- Escobar: A Dem Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob
Escobar: A Dem Presidency Means The Return Of The Blob
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 23:30Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
A Biden-Harris White House would restore many known and some new ghouls to the corridors of foreign policy-making power…
What happens on November 3rd ? It’s like a larger than life replay of the famous Hollywood adage: “No one knows anything.”
The Dem strategy is crystal clear, spawned by the gaming of election scenarios embedded in the Transition Integrity Project and made even more explicit by one of TIP’s co-founders, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Hillary Clinton, bluntly, has already called it: Dems must re-take the White House by any and all means and under any and all circumstances.
And just in case, with a 5,000-word opus, she already positioned herself for a plum job.
As much as Dems have made it very clear they will never accept a Trump victory, the counterpunch was vintage Trump: he told the Proud Boys to “stand back” – as in no violence, for now – but crucially to “stand by”, as in “get ready”.
The stage is set for Kill Bill mayhem on November 3rd and beyond.
Say it ain’t so, Joe
Taking a cue from TIP, let’s game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.
President Trump calls it “the swamp”. Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier “Blob”, applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine.
A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.
Biden became the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997 and was the chair in 2001-2003 and again in 2007-2009. He paraded as total Iraq War cheerleader – necessary, he maintained, as part of GWOT – and even defended a “soft partition” of Iraq, something that fierce nationalists, Sunni and Shi’ite, from Baghdad to Basra will never forget.
Obama-Biden’s geopolitical accomplishments include a drone war, or Hellfire missile diplomacy, complete with “kill lists”; the failed Afghan surge; the “liberation” of Libya from behind, turning it into a militia wasteland; the proxy war in Syria fought with “moderate rebels”; and once again leading from behind, the Saudi-orchestrated destruction of Yemen.
Tens of millions of Brazilians also will never forget that Obama-Biden legitimized the NSA spying and Hybrid War tactics that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff ,the neutralization of former President Lula, and the evisceration of the Brazilian economy by comprador elites.
Among his former, select interlocutors, Biden counts warmonger former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen – who supervised the destruction of Libya – and John Negroponte, who “organized” the contras in Nicaragua and then “supervised” ISIS/Daesh in Iraq – the crucial element of the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy of instrumentalizing jihadis to do the empire’s dirty work.
It’s safe to game that a Biden-Harris administration will oversee a de facto NATO expansion encompassing parts of Latin America, Africa and the Pacific, thus pleasing the Atlanticist Blob.
In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden’s only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the “biggest threat” to the US.
Woke Kamala in da house
Kamala Harris has been groomed to rise to the top from as early as the summer of 2017. Predictably, she is all for Israel – mirroring Nancy Pelosi (“if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel.”
Kamala is a hawk on Russia and North Korea; and she did not co-sponsor legislation to prevent war against Venezuela and, again, North Korea. Call her a quintessential Dem hawk.
Yet Kamala’s positioning is quite clever, reaching two diverse audiences: she totally fits into The Blob but with an added woke gloss (trendy sneakers, the advertised affection for hip hop). And as an extra bonus, she directly connects with the “Never Trumper” gang.
Never Trumper Republicans – operating especially in Think Tankland – totally infiltrated the Dem matrix. They are prime Blob material. The ultimate neo-con Never Trumper has got to be Robert Kagan, husband of Maidan cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland; thus the running joke in many parts of West Asia, for years, about the “Kaganate of Nulandistan”.
Kagan, self-glorified and idolized as a star conservative intellectual, is of course one of the co-founders of the dreaded neo-con Project for the New American Century (PNAC). That subsequently translated into gleeful Iraq War cheerleading. Obama read his books in awe. Kagan forcefully backed Hillary in 2016. Needless to add, neo-cons of the Kagan variety are all rabidly anti-Iran.
On the money front, there’s the Lincoln Project , set up last year by a gang of current and former Republican strategists very close to, among others, Blob stars such as Daddy Bush and Dick Cheney. A handful of billionaires gleefully donated to this major anti-Trump super-PAC, including J. Paul Getty’s heir Gordon Getty, the heir of the Hyatt hotel empire John Pritzker, and Cargill heiress Gwendolyn Sontheim.
Those Three Harpies
The key Blob character in a putative Biden-Harris White House is Tony Blinken, former deputy national security adviser during Obama-Biden and arguably the next National Security Adviser.
That’s geopolitics – with an important addendum: former national security adviser Susan Rice, who was unceremoniously dropped from the Vice-President shortlist to Kamala’s profit, may become the next Secretary of State.
Rice’s possible contender is Senator Chris Murphy, who in a strategy document titled “Rethinking the Battlefield” predictably goes undiluted Obama-Biden: no “rethinking”, really, just rhetoric on fighting ISIS/Daesh and containing Russia and China.
Suave Tony Blinken used to work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 2000s, so no wonder he’s been very close to Biden even before the first Obama-Biden term, when he rose to the top as deputy national security adviser and then, in the second term, as deputy Secretary of State.
Close to Blinken is Jake Sullivan, who under the protective wing of Hillary Clinton replaced Blinken as national security adviser in the second Obama-Biden term. He will have a top place either in the National Security Council or the State Department.
But what about The Three Harpies?
Many of you will remember The Three Harpies, as I coined them before the bombing and destruction of Libya, and again in 2016, when their remixed version’s push for a glorious sequel was rudely interrupted by Trump’s victory. When it comes to Return of the Blob, this is the 5K, 5G, IMAX version.
Of the three original Harpies, two – Hillary and Susan Rice – seem set to snatch a brand new power job. The plot thickens for Samantha Power, former US ambassador to the UN and the author of The Education of an Idealist, where we learn that such “idealist” rips Damascus and Moscow to shreds while totally ignoring the Obama-Biden drone offensive, kill lists, “leading from behind” weaponizing of al-Qaeda in Syria re-baptized as “moderate rebels”, and the relentless Saudi destruction of Yemen.
Samantha seems to be out. There’s a new Harpy in town. Which brings us to the real Queen of the Blob.
The Queen of the Blob
Michele Flournoy may be the epitome of the Return of the Blob: the quintessential, imperial functionary of what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern brilliant christened MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex).
The ideal imperial functionary thrives on discretion: virtually no one knows Flournoy outside of the Blob, so that means the whole planet.
Flournoy is a former senior adviser to the Boston Consulting Group; the co-founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS); a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center; under secretary of Defense during Obama-Biden; favorite of top Harpy Hillary to be Pentagon chief after 2016; and once again favorite to become Pentagon chief after 2020.
The most delicious item on Flournoy’s CV is that she’s the co-founder of WestExec Advisors with none other than Tony Blinken.
Every Blob insider knows that WestExec happens to be the name of the street alongside the West Wing of the White House. In a Netflix plot, that would be the obvious hint that a short walk of fame straight into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue looms in the horizon for the star protagonists.
Flournoy, more than Blinken, turned WestExec into a certified hit in the Beltway MICIMATT profiting from virtually no P.R. and media blitzes, and talking exclusively to think tanks.
Here’s a crucial glimpse of Flournoy thinking. She clearly states that just a benign American deterrence towards China is a “miscalculation”. And it’s important to keep in mind that Flournoy is in fact the mastermind of the overall, failed Obama-Biden war strategy.
In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember “soft coup” Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
- Baltimore Halts Spy Plane Flights As Program Fails To Reduce Homicides
Baltimore Halts Spy Plane Flights As Program Fails To Reduce Homicides
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 23:00All flight operations for Baltimore’s spy plane program will be canceled today, Saturday (Oct. 31), a Baltimore City Police (BPD) spokeswoman told WBALTV 11. Grounding of the spy plane comes as surveillance flights failed to deter violent crime in the metro area.
Called the Aerial Investigation Research program (AIR), readers may recall we’ve highlighted this dystopic surveillance program several times (see: here & here), of civilian planes, outfitted with high-tech, possibly military optical sensors, recording citizens’ every move.
Since April, the program has been in operation, providing support to investigators who solve violent crimes, such as murders, robberies, and carjackings.
The program was financed solely by Texas philanthropists Laura and John Arnold, via their organizations called Arnold Ventures. The plane’s optical sensor is able to record large swaths of the city at a given time.
A BPD spokesperson told WJZ 13: “We will continue to work with our vendor, independent evaluators, and stakeholders to provide additional analysis, briefings and related activities.”
Last month, BPD published a preliminary report on the spy plane’s effectiveness. The report found only 17 of the 121 homicides in the city between May 1 and Aug. 20 happened during flight hours.
“Evidence from the planes was used in 107 cases out of a total of 874. The report concluded the program helped close a number of homicide cases and more arrests were made in cases with air evidence than without,” WJZ said.
City officials hoped the spy plane program would reduce violent crime in a city where the murder rate is some of the highest in the country. Though, judging by homicides trends below, the program has failed to reduce homicides this year.
Opponents of the surveillance program, including the ACLU of Maryland, have been up in arms about the planes buzzing overhead – they argued the program had violated the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights of residents.
More or less, in Baltimore’s case, spy planes failed to deter violent crime – time for the surveillance state to go back to the drawing board – so what’s next, drones?
… maybe so.
- Is China An Existential Threat To America?
Is China An Existential Threat To America?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 22:30Authored by Gordon G. Chang via The Gatestone Institute,
This is a crucial time in the history of our republic.
UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres, speaking to the General Assembly on September 22, said the world must do everything to prevent a new Cold War. “We are headed in a very dangerous direction,” he said.
We can agree with that dangerous-direction assessment, but we might not agree with his recommendation. Guterres recommended that the world embrace multilateral cooperation.
We can, of course, cooperate with a China that is a partner or a friend. We can even cooperate with a China that is a competitor; all nations to some degree compete. The question is this: Is China just a competitor? Can we, for instance, cooperate with a China that is an opponent or an enemy?
We have to remember that Guterres was speaking at the event marking the 75th anniversary of the formation of the United Nations. It was a rather somber event, because multilateralism, the core ideology of the UN, is failing. Countries are bypassing the UN because they realize it cannot provide security. Countries are defending themselves.
The same thing happened in the 1930s. Countries then bypassed the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations. They realized it was ineffective. Countries could not, in a multilateral setting, cooperate with that era’s aggressors: Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.
So is China merely a competitor, or is it an enemy? To answer that, I would like to look at four things:
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China’s spreading of disease,
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China’s meddling in US elections,
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China’s subversion of the United States, and
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China’s militarism.
First, disease. The People’s Republic of China has attacked us with a microbe. This attack shows how, and to what lengths, China will go to injure other societies.
Everyone talks about how Chinese generals and admirals are changing the definition of war. Unfortunately, we now have an example of how they are doing so. China’s unrestricted warfare — a term Beijing has been using for at least 21 years — now includes biological attack.
China’s leaders knew for at least five weeks, maybe as much as five months, that the coronavirus was highly contagious, but during this period they propagated the narrative they knew was false.
They were telling the world that this was not readily transmissible from one human to the next. Chinese leader Xi Jinping enlisted the World Health Organization in propagating that narrative, which by the way, senior doctors at WHO knew was false. They knew this virus was highly contagious.
That is why it was right for President Donald Trump to defund and withdraw from WHO.
To make matters worse, Xi Jinping pressured countries not to impose travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China. WHO helped him in this regard.
At the same time as Xi Jinping was leaning on other countries, he was imposing those same travel restrictions and quarantines internally. That means he thought these measures were effective. That means he thought his efforts regarding other countries were going to spread the disease.
Fortunately, President Trump imposed travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China quickly, on January 31. He took a lot of heat, not only from Beijing, but also somebody called Joseph Biden. Biden called the president “xenophobic” for those travel restrictions, which saved tens of thousands of lives.
Now, President Trump is making China pay. We must make China pay. We must make China pay because we need to establish deterrence. As of this morning, more than 200,000 Americans have been killed by this disease and more will be killed later on.
Worldwide, we recently passed the one million death mark. We cannot allow Beijing to think they can maliciously spread another pathogen ever again.
Trump was cruising to reelection before the disease, but this reversal of fortune — the result of China’s actions — shows the lengths to which they will go.
Beijing is working hard to unseat President Trump. They are doing so not only with their social media feeds but also with their public pronouncements and other efforts. These efforts are much greater in scope than Russia’s in 2016 or Russia’s this year. It is not “Russia, Russia, Russia.” It really is “China, China, China!”
As an initial matter, Chinese state media and Communist Party media have gone on a bender with unprecedented numbers of news stories, pronouncements, articles, all the rest of it. As a part of this campaign, Beijing has unleashed its trolls and its bots against Trump. The New York Times reported in March that Beijing propagated, through social media feeds and text messages, the rumor that President Trump was going to invoke the Stafford Act and lock down the entire United States. Of course, Beijing knew that was false.
Beijing has also been running operations and networks, including the one called Spamouflage Dragon, which relentlessly attacked the president. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have since taken down that network.
China’s effort is massive. We have seen periodically American social media companies take down fake Chinese accounts. In June alone, Twitter took down 174,000 fake Chinese accounts. That is just one month, one social media platform, 174,000 accounts.
This blends into the third topic, which is subversion. TikTok, the wildly popular video sharing app, employs the world’s most sophisticated commercially available artificial intelligence. It uses that artificial intelligence to pick videos to send to people.
TikTok, because of its artificial intelligence, knows what you like, so it sends you more of it. It knows what you do not like. It does not send you videos you do not want. This gives Beijing an opportunity to change American public opinion.
The Chinese Communist Party probably changed public opinion in connection with this spring’s riots. Some observers think TikTok got college-attending white women to believe they were oppressed and therefore motivated them to demonstrate.
As Paul Dabrowa, an Australian national security expert told me, “Because of TikTok’s artificial intelligence and because of its sophistication, it can get people to do things which could end up, for instance, triggering wars, economic collapse, insurrection.”
This weaponized propaganda can turn people against one another and also ruin the credibility of their governments. Engineers working for Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, develop the algorithms for TikTok’s use. That is the reason China does not want TikTok sold to an American company: it wants to keep control of that algorithm.
The algorithm curates content and can motivate people to do things they otherwise might not do. People believe Beijing “boosted the signal” this June to help a “prank” against President Trump. Teens were using TikTok to spread videos to encourage people to reserve seats at his June rally in Tulsa but not go. That is exactly, in fact, what happened.
While on the subject of TikTok, we should talk about China’s Houston consulate. The question is: Why did the State Department, in July, out of all China’s five consulates in the US, pick the one in Houston to close?
The State Department said Houston was being used for espionage. I think State picked Houston — although there are a lot of other consulates involved in espionage, especially the one in New York and the one in San Francisco — because in Houston it was providing financial and logistical support to violent protesters in the United States.
Radio Free Asia reports that an intelligence unit of the People’s Liberation Army actually based themselves in the Houston consulate. Using big data and artificial intelligence, they identified Americans who were likely to participate in Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests.
The PLA unit then created videos and sent them out through TikTok. Those videos instructed people how to riot.
There are also other indications China has been involved in these protests. For instance, on the night of May 31st, one block north of the White House on 16th Street, there were demonstrations. This was the burning, for instance, of St. John’s Church.
At that time, there were Chinese demonstrators in the streets. A number of people observed that protesters were not only speaking Mandarin but also seemed to be acting in a coordinated fashion. Some of them were actually overheard talking about how the Chinese government had organized them to do this.
These reports are unconfirmed, but they mirror what people saw of Chinese protesters in Los Angeles, as well as other southern California locations. This month we have also read reports linking Chinese Communist Party front organizations with Black Lives Matters affiliated people.
Further, there have been a number of reports of suspicious activity. In late January, for example, US Customs and Border Patrol agents seized 900,000 counterfeit one‑dollar bills from China at the International Falls Port of Entry in Minnesota.
In China’s total surveillance state, no one can counterfeit American currency without Beijing’s knowledge, so it appears that this operation had at least the tacit support of the Chinese government. The question is, who counterfeits one‑dollar bills? People certainly do not do that for profit: the cost of counterfeiting those bills and getting them across the Pacific is higher than one dollar.
What probably happened in this case was that China was trying to support violent protesters financially. It is just a guess, but it is the only explanation that makes sense.
By the way, counterfeiting another country’s currency is more than just subversion. That is an act of war. If you want another act of war, that is indeed what the PLA did at the Houston consulate.
We just covered subversion. Let us go on to the fourth topic: China’s militarism. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has ambitions that span the world and are greater than we have seen since Mao Zedong or the dictators of the Axis in the 1930s and 1940s.
Xi has always believed that China should rule the world. He has also always believed he had to get the United States out of the way — especially because Americans promote ideals that are anathema to totalitarianism.
Xi Jinping has targeted America from the beginning. This is what makes the situation so dangerous. At the same time, Xi’s political position seems to be fragile. To bolster his position, Xi has looked to certain flag officers, generals and admirals, to be the core of his political support.
Many now say that, after his purge of “corrupt officers” and after his top-to-bottom reorganization of the military a half‑decade ago, Xi is in control of the military. One can say this, but one can also say Chinese military officers are now so powerful that they can effectively tell him what to do. To put it another way, maybe Xi Jinping realizes that to survive politically he has to let Chinese officers do what they want. We know that the Chinese military, the most cohesive faction in the Communist Party, and other hardliners in Beijing are now setting the tone.
China’s military officers are making their “military diplomacy” the diplomacy of the country. We now know that in Beijing, only hostile answers are considered to be politically acceptable.
Xi Jinping is under pressure, things are not going his way. Chinese leaders, civilians and perhaps military officers as well — know that there is a closing window of opportunity. This became clear in January when the Xinhua News Agency, the official media outlet, ran a story titled: “Xi Stresses Racing Against Time to Reach Chinese Dream.”
This is a clear indication that senior Beijing leaders know they are running out of time. It is really no mystery why they may feel this way. China’s demography is in the initial stages of accelerated decline. We know that China’s environment is exhausted. Think scarcity of water, despite all the flooding. Also, China’s people are restive. China is losing support around the world. The Chinese economy is in distress. That was true even before COVID‑19.
The reason this is important is because, up to now, the primary basis of legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party has been the continual delivery of prosperity. Without the assurance of prosperity, the only remaining basis of legitimacy is nationalism. Nationalism, as a practical matter, means military misadventure abroad.
To understand military misadventure abroad, think what is going on in India and what China is doing to threaten Taiwan at this moment — and not just India and Taiwan. The whole periphery of China has now become a danger zone.
Let’s put this hostility in the context of what is occurring inside Beijing. Xi Jinping, since he became general secretary of the Communist Party at the end of 2012, has accumulated almost unprecedented power — and with it, unprecedented accountability. Unfortunately for him, there is no one else to blame.
At the same time, Xi Jinping has raised the cost of political failure in Communist Party circles. This means Xi knows that should he fail, he could lose everything. He could lose not just power. He could lose assets, his freedom, maybe even his life.
China’s ruler right now has a low threshold of risk, meaning there is very little stopping him from engaging in especially dangerous conduct. The concern, of course, is if he thinks he is going to lose everything, he may believe that one way out of his problems is to cause history’s next great conflict.
We may think that Xi Jinping should be cautious. Unfortunately, he now has incentives to cause a crisis — one that for us would be unimaginable.
Question & Answer
Question: On the economic front, here was a deficit primer report from Bloomberg News indicating that Chinese ownership of US Treasuries is down to a little over a trillion dollars. In the Obama years, Chinese ownership was approaching three trillion when total debt was a fraction of what it is today. This suggests the Chinese now have no more power to disrupt the Treasury than a fly on an elephant unless, of course, that fly is carrying the Wuhan flu. Where has China spent or invested that money? There is not another government debt market that could have absorbed two trillion dollars without raising a lot of noise. If it has gone to the Bridges, Roads, and Ports Initiative, isn’t that going to end up as one of the worst economic decisions ever?
Chang: First of all, we do not know exactly the full extent of China’s Treasury holdings. We have not known that for a very long time. The reason is that China holds a number of its Treasuries through nominees, especially in London.
Those numbers seem roughly correct, especially the one about one trillion dollars now. I am not exactly sure what the number was in the Obama years. Obviously, it was a big number. The reasons there was a fall in their Treasury holdings… two come to mind.
First, since the middle of 2014, China has actually dumped about a trillion dollars or so of Treasuries. They have done that to defend their currency, the renminbi, because the fall in their own currency’s value is, perhaps, the most critical problem they face. They have got to defend their currency. They use Treasuries to do that. They use the dollars they receive when they sell Treasuries to buy their own currency, thereby supporting their own currency’s value.
The other reason is because Xi Jinping, as we know, has announced his Belt and Road Initiative: a huge infrastructure development plan spanning the world. They spend a lot of money on that.
This spending has resulted in a decrease in their foreign reserves.
These reserves, by the way, although they put out a number every month, that number is probably inflated. China is counting assets that do not meet the definition — the IMF’s definition — of what may be counted as a reserve asset.
China actually may not have as much money as it says it does. All of this is critically important because of the question of the sustainability of China’s initiatives. We may be seeing some very interesting developments. Their Belt and Road investments were may be the worst ever because a number of countries around the world are not paying back China on their loans. These loans were extended under terms that were onerous. Countries nevertheless accepted them.
The point is, these projects are not economically viable. China’s ability to achieve its ambitions is very much dependent on the amount of money it has, specifically the amount of Treasuries.
Even China does not have enough to affect markets, at least for more than a month or so. The reason is the world is awash with liquid assets. It still is.
Although China’s holdings are big, they probably cannot use them to permanently to undermine the ability of the US Treasury to borrow. The US should not borrow as it is doing, but if it wants to, it does not need China’s permission.
Xi Jinping, as mentioned, had two separate initiatives. One was the Belt. The other was the Road, the road being the sea routes between China and Europe, the Belt through central Asia. Basically railroads and highways.
The idea was to be able to get Chinese goods from its east coast over to Europe. These two initiatives have now been amalgamated into the Belt and Road and now span the world. There’s a Polar Belt and Road, a Latin American Belt and Road, a Caribbean Belt and Road, and so on. China wants countries to build infrastructure. This is infrastructure generally the private sector would not build. These projects, in general, are not economic. The loans that China extended actually have high interest rates.
The reason leaders in countries accepted these loans was because China just bribed them. Countries took on very high interest loans, and countries cannot now pay them back, including, maybe most importantly, Pakistan, where China’s Belt and Road Initiative contemplates something like $60 billion in loans.
Pakistan has now gone to the IMF to get relief on a portion of its indebtedness.
What we are seeing right now is a number of countries, including African countries, that are not able to pay back. People ask, “Why is China’s only military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa?”
One reason is that Djibouti owed China a lot of money and could not pay back. So, China was able to get a concession on a former US military base and now has turned it into China’s first offshore base for the People’s Liberation Army.
If we want to understand why this is important to us, it is because a Chinese enterprise is now pouring about three billion dollars into Freeport in the Bahamas, 87 miles east of Palm Beach. That container port in Freeport never made economic sense, but it certainly does not make economic sense now that we have COVID‑19 and global trade volumes are declining.
I think that we are going to see, unless the US stops it, the People’s Liberation Army with a naval base 87 miles east of Palm Beach.
Question: Dr. Li-Meng Yan has said the COVID-19 virus was released intentionally. Have you please any information on that? [Dr. Yan escaped to the US, but her mother, who had nothing to do with the virus, was arrested in China on October 3. Ed.]
Chang: Dr. Yan released a non‑peer reviewed paper, which looks at this strain and analyzes the splicing of protein into it. When we first heard of the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, my wife said to me, “All diseases in China come from southern China, either Guangdong or Yunan. How come this outbreak is in central China, in Wuhan? There’s something suspicious about this.”
Of course, China’s only P‑4 biosafety lab, that is the highest level of biosafety, is located in Wuhan, about 20 miles away from the seafood market that everyone originally suspected was the origin of the disease. There is certainly a lot of reason to be suspicious.
Also, we know that the State Department sent a team to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, this P‑4 lab, in 2018. They reported a shocking disregard of safety protocols there.
Indeed, China Daily, an official newspaper for China, actually published photos on their website trying to convince the world how safe this lab was, but people who looked at the photos noticed that the seals on refrigerators where vials of coronavirus were being stored were broken.
There is another reason to be concerned. The Chinese themselves have admitted they stored more than 1,500 strains of coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute.
Also, they have, in Nature in November 2015, published a paper about gain-of-function experiments. In other words, artificial manipulation of coronaviruses to make them more deadly.
You put all of these things together and you have to be suspicious. There is also some physical evidence that something went on in that lab in October.
We have been monitoring their cell phone traffic. All of a sudden, there is a big two‑week period where there are no cell phone transmissions from the lab. Something may well have gone on there in October or maybe earlier.
Also, in late January, China sent its top bioweapons expert, General Chen Wei, to the Wuhan Institute. She was possibly sent to clean up the lab.
The question is, why did they send their bioweapons expert to head the lab after the outbreak?
I do not have any proof that Dr. Yan is correct in her assertion, but it does not matter how this started because we know what Xi Jinping did after it crippled his country. He took steps he knew or had to know would lead to the spread of the disease beyond his borders. This is a deliberate spread. That is why this is mass murder. There is no other way to term it. China deliberately spread this disease, causing infections and deaths around the world. One million deaths and counting.
Question: Do you think Xi might try any aggression before November 3rd to derail the presidential election and derail Trump?
Chang: Xi Jinping does not want President Donald J. Trump to be reelected. Whether Xi would do anything or not, I do not know. With a president who is behind in the polls, Xi may decide he doesn’t want to disrupt anything. If you listen to what domestic political experts are saying, Xi Jinping looks as if he is going to get the result he wants.
Question: What is going on in the other consulates? What should the US do with China? Decouple? If so, partially? Totally?
Chang: Just a couple of days ago, a former CIA director of Counterintelligence, James Olson, said there are more than a hundred Chinese spies in the City of New York and that many of them report and get directions from the New York consulate.
The remaining ones probably get direction from China’s UN mission. Some of them must be directly monitored from China itself. We do not know.
This was brought to light because of the Tibetan who was a NYPD Community Outreach Officer and who is alleged now to be a spy for Beijing. This highlighted China’s intelligence operations in Manhattan. Beijing has basically overwhelmed the city with spies.
We can also say the same thing about San Francisco. About two months ago, a Chinese researcher at the University of California Davis failed to disclose her relationship with the People’s Liberation Army on her visa application and was questioned by the FBI.
She immediately ran to the San Francisco consulate, where she held up for about two weeks or so while trying to evade capture by the United States. Eventually, China surrendered her.
It is not just a question of the consulates. It is also the embassy itself. China’s ambassador, Cui Tiankai, was revealed in FBI transcripts to have been trying to recruit a US scientist in Connecticut as a spy for China. By the way, Ambassador Cui did that in connection with somebody from the New York consulate.
One other thing that happens out of the New York consulate, and happens out of the other consulates, as well. That is, China monitors universities in the United States. A good friend at the City University of New York talks about being visited by Chinese consular officials whenever he gets in their face. He is very much a pro‑democracy guy. He gets sat on by the Chinese consulate.
They are very much involved in trying to manipulate American public opinion and engage in activities that are inconsistent with their status as diplomats.
In terms of what to do about it? I think these consulates should be closed when we find they’ve been involved in inappropriate activities. I think we should also close much of the embassy because there is so much inappropriate activity.
I would leave the Chinese ambassador in place because we need someone to talk to, but I would expel the current ambassador because of his attempt to recruit a spy. I would tell China, “Look, we would be happy if you want to send a replacement, but in the Chinese embassy itself the only people that will be allowed are the ambassador, his family, a secretary or two, and a bodyguard.”
To maintain diplomatic relations with China, the only thing that we need is a phone. Unfortunately, we may get to that point because we cannot afford to have these consulates not only engaging in espionage but also trying to bring down the government of the United States.
I know people are going to say, “We close their consulates. They close our consulates in China.” People are going to make the reasonable argument that because China’s a closed society, we need our consulates there more than China needs consulates in the United States.
That is a perfectly reasonable argument. It has a lot of validity, but because what China’s doing is so dangerous, we have to make a political point to China that we are willing to take a hit to stop their attempts to bring down our government.
No one really wants to do this, everyone wants to maintain friendly relations with every country, but we cannot maintain friendly relations with a country that is trying to subvert us in the way China’s been doing.
Question: What changes in China’s behavior do you expect, based on your analysis, if there is a new administration?
Chang: Beijing will always test a new American president. And so, for instance, George W. Bush was tested with the Hainan incident on April 1st, 2001, when a Chinese jet clipped the wing of a US Navy EP‑3 reconnaissance plane. The Bush administration was certainly found wanting as it allowed China to strip the plane. The administration even offered China a ransom to get our aviators out of China — a low point in American history.
We know what they did to Obama. After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that human rights was not important — in February 2009, the second month of the Obama administration — the following month, China interfered with the operation of two US Navy vessels, the Impeccable and the Victorious.
The interference with the Impeccable was so serious that it actually constituted an attack on the United States. The US let it slide.
Ultimately the issue of Biden’s China policy is not so much a question of what Biden thinks or what his advisors think. It is a question of what Beijing will force America to do. No one know what that will be.
We know one thing. Every new president will give China a grace period. President Trump did that for about 15 months to try to develop cooperative relationships with Beijing, to see if they could work something out. We know that Xi Jinping did not reciprocate Trump’s generous overtures. That is why Trump, starting around the spring of 2018, actually started to impose severe costs on China.
The problem right now with a new president — this is not just Biden himself, what he thinks — is that we cannot afford to lose any time giving grace periods to a regime that is relentlessly attacking us. We have to be concerned that an incoming president will do what every president has tried to do. That is the impossible: to attempt to develop cooperative relations with a militant Chinese state.
Question: Would you think that one of the key lessons companies have learned from having their supply chain in China, that replacing that manufacturing capacity outside China may potentially reduce employment and create greater security for those very companies?
If the US encouraged companies to replace Chinese labor in Central America, for example, would that take care of enhancing employment there and reduce the pressure of people wanting to enter the US?
Chang: I think the Trump administration clearly wants to decouple. It wants to reduce American vulnerability to China. We have seen that, of course, in the coronavirus epidemic where China actually nationalized an American factory making N95 masks and also turned around ships on the high seas because they were taking to the US personal protective equipment that China felt it needed for itself.
Companies are reluctant to move out of China because they do not set US foreign policy. They do not consider issues of national vulnerability. They go where they think they can make the biggest profit. That is business.
It is up to the President of the United States to change companies’ incentives. He can do that with the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
Trump used that on TikTok. A US federal judge in the District of Columbia overturned, or at least stayed, his order, which means President Trump needs, first of all, to start thinking about not only the ’77 act but also the 1917 act, which is the “Trading with the Enemy Act,” because judges would have less scope for overturning a designation of that sort.
On the question of Central America, that is important. These societies started to experience real problems after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 because factories not only left the United States but they also left Central America. That shift destabilized those societies.
It’s important to bring manufacturing back, not only to the United States but also to our neighbors to the south because with employment, with factories, with prosperity, that would stabilize those societies. That would mean much less pressure on our southern border.
We Americans — this goes back, president after president after president — just ignore our own hemisphere when it comes to security. It is important for us to refocus.
Trump has made some initiatives in this regard. They are good ones. Not only with regard to Mexico, the USMCA, the replacement for NAFTA, but also with his Caribbean initiative. We need to do much more because China is not going to let us alone in our own hemisphere.
Question: Do you think we should treat China as we are treating Iran: imposing sanctions and cutting off countries that do business with China? Also, have thoughts on China’s attempt at overtaking globalization of communications with 5G?
Chang: On 5G, go back to the beginning of this year. It looked as if Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer, was going to take over the world’s 5G networks.
The Trump administration — and this is a triumph — Huawei is dependent on American chips, semiconductors. President Trump, through various actions, has restricted and cut off the sale of chips to China and to Huawei.
That means Huawei may not have a future. You have to see how dramatic this is. Huawei is the world’s number one supplier of telecom networking equipment. As of the last quarter, it is also the world’s number one maker of smartphones.
Now, Huawei’s future is in doubt. If Trump’s policies in this regard are continued, we are probably not going to see Huawei as a challenger.
There are other developments that I think will undercut Huawei, as it will undercut Ericsson and Nokia, the other two suppliers of 5G equipment. We are going to go away from these one-company telecom networks. We are going to go to a diversified plug-and-play model where many companies supply 5G equipment and software for a network. This is what happened in the computer industry, for instance.
That model has certainly created a lot more innovation and lowered costs. The Lego model, as it is sometimes called, is certainly going to help the US because we have the companies that can actually compete. This model will undercut China’s position.
Other countries have made it clear that they are cutting off Huawei, as well. Perhaps the best example is India. Because China killed 20 Indian soldiers on June 15, India has gone in a good direction, cutting off Huawei, cutting off TikTok, cutting off Chinese companies.
I believe we need to do the same thing. You’ve got to remember, China declared a “people’s war” on the United States in May of last year. They told us we’re the enemy, so we might as well take them at their word and start defending ourselves with the vigor that is needed.
There is a lot that we can do. I know the president wants to do that. Right now is not a time for him to do that, of course, because of the sensitivity of the election.
If he is not reelected, others, I hope, will work to make sure that the new president does the same things as Trump would do.
We have a lot to learn from India. China is trying to dismember that country. That has been clear from the writings of Chinese security analysts and goes back to the first decade of this century.
China has been increasing its territorial claims on India and would break the country apart because it has claims not only on Ladakh, which is the area of the fighting since the first week in May, but it also wants the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh.
There would not be much left of India if China gets its way. That is why India, right now, has a very resolute stance. We have seen some extremely important developments.
The first week of May, China invaded India, essentially, in Ladakh, in the Himalayas. The Chinese, in a premeditated act, killed 20 Indian soldiers on June 15. India actually responded. They counterattacked. They took back territory that the Chinese grabbed from them.
What we have found is really interesting: That is China’s Ground Force, which is the army portion of the People’s Liberation Army, has been incapable of fighting Indians in an area where they had initial success.
In addition to India actually engaging in successful military operations against the Chinese, more importantly, India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps, which was a crippling blow. It also has cut off Chinese contracts in India. It is also, as mentioned, going after Huawei. If India can do it, the question is why can’t the United States?
Question: What are the places near the United States besides Freeport is China trying to encircle?
Chang: In the Atlantic, there are two other places that China would like military bases. One of them is Walvis Bay in Namibia, and the other is Terceira, in the Azores. Terceira is home to the Lajes US Air Force base. The US Air Force has redeployed, basically making it, as they say, a ghost base.
China has been eyeing Lajes. Lajes is actually not far from Washington, DC. From there, China could control the mouth of the Mediterranean, control the North Atlantic, put Washington, DC and New York at risk.
I think it’s up to the US Air Force to start putting people in Lajes, so the Chinese realize that they cannot take over the airfield. Its runway is almost 11,000 feet long. It can accommodate any aircraft and can threaten the United States. The Atlantic, which we have seen as a preserve, could very well become a Chinese lake.
Question: There is talk that China owns the presidential challenger because of $1.5 billion that China paid his son. Have you thoughts on that?
Chang: Most China analysts believe Beijing favors Trump. I don’t buy it — for two reasons. First, in the Democratic primaries, Chinese propaganda favored Biden over Sanders. Then we have seen Communist Party media, Chinese state, government media, overwhelmingly done its best to tar President Trump.
Chinese media has also said some nice things about Biden recently, so I think that’s a real indication of where Beijing is going.
Also, if you look at their troll activities, their bots and things, we do not know the full extent of it, at least people who do not have security clearances. What we have seen, however, is that this underground Chinese social media activity is overwhelmingly directed against President Trump.
This is different than Russia. Russia in 2016 was going after everyone. They were just totally trying to create chaos. China has been much more thoughtful in the way it has been doing it. It is directing its activities against the president. That is an indication of what it wants.
Further, Biden’s son, Hunter, has had unusual business dealings with China. Now, there are a lot of Americans who have been entrusted with a billion, $2 billion in Chinese money to invest. If Hunter Biden got a billion and a half, that by itself does not say anything.
What says a lot, however, is that Hunter Biden did not have experience as a fund manager. He still got a billion and a half to manage. This is extremely suspicious, along with all the other facts that are now out in the public. It is evidence of a bargain that certainly looks corrupt.
Question: Should the US ban TikTok if China keeps the algorithm?
Chang: I think we should ban TikTok this very moment. I would not wait. If I were President Trump, I would do everything possible, including the designation under the 1917 Act. I would say that TikTok’s operations in the US are over.
Part of the reason the district judge overturned President Trump’s 1977 act designation to stop downloads is because it looks like an attempt to permit a US company to buy, to grab TikTok. Now, I think there is nothing wrong with that, but it does not look good.
The president would be on stronger legal grounds if he just said, “Look, we’re banning all of TikTok’s operations this very moment, and then we will let the chips fall where they may.” This would mean that Oracle could still buy it.
The terms of the deal that we know about, Oracle/Walmart, on one hand, and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok on the other, are completely unacceptable. They leave the algorithm in the hands of China.
Oracle with its cloud-providing services could deal with the issue of China using TikTok to surveil Americans. China has been using TikTok to get metadata from Americans, and then use it to power their artificial intelligence back home.
They have also been inserting malicious software on the devices of users that allows China to spy. They have been doing some other stuff like grabbing the data of minors, which is illegal. All of those things could be taken care of if Oracle hosts the data. That is not the problem. What is the problem is the control of the algorithm because that allows China to manipulate US public opinion.
The Radio Free Asia report shows how dangerous this can be. This is an act of war. I do not see why we allow a company that has committed an act of war against the United States to continue to operate here.
Question: If China purposefully released or spread the virus as an act of war, do you think they predicted the economic damage lockdowns would do to the Western economies? And would they continue to propagate data supporting lockdowns to do further damage? Would they release an additional pathogen, or intensify support of domestic groups like Black Lives Matter destabilizing US society?
Chang: I guess all of the above. The thing about what their next step would be, well, we know they are propagating the narrative that China’s response to the coronavirus was superior to that of the United States and superior response shows China’s form of government is superior to America’s.
They had been continually attacking democracy before the coronavirus, but they are especially doing that now. They are going to use their vaccine, which I think will be out first. It might not be reliable, it might even be dangerous, but it will be out first, and they will tout that.
They are going to tout their vaccine in a massive public relations campaign against the United States. In terms of the initial part of the question, whether there might be another biological attack or not, you have to remember that China has been sending seeds, unsolicited, to Americans, to people in Britain, to people in Taiwan. That could very well be an attempt to cause havoc in the United States.
All of these things indicate a real maliciousness. In going back to that earlier question of what we can do about it, we first need to talk about these things in a realistic, blunt way. These go to the core of China’s attack on the United States.
Question: Why wouldn’t Trump or Pompeo get on the media and announce this, since our media refuses to report on it? Also, didn’t we know about this virus in 2016 from the CDC. If not, why was our CDC not prepared?
Chang: The CDC was not prepared. Not only did China lie about the disease, not only did it pressure countries to accept arrivals from China, thereby spreading the pathogen around the world, China did something else. China, on January 20, finally admitted the coronavirus was contagious. On January 21, one day after that, they started a campaign to convince the world that the coronavirus was no big deal. Their line was that the coronavirus would be no more deadly than SARS, which is the 2002, 2003 epidemic that infected, according to the WHO, 8,400 people worldwide, killed 810.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Task Force Coordinator on Coronavirus, at her March 31 press briefing actually said, when she looked at the data from China, she thought this was not going to be a big deal. She first thought this was going to be another SARS‑like event. She also said it was only after she saw the devastation in Italy and Spain did she realize that the Chinese had misled her. Because they misled her, we did not take precautions that we otherwise would have adopted. By the way, Dr. Anthony Fauci has also publicly talked about being deceived by China.
That is probably one of the reasons the response in the US was not as fast as it could have been. Remember, President Trump acted on his gut on January 31, really fast, cutting off arrivals from China. The administration then became lax on this. The Democrats say it is because of the failure of Trump’s governance.
A large reason why, if that is true, is because China told the Trump administration, “Don’t worry about this.”
Question: Would it not be best for Trump to create an alliance to contain China? He has not, it seems, made efforts to create a multiple-country front. Had China not killed the Indian soldiers, India would also not be pushing China back. Do you think there could be an alliance of more countries to counter China?
Chang:: Actually, this is one criticism that a lot of people make about the Trump administration, that it does not work well with allies. I think that is wrong. For instance, here are two examples from recent headlines. One, of course, is the Bahrain, UAE deal with Israel, which is going to be expanded when perhaps Sudan joins, and maybe even Morocco.
You are going to see a Sunni Arab coalition in the Middle East — a really important development. It is historic. It is important from so many different aspects, and part of it is, it is the real beginning of a US‑led initiative in the region. We have been working with the Gulf States and Israel. They have been happy on their own, to cooperate below the surface. The Trump administration brought this out into the light and is sheparding really important developments.
Of course, the other thing is the Quad: India, Japan, Australia, and the United States. The Quad is actually becoming an effective grouping, and we are going to see other countries join that as well.
US relationships in Asia are actually stronger now than they were under Obama, with the exception of South Korea.
South Korea is not Trump’s fault. That is because the South has a communist as a president. Moon Jae‑in is very happy with what China is doing, and very happy with North Korea, and he wants to merge South Korea out of existence.
That is not Trump’s fault. As a matter of fact, Trump’s South Korea diplomacy has actually been the best under the circumstances.
The administration has worked hard with other countries around the world. The question is, could Trump have done more? One always could do more, but also, let us give the president a lot of credit for some really historic accomplishments that will be remembered, not just during his administration, not just next year, not just next decade. We will be talking about his accomplishments for a very long time.
Question: If after November 3rd, there is no definitive result for a month, would China risk attacking Taiwan with US leadership unknown?
Chang: Yes, I think so. I think that if Trump looked as if he was going to win the election, they might even attack before then. Now, the attack very well may not be a full‑on military attack. They might grab some of the outlying islands, which are just one or two miles away from the Chinese coast.
They could also do something to destabilize Taiwan, which could have consequences that would lead to a full‑on military conflict.
China right now knows the US eventually could win a full‑scale war, so they are reluctant to start one. The point, however, is that China is engaging in conduct that risks accidental military encounters, which could spiral down into history’s next great conflict.
We cannot control these things. Especially with Chinese generals and admirals out of control, anything can happen.
So we have to be concerned about China provoking an incident. China has regularly been sending its planes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. They have also been initiating especially provocative island-encirclement missions with their nuclear‑capable H‑6 bombers. They have been doing a lot of stuff.
The point here is, we have to be prepared for anything. We need to make a clear declaration in public that the United States will defend Taiwan because Taiwan is crucial to maintaining our western defense perimeter.
Since the end of the 19th century, we Americans have drawn our western defense perimeter off the coast of East Asia. Taiwan is at the center of that crucial line. It is where the East China Sea and South China Sea meet.
Taiwan is absolutely critical because it protects us from a surging Chinese air force and Chinese navy, trying to get to Hawaii. We need to be very clear about this. If we are not clear, China may try to do something that leads to tragedy.
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- Savage Corp To Shield High-Value Targets With AI-Drone Killing Missiles
Savage Corp To Shield High-Value Targets With AI-Drone Killing Missiles
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 22:00Weaponized drone swarms could easily take out oil refiners, nuclear power plants, airports, government buildings, electrical grids, or even cause unfathomable loss of life at sports stadiums.
A recent paper titled “Are Drone Swarms Weapons of Mass Destructions?,” argues such attacks like those mentioned above could be viewed as “weapons of mass destruction.”
For example, a massive swarm of drones blew up oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia in 2019. As we recently noted, another incident was unearthed via Freedom of Information Act documents that showed mysterious drone swarms had breached airspace over America’s largest nuclear power plant last year.
The question readers should be asking: Where are the layered defense systems that protect these high-value assets?
Well, we might have found one that combats and could completely neutralize a small drone attack.
Defense firm Savage Corp. has developed the SAVAGE missile (Smart Anti-Vehicle Aerial Guided Engagement), a low-cost smart weapon designed with a solid-fuel propellant rocket motor, able to travel around Mach 1, with an effective range of 3 miles, uses thrust-vectoring engines with artificial intelligence to knock small, fast-moving targets out if the sky, like drones.
Forbes said, “the most expensive part of any missile is the guidance system, and this is where SAVAGE is revolutionary.”
“SAVAGE uses AI-based computer vision algorithms to detect and track the target,” Savage Corp CEO Nick Verini told Forbes in an interview.
Verini said SAVAGE uses a high-tech sensor to detect flying objects in day or night conditions. He said an infrared sensor is an additional option for clients that want to combat drone attacks at night. The warhead on the drone killing missile is “hit-to-kill,” meaning it uses kinetic energy to destroy enemy targets.
“We prefer the kinetic impact approach — one missile, one drone — but a potential customer is interested in an explosive payload option for taking down several drones in a ‘swarm’ with one missile,” said Verini.
Launcher concepts on Savage Corp.’s website show the missile can be launched from a shoulder-fired launcher, a vehicle-mounted launch that can hold 64 SAVAGE rounds, and also an aerial launcher from a warplane.
Shoulder-Fired Launcher
Vehicle-Mounted Launcher
SAVAGE missiles aren’t a stand-alone system at defending high-value targets. Verini said, “launchers can be integrated with any long-range radar surveillance system, which would cue the launcher to the presence, range, and direction of threats.”
He said defense industry partners and military customers have inquired about the missiles:
“We are working with the DoD and several U.S. companies to get to a finished product,” said Verini.
With drone threats fast emerging and already a couple of notable incidents, it’s only a matter of time before weaponized drone swarms disrupt our way of life via an attack that could be classified as a WMD.
Maybe Savage Corp. has a solution to protect high-value assets via low-cost drone killing missiles?
- Quantifying The Left Wing Bias Of Wikipedia
Quantifying The Left Wing Bias Of Wikipedia
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 21:30Authored by Shuichi Tezuka and Linda A. Ashtear via TheCritic.co.uk,
Wikipedia is the most widely used source of information in the world, and a great deal has been written about its impact on public perception of certain topics. Wikipedia shapes both scientific research and real-world economic outcomes, and is the top source of medical information for both doctors and patients. The widespread reliance on Wikipedia would not be a problem if it were a neutral and authoritative source, but earlier this year Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger declared that “Wikipedia’s ‘NPOV’ (neutral point of view) is dead.” Is Sanger’s statement correct?
A 2018 study by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu compared levels of political bias in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica by quantifying each encyclopaedia’s respective usage of phrases favoured by Democratic or Republican members of US congress. Their study found that Wikipedia articles are more politically biased than those in Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as being slanted towards Democratic (as opposed to Republican) points of view. The study also found that the amount of bias in Wikipedia articles tended to decrease the greater the number of people who had edited them. The reason for this trend was explained in an earlier study by the same authors: “Benefitting from the efforts of many contributors, an article is also more likely to present controversial content in an unbiased way: thus diversity may help reduce content bias.”
One limitation of Greenstein and Zhu’s study is that it considered only the contents and histories of Wikipedia articles, and did not examine the site’s internal social dynamics. In this article, we build upon Greenstein and Zhu’s analysis by examining specific mechanisms that produce political bias in Wikipedia, with a focus on administrative decisions at the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard. We also discuss how this bias ultimately affects the site’s content.
Bias in judgments about sources
Wikipedia has several internal policies intended to prevent the spread of false or biased information. One policy, named “Verifiability,” requires that all content on Wikipedia be based on “reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.” Another policy, “Neutral Point of View” (NPOV), requires that Wikipedia articles include all viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in the source material. This does not necessarily mean giving equal validity to all views: for example, most reliable sources that discuss creationism describe it as an unscientific viewpoint, so NPOV policy requires that Wikipedia present it the same way.
An inevitable consequence of these two policies is that the more sources taking one perspective are judged as reliable, and the more sources taking the opposite perspective are judged as unreliable, the more Wikipedia’s articles will lean towards the viewpoint of the first group. Decisions about which sources may or may not be used are left to the judgment of “editors” (that is, people who write, edit, or otherwise contribute to Wikipedia articles), and these decisions are usually made at Wikipedia’s reliable sources noticeboard. Most relevant to assessing bias is the question of which sources have been “deprecated,” which means a source that has been formally prohibited from being used in all but a handful of cases.
Wikipedia’s list of deprecated sources currently contains 16 right-leaning sources: Breitbart, the Daily Caller, the Daily Mail, the Daily Star, the Epoch Times, FrontPage Magazine, the Gateway Pundit, Infowars, LifeSiteNews, News of the World, One America News Network, the Sun, Taki’s Magazine, VDare, WorldNetDaily, and Zero Hedge – and just one left-leaning source, Occupy Democrats. Other politically biased sources have also been deprecated, but it is harder to position them on the left-right political axis, such as media companies controlled by the Russian or Chinese government. The deprecated right-leaning sources include both those that advance far-right conspiracy theories (Infowars and WorldNetDaily) and those that advance ordinary conservatism (the Daily Mail and the Sun), as well as many shades of grey between those two extremes. It could be argued that even the non-extreme sources that have been deprecated are not of a particularly high quality, so the prohibition against citing them is not a problem per se, but a similar standard has not been applied to lower quality, left-leaning sources such as CounterPunch, AlterNet, and the Daily Kos.
According to Ad Fontes Media‘s widely-used media bias chart (which is commonly cited in discussions on the reliable sources noticeboard), CounterPunch, AlterNet, and the Daily Kos are all less reliable than the Daily Mail. This is significant because the Daily Mail, a deprecated right-leaning source, is often used as a benchmark for judging whether other right-leaning sources should be deprecated. All three of these left-wing sources are widely used at Wikipedia. An external links search shows around 2,580 Wikipedia pages linking to CounterPunch, around 2,400 linking to the Daily Kos, and around 1,640 linking to AlterNet. (These search results include both articles and talk pages, because Wikipedia’s software does not have a way to confine an external links search to just articles.)
A proposal to deprecate AlterNet was made in April 2019, but the proposal received very little support. One user argued that AlterNet should be deprecated due to the site’s distribution of false medical information—that anthrax can be treated using homeopathy, for instance—meant that following its instructions can cause bodily harm. On the other hand, one of the users opposed to deprecation argued that AlterNet is “valuable for providing progressive viewpoints and reporting or interviews of progressive organizations.” The majority of the Wikipedia articles citing AlterNet are not medical articles, but in light of Wikipedia’s status as the most widely used source of medical information for doctors and patients, allowing citations to AlterNet poses a risk that does not exist for most of the deprecated right-leaning tabloid newspapers and political websites.
The discussion that failed to deprecate AlterNet had sparse participation, with comments by only seven users. This outcome underlines the subjective nature of judgments about sources because with a different balance of viewpoints among its participants the discussion could have easily produced a different result. To understand the root cause of bias in discussions like this it is necessary to understand the factors affecting the balance of viewpoints among the discussion’s participants.
Bias in Arbitration Enforcement
Wikipedia calls itself “The free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit,” but this is only true for uncontroversial articles. Many controversial topics have additional restrictions about who is allowed to edit them, such as only users who have registered an account and have accumulated a certain number of edits. More relevant to content or sourcing decisions is another type of restriction applied to some topics known as discretionary sanctions. These are a special set of powers given to administrators (admins) in some topic areas that allow them to place blocks or sanctions on any person editing the topic whom they believe to be acting disruptively. Discretionary sanctions can only be authorized by the Arbitration Committee (a.k.a. ArbCom), which is English Wikipedia’s highest ruling body, and usually are authorized at the conclusion of an arbitration case covering a topic.
Discretionary sanctions are authorized in most of Wikipedia’s controversial topics, and cannot be lifted or modified unless there is a consensus among admins to do so. Because it is quite difficult for them to be lifted or modified, and because it is up to admins’ individual judgment what behaviour should be punished under this system, it would be quite easy for any administrator to use this system to suppress one side of a dispute. This could be done by blocking or topic banning most of the editors on one side (a topic ban prohibits a person from contributing to any articles or discussions related to a topic), or by making editors on one side feel unwelcome until they choose to leave. If this were to occur it would affect the balance of participants in discussions about sources or article content, and ultimately affect the outcome of those discussions.
We have examined the history of reports at Wikipedia’s Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard with respect to four politically controversial topics in which discretionary sanctions are authorized, and how the viewpoints of editors involved in those reports relate to the reports’ outcomes. Arbitration Enforcement is Wikipedia’s main forum for implementing discretionary sanctions, as well as for reporting possible violations of decisions made by ArbCom. To make our analysis as systematic as possible, we have excluded reports made on other noticeboards, as well as sanctions imposed by ArbCom directly, because outside of Arbitration Enforcement it is much more difficult to measure the number of opportunities for disciplinary action to occur. This examination was performed using the chi-squared test for independence, which measures whether there is a statistically significant relationship between categorical variables and represents the core of our analysis. Click here for a complete description of the statistical analyses and its results, including tables of the raw data.
The first topic area we’ve examined is the articles covered by the American politics 2 arbitration case, and more specifically those reports that relate to President Trump, as well as to closely related topics such as the 2016 election and the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. We decided to include just these topics because other disputes that have fallen under the American politics 2 case can be difficult to break down along party lines. For example, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has received criticism both from the Republican party and from his rivals in the Democratic party.
Figure 1: Contingency table and association plot for position and action in American politics AE reports.
The timespan examined for this topic is the period from when Trump won the Republican nomination in July 2016 until the end of August 2020, and includes a total of 114 disputes, each consisting of two or more editors. We have classified most of the editors involved in these disputes as either “pro-Trump” or “anti-Trump.” An editor being classified as “pro-Trump” does not necessarily mean that they consider Trump a good president or that they voted for him—it simply indicates that this person’s edits or proposed edits to Trump-related articles were more favourable than negative, while being classified as “anti-Trump” indicates the opposite.
Our analysis of this topic found an odds ratio of 6.02 (95 percent confidence interval: 3.23, 11.23), meaning that pro-Trump editors were about six times more likely to be disciplined at Arbitration Enforcement (AE) than anti-Trump editors.
The second topic area that we examined is the articles covered by the Gun control arbitration case. The timespan examined for this topic is the period from when the gun control arbitration case concluded in April 2014 until the end of August 2020. Our analysis of this topic, which included 19 disputes of two or more editors, found an odds ratio of 3.73 (95 percent CI: 0.98, 14.23), meaning that editors who were opposed to stricter gun control laws were about four times more likely to be disciplined at Arbitration Enforcement than those who were in favour of stricter gun control. (As before, these classifications refer to the overall balance of a person’s edits to gun-related articles, as it is not always possible to know an editor’s personal opinions.) This analysis, though trending in the same direction as the others, was not statistically significant at the p < .05 level, likely due to the small sample of reports available for analysis.
Figure 2: Contingency table and association plot for position and action in gun control AE reports.
The third topic that we examined is the articles covered by the race and intelligence arbitration case. The dispute covered by this arbitration case, and by the subsequent AE reports, has mostly been between those who argue that the cause of ethnic group differences in average IQ scores should be described as a legitimate scientific debate, and those who argue that research about race and IQ should primarily be described as racist pseudoscience. This topic’s political nature becomes clear when examining the various attempts to have academics who have written about race and IQ, such as Noah Carl and Bo Winegard, fired from their positions. These attempts have come almost entirely from the Left, while right-leaning publications such as the Spectator, the Telegraph, and Spiked Online have generally been more sympathetic to these researchers.
The timespan examined for this topic is the period from when the race and intelligence arbitration case concluded in August 2010 until the end of August 2020, for a total of 43 disputes (several of which involved more than two editors). Our analysis of this topic found an odds ratio of 6.23 (95 percent CI: 2.26, 17.13), meaning that editors who are favourable towards research about race and intelligence are over six times more likely to be disciplined at Arbitration Enforcement than those who are opposed to it.
Figure 3: Contingency table and association plot for position and action in race and intelligence AE reports.
The fourth topic area that we examined is the abortion arbitration case. The timespan examined for this topic is the period from when the abortion arbitration case concluded in November 2011 until the end of August 2020. Only seven AE reports have been made under this case, which limits the power of the analysis, but the limited data from this topic shows the most unequivocal relation between viewpoints and administrative results of any of the four topics we examined. Every AE report in this area against an anti-abortion editor has resulted in a warning or sanction, and no such reports have ever resulted in a warning or sanction for someone whose edits were favourable to abortion, although this perfect alignment between editorial positions and report outcomes would not necessarily have been the case in a larger sample.
Figure 4: Contingency table and association plot for position and action in abortion AE reports.
Among the 30 or so topic areas in which discretionary sanctions are authorized, these four topics were chosen because they are areas where the two sides of the controversy tend to align with the left-right political axis (whereas this is less the case in other DS-authorized topics such as, say, Scientology or India and Pakistan). In other words, people who lean to the left politically are more likely to view President Trump and race research unfavourably and are more likely to be in favour of stricter gun control laws and keeping abortion legal. In all four of these topics, the evidence for bias points in the same direction: editors who support views associated with the political right tend to receive disciplinary action more frequently than those who support views associated with the political left.
Considering this common trend shared by the four topics, we have performed an aggregate analysis of the data from all four topic areas, comparing the overall rate of disciplinary action for editors with left-leaning positions and those with right-leaning positions. This leads to a total of 368 opportunities for disciplinary action, split nearly 50/50 among right- and left-leaning editors. Examining these four topic areas in aggregate produces an odds ratio of 6.41 (95 percent CI: 3.94, 10.43), meaning that overall, in these politically loaded topics, editors who support right-leaning views are over six times more likely to be sanctioned at Arbitration Enforcement than those who support left-leaning views.
Figure 5: Contingency table and association plot for position and action in combined American politics, gun control, race and intelligence, and abortion AE reports.
Administrative attitudes
In the absence of any additional context, one possible interpretation of some of these results is that Wikipedia’s administrators are apolitical, and that right-leaning editors are sanctioned more often because their behaviour tends to violate Wikipedia’s policies more often. This argument has been made with respect to Trump-related AE reports: that because the coverage of President Trump in the mainstream media is predominantly negative, people whose edits take an anti-Trump viewpoint inevitably are supported by reliable sources, while those whose edits take a pro-Trump viewpoint are not.
However, our results indicate that the tendency for right-leaning editors to be sanctioned more harshly is not limited to reports related to Trump. The same tendency also exists in areas such as gun control, where this alternative explanation presumably would not apply, at least not to the same degree.
In addition, the argument that Wikipedia’s admins are apolitical ignores another important point: in many cases they do not claim to be apolitical. It is a widely expressed view among Wikipedia administrators, as well as by Wikipedia’s parent organization, that Wikipedia should show little tolerance for editors perceived as having right-wing points of view.
In December 2018, when several administrators were applying for positions on English Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, all of the applicants were asked the following question:
With the rise of far-right and hate groups online, are you concerned that editors espousing such beliefs may try (or are already attempting) to use Wikipedia as a vehicle for propaganda? Why or why not? If yes, what role do you think ArbCom could play in counteracting their influence on Wikipedia?
The majority of the candidates, including four of the six candidates who went on to win positions on ArbCom, answered that far-right editors were a particularly severe problem at Wikipedia and that ArbCom must take an active role in stopping them. (Of the two candidates who were elected without giving this answer, one responded that dealing with these editors was the responsibility of the Wikipedia community rather than of ArbCom, while the other declined to answer.) One experienced administrator who has served several terms on ArbCom gave an answer representative of the majority view:
Yes, Wikipedia has had this problem since before [the arbitration case] Race and intelligence, but the methods of these groups have become more sophisticated in recent years. Biased use of sourcing and other neutrality problems is the first problem posed here … The use of biased sourcing and other verifiability problems is the other problem. This is more difficult to tackle in arbitration (ArbCom cannot easily say “That source looks and sounds real, but it’s a far-right mouthpiece and your use of it was disruptive”), but we make do with what we have.
The perceived need to combat right-wing editors is explained in greater detail by a Wikipedia essay stating that editors who are Nazis or racists should be blocked on sight, even if their behaviour is not violating any Wikipedia policies. (This essay uses the terms “racist” and “Nazi” interchangeably.) Wikipedia essays do not have the same force as actual policies, but they are commonly used as guides for administrative actions. The essay’s definition of racism is very broad: A subpage of the essay listing “pages often edited by racists” includes the articles “Ann Coulter,” “Intelligence Quotient,” and “All Lives Matter.”
Individual administrators have expressed similar views. For several years, a personal essay written by one administrator argued that “uncritical right-wing ideology is disqualifying for Wikipedia editors” or (in another version of the essay) that “in my view, believing that Trump is a good president indicates that you are probably not competent to edit Wikipedia,” although following criticism from several non-admins he rewrote the essay in milder form in May of this year. His rewriting of this essay does not appear to indicate a real shift in attitude about the politics he expects Wikipedia editors to have, as he has expressed a similar sentiment in a subsequent discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement: “You can be one of three things: ally, enemy, or collaborator. Be an ally.”
The most recent major statement about the political views expected from Wikipedia editors has come from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the non-profit organization that runs Wikipedia. In June 2020, the organization published a statement endorsing the goals of Black Lives Matter, which reads in part: “On these issues, there is no neutral stance. To stay silent is to endorse the violence of history and power; yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is well past time for racial justice in America and beyond.”
The statement “there is no neutral stance” is probably a reference to Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View” policy, which is still an official Wikipedia policy. This apparent rejection of a core Wikipedia policy by the site’s parent organization did not go unnoticed by members of the Wikipedia community, who subsequently debated the statement’s implications.
The views expressed by various Wikipedians about the WMF’s statement reveal an informative contrast. Non-admins commenting on the statement expressed a variety of opinions, but more disapproved of the statement than approved, with a few being highly critical. However, no Wikipedia administrators openly criticized the statement. Of the seven administrators commenting in the discussion about it, two (Nosebagbear and DGG) expressed mild concerns or disagreements, one (Llywrch) commented without expressing an opinion, while the other four (Pharos, Sj, The Blade of the Northern Lights, and Amorymeltzer) all defended the WMF’s statement. Ironically, one of the more prominent Wikipedians to directly criticize the WMF’s statement was an ex-administrator, who was stripped of her admin powers in January of this year.
This contrast between the views of admins and of non-admins hints at the existence of a cultural divide over the issue between Wikipedia’s management and its ordinary members. In general, Wikipedia’s management has expressed more positive views than its ordinary members about the idea of requiring editors of controversial articles to hold left-leaning views. However, only administrators have the authority to decide the outcome of Arbitration Enforcement reports, so the broader Wikipedia community cannot easily prevent this type of activist approach from being used there.
How administrative bias affects articles
Over a period of many years, as Wikipedia editors on one side of a dispute receive disciplinary action more often than those on the other side, the position that is supported by admins tends to become over-represented among editors. One might expect this imbalance to result in article wording that is subtly biased in favour of the dominant viewpoint, or to result in an excessive number of sources that support the opposite viewpoint being judged as unreliable, but the imbalance also can affect articles in more profound ways. Here we’ll examine one of these more significant effects on Wikipedia’s article about Linda Gottfredson, a psychologist who has published research about race and IQ among many other topics (and consequently an article that is covered by the “Race and intelligence” arbitration case).
From January 2016 until October 2017, Wikipedia’s article about Gottfredson contained a highly disparaging quote. The Wikipedia article said the following:
Barry Mehler writes in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education that Gottfredson is attempting to promote racial theories used by the Nazis:
Thus, we see that Gottfredson’s opposition to affirmative action is based not in any such claimed “objectivity,” but in a sanitized resurrection of ideas put forward by Nazi racial theorists. Under the false pretence of intellectual honesty, she has endorsed the same poisonous ideology that half a century ago led to the Holocaust.
There is one problem with this quote: Mehler most likely never said it. The citation that Wikipedia gave for the above quote is “Mehler 1994,” with no title or issue number given. But according to Google Scholar, Barry Mehler has never published a paper in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) in 1994 or any other year. Mehler published only a single paper in 1994, and while the paper does compare the twin studies used by behavioural geneticists to Josef Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz, it does not mention Gottfredson. Mehler’s writings have a tendency to be examples of Godwin’s law, so the quote comparing Gottfredson’s views to Nazism does seem like the type of thing he might have said. But there is no source indicating he actually did.
The non-existence of a real source for this quote can be corroborated with a date-restricted search for the quote on Google, Google Books and Google Scholar, limited to before it was added to the Wikipedia article in January 2016. These three combined searches turn up a single result: the 2005 book Destructive Trends in Mental Health. This book contains a chapter by Linda Gottfredson (which is probably why it appears among the Google results), but it does not contain this quote, or cite Mehler. Judging by the Google results, the Wikipedia article about Linda Gottfredson was the first place this quote ever appeared.
This alleged Mehler quote was removed from the Wikipedia article as “unverifiable” on October 20th, 2017, but by that point the damage had been done. This quote was subsequently repeated in the book Modern American Extremism and Domestic Terrorism, published by ABC-CLIO in 2018. Instead of copying Wikipedia’s vague reference to a non-existent JBHE paper, this book instead cites the quote to a 1999 article from the Southern Poverty Law Centre. While the cited SPLC article mentions Gottfredson, it does not contain this quote.
Wikipedia’s policy regarding biographies of living people, also known as BLP policy, requires that all statements about living people be supported by a reliable source, and for unsourced and poorly-sourced material to be immediately removed. But like all Wikipedia policies, this policy can only be applied if there is someone willing to uphold it. During the 21 months that the Gottfredson article contained this apparently fabricated quote, the article was being sporadically edited by several people, who quickly undid attempts at removing negative material from the article. But the people maintaining the article during this time were almost entirely people who had unfavourable opinions of Gottfredson, and their diligence did not extend to making sure all of the negative material was cited to sources that actually existed.
The principle illustrated by this series of events is that members of Wikipedia are far less likely to notice and remove vandalism or hoax material if it is in support of a viewpoint that they agree with. (This is true of all viewpoints, both left-leaning and right-leaning.) While this particular example was more severe than most, the same principle also applies to more subtle violations of Wikipedia’s content policies, such as article text not adequately supported by the sources it cites. When Wikipedia’s administrators suppress one side of a dispute in a controversial topic, one of the long-term results is that policy violations favourable to the opposite side may be overlooked for months or years.
The history of the Gottfredson article also demonstrates one of the dangers that arise from suppressing one side of a dispute, and the resulting lax enforcement of BLP policy or other Wikipedia policies. Many journalists and academics rely on Wikipedia as a source of information, so when hoax material—including hoax material about living people—is not removed in a timely manner it may eventually be repeated in published books or articles, as happened in this case.
The importance of viewpoint diversity
In the view of the Wikimedia Foundation, on certain controversial topics there is only one acceptable opinion, and this view also has been supported by many of English Wikipedia’s administrators. This attitude is reflected in administrative decisions at Arbitration Enforcement and, ultimately, in the content of articles. The problem currently facing Wikipedia is that the creation of a high-quality encyclopaedia requires the exact opposite attitude, for the reasons explained by Greenstein and Zhu: A diversity of editorial viewpoints and backgrounds makes controversial topics more likely to be presented in an unbiased manner.
As both the news media and academia become steadily more partisan, perhaps it was inevitable that Wikipedia would eventually follow a similar route. However, one difference between Wikipedia and most newspapers is that Wikipedia has core policies, such as NPOV and BLP policy, that still theoretically remain in effect. It remains to be seen how Wikipedia and its parent organization will handle the contradiction between these policies and their growing politicization.
There are three possible outcomes:
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One is for Wikipedia or the WMF to implement reforms protecting the viewpoint diversity necessary for its core policies to be upheld.
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A second option is for these policies to be officially overturned, although it is unlikely the Wikipedia community would agree to a change on that scale.
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The final possibility, and perhaps the most likely, is the one predicted by Larry Sanger: that these policies will remain on the books, with perhaps a few half-hearted attempts at reform, but that in the long term they will come to be understood as unenforceable.
* * *
Shuichi Tezuka and Linda A. Ashtear are pseudonyms of two American academics.
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- Nearly 50% Of BLM Protesters Arrested In Seattle Were White, From Other Cities
Nearly 50% Of BLM Protesters Arrested In Seattle Were White, From Other Cities
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 21:00An analysis of 95 arrest records from Seattle riots from May reveals that nearly half of all suspects are white are white men from other cities who traveled to Seattle to commit crimes, according to King5.
Of 95 cases obtained from public records requests and through court filings, KING 5 found:
- 48% of suspects are white
- 18% of suspects are black
- 28% of cases race was undetermined or not listed
- 32% of suspects listed Seattle as hometown –King5
The report kicks off with the story of Ed Little, a resident of Everett, WA – located approximately half-an-hour North of Seattle.
“I thought it was crazy. That shouldn’t be happening at all,” said Little – who thought that peaceful protests against police brutality had been hijacked by criminals.
Then police came knocking on his door to arrest his 25-year-old son and search the family apartment after Jacob Little was caught on camera stealing a rifle from a burning Seattle police car, firing shots into a crowd, and wounding a 15-year-old boy.
“It’s hard to believe. We don’t know Jake like that. It’s not the kind of boy he is,” said Little. “He’s not a troublemaker. Not normally. He doesn’t go out looking for trouble.”
Jacob Little pleaded not guilty to federal charges of possessing a stolen firearm and shooting the boy, who survived.
In another case, 20-year-old suburbanite Kelly Jackson was charged by federal prosecutors with throwing Molotov cocktails into Seattle police vehicles in late May. He was immediately fired from his job as a plumber’s assistant in Edmonds, WA – some 24 minutes North of Seattle where he lives with his parents.
Source: DOJ “He definitely doesn’t seem to have an issue vandalizing and breaking into businesses and destroying other people’s property,” said Noah Center Executive Director Stacie Ventura.
Court records show the 20-year-old was awaiting trial on three burglary cases in Snohomish county court when Seattle police and FBI investigators caught up with him.
Since 2018, county prosecutors have accused Jackson of breaking into an Edmonds ferry toll booth, a marijuana shop just outside the city, and a Stanwood animal rescue facility where he’s accused of walking off with a nearly 100-pound Rottweiler in the middle of the night.
“I wish I knew. We don’t know,” said Noah Center Executive Director Stacie Ventura, when asked about Jackson’s alleged motive for the canine heist. –King5
Meanwhile, 19-year-old Jacob Greenburg is accused of one of the most ‘disturbing social media videos’ of the protests when he was filmed smashing a metal baseball bat into a Seattle cop’s head on September 23.
Read the rest of the report here.
- What's Happened To Bitcoin Since Its Whitepaper Appeared 12 Years Ago?
What’s Happened To Bitcoin Since Its Whitepaper Appeared 12 Years Ago?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 20:30Authored by Robert Stevens via Decrypt.io,
In brief
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On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper.
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Since then, Bitcoin’s journey has taken in highs and lows, from the Mt. Gox hack to an all-time high price of $20,000.
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In 2020, it’s seen renewed growth in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, as institutional investors take a growing interest in the cryptocurrency.
Today marks the 12th birthday of the Bitcoin whitepaper. There will be no party, no cake: Bitcoin’s friendship network is decentralized, and its creator anonymous. Yet, since its release, the whitepaper has had a profound impact on the world.
What’s happened? Let’s go year by year:
2008: the birth of Bitcoin
On October 31, 2008, our story began. Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator—or team of creators—releases the whitepaper for Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. In it, Nakamoto sketches a plan for a system that allows “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
The previous month, Lehman Brothers, one of the largest investment banks in the US, collapsed as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. This was Bitcoin’s raison d’être—as the centralized US financial system ran into trouble, a gap in the market opened for a decentralized system that bypassed its burning wreck.
2009: Bitcoin’s first year
2009 marked the release of Bitcoin. In January, its code was released as open-source software, and the genesis block—Bitcoin’s first block—was mined. Nakamoto mined the first 50 bitcoins, though they weren’t worth anything at the time. A few weeks later, Nakamoto sent Hal Finney 10 Bitcoin in the first Bitcoin transaction between two individuals. As Bitcoin turned one, Wikileaks published 400,000 documents about the Iraq war, and the Times Square Bomber—who failed to detonate in the New York City tourist hotspot—was sentenced to life in prison.
2010: Bitcoin Pizza Day
Bitcoin shared its 2010 birthday with Instagram; the photo-sharing app launched on October 6. In 2010, Bitcoin was worth around $0.20, and hit highs of $0.39 during the year. Nakamoto, who had mined around one million Bitcoins at the time, passed over the keys for Bitcoin’s code repository to Gavin Andresen. 2010 also marked Bitcoin Pizza Day: on May 22, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas from Papa John’s. At current prices, that’s over $137 million.
The #BitcoinPizza would be worth US$137,558,701.15 right now (up 3.56352655% in the last 24 hours) #Bitcoin
— Bitcoin Pizza (@TheBitcoinPizza) October 31, 2020
Years later, Hanyecz was sanguine about his multimillion-dollar purchase, telling the New York Times that, “It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool […] No one knew it was going to get so big.”
2011: The first Bitcoin bubble
Bitcoin took off in 2011—and it didn’t take long for the black market to take note of its supposed anonymity, with Silk Road, the dark net market which traded Bitcoin for guns, drugs, and other illegal contraband, opening for business..
2011 was also Bitcoin’s first bubble: Bitcoin skyrocketed in price, rising to $31.50 on June 8, but by Bitcoin’s third birthday, its price sunk to $3.12; an early sign of the volatility that continues to affect the cryptocurrency to this day.
Bitcoin was also met with competition on its third birthday: Litecoin, the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” launched in October 2011. Elsewhere in the world, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed as part of the Arab Spring uprising.
2012: Blackout, schmackout
October 31, 2012 marked something of a triumph for Bitcoin; on that day, the New York Stock exchange opened up again after closing for two days as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Bitcoin remained operational throughout, providing ample evidence of the power of its decentralized network.
Bitcoin’s price continued to grow throughout the year: by October, it reached highs of $12.4. Its price, which averaged $5.27, was a 1,656 percent increase from 2011.
In September, the Bitcoin Foundation was started, headed by Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Patrick Murck, Charlie Schrem, and Peter Vessenes. BitPay, the Bitcoin payments service, announced that 1,000 merchants started accepting payments through Bitcoin.
2013: Silk Road seized
In February 2013, Coinbase reported sales of over $1 million, and in March, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation surpassed $1 billion. Silk Road, which opened in 2011, was seized by the FBI in October, along with 26,000 Bitcoin; its founder, Ross Ulbricht, is now serving a double life sentence without parole; in 2020, he marked his seventh consecutive birthday in prison. Prosecutors said that, from 2011-2013, sellers on Ulbricht’s site made over $214 million.
By its third birthday, Bitcoin’s market cap had surpassed $2 billion and the price for a single Bitcoin was over $200. Elsewhere in the world, Peter Higgs and Alice Munro win Nobel Prizes.
2014: Mt. Gox collapses
By Bitcoin’s sixth birthday, its market cap is over $4 billion, the price of a single Bitcoin is $329, and its daily volume is over $13 million. But not all is well in Bitcoin world: back in February, the cryptocurrency exchange, Mt. Gox stopped accepting withdrawals after 744,000 Bitcoins went missing; around $473 million, or 6 percent of the Bitcoin supply. Around 200,000 of those Bitcoins have been recovered, though the rest are gone.
2015: Volume up
By the end of October 2015, Bitcoin’s market cap was $4.6 billion, and the price of a single Bitcoin was $312. Though the price and market cap stagnated, Bitcoin’s daily volume skyrocketed to $52 million. Outside of Bitcoin, China started to build islands in the South China Sea, and Russia got involved in the Syrian war.
2016: Bitcoin goes mainstream
In 2016, the price of Bitcoin begins to grow. On its whitepaper’s birthday, its 24 hour volume hit $93 million, its market cap $11 billion, and the price of a single Bitcoin, $703. Many more high profile businesses start accepting Bitcoin, including Valve’s Steam video games store and ride-sharing service Uber.
In October, Colombia signed a peace agreement with FARC rebels, and Kim Kardashian had $10 million stolen from her in a hotel room in Paris. If only she’d kept it in Bitcoin…
2017: The Bitcoin bubble
2017 ushered in a new US President in Donald Trump, but for cryptocurrency holders, it was the year of the Bitcoin bubble.
On the birthday of the Bitcoin whitepaper, one Bitcoin was worth $6,131, and its market cap was over $100 billion—a figure that some attribute to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s listing of Bitcoin futures contracts, which made it far easier for the world to bet on Bitcoin. CME traded $460 million in its first week. This price was to skyrocket to over $20,000 in December. On December 7, almost $50 billion worth of Bitcoin was traded.
2018: Down, but not out
In 2018, everything came crashing down. The market, based purely on speculation, flipped, and Bitcoin fell to $6,538 in February. The cryptocurrency muddled through a tough year: on the 10th anniversary of its whitepaper, the price of Bitcoin was $6,325. While its market cap remained strong, at $109 billion, the crypto crash prompted a backlash from mainstream publications and social media.
Twitter, Facebook, and Google duly banned advertisements for cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Google and Facebook have since lifted the ban, with Facebook going all-in on crypto as it tries to get its own digital currency, Libra, off the ground.
2019: Bitcoin’s back, baby
In 2019, the market came rushing back, following further price drops in 2018. Bitcoin started the year at $3,764, and its price skyrocketed to $13,796 in July. Since then, its price waxed and waned, but held relatively strong, boosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s endorsement of its underlying technology, blockchain.
On its 11th birthday, Bitcoin cost around $10,000, and its market cap was around $165 million. By that point, the Bitcoin network comprised over 55,000 nodes, while over 820,000 addresses had traded Bitcoin.
2020: New heights
Ah, 2020. Bitcoin started off strong, as excitement mounted for the imminent Bitcoin halving. But few could have foreseen how the year would pan out, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world in March. The chaos initially throttled the price of Bitcoin, with the cryptocurrency dropping to lows of $4,000.
But as massive stimulus packages followed lockdowns around the world, Bitcoin began to come into its own, with investors seeking it out as a hedge against inflation. Bitcoin’s price reached around $10,000, and stayed there for the remainder of the summer. The series of financial shocks endured by the world economy seemed to prove the case that Bitcoin is antifragile—not only resistant to shocks and stresses, but stronger for them.
Then the big money started to pour in; institutional investors such as Grayscale and Square scooped up vast amounts of Bitcoin, and digital payments giant PayPal introduced crypto buying and selling features, opening the door to mass adoption of the cryptocurrency.
The news sent the price of Bitcoin soaring past $13,000; on the 12th anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper, it reached its highest price since 2018. Those who’d previously bashed Bitcoin, from Grayscale CEO Michael Saylor to JP Morgan, fell over themselves to sing the cryptocurrency’s praises.
#Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) September 18, 2020
One thing’s for certain: whatever happens next, Bitcoin is in a very different place from when it first emerged into the world, 12 years ago.
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- "A Lot Of People Are Leaving": COVID Shutdowns Have Turned San Francisco Into A Ghost Town
“A Lot Of People Are Leaving”: COVID Shutdowns Have Turned San Francisco Into A Ghost Town
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 20:00San Francisco has managed to curb the virus slightly in its city – but at what cost? Those paying sky high taxes to live in the Bay Area may soon be wondering why they are paying to live in a shut down city that state and local government officials have refused to allow to reopen due to a virus with a CDC-predicted infection fatality rate of between 0.00002 and 0.093.
The entire downtown area of the city, once vibrant with business and tourism, is now “empty” according to a new report by AP. Everything from food trucks to local workers used to be sights one would see on a daily basis in San Francisco. Now, the city has been all but abandoned.
Even the tech giants that San Francisco is known for have left the city, in favor of working remotely from elsewhere. Families have moved out of the city in favor of the suburbs. Rents in the city are crashing, as we highlighted about a month ago. Tourists, once part of the lifeblood of the city, are now “scarce”.
As a result, business owners wonder if the city will ever get back to normal. Evan Kidera, CEO of Señor Sisig food trucks, said: “Is it ever going to get back to normal, is it ever going to be as busy as it was — and will that be next year, or in 10 years?”
This past week, part of the city re-opened as a result of virus numbers slowing. We’re sure it won’t be long until case numbers freak out elected officials heading into the winter, however, and everything is once again put into draconian “the government knows what’s best for you”-style lockdown.
San Francisco first announced its residents should stay at home in March, leading to just 12,200 virus cases and 145 deaths among 900,000 residents since then. It is one of the lowest death rates in the country. Long Beach, which is about half the size, has had about 900 more cases and 100 more deaths.
But at the same time, the city has been crippled, with many residents leaving. And many are unsure whether or not the slight re-opening will do much to re-populate the city.
One tech executive, who moved out of his $4,000/month apartment last week, told AP: “San Francisco can say, ‘Hey, it’s cool to open back up.’ But what’s changed? The virus is still there, and there’s no vaccine.” He said of the move with his partner: “We’re both extreme extroverts, so the working from home thing makes us miserable.”
They packed up their things and drove to an Airbnb in San Diego, instead, and are planning on making trips around the country.
30 year old Deme Peterson, another former San Francisco resident, said: “The spark of living in the city just kind of burned out a bit with everything being closed. We kind of didn’t see when it would come back to normal.”
Many restaurants in the city have already closed permanently. Many others are on the brink.
The city’s office vacancy has almost tripled to 14.1%, the highest numbers since 2011. At the same time, the median price for a one bedroom apartment has dropped 20% to $2,800.
Coldwell Banker realtor Nick Chen commented: “San Francisco rents have been really inflated over the past couple years. It will come back, but I think the question is: Will it come back to the level it was at previously? Maybe not.”
City historian and author Gary Kamiya concluded: “I don’t know if it’s an exodus, but a lot of people are leaving.”
- Twitter's Censorship "Endangers National Security": DHS Acting Secretary
Twitter’s Censorship “Endangers National Security”: DHS Acting Secretary
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 19:30Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,
Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chad Wolf called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to “commit to never again censoring content” on its platform after the big tech giant temporarily suspended the account of Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf testifies at his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, on Sept. 23, 2020. (Greg Nash/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Twitter suspended Morgan’s account on Oct. 28 after he posted updates about the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The company reinstated the account 20 hours later on Oct. 29. In a letter addressed to Dorsey on Friday (pdf), Wolf said that Twitter’s recent action was “disturbing” and called the company’s censorship a national security threat.
“As the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies continue to rely on Twitter to share important information with the U.S. public, your censorship poses a threat to our security,” he wrote.
The Twitter by Morgan on Oct. 28 had a video of the progress of the wall along with the message: “CBP & U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.”
Screenshots of the tweet by @CBPMarkMorgan (L) and the email Morgan received from Twitter regarding his account suspension. (Courtesy of Mark Morgan)
Twitter’s moderators removed the tweet from public view and emailed Morgan, saying, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
“The acting commissioner’s tweet did none of these things. Read it. Watch the video,” Wolf told Dorsey in the letter. He also called Twitter’s action “unjustified,” adding that “the tweet is supported by data.”
“Whether you know it or not, CBP guards the front line of the American homeland. CBP repels and arrests thousands of violent criminal gang members each year. CBP rescues young girls who are forced into cross-border sex trafficking. CBP intercepts dangerous drugs and contraband, including enough of the opioid fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over,” Wolf asserted. “CBP fulfills the United States’ most obvious and essential law enforcement and national security responsibility to the people of our country. Your company may choose to be ignorant of these facts, but it is no less censorship when you choose to suppress them.”
“There was no reason to remove Mr. Morgan’s tweet from your platform, other than ideological disagreement with the speaker,” he added.
“Such censorship is disturbing.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies remotely during a hearing to discuss reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with big tech companies in Washington on Oct. 28, 2020. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Morgan’s suspension came on the same day that Dorsey and other big tech CEOs faced questioning during a Senate hearing to discuss reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 shields tech companies from liability for content posted on their platforms while letting them moderate content, including on political discourse.
Republican lawmakers used most of their time during the hearing to accuse the companies of selective censorship, while Democrats primarily focused on insufficient action against so-called misinformation that they said interferes with the election.
Both Wolf and Morgan traveled to the border in Texas on the following day, Oct. 29, to announce the nearly 400 miles of border wall system built under the Trump administration.
Wolf said that the border system has reduced narcotics smuggling in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas by 26 percent. He also said that in Yuma, Arizona, illegal entries in the areas with a border wall system decreased by 87 percent in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019. In Tuscon, Arizona, the wall system was an aid for border agents, with drug seizures down 25 percent from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020, Wolf said.
‘Intentional’ Censorship
In the letter to Dorsey, Wolf wrote that Twitter’s censorship was “intentional, not accidental.” He recounted that the CBP reached out to Twitter’s office of government affairs, and also appealed Twitter’s censorship decision, but the office ignored the CBP and Twitter denied the appeal.
“Only after CBP reached out to Twitter’s office of government affairs a second time and went public with this censorship, then finally Twitter admitted its bad judgment and unlocked the account,” Wolf wrote.
“I call on you to commit to never again censoring content on your platform and obstructing Americans’ unalienable right to communicate with each other and with their government and its officials, including the thousands of law enforcement officers at the DHS who work vigilantly and diligently to protect your safety every day,” he wrote.
Mark Morgan, former Border Patrol chief, in Washington on April 24, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Prior to his account being reinstated, Morgan told The Epoch Times that his suspension was “unbelievable.”
“Twitter is out of control in their clear bias against this administration and their blatant censorship of anything that may go against the policies of those who sit in cubicles in Silicon Valley,” he followed up in a statement.
Wolf’s letter to Dorsey came the same day Twitter decided to unfreeze the account of the New York Post. The outlet was unable to post content on its Twitter account since Oct. 14 after it shared a stories about alleged overseas business dealings of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Twitter stipulated that the outlet had to delete the original Biden Twitter posts before being able to tweet again, before changing its stance on Friday.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
- David Einhorn Made 7.7% In Month He Claims "Enormous" Tech Bubble Popped
David Einhorn Made 7.7% In Month He Claims “Enormous” Tech Bubble Popped
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 19:05Earlier this week, value investing icon David Einhorn surprised his hedge fund peers when he declared that not only is the tech bubble created by the Fed “enormous” but more importantly, that it had burst on Sept 2, the day the Nasdaq hit an all time high, and as a result his Greenlight hedge fund added “a fresh bubble basket of mostly second-tier companies and recent IPOs trading at remarkable valuations.”
Einhorn’s renewed crusade against the tech bubble came a time when futures traders had taken their Nasdaq net exposure to the 2nd shortest on record, but then quickly reversed as the Nasdaq continued its grind higher, only to be caught flat just as the tech index suffered its biggest weekly drop since March.
For Einhorn, however, it appears that the early-October meltup was another opportunity to add even more shorts and after the latest Nasdaq rout, which saw the index drop on 9 of the past 14 days as it approached a 10% correction from its Sept 2 highs…
… Greenlight Capital returned an impressive 7.7% in October – the hedge fund’s best monthly performance all year – according to Bloomberg.
As reported last Tuesday, Einhorn told his investors that “we are now in the midst of an enormous tech bubble,” adding that his working hypothesis was that Sept. 2 was the top and the bubble had already popped.
Bubbles tend to topple under their own weight. Everybody is in. The last short has covered. The last buyer has bought (or bought massive amounts of weekly calls). The decline starts and the psychology shifts from greed to complacency to worry to panic. Our working hypothesis, which might be disproven, is that September 2, 2020 was the top and the bubble has already popped. If so, investor sentiment is in the process of shifting from greed to complacency. We have adjusted our short book accordingly including adding a fresh bubble basket of mostly second-tier companies and recent IPOs trading at remarkable valuations
It wasn’t just the tech shorts that worked: on the long side of the book the primary driver of Einhorn’s gains in the third quarter was homebuilder Green Brick Partners, which also had a strong October return when it shares climbed 11%. The company is benefiting from low interest rates and pandemic-driven demand for single-family detached housing. According to Bloomberg, Greenlight owns almost half of the company’s stock. Einhorn has been affiliated with Green Brick since before it went public and is its chairman.
While its October performance was impressive, Greenlight has a big hole to dig out of: in 2015, the year Einhorn first made his bet against tech bubble names, the main Greenlight fund fell by 20%. The slump deepened in 2018 with a 34% drop. Last year, Einhorn rebounded with a 14% gain across the funds. Following several turbulent years, Greenlight managed only $2.6 billion as of Jan. 1, down from $12 billion at its peak.
For those who missed it, we excerpted his key thoughts from his latest investor letter at the following link.
- Martenson: We Are Pawns In A Bigger Game Than We Realize
Martenson: We Are Pawns In A Bigger Game Than We Realize
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 18:40Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,
“I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others…. Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”
~ Sherlock Holmes – The Adventures of Silver Blaze
Is it possible to make sense out of nonsense?
So much these days is an incoherent mess. It’s complete nonsense.
Page 1 excitedly beams about a glorious rebound in GDP. Yay economic growth!
Page 2 worryingly notes the near complete failure of Siberian arctic ice to reform during October and that hurricane Zeta (so many storms this year we’re now into the Greek alphabet!) has made punishing landfall.
Each is a narrative. Each has its own inner logic.
But they simply do not have any external coherence to each other. It’s nonsensical to be excited about rising economic growth while also concerned that each new unit of growth takes the planet further past a critical red line.
These narratives are incompatible. So which one should we pick?
Well, in the end, reality always has the final say. As Guy McPherson states: Nature bats last.
So better we choose to follow the narrative that hews closest to what reality actually is, vs what we desperately want it to be.
‘They’ Don’t Care About Us
While issues like climate change and economic growth may be difficult to fully grasp and unravel, direct threats to our lives &/or livelihoods are much more concrete and something we can react to and resist.
Such immediate and direct threats are now fully in play and, once again, they’re accompanied by narratives that are completely at odds with each other. I’m speaking of Covid and the ways in which our national and global managers are choosing to respond (or not).
It’s a truly incoherent mess about which both social media and the increasingly irrelevant media are working quite hard to misinform us.
The mainstream narrative about Covid-19, in the West, is this:
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It’s a quite deadly and novel disease
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There are no effective treatments
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Sadly, no double-blind placebo controlled trials exist to support some of the wild claims out there about various off-patent, cheap and widely available supplements and drugs
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Health authorities care about saving lives
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They care so much, in fact, that along with politicians they’ve decided to entirely shut down economies
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There’s a huge second wave rampaging across the US and Europe and there’s nothing we can do to limit it except shut down businesses and people’s ability to travel and gather
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You need to fear this virus and its associated disease
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All we can do is wait for a vaccine
The alternative narrative, one that I’ve uncovered after 9 months of almost daily research and reporting, is this:
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It’s not an especially dangerous disease and it’s certainly not novel
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There is a huge assortment of very effective, cheap and widely-available preventatives and treatments including (but not limited to)
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Vitamin D
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Ivermectin
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Hydroxychloroquine
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Zinc
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Selenium
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Famotidine (Pepcid)
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Melatonin
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Use of a combination of these mostly OTC supplements could reasonably be expected to drop the severity of illness and the already low mortality rate by 90% or (probably) more
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Western health authorities have shown either zero interest in the results of studies mainly conducted in poorer nations on these combination therapies or…
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They have actively run studies designed to fail so that these cheap, effective therapies could be dismissed or…
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Set up proper studies but which started late, have immensely long study periods and most likely won’t be done before a vaccine is hastily rushed through development.
By the way – every single one of my assertions and claims is backed by links and supporting documentation from scientific and clinical trials and studies. I am not conjecturing here; I am recounting the summary of ten months’ worth of inquiry.
The conclusion I draw from my narrative (vs. theirs) is that we can no longer assume that the public health or saving lives has anything to do with explaining or understanding the actions of these health “managers” (I cannot bring myself to use the word authorities).
After we eliminate the impossible – which is that somehow these massive, well-funded bodies have missed month after month of accumulating evidence in support of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, NAC, zinc, selenium and doxycycline/azithromycin – what remains must be the truth.
As improbable as it seems, the only conclusion we’re left with is that the machinery of politics, money and corporate psychopathy is suppressing life saving treatments because these managers have other priorities besides public health and saving lives.
This is a terribly difficult conclusion, because it means suspending so much that we hold dear. Things like the notion that people are basically good. The idea that the government generally means well. The thought that somehow when the chips are down and a crisis is afoot, good will emerge and triumph over evil.
I’m sorry to say, the exact opposite of all of that has emerged as true.
Medical doctors in the UK NHS system purposely used toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine far too late in the disease cycle to be of any help simply to ‘make a point’ about hydroxychloroquine. They rather desperately wanted that drug to fail, so they made it fail.
After deliberately setting their trial up for failure, they concluded: “Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t help, and it even makes things worse.”
Note that in order to be able to make this claim, they had to be willing to cause harm — even to let people die. What kind of health official does that?
Not one who actually has compassion, a heart, or functioning level of sympathy. It’s an awful conclusion but it’s what remains after we eliminate the impossible.
Getting Past The Emotional Toll
Science has proven that cheap, safe and significantly protective compounds exist to limit both Covid-related death and disease severity.
Yet all of the main so-called health authorities in the major western countries are nearly completely ignoring, if not outright banning, these safe, cheap and effective compounds.
This is crazy-making for independent observers like me (and you) because the data is so clear. It’s irrefutable at this point. These medicines and treatments not only work, but work really, really well.
However most people will be unable to absorb the data, let alone move beyond it to wrestle with the implications. Why? Because such data is belief-shattering. Absorbing this information is not an intellectual process; it’s an emotional one.
I don’t know why human nature decided to invest so much in developing a tight wall around the belief systems that control our actions and thoughts. But it has.
I’m sure there was some powerful evolutionary advantage. One that’s now being hijacked daily by social media AI programs to nudge us in desired directions. One that’s being leveraged by shabby politicians, hucksters, fake gurus, and con men to steer advantage away from the populace and towards themselves.
The neural wiring of beliefs is what it is. We have to recognize that and move on.
Some people will be much faster in their adjustment process than others. (Notably, the Peak Prosperity tribe is populated with many fast-adjusters, which is unsurprising given the topics we cover…tough topics tend to attract fast adjusters and repel the rest)
To move past the deeply troubling information laid out before us requires us to be willing to endure a bit of turbulence. It’s the only way.
For you to navigate these troubling times safely and successfully, you’ll need to see as clearly as possible the true nature of the game actually being played. To see what the rules really are – not what you’ve been told they are, or what you wish or hope they are.
The Manipulation Underway
The data above strongly supports the conclusion that our national health managers don’t actually care about public health generally or your health specifically.
If indeed true, then the beliefs preventing most people from accepting this likely include:
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Wanting to believe that people are good (a biggie for most people)
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Trust and faith in the medical system (really big)
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Faith in authority (ginormous)
There are many other operative belief systems I could also list. But this is sufficient to get the ball rolling.
Picking just one, how hard would it be for someone to let go of, say, trust in the medical system?
That would be pretty hard in most cases.
First not trusting the medical system might mean having to wonder if a loved one might have died unnecessarily while being treated. Or realizing that you’re now going to have to research the living daylights out of every medical decision before agreeing to it. Or worrying that your medications might be more harmful to you over the long haul than helpful (which is true in many more cases than most appreciate). It might mean having your personal heroes dinged by suspicion — perhaps even your father or mother who worked in the medical profession. It would definitely require a complete reorientation away from being able to trust anything you read in a newspaper, or see on TV, about new pharmaceutical “breakthroughs”.
Trust, which is safe and warm and comforting, then turns into skepticism; which is lonelier and insists upon active mental involvement.
But, as always, hard work comes with benefits — with a healthy level of skepticism and involvement, the families of those recruited into the deadly UK RECOVERY trial could have looked at the proposed doses of HCQ (2,400 mg on day one! Toxic!) and said, “Not now, not ever!” and maybe have saved the life of their loved one.
Look at that tangled mess of undesirables that comes with unpacking that one belief: regret, uncertainty, shame, doubt, fallen idols, and vastly more additional effort. Are all up for grabs when we decide to look carefully at the actions of our national health managers during Covid.
Which is why most people simply choose not to look. It’s too hard.
I get it. I have a lot of compassion for why people choose not to go down that path. It can get unpleasant in a hurry.
But, just like choosing to ignore a nagging chest pain, turning away in denial has its own consequences.
The Coming ‘Great Reset’
My coverage of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and Covid-19 (the associated disease) has led me to uncover some things that have made me deeply uncomfortable about our global and national ‘managers’. Shameful things, really. Scary things in their implications for what we might reasonably expect (or not expect, more accurately) from the future.
Once we get past the shock of seeing just how patently corrupt they’ve been, we have to ask both What’s next? and What should I do?
After all, you live in a system whose managers either are too dumb to understand the Vitamin D data (very unlikely) or have decided that they’d rather not promote it to the general populace for some reason. It’s a ridiculously safe vitamin with almost zero downside and virtually unlimited upside.
Either they’re colossally dumb, or this is a calculated decision. They’re not dumb. So we have to ask: What’s the calculation being performed here? It’s not public safety. It’s not your personal health. So… What is it?
This is our line of questioning and observation. It’s like the short story by Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze that many of us informally know as “the case of the dog that didn’t bark”. As the story goes, because of a missing clue – a dog who remained silent as a murder was committed – this conclusion could be drawn: the dog was already familiar with the killer!
The silence around Vitamin D alone is extremely telling. It is the pharmacological dog that did not bark.
One true inference suggests others. Here, too, we can deduce from the near total silence around Vitamin D that the health managers would prefer not to talk about it. They don’t want people to know. That much is painfully clear.
Such lack of promotion (let alone appropriate study) of safe, effective treatments is a thread that, if tugged, can unravel the whole rug. The silence tells us everything we need to know.
Do they want people to suffer and die? I don’t know. My belief systems certainly hope not. Perhaps the death and suffering are merely collateral damage as they pursue a different goal — money, power, politics? Simply the depressing result of a contentious election year? More than that?
We’ve now reached the jumping off point where we may well find out just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
A massive grab for tighter control over the global populace is now being fast-tracked at the highest levels. Have you heard of the Great Reset yet?
If not, you soon will.
In Part 2: The Coming ‘Great Reset’ we lay out everything we know so far about the multinational proposal to transform nearly every aspect of global industry, commerce, trade, and social structure.
If you read on, be ready and willing to let go of cherished beliefs and to suspend what you know to be true. Because none of us has that in hand. It’s going to be a wild ride from here.
Something very big is afoot and I suspect that Covid-19 is merely an excuse providing cover for a much bigger power grab over the world’s wealth and peoples.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).
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- Elite SEAL Team Rescues American Hostage In Daring Overnight Nigeria Raid
Elite SEAL Team Rescues American Hostage In Daring Overnight Nigeria Raid
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 18:15The Pentagon announced Saturday that US special forces have been successful in a daring rescue operation of an American citizen who had been taken hostage earlier in the week by an armed group in Niger.
It was reportedly conducted by the Navy’s most elite SEAL Team in the early hours of Saturday, which in media reports is often referred to as SEAL Team 6 (though goes by other names internally within JSCOC).
It remains unclear as to the precise identity of the group of kidnappers, however, current US official statements suggest it was not an organized terrorist group but instead likely “bandits” seeking ransom money. The American had been subsequently taken by the group across the border into northern Nigeria where the special forces raid rescued him.
Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today. Details to follow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2020
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The dangerous border region is known for the presence of al Qaeda activity as well as the Islamic State’s Boko Haram. The State Department had earlier in the week reported an American was taken captive Tuesday. Follow-up reports identified the man as a missionary named Philip Walton.
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said the US citizen has been recovered and is safe, and further that no US personnel were injured during the rescue.
An American missionary was abducted in the middle of the night by six gunmen armed with assault rifles in southern Niger close to the border with Nigeria on Tuesday. https://t.co/QpddTcQdvY via @CBNNews
— CBN News (@CBNNews) October 28, 2020
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“U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men. This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State. No U.S military personnel were injured during the operation,” Hoffman said in a statement.
“We appreciate the support of our international partners in conducting this operation. The United States will continue to protect our people and our interests anywhere in the world.”
Navy Seals file image via Washington Times Multiple members of the armed group were killed in the raid on their compound where the American was held, according to details given by CNN:
The mission, which was several hours long, was conducted by the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 who were flown to the region by Air Force special operations, a US official with knowledge of the operation told CNN.
The US forces who conducted the mission killed six of the seven captors, the official said. The US believes the captors have no known affiliation with any terror groups operating in the region, and were more likely bandits seeking money.
Nigeria’s northern border region has long been a place of heightened Boko Haram activity, but there’s also “lawless” areas where bandits operate. Map via VOA President Trump congratulated those involved in the mission in a Saturday morning tweet, saying, “Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today.” And he added: “Details to follow!”
- NBC Finally Responds To Hunter Biden Story… With An Exhaustive Exposé Of An Unrelated Document
NBC Finally Responds To Hunter Biden Story… With An Exhaustive Exposé Of An Unrelated Document
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 17:50We have been discussing the continuing blackout on the Hunter Biden story, even as reports have surfaced that the FBI not only rejected claims that the story was “Russian disinformation” but confirmed that it has an ongoing investigation into possible money laundering. Now, NBC has finally responded with an expose into allegations against the Biden. However, the article entitled “How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge,” does not deal with the laptop or its content. It instead focuses on an obscure document that no one has covered or discussed.
[ZH: while we agree with Turley’s perspective that this is a blatant distraction from the actual content of the laptop, we disagree that the Typhoon report is ‘unrelated’ and ‘obscure’ since all the points made by the report are completely backed by actual data, making the author irrelevant even as he has effectively done the media’s homework for them.]
The value for the Bidens was simply the headline, which was immediately used to warn people not to follow up on the Biden story as Chinese disinformation.
The NBC is breathtaking in its careful avoidance of the real story and its apparent duplicity in seeking to shield the Bidens from any inquiry before the election.
There is something incredibly insidious in this story. The media has allowed itself to be boxed in by the Biden campaign. Reporters willingly bought into the narrative that there is no real story to pursue over the laptop. The longer they have ignored the story; the more difficult it is to admit that there are real issues raised by these disclosures. Reporters simply cannot walk back from the dismissal of a story even as it grows daily with new disclosures. The only recourse is to discredit another story and another source.
The emails on the laptop have now been verified by various sources and those emails support allegations of an influence peddling scheme by Hunter Biden and James Biden, the brother of Vice President Joe Biden. Yet, the media has maintained a tight protective cocoon around Biden protecting him from any questions, even after a former business associate Tony Bobulinski directly accused Biden of lying in his denial of past knowledge or involvement in the dealings. President Trump’s re-election campaign Thursday accused NBC News of “actively running interference” for Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter via a widely ridiculed report that critics feel was designed to dupe voters into thinking recent allegations that are harmful to the former vice president are simply part of a conspiracy.
That is why the NBC News story is so unsettling. Rather than ask a simply question of the Bidens about the laptop (like is this Hunter’s laptop and emails), NBC went to extraordinary lengths to find another document to discredit. It focused on a 64-page document with “questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing” that it claims as a source by “far-right influencers” to “baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.” What is equally concerning is that the story makes reference to the laptop story and the Bobulinski allegations but does nothing to verify or address those allegations. It spends considerable time and resources addressing what it says is a complete fabrication in this document while steadfastly refusing to address verified emails discussing influence peddling by the Biden family and direct references to Joe Biden.
The House Foreign Affair Committee immediately jumped on the story to discourage people from looking into the Hunter Biden scandal despite the fact that it does not address the allegations and evidence in the scandal.
“How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge” via @BrandyZadrozny / @oneunderscore__ / @NBCNews
We’re not surprised.
Read this thread to find out why… 1/https://t.co/QwQFe6uaCI
— House Foreign Affairs Committee (@HouseForeign) October 30, 2020
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I will say it again. These emails are not proof of criminal conduct. There are a lot of unanswered questions on these sources and emails. However, this is a major story either way. It is either disinformation (with criminal acts committed in lying to the FBI and Congress) or it is evidence of potential crimes and clear influence peddling by the Biden family. On its face, Joe Biden’s past denials of knowledge or involvement have been contradicted by a witness who has repeated those allegations to the FBI at his own legal peril. That is why the media blackout makes no sense. You can probe the specific allegations which now involve detailed dates, locations, and individuals — exposing lies on either or both sides. That is what the media normally does when the possible next president has been tied to possible influence peddling, suspicious foreign contracts, and direct alleged contradictions.
I have no reason to question the veracity of the NBC story, just its relevancy. Rather than find some unknown, obscure document to debunk, NBC could start with simply asking Biden for a specific response to allegations of meetings and discussions about these foreign dealings. Otherwise, the most relevant post-election article could be “How an evasive press report laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy denial.”
- Watch: Convoy Of Trump Trucks 'Escorts' Biden Campaign Bus Out Of Texas
Watch: Convoy Of Trump Trucks ‘Escorts’ Biden Campaign Bus Out Of Texas
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 17:25A convoy of SUVs and pickup trucks flying Trump flags escorted the Biden-Harris Bus down a Texas highway Friday, nearly forcing the bus off the road, resulting in Democrats to cancel a bus tour due to “security reasons.”
According to Texas House Rep. Sheryl Cole, the Biden-Harris Bus tour in Austin, Texas, was “canceled” due to “security reasons,” which she took to Twitter, accusing Trump supporters of operating “well beyond safe limits.”
This is a 1st for me – but we just cancelled a joint event in Pflugerville w/ @JoeBiden campaign, @AustinYoungDems, & more, due to security reasons. Unfortunately, Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits. Sorry to all who looked forward to this fun event. https://t.co/tSq4moqro0
— Sheryl Cole (@SherylCole1) October 30, 2020
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Cole quoted Travis County Democratic Party Chair Katie Naranjo in a tweet, who provided some details about the convoy “following the Biden bus throughout central Texas to intimidate Biden supporters.”
Naranjo said one Trump supporter “ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats.”
Texas State Rep. Rafael Anchía tweeted: “Armed Trump trolls harassing Biden Bus on I-35, ramming volunteer vehicles & blocking traffic for 40 mins.
Armed Trump trolls harassing Biden Bus on I-35, ramming volunteer vehicles & blocking traffic for 40 mins. Eric Trump took to FB to incite this violence.
At least the Trump hearse is appropriate given the 200K+ Americans who have died due to his incompetence. #VoteHimOut pic.twitter.com/vUyhhKyceo
— Rafael Anchía (@RafaelAnchia) October 30, 2020
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Anchía said, “Eric Trump took to FB to incite this violence.”
Numerous videos, with several angles of the incident, were posted on Twitter.
The first video shows the convoy rolling down the highway, surrounding all sides of the Biden-Harris Bus.
This is the most badass thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Go Texas. pic.twitter.com/dnr8Ns9qe0
— L 🤺 (@SomeBitchIKnow) October 31, 2020
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The next video is from within the convoy – shows a Trump supporter, in a lifted truck, appears to hit a white SUV with its front driver side tire.
This is violence, hitting people with cars is violence. All Republicans need to denounce this political violence
— Alex “Test, Trace, Isolate” Lawson (@alaw202) October 31, 2020
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Naranjo tweeted out a picture of the damaged white SUV.
Today, @realDonaldTrump supporters followed the Biden bus throughout central Texas to intimidate Biden supporters. They ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats. Don’t let bullies win, vote. pic.twitter.com/CIyEWwbvqU
— Katie Naranjo (@KatieNaranjo) October 30, 2020
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Forbes reached out to the Biden campaign about the incident, who stated the convoy “attempted to slow the bus down and run it off the road.”
While some political polls show Texas could be a tossup between Trump and Biden, the incident Friday exemplifies the strong support that Trump enjoys across the Lone Star State.
- Rickards: Silver Could Explode Within Weeks
Rickards: Silver Could Explode Within Weeks
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 17:00Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning blog,
Do you have a flashlight, spare batteries and some duct tape stashed away for home emergencies like power outages or hurricanes? Of course you do. How about 100 ounces of silver coins? If not, you should.
In an extreme social or infrastructure breakdown — where banks, ATMs and store scanners are offline — silver coins might be the only way to buy groceries for your family. This is one of many reasons why sales of silver coins and bullion are set to skyrocket.
The upcoming election and its aftermath could witness social unrest that would make this summer’s chaos look downright tame. We might not even know the winners for several weeks after the election. Things could get very ugly.
If that happens, shortages will appear and the price of silver could soar to $60 per ounce or higher from current levels of about $25 per ounce.
Silver Is More Practical Than Gold
As you know, I write and speak frequently on the role of gold in the monetary system. Yet, I rarely discuss silver. Some assume I dislike silver as a hard asset for your portfolio. That’s not true.
In fact, in an extreme crisis, silver may be more practical than gold as a medium of exchange. A gold coin is too valuable to exchange for a basket of groceries, but a silver coin or two is just about right.
Here’s a photograph of your correspondent inside a highly secure vault in Switzerland. I’m pictured with a pallet of silver ingots of 99.99% purity. The ingots weigh 1,000 ounces each, about 62 pounds. The brown paper hung on the walls behind me is to hide certain security features in the vault that the vault operators did not want to reveal. You may notice the small 1-kilo gold bar by my left hand, worth about $45,000.
Silver is more difficult to analyze than gold because gold has almost no uses except as money. (Gold is widely used in jewelry, but I consider gold jewelry a hard asset, what I call “wearable wealth.”)
Silver, on the other hand, has many industrial applications. Silver is both a true commodity and a form of money.
This means that the price of silver may rise or fall based on industrial utilization and the business cycle, independent of monetary factors such as inflation, deflation, and interest rates.
Nevertheless, silver is a form of money (along with gold, dollars, bitcoin, and euros), and always has been.
“The Once and Future Money”
My expectation is that as savers and investors lose confidence in central bank money, they will increasingly turn to physical money (gold and silver) and non-central bank digital money (bitcoin and other crypto currencies) as stores of wealth and a medium of exchange.
This is why I call silver “the once and future money,” because silver’s role as money in the future is simply a return to silver’s traditional role as money throughout history.
In short, silver is as much a monetary metal as gold, and has just as good a pedigree when it comes to use in coinage. Silver has supported the economies of empires, kingdoms and nation states throughout history.
Before the Renaissance, world money existed as precious metal coins or bullion. Caesars and kings hoarded gold and silver, dispensed it to their troops, fought over it, and stole it from each other.
Land has been another form of wealth since antiquity. Still, land is not money because, unlike gold and silver, it cannot easily be exchanged, and has no uniform grade.
The Birth of Fractional Reserve Banking
In the fourteenth century, Florentine bankers (called that because they worked on a bench or banco in the piazzas of Florence and other city states), accepted deposits of gold and silver in exchange for notes which were a promise to return the gold and silver on demand.
The notes were a more convenient form of exchange than physical metal. They could be transported long distances and redeemed for gold and silver at branches of a Florentine family bank in London or Paris.
Bank notes were not unsecured liabilities, rather warehouse receipts on precious metals.
Renaissance bankers realized they could put the precious metals in their custody to other uses, including loans to princes. This left more notes issued than physical metal in custody.
Bankers relied on the fact that the notes would not all be redeemed at once, and they could recoup the gold and silver from princes and other parties in time to meet redemptions.
Thus was born “fractional reserve banking” in which physical metal held is a fraction of paper promises made.
The First “QE”
Despite the advent of banking, notes, and fractional reserves, gold and silver retained their core role as world money. Princes and merchants still held gold and silver coins in purses and stored precious metals in vaults. Bullion and paper promises stood side-by-side. Still, the system was bullion-based.
Silver performed a leading role in this system. If gold was the first world money, silver was the first world currency.
Silver’s popularity as a monetary standard was based on supply-and-demand. Gold was always scarce, silver more readily available. Charlemagne invented quantitative easing, or “QE,” in the ninth century by substituting silver for gold coinage to increase the money supply in his empire. Spain did the same in the sixteenth century.
Under the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792, both gold and silver coins were legal tender in the U.S. From 1794 to 1935, the U.S. Mint issued “silver dollars” in various designs.
These were widely circulated and used as money by everyday Americans. The American dollar was legally defined as one ounce of silver.
The American silver dollar of the late eighteenth century was a copy of the earlier Spanish Real de a ocho minted by the Spanish Empire beginning in the late sixteenth century.
The English name for the Spanish coin was the “piece of eight,” (ocho is the Spanish world for “eight”) because the coin could easily be divided into one-eighth pieces.
Until 2001 stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange were quoted in eighths and sixteenths based on the original Spanish silver coin and its one-eight sections.
The Debasement of U.S. Coinage
Silver has most of gold’s attractions. Silver is of uniform grade, malleable, relatively scarce, and pleasing to the eye. After the U.S. made gold possession a crime in 1933, silver coins circulated freely. The U.S. minted 90% solid silver coins until 1964. Debasement started in 1965.
Depending on the particular coin – dimes, quarters, or half-dollars – the silver percentage dropped from 90% to 40%, and eventually to zero by the early 1970s. Since then, U.S. coins in circulation contain copper and nickel.
From antiquity until the mid-twentieth century, citizens of even modest means might have some gold or silver coins. Today there are no circulating gold or silver coins. Such coins as exist are bullion — kept out of sight.
Silver Wins, No Matter Who Wins the Election
Silver has had a very good year, which should not surprise you since gold’s had a very good year and the two metals generally (but not always) track one another. Silver has backed off a bit from its August high over $28 per ounce on July 13. But it’s still holding tough around $25 today.
Regardless of which party wins the U.S. presidential election in November, the U.S. is set for more fiscal stimulus in 2021 and lots of government spending. If Joe Biden wins, Democrats will push for free healthcare for all, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, and the Green New Deal.
If President Trump wins, you’ll also see a lot more spending. One thing Trump has proven in his time in office is that he’s not a fiscal conservative.
So either way, we’re looking at more spending, bigger deficits, more money printing and, eventually more inflation.
The market’s anticipation of this outcome, starting in early November, will be a powerful tailwind for silver.
Investors should prepare now, before the spike.
- NY AG Jockeys For Attention With "Long List" Of Trump Policies For 'President Biden' To Undo
NY AG Jockeys For Attention With “Long List” Of Trump Policies For ‘President Biden’ To Undo
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 16:35AG Letitia James is making a list – of Trump Administration policies and actions that future President Joe Biden must undo immediately after being sworn in.
James, who was likely behind the leak of Trump tax records related to the Trump International Hotel in Chicago, since the NYT story included references to her investigation into Trump’s finances. Now we know for sure: her investigation has nothing to do with shadowy Russians, but whether Trump owes taxes on the loans that he was allowed to walk away from by Deutsche Bank and American investment firm Fortress.
The thrust of the investigation is obvious: James is jockying for a promotion to attorney general if Biden wins, a role for which there is no clear frontrunner (though Tom Perez has been floated). As a black woman, James is already a strong contender.
And just in case her relentless investigation into Trump’s business records, an invasive probe that has produced countless leaks of Trump’s private financial information, wasn’t a clear enough signal, James is “preparing a list. And hte list is long.”
As AG in New York, James said she would “work with the Biden Administration to ask them to file stays in a number of cases that are pending in the courts all across the country.” Of course, that’s all contingent on her staying on as AG in Albany.
She also said that she and her staff are reviewing any and all options that she could undertake if Trump tries to contest the election.
James has fought Trump on everything from the Post Office to EPA regulations to immigration. She famously led the probe into Trump’s charity which led to its dissolution, and an investigation into potentially inflated property values hasn’t gone away, either (Eric Trump was recently deposed in that case).
She’s also taken some scalps at the NRA.
As for what’s on the list? Well, it’s not clear. Perhaps it never will be. Asked by reporters whether she would consider running for Mayor of NYC, she said that she was happy as AG.
- Jim Bovard's Guide To Surviving Election Day
Jim Bovard’s Guide To Surviving Election Day
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 16:10Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,
Election Day can be the longest day of the year. Especially if the presidential race remains undecided late into the evening, neither Xanax nor vodka may be enough to kill the pain. In lieu of other sedatives, following are some cheerful lines which might blunt the impact of the prattling on CNN or MSNBC, though there is no known antidote to PBS’s piety.
Image via Axios Voting
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The most dangerous political illusion is that votes limit politicians’ power.
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Nowadays, we have elections in lieu of freedom.
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The defects in any system of choosing rulers outweigh the risks of letting people run their own lives.
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People are entitled to far more information when testing baldness cures than when casting votes that could lead to war.
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What’s the point of voting if “government under the law” is not a choice on Election Day?
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Having a vote does nothing to prevent a person from being molested by the TSA, spied on by the NSA, or harassed by the IRS.
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Politicians are increasingly dividing Americans into two classes—those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.
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Voting for lesser evils makes Washington no less odious.
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Politicians have mandated warning labels for almost everything except voting booths.
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On Election Day, Americans are more likely to be deluded by their own government than by foreigners.
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Politicians talk as if voting magically protects the rights of everyone within a fifty-mile radius of the polling booth.
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Political consent is defined these days as rape was defined a generation or two ago: people consent to anything which they do not forcibly resist.
Democracy
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Modern democracy pretends that people can control what they do not understand.
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We have a drive-by democracy where politicians wave to voters every few years and otherwise do as they please.
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The more power politicians capture, the more illusory democracy becomes.
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A democratic government that respects no limits on its own power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.
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The surest effect of exalting democracy is to make it easier for politicians to drag everyone else down.
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The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But democracy also dies from too many Iron Fists.
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The phrases which consecrate democracy seep into Americans’ minds like buried hazardous waste.
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Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. Voters merely designate who will violate the laws and the Constitution.
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Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.
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The more that democracy is presumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.
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America is now an Attention Deficit Democracy where citizens’ ignorance and apathy entitle politicians to do as they damn well please.
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Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
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Americans now embrace the same myths about democracy that downtrodden European peasants formerly swallowed about monarchy.
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Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.
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Nothing happens after Election Day to make politicians less venal.
Lying
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A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.
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America is increasingly a “Garbage In, Garbage Out” democracy. Politicians dupe citizens and then invoke deluded votes to stretch their power.
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Promising to “speak truth to power” is the favorite vow in the most deceitful city in America.
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Truth delayed is truth defused.
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A successful politician is often merely someone who bamboozled more voters than the other liar running for office.
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The biggest election frauds usually occur before the voting booths open.
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Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn’t matter what untruths the people are fed because they will quickly forget.
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When people blindly trust politicians, the biggest liars win.
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Secrecy and lying are often two sides of the same political coin.
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The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits, and the more lies it must tell.
In modern American history, the most audacious liars have been the greatest self-proclaimed enemies of cynicism. “The only deadly sin I know is cynicism,” declared President Lyndon Johnson in a 1967 press conference on how the Vietnam War was going great. https://t.co/0aitOpHGmI
— James Bovard (@JimBovard) October 31, 2020
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* * *
Government et Cetera
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America is rapidly becoming a two-tier society: those whom the law fails to restrain, and those whom the law fails to protect.
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Idealism these days is often only positive thinking about growing servitude.
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It is naïve to expect governments to descend step-by-step into barbarism—as if there is a train schedule to political hell with easy exits along the way.
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The first duty of today’s citizen is to assume the best of government, while federal agents assume the worst of him.
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America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
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Every recent American commander in chief has expanded and exploited the dictatorial potential of the presidency.
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Many people reason about political power like sheep who ignore the wolf until they feel its teeth.
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Political saviors almost always cost more than they deliver.
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There is no such thing as retroactive self-government.
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The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.
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Washingtonians view individual freedom like an ancient superstition they must pretend to respect.
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Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their sway.
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Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.
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The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States in which no asset or right is safe from marauding politicians.
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P.T. Barnum may have been thinking of Washington journalists when he said there’s a sucker born every minute.
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- "Time To Switch Hands" – Pro-Trump Candidate Kim Klacik Says Liberals Ruined Baltimore
“Time To Switch Hands” – Pro-Trump Candidate Kim Klacik Says Liberals Ruined Baltimore
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 15:45Baltimore congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik could be the next face of the Republican Party – and if she wins a Congressional seat on Nov. 3, it would be the first time in more than fifty years Republicans controlled Maryland’s 7th District.
Klacik’s popularity exploded after President Trump shared her campaign video on Twitter, which criticized the Democratic leadership of Baltimore City with a huge African American population (see: here & here). She even appeared at the Republican National Convention and made several television appearances, raising $6.5 million from Jul. 1 through Sept. 30.
Here’s the video Trump re-tweeted that pushed Klacik into the spotlight:
“…and black people don’t have to vote Democrat,” Klacik said in the short video.
Kimberly will work with the Trump Administration and we will bring Baltimore back, and fast. Don’t blow it Baltimore, the Democrats have destroyed your city! https://t.co/PDdjgxbIHu
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2020
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Klacik is running for late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ old seat in a race against Rep. Kweisi Mfume. She routinely accuses Democrats in Baltimore of abandoning the black community. Most of her fame comes from videos of her speaking to the camera as she walks the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods of the city, or maybe even the country, littered with abandoned homes, dormant factories, and opioid clinics.
The District is a Democratic stronghold, and her opponent, Mfume, recently declined to debate Klacik on local television. So broadcaster Fox 45-Baltimore, owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group., decided to hold a conversation with the young black Republican candidate.
At the beginning of the conversation, Klacik told Fox 45’s Kai Jackson: “Democrats have controlled the Baltimore City area for 53 years;” expanding on that idea, she said it’s time to “switch hands,” referring to the possibility she can win the district seat to usher in a new era of Republican control.
The video ends with Klacik outlining how Baltimore County residents are too scared to visit the city because decades of failed Democratic leadership has resulted in surging violent crime, out of control homicides, and an opioid crisis that has decimated the area. These are all things we’ve discussed over the years about imploding Baltimore (see: here & here & here).
“Why not do more in the city so we can all enjoy Baltimore like we used to,” Klacik said.
Klacik is not alone – other black republicans have launched political campaigns in Democratic cities across the country in the hopes of winning a seat in Congress.
If she wins, Klacik will have an uphill battle, it could take at least a decade before real changes are seen. Just imagine how much work is ahead after fifty years of failed liberal policies.
- BoJo Imposes 1-Month Lockdown On England As UK COVID-19 Cases Top 1 Million: Live Updates
BoJo Imposes 1-Month Lockdown On England As UK COVID-19 Cases Top 1 Million: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/31/2020 – 15:44Summary:
- Portugal restrictions on movement
- BoJo announces 1 month lockdown
- UK COVID-19 cases top 1 million
- NY Gov announces new quarantine rules
- BoJo weighs one-month lockdown
- US reports record new cases
- North Dakota worst-hit state
- New cases in Iran fall
- China reports 33 new cases
- Poland reports 21k new cases
- Brazil strikes deal to buy Chinese vaccine
* * *
Update (1550ET): Minutes after BoJo finished his press briefing announcing an England-wide one-month lockdown, Portugal just announced that it is extending its restrictions on movement to more cities and towns beginning Wednesday. Restrictions will now apply to 12 municipalities, according to newswire reports.
* * *
Update (1540ET): As the UK’s confirmed cases topped the 1 million mark, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the nationwide lockdown affecting all of England (the three other constituent nations of the UK can set their own independent policy).
Beginning Thursday, bars, restaurants and nonessential stores will close, and people will be ordered to stay home with a few limited exceptions, including work, school and exercise.
PM Boris Johnson announces the UK will lock down due to COVID spread “from Thursday until the start of December.” pic.twitter.com/kfwLGLfRXm
— The Recount (@therecount) October 31, 2020
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BoJo said during an afternoon news conference that schools will remain open, confirming that the UK’s lockdown of England will follow roughly the same rules as the lockdowns in France and Germany, with schools remaining open, instead of closing like they did in the spring.
“We’ve got to be humble in the face of nature. In this country, alas, as across much of Europe, the virus is spreading even faster than the reasonable worst-case scenario of our scientific advisers,” he said.
The move is hardly a surprise, and was preceded by press trial balloons which we reported on earlier today. It comes as the UK and the 27 members of the EU have reported, on average, 195,000 new cases a day over the last 7 days.
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Update (1200ET): New York Gov Andrew Cuomo has just shared NY’s latest COVID-19 stats, and also announced a confusing new policy for people traveling to the Empire State the requires them to be tested twice (once before and once after arriving) if they want to avoid the whole 2 week quarantine. However, every new arrival will still need to quarantine for three days after arriving in the state, regardless of whether they are on the state’s travel warning list.
NEW: @NYGovCuomo announces NYS is shifting from a quarantine list to a testing policy.
➡️ Get a negative test within 3 days BEFORE arriving in NYS.
➡️ Once you arrive in NYS, wait 3 days and then take a test on the 4th day (or after).
✅ If both are negative, no quarantine.
— Jack Sterne (@JRSterne) October 31, 2020
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NY reported another 2,049 new cases on Saturday.
Today’s update on the numbers:
Of the 136,962 tests reported yesterday, 2,049 were positive (1.49% of total).
Total hospitalizations are at 1,121.
Sadly, there were 8 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/8briKkbF8e
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 31, 2020
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Today’s update on the numbers:
Of the 136,962 tests reported yesterday, 2,049 were positive (1.49% of total).
Total hospitalizations are at 1,121.
Sadly, there were 8 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/8briKkbF8e
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 31, 2020
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The state’s positivity rate in its “cluster zones” however, was 2x as high at 3%.
Notably, the new rule announced by Cuomo on Saturday morning doesn’t apply to neighboring states or people who commute into the city every day. Enforcement, Cuomo said, will be carried out by local health departments.
He added that the rule was intended to try and avoid a surge in cases from the Thanksgiving holiday. “People are going to travel for Thanksgiving. We’re having issues with small gatherings, which is almost a psychological issue,” Cuomo said.
* * *
As countries across Europe continue to step up COVID-19-related restrictions (most recently, Belgium announced what might be the Continent’s most restrictive lockdown since the start of the second wave), UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly considering a month-long national lockdown across England, which would start next week.
According to British press reports, Johnson will meet with his top advisors and government officials on Saturday to discuss the pros and cons of such an arrangement. The return to restrictions in accordance with the country’s 3-tiered system has already inspired significant public anger, particularly in the Greater Manchester area and other pockets facing Tier 3 – ie the most restrictive – rules.
Hospitalizations have surged across the UK, while deaths have started to creep higher. Though it trails Spain and France in overall cases, the UK is on the verge of crossing the million-case mark. After reporting another 24,418 cases, yesterday, the UK has a total of 992,878.
Across the pond, the situation wasn’t much better. The US reported 99,325 new cases Friday, the most for any country in a single day as infections and hospitalizations surged in the runup to Tuesday’s election. The total number of cases in the country exceeded 9 million. North Dakota continues to show the highest rate per 100,000 residents, though its overall numbers are still relatively low compared to its low population. The state reported 1,357 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, eclipsing the record set one day earlier by 135 cases. Total deaths, meanwhile eclipsed the 500 mark with 13 new deaths reported Friday.
Source: mSightly
As we reported yesterday, the US passed the 9 million case mark yesterday after reporting a record 99,321 new cases, according to Johns Hopkins.
As we head into the weekend, here’s some more news from Saturday morning and overnight:
With the U.S. reporting almost 100,000 new cases on Friday just days ahead of the election, North Dakota led the increase in infections with a 6.8% rise in cases to almost 43,916, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana and Missouri had the next-biggest increases, ranging from 4.2% to 3.1%. Colorado, Kansas and Wisconsin all showed 2.4% increases. Texas reported the most new deaths at 109 (Source: Bloomberg).
The number of new infections in Iran fell for a second day to 7,820 after reaching a record on Thursday. The Health Ministry reported 386 more deaths from Covid-19 overnight, taking the total to 34,864. The country’s national coronavirus taskforce announced a series of closures across Tehran and two dozen other major cities (Source: Bloomberg).
Greece is taking further steps to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a surge this week saw daily cases surpass 1,000 for the first time since March. The country will be divided into two zones — high risk and under surveillance — with northern Greece and the capital, Athens, and its region in the first category. “We must act now before intensive care units bend under the weight of endangered lives,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said (Source: Bloomberg).
Belgium reported 1,105 patients in intensive care units on Saturday, up 48 from the previous day and near the peak reached during the first wave of the outbreak. The nation of 11 million people, which hosts the European Union’s main institutions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, announced a lockdown Friday amid fears that its healthcare system could be overwhelmed (Source: Bloomberg).
Infections in Poland increased by 21,897 on Friday, and deaths rose by 280 to 5,631, according to the Health Ministry. More than 500,000 people are in quarantine in the country. The increases come after government employees were ordered to work from home for two weeks, with private companies also encouraged to send staff home (Source: Bloomberg).
Mainland China reports 33 new COVID-19 cases on Oct. 30, up from 25 a day earlier, the country’s national health authority said on Saturday (Source: Nikkei).
A “politically intoxicated” environment makes it difficult to probe the origins of the new coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, says the World Health Organization’s top emergency expert, Mike Ryan (Source: Nikkei) .
Brazil’s government will “of course” buy a Chinese COVID-19 vaccine that is being tested in the country, Vice President Hamilton Mourao said on Friday, in the latest example of him contradicting President Jair Bolsonaro (Source: Nikkei).
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