- Ukrainian Crisis: Are We On The Verge Of WWIII Or Pax Multipolarity?
Ukrainian Crisis: Are We On The Verge Of WWIII Or Pax Multipolarity?
Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The highpoint in the Ukrainian crisis and the big visits by Nuland to Moscow and Austin to Kiev might actually be attempts by Washington to make lemons out of lemonade…
The Mainstream Media Eye of Sauron has turned its horrid gaze to the Ukraine. This is always cause for concern because it indicates that this is what the elites want America to be focusing on. This would not be so much of a problem if this growing game of chicken in the Donbass did not resemble a Cuban Missile Crisis for the 21st century. The Mainstream Media’s headlines read of warnings to Russia not to attack, and move their own troops away from the border within their own territory for the sake of peace, while at the same time pumping up Kiev with support-based confidence to do just that – escalating the war in the Donbass towards a potential apocalyptic scenario. Since Moscow has already handed out citizenship to the residents of the breakaway republics and even given their leaders party membership into Putin’s dominant United Russia, along with executing many forms of bureaucratic “integration” the Donbass, we can clearly see that the region is de facto Russian again.
Image: Leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin is now a card-carrying party member of United Russia. Source: Anna News.
This means that a massive attack from Kiev, would be met by a full force response from Moscow, the “Russianness” of the region has now become essentially non-negotiable – “not one step back” can be taken as Stalin put it. With so many “instructors” and other assets from NATO working with Kiev it is overwhelmingly likely that a Russian counterattack to any offensive would kill some foreign troops. It could also hit the quietly unhidden network of American supported bio-labs that are spread throughout the country, the contents of which are of critical interest to the Department of Defense. This may sound hard to believe so you can watch this video and decide for yourself.
This scenario is looking like a very dry powder keg just waiting for a spark to start WWIII, Kiev looks like it will launch a foolhardy attack believing it will be supported by NATO just like Saakashvili did in 2008 only this time, the West may just actually give them the proper support they desire, leading to a worst case scenario of a direct confrontation of Cowboys vs. Bears. That is how the scenario looks, especially inside the Russian political analysis sphere, but things are not always what they seem.
Image: Former comedian and non-ethnic Ukrainian, President Zelensky has the chance to outdo Gavrilo Princip by starting an even deadlier war.
It was not that long ago when we were sitting on the exact same cusp of nuclear annihilation. When Biden took office, all the experts within Russia, people on the ground in the Donbass and a few key players (that I know personally) were all sure that this was going to be “the big one”. They unanimously put their chips down on the idea that Biden’s support would be all that is needed to allow for a genocidal campaign to be waged on the Donbass while Moscow accepted its second-tier status watching their people be massacred. Or even worse, if Moscow would have protected the Donbass then we’d all be dead right now. But, despite the hype and expert\insider opinions, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened. There was no massive assault and the status quo was maintained.
So is this WWIII scare somehow different from the previous one from about a year ago? If we all remember correctly, Biden’s ascension to the throne was rather contested and the near future of even America looked a bit blurry – it was not a good moment to greenlight Kiev’s war plans. And probably even more relevant, we cannot forget that the grand resource sinkhole that was the War in Afghanistan is now over, freeing up a lot of men and means to look elsewhere. Biden even said in his now historic speech at the end of the war that nation-building was over, but that other Hard Power and especially Soft Power weapons of U.S. Foreign Policy were still on the table. Now, apparently it is Russia’s turn to face the brunt of their impact. Washington has had the peace it needed in order to turn its focus onto again trying to break the Russians. The most popular sport within the Beltway.
On the other hand, as time goes on the Fed keeps printing hyperinflation levels of dollars, problems at home are growing and the Global Hegemon’s throne seems to be very wobbly. Unlike the doom-and-gloom apocalyptic types that seem to dominate the Alternative Media, who almost salivate with glee at the opportunity to live through the end of the world, it is my personal belief that what we are seeing from Washington’s actions in the Ukraine are perhaps a negotiation strategy that is being masked.
As I have written before, even within the Beltway it is becoming apparent that the Multipolar World Order has won, but the shape of that World Order is certainly up for debate, negotiation, or even a fight. If we were to try to “wargame out” scenarios for America to remain a winner on a globe with competing powers, then now would probably be a good time to work out deals regarding these potential new spheres of influence. We could right now be at some sort of the Yalta moment in the dying days of the Monopolar World.
In fact, if this card was not on the table then NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wouldn’t have had to publicly denounce the idea of Russia having a sphere of influence. This statement echoes the same logic as the expression “punk’s not dead”. If punk music were still vibrant and alive no one would have to try to convince us otherwise with a catchy phrase printed on their t-shirt. So Russia having “no right” to a sphere of influence means that Russia is gaining or already possesses a sphere of influence. No one had to say such things during the Yeltsin period. Interestingly, Putin recently told NATO that he wants a guarantee from them excluding further expansion, which is basically a call for finalizing a deal regarding borders, buffer zones and spheres of influence going deeper into our lovely 21st century.
Image: Russia would be happy to sign off on having all or most of its former Soviet territory as part of its sphere of influence.
If Washington today works out a deal for the layout of the Multipolar World it is being drug into the agreement could work out to be pretty sweet, giving America the lion’s share of the globe. Risking it and kicking this can ten or twenty years down the road could yield far poorer results as at this point in time the Russians would be very happy to take what would look like a terrible deal to historians hundreds of years from now. The Mainstream Media lies about Russia’s obsession with some sort of expansionism are false, they want some (but not all) of their old territory back that they feel was stolen from them during the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century”. They would also like to get American Soft Power the hell out of their country (excluding Hollywood Movies and video games) for good and they would be willing to sign off on an awful deal to just make sure that they can have the stability and sovereignty they need to survive.
Some territories are ultimately non-negotiable and the Russians will never give up until they can reintegrate them…
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Belarus
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The break-away republics of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria
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The territory of today’s Ukrainian east and south of the Dnieper river also known as Malorossiya or “Little Russia” as it is sometimes translated.
Some regions would be nice to have come back home but could at least benefit Russia as being within their sphere of influence.
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Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan
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Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
The Russians would willingly give up on Europe almost entirely, even including the Baltic States to get back the parts of the Ukraine that are an inalienable chunk of their society. That should suit Washington quite well. Kyrgyzstan has been probably the least racist Central Asian nation towards Russians, but they are cut off by questionable Kazakhstan that could turn into a Maidan style regime any day. In order to keep Kazakhstan sane and Kyrgyzstan close, Moscow may be willing to give up on everything else in Central Asia. The Caucasus Mountains are a lovely natural border and perhaps slick American negotiating skills could keep Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan permanently out of Russia’s grasp. Although this is now tougher after the resolution to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Getting almost all of Europe, half of Central Asia and possibly the entire southern half of the Caucasus Mountains while being able to use media spin to project the Russian boogeyman as an eternal cause to raise military budgets should sound good to an America in decline. This is actually a great deal for Russia short term, America in the long term, and anyone who does not want to personally live through a nightmare WWIII scenario.
So, perhaps this highpoint in the Ukrainian crisis, and the big visits by Nuland to Moscow and Austin to Kiev are actually attempts by Washington to make lemons out of lemonade. We Americans are better at this than anyone else on the planet after all. This is not the time to go out and put money down on a fallout shelter but to instead enjoy the media spin that is coming that will try to obfuscate the realities of the dealings between Moscow and Washington to keep up appearances that we are still in a Monopolar World that needs more and more money being thrown to the military industrial complex. Perhaps cooler heads have already prevailed, it just doesn’t look that way on the surface.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 23:40 -
- These Are The Youngest (& Oldest) Richest Women In America
These Are The Youngest (& Oldest) Richest Women In America
The majority of the world’s billionaires hail from the United States.
But, as Visual Capitalkist’s Iman Ghosh details below, of the 724 American billionaires whose net worths are tracked daily by Forbes, only 86 are women. That’s just 12% of the country’s billionaires.
This visualization examines the select few who have made the cut into this prestigious list, using data compiled from Forbes’ real-time billionaires list.
Note: All data is as of November 1, 2021 unless otherwise stated.
Top 10 Richest Women in America
Since 2020, MacKenzie Scott has donated over $8.5 billion and counting of her wealth. Yet, she still remains one of the richest women in the world. This is largely due to the Amazon shares that she received in her divorce settlement.
Amazon’s stock performance soared amid the pandemic, which resulted in the initial value of her shares ($38.3 billion) nearly doubling.
Miriam Adelson inherited her late husband’s 57% stake (worth ~$19 billion) in Las Vegas Sands, making her one of the richest newcomers to the Forbes list. The casinos have locations across Las Vegas, Singapore, and Macao.
Several of the women in this top 10 list also share membership with some of the richest families in America—from the Walmart Waltons, to the Johnsons at the helm of Fidelity Investments and Fidelity International.
The Oldest Richest Women in America
The oldest female billionaire in the world, Alice Schwartz, is 95 years old. She co-founded Bio-Rad Laboratories with her husband, which operates in the life sciences research and clinical diagnostics markets. They started the company in 1952 with only $720 in the bank.
After her husband’s passing in 2018, Janice McNair (aged 85) took over his 80% stake in the NFL team Houston Texans, which ranks highly as one of the world’s most valuable sports teams. This also subsequently catapulted her position as being among the wealthiest sports owners in the country.
The Youngest Richest Women in America
In the online dating era, Whitney Wolfe Herd has made a name for herself. The female-first dating app she co-founded, Bumble, grew into a formidable competitor for her former employer, Match Group (which owns Tinder and OkCupid, among others).
At age 31, Wolfe Herd became the youngest self-made female CEO in the country after Bumble’s $2.2 billion IPO in February 2021.
Wearing many hats from influencer to entrepreneur, socialite Kim Kardashian West’s cosmetics and fashion companies (KKW Beauty and shapewear line Skims) have catapulted her to a newfound billionaire status. She has a set of diverse revenue streams, from reality TV royalties to blue-chip and real estate investments.
Top 20 Self-Made Richest Women in America
The self-made label is an additional fascinating avenue to explore. Forbes defines this category as people who establish a fortune independently, rather than partly or wholly through inheritance.
One of the newest entrants into this mix is Rihanna. She already enjoyed significant success as an entertainer, with her claim to fame being one of the best-selling artists of the 2010s. However, it was her entrepreneurial spirit that put her on the Forbes list in August 2021. Rihanna owns 50% of her cosmetics company, Fenty Beauty. The other half is run by Bernard Arnault, who is among the world’s top billionaires.
Here is the rest of the top 20 self-made richest women in America:
Source: Forbes, as of Aug 2021 (latest available)
For those paying attention to the rapid rise of the fintech industry, Jenny Just’s entry on this list will come as no surprise. Her firm, Apex Fintech Solutions powers the trading technology behind companies like SoFi and eToro. In fact, she has started or bought 15 businesses in the space in just 24 years.
As the richest women in America continue to make great strides, this list could look very different in coming years.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 23:20 - A Dozen Major US Cities Hit All-Time Murder Records With 3 Weeks Still Left In 2021
A Dozen Major US Cities Hit All-Time Murder Records With 3 Weeks Still Left In 2021
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
At least 12 major U.S. cities have set annual murder records in 2021 even as there are still several weeks remaining in the year, data shows.
Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the United States, saw 525 murders in 2021, according to police data. That’s higher than the previously set record of 500 murders in 1990.
With a population of nearly 1.579 million, the data suggests Philadelphia’s homicide rate is about 33 murders per 100,000 people—or more than four times higher than the U.S. homicide rate of 7.8 per 100,000 people in 2020.
“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, said earlier this month, according to reports.
Other large cities that broke their previous homicide records in 2021 include Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; St. Paul, Minnesota; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Columbus, Ohio; Tuscon, Arizona; and Rochester, New York, according to an analysis of public news reports.
Indianapolis recorded at least 246 murders in 2021, Rochester has recorded at least 71 murders, Columbus has recorded at least 179, Baton Rouge recorded 137, Portland saw 79, Albuquerque has experienced 97, Tucson has 81, Louisville saw 175, St. Paul recorded 35, and Toledo saw 62 murders—all records.
Portland police officers walk past a fire started by a Molotov cocktail that a rioter hurled at them, in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 23, 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Notably, Portland, Rochester, Lousiville, and St. Paul experienced numerous days of protests and riots starting in May of 2020 after the officer-involved death of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide unrest.
Protesters and rioters took to the streets in St. Paul—located near Minneapolis—following Floyd’s death at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Meanwhile, weeks of riots and protests erupted in Louisville following the death of Breonna Taylor, and in Portland, left-wing agitators partook in riots and protests for more than 100 consecutive days last year.
In Rochester, riots broke out following the officer-involved death of Daniel Prude, a black man who was later confirmed to be under the influence of the dissociative hallucinogenic drug PCP and was reportedly partially naked and smashing storefronts during cold and snowy weather on March 30, 2020.
“The community has to get fed up,” Capt. Frank Umbrino, of the Rochester Police Department, said during a recent news conference last month.
“We’re extremely frustrated. It has to stop. I mean, it’s worse than a war zone around here lately.”
As it has in the past, Chicago currently leads the United States with more than 730 homicides by the end of November, according to Chicago Police Department data, coming as at least nine murders were reported during an outburst of shootings across the Windy City over the past weekend. The most deadly year on record was in 1974 when Chicago experienced 974 homicides.
Nationally, homicides rose by about 30 percent in 2020 compared to the prior year, according to FBI data released several months ago. That was the largest one-year spike since the FBI started keeping records.
Some criminologists have blamed the spike in murder rates on lax bail laws, political and racial conflicts following the George Floyd riots and protests, large numbers of officers retiring or quitting, and pandemic-related panic.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 23:00 - US Blocks Investment In Uyghur-Hunting Facial-Recognition AI Startup
US Blocks Investment In Uyghur-Hunting Facial-Recognition AI Startup
On Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), the U.S. Treasury Department banned American investments in Chinese artificial intelligence startup SenseTime Group Inc due to their connection to human rights abuse and repression of the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang autonomous region in western China.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned SenseTime, a top developer of facial recognition technology, for their connection to “human rights abuse, including technology-enabled abuse” of Uyghur Muslims.
OFAC said SenseTime’s “facial recognition programs can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs. When applying for patent applications, Shenzhen SenseTime Technology Co. Ltd. has highlighted its ability to identify Uyghurs wearing beards, sunglasses, and masks.”
“The mass detention of Uyghurs is part of an effort by Chinese authorities to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to create a police state in the Xinjiang region,” the OFAC said.
According to Bloomberg sources, hours before the Treasury’s sanctions, SenseTime delayed its Hong Kong initial public offering on early Friday. Bankers familiar with the deal said the pause or withdrawal of the offering would make it more challenging for the A.I. startup to IPO.
SenseTime is already on the U.S. government blacklist, placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019. It was placed there over its role in human rights violations against Uyghurs. Companies on the list are prohibited from doing business with U.S. firms unless they obtain a special license.
All of this is happening on Human Rights Day, and days after the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, Lithuania, New Zealand, and Scotland have declared a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games in Beijing over China’s abuse of Uyghurs.
Instead of actual “words,” the U.S. is becoming brave enough to address the human rights abuses with policy action.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 22:40 - COVID-19 A Pandemic Of Fear "Manufactured" By Authorities: Yale Epidemiologist
COVID-19 A Pandemic Of Fear “Manufactured” By Authorities: Yale Epidemiologist
Authored by Isabel van Bruegn via Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of fear, manufactured by individuals who were in the nominal positions of authority as the virus began to spread across the globe last year, according to Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch.
In an appearance on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, argued that by and large, what has characterized the entire CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic has been a “degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”
“Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few,” said Risch.
“By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t.
“However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”
Risch has authored more than 300 original peer-reviewed publications and was formerly a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology.
“I’m looking at clinicians who have now treated more than 150,000 patients, with fewer than 2 dozen deaths, with #hydroxychloroquine.”
Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, #Ivermectin & other therapeutics.
🔴WATCH👉https://t.co/AdFnjPmJvw pic.twitter.com/ozS0QbWFp7
— Jan Jekielek (@JanJekielek) December 1, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The epidemiology professor suggested that individuals who held the nominal positions of authority during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 initially spread a much worse picture of the “dire nature” of the virus than was warranted.
That included the message that everybody was at risk, anybody could die from contracting the virus, and everybody needed to stay in their homes to protect themselves, and, in this way, protect society.
“People were quite afraid of that message, as anybody would be … with the government, with authorities, with scientists, scientific people, with medical people in authority in the public health institutions, all saying the same message starting in about February, March of last year. And so, we all kind of believe this,” he said.
In the first two months of the pandemic, stringent lockdowns and mask mandates were implemented to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States and across the globe. Risch said that the types of messages issued by authorities led to widespread heightened anxiety levels.
“All of our anxiety levels were raised, and we all made decisions to curtail, to various degrees, our exposures to other people, some more than others, but I think everybody had levels of anxiety that really affected how they carry out their life at that time,” he said.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has said that 96 to 98 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before the nation can “go back to normal,” pushing the rhetoric that unvaccinated Americans are to blame for slowing down the nation’s economic recovery.
According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of Dec. 4, just over 70 percent of American adults were fully vaccinated against the virus, while 23.9 percent had received a booster dose.
“…people need to get angry about this… that these drugs [hydroxycholoquine, ivermectin] have been suppressed for reasons that are nothing to do with the science”
Watch the full interview with Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch below, or watch and read the full transcript on Epoch TV.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 22:20 - Poll Finds Public Confidence In 'Woke' Military Is In Free Fall
Poll Finds Public Confidence In ‘Woke’ Military Is In Free Fall
A new public opinion poll featured in The Hill has found that the US military’s reputation is in free fall:
The Ronald Reagan Institute just announced that public confidence in the military has continued its precipitous drop. The institute’s November 2021 poll found that only 45 percent of those polled report “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” — down 25 points in three years. The institute adds “Increasing numbers of Americans say they have little or not much confidence in the military, which is up 15 points in the last three years.”
The military isn’t the only public institution suffering a bad reputation, but it is used to basking in public esteem. As a result, it may not know how to recover.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, given that especially over the past year the Pentagon has devoted itself to the woke agenda, putting out recruitment videos that focus on
forging leaders, strength and conditioning, preparation for war-fighting, overcoming obstacles“diversity”, “acceptance” and LGBTQ++ campaigns.
A banner from the US Marine Corps’ celebration of LGBTs. Recently GOP Senators have begun to take aim at what appears a clear erosion of the military’s old school values of toughness, overcoming odds, and forging strong leaders and unit cohesion. For example last spring the mainstream media heavily criticized Sen. Ted Cruz for calling out the dangers of a ‘woke and emasculated’ new military.
“Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea,” he wrote on Twitter, commenting on a video comparing Russian and US military recruitment adds.
Rod Dreher at The American Conservative says of the declining public confidence in the military: “You can blame Obama and Biden, as well as the senior US military leadership, for the institutionalization of wokeness in the armed forces — and you can blame Trump for not doing enough to stop the madness. Word is getting around about what they have done, and are doing, to military culture. The brass is making enemies of the core people who serve.”
He points out that the vast majority of recruits come from southern states and red states, based on the most recent available data.
These populations – already tending to lean conservative and toward conservative values – then enter a military where they are bombarded with official woke propaganda.
These are real recruitment adds from Russia, China, and the United States… who stands to have the fiercest fighting organizations in the near and distant future?
As we detailed in recent prior analysis, this is a process that’s been building for the past decade or more:
Over the past decade federal military and intelligence agencies have increasingly embraced so-called woke campaigns and policy positions. Specifically, these government agencies have taken explicitly ideological positions in promoting “pride month” and more recruitment of larger numbers of gay and transgender personnel explicitly for purposes of increasing “diversity.” Actual military concerns appear to be receding into the background even as the US military establishment has recently lost yet another war and blown trillions of taxpayer dollars.
For example, as early as 2014, the CIA was bragging that it “has participated in the DC Capital Pride Festival for the past three years … and is active in advancing LGBT diversity and inclusion efforts throughout the Intelligence Community.” More recently, the CIA in May 2021 released a series of recruitment videos clearly focused on recruiting personnel which would allow the agency to check certain diversity boxes.
But The Hill places emphasis on the August US pullout of Afghanistan and evacuation chaos, which likely accounts for the military’s declining public perception:
It was likely the chaotic retreat from Kabul in August — the first time the American people witnessed a defeat in real-time — that pushed the poll numbers lower. Added to that were the deaths of 13 service members killed by a suicide bomber at the gate of Kabul’s airport as they worked to speed the humanitarian evacuation. Of the 13, 12 were in their 20s, and all were volunteers.
While there’s no doubt the Pentagon should have long been focused on meticulously laying the groundwork for a viable Afghan strategy and pullout, instead the Pentagon was busy focusing on other things…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 22:00 - Upgrading The Behemoth That Is The Bitcoin Blockchain
Upgrading The Behemoth That Is The Bitcoin Blockchain
Authored by Emeka Ugbah via BitcoinMagazine.com,
Bitcoin has undergone many improvements over the years… and not without its share of controversy…
THE BEHEMOTH
The Behemoth, a primeval, “unconquerable beast” in the biblical book of Job. Though largely considered a myth, this beast was said to be over 300 feet in height and weighed over 80,000 metric tons. As is to be expected of such a ginormous creature, its gaits would have caused the earth beneath its feet to tremble with every step as it trudges majestically — slowly — through the land. Now you would agree that it would be physically impossible for such a beast to make any sudden turns or suddenly alter the direction of its movement, yes?
Well, the Bitcoin network can be likened to a behemoth. Some may say that it is still in its infancy seeing as it’s only 12 years old compared to other preexisting monetary systems. Well, in that case, I’ll say it’s a 12-year-old — not so much an infant — with a gigantic 360-gigabyte data repository, powering a 1.1 trillion dollar ecosystem, that has about 76 million unique addresses, and a little over 1 million of those addresses currently active as at the time of writing. Considering the age of the network, if those figures aren’t considered behemoth , then I don’t know what is.
Being a decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer network, Bitcoin — unlike most other networks run by centralized protocols — isn’t run, nor controlled, by any single entity but by its users spread out across the globe. Because the network’s smooth running depends on complete consensus between all network users and participants, no adjustments, changes or upgrades can be made on its ever-growing 360-gigabyte database without the general approval of its participants. As a result of this, these changes or upgrades don’t happen very often. We could say that changes or upgrades can only be implemented slowly — majestically, like the movement of the Behemoth.
The last significant upgrade to the network was implemented in 2017.
THE BLOCKSIZE WAR
Image Courtesy Pixabay
Back in 2015, the era of The Blocksize War, was an interesting time in Bitcoin history. It is a good example of what happens when participants within the network don’t reach a consensus about the affairs of the network. During that time, Bitcoin’s adoption rate reached new heights. As the number of users transferring bitcoin within the network increased, it got bogged down with larger volumes of transactions than its capacity could handle, leading to an overall decrease in transaction processing time. Several proposals were submitted by different schools of thought within the Bitcoin community. One of those proposals suggested increasing the individual block sizes as a solution to the problem. That, of course, was met with opposition, leading to the famed “Blocksize War” and eventually a hard fork in the network that led to the creation of Bitcoin cash.
Hard fork …oh, I don’t mean a piece of cutlery made out of vibranium or adamantium. And yes, there’s also a “soft” variation. Some complex terms, no? Okay, for contextual clarity, I’ll quickly run through what they both mean. First of all, a fork, in this instance, is a change in the underlying protocol of a blockchain. A soft fork is a change or an upgrade in the network that is backward compatible with its previous versions, in which all participants see this upgrade as valid. Now in the case of a hard fork, remember when I said that all participants have to agree on changes in a network for it to be implemented? Well, a failure by the participants to reach an agreement, with the proposing party still holding strong to their notion or idea for the network, results in a split, “a fork in the road” if you will, where a whole new network is created and is run by either a completely new protocol, or a version of the old one that suits the ideals of its creators.
Simple enough, yes? Now, let’s get back to the story.
THE DOCTOR TO THE RESCUE
SegWit, or Segregated Witness, a soft fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, was one of the proposed solutions to the problem that was plaguing the network. SegWit works by decoupling signature data from individual Bitcoin transactions and efficiently rearranging them in each block. The good doctor, Pieter Wuille — a Bitcoin core developer who proposed this upgrade — suggested that it would significantly increase transaction speeds on the network. So, look at it like this: Since it had been established that digital signatures account for 65% of the data from a given transaction, separating or segregating the witness (the digital signature of the sender) from the entire data effectively reduces its volume, thereby reducing the amount of time it would take a miner to validate or verify it. This proposal made sense, and after the network participants reached a consensus, it was agreed upon and work began effectively on it. After several tests and trials, the SegWit upgrade on the Bitcoin blockchain went live on August 23, 2017.
AND THEN LIGHTNING STRUCK
The SegWit upgrade was the scaling solution it was promised to be. It was what Bitcoin needed. This upgrade enabled the network’s continued growth of its user base and by extension, transaction volume. By freeing up space in each block, the SegWit upgrade also paved the way for the creation of the Lightning Network. Remember back in 2015 during the Blocksize War? One of the solutions proposed back then to resolve Bitcoin’s scalability issues was the Lightning Network. It was definitely not a hard fork and not a soft fork either. The Lightning Network is a software designed to be layered on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that enables the creation of off-chain, peer-to-peer, bidirectional micropayment channels, created by users, which allows them to transfer value, almost instantly and at exceptionally low costs, without limits and the need for a trusted third party.
Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja, the two Bitcoin developers and researchers who co-wrote the paper titled, “The Bitcoin Lightning Network,” where they detailed the proposed protocol and how it will solve Bitcoin’s scalability problems, published it on January 14, 2016. And thus began the race to develop it, which then led to the creation of the “Lightning Labs,” a company based in San Francisco, California, and dedicated to the development of the Lightning Network. Then in 2018, they launched the beta version on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The impact of this innovation cannot be ignored within the Bitcoin community, or by the entire Crypto space, because its implementation made Bitcoin’s adoption as legal tender in El Salvador possible. It’s no longer news that one can make micropayments in bitcoin in the country now. Buying a cup of coffee or paying for a haircut with sats from your Lightning wallet is now as easy as scanning a barcode, all thanks to the Lightning Network.
TAPROOT GOES LIVE
Seen as the most significant upgrade since the implementation of the Lightning Network, the Taproot soft fork is an improvement to the Bitcoin blockchain that was proposed in January 2018 by Gregory Maxwell, a Bitcoin core developer and former Blockstream CTO. Fast forward to January 2020, the good doctor Pieter Wuille submitted a pull request for this upgrade, and then, a little over a year later, Michael Ford and Marco Falke, two other Bitcoin Core Devs, merged a complementary pull request, which led to the beginning of the signaling period. The Taproot proposal surprisingly reached a 90% consensus among the network’s miners and participants. This is considered to be a bit of a rare occurrence, I mean we do recall the split in the network that happened around the SegWit upgrade, yes? As soon as that consensus was reached, work to implement the upgrade commenced thereafter.
The Taproot codebase was integrated with the Bitcoin core through three different BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals). These BIPs included BIP 340 (Schnorr signatures), BIP 341 (Taproot) and BIP 342 (Tapscript).
WHAT IS TAPROOT?
Now, without sounding overly technical and using the simplest possible terms I can come up with, let’s get to understand how these three Bitcoin improvements come together.
BIP 340 (Schnorr signatures). Originally, to generate public keys and verify transactions, Bitcoin employs the use of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). With the Taproot upgrade, the Schnorr signature, a more secure, easier to use algorithm is implemented. With the Schnorr signature, instead of processing a single transaction at a time, multiple transactions are bundled up, processed and verified in batches, thereby increasing the network’s overall processing time, making it equally less expensive.
BIP 341(Taproot). Building on the SegWit upgrade, Taproot employs the Merklized Alternative Script Trees (MAST), a cryptographic protocol used to improve the privacy, efficiency and flexibility of Bitcoin’s scripting capabilities without compromising security.
BIP 342 (Tapscript). The term “Tapscript” is basically an upgraded version of Bitcoin’s operating system (script). Now, this BIP 342 improvement proposal complements the earlier mentioned Schnorr and Taproot proposals. It improves the hashing of signatures, enabling the validation of taproot scripts, as well as allowing the flexibility to add operation codes (opcodes, basically script commands). This enhances the network’s ability to process smart contracts, which is one of the most important things about this soft fork.
The Taproot upgrade went live at block 709,632, on Sunday. November 14, 2021.
WHY TAPROOT?
At this point, the “why” shouldn’t be much of a question, no? Besides improved privacy and reduced transaction processing cost, the fact that Bitcoin developers can now much more flexibly develop smart contracts on the network is a thing to be excited about. This feature, as it should be known, is something most other newer blockchains came preloaded, straight out of the box with. With this, the potential for scaling the network can’t be understated. Though it may take a few years for it to be fully adopted, the scaling potential for the network will not be made light of. rom DeFi to NFTs, a whole vibrant ecosystem can now be built on the Bitcoin blockchain.
“Taproot will set the foundation for the next phase of innovation in the Bitcoin protocol. We expect this upgrade to unleash a new wave of innovation in bitcoin focused mainly on smart contracts.” — Katherine Dowling (CCO Bitwise Asset Management)
MY THOUGHTS
As far as upgrades go, Taproot may or may not be the most important upgrade the Bitcoin blockchain has seen since its inception, but it is, by all standards, one that will herald more mainstream adoption for the network. Will it impact the value of the network? I think it will, though not right away, as it may yet take some time before its effects are felt across the network. If we look at what happened a few months after the SegWit upgrade went live in 2017, we can see that the value of bitcoin, which was around $5,000 at the time, embarked on a moon trip so to speak, making that 300%-plus gains that led to the top of the 2017 bull cycle.
Bitcoin Price Chart
Now, will that be the case here as well? No one can say with absolute certainty unless, of course, the tip is from someone who has time-traveling privileges. Whatever the outcome is though, we are here for it.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 21:40 - Five Million Americans In Path For Possible Tornadoes Friday Night
Five Million Americans In Path For Possible Tornadoes Friday Night
The Northern Hemisphere winter is just eleven days away, but the threat of severe thunderstorms “capable of producing tornadoes” on Friday and into early Saturday is increasing for millions of Americans across the Southern part of the US, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) Storm Prediction Center (SPC).
“A few strong tornadoes, damaging gusts, and large hail are all expected beginning this evening across Arkansas and Missouri, with the greatest tornado threat close to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The damaging wind and tornado threat will persist overnight while spreading eastward into the Tennessee Valley and northeastward across the Ohio Valley overnight,” NWS-SPC said.
A broad area across Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Evansville, Indiana; and western Kentucky have a level 3 out of 5 “enhanced risk” of severe storms. A level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” stretches from the Mississippi River to the Ohio River Valley. The “enhanced risk” area has the greatest probability of tornadoes.
Here’s the probability map of where tornadoes could spawn. The most severe chances are in the enhanced risk area, encompassing Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Evansville, Indiana; and western Kentucky, which include approximately 5.6mln people.
NWS-SPC expects wind damage across the enhanced risk area.
“Friday night is a time window that everyone needs to watch closely, have multiple ways to receive weather alerts, and know exactly what your plan of action is in case severe weather threatens,” the NWS office in Paducah, Kentucky, said Thursday.
Storm chaser Reed Timmer is on the hunt for supercells across the South.
LIVE update from western TN ahead of a significant nocturnal #tornado outbreak expected TONIGHT across a large zone from eastern AR to as far northeast as central IN and all areas in between. Very important to stay tuned to watches and warnings tonight! pic.twitter.com/RE2V0Rknjo
— Reed Timmer (@ReedTimmerAccu) December 10, 2021
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 21:20 - Supreme Court Will Have To Decide California Gun Law
Supreme Court Will Have To Decide California Gun Law
Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,
“We are filing to stay the issue, to get cert with the Supreme Court,” Rich Travis told me. He’s the director of development at the California Pistol and Rifle Association, based in Fullerton.
I had asked about the association’s case Duncan v. Bonta, which an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal recently held in favor of California’s ban on magazines containing more than 10 bullets.
“Get cert” means “certiorari,” in which at least four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court agree to hear a case.
In August 2020, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit had held against the restrictive state laws, from 2000, 2013 and 2016. The panel held the limit violated the “strict scrutiny” of any gun law mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision, which upheld the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” was not just for militias, but for persons.
That decision by the panel then was appealed by Attorney General Rob Bonta to the en banc panel of 11 judges. Travis said the vote to uphold the ban was 7-4. All seven of those on the Ninth Circuit voting for the law were appointed by Democratic presidents, and all four voting to uphold the Second Amendment were appointed by Republicans.
The case was decided against the association “only when strict scrutiny was lowered by the seven democratic judges,” Travis said.
Potentially, the Tuesday ruling could have been appealed to the full Ninth Circuit, with 29 judges. On it, 16 are Democrat and 13 Republican, thanks to 10 appointments by President Trump. But Travis said neither his association nor Bonta wanted to take that detour. Instead both wanted to go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Another factor here is the Supreme Court already has a gun case on its docket this fall—New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. It could overturn that state’s strict conceal-carry laws. That likely would mean California’s similar laws also would become unconstitutional.
AP reported Nov. 3, “During two hours of arguments conservative members of the court, where they have a 6-3 majority, suggested New York’s law and perhaps others like it in half a dozen other states go too far. Why, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, does a person seeking a license to carry a gun in public for self defense have to show a special need to do so.”
Roberts said, “The idea that you need a license to exercise the right, I think, is unusual in the context of the Bill of Rights.”
However, Travis said the New York law’s outcome, whatever it is, would not directly affect whatever happens at the court to the California law.
California Anti-Gun Laws
The magazine limits are three of many anti-gun rights laws passed in California in recent years. But magazine limit is especially silly because there’s almost no difference in using a 10-round magazine and, say, a 20-round magazine. It only takes a fraction of a second to pop out one magazine, then pop in another.
The main difference is you save a few ounces by carrying the same number of bullets in larger magazines. And if you’re humping a backpack and rifle 30 miles in the military, every ounce counts.
Neither Gov. Newsom nor Attorney General Bonta ever served in the military. So they don’t know such things.
Moreover, large magazines are more likely to jam because the spring inside can get weak. That’s what happened in the movie theater in Aurora, Colo. back in 2012, in which James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70. His 100-round barrel magazine jammed, ending the mayhem.
Gun expert John Lott wrote, “A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining.” He noted California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s 1994 federal law banning magazines holding more than 10 bullets, which expired a decade later, “had no effect on crime rates.”
Anyone intent on causing mayhem in California also would not be concerned about following the magazine ban and could easily buy larger magazines in Arizona or other pro-gun states, then bring them back illegally across the border. Mass murder is a lot more serious charge than the $100 fine the magazine ban brings for a first offense.
Finally, there’s the old saying, “The Supreme Court justices also read the newspapers.” They know what’s going on in the country with the crime increases in cities that have reduced police funding. They know the murder rates in many cities have soared during the past two years.
Washington, D.C., where the Supreme Court is located, has suffered 205 murders so far in 2021, up 10 percent in one year. It’s the highest rate in 16 years.
The court also has read about the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisc., after he defended himself using an AR-15-style rifle by killing two attackers and wounding a third.
It’s difficult to predict what the Supreme Court will do, even if comments by the justices seem to indicate how a case will be decided. So we don’t know what will happen with the New York or California gun cases.
But what we do know is California’s continued grandstanding on the gun issue is yet another restriction on citizens’ constitutional rights. And appealing decisions like this one is another expense, when the money could be used by Bonta’s department to, say, prosecute the flash mobs robbing California stores.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 21:00 - Plans For New NYC Casino Include "World's Largest Cryptocurrency Trading Floor"
Plans For New NYC Casino Include “World’s Largest Cryptocurrency Trading Floor”
Talk about apropos…
An idea being pitched for a brand new casino in New York City includes plans for the “world’s largest cryptocurrency trading floor”.
The casino plans, being submitted by money manager Jason Ader on December 10, are also expected to include plans for a landing pad for flying cars, according to Bloomberg.
The project, slated to cost more than $3 billion, will also include a eSports arena and space to host events like New York’s Fashion Week.
Ader, a former casino analyst, said this week: “The goal is to have a differentiated but comprehensive approach to entertainment that goes beyond casino gaming with some pretty cool elements.”
Ader also used to sit on the board of Sands and is making his bid as part of a partnership with Universal Entertainment Corp.
The New York State Gaming Commission is issuing three new casino licenses for the Southern most part of the state. Ader’s plans will be among others submitted.
MGM Resorts International and Genting Group will be looking to expanding slot and horse racing parlors that they already have in the New York City area, the report says. Bally’s Corp. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. have also held preliminary talks about expanding their reach to the area.
The casino is slated to be called “Mirai”, which means ‘future’ in Japanese.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 20:40 - Young People Turn To Collectivism Because Of These Psychological Disparities
Young People Turn To Collectivism Because Of These Psychological Disparities
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
Are Americans changing with the times, are the times changing with Americans, or, has nothing really changed at all in the past century?
Before we dive into this discussion it’s important to understand one thing above all else – There is nothing new under the sun. Every “new” political movement or cultural upheaval has happened a thousand times or more in the past. Every “new” form of governance is just a rehashed version of a system that came before it. Every “new” economic structure is one of a handful of preexisting and ever repeating trade methodologies. Every “new” revolution and rebellion is a fight for the same basic goals against the same persistent foes that have always existed since the dawn of civilization. All of human history can be condensed down to a few fundamental and irreconcilable differences, desires, values and ambitions.
This cycle of events is a kind of historical furnace where people and nations are forged. Most go through life without any inkling of the whirlwind; they think the things happening to them are unique and unprecedented. Maybe if human beings lived longer lives they would realize how common such conflicts are and view the repetition with less panic.
The so called “disenfranchised” feel overwhelmed by the tides and completely devoid of any influence over the future. Then there are those that have the ability to see the story unfold. There are those that try to control it and use it to their advantage. There are those that are trying desperately to escape it, even at the cost of reason and sanity. And, there are those that take truly individual action and make history rather than simply being caught up in it.
None of us really knows which path we will choose until we are faced with a defining moment, and none of us knows when that moment will arrive. I know it sounds crazy, but living in interesting times is not a curse, it is a blessing. Of course, not everyone feels this way…
Collectivism Targets The Young For A Reason
As the mainstream media is fond of reminding us, there is a large percentage of teens and young adults today that are turning to collectivist systems like socialism to find protection from what they see as a cruel and unfair era that is inhospitable to their prosperity and emotional security. They feel that the generations that came before them rendered all the fat and siphoned all the wealth this country has to give and now there is nothing left for them. In some cases they are correct, in other cases they have been cleverly misled.
That’s right folks, it’s a return to that epic battle between the inexperienced and naive younglings who will one day inherit the Earth, and the selfish and obstinate “boomers” that supposedly ruined it for them. A battle not just of classes but of generations; nothing new under the sun, same as it ever was.
According to mainstream polling over the past few years there has been an aggressive shift in younger people away from traditional American concepts like free markets (What leftists call “capitalism”) and individualism towards the sweet sugary smell of candy coated socialism. The strange thing is that many millennials and Gen Z kids mistrust government more than any generation that has come before them in recent memory. Yet, more than half of them actually think that socialism (big government) is a “rebellion” against corrupt and intrusive government influence. Yeah, how did they ever come to that conclusion? It’s bizarre.
There are a lot of very insightful theories on why this is happening. Some people argue that public schools and colleges have become subversively communist and ideological, and that recent generations have been exposed to increasing levels of indoctrination. It’s true, the evidence is undeniable that this is happening and the propaganda coming from public schools is so radioactive it’s giving the country cancer.
However, what this theory overlooks is that younger people are targeted with collectivist cultism for a reason – They are already highly susceptible to the narrative. Certain people and groups are more psychologically inclined to adopt particular values and embrace particular solutions.
Young people tend to lean more towards the collectivist mentality, and the elitists behind the curtain encourage and exploit this existing social trait. They don’t create these divisions out of thin air, the divisions already exist in society and they take advantage. That’s the big secret that very few analysts want to acknowledge.
Who Is To Blame?
To be fair, older generations have not helped the situation much. It would have been better if the fight against globalism, collectivism, etc. had been fought and ended decades ago. There have been a lot of false starts. Economically, older Americans have done very little to stop government spending and the Federal Reserve’s money printing bonanza and now we are witnessing a stagflationary crisis which young people are ill equipped to survive. There are many comforts that Baby Boomers took for granted, such as greater buying power of the dollar and easier home ownership, and these are comforts that newer generations will probably not experience.
But then again, blaming the apathy of “boomers” as the sole culprits behind the economic decline of the US is a deflection on the part of young socialists. Let’s be realistic; the vast majority of stimulus creation was accomplished by the Fed between 2008 and today. Millennials are more than old enough to take part of the responsibility. The central bank and the government conjured more national debt and inflationary stimulus in the past decade than all the previous 235 years of our country’s existence combined. Most younger Americans stood by and watched this happen right along with the baby boomers.
Also, accusing boomers of dereliction of duty for not leaping into revolution against the powers-that-be presumes that this was ever their job. It’s a lot like blaming the parents or grandparents of the Founding Fathers for not breaking from England sooner. Maybe there just wasn’t enough momentum yet? Maybe the task was left to the founders era for a reason. Maybe these things are part of a cycle (as mentioned above) and maybe an accounting of our current predicament was not possible until today? Like I said, we don’t get to choose the time in which we live, and moments where tyranny or rebellion are decided are fleeting in history.
Sorry, kids, but someone has to come of age during these moments of malaise and that lot falls to you. Unfortunately, some of you will now be standing in support of the corrupt system instead of fighting against it and we will be finding ourselves at cross-purposes.
The Exploitable Psychological Weaknesses Of Youth
The question again is, why are we on opposite sides? Why are around two-thirds of younger people putting their faith in big government when they are the generation that’s supposed to be the most suspicious of government? What is it with the young and socialism and collectivism?
To be sure, collectivist movements like to present themselves as “revolutionary” and fighting for the “underdogs.” And usually they are marginal in their social presence and seem to be grassroots in origin when they begin. The key to knowing if a movement is real or if it is a controlled farce is to see who is putting their money behind it.
It is not surprising to most conservatives that the political left enjoys endless cash flow from globalist institutions and corporate backers. After all, we’re the people these kids are being encouraged to destroy because we are in actual opposition to the system (save a handful of GOP elites that are conservative in rhetoric only).
Social justice groups are finding enthusiastic allies among the mega-rich, the very people the left claims they are fighting to dethrone. BLM and other leftist organizations have received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, etc. This is not conspiracy “theory”, this is openly admitted reality.
Colleges in particular have long been a grooming ground for the elites, and it’s important to remember that many leftists are coaxed and manipulated by gatekeepers into the role of angry activists. That doesn’t mean they bear no responsibility for their actions. This leads us to the psychology of today’s younger generation and why they are so often targeted for exploitation by collectivists.
The Vulnerable Psychology Of The Young
Collectivist movements associate with empathetic causes and many young people draw political conclusions based on emotion and empathy. It makes sense; most younger Americans value empathy and charity above all else because they have only been on this Earth for a short period of time. They have thrived for most of their brief existences because of charity and support from other people (like their parents). They move into the adult world wondering why collective support and centralized charity are not there waiting for them. It’s the only system of survival they have ever known, and now the world demands that they stand on their own two feet and make their way alone.
The go to solution is usually to go to college and take on debt. For the past 10-15 years college for most people has become a way to escape the real world for a few years more. A large number of them take on useless majors and pay tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that have no value to any employer. When college ends the escape plan ends and once again reality waits for them, but now they have an average of $30,000 in debt dragging on their necks like a millstone.
This is why the number of young people living with their parents into their 20s and 30s has skyrocketed in the past several years to 52%. When mommy and daddy are no longer the primary means of sustainment they search for a proxy, and the government looks like a tempting replacement.
This is partially the fault of helicopter parents that have spent the better part of their children’s lives trying to shield them from any responsibility or consequences. They have left swarms of these kids completely unprepared for the harsh lessons of the adult world. The fact of the matter is, childhood ends, and dependency ends, and you will have to be able to function without constant help or you will feel the pain of failure. This is how the world works and how it always will work. Socialism/communism and globalism/collectivism all make promises that under their new system you can remain a child for the rest of your life, forever cared for by government. This is a lie.
Collectivist systems do have a habit of making most people equal, in that we are all made equally poor and equally destitute. The Utopian vision of a world without work or worries always has a hidden price tag as well. The sacrifice of personal freedom is the trade and while some don’t see this as a bad thing most of them aren’t old enough yet to understand what they are losing.
A problem more specific to Millennials and Gen Z is that they have extraordinarily high expectations but extremely low initiative and ambition. When the top dream job for young people in poll after poll is “YouTuber” or “Influencer”, you know that our society is in trouble. The expectation is that work will always be minimal while money will always be ample and fame will be inevitable. Social media is built on this very narrative, and the number of “followers” a person has on social media is treated as a currency; subscribers and followers are the new measure of individual success, even if that person has accomplished nothing else in their lives.
Imagine that you have this mentality sloshing around in your brain and suddenly you are faced with the cold hard reality of the 9 to 5 work-a-day world? You are going to be enraged when you realize how much struggle and discomfort it really takes just to pay the rent and put food in your stomach.
Zennials think that older people somehow didn’t have to go through this, but they are misinformed. Nearly ALL OF US struggle in our twenties to get somewhere in life. MOST OF US have lived paycheck to paycheck in our early years. Once you enter adulthood it can take a couple of decades to accumulate any measure of wealth or success, but young people today are utterly impatient with the process and are clamoring for shortcuts. When they realize there are no shortcuts, they feel they have been wronged.
There is a realization that comes to a person only through experience and heartache, and it is this: Life is not a violation of our comfort. Life is not something that is “done to us.” Life is unfair for a reason – It is a test of who we are and who we might become. Life is a relentless test.
Collectivist gatekeepers will spin fantastic narratives of a future devoid of discomfort and free from responsibility. All you have to do is give up all your freedoms and the reward will be a perpetual childhood. It sounds nice, but it is quite evil in its design. Infantizing a society is the first step to enslaving a society. Being dependent on government means giving total control to government; government becomes the parent, and not all parents love their children.
Big government and collectivism are also intoxicating weapons. Much like the “One Ring” in the Lord of The Rings, a lot of people think they can use it for good, but big government power corrupts everyone eventually. There are many people on the political left today that are basking in the dark side of this power. They love the intimidation of the mob, and they love that corporations and politicians are helping them to destroy their enemies.
All social justice is built on the notion that the expectation of betterment is a form of bigotry. Seeing merit as a measure of a person’s value is deemed horrific. In a meritocracy these people have no power, but in a world of “equity” where people compete to see who is the most broken and the most oppressed the power goes to the those who can get the most handouts and special treatment.
Then, there are people that are simply narcissistic and sociopathic, and these are traits that are highly valued in the social media culture and in collectivist regimes. In the new world there will be two types of people who will be allowed to succeed: The people that prove their victim status and the people that have no conscience. If you don’t have any defining social justice points to help you climb the diversity totem pole then you will be stuck, unless you are willing to do almost any evil to get ahead. And maybe this has always been the goal of the establishment – To get our culture to a place where evil is the most acceptable option.
To be clear, there are millions of young Americans that are NOT on board with the collectivist program, but the longer the current dynamic goes on the harder it will be to reverse the damage already done by the system. Something is going to have to change very soon and rather violently. While the young are exploited through their fears of stepping into a world based on merit, collectivist tyranny will only continue to grow.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 20:20 - Manhattan Rents Jump Most On Record Despite Dismal Back-To-Office Return
Manhattan Rents Jump Most On Record Despite Dismal Back-To-Office Return
Even though the Omicron variant scare has slowed the back-to-office return across Manhattan, demand for apartments in the borough is booming.
According to a new Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate report, median rent skyrocketed 23% in November compared with the same period last year to $3,369. The increase was the most on record as people are returning to the city for the nightlife, not necessarily back to the office.
November’s increase was the largest in a decade of Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate’s housing data, though median rent remains 3.8% below pre-pandemic levels.
Apartments are in high demand even as Kastle’s “Back to Work Barometer” for the metro area shows only 31% of office workers are back. This suggests that people are still working from home but want to be in the city as they miss cultural institutions, restaurants, bars, and nightlife.
“They just want to get back into the city — they’ve been away long enough,” Hal Gavzie, executive manager of leasing for Douglas Elliman, told Bloomberg. “There’s a kind of fatigue with being out of Manhattan and missing it.”
Last month, upscale apartments in doorman buildings accounted for the most significant rent surge. The median rent jumped 27% from a year earlier to $4,108, above the November 2019 median of $4,016. Apartments without door attendants were in low demand. There was no reasoning why upscale apartments with helping staff were in high demand. One suggestion is the safety of the building as the metro area experiences a surge in violent crime under progressive leadership.
Meanwhile, on the commercial side of the market, retail rents plunged across Manhattan in October. An enormous glut of commercial restate, such as storefronts and office space, remain unleased.
More than a year ago, we noted NYC’s road to recovery would lag the rest of the country as the downturn could last until 2023.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 20:00 - The Joy Of Stealing
The Joy Of Stealing
Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,
I’ve been caught stealing
Once, when I was five
I enjoy stealing
It’s just as simple as thatWell, it’s just a, simple fact
When I want something,
And I don’t want to pay for itI walk right, through the door
Walk right through the door
Hey all right!
If I get by, it’s mine
Mine all mine!– Been Caught Stealing, by Jane’s Addiction
“No Cause for Alarm”
Robbery. Theft. Stealing. These actions take many different forms.
There’s fraud. There’s force. There’s white collar theft. There’s crafty pickpockets. House burglaries. Insurance swindles. Breaking and entering (B&E). Hanoi-style. Credit card scams. Government kickbacks. Hold ups. Carjacking. Embezzlement. And much, Much More…
They all generally roll up to the same thing. Taking another person’s property (including money) without permission or legal right.
Taking from others without permission, no doubt, is barbaric. And barbarism is on the rise…
Here in California there’s a bull market in plywood. The material’s exceptionally suitable for boarding up broken windows following flash mob smash and grab robberies. It also provides fortification against future attacks.
In Los Angeles, for example, nearly $340,000 of merch was stolen by flash mobs between November 18 and 28. These robberies also resulted in $40,000 in property damage.
“No cause for alarm,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti following the rash of smash and grabs.
Fourteen people were arrested. Yet they were all released long before the police reports were written. In fact, many of the crooks met Los Angeles County’s no-bail criteria.
If you didn’t know, California’s statewide policy of imposing $0 bail for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies ended last year. But here in LA County there’s no policy that’s too dumb to not extend. The $0 bail policy was kept in place within the LA County Superior Court system.
By implication, flash mob robberies are encouraged by LA County. We’ll have more on robbery and theft in just a moment. But first, some thoughts on retail…
Knockout Punch
Years of competition from online sales had left an extreme over capacity of brick and mortar stores. There are simply too many shopping centers. Why hassle with crowds when you can order whatever you want – and at the best price – from your kitchen table?
Property managers have had to get creative to keep vacancy rates down. Some shopping malls have filled empty space with indoor trampoline parks, laser tag, and virtual reality gaming and escape rooms.
These amusement venues help maintain low vacancy rates. They also bring in traffic and supply the food court with hungry customers. But these businesses are not supported by the sort of production that drives real economic growth. Rather, they symbolize the passing of the retail shopping center.
Indeed, retail has been on the ropes for many years. Government mandated lockdowns, however, appear to have delivered the knockout punch. Forced isolation trained more and more people to shop online.
Now there are an abundance of Amazon delivery vans double parking in the streets. And vacant strip malls provide overnight parking for these vast fleets of Amazon vans. They’re everywhere.
At the same time, high end retail had appeared to have a more lasting niche. Buying a $1,000 purse is about vanity; not functionality or convenience. The fashion boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or Melrose Avenue in the Fairfax District flatter egos in the most special way.
Posh retail shops seemed to be buffered from the online shopping assault. But that was before ruffians smashed out the windows of Louis Vuitton and Saks Fifth Avenue last month in a failed smash and grab robbery on Rodeo Drive.
Maybe next time the robbers will bring a bigger sledge hammer. What then?
The advent of flash mob smash and grab robberies is a function of several things. Social media gives mobs the means to communicate. Disgruntled individuals can network and quickly set a time and place to all show up and wreak havoc.
The world wide web also gives them an enormous market where they can sell their spoils. They’re no longer limited to swap meets and other black markets. Thieves can go on eBay and sell their loot at below market prices. The margins are phenomenal.
These tech tools, along with lax penalties, support the mass plundering of retail stores. But we think there’s something else at play. Something even more sinister than smash and grab robberies.
The Joy of Stealing
You see, government policies of mass dollar debasement are what really stimulates barbarism. Spineless money produces spineless people. Once the abundance of fake money being issued so grossly favors the wealthy and elites, throwing bricks becomes an attractive option.
We’re not justifying the mass thefts. We’re opposed to any form of unprovoked aggression being committed against another person or property. We also have eyes to see with. And we’ve witnessed an entire class of people repeatedly commit massive theft without suffering personal consequences.
For example, not one banker or mortgage broker that we know of went to jail for the mass fraud and theft that was perpetrated leading up to and following the 2008-09 housing market bubble and bust. Not even Angelo Mozilo…who personally pocketing $45 million in ill-gotten gains. But even that’s small potatoes.
Over the last 24 months, the Federal Reserve’s issued over $4.5 trillion of fake money, which the U.S. Treasury has spent into the economy. All this free money comes with a steep penalty. Like day after night and night after day, price inflation follows the mass issuance of fake money.
Price inflation also acts to confiscate the savings and earnings of wage earners and retirees. In addition, it leads to mass barbarism – and flash mob smash and grabs. Here’s why…
John Maynard Keynes, the godfather of modern day economic intervention, provided one of the better explanations of the relationship between money debasement and the economy. What follows is an excerpt from The Economic Consequences of the Peace, written by Keynes in 1919:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
“Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
This, without question, describes down to the T, precisely, the barbarism going on in America.
Right now, today, unrelenting theft of a colossal scope and scale is being perpetrated by the federal government against American citizens…including you. If that doesn’t bring warmth and joy to your heart, we don’t know what will.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 19:40 - Better.com CEO "Taking Time Off Effective Immediately" After Mass Zoom Firings Backlash
Better.com CEO “Taking Time Off Effective Immediately” After Mass Zoom Firings Backlash
Vishal Garg, the CEO of Better.com, who fired 900 employees, or 9% of its workforce, weeks before Christmas via a mass Zoom call, is “taking time off effective immediately” on Friday morning, according to Vice News. The controversial firings come ahead of a public merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
On Dec. 1, Garg fired 900 employees over a three-minute Zoom call. He later admitted to “blundering the execution:”
“I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected and for their contributions to Better. I own the decision to do the layoffs, but in communicating it I blundered the execution. In doing so, I embarrassed you,” the CEO said, in a leaked email to employees.
On Friday, the board of directors of the digital mortgage company emailed employees and said Garg is “taking time off effective immediately.” The email also said they hired an outside firm to “do a leadership and cultural assessment.”
Vice obtained the email Friday. Here’s what the board of directors told employees:
Good Morning,
Vishal and the Board wanted to provide Better employees an update given the very regrettable events over the last week.
Vishal will be taking time off effective immediately. During this interim period Kevin Ryan as CFO will be managing the day-to-day decisions of the company and he will be reporting to the board. As well, the board has engaged an independent 3rd party firm to do a leadership and cultural assessment. The recommendations of this assessment will be taken into account to build a long-term sustainable and positive culture at Better. We have much work to do and we hope that everyone can refocus on our customers and support each other to continue to build a great company and a company we can be proud of.
Better Board of Directors
In a short Zoom call last Wednesday, the CEO told employees, “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off.” After the mass firing via teleconferencing, the CEO received sharp criticism for the firings.
The firings come ahead of a SPAC deal to take the company public. Better.com’s deal is through blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp.
TechCrunch has reported heads of Better.com’s PR, communications, and marketing departments resigned after the mass Zoom firing controversy.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 19:20 - World Economy Entering Period Of Oil Scarcity, Halliburton CEO Says
World Economy Entering Period Of Oil Scarcity, Halliburton CEO Says
Authored by Nicholas Dolinger via The Epoch Times,
Halliburton CEO and president Jeff Miller made waves this week by predicting that the world is due for a period of oil scarcity in comments at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas.
“I think that for the first time in a long time, we will see a buyer looking for a barrel of oil, as opposed to a barrel of oil looking for a buyer,” Miller said.
Since 2014, the oil industry has generally deemphasized building new infrastructure in the face of low prices. However, that trend may now catch up with the industry, which now finds demand for oil exceeding the available supply given current infrastructure.
Some analysts have speculated that it is increasingly likely that oil prices will soon climb to $100 per barrel, a price unseen in the past seven years and which has serious potential to disrupt the economy.
An additional factor contributing to predicted oil scarcity is a labor shortage in the fossil fuel industry surpassing that in the general economy.
The widespread perception that fossil fuels will be marginalized in the future of energy and transportation makes long-term careers in petroleum unattractive to young workers, with many oil workers seeking to switch to renewables or leave the energy industry outright.
A recent survey revealed that 43 percent of oil industry employees sought to transition to other sectors in the next five years, as reported by Reuters.
As baby boomer employees retire, the industry struggles to replace them with young workers, who see the oil industry as unfavorable to long-term careers because of concerns about climate change models, and pressure by politicians, environmentalists, and investors to transition to renewable energy sources.
This combination of infrastructural underinvestment and labor shortages is likely to result in an oil supply stretched thin to meet demand, resulting in higher prices and possible shortages.
With oil extraction occurring at a significant time lag from industry investment and the skill shortage in the labor industry showing no signs of abating, there are major reasons to believe that any scarcity in oil supplies could last long into the future.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 19:00 - New York Will Require Masks At All Indoor Businesses That Don't Have Vaccine Requirement
New York Will Require Masks At All Indoor Businesses That Don’t Have Vaccine Requirement
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced new COVID measures for New York Friday, implementing an indoor mask mandate for all businesses who don’t have a vaccine requirement in place, as the state encounters its most significant viral uptick in months across all core metrics (remember when the media made fun of Florida for this… good times). Refusing to comply with Friday’s order comes with a possible fine up to $1,000.
It comes a day after the Democrat announced nearly three dozen upstate New York hospitals had to suspend non-essential elective procedures to secure bed capacity, part of what she described as a preemptive strike to “fight this impending surge.”
According to NBC New York, starting Monday, patrons and staff across the state will be required to wear a mask at businesses and venues wear vaccines are not required for entry. This newest mandate, designed to combat increased virus spread at a time when people are spending more time indoors, will be in place through Jan. 15 when the state plans to re-evaluate its effectiveness.
Hochul cited the state’s increasing cases, decreasing hospital bed capacity and low vaccination rates in her decision to implement an updated statewide mandate. She said the state’s vaccination rate is not rising fast enough to match the spike in hospitalizations and infections — the number of New Yorkers fully vaccinated since Thanksgiving has risen by 2%, whereas the seven-day case rate and hospitalizations since the holiday are up 43% and 29%, respectively.
COVID-19 hospitalizations across the state – where 70% of the population are fully vaccinated – are at their highest levels since late April and have soared 86% in the last month alone, the latest data shows. Hochul and “health experts” say that’s a reflection of the still omnipresent grip of delta, which accounts for 99% of all genetically sequenced positive samples in New York — and the nation — and has been scientifically linked to more severe cases of infection.
Daily COVID deaths in the state topped 50 (54) on Thursday for the first time in months, while the daily caseload topped 12,400 for the first time since late January. The latter increase could be reflective of omicron’s spread throughout the state. Hochul and New York City leaders have said community transmission appears to be well underway. While just 20 cases statewide have been detected so far (13 of them in New York City), officials believe the actual number is significantly higher.
Those across-the-board upticks combined with the looming threat of holiday-related spikes warrant intense, early action, Hochul said.
The previously announced order to suspend elective surgeries is designed to ease capacity strains on hospitals as COVID-19 cases surge. It only applies to hospitals that have less than 10% bed capacity available, many of which are in areas where Hochul says lower vaccination rates correlate with the higher, concerning metrics.
“We continue to see an uptick in hospitalizations and this is a trend. You can draw a direct correlation between vaccination rates in an area and the number of hospitalizations,” Hochul said Thursday. “And we know it’s the indoors, the colder temperatures, but also the areas where people are more likely to be vaccinated.”
Hochul said the state will reassess the surgery pauses on Jan. 15 because she doesn’t want to order long-term changes in protocol without an end date or a set time to reevaluate the situation.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 18:40 - UN Chief Accepts Invitation To Beijing Winter Olympics Despite Diplomatic Boycotts
UN Chief Accepts Invitation To Beijing Winter Olympics Despite Diplomatic Boycotts
Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has accepted the invitation to attend the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, despite diplomatic boycotts by several Western nations of the games in protest of the Chinese regime’s ongoing human rights violations in Xinjiang.
“The secretary-general received an invitation from the International Olympic Committee to attend the opening of the Beijing Winter Games, and he has accepted it,” spokesman Stephanie Dujarric told reporters on Thursday.
“I mean, as you know, I think his two immediate predecessors have attended almost every Olympic Game since at least 2002,” Dujarric added.
This is despite the United States, along with several other Western nations, having announced diplomatic boycotts of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, citing the Chinese regime’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the athletes on Team USA would still compete in the Games, but that it would not send an official delegation.
“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can’t do that,” Psaki told a daily press briefing on Dec. 6.
In response, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China would take “resolute countermeasures” against the United States over the boycott effort, without being specific on the countermeasures.
Australia joined the United States in the boycott effort, citing human rights concerns in China and its disputes with Beijing—particularly on the foreign interference legislation for foreign investment, and Australia’s AUKUS security pact with the UK and the United States over nuclear-powered submarines.
“Australia will not step back from the strong position we’ve had standing up for Australia’s interests and consistent with that position, then obviously it is no surprise that we wouldn’t be sending Australian officials to those games,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Dec. 8.
The UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said no ministers would attend the games as there will be “effectively a diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but he maintained that the government doesn’t support sporting boycotts.
Lithuania, Canada, and New Zealand also said they won’t send officials to the games, with New Zealand citing COVID-19 as the main reason.
However, Wang said on Thursday that China wasn’t concerned about the diplomatic boycott, given that “quite a few” foreign leaders and members of royal families had registered to attend the games. China had no intention of inviting Canada and the UK, he said, adding that their absence would have no effect on the outcome of the games.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 18:20 - Jill Biden Insists POTUS's Brain Isn't Scrambled Eggs
Jill Biden Insists POTUS’s Brain Isn’t Scrambled Eggs
For the second time in less than 18 months, Jill Biden has insisted that her husband, the sitting President of the United States, is mentally fit to serve.
In an interview with CBS‘ Rita Braver at Camp David, the First Lady dismissed recent polls indicating that Americans have questions about Joe Biden’s mental fitness.
“Quite a few Americans have some questions about the president’s current mental fitness,” asked Braver.
“I think that’s ridiculous,” replied Biden, insisting that her husband works ‘almost 24 hours a day.’
First Lady Jill Biden opens up this Sunday about her life, her efforts to support her husband and looks back at their first year in office, in a rare interview at Camp David, the Presidential retreat in rural Maryland pic.twitter.com/lC7gpUSqjZ
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) December 9, 2021
In a November Politico/Morning Consult survey noted in the interview, just 46% of those polled agreed with the statement “Joe Biden is mentally fit,” while 48% disagreed.
GOP lawmakers have insisted that Biden, the oldest president in the history of the US at 81, take a cognitive test after multiple verbal blunders – which spox Jen Psaki has blamed on allergies according to the New York Post.
Jill called Joe an “eternal optimist” who “keeps working at it.”
The full interview will air on Sunday.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 18:00 - Americans Need A Conspiracy Theory They Can All Agree On
Americans Need A Conspiracy Theory They Can All Agree On
Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
No subtlety of thought survives in the culture of unreason. Public space is populated with poseurs, cutouts, and imposters. Public discourse, with some exceptions, is much of the time not worth bothering with.
There is a conspiracy theory that the CIA put the very expression into general use to discredit alternate theories about the murder of President Kennedy. Perhaps that’s true – there is a CIA document – but the expression has been around for a long time.
At any event it has become a slur to discredit political opponents. The accusation replaces rational discussion.
There have been actual conspiracies in history. There was a conspiracy to murder Caesar. And to murder Anwar Sadat. The Bolsheviks did conspire to take power and so did Guy Fawkes. Sometimes they succeeded – often surprising the conspirators – and sometimes they didn’t. Many times the conspirators thought the deed itself was all that needed to be done but Caesar was succeeded by Caesar and Sadat by his chosen successor. There are probably fewer conspiracies than people imagine but they do exist.
Conspiracy theories abound in the USA today.
But, it should be made clear from the outset of this discussion that there are two different kinds of conspiracy theories – unacceptable ones and acceptable ones.
An example of the first kind is the assertion that Trump was cheated of victory by vote-faking in key areas. The assertion is “baseless”, pushed by the “far-right-wing” and the “deluded“; has been “debunked” in detail; its so-called arguments are “bogus, none credible“; there is “no evidence” and so on. The full weight of the corporate media stands against this idea and it flourishes only in the undergrowth. Nonetheless, 29% of Americans in a March survey “completely” or “mostly” agreed that the election had been stolen from Trump (66% of Republicans, 27% of independents and 4% (!) of Democrats). So that particular conspiracy theory has significant support.
Other conspiracy theories are respectable: for example the one that the Russians got Trump elected in the first place. Loudly trumpeted by the corporate media for the entirety of his term, the indictment of a principal source of the famous dossier ought to have killed it. But no: to the believers the revelation that a key foundation of the conspiracy theory was a made-up and paid-for fraud makes no difference – “Even if every single word in the Steele dossier was wrong, that would not change the fact that the Russians sought to manipulate the US election“; “it wasn’t a hoax“; the fact that it was a fake was further proof that it was Kremlin-managed.
And so the American population is divided between those who think that Putin won the 2016 US presidential election and those who think Trump won the 2020 election. There is no common ground.
A lot has been written about conspiracy theories, the how and why of them – here’s one and there’s plenty more. But something that is seldom mentioned in these discussions is falsifiability. As Karl Popper argued, a real theory must be capable of being proved false. There must be some imaginable empirical datum that would disprove it. Sometimes, as with the addition of the Lorentz transformations to Newtonian/Galilean transformations, an old theory is proven to be accurate but incomplete. Sometimes an old theory is completely disproven as the aether theory was by the Michelson-Morley experiment. But all real theories are falsifiable. A scientific theory, in short, is true until someone proves that it isn’t. As Richard Feynman said: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. And, as another great physicist observed, these changes are not necessarily accomplished by rational argument: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents… but rather because its opponents eventually die.”
This principle can also be applied to conspiracy theories. For example, if it could be established that Dominion voting machines can not be connected to the Internet, that fact would be a fatal blow to one of the pillars of the Trump won story. Likewise, if it could be established that a fundamental source of the Dossier was a fake then a pillar of the Putin elected Trump story falls. A theory that cannot be falsified is nonsense. Likewise a theory whose believers will never accept any contrary evidence is nonsense. Q-Anon rolls on for years promising the Complete Revelation every tomorrow and the one after that; the Russiagate conspiracy theory rolls on mutating as required.
The more contrary evidence, the more tightly believers cling to them. Actual conspiracy theories therefore are not falsifiable because they’re all conspiracy and no theory.
If they are falsifiable, therefore, “conspiracy theories” are theories; no modifier. The examples in the article cited above – Pizzagate, Q-Anon, Obama’s place of birth and Soros – all happen to be theories that violate conventional wisdom and therefore are tossed into the conspiracy theory bin by the conventionally-inclined. Typically, the author makes no mention of a conspiracy theory that occupied far more space and effort and had much greater effect on the real world than any of these. And that’s because Trumputin was conventional wisdom, pushed every day by the corporate media, and the others weren’t. Trumputin was said to have “a mountain of evidence” and “proof“; the others were dismissed without consideration.
In short, rather than using the useless expletive “conspiracy theory”, it would be more accurate to say that theories that run counter to conventional wisdom abound in the United States today. Some of them – Q-Anon – fail the test of falsifiability, others do not. Some have received enough attention to make them more or less probable, others have not.
In this respect, it is appropriate to look at what Americans think of their mass media. To an older generation “I read it in the paper” meant something but a Gallup poll in October tells us that it doesn’t mean much today. Only 7% of US adults surveyed had a “great deal” of “trust and confidence” and 29% “a fair amount”; the “trusters” were outnumbered by the 29% who had “none at all” and 34% “not very much”; in 1997 the trusters were 53%. Does anyone expect that decline to reverse? Another poll says the USA ranks last in media trust of 86 countries. One more shows a major political division. No one should be surprised – the mainstream media was full of one conspiracy theory and ignored the other.
COVID-19 is another revelation that there are two separate islands of opinion. Take, for example, the simple factual question – yes or no – did Dr Fauci’s organisation fund gain-of-function experiments in the Wuhan laboratory? A rather important matter, one would think. Snopes, that reliable defender of the status quo, says “unproven” in May in a long-winded piece. Denied by Fauci in May: “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Two Pinocchios said the WaPo. But finally admitted in October: “a top official at the National Institutes of Health has conceded that contrary to the repeated assertions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH did indeed fund highly dangerous gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” And more: “The annual report described the group’s work from June 2017 to May 2018, which involved creating new viruses using different parts of existing bat coronaviruses and inserting them into humanized mice in a lab in Wuhan, China. The work was overseen by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci.” And so May’s conspiracy theory became October’s fact.
Did the virus leak from these US-funded experiments? No one knows but it cannot be ruled out. As to Dr Fauci himself, he may have overreached by telling his critics that he represents science; when even the WaPo carries a piece entitled “Fauci Can’t Use Science to Excuse His Missteps” perhaps his best-before date is nearing. Despite the prayer candles. In this respect, the fate of Robert Kennedy’s book, The Real Dr Fauci, is indicative; it’s Number One on Amazon with 96% five-star ratings. This is the more remarkable because of the full-scale attack on him from the establishment media: he is “the dumbest Kennedy“; “race-baiting ‘documentary’ and disinformation to advance bogus theories and seed anti-vaccine sentiment“; “documented history of promoting debunked theories about vaccines“; banned on social media. Tucker Carlson, in “a new escalation of his anti-science rhetoric”, had an interview “with longtime anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Nonetheless, a lot of people are buying and reading it. These media campaigns don’t work as well as they used to. Indeed the 29% who had no trust at all probably believe the reverse of what the conventional media says. I know I do: if they’re all shouting the sane thing, I take it as a powerful indicator that the opposite is true. We should read Western media the way the Soviets read theirs.
However, there are unrelenting attempts to create conspiracy theories that all Americans can agree on.
For years we have had the conspiracy theory that Putin is behind everything bad; in its current manifestation he’s about to invade Ukraine (or as the US Defense Secretary put it: “an incursion by the Soviet Union into the Ukraine“).
Another fast-growing set of conspiracy theories focus on China, the “Wuhan lab leak” being one example. (Dangerous that because of Fauci’s funding of GoF research in Wuhan). China is about to invade Taiwan or starving Uyghers are forced to stuff themselves with pork or tennis players are disappeared; these conspiracy theories are safer. One of the principal pushers of the first conspiracy theory is switching to the other: he senses the change in the party line.
And there’s always North Korea where the rats eat the babies and the babies eat the rats.
The China conspiracy theory seems to be working – a survey by the Reagan Foundation found that 52% saw China as the “greatest threat” to the USA (Russia well behind at 14% and North Korea just behind it at 12%). Three years ago Russia was 30% to China’s 21%. More striking is that China has gained twenty points since February. Can the Putin-won-2016/Trump-won-2020 divide be bridged by a Chinadunnit conspiracy theory?
But agreeing on a common enemy is one thing, the internal divisions are something else. In this respect the Reagan Foundation survey cited above is indicative. It finds that disbelief is spreading rapidly in the American population: trust in all institutions is dropping; confidence in the US military is dropping; support for active global leadership is dropping. A survey just now shows a slight majority of American youth regarding their democracy as in trouble. Not the strongest foundation for more foreign adventures.
A deeply divided country: there is no common conversation in the United States today – one person’s conspiracy theory is another’s truth.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/10/2021 – 17:40
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