- US Color Revolution: The Not So Phantom Menace
US Color Revolution: The Not So Phantom Menace
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 23:40Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
“There is no civility, there is only politics…
The Bureaucrats are in charge now…”
– Senator Palpatine
The Black Revolution in the U.S. is proceeding according to script. We are into the 3rd act of it.
Act I was the Coronapocalypse setting the stage for vastly expanded government powers and the systemic undermining of the sitting President.
Act II was the summer of violence and fake polling data which created the illusion of a society at war with that same President for not addressing the needs of the people.
Underneath the headlines the forces arrayed against Trump were building the infrastructure to ensure that however the people voted on November 3rd, the outcome was pre-determined in their favor against him.
Act III is the election itself and the aftermath. The coup has begun. The pressure campaign to force the incumbent Trump, hated by the establishment, to concede has ratcheted up to eleven.
This is all very normal for color revolutions, just ask Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus or Viktor Yanukovich formerly of the Ukraine. We can’t ask Slobodon Milosovic. He dead.
But the one thing happened they didn’t count on, Trump actually winning the election by margins in swing states that couldn’t be overcome without overt and blatant fraud.
That’s created the opportunity for a complete reversal of the current results and a successful countering of the color revolution strategy, which rests on a media-made frenzy supported by foreign government leaders to oust the sitting president from power quickly without proper adherence to the process.
And that feeds the plot points for the next eight weeks until Congress convenes to certify (or not) the Electoral College.
President Trump refuses to concede the election, and rightly so. There are multiple paths to not only victory for him but also exposing the deep corruption of the election process and the people who control it.
Lukashenko survived the color revolution in Belarus because the attempt there was ham-fisted. It lacked the ingredients necessary to pull it off – identitarian division within the people and ‘corporate’ sponsorship.
The conditions weren’t ripe for that kind of result. All he had to do was offer reforms once the energy died down and make peace with Russia and he would survive.
Ousting him from power may not have been the primary goal, but achieving the secondary goal of severing EU and US ties to it and forcing Russia to devote resources to Belarus is almost as important.
So, if Trump wants to lead the nation he has to show it by fighting tooth and claw, just like Lukashenko did. And that means organizing support for him across the country. This is why he is incredibly smart to organize rallies. According to Axios:
President Trump plans to brandish obituaries of people who supposedly voted but are dead — plus hold campaign-style rallies — in an effort to prolong his fight against apparent insurmountable election results, four Trump advisers told me during a conference call this afternoon.
“Insurmountable election results??” Really? A few thousand votes separates Trump from outright sweeping all the battleground states whose vote totals are very sketchy and this is ‘insurmountable?’
This is what I mean by the pressure campaign having gone plaid. There is no responsible journalism left within the major media outlets.
Only those who were forced out on principle or corruption have the ability to speak their mind now.
Martina, the vitriol went well beyond Trump-some 70m ppl have been called vile, bigots, racists & xenophobes & are now being threatened w/being put on target “lists” as punishment for supporting him. They’ve been demonized by the very ppl now sanctimoniously demanding “civility.” https://t.co/sjiZebqWBm
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 8, 2020
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Never in a million years would I look to Megyn Kelly for the voice of rationality. But it looks like being excommunicated from the inner circle does wonders for one’s ability to tell the truth.
The division today was cynically stoked and nurtured for this current operation to effect this exact result. The bigger point Megyn doesn’t articulate is that this division is exactly the kind of ‘secondary goal’ desired if Trump prevails in the courts or through the Electoral College.
Regardless of the outcome that division cuts deep enough to ensure an America permanently weakened, ripe for a complete remaking into a hellish place. There is a full-court press on right now across the world to attack sovereignty of important states whose populations are dissident to The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset — notably the U.K., the U.S., Poland and Russia.
Trump’s fight is their fight. His supporters and sovereigntists of all stripes are to be ritualistically humiliated by every headline, every utterance, every Tweet and every newscast between now and when the State Legislatures meet to select slates of Electors in December.
The media will never concede they were wrong, will never report on anything fairly. They are in on the grift. Looking for them to admit anything is a waste of energy and time. Simply turn them off and become #Ungovernable.
This is a psychological war now, designed to rob you of your reason and sap your willingness to fight by creating an overwhelming picture of Trump as the bad guy, Quixotically clinging to power we’re being told he’s already lost.
But Megyn Kelly is right in telling people that there will be no reconciliation without acceptance. And since, at its core, leftism is a religion without the ability to forgive, since it is vehemently anti-Christian, there will be no acceptance back into the fold, including for her.
It will be marginalization, retribution and continued vitriol of all Trump supporters and anyone not down with being reset into the grand vision of the New
SovietGreen Man.They haven’t even secured the presidency yet and BLM/Antifa are already turning on white Biden supporters who are urging peace.
Tommy Robinson News, Nov 9
Biden voter: “Here’s my Biden sign, be peaceful”BLM: “nobody cares about your white ass opinion…asking us to be peaceful is white supremacy”
Be careful what you wish for springs to mind. pic.twitter.com/qqxKe9KCOB
— TROLL HUNTER AKA Katie Hopkins.✊🏼🤫😉 (@BrettEverest) November 9, 2020
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Nothing shields you from the mob once the mob gets going. I hope this person’s conscience is clean that he did his part to stop Orange Man Bad because once this is over, that’s all he’ll have left.
Klaus Schwab told you this. You’ll Own Nothing and be Happy.
Or else.
The choice was struggle sessions or Trump rallies. I told you months ago you would be faced with the Hobson’s Choice of accepting their dystopic future or having your house burned down.
Millions chose poorly last week and they will have massive buyer’s remorse as the plans are rolled out and they are sacrificed.
Don’t believe me? Ask Ukrainians if they are better off six years after their color revolution or not? That one was successful.
Act III of a color revolution is the most dangerous. It is the one where chaos can reign for months and the balance tipped by the slimmest of margins. But in the end it always comes down to the willingness of the people to decide their future.
Because taking down the U.S. is such a monumental undertaking they had to create a problem global in scale, COVID-19.
The U.S. has everything against it in this situation. The oligarchy and its quislings are firmly in command of the narrative. There are real, deep divisions to keep people fighting each other while the oligarchs proceed with their plans.
Trump is trying to marshal a counter-revolution on the ground and in the courts. The evidence will be presented. Apparatchiks will ignore their orders. Protests will miraculously spring up in all the right places.
The media will misrepresent everything.
It will be up to us to decide which way the State Legislatures decide whose electors go to Washington D.C. next month by putting real pressure on them to act on their conscience and the evidence. That’s the law.
But the menace of it is real and it won’t go away regardless of the outcome of the election. It no longer lurks in the shadows. It slouches towards Washington waiting to be reborn.
* * *
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DASH: XpqS5Ug1hrgRhb82k3bZi1mNg15DsyTyio - "Catastrophic Collisions" – NASA Warns About New 5G Satellite Constellation
"Catastrophic Collisions" – NASA Warns About New 5G Satellite Constellation
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 23:20Several private companies are planning to launch large, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. NASA, who generally doesn’t comment on these types of developments, recently published a stark warning for AST & Science, which intends to launch a massive constellation of hundreds of large 5G satellites.
NASA engineer Samantha Fonder expressed concern about AST’s 5G mega constellation of satellites in a recently penned letter to FCC’s Marleen Dortch, about how the space agency worries its assets in orbit could experience a “catastrophic collision,” reported Ars Technica.
“NASA submits this letter during the public comment period for the purpose of providing a better understanding of NASA’s concerns with respect to its assets on-orbit, to further mitigate the risks of collisions for the mutual benefit of all involved,” Fonder wrote.
Since AST’s satellites are large, she noted that they could cause thousands of probable accidents every year. AST insists it’s committed to resolving the issues with NASA.
Aside from the satellites’ size, Fonder fears that AST’s inexperience could result in a high rate of satellites failing to achieve orbit.
Fonder added, “for the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities. This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”
At the end of the letter, she requests the FCC, given the size of AST’s satellites and inexperience, along with the heightened probabilities that collision could be seen as LEO has been transformed into a crowded mess of satellites and space debris, that “AST should consider alternative orbit regimes for this constellation.”
Besides Fonder’s warning, the European Space Agency (ESA) also warned about thousands of new satellites and dangerous space debris that have jammed up Earth’s orbit.
While it becomes clear space debris is becoming a significant issue, ESA recently awarded the Swiss startup company Clearpace, a $117 million contract, to remove space debris from orbit. Though the program to remove space junk won’t start until 2025.
Judging by ESA’s animation above of satellites and space junk, collisions are bound to happen…
- We Honor Veterans By Preventing Homelessness, Suicide
We Honor Veterans By Preventing Homelessness, Suicide
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 23:00Authored by Brendan Cushing-Daniels & Christopher R. Fee via RealClearPolitics.com,
We hope the incoming administration makes honoring our veterans a priority, not just today but all year long. President Dwight D. Eisenhower created Veterans Day to show the same commitment to veterans that he showed our troops during World War II.
Our veterans are our noblest citizens. Yet too many who helped preserve our freedoms wind up homeless, or even more tragically, take their own lives.
Two years ago, John Scott Hannon, a decorated veteran of 23 years and a former top-ranked Navy SEAL platoon commander, died by his own hand as a result of his invisible wounds of war. We wish we could say this was an isolated case, but the fact is that among those who have served, suicide is more lethal than the battlefield.
In the last 14 years, nearly 18,000 Americans died while on active duty in the military. During that period, 73,000 veterans took their own lives. Moreover, veterans who were homeless at any point in their lives were 75% more likely to die by suicide compared to other veterans. More than two-thirds of the veterans who took their own lives had no recent contact with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA). That fraction is certainly much higher for veterans experiencing homelessness.
Suicide prevention is the top clinical priority of the VA, which has requested an additional $76 million for suicide prevention in the coming year. Its efforts, and those of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are reducing suicide and improving housing stability.
In 2018, the VA introduced universal screening for suicide risk in all primary-care settings, evaluating nearly 4 million veterans in the first two years. Veterans, particularly those experiencing homelessness, are unlikely to engage in therapies requiring regular visits, so the VA has pioneered a 20- to 40-minute intervention program to develop coping strategies and reduce access to potential suicide methods like firearms and drugs.
Early results are promising. In the six months following the intervention, veterans are 45% less likely to attempt suicide, compared to veterans who are simply referred to follow-up care. Over the past four years, studies show that homeless veterans who used at least one homeless program were 20% less likely than other homeless veterans to die of suicide.
Homelessness is a key predictor of veteran suicide, but the good news is that programs are working. Between 2010 and 2017, 600,000 veterans and their families have been housed or prevented from becoming homeless.
Although we applaud these efforts, there is much work left to be done, and every single day, not just on Veterans Day.
The Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act of 2019 sits on the president’s desk awaiting his signature. Among other things, this legislation directs the VA to create a job description specific to this problem for mental health counselors, expands funding for suicide prevention, and increases access to cognitive behavioral therapy.
Commander Hannon was born to a life of service to country to parents serving in the diplomatic corps. His own, ultimately fatal, invisible wounds of war animated his fight for mental health services for all veterans. Veterans Day is an appropriate time for us to reflect on the sacrifices of all service members and for us to recommit to providing veterans the care they deserve when they come home.
In Ike’s words, “Let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom.” But on that day and every other day, let Americans “pay appropriate homage” to our veterans by providing them with the housing, resources, and support systems they need and deserve.
Signing the act won’t accomplish all of that, but it would be a good faith gesture, and a tiny step in the right direction.
- "A Vaccine For The Rich" – Pfizer's COVID-19 Jab Almost Impossible To Distribute In Poorer Countries
"A Vaccine For The Rich" – Pfizer's COVID-19 Jab Almost Impossible To Distribute In Poorer Countries
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 22:40A logistical “roadmap” from Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical has been released showing the staggering logistical feats required to transport and store the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has just been christened by Bloomberg as “the vaccine of the rich”.
Offering some more insight into details that have been the subject of much speculation on Wall Street, Bloomberg reported on this “complex and costly” private network that companies are building to help distribute vaccines like Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine (a technology that’s also being used by another leading candidate, Moderna), that is, once it has finally been approved.
Countries that don’t already have these networks will need to build them from scratch if they wish to substantially reduce the supply bottleneck, which would be “a herculean task”.
That means that countries will need to build from scratch the deep-freeze production, storage and transportation networks needed for the vaccine to survive. This massive investment and coordination required all but guarantees that only rich nations will manage to dial up access, with the wealthy first in line to receive their doses.
“Its production is costly, its component is unstable, it also requires cold-chain transportation and has a short shelf life,” said Ding Sheng, director of the Beijing-based Global Health Drug Discovery Institute, which has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The WHO and Bill Gates have invested plenty of time on a PR campaign warning that access to the vaccine must be made ‘universal’ – that is, extended to all of earth’s 7.7 billion people – or humanity won’t manage to eradicate COVID-19. Together, they’ve backed a project called ‘Covax’ which aims to raise $18 billion to pay for vaccines for poorer countries.
But even once they’ve been paid for, the task remains: how can we physically ship and store them in such vast quantities?
The massive expense of the infrastructure investment means many of these poorer countries are now faced with a difficult choice: invest in the supply network, even before the vaccines have been approved, and take a risk should unforeseen complications arise, or wait to see how everything pans out for the developed world, sacrificing valuable time. Many of these economies could simply wait longer until more conventional vaccines, using other technologies, such as Russia’s adenovirus-vector vaccine, are available. Generally speaking, mRNA vaccines are a new class of vaccines, which is why some are apprehensive about the long-term side effects, which can’t be reliably studied.
“If there is a protein-based vaccine that could achieve the same effect as an mRNA vaccine does and there’s the need to vaccinate billions of people every year, I’d go for the protein-based shots in the long run,” Ding said.
Countries like India are facing particular difficulties given that shipping regular consumer goods remains a difficult, even treacherous, process across much of the country’s hinterland. Health-care experts in the country have already dismissed sub-zero storage as completely unworkable – “just forget it, one said.”
Many working in the country’s public health and the pharmaceutical industry have already voiced concern that India lacks the necessary capacity and capability to deliver a vaccine across its vast rural hinterland and population of over 1.3 billion people at the breakneck speed now expected.
“Most of these vaccines need minus 70 degrees, which we just can’t do in India, just forget it,” said T. Sundararaman, a New Delhi-based global coordinator of the People’s Health Movement, an organization that brings together local activists, academics and civil society groups working on public health.
“Our current cold chains are not able to cope with some districts’ need for measles vaccines, and that’s only for children below the age of 3,” he said. “That’s a really trivial number of people compared to the numbers that will need a Covid-19 vaccine.”
When asked at a Tuesday briefing if India’s government would look to buy any of the Pfizer vaccine, Rajesh Bhushan, the secretary at the health ministry, said New Delhi is in talks with all vaccine manufacturers. He added that India was in a position to “augment and strengthen” its existing cold-chain capacity, but declined to release any purchase details immediately.
So, judging by the way things are going…
…it looks like the world is headed for a tiered system: one vaccine for the wealthy, and one another for the poor.
- Get Ready For Chaos Regardless Of Who Ends Up In The White House
Get Ready For Chaos Regardless Of Who Ends Up In The White House
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 22:20Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
In July of this year in my article ‘Election 2020: The Worst Case Scenario Is The Most Likely One’, after I outlined the strange factors surrounding Biden and Trump, I stated that:
“These factors and more lead me to predict that Election 2020 will be a contested election which ends with Trump staying in office but accused of usurping the democratic process. This outcome is the worst possible outcome and also the most advantageous for the globalist establishment.”
I also noted the predictive programming campaign by the media and members of the Council On Foreign Relations like Max Boot to acclimated the public to the idea of a contested election while also “wargaming” (planning) that exact outcome. I stated:
“…Boot is back again, this time writing about how he thinks Donald Trump will try to “hijack” the presidency in 2020.
In an article for the Washington post titled ‘What If Trump Loses But Insists He Won’, Boot outlines a scenario that was “war gamed” by a group called the Transition Integrity Project. The group played out a scenario in which there is a razor thin victory for Joe Biden, followed by actions by Trump to keep control of the presidency through lies and legal wrangling. The group also predicted civil unrest leading to potential “civil war” as the fight over the White House expands.
This article is, I believe, an attempt at predictive programming by the establishment. They are TELLING US exactly what is about to happen. A contested election, civil war, martial law, economic collapse and the US will be destroyed from within.”
So far it appears my prediction was correct. As I write this the Trump Administration is filing suit in Pennsylvania over suspicious ballot actions including blocking Republican observers from watching the vote count. The fact that PA is allowing mail-in votes to be counted even though they are postmarked well after the cut-off date will also come into question. Evidence of ballot fraud is popping up in multiple swing states; it’s starting to look like Trump might remain in office after all.
If ANY of the reports of fraud are verified by the courts then the election situation changes completely. Millions of Americans will lose faith in the process and the election itself would be invalidated. Even if the uncovered fraud is not proven to have effectively shifted the vote in favor of Biden, no conservative will accept Biden as president, and the Trump Administration will have a perfect rationale for refusing to concede the White House.
Many Americans do not seem to understand the dynamic at play here. They think “winning” the vote count means an automatic Biden presidency, but this is not actually the case. Trump is already in possession of the White House – If he will not leave because of possible election tampering, then who is going to remove him? Perhaps one of the alphabet agencies, but on whose orders or authority? The military won’t remove him as the majority of them are conservative, and certainly not the Democrats as they have no ability to project power. Trump stays in because the only people that could possibly pressure him to leave (conservatives) will probably not do so.
Another scenario could involve “activist” state electors. Voters within the electoral college do not necessarily have to vote according to the popular vote within their respective states. Some states have laws that bind electors, but many do not, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Minnesota. The states that do have laws have little ability to enforce them, and activist electors can only be slapped with a misdemeanor. Basically, there is nothing anyone can do to stop the electoral college from voting for Trump instead of Biden.
If electors in swing states congregate in December to cast their votes and decide to cast for Trump instead of Biden because they suspect ballot fraud, this would be perfectly legal, and again, Trump stays in office.
Then there is the issue of congress finalizing the election results. Neither party currently holds a 218 seat majority in congress, and if one half of representatives refuse to validate the election then challenges to the results will arise. Once again there is a problem of legitimacy going forward for Joe Biden.
I realize that these factors and many more are giving conservatives continued hope of pulling out an election “victory”. However, I want readers to set aside the concept of “winning” for a moment and consider the bigger picture.
I was able to predict the outcome of the 2020 election (so far) because I based my analysis on what would be the most advantageous result for the globalist establishment.
Meaning, even if Trump stays in the Oval Office, the globalists have much to gain.
First, lets not be naive about the situation – Trump’s cabinet is LOADED with globalists from the Council on Foreign Relations as well as numerous banking elites. If they want to steer the election response from Trump’s side, they easily can. Trump is contesting the election because he is being advised to do so.
Second, the mainstream media and the Biden campaign are already preemptively declaring Biden the winner. This sets the stage for a dangerous dynamic; consider what would happen if leftists go into December/January under the assumption that they have the presidency in the bag, when suddenly it is all snatched away from them? This narrative creates the ultimate rage scenario for the political left; they will consider Trump a usurper of the presidency and from that point on they will rationalize any and all mob violence. This civil unrest will be blamed entirely on Trump and conservatives.
Third, a mass unrest event triggers a demand for law and order. There are two ways this can be achieved: A constitutional way and an unconstitutional way. The elites in Trump’s cabinet will push for the unconstitutional response, meaning they will push for martial law. Martial law will inevitably lead to numerous violations of the Bill of Rights, which are UNACCEPTABLE under ANY circumstances.
Not only this, but what would happen if conservatives, normally staunch defenders of individual rights, suddenly decide it’s okay to trample those rights in the name of “defeating the political left”? We become the greatest hypocrites of the age, we lose the moral high ground in the long term and no one will listen to us when we argue for liberty in the future. The greatest defenders of freedom become freedom’s greatest destroyers. Again, the globalists benefit.
Anyone who tells you martial law is “the lesser evil” and that we have no other choice has an agenda they are not being honest about.
Fourth, with Trump still in office the establishment’s “great reset” agenda will continue using conservatives as the scapegoats of the economic collapse they created. Beyond that, the contested election can be used as further excuse for economic instability. The central banks which have used endless stimulus measures to inflate the massive “Everything Bubble” ever since 2008 need to divert blame for the bubble’s eventual implosion, and now they have numerous distractions that will allow them to do just that.
Fifth, even if millions of Americans view Trump’s actions as justified and the election results as rigged, much of the rest of the world will treat Trump and conservatives as pariahs. The situation becomes much worse if conservatives support martial law. The narrative will be that America is under illegitimate and tyrannical rule, and that international intervention may be required. At the very least, there will be global economic penalties, including the loss of the dollar’s world reserve status which will lead to a flood of dollars returning to the US from overseas and hyperinflation in prices.
Now don’t get me wrong, a Biden presidency will lead to immediate and violent repercussions as well, but conservatives need to wake up to the reality that a Trump presidency is not an answer to any of their problems or fears. It’s a Catch-22 situation.
Under Biden, expect the economic crash to speed up dramatically. Biden will initiate Level 4 lockdowns nationwide within weeks of becoming president and this will cause the destruction of the small business sector, which is already barely hanging on for dear life. The globalists will have to bring down the economy faster under Biden so that they can claim the crash is a residual effect of the Trump Administration. If they wait too long, the blame will fall on Biden and by extension the globalists.
Level 4 lockdowns would also help prevent conservatives from relocating to more friendly states and regions. And, they would help prevent conservatives from congregating in large groups and organizing resistance to leftist policies.
Censorship of conservative voices and platforms will have to accelerate under Biden as well, because the more conservatives are able to share information in real time, the more galvanized they will become and the more confident they will be in refusing to submit to pandemic restrictions (among other things). I believe that web service providers will start directly censoring conservative websites that use their servers. Sites like mine will be removed from the web entirely, or filtered out completely by search algorithms.
Finally, under Biden there will be an immediate call for draconian gun control measures and perhaps even gun confiscation. This will be done by executive order, and it is likely that Red Flag laws will be used. A leftist or globalist agenda cannot progress while conservatives are armed. It is impossible. No one will go along with pandemic restrictions in conservative leaning states. No one will agree to carbon controls. No one will adopt new and insane hate speech laws designed by social justice lunatics.
A Biden presidency would galvanize and unify conservative groups more than anything in recent history. Eventually, conservatives will revolt (including many in the military and law enforcement) and there will be nothing leftists or globalists can do about it. Disarmament would have to happen quickly.
This is why I believe that Trump staying in office is a better model for the globalists. Tricking conservatives into jubilantly supporting martial law measures and bringing in tyranny under their own banner is a better tactic than creating a direct confrontation between conservatives and globalists through Biden’s lockdowns.
As mentioned above, though, there is a solution. Welcome a Trump presidency if fraud is discovered but refuse to support martial law. Instead, conservatives can protect their own towns and counties by organizing community security for themselves. There is no need for the military to take on domestic security concerns. Rather, conservatives must react as many did in Idaho during the BLM riots.
When BLM and Antifa tried to bus hundreds of protesters into rural parts of the Northwest, conservative groups fielded hundreds of armed members of the community to maintain security. BLM and Antifa activists remained relatively peaceful and quiet, there was no looting and no one was hurt (as opposed to numerous other cities). It was the best possible outcome.
This model must be enacted all over the country, and Americans must take their security into their own hands. I would even suggest we start using the “M word” again: Militia.
Conservatives states and counties should start seriously considering the formation of community militias, because government cannot be trusted to remain benevolent or just when it is given the ultimate power of martial law. In the event of a Biden presidency, militias will also be necessary as a deterrent to totalitarian enforcement of federal pandemic lockdowns. If leftists want to destroy their own local economies through unnecessary lockdowns, let them. Conservatives don’t need to follow the lemmings off that cliff.
Constitutionally, militias are supposed to be verified by state governments. This might not be possible. If not, then communities should form militias anyway; just don’t call it an official or “organized” militia. If state governments try to sabotage such measures then they should be bypassed and ignored. We don’t need them in order to provide security for ourselves.
If this solution is not taken seriously and conservatives do not take matters into their own hands, I foresee catastrophe. Either we will be lured into giving credence to liberty crushing martial law, or, we will be at the mercy of Biden’s medical tyranny. The future depends on us…
* * *
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- $61 Million Of Meth Seized At Texas Border Crossings Amid Cartel Crime Wave
$61 Million Of Meth Seized At Texas Border Crossings Amid Cartel Crime Wave
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 22:00Methamphetamine is flooding across the Mexico-US border at an all-time high, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have ramped up patrols at border crossings to disrupt the illegal drug trade made possible by Mexican drug cartels.
CBP released a statement on Nov. 3 detailing how the Colombia-Solidarity Bridge and World Trade Bridge border crossings recently seized, in two separate events, about $61 million worth of meth.
“The trafficking and production of methamphetamine has increased substantially over the past year, causing drug traffickers to become more creative in their methods of smuggling their product into America,” said Acting Port Director Andrew Douglas, Laredo Port of Entry.
The packages contained nearly 3,000 pounds of meth were intended to supply multiple U.S. cities along the ‘meth superhighway‘. CBP explains, in both seizures, how officers confiscated the illegal drugs.
On Tuesday, Oct. 27, the first enforcement action occurred at the Colombia-Solidarity Bridge when CBP officers assigned to the cargo facility encountered a tractor hauling an empty trailer from Mexico. The 2006 Freightliner tractor and shipment were referred for a canine and non-intrusive imaging system inspection, resulting in the discovery of 618 packages containing 1988.12 pounds of alleged methamphetamine discovered within the trailer. The narcotics have an estimated street value of $39,762,165. -CBP
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, at the World Trade Bridge, the second seizure occurred when CBP officers assigned to the cargo facility encountered a tractor hauling a shipment of frozen vegetables arriving from Mexico. The 1999 Freightliner tractor and shipment were referred for a canine and non-intrusive imaging system inspection, resulting in the discovery of 352 packages containing 1049.84 pounds of alleged methamphetamine discovered within the trailer. The narcotics have an estimated street value of $20,996,610. -CBP
On Nov. 8, CBP tweeted two pictures, showing the bricks of meth, indicating the narcotics have an estimated street value of $60,758,775.
#ICYMI – CBP officers in Laredo seized over 3,000lbs of meth—worth $60M—last week in two separate, unrelated incidents at the Colombia-Solidarity Bridge and World Trade Bridge.
Details via @CBPSouthTexas: https://t.co/cVmV30mMKC pic.twitter.com/MT1Yt7dqFj
— CBP (@CBP) November 8, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
According to a Fox News report from early September, CBP meth seizures have so far doubled over last year as drug cartels ramp up production and flood the U.S. with supply.
Officers say in all, the total volume of meth seized is almost double than last year, with still a couple of months left to go in the fiscal year. The volume of meth seized has been increasing annually for several years. In the fiscal year 2019, the Office of Field Operations seized some 68,585 points of meth nationwide, compared to 118,153 pounds this year. -Fox News
The latest meth seizures come as President Trump has had 371 miles of border wall installed on the southern border. <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>
As meth floods into the US, there’s some hope, as shown by the CBP’s latest meth seizures, that the newly erected border wall is possibly working.
- The Dystopic Great Reset & The Fight Back: Population Reduction And Hope For The Children Of Men
The Dystopic Great Reset & The Fight Back: Population Reduction And Hope For The Children Of Men
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 21:40Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Genesis 11:5 – And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
The Great Reset, the 4th Industrial Revolution, the 4th Turning, the Great Awakening, and Artificial Intelligence. These are the real themes that are shaping the socio-political, cultural, and ideological landscape of our lives in 2020.
The push for lockdown and quarantine towards a Great Reset is increasingly understood by critics as program of mass enslavement and collective punishment, population reduction, presented within the trappings progressive talking points. In our last piece on the Great Reset, ‘Whose Great Reset? The Fight for Our Future – Technocracy vs. the Republic’, we confronted the Orwellian nature of the term itself, showing that the ostensibly technocratic new proposal was being made in a way that appears to short-cut the decision making processes of sovereign states as well as democratic processes within republics.
In the eternal words of the Irish author, Oscar Wilde, ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life’.
“That we live in a time where the plans of the elite are more openly and more brazenly spelled out, in fiction, in public mythology, in culture, and are manufactured in a way entirely out of the hands of the vast majority of people whose lives will be forever changed, likely for the worse, is hands-down the real catastrophe of our time.”
There is a strange, if little known fact about the lived lives of prisoners. Now that humanity faces the real daunting probability of a lockdown regime on the flimsy pretext of a virus with a 99.9% survival rate, we need to understand something about prisoners and the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening is the product of how actually imprisoned people respond to imprisonment. Just as a person deprived of vision develops an outstanding sense of smell and hearing, a person deprived of physical freedom develops a profound and reified spiritual or supernatural freedom, which is the awakening. In a strange twist of fate, the more that people are locked down, the more they awaken.
We are caught between two seeming contradictions which in fact reconcile each other. On the one hand we understand that everything happens for a reason and that justice always prevails in the end, and on the other hand we know that the possible destiny that we can have only comes at the cost of tremendous struggle, self-discipline, moral fortitude, and sacrifice. This much is the mindset of the awakened, of the political soldier, in the course of the fight against the Great Awakening and within the age of the 4th Turning.
Censoring Facts, Reifying Fiction
Last month, the father of UK PM Boris Johnson, Stanley Johnson, was caught at a second time in public, not wearing a mask. Was he unaware that there is a highly contagious pandemic, one which affects his age group in particular? Does he not know what is going on in the UK and around the world?
Or does he know something that the rest of us do not? The folly that it may be, it came to be learned that it was Stanley Johnson who wrote the dystopian fiction novel, The Virus, one that describes much of what we are living through today. He is also the author of World Population and the United Nations: Challenge and Response, a non-fiction primer on the subject described in its title. In The Virus,
In both the narrative arc of the novel, and in his own introduction, Stanley Johnson lays out the necessity of a virus in the eyes of an insidious elite to curb population growth. This coincidence with the actual Agenda 201/2030 of the UN on population control, and the commitment of vaccine advocate and WHO beneficiary Bill Gates to decrease world population, is absolutely disconcerting and raises questions about further coincidences that have since arisen. This of course includes the very position that Boris Johnson holds today in managing the real-life version of the virus in Britain today.
But is this a mere matter of coincidence, or not? That question has become the subject of a vigorous debate, with one side of the debate arguing that it is not a coincidence being tremendously censored by social media and effectively barred from giving their side, and the other side being the only voice one hears and sees across social and legacy media.
The fact of this censorship over this question alone appears to lend credence to those being censored, as is often the unintended consequence of censorship, and perhaps the last hope of man.
This is an astonishing example of life imitating art, and now with an increasing public awareness on the relationship between vaccines and infertility, we arrive at the predicate to the film ‘Children of Men’.
Children of Men depicts a world in global chaos, war, strife, open street battles between members of quasi-governmental forces and various radical and religious cults, a jihadist military push through the streets of Paris, a paramilitary junta, the effects of mass migration, open air prisons, and worse. This has taken hold of most of Europe and presumably the world. This breakdown seems to have been the product of a global pandemic of infertility of an unknown origin. A film from 2008, anyone seeing the film today would instantly recognize the scenes as approximating real-life footage seen on the news in the world of 2020.
The global infertility crisis creates a pervasive sense of insecurity, the impossibility of a stock market, and a conscious sense of impending doom and nihilist response on the part of elites.
Taken together with Johnson’s ‘The Virus’, we can make a rather educated guess how such an outcome would manifest in a reality where life is imitating art: the virus or the vaccine created to the cure the virus, in fact lends towards infertility.
It isn’t difficult to make such a guess, for the reason that, day by day, we see this dystopia becoming our everyday reality. It has become a matter of fact much more than of fiction.
This compels us to approach, soberly, a reassessment of the concept of progress and where it leads
The themes of a virus used as a predicate for both population control and a total social transformation, as we wrote about in ‘Whose Great Reset’, is one which mirrors the effects of war: both in terms of a mass casualty event and the need to ‘build back better’ after an apparent socio-economic collapse induced either by the calamity or by the government’s heavy-handed response.
The Ideological State Apparatus of Technocratic Late Modernity
For any number of years, social critics and public philosophers have raised concerns about the never-ending rise of the technocratic and futurist cult of late modernity. In many ways, this is caught up with the entire ideological project of our epoch, as a left-façade over a technocratic thought-police-state has been weaponized as what Louis Althusser had called the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) in his landmark text of the same name, “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État (Notes pour une recherche)“.
That we live in a time where the plans of the elite are more openly and more brazenly spelled out, in fiction, in public mythology, in culture, and are manufactured in a way entirely out of the hands of the vast majority of people whose lives will be forever changed, likely for the worse, is hands-down the real catastrophe of our time.
For generations, citizens were bombarded with futurist and technocratic motifs, where people were encouraged to naively project their own goodness onto the aims of political and corporate leaders, and scientists, even while this goodness had not been proven or established. The white lab-coat had become synonymous not only with trust, but with good intentions, and in that sense replaced the priest’s frock and black robe. This has cultivated a fertile soil for the likes of the Dr. Anthony Fauci and his ilk. This has culminated in the now open implementation of a so-called ‘4th Industrial Revolution’, a progressivist framework wrapped within the sociology of Marx but absent its humanism and emancipatory components – a ‘technocratic Marxism of elites’.
The church of the progress myth has characterized much of the socio-political discourse of the last century. It has been one which has prepared several generations to accept the ‘challenges of change’ as a foregone necessity, towards the forging of a ‘brave new world’. It has served as the underlying assumption of the three most impactful ideologies of the 20th century: liberalism, fascism, and communism. So many apple-carts have been overturned along the way towards some combination of those ends, that today there are hundreds of millions of people who have never seen an apple cart with their own eyes.
The Ideological State Apparatus has proscribed that criticisms of real-existing policies, plans, and commitments at the level of the UN, such as Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, are censored across social media. The censorship itself gives credence to the ‘no coincidence’ side of the present debate, because the aim of global population reduction is not only explicit, but central. The established ideological apparatus proscribes that questioning the agenda is ‘science denial’, and ‘far-right conspiracy’, which are the double-plus ungood thought-crimes of our day. Central to the ideological apparatus were the cultural and political tropes which thematically dovetailed with cultural and supply-line globalization within the framework of first-world service-based economies, itself founded on the premise of planned-obsolescence.
Population reduction however is an open goal of elites and their global governance institutions, and all that is contentious is the idea that the same governments that lied about the pretexts for the wars in Iraq and Vietnam, which then went on to murder millions of innocent people, may be lying again today about the methods they may use towards that end.
And yet the past methods of population control such as warfare of the total war type, are unacceptable for elites today because of the specter of a nuclear holocaust that would also contaminate life for the elites themselves. Johnson is not only aware of this, but is explicit in his introduction to ‘The Virus’. We can also include that war will result in one side or the other being blamed at a time of great collusion between world powers, but yet a global pandemic seems to be an act of god – when in fact perhaps it is the outcome of man playing at god.
The Ideological State Apparatus began to mutate in the late 1970’s, absorbing, deforming and then projecting back onto a society a mutated form of the very same protest radicalism which previously challenged the older Ideological State Apparatus. This new ISA was characterized by a new social morality, which delivered the now pervasive cult of political correctness. This ideological authoritarianism is one where slavery and self-harm are virtue signals, and this cultural shift towards public flagellation made possible the idea that lockdown, quarantine, and mask wearing was a sign of virtue more so than health. Without this change in the ISA over the past few decades, there could have never been a new normal.
Conclusion
As we have laid out the surface of the problem and begun to hint at the necessary course of solutions, in Part II we will dig deeper into the problem and flesh out what a just order would look like. In Part II, we will look at the origins of the social contract and the problem of free men versus the growing bureaucratic form, in history. This will set us up to look at why at the philosophical level our present elites have landed on misanthropy and genocide as a human population reduction program, as the best possible solution. Finally we will explain that while a 4th industrial revolution will come either way, that population reduction and slavery is not a necessary component of it. Rather, that it is up to free men to determine what that will look like and we will sketch out its actual functions.
- Beijing Fears Esper's Exit Raises Risk Of Military Action & 'Accidents'
Beijing Fears Esper's Exit Raises Risk Of Military Action & 'Accidents'
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 21:20In the wake of Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s firing early this week The South China Morning Post reports that leaders in Beijing are worried the sudden transition in the key Pentagon post dramatically raises the risk of accidental conflict, or at least signals a tougher stance out of an unpredictable US administration in its las 70 days in the White House.
The regional publication also wrote that Christopher Miller as acting defense secretary has also raised serious concerns. One Beijing-based Chinese military analyst, Zhou Chenming, warned of “possible military adventures” related to Taiwan following Esper’s exit.
Via AFP And speaking of the new acting defense secretary, Zhou pointed out that “Miller has a strong special forces background. He joined the special forces and commanded it and specializes in surprise attacks and adventure operations.”
Beijing has viewed Esper as a more stable influence over the Pentagon and in Trump’s cabinet – for example when last month the Pentagon agreed to hasten talks over a ‘crisis communications’ hotline with Chinese PLA officials.
Zhou further cited increased US naval “freedom of navigation” exercises near China, as well as increased joint US-Taiwan military drills which though long remaining ‘unofficial’ and undeclared, have now become for the first time “official” – as with this week’s drills involving US Marines.
Outgoing Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper (left) and his successor, currently National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller, Source: DoD/AP An unnamed Chinese military source told SCMP further:
“The PLA leadership wonders if someone in the American military is going to take a risk and cause accidental conflicts with the Chinese military, especially in the South China Sea, following Esper’s termination.”
It does appear a sudden bolder US posture is making itself felt in the region, as Taiwanese media reports: “Taiwan’s Naval Command on Monday (Nov. 9) confirmed media reports that a contingent of U.S. Marines have arrived at the invitation of Taiwan’s military and will begin training Taiwanese troops for four weeks starting that day, marking the first public acknowledgment of U.S. Marines training in Taiwan in over 40 years.”
Pentagon finally confirms near total decapitation of civilian leadership in the last 24 hours. Secretary of Defense Esper fired Monday, the top Pentagon Policy official, top Defense Department intelligence official, and chief of staff to the Defense Secretary all out today
— Ryan Browne (@rabrowne75) November 10, 2020
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Meanwhile in Washington, some defense and intelligence officials have also expressed worry that Trump will be feeling more unconstrained and adventuresome when it comes to potentially provocative actions toward either China or Iran now that key officials in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership have left their posts.
- Biden Picks Longtime Adviser And Obama Ebola Czar As Chief Of Staff
Biden Picks Longtime Adviser And Obama Ebola Czar As Chief Of Staff
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 21:00Joe Biden has chosen his longtime adviser and former Obama admin Ebola ‘Czar’ Ron Klain to reprise his role as Chief of Staff, according to the Associated Press, which – if Biden is elected – means he’ll likely be swamped with pandemic-related challenges amid a divided Congress.
“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Biden said in a Wednesday night statement.
Klain, a Harvard Law graduate and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, previously served as Biden’s Chief of Staff from 2009-2011, as well as former Vice President Al Gore from 1995-1999 after having worked on the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992. He was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron White in 1987 and 1988, and served as Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination.
Towards the end of the Clinton presidency and the lead-up to the 2000 election, Al Gore’s campaign chairman Tony Coelho forced Klain out after Gore loyalists felt he was too loyal to the Clintons, only to return to the Gore campaign the next year. He eventually served as General Counsel of Gore’s Recount Committee during the disputed 2000 election.
Klain was also heavily involved in former Senator John Kerry’s failed 2004 bid for president.
- "Nasdaq Whale" Beached: SoftBank's Attempt To Corner Tech Stocks Leads To $3.7BN Loss
"Nasdaq Whale" Beached: SoftBank's Attempt To Corner Tech Stocks Leads To $3.7BN Loss
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 20:40The last time we looked at SoftBank’s performance in the public capital markets following the stunning news reported here first that it was the Japanese Conglomerate that had attempted to corner the Nasdaq using derivatives to create the biggest “gamma squeeze” on record which led to a massive late-August melt up in FAAMG names (and the broader tech sector), was two months ago when according to press reports, Masa Son sprawling investment vehicle had generated some $4 billion in profits at which point it had largely unwound many of the call spread trades in question.
It turns out there was more.
SoftBank today revealed that its secretive new unit, which was launched this summer to
manipulateplay the market in tech stocks and which is called “SB Northstar” had racked up trading losses of $3.7bn so far, a huge swing to the $4 billion profit that had been reported previously by established financial media.There was more: as we also first reported in “How SoftBank Made Billions Using The Biggest “Gamma Squeeze” In History”, SoftBank confirmed that Akshay Naheta, a 39-year-old former Deutsche Bank trader now based in Abu Dhabi, manages SB Northstar, which is registered in the Cayman Islands. This directly contradicts what SoftBank had said previously when they told the FT that Naheta was not formally in charge.
So what happened? Here is a brief walk down memory lane for those who missed the story:
Back in August, SoftBank first revealed that it was planning to invest about $10bn in publicly traded tech stocks as a way to diversify a portfolio that is heavily reliant on shares in Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba.
However, despite telling the press that it had every intention of curbing its exposure after it had been named as a major market participant, by the end of September, Northstar had purchased nearly $17BN of shares in US tech companies, including $6.3BNn in Amazon, $2.2bn in Facebook, $1.8bn in Zoom and $1.4bn in Alphabet.
What is notable, is that while SoftBank initially disclosed that Northstar’s capital would be just $555MM when its unveiled the existence of the asset management unit in August (of which a third would come from Masa Son), Northstar has had far more capital at its disposal, because as the FT reports, “it uses loans of cash and publicly traded securities from SoftBank’s vast balance sheet to make investments in publicly listed stocks.”
Indeed, on Wednesday, SoftBank revealed that at the end of September, Northstar managed roughly half, or $21BN of its $43BN cash pile, which has surged as the conglomerate executed a series of asset sales under pressure from activist investors such as Elliott Management.
In October, the unit also took out a margin loan of $6BN using SoftBank’s Alibaba shares as collateral.
More importantly, SoftBank also invested another $3.4bn in various equity derivatives in the form of call spreads which included long call options that were worth $4.7bn by the end of September, paired with “short call options” which SoftBank booked as $1.3bn in liabilities. Northstar also held short future contracts on stock indices, which were valued at minus $697 million.
Where things went haywire is that while the short side of the bets was supposed to merely offset the premium of the upside bets, some of the bearish positions took on outsized losses as tech shares soared during the three months to September, resulting in SoftBank booking total derivatives losses of $2.7BN.
According to the FT, the total loss for Northstar ballooned to $3.7BN for the quarter, including $900MM in unrealised valuation losses on investments made by the unit.
While it is possible that SoftBank recouped some of these losses after September, it is unlikely: citing sources, the Financial Times reports that Northstar switched to long call options after the tech rally in late summer to reduce its risk ahead of the US election, and are now going back into buying equities. Alas, that coincided with an especially turbulent period for the Nasdaq, which means that unless SoftBank timed its exit perfectly, it lost even more on theta and as implied vol fizzled while the Nasdaq drifted lower.
Separately, in its latest investor presentation, SoftBank also stated how much impact these derivatives trades could have on pre-tax profits. A 30% rise in the stocks that Northstar went long on would have boosted its long call options by $14bn, but seen its short call options lose $5.7BN. Alternatively, a 30% fall in the stock price, would have hit its long call options by $4.3BN but boosted its short call options by $1.2BN, still resulting in sizable losses.
The not insubstantial P&L exposure is at odds with Son’s previous attempts to play down the risks posed by its foray into short-term trading of highly liquid stocks, saying the investments amount to only 7% of its total equity holdings worth $292Bn. Still, as noted above, it didn’t take much to flip what was a $4BN profit in early September in the portfolio to a $2.7BN loss by the end of the month, especially considering the modest drop in the Nasdaq over that time period.
The result is that despite the much needed extra disclosure, the FT reports that analysts remain nervous, noting that Masa Son has an additional $50BN in cash burning a hole in his pocket following the disposal of SoftBank’s stakes in T-Mobile, Alibaba and its domestic telecoms arm.
“SoftBank Group’s motivations are not clear,” Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal said. “For such a long-term investor as Mr Son, we don’t understand the attraction of short-term call spreads.”
Son, meanwhile, has argued that his group cannot ignore the Big Tech if it wants to bet on the future of artificial intelligence. “The real frontrunner in the AI revolution is Gafa (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon). We need to put them into our portfolio.”
And he is doing it by buying call spreads on the FAAMGs which are trading just shy of their all time highs. Could Masa’s attempt to extract a little more upside from the tech sector mark the top? We don’t know but we will remind readers that the Japanese billionaire, who was nearly ruined when the dot com bubble burst, decided to rush into bitcoin at the very top in late 2017.
As we reported in April of 2019, he ended up losing $130 million when he cashed out, a move which according to the WSJ dented “his reputation as a patient and prophetic investor.” And the WeWork fiasco wasn’t even on the horizon… Ironically, if Son had only held on, he would be on the verge of breaking even with Bitcoin trading nearly at $16K and just shy of its all time high around $20K.
Luckily for SoftBank investors there is now an adult in the room: as the WSJ reports, billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer is going over every Masa Son action with a microscope, which means that the possibility of even greater derivative losses is at least contained.
- JPMorgan Is No Longer The World's Most Important Bank
JPMorgan Is No Longer The World's Most Important Bank
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 20:20For the past three years, JPMorgan – the largest US bank by assets and market cap – was viewed by investors but more importantly by regulators, as the world’s most systematically important bank which however is as much as bragging right as a curse as it required Jamie Dimon’s bank to pay a higher capital burden due to its massive balance sheet (Chinese banks which are generally bigger have explicit state support and as such as broadly viewed as less risky).
All that changed today when the Basel-based Financial Stability Board released its latest annual rankings of systematically important banks, which saw JPMorgan drop one notch, from the 4th bucket where it had been since 2017 and which carried a 2.5% additional capital buffer, to the 3rd bucket, which JPMorgan will shares with Citigroup and HSBC. The FSB’s SiFi ratings are based on a bank’s size, scope of cross-border business and connections to other firms, which are used to assess the risk of financial contagion.
JPMorgan benefited from a surge in revenue from stock and bond trading desks in the midst of the pandemic, which contributed to a surprise increase in third-quarter earnings. Its shares, which plunged with other bank stocks in March, recently rebounded but have still fallen 16% so far this year.
Deutsche Bank, which once headed the list remains in the the 2nd, less risky bucket, which requires a 1.5% capital buffer. Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were also found to pose a lower risk to the financial system and were lowered one level to the lowest importance tier. At the same time, China Construction Bank rose one level in this year’s assessment of 30 firms, to the 2nd bucket.
According to Bloomberg, the latest list uses information from before the Covid-19 pandemic, “which forced lenders to set aside tens of billions of dollars to cover potential credit losses, while authorities eased or delayed rules to help the industry respond.”
Participation in the FSB list is hardly a bragging point: inclusion of a banks means more stringent capital demands and closer scrutiny of their risk management. FSB member authorities apply the following requirements to G-SIBs:
Higher capital buffer: Since the November 2012 update, the G-SIBs have been allocated to buckets corresponding to higher capital buffers that they are required to hold by national authorities in accordance with international standards. The capital
- buffer requirements for the G-SIBs identified in the annual update each November will apply to them as from January fourteen months later.5 The assignment of G-SIBs to the buckets, in the list published today, therefore determines the higher capital buffer requirements that will apply to each G-SIB from 1 January 2022.
- Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity (TLAC): G-SIBs are required to meet the TLAC standard, alongside the regulatory capital requirements set out in the Basel III framework. The TLAC standard has begun being phased-in from 1 January 2019 for GSIBs identified in the 2015 list that continued to be designated as G-SIBs.
- Resolvability: These include group-wide resolution planning and regular resolvability assessments. The resolvability of each G-SIB is also reviewed in a high-level FSB Resolvability Assessment Process (RAP) by senior regulators within the firms’ Crisis Management Groups.
- Higher supervisory expectations: These include supervisory expectations for risk management functions, risk data aggregation capabilities, risk governance and internal controls.
The FSB panel, which recommends changes that national supervisors may implement, said shifts in the rankings reflect underlying changes in banks’ activity. The FSB is chaired by Fed vice chairman Randy Quarles, and includes representatives from authorities including the European Central Bank and Bank of England.
- Biden 'Science' Advisor Calls For 4-6 Week Nationwide Lockdown To Avoid "COVID Hell"
Biden 'Science' Advisor Calls For 4-6 Week Nationwide Lockdown To Avoid "COVID Hell"
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 20:00Meet the esteemed Dr. Michael Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and is the latest “scientist” to join Joe Biden’s “special coronavirus transition advisory team.”
We have to do something, Osterholm argues, or – echoing the exact same words Dr. Fauci has fearmongered America with – the U.S. is headed for dark days before a vaccine becomes available.
The ‘casedemic’ does look terrifying.
So what is his suggestion?
Simple…
A nationwide lockdown would drive the number of new cases and hospitalizations down to manageable levels while the world awaits a vaccine, Osterholm told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday.
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” he said. “If we did that, then we could lockdown for four-to-six weeks.”
So a massive bailout for state and local governments… oh and “we, the people” while we all suffer locked-down like a dementia-ridden presidential candidate in our basements through Thanksgiving and Christmas… with depression and suicide rates soaring ever higher?
As a reminder, we note that this is the same ‘scientist’ who co-wrote an op-ed with Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari in which the two argued for more restrictive and uniform lockdowns across the nation.
“The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota deemed 78 percent of its workers essential,” they wrote in the New York Times.
“To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive and strict as possible.”
In other words – Obey! Or the economy gets it… Again!
There’s just one thing… the real ‘science’ – where actual experiments are undergone, results noted, and theses concluded – shows that lockdowns do not work…
As we detailed earlier, in a surprising report out of JPMorgan, the bank finds no meaningful curve development differences between countries with and without strong curve intervention.
This makes the bank question if existing public health intervention (i.e., lockdown/ stricter social distancing) should remain in place next year, and leads JPM to conclude that “public health policy should consider approaches biased towards economic/pubic mental health over the urge to close the curve in 2021.“
To reach its “startling” conclusion, JPMorgan compared countries without lockdown, keeping the economy open under certain levels of social-distancing (Brazil, US, Sweden, Japan, Korea) to countries with strong curve intervention (UK, Germany, Italy, France, China, India) to see any meaningful differential in the curve development.
This outcome suggest that COVID-19 follows a similar diffusion and development process of other infectious diseases with certain life cycles. Therefore, JPMorgan would argue that public health policy should consider a bit more biased approach on economic/pubic mental health over the aim to close the infection curve in 2021 as lockdowns could be costly to the economy.
JPMorgan’s conclusion: “Keeping public activities open and tracing susceptible people leveraging technology looks to have better risk reward to us.”
And just in case you shrug off JPMorgan’s ‘scientific’ findings, a recent study in The Lancet (yes, that scientific journal) found no correlation whatsoever between severity of lockdown and number of covid deaths. And they didn’t find any correlation between border closures and covid deaths either. And there was no correlation between mass testing and covid deaths either, for that matter. Basically, nothing that various world governments have done to combat covid seems to have had any effect whatsoever on the number of deaths.
As Raul Ilargi Meijer noted, lockdowns are based on pretending we can make time stand still.
That, like in one of those slick videos, everything else stops moving while you can walk around it. All Else Being Equal. It never is, not for 6-7 months. And that the first lockdown didn’t work, at least not for long, should perhaps be a lesson. Maybe you should look for answers elsewhere. Because the damage just goes on, economically, psychologically, physically.
I’m not pretending I have the answers. I do have questions though. While the situation reminds me of Sisyphus, forced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. Every time he nears the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down.
We need to find a balance between the threat of COVID19 and the threat of everything else, very much including those things that are caused by our approach to COVID.
Presumably, Dr. Osterholm and the rest of his 11 wise men (and women and non-binary individuals) on Joe Biden’s COVID advisory team did not bother to look at the actual science… or actual facts… preferring instead to tie their careers to a Federal Reserve president (with no background in ‘sciencey’ stuff – but very well versed in massive government-funded bailouts) and the belief that if we just keep puking borrowed- or tax-payer-funded cash at people while shutting down the economy, then we will “keep the coronavirus pandemic in check and get the economy on track until a vaccine is approved and distributed.”
TL;DR: Ignore common sense and the real-world science experiment that just took place, shutdown the economy to get the economy back on track.
- De Blasio's Daughter In Verbal Slip Up, Claims Biden "Was Able To Steal" Election
De Blasio's Daughter In Verbal Slip Up, Claims Biden "Was Able To Steal" Election
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 19:40Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Mayor De Blasio’s daughter was caught in an embarrassing on camera verbal slip up when she told an interviewer that Joe Biden “was able to steal” the election.
There were in fact two major gaffes, with Chiara de Blasio initially telling the interviewer how happy she was that “now we have the first black Asian female president in office elected,” referring to Kamala Harris.
Harris would of course become Vice President if Biden’s win is certified, although many have suggested that she could soon find herself in the Oval Office given Biden’s declining cognitive abilities.
This is Mayor De Blasio’s daughter in New York…
and I’m the lady in the yellow hat 👒 pic.twitter.com/0iY99PDHBS
— Angela Stanton King 🇺🇸 (@theangiestanton) November 10, 2020
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De Blasio followed up by saying that Biden stole the election, before correcting herself.
“Joe Biden was able to steal…steal no, was able to win,” she said before apologizing.
Given what happened, maybe de Blasio was right the first time.
The 25-year-old has become a prominent left-wing activist and she was arrested back in May during a George Floyd protest.
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- JPMorgan Finds No Benefits From COVID Lockdowns
JPMorgan Finds No Benefits From COVID Lockdowns
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 19:35While the latest vaccine progress news out of Pfizer was welcome by the market (and its CEO who sold over 60% of his PFE stock on the day of the announcement) in a week where global infection resurgence continued with cases jumping 8% W/W last week (537k vs. 309k in Aug-Oct) and EU/ UK re-imposed lockdowns, considering that approximately 60% of population will need to be covered by a vaccine, near term pressure on infection curve/ hospital capacity, growing mortality tally, and stricter public
health policies to pull back secondary infection rate (or R0) below 1 will likely persist for the foreseeable future.However, in a surprising report out of JPMorgan, the bank finds no meaningful curve development differences between countries with and without strong curve intervention. This makes the bank question if existing public health intervention (i.e., lockdown/ stricter social distancing) should remain in place next year, and leads JPM to conclude that “public health policy should consider approaches biased towards economic/pubic mental health over the urge to close the curve in 2021.“
To reach its “startling” conclusion, JPMorgan compared countries without lockdown, keeping the economy open under certain levels of social-distancing (Brazil, US, Sweden, Japan, Korea) to countries with strong curve intervention (UK, Germany, Italy, France, China, India) to see any meaningful differential in the curve development.
Here is what the largest US bank found in its comparison between countries with and without strict social distancing measures and lockdowns:
- Infection scale/speed: Confirmed cases scale: Infection scale is smaller for countries with strict control measures but no meaningful gap with countries without stricter controls (confirmed out of total population: 0.9% vs. 1.2%). Infection speed: Countries with strict control measures have a shorter period to arrive at first peak (78 days vs. 106 days), implying stricter social distancing measures or lockdowns could lead to faster peak infection. Tests performed: countries with stricter measures have performed a greater scale of tests, at 37% of the total population vs. 32% for those with certain levels of social distancing but no full lockdowns. Also in Brazil and India with relatively relaxed social distancing measures on COVID-19, daily new infections have been trending down and this perhaps is due to the natural life cycle of infectious disease thus COVID-19 could have a similar life span.
- Mortality comparison: In an unexpected twist, the mortality rate (= death/ confirmed) was higher for countries with stricter control measures, at 2.6% vs. 2.0% for those without. Death per million people: lower for countries with stricter control measures (240 deaths per 1mn people vs. 273 deaths per mn) compared to those without strict control measures.
- Antibody: Antibody level: the average antibody levels are similar for both groups of countries. Average 3.6% of participants were found to have antibodies in countries with strict control measures, vs. 3.0% in countries without. However the gap in between is not meaningfully large. Time to arrive at 80% recovery rate (= recovered/ confirmed): Days to arrive at 80% recovery rate is shorter for countries with stricter control measures than countries without (119 days vs. 129 days).
Paradoxically, the data show that there exists some degree of i) shorter period to peak infection, ii) smaller scale of death per million and iii) slightly larger scale of antibody level found in countries with stricter social distancing measures and lockdowns. However JPMorgan does not see a large meaningful difference between two groups.
This outcome suggest that COVID-19 follows a similar diffusion and development process of other infectious diseases with certain life cycles. Therefore, JPMorgan would argue that public health policy should consider a bit more biased approach on economic/pubic mental health over the aim to close the infection curve in 2021 as lockdowns could be costly to the economy.
JPMorgan’s conclusion: “Keeping public activities open and tracing susceptible people leveraging technology looks to have better risk reward to us.”
Of course, if this had been known in early March when the establishment rushed to close the economy resulting in the biggest economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression, the consequences – for both the US economy and the outcome of the election where Trump’s handling of the covid crisis became the front and center issue – would have been profound.
- Once "Immune" To The Pandemic, The Financial Industry Is About To Face A Wave Of Layoffs
Once "Immune" To The Pandemic, The Financial Industry Is About To Face A Wave Of Layoffs
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 19:20We covered when Wells Fargo laid off 700 employees in early October, noting the bank, best known in recent years for scamming retail customers and botching small business refi loans, was just likely just starting to implement a larger plan that would result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.
We knew then that other banks would eventually follow suit and now, it looks like this is starting to take place. JP Morgan has started hundreds of dismissals, including 80 at its consumer unit. Goldman has also started eliminating about 400 positions, including “back office roles”.
While much of the financial sector was spared from massive layoffs due to the pandemic, hiring has finally slowed and other banks are starting to look at implementing cuts, according to Bloomberg.
Alan Johnson, the head of compensation-consulting firm Johnson Associates Inc., predicts that the financial industry will see its headcount fall by 10% by mid-2021.
“Financial services and banking has too many people. Next year is going to be very low hiring. There’ll be some layoffs,” he said.
“Firms are not hiring at the levels they were. The trajectory of economic recovery is so unknown and it’s so uncertain and it’s so significant, and you overlay the pandemic and remote working and Zoom — if you’re a laid-off employee, this is a very difficult set of circumstances,” he added.
And so the financial service workers who spent the pandemic earning fees “arranging emergency loans” and handling an influx of volume on trading desks could all eventually see their heads on the layoff chopping block.
Firings will likely focus on traditional banking, Bloomberg says, as banking services move to online formats. Wall Street could see some layoffs, however, especially given recent mergers (like that of Schwab and TD Ameritrade) in the brokerage space.
Even worse is that financial executives who are being laid off from large banks may find it difficult to find jobs at smaller, rival firms. The length of time to land a job has “roughly doubled” for senior executives since before the pandemic. Openings in banking and finance are down 21% from a year prior, according to data from Indeed.com.
The one silver lining appears to be mortgage operations. With rates at historic lows, mortgage banks are the sole area in the industry that is adding personnel.
Jeramy Kaiman, head of professional recruitment in western U.S. at staffing firm Adecco Group said: “Mortgage is booming — I don’t even know what other word to say. Candidates are all receiving three to five offers in 24 hours when they’re on the market.”
As noted, Wells Fargo is expected to shed “up to tens of thousands” of workers over the next few years, reducing branches as part of its cost-cutting initiative.
Vickee Adams, spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, said: “In those situations, to ensure we continue to serve customers well, we keep employees working in other nearby branches whenever possible. We are as responsive to our employees as possible, providing jobs-search resources and other assistance as best we can.”
- Talk Of "Unity" Is Both Hypocritical And Delusional
Talk Of "Unity" Is Both Hypocritical And Delusional
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 19:00Authored by Gary Galles via The Mises Institute,
In Joe Biden’s address after being declared president-elect by news organizations, he promised to be a leader who “seeks not to divide but to unify.” Making that assertion after the campaigns we have seen, not to mention the light-years-apart treatment of the candidates, while Donald Trump is still adamantly disputing the election because of alleged Democrat malfeasance is, at a minimum, ironic. And it would be the height of hypocrisy if only a few of Trump’s claims of cheating are true. But we need to go further and recognize that even the possibility of Joe Biden uniting us is a delusion.
Agreement on the specific ends we want to achieve is unattainable because our desires are mutually inconsistent. Our agreement is very limited on even very broadly defined issues, and once we look further than vague, aspirational language and feel-good generalities, Americans disagree on virtually everything.
All of us want to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, etc. We agree in that sense. But we disagree about virtually every aspect of who, what, when, where, why, and how. We want different types and amounts, in different ways, at different times and places, and for different people. We are vastly different in the tradeoffs we are willing to make among our desires, not to mention who we think should pay our bills. Once we consider any of the myriad actual choices faced, the fact of scarcity necessitates that our specific ends conflict, rather than align.
Consider a mundane example played out daily in our homes – breakfast. Does everyone in your family agree on “the most important meal of the day”? Does everyone even eat breakfast? Does each member have coffee, a cold caffeine drink, or neither? Juice? What kind? Are all agreed on when, where, what, or how much to eat? Do we agree on who should pay for breakfast, cook it, and clean up after it? Do we agree on the “dress code” that should apply, either at breakfast or afterward?
Diverse individuals have diverse preferences. Multiplying this single example by the uncountable decisions that must be reached in society every day makes our fundamental disunity clear. And we are no more unified when we get to public policy. We are not in agreement about people’s rights and government powers that some view as essential but others view as unforgivable. The same is true of many foreign policy choices. We cannot be unified as “one nation under God” when some vehemently reject any reference to God. We cannot be unified about abortion when some view it as murder and others consider it sacred. Policies that take from some to give to others also inherently create disagreement from those whose pockets are involuntarily picked. Reducing what we take from some, entailing giving less to others than they wish, also triggers disagreement. So long as government dictates such choices, political unity is unattainable.
In fact, politics as currently practiced eviscerates the one thing Americans could agree about. This reflects the far-too-little-recognized fact that we have greater agreement on what all of us want to avoid than on what all of us want. None of us wants what John Locke called our “lives, liberties, and estates” violated. That is, each of us wants rights and property defended against invasion. Respecting all of our property rights reduces the risk from predation for each of us. But creating added rights and privileges for some at the expense of others’ equal rights and privileges makes government the most dangerous predator, even when who is selected to do so is determined by majority vote.
Each of us would like the freedom to peacefully pursue our own goals. As Lord Acton put it, “liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition,” because freedom to choose for ourselves is always the primary means to our ultimate ends. That is why the traditional functions of government are to protect us from abuse by our neighbors and foreign powers, while its greatest threat is supposed protectors becoming predators against citizens. That is why Acton recognized that liberty requires “the limitation of the public authority.” But we are incredibly far from agreement on that today.
Well-established property rights and the voluntary market arrangements they enable let individuals decide for themselves, limiting each of us to persuasion rather than coercion. Except in the very unusual case where we must all make the same choice, this allows us to better match our choices to our preferences and circumstances. And unlike minority votes in elections, every dollar “vote” matters.
In fact, we should recognize that markets are our primary means to transform our disagreements into mutually beneficial cooperation, while restrictions on markets hobble that essential function.
Say I offer you a widget for sale at $10 and you say yes. That does not mean we agree on its value. We disagreed. I valued it at less than $10 worth of other goods and services, or I wouldn’t have sold it for that. You must have valued it more than $10, or you wouldn’t have bought it for that. Importantly, however, we have transformed our disagreement on values into an exchange that gives both of us benefits we consider to be worth more than the costs.
In contrast, talk of political unity is primarily rhetorical cover for those who are in power to coerce those who disagree with them. They benefit themselves at others’ expense, taking others’ resources and making them acquiesce in what they object to. And unlike markets, in which greater disagreements about value create greater net benefits from voluntary arrangements, “unifying” political initiatives are just ways to control who will be forced to do what for others, driving Americans apart while hamstringing cooperative arrangements and squandering the wealth they would have created.
Grand invocations that “I will unify us” are actually shorthand for “We disagree about many things, but those in this group are unified against others’ preferences, and we mean to get our way, regardless of their well-being and desire,” which is made clear by the demonization of anyone who doesn’t support the supposed “unity” position as divisive.
That kind of unity is tyranny. Strengthening our union actually runs along a different path than the unity of 50 percent plus one, unified against the interests of others. It is uniting in a common commitment to honoring one another’s rights and the liberty this makes possible for all of us. Without unity in that, we can never achieve the kind of unity that is actually desirable and achievable. The alternative is the prospect of more of what we have experienced of late, which resembles what Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all.” But if we are united only by the ongoing fight to win that war against other Americans, we are selling out the birthright we have from our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
- Deutsche Bank Proposes A 5% "Work From Home" Privilege Tax
Deutsche Bank Proposes A 5% "Work From Home" Privilege Tax
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 18:54At a time when the Fed is already monetizing the entire US budget deficit thanks to helicopter money, sparking conversations about the utility of taxation, and when a Biden administration is set to at least try and roll back most of the Trump tax cuts, the last thing the population wants to hear about is even more taxes.
Yet in a “modest proposal” from Deutsche Bank, the bank argues that in a time of pervasive covid shutdowns, “those who can work from home (WFH) receive direct and indirect financial benefits and they should be taxed in order to smooth the transition process for those who have been suddenly displaced.”
In other words, the argument goes that working from an office is somehow punitive, and since WFH during the pandemic leads to “many benefits” as a resulting “disconnecting themselves from face-to-face society” a 5% tax for each WFH day “would leave the average person no worse off than if they worked in the office.” The bank calculates that such a tax could raise $49bn per year in the US, €20bn in Germany, and £7bn in the UK. “That can fund subsidies for the lowest-paid workers who usually cannot work from home.”
In the report written by DB strategist Like Tumpleman, he argues that the popularity of WFH was growing even before the pandemic: “between 2005 and 2018, internet technology fuelled a 173 per cent increase in the number of Americans who regularly worked from home. It is true that the overall proportion of people working from home before the pandemic was still small, at 5.4 per cent based on census data, but the growth was still way ahead of the growth in the overall workforce.”
Naturally, the covid shutdowns have turbocharged that growth, and as a result the proportion of Americans who worked from home increased ten-fold to 56% during the pandemic. Many of these people will continue to work remotely for some time. Indeed, two-thirds of organizations say that at least three-quarters of their staff can work from home effectively, according to S&P Global Markets. Meanwhile, a DB survey shows that, after the pandemic has passed, more than half of people who tried out WFH want to continue it permanently for between two and three days a week.
This sudden shift to WFH means that, for the first time in history, “a big chunk of people have disconnected themselves from the face-to-face world yet are still leading a full economic life” as if that is somehow a bad thing.
It gets crazier: the bank claims that working in the comfort of one’s own home leads to a slew of financial benefits including:
- financial savings on expenses such as travel, lunch, clothes, and cleaning.
- indirect savings via forgone socializing and other expenses that would have been incurred had a worker been in the office.
- intangible benefits of working from home, such as greater job security, convenience, and flexibility.
- There is also the benefit of additional safety.
As if it is difficult to find someone who also sits in front of a computer all day long in Bangladesh and has the exact same skillset but would work for a fraction of the pay.
Yet those people who are working remotely are, according to DB, the equivalent of social parasites as they “contribute less to the infrastructure of the economy whilst still receiving its benefits” potentially extending the slump in national growth. In other words, the mere act of working from home makes you guilty of not propping up the economy!
That, according to Templeman “is a big problem for the economy as it has taken decades and centuries to build up the wider business and economic infrastructure that supports face-to-face working. If a great swathe of assets lie redundant, the economic malaise will be extended.”
In short, those who failed to develop the appropriate skillset and are “forced” to work in society – mostly employees of service companies – and who were unable to refused to educate and train themselves to be able to “enjoy” the benefits of work from home jobs which incidentally include sitting in front of a computer for hours on end and in some notable cases masturbating in front of a zoom conference call, have to be rewarded monetarily by all those who are lucky enough to not have to work in public.
While it would be easy to laugh and merely brush this idea off as another ridiculous policy proposal from a bank whose very existence would be very much in question had it not been for several rounds of generous taxpayer funded bailouts, since this is yet another grossly socialist proposal we are concerned it has a very high probability of passage not only in Europe but also in the US, especially if Democrats manage to pull of a “Blue wave” sweep in Georgia in January.
So far a WFH tax has merely been floated by a handful of Wall Street strategists; however once this idea gets more popular coverage, expect a groundswell of support for the idea which will promptly lead to yet another tax.
Below we republish the Deutsche Bank note in its entirety because it is clearly a blueprint for what’s to come:
A work-from-home tax, by Luke Templeman
For years we have needed a tax on remote workers – covid has just made it obvious. Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society. Those who can WFH receive direct and indirect financial benefits and they should be taxed in order to smooth the transition process for those who have been suddenly displaced.
The popularity of WFH was growing even before the pandemic. Between 2005 and 2018, internet technology fuelled a 173 per cent increase in the number of Americans who regularly worked from home1. It is true that the overall proportion of people working from home before the pandemic was still small, at 5.4 per cent based on census data, but the growth was still way ahead of the growth in the overall workforce.
Covid has turbocharged that growth. During the pandemic, the proportion of Americans who worked from home increased ten-fold to 56 per cent. In the UK, there was a seven-fold increase to 47 per cent. Many of these people will continue to work remotely for some time. Indeed, two-thirds of organisations say that at least three-quarters of their staff can work from home effectively, according to S&P Global Markets. Meanwhile, a DB survey shows that, after the pandemic has passed, more than half of people who tried out WFH want to continue it permanently for between two and three days a week
The sudden shift to WFH means that, for the first time in history, a big chunk of people have disconnected themselves from the face-to-face world yet are still leading a full economic life. That means remote workers are contributing less to the infrastructure of the economy whilst still receiving its benefits.
That is a big problem for the economy as it has taken decades and centuries to build up the wider business and economic infrastructure that supports face-to-face working. If a great swathe of assets lie redundant, the economic malaise will be extended.
WFH is financially rewarding
WFH offers direct financial savings on expenses such as travel, lunch, clothes, and cleaning. Add to these the indirect savings via forgone socialising and other expenses that would have been incurred had a worker been in the office. Then there are the intangible benefits of working from home, such as greater job security, convenience, and flexibility. There is also the benefit of additional safety. The newly-discovered gains of home working, both tangible and intangible, all have value. And they generally outweigh the costs. The latter have mostly come in the form of additional mental stress of juggling work and children, and dealing with an imperfect home-office setup. These costs should not be underestimated, however, they usually pale in comparison with the gains. Hence why the vast majority of home workers want to continue remote working, on at least a part time basis, after the pandemic passes.
First, the tax will only apply outside the times when the government advises people to work from home (of course, the self-employed and those on low incomes can be excluded). The tax itself will be paid by the employer if it does not provide a worker with a permanent desk. If it does, and the staff member chooses to work from home, the employee will pay the tax out of their salary for each day they work from home. This can be audited by coordinating with company travel and technology systems.
The tax rate? Those who can work from home tend to have higher-than-average incomes. If we assume the average salary of a person who chooses to work from home in the US is $55,000, a tax of five per cent works out to just over $10 per working day. That is roughly the amount an office worker might spend on commuting, lunch, and laundry etc. A tax at this rate, then, will leave them no worse off than if they had chosen to go into the office. If we apply the same tax rate to workers in the UK with an assumed average WFH salary of £35,000, it works out to just under £7 per day. In Germany, a WFH salary of €40,000 leads to a tax of just over €7.50 per day.
A tax at this level means that neither companies or individuals will be worse off. In fact, companies may be far better off as the savings from downsizing their office will more than make up for the cost of the WFH tax they will incur.
How much will the tax raise?
First the US. Of the 104m Americans who work full time, half worked from home during the pandemic. That is up from the 5.4 per cent who already worked from home before the pandemic. Of that additional 45 per cent, our survey shows that three quarters want to work from home to some degree post-covid with 16 per cent wanting one day a week, 33 per cent two days, 19 per cent three days, 4 per cent four days, and 4 per cent five days.
Adding this up, there could be 4.2bn new days every year being worked from home postcovid. With an additional 394m days for those part time and full time staff who already work from home and are not self-employed, that gives 4.6bn WFH days per year. At an average salary of $55,000 and a tax rate of five per cent, the WFH tax will raise $48bn per year. The same calculation in the UK and Germany (using country specific WFH data and the salary levels assumed above) yields a tax take of £6.9bn and €15.9bn respectively.
What can the government do with this money?
In the US, the $48bn raised could pay for a $1,500 grant to the 29m workers who cannot work from home and earn under $30,000 a year (excluding those who earn tips). Many of these people are those who assumed the health risks of working during the pandemic and are far more ‘essential’ than their wage level suggests.
Similarly, in Germany, the €15.9bn raised could fund a €1,500 grant to the bottom 12 per cent of people in the country who have a standard of living equivalent to €12,600 (after adjusting for the size of their household). Similarly in the UK, the £6.9bn raised could provide a grant of £2,000 to the 12 per cent of those aged over 25 who work for the minimum wage. Of course, the exact amount of the grant could be based on an asymmetric tapering system.
Some will argue against the tax. They will say that engagement with the economy is a personal choice and they should not be penalised for making that decision. Yet, these people should remember that governments have always backsolved taxes to suit the social environment. Consider that in centuries past, when it was socially unpalatable in the UK to introduce an income tax, the government implemented a window tax. As society changed, the window tax was abolished and, eventually, an income tax was introduced. In the same way, as our current society moves towards a state of ‘human disconnection’, our tax system must move with it.
Best of all, a WFH tax does not merely subsidise businesses that have no long-term future. If, for example, a city-centre sandwich shop is no longer needed, it does not make sense for the government to support the business in the medium term. But it does make sense to support the mass of people who have been suddenly displaced by forces outside their control. Many will have to take low-paid jobs while they retrain or figure out their next step in life. From a personal and economic point of view, it makes sense that these people should be given a helping hand. It also makes sense to recognise that essential workers that assume covid risk for low wages. Those who are lucky enough to be in a position to ‘disconnect’ themselves from the face-to-face economy owe it to them.
- Whitehead: End The Government's War On America's Military Veterans
Whitehead: End The Government's War On America's Military Veterans
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 18:20Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“For soldiers… coming home is more lethal than being in combat.”
– Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston
The 2020 presidential election may be over, but nothing has really changed.
The U.S. government still poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.
More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
This threat is especially pronounced for America’s military veterans, especially that portion of the population that exercises their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.
Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for exercising those rights they risked their lives to defend.
The government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, this Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.
Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.
Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.
And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.
In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.
In light of the government’s efforts to lay the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data and predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability coupled with a military background.
Incredibly, as part of a proposal being considered by the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.
These tactics are not really new.
Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of rendering them disempowering them.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in Gulag: A History: “The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”
For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.
Insisting that “ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure,” the psychiatric community actually went so far as to provide the government with a diagnosis suitable for locking up such freedom-oriented activists.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers.
Author George Kennan describes a process in which:
The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years. Administrative exile–which required no trial and no sentencing procedure–was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.
Sound familiar?
This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.
What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.
Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.
It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.
The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.
Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.
On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub’s Virginia home, asking to speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a political thriller virtual card game.
Among the posts cited as troublesome were lyrics to a song by a rap group and Raub’s views, shared increasingly by a number of Americans, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.
After a brief conversation and without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, Raub was then handcuffed and transported to police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in nature.”
Outraged onlookers filmed the arrest and posted the footage to YouTube, where it quickly went viral. Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward.
Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance, which combined with heightened media attention, brought about his release and may have helped prevent Raub from being successfully “disappeared” by the government.
Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.
“Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis
“denotes that the person exhibits ‘symptoms’ such as the questioning of authority, the refusal to follow directions, stubbornness, the unwillingness to go along with the crowd, and the practice of disobeying or ignoring orders. Persons may also receive such a label if they are considered free thinkers, nonconformists, or individuals who are suspicious of large, centralized government… At one time the accepted protocol among mental health professionals was to reserve the diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder for children or adolescents who exhibited uncontrollable defiance toward their parents and teachers.”
Frankly, based on how well my personality and my military service in the U.S. Armed Forces fit with this description of “oppositional defiance disorder,” I’m sure there’s a file somewhere with my name on it.
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.
If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
Feeding this perception of veterans as ticking time bombs in need of intervention, the Justice Department launched a pilot program in 2012 aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
The result?
Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.
For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”
Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”
Given the government’s increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists, it makes one think twice about government programs encouraging veterans to include a veterans designation on their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.
Hailed by politicians as a way to “make it easier for military veterans to access discounts from retailers, restaurants, hotels and vendors across the state,” it will also make it that much easier for the government to identify and target veterans who dare to challenge the status quo.
Remember: no one is spared in a police state.
Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we all suffer the same fate.
It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?
It’s time to end the government’s war on the American people, and that includes military veterans.
Certainly, veterans have enough physical and psychological war wounds to overcome without adding the government to the mix. Although the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, large numbers of veterans are impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.
At least 60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017.
On average, 6,000 veterans kill themselves every year, and the numbers are on the rise.
The plight of veterans today—and their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government—remains America’s badge of shame.
So here’s a suggestion: if you really want to do something to show your respect and appreciation for the nation’s veterans, why not skip the parades and the flag-waving and instead go exercise your rights—the freedoms that those veterans swore to protect—by pushing back against the government’s tyranny.
It’s time the rest of the nation did its part to safeguard the freedoms we too often take for granted.
Freedom is not free.
- Toobin Fired From New Yorker For Jerking Off During Zoom Call
Toobin Fired From New Yorker For Jerking Off During Zoom Call
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/11/2020 – 18:00Journalist Jeffrey Toobin, who was suspended by CNN and The New Yorker after he was caught masturbating on a zoom call last month in full view of colleagues, has been fired by the latter publication.
Toobin confirmed his firing in a Wednesday tweet, writing “I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years as a Staff Writer.”
I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years as a Staff Writer. I will always love the magazine, will miss my colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work.
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) November 11, 2020
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In a memo to Condé Nast employees, executive Stan Duncan wrote: “I am writing to share with you that our investigation regarding Jeffrey Toobin is complete, and as a result, he is no longer affiliated with our company.”
“I want to assure everyone that we take workplace matters seriously. We are committed to fostering an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct.”
Meanwhile, a New Yorker spokesperson told The Hill: “As a result of our investigation, Jeffrey Toobin is no longer affiliated with the company.”
After originally reporting on October 19 that Toobin had ‘exposed himself’ during the zoom call, Vice issued a late day correction to note that Toobin was actively jerking off.
“This piece has been updated with more detail about the call and the headline has been updated to reflect that Toobin was masturbating.” –Vice
Toobin told Vice that he had “made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off camera,” before apologizing to his wife, family, friends and co-workers.”
“I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” he added.
CNN, meanwhile, has yet to take action against Toobin, who will quite literally never live this down.
He had an accident pic.twitter.com/Tw95kd4CGX
— Lit News Network (@litnewsnet) November 11, 2020
Would you say they’re giving you the shaft? https://t.co/8TYnZEiAK6
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 11, 2020
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Hard times 😂
seriously though… thought you would have pulled it off to stay.
Ha!!!
Just kidding…. good luck… job market is stiff.
— President Elect Erica or PEE for short ⚖ (@ZiaErica) November 11, 2020
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