- Russia Slams "Crude Provocation" After US Invited To Station Troops & Anti-Air Systems In Ukraine
Russia Slams “Crude Provocation” After US Invited To Station Troops & Anti-Air Systems In Ukraine
A top Ukrainian official has indicated that US support to Ukraine may be in the process of ramping up dramatically, suggesting that Kiev has invited a permanent American troop presence and stationing of anti-air defense rocket systems on its soil.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Reznikov made the revealing statements recently while hosted by the hawkish D.C.-based Jamestown Foundation. “It is important to expand the security package for Ukraine,” Reznikov said. “First of all, with the stationing of air defense forces, and even by deploying American units.”
Patriot batteries, via AFP Reznikov forther argued this would serve a secondary purpose of eroding Moscow’s “influence in the Balkans” – also at a moment the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline is nearing completion, and amid rival military drills of late occurring on the Black Sea.
The statements certainly raised eyebrows in the Kremlin, being picked up widely in Russian media, which described such a scenario of US air defenses on Russia’s border a severe “red line”. TASS cited chairman of the State Duma’s committee for international affairs, Leonid Slutsky, who lashed out at the “crude provocation” on Tuesday.
“Reznikov’s statement is crude provocation. The deployment of the US missile defense systems in Ukraine may change the balance of force in the region and outside it,” Slutsky was quoted as saying. TASS reported his words further:
He stressed that the anti-missile system Aegis included the launcher Mk41, which could be used for launching not only interceptors, but also cruise missiles.
“Their emergence (of such air defense systems – TASS) close to Russia’s borders will undoubtedly evoke Moscow’s response. Tensions will merely soar,” Slutsky warned.
Meanwhile the past year has witnessed a mutual ramping up of military drills on the Black Sea between Russia on the one hand and the Western allies on the other.
And D.C. think tanks have renewed efforts at stoking tensions over Ukraine…
It’s time to stop referring to the area extending from central Europe to Central Asia as a “post-Soviet space.” The reductive term warps U.S. and European policy and serves Russia’s imperialistic aims, argues Ukrainian Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba. https://t.co/jQYnl16KNj
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 5, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Just last month, NATO and Ukraine held two weeks of joint naval drills – Sea Breeze 2021 – as a show of force aimed squarely at Moscow. It involved some 30 warships and 40 aircraft from NATO members and Ukraine, according to IUS state-funded VOA News.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/11/2021 – 02:45 - Italy To Extend Vaccine Passports To Public Transport & Schools
Italy To Extend Vaccine Passports To Public Transport & Schools
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Despite massive protests against the measures, Italy is set to extend its vaccine passport system to public transport and schools from September 1st.
Potentially exacerbating growing public contempt towards the draconian rules, authorities announced that the list of venues where the passport would be required is to be extended.
From the start of next month, teachers will be out of a job unless they take the vaccine and get the pass, while university students will be unable to attend classes without it.
The unvaccinated will also be banned from using long distance public transport, meaning that holidays, travel for work and visiting relatives will become impossible for many.
As of last week, venues such as museums, stadiums, theaters gyms, and indoor seating spaces at bars and restaurants all required vaccine identification.
“Customers and venues may face fines ranging from €400 to €1,000 ($470 to $1,180) if businesses fail to implement the regulation. Institutions that frequently break the rule risk being shut down for up to ten days by the authorities,” reports Reclaim the Net.
In an Orwellian statement, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said the extension of the scheme to include schools and public transport was necessary to “avoid closures and to safeguard freedom.”
As we highlighted last month, the Italian parliament saw protests against the domestic passports when MPs who held up signs saying “no green pass” were chased out of the building.
Italians also hit the streets in numerous cities the demonstrate against the plan, with protesters in Turin chanting, “No dictatorship!”
All across Europe, governments are creating two tier societies that will entrench total discrimination against the unvaccinated, who will remain under de facto lockdown measures indefinitely.
As we highlighted earlier, in France which has imposed one of the most draconian systems, police are now on patrol checking the vaccine papers of people sitting outdoors at cafes.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/11/2021 – 02:00 - Escobar: All Roads Lead To The Battle For Kabul
Escobar: All Roads Lead To The Battle For Kabul
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
City after city have fallen from government to Taliban control but Afghanistan’s end-game is still unclear…
Afghan militia fighters keep watch at an outpost against Taliban insurgents at Charkint district in Balkh Province in June. Photo: AFP / Farshad Usyan
The ever-elusive Afghan “peace” process negotiations re-start this Wednesday in Doha via the extended troika – the US, Russia, China and Pakistan. The contrast with the accumulated facts on the ground could not be starker.
In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban have subdued no less than six Afghan provincial capitals in only four days. The central administration in Kabul will have a hard time defending its stability in Doha.
It gets worse. Ominously, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has all but buried the Doha process. He’s already betting on civil war – from the weaponization of civilians in the main cities to widespread bribing of regional warlords, with the intent of building a “coalition of the willing” to fight the Taliban.
The capture of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province, was a major Taliban coup. Zaranj is the gateway for India’s access to Afghanistan and further on to Central Asia via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).
India paid for the construction of the highway linking the port of Chabahar in Iran – the key hub of India’s faltering version of the New Silk Roads – to Zaranj.
At stake here is a vital Iran-Afghanistan border crossing cum Southwest/Central Asia transportation corridor. Yet now the Taliban control trade on the Afghan side. And Tehran has just closed the Iranian side. No one knows what happens next.
The Taliban are meticulously implementing a strategic master plan. There’s no smoking gun, yet – but highly informed outside help – Pakistani ISI intel? – is plausible.
First, they conquer the countryside – a virtually done deal in at least 85% of the territory. Then they control the key border checkpoints, as with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Spin Boldak with Balochistan in Pakistan. Finally, it’s all about encircling and methodically taking provincial capitals – that’s where we are now.
The final act will be the Battle for Kabul. This may plausibly happen as early as September, in a warped “celebration” of the 20 years of 9/11 and the American bombing of 1996-2001 Talibanistan.
That strategic blitzkrieg
What’s going on across the north is even more astonishing than in the southwest.
The Taliban have conquered Sheberghan, a heavily Uzbek-influenced area, and took no time to spread images of fighters in stolen garb posing in front of the now-occupied Dostum Palace. Notoriously vicious warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum happens to be the current Afghan vice-president.
Taliban posing with military garb stolen from Dostum’s palace in Sheberghan. Photo: Supplied
The Taliban’s big splash was to enter Kunduz, which is still not completely subdued. Kunduz is very important strategically. With 370,000 people and quite close to the Tajik border, it’s the main hub of northeast Afghanistan.
Kabul government forces have simply fled. All prisoners were released from local jails. Roads are blocked. That’s significant because Kunduz is at the crossroads of two important corridors – to Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. And crucially, it’s also a crossroads of corridors used to export opium and heroin.
The Bundeswehr used to occupy a military base near Kunduz airport, now housing the 217th Afghan Army corps. That’s where the few remaining Afghan government forces have retreated.
The Taliban are now bent on besieging the historically legendary Mazar-i-Sharif, the big northern city, even more important than Kunduz. Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital of Balkh province. The top local warlord, for decades, has been Atta Mohammad Noor, who I met 20 years ago.
He’s now vowing to defend “his” city “until the last drop of my blood.” That, in itself, spells out a major civil war scenario.
The Taliban endgame here is to establish a west-east axis from Sheberghan to Kunduz and the also captured Taloqan, the capital of Takhar province, via Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province, and parallel to the northern borders with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
If that happens, we’re talking about an irreversible, logistical game-changer, with virtually the whole north escaping from the control of Kabul. No way the Taliban will “negotiate” this win – in Doha or anywhere else.
The leader of the Taliban negotiating team Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, center, after the final declaration of the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha on July 18, 2021. Photo: AFP / Karim Jaafar
An extra astonishing fact is that all these areas do not feature a Pashtun majority, unlike Kandahar in the south and Lashkar Gah in the southwest, where the Taliban are still fighting to establish complete control.
The Taliban’s control over almost all international border crossings yielding customs revenue leads to serious questions about what happens next to the drug business.
Will the Taliban again interdict opium production – like the late Mullah Omar did in the early 2000s? A strong possibility is that distribution will not be allowed inside Afghanistan.
After all, export profits can only benefit Taliban weaponization – against future American and NATO “interference.” And Afghan farmers may earn much more with opium poppy cultivation than with other crops.
NATO’s abject failure in Afghanistan is visible in every aspect. In the past, Americans used military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Bundeswehr used the base in Termez, Uzbekistan, for years.
Termez is now used for Russian and Uzbek joint maneuvers. And the Russians left their base in Kyrgzstan to conduct joint maneuvers in Tajikistan. The whole security apparatus in the neighboring Central Asian “stans” is being coordinated by Russia.
China’s main security priority, meanwhile, is to prevent future jihadi incursions in Xinjiang, which involve extremely hard mountain crossings from Afghanistan to Tajikistan and then to a no man’s land in the Wakhan corridor. Beijing’s electronic surveillance is tracking anything that moves in this part of the roof of the world.
This Chinese think tank analysis shows how the moving chessboard is being tracked. The Chinese are perfectly aware of the “military pressure on Kabul” running in parallel to the Taliban diplomatic offensive, but prefer to stress their “posing as an aggressive force ready to take over the regime.”
Chinese realpolitik also recognizes that “the United States and other countries will not easily give up the operation in Afghanistan for many years, and will not be willing to let Afghanistan become the sphere of influence of other countries.”
This leads to characteristic Chinese foreign policy caution, with practically an advice for the Taliban not to “be too big,” and try “to replace the Ghani government in one fell swoop.”
How to prevent a civil war
So is Doha DOA? Extended troika players are doing what they can to salvage it. There are rumors of feverish “consultations” with the members of the Taliban political office based in Qatar and with the Kabul negotiators.
The starter will be a meeting this Tuesday of the US, Russia, Afghanistan’s neighbors and the UN. Yet even before that, the Taliban political office spokesman, Naeem Wardak, has accused Washington of interfering in internal Afghan affairs.
Pakistan is part of the extended troika. Pakistani media is all-out involved in stressing how Islamabad’s leverage over the Taliban “is now limited.” An example is made of how the Taliban shut the key border crossing in Spin Boldak – actually a smuggling haven – demanding Pakistan ease visa restrictions for Afghans.
Now that is a real nest of vipers issue. Most old school Taliban leaders are based in Pakistan’s Balochistan and supervise what goes in and out of the border from a safe distance, in Quetta.
Extra trouble for the extended troika is the absence of Iran and India at the negotiating table. Both have key interests in Afghanistan, especially when it comes to its hopefully new peaceful role as a transit hub for Central-South Asia connectivity.
Moscow from the start wanted Tehran and New Delhi to be part of the extended troika. Impossible. Iran never sits on the same table with the US, and vice-versa. That’s the case now in Vienna, during the JCPOA negotiations, where they “communicate” via the Europeans.
New Delhi for its part refuses to sit on the same table with the Taliban, which it sees as a terrorist Pakistani proxy.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Tehran. Photo: AFP / Iranian Foreign Ministry
There’s a possibility that Iran and India may be getting their act together, and that would include even a closely connected position on the Afghan drama.
When Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar attended President Ebrahim Raisi’s inauguration last week in Tehran, they insisted on “close cooperation and coordination” also on Afghanistan.
What this would imply in the near future is increased Indian investment in the INSTC and the India-Iran-Afghanistan New Silk Road corridor. Yet that’s not going to happen with the Taliban controlling Zaranj.
Beijing for its part is focused on increasing its connectivity with Iran via what could be described as a Persian-colored corridor incorporating Tajikistan and Afghanistan. That will depend, once again, on the degree of Taliban control.
But Beijing can count on an embarrassment of riches: Plan A, after all, is an extended China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Afghanistan annexed, whoever is in power in Kabul.
What’s clear is that the extended troika will not be shaping the most intricate details of the future of Eurasia integration. That will be up to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia, China, Pakistan, India, the Central Asian “stans” and Iran and Afghanistan as current observers and future full-members.
So the time has come for the SCO’s ultimate test: how to pull off a near-impossible power-sharing deal in Kabul and prevent a devastating civil war, complete with imperial B-52 bombing.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/11/2021 – 00:05 - China Upholds Death Sentence For Canadian Man Convicted Of Drug Smuggling
China Upholds Death Sentence For Canadian Man Convicted Of Drug Smuggling
Though the story has faded from the headlines over the past 18 months (as the coronavirus and China’s efforts to obscure its origins has superseded other diplomatic struggles), a Chinese judge has just rejected a Canadian man’s last attempt to appeal a death sentence for smuggling drugs.
The timing is notable, coming one day before a Canadian man accused of espionage (one of two Canadian nationals arrested and charged with espionage) is expected to be sentenced in a case that Ottawa has decried as political retribution for the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
The court proceedings for the two Canadians comes as lawyers in Canada representing Meng, who is still under house arrest in Canada as she awaits a ruling on extradition to the US, make a final push to convince a court there not to extradite her to the US, where she faces charges linked to violating sanctions.
The convicted drug smuggler, Robert Schellenberg, was arrested in 2014 and initially sentenced to 15 years in prison in late 2018.
He appealed, but a court in the city of Dalian sentenced him to death in January 2019, a month after Meng was first arrested at Vancouver International Airport on a warrant from the US, charging her with misleading HSBC Holdings about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, potentially causing the bank to violate American economic sanctions.
Around the same tie, two Canadian businessmen were arrested and later charged with espionage.
The High Court in the northeast province of Liaoning heard Schellenberg’s appeal against the death sentence in May last year and confirmed the verdict on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters by telephone after attending the hearing, Canadian ambassador to Beijing Dominic Barton criticized the decision and demanded that China grant clemency.
“It is not a coincidence that these are happening right now, while the case is going on in Vancouver,” Barton said, referring to Schellenberg’s case and that of another Canadian, Michael Spavor.
Spavor was detained in China days after Meng’s arrest in Vancouver. He was charged with espionage in June last year and went to trial in March.
China has rejected the claim that any of the cases were politically motivated.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 23:45 - What Would Our Economy Look Like In The Shadow Of Vaccine Passports?
What Would Our Economy Look Like In The Shadow Of Vaccine Passports?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,
Yes, it’s an official concern now. The mainstream media and the Biden Administration have gone from suggesting that Covid vaccinations would “not be mandated” to saying they “should be mandated.” This means several very uncomfortable consequences are on the way for our economy and the nation as a whole. Remember, the federal government already decided it’s legal for companies to require coronavirus vaccines.
The most obvious next step: A mandatory “vaccine passport” certifying its holder has gotten the recommended injections.
The assertion by the establishment is that life would simply go back to normal as long as you comply and get your shots like a good citizen.
But from what I have seen even some people who have taken the vaccines voluntarily do not want a passport system in place, and for good reason. Should a mandatory vaccine passport system be implemented, life will never be normal again.
Vaccine passports are not a panacea
First we have to take into account the fact that there will never be a 100% vaccination rate in the U.S.; not even close. With a number of states at or below a 50% vaccination rate, there is a question of practicality regarding vaccine passports. Such a program would mean that around half the country could be put in the position of hearing they have no right to employment or possibly even general interaction in trade because they won’t take the experimental jab.
The real concern with a vaccine passport has nothing to do with coronavirus, or herd immunity, or saving lives. It’s a tool of control. Like the Soviet Union’s communist party membership card, it’s an official document that demonstrates compliance to authority. It’s a tool to divide the U.S. population.
If this autocratic diktat was directed at a tiny minority of people within the population, it might work at frightening them into accepting the vaccinations; to go along to get along. But, with hundreds of millions of people saying “no way,” history tells us the more pressure applied the more rebellion is inspired.
Second, we have to consider what the immediate economic and financial effects will be in light of this conflict. For example, look at the amount of relocation and migration that has happened in the U.S. in the past year alone. Many millions of people have escaped from predominantly blue states based on political and social factors; and the covid mandates and lockdowns are a big part of what inspired most people to leave.
As has been well documented, blue states are much slower in recovering economically when compared to red states with less restrictions. Not only that, but money moves with people. This is a hard reality. Conservative states are seeing ample cash inflows from tourism and mass migration while blue states are bleeding tax revenues. In light of this revelation, red states are going to ask themselves this question:
“Why would we commit economic suicide like the blue states by following their example? Wouldn’t vaccine passports be the equivalent of blue state covid mandates times a hundred?”
But let’s say for a moment that vaccine passports were somehow implemented everywhere in the country at the same exact time. What would happen then?
Economic consequences of a vaccine passport mandate
Well, the amount of bureaucracy that would be added between the average consumer and everyday trade would be immense, and with red tape comes a slowdown in business.
Whole new wings of the government would have to be created to track and enforce vaccine passports rules (I say “rules” because none of the mandates have ever been passed into law or voted on by the public). Regular inspections of businesses would have to be enacted, and new taxes would have to be created to pay for the system. The amount of space and employees needed to meet new standards for retailers would increase in order to check every customer that comes through the door for a passport.
Also, let’s not forget that many thousands of people in multiple states have had “breakout” covid infections despite being fully vaccinated, which means rules on social distancing and masking will also still be in place. The amount of capital that a business owner would have to spend to meet the government requirements would continue to rise while their profits would continue to fall. Eventually, the majority of small businesses would close, just as we saw during the first series of lockdowns.
Smaller businesses, which represent about half of the U.S. retail economy, would be under so much stress from maintaining the proper restrictions and adding infrastructure that they simply would not be able to compete with major corporations and Big Box stores.
The end result would be the complete disintegration of the small business sector (except perhaps online retailers). Only national and international conglomerates would be left behind to provide brick-and-mortar services to the public, and of course many millions of jobs would be lost in the process.
Less competition means ever increasing prices and a lower quality of goods and services.
Simply put, vaccine passports could result in the death of what’s left of the free market as we know it. The majors will know they have the public by the scruff of the neck, so why bother trying anymore? They can throw us scraps from the table and we would have to take them and be happy with what we get.
Practical alternatives to the death of the free market
Then again, there is a central factor that tends to arise when restrictions on the economy are put in place – The black market, or what I would call “alternative markets”.
When governments restrict domestic trade and limit consumer participation based on frivolous requirements, people don’t just roll over and submit. Instead, they find other ways to get the things they need more freely. This means black market trade or barter markets, alternative currencies and sometimes entire underground economies.
Free markets will not be denied. And this is where the government disguise of humanitarianism will really fall away and true tyranny will be revealed.
Anyone rational would say that people trading with each other on an individual or community basis is perfectly normal, but under medical tyranny such trade would be treated as an ultimate crime. By providing services for each other, common people would be “opening the door” to survival outside of the system, and if survival is possible, then non-vaccination is possible. Therefore, the argument will be made by the establishment that alternative economies need to be eliminated “for the good of society as a whole.” There is always an excuse for totalitarianism.
With a large portion of the population seeking a means to live without oppression, alternative markets will thrive, and the government will make war on them. Which means the people will be forced to make war on the government. It’s inevitable under every scenario. But in the meantime, barter and trade will continue without vaccine passports and there’s not much that governments can do to stop it.
I have little doubt that precious metals will become go-to commodities for trade as a currency, just as they always have in times of crisis. All trade systems need a universal mechanism with inherent value to back it, otherwise more and more steps are added in the trade cycle and it becomes more difficult to conclude each transaction. Straight barter will be useful, but so will precious metals (especially gold and silver) along with other hard commodities with intrinsic value and utility.
Economic disaster followed by an economic renaissance
What I see in the near future is economic disaster in the wake of any attempt at a vaccine passport system. Millions will lose their jobs or quit their jobs in protest. Small businesses will disappear under the weight of bureaucracy and constant scrutiny. The quality of goods and services will suffer as competition shrivels. But I also see the birth of a whole new economic system outside of the mainstream control grid. I see true free markets returning, and eventually, I see full blown rebellion.
What I suggest is that people get ready for this eventuality. We need to become producers again, rather than mere consumers. In order to position ourselves for success in the new trade environment we have to be able to make necessities, repair necessities or teach necessary skills. Those that are able to do this will do very well within alternative markets. And, of course, those that stock preparations and buy gold and silver will also have a safety net as the current economy is slowly crushed under the weight of covid mandates.
Finally, if you find yourself today in a heavily restricted city, county, or state, I suggest leaving now while you still can to a safer and more free place with more liberty minded people. Time is running out fast.
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 23:25 - Frost Bites Brazilian Sugar Crop As Prices Zoom Higher
Frost Bites Brazilian Sugar Crop As Prices Zoom Higher
Brazil’s top producing regions for coffee, oranges, and sugar have been devastated by the worst weather in decades and could leave a lasting impact on prices, according to Bloomberg.
The South American country is one of the world’s leading coffee, sugar, and orange producers experienced a cold snap and drought this growing season in the Center-South area that has significantly damaged crops.
We have focused on coffee and orange markets and how prices are sloping higher after harvest output will likely come in well below average.
Now we’re setting our eyes on the sugar market, where losses in production, exacerbated by an already tight global supply, is fueling higher prices that may be sticking around for the next 18 months.
“We are getting into a boom cycle for the commodity prices,” said Pierre Santoul, chief executive officer in Brazil of France-based Tereos SCA. He said sugar prices are expected to remain elevated through early 2023.
Tereos’s sugar-cane crushing may fall to the lowest levels since the 2009-10 season, to 16.6 million metric tons, or about a 21% reduction from 20.9 million crushed in 2020-21. The nation’s sugar-cane industry group Unica said sugar content in cane fell in the country from a year ago, while cane yield dropped 18%.
Santoul said the extent of the devastation is still unknown. He said mills had increased harvesting to avoid further cane deterioration. He added that if the weather improves in October and rains relieve droughts, the dismal scenario may slightly improve.
Weather disruptions in Brazil mean higher prices for coffee, oranges, and or sugar. Since most of these farm goods are exported, and shipping costs are at record highs, it’s only a matter of time before US wholesalers pass along the costs to consumers.
Food inflation doesn’t seem to be waning anytime soon. Just yesterday, Tyson Food’s CEO said costs are rising faster than it can hike retail prices.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 23:05 - Gaslighting: The Psychology Of Shaping Another's Reality
Gaslighting: The Psychology Of Shaping Another’s Reality
Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Saker Blog,
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”– Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
We are living in a world where the degree of disinformation and outright lying has reached such a state of affairs that, possibly for the first time ever, we see the majority of the western world starting to question their own and surrounding level of sanity. The increasing frenzied distrust in everything “authoritative” mixed with the desperate incredulity that “everybody couldn’t possibly be in on it!” is slowly rocking many back and forth into a tighter and tighter straight jacket. “Question everything” has become the new motto, but are we capable of answering those questions?
Presently the answer is a resounding no.
The social behaviourist sick joke of having made everyone obsessed with toilet paper of all things during the start of what was believed to be a time of crisis, is an example of how much control they have over that red button labelled “commence initiation of level 4 mass panic”.
And can the people be blamed? After all, if we are being lied to, how can we possibly rally together and point the finger at the root of this tyranny, aren’t we at the point where it is everywhere?
As Goebbels infamously stated,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State [under fascism].”
And here we find ourselves today, at the brink of fascism. However, we have to first agree to forfeit our civil rights as a collective before fascism can completely dominate. That is, the big lie can only succeed if the majority fails to call it out, for if the majority were to recognise it for what it is, it would truly hold no power.
The Battle for Your Mind
“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”
It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.
If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.
However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?
The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum. We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.
We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, the majority choose not to…
It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.
What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”
Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted.
In fact, many are probably not fully aware that presently there is a battle waging for who will “control the past” in a manner that is closely resembling a form of “memory wipe”.
* * *
William Sargant was a British psychiatrist and, one could say, effectively the Father of “mind control” in the West, with connections to British Intelligence and the Tavistock Institute, which would influence the CIA and American military via the program MK Ultra. Sargant was also an advisor for Ewen Cameron’s LSD “blank slate” work at McGill University, funded by the CIA.
Sargant accounts for his reason in studying and using forms of “mind control” on his patients, which were primarily British soldiers that were sent back from the battlefield during WWII with various forms of “psychosis”, as the only way to rehabilitate extreme forms of PTSD.
The other reason, was because the Soviets had apparently become “experts” in the field, and out of a need for national security, the British would thus in turn have to become experts as well…as a matter of self-defence of course.
The work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, had succeeded in producing some disturbingly interesting insights into four primary forms of nervous systems in dogs, that were combinations of inhibitory and excitatory temperaments; “strong excitatory”, “balanced”, “passive” and “calm imperturbable”. Pavlov found that depending on the category of nervous system temperament the dog had, this in turn would dictate the form of “conditioning” that would work best to “reprogram behaviour”. The relevance to “human conditioning” was not lost on anyone.
It was feared in the West, that such techniques would not only be used against their soldiers to invoke free-flowing uninhibited confessions to the enemy but that these soldiers could be sent back to their home countries, as zombified assassins and spies that could be set off with a simple code word. At least, these were the thriller stories and movies that were pumped into the population. How horrific indeed! That the enemy could apparently enter what was thought the only sacred ground to be our own…our very “minds”!
However, for those who were actually leading the field in mind control research, such as William Sargant, it was understood that this was not exactly how mind control worked.
For one thing, the issue of “free will” was getting in the way.
No matter the length or degree of electro-shock, insulin “therapy”, tranquilizer cocktails, induced comas, sleep deprivation, starvation etc induced, it was discovered that if the subject had a “strong conviction” and “strong belief” in something, this could not be simply erased, it could not be written over with any arbitrary thing. Rather, the subject would have to have the illusion that their “conditioning” was in fact a “choice”. This was an extremely challenging task, and long term conversions (months to years) were rare.
However, Sargant saw an opening. It was understood that one could not create a new individual from scratch, however, with the right conditioning that was meant to lead to a physical breakdown using abnormal stress (effectively a reboot of the nervous system), one could increase the “suggestibility” markedly in their subjects.
Sargant wrote in his “Battle of the Mind”: “Pavlov’s clinical descriptions of the ‘experimental neuroses’ which he could induce in dogs proved, in fact, to have a close correspondence with those war-neuroses which we were investigating at the time.”
In addition, Sargant found that a falsely implanted memory could help induce abnormal stress leading to emotional exhaustion and physical breakdown to invoke “suggestibility”. That is, one didn’t even need to have a “real stress” but an “imagined stress” would work just as effectively.
Sargant goes on to state in his book:
“It is not surprising that the ordinary person, in general, is much more easily indoctrinated than the abnormal…A person is considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ by the community simply because he accepts most of its social standards and behavioural patterns; which means, in fact, that he is susceptible to suggestion and has been persuaded to go with the majority on most ordinary or extraordinary occasions.”
Sargant then goes over the phenomenon of the London Blitz, which was an eight month period of heavy bombing of London during WWII. During this period, in order to cope and stay “sane”, people rapidly became accustomed to the idea that their neighbours could be and were buried alive in bombed houses around them. The thought was “If I can’t do anything about it what use is it that I trouble myself over it?” The best “coping” was thus found to be those who accepted the new “environment” and just focused on “surviving”, and did not try to resist it.
Sargant remarks that it is this “adaptability” to a changing environment which is part of the “survival” instinct and is very strong in the “healthy” and “normal” individual who can learn to cope and thus continues to be “functional” despite an ever changing environment.
It was thus our deeply programmed “survival instinct” that was found to be the key to the suggestibility of our minds. That the best “survivors” made for the best “brain-washing” in a sense.
Sargant quotes Hecker’s work, who was studying the dancing mania phenomenon that occurred during the Black Death, where Hecker observed that heightened suggestibility had the capability to cause a person to “embrace with equal force, reason and folly, good and evil, diminish the praise of virtue as well as the criminality of vice.”
And that such a state of mind was likened to the first efforts of the infant mind “this instinct of imitation when it exists in its highest degree, is also united a loss of all power over the will, which occurs as soon as the impression on the senses has become firmly established, producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent.”
I wonder if Sargant imagined himself the serpent…
Sargant does finally admit: “This does not mean that all persons can be genuinely indoctrinated by such means. Some will give only temporary submission to the demands made on them, and fight again when strength of body and mind returns. Others are saved by the supervention of madness. Or the will to resist may give way, but not the intellect itself.”
But he comforts himself as a response to this stubborn resistance that “As mentioned in a previous context, the stake, the gallows, the firing squad, the prison, or the madhouse, are usually available for the failures.”
How to Resist the Deconstruction of Your Mind
“He whom the gods wish to destroy, they first of all drive mad.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Masque of Pandora”
For those who have not seen the 1944 psychological thriller “Gaslight” directed by George Cukor, I would highly recommend you do so since there is an invaluable lesson contained within, that is especially applicable to what I suspect many of us are experiencing nowadays.
The story starts with a 14 year old Paula (played by Ingrid Bergman) who is being taken to Italy after her Aunt Alice Alquist, a famous opera singer and caretaker of Paula, is found murdered in her home in London. Paula is the one who found the body, and horror stricken is never her old self again. Her Aunt was the only family Paula had left in her life. The decision is made to send her away from London to Italy to continue her studies to become a world-renowned opera singer like her Aunt Alice.
Years go by, Paula lives a very sheltered life and a heavy somberness is always present within her, she can never seem to feel any kind of happiness. During her singing studies she meets a mysterious man (her piano accompanist during her lessons) and falls deeply in love with him. However, she knows hardly anything about the man named Gregory.
Paula agrees to marry Gregory after a two week romance and is quickly convinced to move back into her Aunt’s house in London that was left abandoned all these years. As soon as she enters the house, the haunting of the night of the murder revisits her and she is consumed with panic and fear. Gregory tries to calm her and talks about the house needing just a little bit of air and sun, and then Paula comes across a letter written to her Aunt from a Sergis Bauer which confirms that he was in contact with Alice just a few days before her murder. At this finding, Gregory becomes bizarrely agitated and grabs the letter from Paula. He quickly tries to justify his anger blaming the letter for upsetting her. Gregory then decides to lock all of her Aunt’s belongings in the attic, to apparently spare Paula any further anguish.
It is at this point that Gregory starts to change his behaviour dramatically. Always under the pretext for “Paula’s sake”, everything that is considered “upsetting” to Paula must be removed from her presence. And thus quickly the house is turned into a form of prison. Paula is told it is for her best not to leave the house unaccompanied, not to have visitors and that self-isolation is the best remedy for her “anxieties” which are getting worst. Paula is never strictly forbidden at the beginning but rather is told that she should obey these restrictions for her own good.
Before a walk, he gives as a gift a beautiful heirloom brooch that belonged to his mother. Because the pin needs replacing, he instructs Paula to keep it in her handbag, and then says rather out of context, “Don’t forget where you put it now Paula, I don’t want you losing it.” Paula remarks thinking the warning absurd, “Of course I won’t forget!” When they return from their walk, Gregory asks for the brooch, Paula searches in her handbag but it is not there.
It continues on like this, with Gregory giving warnings and reminders, seemingly to help Paula with her “forgetfulness” and “anxieties”. Paula starts to question her own judgement and sanity as these events become more and more frequent. She has no one else to talk to but Gregory, who is the only witness to these apparent mishaps. It gets to a point where completely nonsensical behaviour is being attributed to Paula by Gregory. A painting is found missing on the wall one night. Gregory talks to Paula like she is a 5 year child and asks her to put it back. Paula insists she does not know who took it down. After her persistent passionate insistence that it was not her, she walks up the stairs almost like she were in a dream state and pulls the painting from behind a statue. Gregory asks why she lied, but Paula insists that she only thought to look there because that is where it was found the last two times this occurred.
For weeks now, Paula thinks she has been seeing things, the gas lights of the house dimming for no reason, she also hears footsteps above her bedroom. No one else seems to take notice. Paula is also told by Gregory that he found out that her mother, who passed away when she was very young, had actually gone insane and died in an asylum.
Despite Paula being reduced to a condition of an ongoing stupor, she decides one night to make a stand and regain control over her life. Paula is invited, by one of her Aunt Alice’s close friends Lady Dalroy, to attend a high society evening with musical performances. Recall that Paula’s life gravitated around music before her encounter with Gregory. Music was her life. Paula gets magnificently dressed up for the evening and on her way out tells Gregory that she is going to this event. Gregory tries to convince her that she is not well enough to attend such a social gathering, when Paula calmly insists that she is going and that this woman was a dear friend of her Aunt, Gregory answers that he refuses to accompany her (in those days that was a big deal). Paula accepts this and walks with a solid dignity, undeterred towards the horse carriage. In a very telling scene, Gregory is left momentarily by himself and panic stricken, his eyes bulging he snaps his cigar case shut and runs after Paula. He laughingly calls to her, “Paula, you did not think I was serious? I had no idea that this party meant so much to you. Wait, I will get ready.” As he is getting ready in front of the mirror, a devilish smirk appears.
Paula and Gregory show up to Lady Dalroy’s house late, the pianist is in the middle of the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #8 in C minor. They quickly are escorted to two empty seats. Paula is immediately immersed in the piece, and Gregory can see his control is slipping. After only a few minutes, he goes to look at his pocket watch but it is not in his pocket. He whispers into Paula’s ear, “My watch is missing”. Immediately, Paula looks like she is going to be sick. Gregory takes her handbag and Paula looks in horror as he pulls out his pocket watch, insinuating that Paula had put it there. She immediately starts losing control and has a very public emotional breakdown. Gregory takes her away, as he remarks to Lady Dalroy that this is why he didn’t want Paula coming in the first place.
When they arrive home, Paula has by now completely succumbed to the thought that she is indeed completely insane. Gregory says that it would be best if they go away somewhere for an indefinite period of time. We later find out that Gregory is intending on committing her to an asylum. Paula agrees to leave London with Gregory and leaves her fate entirely in his hands.
In the case of Paula it is clear. She has been suspecting that Gregory has something to do with her “situation” but he has very artfully created an environment where Paula herself doubts whether this is a matter of unfathomable villainy or whether she is indeed going mad.
It is rather because she is not mad that she doubts herself, because there is seemingly no reason for why Gregory would put so much time and energy into making it look like she were mad, or at least so it first appears. But what if the purpose to her believing in her madness was simply a matter of who is in control?
Paula almost succeeds in gaining the upper-hand in this power-struggle, the evening she decided to go out on her own no matter what Gregory insisted was in her best interest. If she would have held her ground at Lady Dalroy’s house and simply replied, “I have no idea why your stupid watch ended up in my handbag and I could care less. Now stop interrupting this performance, you are making a scene!” Gregory’s spell would have been broken as simple as that. If he were to complain to others about the situation, they would also respond, “Who cares man, why are you so obsessed about your damn watch?”
We find ourselves today in a very similar situation to Paula. And the voice of Gregory is represented by the narrative of false news and the apocalyptic social behaviourist programming in our forms of entertainment. The things most people voluntarily subject themselves to on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Socially conditioning them, like a pack of salivating Pavlovian dogs, to think it is just a matter of time before the world ends and with a ring of their master’s bell…be at each other’s throats.
Paula ends up being saved in the end by a man named Joseph Cotten (a detective), who took notice and quickly discerned that something was amiss. In the end Gregory is arrested. It is revealed that Gregory is in fact Sergis Bauer. That he killed Alice Alquist and that he has returned to the scene of the crime after all these years in search for the famous jewels of the opera singer. The jewels were in fact rather worthless from the standpoint that they were too famous to be sold, however, Gregory never intended on selling these jewels but rather had become obsessed with the desire to merely possess them.
That is, it is Gregory who has been entirely mad all this time.
A Gregory is absolutely dangerous. He would have been the end of Paula if nothing had intervened. However, the power that Gregory held was conditional to the degree that Paula allowed it to control her. Paula’s extreme deconstruction was thus entirely dependent on her choice to let the voice of Gregory in. That is, a Gregory is only dangerous if we allow ourselves to sleep walk into the nightmare he has constructed for us.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”– Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”
* * *
The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 22:45 - Ohio Judge Orders Man Convicted Of Fentanyl Possession To Get Vaccine Or Face Jail Time
Ohio Judge Orders Man Convicted Of Fentanyl Possession To Get Vaccine Or Face Jail Time
How’s this for judicial overreach?
An Ohio attorney is speaking out after a judge ordered one of his clients to get vaccinated as a condition of his release.
21-year-old Brandon Rutherford was given a suspended sentence last week for possession of the deadly drug fentanyl by Hamilton County Judge Christopher Wagner. But in addition to the typical requirements – that Rutherford stay clean, and get a job, stay away from guns, – the judge also gave him 60 days to get vaccinated, or be sent to prison to serve out a term as lengthy as 18 months.
Rutherford’s lawyer decided to take the case to the press, speaking to multiple media outlets on Monday about the unfairness of the judge’s order regarding his client. The lawyer says he intends to challenge the order, but that he wants to wait and see if Judge Wagner “violates” his client once the deadline is up.
In America we are threatening prison time unless you undergo a medical procedure.
You guys awake yet?
Ohio judge orders man to get COVID-19 vaccine as condition of probation https://t.co/fMqIvWrbKR via @nypost
— Mommar (@MisterCommodity) August 9, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
According to a transcript of the hearing, Wagner had asked Rutherford why he was wearing a mask inside the courtroom, only to learn that the defendant had not been vaccinated. It was at this point that the judge decided to require the jab as a condition of the probation.
“I’m just a judge, not a doctor, but I think the vaccine’s a lot safer than fentanyl, which is what you had in your pocket,” Wagner told Rutherford. “You’re going to maintain employment. You’re not going to be around a firearm. I’m going to order you, within the next two months, to get a vaccine and show that to the probation office. Okay?”
Rutherford was not on board. He told the press that it’s “unfair” of the judge to force him to get a vaccine that he doesn’t want, or believe he needs.
“Because I don’t take a shot they can send me to jail? I don’t agree with that,” Rutherford told WCPO last Thursday. “I’m just trying to do what I can to get off this as quickly as possible, like finding a job and everything else. But that little thing can set me back,” he added.
Meanwhile, judges across the US have ruled in favor of letting private businesses and even public universities impose vaccine mandates on their employees and students. On Monday, the Department of Defense announced it would mandate vaccines to members of the US military by mid-September, or sooner, if the jabs – currently approved only for emergency use – receive full FDA approval.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 22:25 - Attention Turns From Tokyo Olympics To Beijing 2022 Amid Calls For Boycott
Attention Turns From Tokyo Olympics To Beijing 2022 Amid Calls For Boycott
Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,
As the Tokyo Summer Olympics closed on Aug. 8, attention has turned back to the controversy surrounding the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
The Tokyo Olympics games ran relatively smoothly during the COVID-19 pandemic, although it was not open to spectators.
The United States scored the most gold medals with 39, with China coming in second with 38. The United States also ranked first in the overall medal tally with 113 medals, including 41 silver medals, and 33 bronze medals—far surpassing China, again in second place, with 88 medals.
Players from the United States react after defeating Brazil to win the gold medal in women’s volleyball at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, Japan, on Aug. 8, 2021. (Frank Augstein/AP Photo)
As the host country, Japan performed the best in its history since participating in the Olympics, winning a total of 58 medals, including 27 gold.
While the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging around the world, there are only six months before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The pandemic is just one of the problems that the Beijing Winter Olympics is facing.
CTV, Canada’s largest private television network, conducted a poll of thousands of Canadians during the Tokyo Olympics. It announced its results on the closing day of the Tokyo Olympics showing that more than 60 percent of respondents supported a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
In recent years, the Chinese regime has been accused by human rights experts and organizations, liberal democratic nations, and United Nations experts of mass detention of at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
Policies amounting to cultural extermination and experiences of political brainwashing has been characterized by U.S. administrations as “genocide.”
But while the ruling CCP continues to push back against the “genocide” accusations, more and more international organizations and countries are calling for the 2022 Winter Olympics to be moved from Beijing.
Activists including members of the local Hong Kong, Tibetan and Uyghur communities hold up banners and placards in Melbourne, Australia, on June 23, 2021, calling on the Australian government to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over China’s human rights record. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
In February, more than 180 human rights organizations issued a joint open letter urging world leaders to take a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, including not sending leaders or dignitaries to China to participate in any activity in protest of the regime’s mass human rights abuses.
The letter cited accusations of serious human rights violations by the Chinese communist regime in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. It also pointed out that Beijing has increased threats to regional security across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Sino-Indian border in recent years.
However, on the grounds of political neutrality and an inability to change a country’s legal and political system, the International Olympic Committee refused to the request from international organizations to change the venue of the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing to other countries.
So far, no government has officially announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but lawmakers in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom are all calling on their governments to take action.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 22:05 - One Asteroid Heading Towards Earth Has Enough Precious Metal To Make Every Person Alive A Billionaire
One Asteroid Heading Towards Earth Has Enough Precious Metal To Make Every Person Alive A Billionaire
Wondering about that gold flash crash at the Globex open on Sunday night? Maybe this has something to do with it.
NASA has officially launched a mission to study an asteroid with more than $10,000 quadrillion worth of precious metals on it. The asteroid is literally so “rich” that it would make everyone on Earth a billionaire if its haul was divided equally, according to The Independent.
The asteroid is named Psyche 16 and it was first noticed all the way back in March of 1852. It’s 124 miles wide and is set to be the “primary focus” of NASA’s mission, which will take place in August 2022.
NASA’s spacecraft would arrive at the asteroid in early 2026, according to the report.
“Unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, scientists think the M-type (metallic) asteroid 16 Psyche is comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel similar to Earth,” NASA said.
Image of the proposed NASA Mission to Psyche 16 (The Independent) The asteroid is located between Mars and Jupiter and is believed to be the “remnants of a protoplanet destroyed by ‘hit-and-run collisions’ when the solar system formed.”
A team in California helped create a temperature map to better understand the asteroid’s surface properties.
The team discovered the surface of the asteroid was made up of “at least” 30% metal.
“The findings are a step toward resolving the mystery of the origin of this unusual object, which has been thought by some to be a chunk of the core of an ill-fated protoplanet”, one researcher said.
“We think that fragments of the cores, mantles, and crusts of these objects remain today in the form of asteroids. If that’s true, it gives us our only real opportunity to directly study the cores of planet-like objects,” concluded assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at Caltech, Katherine de Kleer.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 21:45 - Oregon Suspends Need For High School Graduates To Be Proficient In Reading, Writing, & Math
Oregon Suspends Need For High School Graduates To Be Proficient In Reading, Writing, & Math
Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org (emphasis ours),
I was once told by a pilot that jet bridges are the most dangerous places in aviation because “no one dies on the plane.” When someone has a fatal episode on a plane, the preference is to move the person outside to “call the code” on the bridge rather than require the plane to be held or quarantined due to the death. If you just move them outside, they died somewhere else. The result is that it can be challenging to determine how many people actually die on airplanes.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown quietly signed a bill on July 14 that suspends a requirement for Oregon students to demonstrate reading, writing and math proficiency in order to receive a diploma. That story came to mind this week as more schools moved to end standardized testing — a move that can guarantee no one fails in their schools. In this case, students who lack proficiency in basic subjects are being sent out into society or even college to fail somewhere else. Anywhere other than the school.
Many of us have long objected to the chronic failure of public schools in major cities like New York, Detroit, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to achieve bare proficiency for many students in reading, writing, and math. The response in many districts is for some to declare standardized testing or meritocracy as racist while other district eliminate special programs or schools for gifted students. Oregon has found a simpler approach. Gov. Kate Brown (D) just signed a bill last month that drops any proficiency requirement in reading, writing or math, before graduation. Problem solved.
The short bill includes this provision:
“SECTION 3. Notwithstanding any rules adopted by the State Board of Education, a student may not be required to show proficiency in Essential Learning Skills as a condition of receiving a high school diploma during the 2021-2022, 2022-2023 or 2023-2024 school year.”
The pandemic was the basis for initial suspension of such requirements but now it is being extended. The call for a more “inclusive and equitable review of graduation and proficiency requirements” was supported by Foundations for a Better Oregon to change requirement to “reflect what every student needs to thrive in the 21st century.” That appears not to include proven proficiency in being able to write, read, or do simple math. The supporters insist that it is unfair to require students to show knowledge on tests.
Charles Boyle, the deputy communications director from Gov. Brown’s office, is quoted as saying that the new standards for graduation will help benefit the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
The “benefit” however is more to the school district in getting kids out the door with a diploma without shouldering the burden to get them to a point of bare proficiency. Teachers like Larry Lewin testified in support of the change:
“The students I tutored at North Eugene High School were largely Latinx kids, and to a one, they were resigned, fatalistic, and lacking any hope for graduating with their classmates. They knew the score – they knew they were losers in the system. No amount of coaching, cajoling, mentoring from me would inspire them to want to write better. The Essential Skills Requirement had already sunk them. I was not teaching how to write, how to communicate, how to use language for a purpose; I was test prepping them – again.”
There is value to what Lewin says about “teaching to the test” and the need to focus on substantive learning. I respect him for his continuing commitment to his students and his sincere opposition to testing. However, it is chilling to see a former public school teacher say that “no amount of coaching, cajoling, mentoring from me would inspire [Hispanic kids] to want to write better.” That is the point of education. We have to get kids to reach a level of bare proficiency and establish that ability with an objective test. If you have proficiency in writing or reading, you should be able to write or read on a standardized test.
The move in Oregon is part of a larger effort to eliminate standardized testing and scores on every level of our educational system. If there are no such standardized scores, there is no ability to easily compare the achievement of schools or even the achievement of students applying for admission. Recently, the University of California system joined the “test-blind” movement and said it would end the use of the SAT and ACT in its admissions decisions. The move followed a decision of California voters not to lift the long ban on affirmative action in education under state law. Many have decried standardized testing as vehicles for white supremacy.
The elimination of standardized testing means that it would be much more difficult to prove that the universities were still engaging in racial discrimination or preferences. With no testing scores for comparison, it would be nearly impossible to show that race was the major or dominant factor in admissions.
University of California President Janet Napolitano sought to eliminate standardized testing by assembling the Standardized Testing Task Force in 2019. Many people expected the task force to recommend the cessation of standardized testing. However, the Task Force surprised many (most notably Napolitano herself) by releasing a final report that concluded that standardized testing was not just reliable by that “at UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention, [University] GPA, and graduation.” It even found that “test scores are predictive for all demographic groups and disciplines … In fact, test scores are better predictors of success for students who are Underrepresented Minority Students (URMs), who are first generation, or whose families are low-income.”
Despite those conclusions, Napolitano simply announced a cessation of the use of such scores in admissions.
With states like Oregon now eliminating the need to establish proficiency on basic subjects with standardized tests, American education faces the perfect storm. Despite record expenditures on public schools, we are still failing students, particularly minority students, in teaching the basis subjects needed to succeed in life. We will then graduate the students by removing testing barriers for graduation. Then some may go to colleges and universities that have eliminated standardized testing for admission. At every stage in their education, they have been pushed through by educators without objective proof that they are minimally educated. That certainly guarantees high graduation rates or improved diversity admissions. However, these students are still left at a sub-proficient state as they enter an increasingly competitive job market and economy. Any failures will come down the road when they will be asked to write, read, or add by someone who is looking for actual work product. They will then be outside of the educational system and any failures will not be attributed to public educators.
If we truly care for these students, we cannot rig the system to just kick them down the road toward failure. It is like declaring patients healthy by just looking at them and sending them on their way. We have the ability to measure proficiency and we have the moral obligation to face our own failures in helping these kids achieve it.
* * *
Their goal is to credential, not educate. And they want to credential by identity, not ability. Merit-based metrics made that difficult (just look at all the lawsuits showing discrimination by universities against Asian students), so all those merit-based metrics have to go. https://t.co/Vmf8iaBJuV
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 10, 2021
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 21:25 - Here We Go Again: Dozens Of Major Events Are Being Cancelled Across The Country Due To Covid
Here We Go Again: Dozens Of Major Events Are Being Cancelled Across The Country Due To Covid
Here we go again.
Just when we thought life would be returning back to “normal”, that vaccines were going to bring us back to the way things were in 2019 and that the government overreach and hysteria would finally come to a close, events are being cancelled left and right heading into the fall in what is looking like a carbon copy of 2020…all over again.
It was announced yesterday that the famous New Orleans Jazz Festival for 2021 would be cancelled due to “rising cases” of Covid in the state, according to CNN.
The festival said it was being cancelled “as a result of the current exponential growth of new Covid cases in New Orleans and the region and the ongoing public health emergency.”
The festival had already been moved from April and May to October as a result of the pandemic and was supposed to feature the Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters and Lizzo.
“We now look forward to next spring, when we will present the Festival during its traditional timeframe. Next year’s dates are April 29 — May 8, 2022,” the festival said on its website.
Sure. We’ll see about that.
New Orleans also cancelled its famous Red Dress Run. Despite the cancellation, its likely that people are going to show up to do it anyways, NOLA.com reported.
The event “combines self-paced jogging, tongue-in-cheek cross-dressing, and unabashed alcohol consumption” and is run by running club the Hash House Harriers. The two mile run through the French Quarter usually raises tons of money for charity. 2019’s entry fees totaled $139,000.
One board member said he’d be “stunned” if people don’t just “show up anyways”.
New Orleans also cancelled its 2021 Gretna Heritage Festival, which was set for October 22-24.
Outside of Louisiana, rock band Limp Bizkit has also cancelled its tour dates for August due to “safety concerns related to Covid-19”.
“Out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety of the band, crew and most of all the fans, the Limp Bizkit show this Monday and the remaining August tour is being cancelled,” the band said on its website, according to Rolling Stone. The band was supposed to play in New Jersey last Friday and cancelled hours before the show started.
NOLA’s Red Dress Run isn’t happening this year. But it just might anyways. The 2021 New York Oyster Festival has also been cancelled. The event usually attracts thousands and was scheduled to be held in Oyster Bay, NY at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park.
“The health and well-being of the residents of our beloved Oyster Bay-East Norwich community and the festival attendees is our primary concern,” the event said.
In Oklahoma, the Chocktaw Nation has cancelled its annual 2021 Labor Day Festival due to spread of the Delta variant. “Our top priority is the health and safety of our tribal members, associates and the communities we serve,” said Chief Gary Batton, according to NBC.
And we’re sure heading into the fall – and whatever variant Dr. Fauci is bracing to tell us about next – the fear mongering and cancellations will continue.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 21:05 - Beijing Plans To Stick With Its "Zero Tolerance" Approach To COVID As Delta Wave Spreads
Beijing Plans To Stick With Its “Zero Tolerance” Approach To COVID As Delta Wave Spreads
China is presently grappling with a wave of COVID infections believed to be driven by the delta variant, the same highly contagious strain purportedly driving waves of outbreaks in the US and Europe. But economists at American megabanks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have recently become concerned that Beijing’s “zero tolerance” approach to combating COVID – which involves travel restrictions, lockdowns and mass testing, among other disruptive measures – could impact global growth, or at least weaken demand for commodity prices.
Some have broached the idea that as the CCP works to bolster economic growth, it might soon be ready to compromise on its “zero tolerance” approach to combating the virus.
Unfortunately, a recent editorial published by Global Times editor Hu Xijin suggests that this is highly unlikely. as Hu declares in the opening paragraph of the editorial: “China is unlikely to abandon its dynamic approach of vigorously clearing new COVID-19 cases and embrace the loose approach used in the West to achieve “herd immunity.”
As we noted yesterday, rapid indicators like subway ridership in the city of Nanjing, the epicenter of the current outbreak, suggests that the present outbreak might have a broader impact on consumption and the Chinese service-sector (while likely having little, if any, impact on still-important manufacturing sector).
While China’s strategy for fighting the virus has been very “successful” (according to Hu; of course the international community will never really know the true toll), too much “success” – in this case – could still create problems.
Since China can’t live with this “success” (ie lockdowns) forever, “it must favor a disciplined strategy involving short but intense measures to ensure the virus is stopped dead in its tracks.”
And although it’s “understandable” that some scholars advocate “coexistence” with the virus (since it’s currently “impossible” to get rid of COVID in its entirety), Beijing maintains that its strategy has already proven to be the “most effective” while allowing “the least humanitarian and social cost in the world.”
By trying to save their economies first, the US and EU have callously allowed a greater loss of life while “demonstrating a lack of economic competitiveness” as well.
Interested parties can read the rest of the editorial below:
Recently, there have been discussions about whether China should learn to live with the novel coronavirus. In my opinion, such a debate has no meaning now or in the near future. China is unlikely to abandon its dynamic approach of vigorously clearing new COVID-19 cases and embrace the loose approach used in the West to achieve “herd immunity.”
It is understandable that some scholars advocate coexistence with the virus. But they didn’t mean relaxing the current anti-epidemic prevention and control measures. Instead, they wanted to warn us that we need to come up with a more precise strategy to lower the cost of the dynamic zero-case route, as it is currently impossible to get rid of the virus completely. I don’t feel that this is really a serious divergence with the anti-epidemic approach in Chinese society.
To this day, China’s strategy toward COVID-19 has been proven to be the most effective, and one that comes with the least humanitarian and social cost in the world. China will not give up this approach, for the following reasons.
First, the epidemic is still wreaking havoc in the West and some developing countries. There was no resurgence in the UK after the country’s opening-up. However, it is still too early to come to any conclusion, as the UK could still face more challenges. What is more shocking is the swiftly rising number of COVID-19 cases across the US. In other words, herd immunity is not a positive experience, at least not yet, and the World Health Organization has not approved such an approach.
Second, the route that China is taking against the epidemic has brought better economic development. The approach the US and Europe adopted has not only caused more loss of life, but also demonstrated a lack of economic competitiveness. This can’t appeal to China unless it can bring higher economic growth, not to mention the humanitarian factor involved.
Third, in the long term, the West’s barbaric route of disregarding human lives will eventually compete with China’s dynamic approach of clearing COVID-19 cases, and economic growth will be the peak of the competition between the two routes. China does face the pressure of having to continuously improve the precision of prevention and control. The economy in the West was on a rollercoaster ride last year due to COVID-19. And even though there is a resurgence of the pandemic now, vaccines have lowered the death rate in the West and helped its economy come back on track. As a result, China needs to seriously compete with Western countries in terms of the degree of its economic recovery.
Therefore, I must say that China’s anti-virus path is very successful, but we cannot live with such success forever. We must have the urgency to strengthen prevention and control measures. When the virus hits a certain place, we must assess the situation in a highly scientific way to decide if a complete or partial lockdown should be implemented. Any large-scale lockdown must be done in a short period of time. More importantly, each place should detect the epidemic more quickly, cut the infection chain more effectively, and reduce the social cost of wiping it out. Nationwide vaccination is a basic requirement. It can play an invisible role in controlling the intensity of each new wave of the epidemic.
I think China’s anti-virus path is improving, but the latest round of infections that started from Nanjing has exposed some shortcomings. Obviously, there is room for improvement in our scientific prevention and control, and this is something we must do.
China will not tolerate newly emerged infection chains, because that will only lead to disaster and bring the situation out of control. The public will not accept the change for worse, and it is not politically feasible. Therefore, we must give up all illusions and strengthen our anti-virus efforts that have already been proven effective. As for how we should expand engagement with the outside world, decisions will be made according to the situation. The better we do today, the more initiative we will have in the future.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 20:45 - Canadian Farmers Cull 130,000 Pigs After Pork Plant Strike Closes Processor
Canadian Farmers Cull 130,000 Pigs After Pork Plant Strike Closes Processor
Bloomberg reports a labor strike at a Quebec pork-processing plant may have resulted in more than 130,000 culled pigs in eastern Canada.
A dangerous backlog of pigs ready for slaughter has built up after Olymel’s processing facility in Vallee-Jonction, Quebec, experienced a labor strike and the resulting closure of the plant since April 28.
The company slaughters on average 36,000 hogs each week. But since the plant closed, backlogs are increasing, and pigs are being diverted to other U.S. and western Canada processors. About 15,000 pigs each week are being left behind, according to David Duval, the president of the Eleveurs de porcs du Quebec, which represents the province’s farmers.
“Animals struggle through heat waves like this. If on top of that they’re crammed, it’s becoming extremely difficult,” Duval said. “I heard several producers who told me ‘I don’t know where to put them next week.”
Duval calls the situation “unprecedented” and says the pork industry in Quebec produces four times more than what’s locally consumed.
“Olymel is taking special measures to limit this backlog, to control the backlog as much as we can,” Richard Vigneault, a spokesman for Olymel, said.
Bloomberg estimates more than 130,000 pigs have been culled by local farmers.
Each pig can provide around 600 meals, and the waste is considered astronomical.
With backlogs mounting due to limited processing capacity, farmers are forced to euthanize pigs to prevent overcrowding.
Canada is the world’s third-largest pork exporter – there has yet to be any information on supply chain disruptions due to the downed plant.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 20:25 - Tracking China's Regulatory Reset: Handy Cheat Sheet Of Beijing's Regulatory Crackdown
Tracking China’s Regulatory Reset: Handy Cheat Sheet Of Beijing’s Regulatory Crackdown
With Beijing’s regulatory framework changing by the day – if not the hour – as part of the emerging “Paradigm Shift” in China, a popular question that has emerged is which sector’s shareholders does China plan on destroying today by publishing a harshly worded op-ed…
Which industry will China destroy tonight
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
… targeting capitalist virtues like profit and, well, capital.
Making matters worse, now that China’s crackdown is a daily event, it has become virtually impossible to keep track of all the latest developments.
To make it a little easier, Morgan Stanley’s China economist Robin Xing has penned the following tracker of China’s “regulatory reset”, noting that regulatory issues linger in the healthcare and technology sectors, while policy support is skewed toward decarbonization. Further, the bank tracks regulatory developments in key sectors as follows:
1) Healthcare: An article in the People’s Daily on Aug 9 reported incidences of improper sales/marketing practices and safety concerns in the medical aesthetics sector, quoting expert views for stronger regulatory oversight on credentials, service quality and pricing.
Morgan Stanley analyst’s take: Sean Wu and Yolanda Hu believe that while this is a reiteration of previous guidance, the medical aesthetics sector, which has been a loosely regulated segment, could see tightened regulations over time to reduce accidents and penalize sales practices that promote unnecessary surgery procedures.
2) Technology: The Haidian District People’s Procuratorate in Beijing announced on Aug. 7 that it intends to initiate a public interest lawsuit against Tencent, due to alleged compliance issues with the “Minors Protection Law” in the “youth mode” of the company’s WeChat app.
Morgan Stanley analyst’s take: Gary Yu believes that the lawsuit reflects increased scrutiny to protect minors. Tencent proactively launched the “youth mode” on WeChat in Oct 2020 to align with regulatory focus,and has been fine-tuning the functions while conducting a series of self-rectifications across the ecosystem, including implementation of stricter curbs on minors’ access to mobile games and suspension of new user registration for WeChat.
3) Decarbonization: In a recent response to the NPC, the Ministry of Finance indicated that it is drafting supportive fiscal measures (covering fiscal and tax policies) in relation to the “30/60” carbon emission targets.
Morgan Stanley analyst’s take: Tim Chan believes the announcement of the Ministry of Finance reiterated the importance of green finance in achieving China’s carbon neutrality goal. These fiscal measures should support continued flow of capital to green projects. Moreover, Tim also thinks that potential auctioning of allowances in future in the China National Emissions Trading Scheme could become another major funding source for green projects.
Finally, here is a handy cheat sheet summary of all the recent regulatory developments across China’s economy:
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 20:05 - North Korea Lashes Out Over "Hostile" US-South Joint War Drills
North Korea Lashes Out Over “Hostile” US-South Joint War Drills
So much for this summer’s attempts at a communications reset geared towards “recovering trust”…
“North Korea did not answer routine calls on inter-Korean hotlines on Tuesday, South Korea said, hours after a senior official in Pyongyang warned the South and the United States over annual joint military drills set to begin this week,” Reuters reports.
This after the powerful sister of Kim Jung Un blasted the annual drills as imminently destructive of attempts to restore dialogue with the South. Kim Yo Jong said in an August 1st statement warning against holding the drills: “For some days I have been hearing an unpleasant story that joint military exercises between the South Korean army and the U.S. forces could go ahead as scheduled.” The drills have now kicked off.
Pyongyang Press Corps Pool via AP “I view this as an undesirable prelude which seriously undermines the will of the top leaders of the North and the South wishing to see a step taken toward restoring mutual trust and which further beclouds the way ahead of the North-South relations,” she continued at the time.
“Our government and army will closely follow whether the South Korean side stages hostile war exercises in August or makes other bold decision,” she said.
The Hill notes that today’s refusal of Pyongyang to pick up the phone is meant as a glaring message:
North and South Korea have routinely checked in over the hotlines managed by the unification ministry and South Korea’s military two times a day, according to Reuters. While morning calls between the two went as usual, the North reportedly did not answer calls made in the afternoon.
Footage from the drills this week…
US-South Korea preliminary ‘live’ drills have kicked off as of Tuesday, with computer simulated drills continuing into next week.
Washington has called the drills purely “defensive” in nature – this following in prior years the Pentagon scaling them back due to the coronavirus pandemic and also hopes at denuclearization talks on the peninsula proceeding.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 19:45 - Paging Greta Thunberg – China Restarts Coal Mines To Keep Up With Power Demand
Paging Greta Thunberg – China Restarts Coal Mines To Keep Up With Power Demand
Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,
Operations at 53 shuttered coal mines in China will once again come to life, as China struggles to keep up with increased power demand, according to a statement by the National Development Reform Commission in China.
Last week, China announced it would restart 38 coal mines in Inner Mongolia. Now, China has announced it will resume operations at 15 more coal mines, in the regions of Shanxi and Xinjiang. The mines will operate for a year and will produce as much as 44 million tons of coal, which China hopes will satisfy the growing calls for power amid an intense heatwave and tick up in industrial activity.
China has struggled to answer the calls for both increased power and decreased emissions.
The news coincides with a scathing UN report that suggested this week that unless the world takes immediate large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, there will be no way to limit global warming to 2-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Despite bringing a multitude of coal mines back online, China has warned that its power shortage situation is just beginning—in fact, it is expected to worsen.
This also means that its thermal coal prices are expected to stay high. In May, China’s thermal coal prices skyrocketed to new record levels.
Still, coal is a cheap power source that has given China a rather ironic advantage when it comes to manufacturing solar panels used in Western countries, the Wall Street Journal pointed out at the end of July.
One could view the push for solar power in the United States and Europe as triggering increased demand for coal power in China, even to the point of restarting its previously shuttered mines.
[ZH: Someone is going to be angry…]
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 19:25 - "Worst Case Scenario": "Woke" Olympic Ratings Plunge Nearly 50%, Forcing NBC To Hand Out Free Ad Space
“Worst Case Scenario”: “Woke” Olympic Ratings Plunge Nearly 50%, Forcing NBC To Hand Out Free Ad Space
It looks like yet another instance of “get woke, go broke” for NBC and the Tokyo Olympics.
Ratings for the Olympics have been so poor this year that NBC is being forced to hand out “extra commercials” for those who bought advertising during the games, according to Fox News.
Experts have pointed to backlash over protesting the U.S. flag and “woke” athletes as the key reason why ratings are down.
The ratings dropoff is stunning. Per Fox News:
NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on July 26 averaged 14.7 million viewers — for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 53% less than the 2012 London Olympics. The opening ceremonies saw their lowest viewership since 1988.
The plunge in ratings has caused “advertiser anxiety” from companies who feel as though they aren’t getting enough bang for their marketing buck. The early exits of gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka didn’t help rating, the report wrote.
One media exec said the ratings “clearly are not what NBC, our agency or our clients were looking for”.
Andy Billings, director of the sports communications program at the University of Alabama commented: “When you look at the numbers, it’s hard to be pleased with them. It’s probably NBC’s worst-case scenario, but it’s probably a worst-case scenario that they would have been able to predict months ago.”
The protests of the flag “have done little to attract new viewers while alienating Republican spectators,” Fox News wrote.
Monmouth University polling found last week that 33% less American viewers were interested in the games.
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, concluded: “The delay from last year and lack of spectators have taken the edge off the typical anticipation and excitement for this event. But the emergence of Black Lives Matter in the sports world has also led to a backlash among some Americans.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 19:05 - Buchanan: Is America Becoming A Failed State?
Buchanan: Is America Becoming A Failed State?
Suddenly, Sunday, a riveting report came over cable news:
The U.S. embassy was urging all Americans to “leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.” Message: Get out while you can.
Adding urgency was news that three northern provincial capitals, including Kunduz city, had fallen to the Taliban, making it five provincial capitals overrun since Friday.
The huge investment in blood and treasure by the United States over two decades to remake Afghanistan appears about to be wiped out, whole and entire, and we appear about to sustain our worst diplomatic and political defeat since the fall of Saigon.
Not once in this century has the U.S. decisively won one of the wars it launched – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Libya. And the sole superpower status we enjoyed as the 21st century began is gone with the wind.
Yet America’s hawks are urging us to give a new war guarantee to Taiwan, should Beijing exercise its claim, though former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger assented in 1972 that Taiwan is “a part of China.”
Before we issue any war guarantee to Taipei, we might consider the Pentagon’s evaluation of the results of a recent war game in which the U.S. confronted China over Taiwan.
How did it go?
Says vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten,
“Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably.
“An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. … They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it, and they took advantage of it.”
Are we Americans prepared, in any way, for an air-sea-and-missile war in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific over islands they claim as their historic national territory but we have never claimed as ours?
Here at home, the COVID-19 pandemic, now in a fourth wave, is infecting 100,000 Americans every day, with hospitalizations rising commensurately. For that third of a nation still unvaccinated, the delta variant is a potential death sentence.
Despite this medical crisis that is common to us all, our political divide is manifesting itself in savage battles over vaccinations, masks and mandates.
And while COVID-19 continues to infect, hospitalize and kill, scores of thousands of Americans are being annually lost to drug overdoses and opioids. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 93,000 overdose deaths occurred across the country in 2020, and 3 in 4 fatal overdoses can be attributed to opioids.
More Americans are dying yearly from overdoses and opioids than all the Americans dead during the war in Vietnam.
The U.S. trade deficit numbers just came in for June, where the deficit in goods alone increased to $91 billion for the month. This translates into $1 trillion a year.
The largest component of that trade deficit is with China — an extraordinary level of U.S. dependency on a foreign nation for the vital necessities of its national life, let alone on an adversary like China.
On our southern border, an invasion of our country is taking place.
Every month President Joe Biden has been in office, illegal border crossings have increased. In June, Border Patrol recorded 178,000 border arrests — a 571% jump from June 2020. Border arrests have already reached their highest since 2000 and are on track to reach 1.8 million this year.
Biden is failing in his first constitutional duty — to defend the United States from foreign invasion. We Americans no longer decide who comes into our national home and whom we shall adopt as new citizens. Others decide, others determine our future, for us.
We defend the borders of scores of nations; we cannot, or Biden will not, defend our own. And, as former President Ronald Reagan reminded us, a country that can’t or won’t defend its borders isn’t really a country anymore.
In our great cities, public shootings and killings have begun to exceed those of previous years. Police, under attack and abuse from the elites and people they protect, are resigning and retiring in record numbers.
Consider.
America is unable to win the wars she chooses to fight. She cannot or will not control and defend her borders from a mass migrant invasion. She cannot halt an outbreak of criminality and killing in her great cities. She has not run a trade surplus in four decades. Her dependency upon foreign producers is unprecedented. And her budget deficits continue to break records every year — as does her soaring national debt.
Is that not the description of a failed or failing state?
Asked by a despondent young friend if the defeat at Saratoga and potential loss of the American colonies meant the ruin of Britain, Adam Smith assured him, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Britain would go on from the loss of her 13 colonies to create the greatest empire since Rome.
Yet if there is “a great deal of ruin in a nation,” we Americans certainly appear to be testing those limits.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/10/2021 – 18:45
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