- The Metaverse Is Big Brother in Disguise: Freedom Meted Out By Technological Tyrants
The Metaverse Is Big Brother in Disguise: Freedom Meted Out By Technological Tyrants
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The term metaverse, like the term meritocracy, was coined in a sci fi dystopia novel written as cautionary tale. Then techies took metaverse, and technocrats took meritocracy, and enthusiastically adopted what was meant to inspire horror.”
– Antonio García Martínez
Welcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one’s technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, sees this digital universe—the metaverse—as the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.
Yet while Zuckerberg’s vision for this digital frontier has been met with a certain degree of skepticism, the truth—as journalist Antonio García Martínez concludes—is that we’re already living in the metaverse.
The metaverse is, in turn, a dystopian meritocracy, where freedom is a conditional construct based on one’s worthiness and compliance.
In a meritocracy, rights are privileges, afforded to those who have earned them. There can be no tolerance for independence or individuality in a meritocracy, where political correctness is formalized, legalized and institutionalized. Likewise, there can be no true freedom when the ability to express oneself, move about, engage in commerce and function in society is predicated on the extent to which you’re willing to “fit in.”
We are almost at that stage now.
Consider that in our present virtue-signaling world where fascism disguises itself as tolerance, the only way to enjoy even a semblance of freedom is by opting to voluntarily censor yourself, comply, conform and march in lockstep with whatever prevailing views dominate.
Fail to do so—by daring to espouse “dangerous” ideas or support unpopular political movements—and you will find yourself shut out of commerce, employment, and society: Facebook will ban you, Twitter will shut you down, Instagram will de-platform you, and your employer will issue ultimatums that force you to choose between your so-called freedoms and economic survival.
This is exactly how Corporate America plans to groom us for a world in which “we the people” are unthinking, unresistant, slavishly obedient automatons in bondage to a Deep State policed by computer algorithms.
Science fiction has become fact.
Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis’ iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.
We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.
In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world.
Neo is given a choice: to take the red pill, wake up and join the resistance, or take the blue pill, remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be.
Most people opt for the blue pill.
In our case, the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.
Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them.
Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.
This is not freedom. This is not even progress.
This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency.
So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.
Yet it’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.
If ever Americans find themselves in bondage to technological tyrants, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.
Indeed, we’re fast approaching Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here, however, is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”
By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”
As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.
It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.
This “connected” industry has become the next big societal transformation, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.
Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.)
These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.”
For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence?
Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.
It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:
Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.
In other words, the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts.
Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030:
1: Thoughts become action: using the brain as the interface, for example, users will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination.
2: Sounds will become an extension of the devised virtual reality: users could mimic anyone’s voice realistically enough to fool even family members.
3: Real food will become secondary to imagined tastes. A sensory device for your mouth could digitally enhance anything you eat, so that any food can taste like your favorite treat.
4: Smells will become a projection of this virtual reality so that virtual visits, to forests or the countryside for instance, would include experiencing all the natural smells of those places.
5: Total touch: Smartphones with screens will convey the shape and texture of the digital icons and buttons they are pressing.
6: Merged reality: VR game worlds will become indistinguishable from physical reality by 2030.
This is the metaverse, wrapped up in the siren-song of convenience and sold to us as the secret to success, entertainment and happiness.
It’s a false promise, a wicked trap to snare us, with a single objective: total control.
George Orwell understood this.
Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, total control over every aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective of any totalitarian regime.
The Metaverse is just Big Brother in disguise.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 23:40 - In Rare Move, Space Station Fires Thrusters To Dodge Debris From 2007 Chinese Weapons Test
In Rare Move, Space Station Fires Thrusters To Dodge Debris From 2007 Chinese Weapons Test
Low Earth orbit (LEO) is cluttered with space junk that has been steadily increasing over the years. The problem is so severe that the International Space Station (ISS) had to power up its thrusters to dodge a piece of Chinese space debris on Wednesday.
NYT reports the ISS dodged “35114” in NASA’s list of space junk, also identified as 1999-025DKS, a piece of debris from a Chinese weather satellite that was blown up in LEO via a ballistic missile test in 2007. The in-orbit explosion caused over 3,000 pieces of debris.
NASA and Russia’s space agency in Moscow worked together to fire up ISS’ thrusters that raised ISS about a mile in altitude to avoid 35114.
“It just makes sense to go ahead and do this burn and put this behind us so we can ensure the safety of the crew,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS manager, told reporters on Tuesday ahead of the maneuver.
Since the inception of the space station in the late 1990s, there have only been 29 such avoidance maneuvers.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at Harvard who tracks space junk, tweeted Wednesday that thrusters were fired around “2015 UTC to adjust the Space Station’s orbit and make sure it doesn’t get hit by debris object 35114.”
Roskosmos confirmes that the Progress MS-18 engines were fired as planned at 2015 UTC to adjust the Space Station’s orbit and make sure it doesn’t get hit by debris object 35114. https://t.co/NegUFedDNq
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) November 10, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
ISS’ debris-dodging maneuver didn’t impact Thursday’s docking of the Crew Dragon capsule with the station.
Not all objects can be dodged. On May 12, a small, untrackable piece of space junk ripped through a robotic arm on the station. It caused no damage but underlined the space junk problem.
Space agencies track around 30,000 pieces of space debris in LEO. As the technology to launch satellites and humans into space becomes cheaper and more accessible, more junk gathers in LEO.
“The biggest contributor to the current space debris problem is explosions in orbit, caused by left-over energy—fuel and batteries—onboard spacecraft and rockets. Despite measures being in place for years to prevent this, we see no decline in the number of such events. Trends towards end-of-mission disposal are improving, but at a slow pace,” European Space Agency recently said.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 23:20 - Aussie Health Chief Says People Who Don't Get Vaccinated Will Be "Miserable" And "Lonely" For Life
Aussie Health Chief Says People Who Don’t Get Vaccinated Will Be “Miserable” And “Lonely” For Life
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
The Queensland president of the Australian Medical Association said during a television appearance that people still refusing to get the vaccine will be “miserable” and “lonely” for the rest of their lives.
Yes, really.
“Oh, they’re crazy not to get vaccinated, life will be miserable without getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Chris Perry.
“You won’t be able to hide, you won’t be able to get a doctor to sign off that you got an exclusion because there’s quite set rules on that and doctors will be audited, every one of their exclusions will be looked at very carefully,” he added, before threatening doctors with fines and termination.
Perry also threatened people who falsely obtain a vaccine exemption that they will also be hit with fraud charges if they “try and get round the system.”
@mickrowan https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js
“It’s going to be very hard to maintain your employment if you’re not vaccinated and you won’t be able to go anywhere for any entertainment,” he said.
Perry concluded by saying that those who don’t get double jabbed will have “a very, very lonely life” and wouldn’t be able to maintain a job.
Now tell me again how the vaccine isn’t mandatory?
During subsequent comments, Perry blamed “conspiracy theorists” for making people hesitant to take the vaccine.
“In the age of social media, any potential slight headache or small, serious problem with the vaccines is magnified,” he said.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 23:00 - "Yeah, That Looks Bad": Metallurgist Pleads Guilty To Faking Navy Submarine Steel Tests For Decades
“Yeah, That Looks Bad”: Metallurgist Pleads Guilty To Faking Navy Submarine Steel Tests For Decades
A Washington state-based metallurgist has pleaded guilty to fraud after fabricating the results of strength tests on steel used in US Navy submarines for more than 30 years.
The christened Virginia-class submarine Delaware sits at Newport News Shipbuilding in December 2018. (Credit: Huntington Ingalls Industries) According to federal prosecutors, 67-year-old Elaine Marine Thomas of Auburn, Washington falsified strength and toughness results in at least 240 tests between 1985 and 2017 – claiming that the steel met the Navy’s strength requirements when in fact it did not. Thomas, who was charged with one criminal count of major fraud against the United States, was the director of metallurgy at a Tacoma foundry which was acquired by Kansas City-based Bradken, Inc., the Navy’s leading supplier of high-strength steel used in submarine hulls.
The tests, often conducted at -100 degrees Fahrenheit, represented nearly half of Bradken’s high-yield steel produced for use in Navy submarines.
Thomas was busted after a junior metallurgist being groomed as her replacement reported suspicious test results, after which she was immediately terminated. The fraud was admitted to after a special agent from the Department of Defense’s Criminal Investigative Service confronted Thomas with evidence dating back to 1990.
“Yeah, that looks bad,” she said, according to the criminal complaint, which added that she thought conducting tests at such cold temperatures was “a stupid requirement.”
Thomas faces up top 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she’s sentenced in February.
While the affected vessels were not disclosed by authorities, there was no indication in the initial complaint that any submarine hulls had been compromised. That said, it would be interesting to know if any of the compromised metal was used in the USS Connecticut, which collided with an underwater mountain in the South China Sea on Oct. 2, injuring 11 crewmembers and causing an undisclosed amount of damage. Built between 1992 and 1997 by General Dynamics, the Connecticut underwent a hull inspection in 2019 as part of a $17 million project at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
The falsified reports came to public attention in June 2020, when Bradken paid a $10.9 million fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice. The company learned of the deception in 2017, however they found themselves in hot water after initially suggesting that the discrepancies were not the result of fraud. The lie reportedly hindered the Navy’s investigation into how widespread the problem was, along with efforts to determine what risk it had put sailors in.
“Bradken placed the Navy’s sailors and its operations at risk,” Seattle U.S. Attorney Brian Moran said last year. “Government contractors must not tolerate fraud within their organizations, and they must be fully forthcoming with the government when they discover it.”
Thomas’s lawyer, John Carpenter, said in a statement filed in federal court on Monday that his client “took shortcuts and made material misrepresentations.”
“Ms Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised,” the statement continues.
“This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 22:40 - Promoting World Peace, Not Glorifying War
Promoting World Peace, Not Glorifying War
After Armistice Day was rebranded Veterans Day by U.S. Congress, it quickly morphed into an occasion for honoring the military…
Over one hundred years ago, in 1918, the world celebrated peace as a universal principal.
The first World War had just ended and nations mourning their dead collectively called for an end to all wars.
Armistice Day was born and was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated.”
After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand Nov. 11 as Veterans Day.
Honoring the warrior quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day was flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
Veterans For Peace has taken the lead in lifting up the original intention of Nov. 11th – as a day for peace. As veterans we know that a day that celebrates peace, not war, is the best way to honor the sacrifices of veterans. We want generations after us to never know the destruction war has wrought on people and the earth.
Veterans For Peace is calling on everyone to stand up for peace this Armistice Day. More than ever, the world faces a critical moment. Tensions are heightened around the world and the U.S. is engaged militarily in multiple countries, without an end in sight.
Here at home, we have seen the increasing militarization of our police forces and brutal crackdowns on dissent and people’s uprisings against state power. We must press our government to end reckless military interventions that endanger the entire world. We must build a culture of peace.
This Armistice Day, Veterans For Peace calls on the U.S. public to say no to more war and to demand justice and peace, at home and abroad. We know Peace is Possible and call for an end to all oppressive and violent policies, and for equality for all.
Learn More about Armistice Day.
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Numbers from the Census Bureau show that despite the continued U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts, older veterans remained the norm in the U.S. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, as of 2019, more than half were over the age of 65.
In the same year, there were 17.4 million veterans in the U.S., down from 21.8 million in 2010.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Only around 380,000 World War II veterans were still alive in 2019.
The number of U.S. vets is expected to further decline as the largest group among them remain the older Vietnam vets.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 22:20 - Robots Steal Jobs During Pandemic As Working Poor Displaced
Robots Steal Jobs During Pandemic As Working Poor Displaced
Companies faced with worker shortages and soaring labor costs are increasingly turning to automation to address the challenging economic climate.
Hiring issues have been widespread across the economy, and wages are spiking. These two forces are compressing margins for companies that force them to invest in robots to mitigate labor woes.
During the pandemic, we reported microbe-zapping disinfecting robots were introduced in airports and hospitals, fast-food chains adopted hamburger flipping robots, and restaurants began to use robo-waiters.
With the worst days of the virus pandemic hopefully over, the automation trend continues to gain momentum. Bloomberg, citing a new report from the International Federal of Robotics, said spending on professional service robots jumped 12% last year.
With the number of open jobs around 10MM, Americans are quitting with ease. For the first time in decades, workers have power in the labor market. And they’re using this newfound leverage to launch a flurry of strikes, demanding higher pay and more benefits from companies. This has created all sorts of headaches for their preoccupied bosses, dealing with snarled supply chains.
Unions have long viewed robots as a threat. Companies “have one goal in mind: to eliminate your job, and put more money in their pockets,” International Longshoremen’s Association President Harold Daggett said at a June conference. “We’re going to fight this for 100 years.”
But the fight could be pointless as the automation wave is already sweeping through the economy, supercharged by the pandemic. Even before the virus, wealth inequality was at extremes, and what will make it worse is automation:
“If it continues, labor demand will grow slowly, inequality will increase, and the prospects for many low-education workers will not be very good,” said Daron Acemoglu, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing on automation.
Acemoglu said firms could “develop technologies that are more complementary to workers.” But he said that’s not “the direction the technology is going currently.”
Robot technology allows machines to displace humans and could boost productivity but wipe out jobs for the working poor. There will be growing pains in the economy this decade as displaced workers sit idle, and what’s likely to happen is the government will continue to issue stimulus checks.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 22:00 - Escobar: Afghanistan – Between Pipelines & ISIS-K, The Americans Are Still In Play
Escobar: Afghanistan – Between Pipelines & ISIS-K, The Americans Are Still In Play
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
US trained and armed Afghan security forces are joining ISIS-K, which makes the US ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan look more like an American ‘repositioning’ to keep chaos humming…
Something quite extraordinary happened in early November in Kabul.
Taliban interim-Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov got together to discuss a range of political and economic issues. Most importantly, they resurrected the legendary soap opera which in the early 2000s I dubbed Pipelineistan: the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
Call it yet another remarkable, historical twist in the post-jihad Afghan saga, going back as far as the mid-1990s when the Taliban first took power in Kabul.
In 1997, the Taliban even visited Houston to discuss the pipeline, then known as TAP, as reported in Part 1 of my e-book Forever Wars.
During the second Clinton administration, a consortium led by Unocal – now part of Chevron – was about to embark on what would have been an extremely costly proposition (nearly $8 billion) to undercut Russia in the intersection of Central and South Asia; as well as to smash the competition: the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline.
The Taliban were duly courted – in Houston and in Kabul. A key go-between was the ubiquitous Zalmay Khalilzad, aka ‘Bush’s Afghan,’ in one of his earlier incarnations as Unocal lobbyist-cum-Taliban interlocutor. But then, low oil prices and non-stop haggling over transit fees stalled the project. That was the situation in the run-up to 9/11.
In early 2002, shortly after the Taliban were expelled from power by the American “bombing to democracy” ethos, an agreement to build what was then still billed as TAP (without India), was signed by Ashgabat, Kabul and Islamabad.
The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline route
As years went by, it was clear that TAPI, which runs for roughly 800 km across Afghan lands and could yield as much as $400 million annually in transit revenue for Kabul’s coffers, would never be built while hostage to a guerrilla environment.
Still, five years ago, Kabul decided to revive TAPI and work started in 2018 – under massive security in Herat, Farah, Nimruz and Helmand provinces, already largely under Taliban control.
At the time, the Taliban said they would not attack TAPI and would even provide their own security. The gas pipeline was to be paired with fiber optic cables – as with the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan – and a railway line from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan.
History never stops playing tricks in the graveyard of empires. Believe it or not, we’re now back to the same situation on the ground as in 1996.
The spanner in the works
If we pay attention to the plot twists in this never-ending Pipelineistan saga, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that TAPI will finally be built. It’s certainly a quadruple win for all involved – including India – and a massive step towards Eurasia’s integration in its Central-South Asian node.
Enter the spanner in the works: ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the subsidiary of Daesh in Afghanistan.
Russian intel has known for over a year that the usual suspects have been providing help to ISIS-K, at least indirectly.
Yet now there’s a new element, confirmed by Taliban sources, that quite a few US-trained soldiers of the previous Afghan National Army are incorporating themselves into ISIS-K to fight against the Taliban.
ISIS-K, which sports a global jihadi mindset, has typically viewed the Taliban as a group of dirty nationalists. Earlier jihadi members used to be recruited from the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Yet now, apart from former soldiers, they are mostly young, disaffected urban Afghans, westernized by trashy pop culture.
It’s been hard for ISIS-K to establish the narrative that the Taliban are western collaborators – considering that the NATO galaxy continues to antagonize and/or dismiss the new rulers of Kabul.
So the new ISIS-K spin is monomaniac: basically, a strategy of chaos to discredit the Taliban, with an emphasis on the latter being unable to provide security for average Afghans. That is what underlies the recent horrific attacks on Shia mosques and government infrastructure, including hospitals.
In parallel, US President Joe Biden’s “over the horizon” spin, meant to define the alleged American strategy to fight ISIS-K, has not convinced anyone, apart from NATO vassals.
Since its creation in 2015, ISIS-K continues to be financed by the same dodgy sources that fueled chaos in Syria and Iraq. The moniker itself is an attempt to misdirect, a divisive ploy straight out of the CIA’s playbook.
Historic ‘Khorasan’ comes from successive Persian empires, a vast area ranging from Persia and the Caspian all the way to northwest Afghanistan – and has nothing whatsoever to do with Salafi-jihadism and the Wahhabi lunatics who make up the terrorist group’s ranks. Furthermore, these ISIS-K jihadis are based in south-eastern Afghanistan, away from Iran’s borders, so the ‘Khorasan’ label makes zero sense.
Russian, Chinese and Iranian intel operate on the basis that the US ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, as in Syria and Iraq, was not a withdrawal but a repositioning. What’s left is the trademark, undiluted American strategy of chaos executed via both direct (troops stealing Syrian oil) and indirect (ISIS-K) actors.
The scenario is self-evident when one considers that Afghanistan was the precious missing link of China’s New Silk Roads. After the US exit, Afghanistan is not only primed to fully engage with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but also to become a key node of Eurasia integration as a future full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
To hedge against these positive developments, the routine practices of the Pentagon and its NATO subsidiary remain in wait in Afghanistan, ready to disrupt political, diplomatic, economic and security progress in the country. We may be now entering a new chapter in the US Hegemony playbook: Closet Forever Wars.
The closely connected SCO
Fifth columnists are tasked with carrying the new imperial message to the West. That’s the case of Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), “the Afghan intelligence service with close ties to the CIA,” as described by Foreign Policy magazine..
In an interview presented with a series of trademark imperial lies – “law and order is disintegrating,” “Afghanistan has no friends in the international community,” “the Taliban have no diplomatic partners” – Nabil, at least, does not make a complete fool of himself.
He confirms that ISIS-K keeps recruiting, and adds that former Afghan defense/security ops are joining ISIS-K because “they see the Islamic State as a better platform for themselves.”
He’s also correct that the Taliban leadership in Kabul is “afraid the extreme and young generation of their fighters” may join ISIS-K, “which has a regional agenda.”
Russia “playing a double game” is just silly. In presidential envoy Zamir Kabulov, Moscow maintains a first-class interlocutor in constant touch with the Taliban, and would never allow the “resistance,” as in CIA assets, to be based in Tajikistan with an Afghan destabilization agenda.
On Pakistan, it’s correct that Islamabad is “trying to convince the Taliban to include pro-Pakistan technocrats in their system.” But that’s not “in return for lobbying for international recognition.” It’s a matter of responding to the Taliban’s own management needs.
The SCO is very closely connected on what they collectively expect from the Taliban. That includes an inclusive government and no influx of refugees. Uzbekistan, for instance, as the main gateway to Central Asia for Afghanistan, has committed to participating in the reconstruction business.
For its part, Tajikistan announced that China will build a $10 million military base in the geologically spectacular Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. Countering western hysteria, Dushanbe made sure that the base will essentially host a special rapid reaction unit of the Regional Department for Organized Crime Control, subordinated to Tajikistan’s Minister of Internal Affairs.
That will include around 500 servicemen, several light armored vehicles, and drones. The base is part of a deal between Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry and China’s Ministry of State Security.
The base is a necessary compromise. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has a serious problem with the Taliban: he refuses to recognize them, and insists on better Tajik representation in a new government in Kabul.
Beijing, for its part, never deviates from its number one priority: preventing Uighurs from the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) by all means from crossing Tajik borders to wreak havoc in Xinjiang.
So all the major SCO players are acting in tandem towards a stable Afghanistan. As for US Think Tankland, predictably, they don’t have much of a strategy, apart from praying for chaos.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 21:40 - America Is Short A Whopping 80,000 Truck Drivers
America Is Short A Whopping 80,000 Truck Drivers
America is short tens of thousands of truck drivers as supply chain woes increase at ports, creating shortages and pushing inflation higher. Truckers haul an astonishing 72.5% of all freight in the US and account for 6% of the full-time workforce.
Bob Costello, the Chief Economist for the American Trucking Association (ATA), told 6 News that the US is short a whopping 80,000 truck drivers, up from an estimated shortage of 61,500 drivers before the virus pandemic. He said the industry needs to recruit over a million drivers this decade to replace an aging workforce.
Costello said several factors contribute to the shortage of drivers, including age demographics, ongoing COVID pandemic, drug testing, trouble recruiting, pay, age restrictions (commercial drivers must be 21), and infrastructure issues.
He told Fortune that “there is no single cause of the driver shortage, that means there is no single solution, adding that “the solution to the driver shortage will most certainly require increased pay, regulatory changes, and modifications to shippers’, receivers’ and carriers’ business practices to improve conditions for drivers.”
However, there is some good news as labor markets recover and increasing job transitions are underway, which is an uptick in applications for commercial driver’s licenses.
Sunny Truck Driving School in Queens, New York, has added new training trucks to keep up with a flood of new applicants, according to BBC. The wait times to take the test have jumped from 4 weeks to 12 weeks. Some of the new applicants are former taxi and uber drivers, seeking higher pay after the pandemic left them jobless.
In Texas, the state government has expanded truck-driver license testing to six days a week (instead of five) in response to the nationwide shortage that has resulted in supply chain snarls. The pay is so good in The Lone Star State that one transportation company is offering drivers $14k per week.
DPS adds Saturday services for CDLs at select offices in Nov. to help address #SupplyChain strain. @TxDPS Director McCraw: “…we can get more qualified commercial drivers out on the roads to move more goods to Texans… & help meet the demand.”https://t.co/A9Yy2UX6WE pic.twitter.com/QT3bpUk9t2
— Gov. Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) November 4, 2021
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Big trucking companies warn that driver shortages will persist into next year and pressure freight rates higher. An effort is already being made to process new drivers and get them on the road, but it could take years to attract new drivers and clear up the shortage. That’s why companies are pushing towards automation and robot trucks.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 21:20 - Judge Orders FBI To Stop "Extracting" Data From Veritas Devices Amid Mystery Leaks To NYT
Judge Orders FBI To Stop “Extracting” Data From Veritas Devices Amid Mystery Leaks To NYT
A federal judge has ordered the FBI to stop “extracting” information from James O’Keefe’s phone following the raids on multiple properties last week, as part of a probe into the alleged theft of President Biden’s daughter’s diary.
The FBI claims the diary was stolen. O’Keefe has vehemently denied that:
“Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary,” said O’Keefe,” adding “the tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary.”
“At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof.”
O’Keefe said that they turned the diary over to law enforcement after Ashley Biden’s attorney refused to accept or authenticate it.
But that was not enough for ‘the establishment’, especially in light of O’Keefe’s persistent nuisance factor of exposing ugly truths.
Judge Analisa Torres ordered the FBI to stop extracting information contained in O’Keefe’s phone and further ordered verification by Friday.
This is a ‘win’ for O’Keefe and the Project Veritas team, but not before the contents of the documents/phones seized had been leaked to The New York Times.
The FBI raided Project Veritas on a pretext and is now leaking their privileged communications to the New York Times
This is a scandal pic.twitter.com/gll5PG4ShW
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) November 12, 2021
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“Something tells me that the Federal judge who ordered the FBI to stop removing files from Project Veritas devices is going to have some questions as to how attorney-client privileged communications were removed from those devices and sent to the NYT.”
This is the Deep State that Trump has warned about for years.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 21:10 - With 7.4 Billion COVID Shots In Arms, Bill Gates Admits The Quiet Part Out Loud
With 7.4 Billion COVID Shots In Arms, Bill Gates Admits The Quiet Part Out Loud
Authored by Jordan Schachtel via The Dossier substack,
The world’s most influential “public health” advocate has come to seemingly doubt the technology behind mRNA injections, following their deployment into more than 7.34 billion arms worldwide.
A little-noticed interview from last week with a U.K. think tank saw Microsoft founder Bill Gates make some incredible statements about his most prized “solution” to the pandemic.
“We didn’t have vaccines that block transmission,” said Gates, contradicting previous interviews in which he claimed the shots significantly block transmission.
“We got vaccines that help you with your health, but they only slightly reduce the transmission,” he added.
[The vast majority of the interview involves Gates demanding totalitarian solutions to bad weather, which he refers to as climate change. The part about the COVID shots comes at minute 27.]
Gates is correct about the fact that the shots aren’t blocking transmission. With record COVID numbers coming out of Europe, it’s become obvious that the mRNA shots are doing little, if nothing at all, to stop transmission. Moreover, the impact these shots have in preventing a positive COVID test appear to expire after 6-9 months.
Gates wasn’t done.
He added a pretty shocking statement to top it off:
“We need a new way of doing the vaccines.”
Just like that, Gates appears to be wiping his hands clean of his involvement in the worldwide mRNA experiment.
It’s a surprising tone from a man whose foundation has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars (thanks to pre-IPO access to BioNtech, the maker of the “Pfizer shot”) from the shots, in addition to his fierce advocacy for them. Additionally, Gates has added billions of dollars in income to his personal arsenal during the pandemic.
Despite being one of the largest proponents of presently-available COVID-19 vaccines, Gates admits to the failure of the vaccine industry that he has worked so hard to prop up.
MORE: https://t.co/aw7PJZ86jM pic.twitter.com/lo9kKuImo9
— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) November 9, 2021
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To make matters even worse, Gates then endorsed the Police State models for COVID “mitigation” that are currently being implemented by New Zealand and Australia.
“At least Australia and New Zealand showed that competent management could keep the death rate down pretty dramatically,” he said in the interview.
He did not mention that both countries have been under lockdown for significant portions of COVID Mania, with citizens facing massive restrictions of their rights for almost two years. And on top of that, both countries, despite their heinous lockdowns and mRNA deployments, are currently facing massive outbreaks on an unprecedented scale.
Clearly, the man described by Politico as the “world’s most powerful doctor” is doubling down on the totalitarian madness that he is attempting to impose on the world.
At The Dossier, we have reported extensively on the influence the Gates Network wields over the world of “public health.” The Gates network is primarily responsible for seeding America’s COVID policy catastrophes. You can read about it below and listen to my podcast with more detail:
How the Gates Foundation seeded America’s COVID-19 policy catastrophes
The Monopolist: How Bill Gates wields enormous influence over COVID policy
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 21:00 - YouTube Hides "Dislikes" Following Mass Downvoting Of Biden Administration Videos
YouTube Hides “Dislikes” Following Mass Downvoting Of Biden Administration Videos
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
YouTube has announced it will hide ‘dislikes’ from videos to curb “creator harassment,” with critics pointing out that this is merely a way of removing the huge amount of downvotes on videos posted by the Biden administration.
“YouTube has announced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site, starting today,” reports The Verge.
“The company says the change is to keep smaller creators from being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment, and to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.” The dislike button will still be there, but it’ll be for private feedback, rather than public shaming.”
Quite how viewer feedback in the form of a thumbs down icon represents “harassment” is anyone’s guess, but the immediate response to the announcement from many was that the Google-owned company was merely moving to protect the Biden White House from ridicule.
“Is this the reason?” asked one respondent, highlighting how Biden speeches and White House press briefings receive massive dislike ratios, sometimes at a rate of ten to one.
Is this the reason? pic.twitter.com/BSaM92k9Vl
— 🙂FRANK SINATRA (@FRANK_SINATRA7) November 10, 2021
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Gee, I wonder why they’re about to hide dislikes.
It’s a total mystery. pic.twitter.com/tCEwDDVdBY
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 10, 2021
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“This is for the White House account you KNOW that right?” commented another.
This is for the White House account you KNOW that right?
— Ryan Ashe (@RealRyanAshe) November 10, 2021
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“The video department of the Ministry of Truth doing its part for the greater good,” added another.
The video department of the Ministry of Truth doing its part for the greater good.
— Ian (@ianpiepenbrock) November 10, 2021
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Another respondent pointed out the massive dislike ratio received by the Fauci propaganda movie.
Wonder why 🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/5qcqdpZHYK
— ₿hargav (@ThatIndianGuy) November 10, 2021
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With the recent popularity of the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme, this seems like another transparent attempt to protect the plunging popularity of Biden, whose approval rating just fell to a record low.
As we previously highlighted, despite being “the most popular president in U.S. history” after his *totally not unusual* vote record, Joe Biden didn’t fare too well on YouTube in the days after his inauguration, where every single video posted to the official White House channel received massive downvote ratios.
Thanks to YouTube, those ratios will never be a problem again.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 20:44 - For Several Companies, The "Activist Investor" Push To End Coal Mining Has Had The Opposite Effect
For Several Companies, The “Activist Investor” Push To End Coal Mining Has Had The Opposite Effect
The obvious case for allowing the free market to make decisions in industries like energy is that, when changes are forced instead of adopted naturally (usually via laws or government subsidies), they often work against the interests of efficiency.
That’s a lesson several companies found out first hand. In fact, Bloomberg writes there is now a “growing unease among climate activists and some investors that the policy many of them championed could lead to more coal being produced for longer”.
For example, Anglo American Plc, one of the world’s most powerful mining companies, has become “a case study in unintended consequences” after climate activists and investors urged it to stop digging up coal, Bloomberg reported this week. Now, it has transformed mines that were one set for closure into “the engine room for a growth-hungry coal business”.
Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani had seen Rio Tinto sell off its coal mines and had a plan to shut down its seven South African mines. But the company wasn’t taking action fast enough for activists and investors, so Anglo spun off another company called Thungela and tucked its coal operations into the SpinCo. Investors could then “decide for themselves” if they wanted to hold or sell shares of the SpinCo.
The SpinCo Chief Executive Officer, July Ndlovu, then announced they were looking to grow their coal production, not shrink it.
“I didn’t take up this role to close these mines, to close this business,” Ndlovu said. Its South African mines have the potential to add a decade or more of mining, producing more than 10 million tons of coal per year.
BHP Group, a rival company, had trouble selling a colliery earlier this year so it applied to extend mining at the site for another two decades. It was thought of as a way to sweeten a deal to sell the mine, but may wind up turning into BHP simply mining at the site for longer than expected. Investors continue to bring up BHP’s exit strategy from the mines as a point of contention.
“The big push from investors is around ensuring that any divestment that occurs is to parties that are responsible,” BHP CEO Mike Henry said.
Glencore Plc announced earlier this year it would increase its ownership of a large Colombian coal mine after seeking out the opinions of activists, the report says. The company has promised to end its coal operations by 2050, but has also prepared “contingency” plans in the event investors “force it”.
Nick Stansbury, head of climate solutions at Legal & General Group Plc, told Bloomberg: “Everyone in the industry is starting to be more sophisticated, more nuanced and more careful on the way they think these issues through.”
Ashley Hamilton Claxton, the head of responsible investment at Royal London Asset Management, concluded by stating that fossil fuel companies should hold on to their coal assets and manage their decline: “Selling the problem to a third party has unintended consequences. We need to shift the debate in the investment industry about being more sophisticated around these things.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 20:40 - Why You Should Care About 'Taproot', The Next Major Bitcoin Upgrade
Why You Should Care About ‘Taproot’, The Next Major Bitcoin Upgrade
Authored by ‘NAMCIOS’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,
By making transactions cheaper, more efficient and more private, Taproot sets the stage for extra functionality on the Bitcoin network.
Much has been written about Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade, and plenty of resources exist to explain its technical concepts. However, in the author’s opinion, a more comprehensive roundup of why Taproot is being implemented, what it will bring to the network, and what it might enable for the future, in plain English, is still lacking. Driven by the misconceptions that regular users have about Taproot and a certain lack of understanding, this essay leverages the technical resources that came before it to enlighten you to the broader implications of what is arguably the most significant upgrade to Bitcoin yet.
WHY TAPROOT MATTERS
In short and at the highest level of abstraction possible, the Bitcoin Taproot soft fork will optimize scalability, privacy, and smart contract functionality. It will bring about a new address type, allowing bitcoin spending to look similar regardless of whether the sender is making a simple payment, a complex multi-signature transaction, or using the Lightning Network. Moreover, Taproot addresses will allow users to save on transaction fees — the more complex the spending conditions, the more the user will save — compared to previous address types. By reducing the transaction size and making nearly any transaction appear like a simple, single-signature one, Taproot will also enable larger and more complex operations to be deployed on Bitcoin that were previously unfeasible or almost impossible.
If you only use Bitcoin to hold coins long term and sparingly move them around between wallets, you might think Taproot will have little impact on you. But in fact, the possibilities that this soft fork will enable for Bitcoin’s future are extensive, as Taproot lays the groundwork for more prominent and more significant developments to land on the network.
For one, Taproot ultimately empowers the Lightning Network to unleash its full potential as a proper scaling technology for Bitcoin. Currently, the second layer protocol can be spotted in action in the Bitcoin blockchain, reducing coins’ fungibility. Fungibility is vital for a monetary good to actualize the medium of exchange role because it allows for coins to be seen as equal. If transaction outputs were seen differently, they could suffer from discrimination by the receiver, preventing users from using their BTC for payments in certain conditions.
In addition, the Lightning Network and other complex wallets and contracts will enjoy greater efficiency and lower transaction fees, further empowering the usage of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. Enabled by Schnorr signatures, even the most complex transactions made between Taproot-supporting wallets will incur the same fees as simple ones. Furthermore, this reduction of costs and the increased flexibility and capabilities for smart contracts will ultimately enable very complex setups that were previously not feasible in Bitcoin.
But to comprehend why Taproot is being implemented in Bitcoin, one must first understand how Bitcoin transactions work and the many upgrades that have been made up to this point, naturally leading to Taproot.
A QUICK OVERVIEW OF HOW BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS WORK
Bitcoin transactions work based on inputs and outputs, which are also equal since coins are not destroyed. If you want to send me 5 BTC, for instance, you would need to select precisely 5 bitcoin, else the transaction would be either incomplete, or you’d have too many funds.
For the former, Bitcoin can’t do much — you can’t send funds you don’t have — but for the latter, Bitcoin will give you the “rest” as change. Therefore, if you select 7.38 BTC to send me five, 2.38 will go back to you as change. So you’d have 7.38 as input and 2.38 + 5 as outputs, although you’d receive a little less than 2.38 because the network needs to deduct the transaction fees.
When we talk about spending, we are referring to an output. Now that I have the 5 BTC you sent me, I can use it as I wish. I can send 3 BTC to Alice and 2 BTC to Bob, for instance, or I can send 5 BTC to Joe. Or I can keep the 5 BTC and HODL indefinitely. Unless I choose to hold it, I will be making a transaction regardless of the use I make of my new bitcoin. This latest transaction will get the 5 BTC output I have as input, and this transaction’s output will be whatever I decide to send. Notice that since I received the 5 BTC in full, even if I want to send only 3 bitcoin, I will have to input all the 5 bitcoin into the transaction, and I’ll get the rest back as change.
What’s essential in this dynamic is to realize the interaction of coins as inputs and outputs. When we spend, we are transferring a transaction output to another person. But to do that, we need to input it into a new transaction, and the other person will get the BTC as another transaction output. For that reason, the concept of a wallet is an abstraction intended to make things easier to acknowledge and understand by summing up all the transaction outputs you own. Because after all, that’s all there is — transaction outputs (UTXOs).
IMPROVING THE BITCOIN TRANSACTION MODEL
The history of paying in bitcoin has changed a lot since the early days of the network. Overall, the UTXO model described above relies on scripts or contracts created using the Bitcoin Script “programming” language. This author has put “programming” in quotation marks because Bitcoin’s scripting language can more accurately be seen as a verification language than one that provides computation directives. In essence, Bitcoin scripting is a way to specify conditions for spending a UTXO.
There are three major constraints when considering Bitcoin Script and how its improvements are made: privacy, space efficiency, and computational efficiency — usually, improving one of these cascades into strengthening the other two. For instance, seeking to reveal less about a transaction and thereby improving privacy would entail submitting a smaller amount of data, reducing space needs for the transaction, and making it easier to be verified — it’s less computationally intensive.
The community has been improving how Bitcoin transactions work by gradually introducing new script, or address, types. Ultimately, these changes have sought to enhance transactional privacy, make the transfer of funds more lightweight, and speed up the process of validating transactions. As a result, users have greater flexibility for creating scripts that increase the resilience of their savings, move funds around more efficiently and privately, and help unleash financial sovereignty. Albeit complicated for the end-user, technical tools have emerged to adopt these practices and abstract low-level technicalities, ensuring greater adoption of current best practices.
One clear example of this is multisignature addresses, which once had to be done manually with Bitcoin Script but can now be effortlessly created with a smartphone or a laptop. The same is true for Lightning, Bitcoin’s second-layer scaling solution for small and frequent payments. This Layer 2 is now available in mobile apps and allows for people to transact once-unfeasible amounts of BTC with each other instantly.
Taproot, the latest upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol and arguably the most important one to date, is a natural evolution of the way Bitcoin transactions, and hence scripts, work. Enabled by Schnorr signatures, MAST and Tapscript, Taproot seeks to increase flexibility and privacy without compromising security.
In the early days of Bitcoin, with legacy addresses, the sender of a transaction had to care about the receiver’s wallet policy — its contract, or script — which was not only impractical but represented a significant privacy shortcoming. The contract had to be revealed when the transaction was sent for anyone to see; hence, the receiver’s privacy was low.
With the advent of pay to script hash (P2SH), Bitcoin changed that dynamic, and transactions started to be sent to the hash of the contract instead of the contract itself. This meant the contract wouldn’t be revealed until the output was spent, and outputs became identical — just a hash.
A hash is the output of a hashing function, which takes a variable-length input and returns an encrypted result of fixed length. Not only did this addition to Bitcoin transactions improve privacy by making all outputs look similar, but it also reduced the output size, thereby increasing efficiency.
However, the contract had to become visible when spending and all of the spending conditions had to be revealed. The two downsides with this approach are privacy and efficiency, as any observer could learn about the different spending conditions — thus learning plenty of information about the spender — and the blockchain would be bloated with a large script with unnecessary logic — it only makes practical sense to verify the spending condition that was used to spend that output.
The Taproot upgrade improves this logic by introducing Merklelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST), a structure that ultimately allows Bitcoin to achieve the goal of only revealing the contract’s specific spending condition that was used.
There are two main possibilities for complex Taproot spending: a consensual, mutually-agreed condition; or a fallback, specific condition. For instance, if a multisignature address owned by multiple people wants to spend some funds programmatically, they could set up one spending condition in which all of them agree to spend the funds or fallback states in case they can’t reach a consensus.
If the condition everyone agrees on is used, Taproot allows it to be turned into a single signature. Therefore, the Bitcoin network wouldn’t even know there was a contract being used in the first place, significantly increasing the privacy of all of the owners of the multisignature address.
However, if a mutual consensus isn’t reached and one party spends the funds using any of the fallback methods, Taproot only reveals that specific method. As the introduction of P2SH increased the receiver’s privacy by making all outputs look identical — just a hash — Taproot will increase the sender’s privacy by restricting the amount of information broadcast to the network.
Even if you don’t use complex wallet functionality like multisignature or Lightning, improving their privacy also improves yours, as it makes chain surveillance more difficult and increases the broader Bitcoin network anonymity set.
WHAT TAPROOT COULD ULTIMATELY ENABLE FOR AVERAGE BITCOIN USERS
By making transactions cheaper, more efficient, and more private, the adoption of Taproot will set the stage for extra functionality to land on the Bitcoin network. As nodes upgrade and people start using Taproot addresses primarily, it will become more difficult for blockchain observers to spot and discriminate between senders and receivers, UTXOs will be treated more equally, and the broader Bitcoin network will be a more robust settlement network that enables complex functionality to be built on top.
Layer 2 protocols and sidechains will be empowered to step up and leverage even more sophisticated smart contracts for coordinating funds on the base layer. The end-user might not construct these themselves, but they will benefit from more special offerings in the broader Bitcoin ecosystem with stronger assurances. Although some decentralized finance applications and use cases are already being implemented on Bitcoin, the greater smart contract flexibility and capabilities brought by the Taproot upgrade can ultimately allow even more use cases to be implemented and more complex functionality to be deployed while leveraging the strong security assurances of the Bitcoin network — which no other “cryptocurrency” can match.
As bitcoin is actual money, long-term applications of decentralized finance can naturally only be built on top of it. Novelty networks such as Ethereum lack the monetary properties of the Bitcoin base layer and its security and robustness — part of the reason why most applications built on them have fallen short of accomplishing their value proposition over the long run. By patiently building up the foundations for a distributed, uncensorable, antifragile, and sovereign monetary network throughout its lifetime, Bitcoin is set to enjoy actual long term functionality and growth through a layered approach.
The Taproot upgrade, which also comprises Schnorr, MAST and Tapscript, builds on that foundation by furthering the security and privacy of the base layer and enabling more complex applications to be built on top of it. Greater flexibility of the smart contract functionalities of Bitcoin brings about a new era of unthinkable possibilities, opening up the door for broader use cases to be implemented on the best monetary network humanity has ever known.
Over the long term, upgrades like Taproot and Lightning might effectively render altcoins redundant and unnecessary. If a given functionality can be implemented in Bitcoin, the most robust and secure network, it is only natural that it will. While altcoins foster innovation and eventually showcase some exciting use cases, they can be more accurately seen as experimentation playgrounds. Once real use cases are found, they will likely be ported to Bitcoin –– their best bet for continued, long-term development and usage.
* * *
To learn more about Taproot, Aaron van Wirdum’s technical overview is a good place to start. For a more extensive explanation, reference Kraken Intelligence’s detailed report published earlier this year. If you want to jump into the specific proposals, read BIP340, BIP341 and BIP342.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 20:20 - "We Are One Year To The Midterms And The Signs Do Not Look Good For The Democrats"
“We Are One Year To The Midterms And The Signs Do Not Look Good For The Democrats”
With just one year to go to the US midterm elections, which will likely be a pivotal moment for Joe Biden’s presidency as a Republican takeover of either the House or Senate would give them power to block any legislation, Deutsche Bank admits that “the signs do not look promising for the Democrats.”
As the bank’s credit strategist Jim Reid writes, only last week Dems lost the governor’s race in Virginia, a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020. He also adds that history isn’t on their side either: there’s only been one occasion since WWII when the incumbent president’s party has gained House seats in their first midterm vote, and that was when President George W. Bush still had high approval ratings following the 9/11 attacks the previous year.
Furthermore, the Democrats’ narrow House majority means the Republicans need just 5 more seats to be back in control. In the Senate, where 34 seats are up for election, the Republicans need to flip just one. If the Republicans win either chamber, legislative accomplishments would then largely rely on bipartisan agreements. It’s no coincidence that President Obama’s major legislative wins all came in the first 2 years of his 8-year presidency (when Democrats had both chambers), including the post-GFC stimulus, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Act. Similarly for President Trump, his major legislative achievement in the 2017 tax overhaul was when Republicans controlled both chambers too.
Here, Reid points out that a big concern markets will have about divided government is the potential for further wrangling over the debt ceiling. The 2011 crisis saw S&P downgrade America’s AAA credit rating, and a repeat could cause further jitters. Having said that the debt ceiling has been raised or suspended 13 times since then, spanning different congressional compositions. At a minimum we’ll likely be back to brinkmanship if we don’t see a longer-term raising in the months ahead.
It would also likely put an end to any further stimulus, with Republicans already railing against the inflationary impact of Biden’s policies — a potential argument for team transitory even if there’s plenty of inflationary stimulus in the system for now. That said, 12 months is still a very long time in political terms, and if we’ve learnt anything from election outcomes over recent years, it’s that plenty of surprises could still happen along the way.
As an aside, according to online betting markets, the odds of a Republican sweep during next year’s midterms are about two in three, not what the Democrats wants to see and the clearest sign yet that the Dems will try to create a social or economic crisis to prevent this particular outcome.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 20:00 - 10 States Sue Biden Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate For Healthcare Workers
10 States Sue Biden Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate For Healthcare Workers
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
A coalition of 10 states led by Missouri’s attorney general on Wednesday sued President Joe Biden over his administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
A federal court has blocked, for now, the administration’s private employer vaccine mandate, but a stricter one for healthcare workers remains in place.
The healthcare worker mandate, which covers over 17 million nurses and others, does not include a testing opt-out.
The coalition says the mandate is unlawful under federal law, in part because the federal government is trying to wrest away compulsory vaccination power that has “always been the province of—and still properly belongs to—the states.”
“Vaccination requirements are matters that depends on local factors and conditions. Whatever might make sense in New York City, St Louis, or Omaha could be decidedly counterproductive and harmful in rural communities like Memphis, Missouri or McCook, Nebraska,” the 58-page filing in federal court in Missouri says.
“Federalism allows states to tailor such matters in the best interests of their communities. The heavy hand of CMS’s nationwide mandate does not. This court should thus set aside that rule as unlawful agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The mandate is poised to exacerbate an already “alarming shortage” of healthcare workers, the coalition said. As proof, they cite Dr. Randy Tobler, the CEO of Scotland County Hospital in Memphis, Missouri. He said that people working in his hospital informed him that if the mandate takes effect, they will not work at the hospital any longer.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, and Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor filed the suit with the attorneys general of Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire. All the attorneys general are Republicans.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, or CMS, the agency that issued the rule, and the White House did not return requests for comment on the lawsuit.
A nurse prepares a Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
The Biden administration says the mandate will curb the transmission and spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. The rule acknowledges that many healthcare workers have recovered from COVID-19 and have some level of immunity as a result. But, citing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study that was challenged by some scientists, CMS says natural immunity is not allowed as an alternative to vaccination.
CDC officials have acknowledged natural immunity exists but say even those with it can benefit from vaccination. A number of health experts share the view but a host of others say vaccination isn’t necessary among the recovered.
CMS officials say the agency has the legal authority to issue a vaccine mandate through several sections of the Social Security Act, though the rule notes that CMS has never required vaccinations before.
Healthcare facilities that don’t comply with the mandate face a series of penalties, including fines. They could be ousted from Medicare and Medicaid programs, a senior administration official told reporters on a call last week.
One official later explained why there’s not a testing opt-out, a major difference between the rule and the private employer mandate.
“We have a higher bar for healthcare workers, given their critical role in ensuring the health and safety of their patients,” the official said. “And so, it’s either vaccination or an exemption under the rules outlined.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 19:40 - Manhattan Apartment Rents Soar The Most On Record
Manhattan Apartment Rents Soar The Most On Record
We’ve been documenting a massive divergence in Manhattan real estate, one where residential housing is coming back to life in a post-pandemic world, but commercial real estate remains dead.
The latest data from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate shows median rent for Manhattan apartments surged 18% in October from a year earlier to $3,382, the most on record, according to Bloomberg.
The borough is one of the hottest rental markets in all of the city. Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said a shortage of homes in suburban markets had led some people to find better upgrades in the city.
“There are more people understanding the relationship of where they want to live and where their employer wants them to work from,” Miller said.
Demand for luxury apartments pushed overall rents higher. Complexes with door attendants and a front desk saw rents soar 25% to $4,263 compared with non-doorman properties, only rose 7.4%
As for studios, rents surged 17%, one-bedrooms increased 16%, and two-bedroom rents jumped 26%. Miller said each benchmark set a new annual growth record last month.
Meanwhile, the number of new leases sank 22% from a year ago to 4,395 as the housing market returned to normal levels.
When it comes to supply, the number of available apartment rentals across the city has become scarce. In the last week of September, real estate firm StreetEasy reported that apartment inventory stood at 15,541, a considerable decline from the 48,753 rentals available in September 2020.
People are flocking back to the city or upgrading to more affluent parts as back to office slowly returns for some workers. Kastle Systems, whose electronic access systems secure thousands of office buildings across NYC, shows an increasing number of workers returned to the office at the beginning of November. Since September, the index has risen nearly fourteen percentage points from 20% to about 34%. Overall, the index remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
With that being said, commercial real estate in the borough remains in turmoil. Rents plunged last month the most in five years—an enormous glut of storefronts and office space line city streets.
The massive divergence between residential and commercial real estate can easily be explained. As workers remain at home, foot traffic on city streets is muted, and in return, spending at storefronts slumps. People still need a roof over their heads but are more frequently using Amazon to avoid in-person stores.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 19:20 - Appeals Court Blocks House Jan. 6 Panel From Accessing Trump’s White House Records
Appeals Court Blocks House Jan. 6 Panel From Accessing Trump’s White House Records
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A federal appeals court on Thursday halted the scheduled transfer of records of President Donald Trump’s time in office from the National Archives to Congress, ruling that Congress cannot access the files for now.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Perry, Ga., on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. (Ben Gray/AP Photo) A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overruled a federal judge, who had opined earlier this week that a House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6 of the U.S. Capitol had a legitimate legislative purpose in seeking the records.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama nominee, said the transfer could proceed as planned on Friday.
Trump appealed. Jesse Binnall, a Trump lawyer, said the former president is likely to prevail as he tried to convince the higher court to enter an injunction against Chutkan’s order.
“The alleged legislative purpose underpinning the overbroad request at issue here clearly does not merit involving the President and his records,” Binnall said. “The Committee has failed to identify anything in the broad swath of requested materials that would inform proposed legislation.”
The panel agreed to stop the transfer, pending a further order from the court.
The court will hear the case in the coming days before making a more permanent ruling.
Trump’s team was ordered to file a brief by Nov. 16 at noon, with a brief due from the House panel six days later. Trump’s team can respond in a second filing due by Nov. 24 at noon. Oral argument is slated to take place on Nov. 30.
The panel consisted of Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama nominee; Robert Wilkins, an Obama nominee; and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the head of the Jan. 6 House panel, did not immediately react to the order.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 19:00 - Taiwan Halts 2nd Dose Of Pfizer Jabs For 12-17 Year Olds
Taiwan Halts 2nd Dose Of Pfizer Jabs For 12-17 Year Olds
Taiwan has become the latest country to halt or restrict the use of a Covid-19 vaccine due to concerns over adverse reactions.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) announced the suspension of 2nd doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab for children aged 12-17 over concerns that it may increase the risk of myocarditis, according to Taiwan News. The CECC also said that it would hold off on its decision for those under 12 years-old until the 2nd dose issue is settled.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle which can reduce the heart’s ability to pump, as well as cause abnormal heart rhythms. The mortality rate from this disease is approximately 20% after one year, and 50% at five years. Of course, it has yet to be seen whether Covid-19 or Vaccine-induced myocarditis follows the same risk profile.
According to US statistics, the risk of the condition following the second Pfizer dose is 10x higher than after the first dose.
Taiwan follows Hong Kong in changing their policies regarding Covid-19 vaccines in adolescents, which went from two doses of Pfizer to a single dose for those aged 12-17, while the UK has recommended just one shot for children between 12-18 years of age.
Chen said that the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) has decided to halt administration of second BNT doses to this age group for two weeks, during which time experts and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) physicians will look at the 16 cases of myocarditis among adolescents after BNT vaccination before making a final decision on whether to go ahead with the second shot.
International data will also be consulted before the final decision is made, the CECC head said, adding that currently, children between the ages of 12-17 are being vaccinated with two doses worldwide except in Hong Kong and the U.K. -Taiwan News
Meanwhile, Moderna on Thursday said that while its vaccine has fewer breakthrough cases than Pfizer’s offering, it carries a higher risk of myocarditis in young men, according to CNBC.
Reported cases of the rare heart inflammation in men under age 30 are relatively higher after Moderna’s vaccine compared with those who received the shots made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna Chief Medical Officer Dr. Paul Burton told reporters on a call Thursday.
Burton cited data from France on males ages 12 to 29. It showed there were 13.3 cases of myocarditis per 100,000 people for Moderna’s vaccine compared with 2.7 cases per 100,000 people for the Pfizer vaccine.
When it comes to breakthrough cases resulting in mild or severe disease, Moderna has the fewest at 86 breakthroughs per 100,000 people, vs 135 per 100k with Pfizer’s, according to Burton.
Some scientists have suggested that young men are experiencing higher rates of Myocarditis post-vaccination due to testosterone, as well as the fact that Moderna’s vaccine uses a higher concentration of mRNA than Pfizer’s.
“I do think this hypothesis of testosterone is important,” said Burton. “We know that there is indeed some inflammation associated with testosterone. … We do have in the primary series, as you know, 100 micrograms of mRNA, so we have slightly higher levels of spike protein, and that could be a contributing factor as well.”
Remember folks, the vaccines currently being administered are still under emergency use, and if anything goes wrong you can’t sue.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 18:40 - Greenwald: Democrats Are Profoundly Committed To Criminal Justice Reform… For Everyone But Their Enemies
Greenwald: Democrats Are Profoundly Committed To Criminal Justice Reform… For Everyone But Their Enemies
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,
The 2020 protest movement that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha became one of the most sustained and consequential in modern U.S. history. Though there seems to be a somewhat bizarre effort underway by its advocates to insist that this movement accomplished nothing — why are some claiming that radical cultural and political changes are happening? — it is demonstrably true that, as intended, that the movement transformed discourse and policy around multiple issues from race, to policing, to gender identity, to the teaching of history, and fostered an ongoing effort for still-greater changes.
Kyle Rittenhouse makes his way back to the stand to testify during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 10, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He faces counts of felony homicide and felony attempted homicide. (Photo by Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images) The issues raised by that movement were varied and often shifting: though it was catalyzed by the claim that the U.S. is swamped with racist police brutality as illustrated by the Floyd and Blake cases, it quickly metastasized into other areas far removed from those two cases. White Antifa members clashed with Black protesters over the attempt to steer or broaden the movement away from a narrow focus on racist police brutality into one devoted to generalized insurrectionary anarchy. One of the largest and most densely packed gatherings was a spontaneous march, at the height of the COVID pandemic, in Brooklyn, where ten thousand people paid homage to the importance of “black trans lives,” a cause whose relationship to the Floyd and Blake cases was tenuous at best. Institutional changes regarding gender identity were quickly adopted by the corporations and security state institutions that lent their support, however cynically, to this growing movement.
But one constant focus of this movement has been the need for sweeping criminal justice reform. Americans were introduced to the slogan “Defund the Police,” with some activists making clear they meant that literally, while leading progressives in Congress chanted along. Prison abolition and the evils of “the “carceral state” became mainstream progressive positions. Last May, The New Yorker heralded what it called “The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition,” noting that while some activists merely want incremental reform, for many these events “confirmed that the institution of policing should be abolished completely. In the past year or two, propositions to defund or abolish the police and prisons have travelled from incarcerated-activist networks and academic conferences and scholarship into mainstream conversations.”
So mainstream did these once-fringe criminal justice reform proposals become that large cities began presenting proposals or referenda to defund the police and replace it with “public safety” alternatives (in most liberal cities where these proposals were presented to residents, including Minneapolis, they were rejected, including with large opposition from Black residents who, polling consistently shows, want the police in their communities). That the U.S. criminal justice system is far too punitive, thus becoming the largest prison state in the world by imposing far longer and harsher prison terms than most western or democratic countries, has been a long-standing view of criminal justice reform advocates (I wrote a 2011 book with that as one of its primary themes). But prior to the 2020 protest movement, that view had largely been confined to the fringes, rarely able to overtake the decades-old harsh law-and-order framework which the GOP began championing in the 1960s with Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, joined in the 1990s by Democrats such as Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.
But after this 2020 protest movement, all of that changed. That radical reform was needed to both policing and the criminal justice system — to make the “carceral state” far less punitive and sprawling — became the mainstream view, practically the obligatory view, in Democratic Party politics. One of the most centrist corporatists in the House Democratic Caucus is the former corporate lawyer Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the fourth-ranking member of House Democratic leadership and one of the leading candidates, if not the leading one, to replace Nancy Pelosi when she finally abandons her position as House Democratic leader. Despite his careful centrist image, Jeffries, in mid-2020, began advocating slogans which, just months earlier, had been confined to more radical precincts of academic and leftist activism:
Yet a profound dilemma is visible from the momentum of this movement: a large bulk of liberal politics is driven by precisely the opposite impulses. The most loyal Democratic partisans are frequently venerating prosecutors, advocating for harsh criminal punishments, championing punitive theories of criminal law that have long been rejected by liberal jurists and, above all else, often demanding the longest and harshest punishments in “the carceral state” for a large group of people.
Why are so many Democrats simultaneously chanting radical criminal reform slogans to abolish or greatly reduce the police and the prison state while simultaneously demanding harsh prison terms for so many people under the classic law-and-order ideology they claim to oppose? The answer is clear: Democrats believe that the only real criminals, or at least the worst ones, are those who reject their political ideology and are their political adversaries. And thus, while they work with one hand to usher in radical reforms to the policing and prison state, they work with the other to concoct theories to justify the long-term imprisonment of their political opponents, even when their alleged crimes involve no violence.
This internal contradiction in Democratic politics was vividly illustrated by the fact that — though they will now deny it — the most revered and admired figure over the last five years in liberal politics was Robert Mueller, named in 2001 by George W. Bush to be FBI Director and then in 2017 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be Special Counsel investigating Russiagate. Liberals did not even bother hiding their glee at the prospect that Mueller was coming to arrest and imprison as many of their political adversaries as possible. They sung songs in his honor and danced to their fantasies about the next convictions. Every indictment was cheered, every prosecution applauded, every punishment lamented for being insufficiently harsh, as their favorite cable channels were filled to the brim with the very life-long federal prosecutors their ideology ostensibly opposed. Throughout the Trump years, Democratic politics was driven at its core by a bloodlust to imprison Trump, his family, his aides and his supporters for as long and as harshly as possible. Cravings for punishment and prison, at its core, was what drove the arousal of Russiagate.
To accomplish this, they often championed the exact theories of criminal justice which liberal jurists had long warned were abusive and even unconstitutional. Few convictions excited them as much as the one obtained by Mueller against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whose grave crime was lying to the FBI by falsely denying that he had spoken to a Russian official about foreign policy during the transition, weeks before he was to assume his White House job. The most admired liberal judges, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, had long argued that lying to the FBI in the way Flynn did should not even be a crime at all, that making it one was a violation of the constitutional right against self-incrimination and bestowed the FBI with the power to turn citizens into criminals through entrapment. But no matter: Flynn was a Trump supporter, and therefore they were thrilled he was prosecuted and outraged he spent no time in prison.
Then there is Julian Assange, who has been effectively detained for a decade and confined to a harsh high-security British prison for two years on charges that he committed “espionage” by publishing authentic documents in 2010 that exposed crimes by the U.S. Government. As someone who has long reported on WikiLeaks and advocated for Assange’s rights, I vividly recall how much support there was for him back then on the liberal-left. Yet virtually all of that support disappeared in 2016, when he committed the real crime that caused Democrats and liberals to hate him and want him in prison: namely, he published true and publicly relevant documents that reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
As a result of the political impact of Assange’s work, there is little opposition to his prosecution among Democrats and a great deal of glee over his imprisonment, despite the consensus view from press freedom and civil liberties groups that the prosecution of Assange poses the greatest threat to press freedoms in years, and despite its reliance on dangerously broad interpretations of what the wildly authoritarian 1917 Espionage Age encompasses. Here one finds the same dynamic: Democrats believe that the gravest crimes, the only ones that merit harsh prison, are not murder, rape or assault but political and ideological opposition to their leaders, the only real crime which Assange committed in their eyes.
Indeed, the only thing that changed from 2013, when Democrats cheered the Obama DOJ for not indicting Assange, to 2021, when Democrats applaud the Biden DOJ for aggressively prosecuting him is that, in the interim he engaged in journalistic and political activity that harmed Democrats. Thus, they are itching to see him spend years longer if not decades more in the harsh carceral state which, in other circumstances, they pretend to oppose. Like Trump officials, Assange harmed the political interests of Democrats, and thus the harshest state punishments are warranted.
The most protracted thirst for harsh criminal punishment from Democrats has been directed at those who participated in the protest-turned-riot at the Capitol on January 6. Of the more than six hundred people charged with crimes in connection with that riot, only a minority are accused of using violence of any kind. In other words, the majority of 1/6 defendants are accused of non-violent crimes. While few object to prison terms for people who used violence as part of that riot (even though many progressives do object to long prison terms for those who used violence as part of the 2020 protest movement), a large number of non-violent protesters face serious felony charges and lengthy prison terms. That non-violent protesters should not be imprisoned is foundational…
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/11/2021 – 18:20
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