Oct 01

Today’s News 1st October 2020

  • UK Paramedic Team Tests Jet Pack For Rescues 
    UK Paramedic Team Tests Jet Pack For Rescues 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 10/01/2020 – 02:45

    A British jet suit company is revolutionizing how rescuers respond to emergencies in steep, rocky terrain regions. Instead of paramedics scaling the side of a hill, or mountain, on foot, which could take a while, and in an emergency, every minute counts, a “flying” medic could take just a few minutes, reported BBC News.

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    Gravity Industries, the company behind the flying suit powered by several miniature jet engines, published a video Tuesday of a recent test of its suit in action in Britain’s mountainous northern lake district.

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    Gravity teamed up with a local paramedic team, Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS), to conduct a simulation emergency where a young girl had fallen from the hillside and sustained a leg injury. The flying medic could scale the side of the hill at 32 mph, arriving at the incident scene in just under 90 seconds; traveling on foot would have taken at least 30 minutes or more.

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    Andy Mawson, director of operations at GNAAS, said the test of the flying suit via a first responder was “awesome” to see. 

    Mawson said: “There are dozens of patients every month within the complex but relatively small geographical footprint of the Lakes.” 

    “We could see the need. What we didn’t know for sure is how this would work in practice. Well, we’ve seen it now, and it is, quite honestly, awesome,” he said. 

    Mawson said the simulation is a game-changer for first responders to deliver timely critical care services. 

    “The biggest advantage is its speed,” he said. “If the idea takes off, the flying paramedic will be armed with a medical kit.” 

    Mawson said the speed of the rescue “could mean the difference between life and death.” 

  • The Surreal US Case Against Assange
    The Surreal US Case Against Assange

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 10/01/2020 – 02:00

    Authored by Alexander Mercouris via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Following the Julian Assange case as it has progressed through its various stages, from the original Swedish allegations right up to and including the extradition hearing which is currently underway in the Central Criminal Court in London, has been a troubling and very strange experience.

    The U.S. government has failed to present a coherent case. 

    Conscious that the British authorities should in theory refuse to extradite Assange if the case against him were shown to be politically motivated and/or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist, the U.S. government has struggled to present a case against Assange which is not too obviously politically motivated or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist. 

    This explains the strange succession of one original and two superseding indictments. 

    The U.S. government’s first indictment was based on what was a supposedly simple allegation of computer interference, supposedly coordinated in some sort of conspiracy between Assange and Chelsea Manning. 

    This was obviously done in an attempt to dispel the idea that the request for Assange’s extradition was politically motivated or was related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist. 

    However lawyers in the United States had no difficulty pointing out the “inchoate facts” of the alleged conspiracy between Assange and Manning, whilst both lawyers and journalists in the United States and elsewhere pointed out that the facts in the indictment in fact bore all the hallmarks of action by a journalist to protect a source.

    The result was that the U.S. government replaced its indictment with a first superseding indictment, which this time was founded largely on the 1917 Espionage Act, and was therefore closer to the real reasons why the case against Assange was being brought. 

    However, that made the case look altogether too obviously politically motivated, so it has in turn been replaced by a second superseding indictment, presented to the court and the defence team virtually on the eve of the trial, which has sought to veer back towards strictly criminal allegations, this time of involvement in computer hacking.

    More Problems for Another Indictment

    The allegations in the second superseding indictment have however faced major difficulties, in that they do not seem to concern the United States and may not even be actual crimes.  Also they rely heavily on the evidence of a known fraudster, whose “evidence” is inherently unreliable. 

    The U.S. government has failed to make clear whether the additional allegations in the second superseding indictment are intended to constitute a separate standalone case.  Initially they appeared to deny that they did; then they hinted that they might do; now however they seem to be acting as if they don’t.

    As if that were not confusing enough, the U.S. government and its British lawyers have floated confusing and contradictory theories about whether or not the British authorities can extradite Assange even if the case against him is politically motivated, and even if it is related to his journalistic activities.

    Initially they seemed to be arguing that — contrary to all British precedent and the actual text of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain — Britain can in fact extradite Assange to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge, because the enabling Act which the British Parliament passed, which made the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain a part of British law, is silent on whether or not individuals can be extradited to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge.

    This argument of course came close to conceding that the case against Assange is politically motivated after all.

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    Central Criminal Court in London, commonly known as Old Bailey, 2004. (Nevilley, Wikimedia Commons)

    This threadbare argument, at least for the moment, seems to have been abandoned.  At least nothing has been heard of it throughout the current hearing.  Instead the U.S. government and its British lawyers have argued, in the face of the incredulity of a string of expert and factual witnesses, that the case is not politically motivated after all.

    The same inconsistencies have beset the U.S. government’s arguments as to whether or not Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act for activities related to his work as a journalist. 

    Initially the U.S. government’s position was that he was not.  This was based on some theory — never satisfactorily explained or articulated — that Assange in some way is not a journalist, even though he is charged with doing things that journalists do. 

    Faced by a barrage of expert witnesses who pointed out that the charges brought against Assange under the Espionage Act do in fact relate to work journalists do, the U.S. government midway through the hearing reversed course. 

    Now it says that the charges against Assange not only do relate to his work as a journalist, but that they can be brought against any journalist who does the things Assange is being charged with having done.  The U.S. government has even argued that The New York Times would have been successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing the Pentagon Papers, because that was an action essentially identical to the ones for which Assange is being charged.

    The implications for journalists of this astonishing reversal are truly shocking.  It is staggering that in the media it has attracted no attention.

    Trouble with Witnesses 

    The U.S. government has shown the same lack of coherence in its response to the defence’s impressive lineup of expert witnesses.

    The conventional way of responding to an expert is to call another expert to state a contrary view.  On the critical issues of U.S. law, especially the protections provided to journalists by the First Amendment to the Constitution, as well as on the politics in the U.S. behind the Assange prosecution, the U.S. government has however done no such thing.  Presumably it has found it difficult or impossible to find experts who can be relied upon credibly to state a contrary view. 

    Instead, armed only with affidavits from U.S. Justice Department officials, who are of course not impartial experts at all, but who are part of the U.S. government’s legal team, the U.S. government’s British lawyers have been left to argue that the defence’s experts are not really experts at all — an impossible argument to make convincingly in my opinion — and to debate with the experts points of U.S. politics and U.S. law — including difficult points of U.S. constitutional and case law — about which the experts are by definition far more knowledgeable than the British lawyers. 

    The result, inevitably, has been a series of humiliations, as the lawyers have been repeatedly caught out by the experts making basic errors of fact and interpretation about the points which they have sought to argue. 

    Unsurprisingly, the lawyers have attempted to make up for this by trying to intimidate and denigrate the experts, in a way that has only highlighted their own lack of expertise in the relevant areas by comparison with that of the experts.

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    Trevor Timm, a defence witness and press-freedom advocate, in 2014. (YouTube)

    Given the collapse into incoherence of the U.S. government’s case, it is unsurprising that the U.S. government’s British lawyers are now reportedly trying to persuade the Judge against hearing closing arguments. 

    Given the constant shifts and reversals in the U.S. government’s position, preparing and presenting a closing argument to the court which would be internally consistent and credible must be fast becoming a nightmare.  If closing arguments do take place, as I still expect, it will be interesting to see which of the many conflicting arguments and theories they have made the U.S. government’s lawyers finally run with.

    On its face the U.S. government’s case ought to be close to collapse.  There was even a point in the hearing where one of the U.S. government’s British lawyers apparently admitted to the judge that the reason for the second superseding indictment was that the first superseding indictment was “failing.” 

    If so, then given that the charges being prosecuted against Assange are still basically those set out in the first superseding indictment, the case against Assange ought to be dismissed, and the U.S. government’s request for his extradition ought to be refused.

    The Underlying Truth

    It remains to be seen whether that is what actually happens.  However, that brings me to the single most important fact, and the underlying truth, about this extraordinary case.

    It is very easy when following the intricacies of such a complex legal process to lose sight of what this case is really about.

    Ultimately the U.S. government is not pursuing Julian Assange because he helped Chelsea Manning take certain steps with a computer to conceal her identity, or because he had some historic contacts with hackers, or because he became involved in some activities in Iceland, which caused him to fall foul of a fraudster (and FBI informant). 

    Nor is it because Assange received and published classified material.  In the U.S. the receipt and publication by the news media of classified material has grown to almost industrial levels. 

    It is because Assange, to a greater extent than any other journalist since the end of the war in Vietnam, has exposed the darkest and most terrible secrets of the U.S. government.

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    The case against Assange has its origin in the calamitous “War on Terror” launched by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. 

    That “war” provided the cover for a series of violent military aggressions, primarily in the Middle East, by the U.S. and its closest allies, first and foremost Britain but also including other countries such as Saudi Arabia and France.

    The result has been a series of wars in a succession of Middle East countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen— fought by the U.S. and its allies and proxies, which have caused the devastation of whole societies, and the death and dispersal of millions.

    In the process the U.S. has become drawn increasingly into practices which it once condemned, or at least said it condemned.  These include the “extrajudicial killing” (i.e. murder) of people — who have included children and U.S. citizens — by drone strikes, a practice which has now become routine; the kidnapping of individuals and their detention without trial in places like Guantanamo, a practice which despite unconvincing protestations that “extraordinary rendition” no longer happens almost certainly continues; and the practice of torture, at one time referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which almost certainly still continues, and indeed appears to have become normalized.

    All of this activity straightforwardly violates international (and domestic U.S.) law, including war crimes law and human rights law, and does so moreover in fundamental ways. 

    It also requires, in order to implement the policies that result in these unlawful acts, in the creation of a vast and ultimately unaccountable national security apparatus of a sort that is ultimately incompatible with a democratic society.  Inevitably its activities, which have become routinely unlawful, are becoming unlawful within the territory of the United States, as well as outside it. 

    This manifests itself in all sorts of ways, for example through the vast, indiscriminate and illegal bulk-surveillance program exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and by the systemic FISA surveillance abuse exposed over the course of the Russiagate “scandal.” 

    The extent to which the very existence of the national security apparatus, required to implement various U.S. illegal activities and to achieve its foreign policy goals, has become incompatible with a democratic society, is shown by one of the most alarming of recent developments, both in Britain and in the United States. 

    This is the growing complicity of much of the media in concealing its illegal activities.  Obviously without that complicity these activities would be impossible, as would the serial violations of international law, including war crimes law and human rights, which the United States and some of its allies now routinely engage in.

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    All this explains the extreme reaction to Julian Assange, and the determined attempts to destroy him, and to pulp his reputation.

    Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks, have done those things which the U.S. government and its national security apparatus most fear, and have worked hardest to prevent, by exposing the terrible reality of much of what the U.S. government now routinely does, and is determined to conceal, and what much of the media is helping the U.S. government to conceal.

    Thus in a series of astonishing revelations Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed in the so-called embassy cables the extraordinarily manipulative conduct of U.S. foreign policy; in the Vault 7 disclosures the instruments the CIA uses in order to — as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said, “lie” and “cheat” — and, most disturbingly, in collaboration with Chelsea Manning, the rampant war crimes and egregious human rights abuses carried out by the U.S. military during the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.

    This is an extraordinary record for a journalist, and for an organization, WikiLeaks, which was only set up in 2006. 

    Not surprisingly, the result has been that the pursuit of Assange by the U.S. government has been relentless, whilst the media, much of which has been complicit in covering up its crimes, has preferred to look the other way.

    Hence, the Surreal Quality 

    It is this underlying reality which gives the whole case currently unfolding in London’s Central Criminal Court its surreal quality.

    That the true purpose of the U.S. government’s relentless pursuit of Assange is to prevent him from exposing more of its crimes, and to punish him for exposing those of its crimes which he did expose, if only so as to deter others from doing the same thing, is perfectly obvious to any unbiased and realistic observer.  However, the hearing in London is being conducted as if this were not the case. 

    Thus, the extraordinary zigzags in the U.S. government’s rationale for bringing the case, as it cannot admit the true reason why the case has been actually brought.

    Thus, also the U.S. government’s strenuous efforts throughout the hearing to prevent evidence being produced of its crimes which Assange exposed.  

    The U.S. government has strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce as evidence the appalling “Collateral Murder” video, which shows the deliberate murder of civilians in Iraq by members of the U.S. military.  It has also strenuously opposed the introduction of evidence from a defence witness about his own torture.  This despite the fact that in both cases the fact of the U.S. crimes is scarcely disputed, and has in fact been all but admitted.

    The result is the paradoxical and bizarre situation whereby the U.S. authorities try to cobble together a case against Assange based on a confusing medley of discordant and conflicting claims and facts, whilst failing to prosecute or hold to account those who were responsible for the very serious crimes which he has exposed.

    In fact, as the U.S. government’s case has unraveled, the argument has become increasingly confined to the discrete issue of whether — by exposing the U.S. government’s crimes —Assange “irresponsibly” put the safety of various U.S. government informants at risk.

    As it happens the evidence is clearly that he did not.   Over the course of the hearing the court has heard of Assange’s many and serious attempts to conceal the identities of these informants, and of the reckless and even possibly malicious actions of certain others, who actually exposed them. 

    The court has also been told of the absence of any evidence that any one of these informants has in fact been harmed by any disclosure by WikiLeaks or Assange.  Moreover, an expert witness has argued convincingly that the disclosure by a journalist of the identities of such informants would not under U.S. law be a crime anyway.

    In response the U.S. government’s lawyers have relied heavily, not on the evidence of any actual witness, but on passages in a book by two Guardian journalists who are known to be hostile to Assange, and who — by publishing a password — seem to have done more to compromise the identities of the informants than Assange ever did. 

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    Neither of these journalists has been called to give evidence on oath about the contents of their book.  Doing so would, of course, have exposed them to cross-examination by the defence about the truth of the book’s contents. Given the weight the U.S. government is apparently placing on the book, I find it astonishing that they were not called.

    The surreal quality of the U.S. government’s treatment of this issue is shown by the fact that when an actual witness — the German journalist John Goetz — did in fact come forward and offer to give evidence on oath about a specific allegation in the book — refuting an allegation in the book that Assange supposedly made comments at a dinner, which Goetz attended, that showed a reckless disregard for the safety of the informants — the U.S. government’s lawyers strenuously objected, and were able to get the judge to exclude this evidence.

    However, it is the staggering disproportion between the scale of the crimes Assange has exposed, and the crimes of which he is accused — if they are even crimes, and of which he anyway appears to be innocent — which for me stands out.

    Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed rampant war crimes and human rights abuses over the course of illegal wars waged by the U.S. government and its allies.  The death toll from these wars runs at the very least into the tens of thousands, and more plausibly into the hundreds of thousands or even millions. 

    By contrast over the course of the entire hearing no evidence whatsoever has been produced that as a result of any of Assange’s actions anyone has come to any actual physical harm. 

    Yet it is Assange who is in the dock, facing demands for his extradition to the United States, where a 175-year sentence may await him, whilst the persons responsible for the colossal crimes he has exposed, not only walk free, but are amongst those who are trying to jail him.

    The point was made forcefully during the hearing by one of the defence’s most powerful witnesses, Daniel Ellsberg.

    It was also made forcefully to Consortium News by one of its readers, who has correctly pointed out that the crimes which Assange exposed were clearly defined as war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, whose decisions are universally accepted as forming the bedrock of international war crimes law. 

    The Nuremberg Tribunal moreover made it clear that there is not only a positive duty to refuse to participate in such crimes, even when ordered to do so, but that no sanctions should ever been imposed for exposing such crimes when they occur. 

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    Judges’ bench at international military tribunal at Nuremberg, 1946. (Wikimedia Commons)

    In other words, it is Assange and his sources, first and foremost Chelsea Manning, who are the defenders of international law, including the Nuremberg Principles, and including in the case which is currently underway, whilst it is those who persecute them, including by bringing the current case against Assange, who are international law’s violators.

    This is the single most important fact about this case, and it explains everything about it.

    Assange and Manning have paid an enormous price for their defence of international law, and for the principles of basic human decency and humanity. 

    Manning was recently held in long spells of solitary detention, and has had her savings confiscated by the U.S. authorities, for no reason other than that she has refused to testify against Assange.

    Assange has been subjected to what various UN agencies have characterized as long periods of arbitrary detention and psychological torture. 

    He continues to be denied bail, despite his known health problems, and is separated from his family. 

    He continues to have difficulties consulting privately with his lawyers, and has been exposed to the indignity — qualified in other cases by the European Court for Human Rights as a human rights violation — of being kept inside court rooms confined to a glass box or cage. 

    John Pilger has described vividly and in great detail, including to Consortium News, the inhuman conditions to which Assange is daily exposed to. That these amount to human rights violations ought not to require discussion or explanation. 

    International Conventions

    That these human rights violations breach a host of international conventions to which Britain is a signatory, including against torture and arbitrary detention, in respect of the right to a fair trial, in respect of the right to privacy and dignity of the person, and of the right to a family life, also ought not to require discussion or explanation. 

    Recently there has been an outcry in Britain because legislation the British government is proposing, which would allow it to modify unilaterally the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement it agreed last year with the European Union, breaches international law. 

    Without in any way disputing the importance of this issue, which may have important consequences for peace in Ireland, I find the angry protestations of some British journalists and politicians, that Britain never violates international law, frankly unreal. 

    If they want examples of Britain violating international law they need look no further than the facts of Assange’s case.  They might also benefit from looking at what has been said over the course of the ongoing hearing in the Central Criminal Court.

    Despite all the difficulties, there is however no reason to give up hope.

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    London graffiti, March 2020. (duncan c, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

    The extraordinary zigzags the U.S. government has been forced to make as it tries and fails to put a coherent and convincing case against Julian Assange together, show that the law, for all its many flaws, remains an important defence.

    I am aware of the many criticisms which have been made of Vanessa Baraitser, the judge who is hearing Assange’s case.  I don’t disagree with any of them. 

    However, I do get the impression that Baraitser’s patience has been sorely tried by the U.S. government’s repeated and dizzying changes of position.  I also get the impression that she was particularly annoyed when the U.S. government, on the virtual eve of the hearing, presented to the court and the defence its second superseding indictment, which in effect made a nonsense of the first. 

    That may explain why the U.S. government’s British lawyers have largely conducted the case as if the second superseding indictment did not exist, basing their arguments mostly on what the first superseding indictment says, though perhaps unsurprisingly, and to the bafflement of the experts, they are now increasingly making arguments which have no basis in any indictment.

    Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Baraitser has rejected the U.S. government’s various attempts to exclude en masse the evidence of defence witnesses, even if she has imposed a 30-minute guillotine on their examination in chief (direct examination) by defence lawyers.

    In summary, and in my opinion, there is still a chance, however small, that Baraitser will decide the case in Assange’s favour. 

    If she does not do so, then I would have thought, based on what has happened over the course of the hearing, that Assange will have good prospects on appeal.

    More encouraging than what has been happening inside the court, where the outcome remains very much in doubt, and where the prospects must be considered problematic to say the least, is what has been happening outside.

    My wife, who attended one of the hearings last week, saw placards held up by some of Assange’s supporters outside the court, which called on road users to honk their horns in support of Assange.  To her delighted astonishment, despite the media blackout which surrounds the case, and despite the long campaign of character assassination to which Assange has been subjected, an extraordinarily high proportion of road users (more than a quarter) did so.

    That reinforces my sense that the tide of opinion, at least in Britain, is shifting.  The battle is far from over, and can still be won.

  • Air Force Reveals Six-Gen Stealth Jet Has Been "Built And Flown"
    Air Force Reveals Six-Gen Stealth Jet Has Been “Built And Flown”

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 10/01/2020 – 01:00

    The US Air Force has revealed a new stealth fighter prototype it says has already secretly built and flown, according to Defense News. 

    So move over F-22 Raptor, or better yet, maybe its time for the Air Force to rethink its unreliable F-35 Lightning II program because there’s a new stealth jet that could potentially dominate the skies by 2030. 

    Air Force acquisition head Will Roper recently spoke with Defense News and said the jet, built under the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, could enter production “pretty fast.” 

    “We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before,” Roper told Defense News in an exclusive interview ahead of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in mid-September. 

    Roper said, “We’ve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it.” 

    As the NGAD program is classified, not much is known about the secretive jet. Roper wouldn’t give additional details on the aircraft to Defense News or anyone at the event. 

    The disclosure of the Air Force’s sixth-generation prototype could be perfect timing for the Air Force to request more funds from Congress as a modernization wave is sweeping across the military, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget analyst with the American Enterprise Institute.

    “If you can quickly get to something and show progress through product, it just changes the whole dynamic for the Hill,” she said. “[Roper has] got so many headwinds, it seems this would be a likely avenue to show conceptual success for his ideas.”

    The announcement also follows years of troubling stories about just how “f**ked up” the F-35 program is. Readers may recall:

    … the list goes on and on. 

    Nevertheless, there is hope for a new stealth jet, and it appears the Air Force is moving quickly on its futuristic projects. Recently, the Navy’s Rear Adm. Greg Harris recently told a virtual audience that the service is looking at F/A-XX or next-generation air dominance family systems. 

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    Six generation stealth jets could become a reality at the end of this decade.

  • Congressional Hearing Reveals US Govt's Invisible Hand In Protests Around The World
    Congressional Hearing Reveals US Govt’s Invisible Hand In Protests Around The World

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 10/01/2020 – 00:00

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee grilled Michael Pack, who President Trump recently appointed to head the US government’s state propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

    Pack was appointed in June and started a big shakeup at the US state media outlets run by the USAGM, like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. Pack fired senior staffers, pushed out management, and froze funding.

    During last week’s hearing, Democrats and Republicans on the committee teamed up to attack Pack for his purges. But what seemed more important to Congress and former USAGM officials was Pack’s move to freeze funds to the Open Technology Fund (OTF). The OTF was formed in 2012 and operated as part of Radio Free Asia for seven years. In 2019, the OTF became an independent non-profit, although it is financed by US taxpayer dollars through the USAGM.

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    “Color Revolutions”

    According to former USAGM officials and OTF board members, the OTF supports protesters in other nations across the world. “In many places around the globe, OTF quietly is providing support to protesters,” said Grant Turner, the former USAGM chief financial officer, who Pack removed in August. “So the Hong Kong protesters are protecting their identities from surveillance by OTF tools; protesters in Iran; we’ve seen it in Beirut,” Turner said.

    Ambassador Karen Kornbluh, who sits on the board of the OTF, also testified and spoke of how the OTF helps protest movements. “OTF has a long history of supporting internet freedom efforts, and was poised to expand its efforts in Hong Kong,” Kornbluh said. “It was going to serve support for circumvention tools and expand support for digital training.”

    Kornbluh explained that the USAGM froze OTF funds before China’s national security law for Hong Kong came into effect. “And then USAGM froze, and continues to withhold, its funding – and did that just weeks before the new security laws came into effect,” Kornbluh said. “So OTF hasn’t been able to support any of these efforts.”

    The frozen Hong Kong funds were first reported by Time magazine in June. According to Time, Pack froze $2 million that would have “directly benefited the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.” One project the OTF was working on in Hong Kong was a “cybersecurity incident response team” that would have analyzed Chinese surveillance techniques in Hong Kong. The team would have shared information with developers who would design apps for protesters to use. The freeze in funding made this project impossible to go through with.

    Another OTF project hampered by the freeze was a $500,000 “rapid response fund, designed to provide fast relief for civil society groups, protesters, journalists, and human rights defenders.” According to Time, this initiative has already made several payouts to groups in Hong Kong since the civil unrest began in June 2019.

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    Michael Pack is the chief executive of the US Agency for Global Media, US Senate file image

    The cut in funding inadvertently revealed the US government’s covert role in the Hong Kong protest movement. The US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy also provides funding for “pro-democracy” movements in Hong Kong.

    Besides the US government supporting Hong Kong protesters through cutout organizations like the OTF and NED, there has been more overt interference in the city. Throughout the demonstrations, protesters were seen waving US flags and calling for Congress to pass legislation. Leaders of the movement even traveled to Washington and testified before Congress, pleading for US intervention.

    President Trump signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act into law in November 2019. The administration has since sanctioned Hong Kong officials and changed the city’s special trade status. This US interference gave Beijing the foreign boogeyman it needed to pass the controversial national security law.

    Pack was appointed to head the USAGM after the White House accused Voice of America of repeating Chinese state propaganda in its coronavirus coverage. Considering this, the damage Pack’s overhaul did to the OTF’s support for protesters in Hong Kong was likely an unintended consequence.

  • Military Suicides Rise An Alarming 20% As Top Brass Blame COVID Stress
    Military Suicides Rise An Alarming 20% As Top Brass Blame COVID Stress

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 23:40

    Military suicides are up an average of 20% this year over the same period in 2019, according to the Associated Press, citing military officials.

    Broken down by service, suicide among active duty Army is up 30%, from 88 last year to 114 this year, while the Army Guard is up 10% from 78 to 86 over the same period.

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    While the Pentagon would not provide 2020 suicide data, Army officials cites discussions in DoD briefings – and say that while they can’t directly attribute the rise to COVID-19, the timing coincides.

    “I can’t say scientifically, but what I can say is – I can read a chart and a graph, and the numbers have gone up in behavioral health related issues,” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told AP.

    Pointing to increases in Army suicides, murders and other violent behavior, he added, “We cannot say definitively it is because of COVID. But there is a direct correlation from when COVID started, the numbers actually went up.”

    Preliminary data for the first three months of 2020 show an overall dip in military suicides across the active duty and reserves, compared to the same time last year. Those early numbers, fueled by declines in Navy and Air Force deaths, gave hope to military leaders who have long struggled to cut suicide rates. But in the spring, the numbers ticked up. –Associated Press

    “COVID adds stress,” said Air Force chief Gen. Charles Brown in public remarks. “From a suicide perspective, we are on a path to be as bad as last year. And that’s not just an Air Force problem, this is a national problem because COVID adds some additional stressors – a fear of the unknown for certain folks.”

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    There were 98 suicides between active duty Air Force and reserves as of September 15, unchanged from from last year – which was the worst in three-decades for active duty suicides across the branch. In 2018, the Pentagon claimed in a report that the military suicide rate was roughly equivalent to the US general population “after adjusting for the fact that the military is more heavily male and younger than the civilian population.“

    The 2018 rate for active duty military was 24.8 per 100,000, while the overall civilian rate for that year was 14.2, but the rate for younger civilian men ranged from 22.7 to 27.7 per 100,000, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. –Associated Press

    “We know that the measures we took to mitigate and prevent the spread of COVID could amplify some of the factors that could lead to suicide,” said the Army’s director of resilience programs, James Helis – who said that virus-related isolation, combined with loss of childcare and financial disruptions is putting a strain on military families. 

    Meanwhile, Army leaders also pointed to stress from the United States being at war for nearly two decades – with deployments being compounded by the virus, along with civil unrest and natural disasters.

    According to Army veteran Sergio Alfaro who served for 4.5 years, fears associated with the virus amplified his PTSD and suicidal thoughts.

    “It’s definitely something that’s made things a bit more chaotic, trying to plan for the future, do things together,” said the former Iraq vet who dealt with daily mortar rounds in Baghdad in 2003. “It’s almost like adding more trash on the heap.“

  • Fahrenheit 451 Predicted People Would Demand Tyranny
    Fahrenheit 451 Predicted People Would Demand Tyranny

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 23:20

    Authored by Barry Brownstein via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Even if it has been a while since you read Fahrenheit 451, you might remember Ray Bradbury’s classic for its portrayal of a dystopian future in which an authoritarian government burns books.

    Read Fahrenheit 451 again to discover why people wanted their tyrannical government to burn books. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, yet the parallels to today’s social climate for censorship are haunting.

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    Bradbury’s protagonist is Guy Montag, who, like all firemen in Bradbury’s future, burns books. 

    In Bradbury’s dystopia, firemen became “custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.”  

    Today’s mainstream and social media are “custodians of our peace of mind” as they filter out “conflicting theory and thought.” Captain Beatty is Montag’s boss. Beatty explained, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.” 

    If you don’t want people debating questions such as Covid-19 policy, Beatty has the ticket:

    “Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.” 

    Today, millions listen daily to reports of case counts of Covid-19. Like Bradbury predicted, listeners can recite the numbers but have no context to make sense of the numbers. Many have little idea that important scientists and doctors have advocated alternatives to lockdowns that could save lives and abate catastrophic impacts on economies. As in Bradbury’s world, many are working tirelessly to disparage and censor alternative views. 

    After Montag questions his role as a book burner, he recites Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold to neighbors. His neighbors were shocked at the feelings the poem provoked. One cries out, “Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words… Why do people want to hurt people? Not enough hurt in the world, you’ve got to tease people with stuff like that!”

    Incredibly, Bradbury anticipated today’s social climate where people claim censorship is justified because someone hurt their feelings.

    Beatty explains a dominant social norm justifying censorship: Do not offend minorities. Bradbury is clear; “minorities” meant practically everyone:

    “Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico.”

    Pretending you can “stay happy all the time” was another social norm driving popular demand for censorship in Fahrenheit 451. Beatty explains,  

    “[Censorship] didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”

    In Bradbury’s dystopia, to consider conflicting theories makes for unhappiness, so Beatty lauds the fireman’s mission and justifies censorship:

    “The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and dreary philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.”

    In Bradbury’s future, intellectuals came under scrutiny when ideas conflicted. The word “intellectual” became a “swear word.” The public dreaded “the unfamiliar” and disdained a world where merit mattered. Again, Bradbury has Beatty explain the mindset behind such thinking: 

    “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well read man?” 

    In Bradbury’s dystopia, thinking was not welcome. Even front porches were eliminated. One of Montag’s young neighbors explained why:

    “People sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over… they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think.” 

    Social distancing is today embraced as a way to keep us safe from Covid-19. Social distancing also keeps us safe from “conflicting theories and thoughts.” Chairs have been removed from social gathering places. Hallways are quiet. Nobody stands around the water cooler. People have few places to talk with each other. The parallel to porches is haunting. 

    Perhaps you are sensing a shift in social norms undermining parental rights and the sanctity of the family. Bradbury foresaw a push for government-funded pre-school. Captain Beatty explains, “The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.”

    Bradbury also anticipated today’s justification of looting. Some claim that rioters are merely damaging property, not people. Before he began to see the evil he was part of, Montag eased his conscience with this similar line of thinking: “You weren’t hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper.”

    Warning his readers of policies shaped by the majority, Bradbury writes, “The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.” Today, politicians claim the right to destroy freedom when they get a majority vote of the people. This dangerous reasoning is antithetical to the founding principles of this country. 

    We can take a lesson from Bradbury’s character Professor Faber, who recognized the consequences of his own self-censorship:

    “I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the `guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”  

    How ironic that today, claiming they are “woke,” progressives clamor for tyranny and censorship. In Bradbury’s world the “woke” saw through the lies of tyranny and censorship. Bradbury would exhort us to avoid expediency and speak out to prevent the worst.

    In his novel, Bradbury didn’t take a deep dive into the psychology of saying nothing. My recent essay on mask mandates by businesses provoked a strong response. Many were sympathetic to my point that businesses respond to consumer demand. Yet, some believe that business policy is being shaped by a small but frightened and very vocal minority who complain loudly to managers about customers not wearing a mask. 

    Going against the vocal herd takes courage. In his book The Heart Aroused, poet David Whyte, who works with businesses on organizational change issues, shares a universal story: 

    “A man I know finds himself in a meeting room at the very edge of speech; he is approaching his moment of reckoning, he is looking for support from his fellow executives around the table … the CEO is pacing up and down on the slate gray carpet. He has asked, in no uncertain terms, for their opinion of the plan he wants to put through. ‘I want to know what you all think about this,’ he demands, ‘on a scale of one to ten.’” 

    Whyte explains the CEO made it plain he wanted to hear “ten.” Whyte’s friend thinks the plan is terrible, and rumors are that other executives feel the same. As the CEO goes around the room, Whyte’s friend hears his colleague, one by one, say “ten.” When it is his turn, “against everything he believes, (Whyte’s friend) hears a mouselike, faraway voice, his own, saying ‘ten.’”

    According to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s theory of the spiral of silence, “our willingness to express an opinion is a direct result of how popular or unpopular we perceive it to be.” When we believe our belief is popular, we will make a point of signaling that we are part of the herd. Like Whyte’s friend, we will avoid expressing our point of view when we sense it will be unpopular.

    If you think the public is empowered by social media to express unpopular views, you would be mistaken. As in Fahrenheit 451, people censor themselves first, even before Facebook and Twitter add their own censorship. 

    In 2014, the Pew Research Center surveyed the public about their willingness to freely express their views about the 2013 Edward Snowden revelations. The survey revealed that “people were less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story on social media than they were in person.” Social media was not an outlet for those concerned about expressing an unpopular view. 

    Consistent with the “spiral of silence” theory and compatible with Bradbury’s dystopian future, no matter what the setting, people are reluctant to share an unpopular view. A 2020 Cato survey found 62% “of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.”

    Today, how many say nothing to their neighbors and colleagues about Covid-19 policies for fear of being accused of not valuing human lives? In Fahrenheit 451, silence helped pave the way for the public’s embrace of tyranny. In 2020, Fahrenheit 451 is far more than a chilling, cautionary tale. To reverse the spiral of silence we must make space for candid conversations by thoughtfully considering alternative viewpoints.

  • Ukraine Probes Likely Murder Of US Embassy Staffer In Kiev Park
    Ukraine Probes Likely Murder Of US Embassy Staffer In Kiev Park

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 23:00

    Ukrainian authorities are investigating the shocking and mysterious death of a US Embassy employee on Wednesday. 

    So far all that is known is that a woman was found lying unconscious near railroad tracks in a park near the city center, apparently the victim of a brutal attack, given she had a head injury, according to Reuters.

    She succumbed to her wounds at a nearby hospital, after which investigators found her ID, indicating she was employed by the US embassy in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The US Embassy-Kyiv subsequently confirmed an American member of its staff has died under unknown circumstances.

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    US Embassy in Kiev file image, via Kyiv Post/Ukrafoto

    A criminal investigation is underway, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko, who issued a statement in English saying it “may be a crime”. He followed with: “But may be an accident too. Body was found on railway in earphones during the jogging.”

    “The unconscious woman was admitted to a hospital where she subsequently died. During the examination of the victim’s belongings, an identity card of an employee of the U.S. Embassy in her name was found,” Ukrainian police said.

    Police say the investigation is focused on suspected murder and that they are seeking a suspect based on possible eyewitness accounts, described as follows:

    Police are looking for a dark-haired man of 30-40, dressed in dark shorts and a T-shirt. 

    Within hours after the news breaking, the US Embassy-Kyiv issued confirmation.

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    Central Kiev, via iStock

    Little is known as to the identify of the woman, other than she was an American citizen. American embassies abroad also typically employ dozens of local workers within the host country, but the confirmation suggests she could be US diplomatic personnel, or part of another high level agency.

    “We are heartbroken to report the death of an American member of the U.S. Embassy Kyiv community,” an official US Embassy statement said. “Officials from U.S. Embassy Kyiv are currently working with authorities to determine the circumstances of the death.”

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    US embassies also host a multitude of federal agencies, some in covert or clandestine capacities. Though the majority of personnel are State Dept. Foreign Service, such as diplomats, usually CIA and others like the Defense Intelligence Agency (the DoD’s civilian intelligence arm that works closely with the Pentagon) also operate out of foreign embassies.

  • Escobar: China Deploys Sun Tzu To Prevail In The Chip War
    Escobar: China Deploys Sun Tzu To Prevail In The Chip War

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 22:40

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog, originally posted at The Asia Times,

    Beijing has a plan to become the indispensable tech core of East Asia, linking ASEAN, Northeast Asia and even both Koreas…

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    Let’s cut to the chase: with or without a sanction juggernaut, China simply won’t be expelled from the global semiconductor market.

    The real amount of chip supply Huawei has in stock for their smart phone business may remain an open question.

    But the most important point is that in the next few years – remember Made in China 2025 remains in effect – the Chinese will be manufacturing the necessary equipment to produce 5 nm chips of equivalent or even better quality than what’s coming from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

    Conversations with IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei reveal the basic contours of the road map ahead.

    They explain that what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5nm to 3nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

    Additionally, there is no knowledge gap – or a communication problem – between Chinese and Taiwanese engineers. And the predominant modus operandi remains the revolving door.

    China’s breakthroughs involve a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in it, and is nearly ready to transpose their lab work into industrial production.

    In parallel, the Chinese are updating the US-privileged photo-lithography procedure to get nanometer chips to a new, non-photo lithography procedure capable of producing smaller and cheaper chips.

    As much as Chinese companies, moving forward, will be buying every possible stage of chip manufacturing business in sight, whatever the cost, this will proceed in parallel to top US semiconductor firms like Qualcomm going no holds barred to skirt sanctions and continue to supply chips to Huawei. That’s already the case with Intel and AMD.

    Huawei’s game

    Huawei for its part is investing deeply in a very close R&D relationship with Russia, recruiting some of their best tech talent, notoriously strong in math, physics and rigorous design work. An example is Huawei’s purchasing of Russian face recognition company Vocord in 2019.

    Some of the best tech brainpower in South Korea happens to be Russian.

    Huawei has also established a “5G ecosystem innovation center” in Thailand – the first of its type in ASEAN.

    In the medium term, Huawei’s strategy for their top notch smart phones – which use 7nm chips – will be to hand over the business to other Chinese players such as Xiaomi, OPPO and VIVO, collect patent fees, and wait for the inevitable Chinese chip breakthrough while keeping production of 5G equipment, for which it has sufficient chips.

    Huawei’s Harmony OS is considered by these IT experts to be a more efficient system than Android. And it runs on less demanding chips.

    With the expansion of 5G, most of the work on smart phones can be handled by cloud servers. By the end of 2020, at least 300 cities across China will be covered by 5G.

    Huawei will be concentrating on producing desktop computers and digital displays. These desktops will come with a Chinese processor, the Kunpeng 920, and run by a Chinese Unified Operating System (UOS).

    UOS is a Linux system developed by China’s Union Tech and commissioned by Beijing to – here’s the clincher – replace Microsoft Windows. These desktops will not be sold to the general public: they will be equipping China’s provincial and national administrations.

    It’s no wonder a steady rumor in IT circles is that the best bet ahead would be to put money in a Chinese Chip Investment Fund – expecting to collect big time when major tech breakthroughs happen before 2025.

    The East Asian tech core

    Whatever the trials and tribulations of the chip war, the inescapable trend ahead is China positioned as the indispensable tech core of East Asia – encompassing ASEAN, Northeast Asia, and Eastern Siberia linked to both Koreas.

    This is the hard node of the incoming Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the biggest free trade deal in the world – which is bound to be signed by 2021.

    India has opted for self-exclusion from RCEP – which in geoeconomic terms condemns it to a peripheral role as an economic power. Compare it to South Korea, which is boosting its integration with ASEAN and Northeast Asia.

    East Asia’s tech core will be at the heart of a global production chain integrating the very best in science and technology conception and the very best production specialists scattered around all nodes of the global supply chain.

    That’s a natural consequence, among other factors, of East Asia introducing patent applications at a multiple of 3.46 times the US.

    And that brings to the very special Samsung case. Samsung is increasing its R&D drive to in fact bypass US-branded technologies as soon as possible.

    When South Korea’s President Moon turbo-charges his appeal for the official end of the Korean War that should be seen in tandem with Samsung eventually reaching a wide-ranging tech cooperation deal with Huawei.

    This pincer movement graphically spells out South Korean independence from the American bear hug.

    It does not escape the Beijing leadership’s attention that the emergence of South Korea as a stronger and stronger geopolitical and geoeconomic actor in East Asia must be inextricably linked to access by China to the next generation of chips.

    So a crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic process to watch in the next few years is how Beijing progressively attracts Seoul to its area of influence as a sort of high-tech tributary power while banking on the future of what would be a Korea Federation.

    This is something that has been discussed every year, at the highest level, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

    Wang Huiyao of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization notes how China and South Korea already have a free trade agreement and “will start the second phase of negotiations to establish a new mechanism for China-South Korea economic cooperation, which is developing fast.”

    The next – immensely difficult – step will be to set up a China-Japan free trade mechanism. And then a closer, interconnected China-Japan-South Korea mechanism. RCEP is just the first step. It will be a long sail all the way to 2049. But everyone knows which way the wind is blowin’.

  • More Than 500 JPMorgan Employees Inexplicably Got Emergency Virus Relief Funds
    More Than 500 JPMorgan Employees Inexplicably Got Emergency Virus Relief Funds

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 22:20

    Three weeks ago, when we first reported that JPMorgan – the bank that this week was slammed with a record settlement of nearly $1 billion when it admitted it had manipulated and spoofed the gold and Treasury markets – was probing its employees’ role in abuse of PPP funds following reports of “instances in which Covid-relief funds were misused by customers and is probing employees’ involvement in the potentially illegal activities”, we said that it was about time the role of banks was put under the microscope because ” while it was easy to blame the administration for rushing to hand out hundreds of billions in grants/loans (without which the US economy would still be in a depression), a key question is how and why did the private banks that were gatekeepers for all this capital, allow such abuse to take place.“

    A few days later, we also found out that not only did JPM employees allegedly enable fraud by clients when obtaining PPP loans, the largest US bank also found that some of its employees themselves “improperly applied for and received”, i.e. stole, Covid-relief money that was intended for legitimate U.S. businesses hurt by the pandemic.

    The bank discovered the actions, which were tied to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, “after noticing that suspicious amounts of money had been deposited into checking accounts owned by bank employees.” The findings prompted an unusual all-staff message from JPMorgan Tuesday which according to Bloomberg “puzzled many across the industry for its candid admission of potentially illegal acts by some of its own while not describing what they had done.”

    At the time, JPMorgan sent a memo to its roughly 256,000 employees in which senior leaders said they had seen “instances of customers misusing Paycheck Protection Program Loans, unemployment benefits and other government programs” and that some employees had fallen short on ethical standards, too.

    JPMorgan tried to mitigate this discovery by claiming that only a handful of its employees were abusing the program.

    Well, fast forward to today, when we learn that more than 500 JPMorgan employees got assistance from taxpayers aimed at helping businesses through the pandemic “and dozens of them shouldn’t have”, according to Bloomberg.

    The discovery that so many people at the largest and most profitable U.S. bank had tapped the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program raised suspicions inside the company and set off a hasty probe, the full extent of which hasn’t been previously reported.

    Upon discovering that “hundreds of employees” – clearly not the brightest ones as they used checking accounts operated by their employer into which they deposited funds meant for struggling Americans – had received government funds in their accounts, JPMorgan “began scrutinizing director-level employees and workers who received certain amounts.” Of almost two dozen in that first group, the bank found that at least five – none of them director-level employees – had improperly tapped the program, one of the people said. We say at least because every update on this issue reveals that more and more employees had illegally tapped the taxpayer-funded program.

    Amusingly, the bank concluded that of the hundreds of deposits many were “probably” legitimate – providing funds, for example, to side businesses run on workers’ own time, although how a JPM banker would have a “side” business that suddenly needs emergency funding is probably left best for the upcoming Congressional hearings.

    JPM’s findings of illegal employee activity come amid a broader sweep of individual accounts that received business aid. On July 22, the SBA warned banks to be on the lookout for suspicious deposits or activity as part of the EIDL program. The SBA’s inspector general has also flagged evidence of fraud in the program, saying it identified more than $250 million in aid given to potentially ineligible recipients as well as $45.6 million in possibly duplicate payments. A Bloomberg analysis of SBA data last month identified $1.3 billion in suspicious payments.

    As a result, prosecutors have brought charges against more than 20 businesses for fraud under the CARES Act, which authorized the PPP loan program, and a recent report by the House Committee on Oversight suggested that there could have been billions of dollars worth of fraud in the PPP program. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, called on the inspectors general of the U.S. Treasury Department and SBA to investigate the program.

    “The SBA does not comment on individual borrowers. Evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse with any of SBA’s loan programs is not tolerated and should be reported. … The SBA successfully distributed 5.21 million loans and $525 billion to small businesses in an unprecedented amount of time, through the Paycheck Payment Program,” the SBA said, misstating the name of the Paycheck Protection Program.

    “This is going to be the biggest fraud in government history, the magnitude of which we will not know for many years to come,” said Vic Hartman, a former FBI agent and author of a 2019 book about fraud based on lessons from his career.

    In retrospect, it’s most surprising that only 500 JPMorgan bankers were involved.

     

  • Face Masks Are The Mob's "Dumbo's Feather"
    Face Masks Are The Mob’s “Dumbo’s Feather”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 22:00

    Authored by Jeff Harris via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    I remember watching Walt Disney’s film Dumbo’s Feather as a kid. Released in 1941 the story is about a cute baby elephant born with huge ears and forced to perform as a Circus clown. Dumbo is befriended by a mouse who confidently proclaims Dumbo can use his big ears to fly if he will only hold a magic feather in his trunk.

    Leaping off the high-dive platform with his magic feather Dumbo indeed flies! But he soon discovers the feather isn’t magic at all because he could fly without it.

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    So what does this have to do with the mobs obedient wearing of face mask to ward off the “deadly” Covid virus? You know, that deadly virus that is so incredibly virulent that according to the CDC 99.8% of those exposed to it survive? 

    It’s true, I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t even play one on TV. I’m throwing this out there as a kind of thought experiment for your consideration. The mask mandates have been in force for about six months. Instead of giving ostensibly “free” people the option of choosing to wear face mask of their own volition (as in Sweden) the politicians totally ignored citizen’s rights and ordered lockdowns, social distancing, sheltering in place, and the public humiliation of worthless face masks.

    Now you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to simply observe the behavior of the masses. At least in my neck of the woods virtually everyone in public places is obediently wearing a face mask. We were initially told this was to “flatten the curve” and would only be necessary for a few weeks.

    But somehow, those few weeks have been extended and extended by power mad governors and mayors into six long months. Interestingly the CDC, WHO and other “experts” proclaimed people shouldn’t wear face masks early on, but then bizarrely changed their minds all of a sudden?

    Back to Dumbo

    So what does this have to do with Dumbo’s Feather? Well think about it. Human beings are a superstitious lot and made more so when the mainstream media pumps 24/7 fear porn about an invisible “deadly virus” that is all around us! “Millions will die if they don’t obey the expert’s guidance!”

    It stands to reason that for many people who’ve obediently worn their face masks and haven’t gotten sick, they could easily assume the mask is their “magic feather” that’s protecting them and saving their very lives! “See, I’ve been wearing my mask and haven’t gotten sick; it must work!”

    Just like a lucky rabbit’s foot, or a four leaf clover tucked in one’s pocket, I suspect face masks have become a psychological crutch for the masses. This is psychological terrorism by government criminals! Human’s forced to endure extended traumatic experiences are much easier to manage as was discovered by government scientist back in the 1950’s and 60’s.

    Omnipresent, debilitating fear is the primary tool governments use to control the masses. The mask is a highly valuable tool in the fear arsenal as it’s a ubiquitous, visual reminder that death lurks all around us! “Don’t take any chances, wear your mask, obey the rules, do what you’re told and everything will be OK.”

    That’s the message. After all, these government folks are only interested in what’s best for us, right? Well no, they do NOT have our best interests at heart, only their power, control and the wealth they can wring out of us.

    H. L. Mencken, the witty American Journalist hit the nail on the head over half a century ago:

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

    I suspect that even if by some miracle the “authorities” suddenly announced Covid was contained and we could return to normal life, millions would willingly continue wearing their mask. When humans have been deeply traumatized by fear of an untimely death they don’t get over it quickly.

    The scars are deep and for many will never heal. How ironic that the mask is not only a visual cue to remain fearful but also a beacon of hope for those who equate it with their avoiding illness to date; their magic Dumbo’s Feather.

    In a free country one gets to choose for themselves if they want to wear a mask, stay home, stop working, quit attending church or take baths in bleach water for that matter! So is the USA a free country; I think not! I will not comply!

  • Coinbase Has A New Plan For Dealing With Office SJWs: Pay Them To Leave
    Coinbase Has A New Plan For Dealing With Office SJWs: Pay Them To Leave

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 21:40

    The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, has devised an interesting strategy for getting rid of crusading SJW employees, like the rebellious workers creating headaches for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not being “woke” enough.

    Pay them to leave.

    Citing an internal email to employees, CNBC’s Kate Rooney reports that Armstrong offered employees severance packages of 4-6 months if they felt uncomfortable with the company’s policy of political neutrality in the workplace. In the note, Armstrong cited “internal strife” at companies like Facebook and Alphabet as a threat to “value” at Coinbase.

    “While I think these efforts are well-intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division,” Armstrong said.

    The announcement comes after Armstrong clarified the company’s stance on office activism, saying that he preferred employees left political discussions and activities to their off-hours.

    For anybody who absolutely can’t tolerate this arrangement (or simply wants a few months of free pay, at the cost of losing their job in the middle of an economic downturn) the company is offering severance packages, so that anyone “who doesn’t feel comfortable with this new direction” can simply leave.

    Pay packages will range between 4 to 6 months, depending on seniority of the employee. That’s not bad, but not great, as far as Silicon Valley exit packages go. But it’s certainly enough to last a skilled engineer until they land a new gig.

    He finished with a positive spin: “Life is too short to work at a company that you aren’t excited about,” Armstrong said in the email, which was previously reported by The Block. “Hopefully this package helps create a win-win outcome for those who choose to opt out.”

    As CNBC pointed out, the approach stands in stark contrast to the prevailing sentiment in Silicon Valley, which is to encourage employees to speak their mind, even when it might endanger the company’s bottom line.

    Will Coinbase’s policy catch on? Or will they need to follow Peter Thiel and (maybe) Elon Musk out of the Bay Area.

  • The Urban Exodus – Will They Or Won't They Come Back?
    The Urban Exodus – Will They Or Won’t They Come Back?

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 21:20

    Submitted by Philip Fischer, founder of eBooleant Consulting, LLC; previously he was Managing Director, Head of Fixed Income And Municipal Bond Strategy, Global Bank & Markets, at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

    Years before this pandemic began, I gave a speech at the Library of Congress in Washington DC on “Science and the Literary Imagination.” It was an exploration of the ways in which the limits of literary thought were stretched by the possibilities introduced by scientific discovery.

    Now, I think it is timely to think how this era of great scientific discovery has stretched the risk and return potentialities in economics. The growth of the tech giants makes the return potential clear. But the scientific risk component of systemic risk is also clear.

    There should be no doubt that I favor the acquisition of scientific knowledge and in any event, we have little, if any, ability to keep the Genie in the bottle. But the acquisition of knowledge creates new states of nature to price. These include genetic manipulation and air conditioning.

    Here we should note that discoveries are discoveries specifically because they are uncorrelated with current events. As such, scientific discoveries are unhedgable. In my last blog entry, I commented on the role that pandemics play in inducing mass migrations. Whether this virus itself is a “natural” or man- made disaster remains unresolved. The pandemic, however, was clearly facilitated by the amalgamated collection of technology facilitating its spread. And the role of technology in this cycle of municipal depopulations needs to be considered carefully in light of the many discoveries made in recent years.

    They are leaving because they can

    The press is replete with stories about the exodus from major American cities. And has been so for a long time. A September 2019 Forbes article “New Yorkers Are Leaving The City In Droves: Here’s Why They’re Moving And Where They’re Going” seems almost quaint now.1 The Mayor of New York was trying to run for President of the United States while the moving vans were going into overdrive on the East Side of Manhattan. Much of the interstate migration was the product of tax policy in the blue states.  And that was in the good times.

    And, then as now, economists disregarded the depleting populations of the large American population centers. “It has long been a tenet of municipal finance that residents so love their cities that they are largely indifferent to their taxes. This is belied by the experience of the past two decades.”2

    While a few places like New York City and Boston have managed to buck the general malaise, most cities in the Northeast and North Central United States have faced a multigenerational decline. In fact, the Census Department’s graph of the center of the US population, illustrates as well as any, the relentless thrust of the population west and south.

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    While the westward shift of the population occurs for many reasons, we are concerned with one particular item. That is the role of technology in the decline of the Eastern states. And here one invention is particularly relevant. While there are many places where air conditioning drove demographics, the deserts of the Southwest for example, it is in the East where its impact is most relevant. The invention of air conditioning was an important factor in the Eastern cities losing their relative advantage to the South. 

    Perhaps the best example was Washington DC where the adoption of air conditioning was a significant factor in converting a sleepy southern city into a governmental mega city.4

    And the analog to air conditioning this time is telecommunications. Those leaving the cities add the ability to work remotely to the increasing taxes and decreasing quality of life in deciding whether to return. Municipal finance needs to respect the change in technology. It adds another credit negative to these cities.

    A discussion of municipal credit and technology can be very extensive and there will be a plethora of topics to consider in this blog. Nevertheless, we should note the point I made at the Library of Congress. Science imposes a discipline in our risk analysis. Ordinarily in financial analysis the black swans, low probability events, are just that, unlikely. In a more rigorous sense, however, we have to consider that discovery shortens our time horizon. In the limit, if innovation is fast enough, we are driven to say that if it is now possible that something can happen, it must happen.

    * * *

    [1] New Yorkers Are Leaving The City In Droves: Here’s Why They’re Moving And Where They’re Going
    [2] Schramm, Carl. “Save America’s Dying Cities.” Issues in Science and Technology 36, no. 4 (Summer 2020): 62–70. https://issues.org/americas-dying-cities-carl-schramm-revitalizing-competitiveness/
    [3] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2010/geo/center-of-population-1880-2010.html
    [4] Air-Conditioning Comes to the Nation’s Capital, 1928–60, Joseph M. Siry, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2018) 77 (4): 448–472. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2018.77.4.448

  • "Super Spreaders" Cause More Than 4 Million COVID-19 Infections Across India, New Study Finds
    “Super Spreaders” Cause More Than 4 Million COVID-19 Infections Across India, New Study Finds

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 21:00

    In what scientists have billed as the first major analysis of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a developing country, a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science shows that a small number of “super spreaders” caused as much as 2/3rds of infections in India.

    The data was gathered over months while tracing more than 3 million contacts in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

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    Until recently, most of the research on the virus came from the US, Europe and China. But with India set to surpass the US as the world’s largest outbreak over the next 2 weeks or so, the research has arrived at a critical time. It shows that roughly 8% of confirmed cases later led to 2/3rds of the outbreak.

    With India teetering on the cusp of passing 100,000 deaths – it would be the third country to top that number after the US and Brazil – Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy and author of the study, said in an interview with Bloomberg that his research marks the first time that scientists have had granular data allowing them to actually map the spread of the virus from contact to contact in two Indian states.

    But on the flip side, the researchers found that 71% of infected people never passed the virus to anyone.

    “We’ve never had this degree of information to say, hey, some people are really transmitting the virus in a massive way,” Laxminarayan said in an interview. In contrast with the super-spreader minority, 71% of confirmed cases whose contacts were traced weren’t found to have spread the virus to anyone.

    Data for the study were gathered by thousands of contact-tracers during the lengthy lockdown imposed by the Indian government.  Almost 130 million people live in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

    Combined, their population represents roughly 10% of all of India. Both states reported their first infections on March 5. The data examined ended on Aug. 1.Now, India has nearly 6.25 million confirmed cases of the virus.

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    Source: Science

    Health workers traced the spread using the same skills they’ve used to trace the spread of HIV and tuberculosis. In settings like public transit, coming into close contact with an infected person could carry as high as a 79% risk of infection.

    One notable finding of the study was the role that younger people played in spreading the virus. In the two Indian states, children under the age of 14 often “silently” spread the virus to their parents and family members.

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    An analysis of the risks for different age groups found that the rate of mortality for the youngest cohort was 0.05% for ages 5 to 17. On the other end of the spectrum, the mortality rate hits 16.6% for people aged 85 and up.

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    Read the full paper below:

    Science.abd7672.Full by Zerohedge on Scribd

  • Global Food Shortages Are Becoming Very Real, And US Grocery Store Chains Are Preparing For Worst Case Scenarios
    Global Food Shortages Are Becoming Very Real, And US Grocery Store Chains Are Preparing For Worst Case Scenarios

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 20:40

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

    The head of the UN World Food Program repeatedly warned us that we would soon be facing “famines of biblical proportions”, and his predictions are now starting to become a reality.  We have already seen food riots in some parts of Africa, and it isn’t too much of a surprise that certain portions of Asia are really hurting right now.  But I have to admit that I was kind of shocked when I came across an article about the “hunger crisis” that has erupted in Latin America.  According to Bloomberg, “a resurgence of poverty is bringing a vicious wave of hunger in a region that was supposed to have mostly eradicated that kind of malnutrition decades ago”. 

    We are being told that food shortages are becoming acute from Mexico City all the way down to the southern tip of South America, and those that are the poorest are being hit the hardest.

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    Let me ask you a question.

    What would you do if you didn’t have any food to feed your family?

    Fortunately, for the vast majority of my readers that is just a hypothetical question.  But for many families in Latin America, the unthinkable is now actually happening…

    He couldn’t feed his family. Matilde Alonso knew it was true but couldn’t believe it. The pandemic had just hit Guatemala in full force and Alonso, a 34-year-old construction worker, was suddenly jobless.

    He sat up all alone till late that night, his mind racing, and fought back tears. He had six mouths to feed, no income and no hope of receiving anything beyond the most meager of crisis-support checks — some $130 — from the cash-strapped government.

    I once had a friend that is a hardcore prepper tell me that his worst nightmare would be for his daughter to tell him that she was hungry and he didn’t have anything to give her.

    Many of us can’t even imagine being in Matilde Alonso’s shoes.  Sadly, this is going to be happening to even more families soon, because the UN World Food Program is projecting that the number of people facing “severe food insecurity” in Latin American and Caribbean nations will rise by a whopping 270 percent in the months ahead.

    Thankfully, for the moment the United States is in far better shape.  But there have been serious shortages of certain items throughout this pandemic, and many grocery stores have had a very difficult time trying to keep their shelves full.

    For example, during my most recent trip to my local grocery store I noticed more empty shelves than I had ever seen before, and that greatly alarmed me.

    And now we are being told that grocery stores all over the country are attempting to stockpile goods in an attempt “to avoid shortages during a second wave of coronavirus”…

    Grocery stores across the United States are stocking up on products to avoid shortages during a second wave of coronavirus.

    Household products – including paper towels and Clorox wipes – have been difficult to find at times during the pandemic, and if grocery stores aren’t stocked up and prepared for second wave this winter, runs on products and shortages could happen again.

    When even CNN starts admitting that more shortages are coming, that is a sign that it is very late in the game.

    And the Wall Street Journal is reporting that some chains are actually putting together “pandemic pallets” in anticipation of more shortages…

    According to the Wall Street Journal, Associated Food Stores has recently started building “pandemic pallets” to ensure cleaning and sanitizing products are readily available in its warehouses to prepare for high demand through the end of the year.

    “We will never again operate our business as unprepared for something like this,” Darin Peirce, vice president of retail operations for the cooperative of more than 400 stores told the outlet. If grocery stores sense something is coming and are preparing for another “wave” of this scamdemic, it may be something worth taking note of.

    Most of these grocery chains believe that another wave of COVID-19 is the worst case scenario that they could possibly be facing.  Sadly, that isn’t even close to the truth.

    We have entered a time when global food supplies are going to become increasingly stressed, and it is going to be absolutely critical to keep U.S. food production at the highest levels possible.

    Unfortunately, U.S. farmers have been going bankrupt in staggering numbers during this downturn, and the federal assistance that was supposed to help them survive has mostly gone to “large, industrialized farms”…

    Five months into the pandemic, farmers say the federal payments have done little to keep them afloat, as these favor large, industrialized farms over smaller family farms. In fact, initial payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program – which provided $16 billion in direct support and $3 billion in purchases – revealed an uneven distribution of financial aid.

    An NBC News analysis of the first 700,000 payments showed how corporate farms and foreign-owned operations received over $1.2 billion in coronavirus relief – or over 20 percent of the money – with average payments of almost $95,000. Smaller farms, meanwhile, had average payments of around $300. The figures did not take into account other struggling farmers who are ineligible for assistance.

    Reading those numbers greatly frustrated me, because family farms have always been so critical to our success as a nation.

    U.S. farm bankruptcies hit an eight-year high last year, and they are on pace to go even higher this year.

    This should deeply alarm all of us, because we are going to need as much food production as possible during the years to come.

    In 2020, we have just seen one major disaster after another all over the world, and many of these disasters have directly affected global food production.  For example, in my previous articles I haven’t even mentioned the historic flooding that has been going on in China for months that is wiping out crops on a massive scale…

    Experts from the global financial services group Nomura said that although the flooding is among the worst that China has experienced since 1998, it could still get worse in the weeks to come, with the nation poised to lose $1.7 billion in agricultural production.

    However, since the start of the monsoon season, the area of flooded croplands have almost doubled. Nomura’s estimates also do not include the potential loss of wheat, corn and other major crops. Therefore, China could be facing a far greater economic loss than current projections.

    On my news headlines website, I am going to start posting stories like this on a daily basis so that people can keep up with what is really going on out there.

    We really are facing a very serious global food crisis, and the number of people without sufficient food is only going to grow as the months roll along.

    For now, most Americans still have plenty of food, and we should be very thankful for that.

    But everyone should be able to see that global conditions are rapidly changing, and we should all be using this window of opportunity to prepare, because very, very challenging times are ahead of us.

  • Bill Gates: West Must Finance Global Vaccine Distribution Network If It Wants To Defeat COVID-19
    Bill Gates: West Must Finance Global Vaccine Distribution Network If It Wants To Defeat COVID-19

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 20:20

    In an interesting choice of venues, Bill Gates has just published his latest editorial in the Nikkei Asian Review, the English-language flagship of the Japanese financial publishing and data giant. In it, the billionaire Microsoft founder argues that the US and its European allies should dedicate more government funds for guaranteeing supplies of vaccines for poorer countries, which don’t have the wherewithal to strike deals like the $2 billion agreement that Washington struck with Pfizer.

    Hoarding supplies of vaccines isn’t just wrong, Gates argues, it’s counterproductive – since the only way we can truly eradicate COVID-19 is to vaccinate everyone, in every country.

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    But it’s not just a question of donating supplies. The Western world and its leading corporations must collaborate with government to start ramping up supply chains to ensure that production of billions of doses of the vaccine can be produced quickly once emergency approval has been granted.

    Because we can immunize against the disease, governments will be able to lift social distancing measures. People will stop having to wear masks. The world’s economy will start running again at full speed.

    But elimination will not happen by itself. To achieve this goal, the world first needs three things: the capacity to produce billions of vaccine doses, the funding to pay for them, and systems to deliver them.

    Right now, most of the world’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines is slated to go to rich countries. These nations have been making deals with pharmaceutical companies, securing the right to buy billions of doses as soon as they are produced.

    But what about low- and lower-middle income nations of the world, everywhere from South Sudan to Nicaragua to Myanmar? These nations are home to nearly half of all human beings, and they do not have the purchasing power to make big deals with pharmaceutical companies. As things stand now, these countries will be able to cover, at most, 14% of their people.

    To support his case, Gates cites new modeling from Northeastern projecting that the death toll will be twice as high if vaccines aren’t widely distributed in the developing world.

    New modeling from Northeastern University helps illustrate what will happen if vaccine distribution is so unequal. The researchers there analyzed two scenarios. In one, vaccines are given to countries based on their population size. Then there is another scenario that approximates what is happening now: 50 rich countries get the first two billion doses of vaccine. In this scenario, the virus continues to spread unchecked for four months in three quarters of the world. And almost twice as many people die.

    This would be a huge moral failing. A vaccine can make COVID-19 a preventable disease, and no one should die from a preventable disease simply because the country they live in cannot afford to secure a manufacturing deal. But you do not even have to care about fairness to see the problem with the “rich-country-only” scenario.

    As Gates claims: The only way to eliminate the threat of SARS-CoV-2 anywhere, is to eliminate it everywhere.

    Fortunately, corporations like Pfizer and Gilead are collaborating to ramp up supplies not just of vaccines, but of therapeutics like Gilead’s remdesivir.

    Remarkable progress has already been made on this front when it comes to therapeutics. Pharmaceutical companies have agreed to expand drugmaking capacity by using each other’s factories. remdesivir, for example, was created by Gilead, but extra quantities will now be produced in Pfizer factories. No company had ever allowed its factories to be used by a competitor in this way, and now we are seeing similar cooperation when it comes to vaccines.

    In addition to the manufacturing capacity to make them, we also need the funding to pay for billions of vaccine doses for poorer nations. This is where the ACT Accelerator can help. It is an initiative supported by organizations like Gavi and the Global Fund. Not many people have heard of them, but they have spent two decades becoming experts in the task of financing vaccines, drugs, diagnostics.

    After all, trying to “shame” developed countries for simply trying to protect their citizens isn’t a strategy.

    The best way to close this vaccine gap is not by shaming rich countries. They are doing something perfectly understandable — trying to protect their people. Instead, we need to vastly increase the world’s vaccine manufacturing capacity. This way, we can cover everyone no matter where they live.

    While President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” handed billions of dollars to vaccine developers, Gates claims that the UK and Japan, which have both publicly promised to set aside vaccine supplies for poorer nations, should be emulated by other western nations – cough, the US, cough.

    But it’s not enough to simply manufacture the vaccines, an endeavor that would likely cost billions upon billions of dollars. The west should help the developing world create a network of on-the-ground health-care workers around the world to help administer the vaccines, and report any new threats of zoological transmission.

    The United Kingdom is a good model for what other wealthy nations should do. It has donated enough money for the Accelerator to procure, probably, hundreds of millions of vaccine doses for poor countries. So do countries like Japan. The Japanese government was the first advanced economy to announce a public commitment of 17.2 billion yen ($16 million) on Sep. 15 to secure doses for poorer nations.

    But more are still needed. I hope other nations are as generous.

    Finally, even when the world has the manufacturing capacity and funding lined up, we will need to strengthen health systems – the workers and infrastructure that can actually deliver vaccines to people around the world.

    There is a lot of be learned from the ongoing effort to eradicate polio. One of the most famous photos of the polio eradication effort in India was of a line of health workers. They were carrying vaccine coolers over their heads as they waded through waist-deep floodwaters to reach a remote village. Spotting COVID-19 cases in the poorest parts of the world will take a similar network of primary health workers – one that can reach places where even roads cannot. With good diagnostics, these workers can also sound the alarm if another disease jumps from a bat – or bird – to a human.

    There are, in effect, three parts to Gates’ plan, as he teases in the headline: vaccines are the only solution (not “herd immunity” – God forbid), going “global” is the only right way to do it, and – most importantly – more public money is needed to make it happen.

    Typically, self-interest and altruism require opposite behaviors, but in this rare case, Gates argues, the altruistic thing is also an act of self-interest, since the only way we can eradicate COVID-19 would be to ensure the entire world is vaccinated, spending public money on vaccines bound for poorer nations makes sense.

    In other words, in eliminating COVID-19, we can also build the system that will help reduce the damage of the next pandemic.

    One thing I have learned studying the history of pandemics is that they create a surprising dynamic when it comes to self-interest and altruism: Pandemics are rare in cases where a country’s instinct to help itself is tightly aligned with its instinct to help others. The self-interested thing and the altruistic thing — making sure poor nations have access to vaccines — are one and the same.

    And by building a global on-the-ground health-care network, we will be able to detect the next killer virus before it becomes a pandemic.

    To sum up: Americans don’t need all those vaccines! They’re not even going to take them! Maybe the federal government should turn supplies over to the Gates Foundation and WHO, which are already working on expanding access to vaccines.

    Wait a second: Didn’t President Xi say China was going to provide vaccines to the entirety of the developing world as part of its quest to “atone” for unleashing the virus in the first place?

  • Japan's Stock Exchange Halts All Trading "Due To Network Issue"
    Japan’s Stock Exchange Halts All Trading “Due To Network Issue”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 20:03

    As Asian markets open for the start of Q4 trading, Japanese markets have hit a ‘glitch’ resulting in the halting of all buying and selling of securities.

    Tokyo Stock Exchange operator Japan Exchange Group said in a statement:

    We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your exceptional support for the operation of the Securities Market on this exchange.

    Today, there is a failure to deliver market information, and we are pleased to let you know that we will stop buying and selling all stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

    At the same time, it is not possible to accept orders from that time.

    Recovery is currently undecided, but we will contact you again about future plans.

    Seems like it’s a system-wide issue:

    • *NIKKEI, TOPIX ARE NOT TRADING DUE TO SYSTEM ISSUE

    • *JPX: TOSTNET ALSO NOT EXECUTING TRADES

    • *JAPAN SAPPORO EXCHANGE ALSO HALTS TRADING

    • *JAPAN NAGOYA STOCK EXCHANGE ALSO EXPERIENCING SYSTEM ISSUES

    Nikkei futures are modestly lower with the halt…

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    And Yen is weaker…

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    What will the BoJ do when it can’t buy Topix ETFs?

  • The Individual Against The Odds
    The Individual Against The Odds

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 20:00

    Authored by Kym Robinson via The Libertarian Institute,

    There is a genre in fiction that celebrates an individual’s adversity against seemingly impossible odds. Whether this is a person who takes the war to organized crime (Mack Bolan), a secret agent saving the world for their government (James Bond), a wronged loner lost and bullied by the law and the society that rejects them (John Rambo), one who wants something so bad that they will defy social conventions (Velvet Brown), or even a rogue that hides behind a mask and inspires a revolution against tyranny (V), they are in some way inspiring. They are better than most not just because of courage, but also often principle. They are the outsider, the curmudgeon, and blowhard, or worse.

    In the coming eclipse of cancel culture and layered censorship, certain allegories and metaphorical fiction will become a dangerous device for story tellers to use. It is no longer a method of sedition to lift a mirror up to a wider culture or society, to reveal an imagery that the victims or an outsider may see. The marketplace of varied opinions and diverse perspectives that is supposedly a hallmark of the abstract known as western civilization is becoming less welcome to such variations. Instead, through technology and a paternalistic tendency society is becoming a dystopia tinkering between the prose of Huxley and Orwell, but especially that found in the film ‘Demolition Man.’ It is a creation of the timid, those who shy away from difference while claiming to champion it.

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    “First Blood” (1982)

    Social media, like most innovations, was a promise to open our worlds and to connect and share so many different ideas and experiences. Instead it becomes a series of cultivated echo chambers that snuff out certain viewpoints and celebrate others, always confirming a particular bias. It is with an unofficial handshake that the public, made of shrill and easily offended individuals, unite with corporations and states to mash out a new moral order that mutates in instances of outrage and crisis. It clings to central planning and yet it is not necessarily centrally planned. It is a negative instinct to constrict and subvert any desires and needs for liberty. It is the widespread transformation of language to duplicate words into meanings that could only be conjured up inside the laboratories of intellect inefficiency. It is born from a need to be safe and correct, but it is a dangerous approach to any issue or problem.

    The story of the individual saying no or wanting to be left alone is now one that is deemed selfish and dangerous. It is bad that one or a few may defy the collective good. The abstract religion of social contracts and duty to the state are the order and safety that a majority cling to. A society of so many dependents who demand and extract from the individual hinder productivity and creative instincts while demanding more. It would be as much of a cliché to invoke Ayn Rand as it would George Orwell—both would simplify the moment—but alas, the Randian term “moocher” is perhaps apt at times. The moochers rule. Tyranny inevitably is like a kind chef cooking a frog in warm water slowly until it boils, so that it may not leap for freedom until it’s too late.

    It is with great concern that if the fiction of the past is not censored, redacted, or destroyed that it will be viewed, and that many will view the villains of the story as the hero. The individual, those who fight for freedom and liberty, are now the bad guy.  Those with the imperial conviction to control and impose law and order, however maniacal, are the true heroes, the pillars of society. John Rambo after all was carrying a knife and Sarah Connor was stockpiling weapons. Will great firemen like Guy Montag burn the pages of dangerous books and char the words of seditious thought to maintain a society of ignorance?  It is after all a state of bliss to be hidden from such dangers.

    What does it say about a society or culture that will not leave people alone? That it will not let them be or demand that they must not merely comply, but pay tribute? The one who does not want these conditions is considered selfish, while those who exist at the expense of others are normal. The myth is that the elites and rulers are the only benefactors from the centrally planned nightmares that always lead to tyranny. There are many who benefit from such a regulated society, where grants, welfare, and subsidies feed the ineffective and perpetuate an ideology of employment over outcome. The many planners, agents, and ‘moochers’ all benefit, enjoying the trappings of such a state.

    The individual must speak in whispers like a thief, yet they are the one getting stolen from. They must plan around impositions as though a conspirator, but it is those in conferences and on committees who conspire against them. They are the ones whose homes are invaded if they possess contraband, do not pay enough tribute to the state, or if they speak wrongly on social media. The terror regimes of North Korea and the Peoples Republic of China are often pariahs, yet the more the open nations of the west condemn them, the more they seem to employ their methods of control and order.

    The majority tends to yearn for a comfortable status quo that allows them to enjoy life, often at the expense of others. They are the opulent living city dwellers of the Capitol in ‘The Hunger Games.’ They are the humans inside the pods that will not swallow the pills in ‘The Matrix,’ and those who refuse to wear the sunglasses in ‘They Live.’ To have a bitter truth revealed is painful. That means the victims of the wars, the unintended consequences of regulation, the trampled innocent of policy, all cannot have a voice, and if they do it is often skewered and redirected. The status quo is always preserved. Partisan politics allows the steering wheel to keep turning, even as the direction stays the same.

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    Linda Hamilton playing Sarah Connor in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)

    A man like John Rambo—a vagrant used by his government and then rejected—is a danger not because of his skills and experiences, or because he carries a large knife, but because he wants to be left alone. He is directionless and does not have a generic path in mind. It is a long road, but it is his to take. In time the radical individual becomes embraced and utilised by the state, in life and fiction. In the United States, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. is no longer a dangerous emblem of civil rights defying the order of his time, but a murder victim of cause, likely killed by the very government that now enshrines his name. But his ideals?

    Mack Bolan, a former Vietnam war veteran like John Rambo, comes home to a society that no longer needs him. His family is murdered and wronged by the Mafia. So, Bolan deserts the military and wages his own war. In time, as the franchise succeeds and the 1970s climate of anti-establishment thinking grows into Reagan’s America, Bolan fights the Soviets and terrorists. He works with the CIA and other covert government agencies, and like the Punisher (inspired by Bolan), he serves Uncle Sam. Around the same time as this switch, so too does John Rambo in the sequels. These individuals become implements of the state, however begrudging it may be.

    As the new century loomed it was not merely the state itself that was the danger, but corrupt actors from within. Gene Hackman and Will Smith as an ‘Enemy of the State’ do not go up against the U.S. government but instead rogue elements of it. This becomes the theme as the individuals continue to defy the odds, but only in a watered-down way. Mark Wahlberg in ‘The Shooter’ is a wary ex-serviceman, a loner, living remote with conspiracy inclinations. We are shown this as the camera pans across his library. He is bought in by the government as a consultant but is betrayed and used as a patsy. But again it is the secret agency of corrupt individuals, not the government itself.

    Perhaps the peak of this genre was the 1990s when so many things culminated: the promise of a technological future where liberty and decentralized markets could thrive, and where no more would Cold War threaten the globe with nuclear misery and endless proxy wars. Instead the new century arrived, and it was like the last one. All those promises were betrayed. Like the fictional individuals ultimately going on to serve the odds, Arnold Schwarzenegger would become the governor of California. The man who championed Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and appeared in the documentary series introduction, the Austrian ‘Austrian’ economist of free markets who starred in many ‘individual against the odds’ films, ultimately became another statist. ‘The Running Man’ would go on to run the show in the sequel. It defeats the point.

    The animated film ‘Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,’ perhaps one of the greatest tales of individual liberty told, shows a defiant horse that does not want to be owned and broken in by humans, whether that’s by a native American boy or a U.S. army cavalry officer. In the end the native American boy accepts the horse’s wishes and the cavalry officer realizes that he cannot break the stallion’s spirit. It is a beautiful and basic story, that if you love something you should let it to be free. To respect freedom itself is in a sense love.

    In the follow-up sequel, the whole point is missed. It is a cynical defeat of an established franchise, an all too common theme for any fan that has seen the terrible litany of remakes in the modern era. Instead of Spirit the stallion being free—a rebel—he becomes submissive and a prop to a city girl. It is a complete about face of what the original film was about. The hero of individual defiance is again saddled and broken in by the very odds that he was heroically defying. No longer does the individual stand up to do the right thing despite personal risk, but instead he is relegated to be a vapid avatar for contemporary consumption, spiritless and all too common.

    Perhaps this is the theme: no longer will individuals be this feral radical, but instead be tamed in the end. The uniqueness and dignity of their principles becomes perverted by a mandate devised inside the cauldron of academia by a committee of experts or the reactionaries on social media. In the end, like Spirit the stallion they must be broken in and ridden for some collective monolith. Maybe in the future the spirit of the individual will be found inside the broken algorithms of a machine’s mind, like WALL-E, a lowly robot with basic AI that eventually sees the world for what it is. And the comfortable obese humans wrapped in technology, having destroyed nature—both their own and the wider world’s—will be saved by the touch of a machine who simply thinks for itself and says, “no more.” By then will it be to late? Will the sacred beauty of the individual flower pushing through the filthy mess of the collective be plucked for good?

    Bryce Courtenay, in The Power of One, wrote, “Pride is holding your head up high when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.”

  • Chamath Palihapitiya Slams Airline Bailouts: "Giving More Money To These CEOs Is Idiotic And Dumb"
    Chamath Palihapitiya Slams Airline Bailouts: “Giving More Money To These CEOs Is Idiotic And Dumb”

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 19:40

    Good live TV is tough to pull off, especially on CNBC, but once in a while, an otherwise boring debate about the economy or policy will fly ‘off the rails’ and traders and other financial professionals will turn the volume up and tune in.

    That happened back in the spring, when Ventuer Capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya debated CNBC’s Scott Wapner about whether the Trump Administration should bail out the airlines, and other industries suffering from the pandemic. Palihapitiya famously asserted that the government should “Let them [the airlines] fail” before explaining that these companies burnt up their rainy day funds and took on unnecessary debt to finance share buybacks. And since airlines are asset rich, the businesses will survive bankruptcy intact, along with all or most of the staff.

    This response horrified Wapner, and we chronicled the reulting clash. Thrilled with the response, CNBC has brought Palihapitiya and Wapner together for at least one interview since that initial encounter, and on Wednesday, the pair sat for yet another interview as part of CNBC’s “Seeking Alpha” Conference, which was hosted digitally this year.

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    Remarkably, the two men essentially circled back to their original debate about bailouts, and Palihapitiya delivered on the colorful quotes. Troubled airlines shouldn’t be bailed out, Palihapitiya argued, because they have been so poorly managed. Handing government money to the airline CEOS and their boards would be “idiotic and dumb”.

    CNBC has frequently hosted airline executives and lobbyists to argue the other side – that not delivering on the bailouts could put the industry in jeopardy (while implying that customer safety could ultimately be impacted). But Mnuchin’s comments this morning seemed to put hopes for a bail out to rest, even though President Trump promised that the airlines would be taken care of.

    But instead of blaming COVID-19 for the airlines’ woes, Palihapitiya pointed out that the companies essentially put themselves in this situation. Instead of building up reserve funds, these companies focused on buying back stock and bolstering the company’s valuation. It was “the most absolutely horrid and idiotic form of capital allocation you could imagine,” he said.

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    If governments are going to hand out money to corporations every 10 years, then the government should impose new restrictions on how that money is spent, Palihapitiya said, hinting at support for making share buybacks illegal, or subject to greater restrictions.

    “This has been happening for the last 15 or 20 years,” Palihapitiya said. “If you were going to give these folks money, you should have created some much tighter guardrails for what you were going to do in the future.”

    Instead of topping off the rescue programs instituted by Congress and the Fed, Palihapitiya argued that any future stimulus funds should go to small business owners and individuals only.

    “If you really believe in trickle-down economics, then let’s actually see how trickle-down economics would work. Give money into the hands of ordinary Americans…What I guarantee you they will do is they will spend.”

    “We should be improving unemployment benefits, we should make sure they don’t get forced out of their homes, to the extent that they have loans that are coming due…they need to be compensated,” Palihapitiya.

    Prodded again by Wapner about the tens of thousands of airline employees who may lose their jobs this week, the venture capitalist who recently launched a SPAC of his own, stood his ground and insisted that “not another dollar” should go to “these CEOs and boards”.

    Moving on to the subject of politics, Palihapitiyah dismissed Tuesday night’s debate as “shambolic” and called it a “Dumpster fire” that was “so bad”. However, he also said that, in a way, it was also “incredibly clarifying,” before cautioning that a shift toward brand over substance could one day lead to Kim Kardashian, the pioneering reality TV starlet, to the White House.

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  • Military Personnel Outnumber Civilian Scientists In US Vaccine Program
    Military Personnel Outnumber Civilian Scientists In US Vaccine Program

    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 09/30/2020 – 19:20

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Military personnel outnumber civilian scientists in the United States government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program. With the military so heavily involved in the distribution of this vaccine, is it any surprise that most Americans don’t want anything to do with it?

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    An organizational chart obtained by Stat shows, raising concerns about whether military officials are qualified to lead the massive public health campaign. The military is used for war. Rolling it out to distribute a rushed vaccine signals one thing to the public if you’re brave enough to admit it: this vaccine distribution is a war on the public perpetrated by the government. Wake up.

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    This vaccine won’t be voluntary by any sense of the word.  You don’t have to take it, but if you don’t, you won’t be able to eat, buy food, pay rent, or leave your house that will be taken from you if you cannot pay the mortgage because you refuse the vaccine. That doesn’t sound like anyone will have much of a choice.

    This vaccine could be ready before the election, however, it may not be. Political chaos surrounding the elections is all a part of this vaccine agenda.  The goal is to have everyone tracked, traced, monitored, and under authoritarian control. The goal is the New World Order.

    The Health and Human Service’s $300 million “pandemic-related” ad campaign (propaganda rollout) touched off an outcry, and rightfully so, after Politico reported leaked details. Among the concerns were its funding sources: Food and Drug Administration contributed $15 million for pre-campaign work, while most of the program’s $300 million budget was requisitioned from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention funds appropriated by Congress, Politico revealed.

    Additionally, the Ohio national guard was called upon to help provide “security” for the presidential debate. Around 300 members were sent to the city to “ensure a safe and secure environment for those attending Tuesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland.”

    The military will be increasingly used in the coming months and it’s rollout will be seen as a way to provide peace and safety. Please remain vigilant and prepared. Stay alert and know all the possibilities of what could be coming, as it’ll give you an idea of the additional preps that will be needed. As of right now, refuse to live in fear, and make sure you can defend yourself and your family, especially if you intend to deny the vaccine.

    Changes are coming, so prepare and stay alert.

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