- Is A US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?
Is A US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?
At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?
If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.
What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?
If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.
To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.
Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.
Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.
While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.
Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.
Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.
All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.
Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.
Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.
To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.
It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.
In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.
Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.
We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.
Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?
Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 23:40 - Researchers At Hong Kong University Discover New Enzyme That May Help Obese People Feel Full And Stop Eating
Researchers At Hong Kong University Discover New Enzyme That May Help Obese People Feel Full And Stop Eating
Researchers have discovered a new enzyme that may help overweight people “feel full” and stop eating.
The team, at Hong Kong Baptist University, discovered the enzyme “that plays an important role in the process of sating appetite”, according to the SCMP. They then published their findings in the journal Nature Metabolism.
The team said that drugs could be developed that target the enzyme specifically and may help with weight loss. Dr Xavier Wong and Professor Bian Zhaoxiang were the pair that discovered the MT1-MMP protein.
In China, obesity has caught up to to the US: the SCMP notes that more than half a billion people in the country are overweight and 16.4% are obese. 30% of people in Hong Kong aged 15 to 84 were obese, the report also notes. 20% were overweight.
The enzyme may help people who have trouble regulating their own dietary habits as a result of their losing their sense of satiety. It can also “regulate satiety signals in the brain to help regulate food intake,” the report said.
Scientists from the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Texas and the University of Helsinki also played a role on the global research team that discovered the enzyme.
In studies, the doctors created obese mice with depleted MT1-MMP. Their food consumption was 10% less and they gained 50% less weight than a group of control mice. The study also showed that obese mice displayed increased MT1-MMP activity, SCMP reported.
As we noted above, the study comes at a time when obesity rates are on the rise.
“This has to do with eating and physical habits. People are more inactive, live a sedentary lifestyle with no exercise. During the Covid-19 pandemic, people stayed home most of the time,” concluded Professor Martin Wong, a non-communicable disease expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 23:20 - Deborah Birx's Guide To Destroying A Country From Within
Deborah Birx’s Guide To Destroying A Country From Within
Authored by Michael Senger via ‘The New Normal’ Substack,
Part of the fun of reading Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World is that you get to put yourself in the dictator’s shoes. In the book, Xi is an allegory for the Chinese Communist Party in the 21st century. Xi’s “lines” break up the writing with dark humor, a satirical jab at western elites’ blasé attitude toward an advanced, totalitarian regime with overtly-manipulative goals. The book invites you to see through the bad guy’s eyes and imagine just how easy it was to subvert the free world into totalitarianism using the response to a perfectly banal virus.
Alas, to that end, my book has been upstaged by the work of Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, one of the “Trifecta” of three leading officials behind Covid lockdowns in the United States. Virtually every page of Birx’s monstrosity of a book, Silent Invasion, reads like a how-to guide in subverting a democratic superpower from within, as could only be told through the personal account of someone who was on the front lines doing just that.
Notably, though Birx’s memoir has earned relatively few reviews on Amazon, it’s earned rave reviews from Chinese state media, a feat not shared even by far-more-popular pro-lockdown books such as those by Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright.
The glowing response from Chinese state media should come as no surprise, however, because every sentence of Birx’s book reads like it was written by the CCP itself. Chapter 1 opens with what she claims was her first impression of the virus.
I can still see the words splashed across my computer screen in the early morning hours of January 3. Though we were barely into 2020, I was stuck in an old routine, waking well before dawn and scanning news headlines online. On the BBC’s site, one caught my attention: “China Pneumonia Outbreak: Mystery Virus Probed in Wuhan.”
Indeed, as recounted in Snake Oil, that BBC article, which was posted at approximately 9:00 AM EST on January 3, 2020, was the first in a western news organization to discuss the outbreak of a new virus in Wuhan. Apparently, Birx was scanning British news headlines just as it appeared. What are the odds!
Birx wastes no time in telling us where she got her philosophy of disease mitigation, recalling how she immediately thought Chinese citizens “knew what had worked” against SARS-1: Masks and distancing.
Government officials and citizens across Asia knew both the pervasive fear and the personal response that had worked before to mitigate the loss of life and the economic damage wrought by SARS and MERS. They wore masks. They decreased the frequency and size of social gatherings.Crucially, based on their recent experience, the entire citizenry and local doctors were ringing alarm bells loudly and early. Lives were on the line—lots of them. They knew what had worked before, and they would do it again.
Birx spends countless pages tut-tutting the CCP for its “cover-up” of the virus (though Chinese state media apparently didn’t mind, as they gushed about her book anyway), which is funny because then she tells us:
On January 3, the same day the BBC piece ran, the Chinese government officially notified the United States of the outbreak. Bob Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was contacted by his Chinese counterpart, George F. Gao.
Note, January 3 is also the same day the hero whistleblower Li Wenliang was supposedly admonished by authorities for sending a WeChat message about a “cover-up” of the outbreak. So on the same day Li was “admonished,” the head of China’s CDC literally called US CDC Director Robert Redfield to share the exact same information Li supposedly shared.
Off to a strong start. But from here, Birx’s abomination of book only gets worse. Much worse.
A page later, she tells us how traumatized she still is at seeing all those videos of Wuhan residents collapsing and falling dead in January 2020, and praises the “courageous doctor” who shared them online.
The video showed a hallway crowded with patients slumped in chairs. Some of the masked people leaned against the wall for support. The camera didn’t pan so much as zigzag while the Chinese doctor maneuvered her smartphone up the narrow corridor. My eye was drawn to two bodies wrapped in sheets lying on the floor amid the cluster of patients and staff. The doctor’s colleagues, their face shields and other personal protective equipment in place, barely glanced at the lens as she captured the scene. They looked past her, as if at a harrowing future they could all see and hoped to survive. I tried to increase the volume, but there was no sound. My mind seamlessly filled that void, inserting the sounds from my past, sounds from other wards, other places of great sorrow. I had been here before. I had witnessed scenes like this across the globe, in HIV ravaged communities— when hospitals were full of people dying of AIDS before we had treatment or before we ensured treatment to those who needed it. I had lived this, and it was etched permanently in my brain: the unimaginable, devastating loss of mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, brothers, sisters.
Staring at my computer screen, I was horrified by the images from Wuhan, the suffering they portrayed, but also because they confirmed what I’d suspected for the last three weeks: Not only was the Chinese government underreporting the real numbers of the infected and dying in Wuhan and elsewhere, but the situation was definitely far more dire than most people outside that city realized. Up until now, I’d been only reading or hearing about the virus. Now it had been made visible by a courageous doctor sharing this video online.
As a reminder, Birx’s book was published in April 2022. The videos Birx is recalling were all proven fake by the spring of 2020.
In the next paragraph, Birx tells us how she grew even more determined after seeing that the Chinese had built a hospital in 10 days to fight the virus.
Dotting it were various pieces of earth-moving equipment, enough of them in various shapes and sizes that I briefly wondered if the photograph was of a manufacturing plant where the newly assembled machines were on display. Quickly, I learned that the machines were in Wuhan and that they were handling the first phase of preparatory work for the construction of a one-thousand-bed hospital to be completed in just ten days’ time… The Chinese may not have been giving accurate data about the numbers of cases and deaths, but the rapid spread of this disease could be counted in other ways—including in how many Chinese workers were being employed to build new facilities to relieve the pressure on the existing, and impressive, Wuhan health service centers. You build a thousand-bed hospital in ten days only if you are experiencing unrelenting community spread of a highly contagious virus that has eluded your containment measures and is now causing serious illness on a massive scale.
This hospital construction, again, was proven fake literally days after Chinese state media posted it.
So just to recap, here we have Deborah Birx—the woman who did more than almost any other person in the United States to promote and prolong Covid lockdowns, silencing anyone who disagreed with her, to the incessant praise of mainstream media outlets—telling us she’d been inspired by all those images of Wuhan residents falling dead and constructing a hospital in 10 days, and still didn’t realize they were fake two years after they’d been proven fake.
And that’s just Chapter 1.
Birx then spends hundreds of pages recounting her clandestine political maneuvers—from the day she stepped foot in the White House—to get as much of America as possible to stay in lockdown for as long as possible, without making it look like a “lockdown.”
At this point, I wasn’t about to use the words lockdown or shutdown.If I had uttered either of those in early March, after being at the White House only one week, the political, nonmedical members of the task force would have dismissed me as too alarmist, too doom-and-gloom, too reliant on feelings and not facts. They would have campaigned to lock me down and shut me up.
Birx proudly recalls using “flatten-the-curve guidance” to manipulate the President’s administration into consenting to lockdowns that were stricter than they realized.
On Monday and Tuesday, while sorting through the CDC data issues, we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done—a tall order. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it.
Never mind that this kind of manipulation by a presidential advisor is probably not legal. Birx doubles down, inadvertently admitting where that arbitrary number “ten” came from for her guidance as to the size of social gatherings, while admitting her real goal was “zero”—no social contact of any kind, anywhere.
I had settled on ten knowing that even that was too many, but I figured that ten would at least be palatable for most Americans—high enough to allow for most gatherings of immediate family but not enough for large dinner parties and, critically, large weddings, birthday parties, and other mass social events.… Similarly, if I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a “lockdown”—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid.
Birx divulges her strategy of using federal advisories to give cover to state governors to impose mandates and restrictions.
The White House would “encourage,” but the states could “recommend” or, if needed, “mandate.” In short, we were handing governors and their public health officials a template, a state-level permission slip they could use to enact a specific response that was appropriate for the people under their jurisdiction. The fact that the guidelines would be coming from a Republican White House gave political cover to any Republican governors skeptical of federal overreach
Then, Birx recalls with delight as her strategy led the states to shut down one by one.
[T]he recommendations served as the basis for governors to mandate the flattening-the-curve shutdowns. The White House had handed down guidance, and the governors took that ball and ran with it…With the White House’s “this is serious” message, governors now had “permission” to mount a proportionate response and, one by one, other states followed suit. California was first, doing so on March 18. New York followed on March 20. Illinois, which had declared its own state of emergency on March 9, issued shelter-in-place orders on March 21. Louisiana did so on the twenty-second. In relatively short order by the end of March and the first week of April, there were few holdouts. The circuit-breaking, flattening-the-curve shutdown had begun.
All that’s missing is the maniacal laugh.
In what may be the most damning quote of the entire US response to Covid, in one paragraph, Birx tells us that she’d always intended “two weeks to slow the spread” as a lie and immediately wanted those two weeks extended, despite having no data to show why that was necessary.
No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them. However hard it had been to get the fifteen-day shutdown approved, getting another one would be more difficult by many orders of magnitude.
This is one of several quotes in which Birx refers to “our version” of a lockdown, though she never makes it clear what the original “version” of a lockdown is. As a matter of fact, though Birx spends hundreds of pages boasting about her scorched-earth crusade for lockdowns across America, she never once explains why she wanted this or why she felt it was a good idea, other than some brief asides about China’s supposed success using social distancing during SARS-1.
Birx’s apparent plan to almost singlehandedly destroy the world’s primary democratic superpower is going swimmingly until she meets the book’s leading antagonist: Dr. Scott Atlas. To Birx’s disgust, Atlas takes a strong stand for all the things she loathes most—things like human rights, democratic governance, and, most of all, freedom.
Birx lists Atlas’s “dangerous assertions”:
That schools could open everywhere without any precautions (neither masking nor testing), regardless of the status of the spread in the community.
That children did not transmit the virus.
That children didn’t get ill. That there was no risk to anyone young.
That long Covid-19 was being overplayed.
That heart-damage findings were incidental.
That comorbidities did not play a critical role in communities, especially among teachers.
That merely employing some physical distance overcame the virus’s ill effects.
That masks were overrated and not needed.
That the Coronavirus Task Force had gotten the country into this situation by promoting testing.
That testing falsely increased case counts in the United States in comparison with other countries.
That targeted testing and isolation constituted a lockdown, plain and simple, and weren’t needed.
That every word of Atlas’s assertions was obviously 100% true only made them all the more dangerous. As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world,” and nothing would derail the world’s communist destiny faster than letting these self-evident truths spread freely.
In particular, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta was a key component of my strategy… He specifically spoke about a mild disease—another way to describe silent spread. I saw this as a sign that he got it. As a doctor himself, he could see what I was seeing. He could serve as a very good outside-government spokesperson, echoing my message that family members and others they were in close contact with could unknowingly bring the virus home, resulting in a catastrophic and deadly event.
Birx frequently emphasizes her fixation with the concept of “asymptomatic spread.” In her mind, the less sick a person is, the more “insidious” they are:
Asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and even mildly symptomatic spread are particularly insidious because, with these, many people don’t know they are infected. They may not take precautions or may not practice good hygiene, and they don’t isolate.
As Scott Atlas recalls in his own book, A Plague Upon Our House:
Birx commented on the importance of testing asymptomatic people. She argued that the only way to figure out who was sick was to test them. She memorably exclaimed, “That’s why it’s so dangerous—people don’t even know they’re sick!” I felt myself looking around the room, wondering if I was the only one who had heard this.
Birx spends roughly the next 150 pages of her book recalling her anguish as Atlas thwarted her plans to keep America in a near-permanent state of lockdown. As Atlas recalls:
She threw a fit, right there, in front of everyone, as we stood near the door before leaving the Oval Office. She was furious, screaming at me, “NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!! AND IN THE OVAL!!” I felt pretty bad, because she was so angry. I had absolutely no desire for conflict. But did she actually expect me to lie to the president, just to cover up for her? I responded, “Sorry, but he asked me a question, so I answered it.”
Indeed, Birx’s memoir corroborates the testimony in Atlas’s book of the outsized role he played in bringing lockdowns in the United States to an end. More than anything, this involved standing up to Birx who, contrary to popular belief, did more than even Fauci to promote and prolong lockdowns across the United States. As Atlas explains:
Dr. Fauci held court in the public eye on a daily basis, so frequently that many misconstrue his role as being in charge. However, it was really Dr. Birx who articulated Task Force policy. All the advice from the Task Force to the states came from Dr. Birx. All written recommendations about their on-the-ground policies were from Dr. Birx. Dr. Birx conducted almost all the visits to states on behalf of the Task Force.
Unlike the vast majority of our leaders and institutions, Atlas did not shrug this responsibility, and for that, our entire nation owes him a special thanks. I vividly recall reading Atlas’s articles in early 2020, correctly predicting that “The COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life,” a rare light in that dark, dystopian period.
Still, I don’t want to give anyone in this story too much credit. How is it possible that the woman who did more than any other person to shut down the United States doesn’t know that all those videos from Wuhan were fake, two years after FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly stated, on July 7, 2020:
We have heard from federal, state, and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels. Not that long ago, we had a state senator who was recently even asked to introduce a resolution supporting China’s response to the pandemic.
What has the FBI been doing this whole time? As Atlas recalls:
Seema laughingly related that she was frantically looking around as the usual outlandish nonsense was being put forth, knowing that I would have been the one to push back.
Then she got to the point. “Scott, we need to get rid of Birx. She is a disaster! She keeps saying the same things over and over; she’s incredibly insecure; she doesn’t understand what’s going on. We need to eliminate her moving forward.”
Well no wonder Birx was “insecure.” She’d just spent the better part of a year in the White House orchestrating unprecedented crimes against humanity on her own people. These lockdowns ultimately killed tens of thousands of young Americans while failing to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus everywhere they were tried. Whether she did so wittingly or unwittingly, it’s absolutely unseemly that no one around her put a stop to it.
Atlas recalls being baffled as to why Birx had ever been appointed to her role in the first place:
I also asked how she had been appointed—that seemed to be a bit of a mystery to everyone. I was told by Jared, more than once, “Dr. Birx is 100 percent MAGA!”—as if that should make all the other issues somehow less important. Secretary Azar denied appointing her during his stint running the Task Force. I was told by the VP’s chief of staff, Marc Short, that Pence “inherited her” when he took over as chair of the Task Force. No one seemed to know.
Jared Kushner’s reaction is ironic, given Birx’s later admission that she “had a pact with medical bureaucrats—Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Stephen Hahn and perhaps others—that all would resign if even one were removed by then-President Donald Trump.” Democrats in Congress are now defending Birx from scrutiny for the role she played in lockdowns in the United States.
As it turns out, Birx was not “100% MAGA.” She wasn’t even 10% MAGA.
Now, I’m not saying Deborah Birx is a CCP agent. I’m just saying that if she was an agent for Xi Jinping’s stated goal of gradually stripping the world of “independent judiciaries,” “human rights,” “western freedom,” “civil society,” and “freedom of the press,” then every word of her book would read like that of Silent Invasion. If she did do it, this is how it would have happened.
But in researching this topic for over two years, few things have made my hair stand on end more than the clues Birx gives about the man who did appoint her to her role. This man, who will be the subject of my next deep dive, is a little-known, clean-cut, Mandarin-fluent intelligence operative who arguably played a greater role than even Fauci or Birx in bringing China’s totalitarian virus response to the United States, acting as a direct liaison between Chinese scientists and the White House on key items of pseudoscience including asymptomatic spread, universal masking, and remdesivir: Matthew Pottinger.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 23:00 - "This Year Was Quiet" – Aspen Mansion Market Cools
“This Year Was Quiet” – Aspen Mansion Market Cools
The luxury market appears to be cooling as soaring interest rates, stock market turmoil, elevated inflation, and threats of a recession put a damper on demand.
“We’ve definitely had the first true off-season since Covid,” Jennifer Banner, a broker at Christie’s International Real Estate Aspen Snowmass, told Bloomberg, referring to the residential property market in Aspen, Colorado.
“Over the last two years, it was busy through May and June. This year it was quiet,” Banner said.
“Overall, it seems there are some signs the market is weakening a little bit, but not enough to draw any conclusions,” Karen Setterfield, co-founder of Aspen brokerage Setterfield & Bright, said.
According to a new report from Douglas Elliman, Aspen’s single-family-home market is tiny, with approximately 28 listings in June. The resort town was in high demand during the virus pandemic as wealthy folks fled large metro areas to mountainous regions.
Tim Estin, a broker with Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty, said the barriers to entry into Aspen for a single-family home was nearly $12mln in June.
Some of Aspen’s Mansions are listed on Zillow.
The Elliman report showed that signed contracts for single-family homes in June plunged 71.4% year over year, with new listings increasing 33.3%.
“The market hasn’t flipped as much as it’s slowed down,” Stephen Kotler, Douglas Elliman’s chief executive officer of brokerage for the Western region, said.
“We’re still going to see [signed] contracts, but it won’t be at 2021 levels, maybe it will be closer to 2019 or 2020,” Kotler said.
Even though a large majority of Aspen properties are paid in cash, macro-economic uncertainty appears to have triggered a slowdown in mansions across the resort area.
“I think we’re going to see a leveling off of the kinds of price increases we saw in the last two years,” said Banner, “but we knew those were unsustainable. I don’t think we’re going to see a major drop in prices.”
The problem with Aspen is the housing market is so small that it would only take a few property owners to panic sell and cause gyrations.
Last week, Wells Fargo Investment Institute warned about a recession underway, while Guggenheim and Nomura Securities say a downturn is expected later this year. The question remains what will cause further uncertainty among the wealthiest that they would need to liquidate their Aspen mansions.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 22:40 - The Physics Of Freedom
The Physics Of Freedom
Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),
Freedom is our Founding Fathers’ greatest gift.
Since 1776, that single word has been the compass and measure of the human experiment the world calls America. Whatever disparate, sometimes far-flung ideologies they may embrace, all who celebrate or bemoan our past, present, and future ground their claims and critiques in that single word. At heart, we are ever asking: How free are we? When you imagine all the other ideas those men in powdered wigs might have made our identity and obsession, freedom – which feels so hopeful, open-ended, and optimistic – seems the most salubrious of choices.
And yet, perhaps because the concept is so fundamental and familiar, we rarely ask a central question: What is freedom? We assume we truly know its meaning. But do we? Freedom has become like the operating systems that power our computers and the world – something the vast majority of us rely on, take for granted, without really understanding what it is and how it works. I believe that some, but not all, of our divisions are rooted in the lack of clear understanding of this guiding ideal.
In this short space, I want to describe a definition of freedom that is more accurate and hence more useful than the common understandings rooted in politics because it is based in the timeless laws of physics. This scientific lens, which is based on the work of Adrian Bejan, the celebrated professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University with whom I wrote the 2012 book “Design in Nature,” allows us to see freedom more fully and more accurately, in all its power and glory.
Start with the common understandings. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines freedom as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” Other meanings include “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved,” and “the power of self-determination attributed to the will.”
Clear enough, so what’s the problem? These definitions offer a cramped and limited view of freedom, casting it as a human creation, as an idea that chiefly applies to the relations among people. Sure, we might say butterflies are free, that the time spent in the mountains – or even pants with an elastic waist – feel freeing, but those are metaphorical uses of a political concept. Ever since the ancient Greeks, freedom has concerned people.
Through hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and dozens of books, Bejan discovered that freedom is far more expansive. It is not a human concept but a physical reality.
The life of butterflies, and everything around us, hinges on freedom. He summarized this insight in a powerful statement he first articulated in 1995 and which he calls the constructal law. It states:
For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve with freedom in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.
I know that’s a mouthful, but the idea is simple: Everything on our planet that moves – water on the ground, blood in our bodies, money through economies – constitutes a system composed of the current (water, blood, money) and channels they flow through (rivers, arteries, economies). Given the freedom to move and to change, these flow systems evolve with a specific direction in time, to move more current (or mass) more easily.
To see how, consider the first raindrops that fell to earth. In the beginning they were isolated entities. But soon they began to coalesce because it was easier to move or flow together. Over millions of years, these unthinking, inanimate molecules carved out rivulets, brooks, streams and rivers. Today, these tree-like river basins cover the globe, moving water from the plain to the ocean’s mouth far more efficiently than if the raindrops had been destined to seep by their lonesome.
Through his own extensive research and that of collaborators around the globe, Bejan has shown how the constructal law predicts the emergence and evolution of the designs that give shape and structure to our world. The same principle explains why air coalesces to form jet streams in the sky and why human history is the story of greater and easier movement of people, goods, money and ideas. All self-organize into better channels that allow them to flow more easily across the landscape.
Why does this happen? We don’t know. Like the laws of thermodynamics – which predict that hot should move to cold, that matter should be conserved – the constructal law is a first principle of physics that summarizes an observable and universal phenomenon: the tendency of matter to generate evolving designs that increase flow access. There is no mechanism behind it; it is an uncaused cause.
It all hinges on freedom: the freedom of flowing matter to generate evolving. It is the secret sauce of nature. Our planet evolved from a fiery molten ball into a wondrous sphere of oceans and rivers, mountains and forests, cities and air transport systems because of the freedom of everything that moves to generate designs that allow them to flow more easily. Bejan put it this way to me: “Freedom is many physical (measurable) features that allow an observed object to change. No freedom, no change. No change, no evolution. No evolution, no life. Freedom is physics—biological and nonbiological—and so is evolution, nature, and life.”
As I am writing for RealClearPolitics, the question remains: If freedom is not an exclusively human creation, how does physics change the way we should think about politics?
First, it shows us the limits of the common understanding of freedom as a fixed set of outcomes – as a chiseled-in-stone set of laws and practices against which human behavior must be measured. Don’t get me wrong, it is good to have ideals. But while they tell us where we might want to go, they do not tell us how to get there. This common understanding falsely assumes that ideas like freedom are simply things that we choose to embrace or reject. When we ask, for example, why democracy didn’t flourish in Russia after the fall of communism or in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, our answers revolve around the failings of leaders and the led.
The constructal law provides a better answer by showing that politics is anchored in physical realities – in the evolving systems through which ideas and laws, rights and practices move from the centers of power to the people and vice versa. In developed democracies such as the United States, the rule of law, the concepts of “one person one vote,” free and fair elections, and a free press are just a few of the “currents” that move through the designs of a democracy. These currents and channels cannot be simply imposed in one fell swoop; they must evolve, over time, building on what was, like the raindrops that gradually created the mighty river basins from the tiniest rivulets.
In assessing political systems, the central question is not, how free is it compared to some utopian ideal, but to what extent does it permit or restrict the freedom of people, ideas, goods, money, and all the rest to self-organize into designs that allow those things to move more easily?
Bejan, who grew up in Romania under communism, notes that dictatorships are doomed to failure because they are not just fighting the people, but physics. Censorship, coercion, and intimidation are the tools they use to constrain the tendency of everything in nature – which includes people – to flow more freely.
Finally, the physics of freedom should give us a new appreciation of the Founding Fathers. Their greatest gift to us was not the rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution but a political system that was truly free – one that could evolve, get better. Those who see our past as a golden age are as misguided as those who view our history as a series of moral failures. America truly is a great experiment because our capacity for change means we never are, but are always becoming. In freedom.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 22:20 - Satellite Image Reveals China Blew Up Mock Japan Warplane Amid Taiwan Invasion Fears
Satellite Image Reveals China Blew Up Mock Japan Warplane Amid Taiwan Invasion Fears
There’s increasing concern a possible Chinese annexation of Taiwan would fundamentally challenge Japan’s security and result in a broader conflict.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) understands an invasion of Taiwan would likely result in conflict with Japan because only 110 kilometers (68 miles) is Japan’s westernmost inhabited island of Yonaguni.
Japanese leaders have linked Taiwan’s security with Japan’s, enabling the country to play a role in Taiwan’s defense. As a result, the PLA launched a missile(s) at mock Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) aircraft in a desert area in northwest China called Xinjiang, according to Nikkei, citing a report from Planet Labs.
Nikkei examined photos taken by Planet Labs, a U.S.-based satellite operator. Photographs of the same location in mid-May showed an object shaped like an E-767, an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) used by the SDF, a runway and buildings resembling a tarmac. A July 13 photo shows the destroyed object, along with debris and black burn marks.
Previous satellite photographs showed the object was still in place as of July 2. The precise timing is not clear because of weather conditions that prevented photography on some days, but it appears that the object was destroyed in early July. It is the first time that an object mimicking an SDF aircraft is known to have been destroyed. -Nikkei
“I think we can safely conclude this was a test of a ballistic missile of some sort,” said Jeffrey Lewis, professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a specialist in the military analysis of satellite photos, referring to what appears to be a mock Boeing E-767 AWACS used by SDF.
Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also reviewed the images and concluded a missile might have been used:
“If the purpose of the mock target was to test the ability of a missile warhead to recognize and strike specific high-value aircraft, and that capability was in fact tested successfully, then deployment of such a weapon could improve the PLA’s ability to strike key aircraft like the E-767.”
It’s unclear precisely what the PLA used to target the mock AWACS or surrounding aircraft. Kiyofumi Iwata, former chief of staff of the Japan Ground SDF, said there are no impact craters, suggesting the “AWACS object may have been set ablaze, rather than hit by a missile.”
PLA forces also built a mock U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers last year in the same desert area for weapons testing. Nikkei said the “aircraft carrier was found to have marks that experts said were made by missile impacts.”
If an invasion of Taiwan is planned, it seems China recognizes that Japan and the U.S. could be drawn into the fight. That’s why China and Russia aligned and conducted a joint military exercise last month between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 22:00 - 'Very Unfavorable' Political Scenario Appears To Be Taking Shape For Democrats
‘Very Unfavorable’ Political Scenario Appears To Be Taking Shape For Democrats
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
An unfavorable midterm election scenario is taking shape for Democrats as inflation and gas prices remain exceptionally high as some left-wing news outlets appear to be turning on the Biden administration, according to analysts and pollsters.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on reproductive rights as (L-R) Vice President Kamala Harris, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra listen during an event at the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, on July 8, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) A recent New York Times survey posted on the paper’s front page Monday suggested that Democrat voters are turning against Biden. Only about 25 percent said they wanted him to be the presidential nominee in 2024. Meanwhile, the NY Times and other left-wing outlets have increasingly published articles suggesting that the president not run for reelection.
“Democrats haven’t done things they promised,” Connor Farrell, a strategist who founded the Democrat-aligned group Left Rising, told The Hill on Tuesday. “In this environment, the best general election candidates will be bold [ones] that can distinguish themselves from what we’re getting from the White House.”
“Democratic leadership should look no further than the fact that they need to wake up and step up to the plate,” Jon Reinish, managing director at the political strategy firm Mercury, told the website. He did not elaborate what that might entail.
Democrats, he added, are “not just losing Independents or you know, Never-Trump Republicans,” but “they’re losing their own voters. Democrats’ own voters don’t feel as if their leaders hear their concerns.”
“I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but I’m not holding out hope that Biden’s approval rating can improve all that much. Gas prices have started to drop, but inflation remains high, and survey after survey shows that Americans are principally concerned with their economic situation. Another [Federal Reserve] rate hike is on its way, which isn’t bound to make things better in the short term for voters,” Democrat strategist Jessica Tarlov told Fox News this week.
And an article released by pollster Gallup, citing its own polling data, declared that the 2022 election indicators suggest Democrats are facing a significant uphill battle.
“However, 2022 is not shaping up to be an average year. Rather, as of May, Gallup finds presidential job approval and three other key national mood indicators well below the historical averages measured in past midterm election years. On their own, those numbers would all predict a greater-than-average loss of seats for the Democratic Party this fall,” Gallup said last month.
Typically, the party of the president tends to lose seats in the midterm elections, and Democrats have narrow majorities in both the Senate and House.
Economy
Surveys released in recent days indicate that Americans have a generally negative outlook of the direction the United States is heading and have a bleak outlook on the economy amid historically high gas prices and high inflation. Auto club AAA’s data shows that while gas prices have dropped over the past three weeks, the average price still stands at $4.65 per gallon as of Tuesday.
Gas prices are advertised at a Chevron station as rising inflation and oil costs affect the consumers in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13, 2022. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters) Although some Democrat-aligned consultants, including James Carville, have suggested recently that the midterms are still several months away, Gallup said that if Biden’s job approval rating increases, “he would be bucking the trend for second-year presidents. Historically, presidents’ job approval ratings have rarely improved in the last few months before their first midterms.” As such, it rated Democrats’ chances as “very unfavorable” headed to November.
Republicans have said that the Biden administration’s policies are the primary reason why inflation and gas prices remain high, noting that the president last year signed executive orders that blocked new oil drilling leases, suspended the Keystone XL pipeline, and ended some fossil fuel subsidies. In response, Biden and Democrats have pinned the blame on oil companies, the Russian government, and even consumers for not buying electric vehicles.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 21:40 - Russia Building Laser Weapon To 'Soft Kill' US Spy Satellites
Russia Building Laser Weapon To ‘Soft Kill’ US Spy Satellites
Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon that could soon disrupt Western spy satellites flying over its territory.
The Space Review published a new report indicating “strong evidence that a space surveillance complex in Russia’s northern Caucasus is being outfitted with a new laser system called Kalina that will target optical systems of foreign imaging satellites flying over Russian territory.”
Construction of the Kalina project began in 2011. In a 2014 financial document, Kalina’s stated purpose was to “create a system for the functional suppression of electro-optical systems of satellites” using high-powered laser pulses.
Another document from 2017 described Kalina as a “laser system for electro-optical warfare” and said it was a special quantum-optical system” being developed by the Rosatom state corporation.
Kalina can permanently blind optical sensors on satellites, and this is different than other laser weapons known as “dazzlers,” which can temporarily blind optic systems).
Russia’s desire to target satellites via a so-called ‘soft kill’ approach is a much different strategy than launching an anti-satellite missile, as it recklessly did in November 2021, knocking a defunct satellite out of orbit and, in return, generating 1,500 pieces of space junk.
The report said, “the project has suffered numerous delays, but recent Google Earth imagery shows that construction is now well underway.”
News of Russia’s next-gen laser weapon comes as Space X CEO Elon Musk has said his company could launch more satellites than Western adversaries can shoot down. It seems like the Kalina project could soon challenge Musk’s satellite constellation via low-cost beams of light rather than costly missiles, making it cheaper and easier for Moscow to take down more satellites.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 21:20 - Court Blocks Biden Admin From Punishing Unvaccinated Air Force Members
Court Blocks Biden Admin From Punishing Unvaccinated Air Force Members
Authored by Beth Brejle and Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,
A federal district court in Ohio has temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in late 2019, issued a temporary restraining order filed on Thursday preventing the Biden administration from taking any action for at least 14 days against any Air Force member who opted not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
The judge’s ruling also grants the case “class status,” which means the temporary restraining order will grant relief to all members of the Air Force who submitted a religious accommodation request from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from Sept. 1, 2021, to the present, and were confirmed via the Air Force Chaplains as having a sincerely held religious belief, but had their requests denied or not yet acted upon. Plaintiffs had contended that such a class would include over 12,000 airmen.
The action stems from a case filed in February 2022 challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Plaintiffs comprise 18 active-duty members of the Air Force serving at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; Hurlburt Field in Florida; Randolph Air Force Base in Texas; and Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, plus all similarly affected members.
“The court has already granted a preliminary injunction to our 18 original plaintiffs,” an attorney in the case, Tom Bruns of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. “The court has now granted a class certification—and that’s kind of the historic moment—Air Force-wide, service-wide, it covers every member of the Air Force. And now he’s saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I grant the preliminary injunction to all those folks?’”
McFarland wrote in his order (pdf) in granting the class status:
“They face separation from the Air Force and other disciplinary measures. A single injunction would provide relief to the entire class. Indeed, the main purpose of a [lawsuit class] is to provide relief through a single injunction or declaratory judgment. Because Defendants have uniformly maintained a policy of overriding Airmen’s religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine, they have acted ‘on grounds that apply generally to the class.’
“Moreover, the class definition requires that a Chaplain certify that the airman’s religious beliefs are sincerely held. Finally, a single injunction would provide the proposed class with the relief they seek from the harm they stand to suffer.”
McFarland gave Air Force officials until July 21 to file a response “identifying why this Court should not grant a class-wide preliminary injunction.” He also gave plaintiffs an opportunity to then file a response by July 25.
According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, over 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests. Only 104 have had their applications approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the force. According to the figures, 97.1 percent of the Air Force has been fully vaccinated, and 0.1 percent has been partially vaccinated.
Nurse and Army veteran Renee Langone administers a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to U.S. Air Force (active duty reservist) Dr. Pei-Chun McGregor at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center in Boston, Mass., on Dec. 23, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
McFarland’s order came in the nick of time for some airmen. Many have received notices in the last week, with a date of their final day, an airman at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska told The Epoch Times.
…
The Air Force wanted the airmen’s cases heard individually, but in his decision allowing class status, McFarland noted how the Air Force did not consider each case individually when denying religious accommodation requests.
…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 21:00 - Manhattan Rents Soar To New Record Amid Inflation Storm
Manhattan Rents Soar To New Record Amid Inflation Storm
Manhattan apartment rents jumped again in June on a relentless climb into uncharted territory. A combination of low supply, soaring interest rates, and increasing demand implies leasing activity will keep climbing through August and push median average rents in the city well over the $4,000 mark.
Bloomberg reports new data from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate that shows average apartment rents in Manhattan topped $4,050, a new record high. It was an increase of $50 over May when prices breached the $4,000 mark for the first time. Prices from a year ago are up a whopping 25%. Average rents for most-expensive units topped $5,000 for the first time, the firms said in the report.
Rents are smashing records and will increase further this month and August, mainly because of seasonal flows.
Julia Segal, leasing director at the brokerage firm Compass, said rising mortgage rates had sparked housing affordability issues that increased the number of renters in a market with limited inventory.
“Interest rates rising is certainly turning some buyers into renters,” Segal said, “and that’s increasing the renter pool.”
The report shows apartment listing times on the market slid from 52 days in May to 50 in June — a year before, listed apartments sat for 87 days.
Supply remains very tight across the borough. The vacancy rate a year ago was around 12% and has since plunged to 2%. High demand and tight supply are other reasons for summer rent price acceleration.
We noted in mid-April “Not A Peak” – Manhattan Apartment Rents Hit Another Record High and correctly pointed out how prices would soar this summer.
Rising rents in NYC is not an isolated problem — it’s a nationwide crisis as consumer prices in June jumped to another 40-year high. Focusing on housing costs, shelter inflation +5.61%, up from 5.61%, highest since 1992, and rent inflation +5.78%, up from 5.22%, highest since 1986.
And what’s worse is real wages continue to slump for the 15th month in a row as Americans’ purchasing power is wiped out in the inflation storm.
Rising rent, gas, and food costs are squeezing working-poor households to a near-breaking point — where millions of people are on the verge of eviction.
The rising risk of a recession could offer consumers relief with a downshift in prices. Still, there’s a caveat: increasing job loss.
One positive development is a prediction by Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, who believes rent prices could cool in September. He noted price declines might come with a recession.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 20:40 - China Refinery Throughput Falls For First Time In 10 Years
China Refinery Throughput Falls For First Time In 10 Years
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Chinese refineries’ throughput fell for the first time in more than a decade during the first half of the year, by 6 percent to 13.4 million bpd.
In June alone, processing rates were higher than in May, but some 10 percent lower than the all-time high reached last year in June, Reuters said in a report citing official data.
Oil imports also fell in June, according to data from energy analytics firm OilX—by 1.6 million bpd to 9.2 million bpd.
On an annual basis, OilX analysts noted, the June average was about 1 million bpd lower than what China imported in crude oil in June 2021. They noted, however, that despite the recent series of lockdowns because of Covid flare-ups, China’s oil imports were remarkably stable over the past few months.
Chinese oil production rose during the first half of the year, by 4 percent from a year ago, with the daily average at 4.15 million bpd. In June, domestic output hit an all-time high of 4.18 million bpd.
Refinery runs have suffered from Covid restrictions since the start of the year as Beijing maintained its zero-Covid policy and by fuel export restrictions the government has imposed on refiners.
The Covid restrictions have also dampened domestic demand for fuels, but analysts expect a pick-up in refinery runs in the current quarter as the government considers making amendments to its Covid policy and steps up infrastructure spending to boost economic growth. Gasoline and jet fuel demand were the worst affected by the Covid restrictions.
According to an earlier Reuters report, Beijing plans to set up a $75-billion infrastructure spending fund to stimulate growth. China booked GDP growth of 0.4 percent for the second quarter of the year, far below analyst expectations because of the worst outbreak of Covid since 2020 in the country.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 20:20 - The $100 Trillion Global Economy In One Chart
The $100 Trillion Global Economy In One Chart
Surpassing the $100 trillion mark is a new milestone for global economic output.
Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop has covered this topic in the past when the world’s GDP was $88 trillion (2020) and then $94 trillion (2021), and now according to the latest projections, the IMF expects the global economy to reach nearly $104 trillion in nominal value by the end of 2022.
Although growth keeps trending upwards, the recovery that was expected in the post-pandemic period is looking strained. Because of recent conflicts, supply chain bottlenecks, and subsequent inflation, global economic projections are getting revised downwards.
Global annual GDP growth for 2022 was initially projected to be 4.4% as of January, but this has since been adjusted to 3.6%.
Note: This data from the IMF represents the most recent nominal projections for end of year as of April 2022.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a broad indicator of the economic activity within a country. It measures the total value of economic output—goods and services—produced within a given time frame by both the private and public sectors.
The 50 Largest Economies in the World
The United States is still the economic leader worldwide, with a GDP of $25.3 trillion—making up nearly one quarter of the global economy. China follows close behind at $19.9 trillion. Here’s a look at the top 10 countries in terms of GDP:
The frontrunner in Europe is Germany at $4.3 trillion, with the UK coming in second place. One significant change since the last reported figures is that Brazil now cracks the top 10, having surpassed South Korea. Russia falls just outside, in 11th place, with a GDP of $1.8 trillion.
While China’s GDP growth has slowed in recent years, projections still indicate that the country will overtake the U.S. by 2030, dethroning the world’s economic leader.
One region also expected to experience growth in the near future is the Middle East and North Africa, thanks to higher oil prices—Iraq and Saudi Arabia in particular are leading this charge. Regional GDP growth in the area is expected to be around 5% in 2022.
The 50 Smallest Economies in the World
Some of the world’s smallest economies were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and have subsequently been the most affected by the inflation and food supply shortages resulting from the war in Ukraine.
Here’s a look at the countries worldwide with the lowest GDP in 2022:
The smallest economy in the world measured in the IMF rankings is Tuvalu at $66 million. Most of the bottom 50 are considered low- to middle-income and emerging/developing countries. According to the World Bank, in developing countries, the level of per capita income in 2022 will be about 5% below the pre-pandemic trends.
Some countries are actually projected to experience negative GDP growth this year, particularly emerging and developing economies in Europe.
For example, Russia is expected to experience a GDP growth rate of -8.5% in 2022, though it still remains to be seen how the cost of war and increasingly harsh global sanctions impact the country’s economic prospects.
Inflation, Stagflation, Recession – How Bad is it?
While global economic growth has already been revised downwards, it’s possible the situation could be even more serious. Organizations like the World Bank say that risks of stagflation are rising. Stagflation, which hasn’t occurred since the 1970s, is defined as an economy that’s experiencing rising inflation combined with a stagnant economic output.
Currently, global consumer inflation is currently pegged at 7%. Daily goods are becoming increasingly difficult to purchase and interest rates are on the rise as central banks worldwide try to control the situation. As recent events in Sri Lanka demonstrate, low-income countries are particularly at risk to economic volatility.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 20:00 - House Democrats Pass Measure To Identify 'Neo-Nazis' In Military, Law Enforcement
House Democrats Pass Measure To Identify ‘Neo-Nazis’ In Military, Law Enforcement
Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,
House Democrats on July 13 voted to add an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual military spending bill, to identify “neo-Nazis” in the military and law enforcement.
The NDAA amendment was sponsored by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) and instructs the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Defense (DOD) to publish a report analyzing “white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity” within military and law enforcement.
The amendment passed in a 218–208 vote where it faced unilateral opposition from Republicans.
“Such behavior, such extremism is a threat to us in all segments of society. There is no reason to believe that our military is any different,” Schneider said on the House floor late on the evening on July 13 in defense of the amendment.
“These are exceptions,” Schneider insisted. “They are rare, but we must do everything we can to identify them and to thwart them before risks become a reality.”
If the amendment is passed by the Senate, the FBI, DHS, and DOD would be required within 180 days to send Congress a report on the number of people discharged from either military service or law enforcement for “white supremacist” or “neo-Nazi” ideology.
House Republicans opposed the amendment, which they said was overly intrusive and “denigrates” law enforcement.
“This amendment attempts to create a problem where none exists by requesting investigations into law enforcement and the armed services for alleged rampant white supremacist or white national sympathies,” one such critic, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), said in opposition to the amendment on the House floor.
This is not the first effort by Democrats to pass such a measure, and similar measures have faced condemnation by Republicans in the past for trying to impose “thought police” on military service members and law enforcement officers.
….
In a reference to George Orwell’s “1984,” Sen Rand Paul said the new departments created by the bill would have essentially been the “thought police” of the military.
“Congressional Democrats have gotten so extreme, so radical, so out of touch with the American people that when they read it, they think this is something worthwhile to do,” he said.
…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 19:40 - US And Russia To Resume Space Flights To International Space Station
US And Russia To Resume Space Flights To International Space Station
Despite the war in Ukraine and Washington’s mission to crush Moscow with sanctions, NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts will resume flights to the International Space Station (ISS), Insider Paper reports.
“To ensure continued safe operations of the International Space Station, protect the lives of astronauts and ensure continuous US presence in space, NASA will resume integrated crews on US crew spacecraft and the Russian Soyuz,“ NASA said in a statement.
NASA said astronaut Frank Rubio would join cosmonauts on a Soyuz rocket to the ISS on September 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The announcement comes amid a massive leadership shakeup in Russia’s state-owned space corporation, Roscosmos. A short communique published via the Kremlin on Friday said Dmitry Rogozin is out as director general of Roscosmos and will be immediately replaced by former Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Rogozi made threats against the West about Russian participation in the ISS (he even threatened to deorbit the ISS). All threats were hollow but further strained space relations between both countries. It’s unknown how Borisov will act toward NASA.
“The station was designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from each space agency to function. No one agency has the capability to function independent of the others,” NASA continued.
On Thursday, NASA announced a Russia-US agreement on seat swap flights to the ISS. “The first woman in Russia’s cosmonaut team may embark on her flight aboard the US Crew Dragon spaceship under the seat swap program on September 1,” Russian state-run media TASS said.
Space relations between Russia and Western countries have deteriorated since the invasion, though new efforts appear to be underway to fix severed ones and keep a professional arrangement with the Americans to maintain the ISS.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 19:20 - Snyder: "The California Dream" Has Become "The California Cesspool"
Snyder: “The California Dream” Has Become “The California Cesspool”
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Once upon a time, California was the hottest destination in the entire country. Millions of young people poured into California in search of a new life, and today it has the largest population of any U.S. state by a very wide margin. But now “the California Dream” has become “the California Cesspool”, and residents are moving to other states on a permanent basis in very large numbers. In fact, at this point a lot of California residents are even choosing to move to Mexico in order to escape the state. Decades of really bad decisions have turned the Golden State into an endless nightmare, and there appears to be no hope on the horizon.
Just look at what has happened to San Francisco. It is one of the wealthiest cities on the entire planet, but everywhere you look there is squalor.
In recent days, a video that a Twitter user named Ricci Wynne posted of children walking home through “one of the city’s open-air drug dens” has already been watched more than two million times…
San Francisco children were recorded on video having to walk past what appeared to be one of the city’s open-air drug dens on their way home from school.
Ricci Wynne posted the video on Twitter last week, writing that the students were getting off the 14 transit line on 8th and Mission Streets when they encountered what appeared to be the homeless encampment sprawled across the sidewalk.
San Francisco doesn’t have just one open air drug market.
They can now be found in multiple locations around the city, and the authorities don’t seem interested in cleaning them up.
So for the children in Wynne’s video, wading through hordes of zombified drug addicts on the way home has just become a part of normal life.
Now ask yourself this question would you want your children to walk through this squalor just to get home from school? @JoeBiden @VP @SpeakerPelosi @SenFeinstein @LondonBreed @SFPDChief #DoBetter #democrats #politics #Police #DRUGS #SanFrancisco #California #crime #DoYourJob #NA pic.twitter.com/ZBa8PApgtC
— Ricci Wynne (@RawRicci415) July 8, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Of course it could be argued that things are even worse down in Los Angeles.
The following is what one reporter encountered during a harrowing visit to Skid Row…
Walking down San Pedro Street to the heart of Skid Row, I see men smoking methamphetamine in the open air and women selling bootleg cigarettes on top of cardboard boxes. Around the corner, a man makes a drug transaction from the window of a silver sedan, a woman in an American-flag bandana flashes her vagina to onlookers, and a shirtless man in a bleached-blond woman’s wig defecates behind a parked police car. Slumped across the entryway of an old garment business, a shoeless, middle-aged junkie injects heroin into his cracked, bare feet.
The police could easily clear Skid Row at any time.
But the politicians won’t let them.
And despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight drug addiction and homelessness, the problem just keeps getting even worse year after year…
The scale of the crisis is astonishing: 40,000 homeless men and women in Los Angeles County suffer from addiction, mental illness, or both. More than 1,000 will die on the streets this year. As I survey the human wreckage along Skid Row, my fear is that the city government is creating a new class of “untouchables,” permanently disconnected from the institutions of society. For the past decade, political leaders have relied on two major policies to address the crisis—“harm reduction” and “housing first”—but despite $619 million in spending in 2018, more people are on the streets than ever. The reality is that Los Angeles has adopted a policy of containment: construct enough “supportive housing” to placate the appetites of the social-services bureaucracy, distribute enough needles to prevent an outbreak of plague, and herd enough men and women into places like Skid Row, where they will not disrupt the political fiction that everything is okay.
This is what life is like in big cities all over the west coast now.
Needless to say, this sort of environment is going to be a breeding ground for crime, and so far this year robbery is up 21 percent in Los Angeles…
Robbery is up an astounding 21% from ytd 2021 in Los Angeles according to lapdonline.org. Moreover, burglary, a non-violent property crime without the use of weapons, is up 16.2% from ytd 2021 according to lapdonline.org. Unfortunately, businesses and the citizens of the city are at an impasse on how to stem the rising robbery rate.
The murder rate continues to surge higher as well. During the first half of 2022, the murder rate in the city was 35 percent higher than it was during the first half of 2020…
Halfway through the year, murders in Los Angeles are surging on a wave of gun violence, following last year’s spike in crime.
The city saw 172 homicides through June 18, a 5.5% increase from the same period last year, and a 35% jump from the first half of 2020, according to Los Angeles Police Department data. Four more murders were registered in the past week, Los Angeles Police Department police chief Michel Moore at the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday.
The politicians in California wanted to create their version of a “liberal utopia” in the state.
Now they have it.
Meanwhile, scientists continue to warn us that the clock is ticking. The entire west coast of the United States sits along “the Ring of Fire”, and a simulation that was just conducted came to the conclusion that a magnitude 7.5 earthquake on the Seattle Fault could potentially produce a giant tsunami that could be over 40 feet tall…
A simulation released by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) shows the impact of a 7.5-magnitude earthquake on the Seattle Fault.
“Tsunami waves could be as high as 42 feet at the Seattle Great Wheel and will reach inland as far as Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park,” Washington State DNR said in a tweet Thursday.
To put that in perspective, the tsunami that hit Fukushima, Japan many years ago was only about 45 feet tall at the peak.
And if such an event does occur, residents of Seattle would have “fewer than 3 minutes” to react…
Scientists found that if a magnitude 7.5 earthquake were to occur on the Seattle Fault, tsunami waves over 40 feet tall could reach the Seattle area in fewer than 3 minutes.
We are being told that such an event will happen someday.
It is just a matter of time.
Personally, I have been warning for years about the potential for a colossal tsunami along the California coastline.
The entire west coast is extremely vulnerable, but most people that live there don’t like to think about such things.
Instead, most people that live there are just going to keep doing what they are doing, and then one day everything will suddenly change in a single moment.
* * *
It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 19:00 - Stagflation Keeps Making A Fool Out Of Paul Krugman
Stagflation Keeps Making A Fool Out Of Paul Krugman
How many times can an Ivy League economist be wrong before they have to turn in their diploma and their Nobel Prize and move on to a job better suited for them, such as food service management? Apparently in the world of establishment economics the best path to success is to fail upwards; Paul Krugman is the proof.
Outside of financial circles the majority of people don’t know or care who Krugman is, but it’s a mistake to dismiss his influence within the mainstream media and politics. You will hear many of his arguments repeated by human parrots when you least expect it. His faulty narratives and illogical conclusions tend to spread into regular dinner table conversation in the weirdest ways.
His best known terrible prediction is perhaps his internet prophecy. In 1998 he predicted that the growth of the web would ‘slow drastically’ and would have little overall meaning for the global economy, comparing the internet to the fax machine in terms of relevance. This might seem like a harmless fail today, but the problem is not the prediction, it’s the fact that Krugman consistently proves that he is arrogant enough to venture wild analysis on subjects he has zero understanding of. This is a characteristic that has followed him around for most of his career.
Another habit of Paul Krugman is his propensity to flip-flop on every economic issue so that when the consequences of events become readily clear he then searches through his backlog of hundreds of contradictory editorials and contradictory comments to find the one prediction that fits the bill; he then proclaims himself the great prognosticator of crisis or recovery depending on whatever happens first.
His very limited mentions of the possibility of a “housing bubble” in articles published in 2006/2007 conflicted greatly with his unicorn optimism on stocks going to the moon. When the housing bubble imploded, he declared that he predicted the whole thing. In truth, his analysis was a joke while others like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff had outlined in great detail exactly what would happen to the housing market years in advance. All Krugman did was vaguely predict a “slowdown” at some point; he never predicted the epic worldwide credit disaster that actually occurred.
Krugman went on to champion an endless array of bailouts, stimulus packages, QE and near zero interest rates in response to the credit crisis. Keynesians only have one answer to every economic problem, which is government spending and central bank fiat printing ad nauseum. Krugman even suggested that the initial bailouts of 2008/2009 were “too small” and argued in favor of trillions more. He was not aware at the time, but a GOA audit of the early bailouts, pursued only because of the relentless efforts of Ron Paul, would reveal that the Federal Reserve had actually created over $16 trillion from thin air.
It is actually the Keynesian arrogance (or perhaps malice?) of central bankers and economists like Krugman that led directly to the stagflationary crisis we are witnessing right now. While supply chain issues certainly abound, the US was suffering from rising prices well before the covid pandemic or the war in Ukraine and resulting sanctions on Russia.
In fact, these events act more like a fog or cover for the REAL cause of inflation, which is a decade of fiat printing by central banks in classic Keynesian fashion. The $6 trillion-plus in covid stimulus in 2020 was nothing more than the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Krugman is partly culpable. This might be the reason why he refused to acknowledge the stagflation threat for years despite mounting evidence, calling price inflation “transitory” until the end of 2021. Then he flip-flopped as usual and noted the “possibility” that prices might stay high and that he might be wrong. This was only after ridiculing many analysts in the alternative economic sphere for sticking by their inflation predictions.
Inflation/stagflation often takes time to circulate through an economy and register in a way that noticeably affects the public. In the 1970s, the process took around 10 years to culminate. It grew exponentially until the early 1980s when Paul Volcker finally hiked interest rates to around 20%, crushing many businesses in the process. Because America has enjoyed the rise of the dollar as the world reserve currency since that time, trillions in fiat stimulus was not an immediate threat because those dollars were sure to circulate into the coffers of numerous foreign banks and stay overseas. Now, the dollar’s reserve status is in decline, more and more greenbacks are staying within circulation in the US, there are more and more dollar’s chasing less and less goods and the party is finally over.
A week ago Krugman once again put his foot in his mouth. After admitting that he was wrong on stagflation, he flip-flopped, stating that the ‘stagflation narrative is collapsing’ and dismissed concerns about higher prices. And, as always he attacked other economists, saying they were just ‘propping up’ a threat that’s in reversal.
Krugman’s claim was that the Fed’s 75 bps rate hike along with falling stocks was an indicator that inflation was over. He refused to even entertain the idea of stagflation, which is a combination of rising prices and declines in other sectors of the economy including GDP and employment. Krugman’s flip-flop was built on a naive understanding of inflation/stagflation and what it entails. For him, plunging stocks mean deflation, and being a Keynesian, deflation cannot be tolerated.
Then, the CPI print came in on Wednesday and made Krugman look rather foolish, with official inflation numbers hitting 9.1% and new 40 year highs, well above market expectations (and Krugman’s expectations). Krugman refused to admit defeat, saying that 9.1% inflation was not much to be worried about.
His argument? That the CPI print is “outdated” because of recent declines in stocks and gasoline. This is the same idiotic narrative regurgitated by Joe Biden and the White House recently. If CPI had come in lower than last month, would Krugman and Biden be shaking their heads and telling the public that the numbers are “outdated” and not a reflection of the real situation? No. They would be crowing on the mountain tops and demanding praise. They would be ignoring the fleeting circumstances of stocks or gas prices instead of hyperfocusing on them.
But what is reality?
CPI is actually a rigged statistic designed to downplay real inflation rates. If we were to calculate inflation according to the methods used by the government in the 1970s and 1980s the actual inflation rate would be closer to 17%. But even if we ignore true inflation, a CPI print of 9.1% is not to be taken lightly.
Stagflation is a fact according to the spread between rising prices and falling GDP as well as frozen wages. The only technical factor that is missing is growing unemployment, but that is a situation developing now as job growth slows and more companies announce impending layoffs.
Stock markets have little to no bearing on stagflation status (sorry Paul). Stocks are a TRAILING indicator of economic instabilities that have long been in play, not a leading indicator of what is about to happen in the future. As for gasoline prices falling, they have barely dipped. And, this minor dip was probably helped along by Biden once again dumping millions of barrels of oil onto the market from the US strategic reserves. This is not enough to dismiss stagflation, not by any means.
For Krugman, the bigger picture doesn’t exist. He is only interested in the data of the moment and being right no matter what. If even one indicator supports his biased position, he will focus on it and ignore hundreds of other indicators that contradict his position. When his position becomes obviously untenable he shifts stance and acts as if he saw the danger coming all along. Again, how many times can an economist be wrong or flip-flop on his claims before he is no longer relevant? It would seem that Krugman’s novelty has worn off and now it’s time for him to hang up his hat.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 18:40 - Dog Names Are Racist Too, According To Scholars
Dog Names Are Racist Too, According To Scholars
Authored by Terrance Kible via Campus Reform,
Academics recently applauded a Social Psychology Quarterly study purporting to show a disparity in the time dogs were adopted based on racial associations with the animals’ names.
“White” names, according to the study, resulted in shorter adoption times compared to “Black” names.
The correlations were largely concentrated around pit bulls, “a breed that is stereotyped as dangerous and racialized as Black,” according to the study.
Below are examples of academics’ reactions to the study.
Temple University
Timothy Welbeck, director of the Center for Anti-Racism Research and an assistant professor of instruction, retweeted the story, posing the rhetorical question “WhY iS EveRyTHingG aBOuT rACE?”
“WhY iS EveRyTHinG aBOuT rACE?”
Because everything is about race… https://t.co/T2t7LrTcWP
— Timothy N. Welbeck, Esq. (@timothywelbeck) June 7, 2022
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He answers his own question with, “Because everything is about race…”
Welbeck told Campus Reform that “something as seemingly as [sic] innocuous as dog adoption can have lasting racial implications.”
University of Texas at Austin
Assistant Professor of Sociology Chantal Hailey commented in a now-deleted tweet obtained by Campus Reform, “Anti-blackness is so pervasive it even expands to dog names.”
Hailey conducts research “at the intersections of race and ethnicity, stratification, urban sociology, education, and criminology.”
University of Akron
“Fascinating research! Amazing idea”, Daniela Jauk-Ajamie tweeted regarding the study, an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice.
Fascinating research! Amazing idea. https://t.co/ZTIKRfCOo3
— Daniela Jauk-Ajamie (@DanielaJauk) June 7, 2022
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Jauk-Ajamie’s work focuses on “gardening in incarcerated settings, women in the criminal (in)justice system, and qualitative methods.”
Georgetown University
Don Moynihan, professor at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, opined that the study was an “[i]nteresting example of how racialized names still evoke bias even when dealing with non-humans.”
Interesting example of how racialized names still evoke bias even when dealing with non-humans. https://t.co/ef5wTvXfWk
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) June 7, 2022
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Moynihan provided comments to Campus Reform, expressing his view that there exists “a relatively sophisticated body of work in this area that needs to be accounted for to understand the contribution.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Chief Diversity Officer Nef Walker described the study as “Must read work”, and “Fascinating research that supports the resiliency of racialized names and the pervasiveness of antiBlackness [sic].”
Fascinating research that supports the resiliency of racialized names and the pervasiveness of antiBlackness. Must read work. https://t.co/5me6YhsbYh
— Dr. Nef (@NefWalker) June 7, 2022
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Walker has written on [t]he intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation in intercollegiate sports”, and “[h]egemonic masculinity and the institutionalized bias of women in men’s collegiate basketball.”
Denison University
Shiri Noy, assistant professor of sociology, applauded the study’s authors for their “cutting edge work”.
Natasha just doing her cutting edge work as usual, congrats to you and Bradley! https://t.co/9p9thvemL5
— Shiri Noy (@shiri_noy) June 7, 2022
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“[C]ongrats,” she added.
Campus Reform reached out to all parties mentioned here. This article will be updated accordingly.
* * *
Follow @terrancekible on Twitter
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 18:20 - "Unjustifiable" – Musk Lawyers Move To Delay "Warp Speed" Twitter Trial
“Unjustifiable” – Musk Lawyers Move To Delay “Warp Speed” Twitter Trial
Three days after Twitter sued Elon Musk to force him to buy the company, the world’s richest man has responded with a request to delay the “meritless” and “breakneck speed” case until next year.
Twitter asked the court to expedite the proceedings, requesting a trial by mid-September, citing risks from the recent economic downturn and being held in limbo by a buyer: “to protect Twitter and its stockholders from the continuing market risk and operational harm resulting from Musk’s attempt to bully his way out of an airtight merger agreement.”
Today, in a 14-page filing, WSJ reports that Musk’s lawyers called Twitter’s request an unjustifiable “bid for extreme expedition.”
Musk is requesting a Feb. 13, 2023, trial at the earliest, noting Twitter’s request is “an extremely rapid schedule for a case of this enormous magnitude.”
In Friday’s filing, Mr. Musk’s lawyers said:
“The core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fact and expert intensive, requiring substantial time for discovery.”
Mr. Musk’s lawyers argued that “it is unnecessary to resolve these weighty considerations on a breakneck schedule” and asked for a trial date on or after Feb. 13 of next year, adding that the debt financing was valid until April 25, 2023.
Twitter was rushing to court after “a two-month treasure hunt of delays, technical bottlenecks, evasive answers, and, ultimately, refusals,” Mr. Musk’s lawyers said in the filing.
They added that Twitter was trying to “shroud the truth” over fake accounts on the service, an issue that Mr. Musk has made central to his desire to pull out of the deal.
NYTimes reports that, in the legal filing, Mr. Musk’s lawyers reiterated many of the same arguments they had made earlier this month when the billionaire said he intended to terminate the deal. Twitter did not conduct a rigorous count of fake accounts and stymied Mr. Musk’s efforts to understand how spam was tallied, the filing said.
“In a May 6 meeting with Twitter executives, Musk was flabbergasted to learn just how meager Twitter’s process was,” Musk’s lawyers wrote.
“Human reviewers randomly sampled 100 accounts per day (less than 0.00005% of daily users) and applied unidentified standards to somehow conclude every quarter for nearly three years that fewer than 5% of Twitter users were false or spam. That’s it. No automation, no AI, no machine learning.”
Mr. Musk’s side also took issue with other elements of the Twitter suit, including the company’s assertion that the billionaire had disparaged the business he was planning to buy.
“With the sense of humor of a bot, Twitter claims that Musk is damaging the company with tweets like a Chuck Norris meme and a poop emoji. Twitter ignores that Musk is its second largest shareholder with a far greater economic stake than the entire Twitter board,” the filing states.
The case is Twitter v. Musk, 22-0613, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington), and we suspect, given the already boisterous rhetoric, that this is going to be a long and protected legal battle.
A judge will hear arguments on Tuesday at 11am for Twitter’s request for a September trial.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 18:13 - Union-Organizing Surges To Six-Year High
Union-Organizing Surges To Six-Year High
Over the first half of 2022, 1,411 American workplaces filed union-organizing petitions with the National Labor Relations Board—the highest mark since 2015, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Out of the workplace petitions filed in the first half, about 400 have voted to approve a union and 150 have shot the idea down. The balance have either withdrawn the petition or have votes still pending. The 400 workplaces that approved unions represent over 21,000 employees.
While the petition activity represents a 69% surge over 2021, union membership hovers near historic lows, with only 10.3% of U.S. workers belonging to unions. In 1964, almost 30% did, according to university research cited by the Journal.
Employees have increased leverage in a tighter job market and especially in industries beset by worker shortages. “Tight labor markets certainly are conducive to organizing and to workers having more leverage in general,” UCLA professor Chris Tilly tells the Journal.
The year has brought some high-profile victories for the union movement. In April, workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse approved the first-ever union of the retail giant’s employees, by a 55% to 45% vote. Last week, same organizing group—Amazon Labor Union—announced it was backing similar efforts at warehouses in Campbellsville, KY and Albany.
Columbia University’s Mark Cohen saw little benefit to the move in Staten Island, calling Amazon a “high disciplined and regimented” business that pays premium wages and solid benefits. “They might be forced to let people work eight hours but those people will make less money,” he told the Associated Press.
Starbucks is another high-profile target of union-organizing efforts. More than 140 of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations have unionized, with about another 120 petitions filed at other ones.
A March employee walkout at a Denver Starbucks (Caleb Alvarado/The Guardian) Greater unionization is a mixed bag for American workers as a whole. To the extent unions compel employers to raise wages and accept reduced worker productivity, it discourages additional hiring and encourages investment in automated alternatives to human beings.
Incumbent, unionized workers may benefit, but at a price paid by what Frédéric Bastiat would describe as the “unseen” workers who are never hired—to say nothing of higher labor costs passed on to society in the form of higher prices.
Nonetheless, a 2021 Gallup poll found public fondness for unions had climbed to a 56-year high, with 68% of Americans expressing approval.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/15/2022 – 18:00
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