Today’s News 20th November 2021

• A Brief History Of West African Slavery
  A Brief History Of West African Slavery

  Submitted by ICE-9 via The Burning Platform

  Slave [sleyv] from Middle English, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slavic Person”), from Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos), from Proto-Slavic slověninъ …

  The seminal image many 50+ year old Americans have regarding the West African slave trade’s operating model can be traced back to the 1977 television miniseries Roots.  Some of you may recall sitting in front of your CRT television screen unknowingly watching the roots of a future social justice movement unfold before your eyes as a gang of European men magically appear deep within the Heart of Darkness wielding nets, superior numbers, and incredible brutality and snatch up a young and happy Kunta Kinte from his ancestral homeland.

  Like me, I bet the knot in your gut got tighter at each stage as Kunta Kinte was first shipped off in chains to a slave depot, sold at auctioned, and finally sent to America where his foot got cut off and he was renamed Toby.  The miniseries was a monumental success at implanting those first seeds of suburban white guilt into what had previously been infertile terrain.  Afterwards, many Americans could never innocently watch OJ Simpson run through airports in quite the same way.

  Roots was the initial vector that dug its pernicious roots into the formerly oblivious white collective consciousness.  It succeeded where back in the 1960s continuous years of three minute lead story action clips on the Six O’clock Evening News showing groups of helpless southern Negroes getting pummeled by police truncheons and slammed with water cannons had failed.  Thus those January nights back in 1977 unleashed the power of humanized myth that unequivocally proved superior to the old ways of cold impersonal facts.  It was through this new found power of myth and the visceral emotions it conjured that a primordial wokeness was spawned.

  Today, when discussing even the most oblique references to slavery in America, the emotions ignite, misguided passions reign supreme, facts equate to racism, and the phenomenology of history devolves into one where history becomes but a construct derived to aid and abet a white supremacist patriarchy.  Case in point – according to current woke orthodoxy, evil cis-male Europeans just up and sailed 3,500 miles south to forgotten lands like Zenaga, trekked hundreds of miles inland without roads, maps, or logistic support, and – according to some extraordinary unverified estimates – kidnapped up to six million innocent Africans.

  But was this the reality on the ground in West Africa circa 1619, or did Europeans instead rely on intermediaries to conduct their dangerous, high opex dirty work and if so, who were these intermediaries?  Do Americans have an accurate understanding of the West African slavery supply chain, or have they instead meekly decided to go along to get along and ingest without question a toxic narrative that is an antipathy encumbered product tainted by a combination of pop culture and political agenda?  And last, did slavery in West Africa materialize out of thin air with the first appearance of Europeans, or did it exist long before their arrival?

  The answer to this last question is both morally and legally significant, as it could nullify any and all claims to both tangible and ethical debts of reparation borne by ancestral liability.  For if Caucasian Americans are collectively guilty – including those who immigrated here after the Civil War – as a result of their ancestors’ theoretical participation in the West African slave trade, would not a basis be equally established to extend slavery’s collective culpability to African Americans if it were shown that their ancestors too participated to an equal degree in the West African slave trade?  Would not equal culpability on both ancestral sides of the Atlantic nullify any and all claims by one party against the other?  Further still, if slavery in West Africa was shown to be prevalent long before the arrival of Europeans, based on the premise of hereditary culpability, then slavery in America could no longer exist as some kind of alleged “Original Sin”.

  The forthwith exposition can be considered a template for countering the unreasonable and fanciful woke dogma surrounding the realities of West African slavery and specifically, the false claims regarding Europe’s and America’s sole complicity in this industry.  It is an attempt – described here in broken wokespeak – to deconstruct the prevailing narrative derived to aid and abet a People of Color aligned, non-binary, trans-supremacist heterarchy.  Let us begin our journey of enlightenment.

  The Songhai Empire as Gateway to Europe’s Appetite for African Slaves

  Between the 4^th and early 16^th centuries AD, through a succession of kingdoms that included Wagadou (Ghana), Mali, and Songhai, the West African Sahel was among the wealthiest regions on earth during a period when most of Europe wallowed in medieval feudalism.  Prior to the discovery of the Americas, West Africa was the world’s largest source of gold – so much gold in fact that when the Malian king Mansa Musa visited Mecca during his 14^th century hajj, his 60,000 strong retinue (including 12,000 slaves) distributed so much gold that he crashed its value and created a decade of economic chaos on the Arabian peninsula.

  The Niger River during this time possessed six times more arable land than the Nile.  In the adjacent Sahara to the north, Africans operated extensive salt mining operations.  With the arrival of the Arabs in the 8^th century AD, a prodigious iron smelting and blacksmithing industries occupied entire villages from one end of the Sahel to the other.  The West African political economy was such that no king ever enforced strict ownership over the entirety of his realm, so after the millet harvest an African peasant could earn good extra income panning for alluvial gold, mining iron ore, harvesting trees to make charcoal fuel for iron smelting, or travelling north to labor in the salt mines.

  The Sahel during this period was awash in food and gold and large prosperous cities like Gao grew into architectural wonders.  So what happened that would drain not only the wealth of an established long-standing power center yet leave nothing behind but piles of dirt from what were formerly majestic structures of timber and adobe brick?  The short answer is that it all fell to pieces due to horses.

  In the 9th and 10th centuries AD, trade caravans from what are today Morocco and Algeria began regularly making their way south through the Sahara desert during the winter months. These caravans initially brought with them manufactured goods and luxury items to exchange for gold, ivory, specialty woods, animal skins, and salt.  But during the 13^th century these caravans started supplying a vital military component to the various competing rulers of the Sahel – Barb horses.  Ownership of horses gave each ruler a cavalry, and ownership of large herds could facilitate military superiority over rivals.

  The Malian, Hausa, Mossi, Bornu, Kanem and Songhai cavalries regularly battled each other for over three hundred years to what could be considered an equilibrium sometimes punctuated with transient victories and an occasional ebb or flow of juxtaposed borders.  Continuous combat was made possible only by a steady supply of Barb horses from the Maghreb, a market that traders were happy to oblige as the supply of gold from the Sahel appeared endless.

  But with its monsoonal climate and tropical diseases like trypanosomiasis, the Sahel Africans found it difficult to breed horses – the local Dongola sub-breed had a short life expectancy – and thus a steady flow of imported Barb horses were required to both replenish the high equine mortality rates and maintain at least military parity with the surrounding kingdoms. These imported horses were expensive and were initially paid for with alluvial gold, which was starting to go into productive decline during the 15^th century at about the same time the Songhai king Sonni Ali Ber led a successful campaign to defeat his enemy Mali and consolidate rule over the Sahel from Lake Chad to the Cap-Vert peninsula.  So the height of Songhai power coincided with maximum operating costs to retain that power just as alluvial gold production from the Niger River went into decline.

  Saddled with the mounting expense of maintaining many cavalry regiments stretching across an 1,800 mile expanse, the Songhai lords began to launch slave raids upon the various Sahel peoples.  So as the 15^th and 16^th centuries progressed, slaves rather than gold became more and more the medium of exchange between the Songhai lords and the horse traders of the Maghreb.  As these traders brought more and more slaves to the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, most were purchased by Arabs but many were sold on to Europeans where they were employed as domestic servant in wealthy cities like London and Antwerp and were considered a high status symbol – the “negars and blackmoores” of 16th century Elizabethan England.  So it was not the Europeans that first procured slavery in West Africa, but the Songhai themselves that introduced Europe to African slaves via Arab and Berber intermediaries.  Europeans at this time were a minor end customer, where the primary slave demand was provided by Arabs.

  As the 16th century ground out successive years, the gold really began to play out.  Continuous and devastating slave raids depopulated the Niger River goldfield regions – crashing not only gold but also food production – and drove its inhabitants onto marginal lands that had been earlier deforested to manufacture charcoal for the formerly prodigious iron smelting industry.  Over a period of 200 years the once prosperous Sahel was transformed into a land inhabited by subsistence food scavengers and all powerful cavalry lords where the incessant demand for horses laid economic waste to this once prosperous region.

  With Songhai power in the late 16^th century at its nadir as a result of internecine strife and succession wars among the dead king Askia Daoud’s many sons, the Sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur, took advantage of the ensuing political instability and sent a military expedition across the Sahara and in 1591 these 4,000 Moroccans and their cannons defeated the Songhai at the battle of Tondibi.

  Thus with the defeat of the powerful Songhai Empire the coast of West Africa south of the Arab stronghold Nouakchott was left wide open to European maritime exploitation.  By 1625 the Dutch had established a permanent settlement at Gorée and the Portuguese likewise at Portudal, both located in modern day Senegal.  These initial European forays onto West African soil provided the vital resupply anchorage that enabled further permanent settlements along the entirety of the Gulf of Guinea and as far south as Namibia.  And it is at this point where the Kunta Kinte mythology begins with the permanent settlement of Europeans on African soil who allegedly trekked hundreds of miles inland into dangerous areas they did not control to randomly kidnap happy Africans into slavery.  Was this the reality on the ground in Africa back in 1619?  The Angolan experience provides the answers.

  The Angolan Model of Contracted Slave Procurement

  The gradual encroachment of European settlements down the Atlantic coast of West Africa did not lead to immediate mass colonization as malaria and tsetse flies kept out all but the hardiest and most rapacious adventurers.  But how did these Europeans procure so many slaves to service the burgeoning and incredibly profitable sugar and tobacco charters of the Caribbean?  The Kunta Kinte procurement model would have eventually led to depopulation of the local areas as the traditionally semi-mobile Africans would have just up and moved out of reach like they did to avoid the Songhai lords, and Africans were beginning to adopt European weapons in their defense.  So – how did so many Africans end up as slaves in the Americas despite their overwhelming numbers back in Africa?

  The answer lies in the Angolan model which was by no means confined to this region alone.  During the first half of the 16^th century the Portuguese established a permanent trading station at the port of Soyo, a province within the Kingdom of Kongo on the south bank at the mouth of the Congo River.  The significance of Soyo was it established the first European occupation in West Africa outside the provenance of the tsetse fly, and with trypanosomiasis absent, colonists could settle and import European livestock for the first time on the African Atlantic coast.  Entire families of Portuguese colonists began to arrive and by 1575 the city of Luanda was founded, followed by Benguela in 1587.  With Angola’s drier, more temperate climate, these early European colonists got to the business of building homes, clearing land, farming, fishing, and raising their livestock.  But one thing they did not do was get to the business of travelling hundreds of miles inland to hunt down and capture slaves.  They left that to others – and these others weren’t Europeans.

  Soon after the Portuguese planted their flag at Soyo, they granted a trade monopoly to the Kingdom of Kongo which ruled over what is now northwestern Angola.  But as Portugal established colonies to the south of Soyo, these new colonies were located in lands claimed by Kongo but occupied by Ambundu peoples of the N’Dongo and Kisama states within the Kwanza River valley.  Because of the trade monopoly specifics granted to Kongo, the Bakongo could sweep through the Kwanza River valley and capture the local Ambundu and sell them into slavery to the Portuguese, but the Ambundu could not capture these Bakongo raiders and sell them into slavery to the same customer.  This egregious injustice incensed the N’Dongo king to the point of declaring war on – not the Portuguese – but the Bakongo in an attempt to break the discriminatory trade monopoly.  The Ambundu were successful and in 1556 they defeated the Bakongo in a war fought not to end the enslavement of their fellow Africans, but to extend to themselves the right to capture, enslave, and sell their Bakongo neighbors to the Portuguese.

  Despite the N’Dongo victory and elimination of Kongo influence in the Kwanza River valley, the Portuguese insisted on upholding their original trade agreement, so the Kongo trade monopoly remained in place with the Ambundu still cut out of all commercial activity with the Portuguese.  Realizing they had prosecuted a war for nothing, the N’Dongo spent the next several decades threatening colonists and harassing Portuguese interests up and down the Kwanza River valley without any penetration into the colonial economy.  In 1590 N’Dongo had had enough of the commercial status quo so it allied itself with its eastern Ambundu neighbor Matamba and together they declared war on all Portuguese interests across Angola.

  This war led the Portuguese to construct a network of fortalezas up and down the Angolan coastline and after years of protracted violence the Portugal finally defeated the N’Dongo in 1614.  Portugal’s first act after victory was to invite their old trading partner – the Bakongo – to commence mop-up operations across the Kwanza River valley in order to clear out the defeated Ambundu and bring them in chains to the new network of fortalezas, which not only served as troop garrisons and acropoli for the local inhabitants, but also as slave depots that accommodated the swelling numbers of captured Ambundu before being auctioned off and sent to Brazil.

  With the defeat of the Ambundu the N’Dongo matriarchal dynasty fled east to their ally Matamba.  There, a royal refugee named N’Zinga M’Bandi betrayed the hospitality shown her by Matamba and began secret negotiations with Luanda for a return of the Ambundu to the Kwanza River valley.  N’Zinga M’Bandi secured agreements that not only deposed the sitting Matamban queen – handing her the crown by subterfuge – but also convinced the Portuguese to nullify their long standing trade monopoly granted to the Kingdom of Kongo which, in effect, established the Ambundu peoples in the slave procurement business.

  The new Matamban queen made haste regarding her political and business affairs and quickly consolidated N’Dongo and the neighboring Kasanje states under her rule.  By 1619, Queen N’Zinga had grown her realm into the most powerful African state in the region using the wealth generated from her industrial scale slave procurement undertaking.  Within a few decade of Queen N’Zinga’s ascension, the regions surrounding central Angola were depopulated of not only the rival Bakongo peoples, but of its Ovimbundu, Ganguela, and Chokwe peoples too.

  The lucrative Angolan slave trade not only flourished under female African leadership, but grew scientific and efficient and continued unabated until the Portuguese crown outlawed the colonial slave trade in 1869.  However, avarice and ingenuity always prevail so after this slavery prohibition a vibrant slave black market continued unabated as abolition only served to drive up the price of slaves and therefore the incentive to procure them in the field.  These lucrative smuggling operations from Angola lasted up until the day its primary customer Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

  Today the dominance of the Ambundu peoples in the business, political, and military affairs of modern day Angola is directly traced to the business acumen, organizational skills, and operational efficiency that the Ambundu peoples’ developed during their 269 year monopoly over slave procurement in Angola.  From the tens of thousands of their fellow African “brothers” and “sisters” that the Ambundu sold into slavery, they accumulated incredible wealth that enabled them to occupy a position of respect, influence, and near equality in colonial Angola unparalleled anywhere in colonial Africa.  They became, in a sense, the “Master Ethnicity” of the region.

  Twilight of the Woke Idols

  The irony behind the etymology for the word slave, lost upon the woke and the allies of Critical Race Insanity, is that slave derives from ancient words describing Caucasian Slavic peoples.  If slavery were at the core of the “American Experience”, America long ago would have adopted a word for slave that describe African peoples just as the Romans employed Sclāvus to describe a Slav.  But in the 402 years since 1619, Americans have not made this linguistic transition because there is an older and deeper collective history of slavery that can be traced back millennia to Eastern Europeans who constitute a large proportion of the American population.

  Yet somehow this deeper history has not affected Caucasians of eastern European descent – even the generational poor – in the same way it has tormented the collective psyche of African Americans.  Maybe these demons are not so much the product that African Americans were once slaves, but instead a manifestation of the incessant bombarded of acerbic messages from the Academia-Media-Technocracy Complex demanding that African Americans play the role of perpetual victims and that they deserve some abstract redress from those who themselves have never benefitted from systemic anything.

  Or is there a deeper pathological diagnosis, a sepsis of personal ontology whereby the current woke narrative is a desperate attempt at mass cognitive dissonance to blot out the humiliating reality that one’s ancestors were traded in bulk by one’s own kind for the likes of a horse?

  Africans were one of many peoples in a long line of slaves procured by Europeans but they are the last group before the prohibitions of the Utilitarian campaigns of universal human rights put an end to the practice. Thus it is this ‘Last In, First Out” queuing that gives African Americans claim to their title of “systemic victims” without regard to the broader history of European slavery during the preceding two millennia – including Medieval feudalism.  The reality on the ground for centuries in Europe was that slave relations were between Caucasian Master and Caucasian slave.

  And with the advent and maturing scientific efficiency of institutions such as central banking, nation states, denominational religions, non-governmental organizations, together with the application of mass psychology, one finds upon further scrutiny that this predominant relationship between Master and slave has changed little over the millennia.  We Americans are, in a sense, all slaves – caught in a systemic nexus of control with few options of escape.  Therefore, claims of “systemic injustice” and demands for redress are nothing more than demands to be promoted from field hand to domestic slave unless the true, invisible system of enslavement is abolished for all Americans.

  Slavery existed for millennia throughout the entirety of the Bantu populated African continent prior to the arrival of Europeans.  African slaves were captured, worked hard in the millet fields, scolded, beaten, sold multiple times, raped, and murdered well before the first European footprint was impressed on a West African beach.  Slavery was the natural African social condition, it continued as Europeans colonized the continent, and in some places it continues today after most Europeans have left.  Thus any conception of an “Original Sin” borne by Americans through ancestry lies not with Caucasians, but with those of African ancestry as Africans themselves were the origination point for the West African slavery supply chain where they occupied the roles of contractor, planner, procurer, and transporter to distribution hubs.

  The indigenous Africans were, in modern terms, the Chief Operating Officers of the West African slave trade.  Europeans played the roles of wholesale customer, clearing house, and retail distributor of a product offered to them by brazen and entrepreneurial local rulers who amassed great wealth from their endeavors and whose ancestors today are the beneficiaries of an “ethnic privilege” derived from this wealth and societal status as former Masters.

  The truth is that this seminal enduring image created with Kunta Kinte’s abduction is a fraud and was fabricated to not only impugn the Caucasian audience and henceforth brand them evil and complicit through ancestry, but was also consciously constructed to expiate the guilt surrounding the ugly and brutal truth that Africans themselves were the culpable party.  Had indigenous Africans not captured and sold so many of their brethren into slavery, there would likely be very few African Americans today.

  Epilogue

  The woke will never mention the 800 years of an East African slave trade conducted by Arab merchants up and down the Indian Ocean coast.  The woke won’t utter a word regarding present day slavery across the Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Sudan.  One hears only silence from the woke when one mentions the “Systemic Ethniscism” that permeates every Bantu nation where wealth and power are concentrated into the hands of a dominant ethnic group.

  The woke ignore the 3,000+ freed African slaves who show up in the ante bellum US census who were granted manumission, inherited plantations from their former owners, and kept the slaves.  No woke person ever admits that American Indians owned African slaves nor will they / them accept that slavery permeated Nahuatl culture even as they / them espouse the virtues of Greater Aztlán.  And the woke will never accept that it was Europeans who eventually stamped out slavery within the Bantu cultural world despite it being the natural human condition there for centuries.

  And, most importantly, the woke will never acknowledge that all Americans are trapped in a nexus of corporate, bureaucratic, technological, and psychological control where the true “American Experience” has devolved into one where everyone is a slave serving invisible Masters. Until these Masters’ hands are removed from every lever of power and influence in our nation – by any means necessary – abstractions like “equality” and “equity” are nothing more than job promotions on the American plantation.  The woke will never become unwoke because they love their servitude, it has opened the door for them to serve an irresponsible existence free of rationality, logic, true meaning in their existence.  Through their wokeness, they have essentially been freed from Freedom – they can place no hope in death, and their blind lives are so abject that they are envious of every other fate.  The world should let no fame of theirs endure; both true Justice and Compassion must disdain them.

  One final comment about those 4,000 Moroccans at the Battle of Tondibi.  The invading Moroccan army was commanded by a one Judar Pasha, but he was not always known by this name.  Judar was born Diego de Guevara, an inhabitant of the Spanish region of Andalusia who as a boy was captured by Arab slave raiders, packed off in chains to Morocco, and sold into slavery to the Moroccan Sultan.  And just like Kunta Kinte, Diego’s name got changed, but where Kunta Kinte had his foot cut off, Judar was castrated and forced to serve this foreign Sultan as a eunuch.  But we will never see a TV miniseries where an Arab slave wrangler hangs one Diego de Guevara upside down by his ankles, thrashes him with a bull whip, and screams repeatedly, “Your name is not Diego, your name is Judar!”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 23:40

• Taiwan Rolls Out Advanced F-16 Fighter Jets In Ceremony With US Diplomats In Attendance
  Taiwan Rolls Out Advanced F-16 Fighter Jets In Ceremony With US Diplomats In Attendance

  Taiwan this week unveiled its new batch of updated and advanced F-16 fighter jets, recently upgraded with US help, specifically via Lockheed Martin, which further has plans to upgrade 141 F-16 fighter jets by 2023 for the democratic-run island claimed by China.

  A total of 64 upgraded fighters, called F-16Vs, officially went into service for Taiwan’s air force during a ceremony on Thursday attended by President Tsai Ing-wen. She declared that “This represents the steadfast promise of the Taiwan-US partnership.”

  

  The Taiwanese president then urged more countries to follow the US example: “I trust that in holding fast to democratic values, there will definitely be more countries with similar values who will stand with us on this front,” she said.

  During the ceremony at an air force base in the city of Chiayi, pilots demonstrated complex maneuvers, including low passes over the area. The Associated Press noted that by the end of 2023 when Lockheed fulfills the contract, Taiwan will become the largest operator of F-16s anywhere in Asia.

  The AP described further that: “The F-16V is the most technologically advanced version of the storied multi-role fighter jet, equipped with highly capable radar, allowing it to track more than 20 targets at a time. It also features cutting-edge electronic warfare systems, along with advanced weapons, precision GPS navigation and a system to automatically avoid collisions with the ground.”

  Washington has continued to provocatively maintain a very visible presence in Taiwan, following the recent revelation and confirmation that it’s had hundreds of US Marines there training Taiwan’s special forces for more than a year. 

  VIDEO: Taiwan held a ceremony on Thursday to commission the first squadron of its most advanced F-16 fighter. President Tsai Ing-wen oversaw the ceremony at an air base in the southern city of Chiayi alongside Sandra Oudkirk, Washington’s de facto ambassador to Taiwan pic.twitter.com/3Y8ZC7L1aR

  — AFP News Agency (@AFP) November 19, 2021

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

  Sandra Oudkirk, the United States de facto ambassador to Taiwan, was in attendance for Thursday’s upgraded F-16 rollout ceremony, despite constant Chinese warnings against the US selling Taiwan more weaponry. Currently Congressional hawks are calling on more money and support to Taiwan’s military.

  Predictably, Beijing at the end of the week condemned the continued relationship, warning Washington to be “be cautious with its words and actions on the Taiwan issue, and refrain from sending any wrong signals to the secessionist forces of Taiwan independence,” according to the latest Foreign Ministry statements. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 23:20

• Tools In The Service Of Tyranny
  Tools In The Service Of Tyranny

  Authored by Deane Waldman via AmericanThinker.com,

  What does a virus, a Marxist movement, and bans on firearms have in common? Nothing, superficially. Delving deeper, they are tools of federal oppression.

  

  An obvious common element of the three tools is the fear they engender: of infectious death; of unchecked rioting and looting; and of gun violence. These dangers are in fact greatly exaggerated or fabricated altogether.

  Stanford economist Paul Romer is credited with first saying, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

  Washington has taken this idea to heart.

  In 2019, when no crisis existed, the Washington establishment created the perception of existential threat from COVID that would kill 2.2 million Americans without drastic federal intervention. In fact, COVID carried a risk for the general, healthy population similar to seasonal flu and was only dangerous to elderly, immunocompromised individuals with pre-existing conditions. Biden, Fauci, and the media made it seem as if we all would die if we did not follow Washington draconian orders for lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates.

  Fauci commanded Americans to put aside concerns about “personal liberties” for the greater public welfare. We had to accept federal suppression of constitutionally guaranteed rights such as free speech, religious liberty, right to assemble, and even right to work to defeat the “common enemy.”

  The “swamp” used fear of COVID as a tool to impose pseudo-martial law.

  Biden COVID mandates exceeded federal authority. They are unconstitutional, as the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently reminded Washington. Public health measures are state, not federal, responsibility.

  BLM (Black Lives Matter) is a proudly Marxist, domestic organization hiding behind the obvious slogan that the lives of black people matter – just as the lives of all people matter. Yet the Biden administration has tolerated the violence, arson, looting, and even murder by armed BLM agitators in all-black garb and ski mask anonymity.

  Washington and Biden’s DoJ tacitly condone BLM’s domestic terrorism for one reason: it promotes an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. This led to cries to the federal government: Do Something, Anything! In response, they changed or suspended rules, laws, and constitutional rights using violence in the name of social justice as an excuse. Washington encouraged defunding local police departments while offering federal “policing” for local communities.  

  Washington’s tolerance and covert encouragement of BLM is another way to justify extending federal power and reach.

  When the Bill of Rights was written, there was no real difference in military power of a state militia compared to the Continental army. They both had muskets, handguns, bayonets, horses, and even cannon. The Second Amendment does not use words such as “may” or “should” or “cannot.” It reads “shall not [italics added] be infringed” is a simple, unambiguous, and unarguable command.

  The Founders wanted private citizens to have the military capability to resist central government attempts to reimpose tyranny on its citizens. Thus, after free speech and religious independence, the next most important “right” was to keep and bear (use) firearms, in armed defense, if necessary, of personal liberty and American freedom.  

  This is why Democrats seek to circumvent the Second Amendment and take away guns from private citizens. Gun bans are another tactic of federal oppression.

  In progressive hands, COVID, BLM, anti-gun laws, and many others are tools in the service of tyranny… if we allow it.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 23:00

• Where America's International Students Come From
  Where America’s International Students Come From

  For the 2020/21 academic year, the total number of international students enrolled in U.S. higher education came crashing down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the 2021 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange published by the IIE, around 914,000 students from abroad were enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions in the past academic year. The decrease of 15 percent from the previous year represents a grave financial loss for institutions. The loss of around 160,000 international student cost stakeholders around $10 billion dollars, according to NPR.

  As Statista’s Katharine Buchholz notes, international students make up 4.6 percent of the total U.S. student population, down from 5.5 percent in 2019/20. They contributed $39 billion to the American economy in 2020.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  China remained the largest source country for international students with a grand total of 317,299 enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, non-degree and optional practicing training programs.

  India came second with 167,582 while South Korea came third with 39,491. Canada rose one spot into rank 4, as its international student numbers decline the least in the pandemic.

  54 percent of all international students in the U.S. are enrolled in STEM fields.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 22:40

• China Deems Australia 'No Longer Peaceful', But Now "Saber Wielding" After Sub Deal
  China Deems Australia ‘No Longer Peaceful’, But Now “Saber Wielding” After Sub Deal

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  China’s acting ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining, said by seeking nuclear submarines under the AUKUS military pact, Australia will turn to “saber wielding” rather than being a “peace defender.”

  In an interview with The Guardian published Thursday, Wang said he used to view Australia as a peace-loving nation, but now that it is seeking nuclear-powered submarines designed for long-range attacks, that view has changed. “So who are you going to attack? You are no longer a peace lover, a peace defender, you become a saber wielder in certain form,” he said.

  

  Under the AUKUS deal, a three-way pact between the UK, the US, and Australia, Canberra would not get the nuclear submarines until at least the late 2030s. But the pact is a sign that Australia is following the US and other Western powers in the campaign against China, and Australian officials have stepped up their rhetoric.

  “There’s zero nuclear capacity, technologically, in Australia, that would guarantee you will be trouble free, you will be incident free,” Wang said further. “And if anything happened, are the politicians ready to say sorry to people in Melbourne and in Adelaide?”

  Last week, Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton signaled Australia was willing to follow the US in a war against China over Taiwan. Dutton said it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the US if it takes action to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

  Responding to Dutton, Wang said Australian officials should not do “anything that would lead to an even more gloomy state of our relationship.” Last month, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited Taiwan. Wang said this visit was “very unfortunate” and not in the interest of Australia.

  

  “Actually, it is very agonizing to see that such a high-level politician would engage in something that doesn’t serve the interests of Australia, because I think it serves the interests of Australia and China to stick to one-China policy and make our relationship as trouble-free as possible,” Wang said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 22:20

• Canadian Teen Arrested For Allegedly Stealing $36.5 Million In Crypto
  Canadian Teen Arrested For Allegedly Stealing $36.5 Million In Crypto

  Bitcoin fixed this.

  A Canadian teen has been arrested for allegedly stealing $36.5 million worth of crypto from a victim in the U.S., Bloomberg reported this week. 

  It marks the largest crypto theft reported from one person, police near Toronto said.

  The victim was targeted by a SIM swapping scam, wherein someone hijacks a wireless customer’s phone number and then can intercept two-factor authentication codes – in addition to simply accessing accounts on their phone.

  

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force joined together to make the arrest, according to the Hamilton, Ontario police. It’s the culmination of an investigation that started last March.

  The Hamilton police seized crypto worth more than $5 million. Some of the stolen crypto was used to purchase a “rare” online gaming username, which was a key clue integral in helping investigators find out who committed the crime.

  There was no further information on how much crypto had not been recovered or located – which may prove to make for an interesting story once the teen makes his way through the judicial system and pays his debt to society. 

  The teenager has since been charged and has a court case pending.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 22:00

• Texas Party Switcher Is Latest Ominous Sign For Democrats
  Texas Party Switcher Is Latest Ominous Sign For Democrats

  Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics.com,

  Ryan Guillen had been a Democratic member of the Texas legislature, representing a sprawling district south of San Antonio, for nearly two decades. This week he jumped ship for the Republican Party, blaming Democrats for leaving him, not the other way around.

  

  Normally such a move would make local and state news, but certainly not prime-time national coverage. Yet, on Wednesday night, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham gleefully cited the defection as further proof that “truly smart” Democrats are abandoning a sinking ship. While Guillen is a state lawmaker whose switch won’t impact which party holds power in Washington, there’s one sign that this may not be an isolated example: At least nine congressional House Democrats have  announced they are not seeking reelection next year. More are expected to follow.

  Highlighting the shifting political terrain in South Texas isn’t just a partisan exercise. The New York Times’ Tom Edsall this week cited evidence that President Biden’s immigration record and Democrats’ progressive agenda is hurting them with traditional-base voters, especially Hispanics in Texas border counties.

  “Democrats shouldn’t panic,” Edsall wrote. “They should go into shock.”

  Explaining his switch to the GOP, Guillen provided more fodder for veteran campaign consultant James Carville and others warning Democrats to rein in their left wing. The 44-year-old anti-abortion and pro-gun lawmaker cited the defund-the-police push and the climate change movement, which he said is “destroying” the Lone Star state’s oil and gas industry, along with the “chaos at the border.”

  “Friends, something is happening in South Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans,” he said at a press conference Monday with Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dade Phelan, both Republicans.

  Democrats quickly pointed out that Guillen made the switch only after the GOP-led redistricting process turned his already Republican-leaning district scarlet. Texas is the only state to gain two congressional seats after the 2020 census, and Republicans control the state legislature and governor’s mansion, and thus the redistricting process.  

  Yet Guillen wasn’t exaggerating when he said there’s a significant political sea change taking place in South Texas. His move was the latest sign of a rightward shift in the Rio Grande region in recent years. Donald Trump won Guillen’s district by 13 percentage points in 2020; just four years earlier, Hillary Clinton carried it by the same margin. The voters still chose Guillen by 17 points last year, but the new map could have threatened such margins for him in the future. The newly formed district voted for Trump by 25 points.

  Republicans are heavily targeting three South Texas congressional seats held by Democrats and are encouraged by Guillen’s switch and other signs of GOP inroads in traditionally more liberal areas of the state. That trio of districts voted for Joe Biden by just two to four percentage points in 2020, down from the 17-to-22-point margins Clinton garnered in 2016.

  The first signs of Democratic vulnerability in districts along the U.S.-Mexico border came earlier this year when Rep. Filemon Vela, who represents Texas’ 34th Congressional District, announced his retirement.

  Then, in June, the traditionally Democratic border city of McAllen elected a Republican mayor in Javier Villalobos, a former Hidalgo County GOP chairman. (The county had gone for Biden by 17 percentage points over Trump.) Another warning for Democrats came a few weeks ago when Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez announced he would run in the adjacent 34th district because he no longer felt confident about holding onto Texas’ 15th. Gonzalez won the 15th by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016 but by just 2.9 points last year.

  Gonzalez publicly claimed he didn’t have much of a choice after Republicans made his district redder, but the Texas Tribune reported the decision was more deliberate than Gonzalez let on. A Democratic amendment to the redistricting process moved his home into the 34th district.

  In early November, Republicans also picked up an additional Democratic-friendly state House seat in San Antonio, an area where Biden won comfortably but still underperformed expectations last year.

  After Guillen’s jump to the GOP this week, liberal groups assailed aggressive GOP redistricting tactics as a prime motivating factor. Common Cause, a liberal nonprofit that advocates for easier voting access, accused Texas Republicans of “whitewashing” state legislative and congressional districts to dilute the power of minority voters. Anthony Gutierrez, who heads Common Cause’s Texas office, said Republicans revealed the new maps just three days before a scheduled vote on them, “providing almost no time for people to assess the maps or go talk to impacted communities.”

  Democrats are now fighting the redrawn districts in court. Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration, now chairs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The committee filed a suit arguing the new congressional districts lines violate Voting Rights Act protections for minority populations and are gerrymandered to give Republicans an advantage.

  It’s a familiar refrain. In most states, the power to create new congressional maps lies with the state legislature after the decennial U.S. Census, and the majority party in power often attempts to redraw them to benefit their members. But election experts counter that Democrats are trying offset Republican redistricting gains in Texas and Florida in areas where they control the state legislatures, such as California, New York and Illinois. In these states and in most areas across the country, heavily Democratic urban areas are growing while rural GOP areas are losing population.

  The stakes this year are particularly high with Republicans only needing to gain five seats in 2022 to win control of the House. Republicans are hoping the path to regaining the majority runs through South Texas and they point to Guillen’s decision to switch parties as the latest bad omen for Democrats.

  “Texas Democrats are retiring or becoming Republicans because they know they’re doomed in in 2022,” said Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment.

  It’s not surprising that Biden’s plummeting poll numbers are worse in Texas than they are nationally. A recent University of Texas and Texas Tribune survey, released Nov. 8, found only 35% of Texans approve of the way Biden is handling his job while 55% of voters disapprove. The survey showed that Texas voters, more than a third of whom are Hispanic, rank Biden the lowest on his handling of immigration and border security with only 22% of respondents saying they approve of his record on that issue and 63% saying they disapprove.

  Democrats are hoping to bolster Biden’s sinking popularity by pushing through a massive $1.85 trillion climate and social spending bill known as Build Back Better. Last month, Biden warned Democrats that their “House and Senate majorities and my presidency” will be determined “by what happens” to the latest version of the measure.

  “I don’t think it’s hyperbole,” he said, referring to polls indicating many of the individual provisions are popular with voters.

  The legislation, which White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has described as “twice as big in real dollars as the New Deal,” would provide free preschool for all children, expand the child tax credit and bolster liberals’ green agenda with numerous consumer rebates and tax credits for clean energy investments.

  To help pay for the spending package, Democrats are proposing to increase taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations, including new taxes on oil and gas producers. It’s a  controversial move in Texas, even among some Democrats. At least 620,000 jobs are connected to the oil and gas industry across the state, and oil production in South Texas has helped transform the relatively poor region into a boom area over the past decade. The plan would penalize oil and gas companies for leaks of methane from wellheads, pipelines, storage and other facilities to the tune of $1 billion to $10 billion annually. Proponents say the tax would serve as incentive for companies to stop leaks and avoid wasting methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

  Vela and Gonzalez, who founded the House Oil and Gas Caucus, as well as Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in late September asking them not to include the methane tax. Another controversial piece of the House version of the bill would allow illegal immigrants to obtain child tax credits.

  The final House version of the Build Back Better bill, which the House could vote on as soon as Friday, still includes these two provisions. Despite this, Gonzalez and Cuellar have signaled they will vote in favor of it, a point Republicans will inevitably hammer home in ads to voters for months to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 21:40

• NATO Chief Outrages Kremlin In Speech Linking "Nuclear Sharing" & "Our Eastern Allies"
  NATO Chief Outrages Kremlin In Speech Linking “Nuclear Sharing” & “Our Eastern Allies”

  On Friday NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave a key speech on Europe’s nuclear defense posture before a security conference in Germany. His comments are subject of multiple Russian state media reports, particularly as his suggestion that US-supplied nuclear warheads could be positioned on the military bloc’s eastern frontier are driving outrage among Kremlin officials. 

  Highlighting threats from both China and Russia during his German Atlantic Association ‘NATO Talk’ Conference 2021, Stoltenberg especially highlighted Russia’s “aggressive actions” and that “it interferes in other countries’ affairs.” With this in mind, he spelled out: “Our aim is a world free of nuclear weapons, but as long as others have them, NATO must have them too.”

  

  That’s when he invoked countries in the alliance which border Russia, saying provocatively: “The nuclear weapons we share in NATO provide European Allies with an effective nuclear umbrella. This, of course, also includes our eastern Allies.“

  This has set off fury in Russia. For example, RT News quickly wrote within hours of Stoltenberg’s speech that he effectively “urged member states to remain committed to plans that could see deadly American nuclear weapons shared across the US-led military bloc’s eastern frontier, close to the border with Russia.

  And Sputnik interpreted his words as an ultimatum to Germany: “If Berlin refuses to station NATO nuclear weapons, then it can be moved to other European countries, including in the Eastern part of the continent, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday.” However, the commentary might be reading too much implied intent into his actual words.

  Stoltenberg said Germany remains at the forefront of NATO security in Europe, and urged German leaders to maintain strong defense, further calling on the EU in general not to establish “parallel structures”: 

  So Germany has a special responsibility to keep NATO strong. This means providing more and new capabilities. Soldiers that are well-trained and well-equipped. Planes that can fly. And ships that can sail.

  And I count on Germany to remain committed to NATO’s nuclear sharing. It is our ultimate security guarantee.

  The Secretary General of NATO has urged member states to remain committed to plans that could see deadly American nuclear weapons shared across the US-led military bloc’s eastern frontier, close to the border with Russia.

  Moscow ain’t happy. https://t.co/mJjO3W7lKM

  — Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) November 19, 2021

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

  On the European Union in particular, the NATO chief said, “So I am now working with President Von der Leyen and President Michel on a new Joint Declaration between the two EU presidents and myself to chart the way forward for further strengthening NATO-EU cooperation.” He added: “As I have said many times, I welcome European efforts on defense. NATO has been calling on European Allies for many years to invest more, and provide more capabilities.”

  As Brookings reviews: 

  Germany has no nuclear weapons of its own, but it stores 20 or fewer U.S. B-61 nuclear gravity bombs at Büchel air base, and maintains a fleet of aging Tornado fighter bombers to deliver them. This gives it a seat in NATO’s nuclear planning group. The SPD and the Green election platforms demanded the removal of the U.S. bombs from German soil. They also want Germany to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as an observer.

  The section where Stoltenberg calls out a litany of Russia and China threats that NATO must stand up to is also worth noting. He said as follows:

  Russia carries out aggressive actions. It interferes in other countries’ affairs. It has invested significantly in military capabilities, including new, advanced nuclear weapons.

  And Russia continues its massive military build-up, as we see now around the borders of Ukraine. And it has shown a willingness to use military force against its neighbors.

  Meanwhile, China is using its might to coerce other countries and control its own people. It is investing heavily in new technologies, like hypersonic glide vehicles. Expanding its global economic and military footprint in Africa, in the Arctic and in cyber-space.

  And China is suppressing democracy and human rights at home. We don’t regard China as an adversary but we need to take into account the consequences for our security, the rise of China.

  In addition, we face more frequent and sophisticated cyber-attacks. Hybrid tactics, as we see today from Belarus on the border with Poland.  We also face persistent terrorist threats. The proliferation of nuclear weapons. And the security implications of climate change.

  If a brief, quick reaction to the speech Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia will no longer turn a blind eye by such “provocations”.

  

  Just the day prior, on Thursday, Putin himself warned that Western powers must stop dismissing Russia’s “red lines”. “We’re constantly voicing our concerns about this, talking about red lines, but we understand our partners — how shall I put it mildly — have a very superficial attitude to all our warnings and talk of red lines,” Putin told a foreign policy conference. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 21:20

• The Utter Orwellian Stupidity Of Masks On Airplanes
  The Utter Orwellian Stupidity Of Masks On Airplanes

  Authored by Jeffrey Barke, M.D., via AmericanThinker.com,

  I recently traveled across the country to Hillsdale, Michigan.  My wife and I sat for five hours each way on airplanes with a mesh mask pressed across our faces.  It made the absurdity of the mask mandate we live under both clear and depressing.  The charade in which we are all forced to participate is not only totalitarian in nature, but also a big Orwellian lie.

  

  I am sure most of the passengers on the planes were either COVID-19-vaccinated or COVID-19-recovered.  While few speak about the thousands of people who have had COVID-19 and survived, they are turning out to be an important group in the ongoing battle against the virus.  I myself am COVID-recovered after a bout with the disease a couple of months ago.  I now have natural immunity to the disease. 

  Forcing someone like me to wear a mask makes no scientific or health sense.  There are no studies to show that mask-wearing on an airplane can stop a respiratory viral illness.  If that were the case, we would expect pilots always to wear masks while in the cockpit.  But they don’t.  Maybe the recirculated air on airplanes keeps them safe from onboard viruses.  Furthermore, if mask-wearing on an airplane were critical to preventing the spread of the disease, why are we allowed to remove our masks for extended periods of time while eating and drinking?  I wish someone would pose that specific question to Dr. Fauci.

  The requirement to wear a mask when entering or exiting a restaurant, but leaving it off while eating and drinking, also makes absolutely no sense.  Do the authorities suppose that the COVID-19 virus stops seeking new hosts to infect only when we are unmasked but not eating or drinking?  Do these bureaucratic geniuses really believe that the virus plays fair, observing equivalent rules to those invented by the Marquess of Queensberry for boxing?  I think the COVID-19 virus is more likely to play by Fight Club rules!

  The CDC recently acknowledged that it does not have any data showing that naturally immune COVID-recovered people can get and spread the disease to others.  Despite this, the CDC discriminates against these people by insisting that they be fully vaccinated in addition to wearing a mask to function in society.

  Since the CDC is requiring these measures, you would think it would have a mountain of evidence to support such a draconian policy.  It doesn’t.  The science, in fact, shows just the opposite.  It shows that natural immunity is strong, durable, and broad-based.  Strong means that natural immunity protects against a COVID infection better than immunity produced by a vaccine.  It is why we do not see COVID-recovered patients getting COVID again.

  While it is common to see COVID-vaccinated people getting COVID and even requiring hospitalization, COVID-recovereds stay healthy.  Multiple studies have confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 behaves much like SARS-CoV-1 as well as many other viral illnesses such as chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, etc.  That is, these diseases provide long-lasting immunity to those who have been infected. 

  I had chickenpox as a child.  I got it because my mom walked my brother and me down the street to a neighbor’s house where the kid who lived there had the illness.  Our dad, a physician, wanted to have us exposed and to deal with the disease under controlled conditions and when it is mild.  This was circa 1970, prior to a chickenpox vaccination being available. 

  Many scientists expect SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — to behave similarly.  COVID-recovered patients appear to be immune to all SARS-CoV-2 variants, including the delta variant.  This broad immunity occurs because those who contract COVID-19 have exposure to the entire virus.  This is in major contrast to the vaccine, which creates immunity to just the spike protein of the virus, thus limiting the immunity and making it much easier for the virus to break through the vaccine-induced immunity.

  There is an expression that says, “We get what we tolerate.”  Over the past 21 months, we have tolerated assaults on our liberties that we would never have accepted before COVID-19.  We have allowed unelected health care bureaucrats to cover their rear ends against any possible outcome from the disease — no matter how unlikely.  We have allowed a complicit media establishment to knowingly sell every possible danger from the virus to a fearful public.  We should all be embarrassed by the hoax they have perpetuated and we have absorbed.

  I would normally think strong men would step up and say no — the same ones who fight wars, protect our streets, and battle bullies in the schoolyard.  But they were emasculated early on by the “experts.”  Now, however, the mama bears have become involved as the bureaucrats, politicians, and supportive media try to force children as young as five to get an investigational vaccine against a virus that poses little risk to their age group. 

  Ah, but don’t ever underestimate mama bears and the protective nature of their maternal instincts.  They may yet be the force to stop the current madness and then join the larger battle for the future of America.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 21:00

• Almost 9 In 10 Americans Worried About Inflation
  Almost 9 In 10 Americans Worried About Inflation

  A new survey has found nine in ten Americans say they’re concerned about inflation. The high level of anxiety about soaring food, energy, and shelter costs, among others, is felt the same across all age groups, racial and ethnic groups, and income levels. 

  Insurance and financial services company Country Financial commissioned the survey, finding 88% of Americans are highly concerned about inflation.

  Tens of millions of Americans are suffering from runaway inflation that will persist into 2022. The White House and Federal Reserve have erred in calling inflation “transitory,” which has proved to be anything but that. Consumer sentiment tumbled to COVID crisis lows in October as inflation expectations marched higher. 

  In response to rising prices, respondents said they would begin to cut back on spending. About half of them said they would reduce dining at restaurants or take-out meals (48%). About 30% said they would keep their current technology instead of upgrading. 

  The survey was conducted between Oct. 22-25 and had 1,031 adults surveyed. It also found other actions respondents said they would cut back:

  • budget food (29%)

  • purchase less clothing (29%)

  • put off home renovations (23%)

  • cancel/put off travel plans (20%)

  • drive less (13%)

  Americans’ worries about inflation are a snub to the establishment’s constant propaganda that this is ‘transitory’ and that ‘you can afford it’.

  The facts are that consumer prices soared 6.2% YoY in October, far higher than the +5.9% YoY expected and accelerating from September’s 5.4% YoY; that was the highest print since June 1990…

  

  Higher prices for energy, shelter, food, and vehicles fueled the supercharged reading and indicated inflation is broadening out beyond categories associated with the reopening.

  Meanwhile, soaring prices have sent consumer sentiment waterfalling to COVID lows. 

  

  All this despite a stock market that is surging to fresh highs day by day.

  

  Even though retail spending was strong in October (thanks in large part to the fact that it is nominal and therefore inflated by higher costs of everything), it’s only a matter of time before Americans’ credit cards get maxx’d out (because savings rates have already crashed back to pre-COVID levels) and they are forced to cut back their spending to survive persistent high inflation that is destroying real wages. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 20:40

• Crypto Company Creates Architecture For A Self-Sovereign Economy
  Crypto Company Creates Architecture For A Self-Sovereign Economy

  Authored by ‘NAMCIOS’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  Synonym Software, dedicated to bringing new utility and user experiences to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, has officially launched today.

  “Hyperbitcoinization won’t magically happen on its own,” said John Carvalho, CEO of Synonym, in a statement sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

  “In order to live in a world without big banks, oppressive regulation, or Big Tech presiding over our lives, we need a strategy and ecosystem to replace the legacy economy. That is where Synonym comes in.”

  

  Synonym builds software to empower the Bitcoin and Lightning networks to encompass more use cases and free users from depending on traditional finance applications and systems.

  “By combining the Lightning Network’s speed and efficiency with an architected ecosystem of open P2P platforms and applications, Synonym hopes to accelerate Bitcoin’s ability to act as an independent, self-regulated economy,” per the statement.

  At launch, Synonym is releasing Slashtags, a protocol that leverages a web of trust model to create interoperable, uncensorable networks connected via encrypted private channels and feeds. Plans for Slashtags include a search and publishing platform that enables users to create and monetize data and a user-centric decentralized social media platform.

  “Synonym will also release Blocktank, a full-service ‘Lightning Service Provider’ (LSP), which will allow businesses, platforms, apps, or Bitcoiners to configure and purchase Lightning Network connections and liquidity instantly,” according to the statement.

  The company, which Tether Holdings owns, is also open-sourcing code libraries for features like tokens on Lightning, a mobile Lightning node, and encrypted, remote wallet backups. Fulgur Ventures is also an investor.

  “As part of the family of companies that make up Tether and Bitfinex, Synonym is positioned to integrate all of these companies products in a strategic way for Bitcoin, and we can reroute these resources back into Bitcoin development,” Carvalho told Bitcoin Magazine.

  “Slashtags Accounts and Blocktank LSP will be integrated with Bitfinex. Instant Tether tokens will be introduced to the Lightning Network, within our apps, and within Blocktank LSP for token channel liquidity, and Synonym will bring all of this together using the one and only important blockchain, Bitcoin.”

  

  AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK INSIDE SYNONYM WITH CEO JOHN CARVALHO

  The Slashtags protocol challenges common beliefs in the cryptocurrency industry that many blockchains are necessary for disrupting traditional finance. Synonym and its software stack aim to demonstrate how only one blockchain is necessary.

  “We wanted to show and prove that you literally do not need a blockchain for anything other than a Bitcoin standard store of value,” Carvalho told Bitcoin Magazine. “Slashtags can improve any network’s ability to authenticate, coordinate, permission, and sort anything digitally expressible.”

  Slashtags is based on a web of trust (WoT) model, in which public-key cryptography is used to establish the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. It requires that a schema be passed when communicating about a key. These schemas can be leveraged to allow anyone to form private yet interoperable networks.

  “These localized WoTs can rebuild an entire new user-centric web where you decide who to include and under which conditions,” Carvalho explained. “This empowers Bitcoiners by allowing us to create literally any digital marketplace we can define in a way that leaks minimal metadata and only with whom we choose to trust.”

  Slashtags is only part of Synonym’s stack, however. The company also uses Omni, a platform that enables tokens, decentralized crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer trading solutions on Bitcoin.

  “The reason we chose to support Omni and OmniBOLT, is that they are the only token solutions that do not require extra blockchains or native store of value tokens to operate,” Carvalho said. “Omni transactions are Bitcoin transactions with special info that is tracked by the Omni network, and uses the same scaling methods as Bitcoin, like a Lightning Network layer 2.”

  Similar offerings exist, like Liquid and Stacks, that also promise the ability to issue digital assets on Bitcoin. However, Carvalho explained why Synonym chose Omni instead.

  “The problem with Liquid is that it requires a trusted federated network, and that risk profile is nearly impossible to communicate to users inside of an app. Omni allows users to focus on whether they trust each individual token owner alone,” he said. “The problems with Stacks are even worse, as it has a lot of superfluous design and mechanics that do not scale whatsoever, and are ultimately totally unnecessary to achieve decentralized web goals.”

  Synonym’s goal is to enable society to function without trusting intermediaries or asking for permission from big banks or tech companies. By leveraging Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, the company aims to replace trusted intermediaries with an “Atomic Economy” powered by open-source software that puts the user back in control.

  “The idea is to actually reform the web to be as practical and relevant as possible to each individual,” Carvalho said.

  “The Atomic Economy is a concept that combines the ideas of a circular economy with a web of trust to form a highly efficient and relative social economy. Our hypothesis is that if we can achieve minimal conversion (with a circular economy) and minimal data redundancy (with localized webs of trust), we can replace the violent oppressive legacy economy with a self-regulating reputation-aware social economy that obsoletes banks, governments, and Big Tech.“

  Bitcoin is core to that goal since it provides a global and permissionless monetary network to backbone the new web, and Lightning is central to unleashing sound money’s full potential. Synonym’s LSP, Blocktank, seeks to bring that power to everyday users with convenience. The service rivals Lightning Lab’s Pool and Voltage’s Flow as a market for Lightning liquidity.

  “Pool and Flow are systems that attempt to decentralize aspects of this kind of service, but we want to demonstrate that such a design is not always necessary because users can still hold their own keys regardless of the source of their channel connection,” Carvalho explained. “We aim to prove that by offering an intentional business service for Lightning channel liquidity and automation, we can specialize and scale in predictable and useful ways for the businesses that choose to work with us.”

  User control in the form of key ownership and true sovereignty is central to Synonym’s mission, as well as choosing the right tool for the job. As a result, that is where much of the company’s and Carvalho’s criticism of novel “Web3” narratives, common in the cryptocurrency industry, stems from.

  “You simply do not need a blockchain to create what they call ‘Web3’ user experiences and designs. We are solving the same problems using Slashtags and Hypercore to establish a new social economy web paradigm without the nonsense of unscalable blockchain bullshit,” he said.

  “The Web3 and Metaverse narrative will haunt us for years, and require much re-education to separate design ideas from the people simply trying to pump their investments to greater fools.”

  “The Slashtags Web of Trust will enable people to make their own decisions together about which token credit issuers to trust, and which to dismiss, empowering all businesses to leverage their relevance with the customers that rely on them by issuing credit in any format they wish: IOU dollar tokens, hamburger tokens, subscription tokens, gift tokens (a strict upgrade to gift cards), and any bearer instrument they are willing to define and be responsible for,” Carvalho added.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 20:20

• Iranians Hold Huge Anti-Government Protest After Key River Completely Dries Up
  Iranians Hold Huge Anti-Government Protest After Key River Completely Dries Up

  Rare mass protests have hit a large central Iranian city over persisting water shortages and continued economic woes which is fast creating a humanitarian crisis as farmers are losing their crops.

  Thousands gathered in central Isfahan, outraged over government mismanagement which has allowed a key river to dry up completely. “Footage broadcast by state television and dozens of videos circulating on social media on Friday showed a sea of farmers and other people standing on a huge barren strip of dirt where the major Zayandeh Rud River used to flow, near the iconic Khaju Bridge in Isfahan province,” Al Jazeera reports.

  Massive Protest in Isfahan #Iran today against drought, corruption and poor management.

  Internet disruptions now being reported, and heavier security presence now to quell gatherings at night: pic.twitter.com/0uygcusVyx

  — Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) November 19, 2021

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  Lack of resources – which has of late also included gasoline after last month a major cyberattack disrupted a national program for state-subsidized fuel, literally taking gas stations offline for days and weeks (it was widely blamed on Israel) – has fueled sporadic protests for much of the past year, also amid rolling blackouts as the power grid has been strained to the max across major cities.

  The current protest in Isfahan has been underway for much of the past week, but Friday saw the biggest gathering yet, gaining international media attention. Isfahan is the country’s third-largest city.

  Iranian officials have reportedly been under pressure to find a solution for the region’s lack of water. “The key river has faced water shortages and droughts for years, and farmers have intermittently protested the lack of attention given to the issue. But officials have yet to find a sustainable solution to the problem,” Al Jazeera notes further.

  Large protest in Iran’s Isfahan over the drying up of Zayandeh Rood river pic.twitter.com/gLlvjmoWxF

  — Golnaz Esfandiari (@GEsfandiari) November 19, 2021

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  Most provinces in the Islamic Republic have already endured years of drought, and the recent energy woes – exacerbated by US-led sanctions which in some cases have crippled technicians’ ability to quickly replace grid parts – have escalated anti-government sentiment. 

  Many of Iran’s modern high-rise buildings are not designed to stay cool with lack of power, leading residents in sweltering conditions. But the water access issue, particularly in central and southern Iran, remains the most immediate pressing problem. 

  #Iran: Massive gathering in my hometown of #Isfahan. It’s no longer just the farmers, but thousands more have joined in solidarity to protest the catastrophic management of water resources by the regime that has dried up city’s river. In a shift state media is covering it too. pic.twitter.com/ojHkTexQQU

  — Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) November 19, 2021

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  “Precipitation had decreased by almost 50 percent in the last year, leaving dams with dwindling water supplies to fuel the country,” an Associated Press report from last summer emphasized. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 20:00

• COVID Is Over (If You Want It)
  COVID Is Over (If You Want It)

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  The title of this blog post is, of course, an homage to the classic John Lennon Christmas song “Happy XMas (War is Over)”, which then spurred the popularity of the phrase “War is Over! (If You Want It)”.

  Despite my distaste for Yoko Ono (and John Lennon being one of my least favorite Beatles), the song is undeniably one of the greatest ever written, both musically and lyrically.

  Its chorus, including the background lyrics “war is over, if you want it”, sung by the Harlem Community Choir, deliver a goosebump-inducing message of peace at the time of year where so many people, of varying walks of life, celebrating any number of holidays, realign themselves with the magic of giving, the importance of family, the closeness of community and a sense of purpose about our short journey here on Earth.

  

  I caught myself by surprise a couple days ago when the first Christmas playlist I put on this year pumped out this song and I started to get a little emotional.

  It’s surprising, because while I’ve always enjoyed Christmas and the holidays, I never found Christmas music to be particularly moving. Rather, after suffering through years of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” being the number one song played on the bar jukebox where I used to work during all of November and December, I found it less to be about the spirit of giving and more to be a lobotomized cue for automatons to order a 16th glass of egg nog.

  And so, this week, I was trying to take personal inventory about what could have me feeling so moved during only the second week of November. I started thinking about it then, and finished thinking about it during a 3 hour drive I had this week – one of the rare times where I have silence and can hear myself think.

  I stumbled upon the idea that because Christmas last year broke from tradition for so many people (myself and my family included) and because this year it finally feels like some of the nation is breathing a true sigh of relief from Covid, that the 2021 holiday season could wind up being one where we embrace tradition yet again.

  This is akin to some actual Christmas magic.

  To me, it feels like the nation is on the verge of collectively exhaling after what can only be described as a physically arduous and psychologically burdensome 24 months. We’ve lost some family and friends, we’re all a couple years older, our perspectives have shifted – yet, if you’re reading this, you’re one of the billions of members of the human race relentlessly marching forward.

  Together, we have dealt with an assault on our senses for nearly two years and, this holiday season, it’s time to just let that shit go.

  Worse than the virus itself has been the continued incessant reminders to get vaccinated, two-faced mask requirements from hypocritical politicians, spurious and useless mandates and individuals and businesses who suffered personal or economic losses.

  The psychological toll from Covid easily rivals, if not surpasses, the physical toll we have paid. And why wouldn’t it be? Every day, the mainstream media brutalizes us with new sensationalist claims about how Covid is waiting around the corner with a gun, getting ready to shoot us in the face in our own homes if we do something as meaningless as use a one-way door labeled “Exit” to enter a building.

  And if the virus doesn’t shoot us (hyperbole), the government might (less hyperbole). Just ask Australia.

  What have we been rewarded with, as a nation – as a human race – for obeying all of these rules? We have been lied to and deceived at almost every instance possible.

  There have been deceptions about herd immunity, Dr. Fauci has lied willingly about whether or not he helped fund gain of function research, the media has lied about potentially efficacious Covid treatments, FDA staff have resigned in protest over pressure to approve boosters and the stocks of companies like Moderna have gone through the roof.

  Yesterday was another day that I woke up and watched the mainstream media narrative alternate between trying to scare the shit out of people and complete and total implosion.

  Almost one year to the day after President Biden said “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” the following headline made its way onto MSNBC.

  

  The article read:

  “What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Tuesday in an interview.

  Surprise, surprise. The goalposts have been moved again. Oh, and look: vaccination status continues to be pushed as controversial.

  Yesterday there was unending coverage on ESPN over whether or not NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown was vaccinated or whether he faked his vaccination card. The allegations of Brown using a fake card were made by his former private chef, who said Brown owes him $10,000.

  

  To which, I replied: who honestly fucking cares? How is this news?

  Nobody in a stadium full of 40,000 football fans (or on the field tackling each other) honestly cares so much about this that it should be any news story. The virus is dangerous, but not that dangerous, and vaccines have been, and will continue to be, personal health decisions.

  Between headlines like these and another “impending doom” chryon (remember that idiocy from the CDC director?), we continue to be subject to an onslaught of media hysteria heading into the holiday season.

  

  To the average American just trying to do the right thing, these news items are yet another reason, in addition to skyrocketing inflation and just trying to survive in general while healthy, to wake up with your muscles tensed and your mind panicked. How much human capital are we wasting in this perpetual fight or flight state right now? How far have we overshot the response mark? How counterintuitive are our actions? How much is it eating at our quality of life?

  The unfortunate fact of the matter is that Covid is simply going to be unavoidable for most of us. It is everywhere, it’s going to be everywhere, and the sooner that one makes peace with that and accepts it, the quicker they can start to alleviate themselves of the psychosis they’ve been carrying around for two years months.

  Since about March 2020, I haven’t worried much about Covid. I’m in good shape and have continued most of my normal routine despite having Covid earlier this year. I was one of the lucky ones who had a fever for a couple of days, some flu like symptoms, and then just got on with my life. The worst part was losing my smell and taste for a while, but that eventually came back. I didn’t crow about my positive Covid test, I didn’t write about it on Twitter, I didn’t use it as a soapbox to tell people what to do with their lives, and I didn’t have a nervous breakdown.

  I just got on with my life. This holiday season, we can all do the same.

  

  It’s weird that I’m feeling a great sense of relief heading into the holiday season this year. I know I’m going to be around family. I know they are going to be slightly less stressed than they are were last year and – Covid or no Covid – I know I only have so many holiday seasons left. So, this year, I’ll be focusing 100% of my energy on making this one special, and one to remember.

  By all means, if you are immuno-compromised or elderly, or have people with comorbidities in your family – take precautions. Protect those that you love.

  Realistically, you may not be able to completely ignore Covid this holiday season , but there’s a high chance that you owe it to yourself to try and exhale and enjoy your holidays as close to “normally” as you can. Many people might even be able to turn their brains off to Covid completely, like millions across the nation have already done.

  The least you can do, even if you are taking precautions with your family, is turn off the television and stop bludgeoning yourself with the media. It has been nothing but a combination of deception, hysteria and and sensationalism. None of those things belong at your peaceful holiday dinner table.

  Take that deep breath now, then exhale. Covid is over (if you want it).

  *  *  *

  This was a free look at paid subscriber content from QTR’s Fringe Finance. If you enjoy and want to support my work, I’d love to have you as a subscriber. Zerohedge readers get 10% off a subscription for life by using this link.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 19:40

• Ford And GM Could Soon Be Getting Into The Semiconductor Production Business
  Ford And GM Could Soon Be Getting Into The Semiconductor Production Business

  There’s no better reminder of how markets adapt to problems than the free market finding solutions to roadblocks in an industry. That’s what’s happening in automotive, where it appears that Ford and GM are going to start vertically integrating – by producing – to solve their semiconductor woes.

  Both automakers are looking to get into the semiconductor business, a new report from the WSJ claims. In fact, Ford has already outlined a strategic agreement with GlobalFoundries to develop chips in a move that “could eventually lead to U.S. production”.

  The partnership is focused on “producing higher-end chips that would go into vehicles several years out,” WSJ wrote.

  Chuck Gray, Ford’s vice president of vehicle embedded software and controls, said: “We feel like we can really boost our product performance and our tech independence at the same time.”

  Ford is considering bringing chip development in-house, the report says. Its own chips could help improve some vehicle features, the company believes.

  GM is also partnering with names like Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors, the report says, and has agreements in place to manufacture chips.

  

  GM President Mark Reuss said: “We see the semiconductor requirements more than doubling over the next several years.”

  GM is also aiming to reduce the number of unique microprocessors needed for new vehicles by 95%. It plans on developing three core families that use similar architecture in order to do so. 

  Mike Hogan, a senior vice president in charge of GlobalFoundries automotive business said: “This is a great example of how you take a crisis and turn it into an opportunity.”

  It’s not a huge surprise that automakers want to take production matters into their own hands. Recall, we wrote in September how major auto manufacturers were predicting that the global semi shortage “may not just go away” on its own in 2022. 

  Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess said at the time: “Probably we will remain in shortages for the next months or even years because semiconductors are in high demand. The internet of things is growing and the capacity ramp-up will take time. It will be probably a bottleneck for the next months and years to come.”

  Ola Kallenius at Daimler and Oliver Zipse of BMW also added to the pessimism. Kallenius said that the shortage “may not entirely go away” in 2022, according to Bloomberg. Zipse said there could be another 6 to 12 months left in the shortage.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 19:20

• Hyped-Inflation Versus The Coming Global Demographic Vortex
  Hyped-Inflation Versus The Coming Global Demographic Vortex

  Most Central Banks are increasingly convinced high inflation rates might not be so transient after all. Which is why the tightening cycle has now begun. It’s worth reminding oneself that secular demographics are set to reach maximum deflationary pressure in the decade ahead. This is in stark contrast to the 1970s when demographic trends underpinned the then inflationary surge.

  But amid the current inflation panic, Eric Basmajian of EPB Research reminds us that the demographic headwinds facing the major economies are intensifying (especially with people dropping out of the workforce). His great charts show deflation pressures are intense.

  In the long-term, demographics will be a big shock to Central Banks hopes of higher inflation rates.

  The Global Demographic Vortex

  Executive Summary

  • All major economies are suffering from aging demographics.

  • An economy gets a boost from the 25-54-year-old age cohort and suffers a drag from the 65+-year-old age cohort.

  • Older populations are correlated to lower real growth and lower inflation.

  • With major economies already stuck at the zero-bound, fiscal and monetary authorities will have to contemplate negative interest rates or continued debt-financed fiscal spending.

  • Both options will not reverse economic gravity and erode the standard of living over time.

  A rising tide lifts all boats. An economy receives a significant boost through the prime-age (25-54) population as this cohort has the highest rate of income and consumption. Prime-age workers buy more homes, vehicles, and durable goods, helping to boost production and employment. 

  Conversely, an economy feels a drag as older demographics (65+) comprise a larger share of the total population, particularly as modern economies are structured through heavy transfer payments in traditional retirement years. The older population rapidly slows consumption, downsizes home size, and is more able to leave the labor force, supported through Medicare and Social Security, at least in the United States. 

  The next 10-15 years will bring a significant demographic drag, not only in Japan, the poster-child for an aging population, but also in Europe, the United Kingdom, China, and the United States. 

  The global demographic vortex will act as a vacuum, sucking resources from the prime-age workers through taxation or debt-financed transfers, forcing central banks to hold rates at the zero-bound or quickly return after another failed attempt to combat rising inflation.

  Demographic Drag 

  Charted below, we can see the aging population across major economies of the world. The 65+-year-old group as a percentage of the total population is rising (charted inversely) in the five largest economies. 

  Aging Demographics In All Major Economies:

  

  Source: Our World In Data, EPB Macro Research

  Despite popular opinion, Japan is not the only country that is suffering a demographic drag, and in fact, over the next ten years, the major economies of the world will mirror the problems that plagued Japan over the previous decades. 

  Aging Demographics In All Major Economies:

  

  Source: Our World In Data, EPB Macro Research

  Many investors and economic analysts acknowledge aging demographics and the negative impact on growth and inflation but are relatively flippant about the importance. Like the analogy of a frog in boiling water, demographics have been impacting every major economy, contributing to sub-par economic growth over the last ten years, with investors and analysts offering dozens of explanations other than the most obvious and forceful economic fundamental. 

  The chart below shows the 10-year annualized rate of real GDP growth for the United States [blue] and the old-age population as a percentage of the total, graphed inversely [black]. 

  Aging Demographics vs. Real GDP Growth:

  

  Source: Our World In Data, BEA, FRED, EPB Macro Research

  The demographic drag will not impact economic growth month to month or even year to year. Still, if you are willing to take a longer view, demographics are the most reliable economic fundamental impacting real growth, inflation, and thus, central bank policy and interest rates across the entire Treasury curve.

  The relationship below shows the old-age population on the X-axis and the 10-year annualized rate of real growth on the Y-axis. The 2030 demographic estimate highlights how we should very much expect real economic growth to converge to 0% by the end of the decade. 

  Real Growth Will Converge To Zero:

  

  Source: Our World In Data, BEA, FRED, EPB Macro Research

  While this may sound extreme, investors that are more familiar with the long-term analysis at EPB Macro Research know that real GDP per capita growth is already rapidly converging towards zero despite unlimited central bank support and fiscal transfers. 

  Real GDP Per Capita: 20-Year Annualized Growth

  

  Source: BEA, EPB Macro Research

  As economic growth converges towards zero, the linear relationship between demographics and growth starts to level off. With the help of statistician Ian Fellows, we can plot the relationship between real GDP growth and the old-age population in Japan, the UK, and the United States. 

  Real Growth Will Converge To Zero:

  

  Source: Our World In Data, BEA, FRED, Ian Fellows, EPB Macro Research

  Aging demographics plaguing all five major economies of the world will suck real economic growth down towards zero, forcing central banks to the zero-bound if not already there and through the zero-bound for those willing to further the experiment of negative interest rates. 

  The recent surge in supply-side inflation is causing panic among global central banks, putting rate hikes back into the near-term equation. As with the last several attempts to “normalize” policy, there will be a quick U-turn back towards the zero-bound as economic gravity continues to pull the real growth rate to zero.

  Demographics & Inflation

  Demographics is also the most influential factor for inflation if you are willing to accept a longer time frame. 

  The age-dependency ratio is a measure that relates the “dependents” in the population to the working-age population. 

  The population 15-years and younger depend on parents for support, and the population 65-years and older, based on the way we have structured our system, also depends on the working-age population to produce goods, work, and generate income support retirement programs. 

  As a result, the age-dependency ratio graphed inversely in the chart below measures how much pressure there is on the working-age population to divert resources towards the young and old. 

  As the line is moving higher in the chart below, the working-age population is widening relative to the dependent population, creating robust economic conditions. 

  United States: Age Dependency Ratio

  

  Source: Our World In Data, EPB Macro Research

  Particularly today, with inflation that resembles the 1970s, investors and analysts frantically remember what caused the 1970s inflation and the similarities to the current situation.

  In reality, the situation today is much different as the 1970s inflation can be almost entirely explained by a demographic boom. 

  After the war, there was a “baby boom.” Fast forward 20 years, and those babies are now entering the prime-age cohort, ready to work, consume and produce. From 1960-1985, the United States experienced some of the most positive demographics the country has ever seen. 

  If we take the 20-year rolling change in the age-dependency ratio and plot it against the long-term (10Y) rate of inflation, we can see that almost all of the long-term inflation trends can be explained through demographics and a widening or contracting share of the working-age population. 

  United States: Change In Age Dependency Ratio Vs. Inflation

  

  Source: Our World In Data, BLS, FRED, EPB Macro Research

  Investors and analysts ignore demographics despite the clear relationships proving population trends to be the most reliable and forceful determinant of economic conditions.

  Summary

  Over the last ten years, sub-par economic growth and lackluster rates of inflation have confused policymakers and investors. A global demographic drag is at the heart of the problem. 

  The next decade will come with a global demographic drag that is far more intense than the last ten years across all major economies, not just Japan. 

  The rate of real economic growth will continue to slowly grind towards 0% and pull the long-term rate of inflation with it. 

  Fiscal policy will try and paper over this lost demand, aided by a close relationship with the central bank. Still, this debt-based strategy will only compound the problem, leaving the economy without any lasting growth and a rising debt burden, adding even more pressure to the global economy than the demographic drag alone. 

  Central banks will once again try an exercise of removing accommodation and raising interest rates to combat severe supply-side inflation, only to find that the structural economy is too weak, and a quick U-turn back towards the zero-floor will come if you are willing to take the multi-year view. 

  Debt-based fiscal spending will create short-term boosts to growth and inflation but with diminishing efficacy and increasing unintended consequences. 

  The long-term investor should be mindful of these trends and align their portfolio with assets that can survive another low-growth decade. Defensive assets like long-duration Treasury bonds are still effective at low levels of interest rates and one part of a diversified portfolio. 

  Some equities will benefit from low or no growth, particularly the companies that do have legitimate growth as growth that investors can find will continue to trade at a premium. 

  Companies that are sensitive to the real economy and aggregate economic growth will not benefit, so the overall equity market will become increasingly narrow in the decade ahead.

  *  *  *

  If you’re interested in regular updates on the shorter-term cyclical trends in both growth and inflation, consider our monthly report. If you’re interested in quarterly updates on the longer-term structural trends in both growth and inflation, consider our quarterly presentation. If you’d like access to both offerings, please contact me for a bundled rate. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 19:00

• Rolling Blackouts Possible In Texas, Midwest As Cold Blast Looms
  Rolling Blackouts Possible In Texas, Midwest As Cold Blast Looms

  The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a nonprofit corporation responsible for overseeing US’ power grid, published a new report on the risk of rolling blackouts if persistent cold weather is observed this winter. 

  NERC’s three-month (December–February) winter report is an assessment that identifies potential reliability issues of interest across six regional power grids. 

  

  The report identifies Texas as having the weakest power grid if extreme cold weather were to strike.

  

  “Extreme weather events, including extended durations of colder than normal weather, pose a risk to the uninterrupted delivery of power to electricity consumers,” the report said, adding that power grids might have to use “rolling blackout procedures to ensure that no critical infrastructure loads (e.g., natural gas, telecommunications) would be affected.” 

  Power grids are expected to have sufficient supplies under normal operating conditions between the three months. But if unseasonably cold weather is observed, fossil fuel generators (powered by crude, coal, or natural gas) may experience shortages due to supply constraints. 

  For instance, the report warns about potential coal delivery problems:  

  “Coal delivery problems by rail can impact the operation of coal-fired electricity generation; likewise, the economics of electricity and energy markets can affect coal supplies. Coal supplies in North America are being affected by the current global energy shortage,” the report said, pointing out that supplies are dwindling ahead of winter. 

  

  In early October, we quoted Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC., who said US utilities are quickly turning to coal generation because of soaring natural gas prices. 

  “We’ve actually had discussions with power utilities who are concerned that they simply will have to implement blackouts this winter,” Thrasher warned.

  He said, “They don’t see where the fuel is coming from to meet demand,” adding that 23% of utilities are switching away from gas this fall/winter to burn more coal. 

  We recently noted that due to unprecedented demand, resource companies had sold every piece of coal they will extract from the ground for 2022. “It’s pretty much sold out,” Peabody CEO Jim Grech said last month. “We only have a small portion left to be sold for 2022 and for 2023.”

   A La Nina winter means below-average temperatures for parts of the northern hemisphere. Hopefully, an energy crisis like the one playing out in Europe and China isn’t headed for the US. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 18:40

• Jordan Peterson: Government Adviser Told Me COVID Rules Based On Opinion Polls, Not Science
  Jordan Peterson: Government Adviser Told Me COVID Rules Based On Opinion Polls, Not Science

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Jordan Peterson says he spoke to a senior government adviser who told him Canada’s COVID restriction policies are completely driven by opinion polls and not science.

  

  “In relation to the COVID restrictions, I talked to a senior adviser to one of the provincial governments a couple of weeks ago,” said Peterson.

  “He told me flat out that the COVID policy here is driven by nothing but opinion polls related to the popularity of the government,” he added.

  “No science, no endgame in sight, no real plan, and so what that means is that the part of the population that is most afraid of COVID,” are driving the policy.

  Peterson pointed to figures that prove people vastly exaggerate the risk of being hospitalized by COVID due to relentless government fearmongering campaigns.

  This is concerning.
  Jordan Peterson is not known for making up lies, I would love to know who he’s talking about🤔 pic.twitter.com/FyiAzPpUWq

  — heather (@howisthismylif) November 18, 2021

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

  The author said he found the conversation “extremely disheartening” because he had hoped lockdown policies were “at least driven by something remotely resembling a scientifically informed plan.”

  Peterson said the government adviser was “irate at what had been happening, enough to consider resigning.”

  As we have previously highlighted, populations in virtually every major country believe COVID to be an exponentially greater threat than it actually is.

  A poll in France showed that the average person thinks the infection to fatality ratio is over 16 per cent, when it is actually 0.1-0.3 per cent.

  As we previously highlighted, a poll conducted in summer 2020 found that the average American believed 9 per cent of the population, around 30 million people, had died from coronavirus when the actual figure at the time was less than 155,000.

  People in the U.S. also believed that 20% of Americans had caught coronavirus, 20 times higher than the number of confirmed cases.

  In Sweden and the UK in particular, people also vastly overestimated the number of lives COVID-19 had claimed, with the average Brit thinking coronavirus had killed 100 times more people than the actual figure.

  Governments scare the living hell out of citizens to elicit a fear reaction, then point to poll numbers calling for more lockdown measures in order to justify more lockdown measures.

  It would be funny if it were not so sinisterly Machiavellian.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 18:20

• DoJ Charges 2 Iranians Posing As Proud Boys With Election Meddling
  DoJ Charges 2 Iranians Posing As Proud Boys With Election Meddling

  An indictment unsealed in New York Thursday charged two Iranian nationals for their alleged involvement in a “cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord, in connection with the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” according to a Department of Justice (DoJ) press release. 

  Seyyed Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27, Iranian nationals, were indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court this week. The indictment claims Kazemi and Kashian obtained voter information from one state website while attempting to access others. The duo posed as a “group of Proud Boys volunteers” and created bogus videos showing a person hacking state voter websites to create fake absentee ballots. The video was widely distributed ahead of the 2020 presidential election to Republican members of the House and Senate, Trump administration officials, and Trump’s re-election campaign. 

  Both men are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit cyber fraud and abuse, intimidate voters and transmit interstate threats. 

  

  “This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DoJ’s National Security Division.

  “The allegations illustrate how foreign disinformation campaigns operate and seek to influence the American public. The Department is committed to exposing and disrupting malign foreign influence efforts using all available tools, including criminal charges,” Olsen said. 

  “As alleged, Kazemi and Kashian were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the U.S. presidential election,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. 

  “Working with others, Kazemi and Kashian accessed voter information from at least one state’s voter database, threatened U.S. voters via email, and even disseminated a fictitious video that purported to depict actors fabricating overseas ballots. The United States will never tolerate any foreign actors’ attempts to undermine our free and democratic elections. As a result of the charges unsealed today, and the concurrent efforts of our U.S. government partners, Kazemi and Kashian will forever look over their shoulders as we strive to bring them to justice,” Williams said. 

  The suspects are at large, and the DoJ’s Rewards for Justice Program offers $10 million for their whereabouts. Given that Kazemi and Kashian are likely in Iran, and both countries have poor relations, it’s unlikely the pair will be brought to justice. 

  DOJ officials briefed reporters Thursday that the duo didn’t influence the election nor was successful in changing any votes.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 18:00

• Seniors To The Rescue? New Truckers Over-50 Could Solve Driver Shortage
  Seniors To The Rescue? New Truckers Over-50 Could Solve Driver Shortage

  By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves,

  Laura Reny has been an over-the-road truck driver since 2014. The Idaho resident got into the trucking industry full time to pay the bills after her husband passed away from a long illness. She was 63 when she first took the wheel with her CDL as a widow. She’s now 70 — and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

  “I enjoy truck driving, I tell a lot of people that it’s a good job for women and old people, and I’m both,” Reny said.

  

  Ed Falls, 57, retired from a 30-year career as a school band director before he became a truck driver full time about two years ago. Falls wanted a change from teaching and driving a truck seemed like something he could do for a living.

  “It was just time for me to do something else and I always like driving,” Falls said. “I like over-the-road stuff. I like the freedom.”

  While the U.S. trucking industry continues to face a shortage of qualified drivers, a sometimes overlooked aspect of the market could be recruiting older drivers. The median age of over-the-road drivers is 46 and the average age of a new truck driver being trained is 35, according to a 2019 report from the American Trucking Associations.

  The ATA study estimates that the industry could be short by as many as 160,000 drivers by 2028. The trucking industry currently has about 2 million drivers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

  For some people, a truck driving career is all about timing. John Albert said becoming a truck driver was easier as an empty nester.

  “If I was younger and I still had children at home, I would not do it,” said Albert, who is now 69 and started truck driving when he was 55. 

  Travis Bacon, manager of driver recruiting at Prime Inc., doesn’t usually see recruits in their 60s or 70s in the company’s CDL training program.

  Prime is a Springfield, Missouri-based refrigerated, flatbed, tanker and logistics trucking company with more than 8,000 drivers. Like most carriers in the industry, Prime is always on the lookout for truck drivers. Each week, up to 120 new student drivers begin orientation at Prime aiming to get their Class A CDLs. Of those new students, usually a handful are 50 or older.

  “I do see plenty of 50-year-olds starting. For the most part, it’s guys in their early 20s that are getting started, just what you would expect,” Bacon said. “We do occasionally see 50-year-olds, sometimes older, maybe a guy or two every week.”

  Most applicants arriving at orientation already know some information about the trucking industry, Bacon said.

  “We’re kind of painting the picture for them. You’re sleeping in the box in the truck. You’re showering at truck stops, you’re away from home for a few weeks at a time, you’re traveling all over the country and you’ve got to be ready for any type of weather,” Bacon said. “There’s also some perks to [truck driving]. There’s not a boss breathing down your neck 99% of the time, you’re kind of just cruising down the highway, listening to music or whatever you like, but driving takes a lot of focus.”

  Reny has had two stints working as a truck driver over the last 30 years. The first was from 1988 to 1993, after she got out of the Air Force, and her second career as a driver began under sad circumstances.

  “My husband had suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1996. For the next 18 years I took care of him. He went downhill in 2014,” Reny said. “I knew I wasn’t able to care for him any longer. I went ahead and put him in a nursing home. In the meantime, I had gotten my CDL because when I drove before I had a chauffeur’s license and wasn’t able to transfer it over to CDL.”

  Reny works as a long-haul truck driver for GLS Carriers, driving as much as 13,500 miles a month. She has hauled loads through all lower 48 states and in every weather condition. Reny describes driving down on the road as a “busy” experience.

  “My head is always on a swivel to watch traffic around me, because you have to watch all the other vehicles around you, most people drive very unconsciously,” Reny said.

  One of the best parts about truck driving for Reny is the money.

  “The money for sure,” said Reny, who makes roughly $75,000 a year. “Because I had no savings and Social Security is only like $1,500 a month, with my house payment and other stuff, that would be tough to live on.”

  Albert also said the money has been good driving a truck. He’s made more money in the last 14 years as a trucker than he did the previous 30 years working in other industries.

  “The very first year I started driving I made $55,000, and I’ve probably made a million dollars gross pay in 14 years driving a truck,” Albert said.

  Albert started working as a truck driver after working in a ministry.

  “The very hardest part for me, like most people, was backing,” Albert said. “It took about six months to a year, then all of a sudden the light bulb came on and it became a lot easier. I kept trying to turn the trailer into a spot, but you don’t actually turn it. You push it. When I cranked the wheels one way, it was going to push that trailer the other way. That became a little easier for me.”

  Falls said he completed his CDL training at a local community college in Michigan but really learned how to drive a truck on the job.

  “The CDL training was very good at preparing me for the test, getting my CDL,” Falls said. “As far as day-to-day driving on the road, bigger stuff, not too helpful there.”

  Falls said the first time he was out on his own he was driving a truck on Interstate 80 through the Chicago area to Gary, Indiana.

  “I was pretty confident behind the wheel, but I was also aware that I had a lot to learn so I tried to be very aware of what was going on around me. For example, when I was in areas where the traffic was heavier,” Falls said. “I would make sure that the radio was off so that I could really focus on what I was doing, no distractions.”

  Falls currently works Monday through Friday and is home on weekends. He said managing time and concentrating on the road are his most important tips for drivers of any age.

  “You need to be aware of the things that distract you personally, develop strategies to account for them,” Falls said. 

  Albert currently works as a driver for Nussbaum Transportation, for which he makes runs during the week, but like Falls is home mostly every weekend now.

  “I used to do over-the-road trucking, be gone sometimes five weeks at a time, I can’t do that anymore,” Albert said. 

  About 18 months ago, Alberts contracted COVID-19, which kept him in a hospital for two weeks.

  “I was like an inch away from having to go on a ventilator,” Albert said. “I feel privileged to still be doing what I’m doing.”

  Albert said one of his favorite parts about the job is seeing the country and least favorite is delays.

  “I’ve always enjoyed seeing the sights. I’ve seen deer, bears, elk and moose. I’ve even seen a wolf,” Albert said. “Unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of bad accidents too. The frustrating parts are accidents, construction, delays and stuff. 

  Albert said one of the biggest differences he sees between older drivers and younger ones are missed delivery appointments.

  “One of the big things that helped me in trucking is that my biggest pet peeve in life is tardiness,” Albert said. “You have got to be on time when you’re driving a truck.”

  Albert’s advice for anyone thinking of becoming a truck driver is to “count the costs.”

  “That’s how much money you make versus the sacrifice you’re going to have to make, because they’re large,” Albert said. “I think too many people get into trucking and think it’s a glamorous thing, but it is anything but glamorous. So counting the costs I think is No. 1.”

  Falls said anyone thinking of becoming a truck driver should be self motivated and open to learning new things. 

  “Talk to people and be open to suggestions,” Falls said.

  Reny’s advice for new truck drivers is to learn how to save money.

  “If you’re doing it because you need a certain level of money, you need to be prepared for that ahead of time, because it’s going to take an astute person to make more than $45,000 their first year,” Reny said.

  Reny hopes to keep driving for another two years so she can pay off her house and buy a new pickup truck and camper to travel around the U.S.

  “I’ll go visit friends and family and make a nuisance of myself. I want to really see the country,” Reny said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/19/2021 – 17:40

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