- Victor Davis Hanson: This Isn't Your Father's Left-Wing Revolution
Victor Davis Hanson: This Isn’t Your Father’s Left-Wing Revolution
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,
Starry-eyed radicals in the 1960s and 1970s dreamed that they either were going to take over America or destroy it.
One of their favorite mottos was “Change it or lose it,” even as protests focused on drugs, music, race, class, sex, fashion — almost anything and everything.
Sixties radicals tutored America on long hair; wire-rim eyeglasses; who was a drag, a square, a bummer; and who was hip, cool, groovy, mellow and far out. Most of these silly revolutionaries were not unhinged Weathermen killers or SDS would-be communists, but just adolescents along for the good-time ride.
With the end of the draft in 1972, the winding down of the Vietnam War, the oil embargoes and a worsening economy, the ’60s revolution withered away. Cynics claimed the revolution was mostly about middle-class students with long hair kicking back during the peak of the postwar boom, indulging their appetites and ensuring they would not end up in Vietnam.
It is not even true that the ’60s at least ensured needed reform. The civil rights movement and equal rights for women and gays were already birthed before the hippies, as were folk songs and early rock music.
Instead, what the ’60s revolution did was accelerate these trends — but also radicalize, manipulate and coarsen them.
The grasping “yuppies” of the 1980s were the natural successors to let-it-all-hang-out “hippies.” The ’60s were at heart a narcissistic free-for-all, when “freedom” often entailed self-indulgence and avoiding responsibility.
By 1981, the Reagan revolution finished off the dead-enders of the Woodstock generation. Most eventually grew up. They rebooted their self-centered drug, sex and party impulses to fixations on money, status and material things.
Sixties protestors mainlined divorce, abortion on demand, promiscuity, drug use and one-parent homes. But by the late 1970s and the 1980s, most veteran cultural revolutionaries had gotten married, were raising a family, bought a house, got a job and made money.
This time around, their offspring’s left-wing assault is different — and far more ominous.
The woke grandchildren of the former outsiders are now more ruthless systematic insiders. The woke and wired new establishment knows how to use money and power to rebirth America as something the founders and most current Americans never envisioned.
Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp. The media? The campus? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The corporate boardroom? Foundations? The K-12 educational establishment? The military hierarchy? The government deep state? The FBI top echelon?
The left absorbed them all. But this time around, members of the left really believe that “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan. Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values.
Woke revolutionaries are not panhandlers, street people or Grateful Dead groupies. They are not even a few nutty and murderous Symbionese Liberation Army terrorists fighting against “the Man.”
They are “the Man.”
Our 21st century revolutionaries are multibillionaires with flip-flops, tie-dye T-shirts and nose rings, but with the absolute power and desire to censor how half the country communicates — or cancel them entirely.
They don’t flock to campus free-speech areas; they are the campus administrators who ban free speech.
They don’t picket outside the Pentagon; they are inside the Pentagon.
They don’t chant “eat the rich”; they are the rich who eat at Napa Valley’s French Laundry.
They don’t protest “uptight” values, because they are more intolerant and puritanical than any Victorian.
They don’t believe in racial quotas based on “proportional representation,” because they are racists who demand underrepresentation of “bad” racial groups and overrepresentation of “good” groups. The color of our skin is their gospel, not the content of our character.
They are top-down revolutionaries. None of their agendas, from open borders and changing the Constitution to critical race theory and banning clean-burning fossil fuels, are ever favored among a majority of the population.
Their guiding principle is “never let a crisis go to waste.” Only in times of a pandemic, a national quarantine or volatile racial relations can the new upscale leftist revolutionaries use fear to push through policies that no one in calm times could stomach.
Our revolutionaries hate dissent. They destroy any who question their media-spun hoaxes.
Truth is their enemy, and fear is their weapon.
Sixties paranoid revolutionaries warned about George Orwell’s “1984,” but our revolutionaries are “1984.”
While this elitist leftist revolution is more dangerous than its sloppy ’60s predecessor, it is also more vulnerable, given its obnoxious, top-heavy apparatus — but only if the proverbial “people” finally say to their madness, “Enough is enough.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 23:40 - Manhattan To Hamptons In 30 Minutes On This 40 Passenger Drone Bus
Manhattan To Hamptons In 30 Minutes On This 40 Passenger Drone Bus
NYC-based startup Kelekona is designing an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle that will transport dozens of passengers and make regional travel seamless.
Most eVTOL startups (such as SureFly) are designing and developing drone taxis with a maximum capacity of between 2 and 5 seats. Kelekona’s founder, Braeden Kelekona, is thinking big with a 40 passenger drone bus that weighs 10,000 pounds and has an estimated range of 330 miles, with the ability to fly between Los Angeles and San Fransico in one hour.
Kelekona appears to be developing an eVTOL vehicle inspired for mass transit in regional commutes, where passengers can avoid congested highways, traditional airplanes, and trains.
“One hundred percent we are trying to compete with public transportation,” Kelekona told Digital Trends.
According to Kelekona, routes between Manhattan to the Hamptons; Boston to New York; New York to Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles to San Francisco will cost around $85 and last for 30 minutes.
The airframe’s shape is certainly impressive in terms of aerodynamics. Four fan banks power the eVTOL with two ducted fans with variable pitch blades inside each. These fan banks can lift the aircraft up and down and propel the craft forward like a traditional airplane. Kelekona said eVTOL would be powered with “batteries similar to what you see in the Model S.”
“What we decided to build is a flying battery,” he noted. “What that allowed us to do is have greater endurance. Instead of building an interesting airframe and then trying to figure out how to put the battery into that aircraft, we started with the battery first and put things on top of it.”
The company has yet to build a scaled model but has been running computer simulations of the eVTOL. He said, “We feel strongly that we have about plus or minus two percent read on all our performance data.”
Passenger routes are planned for 2024, but it all depends on if the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grants the company licenses to fly the aircraft over U.S. airspace.
“That’s one of the trickier parts with passenger operation,” he said. “The FAA is still, to this day, creating the right protocols to test durability and reliability. They just want to make sure that the aircraft is [ready for whatever incident might] happen. They want to see the redundancy on your aircraft to mitigate that risk. In that regard, there’s a lot of overlap with the traditional aircraft certification, but at the same time with battery technology and electric motors, it has a different level of safety.”
Within the Digital Trends article, there was no mention of funding or prior capital raises. One would assume this startup is itching for investors, and doing so, they need to tell a great story, as what is being done here.
How long until this startup is SPAC’D?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 23:20 - The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning
The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“When you upload your DNA, you’re potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family.”
– Law professor Elizabeth Joh
“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age.
All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.
As of 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It’s estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe.
It’s a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family.
The possibilities are endless.
You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the sibling of a serial killer.
Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.
After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”
It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”
Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.
Indeed, police have begun using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.
For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was flagged as the notorious “Golden State Killer” through the use of genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to DeAngelo, they tracked him—snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash can—and used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes and murders from the 1970s and ‘80s.
Although DeAngelo was the first public arrest made using forensic genealogy, police have identified more than 150 suspects since then. Most recently, police relied on genetic genealogy to nab the killer of a 15-year-old girl who was stabbed to death nearly 50 years ago.
Who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right? At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases.
“In the interest of public safety, don’t you want to make it easy for people to be caught? Police really want to do their job. They’re not after you. They just want to make you safe,” insists Colleen Fitzpatrick, a co-founder of the DNA Doe Project, which identifies unknown bodies and helps find suspects in old crimes.
Except it’s not just psychopaths and serial rapists who get caught up in the investigative dragnet.
Anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match—including distant family members—suddenly becomes part of a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated and ruled out.
Although a number of states had forbidden police from using government databases to track family members of suspects, the genealogy websites provided a loophole that proved irresistible to law enforcement.
Hoping to close that loophole, a few states have started introducing legislation to restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge.
Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning.
Certainly, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with genealogical services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.
According to research published in the journal Science, more than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases, even if they have not submitted their own DNA. According to law professor Natalie Ram, one genealogy profile can lead to as many as 300 other people.
That’s just on the commercial side.
All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.
Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.
What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.
Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.
Referred to as “magic boxes,” Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.
Journalist Heather Murphy explains: “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”
The ramifications of these DNA databases are far-reaching.
At a minimum, they will do away with any semblance of privacy or anonymity. The lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial entities looking to profit off one’s biological record are endless.
Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.
As scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:
We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.
What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: “The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived… Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”
Even old samples taken from crime scenes and “cold” cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.
Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.
If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.
Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.
No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.
Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.
Suspect Society, meet the American police state.
Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.
By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.
By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember.
And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.
Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.
Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.
Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.
What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.
With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who “might” commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a “troublemaker” or their relationship to past dissenters.
Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?
Not to be overlooked, DNA evidence is not infallible: it can be wrong, either through human error, tampering, or even outright fabrication, and it happens more often than we are told. The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.
Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish.
Yet as history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”
With technology, the courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring to invade our privacy on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the slippery slope toward a dystopian world in which there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 23:00 - Firework Shortage Could Ruin Fourth Of July
Firework Shortage Could Ruin Fourth Of July
Microchips, lumber, gas, steel, base metals, chicken, ketchup, and chlorine have been some of the latest shortages due to tangled supply chains because of the virus pandemic.
A little less than a month from now, Americans will be celebrating the Fourth of July with backyard barbecues, drinking Budweiser, and, of course, how could we forget, launching Chinese-made fireworks.
Due to food inflation and shortages of some products, Americans will be paying an arm and a leg for items at supermarkets. But what may anger them the most is the shortage of fireworks, according to ABC 13, who spoke with multiple vendors.
Firework stores across Texas are urging customers to shop now then wait till the very last week or even the last day because of delays in container freight from China to West Coast ports.
Vendors are saying container shipments of artillery shells, such as mortars, from China are in short supply because of port congestion. They warned customers this would lead to higher prices.
“There is going to be an increase in the process just because shipping has doubled since last year,” said Cele Rasmussen, a fireworks vendor.
Peak shipping season has arrived at West Coast ports as congestion could result in firework shipments not arriving in time. This is terrible news for US consumers because 94% of US imported fireworks are derived from China.
Google searches for “firework shortage” have already hit 17-year highs.
Some Americans may not hear fireworks this hear but rather noisy cicadas.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 22:40 - Brandon Smith: The Real Reasons Why California Leftists Are Terrified Of The AR-15
Brandon Smith: The Real Reasons Why California Leftists Are Terrified Of The AR-15
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
This past week a US District judge in California struck down the state’s 30 year ban on high capacity semi-automatic rifles which leftists label “assault weapons”. The judge called the ban unconstitutional (which it is). In response, the progressive media has lost their collective minds, screeching in horror at the idea of AR-15 rifles being legal within the borders of their carefully manicured socialist Utopia state. Their most commonly expressed reaction seems to be fear.
Fear is rarely a rational thing. When someone operates based on fear they tend to make terrible decisions and support oppressive causes and laws. Fear leads to an obsession with control. Fearful people also tend to look for large mobs of other terrified people so they can feel safe and secure and anonymous. They want to be able to act impulsively on their fears without having to face consequences for it later.
Leftists are driven primarily by two factors: Narcissism, and yes, fear. I’ve discussed their narcissism at great length in past articles; now I think we should delve into their fear.
The most common leftist retort to the question “Why are you so afraid of the AR-15?” will usually be a snort of indignant disbelief followed by the words:
“Because it’s a military weapon designed to kill a lot of people quickly…idiot!”
But this is not an argument, it is an expression of irrational fear. Why are they, as individuals, afraid of the AR-15? What are the chances that they will EVER be faced with a person intent on killing them with an AR-15? And, why do they believe that disarming innocent law abiding Americans will somehow save them from their paranoia?
Let’s examine the first issue of statistical probability; how many people are actually killed by AR-15s each year? Not many according to the FBI, which does not track the stats on specific rifles, but does track the stats on all rifles together. And, as it turns out, only around 6% of all gun deaths involve rifles in the US each year.
How much of that 6% involves the use of military grade rifles like the AR-15? It’s impossible to say, but even if it was half, or 3% of all gun related crimes, that would still mean you have FAR more of a chance of being murdered by a knife or blunt object than an AR. By extension, Rifles overall are dwarfed by handgun murders, so, again, why are leftists so afraid of the AR-15?
What about mass shootings? It seems like the AR-15 is a favorite among mass shooters because of it’s “efficiency”, so is this reason enough to be fearful? According to the New York Times own analysis, the AR-15 was used to kill 173 people in mass shootings in the US from 2007 to 2017. Meaning around 17 homicides per year over a decade can be attributed to the rifle. Again, the AR is dwarfed by almost all other weapons in homicide including knives, even when accounting for mass shootings.
With the sheer number of military grade weapons in the hands of civilians in the US there should be mass homicides everywhere you look if you take the common position of the typical progressive gun grabber. But, this is not the case. In fact, if you want to increase your chances of being killed by a gun, move to a major Democrat run city like Chicago, New York or Philadelphia. In Chicago, there were 4033 shootings and 784 homicides, predominantly in black neighborhoods and primarily with handguns.
So, statistically, access to AR-15s does not increase gun homicides. But what about living in a black neighborhood in leftist run Chicago under some of the strictest gun laws in the country? Yes, your chances of being shot are MUCH higher (just not by an AR-15).
Since the math does not add up in favor of the leftists, perhaps we should examine other factors that might be driving them to focus on the AR in particular. Let’s talk about “precedence”…
Look at it this way – States like California are a petri dish, a testing ground for the future that leftists want for the entire country. There is an old saying that “As goes California, so goes the US”, and this is because California is often where most experimental legislation is pushed; legislation that violates the boundaries of what the constitution allows. Sometimes it’s New York or New Jersey or some other blue state, but most of the time CA is where unconstitutional precedents are set. Its massive population and large number of electoral votes make it a perfect target for conditioning the wider public to further restrictions on their freedoms.
This explains some of the fear the media is showing regarding the latest federal court decision on military grade weapons like the AR. Political elites see California as their own little kingdom with their own special laws, and they plan to eventually spread those laws across America using California as the model. But, if such laws are overturned as unconstitutional, then the precedent actually works in reverse. Now, the leftists are concerned that an overturned gun ban in CA means more blue states will follow and their entire gun grabbing scheme will go out the window.
The leftist mind thinks in terms of unchecked and unhinged “democracy”. Meaning, they believe that the majority is paramount; the majority is law. If a majority in a society wants to take away your freedoms, then they have the right to because they have the mob on their side. 51% rules over the lives of the other 49%. But this is not how things work in a Constitutional Republic.
Under the Bill of Rights your freedoms are codified and sacrosanct. They are inherent and gifted by God (or whatever you happen to believe in); government has no domain over these rights. The right to firearms and self defense is one of these inherent qualities. It does not matter what the State of California thinks, or even what the “majority” of people in California think. If an American in California wants to own an AR-15, then he/she has the right to own an AR-15.
We also cannot ignore the fact that leftists have an insatiable appetite for collectivism, usually in the name of the “greater good”. Collectivism is basically totalitarianism disguised as humanitarianism. They know what’s best for you, and they are going to make sure you follow THEIR plan for your life.
The AR-15 is indeed a weapon in military use, and maybe this is what frightens leftists the most. Not because they are personally more likely to be shot by one (we’ve already proven that notion false), but because leftists desire control over all else, and with military grade weapons in the hands of the public control becomes much more difficult. ALL totalitarian governments seek to first disarm the people they intend to enslave or destroy. This is a fact.
When a group of people in power are working hard to remove defensive or even offensive weapons from your hands, it’s best to assume that their intentions are malevolent. They are not trying to help you, they are trying to help themselves.
They will deny this motive to the grave, but look at how the political left has been acting lately: They are the only people that have supported mass censorship of opposing viewpoints. They are the only people that are supported by international conglomerates and Big Tech companies. They are the only people that supported the pandemic lockdowns, which were completely useless in stopping the spread of covid, but they were very useful in killing hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the US. They are also the only people in favor of vaccine passports which would destroy the very fabric of our society and erase what is left of our freedoms.
It’s not really surprising that they want to disarm us as well.
Of course, they will claim that this argument is “silly”. After all, what can an AR-15 do against an Apache helicopter or a Abrams battle tank? Well, these rifles in the right hands can do a hell of a lot to stop a technologically advanced military, as we have seen for the past two decades in Afghanistan. Let us not play games; there is a reason why leftists and elites are obsessed with our disarmament. If military grade rifles were not a threat to them, then they would not be going after them so aggressively.
Finally, the mainstream media has rolled out all the typical propaganda tools when it comes to spinning the federal decision in CA, including attacking the judge and his character. Almost every single article on this issue focuses on the fact that the judge compared the AR-15 to a “Swiss Army knife”.
The left will continue to use this narrative as a means to distract from the real problem at hand because false conflations and straw man arguments have worked for them in the past. Clearly, the judge was not trying to say that an AR-15 and a Swiss Army knife are exactly the same, or that they are equally capable of killing people. The logical interpretation is that the AR-15 is a tool like any other tool, and it has multiple uses. It is a utilitarian object, not an inherently demonic death machine as leftists would have us believe.
Gun grabbers love to make the argument that firearms are only designed for one purpose: “Killing”. This is a lie. They are also tools for self defense. They are a means to defuse a violent situation before it even happens. There are thousands of videos on the web showing people with criminal intent running away from a Good Samaritan with a gun. There is no way of telling how many potential victims have been saved by the mere presence of a firearm, but the accounts are documented and numerous.
This is on top of all the other uses for guns, including hunting and sporting uses. So, yes, the judge is absolutely correct; an AR-15 is a multipurpose tool, just like a Swiss Army knife.
In my view, the gun control lobby in America is in the midst of a considerable decline, and maybe it is even about to die. The political left has long operated on the mantra that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”. In other words, they think if they whine long enough and loud enough about an issue someone will come along and give them what they want just to shut them up, even if what they want is illogical or morally bankrupt.
This strategy has worked out for them for many decades so it’s not surprising that they keep using it, but times are changing. Now, the squeaky wheel gets no oil, at least not from gun owners. The squeaky wheel gets nothing.
Gun control is the big line in the sand for most law abiding conservatives and moderates, and we have grown tired of the debate because it’s no longer a debate, it’s a imposition of ideology and cultism. All the facts are on the side of gun owners. All the legal protections are on the side of gun owners. All the moral dynamics are on the side of gun owners. As long as we stand our ground, there is nothing that leftists can do about it.
They can continue to lie, they can continue to threaten and they can continue exploiting emotional arguments, but they’ll NEVER get the guns. And, as we have seen recently, we might even start returning some of those gun rights and rifles to states like California, where fear was used to cloud the public mind and people were conned into compliance.
What are California leftists and their comrades in other blue states really afraid of? They are afraid that their strategies are failing, that the public is getting wise to their games, that their incrementalism only works for so long, that their true intentions have become transparent, that their narcissism has blinded them to their own frailties, that the law is not their plaything and that every piece of constitutional ground they have stolen over the decades could be taken back from them in the blink of an eye; as fast as a speeding bullet.
Leftists and totalitarians fear the AR-15, but what they fear more is what it represents. And with each carefully placed practice shot at every gun range across America, they hear the crushing sound of inevitability.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 22:20 - PG&E Warns Of More Blackouts As California Wildfire Season Begins
PG&E Warns Of More Blackouts As California Wildfire Season Begins
It has been an arid spring in California, and that’s causing alarm with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. executives who have said this week they will need more frequent power cuts to customers in Northern California to prevent wildfires.
PG&E’s chief risk officer Sumeet Singh told WSJ that California’s dry weather conditions could result in more rolling blackouts this year than last year. The company has trimmed trees away from powerlines and inspected the grid as the wildfire season began earlier this month.
June is typically the month the wildfire season in California begins. The state is already battling an extreme drought, and the first heat wave of the season hit last week. The risks of another heat wave are increasing for next week.
The hottest and most fire-prone months are nearing as a second heat wave of the season could arrive as early as next week.
How the season turns out may depend on the immediate climate in the state. Extreme heat and drought are several factors that may produce dry fuels and eventually spark fires.
“The fuel moisture levels … are about a month or two months ahead of schedule,” Strenfel told Sacramento Bee. “They’re at a state where they’re typically this dry in mid-July, and we’re seeing them in June. We’re a month ahead of schedule, if not two months, in terms of fire danger.”
Singh told WSJ, “the big, big variable that’s unpredictable here is the wind. But in all the forecasts that we’ve done, we do not see ourselves getting back to the same kind of [power shut-off] events like we saw in 2019.”
Already, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared 41 of the state’s 58 counties are in a drought, with much of the state in an “extreme drought” and portions in an “exceptional drought.”
The 2020 California fire season, the worst on record, burned more than 4 million acres, is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Newsom has allocated millions of dollars in new funding to thwart fires this year.
The 2021 wildfire season could be more severe than last year, which means PG&E may have to issue more powercuts to thwart fires.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 22:00 - How Fanatics Took Over The World
How Fanatics Took Over The World
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,
Early in the pandemic, I had been furiously writing articles about lockdowns. My phone rang with a call from a man named Dr. Rajeev Venkayya. He is the head of a vaccine company but introduced himself as former head of pandemic policy for the Gates Foundation.
Now I was listening.
I did not know it then, but I’ve since learned from Michael Lewis’s (mostly terrible) book The Premonition that Venkayya was, in fact, the founding father of lockdowns. While working for George W. Bush’s White House in 2005, he headed a bioterrorism study group. From his perch of influence – serving an apocalyptic president — he was the driving force for a dramatic change in U.S. policy during pandemics.
He literally unleashed hell.
That was 15 years ago. At the time, I wrote about the changes I was witnessing, worrying that new White House guidelines (never voted on by Congress) allowed the government to put Americans in quarantine while closing their schools, businesses, and churches shuttered, all in the name of disease containment.
I never believed it would happen in real life; surely there would be public revolt. Little did I know, we were in for a wild ride…
The Man Who Lit the Match
Last year, Venkayya and I had a 30-minute conversation; actually, it was mostly an argument. He was convinced that lockdown was the only way to deal with a virus. I countered that it was wrecking rights, destroying businesses, and disturbing public health. He said it was our only choice because we had to wait for a vaccine. I spoke about natural immunity, which he called brutal. So on it went.
The more interesting question I had at the time was why this certified Big Shot was wasting his time trying to convince a poor scribbler like me. What possible reason could there be?
The answer, I now realized, is that from February to April 2020, I was one of the few people (along with a team of researchers) who openly and aggressively opposed what was happening.
There was a hint of insecurity and even fear in Venkayya’s voice. He saw the awesome thing he had unleashed all over the world and was anxious to tamp down any hint of opposition. He was trying to silence me. He and others were determined to crush all dissent.
This is how it has been for the better part of the last 15 months, with social media and YouTube deleting videos that dissent from lockdowns. It’s been censorship from the beginning.
For all the problems with Lewis’s book, and there are plenty, he gets this whole backstory right. Bush came to his bioterrorism people and demanded some huge plan to deal with some imagined calamity. When Bush saw the conventional plan — make a threat assessment, distribute therapeutics, work toward a vaccine — he was furious.
“This is bulls**t,” the president yelled.
“We need a whole-of-society plan. What are you going to do about foreign borders? And travel? And commerce?”
Hey, if the president wants a plan, he’ll get a plan.
“We want to use all instruments of national power to confront this threat,” Venkayya reports having told colleagues.
“We were going to invent pandemic planning.”
This was October 2005, the birth of the lockdown idea.
Dr. Venkayya began to fish around for people who could come up with the domestic equivalent of Operation Desert Storm to deal with a new virus. He found no serious epidemiologists to help. They were too smart to buy into it. He eventually bumped into the real lockdown innovator working at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Cranks, Computers, and Cooties
His name was Robert Glass, a computer scientist with no medical training, much less knowledge, about viruses. Glass, in turn, was inspired by a science fair project that his 14-year-old daughter was working on.
She theorized (like the cooties game from grade school) that if school kids could space themselves out more or even not be at school at all, they would stop making each other sick. Glass ran with the idea and banged out a model of disease control based on stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, business closures, and forced human separation.
Crazy right? No one in public health agreed with him but like any classic crank, this convinced Glass even more. I asked myself, “Why didn’t these epidemiologists figure it out?” They didn’t figure it out because they didn’t have tools that were focused on the problem. They had tools to understand the movement of infectious diseases without the purpose of trying to stop them.
Genius, right? Glass imagined himself to be smarter than 100 years of experience in public health. One guy with a fancy computer would solve everything! Well, he managed to convince some people, including another person hanging around the White House named Carter Mecher, who became Glass’s apostle.
Please consider the following quotation from Dr. Mecher in Lewis’s book: “If you got everyone and locked each of them in their own room and didn’t let them talk to anyone, you would not have any disease.”
At last, an intellectual has a plan to abolish disease — and human life as we know it too! As preposterous and terrifying as this is — a whole society not only in jail but solitary confinement — it sums up the whole of Mecher’s view of disease. It’s also completely wrong.
Pathogens are part of our world; they are generated by human contact. We pass them onto each other as the price for civilization, but we also evolved immune systems to deal with them. That’s 9th-grade biology, but Mecher didn’t have a clue.
Fanatics Win the Day
Jump forward to March 12, 2020. Who exercised the major influence over the decision to close schools, even though it was known at that time that SARS-CoV-2 posed almost risk to people under the age of 20? There was even evidence that they did not spread COVID-19 to adults in any serious way.
Didn’t matter. Mecher’s models — developed with Glass and others — kept spitting out a conclusion that shutting down schools would drop virus transmission by 80%. I’ve read his memos from this period — some of them still not public — and what you observe is not science but ideological fanaticism in play.
Based on the timestamp and length of the emails, he was clearly not sleeping much. Essentially he was Lenin on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. How did he get his way?
There were three key elements: public fear, media and expert acquiescence, and the baked-in reality that school closures had been part of “pandemic planning” for the better part of 15 years. Essentially, the lockdowners, over the course of 15 years, had worn out the opposition. Lavish funding, attrition of wisdom within public health, and ideological fanaticism prevailed.
Figuring out how our expectations for normal life were so violently foiled, how our happy lives were brutally crushed, will consume serious intellectuals for many years. But at least we now have a first draft of history.
As with almost every revolution in history, a small minority of crazy people with a cause prevailed over the humane rationality of multitudes. When people catch on, the fires of vengeance will burn very hot.
The task now is to rebuild a civilized life that is no longer so fragile as to allow insane people to lay waste to all that humanity has worked so hard to build.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 21:40 - Perfect Storm: Congestion Plagues South China And US West Coast Ports
Perfect Storm: Congestion Plagues South China And US West Coast Ports
Peak shipping season is ahead — and the parking lot of container ships moored off the US West Coast continues to worsen, with the epicenter of congestion based around Los Angeles/Long Beach ports. On the other side of the Pacific, in southern China, a surge in COVID-19 has caused some of the biggest port congestion in more than one year.
So now port congestion is seen on both sides of the Pacific as it’s hardly a secret that the recent collapse of trans-pacific supply chains will remain strained through the summer and one reason why prices for goods are soaring (as recently discussed in “It’s About To Get Much Worse”: Supply Chains Implode As “Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore” and “Port Of LA Volumes Are “Off The Charts.””)
But now, focusing at South China ports, exploding cases of coronavirus infections in Guangdong province, a top manufacturing and exporting hub, recently triggered local governments to increase prevention and control efforts that “curbed port processing capacity,” said Reuters.
Major shipping companies have warned clients of vessel delays, changes to port call schedules, and the possibility of avoiding some ports altogether.
Ocean Network Express (ONE), a container shipping company, warned customers in an advisory Wednesday: “The container logistics situation continues to deteriorate around all the ports in the area [South China port].”
Most of the congestion has been building at the Yantian International Container Terminal (YICT), a deepwater port in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China handing some of the largest container ships in the world, has reduced capacity at the port due to a recent outbreak of the virus, according to Seatrade Maritime News, citing ONE.
The world’s leading container line Maersk told customers to expect delays up to two weeks because of the reduced capacity of staffing at the port.
Refinitiv data shows 50 container vessels are moored in the Outer Pearl River Delta, waiting to dock at YICT. For comparison, this compares with 20 vessels for the same time last year.
Reuters quoted one exporter who said loading delays and slow deliveries continue to tangle global supply chains.
“Basically we had a similar experience last year so we have experience in responding, only the increase in transport costs are getting really astonishing. The freight fees are reflected in the increase in material costs which are up by around 15%-30% already,” said a sales manager at an electronics cable manufacturer in Shenzhen, a large manufacturing city in Guangdong.
The congestion and delays in South China came when container shipping supply chains were already at full stretch due to US West Coast port congestion. As a result, container freight rates have hit a record high and are expected to continue to rise further.
“The recent rise in Covid-19 cases in China has resulted in a shutdown that may add to the already record cost of shipping goods out of China. The delays have already resulted in pressurizing soaring shipping prices within China due to a lack of containers and increased export demand,” said Josh Brazil, the Vice President of Marketing at project44.
Port congestion on either side of the Pacific continues to deteriorate. It suggests that the normalization of trans-pacific supply chains will not happen anytime soon and will continue to add cost pressures for exporters in China and importers in the US – adding to the cost of products and ultimately pushed along to US consumers. Delays will also continue to create additional shortages…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 21:20 - Connecticut To Enact Highway Fee For Trucks
Connecticut To Enact Highway Fee For Trucks
By John Gallagher of FreightWaves,
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont is expected to sign a bill passed this week by state lawmakers that, beginning January 2023, will impose a tax of up to 17.5 cents per mile on heavy trucks that use Connecticut’s roadways. The tax,, which trucks would be required to pay in addition to federal fuel taxes, is estimated to generate $45 million in revenue in FY23 and $90 million annually thereafter, and would go toward repairing roads and bridges.
“This small fee on large tractor trailers that are doing 20,000 times the amount of damage as a passenger vehicle is a responsible way to address part of that crisis,” commented state Rep. Roland Lemar, a Democrat.
Most Republicans in the legislature, however, including Rep. Devin Carney, opposed the bill. “I think it’s going to raise costs on food, on things like heating oil, clothing, gasoline — I just think it’s a trickle-down tax that’s very regressive,” Carney said. Joseph Sculley, president of the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut, said that the tax will add a financial burden on in-state trucking companies while out-of-state companies will avoid paying by rerouting around the state.
“One of our members estimated it is going to cost him an additional $200,000 per year, and if he can’t pass the cost down, whether through a line-item fee or by increasing his overall rates, he’ll be out of business,” Sculley told FreightWaves.
In addition, Sculley said, state lawmakers have admitted that the program would be administered using an honor system and that it would not be a priority for roadside law enforcement. “I told every member of the legislature that 20 states have tried it and gave up because they couldn’t make it work.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), four states — Kentucky, New Mexico, New York and Oregon — are levying some form of vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee on commercial trucks. Kentucky charges a flat rate of about 3 cents per mile, and the other three charge rates that vary by trucks’ weight, ranging from about 1 to 29 cents per mile, notes a CBO report.
The Connecticut proposal places trucks in 28 weight categories. The rate charged per mile ranges from 2.5 cents for trucks weighing 26,000-28,000 pounds to 17.5 cents for trucks weighing 80,001 pounds and over. The bill requires each carrier to apply to the state’s Department of Revenue Services (DRS) for a highway user tax permit, and would prohibit carriers from operating their trucks in the state without one. Any fees would have to be paid to DRS each month.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 21:00 - Kim Jong Un Calls K-Pop A "Vicious Cancer": Prescribes 15-Years Hard Labor If Caught With It
Kim Jong Un Calls K-Pop A “Vicious Cancer”: Prescribes 15-Years Hard Labor If Caught With It
Apparently Kim Jong Un has gone full culture warrior in attempts to “protect” the North from a K-Pop invasion, calling South Korea’s pop culture style which has in past years gone global a “vicious cancer” which is corrupting the youth, but is still increasingly making inroads into the DPRK. A new state media quote this week indicated his belief that it would make North Korea “crumble like a damp wall.”
These latest statements in the war on K-Pop come after months of Kim himself or other officials in state media ranting against the corrupting “attire, hairstyles, speeches, behaviors” which comes from outside influence, especially from South Korean music and film, and is threatening to induce changes in the “ideological and mental state” of the country’s youth.
Months ago Kim also ordered that authorities across all provinces to “mercilessly” combat increasing “capitalist tendencies” and all external forms of cultural influence.
Multiple international reports are now highlighting a law which was passed last December, but is receiving much more attention in light of the K-Pop comments, given it means a citizen could literally face 15 years of hard labor if they’re found to be in possession of South Korean popular entertainment:
It calls for five to 15 years in labor camps for people who watch or possess South Korean entertainment, according to lawmakers in Seoul who were briefed by government intelligence officials, and internal North Korean documents smuggled out by Daily NK, a Seoul-based website. The previous maximum punishment for such crimes was five years of hard labor.
And worse, “dealing” has been made a capital offense…
Those who put material in the hands of North Koreans can face even stiffer punishments, including the death penalty. The new law also calls for up to two years of hard labor for those who “speak, write or sing in South Korean style.”
Despite the obvious absurdity and somewhat comic nature of the bizarre law and spectacle of the ongoing “crackdown” – which sounds like it’s a write-up in The Onion, it strongly suggests that Pyongyang is legitimately worried at this point about maintaining ideological control over the population.
Where’s Kim Jong Un when you need him, this K Pop garbage is annoying 😂 https://t.co/tIybEF78yY
— Janinks💫 (@janinkathegreat) December 13, 2019
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There appears to be a growing craving for outside media consumption, also as technology has made it easier to either share things digitally, or easily hide small thumb drives.
On the one hand media smuggled from outside might present the DPRK population with more attractive images of life elsewhere away from under the thumb of the totalitarian regime, while at the same time undoing official North propaganda which depicts South Korea as a “living hell”.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 20:40 - Ranchers Sell Off Cattle, Farmers Idle Thousands Of Acres As America's Drought Emergency Escalates
Ranchers Sell Off Cattle, Farmers Idle Thousands Of Acres As America’s Drought Emergency Escalates
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
In my entire lifetime, this is the worst that drought conditions have ever been in the western half of the country. During the past 20 years, the amount of territory in the West considered to be suffering from exceptional drought has never gone higher than 11 percent until now. Today, that number is sitting at 27 percent. The term “mega-drought” is being thrown around a lot these days to describe what is happening, but this isn’t just a drought. This is a true national emergency, and it is really starting to affect our food supply.
Just look at what is happening up in North Dakota. The vast majority of the state is either in the worst level of drought or the second worst level of drought, and ranchers are auctioning off their cattle by the thousands…
“Normally this time of the year, we’re probably looking at 400-600 head and a lot of times would be every other week,” said former auctioneer Ron Torgerson.
On Sunday and Monday, more than 4,200 head of cattle were sold at Rugby Livestock and Auction.
Needless to say, ranchers in North Dakota don’t want to get rid of their cattle, but the drought has pushed prices for hay and corn so high that many of them simply have no choice.
One of those that has already been forced to sell a large number of cattle is rancher David Bohl…
As the drought continues, the price of hay and corn has gone way up. It’s more expensive for ranchers to try and supplement feed than it is to sell the cattle.
Bohl has already sold 200 of his head in the last month.
“Everybody is in the same situation, they’re going to have to sell probably 25 to 50% of them because there’s nowhere to go with them we just got no food to feed them,” Bohl said.
As cattle herds shrink all over the western half of the country, this is going to push beef prices significantly higher than they are right now.
And in many areas, they are already at ridiculous levels.
Meanwhile, the drought continues to push the water level in Lake Mead into the danger zone. According to CBS News, Lake Mead will soon hit the “lowest level ever recorded”…
For more than eight decades, the iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone.
“This is like a different world,” said Pat Mulroy, the former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She told CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is on track to soon hit its lowest level ever recorded.
Since the year 2000, the water level in Lake Mead has declined by a whopping 30 feet, and it is currently at just 37 percent of capacity.
The dam’s hydropower output has already been reduced by about 25 percent, and once the water level gets low enough it will stop producing electricity completely.
In addition, many farmers that rely on water from Lake Mead are facing a very uncertain future at this point…
For the first time ever, the federal government is expected to declare a water shortage on the lower Colorado River later this summer. That will force automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona starting in 2022. Homeowners have higher priority and, at first, won’t feel the pain as badly as farmers.
Dan Thelander is a second-generation family farmer in Arizona’s Pinal County. The water to grow his corn and alfalfa fields comes from Lake Mead. “If we don’t have irrigation water, we can’t farm,” he said. “So, next year we are going to get about 25% less water, means we’re going to have to fallow or not plant 25% of our land.”
Unless something changes, Thelander and other farmers in the region could potentially have all water cut off in 2023.
That is just two years away.
Of course there are many farmers in California that have already been informed that they will not be getting any water allocated to them at all here in 2021. It is being projected that farmers in the state will not grow anything on 500,000 acres this year, and that is really bad news because California grows more than a third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our fruits and nuts…
Along with wildfire risks, short water supply is putting immense pressure on the state’s agricultural industry, which grows over a third of the country’s vegetables and supplies two-thirds of the fruits and nuts in the US. Already farmers are culling crops and fallowing fields in anticipation of water shortages. Karen Ross, California’s food and agriculture secretary, told the California Chamber of Commerce that she expected 500,000 acres would have to sit idle this year.
So what are we going to do if this mega-drought persists several more years and agricultural production in California is dramatically reduced for an extended period of time?
I am sure that some wise guy will post a comment after this article about importing more fruits and vegetables from South America, but South America is experiencing a historic drought too.
In fact, at this moment Brazil is experiencing the “worst drought in nearly a century”, and scientists are anticipating that it will not end any time soon.
Needless to say, the droughts that we are witnessing are setting the stage for many of the things that I have been warning about, and the future of agricultural production in the western hemisphere is looking quite bleak for the foreseeable future.
In the short-term, this crisis is going to result in substantially higher prices at the grocery store. I know that grocery prices have already risen to painful levels, but the truth is that food prices will never be as low as they are right now.
So I am encouraging everyone to stock up while they still can.
As I have said so many times, we really struggle to feed everyone in the world during the best of years, and 2021 is definitely not one of the best of years.
Global food supplies are getting tighter and tighter, and this definitely has enormous implications for our future.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 20:20 - Western Companies "Shocked" After China Rushes Through Anti-Sanctions Law
Western Companies “Shocked” After China Rushes Through Anti-Sanctions Law
There should be little doubt that the timing is intentional: China on Thursday passed its sweeping new law to ‘safeguard’ Chinese businesses and entities from Western and especially US sanctions, just hours ahead of President Joe Biden sitting down with G-7 leaders in Cornwall to argue for a common stance on curtailing China’s influence. AFP observes: “China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing ‘irreconcilable’ compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investment.”
The Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, as we described earlier, is designed shield Chinese entities and institutions from “the unilateral and discriminatory measures imposed by foreign countries” and ultimately the “long arm jurisdiction” of the United States.
It effectively enables the Chinese government to sanction all who comply with US/EU sanctions by drawing a bright red line, forcing entities to choose whether to comply to Washington’s side or Beijing’s side. Upon its introduction early this week in the National People’s Congress there were few details given, other than vowing that “if Chinese entities are hit with unjustified sanctions, the proposed law is supposed to crystallize actionable countermeasures against the foreign governments and institutions…expecting the legal effort to make up for losses that Chinese entities would suffer.”
With the law’s passage, details have been revealed as follows:
Countermeasures in the Chinese law include “refusal to issue visas, denial of entry, deportation… and sealing, seizing, and freezing property of individuals or businesses that adhere to foreign sanctions against Chinese businesses or officials,” according to the text published by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.
Thus it “answers” current US tactics in a serious escalation: whereas Washington currently often seeks to punish third party entities or countries for direct or even indirect dealings with a sanctioned regime (the cases of Venezuela and Iran are clear examples, or even European companies which worked on the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline), Beijing has now given itself the ‘legal authority’ to do the same.
The foreign ministry announced upon the law’s passage: “The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics,” according to state media. And a Global Times op-ed asserted: “It will act as a powerful deterrent against countries imposing sanctions,” and further: “We will not hesitate to fight back against forces that arrogantly challenge us and will continue to enrich our legal toolbox.”
China’s quick rollout of a law against foreign sanctions has left European and American companies shocked and facing “irreconcilable” compliance issues, two top business groups said Friday, despite Beijing saying the move would unlikely impact investmenthttps://t.co/7fYXW5Giwh
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 11, 2021
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And here’s more on how it will coerce companies into “choosing” to conform to US or Chinese law, which could have devastating fallout down the line for Western companies operating in China:
The restrictions can apply to family members of individuals who fall foul of Beijing.
The law also allows the country’s courts to punish companies that comply with foreign laws, and says that businesses or people in China do not need to comply with foreign restrictions.
This could potentially cover the legislators, government officials, law enforcement officers, or even banks or companies who implement foreign sanctions.
— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) June 10, 2021
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Meanwhile, as the G-7 continues in the UK, Beijing officials blasted what they called “small circle diplomacy”.
The Chinese Communist Party’s chief diplomat Yang Jiechi told Antony Blinken in a phone call ahead of the summit that “genuine multilateralism is not pseudo-multilateralism based on the interests of small circles” in denunciation of what’s being seen as an “anti-China” meeting.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 20:00 - Media Converges On The Narrative That UFOs May Be Russian/Chinese Threat
Media Converges On The Narrative That UFOs May Be Russian/Chinese Threat
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
So in case you haven’t been keeping up it’s been pretty thoroughly confirmed that the US government’s highly anticipated UFO report due this month won’t contain any significant revelations and certainly won’t verify anyone’s ideas about these phenomena being extraterrestrial in origin, but it absolutely will contain fearmongering that UFOs could be evidence that the US has fallen dangerously behind Russian and Chinese technological development in the cold war arms race.
Unknown US officials have done a print media tour speaking to the press on condition of anonymity (of course), with first The New York Times reporting their statements about the contents of the UFO report and then CNN and The Washington Post. Each of these outlets reported the same thing: the US government doesn’t know what these things are but is very concerned they constitute evidence that Russia and/or China have somehow managed to technologically leapfrog US military development by light years. All three mention these two nations explicitly.
This narrative was then picked up by cable news, with MSNBC inviting former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta on to explain to their audience that the US government should assume UFOs are Russian or Chinese in origin until that possibility has been exhausted.
“Is it your assumption that it is Russia or China testing some crazy technology that we somehow don’t have, or are we sort of over-assuming the abilities of China and Russia and that the only other explanation is that if it is not us ourselves then it is something otherworldly?” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Panetta.
“I believe a lot of this stuff probably could be countries like Russia, like China, like others, who are using now drones, using the kind of sophisticated weaponry that could very well be involved in a lot of these sightings,” Panetta replied.
“I think that’s the area to go to very frankly in order to identify what’s happening.”
“It sounds like you think we should exhaust that out, exhaust that hypothesis first before you start dealing with other hypotheses,” Todd said.
“Yeah, absolutely,” said Panetta, who for the record is every bit as much of a tyrannical, thuggish imperialist cold warrior as any other CIA director.
This UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative has quickly been picked up and thrust into mainstream orthodoxy by all the major branches of the mass media, from Fox News to Reuters to The Guardian to Today to the BBC to USA Today. Whenever you see the imperial media converge to this extent upon a single narrative, that’s the Official Narrative of the empire. We can expect to see a lot more of this going forward.
Interestingly, the only mass media segment I’ve seen on this topic since the New York Times story broke which doesn’t promote the UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative is a guest appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight by Lue Elizondo, the military intelligence veteran who got the ball rolling on the new UFO narrative which emerged in 2017. Elizondo goes out of his way to tell Carlson (who himself has been promoting the idea that UFOs may be a foreign adversarial threat with cartoonish melodrama) that there’s no way these could be Russian or Chinese aircraft.
Elizondo, who seems to favor the UFOs-as-extraterrestrials narrative, argues that there are extensive records of military encounters with these phenomena stretching back seventy years, which rules out China since it could barely keep its head above water back then and rules out Russia because it shared its UFO knowledge with the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I don’t know what’s going on with that last bit; I see no reason to trust that an American spook is acting in good faith on such an easily manipulated topic, but it is entirely possible that Elizondo set out on this road out of a sincere desire for government disclosure on UFOs and is now trying to regain control of the narrative now that he sees the cold war arms race direction it has taken.
Chris Melon, another major player in the new UFO narrative, recently complained on Twitter that “some important information was not shared” with the public in the UFO report. So who knows, maybe the initiators of this new UFO narrative were acting in good faith and their efforts were just swiftly hijacked by forces beyond their control to advance preexisting cold war agendas.
Clearest indication yet that the Imminent UAP report to Congress was neutered by access problems, this from @ChristopherKMe4: “Undoubtedly, some important information was not shared, potentially for a variety of reasons. Congress should inquire about that” https://t.co/9jmZRDFdsH
— Ross Coulthart (@rosscoulthart) June 5, 2021
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Regardless of whether or not that’s true, it was always inevitable that this strange new rabbit hole of UFOs going mainstream was going to lead to more cold war propaganda. I’ve been interacting a bit with the online UFO community for the first time ever, and it seems like they’re mostly decent people with good intentions and a lot of hope for this new governmental investigation. But it also seems like they’re largely a community which mostly just talks to itself and is only just beginning to meet the cold harsh light of day that is the impenetrable depravity of the US war machine.
The US government is pure swamp; you can’t use the swamp to fix the swamp. Democrats were never going to use a Special Counsel to remove Trump, Trump was never going to take down the Deep State, and the US government isn’t going to investigate itself and tell everyone that aliens are real.
If there are indeed extraterrestrials and they are indeed flying around our world in strange aircraft, we are more likely to get the truth about this from the extraterrestrials themselves than from the US military. The war machine only does killing and destruction; it’s not going to suddenly develop an interest in truth and transparency. The sooner UFO enthusiasts realize this the better.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 19:40 - Pentagon Boss 'Clarifies' Russia & China Pose Biggest Threats After Biden Says It's Climate Change
Pentagon Boss ‘Clarifies’ Russia & China Pose Biggest Threats After Biden Says It’s Climate Change
On Wednesday, President Biden told US troops stationed in the UK that the Joint Chiefs told him “the greatest threat facing America” is “global warming” – a curious pivot from “white supremacy.”
Sooo…. White Supremacy was the biggest problem in America up until Hunter said the n-word.
Now we’re back to climate change… got it.
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 10, 2021
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On day later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ‘corrected’ Biden, asserting instead that the biggest threats facing the US are China and Russia, according to US News, (and who allegedly had a big role in scamming half of pandemic unemployment funds to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars).
“Climate change does impact, but the president is looking at a much broader angle than I am,” Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional panel Thursday morning in response to a question by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) “I’m looking at it from a strictly military standpoint. And from a strictly military standpoint, I’m putting China, Russia up there.”
Milley then backpedaled a bit, saying “Climate change is a threat. Climate change has a significant impact on military operations, and we have to take that into consideration.”
“Climate change is going to impact natural resources, for example,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee,adding, “It’s going to impact increased instability in various parts of the world, it’s going to impact migrations and so on.”
When asked how his assessment that Russia and China pose the biggest threats, Milley said “This is not, however, in conflict with the acknowledgement that climate change or infrastructure or education systems– national security has a broad angle to it. I’m looking at it from a strictly military standpoint.”
On Wednesday, Biden spoke to US forces at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, where he recounted an alleged discussion which took place while he was Vice President with the Joint Chiefs in their cloistered “tank” meeting room at the Pentagon.
“This is not a joke. You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming,” he claimed.
BIDEN: “This is not a joke. You what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming.” pic.twitter.com/apH7RtQWft
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 9, 2021
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In response to Biden’s Wednesday comments, former President Trump issued a statement.
“Biden just said that he was told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Climate Change is our greatest threat. If that is the case, and they actually said this, he ought to immediately fire the Joint Chiefs of Staff for being incompetent,” said Trump.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 19:20 - "Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of The Gun Lobby": Newsom Attacks Federal Judge Who Ruled In Favor Of Gun Rights
“Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of The Gun Lobby”: Newsom Attacks Federal Judge Who Ruled In Favor Of Gun Rights
Remember when networks and legal experts (correctly) denounced President Donald Trump for his attacks on judges who ruled against him?
Two years ago, I ran a column noting that Democrats were adopting the same attacks on conservative judges but the media was entirely silent.
Now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats are lambasting a federal judge who ruled in favor of gun rights in a recent decision — accusing him of being in the pocket of the NRA and a danger to the country. The response to Newsom’s attack from all of those same media and legal experts has ranged from outright support to conspicuous silence.
We recently wrote about the decision of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez to strike down the ban on “assault weapons.” In Miller v. Bonta, Benitez found that the ban on weapons like the AR-15 are based on both a misunderstanding of the weapons and a misinterpretation of the Constitution. I previously discussed many of the same issues surrounding the AR-15 which remains one of the most popular weapons in the United States
The recent decision led to a barrage of personal attacks from Newsom, state Attorney General Rob Bonta and legal experts. Newsom called Benitez a “stone-cold ideologue” who writes “press releases on behalf of the gun lobby.” He warned that everyone needs to “call this federal judge out” because “he will continue to do damage.”
Benitez has indeed ruled for gun owners in the past. However, he was upheld in that decision (which is still on appeal). In 2017, he struck down the state’s nearly two-decade-old ban on the sales and purchases of magazines holding more than 10 bullets. As recently discussed, the Ninth Circuit upheld his decision, which is now scheduled to be reheard by an 11-member panel. These cases have a very strong chance for review before the Supreme Court given the division across the country and the 6-3 conservative majority on the Court.
One can have good-faith reasons to disagree with both decisions. Indeed, I am all in favor of passionate and pointed analysis of judicial rulings. Moreover, there are occasions where a judge’s personal bias is an issue. Despite previously praising Judge Emmet Sullivan, I wrote columns that later criticized him for what appeared bias in his handling of the Flynn case. This is not such a case. Newsom is attacking this judge because he ruled in favor of gun rights arguments that are supported by many judges, lawyers, and citizens. These arguments have never been rejected by the Supreme Court. Indeed, he was relying on strong case law in favor of the Second Amendment claims raised by the litigants.
It is the strikingly different response to the attacks on the judge that caught my attention. As discussed in the earlier column, legal experts expressed outrage over attacks by Trump of judges as “Obama judges” or “political judges” during his term. There was however no push back on Democratic members denouncing “Trump judges” and “Trump Justices.” Esquire magazine published a column denouncing judges who ruled against ObamaCare, declaring that the Republican arguments “don’t need to make sense. They just need the right judges — and they’re everywhere in the federal judicial system.” One Nation article explained how Trump jurists “swarming our judicial system . . . will linger, like an infected wound poisoning the body politic.” CNN ran headlines about “Republican-appointed judges” supporting the ObamaCare challenge, while Democratic members of Congress denounced federal judges ruling for the Trump administration as examples of why new judges must be appointed by Democrats.
Benitez ruled on arguments that have long been discussed by many of us as raising serious questions over the constitutionality of these laws. Again, one can disagree with the arguments but they are not fringe or fanciful positions. Indeed, Newsom’s demand for an appeal may be great news for the gun rights groups. Liberal states and cities have repeatedly pushed appeals that resulted in magnifying their losses. The District of Columbia is a great example of such poor choices in triggering the decisions in Heller. Later the Supreme Court expanded on its pro-gun rights case law in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The Supreme Court just took up a new major gun rights case out of New York.
Benitez and his family fled communist Cuba and remains a powerful American success story. He was able to get through law school as a first generation American. Benitez was confirmed 98-1 and had the strong support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats. (Only Sen. Dick Durban voted against him). Feinstein rejected the negative review of the ABA based on his “temperament” and noted that her own inquiries found that lawyers “say he is a man of the highest ethical standard, that he has superb demeanor, intelligence, pragmatism, and fairness. And the chief public defender notes that he has good judicial temperament and is courteous to his employees and the attorneys who appear before him.”
Newsom’s attack omits that Benitez was upheld by other judges in his earlier decision. That does not mean that the opinion is manifestly right (Indeed, it is being appealed). However, the opinion advanced well-established arguments and authority in reaching its conclusion. A majority on the Supreme Court would likely agree with much of the opinion. It is not about him. It is about the law. That is why I criticized Trump for his attacks on judges and why we should be equally critical of Newsom and Democratic leaders doing the same thing now.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 19:00 - Former ADT Tech Sentenced To Prison After Spying On Naked Women And Couples Having Sex
Former ADT Tech Sentenced To Prison After Spying On Naked Women And Couples Having Sex
A former ADT security technician was sentenced to four years and four months in federal prison for repeatedly hacking into customers’ video feeds in North Texas and spying on attractive women and couples engaging in sexual activity inside their homes, according to CBS Dallas.
Tesforo Aviles (via the Daily Mail) Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty to computer fraud in January – admitting to adding his personal email address to customers’ “ADT Pulse” accounts, which gave him real-time access to video feeds from their homes. In some instances he claimed he needed to add himself temporarily to “test” the system, while in other cases he added himself without customer knowledge.
According to plea papers, Aviles watched numerous videos of naked women and couples engaging in sexual activity, which he admitted he would view for sexual gratification.
Aviles accessed roughly 200 customer accounts over 9,600 times without their consent.
“This deliberate and calculated invasion of privacy is arguably more harmfrul than if I had installed no security system and my house had been burglarized,” said one female victim in a statement to the court. “This sick and corrupt individual’s actions will have a lasting emotional and mental toll on me.”
“This defendant, entrusted with safeguarding customers’ homes, instead intruded on their most intimate moments,” Acting US Attorney Perak Shah said in January.
Aviles faced up to five years in prison.
Unfortunately for the victims, they couldn’t opt-out of Aviles’ intrusions like Amazon Sidewalk customers. You never know who’s on the other end.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 18:40 - Congressman Presses Secretary Yellen For Disclosure Of US Gold Activities
Congressman Presses Secretary Yellen For Disclosure Of US Gold Activities
As foreign governments reportedly accumulate gold and de-dollarize their sovereign wealth funds, a Republican congressman is asking tough questions of the U.S. Treasury about its secretive gold activities.
Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) – sponsor of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2021 (H.R. 3526) to require the first true audit of America’s gold in decades – wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week requesting detailed information about the U.S. gold holdings delegated to the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund and posed other questions.
From Rep. Mooney’s letter:
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According to testimony in 2011 by Mr. Gary Engel, the Director of Financial Management and Assurance at the Government Accountability Office, about 5 percent of the U.S. gold holdings were stored at the time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also stated that this gold is not considered “audited” and that no assaying or inventorying of that gold had occurred since at least 1986.
At the current time, what amount of U.S. gold holdings is vaulted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (or by the Federal Reserve using other depositories)? Also, has this gold been recently audited, assayed, and/or inventoried? If so, please provide me with a copy of any relevant reports.
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For what purpose(s) is United States gold bullion stored at the Federal Reserve?
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According to testimony by Mr. Engel, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds gold for other nations as well. Is the U.S.-owned gold stored at the Federal Reserve held in a physically segregated manner from the holdings of other nations?
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During the 2011 hearing, Rep. Luetkemeyer referenced a report that 261 million ounces in U.S.-owned gold is part of the IMF’s reserves. At present, how many ounces of U.S.-owned gold are in the possession of the IMF or pledged to the IMF – and where is that gold kept? Also, please describe the purpose and nature of this arrangement as well as what oversight procedures are in place.
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How much U.S.-owned gold is in the possession of and/or used by the Exchange Stabilization Fund as part of its activities? What is the purpose and nature of the ESF’s gold activities?
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Please provide details as to what U.S.-owned gold is currently pledged, swapped, leased, or otherwise encumbered – and for what purposes – including, but not limited to, arrangements involving the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), World Bank, IMF, and other financial institutions, foreign or domestic.
Mooney’s inquiry comes shortly after he introduced H.R. 3526 to require the Comptroller General to immediately conduct a full assay, inventory, and audit of the United States’ gold reserves and repeat the process every five years.
There is evidence the U.S. Treasury may have sold, swapped, leased, or otherwise placed encumbrances upon some of America’s gold over time.
U.S. Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV)
However, federal government officials have strongly resisted disclosure of these activities for decades.
To address these concerns, H.R. 3526 also requires a full accounting of any and all sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts, a full accounting of any and all encumbrances, including due to lease, swap, or similar transactions presently in existence or entered into in the past 15 years, and an analysis of the sufficiency of the measures taken to ensure the physical security of such reserves.
To fulfill its obligations under the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, Government Accountability Office auditors would gain access to any depository or other public or private depositories where reserves are kept as well as related records.
“People are rightly concerned about the state of America’s gold holdings,” said Jp Cortez, policy director at the Sound Money Defense League.
“The lack of full transparency by the Federal Government has hobbled public confidence. The Gold Reserve Transparency Act will ensure our gold reserves are accounted for.”
The full text of the bill, which has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee, can be found here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 18:20 -
- Cuba's Central Bank Suspends Deposits In Dollars, Citing US Economic War
Cuba’s Central Bank Suspends Deposits In Dollars, Citing US Economic War
On Thursday the state-run Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) announced that it’s suspending all deposits in US dollars due to what it called America’s “economic blockade” of the country’s banking system.
“Given the obstacles imposed by the US economic blockade for the Cuban banking system to depositing abroad cash in US dollars collected in the country, the decision has been made to temporarily stop the acceptance of bills in that currency by the Cuban banking and finance system,” national media cited the bank as saying.
The decision will go into effect starting June 21, and for now it appears indefinite with no end date for the restrictive measures being issued.
Continued US punitive measures which have greatly weakened the Cuban peso created distortions between public and black market rates of late, a disparity which has hit state employees who are paid out in the national currency the hardest.
“This comes as the U.S. dollar in Cuba’s black market has soared in recent months to about 70 Cuban pesos, about triple the official exchange rate of 24 pesos,” The Miami Herald reports.
“The Cuban peso weakened significantly against the dollar after the island eliminated a confusing dual-currency system that maintained one currency valued at parity to the dollar and another much weaker currency,” the report added.
Central Bank Vice President Yamile Berra Cires further cited as part of the rationale for the drastic move that some two dozen banks had halted business with the island in the wake of the prior Trump administration’s tightened US sanctions. She said the move is necessary to protect the local financial system.
So it’s not surprising people are gonna see this as in fact not the system saying no more dollars, but short-term dollar grab vis-a-vis the informal currency market. IE this:https://t.co/lSqP6QZYjw
— Michael J Bustamante (@MJ_Busta) June 11, 2021
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But as CNN’s Havana bureau chief Patrick Oppmann notes, the change also comes “just months after Cuba effectively dollarized stores. Now the Cuban gov’t seems to be trying to ditch the dollar as inflation has driven down the value of the Cuban peso.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 18:00 - Two Big Problems Are Plaguing Our Economy, New Small Business Survey Reveals
Two Big Problems Are Plaguing Our Economy, New Small Business Survey Reveals
Authored by Brad Polumbo via The Foundation for Economic Education,
With pandemic restrictions finally being wound down around the country, the economy should be roaring back to life. But we’ve seen much more muted job growth than expected, and we have a record-breaking 9.3 million unfilled job openings while millions of Americans languish on unemployment welfare. What’s going on?
Well, a new small business survey reveals two key problems plaguing our economy.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses regularly surveys the thousands of small businesses whose interests it represents. Released this week, its latest polling offers yet more proof that a labor shortage is restraining economic recovery.
A record-high 48 percent of business owners said they had jobs they couldn’t fill.
“The labor shortage is holding back growth for small businesses across the country,” NFIB economist Bill Dunkelberg said.
“If small business owners could hire more workers to take care of customers, sales would be higher and getting closer to pre-COVID levels.”
The source of this labor shortage, at least in large part, is the continued availability in dozens of states of unemployment welfare benefits that pay more than working a job.
Per Forbes, the average unemployed person can earn the equivalent of $17/hour staying on the welfare rolls under the current “temporary” expanded pandemic benefits (assuming a 40-hour workweek). Thus, many workers are disincentivized to return to work, even for jobs that pay $15/hour!
That small businesses across the country are experiencing an acute labor shortage should be no surprise given such dysfunctional government policy. But it’s a huge issue for our economy.
Meanwhile, surging price inflation is also a key cause for concern.
In the new survey, small businesses report big increases in their supply costs. As a result, roughly 40 percent said they are increasing their prices—the highest response to this question since 1981. The rising prices are a major concern for business owners, and one reason why their optimism on the near future fell in this month’s survey.
“Inflation on Main Street is rampant and small business owners are uncertain about future business conditions,” Dunkelberg added.
Where’s the inflation coming from? It’s complicated, but here’s the short answer: reckless federal money-printing.
“Nearly one-quarter of the money in circulation has been created since January 2020,” FEE economist Peter Jacobsen recently explained. But printing more money doesn’t mean we actually have more stuff, and “if more dollars chase the exact same goods, prices will rise.”
From a labor shortage to inflation, our economic recovery faces some serious roadblocks. While the federal government may have intended to help along our resurgence, both hurdles can ultimately be traced back to failed policies in Washington, DC.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/11/2021 – 17:40
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