- Escobar: Xi Of Arabia & The PetroYuan Drive
Escobar: Xi Of Arabia & The PetroYuan Drive
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
Xi Jinping has made an offer difficult for the Arabian Peninsula to ignore: China will be guaranteed buyers of your oil and gas, just pay us in yuan…
It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era.
But it’s more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is way too sophisticated to engage in direct confrontation, especially with a wounded, ferocious Empire. So there’s way more going here than meets the (Eurasian) eye.
Xi of Arabia’s announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan. From now on, Xi said, China will use the yuan for oil trade, through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, and invited the Persian Gulf monarchies to get on board. Nearly 80 percent of trade in the global oil market continues to be priced in US dollars.
Ostensibly, Xi of Arabia, and his large Chinese delegation of officials and business leaders, met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to promote increased trade. Beijing promised to “import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC.” And the same goes for natural gas.
China has been the largest importer of crude on the planet for five years now – half of it from the Arabian peninsula, and more than a quarter from Saudi Arabia. So it’s no wonder that the prelude for Xi of Arabia’s lavish welcome in Riyadh was a special op-ed expanding the trading scope, and praising increased strategic/commercial partnerships across the GCC, complete with “5G communications, new energy, space and digital economy.”
Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down on the “strategic choice” of China and wider Arabia. Over $30 billion in trade deals were duly signed – quite a few significantly connected to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.
And that brings us to the two key connections established by Xi of Arabia: the BRI and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The Silk Roads of Arabia
BRI will get a serious boost by Beijing in 2023, with the return of the Belt and Road Forum. The first two bi-annual forums took place in 2017 and 2019. Nothing happened in 2021 because of China’s strict zero-Covid policy, now abandoned for all practical purposes.
The year 2023 is pregnant with meaning as BRI was first launched 10 years ago by Xi, first in Central Asia (Astana) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta).
BRI not only embodies a complex, multi-track trans-Eurasian trade/connectivity drive but it is the overarching Chinese foreign policy concept at least until the mid-21st century. So the 2023 forum is expected to bring to the forefront a series of new and redesigned projects adapted to a post-Covid and debt-distressed world, and most of all to the loaded Atlanticism vs. Eurasianism geopolitical and geoeconomic sphere.
Also significantly, Xi of Arabia in December followed Xi of Samarkand in September – his first post-Covid overseas trip, for the SCO summit in which Iran officially joined as a full member. China and Iran in 2021 clinched a 25-year strategic partnership deal worth a potential $400 billion in investments. That’s the other node of China’s two-pronged West Asia strategy.
The nine permanent SCO members now represent 40 percent of the world’s population. One of their key decisions in Samarkand was to increase bilateral trade, and overall trade, in their own currencies.
And that further connects us to what has happening in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in full synchronicity with Riyadh: the meeting of the Supreme Eurasia Economic Council, the policy implementation arm of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Kyrgyzstan, could not have been more straightforward: “The work has accelerated in the transition to national currencies in mutual settlements… The process of creating a common payment infrastructure and integrating national systems for the transmission of financial information has begun.”
The next Supreme Eurasian Economic Council will take place in Russia in May 2023, ahead of the Belt and Road Forum. Take them together and we have the lineaments of the geoeconomic road map ahead: the drive towards the petroyuan proceeding in parallel to the drive towards a “common paying infrastructure” and most of all, a new alternative currency bypassing the US dollar.
That’s exactly what the head of the EAEU’s macroeconomic policy, Sergey Glazyev, has been designing, side by side with Chinese specialists.
Total Financial War
The move towards the petroyuan will be fraught with immense peril.
In every serious geoeconomic gaming scenario, it’s a given that an enfeebled petrodollar translates as the end of the imperial free lunch in effect for over five decades.
Concisely, in 1971, then-US President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon pulled the US from the gold standard; three years later, after the 1973 oil shock, Washington approached the Saudi oil minister, notorious Sheikh Yamani, with the proverbial offer-you-can’t-refuse: we buy your oil in US dollars and in return you buy our Treasury bonds, lots of weapons, and recycle whatever’s left in our banks.
Cue to Washington now suddenly able to dispense helicopter money – backed by nothing – ad infinitum, and the US dollar as the ultimate hegemonic weapon, complete with an array of sanctions over 30 nations who dare to disobey the unilaterally imposed “rules-based international order.”
Impulsively rocking this imperial boat is anathema. So Beijing and the GCC will adopt the petroyuan slowly but surely, and certainly with zero fanfare. The heart of the matter, once again, is their mutual exposure to the Western financial casino.
In the Chinese case, what to do, for instance, with those whopping $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds. In the Saudi case, it’s hard to think about “strategic autonomy” – such as what’s enjoyed by Iran – when the petrodollar is a staple of the Western financial system. The menu of possible imperial reactions includes everything from a soft coup/ regime change to Shock and Awe over Riyadh – followed by regime change.
Yet what the Chinese – and the Russians – are aiming at goes way beyond a Saudi (and Emirati) predicament. Beijing and Moscow have clearly identified how everything – the oil market, global commodities markets – is tied to the role of the US dollar as reserve currency.
And that’s exactly what the EAEU discussions; the SCO discussions; from now on the BRICS+ discussions; and Beijing’s two-pronged strategy across West Asia are focused to undermine.
Beijing and Moscow, within the BRICS framework, and further on within the SCO and the EAEU, have been closely coordinating their strategy since the first sanctions on Russia post-Maidan 2014, and the de facto trade war against China unleashed in 2018.
Now, after the February 2022 Special Military Operation launched by Moscow in Ukraine and NATO has devolved into, for all practical purposes, war against Russia, we have stepped beyond Hybrid War territory and are deep into Total Financial War.
SWIFTly drifting away
The whole Global South absorbed the “lesson” of the collective (institutional) west freezing, as in stealing, the foreign reserves of a G20 member, on top of it a nuclear superpower. If that happened to Russia, it could happen to anyone. There are no “rules” anymore.
Russia since 2014 has been improving its SPFS payment system, in parallel with China’s CIPS, both bypassing the western-led SWIFT banking messaging system, and increasingly used by Central Banks across Central Asia, Iran and India. All across Eurasia, more people are ditching Visa and Mastercard and using UnionPay and/or Mir cards, not to mention Alipay and WeChat Pay, both extremely popular across Southeast Asia.
Of course the petrodollar – and the US dollar, still representing under 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves – will not ride into oblivion overnight. Xi of Arabia is just the latest chapter in a seismic shift now driven by a select group in the Global South, and not by the former “hyperpower.”
Trading in their own currencies and a new, global alternative currency is right at the top of the priorities of that long list of nations – from South America to Northern Africa and West Asia – eager to join BRICS+ or the SCO, and in quite a few cases, both.
The stakes could not be higher. And it’s all about subjugation or exercising full sovereignty. So let’s leave the last essential words to the foremost diplomat of our troubled times, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov, at the international interparty conference Eurasian Choice as a Basis for Strengthening Sovereignty:
“The main reason for today’s growing tensions is the stubborn striving of the collective West to maintain a historically diminishing domination in the international arena by any means it can… It is impossible to impede the strengthening of the independent centers of economic growth, financial might and political influence. They are emerging on our common continent of Eurasia, in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.”
All aboard…the Sovereign Train.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 23:40 - These Are The Richest Billionaires In Each Country
These Are The Richest Billionaires In Each Country
While there are nearly 8 billion people in the world, just over 3,000 are billionaires as of November 2022. As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang notes, this tiny group of people is worth nearly $11.8 trillion – Equivalent to about 11.8% of global GDP.
Where do these billionaires live? This graphic by Truman Du uses data from Forbes to map out the richest billionaires around the world.
The Full List
As it turns out, billionaires are a lot more geographically concentrated than you might think.
In fact, of the 195 officially recognized countries around the world, only 76 are home to billionaires. And even within these countries, there’s vast disparities between the quantity of billionaires.
Here’s a breakdown of all the countries that have at least one billionaire. For countries with more than one, we’ve highlighted the billionaire with the highest net worth as of November 28, 2022:
Country/territory Name Net worth ($B) Main source of wealth (sector) 🇩🇿 Algeria Issad Rebrab 5.1 food 🇦🇷 Argentina Marcos Galperin 4.0 e-commerce 🇦🇲 Armenia Ruben Vardanyan 1.3 investment banking 🇦🇺 Australia Gina Rinehart 27.9 mining 🇦🇹 Austria Georg Stumpf 7.9 real estate, construction 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Muhammed Aziz Khan 1.0 power 🇧🇧 Barbados Rihanna 1.4 music, cosmetics 🇧🇪 Belgium Eric Wittouck 9.0 investments 🇧🇿 Belize Kenneth Dart 4.0 investments 🇧🇷 Brazil Jorge Paulo Lemann 15.6 beer 🇧🇬 Bulgaria Georgi & Kiril Domuschiev 1.9 animal health, investments 🇨🇦 Canada David Thomson 53.2 media 🇨🇱 Chile Iris Fontbona 19.6 mining 🇨🇳 China Zhong Shanshan 66.7 beverages, pharmaceuticals 🇨🇴 Colombia Luis Carlos Sarmiento 6.3 banking 🇨🇾 Cyprus John Fredriksen 11.4 shipping 🇨🇿 Czechia Renata Kellnerova 16.0 finance, telecommunications 🇩🇰 Denmark Anders Holch Povlsen 11.9 fashion retail 🇪🇬 Egypt Nassef Sawiris 7.2 construction, investments 🇪🇪 Estonia Kristo Kaarmann 1.4 payments, banking 🇫🇮 Finland Antti Herlin 3.9 elevators, escalators 🇫🇷 France Bernard Arnault 179.5 LVMH 🇬🇪 Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili 4.8 investments 🇩🇪 Germany Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr. 35.1 supermarkets 🇬🇷 Greece Vicky Safra 7.1 banking 🇬🇬 Guernsey Stephen Lansdown 2.3 financial services 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Li Ka-shing 33.0 diversified 🇭🇺 Hungary Sandor Csanyi 1.1 finance, real estate 🇮🇸 Iceland Thor Bjorgolfsson 2.5 investments 🇮🇳 India Gautam Adani 133.6 infrastructure, commodities 🇮🇩 Indonesia R. Budi Hartono 23.4 banking, tobacco 🇮🇪 Ireland John Collison & Patrick Collison 8,1 payments software 🇮🇱 Israel Eyal Ofer 14.4 real estate, shipping 🇮🇹 Italy Giovanni Ferrero 34.4 Nutella, chocolates 🇯🇵 Japan Tadashi Yanai 29.2 fashion retail 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Vladimir Kim 5.0 mining 🇱🇧 Lebanon Taha Mikati 2.8 telecom 🇱🇮 Liechtenstein Christoph Zeller 2.2 dental materials 🇲🇴 Macau Hoi Kin Hong 1.2 real estate 🇲🇾 Malaysia Quek Leng Chan 10.2 banking, property 🇲🇽 Mexico Carlos Slim Helu 86.2 telecom 🇲🇨 Monaco Stefano Pessina 9.3 drugstores 🇲🇦 Morocco Aziz Akhannouch 1.8 petroleum 🇳🇵 Nepal Binod Chaudhary 1.5 diversified 🇳🇱 Netherlands Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken 15.0 Heineken 🇳🇿 New Zealand Graeme Hart 10.1 investments 🇳🇬 Nigeria Aliko Dangote 12.9 cement, sugar 🇳🇴 Norway Andreas Halvorsen 6.6 hedge funds 🇴🇲 Oman Suhail Bahwan 2.0 diversified 🇵🇪 Peru Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor 4.3 finance 🇵🇭 Philippines Manuel Villar 7.0 real estate 🇵🇱 Poland Michal Solowow 6.0 investments 🇵🇹 Portugal Maria Fernanda Amorim 4.5 energy, investments 🇶🇦 Qatar Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani 1.9 hotels 🇷🇴 Romania Ion Stoica & Matei Zaharia 1.6 data analytics 🇷🇺 Russia Andrey Melnichenko 27.0 coal, fertilizers 🇸🇬 Singapore Li Xiting 16.6 medical devices 🇸🇰 Slovakia Ivan Chrenko 1.6 real estate 🇿🇦 South Africa Johann Rupert 9.0 luxury goods 🇰🇷 South Korea Jay Y. Lee 7.9 samsung 🇪🇸 Spain Amancio Ortega 62.5 Zara 🇰🇳 St. Kitts and Nevis Myron Wentz 1.3 health products 🇸🇿 Swaziland (Eswatini) Nathan Kirsh 5.4 retail, real estate 🇸🇪 Sweden Stefan Persson 15.3 H&M 🇨🇭Switzerland Guillaume Pousaz 23.0 fintech 🇹🇼 Taiwan Zhang Congyuan 6.7 shoes 🇹🇿 Tanzania Mohammed Dewji 1.5 diversified 🇹🇭 Thailand Sarath Ratanavadi 12.2 energy 🇹🇷 Turkey Ibrahim Erdemoglu 6.5 carpet 🇺🇦 Ukraine Rinat Akhmetov 4.3 steel, coal 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates Pavel Durov 15.1 messaging app 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Michael Platt 15.2 hedge funds 🇺🇸 United States Elon Musk 191.2 Tesla, SpaceX 🇻🇪 Venezuela Juan Carlos Escotet 3.2 banking 🇻🇳 Vietnam Pham Nhat Vuong 4.7 diversified 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Strive Masiyiwa 1.2 telecom The United States is well known to have one of the highest concentrations of billionaires. It’s home to over 900, with Elon Musk the wealthiest of them all with a staggering net worth of over $191 billion in November 2022. That makes him not just the richest billionaire in America, but the richest person in the world.
China has the second highest concentration of billionaires, with 400 ultra-wealthy that have a combined net worth of $1.45 trillion. China’s richest billionaire, Zhong Shanshan, is the founder of the Nongfu Spring beverage company.
Interestingly, there are no clear patterns when it comes to the type of industry or sector that these billionaires are involved in. The exception is the U.S., where a significant number of billionaires are linked to the tech industry.
And it’s important to note that some heads of states are reportedly billionaires, and in many cases might be the wealthiest people in their respective countries. But their wealth is often a state secret, well-diversified, and too difficult to accurately estimate.
Male vs. Female Billionaires
One trend that does stand out is the number of men versus women who are billionaires. Of the 76 billionaires on the list, only 7 are women.
This pattern is also evident when looking at the entire billionaire population—of the 3,311 billionaires worldwide, only 12.9% are women.
It’s worth mentioning that this population of billionaire women is rising. According to Forbes, the 2021 list included 328 women, 36% more than in 2020.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 23:20 - Setting The Record Straight On Ivermectin
Setting The Record Straight On Ivermectin
Authored by David Henderson and Charles Hooper via The Brownstone Institute,
The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a panoply of lies and evidence-light declarations that were less intended to inform Americans than to consolidate power and buy time. Among these were Anthony Fauci’s famous shift from arguing against wearing masks, to recommending wearing one, and, finally, to wearing two.
Fauci also tried to convince us that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not manipulated in a lab even though his inner circle had emailed him about “unusual features” of the virus that looked “potentially engineered.” And, of course, we had “fifteen days to stop the spread,” an evergreen concept that dragged on for two years. Lest readers fault us for forgetting, there was also the “gain of function” controversy, the focused protection battle, school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine misrepresentations.
These topics have received much public attention. The one pandemic topic that hasn’t, and is nonetheless important, is the maligned ivermectin. It’s time to set the record straight.
If you’ve followed the news closely over the last two years, you’ve probably heard a few things about ivermectin.
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First, that it’s a veterinary medicine intended for horses and cows.
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Second, that the FDA and other government regulatory agencies recommended against its use for COVID-19.
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Third, that even the inventor and manufacturer of ivermectin, Merck & Co., came out against it.
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Fourth, that one of the largest studies showing that ivermectin worked for COVID-19 was retracted for data fraud.
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And, finally, that the largest and best study of ivermectin, the TOGETHER trial, showed that ivermectin didn’t work.
Let’s consider the evidence.
Ivermectin has a distinguished history, and it may have benefits comparable to those of penicillin. The anti-parasitic’s discovery led to a Nobel Prize and subsequent billions of safe administrations around the world, even among children and pregnant women. “Ivermectin is widely available worldwide, inexpensive, and one of the safest drugs in modern medicine.”
The FDA put out a special warning against using ivermectin for COVID-19. The FDA’s warning, which included language such as, “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death,” and “highly toxic,” might suggest that the FDA was warning against pills laced with poison, not a drug the FDA had already approved as safe. Why did it become dangerous when used for COVID-19? The FDA didn’t say.
Because of the FDA’s rules, if it were to make any statement on ivermectin, it was obliged to attack it. The FDA prohibits the promotion of drugs for unapproved uses. Since fighting SARS-CoV-2 was an unapproved use of ivermectin, the FDA couldn’t have advocated use without obvious hypocrisy. Ivermectin’s discoverer, Merck & Co., had multiple reasons to disparage its own drug.
Merck, too, couldn’t have legally “promoted” ivermectin for COVID-19 without a full FDA approval, something that would have taken years and many millions of dollars. Plus, Merck doesn’t make much money from cheap, generic ivermectin but was hoping to find success with its new, expensive drug, Lagevrio (molnupiravir).
A large study of ivermectin for COVID-19 by Elgazzar et al. was withdrawn over charges of plagiarism and faked data. Many media reports seem fixated on this one dubious study, but it was one of many clinical studies. After the withdrawn studies have been removed from consideration, there are 15 trials that suggest that ivermectin doesn’t work for COVID-19 and 78 that do.
The TOGETHER trial received significant positive press. The New York Times quoted two experts who had seen the results. One stated, “There’s really no sign of any benefit [from ivermectin],” while the other said, “At some point it will become a waste of resources to continue studying an unpromising approach.”
While the Elgazzar paper was quickly dismissed, the TOGETHER trial was acclaimed. It shouldn’t have been. Researchers who have analyzed it have found 31 critical problems (impossible data; extreme conflicts of interest; blinding failure), 22 serious problems (results were delayed six months; conflicting data), and 21 major problems (multiple, conflicting randomization protocols) with it.
While the popular narrative is that the TOGETHER trial showed that ivermectin didn’t work for COVID-19, the actual results belie that conclusion: ivermectin was associated with a 12 percent lower risk of death, a 23 percent lower risk of mechanical ventilation, a 17 percent lower risk of hospitalization, and a 10 percent lower risk of extended ER observation or hospitalization. We have calculated that the probability that ivermectin helped the patients in the TOGETHER trial ranged from 26 percent for the median number of days to clinical recovery to 91 percent for preventing hospitalization. The TOGETHER trial’s results should be reported accurately.
Based on the clinical evidence from the 93 trials that ivermectin reduced mortality by an average of 51 percent, and on the estimated infection fatality rate of COVID-19, about 400 infected Americans aged 60-69 would need to be treated with ivermectin to statistically prevent one death in that group. The total cost of the ivermectin to prevent that one death: $40,000.
(Based on the GoodRx website, a generic prescription for ivermectin is priced at approximately $40. Roughly 2.5 prescriptions would be needed per person to receive the average dose of 150 mg per patient.)
How much is your life worth? We’re betting it’s worth far more than $40,000.
When the next pandemic strikes, by necessity we’ll rely on older drugs because newer ones require years of development. Ivermectin is a repurposed drug that helps, and could have helped so much more. It deserves recognition, not disparagement. What we really need, however, is a way to inoculate ourselves against the lies and misrepresentations of powerful public figures, organizations, and drug companies. Sadly, there are no such vaccines for that contagion.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 23:00 -
- Where Real Wages Are Falling Most Sharply
Where Real Wages Are Falling Most Sharply
Wages are rising, but they are not keeping up with inflation.
Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that while pay negotiations may have resulted in wage increases in several sectors this year, overall increases will remain below the rise in consumer prices in many countries, as confirmed by data released by the OECD in its macroeconomic report.
The war in Ukraine has significantly increased prices, particularly for energy, adding to central bank largesse-inspired inflationary pressures at a time when the cost of living was already rising rapidly around the world. As a result, global financial conditions have tightened substantially this year and the outlook for labor markets remains uncertain. In most OECD countries, average wage growth has been slower than inflation, reducing household purchasing power despite government measures to mitigate the impact of soaring food and energy prices.
As Statista’s infographic shows, Switzerland is for the time being one of the few economies analyzed that seems to have been spared.
You will find more infographics at Statista
In the United States, the average decline in real wages for the entire population – across all sectors and income levels – was just over 2 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022.
In Europe, Germany and Spain saw even more pronounced declines in purchasing power, with real incomes falling by just over 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively, nationwide.
Several factors explain the differences between countries, such as differences in exposure to inflation, but also in social protection measures.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 22:40 - Leftists Aren't Capable Of Surviving Economic Collapse – Here's Why
Leftists Aren’t Capable Of Surviving Economic Collapse – Here’s Why
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
There is one factor that constantly stands out as absolutely essential to a person’s chances at surviving a crisis event, and that factor is mindset. Experience and training are highly valuable, having proper tools and preps on hand is a huge advantage. But in the end, without mental toughness and the ability to adapt the most prepared person in the world will still likely bite the dust.
Mental toughness is something that can be taught, to a point. This is the entire purpose of basic training methods used in the military: To take mundane details and elevate them in the minds of trainees while wearing them down with physical punishment. The goal is to condition the mind to ignore distraction, to ignore fear and pain while focusing on the task at hand. Failure is not an option in war, just as it is not an option in survival. Those who embrace distraction and embrace failure because they think it will make things easier for them are filtered out of the recruitment pool, or the gene pool.
It is no coincidence that the US military today is dealing with some of the worst recruitment conditions they have ever seen in terms of people being physically and mentally incapable of finishing basic training. The Pentagon currently estimates that 77% of young Americans are unfit for recruitment without a waiver for obesity, drug use and mental health problems. Meaning, Gen Z is so unfit physically and mentally if there was a major war almost 80% of them would be erased from existence.
The problem has become so bad that militaries in the US and throughout the west are being forced to lower standards just to meet minimum personnel goals. One can argue that many young people don’t want to join the military anyway, but this is besides the point. Even if they wanted to, they would not be up to the task.
There are a number of reasons for this development, but I would suggest that the spread of leftist ideology among 63% of Americans age 18-29 according to polls has created a survival vacuum – A generation of mental weaklings.
It’s important to remember that younger people have adopted more liberal views for decades, but the political left is not liberal today. The leftists of today are full-bore Marxists, both economically and culturally. They support establishment centralization, they support economic centralization, they support corporate centralization, they support authoritarianism and censorship, they support moral relativism and they applaud the concept of an all pervasive welfare state.
In 1980 you might have been able to find a large number of mentally tough people that considered themselves Democrats. Today, you will not find anyone.
With America hovering in a precarious netherworld between stagflationary crisis and deflationary crisis depending on which poison the Federal Reserve chooses to give the country, the stage has been set for an economic disaster similar to the Great Depression or worse (read my analysis on this situation HERE). In two years or less, our system, which is already dealing with a number of threats including high prices and supply chain instability, will not remain functional in the manner most people are accustomed.
If we accept this inevitability, we must then ask a logical question: Who is going to rebuild? Whoever inherits the mantle will either bring America back to freedom and prosperity, or plunge our society into perpetual tyranny. It all depends on who survives the crisis.
One thing that gives me some hope is the fact that leftists as a sub-group of our population are completely incapable of surviving a major economic crisis event. This is not to say that I wish them all to die; I’m only pointing out the reality that most of them won’t make it because they are ill equipped to handle a calamity. Here are the reasons why a post-collapse world would probably be devoid of common leftists…
Leftists Thrive On Crisis, But Die Out During Collapse
Leftists have a tendency to exploit crisis and tragedy to shore up power and expand their numbers through fear, but there’s a problem with this tactic. If the crisis is fabricated, a tempest in a teapot, then they do very well; if the crisis turns into an actual disaster with real world consequences including financial decline, supply chain disruptions, shortages and civil unrest, they have no tools to deal with the effects other than mob action and looting.
What happens if they use mob action and looting when the rule of law is no longer a factor in a country with millions of guns? They will die, by the tens of thousands, as people defend their businesses and homes. The violent hordes we witnessed during the BLM riots would not last long during a collapse scenario where people are more inclined to use deadly force.
Leftists Are Anti-Preparedness
The political left has spent the better part of the past 15 years demonizing the concept of preparedness as a tinfoil hat philosophy for “right-wing extremists.” They have set themselves up for complete failure by refusing to acknowledge the practicality of prepping, just so they can attack their political opponents. The stupidity of it is truly mind boggling.
There are some indications that the covid lockdowns may have shocked a small number of them out of their foolishness. It’s hard to deny the threat of economic collapse when the beginnings of collapse are right in front of your face. That said, prepping is not the only requirement for survival, and progressives buying a few months of food and some guns is not going to save them.
Leftists Have An Aversion To Hardship
The vast majority of people that argue in favor of an expanding welfare state are on the left. While conservatives support individual charity for those that deserve it, leftists believe that people need to be forced by government to provide and pay for others who may not deserve it. This ideal is driven by their desire to avoid hardship.
I find that leftists often have delusions of grandeur. They assume that they are destined for great things, that they are smarter than the rest of us and that work or sacrifice are problems relegated to the rural “peasants” in “flyover country.” Their vision of work is a daycare, a college campus, a place to socialize, find comfort and self identity, do the minimal amount of labor required and then collect a paycheck. Just look how leftist dominated Twitter was being operated a few months ago – It was not a workplace, it was a day spa for lunatics.
These kinds of people are not equipped to endure the backbreaking struggle necessary to build a survivable environment. They wouldn’t know where to begin. When confronted with hard times, leftists do not ask “How can I fix this problem and improve my situation?” Instead they ask “Who is to blame for my misery and how can I make them pay?”
Leftists Have No Practical Skill Sets
The avoidance of technical skill sets is a real problem for progressives. There are a handful of people on the left that engage in micro-farming and other basic skills as a form of activism, but they are few and their methods are limited by their ideology. As noted above, leftists believe themselves to be too valuable to be wasted on production. Rather, they see themselves as “management,” the people in charge of the people that do the manual labor.
A person could get by on that kind of thinking in a first-world environment where office jobs, tech jobs, government jobs and social work is the norm, but in a collapse environment there are no management positions, there are no office workers, there are no elementary school teachers, there are no trust and safety advisors, there are no platform moderators and there are no bureaucrats. You either have a valued knowledge set that can be traded, or you have nothing. You can either produce necessities for yourself, or you can’t.
The development of the information age and the data driven economy of first world nations has made matters even worse by convincing people that data is a currency. This is a concept that leftists in particular adore because they think labor will become a thing of the past; they will only need their brain and a laptop to provide everything they need. It’s a delusion. The “Metaverse” is a facade, a con, and there will always be a need for humans to dig in the dirt, to forage and hunt, to farm and to build with their own hands. As the economy derails further, progressives are going to realize this too late.
Leftists Rely On Government To Fix Their Problems
If the idea of taking matters into your own hands is abhorrent to you, then you might be a leftist. Leftists view individual action during a crisis as almost criminal; it is important to them that the correct authorities with the correct permissions handle any dangerous situation. Leftists love to defer to the “experts” because this takes the responsibility out of their hands, along with the blame should something go wrong.
But what happens when government is not functional enough to save the day? What happens when inflation or supply chains or personnel shortages make it impossible for government officials to help. What happens when government officials don’t want to help? What happens when they are corrupt and they want to see you suffer?
Leftists rarely consider such possibilities. For them, the idea that government could break down, that the grid could break down and that the rule of law could break down is a conspiracy theory. It has only happened hundreds of times around the world in modern history, but because they have never experienced the threat personally they think it is impossible. These are the kinds of people that die very quickly during collapse.
Leftists Value Feelings Over Reason
The root foundation of leftist ideology is that everything is relative according to one’s personal feelings. That is to say, they believe that their feelings shape their reality, and that “their truth” is the only truth that matters. There are some subjective truths that are near-universal which is why moral conscience is a thing that exists in every culture in the world. That said, personal ideals are still subject to the forces of nature.
You cannot pretend that you are not starving when you are starving. You cannot pretend that you are not dehydrated when you desperately thirsty. You cannot feel your way out of a crisis, the crisis is not subject to your fantasies, the crisis will step on your throat and teach you otherwise.
At bottom, their feelings do not matter. They are irrelevant. And this is a lesson leftists will learn as the system continues to degrade. They can cry and scream and wail and make all the demands they want for fairness and equity and welfare but in the end they will face the clarity of self reliance or they will face the Ferryman.
It’s not my purpose here to revel in the erasure of the political left. I am only pointing out that modern leftist ideology is a product of extremely safe and controlled environments where people have the privilege to engage in frivolity. They THINK they want deconstruction. They THINK they want chaos as a means to break the system and rebuild it in their image. What they don’t realize is that if they get what they want most of them will die in the process and they will not be around to see their naive Utopia come to fruition.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 22:20 - Central Asia's 'Water Wars' Are Heating Up
Central Asia’s ‘Water Wars’ Are Heating Up
Authored by The Jamestown Foundation via OilPrice.com,
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Access to water has been a point of conflict in Central Asia for years.
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Environmental changes have raised temperatures in Central Asia faster than the global average.
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While the upstream Kyrgyzstanis and Tajikistanis have plenty of water, Uzbekistan wholly relies on a steady supply of water for its food security.
On November 3, Uzbekistani Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov and his Kyrgyzstani counterpart Jeenbek Kulubaev signed a bilateral deal in Bishkek, under which Kyrgyzstan agreed to cede to Tashkent the territory surrounding the Kempir-Abad Reservoir, covering 4,485 hectares, in exchange for over 19,000 hectares elsewhere (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 3). The deal effectively grants Uzbekistan control over the reservoir, a burning issue that has contributed to rising tensions between the two Central Asian neighbors (Eurasianet.org, November 17). On November 17, the Kyrgyzstani parliament approved a contentious border deal, and on November 29, Kyrgyzstani President Sadyr Japarov ratified the agreement, allowing for joint management of the reservoir (Asia Plus, November 29).
Central Asia has been historically plagued by tension over access to water resources. Even the administrative divisions under the Soviet Union constantly fought over the allocation of water and pastures (Tnu.tj, May 6, 2021). In this, with the introduction of private land ownership in Kyrgyzstan, some rented Tajikistani pastures have declared the property of Kyrgyzstani citizens. Although multiple factors (e.g., strategic, political and ethnic) contribute to the escalation of border tensions among the Central Asian neighbors, the management of water resources has been a perennial issue, frequently sparking conflict. Over the past decade, more than 150 conflicts have occurred on the shared Kyrgyzstani-Tajikistani borders, with victims on both sides (Cabar.asia, February 15, 2021). In September 2022, 24 Kyrgyzstanis died as a result of the escalation of armed conflict on the border (Novosti.kg, September 17). Water is vital to the Central Asian states’ agricultural and energy sectors and, by extension, their economies. Hydropower projects are of particular concern as they can generate electricity that is consumed both domestically and abroad. A strong example of this is the Nurek hydropower plant project in Tajikistan, which will have a planned capacity of 3,000 megawatts (Worldbank.org, October 24).
Furthermore, hydro-geographic features often serve as the basis for international borders. Even when agreed on and fully demarcated by neighboring nations, their strategic value lends itself to conflict. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the failures of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to either fully demarcate or agree on well over 1,000 kilometers of their mutual borders, has made conflicts over boundaries and resources commonplace (The Third Pole, May 28, 2021).
According to Gulmuria Borubaeva, a department head at the Border Control Agency of the Kyrgyzstani State Committee for National Security, one primary reason “for the ‘water conflict’ in Central Asia has been the ‘Golovnoi Vodorazdel,’ the main watershed area from where the runoff from mountainous rivers is distributed between three countries that the Ferghana Valley runs through: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan” (The Third Pole, May 28, 2021). The Golovnoi Vodorazdel, with the Isfara River and Tortkul Reservoir near the Vorukh exclave, has become the center for the water policies and rising tensions in the region.
Each year, conflict arises during the irrigation period from April to June over the use of water resources between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which share about 40 water channels. While Kyrgyzstani farmers living downstream complain that Tajikistanis living upstream use most of the water, the Tajikistani farmers living downstream decry the minimal amount of water arriving to their territory (Specialeurasia.com, September 29).
Recently, however, an uptick in the frequency of violent disputes at shared Kyrgyzstani-Tajikistani water distribution points suggest the increasing gravity of these disagreements. For instance, in April 2021, a deadly border conflict between the two sides was prompted by a dispute over water rights (Asia Plus, April 28, 2021). In September 2022, another conflict on the border between the two turned into a dangerous escalation involving heavy weapons. The death toll in that conflict was 63 people (Novosti.kg, September 28).
Given the current state of affairs, what is fueling these tensions over water resources in Central Asia? According to experts, environmental changes have raised temperatures in Central Asia faster than the global average, and this is melting glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau—also known as the “Third Pole”—disrupting water distribution in the region. As a result, some scientists predict that the region will become increasingly dryer, with more areas effectively becoming deserts. Correspondingly, the Central Asian state have witnessed some of their worst droughts in the past five years, resulting in shortages of water for irrigation and hydropower (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 1).
Shifts in climate have also caused areas north of the region to receive more rain than those in the south, exacerbating the problems of downstream water loss (Intellinews.com, July 6). While the upstream Kyrgyzstanis and Tajikistanis have plenty of water, Uzbekistan wholly relies on a steady supply of water for its food security (The Third Pole, June 30). Thus, we can expect that claims over the water resources of the fertile Ferghana Valley region will increasingly spark conflicts throughout Central Asia. Only cooperation among these countries on water management will help mitigate these threats in the near future. In this sense, the latest Uzbekistani-Kyrgyzstani deal on joint water management could be a step in the right direction for lasting regional water politics.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 21:40 -
- Green Vs Green: Endangered Flower May Wipe Out Nevada Lithium Mine
Green Vs Green: Endangered Flower May Wipe Out Nevada Lithium Mine
It isn’t easy being green. America’s would-be second lithium mine hit a major speed bump on Wednesday, as federal wildlife officials declared that a flower known to exist only on that property is endangered.
An essential chemical element used in manufacturing batteries, lithium plays a starring role in the green energy movement’s myopic quest to replace fossil fuels. In Nevada, however, we get to observe the spectacle of green energy being thwarted by a different form of environmentalism.
The official conferment of endangered species status on “Tiehm’s buckwheat” raises the hurdle for Ioneer, the Australian mining company that has for years been planning to build an open-pit lithium mine on federal land roughly midway between Las Vegas and Reno.
Out of the entire Earth, Tiehm’s buckwheat grows only on 10 acres of public land in Nevada (Patrick Donnelly, Center for Biological Diversity) Wednesday’s move by the Fish and Wildlife Service not only protects the 10 acres on which the plants are found in a 3-square-mile area, but also another 900 surrounding acres deemed as “critical habitat.”
The declaration was prompted by litigation initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity. Environmentalists aren’t done yet: They say Ioneer’s plan for protecting the plant won’t survive federal scrutiny.
“I’m thrilled that Tiehm’s buckwheat now has the protections it so desperately needs for survival,” says Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Lithium is an important part of our renewable energy transition, but it can’t come at the cost of extinction.”
Before you blame mankind for the fact that Tiehm’s buckwheat is on the brink of joining the estimated 99% of the Earth’s all-time species that have already gone extinct, consider that, according to Reuters, “an apparent, unprecedented rodent attack wiped out about 60% of [the Tiehm’s buckwheat] estimated population in 2020.”
Today, there’s only one operating lithium mine in the United States — the Albemarle Silver Peak Mine, which is found in the same region — near the California border — as the mine affected by Wednesday’s declaration.
The Albermarle Silver Peak Mine in Silver Peak, Nevada (Carlos Barría/Reuters via The Guardian) Plants and animals aren’t the only impediment to tapping more of America’s lithium reserves. A whopping 79% of the country’s known lithium is found within 35 miles of tribal lands. In many places, that’s already prompting protests by native American groups opposing mining on lands they consider sacred.
Of course, it’s possible that there’s an as-yet undiscovered patch of Tiehm’s buckwheat somewhere else in Nevada. There are also more 17,000 prospecting claims for lithium in the state.
However, in an unintended consequence of government policies regarding endangered species, prospectors observing Ioneer’s woes are now incentivized to discretely eradicate any Tiehm’s buckwheat they happen to find near their claim.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 21:20 - The Age Of Drones
The Age Of Drones
Authored by Karen Hunt (aka KH Mezek) via ‘Break Free’ Substack,
While researching my piece, The Truth about Luciferase, I came across a patent that blew my mind and I absolutely had to write about it.
The patent is described as “Systems and Methods for Mobile Sample Collection” and it has to do with drones.
We’re talking armies of drones of all shapes and sizes, down to the smallest gnat, working together in a “swarm” to take samples, administer drugs and regulate the health and behavior of ordinary citizens. The promise is that these drones will be deployed to make our lives easier—for our health and safety.
Embarking on this read, I would like to start with some important words:
metaverse, meatverse, wetware, software, hardware
Metaverse: a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.
Meatverse: you will not find this word defined anywhere on the internet. It is the word technocrats derisively use when describing the real world.
In June 2018, Oculus executive Jason Rubin sent an email to Facebook board member Marc Andreessen with the subject line “The Metaverse.” This paper was like the first page in the history of a new world, written by one of the gods.
Ruben described the Metaverse as a place where users “float through a digital universe of virtual ads, filled with virtual goods that people buy. There would be virtual people that they marry, while spending as little time as possible in the so-called ‘MEATVERSE’ — referring to the real world because humans are flesh and blood.”
We are assured that at a certain point, humans will prefer spending time in the razzle-dazzle metaverse rather than the drab and restrictive meatverse. And lest you think, oh what’s the big deal, Zuckerberg’s metaverse is on the way out, it isn’t. If he isn’t successful, someone else will be—whatever form it takes over the next 10 years or so.
We are just pieces of meat to our controllers.
Wetware, Software, Hardware:
The human body is now being described in terms that are similar to robots, making us seem as if our differences are only technical. The human body and central nervous system are “wetware” as opposed to the “software” and “hardware” of machines.
Technopedia describes wetware like this:
…where neural networks and similar artificial intelligence technologies would be described as hardware, the human brain that they attempt to simulate and model would be the “wetware.” Biological systems are described as wetware because of the water that makes up so much of the biological tissue of humans, animals and plants. The term “wetware” will become increasingly useful as technology makes its way into the fields of biology and biological engineering.
We are wet. Machines are dry. We have temperatures—both emotionally and physically. Machines do not. Defining humans with these new words adjusts us to accepting identification based on similarity or dissimilarity to machines.
It’s hard to fight against our controllers if we don’t even know who or what to attack. The biosecurity state is all pervasive. There isn’t one government, organization, or person to point the finger at.
As of July 2022, the United States is just behind China in camera surveillance of its citizens, with an average of two cameras for every 10 people in its major cities. The UK is in third place with one CCTV camera for every 16 citizens in its larger cities.
Ever since 9/11, we have been programed to accept constant surveillance for our health and safety. The January 6th attack on the Capitol building opened the door for even greater surveillance due to increased risk of “domestic terrorism”. As for online surveillance, in 2019 alone, the US government investigated over 800,000 of its own citizens personal data.
Thanks to Covid, citizens came to accept greater and greater levels of control.
A 2020 New York Times article described this post-Covid world we now live in:
Drones have been working as police officers, soaring over the banks of the Seine in Paris and the city squares of Mumbai, to patrol for social distancing violators.
They’re delivering medical supplies in Rwanda and snacks in Virginia. They’re hovering over crowds in China to scan for fevers below.
“Yes auntie, this is the drone speaking to you,” said one drone, speaking to an elderly woman below in an eerie bullhorn echo, according to a video published by Global Times, a state-controlled newspaper. “You shouldn’t walk about without wearing a mask.”
Global Times also published an account of another drone. A voice from above castigated a small child peering skyward while seated with a man who was violating quarantine rules by playing mahjong in public: “Don’t look at the drone, child. Ask your father to leave immediately.”
Drones can be equipped with so-called stingrays to collect information from people’s mobile phones, night-vision cameras, GPS sensors, radar, lidar (laser detection technology for creating three-dimensional maps of an area), as well as thermal and infrared cameras.
Frank Wang is the world’s first drone billionaire. His company DJI, headquartered in Shenzhen, has a 77% share of America’s consumer drone sales, according to this Bloomberg article.
The same drone surveillance system being used in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China that human-rights groups have described as a police state because of the oppression, horrific abuse, and confining to camps of as many as 1 million Uighurs, are being used by Flymotion, a Florida-based drone services company that uses its devices to support dozens of police departments. “DJI owns the global market,” says Flymotion CEO Ryan English.
Agencies in all 50 states have drones now, about 90% of them made by DJI, according to a recent Bard College study.
Now that we have figured out ways to connect machines with our bodies, creating the Internet of Bodies (IoB), drones can be used as intermediaries between our machine-controlled bodies and the elite who control it all.
IoB means that our bodies are “connected to a network through devices that are ingested, implanted, or connected to the body in some way. Once connected, data can be exchanged, and the body and device can be remotely monitored and controlled”.
The elite will no longer have to walk among us. They can live in safe zones, real-world paradises, while we live under constant surveillance, our only escape being the virtual worlds inside our devices and perhaps one day connected directly to our minds.
At any time, drones can swoop down and take samples from us, or inject us with whatever drugs AI determines we need.
Skin-like electronics are being made to monitor our health continuously, described by the United States government as “wearable electronics paired with artificial intelligence that could transform screening for health problems.”
Such a skin-like device is being developed in a project between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME). Leading the project is Sihong Wang. According to Wang, “Such a diagnosis, with health information being continuously gathered over an extended period, is very data intensive.”
Philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, at left, and Illinois Gov. J.B. PritzkerPHOTO ILLUSTRATION: TABLET MAGAZINE; ORIGINAL PHOTOS: VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES; E. JASON WAMBSGANS/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE VIA GETTY IMAGE
It should be noted that the Pritzker family, including Jennifer Pritzker (a male who identifies as transgender), “devotes their massive fortune to funding transgender ideology, or ‘synthetic sexual identities’ (SSI),” as described by journalist Jennifer Bilek.
Imagine a scenario where a drone, having evaluated you as being at risk of heart disease, implants a device on or in you that will monitor what you eat, when you eat, your heart rate, how often you exercise, how many hours you sleep. It will know if you commit the sin of smoking a cigarette or drinking a whiskey.
Perhaps AI will determine your son is really a girl. AI will know this, no matter if you say otherwise. It can administer drugs to facilitate your child’s “sex change.” What if as a result, you seem depressed or anxious? There are drugs for that, too.
One of the products being used to facilitate this is called stretchable electronics, a thin film of a plastic semiconductor combined with stretchable gold nanowire electrodes. You can see what it looks like in this short video. Research was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and a start-up fund from the University of Chicago.
Sub-millimeter microsensors tiny enough to inject under the skin is a step toward making tiny under-the-skin implants that continuously measure a person’s blood glucose, heart rate, and other physiological conditions a reality.
The small device, “approximately five centimeters square, can be placed directly on the skin for around-the-clock health monitoring. When the device turns color, the wearer knows something is awry.”
Other monitoring devices, according to Global Research are RFIDs:
RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips are implanted into a passport or driver’s license. RFID tags are small computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within physical objects, including human beings. The RFID chip itself contains an Electronic Product Code that can be “read” when a RFID reader emits a radio signal.
Hidden placement of tags. RFID tags can be embedded into/onto objects and documents without the knowledge of the individual who obtains those items.
Unique identifiers for all objects worldwide. The Electronic Product Code potentially enables every object on earth to have its own unique ID.
Massive data aggregation. RFID deployment requires the creation of massive databases containing unique tag data.
Hidden readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not restricted to line of sight, by readers that can be incorporated invisibly into nearly any environment where human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have already been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, woven into carpeting and floor mats, hidden in doorways, and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to know when or if he or she was being “scanned.”
Individual tracking and profiling. If personal identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their knowledge or consent. (“Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer Products,” Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, November 14, 2003)
The Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility touts (AIM)biometric identification as “an automated method of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic.” This is especially important since “the need” for biometrics “can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial applications.” When used as a stand-alone or in conjunction with RFID-chipped “smart cards” biometrics, according to the industry “are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives.”
Google is developing a device that can be implanted beneath a person’s skin in order to carry out diagnostic tests. The patent describes “a system for measuring and/or monitoring an analyte present in interstitial fluid in skin, capable of monitoring the blood and sweat of a wearer and transmit the results through an antenna to a companion device.”
But how will all of this be monitored? How will it be delivered? I did some digging into patents, and I found this one which the US government is implementing.
DOCUMENT ID: US 11517232 B1; Filed in 2015; DATE PUBLISHED: 2022-12-06; Inventor: Robertson Channing
The only problem is that today, when I clicked the link I had, it went nowhere. I spent hours trying to find the patent, to no avail. Fortunately, I read the entire patent and also copied most of it, so I am able to share it. I thought of abandoning this essay, but it is too important. If anyone can find it, I will be forever in your debt!
I did find this explanation and the drawing, which illustrates the different types and sizes of drones (just so you all know it exists):
US 11,517,232 B1SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MOBILE SAMPLE COLLECTION Channing Robertson, Palo Alto, CA (US) Assigned to Labrador Diagnostics LLC, Wilmington, DE (US)Filed by Labrador Dlagnostics LLC, Wilmington, DE (US)Filed on Nov. 9, 2015, as Appl. No. 14/936,599.Claims priority of provisional application 62/077,023, filed on Nov. 7, 2014.Int. Cl. B64C 39/02 (2006.01); A61B 5/15 (2006.01); G05D 1/00 (2006.01); G08G 5/04 (2006.01)
CPC A61B 5/150748 (2013.01) [A61B 5/150847 (2013.01); B64C 39/024 (2013.01); G05D 1/00 (2013.01); G08G 5/04 (2013.01); B64C 2201/128 (2013.01); B64C 2201/141 (2013.01)]
So, let’s look into Systems and Methods for Mobile Sample Collection.
Imagine our world as a giant petri dish and we are all inside of it. Experiments can be conducted on our “wetware.” There will be no escape from the drones.
The drones being employed are described like this in the patent:
A “drone” as used herein may be a mechanical device, electromechanical device, other self-propelled device, or a robotic device that can use one or more modes of transportation such as but not limited to flying, swimming, rolling, crawling, wheeling, and/or other movement mode to travel to a subject.
A drone may also have at least one other capability such as but not limited to video surveillance capability, audio surveillance capability, sample collection, tissue penetration, and/or other capabilities currently known or may be developed.
(15) Optionally, some may test for a simple and/or rapid test initially; if a positive signal is detected, then the system may send more drones or send more sophisticated drones to the subject. Some may send a base station or other forward operating device to or near the location of the first drone to sample the area around that site.
(16) Optionally, the size and weight of the drone may be such that they are less noticeable to the subject. This drives to a certain length scale, possibly smaller than a mosquito having the ability to talk to one another, talk to a base station, guidance, autopilot, etc. . . . ). i) Optionally, one configuration may be one where each small flying drone (“gnat”) takes the same type of sample. Optionally, one configuration may be one where ii) each “gnat” takes a different type of sample (blood, sweat, tears, or other bodily fluid). Optionally, one configuration may be one where iii) multiple “gnats” take different types of samples.
(21) In one non-limiting example, the nested drones or nested vehicles may be in the form of sisterships, motherships, daughterships, or any single or multiple combination of the foregoing.
(24) In one embodiment, the mobile sampling system may combine autonomous technology with one or more swarm technologies, one or more motive/movement technologies, and/or one or more sample acquisition technologies.
(33) Location acquisition (for targeting or retrieval) may be by one or more of the following: vision, magnetically, prior GPS coordinates, chemically, electrically, radar, sonar, GIS systems, mapping, and/or other targeting system. Some may use targeting based on features such as but not limited to gas output, thermal signature, CO.sub.2 output, scent-based characteristics, chemical, UV, anything in the EM spectrum, or other signature characteristic of the target.
Acquisition may involve waiting for subjects to walk by or be positioned for sampling. Some may involve being positioned on a tree branch, perch, overhang, or other location above the subject S. Tentacles, webs, strings, or attachments lines may be deployed to assist in getting the sampling device to the subject S. The device may acquire sample from a subject’s finger, hand, forearm, ear lobe, ear cheek, or buttocks.
(38) This reduced volume more enables the embodiments here to use tick or mosquito type sample acquisition techniques because the desired sample size is so small.
(46) Most occupants could be clearly detected by their airborne bacterial emissions, as well as their contribution to settled particles, within 1.5-4 h. It should be understood that an occupied space is microbially distinct from an unoccupied one, and that individuals release their own personalized microbial cloud.
(47) Optionally, other characteristics of the subject such as but no limited to height, weight, sex, profile, thermal image, picture, or the like may also be associated with the microbial cloud sample to more confidently confirm a target.
(51) Optionally, sampling theory and statistics is used as part of one implementation in terms of disease or other outbreak detection.
52) In one embodiment, the population to be sampled is one that has signed up to be sampled. An example may be all patients associated with a particular health insurance company, doctor group, medical group, or other affiliation (health-related or otherwise). Subjects may wear beacons, identifiers, other devices to help facilitate target acquisition by the sampling device. Some may wear Bluetooth, infrared transmitters, or other devices now known or to be developed in the future.
(53) In one non-limiting example, there is an option for sampling weekly, monthly, or other interval. In one non-limiting example, such sample collection may be occurring and the subject may not even know it.
(55) In one non-limiting example, a subject’s bodily fluid is being tested hourly or other frequent interval without the subject’s explicit knowledge.
(62) In one non-limiting example, the sample acquisition from a subject may be in a form that is based at least in part on bio-mimicry of tick, leech, mosquito, or other natural blood sampler for sampling purposes.
(66) Optionally, some may fly and land on a surface and then crawl to the subject. Some may land and remain in the shower or bathroom or other desired area to facilitate sample collection.
And that’s it! Unbelievable what they have in-store for us! I hope it won’t give you nightmares. If people still mock and say it will never happen, then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m doing my best to inform as many people as will listen–myself included.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 21:00 - Liberals Who Ditch Tesla Should Be Aware Of 'Winter Range Anxiety' Among Other EVs
Liberals Who Ditch Tesla Should Be Aware Of ‘Winter Range Anxiety’ Among Other EVs
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and crusade against “defeating” the “woke mind virus” has caused panic among liberal Tesla drivers who now want to sell their electric vehicles. Others progressives waiting for Teslas are canceling orders because they no longer believe in Musk’s politics.
Cancelling my @Tesla Model X order that’s been unfulfilled for over a year now and selling my TSLA stock. They need a cancel option that simply says “Elon Musk”. I won’t give my money to someone that no longer shares the same values I hold important. Likely he never held them. pic.twitter.com/yhxSgJUxZw
— Tom Kulzer (@tkulzer) December 13, 2022
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they asked for a reason
I said “Elon Musk’s Twitter” pic.twitter.com/mEHPxNPxnY— Heather Anne Campbell (@heathercampbell) December 12, 2022
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These progressives who are either selling their Teslas or canceling orders have been engrained by ‘woke’ culture that fossil fuels are evil and EVs will save the planet from a non-existent climate crisis that is just an idea in their head.
So naturally, these folks will be purchasing other EVs because they now view driving a Tesla as the same as wearing a ‘MAGA’ hat.
So San Fran residents will now buy tanks to own Musk, while conservatives in Mississippi will buy Teslas to own the libs.
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 16, 2022
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As for climate alarmists’ predictions this summer that the world would burn, we have bad news for them as Arctic air poured into the Northern Hemisphere like a wrecking ball. The alarmists blame ‘climate change’ for every weather phenomenon, but no one bothered to tell them the climate has constantly been changing for millions of years.
A problem that non-Tesla believers could come across is ‘winter range anxiety’ depending on the EV. According to Recurrent, a research firm that tracks EV battery health, temperatures averaging between 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit will impact vehicle range.
For Teslas, cold weather decreased the Model 3 Long Range’s range by -17%, the Model S P100D by -19%, and Model X 75D by -15%. Out of the list, Tesla wasn’t the worst.
Some of the worst declines, which many liberals have said they wanted to buy instead of Teslas, include Chevy Bolt by -32%, Ford Mustang Mach-E Premium AWD by -30%, and VW ID.4 -30%.
My pronouns are he/him, I believe in science, and I support Dr. Fauci. @elonmusk’s continued bad actions kept me from buying a @Tesla and now I am ecstatic to have a @UAW-made @chevrolet Bolt EUV in my driveway! pic.twitter.com/8Jj3kLjaEB
— Eric Sorensen (@ERICSORENSEN) December 12, 2022
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And one of the best EVs to survive cold weather was surprising the Jaguar i-Pace, which only lost -3% of range. Also the Audi e-Tron was -8%.
Liberals ditching their Teslas will discover quickly what winter range anxiety means for their mobility if they go with a Chevy or Ford.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 20:40 - The Global Gas Crunch Is Set To Worsen As China Reopens
The Global Gas Crunch Is Set To Worsen As China Reopens
By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com
China’s natural gas imports are set for a 7-percent rise next year as the country reopens after Covid lockdowns, which could aggravate an already tight supply situation globally.
The 7-percent import increase forecast was made by state-owned energy major CNOOC, which said, as quoted by Bloomberg, that it was already looking for LNG cargoes for next year.
The report notes that gas inventories at ports in the northern part of the country are depleting at a faster rate than usual because the weather is colder, pushing consumption higher, and this will, too, have an effect on future demand for imports.
What’s more, pipeline supply of natural gas from Central Asia is in decline, which means China will need to rely more on LNG in its gas import mix to make up the difference. And this means more intense competition for a limited number of cargoes between Asia and Europe next year as well.
This year, Chinese gas demand has been trending lower for most of the year, with imports declining consistently over the first ten months of the year, per a report by Energy Intelligence. LNG imports were down by a sizeable 21.6 percent over the ten-month period, reflecting the effects of lockdowns and other restrictions under the country’s zero-Covid policy.
Yet now this policy is being reversed, mass mandatory testing is being dropped and analysts expect a rebound in economic activity before too long. This will drive higher demand for energy and contribute to higher prices due to the tight supply situation in both oil and gas.
This reversal of Beijing’s Covid policy surprised many, who expected tepid demand for energy to continue in one of the world’s largest consumers. If activity rebounds fast, securing sufficient gas supply for the next heating season will likely become a major problem for most importers.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 20:20 - Lawyers Say Bankman-Fried Needs Better Defense Than 'I F*cked Up'
Lawyers Say Bankman-Fried Needs Better Defense Than ‘I F*cked Up’
FTX founder and Democrat megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried’s ‘I’m Sorry, I fucked up‘, ‘It wasn’t me, but I’ll get to the bottom of this whole mess’ act needs some serious work, according to lawyers cited by Bloomberg.
1) I’m sorry. That’s the biggest thing.
I fucked up, and should have done better.
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) November 10, 2022
Bankman-Fried, who just filed a new application for bail before the Bahamian Supreme Court (set to be heard on January 17th), has been playing dumb and blaming competitors since day one.
For weeks, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been previewing a possible defense to criminal charges over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse: I made mistakes but I didn’t mean to do it.
But that’s probably not going to cut it now that he’s been arrested in the Bahamas and charged by federal prosecutors in New York, several lawyers not involved in his defense said. According to the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Bankman-Fried, 30, defrauded FTX customers and investors by using at least $1.8 billion of their money for personal expenses and risky bets by its sister trading firm, Alameda Research. -Bloomberg
“I wish things worked out in the end’ is more of a (guilty) plea allocution than a defense,” according to former federal prosecutor Harry Sandick. “It’s hard to see that being a triable defense. It’s hard to know what the whole thinking was in terms of those public statements, or if there was very much thinking.”
SBF’s current posture is aimed at suggesting the FTX meltdown was unintentional, but the eight-count indictment against him clearly lays out how he lied over and over again about fund transfers. What’s more, prosecutors likely have cooperating witnesses from FTX or Alameda who have flipped on SBF.
“Although this is an extremely high-profile case, the indictment is a no-nonsense, no-frills document,” said Jaimie Nawaday, another former federal prosecutor. “The factual statements are short and plain. The theories of fraud are very standard — lying to get money, lying about what you’re doing with the money.”
Accidentally co-co-commingled funds make my eyes rain pic.twitter.com/KwOTfiLUFe
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 30, 2022
While the bare-bones indictment doesn’t indicate what actual evidence the US government has against him, according to Nawaday, SBF’s public statements may have been more than enough rope for the FTX founder to have hung himself in court. If those statements are later contradicted, it would be devastating for his defense, Sandick also notes.
“There’s a saying that a false exculpatory statement is almost as good as a confession,” he said.
Robert Frenchman, a New York white-collar defense lawyer, said Bankman-Fried’s claims that FTX’s collapse resulted from management missteps aren’t all that convincing, even without the prosecution showing its hand. In particular, Frenchman said, the relationship between FTX and Alameda is hard to spin as innocent. -Bloomberg
“There’s some very troubling facts here that don’t fit the mismanagement narrative,” said Frenchman, adding “I think it’s very difficult to mount that kind of a defense when the defendant is alleged to have given secret preferential treatment to his own hedge fund. Those facts surrounding Alameda are going to be much tougher to defend. They look a lot more like fraud and deception than anything unintentional.“
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 20:00 - Insider Tells Tucker Carlson That CIA Was Directly Involved In JFK Assassination
Insider Tells Tucker Carlson That CIA Was Directly Involved In JFK Assassination
Authored by Catharine Salgado via PJMedia.com,
Speculations about the circumstances and motivations behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, rife at the time the tragedy occurred, have never stopped. While Kennedy’s murderer was declared soon after the assassination to have worked alone, one insider claimed to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was directly involved with JFK’s assassination.
Carlson noted that questions about the Kennedy assassination have been circulating since it happened, simply because there were a lot of details that didn’t add up or seemed too coincidental and the CIA refused to release its documentation on the killing.
Today we spoke to someone who had access to the still-hidden JFK files, and is deeply familiar with their contents. We asked this person directly: did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?
Here’s the reply: “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved.” pic.twitter.com/3EURZcsaR2
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 16, 2022
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President Lyndon B. Johnson released a report the year after JFK’s untimely death declaring that both Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, were acting alone. About 50 years later the CIA admitted it had withheld evidence–but why is still publicly unknown. Carlson said that the term “conspiracy theory” was first brought into everyday American lexicon by the media following JFK’s assassination due to the many rumors and suspicions flying about. The phrase then–as now, of course–was used to label anything and everything contrary to a government pronouncement–both plausible questions and far-out kookiness–as pure nonsense.
Carlson cited one potentially suspicious circumstance, saying that psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West declared in April 1964 that Jack Ruby was insane after visiting Ruby in jail. West wrote that Ruby was in need of psychiatric hospitalization, even though no one encountering Ruby before had diagnosed him as insane. West was a contract psychiatrist and mind control expert working for the CIA at the time. He was involved in the CIA MK Ultra program, which gave powerful psychiatric drugs to some Americans without telling them about it. U.S. media has never investigated why a CIA psychiatrist who specialized in uninformed mind control was diagnosing Ruby. Therefore, the reasons behind West’s selection remain lost to history.
In 1976, the U.S. House of Representatives reopened an investigation into the Kennedy assassination with a special bipartisan committee, and concluded that JFK was “almost certainly murdered as the result of a conspiracy.” What was not decided: whose conspiracy? Carlson boldly called the CIA an “obvious suspect.” He explained his reasoning: “Why else would the agency withhold critical evidence from the investigators?” There was a 1992 congressional law mandating all JFK assassination-related documentation be released by 2017, which ultimately did not happen. Former CIA director Mike Pompeo convinced then-President Donald Trump not to release all the documents even though all the people involved are dead. The reason is unknown, and Pompeo declined to appear on Carlson’s show.
The Biden administration released thousands of pages of previously secret government documents regarding the JFK assassination today. It is unclear how many remain secret.
Carlson believes he knows why the JFK files were not released in 2017, however. He said he talked with someone who has access to and familiarity with the still-secret Kennedy documentation, and asked, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of [President] John F. Kennedy?” According to Carlson, the insider replied, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.” Carlson admitted that the response was “jarring,” but insisted the unnamed source is no “conspiracy theorist … this is someone with direct knowledge of the information.”
Carlson invited viewers, regardless of their feelings about the JFK assassination and his own new report, to consider the ramifications of what his source said. Based on what Carlson’s source stated, there are forces inside the U.S. government entirely beyond the control of the electorate (which in fact is true, simply because America has so many unelected bureaucrats). Carlson explained his understanding of the situation: “These forces can affect election outcomes. They can even hide their complicity in the murder of an American president. In other words, they can do pretty much anything they want. They constitute a government within a government.” Which is a pretty explosive accusation. Carlson noted that Americans no longer trust their government, but added that the government may be even less trustworthy than is publicly apparent.
The situation Carlson described is truly terrifying. Unfortunately, until all the CIA documentation on Kennedy’s assassination is released, the American public cannot judge for themselves if the insider on Carlson’s show was telling the truth or not.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 19:40 - US Sends Infantry Unit To Base Just Miles Away From Russian Border In Estonia
US Sends Infantry Unit To Base Just Miles Away From Russian Border In Estonia
Last week the US Embassy in Lithuania announced the Pentagon plans to step up troop deployments in the Baltic states, taking what was previously categorized as “episodic” troop deployments and turning toward a “persistent rotational presence” across the Baltics, including in Estonia – which shares two small stretches of land-border with Russia.
The embassy wrote in an early December press release that “US Ambassador Robert Gilchrist informed Minister of National Defense Arvydas Anušauskas that, as part of the ongoing commitment to its Baltic Allies, the United States will further enhance the continuous and persistent US military presence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” This was widely interpreted as a direct response to Russia’s ten-month long assault on nearby Ukraine.
Armored military vehicles parade with NATO forces in Estonia a few hundred feet from the Russian border in February 2015. Image: Estonian Armed Forces In follow-up, on Friday the government of Estonia confirmed that a US infantry company has newly arrived in the country, to take part of joint defense drills and training.
According to the the Friday statement posted to the Estonian defense ministry’s website: “A United States infantry company arrived at Taara base in Võru this week as part of a deployment to train and serve with the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Estonian Defense Forces.”
It further confirmed that “The U.S. infantry company will be stationed in Võru during its deployment and will participate in joint exercises with the Estonian Defense Forces to enhance interoperability and to demonstrate the flexibility of combat credible forces to respond to threats.”
Crucially, Taara base in Võru is a mere dozens of miles away from the Russian border – merely about a half-hour away by car. Russian state media has complained that US-Estonia troop exercises will be conducted a mere 20 kilometers away from the border.
The US 1st Infantry Division Artillery Commander cited in Estonia’s statement, Colonel Richard Ikena, said American troops are “excited to be in Estonia” and “look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder, alongside our Allies.”
US Infantry troops along with a HIMARS (long-range missile) platoon will now be conducting drills at a distance from the Russian border that’s similar to the distance between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico…
Map source: Nations Online Project Additionally, the statement confirmed that the US is deploying long-range missiles in the NATO allied country, to now include M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) deployed by the US right on Russia’s doorstep.
“The United States will also deploy a HIMARS platoon to Estonia, along with the corresponding control equipment and systems, and will cooperate with the Estonian Defense Forces to establish a divisional structure within the framework of NATO,” the US military and Estonian defense ministry confirmed.
Welcome to #Estonia! 🇺🇸United States infantry company arrived at the Taara base in Võru this week as part of a deployment to train and serve with the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Estonian Defense Forces @Kaitsevagi.
Read more: https://t.co/qAO5WiAzRV
— MoD Estonia (@MoD_Estonia) December 16, 2022
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Already there have been ratcheting tensions between Moscow and the Baltic states, given that among European nations they have been among the most hawkish in calling for isolating and punishing the Russian government. A heightened US troops deployment along with long-range missiles will certainly escalation these tensions as the war in Ukraine continues to grow more dangerous and unpredictable, especially concerning the potential scenario of direct US-Russia clashes.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 19:20 - Pennsylvania School Board Director Resigns After Uproar Over Vote Against "Cis White Male" President
Pennsylvania School Board Director Resigns After Uproar Over Vote Against “Cis White Male” President
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
A Pennsylvania school board member has resigned and apologized after saying at a meeting last week that she was against voting for a “cis white male” to be nominated as board president.
Jennifer Solot, who has served five years on the school board for the Upper Moreland School District, made the comments at an open board reorganization meeting on Dec. 6 as the board was considering electing two individuals, April Stainback and Greg D’Elia, as the new president.
Now take out the word Cis White Male and replace with Gay Black Man. This is why leftist are the racists they pretend to HATE. These people are not the brightest yet they are making decisions for your kids. pic.twitter.com/7UXpKBGAlm
— LEFTIST TEARS (@LEFTISTTEARS18) December 12, 2022
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Solot had stated that D’Elia would make an “excellent president” but that she would ultimately not be voting for the candidate, and would instead vote for the incumbent president Stainback.
“I believe that Mr. D’Elia would make an excellent president,” Solot said at the meeting.
“However, I feel that electing the only cis white male on this board president of this district sends the wrong message to our community: a message that is contrary to what we as a board have been trying to accomplish.”
Cis is short for cisgender, a term used to describe someone who identifies as the same sex they were assigned at birth.
“I think that it is important that we practice what we preach. And that our words have strength when they are spoken, whether we speak them from the neighborhood sidewalks or from behind these tables,” she continued.
“Mrs. Stainback has done an exemplary job as president these last few months, and the strength of her performance has earned her my vote tonight,” Solot added.
According to his official website, D’Elia is an “engineer, father, and husband,” who had hoped to be elected to the position of School Board president.
Solot Apologizes for ‘Poorly Chosen Words’
Stainback’s website states that she has lived in Upper Moreland since August 1996 with her husband and their five children, all of whom have either graduated, attend, or will attend Upper Moreland schools.
According to the website, Stainback received endorsements from the UM Republican Committee, UM Democratic Committee, and UMEA for the role of School Board president.
“I care deeply for the schools and the township,” the website states.
Stainback eventually won the presidential position by eight out of nine votes. However, Solot’s comments reportedly sparked uproar among the community.
In a statement on Monday, district Superintendent Susan Elliott and Stainback said that Solot was stepping down from her role, effective Jan. 2, following the comments she made at the board meeting that “many in our community took offense to.”
“As a result of this incident, Ms. Solot has decided to resign from the board effective January 2, 2023. She wishes to apologize for her poorly chosen words and does not want to be a distraction from the great things happening in our schools on a daily basis,” the statement read.
“The comments made by Ms. Solot at the board reorganization meeting were solely hers and were not intended to represent the opinion of the entire UMSD Board of Directors or the district as a whole. Indeed, Board Director Greg D’Elia, who was the subject of her comments, says that he ‘supports diversity, but these comments did not further diversity and reflected poorly on our community,’” the statement continued.
“The district thanks Ms. Solot for her five years of service to the Upper Moreland community as a board member,” the statement added.
The Epoch Times has contacted D’Elia for comment.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 19:00 - The Black Old Deal: Global Coal Demand Hits All Time High
The Black Old Deal: Global Coal Demand Hits All Time High
As the new and improved – not to mention far easier on the eyes – UN climate change advisor Sophia Kianni, aka Greta 2.0, is busy warming up the cover and red carpet of Forbes magazine as the 20-year-old criss-crosses the world, her carbon footprint be damned…
Thank you for having me @Forbes ♥️ pic.twitter.com/N2y5ndQ9JP
— Sophia Kianni (@SophiaKianni) December 16, 2022
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… the sexy distraction has achieved its goals and while the world was ogling the new sex symbol of climate warfare, at a time when progressives are frothing at the mouth at any mention of global warming (which however won’t stop them from replacing their Tesla with an F-150 to own Musk) the International Energy Agency just reported that global coal demand is set to reach a record high this year.
In its “Coal 2022” report published Friday, the IEA reported that coal consumption rose by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tons in a single year and topping the previous record set in 2013.
“This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far,” IEA said, despite climate alarmists’ failed attempts to kill the coal industry as it was revived to stave off an energy crisis in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.
“Higher natural gas prices amid the global energy crisis have led to increased reliance on coal for generating power,” IEA explained.
The report forecasts coal consumption will remain at elevated levels through 2025.
For me, more important that the fresh demand record high is the shape of the demand curve — rather than a peak-cliff, coal is experiencing a peak-and-plateau.
That’s quite important as many global oil demand models assume a peak-cliff shape, which modelers may need to revisit.
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) December 16, 2022
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The world is addicted to low-cost power generation sources. The idea that fossil fuel generation, especially coal, would magically be phased out for unreliable renewable energy, such as solar and wind, has been a pipe dream and another reason for grid instability worldwide.
IEA’s Director of Energy Markets and Security, Keisuke Sadamori, said, “the world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, but we are not there yet.”
“Coal demand is stubborn and will likely reach an all-time high this year, pushing up global emissions. At the same time, there are many signs that today’s crisis is accelerating the deployment of renewables, energy efficiency and heat pumps – and this will moderate coal demand in the coming years. Government policies will be key to ensuring a secure and sustainable path forward,” Sadamori noted.
IEA labeled China, India, and Indonesia as the world’s three largest coal producers. Demand for coal has sent coal futures at the Newcastle Coal Terminal through the roof this year.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of coal’s revival is US-based Peabody Energy.
And while the world still on a path toward decarbonizing – this peculiar “onetime” carbon hiccup notwithstanding – nuclear power remains the best and only solution for on-demand clean energy. In the meantime, coal, NatGas, and other hydrocarbons are going nowhere.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 18:40 - Trump Files Defamation Suit Against Pulitzer Prize Board For Rewarding 'Russia Collusion' Coverage
Trump Files Defamation Suit Against Pulitzer Prize Board For Rewarding ‘Russia Collusion’ Coverage
Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump, joined by former First Lady Melania Trump, arrives to speak at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Alon Skuy/AFP via Getty Images) Former President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against members of the Pulitzer Prize Board on Dec. 13 after the board declined to rescind the 2018 National Reporting prizes presented to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on the debunked allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia.
Noting that those allegations have long since been exposed as false, the complaint—filed in Okeechobee County, Florida—asserts that a “demonstrably false connection was and remains the stated basis” for the awarded coverage.
“A large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth at the time the Times’ and the Post’s propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax dominated the media,” notes the complaint, which was obtained by Fox News. “Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public.”
The Awards
According to the Pulitzer Prize Board, the 2018 National Reporting Prizes were awarded to The Times and the Post for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”
While such claims of collusion between Trump and Russia—initially sparked by allegations of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and the Russia-based Alfa Bank by the now-infamous Steele dossier—have long since been discredited, the Pulitzer Prize Board has defended its decision to reward the two media outlets’ reporting on the subject.
Russian analyst Igor Danchenko (R) arrives to court with a lawyer in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 11, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) On July 18, following several inquiries from the former president—which included a threat of legal action if the awards were not revoked—the board announced that it would not be rescinding the awards.
“The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed,” the board said in a statement. “In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign—submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.”
Noting that two independent reviews had been conducted regarding the reporting in question, the board continued: “Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.
“The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand,” the board added.
Slamming the Pulitzer Board’s decision in a statement, Trump wrote: “The Pulitzer Board has taken away any shred of credibility it had left with its ‘response’ regarding the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which was awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for blatant fake news. Instead of acting with integrity and providing transparency, the Pulitzer Board is running cover for the biggest reporting failure in modern history: the fake Russia Russia Russia collusion hoax.”
Also stating that The NY Times and the Post should take the “honorable” course of action and voluntarily return their prizes, the former president added: “The truth is that the 2018 Pulitzer Prize was handed out for reporting that merely parroted political disinformation—disinformation that we know was fabricated by foreign operatives and my political opponents. If the Pulitzer Prize has become a blatant acknowledgment of false, liberal political propaganda, then the Pulitzer Board should just say so.”
The Complaint
In the Tuesday filing, Trump’s legal team echoed those same sentiments, contending that the Pulitzer Board had issued its July statement with “knowledge or reckless disregard for its falsity” and that the board’s members “knew that the Russia Collusion Hoax had been thoroughly discredited numerous times by exhaustive, credible, official investigations, contradicting the ‘deeply sourced, relentlessly reported’” winning articles.
“At the time of publication, nearly every branch and agency of the federal government had examined this issue and reached the same conclusion: there was no conspiracy or cooperation between President Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia,” the former president’s attorneys added.
The complaint also alleges that the Pulitzer Board’s statement was issued with “actual malice and the intention to harm President Trump and his reputation,” noting: “The Pulitzer Statement was knowingly published by Defendants to create a false implication in the mind of the reader that ‘the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration’ was connected with Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump’s team is requesting damages “in an amount to be proven at trial.”
The Epoch Times has contacted the Pulitzer Board for comment.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 18:20 - White Christmas? Meteorologists Warn Of Potential "Blizzard Over East Coast"
White Christmas? Meteorologists Warn Of Potential “Blizzard Over East Coast”
Long-range weather models forecast the increasing possibility of a white Christmas for parts of the Northeast.
“Some of the models are depicting a weather pattern taking shape that could result in very cold air pouring into the central and eastern United States next week — which could set the stage for a potential winter storm along the East Coast heading into Christmas weekend,” media outlet NJ.Com wrote.
NY NJ PA Weather’s meteorologist Steven DiMartino said there’s still uncertainty around forecasts but says signs are emerging of a potential East Coast winter storm next week.
DiMartino said atmospheric patterns and a few weather models show what appears to be a developing storm that has the “potential to be pretty impressive.”
“However, before anyone starts putting out snow maps or anything else that you might see on social media, understand there are a lot of moving parts in this storm,” he noted.
“You have a disturbance in the subtropical jet stream, interaction with the Gulf stream — which is a very warm body of water off the East Coast — and an impressive Arctic air mass driving towards all of that rising air,” DiMartino continued.
“When you have all these features come together, usually a big storm evolves … but as far as the details are concerned, I caution you not to jump on every model guidance that shows up, because a lot can change over the next couple of days,” he added.
DiMartino explained more in the YouTube video.
DiMartino said the storm’s exact timing, track, and impacts are still unknown. Such forecasts will be made available in the coming days.
Another meteorologist by the name of Joe Bastardi, who runs WeatherBELL Analytics LLC, tweeted:
“Christmas week blizzard over the east with severe cold liable to cause thousands of travel-related cancellations as the pattern evolution been trying to show based on old school methods seem to be working out. Euro going ballistic.”
Christmas week blizzard over the east with severe cold liable to cause thousands of travel-related cancellations as the pattern evolution been trying to show based on old school methods seem to be working out. Euro going ballistic pic.twitter.com/OeBTZiEsZp
— Joe Bastardi (@BigJoeBastardi) December 15, 2022
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We pointed out this week that a blast of Arctic air will sweep over parts of the Lower 48 around Christmas.
Meteorologists have yet to lock in any forecast, and there’s still a degree of uncertainty about the storm’s details, though some weather experts believe parts of the Northeast could be looking at a white Christmas.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 18:00 - South Dakota Gov. Noem Proposes Legislation To Restrict Chinese Purchase Of US Farmland
South Dakota Gov. Noem Proposes Legislation To Restrict Chinese Purchase Of US Farmland
Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced on Dec. 13 new proposed legislation to restrict farmland purchases by foreign countries, namely China.
“With this new process, we will be able to prevent nations who hate us—like Communist China—from buying up our state’s agriculture land,” Noem said in a statement.
“We cannot allow the Chinese Communist Party to continue to buy up our nation’s food supply, so South Dakota will lead the charge on this vital national security issue.”
Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, in New York on June 29, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) The proposed plan marked the latest step by the Republican governor to clamp down on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) influence in her state.
The statement revealed that Noem and state legislators planned to create a new board, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States–South Dakota, to review proposed agricultural land purchases by foreign entities. The board, which would consist of three ex officio members and two experts in the agricultural industry and national security, would recommend either approval or denial of land sales.
“We grow the world’s food, and we need to protect the security of that food supply for our kids,” said state Sen. Erin Tobin, a sponsor of the proposed legislation.
Besides food security concerns, lawmakers also view the land that could be owned by CCP-affiliated entities as problematic from a national security perspective.
“With vital national security resources like Ellsworth Air Force Base, we cannot afford for our enemies to purchase land in South Dakota,” said state Rep.-elect Gary Cammack, another sponsor of Noem’s proposal. “We want to keep this land in the hands of South Dakota agriculture producers.”
A B-1B Lancer assigned to the 37th Bomb Squadron taxis on the flight line at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., on July 16, 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Quentin K. Marx via AP) Chinese Purchase of US Farmland
The plan comes amid growing scrutiny of U.S. farmland being owned by Chinese investors. In September, 51 House Republicans raised national security concerns about the sale of 370 acres of farmland in North Dakota to Fufeng Group, an entity with close ties to the CCP.
The Chinese agribusiness proposed to set up a corn mill plant on the site. The proposed project is located about 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, home to sensitive U.S. drone, satellite, and surveillance technology.
The site could become “the ideal location to closely monitor and intercept” the Air Force base’s “exceptional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter dated Sept. 26 addressed to several Biden administration secretaries.
Despite strong pushback from lawmakers and local residents, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) stated that it wouldn’t block the deal, because the farmland purchase is “not a covered transaction” under the panel’s jurisdiction, according to a Dec. 13 statement from CFIUS Staff Chair Andrew Fair.
The total value of Chinese-owned U.S. agricultural land has jumped more than 20-fold in the past 10 years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2020, Chinese-owned U.S. agricultural lands were worth more than $1.8 billion, compared to $81 million in 2010.
A total of 14 states have introduced plans to restrict foreign acquisitions on U.S. soil, according to Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). The two Republican senators are pushing for a federal-level ban on foreign-owned private U.S. farmland.
In South Dakota, the current law limits foreign ownership of farmland to 160 acres, according to Noem’s office.
A sign opposing a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D., stands near 370 acres recently annexed by the city for the project. Many residents don’t want the project in the city because the owner, Fufeng Group, has reputed ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its company chairman. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times) Other Actions Against the CCP
Earlier this month, Noem had called for an immediate review of all investments to determine if taxpayer money is going to companies that “pose a threat to our national security.”
“South Dakotans deserve to know if their taxpayer dollars are being invested to benefit the Chinese Communist Party,” she said in a Dec. 8 statement.
The governor said she wanted the South Dakota Investment Council, a panel managing investment of the state’s pension, to complete the review in seven days.
“The Investment Council has ensured that South Dakota has the best-funded pension in the country. But it is not possible to make good deals with bad people,” Noem said. “If this review shows that such investment is taking place, then the Investment Council should propose alternative investment options.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 17:40 - California Is Impossible For The Middle Class
California Is Impossible For The Middle Class
Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,
As we head toward the end of another year, I’m remembering several friends who left in 2022 for cheaper states. And I’m thinking about several other friends who are planning on leaving in 2023 or 2024.
The fact is California is difficult, often impossible, to live in if you’re in the middle class. The wealthy can afford to live here, although they often leave too, because that 13.3 percent top income tax rate really digs in, especially when they dream of moving to 0 percent Texas, Florida, or Nevada. The poor suffer, but California has a generous welfare state, so it’s easier in many ways for low-income residents than living in another state.
It’s the middle class, the rock bed of any society, that bears the brunt of California’s brutal living conditions—amidst the sublime weather. There are three areas where the middle class is hammered: taxes, high housing costs, and a broken education system. Let’s look at them as we peer toward 2023: a little winter organizing of our political mentalities.
1. Taxes.
The middle class does not pay that 13.3 percent rate on millionaires, but it does pay what long was the “top” tax: 9.3 percent. California’s income tax rates were indexed for inflation in 1978. But that was only after a decade of inflation pushed the middle class into the then-top rate of 9.3 percent. That is, today the middle class pays at a rate originally intended only for the very rich.
The middle class in no other state pays income taxes that high. Of the states, seven have no income tax at all. And 37 have a top rate below 9.3 percent.
Here are the five states after California with top income tax rates above 9.3 percent: Hawaii at 11 percent; New York 10.9 percent; New Jersey 10.75 percent; Oregon 9.9 percent; and Minnesota 9.85 percent.
However, for the middle class, the percentage is lower. For someone making $80,000 a year, here’s the marginal percentage tax rate for a single filer:
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California 9.30
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Oregon 8.75 (and no state sales tax)
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Minnesota 6.80
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New Jersey 6.37
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New York 5.97
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Hawaii 5.86
Year after year, that adds up. Moreover, in California, $80,000 really isn’t middle class, but lower middle class. Admittedly, New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii also are high-cost states in many areas.
But those states have much lower taxes for the middle class. And it’s easier to be in the middle class in those states because most things, especially taxes and property, are cheaper.
2. Housing.
At Chapman University’s 45th Economic Forecast, held Dec. 13 and co-sponsored by The Epoch Times, economist and President-emeritus Jim Doti brought up an interesting number I hadn’t heard before. “Home prices increased 400 percent since 1990” in California, he said. “5.2 percent per year. Overall inflation then was 2.6 percent—roughly half. Home prices increased two times CPI,” the consumer price index.
I came to California just before that, in 1987, and rented a nice one-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach for $600 a month. In 1993 I moved to a nearby place and the price was about the same, $700 in the late 1990s. The rent crept up over the years to $1,000 in 2010, still tolerable. Then the rent started soaring, and I had to move. Today those two places rent for $2,429. My income sure didn’t go up four times in that period.
The median price for a home in 2021 was $854,280 in Los Angeles County and $1.2 million in Orange County—although both have dropped a bit in 2022. And the median price for all California was $554,866 in 2020, lower because the Inland Empire and other inland areas are cheaper.
But here are the median home prices in the other states I listed above for their relatively high income taxes:
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Hawaii $636,451
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Massachusetts $422,856
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Oregon $361,970
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New Jersey $335,607
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New York $321,934
And here are some states with no income tax:
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Washington $409,228
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Nevada $301,753
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New Hampshire $296,163
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Florida $ $245,169
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Texas $207,301
But according to the U.S. Census bureau, the median household income in California in 2021 was only $84,097, compared to $70,784 for the national median. That is, it’s 19 percent higher in the Golden State—which hardly covers the vastly greater expense of taxes and housing in California.
Which makes me wonder why I’m still living here. These two things—the highest taxes and second-highest housing prices—make it almost impossible for the middle class to accumulate capital to buy a home, start a business, or even raise a family.
3. Education.
I’ve written several articles here in The Epoch Times on the horrible state of the public schools in California, such as “Lessons From Running for California Schools Chief: Interview,” on Nov. 14. Test scores, already among the worst among the 50 states, dropped further during the excessive COVID-19 school lockdowns.
Then there’s the politically correct social engineering pushed on the students, beginning with critical race theory, now mandated in state schools under the guise of “ethnic studies.”
No wonder several of my friends left because they didn’t want their kids indoctrinated. A couple other friends with toddlers are planning to leave the next couple of years before the kids go to kindergarten.
Private schools are an option but cost money the middle class doesn’t have. Home schooling is another option but takes dedication some families don’t have, and is next to impossible if both parents are working—itself virtually a necessity in this expensive state.
Some school boards are kicking back against the indoctrination. Temecula Valley Unified School District on Dec. 13 banned critical race theory, while also adopting a resolution condemning racism. But few districts do this. And how long can Temecula and other districts hold out on the side of the parents and students against the pressure from the state government and the powerful teachers unions?
Conclusion: Adios, Middle Class
It’s simply impossible to be in the middle class in California, especially if you have kids. It’s no wonder more people keep leaving. At the Chapman Forecast, Doti provided the latest data, “Net domestic migration has been negative since 2011,” meaning more people leaving for other U.S. states than came here. “For the most recent year, 2021, it was negative 280,000.” If that keeps up, during the 2020s decade, California would lose 2.8 million people to other states.
Gov. Newsom touts his “California Way” as a contrast to the policies of the conservative governors of Florida and Texas. “They’re doubling down on stupid, and we will not follow their path, we’re going in a completely different direction,” he boasts. But the out-migration shows the state’s middle-class residents themselves are going in a completely different direction from Newsom—out of the state.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/16/2022 – 17:00 -
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