Today’s News 14th November 2021

• Smith: Leftists Support Tyranny, Conservatives Do Not; It's Time To Separate
  Smith: Leftists Support Tyranny, Conservatives Do Not; It’s Time To Separate

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  One of the great semantic debates of the past decade has been the ongoing attempt to muddle the definition of “Left vs Right” in the American political sphere. For example, a lot of people who are new to the liberty movement (people who became active during or after the Trump campaign in 2016) have heard of the “false left/right paradigm”, but they have no clue what it actually means. If you think it means there are no legitimate political sides in this fight and that the entire conflict is theatrical or manipulated, then you are misinformed.

  

  The false left/right paradigm specifically refers to the fake division at the VERY TOP of the political pyramid among elitists in government. There are certainly Republicans that are conservative in their rhetoric but not conservative in their actions or policies, and they tend to support or side with politicians on the left regularly when it comes to big government spending and big government power (just look to the Republicans that voted in favor of Joe Biden’s recent infrastructure bill).

  Democrats and leftists don’t have to pretend. They base their entire platform on collectivism and centralization. This is no secret. The only theater is in their motives. Top Democrats claim they are fighting for the “greater good” of the masses when they are actually elevating and benefiting a tiny minority of wealthy elites. They do not care at all about the lives of their constituents.

  Things change dramatically when we start talking about the bottom of the pyramid among regular people. The political spectrum is not as broad and nuanced as some people would have us believe and the sides are much easier to discern. There are exceptions to every rule and to every group, but to say the groups do not exist is an act of denial.

  There are also people who call themselves “moderates” because they think this makes them more impartial and more open-minded. They don’t want to appear as if they are moving to one “extreme” end of the spectrum or the other. But, ultimately, there are only two sides in this fight: Either you are in favor of intensive government dominance of people’s lives, or you are not. And, the vast majority of people in favor of government tyranny herald from the left side of the political spectrum. They revel in the totalitarianism, even when they don’t necessarily benefit from it.

  Yes, it’s time to stop pretending as if there is a “gray area” here and call the situation as it really is. The political left is obsessed with control over how people live, act and even how they think. Issues like Critical Race Theory, BLM, big tech censorship, the covid lockdowns and vax mandates have really clarified things to the point that if you can’t see the enormous difference between leftists and conservatives then you are being willfully ignorant.

  In my latest articles I have been exploring the theme of the political left and their habit of wearing masks to hide their true natures. Many of them will support socialist, collectivist and globalist policies while also claiming they support freedom at the same time. Yet, when they are actually faced with real world decisions in terms of unilateral authoritarianism, the true character of the average leftist is revealed and it’s an ugly thing to behold.

  Lets just use the covid and vaccines mandates as one litmus test for a moment – Poll after poll after poll indicates that an overwhelming number of Democrats (around 80%) applaud the mandates and continue to defend them even after almost 2 years of failures and a lack of scientific honesty. For these people the covid controls are purely political and they often argue in their favor as a vehicle to attack conservatives rather than “saving lives”. The fact is, without their enthusiastic support the draconian mandates would not exist in the US.

  Now, some people will point out that polls also show that around a quarter of Republicans support some form of vax mandates, but here’s the difference: Republicans and conservatives are actually willing to engage in honest debate over the scientific and social merits of the mandates. The vast majority of Democrats and leftists are absolutely not interested. They view any opposition as an act of treason, and any debate as thought crime committed by “cranks” and “conspiracy theorists”.

  This is a rather convenient tactic to take because leftists will never actually have to defend their own assumptions and beliefs in a public forum on fair ground; they can simply say that all evidence that is being presented is “meaningless” because it is being presented by treasonous enemies. Everything they do no matter how destructive or oppressive is thus justified by the assertion that conservatives represent an insurgency against “democracy” rather than honest Americans with honest concerns.

  It should also be noted that the minimal republican support for the mandates has been steadily dropping as new information is released which contradicts the mainstream narrative on vaccine effectiveness, and as Joe Biden continues to use the vaccines as a means to gain power over private businesses. Yet, support among democrats is as high as ever.

  In the past few years I have seen leftists en masse defend the indoctrination of American children with CRT, which teaches white kids that they are all inherently evil oppressors and black and brown kids that they are all perpetual victims that cannot help themselves. When they get called out, leftists then claim that CRT “doesn’t exist” or does not represent what conservatives say it represents. All you have to do is read their own books to see that this is a lie.

  If you are willing to slog through the insanity of the book ‘Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement’, you will see that everything conservatives warn about when it comes to CRT is true. It is edited by Kimberle Crenshaw, widely viewed as a co-founder of critical race theory and “intersectionality.” It is also a book that you will find used as a teaching aid in most social science classes in most colleges.

  I have seen leftists support BLM riots and the destruction of private property across the nation while calling them “peaceful protests”. I have also seen BLM take hundreds of millions of dollars from the very corporations and globalist institutions they claim they hate.

  I have seen leftists defend Big Tech censorship of any person or group that disagrees with the woke narrative, to the point that conservatives now have to constantly self-edit key words and phrases just so algorithms do not automatically derail their accounts, and so that leftists cannot false flag their commentaries as “hate speech” or “medical misinformation.”

  I have seen leftists avidly support covid lockdowns and the arbitrary destruction of hundreds of thousands of businesses as “non-essential”. I have seen them aggressively defend mask mandates despite the fact that red states which removed mask mandates had the same infection rates or even lower rates. Now I am witnessing their fevered joy as they help push forced experimental vaccination through federal and state mandates, using the threat of joblessness to intimidate those who do not comply.

  In the meantime, we have seen conservatives become the overwhelming majority of people in direct opposition to all of these totalitarian activities. And still today I continue to see people try to argue that there are no sides, and that conservatives are “just as bad” as leftists. These people either do not understand what a conservative is, or they are deliberately misrepresenting reality because they have an agenda.

  The bottom line is that proof is seen in action: Red states are free, blue states are enslaved. There’s no way around that.

  The debate is over, at least in terms of left vs. right. The differences are stark and painfully obvious. Places with majority conservative populations are still fighting the mandates while places with a majority of leftists are perpetuating tyranny. It cannot be denied. It cannot be argued. This is reality. In this day and age if you want to be free you make sure you are surrounded by conservatives, or you become a conservative.

  There is not a single blue state in the country that is not on the war path to enforce Biden’s vax mandates. There is not a single blue city in the country that is not trying to subversively teach CRT in schools. And, there is not a single blue region in the country that is not obsessed with wokism and globalism. The truth is, America has split into two completely different cultures with two completely different social objectives.

  To be sure, there are some nuances in terms of geography. Blue states, for example, are often checkered with red counties that do not like the policies of the state government, but this does not change the reality of the overall political divide. I have also noted that most Europeans and people in the UK and Australia have no concept at all of what a conservative actually is. They think a conservative is a corporatist. They have been indoctrinated by their predominantly socialist and leftist systems to treat “conservative” as a four letter word. The people in these nations that oppose the leftist agenda will commonly refer to themselves as “traditional liberals”, but really, they are just conservatives that are afraid to call themselves conservatives.

  I am speaking specifically on the American dynamic, however, and in this country the two sides are sharply defined.

  I think that there is also a subsection of the population that does not want to admit a separation of the US is in progress even though it is a fact. They want to believe the false left/right paradigm applies to the regular population because they don’t want to accept the inevitability of the breakup of our country. They want to believe that if we just deal with the elites at the top of the pyramid that the division at the bottom will simply disappear. This is naive.

  There are principles and ideals which are mutually exclusive; they cannot exist within the same society at the same time. There are moments in history when tribes form and cults rise, and generally these groups grow from either a desire to control others or a desire to remain free. We are living in such times.

  The political left, according to every metric and statistic, is an antithesis to conservative principles of small government, decentralization, personal liberty, free markets, family values, etc. This does not mean all conservatives agree on every aspect of society. We don’t all share the same religious fervor, or adherence to the same denomination. We don’t all have the same ideas on what constitutes “merit”, and the things we value in terms of character traits and life choices vary. We definitely don’t all agree on solutions to the problems and enemies we face everyday, which is why organizing resistance to the mandates has taken so much time and energy. That said, we ALL agree that the leftist agenda is poison and that it is not something we can continue to live with.

  I have heard it argued that if the US is broken into two parts that this will weaken us to threats from the outside. Many conservatives don’t like to accept notions of secession or the left/right paradigm because they fear foreign aggression from places like China, for instance. I would point out that this thinking lacks a sense of priority. We have to deal with the leftists/socialists/communists in our own house first before we can deal with communist on the other side of the world.

  Keeping this defunct marriage between leftist culture and conservative culture going just for the sake of appearances is the most destructive policy we can have in the long run. My thinking is this: If we break up there are two possible results – We go our own separate ways peacefully and the conservative states will continue to succeed economically and socially because we will have freedom, while leftist states will continue to sink into debt and will continue to bleed citizens due to oppression. Or, we separate and the leftists try to stop us using force, and we go to war. And make no mistake, they will ultimately lose such a war.

  The latter is not the most pleasant option but in either case freedom remains in the world. It is time to stop treating separation and division as integrally bad. Sometimes it is healthy and necessary. The old phrase “divide and conquer” is a misnomer for our particular situation. Often, nations and cultures are conquered from within because they refuse to separate from the riff-raff and define their moral boundaries. The right to divide is actually one of the most powerful forms of liberty there is, and it is one of the greatest protections against the leftist authoritarian movements in our midst.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 23:30

• From Amazon To Zoom: What Happens In An Internet Minute In 2021
  From Amazon To Zoom: What Happens In An Internet Minute In 2021

  In our everyday lives, not much may happen in a minute. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali details below, when gauging the depth of internet activity occurring all at once, it can be extraordinary. Today, around five billion internet users exist across the globe.

  This annual infographic from Domo captures just how much activity is going on in any given minute, and the amount of data being generated by users. To put it mildly, there’s a lot.

  

  The Internet Minute

  At the heart of the world’s digital activity are the everyday services and applications that have become staples in our lives. Collectively, these produce unimaginable quantities of user activity and associated data.

  Here are just some of the key figures of what happens in a minute:

  • Amazon customers spend $283,000

  • 12 million people send an iMessage

  • 6 million people shop online

  • Instacart users spend $67,000

  • Slack users send 148,000 messages

  • Microsoft Teams connects 100,000 users

  • YouTube users stream 694,000 videos

  • Facebook Live receives 44 million views

  • Instagram users share 65,000 photos

  • Tiktok users watch 167 million videos

  As these facts show, Big Tech companies have quite the influence over our lives. That influence is becoming difficult to ignore, and draws increasing media and political attention. And some see this attention as a plausible explanation for why Facebook changed their name—to dissociate from their old one in the process.

  One tangible measure of this influence is the massive amount of revenue Big Tech companies bring in. To get a better sense of this, we can look at Big Tech’s revenue generating capabilities on a per-minute basis as well:

  

   

  Much of the revenue that these elite trillion-dollar stocks generate can be traced back to all the activity on their various networks and platforms.

  In other words, the 5.7 million Google searches that occur every minute is the key to their $433,014 in per minute sales.

  The Internet Minute Over The Years

  With the amount of data and information in the digital universe effectively doubling every two years, it’s fair to say the internet minute has gone through some changes over the years. Here are just some areas that have experienced impressive growth:

  • In 2016, Snapchat users 527k photos per minute, compared to 2 million in 2021

  • In 2017, Twitter saw 452k Tweets per minute, compared to 575k in 2021

  • In 2018, $862,823 was spent online shopping, while 2 million people were shopping per minute in 2021

  • In 2019, 4.5 million videos on YouTube were being viewed every minute, while in 2021 users were streaming 694k hours

  • In 2020, Netflix users streamed 404k hours per minute, growing to 452k hours in 2021

  Here’s a look at the services that have been featured in the various iterations of this graphic over the years:

  

  Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube are the only three brands to be featured every single year.

  Internet Growth Perspectives

  The Internet Minute wheel also helps to put the internet’s rapid rate of adoption into perspective. For instance, in 1993, there were only 14 million internet users across the globe. But today, there are over 14 million just in Chile.

  That said, the total addressable market still has some room left. By some measures, the complete number of internet users grew by 500 million in 2021, a roughly 11% jump from 4.5 billion users in 2020. This comes out to an astonishing 950 new users on a per minute basis.

  What’s more, in the long term, with the appropriate infrastructure in place, certain areas within emerging markets can experience buoyant growth in the number of connected citizens. Here’s where the next billion internet users may come from, based on the largest disconnected populations.

  

   

  With this growth trajectory in mind, we can expect future figures to become even more astonishing. But the human mind is known to be bad at interpreting large numbers, so in future editions, the internet minute figures may need to be stripped down to the internet second.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 23:00

• Jan. 6 Defendants Taken Out Of Cells On Stretchers: Court Filing
  Jan. 6 Defendants Taken Out Of Cells On Stretchers: Court Filing

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Multiple Jan. 6 defendants were taken out of their cells on stretchers on Thursday, according to a court filing.

  

  The situation started when one of the defendants refused to wear a mask, family members of Kelly Meggs, who is being held in the D.C. Jail, told Meggs lawyer.

  Prison guards began spraying a chemical substance described as “some kind of mace or pepper spray, according to a filing in federal court.

  “They sprayed mace or some type of gas at an inmate and kept missing so it went into an intake that fed into other cells and the lady with the key left because she didn’t like the gas, so the inmates in the cells who were being fed the gas from that intake were locked in for like 15 minutes while it was going into their rooms and they couldn’t see/breathe,” the family told Jonathon Moseley, the lawyer.

  More than one of the defendants was taken out on stretchers to medical bays.

  Julie Kelly, a writer for the American Greatness, reported on Wednesday that prison guards filled an area of the jail with chemical spray and three detainees had to be taken out on stretchers.

  Moseley and the D.C. Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.

  The lawyer said his client was not in one of the cells that the gas was cycled into by the ventilation system. He urged the court to explore with the Bureau of Prisons and Congress whether any federal funds are already or can be allocated to repair and upgrade the D.C. Jail facilities.

  Neither prosecutors nor the judge has yet responded to the filing.

  The jail has been under heightened scrutiny in recent months due to its holding of dozens of people accused of participating in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

  One defendant, Christopher Worrell, was released from pretrial custody last week because U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth became troubled by the lack of proper medical care he received from the jail.

  The U.S. Marshals Service showed up unannounced at the facilities in mid-October. Officials deemed the part holding Jan. 6 detainees suitable but found conditions in another part that “do not meet the minimum standards of confinement,” the agency said in a recent statement.

  Lamont Ruffin, the acting U.S. Marshal for Washington, told Quincy Booth, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections, in a letter that he personally went to the jail and saw “evidence of systemic failures.”

  Prison guards routinely shut off water to cells as punishment and multiple cells had “large amounts of standing human sewage (urine and feces) in the toilets,” inspectors found. Additionally, guards were observed antagonizing detainees and hot meals were observed being served “cold and congealed.”

  Jail officials were ordered to transfer around 400 detainees, or 36 percent of the inmates in the Central Treatment Facility, one of the facilities that makes up the D.C. Jail, to a prison in another state.

  Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), after months of attempts, were able to tour the facilities last week. Greene said she witnessed terrible conditions, including Jan. 6 detainees receiving “very poor food” and “virtually no medical care.”

  “I want to be very clear that we will deal with those deficiencies so that we have a safe jail until such time that the District is able to build a new one,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat who helped the members secure access, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  Avis Buchanan, director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, said in a statement it has called out the treatment of detainees at the D.C. Jail for years.

  “The inhumane conditions have included long-term solitary confinement for people with no disciplinary issues, lack of running water, full illumination of cells for 24-hours per day resulting in sleep deprivation, cells soiled with feces and blood, lack of air conditioning during the summer, and heat during the winter, lack of proper medical care, failure to provide mental health treatment, and physical and mental abuse by correctional officers of people in their custody,” Buchanan said.

  Councilman Charles Allen, the Democrat chairman of the D.C. City Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, described the situation as “a crisis” during a remote hearing this week.

  “I do not use that term lightly. The District of Columbia has a moral and constitutional duty to provide humane and dignified conditions of confinement and to do so immediately. And that’s not happening here,” he added.

  D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, a Democrat, acknowledged during the hearing that concerns about the conditions in the jail “received little attention until they were raised, of course, by mostly white defendants accused of perpetrating the Jan. 6” breach, adding, “That’s not because people weren’t complaining.”

  Chris Geldart, a deputy mayor, told councilmembers that there are “systemic issues” at the jail and the issues raised by U.S. Marshals were being addressed, but also claimed that the problems were “not so pervasive that [the jail] has become uninhabitable.”

  Geldart also confirmed that Marshals were blocked from re-entering the facilities about a week after the inspection, pinning the decision on the warden.

  The D.C. Department of Corrections and the U.S. Marshals Service on Nov. 10 entered into a memorandum of understanding that outlines plans to improve conditions at the jail. Each party is forbidden from issuing press releases or speaking to the media about the agreement without consent from the other party.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 22:30

• "Revolution In Warfare" – Israel Unveils New Scorpius Electronic Warfare System
  “Revolution In Warfare” – Israel Unveils New Scorpius Electronic Warfare System

  Israel has recognized that the modern battlefield will not be entirely fought on air, sea, and space. To better prepare for new domains of warfare, Israel has developed a revolutionary weapon for electromagnetic warfare. 

  Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the country’s top aerospace and aviation manufacturer, has developed the Scorpius family of systems that scans a sphere of the operating environment for targets and deploys a narrowly focused beam to interfere with multiple threats across the electromagnetic spectrum. The high-tech weapon is categorized under “soft protection” because it doesn’t cause physical harm. Instead, it disrupts the operation of electromagnetic systems, such as radar, electronic sensors, navigation, and data communications.

  

  Gideon Fustick, Marketing VP EW Group at IAI, told Forbes, “We call it [Scorpius family of systems] ‘soft protection.’ It’s an offensive weapon that doesn’t send out missiles. It’s not a hard-kill system,” adding that “it is very effective in engaging and disabling enemy systems.” 

  Fustick describes the new weapon as having a tremendous advantage over legacy electromagnetic warfare weapons because it can shoot targeted beams without interfering with unintended targets. He called this a “revolution in warfare.”

  “The enemy is trying to use the electromagnetic domain for all these activities,” he said. “We are also trying to use them. And we’re each trying to deny the other side from the use of the electromagnetic domain.” Planes, drones, missiles, and other weapons of war operate using electromagnetic magnetic sensors to navigate and communicate – by denying the enemy access to the electromagnetic domain. It can severely impair their warfare capability.

  “It’s the first system that can really detect anything in the sky and address multiple targets in different directions and different frequencies simultaneously,” Fustick added, noting that previous electronic warfare technology was not able to engage multiple targets at once. 

  

  Fustick said the Scorpius has already been exported to “several prominent customers” as the race to dominate the electromagnetic warfare domain heats up. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 22:00

• Taibbi: As America Braces For The Rittenhouse-Verdict Unrest, Profits Soar
  Taibbi: As America Braces For The Rittenhouse-Verdict Unrest, Profits Soar

  By Matt Taibbi, published via SubStack

  The Mayhem Watch is on. Closing arguments in the trial of “Kenosha Shooter” Kyle Rittenhouse are expected Monday, and after weeks of hype, the country is primed to explode again. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers announced 500 National Guard troops will be on hand for potential post-verdict “unrest,” which seems almost guaranteed, no matter the result.

  As with all major news stories lately, the Rittenhouse case saw idiosyncrasies wash away as coverage accumulated, with pundits pounding the trial into yet another generalized referendum on American culture war. Prestige media made Rittenhouse a stand-in for the Proud Boys, January 6th, school board protests, anti-mask protests, QAnon, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, “Domestic Terrorism,” fascism, school shooters, and every other naughty thing, with everyone from then-candidate Joe Biden to The Intercept blithely declaring him a white supremacist. The efforts to cast Rittenhouse as a symbol of racism and white rage have been awesome in quantity and transparently, intentionally provoking, with even leading papers like the New York Times standardizing a practice of underscoring Rittenhouse’s race (“white teenager”) while leaving the identities of those shot out of coverage. Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his old outlet, The Intercept, noted Rittenhouse’s race 20 times in one piece while keeping schtum about the color of those shot. This has gone on for so long, we’ve seen a foreign newspaper misreport that the two people killed in the case were black. In the public consciousness, they might as well have been.

  Because Rittenhouse from the day of the shooting was made a symbol of Fox-watching, Trump-loving conservatives, he was also quickly adopted in red media as a hero, which “he surely wasn’t,” as Andrew Sullivan put it. This turbo-charged the freakout even more, as Rittenhouse’s defenders turned his case into a referendum on everything from media coverage of last summer’s protests of Black Lives Matter to the performance (or non-performance, as it were) of police during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake demonstrations, to a dozen other things that made public passions rise in the last year.

  Rittenhouse in other words became a symbol of so many things to so many people that the specifics of his legal case have ceased to be relevant. There seems to be no such thing as an editorialist who has negative feelings about, say, Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys, yet also believes that incident can’t be evidence since it happened after the shooting. Everyone picks a side and stays there. Pundits are telling us that any opinion on how the jury should rule can only be understood as a reflection of racial attitudes. “If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse, you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” is how Tweeter-with-beard and sometimes-journalist David Leavitt puts it.

  Meanwhile:

  On the day the Rittenhouse trial began, the financial data firm FactSet released an eyebrow-raising report about the Covid-19 economy.

  The firm noted that companies in the S&P 500 were set to post a net 12.9% profit in the third quarter of 2021. They pointed out this was the second-highest result since the firm began tracking the number in 2008.

  The only better result? The previous quarter, i.e. Q2 2021, when net profits sat at 13.1% overall. These results track with the true great story of the pandemic era, which not-so-mysteriously hasn’t made the news much, while Americans have been tearing each other’s faces off over issues like race and vaccination policy: the massive widening of our already-obscene wealth gap.

  Remember last year’s long summer of riots, that period that saw the whole world arguing over the definition of “mostly peaceful,” and saw Rittenhouse go charging into the streets of Kenosha? During that long stretch of unrest, corporate America, which had been headed for a depression in March of 2020, was soaring above the fray on an apparently endless, and endlessly escalating, ride to record profits. Take a look at this graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and focus on the Jeff-Bezos-rocket-like ascent beginning in the second quarter of 2020:

  

  Corporate profits in the second quarter of 2020 sat at $1.58 trillion. One year later, that number was $2.69 trillion, a roughly 71% increase. How many stories have you read in the last year telling you about how well the top end of the income distribution has been doing, while the rest of the country seemed to be falling apart?

  Compared with how often you heard pundits rage about the “insurrection,” how regularly did you hear that billionaire wealth has risen 70% or $2.1 trillion since the pandemic began? How much did you hear about last year’s accelerated payments to defense contractors, who immediately poured the “rescue” cash into a buyback orgy, or about the record underwriting revenues for banks in 2020, or the “embarrassment of profits” for health carriers in the same year, or the huge rises in revenue for pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, all during a period of massive net job losses? The economic news at the top hasn’t just been good, it’s been record-setting good, during a time of severe cultural crisis.

  Twenty or thirty years ago, the Big Lie was usually a patriotic fairy tale designed to cast America in a glow of beneficence. Nurtured in think-tanks, stumped by politicians, and amplified by Hollywood producers and media talking heads, these whoppers were everywhere: America would have won in Vietnam if not for the media, poverty didn’t exist (or at least, wasn’t shown on television), only the Soviets cuddled with dictators or toppled legitimate governments, etc. The concept wasn’t hard to understand: leaders were promoting unifying myths to keep the population satiated, dumb, and focused on their primary roles as workers and shoppers.

  In the Trump era, all this has been turned upside down. There’s actually more depraved, dishonest propaganda than before, but the new legends are explicitly anti-unifying and anti-patriotic. The people who run this country seem less invested than ever in maintaining anything like social cohesion, maybe because they mostly live in wealth archipelagoes that might as well be separate nations (if they even live in America at all).

  All sense of noblesse oblige is gone. The logic of our kleptocratic economy has gone beyond even the “Greed is Good” mantra of the fictional Gordon Gekko, who preached that pure self-interest would make America more efficient, better-run, less corrupt. Even on Wall Street, nobody believes that anymore. America is a sinking ship, and its CEO class is trying to salvage the wreck in advance, extracting every last dime before Battlefield Earth breaks out.

  It’s only in this context that these endless cycles of hyper-divisive propaganda make sense. It’s time to start wondering if maybe it’s not a coincidence that politicians and pundits alike are pushing us closer and closer to actual civil war at exactly the moment when corporate wealth extraction is reaching its highest-ever levels of efficiency. Keeping the volk at each other’s throats instead of pitchforking the aristocrats is an old game, one that’s now gone digital and works better than ever. That might be worth remembering after the coming verdict, and ahead of whatever other hyper-publicized panic comes down the pipeline next.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 21:30

• Traffic Deaths Are Surging Despite Less Miles Being Traveled
  Traffic Deaths Are Surging Despite Less Miles Being Traveled

  New data is out about traffic fatalities in 2020 and, despite the lockdowns from Covid, the numbers are shocking. 

  Deaths on the road were higher during 2020 than any other year dating back to 2007 – during a year where less people were driving, Bloomberg reported this week. 

  Even more alarming is the fact that 2021 could wind up being worse, as the government estimates that 20,160 have died from crashes in the first half of 2021 – a stunning 18.4% increase from 2020. 

  Transportation Secretary “Mayor Pete” said in October, when the numbers were released: “This is a crisis. We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America.”

  Meanwhile, the NHTSA is allowing Tesla to beta test its latest version of its “Full Self Driving” on public roads seemingly without interruption. 

  

  The deaths were initially blamed on reckless driving on empty roads, but that explanation fell short in explaining this year’s numbers, since people are returning to the roads. 

  Pam Shadel Fischer, senior director for external engagement at the Governors Highway Safety Association commented: “This is our other national pandemic—traffic crashes.”

  Experts “don’t know what’s causing the surge,” the report says. Guesses include more people speeding and less people wearing seatbelts, the NHTSA said. Vehicles are also “getting bigger” and lawmakers are making it “legal to go faster”, Bloomberg wrote. 

  Regulators used to simply believe that less driving meant less accidents and more driving would mean more accidents. Beth Osborne, director of the advocacy group Transportation for America, said: “At least one of our assumptions has been proven wildly wrong.” 

  

  She continued: “If I see a very wide-open road, my natural inclination is to drive fast. Highways are designed specifically to allow for fast driving. What we’ve done is take that highway design and apply it to roadways that serve local developments, where there are lots of conflicts.”

  David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, added: “We know from research we’ve done that a greater amount of horsepower equals higher speeds traveled, and we know higher speeds traveled leads to a higher number of crashes with higher severity.”

  No word on whether or not Mayor Pete was seen driving away in his Model 3 after his late October press conference on the issue…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 21:00

• Australia Says It's "Inconceivable" Not To Join US In Defending Taiwan
  Australia Says It’s “Inconceivable” Not To Join US In Defending Taiwan

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

  Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said Saturday that it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the US if it takes action to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

  “It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the US in an action if the US chose to take that action,” Dutton told The Australian. His comments came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the US and its allies would take “action” if China moved to take Taiwan by force.

  

  He added, “And, again, I think we should be very frank and honest about that, look at all of the facts and circumstances without precommitting, and maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, [but] I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”

  The US doesn’t have an obligation to defend Taiwan, but the Biden administration has been sending mixed messages to Beijing over the issue. Last month, President Biden said the US has a “commitment” to intervene if China invades Taiwan, and the White House was quick to clarify that his comments did not mean a change in policy.

  Australia has joined the US in its campaign against China and recently signed a new military pact with Washington and London meant to counter Beijing, known as AUKUS. Canberra will get access to nuclear submarine technology out of the deal, although the submarines aren’t expected to be ready until the late 2030s.

  Taiwan sees a friend in Australia and celebrated the signing of AUKUS. Last month, Taiwan’s foreign minister told Australian media that the island wants help from Canberra to prepare for war.

  ‘Inconceivable’ for Australia not to join US to defend Taiwan, says its defence minister https://t.co/8mpYwLJUhp

  — ST Foreign Desk (@STForeignDesk) November 13, 2021

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

  “We would like to engage in security or intelligence exchanges with other like-minded partners, Australia included, so Taiwan is better prepared to deal with the war situation,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 20:30

• Were These The 'Richest' People In Human History?
  Were These The ‘Richest’ People In Human History?

  When we think of wealth today, we often think of the massive personal fortunes of business magnates like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffett. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins details below, it is only since the Industrial Revolution that measuring wealth by one’s bank account has been a norm for the world’s richest.

  For most of recorded human history, in fact, the lines around wealth were quite blurred. Leaders like Augustus Caesar or Emperor Shenzong had absolute control of their empires – while bankers like Jakob Fogger and Cosimo de Medici were often found pulling the strings from behind.

  This infographic we created with Texas Precious Metals focuses on the richest people in history up until the Industrial Revolution, and it highlights key facts and anecdotes on how they created their wealth.

  

  Is This List of People Definitive?

  While it is certainly fun to speculate on the wealth of people from centuries past, putting together this list is exceptionally difficult and certainly not definitive.

  Here’s why:

  Firstly, much wealth in early periods is tied to land (Genghis Khan) or entire empires (Augustus, Akbar), which makes calculations extremely subjective. What is most of Asia’s land worth in the year 1219? What separates personal fortune from the riches of an empire that one has full control of? There are a wide variety of answers to these questions, and they all influence the figures chosen to be represented.

  Secondly, records kept from Ancient eras are scarce, exaggerated, or based on legends and oral histories. Think of King Solomon or Mansa Musa—these are characters described as immeasurably rich, so trying to put their wealth in modern context is fun, but certainly not guaranteed to be historically accurate.

  Lastly, wealth and conversion rates can be approached in different ways as well. Take Crassus in the Roman Republic, who had a peak fortune of “200 million sesterces”. Well, that’s a problem for us in modernity, because that stash could be worth anywhere from $200 million to $169.8 billion, depending on how calculations are done.

  So, enjoy this list of the wealthiest historical figures, but keep in mind that it is mostly for fun—and that the list of the richest people in history may change depending on who you ask!

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 20:00

• Why Wokeism Is A Religion
  Why Wokeism Is A Religion

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Substack,

  Introducing the Taxonomy of Woke Religion

  Over the last year, a growing number of progressives and liberals have pointed to police killings of unarmed black men, rising carbon emissions and extreme weather events, and the killing of trans people as proof that the United States has failed to take action on racism, climate change, and transphobia. Others have pointed to the war on drugs, the criminalization of homelessness, and mass incarceration as evidence that little has changed in the U.S. over the last 30 years. 

  

  And yet, on each of those issues, the U.S. has made significant progress.

  Police killings of African Americans in our 58 largest cities declined from 217 per year in the 1970s to 157 per year in the 2010s. Between 2011 and 2020, carbon emissions declined 14 percent in the U.S., more than in any other nation, while just 300 people died from natural disasters, a more than 90 percent decline over the past century. Public acceptance of trans people is higher than ever. The total US prison and jail population peaked in 2008 and has declined significantly ever since. Just 4 percent of state prisoners, who are 87 percent of the total prison population, are in for nonviolent drug possession; just 14 percent are in for any nonviolent drug offense. And many large cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have effectively decriminalized public camping by homeless people. 

  Progressives respond that these gains obscure broad inequalities, and are under threat. Black Americans are killed at between two to three times the rate of white Americans, according to a Washington Post analysis of police killings between 2015 and 2020. Carbon emissions are once again rising as the U.S. emerges from the covid pandemic, and scientists believe global warming is contributing to extreme weather events. In 2020, Human Rights Campaign found that at least 44 transgender and non-gender conforming people were killed, which is the most since it started tracking fatalities in 2013, and already that number has reached 45 this year. Drug prohibition remains in effect, homeless people are still being arrested, and the U.S. continues to have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world.

  But those numbers, too, obscure important realities. There are no racial differences in police killings when accounting for whether or not the suspect was armed or a threat (“justified” vs “unjustified” shooting). While carbon emissions will rise in 2021 there is every reason to believe they will continue to decline in the future, so long as natural gas continues to replace coal, and nuclear plants continue operating. While climate change may be contributing to extreme weather events, neither the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change nor another other scientific body predicts it will outpace rising resilience to cause an increase in deaths from natural disasters. Researchers do not know if trans people are being killed disproportionately in comparison to cis-gender people, if trans homicides are rising, or if trans people are being killed for being trans, rather than for some other reason. Twenty-six states have decriminalized marijuana, and California and Oregon have decriminalized and legalized, respectively, the possession of all drugs. Progressive District Attorneys in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major cities have scaled back prosecutions against people for breaking many laws related to homelessness including public camping, public drug use, and theft.

  And yet many Americans would be surprised to learn any of the above information; some would reject it outright as false. Consider that, despite the decline in police killings of African Americans, the share of the public which said police violence is a serious or extremely serious problem rose from 32 to 45 percent between 2015 and 2020. Despite the decline in carbon emissions, 47 percent of the public agreed with the statement, “Carbon emissions have risen in the United States over the last 10 years,” and just 16 percent disagreed. Meanwhile, 46 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “Deaths from natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change” and just 16 percent disagreed, despite the absence of any scientific scenario supporting such fears. And despite the lack of good evidence, mainstream news media widely reported that the killing of trans people is on the rise.

  The gulf between reality and perception is alarming for reasons that go beyond the importance of having an informed electorate for a healthy liberal democracy. Distrust of the police appears to have contributed to the nearly 30% rise in homicides after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests last year, both by embolding criminals and causing a pull-back of police. A growing body of research finds that news media coverage of climate change is contributing to rising levels of anxiety and depression among children. And there is good reason to fear that misinformation about the killing of trans and non-gender conforming individuals contributes to anxiety and depression among trans and gender dysphoric youth.

  Social Media, NGOs, and the Death of God

  

  Why is that? Why does there exist such a massive divide between perception and reality on so many important issues?

  Part of the reason appears to stem from the rise of social media and corresponding changes to news media over the last decade. Social media fuels rising and unwarranted certainty, dogmatism, and intolerance of viewpoint diversity and disconfirmatory information. Social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram reward users for sharing information popular with peers, particularly extreme views, and punish users for expressing unpopular, more moderate, and less emotional opinions. This cycle is self-reinforcing. Audiences seek out views that reinforce their own. Experts seek conclusions, and journalists write stories, which affirm the predispositions of their audiences. It may be for these reasons that much of the news media have failed to inform their audiences that there are no racial differences in police killings, that emissions are declining, and that claims of rising trans killings are unscientific.

  Another reason may be due to the influence of well-funded advocacy organizations to shape public perceptions, particularly in combination with social media. Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Campaign, and Drug Policy Alliance have misled journalists, policymakers, and the public, about police killings, drug policy, and trans killings, often by simply leaving out crucial contextual information. The same has been true for climate activists, including those operating as experts and journalists, who withhold information about declining deaths from natural disasters, the cost of disasters relative to GDP growth, and declining U.S. emissions. 

  But neither of these explanations fully captures the religious quality of so much of the progressive discourse on issues relating to race, climate, trans, crime, drugs, homelessness, and the related issue of mental illness. A growing number of liberal, heterodoxical, and conservative thinkers alike use the word “woke” to describe the religiosity of so many progressive causes today. In his new book, Woke Racism, Columbia University linguist John McWhorter argues that Wokeism should, literally, be considered a religion.

  As evidence for his argument McWhorter points to commonly held myths, like the debunked claim that the American War of Independence was fought to maintain slavery, or that racial disparities in educational performance are due to racist teachers. He points to Woke religious fervor in seeking to censor, fire, and otherwise punish heretics for holding taboo views. And McWhorter suggests that, because Wokeism meets specific psychological and spiritual needs for meaning, belonging, and status, pointing out its supernatural elements is likely to have little impact among the Woke.

  But just because an ideology is dogmatic and self-righteous does not necessarily make it a religion, and so it is fair to ask whether Wokeism is anything more than a new belief system. There is no obviously mythological or supernatural element to Woke ideology, and its adherents rarely, if ever, justify their statements with reference to a god, or higher power. But a deeper look at Wokeism does, indeed, reveal a whole series of mythological and supernatural beliefs, including the idea that white people today are responsible for the racist actions of white people in the past; that climate change risks making humans extinct; and that a person can change their sex by simply identifying as the opposite sex.

  Woke Religion: A Taxonomy

  

  While reading McWhorter’s new book, I was surprised to discover many similarities between woke racism and apocalyptic environmentalism, which in Apocalypse Never I describe as a religion. Each offers an original sin as the cause of present-day evils (e.g., slavery, the industrial revolution). Each has guilty devils (e.g., white people, “climate deniers,” etc.) sacred victims (e.g., black people, poor islanders, etc.) and what McWhorter calls “The Elect,” or people self-appointed to crusade against evil (e.g., BLM activists, Greta Thunberg, etc.). And each have a set of taboos (e.g., saying “All lives matter,” criticizing renewables, etc.) and purifying rituals (e.g., kneeling/apologizing, buying carbon offsets, etc).

  I also saw parallels between woke racism, apocalyptic environmentalism, and victimology, which in San Fransicko I describe as a religion complete with the metaphysical (essentialist) view that people can be categorized as victims or oppressors, by nature of their identity or experience. 

  I reached out to a new friend, Peter Boghossian, a philosopher who recently resigned his post at Portland State University in response to Wokeist repression, and other experts in different Woke movements, and together we constructed a Woke Religion Taxonomy (below). It includes seven issue areas (Racism, Climate Change, Trans, Crime, Mental Illness, Drugs, and Homelessness) covered by Woke Racism, Apocalypse Never, San Fransicko, Peter’s research, and the writings of other critics of Wokeism. And it cuts across ten religious categories (Original Sin, Guilty Devils, Myths, Sacred Victims, The Elect, Supernatural Beliefs, Taboo Facts, Taboo Speech, Purifying Rituals, Purifying Speech). We were surprised by how straightforward it was to fill in each category, and by the fascinating similarities and differences between them. 

  We decided to publish the Woke Religion Taxonomy because it was helpful to our own understanding of Wokeism as a religion, and we felt it might help others. The Taxonomy identifies common myths and supernatural beliefs and helps explain why so many people continue to hold them, despite overwhelming evidence that they are false. We are under no illusion that the Taxonomy will reduce the power that Wokeism holds over true believers. But we also believe it will help orient those who are confused by its irrationalism, and are seeking an accessible overview. Finally, we are publishing it because we recognize that we might be wrong, either about matters of fact or classification, and hope it will encourage a healthy discussion and debate. As such, we have published it with the caveat that it is “Version 1.0” with the expectation that we will revise it in the future.

  Both Peter and I would like to stress that we have published the Taxonomy in service of the liberal and democratic project of social and environmental progress, which we believe to be under threat from Wokeism. We believe the U.S. is well-positioned to reduce police killings, crime, and carbon emissions; protect the lives and the mental health of trans, non-gender conforming, and cis-gender people; and better treat of the mentally ill and drug addicted. But doing so will require that Wokeism weaken its grip over the American psyche.

  As Peter writes, “bigotry and racial discrimination are real and they have no place in society. Yes, there is ongoing racism. Yes, there is ongoing homophobia. Yes, there is ongoing hatred of trans people. These are morally abhorrent and we all need to work together to bring about their end. The woke religion, however, is not the way to stop these moral horrors. It is making our shared problems more difficult to solve.”

  

  Click image for huge legible version.

  *  *  *

  Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,”Green Book Award winner, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is author of just launched book San Fransicko (Harper Collins) and the best-selling book, Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins June 30, 2020). Subscribe To Michael’s substack here

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 19:30

• As Housing Market Boom Drags On, Just 13% Of Gen Z Say Owning A Home Is "Extremely Important"
  As Housing Market Boom Drags On, Just 13% Of Gen Z Say Owning A Home Is “Extremely Important”

  When it comes to the housing market, millennials and Gen Z have something in common: both generations came of age during particularly turbulent times for housing markets. Millennials faced the housing market, when the supposedly “impossible” – the real estate would move down – in reality, game to pass. A decade later, housing prices are back at all-time highs, and only 13% of would-be millennial homeowners is “extremely attainable.” 

  Combining survey views on attainability and important, we find that just 9% of Gen Z view homeownership as both “extremely important” and “extremely attainable.” This is significantly less than the comparable rates for young millennials (16%) and older millennials (17%).

  Despite a generally positive outlook on homeownership, it’s not a goal that many Gen Z renters are actively working toward. Just 16% say that it’s currently their top financial priority, well below the shares that are prioritizing personal savings and investments (35%) and paying down debt (27%).

  The survey further highlighted the growing gap between Gen Zers with parents, and those without. Oftentimes, gathering enough money for a downpayment, it advanced.

  56 percent of Gen Z respondents say that they expect help from family with a future down payment. Among those with high confidence of down payment assistance, over 56 percent feel that homeownership is extremely attainable, but for those who do not expect any assistance, just 17 percent consider homeownership extremely attainable.

  Finally, as more officers return to the office, others see emote work as likely to shape future housing choices for Gen Z, but among Gen Z respondents, just 17% view remote work as an extremely desirable working arrangement, compared to nearly one-third of millennials.

  Roughly one-third of Gen Zers said that being in a low-cost housing market is the most important factor determining where they would like live.

  Although for-sale homes remain in high demand, the homeownership rate in the United States has been gradually declining for generations. Despite being in their prime homebuying years, a growing pool of millennials are continuing to rent, sidelined from the for-sale market by a lack of affordability.

  A growing pool of millennials are continuing to rent, sidelined from the for-sale market by a lack of affordability. know. The big question now: Will the Gen Zers follow suit? Comparisons of Gen Z and millennials tend to focus on their differences,

  Perhaps a reflection of their youthful idealism, Gen Z sees housing as more important long tierm.

  

  77% of Gen Z renters say that they consider homeownership at least somewhat attainable within the next ten years. While lower than the share who view homeownership as important. Gen Zers are still young, many don’t yet see homeownership as a critical financial goal.

  

  Still, only the wealthiest Millennials and Gen Z who have parents to help them pay their down payments can really afford a home. 

  It’s just another example of how family wealth and an inheritance will give millions of Americans a financial leg up. 

  

  While others who invested early in Tesla, BTC and Ethereum will look to use that as their “seed corn” for a life.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 19:00

• FDA Recalls Millions Of At-Home COVID-19 Tests Over False Positives
  FDA Recalls Millions Of At-Home COVID-19 Tests Over False Positives

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed Thursday it is recalling some 2 million Ellume at-home COVID-19 testing because they can produce “false positives” due to a manufacturing defect.

  

  The firm first informed the federal regulatory agency about the defect in some lots in October. But on Wednesday, the FDA said it identified additional lots that were affected by the manufacturing defect, made between Feb. 24, 2021, and Aug. 11, 2021.

  To date, about 35 false positives from the COVID-19 tests were reported to the FDA. No deaths have been reported related to the test, according to the agency.

  A “false positive” indicates that an individual has contracted the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, when they actually do not.

  The FDA noted that false positives could lead to “delayed diagnosis or treatment for the actual cause of the person’s illness, which could be another life-threatening disease that is not COVID-19” or receiving “unnecessary COVID-19 treatment from a health care provider,” which may “result in side effects.”

  Another problem, the FDA noted, is isolation, including monitoring household or close contacts for symptoms, limiting contact with family or friends, and missing school or work.”

  Underscoring the severity of the issue, the FDA said it “identified this as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall … use of these tests may cause serious adverse health consequences or death.”

  The antigen test detects proteins from the CCP virus from a nasal sample, and it’s available without a prescription for use by people aged 2 years and older. It also comes with an analyzer that connects with a smartphone app to show users to perform the test and understand the test results.

  Ellume has recalled 2,212,335 tests in the United States to date. Earlier this year, the Australia-based firm announced it had about 200,000 of its tests.

  The Biden administration had signed a $231 million deal with Ellume, which received approval to produce its tests under the Trump administration last year.

  In October, Dr. Sean Parsons, Ellume’s chief executive, announced that the firm had created more safeguards to stop the problem from occurring again.

  “I’m very sorry that this has happened,” he told the New York Times at the time.

  “We’re all about chasing accuracy, and to have these false positives is disappointing.”

  And a spokesperson said that the “root cause” of the issue was identified. The company is already shipping new products inside the United States, the spokesperson added to the NY Times.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Ellume for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 18:30

• California Fraudsters Get Rich Off Unemployment Benefits
  California Fraudsters Get Rich Off Unemployment Benefits

  By Adam Andrzejeswki, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com; first published at RealClearPolicy

  California has shelled out at least $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits since the beginning of the pandemic, 11 percent of all benefits paid in the Golden State.

  That is more than the 2021 budgets of Delaware, Maine and Montana combined.

  

  The $20 billion given to criminals who fraudulently collected benefits comes out of the more than $178 billion in unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic, The Los Angeles Times reported.

  State officials have blamed that on Congress’ quick expansion of unemployment benefits that allowed people to get weekly checks without safeguards to stop people who weren’t eligible.

  California state officials approved at least $810 million in benefits in the names of people who were in prison, including dozens of infamous killers on death row, the LA Times reported, and even $21,000 in benefits were sent to an address in Roseville under the name and Social Security number of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

  Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration said — finally — the fraud pipeline in California has been closed as the state has implemented new identity verification software that, along with other preventative measures, stopped an estimated $120 billion in fraud attempts.

  With $20 billion gone to fraud, it’s about time California officials take some action and slow the flow of taxpayer money going to criminals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 17:35

• "Its Entirely Feasible That Herd Immunity Has Been Reached In The Current Environment"
  “Its Entirely Feasible That Herd Immunity Has Been Reached In The Current Environment”

  As Covid cases are starting to climb aggressively again in a few European countries – with both Austria and the Netherlands imposing fresh lockdowns – DB’s Jim Reid writes that “here in the UK, where there has been much attention internationally, we have possibly moved into a new phase of the battle against the virus.”

  According to the credit strategist, while cases have been fairly high since the summer, from around the time of the European football championships and the lifting of restrictions on July 19th, the UK has not seen the exponential rise that could overwhelm the health service that many have warned about for months. Furthermore, evidence from the ONS suggests over 90% of adults have antibodies, whilst 80% of the 12+ population have had two vaccine doses now.

  Instead of rising exponentially, new cases have been going through mini-waves, likely due to unvaccinated school children returning in September, the colder weather and then the on and off of half-term. After trending down for the last 2 and a half weeks new cases are starting to pick up again, but with booster jab momentum starting to accelerate after a slow start (a huge 532k yesterday), high antibody levels and some evidence that around 80% of 5-14yr olds  have been infected (the highest of any age group), its entirely feasible that herd immunity has been reached in the current environment and that new case levels will continue to be range bound.

  Indeed, new admissions to hospitals are trending 20-25% of the level they were in January of this year even though cases have been at similar levels; fatalities are 10-15% of these peak levels.

  

  And while the credit strategist notes that we may be faced with waning immunity that changes this equation in the quarters ahead, it is also possible that the virus (outside of a surprise new mutation) has less impact on a continually jabbed or covid exposed population. Meanwhile, new medicines in the pipeline like the Merck and Pfizer anti-viral pills should only help further.

  As Reid concludes, “there is certainly lots of criticism you could lay at the door of UK for how they’ve handled the pandemic but it is currently showing one template out of Covid. It could have enough immunity through vaccines and infections to get through this winter better than others and without further restrictions.” And while the strategist concedes that these are famous last words, it is certainly the case that most of the scare stories of the last few months have not materialized in the UK which gives other heavily countries hope too.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 17:10

• America Facing "Potentially Fatal Overdose Of Government": Rep. Davidson
  America Facing “Potentially Fatal Overdose Of Government”: Rep. Davidson

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  As House Democrats continue trying to muster enough votes to pass President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said that the massive social spending bill—along with other Democrat-led policies—represent a “potentially fatal overdose of government” that could stifle free enterprise and push inflation higher.

  

  Davidson, who serves co-chairman of the Congressional Sound Money Caucus, told NTD News in an interview that the Biden administration’s big-ticket spending proposals risk exacerbating inflation, which is running at a near 31-year high.

  “The only debate on Capitol Hill is how much more gas to throw on the fire,” Davidson said.

  “It gets bigger, and that’s the Democrats’ agenda—they want to throw more on with Build Back Better,” he said, adding that “it’s going to dump a lot of extra spending into the economy and it has a big impact” on inflation.

  “Whether you’re talking about the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill or Build Back Better—all part of this Bernie Sanders’ agenda,” Davidson said, alluding to the Vermont senator’s various left-leaning or far-left policy positions, including proposing to cut the wealth of billionaires by half over 15 years and initially putting forward a $6 trillion budget proposal that he said was “probably too little.”

  “It is hostile to the American way of life and free enterprise. We’re confronting a potentially fatal overdose of government. We need more freedom and less government—and we need to embrace sound money,” Davidson said.

  President Joe Biden has argued that his Build Back Better plan will ease inflationary pressures, including on the labor cost side by getting more Americans back into the workforce by reducing child and elder care costs. And more directly, his plan would lower costs for families by providing more affordable health coverage and prescription drugs, he said.

  In a similar vein, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC in late October that the Build Back Better agenda would have an anti-inflationary impact by smoothing some supply-side dislocations and footing the bill for some costs facing American families.

  “It will boost the economy’s potential to grow, the economy’s supply potential, which tends to push inflation down, not up,” she told the outlet.

  “For many American families experiencing inflation, seeing the prices of gas and other things that they buy rise, what this package will do is lower some of the most important costs, what they pay for health care, for child care. It’s anti-inflationary in that sense as well,” Yellen added.

  Yellen also said she continues to see inflation as a temporary supply-side-driven phenomenon that will normalize next year.

  Davidson challenged the “transitory” inflation framing, noting that the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned from around $4 trillion in the months prior to the outbreak of the pandemic to over $8 trillion.

  “When you create that much cash into the economy, of course it shows up,” he said, adding that, initially, people were “happy” to see their financial assets grow in value, “but then you start seeing it in retail prices, and that’s what we’re seeing today.”

  “This is not going to be transitory.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 16:45

• Glasgow Climate Summit Ends In Tears, Failure, And Kicking-The-Can On Commitments
  Glasgow Climate Summit Ends In Tears, Failure, And Kicking-The-Can On Commitments

  The least-green climate summit in history ended in a huge win for coal – after India and China forced last minute language changes into the final text of the Glasgow Climate Pact to “Phase down” instead of “phase out” unabated coal power.

  

  The language changes were introduced on Saturday night during the last half-hour of the final session, when India swooped with the demand, as well as adding a clause which reads “while providing targeted support to the poorest and the most vulnerable.”

  Specifically, the 197-nation pact would see parties commit to “escalating efforts to phase down unabated coal power and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support to the poorest and the most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognising the need for support towards a just transition.”

  Previously, the text read: “including accelerating efforts towards the phaseout of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, recognising the need for support towards a just transition.”

  So – India and China just kicked the door back open on what was already going to be a near-impossible task to eliminate coal, and Western nations are now committed to ‘targeted support’ in the form of taxpayer dollars for poorer nations.

  

  And while the beneficiaries of said changes took a victory lap, India said (with a straight face) that it would “call upon parties to escalate development and deployment” of green technologies and a transition towards lower energy use – while China issued an even less specific support for the call “according to what India, China, South Africa and Bolivia delegates, and like-minded countries and other developing countries, expressed [as] concerns.”

  If ever Greta should be pissed over ’empty words,’ now’s the time!

  

  Tears of failure

  In response to the last minute changes, COP26 president Alok Sharma offered his apologies, saying he was “deeply sorry” for how the event wrapped up.

  “May I just say to all delegates I apologise for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry,” he told the crowd, adding “I also understand the deep disappointment but I think as you have noted, it’s also vital that we protect this package.”

  #COP26 President Sharma is in tears. He says on stage he is “deeply sorry” for how the process has worked out in the end.

  — Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) November 13, 2021

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

  #COP26 President Alok Sharma tearfully discusses the event and the resulting agreement:

  “I apologize for the way this process has unfolded..I also understand the deep disappointment, but…it is also vital that we protect this package…”

  Then he cries.pic.twitter.com/m23qYqu6xw

  — Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) November 13, 2021

  Switzerland was pissed – expressing its “profound disappointment as a result of intransparent process,” adding “We do not need to phase down coal but to phase out coal.”

  The Swiss representative said the last-minute change to the wording on phasing out fossil fuel use would make it harder to reach the COP26 goal.

  “This will not bring us closer to 1.5 but make it more difficult to reach it.”

  Frans Timmermans, the EU envoy, said he was disappointed with the new phrasing: “The longer you take to phase out coal, the more burden you put on the natural environment and the more burden you put on your economy.” –FT

  US climate envoy John Kerry simply ‘had to go along with it.’

  Hearing John Kerry told delegates here he does not like the new language suggested by India, but had to go along with it.

  — Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) November 13, 2021

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

  Commitment to signal maximum virtue

  Aside from fancy pens, we’re guessing, COP26 attendees return to their countries with a most serious task – kick the can down the road for now, then come back next year with plans to strengthen their 2030 emissions reductions targets. Rich nations have the added bonus to “at least double” the amount of money they give developing countries in exchange for adapting to climate change.

  As always, there are no specifics underpinning a commitment to transfer gobs of money from rich nations to poor.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 16:20

• "Non-Binary" Assistant Professor Calls For "Stigma" Of Pedophilia To Be 'Delegitimized'
  “Non-Binary” Assistant Professor Calls For “Stigma” Of Pedophilia To Be ‘Delegitimized’

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A “non-binary” associate professor at Old Dominion University has called for the “stigma” of pedophilia to be ‘delegitimized’.

  

  Yes, really.

  The Prostasia Foundation, a registered 503c which has called for child-like sex dolls to be legalized, posted an interview with Allyn Walker, a female-to-male transgender, who outlined her views on “minor attraction.”

  Walker, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, is the author of a book called ‘A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity’.

  In the interview, Walker insists that the term “minor attracted people” should be used in preference to ‘pedophile’ because pedophiles’ feelings might be hurt otherwise.

  “I think we believe societally, that stigma against MAPs serves to protect children because we don’t fully understand the differences between MAPs and sex offenders. Again, we have this confusion between the attraction and a criminal behavior.” https://t.co/62YZGg9tbY pic.twitter.com/pPwEOjJUCo

  — Prostasia Foundation (@ProstasiaInc) November 9, 2021

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  She also highlights how, “MAP advocacy groups like B4U-Act have advocated for use of the term, and they’ve advocated for it primarily because it’s less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile.”

  “4W has previously covered the group B4U-Act, which was founded by convicted multi-child rapist Michael Melsheimer for the explicit purposes of normalizing pedophilia and distracting from prevention efforts,” writes Anna Slatz. “In Melsheimer’s own words, he wanted to ensure B4U-Act was never associated with the “prevention of offending.”

  During the interview, Walker suggested that pedophilia is merely another form of sexual attraction and should be tolerated.

  “Sexuality can be fluid, and there are many MAPs who have a range of attractions to both children and adults,” she said.

  Walker also suggested that stigma against pedophiles is a “huge problem” and that she “empathizes” with how pedos are treated.

  “Although I’m not a MAP, myself, I am queer, and so I too, have been through experiences and realized that I have attractions many people wouldn’t understand, and that some people find to be immoral. And those experiences have really shaped who I’ve become. And so I sort of empathize with those experiences, and I wanted to learn more,” said Walker.

  And these people are working inside universities.

  We truly live in hell.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 15:30

• Nearly 300K Non-Existent 'Ghost Soldiers' Is Why Afghan Government Collapsed So Quickly: Ex-Finance Minister
  Nearly 300K Non-Existent ‘Ghost Soldiers’ Is Why Afghan Government Collapsed So Quickly: Ex-Finance Minister

  Former Afghani finance minister, Khalid Payenda, says that most of the 300,000 Afghan troops never existed, and were in fact “ghost” solders who were fabricated by corrupt officials who then pocketed their wages, according to the BBC.

  

  So – corrupt Afghan officials lied about their fighting force, while US President Joe Biden was pressuring former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to lie about the US pullout and say that the Taliban wasn’t winning “whether it is true or not.” Ghani refused to lie, and the rest is history – the Taliban spread throughout the country like wildfire and toppled the government within a matter of days.

  “The way the accountability was done, you would ask the chief in that province how many people you have and based on that you could calculate salaries and ration expenses and they would always be inflated,” the former finance minister told BBC‘s Ed Butler.

  The former minister said the numbers may have been inflated by more than six times, and included “desertions [and] martyrs who were never accounted for because some of the commanders would keep their bank cards” and withdraw their salaries, he alleged.

  There have long been questions over Afghan troop numbers.

  A 2016 report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) claimed that “neither the United States nor its Afghan allies know how many Afghan soldiers and police actually exist, how many are in fact available for duty, or, by extension, the true nature of their operational capabilities”. -BBC

  More recently, Sigar expressed “serious concerns about the corrosive effects of corruption… and the questionable accuracy of data on the actual strength of the force.”

  Ex-finance minister Payenda, meanwhile, said the ‘ghost’ soldiers were often not paid on time, while leaders of government-backed militias frequently ‘double-dipped’ by taking both a government wage, and accepting bribes from the Taliban to give up without a fight.

  “The whole feeling was, we cannot change this. This is how the parliament works, this is how the governors work. Everybody would say the stream is murky from the very top, meaning the very top is involved in this,” he said, adding that while he didn’t think former President Ghani was “financially corrupt,” that there were definitely accusations of corruption within the finance ministry.

  In closing, Payenda said that the West was “part of” some of the failures within the country, and that the United States and NATO’s involvement was a “great opportunity lost.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 15:00

• Look Out Below: Why A Rug-Pull Flash-Crash Makes Perfect Sense
  Look Out Below: Why A Rug-Pull Flash-Crash Makes Perfect Sense

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  It makes perfect financial sense to crash the market and no sense to reward the retail options marks by pushing it higher.

  An extraordinary opportunity to scoop up mega-millions in profits has arisen, and grabbing all this free money makes perfect financial sense. Now the question is: will those who have the means to grab the dough have the guts to do so?

  Here’s the opportunity: retail punters have gone wild for call options, churning $2.6 trillion in mostly short-term calls–bets on gains now, not later. This expansion of retail options exposure is unprecedented not just in its volume but in its concentration in short-term bets (options that expire in a few days) and in mega-cap tech companies that are commanding rich premiums for options.

  Goldman Stunned By The Record $2.6 Trillion In Option Notional Traded Last Friday

  The options market is like every other market only more so. The price of an option–a bet that a stock, ETF or index will go up or down before the option expires–is sensitive to the volatility of the underlying equity, the demand of other punters for options and the premium being demanded for time: the farther out the expiration date, the higher the cost of the option.

  Recall that anyone with 100 shares of the underlying equity can write/originate an option. Each option controls 100 shares, so a call option that is listed at $1 costs the buyer of the call $100.

  This is very sweet leverage if the market goes your way. You get all the gains of the 100 shares for a cost considerably less than buying the 100 shares outright. No wonder retail punters are going crazy for this cheap leverage to maximize gains in “can’t lose” trades.

  Options have one funny trait: they can expire worthless and the punter loses the entire bet. Each option has an expiration date and a strike price–the price of the underlying equity that’s the pivot point for the bet: calls gain value if the equity’s price moves above the strike price and puts gain value if the equity’s price falls below the strike price.

  The entity that sold the option gets to keep the money if it expires without any value. If you have 100 shares of Engulf & Devour and you sell me a call for $500 at a strike price of $100, if Engulf & Devour closes below $100 at expiration, you keep the $500 as pure profit and I lose the entire bet.

  It would be extraordinarily profitable to sell a huge number of calls–bets on a move higher– and then pull the rug out by crashing the market just as all those options expire. It would criminally foolish not to crash the market and scoop up all that free money.

  Here’s what makes the opportunity so extraordinary: the options universe is extremely lopsided. Bearish bets have dried up as the market has melted higher month after month; short bets are at record lows and the put-call ratio reflects the same capitulation of Bears and Bulls’ supreme confidence in near-term gains.

  This means a crash will cost very little in terms of puts gaining value because there are so few puts out there and reap enormous gains as the vast majority of call options will expire worthless, leaving those who wrote the calls immensely wealthier.

  In previous eras with lower retail option volume and a less lopsided options market, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to flash-crash the market to scoop up retail calls. But a trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

  Buyers of “can’t lose” calls may be unaware that the tail can wag the dog. Mega-cap tech companies appear invulnerable to declines, but they are now the 800-pound gorillas in all the indices (Dow-30, S&P500, Nasdaq) and a boatload of ETFs. So triggering a mass sell-off in an index play such as SPY will trigger a sell-off in all the components of that index, including the invulnerable mega-cap tech names.

  The opportunity here is amplified by the dominance of computer trading algorithms. Once a crash begins, the algos will trend-follow and liquidate exposure to lower risk. This sets up a self-reinforcing chain of selling as every drop triggers more sell programs.

  Volumes are so low that it won’t take that big of a leveraged sell order to start the rug-pull.

  Add up the extraordinary size of retail options bets, the lopsided Bullish bias in calls and the short-duration of the calls and you have an unprecedented opportunity to scoop mega-millions of dollars by doing a rug-pull of the market via selling leveraged indices instruments.

  Retail call buyers are basically begging the big players to take their money via a flash-crash, and the players would be insanely incompetent not to take the money laying on the table. It has all the moving parts of a perfect con: convince the retail punters that they can’t lose by buying calls, jack up the premium they’re paying to own that beautiful leverage for a few days or weeks, lead them on with little rallies, “proving” they can’t lose and encouraging them to buy more high-priced calls, crush volatility to show the futility of buying puts and persuade the punters they have no need for any hedge, as the market can only loft higher because the Fed, etc.

  Then bang, pull the rug out and crash the market limit down for a few days. It’s a gorgeous set-up, literally picture-perfect. It makes perfect financial sense to crash the market and no sense to reward the retail options marks by pushing it higher. Let’s see who gets to be the Roadrunner and who ends up as Wile E. Coyote.

  

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 14:30

• US Food Banks Struggle To Feed Hungry Amid 'Perfect Storm' Of Food Inflation 
  US Food Banks Struggle To Feed Hungry Amid ‘Perfect Storm’ Of Food Inflation 

  America’s largest food bank struggles to feed people amid a perfect storm of surging food prices and supply chain woes. 

  Katie Fitzgerald, COO of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that operates more than 200 food banks across the country, told AP News that her network of food banks is already stretched thin due to the unprecedented demand spurred by the virus pandemic downturn in the economy last year. She warned that it has become more difficult for her organization to absorb food inflation, resulting in fewer families being fed this holiday season. 

  Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory, higher transportation and fuel costs, and labor shortages make matters worse for food banks that millions of people rely on. She said her organization has already swapped out smaller-sized food products or entirely substituted some to stretch the dollar further. 

  Fitzgerald said soaring food inflation is an “insult to injury” for families who depend on food banks. 

  Michael Altfest, the San Francisco Bay Area director, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland, said the food bank spends an additional $60k on food per month and is spending $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds of food. 

  Altfest said in pre-COVID times. The food bank was spending a quarter of the money to distribute 2.5 million pounds of food. He pointed out prices for canned green beans and peaches are up 9%, canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%, 5-pound frozen chickens rose 13%, and oatmeal jumped 17%. 

  New people are showing up every week at the Shiloh Mercy House food pantry in east Oakland despite President Biden promoting his economic success and “build back better” plan. 

  Soaring food inflation is hurting families: “And a lot of people are just saying they can’t afford food,” Jason Bautista, the charity’s event manager, said. 

  This comes as consumer prices on Wednesday rose to their highest level in decades. Prices for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 11.9%, with the sub-index for beef increasing 20.1% and the index for pork rising 14.1%, its most significant 12-month increase since the period ending December 1990. 

  

  Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, pays $2,200 in monthly rent and has no money left to feed her family. She frequents local food banks because food prices have skyrocketed over the past year. 

  Lujan-Perez said the food bank “is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money.” This Christmas would be “rough” for her two children because she won’t afford gifts. 

  Biden’s next political nightmare has already arrived: food inflation. Real wage gains are being wiped out as the cost of everything soars. The souring mood for the president is showing up in polling data. 

  

  The Biden administration attempted to counter rising food inflation for the working poor by announcing an increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to more than 40 million beneficiaries in August. This means the average monthly benefit increased more than $36 per person, but even that has failed to satisfy the stomachs of millions of hangry Americans. 

  There’s also another problem. Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods, which delivers to 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said sourcing canned food from Asia has become more complex as shortages due to port congestion have materialized. He also said importing canned food from overseas has become incredibly expensive because shipping containers rates have gone from “$4,000 to $18,000” in less than a year. 

  In Southern Colorado, Care and Share Food Bank’s CEO Lynne Telford explains the cost of food products is going through the roof. 

  Telford said, “the cost for a truckload of peanut butter —40,000 pounds has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago, and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months.”  

  She said her organization is spending more money to make up for the lack of donations, and her other fear is that there won’t be enough food for the holidays. 

  “The other thing is that we’re not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So we have to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad,” said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year. 

  The data from food banks underscores what many poor working Americans already know. Some of the highest inflation in decades is crushing their budgets as they can barely afford to survive. Such pain in the wallet is making them hangry, coming off a demoralizing pandemic, threatening Biden and the Democrats ahead of midterms next year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/13/2021 – 14:00

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