- The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines
The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
I suspect a large portion of the public is at least partially aware when they are being pushed or lured into a specific way of thinking. We have certainly had enough experience with institutions trying to manage our thoughts over the years. Governments and mainstream media outlets in particular have made the manufacture of public consent their top priority. This is what they spend most of their time, money and energy on. All other issues are secondary.
The media does not objectively report facts and evidence, it spins information to plant an engineered narrative in the minds of its viewers. But the public is not as stupid as they seem to think. This is probably why trust in the media has plunged by 46% in the past ten years, hitting an all time low this year of 27%.
Except for pre-election season spikes, mainstream outlets from CNN to Fox to CBS to MSNBC are facing dismal audience numbers, with only around 2 million to 3 million prime time viewers. There are numerous YouTube commentators with bigger audiences than this. And, if you sift through the debris of MSM videos on YouTube, you’ll find low hits and a majority of people that are visiting their channels just to make fun of them.
The MSM is now scrambling to explain their crumbling empire, as well as debating on ways to save it from oblivion. The power of the “Fourth Estate” is a facade, an illusion given form by smoke and mirrors. Bottom line: Nobody (except perhaps extreme leftists) likes the corporate media or activist journalists and propagandists.
One would think that media moguls and journos would have realized this by now. I mean, if they accepted this reality, they would not be struggling so much with the notion that no one is listening to them when it comes to pandemic mandates and the covid vaccines. Yet, journalists complain about it incessantly lately.
In fact, half the media reports I see these days are not fact based analysis of events, but corporate journalists interviewing OTHER corporate journalists and bitching to each other about how Americans are “too ignorant” or “too conspiratorial” to grasp that journos are the anointed high priests of information.
I actually find this situation fascinating as an observer of oligarchy and being well versed in the mechanics of propaganda. The fundamental narrative of control-culture is that there are “experts” that the establishment chooses, and then there is everyone else. The “experts” are supposed to pontificate and dictate while everyone else is supposed to shut up, listen and obey.
Media elitists see themselves in the role of “the experts” and the public as devout acolytes; a faithful flock of sheep.
But what happens when everyone starts ignoring the sheep herders?
The other day I came across this revealing interview on CBS news about a poll of Americans showing at least 30% will refuse to take the covid vaccine outright. The interview is, for some reason, with another journalist from The Atlantic with no apparent medical credentials and no insight into the data surrounding covid.
One thing to note right away is that the discussion itself never addresses any actual facts about the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the mandates, or the vaccines. The establishment keeps telling us to “listen to the science”, but then they dismiss the science when it doesn’t agree with their agenda. When is the the mainstream going to finally acknowledge facts like these:
1) According to multiple official studies, including a study from American College of Physicians, the Infection Fatality Ratio (or death rate) of Covid-19 is only 0.26% for anyone outside of a nursing home. This means that 99.7% of people not in nursing homes will survive the virus if they contract it.
2) Nursing home patients account for over 40% of all Covid deaths across the US. These are mostly people who were already sick with multiple preexisting conditions when they contracted covid.
3) The Federal Government’s own hospital data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that capacity for hospital beds is ample in the US and that this has been the case for the past year. Covid patients only take up around 13% of inpatient beds nationally. The stories in the media of hospitals at overcapacity due to covid are therefore inaccurate or they are outright lies.
4) International studies including a Danish study published by the American College of Physicians have proven that wearing masks makes NO significant difference in the spread or infection rate of Covid-19. Interestingly, the states in the US with the most heavily enforced mask mandates have also had the highest infection rates.
5) In March of 2020, head of the NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci had this to say about mask wearing when being interviewed on 60 Minutes:
“Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks….there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.”
6) On Twitter in February of 2020, the US Surgeon General had this to say about mask wearing:
“Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Both the Surgeon General and Fauci later reversed their stance on mask wearing when it no longer suited the control narrative, and are now fervent supporters of enforcing mask mandates. Scientific data continues to show that mask wearing does nothing to stop the spread of Covid.
7) The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines are made with a brand new technology that has had limited testing. The NIAID used minimal animal testing on mice, but these mice were NOT a type that is normally susceptible to contracting covid the way humans are. These tests were completely inadequate, yet the mRNA vaccines were released for human use anyway.
8) The new vaccines do not contain the virus that triggers COVID-19, as a conventional vaccine might. Instead, Moderna and Pfizer researchers used a new technique to make messenger RNA (mRNA), which is similar to mRNA found in SARS-CoV-2. In theory, the artificial mRNA will act as instructions that prompt human cells to build a protein found on the surface of the virus. That protein would theoretically trigger a protective immune response. The entire Covid vaccine effort was essentially a giant shortcut. This is not an advantage, as the long term effects of any vaccine from 1 year to 5 years to 10 years should be understood before it is injected into human beings.
9) Multiple medical industry professional including the former VP of Pfizer have signed a petition warning about the new mRNA vaccinations. They say far more testing is needed before humans are exposed, and they warned that the vaccines may cause severe autoimmune responses or even infertility.
10) Numerous polls also show that at least 30% to 50% of medical professionals including nurses and doctors plan to refuse the vaccines as well. These people are facing the risk of losing their jobs, but they are still not going to accept the shot. That is how potentially volatile the mRNA vaccines could be; long term health is more important than short term risk.
When all of these facts are taken into account, along with numerous others that I do not have space to mention here, it is not so outlandish for millions of Americans to be skeptical of medical mandates and vaccination over covid.
Why should we worry about getting vaccinated over a virus that 99.7% of the population will survive without difficulty? Why should we allow economic shutdowns, medical passports or invasive contact tracing at all, let alone over a pandemic that less than 0.3% of the population is susceptible to? Beyond that, why should we volunteer to be guinea pigs for a new vaccine technology without knowing what the long term consequences might be?
Even if covid was a legitimate danger, no crisis justifies handing over our civil liberties in response.
The basic establishment narrative is this: “Covid is an existential threat to the public, therefore, we are justified in taking away people’s freedoms, their economy and their privacy. It is for the “greater good of the greater number”. Vaccination is infallible and cannot be questioned. The “experts” are infallible and cannot be questioned. It’s not your body and it is not your choice. Your body is property of the government and if you do not voluntarily take injections of whatever experimental cocktail we give you, then we will continue to erode your freedoms until you give in and submit. Then, once you have submitted, your freedoms will still never be given back.”
It’s not really a persuasive argument for lot of people.
Media outlets like CBS will rarely mention the overall issue of control and oppression tied to the pandemic response, just as they will never address any facts that run contrary to their message. What they will do is misrepresent the situation in order to gain compliance. The Atlantic journo basically admits this in the interview above, arguing that the media in particular needs to change the message to better attach incentive to vaccine compliance. In other words, people are easier to manipulate when they are tricked into thinking there is more to gain by submission rather than rebellion.
The medical passport system is the personification of false incentive. The media presents the notion that no one will be “forced” to take the vaccines; but what they don’t mention is that without the vaccine they will not get a medical passport, and without a medical passport they will be cut off from the normal economy. You can be vax free, but you will be punished through poverty and zero access until you give in.
My question is, why do they care so much if people don’t want or trust the vaccine? Why are they so obsessed? If the mRNA cocktail actually works and is not a health hazard, then they should be perfectly safe from infection. The idea that people who refuse are a danger to others is nonsense.
If we are going to start talking about potential “mutations” that bypass vaccine protections, then why take any vaccine? If mutations are really a threat and are not obstructed by current vaccines, then taking a vaccine now is useless.
And, why the constant attempts at public division? CBS and The Atlantic use an obvious ploy to assert that black and brown Americans have different reasons for refusing to comply when compared to apparently white conservatives. Why do they assume that black and brown people are not conservative or that we do not have ample reasons in common? This is never explained or supported.
Finally, as always the media seeks to gaslight anyone that disagree with the prevailing agenda as “conspiracy nuts”, presenting strawman arguments while ignoring all legitimate arguments on the side of liberty. There is such a thing as conspiracy REALITY, and none of these journos would survive a debate on a level playing field against those of us in the alternative media when it comes to covid and the vaccines.
The media and the government’s stalker mentality when it comes to people skeptical of covid restrictions and vaccines is unsettling. They act more like a jilted psychopathic ex-girlfriends rather than people concerned with saving lives. This tells me they are afraid. Their agenda is uncertain, and they have doubts. This is a good thing.
At bottom, covid is a non-issue that has been inflated into a crisis of epic proportions through storytelling and selective fact checking. Millions of people around the world die every year from a myriad of illnesses, some of them as infectious as covid. We don’t shut down our lives, wear diapers on our faces, inject ourselves with untested cell altering cocktails or sacrifice our freedoms because of this. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continues. Those who wish to take away our self determination in these matters are the real threat; covid is not.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Learn more about it HERE.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 03/12/2021 – 00:10 - SOCOM Fields Killer Robots "For Immediate Force Protection"
SOCOM Fields Killer Robots “For Immediate Force Protection”
A new R&D budget document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense reveals that Special Operation Command (SOCOM) has already acquired and possibly fielded remote weapon technology for ground robots, according to Forbes.
Called the Lightweight Remote Weapons System (LRWS), it’s a miniature version of the Commonly Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS). This unmanned turret enables an operator inside an armored vehicle to find targets via cameras and engage targets with high-powered weapons.
The R&D budget document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense said:
“LRWS rapidly developed and evaluated a remote weapon station with significant size weight and power reduction to enable operations on remotely operated small ground vehicles.”
The weight of the LRWS is only 70 pounds versus CROWS of 350. This makes it small enough to be mounted on a Foster-Miller TALON ground robot. The new system includes various sensors such as a camera, thermal imaging, and laser range finder. The LRWS supports a machinegun or a sniper rifle.
The document further said the LRWS is a “man-in-the-loop” system is controlled by a human operator rather than artificial intelligence.
“LRWS transitioned to US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) for immediate force protection of SOF operators while conducting the operational evaluation of the prototype units and will subsequently be available to all operators within the USSOCOM.”
“This suggests that Special Forces acquired the new remote weapon systems and are using them on unmanned vehicles for Force Protection, such as guarding a base perimeter,” said Forbes.
A SOCOM spokesperson said that the document “does not explicitly specify the vehicle SOF operators are using while assessing the prototype station in question.”
But, more or less, what’s important here is that SOCOM is already fielding armed robots on the modern battlefield.
The US Army is quickly developing and fielding light, medium, and heavy robotic combat vehicles to prepare for future combat as part of a rapid modernization effort.
Earlier this year, the service took delivery of two Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light unmanned ground vehicle prototypes (RCV-Ls).
What comes next is autonomous weaponry and how a line of code will decide what to kill.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:50 - China Is Winning The Great 21st Century Tech War
China Is Winning The Great 21st Century Tech War
Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,
China believes it is on track to take over the world.
At the ongoing “Two Sessions” in Beijing, the Communist Party has publicly told us how it will accomplish its ambitious goal. If the Chinese ruling party succeeds, the rest of the 21st century will be painted only in shades of red.
Fortunately, America is beginning to mobilize itself. Americans, however, need to act, immediately. Tech is the real arms race of our era.
On March 5, at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp legislature, Premier Li Keqiang announced the 14th Five-Year Plan, which begins this year.
China, pursuant to the plan, will increase spending 7% per year to achieve “major breakthroughs” in areas of “frontier technology.” Specifically, the country, will devote resources to artificial intelligence; quantum information; semiconductors; brain science; genomics and biotech; clinical medicine and health; and deep space, deep sea, and deep earth.
Moreover, Beijing is also talking about the Sci-Tech Innovation 2030 Agenda and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035. Officials are silent when it comes to Xi Jinping’s now-notorious Made in China 2025 initiative — the plan is on its face a violation of the country’s trade obligations — but there is no question that the effort remains underway nonetheless.
China is going all-in on what Wang Zhigang, the head of the Ministry of Science and Technology, called the development of a “new ecology” for innovation. In that ecology, China has been able to lead the world in important areas, such as “unhackable” quantum communications. Moreover, the country is not far behind — if it is behind at all — in quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
China’s recent progress has been impressive. A decade ago, Beijing was not considered a tech contender.
There should be no surprise how Chinese leaders made their regime a technology powerhouse. In addition to theft, they adopted a determined, methodical and disciplined approach to developing their own innovations. Beijing’s efforts to master key technologies have been massive, state-directed and government-funded.
Government funding has been China’s key tactic. The 7% figure of the 14th plan comes on top of a massive increase in tech spending in the last half decade. Ye Yujiang, the head of basic research at the Ministry of Science and Technology, just announced that China’s spending on basic research nearly doubled during the just-completed 13th Five-Year Plan.
Beijing’s effort depends on large, top-down projects. Take the National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, a multi-billion-dollar facility spread over 86 acres in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. It is the world’s largest quantum research lab.
The concept is to bring all Chinese researchers to a single location. Some, questioning the idea of a national lab, think it is not a good idea to concentrate the nation’s quantum work in one place. Others believe the “enormous bet” on quantum research is not smart in the first place because it draws funding from other crucial fields. Nonetheless, the lab is now China’s hope for quantum. “This may sound a bit old-fashioned, even Soviet-style, but it can give China a chance to win the race,” said Guo Guoping, a professor at Hefei’s University of Science and Technology of China.
As a practical matter, the U.S. government has not paid much attention to the development of tech in recent decades. For one thing, that is not America’s current style. U.S. tech efforts this century have been diffuse, and many people favor the hands-off approach. As Chris Fall of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science put it to the Washington Post, “The beauty of how we do science in this country is that it isn’t top-down.”
Americans companies such as IBM and Google have led the world in key areas, such as quantum computing, without significant federal support. Yet in building the world’s 5G networks — the fifth generation of wireless communications, which will permit an unprecedented connectivity of devices — the let-the-market-do-it approach has been close to a total failure. There are, for instance, no American companies that compete with China’s Huawei Technologies, which President Trump in August 2019 labeled “a national security threat.”
As Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and now chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, declared in Senate testimony in February, “The threat of Chinese leadership in key technology areas is a national crisis and needs to be dealt with directly, now.”
In this crisis, the U.S. is going to have to adopt a whole-of-society approach. “We need academia, we need industry, we need traditional defense contractors, we need the technology companies, and we also need small business,” said Steve Chien of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Chien also served on the AI commission, which just released its 756-page report.
In short, the U.S. to compete is going to have to ditch “free-market fundamentalism” and go into the business of tech creation. We need to start a series of “Manhattan Projects” — and fast.
Washington is no stranger to top-down efforts, such as the rapid mobilization during World War II, the 1960’s race to the moon, and the building of the Interstate highway system. Unfortunately, the free market cannot meet the emergency the country now faces. China’s approach is working, and America has to move fast.
The United States, Brandon Weichert, the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, told Gatestone, needs to invest at least $1 trillion and preferably more into tech.
Many concur. David Goldman, the deputy editor of Asia Times, recommends restoring federal R&D to Reagan administration levels. That translates into an additional $200 billion a year of such spending. “The Biden administration,” he told this site, “has said a lot of the right things about the need to maintain America’s technological leadership, but it is asking for $1.9 trillion of helicopter money for economic stimulus and very small amounts for the kind of tech investments that raise future productivity.”
Americans, Weichert says, perceive innovations “as nothing more than fanciful exotic technologies that one is likelier to see in the next iteration of Star Trek than in the real world.”
The Chinese, he says, “dare to dream because they recognize that bringing these dreams to reality in China will ensure that the Communist Party survives, thrives, and writes the rules of a new world order.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:30 - Denver Prepares For Biggest Snowstorm In More Than Century
Denver Prepares For Biggest Snowstorm In More Than Century
While much of the country has experienced warmer temperatures this week (something we outlined here & here), a much-needed change from last month’s polar vortex blast that nearly collapsed Texas’ power grid, a monster storm could strike Denver and surrounding areas this weekend.
AccuWeather meteorologists continue to track the weekend winter storm, making its rounds in southern California mid-week and set to arrive in southern Colorado late Friday and dump snow across the state through late Sunday or early Monday morning.
“The looming storm threatens to be a long-duration event that could result in snowfall totals that could reach 2 feet in Denver and pile as high as 3 feet in places west of Denver, such as Boulder and Fort Collins. Heavy snow will stretch north into Wyoming as well,” meteorologists said.
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said the snowstorm could “eclipse the seasonal total in one storm.” He said, “Denver has received 34.1 inches for the season to date. The storm has the potential to rank among the biggest on record in Denver.”
Winter weather advisories have already been posted across Colorado.
While Southwest, Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast regions are experiencing warmer temperatures this week, cooler weather may arrive later this weekend into early next week.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 23:10 - "I'm In A Cult!" – The Miseducation Of America's Elites
“I’m In A Cult!” – The Miseducation Of America’s Elites
Authored by Bari Weiss via City-Journal.org, (emphasis ours)
Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret…
The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls. They are usually coordinating soccer practices and carpools, but now they come together to strategize. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.
But the situation of late has become too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls. So one recent weekend, on a leafy street in West Los Angeles, they gathered in person and invited me to join.
In a backyard behind a four-bedroom home, ten people sat in a circle of plastic Adirondack chairs, eating bags of Skinny Pop. These are the rebels: well-off Los Angeles parents who send their children to Harvard-Westlake, the most prestigious private school in the city.
By normal American standards, they are quite wealthy. By the standards of Harvard-Westlake, they are average. These are two-career couples who credit their own success not to family connections or inherited wealth but to their own education. So it strikes them as something more than ironic that a school that costs more than $40,000 a year—a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board—is teaching students that capitalism is evil.
For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution”—unveiled this July, in a 20-page document—is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.
“I grew up in L.A., and the Harvard School definitely struggled with diversity issues. The stories some have expressed since the summer seem totally legitimate,” says one of the fathers. He says he doesn’t have a problem with the school making greater efforts to redress past wrongs, including by bringing more minority voices into the curriculum. What he has a problem with is a movement that tells his children that America is a bad country and that they bear collective racial guilt.
“They are making my son feel like a racist because of the pigmentation of his skin,” one mother says.
Another poses a question to the group: “How does focusing a spotlight on race fix how kids talk to one another? Why can’t they just all be Wolverines?” (Harvard-Westlake has declined to comment.)
“If You Publish My Name, It Would Ruin My Life”
This Harvard-Westlake parents’ group is one of many organizing quietly around the country to fight what it describes as an ideological movement that has taken over their schools. This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen of these dissenters—teachers, parents, and children—at elite prep schools in two of the bluest states in the country: New York and California.
The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.
“The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”
One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”
Parents who have spoken out against this ideology, even in private ways, say it hasn’t gone over well. “I had a conversation with a friend, and I asked him: ‘Is there anything about this movement we should question?’” said a father with children in two prep schools in Manhattan. “And he said: ‘Dude, that’s dangerous ground you’re on in our friendship.’ I’ve had enough of those conversations to know what happens.”
That fear is shared, deeply, by the children. For them, it’s not just the fear of getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a college recommendation, though that fear is potent. It’s the fear of social shaming. “If you publish my name, it would ruin my life. People would attack me for even questioning this ideology. I don’t even want people knowing I’m a capitalist,” a student at the Fieldston School in New York City told me, in a comment echoed by other students I spoke with. (Fieldston declined to comment for this article.) “The kids are scared of other kids,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.
The atmosphere is making their children anxious, paranoid, and insecure—and closed off from even their close friends. “My son knew I was talking to you and he begged me not to,” another Harvard-Westlake mother told me. “He wants to go to a great university, and he told me that one bad statement from me will ruin us. This is the United States of America. Are you freaking kidding me?”
Woke-Weaning For Harvard
These are America’s elites—the families who can afford to pay some $50,000 a year for their children to be groomed for the eating clubs of Princeton and the secret societies of Yale, the glide path to becoming masters—sorry, masterx—of the universe. The ideas and values instilled in them influence the rest of us.
That is not the only reason this story matters. These schools are called prep schools because they prepare America’s princelings to take their place in what we’re told is our meritocracy. Nothing happens at a top prep school that is not a mirror of what happens at an elite college.
What does it say about the current state of that meritocracy, then, that it wants kids fluent in critical race theory and “white fragility,” even if such knowledge comes at the expense of Shakespeare? “The colleges want children—customers—that are going to be pre-aligned to certain ideologies that originally came out of those colleges,” says a STEM teacher at one of New York’s prestigious prep schools. “I call it woke-weaning. And that’s the product schools like mine are offering.”
Photo: Olga Kurbatova/iStock
The parents I spoke with for this story are savvy and smart: they realize that it’s bizarre—at best—for a school like Harvard-Westlake to hold forth constantly about social justice as it drops more than $40 million on a new off-campus athletic complex. This is a school that sends out an annual report to every Harvard-Westlake family listing parents’ donations. Last year, the “Heritage Circle” group—gifts of $100,000 or more—included Viveca Paulin-Ferrell and Will Ferrell. A red paw next to Jeanne and Tony Pritzker’s names indicated more than a decade of cumulative giving.
Parents say that it is a school where giving more gets you more. Big donors get invitations to special dinners, and, most importantly, time and attention from the people in charge. Meantime, their children are taught radical-chic politics, which, of course, do not involve anything actually substantively radical, like redistributing the endowment.
“These schools are the privilege of the privilege of the privilege. They say nonstop that they are all about inclusion. But they are by definition exclusive. These schools are for the tippity top of society,” a young mother in Manhattan tells me.
Power in America now comes from speaking woke, a highly complex and ever-evolving language. The Grace Church School in Manhattan, for example, offers a 12-page guide to “inclusive language,” which discourages people from using the word “parents”—“folks” is preferred—or from asking questions like “what religion are you?” (When asked for comment, Rev. Robert M. Pennoyer II, the assistant head of school, replied: “Grace is an Episcopal school. As part of our Episcopal identity, we recognize the dignity and worth common to humanity.” He added that the guide comes “from our desire to promote a sense of belonging for all of our students.”) A Harvard-Westlake English teacher welcomes students back after summer with: “I am a queer white womxn of European descent. I use [ she | her ] pronouns but also feel comfortable using [ they | them ] pronouns.” She attached a “self-care letter” quoting Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Woe betide the working-class kid who arrives in college and uses Latino instead of “Latinx,” or who stumbles conjugating verbs because a classmate prefers to use the pronouns they/them. Fluency in woke is an effective class marker and key for these princelings to retain status in university and beyond. The parents know this, and so woke is now the lingua franca of the nation’s best prep schools. As one mother in Los Angeles puts it: “This is what all the colleges are doing, so we have to do it. The thinking is: if Harvard does it, it must be good.”
“Educated In Resentment And Fear”
“I am in a cult. Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s that the cult is all around me and I am trying to save kids from becoming members.” He sounds like a Scientology defector, but he is a math teacher at one of the most elite high schools in New York City. He is not politically conservative. “I studied critical theory; I saw Derrida speak when I was in college,” he says, “so when this ideology arrived at our school over the past few years, I recognized the language and I knew what it was. But it was in a mutated form.”
This teacher is talking with me because he is alarmed by the toll this ideology is taking on his students. “I started seeing what was happening to the kids. And that’s what I couldn’t take. They are being educated in resentment and fear. It’s extremely dangerous.”
Three thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, another prep-school teacher says something similar. “It teaches people who have so much to see themselves as victims. They think they are suffering oppression at one of the poshest schools in the country.”
It seems to be working. One Los Angeles mother tells me that her son was recently told by his friend, who is black, that he is “inherently oppressed.” She was incredulous. “This kid is a multimillionaire,” she said. “My son said to his friend: ‘Explain it to me. Why do you feel oppressed? What has anyone done to make you feel less?’ And the friend said: ‘The color of my skin.’ This blew my mind.”
“We Don’t Call Them Newton’s Law Anymore”
The science program at Fieldston would make any parent swoon. The electives for 11th- and 12th-graders, according to the school’s website, include immunology, astronomy, neuroscience, and pharmacology.
But physics looks different these days.
“We don’t call them Newton’s laws anymore,” an upperclassman at the school informs me. “We call them the three fundamental laws of physics. They say we need to ‘decenter whiteness,’ and we need to acknowledge that there’s more than just Newton in physics.”
One of her classmates says that he tries to take “the fact classes, not the identity classes.” But it’s gotten harder to distinguish between the two. “I took U.S. history and I figured when you learn about U.S. history maybe you structure it by time period or what happened under each presidency. We traced different marginalized groups. That was how it was structured. I only heard a handful of the presidents’ names in class.”
Brentwood, a school that costs $45,630 a year, made headlines a few weeks back when it held racially segregated “dialogue and community-building sessions.” But when I speak with a parent of a middle-school student there, they want to talk about their child’s English curriculum. “They replaced all the books with no input or even informing the parents.” The curriculum no longer features classics such as The Scarlet Letter, Little Women, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Flies. New books include: Stamped, Dear Martin, Dear Justice, and Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass.
“The dean said to me, basically, it’s important to change with the times,” said the Brentwood parent. In a statement, Brentwood’s director of communications said: “Diversity, equity and inclusion are critical components of our education and our community at Brentwood School. The events of last summer created a call to action for all of us, in our school community and beyond.” Brentwood has announced a late-starting school day on March 10 for the lower school “due to our faculty book study of White Fragility.”
At Fieldston, an elective is offered to high school juniors and seniors called “historicizing whiteness.” At Grace Church School, seniors can take a course called “Allying: Why? Who? and How?” The curriculum includes a ’zine called “Accomplices Not Allies” that declares “the work of an accomplice in anti-colonial struggle is to attack colonial structures & ideas,” alongside a photograph of a burning police car. Harvard-Westlake, in its extensive antiracist plan announced this summer, included “redesigning the 11th grade US History course from a critical race theory perspective,” among many similar goals.
A screenshot of ‘Accomplices Not Allies’
To question any of the curricular changes, parents say, is to make yourself suspect: “Every group chat I’m on with school parents, with the exception of my concerned parents’ group, they have a pattern of shaming anyone who shares anything remotely political or dissents from the group narrative,” one Brentwood mother wrote to me. “Once someone shames one person, many chime in agreement. The times I speak up to defend those they shame, they attempt to shame me.”
In this worldview, complexity itself is a kind of racism, nuance is a phobia, and skepticism merely a type of false consciousness. Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, plainly spelled out the logic on Twitter recently: “The heartbeat of racism is denial. And too often, the more powerful the racism, the more powerful the denial.”
One teacher told me that he was asked to teach an antiracist curriculum that included a “pyramid” of white supremacy. At the top was genocide. At the bottom was “two sides to every story.”
“‘Two sides to every story,’” he said. “That was on the racist pyramid.”
The pyramid of racism includes “we all belong to the human race”
“Mom, I Just Found Out I’m Racist”
But the most important consequence of the woke ideology isn’t a lesser English curriculum. It’s that the ideology, which seems to touch every aspect of schooling now, has changed children’s self-conception.
Consider this story, from Chapin, the tony all-girls school on the Upper East Side, involving a white girl in the lower grades who came home one day and told her father: “All people with lighter skin don’t like people with darker skin and are mean to them.” He was horrified as she explained that that was what she had been taught by her teachers. “I said to her: that’s not how we feel in this family.” It’s worth taking a look at Chapin’s various affinity groups, which have become de rigueur at all of these schools. (Chapin did not respond to a request for comment.)
For high schoolers, the message is more explicit. A Fieldston student says that students are often told “if you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.
At Harvard-Westlake, the school recently administered the debunked implicit-bias test to tenth-graders. It was technically optional, but several parents I spoke with said that their children felt compelled to take it. One mother confided that her son said to her, “Mom, I just found out I’m a racist and I prefer White Europeans.” Her child is mixed race. “For my kid to come home and be told by his school you are a racist—I was aghast. I was so, so angry.”
A Brentwood parent says that she has tried, in small ways, to stand up to this. “They say I don’t understand because my skin is white.” Children like hers are being taught to give up ambition and yield positions that they might earn through hard work to others who are more marginalized. “My child is asking me obvious questions like: If I work really hard, shouldn’t I get rewarded?”
A chart used at Brentwood includes the phrase “I yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized” as part of “becoming anti-racist.”
Doublethinkers in American High Scools
All of this “has made me think about race more,” said one teen boy in Manhattan. The curriculum, he explained, was trying to teach him to feel obsessed with his whiteness, the opposite of what his parents had taught him to do. Making students separate out by race in affinity groups is racist, he said. “MLK would condemn my school.”
Some students are rebelling, which, in this case, looks like becoming a Republican. But others go all-in on the ideology, which has created conflicts with parents who don’t. “The school has taken over as the moral guide, with me being the irritating person in the background who doesn’t really get it,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.
So children learn how the new rules of woke work. The idea of lying in order to please a teacher seems like a phenomenon from the Soviet Union. But the high schoolers I spoke with said that they do versions of this, including parroting views they don’t believe in assignments so that their grades don’t suffer.
Photo: GeorgePeters/iStock
In Brooklyn, a STEM teacher known to be friendly among skeptical students laughed when he told me the latest absurdity: students told him that their history class had a unit on Beyoncé, and they felt compelled to say that they loved her music, even if they did not. “I thought: they aren’t even entitled to their own musical preferences,” he said. “What does it mean when you can’t even tell the truth about how music affects you?” One English teacher in Los Angeles tacitly acknowledges the problem: she has the class turn off their videos on Zoom and asks each student to make their name anonymous so that they can have uninhibited discussions.
No reliable survey data exist on free expression among high schoolers, but last week, Heterodox Academy published its annual Campus Expression Survey Report, which found that, in 2020, 62 percent of college students surveyed “agreed the climate on their campus prevents students from saying things they believe.”
Relying on word of mouth, parents are trying to suss out which, if any, of the private schools in their city avoid this ideology. They ask me what I know. “I don’t know where to move him to. I yank him and it’s the same thing. But I have a pit in my stomach about sending him back for third grade,” says a mother at Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx, in a concern echoed by many parents. (Riverdale declined to comment.)
A Conspiracy Of Silence
When I began working on this story, I didn’t feel that much sympathy for these parents. Some 18 million public school children have not set foot in a school in the past year. A study released in early December by McKinsey and Co. found that virtual learning hurt all students, but students of color the most: remote school set them back by three to five months in math, for example. Such numbers do not begin to capture the crippling effects, including suicidal ideation, that this past year has had on what experts are already calling a lost generation.
The parents in this story are not parents with no other options. Most have the capital—social and literal—to pull their kids out and hire private tutors. That they weren’t speaking out seemed to me cowardly, or worse.
The cynical answer for their silence is two words: Ivy League. “There are definitively rumors that the school has like, say, three picks for Duke and that if you stand up against this your kid will get blackballed,” says one mother.
Another explanation is groupthink and social pressure. “Sometimes the smartest people are the easiest ones to fool,” says a father who recently moved his son from one school to another that he judges to be marginally better. “If you made a decision to go on the board of Dalton having espoused all these leftist views forever and you want your kid to get into Harvard, you are not going to stand up and say, ‘wait a second, guys.’ You’re just not going to do it. Most people want to be members of the club.”
I think it’s true that many people would rather violate their stated principles than be iced out of their social network. But this is a situation that goes beyond getting shunted to a bad table at the Robin Hood gala. To resist this ideology is to go against the entire institutional world.
It’s not just Dalton, a school that has committed to being “visibly, vocally and structurally antiracist.” Bain & Company is tweeting about “Womxn’s History Month.” The Cartoon Network is imploring children to “see color.” Coca-Cola employees were recently instructed to “be less white.” You cannot buy or sell the newly problematic Dr. Seuss titles on eBay. This ideology isn’t speaking truth to power. It is the power.
Most alarmingly, the ideology is increasingly prevalent at the local public school. The incoming New York City schools chancellor is a vocal proponent of critical race theory. In Burbank, the school district just told middle- and high school teachers to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. The Sacramento school district is promoting racial segregation by way of “racial affinity groups,” where students can “cultivate racial solidarity and compassion and support each other in sitting with the discomfort, confusion, and numbness that often accompany white racial awakening.” The San Diego school district recently held a training in which white teachers were told that they “spirit murder” black children.
“I don’t mean to get emotional, I just feel helpless,” said one mother through tears. “I look at the public school and I am equally mortified. I can’t believe what they are doing to everybody. I’m too afraid. I’m too afraid to speak too loudly. I feel cowardly. I just make little waves.” Another tells me: “It’s fear of retribution. Would it cause our daughter to be ostracized? Would it cause people to ostracize us? It already has.”
I have a friend in New York who is the mother to a four-year-old. She seems exactly the kind of parent these schools would want to attract: a successful entrepreneur, a feminist, and a diehard Manhattanite. She’d dreamed of sending her daughter to a school like Dalton. One day at home, in the midst of the application process, she was drawing with her daughter, who said offhandedly: “I need to draw in my own skin color.” Skin color, she told her mother, is “really important.” She said that’s what she learned in school.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:50 - All Vaccines Are Not Created Equal In The Eyes Of The Public
All Vaccines Are Not Created Equal In The Eyes Of The Public
As countries continue the push to innoculate their populations against Covid-19, problems with vaccine hesitancy are emerging to varying degrees. While this is not a new phenomenon, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that having a variety of vaccines available has led to some being viewed more favourably than others. A recent YouGov survey showed that up to a quarter of people say they would not accept a shot of a particular vaccine, in the hope they will be offered a different one in the future.
This not only hampers efforts to halt the spread of the pandemic, but also throws up an array of questions as to how governments and the media should deal with the information surrounding each of the vaccines once they have been approved for use. For an example of all these factors coming together we only need to look as far as Germany. According to YouGov, 27 percent of respondents there said they would not take the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, instead choosing to wait for an alternative.
The background to this is somewhat complex, but it essentially stems from the decision of the German government to not recommend the Oxford vaccine for those over 65 as the number of people tested in this age group during stage 3 trials was considered too small. This decision has since been reversed, but the damage to public perception was already done. On top of this, a reporting error in one of the country’s most respected newspapers stated that the effectiveness of the vaccine for the age group 56-69 was just 8%. In actual fact, this figure referred to the share of Astra-Zeneca’s test subjects in this age group, not the efficacy of the vaccine.
In the UK conversely, the Astra-Zeneca shot was rated better than both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNtech products in terms of perceived safety, as this infographic illustrates.
You will find more infographics at Statista
As well as the differing perceptions from country to country, overall differences in levels of trust can be observed, with France especially low across the board.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:30 - Biden Is Playing A Dangerous Game In The Middle East
Biden Is Playing A Dangerous Game In The Middle East
Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,
Washington’s new Middle East policies looks like sandcastle. Targeting MBS means putting region at peril. The new media frenzy about a possible full-out confrontation between the US Biden Administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a sign that Western political leaders are out of touch with reality.
Last week’s revelations published in a declassified report by U.S. security services on the role of MBS in the Khashoggi murder show not only the lack of proof available, but could also lead to a full divorce between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. A growing amount of Western media publications argue that the Saudi Crown Prince should not only be sanctioned, but that Washington also should reconsider its former in-depth cooperation with the Kingdom.
Several U.S. experts have been quoted in international media calling for a clear change in US strategy towards the Kingdom, including a possible removal of MBS as Crown Prince via support of former Saudi Crown Prince Bin Nayef or other Saudi royals. In a clear break with US power politics we’ve seen during the last decades, where the removal of third party power brokers was blocked, a new era seems to be looming on the horizon.
At the same time, Biden finds himself on a slippery slope regarding the ongoing confrontation with Iran, by putting additional sanctions on Iran but at the same time removing one of the region’s main Iranian backed armed groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, from the U.S. terrorism list. The results this policy change have already become very clear. A new aggressive drone and ballistic missile campaign has been started by the Houthis to hit Saudi strategic airports and oil infrastructure targets on the Red Sea and East Coast. The high-profile attack on Aramco oil infrastructure this week shows that the Kingdom is still under threat. Some even state that the attacks on the Eastern Province, Saudi’s main oil and gas production region, could not have been done without the full military and logistical support of Iran.
Still, the military capabilities of Houthi rebels and Iran are at present the least of the kingdom’s concerns. The direct diplomatic fall-out of the publication of an intelligence report by the Biden Administration in which the Saudi Crown Prince, who is expected to become Saudi King in the next few years, is being implicated as potential instigator and backer of the Khashoggi murder, is unprecedented. To have U.S. citizens and politicians call for new inquiries about the role of MBS and his security apparatus in the murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is one thing, but having official documents, declassified by the Biden Administration, directly accusing MBS is calling for potential rifts that could have a fall-out for the whole region.
The attack on Ras Tanura, which is Saudi Arabia’s main crude oil and petchem products export facility had an impact on the market. Crude oil prices spiked, but the effect was only marginal. Even that the current attack has not received the same attention as the Abqaiq attack in 2019, which had a much larger impact on Saudi oil production, the significance seems to be underestimated. A potential destruction of critical facilities in Ras Tanura would have been a shock to the market, even in the light of still high storage volumes worldwide. No oil flows however seem to have been constrained, so futures relaxed again. Still, the market should keep a wary eye on the area, as possible new attacks or even combined attacks on Abqaiq-Ras Tanura by the Houthis and/or Iran could be an option currently being discussed by Tehran hard-liners.
Until now, the impact has been only superficial, but taking into account the growing capabilities of Houthi drone and missile arsenals, or the vast, almost Russian style, capabilities on the other side of the Gulf, other options are clearly on the table.
What should markets get worried is the fact that in the eyes of Iran, Biden and Europeans have almost given green light to hardliners in Tehran to show their muscles. The ongoing Houthi operations are a clear sign that Biden’s current soft-power or even appeasement approach is already backfiring.
Washington’s diffuse approach to Iranian sanctions and the JCPOA is another bone of contention. In the first months of his Presidency, Biden has not shown any clear strategy, leaving too much room for interpretation. Whatever people think about former US president Trump’s policies, his Iran policies were clear. It seems that Iran has almost fallen off the Resolute Desk in the White House, no open and clear way-forward is being introduced. The only clear path currently painted is that Riyadh and Washington are on a collision course. The Biden Administration seems to hold the view that the US is still the sole power broker in the region, so soft power or pressure put on Arab regimes will reap the rewards sought for. This is a clear misconception, partly based on still existing Obama Era assessments, which are no longer valid.
Maybe to the surprise of Washington-based analysts, MBS is not sitting still. The Saudi Crown Prince, is making a lot of headlines with his aggressive economic diversification plans and dreams, and has shown that his international position has not yet diminished. The last days, a flurry of diplomatic and high-level meetings have been held in Riyadh, where Russian Minister Lavrov, Jordan’s King Abdallah, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and others have been holding meetings to discuss economic and geopolitical issues. Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat Prince Faisal also has been hosted by Qatar’s ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani on Monday in Doha, showing renewed interest in expanding cooperation.
At the same time, Saudi ministers have been flying to Saudi major clients, such as China. Russia is currently using the cooling Saudi-US relations as a possible wedge. Moscow and Riyadh already are cooperating fully in energy and logistics, as statements today reaffirmed. Both stated that the OPEC+ cooperation is still very strong and will continue. Moscow is very pleased with the Biden Administration’s lack of strategy for the Arab region.
Putin and his emissary Lavrov hope to be able to capitalize on Biden’s ongoing mistakes, not only in Riyadh, but also Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Egypt. A critical outcome of US pressure on MBS would also be growing fears in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and other places. A possible realignment of these leading Arab countries, leaving the Atlantic sphere of influence while joining the growing Moscow-Beijing axis is not the outcome that Washington or Brussels would like to see.
Pragmatism is needed and neo-realism also. As Machiavelli and Von Clausewitz clearly stated “to rule or influence a region, one should regard possible strong relationships with the Prince”. If removing the Prince results in a new Prince, instability is the outcome. Stability is needed, Biden’s Gulf strategies are counterproductive, to say the least. By indicating or affronting a “King-to-Be”, enemies are being made. Washington’s culture of backstabbing and rumor carousels are maybe effective in the West, in the Arab world “a man’s word is forever, friendship also”….but this is the same for making enemies.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 22:10 - India To Buy 30 MQ-9 Reaper Drones To Beef Up Border Security With China, Pakistan
India To Buy 30 MQ-9 Reaper Drones To Beef Up Border Security With China, Pakistan
As a great power competition roars between the US and China, Washington appears to be supplying India with dozens of armed drones to boost defenses along its borders, according to Bloomberg.
India plans to purchase up to 30 General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones, worth approximately $3 billion, next month. A military source told Bloomberg that the drones would significantly increase India’s military capabilities as tensions persist with neighbors China and Pakistan.
At the moment, India’s drones only have surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. The ability to mount laser-guided bombs and missiles will reassure Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that its borders are protected in case of a military conflict.
“U.S.-India relations in the present day are the result of decades of dedicated efforts by both countries,” Vivek Lall, chief executive for General Atomics, told Bloomberg. “The fact that defense cooperation remains high on the list of priorities for the bilateral relationship, is a sign of our mutual security objectives.”
The ongoing rise in tensions across Asia forced the US and India to sign a new defense pact last year that allows the US to share more satellite data with New Delhi. Increased military cooperation between both countries is aimed at keeping pressure on Beijing.
Picking up the baton from the Trump administration, Biden has continued the tough stance on China by building alliances to counter Beijing. Even NATO is looking to get in on the action. NATO recently released a report that recommended the alliance form a partnership with India to counter Beijing.
Despite Biden’s tough stance, there appears to be an upcoming high-level meeting between the rival powers that could hopefully simmer the flaring tensions over the last four years.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:50 - The Rights Of The Naturally Immune
The Rights Of The Naturally Immune
Authored by Thomas Harrington via The American Institute for Economic Research,
There is an important issue that, in the midst of all the talk of vaccines, has not gotten nearly the attention it deserves: the civil rights of those who have already developed natural immunity to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that is said to cause Covid.
Yesterday, I got the results of the test I took to detect whether I had developed a T-Cell response to the virus.
Like the antibody test I took almost 2 months ago, it was positive.
These two things would appear to demonstrate that for all intents and purposes my body knew exactly what to do with this virus and that it probably has the equipment to dispose of it again were it, or one of its cousins, to revisit me in the near-to-medium term.
And even if one or another related strain were to visit me in that future, studies suggest strongly that the attack would be considerably less virulent than the one I overcame without excessive trouble in December.
In a halfway rational world, what to do going forward in regard to getting a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be something I’d discuss with my doctor in the discreet quarters of the examination room. Were it to be offered, I would politely refuse it. And he, seeing the test evidence in my file, would raise no objection.
And since the danger to me in the future from the virus is minuscule, and the science has clearly borne out what Fauci and Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO flatly said was true before someone upstairs got to them—that asymptomatic transmission of respiratory diseases of this type is virtually nonexistent—I’d be free to live my life as I pleased without a mask, and with complete freedom of movement.
But instead of this, I am facing enormous pressure to get a vaccine in order to recover my basic rights as a citizen.
And even then, those in charge are saying, I will still have to run around with a completely useless, breath-robbing and personality-canceling mask on my face.
And all this for a disease that, even before the introduction of vaccines, gave those infected by it a roughly 997.5 out of 1,000 chance of survival.
The civil authorities have decided, in effect, that fully indemnified pharmaceutical companies, whose pasts are obscenely littered with fraud, and the calculated creation of crises in order to up revenues on their products (OxyContin anyone?), have the de facto “right” to force me to take an experimental vaccine that, in the very, very best of circumstances, will only match what my apparently well-functioning body has already given me without any side effects.
And this, while straight out telling me that even if I submit to their government-coerced medical experiment I will probably still not get my full constitutional rights back.
This is an important issue that needs to be addressed much more vigorously than has been the case up until now.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:30 - Fertilizer Prices Rocket Higher As Farmers Become 'Bullish' On Upcoming Growing Season
Fertilizer Prices Rocket Higher As Farmers Become ‘Bullish’ On Upcoming Growing Season
US wholesale fertilizer prices have been on a tear since December 2020 due to rising commodity prices, tight supplies, and strong demand.
Last fall, Rabobank forecasted that phosphate and other fertilizer prices would remain elevated in the first half of 2021 because commodity prices were accelerating. Now Rabobank reports phosphate prices have nearly doubled.
“With the increase in commodity prices, there has been an increased demand for fertilizers since last fall. This increased demand, coupled with reduced fertilizer imports is – according to forecasters – predicted to keep fertilizer prices elevated through fall and potentially into next year,” Jamie Patton, senior Outreach Specialist for the UW-Nutrient and Pest Management Program, told Wisconsin State Farmer.
DAP Tampa Fertilizer Index has nearly doubled since the start of the year.
Patton said the recent cold weather bogged down truck, rail, and barge transportation networks across the Midwest. This led to challenges for transportation networks to haul fertilizer from ports to Midwest areas. She said supplies were “already low or depleted” ahead of the winter season.
Demand for fertilizer began to ramp higher in late 2020 as farmers became optimistic about the 2021 growing season with futures prices of agri commodities rising.
“Many farmers capitalized on lower fertilizer prices back then and prepaid for a majority of their fertilizer needs for this growing season,” Patton said. “Additionally, with warm, dry weather during harvest, some farms capitalized on early harvest and good field conditions to apply nutrients.”
Other industry experts, such as Citi’s commodity desk, have also expressed optimism in the agri space.
Citi surveyed more than 100 farmers across the Midwest to assess fertilizer and crop chemical inventories and price expectations for fertilizers and seeds ahead of the growing season. They found farmers were overly “optimistic on the Ag cycle.”
Here’s part of the bank’s report:
We surveyed 100+ farm dealers across the Midwest to gauge fertilizer and crop chemical inventories, and price expectations for fertilizers and seeds. We also surveyed participants on CTVA’s Enlist E3 soybean system and optimism on an Ag rebound. Overall, respondents were very optimistic on the Ag cycle, which we had expected given higher commodity prices. Corn prices are trading at ~$5.45/bu compared to ~$3 in August 2020, while soybean prices have increased ~$5 to over $14/bu during the same period. For fertilizers, survey participants were most bullish on nitrogen & phosphate prices, followed by potash.
Fertilizer Pricing Indicated Up
Survey participants were most positive on N prices, with 92% expecting higher prices followed closely by 90% for P and 77% for K (Figures 2-4). Given the higher projection for planted NAM acres this year, it is not surprising to us that most dealers would expect prices to move higher.
Fertilizer Inventories
The majority of respondents reported normal fertilizer inventories (Figures 6-8), which took us by surprise. We are hearing that inventories are extremely lean. Our guest speaker Toby Hvlinka from American Plant Food on our March Madness call series mentioned that he could not find any phosphates and the US still has to import more urea In our survey 19% and 22% of respondents said inventories were low for nitrogen and phosphates, respectively, while only 16% said inventories are low on potash.
This all means that rising agri commodity prices and input prices such as energy products, fertilizer, seeds, labor, and even equipment will continue to have an upward effect on food prices.
Taking a look at the Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM), a basket of commodities, 2020 appears to have hammered out a low. Some ‘experts’ have said a “commodity supercycle” nears.
… and to capitalize on all of this, Citi points out:
“We remain positive on all Ag names, and our rank order is MOS, NTR, CF, CTVA, and FMC.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 21:10 - "Don't Go Down The Rabbit Hole" – NYTimes Decries Critical Thinking, Tells Americans To Trust Google Instead
“Don’t Go Down The Rabbit Hole” – NYTimes Decries Critical Thinking, Tells Americans To Trust Google Instead
Authored by Gavin Nascimento via The Free Thought Project,
A new article from the New York Times claims that instead of engaging with someone that challenges your worldview, you should “resist the lure of Rabbit Holes” and go to more authoritative sources such as Google and Wikipedia.
The New York Times appears to have declared war on traditional critical thinking, which they say “isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation”.
Sharing the insights of “a digital literacy expert” named Michael Caulfield, the article reads as follows:
“We’re taught that, in order to protect ourselves from bad information, we need to deeply engage with the stuff that washes up in front of us,” Mr. Caulfield told me recently. He suggested that the dominant mode of media literacy (if kids get taught any at all) is that “you’ll get imperfect information and then use reasoning to fix that somehow. But in reality, that strategy can completely backfire.”
In other words: Resist the lure of rabbit holes, in part, by reimagining media literacy for the internet hellscape we occupy.
What Does The New York Times Suggest We Do Instead?
Caulfield argues that the best way to learn about a source of information is to “leave it and look elsewhere”, by seeing how that source of information measures up to the existing status quo.
For further clarification, the New York Times’ “digital literacy expert” provides us with an example by investigating a post (which they do not offer any link to) made by Robert F Kennedy Jr on Instagram:
He copied Mr. Kennedy’s name in the Instagram post and popped it into Google. “Look how fast this is,” he told me as he counted the seconds out loud. In 15 seconds, he navigated to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page, highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which reads that Mr. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.
In short, the New York Times and their “expert” are telling us that instead of investigating the claims of someone that challenges the status quo and our understanding and perception of reality, we should instead avoid them and go directly to the authorities to tell us what to think.
Screen Shot Credit: Reuters
Considering the Wall Street Journal’s detailed investigation and an academic study both uncovering Google’s deliberate manipulation of search results (for which they have also been fined) and reports of organizations like the Vatican, CIA and FBI editing Wikipedia entries, this advice needs to be viewed with the highest suspicion for obvious reasons.
This is the Exact Opposite of How We Establish the Truth
Artist Credit Medi Belortaja
There is an expression that “rejecting something you know nothing about is the highest form of ignorance,” and that’s basically what the New York Times and their “digital literacy expert” are encouraging their followers to do. “Resist the lure of Rabbit Holes” and go to Google, where in just “15 seconds”, you can get the Truth from Wikipedia — It’s genuinely shocking to read this.
History is overwhelmed by examples that prove this method to be deeply flawed. Galileo Galilei, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, and countless others were attacked by the authorities for challenging the status quo. In fact, it could be argued that this has been a consistent theme throughout history and clearly represents that what the New York Times are encouraging us to do, is the exact opposite of establishing the Truth. No, it’s not a 15 second process, and no, you don’t mindlessly rely on the authorities to give you the Truth.
New York Times Has a Documented History of Spreading Dangerous Propaganda
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times has a well documented history of spreading dangerous propaganda and working with the authorities to uphold the status quo.
The CIA’s infamous Operation Mockingbird, which reportedly began in the late 40’s and continued into the 70’s, included the New York Times.
During the 1990’s, after journalist Gary Webb exposed how the CIA were working with drug traffickers, the New York Times and other establishment media outlets embarked on a campaign of character assassination claiming Webb was lying, when he was actually telling the Truth.
Correspondingly, in 2012 Glen Greenwald wrote an article on the “correspondence and collusion” between the CIA and the New York Times. In 2015, Professor Noam Chomsky wrote of how the news giant helped cover up war crimes for the U.S. government.
Frustrated Establishment Media No Longer Has a Monopoly on Information
Although this New York Time’s article is revolting, it’s also quite insightful as to how desperate some establishment media outlets have become in their efforts to control the narrative, which has grown more and more frivolous with the introduction of the internet where people such as myself can use verifiable evidence to expose how hypocritical and deceptive they are.
Please help share this because we all know the establishment is not going to expose themselves.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:50 - Firefighters Respond To Fire At Tesla Fremont Factory
Firefighters Respond To Fire At Tesla Fremont Factory
The Fremont Fire Department responded to a fire at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, on Thursday, reported local news station KRON4.
Reports indicate there was a “heavy column of smoke coming from the north end of the factory that is currently under construction. It has since been learned the fire is located at one of the two Giga Press machines,” said Drive Tesla.
KTVU News had a live news feed of the incident.
Firefighters are responding to a fire at the Tesla Fremont Factory https://t.co/jZI5JZrXnV
— KTVU (@KTVU) March 12, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
At this time, there are no reports of injuries.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:35 - US Intelligence Reveals Israel Has Bombed "Dozens" Of Iranian Oil Tankers
US Intelligence Reveals Israel Has Bombed “Dozens” Of Iranian Oil Tankers
All signs are currently pointing to serious escalation in the Middle East between Israel, Iran, and involving the United States – particularly after Israel’s recent claim of an Iranian sponsored attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman two weeks ago.
Signaling the likelihood that another red hot ‘tanker war’ is set for regional waters within the upcoming months, a new bombshell report in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reveals Israeli intelligence has been waging its own tanker sabotage campaign against the Iranians over the past two years, in order to thwart what Tel Aviv believes are illegal oil shipments that result in funds for terror groups.
“Israel has targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East, US and regional officials say, in a new front in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” the WSJ writes.
Previously published photos of Iranian-owned Sabiti oil tanker sailing in the Red Sea, October 13, 2019. It also appears part of the Israeli and US campaign to essentially starve the Assad government and bring it to its knees, further amidst near weekly Israeli airstrikes inside the war-torn country. The new report clearly suggests US intelligence officials knew about the covert tanker sabotage campaign in real time, and may have even assisted in some level of the planning or operations. Remember too that during the final months of the Trump administration Pompeo was essentially told he could go “gloves off” when it comes to greenlighting Israeli sabotage against Iran.
Officials say the covert espionage campaign has been underway going back to late 2019, which featured water mines being secretly attached to ships in order to stop ‘sanctions-busting activity’ in places like the Red Sea – which is a transit route the Islamic Republic uses to resupply its ally Syria of badly needed oil and fuel.
Interestingly, Iran has actually loudly claimed to be victim of precisely such Israeli mine and bomb attacks on the high seas in the recent past, which starting in 2019 were even reported in Israeli media.
See for example the below…
Iran blames alleged tanker attack on Israel, US and Saudis https://t.co/U6RHnGksFX
— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) October 16, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“In an episode last month, suspected Israeli operatives attached a limpet mine to attack an Iranian vessel as it anchored near Lebanon to deliver Iran oil to Syria, according to the first shipping professional,” WSJ continues.
“The attacks on the tankers carrying Iranian oil haven’t been previously disclosed. Iranian officials have reported some of the attacks earlier and have said they suspect Israeli involvement.” But typically when it’s the Iranians, Russians or Syrians making the allegations it gets ignored or batted down in Western press.
The rationale provided for such attacks in the report also includes that Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) typically operate or provide security for the tankers bound for Syria. All of this helps explain what appears to be Iranian retaliation over the past year – again, particularly the latest bombing incident against the Israeli-owned cargo ship Helios Ray in the Gulf of Oman.
Iranian tanker ‘deliberately’ spilled oil into Israel’s waters, leading maritime journal claimshttps://t.co/YnVKn1b1rL via @@i24NEWS_EN
— Elize Biermann (@ElizeBiermann) March 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The Israeli initiative also appears aimed at ensuring the disruption of Biden’s stated plans to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.
Chief executive for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz, summarized Tel Aviv’s approach as follows: “Israel stepped up the game beyond sanctions to sabotage,” he was quoted in WSJ as saying. “The Red Sea sabotage is keeping with a broader economic warfare campaign.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:30 - Hundreds Of Defense Contractor Lobbyists Were Behind New $264BN Nuclear ICBM 'Boondoggle'
Hundreds Of Defense Contractor Lobbyists Were Behind New $264BN Nuclear ICBM ‘Boondoggle’
Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,
A new report by the Federation of American Scientists set for publication next week will reportedly argue that US plans to spend up to $264 billion on construction and maintenance of a new nuclear missile are mostly being fueled by intense lobbying from the powerful weapons industry, not rational or humane strategic objectives.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that there has not been a serious consideration of what role these Cold War-era weapons are supposed to play in a post-Cold War security environment,” the FAS assessment of the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) project will say, according to new reporting from The Guardian.
Unarmed Trident II D5 missile launches from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska off the coast of California, via US Navy Last year, The Guardian noted, the US Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract to help develop the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) after the company and its subcontractors “spent over $119 million on lobbying in 2019 and 2020 alone and employed a total of 410 lobbyists including many former officials.”
In a February memo (pdf) on the nuclear missile project, FAS noted that “despite the growing number of concerns with the program, GBSD… accelerated under the Trump administration, in an effort to make it more difficult to reverse under a Biden administration.”
“Despite substantial reductions in the ICBM force over the past two decades, there has not been a serious consideration of what role these 20th century weapons are supposed to play in a 21st century deterrence environment,” the group said last month. “It is still early enough in the program to change course.”
The new FAS report will come as President Joe Biden faces pressure from progressive lawmakers to pause the new ICBM program. As The Guardian noted, the “Biden administration is preparing its first defense budget which may reveal its intentions towards the GBSD, which is in its early stages.”
In a letter to the president last week, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) argued that “at an acquisition cost of over $100 billion and an estimated total life-cycle cost of $260 billion, a new ICBM system would divert limited resources from higher priority needs.” Last July, Khanna tried to pass an amendment that would have moved $1 billion in funding from the GBSD to a pandemic preparedness fund, but his effort was quashed in a bipartisan vote by the House Armed Services Committee.
The full cost of this boondoggle is $264 Billion, but they nailed this -> “The GBSD project is outdated and the result of lobbying rather than a clear sense of what it will achieve.” https://t.co/KAQG6Wl1lA
— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) March 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“The United States does not need to be modernizing the ICBMs,” Khanna said at the time. “If there is an accidental launch of an ICBM, you can’t take it back. On the other hand, you can call a submarine back, you can call an aerial bomber back.”
In their letter last Wednesday, Khanna and Markey argued that “as the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in a conflict, the United States must play a leading role in ensuring that the most destructive weapon ever created is never used again.”
Kevin Martin, president of advocacy group Peace Action, wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams last month that “there are myriad reasons” to oppose the GBSD, including “the exorbitant price tag, opportunity cost of investing our tax dollars in missiles and warheads instead of human and environmental well-being, and its contribution to a new arms race that threatens global peace and security.”
“Let’s choose humanity, other species who have no say over nuclear policy, and the Earth, over omnicide,” Martin added.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 20:10 - Watch Live: President Biden Addresses The Nation (But Won't Do A Press Conference)
Watch Live: President Biden Addresses The Nation (But Won’t Do A Press Conference)
President Biden will deliver his first prime-time address from the White House tonight to commemorate the anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown.
Biden says he plans to talk about the next steps to address the pandemic.
“Tomorrow night, I’m going to (deliver a) prime-time address to the American people and talk about what we’ve been through as a nation this past year, but more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next,” Biden said on Wednesday.
“I’m going to launch the next phase of the Covid response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the American people.”
Additionally, in his speech tonight, Biden is expected to direct all states and tribal governments to designate all adult Americans eligible for a vaccine no later than May 1.
The president is also expected to announce a website and call center that will launch by May 1 and make it easier for people to find vaccine locations and schedule an appointment.
He will increase the number of places people can get vaccinated and expand the type of people who can administer vaccines or support vaccinations.
Biden is expected to announce the deployment of more than 4,000 active duty troops to support vaccination efforts, which will bring the total number of soldiers assisting vaccinations to over 6,000.
Watch the teleprompter-reader-in-chief live here (due to start at 2000ET):
However, as Philip Wegmann write at RealClearPolitics.com, America would like to hear from its president.
More than six weeks since his inauguration, and unlike his predecessors, Joe Biden still has not held a solo press conference. When the new president does speak, he usually reads from a teleprompter or waits for his staff to call on reporters. According to new polling from Rasmussen, Americans are starting to notice.
Fifty-two percent of likely voters say they are “very concerned” that Biden has not held a press conference while 24% say they are “not very concerned” and another 22% say they are “not at all concerned.” But Biden will, someday soon, meet the press all on his own.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has promised reporters as much, though she hasn’t said exactly when. However, the country will see the president tonight when he delivers his first prime-time address, marking one year since the coronavirus pandemic came to the United States.
He teased those remarks at the White House after an event Wednesday heralding the successful cooperation between pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and Merck to develop more vaccines.
The theme of his big speech? The struggles of the last year, “but more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next,” Biden said, adding,
“There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of this past year.” At the same time, he warned, abandoning caution would be foolhardy: “We cannot let our guard down or assume that victory is inevitable.”
More sacrifices are necessary, the president said, promising to outline the next steps in his Thursday night address and “explain what we will do as a government and what we’ll ask of the American people.”
As Biden started walking away from the podium, reporters shouted questions. He paused to answer just one: What will the U.S. do with surplus vaccine supply?
“If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world,” the president replied. “This not something that can be stopped by a fence no matter how high you build a fence or a wall. So we’re not going to be ultimately safe until the world is safe. So, we’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first, but we’re then going to try to help the rest of the world.”
He then walked away as the press shouted other questions. This has become the norm, a sharp change from his free-wheeling predecessor. For better or worse, Donald Trump loved to engage with the media members he told his supporters he hated. The former president did not just hold press conferences. He invited reporters into the Oval Office regularly and he stopped to take their questions on his way to Marine One, and also offered up a stream of consciousness on the news of the day via his Twitter feed.
Biden? No way.
“There’s going to be a weaning process,” laughs Moe Vela, a former Biden aide who remains close to the president. Don’t expect the new president to weigh in on every news cycle, he told RealClearPolitics. But Biden World insists he is still accessible, taking the occasional question during photo ops or after prepared remarks. The press should just get used to a leaner news diet.
“He is not,” explained Psaki when the White House declined to weigh in on Trump’s second impeachment, “a pundit.”
While the difference between Biden and Trump is stark, the difference between Biden and every other president in the last century is also remarkable. Analysis by CNN found that “he is behind his 15 most recent predecessors, who all held a solo press conference within 33 days of taking office.”
Why the wait? “Presidents most often answer questions in a press conference setting when they have something they want to say,” explains Martha Joynt Kumar, the director of the White House Transition Project. “That is when you call a press conference. That was true for both George W. Bush and for Obama.
“With an important victory, Biden is likely to soon have a press conference,” she told RCP. Passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package could provide such an opportunity, and none too soon. While Psaki briefs the press daily, the White House Correspondents’ Association wants more. “Press conferences are critical to informing the American people and holding an administration accountable to the public,” said association President Zeke Miller.
“As it has with prior presidents, the WHCA continues to call on President Biden to hold formal press conferences with regularity.”
Frustration is building. The Washington Post editorial board, which hasn’t been unfriendly to Biden, warned that “avoiding news conferences must not become a regular habit.” Presidential spokespersons like to spin this kind of silence as “message discipline,” but as the Post reminded the White House, “he is the president, and Americans have every right to expect that he will regularly submit himself to substantial questioning.”
Republican critics are even more pointed. “President Trump barely went 48 hours without holding a press conference and giving access to the American people,” tweeted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “President Biden has gone 48 days.” This silence was enough for the National Republican Senatorial Committee to dust off old talking points from the campaign when they once again dubbed the new commander-in-chief “basement Biden.”
The president hasn’t exactly helped the situation. While he spoke about the importance of transparency on the campaign trail, he now tends to ignore questions.
Biden on Tuesday visited a Washington, D.C., hardware store kept afloat by federal stimulus funds. He chatted with employees, and for the better part of the photo op, the traveling press corps stayed quiet. Eventually, they started shouting questions. “Come on, press, you gotta go,” the president’s handlers said as Biden milled about silently and reporters were herded outside. “You gotta go.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:55 - Why JPMorgan's Chief Economist Thinks The $1.9TN Biden Stimulus Won't Spark Runaway Inflation
Why JPMorgan’s Chief Economist Thinks The $1.9TN Biden Stimulus Won’t Spark Runaway Inflation
Now that the $1.9 trillion Biden fiscal stimulus is a done deal and the stimmys will be mailed out any day, Wall Street economists are lining up to opine on whether it will be sufficient to spark sustained inflation or not, and if so why. One among them is JPM’s chief economist Mike Feroli who overnight published an update on the fiscal package while stating his view that he does not see the package causing runaway inflation, despite it being a massive amount of money.
CBO now estimates the ten-year budgetary impact of the ARP will increase cumulative deficits by $1.85 trillion. This was somewhat lower than their prior scores due to the reduced generosity of the (still-generous) stimulus checks, a lower estimate of the cost of extending unemployment benefits, and the removal of the budgetary drag from the earlier minimum wage proposal. But this modestly smaller figure is still enormous by any historical comparison.
Feroli’s timid view is based on the fact that the fiscal package is not an immediate shot to the economy but will be disseminated over the next two years. $1.16T will be distributed in 2021 but this is overstated he believes that the $300bn for state/local governments will be spent more slowly, to wit:
Even so, we are somewhat less concerned than Larry Summers that it is too enormous for the economy to handle. For one, the federal government won’t disburse these funds immediately. CBO estimates that the budgetary impact for the remainder of the current fiscal year will be $1.16 trillion. Even this overstates the short-run impact, as almost $300 billion will quickly be disbursed to state and local governments who will be much slower to spend the funds (many of these governments are already working on their 2022 budgets). In addition, the extension of unemployment benefits will remove a near-term cliff effect—which is good—but removing a cliff effect doesn’t narrow the output gap, it prevents it from widening.
Of the remaining $680Bn, more than half will be stimulus checks. And while Those stimulus checks may see consumers save at least half of the payment, based upon last year’s behavior:
This highlights the importance for the economic debate of the size of the marginal propensity to consume out of these checks. Most of the evidence from last year’s stimulus checks indicates consumers were relatively prudent with those checks, likely spending less than half in the months following their receipt. There are sensible arguments as to why spending propensities could be larger or smaller with the ARP checks.
JPM concludes that while “time will tell, it shouldn’t take too long to tell” as “the checks will probably be disbursed before the end of the month, and the development over the past year of a number of high-frequency spending indicators should give an early read on how the checks are being used.”
Finally, here is the CBO scores as the largest elements of the Biden plan:
-
Stimulus checks: $402 billion; $393 billion in FY21.
-
State and local fiscal recovery funds: $362 billion; $284 billion in FY21.
-
Extension of expiring unemployment benefit provisions: $205 billion; $195 billion in FY21.
-
Aid to schools: $165 billion; $12 billion in FY21.
-
Increased generosity of the child tax credit: $109 billion; $26 billion in FY21.
-
Aid to union pension plans: $86 billion; $0 billion in FY21.
-
FEMA: $50 billion; $11 billion in FY21.
-
Testing, contract tracing, and mitigation: $48 billion; $10 billion in FY21.
-
COBRA subsidies: $37 billion; $28 billion in FY21.
-
Transit emergency grants: $30 billion; $10 billion in FY21.
-
Restaurant aid: $29 billion; $29 billion in FY21.
-
Child care assistance: $24 billion; $4 billion in FY21
-
Premium tax credit aid: $24 billion; $4 billion in FY21.
-
Rental assistance: $22 billion; $8 billion in FY21.
-
Various other smaller provisions: $262 billion; $149 billion in FY21
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:40 -
- New York Dems Launch Impeachment Inquiry Into Cuomo
New York Dems Launch Impeachment Inquiry Into Cuomo
Update (1900ET): What has been a terrible day for Andrew Cuomo has just gotten even worse. Moments ago, the New York Times reported that Democratic lawmakers in the State Assembly have opened an impeachment inquiry into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the surest sign yet that the governor is seeing his party turn against him following the sixth, and most explosive, allegation of sexual harassment.
Following a three-hour emergency meeting, the State Assembly announced Thursday evening that it would give its judiciary committee broad jurisdiction to investigate allegations of misconduct against the longtime governor, who has reigned over the Empire State for a decade already. During what’s being described as an official impeachment inquiry, the committee will have broad discretion to investigate Cuomo over the sexual harassment and his administration deliberately underreporting nursing home deaths.
“The reports of accusations concerning the governor are serious,” said Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie who added that the “Impeachment investigation” will encompass interviewing witnesses, subpoenaing documents and evaluating evidence. Heastie was among the state Democratic leaders who called on Cuomo to resign Sunday night.
Cuomo has had a rough day, with 59 Democrats in the legislature signing a letter calling on Cuomo to resign.
Previously, Heastie has signaled that he wouldn’t move forward with impeachment without a majority of Democrats supporting it. But according to the NYT, the move to empower the committee, which will launch yet another investigation into Cuomo, might signal a shift in the leaders’ thinking, and a major turning point.
The convening of a special judicial committee could signal a shift in Mr. Heastie’s thinking, but it could also give him more time to decide whether to proceed with impeachment. It also may give the governor some breathing room in a scandal that has overwhelmed his administration in recent weeks.
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has apologized for workplace remarks that he said may have hurt or offended women but has also denied ever touching anyone inappropriately and has urged New Yorkers to await the results of an inquiry by the state attorney general before passing judgment.
Nonetheless, the tumult from the governor’s compounding scandals has significantly complicated negotiations over the state budget, due April 1, when the year’s most important policy issues are decided.
Senate leaders have been in regular contact with leaders in the Assembly about their agenda for the next fiscal year. But the governor’s voice, usually powerful, has been largely absent.
Is it possible we see Cuomo’s resignation before the weekend is through?
“I do not believe this governor will resign unless impeachment is on the table,” said Assemblyman Phillip G. Steck, a Democrat representing an area near Albany.
At this point, the political pressure opposing the governor and political scion has never been stronger.
* * *
Update (1400ET): AG Letitia James’ investigation into the sexual harassment allegations lodged against Cuomo is strictly a professional affair. But following revelations that Cuomo aggressively groped a female staffer under her shirt, Albany Police Department officials said Thursday that they had received a complaint about the governor’s actions from a state official.
The concern is that Cuomo’s actions may have “risen to the level of a crime,” according to Steve Smith, a spokesman for the Albany police, who explained that the department had not received a formal complaint from the woman, who has not been identified, but that it had reached out to a representative for the woman.
News of the criminal referral elicited a strong reaction on social media, as President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “lock him up!” – a humorous reference to a popular chant started by his father and often directed at his erstwhile opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Lock Him Up!!! https://t.co/NFRcI1Mqyi
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 11, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 https://t.co/JczJEO7xCH
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) March 11, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Police have confirmed via the anonymous woman’s lawyer that she didn’t want to file a police report. Still, the issue was referred to the police in accordance with various protocols, according to an NYT report.
Mr. Smith said the call had come from the New York State Police. But the governor’s acting counsel, Beth Garvey, said on Thursday that she had called the police on Wednesday night and reported the allegations, after a lawyer for the female aide told the governor’s office that the aide did not want to file a report.
“As a matter of state policy, when allegations of physical contact are made, the agency informs the complainant that they should contact their local police department,” Ms. Garvey said in a statement. “If they decline, the agency has an obligation to reach out themselves and inform the department of the allegation.”
“In this case, the person is represented by counsel and when counsel confirmed the client did not want to make a report, the state notified the police department and gave them the attorney’s information,” Ms. Garvey added.
While the police department’s actions are part of standard procedure, the situation underscored the potential criminal exposure that the governor may face should the anonymous aide decide to press charges. Cuomo has denied touching anyone inappropriately.
* * *
Earlier this week, the Albany Times-Union, the newspaper of record for New York State’s capitol region, reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been sexually inappropriate with a sixth woman – another young woman who was apparently in her 20s when Cuomo made the aggressive pass at her – at the governor’s mansion.
Though her name has not been revealed (at least, not yet), the Times Union returned last night with an even more shocking report expounding the details of the encounter. Unlike previous incidents, where Cuomo made an aggressive and inappropriate pass at a staffer or a fellow wedding guest or awkwardly planted a kiss on their cheek, the Times-Union described an encounter where a young woman was lured to the executive mansion (possibly under false pretenses) where she was “aggressively groped” by the governor.
Although the under-the-blouse grope only occurred on one occasion, the young woman accused the governor of frequently engaging in “flirtatious behavior”.
The allegations by the female aide, who is the sixth woman to accuse Cuomo of inappropriate behavior, were first reported Tuesday by the Times Union. The additional details describe the most egregious behavior attributed to the governor to date – conduct that could potentially be pursued as a misdemeanor sexual assault charge.
The person briefed on the case, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the woman – who is much younger than Cuomo – told the governor to stop. Her broader allegations include that he frequently engaged in flirtatious behavior with her, and that it was not the only time that he had touched her.
As the Times-Union recounts, the woman says she was summoned to the governor’s mansion with a request to help out with a minor technical issue. The woman’s story contradicts Gov. Cuomo’s description of his transgressions. During a news conference last week, the governor apologized for his inappropriate behavior, but denied having ever touched a woman inappropriately. Afterwards, at least one of the woman’s supervisors reported the incident to a lawyer in the governor’s office.
Late on Wednesday, Cuomo finally issued a statement to the newspaper insisting that he had “never done anything like this.”
“As I said yesterday, I have never done anything like this. The details of this report are gut-wrenching. I am not going to speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation given the ongoing review, but I am confident in the result of the attorney general’s report.”
Despite being asked by the Times-Union about the sixth accuser’s account earlier this week, Cuomo told reporters on Tuesday that he wasn’t aware of any other accusers.
On Tuesday afternoon, several hours after Cuomo’s office had been asked about the matter by the Times Union, the governor said in a news conference, “I’m not aware of any other claim,” when he was asked by a reporter about the new story, which by then had been published online. That story included a statement from his acting counsel, Beth Garvey, who said that “all allegations” of sexual harassment made against the governor were being referred to the attorney general’s office.
New York AG Letitia James is overseeing a civil investigation into the accusations, and earlier this week appointed two lawyers – including a former top federal prosecutor – to lead the probe. Cuomo insisted that the investigation would vindicate him. His sixth accuser has declined to file a formal complaint about the incident.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:22 - "There's No Town Left" – Ten Years Later, Fukushima's Eerie Landscapes Resemble 'Ghost Town'
”There’s No Town Left” – Ten Years Later, Fukushima’s Eerie Landscapes Resemble ‘Ghost Town’
The largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck ten years ago today. The 9.0-magnitude quake triggered a devastating tsunami, killing more than 18,000 people and led to a nuclear meltdown in northern Japan.
Here’s what we wrote about the nuclear incident ten years ago today: “Nuclear Expert: “Fukushima Has 24 Hours To Avoid A Core Meltdown Scenario.””
The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is considered the second-worst nuclear disaster in history, forcing the relocation of more than 100,000 people. The world’s worst nuclear disaster was the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
A decade later, the area around Fukushima remains deserted, much like Chernobyl to this day. Many people have refused to return home, but some have said it worth the residual radiation risk.
“We had reasons to come back and the means to do so,” Ms. Kobayashi,68, told NYTimes, who managed a guesthouse and said, “It made sense — to an extent.”
Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, which had a population of nearly 7,000 before the nuclear disaster, now resembles a post-apocalyptic zombie world.
“I’m always asked, ‘Why did you return? How many people returned?'” Kobayashi said. “But my question is: What does that even mean? That place no longer exists.”
Source: NYTimes About 21 miles inland from Futaba, mounds of radioactive soil sit in a town called Katsurao.
Source: NYTimes Entire neighborhoods in Futaba are still littered with debris.
Source: NYTimes NYTimes said local government officials in Fukushima had received funding from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant owner, to repair streets, buildings, schools, and housing with attempts to lure residents back.
Some, who have called the area around Fukushima, are returning but in small numbers.
“They want to be in their hometown,” said Tsunao Kato, 71, who reopened his third-generation barbershop even before its running water had been restored. “They want to die here.”
Kato, whose shop is in Minami Soma, said the threat of radiation today seems less of a concern. However, he lives in an area that appears lifeless. TEPCO noted three years after the nuclear incident that more nuclear fuel had melted than previously stated – and maybe for good read people are staying away.
Source: NYTimes A decade later, umbrellas at a Futaba nursery school remain untouched – preserved in time.
Source: NYTimes Collapsed homes and other structures are pretty common across Futaba.
Source: NYTimes “There’s no town left,” Kobayashi said. “If you come back, you have to rebuild.”
Source: NYTimes Still, several towns in north-eastern Japan remain off-limits. It could take tens of thousands of workers and three to four decades to clean up the area and safely remove nuclear waste so residents can return.
While the Fukushima disaster becomes a distant memory for many outside Japan – billionaire Bill Gates is pushing nuclear energy as ESG euphoria engulfs Wall Street.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:20 - February Was The Worst Month For Growth Stocks Since The Bursting Of The Dot Com Bubble
February Was The Worst Month For Growth Stocks Since The Bursting Of The Dot Com Bubble
Back in the late summer of 2020, we urged readers to start rotating toward such “value” sectors as energy ahead of the coming re/hyper/re-flationary wave that would be unleashed by trillions in covid fiscal stimulus, whether under Trump or Biden (it would ned up being the latter). Others were also quite prescient, and none perhaps more so than BofA, whose CIO Michael Hartnett and Research and Investment Committee (RIC) head Jared Woodward had been pounding the table on getting out of growth names and into “value.”
Then. most recently, a little over a month ago Woodward flagged “bullish positioning and blind buying” of market “unknowns” – just as the Nasdaq hit it all time high amid record investor euphoria, that Citi needed a bigger chart to show it…
… as catalyst for a Q1 correction. What happened next was striking: risky assets peaked in mid-February with Bitcoin falling -26% peak-to-trough, SPACs -25%, The NYFANG index -17%, small-cap US growth -16%, and Chinese A-shares -14%. But not so much “value”: in fact as BofA shows in the chart below, February was the best month for value vs. growth since March 2001… which of course is when the dot com bubble burst. Everyone knows what happened to the Nasdaq after.
But while in the past such epic drawdowns in tech stocks at least led to a safe haven bid in bonds this time it was just the opposite for the simple reason that it was the puke in bonds that started the entire market rout. In fact, as Woodard shows, Treasuries have tumbled and are down -11% YTD, the third-worst start to a year since 1973.
The pain is hardly over: should the selling persist into the summer when the market tests the Fed’s resolve to do YCC by pushing yields to 2%, BofA expects the 10-year Treasury to suffer an additional 8% in losses.
This means that the bad news for any 60/40 stalwarts (i.e., balance funds and risk parity) is clear: since the pre-COVID equity peak on Feb 19th, 2020, US stocks have rallied 13% while TLT has lost 4%, completely giving up any “hedging” gains during the March crash. And gold (-9% since mid-Feb. and -18% since August) is just another bond, with a 78% beta to Treasuries. In short, aside from value stocks and crypto, absolutely nothing has worked so far in 2021.
The clear catalyst for this pervasive mauling has been widespread optimism that reopening means big consumer spending, strained supply-chains, and therefore higher inflation and earlier Fed tightening.
That said, as BofA notes “quite a lot of optimism about the reopening is already priced in”, and furthermore, we already have evidence of a big rotation to classic pro-inflation assets, which probably means that the great rotation is getting a modestly old. Indeed, Fund flows show that ETF investors have been buying floating-rate loans, energy, financials, and materials. And in bond markets, the spread between short- and long-term inflation expectations is the highest in the history of the TIPS market.
Which brings us to what BofA thinks is the most important question for investors in 2021: what will US households do with their extra money as the economy fully reopens? The consensus is that the record “savings glut” will be spent, but is the consensus right? BofA sees two possible outcomes:
- Big Spending: a sustained real-economy consumption boom, higher wages & services inflation; bullish for GDP, but bearish for stocks because of 1. Fear of Fed tightening and 2. “Mere Rotation”…recent market action shows it’s a zero-sumenvironment where pro-inflation trades are financed by selling down deflation assets (growth stocks, bonds, EM) as institutional cash levels are low;
- Big Saving: after an initial surge of leisure & services spending, consumption reverts to trend as structural forces of stagnation reassert themselves; households keep cash directed to saving (cash, debt payments, financial assets), Fed fears subside; net bearish GDP given supreme expectations, but more bullish for markets.
Pent-up demand…for what? In a follow up post we will explain why Bank of America is skeptical that this time we will see a flood of spending – and no, buying stonks in hopes of getting tendies is not considered “money-multiplier” inducing spending in the Keynesian sense, even though according to many this appears to be the most likely outcome.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/11/2021 – 19:00
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
