Today’s News 22nd December 2020

• The "New Confederacy"? Yes, It's Time For Conservatives To Unite Against The Globalist Reset
  The “New Confederacy”? Yes, It’s Time For Conservatives To Unite Against The Globalist Reset

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The narrative could not be more transparent or obvious, but then again, the elites are becoming lazy in their propaganda and the leftists are not all that bright. Essentially, every time conservatives (or moderates) organize to defend themselves against communist or globalist attack we are called “Nazis”, brownshirts, populists, bullies, etc. Now, I would remind these people that if we were really going the path of the Sturmabteilung then there would be rampant intimidation and assault on leftists to the point that they would be afraid to leave their homes or even identify as leftists. Conservatives believe in self defense, not coercion and terror tactics.

  

  Such actions are the wheelhouse of the political left these days. They are far better than we are at imitating Brownshirt behavior. The reality is that across the board the only people engaging in widespread censorship and violence are on the political left, yet we are supposed to be the “Nazis”?

  Historically, there does seem to be a pattern here, though. In Germany in the 1920s-1930s communist groups were highly active and initiated street violence, riots and even assassinations. This lured many Germans in fear of being overtaken by a communist regime to support national socialism, the other side of the coin when it comes to tyranny. In other words, to defeat the communists the public supported the fascists, and the fascists ended up being just as bad as the communists.

  If you study the investigations of historians like Antony Sutton in books like ‘Wall Street And The Bolshevik Revolution’ or ‘Wall Street And The Rise Of Hitler’, you will discover there is incredible evidence proving that BOTH the communists and the fascists were funded and managed by the same global elites. In other words, the bankers win either way because they control both sides of the game.

  I do suspect that a similar strategy is being implemented within the US today, and that part of the agenda of globalists hellbent on getting their “great reset” is to foment civil war in America while controlling or manipulating both sides of the fight.

  It is indeed a Catch-22 for conservatives:

  • If we roll over and do nothing, then the extreme left and their corporate and political partners take control of the country and we will never see freedom again as they assert their “social justice” mandates along with their lockdown mandates.

  • If we fight back using the same tactics as the leftists or support martial law, then we ultimately erase the civil liberties protected within the Bill of Rights. Those rights will NEVER return (don’t believe the promises for a second) and we become history’s biggest hypocrites and a cautionary tale of the “dangers of nationalism” told to children generations from now, much like the Nazis.

  There is, however, another option, and it’s not diplomacy.

  The establishment likes to make people think there are only ever two choices during any crisis, and both choices involve giving up more freedom or giving government more power. What they don’t want you to consider is the third option – The people taking power for themselves and removing power from those that would abuse it.

  Why should we rely on a middleman to enact such measures? Why are we always being told that we need to wait for a president or a government to do the job we can do ourselves? The liberty movement doesn’t revolve around Trump or the election, and it should NEVER rely on martial law as a means to secure our safety. We can do this on our own without asking permission or waiting to be led by a mascot.

  It is true that the political left and conservatives are no longer capable of finding common ground (except, interestingly, among some moderate liberals that also stand against forced vaccinations and medical mandates). In terms of the hard left, their cult is so far beyond reality now that it would be impossible to reconcile. They live on another planet and their frothing zealotry is too entrenched for them to ever see reason.

  In their delusional fantasies we are the ultimate villains, and they are the “noble freedom fighters”. Of course, every single establishment power platform in the corporate world, in Big Tech and in the mainstream media is at their disposal, not to mention millions in funding from globalist organizations like the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, so this tale of the leftist “underdog” makes us double over with laughter at times.

  The majority of conservatives just want to be left alone to live our lives the way we see fit. You know, like real Americans are supposed to do. But this notion is not acceptable to collectivists. They argue that we are “all part of a society”…THEIR society, and we must abide by their ideologies and rules “for the greater good” or suffer the consequences. In other words, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

  The fact is, groups in general are abstractions of the mind. Just because someone declares that you are a part of their society does not make it so. Walking away is every individual’s right as a human being. Groups that survive and thrive tend to be built on shared values and principles. They don’t all need to agree on every detail, but they can’t be diametrically opposed in every way either.

  Usually those with principles that match with an inherent sense of conscience are the groups that most appeal to people.

  That said, there are people in this world (around 1% to 5% of any given population) that do NOT have inherent conscience, or they suffer from an ingrained affliction called narcissism. These people are attracted to movements that seek to dominate others, and they maintain membership through force rather than appealing to principle. There is no possible way that this group can ever coexist with people that value freedom and empathy. At least, not without incredible conflict…

  There is a large and growing opposition to pandemic lockdown measures, social justice policies that amount to cultural Marxism, as well as the prospect of a Biden presidency which would encourage both of these travesties exponentially. It’s not all about Biden or the leftists, obviously. The Reset goes far beyond them, but many conservatives are looking at the problem more according to what is directly in front of them and less according to the people behind the curtain.

  In light of this the mainstream media is doing exactly what is it designed to do – Create propaganda to “shame” anyone that dares to oppose the prevailing establishment narrative. Their most recent strategy is to label the conservative rebellion against the Reset as “the new Confederacy”, and to bring up the specter of the Civil War.

  This narrative is riding on the back of discussion among conservatives and state politicians that the possibility of secession should be explored in the wake of the growing impasse between leftists, the globalist agenda, and freedom loving Americans.

  The establishment and the useful idiots on the left will have none of it. Despite the fact that all they talked about during the first two years of Trump’s presidency was secession, now that the shoe is on the other foot (if Biden enters the White House and maybe even if he doesn’t) the SJWs and their media counterparts are FURIOUS at the idea that conservatives might actually succeed where they failed.

  Collectivists are good at destroying things, not creating things. Their calls for secession were a joke because we all know they are incapable of self sufficiency, and also they have no means of defense. One look at short lived autonomous zones like “The CHAZ” will give you insight to what would happen if leftists tried to separate within a states. It would be a disaster for them.

  When conservatives talk about separation, though, the leftists and globalists listen. They might not ever admit it, but they know we are actually capable of it.

  To be clear, what I believe is happening is that conservatives are being prodded and provoked, not to separate and organize but to centralize. I think they want us to support actions like martial law which would be considered totalitarian. Conservatives, the only stalwart defenders of civil liberties, using military suppression and abandoning the Bill of Rights to maintain political power? That is a dream come true for the globalists in the long term. And despite people’s faith in Trump, there are far too many banking elites and globalists within his cabinet to ensure that such power will not be abused or used against us later.

  I think the concept of the “new confederacy” label being used by leftists and the media reveals what they truly fear, though:

  • If they can get us to roll over for the lockdowns and medical tyranny and a Biden dictatorship, they’re happy.

  • If they can get us to support martial law under a Trump “coup”, they’re happy.

  • But what they don’t want is for conservatives and moderates to form their own organizational resistance not beholden to any singular political figure or top down pyramid structure.

  Such organization is happening right now. Millions of liberty minded Americans are leaving leftist counties and states, taking their wealth and businesses with them, and going to more conservative regions where they feel they will be safer. There has not been an ideological immigration like this in the US for well over a century. The reality is that conservatives are congregating (FINALLY) and they are starting to work together for their own security.

  In my own area in Montana I have been running local open meetings on preparedness and current events in the hopes of getting people on the same page and networked in the event that the current crisis spills over and rule of law breaks down. Or, in the event that there is an attempt by the state or federal government to enforce medical lockdown mandates where we live. These meetings have been expanding in the past couple of months and needless to say, people in my town are not going to submit to restrictions and do not plan to hide quietly in their homes while their community and businesses are destroyed.

  These groups are forming across the country, and thank God, because without community organization there is ZERO chance of survival or freedom for liberty minded Americans. As I’ve noted in some of my latest articles, the rebellion against lockdowns and vaccination mandates is visible even in hard-left states like California and New York. There is much to be optimistic about. However, the fight is going to be difficult and there will be ample vitriol leveled against us as we successfully unify.

  Organization requires a tit-for-tat philosophy to do well. Meaning, everyone must take some risk in order to encourage others to join the fight.

  For example, conservatives want business owners to refuse to enforce lockdown rules. But, if a business owner makes this courageous choice and faces off with government health officials, then patriots need to be there to back them up. This might even mean standing in the way of law enforcement that is violating the constitutional rights of that business.

  I call this “creating a wall of worry”; many police and sheriffs are not onboard with the enforcement of illegal mandates, but those that are need to understand that there are potential consequences for doing so. The wall of worry is a deterrent, and the larger the group of people involved the better. Police are not going to risk escalation of a fight over lockdown mandates if they realize that fight could go badly for them. And, if people in their own departments are against the lockdowns, the consequences double if they seek to enforce them. They should be the ones worried, not us.

  Health Department officials are even less likely to push the issue in the face of opposition.

  By extension, if your local sheriff’s department or police department is standing against the unconstitutional mandates and the state or federal government threatens them with repercussions, YOU must be there to offer help and support. They are taking a risk for you, so you must be willing to take a risk for them.

  I am also hearing considerable chatter that many medical professionals including doctors and nurses are going to REFUSE to take the poorly tested and questionable Covid vaccine for fear of damaging side effects. And why should they? Why take a vaccine for a virus that only threatens less than 0.3% of the public outside of nursing homes?

  Medical professionals are under immense pressure to take the vaccine or lose their license to practice. Conservatives MUST defend them if they rebel against mandatory vaccination.

  This means helping them to set up their own clinics outside of the controlled system where they can continue to aid people and still make a living. This means networking liberty minded patients that need treatments for various ailments to doctors and nurses that will not demand they show a medical passport and will not report them to the government. This means protecting doctors and nurses from retribution should government officials try to punish or arrest them.

  Communities will need to build their own localized economies, using barter and trade and maybe even creating a local currency scrip (hopefully backed by some kind of commodity). They are going to have to insulate themselves from the lockdowns economically in order to defy the lockdowns in a practical way. Otherwise, anyone that does not conform to medical passports and contact tracing will be denied access to the establishment controlled economy and die of poverty. We have to create alternatives. We have to offer people a choice outside of tyranny, otherwise many will go along with the tyranny.

  Finally, conservative communities are going to have to provide for their own security. Regardless of how the election situation actually ends, and even if Trump stays in the White House and refuses to concede, martial law is an unacceptable scenario. Conservatives don’t need it anyway. We should be establishing localized security (otherwise known as militias) composed of any able bodied person in the community that wants to join. These militias would have to form as unofficial organizations, as it is unlikely that state politicians will sanction them.

  That’s okay. We don’t need them to sanction our own security and defense. Like I said, we can handle it ourselves.

  In the meantime, the leftists will label us “brownshirts”, but as mentioned they are the people that have proven over and over again to be violent and totalitarian, so their accusations ring hollow. The media will call us the “new confederacy”, which is funny because the majority of the original confederates and slave owners during the Civil War were Democrats.

  We’ll set aside that irony and point out that people have an inherent right to self defense and to freedom from oppression, and none of us are slave owners. Anyone that calls for the globalist Reset is an enemy of individual rights, and anyone that tries to enforce medical tyranny is on the wrong side of history and of morality.

  They can call us whatever they want and make erroneous historical comparisons until they are blue in the face; it won’t change the fact that we are seeking to be free and they are seeking to take that freedom away. This is all that matters.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:40

• New Satellite Has "Superman's X-Ray Vision" To See Through Buildings 
  New Satellite Has “Superman’s X-Ray Vision” To See Through Buildings 

  A new satellite from Capella Space is capable of taking high-resolution images anywhere in the world, even through the walls of buildings, according to Futurism. 

  What makes the Capella-2 satellite nothing short of magnificent is its onboard sensor, called the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which can snap a picture in night or day, rain or shine.

  Capella-2 Satellite

  

  Futurism says SAR technology “works similarly to how dolphins and bats navigate using echolocation.” 

  “The satellite beams down a powerful 9.65 GHz radio signal toward its target, and then collects and interprets the signal as it bounces back up into orbit. And because the satellite is sending down its own signal rather than passively capturing light, sometimes those signals can even penetrate right through a building’s wall, peering at the interior like Superman’s X-ray vision.” 

  Capella Space CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the technology-based news publication that most surveillance and observational satellites in low Earth orbit do not have the ability to view land-based objects through clouds or at night. He said the Capella 2 satellite can take clear images during night or day, rain or shine.

  “It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” Banazade said. “When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both. It’s invisible to you, and that portion is moving around.”

  This week Capella Space launched a platform allowing government agencies and private organizations to request images of anything in the world. 

  Capella Space Platform 

  

  The company is expected to create a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that, combined, can produce clear radar images of anywhere in the world every hour. 

  Image of Tokyo 

  

  Certainly, this type of invasive surveillance technology will fuel panic among the privacy watchdog community. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:20

• Kim No-VAX Does DARPA
  Kim No-VAX Does DARPA

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  I have been going through my Asia Times archives selecting reports and columns for a new e-book on the Forever Wars – Afghanistan and Iraq. But then, out of the blue, I found this palimpsest, originally published by Asia Times in February 2014. It happened to be a Back to the Future exercise – traveling in time to survey the scene in the mid-1980s across Silicon Valley, MIT’s AI lab, DARPA and the NSA, weaving an intersection of themes, and a fabulous cast of characters, which prefigure the Brave New Techno World we’re now immersed in, especially concerning the role of artificial intelligence. So this might be read today as a sort of preamble, or a background companion piece, to No Escape from our Techno-Feudal World, published early this month. Incidentally, everything that takes place in this account was happening 18 years before the end of the Pentagon’s LifeLog project, run by DARPA, and the simultaneous launch of Facebook. Enjoy the time travel.

  

  In the spring of 1986, Back to the Future, the Michael J Fox blockbuster featuring a time-traveling DeLorean car, was less than a year old. The Apple Macintosh, launched via a single, iconic ad directed by Ridley (Blade Runner) Scott, was less than two years old. Ronald Reagan, immortalized by Gore Vidal as “the acting president,” was hailing the mujahideen in Afghanistan as “freedom fighters.”

  The world was mired in Cyber Cold War mode; the talk was all about electronic counter-measures, with American C3s (command, control, communications) programmed to destroy Soviet C3s, and both the US and the USSR under MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear policies being able to destroy the earth 100 times over. Edward Snowden was not yet a three-year-old.

  It was in this context that I set out to do a special report for a now-defunct magazine about artificial intelligence (AI), roving from the Computer Museum in Boston to Apple in Cupertino and Pixar in San Rafael, and then to the campuses of Stanford, Berkeley and MIT.

  AI had been “inaugurated” in 1956 by Stanford’s John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, a future MIT professor who at the time had been a student at Harvard. The basic idea, according to Minsky, was that any intelligence trait could be described so precisely that a machine could be created to simulate it.

  My trip inevitably involved meeting a fabulous cast of characters. At MIT’s AI lab, there was Minsky and also an inveterate iconoclast, Joseph Weizenbaum, who had coined the term “artificial intelligentsia” and believed computers could never “think” just like a human being.

  

  Joseph Weizenbaum. Source: Chatbots

  At Stanford, there was Edward Feigenbaum, absolutely paranoid about Japanese scientific progress; he believed that if the Japanese developed a fifth-generation computer, based on artificial intelligence, that could think, reason and speak even such a difficult language as Japanese “the US will be able to bill itself as the first great post-industrial agrarian society.”

  And at Berkeley, still under the flame of hippie utopian populism, I found Robert Wilensky – Brooklyn accent, Yale gloss, California overtones; and philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, a tireless enemy of AI who got his kicks delivering lectures such as “Conventional AI as a Paradigm of Degenerated Research.”

  Meet Kim No-VAX

  Soon I was deep into Minsky’s “frames” – a basic concept to organize every subsequent AI program – and the Chomsky paradigm: the notion that language is at the root of knowledge, and that formal syntax is at the root of language. That was the Bible of cognitive science at MIT.

  Minsky was a serious AI enthusiast. One of his favorite themes was that people were afflicted with “carbon chauvinism”: “This is central to the AI phenomenon. Because it’s possible that more sophisticated forms of intelligence are not incorporated in cellular form. If there are other forms of intelligent life, then we may speculate over other types of computer structure.”

  

  Marvin Minsky at MIT Lab. Photo: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  At the MIT cafeteria, Minsky delivered a futurist rap without in the least resembling Dr Emmett Brown in Back to the Future:

  I believe that in less than five centuries we will be producing machines very similar to us, representing our thoughts and point of view. If we can build a miniaturized human brain weighing, let’s say, one gram, we can lodge it in a spaceship and make it travel at the speed of light. It would be very hard to build a spaceship to carry an astronaut and all his food for 10,000 years of travel …

  With Professor Feigenbaum, in Stanford’s philosophical garden, the only space available was for the coming yellow apocalypse.

  But then one day I crossed Berkeley’s post-hippie Rubicon and opened the door of the fourth floor of Evans Hall, where I met none other than Kim No-VAX.

  No, that was not the Hitchcock blonde and Vertigo icon; it was an altered hardware computer (No-VAX because it had moved beyond Digital Equpment Corporation’s VAX line of supercomputers), financed by the mellifluously acronymed Pentagon military agency DARPA, decorated with a photo of Kim Novak and humming with the sexy vibration of – at the time immense – 2,900 megabytes of electronic data spread over its body.

  The US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – or DARPA – was all about computer science. In the mid-1980s, DARPA was immersed in a very ambitious program linking microelectronics, computer architecture and AI way beyond a mere military program. That was comparable to the Japanese fifth generation computer program. At MIT, the overwhelming majority of scientists were huge DARPA cheerleaders, stressing how the agency was leading research. Yet Terry Winograd, a computer science professor at Stanford, warned that had DARPA been a civilian agency, “I believe we would have made much more progress”.

  It was up to Professor Dreyfus to provide the voice of reason amidst so much cyber-euphoria:

  “Computers cannot think like human beings because there’s no way to represent all retrospective knowledge of an average human life – that is, ‘common sense’ – in a form that a computer may apprehend.”

  Dreyfus’s drift was that with the boom of computer science, philosophy was dead – and he was a philosopher:

  “Heidegger said that philosophy ended because it reached its apex in technology. Philosophy in fact reached its limit with AI. They, the scientists, inherited our questions. What is the mind? Now they have to answer for it. Philosophy is over.”

  

  Hubert Dreyfus. Source: Berkeley Campus News

  Yet Dreyfus was still teaching. Likewise at MIT, Weizenbaum was condemning AI as a racket for “lunatics and psychopaths” – but still continued to work at the AI lab.

  NSA’s wet web dream

  In no time, helped by these brilliant minds, I figured out that the AI “secret” would be a military affair, and that meant the National Security Agency – already in the mid-1980s vaguely known as “no such agency,” with double the CIA’s annual budget to pay for snooping on the whole planet. The mission back then was to penetrate and monitor the global electronic net – that was years before all the hype over the “information highway” – and at the same time reassure the Pentagon over the inviolability of its lines of communication. For those comrades – remember, the Cold War, even with Gorbachev in power in the USSR, was still on – AI was a gift from God (beating Pope Francis by almost three decades).

  So what was the Pentagon/NSA up to, at the height of the star wars hype, and over a decade and a half before the revolution in military affairs and the full spectrum dominance doctrine?

  They already wanted to control their ships and planes and heavy weapons with their voices, not their hands; voice command a la Hal, the star computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Still, that was a faraway dream. Minsky believed that “only in the next century” would we be able to talk to a computer. Others believed that would never happen. Anyway, IBM was already working on a system accepting dictation; and MIT on another system that identified words spoken by different people; while Intel was developing a special chip for all this.

  Although, predictably, prevented from visiting the NSA, I soon learned that the Pentagon was expecting to possess “intelligent” computing systems by the 1990s; Hollywood, after all, already had unleashed the Terminator series. It was up to Professor Wilensky, in Berkeley, to sound the alarm bells:

  Human beings don’t have the appropriate engineering for the society they developed. Over a million years of evolution, the instinct of getting together in small communities, belligerent and compact, turned out to be correct. But then, in the 20th century, man ceased to adapt. Technology overtook evolution. The brain of an ancestral creature, like a rat, which sees provocation in the face of every stranger, is the brain that now controls the earth’s destiny.

  It was as if Wilensky was describing the NSA as it would be 28 years later. Some questions still remain unanswered; for instance, if our race does not fit anymore the society it built, who’d guarantee that its machines are properly engineered? Who’d guarantee that intelligent machines act in our interest?

  What was already clear by then was that “intelligent” computers would not end a global arms race. And it would be a long time, up to the Snowden revelations in 2013, for most of the planet to have a clearer idea of how the NSA orchestrates the Orwellian-Panopticon complex. As for my back to the future trip, in the end I did not manage to uncover the “secret” of AI. But I’ll always remain very fond of Kim No-VAX.

  *  *  *

  Asia Times Financial is now live. Linking accurate news, insightful analysis and local knowledge with the ATF China Bond 50 Index, the world’s first benchmark cross sector Chinese Bond Indices. Read ATF now.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 23:00

• Social Security Is A Mess: There Are 6 Million Active Accounts Of People Aged 112+
  Social Security Is A Mess: There Are 6 Million Active Accounts Of People Aged 112+

  Our friends at Open The Books continue to expose government waste – and fraud – and in their latest investigation, they have shone the spotlight on one of the largest wastes in the US government: the Social Security Administration.

  What they have uncovered is that last year alone, Social Security admitted to $8 billion in improper and mistaken payments.

  The punchline: when they dug deeper, they found that there are six million active social security numbers of people aged 112 and older… even though only 40 or less or those people exist in the world.

  The root cause of this collosal abuse: failure to verify death. And yet while you won’t read about it in the papers, the four-year total sum to US taxpayers is roughly $2.8 billion, which in today’s numbers when trillions are thrown around may not sound like much, but add up all the other areas of government waste, and soon you end up with far greater numbers.

  Watch the clip below for more.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:40

• China Restricts Electricity Use Amid Coal Shortage
  China Restricts Electricity Use Amid Coal Shortage

  By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

  

  Despite the swift industrial recovery from the pandemic, factories in areas in China are working only part-time, and residents in several provinces are asked to save electricity, while authorities are turning off street lights and billboards, warning of coal shortages this winter.

  In at least three provinces in China, authorities have ordered limits on electricity use, saying there could be shortages of coal, The New York Times reports. At the same time, Chinese authorities vehemently deny that the potential shortages have had anything to do with the diplomatic spat with Australia, which has turned into a true energy trade war, with China banning imports of coal from one of its major suppliers (last week we reported that “China Endures Worsening Electricity Shortages In Name Of Punishing Australia“).

  Still, China has admitted there is a problem with electricity supply in parts of the country, just ahead of the winter season when Chinese industrial activity has been recovering very well from the COVID-related economic slump earlier this year.

  “At the moment, some provinces temporarily do not have enough electricity. This is an objective fact,” the NYT quoted the Chinese authority overseeing state-held firms as saying during the weekend.

  As a result of the power shortages with a reduced supply of thermal coal, some factories are cutting working hours and are operational only two or three days a week, while office workers in some cities have had to climb 20 flights of stairs to reach their workplaces because elevators have been shut down to save electricity.

  “We are not living a normal life when our factory can only work two days a week and the streets are dark at night,” Mike Li, who owns a plastic flower factory in the city of Yiwu, eastern China, told the Financial Times.

  Despite the fact that the Chinese government denies that the spat with Australia is responsible for coal shortages and electricity rationing, an official at state-owned power producer China Huadian Corporation told FT that many local power plants depend on Australian coal and scramble to source alternative supply.

  “Politics come first,” the official told FT, adding that the company doesn’t see China relaxing import control just because it is causing trouble.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:20

• Pentagon Threatens Iran As Region Braces For 1-Year Anniversary Of Soleimani Killing
  Pentagon Threatens Iran As Region Braces For 1-Year Anniversary Of Soleimani Killing

  On the same day the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone came under attack by a hail of eight rockets fired by unknown militants, the United States threatened Iran with military action should it decide to pursue any future retaliation for the US killing of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani last January.

  Sunday’s attack, widely believed the have been the work of Iran-backed Shia militia or an allied group, triggered the embassy’s counter-rocket defense system and resulted in at least one Iraqi civilian death and limited damage to the embassy complex.

  General Kenneth McKenzie, who heads the US Central Command (CENTCOM), is currently touring the region ahead of the anniversary of the Jan.3 killing of Soleimani. The trip was unannounced and is being widely interpreted as sending a strong “message” to leaders in Tehran.

  

  “We are prepared to defend ourselves, our friends and partners in the region, and we’re prepared to react if necessary,” Gen. McKenzie told journalists.

  “My assessment is we are in a very good position and we’ll be prepared for anything the Iranians or their proxies acting for them might choose to do,” the four-star Marine general said further at an undisclosed location in the region.

  McKenzie further explained that even amid the continuing White House ordered troop draw downs from Afghanistan and Iran – at 2,500 each country – the Pentagon is making preparations toward greater readiness ahead of Jan. 3.

  It’s now emerging that Sunday’s attack included a direct hit on the embassy compound, resulting in damage.

  Rocket attacks by “Iran-backed militias” into an area housing the U.S. embassy in Iraq killed at least one local civilian and damaged the embassy compound, according to U.S. diplomatic sources. https://t.co/qOaLQKGVEM

  — NPR (@NPR) December 21, 2020

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

  Days after the Soleimani assassination the region was on the edge of war, also given Iran responded by launching multiple ballistic missiles on American bases in Iraq, which the Pentagon at first claimed resulted in no casualties, though later it was revealed troops suffered widespread concussions from the missile attack, dubbed Traumatic Brain Injury.

  At the very least, mass anti-American protests are expected both in Iran and Iraq, likely outside of the Green Zone near the US Embassy. The Pentagon and State Department have signaled they are making full preparations to beef up security ahead of the first week of January.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 22:00

• A Pandemic Of 'Russian Hacking'
  A Pandemic Of ‘Russian Hacking’

  Authored by Ray McGovern and Joe Lauria via ConsortiumNews.com,

  The hyperbolic, evidence-free media reports on the “fresh outbreak” of the Russian-hacking disease seems an obvious attempt by intelligence to handcuff President-elect Joe Biden into a strong anti-Russian posture as he prepares to enter the White House.

  Biden might well need to be inoculated against the Russophobe fever.

  There are obvious Biden intentions worrying the intelligence agencies, such as renewing the Iran nuclear deal and restarting talks on strategic arms limitation with Russia. Both carry the inherent “risk” of thawing the new Cold War.

  Instead, New Cold Warriors are bent on preventing any such rapprochement with strong support from the intelligence community’s mouthpiece media. U.S. hardliners are clearly still on the rise.

  Interestingly, this latest hack story came out a day before the Electoral College formally elected Biden, and after the intelligence community, despite numerous previous warnings, said nothing about Russia interfering in the election. One wonders whether that would have been the assessment had Trump won.

  Instead Russia decided to hack the U.S. government.

  Except there is (typically) no hard evidence pinning it on Moscow.

  

  Headquarters of the SVR, Russian foreign intelligence service, which is being blamed for the hack. (Alex Saveliev/Wikipedia)

  Uncertainties

  The official story is Russia hacked into U.S. “government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments,” as David Sanger of The New York Times reported.

  But plenty of things are uncertain. First, Sanger wrote last Sunday that “hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how many email and other systems they chose to enter.”

  The motive of the hack is uncertain, as well what damage may have been done.

  “The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said,” Sanger reported. “One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost.”

  

  Sanger. (Wikimedia Commons)

  On Friday, five days after the story first broke, in an article misleadingly headlined, “Suspected Russian hack is much worse than first feared,” NBC News admitted:

  “At this stage, it’s not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing top-secret government networks and monitoring data.”

  Who conducted the hack is also not certain.

  NBC reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “has not said who it thinks is the ‘advanced persistent threat actor’ behind the ‘significant and ongoing’ campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia.”

  At first Sanger was certain in his piece that Russia was behind the attack. He refers to FireEye, “a computer security firm that first raised the alarm about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced.”

  But later in the same piece, Sanger loses his certainty: “If the Russia connection is confirmed,” he writes.

  In the absence of firm evidence that damage has been done, this may well be an intrusion into other governments’ networks routinely carried out by intelligence agencies around the world, including, if not chiefly, by the United States. It is what spies do.

  So neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain.

  Yet across the vast networks of powerful U.S. media the story has been portrayed as a major crisis brought on by a sinister Russian attack putting the security of the American people at risk.

  In a second piece on Wednesday, Sanger added to the alarm by saying the hack “ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.” And on Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the cyber attacks. But he cautioned: “… we’re still unpacking precisely what it is, and I’m sure  some of it will remain classified.” In other words, trust us.

  Ed Loomis, a former NSA technical director, believes the suspect list should extend beyond Russia to include China, Iran, and North Korea. Loomis also says the commercial cyber-security firms that have been studying the latest “attacks” have not been able to pinpoint the source.

  

  Tom Bossert (Office of U.S. Executive)

  In a New York Times op-ed, former Trump domestic security adviser Thomas Bossert on Wednesday called on Trump to “use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.” And he said Biden “must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis.”

  [On Friday, Biden talked tough. He promised there would be “costs” and said: “A good defense isn’t enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation.”]

  While asserting throughout his piece that, without question, Russia now “controls” U.S. government computer networks, Bossert’s confidence suddenly evaporates by slipping in at one point, “If it is Russia.”

  The analysis the corporate press has relied on came from the private cyber-security firm FireEye. This question should be raised: Why has a private contractor at extra taxpayer expense carried out this cyber analysis rather than the already publicly-funded National Security Agency?

  Similarly, why did the private firm CrowdStrike, rather than the FBI, analyze the Democratic National Committee servers in 2016?

  Could it be to give government agencies plausible deniability if these analyses, as in the case of CrowdStrike, and very likely in this latest case of Russian “hacking,” turn out to be wrong? This is a question someone on the intelligence committees should be asking.

  Sanger is as active in blaming the Kremlin for hacking, as he and his erstwhile NYT colleague, neocon hero Judith Miller, were in insisting on the presence of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, helping to facilitate a major invasion with mass loss of life.

  The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT, for short) needs credible “enemies” to justify unprecedentedly huge expenditures for arms — the more so at a time when it is clearer than ever, that that the money would be far better spent at home. (MEDIA is in all caps because it is the sine-qua-non, the cornerstone to making the MICIMATT enterprise work.)

  Bad Flashback

  In this latest media flurry, Sanger and other intel leakers’ favorites are including as “flat fact” what “everybody knows”: namely, that Russia hacked the infamous Hillary Clinton-damaging emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

  Sanger wrote:

  “…the same group of [Russian] hackers went on to invade the systems of the Democratic National Committee and top officials in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, touching off investigations and fears that permeated both the 2016 and 2020 contests. Another, more disruptive Russian intelligence agency, the G.R.U., is believed to be responsible for then making public the hacked emails at the D.N.C.”

  That accusation was devised as a magnificent distraction after the Clinton campaign learned that WikiLeaks was about to publish emails that showed how Clinton and the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. It was an emergency solution, but it had uncommon success.

  There was no denying the authenticity of those DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. So the Democrats mounted an artful campaign, very strongly supported by Establishment media, to divert attention from the content of the emails. How to do that? Blame Russian “hacking.” And for good measure, persuade then Senator John McCain to call it an “act of war.”

  One experienced observer, Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, saw through the Democratic blame-Russia offensive from the start.

  Artful as the blame-Russia maneuver was, many voters apparently saw through this clever and widely successful diversion, learned enough about the emails’ contents, and decided not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

  4 Years & 7 Days Ago

  On Dec. 12, 2016, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) used sensitive intelligence revealed by Edward Snowden, the expertise of former NSA technical directors, and basic principles of physics to show that accusations that Russia hacked those embarrassing DNC emails were fraudulent.

  A year later, on Dec. 5, 2017, the head of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC to do the forensics, testified under oath that there was no technical evidence that the emails had been “exfiltrated”; that is, hacked from the DNC.

  His testimony was kept hidden by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff until Schiff was forced to release it on May 7, 2020. That testimony is still being kept under wraps by Establishment media.

  What VIPS wrote four years ago is worth re-reading — particularly for those who still believe in science and have trusted the experienced intelligence professionals of VIPS with the group’s unblemished, no-axes-to-grind record.

  Most of the Memorandum’s embedded links are to TOP SECRET charts that Snowden made available — icing on the cake — and, as far as VIPS’s former NSA technical directors were concerned, precisely what was to be demonstrated QED.

  Many Democrats unfortunately still believe–or profess to believe–the hacking and the Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy story, the former debunked by Henry’s testimony and the latter by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Both were legally obligated to tell the truth, while the intelligence agencies were not.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:40

• Hedge Fund Moves To Dump 'James Bond' Franchise As Outlook For Blockbuster Films Dims
  Hedge Fund Moves To Dump ‘James Bond’ Franchise As Outlook For Blockbuster Films Dims

  With 2020 being the worst year for blockbuster releases in recent memory, leaving analysts to debate whether there will even be a movie theater industry for audiences to return to once COVID is finally gone (assuming that day ever comes), a production company behind one of the English-speaking world’s most beloved cinematic franchises is exploring a sale.

  MGM Holdings, the production studio responsible for the James Bond franchise, has hired Morgan Stanley and LionTree (known for its media franchise, it’s also helping sell whatever is left of Quibi) to explore a sale, affirming months of speculation that its biggest shareholder, Anchorage Capital Group, might be forced to push for a sale as disgruntled investors push to pull their money, according to WSJ.

  Anchorage bought MGM in a deal back in 2010, when the studio was just coming out of bankruptcy and its creditors, including a bunch of hedge fund creditors, became shareholders.

  

  Sources told WSJ the private value of the studio is believed to be $5.5BN, essentially the value of the ‘Bond’ film franchise.

  It’s unclear what kind of return Anchorage’s stake (believed to be somewhere around 14%) might net the fund. Presently, it’s believed the firm owns a $1BN slice of MGM, equivalent to roughly 14% of its $8BN+ AUM.

  But the illiquid holding has dragged on returns in recent years, and some large investors have been complaining.

  According to another WSJ report published earlier this year, Kevin Ulrich, the founder of Anchorage and chairman of MGM, of has said that heavy hitters including Amazon, Apple, Comcast and even Facebook have expressed interest in MGM.

  But with the release of the next Bond film “No Time To Die” delayed until April 2021, Ulrich reportedly believes now might be the perfect time to sell, since the new buyer could influence the marketing and rollout of the film.

  There’s also something to be said for the timing, and the fact that a Biden presidency will likely mean closer economic and political ties with China. Chinese investment firms have, in the past, shown a willingness to pay a premium for American movie studios. And with no fear of the Trump era CFIUS swatting down cross-border deals, maybe Anchorage could generate some real interest.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:20

• Another "Pre-Crime" AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It's Published
  Another “Pre-Crime” AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It’s Published

  Via ActivistPost.com,

  We previously have covered the many weighty claims made by the progenitors of A.I. algorithms who claim that their technology can stop crime before it happens. Similar predictive A.I. is increasingly being used to stop the spread of misinformation, disinformation and general “fake news” by analyzing trends in behavior and language used across social media.

  

  However, as we’ve also covered, these systems have more often that not failed quite spectacularly, as many artificial intelligence experts and mathematicians have highlighted. One expert in particular — Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, at the University of Sydney, Australia — noted that from what he has seen so far, these systems are “no better at telling the future than a crystal ball.”

  Please keep this in mind as you look at the latest lofty pronouncements from the University of Sheffield below. Nevertheless, we should also be aware that — similar their real-world counterparts in street-level pre-crime — these systems most likely will be rolled out across social media (if they haven’t been already) regardless, until further exposure of their inherent flaws, biases and their own disinformation is revealed.

  AI can predict Twitter users likely to spread disinformation before they do it

  A new artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict which Twitter users will spread disinformation before they actually do it has been developed by researchers from the University of Sheffield.

  • University of Sheffield researchers have developed an artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict (79.7 per cent) which Twitter users are likely to share content from unreliable news sources before they actually do it

  • Study found that Twitter users who spread disinformation mostly tweet about politics or religion, whereas users who share reliable sources of news tweet more about their personal lives

  • Research also found that Twitter users who share disinformation use impolite language more frequently than users who share reliable news sources

  • Findings could help governments and social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook better understand user behaviour and help them design more effective models for tackling the spread of disinformation

  A new artificial intelligence-based algorithm that can accurately predict which Twitter users will spread disinformation before they actually do it has been developed by researchers from the University of Sheffield.

  A team of researchers, led by Yida Mu and Dr Nikos Aletras from the University’s Department of Computer Science, has developed a method for predicting whether a social media user is likely to share content from unreliable news sources. Their findings have been published in the journal PeerJ.

  The researchers analysed over 1 million tweets from approximately 6,200 Twitter users by developing new natural language processing methods – ways to help computers process and understand huge amounts of language data. The tweets they studied were all tweets that were publicly available for anyone to see on the social media platform.

  Twitter users were grouped into two categories as part of the study – those who have shared unreliable news sources and those who only share stories from reliable news sources. The data was used to train a machine-learning algorithm that can accurately predict (79.7 per cent) whether a user will repost content from unreliable sources sometime in the future.

  Results from the study found that the Twitter users who shared stories from unreliable sources are more likely to tweet about either politics or religion and use impolite language. They often posted tweets with words such as ‘liberal’, ‘government’, ‘media’, and their tweets often related to politics in the Middle East and Islam, with their tweets often mentioning ‘Islam’ or ‘Israel’.

  In contrast, the study found that Twitter users who shared stories from reliable news sources often tweeted about their personal life, such as their emotions and interactions with friends. This group of users often posted tweets with words such as ‘mood’. ‘wanna’, ‘gonna’, ‘I’ll’, ‘excited’, and ‘birthday’.

  Social media has become the primary platform for spreading disinformation, which is having a huge impact on society and can influence people’s judgement of what is happening in the world around them.

  – Dr Nikos Aletras, Lecturer in Natural Language Processing, University of Sheffield

  Findings from the study could help social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook develop ways to tackle the spread of disinformation online. They could also help social scientists and psychologists improve their understanding of such user behaviour on a large scale.

  Dr Nikos Aletras, Lecturer in Natural Language Processing at the University of Sheffield, said:

  Social media has become one of the most popular ways that people access the news, with millions of users turning to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook every day to find out about key events that are happening both at home and around the world. However, social media has become the primary platform for spreading disinformation, which is having a huge impact on society and can influence people’s judgement of what is happening in the world around them.

  As part of our study, we identified certain trends in user behaviour that could help with those efforts – for example, we found that users who are most likely to share news stories from unreliable sources often tweet about politics or religion, whereas those who share stories from reliable news sources often tweeted about their personal lives.

  We also found that the correlation between the use of impolite language and the spread of unreliable content can be attributed to high online political hostility.

  Yida Mu, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, said:

  Studying and analysing the behaviour of users sharing content from unreliable news sources can help social media platforms to prevent the spread of fake news at the user level, complementing existing fact-checking methods that work on the post or the news source level.

  The study, Identifying Twitter users who repost unreliable news sources with linguistic information, is published in PeerJ. To access the paper in full, visit: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.325

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 21:00

• House Passes 5593 Page Stimulus Bill Without Anyone Having Read It
  House Passes 5593 Page Stimulus Bill Without Anyone Having Read It

  In the immortal words of Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

  Because, as Utah Senator Mike Lee so rambunctiously pointed out tonight, the bill is so huge that Lee said it will take three hours just to print out. And they’ll still have to vote on the bill tonight. It’s unreal.

  1/4 This is the spending bill under consideration in Congress today. I received it just moments ago, and will likely be asked to vote on it late tonight. It’s 5,593 pages long. I know there are some good things in it. I’m equally confident that there are bad things in it. pic.twitter.com/SoWXnEWYfV

  — Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 21, 2020

  Lee noted that “this is by far the longest bill I’ve ever seen,” and added that members won’t be allowed to amend the bill in any way:

  Here’s the really sad thing:  we’re being told that there will be no opportunity to amend or improve it. 

  As a result, nearly every member of Congress – House and Senate, Democrat or Republican – will have been excluded from the process of developing this bill, which will cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. 

  This process, by which members of Congress are asked to defer blindly to legislation negotiated entirely in secret by four of their colleagues, must come to an end.

  It won’t come to an end until no longer works for those empowered by it.  That can happen, but only when most members of both houses and both political parties stop voting for bills they haven’t read—and, by design, cannot read until after it’s too late.

  And so it came to pass that the House passed the bill… without a single member possibly being capable of reading it:

  *HOUSE HAS VOTES TO PASS COVID RELIEF-FUNDING BILL; VOTE ONGOING

  And in case you wondered just what is in it, we summarized the most egregious pork here… and what needy Americans will care about here.

  *  *  *

  Earlier:

  There was some confusion on Monday afternoon when the release of the full text of the stimulus bill was prevented due to a computer glitch, because the file was – no joke – corrupt.

  It’s worse than printer delays.

  They cannot get the Covid relief/govt funding bill uploaded to the internet. the computers keep bugging out, several sources told me. have heard about a corrupt file in education piece of the bill.

  all sections need to be combined into 1 file

  — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 21, 2020

  But that was promptly resolved (we can only hope the hacked password wasn’t Pork123), and moments ago Congress released the full text of the bill… all 5593 pages of it.

  Needless to say, the bill is chock-full of garbage:

  This bill is beyond.

  Example: It literally legislates the process for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

  See pg 5099 of the PDF.

  — Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) December 21, 2020

  Good luck to anyone tasked with reading this porkulus monster from cover to cover.

  Full text below (pdf link here)

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:43

• TSA Screens 3.2 Million People Over Weekend As Holiday Travel Surges 
  TSA Screens 3.2 Million People Over Weekend As Holiday Travel Surges 

  More than three million people have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints over the weekend despite rising coronavirus cases and fears that the virus is mutating in Europe, reported Reuters. 

  The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened 3.2 million people over the last three days as holiday travel begins. 

  

  Over the three-day period, TSA said they screened the most airline passengers since mid-March when the virus pandemic first began to devastate the air travel industry. 

  Compared with the same period last year, the number of people screened by the agency was down 58%.  

  The surge in air travel comes as the weather turned colder and COVID-19 cases are accelerating.

  In a recent report, Goldman Sachs outlines that virus cases will surge in colder months and significantly slow down the economy in the next quarter. 

  Despite the surge in air travel, U.S. Global Jets ETF plunged by more than 3% Monday following the virus new from the UK. 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:40

• Fisherman Publicly Executed In North Korea For Listening To Foreign Radio Broadcast
  Fisherman Publicly Executed In North Korea For Listening To Foreign Radio Broadcast

  Authored by Justin MacLachlan via TheMindUnleashed.com,

  A North Korean fishing boat captain was reportedly publicly executed for listening to a banned foreign radio station…

  

  According to the U.S. Government-funded Radio Free Asia, North Korea executed a 40 year-old man after he admitted to listening to radio broadcasts from Radio Free Asia, banned in the dictator state. North Korea has strict rules when it comes to what content citizens can consume to deny them access to information and news from outside the country’s borders.

  The man identified as Chongjin, picked up the foreign broadcasts while he was out in the water off the coast of North Korea.

  Chongjin is said to have been turned in by by one of his crew members at a fishing base in the port city of Chongjin, where his crew member confessed his “offense” to authorities. It’s believed that Chongjin, who was once a radio operator in the military, had started listening to foreign broadcasts while on service. Chongjin was charged with “subversion against the party.”

  “In mid-October, a captain of a fishing boat from Chongjin was executed by firing squad, on charges of listening to Radio Free Asia regularly over a long period of time,” a source told the station.

  “The provincial security department defined his crime as an attempt of subversion against the party. They publicly shot him at the base in front of 100 other captains and managers of the facility’s fish processing plants,” they added.

  “They also dismissed or discharged party officials, the base’s administration and the security officers who allowed Choi to work at sea.”

  A second source claimed to the news agency that the fisherman who had turned Chongjin in was “vengeance for Choi’s arrogant and disrespectful behavior so he reported him to the security department.”

  They also claimed:

   “It seems that the authorities made an example out of Choi to imprint on the residents that listening to outside radio stations means death.”

  Despite acts like this execution North Korea has failed to quash its people’s desire to obtain information from the outside world. Two refugees who escaped from North Korea to settle in the neighboring South told RFA that North Korean residents often listen to their broadcasts because they are ‘curious’.

  “We can get a variety of content from CDs and memory sticks, but what North Koreans most want to know is news from the outside,” one said.

  “Residents can get many outside broadcasts, but they prefer RFA because it can be heard clearly in the Korean language.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:20

• Purdue Pharma Owners Were Wary Of Lawsuits Before Moving $10 Billion From Company
  Purdue Pharma Owners Were Wary Of Lawsuits Before Moving $10 Billion From Company

  The Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma LP, have been front and center in the nation’s opioid crisis over the last decade. The crisis has taken over 450,000 lives since 1999 and prescription drugs like OxyContin and fentanyl have been the culprit in many cases.

  Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, has been in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings that resulted from a legal onslaught which culminated in an $8 billion settlement with the DOJ and criminal charges for misconduct relating to opioids. The Sackler family paid $225 million to settle civil claims.

  New documents that have been made available during bankruptcy proceedings show the family had discussed the potential for litigation exposure as early as 2007, which Reuters noted was a full decade before the company stopped making significant financial transfers from the company totaling $10 billion – a move lawyers for creditors may allege was to shield assets. The company now faces roughly 3,000 legal actions. 

  

  “I don’t believe anyone knew that lawsuits that really began in earnest in 2017 would be coming back in 2008,” David Sackler told congress last week. But his uncle wrote in an e-mail as far back as March 2007 that “if there’s a future perception that Purdue has screwed up on compliance, we could get murdered” and that the family was “not really braced for the emergence of numerous new lawsuits”. 

  Sackler himself wrote in May 2007: “Well, I hope you’re right and under logical circumstances I’d agree with you, but we’re living in America. This is the land of the free and the home of the blameless. We will be sued. Read the op-ed stuff in these local papers and ask yourself how long it will take these lawyers to figure out that we might settle with them if they can freeze our assets and threaten us.”

  His lawyers argue that this message was sent before he joined the Board, and thus, he had little insight into the company’s affairs.

  The Sackler family, who moved $10 billion out of the company with Sackler controlled entities receiving about $4 billion, said: “We supported the release of documents by the court and reaffirm that members of the Sackler family who served on Purdue’s board of directors acted ethically and lawfully in every regard. These cherrypicked snippets of emails ignore the full context of what they say and the rest of the legal filings, all of which demonstrate how the fraudulent conveyance claims are entirely without merit.”

  

  Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey disagreed, stating: “The Sacklers told Congress they did nothing wrong. The evidence tells a different story – they got rich fueling the opioid crisis and plan to walk away billionaires.”

  The family also “pursued acquiring additional product liability insurance and explored selling Purdue outright to offload its troubles,” according to court documents. Patriarch Mortimer Sackler insisted to company president Richard Sackler in 2008 that he sell the company, writing in an email: 

  “Fundamentally, we don’t want to stay in this business anymore (given the horrible risks, outlooks, difficulties, etc) and I think the majority of your family feels the same way.It is simply not prudent for us to stay in the business given the future risks we are sure to face and the impact they will have on the shareholder value of the business and hence the family’s wealth.”

  “We also fully acknowledge that there is an opioid crisis that has ruined too many lives and that OxyContin addiction and abuse played a role in that. We are truly sorry to everyone who’s lost a family member or suffered from the scourge of addiction,” David Sackler told Congress last week.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 20:00

• Khashoggi's Fiancée Demands Biden Release CIA Report On Brutal Saudi Murder As First Act
  Khashoggi’s Fiancée Demands Biden Release CIA Report On Brutal Saudi Murder As First Act

  Authored by Jessica Corbett via CommonDreams.org,

  Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Washington Post columnist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, is urging US President-elect Joe Biden to fulfill his campaign promise for accountability by releasing the CIA’s classified intelligence assessment on the journalist’s 2018 assassination inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

  “I am calling on the president-elect to release the CIA’s assessment and evidence. It will greatly assist in uncovering the truth about who is responsible for Jamal’s murder,” Cengiz told The Guardian in a report published Friday. She had waited outside while Khashoggi went into the consulate for paperwork for their planned marriage.

  

  Earlier this year, Cengiz attended President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address as the official guest of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who hoped the move would pressure the president to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggi’s brutal murder and dismemberment.

  Trump has maintained a cozy relationship with the Saudi regime, even after the CIA concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Khashoggi’s assassination was likely ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has denied any involvement. US relations with the country are expected to shift under Biden.

  Agnès Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who last year put out her own damning report about Khashoggi’s killing, told The Guardian that she believes the CIA’s assessment could be released without revealing the agency’s sources or methods and that she supports its publication.

  US court orders CIA to explain withholding of Khashoggi report https://t.co/X5vEZVdCki

  — Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) December 9, 2020

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

  “I, for one, am sick and tired of intelligence always taking precedence over justice,” Callamard said. “So much information is held by the US about the murder of journalists, including the identity of the masterminds, corrupt officials, and people who abuse their power. Surely the search for justice, the fight against impunity demand that this information be made made public.”

  On the anniversary of Khashoggi’s death this year – about a month before the November election – Biden’s campaign released a lengthy statement that said in part: “Jamal Khashoggi and his loved ones deserve accountability. Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

  .@RonWyden: “Donald Trump buried the truth to protect authoritarians and murderers in Saudi Arabia. The Biden team has a real opportunity to break from the lawlessness and coverups of the Trump administration.” #jamalkhashoggi https://t.co/jwC3xpmBqz

  — Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) December 17, 2020

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

  “America’s commitment to democratic values and human rights will be a priority, even with our closest security partners,” Biden vowed. “I will defend the right of activists, political dissidents, and journalists around the world to speak their minds freely without fear of persecution and violence. Jamal’s death will not be in vain, and we owe it to his memory to fight for a more just and free world.”

  In a piece for the Post‘s “Global Opinions” section, columnist Josh Rogin on Thursday cited that campaign statement and detailed two separate lawsuits that are expected to soon challenge Biden’s commitment to helping shed light on the journalist’s killing.

  

  “Biden will be forced to quickly choose between keeping his promises and standing up for American values, or perpetuating the coverup by enabling further impunity for MBS and his accomplices,” Rogin wrote. “The former and correct choice would also send a signal to all other despotic would-be journalist-killers that the free ride Trump gave them is over.”

  A documentary on Khashoggi’s life and death, entitled The Dissident, is set to hit theaters on December 25 and be available for streaming on January 8.

  Directed by Bryan Fogel, known for his 2017 Oscar-winning debut Icarus, the film “does not just include the harrowing tale of Khashoggi’s horrific mystery, but an in-depth look at how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is directly accused in the film of being involved with the murder, has fostered a society that relies on silencing its critics, and manipulating people of power,” according to reviewer Nick Allen.

  “The movie is also dedicated to humanizing Khashoggi, sharing with us his big smile, and the story of his relationship with his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz,” Allen noted. “Among its intense moments, The Dissident shows its big heart, which turns into its will to fight, as Hatice is shown making a speech about Khashoggi’s death at the U.N.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:40

• DeBlasio Mocks Fox, Doubles Down On 'Mission To Redistribute Wealth'
  DeBlasio Mocks Fox, Doubles Down On ‘Mission To Redistribute Wealth’

  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio laughed off criticism from Fox News over Friday comments that ‘redistribution of wealth is an important factor toward ending structural racism in education,’ saying in Monday remarks that Fox “apparently was very interested” in what he had to say.

  

  De Blasio then doubled down, quoting Fox‘s headline.

  “I’m going to say it one more time in case Fox News is watching again: ‘NYC mayor sees the redistribution of wealth as an important factor toward ending structural racism in education.’ (roughly 2:45 mark)

  JUST IN: Bill de Blasio doubles down on “Our mission is to redistribute wealth” remark: “If we think we’re going to deal with structural racism and segregation without redistributing wealth, we’re kidding ourselves.” pic.twitter.com/igvTpXg32G

  — The Hill (@thehill) December 21, 2020

  “Exactly right. I don’t get to say it very often, but Fox News got it exactly right. Amen,” he added. “We are going to fight structural racism through redistribution, so Fox News, congratulations, fair and balanced coverage right there.”

  “If we think we’re going to deal with structural racism and segregation without redistribution of wealth, we’re kidding ourselves,” he continued. “Nothing changes unless you put the resources behind it.”

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:20

• Lockdowns Do Not Control The Coronavirus: The Evidence
  Lockdowns Do Not Control The Coronavirus: The Evidence

  Via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  The use of universal lockdowns in the event of the appearance of a new pathogen has no precedent. It has been a science experiment in real time, with most of the human population used as lab rats. The costs are legion. 

  

  The question is whether lockdowns worked to control the virus in a way that is scientifically verifiable. Based on the following studies, the answer is no and for a variety of reasons: bad data, no correlations, no causal demonstration, anomalous exceptions, and so on. There is no relationship between lockdowns (or whatever else people want to call them to mask their true nature) and virus control. 

  Perhaps this is a shocking revelation, given that universal social and economic controls are becoming the new orthodoxy. In a saner world, the burden of proof really should belong to the lockdowners, since it is they who overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights. They never accepted that burden. They took it as axiomatic that a virus could be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and masked gendarmes. 

  The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models, and then merely positing that stringencies and “nonpharmaceutical interventions” account for the difference between the fictionalized vs. the real outcome. The anti-lockdown studies, on the other hand, are evidence-based, robust, and thorough, grappling with the data we have (with all its flaws) and looking at the results in light of controls on the population. 

  Much of the following list has been put together by data engineer Ivor Cummins, who has waged a year-long educational effort to upend intellectual support for lockdowns. AIER has added its own and the summaries. The upshot is that the virus is going to do as viruses do, same as always in the history of infectious disease. We have extremely limited control over them, and that which we do have is bound up with time and place. Fear, panic, and coercion are not ideal strategies for managing viruses. Intelligence and medical therapeutics fare much better. 

  (These studies are focused only on lockdown and their relationship to virus control. They do not get into the myriad associated issues that have vexed the world such as mask mandates, PCR-testing issues, death misclassification problem, or any particular issues associated with travel restrictions, restaurant closures, and hundreds of other particulars about which whole libraries will be written in the future.) 

  1. “A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes” by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, Sheila Riazi. EClinicalMedicine 25 (2020) 100464. “[F]ull lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”

  2. “Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary?” by Christof Kuhbandner, Stefan Homburg, Harald Walach, Stefan Hockertz. Advance: Sage Preprint, June 23, 2020. “Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions became effective. Several reasons for such an autonomous decline have been suggested. One is that differences in host susceptibility and behavior can result in herd immunity at a relatively low prevalence level. Accounting for individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to the coronavirus yields a maximum of 17% to 20% of the population that needs to be infected to reach herd immunity, an estimate that is empirically supported by the cohort of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Another reason is that seasonality may also play an important role in dissipation.”

  3. “Estimation of the current development of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany” by Matthias an der Heiden, Osamah Hamouda. Robert Koch-Institut, April 22, 2020. “In general, however, not all infected people develop symptoms, not all those who develop symptoms go to a doctor’s office, not all who go to the doctor are tested and not all who test positive are also recorded in a data collection system. In addition, there is a certain amount of time between all these individual steps, so that no survey system, no matter how good, can make a statement about the current infection process without additional assumptions and calculations.”

  4. Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown? by Simon N. Wood. Cornell University pre-print, August 8, 2020. “A Bayesian inverse problem approach applied to UK data on COVID-19 deaths and the disease duration distribution suggests that infections were in decline before full UK lockdown (24 March 2020), and that infections in Sweden started to decline only a day or two later. An analysis of UK data using the model of Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature 584) gives the same result under relaxation of its prior assumptions on R.”

  5. “Comment on Flaxman et al. (2020): The illusory effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe” by Stefan Homburg and Christof Kuhbandner. June 17, 2020. Advance, Sage Pre-Print. “In a recent article, Flaxman et al. allege that non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed by 11 European countries saved millions of lives. We show that their methods involve circular reasoning. The purported effects are pure artefacts, which contradict the data. Moreover, we demonstrate that the United Kingdom’s lockdown was both superfluous and ineffective.”

  6. Professor Ben Israel’s Analysis of virus transmission. April 16, 2020. “Some may claim that the decline in the number of additional patients every day is a result of the tight lockdown imposed by the government and health authorities. Examining the data of different countries around the world casts a heavy question mark on the above statement. It turns out that a similar pattern – rapid increase in infections that reaches a peak in the sixth week and declines from the eighth week – is common to all countries in which the disease was discovered, regardless of their response policies: some imposed a severe and immediate lockdown that included not only ‘social distancing’ and banning crowding, but also shutout of economy (like Israel); some ‘ignored’ the infection and continued almost a normal life (such as Taiwan, Korea or Sweden), and some initially adopted a lenient policy but soon reversed to a complete lockdown (such as Italy or the State of New York). Nonetheless, the data shows similar time constants amongst all these countries in regard to the initial rapid growth and the decline of the disease.”

  7. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: a quasi-experimental study” by Paul Raymond Hunter, Felipe Colon-Gonzalez, Julii Suzanne Brainard, Steve Rushton. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “The current epidemic of COVID-19 is unparalleled in recent history as are the social distancing interventions that have led to a significant halt on the economic and social life of so many countries. However, there is very little empirical evidence about which social distancing measures have the most impact… From both sets of modelling, we found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders and closure of all non-businesses was not associated with any independent additional impact.”

  8. “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic” by Thomas Meunier. MedRxiv Pre-print May 1, 2020. “This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”

  9. “Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe” by Marco Colombo, Joseph Mellor, Helen M Colhoun, M. Gabriela M. Gomes, Paul M McKeigue. MedRxiv Pre-print. Posted September 28, 2020. “The classic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model formulated by Kermack and McKendrick assumes that all individuals in the population are equally susceptible to infection. From fitting such a model to the trajectory of mortality from COVID-19 in 11 European countries up to 4 May 2020 Flaxman et al. concluded that ‘major non-pharmaceutical interventions — and lockdowns in particular — have had a large effect on reducing transmission’. We show that relaxing the assumption of homogeneity to allow for individual variation in susceptibility or connectivity gives a model that has better fit to the data and more accurate 14-day forward prediction of mortality. Allowing for heterogeneity reduces the estimate of ‘counterfactual’ deaths that would have occurred if there had been no interventions from 3.2 million to 262,000, implying that most of the slowing and reversal of COVID-19 mortality is explained by the build-up of herd immunity. The estimate of the herd immunity threshold depends on the value specified for the infection fatality ratio (IFR): a value of 0.3% for the IFR gives 15% for the average herd immunity threshold.”

  10. “Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions” by Ken Rice, Ben Wynne, Victoria Martin, Graeme J Ackland. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000.”

  11. “Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis” by Amir Shlomai, Ari Leshno, Ella H Sklan, Moshe Leshno. MedRxiv Pre-Print. September 20, 2020. “A nationwide lockdown is expected to save on average 274 (median 124, interquartile range (IQR): 71-221) lives compared to the ‘testing, tracing, and isolation’ approach. However, the ICER will be on average $45,104,156 (median $ 49.6 million, IQR: 22.7-220.1) to prevent one case of death. Conclusions: A national lockdown has a moderate advantage in saving lives with tremendous costs and possible overwhelming economic effects. These findings should assist decision-makers in dealing with additional waves of this pandemic.” 

  12. Too Little of a Good Thing A Paradox of Moderate Infection Control, by Ted Cohen and Marc Lipsitch. Epidemiology. 2008 Jul; 19(4): 588–589. “The link between limiting pathogen exposure and improving public health is not always so straightforward. Reducing the risk that each member of a community will be exposed to a pathogen has the attendant effect of increasing the average age at which infections occur. For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals.”

  13. “Smart Thinking, Lockdown and COVID-19: Implications for Public Policy” by Morris Altman. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2020. “The response to COVID-19 has been overwhelmingly to lockdown much of the world’s economies in order to minimize death rates as well as the immediate negative effects of COVID-19. I argue that such policy is too often de-contextualized as it ignores policy externalities, assumes death rate calculations are appropriately accurate and, and as well, assumes focusing on direct Covid-19 effects to maximize human welfare is appropriate. As a result of this approach current policy can be misdirected and with highly negative effects on human welfare. Moreover, such policies can inadvertently result in not minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities) at all, especially in the long run. Such misdirected and sub-optimal policy is a product of policy makers using inappropriate mental models which are lacking in a number of key areas; the failure to take a more comprehensive macro perspective to address the virus, using bad heuristics or decision-making tools, relatedly not recognizing the differential effects of the virus, and adopting herding strategy (follow-the-leader) when developing policy. Improving the decision-making environment, inclusive of providing more comprehensive governance and improving mental models could have lockdowns throughout the world thus yielding much higher levels of human welfare.”

  14. “SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution” by Levan Djaparidze and Federico Lois. MedRxiv pre-print, October 23, 2020. “We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (i.e. schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021). We also modeled how average isolation levels change the probability of getting infected for a single individual that isolates differently than average. That led us to realize disease damages to third parties due to virus spreading can be calculated and to postulate that an individual has the right to avoid isolation during epidemics (SARS-CoV-2 or any other).”

  15. “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison” by Christian Bjørnskov. SSRN working paper, August 2, 2020. “The lockdowns in most Western countries have thrown the world into the most severe recession since World War II and the most rapidly developing recession ever seen in mature market economies. They have also caused an erosion of fundamental rights and the separation of powers in a  large part of the world as both democratic and autocratic regimes have misused their emergency powers and ignored constitutional limits to policy-making (Bjørnskov and Voigt, 2020). It is therefore important to evaluate whether and to which extent the lockdowns have worked as officially intended: to suppress the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent deaths associated with it. Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended.”

  16.”Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19” (alt-link) by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky, and Tao Zha. NBER working paper 27719, August 2020. “One of the central policy questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is the question of which non-pharmeceutical interventions governments might use to influence the transmission of the disease. Our ability to identify empirically which NPI’s have what impact on disease transmission depends on there being enough independent variation in both NPI’s and disease transmission across locations as well as our having robust procedures for controlling for other observed and unobserved factors that might be influencing disease transmission. The facts that we document in this paper cast doubt on this premise…. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion.”

  17. “How does Belarus have one of the lowest death rates in Europe?” by Kata Karáth. British Medical Journal, September 15, 2020. “Belarus’s beleaguered government remains unfazed by covid-19. President Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events like the Belarusian football league or the Victory Day parade. Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe—just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million with over 73 000 confirmed cases.”

  18. “Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England” by Harriet Forbes, Caroline E Morton, Seb Bacon et al., by MedRxiv, November 2, 2020. “Among 9,157,814 adults ≤65 years, living with children 0-11 years was not associated with increased risks of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 related hospital or ICU admission but was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 death (HR 0.75, 95%CI 0.62-0.92). Living with children aged 12-18 years was associated with a small increased risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection (HR 1.08, 95%CI 1.03-1.13), but not associated with other COVID-19 outcomes. Living with children of any age was also associated with lower risk of dying from non-COVID-19 causes. Among 2,567,671 adults >65 years there was no association between living with children and outcomes related to SARS-CoV-2. We observed no consistent changes in risk following school closure.”

  19. “Exploring inter-country coronavirus mortality“ By Trevor Nell, Ian McGorian, Nick Hudson. Pandata, July 7, 2020. “For each country put forward as an example, usually in some pairwise comparison and with an attendant single cause explanation, there are a host of countries that fail the expectation. We set out to model the disease with every expectation of failure. In choosing variables it was obvious from the outset that there would be contradictory outcomes in the real world. But there were certain variables that appeared to be reliable markers as they had surfaced in much of the media and pre-print papers. These included age, co-morbidity prevalence and the seemingly light population mortality rates in poorer countries than that in richer countries. Even the worst among developing nations—a clutch of countries in equatorial Latin America—have seen lighter overall population mortality than the developed world. Our aim therefore was not to develop the final answer, rather to seek common cause variables that would go some way to providing an explanation and stimulating discussion. There are some very obvious outliers in this theory, not the least of these being Japan. We test and find wanting the popular notions that lockdowns with their attendant social distancing and various other NPIs confer protection.”

  20. “Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” by Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg, and Jean-François Toussaint. Frontiers in Public Health, 19 November 2020. “Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [−35/−125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.”

  21. “States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions” by Adam McCann. WalletHub, Oct 6, 2020. This study assesses and ranks stringencies in the United States by states. The results are plotted against deaths per capita and unemployment. The graphics reveal no relationship in stringency level as it relates to the death rates, but finds a clear relationship between stringency and unemployment. 

  22. The Mystery of Taiwan: Commentary on the Lancet Study of Taiwan and New Zealand, by Amelia Janaskie. American Institute for Economic Research, November 2, 2020. “The Taiwanese case reveals something extraordinary about pandemic response. As much as public-health authorities imagine that the trajectory of a new virus can be influenced or even controlled by policies and responses, the current and past experiences of coronavirus illustrate a different point. The severity of a new virus might have far more to do with endogenous factors within a population rather than the political response. According to the lockdown narrative, Taiwan did almost everything ‘wrong’ but generated what might in fact be the best results in terms of public health of any country in the world.”

  23. “Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line” by Michael Levitt, Andrea Scaiewicz, Francesco Zonta. MedRxiv, Pre-print, June 30, 2020. “Comparison of locations with over 50 deaths shows all outbreaks have a common feature: H(t) defined as loge(X(t)/X(t-1)) decreases linearly on a log scale, where X(t) is the total number of Cases or Deaths on day, t (we use ln for loge). The downward slopes vary by about a factor of three with time constants (1/slope) of between 1 and 3 weeks; this suggests it may be possible to predict when an outbreak will end. Is it possible to go beyond this and perform early prediction of the outcome in terms of the eventual plateau number of total confirmed cases or deaths? We test this hypothesis by showing that the trajectory of cases or deaths in any outbreak can be converted into a straight line. Specifically Y(t)≡−ln(ln(N/X(t)),is a straight line for the correct plateau value N, which is determined by a new method, Best-Line Fitting (BLF). BLF involves a straight-line facilitation extrapolation needed for prediction; it is blindingly fast and amenable to optimization. We find that in some locations that entire trajectory can be predicted early, whereas others take longer to follow this simple functional form.” 

  24. “Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response” by John Gibson. New Zealand Economic Papers, August 25, 2020. “The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 19:00

• SIFMA Issues Paper To Assist With Planning For Negative Rates In The US
  SIFMA Issues Paper To Assist With Planning For Negative Rates In The US

  If one listens to the Fed, or looks at market-implied odds of subzero rates…

  

  … the US will – unlike Europe or Japan – avoid the devastating central bank experiment that is negative interest rates, which not only does not encourage inflation but in fact ensures even greater savings, even less spending…

  

  … even more disinflation and even greater bank losses as yield curves pancake.

  Yet is there more than meets the eye here, and behind the optimistic facade of the imminent reflation trade, are the biggest US financial institutions quietly preparing for negative rates?

  This is a question that bears asking, after this morning the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) issued a white paper to assist market participants with planning for the potential of a negative interest-rate policy in the US. The paper, titled “U.S. Negative Interest Rates Policy Checklist,” is co-authored by Sifma and Ernst & Young LLP

  “While Sifma is not forecasting a U.S. negative interest rates policy, near term, our members do consider the need to prepare for such a possibility,” Sifma’s Charles DeSimone said in a press release accompanying the report. “While the probability is low, the impact would be high.”

  And while Sifma – which is the biggest industry trade group representing securities firms, banks, and asset management companies – may not be forecasting negative rates, it was explicit enough in its intro to make it clear that NIRP remains a distinct possibility for the US:

  The potential impact of a negative interest rate (NIR) policy in the US continues to be discussed by market participants. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell has previously stated that the US does not see negative interest rates as an appropriate policy response to economic disruption caused by the pandemic. However, the uncertainty of US economic recovery and the current 0% to 0.25% monetary policy target range for the federal funds rate continues to lead market participants to consider the future possibility of an NIR policy in the US.

  Then, in a moment of bizarre absurdity, next to a photo of a jenga tower that is about to collapse (think The Big Short), the paper describes how certain capital markets products may be impacted in the event of negative interest rates in the US, followed by a checklist of considerations that can be used by firms seeking to mobilize negative interest readiness programs within their institutions. The checklist is structured across the following key themes: US NIR program governance and mobilization; financial exposure analysis; contract and counterparty customer analysis; portfolio strategies and profitability; technology and operations; finance, tax and accounting; and regulatory and policy considerations.

  

  While we have discussed the myriad negative consequences that would result from NIRP previously, the paper did recap some of the potential horror stories that it now appears may be coming to the US (because otherwise, this paper would never have been published):

  • NIR could result in derivative product floating rate payments (inclusive of any spread) becoming negative. For products such as swaps, this could result in one party having to pay (or receive) on both legs (i.e., the fixed leg and the absolute value of the floating leg)… Further, derivative trade capture and pricing models may need significant enhancements to account for negative payments, forward curves and negative strikes, and other models such as prepayment models and market risk, counterparty risk and margin models may need enhancements to handle negative rates. The impacts to third parties such as central clearing parties and exchanges will also need to be understood and addressed.
  • Given that the repo rate is typically set based on a market benchmark interest rate, there is potential that repo rates could go negative if the US were to adopt an NIR policy. There is precedence of repo rates falling into negative territory in the US, but the driver historically has been high market demand of certain collateral (i.e., repo special issue trading). So, while operations and technology systems may have been tested and workarounds created for such events, additional challenges may arise if those solutions are not scalable or cannot handle large volumes of negative rate repos, as would be expected in an NIR environment.
  • In a negative rate environment, clients could experience a negative yield on sweep balances, while additional management fees or expenses would further reduce incentives for investors to hold excess cash in such sweep products. Customers may chase yield and avoid sweep products with negative interest rates by moving funds to free credit balances, other sweep vehicles or products with a higher risk profile.

  Read the full paper here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:40

• When Market Ebullience Meets A Left Hook
  When Market Ebullience Meets A Left Hook

  Peter Boockvar, CIO of Bleakley Advisory Group, joins Real Vision editor Jack Farley to break down his market outlook as stimulus talks draw to a close and an alarming new strain of COVID-19 spreads throughout the United Kingdom. Boockvar makes his case for why inflation will continue to rise alongside nominal yields in 2021, and he explains why this macro outlook leads him to look favorably upon commodities and value stocks that trade at significantly low price/earnings multiples since he expects multiples to compress across the equity landscape as nominal yields rise. Boockvar gives a strategic update on the state of the Fed’s QE programs and argues that the expiration of the Fed’s emergency lending programs is not unwelcome and, in fact, is overdue. Lastly, Boockvar shares with Farley several stocks on his radar, such as CVS Health Corp ($CVS) and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc ($WBA) as well as evaluates their future business prospect. In the intro, Real Vision’s Haley Draznin monitors the markets as stimulus relief package passes in the US and a new strain of the coronavirus emerged in England, prompting fresh travel restrictions across Europe.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:30

• Red And Blue States: It's Time For A Multistate Solution
  Red And Blue States: It’s Time For A Multistate Solution

  Authored by James Ketler via The Mises Institute,

  Far from being a unitive force, powerful, centralized government only serves to pit blocs of the electorate against each other. Division grows in lockstep with the ceaseless expansion of federal power, and the 2020 presidential election was a mere symptom of how heated that division has become. How much worse can it get? That remains to be seen. After Joe Biden’s contested presidential win, the country may have to break apart into multiple independent political units if it is to avert further social disintegration.

  

  Power and Polarization

  To win elections, candidates must pander to the lowest common political denominator; i.e., they must promise to expand wide-reaching projects like social security, public healthcare, economic stimulus, and the military. In fact, candidates are incentivized to outpromise one another and when in power to follow through on carrying out at least some of those promises in the interest of reelection. The mass-democratic structure lubricates this process, as costs are distributed across the entire population and thus become more or less “hidden.” That’s led to a constant, creeping growth in government power, behind which Republicans and Democrats almost always form a united front. As Tom Woods says: “No matter who you vote for, you always wind up getting John McCain.” Within that statist unity, however, exist the seeds of electoral division.

  Old, widely accepted government programs are used by politicians as a springboard for new, more expansive powers. Consider, for instance, the Green New Deal; it could only have been seriously proposed because of the broad-based support the New Deal programs have today. Each new law, regulation, bureau, and program is like a brick on top of which many others can be laid. Government seldom abrogates any of its power, tending instead towards constantly expanding it. That raises the stakes higher and higher with each successive election, with the winning party taking office with more power than ever before.

  Centrally, as vote seekers, candidates must always work to demonize the opposition and distance themselves from them. To safeguard their own interests, voters must factionalize behind one candidate or the other, often coming to develop a deep, politico-cultural affinity with their choice, though they may only be the “lesser of two evils.” This drives a sharp wedge down the center of the political spectrum, pushing both sides further and further apart. As competing ideologies vie for control of the system, smaller and more amicable politico-cultural disputes thus become the faultlines of national fractionation. Many nuanced opinions are pounded into the ground and replaced, instead, by the Republican-Democrat binary. These two sides look at politics with irreconcilable politico-cultural presuppositions, driving each side—as both fight for control of the same system—to hate the other.

  Once one party seizes control of the federal apparatus, it tries to solidify support from independents and moderates, while also working to “punish” its political rivals. From the enlightened, liberal principles that originally drove its adoption in the West, democracy has melted and deformed—as it was always inevitably bound to—into an arena of open-faced realpolitik. Both parties seek to win by any means necessary, and the losers must always “accept the results of the election”—that is, have the will of the majority imposed upon them. It’s a system that neither side can consistently accept and that both—for the good of the people—must agree to reject.

  America’s Division Crisis

  Nearly eight in ten Republican voters agree that this year’s presidential election was rigged against President Trump through the perpetration of widespread voter fraud. Biden’s “win” was, as they see it, a fait accompli—predetermined before the first vote was cast. The legitimacy of the past few elections have been widely contested, moreover, as with, for instance, the Democrats’ accusations of Russian interference in 2016. After years of investigations and hearings, at least, those accusations were proven false, but this time around, further inquiry into the Republicans’ claims of voter fraud have been blocked by the mainstream media and the Washington establishment. With just cause, therefore, Trump loyalists have grasped at every legal recourse they can find in hopes that something will stick. But the bid to overturn the election was, from its inception, a long shot. On January 20, the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump will be forced under the yoke of a Biden presidency, which will only serve to turn up the heat in the country even more.

  Nevertheless, Joe Biden has continuously tried to position himself as a moral leader who will “unite” the nation. In his November 7 victory address, he said, “I will govern as an American president. I’ll work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” Does anyone, though, actually believe that? Biden’s politics have differed over the years, but it’s clear that his 2020 agenda is by far further to the left than that of any other president in American history. At his side is Kamala Harris, who was rated the most progressive senator in all of Congress last year. How can anyone pretend to imagine that the next administration will be at all “unifying”? Better yet, how can anyone think any modern presidency will bring America together? Since 2016, the Democratic Party has freely embraced the tenets of socialism and radical progressive politics, while the rise of Trump helped fuel the growth of a new “America First” nationalist populism in the Republican Party. In just the past four years, the two parties have aggressively shifted away from each other and toward their ideological fringes. Moving forward, that split will likely only widen further.

  On the campaign trail, Biden identified himself as a “transition candidate” for a deeper, more radical leftism coming down the line. First, the likes of Kamala Harris will take the reins of the country; then, AOC and “the Squad.” The Constitution-bashing, history-flipping platform of these soon-to-be party leaders will only exacerbate left-right tensions even further as they deal the coup de grâce to America’s founding principles. On the conservative side, Trump insiders have already pointed to the possibility of the outgoing president staging a comeback campaign in 2024. And if he doesn’t run himself, it’ll be one of his children, or his closest allies in Congress—perhaps Tom Cotton or Matt Gaetz. The “Trump brand” looks like it’s here to stay in the Republican Party, and, if it is, it will continue to focus on carrying out the MAGA agenda. In fact, after four years of Biden, the Trump camp may be more energized than ever before. As the national consciousness continues to fork apart all the more diametrically, friends and neighbors will become—in the affairs of state, at least—ever more bitter enemies, and the dream of a “united” US will fall further out of reach.

  With that in mind, we must ask: Why should America be a single country at all? The states have for years already been working to nullify federal legislation on guns, drugs, healthcare, immigration, the environment, and police militarization. Why hold the states together in a union whose diktats they each want to escape? That steady resistance is unlikely to do anything but grow. Last month, after one of Biden’s top covid policy advisors called for a national lockdown, more than a dozen Republican governors expressed their refusal to comply. How much more will it take before states decide to just walk away entirely?

  Secession would give states full sovereignty over their own affairs, so that voters could live under policies more friendly and suitable to their own local and regional interests. There would no longer be a system of national politics, through which voters control and domineer others hundreds of miles away. From the very earliest years of the republic, secession was considered a viable possibility. The United States was not considered a single, monolithic blob, as it often is today, but rather a voluntary confederation of free and independent states associated for the preservation of the common good. If the political tides turned and the Union ceased to be beneficial to its constituent parts, each was free to leave it. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson made this clear:

  “[I]f any state in the union will declare that it prefers separation….I have no hesitation in saying ‘let us separate.’ I would rather the states should withdraw, which are for unlimited commerce & war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace & agriculture.”

  Though the public perception of secession has been radically altered since the Civil War, America’s founding principles respect the right of every state to leave the Union. At this point, the states’ reassertion of that right has been long overdue. Secession is now the only way for the millions of tired and fed-up Americans to protect their interests against federal tyranny. Without it, nothing else can prevent the eventual breakdown of the social order, which is looming in the country’s future.

  Just this past summer, far-left looters clashed violently with right-wing groups and police in city streets across the nation from Portland to Kenosha. Some of the postelection “Stop the Steal” rallies have themselves led to dangerous confrontations, including stabbings in Washington, DC, and a shooting in Washington State. Indeed, a poll from September revealed that around 20 percent of voters in general would eagerly support the use of violence against their political opponents. Although the pivotal spark may have not yet arrived, the scaffolding for potential civil disaster is already in place. When the last straw breaks, will America spiral into chaos and insurrection, or will cooler heads agree to peaceful separation?

  A Secessionist Moment

  The idea of secession is, thankfully, neither alien nor farfetched to voters. In fact, widespread calls for secession have already been made in response to recent presidential elections. After Obama’s reelection, the White House’s “We the People” initiative was inundated by petitions from all fifty states to be granted the right of unilateral secession. When Trump was elected, Democrats in Oregon and California organized serious mass secessionist movements that almost led to both states holding referenda on the topic. With each new election, the politico-cultural divide in America grows deeper and a national breakup looks all the more alluring. The impending Biden presidency may be the drop that spills the bucket.

  A poll from Hofstra University this past September found that 44 percent of Republican respondents were open to the possibility of seceding if Joe Biden was elected. For millions of Trump voters, self-determination is an essential component to preserving their families, finances, and ways of life. Even Rush Limbaugh—the “king of conservative talk radio”—recently pondered whether, without secession, right-wing ideals can ever truly “win” again. If some Republican-majority states managed to leave the Union, that might mean lower taxes, fewer regulations, the repeal of gun laws, a new gold standard, school choice, abortion bans, and a more free healthcare market across the board. As independent states, they may discover that Trumpian politics doesn’t actually represent them after all and instead forge paths more in line with their own local traditions. At last, political diversity would be allowed to emerge and flourish in these smaller, decentralized states, keeping the government more homegrown and orienting politics more toward the interests of the people.

  What’s most promising is that a few recent murmurings of secession have actually come from GOP lawmakers. After the election, Price Wallace, a state congressman from Mississippi, expressed his interest in secession, followed by Congressman Randy Weber, who succeeded Ron Paul for Texas’s fourteenth congressional district seat. Weber’s secessionist endorsement helped generate attention for the Texas Nationalist Movement (or “Texit”), including a sudden spike in the group’s membership registrations. Weeks later, Texas state congressman Kyle Biedermann announced that when the Texas House resumes session in January, he’ll introduce a bill to allow a popular referendum on the question of secession. Seemingly in support of Biedermann’s proposal, the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Allen West, then commented, “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution.” Evidently, state legislators are entertaining the notion, many with considerable interest.

  America may be on the brink of a “secessionist moment,” and if it is, the time to dismount the surly tiger of big government is now. Like dominoes, the process need only begin with one single state and many more will surely follow. After everything, that’s the only real solution left for America—shaking hands, splitting up, and staying friends from afar, for clearly the country has already split apart in heart, mind, and soul, and at last this internal reality must be reflected in the legal reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 12/21/2020 – 18:20

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