- FAO Warns Soaring Food Import Costs Could Induce "Potential Crisis" In Emerging Markets
FAO Warns Soaring Food Import Costs Could Induce “Potential Crisis” In Emerging Markets
Food prices are absolutely outrageous now, but they appear only to be moving higher as the year progresses. According to a new Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report, global food import costs are estimated to jump in 2021 to a record due to increasing commodity and shipping costs.
FAO’s “Food Outlook” report, published Thursday, estimates the global food import bill, including shipping-related costs this year, will be around $1.72 trillion, a 12% rise from its previous high of $1.53 trillion in 2020.
For readers who are not familiar with the Food Outlook report, it’s a bi-annual report that offers a detailed assessment of market supply and demand trends for cereals, vegetable oils, sugar, meat, dairy, and fish. It also dives into the futures markets and logical costs of transporting food.
Last week, the FAO released its monthly food price index, hitting a 10-year high in May, reflecting sharp gains for cereals, vegetable oils, and sugar.
“The FAO said a separate index of food import values, including freight costs that have also soared, reached a record in March this year, surpassing levels seen during previous food price spikes in 2006-2008 and 2010-2012,” Reuters said.
China’s imports of agricultural demand have surged since the virus pandemic as Beijing’s attempts to rebuild its pig industry decimated from disease a few years back.
FAO concludes: “Rising food imports as a share of all imports can be an early warning indicator for potential crises in some areas.”
Back in December, SocGen’s market skeptic Albert Edwards shared his thoughts about why he started to panic about soaring food prices. And since that was before food prices began to rocket amid broken supply chains, trillions in fiscal stimulus, and exploding commodity costs, we can only imagine the situation is much worse today for emerging market economies.
DB’s Jim Reid reminds us that emerging markets are more vulnerable to this trend since their consumers spend a far greater share of their income on food than those in the developed world.
FAO’s Food Outlook report is more evidence that Fed officials’ “transitory” narrative is just malarkey.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 02:45 - G7: Desperately Seeking Relevancy
G7: Desperately Seeking Relevancy
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
A G7 rebooted as a Sinophobic crusade will have few if any takers due to members’ rising dependence on Chinese goods and markets…
The upcoming G7 in Cornwall at first might be seen as the quirky encounter of “America is Back” with “Global Britain”.
The Big Picture though is way more sensitive.
Three Summits in a Row – G7, NATO and US-EU – will be paving the way for a much expected cliffhanger: the Putin-Biden summit in Geneva – which certainly won’t be a reset.
The controlling interests behind the hologram that goes by the name of “Joe Biden” have a clear overarching agenda: to regiment industrialized democracies – especially those in Europe – and keep them in lockstep to combat those “authoritarian” threats to US national security, “malignant” Russia and China.
It’s like a throwback to those oh so stable 1970s Cold War days, complete with James Bond fighting foreign devils and Deep Purple subverting communism. Well, the times they are-a-changin’. China is very much aware that now the Global South “accounts for almost two-thirds of the global economy compared to one-third by the West: in the 1970s, it was exactly the opposite.”
For the Global South – that is, the overwhelming majority of the planet – the G7 is largely irrelevant. What matters is the G20.
China, the rising economic superpower, hails from the Global South, and is a leader in the G20. For all their internal troubles, EU players in the G7 – Germany, France and Italy – cannot afford to antagonize Beijing in economic, trade and investment terms.
A G7 rebooted as a Sinophobic crusade will have no takers. Including Japan and special guests at Cornwall: tech powerhouse South Korea, and India and South Africa (both BRICS members), offered the dangling carrot of a possible extended membership.
Washington’s wishful thinking cum P.R. offensive boils down to selling itself as the primus inter pares of the West as a revitalized global leader. Why the Global South is not buying it can be observed, graphically, by what happened for the past eight years. The G7 – and especially the Americans – simply could not respond to China’s wide-ranging, pan-Eurasian trade/development strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The American “strategy” so far – 24/7 demonization of BRI as a “debt trap” and “forced labor” machine – did not cut it. Now, too little too late, comes a G7 scheme, involving “partners” such as India, to “support”, at least in theory, vague “high-quality projects” across the Global South: that’s the Clean Green Initiative , focused on sustainable development and green transition, to be discussed both at the G7 and the US-EU summits.
Compared to BRI, Clean Green Initiative hardly qualifies as a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy. BRI has been endorsed and partnered by over 150 nation-states and international bodies – and that includes more than half of the EU’s 27 members.
Facts on the ground tell the story. China and ASEAN are about to strike a “comprehensive strategic partnership” deal. Trade between China and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CCEC), also known as the 17+1 group, including 12 EU nations, continues to increase. The Digital Silk Road, the Health Silk Road and the Polar Silk Road keep advancing.
So what’s left is loud Western rumbling about vague investments in digital technology – perhaps financed by the European Investment Bank, based in Luxembourg – to cut off China’s “authoritarian reach” across the Global South.
The EU-US summit may be launching a “Trade and Technology Council” to coordinate policies on 5G, semiconductors, supply chains, export controls and technology rules and standards. A gentle reminder: the EU-US simply do not control this complex environment. They badly need South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
Wait a minute, Mr. Taxman
To be fair, the G7 may have rendered a public service to the whole world when their Finance Ministers struck an alleged “historic” deal last Saturday in London on a global, minimal 15% tax on multinational companies (MNCs).
Triumphalism was in order – with endless praise lavished on “justice” and “fiscal solidarity” coupled with really bad news for assorted fiscal paradises.
Well, that’s slightly more complicated.
This tax has been discussed at the highest levels of the OECD in Paris for over a decade now – especially because nation-states are losing at least $427 billion a year in tax-dodging by MNCs and assorted multi-billionaires. In terms of the European scenario that does not even account for the loss of V.A.T. by fraud – something gleefully practiced by Amazon, among others.
So it’s no wonder G7 Finance Ministers had $1.6 trillion-worth Amazon pretty much on their sights. Amazon’s cloud computing division should be treated as a separate entity. In this case the mega-tech group will have to pay more corporate tax in some of its largest European markets – Germany, France, Italy, UK – if the global 15% tax is ratified.
So yes, this is mostly about Big Tech – master experts on fiscal fraud and profiting from tax paradises located even inside Europe, such as Ireland and Luxembourg. The way the EU was built, it allowed fiscal competition between nation-states to fester. To discuss this openly in Brussels remains a virtual taboo. In the official EU list of fiscal paradises, one won’t find Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Malta.
So could this all be just a P.R. coup? It’s possible. The major problem is that at the European Council – where governments of EU member-states discuss their issues – they have been dragging their feet for a long time, and sort of delegated the whole thing to the OECD.
As it stands, details on the 15% tax are still vague – even as the US government stands to become the largest winner, because its MNCs have shifted massive profits all across the planet to avoid US corporate taxes.
Not to mention that nobody knows if, when and how the deal will be globally accepted and implemented: that will be a Sisyphean task. At least it will be discussed, again, at the G20 in Venice in July.
What Germany wants
Without Germany there would not have been real advance on the EU-China Investment Agreement late last year. With a new US administration, the deal is stalled again. Outgoing chancellor Merkel is against China-EU economic decoupling – and so are German industrialists. It will be quite a treat to watch this subplot at the G7.
In a nutshell: Germany wants to keep expanding as a global trading power by using its large industrial base, while the Anglo-Saxons have completely ditched their industrial base to embrace non-productive financialization. And China for its part wants to trade with the whole planet. Guess who’s the odd player out.
Considering the G7 as a de facto gathering of the Hegemon with its hyenas, jackals and chihuahuas, it will also be quite a treat to watch the semantics. What degree of “existential threat” will be ascribed to Beijing – especially because for the interests behind the hologram “Biden” the real priority is the Indo-Pacific?
These interests could not give a damn about a EU yearning for more strategic autonomy. Washington always announces its diktats without even bothering to previously consult Brussels.
So this is what this Triple X of summits – G7, NATO and EU-US – will be all about: the Hegemon pulling all stops to contain/harass the emergence of a rising power by enlisting its satrapies to “fight” and thus preserve the “rules-based international order” it designed over seven decades ago.
History tells is it won’t work. Just two examples: the British and French empires could not stop the rise of the US in the 19th century; and even better, the Anglo-American axis only stopped the simultaneous rise of Germany and Japan by paying the price of two world wars, with the British empire destroyed and Germany back again as the leading power in Europe.
That should give the meeting of “America is Back” and “Global Britain” in Cornwall the status of a mere, quirky historical footnote.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 02:00 - D'Souza: An Orchestrated Hoax
D’Souza: An Orchestrated Hoax
Authored by Dinesh D’Souza, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
It can now be said publicly: The massive public campaign to convince and even compel the world to accept the idea that SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, arose naturally from a meat market in Wuhan was a hoax.
The gory details are contained in a bombshell investigative report in the magazine Vanity Fair. This alone is surprising. Vanity Fair is a culture and trends magazine, not noted for this type of serious inquiry. Yet Katherine Eban’s in-depth article is thoroughly researched, with multiple named sources, and written in the style of a detective story.
The first question to ask is: How did we get a scientific and media consensus that SARS-CoV2 originally came from the Wuhan meat market? The answer is a group letter signed by leading virologists that appeared in the reputable science publication The Lancet. This article dismissed theories that suggested SARS-CoV2 might have come from the Wuhan lab as “conspiracy theories” that had were flatly rejected by the scientific community.
Apparently convinced they had to “listen to the science,” the Lancet statement convinced media around the world to revile public figures, especially politicians such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), for even asking for an investigation into where COVID-19 came from. Cotton was almost universally dubbed a kook for even raising the possibility of “debunked” and “discredited” theories.
Digital media promptly imposed its strict regime of restriction, banning, shadowbanning, and deplatforming of users who were deemed to share such “misinformation.”
Acting on the recommendation of its so-called fact checkers, Facebook took down millions, perhaps tens of millions, of posts supposedly conveying the false notion that SARS-CoV2 might have leaked out from a lab.
But what Vanity Fair exposes is the behind-the-scenes mechanism for how that Lancet statement was produced.
According to the article, it was organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, himself involved in U.S. government-funded research aimed at the making of deadly viruses in labs. Daszak has worked in close collaboration with Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Daszak’s group, EcoHealth Alliance, has worked directly with China’s Wuhan laboratories to research coronaviruses, and potentially make them more contagious and more lethal.
Peter Daszak, a member of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19, speaks to media upon arriving at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
The ostensible purpose of such “gain-of-function” research is to study viruses, to understand them better, and to develop better cures for pandemics that might arise naturally. But of course, such research is very dangerous, because viruses could through accident or negligence be released and cause the very pandemics they are designed to prevent. Alternatively, such research can be exploited for military purposes, because lethal viruses also make for a powerful weapon of biological warfare.
When Daszak learned that a virus was causing global havoc, he moved quickly to line up a group of virologists to declare, without any persuasive evidence whatever, that COVID-19 had a natural origin.
It might seem puzzling why prominent scientists would agree to sign a letter taking a position on something for which there is no valid scientific evidence.
Why would they do this?
The one-word answer is: money.
Figures like Daszak and institutions like EcoHealth Alliance that receive large amounts of government money typically package those funds into sub-grants that are dispersed among researchers and research institutions around the country. Consequently, there’s a large group of virologists who are, in a sense, in Daszak’s back pocket. They have a financial vested interest in doing what he wants, and moreover, they, like Daszak, have a stake in camouflaging the possibility that their type of work caused a global pandemic with millions of deaths and untold ruin in its wake.
Not only did Daszak organize the Lancet statement, but he did so, according to Vanity Fair, “with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific immunity.” In an email addressed to Baric, Daszak said, “No need for you to sign the ‘Statement’ Ralph.”
Daszak explained that neither he nor Baric should sign the declaration “so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.”
Daszak added,
“We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.”
Baric agreed, responding,
“Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact.”
In the end, Baric didn’t sign. Daszak did. And at least six of the others who signed the statement either worked at, or had received funding from, EcoHealth Alliance, according to Vanity Fair.
What we have here is a group of scientists actively involved in cooking up potentially deadly viruses, and possibly involved in a dangerous collaboration with the Wuhan lab that may have helped cause the death of millions, working in concert to create a false public impression of scientific consensus, when they knew perfectly well that there was no such consensus.
Not only did the media and digital media run with it, but, in addition, the Biden administration used the pretext of scientific consensus—the bogus consensus the Lancet helped create—to shut down an ongoing State Department investigation, begun late in the Trump era and spearheaded by Mike Pompeo, into the true origins of COVID-19.
This shutdown was actively promoted by U.S. government agencies and bureaucrats who had no intention of revealing their own role in sponsoring and subsidizing highly dangerous “gain-of-function” research.
The consequences of the COVID-19 deception, jointly promoted by scientists, journalists, digital moguls, and bureaucrats in the U.S. government, all eager to hide their possible role in a 21st century pandemic, are far-reaching. The big lie that COVID-19 arose naturally from a meat-market has stymied a true inquiry into what happened. Now we might never know. Not knowing means that preventing a future epidemic becomes that much more difficult.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 23:50 - Washington Moves To Make Sensitive Private Data Available For "Minority Report"-Style AI Research
Washington Moves To Make Sensitive Private Data Available For “Minority Report”-Style AI Research
Earlier this week, the investigative journalism outfit ProPublica published a story using data gleaned from the tax returns of America’s richest individuals to determine exactly how much each of them paid in tax vs. the amount by which their wealth increased in a given year, a number the reporters described as their “true tax” rate.
Needless to say, the story inspired intense conversation online, where rival media organizations were quick to assume that the data was somehow “leaked” to PP. ProPublica was vague in its report, refusing to say or even hint at how it obtained the data, which led one reporter to wonder whether it might have been handed off to PP by academic researchers. It’s also worth mentioning that leaking the tax data from inside the IRS would constitute a major federal crime (obtaining it via a third party who had been given the data for some legitimate purpose).
But one thread from Breitbart’s John Carney caught our attention due to his observation that the media might be jumping to conclusions. In his estimation, Carney said, it’s possible that the data could have been released to academics as part of an officially sanctioned research project gone awry.
How anonymized can a billionaire’s tax data be? It seems like it would be pretty easy to figure out from scrubbed data which one was Bill Gates, which was Icahn, which was Bezos. Zipcodes alone would be enough for some of these people.
— John Carney (@carney) June 9, 2021
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People are assuming that the ProPublica data was leaked or hacked from the IRS. But I’m not so sure.
They claim they have “data on the tax returns” which is not the same as having the returns. Could these be data released to social scientists that were badly anonymized?
— John Carney (@carney) June 9, 2021
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How anonymized can a billionaire’s tax data be? It seems like it would be pretty easy to figure out from scrubbed data which one was Bill Gates, which was Icahn, which was Bezos. Zipcodes alone would be enough for some of these people.
— John Carney (@carney) June 9, 2021
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Carney wonders: how anonymized can personal data be for certain high-profile individuals like billionaires?
Well, while America ponders the answer to that, WSJ reports that the Biden Administration is launching an initiative Thursday aiming at making sensitive data like this much more easily accessible to researchers. In fact, the new portal envisioned by the administration would also research create an opportunity to improve the ability of US scientists to review the data.
“This is a moment that is calling us to be strengthening our speed and scale” when it comes to advances in AI technology, said National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan: “It is also calling us to make sure that innovation is everywhere,” they told WSJ.
America is racing against China to dominate the race for AI, and the government is desperately searching for anything that might give the US an edge. Now, the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, a group of 12 members from academia, government, and industry, is reportedly drafting a strategy for potentially giving researchers access to stores of data about Americans, from demographics to health and driving habits.
The task force was first authorized by Congress last year as part of a sweeping law designed to revamp the governments
One member of the task force told WSJ that researchers need access to this data in order to “investigate a lot of their really great ideas in AI.”
Lynne Parker, assistant director of artificial intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the task force announced Thursday would aim to give Congress a road map for creating a common research infrastructure the government could offer to outsiders.
“In order to investigate a lot of their really great ideas in AI, they need access to powerful computing infrastructure and they need access to data,” she said. Many researchers, particularly in academia, “simply don’t have access to these computational resources and data, and this is hampering innovation.”
One example: The Transportation Department has access to a set of data gathered from vehicle sensors about how people drive, said Erwin Gianchandani, senior adviser at the National Science Foundation and co-chair of the new AI task force.
“Because you have very sensitive data about individuals, there are challenges in being able to make that data available to the broader research community,” he said. On the other hand, if researchers could get access, they could develop innovations designed to make driving safer.
WSJ mentioned that data gathered from police vehicle sensors could be among the data shared, along with “sensitive data” gleaned from medical records and other data sets. The task force is due to issue reports on its research in May and November of next year.
We can’t help but wonder what this type of “AI” research will help researchers figure out: will they use it to try and determine individuals who are likely (or even virtually guaranteed) to commit crimes like in “Minority Report.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 23:30 - This Close US Ally Is Selling China Billions In Military-Related Equipment
This Close US Ally Is Selling China Billions In Military-Related Equipment
Authored by Mark Curtis via Consortium News,
The UK government has authorized the sale of £2.6-billion worth of military and civilian equipment with potential military use to China in the past three years, government figures show. Last year saw a tripling in exports to China of “dual use” items defined as “civilian goods with a military purpose.”” Some £1.6-billion worth were authorized in 2020, compared to £526-million in 2019.
The increase coincided with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The exports have been approved while China is identified by the British government as “an increasing risk to U.K. interests” and “the biggest state-based threat to the U.K.’s economic security.”
PM Boris Johnson attending Sun Military Awards in Central London, Feb. 6, 2020, via Flickr Most British exports were for “dual use” equipment but £53-million worth classified purely as “military” went to China over the three years 2018-20, including components for combat aircraft and military support aircraft. Other items licensed for use by China included military communications equipment and technology for air defense systems.
The U.K. has banned the sale of “lethal” military equipment to China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. However, the British exports are likely to benefit China’s air force, which British ministers claim is a growing military threat. Defence Minister Jeremy Quin said in March that “the likes of Russia and China have studied our strengths in the air and begun developing the capabilities to not only counter but surpass us.”
Britain is also aiding China’s naval capacity. Ministers approved two export licences in 2019 for components for combat naval vessels that were identified as being for “end use by the [military] Navy.” The previous year, approvals were given to sell components for combat naval vessels and for military radars where China’s navy was also stated to be the end user. Other British exports likely to benefit the Chinese navy have included technology for combat naval vessels and for “military patrol/assault craft.”
General Nick Carter, the head of the U.K. armed forces, now laments that Beijing commands “the largest maritime surface and sub-surface battle force in the world.” The UK military identifies China as posing a particular challenge in the South China Sea, where Beijing is building bases on disputed atolls in the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which are also claimed by other states in the region. In March, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said China was a “threat” in the contested sea.
Watch out world.https://t.co/JN73HUa4rR
— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) June 10, 2021
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UK support for the Chinese navy has come not only in the form of military exports. Declassified previously revealed that in 2015, the Royal Navy gave training to a Chinese maritime agency that was closely involved with occupying the disputed islands in the South China Sea.
However, that support to Beijing took place when cooperation between the countries was increasing. At the time, the UK’s then chancellor, George Osborne, spoke of “a golden decade for both of our countries” and of making Britain “China’s best partner in the West.”
Six years on, the UK has radically altered its stance towards Beijing as British military planners seek to play a greater military role in Asia. The Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier is due to test China by sailing through the South China Sea later this year.
‘Information Security Equipment’
In addition to supporting the navy and air force, hundreds of licences have been approved by UK ministers for the sale of “information security equipment” and “imaging cameras” to China.
It is not clear if such exports could aid the Chinese state’s domestic surveillance capabilities since the items are not specified in government documents. The UK’s partial arms embargo on China forbids the export of equipment “which might be used for internal repression”.
The exports also raise concerns about China’s policy towards Tibet. Beijing considers Tibet to be an “autonomous region” of the country but many Tibetans have demanded an independent state since China invaded the territory in 1950.
December 2013: then UK Prime Minister David Cameron speaking at the Shanghai trade exhibition, via Flickr Sam Walton, the chief executive of the Free Tibet campaign, said: “The Chinese government will use this military equipment to continue its repression in Tibet, to steal Tibetan homes and erase Tibetan culture. Selling such equipment is not how to stand up for human rights.”
He added: “We have seen fine words from this government condemning the repression in Tibet, the Uyghur genocide and the destruction on democracy in Hong Kong. But their actions once again show their words to be worthless. Britain cannot condemn China’s jackboot whilst heeling that same boot.”
The UK government’s new military strategy says that China is “a systemic competitor” and that “the significant impact of China’s military modernization and growing international assertiveness within the Indo-Pacific region and beyond will pose an increasing risk to UK interests”.
“The fact that China is an authoritarian state, with different values to ours, presents challenges for the UK and our allies,” it adds.
Mark Curtis is an author and editor of Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organization that covers Britain’s foreign, military and intelligence policies. He tweets at @markcurtis30. Follow Declassified on twitter at @declassifiedUK.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 23:10 - Watch "History-Making Event" As Boeing's Drone Refuels Fighter Jet
Watch “History-Making Event” As Boeing’s Drone Refuels Fighter Jet
The US Navy and The Boeing Company made aviation history last week after demonstrating air-to-air refueling using an unmanned aircraft.
Boeing released a press release Monday detailing how its MQ-25 Stingray test drone refueled a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet on June 4 near MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, demonstrating the refueling capability of the new drone.
The F/A-18 test pilot flew about 20 feet separation from the MQ-25 as a hose and drogue were extended and locked into the fighter jet. Once plugged in, the drone successfully transferred fuel to the F/A-18. Boeing said both aircraft flew “at operationally relevant speeds and altitudes.”
Fueling the future: The #Navy made history June 4 conducting the first ever refueling operation between the MQ-25 T1 unmanned tanker and the F/A-18 Super Hornet.
📰: https://t.co/Nk2N3H1W0T pic.twitter.com/lleKEaTjgD
— NAVAIR (@NAVAIRNews) June 7, 2021
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Rear Adm. Brian Corey, who oversees the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, said in a statement that “over the next few years, we will work side-by-side with Boeing to deliver this capability that will greatly enhance the future carrier air wing.”
“This history-making event is a credit to our joint Boeing and Navy team that is all-in on delivering MQ-25’s critical aerial refueling capability to the fleet as soon as possible,” said Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “Their work is the driving force behind the safe and secure integration of unmanned systems in the immediate future of defense operations.”
The MQ-25 is the world’s first carrier-based drone to conduct in-flight refueling for aircraft that extends operational ranges of fighters, bombers, and patrol aircraft.
This refueling drone will eventually be launched from aircraft carriers to conduct refueling missions in the Indo-Pacific region as tensions between the US and China heat up.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 22:50 - New Leak Of Taxpayer Info Is (More) Evidence Of IRS Corruption
New Leak Of Taxpayer Info Is (More) Evidence Of IRS Corruption
Authored by Daniel Mitchell via The American Institute for Economic Research,
I sometimes try to go easy on the IRS. After all, our wretched tax system is largely the fault of politicians, who have spent the past 108 years creating a punitive and corrupt set of tax laws.
But there is still plenty of IRS behavior to criticize. Most notably, the tax agency allowed itself to be weaponized by the Obama White House, using its power to persecute and harass organizations associated with the “Tea Party.”
That grotesque abuse of power largely was designed to weaken opposition to Obama’s statist agenda and make it easier for him to win re-election.
Now there’s a new IRS scandal. In hopes of advancing President Biden’s class-warfare agenda, the bureaucrats have leaked confidential taxpayer information to ProPublica, a left-wing website.
Here’s some of what that group posted.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. …ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period. We’re going to call this their true tax rate. …those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.
Since I’m a policy wonk, I’ll first point out that ProPublica created a make-believe number. We (thankfully) don’t tax wealth in the United States.
So Elon Musk’s income is completely unrelated to what happened to the value of his Tesla shares. The same is true for Jeff Bezos’ income and the value of his Amazon stock.
And the same thing is true for the rest of us. If our IRA or 401(k) rises in value, that doesn’t mean our taxable income has increased. If our home becomes more valuable, that also doesn’t count as taxable income.
The Wall Street Journal opined on this topic today and made a similar point.
There is no evidence of illegality in the ProPublica story. …ProPublica knows this, so its story tries to invent a scandal by calculating what it calls the “true tax rate” these fellows are paying. This is a phony construct that exists nowhere in the law and compares how much the “wealth” of these individuals increased from 2014 to 2018 compared to how much income tax they paid. …what Americans pay is a tax on income, not wealth.
Some journalists don’t understand this distinction between income and wealth.
Or perhaps they do understand, but pretend otherwise because they see their role as being handmaidens of the Biden Administration.
Consider these excerpts from a column by Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times.
Jeff Bezos…added an estimated $99 billion in wealth between 2014 and 2018 but reported only $4.22 billion in taxable income during that period. Warren Buffett, who amassed $24.3 billion in new wealth over those years, reported $125 million in taxable income. …some of the wealthiest people in the United States essentially live under a different system of income taxation from the rest of us.
Mr. Appelbaum is wrong. The rich have a lot more assets than the rest of us, but they operate under the same rules.
If I have an asset that increases in value, that doesn’t count as taxable income. And it isn’t income. It’s merely a change in net wealth.
And the same is true if Bill Gates has an asset that increases in value.
Now that we’ve addressed the policy mistakes, let’s turn our attention to the scandal of IRS misbehavior.
The WSJ‘s editorial addresses the agency’s grotesque actions.
Less than half a year into the Biden Presidency, the Internal Revenue Service is already at the center of an abuse-of-power scandal.
…ProPublica, a website whose journalism promotes progressive causes, published information from what it said are 15 years of the tax returns of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and other rich Americans. …The story arrives amid the Biden Administration’s effort to pass the largest tax increase as a share of the economy since 1968.
…The timing here is no coincidence, comrade. …someone leaked confidential IRS information about individuals to serve a political agenda. This is the same tax agency that pursued a vendetta against conservative nonprofit groups during the Obama Administration. Remember Lois Lerner? This is also the same IRS that Democrats now want to infuse with $80 billion more… As part of this effort, Mr. Biden wants the IRS to collect “gross inflows and outflows on all business and personal accounts from financial institutions.” Why? So the information can be leaked to ProPublica?
…Congress should also not trust the IRS with any more power and money than it already has.
And Charles Cooke of National Review also weighs in on the implications of a weaponized and partisan IRS.
We cannot trust the IRS. “Oh, who cares?” you might ask. “The victims are billionaires!” And indeed, they are. But I care. For a start, they’re American citizens, and they’re entitled to the same rights — and protected by the same laws — as everyone else. …Besides, even if one wants to be entirely amoral about it, one should consider that if their information can be spilled onto the Internet, anyone’s can. …A government that is this reckless or sinister with the information of men who are lawyered to the eyeballs is unlikely to worry too much about being reckless or sinister with your information. …The IRS wields an extraordinary amount of power, and there will always be somebody somewhere who thinks that it should be used to advance their favorite political cause. Our refusal to indulge their calls is one of the many things that prevents us from descending into the caprice and chaos of your average banana republic. …Does that bother you? It should.
What’s especially disgusting is that the Biden Administration wants to reward IRS corruption with giant budget increases, bolstered by utterly fraudulent numbers.
Needless to say, that would be a terrible idea (sadly, Republicans in the past have been sympathetic to expanding the size of the tax bureaucracy).
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 22:30 - Which Countries Have The World's Largest Proven Oil Reserves?
Which Countries Have The World’s Largest Proven Oil Reserves?
Oil is a natural resource formed by the decay of organic matter over millions of years, and like many other natural resources, it can only be extracted from reserves where it already exists. The only difference between oil and every other natural resource is that oil is well and truly the lifeblood of the global economy.
The world derives over a third of its total energy production from oil, more than any other source by far; and, as Visual Capitalist’s Anshool Deshmukh details below, as a result, the countries that control the world’s oil reserves often have disproportionate geopolitical and economic power.
According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, 14 countries make up 93.5% of the proven oil reserves globally. The countries on this list span five continents and control anywhere from 25.2 billion barrels of oil to 304 billion barrels of oil.
Proven Oil Reserves, by Country
At the end of 2019, the world had 1.73 trillion barrels of oil reserves. Here are the 14 countries with at least a 1% share of global proven oil reserves:
While these countries are found all over the globe, a few countries have much larger amounts than others. Venezuela is the leading country in terms of oil reserves, with over 304 billion barrels of oil beneath its surface. Saudi Arabia is a close second with 298 billion, and Canada is third with 170 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Oil Reserves vs. Oil Production
A country with large amounts of reserves does not always translate to strong production numbers for petroleum, oil, and by-products. Oil reserves simply serve as an estimate of the amount of economically recoverable crude oil in a particular region. To qualify, these reserves must have the potential of being extracted under current technological constraints.
While countries like the U.S. and Russia are low on the list of oil reserves, they rank highly in terms of oil production. More than 95 million barrels of oil were produced globally every day in 2019, and the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Russia are among the world’s top oil-producing countries, respectively.
Oil Sands Contributing to Growing Reserves
Venezuela has long been an oil-producing country with heavy economic reliance on oil exports. However, in 2011, Venezuela’s energy and oil ministry announced an unprecedented increase in proven oil reserves as oil sands in the Orinoco Belt territory were certified.
Between 2005 and 2015, Venezuela jumped from fifth in the world to number one as nearly 200 billion barrels of proven oil reserves were identified. As a result, South and Central America’s proven oil reserves more than doubled between 2008 and 2011.
In 2002, Canada’s proven oil reserves jumped from 5 billion to 180 billion barrels based on new oil sands estimates.
Canada accounts for almost 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves at 170 billion barrels, with an estimated 166.3 billion located in Alberta’s oil sands, and the rest found in conventional, offshore, and tight oil formations.
Large Reserves in OPEC Nations
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an intergovernmental global petroleum and oil distribution agency headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
The majority of countries with the largest oil reserves in the world are members of OPEC. Now composed of 14 member states, OPEC holds nearly 70% of crude oil reserves worldwide.
Most OPEC countries are in the Middle East, the region with the largest oil reserves, holding nearly half of the global share.
Regional Shifts
Though most of the proven oil reserves in the world were historically considered to be centered in the Middle East, in the past three decades their share of global oil reserves has dropped, from over 60% in 1992 to about 48% in 2019.
One of the main reasons for this drop was constant oil production and greater reserves discovered in the Americas. By 2012, Central and South America’s share had more than doubled and has remained just under 20% in the years since.
While oil sands ushered in a new era of global oil reserve domination, as the world shifts away from oil consumption and towards green energy and electrification, these reserves might not matter as much in the future as they once did.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 22:10 - How Washington Is Positioning Al-Qaeda's Founder As Its Rebranded 'Asset'
How Washington Is Positioning Al-Qaeda’s Founder As Its Rebranded ‘Asset’
Authored by Ben Norton & Max Blumenthal via TheGrayZone.com,
March 2021 marked the 10th anniversary of the Western regime-change war on Syria. And after a decade of grueling conflict, Washington is still maneuvering to extend its longstanding relationship with the Salafi-jihadist militants fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
With the northeastern province of Idlib under the control of a self-proclaimed “Syrian Salvation Government” led by the rebranded version of Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise, and protected under the military aegis of NATO member state Turkey, powerful elements from Brussels to Washington have been working to legitimize its leader.
Jabhat al-Nusra founder Mohammad al-Jolani before and after his image makeover This June, PBS Frontline aired a special, “The Jihadist,” featuring a sit-down interview with Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, de facto president of the “Syrian Salvation Government” and founder of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda originally called Jabhat al-Nusra, today re-branded as Hay-at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.
Having traded in his battlefield garb for a freshly pressed suit, Jolani was presented with the once unthinkable opportunity to market himself to a Western audience and pledge that his forces pose no threat to the US homeland because they were merely focused on waging war against Syria’s “loyalist” population.
The PBS correspondent who conducted the interview, Martin Smith, previously starred in a 2015 PBS special, “Inside Assad’s Syria,” which presented a US audience with a rare and relatively objective look at life inside Syrian government-controlled territory, as insurgents backed by NATO and Gulf monarchies encircled and terrorized its population.
Whether or not he realized it, when Smith returned to Syria this March to meet Jolani, he was on more than a journalistic field expedition. A network of think tanks and Beltway foreign policy veterans were engaged in a simultaneous push to remove Jolani and his militant faction HTS from the State Department’s list of designated terrorist groups.
Syrian Al Qaeda leader Mohammad al-Jolani (L) with PBS Frontline’s Martin Smith This would open the door for international acceptance of his de facto government in Idlib, which regime-change advocates view as an important piece of leverage against Damascus, and as a human warehouse for the millions of refugees languishing there. In turn, the audacious PR campaign would consolidate a branch of the organization responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States into a de facto US asset.
The campaign to normalize Jolani was publicly initiated by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank with close ties to the Biden administration and NATO. By the time of Smith’s interview, operatives from a network of Gulf-funded, pro-Israel think tanks had spent years quietly lobbying for Washington to support al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, and succeeded in securing shipments of weapons from the CIA to some of its battlefield allies.
Though figures involved in this coordinated lobbying push were featured in Smith’s PBS Frontline report, they were presented to viewers as dispassionate analysts or former officials with no ulterior interests. Framed as hard news yet shaped by one of the most insidious public relations campaigns in recent history, the nationally broadcast PBS special provided an effective vehicle for rehabilitating a jihadist leader and perpetuating the decades-long dirty war against Syria.
Whitewashing US and foreign support for Syria’s extremist insurgency
When Muhammad Jolani first crossed the Syrian-Iraqi border in 2012 with a small detachment of fighters, he belonged officially to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist group responsible for countless attacks on US military occupiers and Shia civilians across Iraq.
Upon their thrust into Syria, Jolani’s forces enabled the late self-proclaimed leader of the caliphate, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to establish his Islamic State, or ISIS, in the northeastern city of Raqqa. A feud over strategy and finances soon prompted Jolani to split from the Islamic State and establish Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, with the explicit blessing of the jihadist group’s global leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Martin Smith recounted this history in his PBS Frontline report, albeit briefly, while neglecting any mention of the scandalous covert US operation that made Nusra’s rise possible.
Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra about to execute a woman in public in Idlib in 2015 after she was accused of adultery. Smith, for instance, neglected mention of the prescient August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment which stated clearly that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,: and that the Western-backed opposition would likely create a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” if weapons were placed in the hands of anti-Assad Islamist militants.
Despite the warning, in 2013, the CIA launched Operation Timber Sycamore, an arm-and-equip program that funneled up to $1 billion per year (one out of every $15 in the CIA’s budget) into material support for an armed opposition thoroughly dominated by Islamist extremists. It was the agency’s largest covert operation since a similar initiative in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which gave birth to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Just as the DIA predicted, an extremist “Salafist principality” took root in northeastern Syria, while Al Qaeda’s local franchise quickly emerged as the dominant force within the armed opposition.
Nusra militants – including a former fighters of the CIA-created “Free Syrian Army” – were filmed cutting open the chests of Syrian soldiers, tearing their hearts out, and eating the organs raw (while receiving sympathetic media coverage from the BBC).
As it seized control of the Idlib province and moved to take Damascus, Nusra earned a reputation for grisly suicide attacks and executions, while instituting a medieval-style theocratic regime in the areas it controlled. An undercover 2017 documentary filmed by local residents, “Undercover Idlib,” exposed the dystopia that unfolded under Nusra control, with all non-religious music and public celebrations banned, the wearing of colorful headscarves outlawed, and Druze and Christian residents killed or forced to convert at gunpoint.
Jolani is the focus of the new PBS/Frontline documentary “The Jihadist” – the chameleon is trying to alter his image yet again. Terrorist, Torturer, Kidnapper, and sponsor of many suicide bombings. https://t.co/s6IEOo9FPZ
(Terror expert @azelin also featured!)— GarWarner (@GarWarner) June 5, 2021
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Rather than being uprooted from its “safe haven,” Nusra was encouraged by its NATO-aligned sponsors to rebrand and superficially distance itself from al-Qaeda so it could survive. First, in 2016, the al-Qaeda franchise changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, then morphed into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) the following year.
Under tutelage from Turkey, which controlled the northern border of Idlib, HTS subsequently formed the “Syrian Salvation Government,” and embarked on a PR campaign for international legitimacy.
Syria’s rebranded Al Qaeda branch courts Western media
In 2020, Idlib’s “Salvation Government” established a media relations office to assist the entry of Western journalists and provide them with fixers to guide them in its territory. While independent reporters (including the co-author of this article) have been subjected to waves of online abuse by mainstream Western correspondents for visiting Damascus, a New York Times tour of Idlib that was openly managed by al-Qeada’s Syrian affiliate took place without a hint of criticism.
Martin Smith’s March 2021 visit to Idlib was a similarly guided venture. His report on Jolani blended interview footage with scenes of the HTS leader pressing the flesh with residents of Idlib City, conveying the image of a popular retail politician stumping for local office.
Idlib “does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America. This region is not a staging ground for executing foreign jihad,” Jolani reassured Smith. Over the past decade, he added, “we haven’t posed any threat to the West.”
“Al-Qaeda has really got it right” – @Charles_Lister.
From my new @GrayzoneProject mini-doc “The Syria Deception – Al-Qaeda Goes to Hollywood”. Watch here: https://t.co/KOxwQx8Xro pic.twitter.com/mXPcLN5q10
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) September 16, 2018
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In the interview, Smith focused entirely on whether Jolani would attack the West or not, demonstrating a near-total lack of interest in the lives of the millions of Syrians trapped under HTS’ neo-feudal rule in Idlib, and the minority groups threatened by its sectarian violence in nearby areas.
Dressed in a pressed shirt and blazer suitable for any job interview, Jolani rattled off rhetoric about the “Syrian revolution,” while stressing that his Salafi-jihadist brethren and Washington shared a common goal: regime change in Damascus.
Continue reading the full report at the The GrayZone
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 21:50 - Scientists Revive 24,000-Year-Old Worm-Like Animal Frozen In Siberia
Scientists Revive 24,000-Year-Old Worm-Like Animal Frozen In Siberia
Russian scientists have published new research this week that shows a tiny animal called a Bdelloid rotifer can be revived after frozen for tens of thousands of years.
On Monday, the paper titled “A living bdelloid rotifer from 24,000-year-old Arctic permafrost” was published in Cell.com’s “Current Biology” section, which stated the Bdelloid rotifer are some of the toughest multicellular animals of their kind, able to be frozen for thousands of years then revived.
“We revived animals that saw woolly mammoths,” Stas Malavin from the Soil Cryology Laboratory in Russia, one of the co-authors of the study, told The New York Times.
These microscopic, multicellular animals can withstand radiation, extreme acidity, low oxygen, dehydration, and starvation for years.
“They’re the world’s most resistant animal to just about any form of torture,” Matthew Meselson, a molecular biologist at Harvard University, told NYT.
Researchers believed the Bdelloid rotifer could only survive deep freezes for up to a decade until Monday’s paper. With radiocarbon dating, researchers were able to date the worm-like animal to 24,000 years old.
Once thawed, the worm was capable of eating. It was also able to reproduce – which researchers explained it could do without a partner.
“We know for sure now it can withstand tens of thousands of years of cryptobiosis,” Malavin said.
Scientists are still baffled how bdelloid rotifers can protect their cells and organs from a deep freeze and self-fix damaged DNA. The discovery could one day help scientists figure out new technologies that would allow people who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for whole body cryopreservation to be revived in the future.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 21:30 - Australia And Japan Join Forces To Hold Beijing Accountable For Its Economic Bullying
Australia And Japan Join Forces To Hold Beijing Accountable For Its Economic Bullying
Authored by Victoria Kelly-Clark via The Epoch Times,
Australia and Japan will join forces to oppose Beijing’s economic bullying as both countries continue to lose patience with China’s aggressive international behaviour.
In a statement following a joint virtual meeting on Wednesday, Australia and Japan’s foreign ministers, Marise Payne and Motegi Toshimitsu, and defence ministers, Kishi Nobuo and Peter Dutton, announced that both countries “would commit to opposing coercion and destabilising behaviour by economic means, which undermines the rules-based international system.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison (L) is greeted by Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (R) prior to an official welcoming ceremony at Suga’s official residence in Tokyo on November 17, 2020. (Eugene Hoshiko / POOL / AFP)
Japan and Australia’s have become increasingly concerned over China’s behaviour as both countries have been on the receiving end of Beijing’s belligerent push to become a global power.
Australia has experienced increasing levels of economic coercion from the Chinese communist regime through its use of trade tariffs on eight major exports, including wine, beef, barley. At the same time, Japan has been forced to increasingly defend its territorial waters from Chinese encroachments using coast guard vessels and what has been dubbed a maritime militia—a point Japan and Australia made in the joint statement noting that they were also strongly opposed to the coercive and destabilising behaviour China was displaying in the East and South China Seas.
“We express our objections to China’s maritime claims and activities that are inconsistent with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the statement said.
“We reinforce our strong opposition to any destabilising or coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.”
The allies also called out Beijing for its human rights abuses against Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Australia Leverages Alliances as Push Back Against Red China Continues
The joint statement comes a week after New Zealand and Australia issued a statement declaring their support for each other and also follows the United States’ declaration that it will continue to have Australia’s back, signalling to the socialists in Beijing that the liberal democratic nations of the Indo-Pacific will stand together in the face of its increasing push for power and dominance.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks as he greets staff members of the U.S. Embassy in the Egyptian capital Cairo on May 26, 2021. (Alex brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
But will this be enough to make Beijing see its recent behaviour has gone overboard in the Pacific?
James Laurenceson, Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology in Sydney, believes that the Chinese Communist Party currently no longer thinks it needs to operate under the rules of the international system.
“China feels as though its power has reached a level where it simply does not have to defer to the wishes of other countries,” Laurenceson said.
But he noted that it will not escalate tensions with any rash acts of aggression because that would “crystallise a hard balancing coalition against China that would make it harder for Beijing to achieve both its domestic and foreign policy objectives.”
Laurenceson believes the best answer to the increasing aggression from Beijing is for countries to continue to prioritise strong ties built on mutual trust.
Mike Green, foreign policy analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told The Australian it was “stunning how aggressive Xi Jinping and the CCP have become.”
“It seems China’s assessment is they (that) have a five-to-10-year window to cement their leadership position in Asia, and that explains why they’ve been pressuring everyone simultaneously: Australia, India, Taiwan, Japan,” Green said.
Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese regime, responded to the statement by telling both countries to stop hyping up the “China Threat” and accused them of “maliciously slandering China.” He urged Australia and Japan to stop meddling and abide by the basic norms of international relations, without explaining his comments.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 21:10 - Goldman Requires Workers To Report If They Are Vaccinated
Goldman Requires Workers To Report If They Are Vaccinated
Goldman Sachs’ bankers dragged themselves back to the office last month, shortly before American workplace safety regulators weighed in on what employers are legally allowed to ask (and not ask) about their vaccination status. As it turns out, vague federal standards will allow Goldman to allow workers to go bare-faced in the office so long as they provided their managers with information confirming they had been vaccinated.
Previously, disclosing vaccination status had been “optional” for employees. That has apparently changed, as Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “DealBook” reported Thursday that the bank had sent a memo this week informing employees in the US that they had until noon on Thursday to report their vaccination status.
Bankers can log their vaccination status with the bank’s internal app for employees. Since employers can’t directly ask for this information, the bank will instead ask workers to fill in the date where they received their shots, along with the maker of their vaccine.
Goldman has also informed employees through the app that their vaccination status may be shared with managers and used for planning purposes.
“Registering your vaccination status allows us to plan for a safer return to the office for all of our people as we continue to abide by local public health measures,” said a section of the memo, which was sent to employees who hadn’t already reported their vaccination status. A copy of the letter was obtained by the YT.
One of the NYT’s “expert” sources explained that Goldman can share vaccination status “with certain individuals if it’s relevant to the individual’s responsibilities, but they can’t share for no reason,,” according to Jessica Kuester, who specializes in benefits at the law firm Ogletree Deakins.
Another source who identified himself as the CEO of the “Society for Human Resource Management” said that “it’s important to have data to make data-informed decisions…” He acknowledged that some may “grimace” at the idea of employers pushing for information like vaccine status.
Goldman has roughly 20K employees based in the US at its New York headquarters and in other cities such as San Francisco and Dallas.
Companies across the US are trying to find out how many workers are vaccinated ahead of full office reopenings. They have conducted surveys and given out cash rewards, mimicking strategies embraced by state governments, as the Biden Administration scrambles to meet its goal of having 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. Though as things stand, it looks like the US is going to miss that target.
No word yet on whether Goldman workers will receive any kind of compensation for getting vaccinated. But seeing as the bank largely skipped bonus compensation offered to junior employees by other banks, we suspect junior bankers who comply will be doing so mostly out of the goodness of their hearts – and their unwillingness to lose their jobs.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 20:50 - CDC To Hold "Emergency Meeting" After 100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines
CDC To Hold “Emergency Meeting” After 100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines
Update (2000ET): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an “emergency meeting” of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.
As CBS reports, the CDC previously disclosed that reports of heart inflammation were detected mostly in younger men and teenage boys following their second dose, and that there was a “higher number of observed than expected” cases in 16- to 24-year-olds. Last month, the CDC urged providers to “ask about prior COVID-19 vaccination” in patients with symptoms of heart inflammation.
We’ll leave the judgment up to someone far more qualified…
YOU STUPID, STUPID STUPIDS.
This was so predictable. pic.twitter.com/oHKFgR9vF4
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 10, 2021
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Congrats you fuckwits you are about to destroy confidence in ALL vaccines and ALL public health measures for a generation.
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 10, 2021
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Does anyone else not find it odd that after discovering 800 cases in the VAERS database the “emergency” meeting is in 7 days? … and in the meantime, every public health authority figure is encouraging parents to get their young children vaccinated?
* * *
As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber detailed earlier, Federal authorities have received over 800 reports of heart inflammation in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine, a health official said Thursday.
The reports of myocarditis or pericarditis were submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a passive reporting system run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, through May 31.
The bulk of the reports described heart inflammation appearing after the second of two doses of either the Pfizer of Moderna vaccines, both of which utilize messenger RNA technology.
Authorities stress that anybody can submit reports through the reporting system but authorities have already verified that 226 of the reports meet the CDC’s working case definition, Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a deputy director at the agency, said during a presentation of the data. Followup and review are in progress for the rest.
Of the 285 case reports for which the disposition was known at the time of the review, 270 patients had been discharged and 15 were still hospitalized, officials said. Myocarditis typically requires hospital care. No deaths were reported.
A slide on myocarditis reports post-COVID-19 vaccination is shown during the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on June 10, 2021. (FDA/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The CDC announced last month that it was investigating reports of heart inflammation in teenagers and young adults who received a COVID-19 vaccine, though it took no definitive action besides saying it would continue reviewing case data.
An advisory committee to the agency, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said in a little-noticed update published dated May 24 and published on June 1 that data from VAERS showed that in the 30 days following the second dose of mRNA vaccinations, “there was a higher number of observed than expected myocarditis/pericarditis cases in 16–24-year-olds.”
Data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, an active reporting system that relies on nine healthcare organizations in seven states, did not show higher than expected cases, it added.
“However, analyses suggest that these data need to be carefully followed as more persons in younger age groups are vaccinated,” the advisory committee’s vaccine safety workgroup said in its report.
Israel’s Health Ministry said that same day that it found 275 cases of heart inflammation among the more than 5 million people in the country who received a vaccine between December 2020 and May. An Israeli study found “a probable link” between receiving the second dose of the Pfizer jab “and the appearance of myocarditis among men aged 16 to 30,” the ministry said.
Shimabukuro said the U.S. passive surveillance data “are consistent with the surveillance data that emerged from Israel.”
The figures are also consistent with other case reports and data from the Department of Defense.
The vast majority of the U.S. reports deal with male patients. Approximately 300 preliminary reports indicated the patients suffered chest pain, with nearly as many having elevated cardiac enzymes.
Family members watch as a 12-year-old is inoculated with Pfizer’s vaccine against COVID-19 at Dekalb Pediatric Center in Decatur, Ga., on May 11, 2021. (Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters)
A case report examining myocarditis in seven adolescents following vaccination with Pfizer’s jab, published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, this month, said all seven developed the inflammation within 4 days of receiving the second dose, did not have evidence of COVID-19 infection, and did not meet the criteria for MIS-C, a rare disease.
The seven males, between the ages of 14 and 19, all required hospital care but each was eventually discharged.
Authors, who did not respond to requests for comment, said no link has been established between the vaccines and myocarditis and that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks. But they also urged healthcare workers “to consider myocarditis in the evaluation of adolescents and young adults who develop chest pain after COVID-19 vaccination.”
A commentary on the study published in the same journal, said “there are some concerns regarding this case series that might suggest a causal relationship and therefore warrant further analysis through established surveillance systems.”
“First, the consistent timing of symptoms in these seven cases after the second vaccination suggests a uniform biological process. Second, the similarities in clinical findings and laboratory characteristics in this series suggest a common etiology. Finally, these cases occurred in the context of a dearth of circulation of common respiratory viruses known to be associated with myocarditis, and thorough diagnostic evaluations did not identify infectious etiologies,” they added.
The expected number of myocarditis/pericarditis cases in those aged 16 or 17, based on background incidence rates and the number of doses administered to that population through May 31, is between two and 19. But based on the VAERS reports, the number is 79.
Likewise, the expected number for cases among young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 is eight to 83. The number based on the reports is 196.
“In the 16- to 17 year-olds and the 18- to 24-year-olds, the observed reports are exceeding the expected based on the known background rates that are published in literature,” Shimabukuro told members of a Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee in the meeting on Thursday, though he cautioned that not all the reports will “turn out to be true myocarditis/pericarditis reports.”
“Of note, of these 528 reports after second dose with symptom onset within 30 days, over half of them were in these younger age groups, 12–24 years old, whereas roughly 9 percent of total doses administered were in those age groups, so we “clearly have an imbalance there,” he added later.
A slide on myocarditis reports post-COVID-19 vaccination is shown during the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on June 10, 2021. (FDA/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which comes from nine healthcare groups that have collectively administered over 8.8 million doses—only some 284,000 of those have been given to 12- to 17-year-olds—did not indicate safety concerns, with just 60 myocarditis or pericarditis events reported through May 29, the doctor continued.
A Food and Drug Administration surveillance system, the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety Initiative, which utilizes claims data from CVS and two other partners, has detected 99 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis in the 42 days following vaccination among some 3.1 million shots given to people between the ages of 12 and 64, the panel was told earlier by an official from the drug regulating agency.
Another 1,260 were reported in people 65 or older through claims data from Medicare claims data.
Neither number raised safety signals, Steve Anderson, director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology said.
Dr. Cody Meissner, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at the Tufts Children’s Hospital, and a member of the panel that heard from Shimabukuro and others, said after the presentations that he was “struck by the fact” that myocarditis “occurs more commonly after the second dose.”
“It’s a pretty specific interval of time, it’s primarily after the mRNA vaccines as far as we know, we know that the consistent age, there’s a lack of alternative explanations even though these patients have been pretty well worked up, and it’s a widespread occurrence because, as you said, Israel has found a pretty similar situation,” he said during the meeting.
He asked Shimabukuro about the rates of blood clots seen in women between the ages of 30 and 49 after vaccination—most of the clots appeared in that population after getting a Johnson & Johnson shot, though officials ultimately lifted a pause, saying the benefits outweighed the risks—and to restate the rate of incidence of myocarditis in adolescents after a jab.
Shimabukuro said that in contrast with the clotting situation, when data showed “strong evidence of a causal relationship fairly early on,” further study is needed on heart inflammation.
“At this point, I think we’re still learning about the rates of myocarditis and pericarditis. We continue to collect more information both in VAERS and continue to get more information in VSD, and I think as gather more information we’ll begin to get a better idea of the post-vaccination rates and hopefully will be able to get more detailed information by age group,” he said.
“It’s still early,” he added, noting that authorization for a vaccine for 12- to -15-year-olds didn’t come until mid-May while immunization of older adolescents largely came later than shots for adults.
“I believe that we will ultimately have sufficient information to answer those questions,” he said.
A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 30, 2014. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)
Another panel member, Dr. Jay Portnoy, director of the Division of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology at Children’s Mercy Hospitals & Clinics, asked for a comparison between the adverse events in vaccinated versus unvaccinated persons, saying if the adverse event rate was lower in those who are vaccinated, then it would still be worth getting a jab.
Shimabukuro said a risk-benefit assessment would be provided by the CDC’s advisory panel, known as ACIP, on vaccines during a meeting next week.
A CDC spokeswoman also referenced the upcoming meeting, which will take place on June 18, after saying reports of myocarditis remain rare, given that over 300 million doses have been administered in the United States.
“Given the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered, these reports are rare. More than 18 million people between ages 12-24 have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine in the United States,” she told The Epoch Times via email.
“CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years and older. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect yourself and your family from COVID-19.”
A Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the company is aware of federal data indicating “rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, predominantly in male adolescents and young adults, after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.” It noted that federal officials have not concluded that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause either condition, before expressing support for an assessment of suspected adverse events.
“With a vast number of people vaccinated to date, the benefit risk profile of our vaccine remains positive,” the spokesperson added.
Moderna did not return an inquiry.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine and associate chief at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Epoch Times in an email that in light of the increased risk of myocarditis above expected rates among young people, especially after the second dose, parents should keep a close eye out for when guidance is issued by federal authorities.
“Possibilities include only vaccinating children without prior infection as there is an association between prior COVID and this adverse effect; giving 1 dose instead of 2 below the age of 20; addressing the dosage of the vaccine (currently at 30 micrograms down to the age of 12, which is the same dose as in adults); and extending the duration between doses 1 and 2 for younger people,” she said.
“I look forward to ACIP guidance on this over the next few weeks.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 20:30 - Ford Secures 100,000 Reservations For Electric F-150 As Pre-Order Count Climbs
Ford Secures 100,000 Reservations For Electric F-150 As Pre-Order Count Climbs
While Tesla’s Cybertruck remains in limbo somewhere and Lordstown Motors is on the brink of failure, Ford Motor Company’s F-150 Lightning pre-order count continues to surge.
Three weeks ago, Ford unveiled the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric truck, delivering 563 horsepower and 775 lb.-ft. of torque. In the first 48 hours of release, the company received 44,500 pre-orders, according to CEO Jim Farley.
Now, the pre-order count has reached 100,000 and continues to climb, according to Engadget. The F-Series line is America’s best-selling truck for more than four decades. Millions of loyal Ford customers would never buy a Chevy, nevertheless, a Tesa or some other startup with a limited track record.
By comparison, since 2019, Tesla’s Cybertruck has accumulated over 1 million Cybertruck reservations. Ford has a much larger following than Tesla and could surpass reservations.
Besides Ford’s loyal customer base, spanning generations, President Sleepy Joe gave the car company free press last month when he was seen driving around in the vehicle on a closed course.
“This sucker is quick,” Biden said at the press conference.
Reservations require a $100 refundable deposit. Ford has said the F-150 Lightning deliveries should begin in the spring of 2022. The Cybertruck is expected to be released in late 2022 but really, who knows.
Those who made reservations for the Ford electric truck will only have to wait about 10-12 months until delivery. Meanwhile, those who made Cybertruck reservations have been waiting for a couple of years.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 20:10 - Buchanan: What Is America's Cause In The World?
Buchanan: What Is America’s Cause In The World?
“Take away this pudding; it has no theme,” is a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, when a disappointing dessert was put in front of him.
Writers have used Churchill’s remark to describe a foreign policy that lacks coherence or centrality of purpose.
For most of our lifetimes, this has not been true of the United States. The goal of our foreign policy has been understandable and defined.
From 1949-1989, it was Cold War containment of the Soviet Empire and USSR.
Ronald Reagan believed in a “rollback” of communism, once telling an aide that his policy might be summed up as: “We win. They lose.”
At the Cold War’s end, George H. W. Bush said America would now lead mankind in the creation of “a New World Order.”
George W. Bush was going to deny to all “axis of evil” nations — North Korea, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — access to the “world’s worst weapons,” with our ultimate goal being “ending tyranny in our world.”
According to the Biden Democrats of today, America’s goal is the preservation of “a rules-based international order,” which is less inspiring than “Remember the Alamo!” or “Remember Pearl Harbor!”
What are the causes that actually animate Americans?
A March survey of 2,000 registered voters, done by the Center for American Progress, reveals that most Republicans still share the foreign policy priorities of Donald J. Trump.
Asked to identify their first three foreign policy priorities from a list of a dozen, two-thirds of Republicans, 65%, gave as their principal concern “Reducing illegal immigration.” And 57% of Republicans put “Protecting jobs for American workers” right behind it. Independents agreed that these should be the top twin goals of U.S. foreign policy.
What does this tell us?
Economic nationalism is alive and well in the GOP, and securing the border remains a central concern of America’s center-right.
In third position, at 31% among Republicans, was “Taking on China’s economic and military aggression.”
Only 9% of Republicans listed “Fighting global poverty and promoting human rights” as top foreign policy priorities. Last among GOP priorities, at 7%, was “Promoting democratic rights and freedoms abroad.”
Indeed, this was the least popular foreign policy option among all voters.
Conclusion:
The priorities of the Bush presidencies and the neocons – democracy crusades, free trade, the New World Order, open borders – have failed to recapture the constituencies they lost in the Trump years.
While “Combating global climate change” rests near the bottom of Republican concerns at 10%, it is the No. 1 priority of Democrats, with 44% listing it first.
When it comes to “Ending US involvement in wars in the Middle East,” that goal ranks 5th among all voters. Democrats, Republicans and independents all support that objective.
Since the last CAP survey in 2019, the greatest change is the reduced concern over “terrorist threats” from al-Qaida and ISIS. Fewer than 1 in 4 voters now view this as a top priority.
As Matthew Petti writes in an analysis of the CAP survey, today, Americans “prioritize getting out of Middle East wars over confronting Middle East adversaries.”
This survey would thus seem to provide public support for the Trump-Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, and for Biden’s effort to reengage with Iran and renew the 2015 nuclear deal.
Also ranked high among Democrats and independents, but less so among Republicans, is “Improving relationships with allies.”
What does the survey tell us?
Illegal immigration and economic nationalism energize the GOP rank-and-file; climate change does not. There is no enthusiasm in either party for new democracy crusades. And there seems to be no enthusiasm in either party for a clash with Iran, North Korea, Russia or China.
Only 14% of Democrats wish to address China’s “military and economic aggression,” though 31% of Republicans do.
But the overall impression here is one of democratic confusion.
We Americans are all over the lot about what our foreign policy should be and what it should do. One is reminded of an insight from Walter Lippmann about U.S. foreign policy confusion before World War II:
“When a people is divided within itself about the conduct of foreign relations, it is unable to agree on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepare adequately for war or safeguard successfully its peace. Thus, it course in foreign affairs depends, in Hamilton’s words, not on reflection and choice, but on accident and force.”
Should we energetically promote democracy worldwide, because it is the right and moral thing to do, though the American people clearly do not see this as America’s cause?
Should we intervene to help Ukraine retrieve Crimea?
Should we fight to prevent China from consolidating rocks, reefs and islets of the East and South China Seas?
Is preserving the independence of Taiwan, which we conceded half a century ago is part of China, worth a war with a nuclear-armed China?
What role should U.S. public opinion play in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 19:50 - Pentagon Pushes Plans For Afghan Airstrike Capability Even After Troop Exit
Pentagon Pushes Plans For Afghan Airstrike Capability Even After Troop Exit
A growing body of indicators point to Biden’s vaunted plan for a full Afghan troop exit by Sep.11 being anything but a true and full final “exit”. First, as we described earlier the Pentagon is thinking up ways to leave a significant security “footprint” which defense officials say is necessary to protect the sprawling embassy in Kabul. There’s also talk of “counterterrorism support” directed from outside the country, which is said to be one among a “range of options” to soon be presented to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The Associated Press observed this week that “The number of American troops needed for the overall security missions inside Afghanistan will depend on a variety of requirements, and could range from roughly a couple hundred to a bit less than 1,000, officials said.” And of course, the CIA and other foreign intel agencies are scrambling to keep eyes and ears on the ground inside the country. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported the Pentagon is pursuing authorization to conduct airstrikes on the Taliban if it appears a major city like Kabul is about to fall to the group
Via The Drive This also as the WSJ wrote that “The Taliban are encircling Afghan police and army positions and encroaching on government-held territory, positioning themselves for large-scale offensives against major population centers while waiting for the last American troops to depart Afghanistan.”
To prevent this likely scenario of a Taliban takeover of much of the country after the US troop departure, the US Air Force would theoretically initiate Afghan aerial operations from one of its four major bases in the Gulf region, including two in Kuwait, and the others in Qatar and the UAE. This could also include use of drones to combat advancing Taliban insurgents against government areas.
Acting Air Force Secretary John Roth told a Senate hearing this week: “We have a series of air bases, they will stay for the time being, that’s where your over the horizon capability will come from,” according to Defense One. These statements alone will likely be interpreted by Taliban leaders to mean that in reality the US military will never truly “exit” the conflict-torn country.
Some in Congress see the new “options” for intervening post-withdrawal as but a recipe for continued war in America’s longest-running occupation…
No more airstrikes. No more war. Twenty years of military involvement in Afghanistan—the longest war in U.S. history—provides more than enough evidence that our weapons will not end this conflict, but they will add to the bloodshed and suffering. https://t.co/pF7rDHKw3u
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) June 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Also on Tuesday the Pentagon said that its withdrawal efforts were ahead of schedule, already being over 50% accomplished. Prior to the ordered drawdown which the White House announced in April there were at least 2,500 US troops amid a broader 10,000 member NATO force. The Taliban had seen the change as reneging on the Trump deal which had set the full pullout deadline for May 1st, which has come and gone.
While so far there has not been the predicted large-scale assaults on remaining US troops and bases, there have been hundreds of Taliban attacks on Afghan national forces and civilians across the country.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 19:30 - South Korean Inventor Creates "Third Eye" As A Warning To "Smartphone Zombies"
South Korean Inventor Creates “Third Eye” As A Warning To “Smartphone Zombies”
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A South Korean designer has created a ‘third eye’ that allows people to constantly look at their cellphones in the street as a warning to “smartphone zombies.”
Paeng Min-wook’s ‘The Third Eye’ is basically a sophisticated robotic eyeball that users strap to their forehead which warns them if they are about to bump into something.
“Paeng’s invention uses a gyro sensor to measure the oblique angle of the user’s neck and an ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance between the robotic eye and any obstacles. Both sensors are linked to an open-source single-board microcontroller, with battery pack,” reports Reuters.
When the user gets within 2 meters of another object, an audible beep warns them to take evasive action.
Paeng Min-wook developed a robotic eyeball dubbed ‘The Third Eye,’ which obsessive mobile phone users can strap to their foreheads so they can browse injury-free on the go 2/5 pic.twitter.com/cbiXq9F6He
— Reuters Tech News (@ReutersTech) June 7, 2021
The South Korean made it clear that his invention was a “satirical” sideswipe at the dystopian levels of smartphone obsession now seen amongst young people.
“As we cannot take our eyes off from smartphones, the extra eye will be needed in future,” he said.
“By presenting this satirical solution, I hope people would recognize the severity of their gadget addiction and look back at themselves.”
As we document in the video below, smartphone addiction continues to be a source of depression and atomization for young people, many of whom have become dopamine junkies left unable to form actual human bonds in the real world.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 19:10 - $1.2 Trillion Manchin-Backed Infrastructure Plan Reached By Bipartisan Group Of Senators
$1.2 Trillion Manchin-Backed Infrastructure Plan Reached By Bipartisan Group Of Senators
Update (1900ET): The bipartisan group has agreed to pitch a $1.2 trillion eight-year infrastructure spending package to the Biden administration, according to Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source familiar with the deliberations.
The proposal is notably backed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), and calls for $579 billion in net new spending “beyond outlays that Congress was already expected to enact.”
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After talks between President Joe Biden and Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) broke down earlier this week, a bipartisan group of 10 senators led by Mitt Romney (R-UT) say they’ve reached a tentative deal on the the size of an infrastructure deal, as well as how they’d pay for it.
The deal would spend a fraction of the $4.1 trillion called for by President Biden, and would not require an increase in taxes, according to The Hill, which suggests it may be a “tough sell within the broader Senate Democratic caucus.”
That said, members of the bipartisan group warned on Thursday that they still need to run it past the Senate GOP conference and the White House to see if there’s a broader buy-in.
“We have a tentative agreement on the pay-fors, yes, but that’s among the five Democrats and the five Republicans. It has not been taken to our respective caucuses or the White House so we’re in the middle of the process. We’re not at the end of the process, not at the beginning but we’re in the middle,” said Romney, who added that an overall top-line spending number has also been tentatively agreed upon.
“I believe it’s complete but others may have a different point of view.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine confirmed that a tentative deal exists, and called it a “significant” sign of progress.
“Among the ten of us there is a tentative agreement on a framework but obviously there’s a long ways to go. I would not say that we have the leaders on board or we have started negotiating with the White House but I think having 10 senators come together and reach an agreement on a framework is significant,” she said.
Earlier Thursday, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Fox News that Republicans “haven’t given up hope” for a deal.
“We haven’t given up hope that we’ll be able to reach a deal on something really important for the country that we really need to accomplish, and that is a major infrastructure bill,” he said, adding “I think it’s clearly possible. We haven’t given up on reaching an agreement on infrastructure. … I think there’s a good chance we can get there.”
Other members of the bipartisan group weren’t quite willing to say they’ve agreed to the overall spending number until they’ve had a chance to bounce it off more of their colleagues.
“We’re continuing to get input from people. Nothing’s final,” said a senator involved in the talks.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she knew members of the bipartisan group were very close to a deal on the broad outlines of a scaled-down infrastructure spending package and predicted it would be similar to what she offered to Biden in recent weeks.
“They were pretty close, I think, the last time I talked to them,” she said.
“I haven’t seen the details of their report but I think a lot of what they have is a lot of what I had in terms of definitionally what infrastructure is,” she added. -The Hill
According to GOP Negotiator Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a key difference between last month’s package outlined by Senate Republicans and the bipartisan deal is energy provisions sought by Biden.
“This will go back through committees, it will go through Finance [Committee] for the pay-fors, we still have to interact with the president but as far as the group’s concerned, we have a final offer,” said Cassidy on Thursday, adding that the next step is to sell the deal to the White House and each party’s caucuses.
“We’d have to, again, have our colleagues, whichever party you’re in, buy into it,” he said, adding that the group needs to “make sure the White House is OK with it.”
According to Cassidy, the Senate group’s top-line figure is similar to the $1.25 trillion infrastructure spending package unveiled earlier in the week by the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, which would provide $762 billion in new spending over eight years.
“The Problem Solvers passed something which [is] pretty similar to ours in terms of top line and with the same categories and roughly the same everything else,” he said. “It’s all positive.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 18:57 - Leaking Las Vegas: Lake Mead Plunges To Record Low Amid Drought-pocalypse
Leaking Las Vegas: Lake Mead Plunges To Record Low Amid Drought-pocalypse
Much of the Western half of the US is in a severe drought, and parts of the Southwest are “exceptionally dry,” the worst category, according to US Drought Monitor. Taking this into account, the iconic Hoover Dam has just recorded the smallest amount of water inside Lake Mead since the 1930s.
The damming of the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona border created Lake Mead and supplies water to 25 million people, including in the cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
We’ve explained in the past if Lake Mead drops to dangerously low levels, the entire town of Las Vegas is absolutely screwed because two pipes, known as straws, are at elevation 1,050 feet and 1,000 feet. However, a third straw was recently constructed at 860 feet just in case the water level continued to drop. For Vegas to prevent a total collapse if Lake Mead continues to drop, it will have to continue constructing straws at lower and lower depths.
Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote back in 2014 that Lake Mead wasn’t able to supply Vegas with water, “it’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere, Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.”
… and this quote was over seven years ago, and the water situation has dramatically worsened.
As of Wednesday, the lake’s water level sank to 1,071.56 feet above sea level and broke the record low in July 2016. Since the early 2000s, the water level has plunged 140 feet due to years of drought that has gripped the region.
“Some states, especially parts of California and parts of the southwest, it’s really quite extreme drought conditions,” Ben Cook, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Reuters. Here’s a map (as of June 3) of the drought situation, which is extremely severe.
Artificial lakes, such as Lake Mead, is no match for Mother Nature, and the latest drop in water level could force state governments (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) to pass a water shortage declaration sometime this summer.
The demand for water downstream from Hoover Dam continues to increase. Farmers in the Southwest are itching for Lake Mead’s water to irrigate their crops as their land becomes fallow.
Over the past year, the lake has declined by more than 16 feet and is projected to fall nine more feet by the end of 2021. The lake’s trigger point for a “shortage,” declared by the government, is 1,075 feet, which has already been broken.
Lake Mead’s downward spiral has also reduced Hoover Dam’s hydropower output by 25%. At some point, the dam could stop producing electricity.
“Our previous number [for cutoff] was at elevation 1,050, and now we’ve lowered that number to 950,” Hoover Dam, facility manager Mark Cook told CBS News. “So, we bought ourselves 100 feet.”
For more than a half-decade (see: here & here), we have the ongoing problems of Lake Mead and how it could impact the water supply of tens of millions of people. Now that the lake is at levels not seen since it was filled in the 1930s, and below levels for an official “shortage.” This means an emergency declaration of water shortage could be seen sometime this summer.
The drought is so severe that the governor of Utah is urging people to pray for rain.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/10/2021 – 18:50
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