• Bovard: Lockdowns Wrecked Democracy Around The World
  Bovard: Lockdowns Wrecked Democracy Around The World

  Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  While the number of fatalities attributed to Covid-19 is carefully tracked by governments, few people have recognized how pandemic-spurred crackdowns have devastated democracy around the world. Emergency proclamations have entitled presidents and other government officials to seize vast new powers previously forbidden to them.

  Government bureaucrats became a new priesthood that could sanctify unlimited sacrifices merely by invoking dubious statistical extrapolations of future perils. 

  

  In October, Freedom House issued a report, Democracy under Lockdown – The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Freedom, which warned that since the pandemic started, “the condition of democracy and human rights has worsened in 80 countries.” Sarah Repucci, co-author of the report, warned that “governments’ responses to the pandemic are eroding the pillars of democracy around the world.” Abuses of power have been propelled by a presumption that government officials are entitled to all the power they claim to need to keep people safe. 

  When the pandemic arrived in America, governors in many states responded by dropping the equivalent of a Reverse Neutron Bomb – something which destroys the economy while supposedly leaving human beings unharmed. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo set the standard when he effectively declared that he was entitled to inflict any burden on his state’s residents to “save just one life.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned people from walking or bicycling outside. More than ten million jobs were lost thanks to lockdowns, a major reason why life expectancy in the United States last year had its sharpest plunge since World War Two. 

  Australia imposed some of the most heavy-handed restrictions. In August, the state of Victoria dictated an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for the Melbourne area and prohibited people from venturing more than three miles from their residence. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews decreed: “Where you slept last night is where you’ll need to stay for the next six weeks.” Melbourne has been hit by repeated lockdowns since then. 

  Britain unleashed some of the most absurd restrictions. In June, it prohibited couples who live in different homes from having sex indoors. The Independent (U.K.) noted, “People who have sex outside can be punished under pre-existing laws on outraging public decency and indecent exposure.” Steve Watson reported in January for Summit News that British cabinet ministers “ have privately debated preventing people from talking to each other in the street and in supermarkets, and even preventing people from leaving home more than once per week, and introducing curfews.” British vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi fretted, “I’m worried about some of the pictures I’ve seen of social interactions in parks, if you have to exercise you can go out for exercise only.” Apparently, a national vow of silence is necessary to fight Covid. Summit News noted, “Police are also demanding new powers to force entry into the homes of suspected lockdown violators.” Former British Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption complained last month, “Foreign travel is being prohibited, turning us into a hermit island on the basis we cannot know what mutations may be lurking out there. The logic of these policies is that we must be locked down for ever simply because the world is a dangerous place.”

  New Zealand has imposed four separate lockdowns in its pursuit to banish the virus from the island, repeatedly placing residents in the capital city under house arrest. In October, the government announced it was creating “quarantine centers” for anyone who tests positive and refuses to obey government orders. One Twitter wag scoffed, “New Zealand went from gun bans to concentration camps in less than a year.”

  Covid horrors have been more dramatic in some developing nations.

  In Uganda, as the Economist reported, Francis Zaake, a member of parliament, delivered food to his neediest constituents during a pandemic lockdown. But “Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered that only the government may hand out food aid. Anyone else who does so can be charged with murder, Mr Museveni has threatened, since they might do it in a disorderly way, attract crowds and thereby spread the coronavirus.” 

  Police and soldiers forcibly entered Zaake’s house and “dragged him into a van and threw him in a cell. He says they beat, kicked and cut him, crushed his testicles, sprayed a blinding chemical into his eyes, called him a dog and told him to quit politics. He claims that one sneered: ‘We can do whatever we want to you or even kill you…No one will demonstrate for you because they are under lockdown.’” 

  In Kenya, police killed at least 15 people during brutal crackdowns on alleged violators of lockdown decrees. Amnesty International declared that the Covid-19 pandemic provided “the perfect storm for indiscriminate mass violence” by the police, thanks to the “pervasive culture of impunity among [police] service members who rely on systemic corruption.”

  Journalists in many nations risked their hides if they violated politicians’ monopoly on fear-mongering. Almost a hundred nations have imposed new restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press since the pandemic began. Freedom House reported: “Governments enacted new legislation against spreading ‘fake news’ about the virus. They also limited independent questioning at press conferences, suspended the printing of newspapers, and blocked websites.” Reporters Without Borders, a nonprofit for press freedom, warned, “Most governments yielded to the temptation, using a variety of repressive measures…, of making official channels the only credible and authoritative sources of information.” Many regimes have expanded the definition of “fake news” to justify repression:

  • “In Ethiopia, the definition of misinformation is so broad that it gives the authorities the discretionary power to declare any piece of information false.”

  • “In India, Egypt, Botswana and Somalia, only government statements on the subject may be published.” 

  • “In Cambodia, the government gave itself the legal power to ban the publication of “any information that could cause unrest, fear or disorder.”

  • In Rwanda, the journalist who runs the YouTube news channel Ishema TV was imprisoned for violating Covid lockdown regulations. “At the time of his arrest he was reporting on the effects of the lockdown on the population and investigating allegations of rape committed by soldiers enforcing the lockdown,” Reporters without Borders notes.

  • In Zimbabwe, anyone “who publishes or disseminates ‘false’ information about an official, or that impedes the response to the pandemic, faces up to 20 years in prison,” the Economist reported. 

  • Tanzania suffered a wave of censorship after the nation’s president publicly denounced Covid-19 as a “Western plot.” “Several news outlets, including the country’s leading Swahili-language newspaper Mwananchi, were closed down after publishing stories about Covid-19. Others were forced to broadcast apologies after carrying reports on the subject which angered the authorities,” Reporters without Borders noted. 

  • In Thailand, Amnesty International reported, “authorities are prosecuting social media users who criticize the government and monarchy in a systematic campaign to crush dissent which is being exacerbated by new COVID-19 restrictions. Authorities have wasted no time using existing repressive laws in order to censor ‘false’ communications related to COVID-19.” The government decreed five-year prison sentences for any Thai journalists or media outlets that published information officials decree to be “capable of causing fear in the public.”

  “Government knows best” is the subtext for arbitrary decrees issued around the world. An Associated Press article in January explained why Californians were denied access to the information that determined the fate of their freedom: “State health officials said they rely on a very complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public.” But many data-driven dictatorial policies relied on data that was either fraudulent, politically contrived, or laughably inaccurate. On the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, the World Health Organization changed the test standard for defining Covid cases, guaranteeing that far fewer “cases” would be reported and thereby making a mockery of the previous 10 months data. 

  The pandemic’s precedents pose a long-term peril for liberty around the globe. Freedom House expects that “official responses to COVID-19 have laid the groundwork for government excesses that could affect democracy for years to come.” This was foreseeable from the start of the pandemic but the media in some Western nations were the biggest cheerleaders for obliterating limits on political power. The secrecy that proliferated during the pandemic will make it harder for citizens to recognize how badly they have been misgoverned. 

  Going forward, citizens in many nations might appreciate this old adage from American politics: “The Constitution isn’t perfect but it’s better than what we have now.” Federal judge William Stickman IV declared in September, “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” But unless there is a similar stark ruling from the Supreme Court, shutdowns could return whenever politicians can panic enough citizens with some new threat. 

  Lockdown victims around the globe would be wise to heed Thomas Jefferson’s 1798 warning that the doctrine “that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it [is] nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers.” The pandemic painfully illustrated how government officials can always concoct the data to justify whatever decree they itch to issue. And regardless of the needless deaths and disruptions caused by government policies, it will be the opponents of lockdowns who will be labeled grandma-killers.

  The Biden administration is reviving America’s proselytizing for democracy around the globe. But Covid-19 crackdowns are a warning for people to be wary of oppressive governments regardless of their purported mandate. The world doesn’t need any more Cage Keeper Democracies where citizens’ ballots merely designate who will place them under house arrest.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 23:40

• Visualizing The Rising Cost Of College In The U.S.
  Visualizing The Rising Cost Of College In The U.S.

  The average cost of getting a college degree has soared relative to overall inflation over the last few decades. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details nelow, since 1980, college tuition and fees are up 1,200%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all items has risen by only 236%.

  

  Back in 1980, it cost $1,856 to attend a degree-granting public school in the U.S., and $10,227 to attend a private school after adjusting for inflation. Since then, the figures have skyrocketed. Here’s how college tuition and the CPI have both changed since 1980:

  

  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest year-over-year change in college tuition and fees was recorded in June 1982 at 14.2%— and over that same time period, overall inflation was up 6.6%.

  On the other hand, November 2020 saw the lowest year-over-year change in the average cost of college at 0.6%, mainly as a result of the shift to online classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, some schools are offering discounts to students, and some are even canceling scheduled tuition increases entirely in a bid to remain attractive.

  Why is the Cost of College Rising?

  While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons behind the rapid surge in the cost of education, a few factors could help explain why U.S. colleges hike their prices.

  • Decrease in State Funding

  State funding per student fell from $8,800 (2007-08) to $8,200 (2018-19), while the share of tuition in college revenues increased.

  • Increase in Demand

  The demand for a college education has increased over time. Between 2000-2018, undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting institutions increased by 26%.

  • Increase in Federal Aid

  According to a study from the New York Fed, every $1 in subsidized federal student loans increases college tuition by $0.60. Student loan debt has doubled since the 2008 recession.

  Furthermore, the costs of providing education, known as institutional expenditures, have also escalated over time. These include spending on instruction, student services, administrative support, operations, and maintenance—all of which are critical to the student experience.

  With student debt at unprecedented levels and ongoing public debates surrounding the rising costs of education, it’s uncertain how college tuition will evolve. However, given the onset of virtual classes, further hikes to college tuitions may be on hold for the foreseeable future.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 23:20

• Ban On 205 Different ‘Assault Weapons’ Introduced By Sen. Feinstein
  Ban On 205 Different ‘Assault Weapons’ Introduced By Sen. Feinstein

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Thursday introduced a ban on more than 200 “assault weapons” after the House passed two gun-control measures pertaining to background checks.

  

  Her bill (pdf), called the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2021,” is co-sponsored by 34 Senate Democrats and would ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds—similar to the bans on magazines in New York state and California.

  According to the legislation, which was also introduced in the House by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the ban would encompass more than 205 rifles. Feinstein’s bill would allow current owners of the guns to retain possession of them. If that gun is transferred, a person has to undergo an FBI background check before getting the firearm.

  The bill also bans any weapon that has the capacity to use a magazine that isn’t a fixed ammunition magazine and has one or more characteristics such as a pistol grip, forward grip, a threaded barrel, a folding or telescoping stock, or a barrel shroud.

  The bill “requires that grandfathered assault weapons are stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock” and prohibits the transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines while banning “bump-fire stocks and other devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates,” according to a news release from Feinstein’s office. Bump-fire stocks were made illegal in March 2019.

  “It’s been 17 years since the original Assault Weapons Ban expired, and the plague of gun violence continues to grow in this country. To be clear, this bill saves lives. When it was in place from 1994-2004, gun massacres declined by 37 percent compared with the decade before. After the ban expired, the number of massacres rose by 183 percent,” Feinstein said in a statement Thursday.

  There are more than 20 million modern sporting rifles owned by private citizens, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, as reported by pro-Second Amendment website Bearingarms.com.

  Republicans and gun-rights groups have said proposals from Feinstein, who has long advocated for gun control, are unconstitutional and won’t prevent firearms from getting in the hands of criminals.

  “Law-abiding Americans use them for every type of lawful purpose, including personal and home defense, hunting, marksmanship competitions, and recreational target practice,” stated the National Rifle Association (NRA) when Feinstein attempted to introduce the bill in 2019. “Needless to say, however, the modern criminal element will not be playing by the antiquated rules that Feinstein hopes to apply to the rest of us,” the group asserted.

  On Thursday, the House passed two Democratic-backed gun control measures, including one would that would expand background checks to those purchasing weapons over the internet, at gun shows, and through certain private transactions. Only eight Republicans joined the Democrats in backing the bill.

  The second bill, passed 219-210 with only two Republicans supporting it, would give authorities 10 business days for federal background checks to be completed before a gun sale can be licensed.

  Reuters contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 23:00

• Russia-China Joint Lunar Base Sparks Fears Of Space Arms Race
  Russia-China Joint Lunar Base Sparks Fears Of Space Arms Race

  Conventional wisdom states the world is in a bipolar era. Though we tend to disagree with that as a multipolar international system is in the works. Multiple superpowers align forces that are the US and other Western nations, and, of course, Russia and China. 

  Russia and China joined forces this week to build a lunar space station. China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos signed a memorandum of understanding to construct a lunar base station for a “complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon”.

  Bank of America’s Haim Israel told clients last month that a space race is underway. He said the US has already been forced to create the United States Space Force in a “direct response to the growing militarization of space” by other superpowers. 

  BofA’s Israel shows which countries in 1966 versus 2016 have satellites and launch capabilities. The conclusion here is much of the world except large swaths of Africa can launch rockets into space with satellites. 

  

  A multipolar international order is developing, and each side is racing to cement its moon base on the lunar surface. Each side wants a slice of the lunar surface, and for a good reason, because, as we’ve mentioned before, there could be an abundance of rare metals underneath. 

  

  Not too long ago, we event suggested the idea that a “brewing war to set a mining base in space is likely to see China and Russia joining forces to keep the US increasing attempts to dominate extra-terrestrial commerce at bay.” 

  Bruce Jones, an expert on Russia and defense, told Daily Mirror that “Russia and China combining their resources, their finances and expertise could lead to all kinds of security threats.” 

  “But most importantly, it means that the west will be forced to react with their supposed plans to form a moon-base.

  “The agreement between the two countries will act as a force multiplier in that it will increase the capabilities of both.

  “Security for the west in space is enormously important because of our satellite technology which could come under threat.

  “It is important to most aspects of our lives and needs to be protected against any threat from outside,” Jones said. 

  Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said: “Any co-operation of this kind between Russia and China is always of concern.”

  “Security in space has long been critical, and I expect this new announcement will mean it will become increasingly so to the UK military.

  “Anything that has an impact on our cyber and space security has to be watched very carefully, and Britain will have to make sure its capability in this area can compete,” Kemp said. 

  Trillions of dollars of iron ore, nickel, and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, are likely under the moon’s surface. The next wild west is in space. Countries are already aligning forces. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 22:40

• How California Is Embracing Mandatory Racial-Injustice Study For All Of Its 1.7 Million High Schoolers
  How California Is Embracing Mandatory Racial-Injustice Study For All Of Its 1.7 Million High Schoolers

  Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations (emphasis ours),

  California has struggled for five years to create a politically palatable “ethnic studies” curriculum that would teach high schoolers how systemic racism, predatory capitalism, heteropatriarchy and other “structures of oppression” are foundational to American society.

  

  Now, after more than 82,000 public comments, and four major rewrites, the state Board of Education is expected to approve the latest version next week, clearing the way for lawmakers to make a semester-long course in the material a graduation requirement for all of California’s 1.7 million high school students.

  

  The latest curriculum, however scaled back, still shares similarities with an earlier, rejected draft that a top state official said failed to comply with state law, and the Los Angeles Times editorial board characterized as a jumble of “politically correct pronouncements” that feel like “an exercise in groupthink, designed to proselytize and inculcate more than to inform and open minds.”

  When all is said and done, the material emphasizing whites’ subjugation of non-whites is not a conventional textbook subject, but an ideology with an activist political agenda. Revisions may never satisfy parents and teachers who believe public schools shouldn’t be in the business of teaching kids how to develop a “social consciousness” or using class time to pinpoint a student’s intersectional identity to determine where they fit on a hierarchy of power.

  At the same time, ethnic studies activists are furious that their efforts at promoting social justice, and centering “voices of color” are being diluted by, as they put it, power structures such as “whiteness,” Zionism and assimilationism.

  Passage of the landmark curriculum at the board’s scheduled meeting on March 18 should mark a hard-fought victory for the half-century-old ethnic studies movement and help advocates promote their movement across the country. But it will not end the conflict in California, where the issue will be forced to the local level to be decided by local schoolboards or in individual classrooms.

  The reason: The state’s guidelines grant teachers wide flexibility in how they teach the subject. Ethnic studies activists — including those who wrote the first, rejected draft of the curriculum — say high school teachers will have an escape clause to teach a watered down version that the activists deride as a “Foods, Heroes & Holidays” and “all lives matter” pabulum. These advocates insist on hewing to a heroic narrative about how people of color have suffered from and fought against European capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

  

  Practitioners have formed their own organization – the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute – to promote an “authentic” ethnic studies, a discipline born in the late 1960s out of student campus protests led by the Third World Liberation Front to end Eurocentrism in education.

  For the past year, these activists have been meeting in online sessions to hash out strategy, expound upon their “liberatory” and “transformational” ideology, and encourage educators to teach the full-strength curriculum that the state has flunked. Their unguarded comments in numerous videos convey the combative tone and spirit of ethnic studies already evident in some California classrooms, and likely to be adopted by many more teachers regardless of the model curriculum approved by the state.

  “Inside of the United States, native people have been actively fighting a long war to dismantle the United States,” said Stevie Ruiz, who teaches in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the California State University, Northridge, during a May 2020 online strategy session.

  “So then we can actually think about what happens if we honor native people’s acknowledgements and begin to tear apart the United States internally,” continued  Ruiz, who was listed as one of the leaders of the Liberated group until February. “What if we decide to call this place the United States no longer?”

  ‘A Way of Life’

  The Liberated Ethnic Studies group includes many of the original authors of the 2019 Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that the state has gutted, as well as 50 scholars, teachers, practitioners and students, according to Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an Asian American Studies professor at San Francisco State University, speaking during a Feb. 2 online event. The advocates say that many state officials fail to grasp that ethnic studies is not a traditional school subject, but a movement and a philosophy best described as “narrative medicine,” “radical healing” and even a “way of life.” It’s distinguished from traditional classroom instruction by its emotional, immersive pedagogy designed to deprogram kids from European cultural assumptions, to make teenagers conscious of systemic inequities, and to reconnect them with forgotten ancestral knowledge.

  According to one of the Liberated institute leaders, Theresa Montaño, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at the California State, Northridge, the group’s K-12 lesson plans should be available online for free this spring.

  

  According to the group’s web site, the material will be based on five themes: racialized intersectional identity, collective narratives, systems of power and oppression, resilience and resistance, and solidarity among people of color. And the Liberated institute is open for business: “We have packages and experts that can help you with your Ethnic Studies professional learning needs.”

  “We know that when districts begin to implement their ethnic studies programs, they’re not going to go to the state of California and say, ‘Excuse me, state of California, can you come to L.A. and help me implement my ethnic studies program?’” Montaño said last August. “No, they’re going to come to us. And so we are continuing the work that we need to do to develop ethnic studies while simultaneously holding on to some critical hope that we can still influence what the state of California does.”

  In repeated expressions of frustration, the advocates attribute the state’s political compromises to a common enemy: “whiteness” – what they call the oppressive force that their movement and its precursors have been seeking to disempower for 500 years. “All of the attacks against the ESMC [Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum] came from the realms of whiteness and authoritarian whitesplaining,” read a statement Los Angeles public school intervention counselor Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona posted during her May presentation on ethnic studies and teacher preparation.

  “Well-funded attempts at whitewashing the ESMC ranged from right wing white nationalists at Breitbart, to Wall Street Journal white capitalists who deny the climate crisis, to white moderates who superficially may say they support ethnic studies, but only if it’s done in the way they ‘as gate-keeping white moderates’ say it needs to be done.”

  The model curriculum that Cardona, Montaño, Tintiangco-Cubales and others wrote in 2019 hit a tripwire with references to Palestinian resistance to the state of Israel as an example of ethnic studies in action. The removal of those references from the state’s revised curriculum, and the addition of lessons about anti-Semitism, is seen by the advocates as emblematic of the way white power structures erase the histories of those they oppress.  

  Cardona, one of the founding members of the Liberated Ethnic Studies group, said by phone that she expects an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions lesson to be included in the Liberated materials that the group is developing.

  Cardona is a longtime public school teacher and a veteran of California’s ethnic studies skirmishes, having been fired from a teaching position three years ago after some parents found out she was a member of a Marxist organization that advocates for political revolution, emulates Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and vows “to crush all forms of oppression and reactionary tendencies.”

  Rejecting the state’s assimilationist bent, Cardona suggested that ethnic studies has a totally different focus than the current equity push to get people of color into middle management positions.

  “They just want little youth to want this little piece of this American pie because that’s what they think social justice is: put black, brown, indigenous bodies in college, put them into these corporate positions and have them do the same old thing that this country does,” she said in a May podcast. “And we’re saying, No, there’s something wrong with this system. We want black, brown and indigenous bodies in universities to learn about it and to transform and to end all of this oppression, not to continue the roles of the oppressor.”

  Another flash point in the 2019 model curriculum was the exclusive focus on people of color, with no mention of European ethnicities that were subject to discrimination and genocide. The experiences of European groups, including Jews and Armenians, deserve to be studied, the advocates say, but they have no connection to the ethnic studies movement, whose true focus is the worldview and struggle of people of color against white supremacy.

  

  The sweeping 1,000-plus pages of the state’s revised model curriculum and appendices have toned down the language of the original version, but the public comments cite a number of concerns.

  Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by Al Qaeda terrorists, wrote: “I am particularly alarmed by its attempt to depict inter-ethnic relationships as a[n] irreconcilable struggle between racially-defined ‘oppressed’ and [‘]oppressors,’ and by the way it associates ‘whiteness’ with ‘oppression’ and ‘colonialism.’”

  According to one of several definitions of “race” provided, American society comprises two opposing racial factions: “In the United States today, races very broadly break down as people of color (POC) and white people.” That definition comes from Rethinking Ethnic Studies, a primer co-edited by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, a consultant and one of the authors of the rejected 2019 version of the model curriculum.

  Breaking New Ground

  The state’s Department of Education described its ethnic studies undertaking in the previous draft as “a groundbreaking project – the first of its kind among the 50 states.” And given California’s outsize influence in the textbook industry and educational trends, it is assumed by many in the field that California’s standards could serve as a national model for years to come.

  California’s push to make a semester-long ethnic studies class a graduation requirement for all of its 1.74 million high school students in 1,322 high schools would be an exponential expansion for a course taught to 20,500 students in 314 high schools during the 2018-19 academic year.

  Ethnic studies advocates believe that after four years of President Donald Trump, a pandemic that hit minorities hard, and a summer of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Americans are ready to grapple with the moral implications of the nation’s origins and history.

  “All the horrific shit that white people have been doing to us, has now began to haunt them,” Ruiz told his colleagues in the May video. “Because they’ve been experimenting on us for 500 years, it’s no longer something you can contain anymore.”

  They also see encouraging signs in President Biden’s choice of education secretary, Miguel Cardona, considered a champion of the cause who will be well positioned to put federal muscle behind it. As Connecticut’s commissioner of education last year, Cardona oversaw that state’s adoption of a requirement that all high schools offer courses in African American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino studies.

  “For Ethnic Studies advocates, that’s really encouraging and suggests that maybe we might see some national efforts that are encouraging folks to implement Ethnic Studies in the K-12 setting,” said Ravi Perry, chairman of Howard University’s political science department and immediate past president of the Association for Ethnic Studies.

  “Education is a local issue,” Perry said. “But perhaps like they’ve done with transgender bathroom directives in the Obama administration, they can provide some incentives, some strongly worded language to districts, to encourage them to adopt this curriculum while working behind the scenes in the House and Senate to get a bill passed that would perhaps require this [nationally].”

  There’s no way of getting around the fact that ethnic studies is going to make some people uncomfortable.

  “It’s an explicit, straight-out confrontation with power,” said Ron Scapp, professor of humanities and teacher education at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, in New York, and past president of the Association for Ethnic Studies. “And the power in the U.S. is predicated on the white supremacist, Christian nationalist, unfettered capitalist caste system.”

  Scapp, who was editor of the journal Ethnic Studies Review for a decade until last year, said the strident tone of some advocates can sound extreme, but that rhetoric is part of the spirit of resistance.

  “They are expressing the outrage, the pain, the suffering, and the longing for home, the longing for validity and legitimacy,” he said. “But in that expression of pain and hurt – and maybe a bit of, like, ‘Fuck you, white man’ – I actually think they do a disservice because they wind up participating in a discourse of violence.”

  Conversely, the movement’s culture is capable of expressing an almost utopian exuberance. Advocates repeatedly say that ethnic studies has “saved” their life and that it “saves” the lives of students.

  In a Feb. 2 organizing session online, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, professor of Latina/o Studies and Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University, hyperbolically declared that Western knowledge stands in awe of the wisdom contained in ethnic studies.

  “There isn’t even a debate in the medical field, in neurobiology, in psychology, in social epidemiology, and in public health, about how important an ethnic studies framework and project is to the wellness of the nation,” he said.

  Still, confronting complicity in or victimization by European colonialism, imperialism and genocide can take a toll on teenagers, and the California Department of Education’s proposal initially advised schools to have trained counselors on standby to assist distraught students. Indeed, the language in California’s third draft of the proposal read like a surgeon general’s warning: “Engaging topics on race, class, gender, oppression, etc. may evoke feelings of vulnerability, uneasiness, sadness, guilt, helplessness, or discomfort.”

  The fourth draft removed the warnings, saying instead: “Given the unique and often sensitive material and discussions that may unfold in an ethnic studies course, being able to establish trust and building community within the classroom are essential.”

   ‘Proselytizing’ in Public Schools

  Some warn that the ethnic studies curriculum amounts to political indoctrination, violates state anti-discrimination policy, and at times borders on child abuse.

  These critics are concerned that kids won’t be required to just study the material, take a multiple-choice test, write a paper and move on; they may be required to espouse progressive politics as a condition of passing the class and graduating from high school.

  “It’s a totalitarian worldview that is every bit as much a faith community as any religion,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, an anti-Semitism watchdog group in Santa Cruz, Calif.

  “In a public school, it really is the imposition of a state religion,” she said. “This kind of proselytizing has no place in public schools.”

  Even though California offers flexibility on teaching the material, the advocates say a state curriculum reflecting their outlook would provide an important tactical advantage: the necessary political cover to advance their agenda against the expected public backlash.

  “If it’s watered down in that curriculum, yes, it’s just a model, you can adjust it,” Cardona said in a December podcast interview. “But you don’t have that sort of political coverage that you could have if it was already in the model curriculum.”

  Cardona is speaking from personal experience. In 2018 she was suspected of teaching Marxist and communist ideology, and was fired from a teaching position at the El Rancho Unified School District, which is about 98% Hispanic and holds the distinction of being the first school district in California to adopt, in 2014, an ethnic studies high school graduation requirement.

  According to local news coverage, local residents began to voice concerns about Cardona’s involvement in several activist organizations, including Unión del Barrio. According to the organization’s website and 17-page political manifesto, the group is committed to dislodging European imperialists from the Western Hemisphere and regaining political sovereignty for people of color from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, forming a single geopolitical unit called Nuestra America, “ultimately advancing Simón Bolívar’s dream of a unified continent.”

  “We will never unite with bourgeois, capitalist, neo-colonialists, who actively unite with imperialism, exploit their own people, and choose to advance their individual self-interest over the interests of all others,” the group declares.

  Cardona said by phone that she subscribes to the revolutionary philosophy of Unión del Barrio, but she does not mix her extracurricular political activities with her day job as a teacher. And she does not hide it: To this day her personal website declares: “She is a proud member of the socialist political organization, Union del Barrio.”

  Guillermo Gómez, who teaches ethnic studies at Lincoln High School in San Diego, declared himself in May 2020 as “actually accountable and responsible” to Unión del Barrio, which has “developed my political ideology in order to continue the work that we do.”

  In the May webinar, Gómez gave a detailed account of the step-by-step process used to introduce teachers and students to the Ethnic Studies worldview. “It’s important to ground ourselves in this concept of love, of revolutionary love,” he described the initiation.

  The training starts by establishing that ethnic studies is grounded in social justice, Gómez said, astutely noting: “Who can argue against social justice, right?”

  The process advances through progressive stages of buy-in.

  For example, students are taught to see themselves not as individuals but through their identity. And after they start seeing themselves through the prism of race, gender and other intersectional modes of power and oppression, they are taught that their identity is exposed and vulnerable to malevolent external forces.

  “Once they’re grounded and they’re very strong about what their identity is, then we start bringing the teachers and students into ideas and attacks against their identity,” he explained. “And once they’re able to analyze and identify the systems of oppression, the question becomes, Well what can we do now?”

  Some teachers and students become totally committed.

  “Ethnic studies is not just an academic discipline – it’s like your whole life – it’s life, period,” Gómez said in the webinar. Gómez did not respond to an email, but Scapp said Gómez represents something very encouraging in ethnic studies: He uses the language of love rather than confrontation, and he’s helping students declutter their minds of toxic ideas.

  “It’s the opposite of indoctrination,” Scapp said. “The starting point is that people are already indoctrinated, even if they are not white, by white supremacy.”

  In the video, Gómez said that teaching effectively ultimately comes down to trust. “Once you have a strong, positive loving community in the classroom,” Gómez said, “you pretty much can teach anything.”

  Email: jmurawski@realclearinvestigations.com

  Twitter: @johnmurawski

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 22:20

• Tom Cruise's Luxury Log Cabin Hidden In Colorado Forest Lists For $39.5 Million
  Tom Cruise’s Luxury Log Cabin Hidden In Colorado Forest Lists For $39.5 Million

  Tom Cruise’s mansion, located in Telluride, Colorado, has just been listed on the market for $39.5 million. The actor’s 10,000-square-foot stone-and-cedar home features 320 acres and amenities for an adrenalin junky. 

  WSJ first reported Cruise’s home went on the market this week. Listing agents Eric Lavey of LIV Sotheby’s International Realty and his colleague Dan Dockray said seven years ago, the property, packed with dirt bike and snowmobile track and complex network of trails for hiking, snowshoeing, and all-terrain vehicle, had a non-public listing value of around $59 million.

  

  For whatever reason, Cruise and his agents are taking a 33% haircut from the non-public listing seven years ago. Perhaps, but not mentioned in the WSJ article, the timing of today’s sale comes as city dwellers are fleeing to rural communities. 

  The stunning home appears to have no drywall or paint, instead constructed with timbers and wooden planks. 

  Den Area 

  

  Kitchen

  

  The property is tucked away in a densely wooded area, which sits miles from downtown Telluride, an old mining town in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The property was completed in 1994, about two years before he starred in the spy movie “Mission: Impossible.” 

  Listing agents believe Cruise has put the log cabin mansion up for sale due to the property’s inactivity. Though it’s likely, he’s striking while the iron is hot, unloading it as panicked city dwellers gobble up rural land. 

  Dockray told WSJ, “People sat down during this lockdown and said ‘What am i doing with my life? I want a better lifestyle.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 22:00

• Buchanan: Is A Cold War II with China Inevitable?
  Buchanan: Is A Cold War II with China Inevitable?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  Today, the four premier leaders of The Quad — the U.S., Australia, India and Japan — conduct their first summit, by teleconference.

  The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal strategy forum of the major Indo-Pacific democracies that some wish to see evolve into an Asian NATO to contain China, as NATO contained the Soviet Union for 40 years of Cold War.

  Next week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan meet their Chinese counterparts midway between Beijing and Washington — in Anchorage, Alaska.

  The Chinese are said to have sought out the two-day meeting since before the inauguration of Biden.

  And understandably so. For while the Chinese are hoping for a reset of relations after a troubled last year with the Trump administration, leaders of both U.S. parties — to compensate for decades of congressional indulgence of Beijing —suddenly seem to be on their muscle.

  Consider.

  During the transition, the Biden foreign policy team gave a war guarantee to Manila to fight alongside the Philippines in any clash with the Chinese over disputed rocks and reefs in the South China Sea.

  Tokyo was informed that its mutual security treaty with the United States that dates to the 1950s covers the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. But Beijing also claims these islands as her own.

  On the eve of his taking office, Blinken said he agreed with Mike Pompeo’s view that China’s brutal repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide” and crimes against humanity. That latter charge is what the Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg.

  How can the United States send athletes to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, if the Chinese are still crushing Hong Kong and committing crimes against humanity in western China that compare to the worst Nazi crimes of World War II?

  Testifying before Congress this week, four-star Admiral Phil Davidson, retiring commander of the Indo-Pacific, called for new defensive missiles to protect Guam against Chinese DF-21 and DF-26 missiles. China calls these missiles “Guam killers.”

  The admiral also called for the U.S. to develop intermediate-range missiles that can be fired from Guam and allied territory closer to China. Describing the need for offensive missiles to hit Chinese targets, Davidson said, “If I can’t score some runs, I can’t win the game.”

  Addressing Taiwan, Davidson said:

  “Over the past year, Beijing has pursued a coordinated campaign of diplomatic, information, economic, and — increasingly — military tools to isolate Taipei from the international community and if necessary compel unification with the (Peoples Republic of China.)”

  Chinese warplanes have lately flown in formation toward the island of 25 million, which Beijing claims as its national territory — a claim President Nixon seemed to concede in the Shanghai Communique after his Peking summit of 1972.

  “Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid,” was how the Biden State Department answered China’s aggressive moves.

  If we don’t establish rules of the road for U.S. and Chinese ships and planes in the East and South China Sea and Taiwan strait, how do we indefinitely avoid the kind of collision that could turn into a shooting war?

  In this widening and deepening confrontation, China is not backing down. She makes no apologies for the crackdown in Hong Kong or the concentration camps of the Uighurs. She continues to stonewall about how the coronavirus escaped from Wuhan to kill 500,000 Americans and many times that number worldwide.

  Meanwhile, Chinese bombers, fighters, warships and patrol boats approach closer and closer to planes, vessels and territory of America and her friends and allies. Nor has China surrendered a rock or reef or shoal in the South or East China Sea.

  Last week, Blinken called China the “biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” the only country able “to seriously challenge the stable and open international system.”

  And in America, whatever your political party, “standing up to China” seems to be a winning posture. But where is all this going? Where does all this end?

  

  Beijing is not apologetically but proudly Communist. It believes its system has been proven superior in this century. It does not believe in an equality of ideologies, religions or peoples. It openly rejects American democracy as a failed and failing system, and rejects any suggestion of American primacy in creating a “rules-based international order.”

  And if it continues to grow in real and relative terms for the next two decades as it did in the last two decades — given that China has four times the population of the United States — it could emerge not only as the dominant power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific but in the world.

  And what can we do to assure that does not happen — short of a war that could be disaster to us both, as World War II was for the British as well as the Germans.

  How do we decouple from a country that provides necessities of national life — such as pharmaceuticals — for our people?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 21:40

• NYC Spent Nearly Half A Million Dollars Per Inmate In 2020, Report Says
  NYC Spent Nearly Half A Million Dollars Per Inmate In 2020, Report Says

  The Office of the New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer published a new report outlining how the New York City Department of Corrections spent a whopping $447,337 per inmate in fiscal 2020, up more than 33% a year ago and more than doubled since 2015. 

  Rising costs per inmate come as violence has exploded within NYC jails. “The rate of incidents and allegations of use of force has also grown sharply, nearly doubling from FY 2018 to FY 2020,” Stringer said in the report.

  

  “The cost to incarcerate a single individual on Rikers has exploded even as our jail population remains near historic lows – yet rates of violence continue to climb,” Stringer said in a statement published Wednesday. “That means we are spending more and more money to incarcerate fewer and fewer people and reducing the safety of both officers and people in custody in the process. We must reimagine our criminal legal system, dramatically reduce the pretrial population, and invest our taxpayer dollars in the resources and programs—from housing to health care—that prevent incarceration in the first place.” 

  The core findings of the report show “the number of people in jail has fallen faster than the DOC budget and headcount, the ratio of correction officers to incarcerated individuals and the cost per incarcerated person has risen.” To incarcerate a single inmate over the 2020 fiscal year costs $447,337, up from $334,864 the prior year. 

  

  Stringer, who is running to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio as mayor, has pledged if he’s elected mayor, he would close jail facilities on Riker’s Island. A couple of years ago, lawmakers pushed a bill through that would shut down Rikers by 2026.

  Since the police killing of George Floyd, NYC has taken steps to defund the police and restructure its criminal justice system, though jail budgets have so far been maintained. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 21:20

• The Founders Warned Us About Abuses Like H.R. 1
  The Founders Warned Us About Abuses Like H.R. 1

  Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times,

  H.R. 1, the bill that would seize control of federal elections from the states, comes with an unusual twist. It supposedly promotes “access.” But it says anyone challenging its constitutionality is barred from every court in the nation but a single federal trial court in Washington, D.C.!

  

  Under H.R. 1, some citizens get more access than others.

  Mark Twain is said to have quipped that history doesn’t repeat itself, but often rhymes. And here’s one of those rhymes: Limiting challengers to one court in the nation sounds a lot like Founding-Era warnings that if Congress could regulate its own elections it might limit voters to one polling place per state. More on that shortly.

  As my last essay noted, H.R. 1 claims to rely on three sections of the Constitution, two of which probably are irrelevant. The third is the Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1)—more appropriately called the Times, Places, and Manner Clause. It reads as follows:

  “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations ….”

  H.R. 1 quotes some out-of-context Supreme Court language to the effect that the italicized language gives Congress broad authority to overrule state election law.

  But the text of the Elections Clause tells a very different story, as does its history.

  The text tells us that Congress’s power applies only to congressional elections. It doesn’t apply to presidential contests, as the drafters of H.R. 1 pretend.

  In addition, the text focuses principally on the power of state legislatures. It adds Congress’s authority only in a subordinate clause. This subordinate clause is what lawyers and judges—both in the Founding Era and in modern times—call a “proviso.” Provisos traditionally are interpreted narrowly, leaving the earlier language (the state legislatures’ power) to be interpreted broadly. In this case, narrow interpretation means that if there’s reasonable doubt about whether Congress has authority, the issue is decided against Congress.

  Now let’s look at the history:

  When the Constitution was publicly debated, the proviso giving Congress power to revise state election laws was highly controversial. Even many of the Constitution’s supporters wanted it taken out. Dr. James McClurg of Virginia, who had served at the Constitutional Convention, was one of these. Another was Noah Webster, later famous for his American dictionary. Webster wrote an influential pamphlet strongly supporting the Constitution—but demanding that the proviso be removed.

  Why the concern? They understood the danger of allowing incumbent politicians to dictate the laws governing their own re-election. Experience shows that if incumbents write the rules, they write the rules to suit themselves. A glaring example is how the Democrat sponsors of H.R. 1 seek to alter state voter registration systems to their own advantage.

  Skeptical Founding-Era writers explained in detail how the proviso could be abused. They pointed out, for instance, that if Congress could fix a “Place” for election, it might severely limit the number of polling places and locate them to benefit incumbents. Thus, a congressman from Philadelphia might induce his colleagues to locate only one polling place in Pennsylvania—in the congressman’s own neighborhood in Philadelphia.

  Sound familiar? It’s a lot like Democrat partisans providing that the one court where H.R. 1 can be challenged is in heavily Democrat Washington, D.C.

  During the constitutional debates, there was so much public resistance to the proviso that advocates became very concerned. What if these few words led the public to reject the entire Constitution?

  So advocates assured the public that Congress’s power over congressional elections would be extremely limited. They said the proviso was designed only for emergencies. As I reported in my 2010 study of the Elections Clause:

  “[T]he proponents’ decisive argument … was one that had first been raised at the federal convention: that the Times, Places and Manner Clause was needed to enable Congress to preserve its own existence. In absence of a congressional power to regulate congressional elections, a group of states could destroy the House of Representatives by refusing to provide for those elections or by creating regulations designed to sabotage them. As a precedent, the Federalists alleged that Rhode Island had damaged the operations of the Confederation Congress by refusing to send delegates to that body. The Federalists made this argument over and over, using it to sway votes in crucial states.”

  Moreover:

  “In Maryland, convention delegate James McHenry added that … an insurrection or rebellion might prevent a state legislature from administering an election. As James Iredell told the North Carolina ratifying convention, ‘[a]n occasion may arise when the exercise of this ultimate power in Congress may be necessary … if a state should be involved in war, and its legislature could not assemble, (as was the case of South Carolina, and occasionally of some other states, during the late war).’”

  Maryland’s famous jurist, Alexander Contee Hanson, added that Congress would exercise its “times, places, and manner” authority only in cases of invasion, legislative neglect, or obstinate refusal to pass election laws, or if a state crafted its election laws with a “sinister purpose” or to injure the general government. “It was never meant,” he wrote, “that congress should at any time interfere, unless on the failure of a state legislature, or to alter such regulations as may be obviously improper.”

  Based on these assurances, the public accepted the proviso and ratified the Constitution.

  Of course, the Constitution doesn’t actually say the proviso is limited to emergencies. But courts routinely consider the history behind a document’s words when deciding how broadly to interpret them. I explained above that the text tells us to construe the proviso narrowly. History backs this up.

  Here’s an illustration of how the courts should apply Congress’s Election Clause authority. Suppose the question arises of whether “the manner of holding Elections” extends only to mechanics such as the form of the ballot, or also includes regulating campaigns. Narrow construction would give force to the Founding-Era evidence that “manner of holding” does not include campaigns.

  Bottom line: The drafters of H.R. 1 were wrong to proclaim unlimited power to regulate federal elections and campaigns. On the contrary, the Elections Clause grants Congress only limited authority. A runaway Congress should never be permitted to seize more power than the Constitution gives it.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 21:00

• Scientists Propose "Lunar Ark" To Store 6.7 Million Sperm Samples As Global Insurance Policy
  Scientists Propose “Lunar Ark” To Store 6.7 Million Sperm Samples As Global Insurance Policy

  The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago appears to be losing its appeal as scientists propose a “lunar ark” to house millions of species of seeds, sperm, eggs, and DNA. 

  A team of researchers from the University of Arizona, led by Jekan Thanga, proposed building a massive “ark” on the moon as a “modern global insurance policy” against natural disasters, socio-economic chaos, asteroids, and the threat of nuclear war. 

  

  “Earth is naturally a volatile environment,” Thanga said in the study titled “Lunar Pits and Lava Tubes for a Modern Ark.” The team debuted the study at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Aerospace Conference last Saturday. 

  “An ark, just like Noah’s in the Bible, could store endangered species more cost-effectively than protecting them on earth or creating an artificial ecosystem,” Thanga said.

  The researcher proposed building the ark in a lunar pit and or lava tubes, holding upwards of 6.7 million species of seeds, sperm, eggs, and DNA.

  Thanga said due to instability, Earth-based repositories, such as Svalbard, could leave specimens vulnerable. 

  

  Thanga’s presentation explained that various species would be cryogenically preserved. “We can still save them until the tech advances to then reintroduce these species — in other words, save them for another day,” he added. 

  To transport upwards of 6.7 million samples, it would take 250 rocket launches. By comparison, the International Space Station took only 40 rocket launches to build. 

  The scientist suggested solar panels would power the facility. However, future moon bases will likely be powered with miniature nuclear reactors, as we’ve explained before. 

  Here’s the full presentation: 

  “We propose development of a modern day ark to be housed inside lunar lava tubes. The ark would house eggs, sperms, seeds and other DNA matter from all of the endangered species on Earth. It would serve as a global insurance policy. Earth faces probability of peril from various natural disasters and human threats such as global nuclear war that could wipe out a large number of species in a short time. Lunar lava tubes were discovered in 2013 and are likely to have remained pristine for 3-4 billion years. They are only 4-5 days from Earth. They are an excellent shelter against lunar surface temperature swings, cosmic radiation and micro-meteorites. The ark would house these endangered species in cryo-conditions of -180 C and colder. Our research shows that new technologies are need to make this initiative possible. It will require substantial investments and advances in robotics to operate under cryo-conditions,” he said.

  Outside of the academic world, global superpowers have proposed building moon bases and mining the lunar surface to harvest rare metals. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 20:40

• Greenwald: Criticizing Public Figures, Including Influential Journalists, Is Not Harassment Or Abuse
  Greenwald: Criticizing Public Figures, Including Influential Journalists, Is Not Harassment Or Abuse

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  The most powerful and influential newspaper in the U.S., arguably the West, is The New York Times. Journalists who write for it, especially those whose work is featured on its front page or in its op-ed section, wield immense power to shape public discourse, influence thought, set the political agenda for the planet’s most powerful nation, expose injustices, or ruin the lives of public figures and private citizens alike. That is an enormous amount of power in the hands of one media institution and its employees. That’s why it calls itself the Paper of Record.

  

  One of the Paper of Record’s star reporters, Taylor Lorenz, has been much discussed of late. That is so for three reasons. The first is that the thirty-six-year-old tech and culture reporter has helped innovate a new kind of reportorial beat that seems to have a couple of purposes. She publishes articles exploring in great detail the online culture of teenagers and very young adults, which, as a father of two young Tik-Tok-using children, I have found occasionally and mildly interesting. She also seeks to catch famous and non-famous people alike using bad words or being in close digital proximity to bad people so that she can alert the rest of the world to these important findings. It is natural that journalists who pioneer a new form of reporting this way are going to be discussed.

  The second reason Lorenz is the topic of recent discussion is that she has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about influential people, and attempting to ruin the reputations and lives of decidedly non-famous people. In the last six weeks alone, she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room in which she was lurking (he had not) and then accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist in a different Clubhouse room to attack her (he, in fact, had said nothing).

  

  She also often uses her large, powerful public platform to malign private citizens without any power or public standing by accusing them of harboring bad beliefs and/or associating with others who do. (She is currently being sued by a citizen named Arya Toufanian, who claims Lorenz has used her private Twitter account to destroy her reputation and business, particularly with a tweet that Lorenz kept pinned at the top of her Twitter page for eight months, while several other non-public figures complain that Lorenz has “reported” on their non-public activities). It is to be expected that a New York Times journalist who gets caught lying as she did against Andreessen and trying to destroy the reputations of non-public figures will be a topic of conversation.

  The third reason this New York Times reporter is receiving attention is because she has become a leading advocate and symbol for a toxic tactic now frequently used by wealthy and influential public figures (like her) to delegitimize criticisms and even render off-limits any attempt to hold them accountable. Specifically, she and her media allies constantly conflate criticisms of people like them with “harassment,” “abuse” and even “violence.”

  That is what Lorenz did on Tuesday when she co-opted International Women’s Day to announce that “it is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I have had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life.” She began her story by proclaiming: “For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment.” She finished it with this: “No one should have to go through this.” Notably, there was no mention, by her or her many media defenders, of the lives she has harmed or otherwise deleteriously affected with her massive journalistic platform.

  That is deliberate. Under this formulation, if you criticize the ways Lorenz uses her very influential media perch — including by pointing out that she probably should stop fabricating accusations against people and monitoring the private acts of non-public people — then you are guilty of harassing a “young woman” and inflicting emotional pain and violence on her (it’s quite a bizarre dynamic, best left to psychologists, how her supporters insist on infantilizing this fully grown, close-to-middle-aged successful journalist by talking about her as if she’s a fragile high school junior; it’s particularly creepy when her good male Allies speak of her this way).

  Taylor Lorenz went after me on-and-off for weeks over my activity on Clubhouse, screencapping my invites and rooms and insinuating to her following that I was some sort of racist nutcase. The only woman she’s ever given a flying fuck about is herself.

  — Mason 🏃‍♂️✂️𐃏 (@webdevMason) March 9, 2021

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

  This is worth focusing on precisely because it is now so common among the nation’s political and media elite. By no means is this tactic unique to Lorenz. She did not pioneer it. She is just latching onto it, exploiting it, in order to immunize herself from criticisms of her destructive journalistic misconduct and to depict her critics as violent harassers and abusers. With this framework implanted, there is no way to express criticisms of Taylor Lorenz’s work and the use and abuse of her journalistic platform without standing widely accused of maliciously inciting a mob of violent misogynists to ruin her life — that’s quite a potent shield from accountability for someone this influential in public life.

  But this is now a commonplace tactic among the society’s richest, most powerful and most influential public figures. The advent of the internet has empowered the riff-raff, the peasants, the unlicensed and the uncredentialed — those who in the past were blissfully silent and invisible — to be heard, often with irreverence and even contempt for those who wield the greatest societal privileges, such as a star New York Times reporter. By recasting themselves as oppressed, abused and powerless rather than what they are (powerful oppressors who sometimes abuse their power), elite political and media luminaries seek to completely reverse the dynamic.

  During Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign, one of the most common tactics used by her political and media supporters was to cast criticisms of her (largely from supporters of Bernie Sanders) not as ideological or political but as misogynistic, thus converting one of the world’s richest and most powerful political figures into some kind of a victim, exactly when she was seeking to obtain for herself the planet’s most powerful political office. There was no way to criticize Hillary Clinton — there still is not — without being branded a misogynist.

  A very similar tactic was used four years later to vilify anyone criticizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — also one of the world’s richest and most powerful figures — as she sought the power of the Oval Office. A major media theme was that she was being brutally assaulted by Sanders supporters who were using snake emojis to express dissatisfaction with what they believed was her less-than-scrupulous campaign, such as relying on millions of dollars in dark money from an anonymous Silicon Valley billionaire to stay in the race long after the immense failure of her campaign was manifest, and attempting to depict Sanders as a woman-hating cretin. When Warren finally withdrew from the race after having placed no better than third in any state including her own, Rachel Maddow devoted a good chunk of her interview with the Senator and best-selling author to exploring the deep trauma she experienced from the snake emojis.

  When Joe Biden announced his choice of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary and various news outlets reported that she had spent the last several years collecting many millions of dollars in speaking fees from the very Wall Street banks over whom she would now exercise immense power, the reporters who disclosed these facts and those expressing concern about them were accused of sexism. Somehow, a narrative was peddled under which one of the multi-millionaire titans of the global neoliberal order was reduced to a helpless victim, while the far less powerful people questioning the ethics and integrity of her conduct became her persecutors.

  One of the many ironies of these tawdry attempts to shield the world’s most powerful people from criticism is that they fundamentally rely upon the exact stereotypes which, in prior generations, had been deployed to deny women, racial minorities and LGBTs fair and equal opportunities to ascend to powerful positions. Those who purport to be supporters of Lorenz speak of her not as what she is — a successful and wealthy professional woman in her mid-30s who has amassed a large amount of influence and chose a career whose purpose is supposed to be confronting powerful people — but instead as a delicate, young flower, incapable of withstanding criticisms:

  This is dangerous and disgusting. Someone asks for help after suffering online harassment, and this man mocks her in prime time — using her full name five separate times — in an obvious attempt to encourage more harassment. We are better than this. https://t.co/zlCcf84bgG

  — Steve Peoples (@sppeoples) March 10, 2021

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

  In the paradigm peddled by Maddow, Elizabeth Warren was instantly transformed from an outspoken, intrepid Harvard Law Professor, consumer advocate, and influential lawmaker into a vulnerable abuse victim. Anonymous Sanders supporters were the ones wielding the real power and strength in this warped and self-serving framework. In order to shield themselves from the same scrutiny and accountability every other powerful public figure receives, they’re resuscitating the most discredited and antiquated myths about who is strong and weak, who requires protection and special considerations and who does not.

  No discussion of this tactic would be complete without noting its strong ideological component: its weaponization for partisan aims. Say whatever you’d like about journalists like Laura Ingraham or Mollie Hemingway or Briahna Joy Gray or political figures such as Kellyanne Conway, Susan Collins or Kirstjen Nielsen. Have at it: the sky’s the limit. Let it all fly without the slightest concern for accusations of misogyny, which, rest easy, will not be forthcoming no matter how crude or misogynistic the attacks are.

  

  One also need not worry about accusations of anti-Semitism if one opposes the landmark quest of Bernie Sanders to become the first Jewish president or even expresses bitter contempt for him. No bigotry allegations will be applied to critics of Clarence Thomas, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Richard Grenell, or Ben Carson.

  This transparent tactic is part-and-parcel of the increasingly ideological exploitation of identity politics to shield the neoliberal order and its guardians from popular critique. Step lightly if you want to criticize the bombing of Syria because the Pentagon is now led by an African-American Defense Secretary and Biden just promoted two female generals. No objecting to the closeness between the Treasury Secretary and Wall Street banks because doing so is a misogynistic attempt to limit how women can be paid. Transportation policy should be questioned only in the most polite tones lest one stand accused of harboring anti-gay animus for the department’s Secretary.

  The CIA and FBI celebrate its diverse workforce in the same way and for the same reason that gigantic corporations do: to place a pretty but very thin veneer on the harmful role they play in the world. The beneficiaries of this tactic are virtually always the powerful, while the villains are their critics, especially when those critics are marginalized. It is a majestic reversal of the power dynamic.

  ---

  Those who invoke this shield on their own behalf do so by claiming that they receive abusive and bigoted messages and even threats online. I have no doubt that they are telling the truth. In the age of social media, anyone with a significant public platform will inevitably be subjected to ugly vitriol. Often the verbal assaults are designed for the person’s gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and other aspects of their demographic identity in order to be as hurtful as possible.

  In response to Lorenz’s use of International Women’s Day to elevate her suffering to center stage, Guardian reporter Julia Carrie Wong described her own personal experience to argue that verbal condemnations from angry readers can cause “serious mental anguish and made me fear for my own safety and that of my family.” She acknowledged that “it’s not physical or material harm” and is “not legal persecution,” but, she said, it is nonetheless “a very real, constant, negative force in my life, something I have to think about all the time, and that sucks.”

  It is hard to dispute Wong’s claims. Not only do studies demonstrate that a barrage of online criticism can adversely affect one’s mental health, I can speak from personal experience — vast, sustained, and intense personal experience — about what it is like to be the target of coordinated, bigoted and threatening attacks because of one’s reporting.

  When Jair Bolsonaro was in the middle of his successful presidential candidate in 2017, he hurled an anti-gay slur at me using his Twitter account to his millions of followers. In 2019, he publicly claimed my marriage to my husband and our adoption of two Brazilian children were fraudulent, done only to prevent my deportation. Does it take any imagination to envision what my email inbox and online messages were like for months after each of those episodes?

  From the time my colleagues and I at The Intercept Brazil began our multi-part exposé about corruption on the part of high-level Bolsonaro officials in mid-2019, my name trended on Brazilian Twitter on a virtually daily basis for weeks if not longer, accompanied by demands for my deportation and arrest. Much of the vitriol was anti-gay in theme, to put that mildly. My husband, one of the only openly gay members of Congress in the history of Brazil, and I have received a non-stop deluge of very specific death threats aimed at our family and our children. As a result of that, none of us — him, me or our two children — have left our home in almost two years without armed security and an armored vehicle. And it all culminated in the attempt to criminally prosecute me last year on over 100 felony counts.

  That is most definitely not the first time I’ve encountered such criticisms and attacks, nor, I say with confidence, will it be the last. I was unable to leave Brazil for almost a year after returning from Hong Kong where I met Edward Snowden and published our first reports on the NSA due to publicly and privately expressed threats from U.S. officials of criminal prosecution.

  I’m so far from unique in any of this. These kinds of recriminations are inherent to journalism (when done well), to confronting those in power, to insinuating yourself into controversial and polarizing political debates and controversies. Journalists love to laud themselves for “speaking truth to power” but rarely think about what that actually means.

  If you do journalism well, then you’re going to make people angry, and if you’re making people angry, then they are going to say unpleasant and hurtful things about you. If you’re lucky, that is all that will happen. The bigger your platform, the more angry people there will be, and the angrier they will be. The more powerful the people angered by your work, the more intense the retaliation. That is what it means to call someone “powerful”: they have the capacity to inflict punishment on those who impede them.

  Death threats like this one arrive in my inbox every week at least. When a news event related to our work transpires that angers large numbers of people — such as this week’s news that the criminal convictions of former President Lula da Silva have been invalidated and his political rights restored, thus rendering him eligible to run against Bolsonaro in 2022 — those threats and vituperative messages intensify greatly and we are forced to enhance our security measures.

  Anyone who cannot endure that, or who does not want to, is well-advised not to seek out a public platform and try to become an influential figure who helps shape discourse, debate and political outcomes, and especially not to become a reporter devoted to exposing secret corruption by powerful factions. It would obviously be better if all of that did not happen, but wishing that it would stop is like hoping it never rains again: not only is it futile, but — like rain — there are cleansing and healthy aspects to having those who wield influence and power have to hear from those they affect, and anger.

  But with that cost, which can be substantial, comes an enormous benefit. It is an immense privilege to have a large platform that you can utilize to shape the society around you, reach large numbers of people, and highlight injustices you believe are being neglected. Those who have that, and who earn a living by pursuing their passion to use it, are incredibly fortunate. Journalists who are murdered or imprisoned or prosecuted for their work are victims of real persecution. Journalists who are maligned with words are not, especially when those words come not from powerful state officials but from random people on the internet.

  And even when such criticisms do emanate from powerful officials, it still does not rise to the level of persecution: when Jair Bolsonaro hurled an anti-gay slur at me online and then maligned our family at a press conference, it was not even in the same universe of difficulty as being threatened with prosecution by the U.S. or Brazil governments or receiving credible death threats. I’ve said plenty of critical things about him as well. That is why I always found it so preposterous to treat Trump’s mean tweets about Chuck Todd or Jim Acosta like some grave threat to press freedom. Imprisoning Julian Assange for publishing documents is a dangerous press freedom attack; mocking Wolf Blitzer’s intellect is not. And if the U.S. President’s mean words about journalists do not constitute an attack on press freedom — and they do not — then surely the same is true of random, powerless people online.

  That is why I do not consider myself remotely victimized: I chose to do this work knowing what it would entail if I did it well, and I continue to do it, rather than do something else, because it is a price worth paying. It is fulfilling and gratifying work to me, and I see the recriminations as proof of its efficacy. Not everyone will have that same calculus, which is why different people make different choices for their lives based on their assessments of the costs and benefits inherent in them, but the framework is essentially the same for everyone.

  What I ultimately find most repellent and offensive about this incessant self-victimization from society’s most powerful and privileged actors is the conceit that they are somehow unique or special in the treatment they receive, as if it only happens to people like them. That is the exact opposite of reality: everyone with a public platform receives abuse and ugly attacks, and there are members of every faction who launch them. If you have any doubts about that, go criticize Kamala Harris and see what kind of staggeringly bigoted and hateful abuse you get back in return.

  

  Whenever this tactic is hauled out in defense of neoliberal leaders — to claim that Sanders supporters are uniquely abusive, or that Corbyn supporters are, or that Trump supporters are: basically that everyone is guilty of abusive behavior except neoliberals and their loyal followers — the real purpose of it becomes clear. It is a crowd-control technique, one designed to build a gigantic moat and drawbridge to protect those inside the royal court from the angry hordes outside of it.

  Last week, I participated in a debate on Al Jazeera about online censorship with the liberal British journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. She was quite a reasonable and candid advocate of the need for online censorship and I found the discussion consequently illuminating, particularly because she was so blunt about what she believes is the real problem that online censorship needs to solve. Listen to what she said:

  Precisely. “It’s not like it used to be.” The problem is that “this is not civilized discourse” to them because “it’s often coming from some of the least educated and most angry.” That’s why online censorship is needed. That’s why media figures need to unite to demonize and discredit their critics. It is because people like Taylor Lorenz — raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, educated in a Swiss boarding school, writing on the front page of The New York Times — now hears from “the least educated and most angry.” This is the societal crisis — one of caste — that they are determined to stop.

  Taylor Lorenz and her media allies know that she is more privileged and influential than you are. That is precisely why they feel justified in creating paradigms that make it illegitimate to criticize her. They think only themselves and those like them deserve to participate in the public discourse. Since they cannot fully control the technology that allows everyone to be heard (they partially control it by pressuring tech monopolies to censor their adversaries), they need to create storylines and scripts designed to coerce their critics into silence.

  Knowing that you will be vilified as some kind of brute abuser if you criticize a New York Times reporter is, for many people, too high of a price to pay for doing it. So people instead refrain, stay quiet, and that is the obvious objective of this lowly strategy.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 20:20

• Security Experts "Raise Red Flags" On Dubai Airport's New Iris Scan Technology 
  Security Experts “Raise Red Flags” On Dubai Airport’s New Iris Scan Technology 

  Travelers at Dubai International Airport are now greeted by iris-scanners that are connected with the country’s facial recognition database, according to the Associated Press (AP). 

  Under the guise of the virus pandemic, United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the contactless technology that helps stem the virus spread. Even though the new system allows quick trips through security checkpoints, there are mounting concerns about mass surveillance in the federation of seven sheikhdoms. 

  According to the AP, UAE ranks the highest globally on a per capita basis of surveillance camera concentration. Many of the cameras are tethered to artificial intelligence systems that make it possible for the government to track anyone, anywhere. 

  On Sunday, the first travelers used the new iris scanner after checking in – it allowed them to “breeze through passport control within seconds,” said AP. 

  Dubai airport is promising to have passengers pass through immigration in less than 10 seconds, by using facial recognition technology pic.twitter.com/YeaFgd2cwv

  — Reuters (@Reuters) March 8, 2021

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  “The future is coming,” said Major Gen. Obaid Mehayer Bin Suroor, deputy director of the General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs. “Now, all the procedures have become ‘smart,’ around five to six seconds.”

  Bin Suroor said Dubai’s immigration office “completely protects” the private data so that “no third party can see it.” But with limited information on the new biometric technology, there’s no telling who could misuse the data. 

  “Any surveillance technology raises red flags, regardless of what kind of country it’s in,” said Jonathan Frankle, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” But in a democratic country, if the surveillance technology is used transparently, at least there’s an opportunity to have a public conversation about it.”

  Along with facial recognition, airports such as Dubai’s could soon request COVID passports from travelers. 

  COVID passports were widely discussed for near-term rollouts by the International Air Transport Association. 

  UAE appears to be implementing a system, sort of like China’s, to track its entire population in real-time. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 20:00

• New York Colleges Under Fire After Targeting Conservative Students And Groups
  New York Colleges Under Fire After Targeting Conservative Students And Groups

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  We have been discussing how universities are remaining silent as student governments limit rights of free speech and association, including the impeachment of conservative students.   Now, students at Skidmore College have reportedly barred fellow students from starting a campus chapter of the conservative group Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). In Rochester Institute of Technology, the student government has impeached student Senator Jacob Custer for defending campus police officers wearing Thin Blue Line masks. In both controversies, there are appeals or reviews being pursued but students were subjected to weeks of abusive campaigns for the exercise of their free speech and associational rights.

  

  Skidmore has been previously in the news as a campus with a growing anti-free speech movement, including an unsuccessful effort to fire  professors for attending a police rally. There is a growing threat to free speech posed by student governments curtailing free speech under the guise of self-governance.  For some universities, student governments can accomplish indirectly what they cannot legally or politically accomplish directly.

  That danger is evident in the account of Hannah Davis of how she was the subject of a campus campaign and petition to prevent her founding a YAL chapter. According to the Albany Times Union, the Skidmore Student Government Association told Davis she could not establish a YAL chapter because the formation of the group triggered “concerns of hate speech and … students on campus feel unsafe.” 

  According to the Times Union, the anti-YAL petition was authored anonymously and denounced YAL as a springboard “for hate speech and bigotry disguised as political discourse.” It also claimed that “Skidmore has become increasingly hostile to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and marginalized students. It is no coincidence that this club is being proposed following months of bold activism by students of color.”

  Skidmore College president Mark Connor said: “The student leaders whom our students have elected as their representatives have the right to vote to decide the outcome of this process I encourage all members of our community to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of association and to engage with each other with patience, courtesy and respect for one another.”  Connor’s statement is disappointingly vague. He added:

  “These fundamental rights apply to all, regardless of political persuasion or other differences, including views and beliefs. The rare exception would be hate speech, in which violence is clearly the goal, which would not be tolerated in our community. As always, I encourage all members of our community to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of association and to engage with each other with patience, courtesy and respect for one another.”

  There is nothing that one could object to in that statement but also little worth repeating. YAL is clearly a very conservative organization that is involved in both political and academic events.  The question is whether Connor would have been more proactive and clear if this was a campus effort to ban other more popular groups. Connor said that the conservative students could appeal but universities need to speak early and strongly in support of free speech and associational rights in such controversies.

  In attacks on professors, we have also seen a sharp difference in the level of support voiced by university officials depending on the content of the viewpoints. Indeed, we have seen schools refuse to apologize when they effectively fueled false allegations.

  When conservative faculty or controversial speakers are targeted, few officials or fellow professors have stepped forward to denounce such campaigns. The same is not true when controversies have arisen for statements on the left. We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views on various issues including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard and a literature professor at Penn. Sites like Lawyers, Guns, and Money feature writers like Colorado Law Professor Paul Campus who call for the firing of those with opposing views (including myself).  Such campaigns have targeted teachers and students who contest the evidence of systemic racism in the use of lethal force by police or offer other opposing views in current debates over the pandemic, reparations, electoral fraud, or other issues.

  Over at RIT, the students went the impeachment route to punish opposing viewpoints. The controversy arose in late January and students sought to impeach Custer due to his arguments on the student government’s messaging app in support of a campus officer who wore a Thin Blue Line face mask. This has been a controversy on other campuses where some symbols are favored while others are disfavored.  For free speech advocates, the issue is not the inherent meaning or value but the basis of discriminating on the basis of content in speech regulation.

  Custer defended the right to wear such masks, writing:

   “Wearing such masks if they want to is not counterintuitive. It is perfectly okay for students and adults to express it since it is free speech. It is not disrespectful either. We are student government, representing all students. It is not our role to determine what idea is good or bad simply because a few members or more disagree with it and punish members of our community over something small. That is just outright censorship.”

  This is clearly a much debated issue, but that is what academia is about: passionate but tolerant debate. Custer was voicing the view of many that TBL masks are not disrespectful or threatening of others. Yet, his defense of the officer triggered an immediate and anger response. According to The College Fix, one student senator wrote “[I]t’s honestly humorous that a White man is going to sit here and try to tell someone of color, more specifically Black, when something is or isn’t racist.” Another said that Custer believes that black people should be murdered: “Breaking news: Jacob Custer is angry and taking a stand against people of color because he isn’t allowed to disagree with the idea that Black people don’t deserve to be murdered.”

  The student government then impeached Custer for what appears to be his exercise of free speech.

  The university will only say that it is reviewing the action.

  The action is a clear denial of the free speech rights of the conservative students and violates the university policies on protecting such rights:

  As a private university, RIT retains the legal authority to determine the extent to which it will regulate an individual’s right to free speech and expression. RIT vigorously supports the rights of all members of the RIT Community to freely express their views and to peacefully and lawfully protest against actions and opinions with which they disagree.  RIT also recognizes that the right to free speech and expression is not absolute. It must be balanced against the university’s obligation to the principles of academic freedom and to provide a secure and civil environment where faculty, staff, and students can freely exchange ideas and openly engage in deliberation, debate and learning. Any decision that RIT might take to regulate speech or expression by members of the RIT Community, shall be based on RIT’s commitment to foster a safe and civil environment where differing views and opinions are expressed.  Open-mindedness, civility, respect, decency, and sensitivity for the opinions and rights of others, however different from one’s own, are crucial to fulfilling the university’s academic mission.

  While the statement seems to emphasize the right to regulate rather than protect speech, this action is clearly in contravention of the policy.

  The university did little during the campaign or the petition to make clear that all students will be guaranteed the rights to free speech and association. Recently, RIT President David Munson declared:

  “Earlier today, we learned that the Student Government Senate voted to uphold the Standards Review Board’s decision to impeach an elected member of the Student Government Senate. We felt strongly that it was proper and necessary for the Student Government to follow and complete the process outlined in their Student Government Bylaws, …However, the question of whether the decision may have violated university policy C.11, protecting free speech and expression, has been raised. As is always the case, the RIT President’s Office reserves the right to review any decision that may violate RIT policy. … To ensure that no RIT policies have been violated, I will be assembling a Review Panel, which will include members of the RIT Board of Trustees and others, to review the evidence and decisions from the Standards Review Board and the appeal process.”

  The two controversies are the latest example of how student governments can function as surrogates to silence opposing voices and viewpoints on campuses. It is commendable for reviews or appeals to be conducted. However, the silence of these schools in both controversies has been disconcerting. Students were subjected to abusive campaigns for weeks due to their exercise of free speech.  The universities remained conspicuously silent. However, student self-governance is not a license to abuse other students or deny their speech rights. Universities cannot simply say that students “can always appeal” and do nothing to maintain the core guarantees of speech and associational rights.

  I recognize that universities must be careful to honor self-governance as well as opposing free speech rights. What was missing in my view was a proactive statement from the university presidents that viewpoint discrimination would not be allowed and that, while students will be allowed to voice their opposing to viewpoints or groups, the university will not permit the sanctioning or barring of students or groups based on content discrimination.  One possible reform is to allow for the equivalent of an interlocutory appeal to the university to force a review on the grounds of raw viewpoint discrimination in certain cases like impeachments.  The alternative to is allow students to be dragged through abusive processes based on their voicing unpopular views.

  Under the current system, students can create kangaroo courts that pummel students with opposing views as universities wait silent and passively for any possible appeal. The result is a chilling effort for other students who will not want to be subjected to such abuse — and have a year of responding to these attacks by the student government. The obvious result is that the majority can deter opposing viewpoints and groups by increasing the cost of exercising the rights of free speech and association.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 19:40

• Building A New Home? Soaring Lumber Prices Adds $24,000 To New Construction Build
  Building A New Home? Soaring Lumber Prices Adds $24,000 To New Construction Build

  Lumber prices have hit $1,000 per thousand board feet, an all-time high in recent weeks, and could extend gains this year as homebuilding and renovation demand outstrips production. Soaring lumber prices have greatly added to construction costs over the last year and could stifle the number of planned residential construction projects across the US. 

  “Production is going to have a hard time keeping up with demand growth as the world economy bounces back from Covid-19 in 2021-22,” Paul Jannke, Forest Economic Advisors LLC.’s principal of lumber, said during a conference this week who Bloomberg quoted. He believes average lumber prices will remain elevated. 

  Lumber Prices

  

  Now the question readers have is how much are these rising costs adding to the construction build? Well, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said rising lumber prices had added $24.4k of costs to the build in the past ten months. 

  Weeks ago, the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) penned a letter to the White House requesting the Biden administration to intervene.

  “AGC believes the White House can play a constructive role in mitigating this growing threat to multifamily housing and other construction sectors by urging domestic lumber producers to ramp up production to ease growing shortages and making it a priority to work with Canada on a new softwood lumber agreement,” the AGC wrote in a letter.

  NAHB has also been vocal and requested the federal government to intervene and lower lumber prices. They asked the Biden administration to end tariffs on Canadian lumber shipments to alleviate supply shortages. 

  “Lumber price spikes are not only sidelining buyers during a period of high demand, they are causing many sales to fall through and forcing builders to put projects on hold at a time when home inventories are already at a record low,” NAHB said in a statement.

  Additionally, as we noted during last year’s chaotic surge, it’s not all demand-driven as one builder noted, “the explanation they had for us was that COVID-19 shut down the plants that treat the wood, and that finally caught up.”

  “The supply chain was screwed up,” said Wilson, Wilson Construction’s owner in Galveston. “Dimension sizes were in limited supplies; even something as simple as a two-by-four-by-twelve Southern yellow pine treated was in extremely short supply.”

  But don’t worry future homeowners and or contractors, Powell says The Fed has “the tools” to manage inflation… well, he is right about one thing! (they do have some tools) but don’t own any sawmills nor have the ability to print wood out of thin air. 

  Inflation is real…

  We paid $30k for the lumber package in January to build this house. Same lumber pack today is $62k. In October it was $18k… 👀😳🤑🤦🏾‍♂️🤷🏾‍♂️#Inflation pic.twitter.com/iFGJHklr2d

  — TheUrbanCEO (@TyronMcDaniel) March 10, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 19:20

• Why A Green New Deal Is More Expensive Than Joe Biden Realizes
  Why A Green New Deal Is More Expensive Than Joe Biden Realizes

  Authored by Charlie Deist via The Mises Institute,

  One of President Biden’s first executive actions was to declare January 27 “Climate Day.” This ad hoc holiday provided an opportunity for his administration to celebrate the latest rationale for economic central planning.

  The day’s festivities began with three executive orders on climate change, science, and technology.

  

  In his remarks, Biden bundled his environmental agenda with a jobs program, along with a broader policy to address social inequality and environmental injustice. Among the ambitious goals of Biden’s $2 trillion Green New Deal are 1 million new high-paying union jobs in the automobile industry, half a million electric car charging stations, and a 100 percent carbon pollution–free electric sector by 2035.

  The goal of transitioning the electrical grid to zero carbon emissions in the next fifteen years stands out as a singularly misguided effort. Even granting the nonobvious assumption that we must immediately transition away from fossil fuels, overhauling the American energy infrastructure is a vast and complex calculation problem. To be truly sustainable, individuals and firms would need to act on local knowledge, assessing where and what kinds of renewables might meet their energy needs.

  The concept of “net energy” illustrates why replacing fossil fuels with large-scale renewable energy is often counterproductive. In Carbon Shift, a 2009 book discussing peak oil and climate change, David Hughes summarizes it like this:

  A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.

  This life-cycle accounting of “energy return on energy invested” (EROEI) succinctly describes multiple stages of intermediate capital within a hydrocarbon-based structure of production. Hughes also hints at the basic questions facing all entrepreneurs—namely, where they should place their investments and how they should configure heterogeneous capital to recoup up-front costs plus some profit or “windfall.”

  Wind turbines and solar panels do enjoy a wide market in off-grid applications, such as remote farm properties and on oceangoing sailboats, where the abundance of wind and scarcity of petroleum products makes the investment a no-brainer. In sunny parts of the country, solar has reached “grid parity.” States like Texas, however, have failed to heed considerations of both net energy and supply and demand in installing massive wind farms at great taxpayer expense where fossil fuels would be far cheaper and more reliable. Lacking price signals, the central planner is blind to the economic consequences of his grand designs.

  The president revealed his ignorance of the technological and economic problem at hand when he stated matter of factly, “We know what to do, we’ve just got to do it.” On the contrary, we have no idea how to create a nonpolluting electrical grid without emitting much more carbon in the process than we otherwise would have.

  If the government invests trillions of dollars in energy-intensive capital investments—whether wind farms, solar charging stations, or transformer stations—it will have two primary effects.

  • First, it will frontload carbon emissions into the construction phase. This may offer the illusion of reducing pollution when in fact it merely shuffles emissions to a prior stage of production. California’s high-speed rail, for example, will take an estimated seventy-one years to offset its own construction emissions through the cars it will hypothetically replace (assuming it is ever completed). Furthermore, electric charging stations are typically powered by coal or natural gas—not solar panels.

  • Second, and relatedly, a Green New Deal funded by debt will distort the capital structure, skewing investment toward long-term fixed capital assets at the expense of the intermediate capital maintenance of the overall structure of production. Theoretically we could burn more coal, petroleum, and natural gas today to build a zero-pollution electrical infrastructure for tomorrow. But when it comes time to service offshore wind turbines, will the helicopters and boats used for maintenance be powered by electricity as well? And what kind of energy will power the factories that manufacture the solar panels and wind turbines? Claiming that they will run on renewables is eerily similar to the circular reasoning and magical thinking used by proponents of modern monetary theory to promote the illusion of spending without taxation.

  The Green New Deal is, if anything, a formula for a new dark age. Texas’s recent power outages show the difficulty of the task facing grid managers. There, an attempt to prematurely transition to unreliable wind energy exacerbated the strain on the grid when turbines froze at the crucial moment when they were most needed. The grid managers failed to keep a maintain a sufficient buffer, even without the additional mandate of ensuring the creation of new green jobs and mitigating the discriminatory effects of climate change. It is ironic that a state and nation so rich in natural energy resources would be leading the charge to cancel fossil fuels in favor of technology that has never been proven effective, or even environmentally friendly, at a large scale.

  The stock of fossil fuels is large but not infinite. Geological surveys indicate that there is plentiful energy in the ground to advance civilization and develop new sources of abundant and nonpolluting energy. However, we must be careful not to squander our petroleum patrimony on unused charging stations, unreliable wind farms, and half-finished trains to nowhere.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 19:00

• Amidst Labor Shortage, Thailand Taps Non-Violent Prisoners To Work In Factories
  Amidst Labor Shortage, Thailand Taps Non-Violent Prisoners To Work In Factories

  Thailand is undergoing a massive labor shortage as a result of migrant workers leaving the country during Covid. 

  The country’s solution? Put its prisoners to work, according to Bloomberg. Thai Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin has implemented a program wherein companies can run their production facilities using inmates nearing the end of their jail sentences. The program will apply to those serving time for non-violent offenses, like drug use.

  The hope is twofold: one, to address the labor shortage and two, to help those nearly out of prison transition without the stigma of having just been in jail. Manufacturers will get the benefits of tax breaks and prisoners could be on their way to a full time job for when they leave jail. 

  Somsak commented: “This is an important project that needs to happen. It helps companies and inmates, and it saves taxpayers’ money.”

  

  Thailand relies heavily on transient workers to make goods for exports, which is “the country’s biggest growth engine”. At the same time, Thai prisons have been overrun and are “bursting at the seams”, stocked to more than 5% of capacity. As of now, prisons are taking in 15,000 inmates per month and only releasing 12,000 per month. To compound problems, the country only has 30,000 monitoring devices, which would be used to monitor those released early, ready for use.

  Somsak thinks the opportunity could be robust, since 82% of inmates in Thailand are due to non-violent offenses, mostly narcotics charges. He also expects about $198 million in seizures of funds from drug traffickers through the country this year. 

  An estimated 700,000 workers, heavily distributed in industries like tourism, services and construction, were let go from jobs due to Covid. About 200,000 returned home to countries like Myanmar and Laos, the report notes. 

  At one labor park in Samut Sakhon, companies have already started hiring “dozens of inmates” to do things like assemble bicycles and make Sriracha sauce. 

  Malaysia’s palm oil industry also sought to benefit from a similar program last year. That program has found “limited success”, the report notes.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 18:40

• War Games Showed US Would "Lose Fast" Against China If It Invaded Taiwan: US General
  War Games Showed US Would “Lose Fast” Against China If It Invaded Taiwan: US General

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

  A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be devastating to the U.S. military as a result of Beijing’s aggressive military development in recent years, according to a U.S. Air Force general.

  

  The outcome was based on a classified Pentagon war game simulation carried out over the years, Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote said in a recent interview with Yahoo News. He said that U.S. forces were losing more quickly in recent simulations after taking into consideration the Chinese regime’s new military capabilities.

  “After the 2018 war game, I distinctly remember one of our gurus of wargaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff, and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again, because we know what is going to happen,” Hinote said.

  “The definitive answer if the U.S. military doesn’t change course is that we’re going to lose fast. In that case, an American president would likely be presented with almost a fait accompli.”

  “At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster.”

  Around September 2020, the U.S. Air Force gamed out a conflict set more than a decade in the future, which started with a Chinese biological-weapon attack on U.S. ships and bases in the Indo-Pacific region, according to the outlet. Using military drills as a cover, Beijing then deploys an invasion force to attack Taiwan, while targeting U.S. bases and ships in the region with missile strikes, the outlet said.

  Last fall, the U.S. Air Force simulated a conflict set more than a decade in the future that began with a Chinese biological-weapon attack that swept through U.S. bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Then a major Chinese military exercise was used as cover for the deployment of a massive invasion force. The simulation culminated with Chinese missile strikes raining down on U.S. bases and warships in the region, and a lightning air and amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.

  This is the first time that the outcome of that simulation has been made public.

  Since President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, the Chinese Communist Party has escalated its war-mongering toward Taiwan, a democratic self-ruled island that Beijing claims as a part of its territory. In late January, a Chinese military official threatened war against the island.

  Beijing also has sent military planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on a nearly daily basis since the start of this year. Most recently on March 10, a Chinese anti-submarine warfare aircraft entered southwestern Taiwan’s ADIZ, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.

  Earlier this week, Adm. Philip Davidson, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned during a Senate hearing that the Chinese regime could invade Taiwan in the “next six years.”

  When asked by a senator about the United States’ ability to defend Taiwan, Davidson said, “I think our conventional deterrent is actually eroding in the region,” citing the Chinese military’s “vast advances” in size over the past decade, and also in capability.

  The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is now larger than the U.S. Navy. By 2025, the PLA is projected to have three aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific to the United States’ one, 12 amphibious assault ships to the United States’ four, and 108 modern multi-warfare combatant ships to the United States’ 12, according to estimates by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command submitted to Congress.

  Hinote told Yahoo News that certain adjustments are needed to tilt a possible war with China in favor of the United States. They include moving away from relying on large military bases, ports, and aircraft carriers while fighting the Chinese military, as well as deploying dispersed and mobile forces with large numbers of long-range, mobile strike systems, anti-ship cruise missile batteries, mobile rocket artillery systems, and unmanned mini-submarines, according to Hinote.

  What’s more, the adjustments call for greater use of surveillance and reconnaissance sources to allow U.S. policymakers to make quicker decisions.

  “If we can design a force that creates that level of uncertainty and causes Chinese leaders to question whether they can accomplish their goals militarily, I think that’s what deterrence looks like in the future,” Hinote said.

  Air Force officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 18:20

• Manhattan Leases Surge On Record Concessions And Plunging Rents
  Manhattan Leases Surge On Record Concessions And Plunging Rents

  Record concessions continue to drive new apartment leases in Manhattan as renters seek to capitalize on falling rents to trade up. 

  New lease signings surged 112% in February over the same period last year, according to Bloomberg, citing a recent report via appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

  

  Even though desperate landlords in the borough offered the most concessions ever to attract new tenants, there was still an overabundance of inventory. Incentives for new leases equated to 2.1 months of free rent, and approximately 41% of leases came with concessions, the report said. Manhattan’s listing inventory soared 154% in February to 11,750 units.

  Manhattan’s average rent declined 14% in February compared with last year. Landlords continued sweetening the pot to attract new tenants. The report also noted luxury apartments saw a 13% rent reduction to an average of $10,209.  

  “People aren’t going to return to Manhattan until they feel safe,” the report said. “We’re seeing that gradually becoming less of a concern.”

  A massive overhang of inventory has been painful for landlords and highly beneficial for bargain hunting millennials as some trade up for larger living accommodations. 

  In a prior report, Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, warned that the latest rebound should not be viewed as an “imminent recovery.”

  There’s still a lot of uncertainty about whether the rental market can rebound given a massive outflow of city dwellers to surrounding rural communities. Nevertheless, the latest developments are welcoming given record concessions and falling rents slowly chip away at inventory. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 18:00

• Taibbi: The Sovietization Of The American Press
  Taibbi: The Sovietization Of The American Press

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

  

  I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

  These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

  Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

  Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

  — Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

  — Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

  — Biden’s historic victory for America

  The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about this person:

  Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

  It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas.

  The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions.

  When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

  “In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

  This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

  The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted?

  The new, cleaved media landscape advances the same tiny intersection of elite opinion, except in the post-Trump era, that strip fits inside one party. Instead of appearing as props in a phony rendering of objectivity, Republicans in basically all non-Fox media have been moved off the legitimacy spectrum, and appear as foils only. Allowable opinion is now depicted stretching all the way from one brand of “moderate” Democrat to another.

  An example is the Thursday New York Times story, “As Economy Is Poised to Soar, Some Fear a Surge in Inflation.” It’s essentially an interview with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who’s worried about the inflationary impact of the latest Covid-19 rescue (“The question is: Does [it] overheat everything?”), followed by quotes from Fed chair Jerome Powell insisting that no, everything is cool. This is the same Larry Summers vs. Janet Yellen debate that’s been going on for weeks, and it represents the sum total of allowable economic opinions about the current rescue, stretching all the way from “it’s awesome” to “it’s admirable but risky.”

  This format isn’t all that different from the one we had before, except in one respect: without the superficial requirement to tend to a two-party balance, the hagiography in big media organizations flies out of control. These companies already tend to wash out people who are too contentious or anti-establishment in their leanings. Promoted instead, as even Noam Chomsky described a generation ago, are people with the digestive systems of jackals or monitor lizards, who can swallow even the most toxic piles of official nonsense without blinking. Still, those reporters once had to at least pretend to be something other than courtiers, as it was considered unseemly to openly gush about a party or a politician.

  Now? Look at the Times feature story on Biden’s pandemic relief bill:

  On Friday, “Scranton Joe” Biden, whose five-decade political identity has been largely shaped by his appeal to union workers and blue-collar tradesmen like those from his Pennsylvania hometown, will sign into law a $1.9 trillion spending plan that includes the biggest antipoverty effort in a generation…

  The new role as a crusader for the poor represents an evolution for Mr. Biden, who spent much of his 36 years in Congress concentrating on foreign policy, judicial fights, gun control, and criminal justice issues… Aides say he has embraced his new role… [and] has also been moved by the inequities in pain and suffering that the pandemic has inflicted on the poorest Americans…

  You’d never know from reading this that Biden’s actual rep on criminal justice issues involved boasting about authoring an infamous crime bill (that did “everything but hang people for jaywalking”), or that he’s long been a voracious devourer of corporate and especially financial services industry cash, that his “Scranton Joe” rep has been belied by a decidedly mixed history on unions, and so on. Can he legitimately claim to be more pro-union than his predecessor? Sure, but a news story that paints the Biden experience as stretching from “hero to the middle class” to “hero to the poor,” is a Pravda-level stroke job.

  We now know in advance that every Biden address will be reviewed as historic and exceptional. It was a mild shock to see Chris Wallace say Biden’s was the “the best inaugural address I have ever heard.” More predictable was Politico saying of Thursday night’s address that “it is hard to imagine any other contemporary politician making the speech Biden did… channeling our collective sorrow and reminding us that there is life after grief.” (Really? Hard to imagine any contemporary politician doing that?).

  This stuff is relatively harmless. Where it gets weird is that the move to turn the bulk of the corporate press in the “moral clarity” era into a single party organ has come accompanied by purges of the politically unfit. In the seemingly endless parade of in-house investigations of journalists, paper after paper has borrowed from the Soviet style of printing judgments and self-denunciations, without explaining the actual crimes.

  The New York Times coverage of the recent staff revolt at Teen Vogue against editor Alexi McCammond noted “Staff Members Condemn Editor’s Decade-Old, Racist Tweets,” but declined to actually publish the offending texts, so readers might judge for themselves. The Daily Beast expose on Times reporter Donald McNeil did much the same thing. Even the ongoing (and in my mind, ridiculous) moral panic over Substack ties in. Aimed at people already banished from mainstream media, the obvious message is that anyone with even mildly heterodox opinions shouldn’t be publishing anywhere.

  Those still clinging to mainstream jobs in a business that continues to lay people off at an extraordinary rate read the gist of all of these stories clearly: if you want to keep picking up a check, you’d better talk the right talk.

  Thus you see bizarre transformations like that of David Brooks, who spent his career penning paeans to “personal responsibility” and the “culture of thrift,” but is now writing stories about how “Joe Biden is a transformational president” for casting aside fiscal restraints in the massive Covid-19 bill. When explaining that “both parties are adjusting to the new paradigm,” he’s really explaining his own transformation, in a piece that reads like a political confession. “I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”

  Maybe Brooks is experiencing the same “evolution” Biden is being credited with of late. Or, he’s like a lot of people in the press who are searching out the safest places on the op-ed page, the middle of the newsroom middle, in desperate efforts to stay on the masthead. It’s been made clear that there’s no such thing as overdoing it in one direction, e.g. if you write as the Times did that Biden “has become a steady hand who chooses words with extraordinary restraint” (which even those who like and admire Biden must grasp is not remotely true of the legendary loose cannon). Meanwhile, how many open critics of the Party on either the left, the right, or anywhere in between still have traditional media jobs?

  All of this has created an atmosphere where even obvious observations that once would have interested blue-state voters, like that Biden’s pandemic relief bill “does not establish a single significant new social program,” can only be found in publications like the World Socialist Web Site. The bulk of the rest of the landscape has become homogenous and as predictably sycophantic as Fox in the “Mission Accomplished” years, maybe even worse. What is this all going to look like in four years?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 17:40

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• The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines
  The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  I suspect a large portion of the public is at least partially aware when they are being pushed or lured into a specific way of thinking. We have certainly had enough experience with institutions trying to manage our thoughts over the years.  Governments and mainstream media outlets in particular have made the manufacture of public consent their top priority. This is what they spend most of their time, money and energy on. All other issues are secondary.

  

  The media does not objectively report facts and evidence, it spins information to plant an engineered narrative in the minds of its viewers. But the public is not as stupid as they seem to think. This is probably why trust in the media has plunged by 46% in the past ten years, hitting an all time low this year of 27%.

  Except for pre-election season spikes, mainstream outlets from CNN to Fox to CBS to MSNBC are facing dismal audience numbers, with only around 2 million to 3 million prime time viewers. There are numerous YouTube commentators with bigger audiences than this. And, if you sift through the debris of MSM videos on YouTube, you’ll find low hits and a majority of people that are visiting their channels just to make fun of them.

  The MSM is now scrambling to explain their crumbling empire, as well as debating on ways to save it from oblivion. The power of the “Fourth Estate” is a facade, an illusion given form by smoke and mirrors. Bottom line: Nobody (except perhaps extreme leftists) likes the corporate media or activist journalists and propagandists.

  One would think that media moguls and journos would have realized this by now. I mean, if they accepted this reality, they would not be struggling so much with the notion that no one is listening to them when it comes to pandemic mandates and the covid vaccines. Yet, journalists complain about it incessantly lately.

  In fact, half the media reports I see these days are not fact based analysis of events, but corporate journalists interviewing OTHER corporate journalists and bitching to each other about how Americans are “too ignorant” or “too conspiratorial” to grasp that journos are the anointed high priests of information.

  I actually find this situation fascinating as an observer of oligarchy and being well versed in the mechanics of propaganda. The fundamental narrative of control-culture is that there are “experts” that the establishment chooses, and then there is everyone else. The “experts” are supposed to pontificate and dictate while everyone else is supposed to shut up, listen and obey.

  Media elitists see themselves in the role of “the experts” and the public as devout acolytes; a faithful flock of sheep.

  But what happens when everyone starts ignoring the sheep herders?

  The other day I came across this revealing interview on CBS news about a poll of Americans showing at least 30% will refuse to take the covid vaccine outright. The interview is, for some reason, with another journalist from The Atlantic with no apparent medical credentials and no insight into the data surrounding covid.

  One thing to note right away is that the discussion itself never addresses any actual facts about the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the mandates, or the vaccines. The establishment keeps telling us to “listen to the science”, but then they dismiss the science when it doesn’t agree with their agenda. When is the the mainstream going to finally acknowledge facts like these:

  1) According to multiple official studies, including a study from American College of Physicians, the Infection Fatality Ratio (or death rate) of Covid-19 is only 0.26% for anyone outside of a nursing home. This means that 99.7% of people not in nursing homes will survive the virus if they contract it.

  2) Nursing home patients account for over 40% of all Covid deaths across the US. These are mostly people who were already sick with multiple preexisting conditions when they contracted covid.

  3) The Federal Government’s own hospital data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that capacity for hospital beds is ample in the US and that this has been the case for the past year. Covid patients only take up around 13% of inpatient beds nationally. The stories in the media of hospitals at overcapacity due to covid are therefore inaccurate or they are outright lies.

  4) International studies including a Danish study published by the American College of Physicians have proven that wearing masks makes NO significant difference in the spread or infection rate of Covid-19. Interestingly, the states in the US with the most heavily enforced mask mandates have also had the highest infection rates.

  5) In March of 2020, head of the NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci had this to say about mask wearing when being interviewed on 60 Minutes:

  “Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks….there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.”

  6) On Twitter in February of 2020, the US Surgeon General had this to say about mask wearing:

  “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

  Both the Surgeon General and Fauci later reversed their stance on mask wearing when it no longer suited the control narrative, and are now fervent supporters of enforcing mask mandates. Scientific data continues to show that mask wearing does nothing to stop the spread of Covid.

  7) The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines are made with a brand new technology that has had limited testing. The NIAID used minimal animal testing on mice, but these mice were NOT a type that is normally susceptible to contracting covid the way humans are. These tests were completely inadequate, yet the mRNA vaccines were released for human use anyway.

  8) The new vaccines do not contain the virus that triggers COVID-19, as a conventional vaccine might. Instead, Moderna and Pfizer researchers used a new technique to make messenger RNA (mRNA), which is similar to mRNA found in SARS-CoV-2. In theory, the artificial mRNA will act as instructions that prompt human cells to build a protein found on the surface of the virus. That protein would theoretically trigger a protective immune response. The entire Covid vaccine effort was essentially a giant shortcut. This is not an advantage, as the long term effects of any vaccine from 1 year to 5 years to 10 years should be understood before it is injected into human beings.

  9) Multiple medical industry professional including the former VP of Pfizer have signed a petition warning about the new mRNA vaccinations. They say far more testing is needed before humans are exposed, and they warned that the vaccines may cause severe autoimmune responses or even infertility.

  10) Numerous polls also show that at least 30% to 50% of medical professionals including nurses and doctors plan to refuse the vaccines as well. These people are facing the risk of losing their jobs, but they are still not going to accept the shot. That is how potentially volatile the mRNA vaccines could be; long term health is more important than short term risk.

  When all of these facts are taken into account, along with numerous others that I do not have space to mention here, it is not so outlandish for millions of Americans to be skeptical of medical mandates and vaccination over covid.

  Why should we worry about getting vaccinated over a virus that 99.7% of the population will survive without difficulty? Why should we allow economic shutdowns, medical passports or invasive contact tracing at all, let alone over a pandemic that less than 0.3% of the population is susceptible to? Beyond that, why should we volunteer to be guinea pigs for a new vaccine technology without knowing what the long term consequences might be?

  Even if covid was a legitimate danger, no crisis justifies handing over our civil liberties in response.

  The basic establishment narrative is this: “Covid is an existential threat to the public, therefore, we are justified in taking away people’s freedoms, their economy and their privacy. It is for the “greater good of the greater number”. Vaccination is infallible and cannot be questioned. The “experts” are infallible and cannot be questioned. It’s not your body and it is not your choice. Your body is property of the government and if you do not voluntarily take injections of whatever experimental cocktail we give you, then we will continue to erode your freedoms until you give in and submit. Then, once you have submitted, your freedoms will still never be given back.”

  It’s not really a persuasive argument for lot of people.

  Media outlets like CBS will rarely mention the overall issue of control and oppression tied to the pandemic response, just as they will never address any facts that run contrary to their message. What they will do is misrepresent the situation in order to gain compliance. The Atlantic journo basically admits this in the interview above, arguing that the media in particular needs to change the message to better attach incentive to vaccine compliance. In other words, people are easier to manipulate when they are tricked into thinking there is more to gain by submission rather than rebellion.

  The medical passport system is the personification of false incentive. The media presents the notion that no one will be “forced” to take the vaccines; but what they don’t mention is that without the vaccine they will not get a medical passport, and without a medical passport they will be cut off from the normal economy. You can be vax free, but you will be punished through poverty and zero access until you give in.

  My question is, why do they care so much if people don’t want or trust the vaccine? Why are they so obsessed? If the mRNA cocktail actually works and is not a health hazard, then they should be perfectly safe from infection. The idea that people who refuse are a danger to others is nonsense.

  If we are going to start talking about potential “mutations” that bypass vaccine protections, then why take any vaccine? If mutations are really a threat and are not obstructed by current vaccines, then taking a vaccine now is useless.

  And, why the constant attempts at public division? CBS and The Atlantic use an obvious ploy to assert that black and brown Americans have different reasons for refusing to comply when compared to apparently white conservatives. Why do they assume that black and brown people are not conservative or that we do not have ample reasons in common? This is never explained or supported.

  Finally, as always the media seeks to gaslight anyone that disagree with the prevailing agenda as “conspiracy nuts”, presenting strawman arguments while ignoring all legitimate arguments on the side of liberty. There is such a thing as conspiracy REALITY, and none of these journos would survive a debate on a level playing field against those of us in the alternative media when it comes to covid and the vaccines.

  The media and the government’s stalker mentality when it comes to people skeptical of covid restrictions and vaccines is unsettling. They act more like a jilted psychopathic ex-girlfriends rather than people concerned with saving lives. This tells me they are afraid. Their agenda is uncertain, and they have doubts. This is a good thing.

  At bottom, covid is a non-issue that has been inflated into a crisis of epic proportions through storytelling and selective fact checking. Millions of people around the world die every year from a myriad of illnesses, some of them as infectious as covid. We don’t shut down our lives, wear diapers on our faces, inject ourselves with untested cell altering cocktails or sacrifice our freedoms because of this. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continues. Those who wish to take away our self determination in these matters are the real threat; covid is not.

  *  *  *

  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
  Fri, 03/12/2021 – 00:10

• SOCOM Fields Killer Robots "For Immediate Force Protection" 
  SOCOM Fields Killer Robots “For Immediate Force Protection” 

  A new R&D budget document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense reveals that Special Operation Command (SOCOM) has already acquired and possibly fielded remote weapon technology for ground robots, according to Forbes. 

  Called the Lightweight Remote Weapons System (LRWS), it’s a miniature version of the Commonly Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS). This unmanned turret enables an operator inside an armored vehicle to find targets via cameras and engage targets with high-powered weapons. 

  The R&D budget document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense said:

  “LRWS rapidly developed and evaluated a remote weapon station with significant size weight and power reduction to enable operations on remotely operated small ground vehicles.” 

  The weight of the LRWS is only 70 pounds versus CROWS of 350. This makes it small enough to be mounted on a Foster-Miller TALON ground robot. The new system includes various sensors such as a camera, thermal imaging, and laser range finder. The LRWS supports a machinegun or a sniper rifle. 

  

  The document further said the LRWS is a “man-in-the-loop” system is controlled by a human operator rather than artificial intelligence. 

  “LRWS transitioned to US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) for immediate force protection of SOF operators while conducting the operational evaluation of the prototype units and will subsequently be available to all operators within the USSOCOM.” 

  “This suggests that Special Forces acquired the new remote weapon systems and are using them on unmanned vehicles for Force Protection, such as guarding a base perimeter,” said Forbes. 

  A SOCOM spokesperson said that the document “does not explicitly specify the vehicle SOF operators are using while assessing the prototype station in question.”

  But, more or less, what’s important here is that SOCOM is already fielding armed robots on the modern battlefield. 

  The US Army is quickly developing and fielding light, medium, and heavy robotic combat vehicles to prepare for future combat as part of a rapid modernization effort. 

  Earlier this year, the service took delivery of two Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light unmanned ground vehicle prototypes (RCV-Ls).  

  What comes next is autonomous weaponry and how a line of code will decide what to kill. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:50

• China Is Winning The Great 21st Century Tech War
  China Is Winning The Great 21st Century Tech War

  Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  China believes it is on track to take over the world.

  At the ongoing “Two Sessions” in Beijing, the Communist Party has publicly told us how it will accomplish its ambitious goal. If the Chinese ruling party succeeds, the rest of the 21st century will be painted only in shades of red.

  Fortunately, America is beginning to mobilize itself. Americans, however, need to act, immediately. Tech is the real arms race of our era.

  On March 5, at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp legislature, Premier Li Keqiang announced the 14th Five-Year Plan, which begins this year.

  China, pursuant to the plan, will increase spending 7% per year to achieve “major breakthroughs” in areas of “frontier technology.” Specifically, the country, will devote resources to artificial intelligence; quantum information; semiconductors; brain science; genomics and biotech; clinical medicine and health; and deep space, deep sea, and deep earth.

  Moreover, Beijing is also talking about the Sci-Tech Innovation 2030 Agenda and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035. Officials are silent when it comes to Xi Jinping’s now-notorious Made in China 2025 initiative — the plan is on its face a violation of the country’s trade obligations — but there is no question that the effort remains underway nonetheless.

  China is going all-in on what Wang Zhigang, the head of the Ministry of Science and Technology, called the development of a “new ecology” for innovation. In that ecology, China has been able to lead the world in important areas, such as “unhackable” quantum communications. Moreover, the country is not far behind — if it is behind at all — in quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

  China’s recent progress has been impressive. A decade ago, Beijing was not considered a tech contender.

  There should be no surprise how Chinese leaders made their regime a technology powerhouse. In addition to theft, they adopted a determined, methodical and disciplined approach to developing their own innovations. Beijing’s efforts to master key technologies have been massive, state-directed and government-funded.

  Government funding has been China’s key tactic. The 7% figure of the 14th plan comes on top of a massive increase in tech spending in the last half decade. Ye Yujiang, the head of basic research at the Ministry of Science and Technology, just announced that China’s spending on basic research nearly doubled during the just-completed 13th Five-Year Plan.

  Beijing’s effort depends on large, top-down projects. Take the National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, a multi-billion-dollar facility spread over 86 acres in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. It is the world’s largest quantum research lab.

  The concept is to bring all Chinese researchers to a single location. Some, questioning the idea of a national lab, think it is not a good idea to concentrate the nation’s quantum work in one place. Others believe the “enormous bet” on quantum research is not smart in the first place because it draws funding from other crucial fields. Nonetheless, the lab is now China’s hope for quantum. “This may sound a bit old-fashioned, even Soviet-style, but it can give China a chance to win the race,” said Guo Guoping, a professor at Hefei’s University of Science and Technology of China.

  As a practical matter, the U.S. government has not paid much attention to the development of tech in recent decades. For one thing, that is not America’s current style. U.S. tech efforts this century have been diffuse, and many people favor the hands-off approach. As Chris Fall of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science put it to the Washington Post, “The beauty of how we do science in this country is that it isn’t top-down.”

  Americans companies such as IBM and Google have led the world in key areas, such as quantum computing, without significant federal support. Yet in building the world’s 5G networks — the fifth generation of wireless communications, which will permit an unprecedented connectivity of devices — the let-the-market-do-it approach has been close to a total failure. There are, for instance, no American companies that compete with China’s Huawei Technologies, which President Trump in August 2019 labeled “a national security threat.”

  

  As Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and now chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, declared in Senate testimony in February, “The threat of Chinese leadership in key technology areas is a national crisis and needs to be dealt with directly, now.”

  In this crisis, the U.S. is going to have to adopt a whole-of-society approach. “We need academia, we need industry, we need traditional defense contractors, we need the technology companies, and we also need small business,” said Steve Chien of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Chien also served on the AI commission, which just released its 756-page report.

  In short, the U.S. to compete is going to have to ditch “free-market fundamentalism” and go into the business of tech creation. We need to start a series of “Manhattan Projects” — and fast.

  Washington is no stranger to top-down efforts, such as the rapid mobilization during World War II, the 1960’s race to the moon, and the building of the Interstate highway system. Unfortunately, the free market cannot meet the emergency the country now faces. China’s approach is working, and America has to move fast.

  The United States, Brandon Weichert, the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, told Gatestone, needs to invest at least $1 trillion and preferably more into tech.

  Many concur. David Goldman, the deputy editor of Asia Times, recommends restoring federal R&D to Reagan administration levels. That translates into an additional $200 billion a year of such spending. “The Biden administration,” he told this site, “has said a lot of the right things about the need to maintain America’s technological leadership, but it is asking for $1.9 trillion of helicopter money for economic stimulus and very small amounts for the kind of tech investments that raise future productivity.”

  Americans, Weichert says, perceive innovations “as nothing more than fanciful exotic technologies that one is likelier to see in the next iteration of Star Trek than in the real world.”

  The Chinese, he says, “dare to dream because they recognize that bringing these dreams to reality in China will ensure that the Communist Party survives, thrives, and writes the rules of a new world order.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:30

• Denver Prepares For Biggest Snowstorm In More Than Century 
  Denver Prepares For Biggest Snowstorm In More Than Century 

  While much of the country has experienced warmer temperatures this week (something we outlined here & here), a much-needed change from last month’s polar vortex blast that nearly collapsed Texas’ power grid, a monster storm could strike Denver and surrounding areas this weekend. 

  AccuWeather meteorologists continue to track the weekend winter storm, making its rounds in southern California mid-week and set to arrive in southern Colorado late Friday and dump snow across the state through late Sunday or early Monday morning.

  

  “The looming storm threatens to be a long-duration event that could result in snowfall totals that could reach 2 feet in Denver and pile as high as 3 feet in places west of Denver, such as Boulder and Fort Collins. Heavy snow will stretch north into Wyoming as well,” meteorologists said. 

  

  AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said the snowstorm could “eclipse the seasonal total in one storm.” He said, “Denver has received 34.1 inches for the season to date. The storm has the potential to rank among the biggest on record in Denver.”

  

  Winter weather advisories have already been posted across Colorado. 

  

  While Southwest, Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast regions are experiencing warmer temperatures this week, cooler weather may arrive later this weekend into early next week. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:10

• "I'm In A Cult!" – The Miseducation Of America's Elites
  “I’m In A Cult!” – The Miseducation Of America’s Elites

  Authored by Bari Weiss via City-Journal.org, (emphasis ours)

  Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret…

  

  The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.

  But the situation of late has become too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls. So one recent weekend, on a leafy street in West Los Angeles, they gathered in person and invited me to join.

  In a backyard behind a four-bedroom home, ten people sat in a circle of plastic Adirondack chairs, eating bags of Skinny Pop. These are the rebels: well-off Los Angeles parents who send their children to Harvard-Westlake, the most prestigious private school in the city.

  By normal American standards, they are quite wealthy. By the standards of Harvard-Westlake, they are average. These are two-career couples who credit their own success not to family connections or inherited wealth but to their own education. So it strikes them as something more than ironic that a school that costs more than $40,000 a year—a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board—is teaching students that capitalism is evil.

  For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution”—unveiled this July, in a 20-page document—is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.

  “I grew up in L.A., and the Harvard School definitely struggled with diversity issues. The stories some have expressed since the summer seem totally legitimate,” says one of the fathers. He says he doesn’t have a problem with the school making greater efforts to redress past wrongs, including by bringing more minority voices into the curriculum. What he has a problem with is a movement that tells his children that America is a bad country and that they bear collective racial guilt.

  “They are making my son feel like a racist because of the pigmentation of his skin,” one mother says.

  Another poses a question to the group: “How does focusing a spotlight on race fix how kids talk to one another? Why can’t they just all be Wolverines?” (Harvard-Westlake has declined to comment.)

  “If You Publish My Name, It Would Ruin My Life”

  This Harvard-Westlake parents’ group is one of many organizing quietly around the country to fight what it describes as an ideological movement that has taken over their schools. This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen of these dissenters—teachers, parents, and children—at elite prep schools in two of the bluest states in the country: New York and California.

  The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.

  “The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”

  One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”

  Parents who have spoken out against this ideology, even in private ways, say it hasn’t gone over well. “I had a conversation with a friend, and I asked him: ‘Is there anything about this movement we should question?’” said a father with children in two prep schools in Manhattan. “And he said: ‘Dude, that’s dangerous ground you’re on in our friendship.’ I’ve had enough of those conversations to know what happens.”

  That fear is shared, deeply, by the children. For them, it’s not just the fear of getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a college recommendation, though that fear is potent. It’s the fear of social shaming. “If you publish my name, it would ruin my life. People would attack me for even questioning this ideology. I don’t even want people knowing I’m a capitalist,” a student at the Fieldston School in New York City told me, in a comment echoed by other students I spoke with. (Fieldston declined to comment for this article.) “The kids are scared of other kids,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

  The atmosphere is making their children anxious, paranoid, and insecure—and closed off from even their close friends. “My son knew I was talking to you and he begged me not to,” another Harvard-Westlake mother told me. “He wants to go to a great university, and he told me that one bad statement from me will ruin us. This is the United States of America. Are you freaking kidding me?”

  Woke-Weaning For Harvard

  These are America’s elites—the families who can afford to pay some $50,000 a year for their children to be groomed for the eating clubs of Princeton and the secret societies of Yale, the glide path to becoming masters—sorry, masterx—of the universe. The ideas and values instilled in them influence the rest of us.

  That is not the only reason this story matters. These schools are called prep schools because they prepare America’s princelings to take their place in what we’re told is our meritocracy. Nothing happens at a top prep school that is not a mirror of what happens at an elite college.

  What does it say about the current state of that meritocracy, then, that it wants kids fluent in critical race theory and “white fragility,” even if such knowledge comes at the expense of Shakespeare? “The colleges want children—customers—that are going to be pre-aligned to certain ideologies that originally came out of those colleges,” says a STEM teacher at one of New York’s prestigious prep schools. “I call it woke-weaning. And that’s the product schools like mine are offering.”

  

  Photo: Olga Kurbatova/iStock

  The parents I spoke with for this story are savvy and smart: they realize that it’s bizarre—at best—for a school like Harvard-Westlake to hold forth constantly about social justice as it drops more than $40 million on a new off-campus athletic complex. This is a school that sends out an annual report to every Harvard-Westlake family listing parents’ donations. Last year, the “Heritage Circle” group—gifts of $100,000 or more—included Viveca Paulin-Ferrell and Will Ferrell. A red paw next to Jeanne and Tony Pritzker’s names indicated more than a decade of cumulative giving.

  Parents say that it is a school where giving more gets you more. Big donors get invitations to special dinners, and, most importantly, time and attention from the people in charge. Meantime, their children are taught radical-chic politics, which, of course, do not involve anything actually substantively radical, like redistributing the endowment.

  “These schools are the privilege of the privilege of the privilege. They say nonstop that they are all about inclusion. But they are by definition exclusive. These schools are for the tippity top of society,” a young mother in Manhattan tells me.

  Power in America now comes from speaking woke, a highly complex and ever-evolving language. The Grace Church School in Manhattan, for example, offers a 12-page guide to “inclusive language,” which discourages people from using the word “parents”—“folks” is preferred—or from asking questions like “what religion are you?” (When asked for comment, Rev. Robert M. Pennoyer II, the assistant head of school, replied: “Grace is an Episcopal school. As part of our Episcopal identity, we recognize the dignity and worth common to humanity.” He added that the guide comes “from our desire to promote a sense of belonging for all of our students.”) A Harvard-Westlake English teacher welcomes students back after summer with: “I am a queer white womxn of European descent. I use [ she | her ] pronouns but also feel comfortable using [ they | them ] pronouns.” She attached a “self-care letter” quoting Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

  Woe betide the working-class kid who arrives in college and uses Latino instead of “Latinx,” or who stumbles conjugating verbs because a classmate prefers to use the pronouns they/them. Fluency in woke is an effective class marker and key for these princelings to retain status in university and beyond. The parents know this, and so woke is now the lingua franca of the nation’s best prep schools. As one mother in Los Angeles puts it: “This is what all the colleges are doing, so we have to do it. The thinking is: if Harvard does it, it must be good.”

  “Educated In Resentment And Fear”

  “I am in a cult. Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s that the cult is all around me and I am trying to save kids from becoming members.” He sounds like a Scientology defector, but he is a math teacher at one of the most elite high schools in New York City. He is not politically conservative. “I studied critical theory; I saw Derrida speak when I was in college,” he says, “so when this ideology arrived at our school over the past few years, I recognized the language and I knew what it was. But it was in a mutated form.”

  This teacher is talking with me because he is alarmed by the toll this ideology is taking on his students. “I started seeing what was happening to the kids. And that’s what I couldn’t take. They are being educated in resentment and fear. It’s extremely dangerous.”

  Three thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, another prep-school teacher says something similar. “It teaches people who have so much to see themselves as victims. They think they are suffering oppression at one of the poshest schools in the country.”

  It seems to be working. One Los Angeles mother tells me that her son was recently told by his friend, who is black, that he is “inherently oppressed.” She was incredulous. “This kid is a multimillionaire,” she said. “My son said to his friend: ‘Explain it to me. Why do you feel oppressed? What has anyone done to make you feel less?’ And the friend said: ‘The color of my skin.’ This blew my mind.”

  “We Don’t Call Them Newton’s Law Anymore”

  The science program at Fieldston would make any parent swoon. The electives for 11th- and 12th-graders, according to the school’s website, include immunology, astronomy, neuroscience, and pharmacology.

  But physics looks different these days.

  “We don’t call them Newton’s laws anymore,” an upperclassman at the school informs me. “We call them the three fundamental laws of physics. They say we need to ‘decenter whiteness,’ and we need to acknowledge that there’s more than just Newton in physics.”

  One of her classmates says that he tries to take “the fact classes, not the identity classes.” But it’s gotten harder to distinguish between the two. “I took U.S. history and I figured when you learn about U.S. history maybe you structure it by time period or what happened under each presidency. We traced different marginalized groups. That was how it was structured. I only heard a handful of the presidents’ names in class.”

  Brentwood, a school that costs $45,630 a year, made headlines a few weeks back when it held racially segregated “dialogue and community-building sessions.” But when I speak with a parent of a middle-school student there, they want to talk about their child’s English curriculum. “They replaced all the books with no input or even informing the parents.” The curriculum no longer features classics such as The Scarlet Letter, Little Women, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Flies. New books include: Stamped, Dear Martin, Dear Justice, and Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass.

  “The dean said to me, basically, it’s important to change with the times,” said the Brentwood parent. In a statement, Brentwood’s director of communications said: “Diversity, equity and inclusion are critical components of our education and our community at Brentwood School. The events of last summer created a call to action for all of us, in our school community and beyond.” Brentwood has announced a late-starting school day on March 10 for the lower school “due to our faculty book study of White Fragility.”

  At Fieldston, an elective is offered to high school juniors and seniors called “historicizing whiteness.” At Grace Church School, seniors can take a course called “Allying: Why? Who? and How?” The curriculum includes a ’zine called “Accomplices Not Allies” that declares “the work of an accomplice in anti-colonial struggle is to attack colonial structures & ideas,” alongside a photograph of a burning police car. Harvard-Westlake, in its extensive antiracist plan announced this summer, included “redesigning the 11th grade US History course from a critical race theory perspective,” among many similar goals.

  

  A screenshot of ‘Accomplices Not Allies’

  To question any of the curricular changes, parents say, is to make yourself suspect: “Every group chat I’m on with school parents, with the exception of my concerned parents’ group, they have a pattern of shaming anyone who shares anything remotely political or dissents from the group narrative,” one Brentwood mother wrote to me. “Once someone shames one person, many chime in agreement. The times I speak up to defend those they shame, they attempt to shame me.”

  In this worldview, complexity itself is a kind of racism, nuance is a phobia, and skepticism merely a type of false consciousness. Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, plainly spelled out the logic on Twitter recently: “The heartbeat of racism is denial. And too often, the more powerful the racism, the more powerful the denial.”

  One teacher told me that he was asked to teach an antiracist curriculum that included a “pyramid” of white supremacy. At the top was genocide. At the bottom was “two sides to every story.”

  “‘Two sides to every story,’” he said. “That was on the racist pyramid.”

  

  The pyramid of racism includes “we all belong to the human race”

  “Mom, I Just Found Out I’m Racist”

  But the most important consequence of the woke ideology isn’t a lesser English curriculum. It’s that the ideology, which seems to touch every aspect of schooling now, has changed children’s self-conception.

  Consider this story, from Chapin, the tony all-girls school on the Upper East Side, involving a white girl in the lower grades who came home one day and told her father: “All people with lighter skin don’t like people with darker skin and are mean to them.” He was horrified as she explained that that was what she had been taught by her teachers. “I said to her: that’s not how we feel in this family.” It’s worth taking a look at Chapin’s various affinity groups, which have become de rigueur at all of these schools. (Chapin did not respond to a request for comment.)

  For high schoolers, the message is more explicit. A Fieldston student says that students are often told “if you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

  At Harvard-Westlake, the school recently administered the debunked implicit-bias test to tenth-graders. It was technically optional, but several parents I spoke with said that their children felt compelled to take it. One mother confided that her son said to her, “Mom, I just found out I’m a racist and I prefer White Europeans.” Her child is mixed race. “For my kid to come home and be told by his school you are a racist—I was aghast. I was so, so angry.”

  A Brentwood parent says that she has tried, in small ways, to stand up to this. “They say I don’t understand because my skin is white.” Children like hers are being taught to give up ambition and yield positions that they might earn through hard work to others who are more marginalized. “My child is asking me obvious questions like: If I work really hard, shouldn’t I get rewarded?”

  

  A chart used at Brentwood includes the phrase “I yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized” as part of “becoming anti-racist.”

  Doublethinkers in American High Scools

  All of this “has made me think about race more,” said one teen boy in Manhattan. The curriculum, he explained, was trying to teach him to feel obsessed with his whiteness, the opposite of what his parents had taught him to do. Making students separate out by race in affinity groups is racist, he said. “MLK would condemn my school.”

  Some students are rebelling, which, in this case, looks like becoming a Republican. But others go all-in on the ideology, which has created conflicts with parents who don’t. “The school has taken over as the moral guide, with me being the irritating person in the background who doesn’t really get it,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

  So children learn how the new rules of woke work. The idea of lying in order to please a teacher seems like a phenomenon from the Soviet Union. But the high schoolers I spoke with said that they do versions of this, including parroting views they don’t believe in assignments so that their grades don’t suffer.

  

  Photo: GeorgePeters/iStock

  In Brooklyn, a STEM teacher known to be friendly among skeptical students laughed when he told me the latest absurdity: students told him that their history class had a unit on Beyoncé, and they felt compelled to say that they loved her music, even if they did not. “I thought: they aren’t even entitled to their own musical preferences,” he said. “What does it mean when you can’t even tell the truth about how music affects you?” One English teacher in Los Angeles tacitly acknowledges the problem: she has the class turn off their videos on Zoom and asks each student to make their name anonymous so that they can have uninhibited discussions.

  No reliable survey data exist on free expression among high schoolers, but last week, Heterodox Academy published its annual Campus Expression Survey Report, which found that, in 2020, 62 percent of college students surveyed “agreed the climate on their campus prevents students from saying things they believe.”

  Relying on word of mouth, parents are trying to suss out which, if any, of the private schools in their city avoid this ideology. They ask me what I know. “I don’t know where to move him to. I yank him and it’s the same thing. But I have a pit in my stomach about sending him back for third grade,” says a mother at Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx, in a concern echoed by many parents. (Riverdale declined to comment.)

  A Conspiracy Of Silence

  When I began working on this story, I didn’t feel that much sympathy for these parents. Some 18 million public school children have not set foot in a school in the past year. A study released in early December by McKinsey and Co. found that virtual learning hurt all students, but students of color the most: remote school set them back by three to five months in math, for example. Such numbers do not begin to capture the crippling effects, including suicidal ideation, that this past year has had on what experts are already calling a lost generation.

  The parents in this story are not parents with no other options. Most have the capital—social and literal—to pull their kids out and hire private tutors. That they weren’t speaking out seemed to me cowardly, or worse.

  The cynical answer for their silence is two words: Ivy League. “There are definitively rumors that the school has like, say, three picks for Duke and that if you stand up against this your kid will get blackballed,” says one mother.

  Another explanation is groupthink and social pressure. “Sometimes the smartest people are the easiest ones to fool,” says a father who recently moved his son from one school to another that he judges to be marginally better. “If you made a decision to go on the board of Dalton having espoused all these leftist views forever and you want your kid to get into Harvard, you are not going to stand up and say, ‘wait a second, guys.’ You’re just not going to do it. Most people want to be members of the club.”

  I think it’s true that many people would rather violate their stated principles than be iced out of their social network. But this is a situation that goes beyond getting shunted to a bad table at the Robin Hood gala. To resist this ideology is to go against the entire institutional world.

  It’s not just Dalton, a school that has committed to being “visibly, vocally and structurally antiracist.” Bain & Company is tweeting about “Womxn’s History Month.” The Cartoon Network is imploring children to “see color.” Coca-Cola employees were recently instructed to “be less white.” You cannot buy or sell the newly problematic Dr. Seuss titles on eBay. This ideology isn’t speaking truth to power. It is the power.

  Most alarmingly, the ideology is increasingly prevalent at the local public school. The incoming New York City schools chancellor is a vocal proponent of critical race theory. In Burbank, the school district just told middle- and high school teachers to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. The Sacramento school district is promoting racial segregation by way of “racial affinity groups,” where students can “cultivate racial solidarity and compassion and support each other in sitting with the discomfort, confusion, and numbness that often accompany white racial awakening.” The San Diego school district recently held a training in which white teachers were told that they “spirit murder” black children.

  “I don’t mean to get emotional, I just feel helpless,” said one mother through tears. “I look at the public school and I am equally mortified. I can’t believe what they are doing to everybody. I’m too afraid. I’m too afraid to speak too loudly. I feel cowardly. I just make little waves.” Another tells me: “It’s fear of retribution. Would it cause our daughter to be ostracized? Would it cause people to ostracize us? It already has.”

  I have a friend in New York who is the mother to a four-year-old. She seems exactly the kind of parent these schools would want to attract: a successful entrepreneur, a feminist, and a diehard Manhattanite. She’d dreamed of sending her daughter to a school like Dalton. One day at home, in the midst of the application process, she was drawing with her daughter, who said offhandedly: “I need to draw in my own skin color.” Skin color, she told her mother, is “really important.” She said that’s what she learned in school.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:50

• All Vaccines Are Not Created Equal In The Eyes Of The Public
  All Vaccines Are Not Created Equal In The Eyes Of The Public

  As countries continue the push to innoculate their populations against Covid-19, problems with vaccine hesitancy are emerging to varying degrees. While this is not a new phenomenon, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that having a variety of vaccines available has led to some being viewed more favourably than others. A recent YouGov survey showed that up to a quarter of people say they would not accept a shot of a particular vaccine, in the hope they will be offered a different one in the future.

  This not only hampers efforts to halt the spread of the pandemic, but also throws up an array of questions as to how governments and the media should deal with the information surrounding each of the vaccines once they have been approved for use. For an example of all these factors coming together we only need to look as far as Germany. According to YouGov, 27 percent of respondents there said they would not take the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, instead choosing to wait for an alternative.

  

  The background to this is somewhat complex, but it essentially stems from the decision of the German government to not recommend the Oxford vaccine for those over 65 as the number of people tested in this age group during stage 3 trials was considered too small. This decision has since been reversed, but the damage to public perception was already done. On top of this, a reporting error in one of the country’s most respected newspapers stated that the effectiveness of the vaccine for the age group 56-69 was just 8%. In actual fact, this figure referred to the share of Astra-Zeneca’s test subjects in this age group, not the efficacy of the vaccine.

  In the UK conversely, the Astra-Zeneca shot was rated better than both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNtech products in terms of perceived safety, as this infographic illustrates.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As well as the differing perceptions from country to country, overall differences in levels of trust can be observed, with France especially low across the board.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:30

• Biden Is Playing A Dangerous Game In The Middle East
  Biden Is Playing A Dangerous Game In The Middle East

  Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,

  Washington’s new Middle East policies looks like sandcastle. Targeting MBS means putting region at peril. The new media frenzy about a possible full-out confrontation between the US Biden Administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a sign that Western political leaders are out of touch with reality.

  

  Last week’s revelations published in a declassified report by U.S. security services on the role of MBS in the Khashoggi murder show not only the lack of proof available, but could also lead to a full divorce between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. A growing amount of Western media publications argue that the Saudi Crown Prince should not only be sanctioned, but that Washington also should reconsider its former in-depth cooperation with the Kingdom. 

  Several U.S. experts have been quoted in international media calling for a clear change in US strategy towards the Kingdom, including a possible removal of MBS as Crown Prince via support of former Saudi Crown Prince Bin Nayef or other Saudi royals. In a clear break with US power politics we’ve seen during the last decades, where the removal of third party power brokers was blocked, a new era seems to be looming on the horizon. 

  At the same time, Biden finds himself on a slippery slope regarding the ongoing confrontation with Iran, by putting additional sanctions on Iran but at the same time removing one of the region’s main Iranian backed armed groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, from the U.S. terrorism list. The results this policy change have already become very clear. A new aggressive drone and ballistic missile campaign has been started by the Houthis to hit Saudi strategic airports and oil infrastructure targets on the Red Sea and East Coast. The high-profile attack on Aramco oil infrastructure this week shows that the Kingdom is still under threat. Some even state that the attacks on the Eastern Province, Saudi’s main oil and gas production region, could not have been done without the full military and logistical support of Iran.

  Still, the military capabilities of Houthi rebels and Iran are at present the least of the kingdom’s concerns. The direct diplomatic fall-out of the publication of an intelligence report by the Biden Administration in which the Saudi Crown Prince, who is expected to become Saudi King in the next few years, is being implicated as potential instigator and backer of the Khashoggi murder, is unprecedented. To have U.S. citizens and politicians call for new inquiries about the role of MBS and his security apparatus in the murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is one thing, but having official documents, declassified by the Biden Administration, directly accusing MBS is calling for potential rifts that could have a fall-out for the whole region. 

  The attack on Ras Tanura, which is Saudi Arabia’s main crude oil and petchem products export facility had an impact on the market. Crude oil prices spiked, but the effect was only marginal. Even that the current attack has not received the same attention as the Abqaiq attack in 2019, which had a much larger impact on Saudi oil production, the significance seems to be underestimated. A potential destruction of critical facilities in Ras Tanura would have been a shock to the market, even in the light of still high storage volumes worldwide. No oil flows however seem to have been constrained, so futures relaxed again. Still, the market should keep a wary eye on the area, as possible new attacks or even combined attacks on Abqaiq-Ras Tanura by the Houthis and/or Iran could be an option currently being discussed by Tehran hard-liners.

  Until now, the impact has been only superficial, but taking into account the growing capabilities of Houthi drone and missile arsenals, or the vast, almost Russian style, capabilities on the other side of the Gulf, other options are clearly on the table. 

  What should markets get worried is the fact that in the eyes of Iran, Biden and Europeans have almost given green light to hardliners in Tehran to show their muscles. The ongoing Houthi operations are a clear sign that Biden’s current soft-power or even appeasement approach is already backfiring.

  Washington’s diffuse approach to Iranian sanctions and the JCPOA is another bone of contention. In the first months of his Presidency, Biden has not shown any clear strategy, leaving too much room for interpretation. Whatever people think about former US president Trump’s policies, his Iran policies were clear. It seems that Iran has almost fallen off the Resolute Desk in the White House, no open and clear way-forward is being introduced. The only clear path currently painted is that Riyadh and Washington are on a collision course. The Biden Administration seems to hold the view that the US is still the sole power broker in the region, so soft power or pressure put on Arab regimes will reap the rewards sought for.  This is a clear misconception, partly based on still existing Obama Era assessments, which are no longer valid.

  Maybe to the surprise of Washington-based analysts, MBS is not sitting still. The Saudi Crown Prince, is making a lot of headlines with his aggressive economic diversification plans and dreams, and has shown that his international position has not yet diminished. The last days, a flurry of diplomatic and high-level meetings have been held in Riyadh, where Russian Minister Lavrov, Jordan’s King Abdallah, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and others have been holding meetings to discuss economic and geopolitical issues. Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat Prince Faisal also has been hosted by Qatar’s ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani on Monday in Doha, showing renewed interest in expanding cooperation.

  At the same time, Saudi ministers have been flying to Saudi major clients, such as China. Russia is currently using the cooling Saudi-US relations as a possible wedge. Moscow and Riyadh already are cooperating fully in energy and logistics, as statements today reaffirmed. Both stated that the OPEC+ cooperation is still very strong and will continue. Moscow is very pleased with the Biden Administration’s lack of strategy for the Arab region.

  Putin and his emissary Lavrov hope to be able to capitalize on Biden’s ongoing mistakes, not only in Riyadh, but also Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Egypt. A critical outcome of US pressure on MBS would also be growing fears in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and other places. A possible realignment of these leading Arab countries, leaving the Atlantic sphere of influence while joining the growing Moscow-Beijing axis is not the outcome that Washington or Brussels would like to see. 

  Pragmatism is needed and neo-realism also. As Machiavelli and Von Clausewitz clearly stated “to rule or influence a region, one should regard possible strong relationships with the Prince”. If removing the Prince results in a new Prince, instability is the outcome. Stability is needed, Biden’s Gulf strategies are counterproductive, to say the least. By indicating or affronting a “King-to-Be”, enemies are being made. Washington’s culture of backstabbing and rumor carousels are maybe effective in the West, in the Arab world “a man’s word is forever, friendship also”….but this is the same for making enemies.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:10

• India To Buy 30 MQ-9 Reaper Drones To Beef Up Border Security With China, Pakistan
  India To Buy 30 MQ-9 Reaper Drones To Beef Up Border Security With China, Pakistan

  As a great power competition roars between the US and China, Washington appears to be supplying India with dozens of armed drones to boost defenses along its borders, according to Bloomberg. 

  India plans to purchase up to 30 General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones, worth approximately $3 billion, next month. A military source told Bloomberg that the drones would significantly increase India’s military capabilities as tensions persist with neighbors China and Pakistan. 

  

  At the moment, India’s drones only have surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. The ability to mount laser-guided bombs and missiles will reassure Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that its borders are protected in case of a military conflict. 

  “U.S.-India relations in the present day are the result of decades of dedicated efforts by both countries,” Vivek Lall, chief executive for General Atomics, told Bloomberg. “The fact that defense cooperation remains high on the list of priorities for the bilateral relationship, is a sign of our mutual security objectives.”

  The ongoing rise in tensions across Asia forced the US and India to sign a new defense pact last year that allows the US to share more satellite data with New Delhi. Increased military cooperation between both countries is aimed at keeping pressure on Beijing. 

  Picking up the baton from the Trump administration, Biden has continued the tough stance on China by building alliances to counter Beijing. Even NATO is looking to get in on the action. NATO recently released a report that recommended the alliance form a partnership with India to counter Beijing.

  Despite Biden’s tough stance, there appears to be an upcoming high-level meeting between the rival powers that could hopefully simmer the flaring tensions over the last four years. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:50

• The Rights Of The Naturally Immune
  The Rights Of The Naturally Immune

  Authored by Thomas Harrington via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  There is an important issue that, in the midst of all the talk of vaccines, has not gotten nearly the attention it deserves: the civil rights of those who have already developed natural immunity to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that is said to cause Covid. 

  

  Yesterday, I got the results of the test I took to detect whether I had developed a T-Cell response to the virus.

  Like the antibody test I took almost 2 months ago, it was positive. 

  These two things would appear to demonstrate that for all intents and purposes my body knew exactly what to do with this virus and that it probably has the equipment to dispose of it again were it, or one of its cousins, to revisit me in the near-to-medium term.

  And even if one or another related strain were to visit me in that future, studies suggest strongly that the attack would be considerably less virulent than the one I overcame without excessive trouble in December. 

  In a halfway rational world, what to do going forward in regard to getting a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be something I’d discuss with my doctor in the discreet quarters of the examination room. Were it to be offered, I would politely refuse it. And he, seeing the test evidence in my file, would raise no objection. 

  And since the danger to me in the future from the virus is minuscule, and the science has clearly borne out what Fauci and Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO flatly said was true before someone upstairs got to them—that asymptomatic transmission of respiratory diseases of this type is virtually nonexistent—I’d be free to live my life as I pleased without a mask, and with complete freedom of movement. 

  But instead of this, I am facing enormous pressure to get a vaccine in order to recover my basic rights as a citizen.

  And even then, those in charge are saying, I will still have to run around with a completely useless, breath-robbing and personality-canceling mask on my face. 

  And all this for a disease that, even before the introduction of vaccines, gave those infected by it a roughly 997.5 out of 1,000 chance of survival.

  The civil authorities have decided, in effect, that fully indemnified pharmaceutical companies, whose pasts are obscenely littered with fraud, and the calculated creation of crises in order to up revenues on their products (OxyContin anyone?), have the de facto “right” to force me to take an experimental vaccine that, in the very, very best of circumstances, will only match what my apparently well-functioning body has already given me without any side effects.

  And this, while straight out telling me that even if I submit to their government-coerced medical experiment I will probably still not get my full constitutional rights back. 

  This is an important issue that needs to be addressed much more vigorously than has been the case up until now.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:30

• Fertilizer Prices Rocket Higher As Farmers Become 'Bullish' On Upcoming Growing Season 
  Fertilizer Prices Rocket Higher As Farmers Become ‘Bullish’ On Upcoming Growing Season 

  US wholesale fertilizer prices have been on a tear since December 2020 due to rising commodity prices, tight supplies, and strong demand. 

  Last fall, Rabobank forecasted that phosphate and other fertilizer prices would remain elevated in the first half of 2021 because commodity prices were accelerating. Now Rabobank reports phosphate prices have nearly doubled.

  “With the increase in commodity prices, there has been an increased demand for fertilizers since last fall. This increased demand, coupled with reduced fertilizer imports is – according to forecasters – predicted to keep fertilizer prices elevated through fall and potentially into next year,” Jamie Patton, senior Outreach Specialist for the UW-Nutrient and Pest Management Program, told Wisconsin State Farmer. 

  DAP Tampa Fertilizer Index has nearly doubled since the start of the year. 

  

  Patton said the recent cold weather bogged down truck, rail, and barge transportation networks across the Midwest. This led to challenges for transportation networks to haul fertilizer from ports to Midwest areas. She said supplies were “already low or depleted” ahead of the winter season. 

  Demand for fertilizer began to ramp higher in late 2020 as farmers became optimistic about the 2021 growing season with futures prices of agri commodities rising. 

  “Many farmers capitalized on lower fertilizer prices back then and prepaid for a majority of their fertilizer needs for this growing season,” Patton said. “Additionally, with warm, dry weather during harvest, some farms capitalized on early harvest and good field conditions to apply nutrients.”

  Other industry experts, such as Citi’s commodity desk, have also expressed optimism in the agri space. 

  Citi surveyed more than 100 farmers across the Midwest to assess fertilizer and crop chemical inventories and price expectations for fertilizers and seeds ahead of the growing season. They found farmers were overly “optimistic on the Ag cycle.” 

  Here’s part of the bank’s report:

  We surveyed 100+ farm dealers across the Midwest to gauge fertilizer and crop chemical inventories, and price expectations for fertilizers and seeds. We also surveyed participants on CTVA’s Enlist E3 soybean system and optimism on an Ag rebound. Overall, respondents were very optimistic on the Ag cycle, which we had expected given higher commodity prices. Corn prices are trading at ~$5.45/bu compared to ~$3 in August 2020, while soybean prices have increased ~$5 to over $14/bu during the same period. For fertilizers, survey participants were most bullish on nitrogen & phosphate prices, followed by potash. 

  Fertilizer Pricing Indicated Up

  Survey participants were most positive on N prices, with 92% expecting higher prices followed closely by 90% for P and 77% for K (Figures 2-4). Given the higher projection for planted NAM acres this year, it is not surprising to us that most dealers would expect prices to move higher.

  Fertilizer Inventories

  The majority of respondents reported normal fertilizer inventories (Figures 6-8), which took us by surprise. We are hearing that inventories are extremely lean. Our guest speaker Toby Hvlinka from American Plant Food on our March Madness call series mentioned that he could not find any phosphates and the US still has to import more urea In our survey 19% and 22% of respondents said inventories were low for nitrogen and phosphates, respectively, while only 16% said inventories are low on potash.

  This all means that rising agri commodity prices and input prices such as energy products, fertilizer, seeds, labor, and even equipment will continue to have an upward effect on food prices. 

  

  Taking a look at the Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM), a basket of commodities, 2020 appears to have hammered out a low. Some ‘experts’ have said a “commodity supercycle” nears. 

  

  … and to capitalize on all of this, Citi points out:

  “We remain positive on all Ag names, and our rank order is MOS, NTR, CF, CTVA, and FMC.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:10

• "Don't Go Down The Rabbit Hole" – NYTimes Decries Critical Thinking, Tells Americans To Trust Google Instead
  “Don’t Go Down The Rabbit Hole” – NYTimes Decries Critical Thinking, Tells Americans To Trust Google Instead

  Authored by Gavin Nascimento via The Free Thought Project,

  A new article from the New York Times claims that instead of engaging with someone that challenges your worldview, you should “resist the lure of Rabbit Holes” and go to more authoritative sources such as Google and Wikipedia.

  

  The New York Times appears to have declared war on traditional critical thinking, which they say “isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation”.

  Sharing the insights of “a digital literacy expert” named Michael Caulfield, the article reads as follows:

  “We’re taught that, in order to protect ourselves from bad information, we need to deeply engage with the stuff that washes up in front of us,” Mr. Caulfield told me recently. He suggested that the dominant mode of media literacy (if kids get taught any at all) is that “you’ll get imperfect information and then use reasoning to fix that somehow. But in reality, that strategy can completely backfire.”

  In other words: Resist the lure of rabbit holes, in part, by reimagining media literacy for the internet hellscape we occupy.

  What Does The New York Times Suggest We Do Instead?

  Caulfield argues that the best way to learn about a source of information is to “leave it and look elsewhere”, by seeing how that source of information measures up to the existing status quo.

  For further clarification, the New York Times’ “digital literacy expert” provides us with an example by investigating a post (which they do not offer any link to) made by Robert F Kennedy Jr on Instagram:

  He copied Mr. Kennedy’s name in the Instagram post and popped it into Google. “Look how fast this is,” he told me as he counted the seconds out loud. In 15 seconds, he navigated to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page, highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which reads that Mr. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.

  In short, the New York Times and their “expert” are telling us that instead of investigating the claims of someone that challenges the status quo and our understanding and perception of reality, we should instead avoid them and go directly to the authorities to tell us what to think.

  

  Screen Shot Credit: Reuters

  Considering the Wall Street Journal’s detailed investigation and an academic study both uncovering Google’s deliberate manipulation of search results (for which they have also been fined) and reports of organizations like the Vatican, CIA and FBI editing Wikipedia entries, this advice needs to be viewed with the highest suspicion for obvious reasons.

  This is the Exact Opposite of How We Establish the Truth

  

  Artist Credit Medi Belortaja

  There is an expression that “rejecting something you know nothing about is the highest form of ignorance,” and that’s basically what the New York Times and their “digital literacy expert” are encouraging their followers to do. “Resist the lure of Rabbit Holes” and go to Google, where in just “15 seconds”, you can get the Truth from Wikipedia — It’s genuinely shocking to read this.

  History is overwhelmed by examples that prove this method to be deeply flawed. Galileo Galilei, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, and countless others were attacked by the authorities for challenging the status quo. In fact, it could be argued that this has been a consistent theme throughout history and clearly represents that what the New York Times are encouraging us to do, is the exact opposite of establishing the Truth. No, it’s not a 15 second process, and no, you don’t mindlessly rely on the authorities to give you the Truth.

  New York Times Has a Documented History of Spreading Dangerous Propaganda

  Unsurprisingly, the New York Times has a well documented history of spreading dangerous propaganda and working with the authorities to uphold the status quo.

  The CIA’s infamous Operation Mockingbird, which reportedly began in the late 40’s and continued into the 70’s, included the New York Times.

  During the 1990’s, after journalist Gary Webb exposed how the CIA were working with drug traffickers, the New York Times and other establishment media outlets embarked on a campaign of character assassination claiming Webb was lying, when he was actually telling the Truth.

  Correspondingly, in 2012 Glen Greenwald wrote an article on the “correspondence and collusion” between the CIA and the New York Times. In 2015, Professor Noam Chomsky wrote of how the news giant helped cover up war crimes for the U.S. government.

  Frustrated Establishment Media No Longer Has a Monopoly on Information 

  Although this New York Time’s article is revolting, it’s also quite insightful as to how desperate some establishment media outlets have become in their efforts to control the narrative, which has grown more and more frivolous with the introduction of the internet where people such as myself can use verifiable evidence to expose how hypocritical and deceptive they are.

  Please help share this because we all know the establishment is not going to expose themselves.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:50

• Firefighters Respond To Fire At Tesla Fremont Factory 
  Firefighters Respond To Fire At Tesla Fremont Factory 

  The Fremont Fire Department responded to a fire at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, on Thursday, reported local news station KRON4. 

  Reports indicate there was a “heavy column of smoke coming from the north end of the factory that is currently under construction. It has since been learned the fire is located at one of the two Giga Press machines,” said Drive Tesla. 

  

  KTVU News had a live news feed of the incident. 

  Firefighters are responding to a fire at the Tesla Fremont Factory https://t.co/jZI5JZrXnV

  — KTVU (@KTVU) March 12, 2021

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

  At this time, there are no reports of injuries. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:35

• US Intelligence Reveals Israel Has Bombed "Dozens" Of Iranian Oil Tankers
  US Intelligence Reveals Israel Has Bombed “Dozens” Of Iranian Oil Tankers

  All signs are currently pointing to serious escalation in the Middle East between Israel, Iran, and involving the United States – particularly after Israel’s recent claim of an Iranian sponsored attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman two weeks ago.

  Signaling the likelihood that another red hot ‘tanker war’ is set for regional waters within the upcoming months, a new bombshell report in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reveals Israeli intelligence has been waging its own tanker sabotage campaign against the Iranians over the past two years, in order to thwart what Tel Aviv believes are illegal oil shipments that result in funds for terror groups.

  “Israel has targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East, US and regional officials say, in a new front in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” the WSJ writes. 

  

  It also appears part of the Israeli and US campaign to essentially starve the Assad government and bring it to its knees, further amidst near weekly Israeli airstrikes inside the war-torn country. The new report clearly suggests US intelligence officials knew about the covert tanker sabotage campaign in real time, and may have even assisted in some level of the planning or operations. Remember too that during the final months of the Trump administration Pompeo was essentially told he could go “gloves off” when it comes to greenlighting Israeli sabotage against Iran.

  Officials say the covert espionage campaign has been underway going back to late 2019, which featured water mines being secretly attached to ships in order to stop ‘sanctions-busting activity’ in places like the Red Sea – which is a transit route the Islamic Republic uses to resupply its ally Syria of badly needed oil and fuel. 

  Interestingly, Iran has actually loudly claimed to be victim of precisely such Israeli mine and bomb attacks on the high seas in the recent past, which starting in 2019 were even reported in Israeli media.

  See for example the below…

  Iran blames alleged tanker attack on Israel, US and Saudis https://t.co/U6RHnGksFX

  — The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) October 16, 2019

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

  “In an episode last month, suspected Israeli operatives attached a limpet mine to attack an Iranian vessel as it anchored near Lebanon to deliver Iran oil to Syria, according to the first shipping professional,” WSJ continues.

  “The attacks on the tankers carrying Iranian oil haven’t been previously disclosed. Iranian officials have reported some of the attacks earlier and have said they suspect Israeli involvement.” But typically when it’s the Iranians, Russians or Syrians making the allegations it gets ignored or batted down in Western press.

  The rationale provided for such attacks in the report also includes that Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) typically operate or provide security for the tankers bound for Syria. All of this helps explain what appears to be Iranian retaliation over the past year – again, particularly the latest bombing incident against the Israeli-owned cargo ship Helios Ray in the Gulf of Oman.

  Iranian tanker ‘deliberately’ spilled oil into Israel’s waters, leading maritime journal claimshttps://t.co/YnVKn1b1rL via @@i24NEWS_EN

  — Elize Biermann (@ElizeBiermann) March 10, 2021

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

  The Israeli initiative also appears aimed at ensuring the disruption of Biden’s stated plans to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.

  Chief executive for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz, summarized Tel Aviv’s approach as follows: “Israel stepped up the game beyond sanctions to sabotage,” he was quoted in WSJ as saying. “The Red Sea sabotage is keeping with a broader economic warfare campaign.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:30

• Hundreds Of Defense Contractor Lobbyists Were Behind New $264BN Nuclear ICBM 'Boondoggle'
  Hundreds Of Defense Contractor Lobbyists Were Behind New $264BN Nuclear ICBM ‘Boondoggle’

  Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

  A new report by the Federation of American Scientists set for publication next week will reportedly argue that US plans to spend up to $264 billion on construction and maintenance of a new nuclear missile are mostly being fueled by intense lobbying from the powerful weapons industry, not rational or humane strategic objectives.

  “It is becoming increasingly clear that there has not been a serious consideration of what role these Cold War-era weapons are supposed to play in a post-Cold War security environment,” the FAS assessment of the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) project will say, according to new reporting from The Guardian.

  

  Last year, The Guardian noted, the US Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract to help develop the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) after the company and its subcontractors “spent over $119 million on lobbying in 2019 and 2020 alone and employed a total of 410 lobbyists including many former officials.”

  In a February memo (pdf) on the nuclear missile project, FAS noted that “despite the growing number of concerns with the program, GBSD… accelerated under the Trump administration, in an effort to make it more difficult to reverse under a Biden administration.”

  “Despite substantial reductions in the ICBM force over the past two decades, there has not been a serious consideration of what role these 20th century weapons are supposed to play in a 21st century deterrence environment,” the group said last month. “It is still early enough in the program to change course.”

  The new FAS report will come as President Joe Biden faces pressure from progressive lawmakers to pause the new ICBM program. As The Guardian noted, the “Biden administration is preparing its first defense budget which may reveal its intentions towards the GBSD, which is in its early stages.”

  In a letter to the president last week, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) argued that “at an acquisition cost of over $100 billion and an estimated total life-cycle cost of $260 billion, a new ICBM system would divert limited resources from higher priority needs.” Last July, Khanna tried to pass an amendment that would have moved $1 billion in funding from the GBSD to a pandemic preparedness fund, but his effort was quashed in a bipartisan vote by the House Armed Services Committee.

  The full cost of this boondoggle is $264 Billion, but they nailed this -> “The GBSD project is outdated and the result of lobbying rather than a clear sense of what it will achieve.” https://t.co/KAQG6Wl1lA

  — Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) March 10, 2021

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

  “The United States does not need to be modernizing the ICBMs,” Khanna said at the time. “If there is an accidental launch of an ICBM, you can’t take it back. On the other hand, you can call a submarine back, you can call an aerial bomber back.”

  In their letter last Wednesday, Khanna and Markey argued that “as the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in a conflict, the United States must play a leading role in ensuring that the most destructive weapon ever created is never used again.”

  Kevin Martin, president of advocacy group Peace Action, wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams last month that “there are myriad reasons” to oppose the GBSD, including “the exorbitant price tag, opportunity cost of investing our tax dollars in missiles and warheads instead of human and environmental well-being, and its contribution to a new arms race that threatens global peace and security.”

  “Let’s choose humanity, other species who have no say over nuclear policy, and the Earth, over omnicide,” Martin added.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:10

• Watch Live: President Biden Addresses The Nation (But Won't Do A Press Conference)
  Watch Live: President Biden Addresses The Nation (But Won’t Do A Press Conference)

  President Biden will deliver his first prime-time address from the White House tonight to commemorate the anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown.

  Biden says he plans to talk about the next steps to address the pandemic.

  “Tomorrow night, I’m going to (deliver a) prime-time address to the American people and talk about what we’ve been through as a nation this past year, but more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next,” Biden said on Wednesday.

  “I’m going to launch the next phase of the Covid response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the American people.”

  

  Additionally, in his speech tonight, Biden is expected to direct all states and tribal governments to designate all adult Americans eligible for a vaccine no later than May 1.

  The president is also expected to announce a website and call center that will launch by May 1 and make it easier for people to find vaccine locations and schedule an appointment.

  He will increase the number of places people can get vaccinated and expand the type of people who can administer vaccines or support vaccinations.

  Biden is expected to announce the deployment of more than 4,000 active duty troops to support vaccination efforts, which will bring the total number of soldiers assisting vaccinations to over 6,000.

  Watch the teleprompter-reader-in-chief live here (due to start at 2000ET):

  However, as Philip Wegmann write at RealClearPolitics.com, America would like to hear from its president.

  More than six weeks since his inauguration, and unlike his predecessors, Joe Biden still has not held a solo press conference. When the new president does speak, he usually reads from a teleprompter or waits for his staff to call on reporters. According to new polling from Rasmussen, Americans are starting to notice.

  Fifty-two percent of likely voters say they are “very concerned” that Biden has not held a press conference while 24% say they are “not very concerned” and another 22% say they are “not at all concerned.” But Biden will, someday soon, meet the press all on his own.

  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has promised reporters as much, though she hasn’t said exactly when. However, the country will see the president tonight when he delivers his first prime-time address, marking one year since the coronavirus pandemic came to the United States.

  He teased those remarks at the White House after an event Wednesday heralding the successful cooperation between pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and Merck to develop more vaccines.

  The theme of his big speech? The struggles of the last year, “but more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next,” Biden said, adding,

  “There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of this past year.” At the same time, he warned, abandoning caution would be foolhardy: “We cannot let our guard down or assume that victory is inevitable.”

  More sacrifices are necessary, the president said, promising to outline the next steps in his Thursday night address and “explain what we will do as a government and what we’ll ask of the American people.”

  As Biden started walking away from the podium, reporters shouted questions. He paused to answer just one: What will the U.S. do with surplus vaccine supply?

  “If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” the president replied. “This not something that can be stopped by a fence no matter how high you build a fence or a wall. So we’re not going to be ultimately safe until the world is safe. So, we’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first, but we’re then going to try to help the rest of the world.”

  He then walked away as the press shouted other questions. This has become the norm, a sharp change from his free-wheeling predecessor. For better or worse, Donald Trump loved to engage with the media members he told his supporters he hated. The former president did not just hold press conferences. He invited reporters into the Oval Office regularly and he stopped to take their questions on his way to Marine One, and also offered up a stream of consciousness on the news of the day via his Twitter feed.

  Biden? No way.

  “There’s going to be a weaning process,” laughs Moe Vela, a former Biden aide who remains close to the president. Don’t expect the new president to weigh in on every news cycle, he told RealClearPolitics. But Biden World insists he is still accessible, taking the occasional question during photo ops or after prepared remarks. The press should just get used to a leaner news diet.

  “He is not,” explained Psaki when the White House declined to weigh in on Trump’s second impeachment, “a pundit.”

  While the difference between Biden and Trump is stark, the difference between Biden and every other president in the last century is also remarkable. Analysis by CNN found that “he is behind his 15 most recent predecessors, who all held a solo press conference within 33 days of taking office.”

  Why the wait? “Presidents most often answer questions in a press conference setting when they have something they want to say,” explains Martha Joynt Kumar, the director of the White House Transition Project. “That is when you call a press conference. That was true for both George W. Bush and for Obama.

  “With an important victory, Biden is likely to soon have a press conference,” she told RCP. Passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package could provide such an opportunity, and none too soon. While Psaki briefs the press daily, the White House Correspondents’ Association wants more. “Press conferences are critical to informing the American people and holding an administration accountable to the public,” said association President Zeke Miller. 

  “As it has with prior presidents, the WHCA continues to call on President Biden to hold formal press conferences with regularity.”

  Frustration is building. The Washington Post editorial board, which hasn’t been unfriendly to Biden, warned that “avoiding news conferences must not become a regular habit.” Presidential spokespersons like to spin this kind of silence as “message discipline,” but as the Post reminded the White House, “he is the president, and Americans have every right to expect that he will regularly submit himself to substantial questioning.”

  Republican critics are even more pointed. “President Trump barely went 48 hours without holding a press conference and giving access to the American people,” tweeted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “President Biden has gone 48 days.” This silence was enough for the National Republican Senatorial Committee to dust off old talking points from the campaign when they once again dubbed the new commander-in-chief “basement Biden.”

  The president hasn’t exactly helped the situation. While he spoke about the importance of transparency on the campaign trail, he now tends to ignore questions.

  Biden on Tuesday visited a Washington, D.C., hardware store kept afloat by federal stimulus funds. He chatted with employees, and for the better part of the photo op, the traveling press corps stayed quiet. Eventually, they started shouting questions. “Come on, press, you gotta go,” the president’s handlers said as Biden milled about silently and reporters were herded outside. “You gotta go.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:55

• Why JPMorgan's Chief Economist Thinks The $1.9TN Biden Stimulus Won't Spark Runaway Inflation
  Why JPMorgan’s Chief Economist Thinks The $1.9TN Biden Stimulus Won’t Spark Runaway Inflation

  Now that the $1.9 trillion Biden fiscal stimulus is a done deal and the stimmys will be mailed out any day, Wall Street economists are lining up to opine on whether it will be sufficient to spark sustained inflation or not, and if so why. One among them is JPM’s chief economist Mike Feroli who overnight published an update on the fiscal package while stating his view that he does not see the package causing runaway inflation, despite it being a massive amount of money.

  CBO now estimates the ten-year budgetary impact of the ARP will increase cumulative deficits by $1.85 trillion. This was somewhat lower than their prior scores due to the reduced generosity of the (still-generous) stimulus checks, a lower estimate of the cost of extending unemployment benefits, and the removal of the budgetary drag from the earlier minimum wage proposal. But this modestly smaller figure is still enormous by any historical comparison.

  Feroli’s timid view is based on the fact that the fiscal package is not an immediate shot to the economy but will be disseminated over the next two years. $1.16T will be distributed in 2021 but this is overstated he believes that the $300bn for state/local governments will be spent more slowly, to wit:

  Even so, we are somewhat less concerned than Larry Summers that it is too enormous for the economy to handle. For one, the federal government won’t disburse these funds immediately. CBO estimates that the budgetary impact for the remainder of the current fiscal year will be $1.16 trillion. Even this overstates the short-run impact, as almost $300 billion will quickly be disbursed to state and local governments who will be much slower to spend the funds (many of these governments are already working on their 2022 budgets). In addition, the extension of unemployment benefits will remove a near-term cliff effect—which is good—but removing a cliff effect doesn’t narrow the output gap, it prevents it from widening.

  Of the remaining $680Bn, more than half will be stimulus checks. And while Those stimulus checks may see consumers save at least half of the payment, based upon last year’s behavior:

  This highlights the importance for the economic debate of the size of the marginal propensity to consume out of these checks. Most of the evidence from last year’s stimulus checks indicates consumers were relatively prudent with those checks, likely spending less than half in the months following their receipt. There are sensible arguments as to why spending propensities could be larger or smaller with the ARP checks.

  JPM concludes that while “time will tell, it shouldn’t take too long to tell” as “the checks will probably be disbursed before the end of the month, and the development over the past year of a number of high-frequency spending indicators should give an early read on how the checks are being used.”

  Finally, here is the CBO scores as the largest elements of the Biden plan:

  • Stimulus checks: $402 billion; $393 billion in FY21.

  • State and local fiscal recovery funds: $362 billion; $284 billion in FY21.

  • Extension of expiring unemployment benefit provisions: $205 billion; $195 billion in FY21.

  • Aid to schools: $165 billion; $12 billion in FY21.

  • Increased generosity of the child tax credit: $109 billion; $26 billion in FY21.

  • Aid to union pension plans: $86 billion; $0 billion in FY21.

  • FEMA: $50 billion; $11 billion in FY21.

  • Testing, contract tracing, and mitigation: $48 billion; $10 billion in FY21.

  • COBRA subsidies: $37 billion; $28 billion in FY21.

  • Transit emergency grants: $30 billion; $10 billion in FY21.

  • Restaurant aid: $29 billion; $29 billion in FY21.

  • Child care assistance: $24 billion; $4 billion in FY21

  • Premium tax credit aid: $24 billion; $4 billion in FY21.

  • Rental assistance: $22 billion; $8 billion in FY21.

  • Various other smaller provisions: $262 billion; $149 billion in FY21

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:40

• New York Dems Launch Impeachment Inquiry Into Cuomo
  New York Dems Launch Impeachment Inquiry Into Cuomo

  Update (1900ET): What has been a terrible day for Andrew Cuomo has just gotten even worse. Moments ago, the New York Times reported that Democratic lawmakers in the State Assembly have opened an impeachment inquiry into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the surest sign yet that the governor is seeing his party turn against him following the sixth, and most explosive, allegation of sexual harassment.

  Following a three-hour emergency meeting, the State Assembly announced Thursday evening that it would give its judiciary committee broad jurisdiction to investigate allegations of misconduct against the longtime governor, who has reigned over the Empire State for a decade already. During what’s being described as an official impeachment inquiry, the committee will have broad discretion to investigate Cuomo over the sexual harassment and his administration deliberately underreporting nursing home deaths.

  “The reports of accusations concerning the governor are serious,” said Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie who added that the “Impeachment investigation” will encompass interviewing witnesses, subpoenaing documents and evaluating evidence. Heastie was among the state Democratic leaders who called on Cuomo to resign Sunday night.

  Cuomo has had a rough day, with 59 Democrats in the legislature signing a letter calling on Cuomo to resign.

  Previously, Heastie has signaled that he wouldn’t move forward with impeachment without a majority of Democrats supporting it. But according to the NYT, the move to empower the committee, which will launch yet another investigation into Cuomo, might signal a shift in the leaders’ thinking, and a major turning point.

  The convening of a special judicial committee could signal a shift in Mr. Heastie’s thinking, but it could also give him more time to decide whether to proceed with impeachment. It also may give the governor some breathing room in a scandal that has overwhelmed his administration in recent weeks.

  Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has apologized for workplace remarks that he said may have hurt or offended women but has also denied ever touching anyone inappropriately and has urged New Yorkers to await the results of an inquiry by the state attorney general before passing judgment.

  Nonetheless, the tumult from the governor’s compounding scandals has significantly complicated negotiations over the state budget, due April 1, when the year’s most important policy issues are decided.

  Senate leaders have been in regular contact with leaders in the Assembly about their agenda for the next fiscal year. But the governor’s voice, usually powerful, has been largely absent.

  Is it possible we see Cuomo’s resignation before the weekend is through?

  “I do not believe this governor will resign unless impeachment is on the table,” said Assemblyman Phillip G. Steck, a Democrat representing an area near Albany.

  At this point, the political pressure opposing the governor and political scion has never been stronger.

  * * *

  Update (1400ET): AG Letitia James’ investigation into the sexual harassment allegations lodged against Cuomo is strictly a professional affair. But following revelations that Cuomo aggressively groped a female staffer under her shirt, Albany Police Department officials said Thursday that they had received a complaint about the governor’s actions from a state official.

  The concern is that Cuomo’s actions may have “risen to the level of a crime,” according to Steve Smith, a spokesman for the Albany police, who explained that the department had not received a formal complaint from the woman, who has not been identified, but that it had reached out to a representative for the woman.

  News of the criminal referral elicited a strong reaction on social media, as President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “lock him up!” – a humorous reference to a popular chant started by his father and often directed at his erstwhile opponent, Hillary Clinton.

  Lock Him Up!!! https://t.co/NFRcI1Mqyi

  — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 11, 2021

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

  🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 https://t.co/JczJEO7xCH

  — Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 11, 2021

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

  Police have confirmed via the anonymous woman’s lawyer that she didn’t want to file a police report. Still, the issue was referred to the police in accordance with various protocols, according to an NYT report.

  Mr. Smith said the call had come from the New York State Police. But the governor’s acting counsel, Beth Garvey, said on Thursday that she had called the police on Wednesday night and reported the allegations, after a lawyer for the female aide told the governor’s office that the aide did not want to file a report.

  “As a matter of state policy, when allegations of physical contact are made, the agency informs the complainant that they should contact their local police department,” Ms. Garvey said in a statement. “If they decline, the agency has an obligation to reach out themselves and inform the department of the allegation.”

  “In this case, the person is represented by counsel and when counsel confirmed the client did not want to make a report, the state notified the police department and gave them the attorney’s information,” Ms. Garvey added.

  While the police department’s actions are part of standard procedure, the situation underscored the potential criminal exposure that the governor may face should the anonymous aide decide to press charges. Cuomo has denied touching anyone inappropriately.

  * * *

  Earlier this week, the Albany Times-Union, the newspaper of record for New York State’s capitol region, reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been sexually inappropriate with a sixth woman – another young woman who was apparently in her 20s when Cuomo made the aggressive pass at her – at the governor’s mansion.

  

  Though her name has not been revealed (at least, not yet), the Times Union returned last night with an even more shocking report expounding the details of the encounter. Unlike previous incidents, where Cuomo made an aggressive and inappropriate pass at a staffer or a fellow wedding guest or awkwardly planted a kiss on their cheek, the Times-Union described an encounter where a young woman was lured to the executive mansion (possibly under false pretenses) where she was “aggressively groped” by the governor.

  Although the under-the-blouse grope only occurred on one occasion, the young woman accused the governor of frequently engaging in “flirtatious behavior”.

  The allegations by the female aide, who is the sixth woman to accuse Cuomo of inappropriate behavior, were first reported Tuesday by the Times Union. The additional details describe the most egregious behavior attributed to the governor to date – conduct that could potentially be pursued as a misdemeanor sexual assault charge.

  The person briefed on the case, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the woman – who is much younger than Cuomo – told the governor to stop. Her broader allegations include that he frequently engaged in flirtatious behavior with her, and that it was not the only time that he had touched her.

  As the Times-Union recounts, the woman says she was summoned to the governor’s mansion with a request to help out with a minor technical issue. The woman’s story contradicts Gov. Cuomo’s description of his transgressions. During a news conference last week, the governor apologized for his inappropriate behavior, but denied having ever touched a woman inappropriately. Afterwards, at least one of the woman’s supervisors reported the incident to a lawyer in the governor’s office.

  Late on Wednesday, Cuomo finally issued a statement to the newspaper insisting that he had “never done anything like this.”

  “As I said yesterday, I have never done anything like this. The details of this report are gut-wrenching. I am not going to speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation given the ongoing review, but I am confident in the result of the attorney general’s report.”

  Despite being asked by the Times-Union about the sixth accuser’s account earlier this week, Cuomo told reporters on Tuesday that he wasn’t aware of any other accusers.

  On Tuesday afternoon, several hours after Cuomo’s office had been asked about the matter by the Times Union, the governor said in a news conference, “I’m not aware of any other claim,” when he was asked by a reporter about the new story, which by then had been published online. That story included a statement from his acting counsel, Beth Garvey, who said that “all allegations” of sexual harassment made against the governor were being referred to the attorney general’s office.

  New York AG Letitia James is overseeing a civil investigation into the accusations, and earlier this week appointed two lawyers – including a former top federal prosecutor – to lead the probe. Cuomo insisted that the investigation would vindicate him. His sixth accuser has declined to file a formal complaint about the incident.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:22

• ​​​​​​​"There's No Town Left" – Ten Years Later, Fukushima's Eerie Landscapes Resemble 'Ghost Town'
  ​​​​​​​”There’s No Town Left” – Ten Years Later, Fukushima’s Eerie Landscapes Resemble ‘Ghost Town’

  The largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck ten years ago today. The 9.0-magnitude quake triggered a devastating tsunami, killing more than 18,000 people and led to a nuclear meltdown in northern Japan. 

  Here’s what we wrote about the nuclear incident ten years ago today: “Nuclear Expert: “Fukushima Has 24 Hours To Avoid A Core Meltdown Scenario.”” 

  The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is considered the second-worst nuclear disaster in history, forcing the relocation of more than 100,000 people. The world’s worst nuclear disaster was the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. 

  A decade later, the area around Fukushima remains deserted, much like Chernobyl to this day. Many people have refused to return home, but some have said it worth the residual radiation risk. 

  “We had reasons to come back and the means to do so,” Ms. Kobayashi,68, told NYTimes, who managed a guesthouse and said, “It made sense — to an extent.”

  Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, which had a population of nearly 7,000 before the nuclear disaster, now resembles a post-apocalyptic zombie world. 

  “I’m always asked, ‘Why did you return? How many people returned?'” Kobayashi said. “But my question is: What does that even mean? That place no longer exists.”

  

  About 21 miles inland from Futaba, mounds of radioactive soil sit in a town called Katsurao. 

  

  Entire neighborhoods in Futaba are still littered with debris. 

  

  NYTimes said local government officials in Fukushima had received funding from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant owner, to repair streets, buildings, schools, and housing with attempts to lure residents back. 

  Some, who have called the area around Fukushima, are returning but in small numbers. 

  “They want to be in their hometown,” said Tsunao Kato, 71, who reopened his third-generation barbershop even before its running water had been restored. “They want to die here.”

  Kato, whose shop is in Minami Soma, said the threat of radiation today seems less of a concern. However, he lives in an area that appears lifeless. TEPCO noted three years after the nuclear incident that more nuclear fuel had melted than previously stated – and maybe for good read people are staying away. 

  

  A decade later, umbrellas at a Futaba nursery school remain untouched – preserved in time. 

  

  Collapsed homes and other structures are pretty common across Futaba. 

  

  “There’s no town left,” Kobayashi said. “If you come back, you have to rebuild.”

  

  Still, several towns in north-eastern Japan remain off-limits. It could take tens of thousands of workers and three to four decades to clean up the area and safely remove nuclear waste so residents can return. 

  While the Fukushima disaster becomes a distant memory for many outside Japan – billionaire Bill Gates is pushing nuclear energy as ESG euphoria engulfs Wall Street. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:20

• February Was The Worst Month For Growth Stocks Since The Bursting Of The Dot Com Bubble
  February Was The Worst Month For Growth Stocks Since The Bursting Of The Dot Com Bubble

  Back in the late summer of 2020, we urged readers to start rotating toward such “value” sectors as energy ahead of the coming re/hyper/re-flationary wave that would be unleashed by trillions in covid fiscal stimulus, whether under Trump or Biden (it would ned up being the latter). Others were also quite prescient, and none perhaps more so than BofA, whose CIO Michael Hartnett and Research and Investment Committee (RIC) head Jared Woodward had been pounding the table on getting out of growth names and into “value.”

  Then. most recently, a little over a month ago Woodward flagged “bullish positioning and blind buying” of market “unknowns” – just as the Nasdaq hit it all time high amid record investor euphoria, that Citi needed a bigger chart to show it…

  

  … as catalyst for a Q1 correction. What happened next was striking: risky assets peaked in mid-February with Bitcoin falling -26% peak-to-trough, SPACs -25%, The NYFANG index -17%, small-cap US growth -16%, and Chinese A-shares -14%. But not so much “value”: in fact as BofA shows in the chart below, February was the best month for value vs. growth since March 2001… which of course is when the dot com bubble burst. Everyone knows what happened to the Nasdaq after.

  

  But while in the past such epic drawdowns in tech stocks at least led to a safe haven bid in bonds this time it was just the opposite for the simple reason that it was the puke in bonds that started the entire market rout. In fact, as Woodard shows, Treasuries have tumbled and are down -11% YTD, the third-worst start to a year since 1973.

  

  The pain is hardly over: should the selling persist into the summer when the market tests the Fed’s resolve to do YCC by pushing yields to 2%, BofA expects the 10-year Treasury to suffer an additional 8% in losses.

  This means that the bad news for any 60/40 stalwarts (i.e., balance funds and risk parity) is clear: since the pre-COVID equity peak on Feb 19th, 2020, US stocks have rallied 13% while TLT has lost 4%, completely giving up any “hedging” gains during the March crash. And gold (-9% since mid-Feb. and -18% since August) is just another bond, with a 78% beta to Treasuries. In short, aside from value stocks and crypto, absolutely nothing has worked so far in 2021.

  The clear catalyst for this pervasive mauling has been widespread optimism that reopening means big consumer spending, strained supply-chains, and therefore higher inflation and earlier Fed tightening.

  That said, as BofA notes “quite a lot of optimism about the reopening is already priced in”, and furthermore, we already have evidence of a big rotation to classic pro-inflation assets, which probably means that the great rotation is getting a modestly old. Indeed, Fund flows show that ETF investors have been buying floating-rate loans, energy, financials, and materials. And in bond markets, the spread between short- and long-term inflation expectations is the highest in the history of the TIPS market.

  

  Which brings us to what BofA thinks is the most important question for investors in 2021: what will US households do with their extra money as the economy fully reopens? The consensus is that the record “savings glut” will be spent, but is the consensus right? BofA sees two possible outcomes:

  • Big Spending: a sustained real-economy consumption boom, higher wages & services inflation; bullish for GDP, but bearish for stocks because of 1. Fear of Fed tightening and 2. “Mere Rotation”…recent market action shows it’s a zero-sumenvironment where pro-inflation trades are financed by selling down deflation assets (growth stocks, bonds, EM) as institutional cash levels are low;
  • Big Saving: after an initial surge of leisure & services spending, consumption reverts to trend as structural forces of stagnation reassert themselves; households keep cash directed to saving (cash, debt payments, financial assets), Fed fears subside; net bearish GDP given supreme expectations, but more bullish for markets.

  Pent-up demand…for what? In a follow up post we will explain why Bank of America is skeptical that this time we will see a flood of spending – and no, buying stonks in hopes of getting tendies is not considered “money-multiplier” inducing spending in the Keynesian sense, even though according to many this appears to be the most likely outcome.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:00

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• The Government's War On Free Speech: Protest Laws Undermine The First Amendment
  The Government’s War On Free Speech: Protest Laws Undermine The First Amendment

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”— George Washington

  It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority.

  So what can we do about it?

  The first remedy involves speech (protest, assembly, speech, prayer, and publicity), and lots of it, in order to speak truth to power.

  The First Amendment, which is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, affirms the right of “we the people” to pray freely about our grievances regarding the government. We can gather together peacefully to protest those grievances. We can publicize those grievances. And we can express our displeasure (peacefully) in word and deed.

  Unfortunately, tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

  

  The American Police State has shown itself to be particularly intolerant of free speech activities that challenge its authority, stand up to its power grabs, and force it to operate according to the rules of the Constitution.

  Cue the rise of protest laws, the police state’s go-to methods for muzzling discontent.

  These protest laws, some of which appear to encourage violence against peaceful protesters by providing immunity to individuals who drive their car into protesters impeding traffic and use preemptive deadly force against protesters who might be involved in a riot, take intolerance for speech with which one might disagree to a whole new level.

  Ever since the Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities. Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are being marketed as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

  It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

  However, as Human Rights Watch points out, these assaults on free speech are nothing new. “Various states have long-tried to curtail the right to protest. They do so by legislating wide definitions of what constitutes an ‘unlawful assembly’ or a ‘riot’ as well as increasing punishments. They also allow police to use catch-all public offenses, such as trespassing, obstructing traffic, or disrupting the peace, as a pretext for ordering dispersals, using force, and making arrests. Finally, they make it easier for corporations and others to bring lawsuits against protest organizers.”

  Make no mistake: while many of these laws claim to be in the interest of “public safety and limiting economic damage,” these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

  For instance, there are at least 205 proposed laws being considered in 45 states that would curtail the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

  No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

  In Alabama, lawmakers are pushing to allow individuals to use deadly force near a riot. Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire are also considering similar stand your ground laws to justify the use of lethal force in relation to riots.

  In Arizona, legislators want to classify protests involving seven or more people as felonies punishable by up to two years in jail. Under such a law, traditional, nonviolent forms of civil disobedience—sit-ins, boycotts and marches—would be illegal.

  In Arkansas, peaceful protesters who engage in civil disobedience by occupying any government property after being told to leave could face six months in jail and a $1000 fine.

  In Minnesota, where activists continue to protest the death of George Floyd, who was killed after police knelt on his neck for eight minutes, individuals who are found guilty of any kind of offense in connection with a peaceful protest could be denied a range of benefits, including food assistance, education loans and grants, and unemployment assistance.

  Oregon lawmakers wanted to “require public community colleges and universities to expel any student convicted of participating in a violent riot.” In Illinois, students who twice infringe the rights of others to engage in expressive activities could be suspended for at least a year.

  Proposed laws in at least 25 states, including Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Florida, would give drivers the green light to “accidentally” run over protesters who are preventing them from fleeing a riot. Washington wants to levy steeper penalties against protesters who “swarm” a vehicle, punishing them for a repeat offense with up to 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

  Responding to protests over the Keystone Pipeline, South Dakota enabled its governor and sheriffs to prohibit gatherings of 20 or more people on public land if the gathering might damage the land. At least 15 other states have also adopted or are considering legislation that would levy harsher penalties for environmental protests near oil and gas pipelines.

  In Iowa, all it takes is for one person in a group of three of more people to use force or cause property damage, and the whole group can be punished with up to 5 years in prison and a $7,500 fine.

  Obstruct access to critical infrastructure in Mississippi and you could be facing a $10,000 fine and a seven-year prison sentence.

  A North Carolina law would have made it a crime to heckle state officials. Under this law, shouting at a former governor would constitute a crime.

  In Connecticut, you could be sentenced to five years behind bars and a $5,000 fine for disrupting the state legislature by making noise or using disturbing language.

  Indiana lawmakers wanted to authorize police to use “any means necessary” to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic. Lawmakers have since focused their efforts on expanding the definition of a “riot” and punishing anyone who wears a mask to a peaceful protest, even a medical mask, with 2.5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

  Georgia wants to ban all spontaneous, First Amendment-protected assemblies and deny anyone convicted of violating the ban from receiving state or local employment benefits.

  Virginia wants to subject protesters who engage in an “unlawful assembly” after “having been lawfully warned to disperse” with up to a year of jail time and a fine of up to $2,500.

  Missouri made it illegal for public employees to take part in strikes and picketing, only to have the law ruled unconstitutional in its entirety.

  Oklahoma created a sliding scale for protesters whose actions impact or impede critical infrastructure (including a telephone pole). The penalties range from $1,000 and six months in a county jail to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. And if you’re part of an organization, that fine goes as high as $1,000,000.

  Talk about intimidation tactics.

  Ask yourself: if there are already laws on the books in all of the states that address criminal or illegal behavior such as blocking public roadways, trespassing on private property or vandalizing property—because such laws are already on the books—then why does the government need to pass laws criminalizing activities that are already outlawed?

  What’s really going on here?

  No matter what the politicians might say, the government doesn’t care about our rights, our welfare or our safety.

  Every despotic measure used to control us and make us cower and comply with the government’s dictates has been packaged as being for our benefit, while in truth benefiting only those who stand to profit, financially or otherwise, from the government’s transformation of the citizenry into a criminal class.

  In this way, the government conspires to corrode our core freedoms purportedly for our own good but really for its own benefit.

  Remember, the USA Patriot Act didn’t make us safer. It simply turned American citizens into suspects and, in the process, gave rise to an entire industry—private and governmental—whose profit depends on its ability to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights.

  In much the same way that the Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program criminalizes otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities such as peaceful protesting.

  Clearly, freedom no longer means what it once did.

  This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from soldiers invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

  Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

  Yet the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

  In other words, if we no longer have the right to voice concerns about COVID-19 mandates, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws or government policies by voicing our opinions in public or on social media or before a legislative body—no matter how politically incorrect or socially unacceptable those views might be—then we do not have free speech.

  What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s what those who founded America called tyranny.

  On paper, we may be technically free.

  In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

  As the great George Carlin rightly observed: “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

  In other words, we only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

  Remember: if the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 23:40

• Mexican President Says Biden Border Policies 'Encouraging Illegal Immigration' And Enriching Cartels
  Mexican President Says Biden Border Policies ‘Encouraging Illegal Immigration’ And Enriching Cartels

  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says US President Joe Biden’s immigration policy is encouraging illegal immigration, and brings revenue to drug cartels through human trafficking operations at the US border.

  

  According to the Reuters, Mexico has asked the Biden administration to assist by providing developmental help to Central America, where tens of thousands of migrants embark on a journey through Mexico in the hopes of reaching the United States and gaining asylum.

  “They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” said AMLO (via Reuters) following a March 1 virtual meeting with Biden. “We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”

  Some of Biden’s policies that worry the Mexican government include a fast track to citizenship for migrants living in the US and support for gang violence victims.

  Internal assessments reviewed by Reuters — based on testimony and intelligence gathering — state that Mexican gangs have been growing their clientele and keeping tabs on US measures that would encourage migration. Additionally they have developed a new tracking system to move migrants across the US-Mexico border.

  One anonymous Mexican official told Reuters that cartels have been using sophisticated smuggling techniques “from the day Biden took office,” such as using technology to thwart authorities, making smuggling operations appear as travel agencies, and keeping migrants up to date on the latest immigration rules.

  “Migrants have become a commodity,” the official told Reuters. “But if a packet of drugs is lost in the sea, it’s gone. If migrants are lost, it’s human beings we’re talking about.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 23:20

• Biden Iran Envoy Boasted Of Depriving Civilians Of Food In Sadistic Sanctions Manual
  Biden Iran Envoy Boasted Of Depriving Civilians Of Food In Sadistic Sanctions Manual

  Authored by Max Blumenthal via TheGrayZone.com,

  The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its Deputy Iran Envoy. As the former Principal Deputy Coordinator of Sanctions Policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry and driving up unemployment rates. He has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting US sanctions.

  Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

  

  After coordinating Obama’s sanctions regime against Iran, Nephew left the administration for a position at the energy industry-funded Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. There, he published a book outlining in blunt terms how he honed the craft of economic warfare and applied it against Iran.

  Entitled “The Art of Sanctions: A View From The Field,” the book’s cover image features two Caucasian hands drawing a rope for a noose, presumably to strangle some insufficiently pliant Global South government. Its contents read like a list of criminal confessions, detailing in chillingly clinical terms how the sanctions Nephew conceived from inside an air conditioned office in Washington immiserated average Iranians.

  With his candor, Nephew has shattered the official US rhetoric about “targeted sanctions” that exclusively punish “bad actors” and their business cronies while leaving civilian populations unharmed.

  The application of pain to a country’s civilian population is central to Nephew’s sanctions strategy. As he explains in “The Art of Sanctions,” for the unilateral coercive measures to succeed, they must impose significant pain to a state’s most vulnerable sectors, shatter the state’s political and social resolve, and ultimately force the state to cry uncle in the face of Washington’s demands.

  Nephew detailed how, as JCPOA negotiations got underway in January 2012, he led a process to reduce Iran’s oil revenue and starve its economy. After the administration successfully pushed for a wholesale reduction in oil exports and other unilateral coercive measures, Iran’s economy went from a period of growth to sudden and staggering contraction while the value of its currency tumbled. Nephew pronounced the economic assault he engineered to be “a tremendous success.”

  While discussing his book, “The Art of Sanctions,” @richardmnephew boasted with a wide grin that the economic warfare tactics he devised drove up unemployment rates in Iran.

  Nephew was just appointed as Biden’s deputy Iran envoy.

  My full story here: https://t.co/FWTYO7Ab4G pic.twitter.com/m5431czF8i

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 8, 2021

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

  Nephew also patted himself on the the back for tripling the price of chicken “during important Iranian holiday periods,” thereby “contribut[ing] to more popular frustration in one bank shot than years of financial restrictions.”

  Next, he boasted of more sanctions targeting civilians to prevent Iranians from obtaining the assistance they needed to repair their cars. “Iran’s manufacturing jobs and export revenue were the targets of this sanction,” Nephew wrote.

  There were some goods that Nephew wanted Iran to import, however. In hopes of fomenting social unrest, he said Washington “expanded the ability of US and foreign companies to sell Iranians technology used for personal communications” so they could “learn more about the dire straits of their country’s economy…”

  During a December 6, 2017 panel discussion about his book at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, Nephew detailed with a chilling smile how he not only sabotaged Iran’s automotive industry, but targeted “things like unemployment, to try to drive that up and make things a little more sticky.”

  In response to online criticism, Nephew has claimed that “the main target” of the sanctions regime he designed was “the oligarchs.” But his book on “The Art of Sanctions” tells another story.

  Nephew fondly recalls how he structured sanctions to sabotage Iranian economic reforms that would have improved the purchasing power of average people. The Obama administration destroyed the economic prospects of Iran’s working class majority while ensuring that “only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connectedness,” he wrote. As “stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation,” Nephew pronounced another success.

  Vatan-e Emrooz highlights Richard Nephew’s appointment as deputy special envoy for Iran.
  The outlet highlights the fact that he was one of the designers of the Iran sanctions regime pic.twitter.com/vZHJlJIqU4

  — Omer Carmi (@CarmiOmer) March 2, 2021

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

  As he made clear, the rising inequality “was a choice” that Washington “made on the basis of helping to drive up the pressure on the Iranian economy from internal sources.” Nephew went on to claim credit for October 2012 protests brought on by the devaluation of Iran’s currency.

  In a fairly stunning admission, Nephew admits at one point that despite providing Iran with supposed humanitarian exceptions on US sanctions, the economic war he helped design caused a catastrophic shortage of medicine and medical devices, largely because average Iranians could not afford them.

  Despite acknowledging the heavy toll of human suffering brought on by the sanctions he personally conceived, suggesting they could have prompted high numbers of excess deaths, Nephew appears to be devoid of contrition. During a December 2016 trip to Moscow, he complained that despite the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US, food was still widely available at local restaurants – “hardly a level of pain” that was necessary to bring the Kremlin to heel.

  He called to “develop a strategy to carefully, methodically, and efficiently increase pain on those areas [of the Russian economy] that are vulnerabilities and avoid those that are not.”

  So who is Richard Nephew? Does he lurk in the shadow world of intelligence intrigues and spook wars, keeping a low profile while he waits to strike the enemy? Or is he a fire-breathing hardliner bellowing threats against America’s adversaries from Beltway think tank panels? The reality is much more banal.

  When he is not snatching chicken from Iranian kids during their winter holiday, Nephew is spending quality time with his own, amusing them with his tattered dad rock t-shirts and flashing arms adorned with tribal tattoos.

  In an administration filled with fun-loving, ethnically diverse characters who moonlight as rock guitarists, decorate the walls of their homes with Haitian art, bob their heads to Tupac and even enjoy an occasional toke, all while keeping the gears of a ferociously violent empire grinding along, the tattooed sanctions artist seems like a perfect fit.

  In Iran, where a leading daily recently portrayed Nephew as Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate, his elevation to a senior diplomatic role is seen as a sign of more pain to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 23:00

• "Pure International Cybercrime": Putin Warns Against US 'Retaliation' For SolarWinds Hack
  “Pure International Cybercrime”: Putin Warns Against US ‘Retaliation’ For SolarWinds Hack

  Russian President Vladimir Putin has reacted fiercely to the contents of a report in the The New York Times this week that cited unnamed senior admin officials to say the White House is preparing a series of devastating cyberattacks on Russia as ‘retaliation’ for the SolarWinds hack.

  A spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Tuesday that the “alarming information” would constitute a “pure international cybercrime” and is thus condemned under international law.

  “The Russian state has never had anything to do with cybercrimes and cyberterrorism it is being accused of,” Peskov emphasized.

  

  Specifically addressing the NY Times report further, Peskov added, “the fact that the newspaper doesn’t rule out that the American state could be involved in cybercrime, is definitely of great concern to us.”

  Amazingly, the anonymous Biden admin officials revealed to the Times that a “series of clandestine actions across Russian networks” are expected to start within the next three weeks.

  The cyber-operations will by design seek to get Putin and Russian intelligence’s attention while being concealed from the broader public when it occurs, the NYT report said.

  Detailing the Kremlin’s condemnation and warning against any such cyber espionage, US News & World Report writes: 

  He spoke in response to a series of claims from U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and FBI Director Christopher Wray, that they are considering harsh punishments on Russia for the attack, including overt sanctions and some form of covert salvos in the cyber realm. Wray hinted at the action in testimony before Congress this month, saying the U.S. was preparing cyber “joint sequenced operations.”

  Multiple US intelligence agencies had issued a rare joint statement in the wake of the SolarWinds intrusion, saying it was “likely” Russia behind it, though without offering evidence or specific intelligence verification of the allegation.

  Russian officials have demanded the US categorically rule out acts of ‘cyberterrorism’ against the country, after media reports said Washington was mulling digital “retaliation” for a colossal hack attack it blames on Moscow. Kremlin says it’s ‘alarmed’ https://t.co/hRpNadxCnx

  — Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) March 10, 2021

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

  However, it’s since been confirmed that SolarWinds has largely faulted its own severe security lapses, including the fact that an update server’s password was literally “solarwinds123” – which had been leaked by an employee online beginning years ago, according to prior Congressional testimony.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 22:40

• Resurrecting The Dead… Digitally: One Step Closer To The "Singularity"
  Resurrecting The Dead… Digitally: One Step Closer To The “Singularity”

  Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

  In 2017, Microsoft revealed it had patented a “chatbot” that could digitally resurrect the dead if actually built.

  The chatbot uses AI and machine learning technology. Essentially, the chatbot would bring our “digital persona” back to life. Friends and relatives could then talk to our “digital persona.” When the media asked Microsoft about the technology, the companies’ representatives did admit that it was “disturbing” and claimed there were no plans to put it into production.

  Believe that if you will.

  

  Personal data? Check. Voice data? Check. Lifelike AI? Check.

  The technical tools and the personal data are already in place to make these digital resurrections possible. AI chatbots have already passed the “Turing Test,” which means that they have been able to fool other humans into thinking that they (the AI bots) are human.

  Globally, most people leave behind enough digital footprints to inform AI programs about their and our conversational idiosyncrasies. Even more convincing chatbots are just around the corner from being released.

  Microsoft’s version of the chatbot would use your electronic messages to create a digitally reincarnated version of you, in your likeness. It would use machine learning to respond to text messages like you would have done when you were alive. If you leave behind especially rich voice data, your vocal likeness could be created, giving your friends and relatives someone to speak with through a phone or even a humanoid robot.

  Chatbots are ALREADY harvesting your information for future use

  Microsoft isn’t alone. The AI company Eternime is also showing interest in AI-enabled chatbots and digital resurrection. Eternime has already built an AI-enabled chatbot that harvests information such as geolocation, activity, motion, Facebook data, and photos, which lets users create an avatar of themselves to live on after they die.

  Eternime’s chatbot ensures it’s just a matter of time before families can reanimate dead relatives using technologies such as these.

  Legalities? What legalities?

  Currently, there aren’t any laws that govern digital reincarnation.

  Researchers have taken a look at the legal question regarding chatbots and digital resurrection. In the absence of specific legislation, it’s unclear who might have the power to bring your digital personality back to life after death.

  Your right to data privacy is questionable in life, but it is far from certain after death. There also isn’t any way for you to opt-out of being digitally resurrected either. There is a lot of legal ambiguity, leaving room for private companies to make chatbots out of your personal data after you die.

  Others researching the emergence of chatbots are also concerned about the legalities. For instance, as The Conversation writes:

  If chatbots and holograms from beyond the grave are set to become commonplace, we’ll need to draw up new laws to govern them. After all, it looks like a violation of the right to privacy to digitally resurrect someone whose body lies beneath a tombstone reading “rest in peace.”

  National laws are inconsistent on how your data is used after your death. In the EU, the law on data privacy only protects the rights of the living. That leaves room for member states to decide how to protect the data of the dead. Some, such as Estonia, France, Italy and Latvia, have legislated on postmortem data. The UK’s data protection laws have not.

  Note: companies like Facebook and Google control much of our data.

  Trending: Reanimated photos of deceased people

  Digital resurrection is a growing trend in other areas as well. For instance, a recent article in The Sun drew attention to a new website that allows users to upload a deceased person’s picture. The online tool “reanimates” that person’s photo.

  As The Sun reports:

  AN EERIE new website lets you bring old photos to life with artificial intelligence.

  Deep Nostalgia is a tool that animates any human portrait photo you upload with the aim of making your family history come alive.

  “Ghost in the Shell” here we come!

  We are quickly heading toward a world like the one presented in The Matrix or Ghost in The Shell.

  In other words, a world where humans have been physically altered and linked with the internet. A world where a “single global consciousness” is linked to “cyberized” humans who have been fully merged into the digital world. The “Singularity” researchers warned of is now on the verge of being deployed against most of humanity.

  What’s the Singularity?

  While futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted 15 years ago that the singularity—the time when the abilities of a computer overtake the abilities of the human brain—will occur in about 2045, Gale and his co-authors believe this event may be much more imminent, especially with the advent of quantum computing…

  ….The authors don’t know when the singularity will come, but come it will. When this occurs, the end of the human race might very well be upon us, they say, citing a 2014 prediction by the late Stephen Hawking. According to Kurzweil, humans may then be fully replaced by AI, or by some hybrid of humans and machines. (source)

  It’s like science is torn between resurrecting us and making us live forever and ending humanity altogether with risky experiments.

  While it would be nice to have one more conversation with lost loved ones, would you actually use chatbots and reanimated photos to do it? Do you think it’s ethical?

  And what about the “Singularity?” Are you for or against the day we find ourselves unable to rely on our own minds? Do you believe the end of humanity will come when we are forced to collaborate with computers to solve life’s every day problems?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 22:20

• Happy Days At The Gas Pump Are Over As Prices Soar 
  Happy Days At The Gas Pump Are Over As Prices Soar 

  When the virus pandemic first hit early last year, Americans were locked down in their homes as gasoline demand plunged and prices crashed. Last April, the nationwide average for gasoline was around $2. According to AAA, prices are surging nationwide, up 32 cents in the previous month to $2.796 for regular. 

  

  On Monday, regular gasoline in Los Angeles County rose for the 27th consecutive day and 47th time in 48 days, increasing to $3.81, the highest since Dec. 3, 2019. Average prices for crude products in the metro area have been on a tear, resulting in a price shock for many consumers who are still battling food and housing insecurities, along with job loss as they wait for the next round of stimulus checks. 

  AAA said average gasoline prices in Los Angeles had risen 46.5 cents in the past 48 days.

  Happy times at the pump are over as crude product prices continue to rise. 

  

  GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan told Fox News that one reason for the jump in prices is due to increased demand. Still, more importantly, he said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) “is not opening the spigot.”

  Last week, OPEC leaders maintained production cuts for all countries except Russia and Khazakstan. The news caused West Texas Intermediate and Brent to surge. 

  OPEC’s decision last week inspired Goldman’s Damien Courvalin to raise his Brent forecast by $5/bbl, to $75/bbl in 2Q and $80/bbl in 3Q21: “This increase in our price forecast reflects stronger time spreads, with our updated inventory path consistent with $5/bbl additional backwardation over the next six months relative to our prior forecast.”

  

  … while this is excellent news for the energy industry, Wall Street, and value investors who’ve plowed into XOM, this is terrible news for consumers where more of their upcoming stimulus checks will go to not only energy costs but also food (as we recently noted, food inflation is off the hook). 

  

  Using the three-month rate of change – one starts to notice the latest surge in prices at the pump should be viewed as a “price shock.” How long until gasoline prices reverse? 

  

  So, where’s the breaking point for consumers already struggling with their finances because of the economic downturn. Now the working-poor, who don’t own assets, are getting crushed even harder in the “K-shaped” recovery as energy and food prices soar. 

  

  Is this Biden’s fault? Hard to say but stirring the pot in the Middle East, closing the Keystone Pipeline, discouraging investment in fossil fuels, and banning fracking on government land probably didn’t help supply (although seasonality and the Texas storm also impacted in the short-term, and of course OPEC+).

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 22:00

• U.S. Aircraft Carrier Deploys In Mediterranean As Damascus Prepares To Push On The Northwest
  U.S. Aircraft Carrier Deploys In Mediterranean As Damascus Prepares To Push On The Northwest

  Submitted by SouthFront,

  The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its Carrier Strike Group have entered the Mediterranean Sea.

  This makes it, currently, the closest aircraft carrier to the Middle East. It has been quite a while since the US hasn’t had one of its super warships deployed in or near the Persian Gulf.

  Starting in the spring of 2019, the U.S. Navy has been publicly ordered to keep a near-constant presence in the region, as if this were something new.

  US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that a global posture review is taking place, and it would be reconsidered whether a carrier was even needed in the region. Still, the Mediterranean Sea is quite nearby, and the removal of the Carrier Strike Group (CSG) from the Persian Gulf was a political move.

  It’s Lloyd Austin’s dream to have a CSG in every hotspot in the world, but resources don’t allow for that.

  Still, the US has the amphibious warship USS Makin Island (LHD-8) in the Persian Gulf with a detachment of F-35B fighter jets, so it still has a hefty presence. Further, it is without a doubt possible for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its CSG to operate without issue in the Middle East, be it Syria, Iraq or elsewhere, from its current place of deployment.

  In Syria itself, as the primary US competitor, alongside Iran, Russian forces are preparing to set up a permanent military base near the city of Palmyra in the Badia Desert. This is not yet confirmed, but according to satellite photos it has a helipad as a runway.

  This base is likely planned to support the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) further in their push against both ISIS and Turkish proxies.

  On March 9th, the SAA carried out heavy shelling on the positions of Turkish proxies in the village of Jabal Al-Zawiya, in southern Idlib.

  Separately, Pro-Turkey opposition factions reportedly thwarted an attempt by the SAA to advance on the Qalaat front in the northern countryside of Latakia. Attacks are frequently repelled in Twitter posts, but nowhere else, demonstrating that the propaganda wing of the Turkish proxies is quite active.

  In the days leading up to this, the SAA has been preparing for a large push in the province of Aleppo.

  This is likely an attempt to form a uniform front, which can exert equal pressure along the frontline and thin the enemy’s forces to provide opportunity for a breach.

  Turkey and its proxies are sure to offer heavy resistance to any advance by the SAA, but so far it appears that this may not be enough.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 21:40

• $500 Million LA Mega-Mansion Faces Default 
  $500 Million LA Mega-Mansion Faces Default 

  A famous LA mansion called “The One” that originally had a planned list price of approximately $500 million in 2017 now faces the threat of default, according to LA Times. 

  Movie producer turned real estate developer (of course) Nile Niami is delinquent on an $82.5 million construction loan from Hankey Capital for the 100,000-square-foot mega-mansion in Bel-Air. In the last three years, the property’s debt has surged to as high as $110 million. 

  

  Niami has had some bad luck over the last year. He sold an LA mansion called “Opus” that was once listed for $100 million for a 50% haircut during the virus pandemic. Perhaps the developer has fallen on hard times, or the super-luxury real estate market has stalled. Whatever the issues are, and why Niami can’t service his debt on The One comes at a precarious time for the real estate market as interest rates have violently risen over the past few months. 

  According to a document obtained by The Times, Hankey, the lender, who is well aware of market conditions, wants their money back and recently slapped Niami with a default notice. The developer has just 90 days to repay the loan or restructure the agreement in some way so that Hankey doesn’t force the sale of the home.

  “We felt the owner of ‘The One’ was distracted from the job at hand, which is to bring the biggest and best house in the United States to market for sale,” said Don Hankey, chairman of Hankey Investment Co.

  “We hope our actions will kick off the official listing.”

  Niami began constructing the 100,000-square-foot mega-mansion in 2013 as part of a speculative bet on the LA mansion market. But over the years, economic conditions have morphed from party to pandemic. Bets on housing in metro areas have gone sour in the recent year as people exit cities for rural communities. 

  “Default notices are nothing new for Niami,” said The Times. In 2020 alone, the developer received a default notice for $10 million on a property on 369 Londonderry Place in the Hollywood Hills, and one for a debt of $23.4 million on a mansion at 10701 Bellagio Road. 

  Maybe the speculative nature of Niami’s leveraged bets on the super-luxury real estate market is beginning to unravel. 

  Last summer, he posted a video on his Instagram account saying The One was a couple of months away from completion. 

  “Seven years ago, I had an idea to create the biggest, most expensive house in the urban world: The One Bel-Air. And I did it.”

  

  At the time, maybe Niami was attempting to appease Hankey in a sale of the property was nearing, but that never happened. Now the developer faces notice of default where the lender could force a sale in market conditions that may not be conducive for top dollar. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 21:20

• Escobar: Raging Twenties – Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism
  Escobar: Raging Twenties – Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  As a proposal to escape our excess hyper-reality show, this book does not offer recipes, but trails: multiple entryways and multiple possibilities.

  

  I have a new book out, Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism. For those who don’t use Amazon, here is a mini-guide on how to order and buy the book.

  The journey of a book finding its readers is always an idiosyncratic, mysterious and fascinating process. To set the scene, allow me a short presentation, drawn from the book’s introduction.

  The Raging Twenties started with a murder: a missile strike on Gen Soleimani at Baghdad airport on January 3. Almost simultaneously, that geopolitical lethality was amplified when a virus cannibalized virtually the whole planet.

  It’s as if Time has been standing still – or imploded – ever since. We cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by SARS-CoV-2.

  Throughout the process, language has been metastasizing, yielding a whole new basket of concepts. Circuit breaker. Biosecurity. Negative feedback loops. State of exception. Necropolitics. New Brutalism. Hybrid Neofascism. New Viral Paradigm.

  This new terminology collates to the lineaments of a new regime, actually a hybrid mode of production: turbo-capitalism re-engineered as Rentier Capitalism 2.0, where Silicon Valley behemoths take the place of estates, and also The State. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by economist Cedric Durand.

  Squeezed and intoxicated by information performing the role of a dominatrix, we have been presented with a new map of Dystopia, packaged as a “new normal”, featuring cognitive dissonance, a bio-security paradigm, the inevitability of virtual work, social distancing as a political program, info-surveillance, and triumphant Trans-humanism.

  A sanitary shock was superimposed over the ongoing economic shock – where financialization always takes precedence over the real economy.

  But then the glimpse of a rosy future was offered towards more “inclusive “capitalism, in the form of a Great Reset, designed by a tiny plutocratic oligarchy duly self-appointed as Saviors.

  All of these themes evolve along the 25 small chapters of this book, interacting with the larger geopolitical chessboard.

  SARS-CoV-2 accelerated what was already a swing of the power center of the world towards Asia.

  Since WWII, a great deal of the planet lived as cogs of a tributary system, with the Hegemon constantly transferring wealth and influence to itself – via what analyst Ray McGovern describes as SS (security state) enforcing the will of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.

  This world-system is irretrievably fading out – especially due to the interpolations of the Russia-China strategic partnership. And that’s the other overarching theme of this book.

  As a proposal to escape our excess hyper-reality show, this book does not offer recipes, but trails: configurations where there’s no masterplan, but multiple entryways and multiple possibilities.

  These trails are networked to the narrative of a possible, emerging new configuration, in the anchoring essay titled Eurasia, The Hegemon and the Three Sovereigns.

  In a running dialogue, you will have Michel Foucault talking to Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius talking to Vladimir Putin, philosophy talking to geoeconomics – all the while attempting to defuse the toxic interaction of the New Great Depression and variations of Cold War 2.0.

  With the exception of the anchoring essay, this is a series of columns, arranged chronologically, originally published on Asia Times/Hong Kong, Consortium News/Washington D.C., and Strategic Culture/Moscow, widely republished and translated across the Global South.

  They come from a global nomad. Since the mid 1990s I live and work between (mostly) East and West. With the exception of the first two months of 2020, I spent the bulk of the Raging Twenties in Asia, in Buddhist land.

  So you will feel that the scent of these words is inescapably Buddhist, but in many aspects even more Taoist and Confucianist. In Asia we learn that the Tao transcends everything as it provides serenity. There’s much we can learn from humanism stripped off metaphysics.

  2021 may be even fiercer than 2020. Yet nothing condemns us to be lost in a wilderness of mirrors while, as Pound wrote, a tawdry cheapness / shall reign throughout our days. The hidden “secret” of this book may be actually a yearning – that we’re able to muster our inner strength and choose a Taoist trail to ride the whale.

  *  *  *

  Pepe Escobar’s new book is Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism. Follow him on Telegram.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 21:00

• Emails Reveal FBI Excavation For Civil War-Era Gold In Lawsuit Over "Hundreds Of Millions" In Disputed Booty
  Emails Reveal FBI Excavation For Civil War-Era Gold In Lawsuit Over “Hundreds Of Millions” In Disputed Booty

  Did the FBI make off with ‘seven to nine tons’ of Civil War-era gold in a Pennsylvania forest after a treasure hunting duo led them to its long-hidden location?

  A father-son team wants to know, and has successfully sued for access to government emails about the dig.

  

  Here’s what we know, according to the Associated Press. 

  On march 13, 2018, treasure hunters Dennis and Kem Parada, who co-own the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers, led FBI agents to a location in “Dent’s Run,” located approximately 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

  The Paradas had spent years looking for the long-lost booty, an 1863 shipment of Union gold, which was either lost or stolen on its way to the US Mint in Philadelphia.

  The FBI brought in geophysical consulting firm, Enviroscan, to survey the hilltop site, where their gravimeter identified ‘a large metallic mass with the density of gold,” according to Warren Getler, a consultant who worked closely with both the FBI and the Paradas.

  An FBI agent told them the location of the mass was “one or two feet off Denny’s sweet spot,” recalled Getler, author of “Rebel Gold,” a book exploring the possibility of buried Civil War-era caches of gold and silver. “Then I went to ask how big is it. And he said, ‘7 to 9 tons.’ And I literally said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’”

  That much gold would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today — and, assuming it was there, would almost certainly touch off a legal fight over how to divvy up the spoils. -AP

  The FBI says they found nothing at the site, while Enviroscan co-founder Timothy Bechtel said the FBI told him to keep his mouth shut about his findings.

  

  The Paradas, meanwhile, say the FBI struck a deal to let them watch the site excavation – only to confine them to their car for most of the two-day dig, only to escort them to a “large, empty hole” at the end of the second day.

  The emails are quite revealing. In one, an assistant US attorney in Philadelphia, K.T. Newton, wrote in an email marked “Confidential,”: “We believe the cache itself is in the neighborhood of 3x5x8 (feet) to 5x5x8.”

  Since the Elk County site was on state-owned land, the FBI had to secure a federal court order to gain access. The legal maneuvering generated emails between Newton and Audrey Miner, chief lawyer for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

  On March 13, as FBI agents clambered up a hill to the target, Miner bluntly asked Newton: “Can you please provide the basis upon which the Office of the United States Attorney asserts that the gold, if found, belongs to the federal government?”

  Newton replied that a federal affidavit in the case was sealed. She instead offered to “discuss this generally with you on the phone,” according to email records released by the state under court order. -AP

  Yet, on March 16, 2018 – two days after the dig ended, US Attorney Newton told Audrey Miner, chief lawyer for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources: “we are all disappointed and scratching our heads over the several scientific test results.“

  In a subsequent March 28 email, Miner asked Newton for an update on the federal investigation, writing that “the gold story still has legs, and the DCNR is now getting a lot of ‘gold-diggers’ interested in Dent’s Run,” to which Newton replied: “For your knowledge only … we have no other scientific evidence, other than what the excavation had been based on, that any gold is hidden in that area.”

  Miner replied: “I guess you can’t come right out and state there is no gold to be found at Dent’s Run?” to which the prosecutor replied: “Unfortunately, we cannot.“

  On Wednesday, the Paradas plan to hold a news conference, where they will present claims that include residents reportedly hearing a backhoe and jackhammer overnight “when the excavation was supposed to have been paused,” and seeing a  “convoy of FBI vehicles, including large armored trucks.”

  “I gotta find out what happened to all that gold,” Dennis Parada said last week, adding that the FBI’s claim to have found nothing was “a slap in the face.”

  Cluck, meanwhile, is still pursuing government material on the case — nearly 2,400 pages, as well as video files, that the FBI has promised to turn over in response to his Freedom of Information Act request.

  All documents in the federal court case about the dig remain sealed. For that reason, a state appeals judge recently declined to order the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to give Cluck the federal writ of entry and seizure warrant that the FBI agents relied on to gain access to the site. -AP

  In a curious development which may shed some light on what’s to come, a Commonwealth Court Judge, Kevin Brobson, wrote in a footnote of a Jan. 28 opinion rejecting Cluck’s petition for more information, that the name of the sealed case is: 

  “In the Matter of: Seizure of One or More Tons of United States Gold.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 20:40

• UC-Berkeley Unveils Plan For Racial Quota
  UC-Berkeley Unveils Plan For Racial Quota

  Authored by Ashley Carnahan via Campus Reform,

  The University of California-Berkeley is on its way to becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution, which means that at least 25 percent of undergraduate students identify as “Chicanx/Latinx.”

  

  UC-Berkeley’s Chancellor Carol Christ announced in August 2018 her “intention to set the UC Berkeley campus on a journey to become an HSI by 2027,” according to the Chancellor’s Task Force on Becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution’s report, published in December 2020.

  A Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) is defined as one that “has an enrollment of undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25 percent Hispanic students at the end of the award year immediately preceding the date of application.”

  The report states that Christ would like to see 25 percent of undergraduate students “self-identify as Chicanx/Latinx” by 2027.

  “[Christ] identified this priority as one of the boldest goals in the campus’ strategic plan—for at least 25 percent of enrolled undergraduate students to self-identify as Chicanx/Latinx, for the University to be a preferred destination for Pell Grant eligible students, and for every student to thrive at Berkeley and to find belonging in all dimensions of the campus towards a true exemplification of comprehensive excellence,” the report said.

  The HSI task force is divided into three implementation phases from 2020-2027. Phase three’s goal (2025-2027) is to apply for HSI Designation.

  Six other UC schools are already HSI designated: UC-Davis, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-Riverside, UC-Merced, UC-Santa Cruz, and UC-Irvine.

  In 2020, UC-Berkeley had a 17.9 percent Latino student population, roughly 7.1 percent away from meeting the enrollment requirement, according to the report overview.

  “Excellence is rooted in diversity — Berkeley’s excellence demands diversity — diversity of thought, perspective, experience, cultural identity. In order to keep Berkeley relevant, we must enhance and strengthen our efforts to attract and retain diverse community members, The Hispanic Serving Institution Initiative is one of several important inclusion programs that will help us achieve this excellence,” reads the report.

  Mia Settles-Tidwell, assistant vice chancellor and chief of staff for the division of equity & inclusion told Campus Reform, “The HSI Task Force was charged in 2018 to bring forth a presentation on the roadmap to becoming an HSI. This effort is more than a reform effort, it is an effort to align ourselves with our UC public service mission for the state of California. The HSI will continue its work and build an HSI Implementation team structure that facilitates the recommendations in the HSI report.”

  UC Berkeley Diversity and Community Fellow Allyson Kohen told Campus Reform she would like to see quotas apply to other racial minorities as well.

  “I think that there should be more research done re the implication on students from other ethnic backgrounds [that] this HSI quota goal is going to have,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 20:20

• Texas Faces Wildfire Threat Amid "Extreme Drought" After Historic Deep Freeze
  Texas Faces Wildfire Threat Amid “Extreme Drought” After Historic Deep Freeze

  No, this is not The Onion…

  Weather-battered Texas can’t catch a break. Last month, the Lone Star State experienced a “historic” plunge in temperatures that nearly collapsed the power grid. Governor Greg Abbott has issued warnings about elevated wildfire risks in several state regions this week, reported CBS Austin. 

  Abbott said Tuesday that the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), Texas A&M Forest Service, and the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System (TIFMAS) are preparing to respond to wildfires if they break out in the Panhandle, Western Plains, Trans Pecos, and the South Texas Plains due to warm, dry, and windy conditions. 

  “As Texans in the Panhandle, Western Plains, South Texas Plains, and Trans Pecos area face a significant threat of wildfires, I urge Texans in these communities to heed the guidance of their local leaders and avoid any outdoor burning that could spark wildfires,” said Abbott. “The State of Texas is working alongside local officials and emergency management leaders on the ground to keep our communities safe and mitigate the threat that wildfires pose.”

  According to the US Drought Monitor, the areas of concern are located in “extreme” to “exceptional” drought areas. Fears are mounting of a Great Depression’s Dust Bowl style drought developing in the Southwest. 

  

  This is the latest weather-related disaster to threaten the state after up to 15 million people were left without power during an Arctic blast when the state’s electric grid nearly collapsed last month. 

  Bloomberg says, “at least 2.1 million people face critical wildfire conditions, including in Amarillo and El Paso, Texas.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 20:00

• Buchanan: The Emerging Existential Crisis At The Border
  Buchanan: The Emerging Existential Crisis At The Border

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  During a Democratic debate in 2020, the candidates were asked if their health care plans would cover “undocumented immigrants.”

  Each raised his or her hand, including front-runner Joe Biden.

  From that stage, the message went forth: If the Democrats win this election, then it is amnesty for all and open borders in America.

  The message was reinforced by repeated Democratic praise for sanctuary cities, by calls to “abolish ICE” and end deportations, by pledges to stop work on Donald Trump’s wall, if not to tear it down.

  Message sent to Mexico, Central America and the Third World:

  If the Democrats win and you make it across the border into the United States, under President Joe Biden, you will not be sent back. After only a brief hassle, the economic opportunities and social welfare benefits of the richest country on earth will be open to you and yours.

  

  Hence, when Biden won, a new and potentially historic surge to the Southern border began, and the number of illegal arrivals and crossings are in the growing thousands every day.

  According to a White House domestic policy council document, the number of children who, without a parent or guardian, will arrive at the border in 2021 will be about 117,000 — 50% higher than the record number of children who arrived in the 2019 humanitarian crisis.

  In February, some 100,000 immigrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol for illegal border crossing. “I actually think that’s an undercount,” says Victor Manjarrez Jr., ex-Border Patrol agent who teaches at Texas University.

  The pre-Trump policy of “catch-and-release” has been reinstated.

  Children and families who cross illegally from Mexico cannot now be held for more than 72 hours. They are being released into the U.S. to await a court date — potentially years off — to hear their claim to a right to be here. Most never show up.

  “We are weeks, maybe even days, away from a crisis on the southern border,” says Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose Texas district abuts Mexico. “Our country is currently unprepared to handle a surge in migrants in the middle of the pandemic.”

  Congressional Democrats, following Biden’s lead, have proposed a new citizenship act. “Dreamers,” brought here by their parents as children, would be put on a three-year fast-track to U.S. citizenship.

  The 11 million to 22 million illegal migrants already in the country — the exact number is unknown — would be put on an eight-year track to citizenship.

  The Democratic Party is signing on to the largest mass amnesty for illegal immigrants in history — which would produce millions of new voters for the party.

  Among the recent border-crossers, who are transported by bus to detention centers, where they remain for 72 hours and then are released to travel where they wish, many are carrying the coronavirus.

  Thus, what’s shaping up on the border is not only a national security crisis but a national survival crisis. For it is impossible to see, given the Biden administration policies adopted, how the invasion of America can be halted. And if 2 million or 3 million migrants reach the U.S. border and cross over each year, and we do not send them back, what stops the invasion and remaking America?

  What would blanket amnesty and a renewed invasion portend?

  In a decade, Texas, the Southwest and much of the South would take on the political aspect of California where the GOP has become a permanent minority party.

  As many illegal migrants do not read, write or speak English, and do not bring a unique set of skills, their immense and growing presence can only deepen our national disunity.

  Almost all of these folks are poor or working-class people who would have to rely on government subsidies for their health care, food support, housing and the schooling of their children.

  With the unemployment rate rising again in the Black community, which has sustained the heaviest collective hit from the pandemic and economic collapse, the migrants would be competing with them for jobs.

  And as the illegal migrants are disproportionately young and male, they would add to the surging crime rates in America’s major cities.

  America is headed, seemingly inexorably, to a future where a majority in this country traces its ancestry to Asia, Africa and Latin America, a future where this already fractionated nation is even more multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural than today.

  With racial conflict as sharp as it has been in decades, with our political parties at swords point, with the culture war raging unabated, as mobs tears down statues and monuments to America’s founders, exactly what national problem will be solved by an unstopping and unrelenting wave of migrants illegally crossing the border into our country year after year?

  One wonders: Is this how the Republic ends?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 19:40

• "Mega Squeeze" Revealed As Culprit Of Tuesday's Historic Meltup, As Expected
  “Mega Squeeze” Revealed As Culprit Of Tuesday’s Historic Meltup, As Expected

  On Sunday, when looking at the latest prime brokerage data from Goldman we noted that around mid-week the PB desk saw the “largest global short sales since May” with the GS Prime book net sold driven by short sales outpacing long buys 1.7 to 1.”

  

  … and predicted that a “Mega Squeeze” was Coming as “Last Week Saw Biggest Hedge Fund Shorting Since May“

  “What does all of this mean for markets”. we asked rhetorically and answered that in a week where stocks first spiked then tumbled only to reverse, and where substantial damage was done on HF P&L, immediately after a furious burst of shorting, which has pushed gross short exposure to the highest level since the start of 2020…

  

  … “it is likely that the short squeeze we observed on Friday which started with the post-EU close ramp that pushed the EMini higher by over 100 points in 4 hours is about to spread and force even more forced squeezes especially now that the $1.9 trillion Biden bill has been passed by the Senate.”

  This prediction proved to be painfully spot on (for the shorts) because what happened on Tuesday was an unprecedented 4% meltup in the Nasdaq facilitated by a massive 20% surge in Tesla and various other popular growth and tech stocks.

  But was it a short squeeze, or merely an oversold bounce as some have defined it?

  For the answer we went to the latest Goldman Prime Brokerage Service note which confirmed our previous prediction, observing that Tuesday’s was the result of “risk unwind in Macro Products vs. large net buying in Single Names” led by TMT and Consumer Disc stocks, with the Goldman Prime book net bought for a fifth straight day in which “trading flows were risk-off with short covers outpacing long sales 4 to 1.”

  Just to make sure there is no confusion, Goldman prime notes that “yesterday’s de-grossing activity – short covers and long sales combined – was the largest since late January (-2.0 SDs).“

  And the most remarkable observation, while US equities were (clearly) net bought, “trading flows were risk-off driven by short covers outpacing long sales 2.7 to 1.”

  

  As Bloomberg adds, short covering in unprofitable tech firms helped the group halt seven straight days of selling and score the third-biggest net buying of the year. In fact, over the past two days, Goldman basket of the most-shorted tech stocks has jumped almost 7%, more than double the return of the Russell 3000.

  

  In other words, as paradoxical as it may sound, the surge was in fact a “risk off move”, and didn’t reflect appetite for risk but merely overall book degrossing as shorts have learned their lesson and no longer stay in the way of epic meltup juggernauts such as the one yesterday.

  That said, with the latest iteration of shorts now out of the picture, it’s time for a new cohort of bears to take their place, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we see renewed weakness in the Nasdaq as a flood of new shorts hammers the tech index only to then suffer another massive squeeze and so on, rinse, repeat.

  Commenting on the move, Andrew Brenner, the head of international fixed-income at NatAlliance Securities in New York told Bloomberg that “we see yesterday’s move as short covering without legs.” Ok fine, but tell that to any Nasdaq shorts whose legs – and everything else – was steamrolled in the historic move higher.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 19:20

• Here Come Trillions More: Biden Will Unveil "Next Phase" Of COVID Response On Thursday
  Here Come Trillions More: Biden Will Unveil “Next Phase” Of COVID Response On Thursday

  Just hours after the House passed the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus package (which will unleash another wave of “stimmies” that will inevitably find their way into millions of Robinhood and other discount brokerage accounts), President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would unveil “the next phase” of the US COVID-19 response on Thursday, which is also the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-inspired lockdowns in the US.

  

  Biden, who made the remarks during a press briefing with the CEO of Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday, will share the details of the plan during a prime-time address Thursday evening.

  “Tomorrow night, I’m going on primetime to address the American people and talk about what we went through as a nation this past year. But more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next,” Biden said Wednesday.

  “I’m going to launch the next phase of the Covid response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the American people,” he said. “There is light at the end of this dark tunnel over the past year. We cannot let our guard down now or assume that victory is inevitable. Together, we’re going to get through this pandemic and usher in a healthier, more hopeful future.”

  Biden also proclaimed Wednesday that, after the COVID pandemic is finally quashed, his administration is planning to pivot to focusing on its next health-care policy goal: eradicating cancer. Note: Biden’s son Beau Biden succumbed to brain cancer a few years ago – cancer that doctors suspected was linked to the younger Biden’s service in Iraq. The administration is also hoping to push through a sweeping infrastructure plan.

  If these plans seem a little too grandiose, especially after the massive blowout in the national debt over the last few years, fear not: Biden and his fellow Dems apparently realized that the federal government can fund all of its policy priorities, no matter how costly, by simply allowing the Fed to monetize all of the debt.

  Up next (after the gigantic “infrastructure” bill): curing cancer. Probably will only cost $100 trillion. But why not, when one has unlimited funds? Just have Jay Powell keep his finger on the money printing button a little longer. https://t.co/uduESJ06HH

  — fred hickey (@htsfhickey) March 10, 2021

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

  Earlier Wednesday, the White House announced plans to buy 100MM additional doses of J&J’s COVID-19 jab in a deal that would double the nation’s supply of the J&J vaccine as the company already has a deal with the government to provide 100MM doses by the end of June. Merck is helping to make J&J’s Covid vaccine, which is helping to accelerate production.

  “I’m doing this because in this wartime effort, we need maximum flexibility,” Biden said Wednesday on plans to purchase more J&J vaccine doses.

  “There’s always a chance that we’ll encounter unexpected challenges or there will be a new need for a vaccine effort…a lot can happen, a lot can change and we need to be prepared.”

  Thanks to this, Biden said, any American who wants a vaccine can now expect to receive one by May 31. The president also noted that 50MM shots have been distributed since he took office, while also claiming that the US has administered the most shots of any country in the world.

  “In five weeks, America has administered the most shots of any country in the world – any country in the world – with among the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated. That’s progress we promised,” Biden said.

  Of course, that’s not entirely true. According to Bloomberg’s numbers, the US is in the lead, with nearly 96MM jabs administered, compared with 52MM for China. But China has also vaccinated millions with its domestically produced vaccines under “emergency use” authorizations that allowed the CCP to start doling out the experimental jabs much earlier than many medical ethicists would have been comfortable with. Back in November, the head of Sinopharm, one of the biggest Chinese vaccine producers, said his company’s jabs had already been administered to 1MM people before the first US vaccines were even approved for emergency use.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 19:00

• Banks Tweak Bond Covenant Language To Protect Against Repeat Of Citi's $500M "Fat Finger" Loss
  Banks Tweak Bond Covenant Language To Protect Against Repeat Of Citi’s $500M “Fat Finger” Loss

  After a court battle that dragged on for more than a year, a New York judge shocked the investment banking community last month when they ruled that a group of Revlon creditors could keep some $500MM that they refused to return to Citi after some $900MM was accidentally transferred in what appeared to be a “fat finger”.

  

  At the time, legal experts posited that the judge’s decision, which was based on quirks in New York State law, would force investment banks to reevaluate the wording of their bond covenants in all future deals, as the ruling created new risks that needed to be addressed.

  It appears America’s biggest lenders have already come up with new legal terminology to be inserted into covenant agreements that would require lenders to return any accidentally transferred funds to the banks.

  The legally binding clauses have been inserted into debt deals for Eagle Materials and pet supply chain Petco, among other deals, the FT reports.

  Building materials manufacturer Eagle Materials, pet supply chain Petco and industrial equipment maker Mesa Laboratories have all included a type of “erroneous payment” term in their US loan deals, according to credit documents assessed by credit analysis company 9fin.

  Analysts who study the leveraged loan market said this is the first time in recent memory that covenant language was evolving in this way, as “erroneous payment” clauses are expected to become standard.

  “This is such a rare thing that has not happened in the US leveraged loan market for a very long time at such a scale,” said Justin Forlenza, senior covenant analyst at credit research company Covenant Review, referring to Citi’s blunder.

  “All the arrangers want to avoid that scenario going forward.” The covenant typically gives banks the discretion to judge whether a payment was mistakenly made and to demand its repayment as well as any interest from the date that the funds were received.

  Banks typically offer administrative services through which they co-ordinate the payment of coupons and other “back office” tasks related to debt deals. JPMorgan was lead arranger for Eagle Materials and Mesa Laboratories while Citi led Petco’s deal. Both banks declined to comment.

  But these new clauses have only been spotted in US deals so far, which is hardly surprising since the ruling was based on precedent and New York State law.

  The accidental payment protection has so far been spotted only in US documents, according to Steven Hunter, chief executive of 9fin, who said it may be because of a quirk of New York’s law which allowed Revlon’s hedge fund investors to keep the accidental transfer.

  US District Judge Jesse Furman said 10 asset managers for the lenders, which include Brigade Capital Management, HPS Investment Partners and Symphony Asset Management, don’t have to return more than $500 million that Citibank said it mistakenly transferred in August while trying to make an interest payment.

  Citi is now seeking to punish these firms and any others who withheld mistakenly transferred money by excluding them from future debt deals, according to Bloomberg.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 18:40

• Livid Trump Blasts "Our Country Is Being Destroyed At The Southern Border"
  Livid Trump Blasts “Our Country Is Being Destroyed At The Southern Border”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  A livid President Trump issued a statement Tuesday lamenting that the country is “being destroyed” by the Biden administration’s actions at the border, as the crisis further spirals out of control.

  

  Border crossings have surged after Biden promised mass amnesty, began allowing unaccompanied migrant children into the US again, and reversed Trump’s ‘remain in Mexico’ policy.

  Video is emerging every day of hundreds of migrants walking into the US, while cities in Arizona and Texas warn that they are becoming overwhelmed, and warning of the complete lack of effort to test for or prevent the spread of COVID:

  The tip of the iceberg near Yuma, AZ as immigrants begin to flood into the US responding to @JoeBiden’s open border, catch and release policy. How many have COVID? pic.twitter.com/8Cu3k88etZ

  — Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) March 7, 2021

  Border patrol is reported to have arrested around 100,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the border in February alone.

  Trump’s statement read “When I was President, our Southern border was in great shape – stronger, safer, and more secure than ever before.”

  “We ended Catch-and-Release, shut down asylum fraud, and crippled the vicious smugglers, drug dealers, and human traffickers,” Trump continued, adding “The Wall, despite horrendous Democratic delays, would have easily been finished by now.”

  Commenting on the current situation, Trump proclaimed “Our country is being destroyed at the Southern border, a terrible thing to see!”

  There are now a record number of migrant children being kept in Border Patrol ‘cages’, which the migrants themselves are calling “dog kennels” and “ice boxes” according to reports.

  CBS News reports that there are more than 3,200 unaccompanied minors in the facilities, with almost half being held beyond the legal three-day limit.

  Less than a month ago there were just NINE children being held, according to CBP documents cited in the CBS report.

  There are a further 8,100 migrant children being held at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

  This is an unprecedented crisis caused directly by the undoing of Trump’s border policies and the Biden administration refuses to address it. Biden himself has not faced questions from the media for almost 50 days at this time.

  In fact, they are putting out “leaks” that reveal their intentions to continue an open border policy, with the intention to integrate 117,000 migrant youths and children this year alone.

  Meanwhile, Arizona and Montana are taking legal action to block the new immigration regulations, which also limit the ability of ICE to detain illegals.

  Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a statement “If asked about the poorest policy choice I’ve ever seen in government, this would be a strong contender.”

  “Blindly releasing thousands of people, including convicted criminals and those who may be spreading COVID-19 into our state, is both unconscionable and a violation of federal law,” Brnovich added, urging “This must be stopped now to avoid a dangerous humanitarian crisis for the immigrants and the people of Arizona.”

  Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has also warned that “Meth trafficked into Montana by Mexican drug cartels has wracked our state. The problem will only be made worse if the Biden administration continues to allow criminals to stay in the country.”

  “Enforcing our immigration laws and helping to keep Americans safe is one of the federal government’s most important functions. The Biden administration is failing its basic responsibility to Americans,” Knudsen emphasised.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 18:22

• Wind Power Is A Disaster In Texas, No Matter What Paul Krugman Says
  Wind Power Is A Disaster In Texas, No Matter What Paul Krugman Says

  Authored by Robert Murphy via The Mises Institute,

  In the wake of February’s tragic power outages in Texas, during which 4.5 million households suffered service interruptions, partisans on both sides have been quick to interpret the events as confirmation of their preferred energy policies. With news images of helicopters deicing frozen turbines, conservatives lambasted Texas’s increasing reliance on wind power as the villain in the story.

  Trying to temper this knee-jerk reaction, Reason.com columnist Ron Bailey argued that “[m]ost of the shortfall in electric power generation during the current cold snap is the result of natural gas and coal powered plants going offline.” And Paul Krugman for his part declared that it was a “malicious falsehood” to blame wind and solar power for what happened in Texas, as it was primarily a failure of natural gas.

  In this article I’ll lay out the basic facts of which power sources stepped up to the plate during the crisis. Contrary to what you would have known from reading Ron Bailey (let alone Paul Krugman), when the Texas freeze hit, electricity from natural gas skyrocketed while wind output fell off a cliff. The people arguing that wind wasn’t to blame mean it in the same way Jimmy Olson wasn’t to blame when General Zod took over: wind is so useless nobody serious ever thought it might help in a crisis.

  

  Krugman on Texas Electricity

  In his February 18 column titled “Texas, Land of Wind and Lies,” Krugman declared that

  Republican politicians and right-wing media … have coalesced around a malicious falsehood instead: the claim that wind and solar power caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and that radical environmentalists are somehow responsible for the fact that millions of people are freezing in the dark …

  In contrast to this dirty rotten lie from the right-wingers, Krugman instead explains:

  A power grid poorly prepared to deal with extreme cold suffered multiple points of failure. The biggest problems appear to have come in the delivery of natural gas, which normally supplies most of the state’s winter electricity, as wellheads and pipelines froze.

  A bit later in the article Krugman admits that wind was involved as well, but minimizes its role in this way:

  It’s true that the state generates a lot of electricity from wind, although it’s a small fraction of the total. But that’s not because Texas—Texas!—is run by environmental crazies. It’s because these days wind turbines are a cost-effective energy source wherever there’s a lot of wind, and one thing Texas has is a lot of wind.

  It’s also true that extreme cold forced some of the state’s insufficiently winterized wind turbines to shut down, but this was happening to Texas energy sources across the board, with the worst problems involving natural gas.

  Incidentally, there are literally no numbers in Krugman’s article (except for numerals referring to dates), which is a signal that he’s pulling a fast one on his readers. From his qualitative (not quantitative) description, most people would have assumed that when the unusually cold weather hit Texas last month, electricity generation from various sources was down across the board, but that it mostly fell from natural gas, while the drop in wind was insignificant. As I’ll show in the next section, this is utterly false.

  What Really Happened During Texas’s Power Crisis

  Had I not seen the analysis from my former colleagues at the Institute for Energy Research (see their articles here and here), I might have believed the spin that the Texas crisis was really a failure of fossil fuels rather than renewables. Yet as we’ll see, the actual numbers tell a much different story from what most Americans probably “learned” from the media discussion.

  The simplest way for me to communicate the relevant information is through three infographics, generated from the Energy Information Administration’s handy tool that shows the source mix for daily energy generation by state.

  Before showing the numbers, I need to make an important clarification: the demand for electricity soared to unprecedented levels during the freeze. In particular, on February 14, peak demand on the electric grid surpassed sixty-nine gigawatts, breaking the previous winter record of (almost) sixty-six gigawatts set in 2018. It was in the early hours of the following morning (February 15) that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) implemented rolling blackouts to prevent the entire grid from collapsing. So to be clear, the issue wasn’t that supply in an absolute sense fell, but rather that demand soared. (Texas typically uses more electricity in the summer to keep things cool, rather than in the winter to keep things warm.)

  With that context in place, here are the stats for electricity output from various sources on February 15, 2021:

  

  Already we see something interesting. Of the total amount of electricity delivered on this first day of blackouts, 65 percent came from natural gas, while only 6 percent came from wind and 2 percent from solar.

  But in fairness, maybe what guys like Krugman meant is that this is much lower than what we normally could expect from natural gas. (Remember Krugman had said that natural gas “normally supplies most of the state’s winter electricity.”)

  To test this possibility, we can look at the situation one year prior, on February 15, 2020:

  

  Now, this is interesting. A year earlier, during a normal mid-February day, natural gas “only” supplied 43 percent of the total electricity, whereas wind accounted for 28 percent and solar was the same at 2 percent. Remember how Krugman said wind was only a “small fraction” of Texas generation? Overall for the year 2020, wind produced 22 percent of Texas’s electricity, a higher share than coal.

  Yet besides the proportions, also look at the absolute quantity of electricity generated: on Feb. 15, 2020, natural gas produced 398,130 megawatt hours (compared to 759,708 MWh during the recent freeze), while wind produced 264,024 MWh (compared to 73,395 MWh during the freeze).

  To sum up, compared with the same date a year earlier, during the first day of the blackouts in Texas, electricity from natural gas was 91 percent higher, while electricity from wind was 72 percent lower.

  To reiterate the clarification I gave earlier, part of the confusion here is that electricity demand in February isn’t normally as high as it was because of the freeze. So to test whether natural gas is the culprit, we can compare the generation from various sources during the freeze to the situation back during the summer. For example, let’s look at how things stood on August 15, 2020:

  

  As our date occurred in the dog days of summer, total electric demand was higher in mid-August 2020 than on February 15, 2021. Furthermore, output from every source was lower during the freeze when compared with their performance the prior August 15. However, it seems odd to single out natural gas as the culprit, when it experienced the lowest percentage drop, and (on all dates) was the single biggest source.

  The following table summarizes electrical output from various sources on the three dates we have analyzed, and shows the change going from the earlier dates to the first day of the recent blackouts:

  

  As the table indicates, on all three dates natural gas was always the leader in electrical generation. During the freeze, it produced 91 percent more than it had the prior year during a more typical winter day. And although natural gas produced less electricity during the freeze than it had during the peak summer demand, it was only a 7 percent drop.

  In contrast, wind power during the freeze was down a whopping 72 percent compared to the previous year, and compared to the summer it was down 47 percent.

  Among all sources, the percentage difference between either the previous year or the previous summer was highest for natural gas. That is, the surge in natural gas output year over year was the biggest by far (with coal coming in second with a 54 percent surge), and compared with the summer load its drop was the smallest at 7 percent.

  Wind, in contrast, was the worst performer in both cases, if we measure in terms of the difference. That is, wind’s 72 percent drop in the year-over-year column was the biggest one, and its 47 percent drop in the column for summer to winter was also the biggest.

  In light of these statistics, it’s a bit odd for commentators to blame the Texas blackouts on natural gas while excusing wind.

  What They Mean: Wind Is the Ted Cruz of Electricity

  Now, in fairness, what the commentators blaming natural gas have in mind is that ERCOT’s emergency planning assumed that natural gas (and the other “thermal” electricity sources, namely coal and nuclear) could be called upon to fill the gap should there be record demand during a winter storm. If we measure in terms of the total capacity that was temporarily knocked out because of the freeze, then the culprits were thermal sources, rather than wind and solar.

  As Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton tweeted out, “Main story continues to be the failure of … natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants … which ERCOT counts on to be there when needed.” He further specified, “Of about 70,000 MW of thermal plants in ERCOT, ~25–30,000 MW have been out since Sunday night. Huge problem.”

  And so we see what people mean when they say the Texas blackouts are the fault of natural gas, rather than wind: since no serious official ever expected wind to be any help during a crisis, it can hardly be blamed for not showing up when disaster struck. In effect, Krugman is arguing that wind power is the Ted Cruz of electricity.

  Conclusion

  When assessing blame for a disaster, it’s hard to know what the relevant counterfactual should be. Yes, had the (relatively) unregulated Texas power providers done a better job in winterizing their natural gas lines, things would have been better last February.

  But by the same token, had the federal government never implemented the wind production tax credit (PTC)—which subsidizes wind so heavily that it sometimes sells for a negative price in the Texas wholesale market—then there would have been more fossil fuel-generated capacity in Texas, which the numbers clearly show did better at providing electricity during the deep freeze. Normally the boosters of renewable energy point with pride to Texas, which has the most wind capacity of any state by far in absolute terms, and even has almost 25 percent of its official generating capacity consisting of wind. Yet when wind collapsed during the deep freeze, suddenly even its biggest fans admit that nobody ever thought it could do the same job as natural gas.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 18:20

• Russia Throttles Twitter Speed In Banned Content Standoff, Threatens Blockage
  Russia Throttles Twitter Speed In Banned Content Standoff, Threatens Blockage

  Russia is seeking to retaliate against Twitter for continued violation of Russian obscenity laws which are regulated by its media watchdog — the Federal Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Communications Oversight Service, also known as Roskomnadzor.

  Specifically Russia has said Twitter failed to comply in removing over 3,100 posts displaying banned content including pornography, suicide and production of drugs. In response, Russia announced Wednesday it’s slowing down Twitter upload speeds, impacting 50% of desktops in Russia. 

  Roskomnadzor is now threatening the next step will be to block Twitter completely from the country.

  

  The regulator said in its statement, “With the aim of protecting Russian citizens and forcing the internet service to follow the law on the territory of the Russian Federation, centralized reactive measures have been taken against Twitter starting March 10, 2021 — specifically, the initial throttling of the service’s speeds, in accordance with the regulations.”

  “If the internet service Twitter continues to ignore the demands of the law, measures against it will continue in accordance with the regulations, up to and including blocking it.”

  Twitter has been named as the only social platform that has “openly ignored the Russian authorities’ demand to remove the banned content,” the statement added. 

  Separately the Russian media regulator filed lawsuits targeting Twitter and other US-based social media platforms for spreading ‘disinformation’ related to the officially banned mass protests in support of anti-Kremlin activist Alexei Navalny. A number of media pundits believe it’s the Navalny situation that’s really driving Russia’s retaliation against Twitter.

  Confirmed: Real-time network data show elevated latency to Twitter servers from #Russia with high impact to mobile internet providers and some fixed-line networks, consistent with targeted traffic shaping or throttling; incident ongoing

  📰 https://t.co/Iv1g06ensV pic.twitter.com/ZKktrzfxUX

  — NetBlocks (@netblocks) March 10, 2021

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

  It’s part of a years-long dispute with major social media companies, as the Associated Press reviews of internet laws going back a half-decade:

  In 2014, the authorities adopted a law requiring online services to store the personal data of Russian users on servers in Russia and have since tried to make Facebook and Twitter to comply with it. Both companies have been repeatedly fined, first small amounts of around $50 and last year the equivalent of $63,000 each, for not complying.

  The government has stopped short of outright bans even though the law allows it, probably fearing the move would elicit too much public outrage. Only the social network LinkedIn, which wasn’t very popular in Russia, has been banned by the authorities for the failure to store user data in Russia.

  Moscow has further accused US big tech of colluding with Western governments to sow destabilization and ‘color revolution’ efforts and information, and further has long been angered over ‘double standards’ and hypocrisy in specially labeling Russian state-backed media while failing to do so in the cases of BBC, NPR, VOA and others. 

  Meanwhile The Guardian and others are reporting that amid the Wednesday move to implement the Twitter slowdown, the government “also appeared to have accidentally shut down the Kremlin’s own website, as well as other government agency sites.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• How France And The US Cooperate
  How France And The US Cooperate

  Authored by Danny Sjursen via ConsortiumNews.com,

  After some hints to the contrary, it turns out French troops in the Sahel aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. So said President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Feb. 16, even before his virtual summit with France’s former-colonial “partners” – Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Chad – comprising the G5 Sahel Joint Force.

  

  Two French Air Force fighter jets operating over Mali after refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker. (U.S. Air Force, Christopher Mesnard)

  Formed in 2014, it’s described in bureaucratic Paris-speak as “an intergovernmental cooperation framework, in order to put forward a regional response to the various challenges.”

  In reality, the G5 are little more than a misfit crew of problematic proxies doing the bidding of the French generals leading a seven years-running Operation Barkhane – and that of America’s AFRICOM proconsuls propping-up Paris’s pet forever war in the Sahel.

  Uniformed Mercenaries

  This year’s G5 Sahel summit was based – like Operation Barkhane’s headquarters – in the Chadian capital of N’Djamena, though due to Covid-19, European and U.S. participants joined virtually.

  France launched its current military adventure in Mali – originally known as Operation Serval – in 2013, before expanding it across the region under Barkhane’s umbrella. Ironically, as the French mission has continually expanded – and recently floundered – every single metric of insecurity in the Sahel has increased along with it. That includes: civilian deaths (2,000 in 2019-20), internal displacement (well over one million), poverty (30 million people in need of food assistance), and coalition casualties (29 Malian, UN and French troops killed since the New Year). 

  Nevertheless, when it comes to doubling down on failure, France learned from the (American) best, so Macron ruled out immediate troop cuts – despite both rising antiwar sentiment at home and growing anti-French sentiment in the region – and even earned Chad’s commitment to deploy 1,200 more troops to complement Operation Barkhane’s 5,100 French soldiers. Now that’s worth keeping an eye on. The Chadian reinforcement represents a nefarious and long-running quid-pro-quo, whereby Paris scratches N’Djamena’s dictator-of-the-moment’s back in exchange for his fielding France’s favorite hired guns. 

  

  French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017. (Estonian Presidency, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

  Come to think of it, Paris often provides the guns too, so Chadian troops really amount to hired hands and cannon fodder for France’s neo-colonial combat. For example, just three weeks before the summit, the French embassy held a ceremony celebrating the handoff of nine ERC-90 armored vehicles to Chad’s uniformed mercenaries – whilst the country’s civilians starve. One wonders just how many bags of grain, mosquito nets, and vaccines nine of these even dated ERC-90s might’ve bought? No matter, since the embassy asserted that these “rustic, efficient and reliable” vehicles “will perfectly meet the operational needs of the Chadian army in its contributions to the fight against terrorism.” Too bad Chad’s children can’t eat them.

  Unhinged Hired Hands

  How about those hired guns? In other words, just what of substance do N’Djamena’s soldiers of fortune – paid all of $58 a month for their trouble – provide the destabilizing Franco-American Sahel “stabilization” mission? Beyond bullet-sponges, let’s say less than zero! Even according to a rather generous International Crisis Group assessment, “Chad’s army plays a central role in the international counter-terrorism operations in the Sahel, but it is a source of potential instability at home.” 

  Not to say current Chadian strongman Idriss Déby’s troopers don’t stay busy. He’s shipped them to support France’s fight in Central and Northern Mali (1,406 of them, in fact, by March 2017), to the five-country combat mission countering Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region in early 2015 (providing about one-third of troop strength for the Multinational Joint Task Force – which is also headquartered in the Chadian capital N’Djamena), and to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) – another former French colonial disaster area.

  

  Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno during the swearing in ceremony of his fifth term on Aug. 8, 2016. (Paul Kagame, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

  Whether Chad’s “desert warriors” are actually value-added on these adventures is another matter entirely. In April 2014, Chadian forces had to withdraw from the UN mission in the Central African Republic after accusations they’d killed 30 unarmed civilians and offered financial and military support to the country’s Seleka rebels. In Mali, there’ve been numerous allegations of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by Chad’s soldiers.

  Nevertheless, even if Chad’s troops abuse civilians, threaten fledging democracy at home, and haven’t won any real victories abroad, Déby sees subcontracting his soldiers as the gift that keeps on giving (to his regime at least). Having crafted Chad’s image as an indispensable counter-terrorism ally, he’s “played the military diplomacy card” to consolidate Franco-American security partnerships – and thereby, his own political power. 

  The political scientist Marielle Debos even coined a clever slogan for Déby’s mercenary method of misrule – and title of her 2016 book – “Living by the Gun in Chad.”

  

  In 2017, she explained that Chad’s self-styled status as a newfound regional military power “leads France and the US to turn a blind eye to election rigging and human rights violations.” Déby’s even garnered decisive diplomatic clout – like the January 2017 selection of his former Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat to head of the African Union Commission. He still does.

  Dancing with Monsters, Sowing Disasters

  Naturally, Chad hasn’t much business contributing to anything abroad — given its own rampant instability and unfolding humanitarian crises. The place is a mess. Right on the heels of its hosted summit, 35 people were killed in southeastern Chad during — such a Sahelian ubiquity — communal fighting between farmers and herders.

  Furthermore, amidst rising tensions resulting from the perennial (in power since 1990) strongman’s Idriss constant constitutional goal-post-moving — he’s amended and re-amended it so he can now stay in power until 2033 — this week Chadian security forces raided the opposition presidential candidate’s house, killing five people (including his mother and son). 

  

  Sunset in N’Djamena, Chad, 2014. (kaysha, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

  This all unfolds ahead of Chad’s scheduled April 11 election, but should hardly surprise even casual observers. Defying a government ban on protests under coronavirus restrictions, Déby’s decision to run prompted several hundred demonstrators to hit N’Djamena’s streets, set fire to tires, and chant “Leave, Déby!”

  They were met with police tear gas and several dozen were arrested. That’s all business as usual in Chad, a country where – according to the 2020 Freedom House report – “Corruption, bribery, and nepotism are endemic.”

  Such pesky details aside, both Paris and Washington view Chad as an essential ally in the regional fight against Islamist groups. In fact, almost two months to the day before the G5 summit’s kickoff, US AFRICOM’s commander, General Stephen Townsend, paid homage at Déby’s tinpot dictatorial court – where he “thanked Chad for its continued leadership in regional security and for hosting US troops.”

  Right after that, Proconsul Townsend dropped by the French Barkhane team and the European Union training detachment (Task Force Takuba), “recognizing their efforts to bring increased security and stability to the Sahel.” That’s the symbiotic relational rub: it’s France – backed by big brother America, and with a clutch EU-assist – that keeps Déby-the-despot in power, thereby fueling the foundational instability driving much of the regional mess.

  I mean that quite literally. As recently as February 2019, the French Air Force spent four days bombing rebel convoys that were en route to overthrow the monster of N’Djamena.

  From Paris’s cynical perspective, Déby is a decidedly useful monster though — as were all the other despots who proceeded him (until they weren’t) — because he provides military bases, including Barkhane’s headquarters, and ample troops to do France’s bidding. Starved and suppressed Chadian citizenry be damned! That populace need not be so put upon by the way. Chad’s humanitarian and human rights disasters are largely manmade and Franco-American accelerated.

  

  N’Djamena, Chad, 2014. (kaysha, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

  Chad’s been exporting oil since 2003, and from 2004-11 alone earned around €4.5 billion – nothing to sneeze at for a country of just 15 million people. Not that average Chadians ever saw, or see, most of the petro-revenues. Déby mortgaged the nation’s desperately needed energy wealth to the multinational Glencore company in 2014, when his government borrowed more than a billion dollars from the Anglo-Swiss mining conglomerate. The plan was to repay the loan with future oil sales, but after the petro-market collapsed more than 80 percent of oil revenues were needed to service the debt. Talk about kicking it old-school resource-extraction-imperialist-style! 

  What little services-based infrastructure was built with the remaining energy profits tended to be of low-quality — what with cronyist corruption skimming off the top – and limited to the country’s north, where (you guessed it!) Déby’s clan happens to hail from. Most of the rest went (guessed it again!) to international gun-runners.

  According to a 2016 briefing for the World Peace Foundation, “Between 2006 and 2010, Chad became the third-largest importer of arms in sub-Saharan Africa, appearing for the first time in the top ten.” Furthermore, N’Djamena’s military spending increased eight-fold from just 2004 to 2008. 

  The globe’s top merchant of death – you know, the “arsenal of democracy” – America, has gotten plenty into that game. In August 2020, Washington delivered $8.5 million in vehicles and equipment to Chad’s Special Anti-Terrorism Group, as part of a $28 million total support package for N’Djamena’s troop contribution to the G5 Sahel Force. Additionally, many Chadian military officers – including Idriss Déby, who attended the Ecole de guerre – have long trained in France. 

  That the U.S. and (more so) France foster all this indecency — and the hypocrisy inherent in their doing so — is hardly lost on Chadians, or, frankly, other Sahelians. “Many people are saying, one day we’re going to kick France out of Africa,” said the host of a Canadian radio show geared towards fellow Chadian exiles – “France values democracy inside its borders. [But] in Chad they protect one man, the dictator.”

  What’s truly key is that Chad and the despotic Déby are only one anecdotal — but instructive — example of how the Franco-American counter-productivity game operates in the Sahel and Africa-wide. That it unfolds in the shadows, as a largely unreported – and with relatively low casualties (for the U.S.) – abstraction, makes the madness all but invisible. But as America’s new president weighs his foreign policy options, and with Macron seemingly pinning his best hopes on a Biden-bailout for France’s forever war in the Sahel, it’s worth keeping an eye on – and definitely time to talk about – the Chadian formula.

  Preferably before some mourning American soldier’s family is forced to find the damn joint on a map.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 02:00

• EU Nations Pull Trigger On Legal Action Against UK Over Brexit Backsliding
  EU Nations Pull Trigger On Legal Action Against UK Over Brexit Backsliding

  It’s no secret that EU officials in Brussels are furious over charges that Britain is backsliding on treaty obligations in its exhaustedly negotiated Brexit withdrawal agreement designed to prevent the reestablishment a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

  EU nations are now backing legal action against the UK after it was reported the European commission is busy working on “infringement proceedings” against Britain due to its “unilaterally” seeking to ease the impact of Brexit on Northern Irish businesses in contradiction of prior agreements. 

  

  A new FT report cites diplomats who attended a closed door meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels Tuesday to say “EU nations have supported Brussels’ plan for legal action against the UK over its decision,” and further that, “France and other countries supported the plans by EU Brexit chief Maros Sefcovic” that would include “a twin-track approach” to rebuke and punish the UK.

  “We are currently preparing it and it would be really something coming to our table very soon. The most precise term I can give you is really very soon,” Sefcovic said.

  Specifically the infringement proceeding would by the end lead the UK to the European Court of Justice, and further involving a formal reprimand for London’s “breach of good faith,” according to the report.

  Last week Sefcovic voiced what he described as “the EU’s strong concerns over the UK’s unilateral action, as this amounts to a violation of the relevant substantive provisions of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland” to UK Brexit representatives. 

  

  To review among the key contentions issues of the Northern Ireland Protocol include:

  As part of its departure from the EU, the U.K. agreed to conduct checks on goods moving across the Irish Sea, going from Scotland, Wales and England to Northern Ireland. The latter has remained part of the EU’s single market for goods to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland in what’s known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

  The U.K. had until the end of this month to put forward these checks, but it has decided to extend the implementation period until October. A move that the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said breaches their agreement and therefore international law.

  In rebuttal to EU anger the UK said it adequately notified the European commission early last week before any public statements that it’s extending a grace period merely as a “temporary” technical step in order “to provide more time for businesses such as supermarkets and parcel operators to adapt to and implement the new requirements.”

  Meanwhile, international delivery specialist ParcelHero put out a study noting that “increased red tape and duties mean UK traders could face a 35% drop in sales of products sourced overseas.” It claimed, “The Government’s Brexit rollout is going to hell in a handcart. The Prime Minister must return to the negotiating table to sort out the escalating issues facing the UK’s beleaguered retailers.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/10/2021 – 01:00

• The Weaponization Of The Term "Far Right"
  The Weaponization Of The Term “Far Right”

  Authored by Shane Coules via The Mises Institute,

  Economist Thomas Sowell once said that the word ‘racism’ is like ketchup: it can be put on practically anything. Today, since Robin DiAngelo et al have decided that all white people are racist, it could be argued that the word has lost some of its power; if we’re all racist, then calling us just that isn’t particularly effective. And if we’re all unconsciously racist, perhaps we’re all victims, and thus should be the target of sympathy, not anger. Or not: Ms. DiAngelo’s and her anti-racist disciples’ claptrap has been brilliantly taken apart by the esteemed linguist and author John McWhorter.

  But the term far right hasn’t been watered down nearly as much as the ‘r’ word. And when most people hear far right, they likely think of Nazi flags, white supremacists, ultranationalists, etc. So, if you are eager to wound an individual’s or a group’s reputation, the term is most certainly a useful one.

  Indeed, like its close cousin – the neologism ‘alt right’ – far right has become an effective tool for those in the media and politics, used to discredit and smear people who they consider a threat, or with whom they merely disagree. A recent example of this is the anti-lockdown protests that took place in Dublin, Ireland on February 27, 2021.

  

  Dublin Drama

  Reports have varied, but anywhere from 400 to 4,000 people took to the streets of Dublin to demonstrate against what have been considered the most draconian lockdowns in Europe. This third Irish lockdown has been enforced since late December and may last until June. When one reckless individual at the protest decided to point fireworks at the Irish police (An Garda Síochána, or ‘the Guards’), unfortunately further violence broke out. Predictably, the ugly scenes that followed dominated the news headlines, rather than the core issue: people protesting against their de facto mass incarceration, and the collateral damage caused by continual lockdowns.

  Papers pounced, using loaded language like “anti-lockdown protesters stormed Dublin city centre.” One elected Irish official referred to the protest as a ‘riot’. And the always-effective smear would soon be utilized, too. Extra.ie proclaimed “far right thugs attacked frontline Gardai policing an illegal protest.” The Irish Mirror declared “far right anti-lockdown protesters thronged the city flouting Covid-19 restrictions.”

  How reporters managed to sit down with protesters and learn about their respective political leanings is not only incredibly admirable – it is journalism of the highest standard. Of course, these journalists did no such thing. Were some of those in attendance right wing? Yes. That a) doesn’t necessarily make them far right, and b) doesn’t warrant labelling the protest a ‘far-right demonstration’ like some Irish politicians have. A significant number of Irish citizens decided to stand up and speak out against what is widely considered a cruel lockdown. That doesn’t make all of them extremists. Quite the opposite: it is likely that many are desperate and feel that protesting is their only option.

  Interestingly, in videos posted online, Irish Republican flags can also be seen among the crowds in attendance. Irish Republicans tend to lean left on the political compass, and often describe themselves as socialists, in keeping with the political leanings of the leaders of the Easter Rising. The likely reality is that the people protesting came from different political backgrounds, and many – if not most – were probably apolitical, like the majority of people tend to be. By using the term far right to describe the march, reporters and politicians are smearing the ordinary, non-violent people who have genuine concerns about the latest level-5 lockdown: a 5km travel limit, no guests on private or rented property, no family gatherings in any setting, the forced long-term closure of “non-essential” businesses, and fines and/or jail time for some who break the rules.

  “Far Right” as an Ad-Hominen

  No matter how rational or cogent one’s arguments are, the term formerly reserved for fascists and neo-Nazis will always be on standby, ready to be used by the writer or politician taking aim. Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson – a man who has lectured on fascist and socialist totalitarianism – has been referred to by critics as “a far-right boogeyman riding the wave of a misogynistic backlash.”

  YouTube has given a platform to progressive, socialist, communist, anarchist, conservative, classically liberal, libertarian, and centrist voices. But according to an academic paper released last year, most YouTubers are far right. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has painted Sam Harris – a self-described liberal – as “a gateway to the alt (far) right.” Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro has recently been called a “far right gadfly” by the ‘youth culture’ magazine Uproxx. For those who don’t know, Mr. Shapiro is Jewish; Jews and neo-Nazis tend not to get on very well. But that doesn’t really matter, because according to Wikipedia – with its approximately 46 million articles accessed by 1.4 billion unique devices every month – far-right politics includes ideologies or organizations “that feature aspects of chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or reactionary views.” Good luck finding widespread agreement on what constitutes each of those terms. In any case, with such a wide net, it shouldn’t be difficult to lump people and groups under the undesirable umbrella.

  Given how the term far right is beginning to be spread like ketchup, perhaps it will soon lose its effectiveness in smearing individuals and groups. But as the above example of the Dublin anti-lockdown protest shows, it is still a useful weapon used by the media and political establishment; tarnish aspects of a protest as far right, and you essentially tarnish the entire protest – one that was reasonably justifiable.

  The sooner all of us smell the BS, the better; with such broad, divisive, and potentially damaging terms used so liberally against individuals and groups, rational dialogue between people who disagree may become even more of a rarity.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 23:25

• ​​​​​​​China Makes Massive Ethanol Purchases, Surpasses Imports From Last Year
  ​​​​​​​China Makes Massive Ethanol Purchases, Surpasses Imports From Last Year

  Three Reuters sources said Monday that Beijing made massive purchases of US energy products.

  The sources said, “three ships carrying ethanol were heading to China from the US Gulf Coast.” They said it’s a “sign that ethanol exports from the United States to the country are increasing drastically.” 

  

  The purchases are so big that they’re expected to “surpass the total amount of US ethanol that China imported last year,” said Reuters. 

  Each vessel is carrying 30,000 tons or about 240,000 barrels of ethanol, the sources said. It was unclear what port the ships were headed to in China. One source said two of the tankers left at the end of February.

  Searching through US Customs data, we found at least two of the vessels and their International Maritime Organization (IMO) numbers for tracking purposes.

  

  In January alone, China has bought “roughly 200 million gallons” (4.76 million barrels) of the US, said Archer Daniels Midland Co-Chief Financial Officer Ray Young.

  If all three tankers were filled to the brim, the cargo would be equivalent to about 720,000 barrels of ethanol, more than 506,000 barrels of US ethanol shipped to China in all of last year. 

  “While China imported an annual record of 4.72 million barrels of US ethanol in 2016, it has not recently been a large importer. However, tightening supplies of domestic corn used to make the biofuel, coupled with comparatively lower US prices, have spurred the need for imports,” Reuters said. 

  The increase comes months after former President Trump has left the White House and the Biden administration has taken control. Even though the Biden administration has promised to move quickly to restore America’s relations with the rest of the world, it has yet to improve relations with China. 

  From Iran to Russia, Europe to Latin America, the administration is cooling tensions after President Trump ran amuck, inciting trade wars and unleashing sanctions. Now cooler tensions are materializing. 

  We wonder if Beijing’s latest purchase of US ethanol is the beginning of a move to show that it plans to hold up to the trade deal agreement it signed in January 2020 to purchase more of the American farm, energy, and manufactured goods. 

  China miserably failed to meet trade deal requirements under the Trump administration, but maybe all will change under a Biden administration?

  Already, China is on a massive buying spree of US corn. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 23:05

• Michigan Governor Whitmer Faces Possible Criminal Charges For Nursing Home Deaths
  Michigan Governor Whitmer Faces Possible Criminal Charges For Nursing Home Deaths

  Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,

  The Macomb, Mich., county prosecutor is considering filing criminal charges against Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her actions in placing coronavirus-positive patients in nursing homes after their release from the hospital.

  

  A similar practice in New York State resulted in the deaths of 15,000 elderly patients and staff and prosecutors are looking at charging Governor Andrew Cuomo in the matter.

  New Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido, a Republican, is appealing to people who lost loved ones in nursing homes during the pandemic to file wrongful death complaints with their local police departments to help in his investigation. Lucido says he is barred by law from getting that information.

  Michigan was one of just five states to place COVID patients in nursing homes.

  WXYZ:

  Lucido started looking into this last year as a State Senator. He issued a statement in August that said more than 2,000 residents and 21 staff died in nursing homes, 32% of all deaths.

  Lucido is asking people to go back to the nursing homes and gather the vital information surrounding deaths and take it to local police to file a wrongful death report.

  He will be meeting with Macomb County Police to instruct them on how to process and verify the information and bring it to his office.

  “Why did my mom or why did my dad, brother, sister, or aunt die? Was it because of the policy by bringing in COVID-infected patients that spread to my mom that killed my mother?” Lucido asked.

  Fifteen thousand families in New York are asking the same thing.

  Lucido is running into a lot of flak from the Democratic leadership in the state. He asked them to help him set up a “blue ribbon” investigating panel made up of county prosecutors to investigate whether any charges should be filed.

  They weren’t interested.

  The Attorney General said there was not a proper basis to open a criminal investigation. The U. S. Attorney said they would look into his request.

  “I didn’t receive a very warm welcome. This is not political everyone. This is about people who passed away at the behest of a policy that was created by the Governor,” Lucido tells 7 Action News.+

  Don’t expect the feds to do anything either. National Democrats have rediscovered states’ rights and wouldn’t dream of infringing on local investigations.

  Whitmer’s office issued a self-serving statement that somehow never quite got around to answering the question.

  Our top priority from the start has been protecting Michiganders, especially seniors and our most vulnerable. The administration’s policies carefully tracked CDC guidance on nursing homes, and we prioritized testing of nursing home residents and staff to save lives. Early in the pandemic, the state acted swiftly to create a network of regional hubs with isolation units and adequate PPE to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within a facility. In addition, we have offered 100 percent of nursing home resident priority access to the vaccine.

  I’m sure the families of dead loved ones are overjoyed that nursing home residents have been given priority access to the vaccine. But what about the policy of placing infected patients in with healthy seniors?

  Whitmer’s response to the pandemic has been at times, hysterical and an incompetent mess. She owes those families an explanation and apology for adopting an incomprehensibly stupid policy that cost lives.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 22:45

• ​​​​​​​Dollar Bottom? USD At Major Crossroads
  ​​​​​​​Dollar Bottom? USD At Major Crossroads

  The US Dollar faded 3.5-month highs on Tuesday morning as Treasury yields dipped, allowing more riskier currencies to rise. The latest surge in the dollar has put it at an important crossroad after stabilizing in the last three months around the 89-90 level. 

  With dollar shorts under strain, the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission data ending Mar. 2 shows the short dollar trade is widely overcrowded. The chart below is relatively important but doesn’t cover the real FX market, i.e., FX futures markets but does represent a sizeable short in the dollar.

  

  The dollar’s latest push higher has put bears under pressure, especially since the monthly 200 exponential moving average (91.355) has been breached to the upside with the 23.6-Fib (92.319) in a test. 

  

  Even though the dollar has slumped Tuesday along with Treasury yields, falling to around 1.54% on 10Y, yields could rise further this week as the market will have to digest $120 billion auctions of 3, 10, 30-year treasuries. After last month’s abysmal 7-year note sale that spiked yields and dollar.

  “Stability is likely to remain the theme of the day ahead of the UST auctions and the US inflation release tomorrow, which are the near-term risks for FX markets (given the possible negative spillover into USTs and the risk of a further sell-off),” ING strategists Chris Turner, Francesco Pesole and Petr Krpata wrote in their daily note. 

  The dollar has perhaps attracted short-term traders due to oversold conditions and high net speculative positioning heavily short (hello Robinhood or WSB kids…). Further, the rise in interest rates increases the dollar’s appeal. 

  And should this occur, it would not be welcome for the equity markets due to the negative correlation between the dollar and stocks. Most importantly, a surging dollar, with rising interest rates, could put a severe dent in the “reflation trade.”

  More on dollar strength is JPMorgan who recently warned dollar strength may be driving some of the recent weakness in commodities.

  However, bear in mind that trading the dollar in FX markets is merely betting its the best-looking – or worst – horse in the glu factory of fiat finance…

  

  We suspect ‘alternative currencies’ may be a better longer-term signal for where the dollar ends up, but counter-trend rallies against its currency peers are obviously tradable.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 22:25

• Arizona And Montana Take Legal Action Against Biden Admin ICE Arrest Regulations
  Arizona And Montana Take Legal Action Against Biden Admin ICE Arrest Regulations

  Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Arizona and Montana are taking legal action (pdf) to block new Biden administration immigration regulations, saying that these would cause negative consequences for the states.

  

  The new rules would limit the capability of ICE to detain some illegal immigrants unless they pose a threat to national security, entered through the border after Nov. 1, or committed aggravated felonies.

  The Biden administration says that the rules don’t impair arresting or deporting people, but the officers in the field would need to request permission from their superiors to arrest people outside of the aforementioned cases.

  “If asked about the poorest policy choice I’ve ever seen in government, this would be a strong contender,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a statement. “Blindly releasing thousands of people, including convicted criminals and those who may be spreading COVID-19 into our state, is both unconscionable and a violation of federal law. This must be stopped now to avoid a dangerous humanitarian crisis for the immigrants and the people of Arizona.”

  

  Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined the Brnovich in the lawsuit. Both filed for a preliminary injunction aiming to block the regulations from going into effect.

  “Meth trafficked into Montana by Mexican drug cartels has wracked our state. The problem will only be made worse if the Biden administration continues to allow criminals to stay in the country,” Knudsen stated. “Enforcing our immigration laws and helping to keep Americans safe is one of the federal government’s most important functions. The Biden administration is failing its basic responsibility to Americans.”

  Last month, Chief Deputy Matthew Thomas told Townhall that the crisis at the border had begun to re-emerge at around the end of 2020 because the human and drug trafficking cartels expected President Joe Biden to have a “hands-off” attitude with regard to the border situation.

  “When [Trump] took office, we saw that this area out here went completely dead. Nobody was moving, nobody was smuggling because [the cartels] knew that Trump was going to put all hands on deck out down here and that they would be intercepted so it came to a screeching halt,” Thomas said.

  “It was a very slow trickle to get back to some kind of normal but it never got back to where it was,” Thomas added.

  

  Thomas said that since Biden has ordered to halt the construction of the southern border wall, it has created more trouble for Pinal County since it doesn’t have physical barriers, promoting the criminals to funnel through, reaching the highway and then transporting drugs or bodies throughout the country.

  He added that once the people or drugs are smuggled in, they can go anywhere inside the United States, sometimes as far as Canada.

  “For us, effectively, I-8 … becomes the new border and even the cartels will tell you that’s their goal line because once they get there, they’re shooting west or they’re shooting east and then they’re on a main interstate right into downtown Phoenix … we become the kickoff point for that,” the Sheriff said.

  “These people and these drugs are not coming here to Pinal County to stay. This is a transport location. This is a spot they get through to get to their final destination and they’re being sent all over the country.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 22:05

• OECD Believes Biden Stimulus Will Boost World GDP 
  OECD Believes Biden Stimulus Will Boost World GDP 

  A global economic recovery is coming in hotter and faster than previously anticipated by the OECD as President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus program will boost not just the domestic economy but the world. 

  The Paris-based organization upgraded its outlook for global growth on Tuesday in a note titled “The need for speed: faster vaccine rollout critical to stronger recovery,” where it explains global output could surge above pre-pandemic levels by the second half of 2021 as vaccine rollouts and stimulus aid the recovery but warned of unevenness. In Europe, measures to boost output will result in slower growth, with the OECD lowering France and Italy’s outlook this year. It also warned accommodative policies should not be prematurely tightened. 

  

  OECD estimates global GDP growth will print around 5.6% this year, an upward revision of more than one percentage point since its December 2020 report.

  Laurence Boone, the OECD’s chief economist, told the Financial Times that the stimulus bill – known as the American Rescue Plan – will add one percentage point to global economic growth in 2021.

  

  There are consequences to governments and monetary authorities across the planet printing like there was no tomorrow – that is – a sharp rise in inflation expectations are putting pressure on central banks to adopt some form of the yield curve control to cap the long end of the curve. It has also added to a violent shift from growth to value, where the once favored tech stocks have lost their luster, such as TSLA, NFLX, and AMZN, as investors pivot to value companies like XOM. 

  Boone doesn’t believe the stimulus package will increase domestic inflation to dangerous levels because “there is a lot of slack in US labor markets,” she said.

  “The amazing fiscal support everywhere means that we have preserved the economic fabric across OECD countries. Even in emerging markets, we’ve seen amazing policy support,” Boone said.

  The upbeat US outlook, only made possible by endless money printing, has side effects. Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson pointed out another round of stimulus ontop of vaccine rollouts and reopening increase inflation expectations and “put pressure on valuations, especially for the most expensive stocks that had reached nosebleed valuations.”

  Wilson said, “most portfolios are positioned” and “overexposed to growth stocks and either short or underweight the value areas.” With Biden’s monstrous fiscal stimulus, the new value regime in town will generate a “portfolio disruption” causing a “net negative effect on the major averages, led by the Nasdaq.” 

  

  He notes, “Markets lead the Fed, not the other way around, and we are now at that moment of recognition,” adding that, “the bull market continues to be under the hood, with value and cyclicals leading the way. Growth stocks can rejoin the party once the valuation correction and repositioning is finished.”

  So in an era where MMT, or Magic Money Theory, is being unleashed by the governments and central banks to supercharge the domestic and global economy, perhaps the lesson to be learned is to stay away from the sinking ARKK. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 21:45

• National Guard DC Deployment To Last Two More Months
  National Guard DC Deployment To Last Two More Months

  About half of the National Guardsmen deployed in Washington DC will remain at the US Capitol through May 23, the Pentagon announced Thursday evening.

  At the direction of Defense Secretary and Raytheon board member what’s his face Lloyd Austin, approximately 2,300 troops will remain stationed more than two months beyond their scheduled withdrawal scheduled for this week. There are approximately 5,100 Guardsmen at the Capitol at present.

  

  “This decision was made after a thorough review of the request and after close consideration of its potential impact on readiness,” said Pentagon spox John Kirby in a statement reported by The Hill.

  As part of the protracted deployment, Pentagon officials will “work with the U.S. Capitol Police to incrementally reduce the National Guard footprint as conditions allow,” said Kirby, adding “We thank the National Guard for its support throughout this mission, as well as for its significant efforts across the nation in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  Blue Anon?

  One may wonder why the National Guard and razor-wire fences have become part of Washington’s ambiance. The answer, in part, is due to the belief in a left-wing conspiracy theory that Trump supporters would swarm the Capitol on March 4, when – as the legend has it, Trump would secretly be re-inaugurated on the historical anniversary of pre-1933 inaugurations before it was moved to January 20th.

  Leftists who believe in such theories – such as the Russia Hoax, Jussie Smolett’s 2am footlong craving, or that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was running a gang rape operation in college – are known as “Blue Anons,” who traffic in mainstreamed fantasies about conservatives gone wild.

  WHAT DOES “BlueAnon” MEAN?

  “Who paid Brett Kavanaugh’s debts?”
  “Why did Justice Kennedy resign?”
  “The Capitol riot was planned by Republicans, and Capitol police collaborated.”
  “Detention centers are concentration camps.”

  and, obviously: “Trump is a Russian asset.”

  Any others? https://t.co/lSl9NJTvN9

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

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  As the Washington Post noted, March 4 came and went without much fanfare.

  When asked what the new threat is requiring the National Guard’s presence, Kirby demurred – saying “The Guard presence on the Hill, while certainly there to address a requirement that is based on law enforcement’s concerns, is also there to help bolster and support the Capitol Police and their capabilities, which may not be at the level where it needs to be given the fact that we’re in sort of a new environment in this country,” adding “So it’s not just about a threat assessment. It’s about assisting and supporting capabilities that the Capitol Police may now lack and may need to look at improving on their own.”

  Quick reaction force?

  After a Democrat-appointed “task force” was established to assess threats in DC, Army Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Russel L. Honoré told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that a “quick reaction force” be formed and placed on standby, because the city is “a high-value target for foreign terrorists or domestic extremists, yet it has no dedicated QRF for response to crises.”

  “The USCP relies on augmentation from other civilian law enforcement agencies for emergency support, but we recommend establishment of a robust, dedicated QRF, not only for the USCP, but to serve the nation’s capital writ large,” the recommendation continues.

  Which begs the question; How ever did DC get by all this time without one?

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 21:25

• "This Was A Bloodbath" – Liberal Journalists Outraged After Huffington Post Fires 1/3rd Of Its Staff
  “This Was A Bloodbath” – Liberal Journalists Outraged After Huffington Post Fires 1/3rd Of Its Staff

  Just months after it was acquired by Buzzfeed in a fire sale, the Huffington Post – the once-pioneering Internet media property – has elicited an outpouring of criticism from the blue-check crowd after abruptly firing nearly 50 reporters, roughly one-third of the site’s staff.

  News of the layoffs first emerged on Twitter, as dozens of newly-fired journos tweeted about their misfortune, but was soon picked up by Defector, the cooperatively-owned media property started by former staff writers from Deadspin.

  

  According to Defector, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti announced Tuesday during an all-hands meeting that 47 HuffPo staffers in the US, including eight managers, would be losing their jobs in order to “drive long-term sustainability.” Rival journos slamed Peretti, accusing him of traumatizing the laid-off journalists by forcing them to repeatedly refresh their inbox to see if they had received one of the dreaded pink slips. Anybody who didn’t receive a notice by 1300ET was said to be “safe”.

  As if this wasn’t undignified enough, Peretti reportedly set the password for the mass-layoff meeting to “spr!ngisH3r3,” an innocuous message that contrasted sharply with the situation as hand. One member of the Buzzfeed union described the firings as a “bloodbath”.

  “This is a bloodbath,” a HuffPost staffer and union member told Defector. “It’s worse than the worst-case scenario for what any of us thought we would see when we got this announcement a couple hours ago. And the fucked-up way that they announced this notwithstanding, this is a just bloodbath for an award-winning international newsroom full of absolutely stellar journalists who didn’t deserve this.” “The initial reaction is I can’t believe what little chance we were given to show what we can do to help this company,” the staffer said.

  Some of the reporters and their allies recounted the firing in terms that one might reasonably describe as “melodramatic.”

  pic.twitter.com/Pc0d5S0Qct

  — Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) March 9, 2021

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  While trying to explain the circumstances surrounding the told staffers that the newly combined company’s losses had exceeded $20MM last year, and that the company was on track to repeat that dismal performance without some kind of intervention.

  Peretti, who laid off nearly 70 percent of BuzzFeed’s furloughed staff last summer in order to keep losses under $20 million, said during today’s meeting that the company’s losses exceeded $20 million.

  “The loss of last year exceeded $20 million and would be similar this year without intervention,” Peretti said. “And BuzzFeed is a profitable company, but we’re not that profitable, and we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses.”

  Another blue-check reporter published a complete accounting of all the reporters who were laid off, along with the beats they covered.

  A thread of incomparable reporters laid off from HuffPost today who you, an esteemed media organization, should scoop up immediately:

  1/

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  + @rklein90, education reporter
  + @aedwardslevy, polling editor/reporter/pun expert
  + @gumgumerson, entertainment reporter
  + @quasimado, reporter on violence against women
  + @CarolKuruvilla, religion reporter
  + @EmilyRPeck, business, economics and gender inequality reporter

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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  + @RottenInDenmark, new economy reporter
  + @tarantallegra, film reporter
  + @emmaladyrose, culture reporter
  + @RealGirlProject, personals/lifestyle reporter
  + @JeffYoung, health care reporter
  + @lukeobrien, extremism/misinformation reporter
  + @nickrobinsearly, world news reporter

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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  Editors/producers you should hire:

  + @blankjess, producer
  + @sarapatt, audio producer
  + @erika_larose, producer
  + @samanthastorey, editor
  + @kewlfocus, photo editor
  + @recordedvoice, editor

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  more HPers I can’t endorse enough:

  + @leighblickley, culture reporter
  + @boyreporter, audience editor
  + @toddvanluling, lifestyle reporter
  + @ClaireEFallon, culture reporter

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  even more:

  + @zblay, culture reporter
  + @zachdcarter, economic policy reporter
  + @Isaachimmelman, producer
  + @IzzyBestNews, producer

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  and more:

  + @hilella, our former powerhouse executive editor
  + @louiseroug, exec editor international
  + @jennkho, strategic innovation
  + @Romblay, producer

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  Our HuffPost Canada comrades were also cut today. Hire them. https://t.co/V1z1v2Pyxm

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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  https://t.co/MNo3xH9uFb

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  https://t.co/xTXbzMb3Sc

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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

  https://t.co/vfvLTHBYk3

  — Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) March 9, 2021

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  While these tweets are obviously well-intentioned, another twitter personality pointed out that sad reality that there simply aren’t any media jobs right now – at least, not for reporters who specialize in covering “culture”, “lifestyle”, “entertainment”, “violence against women” and “misinformation”, which were just a handful of the beats that were eliminated at HuffPo.

  i know everyone means well when they tweet “hire these incredible people” but there are no jobs

  — Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) March 9, 2021

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  Others attacked Peretti and Buzzfeed-HuffPo for failing to be more sensitive to the plight of the laid-off reporters.

  There’s no good way to do mass layoffs but it shouldn’t be that hard to not do it the bad way https://t.co/puikJ8kMbV

  — Tom Gara (@tomgara) March 9, 2021

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  While some couldn’t help but find humor in it all.

  What do you call Huffington Post laying off 1/3rd of their journalists?

  A good start

  — Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) March 9, 2021

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

  But in all honesty, these reporters should have been able to read the writing on the wall. Although it was once a pioneering media organization, the Huffington Post’s best days are long behind it: the website’s traffic has shriveled in recent years to a mere fraction of what it once was, as round after round of devastating cuts thinned its staff.

  Perhaps now it will get another chance at life by mimicking Buzzfeed’s strategy of having its most popular pieces written by high school students working for free.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 21:05

• The V-Shaped Recovery Never Happened
  The V-Shaped Recovery Never Happened

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  In a display of unconvincing enthusiasm, NBC reported Friday that payroll employment “surged” in February. Specifically, total nonfarm payrolls (seasonally adjusted) grew 379,000, month-over-month which was above the expected increase of 210,000.

  

  That might sound great to some, but a closer look suggests jobs growth is quite a bit more sedate than the media narrative suggests. Moreover, a look at the job growth situation in recent months is a helpful reminder that the “V-shaped recovery” we were promised last spring never happened. 

  Some may remember all that talk about a V-shaped recovery last year. That was back when we were being assured that “two weeks” —or maybe two months— to “slow the spread” of covid-19 would pay countless dividends, because then lockdowns and forced business closures would somehow miraculously “beat back” the disease and then employment and the economy would come roaring back, the Fed could end its stimulus programs, and everything would be fine.

  Back in June, CNBC announced “The recovery from the coronavirus sure looks V-shaped” and pointed to record job growth coming out of the initial collapse in employment that occurred in March and April.

  But then the good news basically stopped, at least as far as employment was concerned.

  For example, while February’s month-over-month job growth might look impressive, the US remains a long, long way from where total employment was this time last year. In February of last year, before the effects of lockdowns were beginning to be felt, total employment topped 152 million in the US. After this February’s “surge” in employment, total employment was at 143 million, or still down 9 million. In other words, total employment is still where it was back in 2015.

  

  Yes, the US has regained 13 million jobs since the bottom of the crisis back in April 2020. But as we can see in the first graph, total employment has gone sideways since last November, and is only up by 200,000 over the past four months. That’s not exactly a “surge” of anything. And it’s definitely not anything resembling a “v-shaped” recovery. It looks more like a very week version of a “check mark-shaped recovery” that some predicted last year. Except the tail end of this check mark has so far been nearly flat.

  And then there is the unemployment insurance totals. New unemployment insurance claims have hovered around between 700,000 and 800,000, every week, for the past five months. There’s no evidence of any downward trend here, and the V-shaped recover turned into a long slog past the initial anemic “recovery” that took place last summer.

  

  Continuing unemployment claims are slowly lessening, however. Since the beginning of the calendar year, continuing claims have fallen from 5.1 million to 4.2 million.

  In both cases, totals remain well within recessionary territory. Back during the Great Recession, for example, continuing claims peaked at 6.6 million. Claims totaled about 1.7 million in 2020 before the recession began.

  Unemployment has also remained stubbornly high among those making claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. In early January, total continuing claims under the PUA was at 8.3 million, continuing a long slow trend downward. By early March, continuing claims had only fallen to 7.3 million.

  

  That’s progress, but combined with regular unemployment insurance, it means there are still more than ten million Americans receiving some form of unemployment insurance, which hardly suggests a robust recovery.

  The unemployment rate remains troublingly high as well. The headline unemployment rate for February was reported as falling to 6.2 percent. That’s certainly an improvement from April 2020’s peak rate of 14.8 percent.

  But as is so often the case, the headline rate masks a more complex reality surrounding the unemployment rate.

  Although the official rate is 6.2 percent, the Washington Post’s Heather Long notes that the Minnesota Fed’s Neel Kashkari admitted “the true unemployment rate is around 9.5%”

  Why the gap? It is a result of several factors, including falling response rates to the Labor Department’s employment surveys, the fact many have simply stopped looking for work, and ambiguities in the data over whether or not someone is only temporarily unemployed.

  In other words, the official unemployment calculation excludes a great many people who would like to have jobs, but who gave up and stopped looking for work. Many others are only technically “temporarily” unemployed but in practice are jobless. The official data says many of these people are “on leave.”

  Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has also admitted that the unemployment rate was likely close to 10 percent in January. Not surprisingly, Kashkari predict no “liftoff” for the economy until 2022. 

  Taking all this together, it’s pretty clear the United States is still very much in the midst of a jobs recession. 

  Yet, CNBC tells us that the economy is “on fire” because GDP totals may surge in the upcoming first quarter data.  “Economic growth in the first quarter could hit 10%,” CNBC triumphantly proclaims, claiming the economy has “roared back” and is set to defy even the rosiest expectation.

  But unless something changes big time in the jobs situation, we’ll have to start looking at GDP the way we look at stock prices: something that reflects a lot of optimism and growth in some sectors of the economy but which has very little to do with the personal finances and job prospects of millions of ordinary Americans.  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 20:45

• Hackers Infiltrate Thousands Of Security Cameras Inside Jails, Hospitals & Tesla
  Hackers Infiltrate Thousands Of Security Cameras Inside Jails, Hospitals & Tesla

  In the latest embarrassing hacking incident to affect American technology giants, a team of hackers has stolen what Bloomberg described as a “massive trove of security-camera data collected by Silicon Valley startup Verkada” in an effort to make a point about the dangers and drawbacks of mass surveillance.

  

  Using administrator credentials purportedly found on the public Internet, the hackers gained access to live feeds tied to some 150K security cameras located inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons, schools and – bizarrely – Tesla HQ. According to the report, footage belonging to Tesla and software company Cloudflare were stolen in the hack. The hackers were also able to steal footage taken from inside women’s health clinics, psychiatric hospitals, along with footage from inside Verkada’s offices.

  The cameras administered by Verkada, which bills itself as an “enterprise security camera” maker, use facial-recognition technology to identify people. And the hackers who stole the trove of data say they have access to “the full video archive” of Verkada’s customers. In theory, this could give the hackers a panopticon-like view of hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of people.

  The group behind the breach bills itself as an “international hacker collective” and said it stole the footage to help make a point about the dangers and pervasiveness of video surveillance. Perhaps to help emphasize this point, the group shared some particularly sensitive footage with Bloomberg, including…

  • Footage captured inside Florida hospital Halifax Health, which showed what appeared to be eight hospital staffers tackling a man and pinning him to a bed. Halifax Health is featured on Verkada’s website in a case study entitled: “How a Florida Healthcare Provider Easily Updated and Deployed a Scalable HIPAA Compliant Security System.”

  • Video shot inside a Tesla warehouse in Shanghai showing workers on an assembly line. The hackers said they obtained access to 222 cameras in Tesla factories and warehouses.

  

  • A video showing officers inside a police station in Stoughton, Mass., questioning a man in handcuffs.

  • Security camera footage taken from inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where gunman Adam Lanza killed more than 20 people in 2012.

  • Also available to the hackers were 330 security cameras inside the Madison County Jail in Huntsville, Alabama.

  • And cameras from multiple locations of the luxury gym chain Equinox.

  • Hackers were able to download the entire list of thousands of Verkada customers, as well as the company’s balance sheet, which lists assets and liabilities. As a closely held company, Verkada does not publish its financial statements.

  Tillie Kottmann, one of the hackers who claimed credit for breaching the San Mateo, California-based Verkada, is acting as a sort of representative for the collective. Kottmann, who uses they/them pronouns, previously claimed credit for hacking chipmaker Intel and carmaker Nissan They reportedly told Bloomberg their reasons for the hack were “lots of curiosity, fighting for freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism – and it’s also just too much fun not to do it.”

  Kottmann said the hackers were able to obtain “root” access to the cameras, meaning they could use the cameras to execute their own code. In some instances, this allowed them to pivot and obtain access to the broader corporate network of Verkada’s customers, or hijack the cameras and use them as a platform to launch future hacks. Obtaining this degree of access to the camera didn’t require any additional hacking, as this is a built-in feature. The hackers’ methods were unsophisticated: they gained access to Verkada through a “Super Admin” account, allowing them to peer into the cameras of all of its customers. Kottmann says they found a user name and password for an administrator account publicly exposed on the internet.

  A rep for Verkada said the company had disabled all internal administrator controls to prevent any further unauthorized access. The individual added that “Our internal security team and external security firm are investigating the scale and scope of this potential issue.”

  Another source from inside Verkada told Bloomberg that the company’s chief information security officer, an internal team and an external security firm are investigating the incident. The company is working to notify customers and set up a support line to address questions, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. This facial-recognition technology is used to track staff and inmates inside prisons in the US, with many of the cameras responsible for this being hidden inside vents and other places.

  Verkada offers its clients a feature called “People Analytics” which allows a customer to “search and filter based on many different attributes, including gender traits, clothing color, and even a person’s face,” according to a Verkada blog post. While hardly a household name, in October 2020, Verkada attracted some press attention after it fired three employees who reportedly used its cameras to take pictures of female colleagues inside the Verkada office and make sexually explicit jokes about them. Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan said in a statement to Vice at the time that the company had “terminated the three individuals who instigated this incident, engaged in egregious behavior targeting coworkers, or neglected to report the behavior despite their obligations as managers.”

  This is just the latest hack-related news to rattle the US, as the business press has been intensely covering another breach where hackers working for the Chinese government managed to exploit flaws in Microsoft’s outlook email software to gain access to potentially thousands of high-value targets.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 20:25

• Scotia Sells COMEX NY Vault In Slow Motion Exit From Gold, Silver Markets
  Scotia Sells COMEX NY Vault In Slow Motion Exit From Gold, Silver Markets

  Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

  On Monday 1 March, CME Group, which runs COMEX, made a short announcement saying that long time COMEX approved gold and silver vault operator, Bank of Nova Scotia was withdrawing its New York vault from being COMEX approved and that the withdrawal was ‘effective immediately’.

  The full text of the release, titled “Withdrawal of Regularity for Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium” is as follows, and can also be seen at this link here:

  “Notice herby is given that the New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. (“NYMEX”) and Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“COMEX”) (collectively, the “Exchanges”) received a request from The Bank of Nova Scotia to voluntarily withdraw their approved gold, silver, platinum, and palladium regularity at their Jamaica, NY facility. Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc. will assume responsibility for the registered and eligible material at this facility effective immediately.

  This withdrawal is effective immediately.”

  Beside JFK Airport

  For those who don’t know, the Scotia vault, owned by Scotia Mocatta Depository (SMD), is located right beside JFK Airport, at “International Airport Center, 230-59 International Airport Center Boulevard, Building C, Rockaway Blvd, Jamaica, New York 11413”, the same location as the Agility Logistics center, and can be seen here and here.

  

  Scotia moved to this facility beside JFK Airport in 2006 from a vault facility that it had been using since late 2001 under 26 Broadway in Manhattan, an old Rockefeller building. That vault facility under 26 Broadway was the former Iron Mountain Depository Corporation (IMD) vault which Scotia had acquired when The Bank of Nova Scotia took over IMD in 1997.

  However, prior to September 2001, Scotia’s COMEX approved precious metals vault had been in a sub-basement under 4 World Trade Centre, which it had taken over from Swiss Bank Corporation in the 1990s. Prior to the WTC implosions, WTC 4 was the home of the COMEX and NYMEX trading floors, as well as the trading floors of the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange (CSCE) and the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE)

  After 4 World Trade Centre collapsed on September 11 2001 following the WTC 1 and WTC 2 (and WTC 7) buildings’ explosions and implosions (during which notably COMEX gold was unbelievably being trucked out of tunnels at the same time), Scotia moved its COMEX approved vault back to the 26 Broadway vault in late 2001, and remained there until 2006.

  Manfra, Tordella, and Brookes, also known as MTB, is a New York based bullion dealer which also runs a COMEX approved precious metals vault in Manhattan, in the International Gem Tower building at 50 West 47th Street, in midtown Manhattan. Since 2000, MTB has been part of the Swiss MKS PAMP group.

  On the same day, 1 March 2021, that Scotia Mocatta withdrew its vault from being COMEX approved, MTB, and it parent company, the Swiss based MKS PAMP group, both made announcements on their websites that MTB had:

  “completed the strategic acquisition of a leading North American financial institution’s COMEX (CME) approved depository and logistics center” including a “world class 15,000 square foot secure facility” that will give them “proximity to  major international and domestic logistics hubs [beside JFK airport], additional vaulting capacity [Scotia’s vaults], and experienced staff”.

  The acquisition, said MTB / MKS PAMP, helps offer “enhanced depository and fulfillment services to COMEX warrant holders, financial institutions, industrial, and bullion clients”.

  See the MKS PAMP announcement here, and the identical MTB announcement here.

  In effect, without stating the name of Scotia, MTB / MKS PAMP confirmed that MTB has taken over the Scotia Mocatta COMEX approved vault located in International Airport Center, 230-59, Building C, beside JFK airport.

  Scotia Metal Transfers to MTB

  Anyone who regularly looks at the COMEX daily “Warehouse and Depository Stocks” reports for gold, silver, platinum and palladium on the CME Group (COMEX) website will have also noticed that not only did MTB take over Scotia Mocatta’s New York COMEX approved vault in the first week of March, but, MTB also took over the custody of all the COMEX registered and COMEX eligible gold, silver, platinum and palladium stock and inventory that were being stored in Scotia’s COMEX vault beside JFK.

  This was evident from the COMEX gold, silver and platinum / palladium stock reports for Report Date Wednesday 3 March (Activity Date Tuesday 2 March), where the listing and metal holdings under the “THE BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA” suddenly disappeared, and the listing and metal holdings under “MANFRA, TORDELLA & BROOKES, INC” increased by the amount of metal that had been reported previously under Scotia.

  As a reminder, in COMEX parlance, ‘Registered’ precious metal bars have vault warrants attached and can be used to settle COMEX futures contracts. ‘Eligible’ metal is just any metal that happens to be in a COMEX approved vault which is in the form of a precious metals bar which is acceptable for COMEX delivery. Eligible metal does not have to have anything to do with COMEX trading, and a lot of the time doesn’t have anything to do with COMEX trading.

  The transfers from Scotia to MTB were most pronounced in silver, where a huge 32,301.490.91 ozs (or 1004 tonnes) of silver which had been in the registered category under Scotia came into the registered category of MTB. Prior to the transfer, MTB was reporting only 1,233,649.98 ozs in registered, so the transfer from Scotia gave MTB a new Registered total of 33,535,140.89 ozs, or 27 times more silver than it previously held. This was the highest Registered silver holding of any COMEX approved vault operator, even ahead of JP Morgan’s claimed 32.5 million ozs holding.

  By 3 March, MTB had 668,437 ozs of silver in eligible and 32.26 million ozs of silver in registered for a total of 33.93 millon ozs.

  

  By 4 March MTB received in another 579,290 ozs into eligible, saw a massive 4.48 million move from registered to eligible (someone doesn’t want their silver under warrant), and had a total of 28,782,469 ozs in Registered, and 5,730,255 ozs in eligible, for a total of 34.51 million ozs overall. The Scotia transfers now put the MTB vaults in 2nd position of Registered COMEX silver holdings (just behind JP Morgan) and in 4th position of total COMEX silver holdings behind JP Morgan, Brinks and CNT.

  In gold, prior to the transfers, MTB had about 1.265 million ozs of gold in the registered category, with 20,000 in eligible, while Scotia had about 1.15 million ozs in registered and a small amount in eligible. Following the transfers, MTB now has about 2.4 million ozs in registered and about 60,000 ozs in eligible. So the MTB gold listing on the COMEX gold inventory report has increased by about 87%.

  

  Platinum and palladium in the Scotia vault has also been added to the MTB totals and the latest figures for MTB now have a total of 112,378 ozs of platinum, nearly all of which is in registered, and 9,676 ozs of palladium (all in registered).

  You can see the most recent COMEX inventory gold, silver and platinum / palladium holdings in Excel links on a COMEX webpage here.

  An important point to note here is that the gold, silver, platinum and palladium that were in Scotia’s Queen’s vault beside JFK airport are probably still in the Scotia vault (with the vault now owned by MTB). It would have been logistically illogical to move all the metal in the Scotia vault, to the MTB vault in midtown Manhattan.

  So basically, it looks to be a case of the COMEX reports having just reclassified all metal that was held in the Scotia vault and now reporting it under “Manfra, Tordella, and Brookes” (MTB) along with the metal in MTB’s original vault in Manhattan. This means that it will not be possible to know how much of the reported metal listed under MTB is in Manhattan, and how much is in the vault beside JFK airport.

  Scotia Mocatta – A Slow Motion Car Crash

  For those who may be having déjà vu about Scotia Mocatta previously withdrawing from the precious metals markets, you would be forgiven, as admittedly, Scotia’s withdrawal has been going on for what seems like years now, and can only be described as a slow motion car crash. For financial reporters in Reuters and Bloomberg, Scotia exiting the gold and silver markets is the “gift that keeps on giving”, year after year, because it never seem to end. This is because, like an octopus, Scotia has been intertwined into precious metals markets all around the world for decades and decades, from the London gold and silver markets to New York (COMEX) to Toronto (its Headquarters) and to as far afield as India and Dubai and China.

  As you can see from its vaulting operation, Scotia was one of the key players in COMEX precious metals for a long long time. But even following the New York vault sale, Scotia is still involved with COMEX, with Scotia Capital (USA) Inc still being a clearing firm on COMEX as can be seen on the clearing member firm list here, and also on the COMEX delivery report (Issues and Stops) here.

  But that’s only part of the larger Scotia picture. Because Scotia continues also to be one of the lynchpins in the London gold and silver markets along with the likes of HSBC and JP Morgan, and has a long history of running the LBMA along with HSBC and JP Morgan.

  In London Scotia, was one of the 3 banks that ran the cartel like London Silver Fixing (along with HSBC and Deutsche Bank), and the London Gold Fixing (along with Barclays, HSBC, SocGen and Deutsche Bank). This bullion bank cartel used the private companies London Gold Market Fixing Limited and London Silver Market Fixing Limited to run those daily benchmark auctions. When in 2014 and 2015 the old London Gold and Silver fixes were buried by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and resurrected in the smoke and mirrors replacements of the LBMA Gold Price and the LBMA Silver Price, Scotia was one of the first direct participants in of each of the new fixes.

  The trigger for Scotia’s withdraw from the precious metals markets goes back all the way to early 2015 (or even earlier) when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it was investigating whether the Bank of Nova Scotia and other investment banks were manipulating gold and silver prices. Spoiler: They were.

  While this isn’t an article about Scotia’s criminal activities in manipulating gold and silver prices, a quick recap is in order so as to give some flavor as to who we are dealing with when we refer to the Scotia on the COMEX and in the LBMA.

  According to Bloomberg in February 2015:

  “At least 10 banks, including Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Deutsche Bank AG are being probed by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said one the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential.”

  Soon after that, investors filed class action suits in New York courts against London Gold Market Fixing Limited and London Silver Market Fixing Limited, of which Scotia was one of the defendants. See a 2016 article by Allan Flynn for some background – “How to Trigger a Silver Avalanche by a Pebble: “Smash(ed) it Good”.

  By June 2018, Reuters was reporting that Scotia was to “scrap half its metals business”.

  “Scotia pulling back from metals financing

  Bank is largest lender to precious metals industry

  Cuts heaviest in Europe, no decision yet on Asian business

  Scotia still trying to sell parts of metals business”  

  “Scotia’s pullback comes after a strategic review of Mocatta began in 2016 following a string of lawsuits related to the manipulation of gold and silver benchmarks and dissatisfaction with performance.

  It also follows a failed attempt to sell the business.”

  By April 2020, that ‘half’ of the Scotia precious metals business had turned into a full 100% sale, with Reuters reporting that “Scotiabank to close its metals business”,

  “’Scotia had a global call with all its metals staff and said it was shutting down its metals business,’ said one of the sources.

  ‘The plan is to unwind the metals business,’ said another.”

  But even then in April 2020, Scotia was still a market making member of the LBMA, and a direct participant in the LBMA Gold Price and LBMA Silver Price auctions, and a member of the  London bullion bank cartel unallocated gold and silver clearing company, the London Precious Metals Clearing Limited (LPMCL).

  Scotia’s Gold and Silver Price Manipulation

  Fast forward to August 2020, and the US Department of Justice announced that Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) had entered into a resolution with the DoJ: “to resolve criminal charges related to a price manipulation scheme involving thousands of episodes of unlawful trading activity by four traders in the precious metals futures contracts markets”, and to pay more than more than US$ 60 million in criminal fines. A flavor of the illegal activities of Scotia in that case is as follows:

  “’For over eight years, Scotiabank traders placed thousands of orders for precious metals futures contracts in an attempt to manipulate prices for their own and the bank’s benefit and to deceive other market participants,’ said Chief Robert A. Zink of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Fraud Section.”

  “’Today, Scotiabank has admitted to their role in a massive price manipulation scheme aimed at falsely manufacturing the prices of precious metals futures contracts to serve the bank’s best interests,’ said Assistant Director in Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. of the FBI’s New York Field Office. ‘The bank’s actions were designed to lead others to trade in ways they never would have without what was believed to be legitimate market activity.’”

  Now fast forward to 1 March 2021, the same day as the COMEX and MTB / MKS PAMP vault announcements, and Wells Fargo announces that “it has expanded its precious metals trading business, filling gaps in the market left by the withdrawal of Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank)”.

  But not so fast. Did anyone tell Wells Fargo that as of 08 March 2021, Scotia is still a market making member of the LBMA in gold and silver, still a member of the fractionally backed paper gold and silver trading engine, the London Precious Metals Clearing Limited (LPMCL), and still involved in LBMA precious metals vaulting in London even though it doesn’t have its own vault:

  “those clearing members without their own vault operations – Scotiabank and UBS – utilise their accounts with one of the LBMA custodians or the Bank of England (BoE)”

  And that’s only gold and silver, In addition, Scotia is still a marketing making member of the London Platinum and Palladium Market (LPPM).

  How’s that for exiting the precious metals markets?

  This will gives the likes of Reuters’ Peter Hobson and Bloomberg’s Eddie van der Walt plenty of future material to write articles such as “Scotia Mocatta still withdrawing from the precious metals markets (Part 6)“.

  It’s as if Scotia hasn’t really exited the precious metals markets at all. Just discreetly sold its precious metals vault in New York to another party and quietly slipped out the COMEX door, while transferring over 30 million ozs of silver to MTB / MKS PAMP, as the #SilverSqueeze intensifies.

  This article was originally published on the BullionStar.com website under the same title “Scotia Sells its COMEX NY Vault, in Slow Motion Exit from Gold and Silver Markets”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 20:05

• Twitter Sues Texas AG; Claims He Retaliated Against Company For Banning Trump
  Twitter Sues Texas AG; Claims He Retaliated Against Company For Banning Trump

  Twitter has filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, claiming that he used his office to retaliate against the social media giant for banning former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, according to the Associated Press.

  

  Following Trump’s banishment by several left-leaning companies, Paxton announced that his office was investigating Twitter, Apple, Google and Amazon for what he called “the seemingly coordinated de-platforming of the President.” He made several document requests related to their content moderation policies, as well as internal communications.

  Twitter demands that the court effectively halt Paxton’s investigation.

  “Paxton made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees,” wrote Twitter’s lawyers in the suit filed in a Northern California court.

  Twitter’s counterpunch comes as states, in addition to federal lawmakers and governments outside the U.S., are cracking down on tech companies they see as having amassed too much power in the past decade. This includes antitrust and anti-monopoly regulation, internet privacy laws as well as attempts to regulate how platforms like Twitter, Facebook and others moderate their sites.

  In December, Paxton led 10 Republican attorneys general in suing Google for allegedly running an illegal digital-advertising monopoly in cahoots with Facebook.

  GOP politicians in roughly two dozen states have also introduced bills that would allow for civil lawsuits against platforms for what they call the “censorship” of posts. Almost always, this means what they view as the censorship of conservative or Christian religious viewpoints. –Associated Press

  Paxton cited the First Amendment while launching his investigation, claiming that tech companies’ deplatforming of Trump “chills free speech” and “wholly silences” his detractors.

  Twitter, however, does not have to abide by the First Amendment as they are a private firm with the right to silence users it disagrees with. Trump and other world leaders have been given broad exemptions, however the company said Trump’s tweets leading up to Jan. 6 constituted glorification of violence.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 19:45

• Democrat Panel Recommends Permanent Military "Quick Reaction Force" For Capitol
  Democrat Panel Recommends Permanent Military “Quick Reaction Force” For Capitol

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  A Democrat appointed ‘task force’ has issued a report recommending a permanent military security force be stationed around Capitol Hill.

  

  The task force, headed up by Army Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Russel L. Honoré, reported back to Nancy Pelosi, suggesting that a “quick reaction force” be formed and put on standby in addition to Capitol police.

  The report notes that DC is “a high-value target for foreign terrorists or domestic extremists, yet it has no dedicated QRF for response to crises.”

  It adds, “The USCP relies on augmentation from other civilian law enforcement agencies for emergency support, but we recommend establishment of a robust, dedicated QRF, not only for the USCP, but to serve the nation’s capital writ large.”

  Elsewhere in the report, it is stressed the the National Guard presence at the Capitol should only be a temporary measure and “not a permanent solution.”

  Specifically, the report suggests three forms of occupation in DC.

  Firstly, “a QRF from existing federal law enforcement entities with appropriate legal authorities and appropriations to staff, train and equip such a force.”

  Secondly, “a QRF under the command of the D.C. National Guard. This could be done by mobilizing military police from Guard elements across the U.S. on rotations of three to six months.”

  Thirdly, “a QRF that permanently resides within the D.C. Guard by reestablishing a military police battalion and staffing it with Active Guard Reserve troops.”

  In all three scenarios, a permanent military style force would reside in the nation’s capitol.

  As conservatives such as Tucker Carlson have warned, the troops are not going away, they are there to “prop up the regime”.

  Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

  Since January 6th, phantom threats, including the likes of “QAnon Inauguration Day”, have been continually touted to maintain the martial law style lockdown of Capitol Hill.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 19:25

• Japan's Government To Ban Overseas Spectators From Tokyo Olympics
  Japan’s Government To Ban Overseas Spectators From Tokyo Olympics

  After a week ago it was first revealed that the Tokyo 2020 games organizing committee (to take place this summer, 2021 in late July to August.8) was seriously mulling barring all foreign spectators from attending the games on pandemic fears of a ‘superspreader’ event, Japan has confirmed that it will keep all overseas spectators away in a move expected to cause a hundreds of millions of dollars loss – possibly into billions – in revenue. 

  Reuters reports on Tuesday, “Japan has decided to stage this summer’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics without overseas spectators due to public concern about COVID-19, Kyodo news agency said on Tuesday, citing officials with knowledge of the matter.”

  

  The Japanese public has been cited since reports first emerged last week as overwhelmingly in favor of keeping foreign crowds from descending on Tokyo for fear of new COVID-19 outbreaks, and given the new variants that have health officials worried. This despite the global vaccination campaign making great strides across the various populations in countries whose citizens would be likely to travel to the games, especially by the games’ start on July 23.

  Reuters cites recent surveys by a major Japanese publication:

  Most Japanese people do not want international visitors to attend the Games amid fears that a large influx could spark a resurgence of infections, a Yomiuri newspaper poll showed.

  The survey showed 77% of respondents were against allowing foreign fans to attend, versus 18% in favor.

  Some 48% said they were against allowing any spectators into venues and 45% were in favor.

  Kyodo news agency further confirmed that even the opening torch ceremony will be conducted without fans or spectators in the stadium. 

  “The organizing committee has decided it is essential to hold the ceremony in the northeastern prefecture of Fukushima behind closed doors, only permitting participants and invitees to take part in the event, to avoid large crowds forming amid the pandemic,” the report said, quoting the officials.

  Apparently only the final verdict of the Japanese government has been revealed, with the Tokyo 2020 games organizing committee expected to issue its final decision on the matter by the end of March – but it’s something which according to the latest reports looks certain to be on the side of banning spectators. 

  Recently installed president of the Japanese committee Seiko Hashimoto told reporters last week, “We would really like people from around the world to come to a full stadium, but unless we are prepared to accept them and the medical situation in Japan is perfect, it will cause a great deal of trouble also to visitors from overseas.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 19:05

• Biden Years Ago Called It 'Tyranny' For Just One Man To Decide War
  Biden Years Ago Called It ‘Tyranny’ For Just One Man To Decide War

  Authored by Paul W. Lovinger via AntiWar.com,

  Did Joe Biden read the Democratic platform that he ran under? Elect us and we will “move away from military intervention” in the Middle East. Diplomacy will protect Syrians’ human needs and rights and “find a peaceful resolution for this horrific war.” All the “forever wars” will end.

  Instead, Biden and the military men under his command did what the military is supposed to do: kill and destroy – or, as they prefer to put it, drop “precision-guided munitions” on “targets.” Among targets of the February 25^th attack on Syria were at least 22 people.

  

  Congressional reactions did not follow party lines. Several Democrats objected to the President’s violation of the constitutional war power of Congress. Some of their GOP colleagues praised the bombing, but Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) saw no right to attack a sovereign country. His father, ex-Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), called for Biden’s impeachment.

  Few pay much attention to international laws against aggression, particularly three US treaties prohibiting it. Forcible violation of the territorial rights of one state by another has been considered a war crime since the infamous trials following World War II.

  But everything is good, from what administration spokesmen say. Don’t grieve for the 22. They were all “believed” to be members of “Iran-backed militias” accused of recent rocket attacks on US targets in Iraq. (Rest assured that no children, women, or non-militant men are ever harmed by our clever weapons, only “militants,” “insurgents,” and “terrorists.”)

  The media reported that the raid was designed to “send a message” to Iran. Whatever that message said, it was expensive. You can send one far cheaper by e-mail, phone, fax, or airmail letter. You’d think the cost would concern the budget-minded congressional Republicans, if nothing else does.

  As far as relations with Iran were concerned, the Dems’ platform pledged to call off the race to war; reject the goal of regime change in Tehran; emphasize “diplomacy, de-escalation, and regional dialogue”; and restore the nuclear agreement. If any of those things were in that message, you probably wouldn’t need to send it via bomb.

  Our defense establishment tells us that the aggression was “defensive,” yet also “retaliatory”: We attacked Syria because our forces in Iraq had been attacked, though not by Syria. (Needless to say, our forces had a perfect right to be in Iraq. As California’s Senator S. I. Hayakawa once said about Panama, “We stole it fair and square.”)

  What about the president’s decision to commit an act of war, when Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution reserves that power to Congress?

  According to an aide of the National Security Council, “Biden acted under his constitutional authority to defend US and deter the risk of additional attacks.” (I’m quoting a Bloomberg story by eight writers. It said the aide “commented on condition of anonymity.” I would want to be anonymous too, if I had to dispense stuff like that.) Don’t bother searching through your Constitution for such authority; it’s not there.

  Biden did not lose much time before tending to what the platform called “this horrific war.” The five weeks of abstention compare with 11 weeks into Trump’s term before he bombed Syria. Obama, before him, had waited five years before initiating his bombing of Syrians. Of course Trump and Obama did plenty of killing elsewhere throughout their terms. Biden is just getting started.

  Biden (2021) Should Listen to Biden (1991)

  Thirty years ago, President George H. W. Bush was massing US troops in the Saudi desert, preparing for war with Iraq over its seizure of Kuwait. Bush and his yes-men in the Defense and State Departments contended that the president, as commander-in-chief of the military, had the authority to start a war.

  Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called a hearing on “The Constitutional Roles of the Congress and the President in Declaring and Waging War.” In an introductory speech, Senator Biden found the Bush view of the war power at odds with the Constitution. The Founders, he said, took great pains to ensure that the new government would differ from that of King George III. The chief difference was how the decision to go to war would be made.

  “In England the king alone could decide to take a nation to war.” Here, the legislature would have that power. “The Constitution’s language says that the war power rests in the Congress…. The Constitution’s founders all understood this to be a key principle of our republic…. Yes, the president is the commander-in-chief….”

  Senator Biden thereupon quoted Alexander Hamilton, who wrote about the (then) proposed Constitution in The Federalist, 69. “The president is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy… It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces as first general and admiral….” His authority would be much inferior to that of the British king, which “extends to the declaring of war and the raising and regulating of fleets and armies” – all of which would be the legislature’s functions under the Constitution.

  “In short,” said the senator, “Congress decides whether to make war, and the president decides how to do so…. We have been told that the congressional debate on war could tie the president’s hands or limit his discretion….. Exactly right. Americans once lived under a system where one man had unfettered choice to decide by himself whether we could go to war or not go to war, and we launched a revolution to free ourselves from the tyranny of such a system.”

  Senator Biden noted that President Bush was claiming that his impending war on Iraq would uphold the rule of law by undoing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The former commented, “If the crisis is really about upholding the law of nations abroad, the President must start by upholding the law at home, and our law begins with the Constitution.”

  Bush backed down and submitted to a congressional vote. It supported the war he wanted. Biden voted “nay.”

  Gullible and Contradictory

  Having opposed Bush Senior’s war on Iraq over the Kuwait seizure, Biden avidly supported the second war on Iraq, started by Bush’s son, George W. It was based on “weapons of mass destruction,” which Bush Jr. falsely claimed that Iraq possessed and would likely give to terrorists.

  A mere few years after his 1991 stance in Congress, Biden avidly supported the neocon push for regime change in Iraq…

  Biden fell for those lies and, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke in favor of a resolution (prepared in the White House) to let Bush decide whether war on Iraq would be warranted. The measure would be unconstitutional, for such a decision was up to Congress to make, not the president, as Biden himself had pointed out 11 years earlier.

  Biden has shown similar gullibility in swallowing disputed allegations of Syrian use of poison gas and Russian “bounties” on lives of US servicemen in Afghanistan. Some US intelligence agents doubt that the bounty tale is true.

  In foreign affairs, Biden is full of contradictions. Nine examples follow… Joe Biden –

  • Opposed one Bush attack on Iraq and supported another.
  • Ran for president on a promise of rejoining the nuclear agreement with Iran that Trump renounced, but hesitates to keep the promise, and now comes that “message.”
  • Condemns the bombing of Yemeni civilians and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, yet – without congressional permission – commits the US to defend the Saudi monarchy that committed those crimes.
  • Talks of having the US, Europe, and Asia “work together to secure the peace,” while confronting China with US warships provocatively close to its coast.
  • Renews the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russian Federation (New START) for five years, but heightens tensions by anti-Russian rhetoric and sanctions
  • Considers the climate crisis a top concern, yet the world’s single biggest producer of climate-changing gases is the US military, and war intensifies their production.
  • Resolves to work with allies on critical issues, but disregards his own country’s Congress.
  • Has repeatedly paid homage to “the rule of law,” contrary to his positions in favor of lawless actions in Syria, Iraq, and Yugoslavia (Bill Clinton’s 1999 war).
  • Conducts an act of war that is incompatible with the platform he ran under and his own comments about the war power, made to fellow senators 30 years ago.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 18:45

• Morgan Stanley Expects US To Grow Faster Than China In 2021
  Morgan Stanley Expects US To Grow Faster Than China In 2021

  Last Friday, at the start of its latest Five-Year Plenum, aka National People’s Congress, China’s government surprised markets when it announced a paltry 6% growth target for 2021 (which however did not stop if from also revealing a five-year plan and vision for 2035 that aims to expand China’s global footprint as a major technology power).

  That number is a big problem for several reasons, first and foremost of because as Michael Every explained this morning, it means that China’s credit impulse is about to collapse.Overnight, China’s central bank – the PBOC – announced it would keep growth of both money supply and aggregate financing broadly in line with that of nominal GDP. This, as the Rabo strategist said “is **STAGGERINGLY** contractionary given the last 12-month rolling aggregate financing figure was 35% y/y, the series average back to 2004 is 15%, and the most optimistic nominal GDP print one could expect would be 9% – and even that only for 2021, with something far lower further out.”

  As Every concluded, paraphrasing what we warned back in December, “it seems there is going to be an aggressive crackdown on leverage – and growth will follow. And then so will global growth with a lag. And so will the likes of AUD, etc.” This is another way of saying what we showed in December – namely the upcoming rapid slump in China’s credit impulse – also pointing out that virtually every asset in the world will be impacted the slowdown in China’a credit impulse with a lag anywhere from 1 month to 2 years.

  

  But there is another, even more bizarre, consequence of China’s 6% GDP target: according to the latest, just released US economic forecast from Morgan Stanley, the US will – for the first time ever – grow faster than China in 2021: according to MS chief economist Ellen Zentner, the US “reopening is progressing, the rate of vaccinations is ramping up, and the labor market is gaining momentum.”

  As a result, the investment bank is taking up its 2021 GDP forecast by 0.5% to 8.1% 4Q/4Q (+0.8pp to 7.3%Y).  And while the US may indeed grow faster than China in 2021 as a result of the massive fiscal and monetary stimilus injections, all this will reverse in 2022, when Morgan Stanley lowered its forecast by 0.1% to 2.8% 4Q/4Q (-0.3pp to 4.7% Y).

  

  As Zentner notes, US GDP “is now on track to reach its pre-Covid level by the end of the current quarter, with a positive output gap of 2.7% in 4Q21, and 3.6% in 4Q22.” If one incorporates the bank’s updated expectations for spending and income this year, Zentner expect excess savings in Q1 21 to total $600bn and a further $130bn in Q2 21.This would be added on top of the estimated excess savings of $1.5Tn accumulated in 2020.

  

  Meanwhile, on the labor front, Morgan Stanley expects that a more robust return to work will be offset somewhat by rising labor force participation, “but economic activity is strong enough to still generate a sharp decline in the unemployment rate throughout our forecast horizon.” As a result, the bank expects the unemployment rate to average 4.9% in 4Q21 (vs 5.1%, previously), falling further to 3.9% in 4Q22 (4.0% previously). . On an annual basis, MS sees the underlying unemployment rate falling from 10.5% in December 2020 to 6.1% by December 2021, showing a more substantial improvement, then falling to around 4.0% as it closes in on the as-reported unemployment rate by the end of 2022.

  

  So between blistering economic growth and tumbling unemployment, what does that mean for inflation? According to Zentner, now that  the US is set to surpass China as the world’s fastest growing economy if only for a few quarters, the bank expects significant price adjustments to come this year that sends core PCE to a near-term peak of 2.6%Y in April/May, before backing off to end the year at 2.3%Y (bringing a 2.3% quarterly average).

  Where MS differs from the Fed which sees no cyclical inflation anywhere, the bank expects a more sustainable inflationary impulse to start taking shape in 2021 “led by shelter inflation, healthcare services, and a multi-quarter pass through of dollar weakness into goods.” The sustainable inflation impulse intensifies in 2022 as cyclically sensitive inflation components start to dominate – based on a tightening labor market and still robust levels of demand. Ultimately, the bank sees core PCE ending 2022 at an overheating 2.3%, well above the Fed’s inflation target of 2.0% (which is precisely why the Fed made sure to give itself buffer not to hike with its new average inflation targeting policy).

  

  What is remarkable is that despite clearly admitting the US is set to overheat if only for one year, Morgan Stanley says that “there is nothing in the outlook that changes the Fed’s message of patience on the back of a dismissal of inflationary pressures as transient, and the improvement in the labor market and rising inflation expectations being a good start.”

  So in a world where the US grows faster than China yet where the Fed sees this as perfectly normal, all eyes now turn to the March FOMC were MS expects policymakers “will show an updated Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) with the majority of dots still firmly anchored at the zero lower bound through the end of 2023, alongside higher growth as FOMC participants onboard the stimulus package, and even some acknowledgment of emerging upside risks for near-term inflation. Policymakers will use this new dot plot to double down on dovish guidance, indicating that even after incorporating more fiscal stimulus, vaccine progress, and the latest inflation outlook,policymakers still see interest rates on hold for the foreseeable future.”

  What happens next?

  Well, unless the Fed wants to really teach China’s who’s boss and have the US economy literally explode in a hyperinflationay civil war in a couple of years when the S&P is at 1 trillion, it will have to tighten eventually. First, it will taper, then it will hike rates:

  Tapering: After the March FOMC the Fed’s job this year does not get any easier. As Zentener correctly writes “a sharper turn upward in the data as we move further into the spring coupled with a fresh round of stimulus means financial markets are likely to constantly test the Fed’s patience.” But that won’t happen for a while.

  Outlined in the FOMC statement, the Fed “will continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $80 billion per month and of agency mortgage‑backed securities by at least $40 billion per month until substantial further progress has been made toward the Committee’s maximum employment and price stability Morgan Stanley assumes the Fed will see this substantial further progress over the course of this year, and expects that by the middle of the year the cloud of Covid will have thinned and the recovery will have picked up meaningfully enough that the Fed will see it as appropriate to begin taking its foot off the gas pedal and Chair Powell will indicate tapering could be on the horizon.

  We would take such a message – likely delivered atthe June FOMC meeting – to indicate the start of tapering in January 2022 by reducing the pace of the Fed’s asset purchases by $10 billion Treasury/$5 billion MBS per meeting.

  Translation, brace for a bond market crash some time in the second half as we replay the Taper Tantrum on steroids.

  

  Rate Hikes: While tapering may be about a year off, liftoff remains a long, long way off – some time in Q3 2023 according to Morgan Stanley – which continues to expect a very gradual pace of policy normalization that is indicative of the general dovish shift in the Fed’s reaction function. Look for the June FOMC dot plot to first show a median of one Fed hike before the end of 2023, but it is the September FOMC meeting this year, when the Fed first publishes its 2024 forecasts that it can use the dot plot to redefine gradual in this cycle.

  * * *

  For all those wondering what China will be doing during this self-imposed slowdown when its credit impulse plunges and turns negative, sending its economy on the verge of a recession, stay tuned for a subsequent post in which we analyze what it means for the US to be growing near double digits which China approaches a hard landing.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 18:25

• US Preparing Cyberattack Against Russia Over SolarWinds Hack: Report
  US Preparing Cyberattack Against Russia Over SolarWinds Hack: Report

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  According to a report from The New York Times, the Biden administration is planning cyberattacks against Russia in the coming weeks. The cyber offensive could come with new sanctions and would mark a serious escalation towards Moscow from the new administration.

  Anonymous US officials told the Times that the first “major move” is expected to happen over the next three weeks. It will consist of a “series of clandestine actions across Russian networks that are intended to be evident to President Vladimir Putin and his intelligence services and military but not to the wider world.”

  

  The officials said the cyberattack will come along with new economic sanctions on Russia. Last week, the Biden administration slapped sanctions on Russian officials over the jailing and alleged poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

  The planned cyberattack is being framed as retaliation for the hack of the software firm SolarWinds that affected several US government agencies. The SolarWinds hack was discovered late last year. It was immediately blamed on Russia by members of Congress and Western media outlets despite a lack of evidence that showed Moscow was responsible.

  The US formally attributed blame to Russia for the SolarWinds hack in January. The FBI, NSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the DNI released a statement that said the hack was “likely Russian in origin.” Missing from the statement was any evidence for the accusation.

  The reality is, attributing cyberactivity is difficult as hackers have methods to conceal their identity. One reason US officials and media outlets say it could have been Russia is the sophistication of the hack. But testimony from SolarWinds’ former CEO and a cybersecurity expert made it clear that anybody could have accessed SolarWinds’ servers due to a major security lapse.

  After the hack was first discovered, Vinoth Kumar, a cybersecurity expert who advised SolarWinds, said the password for the firm’s update server was “solarwinds123.” Kumar said he warned SolarWinds that anyone could access the server because of this password. “This could have been done by any attacker, easily,” he told Reuters last December.

  Just as it plans to begin retaliating against Russia for the hacking of government agencies and corporations, the Biden administration faces a new cyberattack that raises the question of whether it will have to strike back at another major adversary: China https://t.co/TZsy0Rc1M2

  — Andreas Landwehr (@andreaslandwehr) March 9, 2021

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

  Kumar’s claim about the password turned out to be true. It was confirmed during congressional hearings in February that not only was “solarwinds123” the password, but it was also leaked and available to the public on the internet for years. Former SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson blamed an intern for posting the password on GitHub, a platform programmers use to share software information.

  “They violated our password policies and they posted that password on an internal, on their own private Github account,” Thompson said during a joint hearing by the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees.

  Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the current SolarWinds CEO, said the password was publicly available as early as 2017. “I believe that was a password that an intern used on one of his Github servers back in 2017,” he said. SolarWinds did not correct the issue until November 2019. According to the timeline from SolarWinds, suspicious activity on their server began in September 2019.

  Despite the fact that it is well established that anyone could have accessed SolarWinds’ servers and the best the US intelligence agencies could come up with is that Moscow is “likely responsible,” the US is poised to launch a cyberattack on Russia anyway.

  The Times story that reported the Biden administration’s plans also mentions another recently discovered hack of Microsoft email servers that is being blamed on another US adversary, China. The hack apparently affected servers used by small businesses, local governments, and military contractors.

  So far, it’s just Microsoft making the claim that China was responsible for this cyberattack, and the US has yet to attribute blame. But according to the Times, the Biden administration is already mulling options to go after China for the Microsoft intrusion.

  According to the Times, in August 2018, President Trump signed a secret document giving US Cyber Command more authorities to go on the offensive in the cyber realm. These authorities are reportedly under review by the Biden administration, and any major cyberattacks must be brought to the White House and the National Security Council before being carried out.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 18:05

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• Hong Kong's Carrie Lam "Fully Welcomes" Election Overhaul To Ensure City Run By China "Patriots"
  Hong Kong’s Carrie Lam “Fully Welcomes” Election Overhaul To Ensure City Run By China “Patriots”

  Beijing’s proposed major overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system has been broadly slammed in the West as but the final cementing of the mainland’s grip over what was set-up since the late 90’s to function as a semi-autonomous city-state according to the “one country, two systems” agreement made with the UK. Following on heels of last year’s draconian and far-reaching national security law which has been used to effectively crush dissent and arrest literally hundreds of pro-democracy activists – many of them also having fled to outside countries – multiple Communist Party officials addressing this weekend’s National People’s Congress (NPC) assembly in Beijing have warned the West not to interfere. 

  Former governor of Hong Kong Lord Chris Patten was cited in BBC as saying that China’s Communist Party had “taken the biggest step so far to obliterate Hong Kong’s freedoms and aspirations for greater democracy under the rule of law”. However, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in an annual speech touted that “Hong Kong’s shift from chaos to stability fully serves the interests of all parties. It will provide stronger guarantees for safeguarding Hong Kong citizens’ rights and foreign investors’ lawful interests.”

  And pro-Beijing Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is “fully welcoming” the China-proposed major changes to the electoral system which will increase the mainland’s influence. “There are loopholes in the electoral systems, there are also flaws in the systems in Hong Kong,” Lam told reporters on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

  

  “I fully understand that this is not a matter that can be addressed entirely by the government. I’m glad that the central authorities have, again, exercised its constitutional powers to help address this problem for Hong Kong,” she said.

  The statement comes days after State Department spokesman Ned Price lambasted the changes as constituting “a direct attack on Hong Kong’s autonomy, Hong Kong’s freedoms, and the democratic processes, limiting participation, reducing democratic representation, and stifling political debate in order to defy the clear will of the people of Hong Kong and to deny their voice in their own government and governance.”

  The AP provides a summary of the overhaul and how it will impact candidate “vetting” and voting as follows: 

  Chinese authorities have said the draft decision before China’s National People’s Congress would mean the largely pro-Beijing committee that elects Hong Kong’s leader would also choose a large part of the legislature to ensure the city is run by “patriots.” The Election Committee would also have the right to vet candidates for the Legislative Council, weeding out any people suspected of being insufficiently loyal to China and the ruling Communist Party.

  Currently, half of Hong Kong’s legislature is directly elected by voters, although the mass resignation of opposition legislators to protest the expulsion of four of their colleagues for being “unpatriotic” means the body is now entirely controlled by Beijing loyalists.

  At other steps of the process too Beijing will further be able to examine whether lawmakers are sufficiently pro-mainland. 

  Lam it should be recalled is the Hong Kong leader whose 2019 proposal to extradite criminal suspects to China sparked many months of fierce anti-China protests that often involved violent clashes with police and the shutting down of who central sections of the city. 

  This led to the sweeping national security law last June which has since resulted in the arrest and sentencing of over 100 protesters. The law enables authorities to easily deem activism and free speech as possible ‘terrorist activity’ if an individual is deemed conspiring with foreign powers or issuing anti-China propaganda and rhetoric. Lately even school textbooks have been purged to only allow for pro-mainland and pro-Communist ‘education’. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 01:00

• The New Normal (Phase 2)
  The New Normal (Phase 2)

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

  So, we’re almost a year into the “New Normal” (a/k/a “pathologized totalitarianism”) and things are still looking … well, pretty totalitarian.

  

  Most of Western Europe is still in “lockdown,” or “under curfew,” or in some other state of “health emergency.” Police are fining and arresting people for “being outdoors without a valid reason.” Protest is still banned. Dissent is still censored. The official propaganda is relentless. Governments are ruling by edict, subjecting people to an ever-changing series of increasingly absurd restrictions of the most fundamental aspects of everyday life.

  And now, the campaign to “vaccinate” the entirety of humanity against a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms or, more commonly, no symptoms at all, in over 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of the infected survive (and that has no real effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile) is being waged with literally religious fervor.

  “Vaccine passports” (which are definitely creepy, but which bear no resemblance to Aryan Ancestry Certificates, or any other fascistic apartheid-type documents, so don’t even think about making such a comparison!) are in the pipeline in a number of countries. They have already been rolled out in Israel.

  

  In other words, as predicted by us “conspiracy theorists,” the “temporary emergency public health measures” implemented by GloboCap in March of 2020 are still very much in effect, and then some.

  That said, as you have probably noticed, the tenor of things is shifting a bit, which is unsurprising, as GloboCap is now making the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the “New Normal” roll-out.

  Phase 1 was pretty much classic “shock and awe.”

  An “apocalyptic virus” was “discovered.” A global “state of emergency” was declared. Constitutional rights were cancelled. Soldiers, police, surveillance cameras, military drones, and robot dogs were deployed to implement the worldwide police state. The masses were bombarded with official propaganda, photos of people dropping dead in the street, unconscious patients dying in agony, bodies being stuffed into makeshift morgue trucks, hospital ships, ICU horror stories, projections of hundreds of millions of deaths, terror-inducing Orwellian slogans, sentimental “war effort” billboards, and so on. The full force of the most formidable Goebbelsian propaganda machine in history was unleashed on the public all at once. (See, e.g., CNN, NPR, CNBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Forbes, and other “authoritative” sources like the IMF and the World Bank Group, the WEF, UN, WHO, CDC.)

  But the “shock and awe” phase can’t go on forever, nor is it ever intended to. Its purpose is (a) to terrorize the targeted masses into a state of submission, (b) to irreversibly destabilize their society, so that it can be radically “restructured,” and (c) to convincingly demonstrate an overwhelming superiority of force, so that resistance is rendered inconceivable. This shock and awe (or “rapid dominance”) tactic has been deployed by empires, and aspiring empires, throughout the course of military history. It has just been deployed by GloboCap against … well, against the entire world. And now, that phase is coming to an end.

  The shape of Phase 2 is not entirely clear yet, but one can make a few logical assumptions.

  Typically, this is the phase in which the conquering force (in this case, GloboCap) restores “normality” (i.e., a “new normality”) to the society it has just destabilized and terrorized. It installs a new occupation-friendly government, restarts the economy, and otherwise begins the gradual transition from martial law to something resembling “normal” everyday life. It hands out candy bars to kids, financial aid to businesses, power to generals and police, and “freedom” to the shell-shocked public.

  This appears to be where we are at the moment. As you’ve probably noticed, the corporate media, government leaders, and medical experts have been making noise about “the end of the pandemic,” or at least “the end of the emergency phase” of it. Suddenly, “some level of Covid is tolerable,” “Zero Covid is unlikely,” et cetera. This is happening pretty much right on cue.

  Now that the vaccination push is underway, they are trying to temper the mass paranoia and hatred that they have fomented for over a year with some hope and a vision of a post-crisis future. Governments are carefully relaxing restrictions, making sure we understand that if we don’t obey orders, wear our masks, get our vaccinations, and so, they will crack down on us again without mercy. They want to ease us into the pathologized-totalitarian future gently, so that it feels like we are being liberated, returning to some semblance of normal life, albeit in a new, more terrifying, perpetually-virus-and-extremist-threatened world.

  For example, here in Germany, the government has decided to “return some freedom and trust to the people,” but they are prepared to lock us down “hard” again if they suspect we haven’t “used their trust wisely.” According to the 5-Step Plan, bookshops and florists can reopen this week with a one-person-per-ten-square-meter limit, up to ten people can play non-contact sports, and five people from no more than two households can meet up (and, thus, also play non-contact sports), unless the “incidence rate” of positive PCR tests rises above 100 per thousand, in which case, back to “hard lockdown” we go. Two weeks after that, on March 22, if the “positive-test rate” stays below 50, outdoor restaurant dining can resume, and theaters, cinemas, and opera houses can open. However, if the “positive-test rate” is more than 50 but less than 100, outdoor dining will only be permitted on a strictly pre-booking basis. (One assumes there will be roving goon squads examining restaurants’ booking records and ordering patrons to show their papers.) There are further Kafkaesque conditions in the plan, but I think you get the general idea.

  Meanwhile, in the USA, although DC remains under occupation, the Capitol surrounded by razor-wire fences to protect democracy from an imaginary enemy straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, Texas, Mississippi, and a few other states are joining Florida in open rebellion, and allowing people to go out to eat, get together with their families and friends, walk around in public without medical-looking masks, and otherwise go about living their lives in a totally non-anus-clenched-paranoid fashion.

  Notwithstanding the outrage of the Covidian Cultists, this development is not of great concern to GloboCap, as the coastal power centers are full-blown “New Normal,” and the liberals who predominantly occupy them have been transformed into paranoid, hysterical zealots who now dedicate a considerable amount of time to hunting down alleged “Covid deniers,” “anti-maskers,” “vaccine refusers,” “white-supremacist extremists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “libertarians,” dead “racist cartoonists,” and anyone else who won’t conform to their pathologized-totalitarian ideology, and obsessively trolling them on social media, or reporting their thoughtcrimes to the Reality Police.

  This transformation of the relatively affluent, predominantly liberal, middle/upper classes, and the millions futilely aspiring thereto, into mindlessly-order-following “Good Germans” (or, rather, mindlessly-order-following “New Normals”) has also occurred here in Western Europe, and elsewhere throughout the global capitalist empire, and was one of GloboCap’s main objectives throughout Phase 1 of the “New Normal” roll out. This transformation has been in progress for quite some time, less dramatically and without a virus. It will continue once this virus is gone.

  The “New Normal” isn’t just about a virus. The “New Normal” was never just about a virus. You don’t need a new “normal” because of a virus. You need a new “normal” when your current “normal” has outlived its usefulness to those in power, which, in our case, are the global capitalist ruling classes.

  I’ve been writing about this for … well, most of my life, and publishing these columns for the last five years, so I’m not going to summarize all that here, but, basically, we’re living through one of those historic transformations of the structure of political power that we usually don’t recognize until after it has occurred … not just a “changing of the guard,” a transformation of the nature of power, how it is exercised, the beliefs it is based on, and the “reality” conjured into being by those beliefs.

  This transformation began with the end of the Cold War, when global capitalism became the first globally-hegemonic ideological system in history. The roll-out of the “New Normal” is part of that transformation, not the whole of it, but an essential stage. We are transitioning from an ideological “reality” to a post-ideological, pathologized “reality” … a “reality” in which any and all deviation from official ideology (i.e., “normality”) is no longer a political challenge or threat, but an “illness” or “psychiatric disorder.”

  I’m going to be obnoxious and quote myself, so that I don’t have to try to explain this again. Here’s a passage from a recent column:

  “A globally-hegemonic system (e.g., global capitalism) has no external enemies, as there is no territory ‘outside’ the system. Its only enemies are within the system, and thus, by definition, are insurgents, also known as ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists.’ These terms are utterly meaningless, obviously. They are purely strategic, deployed against anyone who deviates from GloboCap’s official ideology … which, in case you were wondering, is called ‘normality’ (or, in our case, currently, ‘New Normality’) … [t]he new breed of ‘terrorists’ do not just hate us for our freedom … they hate us because they hate ‘reality.’ They are no longer our political or ideological opponents … they are suffering from a psychiatric disorder. They no longer need to be argued with or listened to … they need to be ‘treated,’ ‘reeducated,’ and ‘deprogrammed,’ until they accept ‘Reality.’”

  As we shift from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the “New Normal,” the pathologization of political dissent will continue, and intensify, both overtly and subtlely.

  GloboCap and the corporate media will continue to warn of imminent “attacks on democracy” by imaginary “domestic terrorists,” as well as the old “non-domestic terrorists.” They will also continue to warn of imminent threats posed by exotic viruses, and “variants” of exotic viruses, and permanent “conditions” caused by viruses, and other threats to our bodily fluids. Above all, they will continue to warn of the danger of ingesting “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories,” or any other type of unverified, unauthorized, un-fact-checked content. They will thoroughly diagnose the sources of such content, and exhaustively explain the pathological conditions these sources will clearly be suffering from. They will explore a variety of treatments and cures, and recommend prophylactic measures against potential exposure to these sources.

  These multiplicitous “threats to democracy” (i.e., “terrorists,” “viruses,” “misinformation,” “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “transphobia,” “electoral-system scepticism,” “white-supremacist pancake syrup,” “premeditated pronoun abuse,” “oppositional-defiant-infant masklessness,” “vaccine hesitancy,” “religion,” et cetera) will fuse into a single Goldstein-like enemy which “New Normal” children will be conditioned to reflexively hate and fear, and want to silence, and quarantine off from “normal” society, or “cure” of their “illness” with government-mandated, “safe and effective” pharmaceutical therapies.

  But whatever … I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m probably just getting all worked up over nothing. After all, as a lot of my ex-friends will tell you (through their multiple masks and prophylactic face shields), I’m just a paranoid “conspiracy theorist” spreading “unverified misinformation.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/09/2021 – 00:05

• Iran Takes Yet More Action To Blow Past Nuclear Restrictions At Natanz: IAEA
  Iran Takes Yet More Action To Blow Past Nuclear Restrictions At Natanz: IAEA

  At a moment that Israel says it has implemented new plans that will enable it to more effectively launch preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities should Israeli leaders believe the Islamic Republic is on the cusp of nuclear weapons capability, Tehran announced Monday that it continues blowing past prior uranium enrichment limits in place as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

  Reuters is reporting it as a “recent acceleration” of restriction violations at a moment Biden’s prior stated intent to rejoin the JCPOA is faltering while US-led sanctions (put into effect by Trump) are still at their max. It appears part of continued efforts at ratcheting the pressure on Biden to provide immediate sanctions relief, which thus far the new Democratic administration has refused to do until Iran comes back into nuclear compliance. 

  But at the same time Iran’s boldness in piling on the pressure in the face of a hesitant Biden administration may inadvertently trigger Israeli retaliation.

  

  “Iran has started enriching uranium with a third set of advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its underground plant at Natanz, the U.N. nuclear watchdog told its member states on Monday,” Reuters writes. Crucially it was this very facility at Natanz that was subject of a major sabotage attack in July 2020, with most analysts believing Israel was likely behind it – possibly via a major cyberattack.

  The UN nuclear watchdog IAEA group issued a statement saying, “On 7 March 2021, the Agency verified at FEP that: Iran had begun feeding natural UF6 into the third cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges.”

  “The fourth cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges was installed but had yet to be fed with natural UF6; installation of a fifth cascade of IR-2m centrifuges was ongoing; and installation of a sixth cascade of IR-2m centrifuges had yet to begin,” it said further. 

  This means that Iran is inching closer toward the 90% uranium purity needed to develop a nuclear bomb, but the IAEA statement indicated Iran was still far from that marker, but is daily opening up such a path if it chooses to go to those levels. 

  Essentially Iran’s position over the past months has been that it’s free to ramp up enrichment at it’s choosing because the US broke the deal (in May 2018) and is thus not in a position to demand conformity. Iran has complained all along that the European signatories have done little to nothing to salvage the JCPOA in the face of Washington’s belligerence and threats of sanctions enforcement. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 23:45

• Stagflation Subterfuge: The Real Disaster Hidden By The Pandemic
  Stagflation Subterfuge: The Real Disaster Hidden By The Pandemic

  Authored byby Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,

  In recent economic news, headlines are being dominated by concerns over rising bond yields. Increased bond yields are a sign of a possible spike in inflation and, logically, they call for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in order to prevent that inflation.

  

  Higher bond yields also mean there is a competitive alternative to stocks for investors – both factors that could trigger a plunge in the stock market.

  If one studies the real history behind the stock market crash during the Great Depression, they will find that it was the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes that caused and prolonged the disaster after they had created an environment of cheap and easy money throughout the 1920s. Former Chairman Ben Bernanke openly admitted the Fed was responsible back in 2002 in a speech honoring Milton Friedman. He stated:

  “In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn. Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

  This then raises the question – inflation or deflation? Will the Fed “do it again?”

  Probably not in exactly the same way, but we will see elements of both inflation and deflation soon in the form of stagflation.

  It’s a Catch-22 that the central bank has created, and many (including myself) believe that the Fed has created the conundrum deliberately. All central banks are tied together by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the BIS is a globalist institution through and through. The globalist agenda seeks to trigger what they call the “Great Reset,” a complete reformation of the global economy and capitalism into a single one world socialist system… managed by the globalists themselves, of course.

  In my view the Fed has always been a kind of institutional suicide bomber; its job is to self-destruct at the right moment and take the U.S. economy down with it, all in the name of spreading its cult-like globalist ideology.

  The only unknown at this point is how they will go about their sabotage. Will the central bank continue to allow inflation to explode the cost of living in the U.S., or will they intervene with higher interest rates and allow stock markets to crash?

  Either way, we face a serious economic crisis in the near future.

  Increasing Inflation Means Economic Recovery?

  Mainstream economists will often argue that rising yields and inflation are a “good thing.” They claim this is a sign of rapid economic recovery. I disagree.

  If “inflation” was the same as “recovery,” then there would not have been total economic collapses in Argentina in 2002, in Yugoslavia in 1994, or in Weimar Germany in the early 1920s.

  I do not see recovery. What I see is the rapid devaluation of the dollar’s buying power due to massive fiat printing through stimulus measures. The Fed and the U.S. government are buying a short-term surge in economic activity, but at a hidden cost. This is a condition that the Dollar Index does not even begin to address, but obvious in prices of necessary goods and commodities.

  Keep in mind that all of this is being done in the name of responding to the pandemic. The pandemic is the ultimate excuse for the active destruction of the U.S. economy. Stimulus measures have devolved into helicopter money being thrown about haphazardly as billions are siphoned primarily by major corporations and through fraud. People who are clamoring for a $2,000 relief check from the government have no idea that corporate welfare has been ongoing for the past year along with billions in retroactive tax refunds. All of that money printing is going to cause damage somewhere. It cannot be avoided.

  It’s Not About The Pandemic

  Let’s make something clear first: The pandemic is NOT the reason for the stimulus flood. The pandemic did very little to hurt actual business in the U.S. Rather, it was the lockdowns that did most of the damage.

  Think about that for a moment – federal and state governments crushed the economy through lockdowns, then offered the solution of vast stimulus measures. This in turn is destroying financial stability and generating rapid price inflation.

  Conservative states and counties that refused to shut down are recovering at a much faster pace than leftist states which imposed draconian restrictions on citizens. Yet, the lockdowns did nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19 in blue states. So, the lockdowns accomplished no discernible advantage for the public, but they did give the central bank a perfect rationale to further erode the dollar.

  This resulting price inflation is something that not even the red states can escape.

  For example, home prices are rapidly expanding beyond the market bubble of 2006. This is partially due to millions of people participating in perhaps the largest migration in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Anyone who is able is moving away from major cities into suburban and rural areas. But, home prices also have a historic habit of inflating along with currency devaluation. The cost of maintaining and remodeling an older home, or building a new home, rises as the prices of commodities like lumber inflate.

  And lumber prices are certainly inflating! Softwood lumber prices are up at least 110% from a year ago, and are climbing as much as 10% in a week.

  Home rentals also do not escape inflation, as the rising cost of maintaining properties forces landlords to increase rents. The only places where rents are decreasing are major cities that Americans are seeking to flee, such as New York and San Francisco.

  Inflation In More Than Just Housing

  The majority of commodities continue to see price inflation across the board. Food and energy prices have been creeping higher for the past year. Governments are once again blaming the pandemic and “stresses on the supply chain,” which may have been a believable claim nine months ago, but not today. Anything to hide the fact that all that stimulus has inflationary consequences.

  Dollar devaluation is the most visible in terms of imported goods. In other words, it costs more dollars to buy goods outside the U.S. as the value of the dollar falls. And since the majority of U.S. retail is supplied by foreign producers, this means that average American consumers will suffer the brunt of inflationary consequences. Public stress and anger will be high.

  Pandemic Lockdowns Are Just An Excuse

  This is why the COVID-19 lockdowns must continue and the pandemic fear factory must remain active. The globalists need a cover event for the Reset and they need to keep the citizenry under control, and the pandemic can be blamed for just about anything. I think this is why we are already seeing the media hyping the existence of “COVID mutations.” Do not be surprised if the Biden Administration tries to implement a national lockdown sometime this year in the name of stopping the spread of a “more deadly” COVID-19 variant.

  It won’t matter that the previous lockdowns were useless and all the data shows that keeping the economy open is a superior policy. It might seem like logic is going completely out the window, but there is a very logical reason for what is happening in the minds of globalists.

  Stagflation comes into play through losses in certain sectors of the economy, high unemployment and the inability of wages to keep up with costs.

  There is the continued dismantling of the small business sector, which, again, I believe is being destroyed deliberately. It’s not a mistake that small businesses were predominantly targeted as “non-essential” during the lockdowns. It’s also not a coincidence that the majority of COVID-19 PPP loans went to big box corporations while small businesses received almost nothing. The small business sector is being erased, leaving only the corporate sector to provide for consumers.

  This may be why Democrats are so adamant about raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Wages are already rising according to market demand and region. The average non-skilled worker in the U.S. is making around $11 an hour. There is no need for the government to interfere, unless they have ulterior motives.

  A $15 minimum wage would likely crush what’s left of small businesses, and only corporations that are receiving the bulk of stimulus dollars will be able to afford to pay workers the higher rate. On top of that, years from now the government could claim they “took action” to front-run stagflation by increasing people’s pay. But a $15 minimum wage is most useful to the establishment in the short term because it muddies the waters on the inflation issue.

  Prices will continue to rise due to dollar devaluation, but the media and government will say that it has nothing to do with the dollar and everything to do with companies raising shelf prices to offset increased labor costs.

  The Biggest Threat In The History Of American Society

  I suspect that the establishment will do everything in its power to distract the public from the biggest threat in the history of American society – the stagflationary time bomb

  If they admit to its existence then the public could prepare for it, and they don’t want that. If Americans were to decentralize their local economies, support local small businesses instead of big box retailers, start producing necessities for themselves, and if they started developing currency alternatives like local scrip backed by commodities… then they would be able to survive a national financial crisis.

  In fact, I guarantee that any community, county or state that takes these steps will immediately be targeted by the federal government, further revealing the truth: The establishment wants the public to suffer.

  They want economic disaster. They do not want people to have the option of taking care of themselves. They need people scared, desperate and malleable, or they will never achieve their Reset agenda.

  *  *  *

  With global tensions spiking, thousands of Americans are moving their IRA or 401(k) into an IRA backed by physical gold. Now, thanks to a little-known IRS Tax Law, you can too. Learn how with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals how physical precious metals can protect your savings, and how to open a Gold IRA. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 23:25

• San Francisco TV Reporter Robbed At Gunpoint While Covering Auto Thefts 
  San Francisco TV Reporter Robbed At Gunpoint While Covering Auto Thefts 

  The effects of the virus pandemic and socio-economic implosion that followed compounded with failed liberal leadership have transformed some parts of San Francisco into high-crime areas. A KPIX 5 reporter investigating a series of car break-ins around Twin Peaks was robbed at gunpoint for his camera, reported KPIX 5. 

  KPIX reporter Don Ford reported at Twin Peaks in San Francisco last Wednesday when a white luxury sedan with four men inside pulled up and put a Glock to his face, demanding his camera. 

  “The car came up here while we were about to do an interview, three guys jumped out,” said Ford. “One had a gun and put in my face and said, ‘We’re taking the camera.'”

  

  “My whole thought at the moment was be calm. Let’s not get this guy excited. He’s got the gun. I don’t. So you take you the camera. It’s yours Buddy,” he said. 

  “I was worried that this is what’s gonna happen, because as thieves get more and more brazen, they do more and more brazenly things. I’m not making that up. We just had that experience today,” a neighbor who asked not to be identified. 

  Ford was preparing to interview a homeowner when the incident unfolded. 

  “I just looked and I said, ‘I’m not going to get shot today,'” the homeowner said. 

  Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who serves the metro area’s District 8, which includes Twin Peaks, tweeted the incident is “ridiculous & unacceptable but not entirely unexpected in San Francisco in 2021.”

  “We need to adequately resource public safety agencies, adopt better strategies to stop repeat offenders & make clear that San Francisco is not a place that you can commit crimes & put people’s lives at risk with impunity,” Mandelman said.

  Violent crime has increased in the metro area since lawmakers defunded the San Francisco Police Department by $25 million from $692.9 million in 2020 to $667.9 million. 

  Citywide robberies and automobile vehicle thefts are surging; latest crime data shows burglaries jumped 59.4%, and motor vehicle thefts are up 20.8% so far this year.

  San Francisco police could see upwards of 11% or 167 officers laid off due to budget cuts. The possible reduction could significantly impact patrols and result in more crime. 

  Besides surging vehicle thefts and other violent crimes, companies are closing up shops as shoplifting has become a significant problem. 

  On top of this all, there’s an exodus of residents who are leaving San Francisco for rural communities, fed up with the city’s socio-economic implosion. The ability to work-at-home has also accelerated outbound migration. San Fran could one day be a hallowed out town, like Baltimore and or Detroit, if these trends persist. 

  Here’s the full report via KPIX 5 of the reporter who was robbed at gunpoint. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 23:05

• U.S. Flies Two B-52H Bombers Over Middle East To "Reassure Allies"
  U.S. Flies Two B-52H Bombers Over Middle East To “Reassure Allies”

  Via SouthFront.org,

  On March 7th, two US B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers flew over the Middle East, as a show of strength against Iran.

  

  The US military’s Central Command said the two B-52s flew over the region accompanied by military aircraft from nations including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It marked the fourth-such bomber deployment into the Middle East this year and the second under President Joe Biden.

  A pair of U.S. Air Force B-52H “Stratofortresses” flew a multinational patrol mission across the #MiddleEast from @TeamMinot today to deter aggression and reassure partners and allies @USAFCENT @MOD_Qatar @modgovksa #B52
  https://t.co/dAEOYtRbgt pic.twitter.com/yPQEqywrnH

  — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 7, 2021

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

  Flight-tracking data showed the two B-52s flew out of Minot Air Base in North Dakota, something Central Command did not mention in its statement on the flights.

  Iran, as usual, wasn’t directly mentioned by CENTCOM’s statement. According to it, the flight was to “deter aggression and reassure partners and allies of the US military’s commitment to security in the region.”

  This goes directly opposite of US President Joe Biden’s claim that he wants to return to the Iran Nuclear Deal and have a sort of normalization in relations.

  Biden expressed a desire to return to the deal if Iran honors the deal’s limits on its nuclear program. However, tensions remain high after militias in Iraq — likely backed by Iran — continue to target American interests.

  In late February, Biden ordered the launch of an airstrike just over the border into Syria in retaliation, joining every American president from Ronald Reagan onward who has ordered a bombardment of countries in the Middle East.

  On the same day, Beirut-based channel Al-Mayadeen aired footage of the Helios Ray, a Bahamian-flagged roll-on, roll-off vehicle cargo ship hit by the blasts February 26 in the Gulf of Oman.

  The grainy footage included areas blurred out on the video, likely coordinates and other information displayed by the Iranian military drone. The footage at one point showed what appeared to be a hole in the side of the vessel.

  Al-Mayadeen did not say when the footage was shot, nor explain the circumstance by which the Iranian drone was following the ship. The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, which patrols the Mideast and often has tense encounters with Iran, declined to comment on the footage.

  Off Gaza’s coast, three fishermen were killed in a reported Hamas misfire, according to Israeli media.

  At the same time, Arab-language media reported that it was an Israeli strike that killed the fishermen.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 22:45

• How Much Money Do You Need To Join The Top 1%?
  How Much Money Do You Need To Join The Top 1%?

  Knight Frank has released its 15th annual Wealth Report which found that the Covid-19 pandemic has proven good news for the world’s super rich, primarily due to surging asset prices that are being driven by lower interest rates and fiscal stimulus.

  As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, the global UHNWI population (an ultra-high-net worth individual has a net worth of $30 million or more) climbed 2.4 percent over the past year with growth strongest in Asia at 12 percent. Growing inequality is increasingly been seen as the greatest threat to future wealth accumulation and support for wealth taxes is rising in many parts of the world with such plans already proposed or in place in Argentina, Canada and South Korea with similar measures likely to be introduced elsewhere.

  Considering the massive and growing gap between the super rich and the rest of the world, how much would someone need to earn to join the exclusive and oft-maligned one percent club? The Wealth Report included an interesting subsection that used the company’s Wealth Sizing Model to compare requirements to gain access to the top 1%.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  They vary considerably between countries and people would need the deepest pockets in Monaco. The tiny principality is well known as a playground for the super rich and it has one of the densest UHNWI populations on the planet. The entry point to the community is the highest on the planet at $7.9 million. Switzerland is known for its affluence and a cool $5.5 million would be needed to be counted among the country’s top one percent. The United States has the world’s largest UHNWI population with around 180,000 people holding a fortune of $30 million or more in 2020. Some $4.4 million would gain entrance to the America’s one percent club.

  

  Elsewhere, the threshold is considerably lower, particularly in developing countries where the super wealthy community remains relatively sparse. While China is expected to see its entry requirements rise significantly in the coming years, $850,000 was enough to be counted among its one percent community in 2020. India has seen its super rich population grow steadily in recent years but its threshold remains extremely low less than one percent of Monaco’s. A mere $60,000 would count someone among India’s highest earners, though the status would not last long. Knight Frank predicts that India’s entry threshold will double within the next five years.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 22:25

• China 'National Team' Is Back – Stocks Surge Back After Hitting Correction Territory
  China ‘National Team’ Is Back – Stocks Surge Back After Hitting Correction Territory

  It would appear global equity markets are testing the will of the world’s central bankers… one by one.

  Friday in the US we saw a sudden and mysterious buying-panic occur as the Nasdaq accelerated into correction territory and beyond…

  

  And tonight, after we tweeted the following…

  In theory a continued collapse in the QQQ will crash the S&P, DJIA, and everything else.

  In practice, the Fed will never allow it. We are within 2-3% of the Fed’s red line for QQQs

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 9, 2021

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

  …Chinese stocks have seen a sudden mysterious buying-panic occur..

  

  …just as the big-cap CSI-300 accelerated beyond a correction…

  

  Bloomberg reports that Chinese state funds intervened to alleviate declines in the stock market as a rout showed no signs of slowing.

  State-related funds are stepping in to ensure market stability during the government’s key policy meeting in Beijing, according to people familiar with the matter. A Hong Kong-based trader said clients linked to mainland funds were actively buying shares through stock links with Hong Kong on Tuesday.

  It has been a few years since the so-called “National Team” has been seen in Chinese markets. In 2016, one analyst noted:

  “The ‘national team’ is very deeply involved, and its main purpose is to prevent the market from moving up or down too extremely. Sometimes when the market looks set to break out and you buy shares to wait for them to rise, the good momentum would suddenly stop.”

  In fact China’s plunge protection team was very active during 2015’s chaos…

  

  

  Will it be The ECB’s turn tomorrow? Or was that what sparked the sheer panic-buying in Europe today also?

  

  Just how much “whatever it takes” are they willing to do?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 22:24

• Burger King's 'Woke' Viral Tweet Backfires Horrendously
  Burger King’s ‘Woke’ Viral Tweet Backfires Horrendously

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A tweet posted by Burger King which said “women belong in the kitchen” that was meant to be a woke virtue signal to mark International Women’s Day backfired horrendously.

  

  The fast food giant followed up the tweet with a second that read:

  “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career.”

  However, the fact that the explanatory text was not included in the first tweet just made it look to many as though Burger King was regurgitating a sexist trope.

  [ZH: We note that both tweets have since been deleted]

  Looks like they forgot to delete their Facebook post:

  

  Perhaps forgetting that the woke mob displays ruthless intolerance to humor or nuance, the company faced an immediate backlash before ‘Burger Queen’ began trending, with Twitter users demanding a name change as an apology for causing offense.

  your only way out of this is to change the name to Burger Queen

  — Kelly Bachman (@bellykachman) March 8, 2021

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

  Others called for a boycott, including this woman whose tweet received over 22,000 likes.

  I won’t be eating at your store again thanks

  — ChildishTalksHipHop🐻 (@childish_santan) March 8, 2021

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

  “Burger King belongs in a trashcan,” said another verified liberal.

  Burger King belongs in a trashcan.

  — Chelsea Peretti (@chelseaperetti) March 8, 2021

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

  Others pointed out the irony of women in the kitchen only being acceptable in 2021 if those women are wage slaves for giant transnational corporations, with traditional family gender roles frowned upon.

  “If they want to, of course.” No one on earth would be working in a Burger King kitchen if they didn’t have to pay rent & bills, but Burger King is trying to make it sound like female empowerment lmao pic.twitter.com/56q58dVKIR

  — Charlie Nash (@CharlieNash) March 8, 2021

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

  *  *  *

  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, 03/08/2021 – 22:05

• "The System Is Compromised" – Baltimore Man Receives 18 Unemployment Debit Cards
  “The System Is Compromised” – Baltimore Man Receives 18 Unemployment Debit Cards

  Maryland’s Department of Labor is investigating a bizarre unemployment insurance scam. A Baltimore-area man claims to have received at least 18 fraudulent unemployment insurance debit cards from “investors,” according to local news station WMAR-2 News. 

  “That’s one, that’s two, three, four. That’s five, that’s six, seven, eight. That’s a total of nine cards,” said Dr. Keenan Cofield, who is a state lobbyist, a taxpayer – he said stuff like this makes him “cringe.” 

  

  He told WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii that a total of 18 unemployment debit cards were mailed to his address. He said the debit cards were individually sent to him but addressed to other people.

  “Each one of them has a Visa card, each one of them has a name,” Cofield said.

  He was communicating with some people inline about the need for investors in a few of his projects. The Baltimore-area man said at least two people through a messenger app offered to invest with him.

  “And things were moving on, and they said that the funding would be coming by cards. So, next thing I know, I see these strange-looking Maryland Department of Labor and Regulation unemployment. [There’s] nobody at this house with these names,” said Cofield.

  Cofield communicated with the investors through Google Hangouts. He shared 30 pages of the conversations with Sofastaii: 

  The sender wrote:

  “Once cards are activated All you have to do is drive to an ATM machine and make withdraw sir”

  The sender instructs Cofield to keep 60 percent of the balance on the various cards and send the other 40 percent back, which will be split between the sender and someone named Bryan.

  Cofield asked whether this was fraud.

  The sender replied:

  “Sir believe me sir. this is not fraud sir ok. … Trust me It not a fraud sir”

  Here’s more of the convo: 

  

  “They have not said which ones were which, but they said the minimum was $500 and at least two or three of those cards are $10,000,” Cofield said.

  Cofield said nobody in his household is unemployed and became suspicious of how the unemployment debit cards, loaded with a lot of taxpayers’ money, and in envelopes under the seal of “Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. 

  What this is, as Cofield discovers, is a “money mule operation.” In an operation like this, Cofield is the “go-between” entity that hands the dirty money then sends a certain portion back to the fraudsters. 

  “When I saw the Department of Labor and Licensing and Regulation unemployment, oh no, this is a scam. This is a big scam and this is a huge problem,” he said.

  Cofield has since contacted law enforcement about the money mule operation. 

  “It’s sad. Nobody knows where to go, so this is why I say guess what, Mallory is on this thing about unemployment, and that’s why I picked up, and that’s why we’re at Channel 2 now,” said Cofield.

  During the pandemic, State Police and the FBI have warned about increasing unemployment scams. The FBI ranks Maryland 5th in the country for “money mules” in 2019 despite being a highly prosperous state. 

  “The system is still messed up. There are people who have still not got their legitimate benefits. This lets you know not only somebody in that pile probably is missing their card, but the system is compromised,” said Cofield.

  Maryland’s Department of Labor expects to eliminate debit cards by April and switch to direct deposits. 

  On a national level, federal officials admitted that tens of billions of dollars in unemployment benefits were disbursed and squandered by fraudsters during the pandemic. 

  One fraudster, who made a million dollars in an elaborate unemployment scam in California, released a rap video about it. 

  As the plot thickens in the search for who the fraudsters are in Cofield’s case – he said one of the “investors” had a family member working at the Tennessee Bank of American Maryland Unemployment debit card processing center, according to Fox 5. 

  Fox 5 reports on the fraud:

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 21:45

• Gold Vs Bitcoin Part 2: Careful What You Wish For
  Gold Vs Bitcoin Part 2: Careful What You Wish For

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  This is the second part of my look at the age old “Gold vs Bitcoin” debate, which I outlined in Part 1: “Gold vs Bitcoin is Fscking Stupid” as being faith-based and pointless.

  

  While it is thoroughly enjoyable to watch it play out between the symbolic archetypes of  near-boomer Peter Schiff and his millennial son, Spencer, I sometimes suspect that to  be a staged, WWE style confrontation….

  Future tweet: “Now that Bitcoin has hit $500,000 I must admit that a move up to $1,000,000 can’t be ruled out. However…”

  — Spencer Schiff (@SpencerKSchiff) February 16, 2021

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

  However I bring up the elder Schiff for a reason, because part of his core thesis is that after the coming global monetary reset, the world will move back to a gold backed currency.

  A return to a gold-backed standard would be a disaster

  This I find not only unlikely, but undesirable. Anybody paying attention to the way the world works now absolutely shouldn’t want a return to a gold-backed currency, especially people holding their wealth in gold.

  The reason is very simple: if that were to happen, there would occur with that a corresponding global ban on private gold ownership. Anybody who thinks this through can see that is the most likely way it would play out.

  The religious goldbugs think the USD will implode (probably correct), lose it’s global reserve currency status (correct) and then… government will admit defeat, remonetize the world with a gold backed currency. Doing that would instantly make the goldbugs who were outside the system, who were highly critical of it and who reject the legitimacy of much of it, the most wealthy and powerful participants in the new monetary regime.

  Do you really think it would play out like that? Do you really think that governments who double-down on incompetence, who think nothing of changing the rules and moving the goalposts, who stop at nothing to preserve their own position and serve their own interests are going to throw their hands up in the air, shrug their shoulders and walk offstage to clear a path for a next generation of goldbug power elites?

  I don’t think so.

  This is what happens instead:

  1. A new narrative begins to emerge:  gold bugs are damaging the stability of the banking system

  2. Sudden focus on how gold mining accelerates climate change and exacerbates systemic racism

  3. Gold jewelry = white privilege (even in India,  remember, by this point 2 + 2 = 5)

  4.  Private gold hoards are exacerbating wealth inequality

  After a few months of this and then the time is right, a coordinated set of policy initiatives will emanate from some elitist circle jerk like Davos or Jackson Hole:

  • all gold mines nationalized globally, possibly structured into an International Gold Pool™.

  • mandatory buybacks of private holdings at capped prices

  • criminalization of unlicensed private gold ownership

  …and gold jewelry will be the MAGA hats of the future. It’ll end your career.

  I may be off on the details, but that is in essence what I would expect happens if the global monetary reset heralds a return to the gold standard.

  The powers that be will never admit causing the monetary crisis, will never concede that it was their policies over successive decades caused it, and they will never voluntarily allow a tectonic shift to move power and wealth to anybody other than themselves.

  So if you’re a big believer in preserving your wealth through holding gold (as I am), then this is definitely what you don’t want to be wishing for. This is what the Bitcoiners should be hoping happens to the goldbugs.

  As for the Bitcoiners….

  Bitcoin as world reserve currency will never happen

  Some Bitcoin maximalists think that it is destined to become the global world reserve currency because (wait for it)….

  It would essentially force governments to be honest.

  I should be able to rest my case here. Governments are congenitally incapable of honesty. Perhaps there was a point in time when that wasn’t the case, but it certainly isn’t today, and the governments we have today will not voluntarily move to a system that forces them to be honest.

  The only way Bitcoin gets made the world reserve currency is if it’s done in a way that removes any and all advantages from those who own it today. This is how the system works: the elites are in charge, and anything that comes along to challenge their authority is either co-opted or criminalized.

  The system is hardwired to preserve the power and privilege of the people running it, and as I’ve said in the past, the privilege isn’t race based, it’s based on the structure of the monetary system. 

  Both goldbugs and Bitcoiners think government bans are unlikely or unworkable. Just last week on Coindesk’s The Breakdown, NLW’s Long Reads Sunday was Alex Gladstein’s Can The Government Ban Bitcoin?, who wrote about the mechanics of implementing a ban on bitcoin…

  “a military home-by-home raid couldn’t work very well and would constitute a mass set of human rights violations.”

  …possibly overlooking that we are one year into a New Normal where that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden.

  Anybody under-estimating the level of overreach and oppression that all governments globally can undertake, in concert, has to either have been asleep for the last year or is so comfortably cocooned  in one of those “post-physical” lifestyles that they didn’t care.

  To be clear however, I mostly agree with Gladstein’s reasoning on why Bitcoin can’t be banned effectively. Which is also why I think that precludes it from being part of any kind of government sponsored monetary restructuring (that said, some central banks may start buying Bitcoin as a part of their own reserves, the first national central bank to ponder it that I know of was Barbados, back in 2015)

  If Bitcoin were to become the rails of the global monetary system, it would happen in a way where the governments can completely regulate every single aspect of it, including where and how you HODL, whether it’s legal to mine (or stake for other or future cryptos) and whether or not you’re permitted to self-custody.

  So if you’re a big believer in preserving your wealth through migrating into the crypto-currency economy (as I am), then this is definitely what you shouldn’t be betting on. This is what the goldbugs should be hoping happens to the Bitcoiners.

  The true enemy is EvilCoin

  If I can see horrible outcomes as a result of what either camp thinks would be “victory”, what am I doing about it? This is what I said in Part 1,

  “the entire debate pointless because people who invest in either asset class are doing so for the same reasons…If the job at hand is to protect one’s wealth from systemically rigged and disintegrating monetary regime, arguing for one over the other feels like trying to defend against it with only half the available toolkit….The entire gold vs crypto argument goes away when one realizes that there is more overlap in the objectives of each asset than there are differences”

  I’ve never been a Gold vs Bitcoin guy, I’ve always been a Gold and Bitcoin guy. And by “gold” I mean precious metals, and by Bitcoin I mean crypto currencies in general (I also like Ethereum, as described in part 1).

  

  The post-reset toolbox, from Part 1

  Personally I don’t see any danger that either camp will ever see that their preferred monetary asset becomes the global reserve asset. Gold doesn’t allow governments to embezzle wealth from its subject and Bitcoin is off the table. They would never go with an open source project pioneered by an anonymous cypherpunk. They just won’t.

  What is more likely and what I personally am betting on is this:

  There will be some form of global monetary reset involving Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). China is already a fair way down the runway with their Digital Currency Electronic Payments (DCEP) system and the use of digital cash is far more pervasive there already.

  China is dictatorship. There is zero personal freedom and there are no sovereign individuals. Their social credit system will increasingly regulate every aspect of every citizen’s most minute activities and it will be the envy of technocrats the world over.

  I am betting on The Great Bifurcation playing out in the classical liberal world as follows:

  

  Erstwhile democratic nations will implement CBDCs which will be the rails of MMT, UBI and eventually full social credit systems “with Western characteristics”.  As the middle class gets hollowed out, most people will fall below an impermeable membrane into the new serfdom. The defining characteristic of the underclass:

  • no assets (“The year is 2030, you will own nothing and be happy…”)

  • no income as we understand it today, it’ll be UBI which is more of a digital “scrip” than actual money

  • no job, no career no profession other than side-hustles, gigs and the odd outlier shot at being in influencer

  The people who owe more than they own will basically be screwed and if there is another financial crisis before all this happens, say one in which equities, property values get smashed down while the cost of living skyrockets, then what’s left of the middle class will be quickly sorted into either category.

  I am always surprised at how few people I talk to have ever watched Mr. Robot.  However its explanatory allegory around the two-tiers of digital money after a global financial crash is a compelling one.

  So called “Evilcoin” is the CBDC, run by the establishment and is more like company scrip of yore, redeemable across the company platform. Alongside EvilCoin is Bitcoin, which people prefer and what actually holds value and confers a greater amount of economic freedom.

  

  In short: we’re headed into two-tier society, one where the tier you’re in relies on which form of digital currency economy you’re participating in the most. That’s what we look at specifically in my premium letter The Crypto Capitalist (including which publicly traded companies will be the best ones to own here in the New Normal).

  If there is any single take-away from all this, it is this, as long as “the system” as we know it, stays on the rails, then:

  “Gold vs Bitcoin” is the wrong question.

  “What are the alternatives to EvilCoin?” is the only question.

  *  *  *

  To receive future posts in your mailbox join the Bombthrower mailing list or follow me on Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 21:25

• Royal Caribbean's Newest Ship Stuck At Port After Workers Catch COVID 
  Royal Caribbean’s Newest Ship Stuck At Port After Workers Catch COVID 

  Europe recorded more than one million COVID-19 cases last week, an increase of 9% from the previous week and a reversal in a six-week decline. There are fears of new variants spreading around the continent. So it comes as no surprise that members of Royal Caribbean International’s newest cruise ship, Odyssey of the Seas, recently tested positive for the virus, forcing the vessel to remain docked at Bremerhaven, Germany, reported NDR German news site. 

  Several German newspapers reported that “two employees on the Odyssey of the Seas” tested positive for the virus on Mar. 3 and were confirmed on Mar. 4 via PCR tests. The estimated 500 crew and workers have been quarantined on the ship. 

  

  According to NDR, the port medical service in Bremerhaven has ordered the vessel to remain in Bremerhaven until further notice. 

  The Meyer Werft shipyard already completed initial tests of the vessel in the North Sea. Further sea trials were supposed to be completed later this month, but NDR said it is “unclear when it can take off for the planned test drives.” The shipyard is scheduled to deliver the Odyssey to Royal Caribbean next month ahead of his first sailing from Haifa, a northern Israeli port city, in May. 

  This comes as the so-called U.K. variant has spread across Europe. According to WHO experts, the new variant is 50% more transmissible than the virus that surged early last year. 

  While the global travel and tourism industry is preparing for a banner year as vaccine rollouts and unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus has led some economists to believe there is massive “pent up demand,” it appears the virus pandemic continues to cause bottlenecks in the return to normalcy for specific industries.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 21:05

• Taibbi: The Prophet Of The Trump Era
  Taibbi: The Prophet Of The Trump Era

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  I entered Martin Gurri’s world on August 1, 2015. Though I hadn’t read The Revolt of the Public, at the time a little-known book by the former CIA analyst of open news sources, I hit a disorienting moment of a type he’d described in his opening chapter. There are times, he wrote, “when tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday… the compass cracks, by which we navigate existence. We are lost at sea.”

  

  Gurri’s book is about how popular uprisings are triggered by collapses of faith in traditional hierarchies of power. I felt such a collapse that day in Waterloo, Iowa, covering the Republican presidential primary. The first debate was five days away and the man expected to occupy center stage, Donald Trump, held a seemingly inexplicable six-point lead.

  Two weeks before, on July 18th, Trump lashed out against former Republican nominee John McCain. Even McCain’s critics considered his physical and mental scars from years as a Vietnam war prisoner to be unassailable proofs of his patriotic gravitas, but the service-evading Trump was having none of it. “I don’t like losers,” he said, adding, “He’s only a war hero because he was captured.” It was the universal belief among colleagues in campaign journalism that this was an unsurvivable gaffe, a “Dean scream” moment. We expected him to apologize and wash out. Instead, he called McCain a “dummy” and kept a firm grasp on the lead.

  A different candidate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, was in Waterloo. Two years before, Time all but dubbed Christie the favorite for 2016 with a silhouette cover portrait, over the nastily shallow (but publicity-generating) double-entendre headline, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Christie was every Washington consultant’s idea of a “crossover” superstar. I’d describe the concept in Rolling Stone as someone “mean enough for the right-wing, but also knows a gay person or once read a French novel.”

  Christie parked himself in the middle of Waterloo’s annual “Irish fest” street fair, waiting for an Iowan to ask for a souvenir campaign handshake. He had his hand out and thumb stuck upwards, like an Iguanodon. Nobody came. Kids ran around him like he was a shrubbery. Two young women, giggling about something that clearly had nothing to do with him, walked his way, separated just long enough to avoid hitting him, then linked up again a few yards down. He eventually posed with a few passersby, but the rubbernecking that usually attends the arrival of any “famous politician” was conspicuously absent.

  

  Later, I sat in the park discussing Trump’s stubborn grasp on the lead with another reporter, an Iowan. “It’s amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re beating the shit out of the guy, and he just won’t die.” He compared it to a nightmare, where you stab an attacking monster over and over, and nothing happens.

  Elections in the pre-Trump era had been stale rituals. As recently as 2013, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post called them “remarkably scripted and controlled.” Donors, party chiefs, and pundits could concoct contenders through sheer alchemy, mesmerizing the public with incantations like “electability.” But in Iowa that summer, one “electable” Republican candidate after another — from Jeb Bush to Scott Walker to Marco Rubio — flopped in public appearances, savaged as phonies on social media. Walker, the betting favorite among reporters, saw his campaign deflated when his online strategist, Liz Muir, started tweeting her real feelings about Iowa (including the classic, “#agsubsidies #ethanol #brainless”).

  I’d spent weeks crisscrossing the state in search of even one piece of evidence that conventional wisdom still had predictive power in Republican politics, finding none. Now, here was Christie, reduced from being lionized in a Time cover story as a favorite and a “guy who loves his mother and gets it done,” to being nobody at all, a clown standing alone in a park. The realization that no one was in control of the campaign show anymore was jarring even to me, a critic of the old gatekeeping ritual.

  In the introduction to The Revolt of the Public, Arnold Kling speaks of a different “Gurri moment”: when Dan Rather’s 2004 expose about George W. Bush’s military service was blown up by an amateur blogging under the name “Bucklehead.” In the past, a media titan like CBS could only be second-guessed by another major institutional power. In “Rathergate,” both the network and one of its most iconic celebrities were humiliated by a single individual, a preview of the coming disorientation.

  The thesis of The Revolt of the Public is that traditional centralized powers are losing — have lost — authority, in large part because of the demystifying effect of the Internet. The information explosion undermined the elite monopoly on truth, exposing long-concealed flaws. Many analysts had noted the disruptive power of the Internet, but what made Gurri unique is that he also predicted with depressingly humorous accuracy how traditional hierarchies would respond to this challenge: in a delusional, ham-fisted, authoritarian manner that would only confirm the worst suspicions of the public, accelerating the inevitable throw-the-bums-out campaigns. This assessment of the motive for rising public intransigence was not exactly welcomed, but either way, as Kling wrote, “Martin Gurri saw it coming.”

  

  Gurri also noted that public revolts would likely arrive unattached to coherent plans, pushing society into interminable cycles of zero-sum clashes between myopic authorities and their increasingly furious subjects. He called this a “paralysis of distrust,” where outsiders can “neutralize but not replace the center” and “networks can protest and overthrow, but never govern.” With a nod to Yeats, Gurri summed up: “The center cannot hold, and the border has no clue what to do about it.”

  Read the rest of the report here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 20:45

• Mutant COVID Strains In Florida, New York Threaten To Derail US Recovery, BofA Warns
  Mutant COVID Strains In Florida, New York Threaten To Derail US Recovery, BofA Warns

  Dr. Fauci and other health experts are warning about the prospect of a “4th wave” of COVID infections as mutated strains of the virus comprise a growing share of new COVID infections in the US, even as the JNJ one-shot vaccine promises to accelerate the pace of vaccinations. Worries about spreading mutant strains are being amplified by research showing that B.1.1.7 (first identified in the UK, also known as the “Kent” strain, after where it was first isolated and identified) might be on the cusp of becoming the most prevalent strain in the US.

  

  According to research cited in a note published Monday by a team of researchers at BofA, Florida is on the cusp of seeing the UK variant become the “dominant” strain in the state. And although hospitalizations, new cases and deaths have slowed in the Sunshine State, researchers are concerned that the variants are slowing the ebb of the pandemic in the state – and could possibly supercharge it. Cases and hospitalizations are still slowing in the state, just not as quickly as they were in January.

  

  The team of analysts at  BofA said these trends have raised concerns about Florida becoming a bellwether state for the spread of the new variants, which many fear could surge as states from Texas to Connecticut move to loosen at least some (or in Texas’s case, practically all) virus-related restrictions. The fact that the state’s positivity ratio has declined since the start of the year suggests that the virus truly is receding (in other words, the lower case numbers aren’t due to solely to a pullback in testing).

  Perhaps counterintuitively, the analysts at BofA are worried that the UK variant might not be as dominant in Florida as they believe. They also gamed out two additional scenarios that they said would lead to a greater outlook.

  We see three possible explanations for Florida’s continued improvement. First, the spread of the new variant might not be as far along as estimated. So the old variant might still be contracting off a much larger base, while the new variant is growing off a small base. This would not be good news as it would suggest an imminent increase in cases as the new variant continues to spread.

  Second, vaccines might be more effective at containing the virus than we thought, by making both vaccinated people and their close contacts less vulnerable. This would be good news because the cumulative effect of vaccines should increase quickly as the roll-out gains momentum. The third explanation, which is least likely in our view, is that the B.1.1.7 variant is significantly less contagious than widely estimated. This would probably be the best news of all.

  But Florida isn’t the only state struggling with COVID mutations: The B.1.526 variant that is believed to have originated in New York State is also raising concerns, according to BofA. New York cases have dropped more slowly than in the rest of the country, and have flat-lined in the last ten days. Hospitalizations are still falling, but, as the analysts remind us, they are a lagging indicator.

  

  Thanks to these trends, the Empire State now has the second-highest number of confirmed cases per capita in the country, after New Jersey (both are higher than California, which leads in total cases, though it’s massive population makes for a lower ratio).

  However, because the testing rate in New York is about 3x the national average, the positivity ratio – measuring number of positive cases vs. total tests – in the state has been steady at around 3.2% for about a week, compared with the national average of nearly 5%. So, while New York might be feeling the impact of the new variant, the team at BofA doesn’t see reason for alarm until the positivity rate moves significantly higher.

  Looking at the US in total, the analysts at BofA believe new COVID cases could climb in the coming weeks due to the growing presence of the new mutant “variant” strains. Fortunately, they only expect a modest rise through the end of April, after which, they believe, case numbers will move lower again.

  Of course, all of this depends on how effective the first generation of vaccines is in offering protection to patients from the growing number of mutant strains.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 20:25

• Repo Chaos Continues: "Market Just Doesn't Know Where To Price The 10-Year"
  Repo Chaos Continues: “Market Just Doesn’t Know Where To Price The 10-Year”

  The Federal Reserve and Jay Powell want to pretend that all is well with the repo market, but nothing could be further from the truth.

  Last Thursday, we presented to our readers the latest repo market data showing just how broken and inverted the traditional fund flows surrounding the world’s “most liquid” and important security had become in “Historic Repo Market Insanity: 10Y Treasury Trades At -4% In Repo Ahead Of Monster Short Squeeze.” One day later, the chaos got even worse as discussed in “10Y Treasury Hits A Stunning -4.25% In Repo As Yields Blow Out.” Very simply, this meant that an investor in the repo market lending money so others could short the 10Y would end up paying rather than getting paid. As we explained said “this is a clear breach of one of the most fundamental relationships in the repo market, where lenders of cash always get paid – however little – in order to make a more liquid and efficient market.”

  The repo rate sliding far below the “fails charge” of 3.00% which is viewed as the lowest theoretical level where dealers are punished for not delivering a 10Y Treasury i.e., there is a delivery “fail”, was striking but what was even more striking is that the recent repo crunch has been surpassed just once in history: when the 10Y hit a record low repo print of -5.75% during the fear and loathing of the covid crash chaos on 3/13/20, when the Treasury bond market essentially broke down for several hours.

  

  And even though the self-proclaimed “repo experts” and various assorted Fed cheerleaders were certain that this historic repo inversion – which as we explained was the result of unprecedented, record shorting of the 10Y Note – would normalize as soon as today following last week’s announcement of Wednesday’s $38BN 10Y auction, this has not happened. In fact, the situation has only gotten worse, with the 10Y opening at -2.65% and trading as low as -3.75% – below the fails charge for the 4th straight day…

  

  … before closing at -2.90% according to Curvature Securities.

  Commenting on today’s action, Curvature’s Scott Skyrm repeats what we already knew, that there is such a massive short out there that there are simply not enough securities for all shorts to be covered, meanwhile continued shorting piles on leading to even more negative repo rates:

  “the market took $8.5 billion (out of  $8.5 billion available) today from the Fed and took $9.9 billion out of $9.9 billion on Friday. The Street needs the SOMA securities lending supply to cover the shorts, and not all shorts are getting covered!”

  So desperate are shorts that they are covering with Off-the-Runs: “There’s no doubt that some shorts rolled back into the Old 10 Year, because there’s more interest in the Old 10 Year over the past two days”, Skyrm writes with Bloomberg echoing what we said last week, namely that “when the interest rate on overnight cash loans backed by the newest 10-year note goes below -3%, it’s cheaper to pay the regulatory fine for failing to return the collateral on time than it is to renew the loan — a sign that short selling is intense” and that there simply isn’t enough underlying paper available to cover all shorts.

  But the most interesting observations is the repo guru’s comparison between the O/N average repo an the March 15 term (when the 10Y settles): as Skyrm notes, “one thing that’s really interesting is how the 3/15 term market follows the overnight average. Basically, that means the market doesn’t know where to price the 10 Year.”

  
  The convergence of the two series means that “there’s no expectation of [the price] loosening or tightening this week” and while Skyrm admits he has no idea what happens next, he adds that “the market just doesn’t know” either. However, “whichever direction it goes, it will be volatile!”

  Finally, Bloomberg once again ends on an optimistic note, inferring from past examples of superspecial repo tightness that the repo market “may remain tight until this week’s $38BN reopening auction settles on March 15.” Of course, if that doesn’t happen, and if the repo chaos persists all the way into the March 17 FOMC, then all bets are off. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 20:05

• Assad & Syrian First Lady Test Positive For Coronavirus
  Assad & Syrian First Lady Test Positive For Coronavirus

  Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma have confirmed they have coronavirus according to a Monday statement from the president’s office and are said to be experiencing minor symptoms. 

  The statement said they were in “good health and in stable condition” and are continuing to work in isolation at home. The 55-year old leader of Syria and his wife – the latter who recently survived breast cancer, took PCR tests after feeling minor symptoms that were consistent with the virus. 

  

  The news comes on the heels of the war-torn country announcing last week that it’s initiated a vaccination campaign; however, few details have been made public. It’s unclear whether or not the president or first lady have received an initial dose of vaccine. 

  According to ABC News, “The health minister said the government procured the vaccines from a friendly country, which he declined to name.” Likely Russia is providing its Sputnik V vaccine.

  The official recorded case numbers in Syria are nearly 16,000 infections so far, including 1,063 deaths, but the true numbers are believed to be far higher for lack of testing throughout the beginning months of the pandemic. 

  Recently a storm of controversy erupted after international reports claimed that Damascus secretly did a deal with Israel to procure vaccines – something which has been batted down by both sides.

  “The New York Times reported last month that Israel secretly agreed to send Syria some vaccine doses as part of a prisoner swap,” Axios observed. “Both countries deny the report.”

  Next week will mark ten years since the start of the war in Syria, which almost immediately became internationalized into a proxy war pushing for regime change, and later a struggle between the US and Russia for dominance in the Middle East. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 19:45

• Ron Paul: The Fed Is Enabling Biden And Congress' Destructive Agenda
  Ron Paul: The Fed Is Enabling Biden And Congress’ Destructive Agenda

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 2021 will be the second year in a row in which the federal debt exceeds Gross Domestic Product (GDP). CBO also projected that this year’s federal deficit will be 2.3 trillion dollars, which is 900 billion dollars less than last year. However, CBO’s projections do not include the 1.9 trillion dollars “stimulus” bill Congress is likely to pass.

  

  The CBO’s report was largely ignored by Congress and the media. One reason the report did not get the attention it deserves is Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s continued commitment to making sure Fed policies enable Congress to spend as much as Congress deems necessary to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus panic.

  As financial analyst Peter Schiff points out, the Fed’s commitment to ensuring the government can run up massive debt means the Fed will not allow interest rates to increase to anywhere near what they would be in a free market. This is because increasing interest rates would cause the federal government’s debt payments to rise to unsustainable levels. Yet, the Fed cannot admit it is going to keep rates near, or even below, zero indefinitely without unsettling the markets. So, the Fed continues to promise interest rate hikes in the future and the markets pretend to believe the Fed. When (or if) the lockdowns end, the Fed will find a new crisis justifying “temporarily” keeping interest rates low.

  The Federal Reserve has not just endorsed massive federal spending, Fed Chairman Powell has also endorsed masks, vaccines, and social distancing to defeat the coronavirus and restore the economy. It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see the Fed go full Fauci.

  The overreaction to coronavirus is a cause of the explosion in federal spending and debt we have witnessed over the last year. However, federal spending already greatly increased from January 2017 until the lockdowns. This spending growth occurred under a Republican president, a Republican Senate, and, from 2017 to 2019, a Republican House. One bright spot in Democratic control of the presidency and both houses of Congress is more Republicans will fight excessive spending and claim to be “deficit hawks.”

  Republican hypocrisy in claiming to care about spending and debt only when a Democrat sits in the Oval Office is one reason why Democrats can so easily disregard debt. Another reason is the left’s embrace of Modern Monetary Theory. Modern Monetary Theory is the latest version of the fairy tale that politicians need not worry about debt and deficits as long as the central bank can monetize the federal debt.

  Unless the government changes course, America will experience a crisis greater than the Great Depression. The crisis will include a final rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. There will also be much increased price inflation. At that point Congress will have no choice but to limit spending, although it will try to hide cuts in popular entitlement programs by “adjusting” government measures of inflation. Congress could then blame the Fed for the reduction in value of government benefits.

  Those who know the truth have two responsibilities. First, ensure they and their families are protected when the crash comes. Second, redouble efforts to spread the ideas of liberty and grow the liberty movement so politicians are pressured to cut spending and debt and to end the Fed.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 19:25

• China FM Demands Biden Reverse "Dangerous" Taiwan Stance, Otherwise "World Will Be Far From Tranquil"
  China FM Demands Biden Reverse “Dangerous” Taiwan Stance, Otherwise “World Will Be Far From Tranquil”

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave his annual news briefing on Sunday and as expected he hammered away at America’s presence and increasing attempts to insert itself politically in the South China Sea region.  

  In particular he demanded that the US stop “crossing lines and playing with fire” on Taiwan in a stark message to Biden, underscoring that Beijing sees “no room for compromise or concessions” when it comes to Chinese sovereignty over the democratically ruled island. Biden’s doubling down on many Trump policies when it comes to ‘confronting’ China was described by Wang as a “dangerous practice” that must be immediately reversed. 

  And what sounds like both a warning to other global powers and a threat to the US in particular, Wang continued: “It is important that the United States recognizes this as soon as possible,” adding that, “Otherwise, the world will remain far from tranquil.”

  

  He emphasized a litany of instances of US “bullying” and “interference” in China’s own affairs, describing Washington’s “willfully interfering in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy and human rights.” One example given was the US calling out human rights abuses against the minority Uighur Muslim population. “The claim that there is genocide in Xinjiang couldn’t be more preposterous. It is just a rumor fabricated with ulterior motives and a lie through and through,” he said.

  Wang’s remarks were issued on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. The major parliamentary session to kick off the year occurs every Spring. This year the NPC is set to initiate a far-reaching overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system, intent on further cementing its power following last year’s draconian national security law which has effectively crushed anti-mainland dissent.

  Former governor of Hong Kong Lord Chris Patten was cited in BBC as saying that China’s Communist Party had “taken the biggest step so far to obliterate Hong Kong’s freedoms and aspirations for greater democracy under the rule of law”.

  Wang, however, touted in his remarks that, “Hong Kong’s shift from chaos to stability fully serves the interests of all parties. It will provide stronger guarantees for safeguarding Hong Kong citizens’ rights and foreign investors’ lawful interests.”

  The one-China principle is a “red line” that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday, adding that the Chinese government will never compromise on the Taiwan question. pic.twitter.com/btorhWohY3

  — Chinese Embassy in CZ (@ChineseEmbinCZ) March 7, 2021

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

  The US and European countries have condemned these moves to ensure only “patriots” can run in Hong Kong elections. Wang had this and other examples in mind when in his address he touted Beijing’s recent ‘successes’ in battling “hegemony, high-handedness and bullying” and “outright interference in China’s domestic affairs” out of Washington.

  Another example offered was concerning recent US and Western allied naval maneuvers: “The US and other Western countries frequently stir up troubles in the region, trying to drive a wedge using the South China Sea issue. They have only one purpose: to sabotage peace and disturb regional stability,” Wang said.

  Interestingly enough Wang offered one starting point for US cooperation as potentially happening on the climate front. “I hope China and the U.S. restarting cooperation on climate change can also bring a positive change of climate to bilateral ties,” Wang said.

  * * *

  Additionally Wang’s briefing reviewed China’s relations with other major world powers and how Beijing is handling pressing crises like the pandemic as follows, according to a Bloomberg review:

  • Europe relations: “China and Europe are two important players in this multipolar world. The relationship is equal. It is open. It is not targeting any third party or controlled by anyone else.”
  • Vaccine diplomacy: “We’re also ready to work with the International Olympic Committee to provide vaccines to Olympians.”
  • Trade: “The answer is not to retreating to protectionism, isolation or decoupling, but to work together to make globalization open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.”
  • Japan tensions: “I hope that Japanese society will embrace a more objective and rational conception of China, and solidify public support for long-term steady progress in China-Japan relations.”
  • Indian border: “The rights and wrongs of what happened in the border area last year are clear, so are the gains and losses. The facts once again prove that unilaterally creating confrontation will not solve the problem.”
  • Russia cooperation: “We will set the example of strategic mutual trust by firmly supporting each other in upholding core and major interests, jointly opposing color revolutions, countering disinformation, and safeguarding national sovereignty and political security.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 19:05

• By One Gauge, Inflation Fears Are The Highest This Century
  By One Gauge, Inflation Fears Are The Highest This Century

  By Ven Ram, Bloomberg macro commentator

  What do you get when you combine potent fiscal and monetary stimulus with a U.S. economy on the cusp of a rebound amid surging oil prices? The answer: fears that medium-term inflation relative to the longer term running at the fastest clip since nearly the turn of the century.

  The spread between U.S. five- and 10-year inflation breakevens is now the most positive it’s ever been in Bloomberg data going back to the start of 2002. The differential, which may be thought of as the market’s evolution of inflation over the medium term versus the longer term, went briefly above zero following the financial crisis as well, but wasn’t so pronounced.

  

  The differential is a sign of the market’s collective thinking that the $1.9-trillion fiscal relief ready for endorsement by the House will stoke price pressures over the medium term without necessarily impinging on the evolution of inflation over the longer term. In other words, secular inflation may still be elusive, which is another reason why the Fed may decide to look past price pressures in the here and now (and witness how prescient last year’s virtual Jackson Hole conference seems in hindsight in the context of average inflation targeting, though I would call it serendipity).

  The surge in non-farm payrolls for February and the progress on vaccination show a strong economic rebound may be on the cards. As if on cue, Brent crude prices are hovering around $70 a barrel. All these mean that the breakeven spread is likely to stay elevated for now.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 18:45

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• Welcome To The Inversion
  Welcome To The Inversion

  Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

  Getting along by going along with the patently absurd…

  

  A seamless web, they all believe because they all believe.

  – The Gordian Knot, Robert Gore, 2000

  If it seems like the world has turned upside down it’s because it has. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Truth is lies and lies are truth. Knowledge is ignorance and ignorance is knowledge. Success is failure and failure is success. Reality is illusion and illusion is reality.

  It would be comforting to say that this inversion is a plot by nefarious others. Comforting, but not true, in the pre-inversion meaning of the word true. Rather it stems from answers to questions that confront everyone. To think for yourself or believe with the group? To stand alone or cower with the crowd? It’s the conflict between the individual and the collective, and between what’s true and what’s believed.

  We live in an age of fear. It’s not fear of germs, war, poverty or any other tangible threat that most besets humanity. It’s the fear of being disliked and ostracized by the group.

  If every age has its emblematic technology, ours is social media, with its cloying likes and thumbs up and its vicious cancellations, doxing, and deplatforming. No longer must you wander through life plagued by that nagging insecurity—am I liked? Now you can keep virtual score: you not only know if you’re liked or disliked, you know how much and by whom. Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn’t seem to help; the scoreboards only amplify the insecurity. What was once an occasionally troubling question, privately asked of one’s self, has become a widely held, public obsession.

  The official Covid-19 response is the apotheosis of inversion and probably the one that runs it off the rails. There’s a model that has repeatedly erred predicting infection and death rates by orders of magnitude. Use it! Politicians and bureaucrats, the two most power-hungry groups on the planet, are clamoring for unlimited powers to destroy jobs, businesses, economies, lives, and liberty. Give it to ’em, no questions asked! Sunshine, Vitamin D, fresh air, and exercise prevent diseases and lessen their symptoms’ severity. Lock ’em up! Lockdowns aren’t working. Lock ’em up harder! Masks don’t prevent or hinder viral transmission, their packaging says so. Double, triple, or better yet, quadruple mask! At high cycle thresholds, the PCR test throws off many false positives, inflating case counts. Crank up the cycle thresholds until Biden gets in office! Cheap medicines hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin both prevent and cure the disease, provided it’s not too far advanced. Discourage their use! They work better than expensive vaccines. Make vaccinations mandatory! Scores of reputable and eminent doctors and scientists are questioning and criticizing the protocols. Censor them and follow our shapeshifting science! Death counts are inflated because hospitals have a financial incentive to attribute deaths to Covid-19 and anybody who has tested positive and subsequently dies of whatever cause is labeled a Covid-19 death. If they scare people into saving just one life…. The cure is far worse than the disease. Shut up or we’ll shut you up! There’s always germs out there and they constantly mutate, this horseshit could last forever. New Normal, Great Reset. It will last forever, and it will get worse, won’t it? We’ll circle back on that.

  Peer pressure is the fundamental force of the social universe. Anyone who’s part of a collective will be pressured to accept its consensus on matters trivial and important. Congruence between what a collective believes and truth is happenstance. The larger the group, the higher the chance of incongruence.

  Groups don’t think, they perpetuate and enforce belief. Collectives collectivize what passes for thought, none more so than governments. There’s always the danger that someone might ask why those who rule get to club everyone else into submission. Rulers either suppress that question or try to provide a nominal justification. If they have the clubs, what are they worried about?

  The ruling caste is always small compared to the ruled. No matter how many clubs it has and how overmatched the subjects may be, the ruling caste knows its position is more secure if their subjects believe their propaganda and consent to their rule. The underpinnings of frightened compliance with, “Do as you’re told or else!” are rickety compared to a chorus chanting in unison “We’re all in this together!” or some such rot.

  None are so enslaved as those chained to group belief. Truth is irrelevant, group acceptance paramount. Belief is unquestioned and unchallenged, truth the shunned and hated enemy. Governments have promoted this inversion for centuries, always telling the same lies. Faith in government may be the strongest and longest-lived secular religion, and it’s certainly the one most resistant to questions, investigation, or contrary evidence.

  The script never varies. We’re good, they’re bad, exterminate them. Conquest, domination, and empire are our nation’s greatness. Need not greed: those who earn it are selfish for trying to keep it; we’re virtuous for taking it away. Our pieces of paper are good as gold. Your squalor has nothing to do with our opulent lifestyles; be grateful for your bread and circuses. Dissidence must be suppressed; opposition is traitorous. Ruination and death are everyone’s fault but ours. You just weren’t good enough to live up to our ideals.

  Inversions can only last so long. People consciously or unconsciously reject them, and reality doesn’t invert. A small coterie in Washington may believe they run a global empire, but Russia and China refuse to kowtow, even nominal allies are backing away, and the costs of maintaining its crumbling empire are helping drive the US into bankruptcy. What US cheerleaders call the best military in the world hasn’t won a significant war since World War II and its fighting forces are being ideologically culled or indoctrinated in wokesterism, systematically rendering it even less fit to fight.

  The censors no longer hide their censorship. There are stories that cannot be reported, questions that cannot not be asked, investigations that cannot be launched, platforms that cannot be allowed, and issues that cannot be discussed within the captured media. It cried foul when Donald Trump made “fake news” a catch phrase, but it caught on because it confirmed what millions know: much of today’s “news” is fraudulent propaganda.

  After a month-and-a-half of one-party rule it’s clear that suppression is only going to get worse. Among those who intellectually stand outside the collective, suppression neither decreases belief in what is suppressed nor increases belief in the party line. They know the truth lies in what’s being kept from them.

  Subconsciously, even adherents to the party line never completely believe it. Fully “woke,” you may “know” that Western civilization is a discredited product of the white male patriarchy. However, do you throw yourself from the top of a tall building because the properties of gravity were first described by white English patriarch Isaac Newton?

  Psychological dissonance plagues true believers. What are they going to believe: dogma or their own senses and thought processes, such as they are? It’s the root cause of their psychic brittleness: the inability to answer questions or engage in debate, the insistence on ostensible agreement, and the need to suppress anyone who doesn’t go along.

  The fragility that tries to adjust reality to belief runs head-on into the desire among those whose behaviors are to be adjusted to live their own lives as they see fit, not to mention reality itself. America’s divide is between those who want to be left alone and those who want to tell them what to do. It’s so much easier for the latter if they can impose at least the appearance of consent on the former through suppression, fraud, or force.

  Reality doesn’t invert, no matter how many people believe otherwise. Governments and central banks will debase their fiat debt instruments until the illusion that they’re worth something is discarded. They have every incentive to do so and it’s happening now as governments go broke. Empires crumble because they require more energy and resources to maintain than they generate. The American empire will be no exception. The more production is taxed. regulated, and otherwise penalized, the less production you get. The more indolence is rewarded, the more indolence you get. As government’s power expands, people’s freedom shrinks. You can make people engineers or brain surgeons based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference or any other irrelevant factor, but it increases the likelihood that the bridge collapses and the patient dies on the operating table.

  A society that corrupts science, the basis for discovering, describing, and employing reality, is doomed. Honest science requires free inquiry and debate. It is a never-ending process of proposing, testing, evaluating, revising and discarding hypotheses for new ones with more explanatory and predictive power. There is no such thing as settled science. The claims that there is with regards to climate, coronaviruses, or any other scientific issue are nothing more than admissions that the purported science is propaganda. Unchallenged science is a contradiction in terms; challenge is the lifeblood of science.

  So add science that isn’t science to the long list of inversions that collectively could spell humanity’s doom. Consequences don’t recognize wishful thinking or political diktat. Climate and coronavirus dogma masquerading as science is the Trojan horse ushering in the great reset of a new world order. Global governance, state-approved science, political and cultural canons enforced with jihadist zeal, top down economic command and control, the eradication of any vestiges of liberty, and billions of unthinking adherents will destroy rather than build, compounding today’s inversions and creating new ones.

  The danger to all this is individuals who think and act for themselves, those who are woke to the woke, so to speak. The key to standing on the outside, critically examining what’s within, is to abandon any desire to be on the inside. The docile dreck and their puppet-masters within are usually sufficient inducement to stay outside. Once that decision is made, independence of thought is almost assured. (Those who see the inside for what it is and still want in are corrupt beyond redemption.)

  Challenge dogma and propaganda and you’re a dissident. Not always a comfortable position, but the dissidents will have the best shot at surviving the coming collapse. The insiders will suffer shattering disillusionment as reality obliterates cherished belief…and the insiders.

  The historically unprecedented scale of present inversions guarantees upheaval and change beyond reckoning when reality’s full force can no longer be denied or subverted. Even those who see things as they are and regard themselves as fully prepared will be shocked by what’s to come. At least they will retain the existential essentials of observational power and logic as they sort through the smoldering intellectual landscape, discard the inversions, and get on with the rebuilding.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 03/08/2021 – 00:00

• China's 7,500-Mile Undersea 'Peace Pipe' To Connect Belt And Road Countries 
  China’s 7,500-Mile Undersea ‘Peace Pipe’ To Connect Belt And Road Countries 

  The Trump administration spent the last several years bashing China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and called it a ‘debt trap’, and urged countries worldwide to resist allowing China to build infrastructure projects in their respected countries. With the Biden administration now in power, there has yet to be a visible protest from the White House of Beijing’s new plan to construct a 7,500-mile submarine communications cable from Pakistan to Africa to Europe.

  The high-speed, 7,500-mile Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) subsea communication cable system will offer high-capacity, low-latency routes connecting China, Europe, and Africa. In addition to France, the cable will land in Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya, Pakistan, and other countries with ultimate connectivity to China. 

  Some of the countries listed above are part of the BRI. China’s motive behind the new undersea project is to provide high-speed internet connectivity to Chinese companies doing business in Europe and Africa.

  “This is a plan to project power beyond China toward Europe and Africa,” Jean-Luc Vuillemin, the head of international networks at Orange SA, the French telecommunications that will operate the PEACE cable landing station in Marseille, France, told Bloomberg. 

  More interesting, Huawei Technologies Co. is the third-largest investor in Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., the company building the PEACE pipe. Huawei is expected to provide critical telecommunications equipment for the project – some of Huawei telecommunications equipment has been cited as a national security risk by the US. 

  

  Despite the Trump administration’s hard stance against the BRI and Huawei and other Chinese companies – the Biden administration has yet to visibly criticize China’s new ambitions to construct a global undersea cable network. Much of the internet around the world is transmitted in 400 undersea cables stretching worldwide, controlled mostly by US companies. Chinese encroachment on the US’ dominance would likely usher in a response from the White House. 

  Bloomberg sources said the French government is prepared to take flak from US officials over the PEACE cable. 

  “It could look to mollify the US by keeping certain types of traffic off the cable,” another source said. 

  French President Emmanuel Macron told the Atlantic Council in February that France doesn’t want to isolate itself from China. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also had similar remarks last month. 

  Some European leaders objected to requests by the past administration to “decouple” from China despite security risks. According to security experts, risks are brewing that China could create backdoors into the PEACE pipe to siphon data. 

  “Any time that you have your data traveling over their switches, their cables—these are the source of redirecting traffic and eavesdropping,” said Robert Spalding, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute policy group in Washington. “It’s just common sense.”

  China’s attempt to control the world’s internet could be realized in the next couple of decades. The Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Netherlands-based Leiden Asia Center estimates China could be the owner of at least 20% of undersea communication cables worldwide by the end of the decade. 

  The great power competition between the world’s two largest economies is now spilling into the internet’s physical layers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 23:30

• So Much For A 'National Healing'
  So Much For A ‘National Healing’

  Authored by Peter R. Quinones via The Libertarian Institute,

  We were told the nation was in desperate need of “healing” because a large portion of the population wanted Donald Trump to “lead” the country. And if you believe that the “national healing would begin” because the “adults” are in the White House…well, you’re a dupe. The response by the corporate press and their supporters to the first freeze to happen in Texas in decades should put to rest any thoughts that the elites, especially the journalists, desire unity. Mass power outages were experienced throughout Texas and the establishment didn’t even attempt to hide their joy.

  The situation many Texans faced over that week couldn’t be because freezes like this are so rare in Texas that the grid is not designed to handle the overload in demand or the freezing of its physical infrastructure. No, that can’t be it. The only reason millions of “bumbling hicks” were forced to endure power outages is because so many of them believe CNN and MSNBC are “fake news” and this belief caused them to vote for Trump. It’s amazing to me that a segment of the population that is so anti-religion adopts such a “wrath of God” or “Karma’s a bitch” stance so often when it comes to their adversaries.

  

  I know many people who live in Texas and have been in constant contact with them. Thankfully they’re fine. But, was I shocked by this incident? As someone who lived through “Snowmageddon” in Atlanta in 2014, the answer to that is…hardly. In that year Atlanta was shut down by two inches of snow. Seriously, look it up. The snow started in the middle of the work day – roughly 11:30 AM EST – at which time school buses were loaded to take kids home and everyone left work. If you are at all familiar with Atlanta traffic, on a normal day we do not need multiple accidents to experience the second worst commute in the United States. It’s just every day congestion.

  Now, imagine everyone within the city limits and surrounding areas leaving work at the same time. Add in two inches of snow which many people are not used to driving in and it was like a scene from The Walking Dead. People slept in their cars on the freeways and side streets, with many not able to get home for 24 hours. And guess what? The coastal elites went to social media and their news outlets to talk about what a bunch of hicks we were.

  Why did Snowmageddon happen? It was a perfect storm of events that all occurred at once. If the storm had occurred at 3 AM, the majority of people would’ve been peacefully sleeping and the number of people trapped in cars would’ve been minimal. Atlanta wasn’t prepared because what happened during Snowmageddon had never before occurred. Apply that “not the norm” occurrence to the freeze in Texas and you have your answer to the state’s recent problems. Atlanta now has snow plows, but more importantly, schools close and businesses are asked to not open if there’s a threat of a midday snow storm.

  I expect the freeze in Texas will cause the local and state governments there to have similar plans in place so that the power outages, with all the associated impacts, will not occur in the future. Or they’ll devise some scheme that will mitigate how widespread the outages will be.

  Even if they don’t construct a plan for the future, the fact that the “enemy class” is using the freeze as an opportunity for ad hominem attacks against Texans should tell you everything you need to know about their so-called plans to “heal the divides.” If anything, I expect the attacks to escalate and hope they do. Popcorn futures are booming!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 23:00

• Robo-Waiters Prove To Be A Necessity For Contactless Portland-Area Bistro
  Robo-Waiters Prove To Be A Necessity For Contactless Portland-Area Bistro

  About one-year into the virus pandemic, the return to normalcy for the restaurant industry is unlikely. More than 100,000 restaurants have already failed, revenues remain collapsed, and millions of workers are laid off. There was a glimmer of hope on Friday when some 75% of all US job gains in February were waiters and bartenders; besides that, COVID-19 has cleared the way for restaurant automation. 

  Automated kiosks, robotic bartenders, flippy the hamburger robot, automated pizza kitchens, and the list go on and on how restaurant operators who survived lockdowns are finding digital solutions for ordering, food preparations, delivery, and even serving. 

  While health experts are suggesting people stay at least 6 feet from others, one restaurant in Portland, Oregon, has found an innovative way to serve food without face-to-face interactions with patrons. 

  At Bistro Royale in Beaverton, the restaurant uses autonomous robots to minimize customer interaction between staff and customers while serving food. 

  

  Kalvin Myint, a co-owner of Bistro Royal, told the local newspaper Mail Tribune that he began using the robot last August. 

  “I love to actually play with all these new technologies,” said Myint. “So, when we were looking for a solution, in terms of providing a safer dining experience, my tendency is actually to lean towards technology and see what’s available out there.”

  Myint and his wife, Poe, opened Bistro Royale during the pandemic last year. The couple owns another restaurant and divided staff between both to minimize layoffs during lockdowns. 

  “It was challenging, no doubt about it, but at the same time, it was also exciting in a way,” he said of opening a restaurant during a pandemic. “We love problem-solving, and it gives you a sort of motivation or push to try harder.”

  Myint said: “We have to keep evolving and changing and coming up with new things to sort of forge ahead of everybody.”

  That’s when he decided to employ three robots (Milo, Navi, and the Beast). The serving robots use mapping software to navigate between customers and obstacles in the restaurant. 

  Myint clarifies that he does not believe robots can — or should — fully replace human servers.

  “In the robotic industry, there’s a lot of worry about robots taking jobs away,” he explained. “They’re like a cellphone, right? You have your cellphone as a tool. So, we’re using them as a tool to sort of amplify what they do best.”

  The robots are “celebrities,” he said. “We have families just come here for Milo. I guess he’s getting more popular than the restaurant.”

  Robotic servers, Kiosks and apps, and all other sorts of automation introduced to restaurants to maintain social distancing are job killers. While last month’s surge in restaurant jobs was inevitable, don’t get too excited that a “V-shape” recovery in bartenders and servers will be seen anytime soon – due to the deep scarring caused by the pandemic. 

  The ushering in of automation and artificial intelligence into the industry will eventually result in entire restaurants controlled without humans – that could happen as early as the end part of this decade. 

  What does this all mean? Well, technological unemployment will continue to rise for years to come. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 22:30

• Money And Statistical Delusions
  Money And Statistical Delusions

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  “I can prove anything with statistics, except the truth”

  — Lord Canning, c. 1819

  Does Canning’s aphorism still hold true, given that data collection and statistical analysis have progressed beyond all recognition in the last two hundred years? This article tests that proposition.

  It is still true, because of the interests for which statistics are deployed. We know, or should know, that CPI indexation of prices fails to reflect the true rate of decline in the purchasing power of fiat currencies. That is at least a simple case of governments saving money on indexation. But being economical with the statistical truth is a far wider practice encompassing input suppression, misleading deployment, and their use to support beliefs and preferred outcomes instead of backing up properly reasoned economic and monetary a priori theory.

  This article finds that the application of all these methods corrupt monetary statistics, including the three principal components of the equation of exchange. This analysis is sparked by recent changes to the definition of M1 money supply in the US.

  Introduction

  Monetarists have long held that there is a relationship between changes in the quantity of circulating currency and the general level of prices. It is not the only factor governing the relation, but it has been generally established to be true. So persuasive is the theoretical case, that no one — not even modern monetary theorists — deny it. We generally assume that the monetary statistics, the sheet anchor to the equation of exchange that emerged over a century ago, are reliable. But even monetary statistics whose components drop out of accounting identities end up being sliced and diced at the behest of the authorities, raising the question as to what we should regard as money at a time of unprecedented peacetime global monetary expansion. And the monetary policy planners moving the goal posts question by their actions the macroeconomic habit of relying solely on statistical evidence for predicting outcomes.

  In February, the Fed changed the definition of M1 to include “Savings deposits” and “Other checkable deposits”. They are now combined and reported as “Other liquid deposits”. The effect is to increase M1 but to leave M2 unchanged, as illustrated in Figure 1.

  

  The change accepts the reality, long recognised in the Austrian school’s definition of money supply (AMS), that depositors and banks assume savings accounts are just another form of money available for spending on day-to-day transactions. Monetary policy planners generally circumvent such considerations, looking at monetary definitions from their policy viewpoint instead of the perspective of money’s users.

  For statistics junkies, there is a disadvantage in that the new M1 is only readily available as a retrospective monthly average instead of a more current weekly average. This has the effect of under recording the increase of M1 in this statistic at times of rapidly rising monetary inflation. And importantly, M1 is so much modified by these changes as to be rendered useless as a statistical record of monetary inflation.

  This raises other questions, such as should we regard broad money or narrow money as the primary indicator of changes in the money supply? And, more deeply, should we ignore the statistical detail and try to understand money from an a priori analysis of the theory of exchange? This is the key difference in the approach of establishment monetarists compared with the Austrian school. Monetarists today, in common with other macroeconomic schools, test propositions by statistical correlation, thereby avoiding the necessity of sound theoretical analysis. Consequently, the definition of money rarely progresses beyond simplistic propositions. And its true use value, which is defined by less predictable human action, is ignored.

  The Austrian school generally disregarded the statistical approach to money, until Murray Rothbard attempted to define circulating currency solely in the context of US monetary statistics, work that was consolidated by Joseph Salerno.[i] But slotting different monetary statistics into any combination has never been standardised, so what applies in America, which cannot be precisely defined anyway, doesn’t apply elsewhere. Nor does it when the makeup of a monetary component is altered, excluded or included, such as the current modifications to M1.

  Therefore, whatever statistical evidence there is can only be used to corroborate a theoretical analysis, and not be accepted as prima facie evidence. As Lord Canning put it two centuries ago, you can prove anything with statistics but the truth.

  Defining money

  A theoretical approach to understanding money must start by defining it. This definition is taken from the glossary to von Mises’s Human Action:“The most commonly used medium of exchange in society. A community’s most marketable economic good, which people seek primarily for the purpose of later exchanging units of it for the goods or services they prefer. The circulating media most readily accepted for the payment for goods, services and outstanding debts. Money is an indispensable factor in the development of the division of labour and the resulting indirect exchanges upon which modern civilisation is based.”In other words, money is the medium that links production with consumption through the division of labour. It must be immediately available for that purpose. That certainly includes cash in circulation and money in the bank. Correctly, it is now argued by the Fed that because in practice savings are instantly available to bank depositors, that they are cash equivalents. But there are other important aspects of money, such as unspent government balances. Because that can be drawn down at any time, it is money as well, just as if it were money due to an ordinary depositor. But that is not included in the Fed’s definition of M1 (renamed M1 SL), which is an important omission given recent balances on the government’s general account of as much as $1.7 trillion. If, as well as savings deposits, unspent government balances had been included, M1 SL money supply would have looked more like Rothbard’s Austrian money supply (AMS) in Figure 2.

  

  There are good theoretical grounds behind the Austrian money supply calculation, but the absence of the government’s general account in the official M1 calculation disqualifies it from being a true reflection of cash and cash alternatives available for spending. Consequently, official M1 has not yet caught up with AMS, having risen from $3,977bn in January 2020 to $18,105 exactly a year later, an increase of 355%. Over the same timescale AMS rose from $14,082 to $20,614, an increase of 46% — less dramatic perhaps, but genuine.

  When it comes to managing expectations, a genuine increase in narrow money of 46% is of greater concern than a far larger increase due to changes in the statistic. This appears to be the reason for the Fed’s part-conversion to Austrian money supply. But they chose a halfway house, which signals perhaps less of a comprehension about what money represents to the wider public and more of a desire to conceal the true state of monetary affairs. And by suppressing interest rates, monetary policy attempts to increase the circulation of money which, the planners appear to believe, would otherwise sit in bank deposits unutilised. The fact that bank deposits are the backing for bank credit whose expansion is also desired escapes this line of reasoning, but that does not stop planners trying to increase the circulation of money.

  The velocity myth

  Even with M1 money supply at a lower figure that AMS, velocity of circulation is close to unity. Velocity is a widely accepted concept, used as a statistic to promote macroeconomic discourse. The St Louis Fed defines it as follows:

  The velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically produced goods and services within a given time period. In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. If the velocity of money is increasing, then more transactions are occurring between individuals in an economy.

  This is patently untrue. For it to be correct there would be no relation between production and consumption, and consumers would somehow end up with money to spend without earning it. Money-printing might appear to satisfy this condition, because some money is produced out of thin air instead of being genuinely earned by economic actors. It does not excuse this calumny. What makes this statistical approach acceptable to neo-Keynesians is the denial of Say’s law, which describes the rationale behind the division of labour and points out that money is the most marketable intermediate good whose primary function permits production to be turned into consumption.

  If there is one concept that illustrates the difference between a top-down macro-economic approach and the reality of everyday life it is concepts such as the velocity of circulation of money.

  Compare the following statements:

  “Whenever the interest rate on financial assets is low, the desire to hold money falls as people try to exchange it for other goods or financial assets. As a result, the velocity of circulation rises. Hence, when the money demand is low, the velocity will be high. Conversely, when the opportunity cost/alternate cost is low, money demand is high, and the velocity of circulation is low”.

  – Corporate Finance Institute – What is velocity of circulation?

  This is in line with monetary planners’ policy of interest rate suppression. They suppress the interest rate to encourage monetary circulation. But if this is valid, then the opposite cannot be true. Yet today, falling velocity to approximately unity with GDP has been accompanied by falling interest rates, even to the zero bound, disproving macroeconomic assumptions.

  The next statement is from an economist in the classical, Austrian tradition:

  “The mathematical economists refuse to start from the various individuals’ demand for and supply of money. They introduce instead the spurious notion of velocity of circulation according to the pattern of mechanics.”

  – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action.

  In effect, von Mises is saying it is free markets that decide how money is used, not state management of interest rates.

  The mathematical economist might attempt to argue that interest rates affect the relationship between consumption and savings, with higher rates reducing immediate consumption. But that is a red herring, because GDP includes business investment and government spending financed by savings and therefore money not spent on direct consumption. To further understand the errors in the velocity concept we must delve into its origins.

  The notion of velocity of circulation arose from the quantity theory of money, which links changes in the quantity of money to changes in the general level of prices. This is set out in the equation of exchange. The basic elements are money, velocity and total spending, represented by GDP. The following is the simplest of a number of ways it has been expressed:

  Money x Velocity = Total Spending (or GDP)

  Assuming we can measure both the quantity of money and total spending, we end up with velocity. But this does not tell us why velocity might vary: all we know is that it must vary in order to balance the equation. You could equally state that two completely unrelated metrics can be put into a mathematical equation, so long as a variable is included whose only function is to always make the equation balance. In other words, velocity is not a valid expression of the relationship between money and prices; it is merely there to balance an equation that otherwise does not exist.

  Von Mises’s criticism is based on the philosopher’s logic that economics is a social and not a physical science. Therefore, mathematical relationships must be strictly confined to accounting and not be confused with resolving economic issues. Unfortunately, economists and commentators have the concept of velocity so ingrained in their thinking that this vital point escapes them.

  The only apparent certainty in the equation of exchange is the quantity of money, assuming it is all recorded. No one seems to allow for unrecorded money or assets that can be assumed to be held as readily accessible cash alternatives. Furthermore, if the money is sound, as it was when the quantity theory of money was devised, one could deduce that after a time lag to allow it to fully circulate, an increase in its quantity would more directly tend to raise prices, because changes in the general level of personal liquidity in a population whose money is sound tend to be more stable than that under a fiat money regime.

  Today we no longer have sound money, whose purchasing power was regulated by human preferences across national boundaries without impediment. Instead, we have fiat currencies whose purchasing power is formalised in foreign exchanges and corrupted by state intervention. An illustrative example of the consequences is given to us from the Icelandic krona, which on 8th October 2008 suddenly halved in value, which had nothing to do with changes in the quantity of money, its velocity of circulation or Iceland’s GDP.

  In economic history, Iceland’s currency collapse was not an isolated event. The purchasing power of a fiat currency varies continually, even to the point of losing it altogether irrespective of changes in its quantity. The truth of the matter is that the utility of a fiat currency in the short-term is entirely dependent on the subjective opinions of individuals expressed through markets and has little to do with a mechanical quantity relationship. In this respect, merely the potential for unlimited currency issuance or a change in perceptions of the issuer’s financial stability, as Iceland discovered, can be enough to destabilise it.

  According to the equation of exchange, this is not how things should work. The order of events is first you have an increase in the quantity of money and then prices rise, because monetarist logic states that prices rise as a result of the extra money being spent, not as a result of money yet to be spent. With a mechanical theory there can be no room for subjectivity.

  It is therefore nonsense to conclude that velocity is a vital signal of some sort. Linking the relationship between changes in the quantity of money to the effect on prices is certainly more justified in the case of sound money, backed by and freely exchangeable into gold coin. But no material changes to the original concept have allowed for the different characteristics between sound and fiat moneys.

  Monetarist theory in its current form is at the very least still a red herring until monetarists finally discover velocity is no more than a factor to make their equation balance. It is indicative of the false mechanisation of human behaviour by modern macro-economists. However, it should also be noted that it is impossible to square the concept of velocity of circulation with one simple fact of everyday life: we earn our salaries and make our profits once and we dispose of them. That’s a constant velocity of exactly one, assuming no change in cash levels over the period under consideration.

  This is the irrefutable conclusion of Say’s law. But it was dismissed by Keynes in his General Theory to make way for his macroeconomic fallacies.

  The implications of monetary expansion

  Following Rothbard’s logic, that money and its immediately encashable equivalents in the mind’s eye of the individual are together the true money supply, we can see from Figure 2 above that in an economy whose annualised GDP is estimated at $21.5 trillion and with Austrian money supply standing at $20.6 trillion, it is 95% of all transactions, suggesting that the average economic actor holds almost a year’s worth of cash liquidity. Clearly, as a result of continual monetary expansion, the US economy is awash with money that hardly, on average, circulates.

  In addition to AMS, there is credit money, which is rightly excluded, because being on the other side of a bank’s balance sheet from deposits it is not necessarily available for immediate payments — the bank can always restrict issues of undrawn credit. In this category we can also include shadow banking balances. And payments by credit card are not instantaneous, the payment for goods being deferred by up to a month, so these and similar credit facilities must be excluded as well.

  Obviously, there is a link between bank credit expansion and the growth of deposits, raising the question of whether deposits so created should be included in AMS. The answer is no distinction should be made between deposits and those that result from credit expansion, because for the user all bank deposits are regarded as money, whatever their origin.

  Left to free markets and sound money, money would undoubtedly be scarce, but plentiful enough to act as the medium of exchange between production and consumption. Therefore, fiat dollar money existing in the quantity that it does is the consequence of easy money policies. Rather than assuming that negative rates will stimulate the population to use it, which is undoubtedly behind official thinking, efforts should be put into considering how to reduce the danger of excess money being unexpectedly mobilised for goods.

  The inconvenience of the current position is explained by von Mises’s description of money’s role as “a community’s most marketable economic good, which people seek primarily for the purpose of later exchanging units of it for the goods or services they prefer”. The risk is that substantial quantities of money will be mobilised for that function if people decide to reduce their relationship between owning money in reserve and owning goods which they do not immediately need.

  But with covid lockdowns knocking out swathes of industrial production, the goods and services are not available to satisfy this potential demand. Consequently, prices can only rise significantly until the money relationship rebalances. In other words, nominal GDP, being no more than a money total, which we discuss below, will appear to rise dramatically. And with official estimates of price inflation blatantly suppressed, officially recorded “real” GDP will be declared as evidence of the success of monetary policy in rescuing the economy. But remember Canning’s aphorism: I can prove anything with statistics, except the truth…

  GDP fallacies

  So far, we have shown the errors in official monetary statistics and explained why velocity of circulation is meaningless. Ignorance over velocity of circulation can perhaps be understood because the reasoning behind the equation of exchange predates macroeconomics and is a belief only partially backed by reasoning. We now turn our attention to the third and final component of the equation of exchange. Ignorance cannot so easily be justified about GDP, which was invented in the 1930s, and whose only practical use is to indicate to the state the potential for tax revenues. Its role in the equation of exchange as a substitute for prices is misleading.

  GDP is no more than a money total of recorded transactions during a period, usually over a year or annualised. It does not reveal the quality of transactions and economic progress as commonly supposed. It is consistent with what von Mises described as an evenly rotating economy. Again, we can refer to the glossary in his Human Action:

  “An imaginary economy in which all transactions and physical conditions are repeated without change in each similar cycle of time. Everything is imagined to continue exactly as before, including all human ideas and goals. Under such fictitious constant repetitive conditions, there can be no net change in any supply or demand and therefore there cannot be any change in prices.”

  By deflating it for officially recorded price inflation, GDP appears to meet all the conditions of an evenly rotating economy. Plainly, it does not accord with reality. Furthermore, if the quantity of money was constant and the balance of trade meant it was contained within a community, then that community’s GDP would also remain constant. The logic of this statement is unchallengeable.

  Therefore, numerical increases in an evenly rotating economy must come from the money side. In other words, if the quantity of money and credit in an economy is increased, so will GDP. And none of its increase can be attributed to an improvement in economic conditions, because it is modelled on a constantly rotating economy. This is clearly illustrated by removing monetary expansion from the GDP statistic, as illustrated in Figure 3.

  

  Deflating nominal GDP by broad money tells us that US GDP is indeed evenly rotating and has been doing so with not much variation for over four decades. The only notable exceptions were following the Lehman crisis when the US economy entered a brief downturn greater than the expansion of broad money, and in 2020. The latter reflects a large increase in unemployed and underemployed individuals who are still receiving direct payments from the government while locked down due to the coronavirus.

  The severity of economic contraction last year was thereby concealed by the expansion of broad money. And its further expansion since the last data point (Q3 2020) will continue to mask the true depth of the economic slump. And for further confirmation, Figure 4 shows the same relationship between GDP and money supply for the UK, where similar factors are at play.

  

  Establishment economists make no differentiation between the real economy and GDP. One never hears or reads any distinction between the two, and Mises’s evenly rotating economy is almost exclusively confined to a few unread pre-Keynesian texts. But its expansion being linked entirely to increases in the money supply reveals that its increase is completely meaningless. But then, monetary and economic policies need to deliver something to justify their existence, not to mention the livings of all the government economists and statisticians and of their opposite numbers in financial and banking institutions.

  But with all the inflation money being funnelled into economies today, there can be little doubt that GDP will increase accordingly. But as the charts in Figures 3 and 4 show, with productive capacity cut, the US and UK economies are in a depression.

  Canning calls out to us. Forget the statistics, just look around you.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 22:00

• Ted Cruz Rage-Tweets 'Fact-Check' Of "Lefty Press" & Sen. Durbin's "Lies" About Stimmies For Illegal Immigrants
  Ted Cruz Rage-Tweets ‘Fact-Check’ Of “Lefty Press” & Sen. Durbin’s “Lies” About Stimmies For Illegal Immigrants

  The passing, by The Senate, of the Biden admin’s $1.9 trillion package of pork and payoffs has apparently triggered Senator Ted Cruz. Having attempted to insert an amendment that would disallow the $1400 handouts to illegal immigrants (paid for by legal US taxpaying residents), he was attacked as a “liar” by Senator Dick Durbin

  Cruz had asked, “The question for the American people to answer is, should your money, should taxpayer money, be sent, $1,400, to every illegal alien in America?”

  Durbin said, “Undocumented immigrants do not have social security numbers. And they do not qualify for stimulus relief checks, period. And just in case you didn’t notice, they didn’t qualify in December… To stand up there and say the opposite is just to rile people up.”

  As is clear by the Twitter thread below – Cruz was none too happy about Durbin’s lies (which were dutifully repeated by the mainstream media)…

  

  Cruz begins by asking (rhetorically): “Want to understand why we’re so divided? Why each side seems to live in alternate universes?”

  Take a moment & examine the misinformation here (both deliberate & inadvertent)…

  FACT 1: Dem spending bill sends $1400 to each adult in US.

  FACT 2: Dems voted against my amendment to prohibit sending those $$ to criminals (murderers, rapists, child molesters) currently IN PRISON. EVERY Dem voted to send criminals the $$.

  FACT 3: I then called up my amendment to prohibit illegal aliens from getting the $1400 checks.

  FACT 4: Durbin then screamed “liar!” and insisted no illegal immigrants would get $$ because the bill requires social security numbers.

  FACT 5: Lefty “press” outlets, like Daily Beast, dutifully repeated Durbin’s charge. They did ZERO fact checking of their own, just said that my claim that illegal immigrants would get the $$ was “false.”

  FACT 6: Lefty pundits & celebrities like Morgan Fairchild happily repeat the charge that I “lied.” They know none of the facts, but in this politically charged world, the other side must always be wrong.

  Sen. Durbin Blasts Sen. Ted Cruz Over False Claims About Immigrants and Stimulus Checks https://t.co/WSZajbWzyU via @thedailybeast

  — Morgan Fairchild (@morgfair) March 7, 2021

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  FACT 7: As it so happens, it was Durbin who was lying, and he knew it. Why?

  FACT 8: There are 12mm or more illegal immigrants. 60% of them are from visa overstays. Many (if not most) of them have social security numbers.

  FACT 9: When Durbin said “illegal immigrants don’t have social security numbers,” he was deliberately saying something false, knowing it would be repeated.

  FACT 10: Under the bill’s language, MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS will get the $1400 checks.

  FACT 11: My amendment required that recipients would be “lawfully present,” i.e., legal.

  FACT 12: When Durbin falsely said ZERO illegal immigrants would get $$, I asked if he would yield for a question. Schumer, sitting next to him, bellowed “no!!”

  FACT 13: If Durbin had taken my Q, I would have asked, “if you’re right that no illegal aliens will get $$ under this bill…WHY ARE YOU AND EVERY DEM OPPOSING MY AMENDMENT TO DO JUST THAT?”

  The answer is that Durbin was lying, and he knew that Lefty partisans would reflexively believe his gals charge that I was the one lying.

  FACT 14: When the checks go out, millions of illegal immigrants WILL GET $1400 checks.

  PREDICTION: the Lefty press & pundits won’t cover it, and won’t care.

  Cruz ended by rather ominously – but accurately – pointing out that:

  “Sadly, that’s why we’re so divided. Facts don’t matter.

  Journalists don’t care about truth.

  Everyone is a partisan warrior.

  And we only believe news from our own side.”

  Unity?

  For America to come together, this must change.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 21:30

• PIMCO Rings The Alarm Over China's Sliding Credit Impulse
  PIMCO Rings The Alarm Over China’s Sliding Credit Impulse

  Three months after Zero Hedge subscribers were first made aware of the biggest risk for the global economy, Pimco has finally caught up and is ringing the alarm as noted in the latest observations from Bloomberg macro commentator Ye Xie titled “Pimco Warns of Risks From Beijing’s Credit Curtail.”

  1. Beijing sounds less sanguine about 2021.

  The government set the growth target this year at “above 6%,” well below economists’ forecasts of 8%. A 6% year-on-year GDP expansion implies zero growth from Q4 2020. Meanwhile, the budget deficit is pegged at 3.2% of GDP, lower than the record 3.6% last year, but higher than the 3% consensus. Taken together, the government seems less upbeat than most economists.

  Granted, 6% is the floor, not the ceiling for growth. Beijing may have intentionally set a low bar this year so that it could target a similar growth rate in 2022 to project the image of stability. The economy may turn out to be stronger.

  In any case, even if the government ensures it won’t yank stimulus abruptly, gradual tapering in credit growth is already well under way. As first discussed in December in “In Historic Reversal, China’s Credit Impulse Just Peaked: What This Means For Global Markets“, China’s credit impulse, or the change of new credit as a percentage of GDP, peaked in October and is following the similar downward path of the previous two credit cycles in 2013 and 2016. At this rate, the gauge could turn negative in the second half of the year.

  

  In a note on Friday, Pimco estimated that the credit impulse will fall to -3.5% of GDP by year-end, from a peak above 9% in 2020. All else equal, it may slow China’s economy to below-trend levels by late 2022, the firm’s Gene Frieda and Carol Liao wrote.

  What does this mean? Tighter liquidity is likely to lead to stress in China’s corporate debt market, they wrote (echoing what Zero Hedge wrote in December). While a soft-landing is achievable and the yuan remains attractive, the drag from China’s economy next year suggests that “developed economies may require stimulus for longer than currently appreciated.”

  2. The path of least resistance is for bond yields to move higher.

  Jerome Powell reiterated that the Fed is in no rush to reduce stimulus, but declined to say that rising bond yields are inconsistent with the central bank’s objective. That essentially gives the market a free rein to push yields higher, keeping Treasuries as the potential source of volatility for other markets.

  Chinese bonds remain insulated from the global bond rout, given they have largely priced in economic normalization.

  3. The trade-weighted yuan rose amid a stronger dollar.

  While rising yields lifted the dollar, the yuan managed to outperform other currencies, sending the trade-weighted yuan close to the highest since 2018. The foreign bond inflows continue to be supportive. “Real money” investors, such as pension funds, have boosted their overweight on the yuan to the highest level since JPMorgan included Chinese bond in its benchmarks in February 2020, according to Bank of America.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 21:00

• "We'll Level Tel Aviv": Iran Responds To Israel 'Preparing' Strike Plans Against Nuclear Sites
  “We’ll Level Tel Aviv”: Iran Responds To Israel ‘Preparing’ Strike Plans Against Nuclear Sites

  Iran has responded to a Fox News interview from late last week wherein Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel is currently updating its plans to strike Iran’s nuclear program and is prepared to act independently if the United States is not willing. The interview was unusually blunt even for Israel in terms of the defense chief openly stating war plans.

  Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami promptly fired back with a counterthreat on Sunday. He said Iran’s military will level Tel Aviv and Haifa should Israel do anything “out of desperation”.

  

  “Sometimes, the Zionist regime [Israel] out of desperation makes big claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran to allegedly threaten it,” Hatami said as cited in The Times of Israel via Iranian state media.

  “It must know that if it does a damn thing, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” he followed up with according to an English translation. Hatami was addressing a military ceremony.

  He further assured that Iran possesses all the power it needs to “maintain the stability of the country” and said the Islamic Republic can strike close to Israel also via “resistance groups” – which is no doubt a reference to Lebanese Hezbollah and militia groups that have been fighting in Syria.

  During Gantz’s Fox News statements two days ago, the defense chief had spelled out to the American correspondent that “If the world stops them [Iran] before, it’s much the better. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves.”

  “The Iranian nuclear aspiration must be stopped… We must defend ourselves by ourselves,” Gantz had asserted.

  NEW: Israel is improving plans to strike Iranian nuclear targets, Defense Minister Benny Gantz tells mehttps://t.co/19GiARhYoy

  — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 4, 2021

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  Prime Minister Netanyahu has also issued similar warnings recently, however, Gantz’s words were the most specific and forceful thus far. He had even handed the Fox reporter what was purported to be a classified target list against Iranian assets that Israel prepared.

  Gantz had also touted that Israel stands ready to attack Hezbollah positions throughout Lebanon and Syria – the latter country has been on the receiving end of Israeli airstrikes on a near weekly basis for much of the past year. The defense minister claimed that Hezbollah has “hundreds of thousands” of missiles aimed at Israel and is bent on the Jewish state’s destruction.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 20:30

• Hedge Fund CIO: The 1929 Crash Sparked A Chain Reaction That Led To WWII In 1939
  Hedge Fund CIO: The 1929 Crash Sparked A Chain Reaction That Led To WWII In 1939

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  Lost Arks

  “Illiquidity is creeping into credit markets,” said Indiana, the industry’s leading archaeologist, explorer. “Credit risks of the type Minsky identified have migrated from the banking system into capital markets.”

  Corporate borrowings through bond issuance, in turn captured in exchange traded funds, are an important part of that risk migration. “Even with the stability of credit spreads, this rate rise battered credit funds.” LQD is -6% YTD. “Fund outflows are $6.8bln YTD – the pandemic outflow from mid-Feb to mid-Mar 2020 was just $4.5bln.”

  “This week saw the return of credit ETFs trading at a discount to net asset values,” continued Indiana. “Small for now, averaging less than 20 basis points in the past three days.” As liquidity in underlying assets lessens, so too does the ability of participants to provide that liquidity through ETFs. “The discounts are capturing a marginal fray in liquidity conditions, an early warning,” said Indy.

  “And the crown jewels of global financial markets – Treasuries – saw a surge in the cost of borrowing securities this week. Illiquidity in Treasuries rose sharply.”

  

  Rapid Unplanned Disassembly (RUD)

  The 1929 market crash sparked a chain reaction that lasted a decade, a rapid unplanned disassembly, leading humanity to WWII in 1939. US unemployment averaged 18.2% in the 1930s, CPI averaged -2.0%. The S&P 500 lost 42% in the decade (real return was -29%). The 1970s RUD produced two brutal recessions, US unemployment averaged 6.4% and CPI averaged +7.25%. The S&P 500 gave the illusion of health with a 17% gain. The real return was worse than the 1930s, with a 42% decline.
   

  • In 1930, the US CPI was -2.7%, the S&P 500 inflation-adjusted return was -23% (the inflation adjusted 10yr Treasury note return was +7.4%). In 1931, CPI was -8.9%, S&P 500 real return -38%, 10yr note real return 7.0%. In 1932 (CPI -10.3%, S&P 2%, 10yr 21.3%). 1933 (CPI -5.2%, S&P 58%, 10yr 7.4%). 1934 (CPI 3.5%, S&P -5%, 10yr 4.3%). 1935 (CPI 2.6%, S&P 43%, 10yr 1.9%). 1936 (CPI 1.0%, S&P 31%, 10yr 3.9%). 1937 (CPI 3.7%, S&P -38%, 10yr -2.3). 1938 (CPI -2.0%, S&P 32%, 10yr 6.4%). 1939 (CPI -1.3%, S&P flat, 10yr 5.8%).
  •  In 1970, the US CPI was +5.8%, the S&P 500 inflation-adjusted return was -2% (the inflation adjusted 10yr Treasury note return was +10.3%). In 1971, CPI was 4.3%, S&P 500 real return 10%, 10yr note real return 5.3%. In 1972 (CPI 3.3%, S&P 15%, 10yr -0.4%). 1973 (CPI 6.8%, S&P -19%, 10y -2.4%). 1974 (CPI 11.1%, S&P -33%, 10yr -8.2%). 1975 (CPI 9.1%, S&P 25%, 10yr -5.0%). 1976 (CPI 5.7%, S&P 17%, 10yr 9.7%). 1977 (CPI 6.5%, S&P -13%, 10yr -4.9). 1978 (CPI 7.6%, S&P -1%, 10yr -7.8%). 1979 (CPI 11.3%, S&P +6.5, 10yr -9.5%).

  In both the 1940s and 1980s, investors who had emerged from the preceding decade with their capital intact made vast fortunes, equity markets boomed.

  Anecdote

  “The 19th century was defined by the formation of nation states. The US had just emerged from its UK ties, the treaty of Vienna created countries such as the Netherlands, France just had its revolution and rid itself of Napoleon, Germany unified and Italy became a nation state,” said the Dutchman, a private investor, his fortune built in the markets, trade, finance.

  “The 20th century was the era of the establishment of institutions, alliances, internal, global, the US Federal Reserve, the United Nations, many others in between.” International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Health Organization, NATO, the list goes on. Programs too: Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, state pensions. Countless agencies: CIA, FBI, NSA, NASA, EPA, FDA and so on.

  “A number of those institutions have come under siege in recent times and the level of trust embedded in them has eroded,” said the Dutchman, images of America’s horned Shaman seared in the global consciousness.

  History moves slowly, then fast, all at once. We read books, watch movies, and they compress years, even decades, into tight chapters, creating the illusion that periods of great change are apparent as they unfold, obvious to those living through them. And this then allows us to ignore today’s seismic shifts even as the ground beneath our feet trembles.

  “This erosion of trust can also be said about the Fed at a time when the need for credibility is perhaps greater than it has ever been, which makes the trajectory for financial markets going forward particularly difficult and potentially very volatile,” he said.

  “And it appears that forces are now in motion that will redistribute wealth, shifting it from capitalists to the workers,” said the Dutchman, taking a moment to consider it all.

  “There tend to be couple decades each century when it is a victory to have preserved your real wealth. This looks to be one of them.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 20:00

• Outrage Mob Goes After Cartoon Skunk Pepe Le Pew For "Normalizing Rape Culture" 
  Outrage Mob Goes After Cartoon Skunk Pepe Le Pew For “Normalizing Rape Culture” 

  The woke cancel culture mob continues trucking along with their crusade against free speech, targeting popular Dr. Seuss books last week as they said some of these beloved children’s books contain racist imagery. As the mob continues to look for stuff to burn figuratively, cartoon characters like Pepé Le Pew, a character from the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from the 1940s, is the next target. 

  

  New York Times liberal columnist Charles Blow recently argued in an op-ed and in a series of tweets how Pepé Le Pew “normalized rape culture.” He tweeted Saturday a scene from the cartoon: “Let’s see, he grabs/kisses a girl/stranger repeatedly, without consent and against her will. She struggles mightily to get away from him, but he won’t release her. He locks a door to prevent her from escaping.”

  RW blogs are mad bc I said Pepe Le Pew added to rape culture. Let’s see.
  1. He grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeatedly, w/o consent and against her will.
  2. She struggles mightily to get away from him, but he won’t release her
  3. He locks a door to prevent her from escaping. pic.twitter.com/CbLCldLwvR

  — Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) March 6, 2021

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  In a separate tweet, Blow continued: “This helped teach boys that “no” didn’t really mean no, that it was a part of “the game,” the starting line of a power struggle. It taught overcoming a woman’s strenuous, even physical objections was normal, adorable, funny. They didn’t even give the woman the ability to SPEAK.” 

  This helped teach boys that “no” didn’t really mean no, that it was a part of “the game”, the starting line of a power struggle. It taught overcoming a woman’s strenuous, even physical objections, was normal, adorable, funny. They didn’t even give the woman the ability to SPEAK.

  — Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) March 6, 2021

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

  The Media Research Center, a top media watchdog, responded to Blow’s op-ed following the recent cancel mob’s assault on Dr. Seuss, who said: 

  “Congrats to anyone who had “liberals try to cancel Looney Tunes” on their 2021 bingo card.” 

  In his op-ed, Blow said, “racism must be exorcised from culture, including, or maybe especially, from children’s culture. Teaching a child to hate or be ashamed of themselves is a sin against their innocence and weight against their possibilities.” He wrote that he “cheered” when he heard the news six of Dr. Seuss’ books were discontinued by its publisher because of “racist and insensitive imagery.” 

  Some social media users were not thrilled with Bow’s op-ed and tweets:

  One Twitter user said: 1. “It’s…a…f**king…cartoon. 2. It was made in the 1950s, when this society’s values and mores were a wee bit different. 3. Pepe always gets clowned by the cat in the end…every time. 4. It’s a fucking cartoon. 5. For those of you unclear on the point, see #1 and #4 above.”

  “I’ve never gotten relationship advice from a cartoon. Not now, and for damned sure, not when I was six. Jesus H. Christ,” someone said. 

  “Wait until people realize that Frosty The Snowman is naked and smokes a pipe in front of children. This never ends. Cancel culture is internet cancer,” another user said. 

  … and there’s this. 

  5. He doesn’t even know WTF he’s talking about. They’ve been multiple times in which Penolope the cat Loves Him. But He smelled Like what he was. A skunk. pic.twitter.com/hXI0KShYsQ

  — ScarletEmber (@Nightdragonx1) March 6, 2021

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

  This Twitter user makes an interesting point:

  “Yeah, this was on TV. it was normal to show it to children in an ‘evolving society’ it’s easy (for most of us) to see how messed up and wrong a cartoon from 80 years ago feels today, but few of us will imagine how what we are doing TODAY may look like 80 years from now.” 

  Perhaps, what the future will show is today’s mob-canceling crowd as “the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn,” said Rowan Atkinson, famous for portraying the characters Mr. Bean and Blackadder. 

  The former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, calls the left’s attempt to cancel culture a “poison.” 

  So every week, the left will cancel a book, cartoon, or anything that displeases them? 

  How about for a change, the left does something constructive – such as – cancel violent video games. Today’s youth are playing games such as “Grand Theft Auto” and or “Call of Duty” – teaching them murder and destruction is okay. While on the streets of America, millennial anarchists, for almost a year, have been destroying tens of millions of dollars in property through destructive riots. 

  Focus on today not what happened decades ago… 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 19:30

• Sen. Blackburn Wants NBA To "Come Clean" On Its Deal With Chinese State Television
  Sen. Blackburn Wants NBA To “Come Clean” On Its Deal With Chinese State Television

  Authored by Cathy He via The Epoch Times,

  Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is questioning the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) reported new deal with Chinese state television, the latest official to raise concerns over the league’s relationship with the Chinese regime.

  

  The NBA famously drew the wrath of the Chinese communist regime in late 2019 after then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Chinese businesses cut ties with the league, and state broadcaster CCTV stopped airing games.

  But Chinese media recently reported that CCTV will resume regular broadcast of the NBA starting with the All-Star Game on March 7.

  “Commissioner Silver cut a deal to air NBA games on the same station that regularly broadcasts Communist propaganda and forced prisoner confessions,” Blackburn told The Epoch Times in an email, referring to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

  “Commissioner Silver needs to come clean – did he agree to censor players’ free speech to return to Chinese state-run airwaves?”

  Silver said last year that the league faced hundreds of millions in losses from the Chinese backlash.

  Blackburn wrote to Silver on March 4, signaling concern over the league’s alleged television deal with CCTV at a time when the Chinese regime faces increasing scrutiny over its coverup of the COVID-19 pandemic and rampant human rights abuses.

  “While investigations into the origin of COVID-19 continue in Wuhan, the NBA seems solely focused on mending its relationship with CCTV even though it’s clear Communist China will distort, censor or terminate any CCTV broadcast that is seen as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the senator wrote in her letter (pdf).

  Last October, CCTV temporarily resumed its broadcast for the last two games of the NBA finals, a result of the “goodwill” expressed by the NBA for some time, a spokesperson for CCTV said at the time. “The NBA has made active efforts to support the Chinese people in their fight against COVID-19,” the spokesperson said.

  “It is safe to assume that ‘goodwill’ included the $1 million in medical supplies the NBA sent to the CCP,” Blackburn said in the letter.

  “China dominates PPE production worldwide, so it is deeply troubling that the NBA would send this aid, especially after witnessing the lack of transparency shown by the CCP throughout the entire pandemic and their continued grave human rights violations.”

  Blackburn asked Silver to provide details about the CCTV deal by March 30, including whether the agreement bars the NBA from speaking on topics deemed unacceptable to the Chinese regime such as Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang, and the financial impact of the CCTV’s broadcast ban.

  Last May, the NBA announced a new head of its China operations, Michael Ma, whose father, Ma Guoli, is a co-founder of CCTV Sports. Blackburn also asked the NBA to detail what roles Ma and his father played in the negotiations.

  The NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  The league also sparked controversy in July 2020, when an ESPN investigation revealed that Chinese coaches at the NBA youth training academy in the region of Xinjiang physically abused players. The NBA later confirmed that it had terminated its relationship with the academy.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 19:05

• Another Market Paradox: Wall Street Struggles To Explain Record Equity Inflows Amid Stock Turmoil
  Another Market Paradox: Wall Street Struggles To Explain Record Equity Inflows Amid Stock Turmoil

  Something bizarre is happening in the stock market: for the past three weeks stocks – and especially tech – has gotten hammered, with the Nasdaq briefly sliding into a 10% correction while the S&P has also been hard hit (although one can’t say the same for reflation stocks such as energy which have soared in recent weeks). Some other notable casualties: Apple has tumbled 15% since late January. Tesla has lost more than a quarter-trillion dollars in market value in three weeks, and more than $1.5 trillion has been wiped off the Nasdaq in less than a month.

  And yet, despite this hit to risk assets on the back of the recent in surge in interest rates, accompanied by a parallel spike in both the VIX, and its bond market equivalent, the MOVE index…

  

  … on Friday we reported that according to the latest EPFR fund flow data, $22.2Bn in new money flowed into equities last week, following the previous week’s massive $46.2Bn inflow which was the 3rd biggest on record, bringing the total 16 week inflow to $436BN, a stunning burst of inflows as shown in the chart below.

  

  So bizarre has been this divergence – historically, investors have always pulled money during times of stress and heightened volatility, instead they are plowing record amounts of cash into stocks now – that Goldman’s David Kostin dedicated his Weekly Kickstart report to the topic. In a note titled “Rising rate anxiety roils share prices but also supports outlook for strong equity inflows”, the Goldman chief equity strategist writes that as “rates rose, and equities fell, long-duration growth stocks plummeted, but equity funds continued to see large net inflows.”

  Equity mutual fund and ETF inflows have totaled $163 billion since the start of February, the largest five-week inflow on record in absolute dollar terms and third largest in a decade relative to assets. Even though the recent backup in rates has weighed on equity prices broadly, the pace of inflows into equity funds during the last few weeks has accelerated compared with the start of the year.

  

  In contrast, weekly flows into bond funds averaged roughly $10 billion in February, 50% less than weekly inflows in January. In addition, money market funds have seen net outflows of $34 billion during the past month.

  It is worth noting that retail investors are not indiscriminately plowing cash into all stocks, and instead the rotation into equity funds has most favored strategies that benefit from accelerating economic growth, in other words there has been a rotation of new money from growth and to value. Indeed, when looking in absolute dollar terms, while US equity funds have seen large inflows during the past month (+$62 billion), relative to assets, EM, Value, small-cap, and Materials equity funds have seen the largest inflows, consistent with the outperformance of economic growth-sensitive equities.

  And here Kostin makes a curious observation in trying to explain this flood of new capital just as stocks – well, mostly tech and growth stocks – get hammered – according to the Goldman strategist, “history shows that equity funds generally experience inflows when real rates are rising. During the past 10 years, the most favorable backdrop for equity fund inflows has been when both real rates and breakeven inflation were rising (Exhibit 2).”

  

  This, Kostin adds, is intuitive given that the dynamic typically occurs when growth expectations are improving. However, equity funds usually experienced inflows when real rates rose and breakeven inflation fell. In short, equity fund flows have been more clearly delineated by the trajectory of real yields than by inflation during the past decade.

  This certainly appears to be confirmed by the data: in his latest “Investor Positioning and Flows” report (available to pro subs), Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte also picks up on this divergence and writes that “bond fund flows slowed sharply this week as rates rose, but equity inflows continue to roll in” and like Kostin, concludes that “the rising rates environment continues to propel large inflows into equity funds (+$22.2bn this week)” although as one would expects, “equity inflows this week went heavily towards cyclical sectors and styles, while Growth funds saw outflows”

  

  Whether or not the chart above ends in tears will ultimately depend on just how much capital investors have to throw at reflation assets, oblivious of how painful the high duration crash in growth/tech stocks could be (and since FAAMGs still account for about 25% of the S&P500, it could be very painful indeed).

  Alternatively, it may well be that yields, inflation or growth concerns have nothing to do with the massive retail inflows we are observing, and it is all due to tidal wave of Robinhood/Reddit investors who have now habituated to buying every single dip. Indeed, as Bloomberg points out over the weekend, no amount of market turmoil has been enough to rattle retail investors who are now so habituated to Fed bailouts, they have yet to find a dip they won’t buy.

  According to Bloomberg, even though the market peaked almost a month ago, retail traders have plowed cash into U.S. stocks at a rate 40% higher than they did in 2020, which was a record year. Yet one way retail capital allocation differs from the charts above, is that “they’re opting for parts of the market that have suffered the most, doubling down in arguably risky ways with triple-leveraged tech funds and options galore.”

  Could it be that nothing but sheer stupidity and/or certainty in yet another Fed bailout is behind the record inflows? And is Powell to blame?

  Retail traders, many of them newbie investors, have consistently held strong, buying virtually every dip during what’s been the best start to a bull market in nine decades. But now the world is wondering how much it’ll take for them to call it quits, especially after a year in which retail traders were right way more often than wrong.

  “Historically it’s been a bad signal that retail investors are piling into the market and a signal of a top,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities Corp. And yet, as he admits in the very next sentence, “every time we tried to call a top in 2020 because of retail participation, it was wrong.”

  Just how aggressive has retail buying been? According to data from VandaTrack, which monitors retail flows in the U.S. market, retail investors snapped up an average of $6.6 billion in U.S. equities each week, up from an average $4.7 billion in net weekly purchases in 2020 even as stocks swooned over the last three weeks.

  They’ve doubled down on areas of the market that have been hit the hardest. Apple, which has plunged 15% since late January, was the most-popular retail buy this past week. NIO Inc., the electric-vehicle maker down almost 40% since Feb. 9, was the second-most popular. Next up were exchange-traded funds tied to the Nasdaq 100, the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 (ticker QQQ) and a triple leveraged version (ticker TQQQ).

  Because in a centrally-planned “market” where the Fed guarantees no losses ever, why not buy any and every dip? Sure enough, that’s what they did and boy did they buy the dip:

  On Thursday, when the Nasdaq 100 fell as much as 2.9%, almost 32 million bullish call options traded across U.S. exchanges, the fifth-most on record. The other four have all occurred within the last four months.

  There is one fundamental reason why retail investors are buying: the just passed $1.9TN Biden stimulus ensures lots and lots and lots of stimmy checks are about be deposited to daytraders’ checking accounts:

  “There’s a lot of excess liquidity and we just had this $600 check going to many families in January,” said Jimmy Chang, chief investment officer of Rockefeller Global Family Office. “We’re going to get an additional liquidity injection in the $1,400 check and part of that money is going into risk assets.”

  Incidentally, the question of how much of Biden’s $1.9TN stimulus  will end up in the market is one we discussed last week in the context of a recent Deutsche Bank survey:

  “Given stimulus checks are currently penciled in at c.$405bn in Biden’s plan, that gives us a maximum of around $150bn that could go into US equities based on our survey.

  

  Obviously only a proportion of recipients have trading accounts, though. If we estimate this at around 20% (based on some historical assumptions), that would still provide around c.$30bn of firepower – and that’s before we talk about any possible boosts to 401k plans outside of trading accounts.”

  Clearly, frontrunning that number is enough to get retail daytraders to flood the market with yet another round of dip buying for the likes of Karim Alammuri, a 31-year-old marketing strategy manager, who is one of many retail investors who’s been snapping up stocks. In recent days, he bought shares of fuboTV Inc. and SPAC Churchill Capital Corp IV. Fubo TV has plunged more than 50% since a December peak. Churchill Capital has lost almost 60% of its value in 11 trading sessions. He is not giving up however:

  “I plan on sticking around because I don’t want to take a loss,” he said by phone from New York. “A lot of very attractive stocks are on crazy discount right now, so I’m just looking to see how I can re-shuffle things to be able to buy them.”

  Naturally, with an army of retail investors standing ready to buy any dip, those declines have grown shallower and shallower. As shown in the chart below, the S&P 500 has gone without a 5% pullback since early November, or 83 straight days, the longest streak in a year. The end result of this persistent dip buying, as Bloomberg notes, “is a market with little downside. At its lowest closing level of 2021, the S&P 500 was only down 1.5% year-to-date. That’s the smallest drawdown at this time of a year since 2017.”

  

  So is this time different?

  Well, as we reported earlier today, Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson believes that the selloff has more room to go before it’s over. Bloomberg agrees and notes that “if past is precedent, that could mean the sell-off has more room to run. Retail investors tend to buy the initial dips, and it’s not until they capitulate and sell that markets ultimately bottom, according to Eric Liu, co-founder and head of research at Vanda Research. The firm’s data show that was the case in both selloffs in 2018, as well as roughly a year ago during the Covid crash.”

  To Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist for Crossmark Global Investments, their continued presence in the markets likely means elevated volatility will persist. Still, that doesn’t mean retail investors’ efforts are misguided.

  “Is there some dumb money in retail trades? Yes. But not all of it,” she said. “Some of these people are doing their homework, looking for opportunities and trying to take advantage of it. Some win, some lose — it’s really not that different than what professionals do on an institutional basis.”

  Maybe there is dumb money in retail, but that’s hardly what matters. What does matter – in our view – is what we reported earlier today, namely that last week we saw the biggest shorting among hedge funds since last May. And with the squeeze having started on Friday and clearly continuing on Sunday, the upcoming “mega squeeze” (which we predicted earlier today) is all that matters.

  As such while Wall Street ruminates about the cause (and reflexive effect) of the current record capital inflows into equity stocks amid growing market turmoil, the only thing that matters for this broken, illiquid market is positioning and right now the “max pain” is higher. A lot higher, especially since the Fed will have no choice but to step in if stocks continue to fall as all the careful centrally-planned work of the past 12 years would implode with a massive bang if it does not.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 18:40

• Stocks, Crude, & Crypto Explode Higher As Asia Opens
  Stocks, Crude, & Crypto Explode Higher As Asia Opens

  Just as we warned, US equity markets (massive short squeeze) and oil (Saudi bombing) are exploding higher at the Sunday futures open.

  Brent crude futures are above $70…

  

  …and WTI is above $67…

  

  And Small Caps are leading the surge in equity futures – now up a stunning 6% from the European close on Friday…

  

  Bonds are being sold…

  

  And the dollar is weaker against the JPY and EUR, helping to send Gold futures back above $1700…

  

  Elsewhere, Ethereum is also bid (EIP-1599 approval) back up near $1700…

  

  And Bitcoin is bid, likely helped by the $1.9 trillion malarkey that is just about to hit the US markets/economy…

  

  Cryptos are also helped by the fact that – much to the chagrin of JPMorgan who didn’t expect any other firms to follow TSLA and MSTR in adding crypto their reserves – Hong Kong-listed Meitu Inc., which makes image and video processing software, said it had purchased $22 million in ether and $17.9 million of bitcoin, making it the first time a firm has disclosed a major purchase of ETH for its treasury.

  While the company said that while buying crypto helps diversify its holdings away from cash, “More importantly, the Board considers this a demonstration to investors and stakeholders that the Group has the vision and determination to embrace technological evolution, and hence preparing its foray into the blockchain industry.”

  The question is – will any of this hold until the cash open tomorrow?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 18:18

• Betting The Farm On Moonshots
  Betting The Farm On Moonshots

  Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

  Ashley Revell of London had a mad itch he needed to scratch.

  The year was 2004.  The initial tickle came from a casual drinking conversation with a friend.  Revell couldn’t let it go.

  The idea, in short, required Revell to liquidate all his possessions, travel to Las Vegas, and ‘bet it all’ on one spin of the roulette wheel.  The idea was sheer lunacy.  Yet Revell was just crazy enough to go through with it.

  Revell sold off all his possessions over a six month period and traveled to the Plaza Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.  Then, one Sunday morning in April 2004, with his mom and dad standing behind him, along with a film crew, Revell placed $135,300 on red.

  What happened next?  Here’s Revell’s account:

  “That spin was the most amazing moment of my life.  It is a cliché but time did stand still.  It was just complete calm because I had done all the hard work.

  “Everything had all been sold.  I had no possessions.  I had decided whether to go red or black.  There were no more decisions to make – it was a complete feeling of freedom.

  “The ball sort of bobbled around and then landed in what I thought was red but it disappeared slightly from view.  I looked around and, as the wheel spun back into view, there it was resting in number seven.  Red.

  “There were a few people watching and they erupted.  They cheered and I just cheered.  Somebody ran on with a bottle of champagne and everyone was celebrating.  My friends and family were there going wild.  I had won £153,680 [$270,600].  It was just a crazy time of complete happiness.”

  Revell, no doubt, was extraordinarily lucky.  He could just have easily lost it all on this high stakes wager.  Then what would he have been?

  He would have been an instant fool without a dollar to his name.

  Art Fart

  Speculative manias always gain momentum through the expansion of money and credit.  A look back at past manias tells this story with familiar rhythm.

  For example, the mania for tulips in Holland in 1636 and 1637 was intensified by personal credit.  At the peak, sellers had no bulbs…yet buyers, lacking cash, made down payments in personal possessions or commodities.

  John Law’s Mississippi Bubble from 1718 to 1720 was puffed up by paper notes issued by his Banque Générale, later the Banque Royale.  The mania for residential real estate from 2003 to 2007, much like today, was made possible by low interest rates and the expansion of credit through mortgage backed securities.

  Objects of speculation – from canals, to railroads, to IPOs, to electric vehicles – may change.  But the mania follows a similar boom to bust trajectory.  One perennial object of speculation, which produces some of the more entertaining episodes, is art.

  In 2006, for instance, at a time when cheap credit was abundant, there was the “$40 million elbow” incident.  That was the approximate cost incurred by casino magnet Steve Wynn when he inadvertently stuck his elbow through the canvas of Picasso’s “Le Rêve.”  After the distinct ripping sound Wynn muttered, “I can’t believe I just did that.”

  Now cheap credit has delivered something called digital NFT art.  The NFT, pronounced ‘nifty’, stands for non-fungible token.  And they’re all the rage.

  The “WarNymph” NFT collection by Grimes, of Elon Musk fame, recently sold for $5.8 million.  And a group of crypto evangelists just live streamed the burning of a print of Banksy’s “Morons”.  Then they created a NFT, called “Burnt Banksy”, to represent the artwork – the recorded burning – on the Ethereum-based OpenSea market place.

  The individual who delivered the flame explained the rationale:

  “The reason behind this is because if we had the NFT and the physical piece, the value would be primarily in the physical piece.  By removing the physical piece from existence and only having the NFT, it makes sure the NFT due to the smart contract on the blockchain will ensure that no one can alter the piece, and it is the true piece that exists in the world.

  “By doing this the value of the physical piece will be moved onto the NFT and being the only way you can have this piece anymore.  The goal here is to inspire, we want to inspire technology enthusiasts and we want to inspire artists.  We want to explore a new medium of artistic expression.”

  Are you inspired?

  At the time of this writing, the auction for “Burnt Banksy” is still open.  We put the over/under at a million bucks.  What side of the wager do you take?

  Betting The Farm On Moonshots

  Betting your life savings on the turn of a roulette wheel – or digital NFT art – is remarkably dumb.  Yet after a decade long bull market that has now inflated into a real McCoy bubble, anything is possible.

  Millions of Americans are taking similar risks to what Revell took.  Only they’re using their retirement savings.  Moreover, they’re betting they can do much better than just double their money.  And they don’t even have to go to Las Vegas.

  

  Presently, thanks to a seemingly endless supply of cheap credit courtesy of the Federal Reserve, speculation is rampant. What’s more, there are countless vehicles for speculation that one can access from the comfort of their own home.

  Technology stocks, small-cap stocks, bitcoin, special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC), digital NFT art – you name it.  Indeed, the late stages of a credit expansion compels people to do insane things.

  The current spirit of the moment is not to just double your money.  A mere double is weak.  Today’s speculators expect much bigger returns.  They’re after moonshots.  They’re after overnight 10x and even 100x returns.

  People have watched their friends and neighbors quickly 10x their money in cryptos and technology stock moonshots – like Tesla.  They want moonshots too.

  But what’s this?  After hitting $900 on January 25, shares of Tesla have dropped over 30 percent.

  Is this just a short bear market for Tesla before Congress’s new stimmy checks inflate shares to new highs?

  Time will tell.  But we wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 18:00

• Mega Squeeze Coming: Last Week Saw Biggest Hedge Fund Shorting Since May
  Mega Squeeze Coming: Last Week Saw Biggest Hedge Fund Shorting Since May

  Last week was an emotional and P&L rollercoaster for every trader, and even though stocks closed almost unchanged from where they opened, what happened in the past five days was anything but smooth sailing…

  

  …. as the following daily wrap from Goldman’s Prime Service desk reveals.

  Starting Monday, when stocks soared in a relief rally from previous Friday’s tumble as yields stabilized, Goldman prime reported that the GS Prime book “was net bought for a second straight day (+2.1 SDs vs. the average daily net flow of the past year), driven by risk-on flows as long buys outpaced short sales 8 to 1.” Furthermore, “on a cumulative basis, the $ net buying from the past two days (Fri and Mon) was larger than any other two-day period since early November. While Friday’s net buying was driven by short covers in Macro Products, yesterday’s net buying was driven by long buys in Single Names.”

  Remarkably, according to Goldman’s hedge fund facing division, “all regions were net bought led in $ terms by North America and Asia. Asia saw the largest $ net buying in more than two years (+3.8 SDs), driven by long buys in Japan and to a lesser extent short covers in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, just in the US, Goldman says buying outpacing short sales 5 to 1.

  

  All of this changed the very next day when stocks stumbled amid renewed rising rate pressures and just a day after Goldman Prime saw a dramatic surge in buying, whiplash set in with Goldman reporting the “largest global short sales since May” with the GS Prime book was net sold yesterday (-0.9 SDs vs. the average daily net flow of the past year), driven by short sales outpacing long buys 1.7 to 1.” In fact, the mid-week puke wasn’t so much selling as short-selling, as “modest net selling (-0.5 SDs) was driven by short sales outpacing long buys 1.5 to 1.”

  

  The next day was one of confusion, with Goldman Prime reporting that its prime book was modestly net bought “driven by long buys outpacing short sales 1.2 to 1”, although North American markets were not on the buying agenda as “with the exception of North America, all regions were net bought led in $ terms by Europe and Asia.“

  Which brings us to the end of the week, when shortly after the biggest shorting in almost one year by some hedge funds, other hedge funds have decided to go all WallStreetBets on their ass, and start a squeeze, with GS prime reporting that “hedge funds bought the US Mega Caps and Non-Tech Single Names yesterday” as “the GS Prime book was modestly net bought for a second day (+0.5 SDs vs. the average daily net flow of the past year), driven by moderate risk-off flows as short covers outpaced long sales roughly 3 to 1.”

  As GS prime details, the end of the week saw “the first net buying in 3 days (+0.9 SDs) driven by short covers in Macro Products and long buys in Single Names” even as “ETF shorts decreased -0.8% (-1.4% week/week; +24% YTD), driven by covers in Small Cap and Health Care ETFs which outweighed continued shorting in Corporate Bond ETFs. 8 of 11 sectors were net bought – Health Care (long buys > short covers), Real Estate (long buys > short covers), Consumer Disc (long buys > short sales), Consumer Staples (short covers), and Energy (long buys + short covers) were among the most net bought. On the other hand, Info Tech (short sales > long buys), Materials (long-and-short sales), and Industrials (long-and-short sales) were the only net sold sectors.” Curiously, Info Tech stocks – i.e., the biggest winners of 2020 – were net sold for a third straight day. That said, in $ terms the net selling in the sector was ~75% of Wed’s activity and driven by short sales outpacing long buys (i.e., there was no significant long liquidation).

  As a result of the whiplash, Goldman Prime calculates that “fundamental LS managers experienced another worst alpha day since Jan 27th, driven by sell-off in Momentum and Info Tech, and have lost 1.8% of alpha over the past three days.“

  

  What does all of this mean for markets?

  Well, in a week where stocks first spiked then tumbled only to reverse, and where substantial damage was done on HF P&L, immediately after a furious burst of shorting, which has pushed gross short exposure to the highest level since the start of 2020…

  

  … it is likely that the short squeeze we observed on Friday which started with the post-EU close ramp that pushed the EMini higher by over 100 points in 4 hours…

  

  … is about to spread and force even more forced squeezes on Monday especially now that the $1.9 trillion Biden bill has been passed by the Senate. The only thing that could prevent a sharp spike in stocks in the overnight/tomorrow session is another burst higher in yields and bond volatility (MOVE). So keep a close eye on both but absent fireworks, prepare for a continuation of Friday’s meltup as hedge funds – especially Fundamental L/S funds – scramble to close their latest round of shorts, and catch up to their sharplt outperforming systematic peers.

  

  In short…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 17:45

• Ethereum Set To Soar As "London" Hard-Fork Gets Approval
  Ethereum Set To Soar As “London” Hard-Fork Gets Approval

  A hotly awaited upgrade to the Ethereum network that lowers the volatility of transaction fees has been scheduled for Ethereum’s next major hard fork.

  

  As Decrypt reports, the upgrade, called EIP-1559 (EIP stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposal), is scheduled to go live in Ethereum’s “London” hard fork this July, and crucially for investors, may result in ETH becoming a deflationary asset.

  EIP-1559 was proposed by Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin and Ethhub co-founder Eric Conner in April 2019 and seeks to implement a fee market and burn mechanism to bring Ethereum’s often-skyrocketing gas fees under control. In December, Buterin again urged Ethereum to adopt EIP-1559.

  

  What is EIP-1559? Decrypt explains…

  EIP-1559 overhauls the way users pay Ethereum’s transaction fees. Currently, fees are paid to miners for processing transactions. 

  The cost of those fees depends on the supply of miners and users’ demand for them. If there’s a bottleneck on the network, miners can charge usurious rates of over $20 per transaction.

  EIP-1559 would replace the supply/demand auction-style system in place today with a standard rate across the network. The fee, called “BASEFEE,” would rise when the market is busy and fall when it’s quiet. 

  The crucial difference is that the fee is set by the network and altered by burning ETH. EIP-1559 means that miners don’t set the rates; the network does.

  And the transaction fees don’t go to miners; they’re burned.

  As Institutional crypto fund manager Grayscale recently noted:

  Some analysis has noted that it may not be necessary to pay fees in Ether, but rather fees could be paid in any digital currency of one’s choosing (or even credit cards). This is known as economic abstraction, and has been used to challenge the value of Ether. Similarly, some have argued that Ether suffers from a working capital or infinite velocity problem — as simply a medium of exchange asset, investors may look to minimize their holdings to only what is necessary to pay for a service, i.e., Ether would be treated as working capital.6 Because investors might look to minimize their working capital, the velocity of Ether would increase and its value according to the equation of exchange, M=PQ/V, would decrease.7 In other words, constant selling would drive down the price of the Ether.

  However, Ethereum plans to implement a proposal known as EIP-1559. Among other things, this proposal would burn (or destroy) Ether that is used to pay for transactions. This is important because it would transform Ether from a medium of exchange asset to a consumable commodity. Ether would become more like combustible gas than money. If this proposal is implemented, it would also ensure that Ether is the native economic unit on Ethereum – protocol rules would dictate that only Ether could be burned. This would reduce the possibility of economic abstraction – the ability to pay fees in an asset besides Ether.

  This burning method may also serve as a deflationary mechanism if the Ether consumed as fuel outpaces the issuance schedule.

  If activity increases and the supply of Ether decreases due to burning, a supply and demand curve would indicate an increase in the unit price of Ether because each unit would need to satisfy a greater proportion of economic activity. If EIP-1559 is implemented, it would institute a consumption mechanism that should serve as a positive feedback loop for Ether’s price.

  As Decrypt reports, Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Ethereum infrastructure firm Staked, told Decrypt that it’s likely to be “positive on the long term price of Ethereum.” Lower and more predictable gas fees, he said, means that Ethereum isn’t just for the rich, encouraging people to build and use the network.

  The upgrade is not without its critics.

  Two of the three largest Ethereum miners are angry that it would dig into their fees, and a further 10 have announced their discontent with the upgrade. 

  “I don’t think miners are going to be long-term winners here. I think they’re gonna fight. But I think there are going to be long term losers,” said Ogilvie. Ethereum 2.0, the long-awaited Ethereum upgrade, transitions the blockchain from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake one. The former rewards miners for processing transactions, the latter rewards people who hold lots of Ethereum. 

  “I think this is close to existential for a mining business,” said Ogilvie. “And so I think they’re going to take the strongest actions they can. How far are they willing to go? I can’t really predict. But I think I think you’re gonna see them fight extremely hard,” he said.

  Ultimately, as CoinTelegraph reports, the proposal is now going forward, putting an end to “selfish” mining practices.

  EIP 1559 “fixes a bug in the economics of Ethereum we’ve known about from the start,” said Tim Beiko, a senior product manager at ConsenSys who’s leading the protocol team implementing EIP 1559, and it’s approval Friday seems to have sparked some relative strength.

  

  “This is probably one of the biggest milestones we’ve seen recently,” Eric Turner, director of research at Messari, a cryptocurrency analytics firm, told Bloomberg.

  Until EIP 1559 goes into effect after being approved Friday, the supply of Ether was theoretically infinite, leading to criticism that its underlying monetary policy was weak and inflationary.

  “Now, they’re actually controlling inflation on Ethereum” and “in some cases you’re looking at negative inflation so it’s definitely important,” Turner added.

  

  As Grayscale concludes, 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.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 17:30

• Morgan Stanley: 3 Reasons Why The Correction Has Further To Go Before It’s Over
  Morgan Stanley: 3 Reasons Why The Correction Has Further To Go Before It’s Over

  By Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley chief US equity strategist

  The Moment of Recognition

  It’s hard to believe a year has passed since the lockdowns first began. The good news is there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, with case counts and hospitalizations plummeting. At the current pace of vaccinations and with spring weather right around the corner, several health experts are talking about herd immunity by April.

  Meanwhile, Congress is putting the finishing touches on another fiscal stimulus which may top US$1.5 trillion. When combined with the progress on the virus, it’s hard not to imagine an economy that’s on fire later this year. Finally, earnings results for 4Q proved to be spectacular, with the median company in the S&P 500 reporting double-digit year-on-year EPS growth. In short, the recession is effectively over.

  With all this good news, why have equity markets struggled for the past few weeks? In my view, it’s really not that complicated, or surprising.

  • First, with all the good news noted above, 10-year yields finally caught up to other asset markets. This is putting pressure on valuations, especially for the most expensive stocks that had reached nosebleed valuations.
  • Second, value-oriented stocks in the sectors that are not egregiously priced, and most levered to the economic rebound, are holding up just fine, or rising.
  • Third, this is not how most portfolios are positioned. Instead, most are overexposed to growth stocks and either short or underweight the value areas. Such portfolio disruption is causing some repositioning, which is having a net negative effect on the major averages, led by the Nasdaq.

  

  I thought the correction at the end of January was the beginning of something more meaningful. Instead, most indices roared back one last time before this more sustainable correction ensued. It’s likely a continuation as many high-flyers never made a new high in February and are now leading on the downside.

  Three things tell me this correction has further to go before it’s over:

  1) The non-linear move in 10-year yields has awoken investors to a risk they thought was unlikely, if not impossible. So, while the Equity Risk Premium (ERP) held constant during this rate move as we expected, it may now move higher in anticipation of the next 50bp jump in rates. In other words, the equity market now knows the 10-year yield is a “fake” rate that either can’t or won’t be defended. To that end, the Fed did expand its balance sheet by US$180 billion in February, 50% greater than its target. Yet, rates surged higher. Markets lead the Fed, not the other way around, and we are now at that moment of recognition.

  2) March represents the anniversary of the market crash last year. This means there will be a big shift in the top and bottom quintiles of 12-month price momentum by the end of this month. Most of the stocks going into the top momentum quintile are value and cyclical stocks like banks, energy and materials – areas we like. Conversely, many of the stocks moving out of the top quintile are tech and other high-growth stocks – areas we don’t like at current prices. We started writing about this coming momentum composition change back in December as a potential risk and opportunity (Exhibit 1). Part of the rotation from growth to value has been due to better relative fundamentals, as the economy recovers, and cheaper valuations. However, as these value stocks move into the top quintile of price momentum and growth stocks move out, the rotation might accelerate even further. This could be quite disruptive to portfolios and lead to another round of deleveraging like in January.

  

  3) Based on the technical damage to date, the Nasdaq 100 appears to have completed a head and shoulders top and should test its 200-day moving average (-8%).

  Finally, everything that’s going on now should be expected at this stage of a recovery from recession. After the big initial surge, the stock market tends to consolidate as interest rates rise and P/Es compress. This is why our year-end target of 3900 for the S&P 500 is toward the lower end of most sell-side strategists.

  The bull market continues to be under the hood, with value and cyclicals leading the way. Growth stocks can rejoin the party once the valuation correction and repositioning is finished.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 17:00

• Brace For Oil Surge: Saudi Oil Tank In Ras Tanura Port Hit In Houthi Drone Attack
  Brace For Oil Surge: Saudi Oil Tank In Ras Tanura Port Hit In Houthi Drone Attack

  It’s not as if oil – the best performing class of 2021 – behind bitcoin of course – needed any more reasons to surge higher (for the latest tally please read “Saudis + Commodity Funds = Energy Stock Explosion“), but it got it moments ago when Saudi Arabia said that it had intercepted missiles and a barrage of drones launched from neighboring Yemen and which targeted Dhahran, where Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, is headquartered, which eyewitnesses said was rocked by an explosion.

  According to Bloomberg which quotes witnesses on the ground, the blast shook windows in Dhahran, which hosts a large compound for Aramco employees.

  

  While Bloomberg was cautious with reporting of what had happened, Saudi journalist Ahmed al Omaran who previously worked with the FT, said that “Saudi oil tanks in Ras Tanura Port hit in drone attack and Aramco facilities targeted with ballistic missile” quoting an energy ministry statement“

  Saudi oil tanks in Ras Tanura Port hit in drone attack and Aramco facilities targeted with ballistic missile —energy ministry statement https://t.co/KttTG8DHc1

  — Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) March 7, 2021

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

  An official spokesman at the Ministry of Energy said that “one of the petroleum tank farms at the Ras Tanura Port in the Eastern Region, one of the largest oil shipping ports in the world, was attacked this morning by a drone, coming from the sea”

  Yemen’s Houthis claimed a series of attacks on Sunday including on a Saudi Aramco facility at Ras Tanura in the east of the kingdom. The group launched eight ballistic missiles and 14 bomb-laden drones at Saudi Arabia, a spokesman for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said in a statement to Houthi-run Al Masirah television.

  “There are reports of possible missile attacks and explosions this evening, March 7, in the tri-city area of Dhahran, Dammam, and Khobar in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province,” the U.S. consulate general in Dhahran said in a statement.

  According to a statement from a spokesman at the Saudi Energy ministry, “the attacks did not result in any injury or loss of life or property.” In his statement, the spokesman stressed that “the Kingdom condemns and criminalizes such repeated acts of sabotage and hostility. The Kingdom calls on nations and organizations of the world to stand together against these attacks, which are aimed at civilian objects and vital installations”

  As Bloomberg reports further:

  The Houthis have stepped up assaults on Saudi Arabia and last week claimed it hit a Saudi Aramco fuel depot in Jeddah with a cruise missile. It wasn’t clear how much damage had been caused. While such assaults rarely result in extensive damage, their frequency has created unease in the Gulf, a region key to global oil production.

  Earlier on Sunday the Saudi-led coalition said the Iran-backed Houthis had fired projectiles at the kingdom and said a U.S. decision to revoke their terrorist designation had fueled rising attacks. It said had carried out retaliatory air strikes on Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, targeting the Houthis it has been battling for six years.

  Needless to say, ignore the diplomatic BS, and keep in mind that everything the Houthis do when it comes to “attacks” on Saudi territory and especially Aramco facilities is known well in advance by Riyadh.

  And since today’s attack will likely send Brent surging once it reopens for trade in a few hours, our only observation on the matter is that shortly after shocking the world by extending production limits in last week’s OPEC+ meeting, it now appears that Saudi Arabia is indeed hell bent on getting the black gold to hit triple digits as fast as possible…

  Saudis really want 100 oil.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 7, 2021

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

  … especially since Saudi Arabia knows mothballed US shale production will take months if not longer to get back online and renew downward pressure on oil prices.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 16:55

• Urban Dictionary Bans "Blue Anon" Entry Defining Liberal Conspiracy Theorists; Google Censors Search
  Urban Dictionary Bans “Blue Anon” Entry Defining Liberal Conspiracy Theorists; Google Censors Search

  The Urban Dictionary, which allows users to submit virtually any phrase with any definition, has removed a reference to “Blue Anon” – a new phrase mocking leftists for their belief in right-wing conspiracy theories, “such as the Russia Hoax, Jussie Smollett hoax, Ukraine hoax, Covington Kids hoax, and Brett Kavanaugh hoax.“

  

  The move comes just 24 hours after journalist Jack Posobiec pointed out the Blue Anon entry to his more than 1 million Twitter followers:

  Ladies and gentlemen, we did it pic.twitter.com/AFzdDbKXlV

  — Neanderthal Scholar Poso (@JackPosobiec) March 6, 2021

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

  And now:

  I have never even heard of a word being banned from @UrbanDictionary before they banned Blue Anon pic.twitter.com/MdwhTzXeGA

  — Neanderthal Scholar Poso (@JackPosobiec) March 7, 2021

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

  As the Post Millennial writes of Blue Anon:

  The definition of “Blue Anon” is “a loosely organized network of Democrat [v]oters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories.”

  It goes on to say, “Blue Anon adherents fervently believe that right-wing extremists are going to storm Capitol Hill any day now and “remove” lawmakers from office, hence the need for the deployment of thousands of National Guard stationed at the US Capitol.”

  Blue ANON exists.

  Q doesn’t.

  — Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) March 6, 2021

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

  And as journalist Ian Miles Cheong notes – as did we while researching for this report, Google appears to be censoring searches for Blue Anon.

  Google censored searches for Blue Anon.

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 7, 2021

  Quite a difference between searching Google and DuckDuckGo for “Blue Anon” #blueanon pic.twitter.com/zWorxETbnV

  — RyeLibertarian (@RyeLibertarian) March 7, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHere’s a thread defining “Blue Anon” beliefs:

  “Brett Kavanaugh is a gang rapist”https://t.co/a7pzG8Vuok

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

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

  “Trump committed felony obstruction 10 times to hide his collusion with Russia”

  Another good suggestion, though this is just a corollary to the “Trump is a Russian asset” conspiracy theory.https://t.co/AvTJCV80D2

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

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

  The entire Steele Dossier!

  There are people who still believe that the Pee Tape is real.https://t.co/aVjvc0b8Ed

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

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

  Russian bounties, forgot about that one. Still never actually confirmed, even though @JeffreyGoldberg promised that sources would come forward soon.https://t.co/IwVPPvfIoO

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

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

  The pivot from “Mueller’s got him” to “Of course Mueller didn’t get him; he couldn’t” was very fast.https://t.co/LXDLaDsark

  — Max Nordau (@MaxNordau) February 2, 2021

  Click into @MaxNordau’s thread to read more.

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 03/07/2021 – 16:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Kissinger: Biden Must Uphold Trump Administration's "Brilliant" Policy In The Middle East
  Kissinger: Biden Must Uphold Trump Administration’s “Brilliant” Policy In The Middle East

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

  Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has advised President Joe Biden’s administration to continue to uphold the “brilliant” policy in Middle Eastern politics achieved under the Trump administration.

  

  Kissinger, who was secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations, made the remarks during a seminar from the Richard Nixon Foundation focused on national security and foreign policy on March 3.

  Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger also participated in the seminar.

  Kissinger likened Donald Trump’s diplomatic achievements in the Middle East to Nixon’s opening of China in 1972, and warned that the Biden administration should continue the tough Trump policy on Iran.

  He also called the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords a breakthrough in Arab-Israeli relations.

  “I think that one of the great successes of the previous administration was that they had lined up, that they had achieved two things in the Middle East,” Kissinger said.

  “One, to separate the Palestinian problem from all of the other problems so that it did not become a veto over everything else.

  He added:

  “Secondly, of lining up the Sunni states in actual or potential combination against the Shiite states, which is Iran, that was developing a capacity to threaten them. I think that this was a brilliant concept. We were just at the beginning of it.”

  The Abraham Accords, brokered by former President Donald Trump, established new cooperation and normalization between the United States, Israel, and Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, and Morocco.

  

  (L-R) Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan hold up documents after participating in the signing of the Abraham Accords where the countries of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognize Israel, at the White House in Washington on Sept. 15, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

  It also opened up economic, social, and cultural ties between the Arab world and the Jewish state and strengthened the Gulf states’ and Israel’s defenses against Iran, earning the former president Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

  “This was a brilliant concept. We were just at the beginning of it. It was like the beginning of the China opening. The evolution of it was just beginning,” Kissinger said.

  Kissinger urged the Biden administration to uphold the current policy in the Middle East cemented by Trump.

  “We should not give up the pressures that exist on Iran until we know where they are heading,” Kissinger said.

  “If we break out the Iranian issue from the overall Middle Eastern issue, we run the risk of losing the two achievements, namely of separating the Palestinian issue, which removes it as a veto over everything else, and the Sunni cooperation with Israel, which is unique in its openness.”

  Elsewhere during Wednesday’s seminar, Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo likened Trump’s “unique” approach to international affairs and foreign policy to President Nixon’s.

  

  Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 27, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

  “This was a president that came at foreign policy problems in a unique way,” he said of Trump.

  “I wanted to make sure the senior people, at least I brought around to the team, understood the environment which we were going to be working in and how we were going to effectively deliver operationally President Trump’s foreign policy. So, I wanted to make sure—while we know Washington is occupied by a lot of folks and a lot of big egos—there were people who were prepared to make sure they were working as part of the team that President Trump wanted to deliver on foreign policy he had put forward to the American people.”

  The United States on Feb. 25 launched airstrikes against militants in eastern Syria, targeting sites connected to Shia militias groups backed by the Iranian regime believed to be involved in recent attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq.

  Biden has also announced that the United States is rejoining or moving to rejoin the pact with Iran, the Paris climate accords, and the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, among other international agreements or entities.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 23:30

• Robocop? Las Vegas Apartment Complex Deploys Human-Sized Robot To Fight Crime 
  Robocop? Las Vegas Apartment Complex Deploys Human-Sized Robot To Fight Crime 

  It was inevitable that security robots would one-day patrol low-income neighborhoods around the clock to ensure everyone was abiding by the rules. This dystopic future is becoming a reality for one apartment complex in Las Vegas. 

  Robotics maker Knightscope deployed a human-sized autonomous robot to a noisy northeast Las Vegas Valley apartment, said the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Westy” has been patrolling Liberty Village Apartments near Craig Road and Lamb Boulevard since October 2020. 

  

  Westy employs an array of cameras, four in total, along with facial recognition technology, license plate reading, verbal warnings, and internet connectivity to human security officers if an incident occurs. 

  “It’s been very useful in several ways,” said complex manager Carmen Batiz.

  “It can advise people when they are out past the 10 p.m. curfew, and the four video cameras tend to make people avoid it. When we have vandalism reports, we can go through the video and get a time frame of when it happened. It has a button so people can get human help quick in an emergency.

  “People don’t want to get caught on the cameras so they will avoid it,” Batiz said.

  Liberty Village Apartments was one of the top three northeast Las Vegas residential living areas for 911 calls. Many of the folks are working-poor Americans, situated in an area known for crime and vandalism. 

  Westy has had some success over the last several months as 911 calls have dropped and crime is lower. Batiz said, “We have eight other properties, and we’re going to bring on more robots, and even the Wynn had people come check it out.”

  “Every resident has the right to live in a crime-free, safe and clean environment, and Westy helps contribute to that,” said Batiz.

  Here’s KSNV News 3 Las Vegas’s report on ‘robocop’ as it patrols the apartment complex 

  More or less, private companies who manage residential multi-family complexes are resorting to automation and artificial intelligence to deter violence, theft, and murders as the post-pandemic world become a more dangerous place. 

  Changes are coming to metro areas as well. The working-poor will feel more oppressed as big brother will continue to monitor their every move through innovative ways such as human-sized autonomous robots. 

  It’s only a matter of time before local governments and municipalities, and even state governments employ fleets of human-sized autonomous robots to maintain law and order. 

  We should remind readers NYPD’s Boston Dynamics robot dog for ground surveillance of low-income neighborhoods is already underway… 

  What’s next is the unveiling of predictive policing via artificial intelligence that will monitor low-income neighborhoods if there’s a potential flare-up in a crime or social disobedience. Maybe by that time, the Federal Reserve could instantly reload people’s bank accounts in those troubled areas with Fedcoin (digital US dollars) to keep the impoverished at bay. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 23:00

• When IBM Was The Center Of Gravity
  When IBM Was The Center Of Gravity

  By Byrne Hobart of The Diff substack

  When IBM Was The Center Of Gravity

  Learning about IBM in the context of the early history of the computer industry has the same shock value as watching Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time: “That’s no moon. It’s a space station.”

  Consider:

  • In 1953, UNIVAC was basically the only company selling computers commercially. By 1956, IBM’s market share in computers was 85%.

  • In the late 70s and early 80s, after several industry transitions, the entry of smaller and more agile competitors like DEC and Control Data as well as larger and more resourceful ones like GE and Exxon, IBM’s market share was still 70%.

  • IBM “bet the company” on one product in the 1960s, with a total budget that exceeded twice the cost of the Manhattan Project. In this time, they didn’t report a loss, and they didn’t even report a sequential decline in annual earnings.

  • In fact, IBM reported positive annual earnings growth every year from 1952 through 1979.

  In “Adam Smith”‘s wonderful book, The Money Game, the concept of a growth stock is illustrated with a five-year table of some high growth companies’ earnings per share; IBM is at the top of the list. More interesting is an earlier section on investor psychology, which has a bit called “IBM as Religion: Don’t Touch, Don’t Touch.” It’s a story about someone who invests in IBM’s predecessor, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, and holds the stock for his entire life. His $20,000 becomes millions of dollars, and he insists that his heirs never sell the stock. They don’t, and they make the same stipulation to their heirs. One reason for the company’s marvelous performance is, of course, that it retains most of its earnings and pays low dividends. When he dies, the stock is split up between his heirs, who also hold and never sell, and who also end up as millionaires, as do their heirs. But the dividends remain modest:

  In short, for three generations the Smiths have worked as hard as their friends who had no money at all, and they have lived just as if they had no money at all, even though the various branches of the Smith family all put together are very wealthy indeed. And the IBM is there, nursed and watered and fed, the Genii of the House, growing away in the early hours of the morning when everyone is asleep.. It is a parable of pure capitalism, never jam today and a case of jam tomorrow; but as any of the Smiths will tell you, anyone who has ever sold IBM has regretted it.

  How did IBM get so dominant? How did “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” become a catchphrase among corporate IT buyers and investors? And what changed?

  Origins: Promoters and Punch-cards

  In 2021’s SPAC-saturated financial universe (and in light of the last few weeks’ SPAC drawdowns), it’s interesting to note that IBM was born as an act of financial engineering. In the early 1900s, the market was enamored by trusts, and promoters realized that merging a few semi-related companies together could create a combined entity that was a) big enough to issue stock, and b) could tell a plausible story that it would monopolize its industry. (Monopolies were technically illegal, but in practice weren’t heavily prosecuted. The existence of the Sherman Antitrust Act told investors that a monopolist could charge exploitative prices; its lax enforcement told them that it wouldn’t be shut down for this reason.)

  Charles Flint was one of many stock promoters who merged together small companies and took them public. In 1911, he cobbled together a new firm called Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. CTR was an odd mix, including an industrial scale manufacturer, a company that made timecards for hourly workers, and The Tabulating Machine Company. The last was a quirky niche product: founded by a German inventor, Herman Hollerith, it built mechanical devices that could tabulate information if it was encoded on punched cards. The company had only a handful of customers; railroads, for example, could save money and better track their business using punched cards. The company’s most important client was the US Census, but one big contract every ten years did not indicate much business potential.

  As it turns out, the company made one other key acquisition: hiring Thomas J. Watson as President. Watson had a somewhat mixed reputation: he’d worked for National Cash Register, a company that was famous for rapid growth, technical sophistication, and an excellent sales organization. On the other hand, he’d been recently convicted of antitrust violations for some of his work at NCR, and faced jail time. Flint, perhaps operating on the assumption that he’d sell out of the stock before the case was fully resolved, hired Watson anyway.

  Watson had a natural flair for sales and strategy, and had developed his sales technique at NCR. NCR deployed armies of salespeople, held them all to strict personal standards (good grooming, no alcohol consumption whatsoever), and used this standardized approach to scale fast. Watson’s CTR adopted the same model, and even borrowed some of the same mottos:

  

  One realization Watson came to was that CTR was a clunky name, and, as trusts went out of fashion, was sending the wrong signal to the market (and to the FTC). So, in 1924, he renamed the company International Business Machines. Watson also insisted on reinvesting in the business, even though other executives like board chairman George W. Fairchild were more concerned with maintaining dividends.

  He came to another important realization about one of those business machines in particular: Hollerith’s punched-card tabulators were more exciting than they looked, especially for an organization that specialized in sales. The machines themselves had unimpressive margins, but making stacks of perforated cardboard and selling them to a captive market was a very high-margin business indeed. And this sticky, high-margin revenue source grew with usage, not just the unit volume of tabulators. If IBM could embed its salespeople in companies, and have them relentlessly THINK about ways to replace clerks with cards (or about new functions that could be economically performed by cards but that wouldn’t be worth an employee’s time), they could continuously grow sales.

  By the 1930s, cards routinely represented a third of sales, and presumably a much larger share of profits. IBM’s sales were flat early in the depression, as cuts in corporate spending were offset by growth in government use. During the Second World War, IBM continued to grow its top line—profits were compressed by higher taxes—but it also reinforced a virtuous cycle. More tabulated data meant more legible data; the Social Security Administration was a big client, but also a client whose existence gave every American a unique numerical identifier, and whose implementation meant that their employers had to track who them employed and how much each one was paid. Heavy war spending required more data tracking, and this meant that manufacturers also needed to invest in business machines to meet their end of the bargain.

  Even later, when IBM was less dependent on cards, it liked the model of having a long tail of revenue. As IBM evolved, it preferred to lease its products rather than sell them, and to offer peripherals that would increase revenue per customer. Even after cards were irrelevant, a card-like model was a core part of IBM: each year, they started with a baseline of high-margin recurring revenue from existing clients. New sales would just add to that sum.

  Dominance

  IBM was not the first company to build computers, although Thomas Watson Jr., who took over from his father in 1952, was certainly interested in them. Sperry-Rand’s subsidiary UNIVAC (which survives today as Unisys) introduced the first commercially successful computers in the early 50s.

  IBM had the largest R&D department of the business machines industry in the 40s and 50s, and Watson had read Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics. IBM quickly caught up, and had dominant market share in computers by the late 1950s. Some of this was because of their research—they were able to introduce cost-competitive computers a few years after UNIVAC. And a lot of it was because of their sales organization: IBM sales reps didn’t have to introduce themselves to potential corporate customers, who had been buying other IBM products for years or possibly decades.

  IBM added another tactic around this time, which would be called “paper machines” then and “vaporware” today: if a competitor’s product was selling well because it reached a price or market segment that IBM didn’t touch, the company wouldn’t hesitate to announce a competing product (and start taking orders for it) long before it was available. Meanwhile, IBM kept news about upgrades to its existing products well-hidden.

  This sort of behavior led to one of what would be a long series of unpleasant interactions with the Justice Department, leading to a decree in 1956 that required IBM to divest some of its punched-card business and start selling as well as leasing computers. This is an early case study of a common phenomenon: antitrust cases take so long—in part because the companies being sued are not especially cooperative—that by the time they’re resolved, the industry has changed, and the remedies don’t have much of an impact. IBM had to divest a rapidly-shrinking segment that was quickly being rendered obsolete by the company’s other products.

  It’s hard to overstate how powerful IBM was in the computer industry by this time. A big order from IBM revived Texas Instruments’ fortunes in the late 50s, for example, and every computer company worried that if their product worked too well for too long, it was only a matter of time before an army in a uniform of starched white shirts, blue suits, clean shaves, and high quotas was marching on their customers and offering a more expensive, but much more defensible, choice.

  Both IBM and its competitors acknowledged that the company excelled at sales. As the CEO of UNIVAC’s parent company put it:

  It doesn’t do much good to build a better mousetrap if the other guy selling mousetraps had five times as many salesmen.

  And in a revealing comment from Watson, Jr., he once explained that the company’s release cadence was dictated in part by the needs of its sales team:

  You have to keep feeding them new things to keep their morale up.

  One of the biggest New Things IBM fed to its salesmen in the 60s was the 360. This product, announced in 1964 and first sold the next year, was IBM’s most intensive development project in history, costing, according to one estimate, twice as much as the Manhattan Project. The 360 was a series of machines that had compatible code, so customers could easily upgrade from one to the next as they scaled without needing to rewrite their software. It was, in other words, another way for IBM to replicate the negative dollar churn model of the punched card business. IBM needed the 360 in part because its sales team was entirely too good: the people responsible for selling IBM’s low-end machines were cannibalizing the sales of high-end ones by convincing buyers that the more affordable option could handle all of their needs. While the 360 represented a technological advance, it was partly an organizational one—a way to give the company a strict hierarchy of products and use cases so it could charge what the market would bear. IBM had to repeatedly turn to the capital markets to fund this, although the company kept reporting growing profits throughout the development process.

  The launch of the 360 represents Peak IBM in terms of influence and ability to shape markets, although their financial peak was a long way off. IBM’s computers were so successful that they spawned two separate ecosystems: the first “IBM compatible” devices were produced in the 1950s, when smaller manufacturers sold peripherals that functioned alongside IBM machines.

  More worrisome for the company was the trend of computer leasing companies, whose business model was straightforward: IBM depreciated its computers over five years, and priced them accordingly. Leasing companies depreciated computers over ten years, and were able to undercut IBM and report (accounting) profits doing it. These leasing companies would have slightly worse cash flows than IBM, since their higher reported profits entailed a higher tax burden. But they were able to show good profits, and as long as they grew fast enough, any misguided optimism about the useful life of a computer would be hidden. (If a leasing company grows its assets 50% each year, and the IBM depreciation number is correct, then the computers they start to write down in year six are just a fifth of assets, and they’ve had five years of profitable growth before then.) Paradoxically, the leasing companies (some of which were much hotter stocks than IBM in the 60s) were a bet on growth but against technology. An investor buying IBM instead of Leasco was betting that the 360 was not the last word in computing (and that whatever the last word was, it would be spoken in the vicinity of Armonk, New York). A buyer of Leasco was implicitly claiming that the computer trend had been an interesting one, and had fully run its course by the mid-60s, with deployment rather than new technology as the main source of growth.

  In a sense, the company painted itself into a corner: by creating a new standard, and ensuring that future releases would be backwards-compatible, IBM plausibly did increase the useful life of its computers. The company could either cut leasing rates (which would cut into revenue) or accept that its model was shifting from leasing computers to customers over to selling them to middlemen.

  IBM did adjust its pricing, but this entailed still more problems.

  Decline

  In 1968, Control Data accused IBM of assorted antitrust violations, which the US government followed up on the next year. IBM spent over a decade in litigation, hiring armies of lawyers and producing millions of documents. (The joke at the time was that the real winner of the case was Xerox.) The case ran on long enough that IBM could accurately argue that more than half of the companies that accused it of anticompetitive behavior had been founded after the original lawsuit was filed. Some companies bet their future on IBM in yet another way; the CEO of one company, Calcomp, joked that his company’s most valuable asset wasn’t patents, equipment, or employees, but their ongoing lawsuit against IBM.

  The suit was ultimately dropped, but IBM’s defense was all too accurate: the computer business was getting too competitive, and other companies were adapting faster than IBM itself was. Over the course of the 70s, IBM’s annual profits still tripled, but by the end of the decade, the stock hadn’t gone up at all.

  The story of IBM’s long-term collapse was not the result of any one decision; if there was one bad decision, it was the way they structured their MS-DOS deal, which allowed Microsoft to license it to other PC manufacturers. But that choice was more symptomatic. IBM’s sales centric approach naturally assumed a slower industry cadence than the one that developed in the 80s. Rapid growth in low-end computers reduced the relevance of their competitive advantage in large-scale, long-term deals, and as those computers got more powerful, software started to matter more. A pure software company has higher margins, and thus more ability to take risky bets, than a software-and-hardware company, particularly one that’s constantly adjusting its overhead in light of lower and lower market share.

  IBM was the most profitable company in America in 1985, but by the early 90s, IBM was losing money. It reported what was then a record annual loss for any US corporation in 1992. The company eventually stabilized, by divesting some money-losing businesses and focusing more on corporate clients. (It also started to focus more on buybacks, even though an early buyback program in the 80s was one reason IBM was somewhat capital-constrained at the dawn of the PC era.)

  It’s exceptionally hard for a company to adjust to no longer dominating its industry. That’s especially difficult when the nature of the industry changes; caring about PCs was low-status relative to worrying about mainframes until the growth of the PC market was impossible to ignore.

  Relative to the other stories of compounders-gone-bad, IBM ends up being the most impressive of the lot. It had an incredible stretch of nonstop growth, and that stretch started after the company pivoted from one sector it was influential in, punched-card machines, to a completely new one it had to catch up in. IBM’s ability to keep growing while disrupting itself, and juggling antitrust restrictions, is simply astounding. While it’s not nearly as influential as it once was, there was indeed a good reason that, for a very long time, nobody got fired for buying IBM.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 22:30

• New York Exodus Sparks Buying Frenzy For Greenwich Mansions
  New York Exodus Sparks Buying Frenzy For Greenwich Mansions

  What happens when thousands of New York millionaires suddenly realize their hometown has gone back in time to the 1970s in terms of both crime and taxes, and it is finally time to get the hell out? Why neighboring Greenwich, long an enclave for the ultra rich, throws a party.

  After years of stagnant demand growth for its multi-million dollar mansions as a result of the secular decline of in “active” asset management, the hedge fund capital of the world is having a real estate renaissance. And it only took a pandemic.

  According to a new report from Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman, In February, 14 contracts were signed to buy single-family houses priced at $5 million to $9.99 million, a 600% jump from just two a year earlier, before Covid-19 swept across the U.S., Bloomberg reports. It wasn’t just the ultra luxury segment enjoying the influx: the report found that across all price points, single-family contracts in the posh Connecticut town soared 157% to 108..

  

  Those with a taste for the ultra-luxury have turned their attention to Greenwich’s older estates outside the town center, which had fallen out of favor in recent years. Two homes listed at $20 million or more found buyers last month, compared with none in February 2020.

  With most people still working from home, “the location of the office is not holding you back,” Scott Durkin, president of Douglas Elliman, said in an interview. “The whole family can live there, work there, play there, educate there.”

  One reason prices are soaring is the plunge in supply: new listings for single-family houses dropped 23% from a year earlier as Greenwich’s homeowners stay put.

  “They’re not selling,” Durkin said. “They have an apartment in Manhattan, they have a home in Greenwich and they have a home in South Florida.”

  The suddenly tight inventory of single-family houses in Greenwich has forced buyers to move fast and often pay above list price.

  As Bloomberg notes, this is yet “another sign that well-off New Yorkers tired of being confined to tight quarters during the pandemic are seeking relief among the backyards and spacious homes of the city’s nearby suburbs.”

  Of course, all those millions who would also like to flee the Big Apple but don’t have the funds to do so are stuck, ensuring that New York’s descent into socialist paradise started by mayor Bill de Blasio is only just starting.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 22:00

• Iranian Militia Group Claims to Have Active Cells in Washington DC: Report
  Iranian Militia Group Claims to Have Active Cells in Washington DC: Report

  By the Epoch Times

  A Telegram channel affiliated with Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq posted in English claiming to have a resistance cell with the capacity to target American troops inside the United States, according to a report.

  “The axis of resistance today is stronger than before. Resistance cells are rooted even in America and its capital,” read the alleged social media post, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which posted a screenshot of the message.

  The post, which included a casket containing American soldiers, was made by the Kawtheryoon Electronic Team, a Telegram network that is said to be used by Iranian militia groups and supporters.

  

  The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Defense regarding the post’s claims.

  The Telegram channel post also claimed that terror factions associated with Iran are growing ever stronger and gaining more support, while it called on U.S. forces to withdraw from not only Iraq, but the Middle East entirely.

  The group also appeared to threaten Israel, referring to it as the “Zionist enemy,” saying “I will summarize for you in words only the horror of the south, which is stronger than before, and we have thousands of men like Imad Mughniyeh.” Mughniyeh is believed to have been the Iran-aligned Hezbollah chief of staff in Lebanon.

  “Do not think that you and the Americans, by killing Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, will survive the torment of the resistance,” the post added, referring to the Iranian commander and the Iraqi militia commander who were killed in an airstrike last year. “We lie in wait for you evil (sic) and the next thing is worse.”

  Last week, President Joe Biden warned that Iran cannot act with impunity and warned the state to “be careful” when asked what message he was sending the country with the U.S. airstrikes in Syria.

  “You can’t act with impunity. Be careful,” Biden told reporters in Texas.

  The United States carried out airstrikes authorized by Biden against facilities belonging to Iranian-backed militia in eastern Syria on Thursday, in response to rocket attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq.

  Tehran has denied being behind recent attacks, whether those in Iraq, against shipping in the Gulf, or on Saudi installations by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis.

  On Wednesday, rockets were again fired at an Iraqi base that holds U.S. troops, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The Pentagon stated the missile defense system at the Al Asad airbase “engaged in defense of our forces” before adding: “We extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the individual who died.”

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

• "Profiteering Off Poverty" – The Side Of Baltimore The Media Won't Show You
  “Profiteering Off Poverty” – The Side Of Baltimore The Media Won’t Show You

  Before President Trump and Republicans focused their energy on Baltimore City, showing how decades of liberal-run leadership transformed the once-thriving metro area into a “hell-hole,” readers may recall our reporting (see: here & here & here) showed a side of Baltimore that many hardly knew, except if they watched the crime series “The Wire.” 

  From the opioid epidemic to homicides to gang warfare to violent crime to failing infrastructure to abandon rowhomes to massive wealth inequality – we were some of the first to shed light on the side of Baltimore traditional media never wanted you to see. 

  Picking up the torch is Daily Caller’s Caity McDuffee, who walked the streets of Baltimore with former congressional Republican nominee (MD-District 7) Kimberly Klacik. 

  Klacik famously said during the 2020 election season: 

  “Democrats don’t want you to see this. They’re scared that I’m exposing what life is like in Democrat-run cities. That’s why I’m running for Congress Because All Black Lives Matter Baltimore Matters And black people don’t have to vote Democrat.”

  McDuffee spoke with Klacik and her campaign manager, Markus Trend Anderson, both explained how “all around Baltimore” there are thousands of vacant homes. He said most of the federal money designated for these neighborhoods never hits the streets. 

  

  The reporter then spoke with a local paster by the name of Rodney Hudson, who said the whole system is corrupt. He said it’s not just the school system that is broken, it’s families, the economy – and “the entire community” – it’s all broken.

  Around the 3 minute mark, Klacik points out that balloons tied to things on the city street usually mean someone was murdered at that spot. On a per-capita basis, Baltimore is one of the most dangerous metros areas in the country. 

  At the 5 minute mark, Hudson told McDuffee that people are “profiteering off the poverty” across the city. 

  Klacik’s campaign manager ends with the notion that many people on the streets “don’t want to sell drugs,” but when there are “no career-based opportunities,” – then their only option is to sell drugs. 

  None of this should be surprising to readers who have followed our commentary over the years. Actually, we’ve provided some of the best insight into the chaos unfolding in Baltimore after the 2015 riots.  

  After listening to us chatter about the Baltimore subject – some questions should be swirling around your head on how to fix this mess. Well, it sure as hell won’t be universal basic income checks – the city needs a plan to start from scratch – start with rebuilding infrastructure, schools, supporting families, and most importantly, provide value-added careers – not service sector jobs like bartending. Baltimore was once an industrial powerhouse – perhaps, the city can thrive again but will take more than a decade to turn around. 

  And one more thing, where is Kevin Plank and his ambitions to transform Baltimore? Maybe he is hiding out at his multi-million dollar horse farm? 

  Watch The Full Video Here:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 21:00

• There Is No Such Thing As "White" Math
  There Is No Such Thing As “White” Math

  Via Common Sense with Bari Weiss substack,

  I am not at all qualified to introduce today’s guest writer, Sergiu Klainerman.

  I barely eked out a C+ in high school calculus, while Sergiu is a professor of mathematics at Princeton who specializes in the mathematical theory of black holes. He’s been a MacArthur fellow, a Guggenheim fellow and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences 

  Mathematics allowed a young Sergiu, who came of age in Ceausescu’s Romania, to escape to a world where right and wrong couldn’t be fudged, and, ultimately, to a life of freedom in the United States. Without math, his life quite literally would not have been possible.

  In the piece below he explains how activists are destroying his discipline in the name of progress. Worse, they are robbing poor children of the opportunity to raise themselves up by mastering it — with untold effects on all of us.

  Math, with its seemingly unbiased tools — 2 + 2 always equals 4 — has presented a problem for an ideological movement that sees any inequality of outcome as evidence of systemic bias. The problem cannot be that some kids are better at math, or that some teachers are better at teaching it. Like so much else, the basic woke argument against math is that it is inherently racist and needs to be made antiracist. That is accomplished by undermining the notion of right and wrong answers, by getting rid of the expectation that students show their work, by referring to mathematical testing tools as racist, and by doing away with accelerated math classes.

  If that sounds like a caricature, I urge you to read this whole document, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Sergiu writes about below. As the linguist John McWhorter put it in a powerful piece published yesterday: “to distrust this document is not to be against social justice, but against racism.”

  Sergiu wrote me in an email that the situation in his field reminds him of this line from Thomas Sowell:

  “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

  This week, as promised, is education week. Like Shark Week! But dorkier. And, I hope, far more important. This is our first installment.

  

  I’m pleased to publish Sergiu Klainerman:

  In my position as a professor of mathematics at Princeton, I have witnessed the decline of universities and cultural institutions as they have embraced political ideology at the expense of rigorous scholarship. Until recently — this past summer, really — I had naively thought that the STEM disciplines would be spared from this ideological takeover.

  I was wrong. Attempts to “deconstruct” mathematics, deny its objectivity, accuse it of racial bias, and infuse it with political ideology have become more and more common — perhaps, even, at your child’s elementary school.

  This phenomenon is part of what has been dubbed “The Great Awokening.” As others have explained powerfully, the ideology incubated in academia, where it indoctrinated plenty of bright minds. It then migrated, through those true believers, into our important cultural, religious and political institutions. Now it is affecting some of the country’s most prominent businesses.

  Unlike the traditional totalitarianism practiced by former communist countries, like the Romania I grew up in, this version is soft. It enforces its ideology not by jailing dissenters or physically eliminating them, but by social shaming, mob punishment, guilt by association, and coerced speech.

  When it comes to education, I believe the woke ideology is even more harmful than old-fashioned communism.

  Communism had a strong sense of objective reality anchored in the belief that humans are capable of discovering universal truths. It forcefully asserted, in fact, the absolute truth of dialectic materialism, as revealed by its founders Marx, Engels and Lenin. Communist ideology held science and mathematics in the highest regard, even though it often distorted the former for doctrinal reasons. 

  Mathematics was largely immune to ideological pressure, and thus thrived in most communist countries. Being skilled in math was a source of great societal prestige for school children. And it was a great equalizer: those from socioeconomically disadvantaged families had a chance to compete on equal footing with those from privileged ones.

  Like children all over the world, I was attracted to mathematics because of its formal beauty, the elegance and precision of its arguments, and the unique sense of achievement I was able to get by finding the right answer to a difficult problem. Mathematics also granted me an escape from the intoxicating daily drum of party propaganda — a refuge from the crushing atmosphere of political and ideological conformity. 

  The woke ideology, on the other hand, treats both science and mathematics as social constructs and condemns the way they are practiced, in research and teaching, as manifestations of white supremacy, euro-centrism, and post-colonialism.

  Take for example the recent educational program called “a pathway to equitable math instruction.” The program is backed financially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; it counts among its partners the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, the California Math project, the Association of California School Administrators, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education, among others; and it was recently sent to Oregon teachers by the state’s Department of Education.

  The program argues that “white supremacy culture shows up in the classroom when the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer” or when students are required to show their work, while stipulating that the very “concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false”. The main goal of the program is “to dismantle racism in mathematics instruction” with the expressly political aim of engaging “the sociopolitical turn in all aspects of education, including mathematics.”

  In the past, I would have said that such statements should be ignored as too radical and absurd to merit refutation. But recent trends across the country suggest that we no longer have that luxury.

  So let me state the following for the record: Nothing in the history and current practice of mathematics justifies the notion that it is in any way different or dependent on the particular race or ethnic group engaged in it.

  For historical reasons, we often discuss contributions to the field of mathematics from the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Indians and Arabs and refer to them as distinct entities. They have all contributed through a unique cultural dialogue to the creation of a truly magnificent edifice accessible today to every man and woman on the planet. Though we pay tribute to great historical figures who inform the practice of mathematics, the subject can be taught — and often is — with no reference to the individuals who have contributed to it. In that sense it is uniquely universal. 

  Schools throughout the world teach the same basic body of mathematics. They differ only by the methodology and intensity with which they instruct students. 

  It is precisely this universality of math — together with the extraordinary ability of American universities to reward hard work and talent — that allowed me, and so many other young scientists and mathematicians, to come to this country and achieve success beyond our wildest dreams. 

  The idea that focusing on getting the “right answer” is now considered among some self-described progressives a form of bias or racism is offensive and extraordinarily dangerous. The entire study of mathematics is based on clearly formulated definitions and statements of fact. If this were not so, bridges would collapse, planes would fall from the sky, and bank transactions would be impossible.

  The ability of mathematics to provide right answers to well-formulated problems is not something specific to one culture or another; it is really the essence of mathematics. To claim otherwise is to argue that somehow the math taught in places like Iran, China, India or Nigeria is not genuinely theirs but borrowed or forged from “white supremacy culture.” It is hard to imagine a more ignorant and offensive statement. 

  Finally, and most importantly, the woke approach to mathematics is particularly poisonous to those it pretends to want to help. Let’s start with the reasonable assumption that mathematical talent is equally distributed at birth to children from all socio-economic backgrounds, independent of ethnicity, sex and race. Those born in poor, uneducated families have clear educational disadvantages relative to others. But mathematics can act as a powerful equalizer. Through its set of well-defined, culturally unbiased, unambiguous set of rules, mathematics gives smart kids the potential to be, at least in this respect, on equal footing with all others. They can stand out by simply finding the right answers to questions with objective results. 

  There is no such thing as “white” mathematics. There is no reason to assume, as the activists do, that minority kids are not capable of mathematics or of finding the “right answers.” And there can be no justification for, in the name of “equity” or anything else, depriving students of the rigorous education that they need to succeed. The real antiracists will stand up and oppose this nonsense.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 20:30

• Bitcoin Could Soon Run Head First Into U.S. Money Laundering Laws
  Bitcoin Could Soon Run Head First Into U.S. Money Laundering Laws

  Among the challenges in regulating bitcoin will be the Biden administration’s handling of recent anti-money laundering laws put into place by the Trump administration pertaining to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. 

  The rules, implemented at the last-minute by the Trump administration, seek requirements for financial services firms to report identities of cryptocurrency holders, according to Bloomberg. The point of the rules is to stop attempts to use crypto as a means of transferring money illicitly. 

  Lobbying against the regulations are “heavyweights from both K Street and Wall Street”, according to Bloomberg, including Fidelity and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce has said the rule would have “unintended long-term consequences” on the virtual currency industry.

  Also lobbying against the rule have been “Republican lawmakers, including former Representative Cynthia Lummis, who is now a Wyoming senator; Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii”. 

  

  The rules were implemented by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN, after President Trump lost the 2020 election. The move drew criticism and even the threat of lawsuits from pro-crypto trade groups. The rule would require filings to the Treasury every time a customer moves at least $10,000 worth of virtual currency into a wallet not hosted at an exchange. These are similar to the reports that banks already send under existing AML laws when customers take out $10,000 or more in cash. 

  The regulation would also require banks and exchanges to keep records of customers who send $3,000 or more of virtual currencies to someone else’s unhosted wallet. 

  Obviously, such regulation would maim one of bitcoin’s biggest “assets”: the ability to transfer money anonymously and “outside the system”. Should Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen move forward with the rules, crypto services could wind up becoming more expensive – and some cryptocurrencies could even disappear altogether. 

  Additionally, if the rules are adopted, they could cause a “sharp fall” in crypto prices, according to Bloomberg. Matthew Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak & Co., said: “Bitcoin is very risky and very volatile and it’s going to continue to be that way. If you add something like a new regulation, it’s going to be very vulnerable to a correction.”

  FinCEN published the rule December 18 and rushed through a 15 day comment period where more than 7,600 public comments were received. 

  As of today, there’s no timetable on when the Biden administration will decide on the rule.

  Of course this is just the latest in “the death of bitcoin”-esque worries. In fact, as 99Bitcoins notes, Bitcoin has died 402 times since inception.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 20:00

• California’s Energy Policies Hurt Minority Citizens The Most
  California’s Energy Policies Hurt Minority Citizens The Most

  Authored by Jude Clemente via RealClear Energy (emphasis ours),

  In 2020, some 9 million Californians were unable to pay their energy bills. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) reports that customers of the major investor-owned electric and gas utilities accumulated $1.15 billion in unpaid bills during the year.

  

  As a “clean energy” climate leader, California seeks to achieve a carbon-free economy before 2050, ensuring that its electrical system can withstand extreme weather events and supply affordable energy to 40 million people.

  That last goal might be the biggest challenge. The wind and the sun may be free, but deriving electricity from them is anything but.

  California’s residential electricity price in 2020 was $20.50 per kWh, or 55% higher than the national average of $13.20 – an expensive energy problem that is only getting worse (see Figure).

  The latest iteration of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), the 100% Clean Energy Act, was enacted in 2018. It requires California utilities to use 100% clean energy by 2045, with an interim requirement of 60% by 2030.

  The costs are immense.

  Experts at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute reported in November that “electricity prices increase substantially after RPS adoption,” adding $30 billion in extra costs after just seven years.

  Here are just some of the numbers, according to new research from UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas:

  • Average residential prices per kWh in San Diego Gas & Electric’s (SDGE) service territory are about double the U.S. average.

  • Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) rates are 80% above the U.S. average.

  • Southern California Edison’s (SCE) prices are 45% higher than the U.S. average.

  • Since 2013, rates at San Diego Gas & Electric have risen nearly 50%, with customers of PG&E paying almost 40% more.

  

  A new report from UC Berkeley attributed California’s high prices to huge fixed costs for generation and grid investments that simply get passed on to customers.

  For example, costs for rooftop solar and wildfire mitigation are quickly mounting.

  Experts at UCLA found that California’s clean energy programs are benefitting the rich and leaving vulnerable families behind.

  As wealthier residents install rooftop solar systems to reduce their electricity bills, lower- and middle-income households bear a bigger burden for covering those fixed costs.

  California’s expensive electricity problem will only get worse.

  From 2020-2022, the state’s big three investor-owned electric utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDGE) plan to spend $22 billion on hardening their systems by cutting back vegetation and pursuing other measures to fight wildfires, along with the high costs of transmission and other network upgrades.

  CPUC concedes that this could increase bundled residential rates 10-20% above the rate of inflation.

  Fitch Ratings has praised the credit-worthiness of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) because it has a “very strong ability to raise revenue.”

  No kidding.

  A few years ago, the city lifted the caps on adjustment factors and made other changes to ensure that rising costs could be seamlessly passed on to customers.

  LADWP has a revenue-decoupling feature in its electric rates, so when sales decline, prices can be raised the following year to compensate for the losses.

  In other words, if power usage falls, whether from a shrinking population or businesses leaving, LADWP can simply up its rates to compensate.

  Indeed, many criticize California’s cap-and-trade system as a disguised tax, because higher costs just get pushed onto captive consumers.

  Hurts Minority Citizens Most

  From Hewlett-Packard to Occidental Petroleum to Tesla, the list of businesses leaving California is growing. These departures represent lost job opportunities for the state’s residents. And higher energy prices disproportionately affect minority communities.

  Already battered by Covid-19, the last thing minority communities need is regressive taxes, such as those imposed by California energy policies:

  • After controlling for factors such as income and household size, experts at UC Berkeley conclude that African-American renters pay $273 more each year than their white peers. African-American homeowners annually pay $408 more for energy than white homeowners.
  • UCLA’s sustainability group recently showed how these disadvantaged communities in Los Angeles could be left behind in the transition to renewables, electric cars, and energy-efficient technologies.

  Experts are telling officials that California’s exorbitantly high electricity prices could block the goal of electrification and even turn public sentiment against renewables. 

  As an input for everything, higher cost energy increases the costs of everything, particularly devastating for food, water, heating/cooling, and other necessities that hold mostly inelastic demand. 

  More laws across the state are banning natural gas hookups in favor of more expensive electricity, even as gas prices are at their lowest levels in decades.

  On an energy-equivalent basis, gas-banning in California is forcing homeowners and renters to pay four times as much for their energy as they would if they were consuming natural gas directly.

  Simply put, the goal to “electrify everything” is a de facto energy tax on low- and middle-income Californians that could add more instability to an already proven unstable state power grid. 

  Minority communities are understandably fighting back.

  A coalition of Latino civil rights leaders has sued California over the state’s energy and housing policies. A mandate to force rooftop solar on new homes is expected to worsen the state’s affordable housing problem, adding costs of $12,000 per home.

  The California Restaurant Association has also sued the city of Berkeley for its gas ban: according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 60% of all restaurants in California are owned by minorities.

  This is why civil rights leaders like Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are actively supporting natural gas.

  The recent Texas energy crisis showed that policies to ensure affordable and reliable energy truly are a matter of life and death. California should take heed of that lesson.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 19:30

• Kroger Opens Fully-Automated Ohio Fulfillment Center As Fears Mount Of Rising Technological Unemployment 
  Kroger Opens Fully-Automated Ohio Fulfillment Center As Fears Mount Of Rising Technological Unemployment 

  With demand for shipped products soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic and foreseeable future, the transition to warehouse automation is already underway – likely to displace warehouse workers and result in rising technological unemployment. 

  Supermarket chain Kroger opened its first automated warehouse in Bulter County, Ohio, last week, reported Hamilton JournalNews. The massive 335,000-square-foot customer fulfillment center is entirely run by robots and artificial intelligence that can put together an order of about 50 items in six minutes compared with 30 to 45 minutes it takes a Kroger employee to pick items from shelves. 

  

  The new $55 million automated facility is known as the “shed” and is the first of 20 planned. 

  The Cincinnati-based grocer completed its first order at the facility last Wednesday. Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chairman and CEO, told investors during Thursday’s call:

  “This marks the soft opening of the facility, and we look forward to our grand opening in early April.

  We continue to be excited about the elevated experience that this will bring to our customers in the tri-state area and across the country as we continue to open additional facilities,” McMullen said. 

  Kroger’s partnership with U.K.-based Ocado has been an essential part of leveraging advanced robotics technology to run the supermarket chain’s e-commerce segment. 

  An Ocado “shed” helps Kroger achieve faster delivery times compared to the in-store experience. It also lowers costs for the grocer. 

  The growing demand for grocery e-commerce by Kroger comes at a time when Instacart, otherwise known as the “personal shopper” app, mulls over robo-driven warehouses as they come to the same realization as Kroger that robots are more efficient and faster in fulfilling orders than humans. 

  The main takeaway is that fulfillment centers will one day be operated by robots and artificial intelligence no matter what the products are. Millions of working-poor Americans, mostly young and less-educated, have joined the ranks of Amazon and other e-commerce retailers as “pickers” in giant warehouses. Many of these jobs will be displaced in the coming years by automation as technological unemployment is set to soar. Maybe if Amazon employees unionize there would be a slower effort by the e-commerece giant to automate its warehouses. 

  This note is a warning to all warehouse workers that robots are coming for their jobs – perhaps now is the time to find a new occupation that will be less impacted by the economy’s technological transformation in the 2020s.   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 19:00

• Ditch The Afghanistan Experts
  Ditch The Afghanistan Experts

  Authored by Daniel L. Davis via RealClear World (emphasis ours),

  U.S. President Joe Biden is coming under heavy pressure to abandon the May 1 deadline to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. The push to move the deadline might come from a former secretary of state, the congressionally mandated Afghan Study Group, or even NATO’s secretary-general. Opposing the pleas of these popular figures are 20 years of unbroken strategic failure. There is ample evidence to suggest that 20 more years of failure await, should the president give in to the wishes of these personalities.

  

  In February, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright argued Biden should ignore the May 1 withdrawal date and instead adopt a series of five new steps. The Afghan Study Group likewise advocated to abandon the withdrawal date and offered its own objectives. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the May 1 date was a “conditions-based” deal and declared the Taliban hadn’t met the conditions, and therefore NATO should continue the war.

  All of these advocates ignore that every tactic and objective they advocate has been tried over the past two decades, usually multiple times, and uniformly they have failed.

  When Barack Obama came into office, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Commander of U.S. Central Command David Petraeus convinced the new president that they had a better strategy than that employed by Obama’s predecessor. They advocated for a dramatic troop increase and the adoption of a counterinsurgency strategy. Obama listened. He authorized a surge of 17,000 troops to Afghanistan in February 2009, and another surge of 30,000 that December.

  Obama was himself unsure the strategy would work. According to Jonathan Alter, however, Obama pressed all his senior officials before making the final decision on Nov. 29 of that year, and he pointedly asked whether they could complete the mission in the 18 months they had promised. All said yes. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months,” Obama demanded, “then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?” All agreed.

  And yet as I personally observed — I was one of the surge troops from 2010-2011 — it was obvious from even a cursory observation on the ground that the mission wouldn’t be successfully completed in 18 months, or even in 18 years. Instead, Obama prosecuted eight more years of inconclusive war in Afghanistan. Donald Trump campaigned on ending endless wars and won the 2016 election. Unfortunately, as president he also came under enormous pressure by supposed experts against ending the war.

  Then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis – both heavyweight former generals with combat experience – sought to sway Trump against following his instincts and ending the war. In August 2017, Trump announced that not only would he not be ordering a withdrawal, but he would reluctantly increase the number of troops.

  “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts,” the president explained. The turnaround, the New York Times reported, was “a victory of sorts” for Mattis and McMaster, who had successfully pressured Trump to order the troop increase. Again the “new” strategy didn’t work, and the result was merely to add four more years to the failed war.

  Now it is Biden who is coming under pressure, again by men and women that seem to have great credentials on paper, to seek yet another so-called new strategic roadmap. Again, they advocate against ending the war and withdrawing. If Biden proves to be the fourth straight president to listen to these experts and choose to cancel the withdrawal and continue the war, it is likely he too will be passing off the war to his successor – as the futile and wasteful adventure reaches 24 or 28 years.

  I warned in 2010 and 2012 that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable. The fundamentals that led me to make that conclusion a decade ago have not changed. So long as Pakistan continues to secretly help the Taliban, the Afghan government remains one of the most corrupt in the world, the Taliban remains committed to fighting, and the Afghan Security Forces remain of limited capability, it won’t matter how many troops Biden orders to Afghanistan, how long they remain there, or what strategy he adopts: We will continue losing the war.

  The best thing President Biden can do for America’s national security and the health and wellbeing of our troops is to end the war and withdraw our troops, on schedule, by May 1. Anything else will needlessly extend the futility into perpetuity.

  Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis1. The views expressed are the author’s own.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 18:30

• How Tokyo Is Using 1,350 Ton Pendulums To Earthquake-Proof Older Buildings
  How Tokyo Is Using 1,350 Ton Pendulums To Earthquake-Proof Older Buildings

  After 2011’s Tohoku earthquake in Japan, the country has been working diligently to “earthquake-proof” itself. The 2011 quake resulted in the deaths of over 22,000 people, including those who died in the subsequent tsunami, according to Nikkei. 

  The quake also caused the Fukushima power plant meltdown. 

  In Tokyo, the quake wasn’t catastrophic, but it was noticed. “The shaking gradually became bigger and bigger, and we didn’t know when it would stop. It was very frightening,” one resident said. Shaking his building lasted 10 minutes. 

  For some parts of the Tokyo skyline, earthquake-proofing buildings means installing 1,350 ton “pendulums” that can help buildings become more resistant to shaking caused by seismic movements. One of Japan’s biggest general contractors, Kajima, is carrying out the installations.

  

  They are part of a broader stroke of retrofits and building upgrades as the country looks to manage earthquake risk moving into the future. Haruhiko Kurino, a senior group leader with Kajima, said: “Many people in high-rise buildings felt uneasy. The earthquake brought home to us that we should take actions to make people inside buildings feel safe and secure.”

  Atsuomi Obayashi, a risk management expert and professor at Tokyo’s Keio University, said: “The 2011 Tohoku earthquake spurred many more companies to tighten their earthquake countermeasures.”

  Even before the quake, however, buildings were constructed specifically to be able to withstand earthquakes. Buildings are meant to be flexible and absorb the shock of such natural disasters. Few buildings suffered direct damage or collapse since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.

  

  Now, instead of just focusing on buildings not collapsing, the focus has turned to reducing their sway, Nikkei reports:

  Earthquakes create two types of seismic motion: short-period and long-period. Long-period seismic motion creates large, slow shaking that can make high-rise buildings sway violently for a long time. The epicenter of the 2011 earthquake was far from Tokyo, but the long-period seismic motions did not weaken much, even far from the epicenter.

  As a result many people in Greater Tokyo were injured by falling objects and fixtures. The swaying in tall buildings often lasts for more than 10 minutes in a big earthquake and can make people feel seasick.

  The pendulums that are installed on rooftops help solve this problem by swinging along with the building, but with a slight delay. They help absorb the vibrations of the building. 

  

  And while demand for office space may be slowing due to Covid, demand for retrofitting buildings with these pendulums is still firm. Tetsuya Hanzawa at Shimizu’s center for safety and reliability engineering told Nikkei: “It is becoming more important for corporate Japan to adopt more earthquake-resistant ceilings, in terms of business continuity.”

  Ohigashi concluded: “Buyers are picky now. As buyers seek more quality and safety, it is crucial for owners of old buildings to update their quality to stay competitive.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 18:00

• Gigafactory Demand Leads To Price Explosion In Battery-Grade Lithium
  Gigafactory Demand Leads To Price Explosion In Battery-Grade Lithium

  Via Mining.com,

  Domestic Chinese battery-grade lithium carbonate prices assessed by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence are on a tear in 2021 after bottoming out in the second half of last year, following a lengthy slump. 

  

  Ex-works lithium carbonate in China (≥99.5% Li2CO3) jumped by 68% to its highest since June 2019 in the first two months on the back of high battery demand, particularly for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode, and a slower-than-anticipated transition to high nickel chemistries, according to Benchmark. 

  Benchmark’s megafactory tracker points to the extent of the rise in demand reflected in China’s battery production figures, which totalled 12 GWh in January, an increase of nearly 320% compared to the same month last year when the country was in the first stages of the pandemic.

  The surge was led by production of LFP batteries which is growing at a breakneck speed, up nearly 500% year- on-year.

  Surging Chinese lithium carbonate prices, which now hold a premium over hydroxide prices for the first time since April 2018, helped push the Benchmark Lithium Price Index up by 14.4% in February 2021, its second-largest move on record after January 2021, the London-headquartered research and price reporting agency said.

  While the most rapid gains were in China, Benchmark’s global weighted average lithium hydroxide prices are up 8% year-to-date and ex-Chinese carbonate prices up by an average of 17.1% in February:

  

  In fact, all 11 of Benchmark’s lithium prices registered increases in February 2021 as producers of both spodumene and lithium chemicals worldwide have begun to sell out inventories and fill order books through until the end of Q2 2021.

  While lithium’s majors are beginning to reengage in expansion plans, three years of falling lithium prices have failed to incentivise sufficient investment into the supply chain, leading to greater risks of price volatility as battery demand ramps up.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 17:30

• Red-Hot Freight Market Sends Used Container-Ship Values Soaring
  Red-Hot Freight Market Sends Used Container-Ship Values Soaring

  No one predicted that the global shipping container industry would be on fire in the last couple of quarters, considering China’s robust economic rebound following the virus-induced downturn. Container rates have soared since last spring as there are few signs of immediate cooling. 

  Container shipowners are capitalizing on the red hot ocean freight market by flipping older ships. Monaco-based International Maritime Enterprises sold its container ship Crete I for $46 million, more than four times its 2016 value ($11 million), according to Bloomberg, citing a new industry report via TradeWinds. 

  

  The market for second-hand ships is soaring as the sale of new vessels has sunk in the last couple of years. A typical container ship takes more than one year to build – so boosting new ship supply cannot be readily done – hence why demand increase and value explosions are being observed on the secondary markets. 

  Clarkson Research Services Ltd. said a 10-year-old container ship with the capacity to haul 6,600 steel boxes fetches about $41 million today – that’s a considerable jump from its $9.5 million value back in 2016.

  

  “The recent price increases have happened far more quickly than previous sales and purchase cycles,” said Stephen Gordon, managing director at Clarkson Research. “Recent prices trends for 10-year-old vessels have more than doubled in less than six months, whereas in 2016-17 and 2004-2005 it took nearly 18 months for similar percentage price increases.”

  “February was the second-highest activity on record for transactions measured in ship container capacity,” Gordon said.

  Time charter rates for a 6,800-box container ship have erupted. 

  

  Container shipping data from Freightos and Harper Petersen & Co show container rates have been surging since April-June of 2020.

  

  Demand for freight containers and the heavy flows from China to the US East/West Coast has resulted in a shipping container shortage in Asia. 

  In September, we first noted that demand for ocean freight out of China was “leading to equipment shortages in Asia.”

  “The surge in volumes is leading to equipment shortages in Asia. Some shippers are paying premiums on top of spiking rates to guarantee containers and space. The imbalance is also putting pressure on overwhelmed US ports and importers to process and return empty containers quickly.”

  While the buying frenzy for second-hand container ships continues – we suspect this trend will last until the global economic rebound stalls – with China’s credit impulse already peaking – this could be in the second half of this year. 

  

  From used cars to used private jets to now used container ships, real asset prices are exploding higher. But how long will this madness last? 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 17:00

• Israel Updating Plans To Attack Iran, Ready To 'Act Independently' 
  Israel Updating Plans To Attack Iran, Ready To ‘Act Independently’ 

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Fox News in an interview published Friday that the Israeli military is updating its plans to strike Iran’s nuclear program and is prepared to act independently.

  Gantz falsely portrayed Iran’s recent steps to advance its civilian nuclear program as the Islamic Republic racing to develop a bomb, something he said Israel would stop. “If the world stops them before, it’s very much good. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” he said.

  

  Gantz cited nuclear activity that Iran is willing to quickly reverse if the US lifts sanctions and returns to the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. But Gantz, like most Israeli officials, is opposed to a revival of the agreement.

  Israeli officials have been making veiled threats about attacking Iran if President Biden rejoins the JCPOA. Other incidents in the region that are being blamed on Iran are causing some to fear that Israel might be preparing an attack sooner rather than later.

  Without providing evidence for the claim, Israel blamed Iran for an explosion on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman that happened last week. No crew members were hurt, and the ship was back at sea a few days after the incident. When asked about possible retaliation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “striking at” Iran throughout the region.

  “This is a target map. Each one of them has been checked legally, operationally, intelligence-wise and we are ready to fight,” Gantz told the FOX correspondent while handing him a classified map.

  EXCLUSIVE: Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz shows Fox News a classified target map, revealing Hezbollah missiles amid civilian infrastructure https://t.co/fPisnRjtjs pic.twitter.com/fm4nOQ5yLm

  — Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 4, 2021

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

  On Wednesday, Israel blamed Iran for another incident in the region. Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel claimed Iran was responsible for a large oil spill that hit Israel last month.

  Surprisingly, Israeli military and intelligence officials doubted Gamliel’s claim, as did other officials in the Environmental Protection Ministry.

  

  Regardless of whether Iran was responsible or not, Israel could be planning a strike against the Islamic Republic over the two incidents. Sources told Business Insider that the Biden administration and its European allies are fearing that Israel is planning a “substantial” attack on Iran.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 16:30

• JPMorgan Estimates Up To $316 Billion In Forced Month-End Selling
  JPMorgan Estimates Up To $316 Billion In Forced Month-End Selling

  Friday’s post-European close ramp notwithstanding…

  

  … stock markets, and especially growth stocks, had a rude awakening this week as rising rates finally hammered high duration stocks, shown in this chart which we have been posting ever since November to warn readers of who will get hammered first.

  

  For those who hope that the worst is now over, JPM has some bad news.

  In one of his latest Flows and Liquidity reports, JPM quant Nick Panigirtzoglou writes that as we approach quarter-end, the equity rebalancing flow question is resurfacing in client conversations. As we notes, “the equity rally and the bond sell-off during the current quarter is naturally creating a pending rebalancing flow for multi-asset investors away from equities into bonds for pension funds and balanced mutual funds. How much of equity/bond rebalancing flow should we expect into current quarter-end?”

  To answer this question, the Greek strategist applies a familiar framework and looks at the four key multi-asset investors that have either fixed allocation targets or tend to exhibit strong mean reversion in their asset allocation. These are balanced mutual funds, such as 60:40 funds, US defined benefit pension plans, Norges Bank, i.e. the Norwegian oil fund, and the Japanese government pension plan, GPIF.

  For those curious about the details, below is a more detailed summary of the considerations behind the four key investor classes ahead of month and quarter-end.

  1. Balanced mutual funds including 60:40 funds, a close to $7.5tr AUM universe globally, tend to rebalance over 1-2 months or so. The lesson from last Nov/Dec is that balanced mutual funds exhibit flexibility and they do not necessarily rebalance every single month. During the previous quarter, they appear to have postponed rebalancing for Nov-end or Dec-end and to have waited until January to de-risk/rebalance. JPM believes that funds de-risked in January, as a result of the tumble in balanced MFs equity beta…

  

  .. and since it would have been too soon to rebalance again in February, the quant believes that they have likely postponed any pending rebalancing to March. Assuming they were fully rebalanced at the end of January, which is a reasonable hypothesis given the reduction in their betas in January and by taking into account the performance of global equities and bonds since then, JPMorgan estimates around $107bn of equity selling by balanced mutual funds globally into the end of March in order to revert to their 60:40 target allocation.

  2. US defined benefit pension plans are a similarly big universe with AUM of around $8tr. They tend to rebalance more slowly over 1-2 quarters or so. Assuming they were fully rebalanced at the end of December, and by taking into account the QTD performance of US equities and bonds, JPM expects that the pending equity rebalancing flow by US defined benefit pension plans into the current quarter-end is negative at around -$110bn: “In other word, US defined benefit plans would need to sell $110bn of equities towards the end of the current quarter and buy a similar amount of bonds for their allocations to revert to end-December levels.” Making matters worse, and given the improvement in their funded ratios, Panigirtzoglou notes that it is possible that they would seek to take advantage of this improvement to de-risk, “which could pose some upside risk to this estimate.”

  3. Norges Bank, a $1.3tr AUM entity as at the end of 2020, is calculated to see negative $65bn in rebalancing (out)flows. This, according to JPM, incorporates also the fact that the Norwegian government looks set to continue to rely on net transfers from its fund to finance part of its budget deficit and assumes that the equity weight would be returned to its target of around 70%. In the second half of 2020, the Norges Bank allowed its equity weight to increase to nearly 73%, and in the event it would simply seek to keep its equity weight unchanged at 73% would imply around $22bn of equity sales, which JPM thinks of as a lower bound estimate.

  4. The Japanese government pension plan, or GPIF, a $1.7tr AUM entity, is also set to sell: JPM estimates that the pending equity rebalancing flow by the GPIF into the current quarter-end based on current equity and bond returns is also likely negative at around $34bn.

  Putting these together, we get:

  • Mutual -$107BN
  • Defined Pension -$110BN
  • Norges Bank -$65BN (could be -$22BN)
  • GPIF -$34BN

  … a grand total of $316BN.

  To be sure, this number will likely be lower following last week’s selloff which followed the original JPM analysis, and may be some $40BN less based on assumptions about forced Norwegian selling, we are still talking about selling in the $100BN+ range in the days before quarter end, which is why JPM concludes that “in all, we see some vulnerability in equity markets into quarter-end from pension funds entities as well balanced mutual funds selling equities and buying bonds to rebalance towards their target equity/bond allocations.“

  And while JPM’s last forced selling forecast was a dud, with the bank’s Nov 2020 prediction of a similar number ($310BN) in year-end selling never materializing (as JPM now acknowledges) and stocks shooting higher by the end of last year, the reality this time is that with markets suddenly far more jittery many whale investors will not risk testing if JPM is wrong twice in a row and may simply frontrun the potential selling, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as fears of possible selling spark waves of actual selling. The only question we have is when does the frontrunning officially begin?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 16:00

• Tulsi Gabbard Calls Out The US Dirty War On Syria That Biden & Aides Admit To
  Tulsi Gabbard Calls Out The US Dirty War On Syria That Biden & Aides Admit To

  Via Pushback with Aaron Maté at The Grayzone,

  While Joe Biden has faced some mild Congressional pushback for bombing the Iraq-Syria border, Tulsi Gabbard says her former colleagues are ignoring the larger issue: the ongoing US dirty war on Syria.

  After a decade of proxy warfare that empowered Al Qaeda and ISIS, the US is now occupying one-third of Syria and imposing crippling sanctions that are crushing Syria’s economy and preventing reconstruction.

  Watch: Featuring video clips from — Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic Congressmember; President Joe Biden; Brett McGurk, National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa; Martin Dempsey, former Joint Chiefs chairman; Rob Malley, Special Envoy for Iran; John Kerry, Special Envoy for Climate & former Secretary of State; former President Donald Trump; Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on Sanctions; Dana Stroul, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East; Vice President Kamala Harris.

  While Gabbard has been vilified for her stance on Syria, many top White House officials – including Joe Biden himself – have already acknowledged the same facts that she has called out.

  Aaron Maté plays clips of Biden and some of his most senior aides admitting to the horrific realities of the US dirty war on Syria, and argues that Gabbard only stands apart in being wiling to criticize it.

  * * *

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 15:30

• Pope Pleads For Peace In Historic Meeting With Powerful Shiite Cleric In Iraq
  Pope Pleads For Peace In Historic Meeting With Powerful Shiite Cleric In Iraq

  On Saturday Pope Frances traveled to the Shia holy city of Najaf while on his four-day papal visit to Iraq – the first ever such trip by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. There he held a historic and somewhat controversial meeting with the country’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, amid a massive security presence. 

  The 90-year old Sistani is among the most senior Shiite clerics in the world, whose quiet but powerful influence has helped shaped post-US invasion Iraq. The months in the making meeting was held in Sistani’s own home. 

  

  Pope Francis’ main message to the top Islamic cleric during the 50-minute meeting reportedly emphasized the importance of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians of Iraq.

  Sistani likewise “affirmed his concern that Christian citizens [who] should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights,” according to a subsequent press release.

  And a Vatican statement further said the Pope thanked al-Sistani for having “raised his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted.” The dialogue itself during the meeting was kept quiet. 

  The meeting took place in close vicinity to the golden-domed Imam Ali Shrine, among the most revered sites in Shiite Islam. The shrine was target of a major twin car bombing in August of 2003 which killed 95 people, and later claimed by al-Qaeda in Iraq.

  Video of @Pontifex visit to Sayed Sistani today pic.twitter.com/z2oOgeDjzi

  — Sajad Jiyad سجاد (@SajadJiyad) March 6, 2021

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

  According to AFP, Sistani’s office “published an image of the two, neither wearing masks: Sistani in a black turban with his wispy grey beard reaching down to his black robe and Francis all in white, looking directly at the grand ayatollah.”

  The significance of the meeting is sure to reverberate across borders, given “The 90-year-old al-Sistani has been a consistent counterweight to Iran’s influence. With the meeting, Francis is implicitly recognizing him as the chief interlocutor of Shiite Islam over his rival, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. News of the meeting heightened long-standing rivalries between the Shiite seminaries of Najaf and Iran’s city of Qom over which stands at the center of the Shiite world,” an AP report previously explained. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 15:00

• Newsom COVID 'Equity' Plan: Vaccinate 2 Million Latinos Or California Won't Reopen
  Newsom COVID ‘Equity’ Plan: Vaccinate 2 Million Latinos Or California Won’t Reopen

  Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,

  California Governor Gavin Newsom has completely changed his response to COVID – again – this time leveraging opening the state for all Californians on the backs of low-income Latinos living in the areas with the highest rates of the illness.

  In the name of “equity,” Newsom announced Thursday that 40% of all the state’s available vaccines will go to Latino communities in the Central Valley and in pockets of LA because Latinos have suffered the most death and illness from COVID.

  

  And there’s a catch: Until the Latinos in these areas take the vaccine in higher numbers, California will stay locked down.

  State Health and Human Services Director Dr. Mark Ghaly said once the shots are in the arms, the state can reopen.

  “As we achieve higher levels of vaccine in the hardest hit communities, we feel more confident that more and more activities across the state can occur,” he said in a briefing Thursday.

  […]

  Once 2 million vaccine doses are given out in those neighborhoods, the state will make it easier for counties to move through reopening tiers that dictate business and school reopenings. With 1.6 million shots administered, he said he expects to hit that target in the next week or two.

  Once the state gives out 4 million doses in those neighborhoods, state officials will revise the metrics for reopening sooner.

  The new plan swaps out the current color-based tier plan with a person-of-color-based plan.

  The Associated Press reported that the governor said getting the vaccines into the arms of Latinos is a “race against exhaustion,” whatever that means.

  “It is a race against the variants. It’s a race against exhaustion. It’s a race to safely, thoughtfully open our economy, mindful that it has to be an economy that doesn’t leave people behind, that is truly inclusive,” Newsom, a Democrat, said at a news conference. He also encouraged people to wear two masks.

  State lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, the woman who’s responsible for AB 5, which largely killed the freelance worker economy in California on behalf of her union pals, wondered how the change in the plan would affect the governor’s previously announced plan to get teachers in the classroom.

  The changes announced Wednesday are “kind of not fair” to those who negotiated the deal, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez said.

  “If we are going to change the tiers and suddenly everyone is in red tier, that changes the classes that have to be open, the number of classes and the testing cadences,” the San Diego Democrat said Thursday just before the Legislature voted on the bill.

  “So, if you get calls from your teachers union a little upset, they have the right to be upset. You don’t negotiate a deal and change the parameters of that deal on the day we are voting on it.”

  The Sacramento Bee reports that the executive director of the California Teachers Association, Joe Boyd, is a bit whipsawed at how confusing Newsom’s COVID response has been.

  He said the governor’s change to the definition of the red tier makes things more complicated.

  “We’ve changed the meaning of what it means to be in a tier now three times,” he said Thursday, speaking on a panel with the Public Policy Institute of California. “At some point, we have to have some consistency of what to expect.”

  The governor also announced that he was advising people to wear double masks.

  This is after Newsom criticized Texas Governor Gregg Abbott for halting his mask mandate, making it voluntary. He called Abbott reckless.

  Of course, Newsom has broken his own coronavirus rules very publicly at least twice, at one point putting a Fresno Mexican restaurant in danger of being closed down because Newsom visited inside, against county COVID rules. The other example was Newsom’s double-standard dinner at the French Laundry with people from all different families, nearly all of whom were lobbyists.

  👀👀 pic.twitter.com/C3dEkYfvA2

  — Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) March 2, 2021

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

  ABC News 7 reported that Newsom was going all-in with giving out vaccines based on equity, which is to say, “color.”

  Gov. Gavin Newsom has called equity the state’s “North Star.” Yet community health clinics focused on serving low-income and vulnerable Californians say they haven’t been getting enough doses. Ghaly said Thursday that Newsom’s administration will work with communities to make sure the vaccine actually ends up in the arms of those patients, not to day-trippers from wealthier ZIP codes who have the time and tech savvy to schedule appointments online.

  The Sacramento Bee reported that “tying reopening to vaccination equity metrics was cheered by representatives of the legislative Black and Latino caucuses, as well as social justice and equity groups. Latinos make up roughly half of cases and deaths in California even though they are 39% of the population. […] Data show that of shots given, only about 17% were administered in vulnerable communities that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.”

  Holding the rest of the state hostage to the vaccination rate of Latinos in certain zip codes seems an odd way of approaching the issue. The governor is apparently hoping that others will pressure Latino citizens to take a vaccine they may or may not want. If you like mask-shamers, just wait until vaccine-shaming becomes a cottage industry in the Golden State.

  This plan may meet Newsom’s definition of “equity,” but certainly won’t enhance comity between Californians.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 03/06/2021 – 14:35