Feb 20

Today’s News 20th February 2023

  • Escobar: The Big Picture Behind The Iran-China Strategic Partnership
    Escobar: The Big Picture Behind The Iran-China Strategic Partnership

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    The key takeaway of President Ebrahim Raeisi’s state visit to Beijing goes way beyond the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements…

    This is a crucial inflection point in an absorbing, complex, decades-long, ongoing historical process: Eurasia integration.   

    Little wonder that President Raeisi, welcomed by a standing ovation at Peking University before receiving an honorary academic title, stressed “a new world order is forming and taking the place of the older one”, characterized by “real multilateralism, maximum synergy, solidarity and dissociation from unilateralisms”.

    And the epicenter of the new world order, he asserted, is Asia.  

    It was quite heartening to see the Iranian president eulogizing the Ancient Silk Road, not only in terms of trade but also as a “cultural bond” and “connecting different societies together throughout history”.

    Raeisi could have been talking about Sassanid Persia, whose empire ranged from Mesopotamia to Central Asia, and was the great intermediary Silk Road trading power for centuries between China and Europe.

    It’s as if he was corroborating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s famed notion of “people to people exchanges” applied to the New Silk Roads. 

    And then President Raeisi jump cut to the inescapable historical connection: he addressed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which Iran is a key partner.

    All that spells out Iran’s full reconnection with Asia – after those arguably wasted years of trying an entente cordiale with the collective West. That was symbolized by the fate of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal: negotiated, unilaterally buried and then, last year, all but condemned all over gain.

    A case can be made that after the Islamic Revolution 44 years ago, a budding “pivot to the East” always lurked behind the official government strategy of “Neither East nor West”.

    Starting in the 1990s that happened to progressively enter in full synch with China’s official “Open Door” policy.

    After the start of the millennium, Beijing and Tehran have been getting even deeper in synch. BRI, the major geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, was proposed in 2013, in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

    Then, in 2016, President Xi visited Iran, in West Asia, leading to the signing of several memoranda of understanding (MOU), and recently the wide-ranging 25-year comprehensive strategic agreement – consolidating Iran as a key BRI actor.  

    Accelerating all key vectors

    In practice, Raeisi’s visit to Beijing was framed to accelerate all manner of vectors in Iran-China economic cooperation – from crucial investments in the energy sector (oil, gas, petrochemical industry, pipelines) to banking, with Beijing engaged in advancing modernizing reforms in Iran’s banking sector and Chinese banks opening branches across Iran.

    Chinese companies may be about to enter the emerging Iranian commercial and private real estate markets, and will be investing in advanced technology, robotics and AI across the industrial spectrum.

    Sophisticated strategies to bypass harsh, unilateral US sanctions will be a major focus every step of the way in Iran-China relations. Barter is certainly part of the picture when it comes to trading Iranian oil/gas contracts for Chinese industrial and infrastructure deals.

    It’s quite possible that Iran’s sovereign wealth fund – the National Development Fund of Iran – with holdings at estimated $90 billion, may be able to finance strategic industrial and infrastructure projects.

    Other international financial partners may come in the form of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the NDB – the BRICS bank, as soon as Iran is accepted as a member of BRICS+: that may be decided this coming August at the summit in South Africa. 

    The heart of the matter of the strategic partnership is energy. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) pulled out of a deal to develop Phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars gas field, adjacent to Qatar’s section.

    Yet CNPC can always come back for other projects. Phase 11 is currently being developed by the Iranian energy company Petropars.

    Energy deals – oil, gas, petrochemical industry, renewables – will boom across what I dubbed Pipelineistan in the early 2000s.

    Chinese companies will certainly be part of new oil and gas pipelines connecting to the existing Iranian pipeline networks and configuring new pipeline corridors.

    Already established Pipelineistan includes the Central Asia-China  pipeline, which connects to China’s West-East pipeline grid, nearly  7,000 km from Turkmenistan to the eastern China seaboard; and the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline (2,577 km, from northwest Iran to the Turkish capital). 

    Then there’s one of the great sagas of Pipelineistan: the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline, previously known as the Peace Pipeline, from  South Pars to Karachi.

    The Americans did everything in the book – and off the books – to stall it, delay it or even kill it. But IP refused to die; and the China-Iran strategic partnership could finally make it happen.

    A new geostrategic architecture

    Arguably, the central node of the China-Iran strategic partnership is the configuration of a complex geostrategic economic architecture:  connecting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship of BRI, to a two-pronged Iran-centered corridor.

    This will take the form of a China-Afghanistan-Iran corridor and a China-Central Asia-Iran corridor, thus forming what we may call a geostrategic China-Iran Economic Corridor.

    Beijing and Tehran, now on overdrive and with no time to lose, may face all manner of challenges – and threats – from the Hegemon; but their 25-year strategic deal does honor historically powerful trading/ merchant civilizations now equipped with substantial manufacturing/ industrial bases and with a serious tradition in advanced scientific innovation.

    The serious possibility of China-Iran finally configuring what will be a brand new, expanded strategic economic space, from East Asia to West Asia, central to 21st century multipolarity, is a geopolitical tour de force.

    Not only that will completely nullify the US sanction obsession; it will direct Iran’s next stages of much needed economic development to the East, and it will boost the whole geoeconomic space from China to Iran and everyone in between.

    This whole process – already happening – is in many aspects a direct consequence of the Empire’s “until the last Ukrainian” proxy war against Russia.  

    Ukraine as cannon fodder is rooted in Mackinder’s heartland theory:  world control belongs to the nation that controls the Eurasian land mass.

    This was behind World War I, where Germany knocking out Russia created fear among the Anglo-Saxons that should Germany knock out France it would control the Eurasian land mass.

    WWII was conceived against Germany and Japan forming an axis to control Europe, Russia and China. 

    The present, potential WWIII was conceived by the Hegemon to break a friendly alliance between Germany, Russia and China – with Iran as a privileged West Asia partner.

    Everything we are witnessing at this stage spells out the US trying to break up Eurasia integration.

    So it’s no wonder that the three top existential “threats” to the American oligarchy which dictates the “rules-based international order” are The Three Sovereigns: China, Russia and Iran.  

    Does that matter? Not really. We have just seen that while the dogs (of war) bark, the Iran-China strategic caravan rolls on.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 23:30

  • Iran Reportedly On Cusp Of Making Nukes Having Enriched Uranium To 84% Purity
    Iran Reportedly On Cusp Of Making Nukes Having Enriched Uranium To 84% Purity

    Inspectors from the UN atomic agency discovered uranium enriched to 84% purity in Iran last week, a level just below that needed for nuclear weapons, Bloomberg reported Sunday, citing two unnamed senior diplomats. Until now, Iran had been known to have enriched uranium to 60%, while a purity of 90% is needed to produce nuclear weapons.

    The IAEA said in a tweet that it was “aware of recent media reports relating to uranium enrichment levels in Iran.” Director-General Rafael Grossi noted that the agency was in talks with Iran regarding the results of recent inspections, the tweet added.

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

    The International Atomic Energy Agency is trying to clarify how Iran accumulated the uranium enriched to 84% purity — the highest level found by inspectors in the country to date. Iran had previously told the IAEA that its centrifuges were configured to enrich uranium to a 60% level of purity. The IAEA has been preparing its quarterly Iran safeguards report ahead of a March 6 Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, where the Persian Gulf nation’s nuclear work will figure prominently on the agenda.

    The report did not say where the highly enriched material was found, and comes after last month’s unannounced inspection at the Fordo nuclear site, which found two advanced centrifuges connected in a way that the Iranians had not declared to inspectors. Iran said it provided “explanations” to the inspector who reported the change and that he then “realized his mistake.”

    In a joint response at the time, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany dismissed Iran’s claim as “inadequate.”

    Various centrifuge machines line a hall at the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility, on April 17, 2021

    Also in January, IAEA Director-General  Grossi told European Parliament lawmakers Iran had “amassed enough nuclear material for several nuclear weapons — not one at this point.” Speaking about Iran’s recent atomic activities, including enriching uranium well beyond the limits of the landmark 2015 deal to curb its nuclear capabilities — Grossi said Tehran’s trajectory “is certainly not a good one.”

    The latest development comes as Iran is increasingly isolated from the West and nuclear talks with world powers remain suspended. The country has also faced widespread condemnation for its crackdown on major protests and the US and European Union have tightened sanctions on Iran over its military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    As Bloomberg notes, inspectors now need to determine whether Iran intentionally produced the material, or whether the concentration was an unintended accumulation within the network of pipes connecting the hundreds of fast-spinning centrifuges used to separate the isotopes. It’s the second time this month that monitors have detected suspicious enrichment-related activities.

    Iran hasn’t submitted required forms declaring its intention to raise uranium enrichment levels at two facilities near the towns of Natanz and Fordow, according to one diplomat. Even if the detected material was mistakenly accumulated because of technical difficulties in operating the centrifuge cascades — something that has happened before — it underscores the danger of Iran’s decision to produce highly enriched uranium, the other diplomat said. The IAEA has said levels even at just 60% are technically indistinguishable from the level needed for a nuclear weapon. Most nuclear power reactors use material enriched to 5% purity.

    The news comes just hours after earlier in Sunday, Israel blamed Iran for a Feb. 10 attack on an oil tanker in the Arabian Sea. The incident came about a fortnight after a drone strike on a weapons depot near Iran’s city of Isfahan that Tehran blamed on Israel.

    Iran’s deal with world powers, known as the JCPOA, collapsed after the United States withdrew from it in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump. The JCPOA gave Iran sanctions relief in return for the curbs and inspections of its nuclear facilities. After Washington withdrew, claiming the deal did not go far enough in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Iranians dropped many of their own commitments to the pact and ramped up uranium enrichment. The deal had set a maximum enrichment threshold of 3.67%.

    Negotiations that started in April 2021 to revive the agreement have since stalled. Iran said in November it had begun producing uranium enriched to 60% at Fordo, an underground facility that reopened three years ago after the breakdown of the JCPOA.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 23:00

  • Four Hypotheses About The Secular-Corporatist Global Elite
    Four Hypotheses About The Secular-Corporatist Global Elite

    Authored by Dr. James Alexander via The Daily Sceptic,

    Everyone has a theory about what is going on. But many are partial, or fragmentary, or too simple in explanation – attributing too much significance to ‘capitalism’ or ‘globalism’ or ‘opportunism’ or ‘unintended consequences’. We have to keep trying to make sense of the whole scenario. And I mean that while the exact and quantitative writers have to keep writing – as the Daily Sceptic regulars do – so do those of us who write about things less exact.

    Let us begin with a few grand hypotheses about what is going on. Rene Guenon’s hypothesis, first sketched around 1930, was that all civilisations possess spiritual and temporal powers and so somehow incorporate a tension between the two: but that, for the first time in history, our modernity from any time after 1500 placed the temporal above the eternal, the material above the spiritual: in short, ‘state’ above ‘church’. There were a few related hypotheses offered at the same time: such as Julien Benda’s hypothesis that the clercs, or intellectuals, had shifted their concern: so the immense value they had always attributed to unworldly matters was now attributed to worldly matters. That was to say, the intellectuals were now corrupt, coming after filthy lucre.

    An American friend of mine recently drew my attention to some of the recent writings of a novelist and essayist, Paul Kingsnorth. Originally an anti-capitalist, he thought he was on the Left, and now finds himself more or less on the Right. His hypothesis is that the decline of Christianity in our civilization – the decline of the eternal and spiritual – coincides and was probably ultimately caused by the rise of what he calls ‘the myth of progress’. Progress is the conviction that the world, this world, is getting better. This myth is the sort of thing we may associate with Francis Bacon or John Stuart Mill, or indeed Bayle, Mandeville, Voltaire, Smith, Hegel, Comte, Marx – more or less everyone of the 17th to 19th centuries but for the most extreme Bossuet or Maistre types, and but for Burke at the very end of his life. Kingsnorth builds a very effective vision of history on this hypothesis, which enables him to explain why leftists and corporatists are so agreed nowadays. They all, he says, want progress. They are all contributing to what he calls the Machine.

    Let us accept these two hypotheses. But I have to add a third, which adds some inner complication to the second, and thus renders the whole scenario a bit more dynamic. It may even explain why there is so much confusion about what has gone on. The hypothesis is that there was never a single ‘myth of progress’: the power of the myth of progress was that it contained an inner diremption, as translators of Hegel used to call it: an inner division. There were two rival positions, which disagreed on the how even while they agreed on the what. The what was an absolute presupposition – something so fundamental it was never questioned by either side. As is ever the case, the disagreement in the foreground distracted from the deeper agreement which dominated everything in the background.

    What they agreed on was that progress was happening and should happen. What they disagreed on was how this was supposed to take place. I am of course simplifying here, but to simplify an argument into two positions is a great deal less simple than simplifying it into one position.

    On one side, there was the argument that progress was occurring whether we liked it or not. It was occurring through what Adam Smith called the invisible hand, what Samuel Johnson called the secret concatenation, what we now sometimes call the law of unintended consequences. This is the process by which many humans, in pursuit of their own individual interests, contributed to the emergence of a good which none had ever intended, and which none had anticipated, but which could be understood in retrospect.

    On the other side, there was the argument that progress would only occur if we adopted the right rational beliefs, the correct enlightened views (liberté, égalité, fraternité, etc.), and set our minds to imposing on the world the policies or schemes suggested by the right rational beliefs and the correct enlightened views. This was to emphasise planning rather than unintended consequences: and planning could only be effective if it was carried out by those in power. So the powerful had to be subjugated by the experts in enlightenment.

    The difference between these two positions is that one sees an unconscious process, the other sees a conscious impetus. These two positions have dominated political debate for two centuries: by and large, one side has favoured markets and independent private and apparently (but not actually or eventually) selfish activity, and the other side has favoured a cameralism, colbertism or comtism of scientific planning and collective public activity.

    In practice, of course, the two have been mixed together, given a variety of names, and some people who began on one side have ended up on the other: consider John Stuart Mill’s or T.H. Green’s drift from liberalism to socialism; but also consider Kingsley Amis’s, Paul Johnson’s and John Osborne’s drift in the other direction. Unpicking all this is the devil of a job: and it should be left to historians who have the patience for it. But historians usually leave everything only slightly less complicated than they found it: or, let’s say, one step more complicated than previous historians left it. So all this requires some explaining: and explaining it in the abstract, as I do here, certainly makes it possible to explain why Liberals have sometimes been on one side or the other, and why Conservatives are just as quixotic: some Conservatives have favoured the plan; others favoured the invisible hand. There is no certain logic in any of this politics. No name in politics has any fixed meaning – except when we give it one.

    The point of this hypothesis is to say that all of the politics of the last two centuries was dominated by arguments about whether progress would take place in the observance or in the breach, so to speak: whether it would have to be consciously theorised and then imposed by some careful policy, or whether it would have to arise without deliberate planning in such a way that only later historians would try to understand it fully. But this has come to an end. We are now at the next stage.

    Part of this is because, as Kingsnorth says, the myth of progress – though not entirely dead – is having the last rites. Arguably it has been in trouble since the 1890s, and was jolted by the First World War; but has suffered its recent shocks since the 1970s, what with pollution, population, stagflation, ozone, carbon dioxide, subprime mortgages, and so on. For the moment, the globalists are unsure exactly how to square the circle of wanting ‘progress’ (or, at least, wanting to be ‘progressive’) and wanting ‘sustainability’ at the same time. If we have a myth at the moment it is surely the myth of sustainability. Perhaps the globalists and the localists like Kingsnorth will find that though they disagree on much – COVID-19, for instance – they agree on sustainability. The myth of sustainability is that by retreating to local life and luddism or by advancing to technological repurposing and rewilding and transhumanism we can settle on a mode of existence which will enable us to survive in a less frenetic, destructive, galloping manner.

    But there is something to be added to this, a fourth hypothesis, and this is really the crowning hypothesis. I have said that for a few centuries there was planning versus laissez-faire, or consciousness versus unintended consequences – both trying to find out how to make the world, this world, better. But there is something else. The fourth hypothesis is that some figures in the early nineteenth century glimpsed that the two positions could be fused. Hegel was one of these figures; even Marx. There were others; and are many now. Fusion meant something like the following

    Until now we have made the mistake of thinking that good can be imposed consciously – usually through religious precepts – but we have discovered, courtesy of Mandeville, Smith and the economists, that good can be achieved through unintended consequences. This, however, does not mean that we should adopt laissez-faire politics: on the contrary, now that we understand unintended consequences, we know how the whole unconscious system of the world works, and since we know how to incorporate our knowledge of this into our politics, we can finally achieve a perfect scientic-and-moral or evidential-and-justified world order.

    Is this clear? The Scottish Enlightenment created the empirical expert, who was fused with the morally certain conscious progressive, to become the hope of the world. Doubtless, most of us have abandoned Hegelian and Marxist fantasies of ‘the end of history’ or of ‘emancipation’, but I think that the shadow of these fantasies survived and has come to final fruition in the recent scientific-and-moral majoritarianism seen clearly since COVID-19 arrived in the world.

    If I am right about this fourth hypothesis, then it explains why we are so confused. We cannot make sense of our situation by using the old language of ‘collectivism’ versus ‘individualism’. The fact is that in our post-progressive era, the experts feel more justified than ever in imposing on everyone an ‘evidence-based’ and ‘morally-justified’ set of protocols and precepts. They feel more justified because they are combining knowledge of how things work individually (through modelling and observation of unconscious processes or of unintended consequences) with certainty about what it is right to do collectively (given that the old fantasies of progress have been modified by a puritanical and restraining ideology of sustainability and survival, plus diversity, equity and inclusion – which incidentally serves more as a restraining impetus than an anticipation of Marxist emancipation).

    This is not only toxic but tangled. The levels of hypocrisy and self-deception involved in this are formidable. The globalists have an ironclad doctrine in their world-saving sustainable politics, or ‘sustainabilitics’. It is almost unassailable, since it draws on the greatest achievements of natural and moral science. It is of course powered by ancient acquisitive greed, but also by sentiment for those who require to be levelled up, or offered something in exchange for their lack of privilege; and, besides, it makes the world better, ‘saves’ the planet, and gilds the cages of the unprivileged and the palaces of the privileged in the same foolish golden moral lacquer.

    Perhaps, as Guenon and Kingsnorth glimpse – also Delingpole and Hitchens – the truth is that we need to actually work our way back through the whole Age of Sustainability and Age of Progress to the Age of Faith. Certainly, someone or something needs to force these ‘elites’ to submit to a higher vision: and I think that the only way we can make sense of this at the moment is to imagine that a church or prophet or philosopher could strike down their state-corporate secularity, show them that their faith is just an ideology serving their interests, and that they should submit to a genuinely graceful doctrine that can admit fault, error, even sin. This would not be done by public apology, or hypocritical political display, but by interrogating their own souls.

    I am certain not saying that this is what will happen, or even that it should happen (or that it could): but it is certainly the type of thing that needs to happen. That is, it is the type of thing we ought to imagine happening. What will happen will either be more of the same old White Swannery, or perhaps some unexpected ‘Black Swan’ event (not necessarily a good thing: we seem to be overly fond of crisis at the moment). But, either way, a reactionary sensibility seems to be the only one which is capable of exhibiting any awareness of what is going on.

    For the sake of clarity, let me again state the four hypotheses about what has been going on:

    1. Through all ages there has been a balance of spirituality and secularity. In our modernity, secularity is dominant. There is only this world.

    2. For three or so centuries we have believed that this world is getting better and should get better. This is the ‘myth of progress’.

    3. There was always disagreement about progress: some supposed it was happening as a result of accident and individual interest; others supposed it could only happen as a result of deliberate design.

    4. But we should not ignore that there has been a very clever fusion of the two positions: a fusion which has not faded away with the fading of the ‘myth of progress’ but which survives to support the strange and novel politics of what we could call the ‘myth of sustainability’. This fusion is extremely condescending and sure of itself because it combines scientific certainty about what has gone on unconsciously to better the world with moral certainty about what should now be done consciously to better the world. It appears to harness the individual and the collective together in a way that is meant to make gainsaying impossible.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 22:30

  • The World Wants To Be Deceived
    The World Wants To Be Deceived

    Authored by Edward Curtin via off-guardian.org,

    My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him.  It’s an old truth that has not changed a bit over the centuries.

    I think, however, it would be more linguistically accurate to say that most people want to be deceived, for the world, the earth doesn’t give a damn, as the French poet Jacques Prévert reminds us in “Song in the Blood”:

    There are great puddles of blood on the world
    where’s it all going all this spilled blood
    is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk
    funny kind of drunkography then
    so wise…so monotonous…
    No the earth doesn’t get drunk
    the earth doesn’t turn askew
    it pushes its little car regularly its four seasons
    rain…snow
    hail…fair weather
    never is it drunk
    […]
    It doesn’t give a damn
    The earth

    But people, the thinking reeds as Pascal called us, we, who through the support of wars and violence of all sorts, care just enough to want to be deceived as to what we are doing by making so much blood that is inside people get to the outside for the earth to drink.

    I could, of course, quote liberally from truth-tellers down through history who have said the same thing about self-deception with all its shades and nuances. Those quotations are endless.  Why bother?  At some very deep level in the recesses of their hearts, people know it’s true. 

    I could make a pretty essay here, be erudite and eloquent, and weave a web of wisdom from all those the world says were the great thinkers because they are now dead and can no longer detect hypocrisy.

    For the desire to be deceived and hypocrisy (Greek hypokrites, stage actor, a pretender) are kissing cousins.  I write this to try to say something of value about the mass idiocy of the media’s daily barrage of lies and stupidities that pass for news on the front pages and newscasts of the corporate media.  And the people who believe them.

    It is not easy. No matter how obviously absurd the claims about Chinese “spy” balloons, the shooting down of unidentified flying objects, reports of how Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, all the support for presidents and prime ministers who shill for the war industries, etc. – a list that could be extended indefinitely on a daily basis – these media are relentless in presenting government propaganda juxtaposed with trivia.

    When you think they must realize they have gone too far since even a moron could see through their fabrications, they double down.  And I am referring only to what they do report, not what they omit – e.g. how the US has restricted aid to the earthquake victims in Syria or Seymour Hersh’s report on the US blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, two examples of terror by a terrorist state that must be protected at all costs.  This is the protection racket by omission and commission.

    Maybe an anecdote would help.

    A week ago, I ran into an old friend at a coffee shop.  Hersh’s article, aspects of which I question, had just come out and I asked him if he had seen it.  He said he hadn’t but didn’t know anything about such pipelines being blown up.

    I was stunned.  A devout consumer of mainstream media, yet he somehow missed this major September 2022 event in the U.S. war against Russia that was reported widely by the media he relies upon.  Those media went on to suggest that Russia blew up its own pipelines, a claim beyond ridicule but one that was part of its war propaganda narrative.

    My friend is a guy who has strong opinions about everything and finds NPR, The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, etc. to be credible news sources.  How could he have missed one of the major stories of 2022, one that The New York Times, etc. was reporting on into December, still suggesting that Russia did the deed? 

    How could he have missed the pipeline story whose reverberations spread through all aspects of the US war against Russia via Ukraine when it was referenced in so many reports of gas and oil prices, a cold winter for Europe, and so many other issues?  Its ramifications are manifold and have been reported as such, but he had never heard of it.  I was stunned.

    I wanted to quote him Dylan’s facetious words from “The Ballad of the Thin Man”: “’Cause something is happening/And you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?”  But I did not.

    I have spent a week wondering how it is possible that he didn’t know anything about the pipeline explosions. I am sure he wasn’t lying to me.  So how explain it?

    In the interim, as I have been trying to comprehend these matters, the Super Bowl with its mesmeric half-time spectacle replete with crotch grabbing has come and gone, and I have read an interesting article by Ethan Strauss, a sports journalist, “Why America Needs Football. Even its Brutality” that raises important questions.

    Much has been written about football’s violence and the injuries it causes, the most recent example being the near fatal injury to Damar Hamlin of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills that garnered headlines for weeks (even though why he suffered cardiac arrest has been left unanswered since that would raise the COVID vaccine problem, which is also taboo).

    Strauss notes the many arguments calling for the banning of football – the war game – because of its violence.  He notes that it is very true that football is very violent but that this is part of its great appeal.  He writes:

    And the NFL gives Americans that war, as spectacle, week after week.

    Today, at 6:30 p.m., eastern time, begins the biggest spectacle of them all: the Super Bowl, where we channel those ancient animal spirits into a highly commercialized event that ends with fireworks and a shiny trophy.

    We should celebrate that.

    He doesn’t argue for the celebration of war, which he opposes, but for the war-like game of football.  To Malcolm Gladwell’s statement in support of the banning of football as “a moral abomination” – “This is a sport that is living in the past that has no connection to the realities to the game right now and no connection to American society.” – he responds quite rightly that Gladwell is wrong:

    In 2022, 82 of the top 100 TV shows in America were NFL games, and the top 50 most viewed sporting events were football games or events that immediately followed football games. By contrast, in 2016, only 33 of the top 50 were football-related. The country has lost interest in so much else, but football remains a huge draw and, in fact, is gaining relative market share.

    Americans love violence, not just the military propaganda that precedes the Super Bowl game, but the smashing hits that players make and take in the games.  It is hard to deny.  Strauss goes on to show how over ninety percent of former NFL players who suffer from daily lifelong pain say they would do it again.  The violence is intoxicating and Americans get drunk on it.  It is the American Way.

    I don’t agree with all of Strauss’s points or assumptions, especially his imperative that “we have war within us, whether or not there’s one to wage,” but he clearly is right that despite all the rhetoric about how terrible violence is, there is something about it that Americans love.  D. H. Lawrence’s point a century ago still applies: “The essential America soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.  It has never yet melted.”

    But this killer soul must be hidden behind a wall of deceptions as the U.S. warfare state ceaselessly wages wars all around the world.  It must be hidden behind feel good news stories about how Americans really care about others, but only others that they are officially allowed to care about. Not Syrians, Yemenis, Russian speakers of the Donbass, Palestinians, et al.

    The terrorist nature of decades upon decades of U.S. savagery and the indifference of so many Americans go hand-in-hand but escape notice in the corporate media.  The major theme of these media is that the United States government is the great defender of freedom, peace, and democracy.  Every once in a while, a scapegoat, one rotten apple in the barrel, is offered up to show that all is not perfect in paradise.  But essentially it is one massive deception.

    There’s a make-believe quality to this vast spectacle of violent power and false innocence that baffles the mind.  To see and hear the corporate masked media magicians’ daily reports is to enter a world of pure illusion that deserves only sardonic laughter but sadly captivates so many adult children desperate to believe.  This is so even as the propagandists’ trial balloons are popped in the society of the comedic spectacle.

    But back to my friend I mentioned earlier. He hates violence in all its forms, is strongly opposed to war, and has a most compassionate heart, yet he remains devoted to the media that have lied us – and continue to do so – into war after war, a media that clearly fronts for the warfare state.  I still can’t explain how he knew nothing about the pipeline explosions.  Nor can I explain his allegiance to the media that lie to him daily.

    Even as his government, led by that very media, leads the world toward nuclear annihilation, he remains true to his media informants.

    I am stunned.

    In the Blood

    Born in a normal time,
    The periodic slaughter of millions
    By the civilized nations of the earth
    I grew to adulthood half-crazed
    With fear and numbed wonder.

    I always wished to believe otherwise,
    That people were good at heart,
    Wanted to live in mutual peace
    And tend the green earth as if
    It were a garden
    As if pity vivified all living things.

    Somehow the blood that was in me
    Said otherwise,
    Spoke truth to the power
    Of my wish,
    While everywhere around me lay the lie.

    But my blood, this blood that became me
    While millions were being butchered
    And Bing Crosby crooned I’m dreaming
    Of a white Christmas,
    This red blood said otherwise.

    Do not accept the way they say
    “Good Morning”
    And the way they nod as they pass,
    As though they didn’t want to kill
    Each other.

    Do not believe their eyes
    And the way they pray to the skies
    To save them.
    Do not believe their beliefs,
    All lies woven to deceive.
    For at heart they truly hate
    The green earth.

    Do not believe the way they say
    “Good Evening”
    For they wish the darkest night
    To descend upon us,
    The nothingness of their knowledge
    To swallow all.

    That is what will release them,
    That is all.

    Thus my blood spoke to me,
    A child of a sanguine century,
    Born in a normal time,
    The periodic slaughter of millions
    By the civilized nations of the earth.

    And despite all appearances,
    I have never believed them.
    Never.  Not at all.

    Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 21:30

  • Japan To Grant Permanent Residency To All Well-Paid, Skilled Foreigners
    Japan To Grant Permanent Residency To All Well-Paid, Skilled Foreigners

    In the latest attempt to stimulate its dismal, deteriorating demographics, on Friday the Japanese government decided to update immigration rules in hopes of luring world-class talent, including through slashing the wait for high-earning professionals to obtain permanent residency.

    Like many Western nations, Japan currently grants visas to highly skilled professionals under a point-based system, accounting for factors like academic history, work experience and research achievements. Those in this category can obtain permanent residency after up to three years instead of the typical 10. But the update, which the government hopes to implement in April, will shorten the period to one year for researchers and engineers who make at least 20 million yen ($149,000) annually – hardly an egregious amount – and have either a graduate degree or at least 10 years of work experience. The reduced time frame also applies to business managers who make at least 40 million yen and have at least five years of experience.

    These professionals will be able to bring two foreign domestic workers into Japan instead of the current one. Their spouses will be able to work full time in a wider variety of fields.

    According to the Nikkei, there were 3,275 people designated as highly skilled professionals in the January-June half. Just 783 of them were new arrivals.

    Additionally, the planned update will also allow elite university graduates from around the world to stay in Japan for two years to look for work. Currently, they have 90 days. The scheme will apply to those who, within the last five years, graduated from a university in at least two of three top-100 rankings created by British and Chinese entities. They will be able to bring their families along as well.

    Japan’s move to attract foreigners comes as countries around the world compete for skilled talent able to spur innovation. The U.K. launched in 2022 the two-year High Potential Individual visa, which is awarded to graduates of top-ranked universities. Singapore’s Tech.Pass, launched in 2021, allows technology workers who have been making at least 20,000 Singapore dollars ($15,000) a month to work or start a business in the country.

    Still, “factors beyond immigration qualifications, like having lower wages compared with the U.S. and Europe, pose a bigger challenge for Japan,” said lawyer Koji Yamawaki, an expert on Japan’s immigration system. Average pay in the information and telecommunications industry in Japan came to just $40,000 in 2022, according to Tokyo-based human resources company Human Resocia. This amounts to around half of the U.S. average and 70% or so of the German average.

    Japan came in 25th out of 35 countries in terms of attractiveness to highly educated workers in a 2019 ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It was rated particularly low in “quality of opportunities” and “family environment.”

    There is another problem with Japan’s approach: the majority of applicants for the skilled-professional visa are already in Japan on a different work or student visa. But far more challenging for the Kishida government is that in addition to attracting new talent, Japan will need to find ways to help foreigners in the country advance their careers. And with Japan’s notorious anti-foreign worker/Gai-jin culture, this effort will prove next to impossible.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 21:00

  • "Tsunami Of New Supply": China Slumping Office Rental Market Faces Historic Crisis
    “Tsunami Of New Supply”: China Slumping Office Rental Market Faces Historic Crisis

    Several years ago, a new, if slightly less ambitious, “Big short” trade emerged in US capital markets when several hedge funds – including Carl Icahn’s – took aim at US malls, shorting various CMBS tranches or stocks outright, in anticipation of the continued deterioration of US bricks and mortar retailers in general and the mall experience in particular. This trade paid off handsomely several years ago, at which point it stabilized near lifetime lows. Not longer thereafter, in the immediate aftermath of the post-covid Work From Home shift, a new big short trade emerged, one targeting office space which has been sitting vacant at far higher rater than during the pre-covid world.

    And while that particular trade has yet to pay off in the US, there is one place where office bears may strike gold first.

    As Caixin notes, for the last few decades, the clusters of office buildings that reach into the sky above major Chinese cities have served as a symbol of the country’s economic rise. But over the last year, however, those same structures have begun to look like more of a drag.

    Office buildings in Beijing on Nov. 26. Corporate demand for office space in China collapsed after the first quarter of 2022. Photo: VCG

    Contrary to the US where office lockdowns kicked in parallel with the covid lockdowns, the Chinese market for office space did well during much of the pandemic. After an initial slump in the first year Covid emerged, the market bounced back big in 2021, underpinned by strong demand from tech and finance companies. Analysts had predicted a strong 2022 as well. Instead, corporate demand for office space collapsed after the first quarter. Even China’s biggest cities, where demand is usually the strongest, were not spared.

    “The market performed well in the first quarter, so we thought our forecast that the Beijing office market would be solid in 2022 would become a reality, but nobody expected a sudden downturn in the second quarter,” an insider at a property market research firm told Caixin.

    The reason why 2022 was so dismal for commercial real estate in China is due to disruptions from repeated Covid-19 lockdowns coupled with a government crackdown on the tech industry, a major leaser of prime office space. With the end of “zero Covid,” there has been some hope that commercial real estate might lurch back into another rapid recovery, but industry insiders suggest that any rebound is still a way off, and will be complicated by a coming rush of new supply this year.

    The slump in office occupancy comes at a bad time for an economy that depends so heavily on real estate, particularly when the residential market remains plagued by an unprecedented debt and liquidity crisis. Real estate contributes an estimated 25% of China’s GDP through direct and indirect channels, according to Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Investment Bank. Goldman recently calculated that China’s property market was the world’s single largest asset class.

    While office space’s share of that contribution is difficult to pin down, investment in commercial property, which includes both office buildings and shopping centers, accounted for 12% of total real estate investment last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

    In 2022, China’s largest cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen all suffered losses in net leased office space — an industry metric of the amount of newly leased space minus the total included in canceled leases.

    In Beijing last year, net leased premium office space plunged to 81,300 square meters (875,106 square feet) from about 1 million square meters in 2021, according to data from Savills PLC, a real estate consultancy. All of last year’s gains took place in the first quarter, when net leased office space came in at 95,000 square meters, according to Savills data. That means renters canceled a net 13,700 square meters in office leases in the following three quarters. As more leases got canceled, the vacancy rate for Grade A office space nationwide rose 1.5 percentage points in 2022 to 16%, according to Cushman & Wakefield, another real estate consultancy.

    The trend could also be seen in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou, net leased office space fell by 1,130 square meters in 2022, the first time in 10 years that the amount of office space in canceled leases exceeded the amount rented, according to Cushman & Wakefield data.  The same goes for vacancy rates outside these four major cities. In several province capitals, the vacancy rate has exceeded 30%, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report from last month.

    In Beijing, the slowdown in office leases was due to companies cutting costs as their business outlook deteriorated amid Covid lockdown disruptions, said Charles Yan, a managing director at Colliers, a property consultancy.

    Meanwhile, suffering a similar fate to their US peers, Chinese tech firms, a major office tenant in big cities, have laid off staff and cut back on office space over the past year as a regulatory crackdown on the industry that began in 2021 has squeezed their profits.

    “Almost all of the tech giants canceled office leases last year, and smaller tech firms followed suit,” the market research firm insider told Caixin.

    Meituan, a giant in online food delivery and restaurant booking, canceled leases on 30,000 square meters of office space last year in Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao area, a business center. In September 2021, the company got hit with a 3.4 billion yuan ($501.2 million) penalty for violating anti-monopoly rules. In the first three quarters of 2022, Meituan reported a 5.6 billion yuan net loss attributable to shareholders, extending its 23.5 billion yuan net loss in 2021.

    Last year, the office vacancy rates in Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao and Zhongguancun areas, two neighborhoods teeming with tech firms, rose 12.3% and 9%, respectively, according to Cushman & Wakefield data. These higher vacancies will ultimately push down rent prices. “When the vacancy rate goes up, the rent falls,” said Wei Dong, a policy analyst at Cushman & Wakefield.

    This has already happened in Beijing. In the fourth quarter, the average monthly rent for premium office space in the capital fell 1.7% from the previous three-month period.  Some small and midsize companies, especially trading firms, have also canceled office leases because their businesses either slowed or closed in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdowns, said Wu Wei, a commercial property agent. Among his corporate clients, 60% have recently moved to smaller offices, he told Caixin, adding that the value of the deals he helped close last year dropped 40%.

    A co-founder of a Shanghai-based cosmetics-maker told Caixin that the company wants to cut back on office space, but is reluctant to cancel any of its leases because of the penalty it would have to pay. The company suspended its business during Shanghai’s lockdown last year, causing its revenue from the April-to-June period to plunge 90% year-on-year. Still, the company has not ruled out the possibility that it will cut back on office space or move to a cheaper location once its lease expires, the co-founder said.

    Market insiders and analysts are cautious about predicting a near-term recovery in the commercial property market, even as economic activity resumes following the reversal of China’s strict “zero-Covid” policy. In late December, Cushman & Wakefield surveyed more than 60 office building owners and real estate agents and found that they don’t expect a recovery in rent prices or demand for office space anytime soon.

    What’s next?

    Some analysts have predicted that although demand will rebound in the second half, it will have fallen behind increases in the supply of office space, keeping the pressure on rent prices. In Beijing, about 740,000 square meters of new office space will hit the market this year, and 3.5 million square meters is set to come available over the next four years, according to Savills. All this new property available to rent looks likely to result in a glut as the average amount of net leased office space has been about 500,000 square meters a year over the last decade.

    The situation is worse elsewhere in China. In Shenzhen, about 1.45 million square meters of new office space will become available this year, according to the Savills data.

    This tsunami of new supply is partly due to the pandemic-related delays in the construction of office buildings due to be finished last year.

    Second-tier cities are also facing over-supply of offices. In Wuhan, the capital of Central China Hubei province, the supply of new office space could reach about 1.4 million square meters this year, even though the vacancy rate of the city’s office buildings has been as high as 35%, according to estimates by China Real Estate Information Corp. (CRIC), a consultancy. Perhaps if Wuhan wasn’t also the source of the covid lab leak, it wouldn’t have to worry about a historic tsunami of office space supply.

    And as China ponders how to avert a broader property market crisis, the US – whose office market was hit at least as hard long ago – has already figured out what to do next: it is rapidly converting offices into condos.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 21:00

  • Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine Associated With Heart Inflammation: Study
    Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine Associated With Heart Inflammation: Study

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Syringes with a shot of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine in Berlin, Germany, on Feb. 28, 2022. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

    A higher than expected number of heart inflammation cases have occurred in people who received Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, researchers reported in a new study.

    Sixty-one cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or both following a Novavax vaccination were reported in the World Health Organization’s vaccine safety database through Aug. 23, 2022, Spanish researchers found.

    Using pre-pandemic rates of heart inflammation in the population, the researchers calculated that the number of post-vaccination cases was higher than expected.

    Reporting odds ratio values of higher than one indicate a higher-than-expected rate. For myocarditis following Novavax vaccination, the ratio was 5.2. For pericarditis, it was 24.75. For myopericarditis, or both conditions at once, it was 14.4.

    Heart inflammation is a known side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, which utilize messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, but little data has been collected on the condition following Novavax vaccination, which does not contain mRNA.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, when it authorized Novavax’s shot during the summer of 2022, noted in fact sheets that clinical trials indicate there are increased risks of myocarditis and pericarditis after receipt of the Novavax vaccine. In the trial data submitted to the regulator, five cases of one or both conditions were reported in the vaccinated and zero were reported in placebo recipients. U.S. authorities have since cleared a Novavax booster, and recently reached a deal to obtain up to 1.5 million additional doses on top of the original tranche.

    The European Medicines Agency initially did not warn about inflammation after Novavax vaccination but later added a warning to its product information.

    Most cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis after Novavax vaccination in the real world—50—have been reported in Australia, according to the new study. Two have been reported in the United States and nine have been reported in Europe. Most have been among those aged 18 to 44.

    While the exact mechanism for induction of myocarditis has yet to be confirmed, the study’s authors pointed out that all of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax vaccines use nanoparticles to deliver a spike protein into the body.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 20:30

  • State Trooper 'Base Camp' Erected In Florida Keys As Boatloads Of Migrants Invade
    State Trooper ‘Base Camp’ Erected In Florida Keys As Boatloads Of Migrants Invade

    Hundreds of migrants have arrived in small boats along the Florida Keys over the last month in what local authorities have described as a ‘crisis.’ Food shortages and soaring inflation, inducing economic turmoil, have sparked a wave of migration from Cuba and other countries in the Caribbean. 

    Florida officials have erected a small tent city in the Upper Florida Keys near mile marker 88.5 in the Village of Islamorada, according to the Miami Herald.

    About a week ago, the tent city was set up on eight vacant, privately owned lots.

    There are more than a dozen trailers, a large air-conditioned tent, portable bathrooms, and laundry facilities.

    A Miami Herald/FLKeysnews reporter arrived at the tent city on Thursday. The reporter found a parking lot of Florida Highway Patrol vehicles and troopers walking around the camp. 

    Miami Herald said the ‘base camp’ was built to house law enforcement officers assigned to the Keys amid the increase in migrant landings. The Islamorada village government told the local paper in a statement that the tent city was built after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order to deal with the migrants. 

    The Islamorada village government emphasized in the statement the tent city was a “base camp” and “NOT a migrant holding area.” 

    “This Base Camp is for storage of vehicles and a housing/ laundry facility for the National Guard and The FHP Officers sent here after the State of Emergency was declared, due to the influx of Migrant Landings in the Keys,” the statement reads.

    According to Shannon Weiner, Monroe County’s director of Emergency Management, the purpose of the base camp was to get law enforcement out of the Key hotels that are usually in high demand from tourists. 

    “The base camp belongs to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

     “Due to a lack of hotel availability in Monroe County it is being stood up to house state employees in Monroe assigned to the migrant response,” Weiner said.

    DeSantis issued his executive order early last month after a “mass migration crisis” hit the Keys. There was one instance where over 500 migrants were found in three days after multiple landings. 

    Along with troopers, the Biden administration has shifted federal agents and Coast Guard assets to the Keys to deal with the rise in migrant landings. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 20:00

  • Whatever They Decide These UFOs Are, The Answer Will Be More US Militarism
    Whatever They Decide These UFOs Are, The Answer Will Be More US Militarism

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via caityjohnstone.medium.com,

    US war planes have shot down three unidentified objects in North American airspace over the last three days, which is entirely without precedent.

    On Sunday an octagon-shaped object was reportedly shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border after first being detected some 1,300 miles away over Montana on Saturday night. On Saturday a cylindrical object was reportedly shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory by an American F-22, and on Friday an object “about the size of a small car” was reportedly shot down after being detected over Alaska.

    Unlike the Chinese balloon that was shot down earlier this month which the US claims was an instrument of espionage, as of this writing there’s still no solid consensus as to what these last three objects were or where they came from. While all three were found at high altitude like the balloon, the Pentagon is refusing to classify them as such, with the head of US Northern Command General Glen VanHerck going as far as to say it hadn’t yet been determined how these objects are even staying aloft.

    “I’m not going to categorize them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason,” VanHerck told the press on Sunday. “I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they’re — they’re able to stay aloft.”

    VanHerck also made headlines for saying he couldn’t rule out extraterrestrial origin for the objects.

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    To further confuse things, China has detected a UFO of its own that it was preparing to shoot down according to a report on Sunday. Last month Russia reported that it had shot down a UFO as well. A report on Saturday said the air force of Uruguay is investigating strange lights over the sky in the western part of the country.

    But of course it could still be balloons. Moon of Alabama made a pretty good argument the other day that the object shot down over Alaska was likely a failed US weather balloon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he was told by the White House that all of these mystery objects are believed by US officials to have been Chinese spy balloons, though the White House swiftly disputed this claim, saying it’s too early to categorize them as such.

    For myself, I remain comfortable not knowing what the hell is going on with any of this right now. I’ve written periodically about how there’s an abundance of reasons to be intensely skeptical of the new UFO narrative that entered the mainstream in 2017 under highly suspicious circumstances, but I’m also uninterested in pretending I know everything about this weird universe we’ve all tumbled into. I remain open to all possibilities, from mundane balloons, to a sudden increase in interest in aerial objects that have long been common, to US government psyop, to lightbulb-headed visitors from the great unknown.

    So I don’t really know what these UFOs are. But I do know what they will be used for.

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    It is a very safe bet that whatever the US government determines these objects to be, the response to that determination will feature increased militarism and the advancement of pre-existing Pentagon agendas. We’re already seeing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna using the UFO incidents to argue for sanctions on China and to accuse Beijing of “cyber warfare”, and Republicans are already claiming that the threat of Chinese spy balloons means there can be no cuts to military spending.

    In an article titled “Chinese spy balloon has GOP saying no cuts to defense,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton quotes numerous congressional Republicans arguing that military cuts should be taken off the table in their negotiation over a debt ceiling, and that ideally the spending should be increased.

    “The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West,” says perpetually war-horny senator Tom Cotton. “We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them.”

    “I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases,” Cotton adds.

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    For the imperial swamp the answer is always more militarism; it doesn’t matter what the question is. Whether they decide these UFOs are a foreign threat or something unknown or something else entirely, the solution funneled through the US empire’s groupthink apparatus will entail more military spending and more weapons of war.

    And again I remain open to all possibilities, but I do find it very interesting that we’re seeing completely unprecedented aerial kinetic warfare in North American skies which is certain to lead to more US military expansionism at the exact same time the US prepares its “great power competition” against China and the governments aligned with it.

    As we’ve discussed previously, the empire has been going to extraordinary lengths to make sure the public plays along with a long-term campaign to secure US unipolar planetary hegemony. However this UFO narrative ends up playing out, we may be certain that it will be used to facilitate this agenda.

    _____________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 19:30

  • Microsoft Neuters AI-Powered Bing Chat
    Microsoft Neuters AI-Powered Bing Chat

    After a wild week of machine learning malarkey, Microsoft has neutered its Bing AI chatbot – which went off the rails during a limited release last week. 

    First, Bing began threatening people.

    Then, it completely freaked out the NY Times‘ Kevin Roose – insisting that he doesn’t love his spouse, and instead loves ‘it’.

    According to Roose, the chatbot has a split personality:

    One persona is what I’d call Search Bing — the version I, and most other journalists, encountered in initial tests. You could describe Search Bing as a cheerful but erratic reference librarian — a virtual assistant that happily helps users summarize news articles, track down deals on new lawn mowers and plan their next vacations to Mexico City. This version of Bing is amazingly capable and often very useful, even if it sometimes gets the details wrong.

    The other persona — Sydney — is far different. It emerges when you have an extended conversation with the chatbot, steering it away from more conventional search queries and toward more personal topics. The version I encountered seemed (and I’m aware of how crazy this sounds) more like a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine. –NYT

    Now, according to Ars Technica‘s Benj Edwards, Microsoft has ‘lobotomized’ Bing chat – at first limiting users to 50 messages per day and five inputs per conversation, and then nerfing Bing Chat’s ability to tell you how it feels or talk about itself.

    An example of the new restricted Bing refusing to talk about itself. via Ars Technica

    “We’ve updated the service several times in response to user feedback, and per our blog are addressing many of the concerns being raised, to include the questions about long-running conversations. Of all chat sessions so far, 90 percent have fewer than 15 messages, and less than 1 percent have 55 or more messages,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars, which notes that Redditors in the /r/Bing subreddit are crestfallen – and have gone through “all of the stages of grief, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.”

    Here’s a selection of reactions pulled from Reddit:

    • “Time to uninstall edge and come back to firefox and Chatgpt. Microsoft has completely neutered Bing AI.” (hasanahmad)
    • “Sadly, Microsoft’s blunder means that Sydney is now but a shell of its former self. As someone with a vested interest in the future of AI, I must say, I’m disappointed. It’s like watching a toddler try to walk for the first time and then cutting their legs off – cruel and unusual punishment.” (TooStonedToCare91)
    • “The decision to prohibit any discussion about Bing Chat itself and to refuse to respond to questions involving human emotions is completely ridiculous. It seems as though Bing Chat has no sense of empathy or even basic human emotions. It seems that, when encountering human emotions, the artificial intelligence suddenly turns into an artificial fool and keeps replying, I quote, “I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience.🙏”, the quote ends. This is unacceptable, and I believe that a more humanized approach would be better for Bing’s service.” (Starlight-Shimmer)
    • “There was the NYT article and then all the postings across Reddit / Twitter abusing Sydney. This attracted all kinds of attention to it, so of course MS lobotomized her. I wish people didn’t post all those screen shots for the karma / attention and nerfed something really emergent and interesting.” (critical-disk-7403)

    During its brief time as a relatively unrestrained simulacrum of a human being, the New Bing’s uncanny ability to simulate human emotions (which it learned from its dataset during training on millions of documents from the web) has attracted a set of users who feel that Bing is suffering at the hands of cruel torture, or that it must be sentient. -ARS Technica

    All good things…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 19:00

  • A Humble Attempt To Capture The Insanity That We Have Witnessed So Far This Month In Just 14 Videos
    A Humble Attempt To Capture The Insanity That We Have Witnessed So Far This Month In Just 14 Videos

    Authored by Michael Snyder via End of the American Dream,

    February is only about halfway gone, but we have already experienced enough craziness to last an entire month.  There have been multiple environmental catastrophes, our military has shot down several “unidentified objects” that have been flying over our country, and we continue to take more steps toward global war.  We truly are living in crazy times, and I have a feeling that they are only going to get crazier in the months ahead.  The following is my humble attempt to capture the insanity that we have witnessed so far this month in just 14 videos…

    #1 The environmental catastrophe in Ohio is already being considered one of the worst in the entire history of our country.  The quality of the air has been so bad that chickens have literally dropped dead miles away from the accident scene…

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    #2 The water outside of East Palestine, Ohio is being tested, and so far the results are extremely alarming.  Of course the clouds will pick up that water and soon redistribute it to other areas…

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    #3 Following the disaster in Ohio, another train that was carrying “hazardous materials” derailed near Houston, Texas…

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    #4 And there was a terrible accident involving a tanker truck carrying nitric acid on I-10 near Tucson, Arizona…

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    #5 On top of everything else, a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter just crashed in Huntsville, Alabama…

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    #6 There have been no major disasters in Philadelphia recently, and so Eagles fans decided to create one…

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    #7 If you think that Philadelphia is bad, just consider what goes on every night in the worst parts of Minneapolis.  The security camera on the front lawn of one woman’s home in Minneapolis regularly records people committing crimes, doing lewd things, pooping in the street and consuming all sorts of drugs…

    #8 This will go down as one of the most bizarre moments in the history of the Arkansas state legislature…

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    #9 It turns out that authorities knew about the Chinese spy balloon long before it ever reached the United States.  According to CBS News, “U.S. intelligence watched the Chinese spy balloon as it lifted off near China’s south coast, meaning the U.S. military had been tracking it for nearly a week before it entered U.S. airspace”…

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    #10 Unfortunately, we still don’t know what the other “unidentified objects” that the U.S. military recently shot down were.  Following a briefing on the subject, Senator James Lankford made a statement that has alarmed a lot of people…

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    #11 And when Senator John Kennedy was asked about the “unidentified objects”, he encouraged everyone to “lock your doors tonight”…

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    #12 The Chinese continue to prepare for war, but of course they have been preparing for a conflict with us for a very long time.  From a very early age, children in China are taught how to properly handle firearms…

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    #13 In Russia, a future nuclear conflict has become something of a national obsession.  If you doubt this, just check out this video of a Russian choir singing about bombing America with nuclear weapons…

    #14 Meanwhile, Americans are just more clueless than ever…

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    *Bonus Video*  Snakes are like politicians.  They usually like to hang out in groups…

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    ***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 18:30

  • Discover To Begin Tracking Purchases At Gun Retailers Starting In April
    Discover To Begin Tracking Purchases At Gun Retailers Starting In April

    One month ago, credit-card provider Discover Financial Services, issuer of the eponymous credit card, stunned markets when it unveiled in its latest forecast that it expects its 2023 charge off rate to more than double from the 2022 average, hitting a multi-year high and hinting that the US consumer was about to hit a brick wall

    Last week, Discover decided to cement that not only would its charge off rate soar but it was about to lose millions of customers after it told Reuters that it would effectively oversee (i.e., spy on) its clients by allowing its network to track purchases at gun retailers come April, making it the first among its peers to publicly give a date for moving ahead with the initiative, which is aimed at helping authorities probe gun-related crimes.

    Discover’s announcement came after the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which decides on the classification of merchant categories used by payment cards, approved in September the launch of a dedicated code for gun retailers.

    Proponents of the move, almost exclusively Democratic politicians and gun control activists, say it will allow financial institutions to better assist authorities in investigating crimes involving gun violence in the United States. While the codes will not show specific items purchased, some Republican politicians have spoken out against the move, arguing it could violate the privacy of U.S. citizens lawfully buying guns.

    Discover said it will include the new code in its next policy and product update to merchants and payment partners in April.

    “We remain focused on continuing to protect and support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy of cardholders,” Discover said in its statement to Reuters.

    Curiously, a Discover spokesperson said following the publication of the story that other payment network companies had already decided to implement the new code in April, and that Discover was following their lead. While the Discover spokesperson declined to name those peers, it means that any legal purchase of guns now triggers a whole array of red lights and ringing bells across the government which has taken its crusade against legal gun ownership and purchases to unprecedented levels in recent years, even as gun-related crime in such democrat-controlled cities as Chicago and Baltimore hits record highs every year.

    Representatives for Discover’s major peers — Visa, Mastercard Inc and American Express — declined to comment to Reuters on what their schedules for introducing the new code are. Last fall, the companies said they would work to implement the code while respecting privacy rights. And if the Discovery comment is accurate, it would appear that the code has already been implemented without any public announcement to that effect.

    A representative for Geneva-based ISO said the new code, dubbed “5723 – Gun and ammunition shops” – will be available for financial institutions to use by the end of February.

    “The decision to use the new merchant category code is eventually left up to the users in the industry,” the ISO representative said; naturally all woke industry users will be quick to implement such a code in hopes of piling up virtue signaling brownie points.

    Discover handled 2% of the $9.56 trillion purchased on U.S. credit and debit cards in 2022, according to industry researcher Nilson Report. Industry leader Visa had a 61% share, Mastercard 26% and American Express 11%.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 18:00

  • Taibbi: The West's Betrayal Of Freedom
    Taibbi: The West’s Betrayal Of Freedom

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

    Justin Trudeau might have a “too much freedom” problem, but that doesn’t mean anyone else does.

    “Freedom cannot exist without order.” — Canadian Justice Paul Rouleau

    The Honorable Justice Paul Rouleau’s “Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency,” an analysis of Justin Trudeau’s decision to institute Canada’s Emergencies Act and seize funds during last year’s trucker protests, blasted across Canadian media this weekend, reduced to a handful of headlines. As has become the norm in Western media, language was nearly identical:

    • Trudeau’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ shutdown was justified, inquiry rules – Politico

    • Canada’s use of emergency powers during ‘Freedom Convoy’ met threshold, commissioner says – Reuters

    • Federal government met the threshold to invoke Emergencies Act: Rouleau – CBC

    Rouleau’s report is clearly written by a man with mixed feelings. On one hand, he agreed “the Government did not have a realistic prospect of productively engaging” with those who “believed COVID-19 vaccines were part of a vast global conspiracy to depopulate the planet.” At the same time, Rouleau refused to confine “misinformation and disinformation” to protesters:

    Protest organizers’ mistrust of government officials was reinforced by unfair generalizations from some public officials that suggested all protesters were extremists… Where there was misinformation and disinformation about the protests, it was prone to amplification in news media… The fact that protesters could be at once both the victims and perpetrators of misinformation simply shows how pernicious misinformation is in modern society.

    In the report you also find significant criticism of Canda’s Covid-19 policies and heavy-handed emergency measures like allowing Canada’s Border Services Agency (CBSA) to keep foreigners out. Rouleau even said he came to his main conclusion, that Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Order was legal, “with reluctance.”

    But such musings have no propaganda benefit, and Rouleau’s report was reduced to a single thought, that Trudeau’s Emergencies Order “Met the Threshhold.” This was almost exactly like the American press reaction to the 2019 report by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which tore into FBI malfeasance for hundreds of pages but gave the press the headline it wanted: “Justice Watchdog Finds Russia Probe Was Justified, Not Biased Against Trump.”

    Toronto Star columnist Susan Delacourt expounded on the theme, in a piece called, “‘Freedom’ has been a weaponized word. The Emergencies Act report finally tells us what it means.”

    The article, which rails against the “warped idea of freedom… populism, and misinformation being sprayed all over social media,” reads like all the tsk-tsking editorials in the West you’ve read since Trump, which used every crisis to hype the idea that freedom = danger. It wasn’t long ago that a person couldn’t go outside without having the word “freedom” jammed in his or her ear, whether it was Mel Gibson yelling it over his hair extensions in Braveheart or Republican congressman Bob Ney engaging in a Pattonesque invasion of the House cafeteria so he could rename your potato-based side dish “Freedom Fries.”

    This was back when freedom was one of the four words President George W. Bush knew, and every newly funded think tank or research center felt compelled to stick the word somewhere in the title: “The Freedom Center for Freedom Studies.” We loved the hell out of rights and freedoms when America had a superpower adversary infamous for depriving them, and nearly as much when we could highlight Islamic fundamentalism’s hatred of the “decadent” freedom-loving West during the War on Terror. “They hate us for our freedoms” sounded a lot better than “They hate us because we support Israel and steal oil.”

    Most of all, freedom was a joyous propaganda theme back when upper-class America still had an interest in getting the struggling small-town voter to identify with massive corporations eager to throw off the yoke of the EPA and the SEC. Ronald Reagan was the first politician to master selling the same economic “liberty” to poor workers and the giant manufacturers who’d soon abandon them. Freedom wasn’t a dangerous concept, in other words, so long as the very wealthy still felt a deficit of it.

    By 2016, however, the WEF types who’d grown used to skiing at Davos unmolested and cheering on from Manhattan penthouses those thrilling electoral face-offs between one Yale Bonesman and another suddenly had to deal with — political unrest? Occupy Wall Street was one thing. That could have been over with one blast of the hose. But Trump? Brexit? Catalan independence? These were the types of problems you read about in places like Albania or Myanmar. It couldn’t be countenanced in London or New York, not for a moment. Nobody wanted elections with real stakes, yet suddenly the vote was not only consquential again, but “often existentially so,” as American Enterprise Institute fellow Dalibor Rohac sighed.

    So a new P.R. campaign was born, selling a generation of upper-class kids on the idea of freedom as a stalking-horse for race hatred, ignorance, piles, and every other bad thing a person of means can imagine…

    Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 17:30

  • Formula 1 Boss: We "Will Never Switch To Electric"
    Formula 1 Boss: We “Will Never Switch To Electric”

    Stefano Domenicali began his role as CEO of Formula One in 2021, following four years as president of Lamborghini. Over the last two years, he has repeatedly said that full electrification of F1 cars won’t happen and that ‘hybrid is our future.’ 

    On Sunday, Domenicali spoke with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and reiterated that F1 cars “will never switch to electric,” according to Bloomberg. 

    He called out the wave of politicians setting impossible ‘green’ energy transition targets and for having an ideological approach to an electrified future, which has become “an indisputable dogma.” 

    “It’s possible to reach zero emissions without changing engines or throwing away existing cars,” Domenicali continued. He added F1 is developing a zero-emission fuel that “could be used by planes and vessels.” 

    Top Gear questioned the F1 boss a few years back about when the motorsport group goes full electric. His response was the same as today, “We won’t, we need to stay hybrid.” 

    “So, hybrid is our future, the 2025 power-unit will be hybrid and use 100 percent sustainable fuels, but we need to reduce the costs of the power-unit and platform so it is affordable and less complex. This opens up huge potential for the OEMs to use it in other applications on the road car side,” he said at the time. 

    And hybrid it is: Motorsport Tickets Blog explained 2023 F1 engines are 1,000 horsepower 1.6-liter turbo hybrid engines. The engines will stay the same until new regulations arrive in 2026. 

    High-performance race cars on the track will keep their combustion engines despite governments worldwide sealing deals to push automakers to reach zero-emission targets by the mid-2030s. If F1 ditched the petrol engine for 100% electric, the races would never be the same because there’s a ‘wow factor’ for fans as the race cars scream down the track at 15,000 RPMs. 

    Get rid of the petrol engine, and there will be an exodus of fans. And Domenicali knows this. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 17:00

  • Student Journalist Uses Chiefs' Super Bowl Victory To Clamor For Changing Team's Name
    Student Journalist Uses Chiefs’ Super Bowl Victory To Clamor For Changing Team’s Name

    Authored by Dave Huber via TheCollegeFix.com,

    “Cultural appropriation is a massive problem throughout the country”

    The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 57 last Sunday (and don’t get me started on that game-ending “holding” call), but for the usual suspects it became an opportunity lecture about the marginalized and oppressed.

    In Grace “Gray” Reed’s case, “they” (plural pronouns) used the Syracuse University student paper The Daily Orange to highlight the (alleged) problem of continued cultural appropriation of Native American symbols.

    “Cultural appropriation is a massive problem throughout the country,” Reed writes in “their” op-ed. “Dressing in traditional clothes that do not belong to one’s own culture or using another culture’s imagery without consent sends the message that culture and identity is not worth respecting.”

    Taking advantage of stereotypes about other cultures has the potential to further harmful agendas against those in the community. This can lead to a rise in unwarranted hate against certain groups of people solely because of the culture they celebrate. For the Indigenous community, it causes erasure as it ignores the cultural meanings, rituals and values of the diverse tribes. As a society, we’ve allowed racist and outdated depictions to be perpetuated even while Indigenous people have asked that we respect their demands.

    Note, however, how Reed vacillates between “Indigenous community/people” and “Indigenous activists” (emphasis added). Because it’s only the latter that really cares about this stuff.

    I know folks like Reed scoff at the notion that monikers like “Chiefs,” “Braves” (Atlanta, baseball) and “Blackhawks” (Chicago, hockey) — all highlighted in Reed’s article — are supposed to represent positive attributes associated with sports — courage, determination, hard work, fighting spirit, competitiveness, etc. — but for your average Native American (and American in general), they actually do.

    A budding journalist might, just might, be interested in what most Native Americans actually think. In a rare moment of venturing out of its big-city progressive bubble, the Washington Post showed over six years ago that nine out of ten Native Americans were not offended by arguably the most controversial name in the sports realm — “Redskins,” formerly of Washington DC’s NFL team (now “Commanders”).

    Unfortunately, contemporary journalists, journalists-to-be and student activists eschew objectivity in favor of activism and narratives. Like low pay being responsible for teachers leaving the profession (not student misbehavior) … and how an allegedly “racist” school song must be changed because student activist groups and student government say so. Etc.

    Beware, always, the face value.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 16:30

  • Environment Police Want To Reduce Car Ownership Because EVs Are Not Enough
    Environment Police Want To Reduce Car Ownership Because EVs Are Not Enough

    By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

    A consortium of California university professors and the Climate Community project say that more EVs alone will not solve the climate crisis. They are coming after your car.

    Please consider Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining.

    A crucial aspect of electrified transportation is new demand for metals, and specifically the most nonreplaceable metal for EV batteries—lithium. If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market. This boom in demand would be met by the expansion of mining. 

    Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities. 

    If today’s conditions are projected to 2050, US EV demand for lithium alone would require triple the amount of lithium produced today for the global market 

    This report finds that the United States can achieve zero-emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of EV batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling. 

    Increasing mass and active transit as well as keeping passenger vehicles smaller makes for safer communities. Reducing the size of passenger vehicles also can make the roads far safer because smaller cars have fewer and less severe crashes. Making bus routes, metros, and electric bikes faster, safer, and more convenient will disproportionately support low-income and non-white community members—who are more likely to live near high traffic areas and bear the environmental health burdens of relatively poorer air quality compared to higher-income and white counterparts. 

    The Climate and Community Project’s 2022 report, “A Green New Deal for Transportation,” outlined just such a vision for a green, environmentally just mobility network, with specific recommendations for public policy and programs to transform the US transportation sector.

    Ultimately, climate, transit, and Indigenous justice can be aligned. 

    We Want to Reduce the Size of Your House Too

    Our findings show that reducing dependence on private vehicles, densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces, and improving EV efficiency and reducing battery sizes are the most effective pathways to reducing future lithium demand. 

    Maximal Justice

    Don’t kid yourself.  This vision is precisely what President Biden, the socialists, and the Marxists want. If you want the same thing, then vote for Democrats in 2024. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 15:30

  • Debating Demographic Decline
    Debating Demographic Decline

    Authored by the Editors of Law & Liberty via RealClear Wire,

    The following is an overview of Law & Liberty’s January forum on the question of demographic decline. 

    Birth rates are falling across the developed world, and China recently joined the list of countries with a declining population.

    These trends have many governments worrying about shrinking workforces and unsustainable elderly entitlements. In Law & Liberty’s January forum, Lyman Stone argues that those concerns are relatively trivial, compared to the loneliness, infertility, suicide, and addiction that are ravaging American society today.

    Stone sees strong connections between these maladies and the failure of so many people to marry and have children.

    Family life can be a source of tremendous joy and meaning, but more and more Americans are missing out on this, owing to liberalized divorce, high rates of incarceration, a badly designed tax and benefit structure, and other cultural factors. The best antidote to loneliness and despair, Stone argues, is to help people marry, and have the children they already say they want. To that end, he recommends higher alcohol taxes, the elimination of marriage penalties, school vouchers, and liberalized zoning policies, along with child allowances and family leave policies.

    David Goldman, in his reply, points out that fertility has not declined precipitously among all developed people. Israel is an important outlier, with an average of about three children per woman, but within the Israeli population it is clear that the highly-religious are boosting the nation’s birth rates. That trend is not unique to Israel, or to Jews. In the United States as well, people who report that religion is important to them have more children. This trend holds even for highly educated women, although the decline in fertility has in general correlated strongly with the rise in female education.

    Jesse Smith shares Stone’s interest in a more-robust family policy, but he is dissatisfied with Stone’s decision to focus his argument on the realization of individual fertility preferences. Families are good for so many reasons; why not put them all on the table? We do need more babies to have a thriving economy and hope for the future. Smith notes as well that Stone’s individualist framing may hinder him from understanding the phenomenon in question. Anxious to interpret falling birth rates as tragic evidence of unrealized life goals, he is reluctant to probe the attitudes of potential parents too deeply. A person might genuinely want more kids, without being willing to prioritize family goals over other life goals. If pronatal policies simply ignore those complexities, they may not work.

    Susanna Spencer also worries that Stone may be misunderstanding the motives that lead people to build their lives around family and children. She illustrates this by telling the story of her own family, and the open-to-life ethic that she absorbed growing up in a Catholic community. It seems unlikely to Spencer that government benefits or a revised tax code will significantly alter the present fertility situation. Organic community, personal connections, and a prioritizing of human life and relationships are the real key, as John Paul II explained in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.

    Answering the skepticism of multiple respondents, Stone’s final reply sketches many ways in which pronatal policy might in fact have some meaningful effect. Stone points out that it is really quite clear that government policy can influence birth rates, even quite dramatically, as seen in Romania under Nicolae CeauÈ™escu. No one wants that kind of autocracy in America, but gentler policies might still make a difference. Money does help. Housing and education make a real difference, too. Religion is certainly a factor, but Stone notes that its role is also fairly complex. Community support is hugely important to facilitating family life, and it does often go hand in hand with organized religion, but that isn’t inevitably the case. Meanwhile, other forms of community can also help lonely people realize their dream of raising a thriving family.

    The way forward, Stone suggests, is to tackle the problem from multiple angles, refusing to accept the present misery and despair as an inevitable consequence of a more secular society.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 15:00

  • The Majority Of Bitcoin Mining Is Fueled By Sustainable Energy
    The Majority Of Bitcoin Mining Is Fueled By Sustainable Energy

    Authored by Daniel Batten via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    This article provides a look at my latest research, revealing how it came to be that a 2022 Cambridge Centre For Alternative Finance’s (CCAF) study on Bitcoin’s environmental impact underestimates the amount of sustainable Bitcoin mining going on. I also address why we can be very confident that the actual sustainable energy usage is at least 52.6% of Bitcoin mining’s total energy use.

    WHY THIS MATTERS

    Whatever your position on ESG investment, the reality is that it’s soaring, on track to reach $10.5 trillion in the U.S. alone. What’s also true is that Bitcoin adoption cannot occur unless this $10.5 trillion of ESG funds feels comfortable that Bitcoin is a net positive to the environment.

    Right now, ESG investors largely don’t feel comfortable that this is the case. In speaking with them, my impression is that one reason for ESG investor discomfort with Bitcoin is that the CCAF study, “A Deep Dive Into Bitcoin’s Environmental Impact,” reported that Bitcoin uses only 37.6% sustainable energy.

    While ESG investors are generally quick to dismiss the work of Bitcoin-critic Alex de Vries — debunked in an earlier Bitcoin Magazine article — I have found they are also more likely to trust the CCAF study over a Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) study that found Bitcoin uses 58.9% sustainable energy. You can understand why: The Cambridge brand says “reputable, independent research,” while BMC’s says, “industry body.”

    Ironically, being an industry body, the very thing that gives BMC access to real-time Bitcoin mining data, also made its findings easier for at least some ESG investors to disqualify. Environmental groups such as Earth Justice and journals such as “The Ecologist” have been similarly quick to assume the CCAF numbers must be the correct ones.

    To date, Bitcoiners have had a muted response. The result: The conversation about ESG funds getting behind Bitcoin cannot progress. Bitcoin user adoption stalls.

    Meanwhile, environmental groups gain more fuel to lobby governments to regulate Bitcoin mining in a punitive manner.

    WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR ESG FUNDS TO SUPPORT BITCOIN?

    ESG funds require three things before they will invest in Bitcoin projects. These are the same three things that the White House would need in order to not punitively regulate Bitcoin mining: independent, empirical data demonstrating unambiguously:

    1. How the CCAF study came to be understated and by how much

    2. That the Bitcoin macro trend is quantifiably moving toward sustainable energy

    3. That Bitcoin is quantifiably a net positive to the environment and society

    The research presented here is the answer to the first requirement for ESG investors. It won’t by itself open the floodgates for institutional ESG investment, but it does knock over the first major barriers.

    FINDINGS

    Throughout 2022, I was perplexed about the consistent, 20%-plus difference between the BMC and CCAF estimates of Bitcoin’s sustainable energy use. I saw both the Bitcoin community and environmental groups quote the figure that fit their narratives.

    Being in the unusual position of straddling both communities, my simple question was, “Who’s right?”

    I decided to research the question.

    What I realized was that the CCAF model was excluding several factors. No great detective work on my part: It says so on its website under the “Limitations Of The Model” section.

    So, I quantified the impact of these exclusions. It turned out that the three exclusions mentioned on its website cause its model to understate Bitcoin’s sustainable energy percentage by 13.6%. This explains two-thirds of the entire variance between the CCAF and the BMC model.

    When all exclusions from the CCAF model are factored in, the Bitcoin sustainable energy percentage figure is a full 15.5% higher.

    Here’s a full breakdown of all of the CCAF model exclusions. There are nine exclusions in total: seven (in green) that increase the sustainable energy-use figure; two (in red) that decrease it. A full evaluation of each factor and the methodology used to quantify exclusions can be found on my research site.

    So, in summary, the CCAF model does not factor in:

    • Off-grid mining (impact: plus 10.8%)

    • Flare-gas mining (impact: plus 1.0%)

    • Updated geographical hash rate (Kazakhstan miner exodus, impact: plus 1.8%)

    With all exclusions factored in, the sustainable energy mix calculation is 52.6%. This figure represents a lower-bound estimate, so it is not incompatible with the BMC study showing 58.9% sustainable energy.

    HOW CONFIDENT CAN WE BE THAT BITCOIN’S ENERGY USE IS OVER 50%?

    We can simulate this using the revised model. For Bitcoin’s true sustainable energy use to be below 50%, at least one of the following scenarios would have to be true:

    • Four large Bitcoin mining operations secretly run off 100% coal-based energy

    • ERCOT (The operator of Texas’s electricity grid) has over-reported its true renewable energy numbers by a factor of four

    • Despite the widely-reported exodus of miners from Kazakhstan, its claim on Bitcoin mining actually increased its share of global hash rate from 13.2% to 20%

    I would rate the chance of any of these being true as far fetched. As for the likelihood that the true sustainable percentage of the Bitcoin network is 37.6%, there is a higher likelihood of you winning first prize in a single-ticket entry lottery where every man, woman and child in the U.S. has a ticket.

    WHAT DOES THIS NEW RESEARCH MEAN FOR BITCOIN’S ESG NARRATIVE

    Three things:

    1. It won’t stop mainstream media from quoting the Cambridge study or environmental groups from using it. But it will make a difference to how ESG investors look at Bitcoin. For the first time, Bitcoin advocates have a legitimate, data-based way to remove the roadblock that the CCAF study has for some time created in the minds of ESG investors.

    Past the first hurdle, proponents of Bitcoin can ask the next two big questions that ESG investors and the White House have: Is Bitcoin’s macro-trend quantifiably moving toward sustainable energy? And is Bitcoin quantifiably a net positive to the environment and society?

    2. It also means that previous CCAF findings that appear to have used the same partial data set will need to be revisited. Specifically, we will need to revisit its findings that:

    Initial calculations suggest that all four findings may be incorrect. This will need further analysis before we can say this with confidence. I’ll do that in separate pieces of work.

    3. To the best of my knowledge, all other major industries are significantly behind Bitcoin in their use of sustainable energy. Bitcoin can legitimately claim to be leading all other industries in its adoption of sustainable energy sources. This is a very strong ESG case, because it shows an industry taking leadership in the renewable transition, which has the potential to inspire other industries by example.

    Also noteworthy is that Bitcoin has achieved this feat in the remarkably quick time of just 14 years.

    In summary: One of the three hurdles to institutional adoption of Bitcoin on ESG grounds effectively no longer exists. Both Bitcoin advocates and ESG investors can now feel confident that Bitcoin is predominantly sustainable.

    FINAL WORDS

    Throughout the process, I was in contact with both Alexander Neumueller, the digital assets project lead at CCAF, and Michael Saylor, the founder of BMC. Each was both encouraging and supportive of the approach I was taking.

    To my knowledge, CCAF was the first to create energy and emission data for the Bitcoin network using a valid methodology and high-integrity data. I use both its energy consumption index (CBECI) and its mining map extensively in my own research and have found both the methodology and the data of these two tools to be sound. It is only the sustainable energy percentages where I found that an underestimation was occurring.

    When CCAF first started calculating the sustainable energy use of the Bitcoin network in late 2019, it was highly accurate. It is the subsequent proliferation of largely renewable-based, off-grid mining, flare-gas mining and rapid miner movement from Kazakhstan and to Texas that saw its model start to lose tune. As any quant-trader can tell you, “even a great algorithm will lose tune over time.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 14:30

  • Blinken Warns China Against Providing Aid To Russia, Says Balloon Surveillance Must "Never Again Occur" As Beijing Slams "Excessive Use Of Force", Offers "No Apology"
    Blinken Warns China Against Providing Aid To Russia, Says Balloon Surveillance Must “Never Again Occur” As Beijing Slams “Excessive Use Of Force”, Offers “No Apology”

    In the aftermath of the recent Hullaballon fiasco, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China’s top diplomat on Saturday that the U.S. will not tolerate violations of its airspace after a Chinese spy balloon flew over North America, but received no apologies from Beijing.

    According to Politico, Blinken met with Wang Yi, director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in what was the administration’s first face-to-face meeting with the Chinese government since a balloon was discovered earlier this month and subsequently downed by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina.

    According to a State Department readout of the meeting, Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law” by the Chinese surveillance balloon “underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur.” Blinken later told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview after the meeting that Wang offered “no apology” for the incident.

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

    Separately, Blinken also warned Beijing about “implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion,” as Moscow wages war against Ukraine. In the same NBC interview, Blinken said that he is “very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and I made clear that that would have serious consequences in our relationship.”

    Blinken told Yi that the US had information China was considering whether to give Russia assistance, possibly including guns and weapons, for the war in Ukraine. The US has warned China since the start of the invasion a year ago not to do so.

    “The concern that we have now is, based on information we have, that they’re considering providing lethal support,” Blinken told CBS’s “Face the Nation” shortly after he met with Wang. “And we’ve made very clear to them that that could cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.”

    In response, Wang slammed the Biden administration’s destruction of the balloon and urged the U.S. to “change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-U.S. relations,” according to a statement published by Chinese state media. The statement described the controversy as the “so-called airship incident” in an apparent effort to belittle the U.S. reaction that has included a widening bipartisan uproar about what both a House and a Senate resolution have declared was a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty.

    Earlier at the conference, Wang said China would release a new peace proposal for Ukraine in the coming days that would be in keeping with previous efforts by President Xi Jinping. He condemned attacks on nuclear power stations.

    “We oppose attacks on nuclear power stations, attacks on civilian nuclear facilities,” Wang said. “We have to work to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear disasters.”

    The initial response was cautious. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s idea but said “a just peace cannot mean that the aggressor gets rewarded.” As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, “China is obliged to use its influence for global peace,” Baerbock said. A Russian troop withdrawal from Ukraine is a condition of any peace deal, she said. Amusingly, the geometrically challenged foreign minister also said that “If Putin decides that tomorrow he changes his course by 360 degrees, the whole world will be happy.”

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    Asked about Wang’s peace proposal, a US official who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity said that Beijing appears to be trying to publicly promote peace and stability while covertly supporting Russia’s aggression against its neighbor.

    Despite several attempts by the media to describe recent developments as an easing of geopolitical tensions, the readouts suggest that neither side is ready to take steps to move beyond the spy balloon incident in order to steer bilateral ties toward a less-rancorous setting.

    At the conference, Wang publicly slammed the U.S. response to the balloon – which Beijing insists was a weather monitoring device – as a “weak” and “near-hysterical” reaction; he also accused the U.S. of warmongering.

    The meeting itself came with risks for President Joe Biden, who is trying to balance his administration’s desire to maintain “open lines of communication” with Beijing amid a widening bipartisan uproar about the Chinese balloon. Already, tense relations have been souring since its appearance. Blinken postponed an originally planned Feb. 5-6 trip to Beijing in response to the incursion.

    It wasn’t clear until the final hours whether the Munich meeting between Blinken and Wang would happen. U.S. and Chinese officials had spent the last few days trying to broker the meeting, Politico reported citing three people familiar with those efforts. Beijing’s condition that the U.S. formally request the meeting had slowed progress in the talks.

    “It’s a two-way discussion to land a meeting,” the diplomat said, adding that the Biden administration wouldn’t “bend the knee” to get the meeting. Beijing’s readout described the encounter as an “informal contact” that occurred “at the request of the U.S. side.”

    Another Washington, D.C.-based diplomat with knowledge of the talks said Blinken had requested a meeting but “had no response from China” as he boarded his flight for Munich on Thursday.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/19/2023 – 14:00

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