Oct 01

Today’s News 1st October 2021

  • "This Is Chaos" – UK Trucker Shortage Will Inflate Prices Of Goods Ahead Of Christmas
    “This Is Chaos” – UK Trucker Shortage Will Inflate Prices Of Goods Ahead Of Christmas

    The United Kingdom is short 100,000 qualified truck drivers after tens of thousands of them returned to the European Union during Brexit, and 40,000 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) driver tests were suspended because of the virus pandemic in 2020. The lack of drivers has roiled supply chains, resulting in higher logistical costs that could make the price of food and anything else hauled by trucks more expensive ahead of the holiday season. 

    The “Winter of Discontent” is starting to become a reality for millions across the world’s fifth-largest economy as a deficit of truckers triggered widespread fuel shortages this week. There’s also been a shortage of natural gas from Russia that has pushed UK wholesale natgas prices to record highs has transformed the country’s power industry into a chaotic mess. Soaring prices and shortages are reminiscent of the late 1970s and may worsen in the months ahead.

    The government announced Sunday temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers to alleviate extremely stressed supply chains, but that may be a hard task to fulfill considering the deficit is so wide. Truckers who spoke with Reuters said their wages are going up because they’re in high demand, and in return, the cost of everything will rise as well. 

    “Wages will have to go up, so prices for everything we deliver, everything you buy on the shelves, will have to go up too,” Craig Holness,51, British trucker with 27 years of experience, told Reuters. 

    Hauler and recruitment companies are struggling to fill the deficit. One online job posting offered 75,000 pounds ($102,500) per annum salary for HGV Class 1 drivers. 

    “With HGV drivers, we’re now paying them 40% more than we were four months ago,” said Jordan Francis, the commercial director of recruitment agency ProDrive. 

    Holness doesn’t believe the trucker shortage will abate anytime soon because the deficit is so large. He said no young person wants to do this job because the conditions are poor. 

    “Who wants to be a lorry driver – you’d be better tapping away on a keyboard wouldn’t you? Kids these days don’t want to know,” said Holness. “I want to get out.”

    Miguel Brunel,41, a truck driver from Bethune in northern France, said, “this is chaos,” while referring to the deficit of drivers in the UK.

    The British Retail Consortium, the retail industry’s lobby group, told the government last week that new HGV drivers need to be found in the next ten days to avoid significant disruption in the run-up to Christmas. 

    “HGV drivers are the glue that hold our supply chains together,” the retail group said. “Without them, we are unable to move goods from farms to warehouses to shops.”

    From turkeys, toys, and trees this upcoming holiday season, millions of Brits could be in for a price shock or at least some kind of disappointment as supplies could be exhausted. 

    This could be problematic for Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey who said this week that he’s laser-focused on the inflationary effects from supply shortages including labor. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 02:45

  • Vatican To Punish Employees Who Refuse To Comply With COVID-19 Certification
    Vatican To Punish Employees Who Refuse To Comply With COVID-19 Certification

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The Vatican is set to punish employees who refuse to comply with COVID-19 certification by not paying them.

    Yes, really.

    Vatican staffers who are unable to prove they’d been jabbed or who refuse to pay for expensive negative COVID tests will be considered “unjustly absent” and paid no salary.

    The new rules will go into force from October 1st onwards.

    As we highlighted last week, the Italian government has also passed a decree applying to both the private and public sector ordering companies to withhold pay from workers who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

    Those found working without the pass face fines of up to €1,500 euros after it was extended as a condition of entry for museums, stadiums, pubs, restaurants, and schools.

    The unvaccinated were also banned from using long distance public transport, meaning that holidays, travel for work and visiting relatives has become impossible for many.

    A sliver of good news is that Italians continue to hit the streets to protest the measures, with one video showing police officers removing their helmets in solidarity with the demonstrators.

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    Despite many Christians asserting a religious exemption to the vaccination, the Vatican itself is offering no such workaround.

    Pope Francis has been a vehement supporter of the mass vaccination program, asserting that humanity “has a history of friendship with vaccines.”

    “The Vatican has said that it considers it acceptable for Catholics to use vaccines, even those that use stem cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research,” reports the Mail.

    Wow, so Christian!

    As we highlight in the video below, by promoting vaccines and by proxy vaccine passports, the Pope is literally helping to grease the skids for what many fear could eventually turn into a ‘Mark of the Beast’ system that will demand total compliance in order to buy or sell.

    And that’s far from his only anti-Christian position.

    *  *  *

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    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 02:00

  • Escobar: The Living Dead Pax Americana
    Escobar: The Living Dead Pax Americana

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

    Perth in Australia will be a forward base for nuclear-powered and nuclear weapon-carrying American subs.

    Pax Americana was always a minor character in a zombie apocalypse flick.

    Pax Americana is actually The Eternal Return of the Living Dead. “Pax” was never in order; War Inc. rules. The end of WWII led directly to the Cold War. The unipolar moment was an arc from the First Gulf War to the bombing of Yugoslavia. 9/11 launched the Global War on Terror (GWOT), renamed Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) by Team Obama. We are now entering Cold War 2.0 against China.

    What former CIA analyst Ray McGovern memorably describes as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) never did “Pax”. They do War, in unison, like The Knights Who Say “Ni!” – minus the comic flair.

    Take this Knight for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the heart of the establishment matrix. CFR specializes in Kissingerian Divide and Rule. Now that applies, in spades, to the Russia-China strategic partnership.

    Knights overwhelmingly state the obvious: “Chinese power must be contained”. They sell the current, serial imperial debacle as “grand strategic moves”, in a quirky, lost in translation mixed salad of Gramsci and Lampedusa: a “new order” (engineered by the Empire) is being born via “everything must change so everything may remain the same” – privileging the Empire.

    Other Knights even propose the ludicrous notion that the current POTUS, an actual zombie remote-controlled by a teleprompter, is capable of conceiving a “foreign policy for the middle class” , as if the MICIMATT would ever approve a scheme to “advance prosperity in the free world as a whole”. The “free world” has just been stunned by the “prosperity” offered to Afghanistan during 20 “bombing to democracy” years.

    And then there are British Knights, who at least should have known their Monty Python by heart, carping about illiberalism and the “regimes created by Xi and Putin” , which will “crumble” and be succeeded by “anarchy and new despotisms.” Same old Anglo haughtiness mixed with piercing ignorance. Oh, those Asiatic “tyrannies” threatening the White Man’s civilizational drive.

    We all live in an Aussie submarine

    Now it’s all about AUKUS – actually U SUK A. Until recently, only the P5 – the five permanent UNSC members – possessed nuclear-powered submarines. India joined the club, and later rather than sooner, Australia.

    Every major player knows the next American war will not be about remote Pacific islands. Taiwan, though, is a completely different ball game. U SUK A is mostly about Taiwan.

    U SUK A was finalized at the G7 summit in Carbis Bay last June. That was an Anglo Boys Club affair, discussed exclusively by the Biden-BoJo-Morrison troika – and duly excluding Japan, even as Tokyo all but drew a samurai sword yelling its intent of supporting Taiwan.

    The problem is there have been no leaks of the fine print contained in U SUK A. Only spin. Yet it’s already clear that U SUK A goes way beyond building Aussie nuclear subs. Canberra will also have access to Tomahawks, Hornets and even become part of American hypersonic missile research.

    But then, in a slip, Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton gave away the game: U SUK A will allow the upgrading of “the infrastructure in Perth, that will be necessary for the operation of these submarines. I expect we will see…lease arrangements or greater joint operations between our navies in the future.”

    Translation: Perth will be a forward base for nuclear-powered and nuclear weapon-carrying American subs.

    Why U SUK A now? Let’s go back to WWII – and the same old cartoonish geopolitics of benign Anglo maritime island powers pitted against the “evil” Eurasian heartland.

    WWII was the solution to simultaneously prevent Germany from dominating the Atlantic and Japan from dominating the Asia-Pacific (by the way, that’s the correct terminology: “Indo-Pacific” is Empire-speak).

    Germany-Japan was all about an alliance that would be predominant across the Eurasian heartland. Now, the Empire of Chaos is being slowly but surely expelled from the Eurasian heartland – this time by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

    Those with technical knowledge across the Beltway – not, not the Knights – are aware the US is not a match for hypersonic Russia. Yet the Americans believe they can make life unbearable for Beijing. The US establishment will allow China to control the Western Pacific over their dead bodies. Enter the instrumentalization of Australia.

    A big question is what will be the new role of the Five Eyes. With U SUK A, the Anglo Club has already stepped beyond mere intel sharing and spying on communications. This is a military pact between Three Eyes.

    Depending on the composition of its new government, Germany could become a Sixth Eye – yet in a subordinate role. With U SUK A, NATO as a whole, fresh from its spectacular Afghan debacle, becomes little else than a semi-relevant vassal. This is all about maritime power.

    U SUK A in effect is a Quad Plus, with India and Japan, the Fifth Columnist Asians, only allowed to play the role of, once again, mere vassals.

    War before 2040

    Not surprisingly, the first, concise technical and strategic assessment of U SUK A is Russian, written by Alexander Timokhin and published in Vzglyad, closely linked to GRU intelligence. Here, provided by John Helmer, is an essential English translation.

    The key points:

    • the extra subs will create a serious, additional threat; “the problem of combating enemy submarine forces will become quite acute for China.”

    • Geographically, “Australia can completely block the connection between China and the Indian Ocean.”

    • Australia will meet the deadlines only if it lays “more submarines a year than the Americans.”

    • It is “possible to quickly make Australia a country with a submarine fleet.” These “gigantic investments and sharp political turns are not carried out just like that. The hegemony of the Anglo-Saxons in the world is seriously shaken.”

    And that brings us to the inevitable conclusion: “It is worth recognizing that the world is on the verge of war.”

    Even before the Vzglyad strategic assessment, I had submitted the ravings of yet another Beltway Knight – widely praised as a sage – to an old school, dissident Deep State intel analyst. His assessment was merciless.

    He wrote me, “the geopolitical logic is that the China-Russia alliance was determined to be against US interests, much as the Mao-Stalin alliance. SEATO and NATO are being replicated. The treaty between England, Australia and the US is part of the Pacific rebalancing, or a new SEATO. NATO is part of the offset against Russia-China in Europe.”

    On what might lie ahead, he noted that “the coup against the US, Australia, England and NATO would be a French-Russian alliance to break up NATO and isolate Germany. Russia has unsuccessfully approached Germany, and now may approach France. The loss of France would effectively end NATO.”

    He sees U SUK A all dressed up with nowhere to go: “As it stands now, China is in command of the Pacific and Australia and Britain mean nothing. Russia can overrun NATO in two weeks, our adversaries’ hypersonic missiles can destroy all NATO airfields within five to ten minutes and the battle for Europe would be over.”

    He’s adamant that “the US cannot project power into the Pacific. Chinese submarine missiles would finish off the US fleet in short order. The Australian submarine issue is really irrelevant; if the CIA had an organization that was worth anything they would know that our adversaries already can spot and destroy our nuclear submarines without the slightest difficulty. The entire US Navy is obsolete and defenseless against Russian missiles.”

    And it gets worse – at least for the cheerleading Knights: “The F-35 is obsolete. The Air Force is largely worthless, as Russian and Chinese missiles can finish off their airfields or aircraft carriers in short order. The woke US Army is more worthless than the French Army with their Maginot Line. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are paid less than 200k a year, and are second or third rate talent. The US is a sinking ship.”

    Assuming that’s really the case, the – nuclear – war against China in the Western Pacific, projected in the Beltway to happen in the second half of the 2030s, would be over even before it started. Taiwan may even be part of China by then – an offshoot of Beijing always proposing economic exchanges to all, while Washington always “proposes” war.

    One thing though will never change: The Knights Who Say “Ni!” singin’ the praise of Pax Americana to the utter indifference of the unruly plebs.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 23:40

  • No Deal: Infrastructure Vote Postponed After Progressives Refuse To Budge
    No Deal: Infrastructure Vote Postponed After Progressives Refuse To Budge

    Update (2330ET): House Democrats called off a Thursday night vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package after the Progressive Caucus was unconvinced by leadership’s proposed ‘bicameral framework’ to move forward on the legislation.

    To review – House progressives have threatened to sink the Senate-passed infrastructure deal unless the moderate Democrats in the Senate agree to pass the $3.5 trillion social spending package. And with moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) refusing to vote on that legislation unless – according to Manchin – it’s no more than $1.5 trillion, it appears the infrastructure deal is doomed to fail unless major changes are made.

    “I don’t see a deal tonight, I really don’t,” said Manchin, after leaving a meeting with White House officials and Sinema, per the Wall Street Journal. “We just—we need a little bit more time,” he added.

    Democrats were expected to resume their negotiations Friday after pushing off the Thursday vote on the infrastructure bill, the second time they have delayed a scheduled vote on the legislation. The bill faced opposition from liberal Democrats who don’t want to vote for it until the Senate has passed the broader social policy bill in a bid to maintain their leverage in the complex negotiations. The infrastructure bill would fund improvements to roads, bridges, ports and expanded broadband Internet access. -WSJ

    Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) (Photo: michael reynolds/epa/Shutterstock)

    Some aides told the Journal that Manchin may be convinced to accept a $2 trillion proposal, however Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said on Thursday that most of the Democrats want a far larger package, and still plan to vote against the infrastructure bill until it’s passed by the Senate.

    *  *  *

    Update (2140ET):

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Thursday night “Dear Colleague” letter that it’s been a “day of progress,” and that “Discussions continue with the House, Senate and White House to reach a bicameral framework agreement to Build Back Better through a reconciliation bill.

    via Punchbowl News‘ Jake Sherman:

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    According to the LA Times’ Nolan McCaskill, the infrastructure vote may happen on Friday, as a source tells him that House progressives are being presented with a “framework” as we speak.

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    Update (1930ET): President Biden has signed the Continuing Resolution, averting a midnight shutdown and funding the government through Dec. 3, according to Bloomberg.

    *  *  *

    Update (1546ET): The House has OK’d the Senate-passed Continuing Resolution (CR) by a 254-175 vote – avoid a government shutdown at midnight, after the Senate passed the stopgap spending bill 65-35.

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    Next stop, Biden’s desk.

    The bill only passed after Democrats eliminated an earlier attempt to link a suspension of the debt deiling to the bill, which was blocked by GOP senators on Monday.

    It also does not include a proposed $1 billion allocation for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system pushed by GOP lawmakers. That said, the House has already passed a standalone bill to provide that funding, which the Senate may soon take up.

    The move will keep the government funded until Dec. 3, after which they can bring a new Continuing Resolution (CR). It contains $28.6 billion to resettle refugees from the Afghanistan debacle.

    According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), her chamber will take up the bill on Thursday, where it’s expected to receive overwhelming support.

    *  *  *

    Update (1340ET): The US Senate has enough votes to pass a bill which will extend government funding through Dec. 3, averting a shutdown at midnight tonight.

    The bill will next move to the House, which is expected to clear it for President Biden’s signature this afternoon.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the Democrat’s agenda remains in limbo, after Rep. Pramila Jayapal said House progressives were “in the same place” following a meeting with Speaker Pelosi regarding their refusal to vote ‘yes’ on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill without concurrently passing the $3.5 trillion economic blueprint.

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    While Congressional Democrats are nowhere near a deal on a $3.5 trillion social spending package, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planning to move forward with a Thursday vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that’s doomed to fail due to party infighting, Republicans are set to grant them a minor victory.

    On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) predicted that the Senate would pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to avoid a partial government shutdown – suggesting that enough Republican Senators will support the Democratic measure due for a vote later in the day.

    “The Continuing Resolution contains a number of key items that Republicans call for,” said McConnell. “That includes supplemental funds to resettle Afghan refugees, and hurricane recovery aid for Louisiana.”

    McConnell then said it was “seriously disappointing” that Democrats wouldn’t let them fund Israel’s Iron Dome, adding “It honestly baffles me that defensive aid to our ally, Israel, has become a thorny subject for the political left. But overall, this is encouraging progress.”

    “On government funding, what Republicans laid out all along was a plain, continuing resolution, without the poison pill of a debt limit increase. That’s exactly what we’ll pass today.“

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    The CR is a stop-gap measure which temporarily provides funding for the government through December 3rd, at which point Congress will need to issue another CR to fund the remainder of the fiscal year.

    As we noted earlier Thursday, the Democrats’ hopes of passing $4.6 trillion in legislation anytime soon appear to be slim.

    Despite moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia refusing on Wednesday to back his party’s $3.5 trillion spending plan  – calling it the “definition of fiscal insanity,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi still plans to hold a vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that House progressives vowed to sink unless the $3.5 trillion plan was passed in tandem.

    “So far, so good for today,” said Pelosi at a press conference following a meeting with her leadership team, adding “We’re on a path to win the vote.”

    According to Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark, even if the bill doesn’t pass today, the impact will be limited.

    “Whether that vote happens today, and I hope it does, this is not over,” she told Bloomberg TV, adding ““If we haven’t reached that point in our negotiations, our commitment is to getting this entire agenda done, and that will happen.”

    Good luck with that.

    In short, looks like the government won’t shut down – but the debt ceiling and the spending packages remain in limbo.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 23:30

  • The US & China's Battle For Global Reputation
    The US & China’s Battle For Global Reputation

    Out of 18 countries surveyed in two separate surveys by Pew Research and the Levada Center, the residents of only two hold more favorable views of China than of the United States.

    In some of the remaining countries, the race is closer than expected as our chart indicates.

    Infographic: The U.S. and China's Battle for Global Reputation | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt notes, the good standing of the People’s Republic in Russia and Singapore can easily be explained.

    China is Russia’s premier trading partner both regarding imports and exports with a trade volume of 104 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 next to Germany with 42 billion U.S. dollars and the Netherlands with 29 billion U.S. dollars.

    Singapore’s population, on the other hand, is made up of roughly three-quarters ethnic Chinese, and official diplomatic relations between the two states have been thriving since the early 1990s. Still, 51 percent of respondents in the sovereign island state held a favorable view of the United States. This could be seen as a nod towards its role as a mediator in the APAC region that managed to bring together former U.S. president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2019.

    On the other end of the spectrum, Japanese residents hold the People’s Republic in contempt, possibly due to the rift widened by the Second Sino-Japanese War starting with the Marco Polo bridge incident in July 1937 or Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 depending on the perspective. Only 10 percent of respondents saw China in a favorable light, while 71 percent held the United States in high esteem.

    Even though China has reclaimed its role as the U.S.’ leading trade partner in 2020 after President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods hampered imports from the People’s Republic, relations between the two superpowers are still fraught.

    In the latest clash for geopolitical dominance, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian called the establishment of the naval Aukus defence pact between Australia, the UK and the U.S. a reinstatement of a “Cold War […] mentality” and an accelerator of the global arms race.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 23:20

  • David Hogg's Anti-Gun Campaign 'Fades Into Darkness' As Millennials Embrace Second Amendment
    David Hogg’s Anti-Gun Campaign ‘Fades Into Darkness’ As Millennials Embrace Second Amendment

    Op-Ed via The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).

    I don’t have Twitter. If I did have Twitter, I’d only be following Bitcoin and meme stocks. I feel sorry for those constantly exposed to the political opinions of 14-year-old children amplified by their usefulness to “the narrative.”

    The Argentinian Philosopher Carlos Bernardo González Pecotche surmised that the world is in turmoil because people don’t know where their thoughts originate. The opinions of others enter their heads, and those people feel like the thoughts are their own. Not realizing that they’ve been programmed. 

    David Hogg is one of those people on Twitter who I’m glad is slowly fading into irrelevancy. He’s a professional anti-gun activist (with armed bodyguards, of course.) He’s one of the founding members of the March for Our Lives organization, a non-profit almost entirely propped up by donations from the top 1% of the country and billionaires like Michael Bloomberg.

    Recently, Hogg has been on a tweetstorm, and it’s caught headlines in the firearms media world. Here’s what he had to say:

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    You can practically see the mental pat on the back that he’s giving himself while writing the tweet. But immaturity isn’t necessarily the point here. Although Hogg himself is insufferable, this is also how he makes his living. Saying ridiculous things on the internet as bait for others to react keeps him from fading into irrelevancy.

    I want to take a second to address David Hogg and respond to this tweet. I’m assuming that he thinks that he’s speaking for young people in general, or maybe young liberals. Either way, I believe that he’s first wrong (read: “The Trend Has Flipped: Millennials Are Actually Buying Guns”) to assume he’s in the majority and second, naive to think that people don’t have differing political views from himself—especially young people.

    I’m 28 years old. I grew up with Liberal baby-boomer parents and am a product of the early 2000s. I had school shooter drills in high school, bomb threats, and more. I am staunchly pro-gun. Many more people my age are as well. Interestingly, younger people are increasingly opposed to gun control, with the percentage of people under 30 that support stricter gun laws dropping from 65% to 45% since 2018.

    Gun owners are incredibly diverse. Young and old, people of all cultures, races, and political opinions own firearms. I’m not sure if there’s anything that supersedes cultural and political divides, like the right to own a gun.

    And if the recent surge in gun buying (read: here & here) has shown us anything, when the chips are down, and it’s time to take self-defense seriously- people who were once opposed to guns buy guns. We experienced a ton of that firsthand here at TMGN. Nationwide more than 9 million people became first-time gun owners in 2020 and 2021, which continues to rise.

    Now, you probably already know this but March for Our Lives is not a grassroots organization. Major million-dollar donations almost entirely fund it. Only 0.5% of their entire revenue is from donations totaling less than $5,000. Some real journalists looked at the group’s 990 tax form showing that out of the $18.6M that March for Our Lives collected in donations during 2018, $17.8M came from about 74 people donating between $5000.00 and $3,504,717.00.

    So, David Hogg would like us to believe that there’s some army of young progressive anti-gun voters out there looking to wipe away these evil old boomers (who are some of the most prominent supporters of gun control, ironically). Yet, his entire organization is mainly supported by 78 wealthy donors. (If you dive into the data, 36 donors made donations between $100,000 and $3.5M, so maybe it’s just 36 people who support Hogg). 

    Here’s the thing, since the Heller decision in 2008, gun rights have been rapidly expanding. The landscape isn’t what it was in the 1990s. AR15s are no longer weird, quirky firearms that a few hobbyists own; they’re recognized as modern-day muskets. The right to carry a concealed firearm has been significantly expanded since the 1980s, and every day more and more young people get into the sport of shooting and exercise their 2nd Amendment right. David Hogg should come to try firearms for himself; he might just change his mind.

    The recent gun-buying craze sparked by the pandemic and social unrest has begun to truly express younger Americans and minorities and women’s Second Amendment rights like never before. These new gun owners are also across all political spectrums and suggest Hogg’s movement is fading into the darkness. 

    * * * 

    One thing that David Hogg and liberal media don’t want you to see is the massive surge in Second Amendment sanctuaries at the state, county, and local levels. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 23:00

  • Northrop, Raytheon's Hypersonic Missile Conducts First Successful Test Flight
    Northrop, Raytheon’s Hypersonic Missile Conducts First Successful Test Flight

    Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman completed the first test flight of an air-breathing hypersonic weapon last week for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force (USAF), according to a press release from Raytheon. 

    The prototype weapon system is called the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, or HAWC, which performed an air launch from an aircraft wing. There was no mention of the type of aircraft used in the test, but it’s likely a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. 

    “This brings us one step closer to transitioning HAWC to a program of record that offers the next-generation capability to the U.S. military,” said Andrew Knoedler, HAWC program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. 

    “The missile, built by Raytheon Technologies, was released from an aircraft seconds before its Northrop Grumman scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) engine kicked on,” DARPA said. 

    “The DoD (Department of Defense) has identified hypersonic weapons and counter-hypersonic capabilities as the highest technical priorities for our nation’s security,” said Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon’s Missiles & Defense business unit. 

    The test comes after the USAF’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, failed an air-launch test on July 28 and days after USAF Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters he wasn’t satisfied with the service’s hypersonic program. 

    The successful launch of the HAWC is good news for the U.S. who has fallen behind Russia and China in fielding hypersonic weapons. 

    So whenever the next big conflict breaks out, hypersonic weapons and fifth-generation fighter jets will be key at rendering enemy defense systems useless. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 22:40

  • Authorities Threaten Jail Time For Unvaccinated Aussies Who Try To Enter Businesses
    Authorities Threaten Jail Time For Unvaccinated Aussies Who Try To Enter Businesses

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Authorities in New South Wales are threatening to jail Australians who don’t show a COVID-19 vaccination pass when they enter businesses.

    Yes, really.

    NSW Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello threatened people who he described as “fraudsters” with arrest if they try to enter premises with “fake vaccine passports”

    “If people want to do the wrong thing, if they get found out, as I said, it could be jail time there,” said Dominello.

    According to the report, people who also try to enter without showing anything will also be subject to arrest.

    “Mr Dominello reiterated that those who refuse to show their vaccine status when entering shops, restaurants and other venues should be reported to the police,” reports News.com.au.

    Enforcing such a system may be problematic however, as the Police Commissioner of New South Wales recently asserted that his officers wouldn’t be checking medical papers.

    “The role of police in terms of vaccine passports, we will not be walking through restaurants, cafes and pubs checking if people are double vaccinated,” said Mick Fuller.

    We now face a two tier society where the unvaccinated are not only brazenly discriminated against, but actually thrown in prison if they try to engage in basic commerce or lifestyle activities.

    As we previously highlighted, Australians who police merely suspect may be planning to attend an anti-COVID tyranny protest are being intimidated with home visits.

    *  *  *

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

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 22:20

  • Erdogan Alarms NATO Allies: 'Putin Agreed To Jointly Produce Jet Engines, Warships & Submarines'
    Erdogan Alarms NATO Allies: ‘Putin Agreed To Jointly Produce Jet Engines, Warships & Submarines’

    There were some unexpected, surprising agreed-upon initiatives to come out of Wednesday’s Sochi summit between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan which will be sure to catch the attention of the West, given Turkey comprises NATO’s second largest army – also given the prior S-400 and F-35 standoff with Washington. 

    As we detailed earlier, it was the two leaders’ first face-to-face summit in a year-and-a-half, also as tensions soar between the two countries on Syria policy. Their meeting in Sochi was lengthy, lasting about three hours. A subsequent statement from the Turkish side indicated Russia agreed to jointly produce jet engines, warships and submarines – a huge development revealed in state-run Anadolu Agency.

    Image: AFP

    While initial Russia press release summaries of the meeting were vague, President Erdogan divulged some of the key details discussed with Putin to Turkish journalists accompanying him. “For example, we discussed steps to build a second and third nuclear reactor,” he said, a reference to the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear reactor in southern Turkey.

    And then Erdogan said this, crucially at a moment the Lockheed F-35 program is still blocked due to the S-400 issue: “We even comprehensively talked about the steps we can take on [building] jet engines.”

    “Another topic, we can take joint steps in the construction of [war]ships. We will, inshallah, even take joint steps on submarines,” Erdogan described, even bringing up the prospect of space exploration cooperation. 

    “Putin would like to work with Turkey in space. Our teams will study this issue and we will create a roadmap,” he told reporters. “There is even a further offer; by creating one platform on the sea and another on land, we can jointly work on rocket firing tests to space.”

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    Erdogan further doubled down on prior statements saying US sanctions wouldn’t deter Turkey from acquiring a second round of S-400 anti-air defense systems from Russia. He said in a Sunday CBS News interview that “Nobody can interfere” with issues of Turkey’s sovereign defense. “We are the only ones to make such decisions.”

    When pressed specifically on whether Turkey plans to move forward on the next round of S-400 delivery, Erdogan responded with a blunt, “of course”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 22:00

  • These Countries Have An Internet Kill-Switch (And They Admit It)
    These Countries Have An Internet Kill-Switch (And They Admit It)

    Authored by Aden Tate via The Organic Prepper blog,

    What do you suppose would happen if the President of the United States deemed it necessary, for “national security,” to flip the Internet Kill Switch? In these digital times, there should be great concern over something like this. However, normalcy bias seems to have a firm hold on a majority of the citizens of the US, and many are clinging to the “it can’t happen here” theory. 

    The United States has yet to employ this particular tool. However, according to data gathered to examine the financial impact of internet shutdowns, since 2019, there have been 237 major internet shutdowns in 45 countries. [source]

    What is an internet kill switch?

    An internet kill switch is a device/software/configuration that allows one to shut down all internet access within a region or country indefinitely. If activated, the kill switch would prevent everyone from checking social media, shopping online, using online messenger services, sending emails, or anything else involving an internet connection.

    In many cases, this may also include any form of phone contact (it varies). 

    Which countries have already used the internet kill switch?

    Hackers have the ability to down the entire internet system, as we have seen with op article and op article. However, governments around the globe have also resorted to shutdowns, claiming it to be necessary for public safety. For example, India (a democratic nation) was the global leader in shutdowns in 2019, with over 150 in 3 years. [source]

    See if you spot the recurring theme among the following shutdowns:

    Cuba

    On July 11, Cuban citizens rallied in the streets to protest food and medicine shortages and electricity outages. Within two days, the Cuban government began restricting internet access. 

    China

    Back in 2009, riots broke out in Xinjiang. The communists responded by shutting down the internet to the region for an entire year. [source]

    Egypt

    Amid protests, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak cut off nearly all internet access and shut down all cell phone services. The shutdown lasted for five days. [source]

    Iran

    November 16, 2019, Iran authorities flipped the switch, plunging citizens into digital darkness for nearly 11 days. According to an Amnesty International press release, the deliberate shutdown was an attempt to hide the horrendous killings across the country.

    Zimbabwe

    In 2019, President Mnangagwa announced a fuel price increase. Protests against the increase caused Mnangagwa to shut down the internet. Critics called the shutdown “an attempt to hide growing reports of a violent crackdown on protests.” [source]

    South Sudan

    Protests? We can fix that with an internet shutdown. [source]

    Zambia

    Election day, 2021, warranted shutting down many social media platforms and some messaging apps. Although the Zambian government denied the reports Secretary, Amos Malupenga mentioned there would be no hesitation to take appropriate measures. [source]

    Colombia

    Colombia’s government used this innovative means of stopping protests here in May 2021 – an internet shut down. [source]

    The Republic of the Congo

    Another election day shutdown in 2021. This time in The Republic of the Congo. [source]

    Armenia

    Political unrest led to an internet shutdown here. [source] 

    Russia

    I think mentioning the word ‘elections’ regarding Russia is enough to make anybody laugh. Have a pesky election-tracking app you need shut down? A partial internet shutdown can do the trick. [source]

    Myanmar

    Coup underway? Better shut off the internet. [source]

    Ethiopia

    Ethiopia’s government shut down the internet 12 times before blacking out the country for nearly 16 days in 2020. Reports said this was an attempt to muzzle activists demanding justice for the killing of a beloved musician. [source]

    Does the United States have an internet kill switch?

    Technically, yes.

    Under an entirely unconstitutional 1930s law on the books: 47 USC 606: War Powers of President; Chapter 5, Subchapter VI, the President has the authority to wield that mighty weapon.

    The 1930s law reads: 

    (c) Suspension or amendment of rules and regulations applicable to certain emission stations or devices

    Upon proclamation by the President that there exists war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States, the President, if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense, may suspend or amend, for such time as he may see fit, the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations within the jurisdiction of the United States as prescribed by the Commission, and may cause the closing of any station for radio communication, or any device capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations between 10 kilocycles and 100,000 megacycles, which is suitable for use as a navigational aid beyond five miles, and the removal therefrom of its apparatus and equipment, or he may authorize the use or control of any such station or device and/or its apparatus and equipment, by any department of the Government under such regulations as he may prescribe upon just compensation to the owners.

    Perhaps you think this only applies to radios. It couldn’t possibly apply to your laptop or phone, right?

    Don’t forget your devices use radio waves to receive their internet access. In addition, your devices can access Google Maps, which would qualify your computer as a navigational aid. 

    What’s stopping the US Government from labeling EVERYTHING a national emergency?

    “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

    If you consider that America now believes racism is a “public health emergency,” government authorities could very likely deem a public health crisis as “public peril, disaster or other national emergency.” Oh no! The government must shut down the internet! [source]

    Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded — and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency persists.” – FA Hayek [source]

    This bill also gives armed men the notion they can take your equipment. And should you say no? Well, you can read the penalties section HERE. And also, before deciding you’re going down in a blaze of glory, check out Selco’s prediction of how that will work out for you.

    Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020

    Last year in 2020, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard introduced the Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act of 2020 to Congress. H.R.8336 would have directly attacked 47 USC 606, making it not pertain to internet usage. While Congress did not refuse the bill, they left it to sit with no further actions. [source] 

    In 2016, we experienced something similar when the Supreme Court denied hearing a petition to release information on the ‘secret’ DHS internet kill switch protocol. [source] Because we need an internet kill switch, of course. THAT is an issue of national security.

    “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” – William Pitt

    Yes, internet kill switches exist – prepare accordingly

    This website published an article about the possibility of a comms blackout and how to prepare for it back in January. Check it out for some useful and viable communications options. Also, don’t forget the importance of ham radio, although you should know that it’s not completely immune to governmental interference.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 21:40

  • US Warns Mexico Of Massive, Ongoing Sewage Spill Into Rio Grande: '150 Million Gallons Since August'
    US Warns Mexico Of Massive, Ongoing Sewage Spill Into Rio Grande: ‘150 Million Gallons Since August’

    A major pipe rupture on the American side of the US-Mexico border is sending millions of gallons per day of raw sewage into the Rio Grande, International Boundary & Water Commission (IBWC) is warning this week. 

    The agency formally notified Mexico authorities late this week, saying in a statement to the monitoring organization Border Report that “The water that is going into the Rio Grande is downstream of the location where Mexico gets the water under the (U.S.-Mexico) treaty. But, yes, sewage flows into the Rio Grande are entering the international reach of the river.” 

    The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border. Image source: The Architect’s Newspaper

    The IBWC estimated that between 3 million and 6 million gallons per day are flowing into the river which forms the natural boundary along the length of the southern Texas border. Broken pipes located in West El Paso have been leaking since Aug.15 – for a believed total of 150 million gallons of potentially toxic sewage polluting the Rio Grande. 

    Crucially, some major downstream population centers in Mexico could be impacted by toxic water from the spillage. According to a local El Paso CBS affiliate: 

    Sewage flows into rivers and other bodies of water can expose humans who wade or swim in them to dangerous pathogens and cause intestinal infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health organizations.

    The Rio Grande cuts across El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, a city of 1.5 million people; many migrants who approach the border wall to enter the United States surreptitiously first must cross the river.

    El Paso water authorities have cited a ‘cascade of failures’ that ultimately contributed to the major leakage and spill. City Water President and CEO John E. Balliew said in a statement it’s “corrosion driven” and described what led up the ongoing disaster as “not just one break” but “a series of breaks”. 

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    “The pipe is so badly corroded that we can’t fix it. When we go to fix it, we cause more damage than exists at present. So, we’re concentrating on replacement,” he added. 

    The city said this week it’s only completed up to 60% of pipe replacement, so millions of gallons of sewage are expected to continue flowing into the Rio Grande. Meanwhile on the US side of the border there’s concern that the polluted water may negatively impact vegetation, wetlands, and irrigation. It’s just one more border disaster among many currently creating tensions for political leaders on each side of the border, also amid the recent Haitian immigrant camp crisis. US Border Patrol is also said to be monitoring the sewage leak situation in coordination with the IBWC.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 21:20

  • Doug Casey Reveals 3 Ways You Can Opt-Out Of The Rising Insanity
    Doug Casey Reveals 3 Ways You Can Opt-Out Of The Rising Insanity

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: Ever since the outbreak of the Covid hysteria, government control over everyday life has reached unprecedented levels. Petty bureaucrats now exercise control over who can open their businesses, whether you can go to a restaurant, and even whether children can go to school.

    Where is this all going?

    Doug Casey: There are basically two types of people in the world—people that like to manipulate the physical universe and create things and people who like to manipulate other people and control them. The people who go into government, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, are the latter. They’re dangerous.

    The problem is that the average citizen in every country around the world has come to think that the government is the most important entity in society. It’s not; it’s a coercive fiction, a parasite that produces nothing. The wrong kinds of people are being given even more control.

    Once people with a certain psychological mindset—that second type of person I just mentioned—take control, things inevitably get worse.

    In Washington, DC, as well as in many state and local governments, we now have genuine Bolsheviks and Jacobins in control. That’s not to say that they’re necessarily believers in those philosophies, but they’re exactly the same psychological types. In other words, they’re exactly the kind of people who once destroyed France and Russia, reincarnated in today’s America.

    Once these types get control of the machinery of the State, they won’t give it up. Power—the ability to coerce and control others—is central to their very beings. They’ll try to cement themselves in place now that they feel they can get away with it.

    They’ll use their power aggressively, installing counterproductive and destructive policies. The worse things get, the more the public will look to the government to save them. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

    The chances of getting a genuine lunatic as the president are very high. I’m very pessimistic because trends in motion tend to stay in motion—and this trend is accelerating rapidly.

    International Man: As a result of this trend, more parents than ever have opted for homeschooling.

    What’s your take on this?

    Doug Casey: It’s cause for optimism.

    First of all, education is something that you provide for yourself. It’s not something that somebody—certainly not the State—gives you.

    The value—and the original purpose—of public schooling was basically to teach the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. With those essentials and the ability to use a library or the Internet, which places all of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips—you don’t need anything else beyond that.

    The basics can be picked up in the first six or seven years of grade school—for anybody, even slow learners. Beyond that, school just bores most kids and is actually counterproductive. It not only wastes their time and money but actually makes them dislike learning. Homeschooling allows them to make the world their oyster while teaching individual responsibility.

    Secondly, most schooling today—certainly once you get into high school and absolutely once you get into college—is little more than indoctrination. Schools are places where your kids pick up bad ideas from the educators and bad habits from other young yahoos they’re surrounded by.

    Schools do not teach critical thinking—if indeed they ever did—at least since Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. Critical thinking is the habit of questioning all assertions and examining everything that we think we know in the light of knowledge, logic, the scientific method, and your own research. That doesn’t exist anymore in schools. In fact, the government and the establishment don’t want schools to turn out critical thinkers and free thinkers. To the contrary, they want obedient, indoctrinated serfs who will do as they’re told and act as cogs in the wheel.

    I think it’s irresponsible on the part of parents not to properly educate their kids. And that doesn’t mean just sending them off eight hours a day where they sit behind a desk and listen to government employees lecture them.

    It costs an average of about $12,000 per pupil per year—we’re talking a nine-month year with long vacations—to babysit and corrupt kids. That’s an outrageous amount. College, often over $50,000, can only be described as a scam.

    Nobody has more of an interest in making education available to kids than their parents do; certainly not members of the teachers union. If the public schools vanished, it would be a good thing. That $12,000 per pupil could stay in society so that people that wanted to educate their kids properly wouldn’t have to pay the toll twice.

    A couple families could easily get together and hire full-time, first-rate tutors to teach their kids one-on-one, as opposed to sending them off to a government factory to be indoctrinated.

    The school system has become very corrupt from what it once was. Schools and universities are grossly overweight with grossly overpaid administrators. Ninety percent of these phony “educators” should be fired. Furthermore, most teachers now are overtly Marxist, and the rest are dim, but sympathetic to Marxist ideas. Schoolhouses at all levels should be intellectually cleaned, then fumigated, if they can’t be abolished.

    I’m glad many people are dissatisfied with schools and some are doing something about it. It’s one of the few good things to come out of the Covid hysteria.

    International Man: What other ways can people opt out and regain more control over their lives?

    Doug Casey: The ideal solution is to become a PT—a permanent traveler or prior taxpayer—but that’s not easy for most people. As I mentioned last week, even if you don’t want to internationalize, the next best thing is to quit your job and become self-employed.

    But beyond that, in order to have control of your life, you need capital, which gives you flexibility and room to run.

    So how do you get that capital?

    If you’re not in a position to quit your job and become self-employed, then take a second job— part-time. The advantage of that is your income will go up and your expenses, in the way of consuming, will go down. Put that money aside.

    The key is to cut your spending to the bone and save. That means don’t buy that new car or trade up to a larger house. Don’t go out and get a new wardrobe.

    Build capital while the economy and the currency are still held together. Capital will allow you to take advantage of opportunities in the future, as opposed to getting deeper in debt like a serf.

    International Man: All the governments around the world are inflating away their currencies and taxing their citizens at ever-increasing levels.

    How can the average person opt out or at least limit the government’s theft of their savings?

    Doug Casey: You want to save, but saving in fiat puts you on a treadmill.

    If you leave your money in US dollars or other currencies, you’re going to lose everything or almost everything. You really have to learn to invest and speculate.

    Unfortunately, investing in the kind of chaotic, government-controlled economy we’re moving into is hard and becoming harder. On the bright side, the distortions the government is creating offer lots of avenues for speculation. I’ve discussed the differences between saving, investing, speculating, and gambling in the past. But unless you study economics and the markets, if you try to speculate, you’ll probably wind up gambling—which is very different.

    The key is to educate yourself on the ins and outs of the markets—including crypto, currency, and commodity markets, not just the stock, bond, and real estate markets.

    Right now, commodity markets are particularly interesting. For example, I’m of the opinion that natural gas, which is traded on the futures market, is currently around $5.00 per Mcf. I believe it could go much higher.

    I’ve personally sold naked puts to capture the premiums, and I’ve bought long-term bull call spreads. If you’re not familiar with these things, then don’t take my advice. But try to become familiar with these things.

    One of the reasons I’m bullish on commodities is that with the Bolsheviks in office in Washington, DC, and actual communists in control of a lot of countries around the world, commodity production of all kinds is being made harder. At the same time, all the money they’re printing is creating artificial demand, and all the regulations they’re passing are artificially restricting supply.

    Commodities are about the only cheap things left; their prices are going a lot higher. You can capitalize on this as a speculator if you know what you’re doing. But be careful because you can easily wipe yourself out.

    Any savings that you have should be in small gold and silver coins, not in fiat currencies. I don’t see gold as a good speculation at $1800. It is, however, ideal for saving. In addition to providing long-term upside, gold and silver coins are far more private than keeping US dollars in a bank account, which the government can monitor.

    Lastly, if you’re going to keep your house and stay in the same place, you might want to save by buying things like cigarettes, whiskey, instant coffee, ammunition, and the like. If times get tough, all of those things are going to be hard to come by. They’ll be in high demand—and they’re an alternative to fiat.

    International Man: Today, what we buy, who we interact with, and what we say are more easily tracked.

    Everyone’s private information is under assault by a private-public partnership of governments and big corporations.

    Where is this all going, and what do you suggest people do about it?

    Doug Casey: As much as possible, keep a low electronic profile.

    Get off Facebook and other social media platforms. I have a Facebook account, but I never use it or access it in any way for anything personal. It’s strictly a business tool—the same for LinkedIn and the rest of them.

    Everybody should realize that social media is the primary way that they track you, learn what you think, and discover who you are. It’s just not good for that information to be in the hands of the bad guys.

    Of course, everybody has a cell phone today; they’re tracking devices. Entirely apart from that, the things are a nuisance, and most people are addicted to them. I have one, but I never use it except when I’m traveling or at a conference.

    I understand the value of apps for navigating and such. It might be good, however, to have two cell phones. The one you use for talking should be a flip phone. The other can be used selectively for whatever apps you need.

    On a personal level, speak up about these things whenever possible. Even though it’s pretty hard to turn back the tidal wave of statism and collectivism that’s washing over society, everyone should do what they can. You might want to start by going to LiveandLetLive.org, run by my friend Marc Victor, for practical thoughts on what you can do. We just taped a videocast that’s pretty good, in my opinion. It will be released shortly.

    I’m afraid the US and most advanced countries in the world are well on their way to combining the worst traits of George Orwell’s 1984 with those of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

    *  *  *

    The months and years ahead will be politically, economically, and socially volatile. What you do to prepare could mean the difference between suffering crippling losses and coming out ahead. That’s precisely why, legendary investor and NY Times best-selling author Doug Casey just released this urgent report on how to survive and thrive. Click here to download the PDF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 21:00

  • China Power Crunch Could Force Global Food Prices Even Higher
    China Power Crunch Could Force Global Food Prices Even Higher

    Global food prices climbed back to near-decade highs in early September, reviving concerns about inflationary pressures. A newly emerging risk that many have missed and could catapult food prices even higher this fall/winter is China’s difficult harvest season as power curbs hurt the outlook for production, according to Bloomberg. 

    Autumn harvest has begun for the world’s second-largest economy amid power constraints in at least 20 Chinese provinces and regions, making up more than 66% of the country’s GDP. Some of these regions are industrial hubs that have key manufacturing plants. 

    Among the worst-hit are industrial hubs in China’s northeastern heartland, such as Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang, where most of the country’s corn and soybeans are grown.

    “The crisis is stoking concern that China will have a tough time handling crops from corn to soy to peanuts and cotton this year after some plants were asked to suspend or cut output to conserve electricity,” Bloomberg said.

    Already, the power crunch has forced soybean processors in northern regions to shutter operations. There’s a big concern the electricity crunch could slash operating rates of corn processors that make products like starch and syrup, Chinese brokerage Huatai Futures warned.

    Futures Daily, a state-backed media, said the power crunch “will affect the supply and prices of agricultural products, which is a matter of importance for the national economy and people’s livelihood.” 

    China has been a top importer of agricultural products over the last year due to domestic shortages, helping to drive global food costs higher. 

    This means that China might have to tap international markets for food supplies as domestic power curbs may reduce production. If China continues to aggressively source from abroad as some top growing areas, such as Brazil and Argentina, have been dealing with extreme weather that damaged crops, this could very well suggest that global food prices may be headed higher. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 20:40

  • Wikipedia Co-Founder Criticizes Site, Says It Has Slid Into "Leftist Propaganda"
    Wikipedia Co-Founder Criticizes Site, Says It Has Slid Into “Leftist Propaganda”

    Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

    Wikipedia has in recent years drifted away from neutrality and slid into “leftist propaganda,” according to its co-founder Larry Sanger.

    Sanger, who parted ways with Wikipedia almost two decades ago over the project’s direction, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that the online encyclopedia, which turned 20 years old earlier this year, has gradually shifted to follow the narrative of “the news media.”

    “Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger.

    “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”

    Wikipedia has around 125,000 active volunteer editors who work on crowdsourced articles, and more than 1,000 “administrators” who can take actions such as blocking accounts or restricting edits on certain pages.

    Sanger told EpochTV that particularly in the past five years, any individual who is “on the right,” or “even contrarian,” often finds themselves with an article on Wikipedia that “grossly misrepresents their achievements, often just leaves out important bits of their work, and misrepresents their motives.”

    Wikipedia “casts them as conspiracy theorists, are far right or whatever, when they and their friends and people who know them well would never describe them in that way,” Sanger said.

    Sanger criticized Wikipedia, suggesting that it has recently moved to “follow the news media.”

    “More recently, they’ve gotten rid of almost all conservative news sources as sources for their articles,” he explained.

    “And so as the news media has shifted, and as the establishment, frankly, has shifted more to the left or to the left, the content of Wikipedia has followed suit.”

    He previously noted that Wikipedia has banned Fox News’s political reporting, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail from being used as sources.

    Sanger said he is now working on creating a new decentralized network, a “superset of all encyclopedias.”

    “We’re going to be putting all of the encyclopedic content and the world in a single network. That’s an extremely compelling vision,” he said.

    He first announced in March that he was working on developing technical standards that could strip power over social media from giant companies and give users more control over the content they produce and see.

    Sanger created Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in 2001, but left the project the following year and has subsequently criticized the website.

    Wikipedia officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 20:20

  • Robinhood Popularity Plunges, JPMorgan Warns Shares Could Drop 20% By Year End
    Robinhood Popularity Plunges, JPMorgan Warns Shares Could Drop 20% By Year End

    Robinhood founder and CEO Vlad Tenev certainly timed his company’s (much-hyped) direct listing almost perfectly.

    As Robinhood shares languish below their post-IPO high of around $56, JPMorgan is out with a new report claiming the company’s shares, which debuted via direct listing back in July, could shed as much as 20% of their value by the end of the year. It’s also the only broker on Wall Street with a “sell” rating on Robinhood’s shares.

    Hopefully JPM’s traders cleared the bank’s entire position (or indeed, went short), because the report had its desired effect, leaving shares of HOOD down more than 2% on the last trading day of the month and quarter.

    Looking more closely at the report, JPM’s “investment thesis” relies on a series of indicators suggesting revenue growth is about to suffer from a an abrupt double-whammy: a startling drop in trading revenue, combined with a sharp slowdown in customer acquisition. And then there’s always the regulatory wrath HOOD has provoked by making PFOF an industry standard practice.

    Indeed, new allegations that Citadel lied about having foreknowledge of Robinhood’s decision to shut off trading in a handful of increasingly popular meme stocks back in January (and that a high-ranking $HOOD executive placed some questionable trades in AMC and other meme stocks ahead of the company’s decision to halt trading), new pressure has emerged against Robinhood. Still, to put it bluntly, it would be a surprise to see Jim Swartwout, President and COO of Robinhood, ever investigated or held accountable for any potential conflicts which he is being accused of online (and against which his firm has chosen to aggressively defend).

    At this point, it would almost be a surprise to see the story linger on the fringes of the news cycle for another day or week before the ember dies out completely.

    But we digress…

    The first part of JPM’s thesis is the risk of a flood of supply given the dilution that looms as more shares are unlocked for sale, leaving the price vulnerable.

    Robinhood’s float started out small at ~59.3MM shares at the IPO, including the greenshoe (some of which was used up to support the share price during the IPO). Keep in mind, Robinhood reserved like 20% of the shares offered in the IPO for its own users.

    • JPM expects the unlocking of 48.9MM shares associated with Tranche Ia of convertible notes and the unlocking of another 48.9MM shares of Tranche Ib once the registration is effective.

    • It also expects a substantial 567.9MM shares will be unlocked as of Dec. 1, when the majority of the selling restrictions expire.

    • These unlocked shares compare to the fully diluted share count of ~924mn including the greenshoe at the IPO price of $38

    That’s a pretty big jump in just a few months, and with the increasingly dim outlook on the market, expect another wave of insider selling.

    Moving on to JPM’s second issue, the significant slowdown in user growth and trading. These are important metrics because HOOD’s business is “much more transaction based” than that of its rivals (put another way: ‘Robinhood makes money by enticing people to trade as much as possible and, now that its users aren’t minting money every week, they’re starting to catch on to the scam’).

    • According to data from Apptopia cited by JPM in its research, the number of new Robinhood app downloads (a proxy for account openings) is down -78% from 2Q21 and daily active users (a proxy for activity levels) have declined -40% from 2Q21, both substantially weaker than peers.

    • We rate Robinhood Underweight with a 12/2022 price target of $35

    JPM said “while the founders have leveraged innovation, guts and ideal market conditions to build a leading US retail broker, we do not see growth as sustainable and we question the ability of the company to generate competitive margins over time given the focus on such small accounts that have limited room to be profitable.”

    There’s also the inevitability of the Fed’s great QE unwind, which could unleash long-suppressed animal spirits that may ultimately turn on stocks once investors accept the fact that the era of “free money” is coming to an end.

    As lawmakers crack down on Robinhood for “game-ifying” the act of trading, it seems many of its more successful clients have moved on to one of Robinhood’s competitors. Indeed, JPM believes “its position [is] inferior to larger existing participants that have been able to leverage peer-to-peer and payments technology to build and leverage a compelling network.”

    The analysts continued: “While Robinhood founders have built a company that brings investing to those that have been underserved, we don’t see a technological competitive advantage, and we see a brand and product offering that risks investors graduating to other more comprehensive financial institutions over time.”

    Before we go, we’d like to remark upon the fact that, since Robinhood decided to go public via direct listing, it cut investment banks like JP Morgan out of the juicy fees that the investment banks see as their just reward for granting access to the markets.

    We’re not saying that JPM being sore about losing the deal inspired the report – just that we doubt we would see such scathing analysis about, say, Didi (where JPM served as one of the lead underwriters).

    But will JPM’s rivals once again follow it to the kill?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 20:00

  • Manchin Proposed $1.5T Top-Line Number In July
    Manchin Proposed $1.5T Top-Line Number In July

    With frustrated Democrats pressing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to produce a dollar figure at which he’d be willing to vote for their gargantuan spending bill, it turns out that many on the hill already knew what his absolute top-line figure was.

    According to Politico, Manchin proposed a $1.5 trillion package to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this summer in a one-page document that outlined his red lines to President Biden’s jobs and families plan.

    The document, dated July 28, proposes raising the corporate tax rate to 25%, the top tax rate on income to 39.6%, capital gains to 28% and that any that any revenue raised from the bill exceeding $1.5 trillion would go towards deficit reduction.

    In bold text, the document says “Senator Manchin does not guarantee that he will vote for the final reconciliation legislation if it exceeds the conditions outlined in this agreement.“

    While both Manchin and Schumer signed the document, Schumer wrote a note which said he’d “try to dissuade Joe on many of these.”

    “Leader Schumer never agreed to any of the conditions Sen. Manchin laid out; he merely acknowledged where Sen. Manchin was on the subject at the time,” said Schumer’s office. “Sen. Manchin did not rule out voting for a reconciliation bill that exceeded the ideas he outlined, and Leader Schumer made clear that he would work to convince Sen. Manchin to support a final reconciliation bill — as he has doing been for weeks.”

    As Politico notes, it’s unlikely Democrats will come down to Manchin’s figure, and it’s of course unknown if he’ll shift his figure higher (though recent comments suggests that’ll be a ‘no’), the document shows that Manchin does in fact have a top-line number.

    Manchin has met with President Biden several times since producing the document.

    “I wasn’t trying to be a fly in the ointment at all. I’ve never been. I’ve never been a liberal in any way shape or form,” said Manchin in a Thursday press conference after Politico‘s story went to print. “For them to get theirs, I guess elect more liberals. I’m not asking them to change. I’m willing to come from zero to $1.5” trillion.

    Manchin said on Wednesday the top priority of the Senate’s reconciliation bill should be tax reform, and he’s generally on the same page with most Democrats in his proposal — though his corporate tax rate idea is below Biden’s preference and that of House Democrats. Manchin is not alone there: Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in an interview this week he also prefers a 25 percent corporate rate.

    Additionally, Manchin is calling for means testing on as many new programs as possible, including health care, child care and education, “targeted spending caps on existing programs” and “no additional handouts or transfer programs.” Manchin has repeatedly raised concerns about Biden’s plan potentially creating an “entitlement society.”

    Working on Sinema

    Democratic leaders have also been pressuring Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), another moderate Democrat who refuses to vote for the $3.5 trillion bill.

    “Senator Sinema said publicly more than two months ago, before Senate passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, that she would not support a bill costing $3.5 trillion. In August, she shared detailed concerns and priorities, including dollar figures, directly with Senate Majority Leader Schumer and the White House. Claims that the Senator has not detailed her views to President Biden and Senator Schumer are false,” said Sinema spokesman, John LaBombard. “She continues to engage directly in good-faith discussions with both President Biden and Senator Schumer to find common ground.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 19:40

  • Elliott Management Joins "Wolfpack" Of Activist Funds Targeting Toshiba
    Elliott Management Joins “Wolfpack” Of Activist Funds Targeting Toshiba

    Despite the tremendous rise and fall in SoftBank shares over the last 18 months, Elliott Management’s position in the Japanese telecoms-giant-with-a-VC-arm-attached is likely still in the green, partially thanks to Elliott’s strategy of pushing for more buybacks (although all the buybacks in the world likely couldn’t offset more “zeros” from soured investments in early-stage and mid-stage Silicon Valley startups).

    But, for better or worse, Paul Singer and his nearly $50 billion activist hedge fund have decided to apply the same approach (push for endless corporate buybacks) to a less-willing Japanese partner: Toshiba.

    According to the FT, Elliott has joined a “wolfpack” of activist funds who are investing in Toshiba, in an attempt to seize control of the Japanese giant and install management that would be more friendly to Elliott’s strategy for boosting the company’s share price: sell off several subsidiaries to PE buyers, then use the money raised to finance stock buybacks up the wazoo.

    Most Americans probably remember Toshiba for the DVD players, TVs and other consumer electronics it once produced and sold in droves. But in more recent decades, the company has been badly mismanaged. It was forced to sell off its once-prized chips business in 2018 to offset losses generated by a disastrous foray into the nuclear power business. Then, back in June, Osamu Nagayama, the chairman of its board, was ousted in a rare vote by shareholders to oust the chairman of a major Japanese firm in the wake of an accounting fraud scandal. In Japan, taking out board members and management in such a brusque style simply isn’t done.

    Now, the board is at a cross-roads. It’s in the final stages of a strategic review demanded by above-mentioned “wolfpack”. They’re pressuring the company to agree to set of measures that would beef up the stock price (selling assets, funding buybacks). According to the FT, activist and special events funds are “camped out in Toshiba’s shareholder register in the expectation that investors can force the company into a strategy that would significantly raise its share price.”

    Sources told the FT that Elliott’s stake hasn’t yet topped 5% (the threshold at which its ownership stake would need to be publicly disclosed). But in recent days and weeks, Toshiba’s board has engaged in “unprecedented levels” of talks with investors as the “strategic review” continues.

    Ultimately, the goal is a private equity buyout of the entire firm that could value the firm at more than $30 billion. If that doesn’t work, investors are hoping to force a sell-off of Toshiba’s most valuable subsidiaries and will use the proceeds to pump up the stock price the old fashioned way – with a torrent of buybacks.

    At this point, the FT says several of the activist funds have threatened the board and management, claiming that if the “strategic review” doesn’t include pursuing a deal with private equity, they will vote to oust the current CEO. However, interest on the PE side is apparently lukewarm, per the FT, which spoke to two large buyout firms that said they had looked at a possible buyout, and passed. Bloomberg later reported that Toshiba started pursuing a plan to go private back in May.

    Elliott confirmed its in investment in Toshiba to Bloomberg, saying it was “encouraged by the company’s underlying value.”

    “Our investment in Toshiba reflects our strong conviction in the company’s underlying value,” an Elliott spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We have been encouraged by the constructive nature of our engagement with the company in recent months.”

    So, the big question now: will we see Toshiba be taken private by Apollo, Blackstone or one of their major competitors (we’ve heard Warren Buffett is interested in opportunities in Japan)? Or will it be broken down and sold for parts, allowing the financiers to extract this “value” in the form of profits…well, we don’t need to tell you what happens, you’ve probably seen Wall Street.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 19:20

  • Enlightened Algos: Democrats Demand Increased Corporate Controls To Protect Citizens From Their Own Dangerous Curiosities
    Enlightened Algos: Democrats Demand Increased Corporate Controls To Protect Citizens From Their Own Dangerous Curiosities

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in USA Today on the recent call by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) for Amazon to steer readers to “true” books on climate change. It is the latest example of Democrat’s embracing a type of  corporate governance model to carry out tasks barred to the government under the Constitution. Companies are now being asked to protect us from our own dangerous interests and inquiries. An array of enlightened algorithms will now watch over citizens to help them make good choices and read “true” things.

    Here is the column:

    Two centuries ago, rulers sought to convince subjects that they should embrace the notion of “enlightened despotism,” living without rights under the beneficent watch of overlords. Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II summed up the idea with the maxim “everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

    Today, we seem to be living in an age of enlightened corporate despotism, where social media and technology companies watch over what we read and what we discuss to protect us from ourselves.

    That corporate governance model was on display this month when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called on Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to use algorithms to steer readers away from books that spew “misinformation.”

    Enlightened algorithms are already responsible for large-scale censorship across social media platforms that reach global audiences. They “stand the wall” as sentinels against dangerous ideas.

    Warren argued that people were not listening to the enlightened views of herself and leading experts.

    Instead, they were reading views of vaccine skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books, including “falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures, including those written by the most prominent spreaders of misinformation.”

    Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices:

    “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.”

    In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.

    What was most striking about this incident is that Warren was eager for others to see her efforts to promote a form of censorship.

    Once considered unAmerican and authoritarian, censorship has become a rallying cry from the left. Indeed, a new poll shows roughly half of the public supports not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation.”

    In one critical hearing, tech CEOs appeared before the Senate to discuss censorship programs. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, but then pledged to censor more people in defense of “electoral integrity.”

    Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, however, was not happy. He was upset not by the promised censorship but that it was not broad enough.

    He noted that it was hard to define the problem of “misleading information,” but the companies had to impose a sweeping system to combat the “harm” of misinformation on climate change as well as other areas. “The pandemic and misinformation about COVID-19, manipulated media also cause harm,” Coons said. “But I’d urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism, in my view, further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.”

    Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal also warned that he and his colleagues would not tolerate any “backsliding or retrenching” by “failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” He demanded “the same kind of robust content modification” from the companies – the new Orwellian term for censorship.

    Others have sought even more “robust” action. For years, Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, have called for corporate censorship on a variety of subjects.

    Last year, Democratic Reps.  Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney of California wrote a letter to cable carriers like AT&T to ask why they are still allowing people to watch FOX News. (For the record, I appear as a FOX legal analyst). The members stressed that “not all TV news sources are the same” and called the companies to account for their role in allowing such “dissemination.”

    Washington Post columnist and CNN analyst Max Boot also wrote that cable providers should “step in and kick FOX News off.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof  insisted that “cable providers should be asked why they distribute channels that peddle lies.”

    CNN’s media expert Brian Stelter has called for censorship as “a harm reduction model.”

    Twitter, Facebook, and other companies have responded enthusiastically in banning those who question the official view of vaccines, climate change, elections or other subjects.

    Calling for companies to protect us from ourselves is the ultimate in enlightened despotism.  It is ironic that Warren has denounced the use of “racist” algorithms in biometric technology like facial recognition. She objects to the error rate in such algorithms but has few such concerns when other algorithms are used to curtail free speech.

    The embrace of corporate censorship reflects a change in attitude of many toward free speech. Once the very defining right of our constitutional system, it is now more often portrayed as an existential threat to that system. Speech is now “harmful” and allowing the expression of unpopular opinions is treated as an act of an accomplice.

    Once free speech is defined as harmful or violent, the algorithms can take it from there. At the urging of our leaders companies like Amazon can censor “everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

    We can then live under the enlightened despotism of governing algorithms that protect us from our dangerous curiosities.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 19:00

  • Taliban Condemns US Drone Flights Over Afghan Airspace, Warns Of "Consequences"
    Taliban Condemns US Drone Flights Over Afghan Airspace, Warns Of “Consequences”

    The Taliban is condemning the United States for violating Afghanistan’s airspace with drones, calling the flights a severe violation of prior US-Taliban peace agreements reached in Doha, warning of “consequences” should they continue. The statements come a week after the Pentagon said it won’t be asking “permission” to strike terrorists operating inside the country. 

    “The US has violated all international rights and laws as well as its commitments made to the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, with the operation of these drones in Afghanistan,” the Taliban announced Wednesday. “We call on all countries, especially United States, to treat Afghanistan in light of international rights, laws and commitments… in order to prevent any negative consequences,” it added. 

    Prior image of US drone over Kabul, via The Economist

    But in terms of imposing any significant “consequences” – the reality remains that the Taliban doesn’t have much in the way of aerial capabilities to take out US drones, other than helicopters and small aircraft it has seized following the rapid American troop exit over the summer, or perhaps very limited surface-to-air capabilities.

    The Biden administration has continually touted its “over the horizon” capabilities, while Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has followed by confirming there is “currently no requirement to clear airspace with the Taliban.” This after questions over the degree to which the US would cooperate with the Taliban in fighting ISIS-K have persisted. 

    According to Al Jazeera, the US is likely to see its ability to fly drones over Afghanistan despite the protests from Kabul justified based on its counterterror mission:

    …the US has argued that such actions are justified under international law when a government is “unable or unwilling” to address a threat from groups operating in its territory.

    So far it looks like regional countries surrounding Afghanistan have been largely unwilling to host US aircraft and spy planes. This means such aircraft have to operate from bases or carriers all the way over in the Gulf region. 

    Interestingly, on Tuesday in Senate testimony which focused on the Afghan pullout debacle, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley maintained that the US had “adhered to every condition” of the US-Taliban withdrawal agreement. However, he didn’t specifically address the question of drone flights and how he interprets such operations. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 09/30/2021 – 18:40

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