and licence big tech? The Libertarian right would say not at all. But Adam Smith would have recognised the dangers inherent in Big Tech’s control and use of big data. Information is a public good. Rather than allowing Big Tech to own and control it – should it be owned by the people and licenced by the state as a public good? That’s a question, btw, not a statement

  Investors will say no – they want the returns. But these companies now utterly dominate their space. They are no longer inventive tech companies expanding the limits of innovation – now they are monopolies milking their data streams.

  That’s why Apple’s new privacy controls are so interesting. This week they upgraded the operating system to stop Apps from tracking Apple User’s data. Google is also on board to kill the App tracking cookies. That’s terrifying news for Facebook which has been monetising that data to sell ads. The social media site is on the wires arguing its bad for smaller niche advertisers, and that its just Apple and Google looking to concentrate the data in their own hands.

  There is any amount of economic literature to explain why monopolies are such a bad idea. Monopolies that exploit the information revealed by internet users about themselves are perhaps even worse – inserting themselves virus-like into their victims and driving their spending decisions. Its wider than just trying to sell us stuff our browsing history has suggested we might like to buy.

  As the degree of polarisation in recent elections has shown, the rising problem of this modern age is that billions of voters think they have free will, but their every action and belief is now increasingly set according to the algorithms dictating what the read, see and buy. In the US, its been the subject of judicial hearings: Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms Shape our Discourse and Our Minds.

  Regulation is never a great solution, but maybe it is time for greater government action over the windfall profits being made by Big Tech behemoths? If Amazon is swamping the high-street because it runs cheaper – even it out by taxing them higher! The logic is simple: Amazon’s success puts high streets out of business and causes additional social welfare, medical and other costs from the workers and businesses it displaces. You can make similar arguments for any Big Tech monopoly…

  Except, maybe Facebook. If I can think of any reason not to dump Facebook, I’ll be sure to let you know. Basically it’s just an advertising platform, and its primary advantage of targeted advertising to likely interested, motivate buyers, is about to get much weaker. Sell. There are plenty of other ways to advertise.

  I have some further points to make re the need to regulate Tech, looking at it from a slightly different perspective of when Tech is Good or Bad for the environment and ecosystem (not just from the perspective of climate change), but I will save that up for Part 2… It will be about the pros, cons, and potential costs of launching Low Earth Orbit coms satellites, and will ask about the perceived public need vs public good!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:50

• Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran's Presidential Office As FM Expresses 'Regret'
  Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran’s Presidential Office As FM Expresses ‘Regret’

  This week’s ‘Zarif-Gate’ audio leak has caused a shake-up in Iran’s presidential office, reportedly leading to the resignation Hessameddin Ashena, head of the Strategic Studies Center (a think tank closely associated with the Iranian presidency), as he was present during the interview with Zarif. The top Iranian diplomat had essentially said it was the military leadership that sets policy.

  “Hesamodin Ashena of the Center for Strategic Studies resigned over ‘the theft’ of the three-hour tape of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif being interviewed at the CSS,” AFP reports Thursday. “Ashena, who held the post of Iranian deputy intelligence minister in the 2000s, has headed the center since 2013 and also serves as adviser to President Hassan Rouhani.”

  But it’s not enough for Islamic hardliners representing the clerical and military establishment, who are now calling for Zarif to step down immediately, also given his remarks were taken as disparaging toward the late “national hero” Soleimani. 

  

  The interview, which was reportedly captured months ago and was never meant to be made public, included Zarif speaking with surprising frankness and criticism toward the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Islamic Republic. He bluntly admitted, for example, that the powerful IRGC often overrides government decisions and that the late Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani’s actions often harmed diplomacy. Even Iranian newspapers described the leak as a major “scandal” which embarrassed Iran on the world stage at a moment of “progress” at the Vienna nuclear talks. 

  In his first public comments since the scandal, Zarif said in an Instagram post that he’s committed to “protecting the interests” of the country and Iranian people. He expressed regret, but stopped short of a direct apology:

  “I am very sorry how a secret, theoretical discussion about the necessity of increasing cooperation between diplomacy and the field (the Guard) — in order for the next officials to use the valuable experiences of the last eight years –- became an internal conflict,” Zarif wrote.

  “I did not censor myself, because this is a betrayal of the people,” he added.

  “I have always been subject to the policies approved by the country and I have strongly defended them. But in expressing my expert opinion, I have considered seeking forgiveness, appeasement, and self-censorship as betrayal,” he said, essentially suggesting it was the leak itself that was a betrayal.

  “Zarif also says that by assassinating [Soleimani] in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.” https://t.co/J7tFMnspzg

  — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 26, 2021

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  While the widespread international coverage of the leaked tapes triggered a firestorm of debate within Iran which in typical fashion pitted the Islamic hardliners against ‘moderates’ (Zarif and Rouhani are widely seen within the “moderate” camp that seeks engagement with the West), it appears the Iranian top diplomat’s job is safe, for now.

  There’s speculation that the leak was intended to sabotage Vienna talks, which is viewed by deep suspicion within the Iranian hardliner political camp – particularly represented in parliament and among the Shia clerical establishment. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:30

• The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public's Trust
  The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

  Authored by Caitlyn Johnstone,

  This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

  

  Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

  The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

  And actually it doesn’t ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public’s growing disgust with them, because there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public’s trust.

  They’ll never regain the public’s trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they’ll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters. At no point will people’s disdain for these outlets ever cease to be reinforced and confirmed by the manipulative and deceitful behaviors which caused that disdain in the first place.

  A propaganda outlet will never be anything other than a propaganda outlet. A lot of half-awake people with one eye open and one eye closed will notice how the news media don’t practice journalism and don’t report the facts, and they’ll assume that something went wrong at some point. “Just do your jobs and report the news!” they’ll shout in frustration.

  But nothing has gone wrong, and they are doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs extremely well.

  Telling the mass media to “just do their jobs” and report the news is like bursting into a shoe factory yelling “Just do your jobs and start manufacturing dentures!” Their job is not to report the news, their job is to manipulate public perception for the benefit of the media-owning class. And toward that end they’ve been immensely successful.

  There’s no point admonishing the mainstream press for the public’s plummeting trust in it, because a thing that has only ever existed to administer propaganda can’t suddenly become journalism. It’s like yelling at a rock for not being a tree.

  The mass media are completely and utterly irredeemable, and always have been. It’s a waste of energy to try and get plutocratic propaganda institutions to suddenly begin doing journalism; that’s not what they’re for. Instead, our energy is better spent teaching people to stop seeing them as journalistic outlets.

  The other reason the mass media will never regain the public’s trust is that humanity’s relationship with narrative is evolving too far beyond the level that once saw Americans gathered around the television listening with Bambi-eyed faith to the words of Walter Cronkite. That level of widespread blind credulity in the official stories of the day will never again exist.

  Our old relationship with narrative is crumbling, and people’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.

  As cold war tensions with Russia and China continue to mount while the US-centralized empire fights with increasing desperation to retain its dominance, we’re seeing propaganda hit white noise saturation levels to such an extent that we’ll likely soon find out how aggressively the collective consciousness can be pummelled with mass-scale psyops before it snaps.

  America just went through four years with a president whose words had no relationship with facts or reality, and who made no attempt to pretend otherwise.

  The mainstream public is becoming increasingly aware of the widespread nature of disinformation and propaganda.

  Deepfake technology means we soon won’t even be able to trust video anymore.

  Ordinary people are hurting financially while Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in the story of the economy that’s only getting more pronounced.

  There are numerous different narratives about Covid-19 and the government responses to it running parallel to each other with everyone still to this day absolutely certain that their position is the only correct one.

  The entire media class is acting stranger and stranger, now routinely reporting bogus stories en masse like the Russian collusion narrative or the “Bountygate” narrative and then simply acting like it’s no big deal when those stories they’d fed us with such urgency are completely discredited.

  Now we’re even seeing headlines about UFOs in esteemed mainstream publications, not just once but regularly, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

  You can’t twist and shove the collective consciousness around like that without something snapping. Without people beginning to look at the thoughts in their heads with suspicion and beginning to question their sense of reality. Without people wondering if everything they believe is a lie.

  Narrative Is Crumbling

  “We are now, as a species, collectively squeezing ourselves out of our old unhealthy relationship with narrative.”https://t.co/iYK2oC7YXf

  — Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) July 26, 2020

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

  We’ve been seeing signs that humanity is moving into a new relationship with narrative for some time now as people learn across all sectors of society that so many of the seemingly solid rules we once took so seriously are just empty thought fluff that we are free to rewrite at any time.

  Atheism and secularism, once fringe positions, are now mainstream as people have discovered that they don’t need to allow their lives to be controlled by words written by long-dead men in far off lands from cultural and historical contexts which have no relevance to our own circumstances.

  People are beginning to recognize that money is made up and we can collectively change the rules of how it works whenever we want, with the rising popularity of both socialism and cryptocurrencies capturing the public imagination of what’s possible.

  People are beginning to understand that what we call gender is a large network of conceptual constructs which we have overlaid upon human anatomy, and that we are free to disregard and re-author those conceptual constructs if that feels right to us.

  People are beginning to understand that romantic relationships don’t need to look the way they’ve been modeled for us across the centuries, with unmarried, same-sex, polyamorous, or other relationship models also being perfectly acceptable options.

  People are beginning to understand that “family” doesn’t need to refer to people to whom we are related by blood, with the concept of chosen family gaining in popularity.

  People are beginning to understand that the failed drug war is an immoral abuse and that we should be allowed to experiment with our own consciousness using whatever substances we see fit.

  These are all signs of a growing awareness that the “How It Is” narratives we’ve been fed by culture do not have the concrete reality to them that we once assumed they did. We’re beginning to see them as what they are: stories. Stories that we are free to ignore or re-write to whatever extent we find useful.

  For propagandists whose manipulations depend on their targets imbuing their narratives with a great degree of significance, this recent development is very problematic. If a ‘How It Is’ narrative isn’t taken seriously, it can’t be used to manipulate the way people think, behave, and vote. And this seriousness is exactly what we’re seeing deteriorate in humanity’s relationship with narrative.

  This could end up being a very, very good thing. All human destructiveness is ultimately caused by our taking thought seriously instead of simply using it as the tool it’s meant to be and setting it down when we’re done with it; look at any manifestation of human self-destructiveness, no matter how large or how small, and you’ll find a belief being taken too seriously underlying it. This shift in our relationship with narrative could end up being what saves us from our self-destructive patterns as a species.

  But it won’t lend itself to trust in the mainstream media. This too would be a very good thing.

  *  *  *

  I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

  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, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. 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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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:10

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• How Old Are Europe's Tech Companies?
  How Old Are Europe’s Tech Companies?

  In a previous infographic, we provided an overview of the age of the world’s (mostly American) tech giants. Then we had a look at a selection of Asian tech companies, showing that some are dinosaurs of the tech age while others have just about hatched, but already have taken over worldwide markets, such as Toshiba, Huawei or ByteDance. But, Statista’s Claire Jenik asks, what about the European technology companies?

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Founded about a century and a half ago, telecom equipment manufacturers Ericsson and Nokia are making their mark among Europe’s tech oldies.

  The Swedish telecommunications pioneer, founded in 1876, was one of the first companies to manufacture and market telephones. As for the Finnish Nokia, its history is a little different: once a manufacturer of toilet paper, the company became a conglomerate in the 20th century and then turned to the electronics industry in the 1960s, before becoming a leader in mobile telephony in the late 1990s.

  With about half a century on the clock, we then find IT and software giants, such as Capgemini, created in 1967 in Grenoble, and the German SAP, born in 1972. Much younger but born more than a decade ago, the music streaming services Spotify and Deezer, as well as the electronic payment platform Adyen. They are among the winners of the digital revolution and are today heavyweights in their respective industries. Finally, among the European “youngsters”, we can cite the Franco-German specialist in teleconsultation, Doctolib, who will be celebrating his 8th birthday this year as well as the 8 year-old British online food delivery service Deliveroo.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 02:45

• Another Navalny Drama Fizzles Despite Hungry Western Media
  Another Navalny Drama Fizzles Despite Hungry Western Media

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The indulgence and fawning must have given Navalny a sense of impunity, reinforcing his megalomania and attention-seeking…

  

  After three weeks allegedly on a hunger strike, the Western-lionized Russian blogger Alexei Navalny has thrown the towel in. The decisive factor was the Russian authorities refusing to kowtow to a Western orchestrated drama.

  Another factor is that Navalny is a conman and stooge of Western intelligence services. To carry out a real hunger strike is perhaps one of the most traumatic, mentally excruciating feats of self-sacrifice. To witness yourself wasting away to death must summon the deepest convictions of righteousness.

  I remember living through the Irish Republican hunger strike 40 years ago which resulted in the death of 10 prisoners in a British state prison. The first one of those men to die was Bobby Sands who at the age of 27 passed away in a coma on May 5 after 66 days of refusing food. It was one of the grimmest periods in the 30-year conflict with Britain that ravaged Ireland.

  Few political prisoners undertake hunger strike, and fewer still see it through to the horrendous end.

  Only those dedicated to a righteous cause could ever contemplate overcoming the gravest challenge.

  That’s why everything about Navalny’s supposed hunger strike reeks of a sham aided and abetted by the fawning Western corporate media.

  The apparent collaboration in this drama also indicates the relationship of a stooge orchestrated by Western state intelligence.

  When the 44-year-old convicted embezzler declared that he was going on a death-fast on March 31, the Western media kept pace with sensational headlines detailing his supposed declining health. We were told about pains, aches, and numbness, “torture”, “imminent death” and so on. Even though the Russian prison authorities released video footage of Navalny swaggering around his shared dormitory remonstrating with a guard over some petty issue.

  The British state-owned BBC reported that prison authorities were using dastardly tricks such as putting savory meals beside Navalny’s bed. The BBC never gave any such concerned coverage to Bobby Sands and his Republican comrades who were abused inhumanely by British prison guards. Indeed, the British media portrayed the then Margaret Thatcher government as justified in its treatment of “Irish terrorists”.

  Instead of the grim fate supposedly facing Navalny, the Western media reported his social media statements with an air of jocularity. “My friends would laugh if they saw me now walking around like a skeleton,” said Navalny in one of his Instagram posts. How is it that a purportedly persecuted prisoner has the liberty to use social media and generate Western headlines? The inappropriate humor also betrays a lack of credibility in his supposed journey of death.

  All the while, the Russian authorities were monitoring Navalny’s health and maintaining that his condition was “satisfactory”.

  U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were reportedly impressing on Russian President Vladimir Putin their concern over Navalny. Again, such high-profile intervention is a reflection of the political orchestration going on. It is so disproportionate to the reality that it is an absurd giveaway of scripted drama.

  It soon became clear, however, that the Russian state would not be bullied by psycho-drama. Its laws and sovereign affairs are not open for hypocritical Western lecturing.

  Navalny was arrested on January 17 after spending five months in Germany in flagrant violation of his parole terms for a suspended jail sentence over a fraud conviction in 2014. While in Germany, Navalny cooked up the outlandish drama that he had been poisoned with a military nerve weapon on the direct orders of Putin. No evidence has ever been provided to support his claims but the Western media and governments have endorsed the narrative as if gospel truth.

  The indulgence and fawning must have given Navalny a sense of impunity, reinforcing his megalomania and attention-seeking. He was therefore shocked when he was arrested on returning to Russia from Germany and again when the Russian federal authorities ordered in February that his suspended sentence be converted to two-and-half-years behind bars.

  While in prison, Navalny began demanding the “right” to have his private doctors visit him over alleged leg numbness and back pain. How’s that for arrogance!

  One wonders how the BBC would have reported it if Irish Republican prisoners were making such a demand from the British state.

  In any case, Russian authorities faced down the intense Western media campaign aiming to make a hero out of the “starving” Navalny. Prison doctors maintained that he was being adequately cared for. One may speculate that the Russian authorities spotted the fake drama from an early stage. You can’t pull off a harrowing hunger strike without an iron will – which Navalny and his handlers do not have because their cause is a fake pretext for destabilizing Russia’s internal politics and undermining the government.

  Realizing that the battle of wills – and shills – was not going to be won, the next necessary ploy was to create an off-ramp for Navalny in order to avoid farcical embarrassment.

  His personal doctors started “warning” on April 18 through obliging Western media headlines that Navalny “could die any day” due to his deteriorating condition. That was after 19 days of supposed hunger strike. Strangely, Navalny’s doctors were somehow able to give such a dire prognosis without actually examining him personally.

  Then on April 23, the BBC and other Western media outlets ran headlines such as: ‘Navalny urged to end hunger strike’.

  Within hours, the convicted conman declared that he was coming off his alleged fast to the death.

  So, there you have it. The end of another drama in which the Western-lionized hero cheats death twice in only a matter of months. First, from alleged poisoning with a deadly nerve agent, and secondly, from an anguish-filled three-week hunger strike (at least according to Western media).

  At this point, Navalny’s intel scriptwriters and Western media are the only ones going hungry.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 02:00

• Critical Race Theory Is About To Face Its Day(s) In Court
  Critical Race Theory Is About To Face Its Day(s) In Court

  Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  As recently as last summer, few people outside academia had heard of critical race theory, whose central claim is that racism, not liberty, is the founding value and guiding vision of American society. Then, President Trump issued an executive order last September banning the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees and federal contractors.

  

  Trump’s ban was blocked by a federal judge in December and immediately revoked by Joe Biden upon occupying the White House in January. Since then, federal agencies and federal contractors have resumed staff training on unconscious bias, microaggressions, systemic racism and white privilege – some of the most common but also most disputed concepts associated with the four-decade-old academic theory.

  

  Now critical race theory is about to face a major real-world test: a spate of lawsuits alleging that it encourages discrimination and other illegal policies targeting whites, males and Christians. But unlike Trump’s executive order, which ran into First Amendment problems by prohibiting controversial speech, the lawsuits name specific policies and practices that allegedly discriminate, harass, blame and humiliate people based on their race.  

  

  David Pitvorak, plaintiffs’ attorney: Equity “is a euphemism for race-based outcomes.”

  The common thread of these legal challenges is the inescapable logic that making accommodations for critical race theory will erode the nation’s anti-discrimination law as it has developed since the 1960s. This would mean replacing the colorblind ideal of treating all people equally, which has been widely viewed as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement, with a contrary strategy: implementing race-based policies, which can range from affirmative action to reparations for compensating African Americans for the injustices of the past and for producing equitable outcomes in the future.

  “Critical race theory is a Trojan horse of sorts,” said David Pivtorak, a Los Angeles lawyer representing two white men who are suing two California state environment agencies.

  “It disguises itself as the gold standard of fairness and justice but, in fact, relies on vilification and the idea of permanent oppressor and oppressed races. Its goal is not ensuring that all people play by the same rules, regardless of race, but equity, which is a euphemism for race-based outcomes.”

  About a dozen lawsuits and administrative complaints have been filed since 2018, with another wave planned this summer by conservative public interest law firms and private attorneys. Their goal is to draw attention to some of the more pronounced practices and win court judgments to slow down the spread of CRT in K-12 schools, government agencies other organizations.

  A pair of lawsuits filed in 2019 by four white women against the New York City public school system allege that a diversity trainer told employees, “White colleagues must take a step back and yield to colleagues of color,” and that they should “recognize that values of White culture are supremacist.” The California suit filed last year by the two white men alleges that the state hosted a discussion series in 2020 in which speakers stated “that any disparate outcomes in society must be the result of white supremacy.”

  A 2019 complaint filed by an Illinois public school teacher led to a finding that as part of a year-long course on equity and diversity, seventh- and eighth-graders participated in a white privilege awareness exercise that required them to remain “in silence” and with “eyes lowered” as they responded to a facilitator’s prompts. A 2020 lawsuit filed by a 12th-grade biracial student and his African American mother says that a civics class in a Nevada charter school taught that “reverse racism doesn’t exist” and that “people of color CANNOT be racist.”

  

  Margaret Burnham, critical race scholar: “Part of being an employee or a public official or a school teacher requires you to appreciate your own standing – your identity and your positionality.”

  Critical race theory scholars assured RealClearInvestigations that white people should never be fired, penalized or gratuitously humiliated for the historical accident of being born white. But organizations should be granted wide leeway in adopting diversity training and equity policies, they say, even if asking white people to acknowledge their unearned privilege and think about their complicity in white supremacy makes them feel singled out and induces anxiety.

  “Part of being an employee or a public official or a school teacher requires you to appreciate your own standing – your identity and your positionality,” said Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern University and a former Massachusetts state judge, using CRT terms that describe racial and gender power hierarchies.

  “Anything that is about the education of the person so that they can do a better job is fair game,” Burnham said. “Just like you have to learn new technologies, new languages, I consider this part of being an employee, part of being in a public space where you’re going to interact with other people.”

  Proponents of critical race theory say the lawsuits are a form of white denialism that confirms the pervasiveness of the problem that CRT exposes. Many critical race theorists believe that the United States has functioned as an elaborate affirmative action scheme to empower and enrich white males, a strategy that depends on a certain degree of coverup.

  “I see these lawsuits as a last gasp attempt of those who benefit from the racial hierarchy to cling to the power and the privileges that have been associated with whiteness from the beginning of the country,” said andré douglas pond cummings (who writes his name in lowercase letters), a business law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who has taught courses on corporate justice and “Hip Hop & the American Constitution.”

  

  andré douglas pond cummings, critical race proponent: “Treating people with dissimilar histories equally … can lead to unjust results and outcomes.”

  “Critical race theory challenges the very legitimacy of the legal system in which these lawsuits are situated,” cummings said.

  “Treating people with dissimilar histories equally, where some have been historically oppressed, can lead to unjust results and outcomes, thereby requiring a focus on results and outcomes, not on blind process, with the goal being equal economic opportunity and equity.”

  The central unifying insight of critical race theory is that racism is embedded in the U.S. legal system and social structures, “so that you don’t have to think about it anymore and you can have racism without racists at this point,” said Robert Westley, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in critical race theory and reparations.

  “You don’t have to be an avowed racist in order for there to be race-based outcomes in this society,” Westley said, noting that confronting these matters “is going to entail talking about things that make a lot of people very uncomfortable.”

  CRT rejects the foundational premises of classical liberalism – such as legal neutrality and individual rights – and from that perspective, colorblindness is not understood as a strategy to overcome racism but as a method to perpetuate it.

  “It’s a white ideology,” Burnham said.

  “Colorblindness really comes into fashion as a means of denying the persistence of racial stratification in the United States.” 

  The lawsuits face a number of challenges, a point borne out by early setbacks some of the claims have experienced so far, including the defeat of Trump’s executive order on free-speech grounds. In another case, lawyers dropped the discrimination allegations in one of the first such lawsuits, filed in 2018 against the Santa Barbara Unified School District in California, because, they said, students and staff who supported the lawsuit were “deathly afraid” of repercussions if they spoke out and came forward publicly as plaintiffs. 

  Claimants generally have to prove the alleged discrimination is severe and pervasive. They also have to overcome the freedom-of-speech rights of those who are professing to be dismantling systemic racism. What’s more, lawyers on both sides say that courts traditionally defer to employers and educators to set policy on workplace training and classroom curricula, a built-in restraint on activist judges.

  Perhaps the biggest wild card in these lawsuits is the staggering cultural shift of the past five years, during which many of the precepts of CRT have become widely accepted, especially among many in the nation’s intelligentsia and the professional managerial class.

  President Biden has adopted the language and made equity part of his platform, including a proposal to establish an Equity Commission “to support the rights of Black, Brown and Native farmers.” Immediately upon taking office, he issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity” to address systemic racism and “affirmatively” promote equity and racial justice in the federal government.

  “Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face,” the executive order states.

  

  Biden’s Education Department cited the 1619 Project among proposed new priorities for education.

  And last week, Biden’s Education Department proposed new priorities for its American History and Civics Education programs in recognition that the Covid-19 pandemic and “the ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism have highlighted the urgency of improving racial equity throughout our society.” The priorities include incorporating diverse perspectives and anti-racist practices into the teaching of history, with The New York Times 1619 Project cited as an example.

  

  Ibram X. Kendi: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

  This paradigm shift has catapulted “anti-racist” experts like diversity trainer and best-selling “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo into the stratosphere of fame. Another beneficiary of the zeitgeist is Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University who runs the school’s Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi is the author of the 2019 bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist,” which contains a succinct antiracist formula that rests on the distinction between bad discrimination (racism) and good discrimination (antiracism): “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

  The nation’s current anti-discrimination law does not make such a distinction, and would read Kendi’s proposal as absurd as claiming that there’s a meaningful difference between good theft and bad theft; instead, all discrimination is wrong in the existing legal framework, with the exception of limited, narrowly tailored exemptions that are subject to strict scrutiny by the courts.

  A sampling of recent lawsuits and complaints shows how critical race theory practices have played out in a variety of circumstances.

  The suit against the New York City Department of Education alleges that employees were told at a diversity retreat that “there is White toxicity in the air and we all breathe it in.” Examples given included the Protestant work ethic and being socialized to be “defensive.” Such messages about “interrogating Whiteness” were repeated over the course of a year, during which time four white employees who later filed suit were accused of privilege, shamed, demoted and replaced by African Americans. The pair of lawsuits, filed in 2019, are in the discovery phase as the Department of Education and the lawyers for the four white women suing exchange documents and evidence.

  A fall 2020 civics curriculum at a Nevada charter school encouraged students to “unlearn” the oppressive structures within their families, their religion and their intersectional identities. The teacher, who identified herself in class materials as a bisexual agnostic with a mental health disability, asked 12th-graders to reflect on the parts of their identity that “have privilege attached to it.” according to a discrimination suit filed by the biracial male student and his black mother who allege he was coerced to affirm a political ideology against his conscience and his Christian faith. The case, filed last December, is headed for trial after a judge, saying the allegations raise “some serious constitutional issues,” refused to toss it out.  

  

  Featured speakers: Blacks don’t use the outdoors in proportion to their population due to white racism.

  In the California lawsuit brought by the two white men, a discussion hosted by the state Department of Fish & Wildlife featured speakers who said that black people don’t use the outdoors in proportion to their population because of white racism, generational trauma and a historical fear of lynching. White employees were instructed on the country’s deeply racist legal system and advised that “silence is complicity” when it comes to racial injustice. According to the lawsuit, employees were subjected to implicit bias training that amounted to compelling staff to take “loyalty oaths” to CRT ideology. The lawsuit, filed last October, is in the early procedural stage; the state’s lawyers are seeking to have the case dismissed.

  In one of the more unusual cases, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights agreed in early January with an Illinois public school teacher that her school district violated anti-discrimination law when it implemented a discipline policy that explicitly directed staff to consider a student’s race when evaluating behavioral and disciplinary issues.

  The case offers indications that different judges will likely reach opposite conclusions in such disputes: Just two weeks after ruling for the schoolteacher under the Trump administration, the Department of Education put the case on hold when President Biden took office and issued the “advancing racial equity” executive order.

  

  Jonathan O’Brien, Nevada plaintiffs’ attorney: “The ideology is so patently stupid and racist to the common person that the only way you can implement it or teach it is with an element of coercion, otherwise it would just be laughed at.”

  The Department of Education initially found that the K-8 school district engaged in illegal stereotyping when administrators and staff were invited to write down “some defining aspects of white culture” in a white privilege awareness exercise. The materials provided several examples of “common white reasoning,” including: “we [whites] haven’t had to develop the skills, perspectives or humility that would help us engage constructively” in cross-racial conflicts. The agency also flagged a segregated “affinity group” for white students that served as a “safe space” for students to learn about white privilege, internalized dominance, microaggressions and how to act as an ally for students of color.

  Hovering in the background of these lawsuits is the unresolved question: To what extent does truth provide a defense against charges of discrimination? It will come as no surprise that to conservatives and other critics of CRT its fatal flaw is its factual wrongness.

  “The ideology is so patently stupid and racist to the common person that the only way you can implement it or teach it is with an element of coercion, otherwise it would just be laughed at,” said Jonathan O’Brien, the lawyer representing the student and mother who filed the Nevada lawsuit. “That’s why the training sessions are like pressure cookers.”

  But if critical race theory is true, as its adherents believe, then labeling the truth as discriminatory smacks of censorship.

  The lawyers who successfully challenged Trump’s executive order last year, for example, claimed truth as a defense when they argued that their clients offer instruction about systemic racism and white privilege as an essential part of their social justice mission to provide equitable health care services. Systemic racism is understood as the totality of social institutions operating in such a way as to generate disparate outcomes for people of color in criminal justice, health care, education and other areas.

  

  Camilla Taylor, Lambda Legal: “We’re talking about a structure, a system, that was set up to benefit white people.”

  “We’re talking about a structure, a system, that was set up to benefit white people. Whether people realize it or not, they’re often continuing that system in a way that hurts people of color,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, which calls itself the nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ rights group.

  “And to undo that structure you need to be able to name who it benefits and who it disadvantages.” 

  Lambda Legal represented the NO/AIDS Task Force, Los Angeles LGBT Center and Dr. Ward Carpenter, the Los Angeles center’s co-director of health services who specializes in transgender medicine and personally treats 200 patients. Their successful legal challenge argued that the restrictions in Trump’s executive order “not only run afoul of First Amendment protections, but they ignore verifiable and truthful information, and therefore restrict highly protected professional speech.”

  In a phone interview, Taylor cited medical research published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that contended when African American newborns are cared for by African American physicians, their mortality rate is cut by half. There is no explanation for the disparity in death rates but the race of the provider, she said.

  “Implicit bias is a problem that is greater in white people than it is in people of color,” Taylor said.

  “To prevent people from talking about these facts, because they make you feel some sense of personal responsibility or guilt that you don’t want to feel, is not only wrong but it hurts people in real time.”  

  The stakes of this dispute couldn’t be higher, at least judging by the rhetoric expressed by both sides.

  One of the conservative groups planning to file lawsuits, the Upper Midwest Law Center in Golden Valley, Mich., is in talks with prospective clients who include non-whites, said the center’s president, Douglas Seaton.

  Seaton described the abandonment of the colorblind idea as giving up on the nation itself.

  “You can’t have a country as diverse as ours without equality before the law,” Seaton said. “It’s a recipe for communal violence, tribalism. You can’t simply proceed that way. You’d be doomed to internecine battles between groups.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/29/2021 – 00:00

• India's COVID-19 Crisis Leads To Black Market Price Explosion
  India’s COVID-19 Crisis Leads To Black Market Price Explosion

  India recorded another 320,000 Covid-19 infections on Tuesday as the country struggles to cope with a deadly surge of the disease. Hospitals in Delhi and many other cities have run out of beds and oxygen and patients are being turned away. Countries have scrambed to assist India with the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom among the governments sending aid. The first ventilators and oxygen have touched down in India but more aid is desperately needed.

  

  The situation, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, in Indian hospitals has seen the price of essential medical supplies skyrocket, according to an investigation carried out by the BBC.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  They found that the $80 price for a standard 50 liter oxygen cylinder has climbed as high as $1,330 on the black market while the cost of an oxygen concentrator has nearly tripled.

  Likewise, the cost of essential drugs has also risen dramatically.

  For example, the highest price for 100mg of Remdesivir in India was quoted by the BBC as $53 and this has climbed as high as $1,000 on the black market.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:40

• California Officials, Biden-Linked Firm Coordinated With Big Tech To Censor Election Posts: Judicial Watch
  California Officials, Biden-Linked Firm Coordinated With Big Tech To Censor Election Posts: Judicial Watch

  Authored by Isabel Van Burgen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California officials colluded with Big Tech to censor social media posts in the United States during the 2020 presidential election, government watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Tuesday.

  

  The findings come after Judicial Watch received 540 pages and a further four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California in response to an open records request, the group said.

  It had filed the request after a December 2020 report surfaced revealing that California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity had surveilled and asked the social media giants to remove or flag as “misleading” at least two dozen messages.

  Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that SKDKnickerbocker, a communications company linked to President Joe Biden’s election campaign, was involved in the censoring of speech during last year’s election period.

  The company did this by sharing its “Misinformation Daily Briefings” with California officials, who then passed them on to social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google for dissemination, according to Judicial Watch.

  “These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” Fitton said.

  

  He added, “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’—as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”

  Jenna Dresner, senior public information officer for the Office of Election Cybersecurity, responded to the December report at the time saying that “we don’t take down posts, that is not our role to play.”

  “We alert potential sources of misinformation to the social media companies and we let them make that call based on community standards they created,” Dresner said.

  According to Judicial Watch, the documents it obtained show how officials pushed big tech companies to censor social media posts.

  

  Google’s YouTube was contacted directly by a state official to remove a Judicial Watch video on the platform on Sept. 24, last year, according to the group.

  “YouTube seemed to respond by deleting the video on September 27, 2020,” Judicial Watch said.

  In another instance, a Facebook user who implied having voted twice with multiple ballots had their post removed on Oct. 31, 2020. Other posts removed by social media giants included claims of voter fraud, receiving multiple ballots in the mail, and finding thousands of alleged unopened ballots in a dumpster.

  Meanwhile, a Twitter post from Fitton that said “Mailing 51 million ballots to those who haven’t asked for increases risk of voter fraud of voter intimidation,” was flagged by SKDKnickerBocker as part of its “Misinformation Tracker.”

  Washington-based SKDKnickerBocker said in a statement last November that it developed the Biden campaign’s vote-by-mail program in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

  The communications firm and California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.

  Big Tech companies have drawn intense scrutiny for perceived political bias and alleged unbalanced moderation of users’ content. Critics say much of the companies’ moderation in the past year has unfairly targeted conservative speech and speech from individuals deemed to be supporters of former President Donald Trump.

  Meanwhile, groups on the other side of the aisle have been taking issue with how social media companies are operating, claiming that the Silicon Valley companies have failed to adequately address misinformation that is being proliferated online.

  Janita Kan contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:20

• Extent Of Toxic DDT Dumping Off Los Angeles Coast Is 'Staggering'
  Extent Of Toxic DDT Dumping Off Los Angeles Coast Is ‘Staggering’

  A new report from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California found a massive graveyard at the bottom of the seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles of a toxic chemical known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).

  Scientists used underwater drones with sonar technology to map out 36,000 acres of the seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles, where they found at least 27,000 barrels of DDT and an excess of 100,000 total debris objects. 

  This area has previously been known as a dumpsite for the industrial complex in Southern California, but the scientist uncovered the true extent of the massive underwater toxic waste zone dating back to World War II in March. 

  

  Images like this one show barrel-like objects containing the dangerous insecticide reside just 3,000 feet below the water’s surface.

  

  The survey provides “a wide-area map” of where the barrels are resting.

  

  For our millennial readers who weren’t around during the days of DDT over half a century ago, the ‘miracle’ pesticide was used against malaria and banned in 1972 after it was linked to cancer and severely damaged ecosystems. 

  Research from Scripps found traces of DDT after decades of barrels sitting at the bottom of the sea. 

  “Unfortunately, the basin offshore Los Angeles had been a dumping ground for industrial waste for several decades, beginning in the 1930s. We found an extensive debris field in the wide-area survey,” said Eric Terrill, chief scientist of the expedition and director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Now that we’ve mapped this area at very high resolution, we are hopeful the data will inform the development of strategies to address potential impacts from the dumping.”

  UC Santa Barbara professor David Valentin first discovered the concentrated accumulations of DDT in the area about a decade ago. He visually confirmed 60 barrels on the seafloor. Over the years, scientists have found high DDT levels in marine mammals, including dolphins and sea lions. Such exposure has been linked to the development of cancer in marine life. 

  Decades ago, the Southern California industry got away with dumping whatever they wanted offshore. The question now is who will pay for the cleanup? 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 23:00

• Japan Restarts Older Nuclear Reactors For First Time Since Fukushima
  Japan Restarts Older Nuclear Reactors For First Time Since Fukushima

  Since achieving the ambitious emissions-reduction targets laid out in the Paris Accords will require developed nations to revive their nuclear plans (something that climate activists have increasingly supported despite the continuing fallout from the disaster at Fukushima) Japan on Wednesday decided to revive three long-idled reactors, marking the first time that Japan has restarted a reactor that’s more than 40 years old.

  After Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga last week announced a new goal of cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions 46% by fiscal 2030 (an announcement that coincided with President Biden’s virtual climate summit) Nikkei reports that Gov. Tatsuji Sugimoto of Fukui Prefecture (located about 300 km, about 186 miles, west of Tokyo) gave the green light on Wednesday to restart the Kansai Electric Power reactor units 1 and 2 at the Takahama nuclear power plant, and unit 3 at the utility’s Mihama plant. Japan’s plans for building new reactors have been frozen for years, leaving its aging nuclear infrastructure largely intact.

  

  Achieving the emissions goals laid out by Suga last week will require generating 20% of Japan’s power via nuclear energy in the coming decades, experts said.

  Currently, Japanese regulations imposed after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown set the operating life of Japanese reactors at 40 years, while leaving open the possibility of extending that to 60 years. No reactors older than 40 years are currently operating in Japan – but that’s about to change.

  Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama on Tuesday told Sugimoto that Japan “will use nuclear power sustainably into the future” and promised up to 2.5 billion yen ($23.1 million) in federal grants to help restart older reactors. Sugimoto told reporters that Kajiyama’s remarks were “something we hadn’t heard before.”

  Japan had about 50 nuclear reactors when Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant was struck by a tsunami in 2011 that knocked out its emergency power, leading to a historic meltdown. 

  Since then, more than 20 reactors in Japan have been marked for decommissioning. By 2030, nearly half of the country’s remaining reactors will be over 40 years old.

  Still, as Fukushima fades into history, support for nuclear power is growing within Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. To open the door to reviving more reactors, more lawmakers favor a different rubric for counting a reactor’s operating age that will subtract the years they spent idled.

  Unfortunately for the nuclear industry in Japan, other obstacles remain aside from environmental concerns. For example, the outlook for restarting Tokyo Electric’s workhorse Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant has been dimmed by a report that finds insufficient safeguards against terrorist attacks. In the US, nuclear has remained out of favor ever since that incident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

  As we pointed out on Earth Day, proponents of lower emissions are starting to accept that nuclear is the only practical strategy that wouldn’t involve massive reductions in energy use, while still maintaining robust systems that won’t seize up when wind turbines freeze.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:40

• Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund Eyes Stake In Aramco
  Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund Eyes Stake In Aramco

  As the production cuts agreed to by OPEC+ drive oil prices higher amid a broad-based commodity boom, China’s sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp is eying a major investment in Aramco, the world’s most valuable company, as Aramco again looks to sell off a piece of its business after scrapping an international IPO a few years back.

  

  Aramco abandoned plans for a public listing amid fears that US law might make Aramco assets vulnerable to seizure as families of victims who died in 9/11 seek compensation from the Saudi government. Instead, the company sold some debt on the international markets and offered shares that are traded domestically on Saudi Arabia’s bourse, but now it appears the oil giant, currently controlled by the Saudi royal family, is once again planning to sell off a stake in its business.

  But instead of turning to the public markets, Aramco is seeking out sovereign wealth funds to invest directly, according to Reuters.

  “There are talks now for the acquisition of a 1% stake by a leading global energy company in an important deal that would boost Aramco’s sales in … a major country,” Prince Mohammed said, without elaborating.

  “There are talks with other companies for different stakes, and part of Aramco’s shares could be transferred to the (Saudi) Public Investment Fund and a part listed … on the Saudi bourse,” he said in an interview aired by Saudi TV marking the fifth anniversary of Vision 2030.

  A 1% stake would equate to around $19 billion based on Aramco’s current market capitalization.

  Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has also spoke highly of the blossoming bilateral relationship between Riyadh and Beijing.

  Prince Mohammed said in the interview that Riyadh was strengthening its relationships with China, India and Russia, though the United States remained a strategic partner despite some differences with the Biden administration, which has taken a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia.

  “China has said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner, India has said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner and Russia has also said Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner,” the prince said.

  According to Reuters, Aramco has been in talks with CIC, as well as Chinese national oil companies. Aramco has been “in touch” with these investors for a few years now.

  “The kingdom does have close relations with China,” said a third source, who is close to Aramco. “The major shareholder will decide what to do with their shares.”

  A tie-up between Saudi and China might make Washington uneasy. But the deal makes sense from a financial standpoint. Saudi Arabia is already China’s biggest crude oil supplier, a position it maintained for a seventh consecutive month in March.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:20

• Watch Live: Senator Tim Scott Delivers Republican Rebuttal Against "Socialist Dreams"
  Watch Live: Senator Tim Scott Delivers Republican Rebuttal Against “Socialist Dreams”

  After President Biden has finished lecturing successful Americans that they “didn’t build it”, Republican Senator Tim Scott will argue that the Democratic agenda amounts to “Washington schemes” and “socialist dreams.”

  

  As the sole Black Republican in the Senate, Scott has promised to deliver an “honest conversation” and an “optimistic and hopeful message” in his own nationally televised remarks.

  “Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams. It will come from you — the American people,” Scott said in experts of his speech released ahead of delivery.

  Scott, of South Carolina, will also laud Republican economic policy for benefits to minorities, women and low-income Americans.

  “Just before COVID, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment ever recorded for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. The lowest for women in nearly 70 years. Wages were growing faster for the bottom 25% than the top 25%,” he said in his prepared remarks.

  “That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans.”

  Finally, we note that in a floor speech last year, the 55-year-old South Carolinan exclaimed:

  “The stereotyping of Republicans is just as toxic and poisoned to the outcomes of the most vulnerable communities in this nation.”

  More Excerpts here…

  Excerpts of ⁦@SenatorTimScott⁩’s response tonight. pic.twitter.com/L2dEGpun1p

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 28, 2021

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

  Watch Live:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:11

• Top Australian Official Warns "Drums of War Beat" As China Tensions Rise
  Top Australian Official Warns “Drums of War Beat” As China Tensions Rise

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

  A senior Australian official warned that the “drums of war” are “beating” in comments to his staff over the weekend as relations between Beijing and Canberra continue to strain.

  “In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat — sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” said Australia’s Department of Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo in comments that were made public on Tuesday.

  

  “Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarization of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war,” he said.

  While Pezzullo didn’t mention China in the remarks that were published, it’s clear he was referencing tensions with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has followed the US in its military provocations against China and is a member of the Quad, a group that is seen as a possible foundation for an anti-China NATO-style alliance in Asia.

  On Sunday, Australia’s defense minister said the possibility of a war erupting over Taiwan should not be “discounted” and warned of regional tensions. “People need to be realistic about the activity,” Defense Minister Peter Dutton said. “There is militarization of bases across the region. Obviously, there is a significant amount of activity and there is an animosity between Taiwan and China.”

  Beijing responded to Dutton’s comments on Monday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China hoped Australia would “fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue” and refrain from “sending any false signals to the separatist forces of ‘Taiwan independence.'”

  

  Australia-China relations have followed the trajectory of US-China relations and are rapidly deteriorating. Further straining ties, last week, Canberra canceled two deals between Beijing and the Australian state of Victoria that would have been part of China’s infrastructure global project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

  Beijing rebuked Australia’s decision to cancel the projects and urged Canberra to abandon its “Cold War mentality and ideological bias.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 22:00

• Ninth Circuit Says "Ghost Gun" Blueprints Can Be Posted Online Without Fed Approval 
  Ninth Circuit Says “Ghost Gun” Blueprints Can Be Posted Online Without Fed Approval 

  3D-printed gun blueprints can be posted online without U.S. State Department approval, a divided Ninth Circuit panel ruled on Tuesday. 

  The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a Trump administration order that authorized removing ghost guns from the State Department’s Munitions List.

  The appeals court ruling will make it easier to share untraceable 3D-printed gun blueprints online, but President Joe Biden in early April announced new measures to tackle gun violence, including a crackdown on ghost guns. 

  “The Ninth Circuit’s decision Tuesday overturned an injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle in March 2020. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik had blocked two rules that transferred regulatory control of 3D-printed gun files from the State Department to the Commerce Department. The rules also removed ghost gun blueprints from a State Department list of munitions that require a license to export. Twenty-two states led by Washington state sued to prevent the rule changes from taking effect,” Courthouse News Service said.

  Here’s more from Courthouse News Service on the divided panel of judges. 

  In a 25-page opinion, U.S. Circuit Judges Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, and Ryan Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee, concluded that courts lack authority to review the challenged rule changes.

  They found a 1976 law, the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, and its subsequent amendments forbid judicial review of State Department decisions on what is considered a “defense article” subject to regulation.

  “Because Congress expressly precluded review of the relevant agency actions here, we vacate the injunction and remand with instructions to dismiss,” Nelson wrote for the majority.

  In a dissenting opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley, a Bill Clinton appointee sitting on the panel by designation from the Eastern District of Washington, argued that his colleagues misinterpreted what Congress intended when it gave the president power “to designate” what items are considered “defense articles and defense services” under the law.

  Whaley wrote that a 1981 amendment to the law “clarified that the president’s removal power was separate from its designation power and was subject to congressional oversight.” He said the majority disregarded a legal principle which presumes any words omitted from a statute should be deemed intentionally excluded from the law.

  “I disagree with the majority’s holding which allows this new regulatory system to escape appropriate oversight,” Whaley wrote.

  Bybee and Nelson rejected that criticism, arguing that prior to the 1981 amendment, the phrase at issue clearly encompassed the president’s power to add to and remove items from the list of regulated munitions.

  Changes to how 3D-printed gun specs are regulated were first proposed in May 2018 about two months after the Trump administration agreed to settle a lawsuit with a private company that distributes blueprints for so-called ghost guns. Under the terms of that deal, the Trump administration agreed to remove 3D-printed gun specs from the State Department’s list of regulated munitions.

  In his dissenting opinion, Whaley questioned why the government “suddenly and secretly changed course” by agreeing to that settlement after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor the State Department and denied Defense Distributed’s request for an injunction to have its blueprints removed from the list. 

  Prior to the settlement, the State Department had argued that Defense Distributed’s files could be used to create “virtually undetectable” firearms that presented a “serious risk of acts of violence” overseas, including the use of untraceable guns in assassinations and the manufacturing of gun parts for embargoed nations and terrorist groups.

  “[Department of State] has never explained why, after securing several victories in the litigation with Defense Distributed, it decided to settle and agreed to permit the export of 3D gun files, even though DOS had argued that the export of these files would irreparably harm the United States’ national security interests,” Whaley wrote.

  Whaley also questioned the government’s decision to keep that settlement secret until after a public comment period for the proposed rule changes ended on July 9, 2018. He noted that only a small fraction of submitted comments pertained to ghost guns, but after the settlement was made public, the government was flooded with “over 106,000 emails from concerned members of the public regarding the deregulation of 3D gun files.”

  Bybee and Nelson acknowledged some “additional reasons” Whaley cited as to why Congress intended to let courts review decisions to deregulate munitions, but they concluded that Congress never wrote those into the law.

  “Congress may decide to codify these policy considerations in the future. But [the law] as currently written does not reflect them,” Nelson wrote for the majority.

  Guns printed at home are often referred to as ghost guns because they lack serial numbers, making them untraceable. 

  In the last several years, a decentralized network of 3D-printed gun advocates has mobilized online and revolutionized gun designs, sharing blueprints, advice and building a community. 

  As we’ve noted, one online ghost gun community has developed the FGC-9, which stands for “f**k gun control 9 mm.” As we’ve mentioned, the FGC-9 can be printed entirely at home for the cost of $350, including the printer’s cost. 

  

  YouTuber Sean with “The 3D Print General” recently attended “Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin” on April 10-11 in Texas. He showed how 3D-printed guns have advanced over the years and can survive thousands of rounds of ammo.

  

  So, for the time being, ghost gun blueprints can be shared online, but it’s only a matter of time before the Biden administration swoops in like a hawk and unleashes executive orders against these untraceable firearms. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:40

• America's Political System Leaves Libertarians Homeless
  America’s Political System Leaves Libertarians Homeless

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  Sadly, in America’s two-party political system Libertarians are left Homeless. The libertarian philosophy or ideology has many facets. Running through all of them is the idea that less government is generally a good thing. This reminds me of what President Ronald Reagan, famously said: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Such words resonate with most libertarians.

  

  While the government may claim it has good intentions history shows it often finds a way to muck things up. This is due to the fact that “government” is comprised of both corrupt and fallible human beings. This is a toxic combination that tends to create policies that screw things up. This takes a variety of shapes, including costly or unintended consequences.

  While some people write a blog for financial gain, others of us do so seeking as wide a base of readership as possible in order to have our opinions heard and share ideas. It is fair to say that on occasion some readers, with opposing opinions refuse to agree to disagree. Below is a comment from one of those fellas taking issue with my claim libertarian views do not align with those of the right, part of what he is saying reflects the confusion surrounding libertarian philosophy.       

  Libertarian, or far-right, what’s the difference? So many times in the past, I’ve read blogs and websites from the far-right, in which they love to cloak themselves in the term of “libertarian,” but the rest of the Rational world understands your dog-whistle politics and misanthropic social ideals. Do your criticisms flow both ways? Where’s your hard-and-fast criticism of the political ideologues on the far right?

  In truth, the views of those claiming to be libertarians often conflict with those of other libertarians and even the Libertarian Party. We tend to be an odd lot and that is why the Libertarian Party may be doomed to failure. It seems the elephant in the room is the question of exactly where one person’s rights start and where another begins. 

  A libertarian is committed to the principle that freedom and liberty are the most important political values. This means we should be able to make our own choices about our own life, what we do with our body and our property. In short, other people should not forcibly interfere with our liberty, and we should not forcibly interfere with theirs. 

  Over the years, you would think the failure of big government to address our problems and woes would have convinced more voters expanding the role of government is not the answer. The cost of big government and the reality Washington seldom accomplishes its goals is beginning to nibble at the theory more government is good for society. While Government may be better at giving people access to services and good at passing popular laws, the private sector is by far more efficient and better at controlling costs.

  

  Over the last two centuries the United States government has been steadily moving away from Adam Smith’s idea of limited government and towards the view of Abraham Lincoln that government should do for the people, whatever needed to be done. The Democratic Party has long been thought of as the party of “big government.” Filled with believers that more government can make things right they claim they care about the “little guy,” women, workers, minorities. They are big supporters of unions, more rules, and more regulations.  

  We, libertarians,  looking for a port in any storm often find ourselves in the Republican camp but it is a poor fit. In politics many of the positions people take reek of conflict. The pursuit of an agenda or political advantage often results in people working together who would not otherwise normally socialize with one another, politics makes strange bedfellows. An example of this is how President Obama had the support of business-minded Republicans when pursuing trade deals while his party fought the idea. 

  Another example of this is how the mainstay Republican party stabbed Trump in the back on several occasions. Clearly, it was Libertarians and Populists that allowed Trump to get elected. In a piece authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute, he writes, “Since 2016, the role of libertarians in political discourse has tended to devolve away from a relevant political demographic into a weird scapegoat for the Left and Right.” Bishop goes on to point out what I contend is a major problem, and that is, while the libertarian electorate may not be valued, it is a very important demographic. This is because during Presidential elections those voting for a Libertarian Presidential candidate can flip enough delegates to give one party an undeserved victory in the electoral college.

  Libertarians are often misunderstood, they believe people are basically good and are endowed by their Creator with natural rights, including the rights of life, liberty, and property. 

  In the United States, libertarians often embrace a political philosophy that advocates small government and is culturally liberal and fiscally conservative. This is far different from what is offered up in America’s two-dimensional political spectrum mainly made up of conservatives with rigid right-wing social values and liberals that embrace big government and the spending that supports it.

  

  The Trend From 20% To 35% Is Clear And Continues

  Big government is not just an American problem and tends to be even worse in countries established long ago. It seems corruption and government both tend to grow in unison over time. The reality of ever-larger government has manifest itself in more scandals as departments overreach their missions. This can be seen in the military, the IRS, NSA, and huge incomprehensible bills being passed by Congress while our government often fails to accomplish the tasks it is given.

  Like the Populist, until the system changes, libertarians should expect to remain a small swing group looking for a home. As for the idea of reforming or improving our election system, that is very unlikely to happen as neither major party wants to introduce a change that might benefit the other. The entrenched interest of the elites within the system block change. The small hope for change can be found in shifting demographics that are rapidly shrinking the Republican Party. If they do not adopt a more populist message and a big tent policy they will continue to lose power. This could have a very negative impact on America going forward. 

  The polarization we see today may be mild compared to what we see in ten years if a large segment of the population feels its voice is silenced. If the checks and balances in our system fail, expect anger to grow as more Americans begin to feel even more left out in the cold. The saying “be careful what you wish for” may again be proven true as those wanting more government intervention experience the limits of government and bureaucracy while burdened by the financial cost it imposes. We must remember that government is often not constrained by the power of the purse to strive for efficiency, where a business fails when it does not meet its goals of providing a good service or product at a reasonable cost government muddles on.

  The open-ended theme of larger Government is generally a mechanism to in some way transfer wealth. Mandates often unfunded are fostered upon business organizations and private citizens.  A new proactive movement of “cuteness” cloaked in a veil of flexibility and diversity has allowed politicians and bureaucrats to use terms like “Private Public Partnership” and “quasi-government entities” that mask just how deep its roots have grown. These terms open a pathway for politicians to tinker without the personal financial risk that a businessman must take. Those within government love being creative especially when they do so on our dime. The use of sun-set legislation is underused when it comes to extending and renewing government bodies. We tend to forget that the best time to kill a monster is while it’s small.

  It is the nature of bureaucracy to expand. It often takes courage to make difficult and unpopular political and economic decisions that will cause pain but benefit society in the long run. A political system that encourages sidestepping these issues to pander to the masses in exchange for remaining in power pays a tremendous price that can stay hidden for only so long. This is a trap America has slipped into, getting out of this will prove quite difficult. I seriously question whether we have the fortitude to take the necessary steps required.

  *  *  *

  Footnote; This post dovetails with many of my writings. Some of my solutions may come across as provocative but are food for thought. For more on government’s role in our lives, related articles may be found in my blog archive, thanks for reading.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:20

• One Bank Warns Soaring Food Prices Will Lead To Social Unrest
  One Bank Warns Soaring Food Prices Will Lead To Social Unrest

  Yesterday we explained why with prices already soaring, global inflation was about to go into overdrive as the leading food price indicator that is the Bloomberg Agri spot index hit the highest level in six years.

  

  In a nutshell, this is a problem since food is a large component of CPI baskets in Asia, and “this large inflationary impulse in the region that houses more than half the world’s population should result in higher wage costs in the factory base of the world. As CPI and PPI rise in Asia, it will feed through globally in the months ahead.”

  Today, DB’s Jim Reid picked that chart as his “Chart of the day”, repeating what readers already know, namely that Bloomberg’s agriculture spot index has risen by c.76% year-on-year, noting that “that’s the biggest annual rise in nearly a decade, and there are only a couple of other comparable episodes since the index begins back in 1991.”

  Like us, Reid then patiently tries to explain to all the idiots – like those employed in the Marriner Eccles building – that the importance of this record surge “extends far beyond your weekly shop, as there’s an extensive literature connecting higher food prices to periods of social unrest.” Indeed, you’ll notice from the chart that the last big surge from the middle of 2010 to early 2011 coincided with the start of the Arab Spring, for which food inflation is regarded as a contributing factor.

  While this is hardly new – we discussed it in “Why Albert Edwards Is Starting To Panic About Soaring Food Prices” and in “We Are Edging Closer To A Biblical Commodity Price Increase Scenario” – Reid also reminds us that emerging markets are more vulnerable to this trend, since their consumers spend a far greater share of their income on food than those in the developed world.

  

  The DB strategist then goes all-in and says what everyone is thinking, namely that “this trend of higher food prices leading to social unrest extends far back into history and surrounds many key turning points. The French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the Ancien Régime, came after a succession of poor harvests that led to major rises in food prices. It was a similar story at the time of Europe’s 1848 revolutions too, which followed the failure of potato crops in the 1840s and the associated severe famine in much of Europe. And the 1917 overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia took place in the context of food shortages as well.”

  So while it remains to be seen what the consequences of today’s surge in food prices could be, Reid cautions that “given the hardship that’s already occurred thanks to the pandemic, a fresh wave of unrest would be no surprise on a historical basis.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 21:00

• Watch Live: President Biden Delivers "You Didn't Build That" 2.0 Speech To Congress
  Watch Live: President Biden Delivers “You Didn’t Build That” 2.0 Speech To Congress

  At 0900ET, President Biden will deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress, where he will unveil the “American Families Plan,” the third part – included with the stimulus and the American Jobs Plan – of his sweeping vision to redistribute wealth and reorganize the American economy.

  Readers can find an outline of the plan here, and can watch live below:

  A brief excerpt from his speech was leaked to Punchbowl News, and the theme, unsurprisingly, is attack on wealthy Americans, who will be called upon to finance Biden’s plan via massive tax hikes – the biggest in decades. (h/t @JakeSherman)

  “100 days since I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.

  Now — after just 100 days — I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Setback into strength.

  …

  The Americans Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America. And, it recognises something I’ve always said: Wall Street didn’t build this country. The middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class.”

  And with the Biden presidency looking increasingly like President Obama’s third term, it’s worth noting that the similarity between the theme from tonight’s remarks and a now-infamous line from a speech President Obama delivered in 2012 where he popularized the phrase “you didn’t build that” in a jab against wealthy Americans and captains of industry that was remembered as one of his more tone-deaf moments.

  Once again, an American President has decided that wealth redistribution is the best path to prosperity.

  

  Sen. Tim Scott will deliver the GOP’s rebuttal to Biden’s speech. Here are some excerpts from that below.

  Excerpts of ⁦@SenatorTimScott⁩’s response tonight. pic.twitter.com/L2dEGpun1p

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 28, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:53

• Biden's First 100 Days: A Radical Transformation Of America
  Biden’s First 100 Days: A Radical Transformation Of America

  Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

  President Donald Trump and conservative pundits warned for months during the 2020 campaign that behind then-candidate Joe Biden’s centrist, bipartisan façade lay a radical liberal agenda to transform the United States. Biden has proven them right in less than 100 days, earning praise from liberal observers who are drawing historical comparisons to the tenure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  

  The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, written along the outline of Biden’s proposal, dwarfs FDR’s New Deal in terms of total cost to the American taxpayer. Democrats rammed the measure through Congress without any Republican support, proving Biden was the partisan that critics had warned about.

  The Democratic president’s proposed infrastructure measures—the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—would bring the total price tag to an estimated $5.4 trillion, while ushering in a wave of welfare programs unseen since the introduction of Medicare and food stamps. The cost splits up to more than $43,000 per household and more than the combined wealth of all the billionaires in America. Democrats could enact both plans without any Republican support, by using, for the first time ever, the reconciliation process more than once in a budget year.

  The fiscal scale and radical nature of the agenda, coupled with the razor-thin House and Senate majorities the Democrats are using to implement it, are exerting pressure on an American system of governance that has historically demanded a measure of bipartisanship in order to enact transformative change.

  “A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to ‘go it alone,’” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a Trump critic and one of the few Republicans seeking a bipartisan solution on infrastructure, wrote on Twitter.

  Democrats argue that pushing the pandemic stimulus through without Republican support was necessary to help Americans struggling with the economic impacts of the pandemic. They say that some provisions of the bill, including the expansion of Obamacare, were long overdue. Democrats predict that the child tax credit, which will amount to a monthly cash payment for most families beginning in July, could cut child poverty in half.

  “The story of the first 100 days is about shots going into arms, checks going into pockets, and seeing hope on the horizon,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter on April 27.

  While testing the system’s limits, Biden has thrown the weight of the presidency behind the radical transformation of the system itself. He backed the long-shot bid for D.C. statehood, which would hand the Democrats two seats in the Senate in the foreseeable future, expressed support for weakening or undoing the legislative filibuster, ordered a commission to study reforms to the Supreme Court around the time fellow Democrats introduced legislation to pack the bench, and said he would sign H.R. 1, a vast election reform bill that would, among other provisions, make mail voting universal in perpetuity.

  “Mr. Biden knows his agenda is so radical, so extreme, that he cannot hope to pass it and keep it intact without first fundamentally changing the rules of the political game,” Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, wrote in a recent op-ed.

  “Consequently, he’s moving on all fronts to do just that.”

  To the Democrats, the wave of change is just what the doctor ordered. Former President Bill Clinton called Biden’s performance so far “almost pitch-perfect” in word and deed.

  “If we can produce positive results that cross those divides by lifting everybody, giving everybody a chance, then we have a chance to psychologically change,” Clinton told Deadline.

  ‘I Want to Change the Paradigm’

  While ushering along a wave of social change via legislation, Biden has churned out a steady stream of paradigm-shifting executive orders and actions on matters ranging from critical race theory training for federal employees to rejoining the World Health Organization.

  Some of the common themes among the five dozen executive actions during the president’s first 100 days in office were the reversals and revocations of Trump-era orders and the introduction of the quasi-Marxist “equity” ideology into virtually every aspect of government operations.

  “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” the title of Biden’s very first order, set the tone for the many that followed.

  “I want to change the paradigm. We start to reward work, not just wealth. I want to change the paradigm,” Biden said during his first press conference.

  What a president says is sometimes as consequential as what a president does. During Biden’s symbolic 100 days, this was exemplified by his comments on the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Biden spoke in favor of convicting Chauvin before the jury rendered its verdict and—after the jury decision was announced—indicted America itself as guilty of “systemic racism.”

  Highs and Lows

  Though his cabinet wouldn’t admit it, Biden inherited a successful vaccine development and distribution program from Trump. This meant that Biden’s campaign promise of injecting 100 million Americans with the vaccine against the CCP virus in his first 100 days was on track to being fulfilled even before he took office on Jan. 20. After eluding questions about raising the target to a more ambitious figure, Biden doubled the goal to 200 million. The administration is now on pace to triple the initial goal by April 29, his 100th day in office.

  That tangible highlight is offset by the crisis on the southern border, which some experts say was triggered by Biden’s revocation of Trump-era immigration policies. Illegal aliens are crossing the border in numbers unseen in decades, forcing immigration authorities to overload shelters for housing detained minors. After weeks of avoidance, Biden finally called the situation a crisis earlier this month.

  The White House has signaled that it intends to solve the crisis by investing in the countries the illegal aliens are fleeing from. Over the past two decades, the United States has spent billions in foreign aid to the nations in question.

  Biden’s approval ratings have fluctuated between the high-40s and mid-50s during his first three months in office, according to Rasmussen, the only pollster conducting daily presidential approval surveys. The media may be contributing to that outcome.

  A recent Media Research Center study showed that evening news coverage of Biden was 59 percent positive during his first three months in office, compared to just 11 percent positive coverage during the same period in Trump’s presidency.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:30

• DoorDash Suffers Widespread Outages As Hangry Millennials Vent On Twitter 
  DoorDash Suffers Widespread Outages As Hangry Millennials Vent On Twitter 

  As millennials wind down for the evening in a post-pandemic world, online food ordering and food delivery platform, Doordash, is suffering widespread outages across the country, according to Downdetector. 

  Reports of outages first began around 1900 ET. 

  

  The outage map shows widespread disruption across the US. 

  

  Millennials are venting on Twitter that DoorDash has randomly canceled their orders or some are having payment issues. 

  One millennial was pissed: “DoorDash canceled my order after I waited a hour I’m not being a good person no more.” 

  Another said, “you guys keep blocking my payments saying it’s fraud… ive called over 10 times and nothing is done about it.. like I can’t order food now!! It even deactivated my sister’s account, and now I know you guys are saying my card is fraud. when its my card.” 

  “My card was charged twice but it shows no active orders?! What’s going on?” one Twitter user said. 

  Others a getting “Network Error.” 

  @DoorDash Your uptime sucks. Once a week, without fail. pic.twitter.com/C8nyWZ48ln

  — Adam Greenwell (@faust3000) April 29, 2021

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

  More people are getting pissed. 

  I’ve got 4 charges on my card for a @DoorDash order that the restaurant cancelled and no order shows up on the app. I’m so pissed.

  — Shelley Boyer (@NapkinGirlSays) April 29, 2021

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

  Google trends show over the last hour, “doordash canceled my order,” “doordash order cancelled,” and “why did doordash cancel my order,” soared as hangry millennials searched for reasons why the app was malfunctioning. 

  

  Maybe try Grubhub or Uber Eats… 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:10

• 50 Million People In Pathway Of Severe Storms From Texas To New York
  50 Million People In Pathway Of Severe Storms From Texas To New York

  A multi-day heavy rainfall and powerful storm threat will affect upwards of 50 million people across Southern Plains Wednesday and into the interior Northeast Thursday, according to CNN. 

  “Even though today may not look like a classic set up for a severe weather outbreak, there will be severe storms that break out from Texas all the way up to the Northeast,” said CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. “We often talk about the ingredients for big storms and today’s recipe includes an overabundance of warm air and humidity.”

  Current Radar (as of 1300 ET)

  

  Storm Prediction Center (SPC) warned hailstones up to 4 inches in diameter for some areas in the Plains. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri will see severe weather on Wednesday. 

  “The stronger thunderstorms may produce large hail and wind damage. A tornado threat may also develop in the Southern Plains,” warned SPC.

  The Southern Plains through the lower Midwest will experience torrential rains this afternoon and into tonight. 

  Forecast Precipitation 

  

  “Locally heavy rainfall will be a bigger concern in our area by later today and tonight, with both flash flooding and main-steam river flooding possible depending on just where the heavier rain swathes set up,” said the National Weather Service office in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  There will be an elevated risk for severe storms in parts of the interior Northeast by Thursday, especially the eastern Great Lakes region.

  Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh, could experience storms during the mid-to-late-afternoon hours, increasing into the evening. 

  12:55am CDT #SPC Day2 Outlook Marginal Risk: from east tx through the mid-south and across much of the oh valley https://t.co/rEAejNpVr0 pic.twitter.com/weJS1NRtfi

  — NWS Storm Prediction Center (@NWSSPC) April 28, 2021

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

  Over 200 million people in the US are forecasted to have high temperatures of at least 80 degrees on Wednesday. All that warm and moist air have been fueling severe storms. 

  Thursday’s Forecast High Temps 

  

  So far, we don’t see any price anomalies in Texas power prices nor any others across the South. 

  … and of course, climate change warriors will point to the temperature spike and severe weather as proof global warming exists. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 20:00

• Manchin "Very Uncomfortable" With Biden's Trillion Dollar Plans
  Manchin “Very Uncomfortable” With Biden’s Trillion Dollar Plans

  Update (1505ET): Unsurprisingly, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is “very uncomfortable” with Biden’s plan – telling CNN‘s Manu Raju: “We want to find how we’re gonna pay for it. … Are we going to be able to be competitive and be able to pay for what we need in the country?”

  Asked Joe Manchin about the trillions proposed for Biden’s plans.

  “Sure, that makes me very uncomfortable,” he told me. “We want to find how we’re gonna pay for it. … Are we going to be able to be competitive and be able to pay for what we need in the country?”

  — Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 28, 2021

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

  *  *  *

  President Biden will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday night for the first time since Inauguration Day (a casual visit by the president would risk spoiling the narrative that the Capitol remains a battle-scarred wreck since the Jan. 6 “uprising”) to unveil the second part of his “Build Back Better” plan, a $1.8 trillion proposal to expand the American “safety net” that will be financed by hefty tax increases on individuals and businesses, including a nearly 40% tax on short-term capital gains that spooked the market when it was first reported last week.

  The scale of the plan, which has been named “the American Families Plan” and is intended to compliment Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” unveiled four weeks ago, has increased in scope since the first details of a preliminary version were leaked to the press earlier this month.

  With spending spanning a decade, the plan’s main features include: $225 billion for child care spending, another $225 billion to create a national family and medical leave program. $200 billion in funding for universal access to pre-K schooling for young children. And $109 billion for two free years of community college, as well as additional subsidies for Americans to purchase health insurance. On the tax credit side, the plan extends a tax credit for up to $3,600 per child until 2025. Biden is scheduled to speak at 2100ET, according to his public calendar.

  

  The AFP marks the trillion-dollar-plus installment in Biden’s sweeping economic programs, enabled by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. First there was the $1.9 trillion, then the nearly $3 trillion American Jobs Plan, and now this. Their ambitious scale means they face an uncertain path through Congress, with Republicans expected to oppose the plan (though it’s possible Biden might win over a few moderates). Planned tax hikes would offset much of the cost of the plan.

  According to the FT, senior administration officials have confirmed that the plan would include an increase in the top income tax rate from 37% to 39.6% for Americans earning more than $400,000, eliminate the preferential tax treatment of capital gains and dividends for those earning more than $1 million (so those making a living day trading on Robinhood can relax) and scrap provisions allowing people to pass unrealized capital gains to their heirs tax-free. What’s more, the hike in the cap gains tax will be felt by the private equity industry, since their share of the appreciation in assets they oversee – known as carried interest – is treated as capital gains, and will now be taxed at a much higher rate.

  The end result is that much of President Trump’s tax cuts for individuals and businesses will be revered.

  “The president’s tax agenda will not only reverse the biggest 2017 tax law giveaways, but reform the tax code so that the wealthy have to play by the same rules as everyone else,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying its proposal.

  And as we reported yesterday, Biden also intends to hand $80 billion more to the IRS to finance campaigns to track down wealthy tax cheats who move money to tax havens overseas.

  Biden has repeatedly insisted that he would try and work with Republicans, and that he might be open to complaints about specific taxes. But if the GOP tries to stymie the plan, Biden has said he would have no problem going it alone.

  Since the text of the plan has yet to be released, those interested in a more comprehensive breakdown of its contents should check out the following summary courtesy of Bloomberg:

  Income Taxes

  Biden is calling to raise the top personal income tax rate to 39.6% for those among the highest 1% of earners. “No one making $400,000 per year or less will see their taxes go up,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the plan. Still, the document didn’t specify whether that threshold applies to both single earners as well as married couples.

  Capital Gains

  Biden would increase the capital gains rate to 39.6% from 20% for those earning $1 million or more — 0.3% of taxpayers or roughly half a million households — equalizing that rate with the top marginal income tax rate. A 3.8% Obamacare tax on investment would then be added on top, meaning the richest would pay a 43.4% federal rate on realized investment returns. State taxes could put the combined tax bill north of 50%.

  The plan would also end a long-standing capital gains tax break on inheritances known as “step-up in basis,” which allows heirs to use the market value of assets at the time of inheritance rather than the actual purchase price as the cost basis for capital gains when the holdings are sold.

  The proposal exempts the first $1 million of gains from the end of stepped-up basis, while there’s no tax if the gains are used for charitable donations. There will also be “protections so that family-owned businesses and farms will not have to pay taxes when given to heirs who continue to run the business.”

  Carried Interest, Real Estate

  The carried interest tax break used by private equity and hedge fund managers to lower their tax bills would be eliminated under Biden’s plan. In what critics call a loophole, that allowed for a share of income being classed as a capital gain, with an associated lower tax rate.

  The administration also would eliminate a real estate tax break for when property investors sell one holding for a more expensive one.

  IRS Audits

  The plan calls for increased audits on high-earners that could collect an additional $700 billion in tax revenue, with funding increases for the Internal Revenue Service. Biden is also proposing to require banks to report information on account flows, so that earnings from investments and business profits are reported to the IRS like wages are.

  Child Tax Credit

  Biden is proposing to extend through 2025 an enhanced version of the child tax credit. The credit, increased for 2021 in the March pandemic-relief package, provides a $3,600 credit for children under six and $3,000 for those six and older. The IRS is slated to send the payments regularly, which amounts to $250 or $300 per child per month, depending on their age. Congressional Democrats are pushing Biden to make this change permanent.

  Child Care

  The plan includes $225 billion to help low-income families pay for child care, provide funding to child care providers and boost wages for child care workers to $15 an hour. Biden is also proposing to make permanent a tax credit for child care costs that would reimburse families for care of children 12 and under with a credit worth up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for multiple children.

  Paid Leave

  Biden would create a $225 billion national paid family and medical leave program. It would provide partial wage replacement for workers who take time off to care for a newborn or an ill family member, recover from a health issue, deal with a family member’s military deployment, address domestic violence issues or deal with the death of a loved one. The plan guarantees 12 weeks of paid parental, family, and personal leave by year 10 of the program. It provides workers with two-thirds of average wage replacement per month, up to $4,000. Lowest-wage workers will get pay replaced at 80%.

  Health Tax Credits

  The plan would pump $200 billion into an expansion of tax credits for households that buy health insurance on their own, saving families an average of $50 per person per month. Biden’s outline said nine million people would save hundreds of dollars per year on their premiums, and four million uninsured people will gain coverage.

  Low-income Tax Credits

  An expansion of the earned-income tax credit for childless workers who earn wages below the poverty line would be made permanent under Biden’s proposal. The expansion roughly triples the value of the benefit for those individuals, the fact sheet said.

  Pre-School

  The plan includes $200 billion for free universal pre-school for all three- and four-year-olds. Pre-kindergarten teachers will earn at least $15 per hour, and those with academic qualifications will receive pay comparable to that of kindergarten teachers.

  College Tuition

  The plan would provide $109 billion to cover two years of tuition-free community college for students and an $85 billion investment in Pell Grants, to aid students pursuing up to a four-year degree. The plan also includes $62 billion to improve college retention rates for disadvantaged students and pump $46 billion into historically black universities, tribal colleges and other institutions that serve minorities.

  Nutrition Assistance

  There is $45 billion to improve the health of school meal programs and provide food for K-12 students during summer breaks in Biden’s proposal.

  Unemployment Systems

  The proposal earmarks $2 billion to modernize the unemployment insurance system, which has been subjected to fraud and technical challenges during the spike in unemployment caused by the pandemic. Biden didn’t call for an automatic extension of jobless benefits as some Democrats had requested, but he pledged to work with Congress automatically extend benefits based on economic conditions.

  Notably Omitted

  The plan did not include any references to expanding the $10,000 state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. More than 20 House Democrats have said that tax break must be boosted to support Biden’s economic agenda. The proposal also didn’t include an expansion of the estate tax — a long-standing Democratic priority that Biden campaigned on. Nor was there an enlargement of Medicare or the drug-price reduction measures that many congressional Democrats have pushed for — though Biden’s outline said both issues were priorities for him.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 19:44

• Why Did Congress "Bailout" Utah For $1.5 Billion? (When Utah Has A $1.5 Billion Budget Surplus)
  Why Did Congress “Bailout” Utah For $1.5 Billion? (When Utah Has A $1.5 Billion Budget Surplus)

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski, CEO/Founder of OpenTheBooks.com, via Forbes.com,

  Recently, Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act along party lines – no Republicans voted for the legislation. Within the bill, there was $350 billion allocated to states, tribes, territories, and 30,000 localities.

  

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forecast that “republicans would vote no and take the dough.” So far, she’s right, as no republican governor has returned the funding.

  A case in point is Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R). Utah state government received $1.5 billion from the Rescue Act. However, the state has an estimated $1.5 billion budget surplus for 2021.

  Gov. Cox forecast a $427 million surplus for 2021 and already expected to have a $1.1 billion one-time surplus. The total extra funds in the state budget amounted to $1.5 billion.

  So, what’s the compelling public purpose for Congress to send Utah $1.5 billion in coronavirus aid? Considering the strength of their state economy, what’s the governor’s argument to keep the money?

  We reached out to Gov. Cox for comment on these important issues, however, we didn’t receive a response. Although U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted against the bill, he hasn’t weighed in on the Utah “bailouts.”

  Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped every government receiving the congressional bailout. Look up your hometown by clicking one of the 50 pins (state capitol) and then scroll down to the chart beneath the map to see the local areas that received Rescue Act aid.

  Beyond the $1.5 billion in aid to Utah state government, a lot of taxpayer money also flowed to Utah’s counties and cities.

  Here’s a high-level breakdown of congressional bailout flowing into communities across Utah.

  Salt Lake County – $225 million

  Salt Lake County is the most populous in the state with an $1.1 million residents. The county is home to the state capital and its largest city, Salt Lake City. Roughly 1 in every 3 Utahns lives in this county. With $225 million in aid, the county collected the equivalent of about $225 for every resident.

  The county is home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in Salt Lake City.

  Utah County – $123 million

  Utah County is the second most populous county in the state with 636,000 residents. That means the county collected about $193 per person.

  Brigham Young University located in the city of Provo ($31.6 million in aid). Brigham Young was the founder of Salt Lake City, the first governor of the Utah Territory and second president of the LDS faith.

  Salt Lake City – $87.5 million

  Salt Lake City is the state capitol and is known for its ski resorts. In 2002, the city hosted the Winter Olympics.

  It’s also home to the Salt Lake City Temple. The 174-year-old Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. With an estimated population of 197,756, the equivalent aid for every resident amounted to $442.

  Davis County – $69 million

  With some ski resorts of its own, Davis County is considered a “bedroom community.” With a population of 355,000, the county collected $194 in stimulus funds for each resident.

  Weber County – $50.5 million

  The county is home to Weber State University, also founded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 260,213 people, the stimulus works out to be about $194 per resident, the same rate of funding as Utah County and Davis County.

  Washington County – $34.4 million

  The county is home to Zion National Park and Snow Canyon State Park, and has 177,556 residents — an average $194 per person in aid — the same rate as Utah, Davis and Weber counties.

  West Valley City – $28.3 million

  The second largest city in the state, West Valley has 136,009 people — an average of $208 per person in aid. A suburb of Salt Lake City, West Valley is relatively new, only incorporating in 1980. The city is home to The Maverik Center which houses the professional hockey team, the Utah Grizzlies.

  Review the rest of Utah’s localities receiving congressional aid here.

  The Utah state economy remained strong as they successfully navigated the pandemic and the state government has a $1.5 billion surplus. Therefore, it’s mind-boggling that the state collected an additional $1.5 billion from the $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

  Critics say that Congress needs to do a better job of letting states manage their own affairs and stop the taxpayer-funded bailouts of states and localities.

  However, Speaker Pelosi was right: republican members of Congress voted no, but their governors took the dough.

  A request for comment to the governor’s office wasn’t returned by our deadline

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 19:40

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• "Exit NATO!" Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision
  “Exit NATO!” Turks Hold Anti-American Protest Outside Incirlik Base Over Armenian Genocide Decision

  Shortly following Joe Biden’s controversial Armenian Genocide statement on Saturday where he became the first US president to shift policy in terms of Washington official recognition of the WWI-era massacre of over one million Armenians in Asia Minor, the US Embassy in Ankara announced the closure of all American diplomatic facilities for Monday and Tuesday as a security precaution. 

  As expected, anti-American protests have indeed popped up at various locations where US personnel are stationed, most notably including outside Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. US troops and intelligence operatives have long been housed at the base in southern Turkey, and it was a major hub out of which anti-Assad military missions in were launched over the past many years. A group of protesters were seen and heard at the gates of Incirlik base loudly denouncing the “lie” of Armenian genocide while telling the Americans to “go home!” and “get out of Turkey!”

  İncirlik Üssü önündeyiz!

  Ey bizim kanımızı içmeye çalışan tek dişi kalmış canavar. Sana bu topraklarda gün yüzü göstermeyeceğiz! pic.twitter.com/XcOwYKZE71

  — TGB (@genclikbirligi) April 27, 2021

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  Such a spectacle outside the major NATO base in Turkey is a rare one.

  According to a description of the demonstration by Military.com:

  A few dozen protestors held banners and chanted slogans. “Genocide is a lie, it’s an American plan,” they said. Demonstrators also demanded an end to the American military’s use of Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, shouting: “American soldiers, get out of Turkey!”

  Turks Protest Biden’s Armenian Genocide Decision, Call for US Military to Leave #Incirlik Air Base | https://t.co/v4werdK5X0 https://t.co/6Nn3Cm54p9

  — Manu Gómez (@GDarkconrad) April 26, 2021

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

  Other international reports noted that some of the demonstrators carried signs that urged Turkey to “exit NATO”…

  The protest was organized by a  local wing of the Youth Union of Turkey (TGB), who call Joe Biden’s recognition of the genocide “illegal and legally void”.

  The demonstrators are carrying Turkish flags and banners saying “exit NATO – the enemy of Ataturk”, “Close Incirlik for the US in response to lies about genocide”, and “No to NATO. This is our land!”

  Ironically much of the American public would only be too happy to see Turkey depart NATO.

  Scene’s from Monday’s protest at Incirlik Air Base:

  Currently an advisory posted to the US Embassy in Turkey’s website tells Americans to avoid these ongoing protests or any areas around US government facilities in the country.

  “U.S. citizens are advised to avoid the areas around U.S. government buildings, and exercise heightened caution in locations where Americans or foreigners may gather,” it says.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:45

• The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity
  The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity

  Authored by Douglas Macgregor via AmericanConservative.com,

  The trouble with leading a great power is that, from time to time, the president is obliged to act like the leader of a great power. If ever there was a time for sound presidential leadership, it’s now. With no appreciation for the endlessly renewable force of national self-preservation that animates Moscow’s maneuvers in Ukraine, President Biden’s insulting remarks and hostile sanctions have plunged the United States into a deeper, more dangerous confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, a region of limited strategic interest to the United States.

  

  Putin’s directive to return most of his troops to garrison while leaving their weapon systems and equipment in place along the Ukrainian border should be viewed in Washington as an opportunity to create a measure of stability in U.S.-Russian relations that’s been missing for years. It’s not enough to hurl insults and simply restate what the Biden administration is against. It’s time to explore what kind of alternative to the fragile and dangerous status quo in Ukraine that Washington and Moscow can both support.

  Washington did a deplorable job of formulating strategic aims in the Middle East and Afghanistan that justified the sacrifice of American blood and treasure. The president cannot seize the strategic initiative now if Washington continues to react impetuously and emotionally to real or imaginary threats to U.S. and allied interests.

  Winston Churchill insisted that most strategic problems can be solved “if they are related to some central design.” Central design implies the guiding influence of strategy. Strategy is not an ideological wish list. Strategy involves an understanding of strategic interests; in this case, grasping the divergence of American and Russian interests. Consider five points.

  First, an analogy may be instructive for Americans: Who rules in Kiev and governs Ukraine is as important to Moscow as events in Mexico are to Washington. It is not enough to admit that expanding NATO eastward to include Ukrainian membership was an unforced error. President Biden must acknowledge that since the end of the Cold War, the geo-strategic environment has changed profoundly. The growth in economic and military strength in Beijing and Moscow gives these nations weight, heretofore unrecognized by Washington, D.C., in the post-Cold War unipolar system.

  Second, Putin is well aware that the southeastern portion (including Odessa) of Ukraine is heavily Russian in language, culture, and political orientation. If this reality is ignored yet again in favor of more wishful thinking about the true character of Ukraine, in a future crisis, the southeastern areas are likely to be rapidly seized and occupied by Russian military power with little difficulty. The probability of U.S. and allied forces throwing Russian forces out is low. Moscow knows from its experience with Crimea that possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law.

  However, Putin is equally aware that for Moscow military action is an option, but hardly the first or even second option. Russian action in Ukraine would exact a serious cost from Moscow in trade sanctions and international standing. Beijing intervened to support the Russian economy once (in 2015), but it is not clear that Beijing would do so again if Russia’s economy faltered under these conditions. These points mean the opportunity for a negotiated settlement with Moscow should not be ignored.

  Third, the Biden administration must work with Moscow and Beijing to identify new rules of engagement that adapt American foreign policy to periodic competition between Great Powers. Russia (and China) advocates for the “principle of noninterference” in the affairs of other states. It’s time for Washington to explore the utility of this approach as a strategic hedge against future potential crises. It’s painfully obvious that Washington’s “Tomahawk Diplomacy”—the act of killing citizens with cruise missiles in weaker, largely defenseless countries when their governments refuse to accommodate American demands—is not viable against Russia or China, let alone against any number of states with rapidly growing military power.

  Fourth, the president must acknowledge that in the new, multi-polar international environment Washington bears an unequal and unsustainable financial burden for the defense of Europe. Acutely sensitive to the American electorate’s demands for peace and prosperity, Eisenhower foresaw the danger that Washington could be ensnared in conflicts on behalf of smaller states for which Americans did not want to fight. Eisenhower’s determination to avoid war and reduce the costs of global military commitments was the rationale for Austrian neutrality in 1955. It is also why Eisenhower urged neutrality for other, smaller European states.

  Finally, President Biden must devise a new national strategy that ensures its political goals are congruent with U.S. military capabilities and fiscal realities. Too many hotheads in the Senate and House are ready to commit American military power without first soberly assessing the concrete interests and the costs of such action. President John F. Kennedy thrilled his supporters with his assertion that Americans should “meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It was great rhetoric, but it put the nation on the road to disaster in Vietnam. The United States does not have the resources or the need to export its political ideas at gunpoint.

  Arnold J. Toynbee argued that great empires die by suicide, not murder. If the United States is to avoid this outcome, Washington must put an end to the strategic follies of the last 20 years, and put American foreign policy back on a credible foundation. Ukraine is a good place to start.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 02:00

• The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19
  The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”

  – Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

  For good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world.

  

  It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.

  Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.

  This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

  We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which has seen governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, has shifted this transformation into high gear.

  Fascism has become a global menace.

  It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (“a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it”) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.

  Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.

  All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care

  Global Disease

  The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.

  We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not.

  “It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times.

  “The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”

  This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead.

  Global Surveillance

  Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.

  Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice.

  Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.

  Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept:

  “The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to information that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.”

  Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the “14 Eyes Program,” also referred to as the “SIGINT Seniors.” This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).

  Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.

  Global War Profiteering

  War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest buyers and sellers.

  The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

  Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that’s $8.3 million per hour). That doesn’t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

  The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today. America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe.

  Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure,  spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors. Price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.

  It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.

  Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.

  Global Policing

  Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There’s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.

  There’s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.

  For example, Israel—one of America’s closest international allies and one of the primary yearly recipients of more than $3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid—has been at the forefront of a little-publicized exchange program aimed at training American police to act as occupying forces in their communities. As The Intercept sums it up, American police are “essentially taking lessons from agencies that enforce military rule rather than civil law.”

  This idea of global policing is reinforced by the Strong Cities Network program, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.

  The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police—acting as extensions of the United Nations—will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.

  Of course, the concern with the government’s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

  Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

  This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

  Are you starting to get the picture now?

  On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.

  We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

  The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.

  In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and running the country.

  Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.

  It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded and entrenched.

  Mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.

  Now there are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

  I am not one of those skeptics.

  I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on one’s liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.

  I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  I have studied enough of this country’s history—and world history—to know that governments (the U.S. government being no exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

  And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.

  Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government). They used to doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America, and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

  As I detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re beginning to know better, aren’t we?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/28/2021 – 00:00

• Russia Is Putting Together An "Unfriendly Countries" Blacklist
  Russia Is Putting Together An “Unfriendly Countries” Blacklist

  Earlier this week Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told national media that the Russian government is currently finalizing what it’s calling an “unfriendly countries” list and that the United States is likely to be at the top of it.

  It follows a recent decree singed by President Vladimir Putin which prevents listed country embassies from being able to hire Russian citizens to work at their diplomatic and consular missions. It’s common practice for foreign embassies to hire staff from the local host countries for certain functins..

  Zakharavo in a weekend interview had said this ‘naughty list’ was triggered ultimately by “another round of unfriendly actions by the US” – a reference to Biden’s latest sanctions on Kremlin officials and Russian companies for the SolarWinds hack and alleged election interference. 

  

  “What are those unfriendly states? The list is being compiled now,” she previously Rossiya 1 TV channel. “As you understand, and I can confirm it, the US is, obviously, present” she said while stopping short of naming other specific countries. 

  On Tuesday state media sources indicated the following are likely be included: 

  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada
  • Poland
  • Ukraine
  • Czech Republic
  • some Baltic states

  In all about ten countries are expected to be named on the ‘blacklist’. 

  Russia’s list of “unfriendly countries” keeps on growing. pic.twitter.com/BTxbEgKLtR

  — Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) April 27, 2021

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  Citing a prominent Russian daily newspaper, TASS describes: “A well-informed source told the newspaper that the US, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia may be blacklisted. An additional Izvestia source in the government added that the UK, Canada, Ukraine and Australia may also be included.” The same publication indicated the list has yet to finalized, however.

  Earlier this month a number of these countries already expelled Russian diplomats and officials, especially the US, also amid a continued tit-for-tat exchange of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and eastern European countries. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:40

• White House Weighs Whether To Back "Open Vaccine" Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma
  White House Weighs Whether To Back “Open Vaccine” Push Opposed By Bill Gates, Big Pharma

  As the latest wave of India’s COVID-19 outbreak metastasizes into a full-blown crisis, India and other developing economies are seizing the opportunity to push back against the Bill Gates-backed status quo that prioritizes the intellectual property rights of big pharma over access to plentiful and cheap vaccines in the developing world.

  Gates has continued to insist that the current approach is the best option for the developing world. But increasingly, it seems the governments of India, South Africa, Nigeria and other emerging powers disagree. And as a showdown looms at the WTO, Washington is being pressed to confront the obvious hypocrisy in backing Gates over the “open vaccine” movement.

  As more lawmakers speak out on the issue, support has grown along Biden’s left flank to push the president and his top trade rep to back a proposal at the WTO to issue a waiver on IP restrictions that would effectively allow countries to manufacture jabs independently, instead of being forced to purchase them from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and their competitors on the open market.

  Of course, Biden can’t move on this issue without the implicit support of big pharma, and in an attempt to try and curry support, Biden’s trade representative Katharine Tai, who has seemingly made the “open vaccine” issue a pet project, met with top executives from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others to discuss the possibility of supporting an IP waiver.

  The talks come as members of the WTO are due to discuss a proposal by India and South Africa to waive certain provisions of the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights during an upcoming meeting on April 30. So far, the US has blocked the resolution. But a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, civil society groups, and 60 former heads of state and 100 Nobel Prize winners have urged Biden to reconsider and instead back the waiver. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said she had no updates on the issue.

  

  Katharine Tai

  Beyond talk about “increasing vaccine production”, it’s not exactly clear what Tai and her fellow executives discussed (though the waiver was reportedly part of the talks), Reuters reminds us that, earlier this month, Tai told a WTO meeting the gaping divide between developed and developing countries’ access to medicines was “completely unacceptable” and that the industry needed to make sacrifices in times of crisis.

  On Tuesday, Seattle’s City Council passed a resolution put forward by the mayor’s office urging Biden to lift the patent restrictions.

  The resolution from my office, urging Biden to lift COVID-19 patent restrictions, passed 7-1 in Seattle City Council.

  Our movement rejects the status quo of billionaire-profit-driven vaccine apartheid & vaccine nationalism. We demand vaccine internationalism, a People’s Vaccine!

  — Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) April 26, 2021

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  Others on social media pointed to the administration’s obvious hypocrisy on the issue. Biden reportedly spoke with PM Narendra Modi directly this week and offered US assistance in helping battle the country’s COVID-19 crisis, however, as one social media user pointed out, the US keeps blocking India’s request for waiving Intellectual Property Rights related to COVID-19 drugs and vaccine raw materials, in the WTO.

  Biden has announced sending help to India, to fight COVID-19.
  However, US keeps blocking India’s request for waiving Intellectual Property Rights related to COVID-19 drugs and vaccine raw materials, in the WTO. Please explain why.

  — Kingshuk Mazumder (@KingshukMazum15) April 27, 2021

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  Behind the scences and with the blessing of Gates, the world’s de facto COVID-19 vaccine czar, the industry has escalated its lobbying efforts in Washington, warning that giving up the rights to such valuable US intellectual property would inevitably aid America’s foes, especially China and Russia.

  The question now is: how many lives is that worth, with emerging economies expected to wait years to receive access to abundant vaccines, while unused jabs pile up in the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:20

• Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949
  Deflation Threat Looms As China Suffers First Population Decline Since 1949

  China is battling not one but three vicious demons. The interconnected issues of insurmountable debts, deflation, and demographics threaten to sap the world’s future growth potential. 

  Fending off the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics requires the People’s Bank of China to slash borrowing costs and unleash an enormous amount of credit into the local economy to cover up the faltering demand that usually persists with demographic challenges.

  The question we should be asking is China really on the “rise,” as President Xi Jinping believes: “the East is rising and the West is declining” or if the coming demographic crisis derails Xi’s global takeover plans.

  Beijing desperately attempts to recover from its decades of disastrous ‘one-child policy,’ which officially ended in 2015 and was replaced by the current two-child policy.

  According to FT’s sources, the latest Chinese census data, which was completed in December and has yet to be publicly released (the issue is reportedly so sensitive that it won’t be released until many government agencies reach a consensus on the data and its consequences), is expected to show the country’s first population decline since records began in 1949.

  China’s total population is expected to print less than 1.4 billion, according to people familiar with the census report, and if it is reported, the peak in China’s population came five years earlier than the United Nations predicted.

  But, as Bloomberg notes, the trend is hardly surprising. China’s birth rate has been in decline for years and the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to make a dent. The number of newborns in 2019 fell to 14.65 million, a decrease of 580,000 from the year before. To cope with the shrinking population, a PBOC study last month urged a drastic overhaul of the policy to encourage “three or more” children per household. It called for a total lifting of any restrictions to “fully liberalize and encourage childbirth” to reverse the current four-year straight decline in births nationwide. 

  A key section of the 22-page document spells out:

  “In order to achieve the long-term goals in 2035, China should fully liberalize and encourage childbirth, and sweep off difficulties (women face) during pregnancy, childbirth, and kindergarten and school enrollment by all means (possible),” the four central bank researchers wrote in the English language abstract. 

  But Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics, said the low birth rate has deep-rooted demographic and social causes that are difficult to reverse. After all, the decline in the fertility rate started before the one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s, and followed a similar pattern in other Asian countries.

  

  In any event, as the official China Daily stated in December, population “trends are irreversible.”

  The PBoC has a big dilemma on its hands. China today is drawing parallels between Japan in the late 1980s – just before its “lost decade,” where the country experienced a decade of secular stagnation. 

  Firstly, demographics – if economic growth is a function of the number of workers and consumers in the economy and technological productivity, then a declining population in China would drag on the global economy. 

  China’s next path could be down the dark road of deflation, similar to Japan, where the typical response to deteriorating demographics is a continued build-up in private debt, leading to soaring public debt.

  The main lesson from Japan is that high debt levels result in structurally weak growth and anemic inflation. This would suggest the latest spurt of inflation rippling through the world is not sustainable. Future growth rates in China are expected to be much lower than what was seen pre-COVID. 

  Souring demographics would mean China’s total social financing and M2 would need to increase to fill in the cracks of faltering demand as the population declines. According to Bloomberg’s Ye Xie, a slowdown in credit growth could “start to shrink by July or August just as the Fed may lay the groundwork for its own tapering.” This would signal deflation is ahead. 

  

  Besides the 3 D’s: debts, deflation, and demographics, a population decline will also dent China’s global image. 

  Huang Wenzheng, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think-tank, said, “census results will have a huge impact on how the Chinese people see their country and how various government departments work.” 

  Wenzheng continued: “They need to be handled very carefully.”

  The Chinese take great pride in being part of the world’s most populous state, but the narrative could begin to shift when the data is released. 

  Wenzheng said the possibility of the first population decline in seven decades could push forward China’s looming demographic crisis: 

  “The pace and scale of China’s demographic crisis are faster and bigger than we imagined,” he said.

  “That could have a disastrous impact on the country.”

  A shrinking population could have profound economic implications.

  First, by Williams’s calculation, the demographic headwind means China may never be able to catch up with the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.

  

  Secondly, an older population would put extra strain on the underfunded pension system.

  

  A separate PBOC report last month estimated that a shrinking labor force is likely to lower China’s potential GDP growth to 5.1% by 2025, from an expected 5.7% this year. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that China’s 10-year bond yields peaked in 2013, the same year that the country’s working-age population started to fall.

  Here’s a look at potential GDP growth and the three-year average of 10-year yields.

  

  A ‘deflationary’ mindset and Japanification are the words that come to mind.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 23:00

• 'Mom And Pop' Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections
  ‘Mom And Pop’ Landlords Dying On The Vine As Un-Evictable Tenants Enjoy Pandemic Protections

  As millions of renters across America continue to benefit from sweeping protections against eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic, their landlords haven’t been so fortunate.

  

  According to Bloomberg, nearly $47 billion in rent relief from the Biden Administration has been slow to materialize, forcing “mom-and-pop” landlords into financial hardship – or forced to sell to wealthy investors. Bloomberg, perhaps to invoke sympathy for the landlord class, focused on the impact felt by minority landlords.

  

  Like their tenants, these landlords are more likely to be nonwhite or to be immigrants using real estate for their economic foothold. Now, mortgage, maintenance and tax bills are piling up, putting landlords in danger of losing their buildings or being forced to sell to wealthier investors hunting for distressed deals.

  …

  The tens of billions of dollars that Congress allocated for rent relief — starting in December and then with a second allotment in March — was supposed to help by covering back rent and unpaid utility bills. But the rollout has been moving at the speed of bureaucracy, which varies from state to state. –Bloomberg

  In one example, airport janitor Joaquin Villanueva has had to take out a home-equity loan to make ends meet while maintaining a three-unit rental house in East Boston. One of his tenants is eight months behind on rent, while another – an unemployed restaurant dish washer, owes him $5,000.

  

  “I don’t want to lose my house so I’m doing whatever I have to do,” said Villanueva – an El Salvadorian immigrant who works at Logan International Airport, adding “I’m not rich like a Donald Trump.”

  Another distressed landlord, Jamaican-America Lincoln Eccles, owns a 14-unit building in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Eccles says investors have been flooding him with unsolicited phone calls, texts and emails. He says that selling would bring much-needed relief, as he’s now a year behind on taxes and gas bills. Eccles says he’d rather keep the building acquired by his immigrant father in order to pass it down to his first son, born this month.

  Unfortunately for Eccles, “One tenant owes more than $40,000 in back rent, five units are empty and Eccles can’t afford to replace or even fix a boiler that broke down again in March. The rent relief program will help only so much. He’s unlikely to get government grants to cover losses from a tenant who left in November owing $96,000.”

  According to RealtyTrac Executive VP Rick Sharga, “The fact that we’re over a year into the pandemic really puts a lot of these landlords at risk.”

  That said, not much is known about how many landlords themselves are in desperate situations, Bloomberg notes, however “it doesn’t take much to fall behind if income stops coming from one tenant in a small building. With each passing month, the problems get bigger and harder to solve.”

  So what now?

  It’s going to be an ordeal either way. In order to remedy shortfalls in rent, both renters and landlords will need to cooperate for the landlord’s benefit – with local governments often requiring long, detailed applications signed by both parties in order to prevent fraud.

  Meanwhile, many landlords don’t qualify for federal COVID-19 mortgage forbearance because less than a third have mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or another federal agency, while local governments can’t afford to let landlords pause property tax payments – particularly in cities which have suffered economic devastation due to the pandemic.

  “The long-term concern here, over the course of a few years, is that a growing share of mom and pop landlords will be forced to sell and rents will go up,” said Rutgers assistant professor of sociology who researches housing inequality. “There’s a lot of private equity interest and a real possibility of growing consolidation.”

  From the government side, the situation is a quagmire.

  Even as the pace of payments pick up, other challenges are looming. The way Congress allocated the money gave an outsize share to smaller states with low renter populations.

  New York’s $2.4 billion portion of the funds, for instance, is expected to cover less than 80% of back rent, utilities and late fees owed in the state as of March, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics. In Illinois, it’s just 45%. Vermont, however, gets a roughly $350 million allocation, enough to pay for the state’s need more than nine times over.

  While Congress provided the Treasury Department with authority to fix any mismatch in funding, the reallocation can’t happen for several more months. -Bloomberg

  “Standing up a brand new program like this that’s very high-touch and has to get out ASAP is really tough,” said Stockton Williams, executive director of the National Council of State Housing Agencies, who added that while some states – including Alaska, Kentucky and Virginia have been quick to distribute relief, California and Texas – states with large allocations – have been slow to respond but are picking up speed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:40

• "F**k The Police" Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run
  “F**k The Police” Proclaims 32-Year-OId Livestreamer Before Killing Cop In 2AM Drunken Hit-And-Run

  A New York woman was arrested early Tuesday morning after striking and killing a veteran police officer in a New York City hit-and-run, according to the Daily Mail.

  In a nearly two-hour Facebook Live stream following the trial of ex-cop Derek Chauvin, 32-year-old Jessica Beauvais could be seen taking shots of vodka and saying “fuck the police” just hours before plowing into 43-year-old NYPD Highway Officer Anastasios Tsakos, 43, on the Long Island Expressway around 2am Tuesday morning while driving her Volkswagen on a suspended license.

  

  Taskos was redirecting traffic from a fatal car Queens accident at the time when Beauvais allegedly aimed for Taskos and struck him head on – killing the married father of a three-year-old son and six-year-old daughter. The 14-year veteran of the NYPD was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

  “We stand here this morning reminded once again, in law enforcement, there is no such thing as a routine job,” said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, adding “We stand here devastated and trying to pick up the pieces of what is a shattered home and a shattered NYPD family.”

  

  Following the accident, Beauvais reportedly sped off with a ‘completely shattered’ windshield before she was arrested by police.

  

  Beauvais, who says she has a 13-year-old son in the video, offered a tearful apology for Tsakos’ death as she was led out of the NYPD’s 107th Precinct in handcuffs on Tuesday afternoon. ‘I’m sorry that I hit him and that he’s dead,’ she sobbed. 

  She is set to be arraigned on two counts of vehicular manslaughter, and reckless endangerment, leaving an accident resulting in death, fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle, and other charges, including driving while intoxicated. –Daily Mail

  “This week we are going to talk about the ignorance that was the Derek Chauvin trial – or the ignorance that is essentially just is this f**ing justice system,” Beauvais said at the beginning of her 1 hour 51 minute Facebook Live video as part of her Face the Reality radio show. “Police say an oath and in that oath they say an oath that they are not supposed to be afraid of that position and that is literally in the rules.”

  

  

  She then proceeded to say that police officers are “signing up for potential death like in the army,” and that it’s “part of the job” that people “might try to fucking kill you.”

  After which she killed a police officer, allegedly of course.

  “‘Like (hip hop group) NWA say about the police – if you’re going to kill me, at least I get to take someone with me,” she told her audience, adding “I’m one of those people. If I’m going to go, someone is coming.”

  Read the rest of the report here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:20

• "Steady As She Goes": Why Powell Won't Rock The Boat Tomorrow
  “Steady As She Goes”: Why Powell Won’t Rock The Boat Tomorrow

  Be Steve Englander, head global G10 FX at Standard Chartered

  The Fed put a lot of effort after the March FOMC meeting into convincing bond investors that it was not thinking of changing its view of low inflation and low policy rates through 2023. There is increased optimism but not additional economic data since, so we think the Fed will try and keep the message as unchanged as possible. The lack of bond yield reaction to sharp data surprises has led investors to be cautious on the immediate upside to bond yields. Real yields are almost 20bps lower than at the March FOMC (Figure 1). There is no real appetite to fight the Fed now and the Fed has little incentive to rock this boat just yet.

  

  This makes it hard for the FOMC to convey a dovish message beyond what the market has absorbed already. The risk is that normally innocuous statements like ‘the next few months may give us more information on the strength of the recovery’ could be seen as signalling an early consideration of tapering or as defining substantial progress. While some market participants think the FOMC may intentionally convey a slightly more hawkish stance, we think the risk is that an inadvertent comment scares the market. There seems little upside in trying to nuance bond prices and reigniting premature tightening fears.

  Yields may not immediately spike higher, but bond prices could be increasingly vulnerable if near-term data continue to surprise to the upside. We think the 10Y UST will most likely trade in a 1.50-1.75% range near-term but see the risks as skewed towards travelling towards the top of that range if the Fed and data-flow play out as we expect. (see Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number).

  The one dovish signal that Powell could convey is that the Fed would measure its success by how few people were left without work once job creation began to level off, not how many jobs were created in the early stage of reopening. This would mean that the Fed would be looking at late Q3 and early Q4 data to decide whether sufficient progress has occurred.

  We doubt Powell is ready to provide a full definition of ‘sufficient progress’ that would encourage a Taylor rule type of market reaction. On the whole we think he will convey that the FOMC is not yet thinking about shifting its dovish stance – if March was too early, then April with a few added data points is unlikely to shift the dovish stance. This is an instance where the Fed wants to dampen investors’ forward-looking instincts.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 22:00

• European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum
  European Investment Bank Issues €100 Million In Digital Bonds Using Ethereum

  The European Investment Bank will use blockchain technology to issue two-year digital bonds, the latest sign of growing mainstream adoption for crypto only this time Ethereum is taking the spotlight courtesy of the EIB.

  In an article published earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg detailed the European Investment Bank’s plans to use Ethereum to register €100 million (~$120M) worth of digital notes. Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, and Société Générale will manage the sale. According to a Bloomberg the source the notes may be priced as soon as today.

  European Investment Bank is issuing 2 year digital bonds on Ethereum through Goldman, Santander, and Societe.

  Wow. @GoldmanSachs #Ethereum @RaoulGMI pic.twitter.com/kaQIrZ9C9V

  — Michael Tant (@MichaelTant3) April 27, 2021

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

  As CryptoBriefing notes, the European Investment Bank using Ethereum to register digital bonds would help reinforce Ethereum’s value proposition as a “global settlement layer.” The project’s biggest evangelists have long discussed Ethereum’s potential to act as the base layer for transactions of various forms. Ethereum processes its transactions using smart contracts; it’s the biggest and most used smart contract platform today, recording about 1.5 million transactions daily. 

  In recent years, the network’s activity has been characterized by the DeFi and NFT booms, but Ethereum still has to earn wider recognition among institutions like banks. If the European Investment Bank and other financial giants are to start issuing payments on Ethereum, mass adoption may be on the horizon. 

  Though Ethereum is not as widely known as its predecessor, Bitcoin, it has had its fair share of mainstream attention recently. CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, launched ETH futures in February. Like BTC, ETH is now supported by PayPal. This year’s NFT explosion has also inspired digital creators and major pop artists like Eminem and Kings of Leon to start using the network. 

  ETH jumped this afternoon, possibly in response to the Bloomberg report. It traded as high as  trading at $2,651 at publication, a new record high, before retracing to $2,625. It has gained over 20% in the past three days, and is up 267% YTD, vastly outperforming bitcoin.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:40

• Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt's Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police
  Lawyer For Ashli Babbitt’s Family Says Lawsuit Will Be Filed Soon Against US Capitol Police

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A lawyer for Ashli Babbitt’s family said that they will file a lawsuit against the U.S. Capitol Police after a Capitol Police officer shot and killed her during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

  

  No charges were filed against the officer who shot Babbitt. The officer has not been identified publicly. Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was unarmed when she tried to climb through one of the Capitol doors before the officer shot her.

  “The family and I were disappointed in the Department of Justice’s decision on this, but my role is really to bring a civil action and in that way, vindicate her rights,” Terry Roberts told Newsmax on Monday.

  The Babbitt family, he said, disagrees with the Department of Justice’s move to not pursue criminal charges against the officer, adding “clearly, the officer required willfullness … he could clearly see that she was not armed” and didn’t present an immediate threat. The officer also didn’t give ample warning before the shooting, Roberts said.

  “This is a situation in which the officer could have easily arrested her if he had grounds to arrest her without using deadly force,” he said.

  “This was an egregious act of excessive force.”

  Because Babbitt was a supporter of former President Donald Trump, Roberts suggested that the officer involved in the shooting got off lightly.

  The family has not yet filed the lawsuit but will do so soon, he added in the interview.

  Roberts previously told The Epoch Times in March that the lawsuit could entail an excessive use of force complaint.

  “That will be filed against the officer, the Capitol Police,” he said at the time.

  An investigator said that his firm has successfully identified multiple witnesses and spoken to them and a team has spent weeks collecting open-source videos and photographs as part of the effort to reconstruct what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting.

  Roberts then added:

  “Witnesses confirm that the officer did not give Ashli a single verbal warning prior to firing. In fact, Ashli was not even aware that the officer was present, as he was located in the doorway of a room off to the side of her field of vision.”

  But Mark Schamel, an attorney for the officer, told The Epoch Times via email that the officer warned people inside not to enter the Speaker’s Lobby.

  “He fired only one shot at the only person who breached the locked doors and makeshift barricade that had been erected. He did so after clearly identifying himself and ordering the mob not to come through the barricade,” Schamel said.

  “He used tremendous restraint in only firing one shot, and his actions stopped the mob from breaking through and turning a horrific day in American history into something so much worse.”

  The Epoch Times has contacted the Metropolitan Police Department for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:20

• Meet The Billionaire Who "Finally Understood Bitcoin" After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms
  Meet The Billionaire Who “Finally Understood Bitcoin” After Tripping On Magic Mushrooms

  Christian Angermayer built his portfolio the old fashioned way: by taking psychedelics and buying bitcoin.

  That’s the actual story of the 42 year old German billionaire that was highlighted by Bloomberg on Thursday. He literally “rode the wave” of every big fad over the last 12 months – including bitcoin and SPACs – and made a fortune in the process.

  His family office is called Apeiron Investment Group and has been the lead investor in 7 companies that have gone public in the last year, raising more than $1 billion combined. He has 10 more companies slated to IPO this year. 

  Angermayer took his first trip on psychedelics in 2015 before investing in companies that are in the space. A conversation with a neuroscientist at a dinner party is what turned him on to the idea of magic mushrooms, despite the fact that he doesn’t drink alcohol. “It was the single most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, nothing really comes close,” he said of his first trip, which took place in the Caribbean. 

  

  After the trip, he claimed he “finally understood bitcoin”. From there, it became a feedback loop of investing in the things he was passionate about while riding the crypto wave that has swollen over the last half decade. 

  On his investing style, he said: “I just invest in what I’m very curious and passionate about,” he told Bloomberg. The report calls him the “German version of Chamath Palihapitiya”. 

  But he doesn’t have as big of a presence on social media as Chamath. This hasn’t stopped him from cultivating serious relationships with influential investors like SoftBank and Peter Thiel. 

  Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz said of Angermayer: “He’s probably the best networker I’ve ever met. He’s built this amazing network of people who like and have learned to trust him because he’s made them money. As a capital raiser, he’s awesome.”

  Angermayer’s office, based in Malta, “helped China’s HNA Group purchase 9.9% of Deutsche Bank AG stock in 2017′ and received a finder’s fee of $15.6 million for introducing executives at SoftBank and the now-defunct Wirecard.

  Apeiron has $2.5 billion in assets, half of which are Angermayer’s. The fund “has averaged an annual internal return of more than 50% over the past decade”, according to Bloomberg. The portfolio is full of companies like AbCellera Biologics, which has developed an antibody drug for Covid and Compass Pathways, a psilocybin-focused depression treatment company that we highlighted shortly after it went public. 

  

  He has also produced or executive produced 21 different movies, the report notes. Thiel said of him that his curiosity “allows him to recognize trends very early or invent and create an entire sector himself.”

  Benedikt Franke, CEO of the Munich Security Conference said of him: “He is an investor who has fully understood the importance of geopolitics for long-term strategy.”

  Angermayer added: “I understand politicians better than investors. One reason I’m very happy is I’m very honest with myself. I want everybody to like me.”

  When asked what type of hedging he uses, Angermayer responded: “None”. 

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 21:00

• Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number
  Early Indications Point To 1.5 Million Jobs Number

  Early indications point to very strong job numbers for April (due May 7), possibly as much as 1.5 million jobs or more, according to Standard Chartered FX strategist Steve Englander. He bases this estimate on an analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit payments in recent weeks. Average weekly benefits have been very stable since late February, but the amount of spending has dropped sharply since mid-March (Figure 1). By implication, the numbers receiving benefits are probably also dropping.

  

  Englander then translates the drop in benefits to an implied fall in unemployment, and seasonally adjusts the unemployment drop based on past patterns. As a result, he finds that unemployment may have decreased between 1.4 million and 2.0 million from March to April. The wide range emerges because March to April seasonality is very strong and the adjustment factor is very uncertain. However, as he adds, a number in the middle or upper end of the range is more likely than in the bottom half, based on this analysis.

  This is how Englander arrived at his estimate

  1. First, assume that just about everyone who lost employment is collecting unemployment benefits because of the broadening of benefits eligibility. In the past, UI benefits have covered about half of workers who lose their jobs; now they cover most of the work force potentially affected by COVID-19, including gig workers and the self-employed.
  2. Similarly, benefits keep getting extended and now will last to September 2021. The major reason to leave unemployment is to go back to work.
  3. Early in the pandemic, benefits paid and the number of benefit recipients moved erratically because of delays and slow systems. This has stabilized in recent months – the $1.9tn stimulus bill in March extended, but did not change, benefits from the $900bn December bill, so there were no discontinuities once the December provisions were implemented.
  4. Since early March, the average weekly payment for unemployed workers has been steady at about $560.
  5. The number of people receiving benefits dropped by 8.6% on a two-week moving average (2wma) basis in the three weeks after the March survey period. The amount of UI benefit payments on the same basis dropped 10.4%. The amount of UI benefits paid out in the April survey week on a 2wma was 15.6% lower than the amount of UI benefits paid out in the March survey week.
  6. If the percentage drop in benefits matched the percentage drop in unemployment, the numbers receiving UI benefits would have dropped 2.9 million.
  7. April employment seasonal effects are severe and cyclical. When unemployment is low and frictional, as in 2018 and 2019, the April seasonal decline in benefit recipients can be 16-18% of the total. This is because with so few unemployed for cyclical reasons, the ebb and flow of seasonal weather represents a big fraction of employment moves.
  8. When unemployment is high, as in 2010 and 2011, the decline in benefit recipients can be as low as 6-8%. Good weather doesn’t bring you back to work in a bad economy. This April, a reasonable range for the seasonal decline is no more than 8%, and could be as low as 5%, given how much stronger cyclical factors are relative to weather in the current downturn than was the case in 2010 and 2011.
  9. A 5% seasonal unemployment drop would leave unemployment 2.0mn lower on a seasonally adjusted basis; an 8% drop would leave unemployment 1.4mn lower. The bigger unemployment drop looks more reasonable to us because there is not that much seasonality in services and retail, which were heaviest hit.

  Risks and data biases

  In some ways these data are better than the BLS surveys that generate household and payroll employment estimates. The Treasury publishes its disbursements on UI benefits on a daily basis with only a day’s lag; these data are not a sample but the totality of what is getting paid. Similarly, the insured UI data basically represent the universe of people receiving benefits and the COVID-19 relief measures encompass a very high percentage of those who have lost jobs, so sampling issues are modest.

  If the objective is to predict non-farm or household employment, the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys from the Treasury spending and Department of Labor benefits data is a disadvantage because the samples may diverge, even if sampling is less of an issue.

  Estimating the seasonal factor is the other big risk. In stable periods, seasonal adjustment is largely formulaic; in volatile periods, there is considerable discretion on what is viewed as seasonal. The seasonality in a period of cyclical upheaval is likely to be modest, but there is a wide confidence interval around our estimates.

  Some workers can collect benefits for partial work weeks. They would be counted as UI beneficiaries, but the BLS labor survey definition classifies them as working, so the decline in benefits may be higher than the decline in BLS-measured unemployment. On the other side, newcomers to the labor market may not be receiving benefits, so if they found jobs they would count as newly employed without having previously been counted as receiving benefits.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:40

• Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop
  Nothing Can Get Us Out Of This High Debt, High Intervention, Low Default, Low Productivity Loop

  On Tuesday morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid published his 23rd annual default study, a document he first put out in the 1990s which as he says, “makes me feel very old” and adds that the story of this report over the past decade or so has been the increasing divergence between economic growth and defaults. And while defaults have trended down alongside growth, the last 12 months have been a supersized version of this as defaults have peaked at a lower level than during the previous three big default cycles even as growth across many countries was at the lowest levels for several decades or centuries.

  

  According to Reid, the reason for this is simple: it is because debt has become so large over this period, and of such extreme systemic importance, that when each cycle turns there is an ever larger policy move to ensure that many of the most heavily indebted entities don’t default and risk a severe contagion event for the global economy.

  In short, in some bizarro form of undead corporate fascism, quasi-insolvent companies how hold the entire world ransom with their own survival, or as Reid puts it “we have so much debt that anything that questions the authorities’ commitment to supporting it risks financial crises.”

  It’s interesting though that since defaults structurally stepped down from around 2004, average spreads have stayed almost identical. So, over a cycle, spreads have not adjusted lower.

  While this is good news for bondholders it’s not great for the economy as creative destruction has been quashed over several cycles and we argue that this has in turn helped reduce productivity.

  Reid’s despondent and fatalistic conclusion: “at this stage it’s hard to see what gets us out of this perpetual high debt, high intervention, low default, low productivity loop.”

  Here’s the answer: nothing. Which is why the only possible outcome is taking the current insanity to its absurd, hyperinflationary extreme.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:20

• Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program
  Trump-Tied Group Sues Biden Admin Over Racial Discrimination In Farm Subsidy Program

  Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

  A newly-formed legal group tied to former President Donald Trump on April 26 sued the Biden administration, seeking to block the implementation of a farm subsidy program that overtly excludes white farmers.

  America First Legal, headed by former senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, against Tom Vilsack, Biden’s secretary of agriculture.

  

  Tom Vilsack speaks after being nominated to be Agriculture Secretary by President-elect Joe Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 11, 2020. (JIM WATSON/AFP)

  The lawsuit argues that the program, enacted as part of Biden’s pandemic stimulus package, discriminates against white farmers by limiting financial aid to “socially disadvantaged” farmers or ranchers based on their race.

  “The Department of Agriculture lurches America dangerously backward, reversing the clock on American progress, and violating our most sacred and revered principles by actively and invidiously discriminating against American citizens solely based upon their race. This is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is wrong, and it must stop,” the lawsuit (pdf) states.

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website currently defines a “socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher” as belonging to “groups [that] include, but are not limited to African Americans, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asians, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, refugees, immigrants.”

  The America First Legal lawsuit cites a different definition of “socially disadvantaged” that appears on a fact sheet (pdf) by the USDA. That fact sheet limits the definition of “socially disadvantaged” to six races and leaves out whites.

  The relevant section of the pandemic stimulus bill points neither to the fact sheet nor to the USDA website. The act says that the definition of the term is in the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990. That act says that “the term ‘socially disadvantaged farmer or ranchers’ means a farmer or rancher who is a member of a socially disadvantaged group.” The act further defines a “socially disadvantaged group” as “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities.”

  

  Stephen Miller, senior advisor to the president, attends a joint press conference with President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Sept. 20, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  The legal action is the first brought by America First Legal, a pro-Trump legal outfit modeled on the legal warfare model that the Democrats deployed to thwart Trump’s agenda. The organization says that its mission is to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”

  The White House and the Department of Agriculture did not immediately return requests for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 20:00

• Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women's Rights Committee
  Outrage After Iran Elected To UN Women’s Rights Committee

  Over the past years various United Nations human rights related bodies have been subject to embarrassment and scrutiny given countries like Saudi Arabia and China have served on them. With such a track record, it was apparently thought a good idea to let another notorious violator of human rights take up an important human rights role at the UN.

  Last week the UN’s Economic and Social Council elected Iran to a 4-year term on its Commission on the Status of Women. That’s right, the hardline Shia Islamic theocracy now sits on a council defining itself as the “principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

  

  International outrage among women’s rights groups and others was swift and fierce, with the executive director of UN Watch perhaps putting it best: “Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” Hillel Neuer said.

  “It’s absurd — and morally reprehensible. This is a black day for women’s rights, and for all human rights,” Neuer added. 

  It should also be noted that China and Pakistan are also on the same Commission on the Status of Women. 

  The Hill reviews the status of women’s rights inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, which it notes has  “some of the strictest laws and codes in the world” limiting women’s freedom as follows:

  Married women cannot obtain passports or leave the country without permission from their husbands. Women who are not married are similarly under the control and supervision of their fathers.

  Women cannot go out in public uncovered due to mandatory hijab laws, and those who do face jail time, according to the 2020 World Report by Human Rights Watch.

  A 2020 Amnesty International report stated that in Iran, “the authorities failed to criminalize domestic violence, marital rape, early and forced marriage and other gender-based violence against women and girls, which remained widespread.”

  Human Rights Watch (HRW) also denounced Iran’s nomination to the UN women’s committee while emphasizing Iran’s “deplorable women’s rights records.”

  Look at her face. This week the U.N. Elected those who threw acid on her face for wearing “inappropriate hijab” to its top Women’s Rights Commission.
  Women of my country Iran are disappointed at the UN .
  Don’t legitimize a misogynist regime.@antonioguterres
  .@Nazhatskhan pic.twitter.com/bNAFsU87Ct

  — Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 24, 2021

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

  The group also called on the UN to overhaul its opaque nomination and elections process, given well-known states that are abusers of human rights keep getting elected to key committees. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:40

• Say It Loud: "I Am Not A Racist!"
  Say It Loud: “I Am Not A Racist!”

  Authored by Stuart Reges, University of Washington via CampusReform.org,

  When young people today watch images of police turning a firehose on black demonstrators they can only imagine what America was like in those days, but I don’t have to imagine it.  I lived in that America and watching its sins displayed night after night on the evening news deeply affected me.  That is why I have done a great deal of soul searching ever since I have been accused of being a racist.

  

  It started when the UW College Republicans organized an affirmative action bake sale where they sold cookies at different prices depending upon the customer’s race.  It was a political stunt meant to make people angry and they succeeded.  Hundreds of protestors gathered around their booth along with a dozen police officers.  I stopped by and tried to have a conversation with a young protestor but it degenerated into a situation where she loudly denounced me to a mob of several dozen students that surrounded me.

  At one point I said that I didn’t see rampant racism on campus and the crowd burst into laughter.  A local paper called The Stranger wrote about the incident and a local TV station included it on the evening news.  I was surprised to find that this single incident branded me as a racist to many students and colleagues.  After one of our students complained, the director of my school reprimanded me for a “lack of sensitivity to minority students.”  A student experience survey conducted at the time generated several angry comments about me including one that said that I am “a garbage person and should not be teaching in this institution” and that I am, “the symbol of hate, ignorance, racism, and white supremacy. I would not be surprised if they were in the KKK.”

  Last summer when I posted a message to a faculty mailing I was accused of being a racist for defending police officers during our summer of riots.  

  One faculty member wrote that, “What Stuart has shared is racist, trolling behavior from a faculty member with a long history of documented racial biases.”

  In my lifetime I have seen this country make incredible progress on the race issue, so I was confused to find myself accused of being a racist.  

  Shelby Steele provided an answer.  

  

  In his book Shame he writes that in our divided society liberals pursue “poetic truth” that “disregards the actual truth in order to assert a larger essential truth that supports one’s ideological position” and that poetic truths “work by moral intimidation rather than by reason, so that even to question them is heresy.”

  He goes on to write that:

  “if you want to be politically correct, if you want to be seen as someone who is cleansed of America’s past ugliness, you will go along with the poetic truth that racism is still a great barrier for blacks.  Conversely, embracing the literal truth—that racism is no longer a serious barrier—will make you politically incorrect and will stigmatize you with that ugliness.”

  I know in my heart that I do not harbor ill will towards anyone based on race and it seems clear that most Americans believe the same thing.  Overt racism has all but disappeared from modern life, especially on college campuses, but progressives have concocted various explanations for hidden forms of racism.

  One accusation is that we have bias that we aren’t even aware of.  In reviewing the many decisions I have made in my 35-year university career for admissions, hiring, and grading, I can’t find even one incident of negative racial bias.  The only examples of bias were in the opposite direction with minority candidates treated more favorably.  The euphemism is that they are “diversity” candidates as in, “We can hire three faculty this year, but the dean said that we can hire up to two more if they are diversity hires.”

  Another accusation has been the claim of systemic racism, the idea that white men built our society so that it favors them.  This idea should not be dismissed out of hand.  I still remember when I first visited a store for left-handed people.  I was amazed to find how much our society has been designed to work well for right-handed people.  I didn’t realize that can openers and desks and notebooks had all been designed for right-handed people like me.

  To take this idea seriously, though, the proponents would have to produce examples of how the system has been tilted in favor of white people.  Where is the equivalent of the left-handed can opener?  Many people have taken a stab at this although there are few convincing examples and many cases where people who make this argument have had to retract their claims.  For example, The Smithsonian quickly apologized for producing a poster that indicated that white culture includes rugged individualism, the nuclear family, and the scientific method.

  The only solid evidence for systemic racism is the fact that there are differences in outcomes across races with whites and Asians generally performing better.  But this argument falls apart when you consider alternate explanations.  In my own courses I have found that course grades are highly correlated with lecture attendance and that mathematical background seems to be an issue for many students who struggle.  

  So to the extent that some minority students perform less well in my courses, it seems most likely that this stems from factors other than race including a weak math background and students putting in less effort than others.

  Shame is a powerful emotion, but it’s time to stand up to these ideological bullies and to speak the truth.  

  It is not racist to oppose affirmative action.  

  It is not racist to challenge the claim of rampant racism on college campuses.  

  It is not racist to support the police.

  It is not racist to challenge the claim of hidden bias and systemic racism.  

  I am not a racist and I won’t stay silent any longer.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:20

• "We Haven't Seen This Before" – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings
  “We Haven’t Seen This Before” – Wealthy Americans Panic-Chase Million Dollar Listings

  Wealthy Americans are taking advantage of cheap mortgages, increased savings, and the ability to remote work for them to search for homes listed above $1 million.

  Redfin reports luxury home sales in the first three months of the year are soaring. Sales jumped by 41.6% over the quarter versus the same period last year. It’s a sharp contrast from sales of affordable homes that increased by 7%, and sales of mid-priced dwellings that rose by 5.9%.

  

  

  Sales growth of homes in all tiers has historically been similar. Still, the latest divergence identified by Redfin outlines how the coronavirus pandemic and policy action by the Federal Reserve and political elites in Washington have exacerbated the great wealth divide that developed long before the pandemic. Affluent folks had access to cheap mortgages, while lower-income earners had limited access to cheap credit as millions of them fell into instant poverty during shutdowns. As a result of government and central bank interventions, a K-shaped economic recovery developed and also manifested in the real estate market. 

  “Affluent Americans with the flexibility to work from anywhere are taking advantage of low mortgage rates and buying up high-end houses—particularly in popular vacation destinations—which is contributing to the surge in luxury home sales. Meanwhile, many lower-income Americans have lost their jobs and lack the means to become homeowners,” said Redfin. 

  Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said Americans are demanding larger homes driven by a desire for more space that could be used as offices, gyms, and outdoor entertainment during the pandemic. He added: “The larger space automatically means that it is more expensive.”

  

  Redfin said sales of luxury homes during the quarter saw the biggest gains in Miami, where luxury-home sales erupted by 101.1% from a year earlier—followed by San Jose, CA (92.3%), Oakland, CA (82%), Sacramento, CA (79.3%), and Las Vegas (72.7%). These areas were some of the top migration destinations during the pandemic.

  “Luxury properties, even those in the $3 million range, are getting multiple offers and going for well over the asking prices,” said Oakland, CA Redfin real estate agent Katy Polvorosa. “That’s something we haven’t seen before, even though the Bay Area has many affluent residents. Everyone just wants more space and big backyards, whether it’s because they’re stuck at home during the pandemic or because they have a growing family.”

  Jefferies recently told clients the US is short 2.5 million homes. The National Association of Realtors said the existing housing inventory could run out in two months. However, the shortage is less severe in the luxury market. 

  The typical luxury home sat on the market for 61 days in the first three months of the year, 38 fewer days than the same period in 2020. 

  

  … and what has this meant for luxury home prices over the year? Well, an explosion, of course. Increases were also seen across all tiers. 

  

  So how long will the housing frenzy last? 

  Well, the latest housing data dimmed the outlook. Existing home sales data was worse than expected and have declined for the second month as prices soar at a record pace. 

  

  This should not have been a huge surprise, as Christophe Barraud warned earlier. Housing affordability has been under pressure since January. On the one hand, mortgage rates started rebounding, with the 30-year recently hitting the highest level since June 2020 in late March.

  

  Like any frenzy, there’s a beginning (start of the pandemic) and an end (when rates rise). The question: When does the music stop playing? 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 19:00

• Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering
  Beijing Looks To Scapegoat Regulators Who Initially Backed Ill-Fated Ant Offering

  When Beijing’s top anti-trust regulator announced a new investigation into Chinese delivery giant Meituan the other day, Alibaba investors may have been tempted to wonder whether the CCP had finally moved on fro Alibaba, Ant Financial and Jack Ma.

  

  Any investors who dared to dream likely saw their hopes crushed Tuesday when WSJ published a report revealing the existence of an investigation into how Alibaba and Ant Group managed to cultivate support for its scuppered IPO. In other words, Beijing is looking for scapegoats within the state apparatus who can be blamed for allowing Alibaba, Ant and China’s other tech giants to become so dominant in the first place. The standards and procedures set by both the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other stock regulators in Shanghai are now facing scrutiny as investigators try to figure out exactly how Ma was able to shepard Ant’s IPO application through the system so quickly.

  “What happened is deeply embarrassing for regulators because they should have more effectively coordinated before approving the IPO,” says Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who specializes in China’s financial-technology sector.

  “By not doing so,” he added, “they were stuck in a lose-lose situation of either the last-minute pause or, worse, forcing massive losses on IPO investors by changing the regulatory stance post-IPO.”

  According to WSJ, the investigation will focus on “regulators who greenlighted the initial public offering, local officials who advocated it and big state firms that stood to gain from it.” Investigators are specifically looking into officials’ relationships with Alibaba founder Jack Ma, whose criticisms of China’s regulatory framework, made during an obscure industry event back in October, prompted the CCP to scrap the planned IPO of Ma’s Ant Group, which was supposed to be spun off from Alibaba in what would have been the world’s largest IPO. Since then, Alibaba has been handed a $2.8 billion fine.

  After a protracted absence from the public eye that aroused suspicion, Ma has continued to keep a low profile, appearing only to parrot his allegiance to the CCP when called upon to do so.

  Since halting Ant’s IPO late last year, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that China’s technology giants shouldn’t use their size, capital and troves of data to undercut their rivals. During a speech in January, he singled out the financial sector as particularly ripe for reform. Ant, which has been forced to reorganize as a financial holding company, will face far more restrictions now that it has been stripped of its “tech” classification, and will instead be treated like any other bank or financial institution in China.

  In summary, as Beijing seeks to punish any regulators deemed “too close” to Ma, the outside world will be watching to see if any further punishments are directed at the executive himself, whom investor Kyle Bass once mused would likely be “disappeared” by the CCP not long after stepping down from his job as Alibaba’s CEO – something Ma did more than a year ago. While some nameless CCP bureaucrats might join him on the chopping block, Ma’s fate is looking increasingly grim.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 18:40

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• Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To "Open Vaccine" Movement
  Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To “Open Vaccine” Movement

  Roughly one year after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seized control of the global response to COVID-19 with the goal of providing “equitable access” to a vaccine, Bill Gates & Co. have accomplished the opposite:  The Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator mechanism, backed by the Gates Foundation, has a stated policy of respecting the exclusive intellectual property rights of western drugmakers. At the same time, the WHO-backed alternative solution, known as Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP, which was supposed to foster an open-source pool of vaccine and drug technology, has mostly faltered.

  

  As India’s second-wave COVID-19 outbreak spirals out of control, more parties have come forward to criticize Gates for his support of IP protections. Considering the scarcity of the medicines, there have been increasing calls from countries like India and South Africa, international relief organizations and other public figures to waive IP protections so that poorer countries can get faster access to the vaccines. WTO Director General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has led a host of emerging-market nations in a push to waive IP protections, arguing that numerous facilities exist that could ramp up production in the coming months.

  But as pressure to reconsider this stance mounts, Gates insisted during an interview Monday with Sky News’ Sophy Ridge that stripping IP protections from vaccine recipes wouldn’t be helpful. Asked point blank about the issue, Gates responded with an emphatic “no”.

  “The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way,” Gates explained. “There are all sorts of issues around intellectual property having to do with medicines. But not in terms of how quickly we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here.”

  Watch the full interview below:

  As Gates sees it, his foundation has helped to accelerate the pace of vaccine testing and design by years. In the past, it would likely have taken decades for poor nations to get supplies from rich states that designed them. “Typically, in global health it takes a decade between when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets into the poor countries,” Gates said.

  While Gates apparently can’t see past how things were done in the past, critics quickly pointed out that countries like the US are already stockpiling more vaccines than they can use. And while Gates insists that there aren’t any factories in the developing world capable of making patented western jabs, India’s Serum Institute is an obvious example of how this simply isn’t the case. Plus, many of the countries pushing the vaccine IP waiver at the WTO have identified facilities where vaccine production can be ramped up quickly.

  Opponents of this approach from within the pharmaceutical industry are scrambling to lobby the Biden Administration to oppose the waiver push at the WTO after a recent speech by Katherine Tai, Biden’s top trade official, stipulated that Washington would “consider what modifications and reforms” can be applied to intellectual property rules. Among other risks, Big Pharma is arguing that an “open” vaccine would benefit American rivals like China and Russia.

  But the reality is that billions of denizens of the developing world stand to benefit, while drug companies and the international pharmaceutical industry stands to miss out on some profits.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:45

• UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment
  UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment

  Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

  Britain will send a Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific region next month in a massive show of force aimed at countering the security challenges posed by the Chinese regime.

  

  The Carrier Strike Group, which will be led by the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be the “largest concentration of maritime and air power” in the UK, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a press release.

  During its 28-week deployment, the Carrier Strike Group will visit more than 40 countries and conduct engagements with Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and India as part of the UK’s “tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region, said the MoD.

  Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “When our Carrier Strike Group sets sail next month, it will be flying the flag for Global Britain—projecting our influence, signalling our power, engaging with our friends, and reaffirming our commitment to addressing the security challenges of today and tomorrow.

  “The entire nation can be proud of the dedicated men and women who for more than six months will demonstrate to the world that the UK is not stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the international system of the 21st Century.”

  

  Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, leaves 10 Downing Street in London on Feb. 13, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

  According to the MoD., the Carrier Strike Group will seek to achieve the UK’s goal for “deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific region in support of shared prosperity and regional stability,” which was set out in the government’s recently published Integrated Review into foreign, defence, security, and development policy.

  The review, which was published in March, said the UK will invest in enhanced “China-facing capabilities” and improve its response to “the systemic challenge that it poses to our security, prosperity and values—and those of our allies and partners.”

  HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful surface vessel in the Royal Navy’s history, will be carrying eight F-35B Lightning II fast jets of the Royal Air Force, four Wildcat maritime attack helicopters, seven Merlin Mk2 anti-submarine helicopters, and three Merlin Mk4 commando helicopters. A company of Royal Marines Commandos will also be based on the carrier.

  

  A new F-35B Lightning fighter jet takes off from the deck of the United Kingdom’s new aircraft carrier, The HMS Queen Elizabeth on Sept. 27, 2018. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  The carrier will be joined by a surface fleet of Type 45 destroyers, HMS Defender and HMS Diamond, Type 23 anti-submarine frigates HMS Kent and HMS Richmond, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s RFA Fort Victoria and RFA Tidespring.

  A Royal Navy Astute-class submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles will be deployed in support of the surface fleet.

  A U.S. destroyer, USS The Sullivans, will sail as part of the Group and providing it with air defence and anti-submarine capabilities. A squadron of 10 F-35B Lightning II aircraft from the U.S. Marine Corps will also be integrated into the fleet.

  The Royal Netherlands Navy’s frigate HNLMS Evertsen will be providing further air defence.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:00

• Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century
  Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century

  Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Canada could play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole…

  

  The arctic remains the world’s last frontier of human exploration. It is also a domain of great potential cooperation among great civilizations, or inversely a domain of militarism and confrontation.

  In recent years, Russia and China have increasingly harmonized their foreign policies around the Framework unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013 dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative. Since its unveiling, this megaproject has grown in leaps and bounds winning over 136 nations, accruing $3.7 trillion of investment capital and evolving new components such as the “Digital Silk Road”, “Health Silk Road”, “Space Silk Road”, and of course the “Polar Silk Road”. In March 2021, the Polar Silk Road, first announced in 2018, was given a prominent role in the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan with a focus on Arctic shipping, resource development, scientific Arctic research and conservation.

  With the enthusiastic support of Russia, China has increasingly become a leading force in icebreaker technology, northern resource development, arctic infrastructure construction, with an aim to be a world leader in shipping across the rapidly melting Northwest Passage cutting between 10-15 days off of goods moving between Asia and Europe. The recent clogging of the Suez Canal and over congested Straits of Malacca have been stark reminders that Arctic shipping is a domain of global strategic significance during the 21st century.

  Russia’s role as Chair of the Arctic Council between 2021-2023 will also put a major spotlight on the evolving Russia-China paradigm for win-win cooperation of the north as a territory of dialogue and development which is the theme of the upcoming St. Petersburg Arctic Summit later this year.

  The Threat of Confrontation Heats Up

  Despite these positive strides, many geopoliticans in the west have repeatedly attacked such developments as “efforts to conquer the world and replace the USA as global hegemons”. Those promoting this Hobbesian outlook not only choose to ignore the countless olive branches offered to the west by the Eurasian powers for mutual development, but have also accelerated a policy which some have dubbed a ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ ballistic missile encirclement of both Russia and China. This latter policy was recently called out by Foreign Minister Lavrov on April 1, 2021 who said:

  “We now have a missile defence area in Europe. Nobody is saying that this is against Iran now. This is clearly being positioned as a global project designed to contain Russia and China. The same processes are underway in the Asia-Pacific region. No one is trying to pretend that this is being done against North Korea… This is a global system designed to back U.S. claims to absolute dominance, including in the military-strategic and nuclear spheres.”

  

  Instead of acknowledging the fact that Russian and Chinese military strategies are defensive in nature, advocates of full spectrum dominance have chosen to push an opposing narrative painting both Eurasian nations as competitors and rivals with ghoulish secret intentions to annex the world. Under this confrontational paradigm, both NORAD and NORTHCOM continental defense systems are undergoing a reform under General Glan van Herck who stated in his Declassified Executive Summary of NORAD’s New Strategic Vision:

  “Both Russia and China are increasing their activity in the Arctic. Russia’s fielding of advanced, long-range cruise missiles capable of being launched from Russian territory and flying through the northern approaches and seeking to strike targets in the United States and Canada has emerged as the dominant military threat in the Arctic.”

  Why the general believes this to be the dominant cause of military threats rather than the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from all confidence building measures such as the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 1987 INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty is beyond the capacity of this writer’s imagination.

  An important part of this continental reform involves an upgrading and expansion of the U.S.-directed Ground Based Midcourse Defense system of 44 silo-based interceptors located in Alaska and California with an additional 20 in response to both China and Russia’s development of hypersonic, maneuverable warheads as well as a new generation of submarine and land-based ICBMs. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle recently attacked this upgraded GMD program by stating not only is the system woefully inept (only half of its 18 tests since 1999 hit their targets), but is also unnecessarily provocative, forcing Russia and China to upgrade their own systems in response to a threat that never should have existed in the first place. In a 2019 interview Coyle stated:

  “All of this is causing Russia and increasingly China to build more and more offensive systems, so that they can overwhelm U.S. missile defence- assuming that they would work… We have no way of dealing with more and more missiles from Russia or China and so building up more and more missile defense is backfiring”.

  General van Herck has also championed Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology across all domains of data collection and even supplementing human decision making as part of the goal of achieving “global integration, all domain awareness, information dominance to reach decision superiority”. Dubbed Pathfinder, van Herck has stated “I absolutely believe it can be a model for the Department of Defense. It lays the foundation for improved data-driven decision making and enhanced capability”. Whether it is wise to strive to cut decision making on matters such as thermonuclear war down to 12 minutes as is currently celebrated by Pathfinder supporters while leaving strategic decision-making protocols in the hands of soulless algorithms, or whether it is a living prophecy of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove can be left up to debate. The fact remains that this is the game plan.

  Since both unipolar and multipolar paradigms gripping the Arctic are creating an objective tension which threatens humanity and since appreciation for the origins and evolution of the Russia-China alliance is misunderstood and mischaracterized in the west, a few words of context are in order.

  A Brief History of Russian Chinese Arctic Synergy

  In 2015, Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union first signed an MOU to integrate with the Belt and Road, and as of 2019, China and Russia signed a series of major programs to extend the Belt and Road Initiative into the Arctic. The synergy between what Prime Minister Medvedev called the “Silk Road on Ice” and Putin’s Great Eastern Vision were obvious and in April 2019, both nations released a joint statement “Joint efforts will be made in Arctic marine science research, which will promote the construction of the ‘Silk Road on Ice.” The statement asserted that both nations “look forward to more fruitful and efficient partnerships worldwide to contribute to the sustainable development of the world oceans and a shared future for mankind.”

  

  During an April 2019 BRI forum, President Putin laid out his concept of Russian and Chinese foreign policy doctrines saying:

  “The Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.”

  In recent months, the Russian-Chinese Joint Statement on Global Governance of March 23, 2021, represented the clearest response to the collapse of diplomatic bridges uniting west and east whose already weak edifices have been set ablaze in recent months. This diplomatic arson took the form of increased anti-Russian and anti Chinese sanctions, accelerated NATO war games on Russia’s perimeter, increased efforts to consolidate an anti-Chinese Pacific NATO, not to mention Biden’s infamous remarks that Putin was a “soulless killer”. These diplomatic disasters culminated in the infamous ambush of Chinese officials in Alaska on March 19, 2021.

  Economic Cooperation and Shared Interests

  Russia and China’s collaboration on Arctic resource development has seen both nations focus on transportation corridors, energy and research with a consistently open offer for all nations among their western counterparts to join at any time. Among the most important of the Arctic Projects now underway as part of Russia’s Arctic 2035 Vision announced in 2019, the 6000 km Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline is at the top of the list which will make Russia the primary supplier of China’s energy needs by 2030. This project will be joined by a Power of Siberia II doubling the natural gas output to China via Mongolia and both projects are part of the historic $400 billion energy deal signed between China and Russia in 2014 with the aim of sending 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China for 30 years.

  A similar strategic project is the LNG-2 involving Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Russian companies on a joint project showcasing the importance of Polar Silk Road thinking in alleviating tensions among Pacific neighbors. Global energy analyst Professor Francesco Sassi of Pisa University stated that this project “will see an unprecedented level of cooperation between Japanese and Chinese energy companies in one of the most important Russian energy projects of the next decade”.

  Additionally China’s 30% stake in the Yamal LNG pipeline which involves the Silk Road Fund ties China’s energy interests ever more deeply into the heart of Russia’s north east.

  Russia’s program of expanding Trans Siberian Rail traffic 100 fold from the current 3000 twenty foot units/year to 300 000 twenty foot units/year by upgrading and doubling rail is vital as well as the program for the completion of the Northern Latitudinal Railway connecting west Siberian ports to the Arctic. On the strategic point of shipping, Russia is not only expanding its fleet of icebreakers to include new models of Project 22220 nuclear powered icebreakers, but also will increase freight traffic to 80 million tons/year by 2025 (up from the current 20 million). Several of Russia’s 40 icebreakers are nuclear powered, making it the only nation in the world enjoying this claim… a title it will enjoy until later this year as China rolls out its first 33,000 ton nuclear icebreaker which will join its growing inventory (already far advanced of both Canada’s and the USA’s dismal capacity).

  Part and parcel of Russia’s new 15-year plan for the Arctic are plans to commit state support for broad transport and energy infrastructure via direct investments as well as the creation of “economic preference zones” giving private sector actors tax incentives. State support will also be directed towards efforts to mitigate climate change, scientific research, monitoring of environmental damage and pollution clean up.

  The Rise of China as an Arctic Powerhouse

  China deployed their first Arctic research expedition in 1999, followed by the establishment of their first Arctic research station in Svalbard, Norway in 2004. After years of effort, China achieved a permanent observer seat at the Arctic Council in 2011, and by 2016 created the Russia-China Polar Engineering and Research Center to develop better techniques to access Arctic resources. In 2012, China rolled out its first icebreaker (Snow Dragon I) and has quickly surpassed both Canada and the USA whose two out-dated ice breakers have passed their shelf life by many years.

  As the Arctic ice caps continue to recede, the Northern Sea Route has become a major focus for China. The fact that shipping time from China’s Port of Dalian to Rotterdam would be cut by 10 days makes this alternative very attractive. Ships sailing from China to Europe must currently follow a transit through the congested Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal which is 5000 nautical miles longer than the northern route. The opening up of Arctic resources vital for China’s long term outlook is also a major driver in this initiative.

  In preparation for resource development, China and Russia created a Russian Chinese Polar Engineering and Research Center in 2016 to develop capabilities for northern development such as building on permafrost, creating ice resistant platforms, and more durable icebreakers. New technologies needed for enhanced ports, and transportation in the frigid cold was also a focus.

  The Questionable Role of Canada in the Arctic Great Game

  Amidst this dramatic rate of Arctic development both towards militarization and towards economic cooperation, the Canadian government has managed to remain remarkably aloof and non-committal.

  Despite the fact that a 2016 Foreign Policy Review called for Canada’s integration into the northern missile defense shield last championed by Dick Cheney in 2004, Canada’s policy establishment has not committed to any course and while the field remains open for a potential Arctic policy based on diplomacy and cooperation as a bridge between East and West, time is running out.

  On the one side, high ranking war hawks among Washington and Ottawa’s policy elite make every effort to court Canada as a participant of the NORAD/NORTHCOM Strategic Vision as the war drums continue to pound. On the other side, Russia has made its desires for Russian-Canadian Arctic cooperation known as Russian chargé d’affaires Vladimir Proskuryakov stated on April 6:

  “Despite political difference between our two countries, prospects for Russia-Canadian Arctic cooperation look wide and generally positive. We should only use our possibilities properly.”

  Proskuryakov continued: “Being neighbours across the Arctic Ocean, we want to make maximum use of the Arctic potential as a territory of peaceful dialogue and sustainable development, which naturally combines realities and technological solutions of the 21st century with cultural and historic traditions of the indigenous populations.”

  If Russia’s hopes for collaboration are to make any headway, then it is certain that Canada’s September 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework will play a role. This framework was an honest attempt by the Federal government to create a “long term strategic vision for activities and investments for Arctic 2030 and beyond”. Having committed to an $800 million fund for Arctic development and amplifying the National Trade Corridors Fund of $2.3 billion/year for 11 years devoted to transportation infrastructure, Canada’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau called for northern infrastructure proposals in October 2020 with a March 2021 deadline saying:

  “Efficient and reliable transportation networks are key to Canada’s economic prosperity. Enhancing Arctic and northern transportation will support trade diversification and social development and ensure greater connectivity for Northerners. I encourage eligible transportation infrastructure owners, operators and users to apply for funding under the National Trade Corridors Fund.”

  Sadly, months later, the deadline came and went with no concrete projects placed on the table and no mechanisms established to carry out any potential construction. No funding mechanisms were set in place and without a vision the potential use of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank or Bank of Canada continues to go untapped.

  The only concretized policies for the Arctic put in place by the Trudeau government during this time are a stark inversion of actual development with three omnibus bills C-48, C-69 and C-88 passing in short order under the fog of a climate emergency declared by the Parliament. Under these bills, a moratorium was placed on all oil tankers in Northern BC stretching from Vancouver to Alaska (C-48), total bans on offshore drilling were passed declaring Arctic waters off limits to development (C-88) and environmental review processes-already among the most elaborate and bureaucratic among developed nations, was expanded (C-69), making new energy projects in the Arctic nearly impossible.

  The Private Sector Steps In

  When opportunities to connect Canada’s interests with China were advanced, as seen in the case of China’s efforts to purchase Canadian construction giant Aecon Inc in 2018 or the Hope Bay TMAC Resources in Nunavut in 2020, the Federal Government swept in at the last minute to kill the deals ensuring that no Chinese capital would have any influence in Canada’s development prospects.

  Stephen van Dine (VP of Public Governance at Canada’s Institute of Governance) wrote that pension funds, the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and Bank of Canada should be used to play a positive role in arctic development. Van Dine wrote in January 2021: “The Canadian arctic is almost investment-ready for the next 50-100 years with a reliable, predictable infrastructure program for schools, public housing, health centers and power generation. What’s missing is a long-term plan.”

  Frustrated with this commitment to inaction, Canadian business leaders at various times formed consortiums outside of the influence of Ottawa as seen in the Alaska-to-Canada Railway Development Corporation which won the support of both the Albertan government as well as former President Donald Trump in September 2020. The A2A Program called for building 2500 miles of rail and finally closing the gap separating Canada from Alaska, which to this day remains one of the most underdeveloped frontiers on earth. Despite the billions of dollars of annual federal transfers to the native bands of each of the northern territories, drug abuse, suicide rates, depression and school drop out rates are magnitudes higher among the static, disconnected northern communities of Canada relative to the national average.

  Many were curious if Biden would continue Trump’s support of this program but considering the new president’s swift killing of the Keystone XL pipeline and his passage of Executive Orders ensuring a total halt to all economic development of Arctic resources, the answer has become less ambiguous. These orders made Biden’s ideological stance on Arctic economic development and the A2A Project transparent, and also defined what should be expected of the Biden-Trudeau “Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership”.

  Another group of thought leaders representing interests in the public, private and academic centers, frustrated at the plague of stasis recently formed a group called Arctic360 with the mandate to drum up support for a positive vision for Canada’s High North. Comparing Canada with other members of the Arctic Council, Jessica Shadian (President and CEO of Arctic360) wrote:

  “When it comes to Canada’s truly competitive advantage for becoming a global leader in innovation it is time to break out of the usual mould and go where few Canadians go: the North. One just needs to glance at Canada’s Nordic Arctic neighbours to see that there is precedence. The often-made arguments as to why the North is an inopportune place for everything from living to working to starting a business or building a road is its real advantage. That the North is vast, cold, remote, dark six months of the year, has harsh weather and a critical infrastructure gap is one of Canada’s biggest innovation assets. Add to this, that the North is home to many of the critical minerals that China and others want for building technologically advanced infrastructure. The North could be Canada’s unrealized key to leap-frog existing infrastructure and industries and play a global leadership role in 21st Century innovation. The question is whether we have the ambition or the conviction to lead.”

  A True Vision for Inter-Civilizational Cooperation: The Bering Strait Corridor

  It was in March 2015, foreseeing the Arctic extension of the Belt and Road Initiative by a number of years, that former Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin, brilliantly called for a Trans-Eurasian Development Belt with rail stretching all the way up to the Bering Strait crossing and integrating into Asia. Yakunin, who for years has been a proponent of the connection of the Americas and Eurasia by rail, said the project should be an “inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current (neoliberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone,’ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.”

  Having been originally conceived in the 19th century as outlined by Governor William Gilpin in his 1890 Cosmopolitan Railway, and supported by Czar Nicholas II who sponsored feasibility studies on the project in 1906, the Bering Strait tunnel connecting Eurasian and American continents fell from general awareness for decades. It was briefly revived during discussions held between FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace and Russian Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 but was again lost under the fog of Cold War insanity. This century-old idea again resurfaced when Russia signaled its willingness to construct the project in 2011 offering over $65 billion towards its funding, which only required the cooperation of the United States and Canada. China put its support behind the Bering Strait Tunnel in May 2014.

  While such a grand design would provide the most direct pathway for the west to synchronise our development paradigm with the Polar Silk Road, and Greater Eurasian Partnership, it is admittedly a far cry from the realities plaguing current geopolitical thinking.

  The best that can be hoped for in the short term would be a successful war avoidance strategy adopted by Ottawa in alignment with Moscow’s desires for cooperation on the field of anti-coronavirus programs, education and arctic medical needs and environmental management. If these simple trust building mechanisms can begin to take hold, and if war hawks are kept at bay, then perhaps Canada can eventually play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 04/27/2021 – 00:00

• Company Weaponizes Soldiers' Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets
  Company Weaponizes Soldiers’ Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets

  As pressure mounts on Big Tech firms to curb their invasive data-harvesting practices first implemented to cultivate valuable personal data that can be packaged and sold to advertisers for a premium (indeed, this is how the “free Internet” was built), WSJ has just published a shocking story about how one firm (a defense contractor called “PlanetRisk”) discovered it could track sensitive movements of American troops in Syria via data generated by apps on their smartphones.

  After making the discovery, the firm used the data to build a surveillance tool that could monitor the travel of refugees from Syria to Europe and the US. The goal was to sell the finished product to the counter-terrorism and intelligence communities.

  But, as WSJ pointed out, “buried in the data was evidence of sensitive US military operations by American special-operations forces in Syria.”

  The fear now is that this data can be bought and sold by America’s adversaries to gain valuable intelligence insights into the movements of American forces. Many vendors now sell “global location information from mobile phones to intelligence, military and law-enforcement organizations.” The US has struggled to effectively monitor what “software service members are installing on devices and whether that software is secure.”

  “Our country’s intelligence leaders have made it clear that putting Americans’ sensitive information in the hands of unfriendly foreign governments is a major risk to national security,” he said.

  This isn’t a new issue. Back in 2019, the Trump Administration moved to force the divestiture of Grindr, the LGBTQ-friendly dating app, which the military and CFIUS – the Commerce Department’s board that reviews foreign deals – largely over concerns that data gleaned from the app might be weaponized to track US troops.

  

  What PlanetRisk revealed could easily be replicated by an American adversary. The company simply traced cell signals from US bases in Syria to an abandoned cement factory back in 2016. This was before US special forces use of the area as a staging ground had become public knowledge. What’s more, PlanetRisk could monitor the movements of American troops even while they were out on patrol, a serious operational security risk that opened units up to being targeted by enemy forces.

  When PlanetRisk traced telephone signals from US bases to the Syrian cement factory in 2016, it hadn’t been disclosed publicly that the factory was being used as a staging area for U.S. and allied forces.

  PlanetRisk resolved to use its discovery to build a new tool and sell it to intelligence agencies, but it was beaten to market by a competitor and the firm eventually dissolved. But in its reporting, WSJ managed to replicate PlanetRisk’s findings, tracking movements at the same cement factory in 2017 and 2018 from a commercial data broker and analytics company that wished to remain anonymous. The Journal tracked the movements of people who appeared to be American special ops, just as PlanetRisk had.

  WSJ also tracked the data to US facilities such as Fort Bragg, Fort Hood in Texas or tiny desert outposts such as the US-run Camp Buehring in Kuwait before later traveling to the Lafarge Cement Factory in northern Syria.  Although these data sets don’t contain personalized names, each individual is assigned an alphanumeric identifier designed for advertisers. But, as WSJ points out, the places associated with a device can offer clues that can in turn be weaponized. While the US has allowed personal data to become a commodity – which led to the backlash in 2018 and 2019 in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

  

  Source: WSJ

  While the US government has taken steps to teach operational security best practices to troops, there’s little doubt that the US system’s approach to commercializing data on behalf of the advertising and technology industries has created massive security holes. And unsurprisingly, China is getting better at exploiting them, while at the same time banning the export of data on its own citizens to prevent any rival countries from tracking its citizens and military personnel in the same way.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:40

• Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting
  Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

  A criminal case involving unauthorized organ procurement surgery conducted in an unlicensed ambulance in China is casting a spotlight on Beijing’s continued efforts to cover up its state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

  

  Last July, four doctors from eastern China were sentenced to between 12 and 28 months in prison after being found guilty for their roles in illegally extracting the liver and two kidneys of Li Peng, a hospital patient, after her death.

  According to China’s state-run media, Li’s liver ended up at a military hospital in China’s capital Beijing, and her kidneys went to a hospital in neighboring Tianjin for transplant. Both hospitals have been identified by a U.S.-based nonprofit as suspected centers for the forced extraction of organs from living political prisoners.

  The doctors, as well as two other accomplices, were charged after Li’s son, Shi Xianglin, alerted authorities that his mother’s donation record was not registered in China’s official donation database. Shi began to suspect that something was amiss after he found out that his cousin Shi Zijun was paid 200,000 yuan (about $30,780) two days after his mother’s organs were removed. Under China’s official organ donation program, donors are not compensated, according to Chinese authorities.

  The money was paid by local businessman Huang Chaoyang, who was also sentenced to 10 months in prison last year over his role in the unauthorized organ extraction. According to China’s state-run media, Huang Chaoyang was a businessman selling medical equipment.

  The four doctors later appealed their sentences, arguing that what they did was a “state-endorsed” duty since they were simply following orders from their hospital supervisors.

  Illegal Organ Extraction

  Li, a 53-year-old woman living in Huaiyuan County in eastern China’s Anhui Province, died at the local hospital, the People’s Hospital in Huaiyuan County, on Feb. 15, 2018. Four days earlier, she had been rushed to its intensive-care unit (ICU) after being wounded by her stepson during an axe attack.

  On Feb. 12, 2018, after spending one day in the ICU, Li was determined to be in a life-threatening condition with signs of imminent respiratory failure.

  Yang, a deputy chief physician and director of the hospital’s ICU, was the doctor looking after Li when she was admitted to the unit.

  It was Yang who persuaded Li’s husband and daughter to sign a voluntary organ donation form, after promising that they would be paid. Initially, Yang promised that the family would be paid 160,000 yuan (about $24,630) but increased the payment to 200,000 yuan at the demand of Li’s nephew Shi Zijun. Li’s husband and daughter signed the form on Feb. 14, 2018, one day before Li’s death.

  Authorities in China, however, claim that all organ donors are non-remunerated donors.

  After getting the family’s approval, Yang called Huang Xinli who worked at a hospital in nearby Nanjing City about an organ extraction, and Huang made the decision that Li’s organs would be suitable for organ transplantation surgery.

  At the time, Huang was a chief physician at the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, which is affiliated with Nanjing University Medical School. Prior to his employment there, Huang had worked at Jiangsu People’s Hospital, a state-run hospital located in the eastern Jiangsu Province’s capital Nanjing.

  Huang then arranged to have his former colleague Lu Shen, and another doctor Wang Hailang remove Li’s organs in an ambulance. Lu was the chief physician in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery at the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. Wang was a doctor in stomatology at the Huaibei Miners General Hospital in Anhui.

  Li’s organs were removed immediately after her death, but it was unclear where the ambulance was parked when the surgery took place.

  The unlicensed ambulance was owned by Ou Yang, who received a one-year-one-month sentence in the same trial as that against businessman Huang Chaoyang and the four doctors. According to China’s state-run media, Ou bought the ambulance from a government health center in Anhui’s Suzhou City in 2015. Since then, he got a new license plate for the ambulance and began using the vehicle to transport patients from areas near local hospitals.

  At the trial at a local court in Anhui in July, all four doctors were convicted of the crime of intentional destruction of a corpse.

  While Lu was found liable for extracting organs from Li only, the other three doctors were found guilty of engaging in unauthorized organ procurement surgeries on 10 other individuals in Huaiyuan County between 2017 and 2019.

  Details of these 10 individuals are not known, but Huang was found to be the main surgeon behind the procurement surgeries on these people. Ou, the owner of the unlicensed ambulance, was also involved in the illegal removal of organs from seven of the 10 individuals.

  Lu was sentenced to one year in prison, while Huang, Yang, and Wang were sentenced to two years and four months, two years and two months, and two years in prison, respectively.

  The four doctors appealed to an intermediate court in Bengbu, a city in Anhui. The court rejected their appeals and upheld the lower court’s ruling in August. They had argued that their actions were authorized as they were following orders from their hospital superiors.

  On April 19, Chinese news portals Tencent and NetEase reported that Lu Dahai, an alias for Lu Shen, said that he had appealed his case to the province’s highest court, the Anhui’s Higher People’s Court.

  Organ Harvesting

  The two hospitals that took Li’s liver and kidneys respectively—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) No. 302 Hospital and Tianjin First Central Hospital—have been named by the U.S.-based World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) for their suspected roles in forcibly harvesting the organs from prisoners who practice Falun Gong.

  The PLA hospital has carried out a large number of liver transplant surgeries. According to the WOIPFG, the number of these surgeries reached 310 between April 2005 and April 2010, and 146 between May 2010 and December 2012.

  Adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual exercise also known as Falun Dafa, have been targeted for persecution by the Chinese regime since 1999. Millions of practitioners have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, psychiatric wards, and other facilities, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

  In the 2000s, reports emerged that the Chinese communist regime was systematically killing detained Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to use for transplantation. At the time China did not have an official organ donation program, and Chinese officials said organs mainly came from executed prisoners.

  Amid the growing scrutiny of China’s organ transplant system, the regime announced that starting Jan. 1, 2015, it would stop sourcing organs from executed prisoners and claimed that it would executively rely on a new system of voluntary donations. However, Beijing’s claim was refuted by a 2019 report by a London-based people’s tribunal.

  The report concluded, after a year-long investigation, that the stated-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting was happening on a “significant scale” in China, with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

  An investigative report by The Epoch Times in 2016 concluded that tens of thousands may have been killed at the Tianjin First Central Hospital, as the hospital carried out more transplants than the supply of organs from executed prisoners could support.

  On April 13, the WOIPFG released an investigative report into the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. In November 2018, a doctor at the hospital did not deny that they sourced transplant organs from Falun Gong adherents when answering a phone inquiry by a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. The doctor also said that a liver transplant surgery could be arranged in less than two weeks.

  The report also included a 2017 audio recording of a phone conversation between a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as someone making inquiries about liver transplant surgeries, and an unnamed liver transplant doctor at the hospital. The doctor said an organ was available as soon as two weeks, a waiting time shorter than that at the nearby Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital.

  The Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital is also on WOIPFG’s list of hospitals likely to be involved in forced organ harvesting.

  Shifting the Narrative

  That Li’s case was widely reported by China’s state-run media and not censored is significant, said WOIPFG’s Chair Wang Zhiyuan in a recent interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

  Wang said that the CCP was trying to use the news to spin a narrative around organ harvesting in China—by trying to create a story that these crimes are all committed by individuals and that it is the Chinese authorities who are trying to stop them.

  In reality, China’s state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience is an expansive endeavor involving cooperation among government agencies affiliated with the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Chinese military, police units, military police, as well as regional Party and government agencies, Wang said.

  He said the sentences handed down on the doctors were quite lenient because, while the CCP wanted to use the case for propaganda purposes, it also did not want to draw too much attention to the matter because the doctors were likely acting on orders from their hospitals.

  Based on recent findings, Wang said some Chinese hospitals are clearly still engaging in live organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents.

  Organ harvesting in China has attracted greater scrutiny in the West in recent years, especially as the United States and other democracies are stepping up their criticism of the CCP over its array of severe human rights abuses.

  In the United States, eight counties in Virginia have passed a resolution condemning China’s ongoing practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. On April 15, the Texas Senate adopted a similar resolution.

  In early March, U.S. lawmakers in both the Senate and House introduced legislation to seek accountability for China’s organ harvesting. If enacted, the bill would allow the U.S. government to impose sanctions on individuals and government officials responsible for organ trafficking or organ harvesting. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:20

• Is Joe Rogan's Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?
  Is Joe Rogan’s Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?

  Joe Rogan made the headlines last year when his highly lucrative exclusivity deal with Spotify was revealed. The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most successful podcasts in the world first appeared on Spotify on September 1 and from December 1, all episodes were released exclusively on the streaming platform, having previously boasted a huge following on YouTube.

  

  While the financial benefits for Rogan and the show are undeniable, Statista’s Martin Armstrong asks (and answers) has restricting his reach led to a drop in relevance? Google Trends data for the U.S. suggests that this may be the case. As originally covered by TecTalk, there has been a clear dampening of search interest for the term ‘Joe Rogan’ since the episodes were moved over to Spotify. Previous spikes of interest generated when the show was more widely accessible have largely disappeared, relatively speaking.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As noted by TecTalk “In the six months leading up to the show’s December 1st exclusive start, [there was] an average search index for ‘Joe Rogan’ of 57.9. After the week of December 1 that index value has dropped to 34.6, which constitutes a 40.2 percent drop in search volume.” Although the podcast is not behind a paywall, Spotify’s popularity and accessibility is still nothing compared to that of YouTube and, despite the integration of video, the chances of an episode going viral are clearly lower at the moment.

  All that said, his latest discussion with libertarian comedian Dave Smith is a much-watch/listen as the two cover everything from America’s regime change foreign policies to Alinksy-ite domestic policy shifts, to COVID corruption, to diversity training, to vaccine passports, to running for president (as a libertarian candidate) and, quite frankly, everything else in the current zeitgeist…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:00

• Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses
  Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses

  Authored by ‘Techno Fog’ via The Reactionary substack,

  The FBI continued to spy on Americans without a warrant…

  A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

  

  This opinion includes these findings:

  April 2019 – July 2019: An FBI technical information specialist was involved in “Compliance incidents” by conducting 124 queries of Section 702-acquired information on (1) Volunteers who had requested to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy”; (2) Persons who needed to enter the field office to perform repairs; and (3) Persons who reported they were victims of a crime.

  

  August 2019 – October 2019: An FBI Task Force Office “conducted approximately 69 queries using names and identifiers of individuals…” The redactions keep secret the identity of the victims.

  

  Other Violations:

  • One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”

  • Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

  Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

  “[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

  HOWEVER – Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

  

  In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

  

  “Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

  

  As we previously reported, Boasberg declined to sentence former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith to prison – not even a day – after Clinesmith altered a CIA email and lied about it to others within the FBI in furtherance of a Carter Page FISA renewal. The FISA heightened duty of candor doesn’t come with heightened punishments for violating that duty.

  After the latest revelations of abuse and unaccountability, perhaps it’s time for FBI Director Wray, Judge Boasberg, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:40

• New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party
  New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party

  China has rolled out with a new policy which requires all religious leaders in the country to show open support to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The new decree goes into effect May 1 and orders all religious heads, including Christian pastors and bishops, to “follow the lead of and support the Communist Party.”

  While Chinese state interference in religious affairs of citizens is far from anything new, this particular decree appears far reaching and is also aimed at rooting out “foreign” influence, with significant legal repercussions that are threatened.

  

  According to an unofficial translation of Article 3 of the decree: “Religious professionals shall love the motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support the socialist system, abide by the Constitution, laws, regulations, and rules; practice the Core Socialist Values, uphold the principle of religious independence and self-management, persist in our nation’s direction of the sinification of religion, and preserve national unity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and social stability.”

  The full decree entitled “Measures on the Management of Religious Professionals” also purports to define “rights” of “religious professionals” – or rather their extreme limitations under the law.

  It also requires religious clerics to resist the infiltration of foreign forces through religion. Violators of the new decree will also be subject to criminal charges and other sanctions, which is a strengthening of older policies. Instead of just state-controlled practices, there’s now more legal basis for criminalizing religion that’s been “unapproved”.

  Critics are already pointing out it constitutes a further severe crackdown on freedom of religion and worship. One large ‘house church’ leader in Beijing commented to US-funded VOA News, “This decree goes against our religious beliefs, and the separation of politics and religion.” The representative said additionally, “There will be a further narrowing of religious freedom and more severe crackdowns on believers.”

  ‘They Think The 21st Century Will Be The Chinese Communist Century:’ Report Shows China’s Crackdown On Religious Freedom https://t.co/FGJ20dZKLK

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 22, 2021

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

  It also further tightens oversight of official government-sanctioned Catholic communities in the country.

  Below is the relevant section from the document…

  Catholic bishops are to be approved and consecrated by the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China shall complete a form for recording Catholic bishops within 20 days of consecrating them, send it to the State Bureau of Religious Affairs for filing, and submit the following materials:

  1. Copies of the bishop’s household registration booklet and resident identity card.
  2. An explanation of the circumstances by which the provincial, autonomous region, or directly governed municipality religious group democratically selected that bishop;
  3. The approval documents from the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China;
  4. An explanation of their consecration by the bishop that presided over it.

  * * *

  According to VOA, the new decree is related to a recent push to force various religious communities into integrating official CCP propaganda and history into their religious teaching curriculum: “The issuance of the decree coincides with a push by the government-controlled national religious associations of Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam to require all believers to study topics such as the histories of the CCP, the People’s Republic of China and socialism to mark the 100th anniversary of the CCP in July.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:20

• Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan "Cannot Be Discounted"
  Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan “Cannot Be Discounted”

  Authored by Daniel Yeng via The Epoch Times,

  Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton is warning that conflict over Taiwan is a possibility and has vowed to work with allies to maintain peace in the region.

  “People need to be realistic about the activity,” Dutton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday.

  “There is militarisation of bases across the region. Obviously, there is a significant amount of activity, and there is an animosity between Taiwan and China.”

  “If you look at any of the rhetoric that is coming out of China from spokesmen, particularly in recent weeks and months in response to different suggestions that have been made, they have been very clear about that goal,” he added.

  “I don’t think it should be discounted. I think China has been very clear about the reunification, and that’s been a long-held objective of theirs,” Dutton said.

  The minister added that “nobody wants to see conflict” between China and Taiwan and added that the Australian Defence Force was prepared to meet any threats in the region and that they would work with allies in the region for peace.

  

  Earlier this month, Michael Goldman, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, revealed that the United States and Australia were working on “contingencies” if conflict were to erupt around Taiwan.

  In recent months, Chinese military jets have made near-daily incursions into Taiwanese airspace, with the largest being in late March, when 20 Chinese military planes entered its Air Defence Identification Zone.

  

  J15 fighter jets on China’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during a drill at sea in April 2018. (AFP/Getty Images)

  U.S. Admiral Philip Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, also issued a warning in response to Beijing’s increasing military build-up, saying he believed China could invade Taiwan “in the next six years,” while other analysts believe the timeframe could be shorter.

  Beijing sees Taiwan as its own territory, even though the island state has been governed as a distinct territory for more than seven decades.

  Recently, the communist regime has upped its rhetoric against the island, vowing to bring it into the fold—by force if necessary.

  Meanwhile, throughout 2020, Australia has endured a year-long economic coercion campaign from Beijing targeting key exports to China, including coal, beef, wine, barley, lobster, timber, lamb, and cotton.

  The Chinese trade strikes were launched in response to calls by Foreign Minister Marise Payne in April 2020 for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

  Australia has encouraged exporters to find alternative markets to China while passing several laws to shore up the country’s national security against interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

  Last week, Foreign Minister Payne exercised powers granted to her by the Foreign Relations Act and terminated the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative signed with the Victorian state government.

  The Chinese Embassy in Canberra criticised the move, labelling it “unreasonable and provocative.” While Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin urged Australia to “revoke” the decision or Beijing would “resolutely take strong actions.”

  Dutton responded, saying, “We’re not going to have our values compromised. We aren’t going to surrender our sovereignty.”

  “We are standing up for who we are. We’ve got very important diplomatic relations with many countries, including China, but we aren’t going to be compromised by the principles of the Communist Party of China.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:00

• Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation
  Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation

  Chicago corn futures are up 3% Monday as supply concerns drive prices to an 8-year high. 

  

  “Corn is in the driver’s seat as there are supply worries as well as strong demand,” a Singapore-based feed grains trader told Reuters. “Corn is pulling prices of wheat and soybeans higher.”

  Besides corn, wheat tagged a seven-year high, while soybeans are at eight-year highs. The entire agri-complex is on fire. 

  

  Traders are looking at the dryness in Brazil and cold temperatures in the US that have supported prices. 

  BAMWX meteorologist Kirk Hinz outlines dryness in Brazil “continues to be a big concern ahead.”

  

  Also, “fuel is being added to the fire by reports that the Argentinian government is considering raising its export taxes on grains and oilseed (products), which would further tighten the situation on the world market,” Commerzbank said in a note.

  Commerzbank continued: “This is because Argentina also plays a very important role in supplying the world markets, especially as the world’s largest soybean meal and oil exporter.”

  In the US, a cold spell in early April adds to additional supply concerns. 

  We noted earlier this month that freezing temperatures could have a profound impact on seedling development this spring. 

  The cold blast has likely delayed seeding across the Corn Belt as farmers wait for warmer temperatures. Planting corn in cooler climates is still possible, but colder soil can take corn kernels much longer to germinate and increases the risk of seedling death. 

  Combine weather woes and possible export taxes in Argentina, and increasing demand from China has developed into a perfect storm of higher prices. 

  Rising agri commodity prices prompted SocGen’s resident permabear Albert Edwards to provide yet another warning (read his first warning here) about soaring food inflation and what social ramifications it could mean for emerging economies. He pointed out central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy after the financial crisis a little more than a decade ago. It resulted in an eruption of food prices that led to the Arab Spring revolutions – something he believes could happen again. 

  Revolution alert: After a pause to refresh, the copper price rising again. Most think this is a sign of the strength in the economic cycle. But the surge in agric prices, (just as in 2011 that triggered the Arab Spring revolutions) suggests this is more to do with QE – again! pic.twitter.com/Ga89zUqSQV

  — Albert Edwards (@albertedwards99) April 22, 2021

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  “I’m not sure if central banks will ever realise not only do their QE polices increase inequality and fan the embers of popularism, but after having done that, rocketing food prices ignite that discontent into raging infernos as occurred during the Arab Spring a decade ago,” Edwards said in another tweet. 

  I’m not sure if central banks will ever realise not only do their QE polices increase inequality and fan the embers of popularism, but after having done that, rocketing food prices ignite that discontent into raging infernos as occurred during the Arab Spring a decade ago. https://t.co/1tUbeAQKVL

  — Albert Edwards (@albertedwards99) April 11, 2021

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  Food prices are undeniably soaring faster than inflation and incomes around the world. It’s only a matter of time before social instabilities begin in low-income countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:40

• Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To "Black And Other Racialized Populations"
  Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To “Black And Other Racialized Populations”

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  The city of Hamilton in Canada posted a tweet offering the COVID-19 vaccine to “black and other racialized populations” over the age of 18, prompting questions as to whether this was discriminatory.

  

  “COVID-19 vaccine appointments are now available for Black and other racialized populations/people of colour ages 18+ who live in postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N and L9K at the COVID-19 vaccine clinic at FIRSTONTARIO CENTRE, Friday to Sunday this coming week,” stated the tweet.

  COVID-19 vaccine appointments are now available for Black and other racialized populations/people of colour ages 18+ who live in postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N and L9K at the COVID-19 vaccine clinic at FIRSTONTARIO CENTRE, Friday to Sunday this coming week.

  — City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) April 24, 2021

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

  This was followed up by another tweet that said appointments are now full, further advising, “Black and other racialized populations/people of colour, who are ages 18+ live in eligible postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N, L9K can call the Public Health COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7 for an appointment at other clinic locations depending on availability of vaccine.”

  Black and other racialized populations/people of colour, who are ages 18+ live in eligible postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N, L9K can call the Public Health COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7 for an appointment at other clinic locations depending on availability of vaccine.

  — City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) April 24, 2021

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

  Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, “prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability.”

  By apparently excluding white people from being offered the shot, the city’s policy appears to be in violation of this act.

  Respondents to the tweet expressed their confusion.

  “How is this even remotely fair? I live in L9C, over 40 and compromised immune system but I can’t get an appointment!!! Ridiculous,” commented Shelly Petrie.

  How is this even remotely fair? I live in L9C, over 40 and compromised immune system but I can’t get an appointment!!! Ridiculous

  — Shelly Petrie (@Shelly76981807) April 25, 2021

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

  “Imagine this same tweet but with “white” instead of “black” and the outrage it would cause,” remarked another respondent.

  “You will be relying on these spanish colonial race charts to determine priority, yes?” joked another.

  You will be relying on these spanish colonial race charts to determine priority, yes ? pic.twitter.com/RkI0xvPzdu

  — Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) April 26, 2021

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

  “While a white 56 year old with a rare disease that has caused scarring in both lungs, compromised immune system, heart palpitations and hypertension, is still awaiting their first shot. I sense a serious level of racism by our elected officials,” said another.

  While a white 56 year old with a rare disease that has caused scarring in both lungs, compromised immune system, heart palpitations and hypertension, is still awaiting their first shot. I sense a serious level of racism by our elected officials.

  — Land_of_Mud (@Land_of_Mud) April 24, 2021

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

  Governments and health bodies across the west have funded public relations campaigns to encourage ethnic minorities to take the jab because of their historically lower than average uptake in those communities.

  However, in directly offering the jab to certain racial groups before others, authorities may find themselves in hot water if a discrimination case is brought before the courts.

  *  *  *

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

  *  *  *

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:20

• Biden's Stimulus Checks "Wreck Labor Pool" As People Get Paid To Stay Home 
  Biden’s Stimulus Checks “Wreck Labor Pool” As People Get Paid To Stay Home 

  There are new concerns that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package is already harming the labor market recovery. 

  While job openings and postings are increasing, there is an issue with the number of applications as labor participation currently stands at 61.4%, with an unemployment rate of 6.2%. People are not applying for jobs as they should be as they collect stimulus checks and enjoy a work-free lifestyle, all on the backs of taxpayers.

  There are many jobs available in manufacturing, trade and transportation, logistics, and the professional sector. But employers have difficulty sourcing workers. 

  The latest comments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City provide a chilling insight this month into the labor shortage developing at manufacturing firms across Denver, Oklahoma City, and Omaha: 

  “Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

  So, lower-level employees are making more money collecting stimulus checks and other handouts under the Biden administration. This was very similar when former President Trump dished out helicopter money during the early days of the pandemic. 

  What this creates are more bottlenecks for the supply chain as labor becomes scarce. 

  “It is very difficult to handle the increased business with supply chain issues across all materials and finding anyone who wants to work. The federal government has incentivized people to stay home and not be productive.”

  Other employers report: 

  “Unemployed workers have no incentive to return to work given the COVID bonus payments.”

  What this means is that entry-level pay will have to increase to get low-level workers off the couch. This will create more cost pressures for companies that will either be absorbed or pass onto the consumer. 

  The Biden administration effectively destroys the labor market, resulting in significant repercussions for the real economy, such as a labor shortage that could stall the recovery. 

  In particular, a McDonald’s in Tampa, Florida, offered $50 last week to anyone who would show up to a job interview. 

  

  WSJ said labor shortages in the food industry affect nationwide and independent eateries as they can’t source enough workers for the front and backend. Some fast-food chains are offering signing bonuses. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is offering free college who work at least 15 hours a week. Taco Bell is giving paid family leave to company store managers. Other operators are boosting pay. 

  But even with all the perks, a labor crunch affects many businesses in various industries to retain workers as the stimulus money adds a barrier to bring back low-level workers. 

  JPMorgan recently warned clients of a massive labor shortage in the US. 

  

  However, JPMorgan did not expand on what may be causing this unprecedented schism within the economy – after all, for normalcy to return, people must not only be employed but must want to be employed – it did suggest that the “robust” government stimulus may be keeping workers on the sidelines. 

  In a letter sent to the White House Friday, WSJ explains Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for the Biden administration to make the jobless benefits permanent, the onset to universal basic income. 

  While politicians on Capitol Hill have cheered about people’s QE since the pandemic began, the consequences of paying low-level workers more to sit at home than to work could derail the economic recovery.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:00

• Beijing's 'Big Tech' Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant
  Beijing’s ‘Big Tech’ Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant

  Two weeks after China’s State Administration for Market Regulation – Beijing’s paramount anti-trust regulator – fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion for abusing its market dominance, capping off the country’s first major anti-trust action to rein in one of the tech giants dominating the Chinese domestic economy, the CCP has just launched its next major anti-trust investigation.

  The SCMP reported that China’s antitrust regulator on Monday officially launched a probe into food-delivery service provider Meituan, citing alleged monopolistic business practices like forcing merchants to “pick one from two” – that is, forcing merchants to either pick its platform as its exclusive distribution channel, or find themselves banned.

  

  The probe reportedly resulted from a public tip. Though it’s not yet known how long the investigation will last, it’s worth remembering that the Alibaba probe was launched on Christmas Eve of last year, and ended earlier this month. Meituan has pledged to cooperate (though of course it has little choice in the matter).

  “The company will actively cooperate with the investigation by the regulatory authorities to further improve the level of business compliance management, protect the legitimate rights and interests of users and all parties, promote the long-term and healthy development of the industry, and earnestly fulfill its social responsibilities,” Beijing-based Meituan said in a statement. “At present, the company’s various businesses are operating normally.”

  According to the SCMP, this tactic of forcing merchants to choose just one platform is widespread in China, suggesting that the crackdown – like other antitrust actions – is more about humbling China’s upstart tech giants and keeping them subservient to the will of the CCP. The company’s shares declined on the news in Hong Kong markets.

  The new probe proves that Beijing’s crackdown on Alibaba and Ant Group wasn’t isolated, and that there will likely be more investigations into other Chinese tech giants before this is over, the SCMP hinted. “It’s not a surprising decision. After Alibaba’s record fine, no big tech players should be immune from monopoly investigations,” said Li Chengdong, the chief executive of e-commerce consultancy Dolphin Think Tank. “The regulators need to also show that the investigation is a fair move for everyone, it’s not only about Alibaba.”

  Meituan, which was founded by 42-year-old Wang Xing, has been dragged into court over allegations of unfair competition before. A local court in Jiangsu this month ruled that Meituan had to pay 352,000 yuan ($54,180) as compensation to Ele.me. a food-delivery adversary owned by Alibaba (as fate would have it) for asking merchants to shun the competing service. Aterward, Meituan issued a public statement claiming it wouldn’t make such demands in the future. Another similar lawsuit played out in February. Then, Meituan and 33 other tech companies were brought in front of SAMR and other regulators earlier this month, and given a deadline of May 13 to rectify anti-competitive behaviors, or be “severely punished”. While the company says it doesn’t practice “one of two”, sources told the FT that Meituan practices a more scaled-down approach whereby it lowers commissions on merchants who exclusively use its platform.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:40

• "Apocalyptic" St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 
  “Apocalyptic” St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 

  There’s no doubt the Caribbean island of St Vincent is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as chronic food and water shortages develop amid ongoing volcanic eruptions at the northern part of the island. Volcanic ash blankets the island and has heavily impacted its agricultural economy. 

  According to Bloomberg, St. Vincent and the Grenadines could experience a halving of gross domestic product due to the near-continuous showering of ash across the island since April 9.

  “The damage on the north of the island is bordering on apocalyptic,” Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves told Bloomberg in a telephone interview. “The country is not recognizable as a Caribbean island in the north of the country.”

   Before And After 

  

  Before And After 

  

  La Soufriere volcano, located in the northern part of the island, has erupted numerous times in the last couple of weeks. At least 20,000 people have been displaced, or about 19% of the island’s population. Much of the economic devastation is situated in the country’s farm belt where agriculture represents about 15% of the economy and is the largest employer. 

  

  The Eastern Caribbean island is one of the world’s top producers of arrowroot and other exotic fruits, vegetables and root crops. Bananas are another huge crop for the country. 

  Such reliance on an agriculture economy is proving to be disastrous following La Soufriere’s volcanic eruption. 

  More than 100 million cubic meters of ash spewed from a volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent recently. The darkened western coastline in a @USGSLandsat image captured Sunday offers a sense of the ash’s extent.
  Find imagery at https://t.co/86O1czz4SR pic.twitter.com/qViPUv4ZbQ

  — Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (@USGS_EROS) April 26, 2021

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

  Preliminary estimates show the farmland near the volcano wiped out 100% of the vegetable crop, 90% of tree crops — like mangoes – and 80% of root crops.

  “This means, essentially, that agriculture has been wiped out on the island,” Gonsalves said.

  New United Nations video shows villages covered in ash amid ongoing volcanic eruptions on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, with the UN reporting more than 12,700 people have been evacuated from their homes. https://t.co/SW3RZVXHNC pic.twitter.com/52k11kA9Jg

  — ABC News (@ABC) April 21, 2021

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

  Tourism has also become an integral part of the island’s economy. Even before the violent eruptions, tourism and travel were down due to the virus pandemic. 

  Scientists don’t know when the dangerously active volcano will stop erupting. In 1979, La Soufriere erupted for four months. In 1902, the eruption last about one year. 

  “The true economic toll of La Soufriere remains unclear, but Gonsalves estimates the volcano caused $150 million in infrastructure damage and $150 million in agriculture and housing losses. In addition, it will require $20 million to $30 million to clean up the islands and about $15 million per month to feed and house evacuees,” Bloomberg said. 

  “The longer people have to stay in shelters and the longer it takes for the volcano to stop erupting, the more precarious our financial situation will be,” he said.

  St Vincent has the third-highest debt-to-GDP at 81% among any other Caribbean nation and faces at least a halving of its economy this year. 

  “Undoubtedly, our debt is going to increase as we try to rebuild and recover from this disaster,” Gonsalves said. “We need our friends to stand by us at this time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:20

• ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM
  ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com

  Enormous sums of money have poured into racial justice groups since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. “The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year,” according to a February Associated Press review, while at least $5 billion was raised by groups associated with that cause in the first two months alone following Floyd’s death.

  

  Two weeks after the Floyd killing, The New York Times said that the “money has come in so fast and so unexpectedly that some groups even began to turn away and redirect donors elsewhere,” while “others said they still could not yet account for how much had arrived.” Propelled by the emotions and nationwide protest movements that emerged last summer, corporations, oligarchs, celebrities and the general public opened their wallets and began pouring money into BLM coffers and have not stopped doing so.

  Where that money has gone has been the topic of numerous media investigations as well as concerns expressed by racial justice advocates. AP noted that BLM’s sharing of financial data in February “marks the first time in the movement’s nearly eight-year history that BLM leaders have revealed a detailed look at their finances.” That newfound transparency was prompted by what AP called “longstanding tensions boil[ing] over between some of the movement’s grassroots organizers and national leaders — the former went public last fall with grievances about financial transparency, decision-making and accountability.”

  In December, ten local BLM chapters severed ties with the national group amidst questions and suspicions over the handling of activities and finances by one of its co-founders, Patrisse Cullors, who had assumed the title of Executive Director. On April 10, The New York Post published an exposé on what it called Cullors’ “million-dollar real estate buying binge.” The paper noted that as protests were unfolding around the country, the BLM official was “snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records,” including a California property valued at $1.4 million. The article also revealed that the self-described Marxist and her partner “were spotted in the Bahamas looking for a unit at the Albany,” an “elite enclave laid out on 600 oceanside acres,” which “features a private marina and designer golf course.” The Post included photos of several of the properties obtained from public real estate listings.

  In an interview about that Post story with Marc Lamont Hill, Cullors — except saying she has not visited the Bahamas since the age of 15 — did not deny the accuracy of the reporting, but instead justified her real estate acquisitions. She denied she had taken a salary from the BLM group, pointing to other income she earns as a professor, author, and a YouTube content creator as the source of this sudden outburst of real estate purchases. She denounced the Post reporting as “frankly racist, and sexist.”

  So that seems like a perfectly healthy cycle for covering a controversy, obviously in the public interest. In the wake of concerns from activists about where this massive amount of BLM money has gone, The New York Post did its job of unearthing the splurge of real estate acquisitions by the person who controls and directs BLM’s budget and who has been a target of accusations and suspicions from activists. Cullors then had the opportunity to publicly provide her side of the story concerning her aggressive and ample financial investments.

  But then something quite unhealthy and unusual occurred. Five days after publication of that Post article, the Substack journalists Shant Mesrobian and Zaid Jilani reported that Facebook was banning the sharing of that article worldwide on its platform — similar to what Twitter and Facebook did in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election to The New York Post‘s reporting on the Biden family’s business dealings in China and Ukraine. The Substack reporters noted that Facebook ultimately confirmed the worldwide ban of the Post‘s reporting to The New York Times’ media reporter Ben Smith, justifying it on the ground that the article “revealed personal details about [Cullors] and her residence in violation of Facebook’s community standards.”

  

  In his weekly New York Times Sunday night media column, Smith returned to this subject. When a Facebook lawyer justified the censorship by citing an alleged policy that the tech monopoly will ban any “article [which] shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it,” Smith expressed extreme skepticism:

  The policy sounds crazy because it could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles every day — indeed, to a staple of reporting for generations that has included Michael Bloomberg’s expansion of his townhouse in 2009 and the comings and goings of the Hamptons elites. Alex Rodriguez doesn’t like a story that includes a photo of him and his former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez, smiling in front of his house? Delete it. Donald Trump is annoyed about a story that includes a photo of him outside his suite at Mar-a-Lago? Gone. Facebook’s hands, the lawyer told me, are tied by its own policies.

  Presumably, the only reason this doesn’t happen constantly is because nobody knows about the policy. But now you do!

  Smith was additionally disturbed that Facebook was, in essence, overriding the editorial judgment of news outlets, which grapple every day with how to strike the balance between ensuring the public knows of information in the public interest and protecting a person’s right to privacy. For obvious reasons, public figures and organizations — which both BLM and Cullors undoubtedly are — are deemed to have a lower expectation of privacy when it comes to what is newsworthy. That is why, for example, the extramarital affairs of Donald Trump or Bill Clinton are deemed newsworthy whereas, outside of the dead-but-returning Gawker sewer, the sex lives of private citizens are not. Yet Facebook accords no deference to the editorial judgments even of the most established media outlets. Instead, they told Smith, “Facebook alone decides.”

  ---

  Whatever one’s views are on this particular censorship controversy, there is no doubt that it is part of the highly consequential debate over online free speech and the ability of monopolies like Facebook to control the dissemination of news and the boundaries of political discourse and debate. That is why Smith devoted his weekly column to it. And yet, when Smith approached the standard free speech advocacy groups for comment on this story, virtually none was willing to speak up. “Facebook’s usual critics have been strikingly silent as the company has extended its purview over speech into day-to-day editorial calls,” he wrote.

  Among those groups which insisted that it would not comment on Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s BLM story was the vaunted, brave and deeply principled free speech organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time,” emailed Aaron Madrid Aksoz, an ACLU spokesman. Smith said “the only criticism he could obtain came from the News Media Alliance, the old newspaper lobby, whose chief executive, David Chavern, called blocking The Post’s link ‘completely arbitrary’ and noted that ‘Facebook and Google stand between publishers and their audiences and determine how and whether news content is seen.’”

  How is it possible that the ACLU is all but invisible on one of the central free speech debates of our time: namely, how much censorship should Silicon Valley tech monopolists be imposing on our political speech? As someone who intensively reports on these controversies, I can barely remember any time when the ACLU spoke up loudly on any of these censorship debates, let alone assumed the central role that any civil liberties group with any integrity would, by definition, assume on this growing controversy.

  In lieu of the traditional, iconic and organization-defining willingness — eagerness — of the ACLU to defend free speech precisely when it has been most controversial and upsetting to liberals, what we now get instead are cowardly, P.R.-consultant-scripted excuses for staying as far away as possible: “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time.” That sounds like something Marco Rubio’s office says when asked about a Trump tweet or that a corporate headquarters would say to avoid an inflammatory controversy, not the reaction of a stalwart civil liberties group to a publicly debated act of political censorship.

  In this particular case, it is not difficult to understand the cause of the ACLU’s silence. They obviously cannot defend Facebook’s censorship — affirmatively defending the stifling of political speech is, at least for now, still a bridge too far for the group — but they are petrified of saying anything that might seem even remotely critical of, let alone adversarial to, BLM activists and organizations. That is because BLM is one of the most cherished left-liberal causes, and the ACLU now relies almost entirely on donations and grants from those who have standard left-liberal politics and want and expect the ACLU to advance that ideological and partisan agenda above its nonpartisan civil liberties principles. Criticizing BLM is a third rail in left-liberal political circles, which is where the ACLU now resides almost entirely, and thus it again cowers in silence as another online act of censorship which advances political liberalism emerges. Indeed, BLM is an organization which the ACLU frequently champions:

  No matter how you say it, BLACK LIVES MATTER. pic.twitter.com/KBlyoUA8fR

  — ACLU (@ACLU) January 4, 2021

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

  Like so many liberal-left media outlets and advocacy groups, the ACLU was suffering financially before they were saved and then enriched beyond their wildest dreams by Donald Trump and the #Resistance movement he spawned. “The American Civil Liberties Union this week laid off 23 employees, about 7 percent of the organization’s national staff,” announced The Washington Post in April, 2015. But in the Trump era, the money flowed in almost as quickly and furiously as post-Floyd money to BLM. In February, 2017, said AP, the group “is suddenly awash in donations and new members as it does battle with President Donald Trump over the extent of his constitutional authority, with nearly $80 million in online contributions alone pouring in since the election.” So that is the donor base it now serves.

  

  The ACLU’s we-know-nothing routine for abstaining from commenting on Facebook’s censorship of the BLM article is, for so many reasons, preposterous. The group funds what it calls its Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and some of its best lawyers oversee it. Clearly they focus on these issues. And the ACLU in general has taken a firm and borderline-absolutist position against online censorship by Silicon Valley monopolies: principles whose application to this particular case would be easy and obvious. The ACLU has a section of its website devoted to “Internet Speech,” and its position on such matters is stated explicitly:

  The ACLU believes in an uncensored Internet, a vast free-speech zone deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to traditional media such as books, newspapers, and magazines….The ACLU has been at the forefront of protecting online freedom of expression in its myriad forms. We brought the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared speech on the Internet equally worthy of the First Amendment’s historical protections.

  In a July, 2018 article published on the group’s site entitled “Facebook Shouldn’t Censor Offensive Speech,” the group praised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial pledge “to keep Facebook from diving deeper into the business of censorship” as “the right call.”

  Unlike in response to the BLM controversy, the ACLU had no trouble back then recognizing that “what’s at stake here is the ability of one platform that serves as a forum for the speech of billions of people to use its enormous power to censor speech on the basis of its own determinations of what is true, what is hateful, and what is offensive.” The ACLU’s stated policy on these controversies could not have been clearer: “given Facebook’s nearly unparalleled status as a forum for political speech and debate, it should not take down anything but unlawful speech, like incitement to violence.” In light of that principle, how is it remotely hard to denounce Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s article given that it does not even arguably fall within the scope of those narrow exceptions?

  Because the ACLU still employs a few old-school civil libertarians among its hundreds of lawyers and staff, those employees manage to do work and express views that are consistent with the ACLU’s old-school civil liberties agenda even when contrary to the interests of liberal politics. But the tactics used by the ACLU in those cases to downplay or hide those aberrations are as transparent as they are craven.

  When three Silicon Valley monopolies united to remove the social media app Parler from the internet in January, 2021 after influential Democratic lawmakers demanded it — one of the most brute acts of monopolistic censorship yet — an ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, was cited in The New York Times as labelling Parler’s destruction “troubling,” telling the paper: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.” But on the ACLU’s highly active and influential Twitter account — the group’s primary platform for promoting its work, expressing its views, and soliciting donations, where it has two million followers and often tweets up to fifty times a day — the group said absolutely nothing about the removal of an entire social media app from the internet:

  

  Indeed, the ACLU — outside of a few token, hidden statements — has chosen to play at most a minor role in the key free speech controversies of the day, ones focusing on such weighty matters as internet freedom and online censorship over our political debates by Silicon Valley monopolies. Over the last four years, as Facebook’s censorship has expanded rapidly, the ACLU has said little to nothing about it — including remaining in utter silence about the extraordinary decision to censor pre-election reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and what it revealed about Joe Biden’s business dealings. Last month, Substack reporter Michael Tracey reviewed the ACLU’s prior 100 tweets and found that 63 of them were about trans issues while a grand total of one was about free speech and none about due process. A comparison of the number of ACLU statements on online censorship controversies to its manifestations on trans issues similarly reveals a fixation on the latter with very little interest in the former:

  

  It goes without saying that the ACLU has every right to devote a huge bulk of its institutional resources and public advocacy to the cause of trans equality if it chooses to do so. But what that reveals is that the group is becoming exactly what its leaders always vowed it would never be: just another garden-variety liberal political advocacy group. After all, there is no shortage of extremely well-financed LGBT groups doing the same advocacy on trans issues. Those LGBT groups shifted their focus almost entirely to trans issues when they won the entire agenda of gay and lesbian equality with the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in all fifty states, and supporting trans rights is the mainstream, standard view of Democratic Party leaders and liberal activists.

  The ACLU’s refusal to engage with growing online censorship is baffling even from the perspective of its liberal politics given that radical leftists are increasingly (and predictably) the targets of tech censorship alongside anti-establishment right-wing voices. Just yesterday, the highly popular trans YouTube host Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints complained that one of her past episodes had just been demonetized and urged: “Free speech should be reclaimed as an essential leftist issue. We should not surrender the most fundamental civil right to Google LLC in the name of deplatforming rightists and curtailing harassment.” Wynn’s last video, rebutting the views of J.K. Rowling on trans issues, featured Wynn’s list of the telltale signs of “indirect bigotry” toward trans people, and she included “free speech advocacy,” but — as happens to so many people — Wynn has apparently reconsidered that view and has discovered the centrality of free speech values now that her own speech is targeted. But agitating for more online political censorship still remains a cause deeply popular among establishment liberals, further explaining the ACLU’s reluctance to involve itself in these controversies on the side of free expression.

  

  What always distinguished the ACLU in the past — and what gave it credibility with judges in courtrooms — was its devotion to and focus on non-partisan free speech, free press and due process causes that were too unpopular or controversial for other groups to touch, particularly liberal groups who could not afford to offend the political sensibilities of Democrats. There are still some isolated occasions when the ACLU does such things — such as when it spoke up in defense of the NRA against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to target the group with destruction or when the ACLU recently denounced parts of the Democrats’ H.R.1 “reforms”— but the ACLU largely hides those exceptions on its most popular public platforms, and they are becoming increasingly rare.

  And now we have arrived at the truly depressing and tawdry place where the ACLU is afraid to apply its long-stated principles to denounce Facebook’s censorship because the censorship in question happened to be an article that reflected poorly on the sacred-among-liberals BLM group. In the place of brave lawyers and activists defending the constitutional rights and civil liberties even of those people and groups most despised, we have instead a corporate spokesman emailing The New York Times with excuses about why it cannot and will not speak up about a major censorship controversy that has been brewing for two weeks. In that decline one finds the ACLU’s sorry trajectory from stalwart civil liberties group into a lavishly funded arm of the Democratic Party’s liberal political wing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:00

• Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted
  Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted

  A recall effort against California governor Gavin Newsom (D) gained enough signatures to trigger a special election, according to the latest count by the Secretary of State’s office, which says 1,626,042 submitted signatures have been verified – surpassing the 1.495 million signatures required.

  

  According to KTLA, California voters will face two questions; “Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him?” If there aren’t enough votes on the first question, votes on the second question will be discarded.

  Among the most prominent Republicans running to replace Newsom are former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, who has never run for elected office. Businessman John Cox, who lost badly to Newsom in 2018, and former Congressman Doug Ose, also are running.

  In 2003, voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s the only other recall of a California governor to qualify for the ballot. –KTLA

  “The People of California have done what the politicians thought would be impossible. This recall movement to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office has reached yet another milestone,” said Orrin Heatlie, Lead Proponent of the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign and founder of the California Patriot Coalition.

  According to the petition, grounds for the recall are as follows: “Governor Newsom has implemented laws which are detrimental to the citizens of this state and our way of life. Laws he endorsed favor foreign nationals, in our country illegally, over that of our own citizens. People in this state suffer the highest taxes in the nation, the highest homelessness rates,  and  the  lowest  quality  of  life  as  a  result.  He  has  imposed  sanctuary  state  status  and  fails  to  enforce  immigration  laws.  He  unilaterally  over-ruled  the  will  of  the  people regarding the death penalty. He seeks to impose additional burdens on our state by the following; removing the protections of Proposition 13, rationing our water use, increasing taxes and restricting parental rights.”

  Newsom, who’s into “double masking,” is also a giant hypocrite – breaking his own lockdown edict last November by dining with medical industry lobbyists at an opulent dinner at the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California, while small business owners across the state died on the vine from stater and local lockdown policies. Newsom’s pandemic restrictions have notably been struck down by multiple judges for lack of legal or scientific justification – while several California sheriffs from major counties also publicly announced that they wouldn’t be ‘blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle’ to enforce Newsom’s ‘dictatorial’ lockdowns.

  According to Newsom, and in spite of the above, responded to the recall as an effort by the ‘extreme right wing’ to take power, saying “This is a Republican effort…this is a Donald Trump effort.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:40

• China's E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan
  China’s E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan

  China’s e-commerce giant, JD.com which directly competes with Jack Ma’s Alibaba, said on Sunday that it has started paying some staff in digital yuan, the virtual version of the country’s physical currency which according to some is set to overtake the US dollar and become the world’s next reserve currency.

  JD said that it has provided technology and service support for China’s e-CNY trial programs in Suzhou, Beijing and Chengdu, since partnering with the People’s Bank of China last September.

  

  As we have reported extensively, China has been busy experimenting with digital currency over the past few months and is on track to become the world’s first major economy to issue a digital version of its fiat money, which could see a wider rollout at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. In October, Shenzhen, a southern city known for its progressive economic policies, doled out 10 million yuan worth of digital currency to 500,000 residents, who could then use the money to shop at certain online and offline retailers.

  

  Several other large Chinese cities have followed Shenzhen’s suit. The residents in these regions must apply through selected banks to start receiving and paying by digital yuan.

  As TechCrunch notes, the electronic yuan initiative is a collective effort involving China’s regulators, commercial banks and technology solution providers. At first glance, the scheme still mimics how physical yuan is circulating at the moment; under the direction of the central bank, the six major commercial banks in China, including ICBC, distribute the digital yuan to smaller banks and a web of tech solution providers, which could help bring more use cases to the new electronic money.

  Of course, that means that the digital yuan is anything but a cryptocurrency, and is merely a more digital version of the currency already in circulation. In fact, all that the digital yuan is achieving is the forced conversion of all paper currency into digital token format, which allows Beijing infinitesimal control over every single transaction, and revealing the identity of every single currency holder – precisely the opposite of what cryptos stand for.

  Of course, since China is an authoritarian regime where companies have to comply with Beijing’s demands to be “Jack Ma’d”, China’s major tech companies have actively participated in the buildout of the digital yuan ecosystem, which will help the central government better track money flows even better.

  Aside from JD.com, video streaming platform Bilibili, on-demand services provider Meituan and ride-hailing app Didi have also begun accepting digital yuan for user purchases. Gaming and social networking giant Tencent became one of the “digital yuan operators” and will take part in the design, R&D and operational work of the electronic money. Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which is undergoing a major overhaul following a stalled IPO, has also joined hands with the central bank to work on building out the infrastructure to move money digitally. Huawei, the telecom equipment titan debuted a wallet on one of its smartphone models that allows users to spend digital yuan instantaneously even if the device is offline.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:20

• NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 
  NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 

  A summer of gun violence could be nearing for New York City as Mayor Bill de Blasio, a symbol of America’s ultra-progressive left, cannot stop a wave of shootings and homicides. 

  According to NYPost, NYPD data reveals the metro area endured its bloodiest week so far this year as shootings and homicides erupt.

  About 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over seven days ending Sunday (April 26). Compared to the same time last year, violent crime has skyrocketed 300%. To be fair, the metro area was in lockdowns last year around this time, but still, de Blasio’s liberal policing policies are failing.

  

  This weekend alone, there were two dozen people shot and three killed. A weekend from hell could be the first course of many more as warmer temperatures bring more people outside and into the streets. 

  In response to the mayhem, de Blasio has unveiled a plan to stop gun violence with new efforts to place more police officers in high-crime districts and convince gangs to trade in their weapons for jobs. 

  Ahead of the summer months, a surge in violent crime and reopening could be a perfect storm to fuel a violent crime wave. 

  De Blasio’s inability to stop gun violence is very troubling. A spike in crime has given city dwellers a reason to move out of the city for peace and quiet as they remote work in the suburbs. 

  Nearly three decades of declining violent crime have reversed thanks to de Blasio and his liberal band of progressives who think they know best when it comes to how policing should work. Certainly, defunding the police and dismantling the NYPD anti-crime unit has backfired. 

  New York City faces an absolute disaster of failed liberal leadership and an example for the next mayor of what not to do to move the city forward.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:00

• Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC "Swarming" Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf
  Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC “Swarming” Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf

  US Navy officials have revealed to The Wall Street Journal that a pair of Coast Guard ships were recently “swarmed” by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fast boats in the Persian Gulf earlier this month as they conducted patrols in international waters.

  The report says “The incident occurred April 2, just as the U.S. and Iran announced they would conduct negotiations toward renewing the 2015 multilateral nuclear accord.” It was considered by the Pentagon to be a major incident (unlike the more frequent, minor exchange of “warnings” between rival military vessels in the region) given the IRGC boats encircled and “buzzed” the US vessels for up to three hours.  

  

  A US Navy spokesperson condemned the “unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” and underscored the Iranian side failed to back off after multiple radio warning attempts communicated. 

  It’s rare that such an incident occurred with US Coast Guard ships… naturally we wonder what United States Coast Guard ships were doing so far away from… the US coast.

  The US Navy apparently provided a photo of the incident in progress…

  Did anyone else just assume the U.S. Coast Guard only guards the coastline of the United States? https://t.co/qMb6lDsCka

  — Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 26, 2021

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

  The incident is recounted in further detail by the WSJ as follows:

  U.S. Navy officials confirmed that three fast attack crafts and one ship known as Harth 55, a 180-foot, twin-hulled support vessel, swarmed the two Coast Guard ships while they were patrolling international waters in the southern portion of the Persian Gulf.

  The larger vessel repeatedly crossed in front of the bows of the two U.S. vessels, the Monomoy and the Wrangell, coming as close as 70 yards away, officials said. That forced the Wrangell to have to make defensive maneuvers to avoid collision, Navy officials said.

  The Harth 55 is perhaps the most distinctive somewhat recent addition to Iran’s Navy, considered a high-speed vessel capable of carrying a helicopter and up to 100 troops.

  

  The timing of the public disclosure of this “new” swarming event revelation is interesting given it comes a day after leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif surfaced. In it he candidly admits that the IRGC often overrides government decisions, even suggesting the late IRGC Quds Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani tried to sabotage Iran’s seeking to restore the JCPOA nuclear deal.

  Could the IRGC’s April 2 swarming event in the Gulf (just as the Vienna talks were about to get started) have been part of an attempt of hardliners leading the military establishment to derail attempts of ‘moderates’ at engagement with the US? 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 04/26/2021 – 18:40