Today’s News 18th October 2021

• Only 22 Countries Have Never Been Invaded By Britain
  Only 22 Countries Have Never Been Invaded By Britain

  Even though the British Empire only managed to establish its first colony in Ireland in 1556, several decades after Portugal and Spain claimed land on the African continent and the Americas, Statista’s Florian Zandt points out that it still became synonymous with global conflict due to its network of dominions and colonies spanning the whole globe.

  As the first chart from Statista’s new content series InFact shows, although certainly not all of them became its subjects, Britain’s warfaring efforts only spared precious few countries in the world.

  According to the book “All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To”, there are only 22 countries Britain never invaded throughout history. There aren’t many gaps on the map, but some of the more notable include Sweden, Belarus and Vatican City.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The biggest blank spots can be seen on the African continent, even though the Royal African Company founded in 1660 alone was responsible for forcibly removing 212,000 slaves from their homeland and shipping them to English colonies in the Americas between 1662 and 1731.

  The British Empire in its various iterations can be seen as one of the longest-lasting Western empires in the world.

  Its first permanent overseas colony in the Americas was established in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia, while Hong Kong, its last big overseas territory, was handed over to China in 1997.

  In 1920, the empire covered roughly 13,700,000 square miles or 24 percent of the total land area of the Earth.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/18/2021 – 02:45

• Beijing, Moscow, Ankara Push US Out Of Red Sea Dominance
  Beijing, Moscow, Ankara Push US Out Of Red Sea Dominance

  Authored by Gregory Copley via The Epoch Times,

  Washington’s escalating hybrid warfare operations against Ethiopia may have cost the United States its strategic influence over the globally-vital Red Sea/Suez sea lanes.

  

  The U.S. abandonment of Ethiopia has forced its government to seek allies and protection elsewhere, and Russia, China, and Turkey have rushed in to fill the power vacuum.

  The now-open hostility of the Biden administration toward Ethiopia was rationalized as being supportive of Egypt’s position as the United States’ preferred partner in the region, controlling the Suez Canal. Washington also justifies its hostility on claims—widely discredited by the evidence—of Ethiopian “human rights violations” in its fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) marxist insurgency. But it was the TPLF which began the war surging into the neighboring Ethiopian Amhara and Afar regions, causing millions of refugees.

  And despite the U.S. efforts to please Cairo, Beijing and Moscow have also improved their positions with the Egyptian government.

  As a result, the Ethiopian government, which had seen Washington as its preferred partner, was forced to reopen talks with China—which the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali had essentially rejected on taking office in 2018—as well as Russia and Turkey. Turkey had until this point been regarded as a threat to Ethiopia, given that it had been funding Islamist insurgents in Ethiopia in recent years.

  To improve its defense position, the Ethiopian National Defense Force has been acquiring significant numbers of unmanned aerial combat vehicles (UCAVs) from China, Turkey, and Iran, and large amounts of weapons and ammunition from Russia, Belarus, and the United Arab Emirates. Russia has been moving Sukhoi Su-27S combat aircraft into the Ethiopian Air Force.

  The U.S. moves support Egypt’s longstanding rivalry with Ethiopia—a rivalry which has not been reciprocated—out of fear that a strong and united Ethiopia could dominate the lower Red Sea and jeopardize maritime traffic coming into and from Egypt’s Suez Canal. Egypt has also alleged that Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile, was restricting Nile water flows to Egypt. This was proven to be a false claim, too, although Egypt does face an increasing water shortage because of its growing population. Cairo, however, needs a scapegoat.

  China and Russia have been able to prove that they have real leverage in the region by resisting U.S. attempts to have the United Nations Security Council authorize military intervention against Ethiopia. The U.S. move was to help the TPLF and the equally violent—avowedly genocidal—Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) to break up Ethiopia.

  Beijing and Moscow gained considerable gratitude in Addis Ababa by using their veto powers in the Security Council to delay or block Washington’s plans. And Beijing already maintains a significant military base in Ethiopia’s neighbor, Djibouti, and built the new Djibouti-Addis Ababa rail link.

  

  Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attend the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti on Aug. 1, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Image)

  In mid-October, Washington escalated plans for economic sanctions against Ethiopia for refusing to allow “U.S. aid” convoys to be routed through the Ethiopian capital to the TPLF. Addis Ababa quickly discovered that the “U.S. aid” convoys were going merely to support the TPLF’s military operations against both the Tigrayan population and other Ethiopians.

  Hundreds of “aid convoys” were reaching the TPLF, but the trucks never returned to the capital; they were diverted to be used by the TPLF to aid its mobile warfare, now well-entrenched in the Amara and Afar regions.

  Far from being embattled, the TPLF has been engaging in large-scale, formal offensive military operations and causing what is genuinely a humanitarian crisis, with massive casualties and an estimated 2 million refugees. The World Heritage city of Lalibela in Amhara Region has been occupied for several months by TPLF forces, who were trained and armed by the United States under the Obama administration.

  Long-serving U.N. officials in Ethiopia have complained that, with the U.S. pressure, new U.N. officials have been shipped into the country and have been promoting the U.S.-TPLF line against the advice of the more experienced U.N. country team. Meanwhile, Ethiopian government forces had, by the second week of October, begun an offensive against the TPLF, utilizing China’s Wing Loong II (CJ-2) MALE (Medium-Altitude, Long-Endurance) UCAVs, which had been shipped in urgently from Chengdu to the Harar Meda Air Base in Ethiopia, not far from the fighting in the Afar and Amhara regions. The CJ-2s can carry 420 kg of ordnance, including precision weapons.

  Ethiopia has also acquired Turkish Bayraktar TB2 UCAVs, as well as Iranian UAVs.

  It does not appear as though the U.S. escalation of political and economic warfare against Ethiopia will abate as long as the Biden administration’s present State Department team is in place. State Department sources admit privately that they are using the same playbook against Ethiopia as they used during the Clinton administration against Serbia in the 1990s. But the United States was then strategically far stronger, and China, Russia, and Turkey were far weaker.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/18/2021 – 02:00

• Will The US Abandon Taiwan?
  Will The US Abandon Taiwan?

  Authored by Brandon Weichert via RealClearWorld.com,

  “Goodbye, great power competition and hello, strategic competition,” this is what the Biden Administration’s Pentagon spokesperson recently told Daniel Lipmann of Politico. According to analysts, these comments signal a shift toward a more cooperative, even conciliatory, American posture toward the Chinese Communist Party. Further, President Joe Biden told the media on October 6 that he had “spoken with [Chinese President Xi Jinping] about Taiwan. We agree that we will abide by the Taiwan Agreement.” 

  

  The agreement that Mr. Biden was referring to was the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, an ambiguous agreement forged between China and the United States in which Taiwan would be treated by the United States as a foreign country without being formally recognized as such. While the 1979 agreement does allow for the provision of American military aid to Taiwan such that Taiwan can “maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” the terms of this agreement allow for the Americans to shirk away from Taiwan whenever it is convenient for Washington do so.  

  The Biden-Xi call came on the heels of China’s brazen violation of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) during the week of October 1. At that time, China deployed more than 50 warplanes to violate Taiwan’s ADIZ, testing Taiwan’s overworked air defense network and pushing the island’s military to the point of exasperation. At some point, a grave miscalculation will occur between China and Taiwan—a mistake that could spark another world war that Washington is not prepared or willing to fight.

  In response to the recent Chinese aggression against Taiwan, the United States deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups near Okinawa. These powerful American warships linked up with the British Royal Navy’s carrier strike group. A group of warships from Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and the Netherlands also joined the American led flotilla. 

  The flotilla was meant to deter Beijing from any further acts of aggression during a low point in relations between Beijing and Washington.

  Beijing was likely unimpressed.

  Deterrence only works on an opponent who is willing to abandon the objective you are trying to prevent that opponent from achieving. Frankly, Beijing wants Taiwan more than Washington wants to keep the island away from China. 

  The current situation in China is especially dangerous for Xi Jinping’s continued rule. As China’s economy goes through a massive reorganization that could take down Xi’s regime, the Chinese ruler is looking to distract his people through powerful displays of nationalism, such as reclaiming the “lost” Chinese province of Taiwan. 

  President Biden, meanwhile, is beset by crises everywhere. 

  The American economy teeters on the brink as inflation continues unabated, a government shutdown looms, brittle supply chains cannot keep up with increased demand, Americans eschew returning to work in favor of greater welfare payments, and COVID-19 continues to rampage throughout the United States. To offset these economic threats to Biden’s presidency, the White House will likely try to get a new trade deal crafted with China that will curb inflation and generate trade. 

  What’s more, President Biden is fearful of a manmade global climate catastrophe. Both he and his climate czar, John Kerry, have for years insisted that China is key to curbing anthropogenic climate change. Far from courting war with China, the Biden Administration likely is seeking to reset relations to what they were before Donald Trump’s rise in 2016. 

  No matter what President Biden says, it is unlikely that he will commit US forces to defend Taiwan. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 41 percent of Americans support US military power being used to defend Taiwan. Therefore, it’s not politically expedient for Biden to risk another world war—at least according to the polls—anymore than it was for Biden to keep US forces in Afghanistan.

  Beijing is quickly approaching the time when it is prepared to call Washington’s bluff over Taiwan. Should Biden refuse to act militarily to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Beijing would probably offer Biden the useless consolation prize of a hollow climate deal and a new trade deal that empowers China in the long run. The diminution of American power will continue under Biden until there’s nothing left of the American-led world order.

  With America’s only options being world war or capitulation, without an actual leader to rally the American people to stand for what’s right and to chart a new course, what else other than the collapse of American power in the Indo-Pacific can one expect? 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:55

• Rare Breed Triggers Accused Of Creating "Machine Gun" Loses First Court Battle With ATF
  Rare Breed Triggers Accused Of Creating “Machine Gun” Loses First Court Battle With ATF

  Florida company Rare Breed Trigger, LLC manufactures a drop-in trigger that makes an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle cycle rounds faster lost its first court battle with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), according to Orlando-based news outlet WFTV. This means the company must halt all sales of its FRT-15 trigger while it waits for trial.

  On July 26, the ATF sent a letter to Rare Breed stating the FRT-15 trigger has been classified as a machine gun under the National Firearms Act, and the company must cease all sales or face fines and jail time. 

  In early August, Lawrence DeMonico, president of Rare Breed, sued the ATF after the agency said the drop-in trigger converted the semi-automatic weapon into a “machinegun,” capable of firing more than one bullet per trigger pull. He said the ATF’s claim is preposterous as the trigger must entirely cycle before the next round is fired. 

  DeMonico and his lawyer filed a request for a preliminary injunction as part of its lawsuit, preventing the ATF from inhibiting the company from selling its triggers ahead of trial. However, the request was denied on Tuesday, citing a lack of evidence that the ATF’s action would financially cripple the company. 

  The FRT-15 trigger sells for $380 on the company’s website, is currently listed as “out of stock.” Court documents show the company must stop making new triggers, and there’s a possibility that triggers in existence might be seized. 

  

  Responding to the new court development is Baltimore-based The Machine Gun Nest who said this is one case every gun owner needs to pay attention to because it could mean the ATF will continue to infringe on gun owners’ rights through executive fiat. 

  Saying that a trigger manufacturer cannot sell the one project they produce does “no harm” is a failure on some level there on the judge’s part. The fact that Rare Breed wasn’t issued a preliminary injunction is ridiculous. Gun owners should pay attention to this case, as the Rare Breed trigger and other similar forced reset triggers will be a convenient scapegoat for the government to continue to push forward on infringing citizens’ 2A rights.

  This is another example of the ATF arbitrarily redefining their definition of what a machine gun is, which was first done with the bump stock in 2018. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:30

• China Q3 GDP Growth Disappoints, Inflation Expected To Stay "High For Some Time"
  China Q3 GDP Growth Disappoints, Inflation Expected To Stay “High For Some Time”

  Facing a “complex and severe domestic and overseas environment”, China’s stats bureau spokesperson Fu Linghui admitted that economic indicators all weakened in Q3/September.

  • China 3Q GDP Grows 4.9% Y/Y; Est. 5% – MISS

  • China Sept. Industrial Output Rises 3.1% Y/Y; Est. 3.8% – MISS

  • China Jan.-Sept. Fixed Investment Rises 7.3% Y/Y; Est. 7.8% – MISS

  • China Sept. Retail Sales Rise 4.4% Y/Y; Est. 3.5% – BEAT

  GDP growth was a mere 0.2% in the third quarter from the previous three months.

  Bank of America’s Helen Qiao says on Bloomberg TV that, aside from retail sales, the numbers are all pointing to downside risk — she especially noted the hit from the energy crunch.

  Aside from GDP, all the other Chinese macro indicators continued to slide (except unemployment, which improved to its best since December 2018). It is worth noting that this is the official surveyed rate and doesn’t capture the whole jobs market.

  

  Sales of clothing fell 4.8% and automobiles fell almost 12% while furniture was also soft. Catering services rose only 3.1% YoY, a sign that Chinese are not out dining and wining much.

  Finally, PPI is likely to stay at high levels for some time, statistics spokesperson Fu says, suggesting little will be done in the short-term from a policy-tightening perspective.

  “However, it should also be noted that at present, uncertainties in the international environment are growing, and the domestic economic recovery is still unstable and unbalanced,”

  Chang Shu and Eric Zhu at Bloomberg Economics warn that the economy needs a cushion, stating that greater policy support is needed for the economy to pull through the soft patch. But a quick turnaround is unlikely, given the slowdown is being driven predominantly by supply shocks, and the government is committed to driving long-term structural reforms.

  Fu said the government will “strive to keep the economic operation within a reasonable range and ensure the completion of the main objectives and tasks of economic and social development.”

  Bloomberg’s Enda Curran warns that it’s clear now that the final three months of the year are going to be harder to navigate on so many front. To be clear, China will do what it takes to avoid a hard landing, but it’s still a more complicated picture than what many anticipated when the year began.

  The bottom line is that China’s economy is slowing — and may slow further from here. Supply challenges are clearly hurting the industrial sector even as retail sales hold up better than expected. Where the overall trajectory goes from here will depend on the energy crunch, consumer confidence and how much support the government will tip into the economy.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:17

• Weiss: We Got Here Because Of Cowardice, We Get Out With Courage
  Weiss: We Got Here Because Of Cowardice, We Get Out With Courage

  Authored by Bari Weiss via Commentary.org,

  A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears. 

  

  Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon.

  It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools.  And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

  So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, persuasion—the purpose of argument—is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings.

  Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.

  In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully. 

  In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

  In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. It is why statues of Grant and Washington are being torn down. And it is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out loud in class.

  In this ideology, intentions don’t matter. That is why Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic utility worker at San Diego Gas and Electric, was fired for making what someone said he thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture—when in fact he was cracking his knuckles out of his car window.

  In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective. Thus, the argument to get rid of the SAT. Or the admissions tests for public schools like Stuyvesant in New York or Lowell in San Francisco. 

  In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class. That is why third-graders in Cupertino, California, were asked to rate themselves in terms of their power and privilege. In third grade. 

  In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted. This is why, one high-schooler in New York tells me, students in his school are told, “If you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

  Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as “not racist.” 

  Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism. 

  What we call “cancel culture” is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next. 

  It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

  Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.

  “I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way. 

  If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work. 

  The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America. 

  Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army. 

  A few stories are worth recounting:

  David Peterson is an art professor at Skidmore College in upstate New York. He stood accused in the fevered summer of 2020 of “engaging in hateful conduct that threatens Black Skidmore students.”

  What was that hateful conduct? David and his wife, Andrea, went to watch a rally for police officers. “Given the painful events that continue to unfold across this nation, I guess we just felt compelled to see first-hand how all of this was playing out in our own community,” he told the Skidmore student newspaper. David and his wife stayed for 20 minutes on the edge of the event. They held no signs, participated in no chants. They just watched. Then they left for dinner.

  For the crime of listening, David Peterson’s class was boycotted. A sign appeared on his classroom door: “STOP. By entering this class you are crossing a campus-wide picket line and breaking the boycott against Professor David Peterson. This is not a safe environment for marginalized students.” Then the university opened an investigation into accusations of bias in the classroom.

  Across the country from Skidmore, at the University of Southern California, a man named Greg Patton is a professor of business communication. In 2020, Patton was teaching a class on “filler words”—such as “um” and “like” and so forth for his master’s-level course on communication for management. It turns out that the Chinese word for “like” sounds like the n-word. Students wrote the school’s staff and administration accusing their professor of “negligence and disregard.” They added: “We are burdened to fight with our existence in society, in the workplace, and in America. We should not be made to fight for our sense of peace and mental well-being” at school.

  In a normal, reality-based world, there is only one response to such a claim: You misheard. But that was not the response. This was: “It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” the dean, Geoffrey Garrett wrote. “Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry.” 

  This rot hasn’t been contained to higher education. At a mandatory training earlier this year in the San Diego Unified School District, Bettina Love, an education professor who believes that children learn better from teachers of the same race, accused white teachers of “spirit murdering black and brown children” and urged them to undergo “antiracist therapy for White educators.” 

  San Francisco’s public schools didn’t manage to open their schools during the pandemic, but the board decided to rename 44 schools—including those named for George Washington and John Muir—before suspending the plan. Meantime, one of the board members declared merit “racist” and “Trumpian.” 

  A recent educational program for sixth to eighth grade teachers called “a pathway to equitable math instruction”—funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—was recently sent to Oregon teachers by the state’s Department of Education. The program’s literature informs teachers that white supremacy shows up in math instruction when “rigor is expressed only in difficulty,” and “contrived word problems are valued over the math in students’ lived experiences.” 

  Serious education is the antidote to such ignorance. Frederick Douglass said, “Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light only by which men can be free.” Soaring words that feel as if they are a report from a distant galaxy. Education is increasingly where debate, dissent, and discovery go to die.

  It’s also very bad for kids.  For those deemed “privileged,” it creates a hostile environment where kids are too intimidated to participate. For those deemed “oppressed,” it inculcates an extraordinarily pessimistic view of the world, where students are trained to perceive malice and bigotry in everything they see. They are denied the dignity of equal standards and expectations. They are denied the belief in their own agency and ability to succeed. As Zaid Jilani had put it: “You cannot have power without responsibility. Denying minorities responsibility for their own actions, both good and bad, will only deny us the power we rightly deserve.”

  How did we get here? There are a lot of factors that are relevant to the answer: institutional decay; the tech revolution and the monopolies it created; the arrogance of our elites; poverty; the death of trust. And all of these must be examined, because without them we would have neither the far right nor the cultural revolutionaries now clamoring at America’s gates. 

  But there is one word we should linger on, because every moment of radical victory turned on it. The word is cowardice.

  The revolution has been met with almost no resistance by those who have the title CEO or leader or president or principal in front of their names. The refusal of the adults in the room to speak the truth, their refusal to say no to efforts to undermine the mission of their institutions, their fear of being called a bad name and that fear trumping their responsibility—that is how we got here.

  Allan Bloom had the radicals of the 1960s in mind when he wrote that “a few students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.” Now, a half-century later, those dancing bears hold named chairs at every important elite, sense-making institution in the country. 

  As Douglas Murray has put it: “The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else.”

  Each surely thought: These protestors have some merit! This institution, this university, this school, hasn’t lived up to all of its principles at all times! We have been racist! We have been sexist! We haven’t always been enlightened! I’ll give a bit and we’ll find a way to compromise. This turned out to be as naive as Robespierre thinking that he could avoid the guillotine. 

  Think about each of the anecdotes I’ve shared here and all the rest you already know. All that had to change for the entire story to turn out differently was for the person in charge, the person tasked with being a steward for the newspaper or the magazine or the college or the school district or the private high school or the kindergarten, to say: No.

  If cowardice is the thing that has allowed for all of this, the force that stops this cultural revolution can also be summed up by one word: courage. And courage often comes from people you would not expect.

  Consider Maud Maron. Maron is a lifelong liberal who has always walked the walk. She was an escort for Planned Parenthood; a law-school research assistant to Kathleen Cleaver, the former Black Panther; and a poll watcher for John Kerry in Pennsylvania during the 2004 presidential election. In 2016, she was a regular contributor to Bernie Sanders’s campaign.

  Maron dedicated her career to Legal Aid: “For me, being a public defender is more than a job,” she told me. “It’s who I am.”

  But things took a turn when, this past year, Maron spoke out passionately and publicly about the illiberalism that has gripped the New York City public schools attended by her four children. 

  “I am very open about what I stand for,” she told me.

  “I am pro-integration. I am pro-diversity. And also I reject the narrative that white parents are to blame for the failures of our school system. I object to the mayor’s proposal to get rid of specialized admissions tests to schools like Stuyvesant. And I believe that racial essentialism is racist and should not be taught in school.”

  What followed this apparent thought crime was a 21st-century witch hunt. Maron was smeared publicly by her colleagues. They called her “racist, and openly so.” They said, “We’re ashamed that she works for the Legal Aid Society.” 

  Most people would have walked away and quietly found a new job. Not Maud Maron. This summer, she filed suit against the organization, claiming that she was forced out of Legal Aid because of her political views and her race, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. 

  “The reason they went after me is that I have a different point of view,” she said.

  “These ideologues have tried to ruin my name and my career, and they are going after other good people. Not enough people stand up and say: It is totally wrong to do this to a person. And this is not going to stop unless people stand up to it.”

  That’s courage.

  Courage also looks like Paul Rossi, the math teacher at Grace Church High School in New York who raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. A few days later, all the school’s advisers were required to read a public reprimand of his conduct out loud to every student in the school. Unwilling to disavow his beliefs, Rossi blew the whistle: “I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.” That’s courage. 

  Courage is Xi Van Fleet, a Virginia mom who endured Mao’s Cultural Revolution as a child and spoke up to the Loudoun County School Board at a public meeting in June. “You are training our children to loathe our country and our history,” she said in front of the school board. “Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this feels very familiar…. The only difference is that they used class instead of race.”

  Gordon Klein, a professor at UCLA, recently filed suit against his own university. Why? A student asked him to grade black students with “greater leniency.” He refused, given that such a racial preference would violate UCLA’s anti-discrimination policies (and maybe even the law). But the people in charge of UCLA’s Anderson School launched a racial-discrimination complaint into him. They denounced him, banned him from campus, appointed a monitor to look at his emails, and suspended him. He eventually was reinstated—because he had done absolutely nothing wrong—but not before his reputation and career were severely damaged. “I don’t want to see anyone else’s life destroyed as they attempted to do to me,” Klein told me. “Few have the intestinal fortitude to fight cancel culture. I do. This is about sending a message to every petty tyrant out there.”

  Courage is Peter Boghossian. He recently resigned his post at Portland State University, writing in a letter to his provost: “The university transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only output was grievance and division…. I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?”

  Who would I be if I didn’t?

  George Orwell said that “the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” In an age of lies, telling the truth is high risk. It comes with a cost. But it is our moral obligation.

  It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking. It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity. It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies. 

  This bravery isn’t the last or only step in opposing this revolution—it’s just the first. After that must come honest assessments of why America was vulnerable to start with, and an aggressive commitment to rebuilding the economy and society in ways that once again offer life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the greatest number of Americans.

  But let’s start with a little courage.

  Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.

  When you’re told that traits such as industriousness and punctuality are the legacy of white supremacy, don’t hesitate to reject it. When you’re told that statues of figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are offensive, explain that they are national heroes. When you’re told that “nothing has changed” in this country for minorities, don’t dishonor the memory of civil-rights pioneers by agreeing. And when you’re told that America was founded in order to perpetuate slavery, don’t take part in rewriting the country’s history.

  America is imperfect. I always knew it, as we all do—and the past few years have rocked my faith like no others in my lifetime. But America and we Americans are far from irredeemable. 

  The motto of Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery paper, the North Star—“The Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren”—must remain all of ours.

  We can still feel the pull of that electric cord Lincoln talked about 163 years ago—the one “in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

  Every day I hear from people who are living in fear in the freest society humankind has ever known. Dissidents in a democracy, practicing doublespeak. That is what is happening right now. What happens five, 10, 20 years from now if we don’t speak up and defend the ideas that have made all of our lives possible?

  Liberty. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. These are ideas worth fighting for.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 23:05

• Washington State Trooper Gives 'Final Sign Off' After Refusing To Take Vaccine; Tells Governor To Kiss His A**
  Washington State Trooper Gives ‘Final Sign Off’ After Refusing To Take Vaccine; Tells Governor To Kiss His A**

  A Washington state trooper released a video of his ‘final sign off’ after more than 22 years on the Yakima County force, after he was forced out of his job for refusing to take the Covid-19 vaccine by Oct. 18.

  

  “This is my final sign-off after 22 years serving the citizens of the state of Washington, I’ve been asked to leave because I am dirty,” said the unnamed officer.

  “Numerous fatalities, injuries, I’ve worked sick, I’ve played sick, buried lots of friends over these years,” he continued. “I’d like to thank you guys, as well as the citizens of Yakima County as well as my fellow officers within the valley. Without you guys I wouldn’t have been very successful.”

  “So State 1034 this is the last time you’ll hear me in a state patrol car… And [governor] Jay Inslee can kiss my ass,” he concluded.

  WASHINGTON STATE TROOPER SIGNS OFF AFTER BEING FIRED FOR NOT TAKING THE JABpic.twitter.com/ELjD2L3T6R

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 17, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn response, a dispatcher thanked him for his years of service.

  “Thank you for your 22 years and five months of service to the citizens of Washington state,” she said. “You’ve taken on many roles in your time with the patrol. In your first year, you delivered a baby while on patrol. You’ve been a theory instructor and part of the chaplaincy board.”

  “You’ve been a great role model and a mentor for all the young troopers serving in the area by sharing your knowledge and experience throughout the years,” she continued, adding: “Thank you for your service.“

  Governor Jay Inslee issued a sweeping order in August mandating that state government workers must “Show proof of vaccination on or before October 18 or lose your job.”

  According to the Seattle Times, more than 90% of state govt. employees were fully vaccinated as of Saturday.

  Last Monday we noted that up to 40% of Seattle PD may lose their job over the mandate. As of Oct. 6, 292 sworn personnel had yet to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccination per the report, down from 354 on Tuesday. An additional 111 officers are awaiting the results of exemption requests, meaning the total number of potentially fired Seattle cops is as high as 403.

  That said, the President of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Mike Solan, said on Friday that officers who choose not to get vaccinated will not be terminated immediately on the Oct. 18 deadline – and will instead be given notice for a “Loudermill hearing” where they will be able to plead their case.

  Meanwhile in Chicago, a Judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday against the Chicago police union president prohibiting him from making public statements which encourage members not to report their Covid-19 vaccination status to authorities.

  Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s high-stakes standoff with the police union over the city’s vaccine mandate landed in court Friday, with a judge doing what the mayor could not — temporarily silencing Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara.

  Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan granted the city’s request for an injunction but only to the extent that Catanzara be precluded — at least until the next hearing Oct. 25 — from making any further YouTube videos or otherwise using social media platforms to encourage his members to defy the city’s mandate to enter their vaccine status on the city’s data portal.

  Catanzara soon took to the union’s YouTube channel where he said the courts were attempting to muzzle him. He said he would comply and urged his members to “do what’s in their hearts and minds.” –Chicago Sun Times

  “Enough is enough…”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 22:40

• Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting "Insurrection" Fears
  Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  When a population is placed in a state of sufficiently grave fear and anger regarding a perceived threat, concerns about the constitutionality, legality and morality of measures adopted in the name of punishing the enemy typically disappear. The first priority, indeed the sole priority, is to crush the threat. Questions about the legality of actions ostensibly undertaken against the guilty parties are brushed aside as trivial annoyances at best, or, worse, castigated as efforts to sympathize with and protect those responsible for the danger. When a population is subsumed with pulsating fear and rage, there is little patience for seemingly abstract quibbles about legality or ethics. The craving for punishment, for vengeance, for protection, is visceral and thus easily drowns out cerebral or rational impediments to satiating those primal impulses.

  

  The aftermath of the 9/11 attack provided a vivid illustration of that dynamic. The consensus view, which formed immediately, was that anything and everything possible should be done to crush the terrorists who — directly or indirectly — were responsible for that traumatic attack. The few dissenters who attempted to raise doubts about the legality or morality of proposed responses were easily dismissed and marginalized, when not ignored entirely. Typically, they were vilified with the accusation that their constitutional and legal objections were frauds: mere pretexts to conceal their sympathy and even support for the terrorists. It took at least a year or two after that attack for there to be any space for questions about the legality, constitutionality, and morality of the U.S. response to 9/11 to be entertained at all.

  For many liberals and Democrats in the U.S., 1/6 is the equivalent of 9/11. One need not speculate about that. Many have said this explicitly. Some prominent Democrats in politics and media have even insisted that 1/6 was worse than 9/11.

  Joe Biden’s speechwriters, when preparing his script for his April address to the Joint Session of Congress, called the three-hour riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” Liberal icon Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose father’s legacy was cemented by years of casting 9/11 as the most barbaric attack ever seen, now serves as Vice Chair of the 1/6 Committee; in that role, she proclaimed that the forces behind 1/6 represent “a threat America has never seen before.” The enabling resolution that created the Select Committee calls 1/6 “one of the darkest days of our democracy.” USA Today’s editor David Mastio published an op-ed whose sole point was a defense of the hysterical thesis from MSNBC analysts that 1/6 is at least as bad as 9/11 if not worse. S.V. Date, the White House correspondent for America’s most nakedly partisan “news” outlet, The Huffington Post, published a series of tweets arguing that 1/6 was worse than 9/11 and that those behind it are more dangerous than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ever were.

  Trump Apology Corps in full apology mode.

  The 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden never threatened the heart of the American experiment.

  The 1/6 terrorists and Donald Trump absolutely did exactly that. Trump continues that effort today. https://t.co/cDcOkXFeio

  — S.V. Dáte (@svdate) May 25, 2021

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

  And ever since the pro-Trump crowd was dispersed at the Capitol after a few hours of protests and riots, the same repressive climate that arose after 9/11 has prevailed. Mainstream political and media sectors instantly consecrated the narrative, fully endorsed by the U.S. security state, that the United States was attacked on 1/6 by domestic terrorists bent on insurrection and a coup. They also claimed in unison that the ideology driving those right-wing domestic terrorists now poses the single most dangerous threat to the American homeland, a claim which the intelligence community was making even before 1/6 to argue for a new War on Terror (just as neocons wanted to invade and engineer regime change in Iraq prior to 9/11 and then exploited 9/11 to achieve that long-held goal).

  With those extremist and alarming premises fully implanted, there has been little tolerance for questions about whether proposed responses for dealing with the 1/6 “domestic terrorists” and their incomparably dangerous ideology are excessive, illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional. Even before Joe Biden was inaugurated, his senior advisers made clear that one of their top priorities was to enact a bill from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — now a member of the Select Committee on 1/6 — to import the first War on Terror onto domestic soil. Even without enactment of a new law, there is no doubt that a second War on Terror, this one domestic, has begun and is growing, all in the name of the 1/6 “Insurrection” and with little dissent or even public debate.

  Following the post-9/11 script, anyone voicing such concerns about responses to 1/6 is reflexively accused of minimizing the gravity of the Capitol riot and, worse, of harboring sympathy for the plotters and their insurrectionary cause. Questions or doubts about the proportionality or legality of government actions in the name of 1/6 are depicted as insincere, proof that those voicing such doubts are acting not in defense of constitutional or legal principles but out of clandestine camaraderie with the right-wing domestic terrorists and their evil cause.

  When it comes to 1/6 and those who were at the Capitol, there is no middle ground. That playbook is not new. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” was the rigidly binary choice which President George W. Bush presented to Americans and the world when addressing Congress shortly after the 9/11 attack. With that framework in place, anything short of unquestioning support for the Bush/Cheney administration and all of its policies was, by definition, tantamount to providing aid and comfort to the terrorists and their allies. There was no middle ground, no third option, no such thing as ambivalence or reluctance: all of that uncertainty or doubt, insisted the new war president, was to be understood as standing with the terrorists.

  The coercive and dissent-squashing power of that binary equation has proven irresistible ever since, spanning myriad political positions and cultural issues. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s insistence that one either fully embrace what he regards as the program of “anti-racism” or be guilty by definition of supporting racism — that there is no middle ground, no space for neutrality, no room for ambivalence about any of the dogmatic planks — perfectly tracks this manipulative formula. As Dr. Kendi described the binary he seeks to impose: “what I’m trying to do with my work is to really get Americans to eliminate the concept of ‘not racist’ from their vocabulary, and realize we’re either being racist or anti-racist.” Eight months after the 1/6 riot — despite the fact that the only people who died that day were Trump supporters and not anyone they killed — that same binary framework shapes our discourse, with a clear message delivered by those purporting to crush an insurrection and confront domestic terrorism. You’re either with us, or with the 1/6 terrorists.

  What makes this ongoing prohibition of dissent or even doubt so remarkable is that so many of the responses to 1/6 are precisely the legal and judicial policies that liberals have spent decades denouncing. Indeed, many of the defining post-1/6 policies are identical to those now retrospectively viewed as abusive and excessive, if not unconstitutional, when invoked as part of the first War on Terror. We are thus confronted with the surreal dynamic that policies long castigated in American liberalism — whether used generally in the criminal justice system or specifically in the name of avenging 9/11 and defeating Islamic extremism — are now off-limits from scrutiny or critique when employed in the name of avenging 1/6 and crushing the dangerous domestic ideology that fostered it.

  Almost immediately after the Capitol riot, some of the most influential Democratic lawmakers — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who also now chairs the Select 1/6 Committee — demanded that any participants in the protest be placed on the no-fly list, long regarded as one of the most extreme civil liberties assaults from the first War on Terror. And at least some of the 1/6 protesters have been placed on that list: American citizens, convicted of no crime, prohibited from boarding commercial airplanes based on a vague and unproven assessment, from unseen and unaccountable security state bureaucrats, that they are too dangerous to fly. I reported extensively on the horrors and abuses of the no-fly list as part of the first War on Terror and do not recall a single liberal speaking in defense of that tactic. Yet now that this same brute instrument is being used against Trump supporters, there has not, to my knowledge, been a single prominent liberal raising objections to the resurrection of the no-fly list for American citizens who have been convicted of no crime.

  

  With more than 600 people now charged in connection with the events of 1/6, not one person has been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government, incite insurrection, conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping of public officials, or any of the other fantastical claims that rained down on them from media narratives. No one has been charged with treason or sedition. Perhaps that is because, as Reuters reported in August, “the FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.” Yet these defendants are being treated as if they were guilty of these grave crimes of which nobody has been formally accused, with the exact type of prosecutorial and judicial overreach that criminal defense lawyers and justice reform advocates have long railed against.

  Dozens of the 1/6 defendants have been denied bail, thus being imprisoned for months without having been found guilty of anything. Many are being held in unusually harsh and bizarrely cruel conditions, causing a federal judge on Wednesday to hold “the warden of the D.C. jail and director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court,” and then calling on the Justice Department “to investigate whether the jail is violating the civil rights of dozens of detained Jan. 6 defendants.” Some of the pre-trial prison protocols have been so punitive that even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — who calls the 1/6 protesters “domestic terrorists” — denounced their treatment as abusive: “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren said, adding: “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” Warren also said she is “worried that law enforcement officials are deploying it to ‘punish’ the Jan. 6 defendants or to ‘break them so that they will cooperate.”

  The few 1/6 defendants who have thus far been sentenced after pleading guilty have been subjected to exceptionally punitive sentences, the kind liberal criminal justice reform advocates have been rightly denouncing for years. Several convicted of nothing more than trivial misdemeanors are being sentenced to real prison time; last week, Michigan’s Robert Reeder pled guilty to “one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building” yet received a jail term of 3 months, with the judge admitting that the motive was to “send a signal to the other participants in that riot… that they can expect to receive jail time.”

  Meanwhile, long-controversial SWAT teams are being routinely deployed to arrest 1/6 suspects in their homes, and long-time liberal activists denouncing these tactics have suddenly decided they are appropriate for these Trump supporters. That prosecutors are notoriously overzealous in their demands for harsh prison time is a staple of liberal discourse, but now, an Obama-appointed judge has repeatedly doled out sentences to 1/6 defendants that are harsher and longer than those requested by DOJ prosecutors, to the applause of liberals. In sum, these defendants are subjected to one of the grossest violations of due process: they are being treated as if they are guilty of crimes — treason, sedition, insurrection, attempted murder, and kidnapping — which not even the DOJ has accused them of committing. And the fundamental precept of any healthy justice system — namely, punishment for citizens is merited only once they have been found guilty of crimes in a court of law — has been completely discarded.

  Serious questions about FBI involvement in the 1/6 events linger. For months, Americans were subjected to a frightening media narrative that far-right groups had plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, only for proof to emerge that at least half of the conspirators, including its leaders, were working for or at the behest of the FBI. Regarding 1/6, the evidence has been clear for months, though largely confined to right-wing outlets, that the FBI had its tentacles in the three groups it claims were most responsible for the 1/6 protest: the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters. Yet last month, The New York Times acknowledged that the FBI was directly communicating with one of its informants present at the Capitol, a member of the Proud Boys, while the riot unfolded, meaning “federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.” All of this suggests that to the extent 1/6 had any advanced centralized planning, it was far closer to an FBI-induced plot than a centrally organized right-wing insurrection.

  Despite this mountain of abuses, it is exceedingly rare to find anyone outside of conservative media and MAGA politics raising objections to any of this (which is what made Sen. Warren’s denunciation of their pre-trial prison conditions so notable). The reason is obvious: just as was true in the aftermath of 9/11, people are petrified to express any dissent or even question what is being done to the alleged domestic terrorists for fear of standing accused of sympathizing with them and their ideology, an accusation that can be career-ending for many.

  Many of the 1/6 defendants are impoverished and cannot afford lawyers, yet private-sector law firms who have active pro bono programs will not touch anyone or anything having to do with 1/6, while the ACLU is now little more than an arm of the Democratic Party and thus displays almost no interest in these systemic civil liberties assaults. And for many liberals — the ones who are barely able to contain their glee at watching people lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic due to vaccine-hesitancy or who do not hide their joy that the unarmed Ashli Babbitt got what she deserved — their political adversaries these days are not just political adversaries but criminals and even terrorists, rendering no punishment too harsh or severe. For them, cruelty is not just acceptable; the cruelty is the point.

  ---

  The Unconstitutionality of the 1/6 Committee

  Civil liberties abuses of this type are common when the U.S. security state scares enough people into believing that the threat they face is so acute that normal constitutional safeguards must be disregarded. What is most definitely not common, and is arguably the greatest 1/6-related civil liberties abuse of them all, is the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

  To say that the investigative acts of the 1/6 Committee are radical is a wild understatement. Along with serving subpoenas on four former Trump officials, they have also served subpoenas on eleven private citizens: people selected for interrogation precisely because they exercised their Constitutional right of free assembly by applying for and receiving a permit to hold a protest on January 6 opposing certification of the 2020 election.

  When the Select 1/6 Committee recently boasted of these subpoenas in its press release, it made clear what methodology it used for selecting who it was targeting: “The committee used permit paperwork for the Jan. 6 rally to identify other individuals involved in organizing.” In other words, any citizen whose name appeared on permit applications to protest was targeted for that reason alone. The committee’s stated goal is “to collect information from them and their associated entities on the planning, organization, and funding of those events”: to haul citizens before Congress to interrogate them on their constitutionally protected right to assemble and protest and probe their political beliefs and associations:

  

  

  Even worse are the so-called “preservation notices” which the committee secretly issued to dozens if not hundreds of telecoms, email and cell phone providers, and other social media platforms (including Twitter and Parler), ordering those companies to retain extremely invasive data regarding the communications and physical activities of more than 100 citizens, with the obvious intent to allow the committee to subpoena those documents. The communications and physical movement data sought by the committee begins in April, 2020 — nine months before the 1/6 riot. The committee refuses to make public the list of individuals it is targeting with these sweeping third-party subpoenas, but on the list are what CNN calls “many members of Congress,” along with dozens of private citizens involved in obtaining the permit to protest and then promoting and planning the gathering on social media.

  What makes these secret notices especially pernicious is that the committee requested that these companies not notify their customers that the committee has demanded the preservation of their data. The committee knows it lacks the power to impose a “gag order” on these companies to prevent them from notifying their users that they received the precursor to a subpoena: a power the FBI in conjunction with courts does have. So they are relying instead on “voluntary compliance” with the gag order request, accompanied by the thuggish threat that any companies refusing to voluntarily comply risk the public relations harm of appearing to be obstructing the committee’s investigation and, worse, protecting the 1/6 “insurrectionists.”

  Worse still, the committee in its preservation notices to these communications companies requested that “you do not disable, suspend, lock, cancel, or interrupt service to these subscribers or accounts solely due to this request,” and that they should first contact the committee “if you are not able or willing to respond to this request without alerting the subscribers.” The motive here is obvious: if any of these companies risk the PR hit by refusing to conceal from their customers the fact that Congress is seeking to obtain their private data, they are instructed to contact the committee instead, so that the committee can withdraw the request. That way, none of the customers will ever be aware that the committee targeted their private data and will thus never be able to challenge the legality of the committee’s acts in a court of law.

  In other words, even the committee knows that its power to seek this information about private citizens lacks any convincing legal justification and, for that reason, wants to ensure that nobody has the ability to seek a judicial ruling on the legality of their actions. All of these behaviors raise serious civil liberties concerns, so much so that even left-liberal legal scholars and at least one civil liberties group (obviously not the ACLU) — petrified until now of creating any appearance that they are defending 1/6 protesters by objecting to civil liberties abuses — have begun very delicately to raise doubts and concerns about the committee’s actions.

  But the most serious constitutional problem is not the specific investigative acts of the committee but the very existence of the committee itself. There is ample reason to doubt the constitutionality of this committee’s existence.

  When crimes are committed in the United States, there are two branches of government — and only two — vested by the Constitution with the power to investigate criminal suspects and adjudicate guilt: the executive branch (through the FBI and DOJ) and the judiciary. Congress has no role to play in any of that, and for good and important reasons. The Constitution places limits on what the executive branch and judiciary can do when investigating suspects . . . . .

  The full article is available to subscribers only. To read the rest of the article, please subscribe at the button below and the full article will then be fully accessible here

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 22:15

• 'Coffee Cup Gestapo': The Latest Covid Crackdown Viral Video Out Of Australia
  ‘Coffee Cup Gestapo’: The Latest Covid Crackdown Viral Video Out Of Australia

  Examples of Covid policy crackdowns out of Australia have only grown more and more absurd as viral videos continue to hit the web on a weekly basis showing the insane and Orwellian lengths police and government authorities are willing to go supposedly in the name of keeping people “safe”.

  The latest encounter of an Aussie citizen with police in Melbourne shows officers actually briefly inspecting a man’s beverage, apparently to ensure that his pulling down his mask in order to consume coffee was “justified”. It should also be noted that this took place outside in the fresh air of a public park…

  Melbourne Police grabs a guy’s coffee cup to check if there is coffee in it otherwise, he would of fined him for not wearing a mask 👀

  Coffee is known to kill COVID 🙃☕️ pic.twitter.com/7wUB1lBXDF

  — DIOGO THE FIVE8 (@Diogothefive8) October 16, 2021

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

  The short clip, which since being posted online has been reported on in multiple international media outlets, shows a masked-up and glove-wearing officer grabbing the man’s coffee cup, while saying, “Do you mind if I check if there’s actually anything in that?” 

  After giving it a shake, the officer gives it back to the man and says, “Enjoy your coffee” – apparently satisfied at finding liquid in it.

  Some news reports mocked the scene as a “North Korea-style” encounter and others dubbed the officers as part of the “Coffee cup Gestapo”.   

  The clip of the encounter has racked up millions of views across various social media platforms this weekend.

  Two years ago if anybody had said, in the future groups of Police Officers will be checking to see whether you are carrying an empty coffee cup to avoid wearing a mask that will not protect you against a virus that will not harm the healthy we would have laughed in their face.

  — onlywayisup (@mark1854now) October 16, 2021

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  The Daily Mail captured some of the outraged social media commentary in response to the incident as follows:

  ‘They were all standing around like a council worker leaning on his shovel, waiting for smoko,’ posted another. ‘Innocent passer-by suffered the brunt of their bored frustration. Poor grunt, no heads to bash, they were made to look stupid.’

  And some are noting the irony in applying the same obsessive social distancing standards to the police, who themselves ended up being the potential ‘contaminators’ by grabbing the man’s coffee in the first place:

  Others were concerned the police officer – who was wearing gloves – could have potentially contaminated the cup by touching it before returning it.

  ‘Why wasn’t the officer forced to change his gloves to touch another person’s property? He could easily spread Covid,’ said one. 

  ‘If that police officer unknowingly had Covid he would absolutely spread it. It is completely irresponsible (and against all infection control) to behave that way.’ 

  But ultimately it appears to be “all about control” – as many commentators have pointed out of late, also following multiple recent videos showing Australian police going door to door to confront residents over their social media posts expressing pushback against the government’s blatantly authoritarian laws and regulations forced on the population during the pandemic.

  Australia has fallen. pic.twitter.com/iQnlCokZT6

  — Avi Yemini 🇦🇺🇮🇱 (@OzraeliAvi) October 10, 2021

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

  No doubt there’s more to come, with the daily and weekly examples getting more and more absurd and outlandish.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:50

• Jussie Smollett Forced To Face Trial After Judge Denies Dismissal Request
  Jussie Smollett Forced To Face Trial After Judge Denies Dismissal Request

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Jussie Smollett’s criminal trial will move forward after a judge on Friday struck down the actor’s effort to dismiss the criminal case.

  

  Smollett in early 2019 made headlines after he told police officers that he was attacked by two white men who shouted epithets at him. However, several weeks later, Smollett, who is black, was charged with one felony count of lying to authorities after officers uncovered evidence that suggested that the incident was staged.

  After initial charges against him were dropped by Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, a special prosecutor was appointed and charged him with felony counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing false police reports about what happened. The actor has denied the allegations and has pleaded not guilty.

  Foxx, who had received funding from wealthy left-wing financier George Soros for her reelection campaign, came under criticism for her handling of the case. The special prosecutor concluded she and her office did nothing criminal but did abuse their discretion and made false statements about the case.

  On Oct. 15, Judge James Linn said that Smollett’s case now is being handled by a special prosecutor and stated he won’t interfere, according to reporters. Smollett’s trial is set for Nov. 29.

  One of the actor’s lawyers, Nenye Uche, said that Smollett had been offered a non-prosecution deal by prosecutors who had previously served in Cook County. Uche argued that Smollett had given up a $10,000 bond and performed community service under the deal.

  Smollett being “hauled back into court again” is a violation of his due process rights, Uche argued in court, USA Today reported.

  “It’s as clear as day—this case should be dismissed because of an immunity agreement,” Uche said. “A deal is a deal. That’s ancient principle.”

  But Sean Wieber, an attorney with the special prosecutor’s office, said Uche’s claim should be dismissed.

  “We have already dealt with this before,” he said, according to the report.

  “Nothing we’ve heard today changes one iota [of the case]. This can be comfortably denied.”

  Amid widespread speculation that Smollett partook in a hoax to advance his career, the actor was later written out of “Empire,” which subsequently went off the air. Smollett is also fighting a civil lawsuit from the city of Chicago, which claims the actor owes the city tens of thousands of dollars to cover police costs during the investigation.

  Earlier this month, it was announced the jury selection phase of Smollett’s trial would start in early November.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:25

• Malone, Kirsch, & Wuhan Whistleblower Hit Maui To Promote Rational Debate On All Things Covid
  Malone, Kirsch, & Wuhan Whistleblower Hit Maui To Promote Rational Debate On All Things Covid

  As protests against Covid-19 mandates rage in major cities around the world, a group of US-based truth seekers took to Maui over the weekend to headline the ‘Free Maui Unity March & Rally’ – where they promoted the free exchange of information abuot the virus, untainted by government narratives, and an evidence-based approach to the pandemic so that people can make informed medical decisions without fear of retribution.

  Informed Consent. pic.twitter.com/khuA1cmvnC

  — Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) October 17, 2021

  

  Among the attendees were Dr. Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Frontline Doctors Ryan Cole and Richard Urso, and a guest appearance by Whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan – a Chinese virologist who worked in a WHO reference lab in Hong Kong and has published evidence that Covid-19 was created in a lab.

  

  Former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd attended a post-rally private dinner with the speakers, and told Zero Hedge that topics discussed included the “coordinated effort to prevent early treatment of Covid with pre-existing available drugs,” and that currently available vaccines are “experimental, don’t provide immunity or prevent transmission and have more risk than benefit.“

  “We can’t even begin to know the long term effects of the vaccines – one of many concerns to the doctors on the panel. Usually a vaccine requires 7-10 years of data before it can be approved,” Dowd added, citing Dr. Ryan Cole of America’s Frontline Doctors.

  On Saturday, hundreds – if not thousands of Hawaiians turned out for a march opposing pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates, eventually ending up at the War Memorial Stadium to hear the featured speakers.

  pic.twitter.com/e5hMFkpZpG

  — Ed ☯️ The Obsolete Man…a Free Thinker (@DowdEdward) October 16, 2021

  One of the speakers, Steve Kirsch – a tech mogul who made hundreds of millions in Silicon valley, and started the Covid-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) – spoke at length about vaccine safety, and has compiled several arguments against the Covid-19 vaccine in a lengthy PDF. Kirsch challenges anyone to refute his data. Instead, he was pushed out of his most recent position as CEO of a tech startup, and treated to a Daily Beast hit-piece.

  Trained as an engineer, Kirsch maintains that the vaccine is ineffective, more dangerous than the virus itself, and that the medical field is under constant threat to stick to official narratives or face smear campaigns. Within minutes of Dowd uploading his Saturday speech, YouTube deleted it – forcing him to upload it to free speech platform Rumble instead.

  The headliners gathered for a second dinner Saturday evening, at which Kirsch said that despite losing vast wealth and opportunities in his mission to educate people “if my data about these vaccines can save just one life it’s worth it to me.”

  At last night’s panel every member was asked why the are doing this. Steve Kirsch who lost his company said “if my data about these vaccines can save just one life it’s worth it to me”. It struck me…they are all Schindler. pic.twitter.com/KFXyDqKo97

  — Ed ☯️ The Obsolete Man…a Free Thinker (@DowdEdward) October 17, 2021

  Dr. Robert Malone – a pivotal figure in the development of mRNA vaccine technology and staunch advocate for medical freedom, proposed what he calls the “Maui plan,” which contains three elements:

  1. Early treatment options
  2. The right for doctors to practice medicine how they see fit without fear of retribution (“The media is not trained to practice medicine. The politicians are not trained to practice medicine”).
  3. “Don’t vaccinate our children.”

  “The risk to kids from this pandemic are about zero,” said Malone. “Pretty darn close. In something like 400 deaths in children since the beginning as identified by the CDC, every single one of those is in children that had major preexisting medical conditions.”

  

  “Let’s stop the fear being put on our children. The fear is what’s damaging our children, it’s not the virus,” said Malone (who has yet to be un-personed by YouTube), adding “If there are superspreaders, it’s probably the vaccinated adults who are having less symptoms, going to the grocery store, going into the schools, going into the hospitals, going into state government – whether they’re vaxxed or not, the vaccines are not protecting them against Delta.”

  No Fear. pic.twitter.com/RMPoHYfO2Q

  — Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) October 17, 2021

  For an in-depth look at what Kirsch and Malone

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 21:00

• Why Goldman Expects A Huge Market Melt-up In The Coming Weeks
  Why Goldman Expects A Huge Market Melt-up In The Coming Weeks

  Below we excerpt from the latest Goldman”Tactical Flow-of-funds: October 2H” report by flow trader Scott Rubner who writes that he is “on FOMO Watch” and lays out the argument for a major market breakout in the coming weeks.

  October 1H (S&P is +3.03% MTD ) = “We made it through the October __________ scare.” Word bank: Stagflation, China Property, Covid, Tapering, Supply Chain, Energy, Hiking, China, Growth, Higher rates, etc, etc.

  Talking Points: (Positioning and Sentiment is UN-STRECHED), really un-stretched.

  1. Un-emotional systematic CTA and VC equity re-leveraging given the decline in volatility: Sold -$96B of Equity over the last 1 month.

  2. Un-emotional systematic, now covering shorts in fixed income (read positive NDX, which means positive SPX): Sold -$540B of FI over the last 1 month.

  3. Discretionary shorting into expiry covering, GS PB.

  4. Corporate buyback dry powder is the largest incremental buyer in the market.

  5. 401k quarterly equity inflows have not slowed

  6. Generation I – (Generation Investor), the retail trader hugely pivoted back into secular growth.

  7. Mutual Fund year end is 10/29 – can’t report cash on the year-end statements?

  8. 2022 seems very difficult! There is a growing interest to try and catch-up to benchmark gains here in Q4.

  9. Bond inflows have now slowed to zero and credit logged their first outflows. $ looking for a home?

  This is the biggest flow dynamic to know for November, and this kicks off aggressively following back earnings.

  1. US corporates authorized +$884B YTD as of October 8th. This is YTD authorization record and exceeds the tax reform Euphoria of 2018. The Goldman buyback desk estimates FY authorizations will be $965B.

  2. The GS buyback desk forecasts $887B worth of buyback executions for 2021. This would be the second highest year on record (after 2018).

  3. The breakdown of executions per quarter is as follows: Q1 – $203B (actual), Q2 – $234B (actual), Q3 – $220B forecast, Q4 – $230B forecast.

  4. In Q4, the GS buyback desk estimates +$230B repurchases, this is broken down by +$70B in October during the blackout window using 10b5-1 plans and +$160B in November and December.

  

  

  According to GS Research, November is the #1 month for buyback executions, November plus December is the best two month period of the year for executions.

  5. 11/1 is the defacto start to the buyback window (65% of corporates are in the open window)

  6. 11/8 is the GS official start to the buyback window (90% of corporates are in the open window).

  7. There are 42.5 trading days in November and December including major vacation weeks and low liquidity.

  8. The $160B of repurchases in the last two months of the year is ~$3.80B per day, every day. This is significantly front loaded into November (and should pace above >$4B).

  

  It’s not just buybacks… Equity Inflows – this has been the biggest market dynamic of 2021.

  9.There have been +$774.50B global equity inflows YTD, the best year on record by a mile, in the 190 trading days ending on October 6th. This will be roughly $1 Trillion worth of inflows for 2021.

  10. This is approximately +$4.10B worth of [retail] demand every single day of 2021.

  11. My assumption is that these inflows will not slow (actually increase coming out of bonds), but lets say, same pace.

  12. This is $8B worth of equity demand from corporates and retail, all else equal for the 42.50 trading days to close out the year. This before what I am typing below.

  13. Bond inflows went to zero this week and logged credit outflows (Investment Grade, High Yield, and EM Debt) – looking for a home?

  

  

  

  Melt-up checkdown: This is why I think there is risk now to the upside in November (this may get pre-traded in late October) 14.

  Exposure is not high: GS HF PB Gross 177% (28th percentile 1-yr) and Net 62% (23rd percentile 1-yr)

  On Wednesday (waiting on Thursday) – US equities on the GS Prime book saw the largest 1-day net buying since late August (+1.1 SDs vs. the average daily net flow of the past year), driven by short covers and to a lesser extent long buys (2 to 1).

  Both Macro Products (driven by short covers) and Single Names (driven by long buys) were net bought and made up 74% and 26% of Thursday’s $ buying activity, respectively.

  Sentiment = ZZZZs.

  

  15. Gamma is not long: Current SPX long gamma = $1B vs. A high last week of $7.7B long. This is the 3rd lowest long of the year and a decline of $7B w/w. This has allowed the market move more freely and we really haven’t seen this little long position in the past year. I think dealers go short (finally) after today’s expiry.

  

  16. OpEx (Option expiry): $2.2 Trillion worth of option notional rolls off Friday and “everyone is looking for weakness into expiry trade.” After today’s expiry, I expect the market to move more freely, especially to the upside.

  

  17. Current CTA positioning in Fixed Income: why do you care? This is an index construction issue. When CTAs short bonds (value > growth)…. when they cover, the whole index can move higher? My most important chart this week.

  

  18. Performance has largely been difficult and 2022 is expected to be difficult. A big bulk of Mutual Fund year-end is at the end of October. Buy stocks w/ cash on sidelines?

  

  19. Systematic releveraging becomes the focus following the FLIP: Systematic equity strategies have sold $96B worth of equities over the past 1 month.

  We have systematic strategies buying $44.8 Billion over the next month and $106.5 Billion if the market is up modestly, which is trending. This would roughly be a $200B swing, this is large.

  

  20. And then, there are seasonals which start to really kick in at the end of the month. You are here w/ the buyback window.

  

  • I. Since 2020, there has been +$2.281 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$578 Billion inflows into equities. 4x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.
  • II. Since 2016, there has been +$4.609 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$427 Billion inflows into equities. 11x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.
  • III. Since 2011, there has been +$5.205 Trillion inflows into bonds and cash vs. +$748 Billion inflows into equities. 7x more inflows into Cash and Bonds.

  I promised myself that I would never use the term “Great Rotation” again, that is the rotation out of bonds into equities, however this movement of capital is the most important dynamic that I am tracking right now. Global Bond funds saw the SMALLEST INFLOWS since Q1 this week. What level higher in bond yields stop this inflow all together (or possibly move to outflows?). Global equities logged another +$13B worth of inflows on the week. No change in tone.

  • IV. There is a competition for dip alpha. Why did everyone want the -5% pullpack? Here is the data.

  This recent stretch was the 8th longest streak without a -5% dip since 1930, lasting 226 trading days. There have been 34, five percent pullbacks since 1980, 1m, 3m, 6m returns have had positive hit rates of 74%, 82%, and 85% respectively

  • V. Retail aggressively defended large cap tech and secular growth this week.
  • VI. October Checklist continued below. (Index gamma smallest long of the year, sentiment ticks lower (again), shorts tick higher, systematic to re-lever above 4400, seasonals remain strong, and Q4 performance catch up vs. benchmarks).

  Who was the largest incremental buyer in the equity market this week?

  Retail traders made a huge pivot this week and have been buying the dip in large cap tech and secular growth.

  a. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

  

  b. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

  

  c. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Thursday October 8th, 2021.

  

  e. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

  

  f. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

  

  g. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Wednesday October 6th, 2021.

  

  h. US single stock equities with the largest percentage of total volume traded by retail on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

  

  i. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute buy skew on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

  

  j. US single stock equities with the largest retail net absolute sell skew on Tuesday October 5th, 2021.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 20:35

• 40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom's Order 
  40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order 

  This might come as a surprise, but 40% of California state employees are unvaccinated despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive to mandate the jab or be subjected to regular testing. 

  Newsom issued this new directive in July following a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the time, he said, “We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it’s going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant.” 

  Still months later, less than two-thirds of state workers, or 62%, were vaccinated, according to The Sacramento Bee. The figure is much lower than the state’s overall rate of 72%. 

  Human Resources Department spokeswoman Camille Travis said her agency has only compiled 89% of state employee vaccination status. She said the data so far suggests some state employees weren’t compelled to get jabbed after Newsom’s directive.  

  Some of the state’s largest departments shared vaccination rates: 52% of California Highway Patrol employees, 60% of Department of Motor Vehicles employees, and 60% of prison employees have received the shots. California Department of Transportation has the highest with 70%.

  Newsom’s mandatory jab, or be forced to regular testing for state employees, is less stringent than those of health care workers who have been forced to get the vaccine unless they had a medical exemption or religious claim. One emerging drawback of mandatory jabs, with no consideration for regular testing nor naturally-acquired immunity, are reports that a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate.

  

  Director of Medical Ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty of the University of California, Irvine, challenged the constitutionality of the hospital’s vaccine mandate regarding individuals who have recovered from COVID and have naturally acquired immunity and was immediately placed on leave. There’s no room to debate science as only the government can decide what’s best for state employees.

  The same sort of stringent vaccination rules for healthcare workers could be coming to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state’s largest department, with approximately 66,000 employees and a vaccination rate of 60%.

  Overreaching government mandating jabs has unintended consequences such as workers striking or leaving their posts altogether, exacerbating already critical labor shortages in essential services. 

  Perhaps of even more note is the fact no lesser liberal mouthpiece than The New York Times is finally willing to admit that it’s not just KKK-Hat-wearing ‘Trumpers’ that are the great unwashed deplorables refusing to get vaccinated.

  In New York, for example, only 42 percent of African Americans of all ages (and 49 percent among adults) are fully vaccinated – the lowest rate among all demographic groups tracked by the city.

  This is another area in which the dominant image of the white, QAnon-spouting, Tucker Carlson-watching conspiracist anti-vaxxer dying to own the libs is so damaging.

  It can lead us to ignore the problem of racialized health inequities with deep historic roots but also ongoing repercussions, and prevent us from understanding that there are different kinds of vaccine hesitancy, which require different approaches.

  Just ask Nicki Minaj.

  … the Covid States Project’s research showed that unvaccinated people who nonetheless wore masks were, indeed, more likely to be Black women.

  Did you ever think you would read those ‘facts’ from that ‘news’ outlet?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 20:10

• Dozens Of Climate Activists Arrested After Storming Interior Department, Police Sustain "Multiple Injuries"
  Dozens Of Climate Activists Arrested After Storming Interior Department, Police Sustain “Multiple Injuries”

  By Tammy Hung of Epoch Times,

  A group of activists protesting against fossil fuels were arrested after staging a sit-in at the Interior Department in Washington on Oct. 15.

  

  The protesters stormed the Stewart Lee Udall Main Interior Building on Thursday afternoon, with “multiple injuries” reportedly sustained by federal police and one officer hospitalized, according to a statement from Interior Department Communications Director Melissa Schwartz.

  Thursday was the second to last day of the week-long protest held by People vs. Fossil Fuels to demand a declaration of a national climate emergency by President Joe Biden.

  The organization also demanded Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and speed up the end of the “fossil fuel era.”

  While the Federal Protective Service (FPS) did not indicate how many people were arrested on Thursday, People vs. Fossil Fuels said that 35 were arrested at the Interior department.

  By the end of the week-long protest, People vs. Fossil Fuels claimed that 655 people had been arrested.

  On the same day, Melissa Schwartz stated, “Interior Department leadership believes strongly in respecting and upholding the right to free speech and peaceful protest.”

  “Centering the voices of lawful protesters is and will continue to be an important foundation of our democracy,” Schwartz added.

  FPS told Fox News that it was “committed to the safety of demonstrators participating in lawful protests” and expressed full support for the “peaceful expression of all people.”

  “FPS will continue to pursue our mission of ensuring the safety and security of federal employees and facilities, consistent with the law,” added the statement.

  FPS also mentioned the U.S. Park Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department for helping “to detain, prosecute, or take action against anyone who caused harm and attempted to disrupt the business of the federal government yesterday.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 19:45

• Joe Manchin Slams 'Out-Of-State Socialist' Bernie Sanders Over VA Op-Ed
  Joe Manchin Slams ‘Out-Of-State Socialist’ Bernie Sanders Over VA Op-Ed

  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) says he ‘won’t take orders from a socialist’ after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote an op-ed in a West Virginia newspaper urging Manchin’s constituents to support President Biden’s infrastructure bill.

  

  “This isn’t the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state,” wrote the 74-year-old Manchin in a Friday statement.

  “Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs,” he continued, adding: “No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that.”

  https://t.co/iU96GLGzsT pic.twitter.com/ly944dr2dE

  — Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) October 15, 2021

  Sanders, 80, slammed Manchin and fellow Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in the Charleston Gazette-Mail Op-Ed over the moderate Democrats’ opposition to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

  “Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation,” claimed Sanders, “Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote ‘yes.’ We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin.”

  “This is a pivotal moment in modern American history,” Sanders continued. “We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont, and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few.”

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 19:20

• Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates On Military, Federal Employees And Contractors
  Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates On Military, Federal Employees And Contractors

  By Mimi Nguyen Ly of The Epoch Times,

  Service members from all five branches of the U.S. military, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors have joined in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

  

  The 24 plaintiffs “face a deadline under the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, and have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal firm that filed the lawsuit.

  The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, lists President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.

  The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order (pdf) to prevent the COVID-19 vaccine mandates from taking effect, and ultimately issue an injunction to prevent the Pentagon from enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

  Biden on Sept. 9 issued an executive order requiring almost all federal employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment. Regular testing isn’t an option. Civilian federal employees and contractors have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated.

  Austin issued a memorandum on Aug. 24 saying that all military service members must receive a COVID-19 vaccine, after which all the branches of the military announced various deadlines for its troops to be fully vaccinated, regardless of whether they had previously survived a bout of COVID-19, and threatening suspensions or other disciplinary actions if service members don’t have a pending exemption request or fail to comply.

  The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have set a Nov. 28 deadline for their active-duty service members; reservists have until Dec. 28. For the Army and the Air Force, the deadlines for active-duty service members are Dec. 15 and Nov. 2, respectively, and deadlines for National Guard and Reserve members are June 30, 2022, and Dec. 2, 2021, respectively. U.S. Coast Guard members have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated.

  “Plaintiffs have demonstrated their commitments to the United States Constitution and the Nation’s future comfort, security, and prosperity. This Court should demand that the Nation return the favor. Telling Plaintiffs they must accept or receive a shot they oppose according to their sincerely held religious beliefs, or face court martial, dishonorable discharge, and other life altering disciplinary measures, disgraces the sacrifices these heroes have made,” attorneys wrote in the filing, adding that relief is “needed now” to “prevent the immediate and irreparable injury” imposed by the vaccine mandates.

  A Pentagon spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “We do not comment on ongoing litigation.”

  “The Biden administration has no authority to require the COVID shots for the military or for federal employees or civilian contractors. Nor can the Biden administration pretend that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment do not apply to its unlawful mandates,” Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. “The Commander-in-Chief must end this shameful treatment and abuse of our brave military heroes. Forcing the COVID shots without consent or consideration for their sincere religious beliefs is illegal.”

  White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

  Religious Exemption Requests Denied, Suit Claims

  The lawsuit notes that many of its 24 plaintiffs have had their requests for religious exemption denied, while other plaintiffs “have been threatened with dishonorable discharge, court martial, termination, or other life-altering disciplinary measures” for seeking such exemptions.

  “Some of these Plaintiffs have been informed by their superiors that no religious exemption or accommodation will be given, so there is no point in even making a request,” attorneys said in the filing.

  The suit said that Vice Admiral William Galinis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, on Oct. 14 issued a warning to his entire command of more than 85,000 civilian and military personnel, saying, “The Executive Order mandating vaccinations for all federal employees has provided clear direction. We are moving quickly toward a workforce where vaccinations are a condition of employment. Frankly, if you are not vaccinated, you will not work for the U.S. Navy.”

  A Navy spokeswoman declined to comment last week when asked whether any religious or medical exemptions had been approved.

  The three currently available COVID-19 vaccines are the one-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, and the two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.

  “Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting any one of the three currently available COVID-19 vaccines derived from, produced or manufactured by, tested on, developed with, or otherwise connected to aborted fetal cell lines,” the suit argued, subsequently providing evidence that aborted fetal cell lines were involved in certain stages of development of all three vaccines.

  “Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs compel them to not condone, support, justify, or benefit (directly or indirectly) from the taking of innocent human life via abortion, and that to do so is sinning against God,” attorneys wrote.

  Attorneys are asking the court to declare that the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the plaintiffs is unlawful because it violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act by “imposing a substantial burden on Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs.”

  EUA Products Cannot Be Mandated: Attorneys

  Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and as such, cannot be mandated.

  Austin, in his memo on Aug. 24 (pdf), stated that the mandatory vaccinations “will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the [FDA] in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance,” attorneys noted, arguing that “additional military documents reveal that the Department of Defense is not following its own directive” and is using vaccines under emergency use authorization [EUA] “because there is no FDA approved vaccine available.”

  Austin’s memo came a day after the FDA issued full approval for future Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, which will bear the Comirnaty label. The latter vaccine wasn’t available in the United States as of Oct. 12, The Epoch Times reported previously.

  The attorneys argued that explicit statutory conditions for an EUA require that people are given “the option to accept or refuse administration” of a given unapproved product that has been authorized for emergency use.

  According to the lawsuit, “Because all COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are subject to the EUA Statute restrictions and limitations, all individuals—including military service members, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors—have the explicit right under the EUA Statute to accept or refuse administration of the products.”

  Attorneys asked the court to declare the vaccine mandate as unlawful because it violates the EUA provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “by imposing a mandatory COVID-19 shot upon Plaintiffs without giving the ‘option to accept or refuse’ the EUA product.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:55

• Has The Housing Bubble Peaked: Zillow Pauses Robo-Flipping Due To "Snags"
  Has The Housing Bubble Peaked: Zillow Pauses Robo-Flipping Due To “Snags”

  In recent weeks we had heard several anecdotal reports that Zillow’s electronic house flipping service was underperforming, buying houses at overinflated prices and then flipping them for a loss (even when factoring in fees and commissions).

  Zillow is charging handsome service fees and commissions that are not reflected in the listed sale price – they still make several percent even if they buy and sell at a nominal loss. That notwithstanding they are surely catching the knife on some of these properties.

  — Alex D. Bibbey, MD (@thats_bone) October 8, 2021

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

  Zillow seem to be selling some houses now lower then they bought them at loss? pic.twitter.com/x0khRRWH7J

  — LookingAhead (@parklandtrader) September 18, 2021

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

  Zillow bought my parents old house in 2019 and ended up taking a loss cause they did minor renovations after but ended up selling it for less then what zillow paid them. My parents skated away with that check so fast. 🤣 https://t.co/JePzW4s2LC

  — Agatha Harkness (@lexisloopy) September 23, 2021

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

  It appears there has been some truth to that, because according to Bloomberg,  Zillow, which acquired more than 3,800 homes in the second quarter, “will stop pursuing new home purchases as it works through a backlog of properties already in its pipeline.”

  Zillow Group Inc. is taking a break from buying U.S. homes after the online real estate giant’s pivot into tech-powered house-flipping hit a snag.

  While Zillow is best known for publishing real estate listings online and calculating estimated home values – called Zestimates – that let users keep track of how their home is worth (with the traffic on the company’s apps and websites serving as the main source of profits in Zillow’s online marketing business), more recently it has been buying and selling thousands of U.S. homes. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, joining a small group of tech-enabled home-flippers such as OpenDoor, known as iBuyers. In the new business, Zillow invites homeowners to request an offer on their house and uses algorithms to generate a price. If an owner accepts, Zillow buys the property, makes light repairs and puts it back on the market.

  While the service was firing on all cylinders in the aftermath of the Covid crisis when home prices tumbled only to shoot back up to all time highs, rising at a record 20% Y/Y pace, in recent months it has found flipping to be far more challenging as the pace of flips has slowed drastically in a housing market where most of the first time buyers now find themselves priced out.

  

  However, instead of admitting that we may be nearing (or have already passed) the peak of yet another housing bubble, Zillow has instead blamed “operational capacity” and being short staffed to meet the pace of transactions.

  While the iBuying process is powered by algorithms – which as the anecdotes above suggest may way above fair value – as well aslarge pools of capital, it’s also reliant on humans. Before Zillow signs a contract to buy a house, it sends an inspector to make sure the property doesn’t need costly repairs. After it buys a property, contractors replace carpets and repaint interiors.

  So joining the vast majority of US corporations which blame lack of workers on reduced output (it could, say, hike wages to quickly offset its staffing challenges), Zillow has blamed the lack of workers to perform the menial home-flipping tasks.

  “Given unexpected high demand, Zillow Offers has hit its capacity for buying homes for the remainder of the year,” an employee who works in the company’s home-buying operation in two states wrote in an email to a business partner that was viewed by Bloomberg.

  Staffing shortages have reportedly been exacerbated by Zillow’s willingness to let customers set a closing date months into the future, meaning it could agree to buy a house in August and begin renovating it in November.

  “We are beyond operational capacity in our Zillow Offers business and are not taking on additional contracts to purchase homes at this time,” a spokesperson for Zillow said in an email. “We continue to process the purchase of homes from sellers who are already under contract, as quickly as possible.”

  None of this of course would be an issue if Zillow merely hiked wages, a step that would immediately fill all the vacant positions and resolve its “stated challenges” overnight at a tiny hit to profit margins. The fact that it has not done so suggests that the cause has nothing to do with the stated reason for the flipping pause. Instead, the most likely reason why Zillow is pulling back from robo-flipping is that the housing market is starting to crack and this particular segment is no longer profitable.

  In any case, according to Bloomberg, pausing new acquisitions will allow the company to work through its backlog, the narrative goes. Yet while both Zillow and Opendoor briefly stopped buying homes in the early days of the pandemic, the companies ultimately benefited from the housing boom that started when early economic lockdowns lifted, it still took Zillow several months to resume purchasing homes at its pre-pandemic pace.

  Curiously, while Zillow is putting roboflipping on hold, Opendoor has no such “worker shortage” issues despite having a similar business model.

  “Opendoor is open for business and continues to serve its customers with a simple, certain, fast and trusted home move,” a spokesman for the company said in an email.

  It may be open, but one wonders for how long: Zillow has said it plans to refer potential customers to traditional real estate agents (and, by extension, its competitors). It would not be doing this if it was handing over not just market share but also potentially generous profit margins.

  As such, the real question is whether Zillow’s move may the first sign that the US housing market has finally peaked and – with rates expected to keep rising for the foreseeable future along with inflation – it’s all downhill from here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:30

• Hedge Fund CIO: The Old And The Young Are Set For A "Terrifying, Agonizing" Battle
  Hedge Fund CIO: The Old And The Young Are Set For A “Terrifying, Agonizing” Battle

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “Today’s announcement has the potential to be a game-changer,” said Biden, from the White House steps, directing attention to the Port of Los Angeles and its newly extended hours of operation. “Private sector companies need to step up as well,” pleaded the President, scrambling to grease America’s rusty supply chain.

  Nearby, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its consumer price index for September. The CPI rose +5.4% from 2020. And a few blocks away, the Social Security Administration considered the arguments for and against transitory inflation, then hiked next year’s benefits by +5.9%. That’s the largest cost-of-living adjustment in 40 years, and a reminder that the lags in inflation are integrated into public policy. In 2020, the inflation adjustment was just +1.6%. But that was before consumer prices jumped +5.4% – inflation cut 3.8% of purchasing power from seniors living off social security. And they’re not alone. This time last year, investors who sought the safety of risk-free 10yr Treasury notes (+0.74% yield back then) lost -11.19 % when measured on an inflation-adjusted basis. What connects these two stories is that both Social Security commitments and Treasury securities represent government liabilities.

  And the net present value of those liabilities is impossibly large to meet – in real terms, at least. So the government’s long process of lightening its burden from that real liability has finally begun.

  If successfully coordinated and executed by the Fed, Treasury, IRS, regulators and elected politicians, inflation rates will be guided to remain well above nominal interest rates for decades. That’s what the inflation-index Treasury market is signaling. By design, the process will destroy vast sums of capital because private-sector assets are the government’s liabilities. And our job as investors is to adapt to this new environment. The starting place is to view it all as neither good nor bad, but rather an inevitable process that simply is – a world of nominal illusion.

  * * *

  Lines

  After decades of coordinated government policy that prevented widespread capital destruction in each and every recession, we unsurprisingly find ourselves with an overabundance of it. Interest rates remain so low not simply because the Fed set rates at zero and buys $120bln of bonds per month. When there is too much of any commodity, its price declines. And until the supply of capital shrinks meaningfully, or demand for it rises materially, the interest rate that borrowers are prepared to pay for something so abundant will remain low.

  Of the many lines that divide our fractured world, the darkest separates young and old. For decades, Baby Boomers advocated for an economic and entitlement structure that favored the old relative to the young. The ageing now overwhelmingly control societal wealth and have granted themselves entitlements that claim an outsized portion of future economic output. The young are expected to produce this for them. Baby Boomers also saddled their offspring with a climate crisis. And the young are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo.

  Much of the tension we see today emanates from competing interests between young and old. This gets obscured by those with an interest to divert attention. But economics doesn’t lie for long. And systems that swing too far from balance are usually drawn back toward center. So the pressures to deprive the old of the wealth they accumulated and the entitlements they granted themselves has begun. The path this process takes will define markets for decades. The fight will be wicked. Agonizing. It has started by haircutting the wealth of those who own bonds.

  The worst possible investment environment for wealthy old people is a high inflation environment with (1) very low yields on risk-free bonds, and (2) extremely high valuations for risky assets. Low yields deprive old people of a way to mitigate their loss of buying power. So they grow poorer unless they take market risk. But when asset valuations are historically high and increasingly disconnected from economic reality, old people who buy them run the risk that prices crash. Without income to recover from such losses, such a situation is rightly terrifying.

  US inflation over the past year was +5.4%. Old people who own risk-free 10-year Treasury notes to secure their retirement lost -11.19% of their real purchasing power in that period (bond prices fell and inflation rose). Those who owned investment grade corporate bonds lost -4.8% of their real purchasing power. In a great irony that foreshadows the generational stresses ahead, old people who own gold to hedge inflation lost -12.8% of their real purchasing power in the past year (prices fell -7.4% and inflation rose +5.4%).

  The people who maintained their real wealth in the past year did so because they owned risk assets. The S&P 500 return including dividends was +30.3%. After discounting that by the +5.4% rise in the consumer price index, the real return was +24.9%. House prices rose +19.7%, and on a real basis were +14.3%. Food price indexes jumped +30% over the past year, gasoline and copper prices leapt +50%, oil doubled, and natural gas surged +150% in the US. But few old people own such things. They consume them. And the one thing old people are unwilling to risk their money on is digital assets. Bitcoin surged 441%. Ethereum soared 920%.

  Anecdote

  There are two good things about being young and broke. The best part of course, is that you are not old. But you also have little to lose. And that is liberating for a person with decades to recover from taking risk in ventures that might fail.

  Having a large group of such youth is an invaluable asset for the older citizens supported by their innovations and output. But powerful forces, if improperly managed, create havoc. So all successful societies strike a healthy balance between the competing desires of old and young. Nations that favor the former to the detriment of the latter suffer upheaval. This is roughly where we are now – nor are such dynamics limited to the US. And they are amplified by a world with a rising proportion of unproductive elderly.

  Our youth, in a system they increasingly recognize as profoundly unfair and biased against their interests, are doing as they should: advocating for vast spending programs to build a green infrastructure and social system that reflects their priorities, unconcerned by the resulting inflation that will erode the wealth of their elders.

  With powerful new blockchain technologies, many are building businesses to bankrupt their parent’s incumbent industries whose lobbyists calcify what our youth see as an unjust status quo. They are fleeing high tax states with bankrupt entitlement systems, for cities like Austin which they then remake in their image. As elderly gold owners writhe in portfolio pain, confused why the price of yellow metal is falling with inflation rising, our young people look to the digital future, buying bitcoin, ether. Solana. NFTs.

  And as investors, our job is to recognize such trends, capitalizing on the opportunities they create, mitigating the risks such periods of upheaval produce. And in this new world, transitioning from old to young, unsettling inversions emerge. The strategies we previously turned to for safety have become risky. While unfamiliar investments that at first appear risky, provide safety.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 18:00

• Fauci Tees Up Unvaccinated Blame Campaign Over Potential 'Fifth Wave'
  Fauci Tees Up Unvaccinated Blame Campaign Over Potential ‘Fifth Wave’

  Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Faucci, is setting the stage to blame the next uptick in Covid-19 cases on the unvaccinated.

  

  Fauci’s ‘science’ – which does not include the vastly superior naturally-acquired immunity from previous Covid-19 infections, or the fact that the vaccine does not prevent transmission – presumes that “the more people we get vaccinated, the less likelihood that there’s gonna be another surge as we go into the winter.“

  Of note, just over 67% of the US is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

  JUST IN: Fauci says unvaccinated Americans could lead to dangers of fifth COVID wave https://t.co/EmUjLZPYG6 pic.twitter.com/NmKutAcFK0

  — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 17, 2021

  Just like 86.1% vaccinated Singapore?

  After vaccinating over 85% of its population, Singapore 🇸🇬 finally flattened the curve, but along the wrong axis: pic.twitter.com/jHjczPGooE

  — Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 8, 2021

  

  If only there were cheap and effective prophylaxis and early treatment options in everyone’s medicine cabinet to take at the first sign of infection.

  

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsFauci on Sunday also suggested that people shouldn’t be hesitant to take Johnson & Johnson booster shots, as they probably should have made their vaccine a two-dose regimen instead of a single shot anyway.

  “I think that they should feel good about it because what the advisors to the FDA felt, is that given the data that they saw, very likely, this should have been a two-dose vaccine to begin with,” he told ABC News’ “This Week.”

  “What the advisors to the FDA felt is that, given the data that they saw, very likely, this should have been a two dose vaccine to begin with,” Dr. Anthony Fauci tells @MarthaRaddatz booster shots authorized for Johnson & Johnson vaccine. https://t.co/0guMYoI4vj pic.twitter.com/KjPQy9ZGg0

  — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 17, 2021

  The ‘top doc’ went on to suggest that some J&J vaccine recipients might be well served to mix brands – receiving a Pfizer or Moderna shot as their booster.

  “You know, that is true the data you refer to that if you [get the booster], people who have originally received J&J with either Moderna or Pfizer, the level of antibodies that you induce in them is much higher than if you boost them with the original J&J,” said Fauci, adding “I think it’s going to be variable depending upon who you are. For example, a woman of childbearing age who’d would have almost no issues at all with a possible adverse event of myocarditis — which you see, rarely…with the mRNA vaccine — that person might want to opt for that approach.”

  “If you’re a young man who does have that very, very rare risk of getting myocarditis, you might want to take the J&J route.”

  So remember – when the next Covid-19 wave hits the US, blame the unvaccinated. Of course, we don’t expect Fauci to actually call out the least vaccinated demographics, as that might ruin such finely curated narratives.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/17/2021 – 17:30

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