- Snow To Blanket UK As Rare Polar Vortex Collapse Could Spell Trouble For Power Grid
Snow To Blanket UK As Rare Polar Vortex Collapse Could Spell Trouble For Power Grid
A sensation headline from UK’s tabloid newspaper, Daily Star, sums up a possible rare weather event that could throw the UK into a more profound energy crisis. The headline states: “As gas supply chaos sends price sky-high a -10c polar vortex is heading our way…”
Meteorologists warn a stratospheric warming event could generate a polar vortex split that pours freezing weather into the country later this month or early November.
“There are signs of the stratosphere experiencing an unusual warming in the next few days, causing the polar vortex above the Arctic Circle to become less strong than normal later in October,” a former BBC weatherman and meteorologist for Weathertrending John Hammond told The Sun.
“These high-altitude winds normally intensify as we head towards winter. So an unusual weakening of the polar vortex may well impact our weather later through autumn and into early winter.
“‘Sudden stratospheric warming’ events can sometimes lead the polar vortex to go into reverse, which can have dramatic impacts on winter weather and increase the chances of severe cold.
“However, there are no indications yet that such a reversal will occur.
“The last time that lowland southern Britain saw significant snowfall as early as October was in 2008 – a measure of how rare it is.”
UK’s Met Office forecaster Marco Petagna said the polar vortex weakening could “have implications for our weather going into the winter.”
🌎 Energy Prices Explosion is also linked to expectations of a harsh winter ⬇
A Deep Freeze This Winter Hinges on La Nina and the Polar Vortex – Bloomberg
*Link: https://t.co/KF7yqXYe0f pic.twitter.com/Qk3Rh8SRoK— Christophe Barraud🛢 (@C_Barraud) October 1, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The forecast for an early winter event is disastrous, considering we’ve noted the “winter of discontent” could be imminent for the county as natural gas shortages have pushed prices to record highs in recent weeks. Natgas remains in a shortage due to low Russia-European flows and increased gas usage by UK power plants as renewable energy (wind power) becomes unreliable with some of the calmest winds in half a century. All of this caused multiple issues, first gas prices for chemical companies made it uneconomical to produce carbon dioxide, which triggered a food supply chain crisis for supermarkets. The second issue was soaring gas prices increased power prices for consumers. But the good news is Vladimir Putin soothed energy markets last week and said Russia is ready to help stabilize energy markets which pushed prices lower but still remain at elevated levels.
Natgas flows into the UK remain depressed but are slowly increasing.
The transition to cleaner energy has been an utter disaster for the UK as wind power generation has collapsed, forcing power suppliers to fire up natural gas turbines and even coal plants to meet demand and avoid a total grid collapse. The UK’s electricity system operator (ESO) spent more than $117 million last week in payments to coal-fired power plants to increase power supplies. Britain has been winding down coal power in recent years. Still, the transition to renewables has become so unreliable that fossil fuel is making a comeback, massively ahead of winter.
Soaring demand for coal in Europe and Asia is pushing prices to record-highs ahead of winter.
To sum this all up, the UK is not ready for a polar vortex collapse due to instabilities in its grid related to unreliable renewable energy sources. It may have to increasingly lean on fossil fuel generation that is becoming more expensive and in short supply. The green transition touted by liberals might jeopardize the grid during a winter storm or cold weather, forcing grid operators to initiate rolling blackouts to thwart a collapse.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/12/2021 – 02:45 - Czech Voters Oust Communists From Parliament For First Time Since 1948
Czech Voters Oust Communists From Parliament For First Time Since 1948
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
On Oct. 9, Czech voters booted the communists out of parliament for the first time since the end of World War II, voting out a party with Soviet-backed predecessors that ruled the central European nation with an iron fist from 1948 until 1989’s Velvet Revolution that ushered in democracy.
Chairman of the The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) Vojtech Filip talks to the media after the parliamentary election in Prague, Czech Republic, on Oct. 9, 2021. (Radek Petrasek/CTK via AP)
The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) failed to retain enough seats to enter the Czech parliament for the first time since the formation of the Czech Republic after Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved into two nations in 1993, with the other state becoming Slovakia.
The KSČM took 3.62 percent of the vote, failing to meet the 5 percent mark needed to retain seats in both the House and the Chamber of Deputies.
In a stunning upset, the SPOLU alliance, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition, captured 27.8 percent of the vote, beating Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ Action for Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) 2011 party, which won 27.1 percent.
The center-left-liberal coalition of the Pirate Party (PIR) and the Mayors and Independents party (STAN) received 15.6 percent of the vote, finishing in third place, according to the statistics office.
Ahead of the election, the SPOLU alliance vowed to form a coalition government with the PIR/STAN coalition. Over the weekend, the alliance signed a memorandum on their intent to create a majority Czech government with the coalition.
The failure to secure enough votes comes amid waning support for the communist party, who, during their reign, jailed tens of thousands of people in forced labor camps in the 1950s and brutally repressed dissidents, including playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel.
“It pleases me. It pleases me a lot,” said Jiri Gruntorad, 69, a former dissident who signed the dissident Charter 77 statement and was jailed for subversion from 1981 to 1985 by the communist regime.
“But it’s coming too late.
“It was one of the last communist parties in the world apart from the Chinese and Cuban ones that held on to its name.”
While the communists largely faded into the background after 1989, they did still cooperate with other parties seeking votes to pass legislation in parliament. They also worked to appeal to senior citizens and working-class members of the republic, but failed to resonate with younger voters, given their previous totalitarian rule.
“I am very disappointed, because it is a really big failure,” said KSČM leader Vojtech Filip, who also resigned following the outcome of the vote.
The communists had also maintained a close relationship with current President Milos Zeman, who was rushed to the hospital on Oct. 10 following the latest election results.
Director Miroslav Zavoral of the Central Military Hospital in Prague said Zeman, 77, was admitted due to complications related to an undisclosed chronic condition.
“We know the diagnosis precisely, which allows us to target treatment,” Zavoral said, stating that he didn’t have the president’s approval to disclose details of the diagnosis.
The hospitalization is sure to create added uncertainty at a time when Zeman is set to lead political talks about forming a new government.
Under the constitution, the president can appoint anyone as prime minister and instruct them to nominate a cabinet. A new cabinet must face a vote of confidence in the lower house within a month of its appointment.
Prior to the election, Zeman had said that he would appoint the leader of the largest winning individual party, not a coalition, to try to form a government, which in this case would be Babis.
While Babis has conceded that the SPOLU alliance won more votes as a coalition, he didn’t signal a move into opposition.
“If the president authorizes me to do so, I will lead talks on forming a cabinet,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/12/2021 – 02:00 - Live Free Or Die: Why Medical Autonomy Matters
Live Free Or Die: Why Medical Autonomy Matters
Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,
Because I have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, I have been labeled everything from an anti-science Luddite to a domestic terrorist. If I lived in almost any other state than Montana, I might be denied basic human services such as health care, refused employment, or told I can’t shop at a store for such fundamental necessities as food.
The powers that be in government, media and medicine have decreed me to be an undesirable and they want to force me and millions like me to be vaccinated against our will. They say that I am a danger to society, never for a minute realizing that they represent a much greater threat to society — the threat of totalitarianism, the state against the individual.
George Orwell might just as well have never written “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” The Greatest Generation might as well have never defeated the Nazis. Ronald Reagan may as well have never defeated the Evil Empire of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
What’s the point if I have to surrender my dignity and willpower to the bureaucrats and technocrats and let them stick a needle in my arm to mark me just as a rancher would brand his cattle: owned.
Oh, wait — I’m supposed to surrender for the greater good. I’m supposed to give up my ability to govern my own body because the people who are already vaccinated are still terrified of the virus that the vaccination supposedly protects them against.
Something doesn’t add up, and until I feel comfortable with taking the vaccine, you can count me out. No, I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’ve never had any problem with vaccines before. From the time I was a child growing up in the early 1960s, I understood that vaccines were to protect me — and society — from deadly illnesses.
That’s not an exaggeration. Smallpox was fatal in up to 30% of cases, and even if you survived, you paid a price. One of my teachers bore the awful scars of smallpox on his face, and no one wanted to suffer as he had. Every kid in school also knew that if you had a run-in with a rusty nail, you ran the risk of being infected with tetanus, which went by the even scarier name of lockjaw.
Then there were German measles, diphtheria and whooping cough. We kids may not have known much about those, but our parents sure did, and they could tell stories about cousins, siblings or friends who had perished from them. I never got measles because I was vaccinated at a young age, but it was a common problem in lower-income families such as mine, and was something you definitely didn’t joke about.
I think vaccines have done the world a world of good. I remember getting my smallpox vaccine and waiting eagerly to get the scar on my arm that my mother’s arm showed off like a badge of courage, but it never appeared for me. Then when the oral polio vaccine was developed, I remember lining up in the gym at North Garnerville Elementary School in New York to get my first dose on a sugar cube. Yum.
So yes, I’m pro-vaccine. I also generally get the flu vaccine every year. I even got a shot last year, although for some peculiar reason, influenza vanished last winter while COVID was enjoying its greatest reign of terror. And naturally, my three children have all been vaccinated against the usual childhood diseases and taken whatever was recommended to keep them safe.
But one thing I never thought of doing was forcing my neighbors to get vaccinated against the flu. Did you know that influenza kills as many as 50,000 Americans a year? That’s approaching the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the entire length of the Vietnam War. On average, flu kills as many Americans every year as car crashes. Yet did anyone — even St. Anthony Fauci — ever dare to suggest that vaccination for flu should be mandatory because it would save lives?
Hell, no, and even though many vaccinations are required of school children for good reasons, we also have allowed religious and medical exemptions for families that needed them. Because we aren’t supposed to be a nation of slaves, but a nation of citizens. If someone had a personal reason why they rejected vaccines, we didn’t put them through an inquisition or try to burn them at the stake of public opinion. This was America — land of the free.
I also never thought of celebrating when a person who opted not to get the flu vaccine died of influenza. But vaccine mandate supporters seem to get giddy when a vaccine refusenik falls ill from COVID and dies on a ventilator or worse. This isn’t science; it’s scientific imperialism — and the CDC centurions are ruthless in their application of power to the masses. Obey or die.
So why might a reasonable person decide not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in such a hysterical climate? Maybe because it’s an experimental and untested drug using a technology (mRNA) that has the power to tamper with the very genetic makeup of the cells in my body. Maybe because I’m more worried about herd instinct than herd immunity. Maybe because I’ve heard wonky scientists gloating about the power they wield over everyday Americans. Maybe because Big Pharma’s getting rich by inventing reasons why you just might need to get a new shot every year. Maybe because I want to decide for myself what’s best for me.
Think of it this way. You are afraid of dying of COVID-19. So am I. But that doesn’t mean I am going to die from COVID. In fact, there is what I would characterize as an acceptably small chance I will die of COVID, and I’m 66 years old, right smack in the realm of the supposedly at-risk elderly population. According to data from the CDC reported at RationalGround.com, from Jan. 1, 2020 until Sept. 11, 2021, there were 12,702 U.S. deaths from COVID for my age cohort out of an estimated population of 3,618,069. That’s a death rate of 0.365%.
Meanwhile, 100,449 people my age died during the same period of all causes, suggesting I have about a 12% chance of dying of something this year, a much scarier possibility than dying of COVID-19. Think of it! If I’m going to die this year, I’m 33 times more likely to die of anything else besides COVID. Based on the propaganda we are inundated with every day about the virus, I should be terrified! There are way worse things out there trying to kill me than COVID.
But I’m not terrified, not even slightly, because life is always a risk. I can temper my risks by avoiding downhill skiing, ATVs, booze, surfing, and motorsports. Those are my choices, but heaven forbid I should dictate that you have to avoid those activities because they are not 100% safe. Your behavior is none of my business. I make my choices, and you make yours. Except with COVID.
Then Joe Biden makes my choices, trying to protect me from myself.
But here’s the thing. There’s no guarantee I’ll ever actually be exposed to the coronavirus, and if I do, there’s something like a 99% chance that I — as a generally healthy man with no co-morbidities — will recover.
Now consider the risk of some kind of debilitating side effect from receiving one of the experimental vaccines being pushed by the government. It is much harder to come up with an actual percentage of adverse effects, because there are so many potential side effects and not all of them may be linked with the vaccine yet, especially when they show up weeks or months after the jab. We do, however, have a number of vaccine-related deaths officially reported by the CDC, using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System:
“More than 396 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through October 4, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 8,390 reports of death (0.0021%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Of course, this means the likelihood of dying from the vaccine is considerably lower than dying from COVID; in fact, if you do the math, it’s about 175 times less likely. That’s a pretty significant difference, even if you throw in the possibility that getting the jab will inflict you with one of the other known possible side effects such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, anaphylaxis, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart failure, thrombosis, brain damage, paralysis, menstrual disorders, and a variety of unexplained pain phenomena. All told, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson says there were more than 400,000 adverse effects recorded by VAERS through July 19 of this year. That number is closing in on 600,000 by now.
But reasonable people can’t ignore the adverse effects of the vaccine, and in a reasonable world, they wouldn’t. Just last week, for instance, Sweden and Denmark halted Moderna vaccinations for those under 30 years of age. Finland did the same for men under 30.
According to Reuters, “The Swedish health agency said it would pause using the shot for people born in 1991 and later as data pointed to an increase of myocarditis and pericarditis among youths and young adults that had been vaccinated. Those conditions involve an inflammation of the heart or its lining. ‘The connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna’s vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose,’ the health agency said, adding the risk of being affected was very small.”
Small or not, the risk is real. The question is why you would want to leave the decision up to a health agency whether you should put something in your body that may harm or even kill you. Why not become informed and then make your own decision.
Defenders of Big Pharma like PolitiFact say there is no evidence that the vaccines have killed anyone, but to believe that you would have to ignore the evidence of not just the VAERS data set, but also the numerous human stories told in news reports and obituaries of perfectly healthy men and women who died suddenly and often horribly after taking one of the vaccines.
Now here’s the point. Knowing all that, if you or anyone else wants to take the COVID vaccine, God bless you, and may all turn out well. But don’t make that decision for me, and don’t turn me into a criminal for making my own decision. I have a conscience, I have a brain, and I have a God. They will inform my decision, along with the science, but the decision should be mine alone. I learned long ago in Psychology 101 that the individual is formed when the infant first cries, “NO,” and for now, that’s what I’m saying to any and all vaccine mandates. I refuse. I’m an individual citizen, not a vassal subject to the whims of my noble superior.
Yes, there is a chance that I will contract COVID and suffer as a result. But there’s no certainty about whether I will ever be exposed to the virus while it is in a dangerous form. If I am, I may get very sick or only slightly sick or have no symptoms at all.
Compare that to the absolute certainty that if I am vaccinated, I am putting myself intentionally at risk of known side effects by putting a vaccine into my arm that I don’t trust. Only a madman would do that, or someone who puts a much higher value on going along with the crowd than I do. I don’t want to die, but that’s not the worst thing that can happen. Being forced to turn my most personal medical decisions over to Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci is an insult to me and to the Founding Fathers who fought to free us from tyranny.
“Live free or die” was their creed, if not yet a formal motto in 1776. Nearly 250 years later, it seems more appropriate than ever.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 23:40 - Mapped: Where Are The World's Ongoing Conflicts Today?
Mapped: Where Are The World’s Ongoing Conflicts Today?
We live in an era of relative peace compared to most of history, however, as Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop details below, this does not mean that there are no conflicts in the world today.
This map using data from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reveals where the world’s 27 ongoing conflicts are today, and what type of conflicts they are.
Note: conflicts are categorized by definitions laid out by the CFR.
Detailing the Conflicts
Many people alive today have never lived through a war on their country’s soil, especially those in the West. But conflict, wars, and violence are by no means things of the past.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), as of Q2’2021 alone:
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Violence against civilians resulted in over 5,000 deaths worldwide
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Battle related deaths numbered over 18,000
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Explosion/remote violence led to more than 4,000 deaths
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Riots resulted in over 600 fatalities
Most of the world’s conflicts are concentrated in Asia and Africa and the most common forms are territorial disputes and civil wars. While terrorism often strikes fear in people, only three of the world’s ongoing conflicts are linked to terrorism, according to the CFR.
As an example of a more typical conflict, Myanmar’s civil unrest began in February 2020 when the military overthrew the democratically elected government and arrested the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The civilian population has been protesting heavily but to no avail. According to a BBC report, more than 860 people have been killed and around 5,000 have been detained.
This is just one of the many examples of persistent violence today including recent events like Mexico’s midterm election violence, Ethiopia’s fighting in the country’s Tigray region, and the fighting between Israel and Palestine over the Sheikh Jarrah evictions.
Finally, though the United States military has now withdrawn from Afghanistan, and the Taliban has taken control of the country, the outlook for the country remains uncertain.
War and Peace
While there are conflicts today, deaths from violence and wars have and wars have decreased over time. For example, battle death rates in state-based conflicts have reduced significantly in a period from 1946 to 2016.
However, according to the UN, although battle related deaths have been decreasing, the number of conflicts occurring in the last few years has actually been on the rise (they have simply remained less deadly). Most conflicts have been waged by non-state actors, like organized criminal groups and political militias.
The UN found that the most common causes of conflict today are:
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Regional tensions
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Breakdowns in the rule of law
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Co-opted or absent state institutions
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Illicit economic gain
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Scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change
Traditional war between countries and war-related deaths may be becoming a thing of the past, but the threat of violence is still very real. Many countries know this as they continue to build up armies and spend significant amounts on military and defense.
The Future of Warfare
War and conflict are still extremely relevant in the 21st century and impact millions of people. However, traditional warfare may be changing its shape and may become less deadly as a result.
For instance, issues like climate change will create further exacerbations on conflicts, and new forms of technological and cyber warfare could threaten countries’ elections and manipulate populations.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 23:20 -
- Is Durham Circling Jake Sullivan? The Special Counsel May Not Be Done With National Security Adviser
Is Durham Circling Jake Sullivan? The Special Counsel May Not Be Done With National Security Adviser
Last month Washington was rocked by the indictment of Michael Sussman, former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, for his alleged role in spreading a false Russia conspiracy theory. Special counsel John Durham — who is variously described as either painfully methodical or positively glacial as a prosecutor — reportedly was prompted to indict Sussman by an expiring statute of limitations.
Absent such a deadline involving Sussman, it seems unlikely that Durham would have disclosed as much as he did in the indictment. The reason is that he is likely focusing on other possible targets and witnesses. That could include the most notable figure exposed in the Sussman indictment: Jake Sullivan.
In that event, Sullivan potentially could be in the unenviable position of having to argue that he was not perjurious, just clueless, in denying knowledge of key facts to Congress. The “ignorance is bliss” defense is a favorite fallback in Washington scandals but it is less common when that person is the current national security adviser to the President of the United States.
While an indictment of Sullivan is viewed as unlikely, he popped up unexpectedly in the indictment and the National Security Advisor may not be done with Special Counsel. If Durham is focusing on who knew or approved of the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim in the Clinton campaign, one of the highest figures referenced in the indictment (and just below Hillary Clinton) is Sullivan.
With Sussman, Durham indicted someone who he believes intentionally hid the role of the Clinton campaign in creating and pushing Alfa Bank scandal. In testimony to Congress, Sullivan also insisted that he did not know the Alfa Bank scandal was the work of a Clinton lawyer and people associated with the campaign. It is not clear if Durham has evidence to contradict his claim of total ignorance on the work performed by campaign counsel and campaign researchers.
Lying to Congress is neither easy nor common for prosecution, though Special Counsel Robert Mueller prosecuted figures like Roger Stone on that basis. Michael Cohen was also indicted for lying to Congress the involvement of Donald Trump in negotiations over a Moscow real estate deal. Sullivan will have to argue that, despite being one of the top campaign advisers, he was unaware of campaign’s prior work on developing the allegation.
The Sussman indictment refers to a wide array of characters responsible for creating the alleged conspiracy theory about a secret communications link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin through Russia’s Alfa Bank. The unsupported claim was allegedly orchestrated in part by Sussman, who was then a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie; another partner at the time, Marc Elias, was the general counsel for the Clinton campaign and played a significant role in pushing the infamous Steele dossier.
The indictment revealed that the Alfa Bank theory was never viewed as particularly credible by the researchers tasked with creating it. Those researchers warned that it would be easy to “poke several holes” in the claim and see the data as “a red herring.” Yet, as with the Steele dossier, the Clinton operatives were counting on an enabling media to ask few questions before the election. The researchers were told they should not look for proof but just enough to “give the base of a very useful narrative.”
We now know the identities of many of the figures described in the 27-page indictment. The researchers appeared in part to be operating out of Georgia Tech, including one who, according to the indictment, warned “Tech Executive-1” in mid-2016 that “we cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”
According to media reports, the mysterious “Tech Executive-1” mentioned in the indictment appears to be Rodney L. Joffe, who was the chief cybersecurity officer at Washington tech contractor Neustar Inc. Joffe, 66, also was a longtime client of Sussman’s and reportedly boasted that he was offered a high-ranking position in the Clinton administration, if she won the election.
In his emails, Joffe pushed for any documentation that could be used as a foundation for the campaign: “Being able to provide evidence of anything that shows an attempt to behave badly in relation to this, the VIPs would be happy.”
That brings us to Sullivan.
As soon as the conspiracy theory was packaged and delivered the FBI and the media by Sussman, the indictment recounts an exchange between some of those “VIPs”: “… on or about September 15, 2016, Campaign Lawyer-1 exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that SUSSMANN had recently shared with Reporter-1.” The campaign lawyer reportedly was Elias, and the “foreign policy advisor” reportedly was Sullivan.
Sullivan was quoted in an official campaign press statement as stating that the Alfa Bank allegation “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” In the statement, Sullivan said: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia … This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin.”
The U.S. intelligence community ultimately rejected the Alfa Bank conspiracy. It also concluded that the Steele dossier not only relied on a suspected Russian agent but likely was used by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation through the Clinton campaign.
Yet, when Sullivan was later questioned by Congress, he went full Sergeant Schultz, claiming he basically did not have a clue about the basis or origins of the Alfa Bank controversy or other campaign-orchestrated scandals. Sullivan was adept at laying qualifiers upon qualifiers to render statements useless: “broadly speaking, at some point in the summer, and I don’t remember exactly when it was, around the convention, I learned that there was an effort to do some research into the ties between Trump and Russia.” That will make any false statement claim difficult absent direct involvement in the planning of these “campaign efforts.”
Sullivan denied knowing that Elias or Sussman were working for the Clinton campaign, despite numerous news articles identifying Elias as the campaign’s general counsel. Sullivan just shrugged and said: “To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing. I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.”
That seems odd, given Sullivan’s long, close involvement with Clinton and her campaigns. He advised her during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and later became her deputy chief of staff and policy planning director at the State Department. He was one of the notable names in Clinton’s email scandal and the recipient of her controversial order to strip the classification headings on a key email. He later rejoined Clinton again during the 2016 campaign as one of her senior-most advisers.
Yet, the lack of disclosure over those behind the “campaign effort” seems suspiciously consistent. Sussman was indicted for allegedly hiding his representation of Clinton in pushing the Alfa Bank conspiracy. Elias was accused of doing the same with reporters on the Steele Dossier. He also reportedly sat next to campaign chair John Podesta when he denied such connections to Congress. Now Sullivan denies any knowledge of the campaign’s early role in these scandals.
It is notable that, when Sullivan was Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser, President Obama was given a national security briefing of Clinton’s alleged plan to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That briefing was on July 28, 2016 — three days before the Russia investigation was initiated.
This brings us back to Durham’s calendar. Sullivan reportedly gave his series of denials to Congress in December 2017. The statute of limitations for lying to Congress is five years, which means that Sullivan still would be within range for Durham if the special counsel does not buy Sullivan’s denials. He could also find himself unindicted but entirely exposed in a report that is likely to be blistering.
If so, Sullivan could find himself a “fellow traveler” with Sussman — not “in this campaign effort” but in Durham’s still-unfolding prosecution effort instead.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 23:00 - Seattle Small Businesses Forced To Hire Private Security Over Reduced Police Presence
Seattle Small Businesses Forced To Hire Private Security Over Reduced Police Presence
With billions of Congressionally approved COVID aid still unspent,small businesses in San Francisco and now Seattle are desperate for aid to help deal with an increasingly intractable problem that’s driving away potential customers and ultimately hurting businesses: the surge in criminals trying to shoplift or loiter around while they use drugs.
One Seattle TV station says the situation has gotten so bad that an organization called the Downtown Seattle Association is lobbying the State and the King County council requesting help and financial aid to both make the streets safer and, in the mean time, help reimburse small business owners for the cost of hiring their own private security (since the defund the police movement has forced the Seattle PD to do more with less, and now hundreds more are ready to quit over the vaccine mandate, allegedly).
The letter specifically requested grants from the city to help small businesses hire and pay for security “to offset the significant additional security-related expenses being incurred by small businesses, retailers and arts and cultural venues due to reduced SPD staffing and increased response times.”
One group of downtown businesses have been paying $35,000 a month to hire two off-duty police officers to patrol about six blocks near 6th Ave and Pine Street.
“These small businesses losing their windows and doors – we need this as a stop gap measure and help them,” said Lou Bond, who is the property manager at the Melbourne Tower, a Seattle office building.
One Seattle City Council member, whose district includes the Pioneer Square neighborhood, said in a statement that the requests from business leaders outlined in the letter “deserve our full consideration” for 2022. “There is significant overlap between the Council’s 2021 budget priorities and the goals of this letter.”
“These are our brothers and sisters these are human beings and we’re just letting them be out here. This is terrible,” Bond said.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has already proposed the budget for next year. A spokesperson said city council could amend it to further fund help for businesses.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 22:40 - New Aerosol Ammunition To Protect Russian Battle Tanks From US Javelin Missiles
New Aerosol Ammunition To Protect Russian Battle Tanks From US Javelin Missiles
Submitted by South Front,
The Russian army has adopted a new aerosol ammunition designed to protect armored vehicles from high-precision weapons.
The 3VD35 protective aerosol ammunition was developed by the Central Scientific Research Institute of Precision Engineering (TsNIITochmash), which is part of Rostec. Its caliber is 76 mm, with length of 290 mm and weight of 1.8 kg. Temperature range of the ammunition is from -50ºC to +50ºC.
The main purpose of the new device is to protect Russian armored vehicles from strikes into the most vulnerable upper hemisphere, which has a smaller armor thickness and is generally not covered by dynamic or anti-cumulative protection. When a threat arises, the 3VD35 protective ammunition is fired in the direction of the enemy’s attack and creates an aerosol screen that “fools” the enemy’s precision-guided munitions guidance systems.
In a way, it makes the armored vehicle (a battle tank, for example) invisible to the guided projectile, knocks it off the target due to the presence of light and heat-reflecting particles.
The product is designed to protect equipment from high-precision weapons with laser, optical and thermal guidance systems. It “covers” the equipment both from high-precision aircraft weapons, barrage ammunition, and from third-generation anti-tank missile systems.
When such protective ammunition is installed on a battle tank or other armored vehicle, the developers claim that it would become essentially invulnerable to high-precision and very expensive homing missiles, such as the US Javelin and AGM-114 Hellfire.
Apparently, there is also interest from foreign buyers, so it could either be directly exported, or an export variant could be presented soon.
The importance of the armored vehicles’ protection rises with the creation of new types of various guided missiles. Recently, the Chinese edition Sohu published photographs of Chinese soldiers with a new anti-tank guided missile launcher. It is believed that the ATGM in the photographs belongs to the third generation. The new weapon can attack armored vehicles in their upper hemisphere making it incredibly dangerous.
If China is developing such a weapon, there is cause to consider that some of Russia’s competitors are also doing the same.
In the past, the United States expressed doubts about the ability of Russian tanks to withstand the FGM-148 Javelin ATGM. The National Interest claimed in a report that the protection systems of the Russian T-72B3, T-80BVM, T-90M and T-14 battle tanks are insufficient to protect against the FGM-148 ATGM.
The United Kingdom is also concerned with the matter, as it is developing a full-fledged active defense system for armored vehicles.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 22:20 - Visualizing The World's 100 Most Valuable Brands In 2021
Visualizing The World’s 100 Most Valuable Brands In 2021
In 2020, the global economy experienced one of the worst declines since the Great Depression.
Yet, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang notes, while the ripple effects of COVID-19 have thrown many businesses into disarray, some companies have not only managed to stay afloat amidst the chaos—they’ve thrived. Using data from Kantar BrandZ, this graphic looks at the top 100 most valuable brands of 2021.
Methodology
Each year, research group Kantar BrandZ ranks companies based on their “brand value,” which is measured by:
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A brand’s total financial value, which is the financial contribution that brand brings to its parent company ($ value).
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Multiplied by its proportional value, measured by the brands proportional impact on its parent company’s sales (% value).
The financial results are then combined with quantitative survey data, sourced from over 170,000 global consumers. The end result is a holistic look at a company’s brand equity, reputation, and ability to generate value.
The Leaderboard
The total value of 2021’s Top 100 brands grew by 42%, reaching a combined $7 trillion. At the top of the list, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Amazon, with a total brand value of $683 billion.
It’s the third consecutive year that Amazon has placed first on the list. Since last year’s ranking, the ecommerce brand has seen its value grow by 64%. Keep in mind, this accounts for all areas of Amazon’s business, including its web and subscription services.
Second on the list is Apple with a brand value of $612 billion. Apple wasn’t completely immune to the impacts of COVID-19—in the early days of the pandemic, its stock dipped almost 19% from record highs—but the company recovered and reported record-breaking revenue, generating $64.7 billion in Q4 2020.
It’s fitting that the top brands on the list are big tech companies since the pandemic pushed consumers online for both their shopping and entertainment needs. A few social media platforms placed high on the list as well, like Facebook, which rose two ranks this year to score the sixth spot with a brand value of $227 billion.
Instagram and TikTok trailed behind Facebook when it came to total brand value, but both platforms saw exceptional growth compared to last year’s report. In fact, when looking at brand value growth from 2020, both brands scored a spot in the top 10.
Insights into Brand Value Growth
The most valuable brand report has been ranking companies for over a decade, and some overarching factors have stood out as key contributors to brand value growth:
1. The Big Get Bigger
Starting “strong” can give brands an edge. This is because growth rate is closely correlated with high brand equity. In other words, a strong brand will likely see more growth than a weaker brand, which might explain why companies like Amazon and Apple have been able to hold their place at the top for several consecutive years.
Keep in mind, this doesn’t account for industry disruptors. An innovative company could come out of the woodwork next year and give the Big Tech giants a run for their money.
2. Marketing Makes a Difference
The right strategy can make a difference, and even smaller brands can make a splash if the message is impactful. Brands with emotional associations, like pride or popularity, tend to see that translate into brand value growth.
Companies like Nike and Coca-Cola have mastered the art of emotional advertising. For instance, in May last year, Nike released a video urging consumers to stand up for equality, in a video titled, “For Once, Just Don’t Do It.”
3. Smart Investment
It’s not just about developing an effective marketing strategy, it’s about executing that strategy, and continually investing in ways that perpetuate your brand message.
For instance, innovation is the core value of Tesla’s brand, and the electric car company walks the walk—in 2020, the company spent $1.5 billion on R&D.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 22:00 -
- Stoddard: If Polls Are Right, Dems Are Doomed; If They're Wrong, It's Worse
Stoddard: If Polls Are Right, Dems Are Doomed; If They’re Wrong, It’s Worse
Authored by A.B.Stoddard via RealClearPolitics.com,
In less than three months, President Biden’s approval rating has tumbled from a remarkable position in a polarized nation to the lowest of all but two presidents since 1945. Democrats are panicked though refusing to course-correct, hoping the pandemic will retreat, the economy will rebound, and their agenda will pass through Congress and turn out to be popular down the line.
The standing of the party with voters, at this time, isn’t in doubt. It’s awful. Biden’s average job approval rating on July 20 was 52.4% in the RealClearPolitics average before tanking precipitously and taking the party’s fortunes with him as the delta variant surged and American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in a deadly and tragic exit. RCP currently has him at 43.3%. His approval in Gallup has dropped 13 points since June, six points in this last month. The latest Quinnipiac University poll had Biden’s approval/disapproval at 38/53, down four points in three weeks. Specific findings on leadership questions were dreadful, with Biden’s numbers falling since April by nine points on the question of whether he cares about average Americans, seven points on whether he is honest, and nine points on whether he has good leadership skills.
The latest Morning Consult/Politico findings from last week showed Biden’s approval underwater across the board, at 45% approval overall, at 40% on the economy, 44% on health care, 40% on national security, 33% on immigration and 36% on foreign policy. The only number not underwater was Biden’s COVID approval of 49%-46%, 30 points lower than it was last spring. Across all polling Biden’s approval on the questions of competence and accomplishment have suffered. And that Morning Consult/Politico survey stated, “The shares of independent and Democratic voters who say Biden has underperformed expectations have doubled over the past three months.”
The decline in COVID deaths, hospitalizations and infections and the disappearance of Afghanistan from the news has done nothing to stabilize the downward trajectory. In order for Democrats to stay competitive in the midterm elections, Biden’s approval would have to get back up to 50%-52%.
Low presidential approval ratings have correlated to significant losses for the president’s party in the last four midterm elections of 2018, 2014, 2010 and 2006.
Meanwhile Republicans have narrowed the margin in the congressional generic ballot, and a September Morning Consult/Politico poll found “58% of GOP voters say they’re ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ enthusiastic to vote in the 2022 midterms, up 10 points since July.”
Even if their polling was good, Democrats face fierce headwinds next year: historical trends that favor the party out of power in the midterms in a president’s first term, a fragile four-seat margin in the House and no margin in the Senate, all of which can easily erase their congressional majorities, and redistricting maps that favor the GOP. In addition, the party is facing new liabilities in voter registration — it has lost registered voters in critical states in considerable numbers. The Hill reported registration is down for Democrats since 2019 in Florida by more than 200,000, in North Carolina by more than 135,000, and in Pennsylvania by more than 200,000. Democrats have seen marginal increases in party registration in Arizona and New Hampshire.
Yet while Democrats are bracing themselves for a wipeout at the ballot box next year, they may not know the true extent of their loss of support among voters. Polling before last year’s election, in which Biden only prevailed by fewer than 43,000 votes in three swing states, was the least accurate in 40 years.
Postmortem assessments are complicated and, largely, inconclusive. But several point to the likelihood that both Republican and Democratic polls — almost all of which favored Biden over President Trump — were off by an average of four percentage points; that most surveys likely oversampled liberal Democrats; that a surge of new voters could have contributed to the polling errors; and that Trump supporters were less likely to respond to pollsters because Trump repeatedly characterized them as “fake” or “suppression polls.” While 2022 will not be a presidential year, a study of 2020 polls by the American Association of Public Opinion Research found that “[t]he overstatement of the Democratic-Republican margin in polls was larger on average in senatorial and gubernatorial races compared to the Presidential contest. Last year Democrats poured record sums into Senate races in red states like Montana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas and Iowa because the polling looked so promising — only to lose them all.
Certainly voter turnout can defy any polling predictions. But Democrats will have a rough time turning out their voters next year when the base of the party is likely to feel more disappointment than gratitude for the party’s accomplishments in 2021 and 2022, and the GOP base is likely to be highly energized.
A few weeks from now the first consequential bellwether election will take place in Virginia where former governor Terry McAuliffe, who is running again, is tied with Republican Glenn Youngkin in the polls. If McAuliffe pulls it out, Democrats will likely dismiss the scenario that polling around the rest of the country is portraying for them next year. They shouldn’t.
Much can happen in a year, Democrats hope for improvement in the economy and the pandemic, and a return on their far-reaching “infrastructure” agenda may materialize. Revelations from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection may challenge GOP candidates trying to avoid any daylight between their campaigns and Trump. Trump’s war with the GOP, and his constant messaging to its voters that all elections are rigged, may cost the party substantial voter turnout in key districts or states.
But Democrats shouldn’t count on it. They should believe the polls and campaign like they do.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 21:40 - Alaska Snow Crab Harvest Cut By 88% After Population Crash In Bering Sea
Alaska Snow Crab Harvest Cut By 88% After Population Crash In Bering Sea
Higher temperatures in the Bering Sea, a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean, could be responsible for one of the lowest levels set in snow crab harvest in more than four decades, according to the Seattle Times.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has set the 2021-22 catch limit of snow crab to 5.6 million pounds – down 88% from last season.
Scientists who study snow crabs attempt to understand what happened to the crabs, native to shelf depths in the North Pacific Ocean.
They discovered that sea bottom warmed, pushing the crabs farther to the northwest and deeper waters. But scientists, in testimony to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council last week, noted there has also been a massive downturn in the population – not just migration out of survey zones.
“We really do think that … some sort of mortality event did occur,” said Katie Palof, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist who advises the council.
This may suggest that supply woes could develop and push snow crab prices higher, adding to already rapid food inflation.
We’ve already detailed in length of an international crabmeat shortage already underway, especially with blue crabs.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 21:20 - Johnstone: Anyone Who'd Support Going To War Over Taiwan Is A Crazy Idiot
Johnstone: Anyone Who’d Support Going To War Over Taiwan Is A Crazy Idiot
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
Taiwan has been in the news a lot lately, and it’s really bringing out the crazy in people.
The mass media have been falsely reporting that China has been encroaching on Taiwan’s “air defense zone”, which gets stretched into the even more ludicrous claim that China “sent warplanes flying over Taiwan”. In reality Chinese planes simply entered an arbitrarily designated area hundreds of miles from Taiwan’s coast it calls its “Air Defence Identification Zone”, which has no legally recognized existence and contains a significant portion of China’s mainland. This is likely a response to the way the US and its allies have been constantly sailing war ships into disputed waters to threaten Beijing.
As Moon of Alabama reports, US warmongers inflamed this non-controversy even further by feeding a story to the press about the already public information that there are American troops in Taiwan training the military there, citing “concern” about the danger posed by China.
This past weekend, warships from six countries entered the South China Sea. Nearly all came from the other side of the world.
Chinese aircraft also briefly entered the “Taiwan ADIZ” — an air defense zone unrecognized by international law.
Guess which event is trending?
— Ian Goodrum (@isgoodrum) October 5, 2021
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Now headlines are blaring about President Tsai Ing-wen responding to this non-event with the announcement that Taiwan will “do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.” Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott just visited Taipei to advocate that “democracies stand shoulder to shoulder” with Taiwan against China. The CIA has announced the creation of a new spy center that will focus solely on China, which CIA Director William Burns says will “further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century: an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”.
A recent poll says that now more than half of Americans would support sending US troops to defend Taiwan from an invasion by the mainland, plainly the result of the aggressive propaganda campaign that has greatly escalated public hysteria about China. In Australia the mass media are cranking out unbelievably insane 60 Minutes episodes ridiculously pushing the idea that China may attack Australia and that Australians should be willing to go to war to protect Taiwan. I’ve been having many disturbing interactions with people online who emphatically support the idea of the US and its allies going to war with China over Taiwanese independence.
This is clearly nuts, and anyone who buys into this line of thinking is a brainwashed fool.
This isn’t some kind of complicated anti-imperialist issue, and it has nothing to do with which side you take in the debate over what government Taiwan belongs under. The US and its allies engaging in a full-scale war with nuclear-armed China over Taiwan is a prospect that should be vehemently opposed out of simple, garden variety self-preservation.
Obviously if Beijing decides to launch a military assault on Taiwan in its bid to reunify China that would be a terrible thing which would cause a lot of suffering. I don’t think that will happen unless western powers push Taipei into declaring independence or otherwise upset the delicate diplomacy dance in some major way, but if it does happen under any circumstances that would be awful.
But Taiwanese independence is not worth fighting a world war that could kill millions, and potentially billions if things go nuclear. This should be extremely obvious to everyone.
War with China: Are we closer than we think?
I’m three minutes into this #60MinutesAustralia episode and they’ve already had on a senior analyst from the state-funded and military industrial complex-funded @ASPI_org.https://t.co/ZYPOk9uSNX
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) September 21, 2021
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War proponents will reference Hitler, as they literally always do whenever there’s talk of war against someone the United States doesn’t like, arguing that China taking Taiwan would be like the Nazis invading Poland after which they’ll just keep invading and conquering until they are stopped. But there’s no evidence that China has any interest in invading Japan, much less Australia, still less everyone else, or that it has any ambitions on the world stage beyond reunification and securing its own economic and security interests.
The idea that China wants to take over a bunch of foreign lands, make you live under communism and give you a social credit score is the same kind of foam-brained bigoted othering which told previous generations that Black men want to take over your neighborhood so they can have sex with your wives. It’s the sort of belief that can only find purchase in an emotionally primitive mind that lacks the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand that not everyone wants what you have.
The jarring amount of pushback I’ve been getting for my very sane and moderate position that we should not be willing to start World War Three between nuclear powers over Taiwanese independence makes it abundantly clear that many people don’t truly understand that starting a war means you have to actually send actual human beings to go fight that war. All the big brave warrior men bloviating about the need to stand up to China know they’ll never find themselves on the front line of that conflict because they’re too old, but they’ll happily send my kids and the kids of countless of other mothers to go and fight in it. It’s like a video game or a movie to them.
Propaganda has made us so compartmentalized and detached from the realities of the horrors of war. If people could really see what war is and what it does, truly grok deep down in their guts how their own governments are inflicting those horrors on people right now, they’d fall to their knees in anguish and never again advocate for such things. No sane person would support a war of this scale if they truly understood what it would mean.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 21:00 - FDA Responds To Nordic Countries Suspending Moderna COVID Vaccine Usage
FDA Responds To Nordic Countries Suspending Moderna COVID Vaccine Usage
By Jack Phillips of The Epoch Times
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responded to Nordic countries limiting the use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine last week, saying the shot’s benefits outweigh the risks.
Health officials in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland suspended the use of the Moderna vaccine for younger people due to a risk of side effects including myocarditis. Sweden said it would pause the vaccine for people under the age of 30, and Denmark did the same for those under 18. Finland said that males under the age 30 shouldn’t receive the jab, while Icelandic officials added over the weekend that they would suspend use of the shot.
“The FDA is aware of these data. At this time, FDA continues to find that the known and potential benefits of vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine,” an FDA official said in a statement to news outlets over the weekend in response to the Nordic nations’ decision to suspend the vaccine for certain age groups.
Moderna, meanwhile, said in a statement after the countries’ decision that it was “aware of the very rare occurrence of myocarditis and/or pericarditis following administration of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”
“These are typically mild cases and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest. The risk of myocarditis is substantially increased for those who contract COVID-19, and vaccination is the best way to protect against this,” the company’s statement continued.
Moderna’s vaccine is still being administered under the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization. The company’s application for full approval is still pending.
On Oct. 10, Iceland’s Health Directorate said the Moderna vaccine would be entirely suspended due to the risk of cardiac inflammation.
“As the supply of Pfizer vaccine is sufficient in the territory … the chief epidemiologist has decided not to use the Moderna vaccine in Iceland,” according to a statement published on the Health Directorate website.
The move was handed down due to “the increased incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination with the Moderna vaccine, as well as with vaccination using Pfizer/BioNTech,” its statement continued.
And in Sweden, officials have “decided to pause the use of Moderna’s vaccine, Spikevax, for everyone born in 1991 and later, for precautionary reasons,” reads a statement from the Swedish health agency, according to a translation.
The agency further added there is “an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle or heart sac,” noting that the risk is “very small.”
Mika Salminen, director of the Finnish health institute, said Finland would instead give Pfizer’s vaccine to men born in 1991 and later. Finland offers shots to people aged 12 and over.
“A Nordic study involving Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark found that men under the age of 30 who received Moderna Spikevax had a slightly higher risk than others of developing myocarditis,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 20:20 - "Final Straw": Erdogan Signals New Turkish Military Operation In Syria, Sending Lira Plunging
“Final Straw”: Erdogan Signals New Turkish Military Operation In Syria, Sending Lira Plunging
On Monday Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he’s preparing “necessary steps” in Syria to eliminate the “YPG threat”, Turkish media reported.
The pledge of what appears to be a coming military operation along the Syrian border area comes after reports of two Turkish police officers killed and multiple more wounded in Azaz in northern Syria, according to an Interior Ministry press release Sunday. “We have run out of patience,” Erdogan told reporters. “Turkey is determined to eliminate threats arising from northern Syria, either together with forces active there, or with our own means.”
Via Hurriyet Daily “The latest attack on our police and the harassment that targets our soil are the final straw,” Erdogan said. Turkey considers Syria’s Kurdish YPG an offshoot of the PKK – long dubbed a “terrorist” group that Ankara has for decades attempted to eradicate.
According Al Jazeera, citing Turkish officials, the police deaths were accompanied by rocket fire from Syrian Kurdish positions onto towns inside Turkey:
Separately, projectiles that landed in two separate areas caused explosions in Turkey’s southern Gaziantep province, across the border from Syria’s Jarablus city, the governor’s office said.
A third landed in Jarablus and was believed launched from a region controlled by the YPG…
Turkey is being fought in Syria’s north by both the US-backed Syrian Kurds and the Assad government, given Turkish national forces as well as anti-Assad jihadist groups supported by Turkey have annexed broad swathes of northern Syria territory along the border. Pro-Turkish forces have also over the years come under attack by Russian warplanes, creating lasting tensions between Ankara and the Kremlin.
The Syrian and Russian governments have charged Turkey with severe and continued violations of Syria’s sovereignty and acts of aggression, and there’ve been recent rumors that the Syrian Army is preparing for an assault of al-Qaeda occupied Idlib province. It’s long been an open secret that Turkey is propping up the terror enclave.
Turkey has sought to justify its military occupation as based in “defensive” ‘counter-terrorism’ operations in accord with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Hence it continually claims to be under attack by Syrian Kurdish militias in the region, for which it had initially launched ‘Operation Euphrates Shield in August 2016.
Meanwhile, also on Monday – likely in part in relation to Erdogan’s signaling a new major military campaign inside northern Syria (further destabilizing the refugee-packed border region) – and following last month’s unexpected rate cut by Turkey’s central bank, the lira weakened to a fresh record low. “The currency extended losses to trade past 9.00 per U.S. dollar,” Bloomberg recorded.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 20:00 - Learning To Fear Free Speech: How Politicians Are Moving To Protect Us From Our Unhealthy Reading Choices
Learning To Fear Free Speech: How Politicians Are Moving To Protect Us From Our Unhealthy Reading Choices
Below is my column in the Hill on the increasing calls for censorship and speech regulation on the Internet. The most recent push on Capitol Hill surrounds the testimony of former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen who alleges that Facebook has been knowingly harming children through promotion and access to certain sites. For some, the testimony follows a type of Trojan Horse pattern where anti-free speech measures are packaged as public safety measures. Before embracing the proposals of these senators, the public needs to think long and hard over what is being lost in these “reforms.”
Here is the column:
“Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health.” Such a rewording of the original 1965 warning on tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening to former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.
But before we embrace a new “ministry of information” model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.
Warnings over the “addiction” and “unhealthy” content of the internet have been building into a movement for years. In July, President Biden slammed Big Tech companies for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugen’s testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech. However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.
In recent hearings with social media giants, members like Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) were critical of limiting censorship to areas like election fraud and instead demanded censorship of disinformation on climate change and other subjects.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has repeatedly called for “robust content modification” to remove untrue or misleading information.
Haugen lashed out at what she said was the knowing harm committed against people, particularly children, by exposing them to disinformation or unhealthy views. Haugen wants the company to remove “toxic” content and change algorithms to make such sites less visible. She complained that sites with a high engagement rate are more likely to be favored in searches. However, the problem is that sites deemed false or harmful are too popular. Haugen said that artificially removing “likes” is not enough because the popularity or interest in some sites will still push them to the top of searches.
It was a familiar objection. Just the week before, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for Amazon to steer readers to “true” books on climate change. Her objection was that the popularity of “misleading” books was pushing them to the top of searches, and she wants the algorithms changed to help readers pick what she considers to be healthier choices — meaning, more in line with her views.
Similarly, Haugen’s solution seems to be … well, her:
“Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what is happening inside … there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like [Facebook],and have a place to work on things like regulation.”
Censorship programs always begin with politicians and bureaucrats who — in their own minds — have the benefit of knowing what is true and the ability to protect the rest of us from our harmful thoughts.
Ironically, I have long been a critic of social media companies for their rapid expansion of censorship, including the silencing of political critics, public health experts and pro-democracy movements at the behest of foreign governments like China and Russia. I am unabashedly an internet originalist who favors an open, free forum for people to exchange ideas and viewpoints — allowing free speech to be its own disinfectant of bad speech.
Facebook has been running a slick campaign to persuade people to embrace corporate censorship. Yet, now, even the Facebook censors are being denounced as too passive in the face of runaway free speech. The focus is on the algorithms used to remove content or, as with Haugen and Warren, used to flag or promote popular sites.
Haugen describes her approach as a “non-content-based solution” but it is clearly not that. She objects to algorithms like “downstream MSI” which tracks traffic and pushes postings based on past likes or comments. As explained by one site, it is “based on their ability to engage users, not necessarily its usefulness or truthfulness.” Of course, the objection to those “un-useful” sites is their content and claimed harm.
Like Warren, Haugen is calling for what I have criticized as “enlightened algorithms” to protect us from our own bad choices. Our digital sentinels are “non-content-based” but will magically remove bad content to prevent unhealthy choices.
There is no question that the internet is fueling an epidemic of eating disorders and other great social problems. The solution, however, is not to create regulatory boards or to reduce free speech. Europe has long deployed such oversight boards in removing what it considers harmful stereotypes from advertising and barring images of honey or chips — but the results have been underwhelming at best.
It is no accident that authoritarian countries have long wanted such regulation, since free speech is a threat to their power. Now, we also have U.S. academics writing that “China was right” all along about censorship, and public officials demanding more power to censor further. We have lost faith in free speech, and we are being told to put our faith into algorithmic guardians.
We can confront our problems more effectively by using good speech to overcome bad speech. When it comes to minors, we can use parents to protect their children by increasing parental controls over internet access; we can help parents with more or better programs and resources for mental illnesses. Of course, it is hard to advocate for restraint when the image of an anorexic child is juxtaposed against the abstract concept of free speech. However, that is the siren’s call of censorship: Protecting that child by reducing her free-speech rights is no solution for her — but it is a solution for many who want more control over opposing views.
Free speech is not some six-post-a-day addiction that should be cured with algorithmic patches.
There is no such thing as a content-neutral algorithm that removes only harmful disinformation — because behind each of those enlightened algorithms are people who are throttling speech according to what they deem to be harmful thoughts or viewpoints.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 19:40 - Wall Street Is Done With Covid: Pandemic No Longer Among Top 3 Risks For Market
Wall Street Is Done With Covid: Pandemic No Longer Among Top 3 Risks For Market
The covid scare is officially over.
According to the latest monthly survey of 600 global market participants conducted by Deutsche Bank, for the first time since June, the biggest perceived risk to markets is no longer covid. Instead the top three risks are i) higher inflation and bond yields, ii) central bank policy error and iii) strong growth failing to materialize or being very short lived (i.e. stagflation and/or recession). New covid variants that bypass vaccines has slumped from 1st place, which it occupied for the previous three months, to 4th place in October.
Below we present some of the other notable results from the survey.
When asked if there will be an equity correction before year-end, only 29% said no, while solid majority, or 63%, expect a drop between 5 and 10% before year end. Just 8% expect the coming drop to be bigger than 10%.
The most likely catalyst for the coming correction are higher rates. At least that’s what the next survey question suggests: a whopping 84% of survey respondents expect the next 25bps move in 10Y yields to be higher, and just 11% lower. Only 5% of the respondents were honest.
DB then asked respondents if they believe the policy error for major central banks – Fed, ECB, BOE – is being too dovish or hawkish. The risks were seen as high everywhere but the Fed/ECB were seen more likely to keep policy too loose with the BoE expected to err on the hawkish side.
The next question is one we addressed over the weekend, namely what is Wall Street’s fluid definition of stagflation. While there was no overwhelming consensus definition for “stagflation”, there is a fairly strong bias that stagflation of some kind is more likely than not over the next 12 months. Particularly in the UK.
A historic cross-section of responses shows something interesting: while inflation expectations have remained heavily tilted to the upside, there has been a slight pullback from the May extremes: in October, deflationary risks increased to highest since January, probably on the growth scares.
We conclude with a response that confirms that for the most part Wall Steet is still clueless, with 62% still saying that inflation will be “mostly transitory”, while just 31% say mostly permanent. The silver lining: that 31% is the highest percentage since May, so there is some hope, even for Wall Street.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 19:20 - 131 Federal Judges Didn't Disclose Their Interests And Cases May Be Reheard
131 Federal Judges Didn’t Disclose Their Interests And Cases May Be Reheard
Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClearPolicy.com,
Federal district judges earn $218,600 annually and many hold stock investments, a potential conflict of interest when a case involving the companies in which they’re invested comes before them.
That’s exactly what happened with 131 federal judges who broke the law by hearing suits in which they had a financial interest, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
The Journal looked at the financial disclosure forms that about 700 federal judges filed between 2010 and 2018 and found that 129 federal district judges and two federal appellate judges in 685 lawsuits had at least one case where they or their family owned stock in a company that was a plaintiff or defendant in their courtroom.
Now, 56 of the judges have told their court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves, making it likely that new judges will be assigned to re-hear the cases at a huge cost to taxpayers.
There’s no law stopping judges from owning stocks, but since 1974, federal law has barred judges from hearing cases that involve a party in which they, their spouses or their minor children have a “legal or equitable interest, however small.”
While there’s no estimate as to how large the bill is that taxpayers foot for the average, federal court case, we know that these judges collect $218,600 annually — $28.6 million for 131 judges — plus benefits.
Their court clerks and other support staff are paid salaries as they go through case after case, and re-hearing cases that have already been decided is a waste of taxpayer money that could have been avoided if judges disclosed their conflict of interests before taking a case.
* * *
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 19:00 - China's Military Conducts Beach Landing Assault Drills Just Across From Taiwan
China’s Military Conducts Beach Landing Assault Drills Just Across From Taiwan
China’s military announced Monday that it carried out beach landing and assault drills just across from Taiwan at a moment the rhetoric coming out of Beijing, Taipei and Taiwan’s powerful backer Washington is growing increasingly bellicose.
The assault drills were held “in recent days” according to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) statement, located in the southern part of Fujian province, which is directly across the sea from the self-ruled island.
Prior PLA assault drills, via Xinhua Importantly the official PLA statement didn’t specifically name Taiwan as a factor in the mission preparation and drills; however, the message is unmistakably meant to affirm China won’t back down on its longtime claims to sovereignty over the island.
Reuters describes details of the drills as summarized in Chinese state media as follows:
The action had involved “shock” troops, sappers and boat specialists, the Chinese military newspaper added. The troops were “divided into multiple waves to grab the beach and perform combat tasks at different stages”, it added, without providing further details.
It showed a video of soldiers in small boats storming a beach, throwing smoke grenades, breaking through barbed wire defenses and digging trenches in the sand.
But it was also noted that a small number of troops appeared in the footage, suggesting elite units were involved – and not large-scale marine or infantry forces.
Though taking place firmly within Chinese mainland territory, the geography is important, considering as Reuters notes that “Fujian would be a key launching site for any Chinese invasion of Taiwan due to its geographical proximity.”
The PLA video release of the Fujian drills…
#China: A combined arms brigade attached to the PLA’s 73rd Group Army recently held multidimentional amphibious landing drills with assault boats, drones and laser engagement systems in a sea area in Eastern China’s Fujian Province. pic.twitter.com/3PtsmyHpG5
— POPULAR FRONT (@PopularFront_) October 10, 2021
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Within the past two months top Taiwan officials have openly described their strategic defense doctrine of wanting to transform the island into a “sea fortress” and “porcupine” which is able to withstand a direct Chinese assault – or at least long enough for help from more powerful allies to arrive.
But meanwhile one recent regional media report emphasized that “Washington will also make clear that Taipei must avoid any provocative action that would compel Beijing to respond, even as it pressures Taiwan to increase its military spending, invest in more mobile coastal cruise missile systems and strengthen its military reserves.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 18:40 - Beware Of The Progressive Redefinition Of Moderates
Beware Of The Progressive Redefinition Of Moderates
Authored by Gary Galles via The American Institute for Economic Research,
Progressive thought control efforts have turned to a new attack on moderates.
As reported on The Hill, first-year Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), said “Referring to the small handful of conservative Democrats working to block the president’s agenda as ‘moderates’ does grave harm to the English language and unfairly maligns my colleagues who are actually moderate yet by and large understand the stakes of this historic moment.” He linked moderates and progressives together, as “united in our commitment to passing President Biden’s agenda,” and that “Anyone trying to obstruct that agenda” is not a moderate.
This redefinition of moderates is reminiscent of the treatment of the Tea Party during an earlier impasse over the debt ceiling. In the wake of an historic explosion of federal power and spending (though dwarfed by current proposals) and when 40 percent of every federal dollar was borrowed, left-leaning politicians and pundits called for moderates to join them in supporting President Obama’s demand for higher taxes and bigger government. Predictably, they called everyone who wanted to undo some of that profligacy an extremist.
In both cases, Democrats demonized those who were at least moderately concerned with citizens’ constitutional rights and wallets. They hoped to find people willing to support their budget priorities, and the massively higher burdens those priorities required. In the end, they hoped to remake America in their own image, while buying off the smallest number of citizens necessary to implement their 50 percent “landslide.”
It is important to note that in both such cases, as well as many others, the moderation Democrats called for was moderation in defense of liberty. Those who resisted were branded unreasonable extremists and shown the door.
While such rhetorical distortions reflect current progressive-left thinking, there is a source Americans can turn to for a more reasonable point of view. It comes from an “electoral manifesto” written by Frederic Bastiat in 1830. His dead-on discussion of moderation is worth recalling now:
Moderation…plays a role in this army of sophisms.
Were those who each year voted for more taxes than the nation could bear moderates? What about those who never found the contributions to be sufficiently heavy, emoluments sufficiently huge, and sinecures sufficiently numerous…the betrayal of the confidences of their constituents?
Are those who want to prevent…such excesses extremists? I mean those who want to inject a dose of moderation into spending; those who want to moderate the action of the people in power…those who do not want the nation to be exploited by one party rather than another.
Left to itself, [government] soon exceeds the limits which circumscribe its mission. It increases beyond all reason…It no longer administers, it exploits…It no longer protects, it oppresses.
This would be the way all governments operate…if the people did not place obstacles in the way of governmental encroachments.
Prodigality and liberty…are incompatible
Where can there be liberty when the government, in order to sustain enormous expenditures and forced to levy huge fiscal contributions, must resort to the most offensive and burdensome taxation…to invade the sphere of private industry, to narrow incessantly the circle of individual activity, to make itself merchant, manufacturer, postman and teacher.
Are we free if the government…subjects all its activities to the goal of enlarging its cohort of employees, hampers all businesses, constrains all faculties, interferes with all commercial exchanges in order to restrain some people, hinder others, and hold almost all of them to ransom?
Can we expect order from a regime that places millions of enticements to greed all around the country…increasingly spreading the mania for governing and a zeal for domination.
Do we want, then, to free government from the plotters who pursue it in order to share out the spoils, from factions who undermine it in order to capture it, and from the tyrants who strengthen it in order to control it? Do we want…order, freedom and public peace?
Do we want the government to take more of an interest in us than we take in ourselves? Are we expecting it to restrain itself if we strengthen it and become less active if we send it reinforcements? Do we hope that the spoils it can take from us will be refused…Should we expect a supernatural nobility of spirit…in those who govern us, while for our part we are incapable of defending…our dearest interests!
Be careful…we should not shut our eyes to the evidence…are we going to destroy [liberty’s] work?
Frederic Bastiat wrote his electoral manifesto at a time when politically popular “moderates” enabled expanding government coercion, while “extremists” defended liberty.
Unfortunately, little seems different today.
But if we recognize with him what is at stake–liberty too precious to be bargained over–we might yet turn this destructive tide.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 18:20 - Southwest Blames Cancellations On Worker Shortage, Union Denies 'Sick-Out' Over Vaccine Mandate
Southwest Blames Cancellations On Worker Shortage, Union Denies ‘Sick-Out’ Over Vaccine Mandate
Update (1800ET): Southwest Airlines has had another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day – as a shortage of workers combined with an air traffic control interruption to bring the total number of canceled flights to nearly 3,100 in four days.
“Crews were struggling to move and you end up in short order with aircraft and crews in the wrong spot,” said EVP Bob Jordan, adding “It’s really difficult to repair and put those things back together.”
Speculation over the actual cause of the cancellations has been rampant on social media – with some pilots refuting claims that they were staging a sickout over vaccination mandates, while COPO Mike Van de Ven told employees on Sunday night that it needs to build more of a “staffing cushion” to deal with unexpected disruptions.
This photo was just sent to me of a grounded Southwest plane flying a Gadsden flag out of the cockpit. The Hero Pilots at Southwest and other Airlines deserve our support. True patriots worthy of the American Freedom Fighter tradition.
Don’t Tread On Me.
God Bless Them 🇺🇸✈️🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/tAo9pT4Q60— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2021
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According to Bloomberg, Southwest has hired just half of the 5,500 workers it plans to before year-end, according to CEO-designate Jordan.
The airline has set a Dec. 8 deadline for vaccinations, which the Pilots Union claim “imposes new conditions of employment” and threatens termination.
“What was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “Our pilots are tired and frustrated because our operation is running on empty due to a lack of support from the company.”
Murray denied that the cancellations were due to any sort of pilot protest.
“I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise,” he said, adding that under federal law “our union is forbidden from taking job action to resolve labor disputes under these circumstances. SWAPA has not authorized, and will not condone, any job action.”
* * *
Update (1220ET):
*SOUTHWEST COO: STILL SHORT ON WORKERS, ESPECIALLY FLIGHT CREWS*SOUTHWEST COO COMMENTS ON CANCELLATIONS IN VIDEO FOR EMPLOYEES
*SOUTHWEST COO: `WE NEED MORE STAFFING CUSHION FOR DISRUPTIONS’
*SOUTHWEST COO: `CANNOT TELL YOU THAT WE ARE OUT OF THE WOODS’
* * *
As we noted on Sunday, Southwest airlines canceled nearly 2,000 flights over the weekend – blaming the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and inclement weather.
Oddly, no other major airlines had the same issues, while rumors swirled that airline employees had staged coordinated walk-outs (which their unions deny).
This is the single bravest thing I have seen in years. God bless these Pilots. The heroes we need right now 🇺🇸✈️ pic.twitter.com/ZxuRseDoAq
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2021
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On Monday, Southwest was once again at the top of the cancellation list, according to FlightAware – which lists 356 cancellations as of this writing (23% of the day’s 1,539 total cancellations), prompting Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to tweet: “As a loyal Southwest customer who has been flying safely throughout the pandemic and is utterly opposed to vaccine mandates, I’m asking, stop the madness before more damage is done.”
Needless to say, shares in Southwest weren’t happy Monday morning – hopeful candle aside.
Former US Senator Dr. Ron Paul may be on to something in a Monday op-ed via the Ron Paul Institute, when he calls it a rebellion (emphasis ours)
The incredible cruelty and folly of forced vaccines finally came home to roost. The vaccine mandate backlash has been bubbling just under the surface, but now it has spilled out into the open, threatening to completely derail an already crumbling economy and to obliterate a deeply unpopular US President and Administration.Seemingly out of nowhere what appears to be a Southwest Airlines rebellion has taken flight this weekend. According to media reports, scores of pilots and other Southwest employees have coordinated the taking of “sick days” to use them up in advance of a Southwest Airlines mandate to get the jab or lose the job. Over Saturday and Sunday more than 2,000 flights have been cancelled, with airports experiencing full-on mayhem.
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association is suing the airline over the imposed vaccine mandate, bolstering the claim that there is a “sick out” underway among angry Southwest pilots.
The mainstream media is doing its best to keep a lid on the expanding rebellion against the vaccine mandates, and Southwest Airlines itself is blaming the cancellations on bad weather and a lack of air traffic controllers. However, the weather problems that Southwest claims to be experiencing seem unique to that carrier: no other airline (thus far) is reporting such weather-related cancellations. And FAA spokesperson Steve Kulm told USA Today that “No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday.”
Will other pilots, such as at American Airlines, follow suit? Rumors are circling that this is only the beginning.
Over the past few weeks, thousands of nurses, medical workers, and first responders have either quit or been fired for refusing to receive a medical treatment they do not want or need. The “nursing shortage” that Democrat politicians and the mainstream media had been blaming on “rising Covid cases” has been in reality a man-made disaster of historic proportions. The nursing crisis is not caused by “Covid” – cases have been in decline in the US for weeks. It is caused by the firing of medical personnel who refuse to take the experimental Covid shots.
The stupidity of adopting a policy of firing healthcare workers while at the same time claiming that there is a raging pandemic gripping the country has not been lost on Americans. President Biden’s polling numbers have unsurprisingly been in freefall, with major Democrat candidates like Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe openly complaining that the deeply unpopular Biden is threatening him in a tight race for governor.
While Biden Administration lackeys like Fauci are telling Americans they can’t celebrate Christmas again this year, more and more of America is finished with this “public health” terrorism. Here in Texas, a hundred thousand unmasked Texas A&M fans poured onto the football field on Saturday after a last minute surprise victory over Alabama. In Texas and elsewhere, the Administration is losing the fear factor.History may record this weekend as the turning point against the Biden Administration’s Covid tyranny. From nurses to pilots to truckers to even Amtrak workers, it appears that America is standing up and saying “enough!” Every one of our fellow citizens standing up on principle to oppose tyranny – facing the loss of their jobs and security – is owed a debt of gratitude by all who love liberty. Let’s hope that the peaceful rebellion continues to grow!
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 18:00
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