Today’s News 18th July 2020

• Escobar: Turkey & The Clash Of Civilizations
  Escobar: Turkey & The Clash Of Civilizations
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Sat, 07/18/2020 – 00:05

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  Turkish President Erdogan’s move to make Hagia Sophia a mosque is part of his masterplan to claim leadership of global Islam…

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  Late afternoon in May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet, the third son of Murad, born of a slave-girl – probably Christian – in the harem, fluent in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Persian and Hebrew, followed by his top ministers, his imams and his bodyguard of Janissaries, rides slowly towards the Great Church of St Sophia in Constantinople.

  It’s unlikely that Sultan Mehmet would be sparing a thought for Emperor Justinian, the last of quite a breed: a true Roman Emperor in the throne of Byzantium, a speaker of “barbarous” Greek (he was born in Macedonia) but with a Latin mind.

  Much like Sultan Mehmet, Justinian was quite the geopolitician. Byzantium trade was geared towards Cathay and the Indies: silk, spices, precious stones. Yet Persia controlled all the caravan routes on the Ancient Silk Road. The sea route was also a problem; all cargo had to depart from the Persian Gulf.

  So Justinian had to bypass Persia.

  He came up with a two-pronged strategy: a new northern route via Crimea and the Caucasus, and a new southern route via the Red Sea, bypassing the Persian Gulf.

  The first was a relative success; the second a mess. But Justinian finally got his break when a bunch of Orthodox monks offered him to bring back from Asia some precious few silkworm eggs. Soon there were factories not only in Constantinople but in Antioch, Tyre and Beirut. The imperial silk industry – a state monopoly, of course – was up and running.

  A fantastic mosaic in Ravenna from the year 546 depicts a Justinian much younger than 64, his age at the time. He was a prodigy of energy – and embellished Constantinople non-stop. The apex was the Church of St. Sophia – the largest building in the world for centuries.

  So here we have Sultan Mehmet silently proceeding with his slow ride all the way to the central bronze doors of St Sophia.

  He dismounts and picks up a handful of dust and in a gesture of humility, sprinkles it over his turban.

  Then he enters the Great Church. He walks towards the altar.

  A barely perceptible command leads his top imam to escalate the pulpit and proclaim in the name of Allah, the All Merciful and Compassionate, there is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet.

  The Sultan then touches the ground with his turbaned head – in a silent prayer. St Sophia was now a mosque.

  Sultan Mehmet leaves the mosque and crosses the square to the old Palace of the Emperors, in ruins, founded by Constantine The Great 11 and ½ centuries before. He slowly wanders the ancient halls, his fine velvet slippers brushing the dust from the fabulous pebbled floor mosaics.

  Then he murmurs two verses of a Persian poet:

  “As the spider weaves the curtain over the palace of the Roman Caesars

  The owl sings the time of the house of Afrasiab”

  The Byzantine empire, founded by Constantine The Great on Monday, May 11, 330, was over on a Tuesday, May 29, 1453.

  Sultan Mehmet is now the Lord of Constantinople and the Lord of the Ottoman Empire. He’s only 21 years old.

  Back to the Magic Mountain

  Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan re-christened Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque. He may have done it because his popularity is waning; his proxy wars are a disaster; his AKP party is shattered; and the economy is bleeding badly.

  But what’s striking is that right at the beginning of his official televised speech, Erdogan quoted exactly the same verses by the Persian poet murmured by Sultan Mehmet in that fateful afternoon in 1453.

  Erdogan’s latest move – which is part of his perennial master plan to claim leadership of global Islam over the decrepit House of Saud – was widely interpreted in myriad latitudes as yet another instance of clash of civilizations: not only Orthodox Christianity vs. Islam but once again East vs. West.

  That reminded me of another East vs. West recent derivation: a revival of the Settembrini vs. Naphta debate in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, promoted by a Dutch think tank, the Nexus Institute, which aims to “keep the spirit of European humanism alive”. The debate pitted Aleksander Dugin against Bernard-Henri Levy (widely known in France as BHL). The full transcript of the debate is here.

  Dugin is a leading Eurasianist and the conceptualizer of the – largely banned in the West – Fourth Political Theory . As a philosopher and political theorist, Dugin is cartoonishly demonized across the West as “Putin’s brain”, a closet fascist and “the most dangerous philosopher in the world”.

  BHL, hailed as “one of the West’s leading intellectuals”, is a vain poseur who emerged as a “nouveau philosophe” in the mid-1970s and ritually regurgitates the usual Atlanticist mantras enveloped in flowery quotes. He managed, among other feats, to write a book about Pakistan without knowing anything whatsoever about Pakistan, as I thrashed it on Asia Times back in 2002.

  Here are a few interesting talking points throughout the debate.

  Dugin stresses the end of Western hegemony and global liberalism. He asks BHL, directly, how, “interestingly, in your book, you define the American empire or the global liberal system as a system of nihilism, based on nothing.” Dugin does define himself as a nihilist “in the sense that I refuse the universality of modern Western values (…) I just challenge that the only way to interpret democracy is as the rule of minorities against the majority, that the only way to interpret freedom is as individual freedom, and that the only way to interpret human rights is by projecting a modern, Western, individualistic version of what it means to be human on other cultures.”

  BHL, which seems not to have read his own, dreary, book – this is something Dugin told me in person last year in Beirut, after the debate – prefers to resort to proverbial, infantile Putin bashing, picked up over and over again, stressing “there is a bad, dark wind of nihilism in its proper sense, which is a Nazi and a fascist sense, which is blowing in the great Russia.”

  Later on in the debate, BHL adds, “I really believe that there is a link between, on the one side, your and Huntington’s way of thinking; and, on the other side, the occupation of Crimea, the 30,000 deaths in Ukraine and the war in Syria with its bloodbath, tragic and horrible.”

  On racism, Dugin is adamant: he does not defend it. For him, “Racism is an Anglo-Saxon liberal construction based on a hierarchy between peoples. I think this is criminal.” Then he defines “a new Manichean division, a new racism. Those who are in favor of Western values, they are good. Everybody who challenges that, in the Islamic tradition, in the Russian tradition, in the Chinese tradition, in the Indian tradition, everywhere, they are populists, and they are classified as fascism. I think that is a new kind of racism.”

  BHL prefers to concentrate on “the civilization of human rights, freedom, individual dignity, and so on. This deserves to be universalized. This should be conceived, except if you are a racist, as profitable for the entire humanity.” And then it’s Anti-Semitism all over again: “All the men who you quoted and from whom you draw your inspiration – Spengler, Heidegger, who is also a great philosopher of course, and others – are contaminated, corrupted, infected by this plague which is antisemitism. And alas – you too.”

  In Paris circles, the joke is that the only thing BHL cares about is the promotion of BHL. And everyone who does not agree with one of the “leading Western intellectuals” is Anti-Semitic.

  BHL insists he’s interested in building bridges. But it’s Dugin who frames the real heart of the matter: “When we try to build bridges too early, without knowing the structure of the Other – the problem is the Other. The West doesn’t understand the Other as something positive. It is all the same, and we immediately try to find bridges – they are illusions, and not bridges, because we are projecting ourselves. The Other is the same, the ideology of the same. We first need to understand otherness.”

  BHL totally ignores Levi-Strauss. It’s Dugin who refers to Levi-Strauss when talking about The Other, describing him as one of his teachers:

  “This anthropological pluralism, I agree, is precisely the American and French tradition. But it is not reflected in politics, or it is reflected in a very perverted way. So I think there is a big contradiction between this anthropological thought in American universities and French universities, and a kind of very aggressive colonial neo-imperialist form to promote American interests on the world scale with weapons.”

  BHL is left with – what else – Putin demonization: “The real imperialism, the real one who is interfering and sowing disorder and interfering in the affairs of others, alas, is Putin. And I need not speak of America, where it is now proved that there has been a huge, crude, and evident Russian intervention in the electoral process of the last election.” BHL, who does not even qualify as a neophyte in geopolitics, is oblivious to the absolute debunking of Russiagate.

  BHL is adamant “there is today a real clash of civilizations. But not the one you mention in your books, between the north and the east and the west and the south and all of that; there is a clash of civilizations all over the planet between those who believe in human rights, in liberty, in the right for a body not to be tortured and martyred, and those who are happy with illiberalism and the revival of authoritarianism and slavery.”

  Dugin’s challenge for years has been to try to conceptualize what may come next, after the failure of Marxism, fascism and liberal democracy. As much as he thinks Eurasian, he’s inclusive – incorporating “Euro” with “Asia”. BHL for his part simplistically reduces every “evil” to “illiberalism”, where Russia, China, Iran and Turkey – no nuances – are thrown in the same dustbin alongside the vacuous and actually murderous House of Saud.

  Mao returns

  Now let’s attempt a light-hearted ending to our mini-triptych on the clash of civilizations. Inevitably, that has to do with the ongoing US-China Hybrid War.

  Around two years ago, the following dialogue was a smash hit on Chinese Weibo. The Great Helmsman Mao Zedong – or his ghost – was back in town, and he wanted to know about everything that was goin’ on.

  Mao: “Can the people eat their fill?”

  Answer: “There’s so much to eat they’re dieting.”

  Mao: “Are there still any capitalists?”

  Answer: “They’re all doing business overseas now!”

  Mao: “Do we produce more steel than England?”

  Answer: “Tangshan alone produces more than America.”

  Mao: “Did we beat social imperialism (as in the former USSR)?”

  Answer: “They dissolved it themselves!”

  Mao: “Did we smash imperialism?”

  Answer: “We’re the imperialists now!”

  Mao: “And what about my Cultural Revolution?”

  Answer: “It’s in America now!”

  Call it a – revisionist? – realpolitik version of the clash of civilizations.

  

• US Customs Plans To Tap Into Nationwide License Plate Reading Network For Border Security 
  US Customs Plans To Tap Into Nationwide License Plate Reading Network For Border Security 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 23:45

  US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published a new assessment titled “Privacy Impact Assessment for the CBP License Plate Reader Technology,” outlining the agency’s plan to combine its database on license plate images with ones from local and state governments, law enforcement agencies, parking garages, toll booth cameras, and financial institutions. 

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  The US has a massive network of automatic license plate readers (ALPR), typically found on police cars and toll booths used to collect license plates of vehicles passing by. We noted one database, in particular, called the Rekor Public Safety Network (RPSN), gives law enforcement real-time access to license plates, captures approximately 150 million plate reads per month. To better protect the nation, the CBP’s new assessment indicates it now wants direct access to these databases. 

  “To meet its vast mission requirements, CBP relies on a variety of law enforcement tools and techniques for law enforcement and border security,” the assessment said. “One such tool is license plate reader (LPR) technology, which consists of high-speed cameras and related equipment mounted on vehicles or in fixed locations that automatically and without direct human control locate, focus on, and photograph license plates and vehicles that come into range of the device.”

  CBP said most Americans “might not be aware” that ALPRs are deployed at border crossings to collect license plate information. The agency said people should avoid areas where ALPRs are deployed if they don’t want to be surveilled. 

  The system will allow CBP agents to quickly enter a license plate number of a vehicle in the database and search for “any responsive records” (or hits) on any license plate readers that detected the vehicle within the last 30 days. 

  The assessment said the overall goal of the new database, by aggregating third-party data with its own, will allow agents to “identify individuals, or vehicles, involved in criminal activity which may need additional scrutiny when attempting to cross the border or to identify and locate suspects involved in terrorist activities.”

  The federal government’s obsession with monitoring everyone and everything is becoming the norm in a post-corona world.

  

• Narcissists, Psychopaths, & Manipulators Are More Likely To Engage In "Virtuous Victim Signaling", Study Finds
  Narcissists, Psychopaths, & Manipulators Are More Likely To Engage In “Virtuous Victim Signaling”, Study Finds
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 23:25

  Authored by Elizabeth Nolan Brown via Reason.com,

  New study links virtue signaling to “Dark Triad” traits. Being accused of “virtue signaling” might sound nice to the uninitiated, but spend much time on social media and you know that it’s actually an accusation of insincerity. Virtue signalers are, essentially, phonies and showoffs – folks who adopt opinions and postures solely to garner praise and sympathy or whose good deeds are tainted by their need for everyone to see just how good they are. Combined with a culture that says only victimhood confers a right to comment on certain issues, it’s a big factor in online pile-ons and one that certainly contributes to social media platforms being such a bummer sometimes.

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  So: Here’s some fun new research looking at “the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The paper—from University of British Columbia researchers Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek, and Karl Aquino—details multiple studies the authors conducted on the subject.

  Their conclusion? Psychopathic, manipulative, and narcissistic people are more frequent signalers of “virtuous victimhood.”

  The so-called “dark triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – lead to characteristics like “self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity, and tendency to take advantage of others,” the paper explains.

  And “treated as a composite, the Dark Triad traits were significant predictors of virtuous victim signaling.”

  This held true “even when controlling for factors that may make people vulnerable to being mistreated or disadvantaged in society (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics) as well as the importance they place on being a virtuous individual as part of their self-concept,” the researchers note.

  They point out that virtue signaling is defined as “the conspicuous expression of moral values, done primarily with the intent of enhancing one’s standing within a social group.”

  Meanwhile, victim signaling “may be used as a social influence tactic that can motivate recipients of the signal to voluntarily transfer resources to the signaler,” they explain. More from the paper’s theoretical background section:

  An emerging literature on competitive victimhood documents the prevalence of victim signaling by various social groups and provides evidence for its functionality as a resource extraction strategy. For instance, victim signaling justifies victim groups seeking retribution against alleged oppressors. Retribution often takes the form of demanding compensation through some kind of resource transfer from nonvictims to the alleged victim. Claiming victim status can also facilitate resource transfer by conferring moral immunity upon the claimant. Moral immunity shields the alleged victim from criticism about the means they might use to satisfy their demands. In other words, victim status can morally justify the use of deceit, intimidation, or even violence by alleged victims to achieve their goals. Relatedly, claiming victim status can lead observers to hold a person less blameworthy, excusing transgressions, such as the appropriation of private property or the infliction of pain upon others, that might otherwise bring condemnation or rebuke. Finally, claiming victim status elevates the claimant’s psychological standing, defined as a subjective sense of legitimacy or entitlement to speak up. A person who has the psychological standing can reject or ignore any objections by nonvictims to the unreasonableness of their demands. In contrast to victim signalers, people who do not publicly disclose their misfortune or disadvantage are less likely to reap the benefits of retributive compensation, moral immunity, deflection of blame, or psychological standing and would therefore find it difficult to initiate resource transfers.

  The effectiveness of victim signaling as a resource transfer strategy follows the basic principles of signaling theory. Signaling theory posits that the transmission of information from one individual (the sender) to another (the receiver) can influence the behavior of the receiver. Signals can refer to any physical or behavioral trait of the sender, and are used by the senders to alter the behaviors of others to their own advantage.

  Their results suggest that:

  • “a perceived victim signal can lead others to transfer resources to a victim, but that the motivation to do so is amplified when the victim signal is paired with a virtue signal” and “people high in the Dark Triad traits emit the dual signal more frequently.”

  • “a positive correlation between the Dark Triad scores and the frequency of emitting the virtuous victim signal.”

  • “evidence of how these signals … can predict a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors …. frequent virtuous victim signalers are more willing to purchase counterfeit products and judge counterfeiters as less immoral compared with less frequent signalers, a pattern that was also observed when using participants’ Dark Triad scores instead of their signaling score,” and “frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to cheat and lie to earn extra monetary reward in [a] coin flip game.”

  • “that a dimension referred to as amoral manipulation was the most reliable predictor of virtuous victim signaling.”

  • “frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to make inflated claims to justify receiving restitution for an alleged and ambiguous norm violation in an organizational context.”

  The authors stress that they “do not refute the claim that there are individuals who emit the virtuous victim signal because they experience legitimate harm and also conduct themselves in decent and laudable ways.”

  

• Pentagon Reveals Trump's "Super-Duper" Hypersonic Missile 
  Pentagon Reveals Trump’s “Super-Duper” Hypersonic Missile 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 23:05

  Rising Sino-US tensions aren’t going away, not tomorrow, not next month or next year. There’s a geopolitical rivalry at play, or as we’ve explained before: Thucydides Trap. 

  China’s rapid military expansion in the Pacific has been a wake-up call to Washington. Beijing has also spent the last decade modernizing its military with the latest war technology, including fifth-generation fighters and hypersonic weapons. 

  President Trump, the Pentagon, and the military-industrial complex recognize a conflict is ahead; otherwise, why would the president plow $2 trillion into modernizing the military over the last couple of years?

  When it comes to hypersonic technology, the US is behind the curve in the deployment of these super-fast weapons onto the modern battlefield. On the other hand, China and Russia have already claimed they’ve fielded these missiles that can travel multiples of the speed of sound. 

  President Trump boasted Ameria’s hypersonic capabilities in May, saying a “super-duper” missile in development can travel 17-times faster, though the Pentagon at the time was unwilling to confirm. 

  “We are building, right now, incredible military equipment at a level that nobody has ever seen before. We have no choice. We have to do it — with the adversaries, we have out there. We have a — I call it the ‘super-duper missile.’ And I heard the other night, 17 times faster than what they have right now,” Trump said in May. 

  Now there’s more color on the hypersonic missile the president was touting. A senior defense official told CNN this week, President Trump has taken “special interest” in hypersonics revealing that the new missile can travel “17 times faster” than the speed of sound.

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  The defense official is referring to a “hypersonic glide body” test over the Pacific in March. 

  U.S. Navy and U.S. Army jointly tests hypersonic glide body pic.twitter.com/9Fr8YvlBUS

  — Dylan Malyasov (@DylanMalyasov) March 21, 2020

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

  “What he was referring to, really, was the recent flight test that we’ve performed in March where we flew 17 times the speed of sound,” the senior defense official said.

  CNN noted the US won’t have hypersonic missiles fielded until 2023 while China and Russia already have there’s in the field. 

  As China challenges America’s predominance, a new Cold War is already underway. The rise of China and the stumbling of the US is one that could suggest tensions between both countries will continue until there’s a conflict. 

  

• Testing Will Begin In Africa For Biometric ID, "Vaccine Records", & "Payment Systems"
  Testing Will Begin In Africa For Biometric ID, “Vaccine Records”, & “Payment Systems”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 22:45

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Testing will soon begin in poverty-stricken parts of Africa for a biometric ID which will also be your payment system and vaccine record. The biometric digital identity platform that “evolves just as you evolve” is backed by none other than the Bill Gates-backed GAVI vaccine alliance, Mastercard, and the AI-powered “identity authentication” company, Trust Stamp.

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  The GAVI Alliance, which is largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as allied governments and the vaccine industry, is principally concerned with improving “the health of markets for vaccines and other immunization products,” rather than the health of individuals, according to its own website. Similarly, Mastercard’s GAVI partnership is directly linked to its “World Beyond Cash” effort, which mainly bolsters its business model that has long depended on a reduction in the use of physical cash.

  Reducing the use of cash is needed. Cash is impossible to track, but if you use centralized digital currency, the ruling class has complete control over what you can spend.

  The program, which was first launched in late 2018, will see Trust Stamp’s digital identity platform integrated into the GAVI-Mastercard “Wellness Pass,” a digital vaccination record and identity system that is also linked to Mastercard’s click-to-play system that powered by its AI and machine learning technology called NuData. Mastercard, in addition to professing its commitment to promoting “centralized record keeping of childhood immunization” also describes itself as a leader toward a “World Beyond Cash,” and its partnership with GAVI marks a novel approach towards linking a biometric digital identity system, vaccination records, and a payment system into a single cohesive platform. The effort, since its launch nearly two years ago, has been funded via $3.8 million in GAVI donor funds in addition to a matched donation of the same amount by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. –Activist Post

  In early June, GAVI reported that Mastercard’s Wellness Pass program would be adapted in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Around a month later, Mastercard announced that Trust Stamp’s biometric identity platform would be integrated into Wellness Pass as Trust Stamp’s system is capable of providing biometric identity in areas of the world lacking internet access or cellular connectivity and also does not require knowledge of an individual’s legal name or identity to function. The Wellness Program involving GAVI, Mastercard, and Trust Stamp will soon be launched in West Africa and will be coupled with a COVID-19 vaccination program once a vaccine becomes available.

  What is perhaps most alarming about this new “Wellness Pass” initiative, is that it links these “dual use” digital solutions to cashless payment solutions that could soon become mandated as anything over than touchless, cashless, methods of payment have been treated as potential modes for contagion by GAVI-aligned groups like the World Health Organization, among others, since the pandemic was first declared earlier this year. –Activist Post

  Do you get it yet? It’s all tied into the same thing, and the plandemic is an excuse to roll this out. Wake up. They are not coming to save you, quite the opposite, actually.

  For those stuck on the line of thinking that President Donald Trump said this “vaccine will be voluntary,” you are probably correct. It’ll be “voluntary” all right. And if you don’t get it and participate in the new biometric ID program, you won’t be able to buy or sell anything, including food. That sounds nothing like the definition of voluntary to me, but believe in whatever religion you wish and put your trust in whomever you want. I’ll rely on myself instead of some politician to save me.

  Oh, just what does Trump need 300 million doses of the vaccine for if it’s going to be “voluntary?” We are in for a “dark winter” as they have already told us several times. It’s time to apply critical thinking and stop falling for all of these psyops.

  Those Who Planned The Enslavement of Mankind Warn Of “A Dark Winter” For Us

  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t remain vigilant and know what’s going on. Get your preps in order. Do another audit, buy some more food, and improve your water storage.  This system is here and it will not be voluntary in any sense of the word.  It’s similar to our “voluntary tax” system. Go ahead and choose to not pay, and men with guns will come to your house to make you pay. Yep, that’s how voluntary interaction works (note: that was sarcasm). Believe any politician you want, but they are all puppets for the Federal Reserve, and their takeover is imminent unless we wake up and stand together.

  The entire breakdown of this new beast system can be read by clicking here.

  Don’t just trust my word. Look into these issues for yourself. Everything is linked above, and better yet, find your own information. I would implore all of you to not just believe what you are being told by anyone, including Trump or myself. Research, read, learn, and prepare.

  

• Record Number Of Americans Died From Drug Overdoses In 2019 As Fentanyl Moved West
  Record Number Of Americans Died From Drug Overdoses In 2019 As Fentanyl Moved West
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 22:25

  Activists and the White House who were hoping that the decline in drug overdose deaths seen in 2018 – the first such decline in nearly three decades – might have continued into 2019 are about to be disappointed.

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  Yesterday, the CDC released its preliminary data on drug overdose deaths (the final report won’t land until December), and the organization found that the total for 2019 was 5% higher than the total from 2018. The data also topped the 2017 total, the last record number for annual overdose deaths, by just a few hundred deaths to mark a new annual record for drug-related deaths in the US.

  Nearly 71,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, per the CDC data. 70,980 died last year, per the preliminary data. That’s compared with 70,699 from 2017, the last record high, the CDC reports.

  Soaring overdose deaths in the US have helped drag down average life expectancy for 3 straight years, and by the looks of it, No. 4 might be right around the corner.

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  Opioids led the pack once again, thanks largely to the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. So far this year, deaths are on track to surpass their totals from last year.

  Drug deaths have risen an average of 13 percent so far this year over last year, according to mortality data from local and state governments collected by The New York Times, covering 40 percent of the U.S. population. If this trend continues for the rest of the year, it will be the sharpest increase in annual drug deaths since 2016, when a class of synthetic opioids known as fentanyls first made significant inroads in the country’s illicit drug supply.

  One of the most important trends, per the NYT, is the fact that deadly fentanyl is moving west.

  Fentanyl had been confined mostly to New England and other parts of the East, where it was generally found as an adulterant in powdered heroin. But in recent years, fentanyl and other potent synthetic opioids have been blamed for an increasing number of overdose deaths in California, Arizona and other Western states.

  Ironically, the New York Times reported that the number of drug-related deaths has probably continued to climb in 2020 as the pandemic cuts off access to needle-exchange vans and other resources that hand out fresh needles and the overdose-reversal medication naloxone.

  With the pandemic disrupting treatment centers, syringe exchanges and other places that help people with drug addiction, there may also be less naloxone — the overdose-reversing medication that has brought back thousands from the brink of death — on the streets. And there is at least anecdotal evidence that with the nation’s borders closed because of the pandemic, the illicit drug supply has been disrupted and has become less predictable. Constant changes in potency make it harder for people to judge the strength of the drugs they’re using.

  “The inconsistency of our drug supply right now is at an all-time high,” said Chad Sabora, the co-founder and executive director of the Missouri Network for Opiate Reform and Recovery.

  Here’s how the number of drug deaths changed across the country. While the northeast (with the notable exception of hard-hit Connecticut) has seen drug deaths ebb, the midwest and the mountain west are still in trouble.

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  The biggest percentage increase across the US was found in South Dakota, with a more than 50% increase (though, keep in mind, it’s South Dakota, so percentage change isn’t as meaningful as the overall number of new cases.

  

• The Lost Boys? The White Working Class Is Being Left Behind
  The Lost Boys? The White Working Class Is Being Left Behind
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 22:05

  Authored by Christopher Snowdon via Spectator USA,

  You can argue about the merits of pulling down statues, but it’s hard to make the case that mass protests serve no useful purpose. At the very least, they provoke debate and draw attention to uncomfortable topics that it might otherwise be easier to ignore. The recent protests have forced everyone to have difficult discussions about race, class, poverty and attainment. Any serious examination of the statistics shows that we’re pretty far from equal, but what the figures also show is that it’s wrong-headed and damaging to lump very different groups together.

  In these discussions politicians often lazily assume that all BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) people are the same, and that all white groups are equally privileged. But a proper look at the data shows not just that there are striking difference within BAME groups, but that the very worst-performing group of all are white working-class boys — the forgotten demographic.

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  It might seem divisive to compare different groups, but attainment in education and in life is relative and if we’re to help the worst off, we have to know who they are. We should help everyone who needs it — but it is vital to be able to compare groups to know who’s falling behind, relative to their peers. In the UK, Bangladeshi-Brits earn 20 percent less than whites on average, for instance, but those with Indian heritage are likely to earn 12 percent more. Black Britons on average earn 9 percent less, but Chinese earn 30 percent more. What these differences tell us is that employers aren’t systematically discriminating between people on the basis of their skin color, and that we have to look elsewhere to see the roots of inequality.

  Ucas, the British university admissions service, can provide unique insight into these issues: it is the only outfit in the world to gather detailed information on all university applicants, including their age, gender, neighborhood and school type. This is collected along with data on who applied for which courses and who was accepted, and it is renewed in huge detail every year.

  Much of the data shows predictable results: there is a gap between rich and poor, as you might expect in a UK state system where the best schools tend to be located in the most expensive areas. But there are surprising discoveries too: nearly half the children eligible for free school meals in inner London go on to higher education, but in the country outside London as a whole it is just 26 percent.

  Black African British children outperform white children, whereas black Caribbean children tend to do worse. Poor Chinese girls (that is to say, those who qualify for free school meals) do better than rich white children. But, interestingly, the ethnic group least likely to get into university are whites. With the sole exception of Gypsy/Roma, every ethnic group attends university at a higher rate than the white British and, of the white British who do attend, most are middle class and 57 percent are female.  The least likely group to go on to higher education are poor white boys. Just 13 percent of them go on to higher education, less than any black or Asian group.

  This is a trend that can also be seen in the GCSE data; only 17 percent of white British pupils eligible for free school meals achieve a strong pass in English and maths. Students categorized as Bangladeshi, Black African and Indian are more than twice as likely to do so. In 2007, the state sector saw 23 percent of black students go on to higher education; this was true for 22 percent of whites. So about the same. But at the last count, in 2018, the gap had widened to 11 points (41 percent for black students, 30 percent for whites). The children of the white working class are falling away from their peers, in danger of becoming lost.

  Going to university is not the golden ticket it once was, but it requires stupefying naivety to believe that seven out of eight poor white boys take a sober look at the economics of higher education and choose to set up their own businesses instead. The trail of hard evidence runs cold once they leave school, but the prospects for those who can barely read and write are dreadful and we can get some idea of the consequences by looking at the ‘left behind’ areas where unemployment, crime and ‘deaths of despair’ are significantly higher than the national average.

  Angus Deaton, a Nobel Laureate based at Princeton University, came up with the phrase ‘deaths of despair’ when he looked at the demographics of those suffering from alcoholism, depression and drug abuse. Suicides among whites, he found, was soaring and those who took their own lives tended to be poor and low-educated. His recently-published book on the subject (Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, co-written with Anne Case) tells the devastating story of what he calls ‘the decline of white working-class lives over the last half-century’.

  Yet while white working-class males are the largest disadvantaged minority, their cause is the least fashionable. In the intersectional pyramid of victimhood, white males are at the bottom, tarnished by ideas of ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘white privilege’ despite the fact that in Britain class has always been the most significant indicator of true privilege. It’s worrying, then, that any who attempt ‘positive action’ on behalf of poor white boys face a hostile reaction. Last year, Dulwich and Winchester colleges turned down a bequest of more than £1 million ($1.25 million) because the donor, Sir Bryan Thwaites, wanted the money ring-fenced for scholarships for white working-class boys. Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust, a charity whose stated mission is to improve social mobility, described Thwaites’s offer as ‘obnoxious’.

  When Ben Bradley, the Conservative MP for Mansfield, tried to ask an ‘Equalities’ question about working-class white boys in parliament earlier this year, he was turned down by the Table Office because they do not have any ‘protected characteristics’. The concept of ‘protected characteristics’ was wheeled into UK law by Harriet Harman’s Equality Act, 10 years ago, and the Tories, then in opposition, took the rare step of voting for it. The nine protected characteristics include ‘race’, ‘sex’ and ‘sexual orientation’, but the Table Office is not alone in interpreting these as ‘non-white’, ‘female’ and ‘gay’.

  Under the Equality Act, ‘positive discrimination’ remains technically unlawful, but the barely indistinguishable concept of ‘positive action’ is explicitly legal. Firms cannot have quotas, but they can set targets. Employers cannot refuse to look at job applications from people who lack protected characteristics, but by stating that ‘applications are particularly welcome’ from BAME, female or LBGTQ+ candidates they send a message that some need not apply.

  In 2016 the BBC pledged that half its workforce and leadership would be female by 2020 despite less than 40 percent of Britain’s full-time workers being women. It also set an 8 percent target for LGBT employees, although only around 2 percent of the population identify as LGBT. This target has been comfortably exceeded, as has been the target of having 15 percent of employees from a BAME background. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last month, the corporation raised this target to 20 per cent.

  The BBC admits that people from ‘low and intermediate income households’ are hugely underrepresented in its workforce. But what does it do about it? Earlier this month Oxford University proudly reported that it was making ‘steady progress’ in its efforts to make its campuses ‘representative of wider society’. Of its most recent intake of British students, only 14 percent came from the poorest 40 percent of households.

  This fits a pattern: at a push, we can hear acknowledgement of the ‘poor white male’ problem. But that’s as far as it ever goes. The underperformance of white boys and men is not considered to be a problem worth solving. When figures come out showing the stunning attainment gaps between boys and girls, the interest lasts for about a day. ‘It always got a few headlines,’ says Mary Curnock Cook, the former head of Ucas. ‘Where it never got any traction at all was in policy-making in government. I began to think that the subject of white boys is just too difficult for them, given the politicization of feminism and women’s equality.’

  When I asked a teacher why white working-class boys have fallen so far behind, he gave me a short answer: girls are better behaved and immigrant parents are stricter. This is a generalization but nonetheless interesting: if it is the case that parenting is the problem, then it’s not clear how much the UK government can do. Perhaps the reluctance to discuss the subject stems from fear that such a discussion would lead to difficult territory about family structure, quality of parenting and — in short — culture. Perhaps politicians think it better to let the problem fester, and the children suffer, than to risk discussing it.

  Last month, the British government announced that its commission on racial inequality would include an examination into the underperformance of working-class white boys at schools. Will it look deep into the causes? It might look at recent studies that suggest poor reading levels in schools is a huge part of the problem. And it might ask whether ‘positive action’ in the name of diversity has left white working-class boys behind.

  

• New US Diet Guidelines Will Limit Men To One Alcoholic Drink Per Day
  New US Diet Guidelines Will Limit Men To One Alcoholic Drink Per Day
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 21:45

  The US government already controls almost every aspect of your daily life. Soon, it will “instruct” you to drink less as well.

  With most Americans suffering from one or more chronic diet-related health conditions, including obesity, heart disease, and certain cancers, an advisory panel told government agencies that it will endorse limiting alcoholic drink to one a day when alcohol is consumed. That’s the new advice experts are recommending for the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are scheduled to be updated later this year for the first time in five years. The guidelines now say men should limit themselves to two drinks a day, and that women should limit themselves to one. That advice has been in place since 1990.

  The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee proposed federal departments should also recommend reducing consumption of added sugars from 10% of caloric intake to less than 6%, and that children younger than 2 shouldn’t drink sugar-sweetened beverages.

  In the report released Wednesday, a committee of experts noted there isn’t adequate evidence to support different alcohol recommendations for men and women, and that research supports tightening the limit for men. U.S. health agencies that issue dietary guidelines aren’t required to adopt the committee’s recommendations.

  “As a nation, our collective health would be better if people generally drank less,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, an alcohol researcher at Boston University and one of the experts on the committee convened by federal officials.

  The proposed advice shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that not having a drink on Thursday means you can have two on Friday, Naimi said. One drink is the equivalent of about one 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor.

  The advice is based on links that researchers observed between drinking habits and all causes of death, including heart disease, cancer and car accidents, rather than a specific physical harm that alcohol might have. While such observational studies, common in food and nutrition science, do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship, they are often the best evidence available, so experts use them to give guidance.

  With alcohol, Naimi said two drinks a day was associated with an increased risk of death compared with one drink a day. While the increase was modest, he said that it was notable enough for the committee to recommend updating the advice.

  Whether the proposed new advice would influence behavior isn’t clear. Many Americans already exceed the current advice on alcohol limits, Naimi noted. Still, he said most people could generally benefit from any reduction in alcohol, even if they’re not within the advised limits.

  The report noted that the guidelines may be aspirational, but are important for “stimulating thought around behavior change.”

  The guidelines are based on the overall health of a population, and an individual’s risk from drinking could vary depending on a variety of factors and health habits, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University.

  Mozaffarian also noted that many people misinterpret the current advice to mean they should have one or two drinks a day. The limits are meant for people who already drink. Hilarious, he felt the need to explain that the guidelines do not recommend that people who do not drink alcohol to start doing so.

  Even if most Americans aren’t familiar with the details of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, they’re subject of intense lobbying because of their power to shape the advice dispensed by doctors and what’s served in federal food programs, including school lunches, as federal food assistance programs, military rations, and doctors’ dietary recommendations reflect the guidelines.

  Federal officials are expected to issue the updated guidelines by the end of the year, after considering public comments and input from other agencies. We expect they will be substantially “watered down” by the time of the final draft.

  

• COVID-19: Phase 1 Of The "Permanent Crisis"?
  COVID-19: Phase 1 Of The “Permanent Crisis”?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 21:25

  Authored by Mike Whitney via GlobalResearch.ca,

  Let’s assume that the events of the last five months are neither random nor unexpected.

  Let’s say they’re part of an ingenious plan to transform American democracy into a lockdown police state controlled by criminal elites and their puppet governors.

  And let’s say the media’s role is to fan the flames of mass hysteria by sensationalizing every gory detail, every ominous prediction and every slightest uptick in the death toll in order to exert greater control over the population.

  And let’s say the media used their power to craft a message of terror they’d repeat over and over again until finally, there was just one frightening storyline ringing-out from every soapbox and bullhorn, one group of governors from the same political party implementing the same destructive policies, and one small group of infectious disease experts –all incestuously related– issuing edicts in the form of “professional advice.”

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  Could such a thing happen in America?

  What’s most astonishing about the Covid-19 operation is the manner in which the elected government was circumvented by public health experts (connected to a power-mad billionaire activist.) That was a stroke of genius. Most people regard the US as a fairly stable democracy and yet, the first sign of infection triggered the rapid transfer of power from the president to unelected “professionals” whose conflicts of interest are too vast to list.

  Equally fascinating is the fact that the lockdowns were not the brainchild of Donald Trump but the mainly Democrat governors who shrugged-off any Constitutional limits to their power and arbitrarily ordered people to stay in their homes, wear masks and avoid close physical contact with other humans.

  All of this was done in the name of “science” and condoned under “emergency powers” despite the fact that mass quarantines of healthy people have no historical precedent or scientific basis. No matter, this was never about science or logic anyway, and it certainly wasn’t about saving lives. It was always about power, pure, unalloyed political power. The power to push the economy into freefall destroying millions of jobs and businesses. The power to bail out Wall Street while diverting attention to a fairly-mild infection that kills roughly 1 in every 500 people. The power to create a permanent underclass willing to work for table scraps or less. And the power to fundamentally restructure human relations so that normal intimacies like handshakes, hugs or social gatherings are entirely banned. This, of course, was the most ambitious part of the project, the basic changes to human interaction that date back thousands of years, and which are now seen as an obstacle to a new order in which the individual must be isolated, desensitized and kept in a constant state of fear to be more easily controlled and manipulated.

  On top of that, all of this is taking place in plain sight where anyone with even minimal critical thinking skills should be able to see what is happening, but very few do. Why is that?

  Fear. Fear has gripped the population and is preventing typically intelligent, perceptive people from seeing something that’s right beneath their noses. Check out this clip from an article titled “When Will the Madness End?”:

  “What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population… The public is adopting a personality disorder … paranoid delusions, and irrational fear…

  It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic…

  … Once fear reaches a certain threshold, normalcy, rationality, morality, and decency fade and are replaced by shocking stupidity and cruelty.…..We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

  …

  This is made far worse by politics, which has only fed the beast of fear. This is the most politicized disease in history, and doing so has done nothing to help manage it and much to make it all vastly worse.” (“When Will the Madness End?“, AIER)

  We’re not saying that Covid doesn’t kill people, and we’re not suggesting that Covid is a bioweapon released on the public for nefarious purposes. (although that’s certainly a possibility.) What we’re saying is that scheming elites and their allies in the media and politics see every crisis as an opportunity to advance their own authoritarian agenda.

  In fact, the restructuring of basic democratic institutions can only take place within the confines of a major crisis. That’s why the CIA, the giant corporations, the WHO and the Gates Posse gathered for meetings that anticipated an event just like the Covid outbreak. They needed a crisis of that magnitude to achieve their ultimate objective; total control. That’s what they mean when they say there will be “no return to normal”, they mean they’re replacing representative government with a new totalitarian model in which the levers of state power will be controlled by them. So while the virus outbreak might be coincidental, the management of the crisis certainly is not. This is from an article by Gary Barnett:

  “We are in the midst of an attempt by the oligarchs to eliminate the human spirit, and if this attempt is successful, the singular majesty of the human experience will have been abolished, and only a technocratic black hole of emptiness and despair will remain. This is the essence of a failed society brought about by the destruction of human intellect by state education, mass propaganda, and the planned control of individuals through physical and psychological manipulation due to fear.”(“Pandemic Madness: The State’s Plan Rests on the Destruction of the Human Spirit“, Gary Barnett, Lew Rockwell)

  Is the author exaggerating?

  I don’t think so. Our species has withstood myriad epidemics in the past without ever resorting to the extremist measures we have taken during this latest outbreak. Take the state of Oregon, for example, whose Democratic governor Kate Brown just signed another executive order extending a state of emergency through Sept. 4. The move comes months after the peak in deaths was reached in mid-April. As of Tuesday, Oregon’s death toll is a meager 240 nearly 90% of who are over 65 with underlying health conditions. That means that Brown shut down a $226 billion per year economy, put tens of thousands of people out of work, destroyed countless small and medium-sized businesses and plunged the state deep into debt, to save roughly 24 or 25 people under 65 with no underlying health conditions. That’s not the reaction of an intelligent, responsible political leader acting in the best interests of the people. That is the reaction of someone who is either criminally insane or doing someone else’s bidding. So which is it?

  Like many of the other mainly Democrat governors, Brown also issued a “mask” mandate, punishable by a fine. The new executive order was neither approved by the House or by any other democratic body. It’s just Brown testing the limits of her new emergency powers. Interestingly, the mask mandate comes a full three months after the state reached its peak in fatalities which means that it has less to do with controlling the infection than it does with using the virus to usurp tyrannical powers. Does that mean Brown or the other Democrat governors are closet tyrants?

  Probably not. But it does suggest that the people who fund Brown’s campaigns and pull her strings want to see how far they can push things before the public fights back. Here’s a comment by Carlo Caduff in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly that helps to put these developments into perspective:

  “Across the world, the pandemic unleashed authoritarian longings in democratic societies allowing governments to seize the opportunity, create states of exception and push political agendas. Commentators have presented the pandemic as a chance for the West to learn authoritarianism from the East. This pandemic risks teaching people to love power and call for its meticulous application.” (“What Went Wrong: Corona and the World After the Full Stop“ Academia.edu)

  Once again, we are not denying that Covid kills people. All we’re saying is that powerful elites are using crisis management to advance their own narrow political agenda.

  It should be no surprise that states governed by Democrats are doing considerably worse than those run by Republicans. Watching the eagerness with which the Dems impose their economy-crushing measures, one can only wonder how the states will ever dig out of the current mess and regain solvency. Of course, maybe that’s the goal, to generate so much red ink that essential social services will have to be slashed, the poor will be left to starve, and the big money guys will buy-up public assets for pennies on the dollar. Indeed, that must be the plan, “shock therapy for the proles while the Democrat governors act as a battering ram to open the state to the plunder and looting of their Wall Street crony friends and others in the parasite class. Here’s how Israel Shamir summed it up in a recent article at the Unz Review:

  “There are people who think we have it too good. They think we did nothing to deserve our high civilization. They think we shouldn’t be able to afford food, the roof above our heads and other goodies. This is the view of some very wealthy people. They are annoyed at seeing Tom, Dick and Harry going to Acapulco and eating in a restaurant, instead of being at their beck and call. They want to lower our income and raise the cost of living. They are willing to fund anyone who calls for more austerity.

  Now they support lockdowns, claiming that it is the best way to fight disease. Yesterday they were calling on us to shut down industry in order to save the climate. Today these same people are still trying to reduce us to poverty, this time for the sake of Covid” (“Unmasking Freedom, The Unz review)

  Shamir is right of course, the justifications are forever changing while the ultimate goal remains the same, wreak havoc the economy, divide the people into warring camps, and clear the way for the new streamlined system of authoritarian government, the glorious NWO. And the speed at which we are moving towards this new order is truly breathtaking. Take a look at this sampling of articles I’ve compiled which illustrates the catastrophic damage that is being done to the economy but swept under the rug by the media. In short, Covid is the diversion that keeps the American people from realizing that the system that keeps them employed, pays the mortgage and puts food on the table is being decimated by voracious oligarchs who want to start fresh. Check out these articles:

  • Some 42% Of Jobs Lost In Pandemic Are Gone For Good

  • US Consumer Credit Crashes As Americans Repay A Record Amount Of Credit Card Debt

  • A Tidal Wave of Bankruptcies is Coming

  • “More Than Half Of The US Population Is Not Working”

  • “52% Of Small Businesses Expect To Be Out Of Business Within Six Months

  • “53% Of Restaurants Closed Amid Coronavirus Have Shuttered Permanently”

  • Tsunami” Of Evictions Could Make 28 Million Americans Homeless This Summer Alone

  • Hurtling towards Depression–Based on information as of May 2020, we show that global consumption losses amount to 3.8$tr, triggering significant job (147 million full-time equivalent) and income (2.1$tr) losses.

  • Eighty percent feel country is spiraling out of control, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC poll

  Anyway, you get the picture, the situation is dire. But as severe as the economic carnage may be, the psychic damage is that much worse. Many readers probably already know that suicides, divorces, child abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence have all risen sharply in the last 5 months. The impact of the lockdowns on people suffering from chronic depression or other mental health conditions has also increased dramatically. As Doctor Waqar Rashid opines in an article at The Spectator:

  “Many people are… still terrified.,… afraid of venturing back into the outside world…. Masks are everywhere, and are compulsory on public transport. The result is a reminder that this ‘new normal’ is utterly unlike what we are used to. Even to those who don’t suffer from mental health problems it’s a depressing and dispiriting sight. And I fear this ongoing state of stress and anxiety is doing profound damage to people’s psychological wellbeing...

  It was widely acknowledged before the pandemic struck that mental health problems were not only increasing in number but also being seen more frequently in younger people. As a neurologist, the people I see are especially at risk from suffering from mental health problems. It’s a sad fact that in my line of work, we can cure very little. But we can try to control and mitigate the illnesses we seek to treat. Much of this relies on the patient remaining hopeful and optimistic about their prospects. But now, surrounded as we are by this ‘invisible enemy’, all too often hope has been substituted for fear, even terror.” (“What’s the true cost of lockdown?”, The Spectator)

  Covid-19; Phase 1 of the “Permanent Crisis”

  It all boils down to this: Ruling class elites are using a public health crisis to wage a full-scale war on the American people and their system of representative government. The Democrat-CIA-Media Axis has been instrumental in prosecuting the conflict, as they were in the Russiagate fiasco. These are the shock troops who execute the battleplan of economic strangulation, covert skulduggery, and relentless disinformation. By the time the American people figure out what’s going on, the political landscape will have changed completely.

  

• Judicial Watch Uncovers Explosive FBI Emails Appearing To Reference A White House 'Confidential Informant'
  Judicial Watch Uncovers Explosive FBI Emails Appearing To Reference A White House ‘Confidential Informant’
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 21:11

  Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,

  A top government watchdog group obtained 136 pages of never before publicized emails between former FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and one in particular appears to refer to a confidential informant inside the White House in 2017, according to a press release from Judicial Watch.

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  Those emails, some of which are heavily redacted, reveal that “Strzok, Page and top bureau officials in the days prior to and following President Donald Trump’s inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing that could “play into” the FBI’s “investigative strategy.”

  Moreover, another email sent by Strzok to Bill Priestap, the Former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, refers to what appears to be a confidential informant in the White House. The email was sent the day after Trump’s inauguration.

  “I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted],” wrote Strzok. “I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction.” 

  In April, 2019 this reporter first published information that there was an alleged confidential informant for the FBI in the White House. In fact, then senior Republican Chairmen of the Senate Appropriations Committee Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson submitted a letter to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing the new texts from Strzok to Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.

  The Chairmen revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been already been obtained by SaraACarter.com and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.

  At the time, texts obtained by this news site and sources stated that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House – at the time that would have been Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock, as reported.

  Over the past year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with years of numerous Congressional investigations, has uncovered a plethora of documentation revealing the most intimate details of the FBI’s now debunked investigation into Trump’s campaign and its alleged conspiracy with Russia.

  For example, in a series of emails exchanged by top bureau officials – in the FBI General Counsel’s office, Counterintelligence Division and Washington Field office on Jan. 19, 2017 – reveal that senior leadership, including former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were coordinating with each other in their ongoing attempt to target the incoming administration. Priestap was also included in the email exchanges. The recent discovery in April, of Priestap’s handwritten notes taken in January, 2017 before the Strzok and his FBI partner interviewed Flynn were a bombshell. In Priestap’s notes he states, “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

  In one recent email chain obtained by Judicial Watch, FBI assistant general counsel in the FBI’s National Security Law Branch stated in an email to Strzok [which was almost entirely redacted]

  “I’ll give Trisha/Baker a heads up too,” it stated. Strzok’s reply to the assistant general counsel, however, was redacted by DOJ. The response back to Strzok has also been redacted.

  Then later in the evening at 7:04 p.m., Strzok sends another emails stating, “I briefed Bill (Priestap) this afternoon and he was trying without success to reach the DD [McCabe]. I will forward below to him as his [sic] changes the timeline. What’s your recommendation?”

  The reply, like many of the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the DOJ, is almost entirely redacted. The email response to Strzok was from the Counterintelligence Division.

  Here’s what was not redacted

  “Approved by tomorrow afternoon is the request. [Redacted] – please advise if I am missing something.” An unidentified official replies, “[Redacted], Bill is aware and willing to jump in when we need him.”

  Judicial Watch Timeline of Events On Emails Obtained Through FOIA

  At 8 p.m., Strzok responds back (copying officials in the Counterintelligence Division, Washington Field Office and General Counsel’s office):

  “Just talked with Bill. [Redacted]. Please relay above to WFO and [redacted] tonight, and keep me updated with plan for meet and results of same. Good luck.”

  Strzok then forwards the whole email exchange to Lisa Page, saying, “Bill spoke with Andy. [Redacted.] Here we go again …”

  The Day After Trump’s Inauguration

  The day after Trump’s inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, Strzok forwarded Page and [a redacted person] an email he’d sent that day to Priestap. Strzok asked them to “not forward/share.”

  In the email to Priestap, Strzok said, “I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]. I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction.” 

  “Also, on January 21, 2017, Strzok wrote largely the same message he’d sent to Priestap directly to his counterintelligence colleague Jennifer Boone,” states Judicial Watch.

  *  *  *

  From Judicial Watch Press Release:

  The records were produced to Judicial Watch in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 2017 request for all communications between Strzok and Page (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)).

  The FBI has only processed emails at a rate of 500 pages per month and has yet to process text messages. At this rate, the production of these communications, which still number around 8,000 pages, would not be completed until at least late 2021.

  In other emails, Strzok comments on reporting on the anti-Trump dossier authored by Hillary Clinton’s paid operative Christopher Steele.

  In a January 2017 email, Strzok takes issue with a UK Independent report which claimed Steele had suspected there was a “cabal” within the FBI which put the Clinton email investigation above the Trump-Russia probe. Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was at the heart of both the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations.

  In April and June of 2017, the FBI would use the dossier as key evidence in obtaining FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. In a declassified summary of a Department of Justice assessment of the warrants that was released by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in January of this year, it was determined that those two applications to secretly monitor Page lacked probable cause.

  The newly released records include a January 11, 2017, email from Strzok to Lisa Page, Priestap, and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jon Moffa, a New York Times report which refers to the dossier as containing “unsubstantiated accounts” and “unproven claims.” In the email, Strzok comments on the article, calling it “Pretty good reporting.”

  On January 14, 2017, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Michael Kortan forwards to Strzok, Page and Priestap a link to a UK Independent article entitled “Former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele’s Frustration as FBI Sat On Donald Trump Russia File for Months”.

  The article, citing security sources, notes that “Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up: that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Clinton’s emails.”

  Strzok responds: “Thanks Mike. Of course not accurate [the cover-up/cabal nonsense]. Is that question gaining traction anywhere else?”

  The records also include a February 10, 2017, email from Strzok to Page mentioning then-national security adviser Michael Flynn (five days before Flynn resigned) and includes a photo of Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Strzok also makes a joke about how McCabe had fat shamed Kislyak.

  On February 8, 2017, Strzok, under the subject “RE: EO on Economic Espionage,” emailed Lisa Page, saying, “Please let [redacted] know I talked to [redacted]. Tonight, he approached Flynn’s office and got no information.” Strzok was responding to a copy of an email Page had sent him. The email, from a redacted FBI official to Deputy Director McCabe read: “OPS has not received a draft EO on economic espionage. Instead, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advised OPS that they received a draft, but they did not send us the draft. I’ll follow up with our detailees about this EO.” Flynn resigned on February 13, 2017.

  On January 26, 2017, Nancy McNamara of the FBI’s Inspection Division emailed Strzok and Priestap with the subject line “Leak,” saying, “Tried calling you but the phones are forwarded to SIOC. I got the tel call report, however [redacted]. Feel free to give me a call if I have it wrong.” Strzok forwarded the McNamara email to Lisa Page and an unidentified person in the General Counsel’s office, saying, “Need to talk to you about how to respond to this.”

  On January 11, 2017, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff emailed Kortan, saying he’d learned that Steele had worked for the Bureau’s Eurasian organized crime section and had turned over the dossier on Trump-Russian “collusion” to the bureau in Rome. Kortan forwards Isikoff’s email to aide Richard Quinn, who forwards to Strzok “just for visibility”. Strzok forwards to his boss, Priestap and Moffa, saying, “FYI, [redacted], you or I should probably inform [redacted]. How’s your relationship with him? Bill unless you object, I’ll let Parmaan [presumably senior FBI official Bryan Paarmann] know.” Strzok forwards the whole exchange onto Lisa Page. 

  On January 18, 2017, reporter Peter Elkind of ProPublica reached out to Kortan, asking to interview Strzok, Michael Steinbach, Jim Baker, Priestap, former FBI Director James Comey and DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg for a story Elkind was working on. Kortan replied, “Okay, I will start organizing things.” Further along in the thread, an FBI Press Office official reached out to an FBI colleague for assistance with the interviews, saying Steinbach had agreed to a “background discussion” with Elkind, who was “writing the ‘definitive’ account of what happened during the Clinton investigation, specifically, Comey’s handling of the investigation, seeking to reconstruct and explain in much greater detail what he did and why he did it.” In May 2017, Elkind wrote an article titled “The Problems With the FBI’s Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey,” which in light of these documents, strongly suggests many FBI officials leaked to the publication.

  Strzok ended up being scheduled to meet with Elkind at 9:30 a.m. on January 31, 2017, before an Elkind interview of Comey’s chief of staff Jim Rybicki. Elkind’s reporting on the Clinton email investigation was discussed at length in previous emails obtained by Judicial Watch. 

  “These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And now we see how the Comey FBI was desperate to spin, through high-level leaks, its mishandling of the Clinton email investigation. And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noted that Wray’s FBI and Barr’s DOJ continue slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails – which means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won’t be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!”

  In February 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered an August 2016 email in which Strzok says that Clinton, in her interview with the FBI about her email controversy, apologized for “the work and effort” it caused the bureau and she said she chose to use it “out of convenience” and that “it proved to be anything but.” Strzok said Clinton’s apology and the “convenience” discussion were “not in” the FBI 302 report that summarized the interview.

  Also in February, Judicial Watch made public Strzok-Page emails showing their direct involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau’s investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The records also show additional “confirmed classified emails” were found on Clinton’s unsecure non-state.gov email server “beyond the number presented” in then-FBI Director James Comey’s statements; Strzok and Page questioning the access the DOJ was granting Clinton’s lawyers; and Page revealing that the DOJ was making edits to FBI 302 reports related to the Clinton Midyear Exam investigation. The emails detail a discussion about “squashing” an issue related to the Seth Rich controversy.

  In January 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered Strzok-Page emails that detail special accommodations given to the lawyers of Clinton and her aides during the FBI investigation of the Clinton email controversy.

  In November 2019, Judicial Watch revealed Strzok-Page emails that show the attorney representing three of Clinton’s aides were given meetings with senior FBI officials.

  Also in November, Judicial Watch uncovered emails revealing that after Clinton’s statement denying the transmission of classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials citing “three [Clinton email] chains” containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of paragraphs.”

  In a related case, in May 2020, Judicial Watch received the “electronic communication” (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed “Crossfire Hurricane,” of President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The document was written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.

  

• US Spy Planes & Drones Observed Stepping Up Operations Over South China Sea
  US Spy Planes & Drones Observed Stepping Up Operations Over South China Sea
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 21:05

  At least two American spy planes were observed flying over contested waters of the South China Sea in an area southeast of Taiwan Wednesday afternoon. 

  It appears confirmation that the US military is stepping up its aerial reconnaissance activities amid soaring tensions with China, and with US warships in the region, including two aircraft carriers. The South China Morning Post reported of the spy planes:

  The US Navy MQ-4C Triton – a long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle – was seen flying towards the southeast of Taiwan at about noon on Wednesday, according to the SCS Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Peking University think tank.

  It said a US P-8A anti-submarine aircraft and a KC-135R aerial refuelling aircraft were also seen on Thursday flying southwest of Taiwan over the South China Sea.

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  There were additional reports of another unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying toward the south of Taiwan on the same day as well, suggesting significantly stepped up US reconnaissance operations in the region.

  Regional analysts have interpreted it as part of expanded US military efforts to track Chinese submarine and other underwater activities.

  This also at a moment the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sailed near the disputed Spratly Islands in “freedom of navigation” exercises this week.

  China will be shocked:

  15 July 2020 15:30
  Reg.: n/a
  Country:USA
  ICAO:AE64C6
  It’s flying over China & heading Beijing, but what is this？

  At high altitude 50,000ft a reconnaissance plane or UAV?
  The speed is nearly 1,000kt pic.twitter.com/fKnn1UYcGn

  — Taiwan Formosa Club 🌐 (@taiwanformosan) July 15, 2020

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

  The Trump administration’s new sanctions related to the Hong Kong security law, as well as visa restrictions targeting certain state-linked entities, has further put the region on edge. 

  

• The Ugly Truth About The BLM Protests
  The Ugly Truth About The BLM Protests
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 20:45

  Authored by Michael Tracey via Unherd.com,

  Are journalists deliberately ignoring the effects of these devastating riots?

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  Having spent the past month traveling around the United States — from major cities to the countryside — the scale of the ‘movement’ which erupted in late May after the death of George Floyd is almost incomprehensible. According to the New York Times, which relays their finding with obvious excitement, the ‘movement’ (its precise contours seldom defined) “may be the largest” in U.S. history.

  That is certainly plausible. In which case, it would presumably be important to document how ordinary Americans, especially those most directly affected, perceive the “movement” in question.

  Scan almost any of the popular media coverage over the past six weeks and you’ll find that journalists have been steadfast in their depiction of “protesters” as unassailably “peaceful.” While the vast majority of those who attended a state-backed demonstration or some other event spurred by the ‘movement’ are unlikely to have committed any acts of physical destruction, the term “peaceful protest” doesn’t seem to quite capture the impact of a society-wide upheaval that included, as a key component, mass riots — the magnitude of which have not been seen in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

  From large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged or destroyed buildings I have personally observed — commercial, civic, and residential — is staggering. Keeping exact count is impossible. One might think that a major media organisation such as the New York Times would use some of their galactic journalistic resources to tally up the wreckage for posterity. But roughly six weeks later, and such a tally is still nowhere to be found.

  A standard retort one often hears is that “the riots” must not be conflated with “the protests,” which is technically accurate in certain contexts. But the distinction is not as obvious as the media like to make out. In many locations, police and fire services were diverted to accommodate these massive protests, which in turn created a vacuum that enabled the outbreak of riotous activity. As one resident of Minneapolis explained to me, emergency services told him that they would simply be unavailable during the weekend of 29-31 May, while other locals recounted with amazement that police were totally absent as their neighbourhoods burned.

  In Milwaukee, a man described being chased down by rioters after getting off the bus on his way home from work. He saw no difference between protesters and rioters; the flippant idea that these groups can be so neatly disentangled is wrong.

  This view is just as likely to be espoused by black people and other minorities as anyone else (the Milwaukee man was black), which renders the media’s strident insistence to depict the ‘movement’ as entirely peaceful incongruous with the perceptions of working-class Americans (of all races). So many of them experienced what transpired more as a painful tragedy than any kind of wondrous harmony.

  Indeed, the resulting destruction may have set their majority-minority neighbourhoods back economically for months or years, if not longer. Most had already been struggling due to the pandemic, with the riots interrupting fragile reopening plans. To exclude the perspectives of these people from popular media narratives amounts to a kind of purposefully obfuscatory, moralising snobbery. Talk about ‘erasure’.

  So why, exactly, has the scope of these riots been so assiduously downplayed, and the opinions of those who experienced them first-hand been largely ignored? A number of potential explanations ring true. For one, media elites desperately do not want to undermine the moral legitimacy of a ‘movement’ that they have cast as presumptively righteous. And highlighting that urban minority populations are generally less enthusiastic about a movement whose mantra is “Black Lives Matter” would be embarrassing for obvious reasons.

  The white liberals and Leftists who claim to be so sensitively attuned to the feelings of minorities clearly spend very little time actually talking to working class non-white people — or at least those who happen to fall outside their activist cohort. If they did, they would be saddened to discover that, unlike them, working class non-whites frequently express “small-c” conservative cultural attitudes.

  For instance, black Americans whom I’ve spoken to on the street across America in randomly-selected encounters were almost unanimous in their approval of the National Guard deployments to their neighborhood during the riots. If anything, their main criticism was that these deployments came too late to prevent the destruction.

  This certainly makes the emotional meltdown of coddled 20 and 30-something journalists, who seriously claimed that they were “endangered” by a U.S. Senator’s NYT column advocating for a military presence to maintain order in cities, look especially disconnected and bizarre. So one could understand why the media would be reluctant to feature the “voices” of minorities who take an alternate view.

  There’s also the barely-hidden fear that properly depicting the after-effects of these riots would somehow “help Trump” during an election year. Even if it could be established as true that reporting on a historically significant event would “help” the incumbent president, refraining from such reportage on that ground would obviously be wildly improper from a journalistic perspective.

  But even from a raw political standpoint, it’s almost certainly not even true. Trump’s inability to convert this post-riot political environment into some kind of electoral advantage is an irony unto itself, given the theme of his inaugural address — which ominously (but not entirely unjustifiably) invoked the specter of “American carnage”. For all the non-stop hysteria painting Trump as some kind of maniacal fascist, it truly is a lousy fascist who fails to leverage widespread social unrest and instability to consolidate power.

  Needless to say, Trump is also currently presiding over a disastrous federal pandemic response, and rapidly shedding support among elderly voters. So if one insists on behaving purely as a partisan actor — which many contemporary journalists certainly are — any fatuous “would it help Trump?” calculation ought to be irrelevant.

  Trump or no Trump, the lack of adequate coverage is the true affront. It should be more widely known that large swathes of a major American metropolis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, still lies in rubble over a month after the riots. And the main perpetrators of this destruction — namely those who committed the most incendiary arson attacks — were, by many accounts relayed to me directly, white Left-wing activists. Refusing to seek out and accurately present this information reflects the mainstream media’s propensity to operate under predetermined, politicised assumptions that are antithetical to any rightly-understood conception of journalism.

  Travelling around Minneapolis, one frequently sees the anarchist “A” symbol scrawled on charred and/or boarded-up buildings, as well as catchphrases like “Viva La Revolucion” — expressions typical of Left-wing activists. Indeed, it’s abundantly clear that there was a strong ideological component to these riots, one that’s also been under-emphasised by the media, again likely because of the belief that it could in some vague sense “help Trump.” I spoke to numerous residents who are convinced that white out-of-towners were the ones who instigated the most severe chaos, after which locals latched on opportunistically. Marianne Robinson, a black woman who has resided in Chicago’s South Side for decades, asked me if I was familiar with “antifa” and blamed them for the riots.

  Flora Westbrooks of Minneapolis, whose hair salon was burned down, was likewise convinced that the perpetrators could not have possibly been familiar with the neighbourhood given her longstanding community ties there. The theory might be a tad over-simplistic, but it does seem at least partially accurate. A (white) rioter I interviewed, who was present when the Third Police Precinct building in Minneapolis burned, remarked to me that he found himself in jail alongside people who came from as far as Missouri, Florida, Colorado, California and other distant states. He said they ventured to Minnesota out of a mixture of thrill-seeking and inchoate political grievance.

  A police officer on foot patrol in Chicago’s heavily-black West Side remarked to me how perplexed she was by the lack of coverage of the damage in these neighbourhoods. Indeed, a simple drive around such parts of Chicago reveals a stunning number of boarded-up establishments, many of which appear like they will never return. The officer mused that she enjoyed the social-work aspects of the job — I watched her greeting various street-dwellers by name — and so, far from seeing the “Defund the Police” slogan and other expressions of animosity as an existential threat to the Chicago Police Department, regarded it as so detached from her everyday experience that she wasn’t even bothered. Over the course of my ten days in Minneapolis, I didn’t see a single officer on foot patrol, which is highly unusual for a major American city.

  In Chicago, at the peak of the riots during the last weekend in May, there were a record-breaking 18 homicides in a single 24-hour period — the most since such data started being collected in 1961. I mention this not to make a knee-jerk “what about black-on-black crime” point, but simply to ask in general terms: why wasn’t this historic occurrence featured more prominently in the coverage of these protests?

  Something extreme just happened in America. I could give dozens of additional examples of reportorial tidbits which don’t align with the prevailing media narrative that has flourished in the wake of this “movement”. And if you hadn’t seen it directly, would you ever know?

  

• "We Need To Earn Money" – Bleach-Bottle-Wielding Bolivian Sex Workers In "Biosecurity Suits" Prepare For Work
  “We Need To Earn Money” – Bleach-Bottle-Wielding Bolivian Sex Workers In “Biosecurity Suits” Prepare For Work
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 20:25

  Bolivian sex workers are preparing for a post-corona world, one where they will sport skimpy see-through “biosecurity suits” while performing sex acts on clients, reported Reuters.   

  The sex workers, based in brothels in the capital La Paz, have been given a 30-page safe sex manual drawn up by the Organization of Night Workers of Bolivia (OTN). 

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  OTN outlines sex workers should wear “biosecurity suits” and be prepared to carry sanitary tools to mitigate COVID-19 spreading, such as bottles of bleach, masks, and gloves. The industry group is demanding the government relax day-time business restrictions for brothels that remain heavily restricted. 

  Lily Cortes, a spokesperson of OTN, told Reuters that some sex workers would resort to prostitution on the streets if brothels remain close. Another sex worker, who goes by the name Antonieta, showed Reuters earlier this month her space-suit-like outfit, consisting of a raincoat, gloves, plastic visor, and face mask. She said bleach is used on a pole she uses for clients at the brothel. 

  “The biosecurity suit will allow us to work and protect ourselves,” she said.

  ​

  AP said kissing would be banned, and mask-wearing is mandatory in brothels. 

  Sex worker Luna hopes for the sake of her family that she can get back to work: 

   “We are part of society. The majority of us are single mothers. We have children and live alone. We need to earn money,” Luna said. 

  Landlocked Bolivia has more than 49,000 cases and nearly 1,900 deaths on Tuesday. In early June, government officials relaxed some lockdowns but left brothels closed. 

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  We noted Tuesday sex workers in Germany were furious the government continued to refuse brothels reopening status. 

  

• Is Israel Hoping To Start A War With Iran Before US Elections?
  Is Israel Hoping To Start A War With Iran Before US Elections?
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 20:05

  Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

  Recent rounds of sabotage attacks against Iranian targets have been consistently blamed on Israel. It’s not just Israel being Israel, according to some officials familiar with the situation, but rather, Israel trying to start a war while Trump is still in power.

  Israel sees war as a tougher sell if Biden gets elected, while Trump would be easier, especially ahead of the vote. EU officials were reportedly concerned Israel would try to provoke something soon. Israeli officials refuse to comment on specific sabotage operations.

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  Veteran Middle East war correspondent Mitch Prothero writes in a bombshell Business Insider report based on Israeli government sources:

  Israel is involved in an extended campaign to pressure or damage Iran before President Donald Trump can be voted out of office in the November election, a former Israeli defense official and a current European Union intelligence official told Insider.

  Iran has seen weekly incidents, including explosions at a missile-production facility on June 22; the Natanz nuclear facility, Iran’s largest uranium-enrichment center, on July 2; and an important shipyard in the port city of Bushehr on Wednesday.

  Israeli officials concede it is “common knowledge” they are behind some of the Iran attacks, but they don’t want to specify which ones when there are so many candidates.

  Officials also say their policy on Iran is clear, without confirming or denying trying to suck the US into a war.

  The US has “several” intelligence indications Iran has put portions of air defense system on ‘high alert’ in recent days. This comes in wake of unexplained explosions at key facilities tied to its military and nuclear programs: US Official. Worries abt Iran retaliation. #natanz

  — Barbara Starr (@barbarastarrcnn) July 16, 2020

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  The report says further:

  A former Israeli defense official told Insider it was common knowledge in Israeli intelligence circles that at least some of the events in Iran over the past month were the work of Israeli intelligence operations.

  “I don’t know which ones exactly and wouldn’t tell you anyway because the entire point is for the Iranians to feel considerable stress trying to decide what might have been our work,” they said.

  Trump’s own administration has some officials very keen on provoking fights with Iran, but so far Trump has resisted launching a war. It’s not clear, with his “most pro-Israel ever” label on the line, he could resist joining an Israeli war.

  Israel has been keen on a war with Iran for decades, and is always trying to pick a good time to sucker the US into the conflict. While Iran focuses on defensive preparedness, it’s likely they’ll be advised by allies to try to resist any reaction to the provocations through November hoping that as this window closes, Israel will dial back attacks.

  

• 'Work-From-Home' Will Reduce US Driving By 270 Billion Miles Per Year, KPMG Finds
  ‘Work-From-Home’ Will Reduce US Driving By 270 Billion Miles Per Year, KPMG Finds
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 19:45

  With tens of millions of Americans out of work, people fleeing cities for rural communities, others working from home, online shopping flourishing, and the virus remerging in many states forcing governors to pause or reverse reopenings, consultancy firm KPMG International has some bad news for those betting the economy is going to “rocket ship” recovery as President Trump boasts about at press conferences and on Twitter. The consultancy firm warns “social-distancing measures” will “dramatically cut the amount of miles Americans travel by car” (fewer miles driven is terrible news for an economy driven by consumer spending). 

  The effects of COVID-19 will be felt for years. The response to the virus has accelerated powerful behavioral changes that will continue to shape how Americans use automobiles. We believe the changes in commuting and e-commerce are here to stay and that the combined effect of reduced commuting and shopping journeys could be as much as 270 billion fewer vehicle miles traveled (VMT) each year in the US. -KPMG 

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  At the height of lockdowns in April, Americans drove 64% fewer miles, “an unprecedented decline in travel,” noted Bloomberg. KPMG estimates 10% permanent reduction of the almost 3 trillion miles driven each and year, and vehicle ownership will slump. 

  “People buy a car to get to and from work and because shopping is a very important part of their lives,” Gary Silberg, head of KPMG’s global automotive practice, told Bloomberg in an interview. “If two of the primary missions that the American public buys a car for are going to reduce in demand, we know that’s going to have an adverse impact on auto sales. It’s just like gravity.”

  The report states, the new normal could be as many as “14 million fewer cars” on America’s highways. This is good for anyone who still has a job and commutes – rush our in some metros areas have already been eliminated. 

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  However, there’s always a consequence – that is, automakers, retailers, and industries directly or indirectly related to transportation will take a massive hit for the next several years. 

  Falling VMT would also affect used-car sales and aftermarket parts and service: less driving also means less wear and tear on vehicles, as well as a decline in traffic accidents, cutting into the lucrative collision parts business. Auto aftermarket suppliers will likely see a significant falloff in demand for replacement parts and maintenance services. – KPMG 

  KPMG outlines three scenarios of falling VMT will result in declining car ownership through 2025.

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  The key takeaway of the report is that change in habits and jobs along with an economic downturn could result in few miles driven by Americans for many years, indicating a V-shaped recovery in the overall economy is certainly not in the cards for this year or next. 

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  KPMG’s conclusion: “COVID-19 is the defining event of 2020–and will continue to shape society, politics, and business for years to come.”

  It’s all downhill from here…

  

• Walter Williams Blasts The Despicable Behavior Of Today's Academicians
  Walter Williams Blasts The Despicable Behavior Of Today’s Academicians
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 19:25

  Authored by Walter Williams, op-ed via Townhall.com,

  The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans. The study found:

  “The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were.”

  For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.

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  The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that contained the expressions “when your first name becomes “n—-r,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are). Referring to white civil rights activists King wrote, “They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as ‘dirty n—-r-lovers.'”

  Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to “Gone with the Wind.” Almost 4,000 Rutgers University students signed a petition to rename campus buildings Hardenbergh Hall, Frelinghuysen Hall, and Milledoler Hall because these men were slave owners. University of Arkansas students petitioned to remove a statue of J. William Fulbright because he was a segregationist who opposed the Brown v. Board of Education that ruled against school segregation.

  The suppression of free speech and ideas by the elite is nothing new. It has a long ugly history. Galileo Galilei was a 17th-century Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer, sometimes called “father of modern physics.” The Catholic Church and other scientists of his day believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo offered evidence that the Earth traveled around the sun — heliocentrism. That made him “vehemently suspect of heresy” and was forced to recant and sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition and was later commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life.

  Much of today’s totalitarianism, promotion of hate and not to mention outright stupidity, has its roots on college campuses. Sources that report on some of the more egregious forms of the abandonment of free inquiry, hate, and stupidity at our colleges are College Reform and College Fix.

  Prof. William S. Penn, who was a Distinguished Faculty Award recipient at Michigan State University in 2003, and a two-time winner of the prestigious Stephen Crane Prize for Fiction, explained to his students, “This country still is full of closet racists.” He said:

  “Republicans are not a majority in this country anymore. They are a bunch of dead white people. Or dying white people.”

  The public has recently been treated to the term — white privilege. Colleges have long-held courses and seminars on “whiteness.” One college even has a course titled “Abolition of Whiteness.” According to some academic intellectuals, whites enjoy advantages that non-whites do not. They earn a higher income and reside in better housing, and their children go to better schools and achieve more. Based on that idea, Asian Americans have more white privilege than white people. And, on a personal note, my daughter has more white privilege than probably 95% of white Americans.

  Evidence of how stupid college ideas find their way into the public arena can be seen on our daily news. Don Lemon, a CNN anchorman, said, “We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.” Steven Clifford, a former King Broadcasting CEO, said, “I will be leading a great movement to prohibit straight white males, who I believe supported Donald Trump by about 85 percent, from exercising the franchise (to vote), and I think that will save our democracy.”

  As George Orwell said, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”

  If the stupid ideas of academic intellectuals remained on college campuses and did not infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment — much like a circus.

  

• Heat Dome Roasts US With Temps Forecast To Approach 100°F  
  Heat Dome Roasts US With Temps Forecast To Approach 100°F  
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 19:05

  A massive heat dome is set to intensify this weekend, expected to roast hundreds of millions of Americans with temperatures in some regions approaching 95-100°F.

  Above normal temperatures will be found across the central U.S. tomorrow and spread to the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic this weekend. Highs in the mid-to-upper 90s will be widespread, with heat indices over 100 degrees. Be sure to stay hydrated and take breaks if working outdoors. pic.twitter.com/fOcHG9LlF4

  — NWS WPC (@NWSWPC) July 16, 2020

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  A portion of the same weather system, a large area of high pressure, that has been building and broiling the south-central United States much of this week will poke northeastward in the coming days.

  Actual temperatures are forecast to rise well into the 90s F from portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York state, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.

  A few locations over the mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley can reach or exceed 100 degrees for a couple of hours in the afternoon on Sunday and Monday. – Accuweather 

  Meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted, “the Lower 48 average high temperature will be over 90°F 🌡️ 265 million population 90°+” on Saturday. 

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  The National Weather Service warns heat indices over 100°F will be found in the Midwest through the weekend. 

  How hot will be it be this weekend and the beginning of next week? Heat indices greater than 105 degrees will be found across the Midwest Saturday and Sunday, before a cold front brings much needed relief. Meanwhile, heat is expected to build across the Mid-Atlantic and South. pic.twitter.com/qENdYNE6ce

  — NWS WPC (@NWSWPC) July 15, 2020

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  It will be a hot and humid weekend over much of the country. About one third of the CONUS by land area is forecast to see a heat index reach 100°F in the next three days. And approximately 53 million people are under some sort of Heat Warning, Watch, or Advisory at the moment. pic.twitter.com/mtDW5g2Z3C

  — NWS WPC (@NWSWPC) July 17, 2020

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  The National Integrated Drought Information System warns “outside of the Southeast, every region of the USA has some drought.” 

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  Here’s Refinitiv weather analyst Ed Whalen’s US weather forecast for the next 1-5 days, 6-10 days, and 11-15 days. The report is specially tailored for natural gas traders. 

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  While approximately 90% of households have air conditioning, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can afford it this year as a virus-induced recession, coupled with a fiscal cliff is badly pressuring household finances. Some people might have to wait until the second round of Trump checks arrive before they lower their thermostats below 68°F. 

  

• Billionaire Dalio Warns US-China Tensions "Could Evolve Into Shooting War", Sees Parallels To '30s Lead Up To World War II
  Billionaire Dalio Warns US-China Tensions “Could Evolve Into Shooting War”, Sees Parallels To ’30s Lead Up To World War II
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 18:45

  In an 8,000-word-plus tome, Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater – the world’s largest hedge fund, took to LinkedIn to expand on his previous discussions about what happens next geostrategically, fearing economic tensions between the US and China escalating into armed conflict, drawing parallels between the current situation and the years before World War I and World War II.

  “…the United States and China are now in an economic war that could conceivably evolve into a shooting war, and I’ve never experienced an economic war, I studied a number of past ones to learn what they are like,” he wrote.

  “Comparisons between the 1930s leading to World War II and today, especially with regard to economic sanctions, are especially interesting and helpful in considering what might be ahead,” he added.

  During times of great conflict, Dalio writes that there exists a tendency to move to “more autocratic leadership” to bring stability to chaos, concluding that rival powers only enter into wars when they are roughly comparable:

  “Smart leaders typically only go into hot wars if there is no choice because the other side pushes them into the position of either fighting or losing by backing down. That is how World War II began.”

  With sanctions being swapped and the angry rhetoric rising, we suspect Dalio’s warnings are more likely than ever.

  *  *  *

  Excerpts via LinkedIn:

  The Big Cycle of the United States and the Dollar, Part 1

  This is Part 1 of a two-part chapter on the US Empire and its path along the archetypical big cycle of dominant powers. It covers the period up through World War II. In Part 2, we will cover from the beginning of the new world order right up to this moment. It will be out on Tuesday, July 21.

  To remind you, I did this study so that I could understand how we got to where we are and how to deal with the situations we are facing, but I am no great historian.  I’m just a guy with a compulsion to understand how these things work and to bet on what will happen, who has access to great research assistants, fabulous data, incredibly informed experts, lots of insightful written research, and my own experiences.  I’m using all of this to try to figure out what’s true and what to do about it.  I am not ideological.  I am mechanical.  I look at reality as a perpetual-motion machine with cause/effect relationships driving developments through time.  I am sharing this information with you to take or leave as you like and to have you point out any inaccuracies you think might exist as we try to figure out together what’s true and what to do about it.  

  This chapter is a continuation of the last chapter in which we started to look at each of the leading reserve currency empires over the last 500 years, starting with the Dutch and British empires.

  …

  As we delve into the particulars of the last 90 years, it is easy to lose sight of the big arcs, most importantly the three big cycles—i.e., the long-term debt/monetary cycle, the wealth and political gap cycle, and the global geopolitical cycle—as well as the eight major types of power and the 17 major drivers behind them.  I will try to keep it simple, emphasizing just the most important developments in just the most influential countries, but if you find that the story starts getting more complicated than you’d like, remember that you can just read the text in bold in order to get the main points without complication.  

  World affairs and history are complicated because there is a lot going on both within and between relevant countries.  Understanding just the most important relevant issues of just the most important countries is challenging because one has to see all of these perspectives accurately and simultaneously.  All countries are living out their own stories that transpire on a daily basis, and these stories are woven together to make up the world story.  But typically, at any one time, there are only a few leading countries and a limited number of major themes that make up the major story of the changing world order.  Since the end of World War I, the most relevant stories have been those of Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and China.  I’m not saying that these are the only countries that matter because that isn’t true.  But I am saying that the story of the changing world order since World War I can be pretty well told by understanding the main developments within and between these countries.  In this chapter I will attempt to briefly tell the stories of these countries and their most important interactions.  This is the highlights version of the more complete version of the stories that I will pass to you in Part 2 of this book.   

  In telling these stories I will try to convey them without bias.  I believe that to accurately understand both history and what is happening now, I need to see things through the relevant parties’ eyes, including those of enemies.  While there are of course allies and enemies and it is tempting to demonize the enemies, most people and countries are simply pursuing their own interests in the ways they believe are best for them, so I find it productive to try to see things through their eyes and counterproductive to demonize them.  If you hear me say things that sound sympathetic to former or existing enemies—like “Hitler built a strong economy before going to war”—please know that it is because I am seeking accuracy and need to be truthful rather than politically correct in conveying my thinking.  While I might be wrong and we might not agree, that’s all OK with me as long as I am describing the picture as accurately as I can.

  Before I begin recounting the story of the United States I’d like to remind you of the archetypical Big Cycle that I described earlier so you can keep it in mind as you read about how events transpired up to the present.  Though a super-oversimplification of the whole thing, in a nutshell it appears to me that the archetypical Big Cycle transpires as follows.

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  A new world order typically begins after radical changes in how things work within countries (i.e., via some form of revolution) and between countries (typically some form of war).  They change in big ways who has wealth and power and the approaches used to get wealth and power.  For example in 1945, when the latest world order began, the US and its capitalist and democratic allies squared off against the communist and autocratic approaches of the Soviet Union and its allies.  As we saw from studying the Dutch and British empires, capitalism was key to these countries’ successes but also contributed to their failures.  It was successful because the pursuit of profit motivated people, and the competitive process of allocating capital and profit making directed resources relatively efficiently to what people wanted enough to pay for.  In this system those who allocated efficiently profited, which led to them gaining more resources, while those who couldn’t allocate well died economically. 

  At the same time, this system of increasing wealth produced widening wealth and opportunity gaps, as well as decadence in the form of people working less and increasingly living on borrowed money.  As the wealth and opportunity gaps grew, that produced increasingly widespread views that the system wasn’t fair.  When the debt problems and other factors led to bad economic times at the same time as the wealth and values gaps were large, that produced a lot of internal conflict that led to large, revolutionary changes in who had wealth and power and the processes for getting them.  Sometimes these big changes were made peacefully, and sometimes they were made violently.  When the leading countries suffered from these internal challenges at the same time as rival countries had become strong enough to challenge them, the risks of external wars increased.  When these seismic shifts in how wealth and power are distributed occur within countries (i.e., via revolutions) or between countries (typically through wars, though sometimes peacefully), the old world order breaks down and a new world order begins, and the process starts all over again.  

  To refresh your memory, the chart below shows the relative powers of the leading countries as measured in indices that measure eight different types of power—education, competitiveness, innovation/technology, trade, economic output, military, financial center status, and reserve currency status.  

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  In examining each country’s rise and decline I look at each of the eight measures and convey the highlights of their stories while diving into key moments to understand how they transpired in a more granular way.  We will now do that with the United States and China, which as you can see in this chart are currently the leading powers.  

  The US Empire and the US Dollar

  While this section primarily focuses on the story of the US since it overtook the British Empire as the dominant global power during the world wars, we will first take a quick look at the whole arc of its rise and its somewhat recent relative decline.  The chart below shows the eight types of power that make up our overall measure of power.  In it you can see the story behind the US’s rise and decline since 1700.  We start in 1700 because that was just before the emergence of the United States.  While the area now occupied by the United States was of course inhabited by native people for thousands of years, the history of the United States as a nation begins with the colonists, who revolted against the colonial power of Great Britain to gain independence in 1776.  In the chart you can see the seeds of the US’s rise going back to the early 1800s, starting with rising strengths in education and then in innovation/technology and competitiveness. 

   These powers and world circumstances allowed the US to create massive productivity growth during the Second Industrial Revolution, which was from around 1870 to the beginning of World War I and then beyond it.  These increased strengths were reflected in the US’s increasing shares of global economic output and world trade, as well as growing its financial strength, exemplified in New York becoming the world’s leading financial center, continuing leadership in innovations, and great usage of its financial products.  You can see that these measures of the United States’ powers relative to its own history reached their peaks in the 1950s immediately after the Allies won World War II.  

  At that time, the gap between the US and the rest of the world was at its greatest and the US dollar and the US world order became dominant.  Though the United States was clearly the dominant power in the post-World War II period, the Soviet Empire was a rival, though it was never nearly as strong overall.  The Soviets and their communist satellite states vied against the much stronger US and US allies and satellite states until Soviet power began to fade under the weight of its growing inefficiency around 1980 and then collapsed in 1989-91.  That is about when China began to rise to become a comparable rival power to the US where it is today.  

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  As you can see, while the United States’ relative strengths of education, competitiveness, trade, and production have declined significantly and steadily over the last 100 years (to now be around the 50-60th percentile versus other leading powers), its relative strength in innovation and technology, reserve currency status, financial center power, and military have remained at or near the top.  At the same time, as we will see when we delve into China’s picture, China has gained on the US in all these areas, has become comparable in many ways, and is advancing considerably faster than the US.     

  Let’s now drop down from the 40,000-foot level to the 20,000-foot level and pick up our story in 1930 so we can see how the United States evolved to become the dominant world power.  While we focus predominantly on the US story, the linkages between economic conditions and political conditions within the United States and between the United States and other countries—most importantly with the UK, Germany, and Japan in the 1930s, with the Soviet Union and Japan from around 1950 until 1990, and with China from around 1980 until now—must be understood because economics and geopolitics within and between countries were and always are intertwined. 

  …

  As a principle: 

  Protecting one’s wealth in times of war is difficult, as normal economic activities are curtailed, traditionally safe investments are not safe, capital mobility is limited, and high taxes are imposed when people and countries are fighting for their survival.  During difficult times of conflict protecting the wealth of those who have wealth is not a priority relative to redistributing wealth to get it to where it is needed most.  

  That was the case in those war years.  

  While we won’t cover the actual battles and war moves, the headline is that the Allied victory in 1945 produced a tremendous shift of wealth and power.  

  World War II was an extremely costly war in lives and money.  The numbers are gigantic and extremely imprecise.  An estimated 40-75 million people were killed as a result of it, which was 3% of the world’s population, which made it the deadliest war yet.  More than half of these losses were Russian (around 25 million) and Chinese (around 20 million).  Germany lost around 7 million people—just over half were military deaths and the rest were German civilian deaths, mostly from the Holocaust (and millions more non-Germans were also victims).  Britain and the United States each lost around 400,000.  The financial cost of the war was both enormous and inestimable, according to most experts, but, based on my research, was in the vicinity of $4-7 trillion in current dollars.  What we do know is that on a relative basis the US came out a big winner because the US sold and lent a lot before and during the war, basically all of the fighting took place off of US territory so the US wasn’t physically damaged, and US deaths were comparatively low in relation to those of most other major countries.  

  In Part 2 of this chapter, we will explore the new world order starting with the US as the dominant power and tell the story that brings us right up to this moment. Then we will turn to China.

  Read the full note here…

  

• China Hit By $9 Billion In FX Outflows In June
  China Hit By $9 Billion In FX Outflows In June
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 07/17/2020 – 18:25

  With the US dollar now officially primed and weaponized amid growing speculation that the Trump administration is contemplating busting the Hong Kong-US Dollar peg as a means of destabilizing China’s financial system as the Cold War between the US and China rolls out in earnest, attention is (or should be) again shifting to China’s capital outflows (especially with Chinese banks suddenly hit by an unprecedented surge in bank runs).

  Addressing this issue, Goldman writes overnight that according to the bank’s preffered gauge of FX flows, there was an outflow of around US$9bn in June (vs. US$19bn inflows in May), and the most since the March crisis, with seasonal investment income payout contributing to the outflows in June, while net foreign buying of Chinese equities and bonds remained strong. Still, as the chart below clearly shows, the June outflow was tiny in comparison to the massive capital flight observed in late 2015 and 2016, following China’s surprise yuan devaluation.

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  Overall net FX outflows composed of US$12bn in net outflows via outright spot transactions, US$8bn in net inflow via forward transactions, and US$5bn outflows in cross-border RMB net payments from onshore to offshore.

  * * *

  Some more details from Goldman on this latest net outflow, which according to the bank’s calculations based on the SAFE dataset of “onshore FX settlement”, non-banks showed net FX outflows of around US$4bn in June (vs. US$18bn inflows in May). This is composed of US$12bn in net outflows via outright spot transactions, and US$8bn in net inflow via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions. Another SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” shows that on a net basis, domestic banks saw net RMB payments of US$5bn from onshore to offshore. In summary, Goldman’s preferred FX flow measure therefore suggest in total US$9bn outflows in June, in comparison with the US$19bn inflows in May.

  Investment income payout contributed to the outflows in June. Cross-border net payments under “current account – income and transfers” rose to US$21bn in June, vs US$14bn in May (a majority of them are likely denominated in RMB) and net FX sales for “current account – income and transfers” went up to US$8bn, from US$3bn in May. Investment income payout tends to be seasonal with June being the peak season of payouts – on average in the past three years, investment income payout tends to drive US$14bn more outflows in June in comparison with May. A smaller goods trade surplus and thus smaller net FX inflows through the goods trade channel also contributed to the overall net outflows in June.

  Foreign buying of Chinese bonds and equities continued to be strong – bond foreign inflows were US$11bn in June, vs US$16bn in May, and net northbound buying through the Stock Connect program was around US$4bn in June, vs US$1bn in May.

  SAFE data on cross-border trade receipts suggest the goods trade repatriation ratio (net foreign receipts under goods trade channel as a share of goods trade surplus) was at 37% in Q2, higher than the 30% in Q1, likely on the back of improved sentiment towards the currency later in the quarter – the CNY appreciated against USD by around 1% in June.

  Official FX reserves (released earlier in the month) stood at US$3,112bn in June, US$11bn higher than May. Based on our estimate, FX valuation effects accounted for most of the increase. After adjusting for the FX valuation effect, FX reserves increased by US$1bn in June.

  

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