Today’s News 15th September 2021

• Spanish Gov't Announces Temporary Tax Cuts To Relieve Consumers After Record Power Prices
  Spanish Gov’t Announces Temporary Tax Cuts To Relieve Consumers After Record Power Prices

  Spain’s Socialist-led government announced temporary tax cuts on power prices in an attempt to drive down household electricity costs, which have surged this summer and triggered outrage among working-poor, according to FT. 

  Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, addressed the nation on Monday night to minimize political damage from the hyperinflationary rise in power prices. He said taxes on electricity would be significantly reduced, and energy companies would be taxed on their “extraordinary profits” and “redirected to consumers.”

  

  “We have made a firm commitment that all citizens will pay the same electricity bill [this year] as in 2018,” Sánchez said, adding that energy companies’ high profits are “not acceptable.”

  The emergency measures would reduce government revenues for 2021 by around 1.4 billion euros, he said, and 650 million euros will be taken from energy companies’ profits and used to assist households. The new package is expected to be approved Tuesday. 

  The exponential rise in Spain’s wholesale electricity prices shows no signs of abating. Prices jumped Tuesday to another record high of 172.78 per megawatt-hour. From the beginning of summer, prices are up more than 200%. 

  

  One primary concern is the price of power rising as the summer season winds down and winter is ahead has become one of the most heated political issues. Sánchez is acting to alleviate consumers as record-high power prices eat away their wages. 

  Angel Talavera, head of European economics at Oxford Economics, told FT, that “people are feeling the pinch in their personal finances but this is not a Spanish problem; it is a European if not a world problem.” 

  “The issue is that, because of the different way the Spanish market works, much of the world has not noticed it yet, but sooner or later, a similar trend will happen in other countries,” Talavera said. 

  Some of the factors behind the soaring electricity and gas prices can be pinpointed to several factors, including increased gas demand by China, higher carbon prices, and reduced supply from Russia. 

  Besides Spain, Germany, the UK, Netherlands, and Dutch have also seen explosive nat gas prices, which have caused power prices to surge. This is creating political pressure on European governments and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde to get a handle on prices. 

  Like it or not, and Europe doesn’t want to admit it, they will soon be drooling over cheap Russian gas via the Nord Stream pipeline as a way to cap soaring gas and power prices. Politicians will do anything to get re-elected, even if that means taking Putin’s gas. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/15/2021 – 02:45

• Calls For Investigation Grow As "Close Ties" Emerge Between Huawei, Cambridge Research Center
  Calls For Investigation Grow As “Close Ties” Emerge Between Huawei, Cambridge Research Center

  Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times,

  A former Conservative Party leader has called on the British government to investigate the UK’s dependency on China as a research center of Cambridge University is alleged to have been “infiltrated” by Chinese tech giant Huawei.

  

  Speaking to The Times of London on Sunday, Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that universities in the UK are “far too dependent on Chinese money,” with Cambridge being “one of the worst offenders.”

  The senior Tory urged the government to set up an urgent inquiry into “the UK’s dependency on China across a range of institutions and companies.”

  His comment came after the newspaper reported that the chief representative and three out of four of the directors at the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Management (CCCM) have ties to Huawei.

  The Times said the information about Yanping Hu, who was listed as the chief representative of the CCCM, was removed from the CCCM website following inquiries from the newspaper.

  A cache of the page, archived on Aug. 17, said Hu had been the head of Huawei Management Engineering Group, director of Huawei Corporate Change Committee, director of Huawei Organisation Department, and the Deputy President of Huawei University before becoming the SVP at Huawei.

  The Chinese version of the page also said that Hu is the CEO of Huawei-affiliated Hua Ying Management, which is—along with Huawei and its other affiliates—on a Washington list of entities that “pose a significant risk of involvement in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

  The page also boasted Hu’s credential as an “expert who enjoys a special allowance from the State Council.”

  Tian Tao, one of the CCCM’s four directors, is a senior adviser at Huawei Technologies and a confidant of Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei.

  The Chinese version of the CCCM’s website also stated that it’s the CCCM’s role and “historical mission” to document, synthesize, spread, and contribute to the development and management of Chinese enterprises.

  Johnny Patterson, co-founder and policy director at human rights NGO Hong Kong Watch, said the link between the university and the Chinese Communist Party have serious implications.

  “Huawei’s ties with the Chinese government are no secret. It looks as if the research centre has been infiltrated by Huawei and the university should definitely investigate it,” Patterson told The Times.

  “The close links between Huawei and Cambridge University have serious national security and moral implications,” he added.

  A spokesperson for Cambridge University said any relationship the university has is in line with government guidelines.

  The CCCM “is a business management programme focused on Chinese business practices. As such, it engages with various sectors of the Chinese economy, including technology companies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

  “The University of Cambridge has a robust system for reviewing all strategic relationships and strict protocols for engaging with any company. Any relationship the University has with any corporate entity, domestic or international, strictly adheres to the guidelines set out by the UK government.”

  Neither Huawei, nor the UK government responded to requests for comment by the time of publishing.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/15/2021 – 02:00

• Iran Replaces Veteran Nuclear Negotiator With "Hardliner" As Vienna Talks Still In Doubt
  Iran Replaces Veteran Nuclear Negotiator With “Hardliner” As Vienna Talks Still In Doubt

  A week after Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the US is “getting closer” to giving up completely on the Iran nuclear deal after Vienna talks have been on hold since June 20, Iran on Tuesday replaced its longtime veteran negotiator with a senior diplomat who’s widely being described as a “hardliner”.

  The recently installed administration of Ebrahim Raisi has named Ali Bagheri Kani to replace Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Araghchi had spearhead the original negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and has been at the forefront of Iranian efforts in Vienna.

  However, Ali Bagheri Kani – who happens to also be a relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – had been part of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team under former President Ahmadinejad from 2007 to 2013. It was during that time that efforts to achieve mutual understanding over Iran’s nuclear program with the West failed and sanctions were imposed.

  

  As Reuters details, it appears part of shake-up at the foreign ministry to replace “moderates” previously serving under Rouhani with more hardened “anti-Western” diplomats: 

  Hossein Amirabdollahian, an anti-Western diplomat chosen as foreign minister last month, also named Mohammad Fathali as his deputy for administrative and financial affairs and Mehdi Safari as deputy for economic diplomacy, state media reported. 

  Already external observers have been concluding that Tehran is preparing to take a firmer stance should talks resume in Vienna, which include indirect talks with the US delegation based on European intermediaries. 

  Meanwhile, Washington and European signatories to the 2015 JCPOA have expressed increasing skepticism that nuclear talks will get off the ground again, blaming the Islamic Republic for stalling. Initially Iran had said it wanted to wait for the next round of Vienna talks till after new President Raisi took office on Aug.5, but we’re now long past that.

  Blinken said last week while alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas: “I’m not going to put a date on it but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance with the JCPOA does not reproduce the benefits that that agreement achieved.”

  Both sides have previously said they won’t let things drag on forever. The Iranians putting a more hardline negotiator in place could suggest Tehran is now more willing to walk away, given especially the crucial demand of immediate sanctions relief hasn’t been met.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/15/2021 – 01:00

• California Governor Newsom Projected To Survive Recall Election, Elder Topped Alternates
  California Governor Newsom Projected To Survive Recall Election, Elder Topped Alternates

  Preliminary results of the 2021 gubernatorial recall election are in and AP, ABC, & DecisionDeskHQ (among others ) have called the race for Gavin Newsom (who will likely not be recalled and will remain governor of California).

  

  Around 67.1 percent of people voted “no” in the election, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office, while 32.9 percent voted “yes.”

  

  Larry Elder has received the most votes at 43.4 percent for who would replace Newsom if he is recalled.

  

   

  As The Epoch Times’ Vanessa Serna reports, in the 2018 gubernatorial election, Gov. Gavin Newsom was elected by the widest margin in an election race since 1950. Since his time in office, Newsom has faced criticism for his decisions to close prisons, suspend the death penalty, enforce vaccine mandates, and enforce COVID-19 statewide restrictions.

  The grassroots effort to recall the governor began in 2020, more than a year before the recall petition cleared on June 23, 2021 and state officials confirmed there were over 1,495,709 signatures, the amount required to hold a special recall election.

  In previous interviews with The Epoch Times, recall organizers attributed the impetus of the recall campaign to the governor’s decisions regarding COVID-19 state-mandated shutdowns and restrictions.

  At the height of the pandemic in Nov. 2020, Newsom received backlash after attending a party at the French Laundry restaurant without wearing a mask and with visitors from multiple households—despite telling state residents to stay home and avoid holiday gatherings.

  Following the French Laundry incident, county registrar offices reported an increase of recall petition signatures by 596,721.

  As the pandemic continued, California continued to release unemployment funds to residents whose jobs have been lost due to the pandemic. As those eligible received additional funds, it was discovered more than $31 billion in EDD funds were claimed by scammers, including prison inmates.

  

  Governor Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at AltaMed Urgent Care in Santa Ana, Calif., on March 25, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  Amid the recall process, Newsom also faced critics who opposed his decision to allow for 76,000 state inmates, including violent criminals and repeat felons to exit prison earlier than their release date through the help of Proposition 57 that allows inmates to receive credits for good behavior.

  Recently, California announced the mandate of vaccines for health care workers and school personnel. In healthcare workspaces, workers are required to receive the vaccine by Sept. 30. Workers who refuse to receive the vaccine and fail to obtain a religious or medical exemption will be out of a job come Oct. 1.

  The last time a governor was recalled in the state was in 2003 when Gray Davis was in office. Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeded Davis after 55 percent of state voters voted “yes” on the recall.

  On Sept. 13, President Joe Biden visited Long Beach to promote Newsom’s campaign, calling Republican candidate Larry Elder a “clone of Donald Trump.”

  

  Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a rally in Westminster, Calif., on Sept. 4, 2021. (Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images)

  Elder said if elected governor, he would immediately move to end mask and vaccine mandates.

  He also said he would suspend the California Environmental Quality Act, noting its effect on the cost of new housing being built and other construction projects.

  *  *  *

  While the final margin remains uncertain, because of the difficulty of estimating the margin of the remaining election day and late-arriving mail ballots – for what it’s worth, betting markets currently suggest that the recall is favored to fail by more than 20 percentage points.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/15/2021 – 00:15

• Constitution Day 2021: It's Time To Make America Free Again
  Constitution Day 2021: It’s Time To Make America Free Again

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The

  “That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.”

  – Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

  

  The Constitution of the United States represents the classic solution to one of humankind’s greatest political problems: that is, how does a small group of states combine into a strong union without the states losing their individual powers and surrendering their control over local affairs? 

  The fifty-five delegates who convened in Philadelphia during the sweltering summer of 1787 answered this question with a document that called for a federal plan of government, a system of separation of powers with checks and balances, and a procedure for orderly change to meet the needs and exigencies of future generations.

  In an ultimate sense, the Constitution confirmed the proposition that original power resided in the people—not, however, in the people as a whole but in their capacity as people of the several states.  To bring forth the requisite union, the people through the states would transfer some of their powers to the new federal government.  All powers not reserved by the people in explicit state constitutional limitations remained in the state governments.

  Although the Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, the fear of the new federal government was so strong that a “bill of rights” was demanded and became an eventuality.

  Intended to protect the citizenry’s fundamental rights or “first liberties” against usurpation by the newly created federal government, the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments of the Constitution—is essentially a list of immunities from interference by the federal government. 

  Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

  “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

  The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

  A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, travel lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

  What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

  Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.

  The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

  Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus “contempt of cop” charges such as “disrupting the peace” or “resisting arrest” for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.

  The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield. As such, this amendment has been rendered nearly null and void.

  The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

  The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

  The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

  The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

  The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

  The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

  As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

  If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

  Yet those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

  It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

  We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

  In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

  Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

  As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

  Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

  Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For instance, a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a little more than one-third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, while another one-third (35 percent) could not name a single one.

  A survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that only one out of a thousand adults could identify the five rights protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, more than half (52%) of the respondents could name at least two of the characters in the animated Simpsons television family, and 20% could name all five. And although half could name none of the freedoms in the First Amendment, a majority (54%) could name at least one of the three judges on the TV program American Idol, 41% could name two and one-fourth could name all three.

  It gets worse.

  Many who responded to the survey had a strange conception of what was in the First Amendment. For example, 21% said the “right to own a pet” was listed someplace between “Congress shall make no law” and “redress of grievances.” Some 17% said that the First Amendment contained the “right to drive a car,” and 38% believed that “taking the Fifth” was part of the First Amendment.

  Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

  In fact, while some educators want students to learn about freedom, they do not necessarily want them to exercise their freedoms in school. As the researchers conclude, “Most educators think that students already have enough freedom, and that restrictions on freedom in the school are necessary. Many support filtering the Internet, censoring T-shirts, disallowing student distribution of political or religious material, and conducting prior review of school newspapers.”

  Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

  So what’s the solution?

  Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

  As Jefferson wrote in 1820: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of our society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

  From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

  Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

  Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

  If this constitutional illiteracy is not remedied and soon, freedom in America will be doomed.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we have managed to keep the wolf at bay so far. Barely.

  Our national priorities need to be re-prioritized. For instance, some argue that we need to make America great again. I, for one, would prefer to make America free again.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 23:45

• China Lodges Formal Protest With US Over Possible Taiwan Diplomatic Office Name Change
  China Lodges Formal Protest With US Over Possible Taiwan Diplomatic Office Name Change

  China has lodged a formal protest with the United States over the possibility that Taiwan might change the name of its diplomatic representation office in Washington from the current “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office” (TECO) to “Taiwan Representative Office”.

  The formal request for the US to not allow the name change came just after on Monday state-run Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times published an op-ed Monday vowing that China’s military will send fighter jets directly over the island in assertion of Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

  

  The proposal was first requested by Taipei, and this current round of diplomatic tensions over the issue was sparked immediately upon reports the Biden administration is “seriously considering” allowing the name change. 

  Since 2017 a handful of countries including Nigeria, Jordan and Ecuador, briefly OK’ed Taiwan representation name changes, but quickly reversed course after feeling severe pressure from China, a large trading partner. 

  According to the South China Morning Post late in the evening Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a formal denunciation of the possible name change at the end of a day it was being widely reported:

  Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday that China had “lodged solemn representations” with the US and urged it to abide by the one-China principle and the three US-China communiqués – joint statements in 1972, 1979 and 1982 that included the US stating its intention to gradually decrease arms sales to the island.

  Zhao said Washington should “stop any form of official exchanges between the US and Taiwan to improve substantive relations”, including by changing the name of Tecro.

  Meanwhile during this week’s testy Congressional hearings, Secretary of State Antony Blinken let slip the words “country” of Taiwan…

  Blinken said the US will defend the “country” of Taiwan, a rookie messaging mistake.

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) September 13, 2021

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

  Earlier in the summer the deputy director of the American Institute in Taiwan Raymond Greene, considered the de facto US diplomat to Taiwan, made statements indicating the US now sees in the Taiwan controversy an “opportunity” to counter Beijing. 

  The Chinese people don’t want war. We don’t build a military alliance, or impose coercive trade, all-around blockade or sanctions. We don’t request other countries to follow our political system. Americans should look in the mirror and see how bad they are. pic.twitter.com/c7pCQnaMmO

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) September 13, 2021

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

  “The United States no longer sees Taiwan as a ‘problem’ in our relations with China, we see it as an opportunity to advance our shared vision,” Greene had said in the June comments. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 23:25

• Buchanan: Who And What Is Tearing The US Apart?
  Buchanan: Who And What Is Tearing The US Apart?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan,

  In Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, former President George W. Bush’s theme was national unity — and how it has been lost over these past 20 years.

  “In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks,” said Bush, “I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures.”

  Though he surely did not realize it, Bush had himself, moments before, given us an example of how that unity was destroyed when he drew a parallel between the terrorists of 9/11 and the Trump protesters of Jan 6. Said Bush:

  “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit.”

  

  What is Bush saying here?

  That Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran shot to death trying to enter the House chamber on Jan. 6, and Mohamed Atta, who drove an airliner into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in a massacre of close to 3,000 people, are “children of the same foul spirit.”

  Query: Was not Bush himself here giving us an example of the “malign force” that “turns every disagreement … into a clash of cultures”?

  Bush did not mention his own contribution to our national divide: his invasion of a country, Iraq, that did not threaten us, did not attack us, and did not want war with us — to disarm it of weapons it did not even have.

  Which contributed more to the loss of America’s national unity?

  The four hours of mob violence in the Capitol the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, or the 18-year war in Iraq that Bush launched in 2003?

  “In those fateful hours” after 9/11, said Bush, “Many Americans struggled to understand why an enemy would hate us with such zeal.”

  Yet, well before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, in his declaration of war on us, listed his grievances. Our sanctions were starving the children of Iraq. Our military presence on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, was a national insult and a blasphemous outrage to Islam.

  After 9/11, Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. President Barack Obama attacked Libya and plunged us into the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars.

  Thus, over 20 years, we have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands — Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, soldiers and civilians alike — and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes and their countries.

  Are Americans really as oblivious, as Bush suggests, as to why it was that our enemies “hate us with such zeal”?

  Many of these peoples want us out of their countries for the same reason that 18th- and 19th-century Americans wanted the French, British and Spanish out of our country and out of our hemisphere.

  Yet, it is not only the Bush and Obama wars that have made us so many enemies abroad and so deeply divided us at home.

  Our southern border is being overrun by illegal immigrants whose number, since President Joe Biden took office, has been running at close to 2 million a year, with 30,000 “get-aways” a month. These last are mostly males who never make contact with the Border Patrol as they move on to their chosen destinations. They are coming now not only from Mexico and the northern tier countries of Central America but also from some 100 countries around the world.

  Americans fear they are losing their country to the uninvited and invading millions of the Global South coming to dispossess them of their patrimony. They never voted for this invasion and have wanted their chosen leaders to stop it.

  Former President Donald Trump earned their trust because he tried and, to a great degree, succeeded.

  Unlike previous generations, our 21st-century divisions are far broader — not just economic and political, but social, moral, cultural and racial.

  Abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights divide us. Socialism and capitalism divide us. Affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, urban crime, gun violence and critical race theory divide us. Allegations of white privilege and white supremacy, and demands that equality of opportunity give way to equity of rewards, divide us. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the wearing of masks and vaccine mandates divide us.

  Demands to tear down monuments and memorials to those who were, until lately, America’s greats — from Christopher Columbus to George Washington to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, from Abraham Lincoln to Robert E. Lee to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson — divide us.

  We are even divided today on the most fundamental of questions:

  Is America now, and has it always been, a good and great country, worthy of the loyalty and love of all its children, of all its citizens?

  And are we Americans proceeding toward that “more perfect union” or heading for a reenactment of our previous violent disunion?

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 23:05

• "Life Has Not Improved By As Much As We Hoped" – Singapore Outbreak Worsens With 80% Vaccinated
  “Life Has Not Improved By As Much As We Hoped” – Singapore Outbreak Worsens With 80% Vaccinated

  Singapore has just reached a level of vaccination penetration that many other developed economies would envy: 80% of its adult population has been vaccinated. And yet, it continues to struggle with one of the worst outbreaks yet. On Sunday, the nation of 5.7 million people reported 555 new local COVID-19 cases, the most since August 2020. One day prior, Singapore recorded its 58th COVID death, a partially vaccinated 80-year-old man with a history of diabetes, hypertension and heart problems.

  Rather than lowering restrictions, Singapore’s Ministry of Health last week banned social gatherings at workplaces, allegedly because clusters of workers gossiping around the water cooler led to an outbreak. And in their free time, Singaporeans have been asked to attend one social gathering per day, tops.

  

  Despite Singapore being one of the world’s most heavily vaxxed countries, not much about life has changed for the worst of the COVID pandemic. Alex Cook, an infectious diseases modelling expert at the National University of Singapore, acknowledged that life had not improved “by as much as we might have hoped,” despite Singapore being one of the world’s most vaccinated countries.

  A curious thing has happened since Singapore hit 80%, Cook reminds us: “The community cases have actually gone up since reaching 80 per cent coverage, in part because we’re allowing more social events for those who are vaccinated and, I dare say, more fatigue at the control measures,” Cook told the ABC.

  And the outlook isn’t exactly positive: Gan Kim Yong, co-chair of the multi-ministry task force, said the “worrying” spike in infections would “probably get to 2,000 new cases a day,” describing the next two to four weeks as “crucial.”

  It’s a lesson that’s not unique to Singapore; “One main lesson from across South-East Asia is that it is incredibly hard to prevent Delta’s spread and, as Singapore shows, even high vaccination rates will not help that much,” Cook added.

  While they’re mostly symptomatic, Singapore is still finding a lot of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated. At this point, it’s only the latest piece of evidence to suggest that even the revised official efficacy rate of the Pfizer jab just isn’t realistic when we look at the case numbers.

  Another scientist said the continued spread is merely a sign that 80% vaccinated is still “too low for delta”. Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases expert from Singapore’s Rophi Clinic, said the Delta strain had moved the goalposts, in terms of what level of community vaccination was necessary.

  But looking at recent waves of COVID infections in the US, Europe and in Asia, it’s starting to look like that virus simply adapts so quickly, vaccines just aren’t effective enough. Maybe natural immunity is the better rout after all.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 22:45

• The Masking Of The Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From The Met Gala Are Now Commonplace
  The Masking Of The Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From The Met Gala Are Now Commonplace

  Authored by Glenn Greenwld via greenwald.substack.com,

  From the start of the pandemic, political elites have been repeatedly caught exempting themselves from the restrictive rules they impose on the lives of those over whom they rule. Governors, mayors, ministers and Speakers of the House have been filmed violating their own COVID protocols in order to dine with their closest lobbyist-friends, enjoy a coddled hair styling in chic salons, or unwind after signing new lockdown and quarantine orders by sneaking away for a weekend getaway with the family. The trend became so widespread that ABC News gathered all the examples under the headline “Elected officials slammed for hypocrisy for not following own COVID-19 advice,” while Business Insider in May updated the reporting with this: “14 prominent Democrats stand accused of hypocrisy for ignoring COVID-19 restrictions they’re urging their constituents to obey.”

  

  Most of those transgressions were too flagrant to ignore and thus produced some degree of scandal and resentment for the political officials granting themselves such license. Dominant liberal culture is, if nothing else, fiercely rule-abiding: they get very upset when they see anyone defying decrees from authorities, even if the rule-breaker is the official who promulgated the directives for everyone else. Photos released last November of California Governor Gavin Newsom giggling maskless as he sat with other maskless state health officials celebrating the birthday of a powerful lobbyist — just one month after he told the public to “to keep your mask on in between bites” and while severe state-imposed restrictions were in place regarding leaving one’s home — caused a drop in popularity and helped fueled a recall initiative against him. Newsom and these other officials broke their own rules, and even among liberals who venerate their leaders as celebrities, rule-breaking is frowned upon.

  But as is so often the case, the most disturbing aspects of elite behavior are found not in what they have prohibited but rather in what they have decided is permissible. When it comes to mask mandates, it is now commonplace to see two distinct classes of people: those who remain maskless as they are served, and those they employ as their servants who must have their faces covered at all times. Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was difficult to imagine how the enormous chasm between the lives of cultural and political elites and everyone else could be made any larger, yet the pandemic generated a new form of crude cultural segregation: a series of protocols which ensure that maskless elites need not ever cast eyes upon the faces of their servant class.

  Last month, a delightful event was hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for wealthy Democratic donors in Napa — the same wine region of choice for Gov. Newsom’s notorious dinner party — at which the cheapest tickets were $100 each and a “chair” designation was available for $29,000. Video of the outdoor festivities showed an overwhelmingly white crowd of rich Democratic donors sitting maskless virtually on top of one another — not an iota of social distancing to be found — as Pelosi imparted her deep wisdom about public policy.

  Pelosi’s donor gala took place as millions face eviction, ongoing joblessness, and ever-emerging mandates of various types. It was also held just five days after the liberal county government of Los Angeles, in the name of Delta, imposed a countywide mask requirement for “major outdoor events.” In nearby San Francisco, where Pelosi’s mansion is found, the liberal-run city government has maintained a more restrictive outdoor mask policy than the CDC: though masks were not required for outdoor exercising (such as jogging) or while consuming food, the city’s rules for outdoor events required “that at any gathering where there are more than 300 people, masks are still required for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” Though Pelosi’s fundraising lunch fell below the 10,000-person threshold for LA County’s outdoor mask mandate, it may have fallen within San Francisco’s mask mandate. Either way, it appears arbitrary at best: how would The Science™ of COVID risk have drastically changed for those sitting with no distancing, at densely packed tables, if there had been a few more tables of Pelosi donors? The CDC’s latest guidelines for outdoor events urge people to “consider wearing a mask…for activities with close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.”

  Trying to find a cogent scientific rationale for any of this is, by design, virtually impossible. The rules are sufficiently convoluted and often arbitrary that one can easily mount arguments to legally justify the Versailles-like conduct of one’s favorite liberal political leaders. Beyond the legalities, everything one does can be simultaneously declared to be responsible or reckless, depending on the political needs of the moment. But what was most striking about Pelosi’s donor event was not the possibility of legal infractions but rather the two-tiered system that was so viscerally and uncomfortably obvious.

  Even though many of the wealthy white donors had no food in front of them and were not yet eating, there was not a mask in sight — except on the faces of the overwhelmingly non-white people hired as servants, all of whom had their gratuitous faces covered. Servants, apparently, are much more pleasant when they are dehumanized. There is no need for noses or mouths or other identifiable facial features for those who are converted into servile robots.

  Similar scenes were visible at the even more opulent birthday bash which former President Barack Obama threw for himself to commemorate his 60 years on the planet. Held at his sprawling $12 million weekend estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama and 400 of his closest maskless friends spent hours in indoor tents dancing, chatting in close circles, and yelling in each other’s ears over the live music. While custom-made masks engraved with Obama’s renowned humility were provided to the guests (“44×60”), only the servants were reported to have worn masks. Who can throw a Hawaiian luau-themed party at one of the country’s wealthiest retreats in the middle of a pandemic and joblessness crisis while wearing disfiguring masks, however chic and carefully hand-crafted they might be?

  Discussing the controversy over Obama’s lavish party on CNN, New York Times reporter Annie Karni explained that while some of the former president’s neighbors found the party objectionable on the grounds of health and/or optics, many adamantly argued that such concerns were applicable only to ordinary people, not the more advanced and evolved species likely to be invited to such an extravagant and exclusive liberal party. Karni described this prevailing mentality with vivid accuracy:

  [The controversy] is really being overblown. They’re following all the safety requirements. People are going to sporting events that are bigger than this. This is going to be safe. This is a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd and this is just about optics. It’s not about safety.

  An avalanche of similarly repugnant imagery poured forth on Monday night at the most gluttonous and opulent royal court spectacle of them all: the annual Met Gala held by long-time Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Town and Country has lamented that the once-elevated-and-dignified event has become quite gauche ever since it became overrun by cultural celebrities and nouveau riche tycoons — “these days, the gala is a highly commercialized, celebrity-driven media circus that celebrates sensationalist preening by individuals who couldn’t be less interested in the museum.” Yet despite this degradation, the magazine nonetheless still regards the affair as “the fashion and society event of the year.” In 2014, Wintour complained that the event was insufficiently exclusive and raised the ticket prices to $25,000 per person in order to keep out the riff-raff who had been able to get in the prior year for the middling price of $15,000 per ticket. Tickets this year cost as much as $35,000 per person. It is, pronounced Wintour’s Vogue this week, “the fashion world equivalent of the Oscars.”

  While event organizers, in an act of noble self-sacrifice and social duty, sadly cancelled the gala in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Wintour was determined this year not to let unpleasant matters like overflowing ICU wards, ongoing school closures, looming mass evictions, and pervasive mask mandates ruin the immense enjoyment bequeathed to the world’s serfs as they watch their beloved bejeweled class pose in designer gowns. Following Pelosi and Obama’s examples, a long list of America’s most glittering stars bravely risked exposure to a deadly virus by appearing without masks, all to ensure that Americans would never again be deprived of such a richly gratifying moment for them. Co-chaired by Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka, honorary chairs included Tom Ford, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri, and Wintour herself.

  Much of the attention on Monday night was devoted to the appearance on the red carpet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The usual horde of embittered online nay-sayers and envious party-poopers tried implying that there was something incongruous about a socialist politician gleefully participating in the most vulgar tribute to capitalism and social inequality to emerge since the walled-off galas thrown by the French aristocracy at the Palace of Versailles. Some petty, resentful critics even suggested that AOC’s latest star turn somehow illustrated what Shant Mesrobian has disparagingly described as “the Squad’s brand of highly educated, professional-class cultural leftism,” which “now offers elected officials a path to fame and pop culture status that circumvents much of the old, hand-dirtying business of politics,” pursuant to which “elected office itself has become merely a stepping stone to social media celebrity” and “maintaining a social media influencer empire rivals, or even surpasses, the priority of being a successful legislator.”

  Fortunately, many of AOC’s most devoted socialist supporters stepped forth with passionate defenses of their leader. As they pointed out, AOC had painted onto the back of her pristine white gown — in perfectly proportioned and tastefully scrolled red ink highlighting the stunning virtues of the designer dress’ silhouette — a leftist phrase, Tax the Rich, that not only assaulted the Biden-supporting liberal celebrities in attendance but made them feel endangered in their own habitat, as if their wealth and privilege were being imperiled not from afar but from one of their own, from within. Far from being what AOC’s dirty and petty critics tried to malign this as being — an attention-seeking, celebrity-building, branding opportunity in which AOC yet again lavished herself in the multi-pronged rewards of the very economic and cultural hierarchies she claims to despise and vows to combat — she was actually engaged in a revolutionary and subversive act, injecting into aristocratic circles a beautifully artistic yet hostile message.

  This was not, contrary to the grievances of her small-minded and jealous critics, AOC reveling in one of Louis XVI’s court festivities. Instead, she was storming the Bastille: not with weapons or fire but with the graceful designer elegance of the insurgent Marxist renegade, which made her presence all the more deceptively disruptive. While it may have appeared that Vogue‘s perfectly-coiffed red-carpet correspondents and other Met luminaries were gushing with admiration and awe at her bold fashion statement, they were actually shaking with fear over what AOC had wrought. They were quivering with rage and fear, not swooning with delight as it appeared.

  Besides, as AOC herself put it with her trademarked class consciousness, the very fact that she can attend the Met Gala while you cannot is proof of the potency of the left-wing movement she leads. Standing next to Aurora James, the designer of her dress, AOC revealed the underlying clandestine strategy of her subversive attendance: “We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met … we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

  “We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met … we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

  — AOC at #MetGala pic.twitter.com/UZj22DjMl3

  — The Recount (@therecount) September 14, 2021

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

  In a separate exposition, AOC explained that her appearance at the Met Gala was such a watershed moment for working-class politics because it is vital that she not be confined to dreary poor and lower-middle class venues when spreading her fist-raising rebellion. Instead, she must endure the burden of carrying her cause to the world’s richest and most privileged elite and the exclusive salons they occupy. Imagine being so unimaginative and myopic as to be unable to recognize and be grateful for AOC’s inventive praxis.

  The jealousy-driven attacks on AOC by her cultural inferiors were almost certainly driven by various forms of white supremacy, misogyny and colonialism, as AOC said of those who criticized her in 2018 for wearing an expensive designer dress (“women like me aren’t supposed to run for office”) as well as when she denounced the dismissive and condescending attitudes toward the Squad from Nancy Pelosi (“Nancy Pelosi has been ‘singling out’ freshman congresswomen of color”). Worse, Monday night’s traumatic bullying of AOC obscured the far more important fact that, yet again, we saw elites prancing around in the middle of a pandemic maskless, while those paid hourly wages to serve them or desperately try to snap a photo of them were required to keep their pointless faces covered with cloth at all times.

  

  COVID rules are now so convoluted that liberals are able to defend their leaders’ actions while not even pretending to make sense from a scientific or rational perspective. Many defended Newsom and Obama’s maskless partying on the ground that it was all “outdoors,” even though both were actually inside tents and people had been shamed for months for taking their kids to deserted beaches rather than keeping them locked away at home. Liberals argue that it is fine for elites at Obama’s party and the Met Gala to remain maskless since they are vaccinated, even as they defend the CDC’s new mask directives for vaccinated people based on the view that vaccinated people still dangerously transmit the Delta variant to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. They will claim that it is fine for rich Democratic donors at Pelosi’s party to sit on top of one other maskless because they are eating even though the video shows they have no food in front of them (they are waiting for the masked servants of color to bring their food) and even though shoveling food into one’s open mouth does not actually create a wall of immunity against transmission of the virus from one’s open-mouthed table neighbors. The Met Gala’s red carpet is said to be “outdoors” even though it is surrounded by tent walls and other structures, and still leaving the question of why workers need to be masked in the same area.

  But all of this stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic. One can locate in all of this jumbled and always-shifting rationale various forms of control, shaming, stigma and hierarchy, while The Science™ is nowhere to be found.

  

  Even with all of this deceit and manipulation, there is something uniquely disturbing — creepy even — about becoming accustomed to seeing political and cultural elites wallowing in luxury without masks, while those paid small wages to serve them in various ways are forced to keep cloth over their faces. It is a powerful symbol of the growing rot at the core of America’s cultural and social balkanization: a maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class. The country’s workers have long been faceless in a figurative sense, and now, thanks to extremely selective application of decisively unscientific COVID restrictions, that condition has become literal.

  ---

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 22:25

• Chinese Data Dump Confirms Hard Landing Imminent
  Chinese Data Dump Confirms Hard Landing Imminent

  Update (2210): On the heels of data showing land sales collapsing, tonight’s smorgasbord of data (absent only GDP) on consumption, industrial output and investment will reveal the extent of the damage caused by an outbreak of the delta variant.

  As a reminder ahead of tonight’s August data, the latest official composite purchasing manager’s index fell to the lowest since February 2020, its first contraction after the virus lockdowns, signaling China’s robust economic recovery from last year’s coronavirus trough is losing momentum.

  • Industrial Production YTD YoY MISSED at +13.1% vs +13.5% exp DOWN from +14.4% prior

  • Retail Sales YTD YoY MISSED at +18.1% vs +18.9% exp DOWN from +20.7% prior

  • Fixed Asset Investment YTD YoY MISSED at +8.9% vs +9.0% exp DOWN from +10.3% prior

  • Property Investment YTD YoY MISSED at +10.9% vs +11.3% DOWN from +12.7% prior

  • Surveyed Jobless Rate IN LINE at 5.1% vs 5.1% exp IN LINE with 5.1% prior

  

  Perhaps most notably, year-over-year retail sales rose just 2.5% in August, dramatically worse than the +7% expected and well below the +8.5% in July…

  

  Retail weakness was most pronounced in communication appliances, clothing, household electronics, automobiles and eating out; and as Bloomberg’s Kevin Kingsbury notes, retail sales data are liable to be worse for September (and possibly October) as folks are apt to stay home during the upcoming holidays.

  Notably, the PBOC rolled over 600 billion yuan of funding in a move that signals Beijing is keeping liquidity levels amid the slowdown. The question is, with China’s credit impulse is at its most contractionary in 3 years, is this the turning point once again?

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Policy makers have so far refrained from large-scale stimulus this year, instead resorting to some low-profile tools to increase credit supply to parts of the economy, especially small businesses. It will be hard for Xi to back down from his ivory tower to suddenly flip-flop to support the economy – systemically or idiosyncratically – without appearing to kowtow to the elites at at time when he is clearly focused on avoiding social unrest among the non-elites.

  *  *  *

  As we detailed earlier, one month after we warned that China had just unleashed a stagflation shockwave, as inflation – and especially factory price inflation – hit the highest in 13 years, crushing corporate profits, while GDP disappointed, and weeks after we also pointed out that China’s credit growth in August had collapsed to the lowest level since the peak of the covid crisis in Feb 2020, Bloomberg writes in its economic preview of China’s economic data dump scheduled for tonight that the country’s economy “likely slowed further in August, with data on consumption, industrial output and investment due Wednesday to reveal the extent of the damage caused by an outbreak of the delta variant.”

  The extent of the slowdown will be closely watched for sign that it’s serious enough to prompt authorities to change their current stance of slowly withdrawing liquidity from markets and keeping stimulus limited. The ongoing regulatory crackdown on sectors like education, the internet and property may have exacerbated the recent economic weakness.

  And while Bloomberg expects substantial disappointments across the board for the month of August when China was hit hard by another round of covid restrictions, including disappointing consumption, property, infrastructure and unemployment data, the reality is that China may be this close to a hard landing.

  The reason for that is that while it won’t be featured in tonight’s data lineup, high-frequency data – actual data, not that kind “filtered” by Beijing’s National Statistics Bureau – points to an absolute disaster for China’s property sector, which has imploded over the past two weeks (coinciding roughly with the terminal collapse of Evergrande).

  According to Nomura, year-over-year growth in volume terms of new home sales, existing home sales and land sales dropped further to -26.6%, -46.6% and -38.3% in the first 11 or 12 days of September from -22.5%, -39.5% and -21.9% in August, respectively. It gets worse: land sales in value terms plunged to -90.4% y-o-y for 1-12 September from -65.0% in August. Some more details from Nomura:

  New home sales growth data for WIND’s 30-city sample serves as a good tracker of official NBS new home sales growth, thanks to their high correlation coefficient of 0.92 during the period from January 2018 to July 2021. Based on our estimates, year-on-year growth in new home sales (hereinafter in volume terms for new home sales) for the WIND 30-city sample declined further to -26.6% for 1-11 September from -22.5% in August and -4.4% in July (Figure 1), while its annualized 2y-o-2y growth also fell to -10.3% in month-to-date September from -5.2% in August and 3.4% in July (Figure 2).

  

  It gets even worse, because a breakdown of the data shows that low-tier cities fared much worse: developers’ net bond financing fell into deeper negative territory in August in both onshore and offshore markets, pointing to a further tightening in developer financing conditions.

  

  According to WIND, growth in land sales in value terms in the 100-city sample, a proxy for land purchases by property developers, slumped to -90.4% y-o-y during 1-12 September form -65.0% in August. In volume (floor space) terms, it also dropped sharply to -38.3% y-o-y from -21.9% (Figure 6).

  

  Although high-frequency land sales data may be under-reported to some extent, as WIND may not receive all cities’ data in a timely manner; the downtrend in land sales growth is quite evident.

  These data support the cautious view of Nomura’s Ting Lu of China’s property sector and macro economy. As Lu writes, “we believe the ongoing property curbs are unlikely to be eased in the near term, as Beijing has attached national strategic importance to reining in property bubbles, directly intervening in credit supply for the property sector, leaving it little room to dial back these curbs.”

  The likelihood of Beijing easing its property curbs is quite low. Actually, despite the worsening property sector, a number of cities have further tightened their curbs over the past two weeks.

  This brings us to another observation made by Nomura last month in the bank’s must read report “Asia Special Report – China: Beijing’s Volcker moment” (available for pro ZH subs at the usual place) namely that the country is facing its “Volcker moment“, as Beijing seems to be willing to sacrifice some growth stability for achieving long-term targets, namely

  • less dependence on foreign high-tech goods,
  • achieving a higher birth rate and
  • reducing wealth inequality.

  Here, Lu repeats his dire conclusion, warning that “there is likely to be a much worse-than-expected growth slowdown, more loan and bond defaults, and potential stock market turmoil.”

  It’s also clear that so far low-tier cities have borne the brunt of the ongoing property sector downturn, due to Beijing’s unprecedented tightening measures, the tapering of the PBoC’s pledged supplementary lending and continued population outflows towards large cities.

  Finally, the latest covid breakout (in the nation that created covid) isn’t helping. As we reported earlier, over the weekend, Putian city in East China’s Fujian province reported 64 local positive cases and the city already imposed locality-based lockdown and “discouraged” people from leaving the city – translation: another multi-million city is under massive quarantine. Of course, it has failed and the outbreak has already spread to neighboring cities in Fujian province, including Xiamen and Quanzhou, with several districts and hospitals put under lockdown there. The situation will get worse as some analysis estimate around 30,000 people have already traveled out from Putian.

  Bottom line: Beijing is facing an economy whose wheels have suddenly come off, and unless China’s political elite is willing to unleash another massive monetary and fiscal tsunami and bail out the economy all over again – something Beijing has repeatedly vowed it won’t do this time – a hard landing, whether or not accompanied by a Volcker Moment, is virtually guaranteed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 22:08

• Microsoft Announces Record $60 Billion Buyback Just As Market Was About To Break Key Support
  Microsoft Announces Record $60 Billion Buyback Just As Market Was About To Break Key Support

  It was just last Thursday when, commenting on the record flood of corporate bond issuance to hit investment grade companies, which hit an all-time post Labor day high of $60.6BN in new issues across a record (for any two-day period) 39 deals (the previous two-day record was 36 deals immediately after Labor Day in 2019) we said that “while much of tens of billions in proceeds will be used to refi existing debt, we expect a good portion to stay as “general corporate purposes”, i.e., used as dry powder to repurchase stocks. Which means brace for a tidal wave of buybacks in the coming days.“

  We had to wait just three trading days for this prediction to come true because shortly after the close on Tuesday, Microsoft which is the second most valuable company in the world after Apple with a market cap of just over $2.2 trillion, announced that its board approved a new share repurchase program authorizing up to $60 billion in share repurchases. The new share repurchase program represents 2.7% of MSFT’s entire market cap and comes exactly two years after the company’s last buyback authorization which was $40 billion.

  In short, it is precisely the kind of buyback tsunami we had expected would arrive just days after the biggest bond offering onslaught in history.

  But there’s more, because while MSFT stock is up about 1% on this news alone and set to hit a new all time high in the next few days making the MSFT board extremely rich(er), the record repurchase could not have come at a more critical time for stocks: with Apple crapping the bed, and tumbling on its dismal iPhone 13 launch date, it had dragged the S&P just above the critical 50 DMA support level. And just when the market despertely need a boost, here comes Microsoft.

  

  Come to think of it, this is precisely what happened in mid-August, when just as the ES was about to drop below the even more critical 4,350 support level, banks unleashed a record round of buybacks according to BofA.

  

  And so, two birds with one buyback: MSFT stock is back to just shy of all time highs, and the S&P has been rescued, with the downward momentum from the recent selling solidly supported now that traders know that the tech giants will boldly step in with tens of billions in buybacks to prop up the “market.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 21:45

• Tajikistan Summons US Ambassador, Angry Over Biden's 9/11 Remarks
  Tajikistan Summons US Ambassador, Angry Over Biden’s 9/11 Remarks

  The central Asian country of Tajikistan, which shares the entirety of its southern border with Afghanistan, has summoned the US ambassador on Tuesday to mount protest over remarks by President Joe Biden during weekend 9/11 anniversary commemoration events. 

  “A verbal note of protest was conveyed to the US Ambassador in connection with the statements by the President of the United States of America Mr. Joe Biden during his visit to a fire station in Pennsylvania,” Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The verbal note stated that such statements do not correspond to the spirit of friendly relations and partnership.”

  

  The US ambassador in residence in Dushanbe – the capital of Tajikistan – John Mark Pommersheim, was summoned on Tuesday. He was informed that the country was offended by Biden’s reference to Tajiks also “hanging in the well of the wheel” if the US had landed a large C-130 transport plane in Tajikistan. 

  The diplomatic protest comes after Biden claimed at a 9/11 commemorative event in Pennsylvania that like Afghans, many Tajiks would also be “hanging in the well of the wheel” if the US pulled up a C-130 Hercules aircraft in Tajikistan.

  Here’s the offending section of the speech which Biden had delivered during a 9/11 memorial event at a fire station in Pennsylvania, according to the White House readout: 

  “As I read it, I am told, 70 percent of the American people think it was time to get out of Afghanistan, spending all that money. “But the flip of it is, they didn’t like the way we got out. But it’s hard to explain to anybody how else could you get out. For example, if we were in Tajikistan and we pulled up with a C-130 and said, “We’re going to let, you know, anybody who was involved with being sympathetic to us to get on the plane,” you’d have people hanging in the wheel well. Come on.”

  Biden was defending the pullout and horribly botched evacuation initiated in mid-August, which resulted in multiple Afghan civilian as well as troop deaths. In particular he was referencing the Afghan civilians who attempted to hold on to the wheel skirt and landing gear of a C-130 while it took off from Kabul airport.

  

  At least two had been filmed plummeting to their deaths immediately after the US plane took off, while another young man was found dead in the wheel well when it landed in Doha. The grisly scenes were widely deemed “defining images” of the US pullout fiasco in its final days. 

  Biden comments offered Tajikistan as a place where the exact same thing would supposedly happen, according to the president’s words, which were framed using a whataboutism argument using Tajikistan as the foremost next example. No doubt, Tajikistan’s leaders are outraged at the implication that the population is so desperate to flee that Tajiks would risk death to get out. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 21:25

• Texas Hospital Faces Closure Over Vaccine Mandate, CEO Says
  Texas Hospital Faces Closure Over Vaccine Mandate, CEO Says

  By Becker Hospital Review

  Nearly 140 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, and the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate could force at least one more to shut its doors. 

  President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to require millions of American workers, including certain healthcare workers, to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The plan requires those who work at hospitals and other types of medical facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to get a COVID-19 vaccine. 

  Brownfield (Texas) Regional Medical Center, a rural hospital, will lose up to 25 percent of its employees if the vaccine mandate is enforced, CEO Jerry Jasper told KCBD.

  

  Losing those workers would probably shut down the hospital because some nurses have already quit to take jobs with nursing agencies that offer higher pay, according to the report. 

  Not complying with the vaccine mandate and losing Medicare and Medicaid funding isn’t an option for Brownfield Regional Medical Center. About 80 percent of the hospital’s funding comes from Medicare and Medicaid, Mr. Jasper told KCBD. 

  The vaccine mandate puts Texas hospital leaders in a complicated position because Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning public hospitals from enacting COVID-19 vaccine mandates. 

  “How’s Governor Abbott going to take this? He hasn’t complied with anything federal laws have done so far,” Mr. Jasper told KCBD.

  “So, we’re going to have to, here in Texas at least, we’re going to have to wait and see how it plays out.” 

  Mr. Jasper isn’t the only hospital chief in Texas grappling with how to respond to the vaccine mandate. 

  “I’ve got President Biden telling me he’s going to mandate it, but I have Gov. Abbott who says I cannot mandate it,” Adam Willman, CEO of Clifton-based Goodall-Witcher Healthcare, told the Texas Tribune Sept. 10.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 21:05

• NBA Won't Impose Vaccine Requirement On Players After Union 'Refused To Budge'
  NBA Won’t Impose Vaccine Requirement On Players After Union ‘Refused To Budge’

  What do NBA players, Congress and US postal workers have in common? None of them will be subject to vaccine mandates that up to 100 million Americans face following last week’s Executive Order.

  

  According to ESPN, NBA players have become the latest ‘exempted class’ from the mandates, after their union (the NBPA) “refused to budge on its demand that players not be required to take the vaccine.”

  The NBA and NBPA continue to negotiate aspects of COVID-related protocols and procedures for the upcoming 2021-22 campaign, but the NBPA has refused to budge on its demand that players not be required to take the vaccine, sources say, and any proposal that mandates vaccination remains a “non-starter.”

  NBA referees and most NBA staff will be required to take the jab, according to the report.

  Roughly 85% of players are vaccinated, a league spokesman recently said, and, in a preliminary memo obtained by ESPN in early September, the league outlined a set of strict protocols for unvaccinated players.

  Such protocols include having lockers far from vaccinated teammates and having to eat, fly and ride buses in different sections. These protocols are not final and are still subject to talks with the NBPA. -ESPN

  Earlier this month, the NBA informed teams that vaccine requirements in both New York and San Francisco will be enforced for members of the Knicks, Nets and Golden State Warriors – including all players – unless there are approved medical or religious exemptions, according to a memo obtained by ESPN.

  And late last month, the NBA informed teams that anyone who came within 15 feet of players or officials during games would be required to be fully vaccinated by October 1.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 20:51

• Russia Releases Footage Of Armed 'Robot Tanks' In Action During Zapad-2021 Exercises
  Russia Releases Footage Of Armed ‘Robot Tanks’ In Action During Zapad-2021 Exercises

  Russia’s military has put its cutting edge robot armored fighting vehicles on display during the ongoing massive Zapad-2021 exercises with Belarus and other allied countries. 

  The Ministry of Defense (MoD) released brief footage of the robots being battle-tested during the exercise, with Russian state media describing that “Robotic Russian fighting machines fired anti-armor missiles and let rip with mounted flamethrowers on Monday, while their operators sat in safety away from the battlefield, in colossal drills attended by President Vladimir Putin.”

  

  One of the two models in the exercise was the Uran-9 armored fighting vehicle, which looks like a small conventional tank, and utilizes laser sensors to hone in on targets, and can be outfitted with rockets or large guns, and even a flame-thrower.

  The other model is called the Nerekhta combat robot, which has a purpose of going to places near or behind enemy lines where it’s too dangerous to send regular infantry forces. One Russian military official described that the Nerekhta is “designed to perform reconnaissance tasks, direct fire on enemy positions, and quickly deliver ammunition and equipment.”

  The pair of robots unleashed fire on a simulated enemy during the Zapad-2021 exercises. Russia is rumored to have actually deployed robotic fighting vehicles during prior years in the Syria war, though there’s yet to be footage or confirmation of this. 

  Footage of the robots in action released by the Russian MoD:

  In footage released by the Russian military, the robots maneuvering amidst a large battlefield scene looks like something straight out of The Terminator.

  Zapad-2021 kicked off last Friday, and is mainly taking place at over a dozen bases and ranges mostly on Russian and Belarusian soil. Considered the largest joint war games to take place in Europe in decades, it involves up to 200,000 troops – including elite paratroopers – nearly 800 tanks, and 15 warships plus 80 aircraft.

  #Footage The Baltic and Northern Fleet marines and underwater commandoes neutralize a group of conditional saboteurs, who took over the Russian battle ships’ homebase, during the #Zapad2021 strategic exercise https://t.co/PbWgygObNS#RussiaBelarus #JointExercises #BalticFleet pic.twitter.com/iFBYDDqGuI

  — Минобороны России (@mod_russia) September 14, 2021

  The drills are designed to test the allied militaries’ “interaction during combat operations and letting commanders and staff practice troop management during joint actions in repelling aggression against the Union State,” according to the MoD, which is a reference to the agreement going back to 1999 in which Russia and Belarus committed to deeper political, military, and economic integration.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 20:45

• NHTSA Asks 12 Competing Automakers To Help With Its Broad Investigation Of Tesla's Autopilot
  NHTSA Asks 12 Competing Automakers To Help With Its Broad Investigation Of Tesla’s Autopilot

  The wide-ranging NHTSA probe into Tesla’s Autopilot just got a little more “wide-ranging”.

  That’s because today it was reported that the NHTSA has asked for help from 12 major competitors other automakers in its probe of crashes involving Tesla vehicles. 

  General Motors, Toyota, Ford and Volkswagen were among the names contacted by the NHTSA as the regulator starts to conduct a “comparative analysis” with other “production vehicles equipped with the ability to control both steering and braking/accelerating simultaneously under some circumstances,” Reuters reported Tuesday. 

  The NHTSA is seeking out information on any crashes in which an advanced driver system was operating “anytime during the period beginning 30 seconds immediately prior to the commencement of the crash,” the report said. 

  The regulator is also looking into how driver assistance systems confirm that drivers are engaged and paying attention. And finally, the NHTSA asked other automakers about their “strategies for detecting and responding to the presence of first responder / law enforcement vehicles.”

  

  Recall, the NHTSA recently said it had opened a formal investigation into the company’s Autopilot feature. It said it is opening a probe into Tesla’s Model X, S, and 3 for model years 2014-2021. The broad range of models and model years means that this could be the broad investigation that Tesla skeptics have been requesting for years. Specifically, the regulator is looking into a litany of accidents involving Teslas on Autopilot slamming into inanimate emergency response vehicles on the road. 

  The NHTSA said the investigation would assess technologies, methods “used to monitor, assist, and enforce the driver’s engagement” during autopilot operation, according to Bloomberg.

  Goldman Sachs appeared anything but optimistic that the probe into Autopilot would be resolved quickly. “Given the current probe is related to a Level 2 driver-assist system, one solution could be for an enhanced driver monitoring system to ensure driver compliance with Tesla’s terms of use,” the investment bank wrote last month.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 20:25

• B-2 Stealth Bomber Damaged During "Emergency Landing" At Whiteman Air Force Base
  B-2 Stealth Bomber Damaged During “Emergency Landing” At Whiteman Air Force Base

  A U.S. Air Force stealth bomber was damaged Tuesday after an emergency landing at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. 

  

  Details are limited, but The War Zone received a statement from Air Force Global Strike Command about the incident that unfolded at 0030 local time at Whiteman AFB. 

  There has been an incident at Whiteman AFB. It occurred at approximately 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 14.

  A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit experienced and [sic] in-flight malfunction during a routine training mission and was damaged on the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, after an emergency landing.

  There were no personnel injuries and no fire associated with the landing. The incident is under investigation and more information will be provided as it becomes available.

  A notice to airmen, or NOTAM, was filed around Whiteman AFB, located near Knob Noster, Missouri, “to provide a safe environment for accident investigations.” The base is home to the B-2 Stealth Bomber of the 509th Bomb Wing.

  

  No damage reports have been released or if the stealth bomber was carrying a payload. The War Zone said there was no fire, and the pilots were unharmed. 

  Northrop Grumman only built 21 of these heavy strategic stealth bombers. One was lost in Guam in 2008. And possibly another has been damaged early Tuesday morning. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 20:10

• Contaminated Pfizer Vaccines Reported In Several Japanese Cities
  Contaminated Pfizer Vaccines Reported In Several Japanese Cities

  Several cities in Japan have reported ‘white-colored floating substances’ in Vials of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, according to Bloomberg.

  

  The vials came from lot FF5357, where white contaminants were first reported by Kamakura City in Kanagawa prefecture. On Tuesday, two more cities – neighboring Sagamihara and Sakai City in Osaka prefecture reported contaminated vials, however there were no reports of adverse reactions. In Sagamihara, white substances were reported at three different vaccination sites on Sept. 11, 12 and 14.

  The cities told Bloomberg that they will ask Pfizer for an analysis.

  Last month Moderna came under fire after black contaminants were found in multiple vials of their Covid-19 vaccine in Japan, causing the Japanese Ministry of Health to pull 1.6 million doses of the vaccine.

  

  According to NHK, “black substances” were found in syringes and a vial, while pink substances were spotted in a different syringe.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 19:57

• China's Xi Snubbed Biden's Suggestion Of Face-To-Face Summit In Phone Call
  China’s Xi Snubbed Biden’s Suggestion Of Face-To-Face Summit In Phone Call

  New reporting in Financial Times has revealed that President Joe Biden’s efforts to initiate an in-person summit with President Xi Jinping at a moment relations remain a low point have been snubbed by the Chinese leader. The serious overture that Biden made ultimately fell “on deaf ears,” the report emphasizes, as Xi apparently displayed no interest.

  FT reveals the offer was made by Biden during the two leaders’ 90-minute phone call last Thursday. The White House call readout made no mention of the proposed in-person summit. It only said “The two leaders had a broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge,” and the statement added, “They agreed to engage on both sets of issues openly and straightforwardly.”

  

  But on Tuesday the FT reports, “The US president proposed to Xi that the leaders hold the summit in an effort to break a deadlock in US-China relations, but several people briefed on the call said the Chinese leader did not accept it and instead insisted that Washington adopt a less strident tone towards Beijing.”

  And further, “Five people briefed on the call said that although Xi had used less abrasive language than his senior diplomats had done this year, his overall message to Biden was that the United States must moderate its rhetoric.”

  Another official cited Biden’s efforts as including proposing “several possibilities for follow-up engagement with Xi” which included the idea of a summit. FT suggests there was widespread “disappointment” at the White House given Xi’s clear lack of interest in Biden’s significant overture.

  As for the Chinse reaction to the proposed summit, FT explains:

  Chinese accounts of the appeal pointed out that it was initiated by Biden, and quoted Xi as saying that US policies had caused “serious hardship.” They also noted that the United States “looked forward to more discussions and cooperation” with China, in language that implied Washington was pushing harder for engagement than Beijing.

  Biden on the phone to Xi last week: let’s avoid a New Cold War.

  Biden to his mates in Australia, Japan and India this week: let’s figure out how to deepen this New Cold War.https://t.co/YcRz3WAhbL

  — Carlos Martinez (@agent_of_change) September 14, 2021

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

  So it appears Beijing is not at all scarred or feeling pressure by Biden’s ‘get tough’ on China stance, which has included continuing a number of Trump policies, particularly ramping up targeted sanctions on officials related to Hong Kong and Uyghur crackdowns – and continuing weapons sales to Taiwan, alongside an increased US naval presence in the South China Sea and through the contested Taiwan Strait.

  Following the revelation of this significant snub, which no doubt the White House would have preferred to keep a tight lid on, President Xi and Beijing officials likely see China as now a bit more comfortably in the driver’s seat when it comes to future proposals and efforts at direct engagement.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 09/14/2021 – 19:45

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