Jul 20

Today’s News 20th July 2022

  • 15,000 Illegals Ferried To UK This Year As High Court Hears Challenge Against Rwanda Policy
    15,000 Illegals Ferried To UK This Year As High Court Hears Challenge Against Rwanda Policy

    Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times,

    The number of illegal immigrants who entered the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats has reached 15,000 so far this year, official figures show.

    It comes as the high court is hearing a challenge brought against the government’s new policy to put eligible illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, on one-way flights to Rwanda.

    On Monday, 330 people in seven boats were escorted ashore by British authorities, bringing the total number this year to 15,107, according to official figures compiled by PA News Agency.

    Crossings continued for 11 consecutive days by Monday—the longest successive run so far in 2022. There have been crossing detected on 13 of the 18 days so far this month.

    The highest daily total for 2022 to date was recorded on April 13 when 651 people made the crossing in 18 boats.

    The highest monthly total for 2022 to date was recorded in June when 3,136 arrived in 76 boats.

    According to Home Office figures, the number of channel-crossing immigrants soared in recent years, with 28,526 people detected arriving on small boats in 2021, compared to 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019, and 299 in 2018.

    A record 1,185 people made the crossing to the UK on Nov. 11, 2021—the highest figure recorded since the start of 2020.

    Cumulative successful arrivals in the UK by people crossing the English Channel in small boats. (PA Graphics)

    Since the UK’s exit from the European Union, few illegal immigrants who came via safe countries in Europe were successfully returned to Europe.

    In April, the British government signed a new deal with Rwanda allowing the UK to ship eligible illegal arrivals to the east African country in order to deter dangerous Channel crossing, with an initial flight chartered for June 14, reportedly costing £500,000.

    But some 47 people who were meant to be on the Boeing 767 were crossed off the list one by one following their lawyers’ challenges, and the flight was effectively grounded after the European Court of Human Rights made a last-minute intervention by removing the last remaining passenger from the flight.

    In written submissions filed for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday on behalf of four charities and eight individuals, Raza Husain QC said that recently provided documents showed that Rwanda had initially been excluded from the shortlist of potential countries “on human rights grounds.”

    In a report (pdf) published on Monday, Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee criticised the Home Office for making policy announcements “before detailed policy has been worked through, tested, and even agreed between government departments.”

    The report said “much more clarity is required” on the Rwanda policy, including the cost, the effectiveness of the tactic in deterring channel crossings, and how to ensure the long-term mental and physical well-being of those relocated.

    According to data from the UN’s refugee agency, at least 120,441 people arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean by land and sea in 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/20/2022 – 02:00

  • Chris Hedges: War With Iran?
    Chris Hedges: War With Iran?

    Authored by Chris Hedges via ConsortiumNews.com,

    The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, responsible for military fiascos, hundreds of thousands of deaths and innumerable war crimes in the Middle East, are now plotting to attack Iran.

    Illustration by Mr. Fish — “Biden at Bat”

    The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trump sabotaged, does not look like it will be revived.  U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is reviewing options to attack if Teheran looks poised to obtain a nuclear weapon and Israel, which opposes U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, carries out military strikes.

    During his visit to Israel, Biden assured Prime Minister Yair Lapid that the U.S. is “prepared to use all elements of its national power,” including military force, to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. 

    Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. function as a troika in the Middle East. The Israeli government has built a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and has been a prolific sponsor of international terrorism, supporting Salafi jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and such groups as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.  

    The three countries worked in tandem to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew its first democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges. The Sisi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in the Gaza strip, one of the most densely populated and impoverished places on earth. 

    Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has conducted an ongoing campaign of covert attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and nuclear scientists. Four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated, presumably by Israel, between 2010 and 2012. In July 2020, a fire, attributed to an Israeli bomb, damaged Iran’s Natanz nuclear site. In November 2020, Israel used remote control machine guns to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist. 

    In January 2020, the United States assassinated Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, along with nine other people including a key figure in the anti-ISIS coalition, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. It used an MQ-9 Reaper drone to fire missiles into his convoy, near Baghdad’s airport. 

    Iranian Restraint

    If similar attacks had been carried out by Iranian operatives inside Israel, it would have triggered a war. Only Iran’s decision not to retaliate, beyond lobbing about a dozen ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq, prevented a conflagration. 

    On July 7, Iran informed The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that  it is using IR-6 centrifuges with “modified subheaders.” The declared purpose of the enrichment process at its underground facility at Fordow is to create uranium isotope enriched up to 20 percent — far below the 90 percent enrichment levels necessary to create weapons-grade uranium. Under the JCPOA agreement, enrichment levels were capped at 3.67 percent.

    Israel has allocated $1.5 billion for a potential strike against Iran and, during the first week of June, held large-scale military exercises, including one over the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea, in preparation to attack Iranian nuclear sites using dozens of fighter aircraft, including Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.  

    The 2016 Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Barack Obama provides a 10-year, $38 billion military package for Israel. 

    Israel and its lobby in the U.S. are working to scuttle  negotiations with Iran to monitor its nuclear program. The preparation for war mirrors the Israeli pressure on the U.S. to invade Iraq, one of the worst strategic decisions in U.S. history. 

    Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in testimony before the British Iraq war commission, offered this account of his discussions with George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002:

    “As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”   

    Saudi Arabia, which seeks to dominate the Arab world, severed ties with Iran in 2016 after its embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters following Riyadh’s execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia, with Chinese help, has built a plant to process uranium ore and acquired ballistic missiles. Saudi Arabia signed a series of letters in 2017 with the U.S. to purchase weapons totaling $110 billion immediately, and $350 billion over the next decade.

    Awar with Iran would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.  It would spread swiftly throughout the region. The Shiites across the Middle East would see an attack on Iran as a religious war against Shiism. The two million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern province; the Shiite majority in Iraq; and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey would join the fight against the U.S. and Israel. 

    Iran would use its Chinese-supplied anti-ship missiles, rocket and bomb-equipped speedboats and submarines, mines, drones and coastal artillery to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified gas supply. Oil production facilities in the Persian Gulf would be sabotaged.

    Iranian oil, which makes up 13 percent of the world’s energy supply, would be taken off the market. Oil would jump to over $500 a barrel and perhaps, as the conflict drags on, to over $750 a barrel. Our petroleum-based economy, already reeling under rising prices because of the sanctions on Russia, would grind to a halt.

    Israel would be hit by Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Hezbollah’s store of Iranian-supplied rockets that allegedly can reach any part of Israel, including Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona, would also be deployed. Strikes by Iran and its allies on Israel, as well as on American military installations in the region, would leave hundreds, maybe thousands, dead.

    In 2002, the U.S. military conducted its “most elaborate war game” ever, costing over $250 million. Known as the Millennium Challenge, the exercise was between a Blue Force (the U.S.) and the Red Force (widely considered as a stand-in for Iran). It was meant to validate America’s “modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts.” It did the opposite. The Red Force, led by retired Marine lieutenant general Paul Van Riper, conducted a swarm of kamikaze suicide boat attacks and destroyed 16 U.S. warships in under 20 minutes.

    When the war game was reset, it was rigged in favor of the Blue Force. The Blue Force was given access to experimental technology – including that which doesn’t exist such as airborne laser weapons. Meanwhile, the Red Force was told they weren’t allowed to shoot down the Blue Team’s aircraft, had to keep their offensive weapons in the open and could not use chemical weapons. Even then, the Blue Force could not achieve all of its objectives as Riper unleashed a guerrilla insurgency on the occupying forces.

    The US-Saudi Tandem

    President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz greeting at Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, on Friday. (Saudi Press Agency/Wikipedia)

    Why shouldn’t Joe Biden be feted by the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia and the apartheid state of Israel? He and the U.S. have as much blood on their hands as they do. Yes, in 2018 the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the assassination and dismemberment of my friend and colleague Jamal Khashoggi. Yes, Israel assassinated Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. But Washington has more than matched the crimes carried out by Israel and the Saudis, including against journalists. 

    The imprisonment of Julian Assange – who released the collateral murder video showing U.S. helicopter pilots laughing as they shot to death two Reuters journalists and a group of civilians in Iraq in 2007 – is designed to destroy Assange psychologically and physically. The corpses of civilians, including children, piled up by Israel and Saudi Arabia, who do much of their killing in Gaza and Yemen with U.S. weapons, don’t come close to the hundreds of thousands of dead the U.S. has left behind in the two decades of warfare it has perpetrated in the Middle East. 

    In 1991, a U.S.-led coalition destroyed much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities resulting in sewage contaminating the country’s drinking water. Then followed years of U.S., U.K. and French airstrikes enforcing a “No Fly Zone” along with crushing sanctions they imposed via the U.N. From 1991 to 1998, these sanctions alone were estimated to have killed 100,000 to 227,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, although the exact figures have been the subject of much dispute.

    The U.S. “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign of Iraqi urban centers during its subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 dropped 3,000 bombs on civilian areas, killing over 7,000 noncombatants in the first two months of the war. 

    By one estimate, the U.S. has been responsible for directly or indirectly killing nearly 20 million people since the end of the Second World War. 

    Israel and Saudi Arabia are gangster states. But so is the United States.

    “There are few of them,” Biden, reacting to Democratic lawmakers who have criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, told Israel’s Channel 12 news. “I think they’re wrong. I think they’re making a mistake. Israel is a democracy. Israel is our ally. Israel is a friend and I make no apologies.”

    The angst about Biden’s not holding the Saudis and the Israelis to account on this visit is risible, as if we have any credibility left that allows us to arbitrate between right and wrong.

    The idea that Biden and the U.S. are brokers for peace was eviscerated long ago. The U.S. offers shameless support for Israel’s right-wing government, including vetoing U.N. resolutions that censor Israel.

    It refuses to condition aid on a respect for human rights even as Israel launches repeated murderous assaults against the civilian population in Gaza, labels Palestinian NGOs as terror groups, expands illegal Jewish-only settlements, carries out aggressive housing evictions of Palestinian families and mistreats Palestinian and Arab-American citizens at points of entry and within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    The idea that the U.S. represents and promotes virtue illustrates the self-delusion that accompanies America’s moral and physical degeneration. The rest of the world, which recoils in repugnance at what the U.S. has become, does not take it seriously. They fear U.S. bombs. But fear is not respect.

    They no longer envy America’s hedonistic mass culture, tarnished by mass shootings, social inequality, the decay of infrastructure, dysfunction and a Grand Guignol-style of politics that has turned civil and political discourse into a tawdry burlesque.

    America is a grim joke, one about to be made worse when the Christian fascists, bigots and conspiracy theorists take control of Congress in the fall, and I expect, the presidency two years later.

    The U.S., along with Israel, makes war on Muslims who, with an estimated 1.9 billion adherents, comprise nearly 25 percent of the world population. The U.S. has turned many in the Muslim world into its enemies. The Muslim world does not hate the U.S. for its values. It hates its hypocrisy. It hates its racism, its refusal to honor their political aspirations, its lethal attacks and military occupations and its crippling sanctions.

    Muslims express the rage felt by Guatemalans, Cubans, Congolese, Brazilians, Argentines, Indonesians, Panamanians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Filipinos, North and South Koreans, Chileans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans – those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.” They too were slaughtered by the U.S. high-tech military machine and subjugated, humiliated, forced to accept U.S. hegemony and killed in American clandestine torture centers or by C.I.A.-backed assassins.

    No one is held accountable. The C.I.A. blocked all investigations into its torture program, including destroying videotape evidence of interrogations involving torture and classifying nearly all of the 6,900-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that examined the C.I.A.’s post-9/11 program of detention, torture and other abuse of detainees. 

    Biden goes to Saudi Arabia and Israel as a supplicant. As a presidential candidate, he called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and vowed to make it “pay the price” for Khashoggi’s murder.

    But with the rising price of oil, Biden is whitewashing the murder, along with the humanitarian disaster the Saudis have caused in Yemen, imploring the Saudis to increase output, a plea Prince Salman has rejected.

    Similarly, Biden is weak in Israel, powerless against the expansion of Jewish settlements and assaults on Palestinians, and unwilling to move the U.S. Embassy back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, a move by the Trump administration that violates international law.

    Biden’s staff was reduced to pleading with the Israelis not to embarrass him as they did during his 2010 visit as vice president. During his 2010 visit, Israel announced it was building 1,600 new Jewish-only houses in illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The Obama White House angrily condemned “the substance and timing of the announcement.”

    How can the U.S. bar Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from a summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and embrace the Saudi regime and the Israeli aparatheid state? How can it decry the war crimes of Russia and unleash industrial violence on the Mulism world?

    How can it plead for the 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, and ignore the Palestinians? How can it justify another “preemptive war,” this time against Iran?

    The duplicity is not lost on most of the world. They know who the U.S. is. They know that in American eyes they are unworthy. The inevitable demise of the U.S. on the world stage is cheered by the majority of the planet. The tragedy is that, as it goes down, it is determined to take so many others down with it.

    *  *  *

    AUTHOR’S NOTE TO READERS: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

    This column is from Scheerpost, for which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for email alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 23:25

  • Court-Packing House Dems Demand Four New Seats On Supreme Court
    Court-Packing House Dems Demand Four New Seats On Supreme Court

    A group of House Democrats on Monday pushed for Congress to add four seats to the US Supreme Court in order to overcome the panel’s 6-3 conservative majority.

    At a Monday press conference hosted by ‘Take Back the Court Action Fund,’ Democratic lawmakers decried recent rulings from the Court which overturned the landmark abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade, which followed a decision which prohibited New York from restricting concealed carry permits.

    Eight House Democrats, including Reps. Andy Levin (MI), Jan Schakowsky (IL), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), Mondaire Jones (NY), Ed Markey (MA) and Senator Hank Johnson (GA) were at the conference.

    According to Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), the Supreme Court is “making decisions that usurp the power of the legislative and executive branches.”

    Republican politicians made controlling the judicial branch part of their platform, said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), adding that the court has “gone rogue” and “become a radical institution.” 

    The lawmakers also emphasized that the longevity of the lifelong terms the sitting justices are now serving makes action to expand the court more urgent. 

    Of 72-year-old conservative Justice Samuel Alito, Johnson said, “You can see the gleam in his eye as he thinks about what he wants to do to decimate the rights of people and put us back in the Dark Ages.” -The Hill

    And of course, they’re framing the current USSC configuration as “court packing” by the Republicans – when in fact Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire when Obama could have appointed another liberal Justice, and GOP lawmakers’ lawful refusal to confirm an Obama nominee after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia – allowing President Trump to appoint Neil Gorsuch, followed by Brett Kavanaugh (replacing Anthony Kennedy), and Bader’s replacement Amy Coney Barrett, are what led to the Court’s current weighting.

    “The nightmare scenario of GOP court-packing is already upon us,” said Rep. Jones, adding “That’s how they got this far-right 6-3 majority in the first place.”

    As The Hill notes, Congress has changed the number of justices on the court seven times.

    Regardless, the measure is unlikely to succeed, as Democrats are not expected to be able to clear the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 23:05

  • Faster Spreading Omicron Variants Hit China, Sparking Lockdown Concerns
    Faster Spreading Omicron Variants Hit China, Sparking Lockdown Concerns

    Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

    Two, more infectious, COVID-19 Omicron variants were detected in China, and a new round of outbreaks has quickly spread to more than 20 of China’s 31 provinces in 2 weeks. Two big cities in western China have been locked down, while major Chinese port cities are conducting mass testing. All of this is sparking concerns about more lockdowns and economic repercussions.

    Fourteen COVID-19 cases were reported on July 17 in China’s southwestern city Chengdu in Sichuan Province. The patients are infected with Omicron variant BA.2.12.1, which hadn’t been seen in China before.

    According to mainland Chinese media China Business Network, as of July 18 as many as 10 subvariants of Omicron have been detected across the country since the first locally confirmed case of BA.5 variant was reported in China’s megacity Xi’an on July 6.

    Public research data shows that the Omicron BA.2.12.1 variant strain is more infectious than the original variant of Omicron. Its transmission speed is 1.2 times that of the BA.2 variant. Both BA.2.12.1 and BA.5 can escape vaccine-elicited antibodies.

    Faster Spreading Variants Causing Lockdowns of Big Cities

    On July 18, authorities ordered a 7-day lockdown of Chengdu, the provincial capital with a population of 16.3 million. During that time, nobody is allowed to leave the city without a negative COVID-19 nucleic acid test result from the last 48 hours.

    The official notice also states that indoor entertainment venues such as bars, KTVs, gyms, and various public cultural and sports venues in the city are temporarily shut down. Large-scale conferences are not allowed to be held in the city for the time being, in-person training and religious activities are suspended, no catering services for banquets, and various clinics are prohibited from accepting patients with a fever.

    As the more infectious variants BA.5 and BA.2.12.1 are spreading in China, authorities in more big cities have ordered lockdowns, partial lockdowns, or district control.

    Security staff stand guard at the entrance of a residental area following COVID-19 cases in Zhangye in China’s northwestern Gansu Province, on Oct. 23, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    Many areas in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province, population 3.8 million, are under lockdown, and nearly 10,000 residents have been sent to centralized isolation facilities for quarantine due to the new outbreak.

    Ms. Chen, the owner of a restaurant in Chengguan District of Lanzhou, told The Epoch Times on July 18 that the city was shut down last week. “The epidemic here is very serious. The entire area is locked down. All shops and restaurants have been closed since last week. Everyone is ordered to stay at home and not allowed to go out.”

    Ms. Zhang, a resident of Yantan Road of Chengguan District in Lanzhou City also told The Epoch Times on July 18 that the city was already under lockdown.

    “Because of the outbreak, the whole city of Lanzhou is shut down. You can’t get in. There are policemen standing on the streets, and you are not allowed to walk on the street. Taxi services are stopped. All the communities [neighborhoods] in the city are closed.”

    The Epoch Times called Yanbei Street office in Chengguan District and the Lanzhou CDC but couldn’t get through.

    Meanwhile, mass COVID-19 testing is conducted in the mega port cities of Shanghai and Tianjin, sparking fears of another round of city-wide lockdowns that would further worsen the Chinese economy and disrupt the global supply chain.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 22:45

  • Chipotle Closes First Of Its Stores To Vote For Union
    Chipotle Closes First Of Its Stores To Vote For Union

    In what’s being decried as “union-busting 101,” Chipotle Mexican Grill just permanently closed the first of its stores nationwide where employees voted to pursue unionization. 

    At 7:39am on Tuesday, a Chipotle Northeast “people experience partner” emailed employees to notify them that Chipotle was pulling the plug on their store on Stephen King Drive in Augusta, Maine.

    The closure comes just four weeks after employees petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to arrange a unionization election. On July 11, a Delta Township, Michigan Chipotle’s became the second location in the country to make that move. As we reported last week, union-organizing across the country has surged to a six-year high, with Starbucks a notable target.     

    For lack of workers, the store has been closed to the public since June 17, but the company kept it open for training and continued paying Augusta employees while not actually serving customers. Now, laid-off workers will receive pay for scheduled shifts this week plus four weeks of severance based on the hours worked in the last two weeks. 

    In a statement, Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs officer Laurie Schalow said the chain had gone to “extraordinary lengths” to staff the Augusta location, to include assigning two recruiting experts to support the store: 

    “Despite these efforts, we have been unable to adequately staff this remote restaurant with crew and continue to be plagued with excessive call-outs and lack of availability from existing staff. We have had an even more difficult time finding managers to lead the restaurant. Because of these ongoing staffing challenges, there is no probability of reopening in the foreseeable future, so we’ve made the decision to permanently close the restaurant.” 

    Workers are planning a Tuesday evening rally to demand the store be reopened. “Chipotle is playing dirty and we’re fighting back! Join us at 5pm to protest the closure of our store and tell them that union busting is bad business! …Bring your signs and your voices and stand up with Chipotle United!” the group said on Twitter.  

    That didn’t last long: Augusta, Maine “Chipotle United” workers after their June 23 union vote (Maine AFL-CIO via Bangor Daily News)

    The week before the June 23 union vote, employees staged a two-day walkout to protest what they described as unsafe working conditions. Specifically, in a letter to management, 10 employees said that alleged understaffing put employees at risk of cutting themselves and each other: “Prep work such as dicing and slicing vegetables is done in the kitchen during our busy times out of necessity, creating a hazard for crew members rushing to cover so much extra work around the knives.”

    Augusta Chipotle employee and Chipotle United member Brandi McNease told WGME TV: 

    “They waited until the morning of the [NLRB] hearing to close the store and then claimed we couldn’t elect to form a union because we’re permanently closed. This is union busting 101 and there is nothing that motivates us to fight harder than this underhanded attempt to shut down the labor movement within their stores. They’re scared because they know how powerful we are and if we catch fire like the unionization effort at Starbucks, they won’t be able to stop us.”

    McNease told the Bangor Daily News:

    “For a company that gave a bonus to its CEO that was 1,700 times more than the median Chipotle worker’s pay in 2020, I don’t believe for a minute that they couldn’t afford to hire a manager and enough staff to keep this store running. Chipotle has the money to attract workers and pay them living wages, but it would prefer to use it to pay exorbitant dividends to their shareholders.”

    Apparently, McNease knows a lot more about guacamole than Chipotle stock. The company has never paid a dividend.  

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 22:25

  • Ignore The Unproductive Central Planners And Use Bitcoin
    Ignore The Unproductive Central Planners And Use Bitcoin

    Authored by Marty Bent via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    The unproductive class is doing its best to ruin the global economy. This class is made up of politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers that have been enabled by a global administrative state expanding at an ever-increasing pace since the end of World War II. Those individuals who make up the unproductive class do not produce anything of value for the world despite what they would like you to think, which is that they are an essential part of order in the world. In fact, the unproductive class should probably be more aptly described as the counterproductive class as everything they do seems to create friction for those who actually bring valuable productive skills and expertise to the world.

    Hell, it has even gotten to the point where it isn’t a far fetched idea to believe that the unproductive class is actively being counterproductive in an attempt to push the masses into a fearful and desperate state that would make them more susceptible to being manipulated to act against their short- and long-term best interests. Your crazy Uncle Marty has reached this conclusion. One can only witness so many coincidental “incompetent blunders” in a row over the course of several years before beginning to grow suspicious that something nefarious is afoot.

    • Forced lockdowns.

    • Printing trillions.

    • Normalizing masks, which have been proven not to work.

    • Mandating experimental vaccines.

    • Energy policy that decreases availability and reliability while increasing costs.

    • Food policy that leads to shortages.

    When isolated, it is easy to write each off as a policy mistake that anyone could have made in the heat of the moment. However, when you take a step back and consider that these policies across different domains have been flung at the public at an incredible pace and in conjunction with one another globally, it is extremely hard to come to any other conclusion besides there is a coordinated effort to completely restructure society in the eyes of those in power: the unproductive class of psychotic central planners. If the unproductive class that is coordinating on an international level, control the money, the energy, the food and eliminate bodily autonomy, they will have successfully subjugated the world.

    Don’t look now freaks, but the unproductive class does have a high degree of control over all of those things at the moment. I would argue that we have already been subjugated. The masses of men do not find themselves in a position where they need to figure out how to defend against a looming subjugation. They find themselves in a position where they better recognize they have been subjugated and work quickly to break free while the door to freedom is still cracked and in a position where it can be kicked open with a bit of effort.

    Bitcoin is the wedge that is keeping the door cracked and the more prominent it becomes, the higher the chances that the masses of men will escape subjugation by the unproductive class. The power over the money is the base from which the unproductive class operates. If one has the central authority to create and destroy monetary units and decide who can and cannot receive or send those monetary units, they can essentially centrally plan an economy. Bitcoin allows us to rip that central control away from the unproductive class. This is just the first step, though.

    To fully cut the unproductive class away from the levers of control, the productive class must begin to secure the layers outside of money using bitcoin. One of the highest layers and easiest to disrupt is energy. Bitcoin mining provides many avenues by which energy producers can begin to pry themselves away from the unproductive class wielding the money printer. The easiest way to do so is by monetizing their stranded energy directly via bitcoin mining.

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    By converting previously wasted resources to censorship resistant hard money, energy producers can begin to bolster their balance sheets in a worst case scenario — buy relatively expensive ASICs during at the peak before a bear market — and supercharge them or, in a best case scenario — buy relatively cheap ASICs at the bottom before a bull market. Increasing the efficiency of your assets is always a good thing, but it’s a great thing when that efficiency (in this case, utilizing previously underutilized assets) brings increased profits. This is step one.

    Step two kicks in when energy producers realize the power of the Bitcoin network and begin to demand that they get paid in sats for selling their precious energy resources to the market. When this happens, the script will be completely flipped on the unproductive class. With the insanity of ESG mandates increasing as time goes on, the likelihood of this script flipping increases.

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    It is not hard to see an attack on energy producers from the unproductive class pushing insane ESG mandates on the markets where they begin to try to freeze the bank accounts of producers who decide not to play along with the madness. If and when this point is reached, it will probably instill a ton of fear in these energy producers, but they should not fear. They have leverage on their side because they produce energy, which is vital for human flourishing. As we’re discovering rather quickly, when energy supply chains break down, it has dire consequences. When push comes to shove, the smart humans will begin to ignore the unproductive class and attempt to acquire the energy they need in any way possible. Luckily for those smart individuals Bitcoin exists and it is there to offer them a censorship resistant network through which they can settle energy trades. Sats for power will become the norm.

    It would be nice if it didn’t reach this point, and the best way to prevent it from getting to that point is for energy producers to frontrun the censorship by beginning to settle their trades in sats instead of cuck bucks. The question that remains is: How quickly is the productive class going to take initiative and preemptively remove the unproductive leeches from the equation?

    *  *  *

    The above is a direct excerpt of Marty’s Bent Issue #1337: “Ignore the unproductive central planners.” Sign up for the newsletter here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 22:05

  • China Belatedly Calls Out John Bolton's Coup-Planning Admission
    China Belatedly Calls Out John Bolton’s Coup-Planning Admission

    China has belatedly reacted to the coup-plotting admission of former White House national security adviser and longtime neocon foreign policy architect John Bolton. In a live interview last week with CNN’s “The Lead”, Bolton casually admitted to having planned “coups d’etat” in the past while being questioned about Trump’s role on Jan.6. “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat—not here but, you know, [in] other places—it takes a lot of work,” Bolton had boasted.

    During a Monday press briefing, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin was scathing in his critique of the interview, saying that “overthrowing foreign governments is deep in the bones of how the US conducts its foreign policy.”

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    “Bolton’s admission is so revealing,” he continued. “Leading US politicians trumpet the so-called ‘rules-based international order’ for one purpose: to ensure that the US can easily interfere in other countries’ affairs and overthrow their governments at its own will.”

    “This is exactly the kind of ‘rules’ and ‘order’ that people like Bolton want absolutely to defend. The people of the world, however, will not let them,” Wang added.

    China and Russia have long held up the disastrous US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in particular as evidence that Washington is addicted to regime change, and further that it hypocritically denounces other countries while employing moralistic language, despite its well-known human rights abuses killings of civilians in regions like the Middle East.

    Continuing this theme of Beijing’s, Wang said in his Monday comments, “The US’ acts of regime change remain unchecked even after the end of the Cold War. For years, the US has created political unrest in Latin America, played a part in the Arab Spring, and instigated color revolutions in Europe and Asia.”

    Some of the earliest and fiercest reaction in the wake of Bolton’s CNN interview came out of Latin America. For example, former Bolivian president and socialist leader Evo Morales denounced Bolton, saying, “It is proof that the US is the worst enemy of democracy and life.” Additionally, Maduro’s Venezuela held a formal vote in parliament condemning Bolton’s remarks as “an extraordinary feat of brazenness” – also calling him “crazy”.

    Washington relations with China have soured further over the Russian war in Ukraine, given calls for Beijing to unreservedly denounce the invasion have been met with silence. China has further gone so far as to urge to West to take seriously Moscow’s security demands related to NATO expansion.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 21:45

  • Ex-COVID Czar Birx Admits Virus "Came Out Of The Box Ready To Infect"
    Ex-COVID Czar Birx Admits Virus “Came Out Of The Box Ready To Infect”

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former top White House COVID-19 adviser Deborah Birx said Sunday that COVID-19 “came out of the box ready to infect” when it was first detected in Wuhan, China, in 2019.

    Dr. Deborah Birx (R) speaks alongside former President Donald Trump and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci during a briefing at the White House in Washington, on March 29, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

    Speaking to the Daily Mail, Birx said that COVID-19 “was already more infectious than flu when it first arrived,” saying that most viruses take months or years to become highly transmissible among humans.

    Birx, who had worked under former President Donald Trump, told the paper that either COVID-19 was “an abnormal thing of nature” or that Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were “working on coronavirus vaccines.” Researchers could have contracted the virus before spreading it to others or it escaped from the lab, she said.

    Lab Leak

    “It happens, labs aren’t perfect, people aren’t perfect, we make mistakes and there can be contamination,” Birx said, noting that individuals with COVID-19 can be asymptomatic. “Someone working in the lab with one of the strains could’ve caught it and not known they had it,” she said.

    An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei Province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could have reduced deaths if officials told health leaders that the virus can spread asymptomatically, she said.

    “China was implying that they were containing it, but asymptomatic spread cannot be contained without testing,” Birx told the publication. “I think the world lost several months of preparation because we were thinking there wasn’t that level of human-to-human spread when there clearly was.”

    While some news outlets and so-called fact-checking websites labeled the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, top U.S. officials conceded later in 2021 that it’s within the realm of possibility. A report released by the 17-agency Intelligence Community in 2021 shows that some federal officials believe the virus emerged from the Wuhan laboratory, according to the White House in a May 26 news release.

    Chinese officials, meanwhile, have claimed the virus was first found in December 2019, emerging from a wet market in Wuhan about 10 miles from the lab’s location. It was later revealed by the National Institutes of Health that it provided funding to researchers who were carrying out research on bat coronaviruses.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 21:25

  • NBC Journalist Laments: "People Don't Trust Us, They Don't Believe Us"
    NBC Journalist Laments: “People Don’t Trust Us, They Don’t Believe Us”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    An NBC journalist embraced a rare moment of self-awareness when she admitted, “people don’t trust us, they don’t believe us.”

    The comments were made by Katy Tur during an interview with The Hill to promote her new book.

    “The trust in media, in newspapers and television, is hitting an all time low,” said Tur as she looked forlorn.

    “People don’t trust us. They don’t believe us, and it makes me wonder if this job —as I’m currently doing it– is effective, but if it’s doing more harm than good,” she added.

    Wow, finally a journalist who has accepted the horrific state of her industry.

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    Tur made the comments in response to a new Gallup poll which finds that, “Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news.”

    “Hear me out for a second here — have you considered not lying?” remarked Chris Menahan. That’s a rhetorical question — of course the answer is no. The media’s only concern is how to best package the regime’s lies in a way that’s “effective.”

    With the public showing a total lack of trust in the media, the baton has been handed to so-called ‘fact checkers’, who are just offshoots of legacy media outlets, to try to control the narrative by ‘debunking’ dissenting views.

    However, now they’re losing credibility too, leading them to try to pressure Big Tech to ban their competition, with fact checkers explicitly stating their reason for doing so is that no one is interested in watching ‘fact checker’ content on platforms like YouTube.

    As we highlighted last month, CNN’s ratings continue to collapse, down 63% from just a year ago, and CNN+ was a dismal failure.

    The network’s new leader is now ordering hyper-partisan hacks to stop giving their biased opinions on everything and concentrate on delivering actual news.

    *  *  *

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 20:45

  • Wave Of Profit Downgrades May Have Just Kicked Off
    Wave Of Profit Downgrades May Have Just Kicked Off

    By Cormac Mullen, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

    The long anticipated wave of global earnings downgrades looks like it may have begun, though for now at least it’s more of a ripple.

    Forward earnings estimates for the MSCI AC World Index have come down by over one percent from their early June high. Analysts still seem reluctant to take a knife to profit forecasts despite the threat of recession, something they had no qualms about doing with bottom-up price targets at the first sign of equity weakness this year.

    Those peaked in late January and have been slashed by about 12%. That ties in with the narrative that investors are reining in the multiples they are prepared to pay for stocks in a new and uncertain inflationary regime. Stocks have fallen quicker than price targets though, as evidenced by the rising upside expected for the global equity benchmark — now just over 25%.

    With global blue chips from Apple to Microsoft to Google vocally preparing for a slowdown in growth, that upside is likely to be an illusion until earnings estimates reset much lower.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 20:05

  • Next Round Of Heat Tests China's Ability To Keep Factories Humming
    Next Round Of Heat Tests China’s Ability To Keep Factories Humming

    Another round of dangerous heat is forecasted to plague large swaths of China as the nation’s power grid is pushed to the brink. Factories have already received power rationing notices to stabilize the grid and thwart rolling blackouts, ensuring sufficient supply for air-conditioners. The last thing China needs is social unrest amid the mortgage boycott crisis. 

    China Meteorological Administration expects temperatures in the southern region, including Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces, to reach between 39 and 42 degrees Celsius (102.2 Fahrenheit and 107.6 Fahrenheit) through late August. 

    For the last two weeks, China has been boiling with temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit). The next round of heat apocalypse appears to be arriving on Wednesday. 

    Last week, the nation’s electricity generation hit a record high due to soaring cooling demand, forcing the government to ration power to polyester and textile factories in Zhejiang province, according to the South China Morning Post. Other electricity-hungry export factories were also rationed power to ensure grid stability. 

    Another round of heat comes as nationwide power shortages worsen supply chain problems. Disruptions from power shortages could be nearing as Bloomberg points out that some coal-fired power plants in the country’s coastal area have rapidly depleted stockpiles. Some power plants have only ten days of usage, warned consultant Fenwei Energy Information Service Co. 

    Besides energy-intensive factories rationing power, office buildings and shopping malls have reduced power usage. 

    Eleven provinces have sent alerts to industrial users for “orderly consumption” that would limit supply when air-conditioning demand jumps. Among the affected regions, Jiangsu has already cut power to just 20% of normal levels in some places and threatened to switch off the electricity to factories consuming excessive amounts, according to industrial news outlet Chemical Fiber Group. -Bloomberg

    Fenwei Energy also said that utility companies are under pressure because of high coal costs, resulting in losses for some coal-power generators. China’s COVID Zero policy made things worse by restricting coal imports and the movement of shipments within the country to utilities. 

    The electricity shortage and power rationing at factories will dampen economic growth in the world’s second-largest economy and worsen supply chain problems. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 19:45

  • Mexican President Intervenes With Biden, Renews Asylum Offer For Julian Assange
    Mexican President Intervenes With Biden, Renews Asylum Offer For Julian Assange

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    On Monday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he delivered a letter to President Biden last week where he pleaded for the US not to prosecute Julian Assange and renewed an offer to grant asylum to the WikiLeaks founder.

    Lopez Obrador said he explained in the letter that Assange “did not cause anyone’s death, did not violate any human rights and that he exercised his freedom, and that arresting him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression.”

    Image source: AP

    The Mexican leader said that he previously offered asylum to Assange in a letter to President Trump at the end of his term and again at the beginning of the Biden administration. Last month, Lopez Obrador called Assange “the best journalist of our time.”

    Assange faces up to 175 years in prison for exposing US war crimes by publishing documents he received from whistleblower and former Army soldier Chelsea Manning. Lopez Obrador said earlier this month that if Assange is sentenced to life in prison, there should be a campaign to dismantle the statue of liberty.

    “If they bring him to the US and sentence to the ultimate penalty, to death in prison, then we will have to initiate a campaign for dismantling the Statue of Liberty, presented by the French, because it will no longer be a symbol of liberty,” he said.

    While Lopez Obrador is outspoken in his support for Assange, who is an Australian citizen, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not. Albanese has rejected calls for him to demand that Washington drop its extradition request.

    Assange is currently being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison. British Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of Assange to the US, and the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team lodged an appeal to her ruling on July 1.

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    Assange is indicted on 17 counts of espionage and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime for his role in obtaining and publishing the leaks provided by Manning. But Assange used standard journalistic practices to obtain the information, something many human rights groups, journalist organizations, and UN officials have pointed out.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 19:25

  • Stellantis Ends Its Manufacturing Joint Venture In China
    Stellantis Ends Its Manufacturing Joint Venture In China

    Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but another U.S. manufacturer is calling it quits on a joint venture in China. 

    Stellantis, the auto maker responsible for mainstays such as Dodge Ram pickup trucks, said that a “lack of progress” has caused it to abandon its joint venture with China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. Ltd.

    The company is instead going to focus on importing vehicles to the country instead of manufacturing them there, the Wall Street Journal noted this week. Stellantis also has a joint venture in China with Dongfeng, to manufacture Peugeot and Citroën brands.

    Dongfeng Motor Group Co. Ltd. said recently it planned on selling its 3.16% stake in Stellantis, the Journal reported. 

    The company commented: “Stellantis intends to cooperate with GAC Group in an orderly termination of the joint venture formed in March 2010, which has been loss-making in recent years.”

    JV’s in China haven’t been easy for foreign manufacturers while local brands have flourished, the report says. Chinese domestic-brand vehicles saw sales up 18% during the first half of 2022, despite the country’s Covid lockdowns. Foreign JVs saw sales fall 6% over the same time. 

    At the beginning of this year, Stellantis had previously planned  to increase its stake in its partnership with GAC to 75% from 50%, the report says. GAC snubbed Stellantis the day they announced their intention, putting out a statement that said it “deeply regrets that this release is not agreed by us.”

    Chief Executive Officer of Stellantis Carlos Tavares has cited geopolitical risk as a reason “not to over-invest in China, particularly in owning factories,” the Journal wrote. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 19:05

  • 81-Year-Old Fauci Responds To Reports On Him Leaving, Says He's "Not Going To Retire"
    81-Year-Old Fauci Responds To Reports On Him Leaving, Says He’s “Not Going To Retire”

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci clarified Tuesday that he doesn’t plan to retire after he said Monday that he was going to step down from his government position at the end of President Joe Biden’s term.

    Fauci told Politico on Monday morning that he did not expect to stay in his current position when the term ends in January 2024. The move triggered speculation that Fauci would retire before then.

    “I’m not going to retire. No, no, I’m not going to retire. I may step down from my current position at some time,” Fauci told The Hill. 

    “I said a very innocent but true thing. I said whether it’s Donald Trump or it’s Joe Biden’s second term, I don’t intend to be in my current position in January of 2025,” he added.

    Fauci, 81, has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984 but became a household name in early 2020 when he began delivering interviews to media outlets about the COVID-19 pandemic, essentially serving as the federal government’s chief pandemic spokesperson.

    “What happens between now and then I have not decided, but the one thing I do know is that I have other things that I want to do in a professional way that I want to have the capability—while I still have the energy and the passion to do them,” he told The Hill Tuesday.

    As the pandemic dragged on, Fauci became a polarizing figure for his often dire predictions about the trajectory of COVID-19’s spread in the United States. Meanwhile, he’s championed mask and vaccine mandates while dismissing assertions that those rules restrict people’s freedom.

    The U.S. Supreme Court in January struck down the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test rule, saying that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration exceeded its authority.

    Several weeks ago, Fauci said he contracted COVID-19 despite having received four vaccine doses. Last week, Fauci raised more headlines when he told Fox News that COVID-19 vaccines “don’t protect overly well … against infection,” although he said that they instead protect individuals against severe disease and hospitalization.

    Also in the interview with Politico, Fauci also said the world will be living with COVID-19 for some time.

    “We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” he said, adding, “What we have right now, I think we’re almost at a steady state.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 18:45

  • China Furious Over Reports Pelosi To Visit Taiwan In August
    China Furious Over Reports Pelosi To Visit Taiwan In August

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan has predictably sparked outrage in China, with Beijing slamming the potential trip as causing “grave harm” and threatening “forceful measures” if she goes through with it.

    She would be the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives – which is third in line to the US Presidency – to visit the country in 25 years after Republican speaker Newt Gingrich visited in 1997. In April she nearly sparked a major diplomatic row with China after it emerged she would stop over in Taiwan while on a southeast Asian trip. But (perhaps only too conveniently), she tested positive for Covid-19 days ahead of the expected tour, leading to cancelation altogether.

    Via Reuters

    Word of a rescheduled trip set for August has left Beijing furious. FT is citing “Six people familiar with the situation” who say “Pelosi would take a delegation to Taiwan in August.”

    During the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s daily briefing on Tuesday, spokesman Zhao Lijiang vowed “resolute and strong measures” if she goes through with it. He said a visit by the US House Speaker would “severely undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, gravely impact the foundation of China-U.S. relations and send a seriously wrong signal to Taiwan independence forces.”

    “If the U.S. were to insist on going down the wrong path, China will take resolute and strong measures to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao added.

    The quick condemnation and scathing statements reminding Washington that it must stick by the ‘one China’ principle are similar to China’s reaction in April. Given that prior trip never materialized (again, due to her announced Covid diagnosis), she was able to quietly back out and many observers chalked up the entire planned Taiwan trip to “rumor” given neither the US nor Taipei side ever confirmed it.

    In these latest remarks Zhao didn’t indicate precisely what counter-US or counter-Taiwan steps China would take. It comes also amid Beijing demanding the Biden administration cancel a proposed 5th package of arms to Taiwan, totaling $108 million, and as Beijing is challenging the status of the Taiwan Strait as “international waters”. 

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    Some Chinese state-linked pundits are going so far as to warn that Pelosi’s visit could spark military conflict between Taiwan and China. Among them, former editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s Global Times has blasted the “risky” visit for which she would “bear historical responsibility for possibly triggering military conflict in the Taiwan Strait.”

    So the question remains: will the 82-year old speaker go through with it? Or perhaps, she’ll conveniently come down with a last minute case of “Covid” again (maybe Monkeypox?); or possibly, she’ll be busy bailing out her husband Paul. The region is especially on edge given growing comparisons to the Ukraine war – a comparison which China has consistently rejected.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 18:25

  • Seven Major Effects Of COVID-19 On Parents, Students, & Schools
    Seven Major Effects Of COVID-19 On Parents, Students, & Schools

    Authored by Bruno Manno via RealClearEducation.com,

    COVID-19 disrupted American K-12 education, with calamitous consequences for young people. Here are seven realities that resulted from that calamity.

    Four describe the tragedy, and three explain what advocates and stakeholders are doing to overcome it.  

    1. Parents know that there are problems and want new solutions.

    More than two-thirds (69%) of parents say that they’re worried their child isn’t on track in school, almost twice as many as the 35% who were worried about this pre-pandemic. Nearly six in ten want schools to continue using statewide tests to show what students are learning so that schools will know where to focus assistance. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of parents worry about their child’s mental health. All this leads nearly six in ten (56%) to want schools to rethink how they educate children and create new ways to teach children.

    2.  COVID-19 led to much less student learning.

    Analysts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) studied mathematics and reading test scores across the country, tracking what students learned using online instruction compared to what they learned in reopened schools. Online instruction was associated with growing achievement gaps, especially for black and Hispanic students attending high-poverty schools. The average student learning remotely lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of in-person instruction, a gap that reached 22 weeks for students in high-poverty schools. The average student in reopened schools lost between 7 and 10 weeks of in-person instruction. Other studies reach similar conclusions, including one that found pandemic learning loss greater than that experienced by New Orleans students after schools closed following Hurricane Katrina.

    3. COVID-19 changed young people’s college-going plans.

    The 2022 high school graduating class lived more than half their school time during the pandemic. Nearly 1 in 3 seniors (28%) have changed their post-high school plans since the pandemic began, up from 18% in a spring 2020 survey. Three out of four (74%) seniors report that they want to go to college, though they’re now facing new challenges. There are significant differences across student groups, with seniors who are Hispanic, black, and male less likely to want to go to college than those who were seniors in 2019.

    4. COVID-19 affected young people’s mental health.

    The Surgeon General issued a public advisory report with troubling information. Mental-health visits for children aged five to 11 increased by 24% compared to 2019, with visits for 12- to 17-year-olds rising almost 31%. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that since the start of the pandemic, 70% of public schools experienced an increase in the number of children seeking school mental-health services, with 76% of school staff voicing concerns about students showing signs of depression, anxiety, and trauma. The General Accounting Office found that during the 2020-21 school year a higher percentage of teachers using online or combining online and in-person learning reported that their students experienced learning difficulties than did teachers in an in-person environment.

    There are reasons for optimism. Here are three promising pathways to overcoming the COVID-19 learning calamity.

    5. Many parents responded to this calamity by voting with their feet.

    Parents enrolled children in new non-public school education settings, shrinking public school enrollment since 2020 by almost 1.3 million students (though some of this decline owes to decreasing birth rates and immigration). Parents enrolled their children in private and parochial schools, micro-schools, and learning pods, with homeschooling reaching record enrollment levels. In particular, large urban districts experienced a significant student exodus, especially those with lengthy periods of remote-only learning. For example, over the last two years, New York City schools lost around 64,000 students; Los Angeles around 43,000 students; and Chicago around 25,000 students.

    6. State and local public school leaders are responding to the calamity.

    States and school districts have received $190 billion in federal pandemic education funding. Money is being used to implement programs that accelerate student learning, including evidence-based ones like intensive small-group tutoring; competency-based instruction that develops specific student knowledge and skills; summer school; extra instruction in core subjects; lengthening the school year; and offering modest financial incentives and other rewards to students, parents, and teachers. 

    7. Policymakers are creating new options for parents and young people.  

    Elected state leaders have expanded school-choice options or created new ones, including open enrollment across school district boundaries, vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts. This has produced a more pluralistic K-12 system with more educational options for families and students.

    School closures produced an education and mental-health calamity for young people. The debate about whether school closures were mistaken will continue. The onus is now with K-12 advocates and stakeholders to do whatever it takes to support families and students in their efforts to make up lost ground.

    *  *  *

    Bruno V. Manno, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, is senior advisor to the Walton Family Foundation’s education program. Some of the research described in this piece was supported financially by the Foundation.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 18:05

  • GoFundMe For Suspected Gunman's Family Hits $20,000
    GoFundMe For Suspected Gunman’s Family Hits $20,000

    GoFundMe has allowed a fundraiser for the family of a now-deceased Minneapolis shooting suspect to reach $20,000 – despite the donation platform removing similar campaigns for Kyle Rittenhouse and Jose Alba – both of whom acted in self-defense.

    Andrew Tekle Sundberg was fatally wounded by police after a six-hour standoff in a Minneapolis apartment complex last Thursday after he allegedly fired bullets into the apartment of a single mother of two while she was cooking dinner, KARE11 reports.

    According to the search warrant, which was issued Thursday morning, while attempting to evacuate the apartment building, “officers started taking fire,” prompting them to exit the building. At that point, Minneapolis police requested assistance from the Minneapolis SWAT Team, the warrant reads.

    When the SWAT Team arrived, two snipers set up on the roof of a nearby apartment building, according to court documents. “At some point during the standoff, the two snipers shot the male subject,” the search warrant reads. The man, later identified as Sundberg, was transported the HCMC where he later died. Minneapolis city officials identified the two officers as Aaron Pearson and Zachary Seraphine.

    Of note, the GoFundMe page for Sundberg had initially raised more than the victim’s GoFundMe, however after a tweet by Rebecca Brannon (@RebsBrannon) went viral, the fundraiser for the woman, Arabella Foss-Yarbrough, hit more than $60,000 as of this writing.

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    In the family’s GoFundMe, Subdberg is described as “a brother, uncle, son, friend, talented artist, hilarious, energetic human.” Donations are promised to go towards his funeral expenses, food and other aid for his family, the Daily Caller reports.

    In the past, GoFundMe has banned fundraising campaigns for people accused of being involved in violent crimes that the platform found to be in violation of its policies. The site banned some fundraisers seeking to help fund Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense prior to his acquittal and took down a fundraiser for Jose Alba, a New York bodega worker who allegedly stabbed and killed a man in self-defense, according to Newsweek.

    GoFundMe’s terms of service say that it does not allow fundraisers for the “legal defense of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind.” The terms of service also say the platform keeps the prerogative to prohibit “any other activity that GoFundMe may deem, in its sole discretion, to … be unacceptable or objectionable.”

    One donor paid $5 to Sundberg’s page just to be able to tell the family that they should donate the proceeds of the fundraiser to the victim’s family.

    GoFundMe told the NY Post: “The fundraiser, ‘T.S. Family Funds,’ states donations will go toward funeral, food, and family expenses,” adding “Fundraisers for these types of expenses are allowed under GoFundMe’s terms of service.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 17:45

  • China's Fuel Exports Plunge
    China’s Fuel Exports Plunge

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    China’s exports of gasoline and diesel slumped in the first half of 2022, per customs data out on Monday, as Chinese authorities continued to work to reduce overseas sales of fuels and allocated lower export quotas to refiners. 

    Gasoline exports slumped by 42 percent annually in the first half of this year compared to the same period of 2021, according to Chinese customs data cited by Reuters. Diesel exports crumbled by an even larger percentage—they were down by 84 percent between January and July compared to the first half of 2021.   

    This month, China’s fuel exports are expected to rebound after the government has recently allocated a new batch of export quotas to refiners, according to industry consultancy JLC quoted by Bloomberg.

    The latest batch of export quotas has been issued, but combined with other quotas so far this year, overall export quotas from China are much lower than last year’s.

    At the beginning of this month, China issued the latest batch of fuel export quotas for refiners, and total quotas so far this year are 39 percent lower than the collective quotas this time last year—a sign that Chinese fuel exports are unlikely to ease the tight fuel market globally.

    The Chinese authorities have approved the latest batch for a total of 5 million tons, Reuters reported, citing sources. That would be enough for the refiners given quotas to make money with sales on the export market, but not enough to ease the global crunch in fuel supply.

    China started this year by considerably reducing the allowances for fuel exports in the first export quota batch for 2022, signaling its intention to limit fuel sales abroad and curb excessive refinery output.

    Exports were reportedly limited in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Chinese authorities were said to have asked state refiners in the country to consider halting diesel and gasoline exports in April due to heightened concerns about oil supply.

    Chinese diesel and gasoline exports so far this year have been well below last year’s, while COVID-related lockdowns hurt demand in the spring, swelling domestic Chinese inventories.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 17:25

  • Former NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio Quits NY Congressional Race
    Former NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio Quits NY Congressional Race

    Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has tapped out of the New York 10th district congressional race, after he said in a Tuesday tweet that it’s clear “people are looking for another option.”

    De Blasio thanked his campaign staff from his current and previous runs, and gave no indication of what his next move might be – though he said it was time for him to bow out of electoral politics.

    The former Mayor has dropped steadily in polls since the beginning of the pandemic – turning down a bid for NY Governor after polling far behind Gov. Kathy Hochul in the Democratic primary.

    Democratic Political strategist and former Pete Buttigieg 2020 campaign advisor Lis Smith trashed former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio during a Monday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. 

    During a segment of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” Wallace read an excerpt from Smith’s new political memoir titled, “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story,” in which she scathingly recounted the time she worked for de Blasio, up until her fired her. -Fox News

    Last October, the New York Times reported that a city investigation revealed de Blasio misused public resources for his own political and personal benefit – and had not reimbursed the city for security costs related to his presidential campaign.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 07/19/2022 – 17:05

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