Today’s News 19th November 2021

• How The "Grand Chessboard" Led To US Checkmate In Afghanistan
  How The “Grand Chessboard” Led To US Checkmate In Afghanistan

  Authored by Max Parry via Off-Guardian.org,

  Nearly as suspenseful as the Taliban’s meteoric return to power after the final withdrawal of American armed forces from Afghanistan is the uncertainty over what will come next amid the fallout…

  

  Many have predicted that Russia and China will step in to fill the power vacuum and convince the facelift Taliban to negotiate a power-sharing agreement in exchange for political and economic support, while others fear a descent into civil war is inevitable.

  Although Moscow and Beijing potentially stand to gain from the humiliating US retreat by pushing for an inclusive government in Kabul, the rebranded Pashtun-based group must first be removed as a designated terrorist organization.

  Neither wants to see Afghanistan worsen as a hotbed of jihad, as Islamist separatism already previously plagued Russia in the Caucasus and China is still in the midst of an ongoing ethnic conflict in Xinjiang with Uyghur Muslim secessionists and the Al Qaeda-linked Turkestan Islamic Party.

  At this point everyone recognizes the more serious extremist threat lies not with the Taliban but the emergence of ISIS Khorasan or ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate blamed for several recent terror attacks including the August 26th bombings at Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital which killed 13 American service members and more than a 100 Afghans during the US drawdown.

  Three days later, American commanders ordered a retaliatory drone strike targeting a vehicle which they claimed was en route to detonate a suicide bomb at the same Kabul airport.

  For several days, the Pentagon falsely maintained that the aerial assault successfully took out two ISIS-K militants and a servile corporate media parroted these assertions unquestioningly, including concocting a totally fictitious report that the blast consisted of “secondary explosions” from devices already inside the car intended for use in an act of terror.

  Two weeks later, US Central Command (CENTCOM) was forced to apologize and admit the strike was indeed a “tragic mistake” which errantly killed ten innocent civilians — all of whom were members of a single family including seven children — while no Daesh members were among the dead.

  This distortion circulated in collusion between the endless war machine and the media is perhaps only eclipsed by the alleged Russian-Taliban bounty program story in its deceitfulness.

  If any Americans were aware of ISIS-K prior to the botched Kabul airstrike, they likely recall when former US President Donald Trump authorized the unprecedented use of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, informally referred to as the “Mother Of All Bombs”, on Islamic State militants in Nangarhar Province back in 2017.

  Reportedly, Biden’s predecessor had to be shown photos from the 1970s of Afghan girls wearing miniskirts by his National Security Advisor, HR McMaster, to renege on his campaign pledge of ending the longest war in US history. As it happens, the ISIS Khorasan fighters extinguished by the MOAB were sheltered at an underground tunnel complex near the Pakistani border that was built by the CIA back in the 1980s during the Afghan-Soviet war.

  Alas, the irony of this detail was completely lost on mainstream media whose proclivity to treat Pentagon newspeak as gospel has been characteristic of not only the last twenty years of US occupation but four decades of American involvement in Afghanistan since Operation Cyclone, the covert Central Intelligence Agency plan to arm and fund the mujahideen, was launched in 1979.

  Frank Wisner, the CIA official who established Operation Mockingbird, the agency’s extensive clandestine program to infiltrate the news media for propaganda purposes during the the Cold War, referred to the press as it’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”, or a musical instrument played to manipulate public opinion.

  Langley’s recruitment of assets within the fourth estate was one of many illicit activities by the national security apparatus divulged in the limited hangout of the Church Committee during the 1970s, along with CIA complicity in coups, assassinations, illegal surveillance, and drug-induced brainwashing of unwitting citizens.

  At bottom, it wasn’t just the minds of human guinea pigs that ‘The Company’ sought to control but the news coverage consumed by Americans as well.

  In his testimony before a congressional select committee, Director of Central Intelligence William Colby openly acknowledged the use of spooks in journalism, as seen in the award-winning documentary Inside the CIA: On Company Business (1980).

  Unfortunately, the breadth of the secret project and its vetting of journalists wasn’t fully revealed until an article by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, whereas the series of official investigations only ended up salvaging the deep state by presenting such wrongdoings as rogue “abuses” rather than an intrinsic part of espionage in carrying out US foreign policy.

  The corrupt institution of Western media also punishes anyone within its ranks who dares to swim against the current. The husband and wife duo of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of a new memoir which illuminates the real story of Afghanistan, were two such journalists who learned just how the sausage is made in the nation’s capital with the connivance of the yellow press.

  Both veterans of the peace movement, Paul and Liz were initially among those who naively believed that America’s humiliation in Vietnam and the well-publicized hearings which discredited the intelligence community might lead to a sea change in Washington with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976.

  In hindsight, there was actually good reason for optimism regarding the prospect for world peace in light of the arms reduction treaties and talks between the US and Moscow during the Nixon and Ford administrations, a silver lining to Henry Kissinger’s ‘realist’ doctrine of statecraft.

  However, any glimmer of hope in easing strained relations between the West and the Soviet Union was short-lived, as the few voices of reason inside the Beltway presuming good faith on the part of Moscow toward détente and nuclear proliferation were soon challenged by a new bellicose faction of DC think tank ghouls who argued that diplomacy jeopardized America’s strategic position and that the USSR sought global dominion.

  

  Since intelligence assessments inconveniently contradicted the claims of Soviet aspirations for strategic superiority, CIA Director George H.W. Bush consulted the purported expertise of a competitive group of intellectual warmongers known as ‘Team B’ which featured many of the same names later synonymous with the neoconservative movement, including Richard Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

  Bush, Sr. had replaced the aforementioned Bill Colby following the notorious “Halloween Massacre” firings in the Gerald Ford White House, a political shakeup which also included Kissinger’s ouster as National Security Advisor and the promotion of a young Donald Rumsfeld to Secretary of Defense with his pupil, one Richard B. Cheney, named Chief of Staff.

  This proto-neocon soft coup allowed Team B and its manipulated estimates of the Soviet nuclear arsenal to undermine the ongoing Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between Washington and the Kremlin until Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev finally signed a second comprehensive non-proliferation treaty in June 1979.

  The behind-the-scenes split within the foreign policy establishment over which dogma would set external policymaking continued wrestling for power before the unipolarity of Team B prevailed thanks to the machinations of Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

  If intel appraisals of Moscow’s intentions and military capabilities didn’t match the Team B thesis, the Polish-American strategist devised a scheme to lure the USSR into a trap in Afghanistan to give the appearance of Soviet expansionism in order to convince Carter to withdraw from SALT II the following year and sabotage rapprochement.

  By the time it surfaced that the CIA was supplying weapons to Islamist insurgents in the Central Asian country, the official narrative dispensed by Washington was that it was aiding the Afghan people fight back against an “invasion” by the Red Army.

  Ironically, this was the justification for a proxy conflict which resulted in the deaths of at least 2 million civilians and eventually collapsed the socialist government in Kabul, setting off a bloody civil war and the emergence of the Taliban.

  Even so, it was the media which helped manage the perception that the CIA’s covert war began only after the Soviets had intervened. Meanwhile, the few honest reporters who tried to unveil the truth about what was happening were silenced and relegated to the periphery.

  Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould were the first two American journalists permitted entry into the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1981 by the Moscow-friendly government since Western correspondents had been barred from the country. What they witnessed firsthand on the ground could not have contrasted more sharply from the accepted tale of freedom fighters resisting a communist “occupation” disseminated by propaganda rags.

  Instead, what they discovered was an army of feudal tribesman and fanatical jihadists who blew up schools and doused women with acid as they waged a holy war against an autonomous, albeit flawed, progressive government in Kabul enacting land reforms and providing education for girls.

  In addition, they learned the Soviet military presence was being deliberately exaggerated by major outlets who either outright censored or selectively edited their exclusive accounts, beginning with CBS Evening News and later ABC’s Nightline.

  

  Not long after the Taliban established an Islamic emirate for the first time in the late 1990s, Brzezinski himself would shamelessly boast that Operation Cyclone had actually started in mid-1979 nearly six months prior to the deployment of Soviet troops later that year.

  Fresh off the publication of his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, the Russophobic Warsaw-native told the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998:

  Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the National Security Advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

  Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

  Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

  B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

  Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

  B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

  Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

  B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

  If this stunning admission straight from the horse’s mouth is too candid to believe, Fitzgerald and Gould obtain confirmation of Brzezinski’s Machiavellian confession from one of their own skeptics.

  Never mind that Moscow’s help had been requested by the legitimate Afghan government to defend itself against the US dirty war, a harbinger of the Syrian conflict more than three decades later when Damascus appealed to Russia in 2015 for military aid to combat Western-backed “rebel” groups.

  Paul and Liz also uncover CIA fingerprints all over the suspicious February 1979 assassination of Adolph Dubs, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, whose negotiation attempts may have inadvertently thrown a wrench into Brzezinski’s ploy to draw the USSR into a quagmire. Spurring Carter to give his foreign policy tutor the green light to finance the Islamist proxies, the timely kidnapping and murder of the US diplomat at a Kabul hotel would be pinned on the KGB and the rest was history.

  The journo couple even go as far as to imply the branch of Western intelligence likely responsible for his murder was an agent from the Safari Club, an unofficial network between the security services of a select group of European and Middle Eastern countries which carried out covert operations during the Cold War across several continents with ties to the worldwide drug trade and Brzezinski.

  Although he was considered to be of the ‘realist’ school of international relations like Kissinger, Brzezinski’s plot to engineer a Russian equivalent of Vietnam in Afghanistan increased the clout of neoconservatism in Washington, a persuasion that would later reach its peak of influence in the George W. Bush administration.

  In retrospect, the need for a massive military buildup to achieve Pax Americana promoted by the war hawks in Team B was a precursor to the influential “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” manifesto by the Project for the New American Century cabal preceding 9/11 and the ensuing US invasion of Afghanistan.

  Fitzgerald and Gould also historically trace the ideological roots of neoconservatism to its intellectual foundations in the American Trotskyist movement during the 1930s. If a deviated branch of Marxism seems like an unlikely origin source for the right-wing interventionist foreign policy of the Bush administration, its basis is not as unexpected as it may appear.

  In fact, one of the main reasons behind the division between the Fourth International and the Comintern was over the national question, since Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” called for expansion to impose global revolution unlike Stalin’s “socialism in one country” position which respected the sovereignty and self-determination of nation states while still giving support to national liberation movements.

  The authors conclude by highlighting how the military overhaul successfully championed by the neoconservatives marked the beginning of the end for US infrastructure maintenance as well.

  With public attention currently focused on the pending Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to repair decaying industry at home just as the disastrous Afghan pullout has put President Joe Biden’s favorability at an all-time low, Fitzgerald and Gould truly connect all the dots between the decline of America as a superpower with Brzezinski and Team B.

  Even recent statements by Jimmy Carter himself were tantamount when he spoke with Trump about China’s economic success which he attributed to Beijing’s lack of wasteful spending on military adventures, an incredible irony given the groundwork for the defense budget escalation begun under Ronald Reagan was laid by Carter’s own foreign policy.

  Looking back, the spousal team note that the ex-Georgia governor did not need much coaxing after all to betray his promises as a candidate, considering his rise to the presidency was facilitated by his membership alongside Brzezinski in the Trilateral Commission, an elite Rockefeller-funded think tank.

  What is certain is that Paul and Liz have written an indispensable book that gives a level of insight into the Afghan story only attainable from their four decades of scholarly work on the subject.

  The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond is now available from Trine Day Press and the timing of its release could not offer better context to recent world events.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 23:40

• Mapping The World's Solar Power In 2021
  Mapping The World’s Solar Power In 2021

  The world is adopting renewable energy at an unprecedented pace, and solar power is the energy source leading the way.

  Despite a 4.5% fall in global energy demand in 2020, Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada notes that renewable energy technologies showed promising progress. While the growth in renewables was strong across the board, solar power led from the front with 127 gigawatts installed in 2020, its largest-ever annual capacity expansion.

  The above infographic uses data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to map solar power capacity by country in 2021. This includes both solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power capacity.

  

  The Solar Power Leaderboard

  From the Americas to Oceania, countries in virtually every continent (except Antarctica) added more solar to their mix last year. Here’s a snapshot of solar power capacity by country at the beginning of 2021:

  

  *1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts.

  China is the undisputed leader in solar installations, with over 35% of global capacity. What’s more, the country is showing no signs of slowing down. It has the world’s largest wind and solar project in the pipeline, which could add another 400,000MW to its clean energy capacity.

  Following China from afar is the U.S., which recently surpassed 100,000MW of solar power capacity after installing another 50,000MW in the first three months of 2021. Annual solar growth in the U.S. has averaged an impressive 42% over the last decade. Policies like the solar investment tax credit, which offers a 26% tax credit on residential and commercial solar systems, have helped propel the industry forward.

  Although Australia hosts a fraction of China’s solar capacity, it tops the per capita rankings due to its relatively low population of 26 million people. The Australian continent receives the highest amount of solar radiation of any continent, and over 30% of Australian households now have rooftop solar PV systems.

  China: The Solar Champion

  In 2020, President Xi Jinping stated that China aims to be carbon neutral by 2060, and the country is taking steps to get there.

  China is a leader in the solar industry, and it seems to have cracked the code for the entire solar supply chain. In 2019, Chinese firms produced 66% of the world’s polysilicon, the initial building block of silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) panels. Furthermore, more than three-quarters of solar cells came from China, along with 72% of the world’s PV panels.

  With that said, it’s no surprise that 5 of the world’s 10 largest solar parks are in China, and it will likely continue to build more as it transitions to carbon neutrality.

  What’s Driving the Rush for Solar Power?

  The energy transition is a major factor in the rise of renewables, but solar’s growth is partly due to how cheap it has become over time. Solar energy costs have fallen exponentially over the last decade, and it’s now the cheapest source of new energy generation.

  Since 2010, the cost of solar power has seen a 85% decrease, down from $0.28 to $0.04 per kWh. According to MIT researchers, economies of scale have been the single-largest factor in continuing the cost decline for the last decade. In other words, as the world installed and made more solar panels, production became cheaper and more efficient.

  This year, solar costs are rising due to supply chain issues, but the rise is likely to be temporary as bottlenecks resolve.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 23:20

• The Road To Fascism: Paved With Vaccine Mandates And Corporate Collusion
  The Road To Fascism: Paved With Vaccine Mandates And Corporate Collusion

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”

  – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  We are moving fast down the road to fascism.

  This COVID-19 pandemic has shifted us into high gear.

  

  The heavy-handed collusion between the Techno-Corporate State and the U.S. government over vaccine mandates is merely the latest manifestation of the extent to which fascist forces are working to overthrow our constitutional republic and nullify the rights of the individual.

  In early November 2021, the Biden Administration drew its line in the sand for more than 100 million American workers: get vaccinated against COVID-19 (by Nov. 22 for federal workers, and Jan. 4 for federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees) or else.

  Or else what?

  For many individuals with sincere objections to the vaccine, either based on their religious beliefs or some other medical or philosophical concern, non-compliance with workplace vaccine mandates will mean losing their jobs and the possibility of no unemployment benefits.

  One survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management estimated that 28% of employed Americans wouldn’t get a COVID vaccine even if it meant losing their jobs.

  Although OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is requiring that employees be paid for the time it takes to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects, those who refuse to get vaccinated but keep their jobs will have to test negative for COVID weekly and could be made to shoulder the costs of those weekly tests. Healthcare workers are not being given an option for testing: it’s the vaccine or nothing.

  To give the government’s arm-twisting some added strength, companies that violate the workplace mandate rules “can face fines of up to $13,653 per violation for serious violations and 10 times that for willful or repeated violations.”

  In other words, as Katrina Trinko writes for USA Today, “the government is turning employers—who are not paid by, nor work for, the government—into an army of vaccine enforcers.”

  You know who won’t suffer any harm as a result of these vaccine mandates? The Corporate State (manufacturers, distributors, and health care providers), which were given a blanket “get out of jail” card to insulate them from liability for any injuries or death caused by the vaccines.

  While this vaccine mandate is being presented as a “targeted” mandate as opposed to a national mandate that impacts the entire population, it effectively leaves those with sincere objections to the COVID vaccine with very little options beyond total compliance or unemployment.

  This has long since ceased to be a debate over how best to protect the populace at large against an unknown pandemic. Rather, it has become a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.

  As such, these COVID-19 mandates have become the new battleground in the government’s tug-of-war over bodily autonomy and individual sovereignty.

  Already, the legal challenges to these vaccine mandates are piling up before the courts. Before long, divided circuit court rulings will make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will be asked to decide whether these mandates constitute government overreach or a natural extension of the government’s so-called emergency powers.

  With every new court ruling that empowers corporations and the government to use heavy-handed tactics to bring about vaccine compliance, with every new workplace mandate that forces employees to choose between their right to bodily autonomy and economic livelihood, and with every new piece of legislation that insulates corporations and the government from being held accountability for vaccine injuries and deaths, our property interest in our bodies is diminished.

  At a minimum, our right to individual sovereignty over our lives and our bodies is being usurped by power-hungry authoritarians; greedy, self-serving corporations; egotistical Nanny Staters who think they know what’s best for the rest of the populace; and a short-sighted but well-meaning populace which fails to understand the long-term ramifications of trading their essential freedoms for temporary promises of safety and security.

  We are more vulnerable now than ever before.

  This debate over bodily autonomy, which covers broad territory ranging from forced vaccinations, abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare, has far-reaching ramifications for who gets to decide what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

  On a daily basis, Americans are already being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

  This merely pushes us one step further down that road towards a total control society in which the government in collusion with Corporate America gets to decide who is “worthy” of being allowed to take part in society.

  Right now, COVID-19 vaccines are the magic ticket for gaining access to the “privileges” of communal life. Having already conditioned the population to the idea that being part of society is a privilege and not a right, such access could easily be predicated on social credit scores, the worthiness of one’s political views, or the extent to which one is willing to comply with the government’s dictates, no matter what they might be.

  The government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

  When all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle, we should all be leery and afraid.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, nothing good can come from totalitarian tactics – no matter how benevolent they appear – that are used to make us cower, fear and comply with the government’s dictates.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 23:00

• Olympic Committee Just Made It Much Easier For Biological Males To Beat Women
  Olympic Committee Just Made It Much Easier For Biological Males To Beat Women

  The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has published a new framework that discards rules on hormone levels for male-born trans athletes competing in women’s sports. 

  The new framework, titled “IOC Framework On Fairness, Inclusion And Non-Discrimination On The Basis Of Gender Identity And Sex Variations,” states, “every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination and in a way that respects their health, safety, and dignity.” 

  “Athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status,” the report said.

  IOC officials swapped out the 2015 framework for the new one, which reverses the committee’s earlier stance on transgender athletes. It previously stated women athletes were only allowed to compete if their testosterone levels were below a certain threshold 12 months before the Games. 

  Under the new framework, sex testing to verify an athlete’s gender is deemed “disrespectful” and “potentially harmful” and “invasive physical examination.” 

  However, these relaxed rules could transform male-born trans athletes into elite female sports stars. The Sports Councils Equality Group recently found male-born trans athletes had an unfair advantage over female athletes. The report said, “transgender women are on average likely to retain physical advantage in terms of physique, stamina, and strength.”

  During the Tokyo Olympics, this was the issue when New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender athlete, competed in the Games. Hubbard was eliminated from the women’s super heavyweight weightlifting competition (failing to record a single successful lift and has now quit the sport.). 

  

  As Damian Wilson summed up perfectly: Women’s rights have been sacrificed at the woke altar by the clueless, self-appointed guardians of morality in sport that sit on the IOC. Female athletes will rightly feel cheated, because this is a disgrace.

  Female athletes will soon be asking the question: Why even compete in the Games if they’re fundamentally rigged against them. 

  But it’s not all one way ladies: female-born athletes wishing to compete against men face no barriers either… but can you name just one?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 22:40

• Can The FBI Be Salvaged?
  Can The FBI Be Salvaged?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,,

  For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be moved far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it…

  

  The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency.

  Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.

  In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news – and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.

  The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton’s email leaks.

  In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton’s own private computer contractor – CrowdStrike – to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike’s point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.

  During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.

  It was also under Comey’s directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.

  The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy – the Clinton-bought dossier – to Obama government officials and the media.

  Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coe attorney Michael Sussman.

  Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.

  In sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey on some 245 occasions claimed he could not remember or had no knowledge of key elements of his own “Russian Collusion” investigation.

  Comey’s replacement, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, was fired for leaking sensitive information to the media. He then lied on at least three occasions about his role to federal attorneys and his own FBI investigators.

  McCabe is now a paid CNN consultant who often has offered misleading information on the Russian collusion hoax that he helped promulgate.

  Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month, $40 million wild goose chase after some mythical “Russian Collusion” plot. When called before Congress, Mueller claimed he had little or no knowledge about Fusion GPS or the Steele Dossier – the twin sources that birthed the entire collusion hoax.

  FBI lawyer Lisa Page was removed from Mueller’s investigation, along with her paramour FBI investigator Peter Strzok. Both misused FBI communications, revealing their pro-Clinton biases during their investigations of “Russian collusion,” while hiding their own unprofessional relationship.

  Mueller himself staggered their firings and delayed explanations about why they were let go from his investigation team.

  When the FBI arrested pro-Trump activist Roger Stone, it did so with a huge quasi-swat team – to the tipped-off and lurking CNN reporters.

  The FBI repeated such politicized performance art recently when they stormed the home of Project Veritas director James O’Keefe. The agency confiscated his electronic devices on the grounds that he had knowledge of the contents of the allegedly lurid missing diary of Joe Biden’s daughter. The FBI – an apparent retrieval service of lost Biden family embarrassments – also did not disclose that it had possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop at a time when the media was erroneously declaring the computer inauthentic.

  O’Keefe was accosted in the pre-morning hours by a crowd of FBI agents, wielding a battering ram, who pushed him out of his home in his underwear.

  The time and location of the FBI raid, as in the Stone case, were leaked to the media that cheered the raid shortly after it was conducted. A federal judge recently stopped the FBI’s ongoing monitoring of O’Keefe’s communications.

  Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins recently detailed other FBI lapses such as downplaying evidence that former Olympic gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was a known and chronic molester of teenage gymnasts.

  The agency also extended its witch hunt against the innocent researcher wrongly accused of involvement in the anthrax attacks of 2001.

  One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained kidnapping scheme of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

  We can also cite the agency’s inability to follow up on clear information about the dangers posed by criminals as diverse as the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

  For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be given one last chance at redemption by moving to the nation’s heartland – perhaps Kansas – far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 22:20

• "Keep Brazilian Beef Out" – US Trade Groups Warn Amid Mad Cow Disease Detection 
  “Keep Brazilian Beef Out” – US Trade Groups Warn Amid Mad Cow Disease Detection 

  Several American trade groups request the federal government to immediately halt beef imports from Brazil due to the rising risk of mad-cow disease. 

  The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) cites reports from Brazil’s Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply Ministry of two “atypical” bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cases, according to Bloomberg. BSE, also known as mad cow disease, is a deadly neurodegenerative disease of cattle that spreads to humans through diseased meat.

  

  The Denver-based National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and Billings-based R-CALF USA, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the U.S. cattle industry, demanded that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack temporarily suspend imports of fresh beef from Brazil due to BSE cases. In September, China and the Philippines suspended their imports of beef products from Brazil, the largest beef exporter in the world.

  Brazil “has a history of corruption at the highest levels, and we are gambling with the health of the domestic cattle herd each time we accept a shipment of beef from Brazil,” said USCA Trade Committee Chair Larry Kendig.

  Lia Biondo, a livestock lobbyist with Western Skies Strategies, said this is the first time all three trade groups are warning about Brazilian meat.

  In a Nov. 12 letter to Vilsack, NCBA demanded the USDA suspend Brazilian beef imports until an investigation can review the process of how Brazil’s livestock industry detects diseased meat. 

  “It’s time to keep fresh Brazilian beef out of this country until USDA can confirm that Brazil meets the same consumer and food safety standards that we apply to all our trade partners,” said NCBA Vice President of Government Affairs Ethan Lane.

  “NCBA has long expressed concerns about Brazil’s history of failing to report atypical BSE cases in a timely manner, a pattern that stretches back as far as 2012. Their poor track record and lack of transparency raise serious doubts about Brazil’s ability to produce cattle and beef at an equivalent level of safety as American producers. If they cannot meet that bar, their product has no place here,” said Lane.

  For the U.S., Brazilian beef imports account for 15% of the domestic beef supply. If imports were suspended, this could result in an inflationary impact on beef prices at the supermarket already at multi-year highs. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 22:00

• Why Is The Media Suddenly No Longer Interested In Blaming COVID Waves On Red States
  Why Is The Media Suddenly No Longer Interested In Blaming COVID Waves On Red States

  Authored by ‘IM’ via ‘Unmasked’ Substack,

  By now, it’s become a truth universally acknowledged that the media must continually be in search of a governor and specific political ideology to blame when COVID cases rise.

  Well, I’m old enough to remember when it was a truth universally acknowledged.

  But that was way back in the summer, when cases were rising in the Southern states, mostly run by Republican governors who refused to acquiesce to demands from the media to mandate masks and vaccine passports.

  The seasons have changed, however, and case trends along with it.

  The Midwest and the Northeast are now the epicenter of the latest COVID surge.

  

  [ZH: We thought these two charts may also help explain the lack of media malificence]

  

  

  And just like that, inexplicably, the media’s no longer interested in blaming local officials or the political beliefs of residents for the dramatic increase in COVID cases. Imagine that!

  After scores of hysterical articles on Florida were written, despite the fact that the inevitable crash of cases and hospitalizations in the state almost immediately proved them wrong, interestingly the mass panic and hyperbole is noticeably absent of late.

  There are a few possible explanations for this confusing lack of interest, and after reviewing the data from each state, some interesting conclusions can be drawn.

  Most of the states have several things in common that seem to insulate them from the levels of severe criticism reserved for governors like Ron #DeathSantis.

  Let’s see the lessons that can be learned from the COVID situation across the country.

  Michigan

  How many of you knew that Michigan now leads the country in recent case rates?

  Probably not many!

  Just for the sake of comparison, I Google searched “Florida leads the country in new covid cases” and here are a few of the top results:

  

  I then searched “Michigan leads the country in new covid cases November” and these were a few of the top results:

  

  Well that’s certainly different, isn’t it?!

  Here’s how the curve of new cases looks in Michigan though:

  

  Not great, huh?

  In fact, Michigan is rapidly approaching the same heights it reached in April, when the CDC director said they needed to again implement lockdown measures to control the surge.

  Yet I searched for Vanity Fair articles labeling Governor Gretchen Whitmer the “Angel of Death,” as they did with Ron DeSantis and came up with a big fat blank.

  I’m not kidding. They literally called DeSantis the “Angel of Death” and said he was a “super-spreader event:”

  

  I also checked those keywords to see if Bess wrote a similar article on Gretchen Whitmer:

  

  Very strange, isn’t it?

  It’s also strange that DeSantis has been accused of courting “anti-vaxxers” and not doing enough to encourage and promote vaccinations, while Florida has significantly higher vaccination rates in every single category.

  As of today, here’s the key vaccination states for both states:

  Michigan

  • TOTAL POPULATION AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 60%/54%

  • 12 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 69%/63%

  • 65 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 92%/85%

  Florida

  • TOTAL POPULATION AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 70%/61%

  • 12 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 81%/70%

  • 65 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – >99%/87%

  Literally in every single category, Florida’s had higher vaccine uptake. Yet only DeSantis has been accused of being “anti-vaxx,” because he…promoted a life-saving treatment that cuts hospitalizations and deaths by 78% in high risk populations.

  Really odd, huh?

  Minnesota

  Minnesota currently ranks second in the U.S. in recent case rate, reporting an average of 700 cases per million residents over the past seven days, which has nearly doubled in just the past few weeks.

  Minnesota also has a higher than average vaccination rate, with 67% of the entire population at least partially vaccinated, 78% of everyone 12 and up, 80% of the over 18 population and 99% of the 65+ population.

  

  Has anyone seen an article accusing Governor Tim Walz of being the “Angel of Death?”

  What’s even more impressive about Minnesota’s recent surge is that they’ve essentially equaled Texas’s recent summer peak:

  

  It’s fair to ask at this point, but did a major online media outlet say that Greg Abbot was running a “death cult?”

  The answer, as always, is yes. Yes of course they did.

  

  You’ll undoubtedly be shocked to learn that I searched for “Tim Walz death cult” and didn’t get any results, even though Minnesota has reported more cumulative COVID cases than Texas after adjusting for population. Bewildering.

  New Mexico & Oregon

  The state with the third highest recent case rate is New Mexico, who you might remember from the glowing article published in September 2020 in Scientific American, extolling their virtues for “controlling” the spread of COVID.

  Infamously, that article was written before cases immediately went up 2,450%. But back to this year.

  As True Believers in The Science™, New Mexico is one of the few states remaining to have a statewide mask mandate for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, which has been in place for nearly three months.

  Shockingly, cases have nearly doubled since:

  

  And naturally, as a result of this dramatic success, they extended the mandate just a few days ago.

  Confusingly, New Mexico’s currently reporting higher case numbers than neighboring Colorado and Utah, states that have followed nearly identical curves for twenty months now:

  

  New Mexico’s vaccination rates are the highest of the three as well:

  New Mexico

  • TOTAL POPULATION AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 74%/63%

  • 12 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 86%/74%

  • 65 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – >99%/89%

  Colorado

  • TOTAL POPULATION AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 69%/62%

  • 12 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 80%/73%

  • 65 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 95%/87%

  Utah

  • TOTAL POPULATION AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 62%/55%

  • 12 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 77%/67%

  • 65 AND UP AT LEAST ONE DOSE/FULLY VACCINATED – 98%/88%

  I’ll admit I didn’t check, but I have significant doubts that Michelle Lujan Grisham has been accused of running a death cult or being a dangerous “anti-vaxxer.”

  Meanwhile, Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown has seen deaths skyrocket to the highest levels of the pandemic, currently ranking in the top 10 in the country despite an active mask mandate and above average vaccination rate:

  

  Nothing to see here either!

  Vermont

  One of the more remarkable surges is happening in Vermont, which currently ranks fifth in the country in population adjusted case rate.

  Cases in Vermont peaked last winter at 277 per million in January of this year. Their recent case rate peak this month is 591 cases per million.

  Remember, this is after world famous expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that getting just 50% of adults vaccinated would make surges a thing of the past:

  

  Vermont has 93% of adults with some level of vaccination. Cases are double what they were last winter.

  And while Governor Phil Scott is a Republican, 66.1% of state residents voted for Joe Biden.

  Somehow I doubt Salon will be updating their story on “unvaccinated Trumpers spreading Delta” given what’s happened in Vermont:

  

  Hard to blame “unvaccinated Trumpers” in a state where only 30% of people voted for Trump and 93% of adults are vaccinated, so you won’t be seeing any stories from the media placing the blame for COVID on Vermont’s political ideology.

  Sure does poke some holes in the obscene push for vaccine passports as well, doesn’t it?

  *  *  *

  So what are the lessons we can learn from this? Well, if you belong to the proper ideology, you can avoid being accused of running a death cult, being the Angel of Death or courting anti-vaxxers by promoting monoclonal antibodies. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have mask mandates or have lower than average vaccination rates, you can avoid most media criticism.

  Four of the top five states in current case rates are either run by Democratic governors or where the populace overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden. All are also seeing hospitalizations rising significantly too.

  It’s remarkable how it works, isn’t it? When cases are rising in areas where the incorrect set of political beliefs is dominant, it’s a moral failing that would be easily preventable if masks were mandated or vaccination rates improved.

  When cases rise in areas with the correct set of media approved political beliefs, no matter what the vaccination rates are or mask wearing rules, it’s an unfortunate barrier to be overcome and an unavoidable increase likely due to seasonal effects and infinitesimal percentages of unvaccinated Trumpers. Or unmasked kids.

  This was an entirely predictable sequence of events, and exactly the same pattern we saw last year. Cases rose in the South during the summer, leading to mass criticism of free-dumb loving Covidiots, only for colder climates to take off a few months later to deafening silence.

  The media never learns. Purposefully never learns. They’re unable to accept that the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus is not a moral examination to be passed or that there’s essentially no correlation with government intervention and better COVID outcomes.

  Remember, Sweden ranks 54th in the world in COVID deaths per million:

  

  Is it any wonder why we never hear about them anymore?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 21:40

• Accelerating CEO Turnover Expected To Continue Heading Into 2022
  Accelerating CEO Turnover Expected To Continue Heading Into 2022

  CEO turnover has become so pervasive in 2021 that news organizations have given it a name: It’s being dubbed “the great resignation”. 

  The rotating door of executives this year has come as a result of stressed out executives who navigated their firms through Covid and a desire for companies to bring on new talent to help with post-Covid business pivots, according to Reuters. 

  Recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles conducted a study that showed how CEOs are “not immune to the exhaustion that has swept hundreds of millions of workers worldwide since the onset of the pandemic,” Reuters recently reported. 

  And now, heading into the back end of 2021 and the front end of 2022, the executive exodus is continuing and is expected to continue. 

  Jeff Sanders, co-managing partner of Heidrick’s global CEO and board practice, said: “Our belief is that it will only accelerate going into next year as people have delayed their retirements.” Sanders’ study showed 103 CEO appointments in the first half of 2021 versus just 49 CEO changes in the second half of 2020. 

  

  “Many CEOs didn’t have to travel as much,” Sanders said, before noting that virtual communication for many CEOs was still “exhausting”. 

  Despite vaccines acting as a somewhat calming presence that allowed many CEOs to step down, boards were still reluctant to meet with new CEO candidates in person. This could be why 66% of new CEOs were internal candidates, the report said. 

  And, as there is with every story nowadays, there had to be a racial element to the shift in the C-suite as well. Our “woke” readers will be disappointed to hear that just 13% of new incoming CEOs were women. 

  Despite 103 CEO changes in companies of all sizes hardly being statistically significant to the Fortune 100, Reuters was forced to add at the end of its reporting that “3% of Fortune 100 CEOs are Black, 4% are Hispanic or Latino, 4% are Asian and 1% are Middle Eastern or North African,” as if the ongoing executive changes were a continued indictment of a racially inequitable business landscape in the country.

  There’s no word on whether or not Heidrick & Struggles studied whether or not any CEOs were leaving due to the burdensome and increasing amount of “diversity” training that that needs to take place during normal work hours, when actual work could be getting done. 

  But, we digress…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 21:20

• Shellenberger: Why $6 Billion Won't Solve World Hunger
  Shellenberger: Why $6 Billion Won’t Solve World Hunger

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger via michaelshellenberger.substack.com (emphasis ours),

  In late October, David Beasley, the Director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) urged billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to address hunger globally. “Six billion [dollars] to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated.” 

  But would you be surprised to learn that saving those 42 million lives is, in fact, complicated?  

  

  Part of the problem is how the money is spent. Musk tweeted back, “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.” Musk added, “it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent.”

  Beasley responded, “I can assure you that we have the systems in place for transparency and open-source accounting.” 

  If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2021

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

  There have been problems in the past with the financial accounting and transparency of WFP and other United Nations agencies, but the larger problem is with food aid itself. After WFP won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, it should have been a time of self-celebration. Instead, it enabled longtime critics of food aid to renew their criticisms of the WFP for dumping food on poor nations, driving down prices and bankrupting farmers, ultimately making it harder for poor nations to become self-sufficient. 

  This scenario has happened time and again around the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, surplus wheat from the US was sent to India, undermining local farmers. In 1976, the US sent wheat to Guatemala, in response to an earthquake, even though the country had just produced record yields. The decline of prices was so harmful to farmers that the government banned grain imports. Six years later, the Peruvian government asked the US government to stop dumping rice on the country, given its impact on poor farmers.  

  In 2002, Michael Maren, a former food aid monitor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Somalia published a book called “The Road to Hell,” documenting how food aid prolonged that nation’s civil war in three ways. 

  First, much of the food aid was stolen and sold to buy arms, furthering the conflict. 

  Second, the food aid helped destroy the centuries-old credit system that allowed pastoral farmers to borrow money during droughts to pay for food, which they repaid later during good times. By undermining the credit system, foreign food aid had helped undermine the social ties that had kept the nation together. 

  And third, the food aid undermined the very incentive to farm.

  The WFP says it has learned from the past by giving one-third of its support in the form of cash aid, which is viewed as both more efficient, and more likely to avoid bankrupting small farmers. But cash aid can also fuel corruption, as I discovered the hard way 30 years ago when attempting to support a small, worker-owned coffee cooperative in Nicaragua. 

  My friends and I raised a few thousand dollars and gave it to the coop’s leaders. One year later, we returned to see how the money was spent. We were told one night by the coop’s angry cook that the coop’s all-male leadership had spent the money on alcohol and partying. None had gone towards upgrading the coop’s infrastructure. Naturally, the coop’s leaders denied it all, and said the money wasn’t sufficient, and they needed more. The lesson? When there is poor governance, aid money makes the situation worse, not better.

  An even bigger problem is that what causes hunger in most cases is not the absence of food but the presence of war and political instability. 

  A few days after his Twitter exchange with Elon musk, the WFP’s Beasley released a list of recipient nations and how much they would each receive in food aid and cash aid if Musk, Bezos, or someone else ponied up the more than $6 billion WFP said was needed to save 42 million lives. The list included the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, Venezuela, Haiti and Syria. Notice anything in common between them? They are all at war or in political turmoil, which is preventing farming and the transportation of food.

  Not all nations suffering from hunger and famine are at war. Some, like Madagascar, are suffering from drought. But we have known since economist Amartya Sen published his landmark 1981 book, “Poverty and Famines,” that most famines are deliberately caused as a weapon of war. They weren’t, for the most part, the result of food supplies in general or drought in particular, which farmers and societies have learned to deal with for millennia. Today, the world produces a 25 percent surplus of food, the most in recorded human history.

  To his credit, Beasley acknowledged that “$6 billion will not solve world hunger,” adding that that “it WILL prevent geopolitical instability [and] mass migration.” 

  If that were true, then that $6 billion would be the greatest philanthropic investment in human history. Unfortunately, it’s not. 

  Just look at Democratic Republic of the Congo, the eastern region of which is again at war. In the 1990s and again in the early 2000s, Congo was the epicenter of the Great African War, the deadliest conflict since World War II, which involved nine African countries and resulted in the deaths of three to five million people, mostly because of disease and starvation. Another two million people were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands of people, women and men, adults and children, were raped, sometimes more than once, by different armed groups. 

  When I was there in 2014, armed militias roaming the countryside had been killing villagers, including children, with machetes. Some blamed Al-Shabaab terrorists coming in from Uganda, but nobody took credit for the attacks. The violence appeared unconnected to any military or strategic objective. The national military, police and United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, about 6,000 soldiers, were either unable or unwilling to do anything about the terrorist attacks. 

  The sad truth is that wars are rarely settled from the outside and, when they are, it’s through long-term military occupation, not food aid. Even 20 years is not long enough, as the US failure to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan shows.

  We have known for more than two centuries that almost every nation escapes hunger and famine in the same way. First, there is sufficient stability to allow farmers to produce and transport their crops to the cities, and for businesses in the cities to operate without being bombed or shelled. The ugly truth is that such stability is often won the hard way, after years or decades of war and even genocide.

  Stability allows farmers to become more productive, and cities to develop new industries, such as manufacturing. Rising farm productivity means fewer people are required to work in farms, and many of them move to the city for work in factories and other industries. In the cities, the workers spend their money buying food, clothing and other consumer products and services, resulting in a workforce and society that is wealthier and engaged in a greater variety of jobs. 

  The use of modern energy and machinery means a declining number of workers required for food and energy production, which diversifies the workforce and grows the economy.

  During the last 200 years, poor nations found that they didn’t need to end corruption or educate everyone to develop. As long as factories were allowed to operate freely, and the politicians didn’t steal too much from their owners, manufacturing could drive economic development. And, over time, as nations became richer, many of them, including the US, became less corrupt. 

  While a few oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia have achieved very high standards of living without ever having embraced manufacturing, almost every other developed country in the world, from Britain and the United States to Japan to South Korea and China, has transformed its economy with factories. 

  This remains the case today. Ethiopia had to end and recover from a bloody 17-year civil war, which resulted in at least 1.4 million deaths, including one million from famine, before its government could invest in infrastructure. Today, factory workers in the capital city of Addis Ababa continue to make clothing for Western labels including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and H&M. Ethiopia has been competitive both because of its low wages compared to places like China and Indonesia, where they have risen in recent years, as well as its investments in hydroelectric dams, the electricity grid and roads. As a result, Ethiopia has seen more than 10 percent annual growth over the last decade.

  But all of that is now in jeopardy. There is a growing war in the northern Tigray region, and the Ethiopian government has blocked aid from being delivered, which has resulted in nearly a half million people suffering from famine. Now, the US and other nations are considering imposing trade sanctions in response, putting in jeopardy the livelihoods of factory workers in Addis Ababa.

  The reason for continuing famines in a world of plenty is not just complicated but also tragic. Over the last 20 years, economists and other experts have criticized development aid for being counterproductive, making nations dependent upon outsiders, and undermining efforts at internal development.

  Those complaints have mostly been ignored. Today, many developed nations continue to see charitable aid as an alternative to economic development. The latest guise to sell charity as development comes in the form of “climate adaptation.” The idea is that poor nations should forgo the use of fossil fuels, a necessary ingredient to industrialization and development, and instead rely on foreign hand-outs to adapt to higher temperatures.

  For poor nations to finally free themselves from the clutches of would-be rescuers from the rich world, they will need to defend their right to develop, including through the use of fossil fuels, and seek to trade with rich nations on equal terms. That may be starting to happen. In response to calls by rich world leaders that Africa not use fossil fuels, South Africa’s energy minister on Wednesday called for united resistance. “Our continent collectively is made to bear the brunt for polluters,” complained Gwede Mantashe. “We are being pressured, even compelled, to move away from all forms of fossil fuels… a key resource for industrialization.” 

  He’s right. From climate change to food aid, rich nations are demanding the poor nations develop in ways radically different from the way they developed centuries ago, without agricultural self-sufficiency, industrialization and fossil fuels. It can’t work. The harsh truth is that poor nations must go through the same, often painful steps toward development, including, often civil war, in order to achieve the political stability they need to develop. Rich nations can be partners to poor nations. But we should stop trying to be their saviors.

  Michael Shellenberger is author of Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins 2020), San Fransicko(HarperCollins 2021), and President of Environmental Progress. He lives in Berkeley, California.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 21:00

• Visualizing How Much Gold Is In The World?
  Visualizing How Much Gold Is In The World?

  Gold has retained its value throughout history, partly due to the fact that it is indestructible.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, that means that virtually all the gold in the world that has been mined is still around in one form or another. Some of it may have turned into jewelry, while some might be sitting inside vaults as bullion. So, just how much gold have we mined, and how much of it is left beneath the ground?

  This infographic from Kalo Gold visualizes all the gold in the world that’s above ground and the identified reserves that we have yet to mine.

  

  Where is All the Gold?

  The World Gold Council estimates that miners have historically extracted a total of 201,296 tonnes of gold, leaving another 53,000 tonnes left in identified underground reserves.

  If all of the above-ground gold were stacked beside each other, the resulting cube would only measure 22 meters on each side, which is a testament to the metal’s rarity. But where exactly is all of this mined gold?

  Nearly half of all the gold ever mined is held in the form of jewelry. India and China have been the largest markets for gold jewelry consumption, combining for more than 50% of global jewelry demand in 2020.

  

   

  *Dollar values are based on gold’s price of $1756.66/oz as of close on Sept. 30, 2021.

   

  Investors across the globe buy gold because of its ability to deliver value, and when inflationary pressures are high, gold often acts as a flight to safety. Consequently, investment is one of gold’s biggest end-uses, with over 44,000 tonnes of gold held as bars, coins, or bullion for gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

  Besides investors, central banks are also among the biggest holders of gold. Unlike foreign currency reserves, equities, and debt-backed securities, gold’s value largely depends on supply and demand. Therefore, central banks often use gold to diversify their assets and hedge against fiat currency depreciation. Central banks’ gold holdings account for almost one-fifth of all above-ground gold; as of 2021, official holdings exceed 35,000 tonnes.

  Although gold is widely coveted as a precious metal, it also has various industrial uses, with applications in electronics, dentistry, and space. In fact, it’s estimated that a typical iPhone contains about 0.034 grams of gold, in addition to other precious metals. It is these industrial uses that account for 29,448 tonnes or roughly 15% of all above-ground gold.

  Underground Gold Reserves

  Before it turns into jewelry and bullion, gold goes through several stages in the supply chain, beginning with mineral exploration and mining of underground reserves. As of 2020, the world had 53,000 tonnes of gold in identified reserves. Here’s where all this gold lies:

  

   

  Given their availability of reserves, it’s no surprise that Australia, Russia, U.S., and Peru are among the world’s largest gold producers, with only China having produced more in 2020. These reserves not only help determine current production but can also provide an idea of where gold mining could occur in the future.

   

  In 2020, miners produced just over 3,000 tonnes of gold, and at this rate, underground reserves will last less than 18 years without new discoveries. However, it’s important to note that reserves can change and grow as explorers find gold in different parts of the world.

  A Golden Future

  Gold has been around for thousands of years, and it will likely remain that way in the future.

  With rising concerns over the growth in money supply and inflation, gold will continue to deliver value and protect investors in times of volatility while preserving wealth for the long term.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 20:40

• Crypto Company Creates Architecture For A Self-Sovereign Economy
  Crypto Company Creates Architecture For A Self-Sovereign Economy

  Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  In a moment of balance and strength, I felt my muscles stiffen, the pressure against my right triceps increasing. Flirting with gravity, I engaged my core like I had a hundred times before, raised my hips a little higher, and started angling my upper body towards my friend. I looked at him with a labored gaze before I remembered my many teachers’ endless insistence that I smile. With equal part astonishment and equal part disbelief, he muttered that he could never possibly do that: “That’s impossible. You are just so flexible!”

  The great mistake in that sentence is the word “are”: it took me five years to reach that yoga pose, and only in the last 12 months or so was I strong enough to finally experiment with the arm balance we were exploring. There was no static “are” involved, no fixed description that somehow belonged to my being or inscribed in my genome. Combining the balance, the strength, the flexibility, and the concentration required to hold my body in place was no mere accident or circumstance. For hours on end, day after day, week after week, I had put my money where my mouth was – or rather, body where my yoga mat was – and endured. I had put in the work that over time resulted in a body capable and strong enough to hold a complicated arm balance.

  

  What the Bitcoin network’s proof-of-work so neatly captures about reality is that nothing valuable in our world comes from nothing; nothing worth having can be had by the waving of magic wands. You must put real-world resources behind the computer network that powers bitcoin, for a randomized yet pre-programmed chance at receiving some new coins. “Let there be light,” said God allegedly – and nobody else ever. This isn’t just true in the ethereal world of digital money, but in probably every endeavor worth doing.

  Wherever I look these days, I see proof-of-work. The skills that people have acquired are their proof-of-work – long arduous hours before a computer coding, in a simulator trying to fly an airplane, in a baking hot sun laying bricks upon bricks, or in apprenticeships or training that teach you how to safely lay electrical wires or perform open-heart surgery. The humongous podcast catalogues that this or that podcaster has, or the astonishing output that certain writers have run up, are proof-of-work. The relationships people have cultivated, with their friends and families and lovers, are proof-of-work. All of them included different ingredients, came into existence in different ways and with different starting points, but all required nurturing to flourish. They exist, and flourish, because their participants have put work into them.

  All of us are given very different starting points in life, and sometimes another’s raw talents seem altogether unfair. That guy had a head start; this dude lucked out; that family had financial resources; those people had better genes. Often, we see ourselves as uniquely disadvantaged compared to someone else or some ideal life we might imagine that others lead. Even so, very few people can succeed with raw talent or ability alone: even the most talented basketball player needs hours and hours on that court; the baseball batter with the most perfect build needs to hone that hitting ability into perfection.

  Nobody gets anything for free, not even the Bitcoiners who stumbled onto the world’s best performing asset way before it was cool. They faced challenges of their own that us latecomers never had to: they doubted the entire project, more than once – every time something bad happened or their underdeveloped markets dropped 80%. They had to learn on their own, rather than follow podcasters and how-to guides for everything. They had to invent, circumvent, or build the technical and financial infrastructure that the rest of us take for granted today. Yes, the ones who grasped the importance of bitcoin in the early days, and put in the mental and practical work required, have been richly rewarded – but they also faced challenges to their diamond hands that the rest of us could hardly even imagine.

  Deep friendships don’t drop from the sky, but require long and hard work. Beyond the youthful relations that bloom during intense summers or first semesters at college, the enduring friendships we grown-ups have nurtured remain precisely because we maintain them. With our best friends, we’ve gone through rough patches, dealt with hard times, shared accomplishments, and put in the hours needed when either they wanted it or we needed it.

  Soul mates, lifelong companions, and other idealized descriptions of love require even higher amounts of devotion and negotiation. They take time to develop, and not just days and weeks and years – but time spent together, exploring, improving, attempting, and yes, negotiating. Successful relationships are proof-of-work. It’s hard to carve out an intimate life with another person, harder the more stressors of politics, societal divides, and financial hardships surround them. One does not simply swipe right a few times and effortlessly find their perfect life partner: however well-matched you are, it takes work – time, attention, commitment, vulnerability, and plenty of sacrifices. It’s the proof-of-work that matters, not the proof-of-accident or fleeting attraction.

  There is but one proof-of-steak I endorse in my life – the pictures of my carnivore(-ish) meals that I send, not to Instagram as my fellow millennials might have, but to my shitcoiner friends (always with a comment about staking). And even this proof-of-steak is technically proof-of-work, because you need to source it, earn it, make it, and most importantly: commit to it before it starts building you into the stronger human being for which steak is intended.

  My generation was raised, intentionally or not, with the opposite mentality – a proof-of-stake mentality, where our mere existence conveyed rights, benefits, and well-being. Every one of us spoiled snowflakes were unique and perfect the way we were, and now are, and tomorrow will be. Whatever we feel is real, whatever delusion we have incorporated lately must be unquestioningly accepted by everyone else. We cannot be exposed to any sort of risk, in case they traumatize us or hurt our precious feelings; horrific ideas of other people cannot be allowed in our midst.

  It’s no surprise that a generation of proof-of-stake later, we’re all coddled and compliant, naive and credulous, unhealthy and stupid. It’s no wonder we trust our monetary overlords more so than our own interactions with the world: the top stakers in our fiat proof-of-stake system say that something is, then surely who am I to object?

  EVERYONE GETS THE BITCOIN PRICE THEY DESERVE

  Everything important in life requires you to focus, to work diligently toward the thing you desire. You will face set-backs; others will do better than you; and you will wonder why on Earth you even try. Before you actually get around to pressing that buy button, do that bitcoin-paying gig, or mine those first sats, you get nothing.

  Everything in the world requires work – physical, mental, or financial. What we are isn’t fixed, and at the bottom of bitcoin’s promise to the world lies the promise that work rewards and discipline matters. Everyone gets bitcoin when they’re ready, or intellectually open to it; everyone thus gets the bitcoin price and allocation they deserve.

  You don’t get things for nothing; You must put in the work before you reap the rewards. Bitcoin teaches us that. Until very recently in our societies, reality taught us that too.

  In time, perhaps it can once more.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 20:20

• House Set For Debate, Passage Of Build Back Better In Thursday Night Session
  House Set For Debate, Passage Of Build Back Better In Thursday Night Session

  Update (2000ET): The House of Representatives is set to debate and then vote on President Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act tonight, just hours after the Congressional Budget Office found that it will add more than $350 billion to the budget deficit – a determination which contradicts the White House’s longstanding claim that the bill is ‘paid for.’

  

  The CBO found that the draft legislation contains $1.636 trillion in spending, and $1.269 trillion in revenue over 10 years, adding $367 billion to the US deficit over that period.

  House speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to fellow Democrats on Thursday advising them that they would be receiving an “updated chart from the White House, reflecting the revised numbers” from the CBO, adding that a vote would take place Thursday night “so that we can pass this legislation and achieve President Biden’s vision to Build Back Better!”

  Of course, BBB passing the house was more or less a foregone conclusion given its broad support in the chamber. If House Republicans are united in opposition, Democrats can afford to lose three votes and still pass the bill.

  What’s in Build Back Better for health care

  – Capping insulin at $35/month
  – Capping seniors’ out-of-pocket drug spending at $2,000/yr
  – Medicare drug-price negotiations
  – Expanding Medicare to cover hearing benefits
  – Boosting ACA subsidies
  – Closing Medicaid gap in 12 states https://t.co/QpWyrZA2oi

  — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) November 18, 2021

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

  The big question now is whether moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) will support it.  The  (more) fiscally conservative Democrats will make their decision as Republicans hammer the bill for increasing the national debt, as well as its potential to intensify inflation, hinder job growth, and increase government dependency.

  A key reason the CBO finds the bill does not pay for itself involves estimates of how much increased tax collection can result from expanding the Internal Revenue Service’s budget. While the White House has projected that increasing the number of enforcement agents at the Internal Revenue Service would yield $400 billion in higher revenue, the CBO does not agree. –Bloomberg

  Critics also point to the fact that without sunset provisions, the bill would have actually exceeded $4 trillion, including tax credits for children and low-income workers which will be extended for one year.

  And while it will likely pass the House tonight, the final bill is almost certain to be whittled down in the Senate, where Democrats are at the mercy of Manchin and Sinema, who have previously objected to how aspects of the legislation will be funded.

  *  *  *

  Just as the House Rules Committee cleared Biden’s Build Back Better bill for debate by the full House with first votes on the bill set as early as 19:15EST (with Senator Manchin commenting earlier that he has not decided on whether to vote to proceed to the Build Back Better Bill), moments ago the CBO finally released its score of Biden’s bill and, to nobody’s surprise, it finds that contrary to what the Democrats asserted (and then un-asserted), that the bill would not fully pay for itself.

  Instead, the CBO estimates that enacting this legislation would result in a net increase in the deficit totaling $367 billion over the 2022-2031 period, as a result of an additional $1.636 trillion in additional spending…

  

  … offset by just $1.269 trillion in revenue (which however the CBO notes does not count any additional revenue that may be generated by additional funding for tax enforcement).

  

  Worse, over just the next five years, the deficit grows by $792 billion, a number which somehow declines to $367 billion over the next decade, which comes as a result of a massive surge in revenues generated from Ways and Means, which magically surges from just $115BN over the next five years to a whopping $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

  

  The massive surge in revenues from Ways and Means comes almost entirely from one section: “Responsibly Funding Our Priorities” (which conjures up an additional $1 trillion of revenues from 2026-2031, dramatically easing the ‘cost’ of the bill)…

  

  That “Responsibly Funding Our Priorities” Section can be read in full here (Spoiler Alert – that’s where all the Tax Reform gotchas are).

  As Mike Shedlock notes, the 10-year lie is that Progressives say the front-loaded benefits will expire. Meanwhile they pledge to do everything in their power to ensure they don’t.

  History shows that government entitlement programs only get bigger, they don’t expire.

  Nor did the CBO look at ancillary costs such as inflation.

  Earlier in the week, the Biden administration began preparing lawmakers for a ‘disappointing estimate,’ and told them to “disregard” the assessment according to the New York Times.

  Hilariously, at just the same time as the CBO revised its long-awaited score, Janet Yellen – knowing how ugly it would look when the CBO scored that the Democrats lied – issued a statement saying that “the combination of CBO’s scores over the last week, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, and Treasury analysis, make it clear that Build Back Better is fully paid for, and in fact will reduce our nation’s debt over time by generating more than $2 trillion through reforms that ask the wealthiest Americans and large corporations to pay their fair share.”

  The wildcard? Yellen’s estimate that the IRS will recoup “at least $400 billion in additional revenue” from high-earners to plug the hole.

  A particularly salient aspect of the revenue raised by the legislation is a historic investment in the IRS to crack down on high-earners who avoid paying the taxes that they owe, which Treasury estimates would generate at least $400 billion in additional revenue.

  The CBO somewhat agrees with this hypothetical wildcard which can not be modeled out and instead has to be taken as faith, which is why the CBO did not account for it, but it does say that its deficit estimates do not account for the $207 billion in IRS “savings”, meaning CBO’s effective estimate is $160 billion in new deficits.

  Of course, in the end all of this is just optics and the CBO score won’t have any impact, with the Bill sure to pass the House and then it will be up to the moderate Democrats in the Senate to determine if it becomes law.

  Now let’s see what moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have to say about it.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 20:00

• "Significant Storm" And Plunging Temperatures Loom For Thanksgiving Week
  “Significant Storm” And Plunging Temperatures Loom For Thanksgiving Week

  Early last week, we told readers a “severe blast” of Arctic air would encompass parts of the US Lower-48 beginning today. While today is mild, Friday, on the other hand, will be the beginning of colder weather for the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast, with the potential for a Thanksgiving week snowstorm from Chicago to New York. 

  The first colder air mass will pour into the East over the next couple of days. Temperatures will be 10-15 degrees below normal for this time of year. 

  “The next surge of colder air will spread across the eastern half of the lower 48 Monday-Tuesday with the broadest coverage of highs 10-15F below normal expected on Tuesday,” the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) said.

  There is a good chance strong winds, rain, or perhaps even snow from Chicago to New York could be seen Sunday night and into early next week. 

  “This storm remains a prominent weather focus due to its timing right before Thanksgiving but it will likely still take a while to resolve the details,” WPC said.

  The National Weather Service in New York said, “a lot of uncertainty in the forecast Sunday night and into early next week, so forecast has low confidence especially in terms of exact precipitation amounts, winds, and the timing of higher winds and precipitation.” 

  

  Another round of cold air will keep temperatures across the East well below normal for Thanksgiving and through the weekend. All of this chilly weather will increase energy demand. Commodity website Nat Gas Weather outlines, “early next week will bring another chilly weather system across the northern US for a swing back to stronger demand.” 

  

  Natgas futures are higher ahead of the latest round of government inventory data Thursday as strong demand continues. The December Nymex contract was up 13 cents, or nearly 3%, to 4.95/MMBtu at around 1145 ET. The coming cold spell could add additional support to prices. 

  

  Heating degree days for the US Lower 48 will spike above the 30-year trendline through the end of the month, forecasting that demand for energy to heat building structures will increase. This in itself suggests natgas prices will remain elevated. 

  

  According to WPC, plunging temperatures and the threat for a “significant storm to affect the East early next week” could disrupt Thanksgiving travel plans. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 20:00

• Murdoch Accuses Facebook, Google Of Censoring Conservative Voices
  Murdoch Accuses Facebook, Google Of Censoring Conservative Voices

  Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,

  Rupert Murdoch has accused tech giants Google and Facebook of silencing conservative voices on their platforms and has called for “significant reform” and transparency around digital advertising supply chains.

  “What we have seen in the past few weeks about the practices at Facebook and Google surely reinforces the need for significant reform,” the News Corp executive chairman told an annual shareholder meeting on Nov. 17.

  “There is no doubt that Facebook employees try to silence conservative voices and a quick Google News search on most contemporary topics often reveals a similar pattern of selectivity—or to be blunt, censorship.”

  Facebook has previously denied it silences conservative voices, with Mark Zuckerberg in 2016 declaring in a post on his social media platform that he took the report it was censoring news on its trending topics very seriously.

  “We take this report very seriously and are conducting a full investigation to ensure our teams upheld the integrity of this product,” he said. “We have found no evidence that this report is true. If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it.”

  Google has also denied its silences conservative voices in 2018.

  

  Murdoch also highlighted his concern over a recent complaint by the Texas Attorney General that the two companies collude.

  “The collusion between the two companies on ad tech as alleged in the Texas Attorney General’s complaint is extraordinary.”

  

  The News Corp. building on 6th Avenue, home to Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal in New York City, N.Y., on March 20, 2019. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

  In December 2020, Ken Paxton’s office, along with 47 other attorney-generals and the Federal Trade Commission, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook.

  “The states’ investigation revealed that Facebook protected its monopoly by identifying competitive threats and either absorbing them through acquisition or neutralising them through exclusionary conduct,” Paxton said in a press release.

  “The law enforcement action filed today exposes its illegal conduct and should ultimately restore competition in social networking for the benefit of millions of users in Texas and the United States as well as businesses that advertise on Facebook.”

  Murdoch said the digital ad market—dominated by Google and Facebook—was subject to manipulation and that companies and consumers were being overcharged for its services.

  “The idea falsely promoted by the platforms that algorithms are somehow objective and solely scientific is complete nonsense,” he said.

  “Algorithms are subjective, and they can be manipulated by people to kill competition and damage other people, publishers and businesses.”

  In Australia, where News Corp has a significant presence, Google is currently facing a five-year inquiry from the nation’s competition watchdog over its market dominance.

  The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is simultaneously probing Google’s activities in the App store space, its control of the digital advertising supply chain, and even whether consumers should have the choice to select non-Google-related search engines when they turn on their phone or PC.

  The ACCC estimated that Google controlled 50 to 100 percent of different segments of the digital ad supply chain, which underpins the country’s AU$3.4 billion digital advertising (excluding classifieds and search) market.

  “But there is a real lack of competition, choice and transparency in this industry. These issues add to the cost of advertising for businesses, which will ultimately impact the prices paid by consumers,” Sims said in a statement.

  “Google’s significant presence across the whole ad tech supply chain, combined with its significant data advantage, means Google is likely to have the ability and the incentive to preference its own ad tech businesses in ways that affect competition,” he added.

  Meanwhile, Murdoch also commented on the current political scene in the United States saying that it was time for everyone, including U.S. President Donald Trump to focus on the future.

  “The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity,” Murdoch said.

  “It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate,” he said. “The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 19:40

• "These Are Numbers We Have Never Seen Before": Drug Overdose Deaths Hit Record High During Pandemic
  “These Are Numbers We Have Never Seen Before”: Drug Overdose Deaths Hit Record High During Pandemic

  As the pandemic swept across the country, a record number of Americans died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  

  The more than 100,000 overdose deaths is nearly 30% higher than the 78,000 counted the year before – with much of the blame landing on the availability and potency of synthetic opioids such as Fentanyl – which is up to 50x more potent than heroin, according to Statista, which notes that the CDC has reported more than 60% of overdose deaths last year involved synthetic opioids.

  

  “I believe that no one should die of an overdose simply because they didn’t have access to naloxone,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, adding “Sadly, today that is happening across the country, and access to naloxone often depends a great deal on where you live.”

  “These are numbers we have never seen before,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who noted that most of the fatalities were among those aged 25 to 55.

  “They leave behind friends, family and children, if they have children, so there are a lot of downstream consequences,” said Volkow. “This is a major challenge to our society.”

  Responding to the staggering figure, the Biden administration on Wednesday said that it would expand access to medications such as naloxone, which can reverse an opioid overdose, according to the New York Times.

  As Liberty Nation‘s Keelin Ferris notes:

  The president’s plans so far are treatment based, focusing on recovery or immediate responses to an overdose. He made no mention of ways to keep the drugs from flowing into the country.

  The President failed to mention China in his statement on Wednesday, the nation responsible for the immense amount of fentanyl killing Americans every day. Former President Trump frequently criticized China’s high level of exports of fentanyl or the substances used to make it, which are smuggled into the United States through Mexico.

  Back in 2018, under pressure from President Trump, President Xi promised to make trading fentanyl a criminal act, punishable to the highest level: the death penalty. However, Xi failed to follow through on that promise, which President Trump routinely blasted him for. So far in 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration has seized enough fentanyl to kill every member of the United States population.

  Unless the United States government can slow and eventually stop the flow of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the states and onto the streets, the number of deaths will likely continue to rise. Funding treatment programs goes a long way in helping addicts recover and stay clean, but it is not enough. The federal government needs to take aggressive action in preventing addictions and overdoses in the first place, cutting off the access to drugs in cities and towns across America.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 19:20

• Oregon Middle School Halts In-Person Classes Due To Students "Struggling With Socialization Skills"
  Oregon Middle School Halts In-Person Classes Due To Students “Struggling With Socialization Skills”

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  A middle school in Oregon is pausing in-person instruction for two weeks over classroom disruptions that officials say are caused by some students “struggling with the socialization skills necessary for in-person learning.”

  

  It comes after the school was forced to provide distance learning over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in spring 2020. The school was able to provide some in-person instruction in the spring of 2021 but still continued with distance learning before recently shifting to full in-person learning.

  “The shifts in learning methods and isolation caused by COVID-19 closures and quarantines have taken a toll on the well-being of our students and staff,” Superintendent Danna Diaz told families and staff.

  “We are finding that some students are struggling with the socialization skills necessary for in-person learning, which is causing disruption in school for other students.”

  Steve Padilla, assistant director of public relations for the Reynolds School District, told The Oregonian,

  “It’s not just fighting, it’s disruptive behaviors as well. Students are disrupting other students, making it hard for them to learn.”

  Reynolds Middle School in Fairview will have distance learning for about two weeks starting Nov. 22. Students will have Nov. 18 and 19 off to allow teachers and support staff to prepare for the transition, Reynolds superintendent Danna Diaz announced.

  During the planned two weeks of distance-learning, school administrators and staff will put in place “operational safety procedures” before the the school resumes in-person learning Dec. 7.

  The measure is to ensure the school “has the necessary social-emotional supports and safety protocols in place to provide a safe learning environment for all students.”

  “The safety and security of our students, families, and staff is our highest priority,” Diaz said.

  Reynolds Middle School is one of three middle schools in the district, admitting students from parts of Gresham, Fairview, and Wood Village, and is the only one to have taken such actions due to disruptive behaviors. The school has 928 students.

  [ZH: Forgive us our ignorance here, but if the lack of socialization skills was caused by lock-downs and isolation… what possible good does it do to put the kids back into remote learning?]

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 19:00

• NY Commuter Train Ridership Still Down 48% From 2019, Despite Trains Appearing "Should To Shoulder" Packed
  NY Commuter Train Ridership Still Down 48% From 2019, Despite Trains Appearing “Should To Shoulder” Packed

  Are things really getting back to normal on New York’s commuter trains – or could your eyes be deceiving you?

  One look at a recent Bloomberg article would suggest that things are “back to normal” on Metro-North trains. The article talks about the fact that, while ridership is still “way down”, some trains are “filling up enough to make it feel like old times again.”

  Author David Papadopoulos recalls how, in the Spring, a citywide return to office started to result in trains filling back up again. Now, he says, it is “shoulder to shoulder” yet again on these trains, just like it was pre-Covid. To the outside observer, this may be the case…

  But the appearance of these trains belies just how poor ridership truly is. Papadopoulos admits that “some” of what he is seeing is a “function of the reduction in the number of trains that the MTA is running”.

  

  And riders like Beth Stanton have unveiled another dirty little secret that could be hiding just how poorly these trains are still doing. 

  “On the earliest express trains (which I ride) the front cars are packed but the rear ones are empty because @MetroNorth won’t open the #NorthEndAccess gates before 6:30am (like they did pre-Covid),” she rwote on Twitter on Wednesday. 

  This is “forcing everyone to exit thru the terminal,” she continued. 

  Here’s a twist: On the earliest express trains (which I ride) the front cars are packed but the rear ones are empty because @MetroNorth won’t open the #NorthEndAccess gates before 6:30am (like they did pre-Covid), forcing everyone to exit thru the terminal. @davidelgreco @sbanjo https://t.co/7SMlcKWL0A

  — Beth Stanton (@beth_stanton) November 17, 2021

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

  Once again, it’s a case of reality being far worse than the MTA may potentially want to let on.

  We wrote just hours ago about how President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill would only stave off MTA fare hikes for 6 months. The NY Times was caught celebrating the fact that President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill will keep MTA fares stable and MTA service “robust”, but the punchline was that the fares will only stay stable for “at least six months”, leaving the door wide open for hikes before the end of 2022. 

  All the result of “receiving billions of dollars” from the infrastructure bill. The Times also celebrated the fact that the bill would “defer drastic service cuts”, as if service from the MTA could possibly get any worse.

  Gov. Kathy Hochul commented prior to the bill being passed: “We anticipate there’ll be no fare hikes for the M.T.A.”. She also said service cuts are “off the table”.

  Several paragraphs down in their article, the Times admits that the MTA is “facing a staggering financial crisis in the wake of the pandemic, which decimated ridership and the agency’s revenue”.

  

  Janno Lieber, acting chair and chief executive of the MTA, said: “Incentivizing people to come back means maintaining the pretty robust service that we have. And it also means that for the time being, we need to stand on the fare.”

  The agency had previously planned a 4% increase in fares earlier this spring. The MTA usually raises fares every two years and the agency has been mum on whether or not they plan on raising fares between the 6 month and 2 year period. 

  Lieber said that the MTA was “taking fare hikes off the table for at least six months and maybe well beyond that.”

  As we said hours ago, “maybe” we’ll just check back in six months…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 18:40

• Watch: Rand Paul Warns "Authoritarian" Fauci's "Casual Disdain" For Rights Is "Recipe For Totalitarianism"
  Watch: Rand Paul Warns “Authoritarian” Fauci’s “Casual Disdain” For Rights Is “Recipe For Totalitarianism”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Appearing on Fox News Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul continued his long running exposition of Anthony Fauci, warning viewers that Fauci’s latest comments provide yet another example of how brazenly “authoritarian” he is.

  

  Fauci stated earlier this week that Americans have a “misplaced perception” about individual rights as regards “societal safety”.

  These are the rantings of a tyrant who finds the Constitution inconvenient to his whims. https://t.co/ABy38LNwxA

  — Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) November 16, 2021

  Paul urged that it is “alarming” to see such “casual disdain” for individual freedom, as well as science, calling Fauci an “authoritarian that doesn’t obey the science.”

  “He’s a liar and he lies about natural immunity. He knows it works,” Paul added.

  “This is a recipe for totalitarianism. It’s a recipe for something we don’t want in our country,” the Senator further warned.

  Watch:

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 18:20

• Adam Schiff And The End Of Shame In American Politics
  Adam Schiff And The End Of Shame In American Politics

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” The problem with shame is it assumes a sense of guilt over one’s actions. In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics. Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier. While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier. Schiff’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press may be the final proof of the death of shame in American politics.

  Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims. However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source.

  Schiff told host Chuck Todd:

  “I don’t regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer. And we couldn’t have known, of course, years ago that we would learn years later that someone who is a primary source lied to him. [Igor] Danchenko lied to Christopher Steele and then lied to the FBI. He should be prosecuted. He is being prosecuted. And I’ll tell you this, if he’s convicted, he should not be pardoned the way Donald Trump pardoned people who lied to FBI agents, like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. There ought to be the same standard in terms of prosecuting the liars. But I don’t think there ought to be any pardon, no matter which way the lies cut.”

  Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo.

  

  Some of us have spent years being pummeled for questioning the obvious problems with the Steele dossier, including the long-denied connection to the Clinton campaign. Schiff was the main voice swatting down such criticism and his endorsements were treated as dispositive for media from MSNBC to the Washington Post. After all, he was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and assured the public that our criticisms were meritless and the dossier was corroborated.

  Schiff’s spin however many continue to deny the obvious about the Russian collusion scandal.

  First, many would guffaw at the claim that Steele was and remains a “well-respected British intelligence officer.”  Soon after the dossier was shopped to the FBI, British intelligence flagged credibility problems with Steele. The FBI severed Steele as an asset. Even his own sources told the FBI that Steele wildly exaggerated information and distorted intelligence. Most recently, Steele went public with a laughable claim that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former counsel, was lying to protect Trump despite spending years trying to get Trump charged criminally.

  Second, Schiff ignored repeated contradictions in Steele’s dossier as well as evidence that the dossier was paid for and promoted by the Clinton campaign. In 2017, even fired FBI agent Peter Strzok admitted that “we are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials” and “Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.” Schiff would have had access to some of this intelligence. Indeed, while the Clinton campaign was denying that it funded the dossier, American intelligence knew that that was a lie.  Indeed, until the Durham indictments, Schiff continued to defend the Russian collusion investigation and the Steele dossier.

  Third, Schiff attempts to portray the sole problem with the Steele dossier as Russian analyst Igor Danchenko. That is simply not true. Schiff was long aware that there were allegations of misleading or false information given by the FBI to the secret court. Indeed, the first Durham conviction was of Kevin Clinesmith, the former FBI agent who pleaded guilty. Schiff was aware that President Barack Obama was briefed in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was allegedly planning to manufacture a Russian collusion scandal — just days before the start of the Russian investigation. The dossier was riddled with disproven allegations.

  Fourth, Schiff states that he merely sought to investigate allegations.  However, Schiff was one of the most active members fueling the Russian collusion allegations. Indeed, when the Mueller investigation found no proof of Russian collusion, Schiff immediately went public to claim that he had evidence of collusion in his committee files. It was meant to keep the scandal alive. Schiff has never produced his promised evidence of collusion.

  While Schiff insists that he was just doing his due diligence in pushing for an investigation, the claim is not only undermined by his refusal to acknowledge obvious flaws in the dossier for years but his opposition to the investigation by John Durham. Indeed, while Schiff insists that he is glad to see people like Danchenko prosecuted, he opposed the continuation of this and other investigations.

  Schiff told MSNBC that ongoing investigations would constitute “tearing down our democracy” and would serve as a way to “delegitimize” a president.  Schiff denounced the Durham investigation as a “politically motivated” effort and resisted demands from Trump to issue a report before the election. Schiff raised the termination of the Durham investigation by Attorney General Garland before Durham could issue any indictments or reports.  He added “The appointment is not consistent with the language of the statute that he’s relying on and can be rescinded, I think, by the next attorney general. I would presume the next attorney general will look to see if there is any merit to the work that John Durham is doing.”

  So Schiff is now heralding indictments by Durham despite the fact that, if he had gotten his way, there would have been no Durham and no indictments.

  The Russian collusion scandal was not some harmless political ploy. Lives were destroyed. Carter Page, who was never charged with a single crime, was labeled a Russian agent and pilloried across networks and print media. A fortune was spent on investigations by Congress, two special counsels, and inspectors general investigations.  Hundreds of people faced questioning and many spent their savings on legal representation. A presidency was derailed, agencies like the Justice Department and the FBI were whip lashed by scandal, and Congress dropped a myriad of other issues to focus on various investigations.

  In the wake of those costs, Schiff offers little more than a shrug.

  Many have long marveled at the incapacity for shame in politicians. That missing emotion was most famously captured by lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954: “Have you no shame, sir, at long last? Have you no shame?” The answer is that we now live in a post-shame era where the only shame is yielding to the impulses of decency or decorum. The Russian collusion scandal served its purpose and Adam Schiff would be the first say that there is no shame in that.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/18/2021 – 17:40

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