Sep 12

Today’s News 12th September 2021

  • McMaken: 9/11 Was A Day Of Unforgivable Government Failure
    McMaken: 9/11 Was A Day Of Unforgivable Government Failure

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    Perhaps more than anything else, the rationale given for the necessity of the state – and the necessity of supporting the regime at any given time – is that it “keeps us safe.” This permeates thinking about government institutions at all levels, from “thin blue line” sloganeering at the local level, all the way up to jingoism surrounding the  Pentagon.

    Presumably, the hundreds of billions of dollars extracted from taxpayers, year after year after year, is all both necessary and laudable because without it, chaos would reign on our streets, and foreign invaders would slaughter Americans.

    Yet, this rationale for state power also presumes that the nation’s alleged defenders are actually competent at their jobs.

    Whether or not this is case certainly remains debatable as the recent military disasters in Afghanistan have made clear. The Pentagon brass pushed for continued war in Afghanistan for 20 years, and ultimately, lost the entire country to the Taliban, the very people Pentagon generals assured us they would eliminate “soon.”

    Moreover, the so-called “intelligence community” in the United States has repeatedly failed in its mission at crucial times. This can be seen in the fact the CIA was asleep at the switch in the lead ups to both the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 —both of which constituted an immense blow to American “safety” by the American regime’s metrics.

    Needless to say, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were made possible by an immense military and intelligence failure on the part of the United States government. Not only did the US government provide the motivation for the attacks—through endless meddling in Middles Eastern regimes—but the US regime failed to protect its own citizens when the blowback arrived. 

    Yet, as is so common following displays of incompetence by government bureaucrats, virtually no government agents was held accountable for this failure. The head of the CIA on 9/11, George Tenet, continued at his post for years afterward. There certainly was no “house cleaning” at the FBI either. 

    Yet federal agencies allegedly formed to “keep us safe” were more or less AWOL in the lead up to 9/11, choosing to focus on relatively petty goals, and on augmenting the agencies’ public-relations efforts, rather than on terrorism.

    The CIA at the Center

    A bevy of books have been published over the last 20 years examining the massive intelligence blundering that preceded 9/11. Many of them are partisan, and many attempt to blame everything on elected officials. But the failures leading up to 9/11 go much deeper than that. Much of this is described in detail by Milo Jones and Philippe Silberzahn in their book Constructing Cassandra: Reframing Intelligence Failure at the CIA, 1947-2001.

    The authors note that the 9/11 failure was a failure of multiple intelligence agencies, as well as numerous US policymakers across many agencies and institutions.

    But, as Jones and Silberzahn contend, “the CIA stands at the center of the failure. … [p]rior to 9/11, the CIA was primus inter pares among the agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, chartered specifically to coordinate the community’s activities against threats—especially surprise attacks originating abroad.”

    The story of the CIA’s failure is one of an organization that was repeatedly warned of the al-Qa’ida threat by internal analysists. But both the CIA leadership, and the rank and file, chose to ignore the warnings.  Rather, before 9/11, the leadership insisted on focusing on China, Iran, and Iraq. Other priorities included drug trafficking, organized crime, and illicit trade practices and “environmental issues of great gravity.”

    Thanks only partly to guidance handed down form the Clinton administration in the late 1990s, “intelligence about al-Qa’ida [was] equal to that [of] …the illegal trade of tropical hardwood.” Jones and Silberzahn note the CIA did not “push back” against these priorities but concerned itself with telling politicians what they wanted to hear. 

    Looking at “CIA budgetary decisions prior to 9/11” it becomes clear that intelligence on terrorism and al-Qa’ida were “extremely low priorities” at the CIA and “the agency had repeatedly diverted money away from counterterrorism to other purposes.”

    For instance, the CIA’s intelligence briefings for the Bush administration in 2001 (prior to September 11) were extremely vague and never communicated much beyond the bland facts that Islamic terrorists exist and might carry out attacks—sometime, somewhere.  The agency never devoted many resources to following up on the possibility of these attacks. Briefings on the topic of Islamic terrorism were historical in nature with little effort given to anticipating the details of possible future acts. There was no “actionable warning.”

    The 9/11 Commission noted this problem:

    Commission staff member Douglas McEachin—a veteran former CIA analyst himself—thought that it was “unforgivable” that no NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] on al-Qa’ida or terrorism of any sort was produced for four years before the attacks. McEachin was “shocked that no one at the senior levels of the CIA had attempted for years— to catalog and give context to what was know about al-Qa’ida.”

    Yet, to this day, apologists for the CIA will shrug their shoulders and insist “hindsight is 20/20!” and “how could anyone have known?” These defenders of the regime, of course, ignore the fact that the intelligence community in 2001 was receiving $30 billion in taxpayer money—an amount that was real money in 2001—to anticipate security threats. Providing “early warning of an enemy attack” was (and is) their job.

    (It’s also worth asking if the perennial excuse-makers for government failure can provide an example of a military or intelligence failure that they wouldn’t shrug off.)

    The CIA Was Warned, and Did Nothing

    Moreover, the data is clear that it didn’t require revolutionary thinking to anticipate that Islamic terrorists might use airplanes as weapons, or that al-Qa’ida posed a credible threat.

    After all, the CIA leadership was warned by its own analysts, especially those under Michael Scheuer who headed up the CIA’s much-ignored bin Ladin unit. As early as 1996, Scheuer had attempted to warn his superiors at the CIA of the threat of Islamic terrorism in general, and al Qa’ida in particular. Usama bin Laden had been publicly threatening Western nations to Western media since 1993, and publicly declared war on the United States on September 2, 1996.

    Unlike most staffers and officials at the CIA, Scheuer took bin Ladin seriously, but he and his unit were regarded with little esteem at the agency. While Scheuer was attempting to raise the profile of al-Qa’ida, “Anyone with seniority or savvy avoided assignment to the bin Ladin unit.”

    Scheuer was regarded as “obsessive” and those who were assigned to work with him were usually “very junior” and also female. Indeed, the bin Ladin unit, staffed as it was by Scheuer and a number of women, came to be derisively called “The Manson Family” among CIA staff.

    Eventually, Scheuer lost what little influence he had in 1999. Frustrated with senior officials, Scheuer attempted to engage CIA director Tenet directly. This was regarded as an unforgiveable breach of bureaucratic protocol and Scheuer was demoted to the position of a librarian and shunted off to a cubicle in the library at Langley.

    Airplanes as Weapons: It Was Predictable

    Having studiously ignored the potential threat of al-Qa’ida throughout the late 1990s, CIA staff and leadership also failed to anticipate the methods eventually used on 9/11.

    Followers of early 2000s popular culture will sometimes recall that the television show The Lone Gunmen—a spinoff of The X-Files—aired an episode in March 2001 in which a nefarious “hacker” deliberately flies a 747 at the World Trade Center.

    Many note with amazement that authors of fiction saw the potential for the use of airplanes as weapons while the intelligence community apparently ignored the idea. Yet, the writers at The Lone Gunmen were hardly the first to conceive of the idea, which further illustrates the lack of imagination employed at the CIA.

    As Jones and Silberzahn note,

    In 1994, an Algerian group hijacked a plane in Algiers and apparently intended to fly it into the Eiffel Tower; in 1995, Manila police reported in detail about a suicide plot to crash a plane into CIA Headquarters; since the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the NSC actively considered the use of aircraft as suicide weapons. Tom Clancy also wrote a novel about such an attack. As the [9/11] commission itself noted, the possibility of commercial planes as suicde weapons was both “imaginable and imagined” not just at the CIA.

    A Lack of Expertise

    So why was the CIA leadership so incapable to taking the al-Qa’ida threat seriously?

    Much of it, Jones and Silberzahn conclude, was due to sizable weaknesses in the CIA’s analytical capabilities. Just as a general example, the authors note that even as late as 2013, “very few CIA analysts can read or speak Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, or Farsi—which collectively comprise the languages spoken by nearly half the world’s population.”

    Jones and Silberzahn note this is part of a general problem at the CIA of cultural homogeneity. Prior to 9/11, and likely still today, the CIA capabilities in understanding foreign cultures is limited by the fact the CIA is largely the domain of college-educated Americans, generally from the same socio-economic strata.

    As noted by one CIA officer shortly after 9/11:

    The CIA probably doesn’t have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern Background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist… For Christ’s sake most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia.

    Indeed, “In 2001, only 20 percent of the graduating class of clandestine case officers were fluent in a non-Romance language.” It’s unlikely that in 2001, the CIA had even a single case officer who spoke Pashto, the language of the Taliban. These great intelligence “experts” were groping around in the dark, often due to bureaucratic laziness and ignorance. 

    The CIA’s defenders today may still make excuses for the CIA’s failure to know the details of the 9/11 conspiracy ahead of time, but it is clear today that the CIA wasn’t even looking in the right general direction to discover such information were it to present itself. Rather, in 2001, the CIA was apparently more interested in working with policymakers and media to leak headlines that would play up the foreign threats the CIA was most interested in talking about.

    Unfortunately, in spite of these enormous failures, the CIA and the intelligence community have seen little damage to their reputations. Nor is there any reason to assume the situation has substantially changed and that the federal bureaucracy is any more competent today than it was on September 10, 2001. There is no market test or objective measure of success in government bureaucracies. In the decade following 9/11, the US’s intelligence agencies were rewarded with a marked increase in funding over 1990s levels. 

    Twenty years after 9/11, a much-needed culture of skepticism around the nation’s “intelligence community” has yet to arise. This attitude will only pave the way for the next time it becomes tragically clear that America’s well-funded collection of intelligence agencies doesn’t actually “keep us safe.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 23:30

  • Boston Suburb Attempts To Limit Gun Stores With New Zoning Proposal
    Boston Suburb Attempts To Limit Gun Stores With New Zoning Proposal

    It comes as no surprise the Second Amendment is under attack in a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the most anti-gun states in the country. 

    Members of the Select Board in Brookline, Massachusetts, are proposing zoning limits for gun stores, according to the Patch. 

    Under the new zoning proposal submitted by town board members Petra Bignami, Janice Kahn, Alexandra Metral, and Sharon Schoffman, gun stores would only be allowed to operate by special permit. It also states buffer zones will be around residential properties, private and public K-12 schools, and childcare facilities, which would block firearm businesses from operating within a certain distance. 

    The proposal came after the City of Newton, one town over, approved new zoning rules for gun stores in June that restricted them to three locations. This action was in response to a new gun store attempting to open. 

    “When the issue of the gun store going into Newton, that got everybody’s attention I think about potentially a flaw in the towns land use that might allow gun stores in places we don’t want, and so I asked the planning department to begin to work on that,” Brookline’s Town Administrator Melvin Kleckner said at a Select Board meeting last month. 

    Kleckner said the proposal is a good idea and is “essentially the Newton model.”  

    Responding to this liberal madness is The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN), who said: 

    “Not surprising that the proposal is coming from Massachusetts, one of the most anti-gun states in the country. The irony is that the same people who claim to be for personal freedom and free expression push laws that stifle commerce and limit free choice. The simple fact is that zoning gun shops out of participation in the local economy will do absolutely nothing to stop gun violence and will only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to access their 2nd amendment rights and defend themselves.”

    The Newton model might work in the Northeast, but elsewhere, 1,930 US counties are protected by Second Amendment Sanctuary legislation, and a crackdown on gun stores might be challenging. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 23:00

  • Gaslighting The American People: Biden's "Extraordinarily Successful" Withdrawal From Reality
    Gaslighting The American People: Biden’s “Extraordinarily Successful” Withdrawal From Reality

    Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

    The Democratic Party and its apparatchiks in the media keep asking the American people variations on a single question: What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

    From the Trump/Russia collusion fantasy and concocted claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” to ongoing efforts to cast an America that has never been freer or fairer as a nation riddled with “systemic” racial oppression, they keep insisting that we reject clear and convincing evidence and embrace politically driven falsehoods.

    The latest example is President Biden’s refusal to even acknowledge the catastrophic failure of his withdrawal from Afghanistan. The nation heard him say on July 8 that it was highly unlikely that the Taliban would overrun the country. The Washington Post reports that his senior leadership team was caught so unaware by the Taliban’s August advance that many were on vacation when Kabul fell. Then came the images of chaotic panic at the airport, a grim scene turned violently grisly when a suicide bomber murdered scores of people, including 13 Americans.

    Biden subsequently described the withdrawal as an “extraordinary success” even as he left behind lethal state-of-the-art military equipment worth billions of dollars as well as many Americans and Afghans who had aided us during the 20-year struggle – including the interpreter who helped rescue Biden himself in 2008.

    Slowly but surely the mainstream press, which initially covered the debacle forthrightly,  is beginning to embrace Biden’s narrative. Ezra Klein offered his New York Times readers a fatuous counterfactual defense: “A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one.” Jonathan Karl of ABC News played the Trump card: “The truth is that Biden accomplished exactly what Trump had tried to do in his final year in office. The only real difference is that Trump wanted to withdraw more quickly and with less regard for the Afghan citizens who worked with the United States.”

    Expect to hear more of the same in the coming weeks. Don’t be surprised if Biden is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The brazenness is stunning. This is not your typical political spin, it is propaganda. It is the willful effort to corrupt our perception of reality. Say it loud and long enough and people will believe it. If they don’t, get Twitter mobs and cancel culture to silence and punish them. That is increasingly becoming the Democrats’ playbook.

    Why do they do it? The obvious and most important answer is that they can, and it is incredibly useful. The spread of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory helped them hobble a presidency just as the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story helped them win an election.

    They are able to get away with it because they have convinced their allies in the press and millions of voters that our nation is locked in an existential battle with an evil enemy: the Republican Party. False narratives that kneecap the enemy are serving a higher truth; admissions of error are taboo because they will only strengthen the opposition. Give no quarter is their mantra.

    There is also a politico-psychological dynamic behind this posture. Democrats are the party of well-educated elites, whose position in society and sense of self are anchored in their belief in their intellectual merit. Likewise, the Democratic Party’s argument for an all-powerful government is based on claims of competence and expertise. Acknowledging errors undermines their claims to authority.

    This helps explain the lack of accountability. Firing, say, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley for the Afghanistan debacle would suggest that our brilliant leaders are not so brilliant.

    To admit the obvious, yes, Republicans practice deception all the time. And it is also corrosive. But they do not control the government or, more importantly, the news. Their lies are almost always exposed, while those of the Democrats are often propagated.

    This is at the root of our country’s deep divide.

    Even thoughtful conservatives are rightly skeptical of most everything they are told. This increasingly knee-jerk antagonism not only leads some to seek the truth, but also others to reject honest information, such as the efficacy of vaccines.

    When you don’t know who to trust, you don’t know what to trust. As long as our leaders keep trying to subvert reality, this is the reality we are consigned to inhabit.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 22:30

  • The Road To Decarbonization: Visualizing The United States Electricity Mix
    The Road To Decarbonization: Visualizing The United States Electricity Mix

    The U.S. response to climate change and decarbonization is ramping up, and putting a focus on the country’s electricity mix.

    As pressure has increased for near-term and immediate action after the UN’s latest IPCC report on climate change, major economies are starting to make bolder pledges. For the United States, Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach notes that includes a carbon pollution-free utilities sector by 2035.

    But with 50 states and even more territories—each with different energy sources readily available and utilized—some parts of the U.S. are a lot closer to carbon-free electricity than others.

    How does each state’s electricity mix compare? This infographic from the National Public Utilities Council highlights the energy sources used for electricity in U.S. states during 2020, using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    The U.S. Electricity Generation Mix By State

    How does the United States generate electricity currently?

    Over the course of 2020, the U.S. generated 4,009 TWh of electricity, with the majority coming from fossil fuels. Natural gas (40.3%) was the biggest source of electricity for the country, accounting for more than nuclear (19.7%) and coal (17.3%) combined.

    Including nuclear energy, non-fossil fuels made up 41.9% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020. The biggest sources of renewable electricity in the U.S. were wind (8.4%) and hydro (7.3%).

    But on a state-by-state breakdown, we can see just how different the electricity mix is across the country (rounded to the nearest percentage).

    At a glance, regional availability of a fuel source and historical use is clear.

    For example, coal is the most-used electricity source in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Wyoming, historical coal rich regions and economies.

    On the flip side, the Pacific Northwest and New England generated the most hydroelectricity, and the biggest producers of wind energy were all located in the Great Plains. Even the biggest percentage producers of solar and geothermal energy, California and Nevada, have plenty of access to sunlight and geothermal activity.

    The Changing Electricity Landscape

    But for the U.S. to reach its ambitious carbon-free goal by 2035, the biggest impact will need to come from the biggest electricity producers.

    That title currently goes to Texas, which generated 12% of total U.S. electricity in 2020. Despite being the most populous state, California generated less than half Texas’ output, and less than both Florida and Pennsylvania.

    So although it’s positive that many states in the Pacific Northwest and New England have more plentiful non-fossil fuel electricity, their overall impact on the total U.S. picture is lessened.

    Still, more and more states (and countries) are increasing their efforts and ambitions to decarbonize, and that progress makes it easier and more affordable over time. States that might struggle to attain carbon-free electricity, or where costs are too high, face less hurdles as technology improves and subsidies increase.

    And with most major U.S. based utilities focusing on improving their ESG reporting and keeping up with decarbonization pledges of their own, the total electricity mix is expected to shift rapidly over the next decade.

    National Public Utilities Council is the go-to resource for all things decarbonization in the utilities industry. Learn more.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 22:00

  • US Military Court Rules Bump Stock Is Not A Machine Gun
    US Military Court Rules Bump Stock Is Not A Machine Gun

    Op-Ed via The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN). 

    There’s been big news for gun rights these past few days, with headlines focusing on President Biden officially pulling David Chipman’s nomination to serve as ATF director.

    With Chipman’s nomination removed, gun owners might have missed this story, absent from mainstream media, about military courts ruling bump stocks are not machine guns. 

    On Sept. 9, the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns in the case U.S. v. Ali Alkazahg. This is a big win for gun owners and reaffirms the fact that items that are not machine guns by legal definition cannot be classified as machine guns simply because the ATF “feels” like they meet the definition.

    Let’s take a peek at the case. Private Ali Akazahg was in Hawaii on the Marine Corps base in Kaneohe Bay. While there, he was convicted of possessing two machine guns in violation of the UCMJ or Uniform Code of Military Justice. Although, these “Machine Guns” were, in fact, bump stocks. Akazahg’s defense argued that bump stocks did not meet the legal definition of a machine gun.

    Here’s an excerpt from the decision:

    “Instead, the President directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives [ATF] to issue a new interpretation of a rule—that contradicted the ATF’s previous interpretation—governing legislation from the 1930s. This Executive-Branch change in statutory interpretation aimed to outlaw bump stocks prospectively, without a change in existing statutes.”

    The court is essentially laying out the fact that the ATF bypassed Congress to create law. They go on to explain that:

    “In 1986, Congress passed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act [FOPA], banning possession of machine guns not owned before 1986. FOPA also banned any parts, to include frames and receivers, which were part of a machine gun or were designed for converting a weapon into a machine gun. The current statute at issue is 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), which defines what a machine gun is. Due to having a bump stock, Appellant was charged under the statute which states that a machine gun is “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically, more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

    The court explains that the bump stock not only does not meet that definition, but similar situations have already been litigated in Civilian courts as well. They cite Gun Owners of America v. Garland, which took place in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In GOA v. Garland, the Sixth Circuit agreed that bump stocks did not meet the definition of a machine gun. Interestingly, they noted that the current classification of bump stocks as machine guns has relied upon Chevron deference. For those unfamiliar, it is a legal principle that compels federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute. 

    To sum up, the Judges declared that bump stocks are not machine guns. This adds to the growing list of bump stock court cases making their way to the Supreme Court, as the US Court of Military Appeals is like the Federal Court of Appeals, one step below the Supreme Court. 

    So now you might be asking yourself? “Why should I care about the bump stock?” Well put simply, the current legal precedent allows for ATF, and the anti-gun lobby to now take steps to ban all semi-automatic firearms. It is essential for those of us that care about our 2nd amendment rights to draw a line in the sand and say, “No More.” The goal of the anti-gun lobby and the Congressmen that line their pockets with their donations is the complete and total disarmament of the United States of America. The bump stock might just be the key to their goal. The complete and total repudiation of this ban is how we stop them.  

    * * * 

    … and if readers want to learn more about possible future gun policy via TMGN, they’ve laid out the “puzzle pieces” of how the ATF maybe David Chipman appointed as White House “Gun Czar” has plans to classify semi-automatic rifles, such as the AR-15, as “machine guns.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 21:30

  • KFC Bets On Vegan Nuggets Amid Nationwide Poultry Shortage
    KFC Bets On Vegan Nuggets Amid Nationwide Poultry Shortage

    Kentucky Fried Chicken is serving up a new vegan future for its fast-food chain amid poultry shortages and the continued disruption caused by the virus pandemic. 

    KFC’s president in the U.S., Kevin Hochman, has been preparing the Louisville-based fast-food restaurant chain, known for its “Finger-Lickin’ Good” chicken, for a future of plant-based meat. The company has been testing plant-based nuggets from Beyond Meat in select locations but has yet to take it nationwide. 

    The poultry shortage, which has disrupted chicken supply chains across the UK and US, could be why Hochman brings a faux option that replicates chicken to market faster than anticipated to alleviate supply woes. The shortage is so dire in the US that the company cannot promote its breaded chicken tenders on US television. 

    Bloomberg’s Leslie Patton said KFC is preparing for what looks like an inevitable future of fake chicken going mainstream. He sat down with the KFC executive to discuss more about faux nuggets. 

    “Our plan is to try to replicate that Kentucky Fried Chicken as close as we can, obviously without using the animal. A lot of that is about how the chicken cuts and tears and the mouth feel. The gold standard is the chicken tenderloin or chicken strip,” Hochman told Patton, adding that millennials are more receptive towards plant-based meat. 

    He continued: “We’re pretty bullish on that. We don’t think that plant-based is a fad, we think that’s something that’s going to continue to grow over time.” 

    However, vegan could be a tough sell for the fast-food chain. The C-suite employees at its Louisville headquarters are more rounded than anyone else in their target audience and shouldn’t deviate from the norm: Finger-Lickin’ Good” chicken. Trying to convince someone in middle America to eat fake meat versus the real thing could be a tricky sell. 

    In the meantime, fake chicken nuggets could be the solution for KFC to alleviate supply troubles. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 21:00

  • Escobar: 9/9 & 9/11, 20 Years Later
    Escobar: 9/9 & 9/11, 20 Years Later

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    We may never know the full contours of the whole riddle inside an enigma when it comes to 9/11 and related issues…

    Massoud leaving Bazarak in the Panjshir after our interview in August 2001, roughly three weeks before his assassination. Photo: Pepe Escobar

    It’s impossible not to start with the latest tremor in a series of stunning geopolitical earthquakes.

    Exactly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the Taliban will hold a ceremony in Kabul to celebrate their victory in that misguided Forever War.

    Four key exponents of Eurasia integration – China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan – as well as Turkey and Qatar, will be officially represented, witnessing the official return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. As blowbacks go, this one is nothing short of intergalactic.

    The plot thickens when we have Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid firmly stressing “there is no proof” Osama bin Laden was involved in 9/11. So “there was no justification for war, it was an excuse for war,” he claimed.

    Only a few days after 9/11, Osama bin Laden, never publicity-shy, released a statement to Al Jazeera: “I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons (…) I have been living in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders’ rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.”

    On September 28, Osama bin Laden was interviewed by the Urdu newspaper Karachi Ummat. I remember it well, as I was commuting non-stop between Islamabad and Peshawar, and my colleague Saleem Shahzad, in Karachi, called it to my attention.

    Saudi-born alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in a video taken ‘recently’ at a secret site in Afghanistan. This was aired by Al Jazeera on October 7, 2001, the day the US launched retaliatory bombing of terrorist camps, airbases and air defense installations in the first stage of its campaign against the Taliban regime for sheltering bin Laden. Photo: AFP / Al Jazeera screen grab

    This is an approximate translation by the CIA-linked Foreign Broadcast Information Service: 

    “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people.

    “I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it.

    “Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country or ideology could survive. Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year (…) They need an enemy.”

    This was the last time Osama bin Laden went public, substantially, about his alleged role in 9/11. Afterward, he vanished, and seemingly forever by early December 2001 in Tora Bora: I was there, and revisited the full context years later.

    And yet, like an Islamic James Bond, Osama kept performing the miracle of dying another day, over and over again, starting in – where else – Tora Bora in mid-December, as reported by the Pakistani Observer and then Fox News.

    So 9/11 remained a riddle inside an enigma. And what about 9/9, which might have been the prologue to 9/11?

    Arriving in the Panjshir valley in one of Massoud’s Soviet helicopters in August 2001. Photo: Pepe Escobar  

    A green light from a blind sheikh

    “The commander has been shot.”

    The terse email, on 9/9, offered no details. Contacting the Panjshir was impossible – sat-phone reception is spotty. Only the next day it was possible to establish Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary Lion of the Panjshir, had been assassinated – by two al-Qaeda jihadis posing as a camera crew.

    In our Asia Times interview with Massoud, by August 20, he had told me he was fighting a triad: al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani ISI. After the interview, he left in a Land Cruiser and then went by helicopter to Kwaja-Bahauddin, where he would finish the details of a counter-offensive against the Taliban.

    This was his second-to-last interview before the assassination and arguably the last images – shot by photographer Jason Florio and with my mini-DV camera – of Massoud alive.

    One year after the assassination, I was back in the Panjshir for an on-site investigation, relying only on local sources and confirmation on some details from Peshawar. The investigation is featured in the first part of my Asia Times e-book Forever Wars.

    The conclusion was that the green light for the fake camera crew to meet Massoud came via a letter sponsored by CIA crypto-asset warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf – as a “gift” to al-Qaeda.

    In December 2020, inestimable Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott, author among others of the seminal The Road to 9/11 (2007), and Aaron Good, editor at CovertAction magazine, published a remarkable investigation about the killing of Massoud, following a different trail and relying mostly on American sources.

    They established that arguably more than Sayyaf, the mastermind of the killing was notorious Egyptian blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, then serving a life sentence in a US federal prison for his involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

    Among other nuggets, Dale Scott and Good also confirmed what former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Naik had told Pakistani media already in 2001: the Americans had everything in place to attack Afghanistan way before 9/11.

    In Naik’s words: “We asked them [the American delegates], when do you think you will attack Afghanistan? … And they said, before the snow falls in Kabul. That means September, October, something like that.”

    As many of us established over the years after 9/11, everything was about the US imposing itself as the undisputed ruler of the New Great Game in Central Asia.

    Peter Dale Scott now notes, “the two US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were both grounded in pretexts that were doubtful to begin with and more discredited as years go by.

    “Underlying both wars was America’s perceived need to control the fossil fuel economic system that was the underpinning for the US petrodollar.”

    Deceased Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar in a file photo. Photo: Wikimedia

    Massoud versus Mullah Omar

    Mullah Omar did welcome Jihad Inc to Afghanistan in the late 1990s: not only the al-Qaeda Arabs but also Uzbeks, Chechens, Indonesians, Yemenis – some of them I met in Massoud’s riverside prison in the Panjshir in August 2001.

    The Taliban at the time did provide them with bases – and some encouraging rhetoric – but deeply ethnocentric as they were, never manifested any interest in global jihad, in the mold of the “Declaration of Jihad” issued by Osama in 1996.

    The official Taliban position was that jihad was their guests’ business, and that had nothing to do with the Taliban and Afghanistan. There were virtually no Afghans in Jihad Inc. Very few Afghans speak Arabic. They were not seduced by the spin on martyrdom and a paradise full of virgins: they preferred to be a ghazi – a living victor in a jihad.

    Mullah Omar could not possibly send Osama bin Laden packing because of Pashtunwali – the Pashtun code of honor – where the notion of hospitality is sacred. When 9/11 happened, Mullah Omar once again refused American threats as well as Pakistani pleas. He then called a tribal jirga of 300 top mullahs to ratify his position.

    Their verdict was quite nuanced: he had to protect his guest, of course, but a guest should not cause him problems. Thus Osama would have to leave, voluntarily.

    The Taliban also pursued a parallel track, asking the Americans for evidence of Osama’s culpability. None was provided. The decision to bomb and invade had already been taken.

    That would have never been possible with Massoud alive. A classic intellectual warrior, he was a certified Afghan nationalist and pop hero – because of his spectacular military feats in the anti-USSR jihad and his non-stop fight against the Taliban.

    Jihadis captured by Massoud’s forces in a riverside prison in the Panjshir in August 2001. Photo: Pepe Escobar  

    When the PDPA socialist government in Afghanistan collapsed three years after the end of the jihad, in 1992, Massoud could easily have become a prime minister or an absolute ruler in the old Turco-Persian style.

    But then he made a terrible mistake: afraid of an ethnic conflagration, he let the mujahideen gang based in Peshawar have too much power, and that led to the civil war of 1992-1995 – complete with the merciless bombing of Kabul by virtually every faction – that paved the way for the emergence of the “law and order” Taliban.

    So in the end he was a much more effective military commander than politician. An example is what happened in 1996, when the Taliban made their move to conquer Kabul, attacking from eastern Afghanistan.

    Massoud was caught completely unprepared, but he still managed to retreat to the Panjshir without a major battle and without losing his troops – quite a feat – while severely smashing the Taliban that went after him.

    He established a line of defense in the Shomali plain north of Kabul. That was the frontline I visited a few weeks before 9/11, on the way to Bagram, which was a – virtually empty and degraded – Northern Alliance airbase at the time.

    All of the above is a sorry contrast to the role of Masoud Jr, who’s in theory the leader of the “resistance” against Taliban 2.0 in the Panjshir, now completely smashed.

    Masoud Jr has zero experience either as a military commander or politician, and although praised in Paris by President Macron or publishing an op-ed in Western mainstream media, made the terrible mistake of being led by CIA asset Amrullah Saleh, who as the former head of the National Directory of Security (NDS), supervised the de facto Afghan death squads.

    Masoud Jr could have easily carved a role for himself in a Taliban 2.0 government. But he blew it, refusing serious negotiations with a delegation of 40 Islamic clerics sent to the Panjshir, and demanding at least 30% of posts in the government.

    In the end, Saleh fled by helicopter – he may be now in Tashkent – and Masoud Jr as it stands is holed up somewhere in the northern Panjshir.

    In this file photo taken on September 11, 2001, a hijacked commercial aircraft approaches the twin towers of the World Trade Center shortly before crashing into the landmark skyscraper in New York. Photo: AFP / Seth McAllister

    The 9/11 propaganda machine is about to reach fever pitch this Saturday – now profiting from the narrative twist of the “terrorist” Taliban back in power, something perfect to snuff out the utter humiliation of the Empire of Chaos.

    The Deep State is going no holds barred to protect the official narrative – which exhibits more holes than the dark side of the moon.

    This is a geopolitical Ouroboros for the ages. 9/11 used to be the foundation myth of the 21st century – but not anymore. It has been displaced by blowback: the imperial debacle allowing for the return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to the exact position it was 20 years ago.

    We may now know that the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We may now know that Osama bin Laden, in an Afghan cave, may not have been the master perpetrator of 9/11. We may now know that the assassination of Massoud was a prelude to 9/11, but in a twisted way: to facilitate a pre-planned invasion of Afghanistan.

    And yet, like with the assassination of JFK, we may never know the full contours of the whole riddle inside an enigma. As Fitzgerald immortalized, “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” probing like mad this philosophical and existential Ground Zero, never ceasing from asking the ultimate question: Cui Bono?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 20:30

  • Japan's First Fully Autonomous Container Ship Is About To Tackle A 236 Mile Trial Run
    Japan’s First Fully Autonomous Container Ship Is About To Tackle A 236 Mile Trial Run

    The world’s first autonomous cargo ship, based in Japan, is facing its first real test as it gets ready to take on a 236 mile journey. It’s the first step in a literal journey of a thousand miles that Japan hopes will result in half of all domestic ships eventually piloting themselves. 

    Japan’s Nippon Foundation, a public interest organization, is backing the effort in hopes of seeing crewless ships make up 50% of Japan’s local fleet by 2040, according to Bloomberg. 

    The first such trial run will belong to Nippon Yusen KK, who is setting up a container ship to pilot itself from Tokyo Bay to Ise in February 2022. The 236 mile trip will be the first of its kind by an autonomous ship in heavy marine traffic.

    The autonomous global shipping market could be worth as much as $166 billion by 2030, the report notes.

    Satoru Kuwahara, a general manager at Nippon Yusen subsidiary Japan Marine Science Inc. told Bloomberg: “When it comes to the automation of ships, our mission is to have Japan lead the rest of the world.”

    He continued, stating that he thinks there’s a “real need” for autonomy in shipping because the country’s workforce is shrinking and aging. 40% of the country’s crew are 55 years or older, the report notes.

    The Nippon Foundation believes $9 billion in savings can be realized by autonomous shipping and that it can eliminate many maritime accidents. “With the issue of Japan’s shrinking workforce in mind, there’s growing need for these technologies to uphold safety,” Kuwahara said.

    Data will be collected from February’s test run and the vessel will be controlled remotely, if necessary. 

    Kuwahara predicts “practical use” of the technology by as early as 2025. 

    He concluded: “We need this technology to be recognized, otherwise actual implementation in society won’t move forward. As a first demonstration, we can’t fail.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 20:00

  • Canadian Schools Hold Book-Burning Demonstration To Be A More "Inclusive Country"
    Canadian Schools Hold Book-Burning Demonstration To Be A More “Inclusive Country”

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We recently discussed how many on the left have discovered the allure of book burning, book banning, and blacklisting of authors.

    While expressing shock at ISIS and other extremist groups burning books, the practice appears acceptable based on the titles or content.

    Now educators in Ontario have held a “flame purification ceremony” for the local indigenous population by burning roughly 5,000 books.

    The notion of teachers burning books is almost as bizarre as the thought of book sellers embracing blacklisting but both are now part of the realities of our age of rage.These school officials actually videotaped the celebration of book burning for students at 30 schools with the announcement that:

    “We bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes in the hope that we will grow up in an inclusive country where all can live in prosperity and security.”

    The announcement even has a type of Maoist cultural revolution feel to it. In addition, Lyne Cosette, a spokeswoman for the public French-speaking Catholic schools of Ontario, told the National Post newspaper, “Symbolically, some books were used as fertilizer.” 

    The entire demonstration was a disgrace to educators everywhere. The lesson of book burning left with these children will likely be indelible and lasting. I have worried about the rise of a generation of censors but the Catholic schools of Ontario appear intent on raising a generation of book burners.

    What is truly chilling is the Orwellian call for children to burn books in order to be a more “inclusive country.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 19:30

  • Forget New Or Used, Even Wrecked Car Prices Are Hitting Record Highs
    Forget New Or Used, Even Wrecked Car Prices Are Hitting Record Highs

    Junked-car auctioneer Copart, Inc., or simply Copart, reported earnings this week and said given the stellar growth in new and used car prices this year, wrecked car prices are getting a lot more expensive. 

    On Thursday, Copart’s CEO Jeffrey Liaw told investors on an earnings call that strong used car prices are a driving force behind “the record average selling prices” for wrecked cars. 

    Copart specializes in auctioning wrecked cars that insurers have totaled. The vehicles go to auction and are frequently bought by companies who part out vehicles. 

    Selling prices for wrecked cars surged 20.7% in the most recent quarter versus the same period in 2020. That compares with a 48% jump in the three months ending in April and 35% in the quarter before that. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    During the question and answers part of the call with investors, the CEO told Jefferies’ Bret Jordan that insurers are totaling cars more quickly because technology has gotten so sophisticated that it might be too expensive to replace and recalibrate sensors in a minor fender bender. The rise in prices gives insurers a more significant economic incentive to total and let Copart auction it off than fixing. 

    “When it comes to the insurance vehicles, yes, more cars are drivable today because a car can be totaled because a rear sensor or front sensor or lane departure warning sensor on the mirror is knocked out and the replacement and calibration is expensive. That yes, there are more run and drive cars as a percentage of the total. 

    “If you visited some of our yards, you would be astonished by some of the high-value Range Rovers and European vehicles that you would see on the lots that at least on their surface look perfectly good and perfectly functional — and in many cases are,” Liaw said. 

    Another reason for soaring wrecked car prices is that supply-chain woes in the automotive industry have made it more challenging to find new parts, thus boosting demand for used parts. Also, higher metal prices have made wrecked cars more appealing to scrappers. 

    This is just more evidence that the Federal Reserve’s narrative of “transitory” inflation is a whole bunch of nonsense as rising prices rip through the automotive industry. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 19:00

  • Why Did The USA Hand Afghanistan To China?
    Why Did The USA Hand Afghanistan To China?

    Authored by Roger Simon via The Epoch Times,

    Paul Shinkman of U.S. News wrote the other day:

    “China is considering deploying military personnel and economic development officials to Bagram airfield, perhaps the single-most prominent symbol of the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

    “The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram, according to a source briefed on the study by Chinese military officials, who spoke to U.S. News on the condition of anonymity.”

    As Moon Unit Zappa used to say, “Gag me with a spoon!”

    Feasibility study? You don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out how that’s going to turn out, assuming it hasn’t been done already and this is just a masquerade.

    Why wouldn’t the Chinese take over Bagram? It’s sitting there.

    And no real estate could be more apt for their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road), essentially a large-scale bait-and-switch operation. The Chinese—in reality the Chinese Communist Party—lends the poor country—in this case the impoverished Taliban—money to modernize their infrastructure with the caveat that, if they don’t pay off the loan in a certain amount of time, guess who owns said infrastructure?

    Well, we know the answer to that. The Chinese are in essence buying the world with the help, note well, of some of the most prominent American firms (pdf) busy enriching themselves with more money than most of us can compute.

    (If you’re interested in how successful the BRI has been, here’s a helpful map from the Council of Foreign Relations.)

    What has occurred in recent days is that China has achieved something absolutely free for which the Soviets and the United States wasted decades of personnel (tragically dead or wounded), matériel and trillions of dollars, not to mention ended up by disgracing themselves in the eyes of the world.

    Effectively, the Chinese own Afghanistan, the important parts of it anyway—airbases, ports, mineral rights, and so forth—or will shortly.

    As for internal Taliban affairs, the Chinese communists aren’t about to lift a finger about the horrifying level of women’s rights or the extensive drug growing and dealing the terror group engages in, especially if they send as much of it as possible to America.

    As long as the various Islamic terror organizations leave the Chinese alone, the Chinese will let them do as they wish. Yes, some—al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, one we haven’t heard of yet—may make a fuss about the treatment of the Uyghurs and make their violent presence known, but I would imagine they ultimately see the Chinese forces as much more ruthless than the Americans (now especially) and this will be at best a temporary sideshow of little global importance. Realpolitik will be at play on both Chinese and Taliban (Islamic) sides as they benefit each other, at least for now.

    So how did we get here? If this is all so obvious—and it is—wasn’t our State Department and our military aware of how this would, or certainly could, turn out? (Wouldn’t they at least leave a small NATO force guarding Bagram and destroy our weaponry?)

    I imagine many of our officials were—how could they not be—aware of this eventuality. And that’s highly disturbing.

    Why then did the USA cede Afghanistan—a territory bounded by Iran and Pakistan, among other states, not to mention control of much of the world’s rare earths and other key resources—to the increasingly totalitarian China of Xi Jinping?

    For an answer, it’s hard not to think back to those days when, shortly before declaring for the presidency and reversing himself on the topic, our current president told us “The Chinese aren’t our enemies, folks.”

    Was he covering up for his own activities and connections that could have been recorded on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop, much of which is as yet unseen? Do the Chinese, in the crudest sense, have something on him? Unfortunately, considering the operations and governance of our FBI and Department of Justice, we may never know.

    We can, however, make our own surmises. But whatever they may be, they’re only a part of a more depressing overall zeitgeist.

    I have believed for some time—and our extraordinarily rapid and ill-conceived evacuation of Afghanistan, leaving behind not only Bagram but enough U.S. weaponry to make the Taliban’s army nearly equivalent to the Italian’s, not to mention putting our advanced military technology in the hands of the Chinese and the Russians, only underscores this—that a large percentage of our Democratic Party leadership as well as a tragically significant percentage of the Republican have long believed the Chinese regime are winning the battle between China and America for global hegemony. They are therefore, overtly or covertly, consciously or subconsciously, throwing in with the Chinese side for their own economic—and to a lesser extent survival, though the two interact—advantage.

    Our globalist-leaning corporations, like the giant law firm linked above, that deal extensively with China are similar. They’re going with what they think is the winning side.

    And globalism is not democracy. For the globalist, people voting has been irrelevant, even retrograde, for decades. It’s the one-party state gone world-wide.

    So, to be overly colloquial, “bugging out” on Afghanistan to them is no big deal. And China taking over, well, to them it’s just part of the game.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 18:30

  • Stagflation "Phase 1" Begins As Democrats Scramble To Pass Largest Fiscal Stimulus Of All Time
    Stagflation “Phase 1” Begins As Democrats Scramble To Pass Largest Fiscal Stimulus Of All Time

    For all the speculation about the upcoming taper, which we now know will start in November at a pace of $15bn per month and conclude by July…

    … the main event this fall, if not this year, may be on the fiscal side, and specifically what is the final shape of the upcoming bipartisan + Build Back Better stimulus avalanche, which as BofA’s Michael Hartnett calculates will represent – at roughly $1 trillion in biparstian “infrastructure” spending plus some $3.5 trillion in Build Back Better reconciliation – some $4.5 trillion in “epic fiscal stimulus”, which at 20% of GDP will be more than double the size of the previous record stimulus and will represent the largest fiscal stimulus package of all time.

    This stimulus, which will pass one way or another, would arrive at a time of 12% GDP growth (if plunging fast), 5% inflation, and 33% deficit.

    Furthermore, the final size of the reconciliation package is, in BofA’s view, the driver for yields next 3-6 weeks – anything above $2 trillion  = higher yields as stimulus shores up weakening US consumption & heightens inflation.

    But stimulus or not – and for the sake of the economy and democrats there better be one – the macro backdrop is turning uglier by the day. As Hartnett notes, his macro backdrop for the second half is one of higher inflation, hawkish central banks, weaker growth, i.e. stagflation. At the same time, the investment backdrop is one of rising Rates, Regulation, Redistribution (3Rs)…

    … and peak Positioning, Policy, Profits (3Ps).

    This means that all else equal, investment returns will be low/negative for both stocks and credit in the second half, while the optimal H2 portfolio is a “barbell” trade of long inflation (e.g. commodities, TIPS, small cap, banks, Japan) & long quality (e.g. cash & defensive utilities, staples, healthcare, REITs).

    And speaking of stagflation, Hartnett compares the current period to the three stagflationary phases of the-1960s/70s and concludes that “we are in phase 1 with phase 2 starting in 2022…”

    1. 1965-68…inflation & interest rates breakout to upside from multi-year ranges, stock market peaks, but “stagflation” neither visible nor anticipated…equities outperformed via a “barbell” of small cap value and Nifty 50 tech outperform;

    2. 1969-73…end of Bretton Woods & oil shock causes sharp rise in inflation ending Nifty-50 bull market & kick-starting volatility & commodity bulls;

    3. 1974-81…inflation & real assets outperform all asset classes.

    Needless to say, stagflation is hardly what your financial advisor ordered as equity and bond returns tend to be especially ugly during such periods. So will this time be any different? Alas, central banks already blew their load, and while the differential between monetary and fiscal policy remains, (with monetary policy driving absolute returns, while fiscal policy driving relative returns) what is coming is ugly on the absolute return side, since the pace of central bank bond purchases is decelerating from its record of $8.5tn in ’20 to just $2.3tn in ’21, and then to just barely positive $0.3tn in ’22 before turning negative.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 18:00

  • "A Decision They'll Regret" – Australia Regulator Bans Ivermectin Use As COVID-19 Treatment
    “A Decision They’ll Regret” – Australia Regulator Bans Ivermectin Use As COVID-19 Treatment

    Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

    Australia’s medicine and therapeutics regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has introduced new restrictions on the prescribing of ivermectin for COVID-19 and other off-label use.

    The TGA, an agency under Australia’s Department of Health, announced that the changes were introduced “because of concerns with the prescribing of oral ivermectin for the claimed prevention or treatment of COVID-19.”

    The new restrictions mean that general practitioners may only prescribe the drug for TGA-approved conditions and not for other non-approved purposes—also referred to as “off-label” use. No penalties were specified in the TGA announcement in the event of a GP skirting the rules.

    The Epoch Times has reached out to the TGA for further information.

    Only certain specialists can continue to prescribe oral ivermectin for off-label use. They include infectious disease physicians, dermatologists, gastroenterologists, and hepatologists, the TGA announced.

    Stromectol ivermectin 3mg is the only oral ivermectin product that is TGA-approved. The indications approved are river blindness, threadworm of the intestines, and scabies.

    Ivermectin is not TGA-approved for use to treat COVID-19 in Australia. The TGA said that its use for COVID-19 in the general public is “currently strongly discouraged” by three entities—the National COVID Clinical Evidence Taskforce (pdf), the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

    TGA Lays Out Concerns

    The TGA in its announcement asserted that there are “a number of significant public health risks associated with taking ivermectin in an attempt to prevent COVID-19 infection rather than getting vaccinated.”

    The agency added that people who think they are protected from COVID-19 by taking ivermectin “may choose not to get tested or to seek medical care if they experience symptoms,” and claimed that doing so “has the potential to spread the risk of COVID-19 infection throughout the community.”

    The TGA said that a second concern involves “unreliable social media posts and other sources” that have reportedly advocated for the use of ivermectin in “significantly higher” doses compared to what is approved and found safe for the treatment of scabies or parasites.

    “These higher doses can be associated with serious adverse effects, including severe nausea, vomiting, dizziness, neurological effects such as dizziness, seizures, and coma.”

    The regulator also said that there has been a three- to four-fold increase in the dispensing of ivermectin prescriptions in recent months, which has resulted in “national and local shortages for those who need the medicine for scabies and parasite infections.”

    “It is believed that this is due to recent prescribing and dispensing for unapproved uses, such as COVID-19,” its statement reads.

    “Such shortages can disproportionately impact vulnerable people, including those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.”

    Immediate Backlash by MPs

    Two Australian politicians immediately issued announcements late Sept. 10 criticizing the TGA restrictions.

    Federal MP George Christensen, a Liberal Party member from the state of Queensland, posted on Telegram a photo of his medications, writing, “My ivermectin treatment pack. Prescribed by a GP. Now the TGA has banned GPs from prescribing the drug off-label. It’s a decision they will regret.”

    Christensen also shared a lengthy list of studies, writing, “here’s some REAL INFO on IVERMECTIN.”

    Federal MP Craig Kelly, a former Liberal Party member and now leader of the United Australia Party, in a statement posted on Telegram called the TGA move “OUTRAGEOUS” and accused the agency of having “interfered with the sanctity of the Doctor patient relationship in Australia, by ignoring the evidence of over 50 published studies and also ignoring expert medical advice from doctors that have treated thousands of patients successfully with Ivermectin—by prohibiting doctors from prescribing this medicine to sick Australians.”

    “The UNITED AUSTRALIA PARTY tonight calls for [an] urgent Royal Commission in this TGA over this decision,” he wrote, saying that the decision “could be investigated for possible corruption.”

    “It’s a sad day for the nation, as the expert medical evidence from overseas indicates that this outrageous decision by the TGA will result in the death of Australians,” Kelly added.

    A health worker shows a box containing a bottle of Ivermectin in Cali, Colombia, on July 21, 2020. (Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

    On Ivermectin

    Ivermectin is a generic medicine that can be produced cheaply in many places around the world and has been widely used in humans against some parasitic worms, and to combat scabies, lice, as well as rosacea. It is also used as an anti-parisite drug in livestock, including horses and cows.

    William Campbell and Satoshi Omura in 2015 won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery and applications of ivermectin. The World Health Organization features ivermectin on its List of Essential Medicines. It is also an FDA-approved antiparasitic agent.

    Doctors and health care professionals have considered ivermectin as a repurposed medicine in tackling COVID-19, especially when used in early treatment. Many have praised ivermectin for having successfully helped thousands of their patients survive the initial waves of COVID-19.

    As of Sept. 9, there are at least 63 studies, of which 45 are peer-reviewed, on the treatment of COVID-19 with ivermectin.

    Two groups, the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group, have been campaigning for the off-label use of the drug to combat the disease amid the pandemic.

    Monash University, based in the Australian state of Victoria, announced in April 2020 that a study it led showed that “a single dose of the drug, Ivermectin, could stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus growing in cell culture.”

    But it cautioned that ivermectin “cannot be used in humans for COVID-19 until further testing and clinical trials have been completed to confirm the effectiveness of the drug at levels safe for human dosing.”

    “The potential use of Ivermectin to combat COVID-19 remains unproven, and depends on funding to progress the work into the next stages,” the university said at the time.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 17:30

  • Taliban Holds Flag Raising Ceremony On Same Day Americans Commemorate 9/11
    Taliban Holds Flag Raising Ceremony On Same Day Americans Commemorate 9/11

    On the day the US marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban sent its own ‘message’ by raising its large flag over the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul on Saturday.

    The Taliban’s cultural commission spokesman Ahmadullahh Muttaqi announced Saturday that the raising of the flag was part of a ceremony to mark the start of the new Taliban government over Afghanistan.

    Taliban raise flag on the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul, via WION

    “The Taliban’s new Prime Minister Mohammad Hasan Akhund raised the flag in a ceremony at 11 a.m. local time to mark the official start of work by the Taliban’s 33-member caretaker government,” The Associated Press reported of the event. 

    The group which the US fought in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks also painted their flag of jihad over the US Embassy in Kabul, which had been quickly abandoned in the days prior to the last US troops leaving Afghanistan on Aug.30.

    “Earlier, another Taliban official said the religious militia’s black and white flag was first raised at the palace on Friday,” AP continues. “The militant group has also painted their banner on the entry gate to the US Embassy building.”

    It was on Tuesday that the Taliban named and confirmed its caretaker government, complete with an Interior Minister who is still on the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ terrorism list. The Saturday ceremony officially inaugurates the government, but the symbolism of the timing couldn’t be clearer nor more ironic. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Islamic ‘shahada’ – or Muslim confession of faith – was earlier plastered in large script over the entrance to the US embassy in Kabul…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The formal raising of the black and white Taliban flag over Kabul’s government buildings took place simultaneous to the US holding somber memorial commemorations at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 went down after al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 17:00

  • NY Hospital Forced To Stop Delivering Babies After Maternity Workers Resign Over Vaccine
    NY Hospital Forced To Stop Delivering Babies After Maternity Workers Resign Over Vaccine

    A hospital in upstate New York has been forced to ‘pause’ the delivery of babies starting Sept. 24 after a flood of maternity workers resigned over Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

    Lewis County Health System CEO Gerald Cayer made the announcement in a Friday press conference, according to WWNY. According to Cayer, six employees in the maternity unit resigned and another seven are ‘undecided,’ rendering the hospital unable to safely deliver children.

    “If we can pause the service and now focus on recruiting nurses who are vaccinated, we will be able to reengage in delivering babies here in Lewis County,” said Cayer.

    Cayer said 165 hospital employees have yet to be vaccinated against COVID-19; that’s 27 percent of the workforce.

    The other 464 workers, or 73 percent of employees, have gotten their shots, he said.

    In August, the state announced all health care workers at hospitals and long-term care facilities across New York would be required to have gotten at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination by September 27.

    Cayer said the announcement prompted 30 workers to get vaccinated, while another 30 resigned. -WWNY

    New York isn’t the only state with healthcare workers who refuse to get vaxxed. Last month, a group of New Mexico healthcare workers protested vaccine mandates – which they say ‘take away people’s choice and informed consent,’ and ‘violate medical codes of ethics as well as fundamental human rights, the constitution, and the Nuremberg Code,’ according to KFOX14.

    Protests have also been held in California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Arizona, Washington and elsewhere.

    And judging by the overwhelming upvotes on YouTube, most people support them.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 16:30

  • While Biden Joins 'Drone Club' At 9/11 Ceremonies, Trump Hits Streets Of NY
    While Biden Joins ‘Drone Club’ At 9/11 Ceremonies, Trump Hits Streets Of NY

    While President Biden joined former presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton at 9/11 services held at the World Trade Center and Shanksville, Pennsylvania – a group which presided over the deaths of countless Middle Easterners over 20 years of undeclared “wars on terror” that benefited the US Homeland Security-Industrial Complex and a few others, former President Trump took to the streets of New York to shake hands with first responders.

    It was quite the juxtaposition to say the least – with former President Bush pushing the ‘domestic terrorism‘ and ‘angry America’ narrative during a speech in Shanksville (echoing Klaus Schwab), and images of Biden pulling down his mask to shout at someone…

    Vs. President Trump being greeted by working men and women in uniform who won’t go home to mansions after the ‘ceremonies’ are over.

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    More via Dan Scavino:

    We can’t imagine it would go as well for Biden and the other former presidents.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 16:00

  • NYT Confirms Biden Murdered Innocent Family In Kabul Drone Strike
    NYT Confirms Biden Murdered Innocent Family In Kabul Drone Strike

    President Joe Biden murdered an innocent family when the US military conducted a “righteous strike” on Aug. 29 against a vehicle that American officials thought was an ISIS bomb that posed an imminent threat to thousands of people at the Kabul airport.

    In a late Friday afternoon report, the New York Times reveals that “Military officials said they did not know the identity of the car’s driver when the drone fired, but deemed him suspicious because of how they interpreted his activities that day, saying that he possibly visited an ISIS safe house and, at one point, loaded what they thought could be explosives into the car.”

    In reality, they were filling water bottles.

    More via the New York Times: 

    Times reporting has identified the driver as Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group. The evidence, including extensive interviews with family members, co-workers and witnesses, suggests that his travels that day actually involved transporting colleagues to and from work. And an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.

    While the U.S. military said the drone strike might have killed three civilians, Times reporting shows that it killed 10, including seven children, in a dense residential block.

    Mr. Ahmadi, 43, had worked since 2006 as an electrical engineer for Nutrition and Education International, a California-based aid and lobbying group. The morning of the strike, Mr. Ahmadi’s boss called from the office at around 8:45 a.m., and asked him to pick up his laptop.

    Scroll down for a lengthy recap by one of the NYT journos

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    As we noted last week, NBC News spoke with members of the Ahmadi family who said they were hoping to make it onto an evacuation flight out of Kabul before the United States ended its withdrawal from the country.

    Ramal Ahmadi is supported by family members during a mass funeral in Kabul on Monday.Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    “They were 10 civilians,” said Emal Ahmadi, whose 2-year-old toddler, Malika was among those killed. “My daughter … she was 2 years old,” he said.

    Malika Ahmadi, 2, was among those killed in Sunday’s U.S. drone strike in Kabul, her father, Emal Ahmadi, told NBC News.Courtesy / Emal Ahmadi

    More via NBC News:

    That day, Ahmadi’s cousin, Zemari Ahmadi, 38, had just pulled up at home from work, with his 13-year-old son, Farzad, his youngest of three, racing to greet him. (Other reports have said Farzad was 12, but both Ahmadi and another relative told NBC News he was 13.)

    Farzad, who had just learned to drive, wanted to park his father’s car, a wish Zemari was happy to oblige as other family members gathered around.

    It was in that moment that Ahmadi said an explosion tore through the vehicle, killing Zemari, Farzad and eight other family members, as was first reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

    According to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, Washington is “not in a position” to dispute reports that the Sunday drone strike killed civilians, however he claimed that one of the family members belonged to radical Islamic group, ISIS-K.

    Malika and two other toddlers were the youngest family members killed, along with Ahmadi’s nephews Arwin, 7, and Benyamin, 6, and Zemari’s two other sons, Zamir, 20, and Faisal, 16, Ahmadi said.

    Zemari was a technical engineer for Nutrition and Education International, a nonprofit working to address malnutrition based in Pasadena, California.

    Just a day before his death, he had been helping to prepare and deliver soy-based meals to women and children at refugee camps in Kabul, Steven Kwon, president of NEI, told NBC News in an email.

    One colleague and friend of six years to Zemari said he was devastated, while also describing Ahmadi as a “good man with good ethics.”

    Residents and family members gather next to a damaged vehicle a day after the drone strike. Wakil Kohsar / AFP – Getty Images

    Also killed in Biden’s drone strike was Ahmad Naser – a former officer in the Afghan Army and contractor with the US military, according to his cousin. Naser was days away from his wedding when he was killed.

    Instead, there will be a funeral.

    “They were all buried,” said 31-year-old Yousef. “We’re all ruined. The family is gone.”

    A relative throws himself on Farzad’s casket.Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    According to an evidence-free statement by US Central Command, however, there “were substantial and powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of the vehicle,” suggesting that there was a “large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties.”

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    We now know that was utter bullshit.

    Times journalist Evan Hill recaps the entire event in the following Twitter thread:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 15:55

  • The Insecurity Of Social Security
    The Insecurity Of Social Security

    Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    The latest annual report from the Social Security Trustees showed the insecurity of social security.

    According to the July 2021 snapshot from the Social Security Administration, nearly 70-million people receive a monthly benefit check, of which 51.3 million are over the age of 65.

    Social Security provides the majority of income to most elderly Americans. The system provides at least 50 percent of incomes for about half of seniors. For roughly 1 in 4 seniors, it provides at least 90 percent of total incomes. But, that dependency ratio is directly tied to the financial insolvency of the vast majority of Americans. According to a CNBC report:

    “Morning Consult found that nearly 18% of adults with an annual income of $50,000 or less have no savings, while some 34% have enough to cover just three months of expenses. Another 11% would deplete savings within six months. Only 10% of that income group has more than a year’s worth of cash.

    Higher-income households are only somewhat better prepared, the survey found. Among those with annual incomes of $50,000 to $100,000, about 18% said they have between three months and six months of savings. About 25% said their cash would last less than three months, and 6% had set aside nothing at all. None of those questioned in that income group had more than a year’s worth of savings.”

    Such is a huge problem that will impact boomers in retirement.

    The Insecurity Of Social Security

    Given the financial insecurity of the bottom 90% of Americans, the dependency on social security is problematic. Here are some facts from the latest SSI report from CRFB:

    • Social Security is Only 13 Years from Insolvency. Social Security cannot guarantee full benefits to current retirees under current law. The Trustees project the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will deplete its reserves by 2033. The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund will be insolvent by 2057. The theoretical combined trust funds will exhaust their reserves by 2034. Upon insolvency, all beneficiaries will face a 22% benefit cut.

    Source: CRFB

    • Social Security will run cash deficits of $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Such is the equivalent of 2.3% of taxable payroll or 0.8% of (GDP). Social Security’s 75-year actuarial imbalance totals 3.54% of taxable payroll. That is 1.2% of GDP or nearly $21 trillion in present value terms.
    • Finances Are Deteriorating. Social Security’s finances worsened over the last year. Current projections show Insolvency occuring a year earlier, and the 75-year actuarial deficit is over 10 percent larger. The 75-year shortfall is nearly 85% larger than orginally estimated in 2010.

    The problem is evident. Given the large and growing dependency on social security, benefits will get cut for recipients if Congress fails to act. As noted by the Center Of Budget & Policy, social security for many retirees is the difference between living in poverty or not.

    Demographics Are Destiny

    One of the primary contributors to the insecurity of social security is demographics.

    In 1940, the life expectancy of a 65-year-old was just 14 years. Today it is over 20 years. By 2035, the number of Americans 65 and older will increase from approximately 56 million today to over 78 million.

    The problem for social security is that in 1940, nearly 16-workers paid into the program for each person receiving benefits. Currently, that ratio is just 2.8 workers for each Social Security beneficiary. By 2035, that ratio will decrease to 2.3 covered workers for each beneficiary.

    “Social Security will see negative cash flow of $147 billion this year. The deficits will keep adding up as the population ages as fewer workers pay into the system relative to the number of retirees collecting benefits.” – Reason

    Such increases in the number of retirees and lower birth rates decrease the relative number of workers. However, this decline in the “support ratio” is not just domestic, but global.

    “Recently released official U.S. birth data for 2020 showed births fell continuously for more than a decade. The ‘total fertility rate,’ is a measure constructed from the data to estimate the average total number of children born. That rate fell from 2.12 in 2007 to 1.64 in 2020. It is now well below 2.1, the value considered to be ‘replacement fertility,’ which is the rate needed for the population to replace itself without immigration.“

    However, the problem isn’t just the “replacement rate” of workers paying into the system. But also the structural change to the workforce itself.

    A Structural Employment Problem

    The structural shift in employment is due to technology and automation. Yet, it is an overarching problem most give little attention to.

    While the mainstream media focuses their attention on the daily distribution of economic data points, there is a hidden depression running along the country’s underbelly. While reported unemployment is heading back to historically lower levels, there is a swelling mass of uncounted individuals. These are individuals assumed to have either given up looking for work or are working multiple part-time jobs. 

    The chart strips out the argument of retiring baby boomers, who ironically, aren’t retiring. Such is not because they don’t want to retire, but because they can’t afford to.

    These higher levels of under and unemployment apply downward pressure on wages even as work hours increase. Real wage declines are evident as companies opt for increasing productivity, continued outsourcing, and streamlining employment to protect corporate profit margins. However, as the cost of living is affected by the rising food, energy, and health care prices without a compensatory increase in incomes, more families are forced to turn to assistance to survive.

    Without government largesse, many individuals would live on the street. The chart above shows all the government “welfare” programs and current levels to date. The black line represents the sum of the underlying sub-components. Thus, while unemployment insurance did taper off after its sharp rise post-pandemic, social security, Medicaid, Veterans’ benefits, and other social benefits continue to rise.

    Importantly, these social benefits are critical to the average person’s survival as they make up more than 25% of real disposable personal incomes.

    With 1/4 of incomes dependent on government transfers, it is not surprising the economy continues to struggle. Recycled tax dollars used for consumption purposes have virtually no impact on the overall economy.

    The Social Security Insecurity Endgame

    As stated above, the biggest problem for Social Security, and the U.S. in general, comes when Social Security begins paying out more in benefits than it receives in taxes. Then, as the cash surplus gets depleted, Social Security can not pay full benefits from its tax revenues alone.

    Already, welfare programs in the U.S. are consuming ever-growing amounts of general revenue dollars to meet obligations.As noted recently,mandatory spending already consumes more than 100% of Federal tax revenues.

    “In the fiscal year 2019, the Federal Government spent $4.4 trillion, amounting to 21 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of that $4.4 trillion, federal revenues financed only $3.5 trillion. The remaining $984 billion came from debt issuance. As the chart below shows, three major areas of spending make up most of the budget.”

    Think about that for a minute. In 2019, 75% of all expenditures went to social welfare and interest on the debt. Those payments required $3.3 Trillion of the $3.5 Trillion (or 95%) of the total revenue collected. Given the decline in economic activity during 2020, those numbers become markedly worse. For the first time in U.S. history, the Federal Government will have to issue debt to cover the mandatory spending.“

    Eventually, either the benefits will get slashed, or the rest of the government will have to shrink to accommodate the “welfare state.” It is improbable the latter will happen.

    Conclusion

    Demographic trends are reasonably easy to forecast and predict. Each year from now until 2035, we will see successive rounds of boomers reach the 62-year-old threshold. Two problems are resulting from these consecutive crops of boomers heading into retirement.

    The first is that each boomer has not produced enough children to replace themselves, which leads to a decline in the number of taxpaying workers. It takes about 25 years to grow a new taxpayer. We can estimate, with surprising accuracy, how many people born in a particular year will retire. The retirees of 2070 were born in 2003, and we can see and count them today.

    The second problem is the employment problem. The decline in economic prosperity is the result of four decades of misguided policy:

    • Increases in non-productive debt and deficits,

    • Reduction in savings,

    • Declining income growth due to productivity increases; and,

    • The shift from a manufacturing to service based society that generates lower levels of taxable incomes in the future.

    “The more time that passes, the heavier the lift will be. According to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for low deficits and sustainable entitlement programs, delaying action until insolvency hits in 2034 will make the needed tax increases or benefit reductions about 25 percent larger than if Congress acted today. In either case, the changes will be seriously disruptive to Americans’ retirement plans and financial security.” – Reason

    The entire social support framework faces an inevitable conclusion where no wishful thinking will change that outcome. The question is whether our elected leaders will start making the changes necessary sooner, while they can get done by choice or later when forced upon us.

     Post Views: 296

    2021/09/10

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 15:30

  • NYC Using $5.9 Billion In Federal Relief Funds To Pay Artists $5,000, Give Cash To Cab Drivers And Encourage Outdoor Dining
    NYC Using $5.9 Billion In Federal Relief Funds To Pay Artists $5,000, Give Cash To Cab Drivers And Encourage Outdoor Dining

    Instead of just reopening, NYC seems hell bent on keeping its workers and businesses on the Covid-stimulus government dole. The city is distributing a portion of its $5.9 billion in federal aid to cab drivers, artists and restaurants.

    The city is one of the first to distribute aid from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, according to Bloomberg. Last week the city published a more than 70 page report laying out its plans for the funds.

    Those plans include $2.27 billion for the city to replace lost revenue after the city shut down.

    The report read: “New York City’s Recovery for All plan prioritizes vaccinating against COVID-19 to jump-start the recovery, using the City government to fight inequality, building a fairer economy, helping children recover emotionally and academically from the impact of the pandemic, strengthening community-based solutions to public safety, and fighting the climate crisis.”

    $1.45 billion in funds will expand the state’s healthcare system, which will make Covid vaccines more available and will expand testing sites.

    Another portion of the cash will go to 1,800 grants of $5,000 each for artists and taxi medallion owners. It’s also going toward a program that will encourage outdoor dining, that starts in 2023. 

    $1.51 billion will be used to “support small businesses”, according to the report. We wonder if Bill de Blasio ever thought about supporting small businesses by actually allowing them to fully re-open, or if his plans are simply to paper over the entire NYC economy with printed paper.

    Finally, the city put aside $52.5 million for its tourism industry, which makes up 376,800 jobs and suffered from a 67% decline in visitors to the state in 2020. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 09/11/2021 – 15:00

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