- Brandon Smith: A Question For Leftists
Brandon Smith: A Question For Leftists
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
The media these days is saturated with tales of “evil conservatives” and our heinous plans for world domination through “insurrection”. In fact, most mainstream articles that cover recent events including the election and the protests at the capitol make a point to always mention “white supremacy” and “terrorism” in the same breath as the word “conservative”. This is an entirely deliberate propaganda tactic called “word association” or “word redefinition”; change the subtext of a word or group label in the minds of the masses and you can often change perception from positive to negative.
In other words, Conservative = Racist/Terrorist. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true, it just matters that people are conditioned to subconsciously make the connection.
How about an example:
I’ve offered numerous criticisms of Trump and his administration over the years, but none of those criticism had anything to do with what leftists have been regurgitating since 2016. To them, Trump’s “racism” was verified fact, yet when I ask any social justice warrior to produce an actual quote of Trump saying something racist, they can’t seem to dig anything up.
By extension, leftists have a bizarre obsession with Russia and the theory that Russia is an ever present hand of god in US politics, yet, none of them can produce any concrete proof that Russia has meaningful influence in American elections or affairs.
The political left has committed itself to a fantasy world; a parallel universe. They deeply believes in things that never happened, and treat those beliefs as sacrosanct. Why? Probably because their movement is infected with people that are easily manipulated by word redefinitions and false associations. Are they victims of propaganda? Sure. Are they innocent? No, not really.
Refusal to question the actions and motives of your chosen movement is willful ignorance, and leftists should be held accountable for that.
They are the ONLY group of people that has consistently supported mass surveillance, mass censorship and deplatforming, mass violence, property destruction and looting as well as violations of individual rights through medical mandates and lockdowns.
They call conservatives “insurrectionists” and “traitors”, but they are the only people openly trying to dismantle constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.
So, who are the real villains of this story?
Leftists seem to suffer from bewilderment when faced with conservative values, so perhaps an explanation is needed? Think of it this way: Conservatives value core principles (natural law) and the vital fundamentals of civilization. We believe merit is more important than equity. We believe in winning through hard work and excellence, not winning by deception or through claims of victim status. We do not value personal feelings above logic and reason, and the opinion of a mob is no more important to us than the opinion of a single person.
Conservatives don’t owe any allegiance to the left’s twisted vision of “democracy” (tyranny by the majority), nor do we hold blind allegiance to any particular government. Our allegiance is to the Bill of Rights and to the principles which founded this nation, and when a political group attempts to violate those principles, we are not required to submit simply because they collected “more votes”.
Our rights are more important than any election. Our rights are more important than your fears.
One of the core characteristics of conservatives is that we have a tendency to argue with each other…a lot. It’s one of the main reasons why we find it difficult to organize on the same scale that leftists often do. We might all agree on the source of the problems our country faces, but we rarely all agree on the details, or the solutions. This is a weakness, but it is also a strength.
I would much rather be a part of a movement that self reflects. I would much rather be a part of a movement that doesn’t operate as a hive mind. There needs to be LOGICAL dissenting voices in everything so that ideas are challenged. If the ideas are found wanting by reason and wisdom, then they need to be addressed or abandoned. The political left has no concept of this, though.
Leftists are afraid to question anything within their own circles. To dissent on the smallest detail is to be a heretic, a traitor to the cause. They use the word “diversity” all the time, like a battle cry, but when confronted with true diversity (diversity of thought), they panic and react violently.
Leftists don’t actually care about diversity; they only care that you have blind allegiance to the collective. Stray but a little, and the mob will come for your head. They LOVE plantations, they love slavery; as long as they own the plantations and they control the slaves.
A natural consequence of this Animal Farm mentality is that irony and hypocrisy is lost on the followers of such movements. They project all their shortcomings and crimes on others. The devils they see in conservatives are actually the devils they see in the mirror everyday. That said, the higher up you get in the leftist pyramid, the less it becomes hypocritical and the more it becomes malicious and deliberate.
The gaslighting, the word association propaganda, the selective memory hole they use to erase historical facts that contradict their ideology, the people at the top and their lackeys KNOW exactly what they are doing. They don’t care that their claims are hypocritical or outright fraudulent. They know they are lying, they know they are gaslighting. They’re not interested in being right, they are only interested in WINNING.
There is much more going on here than meets the eye. There is a great deal of power and money behind the rise of the hard left ideology and there are certain people that benefit from it’s expansion. Leftists like to view themselves as the “underdogs” or revolutionaries fighting against “the man”. However, every resource of global power brokers has been offered in support of the political left. The “Man” is the ally of the leftists; in some ways he is even the creator of the leftist movement.
They aren’t revolutionaries at all; they are the jackboots of the new world order.
It was globalist institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation that funded different elements of the feminist movement and “gender studies” movements from the late 1960’s onward. This included the Rockefeller Foundation’s large donations to ‘The Feminist Press’ and the Ford Foundation’s programs to indoctrinate university professors into injecting social justice talking points into their curriculum.
This is openly admitted in Alison R. Bernstein’s book ‘Funding The Future: Philanthropy’s Influence On America’s Higher Education’. Bernstein is the vice president of Education at the Ford Foundation and the former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton.
That’s right folks, social justice activism was paid for and encouraged by the so-called “patriarchy”. This is reality, and it never stopped. Even today SJW groups are funded by globalists. For example, as the mainstream media often tries to dismiss or ignore, Black Lives Matter was initially funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. BLM coffers were flooded with over $100 million from uber rich white elites.
Again, this is a FACT that even the dishonest spin doctors at Snopes are not able to deny. Instead, they attempt to use strawman arguments and sophistry to distract from the implication of extreme-left mobs receiving seed money from elitist billionaires.
But let’s follow this path even further: Who gets the support of the mainstream media behemoths? Conservatives or leftists? The answer is obvious.
What about Big Tech platforms? Do they enforce leftist ideological standards? Do they censor conservative viewpoints predominantly or leftist viewpoints predominantly? The reality is that conservatives are deplatformed from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook far more than leftists, this is verifiable fact.
When alternative platforms like Parler are built, are they allowed to simply exist? Of course not! The leftists rampage in an effort to destroy them, but the leftists would have no power without the backing of corporate monopolies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Not only does Big Tech aid the leftists in their Jihad against conservatives, but the government does as well.
They don’t just go after alternative platforms, they try to go after web service providers. And when alternative platforms move to more freedom oriented service providers like Epik, the leftists get government support in order to intimidate them also.
Leftists revel in the argument that “freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences”; they seem to think it is rather clever. I would say, actually, yes, that’s EXACTLY what freedom of speech means. Freedom of speech means that no single group of people is allowed to use fear, intimidation and punishment to compel silence in other groups or individuals that disagree with them. With corporate monopoly and government on their side, it is clear that leftists have appointed themselves the sole arbiters of “consequence”, and this violates the constitution in every conceivable way.
The collusion between government, corporations and extremist ideological movements is the classical definition of fascism. And, just as the Third Reich enjoyed immense funding, investment and industrial support from globalists and corporations in the decade leading up to WWII, the political left is enjoying immense support from the global corporate oligarchy today. You cannot be “anti-fascist” while you are colluding with fascists.
So, again, I ask leftists: If you are the rebels, if you are the freedom fighters, then why are all the elites you are supposedly fighting against on your side? Why are evil people your most avid allies?
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 02/19/2021 – 00:00 - NYC Waitress Fired For Waiting To Take COVID Vax Over Pregnancy Concerns
NYC Waitress Fired For Waiting To Take COVID Vax Over Pregnancy Concerns
A waitress in New York City was fired after she told her employer that she wanted to wait and see if the COVID-19 vaccine – which has been in use for less than nine months – has any side affects on pregnancy.
34-year-old Bonnie Jacobson, who started working at the Red Hook Tavern in August, says she’s not an ‘anti-vaxxer,’ but was uncomfortable taking the vaccine while she and her husband were trying to conceive, she told the Daily Mail.
Bonnie Jacobson On February 8, the restaurant sent an email to employees which said “If you choose to get vaccinated, here’s what you need to know.” The email made no mention of mandatory vaccinations – which, by the by, don’t prevent people from catching or transmitting COVID-19 and instead helps protect against serious illness from the disease.
During a staff meeting, Jacobson says she told her manager that she wanted more time to research the vaccine, and was told that she wouldn’t be required to get the shot.
“As a 34-year-old woman, why take the risk right now when I can just wait a little longer when there are people a lot older and more at risk who could use the vaccine more than I could right now?” she told the Mail. “My dad is 68 years old and lives in Pennsylvania and has diabetes, there’s no reason why I should be getting that before him.”
Days later on February 12, the Brooklyn tavern changed its mind and sent an email telling employees that the vaccine was mandatory.
“Please be advised that we will require that all employees receive the vaccination,” reads the email.
“This will be mandatory for all existing employees and any new hires. The exception to this policy will be if your own personal health or disability prohibits you from obtaining this vaccination. We encourage you to consult your healthcare professional to determine if getting a vaccine is right for you.”
Jacobson emailed her employers back, and said that while she ‘fully supports’ the vaccine, she doesn’t want to get it yet.
“While I fully support the vaccine and understand its importance I do believe this is a very personal choice. I really hope this choice would not affect my employment at Red Hook Tavern,” she wrote, adding that she takes COVID “very seriously” and will continue to practice safety guidelines.
“I get tested every 1-2 weeks and have never tested positive for COVID. I plan to continue these safety practices for as long as necessary,” her email continues, adding “Also once there is more research to support that it does not affect fertility I would reconsider my position.”
On Monday, however, Jacobson heard back – with her employers noting that the company ‘respected’ her ‘very personal choice,’ but that “In order to continue employment with us, getting the vaccine is required. At this time your employment will be terminated. We are sad to see you go. If you do change your mind, please do not hesitate to let us know.”
Red Hook Tavern owner Billy Durney told the Mail that he could have handled the situation differently, and that the tavern would update its policy so all employees understand their stance.
“Once New York state allowed restaurant workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to put a plan in place to keep our team and guests safe,” he said in a statement obtained by various outlets, adding “No one has faced these challenges before and we made a decision that we thought would best protect everyone.”
Red Hook Tavern owner Billy Durney “I just wanted more time they didn’t allow me that, I didn’t even have time to consult a physician. It was a week from being ‘your choice,’ to it’s not going to be mandatory, to it us mandatory, to you’re fired,” said Jacobson. “I had a very good working relationship there. I just had an employee review on February 6 and it was all positive, so it was truly shocking that it was so impersonal.”
According to labor attorney Carolyn D. Richmond, it’s too early for companies to mandate shots.
“Pregnancy and vaccine — as soon as you hear those words in the workplace, you should stop to think if what you are doing is right or wrong,” Richmond told the New York Times. “It has to be generally available to the employee population and it’s not. None of us are having an easy time getting appointments.”
That said, employers have the right to mandate the vaccine, according to Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law.
“Requiring a vaccine is a health and safety work rule, and employers can do that,” he told CNBC in December.
Last month, the World Health Organization advised pregnant women not to get vaccinated unless at high risk for COVID-19 due to underlying conditions.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:40 - Jettison The Johnson: Transwomen Athletes Crashing Female Sports Will Only Hurt The Game
Jettison The Johnson: Transwomen Athletes Crashing Female Sports Will Only Hurt The Game
Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
As the Biden administration moves to make it illegal to deny the participation of birth males in female sport, a number of courageous athletes and academics are beginning to speak out on the issue, warning that the presidential orders will have disastrous consequences on their profession, and possibly their lives.
On the very same day of his locked-down inauguration, Joe Biden signed off on dozens of executive orders, including one gem entitled, ‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’. The controversial legislation, which has never been the subject of serious debate at the governmental level, moves to allow transgender women (i.e. biological males that self-identify as females) who have undergone male puberty to compete in women’s sports.
What could wrong?
To better understand what the future of women’s sports may look like in the future, take a moment and watch the Mixed Martial Arts fight between Fallon Fox and Tamikka Brents from 2014. Fox, the first openly transgender athlete in MMA history, subjected Brents to a brief but brutal pummeling that resulted in a fractured skull and concussion.
Transgender MMA Fighter Fallon Fox beat her female opponent Tamika Brents so severely that she suffered a broken skull. pic.twitter.com/S7HOMcA60j
— #TartanTuesday 🏴CITIZEN NOT SERF🏴 (@TartantuesdayI) July 11, 2019
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Now with the passage of Biden’s order such displays of aggression on the field of broken dreams and bones promise to occur with increasing regularity. What is very odd about Biden’s executive order, clearly the brainchild of the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is that it aims to protect a minuscule segment of the population, while leaving the majority exposed to tremendous risk of injury. Are the social justice warriors only interested in protecting minority groups for the supposed moral high ground it gives them when preaching their flawed message of ‘equality and inclusivity’?
[ZH: we were also reminded of this story]
And yes, this was a real thing. Not a movie or skit. https://t.co/ENvBEws2zn
— Old Man Mir (@Moneymirweather) February 17, 2021
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In any case, the Democrats, despite the conceit that theirs is the ‘party of science,’ blatantly ignore any medical evidence that disproves the notion that females can compete on a level playing with the males. After all, just because a person feels that they are trapped in the wrong body with the wrong sex does not mean that those feelings can alter biological fact.
“Males are five inches taller than females, they have longer arms, a greater reach and they can generate more speed and larger hand spans,” explained Dr. Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist and university lecturer.
“Males have 40 percent more muscle mass, and forty percent less body fat. The muscle they have is denser…and higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers, which are the fibers responsible for explosive movement…”
What is the main driver of these significant physical differences between males and females? That would come down to testosterone, the powerful game-changing hormone released in males during puberty that Hilton refers to as “one hell of a drug.”
“It has delivered us athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps,” the professor continued, before dropping a tongue-in-cheek remark that underscored its desirability among athletes looking for a competitive edge.
“As the original anabolic steroid, used widely in the 1980s in state-led doping programs, it has almost certainly delivered us a fair few elite females too.”
The proponents of transgender females in women’s sports, however, argue that biological males are able to pare down their testosterone levels through a number of medical treatments, including the injection of estrogen, the female hormone, and the surgical removal of the testes, the endocrinal gland responsible for testosterone secretion. In 2003, the International Olympic Committee said these medical steps were sufficient enough to permit transgender women to compete alongside biological females in competition. In order for a transwoman to qualify to compete among biological females, the IOC required: testes removal at least two years before competing; legal status as female; hormones in line with female profiles.
#WomenInSport See more: https://t.co/WAO0Uak97c pic.twitter.com/4HXCv8AkUF
— Nancy Hogshead-Makar, JD, Oly (@Hogshead3Au) February 8, 2021
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These measures were deemed adequate – despite little study into the question – to ensure fair competition. However, a strange thing happened between 2003 and 2015, when the IOC rather radically changed the rules in the middle of the game, so to speak. That strange thing seems to have been the further radicalization of the progressive movement. Today, the IOC no longer demands that the biological males submit to castration in order to compete with the ladies. All that is required is that they keep their testosterone levels below a certain level. But does keeping testosterone in check make a difference. Yes, it does, but not nearly enough to level the playing field between transwomen and females.
According to one study, published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, “transwomen still had a 9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events.”
Dr. Hilton summed up the situation, which should give anyone pause who cares about the safety of females competing against transwomen: “even five years past transition and their testes long gone [transwomen] retain more muscle mass and remain much stronger than reference females.”
Nevertheless, civil liberty groups, like the ACLU – without citing a single professional medical study – have come out in full support of transwomen competing head-to-head against females.
The @ACLU has spoken. https://t.co/TXe8oQUv2n
— Geoffrey Miller (@primalpoly) February 3, 2021
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A Call for Balance
This month, and not a moment too soon, a group of world class athletes and sports organizations announced the formation of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group created to “protect girls’ and women’s sports and accommodate transgender athletes.” Some of the high-profile names among the group include Olympic gold medalist swimmer Donna de Varona, International Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Navratilova, Olympic gold medalist swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, and Lyn St. James, former Indycar and LeMans racecar driver.
The Working Group proposes that “the Biden Administration and Congress to reject ‘either/or’ positions and instead to adopt an ethical, science-based approach to the protection of girls’ and women’s sport.”
Martina Navratilova, a winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles, emphasized that she supported transwomen rights but that the physical advantages for transgender women competitors who had experienced male puberty were “pretty obvious.”
In an interview with the BBC, Navratilova expressed opposition to “an all-inclusive situation where trans men and women, just based on their self identification [with the opposite sex], would be able to compete with no mitigation, no rules outside of that whatsoever. And that clearly would not be a level playing field.”
Although that would seem to be a logical approach for everyone, not least of all for the females who must compete against biological males, the initiative is already being attacked on the grounds that it limits “fairness and opportunity” for transgenders in sports.
According to Sharon McGowan, chief strategy officer of Lambda Legal, which works for LGBTQ civil rights, “The kinds of proposals that unfortunately [Navratilova] and others have been promoting would really sweep way too far in terms of limiting the opportunity of transgender children being able to participate in a way that ensures fairness and opportunity,” as quoted by Reuters.
Unfortunately, it looks as though the only way Biden’s executive order will receive the fair amount of scientific scrutiny is when more females begin to suffer serious injury while competing against transwomen. But even then nothing guarantees that the woke crowd will awaken from its stupor.
Admitting to its faults is not a strong suit of the radical progressives, even when lives are on the line, and this stubbornness could deal the world of women’s sports a truly fatal blow.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:20 - Oakland Chinatown Shop Owner Arrested After Firing Shots Into The Air To Thwart Robbery
Oakland Chinatown Shop Owner Arrested After Firing Shots Into The Air To Thwart Robbery
Only in a liberal-run state like California will a store owner get jailed for intervening in a robbery outside his shop. It’s backasswards but true, according to local television station KTVU.
In Oakland’s Chinatown, a store owner was arrested Monday when he fired his handgun in the air to chase off a criminal who was mugging a woman outside his shop. No one was injured at the time of the incident, but the 36-year-old man was arrested and faces one felony assault with a firearm.
Robbery in #OaklandChinatown before 6pm Community leader tells me a thief knocked down a woman in her 30’s to steal her camera. Shop owner intervenes, struggles w/ suspect & fires 4 shots . Suspect gets away in vehicle No serious injuries #KTVU pic.twitter.com/bk3BNOLpsE
— Amber Lee (@AmberKTVU) February 16, 2021
Oakland’s Chinatown has been hit with a recent wave of assaults and robberies. Members in the community have pooled together funds and hired private security guards to patrol the streets.
Oakland’s new police chief commented on Monday’s incident at a press conference on Tuesday.
“We don’t want people to fire weapons into our community. There could be unintended victims,” Chief LeRonne Armstrong said.
The store owner was bailed out on Tuesday with a $60k bond, the police department said.
Head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, Carl Chan, told CBS San Francisco that when he “talks to the entire community they feel sad that someone is trying to help others and ends up to be the one arrested or being in custody.”
Chan has been advocating for more police presence in the area. As we noted above, armed security guards already patrol the streets, funded by the public.
“So, I think many of the people feel strongly that we should be supporting the store owner,” Chan said.
He added that more shop owners would have to intervene in violent crimes outside their stores without a police presence in Chinatown.
This incident sets a horrible precedent for store owners who may decide not to intervene in a violent crime outside their store because they fear any action they would take may result in jail.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 23:00 - 5 Of 7 Republican Senators Who Convicted Trump Have Been Censured In Home States
5 Of 7 Republican Senators Who Convicted Trump Have Been Censured In Home States
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict former President Donald Trump, five of them have been censured by various state and county Republican Parties or from voters.
On Monday night, the North Carolina GOP unanimously voted to censure Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is retiring in 2022, after he voted to convict, despite previously said it was unconstitutional to try a former president.
“By what he did and by what he did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” Burr stated over the past weekend.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who voted to convict and is up for reelection in 2026, explained that he did so because he “took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I take that oath seriously.” However, his move didn’t go over well in the state’s GOP.
The Louisiana Republican Party unanimously voted to censure—or officially condemn—Cassidy for his vote on the same day that he voted to convict the former president.
Before that, the Lincoln County Republican Party unanimously censured Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) for his dismissing the legitimate concerns” of Nebraska’s secretary of state, Nebraska’s attorney general, “and a huge majority of Republican voters,” while it said he failed “to respect the high office of the President of the United States.”
Sasse could be the one who loses the most politically, as some have said the senator could be a 2024 Republican presidential candidate. However, he is likely to face blowback from Republican voters, who, according to polls, view Trump very favorably.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who faces reelection in 2022, was censured by Republicans in six state House districts over her vote to convict.
“I stand my ground. If I had to take that vote again, I would vote to uphold my oath of office,” she said after voting, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “And, if the party is to censure me because they felt that I needed to support the party, they can make that statement, but I will make the statement again that my obligation is to support the Constitution that I have pledged to uphold, and I will do that, even if it means I have to oppose the direction of my state party.”
In Pennsylvania, the York County GOP censured Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is slated to retire in 2022.
“Given his recent support of the second unconstitutional impeachment effort against a president who is no longer in office the York County Republican Committee has reached the limits of its frustration,” Republican state Rep. Dawn Keefer wrote.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a noted Trump critic from within the Republican Party, will not be censured by the Utah Republican Party after the organization said it would not do so. However, a widely circulated petition condemns the 2012 Republican presidential candidate for using “his senatorial power and influence to undermine” Trump.
The state GOP noted that Romney and fellow Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), who acquitted Trump, cast different votes.
“The differences between our own Utah Republicans showcase a diversity of thought, in contrast to the danger of a party fixated on ‘unanimity of thought,’” the Utah Republican Party said in a statement on Monday, explaining that it won’t censure Romney.
Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has not faced any punitive actions from within her party or a petition, although the state GOP is reportedly meeting to discuss potentially censuring her.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:40 - Indonesia Moves To Punish Citizens Who Refuse COVID Vaccine
Indonesia Moves To Punish Citizens Who Refuse COVID Vaccine
In a uniquely heavy-handed move, the Indonesian government is threatening to punish citizens who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, as the massive island nation, one of the world’s most populous, pushes one of the most aggressive vaccination campaigns in the world.
According to Reuters, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta is threatening residents with fines of up to 5 million rupiah – about $360 – for anyone refusing a jab, an unusually stiff penalty aimed at guaranteeing compliance with new regulations calling for compulsory vaccinations. In addition to the fines, the government is threatening to withhold social aid.
Deputy Jakarta governor Ahmad Riza Patria said city authorities were merely following rules and such sanctions were a last resort in Jakarta, which accounts for about a quarter of the archipelago nation’s more than 1.2 million coronavirus infections.
“If you reject it, there are two things, social aid will not be given, (and a) fine,” Riza told reporters.
For those who haven’t been following it, Indonesia is fighting one of Asia’s largest and most stubborn COVID outbreaks. The country aims to inoculate 181.5MM of its 270MM population within 15 months under a vaccination program that started last month.
New cases have actually inched higher in Indonesia over the past week, while most of the world has seen a continued decline.
Some 34K Indonesians have also died of the virus, and deaths have also ticked higher lately.
Indonesia announced a presidential order earlier this month stipulating anyone who refuses vaccines could be denied social assistance or government services or made to pay a fine. The penalty would be determined by regional health agencies or by local governments.
In a December survey, pollster Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting found that only 37% of 1.2K respondents were willing to be vaccinated, 40% were undecided and 17% would refuse across Indonesia. Though we imagine these new requirements might change that.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:20 - Japan's Incredibly Shrinking Population Is A Big Problem
Japan’s Incredibly Shrinking Population Is A Big Problem
Submitted by Ethen Kim Lieser of 19FortyFive.com, Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn,
As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to limit the number of foreign workers entering Japan, new government data has revealed that the nation’s population contracted by a record four hundred twenty thousand people last year.
That hefty figure shattered the previous mark of nearly three hundred thirty thousand, which was set just the year prior, and continued the downward trend seen over the past decade.
According to the Health Ministry, Japan’s population now sits at roughly one hundred twenty-six million.
The 60% decrease in the number of foreign workers entering the East Asian nation over the past year has been largely blamed for the sharp drop in the population.
Even with the pandemic cutting jobs across many sectors, many companies and small businesses, including those in the hard-hit restaurant and hotel industries, have reported consistent labor shortages.
“Easing restrictions on immigration is a necessary first step in boosting the population, but the Japanese government also needs to address structural problems in the Japanese economy and society that keep young people from getting married and having children—even if they want to,” John Person, an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at University at Albany, State University of New York, told the National Interest.
“This includes tackling the issue of growing economic inequality and ensuring better access to affordable childcare.”
The data shows that in the first seven months of 2020, the difference between the number of births and deaths was similar to what was seen the year prior, but foreign arrivals into the country plummeted considerably due to airport entry restrictions that aimed to limit further spread of the coronavirus.
Japan, though, is also still struggling to boost its low birth rates. The reported number of pregnancies fell 5.1 percent during the ten months through last October, the Health Ministry’s data showed.
Japan, An Aging Society
According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan’s population is expected to decrease to about hundred eleven million by 2040, ninety-nine million by 2053, and eighty-eight million by 2065.
“The decline in birthrate is an issue that compounds over time, so the fact that Japan’s birthrate has been in decline for so long means that even a rebound in birth rates now and in the future won’t solve the issue of the decline in overall population,” Person said.
Toshiyuki Sakuragi, the director of the Japanese Studies Program at Gustavus Adolphus College, shared similar sentiments, adding that Japan’s “low fertility rate … is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.”
“Japan does not have many options for dealing with this problem,” he explained. “Two obvious options are—making it easier for women to fully participate in the labor market and accepting more immigrants. I see both as crucial for Japan’s future. I believe that an increasing number of Japanese people share this view, but any major cultural or societal change is likely to encounter significant resistance.”
Some Reasons for Hope
However, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, as the entry of foreign workers is expected to eventually perk up again with the rollout of this week’s mass vaccination campaign across the country.
Employees at Tokyo Medical Center were among the first of some forty thousand medical professionals targeted to receive the initial shipments of the vaccine. They will be followed by 3.7 million more medical personnel, then thirty-six million seniors aged sixty-five and over.
“This is the first major step towards ending the coronavirus (pandemic),” Vice Health Minister Hiroshi Yamamoto told reporters at the hospital after the first vaccines were administered.
There were, however, increasing concerns that millions of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses could be wasted due to a shortage of syringes required to maximize the number of shots from each vial. The Tokyo Medical Center has confirmed that it has enough supply for now of the low dead-space syringes needed to extract six doses from each vial.
Japan has signed overseas deals to procure a combined total of three hundred fourteen million vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna. As the shots require two doses, that’s enough for one hundred fifty-seven million people to get fully inoculated.
The country’s vaccine rollout noticeably lagged behind other developed nations because it asked vaccine maker Pfizer to conduct clinical trials with Japanese people, in addition to tests already conducted in six other countries. The Japanese are known to have a longstanding reluctance to take any vaccine shot, generally because of fears of having to deal with rare side effects.
The vaccine campaign is also considered crucial to the fate of the Summer Olympics in late July, and the associated billions of dollars at stake. Japanese officials are also well aware that rival China, which has enjoyed much success in suppressing the virus, will host the Winter Olympics next year, giving even more urgency to make the Tokyo Games a reality. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has even billed the Games as “proof of human victory against the pandemic.”
A recent poll, however, has revealed that 80 percent of Japanese respondents support the cancellation or further postponement of the Olympics due to the ongoing pandemic.
According to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Japan has so far recorded about four hundred twenty thousand confirmed COVID-19 cases and seven thousand related deaths.
The country is currently seeing an average of about one infection per hundred thousand people—compared to about twenty-five in the United States and eighteen in the United Kingdom.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 22:00 - Goldman Tells Clients To Buy Exxon Calls Ahead Of Analyst Day
Goldman Tells Clients To Buy Exxon Calls Ahead Of Analyst Day
To think it was just two months ago that Goldman upgraded energy giant Exxon to Buy for the first time in four years (after having a Sell rating as recently as October).
In retrospect, this proved to be one of Goldman’s best recommendations in the recent past, and while the bank had since lifted its PT to $55, it also advised its clients to put on a call spread for some levered upside.
Well, no more. As of today, Goldman has closed its recommendation to buy XOM call spreads, and instead has gone balls to the wall bullish, by initiating a new recommendation to buy calls outright ahead of the Mar 3rd analyst day:
On Dec 15th, we recommended buying the XOM Apr-21 $45/$50 call spreads, driven by our bullish view ahead of multiple catalysts. On 20-Jan we rolled the recommendation to a higher strike at a gain. Today, with increased clarity on the company’s dividend payment, and solid earnings on 02-Feb, we recommend closing the call spreads at a gain, and buying the XOM Mar-21 $52.50 calls, recently offered at $2.56 (4.8%, stock $52.85).
Why is the upcoming analyst day a catalyst? Because according to Goldman, “XOM analyst days have historically been an important catalyst, with the stock averaging +/-1.6% on the day of the event, nearly in-line with the average earnings-day move in past years.” And with one month implied volatility declining 10 points since earnings, Goldman believes “option prices are low, and recommend investors buy calls ahead of the analyst day.”
For those who care more about the fundamentals, Goldman Energy analyst Neil Mehta is Buy rated on XOM, with his bullish near-term view driven by:
- Significant upside to 2021-22 Visible Alpha consensus earnings
- Outlook for improving oil prices, particularly relative to the forward curve
- Leverage to continued chemicals strength
- Improving natural gas price fundamentals
- A view that refined product demand will sharply accelerate as jet and road travel rebound
Yet while the biggest risk – the Exxon dividend – now appears safe, why has the stock failed to keep up with oil, and is still well below year-ago levels even as Brent has reversed all post-covid losses? As a reminder, this is a point we discussed earlier this week, when we showed that Goldman recommended adding energy equity exposure since the “US energy equity sector is almost unchanged since mid January” while oil has surged.
According to Goldman’s Neil, despite recent investor conversations highlighting improving sentiment around XOM and the sustainability of its dividends, mutual funds remain underweight the stock, potentially a bullish positioning indicator.
As a result, he too sees positive risk-reward heading into the March 3rd analyst day, where management is likely to discuss improving capital intensity, and defend the dividend. He also sees the event as an opportunity to unpack differentiated assets in their portfolio, particularly Guyana, Brazil and the chemicals portfolio.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:56 - Only 44% Of High Schoolers Submitted SAT Or ACT Exams Last Year
Only 44% Of High Schoolers Submitted SAT Or ACT Exams Last Year
Remember how important the SATs were as a kid? It was almost like your entire future – and certainly your chances of getting into college – revolved around the standardized test.
But today, the test doesn’t hold the clamor and clout that it once did. In fact, during 2020, only 44% of high schoolers submitted SAT or ACT exams with their college application, down from 77% the year prior, according to Bloomberg. A Kaplan survey of 400 college admissions officers found that only 9% were requiring standardized tests this year.
Schools are suspending requiring the testing because of the pandemic – and while students love it, some counselors worry it could “add to growing inequality” in higher education.
This worry is a product of wealthier kids being able to “game” the other requirements looked at while applying to school. As we saw firsthand from the college admissions scandal, wealthy students can often give the appearance of being involved in all sorts of extracurricular activities when, in fact, they may not be doing all, or any, of them.
17 year old Ayah Fakhy, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants in Los Angeles, says she is now worried she’ll be at a disadvantage without the standardized test. She said: “It frightened me. I knew I’d have to make the other parts of the application stand out.”
Bob Sweeney, who works with a Brooklyn college access program that each year helps about 20 senior girls, agreed: “They’re at a disadvantage if there isn’t someone who can advocate for them.”
But like with everything else, testing critics are working to get the SATs “cancelled” anyway. They claim the tests are biased against “poor students and members of underrepresented minority groups” and that doing away with them will “improve race, gender and income diversity”.
“It’s remarkable how many schools found the experience good enough to say ‘Let’s do it again,'” said Bob Schaeffer, who is director of FairTest, which has pushed to eliminate the SAT/ACT requirement.
Zach Goldberg, a spokesman for the College Board, which administers the SAT, argued against Scaeffer, saying the absence of common, objective indicators, will increase grades, which wealthy schools are more likely to inflate.
There’s a divide between those who still choose to send in their scores, the report notes:
Forty-nine percent of students whose parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree provided test results, compared with 79% the previous year. Among those families who reported that neither of their parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree, only 31% sent scores, down from 71%. Wealthier students were also more likely to submit results, as were White and Asian students.
17 year old Shawn Babitsky, the son of a single mother who works as a nurse’s aide and an Uber driver, was upset he couldn’t send his test scores after his sessions were cancelled 4 times: “No one told me to start thinking about the SAT sophomore year. If I had, then maybe I could have had a test score. I wish I had been able to submit test scores.”
He aims to study molecular biology.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:40 - An Exceptionally Sad Day For Illinois
An Exceptionally Sad Day For Illinois
Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,
Despair, as best as we can tell, is the emotion growing most rapidly in Illinois, and yesterday, February 17, was particularly dispiriting.
Three stories told those who believe Illinois is on the wrong track that the state’s political establishment cannot care less about their concerns. Disdain and even hatred about those concerns prevail.
First was Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State and Budget Address. It’s not just that it was more of the same refusal to undertake the major reforms needed to solve the fiscal crisis, which we are writing about separately. It was the extreme rhetoric Pritzker used to attack a political obstacle that doesn’t exist.
That political obstacle, Pritzker said, is Illinois Republicans. Their purposeful destructiveness has undermined the mission of putting Illinois on the right path, Pritzker would have us believe. “In essence, they eliminated the fire department, burnt down the house, and poured gas on the flames — and now they’re asking why we’re not doing more to prevent fires,” he said.
In truth, however, Republicans have been unable to pass or block a single thing of any consequence during the Pritzker Administration because Pritzker’s party has held a supermajority in the General Assembly for years. Nor do Republicans hold even one statewide office. He has faced no political obstacle from those he excoriated.
Second, Illinois finalized the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards through a vote by a legislative committee. A firestorm of opposition preceded the vote, expressed by Illinoisans who saw what the standards were plainly designed to accomplish: political indoctrination of kindergarten through high school students, imposing radically divisive critical race theory on classrooms.
Countless parents across the state were livid, but they watched helplessly as the standards were sold to the public through distortion and outright dishonesty, which we wrote about here.
Third, a commission appointed by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to identify city statutes that perhaps should be removed returned its list of what it called “problematic” statues. The list includes five of Abraham Lincoln and two of George Washington.
One, of a Native American, is titled A Signal of Peace, and was dedicated by an owner who said the monument was intended as a permanent symbol of respect for native people.
Another, directed at antisemitism, bears a quote from a speech George Washington delivered to a Jewish congregation: “The government of United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” A bronze plaque placed by the donor reads: “Symbol of American tolerance and unity and of the cooperation of people of all races and creeds in the building of the United States.”
And in the height or irony, one, shown here, is simply called The Republic.
The Republic: “problematic.”
Most Illinoisans may think it preposterous that those statues could be tagged for possible removal, but Lightfoot is taking her commission’s list seriously. “This project is a powerful opportunity for us to come together as a city to assess the many monuments and memorials across our neighborhoods and communities — to face our history and what and how we memorialize that history,” Lightfoot said in a statement.
The common element in each of those stories is the extreme contempt, even hatred, that Illinois’ political leadership shows for the most fundamental values held by many Illinoisans. And they make no effort to hide it. They simply don’t care.
It is therefore understandable if despair is the sentiment growing most rapidly in Illinois.
We can only hope that conviction, courage and resilience remain dominant and prevail against a government so estranged from so many of its own people.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:35 - Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope From Censoring "Disinformation" To Silencing Truth
Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope From Censoring “Disinformation” To Silencing Truth
Authored by John Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell
This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.
In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.
Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.
This is how it starts.
Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all still applies.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
In our case, however, it started with the censors who went after extremists spouting so-called “hate speech,” and few spoke out—because they were not extremists and didn’t want to be shamed for being perceived as politically incorrect.
Then the internet censors got involved and went after extremists spouting “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden, and few spoke out—because they were not extremists and didn’t want to be shunned for appearing to disagree with the majority.
By the time the techno-censors went after extremists spouting “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.
Still, few spoke out.
Eventually, “we the people” will be the ones in the crosshairs.
At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.
When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.
Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.
Watch and learn.
We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices such as Donald Trump, Alex Jones, David Icke and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.
The question is not whether the content of their speech was legitimate.
The concern is what happens after such prominent targets are muzzled. What happens once the corporate techno-censors turn their sights on the rest of us?
It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
We are on a fast-moving trajectory.
Already, there are calls for the Biden administration to appoint a “reality czar” in order to tackle disinformation, domestic extremism and the nation’s so-called “reality crisis.”
Knowing what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.
Here’s the point: you don’t have to like Trump or any of the others who are being muzzled, nor do you have to agree or even sympathize with their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship would be dangerously naïve.
As Matt Welch, writing for Reason, rightly points out, “Proposed changes to government policy should always be visualized with the opposing team in charge of implementation.”
In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.
As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:
The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.
Welcome to the age of technofascism.
Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.
Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best. Certainly, Facebook and Twitter have become the modern-day equivalents of public squares, traditional free speech forums, with the internet itself serving as a public utility.
But what does that mean for free speech online: should it be protected or regulated?
When given a choice, the government always goes for the option that expands its powers at the expense of the citizenry’s. Moreover, when it comes to free speech activities, regulation is just another word for censorship.
Right now, it’s trendy and politically expedient to denounce, silence, shout down and shame anyone whose views challenge the prevailing norms, so the tech giants are lining up to appease their shareholders.
This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority—exactly the menace to free speech that James Madison sought to prevent when he drafted the First Amendment to the Constitution—marching in lockstep with technofascism.
With intolerance as the new scarlet letter of our day, we now find ourselves ruled by the mob.
Those who dare to voice an opinion or use a taboo word or image that runs counter to the accepted norms are first in line to be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various “word crimes” and banished from society.
For example, a professor at Duquesne University was fired for using the N-word in an academic context. To get his job back, Gary Shank will have to go through diversity training and restructure his lesson plans.
This is what passes for academic freedom in America today.
If Americans don’t vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).
No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before “we the people” constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.
We are almost at that point now.
The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.
Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.
Again, to quote Greenwald:
Censorship power, like the tech giants who now wield it, is an instrument of status quo preservation. The promise of the internet from the start was that it would be a tool of liberation, of egalitarianism, by permitting those without money and power to compete on fair terms in the information war with the most powerful governments and corporations. But just as is true of allowing the internet to be converted into a tool of coercion and mass surveillance, nothing guts that promise, that potential, like empowering corporate overlords and unaccountable monopolists to regulate and suppress what can be heard.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns. They’re laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
Therefore, it is important to recognize the thought prison that is being built around us for what it is: a prison with only one route of escape—free thinking and free speaking in the face of tyranny.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:20 - The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You
The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
Over the past year we have seen a mass exodus from major cities along the west coast, but what is happening to San Francisco is particularly sad. Once upon a time, San Francisco was one of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet. There is so much culture there, and the rolling hills make it a place like no other. And thanks to the tech boom in Silicon Valley, it has become one of the most prosperous cities in the whole country. So why have hordes of San Francisco residents decided to leave and never look back?
Well, there are a lot of factors at work.
First of all, the cost of living has gotten wildly out of control. A postage stamp of an apartment will cost you thousands of dollars per month to rent, and a lot of people don’t like paying 17 dollars for a salad.
For others, the extremely high taxes and the insane politicians are more than enough of a reason to leave the state. The lockdowns that were instituted by Governor Gavin Newsom have destroyed thousands of small businesses, and many former small business owners have pledged that they will never go back to California under any circumstances.
In San Francisco in particular, open drug abuse in the streets has made headlines all over the globe in recent years. The streets are constantly littered with drug needles and piles of human feces, and that isn’t pleasant.
On top of everything else, there is always the threat of more wildfires and a giant earthquake could strike the coast at literally any moment.
But none of those things are what this article is about.
This article is about the huge spike in crime that is driving countless people away from San Francisco.
When he was able to get a job with a tech company four years ago, Kieran Blubaugh jumped at the chance to live in San Francisco, and at first everything seemed great…
Kieran Blubaugh dreamed of living in California when he was growing up in Indiana. He played the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game and envisioned himself skateboarding down San Francisco’s crazy hills.
After paying off his student loans four years ago, he landed a job with a tech company and moved to San Francisco. At first, life was heavenly. He had a seven-minute commute on his motorcycle. He could pay $30 to see Incubus, one of his favorite bands, a short walk from his apartment.
Unfortunately, his infatuation with the region did not last long.
Even though he was located in a good part of the city, crime just kept getting worse and worse, and eventually he decided that enough was enough…
Soon, however, his California dream soured. Thieves broke into his locked garage and did $8,000 worth of damage to his motorcycle, doubling his insurance rates. His dog nearly died after eating human feces on the sidewalk. Seeing people either getting arrested or being treated for an overdose outside a nearby building was a regular occurrence.
“And I live in a nice part of town,” said Blubaugh, 33.
With each passing year, the criminals just keep becoming even more brazen.
Not too long ago, San Francisco resident Ben Couillard had someone watch his house while he was away, and that individual actually had to confront someone that was trying to break into the house…
He said the house sitter came face-to-face with the suspicious person who had turned his attention away from the vehicles and to the house.
“So she saw him through the window and basically when she asked him, you know, ‘Can I help you?’ Like, what are you doing as he’s trying to break in? And he said to her, like, ‘Go upstairs, (expletive) or I’ll kill you.”
What would you do if that happened to you?
You could call the San Francisco police, and they may or may not show up eventually.
Meanwhile, the junkies will continue to roam throughout your neighborhood as they search for things to steal so that they can sell them for more drugs.
The other night, San Francisco officials held a “virtual town hall” to discuss the crime wave. Residents were told that criminals are starting to target residents more frequently because they don’t have many tourists to prey upon these days…
San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen, District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and the captain of the police department overseeing the area, held a virtual town hall with residents of the community Wednesday night to address their concerns.
They attribute what they say is an increase in crime to “economic desperation” and “tourism has gone down so substantially in San Francisco that criminal rings that targeted tourists in areas that tourists frequent no longer have tourists there,” said Supervisor Ronen.
Please remind me not to visit San Francisco as a tourist any time soon.
Sadly, we are seeing the exact same thing happen to San Francisco that has happened to countless other communities all across the nation. Like so many other major cities, it has become a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole, and this has happened even though northern California is swimming in hundreds of billions of dollars from the tech industry.
After telling a reporter why he left the state, Kieran Blubaugh was asked how conditions in the state could be improved. This was his answer…
“We need more police. There’s a general lawlessness that’s just scary.”
Isn’t that ironic?
The “defund the police” movement has been pushing California cities such as San Francisco to greatly reduce police funding, but Blubaugh insists that the solution is more police.
And Blubaugh is not exactly an elderly curmudgeon. In fact, he is just 33 years old.
Of course the phrase “general lawlessness” could be used to describe the condition of the United States as a whole. We have become an upside down society where good is evil and evil is good, and as a result we have totally lost our way.
Unless we completely reverse course, the “general lawlessness” in our country is only going to intensify in the years ahead.
But we aren’t going to reverse course, are we?
At this point, we appear to have a national love affair with evil, and the consequences of that love affair are going to be very bitter indeed.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:10 - Biden Finally Accepts First Call From Netanyahu After Month-Long Delay
Biden Finally Accepts First Call From Netanyahu After Month-Long Delay
After going weeks since his inauguration without answering Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request for a customary first call, with growing concern in Tel Aviv over what was increasingly looking like an intentional snub, on Wednesday President Biden finally spoke with the Israeli leader. Though few details were made public as to the details of the content discussed, the conversation “was very friendly and warm and lasted about an hour,” according to the prime minister’s office.
As for the White House, Biden “affirmed his personal history of steadfast commitment to Israel’s security and conveyed his intent to strengthen all aspects of the U.S.-Israel partnership, including our strong defense cooperation,” according to a statement.
Via Jerusalem Post/Israeli PM’s office Each side’s press readout indicated they dealt with Israel’s regional security concerns – at the top of the list being Iran – as well as the COVID-19 response, and recent normalization efforts between Israel and Arab countries, which was brokered under the Trump admin.
Likely Netanyahu pressed Biden further on not restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear (JPOA) given the Islamic Republic’s recent breaches of the agreement. Tehran has lately urged that Washington must drop sanctions first before it acts to come under compliance. The Israelis think it’s all toward shielding an underlying nuclear weapons program, as opposed to developing peaceful nuclear energy.
And the White House said further on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “He underscored the importance of working to advance peace throughout the region, including between Israelis and Palestinians. Together, they affirmed their shared interest in continued strategic cooperation to confront the many challenges facing the region.”
Of course, the estimated $3.8 billion in annual military aid is still flowing uninterrupted…
Biden promises to increase Israel’s military aid, as Obama did. https://t.co/v5dZykIJID
— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) February 18, 2021
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Last week and into the days preceding the belated call, Israeli media was rife with speculation over what this means for the future of Israeli-US relations.
“Biden and his aides aim to tell Netanyahu, ‘You’re nothing special,'” geopolitical analyst Yossi Melman previously wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz. “‘The personal connection and chemistry you had with Donald Trump not only fail to advance your standing in Washington, they’re an obstacle,'” the report last week speculated.
The further irony was that Netanyahu over the same period in which Biden was not bothering to pick up the phone had no less than three phone calls from Vladimir Putin.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 21:00 - Texas Was "Seconds And Minutes" From Complete Disaster
Texas Was “Seconds And Minutes” From Complete Disaster
One week ago, long before almost anyone else realized just how serious the situation in the plains states in general and Texas in particular would be as a result of the cascade of soaring nat gas prices, we warned that all hell was about to break loose. But not even we had any idea just how close to total collapse the system nearly was.
On Thursday, ERCOT officials said that the Texas power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months. They should know: ERCOT is the entity that operates the power grid that covers most of the state.
The Texas Tribune reports that as millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.
Maybe if they had read our warnings, none of what happened this week would have been a surprise. Alas, that was not the case. So in hopes to frontrun a wave of lawsuits, they spun their quick reaction as the only thing that prevented an even more catastrophic scenario: according to the Tribune, “the quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts — but lasted days for millions of Texans — occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid.”
The #TexasPowerGrid is 90% self-contained, they can’t simply get power from other states. This is why all the states are connected, so the demand of the grid can be met.
Right now, acc to @ERCOT_ISO, Texas’s electricity demand is FAR exceeding current generation capacity. /8 pic.twitter.com/0LS9ky8ui8
— Liam Kent 🦞 (@l___kent) February 17, 2021
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As natural gas fired plants, utility scale wind power and coal plants tripped offline due to the extreme cold brought by the winter storm, the amount of power supplied to the grid to be distributed across the state fell rapidly. At the same time, demand was increasing as consumers and businesses turned up the heat and stayed inside to avoid the weather.
“It needed to be addressed immediately,” said Bill Magness, president of ERCOT. “It was seconds and minutes [from possible failure] given the amount of generation that was coming off the system.”
With energy prices exploding to record highs, and with demand soaring, grid operators had to “act quickly” to cut the amount of power distributed, Magness said, because if they had waited, “then what happens in that next minute might be that three more [power generation] units come offline, and then you’re sunk.”
Magness said on Wednesday that if operators had not acted in that moment, the state could have suffered blackouts that “could have occurred for months,” and left Texas in an “indeterminately long” crisis.
In other words, the millions of households left without power – in some cases for days – were sacrificing for the greater good.
So by manually shutting down entire parts of the grid, ERCOT avoided the worst case scenario: one where demand for power overwhelms the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down.
If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid would take months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software and information company headquartered in Austin.
“As chaotic as it was, the whole grid could’ve been in blackout,” she said. “ERCOT is getting a lot of heat, but the fact that it wasn’t worse is because of those grid operators.” If that had occurred, even as power generators recovered from the cold, ERCOT would have been unable to quickly reconnect them back to the grid, Johnson said.
And since nobody can disprove a negative, one just has to take them at their word that dozens of people died so that millions more could live… or something.
Grid operators would have needed to slowly and carefully bring generators and customers back online, all the while taking care to not to cause more damage to the grid. It’s a delicate process, Johnson explained, because each part of the puzzle — the generators producing power, the transmission lines that move the power and the customers that use it — must be carefully managed.
“It has to balance constantly,” she said. “Once a grid goes down, it’s hard to bring it back online. If you bring on too many customers, then you have another outage.”
And while that may justify the widespread blackouts, it does not explain why the Texas grid was so underprepared for just this scenario. ERCOT officials have repeatedly said that the winter storm that swept the state caught power generators off guard. The storm far exceeded what ERCOT projected in the fall to prepare for winter. Right, but that’s why they are paid the big bucks: to predict worst case scenarios (kinda like the Fed) – it is here that everyone failed so abysmally. Which means that it has to be spun into some heroic task.
“The operators who took those actions to prevent a catastrophic blackout and much worse damage to our system, that was, I would say, the most difficult decision that had to be made throughout this whole event,” Magness said.
Nine grid operators are working at any given time who make these sorts of decisions, said Leslie Sopko, a spokesperson for ERCOT. “At the end of the day, our operators are highly trained and have the authority to make decisions that protect the reliability of the electric system,” she said in a statement.
The good news is that the Texas nightmare is coming to an end: ERCOT said it made “significant progress” overnight Wednesday to restore customer power to many Texans, and remaining power outages are likely due to ice storm damage to the distribution system. Some areas that were taken offline will also need to be restored manually, according to ERCOT.
ERCOT warned that emergency conditions remain, and that “some level of rotating outages” may be necessary over the coming days to keep the grid stable.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:40 - Bill Gates Plugs "Next Gen" Nuclear That Solves All Issues Of 'Safety & Economics'
Bill Gates Plugs “Next Gen” Nuclear That Solves All Issues Of ‘Safety & Economics’
For the past two months, Zero Hedge has been especially constructive on the uranium sector (and its handful of beaten down stocks), which we, and others, suspect may benefit tremendously as the sector gets swept up in the ESG euphoria many expect to follow the collapse of Texas’ independent power grid during this bitter winter storm. While conservatives have already attacked windmills and other “green” energy for contributing to the grid’s failure in the face of record low temperatures and snow in Texas (which never “winter-fied” its power grid)…
…Many on the left, including AOC and other Green New Deal types, are using the opportunity to push their agenda own.
Somewhere in the middle, uranium bulls have been growing increasingly convinced about the commodity’s prospects, as prices have trended after roughly a decade in the unloved wilderness. Will nuclear be the next “ESG Craze”? Hugh Hendry and Michael Burry (two iconic hedge fund managers) have both plugged nuclear power, with Burry calling on the Dems to “convert the US to nuclear” adding the hashtag #greenfuturenow.
In a recent Bear Traps Report, Larry McDonald wrote that one of the “cons” of nuclear is what to do with the potentially harmful waste.
Nuclear Pros and Cons:
Nuclear is so much better for the environment but the two major issues environmentalists cite as problems is discharged cooling water than harms fish due to warmer temp and micro leaks that go undetected. How to dispose of contamination is an issue too. I believe all these things have been addressed in the last couple decades and micronuclear sites are a way to limit fallout concerns, albeit extremely low. However, Japan didn’t do proponents of nuclear any favor and hard to ensure total safety when the Earth can move below you…
Well, in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Thursday, billionaire Bill Gates joined in the chorus of pro-nuclear voices (something that he has long supported) as he sat for an interview on CNBC to plug a new book he is selling.
Asked pointed blank if Gates ever thought nuclear power would ever be politically palatable again, he responded “absolutely”, adding that nuclear – counter to the contemporary wisdom – is actually safer than natural gas and other fossil fuels, when one accounts for deaths from inhaling coal particulate and natural gas pipelines exploding.
“The deaths per unit of power of these other approaches are far higher. And the miracle is I’m not even talking about the current generation of nuclear. There’s a new generation that solves the problem of economics…which is the big problem with nuclear” while also taking care of some of the safety issues.
Gates then seized the opportunity to plug Terrapower, a public-private partnership (with money mostly from Gates), along with other government project, before later adding that the new generation of nuclear companies are figuring out how to mitigate threats, like the cleanup of waste (by burying it deep underground).
Watch the full interview below:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:20 - GOP Senators Demand Probe Into Cuomo's "Possibly Criminal" Handling Of COVID Death Data
GOP Senators Demand Probe Into Cuomo’s “Possibly Criminal” Handling Of COVID Death Data
A group of Republican Senators have penned a letter demanding a full investigation into the recent revelations that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have deliberately covered-up New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death toll.
“That so many people needlessly lost their lives because of the failed policies of Governor Cuomo’s administration – an administration that many have lauded over the past year – is tragic and deserves a full investigation and accounting,” reads the letter sent to Sen. Dick Durban (D-Ill), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The letter is signed by nine GOP Senate Judiciary Committee members, including Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton , and Thom Tillis .
Last week the New York Post reported that Cuomo top-aid, Melissa DeRosa, told a group of lawmakers that Governor Cuomo and his senior staff engaged in a deliberate cover-up of New York’s nursing home COVID-19 death numbers out of fear that it would be “used against us” by the Trump Justice Department.
“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” DeRosa reportedly said during a private zoom call.
It was also revealed in a separate report by the Associated Press that the Cuomo administration sent over 9,000 elderly coronavirus patients back to their long-term care centers while the administration reported these facilities had only admitted 6,000 patients.
At the onset of the pandemic, a Cuomo directive ordered nursing homes to accept residents recovering from COVID-19 after they were discharged from hospitals, a decision many blame for spreading sickness and a high death toll among residents.
“These new revelations, however, that Governor Cuomo’s administration withheld information from the Department of Justice and intentionally misled federal officials to avoid political accountability is more than irresponsible: it is very possibly criminal,” the GOP letter goes on, adding:
“Those who deliberately withheld – or directed others to withhold – material information from the Department of Justice may be guilty of obstruction of justice, violating the False Claims Act, and numerous other criminal violations.”
The letter calls on Durbin to open an investigation and hold hearings on the matter because:
the “American people deserve to know the extent to which Governor Cuomo and his senior staff violated the civil rights of New York seniors, lied to the Department of Justice about their actions, and violated federal civil and criminal laws in the process.”
The GOP letter comes on the heels of reports claiming the FBI and US attorney’s office in Brooklyn have begun an investigation into the governor and his administration’s handling of nursing home death data. The investigation was opened shortly after Democratic state Assemblyman Ron Kim, whose uncle died of COVID-19 in a nursing home, accused the governor of threatening him over his criticism of the handling of state nursing homes during the pandemic.
NY Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, whose uncle died in a NY nursing home: @NYGovCuomo called and “berated me, yelled at me. He told me that my career would be over [if I didn’t ] lie and … asking me [to cover up a] crime” pic.twitter.com/uHKopiIeDW
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 18, 2021
Read the entire GOP letter below:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 20:00 - BOJ Mulls Changing How It Buys Billions In ETFs
BOJ Mulls Changing How It Buys Billions In ETFs
With all pretense that central banks don’t do everything in their power to push stocks higher having long ago been steamrolled by their own actions, on Wednesday Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga defended the Bank of Japan’s buying of equity ETFs in parliament, saying the policy isn’t aimed at lifting stock prices, which is funny because that’s precisely what it is aimed at.
It’s also probably why he did admit that higher equity prices (with the explicit support of the BOJ) benefit Japan’s wider population, especially by helping the performance of pension funds including the Government Pension Investment Fund, Suga said.
The prime minister was responding to criticism from an opposition lawmaker that rising share prices only benefit the wealthy; and while Suga acknowledged that inequality is growing in the domestic economy – facilitated by the BOJ’s own actions – he said the government’s third extra budget is helping, although it wasn’t clear where considering the ongoing collapse in Japan’s nominal wages.
Despite Suga’s disingenuous attempts to deflect from what is the biggest topic of the millennium – namely central banks distortions and manipulation of capital markets – the growing concerns about the BOJ’s aggressive ETF purchases had an impact and on Thursday, Reuters reported that the Bank of Japan may replace some numerical guidelines for its purchases of exchange-traded funds with a pledge to ramp up buying when markets become volatile, three sources familiar with its thinking said.
The change in policy – which would be similar to shifting from fixed forward guidance to more fluid, contingent regime – would allow the BOJ to more flexibly slow purchases when markets are stable, while “reassuring investors” it will step in forcefully when shock events trigger turbulence.While there is no consensus on the final decision, the idea is among options being floated within the BOJ ahead of a review of its policy tools due in March amid growing pushback.
“There are benefits to having numerical guidelines, though they also serve as a bind,” one of the sources said, adding that removing some of the numerical guidelines was a possibility.
“To make the BOJ’s policy sustainable, it needs to avoid buying too much ETFs when doing so is unnecessary,” another source said, a view echoed by a third source.
Which of course is a funny “concern” to emerge now, after a decade of non-stop ETF purchases with the BOJ currently purchasing up to 50BN yen in ETFs every other week, after peaking at over 200BN during the March crisis.
The BOJ will conduct the review of its tools at next month’s policy meeting to make its massive stimulus program “more sustainable and effective,” as the COVID-19 pandemic heightens prospects of a prolonged struggle to reflate the economy.
The BOJ now pledges to buy ETFs at an annual pace of roughly 6 trillion yen ($56.7 billion) and by up to 12 trillion yen, a commitment that forces it to keep buying even when stock prices are booming, if keeping bulls quite happy.
Yet in a curious reversal to years of policy, many BOJ policymakers now want to make the ETF-buying program more nimble, so it can buy smaller amounts or even stop buying when markets are calm, the Reuters sources said. Some are warming to the idea of removing the 6-trillion-yen target or the 12-trillion-yen ceiling, a move that would give the BOJ a free hand in slowing purchases, they said. Others, however, are worried that taking out the numerical guidelines could scare investors and trigger a stock market sell-off at a time many Japanese firms close their March fiscal year-end books.
Because clearly a stock market without explicit central bank support is simply not acceptable.
To ease fears, the BOJ will seek to clarify that it would phase out purchases in non-crisis times, so it has scope to buy aggressively when markets turn volatile.In any case, the central bank will look at various ideas before reaching a final decision at the March 18-19 policy meeting, which could be swayed by market moves at the time, they said.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:40 - Texas Blackouts Cost Mexican Manufacturers $2.7 Billion
Texas Blackouts Cost Mexican Manufacturers $2.7 Billion
By Noi Mahoney of Freightwaves,
Rolling power blackouts have affected key industrial sites across Mexico, including border states home to hundreds of factories producing everything from auto parts to electronics.
Factories across northern Mexico states such as Tamaulipas, Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon reported more than $2.7 billion in losses from blackouts that started Monday when Texas began limiting natural gas supplies, according to Mexico’s National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing (INDEX).
INDEX reported 2,600 companies across Mexico have been affected by the power outages since Monday.
General Motors, Mazda and Volkswagen are suspending some of their operations for several days in Mexico due to the natural gas shortage, the automakers said in separate statements.
“Due to the natural gas shortage affecting the Mexican territory, our Silao Guanajuato Complex was forced to stop its operations on the night of February 16 and February 17,” GM said in a statement.
Volkswagen adjusted the production schedule of its plant in Puebla where it produces the Jetta, Taos and Golf model cars.
Japanese automaker Mazda announced it would stop production of its plant in Salamanca, Mexico, starting Wednesday due to the lack of natural gas from the U.S. Production could resume by Friday.
More blackouts across Mexico could be on the horizon with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that natural gas sale and exports to Mexico will be suspended until Sunday.
“Some of the natural gas produced in Texas is occasionally shipped out of state. Today I have issued an order effective today through February 21, requiring producers who have been shipping to locations outside of Texas to instead sell that natural gas to the Texas power generator which will also increase the power produced and it will be shipped to homes in Texas,” Abbott said during a Wednesday press conference.
Ports of entry across Texas have been mostly unaffected by the wintry weather, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“The Los Indios International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, has been closed until further notice due to no electricity or water. Commercial traffic is diverted to Veterans International Bridge,” according to a Thursday email from CBP.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:20 - In Major Nuke Deal Breakthrough, Biden Tells Iran 'We're Ready For EU-Sponsored Talks'
In Major Nuke Deal Breakthrough, Biden Tells Iran ‘We’re Ready For EU-Sponsored Talks’
A first potential major breakthrough which so far has proved elusive after Biden has stalled on prior promises to ‘immediately’ restore US participation in the Iran nuclear deal, the United States appears to have just changed its tune. An admin official has said ‘maximum pressure’ could come to an end if Iran agrees to engage through a broader EU-hosted meeting base in the P5+1 framework.
“The United States would be ready to hold talks with Iran if the European Union extended an invitation, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday, sketching out a possible diplomatic path to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,” Reuters reports late in the day Thursday.
Further the official said the administration’s “goal is to get both sides back into compliance with the nuclear deal” and has extended the invitation to Iran: “Let’s talk about how to get there.”
Via Shutterstock/Office of the Supreme Leader Previously the administration appeared to balk when initially just such an offer was made two weeks ago by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif for the European Union to coordinate a piecemeal approach for dropping sanctions and Iran’s return to conformity.
But now Reuters has cited a top admin official to say “We are ready to show up if such a meeting were to take place” – in what’s clearly an invitation for Iran to signal the same.
Iran has indicated it will begin blocking IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities starting Sunday, February 21st, hence this new scramble out of the Biden administration to find a way forward before this next escalation measure that many fear would be hard to roll back takes effect. Both the US and Europe are warning against such a step.
The US has lately been in direct talks with allies Britain, France, and Germany – the key European signatories to the JCPOA – and it appears they’ve finally struck up a common strategy in getting the frozen communications between Tehran and Washington going again.
US, EU diplomats meet to salvage Iranian nuclear pact
Both sides seem to be digging themselves into positions that show little room for successful. Distrust is highhttps://t.co/lrmnW0kMqy via @AlMonitor
— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) February 18, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
At the start of this month State Department spokesman Ned Price appeared to shrug off EU-backed talks when asked directly about Tehran’s expressed willingness to engage through the Europeans. He said there are “many steps” that had to be taken before engaging “directly with Iran” and before the US is willing to “entertain any sort of proposal.” Later the White House appeared to walk back the comments.
The central point of controversy since Biden took office was over who would “move first”. The Biden White House has been adamant thus far that Iran must return to compliance with enrichment caps and walking back breaches of the terms of the JCPOA. At the same time Iran has pointed to US hypocrisy of backing out of the deal in the first place (under Trump in May 2018) but now demanding Iran’s conformity. Iran has been adamant that all sanctions be dropped.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/18/2021 – 19:00
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