- Initial Influencer Public Offering: Italian Instagram Star Chiara Ferragni Wants To Take Herself Public
Initial Influencer Public Offering: Italian Instagram Star Chiara Ferragni Wants To Take Herself Public
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 02:45Italian Instagram star (whatever that means) Chiara Ferragni looks to be the first “professional influencer” set to try out a smash and grab job on the public markets by going public through an initial public offering.
In what would be a first for the influencer business model, Ferragni is considering going public in Milan, where she lives. She has 21 million Instagram followers and has signed partnerships with companies like Dior and Lancome.
Her goal is to “monetize the clothing-to-lifestyle persona she has built over a decade”, according to Reuters.
Ferragni/Reuters Social media influencers have played a big role in the marketing plans of fashion companies globally. Influencers who build a reputation and “a certain look” can yield big chunks of fashion companies advertising budgets, who can sometimes set aside between 10% and 20% of their entire budget for influencer marketing.
Brands spent $6.5 billion on influencer marketing in 2019, up almost 4x from 2016.
Based on the 20 million euros Ferragni’s blog brought in during 2019, at a 4x sales multiple, it is estimated a public valuation for her group could be around 80 million euros when all is said and done. A small IPO on any scale, but the first of its kind nonetheless.
Recall, last year we wrote about how influencers in China were helping sell billions of dollars worth of products and services on an annual basis. Famous names in the U.S. like Rihanna and Kylie Jenner have also generated hundreds of millions of dollars in promoting beauty brands and fashion labels.
And as it relates to Ferragni; hell, it’ll probably still be a better buy than most SPACs out there – and, be honest – you’d buy shares if you could…
- Swedish Health Chief Said Country Avoided Lockdown To Prevent "Pandemic Fatigue"
Swedish Health Chief Said Country Avoided Lockdown To Prevent “Pandemic Fatigue”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 02:00Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Swedish health chief Olivia Wigzell explained that her country didn’t impose the kind of draconian coronavirus lockdown seen in other European countries in order to prevent the public from developing “pandemic fatigue.”
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden chose to go for herd immunity by refusing to impose a hard lockdown, meaning bars, restaurants, gyms, workplaces and schools remained open and vulnerable people were told to shield while mandatory mask rules were avoided.
Despite the mainstream media predicting that this would lead to massive fatalities, Sweden has recorded under 6,000 coronavirus deaths and now has the lowest death rate in Europe.
The Scandinavian country’s GDP fared better than the rest of Europe and now large segments of the population have developed herd immunity, reducing the impact of any potential “second wave.”
Illustrating how the country is already virtually back to normal, a young woman posted a video of herself boarding a train in Stockholm showing minimal social distancing and hardly anyone wearing masks.
Hi, this is a short video to show Stockholm today as people around the world should see life is normal here. pic.twitter.com/7TagOXczUf
— SvitLana (@SvitlanaNosul) October 12, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Now the director general of Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare reveals that one of the reasons the Swedish government chose not to impose a harsh lockdown was to prevent its population from development “pandemic fatigue.”
“We did not choose the path of a complete lockdown of society, because we had other arguments for a systematic response to a pandemic,” said Olivia Wigzell during the Pandemic 2020: Challenges, Solutions, Consequences conference, which was held in Moscow.
“We were very afraid, we feared that people would develop such a pandemic fatigue, that people would get tired of restrictions. But in Sweden, practically everyone followed the recommendations,” she added.
Sweden’s health care system was never overwhelmed, even at the height of the pandemic, and the country is now in a better position than any other country on the continent, virtually all of which continue to follow disastrous lockdown policies.
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- 60 US Warplanes Buzzed Islands Near China In September: Beijing Think Tank
60 US Warplanes Buzzed Islands Near China In September: Beijing Think Tank
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 01:00Concern over escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing have been center stage in 2020. Risks are increasing that both of the globe’s superpowers are preparing for a future conflict.
The escalating Sino-American power struggle is playing out in many places worldwide – whether in trade, technology, or military.
Take, for instance, a South China Morning Post (SCMP) report, citing a Beijing think tank that said at least 60 US warplanes conducted reconnaissance flights near China in September.
Chinese government-backed South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) said the latest flights near China could suggest the US is preparing for “future long-distance missions” in the South China Sea.
SCSPI said 60 military jets flew near China in September, with 41 flying over the heavily disputed South China Sea, six over the East China Sea, and 13 over the Yellow Sea. There was a notable increase in aerial refueling aircraft, suggesting the US military is conducting training missions for future long-distance attacks against Chinese military targets in the South China Sea.
SCSPI outlined some of the air refueling missions were considered “unusual.”
“It’s unusual for the US to dispatch fuel tankers from Guam [instead of from Kadena airbase in Japan] because such operations are uneconomical and inefficient,” SCSPI said. “Such operations are more probably preparing for future long-distance refueling in extreme conditions, and thus deserve significant attention.
“This showed that the South China Sea region is still the US’ primary focus, but what is equally notable is that activities in the Yellow Sea region had a marked increase when compared with the sporadic activities two months ago.”
SCSPI said the total number of US military flights around the area were the same in July and August – but noted that the real numbers were unknown because some of the aircraft were “disguised as civil planes or did not turn on transponders.”
We noted this last month, pointing out how US spy planes flying around China changed transponder codes to disguise themselves as commercial aircraft.
Last month, China’s foreign ministry called the concealment of American warplanes in the region a “serious security threat,” with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin issuing the following statement:
“It’s a common trick for the US Air Force to impersonate the transponder code of civilian aircraft from other countries … It is of a vile nature,” the FM spokesman said.
“We urge the US to immediately stop such dangerous provocations, to avoid accidents from happening in the sea and air.” Wang described Chinese records of American spy plane activity in the area as “incomplete.”
Ben Ho, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told SCMP that aerial refueling tanker deployments should be seen as the pentagon’s contingency options:
“The US deployment of aerial tankers from Guam rather than Okinawa hints at the much-talked-about contingency where Chinese missiles knock out bases on the Japanese island during the opening stages of a Sino-American conflict,” Ho said.
“[It] also shows that Washington is hedging against the possibility that Japan refuses US forces [being] stationed on its soil to be deployed against China. Under these two circumstances, America has no choice but to fall back to Guam.
“My biggest worry is that China will seek to exploit any internal unrest or political distraction in the US following the US presidential election, to move aggressively against Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
“The US has to deter such an act, and these types of training missions are part of that – forward presence and resolve being communicated to Beijing,” he said.
And maybe conflict between both countries is ahead. President Trump recently said China “will pay a big price” for the unprecedented havoc wrought by the virus on modern society.
- The Cultural Failure That Makes Spouting Nonsense About Trump Possible
The Cultural Failure That Makes Spouting Nonsense About Trump Possible
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 23:40Authored by Conrad Black, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
The unutterable nonsense that President Trump is somehow responsible for the plan of a group of lunatics in Michigan to kidnap their governor, Gretchen Whitmer, succeeds the asinine theory that Trump was endangering the health of his security unit by driving around the block at Walter Reed Hospital in his car last week waving to well-wishers.
Like an immense mythological monster, Media Trump Hate must be hurled each week, or sometimes more often, in an arsenic-laced dosage of malicious fiction at the Trump campaign.
There have been so many of them that very few can now be remembered even those that were momentarily taken seriously by reputable observers, such as the idea that lawyer Michael Cohen paying blackmail to Stormy Daniels, constituted an illegal campaign donation.
Since Trump paid Cohen’s bill for allegedly unspecified services it wasn’t a donation and since Stormy was trying to do the blackmailing, it was only an offense in the demented imagination of CNN’s momentarily favored candidate for president, Stormy’s beleaguered counsel Michael Avenatti, (whom she soon fired for over-billing).
The governor’s own erratic imagination suggested that Trump somehow motivated those who imagined that they could kidnap the governor of Michigan and extract concessions while the rest of the country including the federal government looked on as if it was an attempted coup d’état in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Since Trump had been highly critical of her encroachment upon the First Amendment rights of assembly of the people of Michigan, by restricting their ability to engage in most collective activity including churchgoing, and in the absence of convincing evidence that such impositions reduce the incidence of the coronavirus, the governor naturally accused the president of inciting criminal and life-threatening behavior directed at her.
This is the Red Queen school of evidence-gathering and prosecution followed by almost the entire U.S. media in respect of the president. This is the same refined school of jurisprudence exhibited by that well-known jurisconsult Don Lemon (CNN) when he declares that any reference by President Trump to the existence of any human beings of a different pigmentation to himself constitutes “a racially charged statement.”
Nothing could be simpler: the week has not gone by when the president has said or done something or failed to say or do something which must be assumed to be the cause of a real or apprehended unpleasant event.
There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that the public is particularly convinced by the sort of thing though the 40 percent or so of Americans who dislike the president are pretty indulgent of such imputations, no matter how implausible they may be. But the majority seem not to pay much attention to it.
Media Credibility
One of the many things that is generally lost sight of in this election is that it is as much a test of some other people and institutions as it is of the president himself. The overwhelming majority of the national political media have determined that the fate of the Trump presidency is a matter of life and death to their own credibility.
Over 90 percent of the national political media opposed Trump’s election in 2016 and have continued with unvarying stridency to oppose his incumbency and his reelection. If in these media-hostile circumstances he is reelected, it will be a decisive defeat for the ancient and rarely questioned ability of the media to raise up and tear down officeholders.
If Trump manages to overcome this extreme and almost uniform animosity of the media, they will surely, finally have to consider the possible necessity of trying once again to separate reporting from comment, and returning to the ancient wellsprings of the dignity and indispensability of the free press.
All polls indicate that despite the frenzied and relentless efforts of almost all of the national media to destroy the president, he is respected and admired by approximately three times as great a percentage of the American public as are the media, who have the questionable distinction of being on all fours butting heads with the United States Congress in the lowest ranks of public esteem.
There is an inborn danger to democracy itself and the entire constellation of rights and beliefs that go with it when the public are contemptuous of their legislators and of the free press. Ultimately in political societies those institutions of which the public is contemptuous are dispensed with; we must surely be a considerable distance from that point still in the United States, but it is an unhealthy and a worrisome condition.
Public Education
The palsied state of the media is largely a phenomenon of the collapsed state of public education. It is one of the great and haunting ironies of our entire Western civilization that the more money we consecrate as societies to education and especially higher education, the less educated the graduates we produce, and the less capable they are of pursuing economically self-sustaining careers on the basis of what they purport to have studied.
Teachers’ unions have reduced many schools to the level of mere daycare centers, and lazy, underworked and tendentious university faculties have imparted what is technically described as white oikophobia: national self-hate, to American students. Universities have largely become unemployment-deferral centers where scandalous amounts of resources are squandered on obscure subjects. The Canadian public intellectual Jordan Peterson makes the point that nothing described as “studies” is in fact an authentic academic subject.
If we start from the premise that in terms of the quality of its information the traditional media is a disgrace, we soon will get to the worrisome fact that the only way to deal with that is to have a more informed and demanding public. Since the media are the problem they are not going to generate that progress in the taste of their readers and viewers and listeners, so a more informed public can only be the result of educational endeavors.
Only when schools actually teach students to do necessary things, to develop some intellectual curiosity, and some aptitude to study and concentrate, and universities are obliged by those who fund them to observe reasonable standards of objective truth in teaching humanities, and to avoid squandering excessive quantities of their resources on subjects of no possible relevance to any but a handful of the curious and the eccentric, will the population slowly develop the intelligence necessary to demand better service from news and entertainment providers. And only then will advertisers require more product-integrity also.
As it is we have major sports leagues prostrated in self-abasement before the totalitarian regime of China while domestically, vastly overpaid players for vastly overvalued franchises mock the national anthem and the flag and demand the abolition of the police and of prisons.
More contemptible than these hypocritical agitators are the flabby white sports executives who go along with them rather submissively, including National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. They have buckled to the players and offended the fans. The silent majority lives, but like everyone else in Trump’s America, is confused.
The Trump administration is pledged to promote better schools through private, charter, faith-based, and community organized schooling, and to incentivize more responsible universities. If the administration is not reelected the country will be significantly further down the well.
But whatever the outcome of the election it is a profound problem that will ultimately threaten the entire society: a more educated population is necessary to produce a more accurate media to increase the value the nation places on the democratic rights that it exercises. Whether the president wins or loses in November, the country will not be able to go on blaming everything on him much longer.
- This Is What It Looks Like When A Supermassive Black Hole "Eats" An Entire Star
This Is What It Looks Like When A Supermassive Black Hole “Eats” An Entire Star
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 23:20While you were sitting around scratching your ass, watching Seinfeld re-runs and pondering whether or not you should have Chinese food or pizza for dinner, a supermassive black hole was in the process of devouring a star 215 million light years away.
And scientists have published a rendering of exactly how it happened.
On Tuesday, RT posted the moment that astronomers were able to capture the death of a star from what is called a “tidal disruption event”. Astronomers were alerted to the event due to a “intense flash of light” that was visible hundreds of millions of light years away, before a star disappeared into a black hole’s event horizon.
The TDE was discovered in September 2019 and was observed for the next six months. These events are “almost impossible to predict” and are rarely ever witnessed, but for periods of “constant surveillance” of the sky. This event occurred in the constellation of Eridanus and astronomers were able to direct numerous telescopes in that direction once the initial flash was observed.
Thomas Wevers, based at the University of Cambridge, said: “We immediately pointed a suite of ground-based and space telescopes in that direction to see how the light was produced.”
Participating observatories included the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope, the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network, and the Neil Gehrels Swift Satellite.
The process is so intense that, at times, it “outshines” its host galaxy before fading into oblivion. Observers said this star was, at one point, roughly the mass of our own sun. The black hole that absorbed it was “a million times more massive”.
The observation provided direct evidence of the outflowing of gas during these events, which had been theorized but never observed. “The black hole launched powerful jets of dust outward at velocities up to 10,000 km/s as it was eating the star,” RT noted.
Astronomer Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics concluded: “This event is teaching us about the detailed physical processes of accretion and mass ejection from supermassive black holes. [It is a] Rosetta stone for interpreting future TDE observations.”
- "Facts Do Not Matter" To The Covidian Cult
“Facts Do Not Matter” To The Covidian Cult
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 23:00Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not just a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror,” or even a myth like the “American Dream.” A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, etc., each with its own psychotic official narrative, i.e., Helter Skelter, Christian Communism, Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, and so on.
Looking in from the dominant culture (or back through time in the case of the Nazis), the delusional nature of these official narratives is glaringly obvious to most rational people. What many fail to understand is that to those who fall prey to them (whether individual cult members or entire totalitarian societies) such narratives do not register as psychotic. On the contrary, they feel entirely normal. Everything in their social “reality” reifies and reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it is perceived as an existential threat.
These narratives are invariably paranoid, portraying the cult as threatened or persecuted by an evil enemy or antagonistic force which only unquestioning conformity to the cult’s ideology can save its members from. It makes little difference whether this antagonist is mainstream culture, body thetans, counter-revolutionaries, Jews, or a virus. The point is not the identity of the enemy. The point is the atmosphere of paranoia and hysteria the official narrative generates, which keeps the cult members (or the society) compliant.
In addition to being paranoid, these narratives are often internally inconsistent, illogical, and … well, just completely ridiculous.
This does not weaken them, as one might suspect. Actually, it increases their power, as it forces their adherents to attempt to reconcile their inconsistencies and irrationality, and in many cases utter absurdity, in order to remain in good standing with the cult. Such reconciliation is of course impossible, and causes the cult members’ minds to short circuit and abandon any semblance of critical thinking, which is precisely what the cult leader wants.
Moreover, cult leaders will often radically change these narratives for no apparent reason, forcing their cult members to abruptly forswear (and often even denounce as “heresy”) the beliefs they had previously been forced to profess, and behave as if they had never believed them, which causes their minds to further short circuit, until they eventually give up even trying to think, and just mindlessly parrot whatever nonsensical gibberish the cult leader fills their heads with.
Also, the cult leader’s nonsensical gibberish is not as nonsensical as it may seem at first. Most of us, upon encountering such gibberish, assume that the cult leader is trying to communicate, and that something is very wrong with his brain. But the cult leader’s intention is not to communicate. His intention is to disorient and control the listener’s mind. Listen to Charlie Manson “rapping.” Not just to what he says, but how he says it. Note how he sprinkles bits of truth into his stream of free-associated nonsense, and his repetitive use of thought-terminating clichés, described by Robert J. Lifton as follows:
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
– Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, 1961
If all this sounds familiar, good.
Because the same techniques that most cult leaders use to control the minds of the members of their cults are used by totalitarian systems to control the minds of entire societies… Milieu Control, Loaded Language, Sacred Science, Demand for Purity, and other standard mind-control techniques. It can happen to pretty much any society, just as anyone can fall prey to a cult, given the right set of circumstances.
It is happening to most of our societies now. An official narrative is being implemented. A totalitarian official narrative. A totally psychotic official narrative, no less delusional than that of the Nazis, or the Manson family, or any other cult.
Most people cannot see that it is happening, for the simple reason that it is happening to them. They are literally unable to recognize it. The human mind is extremely resilient and inventive when it is pushed past its limits. Ask anyone who has struggled with psychosis or has taken too much LSD. We do not recognize when we are going insane. When reality falls apart completely, the mind creates a delusional narrative, which appears just as “real” as our normal reality, because even a delusion is better than the stark raving terror of utter chaos.
This is what totalitarians and cult leaders count on, and exploit to implant their narratives in our minds, and why actual initiation rituals (as opposed to purely symbolic rituals) begin by attacking the subject’s mind with terror, pain, physical exhaustion, psychedelic drugs, or some other means of obliterating the subject’s perception of reality. Once that is achieved, and the subject’s mind starts desperately trying to construct a new narrative to make sense out of the cognitive chaos and psychological trauma it is undergoing, it is relatively easy to “guide” that process, and to implant whatever narrative you want, assuming you have done your homework.
And this is why so many people — people who are able to easily recognize totalitarianism in cults and foreign countries — cannot perceive the totalitarianism that is taking shape now, right in front of their faces (or, rather, right inside their minds). Nor can they perceive the delusional nature of the official “Covid-19” narrative, no more than those in Nazi Germany were able to perceive how completely delusional their official “master race” narrative was. These people are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have been successfully initiated into a cult, which is essentially what totalitarianism is, albeit on a societal scale.
Their initiation into the Covidian Cult began in January, when the medical authorities and corporate media turned on The Fear with projections of hundreds of millions of deaths and fake photos of people dropping dead in the streets. The psychological conditioning has continued for months. The global masses have been subjected to a constant stream of propaganda, manufactured hysteria, wild speculation, conflicting directives, exaggerations, lies, and tawdry theatrical effects. Lockdowns. Emergency field hospitals and morgues. The singing-dancing NHS staff. Death trucks. Overflowing ICUs. Dead Covid babies. Manipulated statistics. Goon squads. Masks. And all the rest of it.
Eight months later, here we are. The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO has basically confirmed an IFR of 0.14%, approximately the same as the seasonal flu.
And here are the latest survival rate estimates from the Center for Disease Control:
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Age 0-19 … 99.997%
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Age 20-49 … 99.98%
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Age 50-69 … 99.5%
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Age 70+ … 94.6%
The “science” argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over so-called “cases” (which now includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example, in this segment on ARD, one of the big mainstream German TV channels.
And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria.
I’m not going to go on debunking the narrative. The point is, the facts are all available. Not from “conspiracy theorist” websites. From mainstream outlets and medical experts. From the Center for Fucking Disease Control.
Which does not matter in the least, not to the members of the Covidian Cult. Facts do not matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party.
Which means we have a serious problem, those of us to whom facts still matter, and who have been trying to use them to convince the Covidian cultists that they are wrong about the virus… for going on eight months at this point.
While it is crucial to continue reporting the facts and sharing them as widely as possible (which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and social media), it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological movement. A global totalitarian movement … the first of its kind in human history.
It isn’t national totalitarianism, because we’re living in a global capitalist empire, which isn’t ruled by nation-states, but rather, by supranational entities and the global capitalist system itself. And thus, the cult/culture paradigm has been inverted. Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it.
I wish I could be more optimistic, and offer you some sort of plan of action, but the only historical parallel I can think of is how Christianity “converted” the pagan world, which doesn’t really bode so well for us. While you’re sitting at home during the “second wave” lockdowns, you might want to brush up on that history.
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- "Supercar Of The Sea" – Conor McGregor Buys 4000HP Lamborghini Racing Yacht
“Supercar Of The Sea” – Conor McGregor Buys 4000HP Lamborghini Racing Yacht
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 22:40Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Dublin-born Conor McGregor announced on his Instagram page Monday that he purchased a Lamborghini superyacht.
Lamborghini has always been synonymous with the need for speed on land. But now, a July partnership between Lamborghini and the Italian Sea Group is set to produce the new Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63, a carbon-fiber superyacht that is powered by twin-turbo V12 engines capable of producing 4,000 horsepower.
McGregor said the vessel is the “Supercar of the Sea,” and he was honored to secure the “Number 12 edition of just 63 to be made.”
“The No.12 “McGregor edition” 🛥 @tecnomaryachts @lamborghini Lamborghini’s first entry into the Sport Yacht World comes in the form of this 63foot, 4000bhp, duel engine, twin-turbo, rocket ship! Titled the “Supercar of the Sea” I am honoured to secure the Number 12 edition of just 63 to be made. 1963 being the year Lamborghini first began, and 12 being, well you know Twelve! Proper Fucking Twelve baby! Ain’t no stopping it! @properwhiskey Thank you Giuseppe Constantino and the entire team at “The Italian Sea Group” for your amazing work! Excited to see the finished result during next seasons yachting season ❤️,” McGregor posted on Instagram.
McGregor and his family at the unveiling event.
The Lambo yacht…
McGregor choosing colors for the new vessel, presumably it has yet to be built.
Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 Promotional Video
McGregor is all about Lamborghini cars – and maybe his rationale today is why not own a Lambo yacht.
Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 could be ready as soon as early 2021.
- The Barbarians Are Threatening Us!
The Barbarians Are Threatening Us!
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 22:20Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Now, as we enter the final month of the U.S. election, the expected climax to long-buried animosities is at hand. It is unlikely to be brief or decisive. The internal convulsions of the U.S. however, are one thing. But the implosion of social trust in the U.S. is radiating out, and its effects are radiating out across the globe. If the imprecarity of our times – compounded by the virus – is making us nervous and tense, it may be because we intuit that a way-of-life, a way-of-economics, too, is coming to its end.
The fear of social upheaval sows distrust. It can produce the spiritual state that Emile Durkheim called anomie, a feeling of being disconnected from society; a conviction that the world around one is illegitimate and corrupt; that you are invisible – a ‘number’; a helpless object of hostile repression, imposed by ‘the system’; a feeling that nobody is to be trusted.
Russian nineteenth century literature, including novels by Dostoevsky, chronicled how such feelings amongst the children of the Russian well-to-do could evolve into burning hatred. This hatred extended to nail-bombs hurled into smart cafés, in order “to see how the foul bourgeois will squirm in death agony”.
The West’s post-war era largely was defined by the ‘Woodstock’ generation: an era in which the rich (white) 20% of the globe lived in a consumer paradise of choice and over-consumption, whilst the 80% non-white, did not. That generation lived at a period of relative cultural cohesion and social stability – and rarely was called upon to make sacrifice or to endure hardship. It was the era of one ‘easy-decision’ after the other, building up to an ethos that put personal liberty above every other value, including social obligation.
The emerging generations of today, David Brooks argues in The Atlantic, “enjoy none of that sense of security. They grew up in a world in which institutions failed, financial systems collapsed, and families were fragile. Yet human beings need a basic sense of security in order to thrive, as the political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart puts it: their “values and behaviour are shaped by the degree to which survival is secure””.
“The values of the Millennial and Gen Z generations that will dominate in the years ahead are the opposite of Boomer values: not liberation, but security; not freedom, but equality; not individualism, but the safety of the collective; not sink-or-swim meritocracy, but promotion on the basis of social justice…
Distrustful people try to make themselves invulnerable, armour themselves up in a sour attempt to feel safe… start to see threats that aren’t there.”
Brooks does not fully elaborate, but he is hinting at a key generational schism that is little appreciated: Millennials and Gen Z still look to (a reformed) politics for solutions, but some in the successor generation, Gen X, simply want to burn-down the system wholly.
Here is the point: For the rest of the world – that 80% (with few exceptions) – there never was a stable post WW2 era of effortless over-consumption or institutional stability (except for a tiny slice of co-opted élites). For many, it was an era racked by conflict, personal, financial insecurity, and violence. Is it any surprise then, that their national consciousness became transformed? That new norms and beliefs, new values for what is admired and disdained arose? Power was renegotiated mostly amidst severe civil convulsion, not the calm of settled society.
Former Indian Ambassador, MK Bhadrakumar, writes:
“The disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991 was a geopolitical disaster for Russia. But the watershed event, paradoxically, prompted Moscow and Beijing, erstwhile adversaries, to draw closer together, as they watched with disbelief the United States’ triumphalist narrative of the end of the Cold War, overturning the order they both had regarded, despite all their mutual differences and disputes, as crucial for their national status and identities.
“The Soviet collapse resulted in great uncertainty, ethnic strife, economic deprivation, poverty, and crime for many of the successor states, in particular for Russia. And Russia’s agony was closely observed from across the border, in China. The policymakers in Beijing studied the experience of Soviet reforms, in order to steer clear of the “tracks of an overturned cart.”
“[Soon after, Xi Jinping spoke about the former Soviet Union]: In December 2012, he spoke of “political corruption,” “thought heresy,” and “military insubordination” as reasons for the decline of the Soviet Communist Party: “One important reason was that ideals and beliefs were shaken.” In the end, Mikhail Gorbachev just uttered a word, declaring the Soviet Communist Party defunct, “and the great party was gone just like that. In the end, there was not a man brave enough to resist, no one came out to contest (this decision).”
“A few weeks later, Xi revisited the topic and reportedly said … there was a complete denial of Soviet history, denial of Lenin, denial of Stalin, pursuit of historical Nihilism, confusion of thought; local party organisations were almost without a role. The military was not under the Party’s oversight. “In the end, the great Soviet Communist Party scattered like birds and beasts. The great Soviet socialist nation fell to pieces. This is the road of an overturned cart! …”
“In Xi’s words, “The Soviet Communist Party had 200 thousand members when it seized power; it had 2 million members when it defeated Hitler, and it had 20 million members when it relinquished power … For what reason? Because the ideals and beliefs were no longer there.”
“But where Putin and Xi Jinping come together… is their shared appreciation of China’s astonishing sprint to the ranks of an economic superpower. In Putin’s words, China “managed in the best possible way, in my opinion, to use the levers of central administration (for) the development of a market economy … The Soviet Union did nothing like this, and the results of an ineffective economic policy impacted the political sphere.”
David Brooks’ Atlantic essay is centred on America’s current collapse of social trust – trust, he says, is a measure of the moral quality of a society. His is, he says, an account of how, over the past few decades, America became “a more untrustworthy society… Americans today experience more instability than at any period in recent memory – fewer children growing up in married two-parent households, more single-parent households, more depression, and higher suicide rates”.
People today live in what the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called Liquid Modernity – all the traits that were once assigned to you by your community, you must now determine on your own: your identity, your morality, your gender, your vocation, your purpose, and the place of your belonging.
What Brooks does not address however, is how Americans’ distrust of each other, and for anyone other than themselves, being an empire, has impacted, more widely, on the geo-political order, and on perceptions of the proper management of economies – which in the case of Russia and China, are drawn from the experience of earlier convulsions of their own.
Distrust is spreading today faster than the Coronavirus.
Russia is de-coupling from Europe, because it no longer trusts Europe. A huge shift. Seventy-five years after the end of WW2, German militarism and nationalism is stirring — and its élites are once again targeting Russia:
“Berlin is ending the era launched by Gorbachev of a trusting and friendly relationship with Moscow. Russia, for its part, no longer expects anything from Germany, and therefore does not feel obliged to take into account its opinion or interests”, says the respected Moscow-based Carnegie bureau chief, Dmitri Trenin.
Russia is observing that Europe is in the process of constructing a western anti-Russian platform. The era that begun in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to be expiring. Yet, is this shift not a reflection of Europe’s own insecurities and social distrust, more than of some ‘threat’ that is emanating from Russia?
It is Germany – and Europe – that is going through metamorphose: The EU is experiencing its own deficit of trust. Populist and skeptic parties are on the rise. Contempt for insiders and for the Brussels élites is spiraling, as is suspicion toward anybody who holds authority. And as Brooks points out, nervous leaderships are prone “to see threats that aren’t there”.
The EU is deeply engaged in the attempt to reinvent itself as the torch-bearer of liberal and liberal-market values (absent the U.S.). The EU “wants to be stronger, more autonomous, and firmer”. And President Macron tells Europeans “they must root their belonging” in such values. He is attempting to rally Europe against the coming ‘age of empires’, thereby postulating that Europe should become a sort of ‘empire’ too, to compete and survive in the coming clash of the economic and tech giants.
The problem for Russia is two-fold:
It was Samuel Huntington, who writing in his Clash of Civilizations asserted that “the concept of a universal civilization helps justify Western cultural dominance of other societies and the need for those societies to ape Western practices and institutions.”
Well, firstly, Russia has for three centuries precisely refused the attempts to force her to ape western practices and institutions.
And the second is, does Europe exist now as a coherent, bounded entity? Clearly not. And that means that Germany paying more heed to the complaints and prejudices of states such as Poland. Europe must build cohesion, if it is to imagine itself as the up and coming ‘middle empire’. Hence Belarus.
Again, in a another sign of distrust ‘virus’ rippling its infection through the geopolitical space, this month, the Atlantic Council has highlighted how the ‘information space’ is allowing China to project the “China Story” – “i.e. to project [itself as] a positive image through storytelling in the media landscape, both domestic and abroad”. This is denounced as a cultural threat to the U.S. – the ‘threat’ of Chinese Discourse Power.
As U.S. convulsions and Covid combined tear down the credibility of the ‘old free market economics’ of Adam Smith and the Chicago School, is it any surprise that China’s and Russia’s own experience of economic and political turmoil has drawn them to the use of their central administration, rather than just markets, for the development of their economic enterprise ecosystem. Or, that they are messaging this approach to others.
Paradoxically the self-circulating, closed, national economy was, in any case, a western notion in the first place (should the Atlantic Council have not noticed).
In 1800, Johann Fichte published The Closed Commercial State. In 1827, Friedrich List published his theories of national economics which took issue with the ‘cosmopolitan economics’ of Adam Smith and JB Say. In 1889, Count Sergius Witte, an influential politician and Prime Minister in Imperial Russia, published a paper titled National Savings and Friedrich List, which cited the economic theories of Friedrich List and justified the need for a strong domestic industry, protected from foreign competition by customs barriers.
It is effectively the flip-side to the coin of Adam Smith. Russians, such as Sergei Glazyev, have been thinking about such things for years – and especially, since Russia was expelled from the G8.
Finally, the salient question is: Are all this scattershot of expressions of distrust now reciprocated on all sides, something ephemeral? Are they simply a reflection of uncertain and disquieting times? Or, are we witnessing the build-up of explosive distrust? Explosive distrust is not just an absence of trust, or a sense of detached alienation – it is an aggressive animosity and an urge to destroy.
Recall the experience of explosive distrust building in pre-revolutionary Russia:
“Anyone wearing a uniform was a candidate for a bullet to the head or sulfuric acid to the face. Country estates were burnt down (‘rural illuminations’) and businesses were extorted or blown up. Bombs were tossed at random into railroad carriages, restaurants, and theaters … Yet, instead of the pendulum’s swinging back, the killing grew and grew, both in numbers and in cruelty. Sadism replaced simple killing”.
“And how did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? The party leader, Paul Milyukov, declared that “all means are now legitimate … and all means should be tried”. When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader then in the Duma, Ivan Petrunkevich, famously replied: ‘Condemn terror? That would be the moral death of the party!’.
Well, explosive geo-political distrust is the belief that those states who disagree with you are not just wrong, but illegitimate and always threatening. They are the barbarians beyond the city walls.
- Coronavirus & Sanctions Have Plunged Iran's Currency To Lowest Level In History
Coronavirus & Sanctions Have Plunged Iran’s Currency To Lowest Level In History
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 22:00On Monday Iran announced it suffered its highest single-day death toll from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, with 272 confirmed dead, up from the 251 deceased from the disease the day before. The grim report also came alongside news that two senior government officials were infected – the head of Iran’s atomic energy organization as well as the country’s vice president.
Out of a total population of just over 80 million, Iran has tallied more than 508,000 confirmed cases and 29,070 total deaths as of Tuesday, however, the true number of cases has long been believed to be much higher, even in the millions according to prior estimates of President Rouhani.
Headlines of the record day for virus deaths plunged Iran’s currency to its lowest level ever. This also as there’s been a steady rise in daily cases, including 3822 new cases from the 24 hours of Saturday into Sunday, according to the AP.
Tehran file image The Islamic Republic remains the hardest hit country in the broader Middle East region, and early this year was the first to witness a major outbreak outside of China alongside Italy following discovery of the virus in Wuhan, China.
“Money exchange shops in Tehran sold the US dollar at 315,000 rials on Sunday, compared to what was 32,000 rials to the dollar at the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers,” AP notes.
And on Monday it slipped slightly further:
At the same time its spiraling currency, the rial, has been consistently falling to historic lows against the dollar, trading at 317,000 to the dollar on Tuesday afternoon London time, according to rial exchange site Bonbast.com. The greenback has gained 138% against the rial year-to-date.
Meanwhile, Iran’s leaders have blamed the United States for severely exacerbating the impact of the pandemic, essentially kicking the country while it’s already down, choking off even humanitarian and medical supplies via sanctions and threats against those willing to trade with Iran.
“Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine,” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted last week. “Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.”
Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine.
Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.
But conspiring to starve a population is a crime against humanity. Culprits & enablers—who block our money—WILL face justice. pic.twitter.com/n0fnXPNik8
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) October 8, 2020
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He charged that Washington is conspiring to starve the Iranian population in a “crime against humanity” and vowed that “Culprits & enablers—who block our money—WILL face justice.”
The statements came after the US Treasury unveiled sweeping sanctions on Iran’s already struggling financial sector, including eighteen banks, including one tied to Iran’s military.
In a new statement the head of Iran’s coronavirus task force warns that hospitals are overwhelmed: “We had not experienced this level of deterioration in the past seven or eight months… some hospitals are full and unable to admit new patients,” Masoud Mardani told Financial Times. “Continuation of this trend could lead to an eye-catching rise in the number of deaths.”
- Buchanan: Is War With China Becoming Inevitable?
Buchanan: Is War With China Becoming Inevitable?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 21:40Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
“The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border,” Secretary of State Michael Pompeo ominously warned on Friday.
He spelled out what he meant to commentator Larry O’Connor:
“The Chinese have now begun to amass huge forces against India in the north. … They absolutely need the United States to be their ally and partner in this fight.”
Pompeo had just returned from a Tokyo gathering of foreign ministers from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad,” the group of four democracies — U.S., Japan, Australia, India — whose purpose is to discuss major Indo-Pacific geostrategic issues.
Exactly what kind of “ally and partner” the U.S. is to be “in the fight” between India and China over disputed terrain in the Himalayan Mountains was left unexplained. We have no vital interest in where the Line of Control between the most populous nations on earth should lie that would justify U.S. military involvement with a world power like China.
And the idea that Japan, whose territorial quarrel with China is over the tiny Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, thousands of miles away, would take sides in a Himalayan India-China conflict also seems ludicrous.
Yet, tensions are rising between the U.S. and China, as the list of ideological, political and economic clashes continues to lengthen.
And there is a transparent new reality: China seems in no mood to back down.
When, after a year of demonstrations for greater democracy, the Hong Kong government failed to quell the uprising, Beijing stepped in and took control. The U.S.-led democracies that had been cheering on the Hong Kong marchers and protesters did nothing, and they have done nothing since to reverse Xi Jinping’s political coup but prattle on about “values.”
Lately, the democracies have been protesting, and rightly so, the inhumane treatment of the Uighur peoples in Xinjiang in China’s west.
Han Chinese have been moved into the region to swamp the local population of Turkic and Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs and bring about the demographic change Beijing desires. “Reeducation camps” have been established to cleanse Uighurs of their ethnic and religious identities and convert them into loyal and reliable Chinese Communists.
In a speech in late September, Xi declared that Beijing’s policy of eradicating the ethnic and religious identity of the minorities of Xinjiang through state-driven education has proven “totally correct.”
He vowed to imprint a Chinese identity “deep in the soul” of the peoples living there. “Our national minority work has been a success,” said Xi, “It must be held to for the long term.”
Xi makes no apology for — indeed, he is proud of — using state power to impose the state ideology upon the peoples he rules, and he openly repudiates our democratic values as inapplicable in his country.
Our rejection of China’s claims to virtually all of the reefs and atolls in the South China Sea is also being ignored. Beijing’s warnings grow louder and more pointed as the U.S. continues to send warships, the latest being the USS John McCain, close to islets claimed by China.
What is our strategy here? Are we prepared for a naval and air clash in these waters? What would be the U.S. strategic goal?
The Chinese are now responding angrily and defiantly to what they see as the provocations of sending high-level U.S. officials, and selling new weapons, to Taiwan, which China regards as its lost province.
Again, what is our purpose in playing the Taiwan card now?
If it is to provoke a fight, then are we prepared for a war in the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea? Do we think the Chinese will capitulate?
Is this being done to “stand up to China” before Nov. 3?
Which is the party here that is engaged in bluster and bluff and which is the party that seems deadly serious as it views its vital interests and territorial rights as challenged?
There has been talk of the Quad evolving into an Asian NATO that embraces the major democracies in the Indo-Pacific Theater.
But the essence of NATO is Article V, where the U.S. commits itself to treat an attack on any one of some 30 nations as an attack on us.
Is there anything like this in the cards?
Australia, Japan and the U.S. are not going to war with China over its border with India, or its ethnic concentration camps in Xinjiang, or its seizing Hong Kong and atolls in the South China Sea.
When this election is over, this country has to think through what we are and are not willing to fight China for.
Xi Jinping dismisses our concerns over Hong Kong and the Uighurs, and he appears willing to fight for Taiwan and for what Beijing holds in the South China Sea, rather than see it permanently lost.
Are we?
- Hawaii "Has Committed Suicide" – Local Rages "Hardly Anyone Is Sick, But We're All Broke"
Hawaii “Has Committed Suicide” – Local Rages “Hardly Anyone Is Sick, But We’re All Broke”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 21:20While we have grown used to the people (well, at least those who are capable for thinking for themselves) of Michigan and California complaining that the tyrannical COVID lockdown rules imposed by Governors Whitmer and Newsom are arbitrary and capricious (if not downright unconstitutional), it is less often we hear from those living on the beautiful islands of Hawaii.
For many ‘mainlanders’, the thoughts of a vacation to Hawaii (or anywhere but the apartment they have been suffering in for 7 months) are heavenly. However, as the following ‘rural Hawaiian’ exclaims in her Twitter thread, “Hawaii is committing suicide” with its “cargo-cult level bullshit” travel restrictions.
‘Mom Folding Laundry’ (@Folding_Laundry) begins her righteous rant as follows: “Guys… I cannot tell you how bad it is in Hawaii.”
They cancelled our flight without telling us.
It took an hour to get through the new security checkpoint. A guy there (a surgeon with an exemption) was telling the people to go ahead and arrest him.
We had to check into a hotel in Oahu overnight. We can’t leave the room because we are technically “quarantined.”
I have to fill out paperwork AGAIN to go from one island to our own.
This is BULLSHIT.
They think tourists are coming back in 4 days???)
Hawaii has committed suicide.
We may legit have to move. This is ridiculous .
In closing, I will say this:
Shut the fuck up about the “dangers of COVID.”
What is happening in Hawaii is some cargo-cult level, praying to the gods for deliverance from the “plague”, bullshit.
Hardly anyone is sick here.
But we are all broke.
At this point, I feel like the response to covid should have been managed at the federal level. This state to state bullshit is not working.
I am a goddamn American. I am entitled to the same rights as any other American .
I’m not even kidding that there were only like 50 people on our plane to Oahu from Seattle, and one of them [a surgeon] ended up yelling at airport security to go ahead and arrest him.
The state of Hawaii is trying to detain him – even though he has surgeries to give in the morning.
This man comes to Hawaii once a month to perform surgeries.
Every month.
They keep changing the regulations for entry.
The state or Hawaii is denying their citizens ACCESS TO MEDICAL TREATMENT via their constant changing of their rules.
This doesn’t even surprise me.
Many of us here in Hawaii use medical services that come from other islands, or even from the mainland.
Hawaii’s ridiculously overzealous travel restrictions are going to make it so that even FEWER doctors are available to serve the citizens
The veterinarian who sees my horse normally flies in from Oahu.
Until recently, he was the ONLY equine vet serving the island.
Our only pediatric psychiatrist on island works 1/2 time on another island.
These travel restrictions are not only cumbersome, but risk lives.
I’m currently walking my kid through creating her own account and filling out her own paperwork online.
She is 18. So she is required to have this.
They wouldn’t let me do both of us on MY phone.
She needs to do it on HER phone.
What 18yos without phones do, I do not know.
I have a doctoral degree, and struggled to figure this out.
My kid would not have figured it out without me.
The new travel requirements will trap Hawaii residents here as securely than if they were slaves.
And this is where people say I’m being hyperbolic… But at what point in the loss of your freedom do you speak up?
* * *
The thread prompted numerous sympathetic responses, included more than a few like this, signaling Trump’s support is on the rise…
Hang on – we’re working on getting our Aloha back! pic.twitter.com/n4Juiylj4B
— Deadly Clear (@DeadlyClear) October 12, 2020
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And finally, here is ‘mom folding laundry’ with some advice:
Home.
Finally.
Take my advice: do NOT come to Hawaii right now. It’s an utter disaster.,
— mom folding laundry (@folding_laundry) October 12, 2020
- A Bailout For Hollywood Stars Next? World's Largest Movie Chain Prepares For Bankrutpcy
A Bailout For Hollywood Stars Next? World’s Largest Movie Chain Prepares For Bankrutpcy
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 21:00In what may end up as the most poetic outcome of the covid crisis, one which has seen Hollywood’s starved-for-attention C-listers take their clothes off in hopes of
attracting attentionmaking a political stand for either wearing masks or supporting the one presidential candidate who has all but assured more nationwide lockdowns are coming (because scientists)…… Hollywood’s movie stars may be next in line for a taxpayer bailout.
What could precipitate such an outcome? Well, if the primary source of revenue for Hollywood – namely billions in annual box office revenue – is indefinitely shuttered, then movie studios and producers would have no choice but to apply a very major haircut to those $20 million checks they hand out to the star du jour.
Ironically, this is the outcome that appears increasingly likely and complies directly with Hollywood’s explicit demands for continued social and economic lockdowns. The reason: AMC Entertainment Holdings, also known as AMC Theaters, the largest movie theater chain in the world, is rapidly running out of cash and is considering “a range of options that include a potential bankruptcy to ease its debt load as the pandemic keeps moviegoers from attending and studios from supplying films” Bloomberg reports.
In advance of what may be the biggest movie chain bankruptcy in history, lenders to AMC – who have hired Gibson Dunn as legal advisor and bankruptcy experts Greenhill & Co as bankers – have held preliminary talks among themselves about providing the movie-theater company with financing if it decides to file for Chapter 11 court protection, according to Bloomberg sources. And while the fresh cash would keep AMC in business while it crafts a recovery plan, absent a wholesale return to normalcy – which is unlikely until well into 2021 after there is not only a vaccine but a majority of the population is willing to get vaccinated – any liquidity injection would merely kick the can for a few months.
AMC’s attendance since the resumption of business in the U.S. is down about 85% from the same period a year ago, the company said.
It’s not just AMC: last week UK cinema chain Cineworld suspended operations because business is not viable as virus restrictions stand. Indeed, cinema chains are facing a chicken-and-egg problem with no near-term solution: As local capacity restrictions and audience skittishness keep U.S. theaters largely empty, studios are delaying most of their major film releases into 2021 and beyond, which gives consumers still less reason to buy tickets.
In short, as Rabobank’s Michael Every said recently, “the movie industry – how we watch them, and so the money for how they are made, if they are made – could be dying, indicative of a whole key slice of the service-sector economy.”
And while the situation “remains fluid and plans could change” according to the report, what really matters – at least to Hollywood – is that ticket sales have cratered because state and local officials are urging moviegoers to stay home. Ironically, so do Hollywood’s own stars.
But in a delightful moment of poetic justice, this may be one of those times when Hollywood’s tiresome, grating virtue signaling finally comes back to bite it in the ass, and cause major monetary harm to the A (and B and C) listers. In fact, we wouldn’t be shocked if Hollywood demands a taxpayer bailout next just to keep those $20 million checks to the lead actors coming. Alas, in light of the total collapse in NFL, NBA and MLB viewership now that these organizations have also gone full-retard political activist, something which increasingly disgusts at least half of America, we doubt many, if any, taxpayers will line up to ensure that Hollywood’s liberals can afford to pay the property taxes on their $50 million mansions… although we are certain that those who pay no taxes will be most vocal in commiserating with Hollywood’s dire plight.
- White House Approves Three Arms Sales To Taiwan As China's 'Retaliation' Threats Escalate
White House Approves Three Arms Sales To Taiwan As China’s ‘Retaliation’ Threats Escalate
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 20:40Multiple sources have told Reuters that the Trump administration is proceeding with the sale of three weapons packages to Taiwan, a move resulting in a formal threat of retaliation based on statements of the Chinese embassy in D.C.
This follows September reports that the US was looking at no less than seven different weapons systems to Taiwan, and now Congress has been officially notified about three of these by the White House.
They include long-range missiles made by Boeing, a Lockheed Martin produced truck-based rocket launcher, and external sensor pods for F-16 fighter jets. These are expected to be the first of more to come.
Taiwan military drills, file via Reuters Reuters further hinted at what may be next for State Department approval:
Notifications for the sale of other weapons systems, including large, sophisticated aerial drones, land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles and underwater mines, to deter amphibious landings, have yet to reach Capitol Hill, but these were expected soon, the sources said.
Predictably this was immediately met with a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson slamming the arms transfers as a violation of China’s sovereignty and security, and a further call for the deals to be immediately canceled, accompanied by a vow of “retaliation” – though without specifying the form that would take.
At last week’s annual US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, which was reported as taking place virtually, US officials had urged the Taipei to approve more for defense spending.
In comments at a separate event last week, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said, “You can’t just spend 1 percent of your GDP [gross domestic product], which the Taiwanese have been doing – 1.2 percent – on defense, and hope to deter a China that’s been engaged in the most massive military build up in 70 years.”
O’Brien proffered a strategy that militarily Taiwan needs to “turn themselves into a porcupine” because ultimately “Lions generally don’t like to eat porcupines.”
- Pelosi Slams CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "You're Always An Apologist For Republicans"
Pelosi Slams CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “You’re Always An Apologist For Republicans”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 20:32The world just turned upside-down for a few glorious minutes when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer removed his anti-Trump activist mask and dared to ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi some uncomfortable questions.
The conversation about why the Democrats refused to accept the $1.8 trillion COVID Relief bill offered by The White House quickly turned ugly when Blitzer brought up the following tweet from one of her own – Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna…
People in need can’t wait until February. 1.8 trillion is significant & more than twice Obama stimulus. It will allow Biden to start with infrastructure. Obama won in 08 by doing the right thing on TARP instead of what was expedient. Make a deal & put the ball in McConnell court. https://t.co/qAEtd049sW
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 11, 2020
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Pelosi grinned awkwardly, then unleashed on the bearded reporter:
“I don’t know why you’re always an apologist and many of your colleagues are apologists for the Republican position… Ro Khanna, that’s nice. That isn’t what we’re going to do,” wagging her fingers in a matronly way.
She went on briefly reverting to talking points about supporting “our heroes” by funding state and local governments, but in an uncharacteristic move, Blitzer refused to back off, “…there are million of Americans out there who can’t pay the rent, feed their kids and $1.8 trillion [is a lot]” adding that he’s also spoken with former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who said to take the deal, “it’s not everything you want, but there’s a lot there.”
Pelosi was rattled – this is what what she signed up for ….
“Honest to God, I really can’t get over it. Because Andrew Yang, he’s lovely. Ro Khanna, he’s lovely. They’re not negotiating this situation… they have no idea…“
and then said “I didn’t come over here so you’re the apologist for the Obama…” but before she could correct her mis-speak, Blitzer fired back by urging her to reach out to the president and make a deal.
“Why not work out a deal with [President Trump] and don’t let the perfect as they say here in Washington, be the enemy of the good?”
That was the tipping point and Angry Nancy was exposed…
“What makes me amused if it weren’t so sad is how you all think that you know more about the suffering of the American people than those of us who are elected by them to represent them at that table... It is unfortunate that we do not share our values with this White House.”
More talking points gushed forth, not addressing any of the issues that Blitzer dared to utter. Pelosi exclaimed:
“With all due respect, and we’ve known each other a long time, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. . . Do a service to the issue and have some level of respect for the people who have worked on these issues, written the bill to begin with.”
The cage-match ended even more stunningly as Blitzer and Pelosi spoke over each other, fighting for the last word…
“Madam speaker, these are incredibly difficult times right now and we’ll leave on that note,” Blitzer said.
“No, we’ll leave it on the note that you’re not right on this, Wolf, and I hate to say that to you,” Pelosi responded,
Pelosi refused to allow Blitzer – the anhcor of the show – the final word on his show:
“Thank you for your sensitivity to our constituents’ needs,” Pelosi said with dry sarcasm.
“I am sensitive to them because I see them on the street begging for food, begging for money,” Blitzer said.
“Have you fed them? We feed them,” she snapped as the show ended…
Watch the full 10 minutes here…
CNN’S @wolfblitzer presses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump’s $1.8 trillion stimulus proposal and why she doesn’t agree with it. “They do not share our values,” Pelosi says. pic.twitter.com/AVHKZH21NA
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) October 13, 2020
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Did CNN just realize that if Trump loses, their viewership will truly go thru the floor?
- The Unholy Mix Of Porn And Crypto Yield-Farming: Meet Swag.Finance
The Unholy Mix Of Porn And Crypto Yield-Farming: Meet Swag.Finance
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 20:20Authored by Shuyao Kong via Decrypt.co,
Blockchain protocol Swag.Finance is turning Swag.live, Asia’s biggest adult chat and porn site, into a truly decentralized community – complete with its own DAO, governance token and yield farming.
In brief
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Blockchain protocol Swag.Finance is issuing its own tokens on Thursday to turn Swag.live, an Asia-focused porn site, into a truly decentralized community.
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625 million governance tokens will be issued, of which 25 million will be used for its DAO and 60 million will be distributed to community and influencers.
Liquidity mining meets the porn industry? Welcome to the future, baby: On Thursday, blockchain protocol Swag.Finance plans to turn Swag.live, an Asia-focused porn site, into a truly decentralized community – complete with its own DAO, governance token and yield farming.
Swag appears to be based in Taiwan and claims to be the largest adult chat site in Asia. It has some 4 million users and tens of thousands of content providers. On October 15, the platform will launch its native governance token, SWAG. A total 625 million governance tokens will be issued, of which 25 million will be used for its DAO and 60 million will be distributed to community and influencers. The rest will be distributed to the public through two events: a First Swap Event (FSE) and a Subsequent Swap Events (SSEs).
Swag is trying to fully decentralize.
SQUIRT and CREAM
What are these swaps and who is swapping with whom? The swaps are trading pairs on a decentralized exchange that permit users to do good old-fashioned yield farming. For instance, users can swap SWAG with USDC, or C.R.E.A.M on cream.finance while also earning extra SWAG tokens as rewards.
C.R.E.A.M ? Yeah. SWAG’s founder is believed to be the founder of cream.finance: Jeffery Huang, who is not only a crypto OG, but also brother of a famous Taiwanese singer Stanley Huang. Indeed, it’s possible that the SWAG project will help breathe a little life back into cream.finance, which has been on a downward trajectory of late.
Coins with benefits
Swag claims to be Asia’s largest adult chat site.
To encourage community participation, SWAG investors will have the perk of watching swag.live for free. It designed an incentive program called SQUIRT: Users who actively contribute to the platform through proposals, building, staking and problem-solving, are rewarded with either stablecoins or SWAG tokens based on rules set in the SQUIRT smart contract.
“I was watching porn on swag.live anyway. Investing in the token seems logical to me,” one anonymous investor told Decrypt.
“What’s the worst case? The worst case is that the token goes to zero, but I still get the chance to enjoy the platform.”
This is not the first time that the adult industry has used crypto, of course.
From early public blockchain pioneers such as Spankchain to Pornhub, which accepts crypto as a payment method, crypto has always had a love/love relationship with the adult industry. Its unique characteristics help the industry tackle issues such as privacy, payment and censorship.
But SWAG.Finance could be the first to DeFi-ify the adult entertainment industry. Whether it ultimately works though is still uncertain. Despite swag.live having been profitable since 2017, it has largely functioned as a centralized entity. To decentralize it through token distribution is the first baby step. Crypto and the adult industry’s love affair continues.
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- US "Geoblocks" BLS And Census Websites For Hong Kong Internet Users
US “Geoblocks” BLS And Census Websites For Hong Kong Internet Users
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 20:00The US has terminated access to two very important US federal websites for Hong Kong internet users, reported FT.
The Websites, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau, provide critical economic data for investors, is fueling continued tensions between Washington and Beijing over the semi-autonomous territory.
FT spoke with several US government agencies about the blocked websites for Kong Kong residents but received very little information about the ongoing situation.
A spokesperson at the Department of Labor, which includes the Bureau of Labor Statistics, declined to comment on the “security procedures” but said, “agencies began implementing geoblocks that included Hong Kong in January 2018.”
“That would mean the measures started more than two years before the US punished the Asian financial center in response to Beijing’s introduction in June of a tough security law for Hong Kong. The US maintained that the security law meant Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous from mainland China,” FT said.
Considering Hong Kong is one of the world’s most important financial hubs, the blocking of both websites is not helpful for analyst and investors working in the area, though many are still able to access the US government data via a virtual private network, Bloomberg, Eikon, or FactSet terminal.
Cliff Tan, a Hong Kong-based analyst and former head of East Asian global markets research at Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, told FT that access to both websites have been blocked for the last couple of months.
“Non-farm payroll data is arguably the most important economic statistic in the world,” Tan said.
He said his VPN works just fine to access the websites.
“I have a VPN but didn’t ever think I would need it in Hong Kong,” he said.
A US government source, with direct knowledge about the situation, said more US federal government websites are expected to be blocked as Washington no longer recognizes Hong Kong as autonomous from mainland China.
US Cyber Command told FT it began geoblocking federal websites in 2017 to protect military websites and ensure “network availability” worldwide. The cyber agency wasn’t able to comment on why certain civilian websites were geoblocked.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have been soaring under President Trump’s first term. The rift between both countries explode during the trade war and accelerated in 2020 following the virus pandemic. In July, Trump revoked Hong Kong’s special trading status after Beijing imposed national security law.
Tan summarizes the latest debacle: “If you interfere with information in a financial center, it’s like cutting off oxygen.”
- Rickards: We Destroyed The World's Greatest Economy For No Reason
Rickards: We Destroyed The World’s Greatest Economy For No Reason
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 19:40Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,
Everyone knew the second quarter of 2020 was going to be a disaster, and it was. The U.S. economy fell by 31.4% (annualized) in the second quarter.
But, the expectation was that we’d have a V-shaped recovery with a sharp bounce-back in the third quarter, a reopening of closed businesses, rehiring of the unemployed and a rising stock market.
But so far, the economy is not following the script laid out for it by the politicians and experts.
The stock market did rally, but that was mainly because the stock index components are heavily weighted to companies least affected by the pandemic including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet (Google), Facebook and Microsoft.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion of new money and backstopped money markets, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, foreign central banks and other facets of capital markets with direct purchases, guarantees or currency swaps.
Even at that, stocks have been struggling since hitting new highs on September 2.
And yes, there was growth in the third-quarter (the best estimate is that the economy will grow at about a 35% annualized rate, but we won’t have official figures until October 29).
The 35% third-quarter recovery was to be expected as Americans got back to work after the lockdown. That 35% rate might sound like the third quarter will basically make up for the second quarter, but it won’t.
Not as Good as It Sounds
The 35% gain is applied to the lower level of output resulting from the 31.4% loss. If you take 100 as a starting place, reduce it by 31.4% you get to a new level of 68.6. If you increase that level by 35% you get back to 92.6.
That still leaves you 7.4 percentage points in the hole, not counting the 5% drop in the first quarter. When you apply 7.4% to a $22 trillion economy, that means you still have $1.6 trillion of lost output on an annualized basis even after the 35% third-quarter recovery.
The V-shaped recovery looks more like an “L” with flattish growth beyond the third-quarter. Things will not necessarily get much better from there, and progress is very much in doubt.
The lockdown continues in many places. The virus has not gone away, and the caseload and fatalities continue to grow.
A second wave of layoffs has now begun as companies that were able to hang on thanks to Payroll Protection Plan loans find that the money has run out, and their businesses are still closed. They are now being forced to let go of workers who might have survived the first layoffs in March and April.
So the letter to describe the recovery isn’t a “V” or even an “L” but possibly a “W,” with another recession right around the corner.
Beyond the second wave of layoffs, there is a persistent problem of the long-term unemployed whose businesses are shut down or dead in the water with no prospect of any return of demand.
This is a combination of factors the economy has not seen since the 1930s. It’s worse than a technical recession, it’s a depression, and its effects will be felt for years, or even decades, to come.
When Will Output Return To 2019 Levels?
The U.S. will not regain 2019 output levels until at least 2022, and growth going forward will be even worse than the weakest-ever growth of the 2009–2020 recovery.
The post-2009 recovery produced only 2.2% growth. It was an L-shaped recovery. It was a real recovery, yet the output gap between the former trend and the new trend was never closed.
The U.S. economy suffered over $4 trillion of lost wealth based on the difference between the former strong trend and the new weaker trend.
That lost wealth was a serious problem for the U.S. before the New Great Depression. Now the prospect is for even lower growth than the weak post-2009 recovery.
The U.S. economy would have to grow 10% a year in 2021 and 2022 to return to 2019 levels of output.
First, is 10% growth even a reality? Past history says no.
Since 1943, U.S. annual real growth in GDP has never exceeded 10%. In fact, post-1980 recoveries averaged 3.2% growth. And since 1984, growth has never exceeded 5%.
So 10% is a very optimistic forecast to begin with. Here’s the problem:
Using 100 as a yardstick for 2019 output and assuming unrealistic back-to-back years of 10% real growth in 2021 and 2022, one still does not get back to 2019 output levels.
It would take the highest annual real growth in over 40 years, sustained for two consecutive years, to get close to 2019 output levels.
It’s far more realistic to assume real growth will be less than 10% per year. That puts the economy well into 2023 before reaching output levels last achieved in 2019.
Another “L”-shaped Recovery
The new recovery, far from the 10% growth discussed in the example above, may only produce 1.8% growth, even worse than the 2.2% growth before the pandemic.
It’s another L-shaped recovery, the second in a row. Now the bottom of the L is even closer to a flat line, and the output gap compared with the long-term trend is even greater.
All of this economic devastation was not caused directly by the virus. It was caused by the policy response to the virus, specifically the extreme lockdowns ordered by many state governors.
Was it all worth it? The likely answer is “no.”
90% of Lockdown Benefits at Only 10% of the Cost
Many top scientists agree that lockdowns don’t work. The virus will spread with or without a lockdown. Some measures make sense such as washing hands, keeping social distance and wearing masks in crowded spaces.
But there’s no evidence masks do any good at all when the wearer is alone, outdoors or at a reasonable distance from others.
We could have followed these basic rules and gotten 90% of the benefit of a lockdown at only 10% of the cost.
Those supporting lockdowns have ignored the costs of increased suicides, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and the depression and anxiety that result from lack of social interaction. There was never a good reason to close every bar, restaurant, salon, boutique and public space.
“We Destroyed the World’s Greatest Economy for No Good Reason”
Even the World Health Organization is coming out against lockdowns. Dr David Nabarro, the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, says:
We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method… We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.
We destroyed the world’s greatest economy for no good reason.
- Trump Scores With Independents As Suburban Women Lean Left
Trump Scores With Independents As Suburban Women Lean Left
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 19:20President Trump is closing the gap with former Joe Biden – scoring points with independent voters, while the former Vice President enjoys a healthy lead among suburban women, according to a recent poll by Zogby Analytics.
Overall, the poll has Trump leading Biden 46 to 43 in major battleground states – due in part to the fact that Zogby included third-party candidates Jo Jorgensen, Howie Hawkins and voters who are undecided.
“The race is close and is a far better representation when you include third parties,” said Jonathan Zogby, adding “Zogby Analytics will always include third parties in our polls. It’s a shame when you have a respected, intelligent woman as a party nominee, and the mainstream media is pretending she doesn’t exist. Now who is sexist? Don’t give us that business that ‘voting for a third party is a vote for Trump or Biden!’ So if you don’t fall in line with the duopoly you don’t have a voice? That’s not what the founders’ of our republic and Constitution ever intended to happen. Everyone has a voice: Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens”
“The contest is also close in battleground states, with Trump narrowly winning against Biden 46% to 43%, while Jorgensen received 7% and Hawkins 1%,” said Zogby.
The poll also revealed (via the Washington Examiner):
Positives for Trump in the survey:
- “The president is also coming back with independents,” though Biden still leads 39% to 34%.
- Trump is winning voters aged 30-49, 51% to 38%, and Generation X, 50% to 42%.
- 70% of swing voters who chose Barack Obama and then Trump in 2016 back the president.
Positives for Biden:
- Older voters choose him over Trump, 58%-38%.
- He’s winning the suburbs, 47% to 39%.
- Biden leads Trump among suburban women, 52% to 33%.
Yet, while Zogby conducts what appears to be minimally biased polls which includes a more realistic playing field (as people will write in third-party candidates), Rabobank’s Michael Every points out (and we noted earlier), polls can be wrong. Especially when it is harder and harder to find people who have the time and energy to answer a survey, a process that naturally leans towards the wealthier and more politically active.
As Pew research notes in a looong election note today, different polling agencies conduct their surveys quite differently; the barriers to entry in the field have disappeared; a poll may label itself “nationally representative,” but that’s not a guarantee that its methodology is solid; the real margin of error is often double that which is reported (and they are already quite large at +/- 3%); huge sample sizes sound impressive, but don’t mean much as this can mean cheap and problematic sampling; evidence suggests if the public hears a certain candidate is likely to win, they are less likely to vote; public estimates of policies are generally trustworthy, but estimates of who will win are less so; all good polling relies on statistical adjustment; not adjusting for education is a disqualifying shortfall (as we saw in 2016); more transparency on how a poll was taken is better; polling is not broken, despite 2016; the evidence for “shy” Trump voters is actually quite shy; yet a systematic miss in election polls is more likely than people think, especially on the electoral college outcome.
Every notes that RealClearPolitics‘ polling aggregator fails to include Zogby and Democracy Institute in their polling average benchmark.
* * *
In short, trust polls at your own risk.
- IMF Urges Governments To "Ensure Corporations Pay Fair Share Of Taxes"
IMF Urges Governments To “Ensure Corporations Pay Fair Share Of Taxes”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/13/2020 – 19:00In its latest batch of projections about the global economy, the International Monetary Fund has again projected a “deep recession” in 2020, which would be one of the worst annual plunges since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The report, released Tuesday, shows the agency expects global growth to plunge 4.4% this year, an upward revision of 0.8 percentage points compared with the June estimates in the World Economic Outlook report, said IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath. For 2021, the IMF sees world growth at 5.2%, down from June’s 5.4% projection.
h/t Bloomberg “The upward revision in the IMF’s 2020 growth forecast reflects in particular better-than-projected second-quarter growth in the U.S. and the euro area, a stronger-than-anticipated return to growth in China and signs of a more rapid recovery in the third quarter,” said Bloomberg.
h/t Bloomberg Ahead of today’s release, Bloomberg quoted Gopinath as saying:
“So we continue to project a deep recession in 2020 with global growth projected to be -4.4%. This is a small upgrade relative to our June numbers. We expect growth to rebound partially in 2021, coming back to 5.2 percent. However, with the exception of China, all advanced economies and emerging and developing economies, excluding China we are projecting output will remain below 2019 levels well into 2021. Therefore, we see that the recovery from this catastrophic collapse will likely be long and even highly uncertain,” she said.
In today’s report, Gopinath said that “the global economy is climbing out from the depths to which it had plummeted during the Great Lockdown in April… But with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to spread, many countries have slowed reopening and some are reinstating partial lockdowns to protect susceptible populations.”
She said the crisis is “far from over.” This year’s contraction will be the deepest since the Great Depression, with COVID-19 killing more than one million people and collapsing the global economy.
As we’ve explained in recent weeks, severe wealth inequality imbalances are developing, as the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer – the imbalance is directly connected with how governments and central banks distribute monetary and or fiscal stimulus, with much of it flowing to mega-corporations. IMF estimates at least 90 million people worldwide are set to fall into “extreme poverty” this year.
Gopinath wrote in the report that economic recoveries “everywhere face difficult paths back to pre-pandemic activity levels.”
The IMF said a speedy recovery in China had been a surprise, but warned the global rebound remains vulnerable to setbacks. It noted that “prospects have worsened significantly in some developing countries where infections are rising rapidly.”
“Preventing further policy setbacks,” the IMF said, “will require that policy support is not prematurely withdrawn.” It warned that sovereign debt loads are set to rise sharply:
“The global easing of monetary policy, while essential for the recovery, should be complemented with measures to prevent build-up of financial risks over the medium term, and central bank independence should be safeguarded at all costs. Needed fiscal spending and the output collapse have driven global sovereign debt levels to a record 100 percent of global GDP,” the report said.
As analysts on Wall Street reasses whether a Biden victory and Democratic Senate sweep would truly be such a negative for the market, the IMF has highlighted the importance of keeping the money tap flowing – at least in the near term.
“While low interest rates alongside the projected rebound in growth in 2021 will stabilize debt levels in many countries, all will benefit from a medium-term fiscal framework to give confidence that debt remains sustainable. In the future, governments will likely need to raise the progressivity of their taxes while ensuring that corporations pay their fair share of taxes, alongside eliminating wasteful spending,” the report said.
That wording seems extremely similar to Democratic Party talking points…
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