- What If An Alien Probe Visited Earth?
What If An Alien Probe Visited Earth?
Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScioence.com,
Popular media portrayals of extraterrestrials visiting Earth have tended to display the dramatic: giant spaceraft, killer robots, and nefarious aliens. A more realistic scenario is decidedly more mundane, but still undeniably world-shattering: a single, robotic probe, visiting Earth in orbit or landing as a rover.
Back in 1998, Allen Tough, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto and an expert in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) before his death in 2012, postulated that there might be alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with the ability to send out hundreds of small, intelligent probes to explore space. His supposition was reasonable. Today, well-funded collaborations like Breakthrough Starshot here on Earth are now actively working toward such an endeavor.
So what if Tough was right, and tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, a far-off alien civilization dispatched dozens of robotic scouts out into the cosmos and one such rover eventually cruised its way to Earth?
What should be humanity’s response?
The first step, according to Tough, would be to confirm that the craft really isn’t from Earth, perhaps from a secretive government. A smart, skeptical team, ideally composed of scientists from various countries, would need to be recruited to examine the probe. If it’s on land, the rover should probably be quarantined at the area it touched down. If it’s in space, a robotic or a crewed mission would undoubtedly be required for an up-close look.
Once the probe’s authenticity is confirmed, Tough stresses that the finding should be made public worldwide, with all collected data openly shared.
What to do next depends upon the nature of the probe.
According to SETI Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak, we’d want to find out if it’s broadcasting any radio signals out into space, and probably block them at least temporarily. Such signals, especially if they are unidirectional, would likely be attempts to communicate with the aliens who sent it. We might not want the probe revealing too much about humanity before we can ascertain its intent.
If the probe’s intent is judged to be benign, or even friendly, we’d next want to try to communicate with it. If it’s plainly unintelligent, this could take some time. After unblocking its communications, we’d likely have Earth representatives attempt to share basic information, something like mathematical principles, gestures of friendship, or music. We’d then have to wait for the probe’s handlers to respond through it. If the craft traveled for a long time, this could take hundreds of years! Shostak isn’t sure humans would be able to wait that long – the desire to disassemble the probe and learn from it’s technological guts might be too great.
But how would extraterrestrials feel if we took apart their probe? Shostak doesn’t think aliens would be too mad. After all, if genial Martians suddenly appeared and messed with Curiosity, NASA engineers would be ecstatic – nothing would increase the space agency’s budget more.
It would be more interesting if the probe or rover was artificially intelligent, thus capable of communicating with humans directly. Tough believed that any alien probe sent expressly for long-distance exploration would likely be capable of learning from, and even communicating with, a race it encountered.
“The probe has presumably already monitored our radio and television broadcasts, learned at least one of our languages, and learned about our culture and history,” he wrote.
That certainly would be convenient and fascinating! While it’s hard to hypothesize on what exactly an intelligent alien probe might tell us, Tough has a good idea about how we should act around it: show respect, avoid violence, speak and act truthfully, and deal with it fairly and honestly.
He also thought that any communication should be attempted with international scientific cooperation as well as openness to the public, aspirations perhaps as unlikely as an alien probe visiting Earth in the first place!
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 23:30 - Visualizing Silver's Uses Through The Ages
Visualizing Silver’s Uses Through The Ages
Silver is one of the most versatile metals on Earth, with a unique combination of uses both as a precious and industrial metal.
Today, silver’s uses span many modern technologies, including solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G devices. However, as Visual Capitalist notes, the uses of silver in currency, medicine, art, and jewelry have helped advance civilization, trade, and technology for thousands of years.
The Uses of Silver Over Time
The below infographic from Blackrock Silver takes us on a journey of silver’s uses through time, from the past to the future.
3,000 BC – The Middle Ages
The earliest accounts of silver can be traced to 3,000 BC in modern-day Turkey, where its mining spurred trade in the ancient Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Traders and merchants would use hacksilver—rough-cut pieces of silver—as a medium of exchange for goods and services.
Around 1,200 BC, the Ancient Greeks began refining and minting silver coins from the rich deposits found in the mines of Laurion just outside Athens. By 100 BC, modern-day Spain became the center of silver mining for the Roman Empire while silver bullion traveled along the Asian spice trade routes. By the late 1400s, Spain brought its affinity for silver to the New World where it uncovered the largest deposits of silver in history in the dusty hills of Bolivia.
Besides the uses of silver in commerce, people also recognized silver’s ability to fight bacteria. For instance, wine and food containers were often made out of silver to prevent spoilage. In addition, during breakouts of the Bubonic plague in medieval and renaissance Europe, people ate and drank with silver utensils to protect themselves from disease.
The 1800s – 2000s
New medicinal uses of silver came to light in the 19th and 20th centuries. Surgeons stitched post-operative wounds with silver sutures to reduce inflammation. In the early 1900s, doctors prescribed silver nitrate eyedrops to prevent conjunctivitis in newborn babies. Furthermore, in the 1960s, NASA developed a water purifier that dispensed silver ions to kill bacteria and purify water on its spacecraft.
The Industrial Revolution drove the onset of silver’s industrial applications. Thanks to its high light sensitivity and reflectivity, it became a key ingredient in photographic films, windows, and mirrors. Even today, skyscraper windows are often coated with silver to reflect sunlight and keep interior spaces cool.
The 2000s – Present
The uses of silver have come a long way since hacksilver and utensils, evolving with time and technology.
Silver is the most electrically conductive metal, making it a natural choice for electronic devices. Almost every electronic device with a switch or button contains silver, from smartphones to electric vehicles. Solar panels also utilize silver as a conductive layer in photovoltaic cells to transport and store electricity efficiently.
In addition, it has several medicinal applications that range from treating burn wounds and ulcers to eliminating bacteria in air conditioning systems and clothes.
Silver for the Future
Silver has always been useful to industries and technologies due to its unique properties, from its antibacterial nature to high electrical conductivity. Today, silver is critical for the next generation of renewable energy technologies.
For every age, silver proves its value.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 23:00 - Meet Jigsaw: Google's Intelligence Agency
Meet Jigsaw: Google’s Intelligence Agency
It’s no secret that Google regularly collaborates with intelligence agencies.
They are a known NSA subcontractor. They launched Google Earth using a CIA spy satellite network. Their executive suite’s revolving door with DARPA is well known.
In the wake of the January 6th Capitol event, the FBI used Google location data to pwn attendants with nothing more than a valid Gmail address and smartphone login:
A stark reminder that carrying a tracking device with a Google login, even with the SIM card removed, can mean the difference between freedom and an orange jump suit in the Great Reset era.
But Google also operates its own internal intelligence agency – complete with foreign regime change operations that are now being applied domestically.
And they’ve been doing so without repercussion for over a decade.
From Google Ideas to Google Regime Change
In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt created Google Ideas. In typical Silicon Valley newspeak, Ideas was marketed as a “think/do tank to research issues at the intersection of technology and geopolitics.“
Astute readers know this “think/do” formula well – entities like the Council on Foreign Relations or World Economic Forum draft policy papers (think) and three-letter agencies carry them out (do).
And again, in typical Silicon Valley fashion, Google wanted to streamline this process – bring everything in-house and remake the world in their own image.
To head up Google Ideas, Schmidt tapped a man named Jared Cohen.
He couldn’t have selected a better goon for the job – as a card-carrying member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Rhodes Scholar, Cohen is a textbook Globalist spook. The State Department doubtlessly approved of his sordid credentials, as both Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton enrolled Cohen to knock over foreign governments they disapproved of.
Google Ideas’ role in the 2014 Ukraine regime change operation is well-documented. And before that, their part in overthrowing Mubarak in Egypt was unveiled by way of the Stratfor leaks.
More recently, the role of Google Ideas in the attempted overthrow of Assad in Syria went public thanks to the oft-cited Hillary Clinton email leaks:
Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.
Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition.
Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria. I’ve attached a few visuals that show what the tool will look like. Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything eke you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact.
-Jared Cohen to State Dept. Officials, July 25, 2012
With all this mounting evidence, surely Google Ideas was decommissioned. Surely Jared Cohen was swiftly ousted from his position at one of America’s premier Big Tech darlings for crimes against humanity, right?
Of course not!
Why scrap all that hard work when you can just rebrand and shift your regime change operations to domestic targets?
Google Jigsaw – USA Psyop Edition
Google Ideas was renamed Google Jigsaw in 2015 after years of bad press and controversy – this time with an eye on performing psychological operations in the United States.
But all that experience data mining and overthrowing Middle Eastern nations wasn’t just thrown out. Rather, Jigsaw repurposed its internal psychological operations program (code-named Operation Abdullah) to instead target “right-wing conspiracy theorists,” as revealed by privacy researcher Rob Braxman.
Using a technique known as the redirect method, Jigsaw attempts to populate outbound links to dissuade potential thought-criminals from looking at wrongthink.
Make no mistake – the redirect method is about more than manipulation of search engine results. It’s one thing to manipulate the content of searches based on query strings, but to target the psychology of the searcher themselves requires an accurate psychological profile of the person doing the searching.
And Google has psych profiles in spades thanks to centralized Google logins: To Android phones, to Gmail accounts, to adjunct services like YouTube, even to children via Google Classroom.
You don’t even need to use Google’s search engine to populate them with weaponized data. In fact, search alone provides far fewer avenues for offensive metadata usage than a cell phone.
We would implore readers to take a look at Jigsaw’s site. It’s a study in how to use front-end design to creep out your visitor, as a snippet of JavaScript code ensures your cursor is tracked in a spotlight throughout your visit:
Jigsaw’s front-end design team has a clear message for you: There’s nowhere to hide.
The site also uses another bit of intelligence tradecraft known as “transferrence” – it’s a simple psychological tactic of shifting blame from yourself to your target.
The four subheaders on Jigsaw’s homepage, Disinformation, Censorship, Toxicity, and Violent Extremism demonstrate this tactic at work.
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There is no greater source of media disinformation than MSM and the information served up by Google search engines.
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Big Tech are at the forefront of destroying free speech through heavy-handed censorship, Google among them.
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Psychological manipulation tactics used by the social justice crowd doubtlessly instill toxicity in those subjected to them.
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And Google’s well-documented history of participating in bloody regime change as described in this article are textbook cases of violent extremism.
Yet Jigsaw markets itself as combating these societal ails. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, just as Google’s former company tag-line of “Don’t Be Evil” was a similar reversal of reality.
And yes, regime change aficionado Jared Cohen is still the CEO of Google Jigsaw. In fact, Jigsaw, LLC was overtly brought back in-house as of October 2020.
In Closing
As we’ve described in previous articles, vast swaths of the State-controlled Panopticon are currently being outsourced to Big Tech companies.
Call this phenomenon a public-private partnership. Call it the Great Reset. Call it Agenda 2030, or Agenda 21, or “stakeholder capitalism,” or any of the other euphemisms dreamt up by these hapless would-be oligarchs to sell neofeudal Technocracy to the public.
Making intelligence services pseudo-independent from the State is simply a mandatory prerequisite for fully globalizing them.
Furthermore, as the Biden administration seeks to reclassify half of the country as domestic extremists, it’s no secret that companies like Google, with their vast data weaponization programs, will play a key role in identifying Public Enemy #1:
You.
There is no “silver bullet” solution to this problem. Nearly all consumer electronics can be exploited at very low levels. Even the Internet itself is a longstanding military intelligence operation.
But this doesn’t mean any action short of becoming a Luddite is meaningless!
If data is the new oil, it’s time to shut off your well:
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Abstain from using Google Mail, Docs, or Search where possible.
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Seek out alternative social media and content creation platforms.
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If your smartphone requires heavy dependence on Apple or Google for logins or closed-source apps, consider privacy-respecting alternatives.
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Familiarize yourself with common data harvesting tactics and take action where you can.
While a full list of meaningful action is beyond the purview of this post (or any single blog entry for that matter), the important takeaway here is this:
We cannot opt out of mass government surveillance. But we knowingly consent to most forms of “privatized” intelligence gathering.
Take the first step and revoke your consent.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 22:30 -
- Air Force Releases New B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber Rendering
Air Force Releases New B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber Rendering
The B-21 Raider – the US Air Force’s secretive, next-generation, long-range stealth bomber, was featured in a new artist rendering graphic for a new fact sheet. This is the third official rendering of the B-21, as there are no images of the stealth bomber.
The new rendering shows a previously unseen cockpit windscreen configuration as the bomber takes off from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. We noted several years ago that the bomber would be tested at Edwards AFB.
Testing is expected to occur in May 2022 where actual images of the plane may be released before or during its maiden flight. The 420th Flight Test Squadron will plan, test, analyze and report on all flights on the new bomber.
The B-21 is the most advanced bomber to date, with complex nuclear long-range missions built into its airframe. It may even be able to carry hypersonic weapons.
“Nuclear modernization is a top priority for the Department of Defense and the Air Force, and B-21 is key to that plan,” Randall Walden, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director, said in a Tuesday press release.
Senior Air Force officials have testified before Congress that the service is in desperate need of ordering the new stealth bombers that would increase its competitiveness globally.
The service plans to replace the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit bombers with the B-21.
“The built-in feature of open systems architecture on the B-21 makes the bomber effective as the threat environment evolves. This aircraft design approach sets the nation on the right path to ensuring America’s enduring airpower capability,” the press release continued.
The service’s current plan is to purchase at least 100 B-21s. There is no timeline on when the first B-21 would enter deployment.
Simultaneously, China has unveiled renderings of its next-generation Xian H-20 strategic bomber. As the US-China relationship continues to sour and a new “Cold War” is underway, both countries are racing to deploy their next-gen stealth bomber.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 22:00 - China: Fragile Giant
China: Fragile Giant
Authored by Jim Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,
I’ve made many visits to China over the past thirty years and have been careful to move beyond Beijing (the political capital) and Shanghai (the financial capital) on these trips.
My visits have included Chongqing, Wuhan (the origin of the coronavirus outbreak), Xian, Nanjing, new construction sites to visit “ghost cities,” and trips to the agrarian countryside.
My trips included meetings with government and Communist Party officials and numerous conversations with everyday Chinese people.
These trips have been supplemented by reading an extensive number of books on the history, culture and politics of China from 3,000 BC to the present. This background gives me a much broader perspective on current developments in China.
In short, my experience with China goes well beyond media outlets and talking heads.
An objective analysis of China must begin with its enormous strengths. China has the third-largest territory in the world, with the world’s largest population (although soon to be overtaken by India).
China also has the fifth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with over 280 nuclear warheads. This is about the same as the U.K. and France but well behind Russia (6,490) and the U.S. (6,450). China is the largest gold producer in the world at about 500 metric tonnes per year.
Its economy is the second-largest economy in the world — behind only the U.S. China’s foreign exchange reserves (including gold) are the largest in the world.
By these diverse measures of population, territory, military strength and economic output, China is clearly a global super-power and the dominant presence in East Asia. Yet, these blockbuster statistics hide as much as they reveal.
China’s per capita income is under $12,000 per person compared to per capita income of about $64,000 in the United States. Put differently, the U.S. is only 38% richer than China on a gross basis, but it is 500% richer than China on a per capita basis (of course the massive economic fallout from the coronavirus will have an impact).
China’s military is growing stronger and more sophisticated, but it still falls short against the U.S. military when it comes to aircraft carriers, nuclear warheads, submarines, fighter aircraft and strategic bombers.
Most importantly, at under $12,000 per capita GDP, China is stuck squarely in the “middle income trap” as defined by development economists.
The path from low income (about $5,000 per capita) to middle-income (about $10,000 per capita) is fairly straightforward and mostly involves reduced corruption, direct foreign investment and migration from the countryside to cities to pursue assembly-style jobs.
The path from middle-income to high-income (about $20,000 per capita) is much more difficult and involves creation and deployment of high-technology and manufacture of high-value-added goods.
Among developing economies (excluding oil producers), only Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea have successfully made this transition since World War II. All other developing economies in Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East including giants such as Brazil and Turkey remain stuck in the middle-income ranks.
China remains reliant on assembly-style jobs and has shown no promise of breaking into the high-income ranks.
To escape the middle income trap requires more than cheap labor and infrastructure investment. It requires applied technology to produce high-value added products. This explains why China has been so focused on stealing U.S. intellectual property.
China has not shown much capacity for developing high technology on its own, but it has been quite effective at stealing such technology from trading partners and applying it through its own system of state-owned enterprises and “national champions” such as Huawei in the telecommunications sector.
But the U.S. and other countries are cracking down on China’s technology theft and China cannot generate the needed technology through its own R&D.
In short, and despite enormous annual growth in the past twenty years, China remains fundamentally a poor country with limited ability to improve the well-being of its citizens much beyond what has already been achieved. And that has serious implications for China’s leadership…
China’s economy is not just about providing jobs, goods and services. It is about regime survival for a Chinese Communist Party that faces an existential crisis if it fails to deliver.
It’s an illegitimate regime that will remain in power only so long as it provides jobs and a rising living standard for the Chinese people. The overriding imperative of the Chinese leadership is to avoid societal unrest.
If China’s job machine seizes, as parts of it did during the coronavirus outbreak, Beijing fears that popular unrest could emerge on a potentially scale much greater than the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. This is an existential threat to Communist power.
President Xi Jinping could quickly lose what the Chinese call, “The Mandate of Heaven.”
That’s a term that describes the intangible goodwill and popular support needed by emperors to rule China for the past 3,000 years.
If The Mandate of Heaven is lost, a ruler can fall quickly. Even before the crisis, China has had serious structural economic problems that are finally catching up with it.
China is so heavily indebted that it’s at the point where more debt does not produce growth. Adding additional debt today slows the economy and calls into question China’s ability to service its existing debt.
China also confronts an insolvent banking system and a real estate bubble. Up to half of China’s investment is a complete waste. It does produce jobs and utilize inputs like cement, steel, copper and glass. But the finished product, whether a city, train station or sports arena, is often a white elephant that will remain unused. The Chinese landscape is littered with “ghost cities” that have resulted from China’s wasted investment and flawed development model.
Essentially, China is on the horns of a dilemma with no good way out. China has driven growth with excessive credit, wasted infrastructure investment and Ponzi schemes.
The Chinese leadership knows this, but they had to keep the growth machine in high gear to create jobs for millions of migrants coming from the countryside to the city and to maintain jobs for the millions more already in the cities.
The two ways to get rid of debt are deflation (which results in write-offs, bankruptcies and unemployment) or inflation (which results in theft of purchasing power, similar to a tax increase).
Both alternatives are unacceptable to the Communists because they lack the political legitimacy to endure either unemployment or inflation. Either policy would cause social unrest and unleash revolutionary potential.
China also has serious demographic challenges that will limit future growth…
In 1980, China instituted a one-child policy in an effort to control population growth. But the 1980 announcement was really a matter of formalizing an existing policy. The Chinese have a cultural preference for boys over girls. So, when the one-child policy was implemented, the Chinese used pre-natal tests to determine sex and then aborted the girls.
At a more crude level, families kept buckets of water next to birthing beds so that if a girl was born she could be drowned immediately. It is estimated that between 20 million to 30 million baby girls were killed this way, resulting in an equivalent surplus of men over women.
These excess men will never find wives in China. Since women can be selective about husbands, it follows that the 30 million excess men will be the least talented and poorest in Chinese society. This cohort is highly prone to antisocial behavior, including alcohol and drug abuse and violence.
The demographic time bomb is now detonating. The missing children from thirty or forty years ago are the missing prime age workers of today. The Chinese economy grew strongly from 1995 to 2010, mainly because of a rural-to-urban migration and the rise of assembly-style manufacturing jobs.
Now the migration is over, the assembly-style jobs are moving to Vietnam and India, and China’s lack of high-value-added technology has left it stuck in the slow-growth middle-income trap. China might have overcome this through the sheer weight of low-wage workers, but they don’t exist.
China will lose over 100 million workers in the next ten years due to aging, retirement and the absence of working-age replacements. China is now trying to undo the demographic damage with a new “three-child policy.”
But, it’s too late. Demographic disasters take thirty years or more to create and they can take thirty years or more to cure. For the next thirty years, China’s worker shortage will be a drain on growth.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 21:30 - Unfavorable Opinions About China Have Reached Historic Highs
Unfavorable Opinions About China Have Reached Historic Highs
As China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of its Communist Party last week, the Pew Research Center released a new report showing that unfavorable views of Beijing have reached historic highs in 17 advanced economies.
As Statista’s Niall McCarty notes, in most places, large majorities of the public also agreed that China is not respecting the personal freedoms of its people.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Views of China are broadly negative across most of the world’s advanced economies including approximately three-quarters of respondents in Japan, Sweden, Australia, South Korea and the United States. While overall views did not change significantly in most countries, they did rise in Austria, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom as a result of bilateral tensions and the feeling that the pandemic was badly handled.
Eight-in-ten or more respondents said that the Chinese government does not respect the personal freedoms of its people and that view is at record highs in nearly every market surveyed. In a further sign of negativity to towards Beijing, Pew found that few countries have confidence in Xi Jinping doing the right thing regarding world affairs while there is a widespread preference for closer economic ties with the U.S. rather than China.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 21:00 - Dershowitz: Trump Lawsuit Against Twitter "Will Shake Things Up Considerably"
Dershowitz: Trump Lawsuit Against Twitter “Will Shake Things Up Considerably”
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday said that President Donald Trump’s class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Google, and Twitter are “very, very important” for the future of free speech in the United States, arguing that the Big Tech firms have special exemptions from the government and aren’t just any ordinary private companies.
The former president, during a news conference in New Jersey, announced several lawsuits were being filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida. They’re asking a judge to order an immediate halt to social media companies’ alleged shadowbanning, censoring, blacklisting, and canceling of people. Trump is also seeking punitive damages.
Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Newsmax that recent actions taken by the social media giants are “inconsistent with the spirit of free speech that underlies our First Amendment.” According to him, the lawsuit “will shake things up considerably, though I can’t predict in the end how it will come up.”
Trump’s suit, he continued, is “a complicated case because, as the president pointed out, and as [lawyer] Pam Bondi pointed out, the others pointed out, these are not just ordinary private companies—they have special exemption … and therefore they partake of some kind of government action, and the courts will have to parse this issue.”
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other platforms, under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, are generally protected from liability for the content that users post.
The law allows social media companies to also moderate their platforms by removing posts that violate their terms and conditions as long as they’re acting in “good faith.”
Bondi on Wednesday suggested that Section 230 is currently outdated because it was drafted in the mid-1990s with the intention to protect children from harmful content online. The way in which Big Tech firms currently use the law as a shield, she argued, oversteps what it originally intended to do.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on July 7, 2021. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo)
Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube suspended Trump’s accounts in January, claiming that the former president incited violence on Jan. 6 and said he violated the companies’ terms and conditions regarding allegations about election fraud.
“What we don’t want is the government telling private companies what they can say and what they can do,” Dershowitz said.
“That would be wrong, but we don’t want these crazy, public, enormous, monopolistic companies to be restricting our free speech. The current situation is unacceptable, and this lawsuit, I think, will shake things up considerably, though I can’t predict in the end how it will come up.”
Dershowitz further noted that private firms should be able to regulate content on their sites—a common argument that has been deployed against Trump and others who have been suspended.
But he said the “argument on the other side is they’re not really private, and the courts are going to have to resolve that.”
“There is some precedent on that, there’s a case called Marsh v Alabama, where a company town, a town-owned by a company, forbade free speech and the Supreme Court said, ‘no, although it’s owned by a company it partakes of the public and therefore the First Amendment applies,’” Dershowitz said.
He added: “Clearly what’s happening here is prior restraint. That is, they’re telling the former president of the United States, ‘we don’t want you on our platforms, no matter what you say, we’re going to restrain you.’ So, the issue is not so much prior restraint. I think everybody will acknowledge this is prior restraint. It’s whether or not the prior restraint is subject to the First Amendment or [Trump] himself has a First Amendment right. That’s what’s so complicated about this, that’s why I call this the new censorship. The old censorship involved pure government. McCarthyism. Congress. Today we have these companies that are the new censors.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 20:30 - China Tightens Grip On Tech Companies With Crackdown On Foreign IPOs
China Tightens Grip On Tech Companies With Crackdown On Foreign IPOs
China’s unprecedented crackdown on its burgeoning (for now) tech industry just won’t stop and overnight, China’s Cyberspace Administration of China – the same entity responsible for the crackdown on Didi – proposed new rules that would require nearly all companies seeking to list in foreign countries to undergo a cybersecurity review, a move that would significantly tighten oversight over its internet giants.
Confirming our thoughts from last week, namely that “with 34 Pending Filings, China Sends A Message: No More US IPOs“, tech platform companies that possess the personal data of at least 1 million users will have to apply for approval from the Cybersecurity Review Office, a group backed by 12 powerful Chinese ministries, if they plan an IPO in a foreign market according to a draft of the updated version of Beijing’s Measures for Cybersecurity Review published on Saturday, which is open for feedback until July 25.
While the draft does not specify if it exempts or covers Hong Kong – the world’s favorite IPO destination in seven of the past 12 years – the city is usually not considered a “foreign” market under Chinese regulations, and especially now following the its quasi-annexation by China.
According to the SCMP, the threshold was set at 1 million – a low bar a country where almost 1 billion people go online actively – apparently to conform with Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of the United States, which requires approvals by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) for deals that involve the personal data of 1 million or more US individuals.
Coming in the aftermath of a series of aggressive crackdowns by the cyberspace regulator on China’s dominant ride-hailing service Didi-Chuxing, the new rules will transform the regulatory landscape for Chinese tech firms wanting to raise funds from foreign markets.
Didi, which raised US$4.4 billion in a June 30 stock sale in New York, angered Chinese regulators – especially the CAC – because of the way that it forced its way to the listing, with SCMP sources describing the company’s insistence to list as akin to a “deliberate act of deceit”.
As Bloomberg notes, the move is “one of the most concrete steps taken yet to restrain the ability of technology firms to raise capital in the U.S. through a so-called Variable Interest Entity model that the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Baidu Inc.and Didi Global Inc. have adopted. Regulators are also considering requiring VIEs like Alibaba that have already gone public to seek approval for additional share offerings in the offshore market, people with knowledge of the matter have said.”
The crackdown is also meant to send a clear signal to the US: according to You Yunting, senior partner at Shanghai Debund Law Firm, the draft is mainly aimed at listings in the US.
“The Chinese government has been hoping to strengthen supervision of Chinese companies listed overseas for some time … but since the start of the China-US trade war, data has become a focus of the power play between the two sides,” You said. “Didi’s US listing was only the fuse that lit the supervision, but even without the Didi incident, the Chinese government would still have taken the initiative.”
So far this year, 37 Chinese companies have listed in the U.S., surpassing last year’s count, and raised a combined $12.9 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“These rules will push more Chinese internet firms to list in Hong Kong instead of in another country, to bypass such a review,” said Feng Chucheng, a partner at research firm Plenum in Beijing. “The one million-user threshold is very low and would basically apply to every internet company aspiring for an IPO.”
The draft regulations also cover data security risks involving foreign powers, with reviews assessing the risks of data being transferred abroad illegally, or being stolen, leaked and destroyed. Reviews will also consider the national security risks of critical information infrastructure: whether critical and personal data is being affected, controlled, or maliciously used by foreign governments after a foreign listing, according to the draft.
The proposal did not say whether Chinese tech companies that have already filed to list in New York must go through the cybersecurity review. LinkDoc Technology, a company backed by Alibaba Group Holding’s Alibaba Health unit, and the Beijing-based Daojia are among the China-domiciled technology companies that have filed to raise funds in the US.
The current regulations, issued in April and effective from June 2020, require that critical information infrastructure operators go through a cybersecurity review if they acquire network products or services that may threaten national security. Just days after the Didi IPO, the Cyber Security Review Office announced probes into Didi, truck-hailing apps Yunmanman and Huochebang, as well as a recruiting app operated by Boss Zhipin, all on national security grounds.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 20:00 - Escobar: Say Hello To The Diplo-Taliban
Escobar: Say Hello To The Diplo-Taliban
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Deploying diplomatic skills refined from Doha to Moscow, the Taliban in 2021 has little to do with its 2001 incarnation…
Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) and other members of the Taliban arrive to attend an international conference in Moscow on March 18, 2021. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AFP
A very important meeting took place in Moscow last week, virtually hush-hush. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, received Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.
There were no substantial leaks.
A bland statement pointed to the obvious:
They “focused on the security situation in Afghanistan during the pullout of Western military contingencies and the escalation of the military-political situation in the northern part of the country.”
The real story is way more nuanced. Mohib, representing embattled President Ashraf Ghani, did his best to convince Patrushev that the Kabul administration represents stability. It does not – as the subsequent Taliban advances proved.
Patrushev knew Moscow could not offer any substantial measure of support to the current Kabul arrangement because doing so would burn bridges the Russians would need to cross in the process of engaging the Taliban. Patrushev knows that the continuation of Team Ghani is absolutely unacceptable to the Taliban – whatever the configuration of any future power-sharing agreement.
So Patrushev, according to diplomatic sources, definitely was not impressed.
This week we can all see why. A delegation from the Taliban political office went to Moscow essentially to discuss with the Russians the fast-evolving mini-chessboard in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban had been to Moscow four months earlier, along with the extended troika (Russia, US, China, Pakistan) to debate the new Afghan power equation.
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Photo: AFP / Viktor Tolochko / Sputnik
On this trip, they emphatically assured their interlocutors there’s no Taliban interest in invading any territory of their Central Asia neighbors.
It’s not excessive, in view of how cleverly they’ve been playing their hand, to call the Taliban desert foxes. They know well what Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been repeating: Any turbulence coming from Afghanistan will be met with a direct response from the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
In addition to stressing that the US withdrawal – actually, repositioning – represents the failure of its Afghan “mission,” Lavrov touched on the two really key points:
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The Taliban is increasing its influence in the northern Afghanistan border areas; and
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Kabul’s refusal to form a transitional government is “promoting a belligerent solution” to the drama. This implies Lavrov expects much more flexibility from both Kabul and the Taliban in the Sisyphean power-sharing task ahead.
And then, relieving the tension, when asked by a Russian journalist if Moscow will send troops to Afghanistan, Lavrov reverted to Mr Cool: “The answer is obvious.”
Shaheen speaks
Mohammad Suhail Shaheen is the quite articulate spokesman for the Taliban political office. He’s adamant that “taking Afghanistan by military force is not our policy. Our policy is to find a political solution to the Afghan issue, which is continuing in Doha.” Bottom line: “We confirmed our commitment to a political solution here in Moscow once more.”
That’s absolutely correct. The Taliban don’t want a bloodbath. They want to be embraced. As Shaheen has stressed, it would be easy to conquer major cities – but there would be blood. Meanwhile, the Taliban already control virtually the whole border with Tajikistan.
New face of the Taliban: The insurgents’ spokesman Mohammad Suhail Shaheen speaks to media in Moscow on February 15, 2021. Photo: AFP / Elena Teslova / Anadolu Agency
The 2021 Taliban have little in common with their 2001 pre-war on terror incarnation. The movement has evolved from a largely Ghilzai Pashtun rural guerrilla insurgency to a more inter-ethnic arrangement, incorporating Tajiks, Uzbeks and even Shi’ite Hazaras – a group that was mercilessly persecuted during the 1996-2001 years of Taliban power.
Reliable figures are extremely hard to come by, but 30% of the Taliban today may be non-Pashtuns. One of the top commanders is ethnically Tajik – and that explains the lightning-flash “soft” blitzkrieg in northern Afghanistan across Tajik territory.
I visited a lot of these geologically spectacular places in the early 2000s. The inhabitants, all cousins, speaking Dari, are now turning over their villages and towns to Tajik Taliban as a matter of trust. Very few – if any – Pashtuns from Kandahar or Jalalabad are involved. That illustrates the absolute failure of the central government in Kabul.
Those who do not join the Taliban simply desert – as did the Kabul forces manning the checkpoint close to the bridge over the Pyanj river, off the Pamir highway; they escaped without a fight to Tajik territory, actually riding the Pamir highway. The Taliban hoisted their flag in this crucial intersection without firing a shot.
The Afghan National Army’s chief, General Wali Mohammad Ahmadza, fresh into his role by appointment from Ghani, is keeping a brave face: ANA’s priority is to protect the main cities (so far, so good, because the Taliban are not attacking them); border crossings (that’s not going so well), and highways (mixed results so far).
This interview with Suhail Shaheen is quite enlightening – as he feels compelled to stress that “we don’t have access to media” and laments the “baseless” barrage of “propaganda launched against us,” which implies that Western media should admit the Taliban have changed.
Shaheen points out that “it’s not possible to take 150 districts in just six weeks by fighting,” which connects to the fact that the security forces “do not trust the Kabul administration.” In all districts that have been conquered, he swears, “ the forces came to the Taliban voluntarily.”
A smoke plume rises from houses amid an ongoing fight between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in the western city of Qala-i- Naw, the capital of Badghis province, on July 7. The Taliban launched its first major assault on a provincial capital since the US military began its final drawdown of troops from the country. Photo: AFP
Shaheen makes a statement that could have come straight from Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s: The “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are the real freedom fighters.” That may be the object of endless debate across the lands of Islam.
But one fact is indisputable: The Taliban are sticking by the agreement they signed with the Americans on February 29, 2020. And that implies a total American exit: “If they don’t abide by their commitments, we have a clear right of retaliation.”
Thinking ahead to “when an Islamic government is in place,” Shaheen insists there will be “good relations” with every nation, and embassies and consulates will not be targeted.
The Taliban “goal is clear: to end the occupation.” And that brings us to the tricky gambit of Turkish troops “protecting” Kabul airport. Shaheen is crystal clear. “No NATO forces – that means continuation of occupation,” he proclaims. “When we have an independent Islamic country, then we will sign any agreement with Turkey that is mutually beneficial.”
Shaheen is involved in the ongoing, very complicated negotiations in Doha, so he cannot allow himself to commit the Taliban to any future power-sharing agreement. What he does say, even though “progress is slow” in Doha, is that, contrary to what was previously reported by media in Qatar, the Taliban will not present a formal written proposal to Kabul by the end of the month, The talks will continue.
Going hybrid?
Whatever the “Mission Accomplished” non-denial denials emanating from the White House, a few things are already clear on the Eurasia front.
The Russians, for one thing, are already engaging the Taliban, in detail, and may soon strike their name off their terror list.
The Chinese, for another, are assured that if the Taliban commit Afghanistan to join the Belt and Road Initiative, connecting via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, ISIS-Khorasan will not then be permitted to go on overdrive in Afghanistan bolstered by Uyghur jihadis currently in Idlib.
American soldiers retrieve their duffel bags after they returned home from a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan on December 10, 2020, at Fort Drum, New York. Photo: AFP / John Moore / Getty Images
And nothing is off the table for Washington when it comes to derailing BRI.
Crucial silos scattered across the deep state must be already at work replacing a forever war in Afghanistan with hybrid war, Syria-style.
Lavrov is very much aware of Kabul power brokers who would not say “no” to a new hybrid war arrangement. But the Taliban for their part have been very effective – preventing assorted Afghan factions from supporting Team Ghani.
As for the Central Asian “stans,” not a single one of them wants any forever wars or hybrid wars down the road.
Fasten your seat belts: It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 19:30 -
- 25K Applicants In First Week After Indiana Offers Free Gun Carry Licenses
25K Applicants In First Week After Indiana Offers Free Gun Carry Licenses
At the beginning of July, Indiana exempted all fees for a lifetime license to carry a handgun. The response was so overwhelming that in the first 24 hours, more than 7,000 people successfully applied for the free license. In the seven days following the new law taking effect on July 1, more than 25,000 people had signed up for the license, according to Bearing Arms.
A lifetime permit originally cost $125, but now it’s free of charge and overwhelming the state as they struggle to process thousands of applications.
“As expected, we’ve had an influx of applications on our website. We’re asking folks that want to apply for that to be patient,” said Indiana State Police (ISP) public information officer Sgt. John Perrine.
ISP warned due to the high volume of applications, there may be delays in accessing the firearms portal.
“We’re sorry, due to a high number of current applicants, we must limit the number of individuals applying at one time. Please try again later,” ISP said.
Because of the expected demand for free licenses, state police say it could take months to process all the new license paperwork.
However, there are some hidden fees – when Indiana legislators removed the state fees on the permit, they didn’t remove fees for background checks or fingerprinting.
Whether or not lawmakers take the next step and abolish carry licenses is still an open question.
Readers may recall a massive surge in Second Amendment sanctuaries at the state, county, and local levels are sweeping across the country. Lamestream media fails to report that 61% of US counties now protect gun rights.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 19:00 - Activism Uncensored: Colombia In Chaos
Activism Uncensored: Colombia In Chaos
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
Any American correspondent working abroad will tell you: coverage of in-country upheavals are dictated by the nature of the government’s relationship to the United States. If they’re technically allies, protests tend to be portrayed as illegitimate. Hence the dilemma in Colombia, as depicted in this episode of Activism Uncensored.
Colombia for some time now has been considered America’s key strategic ally in South America — “think of it as similar to Israel in the Middle East,” says correspondent Maranie R. Staab, above. Colombia is the top recipient in the region of American aid, collecting $800 million in 2020 alone, being central to multiple American objectives, from drug interdiction to opposition to the left-wing government of Nicolas Maduro. The State Department last year issued a fact sheet explaining the relationship:
Colombia is a key U.S. partner in ongoing efforts to help Venezuela in its return to democracy and economic prosperity. Colombia’s leadership has been essential in coordinating regional support for Interim President Juan Guaidó, as well as condemning Maduro’s misrule and adopting policies to isolate his regime…
The usual “Democracy Promotion” script involves the U.S. backing this or that politician with money, weapons, and sometimes even military manpower, turning a blind eye to corruption or other excesses connected to that politician, then ultimately being forced to double down on the money and weapons when anti-American protest movements rise in response.
This isn’t exactly that situation, but close: a government in America’s good graces largely thanks to its role as a launching pad for the dubious effort to install Guaidó in Venezuela, under pressure from a frustrated and impoverished population reacting in this case to a proposed tax hike on basic goods.
Foreign news outlets like Al Jazeera have openly described the Colombian protests as a “class war,” while groups like Amnesty International have tried to bring attention to the fact that the Colombian police suspected in the disappearances of some of the protesters may be armed with American weapons. Outlets like the Washington Post, meanwhile, have used more neutral language in describing “anti-government protests,” almost describing the Duque administration as a bystander to the chaos:
The White House has taken notice. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged authorities last month to “continue to work to locate all missing persons as quickly as possible.” The government of President Iván Duque has said it’s doing all it can.
The Colombian attorney general’s office says it received 572 reports of people “not located…”
In most cases, the office told The Post, the reports “correspond to the normal dynamics of people who voluntarily left their family circle…”
The footage gathered by Staab, Ford Fischer, and News2Share above shows a different picture: the Colombian protests as a serious foreign policy dilemma for the Biden administration, which finds itself caught between its strategic sponsorship of the Colombian government and pressure to respond to wide-scale accusations of human rights violations.
When the U.S. doesn’t have a clear horse to back in these standoffs, coverage tends to be muted. Here we at least get a long look at the scene on the ground, where over 1,000 have been injured and at least 50 have been killed.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 18:30 - Will The Pandemic PTSD Ever End: Maui's Mayor Asks For "Fewer Tourists" As Tourists Arrive En Masse
Will The Pandemic PTSD Ever End: Maui’s Mayor Asks For “Fewer Tourists” As Tourists Arrive En Masse
Proving that the PTSD from the pandemic is going to offer up likely several decades more of total fear porn, Maui’s mayor is pleading to airlines: “Please don’t bring so many people to our island.”
For a year, Hawaii, which derives much of its revenue from tourism, was shut down to everyone but locals. Now, it seems the once-prominent issue of “over-tourism”, often cited by locals as a complaint of living on the island, is back in full force. Except this time, when the tourists showed back up, the island is scurrying to make up a shortage of hospitality workers, U.S. News and World Report said. The islands restaurants are struggling to keep up, the report says.
Mayor Michael Victorino recently said: “We don’t have the authority to say stop, but we are asking the powers to be to help us.”
Victorino has blamed the airport: “It’s the airlift that really drives all of this. Without airlift, people don’t come.”
Hawaiian Airlines spokesman Alex Da Silva responded by saying that while the company is conscious of the regulations and requests, it is visitors that drive the state’s economy.
The island still has “some of the nation’s most stringent coronavirus public health restrictions”, according to the report. It is also the only state that hasn’t fully reopened, mostly due to its remote location and limited hospital capacity. The islanders also have on their mind “the memory of diseases that wiped out 80% of the Native Hawaiian population in the century after Europeans arrived”, U.S. News and World Report writes.
The state’s governor doesn’t plan on lifting all restrictions until 70% of the state is vaccinated. As of right now, 58% of the state was vaccinated.
The state has become a destination, meanwhile, as travel restrictions from other states start to loosen. It’s also a great destination for those that are looking to fly overseas, but can’t yet due to Covid restrictions.
215,148 visitors came to the island in May compared to just 1,054 during the same month last year, the report notes. That number stood at 251,665 in May of 2019. Travelers still must quarantine upon their arrival.
Jack Starr, who manages Kimo’s in Lahaina, said: “We’re under more pressure than we’ve been in pre-COVID, that’s for damn sure.” Restaurants have still been operating at 50% capacity and will be allowed to fill 75% of their seats later this week. Starr says that the distancing requirements and employee shortage are making life difficult for restaurant owners.
“Are you kidding me? You got to take that down to 3 feet, and we might have something going here,” he told U.S. News.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 18:00 - The Blind Leading The Clueless
The Blind Leading The Clueless
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
Most of us watch television. In part, we seek to be entertained, but, additionally, we often seek to be enlightened as to “what’s going on.” In a difficult era like the present one, in which some of the most prominent countries are experiencing the onset of an economic crisis, virtual cartoon characters are competing as choices in political contests, governments are becoming increasingly rapacious and a police state is developing rapidly, it’s not surprising if the average person questions, “What on earth are they thinking?”
Well, there’s no shortage of media exposure to answer that question. Today, there are a multitude of channels offering 24/7 “news,” from which we may hope to glean some insight as to what the leaders of the world are thinking. Yet, in spite of the endless folderol being offered, the leadership vision remains about as clear as mud.
They don’t want war, but are invading more countries than ever before in history. Political hopefuls are vague at best regarding their proposed platforms for action, yet they attack each other as though they’re reporters for the tabloids. Governments continually speak of their wish to lighten the load on the common man, whilst heaping laws, regulations, fines and taxes on him like never before, and whilst heaping billions in tax dollars on their cronies in the financial industry. They claim to seek greater security for all, but instead, create an endless stream of agencies that have the authority to ignore basic rights and behave more like Mafia shakedown operators than law enforcers. Governments claim to be pursuing a sounder economy, but have created an unprecedented level of debt, that promises to crush the economies of several of the world’s most prominent countries in the very near future.
And so, many people look to the media, seeking answers. Typically a news programme will feature a “panel of experts,” who will debate the latest issues. They rarely reach a conclusion, but do succeed in creating a general impression that one political party is out to destroy the country and that the other (which they represent) is out to save it.
(Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard, interviews Janet Yellen.)
In addition to the panels, the media go straight to the source on frequent occasions, interviewing political and financial leaders. The list of questions is invariably prepared well in advance and the interviewee is never caught off guard. His handlers have prepared his answers for him and, on every occasion, a full plate of predictable reheated rhetoric is served up to the viewer for his consumption.
In these repartees, the interviewer is intended to appear congenial yet probing, yet the questions asked are invariably bland enough for the interviewee to either dismiss them or provide an easy retort. The interviewee is intended to appear as though he is informing the public of policies and procedures that, whilst too complicated for the viewer to fully grasp, are well in hand and will provide solutions in the not-too-distant future. Be patient.
The fact that these solutions never seem to arrive seems to be less relevant than the fact that a new solution is underway. In this manner, the viewer, no matter how badly his life is being affected, continues to sit tight and be hopeful, for, surely, better days are just around the corner.
Incredibly, the average viewer seems to be able to consume endless quantities of this propaganda, year after year, and never say to himself, “Something’s radically wrong here.”
If he were to actually turn off the television for a week or so, stand back, and assess the propaganda as a whole, he might conclude that, in fact, the media acts at the behest of the economic and political leaders, to propagate their message. The “debates” and “pressing questions” are limp at best and never lead to any significant change or improvement. Nor are they intended to. They are pacifiers only.
Worse, the leaders themselves continue to not only fail the public, but to steadily morph the governmental, economic and social systems in a direction that will lead inevitably to a bad end.
It is true, of course, that the citizens of these leading nations are becoming increasingly cynical about their leaders and their own futures, but their reaction to the pablum, after having a good grumble, tends to be to “hope the next administration will be better.” This is very foolhardy indeed. (Once the apple is thoroughly rotten, expect to see only worms inhabiting it.)
But those who sense that they’re being shafted need to vent somehow. And, for this we have political parties. Whether our country has Democrats and Republicans, Tories and Labour, or any other such groupings, those who are elected are under no illusion that they exist to serve those who elected them; they exist to serve the major donors who pay for the elections. And the major donors contribute to both parties, in order to ensure that their objectives are carried out by the candidates who are successful, regardless of their party. The overall plan will continue, full steam, regardless of who’s in office.
But the parties do provide the electorate with targets at which to aim their rubber-tipped arrows. Regardless of which party is in power, liberal voters will complain that not enough is being done for their causes and conservative voters will do the same.
Will one win out over the other eventually? Unquestionably not. The system is designed to remain as is – with endless bickering encouraged, but no actual progress planned.
The most prominent countries in the world are on the cusp of a major economic crisis. With it will come political and social crises and, most certainly, war. The television viewer, if he accepts this at all, will say, “Well, that will teach them. Then they’ll have to admit that our side was right.”
Unfortunately, no. After the inevitable economic crashes, after years of pointless warfare, after increased totalitarianism at home, there will be an eventual end to the strife. When the dust begins to settle, the average person will turn on his television, hoping to see that some answers have been reached.
Instead, what he’ll witness, if he turns on a liberal station, will be pundits stating that, if only there had been more QE and more entitlements, it might have all worked out, but that, instead, there was disaster, as a result of the conservatives.
Likewise, the pundits on the conservative station will expound that all the suffering could have been avoided if the entitlements had been kept in check and the bombs could have been dropped on the enemy earlier. Both liberals and conservatives will return to their corners to dress their wounds and prepare for the next round of polarization against each other.
So, who is it that we blame for mankind’s debacles? Surely, we were tricked by the leaders – the politicians, central bankers, leaders of major industries, etc. Or was it the media that did such a sterling job of packaging up the propaganda that we were unable to see the forest for the trees?
It will matter little, because nothing will be learned and we shall begin the game anew. But if it’s a genuine solution we’re after, yes, that is possible. But that solution depends upon whether we’re prepared to cease to allow the media to provide our reasoning for us.
We must be prepared to study our leaders’ actions, to be prepared to be contrarian and, most importantly, to question everything. If not, we ourselves are amongst the blind and the clueless and we can expect an endless cycle of the same dog and pony show.
* * *
All you can hope to do is to save yourself from the consequences of all this stupidity. The coming financial collapse is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we saw in 2008 and 2009. That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video. Click here to watch it now.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 17:30 - Every State's Least-Favorite State
Every State’s Least-Favorite State
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 17:00 - Rand Paul Says He Will Introduce Bill To Scrap Mask Mandate "Farce" On Planes
Rand Paul Says He Will Introduce Bill To Scrap Mask Mandate “Farce” On Planes
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Senator Rand Paul declared Thursday that he intends to introduce legislation that would scrap mask mandates, specifically on planes, calling the practice a ‘farce’.
Paul noted that he intends to seek a repeal of Joe Biden’s executive order mandating masks on public transit.
Paul tweeted that he will seek “immediate repeal of the mask mandate on planes” when the Senate reconvenes next week, adding, “let people travel in peace!”
When the Senate returns to session, I will be introducing an immediate repeal of the mask mandate on planes. Enough! Time to stop this farce and let people travel in peace!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 8, 2021
The Transportation Security Administration has decided to continue its mask mandate at least into September, with fines for those who fail to comply.
According to reports, the FAA has handed out fines to unruly travelers totaling $682,000 this year alone.
Paul has consistently railed against the mask mandate, previously calling it a strategy of government “fear mongering,” “security theater,” and calling for Biden to burn his mask on live TV.
Last week, Paul made an assertive case for natural immunity and the misinformation on the matter that is coming from the government in indiscriminately pushing vaccinations:
The Senator also made his feelings clear this week regarding Biden’s door to door vaccination “strike forces”.
No.
The gov’t doesn’t decide who gets vaccinated. You do.
Do not submit to the fearmongers. https://t.co/NDCRUE3wCV
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 7, 2021
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 16:30 - Goldman: Here's Why The Shorts Will Have To Cover This Week
Goldman: Here’s Why The Shorts Will Have To Cover This Week
Last weekend, before the S&P broke out into a series of new all time highs despite Thursday’s “harrowing” 1% dip, we shared Goldman’s observations on why the market was entering the best 2-week seasonal period of the year. Since then, the SPX has hit new all time highs 3 out of the past 5 trading days, and on 9 out of the last 11 even as sentiment substantially declined this week in global equities. For context, on Thursday we observed that the TICK Index logged one of the largest (top 4) selling pressure on the open on record.
For those asking what was behind Thursday’s wobble, we mentioned previously listed the reason for the selloff, none of which were new. The general feeling was that equities needed to catch down to other asset classes.
But, as Goldman flow trader Scott Rubner correctly predicted on Friday, when he said that “I think local shorts will need to cover this am” only to see a new all time high in the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq, the selling is pretty much over “as long dealer gamma muted a larger potential drawdown.” Another reason why Goldman expects stocks to keep rising: JPM kicks off the defacto new buyback window on Tuesday.
With that in mind, here is a mini thread from Rubner on “where we came from” and where we are going next.
1. GS Wedge: Since January 2019, Money Markets have seen +$1.707 Trillion inflows and Global Bonds have seen +$1.629 Trillion inflows, while Global Equities just +$154 Billion worth of inflows. GS wedge stands at $3.2 Trillion ~ aka the defensive buffer.
2. Cash on the sidelines is waiting for a dip and bought the Thursday dip.
3. 1H 2021 actually logged the 2nd largest money market inflows on record. 1H 2020 was the largest.
4. The cash pile from 2021 has not been reduced.
5. 1H 2021 Bond inflows seem significant? On pace for best year in a decade.
6. Q1 2021 saw the 3rd largest quarterly inflow on record, Q2 2021 saw the 7th largest on record.
7. Global Equity inflows are the biggest story of the year, but do not seem extreme at all when I zoom out.
Goldman’s bottom Line: “We are still in the best two week period of the year, equity inflows are large, 401k are going back into stocks at a record pace. I think local shorts will need to cover.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 16:00 - Galloway: FinTech Is As Under-Hyped As Space Is Overhyped
Galloway: FinTech Is As Under-Hyped As Space Is Overhyped
Authored by Scott Galloway via No Mercy / No Malice blog,
Bank
My north star(s) for philosophy, management, and politics are Star Wars, The Sopranos, and Game of Thrones, respectively. The Iron Bank (GoT) is a metaphor for today’s financial institutions, if present-day banks didn’t need bailouts or to invent fake accounts to juice compensation. Regardless, it was well known throughout Braavos that The Iron Bank will have its due. If you failed to repay, they’d fund your enemies. So today’s Iron Bankers are the venture capitalists funding (any) incumbents’ enemies. If this makes VCs sound interesting/cool, don’t trust your instincts.
Lately, I’ve spent a decent amount of time on the phone with my bank in an attempt to get a home equity line, as I want to load up on Dogecoin. (Note: kidding.) (Note: mostly.) If Opendoor and Zillow can use algorithms and Google Maps to get an offer on my house in 24 hours, why does it take my bank — which underwrote the original mortgage — so much longer?
How ripe a sector is for disruption is a function of several factors. One (relatively) easy proxy is the delta between price increases and inflation, and if the innovation in the sector justifies the delta. Think of the $200 cable bill, or a $5.6 million 60-second Super Bowl spot, as canaries in the ad-supported media coal mine.
Another, easier (and more fun) indicator of ripeness is the eighties test. Put yourself smack dab in the center of the store/product/service, close your eyes, spin around three times, open your eyes, and ask if you’d know within 5 seconds that you were not in 1985. Theaters, grocery stores, gas stations, dry cleaners, university classes, doctor’s offices, and banks still feel as if you could run into Ally Sheedy or The Bangles.
It’s hard to imagine an industry more ripe for disruption than the business of money.
Let’s start with this: Twenty-five percent of U.S. households are either unbanked or underbanked. Half of the nation’s unbanked households say they don’t have enough money to meet the minimum balance requirements. Thirty-four percent say bank fees are too high. And, if you’re trying to get a mortgage, you’d better hope the house isn’t cheap.
Inequity is a breeding ground for disruption, leaving underserved markets for insurgents to seize and launch an attack on incumbents from below. We have good reason to believe that’s happening in banking.
Insurgents
A herd of unicorns is at the stable door, looking to trample Wells Fargo and Chase. Fintech is responsible for roughly one in five (17%) of the world’s unicorns, more than any other sector. In addition, there are already several megalodons worth more than financial institutions that have spent generations building (mis)trust.
How did this happen? The fintechs are zeroing in on everything big banks aren’t.
Example #1: Innovation. Over the past five years, PayPal has issued 26x more patents than Goldman Sachs.
Example #2: Cost-cutting. “Neobanks” offer the basic services of a bank, with one less expensive and cumbersome feature: the branch. A traditional bank branch needs $50 million in deposits to generate an adequate return. Yet nearly half (48%) of branches in the U.S. are below that threshold. Neobanks don’t have that problem, and there are now at least 177 of them. Founders frame these offerings as more progressive, less corporate. Dave, a new banking app, offers a Founding Story on its website (illustrated with cartoon bears) about three friends “fed up” with their banking experience, often incurring $38 overdraft fees. Fed up no longer: Dave provides free overdraft protection and has 10 million customers.
Example #3: Less inequity. NYU Professor of Finance Sabrina Howell’s research found fintech lenders gave 18% of PPP loans to Black-owned businesses, while small to medium-sized banks provided just 2%. Among all loans to Black-owned firms, Professor Howell found 54% were from fintech startups. Racial discrimination is the most likely explanation, as lenders faced zero credit risk.
Example #4: Serving the underserved. Unequal access to banking is a global botheration. Almost a third of the world’s adults, 1.7 billion, are unbanked. In Argentina, Colombia, Nigeria, and other countries, more than 50% of adults are unbanked.
But innovation is already on the horizon: Take Argentine fintech Ualá, whose CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri I spoke with on the Pod last week. In just 4 years, more than 3 million people have opened an account with his company — about 9% of the country — and over 25% of 18 to 25-year-olds now have a tarjeta Ualá (online wallet). Ualá recently launched in Mexico, where, as of 2017, only 2.6% of the poorest 40% had a credit card. This is more than an economic issue — it’s a societal issue, as financial inclusion bolsters the middle class and forms a solid base for democracy.
Interest(ed)
Chase savings accounts are offering, no joke, 0.01% interest. Wells Fargo? The same, though if you keep your investment portfolio with Wells, they’ll double that rate to 0.02%. Meanwhile, neobanks including Ally and Chime offer 0.5% — 50 times the competition.
There is also blood in the water for fintech unicorns that have created a debit, vs. credit, generation: The buy-now-pay-later fintech Afterpay has more than 5 million U.S. customers — just two years after launching in the country. As of February, its competitor Affirm has 4.5 million customers.
Unicorns are also coming for payments. The megasaurus in this space is PayPal, which has built the first global payments platform outside the credit card model and is second only to Visa in payment volume and revenue. Square’s Cash app is capturing share, and Apple Cash is also a player, as it’s … Apple.
Square, Apple, and a host of other companies are taking the “partnership” approach, bolting new services onto the existing transaction infrastructure. Square’s little white box is a low-upfront-cost way for a small merchant to accept credit cards. It’s particularly interesting that Apple teamed up with Goldman Sachs instead of a traditional bank. Goldman is looking to get into the consumer space (see Marcus), and Apple is looking to get into the payments space — this alliance could be the unsullied fighting with air cover from dragons. It should make Wells and BofA anxious.
The Big Four credit card system operators (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express) are still the dominant payment players, and they have deep moats. Their brands are global, their networks robust. Visa can handle 76,000 transactions per second in 160 currencies, and as of this week it had settled $1 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.
Still, even the king of payments sees dead people. In 2020, Visa tried to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion. Plaid currently helps connect existing payments providers (i.e. banks) to finance software such as Quicken and Mint. But it plans to expand from that beachhead into offering a full-fledged payments system. Visa CEO Al Kelly initially described the deal as an “insurance policy” to neutralize a “threat to our important U.S. debit business.” In an encouraging sign that American antitrust authorities are stirring, the Department of Justice filed suit to block the merger, and Visa walked.
Beyond Banking
Fintech is also coming for investing with online trading apps (Robinhood, Webull, Public, and several of the neobanks) and through the crypto side door (Coinbase, Gemini, Binance). Insurance is under threat from companies like Lemonade (home), Ladder (life), and Root (auto).
In sum, fintech is likely as underhyped as space is overhyped. Why? The ROI on your professional efforts and investing are inversely proportional to how sexy the industry/investment is, and fintech is … boring. Except for the immense opportunity and value creation — for multiple stakeholders. “Half the world is unbanked, but we need to colonize Mars,” said no rational investor ever.
Re investing in fintech: What has, and will always be, a good rap? The guy/gal who owns the bank.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 15:00 - The Millennials Who Swore Off Cars Pre-COVID Are Now Buying Them
The Millennials Who Swore Off Cars Pre-COVID Are Now Buying Them
The auto market is so hot, post-pandemic, that many of those who once wrote off car ownership are coming around to the idea of buying a vehicle.
It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of car ownership disappearing was being discussed: younger generations moving to the cities, combined with ridesharing companies like Uber, were prompting questions of whether or not car ownership would be permanently impaired.
But as the world recovers from Covid, used car prices are skyrocketing (as we have documented), public transit route inquiries have “plunged” and a recent EY survey showed that 32% of non-car owners were intending to get a car in the next six months, Bloomberg reported this week.
Of those who responded to the survey, about half were millennials.
“If it weren’t for the pandemic, I wouldn’t have thought about getting a car. I would have thought it a hassle,” 32 year old Georgios Basdanis told Bloomberg.
Prior to the pandemic Basdanis lived in an apartment complex in London with a no-car policy. With the London Tube the best option to get around town, there was nary a problem for intra-city travel. But after Covid hit, public transit became a faux pas and being able to drive himself “seemed much safer.”
While he is now vaccinated and will likely be back on the Tube more often, he said about his car: “It’s certainly a useful thing to have, for out of hours work or just driving to the gym on a weekend. Also trips. I can just jump in the car and go to the countryside for a day.”
His sentiments are being shared by many other millennials, despite the fact that there was a serious pre-covid push (both for environmental reasons and space issues in major cities) to limit vehicles.
Eric Zayer, a partner in Bain & Co’s automotive and mobility practice in Munich, told Bloomberg: “There will be a strong push of cities trying to limit and reduce the number of cars. They have made huge investments in public transport, and they need to be amortized. They will not give up on their mass transport systems.”
The shift in attitude can also be seen in places like Japan, where 10 million people per day used to cram into Tokyo’s subway lines. Now, the article notes, interest in car ownership in rising. New licenses increased in 2020 for the first time in eight years, with most of the growth coming from people in their 20s and 30s.
Gypsy Byrne, a 19-year-old student in Melbourne, also shifted her views on car ownership: “You can’t trust public transport now. I got my driving instructor to start doing five-hour lessons instead of one because I just need my Ps [provisional license plates] to be able to get out and do things.”
Michael Brisson, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in the U.S. argued that while ownership may be on the rise, total miles driven still hasn’t eclipsed previous highs. He concluded: “A resurgence of car ownership might be more of the story versus a resurgence of car usage. People may want the ability to travel and may be taking more short trips, but I can’t see anywhere that shows they are driving more miles.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 15:00 - Federal Government Paying $6.1 Million To Create Database For Capitol Riot Prosecutions
Federal Government Paying $6.1 Million To Create Database For Capitol Riot Prosecutions
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Department of Justice has committed to paying over $6 million to a multinational firm to create a database to host the reams of data prosecutors are gathering in cases against accused participants of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, LLP was contracted in late May to help develop the database and the government has started transferring a large volume of materials, including tens of thousands of records from the U.S. Capitol Police, prosecutors said in a court filing this week.
“Following the Capitol Breach, the United States recognized that due to the nature and volume of materials being collected, the government would require the use of an outside contractor who could provide litigation technology support services to include highly technical and specialized data and document processing and review capabilities,” prosecutors wrote in the filing, which was submitted in a case against several accused Capitol rioters.
The government will work with Deloitte to process, review, and produce material related to the breach, using various tools to redact certain personal information.
Prosecutors expect the database to be available for use in the near future.
“Once it is, the government will begin systematically reviewing materials for potentially discoverable information, tagging when possible (e.g., video by a location or type of conduct, tips by a type of allegation), and redacting when necessary,” prosecutors wrote.
Deloitte did not return a request for comment.
The firm, which was listed as having a Virginia address, was awarded $6.1 million by the Department of Justice for “automated litigation support services,” according to a database holding government contracts.
That figure could swell to $25.9 million, according to the database listing, which was reviewed by The Epoch Times.
The start date of the contract was June 1. The current end date is May 31, 2022. A potential end date was listed as May 31, 2027.
The existence of the database was first reported by Politico.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) on Friday said the development signaled that U.S. prosecutors are focused only on prosecuting cases related to the breach.
“The DOJ is going to spend $6.1 million on a January 6 database. Where is the ANTIFA database? Where is the BLM database? It’s as if the DOJ has given up on all investigations other than January 6,” she wrote on Twitter.
Antifa is a far-left, anarcho-communist network that has perpetrated violence across the United States, primarily in the Pacific Northwest. BLM refers to Black Lives Matter, a movement that alleges minorities are systematically treated unjustly by law enforcement, among other claims. DOJ stands for the Department of Justice, which did not return a request for comment.
Protesters are seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
More than 535 people have been charged as of July 6 with crimes related to the breach, including 165 for assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, according to the DOJ.
FBI agents are still seeking assistance identifying another 300 or so persons accused of participating in the tumult on Jan. 6.
The Federal Public Defender’s Office (FPD), meanwhile, is also mulling putting in place multiple databases to help with the defense of accused riot participants, prosecutors also said.
“Given the volume of information that may be discoverable, FPD is carefully examining options for accepting materials. We understand that FPD is considering contracting with a vendor to establish databases that can be used to receive and perform technical searches upon discoverable materials. The government’s discovery team is in the process of identifying the scope and size of materials that may be turned over to FPD with as much detail as possible, so that FPD can obtain accurate quotes from potential database vendors,” they wrote in the new filing.
“It is hoped that this database will be used by FPD offices nationwide that are working on Capitol Breach cases and counsel that are appointed under the Criminal Justice Act. We believe that a database will be the most organized and economical way of ensuring that all counsel can obtain access to, and conduct meaningful searches upon, relevant voluminous materials, e.g., thousands of hours of body worn camera and Capitol CCTV footage, and tens of thousands of documents, including the results of thousands of searches of Stored Communications Act accounts and devices,” they added.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/10/2021 – 14:30
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