Aug 21

Today’s News 21st August 2022

  • Chang: China Is Preparing To Go To War
    Chang: China Is Preparing To Go To War

    Authored by Gordon Change via 19fortyfive.com,

    Last month, a Chinese entrepreneur making medical equipment for consumers told me that local officials had demanded he convert his production lines in China so that they could turn out items for the military. Communist Party cadres, he said, were issuing similar orders to other manufacturers.

    Moreover, Chinese academics privately say the ongoing expulsion of foreign colleagues from China’s universities appears to be a preparation for hostilities.

    The People’s Republic of China is preparing to go to war, and it is not trying to hide its efforts. Amendments to the National Defense Law, effective the first day of last year, transfer powers from civilian to military officials.

    In general, the amendments reduce the role of the central government’s State Council by shifting power to the CMC, the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. Specifically, the State Council will no longer supervise the mobilization of the People’s Liberation Army.

    As Zeng Zhiping of Soochow University told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post,

    “The CMC is now formally in charge of making national defense policy and principles, while the State Council becomes a mere implementing agency to provide support for the military.”

    In one sense, these amendments were window dressing. “Recent changes to China’s National Defense Law that diminish the power of the State Council are largely political posturing,” Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me soon after the amendments went into effect. “The Chinese Communist Party and particularly its subordinate CMC have always held supreme power over decisions regarding war and peace.”

    Why then do we care about the National Defense Law amendments?

    The amendments, Fisher tells us, “point to China’s ambition to achieve ‘whole nation’ levels of military mobilization to fight wars and give the CMC formal power to control the future Chinese capabilities for global military intervention.”

    “The revised National Defense Law also embodies the concept that everyone should be involved in national defense,” reports the Communist Party’s Global Times, summarizing the words of an unnamed CMC official. “All national organizations, armed forces, political parties, civil groups, enterprises, social organizations, and other organizations should support and take part in the development of national defense, fulfill national defense duties, and carry out national defense missions according to the law.”

    As Fisher told 19FortyFive this month, “For the past 40 years, China’s Communist Party has been preparing for brutal war, and now the ruling organization is accelerating its plans.”

    The Party, as it readies itself for combat, is leaving nothing to chance. In March, its Central Organization Department issued an internal directive prohibiting the spouses and children of ministerial-level officials from owning foreign real estate or shares registered offshore. The ban also appears to apply to such officials themselves as there are reports of their selling foreign assets. Moreover, such officials and immediate families are not, except in limited circumstances, allowed to open accounts overseas with financial institutions.

    The directive, issued soon after the imposition of sanctions on Russian officials for the “special military operation” in Ukraine, appears designed to sanction-proof Chinese officials.

    J-10 Fighter.

    Moreover, the central government is trying to sanctions-proof itself. On April 22, officials from the finance ministry and central bank met with representatives of dozens of banks, including HSBC, to discuss what Beijing could do in the event of the imposition of punitive measures on China.

    The holding of the “emergency meeting,” reported by the Financial Times, is ominous.

    “The officials and attendees did not mention specific scenarios, but one possible trigger for such sanctions is thought to be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” the FT noted.

    The fact that Chinese officials held the meeting is a clear indication that Beijing is planning belligerent acts.

    “Be ready for battle.” That’s how Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post summarized Chinese ruler Xi Jinping’s first order to the military of 2019. In January of that year, he gave a major speech to the CMC on making preparations for war, and the address was then broadcast nationwide.

    Foreign analysts debate whether China is going to war anytime soon. The Chinese political system has become less transparent over time, so it is not clear what senior leaders are thinking.

    Image of J-20 fighter. Image Credit: Chinese Internet.

    Yet it is clear what senior leaders are in fact doing. They are getting troops ready for another advance below the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, preparing to seize more Indian territory in the Himalayas. They renewed, in November of last year and this June, attempts to block the resupply of a Philippine outpost at Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea. They ordered four vessels to enter Japan’s sovereign water around the disputed but Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in late July. They are directing continual provocations around Taiwan, including a violation of the island’s sovereign airspace in early February.

    And there is something else that is unmistakable: Xi and senior leaders are getting China’s citizens ready for war.

    *  *  *

    A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 23:30

  • Daughter Of Putin Ally Killed In Car Bombing Outside Moscow
    Daughter Of Putin Ally Killed In Car Bombing Outside Moscow

    Update(2310ET): Russia’s English language state RT News is confirming the death of Darya Dugina, the daughter of veteran Russian political commentator and Putin ally Alexander Dugin, in what appears to have been a targeted hit – possibly an attempt on her father Alexander’s life. RT however is still calling the reports “preliminary” until government authorities confirm the identity of the deceased. 

    “The incident took place on a highway some 20 kilometers west of Moscow around 21:35 local time, with witnesses saying that the blast rocked the vehicle right in the middle of the road, scattering debris all around,” according to new details in RT. “The crippled car, fully engulfed in flames, then crashed into a fence, according to photos and videos from the scene.”

    “Emergency services said one person was inside the car and was instantly killed by the blast and crash – a female whose body was reportedly recovered burned beyond recognition.”

    RT writes further: “Authorities have yet to confirm the identity of the victim, but multiple Russian Telegram channels and media sources reported that the victim was 30-year-old Darya Dugina (Platonova). Her father, Alexander Dugin, was spotted at the scene soon after the incident, visibly shocked, according to several videos circulating on social media.”

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    While an official cause of the blast hasn’t been identified as yet, there’s widespread speculation it was an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). 

    There’s also much speculation centered on the apparent bombing being a likely attempt on Alexander Dugin, with unconfirmed reports saying she had been driving his car and he was in another vehicle.

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    According to The Daily Beast, citing local reports: 

    Alexander Dugin was meant to be in the vehicle his daughter was driving but had gotten in a different one at the last second, according to Pyotr Lundstrem, a Russian violinist quoted by the outlet.

    Dugin had reportedly been following right behind his daughter and had watched as her car exploded. Photos shared by Baza appeared to show Dugin distraught at the scene, holding his head in both hands as he stood in front of the fiery wreckage.

    And more:

    Denis Pushilin, the Russian proxy leader of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk, angrily blamed “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime” for the blast, writing on Telegram that they had been “trying to liquidate Alexander Dugin” but “blew up his daughter.”

    “In loving memory of Darya, she is a true Russian girl,” Pushilin wrote.

    Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and social media pages similarly blamed Ukraine for the explosion and called on Russians to “avenge” Dugina’s death.

    This, along with recent attacks inside Crimea, could indeed mean greater escalation in the Ukraine war.

    * * *

    The daughter of Alexander Dugin – a close ally and adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin – has reportedly been killed in what many are assuming was an assassination attempt meant for her father.

    Darya Dugin was ‘blown to pieces’ near Moscow suburb of Bolshiye Vyazyomy, according to reports, which say that Alexander had originally planned to travel back with her from a festival before deciding to ride in a separate car, according to the Daily Mail and other outlets.

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    According to Russian’s state-owned TASS, local law enforcement confirmed that a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado had blown up, but did not confirm the victim’s identity – only that it was a female. A man identified by TASS as a Dugin associate said it was Darya, but there has been thus far no official confirmation.

    Russian outlet Baza reports that the 29-year-old had been returning home from “Tradition” – a literature and music festival, when the blast occurred. She was reportedly driving for around 10 minutes before the detonation. The outlet also quoted Russian violinist Pyotr Lundstrem, who (and how would he know?) that Alexander was meant to be in the vehicle. Instead, he was reportedly following her car when it exploded.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsDugin is the former chief editor of the pro-Putin Tsargrad TV network, and has been often portrayed in Western media as being a ‘mastermind’ of the Ukraine invasion, as well as an intellectual / philosopher who’s had a large influence in Russia’s post-Soviet nationalism.

    Alexander Dugin and Darya Dugin, via Telegram

    In an Instagram post, Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, called it an ‘attack’ by ‘vile villains,’ adding “The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to eliminate Alexander Dugin, blew up his daughter… In a car. Blessed memory of Daria, she is a real Russian girl!”

    “The tenacity of these Ukro-Reich morons is amazing. Everyone, if possible, needs to be home in the next hour,” he added.

    An alleged photo of the scene was posted to Telegram by “MOW!” Moscow News, with the caption (translated): “All that remains of the blown up car of the daughter of the famous public figure Alexander Dugin on the Mozhaisk highway in the Moscow region. The SUV of Darya Dugina detonated while driving, after which it caught fire.”

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    Check back for updates…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 23:10

  • All The Contents Of The Universe, In One Graphic
    All The Contents Of The Universe, In One Graphic

    Scientists agree that the universe consists of three distinct parts: everyday visible (or measurable) matter, and two theoretical components called dark matter and dark energy.

    As Visual Capitalists’s Mark Belan explains below, these last two are theoretical because they have yet to be directly measured – but even without a full understanding of these mysterious pieces to the puzzle, scientists can infer that the universe’s composition can be broken down as follows:

    Let’s look at each component in more detail.

    Dark Energy

    Dark energy is the theoretical substance that counteracts gravity and causes the rapid expansion of the universe. It is the largest part of the universe’s composition, permeating every corner of the cosmos and dictating how it behaves and how it will eventually end.

    Dark Matter

    Dark matter, on the other hand, has a restrictive force that works closely alongside gravity. It is a sort of “cosmic cement” responsible for holding the universe together. Despite avoiding direct measurement and remaining a mystery, scientists believe it makes up the second largest component of the universe.

    Free Hydrogen and Helium

    Free hydrogen and helium are elements that are free-floating in space. Despite being the lightest and most abundant elements in the universe, they make up roughly 4% of its total composition.

    Stars, Neutrinos, and Heavy Elements

    All other hydrogen and helium particles that are not free-floating in space exist in stars.

    Stars are one of the most populous things we can see when we look up at the night sky, but they make up less than one percent—roughly 0.5%—of the cosmos.

    Neutrinos are subatomic particles that are similar to electrons, but they are nearly weightless and carry no electrical charge. Although they erupt out of every chemical reaction, they account for roughly 0.3% of the universe.

    Heavy elements are all other elements aside from hydrogen and helium.

    Elements form in a process called nucleosynthesis, which takes places within stars throughout their lifetimes and during their explosive deaths. Almost everything we see in our material universe is made up of these heavy elements, yet they make up the smallest portion of the universe: a measly 0.03%.

    How Do We Measure the Universe?

    In 2009, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a space observatory called Planck to study the properties of the universe as a whole.

    Its main task was to measure the afterglow of the explosive Big Bang that originated the universe 13.8 billion years ago. This afterglow is a special type of radiation called cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

    Temperature can tell scientists much about what exists in outer space. When investigating the “microwave sky”, researchers look for fluctuations (called anisotropy) in the temperature of CMBR. Instruments like Planck help reveal the extent of irregularities in CMBR’s temperature, and inform us of different components that make up the universe.

    You can see below how the clarity of CMBR changes over time with multiple space missions and more sophisticated instrumentation.

    What Else is Out There?

    Scientists are still working to understand the properties that make up dark energy and dark matter.

    NASA is currently planning a 2027 launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an infrared telescope that will hopefully help us in measuring the effects of dark energy and dark matter for the first time.

    As for what’s beyond the universe? Scientists aren’t sure.

    There are hypotheses that there may be a larger “super universe” that contains us, or we may be a part of one “island” universe set apart from other island multiverses. Unfortunately we aren’t able to measure anything that far yet. Unravelling the mysteries of the deep cosmos, at least for now, remains a local endeavor.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 23:00

  • Biden Misled Public On Afghanistan; New GOP Report Finds
    Biden Misled Public On Afghanistan; New GOP Report Finds

    Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),

    The frantic and deadly U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was so disorganized that 1,450 children were evacuated without their parents, and senior leaders in Vice President Kamala Harris’ and first lady Jill Biden’s offices, as well as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked private veteran groups for assistance evacuating certain people from the country.

    In the waning days of the evacuation, more than 1,000 women and girls waited more than 24 hours on dozens of buses, desperately circling the Kabul airport and trying to avoid Taliban checkpoints. Many of them were told multiple times they were not allowed to enter the airport. Now, nearly a year since the Taliban took control of the country, fewer than one-third of them have managed to flee the country.

    These are just some of the findings in a new report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee one year after the Taliban swept into the Afghan capital of Kabul, almost instantly rolling back more than two decades of U.S. and NATO military support and nation-building efforts.

    More broadly, the report, which RealClearPolitics obtained late last week, asserts President Biden and top officials in his administration repeatedly – and perhaps intentionally – misled the American people when they said the fall of Kabul came as a surprise and there was no alternative other than depending on the Taliban for security in the Afghan capital as the U.S. military evacuated hastily.  

    The report asserts that the chaotic withdrawal that left more than 800 American citizens stranded in the country was completely avoidable if Biden and his national security team had listened to the warnings and advice of military leaders, U.S. diplomatic officials operating on the ground, and international allies.

    It adds that one of the most tragic outcomes of the evacuation – the death of 13 U.S. servicemembers and 160 Afghans in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport – could have been prevented if the administration had accepted the Taliban’s Aug. 15 offer for the U.S. to control the capital city’s security until the end of the withdrawal.

    Such an arrangement would have allowed American forces to extend the airport’s security perimeter, creating more space for evacuating Afghans and a far more orderly process. It also would have prevented U.S. servicemembers from being penned in amid the frantic crush of Afghans desperately trying to board U.S. military planes, leaving them vulnerable to the suicide attack, several former officials told committee Republicans, according to the report.

    “There were many sins if you will – there was a complete lack of and failure to plan,” Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the panel told CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday. “There was no plan executed.”

    In a new memo over the weekend, the White House started defending its decision to withdraw troops, arguing that the move strengthened U.S. national security by freeing up military and intelligence agents and assets. The memo, written by National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson and first reported by Axios, is a direct response to the House Republicans’ interim report outlining their view of the administration’s withdrawal failures.

    It assails the House Republicans’ report as a partisan exercise “riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry picked information, and false claims…. It advocates for endless war and for sending more troops to Afghanistan, and it ignores the impacts of the flawed deal that former President Trump struck with the Taliban,” the memo states.

    Republicans are standing by their findings, arguing that a failure to plan left the State Department with only 36 consular officers at the airport trying to process hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of days. These officials were overwhelmed, McCaul said, but the lack of resources for a withdrawal of this magnitude was just one of the many mistakes involved in failing to plan for Kabul’s fall despite multiple warnings.

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    Several top U.S. military leaders for months had warned the president that the Afghan government would likely collapse if the U.S. left fewer than 2,500 troops stationed there, the report states.

    The report also cites “more realistic assessments on the ground,” including a July 13, 2021, embassy cable from 23 U.S. personnel assigned to the embassy in Kabul, which reportedly contained “a stark warning” about the potential collapse of the Afghan state. The cable, which the Wall Street Journal first reported a year ago, and was sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of Policy Planning Salman Ahmed, called on the State Department to respond more urgently to the Taliban’s offensive.

    Although Blinken acknowledged the existence of the cable, he has refused to share it or disclose his response to it with congressional committees, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    The biggest mistake of all, McCaul argued, was Biden’s rejection of the Taliban’s offer for the U.S. to take control of Kabul’s security until the evacuation was over.

    “Think about what that would have changed,” McCaul said. “We had to rely on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of [the airport], that led to the chaos, and it also led to the suicide bomber who killed 13 servicemen and women and injured hundreds of people.”

    The Biden administration also rebuffed other offers that could have helped prevent the frantic crush of Afghans at the airport and preserve America’s reputation abroad, the report states. U.S. leaders ignored a proposal from Guam for the U.S. territory to serve as an interim processing center to help evacuate interpreters and other at-risk allies. It similarly declined an offer from Pakistan to have a facility there serve as a transit center for evacuees, despite other facilities in Qatar and Germany reaching capacity.

    The report, which will serve as a roadmap for several lines of inquiry if Republicans win back the majority in either chamber this fall, is based on open-source information, along with interviews with U.S. officials and civilians involved in evacuating U.S. citizens and Afghan allies. Several whistleblowers who requested anonymity also played a key role, along with sworn statements by U.S. military personnel who were part of the investigation into the August 26, 2021, suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.

    The State Department did not comply with requests for documents and transcribed interviews with 34 administration officials involved in the Afghanistan evacuation effort. The report also criticizes the full House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Democratic Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, for holding just one full committee hearing with senior Biden administration officials on the Afghanistan withdrawal even though it’s widely recognized as one of the worst U.S. foreign policy failures in decades.

    While the report says more State Department resources would have helped ease panic and confusion, it faults the agency for basic communication miscues that further exacerbated the chaos.

    By ignoring early warnings that they were not moving quickly enough to evacuate Americans and at-risk Afghans who had worked directly with the U.S. government, they left American citizens, green-card holders, and Afghan allies approved for departure stranded outside airport gates with no assistance.

    “Attempts by members of Congress and their staff to help their constituents or other would-be evacuees were often stymied by out-of-office replies to email requests and broken links to web pages mean to submit information,” according to the report.

    It also criticizes U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson for going on a two-week vacation as Afghanistan was falling apart. Wilson took his summer break immediately after accompanying then-Afghanistan President Ghani to a late June meeting with Biden who promised the Afghan envoy, “We’re going to stick with you, and we’re going to do our best to see to it that you have the tools you need.”

    “There were no decisions made in the embassy until [Ross] returned in mid-July. This made action impossible,” a U.S. military officer told Army investigators. “Ground could have been gained at this time if the embassy had been able to do anything.”

    A couple of weeks later, it was Biden and Blinken who were on vacation at Camp David and the Hamptons, respectively, when alarms began sounding at the Pentagon for the need to relocate all of U.S. embassy personnel to the Kabul airport. Before the move, the personnel were being ordered to destroy sensitive documents in response to new fears of an immediate Taliban takeover of Kabul.

    All these hasty actions left no time for the State Department to speed up the processing of immigration applications for the Afghan allies Biden had promised to protect.

    There were no plans made to evacuate tens of thousands of U.S.-trained Afghan commandoes and other elite units who possess sensitive knowledge about American military operations.

    Also left behind: women leaders and soldiers whom Americans had promised sanctuary, along with more than 10,000 Afghans who had been employed by Embassy Kabul since it was re-established in 2001 and thousands more who worked with U.S. Agency for International Development.

    Nearly one year after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the Biden administration still lacks a plan to help these at-risk Afghan allies who fought and worked alongside U.S. forces, even though the administration has admitted that the Taliban and other terrorist groups have subjected these U.S. allies to killings and forced disappearances.

    And, despite Biden’s assurances that the U.S. had accomplished its original goal of expelling al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from the country, the report points to the recent U.S. strike against Ayman al Zawahiri, a top al Qaeda leader, who was living freely in downtown Kabul, as proof of the group’s presence in Afghanistan.

    “Thankfully, al Zawahiri was killed by a U.S. drone strike last month, but officials warn that al Qaeda and ISIS-K continue to grow their presence in Afghanistan,” the report states.

    Meanwhile, the withdrawal has wreaked havoc on the country’s economy, with some estimates that 95% of the country needs emergency assistance to avoid hunger. With the Taliban back in control, there are reports of targeted revenge killings against those who worked with the U.S. government or military. U.S.-based volunteer groups seeking to aid Afghan evacuees have reported nearly 500 reprisal attacks, including beheadings, hangings, severed limbs, lash marks, and car shootings.

    The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported in July 2022 that these killings are often carried out “execution style – for example, when an individual is taken out of their house and shot almost immediately,” the report notes.

    One of the worst casualties of the U.S. withdrawal from the country is the dramatic regression of women and girls, who are now ordered to wear burqas and are prevented from attending school or universities or even from walking unaccompanied in public places.

    Child marriage is also reportedly on the rise with girls as young as nine years old being sold into marriage to pay off debts, or families being forced to marry off their young daughters to Taliban fighters, the report states, quoting PBS documentary filmmaker Ramita Navai’s comments earlier this month after two visits to Afghanistan.

    The report also cites a finding by Amnesty International that “many women protesters” in Afghanistan who demonstrated against the Taliban’s repressive policies “have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance and torture,” including Taliban-administered beatings and electric shocks with tasers.

    Although Blinken acknowledged reprisal attacks and killings earlier this year, the report points out that the secretary played down the Taliban leadership’s responsibility for the deaths.

    “We are of course seeing retribution, attacks by Taliban against those who are part of the former government,” he told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on April 28. “These seem to be, for the most part, not centrally directed, that is they – they tend to be happening at a local level, but they’re happening.”

    Many of these allies are still sheltering in safe houses, afraid that the Taliban informants will expose their previous work with the U.S. government or NATO allies. Each passing week, they have fewer resources to purchase basic items such as food, fuel, and shelter.

    With the State Department unable to aid these people, the task of clothing, feeding, and sheltering tens of thousands of Afghans has fallen to outside veteran or humanitarian groups or sympathetic individuals. With almost no support from the U.S. government, some of the personnel running these groups, many of them comprising military veterans, have drained their personal retirement accounts, quit jobs, and suspended their small businesses in order to raise the funds to operate these networks of safe houses.

    “But these funds are not limitless, and the resource strains incurred have endangered the continued existence of these safe houses which many Afghans and Americans rely on for their very survival,” the report concludes.

    Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 22:30

  • Is Your Government Ready For Another Pandemic?
    Is Your Government Ready For Another Pandemic?

    With polio now confirmed in New York City’s wastewater and monkeypox having spread around the world – albeit with mortality rates remaining low – it appears that disease outbreaks are happening faster and more frequently than before.

    While greater media attention has certainly heightened awareness, we’re also seeing the ripple effects of a number of factors including population growth, which means more people are living in closer proximity to potentially infected animals, climate change, which is making diseases more severe, and even the decline of vaccine coverage for other diseases over past years, as reported by the OCHA. Not to mention the fact increased trade and travel as well as rapid urbanization – where levels of contact between people is high and living conditions can be unhygenic – are also making transmission easier.

    But how ready are the world’s governments for another – unfortunately, fairly inevitable – health crisis?

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, a survey carried out by the OECD in 2021 found that perceptions of government preparedness vary greatly around the world, with a fairly even split of opinions, favoring slightly more positive. People living in Luxembourg and Ireland, for instance, thought more highly of their government’s healthcare strategies, with 69 percent and 60 percent, respectively, saying they thought their leaders would be ready. Just over half of Brits felt the same.

    In Austria, however, trust on the topic was fairly low, with 29 percent of people saying they thought their government would be ready. Japan came in with 32 percent feeling confident in the government, although a greater share than any other felt ambivalent about the issue – responding that they felt either ‘neutral’ or ‘didn’t know.’

    Infographic: Is Your Government Ready for Another Pandemic? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    According to the report, public trust in government rise and fell throughout the pandemic, with a show of support for governments at the start, versus later when the death count started to rise. The authors note that the survey’s results likely correspond to the intensity of the pandemic at the time, in November 2021. They add:

    “It is also worth noting that – in spite of the many challenges governments faced in effectively responding to the economic and health exigencies of the pandemic – this finding suggests that people see governments as having learned from the information gained during this experience.”

    The countries surveyed included Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 22:00

  • Finnish Prime Minister 'Party Girl' Submits To Drug Test Over Leaked Videos
    Finnish Prime Minister ‘Party Girl’ Submits To Drug Test Over Leaked Videos

    Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has found herself at the center of a bizarre tabloid-fueled “scandal” after days ago multiple videos of the 36-year old head of state were leaked showing her recently partying with friends and local celebrities.

    One of the videos purportedly shows her dancing very close-up to a man that’s not her husband, according to Fox News, with the whole spectacle leading to charges from media and the public of “inappropriate” behavior for someone in the nation’s highest office.

    Marin has even been accused of being on drugs when the ‘wild’ party videos were taken, something she has firmly denied. Finnish politicians and opposition factions have been behind some of the drug use accusations. 

    “I did nothing illegal,” Marin said at a Friday press briefing responding to the allegations, according to a translation from the BBC. “Even in my teenage years I have not used any kind of drugs.”

    Media coverage of the videos has taken over headlines in Finland and quickly went international, leading to the prime minister agreeing to submit to a drug test, in a highly unusual and unprecedented scenario: 

    Finland’s prime minister has said she has taken a drug test, after new footage emerged showing the leader dancing with a Finnish popstar.

    Sanna Marin, 36, came under fire this week after a leaked video showed her partying, with some politicians saying she should be tested for narcotics.

    At a news conference on Friday, Ms Marin said she had taken the test and expects the results next week. The prime minister repeated her denials that she has ever taken drugs.

    Many of Marin’s supporters as well as media pundits have charged critics with unwarranted attacks over the party videos simply because she’s a woman.

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    Strangely (or perhaps entirely to be expected), Russia and Vladimir Putin have even the conversation, with some pundits claiming that pro-Russian “trolls” are primarily responsible for driving the “scandal” into the spotlight. 

    The claim is that “Russian media accounts” have sought to spread the now viral clips in order to stir fresh domestic controversy at a moment Finland is applying to join NATO.

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    “I think my ability to function was really good. There were no known meetings on the days I was partying,” the Finnish leader said in her defense. “I trust that people understand that leisure time and work time can be separated.”

    “If someone has kissed me on the cheek, there’s nothing inappropriate or something I can’t handle or tell my husband,” Marin added, commenting on the video where she was seen getting physically close with a pop star.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 21:31

  • Victor Davis Hanson: 'Civil War' Porn
    Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Civil War’ Porn

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As President Joe Biden’s polls stagnate and the midterms approach, we are now serially treated to yet another progressive melodrama about the dangers of a supposed impending radical right-wing violent takeover.

    Georgians hold signs in front of the Georgia State Capitol in support of the challenge to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s qualification for the ballot under the insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, in Atlanta, on April 21, 2022. (Derek White/Getty Images for MoveOn)

    This time the alleged threat is a Neanderthal desire for a “civil war.”

    The FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, the dubious rationale for such a historic swoop, and the popular pushback at the FBI and Department of Justice from roughly half the country have further fueled these giddy “civil war” conjectures.

    Recently “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss speculated about the parameters of such an envisioned civil war.

    Beschloss is an ironic source. Just days earlier, he had tweeted references to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who passed U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, in connection with the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

    That was a lunatic insinuation that Trump might justly suffer the same lethal fate due to his supposed mishandling of “nuclear secrets.” Unhinged former CIA Director Michael Hayden picked up on Beschloss death-penalty prompt, adding that it “sounds about right.”

    Hayden had gained recent notoriety for comparing Trump’s continuance of the Obama administration’s border detention facilities to Hitler’s death camps. And he had assured the public that Hunter Biden’s lost and incriminating laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.”

    So, like the earlier “Russian collusion” hoax, and the January 6 “insurrection,” the supposed right-wing inspired civil war is the latest shrill warning from the Left about how “democracy dies in darkness” and the impending end of progressive control of Congress in a few months.

    On cue, Hollywood now joins the civil war bandwagon. It has issued a few bad, grade-C movies. They focus on deranged white “insurrectionists” who seek to take over the United States in hopes of driving out or killing off various “marginalized” peoples.

    Pentagon grandees promise to learn about “white rage” in the military and to root it out. But never do they offer any hard data to suggest white males express any greater degree of racial or ethnic chauvinism than any other demographic.

    When we do hear of an insurrectionary plan—to kidnap the Michigan governor—we discover a concocted mess. Twelve FBI informants outnumbered the supposed four “conspirators.” And two of them were acquitted by a jury and the other two so far found not guilty due to a mistrial.

    The buffoonish January 6 riot at the Capitol is often cited as proof of the insurrectionary right-wing movement. But the one-day riotous embarrassment never turned up any armed revolutionaries or plots to overthrow the government.

    What it did do was give the Left an excuse to weaponize the nation’s capital with barbed wire and thousands of federal troops, in the greatest militarization of Washington, D.C. since the Civil War.

    In contrast, Antifa and BLM rioters were no one-day buffoons. They systematically organized a series of destructive and deadly riots across the country for over four months in the summer of 2020. The lethal toll of their work was over 35 dead, $2 billion in property losses, and hundreds of police officers injured.

    Such violent protestors torched the ironic St. John’s Episcopal church and attempted to fight their way into the White House grounds. Their violent agenda prompted the Secret Service to evacuate the president of the United States to a secure bunker.

    The New York Times gleefully applauded the rioting near the White House grounds with the snarky headline “Trump Shrinks Back.”

    As far as secession talk, it mostly now comes from the Left, not the Right. Indeed, a parlor game has sprung up among elites in venues such as The Nation and The New Republic imaging secession from the United States. Blue-staters brag secession would free them from the burden of the red-state conservative population.

    Over the last five years, it was the Left who talked openly of tearing apart the American system of governance—from packing the Supreme Court and junking the Electoral College to ending the ancient filibuster and nullifying immigration law.

    Time essayist Molly Ball in early 2021 gushed about a brilliant “conspiracy” of wealthy tech lords, Democratic Party activists, and Biden operators.

    Ball bragged how they had systematically poured hundreds of millions of dark money into changing voting laws, and absorbing the role of government registrars in key precincts.

    What was revolutionary were new progressive precedents of impeaching a president twice, trying him as a private citizen, barring minority congressional representatives from House committee memberships, and tearing up the state of the union address on national television.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 21:30

  • Ex-FBI Agent Pleads Guilty To Destroying Evidence
    Ex-FBI Agent Pleads Guilty To Destroying Evidence

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

    A former FBI agent said he is pleading guilty to paying a business to wipe his computer hard drive to make it unavailable for forensic examination, according to a statement.

    The FBI headquarters in Washington on Jan. 2, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    Former FBI agent Robert Cessario was charged with corrupt destruction of record in an official proceeding in connection to the trial of former Arkansas Republican state Sen. Jon Woods, local media reported.

    On Wednesday, Cessario issued a statement saying that he is pleading guilty as part of a plea deal in the case.

    “I erased the contents of the computer hard knowing that the court has ordered that the computer be submitted for a forensic examination,” the former federal agent stated in court documents, according to local Arkansas news outlets. “I did so with the intention of making the contents of the computer’s hard unavailable for forensic examination.”

    “Ex-FBI Agent Pleads Guilty To Destroying Evidence, that is, Cause No. 5:17-CR-50010, United States v. Woods et al,” Cessario’s statement continued, adding that he “corruptly performed and had performed, the erasures with intent to impair the integrity and availability of the computer hard drive and its contents for use in that official proceeding.”

    He added: “I am guilty of the violation alleged.”

    Court documents show Cessario faces as many as 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release, according to local media reports. His sentencing will come at a later date, which has not been disclosed.

    Woods’s Trial

    The case stems from the trial involving Woods, who in 2018 was convicted of mail fraud and wire fraud charges. Woods was accused of taking kickbacks in return for steering state grants to Ecclesia College in Springdale.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 20:30

  • Where Will The World's Next 1,000 Babies Be Born?
    Where Will The World’s Next 1,000 Babies Be Born?

    Every four minutes, approximately 1,000 babies are born across the globe. But in which countries are these babies the most statistically likely to come from?

    Using data from the CIA World Factbook, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang shows this this graphic by Pratap Vardhan (Stats of India) that paints a picture of the world’s demographics, showing which countries are most likely to welcome the next 1,000 babies based on population and birth rates as of 2022 estimates.

    The Next 1,000 Babies, By Country

    Considering India has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, it’s fairly unsurprising that it ranks first on the list. Of every 1,000 babies born, the South Asian country accounts for roughly 172 of them.

    It’s worth noting that, while India ranks number one on the list, the country’s birth rate (which is its total number of births in a year per 1,000 individuals) is actually slightly below the global average, at 16.8 compared to 17.7 respectively.

    China, which comes second on the list, is similar to India, with a high population but relatively low birth rate as well. On the other hand, Nigeria, which ranks third on the list, has a birth rate that’s nearly double the global average, at 34.2.

    Why is Nigeria’s birth rate so high?

    There are various intermingling factors at play, but one key reason is the fact that Nigeria’s economy still is developing, and ranks 131st globally in terms of GDP per capita. Further, access to education for women is still not as widespread as it could be, and research shows that this is strongly correlated with higher birth rates.

    The World’s Population Growth Rate is Declining

    While there are hundreds of thousands of babies born around the world each day, it’s worth mentioning that the world’s overall population growth rate has actually been declining since the 1960s.

    This is happening for a number of reasons, including:

    • Increased wealth around the world, which research has correlated with fewer births

    • Various government policies discouraging large families

    • The global shift from rural to urban living

    By 2100, global population growth is expected to drop to 0.1%, which means we’ll essentially reach net-zero population growth.

    This would increase our global median age even further, which poses a number of economic risks if countries don’t properly prepare for this demographic shift.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 20:00

  • Fargo School Board Reinstates Pledge Of Allegiance After National Public Outcry
    Fargo School Board Reinstates Pledge Of Allegiance After National Public Outcry

    Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    After criticism from conservative lawmakers and backlash from citizens nationwide, the Fargo Board of Education on Aug. 18 voted to reverse course on its previous week’s decision to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before its meetings.

    New U.S. citizens recite the Pledge of Allegiance during their naturalization ceremony at George Washington’s residence in Mount Vernon, Virginia, on July 4, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

    On Aug. 9, seven of the board’s nine members, including four newcomers who took office in June, voted to cancel a previous board measure that was instituted in March before the election.

    Board vice president Seth Holden said at the Aug. 9 meeting that the Pledge of Allegiance was contrary to the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities.

    “Given that the word ‘God’ in the text of the Pledge of Allegiance is capitalized, the text is clearly referring to the Judeo-Christian God, and therefore, it does not include any other faiths such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism,” Holden said, adding that this made the pledge of allegiance a “non-inclusionary act.”

    Reciting the pledge is a “non-inclusionary act” and there is text within the pledge that is “simply not true,” Holden added.

    “The statement that we are ‘one nation under God’ is simply an untrue statement,” Holden said. “We are one nation under many or no gods.”

    Tracie Newman, who is board president, recommended that a member recite “a shared statement of purpose that would bring us all together” at the start of the meetings instead of the pledge, adding that it would be “unifying.”

    “I’m just not sure that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is a useful way to begin every one of our board meetings,” Newman said at the Aug. 9 meeting.

    North Dakota’s Republican Party called the board’s Aug. 9 vote “laughable” and an “affront to our American values.”

    Republican State Sen. Scott Meyer told North Dakota media outlets last week that he would start work on a school voucher bill draft to allow public money to pay for private school tuition.

    “These positions like by the Fargo School Board just don’t align with North Dakota values,” he said. “The logical solution is to just give parents that option to help educate their kids.”

    Robin Nelson was one of two board members who voted on Aug. 9 to keep the pledge.

    “It was a very easy ‘no’ vote from me from the get-go. I knew right away it would be controversial,” Nelson told Fargo’s Valley News Live.

    “Our focus should be on our great students and teachers and education, but this is going to detract from that and really shed more negative publicity on the Fargo school district, and quite frankly, we don’t need that.”

    Nelson’s words were proved correct. The decision prompted an outcry across the country, which led the board to hold the Aug. 18 meeting to discuss reinstating the pledge.

    “That is perpetuating Critical Race Theory, which is against the law in North Dakota,” Fargo parent Jake Schmitz told Fox & Friends last week following the initial vote to ban the Pledge of Allegiance.

    “The next logical step in the progression is [they’ll] want to remove it from schools because it’s a non-inclusionary act which is a bunch of [expletive].”

    At the special meeting on Aug. 18, the board discussed the volume of angry emails and voicemails directed at members.

    Nyamal Dei, a refugee from war-torn Sudan, was among those who received messages from irate citizens.

    Dei was one of the seven members who voted on Aug. 10 to eliminate the pledge. At the special meeting, she was the only board member to vote no on reinstatement.

    “We won’t be rewarding our children or students in our district for acting in this way,” Dei said at the special meeting.

    “But know that this moment will pass. Let’s get back to the work that we are elected to do and that is to find a solution to our teacher shortages, mental health issues, and academic achievement for our students.”

    Greg Clark, who also serves on the board, said that less than 20 percent of the “angry messages” were from Fargo residents.

    He admitted that his vote to reinstate the pledge was influenced by people who do not live in the district.

    “But I hope you’ll forgive me because I truly believe it is in the best interest of our schools to do so,” Clark said.

    “The disruptions and the threats must end so that we can have a successful start to our school year.”

    Holden voted to bring back the pledge, but not before expressing reluctance.

    “Do you concede the battle to win the war?” Holden said.

    “I’m also concerned about what might happen to this board in the future because we’re going to have to probably be prepared to take more heat than we normally do for decisions that we make because that there may be a perception of success.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 19:30

  • Is Ethereum's Censorship-Resistance Under Attack: A Recap Of The Biggest Crypto News In The 2nd Week Of August
    Is Ethereum’s Censorship-Resistance Under Attack: A Recap Of The Biggest Crypto News In The 2nd Week Of August

    By Lucas Campbell of Bankless

    The recent sanction of Tornado Cash from the U.S. treasury has had a windfall of effects on crypto.

    A developer was arrested and a string of “decentralized” applications have banned wallets that have touched Tornado Cash.

    People are afraid of OFAC. These guys are nothing to mess with. If you don’t comply with their demands, there’s a really good chance you go to jail.

    This collective fear and action from OFAC are sparking debate among the community.

    On one hand, protocol teams are worried. For most, prison time is not an option to consider (understandably). Companies will comply if threatened with jail time.

    At the very least, if these companies are working in the best interest of crypto, they’ll fight it in the legal system. But that will take years and millions (and millions and millions) of dollars.

    On the other hand, crypto is about open, unstoppable access to money and finance. The idea that “DeFi” apps are banning access because certain wallets directly (or indirectly) used a sanctioned code goes against the ethos and mission of crypto.

    Satoshi would be pissed. This isn’t what we’re here for.

    Regardless, this looming threat becomes a serious issue when looking at Ethereum’s validator set.

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

    A handful of companies are responsible for operating a majority of the validators on Ethereum.

    What happens if OFAC starts demanding these companies to censor specific transactions via their validators (or go to jail)?

    Will they bend the knee?

    Will they shut down their staking services?

    Will validators accept it and get slashed by the network, losing user deposits?

    This is a big unknown right now, but any of these outcomes are possible.

    Before you say “Ethereum would never support censorship”, there are a lot of nuances behind this, primarily with Flashbots and block building, that go above my head.

    Regardless, this was a major discussion on the Ethereum Core Devs meeting this week, and there’s a lot to unpack here. I recommend listening to the discussion and reading Tim Beiko’s thread on the topic to get the full rundown.

    Starts at 18:11.

    Is Ethereum’s censorship resistance under attack?

    The honest answer is that it’s not entirely clear right now.

    The Best Monetary Asset

    Four weeks from now, Ethereum will be in a post-merge world. Issuance will be reduced by 90% and net inflation will virtually become neutral, if not negative.

    This creates a compelling case for ETH as a monetary asset in an increasingly inflationary world.

    • Fiat is currently inflating at 12.8% per year.
    • Gold sits at 1.79%
    • After the next Bitcoin halving in 2024, BTC’s inflation rate will be 0.88%.

    Post-Ethereum Merge?

    ETH issuance falls to 0.18% based on current demand levels where it could potentially go negative if demand recovers to same the levels as a few months ago.

    Most people looking at this graph might respond “But Apple is sitting at -3.78%! That’s the better store of value.”

    True—sort of.

    But Apple stock is not a monetary asset. You can’t instantly transfer it to anyone in the world. You can’t buy anything with it. You don’t have global access to lending, borrowing, trading, or earning yield.

    Apple stock has no credible neutrality. There’s no decentralization.

    It’s not a Medium of Exchange or a Unit of Account.

    Issuance is just one part of it.

    But when you factor in all of it, ETH becomes a highly favorable monetary asset in the current landscape.

    Other News

    Celsius owes $6.7 billion in crypto tokens and only holds $3.8 billion; Genesis CEO quits amidst job layoffs; Mailchimp cracks down on crypto newsletters; The SEC sues Dragonchain; Canada lays new crypto regulations; The NFT market faces a potential liquidity crisis?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 19:00

  • Republican Voter Enthusiasm For Midterms Boosted By Mar-a-Lago Raid: Poll
    Republican Voter Enthusiasm For Midterms Boosted By Mar-a-Lago Raid: Poll

    Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Before-and-after survey results show the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid last week largely encouraged Republican voters to go to the ballot box in November for the midterms.

    An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents searched it, in Palm Beach, Florida on Aug. 15, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

    The FBI on Aug. 8, in an unprecedented move, raided the home of former President Donald Trump for a potential violation of the Espionage Act, before allegedly finding four sets of top-secret documents and seven other sets of classified information that the former president removed from the White House.

    One poll (pdf) conducted from Aug. 13–16 by the Economist/YouGov, found that 51 percent of Republican respondents said they were more enthusiastic about the 2022 midterm elections compared to the previous congressional election year. It turned out to be a 6 percent increase from an Aug. 7–9 poll result (pdf), showing only 45 percent were more devoted to voting.

    The growth was smaller when it came to Democrat and Independent voters—both increased after the raid by one point to 36 percent and 25 percent respectively. Both surveys asked 1,500 adult citizens nationwide, declaring a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

    The recent raid by the FBI in Palm Beach has solidified Trump’s hold on the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, according to conservatives and analysts. Trump’s family and aides also slammed the move as being politically motivated to prevent the former president from regaining the presidency.

    The release of findings came as Trump’s 2022 endorsement record grows to 209–17, according to Breitbart, after five “America First” candidates he backed won their primary races in Wyoming and Alaska Tuesday night.

    Incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) lost her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Aug. 16, without coming close to her Trump-endorsed challenger, Harriet Hageman, who doubled Cheney’s votes to win the Wyoming primary.

    Trump had three other endorsements in Tuesday’s state races: Wyoming State Rep. Chuck Gray, who secured the nomination for secretary of state, and incumbent State Treasurer Curt Meier advancing in his renomination bid, as well as Brian Schroeder, former head of Veritas in Cody who lost his bid to maintain his position as state superintendent.

    In Alaska, both Trump-endorsed candidates—former Gov. Sarah Palin and Kelly Tshibaka—advanced to general election races.

    Tshibaka, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol protest, advanced to the ranked-choice election from the open primary on Aug. 16.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 18:30

  • CNN Boss Warns 'Unsettled' Staff To Prepare For 'More Changes'
    CNN Boss Warns ‘Unsettled’ Staff To Prepare For ‘More Changes’

    CNN Boss Chris Licht’s efforts to restore credibility to the far-left, ratings-challenged network is far from over.

    According to multiple reports, Licht has warned employees to brace for “more changes” following the departure of Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter.

    “I want to acknowledge that this is a time of significant change, and I know that many of you are unsettled,” said Licht during a Friday morning editorial call, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “There will be more changes and you might not understand it or like it all.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAccording to a June Axios report, Licht has been preparing to boot on-air personalities who can’t break free of their crippling Trump Derangement Syndrome.

    CNN’s new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network’s new priority to be less partisan.

    Why it matters: If talent cannot adjust to a less partisan tone and strategy, they could be ousted, three sources familiar with the matter tell Axios.

    Details: Licht wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they’re willing to uphold the network’s values so that they don’t tarnish CNN’s journalism brand.

    • For on-air talent, that includes engaging in respectful interviews that don’t feel like PR stunts. For producers and bookers, that includes making programming decisions that are focused on nuance, not noise. -Axios

    “We will continue covering media stories, including on TV, when warranted,” Licht reportedly said on the Friday call, in response to concerns that the network may no longer cover media issues following Stelter’s ouster, adding that the Reliable Sources newsletter will be revived under reporter Oliver Darcy.

    “I really appreciate all that Brian has done to build the media beat for CNN. He’s a great human being and a good person. I wish him all the best on his new venture,” he added.

    That said, the Daily Beast reached out to CNN, which confirmed Licht’s comments, but said they don’t reflect any specific changes.

    “We’re constantly changing things and making decisions,” they added.

    Since Licht took over in the wake of ex-boss Jeff Zucker’s unceremonious firing over an office romance with his top lieutenant Allison Golust (who’s also gone), he’s cut loose a swath of staffers, and changed several editorial guidelines – including reducing the use of “Breaking News” for on-air banners, and the use of less partisan terms to describe election fraud claims.

    A source also told the Beast that Licht’s recent decisions may have more to do with billionaire mogul and influential WarnerDiscovery shareholder John Malone, who told CNBC last year that he’d “like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.”

    “Everything about this rollout points to John Malone and [Discovery CEO] David Zaslav,” said a source familiar with the situation, adding “Chris Licht did not want to do this.”

    Either way, looks like more CNN employees may have to learn a new skill.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 18:00

  • Investors Have Now Spent $5 Billion Pursuing The "Holy Grail Of Energy"
    Investors Have Now Spent $5 Billion Pursuing The “Holy Grail Of Energy”

    By Alex Kimani of Oilprice.com

    What do The Dark Knight Rises, Back to the Future, Oblivion, and Interstellar all have in common? They are sci-fi blockbusters that showcase a technology that scientists consider to be the Holy Grail of Energy: Nuclear fusion. Theoretically, two lone nuclear reactors running on small pellets could power the entire planet, safely and cleanly. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion. So, why are we still relying on fossil fuels? What’s stopping us from building these reactors everywhere?

    After all, scientists have been working on nuclear fusion technology since the 1950s and have always been optimistic that the final breakthrough is not far away. Yet, milestones have fallen time and again and now the running joke is that a practical nuclear fusion power plant could still be decades away.

    Well, the past few years have witnessed a resurgence in the field with a handful of startups setting up shop to make nuclear fusion an everyday reality. Interestingly, the vast majority of the sector’s funding has come from the private sector rather than public investments.

    According to the second global fusion industry report published by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA), private investment in fusion technology hit $4.7 billion in total, dwarfing the $117 million of public investment. Also, the current year is proving to be a watershed moment for fusion technology, with the amount of funding in 2022 more than doubling the industry’s entire historic investment to the tune of $2.83 billion.

    Fusion Startups

    To date, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has bagged the largest amount of funding for a fusion startup. Back in December, the Massachusetts-based fusion startup snagged more than $1.8 billion in the largest private investment for nuclear fusion yet from a plethora of big-name investors including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, George Soros via his Soros Fund Management LLC, and venture capitalist John Doerr.

    Commonwealth Fusion System is in good company.

    On Nov. 5, Helion Energy announced that it had raised $500 million in its latest fundraising round, making it the second-largest-ever single fundraising round for a private fusion firm. Helion has a chance to surpass Commonwealth Fusion System since its latest round of funding includes an additional $1.7 billion tied to certain performance milestones. Meanwhile, Canada’s General Fusion has closed a $130 million fundraising round that was oversubscribed. General Fusion plans to launch an even bigger fundraising effort soon.

    Google and Chevron participated in a $250-million funding raise for TAE Technologies, a nuclear fusion startup with an unconventional strategy, back in June. Since then, TAE has raised a total of $1.2 billion.

    “It’s a sign of the industry growing up,” General Fusion Chief Executive Christofer Mowry has told the Wall Street Journal. 

    Various fusion companies are pursuing different designs for fusion reactors, though the majority rely on fusion that takes place in plasma. Commonwealth Fusion has successfully tested the most powerful fusion magnet of its kind on Earth that would hold and compress the plasma.

    Commonwealth Fusion Systems is collaborating with MIT to build their fusion reactor. The team has planned a fusion experiment they have dubbed Sparc which is about 1/65th the volume of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The experimental reactor will generate about 100MW of heat energy in pulses of about 10 seconds – bursts big enough to power a small city. The team anticipates that the output will be more than twice the power used to heat the plasma thus overcoming the biggest technical hurdle in the field: positive net energy from fusion. The Sparc team has set an ambitious target to have the reactor running in about 15 years.

    But why have scientists so far failed at replicating a natural process that powers the stars in our universe?

    Extreme Challenge

    Turns out that the conditions necessary for nuclear fusion to take place present an extreme challenge for us earthlings. 

    Fusion works on the basic concept of forging lighter elements into heavier ones. When two hydrogen atoms are smashed together hard enough, they fuse to form helium. The new atom is less massive than the sum of its parts, with the balance converted to energy in the E=MC2 mass-energy equivalence.

    Ok, that’s a bit simplistic since hydrogen atoms do not fuse together directly but rather in a multi-step reaction. Anyway, the long and short of it is that nuclear fusion produces net energy only at extreme temperatures – in the order of hundreds of millions of degrees celsius. That’s hotter than the sun’s core and far too hot for any known material on earth to withstand.

    To get around this quagmire, scientists use powerful magnetic fields to contain the hot plasma and prevent it from coming into contact with the walls of the nuclear reactor. That consumes insane amounts of energy. 

    Stars have it easy in this regard thanks to their immense masses and powerful gravitational fields that hold everything together. For instance, the sun is 333,000 times the mass of the Earth with a gravity ~27.9 times that of Earth.

    Unfortunately, every fusion experiment so far has been energy negative, taking in more energy than it generates thus making it useless as a form of electricity generation. 

    Getting the initial fusion reaction is not a problem – keeping it going is, not to mention that building nuclear reactors takes some extremely sophisticated feats of engineering.

    International Megaproject

    But now scientists are confident that they are close to building a nuclear reactor that will produce more energy than it consumes. 

    The Saint-Paul-les-Durance, France-based upcoming International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the world’s largest fusion reaction facility that aims to develop commercially viable fusion reactors.

    Funded by six nations including the US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and India, ITER plans to build the world’s largest tokamak fusion device, a donut-shaped cage that will produce 500 ME of thermal fusion energy. 

    The device will cost ~$24 billion with a delivery date set at 2035. The giant machine – the biggest fusion machine ever built – will weigh in at an impressive 23,000 tonnes and will be housed in a building 60 meters high.

    So, what’s different this time around?

    Scientists have successfully developed a new superconducting material – essentially a steel tape coated with yttrium-barium-copper oxide, or YBCO, which allows them to build smaller and more powerful magnets. This lowers the energy required to get the fusion reaction off the ground.

    According to Fusion for Energy – the EU’s joint undertaking for ITER – 18 niobium-tin superconducting magnets aka toroidal field coils will be used to contain the 150 million degrees celsius plasma. The powerful magnets will generate a powerful magnetic field equal to 11.8 tesla, or a million times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field. Europe will manufacture 10 of the toroidal field coils with Japan manufacturing nine.

    However, it will be another decade before a full-scale demonstration power plant will be built using lessons learned from ITER. The industrial fusion power plants will thereafter be connected to the grid.

    The ITER site construction is nearly 80% complete.

    With all that said… it seems nuclear fusion remains (but hopefully not forever) over a decade away.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 17:30

  • UC Berkeley Student Housing Co-Op Bans White People From Common Areas
    UC Berkeley Student Housing Co-Op Bans White People From Common Areas

    A UC Berkeley off-campus housing co-op has banned white people from entering common spaces in order to protect people of color (POC) from so-called “white violence.”

    As first reported by The College Fix and confirmed elsewhere, house rules for the 30-room “Person of Color Theme House” leaked to Reddit read: “Many POC moved here to be able to avoid white violence and presence, so respect their decision of avoidance if you bring white guests.”

    “White guests are not allowed in common spaces,” reads the rule under “Guests in Common Spaces.”

    Via Berkeley subreddit

    The top comments in the notoriously liberal subreddit noted the obvious racism:

    “In order to beat racism we must first become racists ourselves!” wrote one user, /u/Educational-Net303.

    Also banned from the POC House:

    “Avoid bringing parents/family members that express bigotry,” adding “Queer, Black, and Indigenous members should not have to avoid common spaces because of homophobic or racist parents/family members.”

    Via The College Fix

    Of note, the facility is not run by UC Berkeley, as Assistant Director of Media Relations Adam Ratliff told the outlet, adding that it’s “not the role of the campus” to comment on what they do.

    “As this involves an off-campus non-affiliated landlord, the campus has no ability under the Code of Student Conduct to discipline the landlord,” said Ratliff.

    The Person of Color Theme House, a five-story, 30-room home that can accommodate up to 56 students, exists to serve “low-income, first generation, immigrant and marginalized students of color.”

    It’s part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative, a nonprofit housing cooperative established to provide affordable housing to Bay-area college students.

    Since it was established in 2016, the POC house has faced its share of internal problems.

    One former member wrote in a Medium article that the house has become known for its “call-out culture” perpetuated by “the lack of intersectionality.”

    “Several members have been criticized for being white/white passing, aligning themselves with whiteness, or allowing white violence in the house,” she wrote.

    Stephen Ross, cooperative experience manager for the Berkeley Student Cooperative, told The College Fix that “neither the BSC nor the POC house has an official policy” excluding white guests from common spaces. -The College Fix

    “White people can and do live in POC house, but the focus for POC house is providing a safe and supportive living environment for people of color,” said Ross – though he added that each of the 20 BSC houses “have their own culture and practices” that develop ovver time, adding that members actively work toward “not making Whiteness central to the experience for members living in the house.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 17:00

  • Illegal Transaction?: Shaquille O'Neal's Crypto-Mixer Move Just Crossed The Line…
    Illegal Transaction?: Shaquille O’Neal’s Crypto-Mixer Move Just Crossed The Line…

    Authored by Scott Hill via BombThrower.com,

    Basketball Entrepreneur, Shaquille “Big Sexy” O’Neal just crossed the line.

    Here’s the Etherscan page for Shaq’s NFT project showing the sanctioned, illegal transaction.

    The US Treasury announced sanctions applied to Tornado Cash transactions beginning last Monday.

    I’m not suggesting that Shaq’s done anything wrong, but this is an example of why the Treasury’s attack on Crypto mixing services via sanctions is unworkable.

    Who Gets Invited To The Crypto Mixers?

    Mixers are tools within the Cryptocurrency ecosystem that allow users to deposit tokens, combine them with other people’s tokens, and then withdraw to an unrelated wallet. They can be used simply for privacy reasons, or it can be used to hide the tracks of illicit funds.

    The US Treasury was obviously focused on the latter when it sanctioned Tornado Cash, with an estimated $455M washed through Tornado over the last few years by North Korean hacker group Lazarus. 

    I’m not defending the ability to hack and launder money, but you can walk the line if one can actually be laid down. Lazarus has been a scourge on the Crypto industry since at least 2017 and I would love nothing better than to see them dealt with effectively and severely. But that’s the problem…

    The solution to Crypto hacks needs to be effective or there’s no point.

    According to Chainalysis’ research on the topic, for every criminal use of crypto mixers, there appears to be a legitimate use. So a large part of the pushback on this round of sanctions is to do with preserving privacy tools in an increasingly aggressive surveillance state that jeopardizes citizens’ legitimate need for privacy in everyday life. 

    Privacy is normal and needs to be defended.

    Among notable legitimate and extremely necessary uses of privacy tools that have come out since the sanctions announcement are Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin using Tornado Cash to donate money to Ukrainians. This reduced their risk. Blockchain developers can also use untraceable funds to seed new projects without exposing their entire net worth.

    However, this article isn’t about privacy. There’s plenty written about that elsewhere. I’m talking about why sanctions aren’t the right tool for this problem. 

    Sanctions Didn’t Stop Party Crasher Lazarus

    This isn’t the first mixer the US has sanctioned. In May, the Treasury sanctioned Blender.io, another mixing service that had also been used extensively by Lazarus group. In that case, the sanctions worked well to shut down the service.

    They had no meaningful effect on the Lazarus group who simply kept hacking and moved to the next mixer.

    Blender.io was a custodial mixer. Users deposited funds into a centralized custodian who would then mix your funds and return them. The people running the service were targeted by sanctions and shut down. 

    Tornado Cash is structured differently. Rather than having a centralized custodian making decisions it’s simply a smart contract hosted on the Ethereum blockchain which holds funds prior to mixing and withdrawal. It’s just a piece of code that will continue running indefinitely and doing what it was designed to do. No one that can take it down. It is an immutable smart contract. 

    Tornado Cash is Bitcoinesque. It cannot be changed. It cannot be removed. 

    The Treasury seems to not really be aware of this distinction. The actual text of the sanctions has identified a range of wallet addresses associated with the smart contract as being prohibited to transact with. Treasury hasn’t identified any specific people or organizations, other than a website that hosts a front end for accessing the service. That makes this the first time the Treasury has sanctioned code, rather than people or corporations.

    Enforcement: “Buzzkill” US Treasury Just Doesn’t Get It

    How will this be enforced? No one really knows, but so far Circle has frozen USDC currently held in the smart contract awaiting withdrawal. Circle’s CEO doesn’t seem very happy about being forced to do this. There are also significant amounts of Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin also held in the smart contract.

    BitGo, the issuer of Wrapped Bitcoin can’t freeze their tokens and Ethereum also can’t be frozen at the protocol layer. The only logical way that US based companies like Coinbase can comply with sanctions is to prevent tokens that have been through Tornado Cash from being deposited onto their platforms.

    Which raises a huge issue. Because tokens can’t be frozen on the protocol layer, these tokens are free to move around in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem prior to deposit on Coinbase. Regular users will have a very hard time knowing whether or not tokens that they receive are going to be accepted with major US based companies.

    We don’t have any guidance from the Treasury on how this is supposed to be dealt with, but I imagine there are currently extremely frustrated calls between Crypto exchanges and the Treasury department trying to sort out this issue without breaking Ethereum.

    The Treasury department might have just accidentally broken Ethereum fungibility.

    Do I think that is the likely outcome here? No, not at all. But it does speak to how recklessly uniformed and uncaring the US Treasury is becoming regarding the collateral damage of using sanctions to solve every problem. There doesn’t appear to have been any consultation with major Washington based Crypto education groups like Coin Center and the DeFi Education Fund.

    Will the US Treasury be educated enough to make restrictions and reform possible. We don’t yet know how strict the Treasury will instruct US corporations to be about blocking deposits from Tornado Cash. Using blockchain records, it’s perfectly possible to trace Tornado Cash use through several transactions. It’s less possible to do the same through a DeFi system which inherently mixes up funds so that their origin can’t be ascertained.  

    The maximum enforcement would be to block all deposits from DeFi because some deposits would have touched Tornado Cash at some point in time.

    This highlights how useless sanctioning a medium of exchange really is. Usually transactions with a particular party are the sanctioned activity. This is what it means to have effective measures against cybercrime. These sanctions won’t shut down Tornado Cash and they won’t stop Lazarus Group. They have the potential to cripple Ethereum, if they’re applied strictly. It’s fundamentally a losing game. The USTreasury is playing whack-a-mole with privacy tools. 

    So what happens when a government enacts an absurd law that can’t be enforced and doesn’t really make any sense?

    People immediately break the law.

    Guilty By Association: Shaq, Fallon And Others Get Dusted

    Numerous celebrities and notable Crypto figures including Shaq, Jimmy Fallon, Brian Armstrong the CEO of Coinbase, Crypto Exchange cold wallets and numerous others got dusted by Tornado Cash transactions.

    Dust attacks aren’t new, they’ve been around as long as I’ve been in Crypto. They describe when a wallet gets sent useless or harmful tokens without their consent. There is no need to accept Crypto transactions, they just show up when someone sends them to your wallet. 

    Someone with a balance held in Tornado Cash started sending small Ethereum transactions to a range of known celebrity wallet addresses without their approval or knowledge. On the first day of sanctions over Tornado Cash. 

    Did Shaq violated sanctions? Arguably yes.

    Sanctions violations are strict liability offenses. There doesn’t need to be any intention to perform a transaction with the sanctioned party. There doesn’t have to be any benefit gained by transaction. All that needs to be shown is that a transaction occurred.

    There is a defense that best efforts were taken to comply with sanctions. The prosecuting body will look at what steps were taken to avoid breaching sanctions, that will affect their likelihood to prosecute and the severity of the punishment. But what could Shaq have done to avoid breaching sanctions?

    There is nothing that anyone could have done to avoid breaching sanctions by receiving unsolicited Tornado Cash transactions.

    Obviously Shaq and Jimmy Fallon are not going to get prosecuted for sanctions violation because someone else sent them some Ethereum, but the fact that these celebrities will need to be excused for something that is arguably a breach of US sanctions according to the letter of the law is a big problem. 

    If The Rules Are A Bluff, What Happens Next?

    The sanctions are at best ineffective. Tornado Cash is the second mixer that has been sanctioned because it was used by Lazarus. The first set of sanctions just meant that Lazarus moved to using Tornado Cash instead of Blender.io. I imagine that due to the lack of enforceability of this round of sanctions, they won’t even stop Lazarus from using Tornado Cash as their mixer of choice. 

    Will it change how Crypto exchanges treat mixed funds? Unlikely. Major US exchanges already had a responsibility to refuse shady deposits under existing anti-money laundering provisions. There were already reports earlier this year of Coinbase refusing to credit deposits directly from mixers or funds that had recently been through a mixer. 

    What is the point of sanctioning Tornado cash if it doesn’t shut down the service or slow down Lazarus group?

    Well it will likely prevent law abiding US citizens from accessing a financial privacy tool for non-criminal purposes. Fight for the Future compared the sanctions to banning email because it can be used for phishing scams. The Cato Institute noted that “Punishing every American by going after technology is not the solution for dealing with criminals”.

    Banning mixers to stop cyber crime is like digging up roads to prevent carjackings.

    I’m much more concerned about the big picture problems with this style of enforcement. The demonstrated lack of basic understanding of how this technology works and what they are doing at the Treasury department is frankly terrifying. 

    It’s one thing to deliberately destroy Crypto ecosystems with regulation. It’s an entirely different thing to do it by accident. 

    The Ethereum blockchain is open and readable. There are numerous firms and hobbyists who monitor transactions. All eyes will be on Tornado Cash to see if it continues to operate or if the sanctions shut it down. In the day after the sanctions came into effect almost $3M moved through Tornado Cash.

    Sanctions are a powerful tool, but they are completely unsuited to dealing with decentralized or ungoverned entities like Tornado Cash. There is no one for the government to threaten here. There’s just users accessing open source code to assert their privacy. 

    If the US Government is going to bluff, I’d prefer it if the entire world couldn’t see that bluff fail in real-time. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 16:30

  • The Countries Supplying The EV Lithium Rush
    The Countries Supplying The EV Lithium Rush

    With both the demand and cost of lithium rising dramatically over the last few months, and forecast to do so into the future, this infographic from Statista’s Martin Armstrong takes a look at the countries which mine the most of the metal, and where the largest reserves are held.

    Infographic: The Countries Supplying the EV Lithium Rush | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The shift towards electric-powered mobility has really picked up pace in recent years and is only set to intensify as bans around the world on petrol and diesel car production come into place. As data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows, Australia and Chile are the countries best positioned to capitalize on the lithium rush. In 2021, 55,000 metric tons of the metal crucial to EV battery production was mined ‘down under’ – more than double of that extracted in Chile. The South American country does however have considerably larger reserves of the natural resource, as the infographic shows.

    Important to note is that production figures for the United States were not published by the source in order to “avoid disclosing company proprietary data”. Reserves in the country are however recorded at 750,000 metric tons in 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 16:00

  • Why Home Prices Haven't Crashed Yet
    Why Home Prices Haven’t Crashed Yet

    Submitted by EPB Macro Research’s Eric Basmajian, 

    Real home prices are going to fall, and it’s going to cause a massive negative wealth effect. Real home prices are much more impactful for the wealth effect compared to nominal home prices. Many people invest in real estate as an asset to beat inflation. If inflation is 10% and your home goes up 15%, you beat inflation by 5%, and thus, you are 5% wealthier in real terms. If inflation is 10% and your home goes up 5%, you lost 5% of your purchasing power in an asset that is supposed to give you protection, and you are actually worse off.

    Also, real home prices are the best measure of the true performance of real estate as an asset class across long periods of time. You can’t compare home prices today to those in the 1970s without looking at them in real or inflation-adjusted terms.

    This chart shows real home prices since the 1970s, and you can see that real home prices have declined several times, mainly around the recessionary periods.

    The 2000s recession was an outlier in which home prices rose in real terms.

    The financial crisis in 2008 caused home prices to decline by almost 30% in real terms. It took until 2021 to regain the peak in real home prices in 2006, 15 years!

    Over the last ten years, real home price growth averaged 4.5%, which is way higher than the 20-year average of 2%.

    Consumers and investors became accustomed to home prices rising sharply above the rate of inflation and a source of wealth building, particularly when using high amounts of leverage and mortgage debt.

    With the feeling that home prices would always rise above inflation and nearly 5% above inflation, a prevailing sentiment was born that you could leverage your way to wealth. But now, real home prices are starting to decline.

    One month is certainly not a trend, but this is where the EPB process becomes very powerful and why studying leading indicators is critical when determining what noise is and what’s the start of a new trend.

    There are several key leading indicators of real home prices, but this video covers just three: the months’ supply of new homes, the spread between 30YR mortgage rates and 30YR Treasury rates, and the growth rate of real M2. All three indicators imply the rate of real home price appreciation is likely to decline in the months ahead.

    This video explains the data behind these leading indicators and real home prices.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 15:30

  • Restaurants In Lockdown-Loving, High-Crime Cities Still Reeling While Others Thrive
    Restaurants In Lockdown-Loving, High-Crime Cities Still Reeling While Others Thrive

    More than two and a half years after the Covid-19 pandemic reached America, there’s a enormous divide among America’s restaurant markets. In deep-blue cities that embraced lockdowns, the number of diners is still far below pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, restaurant businesses are prospering in states that were quickest to reject Covidian authoritarianism.  

    That’s the finding of a Fox News report centered on data from OpenTable, a company that helps more than 60,000 restaurants worldwide manage reservations, payments and operations.  

    Civil unrest and crime have likely played a defining role too. It’s probably no coincidence that the worst-performing city — Minneapolis — was at the epicenter of the George Floyd riots that ravaged deep-blue cities. Strikingly, the number of average daily diners in Minneapolis is still less than half what the city enjoyed in pre-Covid, pre-Floyd 2019.  

    “We’re just getting killed in Minneapolis,” restauranteur Greg Urban told Fox News. “People don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe coming to Minneapolis. It’s a public safety issue right now.” 

    Happily, Urban is geographically — and politically — diversified, with nightspots in Austin, Pensacola and Lakeland, Florida too. 

    The 10 worst cities represent a who’s who of cringe-inducing, high-crime, vaccination-forcing, mask-adoring metropolises, with the likes of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Philadelphia rounding out the top five losers. 

    Meanwhile, the list of the 10 best-performing restaurant cities includes four from Florida which, under Governor DeSantis, helped set an example that emboldened other red-state governors to shift policies and begin rising out of the depths of public health madness. Underscoring a clear Sunbelt trend, Texas and Arizona placed two cities apiece. 

    10 Worst Lockdown-Hammered Restaurant Cities (Change in Daily Diners: July 2022 vs July 2019)

    1. Minneapolis (-54.3%)

    2. San Francisco (-45.9%)

    3. Portland (-45.2%)

    4. Seattle (-40.8%)

    5. Philadelphia (-39.2%)

    6. New York (-37.9%)

    7. St. Louis (-28.2%)

    8. Washington, DC (-27.3%)

    9. Baltimore (-24.9%)

    10. Chicago (-22.8%)  

    10 Best-Performing Restaurant Cities (Change in Daily Diners: July 2022 vs July 2019)

    1. Las Vegas (+35.7%)

    2. Fort Lauderdale (+34.0%)

    3. Miami (+32.8%)

    4. Austin (+27.3%)

    5. Naples (+25.4%)

    6. Tampa (+22.3%)

    7. Nashville (19.2%)

    8. San Antonio (+18.6%)

    9. Scottsdale (+18.0%)

    10. Phoenix (+14.3%)

    Source: OpenTable via Fox News 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/20/2022 – 15:00

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