Jan 21

Today’s News 21st January 2021

  • Stung By Chip Shortage, VW Loses Production Of "Tens Of Thousands" Of Vehicles In China
    Stung By Chip Shortage, VW Loses Production Of “Tens Of Thousands” Of Vehicles In China

    Volkswagen has been the latest automaker to be hit hard by the semiconductor shortage that is sweeping its way through the auto industry. 

    The company has reportedly lost “tens of thousands” of vehicles in production in China as a result, according to Bloomberg. 

    VW’s China head, Stephan Wollenstein, commented Wednesday: “It was hurting us already in December and we lost some 10,000 cars since then simply because we lost 50,000 cars in production in December because of some chips.”

    For VW, the impact has been felt the most in vehicles that use the automaker’s Electronic Stability Program, “a system of sensors that works with a car’s Anti-lock Braking System to prevent the wheels seizing up after an unexpected swerve.”

    “You see how vulnerable our industries are if only one chip is missing. This will unfortunately continue in the first quarter,” Wollenstein continued. 

    China is the world’s largest auto market and a critical market for VW, who has about 40% of its vehicle operations in the country. In China, VW delivered 3.85 million cars in 2020, down 9.1% from the year prior as a result of the pandemic. 

    2021 was thought to be a year where many automakers could play catch-up, but the chip shortage could stand in the way of an easy recovery for some automakers. Recall, we reported just days ago that the ongoing global chip shortage was wreaking havoc with the auto industry, which has become far more reliant on semiconductors due to “smart cars”, than it ever has been.

    Last Tuesday, it was reported that Toyota has stopped its factory lines in Guangzhou, China as a result of lack of semiconductors. This came just hours after the company said it would have to cut production of its Tundra, being manufactured in Texas, by 40% for the same reason.

    “The [Chinese factory] suspension could result in as much as a 30% cut in January’s output depending on how long it drags on,” Bloomberg noted early Tuesday morning. The company has told some of its suppliers that the halt could last about 4 days. 

    Meanwhile, Toyota was unable to provide concrete information as to when production would restart. The Japanese automaker operates the Guangzhou factory with Guangzhou Automobile.

    Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin told the Chicago Tribune last week: “This is absolutely an industry issue. We are evaluating the supply constraint of semiconductors and developing countermeasures to minimize the impact to production.”

    Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry at the Center for Automotive Research, commented: “There have been warning signs about his for months.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/21/2021 – 01:00

  • Biden Can Now Launch The Nukes And Unleash World War III Whenever He Feels Like It
    Biden Can Now Launch The Nukes And Unleash World War III Whenever He Feels Like It

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    During the Trump administration, I pointed to a problem with the American presidential system: it provides presidents with essentially unchecked power when it comes to launching a nuclear holocaust. Presidents can initiate nuclear war whenever they like. They need not be acting in a defensive capacity. This should strike any sane person as a rather insane policy, and as a huge hole in the so-called checks and balances on which the US political system is allegedly premised. 

    Because of the Washington Beltway hysteria over Trump, the Congress—possibly for the first time—considered measures to rein in the president in this regard. It’s a shame it required Trump Derangement Syndrome to make this an issue, but we should take what we can get when it comes to admitting some of the grave threats to common sensical governance that plague the American national security state. 

    Naturally, these lukewarm attempts at reform failed, likely because the Pentagon was surely opposed to them. While the president’s power is essentially unrestrained in this manner, the loosey goosey approach to controlling launching power also empowers the Pentagon. Surely, the Pentagon’s generals wanted to make sure they can have a big role in launching WWIII on a whim as well. 

    Moreover, Trump supporters opposed the idea as well. When I published the 2020 article on the problem of unchecked presidential power in this regard, I was savaged by Trump supporters in social media for allegedly being a “never Trumper” and failing to understand that the power of the president must never be limited in any way, lest it get in the way of Trump “owning the libs.” Now that Trump is an ex-president, however, both Washington and the hero-worshipping Trump backers will completely forget about the issue. As far as Washington is concerned, the nuke codes are now being controlled by one of their own. And few Trump supporters ever cared about limiting presidential power, anyway. 

    So, the power to incinerate a billion or more human beings over morning coffee remains in the power of the president. This morning, Biden supporters on Twitter were ecstatic over the video of the nuclear “football”—the device which enables the president to launch the nukes—was handed over to Biden:

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

    But this should be little comfort to anyone who’s paying attention, especially given the launch codes are now under the thumb of a man who may not even know what year it is. 

    But regardless of who is president, the fact is the only thing that stands between a president and his launching of nuclear missiles is his own moral compass. Anyone who isn’t hopelessly naïve about politicians and political institutions will find this deeply disturbing.

    A Brief History of the Nuclear Launch Process

    But why has there been no significant effort to develop some sort of check or veto to this process? Part of this lies in the fact the US military establishment maintains a posture very much in favor of erring on the side of aggression rather than restraint. In the early days of the nuclear-armed Cold War, there were essentially no safeguards in place. A man claiming to be the president, if he had access to the right people, could theoretically call for a nuclear strike, and there was no set way of remotely verifying his identity.

    A more robust process was put in place by President Kennedy:

    Although its origins remain highly classified, the Football can be traced back to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Privately, John F. Kennedy believed that nuclear weapons were, as he put it, “only good for deterring.” He also felt it was “insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.” Horrified by the doctrine known as MAD (mutually assured destruction), JFK ordered locks to be placed on nuclear weapons and demanded alternatives to the “all or nothing” nuclear war plan.

    Kennedy began asking questions about how a nuclear strike might actually take place, and specifically asked:

    • “What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?”

    • “How would the person who received my instructions verify them?”

    Kennedy felt that it was important to ensure that only the president—whose identity could somehow be verified—could authorize a strike.

    According to some critics of the Pentagon, however, the military was committed to making it easy to launch the missiles. The Air Force has even been accused of using “00000000” as a code that could enable the launch of a nuclear missile. According to Foreign Policy:

    Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert and former launch officer…[and] now a scholar and author at Princeton University, first raised the idea in a piece published in 2004. He accused the Air Force of circumventing President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 order to install extra security codes to safeguard against accidental or unauthorized launch by putting them in place, but making them painfully simple to the missile launch officers who manned underground bunkers. Doing so, Blair said, effectively eliminated the codes’ usefulness.

    Blair contends this easy-code protocol persisted for at least a decade, including the period when he was a launch officer.

    For its part, the Air Force denies using the specific code “00000000.” Nonetheless, the prolaunch posture of the Pentagon has long been evident. As noted by Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies:

    Bruce is correct about the major historical narrative at stake – the United States Air Force, particularly Strategic Air Command, generally resisted the introduction of technical safeguards out of concerns that such measures might make it more difficult to use the weapons in the event of a conflict….Like many other practices of the period…the Air Force’s emphasis on readiness at the expense of safety at that time seems, admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, unwise in the extreme.

    Other potential sources of human error or sabotage have surfaced over the years as well.

    Military personnel close to President Clinton have claimed that he misplaced the so-called biscuit, the card on which nuclear launch codes are printed. Presidents have often carried them in a coat pocket. But they can be misplaced. According to one of the men who carried the football:

    “[Clinton] thought he just placed them upstairs,” Patterson recalled. “We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them.”

    Other cases have reputedly occurred. President Carter allegedly “left his biscuit in a suit that got sent to the dry cleaners.”

    One instance that has been confirmed, however, is when Ronald Reagan’s codes were left discarded and unattended following his attempted assassination:

    During the chaos that followed the shooting, the military aide was separated from the president, and did not accompany him to the George Washington University hospital. In the moments before Reagan was wheeled into the operating theater, he was stripped of his clothes and other possessions. The Biscuit was later found abandoned, unceremoniously dumped in a hospital plastic bag.

    While mere loss of the biscuit does not trigger any sort of launch, it is not difficult to predict how access to the codes could be abused by someone else in a chaotic wartime situation. Scholars have suggested several potential problems with verification and authorization.

    For example, what if a president refused to launch missiles in opposition to the emphatic urgings of his subordinates? Could he then be incapacitated by his subordinates and his launch codes used under the authorization of another person?

    It is unknown how this would play out. According to Ron Rosenbaum in How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III,

    the whole question of nuclear command authority, and of who takes control of that authority if the president is killed in a nuclear attack, has frustrated experts and politicians for decades. Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar has called the confusing succession problem “a disaster waiting to happen.”

    This suggests problems whether a president is killed, thought to be killed, or is unreachable for a period. If the vice president assumes office and the original president later resurfaces, who then controls the nuclear weapons? Conspirators could also attempt to actively wrest control of launch authorization from presidents through deception. This could include having the president declared incapacitated for reasons of insanity under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. But Rosenbaum writes:

    By then we’d be in coup territory, or inside an episode of 24. And what is sanity or insanity? What if the president refuses to carry out the deterrent threat of genocidal retaliation once it’s failed to deter a strike on us? Can those around him force the president to give them the Gold Codes and in effect give the launch order? Who determines who is sane and who is insane?

    This strategy, of course, could be used by either side: a prolaunch vice president might ally with a secretary of defense to declare an antilaunch president mentally incompetent. Or, anti-launch underlings could seek to declare the president insane so as to prevent a launch.

    Either way, its clear that this is uncharted territory and well outside the bounds of any orderly process of checks and balances on executive power.

    Problems extend down the chain of command as well. In 1973, launch officer Major Harold Hering asked his superiors for clarification on how he could know if the president giving the order was sane. The military brass had no answer. Instead, Hering was forced out of the Air Force. Although the military likes to claim personnel are required only to follow legal orders—i.e., not planet-destroying orders issued by insane people—all that really mattered was that Hering be willing to launch missiles without question.

    The fact of the matter is that there is no way to confirm a president has consulted any facts on the necessity of nuclear war, or that the president is in his (or her) right mind when ordering a nuclear strike.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 23:45

  • Ship Crossing Pacific Loses 750 Containers In The Ocean After Hitting Storm
    Ship Crossing Pacific Loses 750 Containers In The Ocean After Hitting Storm

    Last December, we reported that an unlucky containership – the ultra-large ONE Apus – suffered a historic incident when it lost a record number of containers overboard as it sailed across the Pacific Ocean towards Long Beach after hitting severe weather; the ship lost some 1,816 container units, of which 64 are were Dangerous Goods containers.

    It now appears that this was just the start of a unfortunate series of incidents because as Maritime Executive reports, heavy weather in the North Pacific was again blamed for the loss of containers aboard one of Maersk’s containerships. This was the third container loss incident recently reported in the Pacific.

    Maersk said that approximately 750 containers were lost overboard from the Maersk Essen, a 148,723 dwt vessel with a capacity of 13,100 TEU. The loss occurred on January 16, but the line did not supply details on the vessel’s location. The vessel had departed Xiamen, China on December 26 and was due to arrive off Los Angeles on January 22; the ship operates on Maersk’s TP6 Asia/US West Coast route and as such would have made calls in Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Yantian, China before arriving in Xiamen.

    Cargo claims consultancy WK Webster is saying in its initial casualty report, that “it is very likely that some containers will have collapsed or have been damaged in the affected stacks, but remain on board. These containers will need to be removed or repositioned.” Webster reports that it is making arrangements for surveyors to be in place in order to investigate the cause of the incident and to attend to any cargo surveys. They are urging anyone who might have had cargo aboard to make contact to protect their position.

    “We view this as a very serious situation which will be investigated promptly and thoroughly,” Maersk said in its statement. They reported that all of the crew was safe and that a detailed cargo assessment is ongoing. In addition, the US Coast Guard, flag state and relevant authorities have been notified.

    The Maersk Essen is proceeding to Los Angeles on its scheduled route. Maersk’s vessel tracking system shows that the vessel was scheduled to be on the terminal in Los Angeles from January 28 to February 5 before departing for Yokohama, Japan.

    As noted above, there have been several other incidents in recent month also on the North Pacific. On November 30, the ultra-large containership ONE Apus lost approximately 1,800 containers overboard and damaged scores more during reports of severe weather approximately 1,600 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. In that incident, the vessel reversed course and sailed to Kobe, Japan, where the recovery operation is still ongoing.

    In another recent incident, at the beginning of November, the ONE Aquila also suffered a container loss in the North Pacific. One Line did not provide details on the number of containers, but WK Webster in its casualty report said that it believed the number exceeded 100 containers. That vessel diverted to Washington state to offload damaged containers and reposition lose containers before proceeding to Long Beach, California.

    These recent events are counter to a report issued by the World Shipping Council last summer that said the incidents of containers lost overboard has been on the decline and is a small percentage of the total annual volume. The WSC reported that the three-year moving average was declining, amounting to an average annual loss of 779 containers overboard between 2017 and 2019.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 23:25

  • The Deep State's Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup To Ensure Nothing Changes
    The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup To Ensure Nothing Changes

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”

    – Seven Days in May (1964)

    No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful.

    That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

    It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

    This new order didn’t emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.

    Indeed, the real coup happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”

    We’ve been mired in this swamp for decades now.

    Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.

    Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

    Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.

    Step away from the cult of personality politics and you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.

    Follow the money.  It always points the way.

    As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”

    Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:

    …a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…

    This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

    Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today’s current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May, which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.

    The premise is straightforward.

    With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government.  When Gen. Scott’s aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.

    Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.

    We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

    The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we’ve been fooled into believing is for our own good.

    How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?

    Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.

    This present military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.

    This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.

    Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

    Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

    In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

    Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This hasn’t just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s been happening all across the country.

    And then you’ve got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

    Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

    So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they’ve been amassing so assiduously over the years.

    Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

    I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

    This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

    Brace yourself.

    There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

    Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

    Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

    And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

    All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.

    The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 23:05

  • Twitter, Facebook And YouTube Allow Incendiary Anti-MAGA Video To Remain On Platforms
    Twitter, Facebook And YouTube Allow Incendiary Anti-MAGA Video To Remain On Platforms

    While Silicon Valley tech giants spent the last two weeks purging President Trump and tens of thousands of his followers over ‘dangerous conspiracy theories’ and ‘inciting violence’ during the so-called “Capitol insurrection” on January 6, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have yet to remove a video by far-left Russiagate conspiracy theorist Dan Winslow which is the definition of incitement.

    “They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs,” Winslow warns. “They are your children’s teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor’s offices, and many are police officers and soldiers.”

    The video, which has over 4 million Twitter views in two days, calls for “an army of citizen detectives” to identify Trump supporters – who he calls Trump’s ‘army of domestic terrorists,’ – who should be reported to authorities.

    The video, which one would think clearly violates Silicon Valley’s arbitrary rules against incitement and hate speech, continues to be viewable on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Would big tech allow a conservative video claiming Biden voters are left-wing terrorists who need to be watched to remain on their platforms?

    Winslow’s video appears to be designed to stoke maximum division between Americans (which, as we were told for four years during ‘Russiagate’ and have known for decades, is straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook).

    As Caitlin Johnstone noted on Tuesday, and is worth repeating:

    “On or before January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be the Commander-in-Chief: he will lose control of the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Special Forces and America’s nuclear arsenal,” Winslow’s voice begins ominously. “On January 20th Donald Trump will become Commander-in-Chief of a different army: this army.”

    Viewers are then shown footage from Trump rallies while being told that they are looking at “radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists”.

    “They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs,” Winslow warns.

    “They are your children’s teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor’s offices, and many are police officers and soldiers.”

    Winslow talks about white supremacists and the Capitol riot, warning that Trump will continue escalating violence and fomenting a civil war in America.

    “We have to fight back,” Winslow declares.

    “In this new war, the battlefield has changes. Computers can be more valuable than guns. And this is what we need now more than ever: an army of citizen detectives. I’m proposing we form a citizen army. Our weapons will be computers and cellphones. We, who are monitoring extremists on the internet and reporting our findings to authorities. Remember, before the Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, he had to be found. He was found by a CIA analyst working on a computer thousands of miles away. It’s up to you.”

    * * *

    In addition to the usual suspects on the left using Winslow’s video to incite a new witch hunt, the Biden Administration is now focusing on ‘Domestic Terrorism’ as a key priority. And as Johnstone also notes, and which is worth repeating, these people are batshit crazy.

    Johnstone continues:

    This is as insane and scary as I have ever seen these people get, and I was in the thick of peak Russiagate hysteria. An aggressively manufactured push to get an army of citizens spying on each other calls to mind the Stasi informants of East Germany, the patriotism-fueled digital “digging” of the QAnon psyop, and the NatSec LARPing of Louise Mensch Twitter, all rolled into one great big ball of crazy.

    This comes out as we are being bombarded with mass media punditry from literal CIA veterans like Sue Gordon and Elissa Slotkin forcefully hammering home the message that domestic terror is the new frontier for combating violent extremism, meaning of course that new Patriot Act-like solutions will be needed. Winslow himself spent six years traveling and doing research for a novel about a former CIA operative, and if some government agency didn’t recruit him during that period they clearly should have.

    This will get frightening if it keeps up. Just as a relatively low-profile lefty blogger I routinely get liberals online falsely claiming I’m a Russian agent and saying they’ll report me to the FBI, and that’s without an aggressive campaign urging them to join a powerful digital army. The fact that Winslow stays very vague about what he means by “Trump’s new army” and constantly conflates rank-and-file Trump supporters with white supremacist terrorists means people are effectively being pointed at all Trump supporters, especially when normal Trump rallies are what he points to in the video. If this takes off it can very quickly lead to a volunteer army of power-worshipping snitches against literally anyone who is critical of US foreign policy or the Democratic Party, whether they actually support Trump or not.

    * * *

    Does Winslow want actual civil war?

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 22:45

  • Luongo: Epitaph For A Post-Trump America
    Luongo: Epitaph For A Post-Trump America

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    I’m relieved Donald Trump is no longer President. In fact, I’m downright ecstatic. This is the best I’ve felt in weeks.

    Trump was four years of faint hope, failed promises and false narratives.

    Oh, don’t get me wrong he was also entertaining as hell, did many things I fundamentally agreed with and accelerated the collapse of the biggest, most corrupt organization ever created in human history.

    He made a mockery of the media, stood tall until the final days of his presidency against a self-congratulatory bureaucracy and forced out into the open the depths of the depravity of our ruling class.

    I friggin’ love the guy for that.

    But I’m also over it. It’s time to move on.

    Today I feel no nostalgia for Trump or America 1.0.

    I refuse to go into the same hysterical theatrics the Left did four years ago. Biden’s the president. The restoration is complete. He was selected no different than every president other than Trump since Reagan.

    I have as much emotion for him as I had for Bush the Lesser, Clinton the Rapist or Obama the Enigma.

    He’s just a placeholder for a system I no longer have any affinity for. Trump always represented a big two-fingers up to that system, which too many conservatives helped Trump prop up for four years.

    One of my patrons posted a stray thought in our community on Slack that sums things up perfectly:

    “Just think if Trump had won fairly and the “steal” hadn’t happened. We’d have had another 4 inept years of placeholding and false hope.

    What a godsend that the steal happened as it has decoupled the people from the political establishments and freed them. Ok, so the Great Reset’s happening but who cares?

    Everybody knows about it.

    Necessity is the mother of invention and as long as people “feel” free then they aren’t free. That’s how it’s worked up until now. The decoupling had to happen somehow.”

    This is the law of unintended consequences writ large. Today should be looked at with relief for the clarity of vision we have for the future. It will suck, but at least there is symmetry.

    In the end they stole the election to regain control and doing so set the stage for a wholesale rejection of their authority.

    Too many conservatives still believed in the Myth of America. That should stop today.

    The lead up to the inauguration with all of the pearl clutching, troop movements, breathless headlines portending a violent assault on the Capitol was the height of political theater.

    And they know this. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle.

    This is a picture that encapsulates everything wrong with post-Trump America. Symbols of America but no Americans.

    Military and pols everywhere but no governed giving their consent.

    Image systems matter folks and the world is watching the U.S. transition from a Republic into an Autocracy.

    I guess Gil Scott Heron was wrong, the revolution will be televised after all.

    The two weeks since the staged assault on the Capitol saw Trump pile-driven in the ground by a vengeful GOP leadership while obviously having his arm twisted behind the scenes.

    People who should know better can’t see through their own coping.

    What did they think trust-fund Donald was going to do? Fall on his sword for a whistleblower/journalist? Trump is, after all, still just Trump.

    This was the plan. Trump needed to finally be defeated. His followers humiliated. There was never going to be an Assange pardon.

    There was never going to be a big declassification.

    He was never allowed to burn the place down.

    If any of that was going to happen it would have happened ages ago.

    And this is why I’m happy Trump is gone. Because did you really want to live through another four years of pathetic virtue signaling, bureaucratic inertia, media lies and shameful pandering?

    No, today the collapse of the U.S. will be on the watch of the people who orchestrated it. It won’t have the consent of a majority of the people, but if we were really honest with ourselves that’s how it was under Obama, Bush the Lesser and Clinton.

    Trump was a guy who made things interesting but he also ensured we would be disabused of any notion of dissidence.

    Today is the day Trump supporters can finally grow up. He wasn’t Orange Jesus sent to save America from itself. There was never a plan.

    Trump was just a guy in over his head doing something no President did since Calvin Coolidge, giving a shit about what America means for Americans.

    That’s why he had to be destroyed and that’s why we ultimately have to put him behind us.

    As the U.S. sinks and what’s left of the legal protections we’ve enjoyed are taken away under the guise of ‘domestic terrorism’ we are also, strangely, free.

    That’s why I’m ecstatic a man more fit for Andrew Cuomo’s COVID Death Parlors is president today rather than Trump.

    Everyone’s eyes are now open. A fungus is president.

    Absent the false hope of Trump people are now free to conclude what I always have — politics got us into this, politics will not get us out.

    We can finally put the childish Red vs. Blue behind us.

    That false duality is gone. The GOP is dead. The Democrats are ready to knife each other climbing to the pinnacle. They both hate us.

    The Capitol knows it is under siege, not from right-wing militias and neo-Nazis but from their own fear of our not feeling anything for them anymore…

    … except maybe pity.

    So, raise a glass to Trump, wish him well, accept his limitations. The Empire is back with a vengeance. The Brave New Post-Trump World is here.

    And that has never been a more exhilarating thought.

    *  *  *

    Join My Patreon if you truly value freedom.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 22:25

  • Generations Of Globalist Ghouls Collaborate On "Manifesto" For Post-Trump Economic "Reset"
    Generations Of Globalist Ghouls Collaborate On “Manifesto” For Post-Trump Economic “Reset”

    Proponents of the QAnon “conspiracy theory,” which the NYT can’t seem to stop writing about, are going to love seeing this.

    A memo that has reportedly been circulating among policymakers on both sides of the aisle for weeks was finally released to the press on Tuesday when Dealbook editor and CNBC “Squawk Box” host Andrew Ross Sorkin got the scoop: a memo penned by a group of senior-level bureaucrats, including – who else? – Henry Kissinger and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has provided a kind of “blueprint” for the Biden Administration to undo all of President Trump’s trade-war tactics and other policies that didn’t exactly help promote free trade.

    As Trump recounted in his farewell video published earlier Tuesday afternoon, his administration dramatically altered the American trade landscape, pulling the US out of the TPP, renegotiating Nafta into the USMCA, and – most consequentially, at things would turn out – the trade war with China, which inspired waves of hysterical lobbying by the Chamber of Commerce and special-interest groups from Big Tech to Wal-Mart and other major retailers, and others.

    So, as Biden prepares his first 100-day blitz of policy directives, many of the architects of the globalist system created by groups like the Trilateral Commission are joining with a gaggle of former cabinet-level officials (both Dems and GOP) along with the CEO of one of America’s largest banks, former British Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair and – who else? – Henry Kissinger, have essentially penned a manifesto that is being circulated among lawmakers, along with top-level officials in the cabinet and the West Wing, to help restore the globalist system that Trump helped to disrupt.

    Who better to leak the story to than Andrew Sorkin, who first brought up the existence of the memo during an interview during Tuesday morning’s episode of “Squawk Box” on CNBC during a conversation with Harvard economist Austan Goolsbee.

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    According to Sorkin’s column, “the memo comes from an under-the-radar group of global boldfaced names that act as a private advisory committee to JPMorgan Chase. They include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister; Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger, two former secretaries of state; Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense; Alex Gorsky, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson; Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH; and Joseph C. Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba, among others.”

    The group, which even Sorkin concedes is exclusively staffed with members of the “globalist part of the globalist establishment that fell out of favor during the Trump years, typically meets once a year in a far-flung location with JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon.”

    Dimon hasn’t shied away from sharing his idealistic political prescriptions for saving American capitalism from itself. Most of these screeds, published in recent annual letters to the bank’s shareholders, mostly focus on the need to raise taxes on the rich and make the American education system more meritocratic, among other proposed “reforms”.  Though whenever a rich person says they support raising taxes on the rich, one almost can’t help but feel skeptical.

    These discussions are usually kept quiet, filtering out through the shadowy nexus where corporate interest meets public policy meets Capitol Hill. But “given the precarious state of the world during a pandemic and change in leadership in Washington, the group put its views on paper in hopes of persuading policymakers to address what it sees as the most pressing priorities.”

    Though Sorkin didn’t share the memo, he described it as “a manifesto or sorts”. Without explicitly saying so, it advocates for a “reset” – a return to the pre-Trump days, essentially turning back the clock to a time before Trump dumped the TPP, retooled Nafta and started the aggressive trade war/economic confrontation of China.

    Why? Because, as Tony Blair explains to Sorkin at one point, “enlightened self-interest” – ie working closely with other countries to build better products and more efficient supply chains etc – actually helps lift all boats. In other words, backing down from the trade confrontation with China and other Trump policy rollbacks would actually help put “America First”.

    Without saying it in so many words, the group argues that engaging in policy and commerce with other countries isn’t a sign of weakness or against the interests of the country. In many ways, it is actually “America First.” “The purpose of cooperation is not to put someone else’s interest before those of your own country,” Mr. Blair told me about the discussions among the group. “Enlightened self-interest is best satisfied by people working together.” On this point, Mr. Gates, who was the secretary of defense under President George W. Bush, added that the government has failed to “bring home to the American people why international cooperation and engagement on the international front and the relationships with our allies, why that all serves Americas self-interest.”

    In an example of just how out-of-touch this memo’s authors apparently are, it argues that the COVID-19 outbreak is an example of the shortcomings of those who are skeptical of the globalist system.

    “The near-total absence of American leadership, coupled with the nationalist approach of too many countries, have come at the expense of a strategically coherent, international response to the pandemic,” the paper contends. Mr. Blair said that, while everyone involved in the group didn’t agree on every point in the document, it reflected the broad consensus.

    Even as Mike Pompeo labels China’s treatment of the Uyghers a “genocide”, the paper argues for greater cooperation on everything from saving the climate to “issues of global health”.

    The memo calls for a return to engaging with China, especially on climate issues and global health, while acknowledging the “significant challenge” the country poses. “The best outcome for US-China relations is likely managed competition — an accommodation that avoids military conflict while allowing for limited cooperation,” it reads. “It is impractical to think that supply chains and manufacturing can be moved simply, affordably or comprehensively out of China.”

    Sorkin acknowledges that Trump-aligned voters, as well as many on the Democratic Party’s left flank, might have serious problems with the memo, given the fact that it was written by the very architects of the free-trade system that hollowed out American factories.

    The document also calls for placing renewed importance on the G7 and G20. It urges the creation of “trusted supply chains” and places responsibility on the business community to engage with policymakers “from the point-of-view of the public interest, not simply narrow business interests.”

    Some will fairly question the group’s intentions. After all, a message being delivered by the nation’s biggest bank – and a group of chief executives and former senior policymakers – may only encourage the idea that there is a supersecret cabal of puppeteers steering policy.

    The idea that the Biden administration might take this group’s advice might be considered anathema to his supporters on the far left just as much as it is to his opponents on the far right.

    Tony Blair says he understands why people are skeptical, or even furious at, the globalist elite. But they’re not so bad, he says. In reality, the system they’re advocating is simply “common sense”. Dimon says that involving the business community and other stakeholders can help undo some of the mistakes of the past.

    Mr. Blair said he understood the skepticism of the motives of the global elite. “Politically this is my view: You’ve had genuine grievances, which populism has exploited, but too much of those opposed to populism have simply stood for better management of the status quo,” he said. Mr. Dimon said that one of the few ways that the status quo, and the inequality it created, can be undone is if his peers start advocating for policies that may be against their own short-term business interests.

    “I’d like to criticize business for a second,” he said in an interview, describing how he had witnessed some executives lobby for their business or themselves, knowingly at the expense of society. “I’ve been to a lot of meetings with presidents and prime ministers and senators and congressmen, and the selfishness and parochialism with the business folks is just absolutely outrageous.”

    “The first thing businesses should do is separate their company’s interests from what’s in the interest of the country,” he added.

    As an example, he took a shot at the private equity industry, which happens to provide some his bank’s biggest clients. “I mean, we still have carried interest in this country?” he said, questioning the special, lower tax rate that private equity executives enjoy. “When you look at those things, I feel like the American public says, ‘It’s a swamp.’ And they’re saying ‘I’m not getting my piece of it,’ you know?”

    Mr. Dimon said that, ultimately, many of the big challenges the country faces during and after the pandemic will require private-sector investment from around the world, and gaining the trust of the public is crucial.

    “It’s unlikely to be fixed without business, particularly when you get around to things like work skills, property and building infrastructure,” he said.

    Sorkin’s column ends with an analogy, reportedly sourced to Dimon, about FDR overcoming his hostilities with big business to build the War Production Board and staff it with captains of industry like Walter Chrysler.

    If nothing else, the memo and the slick way it was leaked to the press after making the rounds in Washington, is a harbinger of how business will be done in the Biden area, as the same old foreign policy and economy wonks from the Clinton, Bush and Obama years reemerge like the living dead.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 22:05

  • PBOC Injects The Most Liquidity In Four Months
    PBOC Injects The Most Liquidity In Four Months

    China’s central bank added the most cash to the financial system via open-market operations since Sept. 22 as companies finalize some tax payments, according to Bloomberg’s John Liu.

    The People’s Bank of China added a net 248 billion yuan of seven-day reverse repurchase agreements, a day after a similar move involving 278 billion yuan, which in turn followed 75 billion yuan.

    The operation is intended to offset the impact of tax payments and ensure that liquidity in the banking system is reasonably ample, the PBOC said in a statement on Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, money markets rates are climbing, with the benchmark seven-day repo rate on Wednesday increasing for the sixth session to 2.55%, in line for the highest since Nov. 13. Chinese companies need to wrap up certain tax payments for last quarter, such as corporate income taxes.

    “The big injection today will help banks soothe liquidity tightness caused by the tax payments,” said Xing Zhaopeng, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.

    “We estimate the size of tax payments to be about 700 billion yuan, and the impact will last three to four days from January 19 to 22.”

    The yield on government bonds due in a decade fell as much as 2 basis points before trading little changed at 3.16%.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 22:01

  • Rabobank On President Biden: Now What
    Rabobank On President Biden: Now What

    By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

    Summary

    • Today, Joe Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States. In his first ten days in office, President Biden is expected to sign a flurry of executive actions aimed at Covid-19, the economy and climatechange.
    • The two Democratic victories in the Georgia run-off elections have opened the door to expansive fiscal policy in the next two years. For the near-term, Biden has proposed the American Rescue Plan. For the remainder of his term he is expected to announce a Recovery Plan next month. According to our calculations, Biden’s plans would provide a boost to economic growth, also in the long run.
    • However, the question is how much of his plans can be realized, given the minimal Democratic majority in the Senate. It would take only one centrist democratic senator to block a Biden initiative. Consequently, the internal divisions in the Democratic party will come to the forefront in the coming two years. In this sense, Biden’s style may be more reminiscent of that of a prime minister trying to hold together a broad and shaky coalition.
    • Under a Biden administration foreign and trade policy will remain focused on meeting the challenge of China as the main rival of the US. However, Biden is likely to return to a multilateral approach.
    • The contested elections have left the United States with legitimacy issues regarding Biden’s presidency.In fact, a majority of Republican voters does not even believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.While we expect Biden’s policies to boost economic growth, we do not expect them to end the vicious cycle of polarization and social unrest that is undermining the country

    Introduction

    Today, Joe Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States. In his first ten days in office, President Biden is expected to sign a flurry of executive actions aimed at Covid-19, the economy and climate change.Biden intends to sign orders expanding testing for Covid-19, protecting workers from the pandemic and establishing public health standards. He also wants to mandate the use of face masks on federal property and for interstate travel on airlines, trains and transit systems.Biden is also expected to keep in place restrictions on evictions and foreclosures and to extend a suspension of interest-free student loan payments.Biden wants to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and put an end to the Keystone XL pipeline.The reversal of the deregulation of the Trump year swill have an early start.

    Biden’s growth impulse

    The two Democratic victories in the Senate run-off elections in Georgia on January 5 have opened the door to expansive fiscal policy in the next two years. In the near term, this means a substantial additional Covid relief package. But it also means an expansive fiscal policy in the next two years, aimed at stimulating economic growth. Biden wants to invest more in education, R&D, and infrastructure. The Democrats want to pay for this partly through higher taxes. The budget deficit is likely to increase further. But our calculations show that Biden’s plans could provide a substantial impulse to economic growth, also in the long run. Biden’s fiscal policy initiatives are split up in a near-term covid relief plan (American Rescue Plan) and a medium-to-long term plan (“Recovery Plan”). He presented the first on January 14 and is expected to release the second in February.

    The American Rescue Plan

    While it took Congress relatively little time to agree on the well over $2 trillion CARES Act back in March last year, it took until December to come up with a $900 billion follow-up. However, the two Democratic victories in the Senate run-off elections in Georgia on January 5 have opened the door to more covid relief.On January 14, Biden presented his American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion package that includes additional direct payments of $1400 to Americans (in addition to the $600 from the December package), an increase in federal unemployment benefits to $400 (from $300) per week and an extension through September(from March), and increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour(from $7.25 since 2009). The rescue package can be divided in three large chunks: $1 trillion in direct relief to households, $440 billion for small businesses and communities that were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, and $415 billion for virus response. At present, it is uncertain how much of this plan will be approved by the Senate. For example, there is doubt about the effectiveness of sending people checks without knowing if they really need it. Not only Republicans have their doubts, but also a centrist Democratic senator such as Joe Manchin.

    The American Recovery Plan

    As for the coming years, Biden is expected to present a Recovery Plan in February. Biden is expected to invest more in education, R&D, and infrastructure. Even if only part of Biden’s plans materialize -the Democratic majority in the Senate is minimal-, we expect a boost to GDP growth in 2021 and beyond.While there may be some common ground between Democrats and Republicans on infrastructure, for a large part they are thinking about different forms of infrastructure. While Republicans may be willing to spend federal money on highways, bridges and airports, Democrats are thinking of green infrastructure facilitating clean energy and electric vehicles.

    Although markets are focusing on Biden’s spending spree, we should not forget that tax hikes are also part of his plans. They may not be at the top of his list given the covid crisis, but once the economy regains momentum tax hikes may come back to the surface. Meanwhile, we should not lose sight of the fact that not all businesses and households have suffered due to the covid outbreak. Some have actually done quite well, so they should be able to absorb a higher tax rate.During her Senate confirmation hearings for the position of Treasury Secretary, on January 19, Janet Yellen said that the Biden team does not immediately plan to pursue tax increases, but would consider them as part of a later package that focuses on long-term investments.

    Getting plans realized

    The question is how many of Biden’s plans are going to be realized. After all, the Democratic majority in the Senate is minimal. The Republicans have 50 seats and the Democrats 48. However, independent senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King caucus with the Democrats and the Vice-President is the tie-breaker in case of a 50-50 outcome. This means that Kamala Harris is going to be busy and is likely to spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill. Her main contact may very well be Joe Manchin, who is considered to be the most conservative Democratic senator. He will be able to block the more leftist plans of the Democrats on his own. So we cannot simply assume that Biden can realize all his plans just because the Democrats have majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the next two years the differences within the Democratic Party will come to the forefront, instead of the differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as in the last four years. How many of Biden’s plans are going to be realized no longer depends on Senate Republicans after the Georgia elections, but on centrist Senate Democrats.In this sense, Biden’s style may be more reminiscent of that of a prime minister trying to hold together a broad and shaky coalition,ranging from centrists to democratic socialists.

    Increasing polarization

    While Biden’s economic plans are expected to boost the economy, they will probably not reduce the polarization in politics and society. The ever increasing polarization of US politics and society has reached a level that poses a serious threat to the stability of the country. The question is now: is this the culmination of the civil unrest in the United States, or is this just another warning signal that the country is heading toward something worse? If we look at the underlying mechanism of polarization, it appears tobe self-reinforcing. New events or information will be interpreted through two different filters, such as CNN and Fox. What’s more, economic policies aimed at income redistribution will not appease Trump supporters, as we explained in Economy or identity. The Trump vote is not about the economy, it’s about identity. Biden’s plans do not offer a solution to these anxieties. If the US does not find an off-ramp from this route of increasing polarization, we are only going to see a further escalation of civil unrest.

    In fact, a majority of Republican voters does not even believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.As we argued in Election meltdown, this was going to be the case no matter who would be sworn in. With Trump claiming in advance that the elections were rigged and the Democrats spurring their voters to go to the polls to avoid all kinds of nightmare scenarios, how much trust in the election outcome were voters supposed to have if their side would lose? Meanwhile, foreign adversaries such as the Russians, Chinese and Iranians, are likely to amplify the mutual distrust through cyber warfare. As we concluded in Civil unrest, no matter who would have won the elections, the turbulence in US politics and society is not likely to pass. This was only the beginning.

    Return to multilateralism

    When it comes to foreign policy, trade policy and international climate policy the Biden administration intends to return to the multilateral approach of the Obama years. Multilateralism does not necessarily mean that the US will go soft on all its rivals and enemies. Rather it means that it will not go at them alone, but instead (re)build coalitions.During his Senate confirmation hearing for the job of Secretary of State, on January 19, Antony Blinken said that he will work to revitalize damaged American diplomacy and build a united front to counter the challenges posed by Russia, China and Iran.However, we should note that America’s leadership of the free world has credibility issues after four years of Trump’s go at it alone approach. What’s more, America’s moral leadership has also lost credibility after the insurrection. In fact, it is already being exploited by America’s adversaries.

    During his Senate confirmation hearing Blinken said that there was no doubt China posed the most significant challenge to the US of any nation, and believed there was a very strong foundation to build a bipartisan policy to stand up to Beijing. While the US is heavily polarized on domestic topics, there is a broad consensus on China. According to the Pew Center, the percentage of survey respondents who say they have an unfavorable opinion of China has risen in the last 15 years from a minority to a majority. And this is true of Democrats and Republicans, even though Republicans always score higher than Democrats on this topic. So there is some common ground abroad for Democrats and Republicans. However, on other issues, such as international climate agreements, Biden  – feeling pressure from left wing Democrats – will be at odds with the Republicans.

    Conclusion

    Biden has an ambitious agenda, but he has only two years with the certainty of a Democratic majority in the Senate. If the Republicans flip just one seat in the November 2022 midterms, it will all be over by January 2023 and the Republican Senate will shoot down most if not all of Biden’s remaining plans. And during these first two years he only has a minimal majority in the Senate, which means that just one centrist Democratic senator can block an initiative. What’s more, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has been reduced. Meanwhile, the country is heavily divided and a majority of Republican voters does not even believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States. Biden’s plans do not address the anxieties that fuel this divide. So while we expect Biden’s policies to boost economic growth, we do not expect them to end the vicious cycle of polarization and social unrest that is undermining the United States

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 21:45

  • Biden To Keep Up Trump's Venezuela Regime-Change Policy
    Biden To Keep Up Trump’s Venezuela Regime-Change Policy

    The Biden administration has said it will continue to formally recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, despite Nicolás Maduro clearly being the actual leader of the socialist country.

    Biden’s nominee for secretary of state Anthony Blinken told Senators on Tuesday that Guaido will be the recognized leader, a policy which began in January 2019 when the opposition leader dubbed himself ‘Interim President’ and also ‘Acting President’ at the encouragement of Washington during Trump admin attempts to foment a military and popular uprising against Maduro.

    During his remarks Blinken also indicated the new administration will keep up the sanctions. “We need an effective policy that can restore Venezuela to democracy, starting with free and fair elections,” he said.

    He said Biden will seek “more effectively target” economic punitive measures in efforts to make Maduro step aside and allow Juan Guaido to take up position, according to Reuters. 

    Blinkin further said he believes the US should not enter into negotiations with Maduro for the end of sanctions or some kind of relief, but instead vowed that Caracas must “really feel the pain”.

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    Currently the OPEC nation is gaining help from Iran and Russia in circumventing a US oil and fuel blockade. US sanctions aim to prevent crude being exported out and gasoline being imported for domestic use (Venezuela’s derelict refineries have been incapable of processing enough fuel to keep up domestic demand).

    While Guaido is also recognized as president by over a dozen US allies, the majority of countries – including powerful Russia and China – do not. He’s long claimed Maduro’s 2018 reelection was “rigged” – something which the US has also maintained.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 21:25

  • "Even Libertarians": John Brennan Issues 'List' Of Ideologies Biden Intel Community Should Go After
    “Even Libertarians”: John Brennan Issues ‘List’ Of Ideologies Biden Intel Community Should Go After

    Well this is alarming and ominous to say the least… Former CIA Director John Brennan told MSNBC in an interview on inauguration day that the intelligence community under newly sworn in President Biden is “moving in laser-like fashion” to try and uncover dangerous plots against the country.

    Naturally, there’s been much of this worrisome commentary about what political ideologies should be targeted and monitored coming out of NatSec hawks in the wake of the Capitol Hill mayhem of January 6. But this is the first time such a broad array of groups have been so bluntly lumped into a Pro-Trump “insurgency” by an influential media pundit and former spook. Brennan expressly said they are “violent” and remain a domestic threat.

    He said in the MSNBC interview without the least concern for violation of Americans’ rights that intelligence agencies should look into “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians…”.

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    He said these belief systems have come together under the umbrella of a supposed pro-Trump movement capable of committing violence. 

    Ah yes, “even libertarians”… 

    “I had white knuckles because of the nature of the threats,” he began by recalling his days as CIA Director. We’ve seen “the growth of this polarization in the United States and domestic violence and White supremacist groups,” he continued.

    Comparing this “threat” to a foreign insurgency which the US has lately battled overseas, he said it—

    “brings together an unholy alliance of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

    He added: “And unfortunately I think there’s been this momentum that generated as a result of unfortunately the demagogic rhetoric of people that’s just departed government, but also those who continue in the halls of Congress and so I really do think that the law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, and even the defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic.”

    Interestingly, Brennan spoke as if these groups are already being looked into and spotlighted by US intelligence under Biden. “Even Libertarians,” apparently.

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    Increasingly, it looks like Inauguration Day for intelligence insiders like Brennan represents “Deep State back on top” in America.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 21:05

  • Tesla Investigating Model 3 Fire In Shanghai After Collision Causes Battery Short Circuit
    Tesla Investigating Model 3 Fire In Shanghai After Collision Causes Battery Short Circuit

    Tesla is reportedly cooperating with a fire department in Shanghai in trying to find the cause of what is being calling a “Model 3 fire incident” that took place on Wednesday night.

    A Model 3 caught fire in an underground garage after a “collision below the vehicle” may have caused a battery short circuit, according to reports from Bloomberg and Shine. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

    Both Tesla and the owner acknowledge that a collision under the vehicle may have been the cause of the battery catching fire.

    The fire took place in Qibao, Minhang District and photos of the vehicle show a burnt Model 3 surrounded by foam used by firefighters. The car “was parked close to the entrance of the garage,” the report notes. 

    Recall, mysterious fires popping up in China – in addition to sudden unintended acceleration and consumer complaints – were two of the reasons we cited in our recent piece suggesting that Elon Musk’s Chinese fairy tale could eventually come to an end. 

    As we noted then, so far Musk has been able to sidestep some ugly press in China, including out of control Tesla vehicles, forced recalls, constant price cuts and disgruntled customers. So far, Musk is holding it together in China.

    Incidents like this one won’t help. We look forward to hearing the result of Tesla’s totally unbiased investigation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 20:45

  • "Perfect Storm…Not Of Our Doing" – Fauci-Led Biden Team Suddenly Stunned By Virus Surge Created By Fauci-Led Trump Team
    “Perfect Storm…Not Of Our Doing” – Fauci-Led Biden Team Suddenly Stunned By Virus Surge Created By Fauci-Led Trump Team

    Even before President Biden was officially sworn in, corporate American was already rearing to have his back. Earlier this week, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told the press that his company was on track to produce 100MM COVID vaccine doses by the end of Biden’s first 100 days, as expected, while a top Amazon exec sent Biden a letter asking if there was anything Amazon could do to help with the vaccine rollout (meanwhile, a “logistical hiccup” by McKesson forced the rescheduling of 23K injections).

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    Now, after Wall Street already declared “the beginning of the end” of the COVID pandemic, Bloomberg News is pitching in with a little CYA, publishing a report claiming Biden’s Dr. Fauci led White House COVID team is now seeing that the outlook for the US pandemic is worse than they had believed…presumably because the Trump COVID team (also led by Dr. Fauci) kept them in the dark.

    The Biden team, Bloomberg says, is “increasingly worried the coronavirus pandemic is spiraling out of control – imperiling his promise to contain the outbreak – as cases and deaths mount, vaccinations lag and a more-transmissible strain emerges in the US.”

    The way the editors framed the issue, they made it sound as if any potential surge in cases later in the year – for whatever reason, even something totally unforeseen like more viral mutations (the other day, brazilian media warned of a new hyper-infectious strain emerging in the Amazon) – would be President Trump’s fault, not Biden’s and the Democrats.

    As they learned more about the federal response to the pandemic, Biden’s transition team grew alarmed at a lack of coordination with states, the people said. Biden himself has warned of a “dark winter” and has flatly said the pandemic will worsen before it improves.

    The stakes are escalating. U.S. hospitalizations are at near-record levels, and daily cases and deaths have doubled since Election Day on Nov. 3. While blame has fallen on the Trump administration for its failure to develop a national testing or vaccination strategy or encourage widespread mask-wearing, Biden’s team – which keeps adding new experts – now inherits the job of containing the pandemic.

    On Thursday, Biden will sign executive actions to “move aggressively to change the course of the Covid-19 crisis and safely re-open schools and businesses, including by taking action to mitigate spread through expanding testing, protecting workers, and establishing clear public health standards,” according to a memo by Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff. After taking office on Wednesday, one of Biden’s first acts was expected to be an order requiring face masks on federal property.

    But why does Bloomberg feel the need to engage in this type of defensive cover? Well, presumably because some of the “experts” (who perhaps have been afraid to speak up and question the official narrative on masks, lockdowns and vaccines) truly are concerned that none of the palliatives actually work – though they probably wouldn’t tell you that if you asked them

    But the risk of explosive new strains, including a UK variant known as B.1.1.7, threatens to upend it all and leave Biden at the end of his first 100 days with a pandemic that has worsened, instead of improved. There’s concern among his team that the scope of the problem he’s inherited is far worse than anticipated, posing a political risk to Biden’s White House.

    […]

    The most alarming developments have come over the past month. Some Biden advisers, who asked not to be identified discussing internal conversations, said it isn’t vaccine logistics that worry them most, but the new strain of the virus, which is more contagious. The US already has a perilously high baseline caseload – about 230,000 new infections a day, of late – that could quickly become unmanageable as the mutant strain takes hold.

    “This administration is inheriting such a horrible problem, not of their making,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of the coronavirus advisory board for Biden’s transition. “This is a perfect storm.”

    Some twitter users apparently saw through Bloomberg’s CYA operation on behalf of the new administration, and mocked it accordingly.

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    Meanwhile, earlier today, a top Israeli health official announced that the Pfizer vaccine, which the country has used to carry out one of the most comprehensive vaccination programs in the world, is only 50% effective, roughly half the 95% that the “Phase 3 trial data” suggested.

    Even with Israel apparently well on its way to herd immunity (or so they say) the country has moved to extend its lockdown once again, this time until the end of the month. Like the Biden White House scientists reportedly told Bloomberg, their biggest fear is that the mutations – which these same experts said just months ago showed no evidence of being a problem – will make the virus more deadly, more infectious, or more difficult to contain with the vaccines, as we continue to head into a future full of unknowns.

    But just remember…whatever happens over the next year…it’s still Donald Trump’s fault.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 20:25

  • Biden Signs First 17 Executive Actions Starting With Mask Mandate, "Racial Equality" & Rejoining Paris Accord
    Biden Signs First 17 Executive Actions Starting With Mask Mandate, “Racial Equality” & Rejoining Paris Accord

    Update (1810ET): Biden has finished signing his first 15 executive orders and 2 executive agency directives, according to a White House pool reporter with the Washington Post.

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    These include orders for the US to rejoin the WHO, the Paris Accord, a commitment to racia equality, a federal mask “challenge” mandate. Taking only a couple of minutes to speak to reporters in the Oval, Biden listed the three orders he would sign first and answered a question about a letter he was left by his predecessor Donald Trump, calling it “very generous.”

    * * *

    Update (1745ET): Biden officially kicked off his one-day blitz of executive orders and executive actions, as expected, by signing them in front of an eager crowd of media, which has been following him around all day on his first day in office.

    Biden kicked off the flurry of what are expected to be 17 or more individual executive action items by requiring masks on all federal grounds, while asking agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He also signed an order overturning Trump’s travel ban order.

    Another order asks Americans to don face coverings for 100 days while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council that was allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration to oversee America’s pandemic preparedness and response. Biden will also begin to reverse steps taken by former President Trump to withdraw from the WHO by sending Dr. Fauci to speak at the international group’s executive board meeting on Thursday.

    “As you’ve heard [Biden] say, the pandemic will continue to get worse before it gets better,” Jeff Zients, the incoming White House coronavirus czar, told reporters on a call previewing the administration’s actions. “This is clearly a national emergency and we will treat it as such.”

    Biden also signed an EO to stop construction of border wall-work ordered under President Trump, even as Fox News reported that the contract with the construction company was already paid out.

    Here’s a video from Sky News showing Biden as he starts the flurry of orders, with signings expected to continue until the first White House press briefing to be held at 1900ET.

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    Here’s the schedule for the rest of the day after that:

    1900ET: News briefing to be held by new press secretary Jen Psaki
    2030ET:  ‘Celebrate America Primetime Special’ begins on US TV to replace traditional inaugural ball
    2050ET: Joe Biden to speak
    2115ET: Kamala Harris to speak
    2155ET: President and First Lady to appear on Blue Room Balcony on South Lawn to watch fireworks

     

     

     

     

     

     

    With just hours to go before his swearing-in, Joe Biden and his team have already started Wednesday with a blitz of announcements for Executive Orders that will be issued immediately.

    Following at least a week’s worth of media leaks teasing all the Biden “Day One” action items (Rejoin the Paris Accords, Keystone Pipeline, Halt the departure from the WTO, But mostly the massive immigration package that could create paths to citizenship for millions of illegal migrants), Biden is moving ahead with no fewer than 17 executive actions targeting Trump’s various policies.

    CNN reports there will be a total of 17 executive actions, at least 15 of those will be executive orders targeting a range of issues, while Biden pushes his immigration package and a raft of immigration legislation. Of these 17 actions, 9 will involve reversals of Trump-era policies.

    His very first action will an executive order mandating masks be worn by all on federal property.

    And after holding a COVID victim’s memorial event on Tuesday evening, timed to maximally undermine Trump, who was at a private farewell ceremony at Joint Base Andrews

    The FT reports that the barrage of orders also includes a “100-day masking challenge” to promote the wearing of face masks across the US, with a guest appearance by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will (shocker of the century) serve as the media face of the challenge.

    As expected, Biden will also roll back the Trump travel ban on citizens of certain Muslim -majority countries introduced at the very beginning of the Trump Administration, which survived a bitter court battle that infamously occupied plenty of headline space during the first half of 2017. It also sent protesters rushing to airports around the country as some travelers were caught up in the chaos.

    “It was rooted in xenophobia and religious animus and president-elect Biden has been clear that we will not turn our back on our values with discriminatory bans on entry to the United States,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s pick for national security adviser, said of the Muslim ban recently during a briefing.

    Biden will sign the EOs and other memoranda in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, his incoming press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

    Psaki confirmed that, as we have previously reported, Biden plans to accompany his slate of EOs with a comprehensive immigration package that will be sent to Congress straightaway, where it will need to be passed by the (Democrat-controlled) House and Senate.

    We have also noted previously that the day one orders will be part of a “10-day blitz” of orders, upon which we have previously reported, they will target the “four overlapping and compounding crises”: COVID-19, the economy, climate change and racial inequality.

    “In his first 10 days in office, President-elect Biden will take decisive action to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harms, and restore America’s place in the world,” Klain wrote at the time.

    Other ’10-day blitz’ items include presidential directives on safely reopening schools and businesses, after Democrats spent much of last year insisting they remain closed.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 20:12

  • "We Want Revenge": Antifa Anarchists Activate After Biden Inaugurated
    “We Want Revenge”: Antifa Anarchists Activate After Biden Inaugurated

    Update (2031ET): Someone on Twitter points out that Antifa.com is being redirected to whitehouse.gov. Watch below: 

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    * * *

    Update (2021ET): While the mainstream media and the federal government drummed up imminent threats of right-wing violence during the presidential inauguration at state capitol buildings, nothing happened that was significant in reporting. 

    Meanwhile, after the Biden inauguration, leftist groups, such as Antifa, are causing chaos in multiple cities. 

    * * *

    Update (2034ET): Antifa is marching in multiple cities. The latest is Seattle, according to AntifaWatch. 

    “Some property damage, likely ENDD, they are headed Northbound,” AntifaWatch said, quoting a police scanner.

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    Chaos appears to be unfolding. 

    Antifa is burning an American flag. 

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    Antifa is on the move in Seattle’s downtown district. 

    “An Amazon Go store is graffitied and window smashed in downtown Seattle,” tweeted Brendan Gutenschwager. 

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    Seattle Police confirm multiple businesses were vandalized by Antifa. 

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    * * *

    Update (2018ET): Portland’s KATU News says Portland Police are arresting protesters at the “J-20 march.”

    * * *

    A group of violent demonstrators gathered in Southeast Portland on Wednesday afternoon, hours after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn in at the US Capitol. The leftist anti-government group appeared displeased with the new administration as they attacked the building of the Democratic Party of Oregon.

    Local news KGW reports the group of at least 100 people, dressed in all black, marched through Portland. 

    KGW’s Mike Benner posted a series of tweets showing the chaos unfolding in Portland as there was “significant damage at the Democratic Party of Oregon bldg at 9th & Everett.” 

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    Videos Benners posted shows group members, dressed in all black, are likely radical leftist, Antifa. 

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    Despite President Biden pleading for national unity in his Inaugural Address today, demonstrators in Portland held up signs that read:

    “We are ungovernable” and “A new world from the ashes.” 

    Conservative journalist Andy Ngo tweeted “shocking footage of Antifa” smashing the Democratic Party of Oregon building. So much for unity… 

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    Another local news station, KATU, said the protest in Portland this afternoon is called the “J20 protest.”

    “We Don’t Want Biden – We Want Revenge!” another banner read. 

    Already, there have been reports that some of the demonstrators have attacked police officers. 

    “The group of roughly 100 people started marching north shortly after 3 p.m. and reached the Democratic Party of Oregon’s Portland headquarters shortly before 4 p.m.,” said KATU.

    “Members of this group have been observed damaging the building. Anyone involved in criminal behavior, including vandalism and graffittiing is subject to arrest or citation,” Portland Police Bureau tweeted.

    More demonstrations are planned for this evening, according to police. 

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    Besides Portland, so-called Antifa mobs were seen burning American flags outside Colorado’s Capitol building. The Sun describes the group as a “militant left-wing-group.” 

    Reports keep pouring in as Antifa groups assemble in other cities. Twitter user Jason Whitman said an Antifa march was spotted at the Ohio Capitol building this afternoon. 

    With reports of leftist anti-government groups, or possibly Antifa as some claim, are on a path of destruction in multiple cities following the Biden inauguration. There are reports Antifa is planning to attack Trump supporters this week. 

    The militant leftist group seeks to dismantle the federal government; it comes at the president calls for national unity. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 20:05

  • MSM Calls For "New Definition Of Free Speech"
    MSM Calls For “New Definition Of Free Speech”

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    Part of the main duty of OffGuardian is to troll through the masses of media output and try and pick up patterns. Sometimes the patterns are subtle, a gentle urging behind the paragraphs. Sometimes they’re more like a sledgehammer to the face.

    This has been face-hammer week. In fact, it’s been a face-hammer year.

    From “flatten the curve” to “the new normal” to “the great reset”, it’s not been hard to spot the messaging going on since the start of the “pandemic”. And that distinct lack of disguise has carried over into other topics, too.

    We pointed out, a few days ago, the sudden over-use of the phrase “domestic terrorism” preparing us for what is, almost certainly, going to be a truly horrendous piece of new legislation once Biden is in office.

    Well, the buzz-phrase doing the rounds in the wake of Donald Trump being banned from the internet is “the new definition of free speech”…and variations on that theme.

    Firstly, and papers on both sides of the Atlantic want to be very clear about this, Donald Trump being banned simultaneously from every major social network is not in any way inhibiting his free speech.

    Indeed none of the tens of thousands of people banned from twitter et al. have had their free speech infringed either. Neither have any of the proprietors – or users – of the Parler app which the tech giants bullied out of existence.

    Free Speech is totally intact no matter how many people are banned or deplatformed, the media all agree on that (even the allegedly pro-free speech think tanks).

    They also agree that maybe…it shouldn’t be. Maybe “free speech” is too dangerous in our modern era, and needs a “new definition”.

    That’s what Ian Dunt writing in Politics.co.uk thinks, anyway, arguing it’s time to have a “grown-up debate” about free speech.

    The Financial Times agrees, asking about the “limits of free-speech in the internet era”.

    Thomas Edsall, in the New York Times, wonders aloud if Trump’s “lies” have made free speech a “threat to democracy”.

    The Conversation, a UK-based journal often at the cutting edge of the truly terrifying ideas, has three different articles about redefining or limiting free speech, all published within 4 days of each other.

    There’s Free speech is not guaranteed if it harms others, a drab piece of dishonest apologia which argues Trump wasn’t silenced, because he could make a speech which the media would cover…without also mentioning that the media has, en masse, literally refused to broadcast several of Trump’s speeches in the last couple of months.

    The conclusion could have been written by an algorithm analysing The Guardian’s twitter feed:

    the suggestion Trump has been censored is simply wrong. It misleads the public into believing all “free speech” claims have equal merit. They do not. We must work to ensure harmful speech is regulated in order to ensure broad participation in the public discourse that is essential to our lives — and to our democracy.

    Then there’s Free speech in America: is the US approach fit for purpose in the age of social media?, a virtual carbon copy of the first, which states:

    The attack on the Capitol exposed, in stark terms, the dangers of disinformation in the digital age. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which certain elements of America’s free speech tradition may no longer be fit for purpose.

    And finally, my personal favourite, Why ‘free speech’ needs a new definition in the age of the internet and Trump tweets in which author Peter Ives warns of the “weaponising of free speech” and concludes:

    Trump’s angry mob was not just incited by his single speech on Jan. 6, but had been fomenting for a long time online. The faith in reason held by Mill and Kant was premised on the printing press; free speech should be re-examined in the context of the internet and social media.

    Ives clearly thinks he’s enlightened and liberal and educated, after all he drops references to Kant AND Mills (that’s right TWO famous philosophers), but he’s really not. He’s just an elitist arguing working class people are too dumb to be allowed to speak, or even hear ideas that might get them all riled-up and distract them from their menial labour.

    To season these stale ideas with a sprinkling of fear-porn, NBC News is reporting that the FBI didn’t report their “concerns” over possible violence at the Capitol, because they were worried about free speech. (See, if the FBI hadn’t been protecting people’s free speech, that riot may not have happened!)

    And on top of all of that, there’s the emotional manipulation angle, where authors pretend to be sad or exasperated or any of the emotions they used to have.

    In the Irish Independent, Emma Kelly says that “free speech” doesn’t include “hate speech” (she’s never exactly clear what part of “go home in peace love” was hate speech though).

    In The Hill, Joe Ferullo is almost in tears that the first amendment has been ruined by the right-wing press continuously “shouting fire in a crowded theatre”, citing the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes quote, which so many use to “qualify” the idea of free speech, without realising it hands over power to destroy it completely.

    Up until you can show me the hard-and-fast legal definitions of “shout”, “fire”, “crowded” and “theatre”, this open-ended qualification is nothing but a blank canvas, free to be interpreted as loosely – or stringently – as any lawmaker or judiciary feels is necessary.

    As an example:

    Twitter is certainly bigger and more populated than a theatre, and spreading anti-vaccination/anti-war/pro-Russia/”Covid denial” news [delete as appropriate] is certainly going to cause more panic than one single building being on fire. Isn’t it?

    It’s this potential abuse of incredibly loose terminologies which will be used to “redefine” free speech.

    “Offensive”, “misinformation”, “hate speech” and others will be repeated. A lot.

    Expressions which have no solid definition under law, and are already being shown to mean nothing to the media talking heads who repeat them ad nauseum.

    If “go home in peace and love”, can become “inciting violence”, absolutely everything can be made to mean absolutely anything.

    The more they “redefine” words, the further we move into an Orwellian world where all meaning is entirely lost.

    And what would our newly defined “free speech” really mean in such a world?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 19:45

  • China Mocks "Doomsday Clown" Pompeo After 'Genocide' Designation For Uighur Persecution
    China Mocks “Doomsday Clown” Pompeo After ‘Genocide’ Designation For Uighur Persecution

    On Tuesday, the last day of the Trump administration, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the trigger on a long debated topic and policy proposal in Washington – namely to officially label Chinese persecution of the country’s Uighur minority as “genocide”.

    Predictably Beijing was quick to voice its outrage. But with the Trump administration now out the door China let some colorful words fly. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying called Pompeo a “doomsday clown” while charging him with spreading blatant lies.

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    She further said the US genocide designation slapped on China is based on “outright sensational pseudo-propositions and a malicious farce concocted by individual anti-China and anti-Communist forces represented by Pompeo,” as quoted in the Associated Press.

    “In our view, Pompeo’s so-called designation is a piece of wastepaper. This American politician, who is notorious for lying and deceiving, is turning himself into a doomsday clown and joke of the century with his last madness and lies of the century,” Hua added.

    Pompeo’s Tuesday declaration had underscored that future Biden policies are likely to only embolden China. It was significant eleventh-hour declaration against Beijing using the strongest language thus far on the issue.

    Alleged Uighur ‘re-education’ camp, via Reuters

    “If the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against its own people, imagine what it will be emboldened to do to the free world, in the not-so-distant future,” Pompeo said in the statement. 

    Meanwhile, any Biden reversals on Trump’s targeted sanctions on Chinese officials especially early in his administration – particularly related to the Hong Kong issue – will make the Democratic administration look “soft”. But this is precisely what such statements as Pompeo’s latest were designed to do.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 19:25

  • Humpday Humor: 15 Ways To Cope When You Don't Like The President
    Humpday Humor: 15 Ways To Cope When You Don’t Like The President

    Via Babylon Bee,

    It can be tough to live in a country where you don’t like the president. Luckily, our friends on the left have shown us how to handle this situation with grace and class over the past four years.

    Here are 15 easy ways to cope when you don’t like the president:

    1. Put on a neon vest and shriek at the sky.

    2. Accuse him of colluding with a foreign adversary with no evidence while sleeping with a Chinese spy.

    3. Impeach him at least 73 times.

    4. Riot in every major city, set fires, and loot for weeks on end for like 6 months going strong – but whatever you do, DO NOT riot at the Capitol or you’re a traitor.

    5. Make every late-night show joke some variation of  ‘your president bad.’

    6. Have all comedians stop doing comedy and instead spend every waking minute tweeting at the president with some sort of expletive-laden Braveheart speech. Get Stephen King to do it too.

    7. Immediately assume half the country is secretly Nazis.

    8. When dining out, scream at all the other diners that we now live under a dictator between bites.

    9. Take 12 months worth of hormonal birth control at once and scream into your camera.

    10. Get a permanent face mask with ‘stay 6 feet away’ printed on it.

    11. Keep all of your friends and family that agree with you close enough to hear the echo in the room.

    12. Research every actor and musician to make sure they all align perfectly with everything you believe before enjoying any of their art.

    13. Tell everyone that diversity only counts if it’s for your side.

    14. Keep the news on 24 hours a day and never leave the house. Always be on Twitter and your phone. Make sure you know everything the president is doing at all times.

    15.  Weep uncontrollably until 2024.

    Scream it with us.

    Ready?

    1… 2… 3…

    NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 19:06

  • Watch Live: Biden Administration Holds First White House Press Briefing
    Watch Live: Biden Administration Holds First White House Press Briefing

    The White House press corps probably hasn’t been this happy since Nov. 7, 2016.

    Hours after Wednesday’s socially-distanced inauguration, which featured a field of flags and a small number of VIPs, ended, President Joe Biden is about to hold his first press briefing in office.

    After Wednesday’s inauguration and a stopover to meet with Congressional leaders for the first time, President-elect Biden received an escort to the White House at 1500ET. After that, Biden signed a flurry of executive orders and implemented other presidential actions, which were first officially announced Wednesday morning.

    Now, incoming Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki will no doubt give the press pool members and opportunity to ask questions about all the great new policies being unilaterally ordered by Joe Biden (in a manner reminiscent of President Trump’s EOs, which Dems once slammed as bypassing Congress), and how much better they are than the policies adopted by Trump and his administration.

    In her first tweet form the @PressSec account, Psaki asked the public to tweet questions at her, promising to answer a few in a video earlier in the week.

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    Biden will also swear in “day one presidential appointees” in a virtual ceremony Wednesday evening.

    The public should probably expect briefings from Psaki, Biden, Harris and members of the administration (including, of course, Dr. Fauci) every day for at least the next 10 days as Biden prepares his opening blitz of policies intended to undo President Trump’s legacy.

    Watch the briefing live below. It’s slated to start at 1900ET.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/20/2021 – 18:55

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