- Facebook "Overwhelmingly" Being Used For Online Recruitment In Active Sex Trafficking Cases
Facebook “Overwhelmingly” Being Used For Online Recruitment In Active Sex Trafficking Cases
A stunning new report ties social media platforms – the most prominent of which is Facebook – to “the majority” of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases.
The data was revealed in the Human Trafficking Institute’s 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report, according to CBS.
Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros said on CBSN Wednesday: “The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites. Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”
The report uses data from every criminal and civil human trafficking case that’s active. “This report actually looks at the last 20 years of trends in the federal government,” Boutros continued.
The report revealed that 30% of all victims identified in federal sex trafficking cases since 2000 were recruited online. In 2020, 59% of online recruitment in active cases took place on Facebook. 65% of identified child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were also attributed to Facebook.
Children accounted for 53% of identified victims in active criminal human trafficking cases in 2020, the report says, and a “large majority” of them were women.
An active case is defined as one where defendants were charged in 2020, or had charges pending in 2020 from previous years.
Facebook told CBS: “Sex trafficking and child exploitation are abhorrent and we don’t allow them on Facebook.” (Well, that solves *that* problem).
The tech giant continued: “We have policies and technology to prevent these types of abuses and take down any content that violates our rules. We also work with safety groups, anti-trafficking organizations and other technology companies to address this and we report all apparent instances of child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
In addition to Facebook, both Instagram and Snapchat were the most frequently cited platforms for recruiting child victims.
The report stated: “These data do not reflect the prevalence of online solicitation in sex trafficking schemes beyond those federally prosecuted. To be sure, the internet is implicated in many sex trafficking situations, but the high numbers of federal prosecutions involving internet solicitation are equally if not more reflective of the strategies law enforcement use to investigate these crimes.”
Boutros concluded: “Traffickers often prey on existing vulnerabilities of victims. A lot of times we imagine that traffickers are these large group syndicates or networks, exploiting a huge number of victims. But actually most traffickers are not operating as an organized crime enterprise. It is mostly individual traffickers that are operating individually and often exploiting a small handful of victims at a time.”
The Human Trafficking Institute “exists to decimate human trafficking at its source by empowering police and prosecutors to stop traffickers.”
“Working inside criminal justice systems, the Institute provides the embedded experts, world-class training, investigative resources, and evidence-based research necessary to free victims,” the report says.
You can read the full 2020 Federal Human Trafficking report here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/17/2021 – 02:45 - New Israeli Strikes On Gaza – New Hope For Netanyahu
New Israeli Strikes On Gaza – New Hope For Netanyahu
Submitted by SouthFront,
Thousands of Israelis waved flags and marched in a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem, asserting Israeli control over the city and testing the feeble ceasefire in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The march had been delayed from last month out of concern it would escalate the violence in the city just as fighting was breaking out between Israel and Palestinian groups on May 10th.
Hamas vowed a response to the recent escalation, and returned to its usual military practice: launching incendiary balloons into Israeli territory.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that 20 fires were sparked by these attacks over the past 24 hours, and in response scrambled warplanes to carry out airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The IDF said that it had targeted Hamas military compounds, used by the group’s operatives.
The Israeli strikes in Gaza appeared to cause no deaths or injuries. But the Israeli military warned that it was “prepared for any scenario, including a resumption of hostilities, in the face of continuing terror activities from the Gaza Strip.”
Israel also deployed Iron Dome to the country’s south to guarantee security. Tel Aviv’s government needed to show that it had security under control, especially since it hosted a full delegation of former US generals who met with various IDF officials.
Earlier on June 15th, in Jerusalem, mostly young Israelis marched to the main entrance to the Old City’s Muslim quarter. Many of them chanted “Death to Arabs”. There, a few thousand dancing demonstrators had gathered to celebrate Israel’s contested control of East Jerusalem. Scores of stone-throwing Palestinians took part in running street battles with Israeli security forces, who used rubber bullets, batons and water cannons spraying foul-smelling water to scatter those trying to disrupt the nationalist celebration outside the Old City walls.
At least 33 people were injured, including a 14-year-old boy hit by a rubber bullet, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
Israeli police said that two officers were lightly wounded and 17 people were arrested during the protests.
Hamas leaders had urged Palestinians to take part in a “day of rage” to challenge the protest outside the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, and the militant group then launched incendiary balloons.
The march’s organizers are former allies turned political enemies of new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has drawn ire from Israel’s right-wing population for forming a coalition that also includes the left-wing and an Arab party.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that him being removed from his post was just temporary and he would be back in a short time-span, as Israel is essentially lost without him.
Any sort of escalation in the West Bank is in his favor, as he may claim that his competition is not effectively dealing with the situation.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/17/2021 – 02:00 - FBI Operatives Likely 'Unindicted Co-Conspirators', Organizers Of Capitol Riot: Report
FBI Operatives Likely ‘Unindicted Co-Conspirators’, Organizers Of Capitol Riot: Report
Tucker Carlson dropped several bombshells on his show Tuesday night, chief among them was from a Revolver News report that the FBI was likely involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol ‘insurrection,’ and were similarly involved in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchin Whitmer.
“Why are there so many factual matters that we don’t understand about that day?” asked Carlson.
“Why is the Biden administration preventing us from knowing? Why is the administration still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the US capitol on January 6th? What could possibly be the reason for that – even as they call for more openness… they could release those tapes today, but they’re not. Why?”
Carlson notes that Revolver News has dissected court filings surrounding the Capitol riot, suggests that unindicted co-conspirators in the case are likely to have been federal operatives.
We at Revolver News have noticed a pattern from our now months-long investigation into 1/6 — and in particular from our meticulous study of the charging documents related to those indicted. In many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-called “conspiracy” serving as the basis for charging those indicted.
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case, and forces us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from indictment because they were involved in 1/6 as undercover operatives or confidential informants for a federal agency.
Key segment from Tucker:
“We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers that were present at the Capitol on January 6th, not just the one that killed Ashli Babbitt. According to the government’s own court filing, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot – sometimes in violent ways. We know that because without fail, the government has thrown the book at most people who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. There was a nationwide dragnet to find them – and many are still in solitary confinement tonight. But strangely, some of the key people who participated on Jan. 6 have not been charged.”
Look at the documents, the government calls those people ‘unindicted co-conspirators.’ What does that mean? Well it means that in potentially every case they were FBI operatives… in the Capitol, on January 6th.”
“For example, one of those unindicted co-conspirators is someone government documents identify only as “person two.” According to those documents, person two stayed in the same hotel room as a man called Thomas Caldwell – an ‘insurrectionist.’ A man alleged to be a member of the group “The Oathkeepers.” Person two also “stormed the barricades” at the Capitol on January 6th alongside Thomas Caldwell. The government’s indictments further indicate that Caldwell – who by the way is a 65-year-old man… was led to believe there would be a “quick reaction force” also participating on January 6th. That quick reaction force Caldwell was told, would be led by someone called “Person 3,” who had a hotel room and an accomplice with them. But wait. Here’s the interesting thing. Person 2 and person 3 were organizers of the riot. The government knows who they are, but the government has not charged them. Why is that? You know why. They were almost certainly working for the FBI. So FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th according to government documents. And those two are not alone. In all, Revolver news reported there are “upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keeper indictments, all playing various roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities and in some cases much, much more severe activities – as those named alongside them in the indictments.”
Watch:
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) June 16, 2021
Revolver, meanwhile, has important questions about January 6th
- In the year leading up to 1/6 and during 1/6 itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups (the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters) that the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and network news have labeled most responsible for planning and executing a Capitol attack on 1/6 infiltrated by agencies of the federal government, or informants of said agencies?
- Exactly how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol during the infamous “siege” and what roles did they play (merely passive informants or active instigators)?
- Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.)?
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has demanded an explanation from FBI Director Christopher Wray:
BREAKING: Congressman Matt Gaetz calls on FBI Director Christopher Wray to fully disclose the role and involvement of FBI operatives during the January 6th Capitol riot.
More details coming. pic.twitter.com/lviUHfhLyW
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) June 16, 2021
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More:
- Revolver News: “Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge“
- Tucker Carlson op-ed: “Government agents may have helped organize the Jan. 6 Capitol riot“
.@DarrenJBeattie: “After seeing all of this you have to ask yourself: Does the national security apparatus do anything but conspire against the American people?” pic.twitter.com/vdMb8RfXgA
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) June 16, 2021
We recommend you read the entire Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved int he “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot” were undercover agents and federal informants.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 23:55 - Mao’s Cultural Revolution Has Arrived In America
Mao’s Cultural Revolution Has Arrived In America
Commentary authored by Chris Talgo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
From 1966 to 1976, Chinese society suffered under what we now call the Cultural Revolution.
Although the Cultural Revolution (previously known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) was a multifaceted affair, it was undergirded by a vicious, fanatical campaign to destroy the “Four Olds.”
A small group of Chinese youth walk past several dazibao, revolutionary placards, in February 1967 in downtown Beijing, during the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images) In 1971, The New York Times described the campaign thusly:
“One of the early objectives of the Cultural Revolution in China … was to wipe out the ‘four olds’—old things, old ideas, old customs and old habits.
“The ‘four olds’ had already suffered setbacks in the years of Communist rule preceding the Cultural Revolution, but the Maoist leadership tried to use the new revolutionary upsurge launched in 1966 to eliminate them completely.
“In the turbulent years from 1966 to 1968, what remained of old religious practices, old superstitions, old festivals, old social practices such as traditional weddings and funerals, and old ways of dress were violently attacked and suppressed. Visual evidences of old things were destroyed, and there was an orgy of burning of old books and smashing of old art objects.”
Tragically, it seems as if the United States is in the midst of its own Cultural Revolution.
Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the current “revolution” in America is being waged by the youth, at the behest of radical leftists, of course.
Also, much like the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the American “Woke Revolution” is hellbent on destroying any and all vestiges of traditional society, especially those that celebrate freedom, individualism, and American exceptionalism, in general.
In China, during the Cultural Revolution, as The New York Times describes, old things, old ideas, old customs, and old habits had to be eliminated.
In America, during the Woke Revolution, we’re following the same path.
Old things, such as fossil fuels, the Founding Fathers, the Electoral College, etc. must go.
Old ideas, such as equality of opportunity and meritocracy, are now moot.
Old customs, such as standing for the National Anthem and vigorously defending one’s right to freedom of speech, are long gone.
And, old habits, such as the Protestant work ethic and rugged individualism, have been seriously undermined.
In place of these “old” aspects of our culture, the Woke Revolution desires to turn our society on its head.
The Woke Revolution, like the Cultural Revolution, is predicated on Marxist ideology.
Individualism is being replaced with communalism. Equity, better known as equality of outcome, now trumps equality of opportunity.
Sadly, even Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of a color-blind society has given way to critical race theory, which is the epitome of racism.
And, above all else, class warfare reigns supreme. Rich versus poor. Privileged versus oppressed.
No longer is America the land of opportunity. Henceforth, it shall be known as the land of oppression. Or so we’re told.
Perhaps most disconcerting when one compares the Cultural Revolution to contemporary America is the disdain for the past.
In China, this manifested in mass book burnings and wanton destruction of historic monuments. That sounds a lot like what’s been happening in America recently.
The parallels between China’s Cultural Revolution and America’s Woke Revolution are becoming closer by the day.
As The New York Times article chronicling China’s Cultural Revolution concluded, “A new generation has appeared, and though much of the old China is too indelible to erase as yet, a new China with ways quite different from the old is in existence.”
The same could be said about America in 2021.
Chris Talgo is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 23:40 - California Bans Porsche From Selling 2022 911 GT3 With Manual Transmission
California Bans Porsche From Selling 2022 911 GT3 With Manual Transmission
Well, maybe the birds and deer will feel comfortable in California that the liberal-run state has banned Porsche from selling the 2022 911 GT3 with manual transmission because it’s just too damn loud.
Porsche informed Car and Driver this week that the optional six-speed manual transmission of the supercar will not be sold in the state due to the state’s sound regulations.
Porsche will contact those who have already ordered the GT3 with the opportunity to switch to the standard dual-clutch automatic gearbox.
Porsche tells us that California’s Code of Regulations (CCR) 1046 references the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) test procedure J1470 for its exterior-noise criteria, which was last revised in 1998. There’s a newer SAE standard for pass-by noise, J2805, which presumably the GT3 was designed to and meets, and Porsche expected California to update its regs to this latest standard before the GT3 went on sale. But, for now, the GT3 is stuck in limbo, awaiting that change.
Porsche says that it’s working with California State Highway Patrol to come to a solution but has no estimated timeline of when that might happen. Somewhere in the details of those two SAE testing procedures is why the manual fails one but not the other; we’re digging into those specifics and will update this story when we have a more complete explanation. -Car and Driver
The GT3 is an absolute beast, pumping out 502-hp from its naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six and screams at 9,000 rpm.
So the ban on these GT3s will only be a handful of cars because of their rarity. Still, the state is turning a blind eye to the tens of thousands of automotive enthusiasts who mount aftermarket parts on their vehicles for performance gains that make some areas of the state sound like a Fast & Furious sequel on any given day.
Instead of banning these cars from the street in the UK, noise cameras were placed on certain roads that would ticket drivers if their vehicles made sounds over 80 decibels.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 23:20 - Welcome To Wokespeak: Its Logic-Defying Rhetoric Is Making Heads Spin
Welcome To Wokespeak: Its Logic-Defying Rhetoric Is Making Heads Spin
Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations,
In the midst of the nation’s racial upheaval last year, media outlets including the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post rushed to start capitalizing the word “Black” in reference to African Americans, some announcing the move as a long-overdue gesture of respect. While RealClear has not changed its style, the change elsewhere prompted newsroom soul-searching on whether to write “white” or “White” in reference to people of European descent.
Capitalizing the term made sense as a simple matter of consistency. But the argument for lower-casing “white” staked its own moral claims. One was that capitalizing it would legitimize white supremacy. Another was that “white” in lower case is an apolitical description of a skin color; it doesn’t merit capitalization because whites don’t represent a shared culture.
News organizations adopted inconsistent policies on the question – the AP, Times and others voted for “w”; the Washington Post and National Association of Black Journalists chose “W.” But the notion that there is no white culture drew jeers of derision from some quarters. It was virtually impossible to pretend not to see that white culture is routinely cited to refer to white supremacy and white privilege as a shorthand for the cultural biases, prejudices and values that prop up systemic racism.
Both ideas – that white culture is omnipresent and nonexistent – can’t be true. Or can they?
The white culture conundrum is one of many such paradoxes in today’s topsy-turvy woke culture, where colorblindness once represented the ideal of being unprejudiced, but now marks the epitome of racism.
These apparent contradictions can cause confusion, frustration and moral whiplash in a swiftly changing society where many people fear that one wayward move can result in a public flogging or a pink slip. Yet as the public seeks guidance, the fractured market of ideas seems unable to provide clarity on which rules apply in which situation.
“These contradictions and conundrums have hit like an avalanche,” said Jason Hill, a native of Jamaica and author of the 2018 book, “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People.”
Distinct white culture is, except when it isn’t: The AP announces its Black/white capitalization policy. Associated Press Everyone needs to be aware because at some point they are going to be caught in these conceptual snares,” said Hill, a philosophy professor at DePaul University. “Most people are caught off-guard and cede their position. If you try to argue your way out, they’ll ensnare you in more traps.”
The paradoxes come in a variety of iterations, from moral imperatives to abstract propositions. In Ibram X. Kendi’s best-selling book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” the celebrity professor writes that cultural relativism is “the essence of cultural antiracism. To be antiracist is to see all cultures in all their differences as on the same level, as equals.”
Taken literally, Kendi’s dictum would mean that the antiracist culture he envisions is no better than the racist culture he blames for racial disparities in health, wealth, education and other measures. Yet it’s impossible to read Kendi’s work as anything but a critique of racist culture, and by extension, gun culture, rape culture and consumer culture.
This paradoxical pairing of a radical cultural critique with a radical cultural relativism is hardly unique to Kendi, but one of a growing number of widely circulating self-cancelling propositions.
Take gentrification, often invoked as an example of systemic racism because it can lead to the displacement of generations of black residents by incoming affluent whites. The famed antiracist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has described gentrification as a crime, and others have denounced whites moving into black neighborhoods as ethnic cleansing, colonization and genocide.
Yet the reverse of gentrification – white flight from increasingly black neighborhoods – is also deemed a racist reflex by some, Coates among them, because it abandons once thriving schools and communities to neglect and disrepair. Hence the paradox: Condemning gentrification and white flight seems to leave no room for movement in any direction, inducing a moral paralysis.
“If both advocating for integrating city neighborhoods and advocating for retreat to safer suburban neighborhoods can be painted as racist — and there are many examples equivalent to this one — almost anyone could be ‘canceled’ at any time,” said Wilfred Reilly, author of the 2019 book “Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War.”
“It makes almost every conversation not among close friends into a booby-trapped environment,” said Reilly, a political science professor at Kentucky State University, a historically black college.
Some critics of progressive politics describe these paradoxes as the inevitable consequence of sloppy, illogical thinking based on emotional arguments and political expediencies. The inconsistencies can also result from the social justice movement’s strategy of “problematizing” – a philosophical posture that deconstructs and delegitimizes existing values and institutions as systems of oppression when seen through the lens of race, gender and power. Indeed, the term “woke” refers to being hyper-aware of the constant microaggressions and oppressions that become evident everywhere once one gets into the mindset of problematizing, or turning everything into a problem.
Others see the self-cancelling propositions in more sinister terms: as moral double-binds and Orwellian doublespeak deliberately designed to deceive, entrap and neutralize political opponents.
“They’re not bugs, they’re features,” said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and other individual rights of students and faculty at colleges and universities.
“It gives you infinite power over your opponent if you can literally have your argument any which way that works to your advantage,” said Lukianoff, co-author of the 2018 book “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.”
To be sure, any large movement will have discordant voices and divergent opinions, and a certain amount of viewpoint diversity is inevitable. In all human affairs, from politics to religion, there seems to be no shortage of hypocrisy. Fabio Rojas, a sociology professor at Indiana University, said the visibility of paradoxes in the realm of social justice is a testament to the movement’s ascendance in Western societies.
“Social justice is the theory of the moment. It’s all that we’re doing,” said Rojas, author of the 2007 book “From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline.” “Right now the social justice world is gigantic, very popular.”
Still, many antiracist advocates don’t see these conundrums as contradictory, but as being situationally true in specific contexts, and also dependent on other nuances, such as whether a word like “culture” is being used literally or metaphorically.
Ron Scapp, an academic specialist in ethnic studies, is among those who acknowledge the contradictions and paradoxes as real, not imaginary; but Scapp says they are not the result of muddled thinking or an underhanded attempt at emotional blackmail. They simply reflect the ubiquity of systemic racism that permeates so much of American society, which means that we encounter racism wherever we turn, and all our options are morally fraught.
This sensation of feeling trapped is what is often meant by the idea that facing one’s white complicity in structures of oppression will necessarily cause white people to experience discomfort and even distress, because they have no place to hide in the society they have created, said Scapp, a professor of humanities and teacher education at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, in New York, and past president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies.
“The options aren’t painless – this comes with a price,” Scapp said. “And doing good doesn’t mean that you get to feel free from any pain or inconvenience that history has set us up for. There’s some white people who want a quick and easy out, to buy their way out of that history.”
Several critical race theorists told RealClearInvestigations that another factor might be at play in the calling out of contradictions: a whiff of white privilege in demanding perfect logical consistency without bothering to attend to context or to the literal and rhetorical uses of language.
“There might be some element of that [white privilege] involved in demanding logical consistency where it’s so easily shown that there is none,” said Robert Westley, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in critical race theory and reparations. “If we suspend the rhetoricity of language and just approach it in a logical way, then you could generate these kinds of contradictions all day long.”
In many intellectual traditions, logical consistency is not considered to be the loftiest human intellectual attainment, and rationalism lacks the prestige of paradoxes, enigmas, koans and riddles. In the Anglophone world, contradictions have been celebrated as transcendent by the playwright Oscar Wilde, poet Walt Whitman and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who declared that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Political theorist Saul Alinsky, the author of the 1971 community organizing guide “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals,” gamely advised: “In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.”
Paradoxes aren’t the sole domain of the activist, but also are a tendency of progressive scholarship. For example, we are told that women are equal to men in all areas of competency, but studies show that women are more effective in 84% of leadership skills and in 13 of 19 areas of leadership effectiveness, according to research reported in Harvard Business Review.
It is accepted as a self-evident truth that slavery and segregation enriched white America at the expense of African Americans. But research also shows the opposite: that racism acts as a drag on the whole economy – retarding investment, growth, purchasing power, consumer spending and depressing other metrics — which economically harms white people, too, according to a report in The New York Times.
The most fertile ground for contradictions might well be the diversity and equity industry, which seems to have outpaced the pulpit in its zeal for issuing moral precepts.
A recurring theme in the social justice movement is the plea for an honest conversation about race, where all perspectives are respected. But the public is also getting the inverse message: that it is imperative for whites to remain silent to make room for marginalized voices and to stop centering their privileged experiences.
In the antiracist consulting world, it is a truth universally acknowledged that organizations should hire people of color to promote diverse viewpoints and insights from those employees.
But according to materials from The Walt Disney Co., recently leaked to City Journal, there is a limit on exploiting black wisdom. “Do not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you. This is emotionally taxing”; “Do not call on your Black colleagues to represent the voice of their community”; and “Be aware of tokenism, when Black professionals are expected to be representative for their entire race.”
Critical race theorist andré douglas pond cummings (who writes his name in lowercase letters), said this is actually sound advice for an organization that has hired one or two token black employees. The problem of tokenization disappears when organizations have true diversity with many black colleagues representing multiple black perspectives, said cummings, a business law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who has taught courses on corporate justice and “Hip-Hop & the American Constitution.”
He said many of the paradoxes will become moot in a socially just society.
“Maybe some of these seeming incoherences or inconsistencies just need time to come to a place of coherence,” cummings said.
Appeasing moral scolds can present a special challenge for homebuyers who want to be “on the right side of history” and increasingly see their words and actions as moral statements. The real estate dilemma of gentrification versus white flight is particularly acute for someone who might opt for a hybrid automobile over a gas-guzzling SUV and insists on shopping at businesses that support Black Lives Matter. A home purchase, the most expensive personal investment most people will make, becomes imbued with the greatest moral significance of all.
Rachel Garshick Kleit, a professor of city and regional planning at The Ohio State University, has taught classes on and written about teaching “The Socially Just City.” She said her students have been torn between the two impossible options when they think about home ownership as a personal moral decision. “They were in moral conflict over it in a class discussion,” Kleit said. “They were trying to figure out what their personal responsibility was.”
Gentrification is deeply personal for all involved. In a 2019 New York Times article about gentrification in Raleigh, N.C. – headlined “The Neighborhood’s Black. The New Home Buyers? White.” — a community organizer vented her frustration: “Our black bodies literally have less economic value than the body of a white person. As soon as the white body moves into the same space that I occupied, all of a sudden this place is more valuable.”
Some critical race theorists are willing to grant moral absolution on this point. The moral predicament of home ownership arises out of the default culture’s fixation with individualism, said Westley, the reparations specialist at Tulane. The critique of gentrification and white flight is not so much a moral litmus test for individual white homebuyers, according to Westley and Kleit, but a critique of the government policies that shape real estate markets in ways that are harmful to people of color.
“I think you have to get out of this individualist paradigm where it’s all about me and what I do, as opposed to it’s about what we do as a society and a community,” Westley said.
‘Endless Contradictions, Fabrications and Fantasies’
The topic of woke paradoxes has received scant attention, but it hasn’t escaped notice altogether.
Conservative British author Douglas Murray grappled with the issue in his 2019 book, “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity.” He traced the cause of the linguistic convolutions to the social justice movement’s emphasis on identity politics and its jettisoning of traditional liberal principles such as colorblindness. This manner of thinking distorts the benefits of liberalism (that is, civil rights gains for minority groups) into a type of idolatry, elevating identity politics as an end unto itself. This confusion leads to “endless contradictions, fabrications and fantasies,” Murray wrote.
As a paradox-spotter, Murray has few peers. Murray depicts social justice activism as an incarnation of the Orwellian principle that revolutions start out professing that all people are equal but then slip into the self-serving belief that some people are more equal than others. Though Murray doesn’t mention the U.S. Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – slavery and discrimination might well be one of the most egregious examples of this unfortunate tendency.
Murray does cite other examples. One is a 2014 study by Australian researchers that found that children of same-sex couples are healthier and happier than children brought up by straight couples. In another study, UCLA researchers found that gay couples are more likely to stay together than straight couples (and, surprisingly, lesbian couples).
Murray also noted the perplexing declamations that women are more capable than men. This incongruity gained currency after the Great Recession of 2008, which was allegedly caused by too many men in positions of power in the finance and banking industry. Christine Lagarde, former head of the International Monetary Fund (now president of the European Central Bank), blamed the financial meltdown on the underrepresentation of women on the boards of banks and in regulatory agencies. “If it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers,” she was quoted as saying, repeating a favorite mantra, “the world might well look a lot different today.”
According to Murray, who is gay, one of the “central conundrums” of our time is expressed by people with marginalized identities: You must understand me. / You will never understand me.
Murray dubbed these moral strictures as “paradoxical, impossible demands.”
“The inherent willingness to rush towards contradiction” is “not enough to stop this new religion of social justice,” Murray wrote. One reason “why contradiction is not enough is because nothing about the intersectional, social justice movement suggests that it is really interested in solving any of the problems that it claims to be interested in.”
That left Murray with only one possible conclusion: “Their desire is not to heal but to divide, not to placate but to inflame, not to dampen but to burn.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 23:00 - Summer's Hottest Drink Is Hard Seltzers, As It Single-Handedly Transforms Alcohol Industry
Summer’s Hottest Drink Is Hard Seltzers, As It Single-Handedly Transforms Alcohol Industry
This summer’s hottest drink is hard seltzers, and their success during the pandemic is rapidly transforming the alcohol industry.
Alcohol sales soared during the pandemic, and hard seltzers led the most of the growth, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis. They found seltzers and canned cocktails jumped 43%, and overall alcohol sales rose about 2% in 2020.
NielsenIQ data provided Bussiness Insider with data on the hard seltzer industry, only to reveal that it has become a multi-billion dollar industry over a short period, with $4.5 billion in sales in just 52 weeks ending on May 22. For the month, sales jumped 80% over the same month in 2020. In 2017, hard seltzers had sales of only $39 million. Already, sales this year are around $3 billion, more than doubling 2019’s.
The growing demand for seltzers and canned cocktails is not just because of the virus pandemic closing down bars, but there’s also a generation component to the equation because millennials seek exotic tastes and a convenience factor in a can.
How consumers are consuming hard seltzer pic.twitter.com/aRIswlaZqw
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 10, 2020
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Nielsen analyst Danelle Kosmal told Insider that hard seltzers’ popularity is driving growth across the entire industry. She added that consumers are requesting hard seltzer with “an experience through flavor or trying something new.”
Bank of America beverage analysts told clients in March that Anheuser-Busch InBev and Diageo were two companies that are emerging as top players in the field.
Instacart said hard seltzers are popular with millennials who live in suburbs or small urban areas.
There’s plenty of reason to believe that as bars and restaurants open up, hard seltzer will continue to be in high demand.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 22:40 - Taibbi: Has The Media's Russiagate Reckoning Finally Begun?
Taibbi: Has The Media’s Russiagate Reckoning Finally Begun?
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News Subastack,
Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter turned high-priced “oppo” merchant, didn’t like to think of himself as a private investigator.
He preferred to describe what he and his firm, Fusion-GPS, did as “journalism for rent,” an activity a class above spying, because a journalist can’t just say what he or she thinks.
“You have to prove it,” Simpson said.
“And that imposes a discipline to the investigative process that people in other fields don’t really absorb… When you’re a spy, you really don’t have to get into a lot of that stuff.”
Spooked, the meticulous new book on private spying by former New York Times reporter Barry Meier, reads like a direct rebuttal to Simpson, the book’s central character.
“There is little question that private investigators take on legitimate assignments,” writes Meier at one point.
“Still, everyone in the industry knows its secret — that the big money is made not by exposing the truth but by papering it over.”
Meier, a two-time Polk award winner who was also part of a team that won a Pulitzer in 2017, is the first mainstream press figure to break the industry omerta over the reporting failures of Russiagate. That Spooked is an important book can be judged by the nervous reaction to it. Though the Times did publish an excerpt and a review by William Cohan, and the Wall Street Journal commended him for saying “what hardly anyone else in his circle of elite mainstream journalists has had the courage to say,” much of the rest of the business has looked askance.
This reveals how much industry discomfort remains about the Steele story, still treated by media critics as a minor fender-bender and not the epic crackup Spooked describes.
Much of the point of Meier’s book is that there can be no such thing as “journalism for rent,” because the mere act of putting information up for sale corrupts the process Simpson claims to love. As Meier put it to me, “People who think of themselves as journalists and rent out those talents are no longer journalists.”
Although Spooked covers other private agencies like Black Cube (hired by Harvey Weinstein to dirty up his accusers) and K2 (the corporate descendant of Kroll Associates, who planted a phony documentarian to investigate health activists), the spine of the book is the story of Glenn Simpson’s Fusion-GPS. Simpson is the kind of half-absurd, half villainous character who makes for a great character study, and Spooked readers are fortunate he made the mistake of leaving a trail of unflattering stories before very gossipy witnesses across his years in the media business. Meier coldly gathers these tales together in a way that makes for a particularly entertaining read for anyone who’s ever worked in a newsroom (Simpson imploring his “dachsund-beagle mix named Irving” to take a dump on his editors’ desks on his last day at the Journal is just one of many amusing anecdotes).
Simpson had a rocky relationship to the journalism profession when he was in it. On one level, he apparently was well-liked, funny, a prankster. On another, editors were wary, finding him combative and, as Meier writes, “quick to see conspiracies where they didn’t exist”:
One Journal editor became so concerned about the conclusionary leaps that Simpson was capable of making that he asked another journalist on the paper’s staff to double-check Simpson’s reporting. His response to any pushback he got from editors was usually the same: they could go fuck themselves…
As Simpson soldiered on in a business whose ranks were shrinking, he drifted into a world where a thinker prone to “conclusionary leaps” might feel more comfortable, filling his rolodex with the names of private operatives who became his top sources. He did a series of reports about a fierce (if uninteresting) squabble between Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev and his former son-in-law and political rival, Rakhat Aliyev, with Aliyev’s lawyers and operatives serving as Simpson’s sources.
Feeling less wanted in the newsroom, and tempted by the money and allure of the private spy world, Simpson made the jump to become an informational Pinkerton, to disastrous effect. Meier emphasizes that for all its flaws, the journalism business at least once imposed some constraints on personalities like Simpson’s, forcing them to stay stuck in the world of evidence. In private spying, those constraints are removed, and a person prone to skipping steps in the proof process can get themselves into some very nasty situations. As Meier put it, “things could go really wrong.”
As the world knows by now, things did go wrong, in what Meier describes as “a media clusterfuck of epic proportions.”
To read more, subscribe here…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 22:20 - After Blisteringly Hot Temps, Texas Faces Shot Of Cold Air Next Week
After Blisteringly Hot Temps, Texas Faces Shot Of Cold Air Next Week
A negative temperature anomaly has been spotted for Texas for early next week that may impact power prices. But, no matter the temperature, extreme climate variability has stressed out the state’s power grid and resulted in soaring prices and forced outages.
Next week’s forecast shows a negative temperature anomaly is expected to roll into the Lone Star State between next Tuesday and Wednesday. This indicates cooler than average temperatures are expected.
Texas’ power grid has proved no match for extreme climate variability this year due to all the renewable energy sources on the grid.
In February, Texas power prices infamously exploded higher during the frigid temperatures of the February winter storm. The power grid was seconds away from breaking as record cold temperatures affected power generation of all types. The state’s independent and isolated electricity grid (operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT) had to plunge millions of people into darkness to save the grid from a total collapse.
Earlier this week, a positive temperature anomaly in the state resulted in surging power prices and outages as millions of people turned down their thermostats to survive blisteringly hot temperatures. As a result, ERCOT requested customers this week to reduce electric consumption as much as possible. But as of Wednesday, Bloomberg notes blackout threats are easing as more power capacity comes online.
The threat of blackouts is easing in heat-ravaged Texas as more power plants return to service after going down for repairs. The state’s grid operator projects available capacity will rise to about 75,000 megawatts Wednesday afternoon, up nearly 6% from Tuesday, with demand projected to peak at around 70,000 megawatts. That offers more breathing room, though officials are still asking consumers to reduce power use.
Texas Power Demand vs. Texas Power Capacity
Texas’ reliance on renewable energy shows how an entire state, isolated from the nation’s grid, can barely handle shifts in power demand due to extreme climate variability.
So what happens to the power grid during next week’s cold snap?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 22:00 - Americans Are Increasingly "Fleeing" California And New York For Florida And Texas: Study
Americans Are Increasingly “Fleeing” California And New York For Florida And Texas: Study
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
A new study revealed that Americans are continuing to flee New York and California for places like Texas and Florida in recent months.
“Despite the 2020 pandemic, this year Americans are following similar moving trends as prior years. Millions of Americans are moving either to start a new job or to move home,” said a report (pdf) from North American Van Lines, a trucking and moving company.
Specifically, it noted that Americans “are fleeing” California to Texas and Idaho, although New York, New Jersey, and Illinois “are the three states with the most outbound moves.”
Other states that have seen a mass exodus of people, the report said, are Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“The top five inbound states in 2020 are Idaho, Arizona, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina, with Tennessee overtaking South Carolina from the 2019 results,” the report found.
North American Van Lines did not make mention of the widespread protests and riots last year, or the pandemic. Crime rates in some cities have also spiked amid the “defund the police” movement that became popular in the summer of 2020. In major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, and Chicago, shootings and homicides saw upticks in 2020 and during the first six months of 2021.
But the report speculated that people might be leaving northeastern states due to the “harsh winters,” job availability as many firms “are avoiding the region” for now, and that many northeastern cities have a high cost of living that makes housing affordability more challenging.
The city that is most popular as a moving destination is now Phoenix, according to the report. The next on the list are Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Denver.
“With Texas’ warm climate and low taxes it’s not surprising that three of the top ten MSA [Metropolitan Statistical Area] destinations are in Texas,” the report noted.
Another report released this week from real estate website Zillow confirmed that there has been a significant shift in where people are living now, saying that Americans are “reshuffling” to “larger” and “more-affordable homes.”
“The average long-distance mover relocated to a ZIP code with home values nearly $27,000 lower than where they came from last year,” its report said. “U.S. movers in 2020 relocated to ZIP codes with homes 33 square feet larger than where they came from, on average.”
Zillow used data from North American Van Lines to find that “movers that changed states in 2020 moved to areas with homes that were, on average, both larger and less-pricey than in the areas they moved from.” That finding, according to the analysis, is a “notable reversal” of previous years’ trends.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 21:40 - IAEA Chief Says Nuclear Deal Will Have To Wait For New Iranian President
IAEA Chief Says Nuclear Deal Will Have To Wait For New Iranian President
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said any agreement reached on a restored nuclear deal in Vienna will have to wait until after this weekend’s Iranian presidential election.
A national vote will take place on Friday, June 8, and it’s expected that the hardline candidate and current head of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi will succeed Hassan Rouhani as president. Rouhani’s term ends on August 3rd. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said in a Wednesday interview with an Italian daily paper that “Everyone knows that, at this point, it will be necessary to wait for the new Iranian government.”
Via AP “The discussions that have been going on for weeks have dealt with very complex and delicate technical questions, but what is needed is the political will of the parties,” he added.
The remarks come after prior widespread overly-optimistic reports that a deal would be reached prior to a new Iranian president being sworn into office.
These statements had actually previously come from the Iranian side, also given it was Rouhani who oversaw negotiations with the Obama administration in 2015 for the original deal. Rouhani has this week been pushing for a hasty positive conclusion to Vienna talks, with the hoped-for US dropping of sanctions:
President Hassan Rouhani in his cabinet meeting Wednesday said that while progress in the Vienna nuclear talks had slackened, an agreement was “two words and a dot” away and would happen soon.
With his period in office ending in August − he was ineligible to seek a third consecutive term in Friday’s presidential election − Rouhani has been heralding the imminent conclusion of Iran’s multilateral talks with world powers that began in April to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA.
In remarks likely aimed at bolstering turnout for the election, Rouhani today at the cabinet meeting acknowledged the Vienna talks on #Iran JCPOA had slowed but said an agreement was now “two words and a dot” away.https://t.co/moieI6WiGz
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) June 16, 2021
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As for the current state of the now 6th round of talks in Vienna, which is being done “indirectly” in terms of Iran engaging US officials, Grossi stated: “The discussions that have been going on for weeks have dealt with very complex and delicate technical questions, but what is needed is the political will of the parties.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 21:20 - You Know It's Bad When A North Korea Defector Says That US Similarities To NK Are "Insane"
You Know It’s Bad When A North Korea Defector Says That US Similarities To NK Are “Insane”
Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
We interrupt your regularly scheduled brainwashing for a dose of reality for a brave young woman who defected from North Korea in a brutal journey so she could be free. Eventually, she made it to the US to attend an Ivy League American school.
Yeonmi Park has seen firsthand where the United States is headed….and it’s straight to North Korea if we don’t make changes soon.
Propaganda in North Korea
Anyone who saw the movie “The Interview” recognized that under the farce there was a lot of truth. Kim Jong Un is a brutal dictator who will not allow citizens to access the internet or learn anything about critical thinking. The propaganda in North Korea is rampant – both anti-American and pro-North Korea.
For example, there’s a long-running cartoon shown to schoolchildren called “A Squirrel and Hedgehog.”
Yet we should not forget that films and cartoons in North Korea send an ideological message. Usually it is very simple: all the army, the party, and the people follow the unsurpassed leaders of Mount Paektu in their march from victory to victory against the mortal enemies of the Korean people willing that the wicked American imperialists, the evil Japanese claimants of territory, and their south Korean puppets suffer defeat-after-defeat, bringing ever closer the day when they will be erased from the face of the planet.
The least ideological material on North Korean TV happens to be children’s cartoon series, the most well-known which is called “A Squirrel and Hedgehog”.
The story is quite simple. There is a community of good animals who live on Flower Hill, but they are attacked by an evil Weasel Legion. The Flower Hill animals respond by sending a brave squirrel named Goldie agent to infiltrate the Legion. Goldie becomes close to the evil overlord – the Weasel General – yet soon sabotages his plans, helping his allies from Flower Hill. And when the Weasel Legion is defeated in episode 26, a new enemy rises: a Jackal Legion…
…The morality presented in the series is utterly black and white alike those usually in North Korean fiction. Goldie and the other Flower Hill animals are smart, noble, witty and ready to self-sacrifice. Weasels, jackals and their allies, on the other hand, are mean and treacherous cowards, longing to betray everyone they see…
…Finally, and this is perhaps the saddest part of all, “A Squirrel and a Hedgehog” is actually a cruel cartoon.
Here I am not merely talking about the Jackal General, who suffers a nervous breakdown in almost every episode. The cruelty is actually more associated with Goldie and his allies, who constantly call their enemies “bastards” and “scum,” using violence against a defeated enemy on a regular basis…
…Outside of North Korea, most cartoons and films about wars talk about a show of compassion towards the defeated enemy and civilians, in which when the hero is forced to kill, it is not an easy thing. In North Korea, however, the mentality seems to be “We are right. The enemy is not. Kill the enemy and make him suffer.” (source)
In North Korea, there is no internet, all media is state-run, and there’s only one television channel. Only one point of view is allowed to exist. From the time they start school, children in North Korea are inundated with propaganda to the point that they’re completely brainwashed. Sound familiar?
Back to Yeonmi Park’s interview
Yeonmi, now 27, escaped from North Korea with her mother when she was 13 years old. The journey was treacherous. She and her mother were sold to sex traffickers, then rescued by missionaries, they walked across the Gobi Desert to reach freedom. Eventually, they reached safe haven in South Korea. She wrote about her fight to live free in her 2015 memoir, In Order to Live.
We’ve talked here before about a Marxist agenda in the US education system and Park agrees. When she transferred to Columbia University, she says she was deeply disturbed by what she saw.
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in an interview with Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.
Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school…
…It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with. (source)
Yeonmi was baffled by what American students considered oppression.
“Because I have seen oppression, I know what it looks like,” said Yeonmi, who by the age of 13 had witnessed people drop dead of starvation right before her eyes.
“These kids keep saying how they’re oppressed, how much injustice they’ve experienced. They don’t know how hard it is to be free,” she admonished…
….”The people here are just dying to give their rights and power to the government. That is what scares me the most.” (source)
This is something we’ve witnessed to a shocking degree during the Covid pandemic, which has been used as an opportunity to change the world forever. People have given up their livelihoods, their lives, their very freedom to walk their dogs.
The United States of America was not what she expected.
Yeonmi had always dreamed of coming to the United States.
Having come to America with high hopes and expectations, Yeonmi expressed her disappointment.
“You guys have lost common sense to degree that I as a North Korean cannot even comprehend,” she said.
She thought she was going to come here and learn to think critically.
She accused American higher education institutions of stripping people’s ability to think critically.
“In North Korea I literally believed that my Dear Leader [Kim Jong-un] was starving,” she recalled. “He’s the fattest guy – how can anyone believe that? And then somebody showed me a photo and said ‘Look at him, he’s the fattest guy. Other people are all thin.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, why did I not notice that he was fat?’ Because I never learned how to think critically.”
“That is what is happening in America,” she continued. “People see things but they’ve just completely lost the ability to think critically.” (source)
Critical thinking is indeed becoming a lost art, particularly as anyone thinking outside the status quo gets “canceled” or “defunded.” Our country is rapidly turning into the kind of place in which only one opinion can be held. To hold a different viewpoint is practically criminalized.
The worst part is that people here have chosen their path.
Yeonmi is watching America go down a totalitarian path.
Witnessing the depth of American’s ignorance up close has made Yeonmi question everything about humanity.
“North Koreans, we don’t have Internet, we don’t have access to any of these great thinkers, we don’t know anything. But here, while having everything, people choose to be brainwashed. And they deny it.” (source)
We’re seeing changes though, that take us further and further toward that kind of world. Alternative news sites are shut down in a wave of virtual book-burning. Social media purges any dissenting point of view. TikTok brainwashes young people in 15-60 second intervals. University professors promote violence against those who think differently.
Have things gone too far?
Is it fixable? Yeonmi questions where our country goes at this point.
“Where are we going from here?” she wondered. “There’s no rule of law, no morality, nothing is good or bad anymore, it’s complete chaos.”
“I guess that’s what they want, to destroy every single thing and rebuild into a Communist paradise.” (source)
There’s a playbook, we wrote it, and it’s being used to turn our once-proud nation into a parody of itself. Our very education is brainwashing students into hating our country and being ashamed of our race if we’re white. Social media inspires paroxysms of self-induced guilt over the possibility one may have accidentally micro-aggressed or not been 100% inclusive to everyone on the planet, thinking ahead of any potential handicap or mental illness that might have caused someone discomfort. Americans have become offended over practically everything and the butthurt is real. Some of it would be funny if it wasn’t so damned tragic.
Critical thinking is frowned upon, canceled, and defunded. Why?
Because we’re being set up for a communist takeover and the brainwashed masses will applaud. With jazz hands, of course, so they don’t “trigger” those who are bothered by loud noises. And definitely no memos will be sent announcing the changes using “frightening” all-caps.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 21:00 - "Now In Bust Cycle" – China Hog Futures Plunge Near Record Lows On Pork Glut
“Now In Bust Cycle” – China Hog Futures Plunge Near Record Lows On Pork Glut
Chinese hog futures have fallen nearly 38% since launching in January amid rising concerns that the Chinese pork market has gone from shortage to surplus.
Readers may recall African swine fever was first reported in China in August 2018. The spread of the disease slashed the country’s hog herd by at least 40%, resulting in hyperinflation of pork prices by 2019.
African swine fever has since been eradicated to some extent in the country as the government urged farmers to breed more pigs. At the same time, China Customs data showed the country imported a record amount of pork from the US in late 2019 and 2020 to replenish supplies.
Now the country has gone from a supply deficit to a supply surplus, sending domestic prices tumbling in 2021.
Hog futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange dropped more than 8% in the last four sessions to Rmb18,980 ($2966.23), a record low. Since the contracts started trading in early January, hog prices are down nearly 38%.
Pork prices are back to levels not seen since the beginning days of the outbreak.
Plunging prices are getting out of hand as farmers race to slaughter their herds before prices head lower – adding to oversupply fears, according to Financial Times.
“It’s definitely surprising how fast and far pork prices have fallen,” said Darin Friedrichs, an analyst at commodities broker StoneX Group in Shanghai.
Oversupply pork conditions have affected US pork markets on Tuesday. Lean hog futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are down 3%.
The latest drop in Dalian-traded hog futures is likely linked to a report by Beijing’s Xinfadi market, a large wholesale market, last Friday that noted smaller pigs were being brought for sale.
This “indicates some farms have significantly lowered their expectations for future meat prices and . . . are slaughtering ahead of schedule”, according to the report.
Downward pressure on prices has been so concerning that China’s cabinet, the National Development and Reform Commission, addressed the issue last week by promising to “maintain supply and stabilize prices in the pork market.” However, there was no word on what policies the agency would take.
Friedrichs said the government had anticipated the launch of hog futures contracts would flatten out boom and bust cycles in Chinese pork prices. “Now we’re in a bust cycle, so the volatility is still there,” he said.
Pork prices are a heavyweight in China’s consumer price index, and declining prices in late 2020 managed to push inflation into negative territory for the first time in over a decade. Also, China’s producer price index for hogs has gone negative on a year-over-year basis.
What may happen is that Chinese importers will order much less pork from the US this year.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 20:40 - Joe Rogan Warns "What's Happening In Mexico Could Easily Happen Here" Due To Defunding Of Police
Joe Rogan Warns “What’s Happening In Mexico Could Easily Happen Here” Due To Defunding Of Police
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Podcast king Joe Rogan issued a stark warning this week concerning the ongoing leftist campaign to defund police departments all over the country, noting that the U.S. could soon resemble Mexico if it continues.
“Cops don’t do anything if someone jumps into someone’s backyard, they don’t arrest them — like, you have to do like $900 worth of theft before they’ll even arrest you,” Rogan said, adding “If they do arrest you, they’ll just put you right back out on the street again.”
Rogan noted that things have gotten worse “after the defunding.”
The host added that “The defunding of the police in Austin has been a disaster, too, and New York’s been a disaster. It’s terrible everywhere. It’s a terrible idea.”
Rogan further noted that “the idea that you are going to send social workers to handle someone’s domestic violence case is fucking bananas!”
He asserted that the defund the police movement is supported by “a lot of people that don’t understand violence that think that’s OK, and they have this utopian idea.”
“What’s happening in Mexico could easily happen here with no police presence. People have to understand that,” Rogan urged.
Watch:
As we have previously noted, researchers and experts have warned that defunding the police is having, and will continue to have, disastrous consequences.
Last year after unrest and violence targeting police, Harvard university Professor Roland Fryer urged that defunding the police would cause more loss of life, citing figures showing that there are “450 excess homicides per year” when police are not able to do their jobs proficiently.
“Defunding the police is not a solution and could cost thousands of black lives,” professor Fryer wrote in an email to the College Fix.
Fryer has recently authored a research paper titled “Policing the Police: The Impact of “Pattern-or-Practice Investigations on Crime,” noting that police are less present when ‘viral incidents’ occur, meaning crime, including homicides increase… a lot.
Last year it was reported by the New York Times that Gun violence is up 358% in New York City since June 2019 as police are being stripped of resources in Democrat run cities nationwide.
The explosion in gun violence dovetailed with the disbanding of NYPD anti-crime units, a decision that meant around 600 plainclothes officers were taken off targeted raids and reassigned.
In addition, Democrat imposed “reforms” have meant that around 40% of people arrested on gun possession charges were released without bail in 2019.
Figures also show that other Democrat run cities including Chicago and Minneapolis have experienced a massive uptick in gun violence.
Despite the crime spike, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution to replace the police department with a “community-led public safety system.”
Meanwhile, the radical leftists and Democrats who are pushing the movement think nothing of hiring their own armed security while everyday Americans are left at the mercy of criminality.
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 20:20 - China's "Virus Control" Measures In Hong Kong: No Easing Lengthy Quarantine For Fully Vaccinated Execs
China’s “Virus Control” Measures In Hong Kong: No Easing Lengthy Quarantine For Fully Vaccinated Execs
Hong Kong has within a mere couple years gone from packed streets to silence – as The Guardian has observed following the national security law and mainland China crackdown going deep into effect, given also the arrests and exiling of young protest leaders. One UK-based photojournalist laments that “With no protests left to photograph, it seemed a good idea to take a break… But it was with a heavy heart that I watched the situation continue to deteriorate from afar.”
And then the streets grew eerily calm after a couple years of mass protest and unrest: “In January 2021, the authorities arrested dozens of activists under the national security law. In one fell swoop, it was as if the entire cast of characters in the story of Hong Kong’s democratic movement – one I had been covering for years – were arrested, in jail, or in exile.”
Whatever additional “control” over the previously protesting crowds HK police couldn’t get the upper hand on, the virus seems to have taken care of the rest, as the city has remained an on-and-off potential pandemic hot spot of concern for the mainland given it’s a hub of foreign travel, now also as health officials are desperately seeking to trace a rare coronavirus variant infection that’s raising new alarm. All of this seems conveniently timed of course, through Beijing’s eyes at least.
“Scenes from Hong Kong’s (Empty) Streets” via SmartCities Dive Even business and top executives’ travel to the financial hub can now be tightly managed and controlled based on stringent health measures, as Bloomberg observes of the latest hugely disruptive restrictions: “Senior global bankers hoping to skip Hong Kong’s stringent quarantine regime will need to wait as concerns about imported Covid cases ratchet up,” according to the report.
“Bank executives who have applied to take trips in June are being advised to postpone, without any indication of when requests under the new plan will be processed, according to a person familiar with the matter,” it continues.
Currently a mandatory minimum hotel quarantine of at least three weeks is still in effect for Hong Kong inbound travelers as much of the rest of the world has opened up and moved on, for example other financial centers like New York and London, and even Singapore.
This is mandated even for the fully vaccinated, as Bloomberg underscores: “The pause is a blow for fully vaccinated bankers looking to travel outside the city and for executives from abroad planning to visit the financial hub without needing to quarantine in a hotel for three weeks.”
Remember when the Chinese Communist Party was facing the largest existential threat to its existence in HK? Pro-democracy protests in HK were out of control when…POOF everyone was gone from the streets as the virus was released. #GoodTiming #China #Wuhan https://t.co/GUQT3Tg14I
— 🇺🇸Kyle Bass🇺🇸 (@Jkylebass) June 16, 2021
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At the end of May Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced an easing plan which would allow select bankers to travel more freely based on each financial firm having the ability to apply for two quarantine exemptions per month. The idea was to speed up a post-pandemic economic recovery.
But this too is now on hold as the quarantine process for those wishing to travel is still in full effect. Some are now seeing the inexplicable reversal as yet another tool of primarily political control.
Hong Kong devolving into economic monoculture https://t.co/rVekVkeB6g pic.twitter.com/MOWbppTh8E
— Reuters U.S. News (@ReutersUS) June 8, 2021
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A spokesman for the island’s Financial Services and Treasury Bureau issuing the following non-definitive statement via Bloomberg: “We are looking into the details of the applications received, and expect to take some time to process them in the light of latest local and global pandemic situations to ensure relevant control measures are sufficient to mitigate the risk of case importation.”
Of course, ensuring “sufficient” and “relevant control measures” can be taken in more ways than one.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 20:00 - Trump Wanted Supreme Court To Order New Election In Key Swing States, Emails Show
Trump Wanted Supreme Court To Order New Election In Key Swing States, Emails Show
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump through a lawyer and White House officials placed pressure on Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to probe the 2020 election results and wanted the Supreme Court to authorize a new election in key swing states, according to newly released emails.
Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Kurt Olsen, a Trump lawyer, was shown in one of the emails asking DOJ officials to connect him to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. He said that he represented Texas in the Supreme Court lawsuit against Pennsylvania and other states and that Trump “directed” him to meet with Rosen “to discuss a similar action to be brought by the United States.”
A draft document attached to Olsen’s December 2020 message alleges elections in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada violated the U.S. Constitution. It asks the Supreme Court to stop the states from using their election results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College and to authorize them “to conduct a special election” to appoint electors.
The document was never filed.
The Texas lawsuit noted that non-legislative officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin put into place election measures without the approval of their legislatures. Texas asked the Supreme Court to declare the election in the states unconstitutional. At least one judge said the arguments had merit, blocking certification of the election results in Pennsylvania in a separate case until her order was overturned and the case was dismissed.
The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Texas’s lawsuit.
Molly Michael, an assistant to Trump, also directly sent Rosen and other DOJ officials the draft complaint Trump wanted the United States to file.
In another set of emails, Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff at the time, asked Rosen to have the DOJ investigate fraud allegations.
In one message to Rosen, Meadows sent a petition contesting the election that was submitted to Fulton County Superior Court by Trump and David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman.
“Can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing. Only the alleged fraudulent activity. Thanks Mark,” the email stated.
The petitioners on Jan. 7 voluntarily withdrew the petition.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington on Sept. 14, 2020. (Susan Walsh/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) In another email, Meadows told Rosen that there had been allegations of signature match anomalies in Fulton County, Georgia.
He asked Rosen to get a DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, “to engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation.”
Rosen sent the email to Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, commenting: “Can you believe this? I am not going to respond.”
Rosen did ask Clark to followup on allegations of fraud in Atlanta and Clark said he was doing so.
A group of Georgia voters is engaged in an ongoing petition regarding fraud claims in Fulton County. A judge is set to hear motions to dismiss on Monday. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, meanwhile, is probing how a county official recently said some forms documenting chain of custody for mail-in ballots are “missing.”
Meadows also requested a review of allegations of fraud in New Mexico and sent Rosen documents and a video that claimed American electoral data was changed in facilities in Italy, with assistance from U.S. intelligence officials.
Donoghue, who again forwarded one of the emails, called the claims “pure insanity.”
Rosen said he learned that Brad Johnson, who created the video, was working with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and refused a request to have the FBI meet with Johnson.
The emails were released by House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who said they “show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost.”
“Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy,” she added.
Maloney’s panel wants Meadows, Donoghue, Clark, and several others to sit for transcribed interviews.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump did not return requests for comment sent to his campaign and political action committee.
Trump has made no secret of his view that the 2020 election was rife with fraud. Last week, after the DOJ announced it would focus on protecting voter access and probe election audits for possible legal violations, Trump said the agency would seem to have “no choice but to look at the massive voter fraud which took place in certain Swing States, and I assume elsewhere, during the 2020 Presidential Election Scam.”
“Whether it be voting machines, underaged people, dead people, illegal aliens, ballot drops, ballot cheating, absentee ballots, post office delivery (or lack thereof!), lock boxes, people being paid to vote, or other things, the 2020 Presidential Election is, in my mind, the Crime of the Century,” he added.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 19:40 - Maersk Warns South China Port Congestion 'More Significant Disruption' Than Suez Canal Closure
Maersk Warns South China Port Congestion ‘More Significant Disruption’ Than Suez Canal Closure
We previewed last week to readers that port congestion wasn’t just observed across US West Coast ports, such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, but also severe congestion was developing in southern China. At the time, we called it a “perfect storm” ahead of the peak shipping season.
Now the world’s largest container line, Maersk, calls the port congestion at Yantian International Container Terminal, a deepwater port in Shenzhen, Guangdong, in southern China, a much more significant disruption to its operations than the shutdown of the Suez Canal in March.
Ditlev Blicher, Maersk Asia Pacific Managing Director, was quoted by Seatrade Maritime, who said Yantian port is operating at a 40% capacity, and “We’re expecting that to continue for the next month with significant delays for vessels to be able to berth.”
A recent surge in COVID-19 infections in the port area and prevention and restriction measures put in place by local authorities is the primary reason for the lack of capacity at the port.
AP Moller-Maersk’s CEO of Ocean & Logistics, Vincent Clerc, stated:
“I would say this for us is a much bigger disruption than the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal for some days because of the duration and the importance of Yantian as a gateway.”
Before the outbreak, the average shipping times at Yantian averaged a waiting time of 0.5 days. Now it’s 16 days.
“Right now, we have vessel delays of up to 16 days outside Yantian which is of course going to cause significant ripple effect across the network from a reliability perspective,” Clerc explained.
This has caused a massive traffic jam of container ships in the region, resulting in an unprecedented supply chain impact and another shipping crisis as delays mount, threatening to drive up costs again.
South China Container Port Congestion
Source: Refinitiv Brian Glick, founder and CEO at supply chain integration platform Chain.io, told CNBC that the latest congestion in Yantian is “absolutely massive” and will have an “unprecedented supply chain impact.”
Already, shipping delays in major Chinese ports drive shipping costs higher as waiting times at berth jumped.
Global Container Prices
Source: Refinitiv Guangdong accounts for about a quarter of China’s total exports. It’s home to Shenzhen port and Guangzhou port, some of the largest in the world.
Combined with the congestion challenges on the US West Coast, the latest round of congestion in southern China is a significant warning for US businesses and consumers that another round of delays, shortages, and soaring shipping costs is ahead.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 19:20 - Florida Sheriff To Blue-State-Migrants: Don't Vote The Way You Did Before "Or You'll Have Here What You Had There
Florida Sheriff To Blue-State-Migrants: Don’t Vote The Way You Did Before “Or You’ll Have Here What You Had There
Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times,
On June 9, The Epoch Times reported how Florida was the number one state in the nation for people to move to, while New York and California took first and second place respectively for states that have the most people leaving. To those moving to Florida from blue states, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd says: “Do me a favor,” and “don’t vote the way the majority of the people voted from where you came or you’ll have here what you had there. Guaranteed.”
One of the reasons cited by those fleeing their blue state hometowns was the rising crime rates. According to Judd, the escalation in crime rates are a direct result of the “defund the police” movements in many Democrat-run states.
“Florida has had a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican governor for a very long time,” Judd told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.
“So all you have to do is compare-and-contrast. You go to these areas where crime is through the roof, look at your representatives.”
In April 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Anti-Riot” HB1 bill into law. This new measure makes it a felony to tear down statues or monuments in the Sunshine State and provides the governor and Florida Cabinet the authority to override the efforts of any other state official to cut law enforcement spending.
Conversely, in June 2020, the Portland City Council voted 3-1 to cut at least $15 million from the police bureau. The cut effectively eliminated 84 positions in the department.
So far this year, 37 homicides have been reported in the city, an increase of more than six times compared to the same period last year.
In November 2020, the Seattle City Council cut 18 percent of the budget from their police department. By January, Seattle saw a 48 percent increase in murders, the highest number in almost 30 years. In May, 260 police officers chose to leave the Seattle police force.
Trust in Law Enforcement
“The good things that are happening in Florida don’t just happen,” Judd insisted.
“If they did, those good things would be happening in Seattle and Portland. But when you create an environment where criminal conduct is acceptable that’s exactly what you get.”
Judd also attributes the better safety conditions in Florida to the public’s connection with law enforcement and effective leadership in government.
“When people lose trust and they lose faith in the government or the police they quit interacting with you,” Judd explained.
“So you don’t know how bad the crime rate is if people aren’t calling to tell you and people quit calling to tell you when you quit caring.”
It’s the same sentiment shared by Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis.
“Florida Sheriffs, who report directly to their citizens, are very good at holding chronic criminals accountable, while simultaneously maintaining the trust of the law-abiding citizens,” Nienhuis told The Epoch Times.
“This has all resulted in a consistent decrease in crime during the last 4 decades. This is foundational to Florida’s growth, due to the fact that, regardless of age or family status, everyone wants to live in a safe community.”
“Florida’s great weather and beaches have always been a draw for tourists,” Nienhuis added.
“However, low taxes, common sense leadership in state government, and the community’s support of law and order, have made those tourists realize that Florida is also a great place to live, work, and raise a family.”
Changing Voting Habits
Judd agreed, saying when he asks blue state migrants if they chose to move to Florida because of the warm weather, low taxes, and low crime rates, they always answer “yes.”
“Then do me a favor,” he tells them. “Welcome to Polk County. Welcome to Florida. But please don’t vote like you did up north. You’ll still have warm weather in the winter but you won’t have low taxes or a safe community.”
“We are definitely seeing the trend of people fleeing blue ‘lockdown’ states for the ‘free state’ of Florida,” state House Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, told The Epoch Times. “They are coming here because of sunshine and opportunities. I can only hope that they leave any liberal ideology at the border.”
“You are coming for a reason,” Ingoglia reminded the blue state migrants.
“Please don’t ‘New York our Florida.’ Don’t turn this great state into the state you fled from.”
Asked about the fears held by some Floridians that the blue state migrants will dim the freedoms of the Sunshine State, Judd admitted “their fear is well-founded” because individuals casting ballots in blue states don’t seem to understand that the officials they elect are the ones enacting the destructive policies that made them leave.
“None of the policies and practices in place up north just happened. It happened because they voted for elected officials that created those policies or laws.”
To assuage their fears, Judd advised worried Floridians to educate their new blue state neighbors and to explain that “all of the good things we have in Florida didn’t just happen.”
“It was the people we elected to the city commissions, to the county commissions and into the state legislature that made good things happen,” Judd said.
“If you live in a high crime community, vote those officials out.”
“Nothing else really matters if you aren’t safe and you don’t feel safe,” Judd concluded. “A community can’t thrive if it’s eaten alive by crime.”
Welcoming New Residents
The Epoch Times asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis what he’d like to share with the migrants coming from blue states.
“For the almost 1,000 people a day who are moving to Florida,” DeSantis wrote in an email.
“Welcome to Florida, I hope we can all work together to keep our state the special place it is, an oasis of freedom in our country.”
“All Americans can learn from the mistakes made in lockdown states and not repeat those mistakes,” he added. “It won’t happen in Florida.”
“People who come to Florida from lockdown states can see for themselves how well we are doing here. If you look at voter registration trends overall, it’s positive; there isn’t any indication that the people of Florida—newcomers and longtime Floridians—are shifting away from the principles that helped our state succeed.”
Judd also expressed goodwill to Florida’s new migrants: “Welcome to Florida. You’re in a safe state, you’re in a healthy state, and we love people coming to our state. But don’t vote the way the majority of the people voted from where you came or you’ll have here what you had there. Guaranteed.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 19:00 - US Food Bank Lines May Reemerge As Millions Set To Lose Unemployment Benefits
US Food Bank Lines May Reemerge As Millions Set To Lose Unemployment Benefits
US food banks in Republican states are preparing for a massive demand surge in food aid this summer as 24 GOP-led states are set to end federal unemployment assistance before they’re set to expire on Sept. 6.
The benefits set to lapse include the additional $300 weekly federal supplement and other Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programs that support low-income households. The policies have also contributed to a historic labor shortage after millions of people received more money via government benefits to staying at home than actually work.
With local economies reopening up across the country, here are states that are pulling pandemic benefits early so that millions of people can reenter the labor market:
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Jun. 19: Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming
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Jun. 26: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas
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Jun. 27: Montana, Oklahoma, Utah
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Jul. 3: Tennessee
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Jul. 10: Arizona
According to JPMorgan, cutting benefits is “tied to politics, not economics.”
With two dozen GOP-led states pulling benefits within the next month, millions of people are expected to return to food bank lines this summer, similar to what was seen last spring/summer.
Already, US Census Bureau figures show 19.3 million adults experienced food insecurity issues.
Food banks around the country are well aware that millions of Americans are set to lose generous unemployment benefits, according to The Guardian.
“We are still distributing about a million to a million and a half more meals each month than we did pre Covid,” said Teresa Schryver, advocacy manager for the St Louis Area Food Bank in Bridgeton, Missouri services for residents in Missouri and nearby Illinois.
Schryver said there could be another “spike in July and August as we’re losing the unemployment benefits here in Missouri, so we might be doing 2m meals again for a couple of months.”
She said the public health crisis is abating this spring as summer approaches due to the high level of vaccinations, but the lingering economic effects tied to virus-related shutdowns has economically doomed millions of people.
“We hope it’s not going to take us 10 years to get our food insecurity rates back down to pre-pandemic levels, but that’s the kind of timeline we’re looking at,” Schryver said.
Florida food banks are also preparing for increased demand later this summer. “With the unemployment benefits level being reduced, it will no doubt put hardship on a large population here in central Florida. It is impossible to say how much of an impact, but, it cannot be positive,” said Dave Krepcho, CEO of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida in Orlando.
“We can see a correlation between an addition or elimination of a household financial benefit,” said Thomas Mantz, the CEO and president of Feeding Tampa Bay, which provides a variety of food relief services to communities in the Tampa area. “So when we see stimulus checks go out, we do see less people in our lines, when we see additional unemployment checks, we see less people in our lines. And conversely, when those things stop, we do see our numbers swell.”
Thomas Mantz, the CEO and president of Feeding Tampa Bay, said demand is about 35% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The virus pandemic has placed significant strains on food banks (read: here & here & here).
In Texas, all federal extended unemployment benefits end on Jun. 26, leaving more than 1.3 million unemployed workers with reduced benefits. Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, said the lowest-income Americans continue to struggle despite the recovery. She expects food bank demand will surge at the end of this month when benefits are wound down.
“We’re anticipating that we will see at least a short-term surge when the unemployment benefits run out. So we’re gearing up for that,” said Cole. “People who were lower-income to begin with tend to get hit harder by natural and economic crises, and it can take them as individuals and the communities they live in a lot longer to come back.”
… and by the way, there are still 15 million Americans on some form of government dole…
The economic crisis is far from over, and we may just see a reemergence of massive food bank lines this summer.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 06/16/2021 – 18:40 -
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