- Finland Will Lobby The EU To Give Nuclear Power "Sustainable" Status
Finland Will Lobby The EU To Give Nuclear Power “Sustainable” Status
It looks as though Finland is starting to come back around to the idea of nuclear power – and that they plan on taking their advocacy for the clean energy to the European Union. The country will now lobby the EU for a “sustainable” label on nuclear power.
The EU’s decision on whether or not nuclear is “sustainable” has yet to be made. Despite the fact that plants are emission free, “nuclear is currently considered only a low-carbon energy source due to emissions caused by mining and transport,” Euractive wrote this week.
Finland’s fifth nuclear plant is nearing completing after years of delays, the report notes. Nuclear remains an important energy source for the country, which has a target of being carbon neutral by 2035. Nuclear currently accounts for 30% of the country’s power.
Finland’s government lobbying nuclear as a clean source of energy “marks a near U-Turn” in the green party, Euractive writes. The party has been traditionally “fiercely anti-nuclear” and has resigned from previous governments over the issue, the report says.
Now, it’s views have become “more pragmatic”.
Recall, yesterday, we published on uranium, which we have been recommending since December 2020.
We pointed out that the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust has emerged as a powerful buyer of physical uranium, which in a market as illiquid as uranium, would serve as a powerful catalyst to move prices of both the underlying commodity and various producers sharply higher.
We also noted how hedge funds were starting to pour into uranium.
The difference this time from other uranium pops, we wrote, is that finally the institutions are waking up to what could be a historic surge, especially if the fake ESG lobby starts dumping the bloated FAAMG names and seeks refuge in such “soon to be green” sectors as uranium. Incidentally, the entire Uranium sector is a tiny fraction of Apple’s market cap.
And while Finland is just a tiny brick in the wall in terms of additional adoption, they represent the obvious direction for energy lobby to eventually focus their efforts on.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/14/2021 – 02:45 - French Finance Minister Issues Declaration Of Independence… From the US
French Finance Minister Issues Declaration Of Independence… From the US
Authored by John V. Walsh via AntiWar.com,
“Clear Differences Remain Between France and the U.S, French Minister Says,” is the headline to a remarkable piece appearing in the New York Times this week. The Minister, Bruno Le Maire, is brutally frank on the nature of the differences as the quotations below Illustrate. In fact, they amount to a Declaration of Independence of France and EU from the US.
It is not surprising that the differences relate to China after the brouhaha over the sale of US nuclear submarines to Australia and the surprising (to the French) cancellation of contracts with France for submarines. Mr. LeMaire, sounding very much like a reproving parent, characterized this as “misbehavior from the US administration.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire (L) with President Emmanuel Macron, AFP Mr. LeMaire made it crystal clear that the disagreement over submarines is symptomatic of deeper differences in world view that have emerged not only in France but in the EU as a consequence of China’s rise. The NYT article states:
“‘The United States wants to confront China. The European Union wants to engage China,’ Mr. Le Maire, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron of France, said in a wide-ranging interview ahead of the (IMF) meetings. This was natural, he added, because the United States is the world’s leading power and does not ‘want China to become in a few years or in a few decades the first superpower in the world.
“Europe’s strategic priority, by contrast, is independence, ‘which means to be able to build more capacities on defense, to defend its own view on the fight against climate change, to defend its own economic interest, to have access to key technologies and not be too dependent on American technologies,’ he said.”
The article continued, quoting the Finance Minister:
“The key question now for the European Union, he said, is to become ‘independent from the United States, able to defend its own interests, whether economic or strategic interests.’”
LeMaire might have pre-ambled that statement with: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The fallout between France & AUKUS states has created awkwardness in the #IndoPacific. Australia will need to bridge the trust deficit that joining the #AUKUS has created with its European allies. @PremeshaSaha & @rahulkamath23 write. https://t.co/U9AHB0i2X4
— ORF (@orfonline) October 13, 2021
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Still, seasoned diplomat that Mr. LeMaire is, he provided some cold comfort to the naughty US administration, saying, the United States remains “our closest partner” in terms of values, economic model, respect for the rule of law, and embrace of freedom. But with China, he said, “we do not share the same values or economic model.”
The article continued:
“Asked if differences over China meant inevitable divergence between the United States and Europe, Mr. Le Maire said, ‘It could be if we are not cautious.’ But every effort should be made to avoid this, which means ‘recognizing Europe as one of the three superpowers in the world for the 21st century,’ alongside the United States and China.”
The piece concluded;
“One of the biggest lingering points of contention is over metal tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed globally in 2018. Officials face difficult negotiations in coming weeks. Europeans plan to impose retaliatory tariffs on a range of US products as of Dec. 1, unless Mr. Biden pulls back a 25 percent duty on European steel and a 10 percent tax on aluminum.
“‘If we want to improve the bilateral economic relationship between the continents, the first step must be for the United States to lift the sanctions in the steel and aluminum case,’ Mr. Le Maire said. ‘We are fed up with the trade wars,’ he added.”
Shared values are nice, but shared profits are clearly better.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/14/2021 – 02:00 - The Great New Normal Purge
The Great New Normal Purge
Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,
So, the Great New Normal Purge has begun … right on cue, right by the numbers.
As we “paranoid conspiracy theorists” have been warning would happen for the past 18 months, people who refuse to convert to the new official ideology are now being segregated, stripped of their jobs, banned from attending schools, denied medical treatment, and otherwise persecuted.
Relentless official propaganda demonizing “the Unvaccinated” is being pumped out by the corporate and state media, government leaders, health officials, and shrieking fanatics on social media. “The Unvaccinated” are the new official “Untermenschen,” an underclass of subhuman “others” the New Normal masses are being conditioned to hate.
You can see the hatred in the New Normals’ eyes …
But it isn’t just a purge of “the Unvaccinated.” Anyone deviating from the official ideology is being systematically demonized and persecuted. In Germany, Australia, and other New Normal countries, protesting the New Normal is officially outlawed. The New Normal Gestapo is going around to people’s homes to interrogate them about their anti-New Normal Facebook posts. Corporations are openly censoring content that contradicts the official narrative. New Normal goon squads roam the streets, checking people’s “vaccination” papers.
And it’s not just governments and corporations carrying out the New Normal Purge. Friends are purging friends. Wives are purging husbands. Fathers are purging children. Children are purging parents. New Normals are purging old normal thoughts. Global “health authorities” are revising definitions to make them conform to New Normal “science.”
And so on … a new official “reality” is being manufactured, right before our eyes. Anything and anyone that doesn’t conform to it is being purged, unpersoned, memory-holed, erased.
None of which should come as a surprise.
Every nascent totalitarian system, at some stage of its takeover of society, launches a purge of political opponents, ideological dissidents, and other “anti-social deviants.” Such purges can be brief or open-ended, and they can take any number of outward forms, depending on the type of totalitarian system, but you cannot have totalitarianism without them.
The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal … the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.
Thus, each new totalitarian system, at some point in its evolution, needs to launch a purge of those who refuse to conform to its official ideology. It needs to do this for two basic reasons: (1) to segregate or otherwise eliminate actual political opponents and dissidents who pose a threat to the new regime; and (2) and more importantly, to establish the ideological territory within which the masses must now confine themselves in order to avoid being segregated, or eliminated.
The purge must be conducted openly, brutally, so that the masses understand that the rules of society have changed, forever, that their former rights and freedoms are gone, and that from now on any type of resistance or deviation from official ideology will not be tolerated, and will be ruthlessly punished.
The purge is usually launched during a “state of emergency,” under imminent threat from some official “enemy” (e.g., “communist infiltrators,” “counter-revolutionaries,” or … you know, a “devastating pandemic”), such that the normal rules of society can be indefinitely suspended “for the sake of survival.” The more terrified the masses can be made, the more willing they will be to surrender their freedom and follow orders, no matter how insane.
The lifeblood of totalitarianism is fear … fear of both the system’s official enemy (which is constantly stoked with propaganda) and of the totalitarian system itself. That the brutality of the system is rationalized by the threat posed by the official enemy doesn’t make it any less brutal or terrifying. Under totalitarian systems (of any type or scale) fear is a constant and there is no escape from it.
The masses’ fear is then channeled into hatred … hatred of the official “Untermenschen,” whom the system encourages the masses to scapegoat. Thus, the purge is also a means of allowing the masses to purge themselves of their fear, to transform it into self-righteous hatred and unleash it on the “Untermenschen” instead of the totalitarian system, which, obviously, would be suicidal.
Every totalitarian system — both the individuals running it and the system, structurally — instinctively understands how all this works. New Normal totalitarianism is no exception.
Just reflect on what has happened over the last 18 months.
Day after day, month after month, the masses have been subjected to the most destructive psychological-terror campaign in the history of psychological terror. Sadly, many of them have been reduced to paranoid, anus-puckering invalids, afraid of the outdoors, of human contact, afraid of their own children, afraid of the air, morbidly obsessed with disease and death … and consumed with hatred of “the Unvaccinated.”
Their hatred, of course, is utterly irrational, the product of fear and propaganda, as hatred of “the Untermenschen” always is. It has absolutely nothing to do with a virus, which even the New Normal authorities admit. “The Unvaccinated” are no more of a threat to anyone than any other human being … except insofar as they threaten the New Normals’ belief in their delusional ideology.
No, we are way past rationality at this point. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism. Not “communism.” Not “fascism.” Global-capitalist totalitarianism. Pseudo-medical totalitarianism. Pathologized totalitarianism. A form of totalitarianism without a dictator, without a definable ideology. A totalitarianism based on “science,” on “fact,” on “reality,” which it creates itself.
I don’t know about you, but, so far, it has certainly made quite an impression on me. So much so that I have mostly set aside my satirical schtick to try to understand it … what it actually is, why it is happening, why it is happening now, where it is going, and how to oppose it, or at least disrupt it.
The way I see it, the next six months will determine how successful the initial stages of the roll-out of this new totalitarianism will be. By April of 2022, either we’ll all be showing our “papers” to the New Normal Gestapo to be able to earn a living, attend a school, dine at a restaurant, travel, and otherwise live our lives, or we will have thrown a monkey wrench into the machinery. I do not expect GloboCap to abandon the roll-out of the New Normal over the longer term — they are clearly committed to implementing it — but we have the power to ruin their opening act (which they’ve been planning and rehearsing for quite some time).
So, let’s go ahead and do that, shall we? Before we get purged, or unpersoned, or whatever. I’m not sure, as I haven’t seen a “fact-check” yet, but I believe there are some commercial airline pilots in the USA who are showing us the way.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/14/2021 – 00:05 - Victoria "F*ck The EU" Nuland Is In Moscow Negotiating The Status Of Ukraine's Donbass
Victoria “F*ck The EU” Nuland Is In Moscow Negotiating The Status Of Ukraine’s Donbass
Look who’s back in Eastern Europe – this time forced to deal directly with the Kremlin after a half-decade of military and political stalemate in war-torn eastern Ukraine. Victoria “F*ck The EU” Nuland is currently in Moscow for high-level talks with top Russian officials. Among multiple tense issues, there’s reportedly been progress on the situation in eastern Ukraine, related to working out a potential lasting political settlement leading to the cessation of violence there.
As Biden’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Nuland kicked off three days of talks Tuesday and into Wednesday with Yury Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to Putin. Interestingly the Kremlin agreed to a temporary lifting of travel sanctions against her just to enter the country for the meeting.
Nuland leaving the Russian Foreign Ministry after meeting with the deputy foreign minister in Moscow on October 12, via AFP After initial meetings, Nuland hailed “the frank, productive review” of US-Russia relations, noting that the two sides are “committed to a stable, predictable relationship,” according to a US Embassy statement. On Tuesday after her arrival she had met with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, reportedly for more than an hour-and-a-half.
The US side has indicated “no breakthroughs” in US-Russia relations as of yet, which comes after a year of sanctions and counter-sanctions targeting diplomats and mutual restrictions on media entities. It’s among the highest level meetings since Putin and Biden’s June summit in Geneva where the two leaders pledged better, frank and open communication – given Nuland is the number three highest official at the State Department.
While the American delegation hasn’t commented to this level of specifics, Russian media is citing Kremlin deputy chief of staff Dmitry Kozak as saying after Wednesday meetings that “A thorough and constructive dialogue took place regarding the settlement of the conflict in south-east Ukraine.”
Kozak told the top daily newspaper Kommersant that there’s general agreement over mutual recognition of special autonomy for Donbass – where the Russia-backed, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic have been in a military stalemate with Ukrainian national forces for the past six years:
“It was confirmed that the Minsk agreements remain the only basis for a settlement,” he continued. “During the talks, the US confirmed its position… that significant progress towards the settlement of the conflict is unlikely without any agreement on future parameters of Donbass autonomy.
In other words, giving the region a special status within Ukraine.”
The reference is to the 2014 peace plan for eastern Ukraine signed by Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with the mediation also of France and Germany. It’s still considered the only agreed upon basis for any future negotiations and settlement to the still “on hold” conflict.
👇first comment from the US Embassy Moscow on how Victoria Nuland’s meetings in Russia are going so far. https://t.co/13xqLFTIYB
— Mike Eckel (@Mike_Eckel) October 13, 2021
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Commenting on the irony of Nuland – one of the very officials responsible for destabilizing Ukraine in the first place with an obvious agenda to strike at Russia’s influence – now eagerly joining Russian officials at the table in Moscow to talk “peace”, geopolitical analysis site SouthFront recalls:
As a senior state department official, Nuland took an active part in what transpired in Ukraine back in 2014, namely the Euromaidan. She visited Kiev on several occasions during the height of the protests.
From 2019 onwards she’s been entirely banned from entering Russia. Her visit on October 11th was completely at the initiative of the American side.
Nuland who was a part of the “very successful” destabilization efforts in Kiev is now being sent to Moscow in order to foster “stable and predictable” relations.
But also looming perhaps larger in the background is Russia and China’s growing closeness on a multitude of fronts:
The developments in Ukraine, as well as in Afghanistan or in the Middle East, are only a pretext for the meeting. The recent US-China tensions and the energy crisis are a much more significant focal point.
The United States is attempting to take advantage of the energy crisis, as China is one of its main victims. Washington is doing its best to inflict competitive damage to Beijing and to strengthen its own position. Improving on its competitive advantages over the EU comes as an added bonus.
China, for its part, is drawing closer to Russia, as it has no other choice. As a result of Nord Stream 2, and the United States proving to France, and earlier to Afghanistan, that it is a disloyal “ally”, the EU is likely to grow “fonder” of Russia. This is a worrisome development for Washington in both of these cases.
Indeed just last Friday Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian issued rare statements on the Nord Stream 2 controversy, stepping firmly into Moscow’s corner.
Russia and US to continue talks if status of Donbass agreed, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Dmitry Kozak said:https://t.co/ao9fAyOYcu pic.twitter.com/T7r4BTx9i8
— TASS (@tassagency_en) October 13, 2021
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“It is well-known that the Nord Stream 2 project shows energy complementarity between Russia and Europe, and would help resolve the European energy crisis,” Zhao said during those last Friday remarks defending Russia.
“The U.S., however, to serve its own geopolitical interests and monopolize the European energy market, spares no effort in disrupting and hobbling relevant projects to undermine the interests of Russia and Europe and their cooperation. This wins no support,” the official said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 23:45 - Beijing Is Trapped: China Producer Prices Surge At Fastest Pace In 26 Years
Beijing Is Trapped: China Producer Prices Surge At Fastest Pace In 26 Years
China’s factory-gate prices grew at the fastest pace in almost 26 years in September, adding to global inflation risks and putting pressure on local businesses to start passing on higher costs to consumers.
The producer price index climbed 10.7% from a year earlier, the highest since November 1995, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Thursday, far higher than the 9.5% gain in August and hotter than the 10.5% expected.
On the other hand, consumer prices rose 0.7% last month from a year earlier, lower than a 0.8% gain in the previous month., but Bloomberg notes that for now consumer inflation remains in check because of falling pork prices, even though the removal of most virus controls by the end of September may have helped to boost household spending.
“The widened gap between PPI and CPI means greater pressure for upstream sectors to pass on rising costs to the downstream,” said Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance Securities Hong Kong.
And, as we previously warned, the situation is about to get much, much more serious. If the historical correlation between Coal prices and PPI holds, were may be soon looking at a tripling of China’s PPI, which from 10.7% Y/Y in September, is about to soar to 30% or more.
Needless to say, if Chinese PPI does hit 30%+, even if CPI somehow stay in the single digits, the results would be catastrophic: profit margins would collapse, the plunge in already thin cash flows would lead to even more defaults and supply chain bottlenecks, even as the scramble to obtain commodities “at any price” keeps pushing costs – and PPI – even higher.
Meanwhile, if producers do try to pass on some of the costs and CPI spikes (the gap between CPI and PPI was already at record wide before the recent surge in coal prices) as it did in the early 90s…
… then Beijing will have social unrest on its hands.
There are early signs that producers are starting to pass on higher costs to consumers: the largest soy sauce maker in the country said this week it plans to raise retail prices of its products. At least 13 companies listed on China’s A-share market have announced price hikes this year to address rising costs and tight supply, China Securities Journal reported Thursday.
And all this is happening as China’s property sector desperately needs a massive liquidity infusion which is – you guessed it – inflationary.
And while China may be facing its first “galloping inflation” PPI print since the early 90s, it’s only downhill from there, because as Citigroup wrote over the weekend, power cuts (with over 20 provinces, making up >2/3 of China’s GDP, have rolled out electricity-rationing measures since August) and contractionary PMI “seem to suggest China could enter into at least a short period of stagflation.”
“We think the risk of stagflation is rising in China as well as the rest of the world,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd.
“Persistent inflationary pressure limits the potential scope of monetary policy easing.”
And so, Beijing is now trapped: if it eases, inflation – already at nosebleed levels – will soar further crushing margins and sparking a deep stagflationary recession; if it does not ease, the property market – already imploding – will crater.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 23:25 - Putin Blasts Accusations Russia Is Weaponizing Natural Gas As "Politically Motivated Blather"
Putin Blasts Accusations Russia Is Weaponizing Natural Gas As “Politically Motivated Blather”
In Wednesday remarks aimed at Western press, President Vladimir Putin shot down accusations that Russia weaponizing its supplies of natural gas in order to pressure German regulators to quickly approve switching on the taps for the recently completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
He dismissed recent reports accusing the Kremlin of withholding gas supplies to Europe as “politically motivated blather with nothing to support it”. The statements were given to CNBC in Moscow as part of the annual Russian Energy Week major industry event, with Putin bluntly saying in response, “We are not using any weapons.”
The Russian leader added that “Even during the hardest parts of the Cold War Russia regularly has fulfilled its contractual obligations and supplies gas to Europe,” according to the US news network’s translation.
Via kremlin.ru Last week as Nord Stream 2 critics led by US officials alleged that the Russia-to-Germany pipeline will essentially hold Europe’s energy needs hostage to Russian geopolitical whims, Putin instead pointed to Europe’s ongoing energy market “hysteria” and crisis as being fundamentally a result of the ‘green transition’ coupled with corresponding low investment in the extraction industries.
In the Wednesday remarks he re-emphasized that there’s “nothing to support it [the idea] that we use energy as a kind of weapon,” but instead the reality is that Russia is busy “expanding its supplies to Europe.” In support of this statement he alluded to state-run Gazprom actually increasing its natural gas flow to Europe by 15% over the first nine months of this year. He added that Russia stands ready to increase its supply if that’s what Europe needs and asks for.
“Higher gas prices in Europe are a consequence of a deficit of energy and not vice versa and that’s why we should not deal in blame shifting, this is what our partners are trying to do,” Putin said during the panel conversation. He again invoked Europe’s green agenda as playing a big part in its energy costs soaring just ahead of winter:
“You see the problem does not consist in us, it consists in the European side, because, first, we know that the wind farms did not work during summer because of the weather, everyone knows that. Moreover, the Europeans did not pump enough gas into their underground gas facilities… and the supplies to Europe have decreased from other regions of the world.”
On oil, elsewhere in the conversation he noted that OPEC+ “is doing everything to ensure that the oil market is completely stabilized. We do not allow sharp price spikes and it is not in our interests.”
“The market has stabilized, but we have not yet reached the pre- crisis production level of 11 million barrels a day. And our position is to increase production in accordance with the growing needs of the market,” the Russian president said.
And then there was this exchange during the panel conversation:
When asked whether oil could reach $100 a barrel, Putin said it’s “quite possible”…
“We do not seek to restrain production in such a way that prices skyrocket, as it happens in the gas market. We favor smooth and balanced movement.”
Gazprom too has been on the defensive in the face of the widespread natural gas restriction accusations coming out of Europe, particularly after last week gas supplies through Belarus to the EU were cut by 70%, according to the company’s data. And supplies via Poland too were slashed: “The new figures come after supplies via the Yamal pipeline, which runs from Russia via Belarus to Poland, fell by half last week,” EU Observer wrote.
“Analysts, such as US investment bank Goldman Sachs, have said the Yamal cuts could lead to higher gas prices in winter,” the report added.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently fired back that Gazprom has fulfilled its current obligations to the maximum extent possible under existing contracts: “Nothing can be delivered beyond the contracts. How? For free? It is a matter of negotiating with Gazprom,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 23:05 - Brandon Smith: If You Don't Respect My Freedoms, I Don't Respect Your Pronouns
Brandon Smith: If You Don’t Respect My Freedoms, I Don’t Respect Your Pronouns
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
No group in this world is above ridicule, and that includes the mentally ill. Just because the mentally ill become an organized mob does not mean they are a victim status group deserving of special protection or special treatment. The mentally ill are the LAST people on the planet that should be given the power to dictate the course of society. Madness is, in a way, infectious. Narcissism is poisonous. Psychopathy is radioactive. The majority of humans naturally discriminate against such people because every facet of our biology, every cell of our being warns us that if they are given an ounce of control, destruction will surely follow.
Human tribes and societies have understood this reality for thousands of years. Our repellent reactions to madness are ingrained in our cellular memory. Just as we instinctually recoil from snakes and spiders we have also learned over millennia to recoil from unhinged minds. But for some reason in the past 5-10 years we are being told to embrace the exact reverse. The insane are now above the rest of us. The insane must be worshiped. The insane are our leaders and role models. Biology is wrong, and the cultural Marxists and woke ideologues are right.
The new narrative is that truth tellers and rational people are the “insane” ones and they should be watched or possibly locked up.
I’ve been writing about political correctness and woke culture for a long time now, and I have to say that the developing trends of social justice are not surprising. However, the speed at which they are being forced on the rest of us today is disturbing. One has to wonder if the woke mob is in a rush to meet some kind of propaganda deadline the rest of us are not aware of.
The gender and “Trans” issues are really at the forefront of leftist ideology these days. If you have observed these people for any length of time you know all about the Oppression Olympics and the intersectional totem pole. And, you are also probably aware that people who claim to be trans earn an automatic spot at the top of that totem pole, well above women, black people, and even your run-of-the-mill gay people. The trans costume is the most powerful of all SJW costumes and imbues a person with unlimited protection no matter how terrible that person might be. It even allows them to dictate the very thoughts and speech of the public at large.
For example, there is a policy among western governments to allow male convicted criminals who claim to be trans women to be interned in women’s prisons. This allows them to rape female inmates at their leisure while claiming special status. Yet, according to the leftist media it is the men posing as women that are being “victimized” by guards and female inmates. In Britain, they are even passing a law which makes it a crime for prisoners to use the wrong pronouns when referring to a trans inmate.
It is important to note that the trans identity is a sort of magic ticket for white people in particular. The SJW cult is especially concerned with all white people (mainly white men) as some kind of monstrous threat to the safety and emotional stability of everyone else. If you are a white person within the SJW religion you are immediately hated for your original sin and are relegated to the leftist gutter. They despise your skin color, and no amount of help you give as an “ally” is going to earn you a place among the oh-so-holy oppressed.
Unless, that is, you say you are trans. Then, as if you have touched the pure hand of the SJW deity, you are suddenly absolved of all your inherent white evil and are given a mantle of divinity. You are better than everyone else, because you are supposedly the most oppressed of them all.
Maybe this sounds like a bit of exaggeration. Surely I am engaging in hyperbole. I promise you I am not. Western culture is being increasingly segregated by the political left into various tiers of people based on their skin color as well as their sexual orientations and mental instabilities, and the more made-up the orientations and the more volatile the mental instability the more privileges a person is afforded. The patients are truly taking over the asylum.
I am revisiting this subject because I have noticed a renewed uptick in aggression from leftists on the trans issue, and I suspect this is because they are starting to get more push-back from the public. The latest Dave Chappelle special on Netflix triggered the sensitive snowflakes again simply because Chappelle argues what most of us already know –That gender is a biological fact, not a social construct.
This has led to numerous angry demands on Twitter to have Chappelle kicked off Netflix and canceled in general. For now it seems as though these demands are being ignored, which is exactly what should be happening everywhere all the time.
Others, like author JK Rowling, have not been as lucky. And I suspect if Dave Chappelle was white it would be a different story.
Sometimes people in the middle of the totem pole can get away with criticizing another group in the progressive stack, but if you’re a straight white person there are no allowances.
Why are people that represent a tiny percentage of the population (around 0.3% or less) being given massive special attention and enjoying unprecedented legal regulations in their favor? Why are states like California going out of their way to force the public to accommodate the tiny trans minority, to the point of passing laws which make it an offense to have separate toy aisles for boys and girls, or trying to make it illegal to ignore a person’s preferred pronouns?
Again, it seems that leftists (mostly middle-class and rich white progressives) are creating a kind of ultimate victim pass – A way to climb to the top of the totem pole from the very bottom. All they have to do is loudly denounce biological gender and say they are “trans”, and like magic they become part of a new civil rights movement in which they are the righteous “freedom fighters” in a fake revolution for a fake cause.
Anyone that asserts conflicting viewpoints on the trans issue is usually met with accusations of bigotry and “transphobia.” After all, why should we care about the trans movement getting whatever it wants? Is it because we are prejudiced?
This is a gaslighting tactic among leftists to deter any criticism of their activities. For most people who argue against corporate marketing and government laws in favor of gender neutrality, our interest is in fighting against the propaganda and disinformation, not fighting against trans people in general.
There are some real transexual men and women out there that suffer from a disorder called “Gender Dysphoria.” It is an extremely rare condition; a mental illness that is mostly harmless to the rest of society but does cause a high rate of depression and suicide among those that have it. I don’t have any problem with these folks or their existence. What I do have a problem with is social justice Marxists exploiting gender dysphoria as a weapon in their ideological war to tear down western society and replace it with their own dystopian vision.
The issue here is not about actual trans people, but about respect for freedom of speech and thought. You see, every single facet of the leftist movement is about collectivism and control. They say they care about minorities and their well-being, but they are really just using them to further their own twisted political conquests. Whether we are talking about critical race theory or the transgender movement the end goal is always the same: The leftists want to put themselves in the position of arbiter over what speech is acceptable and what speech is not acceptable.
Once they are allowed to dictate what is and what is not “hate speech”, they then control ALL speech. Control is obviously the agenda rather than the defense of minorities; all you have to do is examine how they treat minorities that step out of line. Look at how they attack blacks like Dave Chappelle, classic feminists like JK Rowling, gay people like Dave Rubin or even trans conservatives like Blaire White. They are part of the precious totem pole, but as soon as any of these people leave the leftist plantation or speak contrary to the main agenda they are declared heretics and viciously excommunicated.
The purpose of the trans movement and the purpose of social justice overall is two-fold:
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The first purpose is to break down the foundations of western society and create chaos so that leftists can replace the existing culture with their own communist framework.
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The second purpose is to use supposed “victim groups” as a shield from any criticism of their agenda by controlling the language and labeling the people that oppose them as “intolerant.”
The battle over pronouns is indicative of this agenda because it requires the forced participation of everyone in the delusions of a minority of people with mental instability. It requires that I give respect to someone who hasn’t earned it and is not entitled to it, and call them whatever label they dictate I call them for however long they wish. And if I don’t, I am evil and should be punished by the state or by the mob.
Imagine if schizophrenics decided to join together into a movement to demand that the rest of society call them by whatever delusional persona they happen to fantasize about that day. A guy suddenly decides that on Monday he is Napoleon Bonaparte or Jesus Christ and I’m supposed to accommodate him or be called a bigot? There is really no difference between this and what the LGBTQ-whatever movement is demanding when it comes to their made-up pronouns.
I really don’t care if a person wants to declare themselves transgendered. That action by itself doesn’t really affect me and I hope it makes them happy. I think they should seek psychological help because if they really have gender dysphoria then they are statistically far more likely to commit suicide (and it’s not because society makes them commit suicide, there is no evidence to support that claim). Beyond that, as long as they don’t turn their sexual preferences into a political mob then there’s really no conflict. If I really like the person and they are respectful of my personal freedoms, I might even use their pronouns, who knows. Frankly, I don’t think any reasonable person would care about pronouns outside of their own biology.
The war arises when leftists and the trans people they exploit try to impose their ideology and their views on the rest of us. The fight is over freedom, not over trans people. If you want to control how I talk, how I think and how I live; If you don’t respect my freedoms then I don’t respect you. You are not owed or entitled to respect just because you were born or because you think you are special. You get respect by earning respect. You get respect for your actions, not your identity.
The world is not here to accommodate you or your pronouns. People are not here to adjust their speech to protect your feelings. Your feelings do not matter. Your pronouns do not matter. You will be measured by your accomplishments and by how much or how little you violate the rights of others. And if your goal is to manipulate or control how the rest of us speak or interact according to our natural biological preferences then perhaps you should start your own society somewhere else? Maybe somewhere far, far away…
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 22:45 -
- "Into The Trash It Goes": Snowden Slams CIA-Funded 'Encrypted' App Wicker
“Into The Trash It Goes”: Snowden Slams CIA-Funded ‘Encrypted’ App Wicker
In 1999, the CIA created In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment firm that invests in high-tech startup companies focused on increasing the capacity of US intelligence agencies. The fund has been notable for funding Google and Palantir at very early stages, bringing us to the latest possible investment into encrypted messaging platform Wickr.
Vice’s Motherboard was first notified by Jack Poulson, executive director of Tech Inquiry, about In-Q-Tel’s From 990 filed in the fiscal year ending in March 2020. The form details compensation paid to outside contractors and mentions a $1.6 payment to Wickr but doesn’t explain if it was an investment or a purchase order.
But deeper within the form, a section reads: “The hallmark of IQT’s strategic an agile model is the development effort—aka work program—where the company collaborates with the startup to tailor a company’s technology to specific government requirements and invests funds towards that work program.”
Motherboard spoke with Carrie Sessine, senior vice president of marketing and communications at In-Q-Tel, and asked more about the funds sent to Wickr.
“In-Q-Tel is a prolific strategic investor, making more than 50 investments each year. Our website features the majority of our portfolio investments. There will always be companies that are not announced publicly, which is common practice in the investment community. In-Q-Tel serves multiple agencies committed to national security including the CIA, FBI, NSA, NGA, NRO, DHS (specifically Customs and Border Protection), DIA, and Air Force,” Sessine said.
However, Wickr’s funding profile is nowhere to be found on In-Q-Tel’s public portfolio section on its website.
In June, Amazon Web Services announced it acquired Wickr. Amazon has been known to have cloud contracts with the CIA.
More questions than answers remain about In-Q-Tel’s $1.6 million injection into the end-to-end encrypted messaging app.
Interesting to note that the CIA had invested $1.6million into Wickr, the encrypted messaging software that organized crime groups used white labelled in Anom phone devices, later discovered to be a sting operation run with US Law Enforcement agencies.
— Hacker Fantastic (@hackerfantastic) October 12, 2021
Edward Snowden responds to Wickr’s CIA funding by tweeting: “Into the trash it goes.”
No, I don’t use Wickr. The point is that in 2021, you can’t credibly purport to provide a secure app when you
a) take money from the CIA and
b) literally give the CIA a seat on your board of directors.
ayfkm?
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 13, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 22:25 - Paradigm Shift? Aussie Cop Quits, Refuses To Enforce COVID Tyranny, Says "Majority" Of Cops Feel The Same
Paradigm Shift? Aussie Cop Quits, Refuses To Enforce COVID Tyranny, Says “Majority” Of Cops Feel The Same
Authored by Matt Agorist via The Free Thought Project,
A female officer with Victoria Police, who served for 16 years, has resigned in protest against the use of police to enforce Covid-19 rules, saying in an interview that a “great majority” of her colleagues shared her sentiments.
Acting Senior Sergeant Krystle Mitchell has appeared on The Discernible Interviews channel on YouTube on Friday, wearing her dark-blue uniform and revealing that she had been “troubled” by how police resources have been applied during the pandemic by state authorities.
Victoria Police has been tasked with making sure that people in one of Australia’s most populous states abide by the lockdown restrictions, and with curbing illegal protests against the health rules and vaccination mandates, which often turn violent, resulting in numerous arrests and accusations of police brutality. Melbourne, Victoria’s capital city, holds the world record for longest lockdown.
Mitchell, who had been working with the gender equality and inclusion command, said that “all of my friends that are police officers that are working the front line and are suffering every day enforcing CHO (Chief Health Officer) directions, that certainly the great majority don’t believe in and don’t want to enforce.”
The law enforcers were “scaring people in the community,” and she herself felt uneasy when encountering officers in the street while off-duty and wearing civilian clothes, she confessed.
Some rough behavior by the police during the pandemic might be partially explained by the enforcement approach taken by Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, Mitchell suggested.
“I think that the reason, or the issue, in why perhaps police [are] feeling more emboldened to act the way they are in relation to these harsher actions is because of the messaging that comes from Dan [Andrews],” who tells the law enforcers what to do “on a daily basis,” she said.
“The consequences of me being here today, is that I will be resigning from Victoria Police, effective the end of this interview because the consequences of me coming out publicly would be dismissal,” Mitchell announced.
I can’t remedy in my soul any more the way in which my organization, that I love to work for, is being used and the damage that it’s causing in the reputation of Victoria Police and .. to the community.
Victoria Police confirmed that Mitchell used to be one of their officers, but stressed that her comments in no way reflected the views of the whole force.
“Victoria Police cannot pick and choose what laws it enforces,” it said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the police “looks forward to the easing of restrictions and the eventual return to pre-COVID life,” just like ordinary residents do.
As for Mitchell, she would be the subject of a professional standards command investigation over her revelations, according to the statement.
Several instances of police brutality in the state of Victoria went viral in September at the height of the protests against Covid-19 restrictions in Melbourne. One of the viral clips that caused outrage featured police violently tossing an elderly woman to the ground and pepper-spraying her. In another incident, an officer was filmed slamming a demonstrator onto the pavement, allegedly rendering him unconscious.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 22:05 - Feds Deploy Non-Toxic Gas On Subway In Test Of Biological Attack Preparedness
Feds Deploy Non-Toxic Gas On Subway In Test Of Biological Attack Preparedness
If you smell something strange during your next subway ride, don’t panic, it’s not a terror attack – it’s just the Feds testing out a new strategy for averting chemical and biological attacks on the country’s largest public transportation system.
According to NBC 4 New York, the MTA, working in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security and a team of researchers and city agencies, will deploy a non-toxic gas at 120 places across the city. The tests will be carried out on five days between Oct. 18 and Oct. 29.
Most of the test sites will be above ground, including in some parks. But an unknown number of tests will be carried out below ground in subway stations across the city (exact details aren’t being released to the public).
The public is advised: should one happen to stumble upon a test site, the gas is non-toxic and poses no public health risk.
Although details are slim, the study is intended to simulate “the aerosol release of a biological agent in a densely populated urban environment.”
“The study will track movement of non-toxic material and the results from these tests will be used to learn more about the relationship between airflow in street level and underground environments,” the MTA said.
Commuters who encounter test sites will likely see teams of researchers around. The study is part of a secretive federal campaign called the Urban Threat Dispersion program. Testing has taken place in NYC before back in 2016, while cities like Washington DC and Boston have also been tested.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 21:45 - Taibbi: Konstantin Kilimnik, Russiagate's Last Fall Guy, Speaks Out
Taibbi: Konstantin Kilimnik, Russiagate’s Last Fall Guy, Speaks Out
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
On Real Time With Bill Maher two Fridays ago, I fumbled and deflected politely over a Russiagate question, instead of going full cage match. The segment went off the rails beginning with this exchange:
MAHER: You compared it to WMDs. You said, the Russia connection with Trump is this generation’s WMD. I don’t think that’s an accurate analogy, because there were no WMDs. But there was collusion with Russia.
TAIBBI: Really? Where?
MAHER: Where? The Senate Intelligence Committee, run by Republicans, who are if anything slavish to Trump, their report said, “The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a ‘grave’ counterintelligence threat.”
First of all, that quote isn’t from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report from last August. It’s actually a paraphrase of the report from an Associated Press article, “Trump campaign’s Russia contacts ‘grave’ threat, Senate says,” which reads:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday…
The real SSCI quote is a little different:
Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.
By all rights, Russiagate should be dead as a serious news story. But as the Real Time episode showed, “collusion” is still alive for some, and the bulk of the case essentially rests now upon the characterization of one person from the above passage as a Russian agent: a former aide to Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik.
Kilimnik is a Ukrainian-American who’d served in the army and was hired to work as a translator at the American-funded International Republican Institute in Moscow beginning in the mid-nineties. In 2005, he left the IRI to go work for Paul Manafort, who was advising future president Viktor Yanukovich and the “Party of Regions” in Ukraine.
As it happens, Kilimnik worked at the IRI in Moscow during the same time I lived in that city in the nineties and early 2000s. In fact, he was well-known enough in that small expatriate community that in the space of a day last week I was able to reach, through mutual acquaintances, five of Kilimnik’s former colleagues, including three from the IRI and one from the U.S. State Department, to whom he was a regular and valuable contact (the Senate investigators left that fact out). I also called Kilimnik and had two lengthy interviews with him.
Why bring this up? Because in that little flurry of calls, I did more actual work on Konstantin Kilimnik than either the Special Counsel or SSCI researchers, who ostensibly spent thousands of man-hours investigating him.
Kilimnik being a spy wouldn’t just mean that the Trump campaign had been penetrated. It would mean the same thing for the IRI, which was chaired by late Senator and leading proponent of the Russiagate theory John McCain at the time. More to the point, it would also be disastrous for the State Department, and particularly for the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, whose staffers placed great trust in “KK” as a regular source.
The FBI’s own declassified reports show Kilimnik met with the head of the Kiev embassy’s political section “at least biweekly” during his time working with Manafort and Yanukovitch, adding that he “displayed good knowledge and seemed to know what was going on,” and came across as “less slanted” than other sources, among many other things. This fits with what I was told by multiple former colleagues of Kilimnik’s, that staffers in the Kiev embassy valued his analyses above those of some Americans in Yanukovitch’s orbit. (A third former co-worker was a little more blunt about what he heard, saying the Kiev embassy was “sucking his dick”).
They also show the embassy was so intent on protecting Kilimnik’s identity as a State Department source that they pulled his name out of diplomatic cables sent home:
Kilimnik says he “played a certain role in communication with the Western embassies in Kiev” both before and after the “Euromaidan” Revolution in 2014. “I tried to draw attention to facts about thugs attacking TV channels and opposition politicians, and things like [an arson attack against “InterTV” in 2016],” he says, adding that he “naively thought the West would stand for media freedom and protecting rules for fair play in politics, like it has for many years.”
The only reason nobody’s asked the Senate Committee why Kilimnik’s alleged spy status doesn’t also represent a “grave” embarrassment to, say, the U.S. State Department is because our press corps is the most dogshit on earth (more on that in a moment).
Special Counsel Robert Mueller claimed the FBI spoke to an IRI employee who said Kilimnik was “fired from his post because his links to Russian intelligence were too strong.” Though not all the IRI staffers I reached liked Kilimnik, each found the idea that he might be a spy alternately ridiculous and baffling. Multiple ex-colleagues said they believed he was fired for “moonlighting,” i.e. because he’d already started working for Manafort.
“I was actually moonlighting. It was a funny story,” Kilimnik says (for a more complete explanation, see the Q&A below).
As to the idea that it was known around the IRI office that Kilimnik had intelligence ties, one former senior IRI official said, “I think whoever said that, that’s someone trying to feel more important in retrospect,” adding that the idea that he was “some GRU plant from years gone by” was questionable because the Russians “didn’t know their right from their left back then, and the IRI could not described as a high-value target.” The official concluded: “I find the notion that Kilimnik is now this big figure remarkable.” None of former employees of the Moscow IRI office I spoke with had been contacted by any American investigator, including Mueller.
Then there’s the matter of the suspect himself. Question to Kilimnik: how many times was he questioned by American authorities, with whom he was so familiar — remember he met with American officials “at least biweekly” at one point pre-Trump — during the entire Russiagate period?
“Not a single person from the U.S. Government ever reached out to me,” Kilimnik says.
Nobody from the Office of the Special Counsel, the FBI, or the Senate Intelligence Committee ever contacted him?
“Not once,” Kilimnik says. “Nobody from Mueller’s team reached out to me, literally nobody.”
In reaching Kilimnik last week I also became just the second American reporter, after Aaron Maté of RealClear Investigations and Grayzone, to call Kilimnik for comment on the Senate report. Virtually every American news organization or TV commentary program has in the last year repeated accusations against Kilimnik made by either the Senate Intelligence Committee or the U.S. Treasury Department, which earlier this year called him a “Russian Intelligence Services agent” in an announcement of sanctions against Russia.
It was once normal practice in American media to give people a chance to respond to serious allegations, but no longer, apparently. “Zero. Zero,” says Kilimnik, when asked how many American media outlets called him after the release of the Senate report. Incidentally, Kilimnik isn’t hiding under a snow-covered trap door at a secret FSB installation outside Izhievsk. He’s in an apartment in Northwest Moscow, where anyone could find him.
“Everybody knows my phone number. It was in Mueller’s reports,” he says. “But I got no questions. I mean, a lot of people know how to find me. I guess they just didn’t care.”
Kilimnik was even on the list of 16 entities and 16 individuals the Treasury just this year said “attempted to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election at the direction of the leadership of the Russian Government.” That’s the 2020 election, not the 2016 election, meaning the one that came after the Senate report.
“The US actually sanctioned me for interference in 2020 elections,” Kilimnik says. “I would not be able to say why. I’d love to know. I’ve been sitting in fucking Moscow, in my backyard, and feeding squirrels. Must have been some sort of interference.”
The aforementioned Maté published photos of Kilimnik’s passport that appear to show he entered the U.S. on a visa stamped in a regular Russian passport on October 28, 1997. This is the same date the Senate committee said he was entering the United States on a diplomatic passport. The Senate also said Kilimnik met with Manafort in Spain in 2017, which he denies. “I’ve never been to Spain,” Kilimnik laughs. “I haven’t been there. Let them prove I’ve been there.”
Another thing that came up on Real Time was the idea that we shouldn’t dismiss the monetarily tiny Russian Facebook campaign — featuring classics that ironically read like Real Time bits, with images of Jesus pleading with American voters, “Struggling with addiction to masturbation? Reach out to me and we’ll beat it together” — because “9/11 didn’t cost much either”:
I oversold things on the air, talking about how the Internet Research Agency only spent $100,000, as only $44,000 of that was before the campaign. More importantly, only a tiny percentage of ads qualified as coherent propaganda. I’d wager few Americans have actually read through all these ads, which have messages like, “Tell me once again that there’s no such thing as white privilege,” “Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!”, and “Share the experience and the challenges of the black hair industry.” Overall, for 2016, they read like a creepy, overambitious parody of woke culture, with a tinge of Charlie Manson’s “Helter Skelter” plan thrown in. Whatever it is/was, it’s pretty far from 9/11:
Kilimnik stands accused of helping Evil Von Putin aim this high-tech weapon. How? Senate investigators said, “Manafort briefed Kilimnik on sensitive Campaign polling data and the Campaign’s strategy for beating Hillary Clinton.” What was sensitive about it?
“That’s bullshit. There was nothing that resembled ‘sensitive’ polling data,” Kilimnik says. “I would get two figures maybe once a month, not every day, not every week.”
Two figures — meaning two pages?
“Two digits,” he says. “Like, ‘Trump 40, Hillary 45.’ That’s all I would get, nothing more. So I don’t understand how this is sensitive data.”
Kilimnik was getting his information from former Trump deputy campaign chief Rick Gates, who was directed to send the data to Kilimnik by Manafort. None other than Rachel Maddow once called Gates “Mueller’s star cooperating witness.” I called Gates last week and asked: what was he passing to Kilimnik?
“Top-line data, and I want people to understand what that means,” he says. “It was like, ‘Ohio, Clinton 48, Trump 50,’ Or, ‘Wisconsin, Trump 50, Clinton 42.’ The sources were a combination of things like RealClear Politics and occasionally some numbers from [Republican pollster] Tony Fabrizio. But it was all just top-line stuff.”
Gates’s story is that Manafort was passing this data back to people like his longtime sponsors, the Ukrainian barons Rinat Akhmetov and Sergei Lyvochkin, because “Paul was just trying to show that Trump was doing well,” as “Paul was just trying to do what he’s always done,” i.e. trying to show how valuable he could be.
For those disinclined to believing the Gates or Kilimnik version of events, remember that neither Mueller nor the Senate Intelligence Committee could come up with a different one. Apart from adding “sensitive” to their description (Mueller just called it “internal polling data”), the Senate never offered evidence that Kilimnik was getting more than those few numbers. As to why Kilimnik was sent this information, this is what the Senate had to say:
The Committee was unable to reliably determine why Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy with Kilimnik. Manafort and Gates both claimed that it was part of an effort to resolve past business disputes and obtain new work with their past Russian and Ukrainian clients by showcasing Manafort’s success.
Why “sensitive?” The Committee was “unable to reliably determine” why, having no idea what Kilimnik did with those numbers. But they were sure enough it was bad to conclude it represented a “grave counterintelligence threat.”
Kilimnik is roughly the twentieth suspect in a long list of alleged secret conduits that across five years have already been tried out and discarded by pundits and investigators alike as “smoking gun” links between Trump and Putin.
An abbreviated list:
There was a Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud and a young Trump aide named George Papadopoulos, former Trump adviser Carter Page, an alleged “secret server” supposedly pinging between Trump and Alfa Bank, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser J.D. Gordon, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, real estate developer Felix Sater, another Russian who approached Trump people claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton named Henry Oknyansky, a Russian firm called Concord Consulting, plus Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and many others.
The pattern with all of these “smoking gun” cases was the same. At first, there would be a great press hullaballoo, complete with front-page media profiles and heated straight-to-camera monologues at the tops of cable commentary shows over “Breaking News” chyrons:
Freakouts would be long, but months or years later, narratives would collapse. Ambassador Sergei Kislyak was everyone’s favorite suspect in the summer of 2016 for having done everything from rig the Republican convention platform to turning Sessions into a spy, but then Mueller quietly said Kisylak’s interactions with Trump officials in those months were “brief, public, and non-substantive.” Reporters howled that Christopher Steele was right about Cohen meeting Russian hackers in Prague to help rig the 2016 race, and even claimed (see above) that Mueller was about to release evidence of it any minute, until Mueller said flatly, “Cohen… never traveled to Prague.”
The saddest case involved Carter Page. Steele’s Dossier identified Page — not Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, or even Donald Trump — as the mastermind of the Wikileaks leak:
The aim of leaking the DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks during the Democratic Convention had been to swing supporters of Bernie SANDERS away from Hillary CLINTON and across to TRUMP… This objective had been conceived and promoted, inter alia, by TRUMP’s foreign policy adviser Carter PAGE…
Steele also had Page negotiating a massive bribe via the oil company Rosneft in exchange for the dropping of sanctions, and acting as the personal intermediary between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin. Page, not knowing he was being spied upon, told an FBI informant that August that he had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort, even going so far as to complain that Manafort never answered his emails. The FBI sat on this information, and wrote up a secret surveillance warrant application that read:
Sub-Source reported that the conspiracy was being managed by Candidate’s then campaign manager, who was using, among others, foreign policy advisor Carter Page as an intermediary…
It wasn’t until the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz came out in December of 2019 that the world found out that the FBI not only “did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page,” but had covered up Page’s history as an informant for the CIA, very much like the Senate and the Treasury are now covering up Kilimnik’s status as a U.S. State Department source.
Kilimnik is just the last person on the list, and he’s conveniently in Moscow, unlikely to ever come back here to defend himself. As such, he’s the perfect fall guy for the marooned-Japanese-soldier-type holdouts on Russiagate who think the collusion narrative is still viable. More from Kilimnik:
TK: You were described by the Senate Intelligence Committee as a “Russian Intelligence Officer.” Are you one?
Konstantin Kilimnik: I have not had any relationship with any intelligence agency. Not with U.S. intelligence, not the Ukrainian, Russian, Zimbabwean, whatever. I’m a consultant who has worked for many years running elections in Ukraine. I just haven’t had any relationship with any intelligence, and haven’t seen any facts proving otherwise.
I think the investigation was so politically charged from the beginning, that they just needed to find a Russian body that they could just put as much dirt as possible on. Ultimately, nobody is going to care, because all the Russians are considered to be bad anyhow, they’re all spies.
TK: The intelligence community in the U.S. seems unanimous in their conclusion that Russians interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Did they not?
Konstantin Kilimnik: I don’t think Russians interfered… I know that runs counter to all the conclusions of the intelligence community and all that country to all the intelligence and press and all that. And maybe there were other efforts, as well. But, I was not involved in any of that.
There was a lot of misinformation, just because the public wanted someone, and I just happened to be that person thrown into the mix. If I had Hungarian citizenship or any other citizenship, of course, people would not have given my name. They just needed the Russian connection, and I happened to be that unfortunate Russian connection.
TK: The Mueller report claims an IRI employee believed you were “fired from his post because his links to Russian intelligence were too strong.” Others say you were “moonlighting.” Why did you leave the IRI?
Konstantin Kilimnik: I was actually moonlighting. It was a funny story. I was looking for ways to move on, because by 2005 I had been at IRI for 10 years. Some time in mid-2004 an old IRI pal, Phil Griffin, reemerged and proposed a well-paying job of going to Ukraine and writing analyses of what was going on during the Orange Revolution, for Manafort.
So, I went there after not having been to Ukraine for over 10 years. I was ecstatic about Kiev and got seriously interested in what was going on politically… Manafort, Griffin and I (as a translator) went to Donetsk in, I think, November 2004 to meet some guy I had no previous knowledge of (who turned out to be Rinat Akhmetov’s closest confidant, Borys Kolesnikov). Manafort and he spoke for several days and got convinced that the “Donetsk guys” were not even close to being thugs they had been portrayed by the Western media to be. I went back a couple of times to translate for these meetings, which I thought were not in any conflict with my work at IRI Moscow.
Then, the government in Ukraine changed. [Viktor] Yuschenko became the President, Manafort was in negotiations about the contract, and I almost forgot about my short translation jobs. In April 2005, we were at an IRI retreat, and my boss, director of Europe and Eurasia programs Steve Nix got a tip from the new President’s office that “Donetsk thugs” were looking to hire an American consultant, and that a guy who seemed to work at IRI was helping in the process.
Steve, who was very pro-Yuschenko, completely freaked out, and accused me of working for criminals. I said that a) I was doing this in my free time, 2) this did not conflict in any way with my job at IRI Russia, and 3) maybe things are not so straightforward in Ukrainian politics, and there are no guys in black and white hats, but mostly gray hats. He disagreed and demanded I resign, which I did.
TK: The Senate claims you met Manafort in Spain in 2017. Did you?
Konstantin Kilimnik: I have never been to Spain. (laughter)…I have not been there. They can’t prove that. And yet they’ve inserted that. And yet, that’s central to what they’re saying.
Europe is specific place in terms of passports and immigration. To cross the border, you have to give your fingerprints, and upon any re-entry too. If I went to Spain, I can guarantee that, first of all, Europe keeps a record of that. They would say that I have crossed the border at a certain time in a certain place. And that would be okay because, again, it’s all tied to the fingerprints. You cannot get into the EU without this. You can’t fake it. So let them prove it.
TK: You’ve been accused of obtaining that “sensitive polling data” for Oleg Deripaska. Was that right?
Konstantin Kilimnik: No, Deripaska was a Russian businessman. I actually didn’t have any contact with him. There were Ukrainian businessmen and Ukrainian politicians in 2016 who were in opposition, and who were actually under pressure from Petro Poroshenko’s government. Naturally, for them, any change, opening a channel into the U.S. Government, that for them would have been a great thing. So that’s why they were interested in the outcome of the elections. There was no Russian connection whatsoever. If there were, they would have a record of me talking to Deripaska or visiting him.
TK: You never had any contact with Deripaska?
Konstantin Kilimnik: No, I haven’t met him since, I’m afraid to be exact, but like 2006, I think was the last time I saw him. I was translating for Manafort. But after that, Manafort spoke to him himself, because Deripaska spoke the language by then. And there was no need for me.
Part 2 of my interview with Konstantin Kilimnik is coming later this week.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 21:25 - NIH-Backed Study Finds Moderna, Pfizer Boosters Work Best
NIH-Backed Study Finds Moderna, Pfizer Boosters Work Best
After months of dithering about the potential safety risks of mixing and matching various approved COVID vaccines, a long-running NIH-sponsored study has found that patients can safely and effectively receive booster shots from any of the major approved vaccines, even as the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has sounded lukewarm about the prospect of approving booster jabs for all adults over the age of 18.
According to Bloomberg, the complicated 9-arm trial involved over 450 people and measured the effects from giving a booster shot of the Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech or J&J vaccines to those who had originally gotten a different vaccine. The data showed that the new jabs increased patients’ levels of neutralizing antibodies, sometimes by more than would be expected if they received a third jab of the same vaccine they had received initially.
“These data suggest that if a vaccine is approved or authorized as a booster, an immune response will be generated regardless of the primary Covid-19 vaccination regimen,” the researchers said in their conclusion.
In the abstract from the preprint of the study (which can be found on medrxiv.org) the researchers claimed they were embarking on this research because of the persistent breakthrough infections that continue to occur in some patients. While “homologous” mRNA booster jabs have received approval in some jurisdictions (Israel, and now the EUA, are now allowing some patients to receive a third dose of whatever initial jab they received)
In total, 458 individuals were enrolled: 154 received mRNA-1273 (Moderna), 150 received Ad26.CoV2.S (J&J), and 154 received BNT162b2 (Pfizer) booster vaccines. The study was sponsored and primarily funded by the NIH.
Participants were divided into nine groups with roughly 50 volunteers in each. Those who initially got the two-dose Moderna vaccine got either another Moderna shot, a Pfizer shot or a J&J shot as a booster four to six months after their primary immunization.
People who got the two-dose Pfizer vaccine got either another Pfizer shot or a Moderna or J&J booster. And people who got the one-shot J&J vaccine, either got another J&J shot, or a Moderna or Pfizer booster. Antibody levels were then measured at two weeks and four weeks after the booster dose.
Data showed that homologous boosters increased neutralizing antibodies by 4.2-20-fold while heterologous boosters created an increase of 6.2-76-fold. The conclusion: Conclusion: “Homologous and heterologous booster vaccinations were well-tolerated and immunogenic in adults who completed a primary Covid-19 vaccine regimen at least 12 weeks earlier.”
Notably, the study found that for patients who initially received the J&J jab, switching to an mRNA jab (Pfizer’s or Moderna’) for the booster dose might afford them better protection. Regardless of the initial jab, Pfizer and Moderna boosters appeared to work best.
More detail about the study are expected Friday afternoon during a meeting of an FDA advisory panel, where researchers conducting the trial are scheduled to give a presentation on their early findings. A panel will also meet Thursday to deliberate over Moderna’s application for booster-jab approval.
Find the full pre-print below:
2021.10.10.21264827v1.full by Joseph Adinolfi Jr. on Scribd
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 21:05 - Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Got What It Wanted – So Now What?
Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Got What It Wanted – So Now What?
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,
There is no schadenfreude in seeing the Left destroy everything it touches – because its claws tear all of us as well…
What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?
Then
No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.
Foreign Policy published an article by a liberal Obama Administration lawyer outlining all the ways to remove an elected president as soon as possible—including consideration of a military coup.
The FBI and the entrenched bureaucrats at the Justice Department continued their prior failed efforts during the campaign to seed the lies of the fabricated Steele dossier and Fusion GPS. A 22-month-long and $40 million hoax ended with the special counsel himself, a doddering Robert Mueller, swearing under oath that he essentially knew nothing about the dossier or Fusion GPS—the twin catalysts that had prompted his very own investigation.
Fired FBI Director James Comey—a lion on Twitter, and a lamb when under oath—on over 240 occasions testified to the Congress that he either did not know or could not remember, when asked details about the collusion fraud that the philosopher G-man had helped perpetuate.
No one worried about the weaponization of government. So, we went right from the nefarious legacy of John Brennan (who lied under oath to Congress twice), James Clapper (who lied under oath to Congress once), James Comey (who leaked confidential presidential memos), Andrew McCabe (who gave false testimony to federal investigators), Lisa Page (who was fired from the special counsel’s legal team for various unprofessional conduct), Peter Strzok (about whom there is not enough space to detail his transgressions), and the now convicted felon Kevin Clinesmith onto the next round of impeachments.
Two of them followed. Neither was conducted by a special counsel. There was no array of witnesses, no prosecutorial report. Much less were there formal charges of a specific high crime or misdemeanor, or bribery or treason, as specified by the Constitution.
In the end, both farces ended in trials—but not before the Left had established lots of baleful precedents. Impeachment is now simply a tool to embarrass a president in his first term when he has lost the House. A Senate trial could hound an innocent president, even as a private citizen out of office. And a chief justice need not preside over the Senate trial. If and when Joe Biden loses the House, the Left should applaud any attempt to impeach him—given it established the new model of opposition.
Of the January 6 debacle, we were not told that it was a riot involving lawbreakers who would be punished. Instead, we were lied to that it was an “armed insurrection,” a “coup,” and “a rebellion” of massive proportions.
Our esteemed retired military and civil libertarians who had damned the mere thought of using federal troops to quell the prior four summer months of continuous rioting were suddenly happy to see 25,000 federal soldiers patrol Washington to hound out fantasy second-wave insurrectionists. In Animal Farm fashion, there were now to be good federal troops deterring mythical violent domestic extremists, but bad federal troops who should never stop real, ongoing mayhem in the streets.
It mattered nothing that “armed” in the case of January 6 meant that no firearms were used or even found among the protestors. No one was charged with conspiracy, insurrection, or racketeering. But many were placed in solitary confinement without specific charges being filed—to the utter delight of liberal groups like the ACLU and human rights organizations.
The FBI—recently known mostly for spreading Hillary Clinton’s campaign collusion hoax—found no premeditated grand plot. The remaining media narratives were also untrue: Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was not murdered, but died tragically of a stroke the next day. Five persons were not “killed.” Four who died were Trump supporters. Only one of the five deaths occurred at the hand of a known other—a 14-year military veteran, unarmed, 110-pound female Ashli Babbitt. She was fatally shot while attempting to enter through a window of the Capitol by a law-enforcement officer—to the frequent approbation of the left-wing commentariat. The officer’s name was hidden for months from the public—something conspicuously uncharacteristic in other cases where law enforcement officers are involved in shooting unarmed suspects.
Videos surrounding the entire melee still have been repressed. They likely will never be released. That infamous day remains in dire contrast to the prior 120 days of continuous rioting, looting, and arson. In the election-year summer 2020, federal courthouses and iconic buildings were torched. Nearly $2 billion worth of property was destroyed and 28 were killed.
Yet current Vice President Kamala Harris rallied the public to help bail out the arrested. And the architect of the “1619 Project” reassured Americans that crimes against property like arson and looting are not really violence per se. The weeks of “spontaneous” mayhem magically vanished after November 3, 2020. Note that esteemed medical professionals argued that BLM protestors who flooded the streets were exempt from quarantine, social distancing, and mask requirements, given their higher morality. There are now good riots and bad ones, and noble sustained silence about a noble officer who lethally shoots an unarmed suspect, and noble immediate outing of an ignoble officer who lethally shoots an unarmed suspect.
These were merely the main media distortions and fixations over the last four years. We forget the daily craziness such as a president’s calls to foreign heads of state routinely leaked or the FBI director passing on confidential memos of private presidential conversations to the liberal press, or the “whistleblower” who was not a whistleblower as much as a Democratic operative. The media nadir came when the press bellowed that Trump had overfed a fish.
An array of retired four-stars damned their president as Hitlerian, Mussolini-like, and deserving an early exit from office. Their superior morality naturally excused them from abiding by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The New York Times falsely identified a minor Trump Administration bureaucrat (“anonymous”) as a major conservative truth-teller—once he thrilled the media by lying that a large, morally superior, inside cabal was devoted to obstructing the implementation of a president’s orders. Everyone from Hillary Clinton to an active FBI lawyer bragged of joining the “Resistance,” with plenty of conspiratorial retro-accusations that the 2016 election was “rigged.”
All that was a warm-up for the plague year in which Donald Trump was blamed for every COVID death. His medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci was deified, due largely to his coy opposition to the president he was supposed to serve.
Both the current president and vice president had, less than a year ago, urged Americans not to be vaccinated, given their own reluctance to take a “Trump” vaccine. At least the anti-vaxxers had consistent opposition to the experimental inoculations; in contrast, the anti-Trumper anti-vaxxers merely saw sabotaging the 2020 vaccination program as necessary to be in a position to claim it as their own in 2021.
Now
What did all that madness achieve? Mostly, the first election in U.S. history in which over 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day. Strangely, with such an avalanche of ballots, the usual error rate of absentee balloting dived from around 2-4 percent to 0.2-0.4 percent. You see, when we suddenly must count tens of millions more paper ballots then it becomes easier, not harder, to spot errors.
So, the Left won its Pyrrhic victory.
The nation was done with the demonized Trump and now the Left controlled the presidency, and both houses of Congress. Somnolent Ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton pledged to heal the nation as he overturned his predecessor’s supposedly disastrous policies and went on a rampage of slandering his opponents. If Donald Trump was once damned as non compos mentis, the same media and academic accusers kept mum as Biden shuffled, fell, went mute, slurred words, and went off on angry, disjointed, and incoherent riffs.
What followed was a concerted effort to destroy the Trump record: the greatest level of combined annual natural gas and oil production in any nation’s history, record low minority unemployment and near record peacetime, general unemployment, a border secure and illegal immigration finally under control, and a New Middle East in which Israel and its Arab enemies concluded neutrality pacts. China was put on notice for its past mockery of global norms. Inflation was low, growth was good. “Stagflation” was still a rarely remembered word from the past.
And again, what was all that Pavlovian nihilism to achieve?
Within eight months the following was finalized: Joe Biden utterly destroyed the idea of a border. Some 2 million were scheduled to cross illegally in the current fiscal year. The sheer inhumanity of deplorable conditions at the border surpassed any notion of the “cages” Donald Trump, in fact, had inherited from the humanitarian Barack Obama.
A war almost immediately broke out in the Middle East, once Biden distanced the United States from Israel and rebooted the radical Palestinian cause.
The Taliban defeated the 20-year effort of the United States in Afghanistan, in the most humiliating withdrawal of the American military in over 45 years. Tens of billions of dollars of abandoned military equipment now arm the Taliban and have turned Afghanistan into a world arms mart for terrorists. Iran is emboldened and speeds up its nuclear proliferation efforts. China brags that the United States has been Afghanistanized and will not defend its allies, Taiwan in particular.
At home, gas prices have soared. Prior trillion-dollar deficits now seem financially prudent in comparison to multitrillion-dollar red ink. The nation is more racially polarized than at any time in the last half-century. A bleak and venomous woke creed has outdone the hate and fear of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, as it wages war on half the nation for various thought crimes and the incorrect idea that the United States was, is, and always will be a kind and humane place.
More will likely have died each day from COVID by year’s end during the Biden first 12 months than during Trump’s last 12 months. That statistic perhaps might have been meaningless had Biden himself not demagogued the idea that a president is strangely responsible for all pandemic deaths on his watch.
But then again, Biden had warped the pandemic narrative only after he had inherited the Trump vaccination program (17 million vaccinated by Inauguration Day). Biden was wrongly and prematurely convinced that vaxxes were a permanent prophylaxis to any sort of COVID variants that would simply disappear once he took office. Depending on the occasion, Biden claims none, or just 4 million, were vaxxed until he took office, as truth and fantasies waft through his cloudy cognition.
With Biden came not just woke polarization, stagflation, a subsidized ennui that erodes the work ethic, and selective nonenforcement of existing laws: Worse, still, we got a bankrupt ideological defense of these insanities. Critical legal theory, critical race theory, and a new monetary theory were all dreamed up by parlor academics to justify the nihilism.
Did America ever believe that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would trash his commander in chief as Hitlerian to journalist hitmen, or allegedly denounce news organizations as “terrorists,” or interrupt the chain of command on a prompt by the Speaker of the House, or warn the Chinese military that he believed there was enough instability in the White House to justify a promise to warn of any impending U.S. military action against Beijing deemed offensive? Was General Milley suffering from the very “white rage” he sought to ferret out?
With Biden, China is now omnipresent in the halls of power. A task of our chief COVID advisor, Anthony Fauci, seems to be to deny repeatedly that his stealthy funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan virology lab in China had anything to do with the likely accidental release of a likely human engineered and energized coronavirus. Americans still cannot even imagine that their government might have helped subsidize the plague germ that has wrought such havoc upon them.
Meanwhile the president’s son still owns a 10 percent cut in a communist Chinese government-affiliated financial venture, apparently due to his prior drug-addled record of financial mismanagement. The media still insists Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” while his paint-by-numbers art is auctioned off to foreign lobbyists expecting a return of the old days when Hunter and Joe grandly arrived on Air Force Two to do their bidding.
What did the Left leave as the proper model for conservatives now to deal with Biden?
Impeach him when he loses the House? Get a special counsel, lavish said counsel with $40 million, a dream team of right-wing lawyers, and 22 months to find real Chinese collusion?
Start seeding a conservative version of Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and an “anonymous” whistleblower inside the Biden octopus?
Get retired four-star generals on TV to swear Biden is a Chinese “asset,” or have them retweet the idea of sending Biden supporters to China, or swear that he is a fascist? Bring back Woodward and Bernstein to find out whether Biden, Inc. ever paid taxes on all that Chinese and Ukrainian cash?
Call in the ubiquitous Dr. Bandy X. Lee from Yale to administer the Montreal Cognitive Assessment to prove that Biden can distinguish a camel from an elephant or a train from a bike or count backwards from five?
Will the Right prod General Mark Milley’s replacement to collude with soon-to-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy and call the Russians to warn them that Biden is demented, democracy is “messy,” Kamala Harris is crazy, and thus Moscow might need a warning from us about any Biden preemptive aggression?
And what of the people who voted for this change and the media that empowered it? In the latest Quinnipiac poll, known for its liberal affinities, Biden now earns a 38 percent approval rating. We should add a few extra negative points given media bias. Do they suffer buyer’s remorse or angst that they were lied to by the hard Left that Joe Biden was cognizant and not a mere vessel for a two-year push for overt socialism?
Meanwhile the media is reduced to explaining why an undocumented activist has an understandable right to chase a liberal Democratic senator into a public restroom, hector her, and then video her as she enters a stall to relieve herself and then post the grotesqueness on the internet—a felony in the state of the Arizona, though just part of the “process” for the president of the United States.
We could call the above insanity nemesis for woke hubris. Or maybe it is karma, “payback’s a bitch,” or “what goes around comes around.” But there is no schadenfreude in seeing the Left destroy everything it touches—because its claws tear all of us as well.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 20:45 - Chaos In Texas As Employees Fired For Refusing To Get Vaxxed Demand Their Jobs Back
Chaos In Texas As Employees Fired For Refusing To Get Vaxxed Demand Their Jobs Back
Things are getting very confusing in Texas.
Shortly after governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning the vaccine mandates by any employer, which in turn was followed by several prominent Texas corporations – such as IBM, American Air, Southwest – saying they would snub the EO and back Biden on shots, we’ve reach a point where some employers side with the governor, others side with the president, meanwhile employees have no idea what they have to do (or not do), while yet another group of (former) employees that was fired for refusing to comply with the mandates is now trying to get their jobs back.
As Houston Public Media reports, more than 150 former employees of Houston Methodist Hospital, who either quit or were fired in June over a vaccine mandate policy will demand to be rehired after Gov. Abbott issued an executive order on Monday banning any entity in the state from implementing such mandates, according to a lawyer representing the former employees.
Attorney Jared Woodfill, who represents almost 200 healthcare workers in multiple lawsuits against Methodist, said executive order GA-40 makes the hospital’s policy illegal.
“Governor Abbott says very clearly, ‘whereas countless Texans fear losing their livelihoods because they object to receiving a COVID-19 vaccination for reasons of personal conscience,’” he said. “That applies to every plaintiff that I represent, and every plaintiff that Methodist hospital thought it was appropriate to fire.”
Woodfill said he planned to send a formal request to the hospital on Tuesday in an attempt to reinstate the former employees.
As we reported at the time, Houston Methodist, which operates several hospitals in the area and has more than 25,000 employees, was the first hospital in the country to implement a vaccine mandate for workers in April sparking a fierce legal battle between hundreds of employees and the hospital. In June, 178 employees were suspended after declining to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Weeks later, 153 employees either resigned or were terminated. According to Methodists’ numbers, 25 opted to get vaccinated and return to work.
In a statement, Methodist CEO Marc Boom didn’t touch on whether or not the former employees would be allowed back, but said he was “deeply disappointed” by Abbott’s order. He added that the order wouldn’t have an impact on Methodist since the hospital implemented its vaccine mandate months ago.
The hospital system is still reviewing Abbott’s order and its possible implications, but because its own rule went into effect months ago, 100% of its employees are compliant with the vaccine policy, according to Boom.
“We are reviewing the order now and its possible implications,” the statement read.
“We expect all of our employees and physicians to be vaccinated as we must continue doing everything possible to keep all our patients and each other as safe as possible until this pandemic is over.”
He added that “not only are our patients safe as a result, but we are able to remain healthy at work and be there for our community when it needs us the most.”
Boom said he hoped that other Texas hospitals, like Baylor College of Medicine and Memorial Hermann, would continue to implement their vaccine mandates despite the governor’s orders.
“We are grateful we mandated the vaccine early so the order will not have an immediate impact on us,” Marc Boom, the chief executive officer of Houston Methodist, wrote in an email. “But we are concerned for other Texas hospitals that may not be able to continue their mandates now with this executive order.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 20:25 - Lira Crashes To Record Low After Turkey's Erdogan Fires Three More Central Bankers
Lira Crashes To Record Low After Turkey’s Erdogan Fires Three More Central Bankers
At this point, we’ve lost count of how many central bankers Turkey’s authoritarian head Erdogan has fired, so a quick stroll down memory lane helped us remember:
- July 2019: Lira Crashes After Erdogan Unexpectedly Fires Turkey’s Central Bank Governor
- Nov 2020: Erdogan Fires Turkish Central Bank Governor, Launching Full-Blown Currency Crisis
- March 2021: Turkey In Turmoil Again: Erdogan Fires Second Central Bank Chief In 4 Months, Sparking Foreign Capital Panic
- May 2021: Erdogan fires deputy governor of Turkey’s central bank
One look at the headlines above reveals that Erdogan, who himself is technically the head of the central bank as he can replace any current central bank governor that does not do his bidding and swap in some figurehead, tends to have a short fuse when it comes to heads of TCMB when they don’t follow the crackpot economic “theory” known as Erdoganomics according to which cutting interest rates is the way to lower inflation, not vice versa. It’s also why back in June when the Turkish central bank kept rates unchanged despite Erdogan’s prodding for a rate cut (even as Turkish inflation was well in the double digits), we predicted – jokingly – that Erdogan was about to fire everyone.
Turkish Central Bank Keeps Benchmark Rate Unchanged at 19%
Erdogan is about to fire everyone
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 17, 2021
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Well, he didn’t “fire everyone”, but he definitely sent a message and back in September, the central bank shocked the market when it cut rates by 100bps to 18% with consensus again expecting an unchanged decision. The move sent the lira plunging to an all time low.
Alas, it turns out that the pace of cuts was not to Erdogan’s liking and earlier today when we noted a Bloomberg headline that Erdogan was meeting with his central bank puppet, Kavcioglu, we said it was “game over” as more heads were about to roll.
*TURKISH PRESIDENT ERDOGAN MEETS CENBANK GOVERNOR: PRESIDENCY
And… game over
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 13, 2021
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This time we were correct, and late on Wednesday evening, President Erdogan fired three members of the central bank’s interest-rate setting committee in a midnight decree after meeting with Governor Sahap Kavcioglu who was appointed by Erdogan to lead the central bank in March, replacing his hawkish predecessor Naci Agbal.
Erdogan removed deputy governors Semih Tumen and Ugur Namik Kucuk, along with Monetary Policy Committee member Abdullah Yavas, according to the decree. He appointed Taha Cakmak as deputy governor and Yusuf Tuna as an MPC member.
According to Bloomberg, the changes followed a meeting between Erdogan and Kavcioglu on Wednesday evening, where the two discussed changes to the committee. Kucuk was the only member of the committee who voted against Kavcioglu’s interest-rate cut last month, thus committing professional career suicide. Yavas didn’t vote because he had contracted Covid-19 in the U.S., where he lives, but that was enough to prompt Erdogan’s ire and to get him sacked.
Erdogan probably wanted to fire the head as well, but just last week, Erdogan’s office refuted a Reuters report that said Erdogan is “cooling” on Kavcioglu in the job even though the central banker had cut rates just over a month ago – a move sure to make Erdogan happy – despite explosive inflation crushing Turkey’s economy. The inflation rate was 19.6% in September, when Kavcioglu lowered the benchmark interest rate by 100 basis points to 18%.
Predictably, the lira – which has been hitting new all time lows almost daily – dropped to a record low against the dollar, and extended its losses to nearly 5% against the dollar since the governor delivered his surprise interest-rate cut on Sept. 23.
The Turkish presidency posted a picture of the two men together on Twitter after the meeting, and Erdogan’s office described the conversation as “positive.” The presidency also said the two men discussed the general economic situation.
Cumhurbaşkanı @RTErdogan, Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası (TCMB) Başkanı Şahap Kavcıoğlu’nu Çankaya Köşkü’nde kabul etti. pic.twitter.com/zpjiEkcnVv
— T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı (@tcbestepe) October 13, 2021
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The lira fell 1% to a fresh record low of 9.1883 per dollar…
… and by now it should have become clear to even the most die-hard EM fanatic desperate for carry that any long position in the lira is career suicide. Which is why very soon we may see a wholesale capital flight out of Turkey which leads to total economic catastrophe, not to mention hyperinflation, for the NATO member state.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 20:05 - New Zealand Forces Vaccination Mandate On All Education, Health-Care Workers
New Zealand Forces Vaccination Mandate On All Education, Health-Care Workers
New Zealand announced late Monday that it would join the growing list of developed nations forcing workers – or at least certain workers – to choose: either accept the jab, or lose your job.
One week after Canada adopted mandatory vaccination rules for federal workers and travelers, New Zealand has announced its own vaccine mandates for most teachers and health care workers.
Per NZ’s Liberal-led government, doctors, nurses and other health-care workers must be fully vaxxed by Dec. 1, while everyone working in education who has contact with students must be vaccinated by Jan. 1.
“We can’t leave anything to chance so that’s why we are making it mandatory,” said COVID Response Minister Chris Hipkins, who is also the country’s education minister.
“Vaccination remains our strongest and most effective tool to protect against infection and disease,” Hipkins said.
New Zealand briefly enjoyed COVID-free status after the initial global outbreak, but the country’s “drawbridge” strategy was unable to keep out the delta variant, imposing a lockdown in Auckland, the country’s largest city after confirming just a single case. As cases spread despite the tightening restrictions, the government was forced to finally abandon its “COVIDZero” strategy.
New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern said the highly transmissible delta variant had proved a “game-changer” that can’t be easily eliminated.
As kiwis confront the new system, the Guardian is reporting that New Zealand’s epidemiology “experts” were taken by surprise when Ardern abandoned “COVIDZero”. They said they weren’t consulted about the government’s new system, which will lessen restrictions in three stages.
“We were obviously surprised on Monday last week when the government seemed to say that we were moving away from elimination,” said prof Michael Baker, one of the country’s most prominent pandemic communicators and a member of the ministry’s Covid-19 Technical Advisory group. “A decision of that size – changing your major strategy – you’d think you would consult with [the] quite small batch of scientists and other advisers who work very hard to support the government … explaining things to the public.”
“That was very unusual. I think the government’s done a great job generally with consultation and getting us all to at least understand the rationale for change.”
Others insisted that the only way out for the country is full vaccination.
Now, keep in mind, New Zealand has confirmed fewer than 5K cases and fewer than 30 deaths.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 19:45 - Kemp: Beset By Coal Shortages, India's Power Grid Struggles To Meet Demand
Kemp: Beset By Coal Shortages, India’s Power Grid Struggles To Meet Demand
By John Kemp, Reuters energy analyst and reporter.
India has experienced persistent electricity shortages since the start of October as power generators have proved unable to meet resurgent demand as the economy rebounds from last year’s coronavirus-driven recession.
The country’s power crisis stems from the same mismatch between rapidly growing demand and lagging supply that is also causing electricity shortages in China and soaring gas prices across much of Europe and Asia.
Generation shortages are manifesting themselves in blackouts and rotating power cuts as well as persistent under-frequency on the country’s transmission system.
The crisis has been building for some weeks, first in the form of a slide in coal stocks, then a deterioration in grid frequency, and now most obviously in blackouts hitting parts of the country.
Grid controllers normally aim to keep frequency steady and very close to target, minimizing the size and duration of any deviations, which can damage generators as well as customer equipment.
Below-target frequency indicates there is not enough generation to satisfy the total load on the transmission system (by contrast, above-target frequency indicates there is too much generation).
India has a grid frequency target of 50 cycles per second (Hertz) with controllers tasked with keeping it steady between 49.90 Hz and 50.05 Hz to maintain the network in a safe and reliable condition.
But average frequency has fallen well below target since the start of October, and the shortfalls have become larger and longer, indicating a chronic shortage of generation.
On Monday, the average frequency fell to just 49.96 Hz, down from 50.03 two weeks earlier, and the proportion of time spent below the minimum target increased to 21%, from less than 1%.
On Oct. 7, the worst day of the power shortages so far, the average frequency dropped to just 49.93 Hz, and the grid was below its minimum target for almost 28% of the day.
Transmission controllers have been forced to inflict local blackouts to prevent frequency dropping even further and threatening the overall stability of the network.
On Oct. 7, the nationwide shortage peaked at 11.7 Gigawatts and the day’s total unmet electricity demand hit 114 million kilowatt-hours, equivalent to almost 3% of total demand.
COAL SHORTAGE
Thermal power generators, most of them fuelled by coal, have proved increasingly unable to keep up with customer demand and the generation plan.
Cumulative power production since the start of April has fallen 21.5 Terawatt-hours (-2.9%) behind plan, worsening from a deficit of 11.6 TWh (-2.0%) at the end of August.
Thermal power generation has now fallen 21.7 TWh (3.6%) behind plan, from a deficit of 9.7 TWh (-2.0%) at the end of August.
The shortfall in coal-fired generation has become so large it can no longer be covered by the above-plan output from nuclear and hydro sources.
Coal-fired power plants are encountering increasing problems securing enough fuel to meet planned generation owing to a combination of fuel shortages and transport problems.
Coal-fired power plants have an average of just 4 days of fuel on hand compared with 19 days in October 2020 and 12 days before the pandemic in October 2019.
Coal stocks are rated critically low at 116 out of 135 generating plants (86%) across the country and those power plants account for 142 GW of generating capacity out of a total of 165 GW (86%).
Fifteen power plants have less than one day of fuel on hand and another 47 have only 1-2 days fuel in their yards, according to daily reports from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).
Power producers report coal shortages are currently responsible for forced outages or some loss of production at 60 generating units across the country (“Daily maintenance report”, CEA, Oct. 11).
Outages and losses are reported at coal-fired units in the states of Uttar Pradesh (14), Maharashtra (11), Gujarat (7), Rajasthan (6), Chhatisgarh (6), West Bengal (5), Punjab (4), Tamil Nadu (3), Karnataka (3) and Madhya Pradesh (1).
Until fuel stocks improve and more coal-fired plants are able to return to full production the electricity grid will struggle to meet high levels of power demand.
* * *
What’s worse, the energy crisis rippling worldwide could be doomed to repeat in the US. For more on that, read: “Energy Crisis May Unleash Winter Blackouts Across US, Insider Warns.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 19:25 - Taiwan Is Part Of China, Russia Declares, As Two Powers Coordinate To Resist US Pressure
Taiwan Is Part Of China, Russia Declares, As Two Powers Coordinate To Resist US Pressure
Russia has entered the fray in terms of interjecting in the ratcheting rhetoric between China and the US on the Taiwan issue. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made Moscow’s stance on the issue clear, firmly stating that Russia affirms its position that the island belongs to China.
“Just like the overwhelming majority of other countries, Russia views Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This is the premise we proceed from and will continue to proceed from in our policy,” Lavrov told reporters Tuesday, as cited in Interfax.
The statement was in response to a press question over whether the geopolitical tensions growing around Taiwan constitute a threat to regional security that Russia is concerned about. His statement about the “overwhelming majority” of nations holding Russia’s same view is certainly accurate, given Washington technically falls into the same category, while a mere 14 countries today have diplomatic relations with Taipei.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, via CGTN Lavrov did just days ago indicate the Kremlin is watching things with growing concern, as the US transfers weapons to Taiwan, continues sending occasional provocative delegations, and as The Wall Street Journal days ago confirmed, has a kept a contingent of US Marines on the ground to train local forces.
Lavrov said last week at a defense conference: “The Indo-Pacific concept is aimed at breaking up this system that relied on the need to respect the indivisibility of security,” in reference to the latest US coalition-building efforts within ‘the Quad’ nations of Australia, India and Japan, ostensibly toward maintaining a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Lavrov pointedly charged that this US policy “has openly proclaimed that its chief objective is containing China.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian was quick to welcome the remarks and Russia’s input on issues afflicting the South China Sea, specifically praising the remarks soon after as “well-put indeed!” – saying “Lavrov’s views reflect the shared concern of the vast majority of ASEAN countries.” The Chinese FM further blasted US policy as a reckless Cold War relic that Washington has lately revived:
“The US Indo-Pacific strategy, AUKUS and Quad are all closed and exclusive cliques informed by the Cold War zero-sum mentality with strong military security undertones. They will spur regional arms race, aggravate tension, and undermine regional unity and cooperation.
The US practice of ganging up against a third party runs counter to regional countries’ common aspiration to seek shared development through dialogue and cooperation and advance regional integration. It wins no hearts and has no future. Many ASEAN countries have questioned and opposed these moves to various degrees.”
Zhao had also returned the favor, stepping into Russia’s corner on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which the US, Ukraine, and some EU allies have sought to block.
“At least we’ve got Biden” — not a single Taiwanese person ever https://t.co/OTKmRXFCzQ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 12, 2021
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“It is well-known that the Nord Stream 2 project shows energy complementarity between Russia and Europe, and would help resolve the European energy crisis,” Zhao said during those last Friday remarks defending Russia. “The U.S., however, to serve its own geopolitical interests and monopolize the European energy market, spares no effort in disrupting and hobbling relevant projects to undermine the interests of Russia and Europe and their cooperation. This wins no support.”
He then actually linked the two issues as representative of the United States’ ‘bullying’ approach (a term top Chinese leaders have lately used with increased frequency): saying “the U.S. is adept at politicizing issues in all means and would hurt others indiscriminately, including its allies and partners, for its own interests.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 19:05 - Supply Chain Disruptions Force White House To Ask Walmart, UPS, FedEx To Increase Output
Supply Chain Disruptions Force White House To Ask Walmart, UPS, FedEx To Increase Output
By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times,
Carriers of goods including Walmart, UPS, and FedEx are moving to work more shifts—including 24 hours per day, seven days per week—to address global supply disruptions that have contributed to a surge in inflation, the White House said Wednesday. The update was announced ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with the heads of Walmart, FedEx, and UPS to address the supply chain bottlenecks before the Christmas season.
According to a fact sheet released by the administration, Walmart said it would “increase its use of night-time hours significantly and projects they could increase throughput by as much as 50 percent over the next several weeks.”
Meanwhile, UPS said it would commit to use 24/7 operations “and enhanced data sharing with the ports” to move more containers out of ports, said the White House.
And FedEx, the fact sheet said, will “work to combine an increase in nighttime hours with changes to trucking and rail use to increase the volume of containers it will move from the ports.”
UPS and FedEx combined shipped approximately 40 percent of U.S. packages by volume in 2020, the White House said. A White House official told news outlets on Wednesday that FedEx, UPS, and Walmart will move toward a 24/7 working schedule.
Thousands of shipping containers at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk, England, on Oct. 13, 2021. (Joe Giddens/PA) “Across these six companies over 3,500 additional containers per week will move at night through the end of the year,” said the fact sheet. “Those boxes contain toys, appliances, bicycles, and furniture that Americans purchased online or at their local small business, and pieces and parts that are sent to U.S. factories for our workers to assemble into products.”
Additionally, the Port of Los Angeles will move to 24/7 service, coming after the Port of Long Beach began similar operations several weeks ago, officials said.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union also made a commitment to staffing 24/7, meaning that it will double the “hours that cargo will be able to move out of its docks and on highways,” according to the White House.
The supply crisis is driven in part by the global COVID-19 pandemic and potential vaccine mandates, as sales of durable goods jumped amid worker shortages and transportation hub slowdowns. Lower-than-expected Christmas sales could hurt U.S. companies and pose a political risk for Biden.
Thousands of shipping containers are on cargo ships offshore waiting to be offloaded at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Similar backlogs exist at ports in New York and Savannah, Georgia. A shortage of warehouse workers and truck drivers to pick up goods is another reason for the bottlenecks.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/13/2021 – 18:45
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