Dec 16

Today’s News 16th December 2022

  • China: The World's First Technate – Part 2
    China: The World’s First Technate – Part 2

    Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

    In Part 1, we discussed the historical background of Technocracy Inc. that briefly found popularity in the US in the 1930s during the turmoil of the Great Depression.

    Technocracy was rooted in socioeconomic theories that focused upon the efficient management of society by experts (technocrats). This idea briefly held the public’s attention during a period of sustained recession, mass unemployment and growing poverty.

    The technological capabilities required for the energy surveillance grid, essential for the operation of a Technate (a technocratic society), were far beyond the practical reach of 1930s America. Consequently, for that and other reasons, public interest in the seemingly preposterous idea of technocracy soon subsided.

    However, in recent decades, many influential policy strategists—most notably Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger—and private philanthropic foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, recognised that advances in digital technology would eventually make a Technate feasible. As founding and leading members of the Trilateral Commission, a policy “think tank,” they saw China as a potential test bed for technocracy.

    We will now consider their efforts to create the world’s first Technate in China.

    These articles build upon the research found in my 2021 publication Pseudopandemic, which is freely available to my blog subscribers.

    WHY CHINA?

    In the West we often have difficulty understanding or even conceptualising Chinese mores. We tend to see the world in our own terms and are able to describe it only in reference to the principles and philosophical concepts that we are familiar with. Perhaps we forget that the Western perspective is not the only one in the world.

    For example, as pointed out by students of the Chinese political philosophy of tianxia, there is no ontological tradition in China. In the Chinese philosophical mind, the question is not “What is this thing” but “What path does this thing suggest?”

    Datong lies at the heart of “the Great Way,” first described in the Liyun chapter of the “Book of Rites” (the Liji), written more than 2,000 years ago. Recounting the teachings of Confucius, the chapter depicted a utopian society of the ancient past this way:

    When the Great Way was practised, the world was shared by all alike. The worthy and the able were promoted to office and men practised good faith and lived in affection. Therefore they did not regard as parents only their own parents, or as sons only their own sons.

    The “Rites” (or “li”) are the formal etiquette and behavioural conduct that underpin Chinese social order. Li also compasses the ceremony and rituals that reinforce normative standards.

    Datong, which can be translated as “the Great Unity,” represents the central political and moral philosophy of the ideal Chinese society. In datong, everyone respects “the li” and is imbued with the Confucian virtue of “ren.” This love and benevolence (ren) is founded in human empathy. It first manifests within the family but extends to the whole of society.

    Datong implies a society where the most able and virtuous lead, with ren foremost in their hearts and minds. All resources are shared equitably for the common good. In the Liyun chapter, the expression “the world is shared by all alike” is written as “tianxia weigong.” This can be translated as “all under Heaven is held in common” or “all under Heaven is publicly held.”

    There is no place for private property in datong, because communities meet the needs of all. There is no conflict of interest. The Great Way is one of “Universal Harmony.”

    The opening passage of the Liyun chapter also described xiaokang, the “lesser prosperity,” in which society still maintained li and ren but differed from datong in an important regard:

    The world is the possession of private families. Each regards as parents only his own parents, as sons only his own sons; goods and labour are employed for selfish ends.

    While datong describes a world where resources are “shared by all alike,” in xiaokang resources are in “the possession of private families.” Xiaokang was not seen as opposed to datong but rather on the path toward it, for li and ren were still observed. But there is a warning in the Liyun chapter that private property and the control of resources by private interests present a risk:

    Therefore intrigue and plotting come about and men take up arms.

    Kang Youwei’s book “Datong shu” (The Great Commonwealth) was published posthumously in 1935. Kang wrote it as a series of lecture notes, the earliest dating to 1884. Rather than view datong only as a lost utopia, Kang proposed datong as a future society that could be constructed. He viewed ren as the path toward establishing the common good for all, attainable by eliminating suffering and creating happiness.

    Kang noted that ren was applicable not only to humanity but to the universe and all within it, and he called this “jen.” Jen gave rise, he said, to creation and to the establishment of universal order. Therefore, order should be based upon the same principle of the “compassionate mind.”

    He drew upon the work of the Confucian scholar He Xiu, whose Gongyang theory of history described sociopolitical development as a path consisting of incremental, progressive stages. Kang built upon Gongyang’s work to plot a course toward the Great Unity.

    In essence, Kang suggested that society could be reverse-engineered to achieve datong in the future. He identified “nine boundaries” of human suffering that needed to be deconstructed in order to reach datong. He said that datong could be attained once nation-states, social class, racism, sexism, families, private property, injustice, environmental destruction, and poverty (the result of social inequality and oppression) were abolished.

    “Sages” or “persons of jen” would be needed to lead, Kang maintained. He acknowledged that the sages had to operate in the social, economic and political circumstances of their day and that the resultant laws and institutions might be oppressive and cause suffering. Therefore, the objective of the “person of jen” (sage) should be to reform the laws and organisations of the state with a view to eradicating the nine boundaries of suffering.

    With the abolition of the nation state, Kang’s proposed path toward the Great Way extended far beyond China. He favoured a global society where a world government would rule over a planet that was divided into regional districts.

    In this global society, there would be no class or private property, and all would strive to deliver the common good and benefit everyone. Specifically, all resources would be deployed for the benefit and happiness of all. Public institutions, not families, would raise children. And the children would be trained to become citizens who would provide free services, such as health care and education, for all.

    The only distinction between people would be the badges of honour worn by those deemed to have great ren, or knowledge—that is, the sages. Ultimately, once datong exists, there would be complete harmony with nature, which in turn would mean that all human beings are vegetarians and that euthanasia would be practised with ren, for the common good.

    The ideology of datong, as Kang expounded it, and the hope of following the Great Way have strongly influenced Chinese political philosophy throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Xi Jinping has been heard on numerous occasions to repeat the phrase, “When the Great Way prevails, the world is for everyone.”

    Seen from the Chinese philosophical perspective, the best anyone can hope for today is xiaokang. Thus, xiaokang sages must be free to reform the institutions of the state on the path toward removing the nine boundaries, achieving datong and leading the Great Way.

    There are many parallels between this path and the socioeconomic theory underpinning technocracy. For those who wished to establish a global technate, China was a natural choice for their pilot project.

    UNDERSTANDING TECHNOCRACY

    While there is a lot of debate about the extent of “legitimate” technocratic governance in the West’s supposedly liberal representative democracies, governance is just one aspect of technocracy. In other words, technocratic governance alone is not technocracy.

    As discussed previously, a technocracy is a “governance of function.” The overarching goal is to run the whole of society as efficiently as possible.

    The Technocracy Inc. Study Course states:

    The basic unit of this organization is the Functional Sequence. A Functional Sequence is one of the larger industrial or social units, the various parts of which are related one to the other in a direct functional sequence. Thus among the major Industrial Sequences we have transportation (railroads, waterways, airways, highways and pipe lines); communication (mail, telephone, telegraph, radio and television); agriculture (farming, ranching, dairying, etc.); and the major industrial units such as textiles, iron and steel, etc. Among the Service Sequences are education (this would embrace the complete training of the younger generation), and public health (medicine, dentistry, public hygiene, and all hospitals and pharmaceutical plants as well as institutions for defectives)

    Each “Functional Sequence” is overseen by a directorate. For example, the Distribution Sequence collects all the data gathered from the “Energy Certificates,” which are allocated to the citizens to be exchanged for goods and services. The “Price System” is abolished. There is no private property. The entire Technate is controlled by one body: Continental Control.

    Like Kang’s “sages,” and in a fashion similar to guidance of the population toward the Great Way, a technocracy creates a rigid hierarchical structure to ensure that all are working for the common good. In the language of technocracy, the citizen contributes toward the appropriate service function.

    Effectively, this creates a pyramid-like sociopolitical structure:

    The personnel of all Functional Sequences will pyramid on the basis of ability to the head of each department within the Sequence, and the resultant general staff of each Sequence will be a part of the Continental Control. A government of function! The Continental Director, as the name implies, is the chief executive of the entire social mechanism. On his immediate staff are the Directors of the Armed Forces, the Foreign Relations, the Continental Research, and the Social Relations and Area Control. [. . .] The Continental Director is chosen from among the members of the Continental Control by the Continental Control. Due to the fact that this Control is composed of only some 100 or so members, all of whom know each other well, there is no one better fitted to make this choice than they.

    Class is abolished in technocracy. Child care is provided by the Technate. Rather than having “great ren,” the general staff of the Technate are said to possess “peck-rights.” That is, they are the most suited to be at the top of the pyramid because a “governance of function” works most efficiently when “the right man is in the right place” to serve the common good.

    Like the ideas presented in “Datong shu,” the intention of technocracy is essentially altruistic. The small cluster of engineers, economists, sociologists and other academics brought together by the Rockefellers and Howard Scott wanted to construct a society that would deliver “lives of abundance” to all.

    It must be admitted that the Technocracy Inc. Study Course made some valid criticisms of a number of social problems. Unfortunately, the offered solution of a Technate is both arrogant and naïve.

    It assumes, much as does the notion of a Great Way, that authority can be exercised by some human beings over other human beings for the common good. Further, it imagines that there is some social or political mechanism that can produce leaders who are omniscient and capable of defining what that “common good” is.

    Both datong and technocracy would require human nature to undergo a fundamental transformation. Avarice, malevolence, narcissism, psychopathy and every other deleterious failing would need to be expunged from humanity. Until they are, power will continue to be sought by those who want to control others.

    The most ruthless among us will ultimately succeed—often not because they are the most suited but because they are prepared to do what others won’t in order to gain the power they crave. This situation will persist for as long as we believe that someone or some organisation needs to have absolute authority over our lives in order for us to be able to cooperate effectively.

    To imagine that concentrating all power in the hands of a tiny, select band of experts or sages will solve the problems caused by the unscrupulous and frequently violent and immoral use of authority is ridiculous. You can’t fix a kakistocracy by investing more power in the “kakistocrats.”

    For the global public-private partnership (G3P), which operates a compartmentalised, hierarchical, pyramid-like power structure, the most enticing aspect of technocracy is the extreme centralisation of power and authority over vast swaths of the humanity. That is why, as soon as technological development permitted and the opportunity arose, the G3P set about assisting the development of a Technate in China.

    INFILTRATING CHINA

    The formal story of Henry Kissinger’s “secret” 1971 discussions with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai—officially acknowledged in 2001—is that US President Richard Nixon sent Kissinger to normalise relationships with the Chinese government as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. What is mentioned less frequently, though, is Kissinger’s relationship with the Rockefellers.

    In 1956, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund commissioned Kissinger to convene its Special Studies Panels. The panels investigated emerging global challenges and trends and suggested how US foreign policy might adapt to meet them.

    In the 1961 publication of the six panel reports, Prospect for America (subtitled “The problems and opportunities confronting American democracy—in foreign policy, in military preparedness, in education, in social and economic affairs”), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund outlined how public-private partnership would be key to this projected future:

    Corporations, whose operations extend through many nations[,] [. . .] through which a considerable and essential part of the world’s economic activities is carried on, must be able to compose diversities, adjust conflicts of interest, and adapt their operations to the needs of the country in which they operate. In doing so they represent a further example of multinational solutions to common problems.

    The authors of these reports regarded private finance as essential not only for developing international markets but also for guiding the social and political development of the target nation:

    Rapid economic growth can be achieved only if local savings and public foreign investment are supplemented by an increasing inflow of private foreign investment. Such investment performs two key functions: it adds to the capital resources of the host nation and it is the chief mechanism through which the managerial and technical skills and the creative and catalytic quality can contribute to economic development in less developed areas. [. . .] Private philanthropic capital can also play an important role in economic development.

    The panels that provided the analysis for Prospect for America were convened in the aftermath of McCarthyism. They needed to appeal to a US polity still obsessed with the perceived threat of international communism. Thus, the reports eulogise so-called democracy throughout.

    However, there are numerous indications that the Rockefeller foreign policy strategists were willing to diplomatically suggest alternatives:

    The American pattern of private enterprise and voluntary association is not the only mold for a free society.

    It is clear that these strategists sought to both exploit the differences between nation-states for their development potential and amplify the importance of global issues as a means of uniting nations, regardless of their model of government, under a system of global governance. They considered scientific and technological development one way to do just that:

    In the field of science, international cooperation on a world scale is most readily achievable. [. . .] [T]he United States should, therefore, seek to develop a series of agreements, looking toward the stimulation of scientific interchange and the fostering of scientific progress on a world scale. [. . .] The Communist nations should be invited to participate.

    The panels, which effectively formed a temporary Rockefeller-funded think tank, were not opposed to colonialism on moral grounds but they highlighted its tactical flaws. Inherent in their critique of colonialism was an acknowledgement that alleged democratic values have nothing to do with hard-nosed geopolitics or with expansive foreign policy ambitions:

    While colonialism exacted a human and political toll, it also represented one of the greatest conversions in history. As the ideals of the British, French and American revolutions became diffused, partly through the very spread of colonialism, the seeds were sown for the destruction of colonialism itself. The more successful the teachings of the colonial powers, the more untenable grew their position. Almost without exception, the leaders of independence movements fought their rulers in terms of the rulers’ own beliefs. They asked them to live up to their own principles.

    The Rockefellers, being one of the leading families at the head of the G3P’s compartmentalised hierarchy, had worked with the Chinese authorities for generations. John D. Rockefeller Sr. was trading kerosene in China in 1863.

    The family’s philanthropic foundation had long fostered strong ties with the Chinese government. For example, it helped advance the use of Western allopathic medicine in China by establishing the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and by making other philanthropic investments.

    It’s safe to say that the Rockefellers were knowledgeable and enthusiastic supporters of the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, they were also knowledgeable and enthusiastic supporters of the technocracy movement in the US, maintaining their keen interest in it despite its lack of public support. They understood the potential of social engineering to create a governance of function (a Technate):

    Changes in technology have always been a major cause of change in government, economic relations and social institutions. But technological innovation is no longer the work of isolated, ingenious inventors; it is the product of organised scientific enterprise and is constant, insistent and accelerating. One of its notable effects is upon the tempo of social change itself, which is enormously quicker than it has been, and which subjects every inhabitant of a technological society to its pressures. Technological innovation thus poses a series of issues with which our society will have to deal. [. . .] The growth of technological society has changed the traditional society in which men have enjoyed freedom. Large and complex organisations have become the order of the day. [. . .] Programs for the preservation and strengthening of individual freedom must assume the existence and the inevitability of such organisations.

    The Rockefellers had a nuanced appreciation of the potential for technological development to act as the catalyst for change. Despite the report’s primary focus on the US relationship with the Soviet Union, the Rockefellers obviously recognised the ripe opportunities in China:

    It [China] has a rapidly growing population, a shortage of resources, and a fanatical ideology. Around a large part of its perimeter exists “soft” situations, making infiltration, subversion, and outright conquest seem easy or inviting prospects. The present relations between Soviet Russia and Red China [. . .] may not always be drawn together by common interests. [. . .] We must avoid, wherever possible, courses that seem to drive China closer to the Soviets.

    As founders of the Trilateral Commission, the Rockefellers’ and their fellow Trilateralists’ goal was to infiltrate China by extending the hand of cooperative friendship through public-private investment in technological and thus financial and economic development.

    The Sino-Soviet split was seemingly the window of opportunity they wished to lever open.

    China’s society, its political history and government structure was already amenable to the introduction of technocracy, as it was to communism. The Trilateralists were apparently eager to avoid the mistakes of Western colonialists, who extolled the democratic ideals and associated legal concepts which had come back to bite them. These ideals were, in any event, antithetical to the Trilateralists’ project.

    ASSISTING CHINA

    Following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping rose to power, becoming the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1978. Just two weeks after assuming power, on January 1, 1979, he became the first communist Chinese leader to conduct a formal state visit to the US.

    He was received with full state honours by the administration of Jimmy Carter, whose National Security advisor was Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski—and who was himself a Trilateralist.

    Deng Xiaoping immediately set about instigating a series of social and economic reforms, which were called “reform and opening up” in China and “the opening up of China” in the West.

    Deng was one of a group of eight high-ranking Chinese officials who had survived the brutal repressions of cultural revolution. The reverently named “Eight Immortals” were credited with turning the Chinese economy from an unstable mess, riven with extreme poverty, into the thriving economic engine it is today.

    Despite the hopes of datong, and far from being the sages that Kang Youwei dreamed of, the sons and daughters of the Eight Immortals, who are collectively known as the Princelings, hoovered up China’s state assets to effectively create a new dynasty, just as corrupt as its predecessors. Such is the nature of kakistocracy.

    The scale and pace of the economic transformation in such a vast country would have been impossible without the considerable inward investment and the transfer of technology which China received from the G3P. This G3P investment was the initial source of China’s economic growth miracle. In late 2019, The World Economic Forum (WEF) reported:

    High levels of government spending and foreign investment have enabled China to roughly double the size of its economy every eight years since the introduction of economic reforms in 1979.

    CITIC (China International Trust & Investment Corp, renamed CITIC Group) was effectively China’s state–run investment arm. Kissinger’s visit to China had opened up investment banking opportunities for Rockefeller’s Chase Group (Chase Manhattan Bank at the time.)

    In June 1980, CITIC Chairman Rong Yiren attended a meeting with David Rockefeller and the representatives of 300 Fortune 500 companies in the Chase Manhattan offices in New York.

    The purpose of the meeting between CITIC and the G3P representatives was:

    [To] identify and define those areas of the Chinese economy most susceptible to American technology and capital infusion.

    Kissinger and Rong reportedly established an investment company, with Trilateralist Kissinger appointed as a special advisor to CITIC. The initial phase of China’s economic transformation consisted of banking reforms that allowed much greater Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China.

    FDIs aren’t just capital investments. They typically come with a transfer or sharing of expertise, technology and even workforce. Common types of FDIs are mergers, acquisitions, management services and logistical and manufacturing agreements.

    From the mid 1980s onwards the G3P began to pour into Beijing’s Central Business District (CBD).

    By 2009 there were 114 Western companies with a substantial presence and established investments in Beijing and beyond. By 2020 there were 238 Fortune 500 companies in Beijing. Today, Beijing CBD (called the Functional Area) now houses the regional headquarters of 105 multinational corporations and more than 4,000 foreign-invested enterprises. The CBD is one of six “high-end industrial functional areas in Beijing.”

    According to Chinese state media, between 1983 and 1991 FDI in China went from a value of $920 million to $4.37 billion. By 2019 total FDI had risen to more than $2.1 trillion. At the same time, the transition economy of China, just like many other economies, rapidly expanded its money supply.

    All of this monopoly money, a mixture of FDI and domestic (digital) currency printing, fuelled the economic and technological development of China. In exchange for access to its market, the Chinese government required that investors sign so-called Forced Technology Transfer (FTT) agreements.

    Simultaneously, the Western mainstream media (MSM) began constantly pushing the notion of the “rising threat” of China and frequently accused China of alleged industrial espionage and “technology theft.“

    Like so much propaganda aimed at Western populations by their MSM, these charges were just a fabrication. In truth, no one was forcing anyone to transfer technology to China. In fact, Trilateralists like President Bill Clinton went to considerable lengths to make sure China could get hold of the technology, including military technology, it needed.

    In 1994 the Clinton administration scrapped Cold War export controls, thereby enabling more sensitive technology to be transferred to China. Claiming that they would not allow defence technology, such as supercomputer or potential uranium enrichment technology, to go to China (or Russia), they soon lifted this restriction via a work-around that shifed oversight from the departments of State and Defense to the Department of Commerce.

    One only has to look at the near identical design of US and Chinese defence systems and weaponry to see that a massive amount of “sensitive” technology is common to both countries.

    The asinine explanation we are given is that this is all the result of Chinese espionage, even though the US government has amended legislation to make such transfers possible.

    The Israeli government and Israeli defence contractors have consistently acted as facilitators for the transfer of the most sensitive Western defence and surveillance technology to China. As soon as “reform and opening up” began in 1979, Israeli multibillionaire—then a humble billionaire—Saul Eisenberg flew a delegation of defence contractors to arrange military supply contracts with the Chinese government.

    While the West’s MSM parrots the intelligence agencies’ overwhelmingly baseless claims that China represents an “immense threat,” the US government and others have maintained deep defence ties with the Israeli government for generations.

    In the full and certain knowledge that Israel is passing defence technology to China, the US and other NATO allies continue to provide Israel with the latest defence technology.

    Occasionally a story surfaces claiming that Washingtion is “angered” by this habitual practice. If we look beyond the propaganda, the fables simply reaffirm that which is blatantly obvious.

    The Israeli government, its defence contractor and tech corporation partners, have consistently acted as a conduit for the transfer of “sensitive” defence, fintech, surveillance and communication technology from the West to China. Between 1992 and 2017 the volume of overall trade between Israel and China multiplied 200 times over.

    Another Western propagandist myth is that China has “stolen” jobs from Western economies. While it is true that manufacturers took advantage of cheaper labour costs in China, leading to job losses in the West, the practice of offshoring jobs had been ongoing for decades.

    Companies are in the business of maximising profits for shareholders and staying competitive. No one was forcing Western corporations to offshore. It was simply an economic expediency, largely the consequence of G3P efforts to modernise China’s economy.

    Often the focus of G3P investment in China has been Research and Development (R&D). In 1994 China ranked 30th in terms of US overseas R&D investment; by 2000 it was 11th.

    Between 1994 to 2001 multinational corporation (MNC) investment in China quadrupled. As a ratio of overseas R&D investment, the G3P were providing thrice the amount of “technology infusion” into China compared to anywhere else.

    While the pseudopandemic sharpened the decline in total global FDI, that figure continued to rise in China.

    The 4% increase of FDI in China in 2020 saw it temporarily surpass the US as the world’s leading recipient of direct investment. In 2020, while FDI in other advanced economies collapsed, China benefited from FDI valued at $163 billion.

    In addition to the huge growth stimulus pumped into the Chinese economy over the last four decades, a significant number of foreign/Chinese industrial R&D alliances were established. These were separate business organizations that targeted specific research or technological development projects. They were formed through collaboration between academic and scientific research establishments, NGOs, government institutions and private enterprise.

    Between 1990 and 2001 the US government established 105 such alliances. In the same time period, Japan had the second largest number of R&D partnership alliances (26), followed by Germany (15), the UK (14), Singapore (12), and Canada (11). The overwhelming majority of these R&D collaborations operated in China.

    From 2001, to the financial crash in 2008, both FDI in R&D and China’s own R&D investment really took off. While the explosive pace of FDI growth slowed from 2010 onward, by 2016 China’s own outward foreign investment had surpassed the FDI it received. That was an astounding economic turnaround in less than 40 years.

    A 2019 report by the World Bank stated:

    China’s spending on research and development (R&D) rose to 2.18 percent of GDP in 2018, up from 1.4 percent in 2007[.] [. . .] Its spending on R&D accounts for around 20 percent of the world total, second only to the United States. Its number of patents granted annually for inventions increased from 68,000 in 2007 to 420,000 in 2017, the highest in the world. [. . .] China is also a hotbed for venture capital in search of the next technology. [. . .] China has evolved from being a net importer of FDI to a net exporter. [. . .] China remains an attractive destination for foreign investments due to its large domestic market. Foreign enterprises such as BASF, BMW, Siemens, and Tesla have recently announced new or expanded investments in China.

    A focus of apparent Western concern has been China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    This enormous infrastructure project, known in China as One Belt, One Road, or OBOR, is establishing a network of modern trade routes across Eurasia, linking Asia, Africa, Europe, South East Asia and Australasia, easing both international trade and, in particular, Chinese exports.

    Beyond China’s borders there are 140 countries involved in the BRI to one degree or another.

    In its 2018 research paper looking at FDI in a BRI-related project, the World Bank referred to those countries directly involved in its construction as BRI nations. China’s own investment in BRI nations has grown, but the majority of its FDI goes to non-BRI nations. These, according to the World Bank, are nations that are not inviolved in the BRI.

    China is the leading single nation investor in BRI nations but it does not account for the bulk of total investment. China took the lead after the 2008 financial crisis saw non-BRI nations (such as the US and the UK) pull back on their FDI deals in BRI nations. The investment from the non-BRI nations picked up again as quantitative easing (money printing) monetary policies in Western countries took effect post-2010.

    The World Bank reported:

    The majority of BRI countries’ [those who are part of the One Belt, One Road project] FDI inflow comes from non-BRI countries.

    That is to say, BRI nations—Italy, Saudi Arabia, Austria, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore, etc.—are net recipients of FDI from non-BRI nations, such as the US, UK, France and Germany.

    The majority of the investment, expertise and technology that is building the BRI infrastructure comes from the non-BRI G3P partners. The notion that Western politicians, corporations and financial institutions are worried about the Belt and Road Initiative is just an MSM story. In reality, they are working hard to construct it in partnership with China.

    CHINA: THE WORLD’S FIRST TECHNATE

    China has developed an overt system dedicated to the social engineering of society.

    As noted in Part 1, the definition of technocracy is:

    The science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population.

    The focus of technocracy is to direct the population to maximise the efficiency of all “functions” of society, primarily through control of the allocation of resources.

    Published in 2014, the State Council Notice for planning a Social Credit System (SCS) outlined the Chinese government’s rationale for its social credit system:

    The social credit system is an important component of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system; [. . .] its foundation is a complete network covering the credit records of all members of society and the credit infrastructure; [. . .] its reward and punishment mechanisms are incentivizing trustworthiness and restricting untrustworthiness. [. . .] The establishment of a social credit system is an important foundation for comprehensively implementing the scientific viewpoint of development. [. . .] Accelerating and advancing the establishment of the social credit system is an important precondition for promoting the optimized allocation of resources.

    This is a description of pure technocracy.

    Western commentators often focus upon the technological aspects of China’s social credit system. China certainly operates a dystopian surveillance society, but this complements the social credit system which, as the name suggests, is an overarching system for “implementing the scientific viewpoint of development.”

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported that the supposedly “terrifying system doesn’t exist” in China:

    [T]he system that the central government has been slowly working on is a mix of attempts to regulate the financial credit industry, enable government agencies to share data with each other, and promote state-sanctioned moral values.

    MIT and its funding partners, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, have consistently highlighted the potential merits of the social credit system (SCS).

    When reading that material, we must separate the rhetoric of the engineers of the social credit system from its practical application.

    Like the Great Way or technocracy or communism, the political philosophy underpinning the social credit system is presented by its advocates as progressive, humanitarian and benign. Naturally, the people who impose this system would also need to be progressive, humanitarian and benign, right?

    Yet, while the social credit system is effectively a massive bureaucracy, combining the digital sharing of information with legislation and various paper-shuffling exercises, there are many aspects of it that are extremely concerning.

    For one thing, it creates a public-private partnership that, by rewarding good behaviour, fosters public faith in the mechanisms of the state. For another, it punishes those who aren’t duly faithful.

    The SCS removes access to “privileges” from people who have broken the law and even from those who haven’t. The concept of Joint Disciplinary Action in the SCS introduces the idea that, if found “untrustworthy,” a citizen or organisation so labelled will face broader social consequences, from having their right to fly removed to restricting their ability to book “high-class” tickets on trains to impeding their employment or business opportunities.

    The SCS sets up a blacklist for those deemed to have committed “misdeeds.” Thus far it has predominantly punished those who have failed to pay court fines or those considered bad debtors.

    Chinese state media have praised the courts’ partnership with tech giants like Sesame Credit—the credit-scoring system of the Alibaba Group subsidiary Ant Financial.

    Chinese government data, gathered from the courts and elsewhere, has been combined with private data, gathered from social media, for the purpose of lowering the financial credit score of millions of people who have been “blacklisted.”

    Public humiliation and shaming are commonly used to change the blacklisted’s behaviour. The Supreme Court maintains a database of “discredited individuals” (laolai). Tech companies like TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., publish laolai lists from the publicly available data to inform its users which companies and individuals have been “discredited.”

    Technology enhances the social credit system.

    To register a SIM cards and new SMART phones, Chinese users must by law use face scan technology. This biometric data then informs China’s already extensive and rapidly expanding national network of facial recognition cameras.

    The surveillance grid, allowing entry to everything from bus depots to safari parks, is integrating with alleged emotion-recognition technology to assess an individual’s mood and “predict” their behaviour.

    China’s internet is highly regulated via the “Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services.” The government prohibits news bloggers from commenting on any policies or political developments without a license from the Cyberspace Adminstration of China (CAC).

    Again, this system operates as a public-private partnership. There are eight licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in China registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), but censorship largely occurs through the state’s partnership with fintech companies and social media platforms. The censorship is overseen by the Internet Information Office.

    The Chinese have to register their personal details to use the popular social media platforms. The independent sale of SIM cards and network adapters is prohibited; the cards and adapters require similar registration upon purchase and prior to use.

    The Chinese authorities can block foreign websites, restricting citizens access to information from outside China, and it is a crime for anyone to facilitate the illegal flow of prohibited information into China. The Chinese authorities have effectively created the crime of information-smuggling.

    Beyond inciting crimes or advocating violence or terrorism, Article 12 of China’s Cybersecurity Law outlines the other types of information that Chinese people are not permitted to share:

    [Users] must not use the Internet to engage in activities endangering national security, national honour, and national interests; they must not incite subversion of national sovereignty, overturn the socialist system, incite separatism, break national unity, [. . .] create or disseminate false information to disrupt the economic or social order, or information that infringes on the reputation, privacy, intellectual property or other lawful rights and interests of others, and other such acts.

    In other words, no one is permitted to question the state in China. This doesn’t stop the people from doing so, but the associated risks are high. Political dissidents can certainly expect to be censored by the social media platforms, and prison sentences are a distinct possibility for those who speak out too vociferously.

    Among the major geopolitical powers, China is leading in the development of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). CBDC is “programmable money” and the issuer can insert “smart contracts” to control what can be bought, where it can be used and who can use it.

    Bo Li, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of China and the current Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speaking at the Central Bank Digital Currencies for Financial Inclusion: Risks and Rewards symposium, clarified smart contracts further:

    CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program [CBDC] to create smart-contracts, to allow targetted policy functions. For example[,] welfare payments [. . .], consumptions coupons, [. . .] food stamps. By programming, CBDC money can be precisely targeted [to] what kind of [things] people can own, and what kind of use [for which] this money can be utilised. For example, [. . .] for food.

    At the 2022 World Economic Forum’s Davos gathering, the president of the Chinese Alibaba Group, J. Michael Evans, announced that the global tech corporation would soon roll out its personal “carbon footprint tracker.”

    He said:

    We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint [. . .] That’s where they’re travelling, how they are travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform. [. . .] So, individual carbon footprint tracker, stay tuned! We don’t have it operational yet, but this is something we’re working on.

    During the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, China’s government required all businesses and public services to install Covid status app scanners, connected to the internet.

    In order to access shops, restaurants, libraries, hospitals, etc., and to move between the newly created urban “zones,” the Chinese have to use their Covid app. In conjunction with the SIM and SMART phone registration requirements, combined with the biometric facial recognition technology, the public movements of the urban Chinese can be tracked 24/7 in real time by China’s public-private partnership.

    The foundations for “the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism” have already been built in China. One of the major cities conducting some of its business in CBDC is Shanghai. In Shanghai’s Pudong “smart city” district, an AI integrated monitoring system is able to access the feeds from 290,000 surveillance cameras.

    The deputy director of the smart city, Sheng Denden, explained the systems value to the Chinese government:

    For the government, this is a tool for more efficient administration in the city.

    China is not communist. It is a technocracy. It is the world’s first Technate.

    THE CHINA BLAME GAME

    As we have already discussed, the idea that Western governments are “opposed” to China’s government is frankly ridiculous. This is not to suggest that there aren’t tensions, but these spring from competition not trenchant animosity. China’s government, and its tech giant partners, are as much a part of G3P as any other nation. The propaganda, from both the West and the Communist Party of China, serves as a surface narrative designed to divide and rule the global population, and to exert control over the respective domestic populations.

    The Trilateralists who worked tirelessly to ensure that China was able to construct a Technate are seemingly proud of their claimed achievements. In 2001, Hedley Donovan, one of the founding members of the Trilateral Commission alongside Brzezinski and the Rockefellers, wrote:

    It’s no exaggeration to describe the current regime as a technocracy. [. . .] You might say that technocratic politics is a natural fit with the Chinese political culture. [. . .] During the 1980s, technocracy as a concept was much talked about, especially in the context of so-called ‘Neo-Authoritarianism.’ [. . .] The basic beliefs and assumptions of the technocrats were laid out quite plainly: Social and economic problems were akin to engineering problems and could be understood, addressed, and eventually solved as such. [. . .] Scientism underlies the post-Mao technocracy, and it is the orthodoxy against which heresies are measured.

    The self-congratulation was largely misplaced. That China’s government developed a Technate owes more to that nation’s circumstances and political and social history and belief systems than it does to the ambitions of the Trilateralists.

    Technocracy is intended to be a sociopolitical system where individual rights are sacrificed to communitarianism. This is contrary to the Western liberal tradition. Technocracy represented less of a culture shock to the Chinese people. Certainly this fact was another impetus for the Trilateralists to pilot technocracy in China.

    Just as we in the West generally believe in individual liberty and freedom from the state, so the Chinese people largely hold that the state should strive to rule with ren along the path to the Great Way and equality for all. In both cases, the people continue to be deceived and disappointed by the “kakistocrats,” who clearly have no intention of living up to any of those principles or expectations.

    The mass and widespread Chinese demonstrations against the human cost of the government’s harsh Covid lockdown measures shows that the people are not willing to simply allow the state to do whatever it likes.

    While isolated protests in China are not unusual, the scale and coordination of these protests are testament to the Chinese people’s determination to resist oppression.

    The Western investment in Chinese technocracy was made with a view to developing a global system, not one restricted to China. From the surveillance network and social credit to censorship and social control using CBDC, having seen what can be achieved in China, Western governments are busy trying to impose exactly the same model of technocracy upon their own people.

    The Western political class cannot help but openly admire China’s technocracy. The only difference is that China’s system is publicly discussed—although rarely acknowledged as “technocracy” by name—while the rapidly emerging technocracy in the West is denied and concealed.

    The G3P is ostensibly colonising Western populations yet remains eager to avoid the errors of 19th century colonialists. The Rockefellers’ research in the late 1950s highlighted the need to first justify the necessary destruction of democratic values—something all Western governments are working hard to do.

    For its part, the Chinese government has had its own reasons for allowing technocracy to flourish. Technocracy fits well with China’s domestic policy ambitions. That said, there is no reason to think that the Chinese government ever intended to “export” technocracy to other nations.

    Technocracy is being installed globally. This suits China’s oligarchy, accustomed as it is to operating a Technate. The Chinese government has no reason to stand in the way of the global adoption of technocracy. It is merely aligned with the global transformation, not leading it.

    China’s government is not forcing other nations to adopt technocracy. Rather, all governments are collaborating to that end.

    The Chinese people are not our enemy, and China is not a foe to be fought. We, the people of the Earth, are all under attack by our own G3P governments.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/16/2022 – 00:00

  • 1st Full Test Of Hypersonic Missile Successful: US Air Force
    1st Full Test Of Hypersonic Missile Successful: US Air Force

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Air Force said Monday it had successfully tested a hypersonic missile off the coast of Southern California on Dec. 9.

    A B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron undergoes pre-flight procedures at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Aug. 8, 2020. (Giancarlo Casem/U.S. Air Force)

    The hypersonic missile, known as the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), was launched from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber while in the air.

    The United States has been testing its hypersonic missile capabilities amid growing concerns Russia and China have had more success developing their own hypersonic weapons.

    The Lockheed Martin-built hypersonic missile reached over five times the speed of sound after it was fired from the bomber. The missile flew its scheduled flight path and detonated at its target, according to the Air Force.

    “The ARRW team successfully designed and tested an air-launched hypersonic missile in five years,” said Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, executive officer of the Air Force’s armament directorate program, in a statement.

    “I am immensely proud of the tenacity and dedication this team has shown to provide a vital capability to our warfighter.”

    The “All-Up-Round” test of the full prototype by the Air Force was similar to the two previous booster tests in that they were launched from a bomber flying off the coast of Southern California.

    However, the test last week was the first of the entire system, with previous missions concentrated on the booster rocket.

    US Behind China

    The Pentagon is eager to advance progress on hypersonic missile testing and development, particularly since China and Russia have demonstrated progress in their own projects.

    In March, Russia said it had used hypersonic missiles to destroy Ukrainian military assets in what marked the first time Moscow has acknowledged using this type of weapon in combat. In a March 19 operational report, Russia’s military ministry stated that it destroyed a massive underground storage site for missiles and aircraft ammunition in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk area.

    Last year, a secret Chinese hypersonic missile circled the earth and struck down toward a target. To address the threat, U.S. lawmakers urged that long-stalled military research be restarted.

    One expert has said that the United States is trailing China in the development of hypersonic weapons.

    “China has effectively taken the lead in the hypersonic weapons race due to the breadth and depth of its technology investments,” said Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a security-focused think tank.

    “We are only seeing the beginning of their weapons developments in this field.”

    In Fisher’s opinion, the race to develop hypersonic weapons—and who uses them first—may determine who dominates the international order in the coming decades.

    ARRW

    The ARRW is a boost-glide missile that accelerates a projectile to hypersonic speeds using a booster rocket. The glide vehicle subsequently separates from the rocket and travels at hypersonic speeds using inertia.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 23:20

  • Judge Blocks Biden Plan To Shred "Remain In Mexico" Policy
    Judge Blocks Biden Plan To Shred “Remain In Mexico” Policy

    A federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s plan to scrap the Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy which required certain illegal immigrants to return to Mexico while they await immigration court proceedings.

    The program, known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” is different from Title 42, which is set to end next week.

    US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the Biden administration to pause their plan to end the program.

    “As Secretary Mayorkas has said, MPP has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border,” Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in June, when the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could terminate the policy, which was formally lifted in August.

    The decision comes as federal border authorities encounter overwhelming levels of illegal immigration, with a record more than 2.3 million migrants encountered in fiscal year 2022 and even more expected with the end of another Trump-era expulsion policy, Title 42, expected on Dec. 21. -Daily Caller

    As the Daily Caller notes, the Biden administration originally attempted to cancel the policy on Biden’s first day in office, but was prevented from doing so by a flurry of lawsuits from Republican states.

    After the Supreme Court’s June decision, theyt sent it back to Kacsmaryk to consider whether it complied with the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires that agencies conduct certain procedural steps when implementing policy.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 22:40

  • Oregon Judge Blocks High-Capacity Magazine Ban
    Oregon Judge Blocks High-Capacity Magazine Ban

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    Gun Owners of America & Gun Owners Foundation have successfully delivered on their promise to fight gun control in the Beaver State.

    A Judge in Oregon State Court granted GOA a Preliminary Injunction in the case Arnold & GOA v. Brown. The injunction halts the magazine ban in Oregon’s most recent gun control law – Ballot Measure 114 (BM 114) – from being enforced. The Judge also maintained the Temporary Restraining Order on BM114’s permit-to-purchase requirement. 

    This means that Oregonians can still buy standard-capacity magazines and purchase firearms without a permit.

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    Previously, on December 6th GOA was granted a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against BM 114. This Comprehensive TRO prevented the entire new law from being enforced before it could go into effect on December 8th.

    Ballot Measure 114 passed by razor-thin margins, and was reportedly bankrolled by out-of-state anti-gun lobbying groups such as Everytown and Giffords.

    Had the law gone into effect, it would have

    • Banned Magazines over ten rounds
    • Required a permit to purchase any firearm
    • Required a training course, application fee, fingerprinting and a duplicative background check to obtain a permit-to-purchase.

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    Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, had this to say:

    “GOA and GOF are very glad that Judge Robert Raschio responded to our arguments and is protecting the Second Amendment rights of Oregonians. We will continue to oppose the ineffective magazine ban and permit-to-purchase scheme, as these infringements would fail to control criminals, but instead, would endanger the safety of law-abiding citizens.”

    This victory is just one of many battles for your rights that GOA & GOF are fighting in the court system nationwide. Like we have been warning anti-gun activists and politicians since the Bruen decision, fall in line with this precedent, or we will make you.

    *  *  *

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 22:20

  • 'Some Sort Of Sex Slave'? Son Of Paul Pelosi's Attacker Breaks Silence, Fuels Speculation
    ‘Some Sort Of Sex Slave’? Son Of Paul Pelosi’s Attacker Breaks Silence, Fuels Speculation

    The son of Paul Pelosi attacker, David DePape, says his father ‘is not evil,’ and is ‘hardly a right-wing conservative.’ He also implied that the 82-year-old Pelosi may have invited DePape over for sexual activities.

    Speaking with the Daily Mail, Nebosvod ‘Sky’ Gonzalez said “He isn’t a danger to society, I don’t even know if he even attacked Mr. Pelosi. For all that we know he was some sort of sex slave, as Elon Musk pointed out.”

    The 42-year-old DePape appeared before a San Francisco Superior Court Judge on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing, and will be arraigned on federal charges on Dec. 28, which include attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, first-degree burglary and threatening the family member of a public official . He has pleaded guilty to all charges. He has also been charged in federal court.

    When asked about first hearing of his father’s arrest, Gonzalez said he was in shock, and that “That’s not the type of person he is.”

    Official reports about the attack have changed several times. First, an ‘unknown third party’ opened the door after police arrived at the Pelosi house – after which police witnessed DePape take a hammer from Pelosi and hit him with it. Then, it was that Pelosi and DePape were both struggling with the hammer, and DePape wrested it from Pelosi and beat him with it. Then, in a now-retracted report which has gotten veteran NBC reporter banished from the air, after being alone in the home for 30 minutes, Pelosi opened the door when police arrived. However, he did not try to escape or alert police to an emergency, and he instead walked to the police and back toward DePape.

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    NBC News deleted the clip from their Twitter feed and scrubbed it from their website.

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    “I’m surprised about the whole thing. There is still a lot of info that hasn’t been given to the public. I have no clue what happened or how it happened. There are more questions than answers right now. Do we even know what really happened?” he told the Mail.

    There is “almost no person on this planet that has gone through so much suffering,” the 19-year-old Gonzalez said. “If you look into his eyes, you can see he’s such a sad person.”

    “He often told us he was raised in an abusive home and would be physically abused by his grandparents,” Sky continued, adding that DePape was bullied in school and didn’t have any friends.

    Their mother, Oxane ‘Gypsy’ Taub, gave them the last name “Gonzalez” as a tribute to a Mexican family that allegedly saved her life several years ago.

    Not politically motivated

    Gonzalez, who says he hasn’t seen his father in several years, told the Mail that the attack wasn’t likely to have been politically motivated.

    “My father had a lot of political views and told me about a lot of different things, but he didn’t subscribe to either political party, Democrat or Republican,” adding that the two parties ‘are just covers and colors.’

    Nebosvod ‘Sky’ Gonzalez

    “What matters are the policies of each individual person. Each individual person is unique, and it isn’t about right or left. That’s just a distraction,” he continued.

    “My father had progressive views. He believed in human rights, equality, and justice. He was against the war, he was a peace activist, hardly a right-wing conservative, as he has been branded.“

    Mental Illness

    Shortly after DePape’s arrest, Taub – who is currently imprisoned for the attempted abduction of a 14-year-old boy, told ABC30 that her former partner was “mentally ill,” and that he disappeared for a year in the mid 2010s.

    “He came back in very bad shape. He thought he was Jesus. He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him,” she said, adding “And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal.”

    “When I met him, he was only 20 years old and he didn’t have any experience in politics, and he was very much in alignment with my views and I’ve always been very progressive.”

    “I absolutely admire Nancy Pelosi,” she added.

    According to Gonzalez, “We all deserve to know what happened, especially in such a high-profile case,” adding “But we don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether or not my father did what he’s been accused of. So far, what we know doesn’t make any sense.“

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 22:15

  • Here's The Latest Sign Americans Are Going To Eat Bugs And Be Happy
    Here’s The Latest Sign Americans Are Going To Eat Bugs And Be Happy

    The latest sign Americans will one day be eating insects is that a top bug producer announced Tuesday major expansion plans in North America. 

    French insect producer Ÿnsect signed two agreements to expand production facilities in the US and Mexico in 2023. The company “entered an accelerated phase of international development with the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Ardent Mills for an industrial facility in the United States and the signing of a joint development agreement with Corporativo Kosmos in Mexico.” 

    Ÿnsect’s development plans include 10-15 insect farms worldwide by the end of the decade that can meet the feeding demand of hundreds of millions of people, if not more. The producer of bugs uses highly-automated vertical farms to raise Buffalo and Molitor mealworms to create insect protein. 

    Many Americans have already been conditioned for the brave new world, one pushed by the World Economic Forum of a so-called ‘sustainable’ future where you’ll eat insects… 

    … and also own nothing. 

    Some of the latest conditioning to eat bugs was an article published in Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post.

    Which brings us to the WEF’s warning earlier this year about an impending food crisis kicked off by the war in Ukraine. 

    In the medium term, it highlights the need to transform our food system, using more green energy. We should also be encouraging more sustainable diets, which contain fewer grain fed animal products; and regenerative agricultural practices, which improve soil health and the efficiency of nutrient use by the crop. -WEF

    So… eat bugs and be happy about owning nothing are the global elites’ blueprint for 2030 society. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 22:00

  • "There's A New Sheriff In Town": Twitter Nukes Liberal Pundits From Platform
    “There’s A New Sheriff In Town”: Twitter Nukes Liberal Pundits From Platform

    Twitter on Thursday evening began purging reporters from major media outlets, just one day after new owner Elon Musk changed the platform’s “anti-doxxing” policy in response to a “crazy stalker” who climbed on the hood of a car carrying his two-year-old son.

    Those kicked off the platform include:

    • Keith Olbermann of MSNBC
    • Ryan Mac of the NY Times
    • Anthony Webster of Bellingcat
    • Donnie O’Sullivan of CNN
    • Micah F. Lee of The Intercept
    • Matt Binder of Mashable
    • Drew Harwell of the Washington Post
    • Aaron Rupar of his mom’s basement

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    Also booted was the official account for Twitter competitor Mastadon, which earlier in the day posted a link to track Musk’s private jet.

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    It was unclear what prompted the suspensions, though it appears they are related to doxxing – current or in the past.

    “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” Musk said on Thursday evening, adding “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

    “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Musk said in a subsequent tweet.

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    Aaron Rupar said in a statement to CNN‘s Oliver Darcy: “I never posted anything Elon Jet related or that could violate the policy about disclosing locations. Unless the policy is that you criticize Elon and you get banned.”

    Except…

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    Interestingly, the Washington Post‘s resident trust-fund snitch Taylor Lorenz deleted her ‘entire archive and took her account private,’ according to The Federalist‘s Sean Davis.

    Corporate media has framed this as Twitter suspending journalists “who have been covering Elon Musk and the company.”

    A spokesperson for the NY Times said that the suspensions were ‘questionable and unfortunate,’ and said that no explanation was provided.

    “We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action,” said Charlie Stadtlander, communications director for the Times.

    Some aren’t taking the news well…

    Oh Jason…

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    As expected, the reactions have been flying!

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 21:40

  • Ford Raises F-150 Lightning Prices Again, Now 40% More Expensive
    Ford Raises F-150 Lightning Prices Again, Now 40% More Expensive

    The base version of the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup now starts at $56,000, more than 40%, or about $15,000, over its original listing price earlier this year, according to Electrek. Ford hiked prices in August and October. 

    Electrek discovered the stealth price hike after visiting the order page of the Detriot-based automaker’s website. The configuration and base price of all EV Lightning variants is shown below. 

    “Interestingly, the prices of the other versions of the F-150 Lightning haven’t increased with this update. The cheapest way to get a Lightning with the longer-range extended battery pack is still the XLT, starting at $81,000,” Electrek said. 

    There was no explanation by Electrek or Ford about the price hike. However, we pointed out several days ago that lithium-ion battery packs jumped in price for the first time since BloombergNEF began tracking. 

    Meanwhile, lithium prices per ton are skyrocketing. 

    Higher prices could spark an affordability issue that might jeopardize EV adoption. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas recently told clients that EV demand is slowing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 21:20

  • 2 + 2 = 5
    2 + 2 = 5

    By Peter Tchir, chief strategist at Academy Securities

    We discussed Orwellian Moments back in August, but yesterday’s Fed meeting has confounded me (again) and left me trying to figure out some of their “math”. But first, let’s cover the ECB.

    The ECB Made Sense

    The ECB has been late to the rate hike party and has some catching up to do. They also have a serious inflation problem, but one that is different than ours. They were (and still largely are) incredibly dependent on cheap Russian energy to power their countries. That is a problem and is something that they have to combat. Today they did two things:

    1. A “hawkish” 50 bps hike. They could have gone with more, but chose not to. However, Lagarde made it very clear that they are prepared to do more. While Powell made it somewhat clear that we were nearing the “wait and see” moment, the ECB did not. That pushed all yields in Europe higher.
    2. They announced that their QT would start in March and be €15 billion. That seemed to hit markets hard and explains why Italian 10-year bonds are 10 bps worse than German and French bonds. If nothing else, hopefully central bankers are learning that QE distorts asset prices more than any other policy that they can enact, and those distortions are disruptive and difficult to unwind. For example, a relatively small amount of QT (starting 3 months from now) had a significant market impact today – scary to think about). My one hope is that going forward central bankers will use QE only in the direst of circumstances and for the briefest time possible (in cautiously small amounts). Probably wishful thinking, but seems logical to me!

    So, the ECB and the market’s reaction to the ECB largely make sense.

    Back to 2 + 2 = 5

    This chart takes monthly core CPI (seasonally adjusted) and presents it in 4 ways: the sum of the 12 months, taking the prior 6 months and multiplying it by 2, taking the prior 3 months and multiplying it by 4, and finally just taking the most recent month and multiplying it by 12.

    The big black line is the annual one that we all see and it is around 6%.

    My favorite line is the light blue one, which represents the prior 3 months * 4. I like that because the data is recent and incorporates the impact that prior policy decisions should be having. Using 3 months “smooths” the data. That has been trending down for several months and is currently down to 4%. This is above the Fed’s target of 2% (which Powell reiterated yesterday), but is hardly alarming. If anything, we probably should be talking about how to “flatten the curve” to get a soft landing (I already think that it is too late for that as you can read in Rise and Fall of Inflation Drivers and Squishy Landing).

    If you simply take the latest month and annualize it, we were at 3.3% last month and 2.4% in the latest month (wow, almost like their policy has worked)! But instead, we have to focus on trailing 12 months, despite the impacts of higher yields and quantitative tightening needing more time to fully impact the system! It is so Orwellian to me that it hurts!

    But that wasn’t all that sent me back to this dystopian wasteland.

    “By the middle of next year, we should begin to see lower inflation from the housing services sector.”

    Powell said that. He knows that rents incorporate data from as much as 10 months ago. He knows as well as you and I do that it is a lagging indicator. He even said as much (at least that is how I interpret his comment). But why do we include it and base policy on it, knowing it is wrong! The 3 highest prints for owner’s equivalent rent in the past 30 years came in Q3 and Q4 this year. Simply impossible, and even the Chair acknowledges that it will go down, but he is still acting on it as though it is legit!

    I will continue to send charts of Zillow’s data around and expand on this work that first started in earnest back in an October T-Report.

    Imagine how low the prior 3 months of core data would be with proper housing inflation data. And yes, think of how high it really was last year when we were being fed the “transitory” story.

    Finally, he highlighted jobs, which I will grant have been decent, but he seemed to ignore several things:

    • The Household Survey hasn’t been as good as the Establishment Survey (a couple million jobs difference).
    • The survey response rates have been low, making people question their validity and if there is any “self-selection” bias in the reporting (companies doing well report, but maybe others don’t).
    • The Philly Fed thinks Q2 jobs were overstated by more than 1 million! Some group within the Fed tasked with figuring out how accurate the data is thinks that it was overstated by 1 million, which is more in line with the Household Survey!
    • The JOLTS data has a high number of vacant jobs. The question is how overstated is that number? How has it kept up with online job searches?

    We address many of the jobs questions in Inflation Dumpster Dive and More Inflation Dumpster Diving, and the Fed’s own work on the subject is there for all to see.

    If one part of the economy is doing better than expected (by some measures, but not all), I’d spend more time wondering if the good measures are accurate, rather than basing a large part of my policy on data that is the outlier!

    And just today, sales numbers came in extremely weak and last month’s numbers were revised down! The consumer is buying for the holidays and buying on discount, and I expect that to evaporate as we head into the new year!

    Bottom Line

    The Fed should be taking a victory lap and figuring out how to avert a hard landing, but for some reason they insist on looking at old data (12 months, rather than data impacted by their actions), stale data (OER), and pollyannish data (the selective use of some jobs data) to signal that they want a higher terminal rate!

    Good luck with that, because 2 + 2 does NOT EVER EQUAL 5!

    I feel better after that rant, and I am buying the dip here in risk because I believe that the Fed speakers will sound a bit more dovish as they resume their speaking circuit, and it is a bit premature to trade the very hard landing (that I still expect will happen).

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 21:00

  • Study Claims Unvaccinated People More Likely To Be Reckless, Cause Traffic Accidents
    Study Claims Unvaccinated People More Likely To Be Reckless, Cause Traffic Accidents

    A new study released this month by members of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at Toronto University in Canada makes the bizarre claim that being unvaccinated is an indicator of psychological risk-taking and recklessness.  The authors, Donald A. Redelmeier, MD, Jonathan Wang, MMASc, and Deva Thiruchelvam, Msc argue that data involving traffic accidents in which one or more people are admitted to the hospital for injuries shows a correlation between vaccination status and car wrecks.

    Not surprisingly, the data sources involved in the study strongly support the original premise.  But we’ll get to that in a moment…

    The first question one might ask is why in the world anyone would engage in such a study in the first place?  The notion is out of left field and requires a couple initial assumptions – That unvaccinated people are a monolithic group that share the same psychological motivators, and that those motivators are dangerous.  Without this rather biased assumption, it’s unlikely that a group of doctors or scientists would dream up the study in the first place.  

    Of course, strange premises are not necessarily proof of rigged conclusions.  So, let’s get into motivations:

    The authors of the study are all member of the University or Toronto Temerty Faculty and the Sunnybrooke Health Sciences Centre.  This faculty and section of the university was funded by a $250 million grant from James C. Temerty and the Temerty Foundation in 2020; it was the single largest gift in Canadian history.  The money was designated to various areas of the university, but a large portion went directly into Covid-19 research projects. 

    So who is James Temerty?  He is a Ukrainian born citizen of Canada and the founder of Northland Power, but his non-profit foundation appears to be his primary focus.  He is also on the advisory board of the Atlantic Council, a globalist think-tank out of Washington DC with many of the same ideological aims promoted by the World Economic Forum.  In fact, members of the Atlantic Council are often invited to speak at WEF functions and none other than Klaus Schwab was the very first recipient of the Atlantic Council’s “Global Citizen Award” several years ago.

    The Atlantic Council advisory board is a long list of global elites and corporate heads.  The institution also had previous connections to Charles Koch, though this relationship has apparently ended. 

    Does anyone in the vaccine industry and Big Pharma have a close relationship to the Atlantic Council?  Of course.  Albert Bourla, the Chairman and CEO of Pfizer.  Bourla is often invited to speak at Atlantic Council events and was awarded the council’s Global Citizen Award just last year.     

    As many people are now aware, the methodology of globalist think tanks is to use philanthropy (large sums of tax deductible money) as a means to control society by influencing (or corrupting) the top 10% in the professional class/academic class.  

    If you can buy the people that run the colleges, buy the people in suits and buy the people in lab coats then you can own the narrative and control the other 90% of people who simply “defer to the experts” without doing their research.  The Temerty Foundation clearly has a high level of influence over the University of Toronto and their medical wing, and James Temerty is on the advisory board of a globalist institution that has aggressively supported the Pfizer narrative on covid mandates and vaccination.

    Any covid based study funded by members of the Atlantic Council should be immediately treated as suspect.

    But what about the science itself?  How did the Temerty Faculty come to the conclusion that lack of covid vaccination indicates reckless behavior?  Where did they get the vaccination data?  Where did they get the traffic data?  How did they tie it all together?  

    The study claims to have developed their reference points using encrypted identifiers from official government registries.  In other words, they exploited private medical data tracked by the Canadian government.  By cross referencing vaccination status with severe traffic accidents the group asserts that the unvaccinated are 72% more likely to harm themselves or others in the process of a car wreck.

    There are two problems immediately evident from a scientific standpoint: 

    One, the group admits that a much larger portion of people who are unvaccinated were younger, ages 18-39.  This makes perfect sense, because the vast majority of young people are at near zero risk of mortality from a covid infection.  The median Infection Fatality rate of covid is a tiny 0.23%, and the younger you are, the more the IFR shrinks.  Why get a vaccine for a virus that is no threat to your age group, and that doesn’t prevent transmission to those around you anyway?  

    But beyond that, younger people are also statistically more likely to get into car accidents by virtue of age, inexperience and more reckless behavior.  While teens are known for auto accidents, insurance companies rate people ages 25 – 34 as the deadliest drivers on the road.  This age group, coincidentally, makes up the bulk of the Temerty Faculty’s unvaccinated test case. 

    In other words, the study seems to ignore the age factor in an effort to support the unvaccinated factor.  Maybe their vaccine status has nothing to do with their risky behavior and their younger age is the actual cause?  Which is more likely given the circumstance?

    Two, another problem with the study is the complete lack of peer review and the inability for independent analysis of their core data.  The group claims to have used encrypted government medical data that is unavailable to the public (rather convenient, right?).  While certain government officials might be able to get quick access, there is no way for the general public to look at this data to see if their claims are accurate or if the study is rigged.  They could, frankly, say whatever they want about the unvaccinated being dangerous and no one would be able to disprove it for quite some time.  

    Perhaps a couple of years down the road the study will be debunked, but as in most cases of dubious and potentially politically motivated science the headlines stick in people’s minds while no one notices the retractions.

    But what would be the motive for exaggerating this kind of study other than to try to make the unvaccinated look bad?  Consider the possibility of insurance as leverage.  

    Most people are required by law to have insurance of one kind or another, including car insurance, and the premiums they have to pay are based on a company’s (or government’s) determination of risk.  Imagine if your insurance rates in every area skyrocketed because you are unvaccinated and are considered high risk?  This is likely the root purpose of studies like the one in Toronto.

    Punish the unvaccinated by institutionalizing vaccine status into every facet of life, including car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, business insurance, etc.  Another point of leverage would be credit.  Many bank loans are also based the concept of low risk, but if you are unvaccinated and labeled high risk in life and in finances then you could be rejected for future access to funds.    

    The basic strategy is this:  Use high costs to force the unvaccinated into compliance, and slowly whittle the public down.  These people won’t give up easily, and since the direct route of medical tyranny has failed, they have decided to use indirect chicanery to get what they want.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 20:40

  • Guyana Is Becoming A Top-Tier Oil Producer
    Guyana Is Becoming A Top-Tier Oil Producer

    By Matthew Smith of OilPrice.com

    Despite the dire predictions of peak oil demand, which will is expected to arrive during the next decade as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy, international energy companies are investing heavily in fossil fuel exploration and production. One region which has caught the world by surprise and is attracting significant attention is the Guyana-Suriname Basin. A swathe of world-class discoveries by ExxonMobil in offshore Guyana sparked considerable interest in the Guyana-Suriname Basin, which after poor drilling results during the 1960s and 1970s saw it largely ignored by energy companies. Recent discoveries with estimated recoverable oil resources of more than 11 billion barrels in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana alone indicates the U.S. Geological Survey grossly underestimated the basin’s undiscovered oil resources. There are signs that the sedimentary basin could indeed be the world’s last great offshore oil boom.

    In a May 2001 report, the USGS estimated that the Guyana-Suriname Basin held somewhere between 2.8 billion and 32.6 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources with mean resources of 15.2 billion barrels. The latest oil discoveries, since 2020, point to that number being far lower than the actual petroleum potential that exists in the sedimentary basin. Exxon has found at least 11 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil resources in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana while nearby Block 58 offshore Suriname is believed to contain as much as 6.5 billion barrels. Oil discoveries in those two blocks alone, out of more than 30 blocks across the Guyana-Suriname Basin, are estimated to total more than 18.5 billion barrels which is substantially higher than the USGS mean of 15.2 billion barrels. The latest discoveries made since the start of 2022 in the Stabroek and Corentyne Blocks offshore Guyana as well as Blocks 58 and 53 in offshore Suriname point to the volume of recoverable oil resources being considerably higher.

    Drilling activity is continuing at a feverish pace in Guyana, where the national government in Georgetown implemented very favorable terms for the Exxon-led consortium operating in the offshore Stabroek Block. Exxon, which is the operator holding a 45% working interest with partners Hess owning 30% and CNOOC 25% respectively, has made over 30 world-class discoveries in the block and is fast-tracking its development. Aside from the Stabroek Block containing over an estimated 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources Exxon’s Liza oilfield, which analysts describe as the last major frontier oil play, is pumping 360,000 barrels per day, well above the nameplate capacity of 340,000 barrels.

    Exxon is developing additional assets in the Stabroek Block, notably the Payara and Yellowtail discoveries which on commencing operations, during 2023 and 2025 respectively, will add 470,000 barrels of capacity to the Stabroek Block. That will see Exxon pumping at least 800,000 barrels per day from offshore Guyana by 2025. There is every likelihood that production from the Stabroek Block will keep growing past 2030. In October 2022, Exxon announced the Sailfin-1 and Yarrow-1 discoveries in the block and continues to advance its drilling campaign. Exxon continues to drill in offshore Guyana, with a focus on the prolific Stabroek Block, where the supermajor is targeting the completion of 25 wells by the close of June 2023 to be followed by a 35-well campaign that will be launched when the current plan is completed. There have been discoveries outside of the Stabroek Block. Among the most recent is at the Kawa-1 exploration well by CGX Energy and partner Frontera Energy in the northern section of the Corentyne Block located adjacent to Stabroek. That segment of Corentyne is believed to lie above the same petroleum fairway running through the Stabroek Block into Block 58 offshore Suriname.

    For these reasons, analysts are forecasting Guyana’s production will reach 1.2 million barrels daily by 2027, seeing the impoverished former British colony overtake Colombia to become the third largest oil producer in Latin America and the Caribbean. Guyana’s oil output is forecast by industry consultancy Rystad Energy to reach 1.7 million barrels per day by 2035, seeing the tiny South American country surpass U.S. offshore production and become the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer. It will be an ongoing investment by energy supermajors in the South American country of around 800,000 people which will drive this rapid growth. Among the latest to enter the fray in Guyana is British global energy supermajor BP, which in November 2022 won the contract to market Guyana’s share of the petroleum produced from the Stabroek Block, which comes from the Liza Destiny and Unity platforms operating the Liza oilfield.

    It hasn’t been all plain sailing in offshore Guyana despite the Exxon-led consortium’s tremendous success. CGX, which is 77% owned by Frontera and the operator of the Corentyne Block, was forced to delay the drilling of the Wei-1 well targeted for 2.5 miles northwest of Kawa-1. This occurred because a third party did not release the drilling unit. CGX and Frontera are committed to drilling the well which, according to the companies, is to be spudded before the end of January 2023. The partners have confirmed with Guyana’s government that the block’s license is unaffected and remains in force. In August Tullow Oil, which holds a non-operating 37.5% interest in the Kanuku Block, announced it was abandoning operations at the Beebei-Potaro well in the block after it hit water-bearing targets. Repsol, operator and owner of a 37.5% share in the Kanuku Block with the remaining 25% held by a joint venture between TotalEnergies and Qatar Petroleum, has plugged and abandoned the well.

    A tremendously positive development for Guyana’s burgeoning offshore oil boom is Georgetown’s 9 December 2022 announcement it had launched the first licensing round for offshore oil exploration and production. The bid round has a mixture of 14 shallow and deep-water blocks for tender, with submissions closing on 14 April 2023 and contracts expected to be awarded on 31 May 2023. There is a minimum signature requirement of $10 million for shallow-water blocks and $20 million for deep-water blocks. While the terms of the contracts to be awarded to successful bidders will not be as favorable as the agreement secured by the Exxon-led consortium for the Stabroek Block, they will still be on advantageous terms.

    Guyana is one of the lowest-cost jurisdictions in Latin America for energy companies to operate in, and even globally for that matter. The Exxon-led consortium claims that the 120,000 barrel per day capacity Liza Destiny Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel is pumping petroleum with a breakeven price of $35 per barrel. That has fallen to $25 a barrel for the second FPSO, the 220,000 barrel-per-day Liza Unity, which came online in February 2022. Exxon recently announced that both FPSOs are operating above capacity, see the Liza oilfield pumping 360,000 barrels per day. The energy supermajor continues to develop the Stabroek Block at a rapid clip, expecting production to reach one million barrels per day by 2030. Overall, offshore Guyana is estimated to have an average breakeven price of $30 to $35 per barrel Brent, which will fall further as additional industry infrastructure comes online.

    The sweet light and medium oil grades found in Guyana have a relatively low carbon cost to extract and refine, especially when compared to the heavier sourer grades typically found in South America, which magnifies the country’s competitiveness. Those characteristics further enhance the attractiveness of investing in offshore Guyana and is the reason the former British colony is attracting considerable investment from international oil companies. For these reasons, Georgetown’s inaugural oil auction will garner considerable attention, particularly with Guyana at the top of the leaderboard for yielding the most oil discovered globally since 2015. In fact, aside from the prolific Stabroek Block where Exxon’s swath of world-class finds has yielded 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources, it is believed that another 25 billion barrels is waiting to be discovered. With Rystad predicting Guyana will be pumping 1.7 million barrels daily by 2035 the deeply impoverished South American country will emerge as an elite top-five global producer.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 20:20

  • Could Slumping US Air Travel Demand Be A Sign Consumers Are Tapped Out?
    Could Slumping US Air Travel Demand Be A Sign Consumers Are Tapped Out?

    Delta Air Lines Inc. was one of the latest carriers to warn about slumping travel demand. Several other carriers have also voiced similar concerns.

    “The December month was the off-trend month,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein told analysts and investors on Wednesday at an event in New York. He explained that January travel demand could be significantly better than December and added February is usually a much better month. 

    Hauenstein’s comments followed JetBlue Airways Corp.’s travel warning on Tuesday. Shares of the airline plunged the most in six months after fourth-quarter revenue per seat flown a mile, a metric used to measure fares and passenger traffic, trended toward the low end of guidance.  

    “The expected very strong close-in demand for December reflected in its prior outlook has materialized below expectations,” JetBlue said.

    Separately, Spirit Airlines Inc. reduced its capacity forecast for the quarter due to adverse weather conditions. Alaska Air Group Inc., meanwhile, warned about “softening in corporate travel bookings.”

    Looking at the S&P500 Airline industry, shares are down 16% year-to-date and down 47% from five years ago. The index remains well below pre-Covid levels. 

    Multiple warnings about sliding travel demand come as consumers have endured 19 months of negative real wages. Persistent inflation has decimated the household finances of the bottom 90% of Americans. Many folks are draining personal savings and maxing out credit cards in high-rate environments just to buy staples and pay rent. So, their ability to spend money on experiences and travel is sliding.  

    The increasing drumbeat of macroeconomic headwinds because of a Federal Reserve-induced economic downturn is making life for the consumer harder by the month.

    There are signs at TSA checkpoints that travel numbers have been moving lower since the spike during the Thanksgiving holiday.

     A good question is whether the consumer will have enough dry powder to go on trips in the first half of next year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 20:00

  • Georgia Restaurant Worker Fatally Shoots Armed Intruder In Self-Defense
    Georgia Restaurant Worker Fatally Shoots Armed Intruder In Self-Defense

    Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    An employee at a restaurant in Georgia fatally shot an armed intruder in self-defense after the masked assailant pistol-whipped the worker during an attempted robbery, authorities say.

    An American Philly N Wings in Warner Robins, Georgia. (Courtesy of Google Maps via NTD News)

    Warner Robins Police Department Sgt. Justin Clark told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday that the intruder, identified as Joshua Hickey, entered an American Philly & Wings restaurant on Dec. 5 and demanded money.

    “Hickey … had a stolen pistol,” Clark told the network, explaining that he entered the restaurant and demanded money from the manager, which led to a struggle with the employee.

    The worker, who was not identified, suffered a head injury after being pistol-whipped and knocked to the ground, Clark said. After managing to get back on his feet, the employee pulled his own legally owned pistol and fired three shots at Hickey, striking him twice, according to police.

    “Once Mr. Hickey was shot, he fled from the restaurant but only made it about 75 yards before collapsing on the street,” the official said. Authorities transported him to the hospital, but he died of his wounds.

    When Clark was asked in the interview how the worker was doing mentally after experiencing the fatal encounter, he told the anchor the worker “took it pretty hard.”

    “Of course, nobody wants to be in that situation and … he was doing his best to come out of it okay,” the police sergeant said.

    In recent years, the United States has seen overall crime increase after enjoying decades of generally declining crime. In particular, robberies, carjacking, burglaries, and theft, have increased over the past year or so.

    Clark told Fox News that Warner Robins, a city in Houston and Peach counties located in the central part of Georgia, has not necessarily seen an increase in crime, although the area did report “a fair share of crime,” including violent crime and theft.

    When asked to react to major cities reporting an increase in robberies and homicides in recent years, Clark blamed it on staff shortages, adding that it is hard for law enforcement to do their jobs efficiently nowadays.

    “It’s terrible, a lot of it has to do with, you know, officer shortages,” he told the network. “Everybody, including us, is dealing with this. Unfortunately, it is hard to get people to do the job nowadays.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 19:40

  • China Downgrades Omicron Risks To Seasonal Cold
    China Downgrades Omicron Risks To Seasonal Cold

    Although easing zero Covid restrictions in China will be met with reopening hardships as infections soar, earlier this week, one of the top medical advisers in the country said that the omicron variant of the virus is no worse than the flu. Now some Chinese cities are downgrading Covid even further, saying it’s the same as the seasonal cold, and there is no need to panic. 

    We pointed out earlier this week that China’s renowned respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan downplayed the risks of the omicron subvariant of Covid-19. He said the death rate from omicron is .1%, equivalent to the common flu, and the infection doesn’t reach the lungs, adding most healthy people recover in less than ten days. 

    Zhong’s comments come as Beijing pivots from zero Covid to reopen the economy and prevent further economic deceleration. Officials are now telling people they must learn to live with Covid — a similar move that worked in Western countries. 

    According to Shanghai Morning Post, Guangzhou health authorities have assured the public that Covid is less severe than the flu and no more serious than a seasonal cold: 

    “The virulence of the new coronavirus [Omicron] has now evolved to the level of the seasonal flu, and some are even less virulent than the flu, so you really don’t need to panic,” said Tang Xiaoping, director of the No 8 People’s Hospital in Guangzhou and head of the national key clinical department of infectious diseases.

    China downplaying the severity of Covid from flu to cold is the latest sign Beijing is attempting to calm fears and quickly reopen the economy. And why would they be doing that? Well, check out overnight economic data: 

    Overnight, a slew of economic data led to a decline in business activity in November. Retail sales fell 5.9% last month from a year earlier — the biggest decline in consumer spending since May — caused mainly by lockdowns. 

    The unemployment situation also worsened to 5.7% last month, the highest level in six months. And industrial production only rose to 2.2%, about half of October’s figures. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    China’s economic slowdown, and the acceleration to the downside, is a direct result of disastrous zero Covid policies, hence why Beijing is pivoting hard to reopen. 

    Meanwhile, Feng Zijian, a former deputy chief at China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently said the coming Covid wave could infect 80 to 90% of the Chinese population. 

    China is battling its largest outbreak as infections soar. 

    And Beijing’s mindset is apparent: reopen the economy, and let the virus spread because there isn’t much officials can do at this point unless they want to crash the economy. 

    Beijing downplaying Covid as no more serious than a seasonal cold is a move to save its crumbling economy and calm public fears. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 19:20

  • Documents Uncover Secret Twitter Portal US Government Used To Censor COVID-19 Content
    Documents Uncover Secret Twitter Portal US Government Used To Censor COVID-19 Content

    Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Twitter logo is seen on a sign on the exterior of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, Calif., on Oct. 28, 2022 (Constanza Hevia/AFP via Getty Images)

    New documents reveal how the United States government used a secret Twitter portal to censor COVID-19 content that contradicted the government’s narrative.

    In its ongoing probe into Twitter’s censorship practices, America First Legal has obtained a fourth set of documents (pdf) exposing a secret Twitter portal, which U.S. government officials used to censor dissenting COVID-19 views in violation of the First Amendment. It’s a revelation Elon Musk described as “extremely concerning.”

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

    The documents reveal that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was collaborating with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and Mafindo to mitigate “disinformation.”

    Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia that is funded by Google, known to have censored searches for keywords like Coronavirus, and COVID-19 as well as blocking information regarding adverse reactions and deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook started its third-party fact-checking program in 2016, working with fact-checkers from around the world who are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter to rate and review the accuracy of the content on their platform. According to the IFCN website, they believe “nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking can be a powerful instrument of accountability journalism.” However, among their advisory board, U.S.-based representatives appear to be from liberal-leaning outlets such as the Washington Post and PolitiFact, which is owned by Poynter.

    The Twitter Portal

    On March 10, 2021 email from a US Public Policy employee at Facebook to several CDC employees spoke of the social media giant’s “weekly sync with CDC” and how the CDC was “to invite other agencies as needed.”

    A March 24, 2021 email from the same Facebook employees to CDC employees said “this is my regular FB meeting and they would like to discuss 2 misinformation topics” and “misinformation that was removed.”

    On May 10, 2021, a Twitter employee recommended to a CDC official to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which he described as “the best way to get a spreadsheet like this reviewed.”

    On May 11, 2021, the CDC official enrolled her personal Twitter account into Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which allowed “a special, expedited reporting flow in the Twitter Help Center.”

     

    A May 19, 2021 Facebook Community Standards manual reveals how the company works with lawmakers and legal council as well as human rights activists in developing policies in their goals of “bringing 50 million people a step closer to vaccinations” while “combatting COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation” and “overcoming global challenges in vaccination.” Methods used to accomplish this included removing “false information that has been debunked by public health experts” and rejecting ads that violate their policies, “including those that discourage vaccination.” They also reduced the distribution of “misleading claims rated by independent fact-checkers.”

    Removed Content

    Posts that Facebook would delete—which the CDC or any other public health authority deemed as “false and likely to contribute to imminent violence of physical harm”—included:

    • Claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common flu or cold.
    • Claims that COVID-19 cannot be transmitted in certain climates, weather conditions, or locations.
    • Claims that for the average person, something can guarantee prevention from getting COVID-19 or can guarantee recovery from COVID-19 before such a cure or prevention has been approved.
    • Claims that COVID-19 tests cause cancer.
    • Claims about the availability or existence of COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Claims about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Claims about how the COVID-19 vaccine was developed or its ingredients.
    • Claims involving conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines or vaccine programs.

    Content deemed to have been “debunked” included among other things, “vaccines cause the disease against which they meant to protect, or cause the person to be more likely to get the disease,” that “natural immunity is safer than vaccine acquired immunity,” and  “vaccines are not effective to prevent the disease against what they purport to protect.”

    Repeat offenders would face restrictions “including (but not limited to) reduced distribution, removal from recommendations” or removal from the site.

    These punishments were conducted despite evidence that the vaccines do not prevent transmission, that vaccines cause adverse effects and even death, and that more vaccinated people are now dying than unvaccinated. Even the CDC admitted in June that vaccinated people could contract the disease again.

    ‘The Coolest Misinformation Fighting Speakeasy’

    In August 2021, the head of Google’s News Lab for the Asia Pacific region (APAC), emailed a CDC Vaccine Confidence Strategist to invite her to the APAC’s “Trusted Media Summit.” The CDC’s vaccine confidence strategist then emailed the event planner for Google’s APAC Trusted Media Summit, noting her excitement over being invited to what she referred to as “the coolest misinformation fighting speakeasy.”

    The same CDC employee was then invited to the summit to give a keynote addressing how the CDC was working with WHO and other international organizations to address a so-called “infodemic” and using “social inoculation” to mitigate it.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 19:00

  • Trump Makes Major Announcement: $99 NFTs
    Trump Makes Major Announcement: $99 NFTs

    After teasing a “major announcement” on Truth social, former President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled a “limited edition collection” of NFT trading cards, available at collecttrumpcards.com.

    They feature cartoon images of Trump depicted as a superhero, a Hollywood actor, a hunter and other characters.

    The announcement was accompanied by a video with Trump pitching the digital assets.

    “This is Donald Trump, hopefully, your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln or Washington,” Trump says, before detailing the project.

    According to the website, 45,000 cards will be created in the series, of which 44,000 will be sold. Those who buy will also be entered into a sweepstakes where the will have the opportunity to dine with Trump, play golf with him, and join a Mar-a-Lago cocktail hour.

    Trump’s entry into the NFT market via NFT INT LLC (not affiliated with Trump or the Trump organization), comes at a precarious time for the crypto-based digital art – with volume declining 97% between January and September of this year, and the collapse of FTX – which was a major host of NFTs.

    If the collection sells out, the creators stand to make $4.5 million. It’s unclear what Trump will make off the sales, if anything.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 18:40

  • The Age Of Amnesia
    The Age Of Amnesia

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    The main defense of Anthony Fauci in his legal deposition this month was pretty simple: he forgot. He said that he couldn’t recall nearly 200 times and versions of that many more. He said that he was so busy running his huge agency plus shepherding vaccines that he couldn’t possibly remember this or that email implicating him in a censorship scheme. He gets thousands of emails a day and there is no reason to think any in particular would grab his attention.

    It’s all a bit implausible because we saw him on TV several times a day for the better part of three years. He was the hard-working actor out there. I do TV and interviews several times per week but I try my best to throttle them back and turn many down simply because they truly drain away energy and focus from other work. In short, they are all-consuming. The notion that he neglected issues of message in favor of serious science is an incredibly obvious strain on credulity.

    So what was the point of this line of answer? Yes, he wants to save his skin. No question about that. But it occurs to me that there is another point too. He wants to model for the nation and the world how to think about the whole of the last three years. His view is that everyone should forget about it.

    You have surely noticed this happening ever since the opening following lockdowns and the rest. We are all just supposed to forget. We are supposed to move on. I’ve heard already a thousand times that we never had a lockdown. There seems to be little in the way of official memory of two years of school closures or the shutting of churches on holidays.

    We are being told to forget about the medical mandates that displaced millions from their jobs. We had relatives die and we couldn’t attend their funerals but we are supposed to forget about all that. I see claims daily that the censorship never really took place or wasn’t that bad really, so we should shut up already.

    What about all the politicians who violated stay-at-home orders, went on vacations or got hairstyles, or were photographed partying without a mask even as they imposed them on everyone else? Hey, mistakes were surely made but let’s not make too big a deal of it.

    Indeed, it was amazing to me how the most egregious and global attacks on human liberty in the name of public health were very quickly memory-holed by the major media, which we now know was the answer to public health agencies themselves the entire time. We all stood by in shock and wondered if we were the crazy ones.

    That, after all, is the whole point of Orwell’s Memory Hole, the invention of an alternative history of the recent past that contradicts our own memories and invites us to believe that we are crazy or obsessed or otherwise thinking about things that truly do not matter. This is why the Memory Hole was so important in Orwell’s book. It becomes a means by which the population is controlled in its thinking and therefore in its psychological capacity to resist the next round of impositions.

    This is why cultivating a solid memory is so crucial to the preservation of the good and civilized life. The barbarians all around us are constantly inviting us to forget so that we do not learn lessons and do not apply the lessons we learn. Instead we become blank slates for the ruling class to write on daily and then we are more likely to believe them. Better to never learn lessons at all. If we must learn something, it should be along the lines that we need more control and more acquiescence in the future.

    Movements that truly seek to prevent horrors of the past must also seek to preserve memory. This is why there are Holocaust Museums, for example, to help us understand experiences that were not ours but from which we can still learn. Indeed, this is the whole point of learning in general, to extract wisdom from people and events that have come before in order that we can be better prepared to build a future.

    People who invite us to forget are more than likely up to no good. It’s not just that they want to replace a real narrative with a false one. They want history to start over at any given moment so that we are more easy to manipulate in the future.

    Perhaps this is why basic memory skills have been so de-emphasized in early childhood education for so long. It’s a true tragedy because young people do have a remarkable capacity for memorization. They might lack the ability to think abstractly or process difficult strings of logic but they do have the mental power to hear and repeat, which is why a classical education puts so much emphasis on this and probably why modern education regards memorization as a waste of time.

    The urge to forget plays out in strange ways in our time. When accounts are banned on YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, so too are the archives of those accounts blown away so that we can longer access information about the recent past. That is intentional, otherwise the banning would be a mere blocking of new content. No, the whole point is to wipe out what we know or think we know.

    This is one of the tragedies of the Trump ban on Twitter, for example. We lost a narrative record over years of important data points, making even writing the history of our times more difficult. So when the account came back, so too did our memories and then we could scroll through and verify a version of events that is closer to reality rather than the fake history we were being told to accept from on high.

    We’ve been through almost three years in which powerful elites have done their best to wipe out history. I recall the chills I got down my spine when major media organs began putting trigger warnings on links older than a few months. The clear message was: this is no longer valid or reliable because things have surely changed. This is also why Fauci kept saying that the science has changed. It was a call for us to forget all the statements that contradict his latest statements.

    In this way, we have entered into an age of amnesia with a ruling class that wants everyone to forget the wisdom of the past and even the events of recent history, to forgive but mostly to forget and move on like good little pawns in their game. Just do what we are told and forget everything else.

    We can all resist this little game. We can access Archive.org and, more importantly, we can consult the wisdom of the ages through books and poetry and religious teachings. If civilization is to survive the onslaught, it will be because we choose to remember and act on those memories in defiance of every demand that we forget.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 18:20

  • IMF Warns 5% To 20% Drops In Asian Property Prices Could Be On The Horizon
    IMF Warns 5% To 20% Drops In Asian Property Prices Could Be On The Horizon

    A new report from the International Monetary Fund predicts a sharp drop in property prices across Asia.

    The report points out that home prices are “flattening” across the continent coming out of the pandemic boom that the region experienced. With rates rising, risks of “significant corrections in a number of markets” are profound, according to Nikkei. 

    The report set out “to highlight challenges in Asian housing markets linked to fast price rises especially in the advanced economies since COVID, and more broadly including many EMs in the period leading up to COVID,” per the IMF.

    It also aimed “to draw policy lessons on how to manage stability aspects through macroprudential and other policies and how to support affordability through structural policies and targeted government support.”

    The report notes concerns about affordability due to the spike in prices during the pandemic. South Korea, for example, saw a rise in inflation-adjusted prices of about 20% in 2021. Places like Japan and Singapore saw prices rise about 10% while Thailand saw price spikes of about 5%. 

    Now the issue is cooling demand as a result of rising rates. The pandemic bubble combined with the quick whipsaw of spiking rates could create drops “on the order of 5% to 20% in some countries,” Nikkei wrote. 

    Kenichiro Kashiwase, co-author of the IMF study, said: “Our study basically indicates that in order to alleviate, or address, housing affordability, governments can provide targeted, for example, mortgage insurance or mortgage guarantees.”

    Krishna Srinivasan, director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific department, commented this week: “The current phase looks like another turning point for many countries, with the post-pandemic house price surge now increasingly at risk of reversing in the context of slowing growth and rising interest rates.”

    “As we look towards 2023, we see once more that the global environment is fragile, with storm clouds on the horizon. We expect 2023 to be worse than 2022. Inflation is still uncomfortably high and financial conditions are tight, so things are looking pretty not so good.”

    You can read the entire IMF policy paper, called “Housing Market Stability and Affordability in Asia-Pacific”, here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 18:00

  • Navy Unleashes Controversy By Naming Next Warship USS Fallujah
    Navy Unleashes Controversy By Naming Next Warship USS Fallujah

    Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams,

    Peace advocates responded with disgust to the Navy’s decision to name its new warship after the two battles of Fallujah, during which U.S. troops massacred Iraqi civilians.

    “The future America-class amphibious ship will be named the USS Fallujah, LHA-9,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Tuesday in a speech at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C. “The future USS Fallujah will commemorate the first and second battles of Fallujah, American-led offenses during the Iraq War.” Del Toro called it “an honor for me, and for our nation, to memorialize the Marines, the soldiers, and coalition forces that fought valiantly and those that sacrificed their lives during both battles of Fallujah.”

    LHA 9—the future USS Fallujah—will be a sister ship to LHA 8, pictured here in an artist’s conception and currently under construction at Huntington Ingalls Industries.

    U.S. troops slaughtered approximately 600 Iraqi civilians—including more than 300 women and children—along with 200 insurgents during the First Battle of Fallujah. Code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, the battle was launched in April 2004 to avenge the deaths of four Blackwater contractors. Twenty-seven U.S. soldiers were killed during the retaliatory siege.

    The Second Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury, was fought from November to December 2004 to recapture the city from insurgent forces. In the process, U.S.-led occupation forces killed between 581 and 670 civilians across nine neighborhoods, according to Iraq Body Count.

    “With over 100 coalition forces killed and 600 wounded, Operation Phantom Fury is considered to be the bloodiest engagement to the Iraq War and the fiercest serving combat involving U.S. Marines since the Vietnam War’s battle of Hue City,” said Del Toro. “This namesake deserves to be in the pantheon of iconic Marine Corps battles, and the LHA’s unique capabilities will serve as a stark reminder to everyone around the world of the bravery, the courage, and commitment to freedom displayed by those who fought in those battles.”

    Critics called the Navy’s commemoration of the battles of Fallujah “shameful.”

    “Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah,” The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill, who reported from Iraq during the U.S. invasion, wrote Wednesday on social media.

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    In a 2007 appearance on the Bill Moyers show, Scahill described the siege of Fallujah as “one of the most brutal and sustained U.S. operations of the occupation,” telling Moyers that the Pentagon’s murderous response to the killing of Blackwater contractors set a dangerous precedent. In 2016, journalist Hope Hodge Seck wrote about what she called “the whisper campaign for a USS Fallujah.” She tweeted Tuesday: “At the time, it seemed unlikely to ever happen…But now it has.”

    Construction on the 45,000 metric-ton vessel, the first U.S. warship named after a post-9/11 battle, is set to begin this month at the Mississippi-based Ingalls Shipbuilding, which secured a $2.4 billion contract in October.

    Civilians in Fallujah, meanwhile, continue to suffer from a sharp rise in birth defects that has occurred in the wake of the 2003 invasion.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/15/2022 – 17:40

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