Today’s News 17th September 2023

• Here's The Climate Dissent You're Not Hearing About Because It's Muffled By Society's Top Institutions
  Here’s The Climate Dissent You’re Not Hearing About Because It’s Muffled By Society’s Top Institutions

  Authored by John Murawski via RealClear Wire,

  As the Biden administration and governments worldwide make massive commitments to rapidly decarbonize the global economy, the persistent effort to silence climate change skeptics is intensifying – and the critics keep pushing back. 

  

  This summer the International Monetary Fund summarily canceled a presentation by John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who publicly disavows the existence of a climate “crisis.” The head of the nonprofit with which Clauser is affiliated, the CO2 Coalition, has said he and other members have been delisted from LinkedIn for their dissident views.  

  Meanwhile, a top academic journal retracted published research doubting a climate emergency after negative coverage in legacy media. The move was decried by another prominent climate dissenter, Roger Pielke Jr., as “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen” – criticism muffled because the academic says he has been blocked on Twitter (now X) by reporters on the climate beat. 

  The climate dissenters are pressing their case as President Biden, United Nations officials, and climate action advocates in media and academia argue that the “settled science” demands a wholesale societal transformation. That means halving U.S. carbon emissions by 2035 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050 to stave off the “existential threat” of human-induced climate change. 

  In response last month, more than 1,600 scientists, among them two Nobel physics laureates, Clauser and Ivar Giaever of Norway, signed a declaration stating that there is no climate emergency, and that climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria. The skeptics say the radical transformation of entire societies is marching forth without a full debate, based on dubious scientific claims amplified by knee-jerk journalism.  

  Many of these climate skeptics reject the optimistic scenarios of economic prosperity promised by advocates of a net-zero world order. They say the global emissions-reduction targets are not achievable on such an accelerated timetable without lowering living standards and unleashing worldwide political unrest.  

  “What advocates of climate action are trying to do is scare the bejesus out of the public so they’ll think we need to [act] fast,” said Steven Koonin, author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”  

  “You have to balance the certainties and uncertainties of the changing climate – the risks and hazards – against many other factors,” he adds. 

  These dissenters don’t all agree on all scientific questions and do not speak in a single voice. Clauser, for example, is a self-styled “climate denialist” who believes climate is regulated by clouds, while Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Bjørn Lomborg, the former director of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, acknowledge humans are affecting the climate but say there is sufficient time to adapt. The dissenters do, however, agree that the public and government officials are getting a one-sided, apocalyptic account that stokes fear, politicizes science, misuses climate modeling, and shuts down debate.  

  They also say it is a troubling sign for scientific integrity that they are systematically sidelined and diminished by government funding agencies, foundation grant-makers, academic journals, and much of the media. Delving into their claims, RealClearInvestigations reviewed a sampling of their books, articles, and podcast interviews. This loose coalition of writers and thinkers acknowledges that the climate is warming, but they typically ascribe as much, if not more, influence to natural cycles and climate variability than to human activities, such as burning fossil fuel.  

  Among their arguments:  

  • There is no climate crisis or existential threat as expressed in catastrophic predictions by activists in the media and academia. As global temperatures gradually increase, human societies will need to make adjustments in the coming century, just as societies have adapted to earlier climate changes. By and large, humans cannot control the climate, which Pielke describes as “the fanciful idea that emissions are a disaster control knob.” 

  • Global temperatures are increasing incrementally, and have been for centuries, but the degree of human influence is uncertain or negligible. Climate skeptics themselves don’t agree on how much humans are contributing to global warming by burning fossil fuels, and how much is caused by natural variability from El Niño and other cycles that can take centuries to play out. “The real question is not whether the globe has warmed recently,” writes Koonin, “but rather to what extent this warming is being caused by humans.” 

  • Rapidly replacing fossil fuels with renewables and electricity by mid-century would be economically risky and may have a negligible effect on global warming. Some say mitigation decrees – such as phasing out the combustion engine and banning gas stoves – are not likely to prevent climate change because humans play a minor role in global climate trends. Others say mitigation is necessary but won’t happen without capable replacement technologies. It’s unrealistic, they say, to force societies to rely on intermittent energy from wind and solar, or wager the future on technologies that are still in experimental stages.   

  • The global political push to kill the fossil fuel industry to get to “net zero” and “carbon neutrality” by 2050, as advocated by the United Nations and the Biden administration, will erase millions of jobs and raise energy costs, leading to a prolonged economic depression and political instability. The result would be that developing regions will pay the highest price, while the biggest polluters (China and India) and hostile nations (like Russia and Iran) will simply ignore the net-zero mandate. This could be a case where the cure could be worse than the disease.  

  • Despite the common refrain in the media, there is no evidence that a gradually warming planet is affecting the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, storms, droughts, rainfall, or other weather events. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed low confidence such weather events can be linked to human activities. Still, “it is a fertile field for cherry pickers,” notes Pielke.  

  • Extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, are not claiming more human lives than previously. The human death toll is largely caused by cold weather, which accounts for eight times as many deaths as hot weather, and overall weather-related mortality has fallen by about 99% in the past century. “People are safer from climate-related disasters than ever before,” statistician and author Bjørn Lomborg has said. 

  • Climate science has been hijacked and politicized by activists, creating a culture of self-censorship that’s enforced by a code of silence that Koonin likens to the Mafia’s omerta. In her 2023 book, “Climate Uncertainty and Risk,” climatologist Judith Curry asks: “How many skeptical papers were not published by activist editorial boards? How many published papers have buried results in order to avoid highlighting findings that conflict with preferred narratives? I am aware of anecdotal examples of each of these actions, but the total number is unknowable.” 

  • Slogans such as “follow the science” and “scientific consensus” are misleading and disingenuous. There is no consensus on many key questions, such as the urgency to cease and desist burning fossil fuels, or the accuracy of computer modeling predictions of future global temperatures. The apparent consensus of imminent disaster is manufactured through peer pressure, intimidation, and research funding priorities, based on the conviction that “noble lies,” “consensus entrepreneurship,” and “stealth advocacy” are necessary to save humanity from itself. “One day PhD dissertations will be written about our current moment of apocalyptic panic,” Pielke predicts.  

  • The warming of the planet is a complicated phenomenon that will cause some disruptions but will also bring benefits, particularly in agricultural yields and increased vegetation. Some climate skeptics, including the CO2 Coalition, say CO2 is not a pollutant – it is “plant food.”  

  Curry, the former Chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expresses a common theme among the climate refuseniks: that they are the sane, rational voices in a maelstrom of quasi-religious mania.  

  “In the 1500s, they used to drown witches in Europe because they blamed them for bad weather. You had the pagan people trying to appease the gods with sacrifices,” Curry said. “What we’re doing now is like a pseudoscientific version of that, and it’s no more effective than those other strategies.’ 

  The climate change establishment occasionally concedes some of these points. No less an authority than the newly appointed head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged the climate community to cool its jets: “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” Jim Skea recently said to German media. “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees [centigrade]. It will however be a more dangerous world.”  

  In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee in June, Pielke said human-caused climate change is real and “poses significant risks to society and the environment.” But the science does not paint a dystopian, catastrophic scenario of imminent doom, he added.  

  “Today, there is general agreement that our current media environment and political discourse are rife with misinformation,” Pielke testified. “If there is just one sentence that you take from my testimony today it is this: You are being misinformed.” 

  Still, the overwhelming impression conveyed is one of impending disaster, with the menace of global warming rhetorically upgraded in July by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to “global boiling.” Climate scientists announced in July that the planet is the hottest it’s been in 120,000 years, an old claim that gets recycled every few years. Meanwhile, three vice-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of mass starvation, extinction, and disasters, saying that if the temperature rises 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, “children under 12 will experience a fourfold increase in natural disasters in their lifetime, and up to 14% of all species assessed will likely face a very high risk of extinction.”  

  Many of these predictions are based on computer models and computer simulations that Pielke, Koonin, Curry, and others have decried as totally implausible. Koonin’s book suggests that some computer models may be “cooking the books” to achieve desired outcomes, while Pielke has decried faulty scenarios as “one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first  century thus far.” Curry writes in her book that the primary inadequacy of climate models is their limited ability to predict the kinds of natural climate fluctuations that cause ice ages and warming periods, and play out over decades, centuries, or even millennia.  

  Another critique is the use of computer models to correlate extreme weather events to multi-decade climate trends in an attempt to show that the weather was caused by climate, a branch of climate science called climate attribution studies. This type of research is used to bolster claims that the frequency and intensity of heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events could not have happened without climate change. An example is research recently cited by the BBC in an article warning that if the global temperature rises another 0.9 centigrade, crippling heat waves that were once exceedingly rare will bake the world every two-to-five years.  

  One question looms: Does a warming climate contribute to heat records and heat waves, such as those that were widely reported in July as the hottest month on record and taken as overwhelming proof that humans are overheating the planet? The United States experienced extreme heat waves in the 1930s, and the recent spikes are not without precedent, climate dissenters say. Pielke, however,  concedes that IPCC data signal that increases in heat extremes and heat waves are virtually certain, but he argues that the societal impacts will be manageable.  

  Koonin and Curry say that the global heat spikes in July were likely caused by a multiplicity of factors, including an underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic explosion last year that increased upper atmosphere water vapor by about 10%, a relevant fact because water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas. Another factor is the warming effect of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has shifted to an active phase recently.  

  Koonin says that greenhouse gas emissions are a gradual trend on which weather anomalies play out, and while it’s tempting to confuse weather with climate, it would be a mistake to blame July’s heat waves on human influence.  

  “The anomaly is about as large as we’ve ever seen, but not unprecedented,” Koonin explained on a podcast. “Now, what the real question is, why did it spike so much? Nothing to do with CO2 – CO2 is … the base on which this phenomenon occurs.” 

  Climate dissent comes with the occupational hazard of being tarred as a propagandist and stooge for “Big Oil.” Pielke was one of seven academics investigated by a U.S. Congressman in 2015 for allegedly failing to report funding from fossil fuel interests (He was cleared). A New York Times review of Lomborg’s 2020 book, “False Alarm,” described it as “mind pollution.” 

  Climate advocates see climate skepticism as so dangerous that Ben Santer, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, publicly cut ties with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory two years ago after the federal research facility invited Koonin to discuss his skeptical book, “Unsettled.” Santer, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, said allowing Koonin’s views to go unchallenged undermined the credibility and integrity of climate science research. For similar reasons, the IMF postponed Clauser’s July presentation so that it could be rescheduled as a debate.  

  Another critique: scientists arbitrarily forcing the facts to fit a prescribed catastrophic narrative, often by ignoring plausible alternative explanations and relevant factors. That’s what climate scientist Patrick Brown said he had to do to get published in the prestigious journal Nature, by attributing wildfires to climate change and ignoring other factors, like poor forest management and the startling fact that over 80% of wildfires are ignited by humans. Brown publicly confessed to this sleight-of-hand in a recent article in The Free Press.  

  “This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers,” Brown wrote. “When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets.” 

  These frustrations serve as a reminder that the world has entered what the United Nations and climate advocates call the make-or-break decade that will decide how much the Earth’s temperature will rise above pre-industrial levels. This decisive phase is “unfolding now and will intensify during the next several years,” according to Rice University researchers. “Accordingly, what happens between now and the late 2020s, in all likelihood, will fundamentally determine the failure or success of an accelerated energy transition.” 

  In response to this call for global action, political leaders in Europe and North America are vowing to reengineer their societies to run on wind, solar, and hydrogen. In this country, California is among a dozen states that have moved to ban the sale of new gasoline-engine cars in 2035, while states like Virginia and North Carolina have committed to carbon-free power girds by mid-century.  

  In the most detailed net-zero roadmap to date, the International Energy Agency in 2021 identified more than 400 milestones that would have to be met to achieve a net-zero planet by mid-century, including the immediate cessation of oil and gas exploration and drilling, and mandated austerity measures such as reducing highway speed limits, limiting temperature settings in private homes, and eating less meat.  

  In the IEA’s net zero scenario, global energy use will decline by 8% through energy efficiency even as the world’s population adds 2 billion people and the economy grows a whopping 40%. In this scenario, all the nations of the world – including China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia – would have to commit to a net-zero future, generating 14 million jobs to create a new energy infrastructure. Nearly half the slated emissions reductions will have to come from experimental technologies currently in demonstration or prototype stages, such as hydrogen, bioenergy, carbon capture, and modular nuclear reactors. Reading this bracing outlook, one could almost overlook the IEA’s caveat that relying on solar and wind for nearly 70% of electricity generation would cause retail electricity prices to increase by 50% on average and destroy 5 million jobs, of which “many are well paid, meaning structural changes can cause shocks for communities with impacts that persist over time.”  

  A critique of the IEA’s scenario issued this year by the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a think tank that specializes in oil, gas, and petroleum products, warned of “massive supply shocks” if oil supplies are artificially suppressed to meet arbitrary net zero targets. The report further stated that “if the world stays committed to net zero regardless of high costs – the recession will turn into an extended depression and ultimately impose radical negative changes upon modern civilization.” (Disclosure: The report was commissioned by the RealClearFoundation, the nonprofit parent of RealClearInvestigations.) 

  Already, societies have fallen behind their emissions reduction targets, and it’s widely understood that fast-tracking net zero is an unattainable goal. Transforming existing energy infrastructures within several decades would require installing the equivalent of the world’s largest solar farm every day, according to the International Energy Agency. Carbon-free energy accounts for only 18% of total global consumption, and fossil fuels are still increasing, according to a recent analysis. The IEA reported this year that investments in oil exploration and drilling have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, while global coal demand reached an all-time high last year. Globally nations are spending more on clean energy than on fossil fuels, but fossil fuels are still vital to economic growth; for instance, the IEA noted that 40 gigawatts of new coal plants were approved in 2022, the highest figure since 2016, almost all of them in China.  

  “We live in this world of exaggerated promises and delusional pop science,” Vaclav Smil, the University of Manitoba environmental scientist and policy analyst, told The New York Times last year. “People don’t appreciate the magnitude of the task and are setting up artificial deadlines which are unrealistic.” 

  A government push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by cutting back on livestock farming has led to public protests in the Netherlands, a conflict over resources that Time magazine predicts will spread elsewhere: “This may be just the beginning of much wider global unrest over agriculture. Scientists say dealing with climate change will require not just gradual reform, but a rapid, wholesale transformation of the global food system.”  

  Climate dissidents say what happened in the Netherlands is a foretaste of the political backlash that is inevitable when net-zero policies start becoming implemented and people have to travel across state lines to buy a gasoline-powered car.  

  “The urgency is the stupidest part of the whole thing – that we need to act now with all these made-up targets,” Curry said. “The transition risk is far greater than any conceivable climate or weather risk.” 

  To Koonin, these challenges indicate that the catastrophic climate narrative will collapse when put to the test of practicality and politics. The more sensible route, he said, is a slow-and-steady approach.  

  “There’s going to be a deep examination of science and the cost-benefit issues,” he said. “We will eventually do the right thing, but it’s going to take a decade or so.” 

  John Murawski reports on the intersection of culture and ideas for RealClearInvestigations. He previously covered artificial intelligence for the Wall Street Journal and spent 15 years as a reporter for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) writing about health care, energy and business. At RealClear, Murawski reports on how esoteric academic theories on race and gender have been shaping many areas of public life, from K-12 school curricula to workplace policies to the practice of medicine.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 23:20

• Visualizing Google's Search Engine Market Share
  Visualizing Google’s Search Engine Market Share

  Google is ubiquitous in the daily lives of billions of people around the world, with leading positions in online search, maps, and other services.

  In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu notes, Google’s dominance is so far-reaching, it has led the U.S. Justice Department to launch a civil antitrust lawsuit for what it believes are examples of anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct.

  This graphic, which uses data from Similarweb, shows the scale of Google’s lead over major search engine competitors like Bing and Yahoo.

  

  Global Search Engine Market Share

  The data we used to create this graphic is provided in the table below. It is global search engine market share as of June 2023, across all platforms (desktop, mobile, and tablet).

  Note that this analysis does not include China, where Google and other American tech firms are currently banned, or Russia, where Google has ceased operations.

  

  The largest player included in “Other” is South Korea’s Naver (0.48% global market share), which is similar to Google in that it offers a plethora of online services like search, video, and mobile payments.

  Google Prepares for its U.S. Lawsuit

  In January 2023, the U.S. Justice Department announced a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google for monopolizing digital advertising technologies.

  “Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies”

  – MERRICK B. GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL

  The Justice Department originally made several antitrust arguments. Potential actions that were deemed red flags include setting Google as a default mobile browser on Android phones, designing search results to disadvantage competitors, and the company’s ongoing partnership with Apple for its Safari browser. That said, some of the less substantial claims have since been dismissed by Judge Amit Mehta.

  Google’s court case will begin in mid-September, marking the biggest tech monopoly trial since United States v. Microsoft Corp in 2001. Google is expected to argue that it simply offers a superior product.

  Can Bing Challenge Google on Home Turf?

  To answer this question, let’s look at U.S. market share over the past 12 months ending June 2023.

  

  From this chart we can see that Bing maintains a slightly higher 5.5% U.S. market share (versus 3.2% globally).

  The biggest takeaway from this chart, though, is that Bing does not appear to have gained any traction in 2023, even after releasing its latest AI-powered version in February.

  The new Bing is the result of Microsoft’s $10 billion investment into OpenAI at the beginning of 2023, which allows the tech giant to incorporate the immensely popular GPT-4 into its various products and services.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 22:45

• "We Dare Not Keep Silent": ATF Releases Anti-Gun Rule For Public Comment
  “We Dare Not Keep Silent”: ATF Releases Anti-Gun Rule For Public Comment

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  Earlier this year, the Biden Administration announced its intent to move the United States “as close to Universal Background Checks as possible without additional legislation.”

  After much speculation on how far-reaching the rule would be, it has finally arrived, and it’s worse than expected.

  In its current form, the universal background check rule could subject those who sell even a single firearm to dealer requirements, including a background check.

  ICYMI📢

  We hate to say we told you so, but it’s official.

  The Justice Department announced a new rule to amend ATF regulations and expand the definition of a firearms dealer to include those who sell even a single firearm. 🤯 https://t.co/HIpxe0xYv6

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 5, 2023

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  While it is worth noting that none of this would be possible without the Republican-backed gun control known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. There’s still something that gun owners can do to combat this rule.

  Under the Administrative Procedures Act, when agencies like ATF make rules, they must first submit the rule for public comment on the Federal Register.

  During this period, citizens can give their thoughts on the rule and describe their unique situations as to how it will affect them.

  If enough comments are negative, the agency will pull the rule and not proceed. Gun Owners of America has experienced massive success in defeating the ATF through this method. Most significantly, in 2015, we defeated the Obama administration’s attempt to ban M855 “green tip” ammunition during the notice and comment period.

  The first attempt at a pistol brace ruling during the Trump Administration was also defeated through the notice and comment period. ATF retracted the rule and “acknowledged there were legitimate uses for the devices,” a statement that encapsulates the hypocritical nature of the agency itself.

  And even if the rule goes through and becomes the law of the land, we’re not out of options, but your comments are still extremely important to the next steps.

  First, we lobby Congress to bring the rule under the Congressional Review Act. Gun Owners of America did this for Biden’s pistol brace rule with H.J. Res 44. The House of Representatives passed a resolution that condemned the ATF rulemaking. Even though the resolution had no chance of being signed by Joe Biden, it still showed that ATF had acted against Congress’s intent, sending a powerful message to the courts.

  To get members of Congress to vote yes on this resolution, all we had to do was point to the massive number of comments left on the rule by their constituents.

  Your comments matter in our lawsuits. If we can’t get Congress to act, we can always take the ATF to court, something we’re preparing to do right now over this rule. In our lawsuit, we will undoubtedly use the comments of GOA members to show how the rule adversely affects such a large portion of our membership along with the general population.

  🚨BREAKING🚨

  The @ATFHQ sent notice of a new rule to essentially create backdoor Universal Registration Checks to require a background check where any “profit” is made.

  We will share details after we’ve reviewed the rule & our attorneys will be preparing a lawsuit.

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 31, 2023

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  We have seen ATF rules where thousands of pro-gun commenters will point out a problem or flaw in the ATF’s reasoning, forcing the agency to attempt a rewrite in order to try and fix the problem, only to find that the ATF has violated the Administrative Procedures Act because they made significant changes without issuing a second round of comments. This is a violation of law that can bring down the entire gun control rule. 

  Sadly, there is an attitude among some gun owners who don’t think their voice matters – and that gives the ATF precisely what they want.  

  In fact, the worst thing you can do as someone who’s pro-gun is take a backseat to events like this because it’s a “waste of time.”  

  The ATF and the anti-gun lobby want you NOT to be politically active! It’s a key part of their strategy. If voters can be persuaded that noncompliance is the only way to combat a tyrannical government and that there’s no use fighting for your rights within the system, the government can then legislate your rights away as they please and simply play the waiting game to catch those practicing noncompliance.

  This is why it’s not just important for you to get involved politically, but for you to get your fellow gun owners to do the same. 

  Erich Pratt, Senior Vice President for Gun Owners of America, said:

   “It’s been said time and again: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ The anti-gun Left would love nothing more than for gun owners to think their activism accomplishes nothing. But that’s a horrid lie. Our activism has … does … and will continue to make a difference. We dare not keep silent, or we will have only ourselves to blame when our freedoms are taken from us.”

  Unfortunately, the reality is that your rights are under attack from very well-funded organizations that currently have a large amount of influence over the United States government. As gun owners, we can’t be complacent in saying, “I’ll sit this one out.”  

  So please leave a comment on the Federal Register.

  

  Help us fight back against the Biden Administration and the Billionaire-funded anti-gun lobby.

  *   *   * 

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 22:10

• Canadian School Purges Books Published Before 2008 In Bid For 'Inclusivity'
  Canadian School Purges Books Published Before 2008 In Bid For ‘Inclusivity’

  In a quest to be more “inclusive,” a Canadian school board in Mississauga, Ontario has decided to purge its library of all books published before the year 2008.

  

  Erindale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, ‘burned’ roughly 50% of its library book, including Harry Potter and the Hunger Games series, as part of a new “equity-based book weeding” implemented by the Peel District School Board earlier this year, according to the CBC.

  The board insists it was following a wider directive from the Minister of Education to make learning resources more inclusive and reflective of the community.

  Yes, a library with empty shelves sounds very inclusive…

  Also purged were classics  like “The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank” and iconic children’s books like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

  

  When asked WTF, the school board has been notably evasive, refusing to address whether books are being removed solely based on their publication date. Their statement, which claims books are removed if they are “damaged, inaccurate, or not checked out often,” doesn’t check out whatsoever.

  10th-grade student of Japanese descent Reina Takata worries that significant portions of her heritage could vanish with this book purge.

  

  “Authors who wrote about Japanese internment camps are going to be erased,” she warned.

  Official backpedaling

  Given the mounting backlash, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce finally weighed in, condemning the practice as “offensive, illogical, and counterintuitive.” He has since ordered the board to cease the book removals immediately.

  The larger issue here is the increasing trend of over-correction in the name of “wokeness,” often leading to the vanishing of history, culture, and nuanced discourse. At what point does the push for equity turn into a frenzy of historical whitewashing? Erindale Secondary School may have given us the answer: when you arbitrarily remove 50% of your library in the name of inclusivity, you’re probably doing it wrong.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 21:35

• CNN Inadvertently Makes The Case For An Impeachment Inquiry
  CNN Inadvertently Makes The Case For An Impeachment Inquiry

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  I recently wrote a column about five facts that justified the start of an impeachment inquiry.

  While I have stressed that I do not believe that there is currently sufficient evidence for an actual impeachment, I am mystified by the claim that there is not ample evidence to warrant an inquiry into possible impeachable offenses.

  Notably, CNN just reactivated its fact-checking team for a review of the basis for the inquiry. In so doing, the network made an iron-clad argument in support of the decision by Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

  CNN presented this claim:

  Claim: Biden family and associates got $20 million through shell companies

  “Bank records show that nearly $20 million in payments were directed to the Biden family members and associates through various shell companies,” McCarthy said.

  Facts First: This is true about Joe Biden’s family and associates, but there is no public evidence to date that the president personally received any money.

  

  That is a fair fact check but it is also the very reason that Speaker McCarthy initiated the inquiry.

  We do not know where this money went, why it was sent through this labyrinth of accounts, or what it was intended to buy. That is why this is an impeachment inquiry.

  The media and a number of Democrats recently admitted, belatedly, that Hunter Biden was involved in a corrupt influence peddling operation. This was made clear by Hunter associate Devon Archer who said that they were selling the “Biden brand” and that brand was Joe Biden. Clearly, these corrupt foreign figures in China, Ukraine, and Russia (including some who were charged with corruption in their own countries) thought that they were getting something other than Hunter for their money. After all, one of these figures reportedly referred to Hunter as dumber than his dog. However, pundits and politicians now insist that it was merely the “illusion” of access.  In other words, these notoriously corrupt figures were chumps fleeced by Hunter and Biden associates.

  However, how do we know it was an “illusion”?  You have a trusted FBI informant relaying the claim of a Ukrainian that he gave Biden a “bribe,” but was told not to pay him directly. As I previously discussed, only a moron would pay Joe Biden directly for such influence or access.

  CNN repeatedly returns to this fact in each of the checked claims. Again, that is precisely why we have an inquiry. Bribery is a stated basis for impeachment in the Constitution. Even CNN accepts that, if Biden received such benefits, it would be a serious offense.

  It is also worth noting, as I have raised previously, that the requirement of an envelope filled with money or a deposit slip into the checking account of Joe and Jill Biden is a bit ridiculous as a condition. If millions went to Biden children and grandchildren, it is still a benefit for the President.

  Joe Biden is currently worth more than $8 million. At his age, he will never spend the wealth that he has. Most people in his position are focused on ways to leave financial legacies for their family and minimize estate and death taxes. It is absurd to suggest that millions going to Joe Biden’s family would not constitute a benefit to him.

  Finally, the inquiry is looking into whether some of these funds did make their way into Joe Biden’s accounts.  There are indications that both Hunter and Joe received money out of some of these accounts and used shared credit cards. For example, there are indications that Hunter used his Dad’s credit card to pay for prostitutes.

  That again is precisely the point of the impeachment inquiry. The House will now have to demand the personal bank and financial records of both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Thus far, the House Committees have been focused on following the money through bank transfers.

  That is why the CNN fact check is a full-throated call for an impeachment inquiry. The nexus between this massive amount of money and President Biden is precisely what the House will now try to establish.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 21:00

• Navy Detransitions From 'Digital Recruiting Program' Featuring Drag Queen
  Navy Detransitions From ‘Digital Recruiting Program’ Featuring Drag Queen

  With the US military in the midst of a recruitment crisis, the Navy has decided to reverse course on its Digital Recruiting Program which featured an enlisted drag queen.

  

  Four months ago, the Daily Caller noted that the Navy had brought on active-duty drag queen, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelly, who goes by the stage name “Harpy Daniels” and identifies as non-binary. The goal was to make Kelley a “Navy Digital Ambassador” in a pilot program which ran from October 2022 to March 2023, and was “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates.”

  Putin must tremble in fear when he beholds the US Navy’s new ‘digital ambassador’ whose role is to get more recruits. Presenting the fabulous Harpy Daniels aka Joshua Kelly. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/FwNCzSrlsW

  — David Vance (@DVATW) May 3, 2023

  In a Tuesday letter to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) from Navy under secretary Erik Raven, the service confirmed that the Digital Ambassador Pilot program “will not be continued.”

  “The Navy learned lessons from the pilot program that will inform our digital engagement and outreach going forward,” wrote Raven. “Our digital outreach efforts will maintain the important distinction between Sailors’ official activities and their personal lives.”

  Tuberville — who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee — previously sent a letter to Admiral Michael M. Gilday, the chief of Naval Operations, in May, demanding to know the identities of the officers tasked with funding and promoting drag queen shows aboard naval vessels. The letter was sent the same day the Alabama senator and his Republican colleagues submitted a separate communique to Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro on the branch’s embrace of Daniels and whether Navy leadership is encouraging its “digital ambassadors” and public affairs personnel to use TikTok — which the Pentagon banned its members from using on government-issued devices — “on their personal devices” in order to skirt the agency’s prohibition. -The Federalist

  Recruitment fail

  As the Epoch Times notes, the Navy expects to fall short of its annual recruiting goal by around 7,000 sailors when the fiscal year ends this month.

  At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti announced that the service is on track to miss its fiscal year 2023 goal—ending Sept. 30—to bring in 37,700 active duty enlisted sailors. The service also aimed to recruit 2,528 active duty officers, 8,200 reserve enlisted sailors, and 1,940 reserve officers.

  Adm. Franchetti’s latest recruiting projection is worse than the 6,000-recruit miss she predicted in April, but not the worst outcome Navy officials have considered this year.

  “We started out the year thinking we’d be about 13,000 short,” Adm. Franchetti told Senators on Thursday.

  “We’re going to be about 7,000 short. We’re doing better month by month than we were last year.”

  NTD News reached out to the Navy for additional comment about its recruiting efforts this year but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.

  The Navy brought out several new measures to drive recruiting this year, including raising the maximum enlistment bonus to $75,000 and raising the maximum enlistment age to 41 years old.

  The service also changed its standards to allow recruiters to take candidates who scored in the 10th to 30th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). The revised standards permitted recruiters to fill around 20 percent of their fiscal year 2023 quota with candidates who scored in the 10th to 30th percentile on the AFQT, dubbed “Category IV” candidates.

  Military Recruiting Woes Stretch Into Second Year

  The Navy is not the only military service expecting to fall short of its recruiting quotas for the year. This week, the U.S. Air Force announced it is on track to bring in about 2,700 new airmen fewer than it had planned for fiscal year 2023, missing this year’s goal to bring in 26,877 new recruits by about 10 percent.

  The U.S. Space Force—which is organized under the purview of the Department of the Air Force—did manage to overshoot its recruiting quote for the 2023 fiscal year.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 20:25

• 'Gut Instinct' Cause For Numerous Sensory Symptoms In Long COVID, Doctors Offer Comprehensive Treatment
  ‘Gut Instinct’ Cause For Numerous Sensory Symptoms In Long COVID, Doctors Offer Comprehensive Treatment

  Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  COVID-19 and long COVID may be linked to impaired sensory neurons, a recent study Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study finds.

  

  Sensory neurons are responsible for smell, taste, touch, pain, and changes in temperature. Damage to them may lead to impaired senses.

  Surprisingly, the study found that infected neurons released viral proteins like the spike protein and nucleocapsid proteins rather than the virus releasing them.

  Not all neurons were infected. All lab-made neurons were exposed to the Wuhan, delta, and omicron strains, but only up to 30 percent of the neurons were infected, with the omicron variant having the lowest infection rate.

  

  Sensory Symptoms in Long COVID and Vaccine Injuries

  Some doctors have suspected that the sensory problems, such as lost or impaired smell, taste, and hearing, and muscle pains, numbness, burning, and electrical shock sensations, seen in long COVID and vaccine-injured patients are due to the spike proteins on the COVID-19 virus’ surface. The mRNA and adenovirus vaccines similarly instruct the body to produce spike proteins.

  The MIT study shows what “our clinical gut instinct” tells us is the cause of symptoms, neurologist Dr. Diane Counce told The Epoch Times.

  Other factors may also be at play.

  A common driver is inflammation. Inflammation occurs as immune cells clear out viruses and their proteins. Yet a constant state of inflammation is not viable for normal neural function, and neurons can become hyperreactive and damaged.

  Some patients may also develop mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). In MCAS, patients become highly sensitive to any change in the environment. The histamine released in such a scenario irritates the nerves, causing neuropathic pain and itching. Swelling and mucus production due to this allergic response can also impair the senses if sensory neurons are near the site of histamine release.

  Another increasingly recognized driver is microclotting.

  “The nerves form a webbing around the blood vessels … If you have clotting, then you’re not feeding the nerves correctly,” Dr. Counce said, adding that this could cause something close to “infarcts in the nerves.”

  Sensory problems from microclotting often manifest alongside other symptoms, including chest pain, palpitations, and shortness of breath.

  These mechanisms can be affected simultaneously and overlap; therefore, several different therapeutics must often be prescribed to manage all the different systems, said internal medicine physician Dr. Keith Berkowitz.

  Treatments That Clear Spike Proteins

  Ivermectin

  Ivermectin is a first-line therapy in both treating COVID-19 infections and chronic long COVID and vaccine injuries.

  The drug has a high affinity to the COVID-19 virus, including its spike protein, and can immobilize the proteins for immune clearance.

  Dr. Berkowitz has found ivermectin to be very helpful in clearing acute COVID-19 infection, which also alleviates the infection’s loss of taste and smell.

  N-Acetylcysteine (NAC)

  N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has been shown to impair and break down spike protein. Augmented NAC may be particularly potent in its effects.

  Nurse practitioner Scott Marsland at the Leading Edge Clinic told The Epoch Times that long COVID and vaccine-injured patients may experience flare-ups of symptoms, and treatment with augmented NAC has been particularly helpful in controlling these.

  Nattokinase

  Nattokinase is an enzyme derived from natto made from fermented soybeans. Japanese studies have shown that it can break down spike proteins in cell culture.

  Apart from that, nattokinase also has robust anti-clotting capabilities. Therefore, the supplement can aid in the breakdown of blood clots that obstruct the sensory nerves from receiving adequate oxygen and nutrients.

  Some of Mr. Marsland’s patients have reported improvements in their senses of smell and taste after taking a high dose of nattokinase twice daily.

  Treatments That Reduce Inflammation

  Intravenous Fluid Therapy

  “When you have a virus, what do they first do in the hospital when you go in? Hydrate them,” Dr. Berkowitz told The Epoch Times.

  He has observed that around 80 percent of his long-COVID and vaccine-injured patients would be more responsive to treatment after a few hydration sessions.

  Dr. Counce explained that patients who need intravenous fluid therapy likely have small fiber neuropathy, which can affect sensory neurons.

  Low-Dose Naltrexone

  In managing long-COVID- and vaccine-related injuries, Dr. Counce and pulmonary critical care specialist Dr. Pierre Kory have found the drug effective in treating neuropathies. Since the drug can reduce inflammation in neurons, doctors think it may have promise in treating smell-, taste-, and other related sensory problems.

  Treatments That Inhibit Neural Overactivity

  Dr. Berkowitz has observed that some patients’ nervous systems appear hyperreactive.

  These patients are insomniac, anxious, have gastrointestinal problems, and often have neuropathic symptoms like pain and experience electric shock-like feelings. Some patients are also unresponsive to various long-COVID and vaccine-injury treatments like low-dose naltrexone.

  Dr. Berkowitz found hydration therapy and gabapentin helpful treatments in these cases.

  Gabapentin

  Gabapentin helps soothe the nervous system by mimicking gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which works as an inhibitor in neurons.

  GABA slows and blocks nervous activity, creating a calming effect. Since the gut is a major producer of GABA, patients with gut problems may benefit from gabapentin.

  Dr. Counce has observed that patients with severe neuropathic pain also tend to respond well to it.

  Stellate Ganglion Block

  Stellate ganglion blocks, an invasive operation that involves an anesthetic injection into the autonomic nerves, can reset hyperactive nerves, reduce stress, and return smell and taste to affected patients.

  A study published in May examined the effect of stellate ganglion block on 195 long-COVID patients at a pain clinic and found that 87.4 percent reported an improved sense of smell after receiving the injection.

  Treatments That Repair Neurological Damage

  Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)

  Dr. Counce has found that patients tend to respond well to therapies that improve brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein related to neural growth and survival.

  The mushroom lion’s mane boosts BDNF. In an animal study, rats had their sciatic nerves cut, making them unable to walk. After being supplemented with lion’s mane mushrooms, they could walk again.

  Rhodiola rosea, a type of herbal medicine, can also increase BDNF levels.

  NAC and resveratrol, commonly recommended supplements for long COVID and vaccine injury, also carry BDNF properties.

  Treatments That Prevent Clotting

  Curcumin

  Curcumin is a phytonutrient derived from the ginger plant turmeric. Studies show that curcumin has potent anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting effects. Therefore, many doctors have added curcumin to their treatment regimen, judging it to be helpful in breaking down blood clots.

  The phytonutrient can also cross the blood-brain barrier to alleviate neuroinflammation. Research has shown it to help reduce neuropathic pain; other reports suggest it may also help treat loss of smell and taste in COVID.

  Bromelain

  Bromelain is an enzyme derived from pineapples. Since bromelain can digest gelatin, jelly companies advise against adding fresh pineapples to their mixtures to prevent the jelly from “setting.”

  In the body, bromelain can break down fibrin, a component of blood clots, and is known to prevent coagulation and platelet aggregation, all of which may help to break down blood clots. Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough recommends bromelain as part of his spike protein detox protocol (pdf).

  Triple Therapy

  Combining anticoagulants may create a more substantial synergistic effect than using one anticoagulant alone.

  Professors Resia Pretorius and Douglas Kell have found the triple combination therapy of anticoagulants—clopidogrel and aspirin, anti-platelet apixaban, and proton pump inhibitor (PPI)—to be successful in treating blood clots.

  Researchers placed a group of 24 long-COVID patients on this regimen for a month, and all patients experienced a significant improvement in symptoms, including muscle pain.

  In March, the same researchers published a second preprint (pdf) on 91 patients, most of whom experienced a resolution of symptoms. The authors emphasized that “such a regime must only be followed under expert medical supervision in view of the risk of bleeding.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 19:50

• Bud Light Might Soon Lose Retail Shelf Space Amid Boycott: Experts
  Bud Light Might Soon Lose Retail Shelf Space Amid Boycott: Experts

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In the midst of a months-long boycott against Bud Light, some experts have forecast that the Anheuser-Busch owned brand will soon lose coveted retail shelf space as sales continue to slide.

  

  Beer industry experts, wholesalers, and a former Anheuser-Busch executive told ABC News Friday that places like 7-Eleven, QuikTrip, and Walmart may decrease Bud Light’s refrigerator space in stores.

  “During a busy shopping period on a Friday or Saturday night, if you don’t have the beer available cold on the shelf, consumers pick something else,” former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Anson Frericks, a frequent critic of his former company, told the outlet. He noted that shelf space is “the single largest determinant of sales in a store,” and warned there will be a “dramatic shift” for Bud Light.

  Dave Williams, vice president of analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, said that retailers often watch for sales figures to determine what brands would be given the best shelf space.

  “There’s explosive growth on one side and sharp decline on the other,” Mr. Williams said, according to the broadcaster. “This does have that ripple effect where if Bud Light loses space on the shelf, that could make it a longer-term endeavor to claw back to where they were if they’re ever able to do that in the first place.”

  According to a report from Drinks Market Analysis from several years ago, about 80 percent of beer sales occur at retailers or similar locations where consumers take the product home. The other 20 percent of sales occur at restaurants and bars.

  Over a month period ending in early September, sales for Bud Light dropped about 27 percent year-over-year, according to Bump Williams Consulting. Those figures are consistent with Bud Light’s previous weekly sales figures since the boycott erupted in early April.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Anheuser-Busch InBev for comment on the report Friday.

  A general manager at a Wisconsin Anheuser-Busch distributor, who wasn’t named, told ABC that retailers do not expect a “drastic change” anytime soon. But he warned that the Bud Light “boycott has lasted longer than anybody thought,” adding, “Every retailer has their own opinion for what sales warrant on their shelves. Time will tell.”

  Last month, Anheuser-Busch’s American division revealed in its quarterly earnings report that it lost about $395 million amid the boycott and that U.S. revenue dropped about 10 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, Bud Light lost its No. 1 spot to Modelo Especial, which is owned by Constellation Brands in the United States, in June.

  Adding more fuel to the fire, a beer industry expert, Harry Schumacher of Beer Business Daily, told Fox News some Bud Light drinkers may never come back and have switched to other brands.

  The boycott, he warned, is “actually worse than just lost sales because now it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming systemic within the industry, and they’re losing the confidence of the retailers, and that’s when it starts getting bad.”

  Controversy

  It all started in April when Bud Light made a beer can featuring the face of transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, who then posted the promotional item on social media. Backlash came quickly, and some conservative musicians and influencers called for a boycott, accusing Bud Light of abandoning its traditional consumer base.

  Musician Kid Rock was seen in a viral video shooting up cans of the beer, while several country singers said they wouldn’t serve it at their bars or on tour. Former President Donald Trump also accused the firm of caving to leftists and urged supporters that it’s “time to beat the radical left at their own game.”

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis later urged the state’s pension manager to investigate Anheuser-Busch and potentially take legal action against the firm over the incident. Like President Trump, Mr. DeSantis is also a GOP presidential candidate.

  Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch confirmed that two top Bud Light executives took a leave of absence the company, namely after a Bud Light marketing executive, Alissa Heinerscheid, gave an interview saying that she wanted to move the brand away from an “out-of-touch” and “fratty” image. Reports have indicated that she was associated with the company’s Mulvaney campaign.

  In an earnings call with investors in May, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris appeared to distance the beer brand from the transgender controversy and said there was no “formal campaign.”

  “This was the result of one can,” he said during the call. “It was not made for production or sale to general public. It was one post, not a formal campaign or advertisement.”

  Months later, in August, Mr. Doukeris told investors that Bud Light is “working hard to build it back and to earn back consumers” and worked with a third-party researcher to engage with about 170,000 customers in the U.S.

  “Most consumers surveyed are favorable towards the Bud Light brand and approximately 80 percent are favorable or neutral,” the firm said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 18:40

• Young People Begin To 'Freak' About AI Taking Their Jobs, Survey Reveals 
  Young People Begin To ‘Freak’ About AI Taking Their Jobs, Survey Reveals 

  Millions of jobs across the Western world are at risk due to artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs cautioned its clients that AI could affect up to 300 million jobs in the coming years. Recent news about IBM implementing a hiring freeze due to automation, along with similar actions by other corporations, has sparked the ‘fear of becoming obsolete’ (FOBO) among the younger workforce participants, according to a new poll. 

  Gallup revealed a surge in respondents expressing FOBO, driven by the expansion of AI, over the last year. 

  Twenty-two percent now say they worry that technology will make their job obsolete, up seven percentage points from the prior reading in 2021. The figure had previously varied between 13% and 17%, with little upward movement in the trend.

  

  FOBO is occurring with “college-educated workers, among whom the percentage worried has jumped from 8% to 20,” Gallup said. At the same time, survey data showed those without college degrees could care less about AI taking their jobs. Most of the FOBO is occurring with younger respondents. 

  

  The number one worry respondents had was AI and other technological advancements harming their job benefits. About a third said they were worried about reduced benefits, and almost a quarter worried about decreasing wages. 

  

  The wake-up call for workers has been the release of ChatGPT last November. “It is no longer only about robots standing in for humans in warehouses and on assembly lines but has expanded to online programs conducting sophisticated language-based work, including writing computer code,” Gallup said. 

  According to Goldman’s Jan Hatzius, “using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two-thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”

  

  Reports like Goldman’s have been echoed by other investing desks and Wall Street professionals. These reports have sparked a wave of FOBO across the Western world. 

  For more insight into the rapidly evolving job landscape, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Sabrina Lam – using data from MSCI – has ranked the industries where AI-driven automation will displace the most workers. 

  

  This is a big problem for all those college students accumulating insurmountable student debt for degrees that may be proven worthless. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 18:05

• The Religion Of Masking
  The Religion Of Masking

  Authored by Gwendolyn Kull via The Brownstone Institute,

  What do burkas, tichels, yarmulkes, hijabs, kapps, fezzes, dukus, and surgical masks all have in common?

  Religious cultures mandate or strongly encourage these head coverings to comply with dogma. Although most of these are rooted in ethnic and religious traditions of any denomination to reflect humility before G-d and modesty before man, surgical masks have become the morality trend of the Western world for those who fear The Science before they fear any god. 

  

  As absurd as that last sentence may sound, the People of the United States are under siege – a war that is targeting our greatest claim to fame, our pride and joy: our freedom. Our Forefathers determined at the inception of this nation that all men have the inviolate right to life and liberty. Recognizing some freedoms that are indelible to the identity of a human are especially at risk of infringement, the Founders drafted the Bill of Rights to expressly protect freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to peaceably assemble, and freedom to petition the government among other activities.

  Yet over the last three years, our government has encroached on these unalienable freedoms in the name of public health and following The Science. The few government officials and bureaucrats sitting in D.C. and Georgia imposed their beliefs on what makes the public healthy on the masses, without regard for dissenting opinions or contrary beliefs. Such factional tyranny is exactly the breach of social contract the Framers aimed to prevent.

  After initially telling the country that masks would not work against this virus, Anthony Fauci fell in step, ordering persons be masked and directing both government and non-government actors alike to hold their fellow citizens accountable for failing to mask. A futile exercise in the name of “public health” given research predating the pandemic had already put to bed the idea that masking could prevent respiratory infections. Even following the Cochrane Review’s pandemic masking study showing little-to-no efficacy at masks preventing infection, the Biden administration still tells the People we should be masking.

  Beyond inefficacy, recent studies are also researching possible adverse consequences from constant mask-wearing, now termed “Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome.” The illness bears many of the same symptoms as “long covid,” begging the question: are the health risks of long-term masking worth the miniscule efficacy? I digress. Masking mandates began to die down when the CDC lost a legal battle where the court only addressed the agency’s statutory authority to impose such a mandate. The question of whether such mandates are constitutional at all was never reached. Despite the open question in the courts, I firmly believe mask mandates do not pass constitutional muster.

  Recalling my extreme parallel of religious head coverings to surgical masks, compare this scenario: one day, the bureaucrats in Washington decide that for public health and decency, everyone must wear a burka. The land would cry, “Foul!” Non-muslim citizens would lose their minds that Sharia law was being imposed on them in violation of their First Amendment right to be free from the establishment of religion! Only the worshippers of the public health fascists would gladly adorn the dress as a testament to their true belief that the burka would save them from illness. I ask you, how is our current masking guidelines any different? Because masking is not a teaching from an institutionalized religion? Is trusting The Science not a form of having faith?

  In truth, our courts have held time and time again that government actors cannot infringe on our clothing under both freedom-tenants of religion and speech. Our Constitution contracts our appointed government to respect and defend our human right to liberty, which includes our ability to express ourselves and beliefs through our clothing and appearances. After all, our appearance is all a part of our individual identities. Covering one’s face, one’s physical identity, must be a choice and not a requirement.

  Moreover, our individual identities are not just linked to our physical attributes. Nay, our speech is also core to our humanity and identities. Speech is the expression of one’s soul, subjective based upon the speaker’s own perceptions and experiences. How I speak and what I say is part of how others (and I) recognize me as who I am!

  Like any painting serves as a window into the artist’s being, so is speech into a person’s mind, heart, and soul. It is as complex as the human body that produces such words and sounds: the speaker’s larynx, vocal chords, pharynx, palate, tongue, teeth, cheeks, lips, and nose are all coordinating in harmony to make what we think in our minds come out of our mouths. Speech is as unique to each individual as a person’s fingerprints or DNA. Muffling a person’s voice, covering the delicate facets producing speech, hiding non-verbal facial cues, and restricting air flow via masks is not natural.

  Masking inhibits self-expression. Even prior to physical masking, virtue-signalers touted policing one’s own speech as being “politically correct.” Policing and masking speech is toxic to both individuals and humankind. It evokes the same hesitancy as does domestic abuse–the feeling of “walking on eggshells” for fear your words will trigger and bring you harm. It further causes an identity crisis–a dissociation within oneself, wherein the mind is policing the heart and soul for fear of offending any listener (or observer). Both perpetuate the victimhood complex where one believes she cannot live without fear because others will not do “what they are supposed to do.” 

  It is true that internal perceptions expressed outwardly are not always correct or palatable. Such is the beauty of allowing one to convey his opinions and beliefs in his own words: the listener can understand the person with whom she is speaking and take the opportunity to debate and educate, correct her own misunderstanding, or completely discredit the speaker of value within her own mind. Speech is not just about speaking, but about hearing and deciding what one believes to be true. Speech of our own and listening to others’ speech helps us understand and develop our own identities.

  It is not that constant expletives and hyperboles should become the norm of self-expression through speech. No, language itself is so vastly malleable that it can be morphed to rise to any situation–to connect with one’s listeners. For instance, there are different ages of communication. You would not use the same words with a child as you would with adults, unless your intention is to be misunderstood or completely unintelligible like the unseen adult characters of Charlie Brown. To be understood by your listeners, you must change your speech to be appropriate for the venue and target audience.

  How is any of this relevant to the topic of mask mandates eroding freedom? Requiring people to cover the face and bodily member responsible for speaking and being heard and understood is inhumane. It strips children of their ability to learn how to speak, how to use their body to produce sounds and words and sentences, and how to connect those words to facial expressions to add context for listeners. It socially distances people from each other, deteriorating the human connection that allows us to communicate and understand each other.

  There is no replacement for that connection. As I discussed in a prior article, humans are a social species. Although we are capable as individuals, we fail to thrive when deprived of interacting with others. During lockdowns, people yearned to visit family, go out to restaurants, to resume “normalcy.” Zoom meetings, video calls, and text messages were not enough to curb the cravings for human connection. 

  Masking is just another degree of separation from one another. Although it is less obvious than the isolation of quarantines, it is just another lonely reminder that we are not free. Not free to be ourselves, not free to connect, not free from fear, not free to breathe, not free to decide for ourselves what is in our own best interest. Even President Biden joked during a recent press conference that, “they keep telling me… I got to keep wearing [a mask], but don’t tell them I didn’t have it on when I walked in,” defiantly waving his surgical mask away from his face.

  Who are “they” to decide what is in any individual’s best interest? Are we children and “they” our parents? Do we lack the mental capacity to think for ourselves? Are we not developed and educated enough to decide what is healthy and what is not? Are our God-given immune systems so defective that we can no longer survive colds? I find it a hard blue pill to swallow that humanity has survived on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years for a coronavirus variant to suddenly confound our natural biological defenses.

  Who are “they” at all? “They” are not our duly-elected legislators who oathed to uphold and defend our Constitution and who are the only branch of government who the People gave authority to create laws. In fact, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) is now fighting this usurpation of legislative authority by “them.” On September 7, 2023, he brought to the Senate floor the “Freedom to Breathe” Act, which would prohibit mask mandates. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) objected to the call for unanimous consent, arguing that this legislation would infringe on the health powers of the states.

  An interesting and seemingly Constitution-based argument by Senator Markey, but it presupposes masking mandates on the public are a health-related decision at all, which is not supported by scientific evidence, and that such mandates are not otherwise constitutionally prohibited. 

  Though the People granted health powers to the states, those powers are still limited by the People’s ultimate right to life and liberty, including the free exercise of religion without a state-sanctioned religion (The Science) and free speech without intrusions on the speech-producing orifice or physical identity of the speaker. 

  Masking restrictions are not a “health power” the state governments are permitted to enforce.

  Masking mandates are not a public health measure the federal government is permitted to sanction.

  Both impede life and liberty guaranteed to the People by being human and safeguarded by the People through enforcing our Constitution. As such, the People will not comply.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 17:30

• Map Of 'Zombie Drug' Tsunami Consuming America 
  Map Of ‘Zombie Drug’ Tsunami Consuming America 

  Despite the Biden administration’s campaign promise to tackle the nationwide drug crisis, new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 2023 will be another disastrous year as overdose-related deaths continue rising nationwide. 

  New CDC estimates show 111,000 people died from a drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in April. The data shows that the drug epidemic continues ravaging counties and cities nationwide. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are responsible for about 70% of the overdoses. 

  With no signs of slowing, the drug epidemic might be supercharged by xylazine, a horse tranquilizer commonly referred to on the street as “tranq” or the “Zombie drug.” Tranq has been flooding illegal drug markets across the East Coast, working into the Deep South, Rust Belt, and Midwest

  Axios, citing a new report from the drug testing lab Millennium Health, showed tranq is spreading across the nation at a dangerously fast pace. 

  

  “While virtually all positive urine tests for xylazine also contained fentanyl, 16% of fentanyl-positive tests contained xylazine between April and July,” Axios said. 

  Here’s a snapshot of the report (courtesy of Axios):

  • The rates are much higher in some states — 42.8% in Pennsylvania, 40% in North Carolina, and 36.1% in Ohio.

  • It’s still largely a regional phenomenon, though Millennium testing detected xylazine in 34 states since the Biden administration in April declared the fentanyl-xylazine combination a threat to the US.

  • In Mid-Atlantic states, 40% of fentanyl-positive tests contained xylazine, and it was 33% in East North Central states.

  • Here’s how the remaining states broke down, by US Census Division: South Atlantic (22%), East South Central (19%), New England (16%), West NorthCentral (13%), West South Central (5%), Pacific (4%) and Mountain (2%).

  In March, the Drug Enforcement Administration warned about the tranq wave sweeping parts of the US. We warned as early as December 2022 about the new drug hitting streets across the Northeast. 

  Here’s a recent scene from Philadelphia of the tranq-zombie apocalypse. 

  This is Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/2xKFei0w7m

  — Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 10, 2023

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  Perhaps the presence of open-air drug markets and lack of law and order in Democrat metro areas contribute to the tranq wave. It’s only a matter of time before Millennium Health begins finding the drug in urine samples on the West Coast. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 16:55

• IRS Hiring Another 3,700 Tax Enforcers, Watchdog Warns Those Earning Under $400,000 Could Be Targeted
  IRS Hiring Another 3,700 Tax Enforcers, Watchdog Warns Those Earning Under $400,000 Could Be Targeted

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  IRS hiring 3,700+ tax enforcers to audit higher earners but a watchdog worries about audits for those under $400,000 due to unclear “high-income” definition.

  

  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking to hire over 3,700 additional tax enforcers as it ramps up its audit crackdown of higher-earning taxpayers, though a watchdog warns that Americans making less than $400,000 could get caught in the dragnet because the agency doesn’t have a clear definition of “high-income.”

  The IRS said on Sept. 15 that it had opened over 3,700 positions nationwide to assist  with “expanded enforcement work” that focuses on complex partnerships, large corporations, and high-income earners.

  The compliance positions will be open in more than 250 locations across the United States and are part of a “sweeping, historic” tax enforcement crackdown that leverages cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, to catch tax evaders more effectively.

  The hiring will be for higher-graded revenue agents, with the IRS calling on people in the financial services industry—such as tax accountants, forensic accountants, auditors, and controllers—to apply.

  The IRS is flush with cash from a recent congressionally-mandated infusion of $60 billion in new funding, with some of the money already having bolstered the tax agency’s ranks substantially. Recent reports indicate that hiring is up around 13 percent over the past year, allowing the IRS to hit a decade-high of nearly 90,000 staffers.

  But while the recent batch of new hires was focused on taxpayer service positions, the newly announced hiring thrust is looking to give the IRS more enforcement muscle.

  “This next wave of hiring will help the IRS add key talent like tax accountants to help reverse a decade-long decline of audits for the wealthy as well as complex partnerships and corporations,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement.

  “These new employees will be focused on higher-income and complex tax areas like partnerships, not average taxpayers making less than $400,000,” Mr. Werfel added.

  But Mr. Werfel’s pledge not to target Americans earning under $400,000 rings hollow, given a recent watchdog report that called into question the ability of the IRS to make good on this pledge because it either lacks a clear definition of “high-income” or uses outdated tax examination activity codes that put the threshold for high earners at $200,000.

  No Clear Definition of ‘High-Income’

  The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which is the watchdog overseeing the IRS, recently carried out a review to assess the IRS’s strategy to train employees hired to audit high earners and big businesses that underreport income.

  The watchdog report includes scathing criticism of the IRS for lacking a clear definition of “high-income” earners—despite the very same watchdog asking the IRS to look into developing a better definition years ago.

  “The IRS does not have a unified or updated definition for individual high-income taxpayers,” the watchdog said in the report, which notes that the IRS uses different definitions of “high-income” depending on context as various IRS programs address different compliance issues across different parts of the filing population.

  TIGTA faulted the IRS for still not having a clear definition of “high-income” for tax compliance even though the watchdog recommended in 2015 that the IRS reevaluate the appropriate income thresholds for its high-income and high-wealth strategy.

  “The high-income terminology is being used loosely inside the IRS with no common understanding of what the term means,” the watchdog said.

  The watchdog said that in response to its recommendation to the IRS nearly a decade ago to reevaluate its income thresholds, the IRS “made no changes,” citing “internal data analysis results and resource constraints.”

  Also, the IRS continues to rely on old tax examination activity codes adopted half a century ago with the Tax Reform Act of 1976, which used a $200,000 threshold to measure high-income returns.

  “This amount is equivalent to more than $1 million in 2023, but the IRS still uses $200,000 as the default high-income threshold,” the watchdog said, adding that the $200,000 threshold is “no longer a reasonable standard for high earners given inflation since 2005.”

  Generally, the IRS uses the examination activity codes to plan the number of tax-related examinations, although since 2019, its Large Business and International (LB&I) division has been using a modified planning method based on resource allocation.

  More Details

  One of the watchdog’s recommendations was for the IRS to establish a definition for high-income taxpayers for examination compliance purposes and that, “at a minimum, the IRS should accept the Treasury secretary’s $400,000 directive as the new high-income floor on which IRS leadership can focus enforcement efforts.”

  The IRS disagreed with the watchdog’s recommendation. It asserted in a statement included in the report that a “static and overly proscriptive” definition of high-income taxpayers for audit purposes “would serve to deprive the IRS of the agility to address emerging issues and trends.”

  The watchdog commented on the IRS’ pushback, saying that the definition need not be “static” and income thresholds should be adjusted based on economic and complexity factors—otherwise there’s a risk that the agency will break its pledge not to audit more Americans earnings less than $400,000.

  “When the high-income thresholds are set too low, the result can be higher numbers of inefficient examinations,” the watchdog said. “When the definition is too low, the base of taxpayers earning those incomes is wider so that the IRS does many more audits in that category in order to achieve desired audit coverage.”

  The watchdog said that, under the circumstances of a lack of a clear definition of “high-income,” the IRS would not only be conducting more audits on lower-earning Americans (contrary to its pledge not to), but it would also be less effective at its stated goal of closing the tax gap.

  The watchdog also said that the IRS’s lack of action in response to the TIGTA recommendation in 2015 to reevaluate its income thresholds means that the IRS is in a difficult position if it hopes to meet its pledge not to raise audit rates above historical norms for Americans earning less than $400,000.

  “Because $400,000 will be an important threshold, the IRS needs to update the examination activities codes for individual tax returns,” the watchdog recommended.

  Currently, “there is no way to identify the complete population of taxpayers that meet the criterion of $400,000 or more specified by the current Treasury Secretary,” the watchdog added.

  The IRS partially agreed with the watchdog’s recommendation to refine its examination activity.

  “The IRS agreed to identify the best method to identify and track high-income examinations as part of the work being undertaken to implement the Treasury Secretary’s directive to not increase audit rates for households making less than $400,000 and small businesses,” the IRS said in a statement included in the report.

  But the watchdog responded by saying this isn’t good enough.

  “The IRS’s partial agreement and planned corrective action will not satisfy the intent of our recommendation, and additional actions are needed,” TIGTA said in a comment.

  “The IRS should establish examination activity codes for additional TPI increments, which will help the IRS identify noncompliance at different income levels,” the watchdog added. TPI stands for “taxpayer profile increment.”

  Asked for comment on the watchdog’s rejection of the IRS’s response to its recommendation, the IRS simply pointed to its original response included in the report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 16:20

• Trudeau Threatens 'Grocery Tax' To Combat 'Record Profits'
  Trudeau Threatens ‘Grocery Tax’ To Combat ‘Record Profits’

  In a move that totally won’t backfire and be passed along to the consumer, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has threatened to tax Canadian grocers if they don’t lower grocery costs.

  

  “Large grocery chains are making record profits,” Trudeau claimed Thursday. “Those profits should not be made on the backs of people struggling to feed their families.”

  Grocers have until Thanksgiving to stabilize prices, otherwise tax measures may be on the way for ‘Loblaw, Metro, Empire, Walmart and Costco,’ according to Rebel News.

  Prime Minister Trudeau says he’s giving major grocery retailers until Thanksgiving to come to Ottawa and explain what they’re doing to stabilize/lower food costs.

  If the grocers don’t act, Trudeau says “the federal government will take action.” pic.twitter.com/XA43srPPk5

  — Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) September 14, 2023

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

  Francois-Philippe Champagne, interior minister, said the Canadian government would also begin to engage with other players in the food industry.

  “We’re going to start with the five largest grocers in Canada, representing about 80% of the market, and we’re going to be in solution mode with obvious deadlines and very clear outcomes for Canadians,” he said, adding “We’re going to bring them to Ottawa, talk to them about meaningful action, and if they fail, there’ll be consequences.”

  More via Rebel News;

  The call for relief comes as grocery prices rose 8.5% in July — nearly three times the overall inflation rate.

  However, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) believes another tax will not improve affordability when Canadians go to checkouts across the country.

  “The last thing Canadians need is a grocery tax,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Instead of hammering Canadians with a grocery tax, Trudeau should scrap his carbon tax, making food prices more expensive.”

  “Another tax won’t make groceries more affordable, it’ll make them more expensive,” he said.

  Canada’s Food Price Report 2023 predicted a 5% to 7% food price increase in 2023 following 10% increases last year, with vegetables, dairy and meat becoming more expensive.

  The average family of four is expected to spend up to $16,288.41 annually on food this year — up an additional $1,065.60 from 2022.

  “Not only are some nutritious foods more difficult to find, but they can also be more expensive,” according a report, Evaluation Of The Office Of Nutrition Policy And Promotion.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 15:45

• US To Shift Military Aid From Egypt To Taiwan
  US To Shift Military Aid From Egypt To Taiwan

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  The US will withhold $85 million in annual military aid to Egypt and redirect some of the funds to Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal this week. The $85 million the US is withholding over human rights abuses is just a small portion of the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt receives from the US each year.

  The $85 million is in the form of Foreign Military Financing, a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US arms. According to CNN, Egypt receives $1 billion in FMF annually, and $320 million of those funds is conditional and tied to human rights issues.

  

  Some members of Congress want President Biden to withhold the full $320 million, but for now, the administration has only announced its intention to transfer $85 million. Of that amount, $55 million will be redirected to Taiwan, and $30 million will go to Lebanon.

  The US began providing Taiwan with military aid this year, an unprecedented form of support in the era of normalized US-China relations. Since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 to open up with Beijing, the US has sold weapons to Taiwan but never financed the purchases or provided arms free of charge until this year.

  Last month, the US approved the first-ever FMF military aid package for Taiwan worth $80 million. In July, the Biden administration provided Taiwan with a weapons package using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) for the first time.

  PDA allows President Biden to send weapons directly from US military stockpiles and is the primary way he’s been arming Ukraine.

  The PDA package for Taiwan was worth $345 million. The contents of the military aid packages for Taiwan have not been disclosed.

  The US military aid for Taiwan has enraged China as Beijing opposes all forms of US military support for the island, especially new kinds of assistance. The US is arming Taiwan in the name of deterrence, but the policy is making war more likely as China has responded to the growing diplomatic and military ties between Washington and Taipei by putting the island under increasing military pressure.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 15:10

• "Baloney, Bull, & Hogwash" – Texas AG Paxton Acquitted On All Impeachment Charges
  “Baloney, Bull, & Hogwash” – Texas AG Paxton Acquitted On All Impeachment Charges

  It appears the jury of Texas State Senators agreed with Texas AG Ken Paxton’s attorney Tony Buzbee – who said Friday in his closing remarks that the prosecution did not prove its case, calling the charges “baloney,” “bull”, “hogwash”, and a “political with hunt” – as they just acquitted the embattled AG of all impeachment charges.

  The Texas Senate chamber was turned into a courtroom for the historic impeachment trial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton, which kicked off last Tuesday morning at the state Capitol in Austin, Texas.

  

  Mr. Paxton was impeached on 20 articles in late May by the GOP-led House of Representatives in a vote of 121–23. He is only the third sitting official to be impeached in the state’s nearly 200-year history. The last impeachment case was more than a century ago.

  The articles of impeachment included allegations of abuse of power and bribery, among others. Mr. Paxton and his lawyers have maintained that all of the accusations are false.

  As Bloomberg reported, at the heart of the allegations against Paxton was his friendship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer and political donor.

  At the time, Paul was under state and federal investigation for separate allegations, and has since been indicted. He has pleaded not guilty.

  Paxton was accused of using his office to benefit Paul, including by conducting baseless investigations into Paul’s rivals.

  In turn, Paul allegedly helped Paxton conceal an extramarital affair and funded renovations to the attorney general’s home.

  But, 8 days later, despite the earlier overwhelming majority vote of House Republicans to impeach him, Senate Republicans on the 30-person jury empaneled for the trial rallied around the party with all but two of 18 Republicans voting to clear Paxton of every charge.

  State Rep. Jeff Leach (R), one of the House impeachment managers, said in closings that “there comes a time for each of us… not to ask yourself what is safe, or popular, or politic, but what is right,” and implored the jurors to sustain the articles of impeachment.

  

  “There is shame here, and the shame sits right there that they would bring this case in this chamber with no evidence,” Buzbee said, pointing to the House impeachment managers and the lawyers working with them.

  “I am proud to represent Attorney General Ken Paxton. If this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.”

  However, while Paxton may have won this battle, the war continues as Axios reports the FBI is also investigating him for the alleged misdeeds underpinning his impeachment.

  A grand jury has reportedly been impaneled to review potential criminal charges.

  Furthermore, Paxton also faces eight-year-old fraud charges, a whistleblower lawsuit, and a state bar lawsuit over his role in challenging the 2020 election results that could end with his disbarment.

  Nevertheless, having been suspended following the House impeachment in May, Paxton will now return to office, as his attorney said:

  “They assumed that Attorney General Ken Paxton would resign. Well, guess what? He did not resign. He is proud and is ready to go back to work. And after this is over, I expect he will go back to work.”

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 14:35

• Trump Decries 'Double Standard' In Documents Case, Pointing To Treatment Of Hilary Clinton
  Trump Decries ‘Double Standard’ In Documents Case, Pointing To Treatment Of Hilary Clinton

  Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The former president says he is unconcerned because he’s ‘fighting for the people.’

  

  Former President Donald Trump is unconcerned by the possibility that he could face jail time over the charges that have been brought against him in four different criminal cases.

  “I have a great attitude,” he said on the Sept. 14 episode of “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast. “It doesn’t affect me at all because I’m fighting for the country; I’m fighting for the people.”

  Pointing to his continued dominance in the polls, the Republican presidential candidate added that he wasn’t worried about how a conviction might affect his chances of winning the 2024 election, either.

  “These poll numbers are so good, and it makes me feel good, but I think we’re going to win the election no matter what happens because the people know it’s all fake.”

  President Trump is facing criminal charges in two federal cases relating to his handling of classified documents and his challenge of the 2020 presidential election results. Two additional cases have been brought by Democrat prosecutors in New York and Atlanta, though the former president holds that those cases were also brought in coordination with the Biden Department of Justice.

  “These are Biden indictments,” he said. “This is a guy that is grossly incompetent—I don’t even believe it’s him. It’s the people, the fascists that’s around him. Because I don’t believe he’s smart enough to do this, if you want to know the truth.”

  ‘It’s All Fake’

  In the documents case, brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, President Trump stands accused of willful retention of national defense information, obstruction, and making false statements.

  But the case, according to the former president, revolves around a “fake crime.”

  “They create a fake crime, and then they say, ‘Oh, you obstructed.’ This is a fake thing that they’ve done,” he said.

  Pointing to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, he contended that the law gives him the authority to decide which records he can keep.

  As support for those claims, President Trump cited a similar case involving audio recordings that President Bill Clinton kept in a sock drawer. The recordings were made during President Clinton’s time in office, but when government watchdog group Judicial Watch sued to obtain access to them, a federal judge dismissed the case. The 42nd president, the judge ruled, had the authority to decide which records qualified as personal and which were presidential.

  “This is all about the Presidential Records Act,” President Trump said. “I’m allowed to have these documents. I’m allowed to take these documents, classified or unclassified. And frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified.

  “People think you have to go through a ritual—you don’t. At least, in my opinion, you don’t.”

  Further noting that the statute in question is civil rather than criminal, he asserted, “I did absolutely nothing wrong.”

  Double Standard

  President Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges filed against him. But while he may not be worried about a conviction, one emotion he admitted to feeling was anger.

  Ms. Kelly, noting that he had not been accused of destroying classified documents, said: “Hillary Clinton destroyed documents while under subpoena—while under subpoena—and wasn’t even charged. … Does it make you angry?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Yeah, it makes me angry.”

  President Trump noted that Ms. Clinton smashed her cell phones and destroyed tens of thousands of emails after receiving a congressional subpoena, yet former FBI Director James Comey concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against her.

  “Yeah, there’s a double standard in this country, and the people aren’t standing for it,” he said. “People get it.”

  And if the polls are any indicator, the people do get it—or at least Republican voters do.

  According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, the former president holds a commanding lead over the rest of the GOP primary field at 56.1 percent. In a distant second at 13 percent is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

  But even so, President Trump added that he did not think the voters were in complete control over the results of elections in America.

  “Our elections are crooked, our elections are rigged, our borders are open, our country’s in trouble,” he said.

  “Our country’s in trouble.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 14:00

• Hollywood Is Dead: Here's Why No One Cares
  Hollywood Is Dead: Here’s Why No One Cares

  In the past, the film industry was perhaps the only industry (besides politics) in which abject failure has been met with consumer empathy and largesse.  Ever since the days of the Great Depression, the American public has wanted Hollywood to succeed; to continue to entertain us with tales of adventure and drama.  For if Hollywood survived, so did people’s hopes for American culture.  

  There was an era when Hollywood celebrities and film creators were treated as a kind of modern royalty, a representation of the heights to which the average person could strive and “make it big.”  The glitz and the glamour were viewed as the culmination of the American dream.  But as with all fantasies, the story must end and reality must return.  Was the movie business always a farce?  Yes.  However, it was a farce that the public held up even in the worst of times as something of value; something more than frivolity.  

  In the spans of around 7 years Hollywood has lost every ounce of social capital they had gained in the past century.  That takes an epic level of ignorance and arrogance.  It takes criminal levels of malicious intent and an unprecedented display of stupidity.  The populace was willing to put up with almost any level of degeneracy from Tinsel Town as long as they could make compelling movies, and yet, they couldn’t even do that.

  Today, the consequences of their hubris are punching them right in the nether regions as the business collapses in on itself.  And this time, no one seems to care.  In fact, many people are cheering their inevitable demise.

  In the past 4 years alone theaters across the country have seen a 50% plunge in box office attendance.  Meaning, the industry somehow lost half its consumer base from 2019 to 2023.  The media attempted to play down the crash as a symptom of the covid pandemic, but the fact is that the decline started well before the lockdowns, the closures in red states ended quickly, and some movies (such as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick) had explosive success while most other films lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the midst of the covid hype.

  It should be noted that a large percentage of celebrities and Hollywood corporate interests supported and promoted the covid lockdowns.  They also joined the online lynch mobs seeking to shame and destroy anyone who defied the mandates.  Now they’re pretending like none of that ever happened, but the public has not forgotten.    

  In the past few months Hollywood has been dealing with the WGA and SAG worker strikes and there’s no doubt they will attempt to blame the labor conflict for the continuing decay of profits just as they blamed covid.  Already, multiple major studio productions have been pushed back two years or canceled altogether, and most premier release dates have been moved to 2024 – 2025.  A number of television productions have been shut down and late night talk shows are on the verge of extinction.  But you don’t hear the public complain much, at least not as much as during the last major strikes in 2008.    

  No one cares about the writers, no one cares about the actors, and certainly no one cares about the studios for good reason.  Though writers and actors might garner more sympathy than producers and CEOs due to concerns over AI, the threat of AI formulated screenplays is greatly overblown and AI generated proxies of famous actors are not going to bring back audiences in sufficient numbers to save the film industry anyway.

  The strikes are seen as the last gasp of a dying institution, an institution that deserves to be cremated and replaced by a decentralized network of true creatives making content with substance and intelligence.  The real reason for the death of Hollywood is simple, and it’s a truth that the media will never admit to:  Get woke, go broke.  As a reminder, let’s take a look at the plethora of woke failures Hollywood produced in 2022 alone…

  Woke propaganda and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) ideology are the root cause of the implosion of showbiz.  There is an inherent hostility within woke culture towards American heritage, towards constitutional freedoms, towards free markets and towards legitimate imagination and creativity.  This hostility and deconstruction is not lost on the average consumer, they know when they are being attacked and they don’t like it. 

  Beyond the industry’s attempts to “count coup” against the conservative and moderate population, there is the basic matter of content quality.  If the top priority of a creative endeavor is to implant extremist political messaging rather than tell a good story, it will be virtually impossible to tell a good story and the industry will attract the worst kinds of zealots.  

  The survival of Hollywood now relies on their ability to accept failure and recognize their mistakes, which will never happen. 

  It’s not surprising that media simpletons are currently clinging to a movie like Barbie as a sample of woke success; they’re desperate for a counter-argument to the Get Woke, Go Broke mantra.  That said, exceptions to the rule do not change the rule.  For every Barbie, there are a dozen Little Mermaid or Woman King bombs.  And, Barbie was never marketed as a woke film (except in Australia).  In fact, it was marketed as a normal romantic comedy romp in the US, something which female audiences have been clamoring for (how many decent romantic comedies has Hollywood released in the past 5 years?  Why have there been so few? Is it because the far-left hates love stories about straight people?).  

  They had to hide the feminist cancer in order to get butts in the theater.  Hardly a shining example of woke success.  Barbie/Oppenheimer were likely the last hurrah for Hollywood as the strikes continue unabated and productions are pushed further into oblivion.  All the parties involved in these strikes are responsible for their dwindling piece of the entertainment pie.  The writers are garbage, the actors are garbage, the production companies are garbage.  It would appear that consumers have decided it’s time to put the garbage where it belongs – In the dustbin.   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 13:25

• Currency Wars Versus Gold Standards
  Currency Wars Versus Gold Standards

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  Russia and the Saudis are driving up oil and diesel prices. But these moves are likely to undermine the rouble more than they undermine the dollar, euro, and other major currencies. Therefore, higher energy prices will rebound on the Russians this winter: if they shiver in Germany, they will freeze in Russia. If the dollar is king of the fiats, the rouble is just a lowly serf.

  There is little doubt that Putin and his advisers are aware of this problem.

  • Plan A was to introduce a new gold-backed BRICS currency which might be expected to weaken the dollar and euro relative to the rouble.

  • Plan B was more drastic: to back the rouble itself with gold. This is the financial equivalent of dropping a hydrogen bomb on the dollar and the global fiat currency system upon which it is based.

  As well as demonstrating why there is no option for Russia but to back her currency with gold, this article shows why it is perfectly possible for Russia to do so during wartime and explains how it can be done.

  It is, as a matter of fact, very easy for Russia to reintroduce a gold standard for the rouble, but the consequences for the global fiat currency system are nothing short of lethal.

  

  Introduction

  For the last decade I have argued that there is a strong financial element in the wars between the Asian hegemons and America. President Trump’s trade policy towards China and his banning of Chinese technology, notably of Huawei, the world leader in G5 mobile technology was not just to suppress competition to America’s technology leadership but also to discourage global capital flows into China, which otherwise might have gone to America. And Ukraine gave President Biden the excuse to cut Russia out of global currency markets.

  All had gone quiet, superficially at least, until Russia declared its special operation against Ukraine, setting in motion a sequence of events which rebounded badly on the West. Initially, the rouble soared in value when Putin responded to western energy sanctions by setting his own payment terms. But since then, the rouble has declined and it has become clear that as a fiat currency the rouble will continue to weaken against the dollar. The weakening rouble is the principal chink in Putin’s armour.

  In response to sanctions, Putin appointed one of his advisers, Sergei Glazyev, to design a trade settlement currency, initially for the Eurasian Economic Union. It is believed that the scope was widened into a planned BRICS gold denominated currency, confirmed by the Russians ahead of the BRICS summit last month. But for China and India that was a step too far too quickly. China’s yuan is a component in the IMF’s SDR, a hard-won privilege which might have been threatened if it backed gold as a trade settlement medium. India has a history of anti-gold Keynesian monetary policies and is keen to develop trade links with the US and its allies, as demonstrated by its hosting of the G20 meeting last weekend and its prospective free trade agreement with the UK. China may have also been concerned that the consequences might be destabilising for the global currency system.

  The hesitancy of the two most populous nations on earth over the gold issue is now creating significant problems for them, as the chart below of their respective currencies shows.

  

  

  I have inverted the y-axis on both charts to make the point that the current rally in the dollar’s trade weighted index may not mean very much for the euro, which is its largest component, but it is undermining the major Asian currencies badly. When, rather than if the rupee breaks below its current support level, a move to test the INR100 level looks all but certain. And despite zero consumer price inflation in China, the yuan has already broken support and looks like falling even further. No wonder China’s citizens are pushing gold prices up to significant premiums: it is their escape from a falling currency. The Indians have yet to get used to higher gold prices in rupees, but that is likely to be only a matter of time.

  A particular currency target is Russia’s rouble, illustrated in our next chart.

  

  In an attempt to stop the slide, Russia’s central bank raised its interest rate by 3.5% to 12% in August, which initially rallied the rouble, but it is now sinking back towards its recent low against the dollar. But while Putin and his economic advisor Maxim Oreshkin appear to have a reasonable grasp of monetary affairs, the same cannot be said of the leadership of Russia’s central bank. At the time of the interest rate hike, Oreshkin wrote that “a recent acceleration of inflation and the sinking currency were the result of loose monetary policy, and that the central bank “has all the necessary tools to normalise the situation”.[i]

  The issue is that the central bank has followed expansive fiat monetary policies by allowing M0 money supply to expand by 26% in the year to August. Directly addressing this expansion of central bank credit would have done more to stabilise the rouble than crippling interest rate increases. While much of the destabilisation of the rouble can be attributed to the continuing expense of the war, there can be little doubt that it is also partly due to the dollar’s recent strength. As is the case between the dollar and most other fiat currencies, there is a relative trust factor working against the rouble. Irrespective of interest rate differentials, it is the fact that fiat currency values are tied to nothing more than the faith in them. And Russia now faces the problem that in a fiat currency regime run in western capital markets it can never match the faith and credit in the US dollar. In current currency conditions, the dollar can always undermine the rouble because the US controls the fiat currency agenda.

  The weakness of the rouble is perhaps the only real pressure point that America and NATO can apply. The war in Ukraine is turning out to be yet another NATO debacle, which only appears not to be the failure it is due to the western alliance’s control of its media-reporting. In a world driven by propaganda, we cannot know the truth. But any military commander who thinks, as did Napoleon and Hitler, that a land-borne army can defeat the Russians in Eastern Europe is deluding himself. While grinding down the Ukrainian army, the Russians are digging in for the long haul, expecting growing dissent in the NATO membership to undermine its unity. It is a plan which appears to be working.

  The energy war could backfire badly against the rouble

  Dissent in NATO can be expected to increase this winter, as energy shortages begin to bite. The most recent salvo in the energy war is timed ahead of the northern hemisphere winter. Russia and Saudi Arabia have jointly been squeezing oil supplies, pushing crude prices above the G7’s price caps. One area where energy supplies will hurt the Europeans more immediately is heating oil, which is also regarded as the proxy for diesel prices having increased in dollars by nearly 50% in the last quarter alone.

  The importance of diesel is that logistics in Europe (and America) are almost entirely dependent upon it. On top of earlier OPEC+ cuts of 2 million barrels per day, the more recent 1.3 million barrels per day cuts in oil output by Russia and Saudi Arabia are bringing pressure to bear on the supply of distillates (of which diesel is one) and Russia also plans to cut its diesel exports by a quarter, partly due to refinery maintenance (allegedly) and partly to divert supplies to its domestic economy. While the EU’s gas reserves are relatively full at 90% of capacity, it is not nearly enough to see the EU through the winter. From December onwards, there will be a scramble for more supplies. And the end of the agreement on Black Sea grain exports will put further pressure on food prices as well.

  Therefore, the western alliance will face further inflationary pressures, likely to give higher interest rates and bond yields a new impetus. Already, there is a credit crisis developing in key western economies, with banks trying to reduce their risk exposure to financial and non-financial markets in the face of a recession. And as the credit crunch intensifies, the likelihood of a new round of bank failures increases.

  The problem for Russia is that in pursuing energy policies with the intention of undermining the dollar and euro, the consequences for the rouble are likely to be far worse. The next chart, of oil priced in gold and roubles, illustrates the point.

  

  The first point to note is that in 1998, the rouble was redenominated at a ratio of 1000:1. Back-dated by this factor, in June 1992 there were US$7.25 to the new rouble, and a barrel of oil was valued at 2.03 gold-grammes. Today there are nearly 100 roubles to the dollar, and a barrel of oil is over RUB 7,500. As a fiat currency, the rouble has behaved like a third-world currency relative to the dollar, let alone gold. And the domestic price of oil in Russia has soared along with the rouble’s collapse. Furthermore, the exceptional volatility in the rouble price of oil is extremely disruptive for the domestic economy, with heating becoming unaffordable for Russia’s citizens in desperately cold winters.

  To quantify this distress, between September last and end-July, priced in roubles the oil price increased from RUB4,707 per barrel to RUB7,500:  that is an increase of 59%. In dollars, the price rose from $78.72 to 81.72, up less than 4%. Clearly, the energy battle cannot be won by Putin, because if they shiver in Germany they will freeze in Russia.

  The chart above puts Putin’s energy war in its proper context. Withholding energy from western markets will undoubtedly destabilise their currencies. But the blowback on the rouble will be even worse. But Russia’s analysts, including Maxim Oreshkin and Sergei Glazyev (who has already recommended a gold standard for the rouble) must surely know this. And the chart also tells us that priced in gold oil is considerably more stable. In June 1992 a barrel of oil was 2.03 grammes, today it is 1.41 grammes, a fall of 30%. Bearing in mind that gold is real money, and currencies are highly unstable credit, Russia is getting 30% less for her oil today than she did in 1992.

  Again, in common with the Saudis, the Russians are aware that American monetary policy has had the consequence of undermining the true value of their oil, something they have been powerless to correct without binding the price of oil to gold. There can be little doubt that Russia’s motivation to take control of energy values was behind its proposal for a new BRICS gold backed currency and that it was part of a two-step plan.

  The first step was to send a signal to markets that the era of the fiat dollar was over, justifying the second step which was for Russia and China, followed by other nations in the BRICS camp to evolve their own currencies onto gold standards as a protective response to a declining dollar. But China was not going to take the offensive against the dollar, and the Keynesian Indians were not convinced.

  Russia will take the BRICS presidency next year, so we can assume that the new BRICS currency has not gone away. Meanwhile, if Russia is to use the oil weapon against the West, then it must put the rouble onto a gold standard again as a matter of urgency (it was on a gold standard until Khrushchev devalued the rouble in 1961). If Russia prevaricates on this issue, then Putin’s legacy to be a latter-day Peter the Great will be destroyed by his own currency.

  The practicalities of a Russian gold standard

  In the middle of a war, usually a government suspends its gold standard. This would suggest that Russia can only consider a gold standard after its special operation in Ukraine is over. But the modern equivalent of a gold standard, the currency board, has been successfully established in modern times in nations with far worse budget deficits than Russia. Russia was in the fortunate position of a budget deficit of only 2.3% of GDP last year, despite military spending. This year, military spending has soared, and at a guess the deficit will be about 5% of GDP this year, but government debt to GDP will still be about 20%.

  Anything other than ball-park numbers for the Russian economy are difficult to come by, and the volatility of the rouble is a further analytical hazard. But some of these numbers are not substantially different from where Britain was economically in 1816, when a return to the gold standard was planned — the exception being her estimated debt to GDP number, which at nearly 200% was ten times that of Russia today. Therefore, there is no reason why Russia cannot put the rouble onto a gold standard immediately.

  In doing so, the objective is simple: to ensure that the purchasing power of circulating credit retains its value in terms of goods and services with as little fluctuation as possible. It would allow savers to accumulate credit balances in their bank accounts, and for businessmen to calculate the profitability of their investments with greater certainty. With income tax currently at a flat 13% rate and corporation tax at 20%, in these conditions economic progress will advance surprisingly rapidly. And there is every reason to expect Russia would quickly become an economic counterweight to the sheer power of China, rather than living off the depletion of her natural resources. It is necessary not just for Russia to distance herself from the fate of the western fiat currency system, but also for President Putin’s legacy.

  The method of ensuring monetary stability is equally simple: to bind credit denominated in roubles to gold, which both in law and naturally is the money of the people. It is the highest form of credit, there being no counterparty risk. It’s purchasing power in the general sense has held steady through millennia. Importantly, it removes the currency from political control and dollar influences. It allows for the creation and destruction of credit determined solely by the needs of the Russian people, both as businessmen and consumers.

  In constructing a new gold standard for Russia, we can learn from the lessons of the past, particularly the establishment of Britain’s gold sovereign coin fixed at 113 grains (7.99 grammes) to a one pound Bank of England banknote, freely exchangeable at the holder’s option. There were mistakes made in the implementation of Britain’s gold standard in the nearly one hundred years of its existence, but in the light of experience we should know how to avoid them today.

  The principal errors incorporated in the 1844 Bank Charter Act were to not realise that redemptions of bank notes for sovereign coin were inconsequential. The occasional runs on the Bank of England’s gold reserves always originated in cheques drawn on the Bank for bullion. Amazingly, this source of encashment was not foreseen by the framers of the Act, leading to crises in 1847, 1857, and 1866. The Act was suspended on these three occasions, the crises were averted, and the Act subsequently reinstated every time.

  The observant reader will have noted that these runs on the Bank’s bullion reserves fit in with an approximate ten-year cycle of bank credit expansion and crisis, a cycle still evident to this day. The 1847 suspension came about after the Bank had made immense advances to commercial banks to rescue them from insolvency. But the Bank’s advances were insufficient to stop the crisis. With Parliament staring into an economic abyss, it authorised the bank to issue notes at discretion, and the panic immediately subsided.

  Ten years later in November 1857, the Bank’s monetary assets were comprised of gold and silver, which together with its own notes bought in had declined to only £387,144 compared with liabilities to commercial banks of £5,458,000. It was on the point of having to cease trading within the terms of the act. Consequently, the government authorised the Bank to expand its liabilities at its discretion, but at a discount rate of not less than 10%. The following day, the panic passed.

  In 1866, the prominent discount house, Overend Gurney failed. Again, the government authorised the suspension of the Act, allowing the Bank of England to expand its liabilities to deal with the crisis, but again at a punitive discount rate of not less than 10%. As before, the run on the Bank of England’s gold reserves ceased.

  In all three cases, the suspension of the 1844 Act saved the nation from untold economic damage. In this respect, the Act was a failure. Insisting on the restrictions of the Act come hell or high water and simply letting banks and businesses fail is never an option. Therefore, a successful gold standard must allow for the management and containment of banking crises, the inevitable consequence of periodic over-expansions of credit. There has to be the flexibility to support otherwise solvent commercial banks in times of crisis. In all three cases above, it was the function of the banking department to avert the crisis by extending additional credit. It should not have been the function of the issue department to get involved, and if the separation between the two had been different in its detail, the Act need not necessarily have had to be suspended.

  I should mention a further error in the framing of the 1844 Act. At that time, it had been assumed that a drain on the nation’s bullion would only occur if the balance of trade with other nations was unfavourable, because settlements would be conducted in gold. While this was obviously true, there was a far greater influence on bullion flows: differences in discount rates (or interest rates in modern terminology) between centres with currencies on gold standards.

  If the interest rate in Centre A exceeds that in Centre B by more than the cost of transporting bullion between them, then bullion will flow from Centre B to Centre A. This is why the setting of interest rates must be solely to regulate bullion flows. To explain further why this is the case, it should be understood that the future value of gold includes the interest accumulated with it, being payable in gold. Therefore, if the sum of principal plus interest is less in one place than another, gold will naturally gravitate from the former towards the latter.

  Armed with this knowledge, Russia can easily establish the rouble on a gold standard and maintain it. In light of the foregoing, the following are the basic principles required to achieve this goal.

  1. The objective is to ensure that rouble banknotes and balances held in the Issue Department (see below) are freely encashable into gold coin and bullion.
  2. The issue and redemption activities of rouble banknotes must be transferred from the Central Bank of Russia to a new entity charged solely with managing the note issue, which we will refer to as the Issue Department. The central bank’s gold reserves must also be transferred to the Issue Department. Furthermore, the Issue Department must have the sole power to set interest rates with the mandate of maintaining sufficient bullion balances at all times. By these means, interest rates will no longer be a matter for monetary policy, being handed down to the markets.
  3. The Banking Department will continue with its other functions on behalf of the Russian state, except for the setting of interest rates. It will act as it sees fit in the management of commercial bank failures, extending credit or withdrawing it when necessary to maintain stability in the overall credit system.
  4. The separation between the Banking and Issue Departments must be defined and confirmed in law. As separate entities, each shall have its own balance sheets, so that the credit activities of one are separate from the other.
  5. Along with the power to set interest rates, the Issue Department will be empowered to maintain reserve balances (the counterpart of bullion submitted to it) paying interest at a small discount to the official rate. Assets on the Issue Department’s balance sheet balancing these reserves will be held as interest paying deposits at the Banking Department, allowing the Issue Department to generate sufficient profit between its liabilities and assets to cover its costs and the costs of minting coin.
  6. Any restrictions and taxes on gold coin and bullion must be removed by law. All foreign currency restrictions and controls must be removed as well to permit the free flow of bullion.

  Currently, Russia’s official gold reserves are declared to be 2,301 tonnes. It is thought that between two state funds, the Gokhran (State Fund for Precious Metals) and Russia’s National Wealth Fund, Russia has a further 7,000—9,000 tonnes. Their holdings need not be folded into the Issue Department (though it may be advantageous to the funds to do so), but public declaration of their quantity would be helpful to establish the gold standard’s initial credibility.

  The rouble must be defined by weight in gold grammes and be fully exchangeable in gold coin. New coin must be minted accordingly, perhaps with a face value of 50,000 roubles and exchangeable in those units (currently the equivalent of about $500, and similar to the value of a British sovereign). The time taken to design and mint the new coin will delay its introduction, but there is no reason why a bullion exchange facility cannot start immediately.

  This is how it will work.

  The bullion exchange facility operates not through the Banking Department, but through the Issue Department. In order for a commercial bank to have a credit balance with the Issue Department, bullion must be deposited in the first place. And it is here that the lessons learned from the 1844 Bank Charter Act comes into play.

  Banks eligible to open an account at the Issue Department can buy gold in domestic and foreign markets, where the lease rate for 12 months is currently less than 2%. We can take that as an indicated rate of interest that global markets pay to borrow gold. Therefore, in one year a holder of 100 ounces of gold has 102 ounces equivalent (assuming the interest accumulates in line with the gold price and is paid in gold — which is not the case). Meanwhile, the Bank of Russia’s key rate is 12%. The uplift in return for a buyer of gold in international markets depositing gold with the Issue Department is 10% accumulating in gold.

  It now becomes obvious that Russian and other banks accessing the Issue Department will provide the gold deposits to ensure that the Issue Department will rapidly accumulate all the bullion it needs to operate a secure gold standard. And it is equally clear that with the ability to regulate the interest rate, the issue Department can manage its gold reserves.

  In its initial stages, credibility is obviously key. This can be rapidly achieved by the Russian banks supporting the plan, which they are bound to. Any bank on Russia’s SPFS payments messaging system can open an account with the Issue Department. This should be extended to any licenced bank in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS with secure messaging system access to the Issue Department. As well as acting as principals, these banks can operate on behalf of their customers. Russian oligarchs and draft-dodgers who have sold their roubles would almost certainly rush to buy them back, and even deposit gold with the Issue Department through the agency of their banks.

  On current interest rate spreads, bullion inflows should be substantial: arbitrage with western bullion markets will ensure it. Given current sanctions against Russia, London and other markets under the control of the western alliance will not be directly available to sanctioned banks, a factor which is likely to provide a significant boost to gold trade in Asian and Middle Eastern markets. Sanctions will not stop gold shipments. Nonetheless, Russia’s success is bound to lead to imitators, almost certainly the Saudis, and if not immediately the Chinese are bound to follow.

  A rouble priced in gold will also make energy payments in declining fiat currencies even less desirable to Russia, which will have to be sold — for what? The divide between the fiat world and gold standard currencies is going to become a very wide gulf indeed. A new impetus for the delayed BRICS trade settlement currency is bound to ensue, particularly with Russia taking the BRICS chair in January. India’s hope that payment terms for oil will be set by nations on fiat currency standards should be dismissed.

  For the other BRICS currencies, a currency board relationship with a gold backed currency becomes a live option. The more natural alternative to the rouble (which Russia may not desire anyway) is to tie in with China’s renminbi — if or when it adopts a gold standard. China may not be far behind Russia in implementing its own gold standard anyway, because the consequences for the dollar and euro could be sufficiently undermining for China to seek to protect her own currency.

  The impact on the dollar of the move to gold standards

  Chalk and cheese, oil and water, diamonds and dust: whatever metaphor you care to choose, it must be clear that a mixture of gold standards and fiat currencies will not last long. Priced in fiat currencies, gold’s value might be expected to rise significantly, as central banks in what is now termed The Global South (the Asian hegemons and those aligned with them) move towards replacing fiat currencies in their reserves with gold.

  According to Ambrose Evens-Pritchard (Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph), “The Global South holds three-quarters of the world’s $12 trillion of foreign exchange reserves (59 per cent held in dollars)”. And in addition to a $2-plus budget deficit, in the next year the US Government has to refinance about 30% of its existing debt.

  Therefore, the impact of a move to gold on funding the western alliance’s deficits will be substantial, because not only will The Global South stop buying their bonds, but they will seek to liquidate their existing holdings. In the absence of severe spending cuts and increased taxes, increasing monetisation of government debt will become inevitable. Kiss goodbye to lower inflation, lower interest rates, and lower bond yields: embrace crashing bond prices and collapsing asset values. What over-leveraged bank can survive the squeeze on their balance sheets? Which of the western alliance’s central banks, already deeply into negative equity will be able to monetise their government’s debt with further QE against a background of soaring bond yields?

  Inflation of energy prices, already low measured in gold grammes, is bound to increase measured in collapsing fiat. Truly, if Russia does introduce a gold standard for the rouble, it will be the financial and economic equivalent of a nuclear attack on the entire fiat currency system. There can be little doubt that these consequences for the global financial system are what have made Russia hesitate so far. China is sure to have arrived at a similar conclusion, one reason why she was too cautious to support Russia’s proposal for a gold backed trade settlement medium. But Russia is reaching a point where she has no other way to stabilise her currency.

  Russia and NATO (by which we really mean America) have got themselves into positions from which they cannot back down. Unless Russia stabilises her currency, her likely victory in Ukraine will be pyrrhic. Putin’s policy of driving up energy prices will have worse consequences for the Russian people this winter than for Europeans and Americans, because of a collapsing rouble. And a collapsing rouble will also drive up food prices, a combination which will almost certainly destroy Putin’s government.

  Whichever way you look at it, it is the currency factor which matters above all else and the Russians have no option but to stabilise the rouble by defining it in gold grammes and making it immediately exchangeable on the lines described in this article.

  It will be a tragic end to the dollar-based fiat currency regime.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 12:50

• Chicago Mayor Johnson Moves Toward City-Run Grocery Stores
  Chicago Mayor Johnson Moves Toward City-Run Grocery Stores

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) ran for office, he was propelled to victory by a growing socialist movement allied with the Democratic Party. 

  The Socialist movement has elected a record number of socialists in Congress.

  However, Johnson now has one of the largest American cities to implement such policies with the support of the far left teacher’s union.

  Years ago, I wrote how a delegation of the union went to Venezuela and heaped praise on the murderous regime’s “progress.”

  Now Johnson appears to be moving toward a pilot program with great significance for socialist supporters: state-run grocery stores.

  I am admittedly no fan of Johnson. 

  I love Chicago where I was born and raised. However, rising taxes and crime had led many to leave, particularly businesses. 

  This includes grocery chains. Walmart, Walgreens, Aldi are just some of the companies closing stores.

  Johnson’s solution is telling.

  

  Rather than address the underlying conditions, he is suggesting a solution that has failed historically — government-run stores. Indeed, the failure in dealing with crime and hostile business environments has allowed socialist activists to realize a major new socialist agenda item.

  The Chicago Tribune reported the start of the feasibility study to open government-run stores as part of Johnson’s pledge to advance “innovative, whole-of-government approaches to address … inequities.”

  The mayor said in a statement: 

  All Chicagoans deserve to live near convenient, affordable, healthy grocery options. We know access to grocery stores is already a challenge for many residents, especially on the South and West sides. A better, stronger, safer future is one where our youth and our communities have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. My administration is committed to advancing innovative, whole-of-government approaches to address these inequities.

  His Economic Security Project senior adviser Ameya Pawar said that government-run stores are no different from other government programs “the way a library or the postal service operates.” It is all part of “reimagining the role government can play in our lives by exploring a public option for grocery stores via a municipally owned grocery store and market.”

  Yet, we have previously “imagined” this approach in various governments with uniformly awful results.

  The government is not going to run these stores at a profit when actual businesses could not do so. Instead, it is likely to supply food at a higher cost for taxpayers in the red.

  What is striking is that Johnson’s office said the grocery stores would be funded with the help of the Biden Administration as well as state funds. The use of federal funds to take another stab at state-run stores was hardly embraced by Congress in prior appropriation debates. If true, it is yet another example of how Congress has allowed billions to be spent without meaningful limits, including the massive and largely unrestricted spending tied to pandemic measures. That funding has been used for everything from office upgrades to state lottery systems.

  In the Soviet Union, state-run grocery stores were the subject of gallows humor. The “reimagining” of grocery stores left shelves bare with only imagined essential products. The most widely told joke spread just before the fall of the Soviet Union:

  Two men are in line waiting to buy vodka. An hour goes by, then two, and the line barely moves. Everyone is in a terrible mood. Finally, one of the men can’t take it any longer. “This is it! I’m sick of this kind of life. Everywhere there are lines, you cannot buy anything, and the store shelves are empty. I’ve had enough. I’m going to the Kremlin right now to assassinate him”. The man returns after two hours, still angry, and says, “To hell with it! At the Kremlin the line to assassinate Gorbachev is longer than this one.”

  As the Johnson and Biden Administration try to make state-run stores work where the Soviet Union failed, history and economics are hardly on their side.

  Of course, as University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman noted:

  “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 09/16/2023 – 11:40

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