Today’s News 15th July 2021

• Watch 1 Billion Years Of Tectonic Plate Movement In 40 Seconds
  Watch 1 Billion Years Of Tectonic Plate Movement In 40 Seconds

  According to plate tectonic theory, the Earth’s surface is made up of slabs of rock that are slowly shifting right under our feet.

  Because of this constant movement, today’s Earth looks a lot different from what it did millions of years ago. In today’s animation, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang looks at the Earth’s tectonic plate movement from 1 ga (geological time for 1 billion years ago) to the present-day, via EarthByte on YouTube.

  Editor’s note: The video starts at time 1,000 ma (1,000 million years ago), and ticks down at the rate of about 25 million years every second.

  The Emergence of Plate Tectonic Theory

  Plate tectonics is a relatively new theory—in fact, according to National Geographic, it hadn’t become popular until the 1960s. However, the concept of continental movement was brewing long before it became widely accepted.

  In 1912, German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed a theory he called continental drift. According to Wegener’s theory, Earth’s continents once formed a single, giant landmass, which he called Pangaea.

  Over millions of years, Pangaea slowly broke apart, eventually forming the continents as they are today. Wegener believed this continental drift explained why the borders of South America and Africa looked like matching puzzle pieces. He also pointed to similar rock formations and fossils on these two continents as proof to back his theory.

  Initially, the scientific community wasn’t on board with the theory of continental drift. But as more data emerged over the years, including research on seafloor spreading, the theory started to gain traction.

  The Supercontinent Cycle

  Nowadays, it’s believed that Pangea was just one of several supercontinents to mass together (and break apart) over the course of geological history.

  The exact number of supercontinents is largely debated, but according to the Encylopedia of Geology, here are five (including Pangea) that are widely recognized:

  • Kenorland: 2.7-2.5 billion years ago

  • Nuna/Columbia: 1.6-1.4 billion years ago

  • Rodinia: 950–800 million years ago

  • Pannotia: 620-580 million years ago

  • Pangea: 325-175 million years ago

  According to the theory, this cycle of breaking apart and coming together happens because of subduction, which occurs when tectonic plates converge with one another.

  The supercontinent cycle also ties into ocean formation. The below example of the Wilson Cycle specifically keys in on how the Atlantic Ocean, and its predecessor, the Iapetus Ocean, were formed as supercontinents drifted apart:

  

  Source: Hannes Grobe

  The Importance of Plate Tectonics

  Plate tectonics has been a game-changer for geologists. The theory has helped to explain tons of unanswered geological questions, assisting scientists in understanding how volcanoes, mountains, and ocean ridges are formed.

  It’s also valuable for the oil and gas industry since it explains how sedimentary basins were created, allowing geologists and engineers to target and locate vast oil reserves.

  Since the theory of plate tectonics is relatively new, there’s still a lot to be discovered in this field of research. However, in March 2021, a report was published in Earth-Science Reviews that, for the first time, visualized a continuous plate model that shows how Earth’s plates have shifted over the last billion years.

  The video above visualizes this particular report and accurately depicts the Earth’s tectonic plates’ movement or the observed shift in Earth’s tectonic plates over the years.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/15/2021 – 02:45

• Lithuania Concludes Its Subject To "Hybrid Aggression", Deploys Military To Protect Its Border
  Lithuania Concludes Its Subject To “Hybrid Aggression”, Deploys Military To Protect Its Border

  Via SouthFront.org,

  On July 13th, the Lithuanian parliament adopted a resolution calling the recent spike in irregular migration via Belarus “hybrid aggression”.

  

  The document states that the organised movement of migrants is aimed at destabilising the situation in Lithuania.

  According to the ruling conservative Homeland Union (TS-LKD), the resolution was initiated by the ruling majority in the parliament in cooperation with leaders of the majority of opposition groups and was backed by 56 lawmakers, with two votes against and 24 abstentions.

  The adopted resolution states that “countries hostile towards Lithuania are carrying out hybrid aggression against the Republic of Lithuania” by organizing irregular migration.

  It also expressed concern that “this hybrid aggression can be further developed and exploited and can even be used as a basis for threats of new nature in the context of the large-scale military exercise Zapad”, due to be held in Russia and Belarus in the autumn.

  As a result, the Lithuanian government calls on the border to be reinforced and the Lithuanian military assist the border guard in protecting against this sort of “hybrid aggression”.

  This comes alongside the construction of a “physical barrier” (read here border fence or wall) as soon as possible.

  The document also calls for measures to ensure that the organizers of migration, including natural and legal persons in Belarus, are held accountable and placed under national and EU sanctions.

  The resolution also proposed treating foreign nationals who cross the Lithuanian border without ID documents – excluding women with children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and those under 16 – as possible active participants of the ongoing hybrid attack.

  Therefore, they should be subject to different detention and accommodations conditions.

  A total of 1,676 foreigners have been detained near Lithuania’s border with Belarus so far this year, up more than 20 times from last year.

  Additionally, the resolution proposed launching an information campaign in the migrants’ countries of origin and also ensuring their return.

  If this doesn’t work, the resolution calls for the launch of consultations with NATO member countries.

  The resolution simply made official something that Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė said on July 7th.

  According to her, Lithuania is currently experiencing an unprecedented increase in irregular migration. Lithuanian officials believe that Belarusian authorities are involved in migrant smuggling.

  “We see the whole process as a hybrid aggression against not Lithuania, but the entire European Union,” she said. “It is [a response to] a principled stance of the entire EU, including Lithuania, regarding the results of rigged elections [in Belarus], repressions against the civil society and human rights activists.”

  Šimonytė noted that “institutions of the Belarusian regime participate in the organisation of flows of illegal migrants both actively and passively”.

  “Border crossing is being facilitated deliberately and the purpose of this, in our view, is to harm our country, to destabilize the situation, among other things,” she said.

  Lithuania is mobilizing the military to assist the border guards and handle the situation, Šimonytė said.

  “Also, we will start installing an additional physical barrier between Lithuania and Belarus, which would at the same time act as a sign and a deterrent for those organizing the flows of illegal migrants,” the prime minister said.

  As can be seen, the resolution was simply an official document to testify that the actions had already been undertaken.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/15/2021 – 02:00

• The Right To Be Let Alone: What To Do When COVID Strike Force Teams Come Knocking
  The Right To Be Let Alone: What To Do When COVID Strike Force Teams Come Knocking

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”

  – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

  A federal COVID-19 vaccination strike force may soon be knocking on your door, especially if you live in a community with low vaccination rates. Will you let them in?

  

  More to the point, are you required to open the door?

  The Biden Administration has announced that it plans to send federal “surge response teams” on a “targeted community door-to-door outreach“ to communities with low vaccination rates in order to promote the safety and accessibility of the COVID-19 vaccines.

  That’s all fine and good as far as government propaganda goes, but nothing is ever as simple or as straightforward as the government claims, especially not when armed, roving bands of militarized agents deployed by the Nanny State show up at your door with an agenda that is at odds with what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to as the constitutional “right to be let alone.”

  

  Any attempt by the government to encroach upon the citizenry’s privacy rights or establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked and singled out must be met with extreme caution. These door-to-door “visits” by COVID-19 surge response teams certainly qualify as a government program whose purpose, while seemingly benign, raises significant constitutional concerns.

  First, there is the visit itself.

  While government agents can approach, speak to and even question citizens without violating the Fourth Amendment, Americans have a right not to answer questions or even speak with a government agent.

  Courts have upheld these “knock and talk” visits as lawful, reasoning that even though the curtilage of the home is protected by the Fourth Amendment, there is an implied license to approach a residence, knock on the door/ring the bell, and seek to contact occupants. However, the encounter is wholly voluntary and a person is under no obligation to speak with a government agent in this situation. 

  Indeed, you don’t even need to answer or open the door in response to knocking/ringing by a government agent, and if you do answer the knock, you can stop speaking at any time. You also have the right to demand that government agents leave the property once the purpose of the visit is established. Government officials would not be enforcing any law or warrant in this context, and so they don’t have the authority of law to remain on the property after a homeowner or resident specifically revokes the implied license to come onto the property.

  When the government’s actions go beyond merely approaching the door and knocking, it risks violating the Fourth Amendment, which requires a warrant and probable cause of possible wrongdoing in order to search one’s property. A government agent would violate the Fourth Amendment if he snooped around the premises, peering into window and going to other areas in search of residents. 

  It should be pointed out that some judges (including Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch) believe that placing “No Trespassing” signs or taking other steps to impede access to the door is sufficient to negate any implied permission for government agents or others to approach your home, but this view does not have general acceptance.

  While in theory one can refuse to speak with police or other government officials during a “knock and talk” encounter, as the courts have asserted as a justification for dismissing complaints about this police investigative tactic, the reality is far different. Indeed, it is unreasonable to suggest that individuals caught unaware by these tactics will not feel pressured in the heat of the moment to comply with a request to speak with government agents who display official credentials and are often heavily armed, let alone allow them to search one’s property. Even when such consent is denied, police have been known to simply handcuff the homeowner and conduct a search over his objections.

  Second, there is the danger inherent in these knock-and-talk encounters.

  Although courts have embraced the fiction that “knock and talks” are “voluntary” encounters that are no different from other door-to-door canvassing, these constitutionally dubious tactics are highly intimidating confrontations meant to pressure individuals into allowing police access to one’s home, which then paves the way for a warrantless search of one’s home and property.

  The act of going to homes and taking steps to speak with occupants is akin to the “knock and talk” tactic used by police, which can be fraught with danger for homeowners and government agents alike. Indeed, “knock-and-talk” policing has become a thinly veiled, warrantless exercise by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night.

  “Knock-and-shoot” policing might be more accurate, however.

  “Knock and talks” not only constitute severe violations of the privacy and security of homeowners, but the combination of aggression and surprise employed by police is also a recipe for a violent confrontation that rarely ends well for those on the receiving end of these tactics.

  For example, although 26-year-old Andrew Scott had committed no crime and never fired a single bullet or threatened police, he was gunned down by police who knocked aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 am, failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed Scott when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense. The police were investigating a speeding incident by engaging in a middle-of-the-night “knock and talk” in Scott’s apartment complex.

  Carl Dykes was shot in the face by a county deputy who pounded on Dykes’ door in the middle of the night without identifying himself. Because of reports that inmates had escaped from a local jail, Dykes brought a shotgun with him when he answered the door.

  As these and other incidents make clear, while Americans have a constitutional right to question the legality of a police action or resist an unlawful police order, doing so can often get one arrested, shot or killed.

  Third, there is the question of how the government plans to use the information it obtains during these knock-and-talk visits.

  Because the stated purpose of the program is to promote vaccination, homeowners and others who reside at the residence will certainly be asked if they are vaccinated. Again, you have a right not to answer this or any other question. Indeed, an argument could be made that even asking this question is improper if the purpose of the program is merely to ensure that Americans “have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is.”

  Under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, an agency should only collect and maintain information about an individual as is “relevant and necessary to accomplish a purpose of the agency.” In this situation, the government agent could accomplish the purpose of assuring persons have information about the vaccine simply by providing that information (either in writing or orally) and would not need to know the vaccination status of the residents. To the extent the agents do request, collect and store information about residents’ vaccination status, this could be a Privacy Act violation.

  Of course, there is always the danger that this program could be used for other, more nefarious, purposes not related to vaccination encouragement. As with knock-and-talk policing, government agents might misuse their appearance of authority to gain entrance to a residence and obtain other information about it and those who live there. Once the door is opened by a resident, anything the agents can see from their vantage point can be reported to law enforcement authorities.

  Moreover, while presumably the targeting will be of areas with demonstrated low vaccination rates, there is no guarantee that this program would not be used as cover for conducting surveillance on areas deemed to be “high crime” areas as a way of obtaining intelligence for law enforcement purposes.

  We’ve been down this road before, with the government sending its spies to gather intel on American citizens by questioning them directly, or by asking their neighbors to snitch on them.

  Remember the egregiously invasive and intrusive American Community Survey?

  Unlike the traditional census, which collects data every ten years, the American Community Survey (ACS) is sent to about 3 million homes per year at a reported cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, while the traditional census is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in each dwelling, their ages and ethnicities, the ownership of the dwelling and telephone numbers, the ACS is much more intrusive, asking questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among other highly personal and private matters.

  Individuals who receive the ACS must complete it or be subject to monetary penalties. Although no reports have surfaced of individuals actually being penalized for refusing to answer the survey, the potential fines that can be levied for refusing to participate in the ACS are staggering. For every question not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.

  At 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), the ACS contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire. These concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among others. For instance, the ACS asks how many persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed information about them such as their relationship to you, marital status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc. The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and so on.

  However, that’s not all.

  The survey also demands to know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble getting up the stairs, and what time you leave for work every morning, along with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer. The questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last worked at a job, among other things.

  While some of the ACS’ questions may seem fairly routine, the real danger is in not knowing why the information is needed, how it will be used by the government or with whom it will be shared.

  Finally, you have the right to say “no.”

  Whether police are knocking on your door at 2 am or 2:30 pm, as long as you’re being “asked” to talk to a police officer who is armed to the teeth and inclined to kill at the least provocation, you don’t really have much room to resist, not if you value your life.

  Mind you, these knock-and-talk searches are little more than police fishing expeditions carried out without a warrant.

  The goal is intimidation and coercion.

  Unfortunately, with police departments increasingly shifting towards pre-crime policing and relying on dubious threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state, we’re going to see more of these warrantless knock-and-talk police tactics by which police attempt to circumvent the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement and prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

  Here’s the bottom line.

  These agents are coming to your home with one purpose in mind: to collect information on you.

  It’s a form of intimidation, of course. You shouldn’t answer any questions you’re uncomfortable answering about your vaccine history or anything else. The more information you give them, the more it can be used against you. Just ask them politely but firmly to leave.

  In this case, as in so many interactions with government agents, the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments (and your cell phone recording the encounter) are your best protection.

  Under the First Amendment, you don’t have to speak (to government officials or anyone else). The Fourth Amendment protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. And under the Fifth Amendment, you have a right to remain silent and not say anything which might be used against you.

  You can also post a “No Trespassing” sign on your property to firmly announce that you are exercising your right to be left alone. If you see government officials wandering around your property and peering through windows, in my opinion, you have a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Government officials can ring the doorbell, but once you put them on notice that it’s time for them to leave, they can’t stay on your property.

  It’s important to be as clear as possible and inform them that you will call the police if they don’t leave. You may also wish to record your encounter with the government agent. If they still don’t leave, immediately call the local police and report a trespasser on your property.

  Remember, you have rights.

  The government didn’t want us to know about—let alone assert—those rights during this whole COVID-19 business.

  After all, for years now, the powers-that-be—those politicians and bureaucrats who think like tyrants and act like petty dictators regardless of what party they belong to—have attempted to brainwash us into believing that we have no right to think for ourselves, make decisions about our health, protect our homes and families and businesses, act in our best interests, demand accountability and transparency from government, or generally operate as if we are in control of our own lives.

  But we have every right, and you know why?

  Because as the Declaration of Independence states, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights—to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness—that no government can take away from us.

  Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the government from constantly trying to usurp our freedoms at every turn. Indeed, the nature of government is such that it invariably oversteps its limits, abuses its authority, and flexes its totalitarian muscles.

  Take this COVID-19 crisis, for example.

  What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

  The government has made no secret of its plans.

  Just follow the money trail, and you’ll get a sense of what’s in store: more militarized police, more SWAT team raids, more surveillance, more lockdowns, more strong-armed tactics aimed at suppressing dissent and forcing us to comply with the government’s dictates.

  It’s chilling to think about, but it’s not surprising.

  In many ways, this COVID-19 state of emergency has invested government officials (and those who view their lives as more valuable than ours) with a sanctimonious, self-righteous, arrogant, Big Brother Knows Best approach to top-down governing, and the fall-out can be seen far and wide.

  It’s an ugly, self-serving mindset that views the needs, lives and rights of “we the people” as insignificant when compared to those in power.

  That’s how someone who should know better such as Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor, can suggest that a free people—born in freedom, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, and living in a country birthed out of a revolutionary struggle for individual liberty—have no rights to economic freedom, to bodily integrity, or to refuse to comply with a government order with which they disagree.

  According to Dershowitz, who has become little more than a legal apologist for the power elite, “You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business… And if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”

  Dershowitz is wrong: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, while the courts may increasingly defer to the government’s brand of Nanny State authoritarianism, we still have rights.

  The government may try to abridge those rights, it may refuse to recognize them, it may even attempt to declare martial law and nullify them, but it cannot litigate, legislate or forcefully eradicate them out of existence.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 23:50

• FBI Foils Iranian Intelligence Plot To Kidnap Dissident On American Soil
  FBI Foils Iranian Intelligence Plot To Kidnap Dissident On American Soil

  During the same week it’s being widely reported that the US and Iran are engaging in prisoner swap negotiations related to the stalled nuclear deal talks in Vienna, it’s been revealed Wednesday that the feds have charged four alleged Iranian intelligence agents for attempting to kidnap a dissident on US soil. 

  The Associated Press reports that “An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran, authorities said Tuesday.”

  

  The indictment doesn’t reveal the victims’ names based on the sensitivity of the case, but Brooklyn-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad says she was among those targeted in the plot. The 44-year old Iranian-American appears regularly on the US-funded satellite TV channel Voice of America Persian. There were reportedly other targets living in Canada and America.

  Her activism further includes organizing events against the mandatory wearing of headscarves and other mandated religious practices in the Islamic Republic. She said at first she felt “scared” when she learned of the plot, but later posted the following statement to social media: “I am grateful to FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry’s plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under Rouhani. This is the regime that kidnapped & executed Ruhollah Zam. They’ve also kidnapped and jailed Jamshid Sharmahd and many others.”

  I am grateful to FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry’s plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under Rouhani.

  This is the regime that kidnapped & executed Ruhollah Zam. They’ve also kidnapped and jailed Jamshid Sharmahd and many others pic.twitter.com/HUefdEbiil

  — Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) July 14, 2021

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  An official with New York’s FBI office has been cited as saying it sounded like “some far-fetched movie plot” – the details of which are laid out in The Wall Street Journal as follows: 

  In an interview, Ms. Alinejad, who lives in Brooklyn, said federal agents informed her of the alleged kidnapping scheme last year and told her it was the first known attempt by Iranian officials to carry out a kidnapping plot on American soil.

  On Tuesday, federal prosecutors announced the kidnapping conspiracy charges against an Iranian intelligence official, Alireza Farahani, and three Iranian intelligence assets, all of whom remain at large in Iran. It couldn’t be determined if the men have U.S. attorneys.

  Another individual has been arrested in California for reportedly providing financial support to the scheme. Essentially the goal was to get Alinejad and other targets to travel to Iran where they would have been apprehended as soon as they entered the country.

  The WSJ details further that “The Iranian government tried to lure Ms. Alinejad to Iran through her relatives, prosecutors said.”  But her family refused and that’s when the “intelligence network paid investigators to surveil and record Ms. Alinejad and her family in Brooklyn.”

  You’re going to find out just how performative the last 4 years are based on WH press briefing questions tomorrow on this topic. https://t.co/ezTBsJfLXU

  — Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 14, 2021

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  “They also researched ways to sneak Ms. Alinejad out of the U.S., including a plot to abduct her to Venezuela before bringing her to Iran, according to the indictment,” the report says.

  The timing of this major incident coming to light is key, given Vienna nuclear negotiations are said to be stalled till August. Crucially the new Iranian president, hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, will take office August 3rd – meaning the previously stated White House desire to see a deal wrapped up before then looks out of reach.

  This latest unprecedented and brazen plot allegedly overseen by Iranian intelligence will put immense pressure on the Biden administration to halt negotiations – something already being used of Iran hawks in Congress to argue against the JCPOA on both sides of the aisle. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 23:30

• Biden's Afghan Exit: Be Prepared To Live With the Taliban Or The Warlords
  Biden’s Afghan Exit: Be Prepared To Live With the Taliban Or The Warlords

  Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The US and the rest of the world have to be prepared to live with the winner. They had better start planning how they are going to do that.

  Fourth of July marked U.S. Independence Day and it was ironic that at the beginning of the holiday weekend, on July 2, American troops slunk out of the massive Bagram air base in Afghanistan which they had occupied for twenty years. Concurrently, President Biden had a media conference at which he was asked “Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall? I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.” The President’s reply was barely coherent which is disturbing on several counts, not the least being the indication that he has no idea what the future holds for Afghanistan.

  

  His rambling response was: “Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years. And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval. I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government. There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect. But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.” He was then asked another question about Afghanistan but cut the reporter short, saying “I want to talk about happy things, man.”

  Happy things? The man is living in fantasyland. Not only has his country suffered the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world, but a Washington Post analysis showed that “through the first five months of 2021, gunfire killed more than 8,100 people in the United States, about 54 lives lost per day” — which is even more deaths than in Afghanistan in the same period, which the New York Times calculated as 2077 (1461 soldiers and police; 616 civilians). Biden should be sitting down with his best and brightest advisers and talking about serious things — such as future US policy concerning Afghanistan.

  On July 5 Stars and Stripes reported that U.S. forces “left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night [of 2 July] without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left…” It is very difficult to believe that any nation would take such action, but Afghanistan’s designated commander of Bagram, General Mir Asadullah Kohistani, said that “we heard some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram . . . and finally by seven o’clock in the morning we understood it was confirmed that they had already left.”

  This bizarre behavior illustrated US disloyalty to the Kabul government and served to further erode the morale of the tottering security forces which have been taking an increasingly severe beating in recent weeks. The flight of over 1,000 Afghan troops to neighbouring Tajikistan on July 5 was a humiliation that focused world attention on the approaching catastrophe.

  Video: Chaos reigns at Pakistan-Afghanistan border as Taliban ‘retakes’ key crossing after 20 Years:

  In an interview broadcast on ABC News on July 4 the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, said the Taliban militants are “gaining strength” and that “we should be concerned… The loss of terrain is concerning.” This was probably the ultimate understatement in the past week of crisis although Miller had the grace to admit that “I don’t like leaving friends in need… You look at the security situation and it’s not good. The Taliban is on the move.” And there is nothing that he or the entire U.S.-Nato military alliance can do about it. They are leaving a country in a state of mayhem, and abandoning friends in need.

  In October 2005 I wrote that “The insurgency in Afghanistan will continue until foreign troops leave, whenever that might be. After a while, the government in Kabul will collapse, and there will be anarchy until a brutal, ruthless, drug-rich warlord achieves power. He will rule the country as it has always been ruled by Afghans: by threats, religious ferocity, deceit, bribery, and outright savagery, when the latter can be practiced without retribution. And the latest foreign occupation will become just another memory.”

  In 2005-2006 the Taliban began to recover, attracting more recruits and carrying out ever-increasing acts of violence around the country. Concurrently the warlords firmed up their positions in their own regions and continued to expand their militias. Foreign troops and aircraft surged in, and Afghanistan’s armed forces were being trained to take over security duties. But the war went on, and the U.S.-Nato military alliance led the so-called International Security Assistance Force with the mission “aimed to create the conditions whereby the Afghan government could exercise its authority throughout the country and build the capacity of the Afghan national security forces.” According to Nato this “was completed in December 2014 when the Afghans assumed full responsibility for the security of their country.”

  But the security of Afghanistan continued to decline, and now all the foreigners are scurrying out of the country, leaving it in a state in which, according to the US commanding general, the Taliban is “gaining strength” and “the loss of terrain is concerning.”

  In Herat Province in the west of the country, abutting Iran, the Taliban captured two major border crossing points on July 8 while President Biden was making another statement about Afghanistan. Following his (again painfully disjointed) remarks he was asked “why you don’t trust the Taliban?” and answered “it’s a silly question. Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more — more competent in terms of conducting war.” This is patent nonsense, as was his reply to the observation that “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.” He said “that is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion” which is directly contrary to the Wall Street Journal report that “a new U.S. intelligence assessment says that the Afghan government could fall within six months of the American military departing“.

  Taliban apparently took over this gym somewhere in #Afghanistan……I’m just leaving this video here without any other comment. 🙈

  pic.twitter.com/UcvdIvmqD9

  — FJ (@Natsecjeff) July 14, 2021

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  It doesn’t need the massive intelligence capability of the United States to be able to predict that the Afghan government will soon collapse and that even greater chaos will envelope the country. Biden declared he believes “the only way there’s going to be — this is now Joe Biden, not the intelligence community — the only way there’s ultimately going to be peace and security in Afghanistan is that they work out a modus vivendi with the Taliban and they make a judgment as to how they can make peace.”

  Getting on with the Taliban is not easy, although there was a glimmer of hope in their meeting with some Kabul government representatives in Iran on July 7. They jointly stated that “war is not the solution to the Afghanistan problem”, but being told by Biden that he doesn’t trust them is not going to make them eager to engage in any settlement that he might wish to broker. After the present government collapses, the civil war in the country will continue, this time between the Taliban and the warlords, and it’s anyone’s guess who will come out on top.

  Whatever happens, the US and the rest of the world are going to have to be prepared to live with the winner. They had better start planning how they are going to do that.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 23:10

• Stanford Researchers Create AI-Powered Immune System 'Clock' That Predicts How Well You'll Age
  Stanford Researchers Create AI-Powered Immune System ‘Clock’ That Predicts How Well You’ll Age

  Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research have developed a method for predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon you’ll become frail, and whether a person has undiscovered cardiovascular problems that could lead to serious illness down the road.

  

  “[N]ot all humans age biologically at the same rate. You see this in the clinic — some older people are extremely disease-prone, while others are the picture of health,” said senior author David Furman, PhD, who runs Stanford’s 1000 Immunomes Project.

  Published July 12 in Nature Aging, the 26-author collaboration found that bloodbourne inflammation markers hold the key to how one will age.

  This divergence, Furman said, traces in large part to differing rates at which people’s immune systems decline. The immune system — a carefully coordinated collection of cells, substances and strategies with which evolution has equipped us to deal with threats such as injuries or invasions by microbial pathogens — excels at mounting a quick, intense, localized, short-term, resist-and-repair response called acute inflammation. This “good inflammation” typically does its job, then wanes within days. (An example is that red, swollen finger you see when you have a splinter, and the rapid healing that follows.)

  As we grow older, a low-grade, constant, bodywide “bad inflammation” begins to kick in. This systemic and chronic inflammation causes organ damage and promotes vulnerability to a who’s who of diseases spanning virtually every organ system in the body and including cancer, heart attacks, strokes, neurodegeneration and autoimmunity.

  To date, there have been no metrics for accurately assessing individuals’ inflammatory status in a way that could predict these clinical problems and point to ways of addressing them or staving them off, Furman said. But now, he said, the study has produced a single-number quantitative measure that appears to do just that. –Stanford Medicine

  For the study, blood samples were taken from 1,001 healthy people ranging in age from 8-96, between 2009 and 2016. The samples were “subjected to a barrage of analytical procedures determining levels of immune-signaling proteins called cytokines, the activation status of numerous immune-cell types in responses to various stimuli, and the overall activity levels of thousands of genes in each of those cells,” according to the report.

  Using artificial intelligence, the data was fed into a composite analysis referred to by researchers as an ‘inflammatory clock,’ which finds that the strongest predictors of inflammatory age are contained within 50 immune-signaling proteins called cytokines. When run through the ‘complex algorithm,’ the markers were sufficient to generate a single-number inflammatory score that reflects a person’s immunological response – including the likelihood of suffering from a variety of aging-related diseases.

  In particular, researchers tracked 30 participants in Furman’s 1000 Immunomes Project participants aged 65 or older whose blood was drawn in 2010. They measured how quickly participants were able to get up from a chair and walk a fixed distance, as well as their ability to live independently via questionnaire (“Can you walk by yourself? Do you need help getting dressed?”). In doing so, they found that ‘inflammatory age’ was a better predictor than chronological age at predicting frailty seven years later.

  Furman also studied an exceptionally long-lived population in Bologna, Italy – comparing the inflammatory ages of 28 centenarians and one sub-centenarian to 18 subjects with ages ranging between 50-79 years, and found that the aged Italians had inflammatory ages averaging 40 years less than their calendar age. One 105-year-old participant had an inflammatory age of just 25, according to Furman.

  To further assess inflammatory age’s effect on mortality, Furman’s team turned to the Framingham Study, which has been tracking health outcomes in thousands of individuals since 1948. The Framingham study lacked sufficient data on bloodborne-protein levels, but the genes whose activity levels largely dictate the production of the inflammatory clock’s cytokines are well known. The researchers measured those cytokine-encoding genes’ activity levels in Framingham subjects’ cells. This proxy for cytokine levels significantly correlated with all-cause mortality among the Framingham participants. –Stanford Medicine

  Keep in mind, many scientists believe COVID-19 should be treated as an acute inflammatory disease, in which critical patients often experience a ‘cytokine storm.’

  More via Stanford Medicine:

  A Key Substance:

  The scientists observed that blood levels of one substance, CXCL9, contributed more powerfully than any other clock component to the inflammatory-age score. They found that levels of CXCL9, a cytokine secreted by certain immune cells to attract other immune cells to a site of an infection, begin to rise precipitously after age 60, on average.

  Among a new cohort of 97 25- to 90-year-old individuals selected from the 1000 Immunomes Project for their apparently excellent health, with no signs of any disease, the investigators looked for subtle signs of cardiovascular deterioration. Using a sensitive test of arterial stiffness, which conveys heightened risk for strokes, heart attacks and kidney failure, they tied high inflammatory-age scores — and high CXCL9 levels — to unexpected arterial stiffness and another portent of untoward cardiac consequences: excessive thickness of the wall of the heart’s main pumping station, the left ventricle.

  CXCL9 has been implicated in cardiovascular disease. A series of experiments in laboratory dishware showed that CXCL9 is secreted not only by immune cells but by endothelial cells — the main components of blood-vessel walls. The researchers showed that advanced age both correlates with a significant increase in endothelial cells’ CXCL9 levels and diminishes endothelial cells’ ability to form microvascular networks, to dilate and to contract.

  But in laboratory experiments conducted on tissue from mice and on human cells, reducing CXCL9 levels restored youthful endothelial-cell function, suggesting that CXCL9 directly contributes to those cells’ dysfunction and that inhibiting it could prove effective in reducing susceptible individuals’ risk of cardiovascular disease.

  “Our inflammatory aging clock’s ability to detect subclinical accelerated cardiovascular aging hints at its potential clinical impact,” Furman said. “All disorders are treated best when they’re treated early.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 22:50

• Goldman Sees Oil Price Spiking On UAE/OPEC+ Deal
  Goldman Sees Oil Price Spiking On UAE/OPEC+ Deal

  Oil suffered its biggest drop in 2.5 months today after the EIA reported that in the latest week, gasoline demand in the US unexpectedly tumbled by 760,000 barrels a day from the record 10 million barrels a day a week, to 9.28 million barrels a day to get back to levels in late June.

  

  While algos focused on the sharp drop, what they ignored was that the number was largely meaningless, since the reporting week included July 5, a day off for Americans. Additionally, the EIA’s estimate, known as product supplied, is derived from other data rather than being a direct measurement of consumption. Since that method often leads to erratic numbers, some observers prefer to use the 4-week rolling average. That measure was 9.485 million barrels a day, which was about equal to the same week in 2019

  None of that mattered, however, as CTAs quickly joined in the selling frenzy and completely erasing the earlier jump on the far more important news of an OPEC+ deal.

  Just how important was the Reuters report that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are close to reaching a production agreement, one which sees both the higher baseline requested by the UAE (of 3.65 mb/d starting in April 2022) as well as an extension of the output agreement requested by Saudi (through December 2022). Important enough that in a note released late on Wednesday, Goldman said that the deal would remove the low-probability tail risks of potential price war, and “represents $2 to $4/bbl upside risk to our $80/bbl summer and $75/bbl 2022 Brent price forecasts.”

  In the note from Goldman commodity analysts Damien Courvalin and Jeff Currie, the two also write that the expected agreement “as the first of likely four potential bullish supply catalysts over the coming month” that would more than offset higher North American production. Additionally, although some OPEC+ details remain uncertain, like August and September quotas or baselines of other countries, “these are of limited magnitude and importance to the global oil market outlook, which the bank continues to see as supportive of higher oil prices”

  Piling on the bullish cash, Courvalin writes that an OPEC+ deal that offers a higher baseline for the UAE, as well as an extension of output agreement through December 2022 – such as the one being contemplated –  would be bullish relative to Goldman’s base case

  And speaking of Goldman’s forecasts, the bank had assumed a 500kb/d ramp-up starting in August as well as a gradually rising UAE baseline from 3.17m b/d to 3.3m b/d in August to 3.65m b/d by the end of 1Q 2022. As a result, such a deal would imply downside risk to its OPEC+ production forecast of 400k-600k b/d on average for 3Q 2021-1Q 2022, depending on whether the lack of August production hike is compensated for in September. Needless to say, that too is bullish for the price of oil… and yet one look at the collapse in oil prices today and one would be left shocked at just how dumb the algos have become.

  Finally, it’s not just the UAE/OPEC+ deal that makes Goldman’s commodities team hopeful – the bank’s other three potential bullish supply catalysts are listed as:-

  • Upcoming shale earnings season, which may reaffirm greater incentive toward returning cash to shareholders over production growth
  • That progress on the U.S. reaching an agreement with Iran has stalled, setting back the potential ramp up of exports
  • Bank’s view that consensus expectations for global production outside of North America and core-OPEC remain too optimistic

  Below we excerpt from the full note:

  The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear close to reaching a production agreement, with Reuters reporting progress towards a deal that would allow for both the higher baseline requested by the UAE (of 3.65 mb/d starting in April 2022) as well as an extension of the output agreement requested by Saudi (through December 2022). We assume that the such a deal – if confirmed – would likely come alongside a gradual 0.4 mb/d monthly ramp-up in production through December 2021, as all OPEC+ members had already supported this decision.

  Such an agreement would help bridge the (modest) divide between both countries and help remove the (low probability) OPEC+ tail risks of a potential price war or insufficient production growth, as we expected. While some details remain uncertain, like the August and September quotas or the baseline of other countries, these are of limited magnitude and importance to the global oil market outlook, which we continue to see as supportive of higher oil prices.

  Importantly, such an OPEC+ agreement would be bullish relative to our base-case, as we had assumed (1) a 0.5 mb/d ramp-up starting in August as well as (2) a gradually rising UAE baseline from 3.17 mb/d to 3.3 mb/d in August to 3.65 mb/d by the end of 1Q22 (given its clear inequity). As a result, a deal as described above would imply downside risk to our OPEC+ production forecast of 0.4 to 0.6 mb/d on average for 3Q21-1Q22 (depending on whether the lack of August production hike is compensated for in September).

  

  All else equal, this would represent $2 to $4/bbl upside risk to our $80/bbl summer and $75/bbl 2022 Brent price forecasts.

  1. While the lack of definitive OPEC+ production agreement (and the potential modest downside demand risk from the Delta COVID variant) leave our forecasts unchanged, we see such an OPEC+ agreement as the first of likely four potential bullish supply catalysts over the coming month that would more than offset higher recent realized North American production.
  2. Second is the upcoming US shale earnings season, which has the potential to further illustrate the higher US marginal costs and greater incentive towards returning cash to shareholders than production growth. This is presaged by the lack of horizontal oil rig count increase in recent months, with such discipline increasingly imposed on HY producers by the ratings agencies and potentially binding for IG producers if they announce higher dividend payouts.
  3. Third, progress on the US reaching an agreement with Iran has stalled, with the likely delay of the seventh round of negotiations till at least August creating risks that the potential ramp-up in Iran exports is later than our October base-case (and altogether less likely). The next OPEC+ agreement is further likely to state an offset provision for a potential ramp-up in Iran exports, further limiting the bearish impact of a potential return to the JCPOA agreement. For reference, a lack of Iran supply deal would increase our 2022 price forecast by $10/bbl.
  4. Fourth, we believe consensus expectations (as proxied by the IEA) for global production outside of North America and core-OPEC remain too optimistic. We expect (1) non-OPEC+ exc. North America production to only increase by 0.6 mb/d from May to August 2021, 0.8 mb/d less than the IEA, and further (2) expect 60% of OPEC+ members accounting for 20% of production to fall below their production quotas as low drilling activity reduces productive capacity by early 2022. Such an outcome would lay bare the need in 2022 for both a decline in OPEC’s spare capacity to below its 10-year range as well as a sharp rebound in shale production growth, both bullish outcomes relative to market forwards.

  As a result, we believe that risks to our bullish oil price forecasts are skewed to the upside, with the catalyst for such a move higher shifting from the demand to the supply side. While our bullish view this year had been driven by our well above consensus demand growth forecast, this is no longer the case with (1) the sharp rebound in global oil demand that has taken place since May, from 95 to 98 mb/d currently and near our 99 mb/d end of summer forecast, mostly played out, with (2) the IEA expecting similar peak summer demand, and with (3) the EM vaccine led demand uplift set to only play out gradually through 1Q22.

  A shift in market focus to the supply will make increasingly evident that the industry’s costs have reset sharply higher, due to (1) poor accumulated returns of the past 5 years, (2) the inflationary impact of internalizing carbon emissions and (3) the rising uncertainty and pessimism on long-term oil demand. As a result, we initiate a new trade recommendation to be long Dec-22 Brent forwards, currently trading at $67.06/bbl. This entry point is below our Dec-22 spot forecast of $75/bbl due to backwardation and further offers a proxy trade for a re-setting higher of the oil market’s marginal costs.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 22:30

• China GDP Growth Disappoints As Credit Impulse Crashes
  China GDP Growth Disappoints As Credit Impulse Crashes

  Following Q1’s record-breaking surge in China’s YoY GDP (thanks to base-effect malarkey and a massive credit impulse), tonight’s Q2 GDP was expected to slow drastically (especially given the crackdown on investment/real estate deleveraging and the collapse in the credit impulse)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The question is how much? Consensus estimates called for an 8.0% YoY GDP rise, but whisper numbers were notably lower with Bloomberg Economics’ Shu noting that various early indicators are consistent in pointing to some weakening in consumption in June.

  “On balance, these indicators suggest production growth – after base effects are taken into account – may have slowed, but only a touch.”

  The official services PMI fell to 52.3 in June from 54.3 in May, while its Caixin counterpart showed a much steeper slide from a strong reading to just slightly above 50 – the line between expansion and contraction.

  The headline GDP growth figure printed a very slightly disappointing +7.9% YoY

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  On A QoQ basis, Q1 GDP growth was downwardly revised from +0.6% to +0.4% which helped push Q2’s QoQ GDP 1.3% higher (better than the +1.0% QoQ expected).

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Other data was mixed, with Industrial Production and Property Investment disappointing as all major data items showed slowing growth…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  June Retail Sales rose 23.0% YTD YoY (better than the +22.8% expected) but slower than the +25.7% in May.

  June Industrial Production rose 15.9% YTD YoY (slightly weaker than the +16.0% expected) and slower than the +17.8% in May.

  June Fixed Asset Investment YTD YoY rose 12.6%, down from the 15.4% rise in May (but better than the +12.0% expectation).

  June Property Investment YTD YoY rose just 15.0% (worse than the +16.0% expected) and well down from the +18.3% in May.

  June Surveyed Jobless Rate was unchanged at 5.0%.

  This will likely be a little confusing to traders.

  Given China’s headline data wasn’t terrible, with retail sales even beating estimates, why does the economy needs more central bank support?

  Bloomberg’s Chief China Markets Correspondent, Sofia Horta e Costa, points out that “it may be that’s there’s a problem with China’s financial plumbing where banks aren’t lending or credit demand is weak. This is tricky to read.”

  Can we say the RRR cut and calls for lower interest rates are not at all about the economy, but about the banking system? The sector is struggling under the impact of a negative credit impulse, the deleveraging campaign and increasing corporate defaults.

  There is one side note: The country’s energy companies are starting to see demand declining after months of robust increase underpinning the recovery.

  Apparent oil demand fell for a second straight month, down 1.7% from a year earlier.

  No major reactions in markets to any of the data for now as Yuan is leaking lower against the dollar and Chinese bank stocks are rallying.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 22:17

• Russia Warns Pentagon: Don't Deploy Troops In Central Asia Near Afghanistan 
  Russia Warns Pentagon: Don’t Deploy Troops In Central Asia Near Afghanistan 

  Amid the continuing full US troop draw down from Afghanistan, which last week President Biden said would be ‘complete’ by August 31st, the Pentagon has been debating how to maintain a foothold in Central Asia as it increasingly looks like Kabul will come under Taliban threat within a mere months. 

  Last month in an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan slammed the door shut on allowing the CIA or US special forces to conduct cross-border counterterrorism missions against a resurgent Al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Taliban. Given Washington’s scrambling to establish other outposts in countries neighboring Afghanistan, Russia is now warning against such an expanded Central Asian US military presence. 

  On Tuesday Russia’s foreign ministry put the US on notice, warning that the possibility of a US “permanent military presence” in countries neighboring Afghanistan is “unacceptable”. 

  

  The comments by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov further stated: 

  “We told the Americans in a direct and straightforward way that it would change a lot of things not only in our perceptions of what’s going on in that important region, but also in our relations with the United States.”

  Crucially Moscow also warned Central Asian countries, especially its allies, against hosting US troops connected to events in Afghanistan.

  “We cautioned them against such steps, and we also have had a frank talk on the subject with our Central Asian allies, neighbors and friends and also other countries in the region that would be directly affected,” Ryabkov said further.

  Currently Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have Russian military bases, while Kyrgyzstan closed a US base in 2014 that had been used as a launching pad for counter-terror missions in Afghanistan.

  

  According to Military Times, at the start of this week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had “emphasized that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and any presence of foreign troops on their territories must be endorsed by the security pact. He added that none of those countries have raised the issue.”

  Taliban offensives across much of the country as the US exits is already creating a crisis that’s spilling over to nearby countries, particularly Tajikistan, which lately saw over 1,000 Afghan national troops and many more civilian refugees flee across its border. 

  Russia for its part considers Tajikistan its own sphere of influence and says it’s poised to activate a base there specifically for Afghan security-related missions, given its concern over foreign jihadists coming out of Afghanistan and entering Russian border regions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 22:00

• Taibbi: Spying And Smearing Is "Un-American," Not Tucker Carlson
  Taibbi: Spying And Smearing Is “Un-American,” Not Tucker Carlson

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  On Monday, June 28th, Fox host Tucker Carlson dropped a bomb mid-show, announcing he’d been approached by a “whistleblower” who told him he was being spied on by the NSA.

  “The National Security Agency is monitoring our electronic communications,” he said, “and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”

  

  The reaction was swift, mocking, and ferocious. “Carlson is sounding more and more like InfoWars host and notorious conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones,” chirped CNN media analyst Brian Stelter. Vox ripped Carlson as a “serial fabulist” whose claims were “evidence-free.” The Washington Post quipped that “in a testament to just how far the credibility of Tucker Carlson Tonight has cratered,” even groups like Pen America and the Reporters Committee on the Freedom of the Press were no-commenting the story, while CNN learned from its always-reliable “people familiar with the matter” that even Carlson’s bosses at Fox didn’t believe him.

  None of this was surprising. A lot of media people despise Carlson. He may be Exhibit A in the n+2 epithet phenomenon that became standard math in the Trump era, i.e. if you thought he was an “asshole” in 2015 you jumped after Charlottesville straight past racist to white supremacist, and stayed there. He’s spoken of in newsrooms in hushed tones, like a mythical monster. The paranoid rumor that he’s running for president (he’s not) comes almost entirely from a handful of editors and producers who’ve convinced themselves it’s true, half out of anxiety and half subconscious desperation to find a click-generating replacement for Donald Trump.

  The NSA story took a turn on the morning of July 7th last week, when Carlson went on Maria Bartiromo’s program. He said that it would shortly come out that the NSA “leaked the contents of my email to journalists,” claiming he knew this because one of them called him for comment. On cue, hours later, a piece came out in Axios, “Scoop: Tucker Carlson sought Putin interview at time of spying claim.”

  In a flash, the gloating and non-denial denials that littered early coverage of this story (like the NSA’s meaningless insistence that Carlson was not a “target” of surveillance) dried up. They were instantly replaced by new, more tortured rhetoric, exemplified by an amazingly loathsome interview conducted by former Bush official Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC. The Wallace panel included rodentine former Robert Mueller team member Andrew Weissman, and another of the networks’ seemingly limitless pool of interchangeable ex-FBI stooge-commentators, Frank Figliuzzi.

  Weissman denounced Carlson for sowing “distrust” in the intel community, which he said was “so anti-American.” Wallace, who we recall was MSNBC’s idea of a “crossover” voice to attract a younger demographic, agreed that Carlson had contributed to a “growing chorus of distrust in our country’s intelligence agencies.” Figliuzzi said the playbook of Carlson and the GOP was to “erode the public’s trust in their institutions.” Each made an identical point in the same words minus tiny, nervous variations, as if they were all trying to read the same statement off a moving teleprompter.

  The scene was perfectly representative of what the erstwhile “liberal” press has become: collections of current and former enforcement types, masquerading as journalists, engaged in patriotic denunciations of critics and rote recitals of quasi-official statements.

  Not that it matters to Carlson’s critics, but odds favor the NSA scandal being true. An extraordinarily rich recent history of illegal, politically-directed leaks has gone mostly uncovered, in another glaring recent press failure that itself is part of this story.

  It’s admitted. Go back to December, 2015, and you’ll find a Wall Street Journal story by Adam Entous and Danny Yadron quoting senior government officials copping to the fact that the Obama White House reviewed intercepts of conversations between “U.S lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”

  The White House in that case was anxious to know what congressional opponents to Obama’s Iran deal were thinking, and peeked in the electronic cookie jar to get an advance preview at such “incidentally” collected info. This prompted what one official called an “Oh, shit” moment, when they realized that what they’d done might result in “the executive branch being accused of spying.”

  After Obama left office, illegal leaks of classified intercepts became commonplace. Many, including the famed January, 2017 leak of conversations between Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, were key elements of major, news-cycle-dominating bombshells. Others, like “Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin,” or news that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials in foreign intercepts, were openly violative of the prohibition against disclosing the existence of such surveillance, let alone the contents.

  These leaks tended to go to the same small coterie of reporters at outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN, and not one prompted blowback. This was a major forgotten element of the Reality Winner story. Winner, a relatively low-level contractor acting on her own, was caught, charged, and jailed with extraordinary speed after leaking an NSA document about Russian interference to the Intercept. But these dozens of similar violations by senior intelligence officials, mainly in leaks about Trump, went not just unpunished but un-investigated. As Winner’s lawyer, Titus Nichols, told me years ago, his client’s case was “about low-hanging fruit.”

  The key issue in those cases was not even so much that someone in government might have been improperly accessing foreign surveillance intercepts — revelations to that effect have been a regular occurrence since the Bush years, with the FBI a serial violator — but that such intercepts were being leaked for public effect, with the enthusiastic cooperation of reporters, often in stories involving American citizens. They got away with it in the Trump years, because it was Trump, but the arrogance to think they can keep getting away with it by power-smearing everyone who objects is mind-blowing.

  During Trump’s first run for president, I nearly lost my mind trying to explain to fellow reporters that he was succeeding in part because of us, that the prestige media’s ham-handed, hysterical, anti-intellectual approach to covering the Trump phenomenon was itself massively fueling it, making a case for establishment corruption and incompetence more eloquently than he could.

  Something similar now is happening with the collapse of traditional media and the rise of Carlson, the current #1 voice on cable, who is rapidly stealing the audience MSNBC somehow believed it could corral with spokesgoons like Wallace. It seems impossible that Carlson’s haters don’t realize how easy they’ve made it for him, turning themselves into such caricatures of illiberalism that they’re practically handing him the top spot.

  The inspiration for his current show seemingly came when Carlson watched his former colleagues among the GOP Brahmins make a show of reacting with horror to Trump’s arrival. These were people who had no problem wantonly bombing poor and mostly nonwhite countries all over the world, made a joke of the rule of law (and America’s reputation abroad) with policies like torture, rendition, and mass surveillance, and shamelessly whored themselves out to Wall Street even after the 2008 crash. Yet they pretended to severe moral anguish before Trump even took office.

  Carlson grasped that the sudden piety of the Kristols and Max Boots and David Frenches was rooted in the same terror the Democratic Party nomenklatura felt at the possibility of a Bernie Sanders presidency in 2020, i.e. fear of a line-jumping outsider tearing away their hard-fought consultancies and sinecures.

  “He was threatening their rice bowl,” Carlson says. “That’s all it was. I was like, ‘Fuck these people.’”

  This is an excerpt from today’s subscriber-only post. To read the entire article and get full access to the archives, you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 21:40

• Indonesia Regulator Allows Ivermectin Use For Covid Treatment
  Indonesia Regulator Allows Ivermectin Use For Covid Treatment

  Merely mentioning the name of the vaccine-busting drug Ivermectin in the US is enough to get you carted off for “questioning” to the nearest illegal CIA blacksite, have the NSA leak all your private information to MSNBC, WaPo and the NYT and quietly shipped off to Guantanamo for permanent re-education under the daily auspices of Critical Race Theory. But not in the “banana republic” of Indonesia, where on Thursday, Ivermectin was officially approved for covid treatment in a vicious blow to the “buy my vaccine” pharmaceutical lobby around the world.

  According to Bloomberg, Indonesia’s food and drug regulator, known as BPOM, has issued a letter approving the distribution of Ivermectin, Remdesivir, Favipiravir, Oseltamivir, immunoglobulin, Tocilizumab, Azithromycin and Dexametason to be used in treatment of Covid-19, according to a statement from the agency. The latter, Bloomberg adds, was issued as guidance for distributors of the drugs.

  The startling development – if only to the anti-Ivermectin oligarchs in “developed” Western nations – takes place two weeks after eight hospitals in Indonesia began conducting clinical trials on Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine that has appeared to be a potential Covid-19 medication and which is greatly hated by the establishment due to its low price and its ability to eradicate the covid plague which the establishment desperately needs to perpetuate a state of constant near-panic not to mention enabling trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus, following a permit issued by the national agency of drug and food control.

  BPOM’s head Penny K. Lukito said at a press conference on Monday (June 28) that global data and guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that Ivermectin, previously used for deworming, can also be used for Covid-19 treatment. However, while the BOMP said on June 28 that data are still being collected and the results are not conclusive, it appears that two weeks later it has found enough conclusive data to formally approve Ivermectin for covid treatment.

  Indonesia is scrambling to contain the covid pandemic, having overnight surpassed India’s daily Covid-19 case numbers, and becoming Asia’s new virus epicenter as the spread of the highly-contagious delta variant drives up infections in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

  The country has seen its daily case count cross 40,000 for three straight days — including a record high of 54,517 on Wednesday — up from less than 10,000 a month ago. Officials are concerned that the more transmissible new variant is now spreading outside of the country’s main island, Java, and could exhaust hospital workers and supplies of oxygen and medication.

  

  That said, Indonesia’s current numbers are still far from India’s peak of 400,000 daily cases in May, and its total outbreak of 2.7 million is barely a tenth of the Asian giant’s 30.9 million. India, with a population roughly five times the size of Indonesia’s 270 million people, saw daily infections drop below 39,000 on Wednesday as its devastating outbreak wanes. The Southeast Asian country reported about 900 deaths daily on average in the past seven days – compared to just 181 a month ago – while India reported an average of 1,027 daily fatalities.

  As Bloomberg observes, the outbreak in Indonesia underscores the consequences of an unequal global distribution of vaccines that has seen richer countries gobble up more of the supply, leaving poorer places exposed to outbreaks of variants like delta. World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called the growing divide a “catastrophic moral failure.”

  He is of course referring to the inability of pharma giants like Pfizer to deliver millions of doses to poor countries like Indonesia which won’t pay it tens of billions of dollars. Well, poor countries like Indonesia are taking matters into their own hands, and we wonder what China Ted will say now that the Asian nation has found a way out of the vaccine squeeze: one involving the use of the single most hated compound by rich pharma barons everywhere.

  Upon learning the news, social media had some amusing, if painfully accurate, reactions.

  BREAKING NEWS: Indonesian Regulator assassinated. Mass riots and chaos grip the country as the people beg for vaccines to stop covid. https://t.co/Y9rPIBBj7F

  — Captain Calypso (@RealCalypsoJohn) July 15, 2021

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

  I bet #Indonesia will be one of the first countries to wipe out Covid19. Well done to their government.

  — Bobby The Yemenite (@AlphaQ1st) July 15, 2021

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

  we know it pic.twitter.com/Jj5KPpZj7Y

  — rickbalboa 🥊🇧🇷🇵🇹 (@rickbalboa2) July 15, 2021

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  This is disinformation.

  I’m here to let everyone know Ivermectin is racist and white propaganda.#BlackLivesMatterUK

  — Greg – PhD (@gulagcitizen) July 15, 2021

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  Indonesia about to get banned

  — GastonTheGinger (@gastirapa) July 15, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 21:28

• No Victory Lap For Governors Who Locked Down America
  No Victory Lap For Governors Who Locked Down America

  Authored by James Bovard,

  There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.”

  Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association.

  Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal.

  

  Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment as governors. Governors have a new credibility. Governors have a new status.” Cuomo epitomized the rush to “absolute power” that occurred in governor’s mansions across the nation. After he fueled pandemic fears, the New York Times proclaimed, “Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now.” A New Yorker profile, titled “Andrew Cuomo, King of New York,” explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” Cuomo denounced anyone who disobeyed his edicts, including condemning sheriffs as “dictators” for refusing to enforce his mask mandate inside people’s homes.

  

  Cuomo justified placing almost 20 million people under house arrest: “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” Though his repressive policies failed to prevent New York from having among the nation’s highest Covid death rates, he became a superhero thanks largely to media scoring that ignored almost all of the harms he inflicted. Cuomo won an Emmy Award for his “masterful use of television” during the pandemic. Media valorization helped make Cuomo’s self-tribute book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller.

  Cuomo had plenty of power-mad accomplices in the governors’ association.  

  • Oregon Governor Kate Brown banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions and also banned all recreational travel.

  • Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most severe restrictions, prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends.

  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti even banned people from walking or bicycling outside.

  The CDC eventually admitted that there was almost no risk of Covid contagion from outdoors activity not amidst a throng of people.

  But that did not stop politicians from claiming that “science and data” justified locking people in their homes.

  Some governors have acted as if their shutdown orders gave them unlimited sway to decree when normal life could resume.

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors.

  California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused,

  “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.”

  The end of Covid restrictions turned into hostage release negotiations with domineering rulers clinging to all their new prerogatives.

  Cuomo was proud that, when he visits a school, he is no longer asked “‘What does a governor do?” because “people know what governors do and how important governors are.” Governors can wreck kids’ futures by shutting down schools and placing children under indefinite home detention, costing millions of children almost an entire year of learning. In some areas, private schools remained open and took precautions that kept children safe in the classroom. As Washington Examiner editor Tim Carney noted, students in Catholic schools in Montgomery County, Maryland continued attending school and were kept safer than public school students: “Kids learning remotely got Covid at 3 times the rate as kids learning in person.” Unreliable “distance learning” produced a more than 500 percent increase in the number of black and Hispanic students failing classes in Montgomery County government schools.

  A Journal of the American Medical Association analysis concluded that shutting down the schools would reduce the current crop of students’ collective years of life by more than five million, based on “lower income, reduced educational attainment, and worse health outcomes.” School shutdowns blighted the lives of millions of children in part because the Centers for Disease Control proclaimed that six feet of “social distancing” was necessary to avoid contagion – an arbitrary standard pulled out of thin air that was denounced by former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

  The lockdowns that governors imposed also pointlessly ravaged many Americans’ mental health. The Centers for Disease Control last month reported a 51% increase in emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls in early 2021. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found a 300% increase in the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder (41% of adults in January 2021). The CDC also reported a record number of drug overdose deaths last year, due in part to the lockdowns and other government-imposed disruptions.

  Cuomo boasted that the Covid-19 responses “were probably the most consequential decisions that governors had made in generations. They were literally about life and death. You make the wrong decision, people could die.” Thousands of New Yorkers died because of Cuomo’s mistakes and cover-ups. New York state initially reported barely half of the total of more than 12,000 New York nursing home patients who died of Covid – one out of eight nursing home residents in the state that occurred after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to admit Covid patients. Early in the pandemic, Cuomo pushed to include a legislative provision written by the Greater New York Hospital Association to give a waiver of liability to nursing homes and hospitals whose patients died of Covid. A report earlier this year by the New York Attorney General warned, “The immunity laws could be wrongly used to protect any individual or entity from liability, even if those decisions were not made in good faith or motivated by financial incentives.” As the Guardian noted, “Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association, its executives and its lobbying firms.”

  Any politician who recited the magic words “science and data” became entitled to outlaw any activity he chose. Cuomo and other governors acted as if they had discovered a “good intentions” exemption to all limits on their power. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s Covid restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” But Cuomo and other governors presumed that proclaiming emergencies nullified the constitutional rights of any citizen under their sway. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Cuomo’s restrictions on limited religious gatherings because they were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.”

  Cuomo’s spiel to the governors included Washington’s most revered banality: “We spoke truth to power.” But Cuomo’s own appointees suppressed the data on nursing home deaths while he was negotiating a $5 million advance for his book on pandemic leadership lessons. Last August, the Justice Department announced an investigation into state nursing home policies that boosted Covid death tolls in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Cuomo is probably confident that Biden’s Justice Department will throttle any such investigation that could tarnish Democratic governors. But will other investigations or Freedom of Information Act disclosures eventually obliterate the bragging rights of the Covid lockdowners?

  Governors’ response to Covid was supposedly a glorious triumph because not every nursing home patient died, not every small business was bankrupted, and not every teenager attempted suicide from isolation and despair. Despite the severe repression of everyday life, more than 620,000 Americans reportedly died of Covid and more than 114 million were infected. According to the CDC more than ten million jobs were lost thanks to lockdowns, a major reason why life expectancy in the United States last year had its sharpest plunge since World War Two. CNN reported last month that “New York’s economy is America’s worst,” with economic activity at only 83% of pre-pandemic levels.

  In reality, Cuomo’s speech relied on what Hegel called “the truth which lies in power.” As long as politicians are exalted, the actual details of their decrees are irrelevant: they have been coronated as saviors. Cuomo assured his fellow Covid-profiteering governors that “this will happen again.” This is why Americans must recognize the catastrophic failure of political iron fists during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 21:00

• New Study Finds Millennials, Gen Z Are Terrible Tippers
  New Study Finds Millennials, Gen Z Are Terrible Tippers

  Despite the fact that service workers have endured some of the worst consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tips they have received haven’t swelled with the increased risks attached to their jobs. But before millennials blame greedy baby boomers or some other generational villain, a recent study from CreditCards.com found that millennials and members of Gen Z are the least likely to top baristas, uber drivers, servers and bartenders.

  

  According to the survey, the number of food service customers who say they always tip fell slightly in the new 2021 tipping survey compared with a pre-pandemic survey on tipping behaviors. Meanwhile, the percentage of sit-down restaurant diners who say they always tip is down two percentage points, from 77% in 2019. And the percentage of food delivery customers who always tip fell four percentage points to 59%, despite skyrocketing demand for food delivery services during the pandemic.

  Ted Rossman, industry analyst at CreditCards.com, said he expected the pandemic to have a bigger impact on Americans’ tipping habits.

  “Delivery people and food industry workers literally risked their lives to do their jobs over the past 16 months,” Rossman said. “It has been an incredibly difficult time to work in the service industry.”

  And despite shifting social mores surrounding tipping, the survey found that older generations were more likely to tip.

  

  The survey found that the likelihood a customer would leave a tip decreased in all tipping scenarios presented if the tipper was younger rather than older. Here’s a rundown of service users who say they tip without fail.

  • Servers or waitstaff at a sit-down restaurant – 88% of boomers, 80% of Gen Xers, 58% of millennials and 56% of Gen Zers say they always tip.
  • Food delivery drivers – 75% of boomers, 65% of Gen Xers, 44% of millennials and 40% of Gen Zers say they always tip.
  • Hair stylists and barbers – 76% of boomers, 69% of Gen Xers, 49% of millennials and 35% of Gen Zers say they always tip.
  • Taxi and rideshare drivers – 66% of boomers, 48% of Gen Xers, 34% of millennials and 32% of Gen Zers say they always tip.
  • Hotel housekeepers – 37% of boomers, 28% of Gen Xers, 20% of millennials and 18% of Gen Zers say they always tip.

  However, there’s a caveat for restaurants that serve a mostly younger clientele: when millennial do tip, they tend to be slightly more generous than other generations. For example, at sit-down restaurants, millennials leave on average a 21% tip vs. the 20% left by the boomers.

  For those who are curious about modern tipping etiquette, here’s a rundown of tips from experts.

  • Do: Learn tipping norms. It can be tough to remember when and how much you’re supposed to tip. Look up guidelines for common scenarios (see our tipping chart below for a start) and start tipping accordingly, Lynn recommended.
  • Do: Carry cash. If you carry only your debit or credit cards, you’re likely to find yourself in an awkward tipping situation, Gottsman said. “If you’re not carrying cash, you’re not prepared,” she said.
  • Do: When in doubt, ask. Not sure if you should tip or if the service provider is allowed to accept a gratuity? It’s an awkward situation that can be alleviated by being open and honest, financial psychologist Brad Klontz said. “You can say, ‘Hey, is it OK if I give you a tip?’” he added.
  • Don’t: Stiff for bad service. Keep in mind that tipping is built into the compensation structure for some service workers, Klontz pointed out. “For some people, it’s not bonus money,” he said. “This is part of what they’re relying on to feed their family.”
  • Don’t: Buy into a “guilt tip.” Did an electronic message pop up asking if you want to leave a tip while you’re buying a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine at a store? No tip is necessary for a cashier ringing up a purchase, Gottsman said. “We have to get comfortable hitting the ‘no tip’ button at a cash register,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 20:40

• Are Teachers' Unions Evil?
  Are Teachers’ Unions Evil?

  Authored by Philip Carl Salzman via The Epoch Times,

  America has faced great challenges during the past year and a half: the CCP virus, deep political division, and the aggression of communist China. How have our teachers’ unions responded to these challenges?

  

  During the pandemic, front-line workers, such as doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers, dealt directly with sick and contagious patients, while other front-line workers, such as grocery store clerks and truck drivers, kept the material necessities of life available for all citizens.

  Many other workers retreated to home to work at a distance, while yet others lost their jobs and had to make do without an income.

  Not the teachers. Public school teachers’ unions refused to return to class even when religious and private school teachers were back in class. The evidence quickly showed that distance learning was an abject failure. Public school unions didn’t care what harm was being done to the children that they were supposed to serve. These unions decided to serve the preferences of their dues-paying teachers, who preferred to stay at home and get paid for doing so. No one could accuse public school teachers of rushing to the front lines.

  While the teachers refused to go to class, they nonetheless demanded vast sums of additional money for schools and for their own benefits. It was not exactly blackmail, but it was shameless. However, the unions didn’t stop there. They meddled in domestic politics.

  The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) demanded as a condition of returning to the classroom that Los Angeles defund the police. According to a Freedom Foundation report about a teacher suing the UTLA:

  “Defunding the police was one of several informal conditions UTLA claimed the school district would have to meet before its members would agree to resume in-school instruction. And like the union’s demand that charter schools be abolished, it had nothing whatsoever to do with making teachers safe during the COVID pandemic. … The union wasn’t asking for better wages, benefits or working conditions. Instead, it had prioritized the radical liberal agenda of its leaders above the legitimate workplace concerns of its members—and was willing to hold the parents hostage until it got what it wanted.”

  Not satisfied with making demands on domestic political policy, the teachers’ unions now wish to determine foreign policy.

  The United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) have adopted an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction policy within a broader “Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” Perhaps the UESF would like to join Hamas in lobbing thousands of rockets at Israeli citizens. The UESF, as so many on the far left and far right, single out for condemnation the sole Jewish state in the world; apparently, they don’t care about the slaughter of Syrians, Iranians, Afghans, and Uyghurs that cannot be blamed on Jews. This is reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter movement that cares only about the dozen blacks killed by police but not the thousands killed by other blacks. Very selective “morality.”

  In response to the clear and hostile division of the two halves of the country, teachers’ unions have explicitly rejected being a unifying force, choosing to adopt the extremist critical race theory approach in their teaching. Their plan for children is to force them into racial divisions, berating the despised white race as “oppressors,” and enabling blacks and other minorities to write themselves off as “victims” with no hopes, because—you know—“systemic racism.” Second and third-graders are segregated into races and must confess their “privilege” or “victimhood.” This is not just anti-American; it’s child abuse.

  Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), claims, along with various Democrat media figures, that critical race theory is not being taught in schools—“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools”—but, she warns, the AFT has a ready defense fund to use against anyone who tries to stop teachers teaching critical race theory.

  The National Education Association has dedicated itself not only to teaching critical race theory in all 50 states, but also to crushing any opposition to critical race theory. Note what’s happening here. As the New York Post headline has it, “Embracing critical theory, teacher’s union says they—not parents—control what kids learn.” The teachers’ unions have gone to war against parents, and usurped parental authority over the education of children.

  While American teachers are obsessed with race and gender, students’ achievement in reading, math, and science is mediocre. While Chinese students rated best in the world with a combined score of 1,731, U.S. students ranked 26 in the world with a combined score of 1,489, according to the World Population Review. Teachers don’t seem to care that America’s greatest adversary is outstripping the United States in education. They might not be paid by China to undermine their own country, but they might as well be as far as the results are concerned.

  The transfer of raising children from the family to the state and its agencies, in this case the teachers’ unions, is a dream of Marxism, a fulfillment of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which in practice means the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Teachers’ unions, with their advocacy of racism and their rejection of parents’ rights, are playing a major role in “divide and conquer,” the conquest of America by Democrat socialism.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 20:20

• Biden Copies Trump By Scrapping Economic Dialogue With China
  Biden Copies Trump By Scrapping Economic Dialogue With China

  Unfortunately for Hunter Biden’s former CCP business partners, President Biden and his advisors have clearly identified China as a ‘weak spot’ for the Democratic President, and are thus determined to burnish Biden’s “tough on China” credentials, mostly by co-opting policies introduced by his predecessor, President Trump.

  One day after the White House warned American businesses operating in Hong Kong that it’s not safe anymore, Bloomberg reports that the White House and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have no plans to restart regular US-China bilateral talks on the economy, a policy that was in place during the Bush and Obama Administrations, but was dropped by President Trump.

  

  Despite having already spoken repeatedly with President Xi by phone, while his top diplomats including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have met with their Chinese counterparts, it appears the White House is planning to roll back its cooperation with Beijing.

  Bloomberg reported that “the disinterest in reopening channels active under President Barack Obama adds to evidence of President Joe Biden’s toughening stance on China.” They added that Biden appears to “extend and even deepen Trump’s more confrontational approach.”

  Earlier this week, Yellen on Monday called out China for imperiling “rules-based international order” constructed after World War II, along with Russia and Belarus. Recently, China refused to attend a G-20 meeting between Yellen and the other top global finance chiefs, forcing them to participate remotely.

  She added that China was guilty of “unfair economic practices, malign behavior and human rights abuses.” The US has been cranking up the pressure on Chinese firms, slapping sanctions on more firms that the US believes are involved with China’s “genocide” in Xinjiang.

  In other news, the Information reported that two more Chinese firms are scrapping plans to list in the US. The two firms, Kujiale and Lalamove are searching for alternatives, and will likely list in Hong Kong (the venue of choice for all of the Chinese firms, including ByteDance).

  Trump abandoned these bilateral talks with China in 2018 after holding a meeting at the Treasury Department in 2017. Neither the US nor China released a statement about that meeting.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 20:00

• Federal Court Rules It Unconstitutional To Ban 18-To-20-Year-Olds From Buying Guns
  Federal Court Rules It Unconstitutional To Ban 18-To-20-Year-Olds From Buying Guns

  Authored by Matt Agorist via TheFreeThoughtProject.com,

  At the age of 18, an American citizen can join the military get issued an M-16 and have their legs blown off by an IED in Iraq – “for freedom.” However, if that 18-year-old wants to buy a handgun in the same country that sends them off to have their legs blown off, they are banned from doing so – because “freedom.” All that could soon be changing now, however, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has ruled that laws preventing 18-20-year-olds from buying guns are unconstitutional.

  

  In a split decision, the three-judge panel ruled on Tuesday that the minimum age requirement of 21 to buy a gun in the land of the free restricts the rights of law-abiding citizens by drawing an arbitrary and unjustified line.

  In the case, according to court documents, the plaintiffs sought an injunction and a declaratory judgment pointing out that several federal laws and regulations that prevent federally licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to any 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old violate the Second Amendment. According to the plaintiffs:

  We first find that 18-year-olds possess Second Amendment rights. They enjoy almost every other constitutional right, and they were required at the time of the Founding to serve in the militia and furnish their own weapons. We then ask, as our precedent requires, whether the government has met its burden to justify its infringement of those rights under the appropriate level of scrutiny. To justify this restriction, Congress used disproportionate crime rates to craft over inclusive laws that restrict the rights of overwhelmingly law-abiding citizens. And in doing so, Congress focused on purchases from licensed dealers without establishing those dealers as the source of the guns 18- to 20-year-olds use to commit crimes.

  The court agreed.

  “Despite the weighty interest in reducing crime and violence, we refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18-to-20-year-olds to a second-class status,” wrote Judge Julius N. Richardson.

  The court found that 18-year-olds possess a Second Amendment right to gun ownership and noted that they were “required at the time of the Founding to serve in the militia and furnish their own weapons,” wrote Richardson.

  Indeed, they were. Not only is it unconstitutional to prevent 18-year-olds from buying a handgun to defend themselves, but it is extremely hypocritical. The idea of sending an 18-year-old off to war for a country, giving him or her a gun to defend themselves in battle but refusing to allow that same person to defend themselves at home is sheer nonsense.

  What’s more, that same 18-year-old can vote on laws which affect the second amendment but cannot practice that right at all.

  Not everyone agrees, however, and the dissenting judge thinks that the right to self defense is the sole doing of the gun lobby.

  “The majority’s decision to grant the gun lobby a victory in a fight it lost on Capitol Hill more than fifty years ago is not compelled by law. Nor is it consistent with the proper role of the federal judiciary in our democratic system,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. Courts wrote.

  According to the Washington Post, Wynn rejected as “simply surreal” concerns about relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status.

  “No, the Second Amendment is exceptional not because it is uniquely oppressed or imperiled, but rather because it is singularly capable of causing harm,” wrote Wynn.

  Wynn is backed by gun control advocates who point out that 18-to-20-year-olds commit gun homicides at a rate four times higher than adults 21 and older do. It is rather irresponsible, however, that they would use these statistics to advocate gun control given that 18-to-20-year-olds cannot legally buy a handgun — therefore proving that the law doesn’t work.

  Like all gun control measures, laws that prevent 18-to-20-year-olds from buying guns only stop law abiding citizens from defending themselves and do nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining weapons.

  This is a fact that the court pointed out as well, noting that allowing law abiding 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase guns in a legal market will enhance public safety.

  Attorney Elliott Harding, who represented the plaintiffs in case pointed out that the ruling bolsters safety by allowing young people to purchase handguns in a more regulated market with background checks.

  While this is a win for gun rights, it is likely only temporary as the DOJ has already promised to knock it down.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 19:40

• Natural Infection May Offer Better Protection Against Delta Variant, Israeli Health Ministry Says
  Natural Infection May Offer Better Protection Against Delta Variant, Israeli Health Ministry Says

  In recent weeks, Israeli media has become a factory for stories that cut against the ‘official’ ‘scientific’ narrative about the COVID-19 vaccines. Most visibly, Israel has made a deal with Pfizer to start doling out “booster” shots for the most vulnerable Israelis, despite the FDA’s insistence that there’s “no evidence” that a booster shot is necessary.

  

  Now, the Israeli Health Ministry has discovered that the number of patients who had been infected prior to becoming infected again during the latest Delta-driven wave of the pandemic were less likely to be reinfected than patients who have only been vaccinated. The finding directly contradicts research spouted by American experts like Dr. Fauci, along with Pfizer and Moderna, who have previously insisted that  the antibodies created by their jabs are more powerful than antibodies produced by natural infection (which is one reason even the previously infected have been asked to get vaccinated).

  According to Israel National News, more than 7.7K new cases of the virus have been detected during the most recent wave (beginning back in May). However, just 72 of the confirmed cases were reported in people who were known to have been previously infected – that is, less than 1% of the new cases.

  Roughly 40% of new cases – involving more than 3K patients – were infected despite being fully vaccinated.

  By this count, Israelis who had been vaccinated were 6.72x more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with more than 3K of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave. The disparity has confounded Health Ministry experts, with some saying the data proves the higher level of immunity provided by natural infection versus vaccination. However, others remain unconvinced.

  Israel’s Health Ministry previously estimated that the efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID jab was only 64% against the Delta variant, which helped prompt Pfizer and its partner BioNTech to develop a new jab designed to protect against variants including Delta and Beta (the variant first discovered in South Africa).

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 19:20

• Georgia County Ballot Images Prompt Speculation Of "Provable Fraud"
  Georgia County Ballot Images Prompt Speculation Of “Provable Fraud”

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  A group seeking to ensure that elections are run fairly said this week that an in-depth analysis of mail-in ballot images it obtained through a court order shows that the hand-count audit in Fulton County, Georgia, last year “was riddled with massive errors and provable fraud.”

  

  The analysis turned up at least 36 batches of mail-in ballots, containing 4,255 votes, that were added redundantly to the audit results, Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA), charged. Nearly 3,400 were for Democrat Joe Biden.

  The team examining the ballots also found seven audit tally sheets (pdf) they believe were falsified to contain fabricated vote totals. In one example, the group said, a batch containing 59 ballot images for Biden and 42 for former President Donald Trump was reported as 100 for Biden and 0 for Trump.

  The analysis revealed that 923 (60 percent) of the 1,539 mail-in ballot batch files contained votes that were incorrectly reported in the county’s official 2020 election result compared to the audit totals, according to VoterGA.

  “We believe that there is massive audit errors,” Garland Favorito, founder of the group, told a press conference in Georgia on July 13.

  The group received the images as part of a court case after it petitioned in late 2020 to get clearance to inspect all mail-in ballots cast in the county in the 2020 election, alleging that fraud took place. The petition cited witnesses to the alleged fraud, including Favorito and other poll watchers and workers.

  Henry County Judge Brian Amero, who is overseeing the case, ordered in March that scanned ballot images be made available to the petitioners. Amero late last month let part of the election lawsuit proceed.

  Asked about the new claims, a Fulton County spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email:

  “This is related to a matter that is the subject of pending litigation. Therefore we do not wish to respond.”

  A spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, referred comment to Fulton County.

  Favorito said elected officials have known about the discrepancies “for a long, long time,” and he accused them of having “covered it up.”

  Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who is challenging Raffensperger in the Republican secretary of state primary, in a video called on him to resign.

  “In Fulton County, there is now undeniable proof of voter irregularity if not outright voter fraud,” he said, pointing to the evidence presented by VoterGA.

  Raffensperger has claimed that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which saw Biden beat Trump in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes out of over 4.9 million cast.

  Trump said in a statement on July 14:

  “The news coming out of Georgia is beyond incredible. The hand recount in Fulton County was a total fraud! They stuffed the ballot box—and got caught. We will lose our Country if this is allowed to stand.”

  Biden, in remarks delivered on July 13, noted that election results were recounted three times in Georgia.

  “It’s clear. For those who challenge the results and question the integrity of the election: No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny and such high standards,” he said.

  And here is Tucker tonight

  It’s starting to make sense…

  pic.twitter.com/0jKydkGubf

  — Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 15, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 19:00

• Democrats Unveil Bill To Decriminalize (And Tax) Marijuana
  Democrats Unveil Bill To Decriminalize (And Tax) Marijuana

  Sen. Chuck Schumer is taking a quick break from whipping up support along his moderate flank for the Dems’ $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package to draft legislation on Wednesday to help decriminalize marijuana at the federal level in an attempt to raise more tax revenue to offset the trillions of dollars of additional spending the Democrats are planning over the next decade.

  While the revenues raised from taxing marijuana likely would only amount to a drop in the bucket, Schumer, Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Ron Wyden have unveiled draft legislation calling for federal decriminalization.

  

  Marijuana is already effectively legal now across much of the US after New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and a handful of other states recently embraced legalization.

  The bill, called the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (where it remains a “Schedule 1” and impose a federal tax on marijuana products).

  According to Axios, revenue from marijuana taxes would be used to fund “grant programs for communities most impacted by marijuana prosecutions”. It would also transfer regulation of marijuana to the FDA from the DEA. The bill still faces “steep” odds in the Senate, where moderate Dems remain wary of ending federal prohibition.

  States would mostly be allowed to set their own laws and taxes regarding cannabis sale and consumption. It would also require federal districts to expunge all nonviolent marijuana-related arrests and convictions within one year.

  Speaking from the Senate Floor Wednesday, Schumer declared the legislation a major step forward.

  “For decades, young men and women – disproportionately young Black and Hispanic men and women, have been arrested and jailed for even carrying a small amount of marijuana in their pocket.”

  “This is monumental,” he added. “At long last, we are taking steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs.”

  At one point, the bill’s backers said that the higher prices created by taxes would “disincentivize” young people from buying the increasingly potent marijuana available both at legal dispensaries and on the street. As for trying to construe legalizing (and price-inflating) marijuana as a kind of deterrent against abuse by teenagers, well…we imagine readers can reason through that on their own.

  The timing of the announcement isn’t much of a surprise. Earlier this week, the CEO and chairman of Tilray, a major publicly traded pot stock, said during an interview with CNBC that he expected Congress to move ahead with full legalization within the next two years. He pointed to surveys purporting to show more than 90%+ public support for marijuana.

  And as the Democrats have demonstrated with their spending ambitions, they need to raise revenue from wherever they can get it.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/14/2021 – 18:40

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