- Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?
Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?
Commentary authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it.
A woman walks a dog near the ruins of an ancient Roman aqueduct, in a park in a suburb of Rome, on July 28, 2017. (Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images) Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Every day things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile.
Consider contemporary Venezuela. By 2010, the once well-off oil-exporting country was mired in a self-created mess. Food became scarce, crime ubiquitous.
Radical socialism, nationalization, corruption, jailing opponents, and the destruction of constitutional norms were the culprits.
Between 2009 and 2016, a once relatively stable Greece nearly became a Third World country. So did Great Britain in its socialist days of the 1970s.
Joe Biden’s young presidency may already be leading the United States into a similar meltdown.
Hard Left “woke” ideology has all but obliterated the idea of a border. Millions of impoverished foreigners are entering the United States illegally—and during a pandemic without either COVID-19 tests or vaccinations.
The health bureaucracies have lost credibility as official communiques on masks, herd and acquired immunity, vaccinations, and comorbidities apparently change and adjust to perceived political realities.
After decades of improving race relations, America is regressing into a pre-modern tribal society.
Crime soars. Inflation roars. Meritocracy is libeled and so we are governed more by ideology and tribe.
The soaring prices of the stuff of life—fuel, food, housing, health care, transportation—are strangling the middle class.
Millions stay home, content to be paid by the state not to work. Supply shortages and empty shelves are the new norm.
Nineteenth-century-style train robberies are back. So is 1970s urban violence, replete with looting, carjackings, and random murdering of the innocent.
After the Afghanistan debacle, we have returned to the dark days following defeat in Vietnam, when U.S. deterrence abroad was likewise shattered, and global terrorism and instability were the norms abroad.
Who could have believed a year ago that America would now beg Saudi Arabia and Russia to pump more oil—as we pulled our own oil leases, and canceled pipelines and oil fields?
Our path to systems collapse is not due to an earthquake, climate change, a nuclear war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead, most of our maladies are self-inflicted. They are the direct result of woke ideologies that are both cruel and antithetical to traditional American pragmatism.
Hard-Left district attorneys in our major cities refuse to charge thousands of arrested criminals—relying instead on bankrupt social justice theories.
Law enforcement has been arbitrarily defunded and libeled. Police deterrence is lost, so looters, vandals, thieves, and murderers more freely prey on the public.
“Modern monetary theory” deludes ideologues that printing trillions of dollars can enrich the public, even as the ensuing inflation is making people poorer.
“Critical race theory” absurdly dictates that current “good” racism can correct the effects of past bad racism. A once tolerant, multiracial nation is resembling the factionalism of the former Yugoslavia.
The culprit again is a callous woke ideology that posits little value for individuals, prioritizing only the so-called collective agenda.
Woke’s trademark is “equity,” or a forced equality of result. Practically, we are becoming a comic-book version of victims and victimizers, with woke opportunists playacting as our superheroes.
Strangest in 2021 was the systematic attack on our ancient institutions, as we scapegoated our ancestors for our own incompetencies.
The woke have waged a veritable war against the 233-year-old Electoral College and the right of states to set their own balloting laws in national elections, the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year-old, 50-state union.
The U.S. military, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, Center for Disease Control, and National Institutes of Health until recently were revered. Their top echelons were staffed by career professionals mostly immune to the politics of the day.
Not now. These bureaus and agencies are losing public confidence and support. Citizens fear rather than respect Washington grandees who have weaponized politics ahead of public service.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Attorney General Merrick Garland, former FBI heads like James Comey and Andrew McCabe, retired CIA director John Brennan, and Anthony Fauci head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have all politicized and vastly exceeded their professional purviews.
They sounded off in public fora as if they were elected legislators up for reelection. Some lied under oath. Others demonized critics. Most sought to become media darlings.
This governmental freefall is overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden seems to believe his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.
As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:40 - Renting Robots For Less Than Minimum Wage Is A Boon For Companies
Renting Robots For Less Than Minimum Wage Is A Boon For Companies
Automation has rapidly expanded in businesses of all sizes to cope with rising wages and labor shortages. Robotics help firms streamline otherwise inefficient tasks and slash labor costs amid an inflationary environment.
Orders for robotic machinery have jumped for automotive, agricultural, construction, electronics, food processing, and warehousing companies. The benefits of employing a robot over a human are now being realized for small and medium-sized companies.
Jose Figueroa, who manages Polar Manufacturing, a small company that produces hinges, locks, and brackets in south Chicago, told Wired that he employed a robot on the production line that costs only $8 per hour versus a minimum wage of $15 per hour for humans. He said the robot has allowed workers to concentrate on other tasks while increasing output.
“Smaller companies sometimes suffer because they can’t spend the capital to invest in new technology,” Figueroa said.
“We’re just struggling to get by with the minimum wage increase,” he added.
Polar pays $8 an hour to use the robot, making it very affordable for small businesses. The manager expects 25 of these production line robots within five years. As for the 70 employees, he expects to retain them but said robots had made it so that no new hires are needed.
Over the last two years, the virus pandemic has created a shortage of workers and a whole host of inflationary pressures, from wages to transportation to energy costs, squeezing margins and forcing companies to become more efficient and or pass along the extra costs to consumers.
Another small business, called Georgia Nut, a confectionery company in Skokie, Illinois, struggles with labor shortages and employs robots for $8 an hour.
“Anything that can help reduce labor count or the need for labor is obviously a plus at this particular time,” Steve Chmura, chief operating officer at Georgia Nut, said.
Companies like Formic make it possible for small and medium-sized firms to reduce operating expenses and increase capacity by allowing them to pay per hour for robots. Renting robots is a gamechanger for smaller companies than outright purchasing one.
Robotics as a service is driving a new wave of affordable automation. This will only accelerate the automation wave (something we’ve described for years) that will displace millions of workers by the end of the decade.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:20 - Ivermectin Could Destroy Justification For Lockdowns And Vaccine Mandates
Ivermectin Could Destroy Justification For Lockdowns And Vaccine Mandates
Authored by Harry Lee and Nicholas VandenNieuwenhof via The Epoch Times,
Federal health agencies haven’t recognized ivermectin as an effective treatment for COVID-19 patients. According to Doctor Leland Stillman, the reason is more political than scientific, because otherwise there would be no basis for lockdowns or vaccine mandates.
“If ivermectin were recognized by the public health and academic establishment as the drug that it is, that treats acute viral illnesses, one of which is COVID-19, the entire justification for lockdowns, mandates, let alone vaccine research and development would evaporate overnight,” Stillman told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.
Dr. Leland Stillman in an interview with The Epoch Times in Arizona in December, 2021. (The Epoch Times)
According to Section 564 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (pdf), the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can only issue emergency use authorization if certain criteria are met, including “there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product.”
So if there’s an approved alternative, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—an agency in HHS—can’t issue emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines.
Stillman said it’s not a conspiracy theory or even an isolated opinion that ivermectin works for treating COVID-19, because tens of thousands of physicians all over the world have recognized its effectiveness.
File photo: A package of ivermectin tablets. (Natasha Holt/The Epoch Times)
The Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a nonprofit organization working on protocols to treat patients with COVID-19, regards ivermectin as a core medication used in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Its website cites 142 studies, among which 93 are peer-reviewed, and 75 with results comparing treatment and control groups showing ivermectin works.
However, the FDA has repeatedly said that “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directed The Epoch Times to contact the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for COVID-19 treatments. NIH referred to their online guidelines about ivermectin: “There is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.”
Stillman explained why many doctors are silent on recognizing ivermectin as an effective drug for COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
“And the reality that’s really important for people to understand is that doctors can lose their licenses or lose their board certification, which is very important for their income based on insurance guidelines, for speaking out as I have chosen to,” Stillman said.
Stillman said he is able to speak up because he’s one of very few doctors in the country who takes cash and doesn’t work with insurance companies.
Graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, Stillman is now practicing medicine in Kissimmee, Florida. His focus is to help people achieve health with integrative medicine, which combines a number of different modalities, such as traditional Chinese medicine, herbs, nutrition, diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes.
Two prominent scientists, Martin Kulldorff, previously a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of Medicine at Stanford University, also explained why many scientists are silent on this issue as well.
In an article published in The Epoch Times last month, the two professors said NIH and its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is headed by Anthony Fauci, control a scientific research budget of billions of dollars every year, and “channel research dollars to nearly every infectious disease epidemiologist, immunologist, and virologist of note in the United States and UK.” So it would be unwise for scientists to upset these health agencies.
“There’s a lot of politics on this,” Stillman said, referring to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“And the way it’s been politicized is really disgraceful and unfortunate. At the end of the day, it’s all about how these corporations who are profiting immensely off of the pandemic.”
Stillman said freedom is the way out of the current problem.
“Freedom is absolutely the solution,” Stillman said.
“Because if you really allow doctors to treat patients on their own terms, without insurance companies, without all this, it can be very affordable, and it can be very effective.
“Because the reality is that a lot of the care being provisioned right now, it’s just being provisioned based on some bureaucrat’s idea of what’s good medicine, not based on what the patients actually want and think is worth it to them.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 23:00 - World's First Space-Based Entertainment Studio To Be Launched In 2024
World’s First Space-Based Entertainment Studio To Be Launched In 2024
The company co-producing Tom Cruise’s upcoming space movie revealed on Thursday new plans for the world’s first space-based entertainment studio that will attach to the International Space Station (ISS).
Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), co-founded by producers Elena and Dmitry Lesnevsky, hired Texas-based Axiom Space, Inc. to build a module named SEE-1, which will dock with the Axiom Station, the commercial side of the ISS, in December 2024.
SEE-1’s low-orbit microgravity environment will host television, sports events, films, and music and allow content creators to record 250 miles above Earth.
“SEE-1 is an incredible opportunity for humanity to move into a different realm and start an exciting new chapter in space.
“It will provide a unique, and accessible home for boundless entertainment possibilities in a venue packed with innovative infrastructure, which will unleash a new world of creativity,” Dmitry and Elena Lesnevsky said.
SEE COO Richard Johnston spoke about “creating the next-generation entertainment venue in space opens countless doors to create incredible new content and make these dreams a reality.” The move is likely the birthing of the space industry.
Axiom Station is expected to separate from the ISS in 2028, and the studio module is about 20% of the station’s overall volume.
“Adding a dedicated entertainment venue to Axiom Station’s commercial capabilities in the form of SEE-1 will expand the station’s utility as a platform for a global user base and highlight the range of opportunities the new space economy offers,” Michael Suffredini, Axiom’s CEO, said.
From Apollo 13 to Gravity to Interstellar to The Martian…visual effects have already taken audiences into space on an unbelievable level. So it makes absolutely no sense to build a studio in space (from a cost analysis perspective).
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:40 - San Francisco Officials Secretly And Illegally Operating An Illicit Drug Use Cite
San Francisco Officials Secretly And Illegally Operating An Illicit Drug Use Cite
Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse via substack (emphasis ours),
San Francisco Mayor London Breed generated national news media coverage last December when she announced a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood. Shortly after, she announced a “linkage center” aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities. Breed’s announcement came in the midst of a local, state, and national debate over whether the city should open a “supervised drug consumption” site as a tactic for reducing drug overdose deaths.
When San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a “linkage center” to connect homeless drug addicts to treatment, she never mentioned it would include a supervised drug consumption site. In fact, the illicit drug consumption site has been up and running since Tuesday inside the linkage center, which is located at 1172 Market Street. The linkage center is located in the United Nations Plaza, the city’s largest open air drug market. The supervised drug consumption area is an outdoor fenced section of the linkage center.
The supervised drug use site is directly behind the green mesh. The sign on the fence says “Tenderloin Linkage Center” and names “Food and Water,” “Hygiene Services,” and “Social Support,” but makes no mention of the supervised drug use site. There is an on-going national debate over the efficacy of supervised drug consumption sites, which are prohibited by state and federal laws, and a continuing local debate over whether and where to open one in San Francisco. Mayor Breed and members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have advocated a supervised drug consumption site, and purchased two properties in the Tenderloin to serve people suffering from addiction. But the city never approved the creation of a supervised consumption site at the linkage center and the site is in violation of state and federal laws.
We are the first to report on the operation of the illegal supervised drug consumption site at the linkage center. The two of us witnessed a half-dozen people smoking fentanyl in an outdoor area on the site, and two people passed out at a table. An employee of a city contractor at the linkage center told us that two people had overdosed and been revived since the site opened on Tuesday.
People smoking fentanyl a few feet away from the linkage center’s supervised drug use site. Subscribe to Michael Schellenberger’s substack here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:20 - NASA Warns Of "Significant Solar Flare;" Radio Blackout Reported Over Indian Ocean
NASA Warns Of “Significant Solar Flare;” Radio Blackout Reported Over Indian Ocean
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory warned Thursday of a “significant solar flare” event.
The powerful burst of energy from the Sun, classified as an M5.5 class flare, sparked radio blackouts across the Indian Ocean.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare can’t pass through Earth’s atmosphere to affect humans on the ground, however – when intense enough – they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS & communications signals travel.
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) January 20, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on January 20, 2022, peaking at 1:01 am EST,” NASA said. Thursday’s eruption has been classified as an M class, which is medium-sized and leads to radio blackouts. The eruption of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun can be seen below.
According to spaceweather.com, a shortwave radio blackout across the Indian Ocean has been reported. “Aviators, mariners, and ham radio operators in the area may have noticed unusual propagation effects at frequencies below 30 MHz,” it said.
We noted last year that Solar Cycle 25 has begun and could result in a flare-up in space weather activity.
In 2017, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) planned for a massive solar event that would be strong enough to take down the power grids.
There has also been a couple of notable solar flare events in the last several years:
- Huge Solar Flare Sparks Widespread Blackouts, May Deter Korean Missile Launch This Weekend
- NASA: “Sun Erupts With Significant Flare”
A new active solar cycle could present danger to the digital economy that has become more reliant than ever on space-based and ground-based communication systems that could be prone to disruption during increasing solar activity bombarding the Earth’s ionosphere.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 22:00 - "Impossible To Regulate" – Ghost Gunner Introduces New "0% Receiver"
“Impossible To Regulate” – Ghost Gunner Introduces New “0% Receiver”
Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,
If you’re familiar with 3D printed firearms or 80% receivers, a company that may sound very familiar to you is Defense Distributed. The Austin, Texas-based company was the first to distribute 3D files for their Liberator handgun, empowering anyone with a 3D printer to assemble a firearm privately in their home.
With the ATF’s pending rule change (which can be read here), previously classified items as not firearms will become firearms, and ATF will start requiring firearms parts to be serialized and tracked like guns.
This means that under this rule change if you want to purchase a barrel for a rifle, you would have to undergo a background check like that barrel was a completed gun, even though it isn’t.
The ATF, DOJ, the anti-gun politicians, and the lobby that supports them seem to think that this will stop people from manufacturing firearms for personal use inside their homes. This couldn’t be further from the truth, even without Defense Distributed’s newest product.
Enter the Ghost Gunner 3
The Ghost Gunner 3 is a 3 Axis CNC machine that can take a metal block and create a lower receiver in a relatively short period. You can then assemble that lower into a completed firearm without it being registered.
Since the only part needed to create these homemade firearms is a block of metal (pictured below), it would be entirely impossible for the ATF to regulate these without an act of congress.
While the anti-gun politicians pat themselves on the back for “stopping the proliferation of privately made firearms,” Defense Distributed was hard at work crafting a tool that empowers citizens to expand their 2nd amendment rights and makes regulation irrelevant.
I was ecstatic to see the Ghost Gunner 3 here at SHOT Show in Las Vegas this week, and I’m excited to see what Defense Distributed does next.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:40 - Trump Calls DeSantis Feud Rumors "Fake News"
Trump Calls DeSantis Feud Rumors “Fake News”
President Trump on Thursday said media reports of conflict between he and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were “totally fake news,” adding that he foresees a good relationship down the road.
During a phone interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Hannity noted that DeSantis rejected the notion that there was conflict between the two – asking Trump “Is he right?”
“Well, he is right,” Trump replied, going on to praise DeSantis.
“The Republicans really stuck together, and it was a great thing, and Ron was one of them, and Ron wanted to run [for governor], and I endorsed him, and that helped him greatly, and he went on, and he’s done a really terrific job in Florida,” said Trump, adding “Ron has been very good. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time. It’s totally fake news.“
Watch:
Trump just MURDERED the media narrative that there’s tension between him and Gov. DeSantis by calling it “TOTALLY FAKE NEWS” pic.twitter.com/XPezBHSkcy
— Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) January 21, 2022
More via Fox News:
DeSantis, who is running for reelection this year, has seen his popularity surge among Republican voters in his state and around the nation over the past year and a half, thanks in large part to his pushback against COVID-19 restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
After Trump recently said in an interview that politicians who won’t publicly say whether they’ve received a COVID vaccine booster shot are “gutless” – which was widely seen as a shot at DeSantis – the governor appeared to return fire in an interview on the popular conservative podcast “Ruthless.” DeSantis said he should have been “much louder” in trying to convince Trump to oppose lockdowns as the pandemic was sweeping the nation in February and March 2020.
And the governor touted that “when COVID was first coming… I was telling Trump ‘stop the flights from China’ because we didn’t know what we were dealing with.” DeSantis shut down Florida as the pandemic engulfed the nation, but was also one of the first governors in 2020 to lift coronavirus restrictions.
* * *
Do you believe any of this?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:20 - The Actual Impact Of Bitcoin On War
The Actual Impact Of Bitcoin On War
Authored by Matthew Pines via BitcoinMagazine.com,
The impact of Bitcoin on war will not simply be the eradication of violence, a problem of humanity since the dawn of time…
As bitcoin has appreciated and seen increased global adoption, it has emerged as a macroeconomically relevant phenomenon. This has turned formerly theoretical debates into live, practical questions on how Bitcoin will affect geopolitical relations. The current balance of global power is defined by complex arrangements of military alliances, trade flows, ethnic and religious affinity, cultural influence, linguistic agreement, and, of course, national borders.
In this author’s view, it is hubris to expect Bitcoin to singularly override or sweep away the accumulated weight and historical inertia of this tightly-bound matrix of interlinked forces. Of course, it is tempting to smooth over this irreducible complexity and hypothesize a “saved” world, where bitcoin is that “one weird trick” to fix all that’s wrong with human civilization. This temptation to “immanentize the eschaton” is common among totalizing belief systems and becomes an emotionally attractive picture of the future, especially in an era where formerly trusted verities of common belief are losing their stabilizing force. And yet, we can still, and increasingly must, analyze the question of violence – especially state violence – in a future world order where Bitcoin is a major, if not the dominant, economic and political force.
Some reason that Bitcoin will positively adjust the calculus of violence by which states decide how and where to project power and secure their respective interests. By shifting a large portion of national wealth from easily seized and vulnerable tangible assets into digital form, the incentives to violent conflict – as a means of confiscating this wealth – are substantially reduced. This moves the locus of inter-state conflict from the battlefield to the global, competitive mining market. Real wars become hash wars, and the negative externalities of the former (death and destruction) are replaced by the positive externalities of the latter (energy efficient computation and power generation).
While this is well-reasoned and accords with the likely directional influence of Bitcoin on state competition, it is overly simplistic and incomplete. For human conflict exists on a spectrum: from soft power influence and psychological operations (psyops), gray zone subversion, and deniable covert action or sabotage to more overt forms of military violence via stand-off strikes, large-scale invasion, and (in the escalatory limit) all-out nuclear war.
To claim Bitcoin will usher in an era of enduring world peace is to argue that it will eliminate all of these long-enduring sources and methods of human conflict. It is possible it will, but there are contrary forces at play that must not be overlooked. Considering the full set of relevant factors, a more reasonable thesis to hold is one in which Bitcoin may constrain certain forms of large-scale, expensive conventional war, but may not (on net) materially reduce human conflict or substantially constrain state violence.
One can argue that all property claims, when it comes down to it, are enforced via violence or the threat thereof. (Bracket off for now the strong anthropological evidence, especially in human prehistory, that it is possible for communal social arrangements to endure with group-rights to “property,” though it remains an open question how durable these arrangements are as populations scale and cultural heterogeneity erodes the informal norms and coherence of group identity which mitigates violent dispute.) If Bitcoin succeeds in transposing most property claims from a vulnerable physical form to a more easily protected digital bearer asset, then one may argue that bitcoin removes one potent locus of physical violence from the world: physical property. However, even if one holds that all physical property claims are inherent or latent sources of violence, this doesn’t imply that all sources of human violence (namely, war) result from conflict over physical property. So even if Bitcoin succeeds in reducing one driver of war, one may not feel confident in the claim that Bitcoin fixes all, or even the dominant, drivers of war.
I) Bitcoin reduces the state budget for war … but warfighting technology improvements will give states (and everyone else) “more for less” (partly because of bitcoin).
One important, and little remarked-upon, factor is a corollary of Jeff Booth’s thesis (well-articulated in his book, ”The Price Of Tomorrow”) on the deflationary impact of technology. Much recent technological progress – especially in computational hardware, machine learning/artificial intelligence, resilient network communications, quantum computation, robotics/unmanned systems, 3D manufacturing, biological synthesis, propulsion systems, novel energetics, space launch and surveillance , among others – is being driven by and for military applications. The implication of Jeff Booth’s thesis (which has been borne out to date) is that just as technology drives exponential progress in consumer goods and services getting better and cheaper, so will the warfighter get “more for less.” More problematic, however, is that this will likely result in a proliferation of advanced technology that “democratizes” violence and distributes powerful capabilities to a broad range of human actors, with their use increasingly unconstrained by rules of engagement, Geneva Conventions, or deterrence considerations.
One can imagine a world that has fully adopted a Bitcoin standard, but in which zero-day exploits in critical enterprise software and industrial control systems are found and deployed by teenage Minecraft players, autonomous drone-swarms are built and launched by hobbyists for a few hundred dollars, a disaffected postdoc cooks up synthetic viruses in his garage laboratory, and AI-bot armies execute continuous psyops campaigns against target populations. Further, as Jeff Booth has argued, Bitcoin’s natural alignment with these deflationary forces may accelerate technological progress, which while certainly positive for civilization at large, will likely have these kinds of spillover effects.
At a different scale, once bitcoin becomes a globally-adopted neutral reserve asset, protection of domestic mining operations tightly integrated into energy grids becomes a national security issue. While mining firms within each nation will likely be regulated into coopetitive arrangements that dissuade disorderly sabotage, no such constraints will exist between states. In the zero-sum battle for the next nonce (and assuming the combination block reward and fee reflect the state of global adoption), the incentive to undercut one’s global competition will be large.
This will manifest first in sophisticated corporate espionage and sabotage operations, likely involving the same sorts of firms which now hire armies of ex-intelligence and military professionals to conduct all sorts of unsavory activities around the world. As is the case with strategically important industries today, these types of activities tend to fuse with state intelligence services. Bitcoin mining may become a strategically important industry, if not the most important such industry in the most geopolitically powerful and relevant nations.
Thus, it should not be surprising if we come to see state intelligence agencies brought into service to protect domestic mining operations and develop offensive capabilities to threaten their global competitors. Given the interconnection of these mining operations with regional energy production and grid networks, this will compound the existing risks states face in protecting against cyberattacks and disruption to critical infrastructure.
States (and/or their deniable proxies) will find and exploit vulnerabilities in each other’s mining and national Bitcoin operations, which may range from executing sophisticated supply chain attacks that compromise competitor ASICs, to outright physical or cyber-enabled sabotage. This will set off an increasingly expensive game to relocate and protect one’s domestic mining infrastructure. However, the lessons from the current spate of cyber-incidents is that the offense is inherently advantaged over defense in these types of digital environments. It could be the case that the direct, substantial incentive that Bitcoin provides energy owners to protect their networks will finally focus attention on basic cyber-hygiene, insider-threat mitigation, and effective business continuity activities, but this is more a hope than a rational expectation.
While beyond the scope of this essay to fully analyze, it is plausible that bitcoin, if adopted as the primary global neutral reserve asset, will constrain (but not eliminate) most forms of national debt finance. Note that it is likely that before it reaches equilibrium adoption as a unit of account (which could be a very long ways away), bitcoin will spend a substantial period of time as a reserve asset (taking increasingly dominant share of similar assets) in its store of value function and somewhat as a medium of exchange vehicle to settle large balances between institutions and governments and in jurisdictions which have adopted it as legal tender.
In such a period, there are reasons to believe that large states will still find willing creditors for their national debt (denominated in local currency or, more likely, USD), subject to collateral conditions relating to that nation’s (provable) bitcoin reserve. Such creditors will assess the default risk of such sovereigns in a similar manner as today (and as throughout history), and will take the nation’s bitcoin reserve, its taxing ability, fiat currency acceptability, and extant geopolitical position as factors to consider when lending out their own bitcoin to help these governments’ finance expenditures beyond their existing fiscal balance.
Note that this will likely be a much more constrained form of debt finance than we currently see, though it is hard to estimate this precisely. It most likely would not be sufficient to enable states to debt-finance large-scale, conventional wars involving mass mobilization, extensive heavy armaments, and protracted deployments, let alone decades-long occupations or “nation-building” imperial misadventures.
Even if one doubts the above argument and believes that Bitcoin will absolutely bind governments to self-fund entirely via tax arrangements subject to revised social contracts delimiting the scope of such spending, war likely won’t disappear. This is because war (especially in the form near-future technology will enable) may not be that expensive to prosecute. As we saw above, the exponential effect of technological deflation (partly enabled by bitcoin shifting investor time preference and raising the hurdle rate for productive capital investment) will accelerate the trend already underway to radically cheap, but asymmetrically effective weapons.
National defense strategies (among the most geopolitically significant states) will plausibly evolve towards a barbell strategy that combines irregular warfare capabilities with nuclear deterrence. The most expensive parts of national defense budgets derive from having to pay, train, equip, supply, transport, and provide medical benefits to human soldiers, and to construct manned platforms (e.g., aircraft carrier battlegroups) to project violent force. The next few decades will see a shift towards autonomous and unmanned weapons systems and cyber-enabled electronic warfare to deny, disrupt, and destroy similar adversary systems. Humans will be reserved for the special operations and irregular warfare activities in the broadening “gray zone” of state conflict that sits just below the threshold of overt peer-on-peer war. One perverse effect of the very power of nuclear weapons is the creation of deterrence voids for non-nuke threshold conflict, especially in deniable or gray-zone domains.
As the capabilities to cheaply execute effective operations in these domains increases, the incentive to do so, while knowing the nuclear threshold sits high above, will be strong for many states. One can imagine revanchist regimes or those disposed to take special advantage of newly affordable weapons systems to prosecute long-awaited grievances or secure what they may see as marginal, and increasingly perishable, military superiority. For example, the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war saw Azerbaijan combine drone technology and long-range sensors to direct precision fires that dominated the battlefield and decisively tipped the scales in a decades-long conflict. These capabilities would have been out of reach just a few years ago, but were made affordable to such a small state by the deflationary impact of technological progress.
It’s possible that even the relatively minimal costs of sustaining these forms of asymmetric capabilities will outweigh their benefit (priced in bitcoin, even). But this seems unlikely, especially if the technology deflation continues to make them ever cheaper, and while the world remains a contested, finite geography riven by historically embedded lines of division and political heterogeneity.
II) States will likely continue to sustain and expand world-ending nuclear capabilities, even under a Bitcoin standard, merely as a result of the locked-in logic of deterrence.
The one military technology where states are likely to be less cost sensitive are nuclear weapons. Despite the hopes of disarmament activists decades running, this particular genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The existential consequences of nuclear weapons will continue to hang like a sword of Damocles over humanity until we reach some (as yet unenvisioned) plane of enlightenment that ushers in enduring global accord. Until that time, we will require that states invest whatever is necessary in order to maintain extremely secure and reliable nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to call the U.S. government (to take one example) as a form of nuclear monarchy. While our constitution vests the Commander in Chief (CiC) executive powers over the armed forces, it formally remands the authority to declare war with the Congress. While presidents have found various ways around this particular constraint, they still feel compelled to come to Congress to receive the political dispensation offered by “authorizations to use military force.”
The time-scales of nuclear war, however, render all of that moot. Given the precious few minutes between launch detection and detonation, the CiC is given sole and unchallenged authority to issue counter-strike orders, able to select from a menu of pre-selected target packages (defined in the Single Integrated Operational Plan). This nuclear SIOP is designed explicitly to convince our nuclear adversaries that a devastating retaliatory strike is guaranteed, a deterrence logic captured by the dictum of mutually assured destruction.
The fraught stability of this system courted catastrophe several times during the Cold War, and that era was comparatively simple from a game-theoretic perspective. As more (and less stable) states continue to nuclearize, the dynamics of multi-party deterrence becomes dangerously unpredictable. Further, technology is pushing the capability envelope, from dial-a-yield “tactical” weapons (e.g., the U.S. B61 bomb) to mega-weapons (e.g., Russia’s Status-6 unmanned nuclear torpedo with a potentially 100MT payload), as well as novel delivery platforms like hypersonic glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment systems (like that recently demonstrated by China).
Now, you may be asking why this excursion on nuclear weapons. Well, if the question at issue is the degree to which Bitcoin may constrain state violence, and war in particular, it seems to me absolutely imperative to recognize the deeply embedded present system of nuclear deterrence. Such a structure – which places the power of world-ending violence in the hands of individual political leaders – isn’t likely to change anytime soon (no matter what happens with Bitcoin). Humble Bitcoiners must reconcile themselves to this unfortunate reality, and hope that the enlightened Bitcoiner leaders of the future will dedicate themselves to reinvigorate the failed non-proliferation, denuclearization, and arms-reduction efforts of our current politicians.
III) Bitcoin fixes a lot of things, but war is unlikely to be one of them (at least for the foreseeable future).
More fundamentally, human conflict isn’t always (or even mostly) motivated to directly seize monetary wealth. We fight each other for many reasons, including over scarce assets (e.g., water rights, agricultural land, minerals, rare earth metals, oil, and natural geographic features like ports, navigable waterways, straits, etc.), ethnic, tribal, or religious enmity, national pride or honor, domestic political wagging-of-the-dog, or just because of some individual leader’s mania or even group collective insanity.
While humans are capable of some wondrous things, our capacity for violence and destruction (especially against our own self-considered and “rational” interest) is legion. In the “long-run,” one can, possibly, envision a utopia of abundance where all conceivable axes of human conflict have been eliminated or mitigated. But this seems so far off as to distract from the more likely practical scenarios we must navigate in the decades ahead.
Bitcoin as a bearer asset presents immense benefits as well as security challenges for individual holders. These will scale with the scale of adoption. It will be hard to steal a nation’s or a large corporation’s bitcoin, but not impossible, and the incentives to try will be large. Right now, national governments substantially invest in securing domestic critical infrastructure – especially the financial system and its centralized, interconnected digital ledgers – from cyberattack, insider exploitation, theft, sabotage, and natural hazard disruption. Bitcoin’s ledger needs no such protection thanks to the geographic distribution, scale-free self-healing network structure, and endogenous incentives of miners (bracket off the 51% attack arguments here), but our keys do.
If you don’t believe the combined intelligence and defense capabilities of the world’s (remaining, likely most powerful) states will not invest in forms of violence, compellence, theft, sabotage, and manipulation to undercut their rival’s economic stability, I encourage more “adversarial thinking.”
Conclusion
The precise outlines of the future state of geopolitical competition in a Bitcoin standard are hard to foresee. Exactly how the incentives of Bitcoin mining and national reserve adoption may affect the calculus of inter-state violence is unknowable. Still, we can reason and explore the parameter space of possibilities given present conditions and projected trends. There are good reasons to believe that Bitcoin may reduce the incentive for large-scale, conventional war and imperial-style occupations. At the same time, such forms of state violence may become outmoded regardless of Bitcoin due to the dramatic improvement in weapons technology to asymptotically project power with relatively little cost. Further, the posture of nuclear forces – and the taught logic of deterrence we rely on to prevent their use – will likely be entirely unchanged by Bitcoin (at least for the foreseeable future).
Where does this leave us on the question of Bitcoin and war? Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic that it will fundamentally alter the strategic balance of geopolitical forces in such a way as to substantially reduce the likelihood of destructive state conflict. This is no fault of Bitcoin, which promises a great reformation and improvement in many critical aspects of our civilization. Rather, this is merely a statement that, for all its power, Bitcoin is unlikely to change (in our lifetimes, at least) inherent aspects of the human condition, existing as we are on a finite planet, burdened by the frailties of nature and our fraught history.
Bitcoin is a net good for humanity, and especially good for those states that recognize its virtues before others. Bitcoin fixes a lot of things, and these should be explained clearly and proclaimed proudly, to all who wish to hear. For all its promise however, Bitcoin is unlikely to fix war. Until it does, stay humble and stack sats.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 21:00 - Beijing Confirms More COVID Cases As Chinese Port Congestion Expected To Worsen
Beijing Confirms More COVID Cases As Chinese Port Congestion Expected To Worsen
As the number of days between now and the start of the Winter Games in Beijing continues to shrink, the number of confirmed cases of COVID acknowledged by the CCP continues to grow.
According to Bloomberg, China’s NHC reported 12 COVID infections Friday, bringing the total confirmed in the capital city to two dozen since last Saturday. Authorities once again blamed the outbreak on imported frozen food and other imported products, lest anybody question the efficacy of the CCP’s “warlike” approach to suppressing the virus. The presence of the omicron variant in the city wasn’t acknowledged until just a few days ago, and the government has been pretty tight-lipped when it comes to confirming new omicron cases.
Unfortunately for the CCP, the pandemic isn’t the only problem persistently plaguing China’s leaders ahead of the Winter Games. The ructions in China’s property sector still present a major risk to economic stability, even if shares of homebuilders have rebounded from their lows.
Here’s a breakdown of Friday’s infections, and the factors that the NHC has blamed for the infections.
Friday’s numbers include five people that are not yet showing any symptoms. Two infections were traced back to an earlier patient coming in contact with international mail from Canada that was later found to have been contaminated with the omicron variant. The remaining 10 infections are close contacts of the initial cluster detected earlier this week and driven by the delta variant at a cold storage facility dealing with imported foods, health officials said at a briefing.
Beijing has emerged as the latest COVID hotspot after China’s health authorities scrambled to contain the spread of the omicron variant in Tianjin, a coastal city near Beijing, and weeks after they locked down Xi’an, a western Chinese city of 13MM that has been locked down since just before Christmas.
While the outbreaks have interfered with production of semiconductors and other goods in Xi’an and elsewhere, China’s ports have also been struggling with disruptions – and not just the port in Tianjin.
Bloomberg reported that containers are stacking up at the already backed-up port in Shenzhen. The Yantian terminal at the Shenzen port has been forced to warn clients about the backlog, which is likely going to get worse before it gets better since the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is right around the corner.
Ships arriving to the Yantian terminal are delayed by an average seven days and the number of ships arriving from Europe and the U.S. has fallen more than 40% in the past two weeks, the terminal said in a customer advisory Wednesday. That comes on top of the problems Shenzhen port was already facing, with a viral outbreak earlier this month leading to lockdowns of districts, testing of workers and trucking delays at the Yantian and Shekou container terminals.
The congestion has prompted the Yantian terminal to say it will start restricting the acceptance of containers. To stop operations getting worse, from Friday full containers can only be trucked in four days before vessels are due to berth, the operator said.
This week is seen as the “peak” week to get goods out of China before the lengthy holiday.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:40 - Durham Vs Horowitz: Tension Over Truth & Consequences Grips FBI's Trump-Russia Reckoning
Durham Vs Horowitz: Tension Over Truth & Consequences Grips FBI’s Trump-Russia Reckoning
Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClearInvestigations.com,
As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI’s claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began.
At stake is the completeness of the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal – and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense: the abuse of the nation’s highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition presidential candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated.
Trump-Russia Special Counsel John Durham has made plain his dissent from the findings of …
… DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who concluded the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was properly “predicated.”
The drama is playing out against the clashing approaches of the two Justice Department officials tasked with scrutinizing the Russia probe’s origins and unearthing any misconduct: Durham, the Sphinx-like prosecutor with a reputation for toughness whose work continues; and Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, whose December 2019 report faulted the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe but nonetheless concluded that it was launched in good faith.
The bureau’s defenders point to Horowitz’s report to argue that the FBI’s Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, is untainted despite its extensive use of the discredited Clinton-funded Steele dossier. Though highly critical of the bureau’s use of Christopher Steele’s reports, Horowitz concluded that they “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening,” which he said had met the department’s “low threshold” for opening an investigation.
But Durham has made plain his dissent. In response to Horowitz’s report, the special counsel announced that his office had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham stressed that, unlike Horowitz, his “investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department” and has instead obtained “information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”
Durham’s office has not described the specific basis for its disagreement. But the Crossfire Hurricane advocates’ defense has a big problem: copious countervailing evidence in the public record – including in Horowitz’s own report. A considerable paper trail points to Steele’s political opposition research playing a greater role in the probe than the FBI has acknowledged:
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Numerous officials received Steele’s allegations – some meeting with the ex-British intelligence officer himself – and discussed sending them up the FBI chain weeks before July 31, 2016, the Horowitz-endorsed date when the bureau claims it opened the Russia-Trump “collusion” investigation. These encounters call into question the FBI’s claim that Steele played no role in triggering Crossfire Hurricane and that its team only received the dossier weeks after their colleagues, on Sept. 19.
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The FBI’s own records belie its claims that it decided to launch the Russia probe not because of the dossier, but instead on a vague tip recounting a London barroom conversation with a low-level Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos. Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s tip, recorded in bureau records, was that Papadopoulos had merely “suggested” that Russia had made an unspecified “suggestion” of Russian help – a thin basis upon which to investigate an entire presidential campaign.
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Upon officially opening Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, FBI officials immediately took investigative steps that mirrored the claims in the Steele dossier even though they were supposedly unaware of it. In August, the FBI team opened probes of Trump campaign figures Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort – all of whom are mentioned in the dossier – based on predicates that are just as flimsy as the Downer-Papadopoulos pretext.
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The FBI’s claim that Steele played no role in sparking the Trump-Russia probe is further called into question by top bureau officials’ previous false claims about the investigation, including Steele’s role. They not only lied to the public and Congress, but to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Above, the Horowitz report, which FBI apologists have seized upon because of its dubious headline finding that dossier compiler Christopher Steele “played no role” in sparking the Trump-Russia probe. U.S. Department of Justice
‘Definitely of Interest to the Counterintelligence Folks’
Durham’s November indictment of Igor Danchenko, Steele’s main source, was the final nail in the coffin for the Clinton-funded dossier. But to sympathetic media amplifiers of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, its origins were unscathed.
Horowitz’s report, wrote Mother Jones reporter (and early Steele media contact) David Corn, “concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump-Russia contacts had been legitimately launched” thereby proving that “there was no hoax.”
In an article attempting to demonstrate “Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation,” Charlie Savage of the New York Times said Horowitz’s report “established” that Steele’s allegations did not reach the Crossfire Hurricane team until Sept. 19, 2016, meaning that “they did not yet know about the dossier” when they launched the probe on July 31.
But if the Crossfire Hurricane team really did not learn of Steele until Sept. 19, then those leading the Russiagate probe were among the few high-ranking officials in Washington intelligence circles unaware of the dossier.
The first known Steele-FBI contact about the dossier came on July 5, more than three weeks before the Trump-Russia probe officially launched. Days before, Steele – working for the Clinton campaign via the Washington-based opposition research firm Fusion GPS – contacted Michael Gaeta, the senior FBI agent he had worked with on other matters. Gaeta was then serving in Rome as a legal attaché.
Working for the Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS, opposition researcher Christopher Steele …
… briefed the FBI’s Michael Gaeta months before the bureau says it received Steele’s dossier.
Steele, Gaeta recalled in congressional testimony, informed him that “I have some really interesting information you need to see … immediately.” Gaeta jumped at the chance: “I said, all right, I will be up there tomorrow,” and immediately caught a flight to London. At Steele’s office on that early-summer day, the former British spy briefed his eager FBI handler on the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories he had generated and handed over a copy of his first “intelligence report.”
Steele’s allegations did not stay in London, as Gaeta quickly shared them with FBI colleagues. “I couldn’t just sweep it under the rug, couldn’t discount it just on its face,” he told Congress, adding that Steele “was an established source.” On July 12, Gaeta told a colleague in the FBI’s New York field office, the then-assistant special agent in charge, about Steele’s allegations. According to Horowitz — the IG who concluded that Steele “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening” – this agent then informed his superior about the Steele allegations “the same day.” The Steele material, Horowitz’s team was told, was seen by these FBI officials as “something that needs to be handled immediately” and “definitely of interest to the Counterintelligence folks.”
On July 28, at his FBI colleague’s request, Michael Gaeta passed along copies of the two reports he had received from Steele. As Horowitz later found, the first one (dated June 20, 2016) provided by Steele to Gaeta, would later become “one of four of Steele’s reports that the FBI relied upon to support” its surveillance applications for Carter Page.
Steele’s conspiracy theories quickly made their way up the FBI chain. According to the inspector general’s report, Gaeta heard from a colleague that high-level officials were already “aware of the reports’ existence,” including at the “Executive Assistant Director (EAD) level” at FBI headquarters in Washington. This occurred, Gaeta told Congress, “on maybe the 1st of August, right around then,” or “either the 31st of July.”
“I was told by the [assistant special agent in charge] at a very high level, he goes at the EAD level at headquarters they have the reports,” Gaeta said. According to the IG report, Gaeta emailed an FBI supervisor on July 28 to report that Steele had told him that contents of two of his reports “may already be circulating at a ‘high level’ in Washington, D.C.”
Gaeta also discussed the Steele dossier claims with the legal attaché overseeing his work at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The unidentified government lawyer told the inspector general that he signed off on Gaeta’s discussions with the New York field office, and also recalled having the “expectation” that “Steele’s reporting” would be provided “to the Counterintelligence Division (CD) at FBI Headquarters within a matter of days.”
Victoria Nuland: Received information directly from Steele “in the middle of July.”
Bruce Ohr: Made contact with Steele right before the former British spy’s meeting with Gaeta on July 5, and then shortly after.
Before making the trip to see Steele in London, Gaeta also received the approval of Victoria Nuland, a senior Obama administration State Department official who now serves under President Biden. By her own telling, Nuland’s office then received information directly from Steele “in the middle of July.” Steele, Nuland recalled in a 2018 interview, “passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI.”
Yet another senior U.S. government official also shared Steele’s information with the FBI. It helped that he had a personal connection: Then-senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked alongside Steele at Fusion GPS, first made contact with Steele right before the former British spy’s meeting with Gaeta on July 5, and then shortly after. This led to a July 30 breakfast between the Ohrs and Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. – one day before Crossfire Hurricane began. At this sit-down, Ohr recalled to Congress, Steele claimed that he had evidence that Russian intelligence “had Donald Trump over a barrel.”
According to Ohr, “I wanted to provide the information he [Steele] had given me to the FBI.” He immediately reached out to Andrew McCabe, the then-deputy director of the FBI. “I went to his office to provide the information, and Lisa Page was there,” Ohr recalled, referring to the FBI attorney who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Strzok while both worked on the Trump-Russia probe. “So I provided the information to them.”
When exactly this pivotal meeting occurred has never been resolved, and all involved have a fuzzy recollection. The transcript of Ohr’s August 2018 House testimony shows him responding “Yes” to a question placing his meeting with McCabe and Page on July 30 – the same day he met Steele, and one day before the Trump-Russia probe officially began. Yet earlier in the deposition, Ohr guessed that he in fact met with McCabe and Page “in August.” When he spoke to the DOJ inspector general, Ohr “did not recall exactly when he contacted McCabe.”
Despite that testimony, Horowitz instead relied on an entry in Ohr’s calendar to determine the meeting did not take place until Oct. 18. McCabe, who was forced to resign from the department for lying about his contacts with the media, said he believes the meeting occurred in “fall 2016” and “did not remember Ohr calling him to set up the meeting or how it came to be scheduled.”
George Papadopoulos: Crossfire Hurricane’s “predicate” was vague, even exculpatory.
“Suggested … Some Kind of Suggestion”
According to the official narrative, while top-ranking FBI officials shared and discussed the Steele dossier with everyone but Crossfire Hurricane team members, the counterintelligence division decided to investigate the Trump’s campaign’s potential ties to Russia on July 31 based on an unrelated tip from Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat. At a London bar in May, campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer that Russia had offered to help the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although there was no evidence that the Trump campaign had pursued, received, or used this undefined material, FBI officials deemed this rumor sufficient grounds to investigate the campaign for potential involvement in Russia’s alleged theft of DNC emails published by Wikileaks.
Peter Strzok of the FBI wrote that Papadopoulos somehow “had advance knowledge” about Russian hacking …
… but bureau records show that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer’s tip about the junior Trump aide contained no such mention.
“In other words,” Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the Trump-Russia probe, wrote in his memoir, “Papadopoulos had somehow learned about the hacking operation before the public did and had advance knowledge of the Russian plan to use that information to hurt Clinton’s campaign. Even the FBI hadn’t known about it at that time.”
But when the Australian tip that reached the FBI in July 2016 was finally disclosed to the public in December 2019, Papadopoulos’ supposed “advance knowledge” about Russia’s alleged “hacking operation” turned out to be non-existent. The FBI’s tip from Downer contained no mention of the DNC hacking, a Russian interference campaign, or even the stolen emails handed to WikiLeaks. Nor did they even have any trace to suggest that a Russian intermediary had made an overture.
Instead, according to the FBI Electronic Communication (EC) that opened the Trump-Russia probe, the FBI only heard that Papadopoulos, in his conversation with Downer, “suggested” that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia” (emphasis added) that it could “assist” the Trump campaign “with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”
The FBI document acknowledged that the nature of the “suggestion” was “unclear” and that the possible Russian help could entail “material acquired publicly” – in other words, not emails hacked from the DNC, which, as Horowitz noted, were “not mentioned in the EC.” The FBI also acknowledged that it had no evidence concerning the Trump camp’s receptivity to the “suggested… suggestion”: It was “unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer,” the EC stated, and that Russia could act “with or without Mr. Trump’s cooperation.” Although Papadopoulos’ October 2017 guilty plea with the Mueller team suggested that he had told Downer about “thousands of emails” obtained by Russia, Downer later stated that the Trump campaign volunteer had made no mention of any stolen emails, and fact “didn’t say what it was” that Russia had on offer.
In other words, what Strzok wrote in his own book was untrue.
Joseph Mifsud: When it opened its probe, the FBI did not even know that that the purported “suggestion” to Papadopoulos came from this Maltese academic.
Because Downer’s tip was so thin, the FBI’s predicate was not only vague or even exculpatory, but also contained no indication that the “some kind of suggestion” actually came from the Russian government, or a Russian national, or anyone for that matter. When it opened the probe, the FBI did not even know that that the purported “suggestion” to Papadopoulos came from his conversation with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic. For his part, Mifsud has denied making any “suggestion” of Russian help to Papadopoulos at all.
To accept that the FBI’s decision to open the Trump-Russia investigation was well-founded, one has to stipulate that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency decided to investigate a presidential campaign, and then a president, based on a low-level volunteer having “suggested”, during a barroom chat, “some kind of suggestion from Russia” that contained no mention of the alleged Russian hacking or stolen emails that the Trump campaign was supposedly conspiring over. One would also have to accept that the bureau was not influenced by the far more detailed claims of direct Trump-Russia connections – an alleged conspiracy that would form the heart of the investigation – advanced in the widely-circulating Steele dossier.
Their mugs weren’t in post offices, but the FBI targeted them. And it was the Steele dossier that named them, not the bureau’s supposedly probe-originating witness, George Papadopoulos.
‘An Insufficient Basis’ for the Probe’s Supposed Predicate
Adding to the questions surrounding the FBI’s basis for opening a Trump-Russia counterintelligence probe is that, upon doing so, the Crossfire Hurricane team didn’t bother to contact the campaign volunteer whose vague “suggestion” supposedly triggered it. Instead, the FBI expanded the probe to multiple other figures in the Trump orbit. Although no intelligence connected them to Downer’s vague tip, all three shared the distinction of being named as Russia conspirators or assets in the Steele dossier.
Rather than just focusing on Papadopoulos – who was never wiretapped and not even interviewed until January of 2017 – the FBI quickly opened parallel probes of campaign volunteer Carter Page, campaign adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, and then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. According to Horowitz, Strzok described “the initial investigative objective of Crossfire Hurricane” as an effort “to determine which individuals associated with the Trump campaign may have been in a position to have received the alleged offer of assistance from Russia” (emphasis added) that Papadopoulos had “suggested.”
The FBI identified Page, Flynn, and Manafort as additional investigative targets, the IG found, not based on any new intelligence but because they had “ties to Russia or a history of travel to Russia.” They relied on a rarely used law – the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans representing foreign governments to disclose these relationships – as the basis for their inquiries.
“Lacking any evidence — and admitting such in their own opening document — the team, nevertheless, proceeded to simply speculate who ‘may have’ accepted the Russian offer and subsequently opened up full investigations on four Americans,” Kevin Brock, the former FBI assistant director for intelligence and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), opined in Congressional testimony in 2020. “This is unconscionable and a direct abuse of FBI authorities.”
When it comes to Papadopoulos, the FBI “initially considered seeking FISA surveillance of Papadopoulos” but quickly determined that it had “an insufficient basis” to do so, Horowitz found. But if the FBI felt that it had “an insufficient basis” to spy on Papadopoulos, how could the FBI deem him to be a sufficient basis for investigating and spying on members of the campaign that he worked for?
Igor Danchenko, dossier fabulist: The FBI was deceptive about him, and much more.
On Steele, a Pattern of FBI ‘Factual Misstatements and Omissions’
Although Horowitz took the FBI at its word that Steele played no role in triggering Crossfire Hurricane, he did so after documenting multiple instances of FBI lies – including about Steele’s role in the probe.
When the FBI used the Steele dossier to seek surveillance warrants on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, the bureau made 17 “factual misstatements and omissions” to the FISA court, Inspector General Horowitz found in his December 2019 report.
These abuses included embellishing Steele’s established reliability as an FBI source; omitting information that undermined the credibility of Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, and the fanciful claims he told Steele about prostitutes and billion dollar bribes; concealing that Steele was a source for a Yahoo News article that the FBI also cited as source material; omitting that both Page and Papadopoulos had made exonerating statements to FBI informants; and, most notably, omitting that the Clinton campaign was paying for Steele’s services. The FISA court concurred with Horowitz, invalidating two of the four Page surveillance warrants on the basis of the FBI’s “material misstatements.”
When the FBI briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on its use of the Steele dossier in 2018, it told similar falsehoods while presenting the Clinton contractor as credible. According to the FBI’s prepared talking points, the Senate was erroneously told that Steele’s main source Danchenko “did not cite any significant concerns with the way his reporting was characterized in the dossier.” Danchenko, the FBI additionally claimed, also “maintains trusted relationships with individuals who are capable of reporting on the material he collected for Steele.” The FBI also said that its discussions with Danchenko “confirm that the dossier was not fabricated by Steele.”
But the FBI concealed – just as it did with the FISA court – that Danchenko had in fact told its agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claim was “zero”; that he “has no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from “word of mouth and hearsay” and “conversation that [he] had with friends over beers” that should be taken with “a grain of salt.”
When the FBI’s deceptive reliance on Steele was brought to light in a memo from then-House intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes in early 2018, the FBI fought to prevent its release. Moreover, the FBI resorted to more deception: In an explosive Jan. 31 statement aimed at thwarting the Nunes memo’s release, the FBI claimed that it had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
The FBI’s tactic failed, and the memo was released two days later. When the first of the FBI’s Carter Page warrants was declassified in July 2018, it showed that the only material omissions of fact were made by the FBI. The FBI told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it “believes that [Russia’s] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” the Trump campaign. Its source for this belief was Steele, whom it described as “Source #1” and “credible” – all while omitting that the Clinton campaign was footing the bill.
In addition, unidentified intelligence and law enforcement officials went out of their way to bolster Steele’s image via anonymous leaks to credulous news outlets. “U.S. investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier,” a CNN headline proclaimed in February 2017, weeks after the dossier’s publication. The FBI is “continuing to chase down stuff from the dossier, and, at its core, a lot of it is bearing out,” an unidentified “intelligence official” told The New Yorker later that month.
The FBI’s faith in Steele extended to sharing classified information with him. According to Horowitz, at an October 2016 meeting in Rome, FBI agents gave Steele a “general overview” of Crossfire Hurricane, including its then-secret probes of Manafort, Page, Flynn, and Papadopoulos. The FBI was so eager to enlist Steele that it offered to pay him $15,000 “just for attending” the Rome meeting and a “significantly” greater amount if he could collect more information.
This early FBI enthusiasm for Steele – and lengthy record of lying about it — is hard to square with the bureau’s subsequent claims that he only played a minor role.
Durham’s Dissent Could Become a Political Flashpoint
Despite uncovering FBI deceptions, Horowitz acknowledged that he was relying largely on the word of the officials he was investigating. “We did not find information in FBI or Department ECs [Electronic Communications], emails, or other documents, or through witness testimony, indicating that any information other than the [Friendly Foreign Government] information” – Australia’s tip from Downer — “was relied upon to predicate the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” his report states.
As his dissenting statement made clear, Durham is not limited to one department nor to its employees’ voluntary testimony.
Durham’s grand juries have already yielded indictments of two Clinton campaign-tied operatives for deceptive attempts to influence the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe. That Horowitz has already uncovered so many inconsistencies in the FBI’s account – and that Durham has gone out of his way to question the FBI predication that Horowitz accepted – suggests that the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank “secret hotline” story are far from the only fraudulent Trump-Russia activity in Durham’s sights.
If Durham does unearth additional evidence that the FBI did not launch the Trump-Russia probe in the way that it claims, then that would be yet another devastating revelation for a bureau that has already been caught relying on Clinton-funded disinformation and lying about it. Given how hard the FBI and Democratic Party allies have fought to shield this conduct from scrutiny, Durham’s probe could become a major political flashpoint as his probe reaches its final months and hones in on its final targets.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:20 -
- China Says It Chased US Warship Out Of Its "Territorial Waters"
China Says It Chased US Warship Out Of Its “Territorial Waters”
China says it chased a US warship out of its territorial waters on Thursday, near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
The Southern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) accused the USS Benfold of “illegally” sailing into its waters without permission, resulting in PLA naval and air forces tracking the ship and warning it away. A US Navy statement pushed back on the claim, saying that China’s expanding assertions of sovereignty around the islands “pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas.”
Illustrative image: US Navy These same islands in the South China Sea have seen the Chinese military establish island fortifications, meant to expand Beijing’s territorial reach. This week the US Navy has appeared to test these claims of Chinese sovereignty over the region.
Beijing has further sought to impose new maritime identification rules within the past months, aimed at shoring up its claims, as CNN previously described:
Beijing wants foreign vessels to give notice before entering “Chinese territorial waters,” providing maritime authorities with detailed information — including the ship’s name, call sign, current position, next port of call and estimated time of arrival.
It may sound like a reasonable enough request, especially if the ship is carrying hazardous goods, that is until you consider what constitutes “Chinese territorial waters.”
It’s the second such incident between the Benfold and PLA navy in the last six months. But this instance has further involved China seeking to enforce its new identification laws.
The PLA’s interpretation of events was as follows:
Senior Col.Tian Junli, spokesperson of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, said in a statement released on the microsite Weibo that “the actions of the U.S. side have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security.”
The latest event “is another cast-iron proof that it (the United States) is pursuing navigational hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea,” the statement read.
“The PLA Southern Theater organized naval and air forces to track and monitor and warned them to leave,” it added.
“We solemnly demand that the U.S. side immediately stop such provocative actions, otherwise it will bear the serious consequences of unforeseen events,” the PLA added in its statement.
The US Navy 7th Fleet vehemently rejected Beijing’s assertions, calling them “false”.
“USS Benfold conducted this FONOP in accordance with international law,” the US side said. “The operation reflects our commitment to uphold freedom of navigation and lawful uses of the sea as a principle.” The US Navy added that its ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises will continue: “Nothing PRC (People’s Republic of China) says otherwise will deter us.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 20:00 - Scientists Instrumental To COVID-19 'Natural Origins' Narrative Received Over $50 Million In NIAID Funding In 2020-2021
Scientists Instrumental To COVID-19 ‘Natural Origins’ Narrative Received Over $50 Million In NIAID Funding In 2020-2021
Authored by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Four prominent scientists who played key roles in shaping the public narrative around the origin of COVID-19 received substantial increases in grant money from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the subsequent two years, a review of funding data by The Epoch Times has found.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, makes a phone call during a break in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Jan. 11, 2022. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) Three of these scientists—Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, and Michael Farzan—were advisers to a teleconference organized by Fauci held on Feb. 1, 2020, in response to increasing public questions about the origin of the virus.
The scientists were also instrumental in the publication of Proximal Origin, a highly influential paper that promoted a natural origins theory for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and has been frequently cited by the government and media.
Emails released under Freedom of Information Act requests, showed that the scientists had told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID-19 had come out of a lab.
Then-director of NIH Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., on Jan. 26, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) Notably, despite their private concerns about the origin of the virus, the first draft of Proximal Origin was completed on the same day as the teleconference. Andersen and Garry were co-authors of Proximal Origin and Farzan was acknowledged in the Nature version of Proximal Origin for his participatory discussions in the article’s creation.
Additionally, Fauci’s NIAID provided a substantial increase in funding to EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak, through whom NIAID had funded controversial gain-of-function coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Some of these funding amounts have continued through 2021—and one of the newest grants will continue through at least 2025.
A significant portion of the funding increase for Daszak, as well as for Andersen and Garry, was provided through NIAID’s creation of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID).
The program, which was originally referred to as Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Centers (EIDRCs) during the early planning stages in 2019, was formally announced under a new name on Aug. 27, 2020. It is not known why the program was initially delayed or why it was renamed.
The new initiative, described as a global network that involves “multidisciplinary investigations into how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife and spillover to cause disease in people,” provided eleven new grants totaling $17 million of new funding in the first year and $82 million in total funding across five years.
The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) Andersen and Garry were the co-recipients of a new $8.9 million 5-year grant made under the CREID initiative that established the West African Research Network for Infectious Diseases (WARN-ID). Daszak was the recipient of a new $7.5 million, 5-year CREID grant that established the Emerging Infectious Diseases: South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub (EID-SEARCH). The other participants of the NIAID CREID program can be found here.
Notably, although the creation of CREID was not publicly announced until Aug. 27, 2020, the Award Notice Date for the grants to Andersen and Garry are listed as May 21, 2020. The CREID grant to Daszak lists an Award Notice Date of June 17, 2020. The timing of Daszak’s grant is particularly noteworthy as it came shortly after President Donald Trump had revoked Daszak’s previous grant from Fauci’s NIAID in April 2020 due to Daszak’s entanglements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Andersen, who had privately told Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020, that the virus “looked engineered,” but later helped spearhead Fauci’s efforts to promote a natural origins narrative, received a total of $7.4 million in funding in 2020 as compared to $4.5 million in grant proceeds in 2019. Andersen’s total grant funding increased to nearly $9 million in 2021. The new CREID grants (co-awarded with Garry) accounted for approximately $1.9 million of his 2020 grant proceeds and $2 million of his grant proceeds in 2021. Included in Andersen’s 2021 figure is a $266,250 CREID grant that was made to Andersen but did not include Garry as a co-recipient.
While it is not known at this point whether there was a connection between the increased funding and the scientists’ involvement in shaping the public natural origins narrative, these new revelations raise an obvious question: How is it that among the thousands of scientists eligible to participate in the much-desired funding from the eleven grants provided by Fauci’s new $82 million CREID initiative, three of those chosen happened to be the same individuals who had led the way in promoting Fauci’s natural origins narrative—despite their private concerns that the virus had been created in a lab.
Peter Daszak, right, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) During the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Andersen claimed to be “60 to 70 percent sure the virus came from a laboratory.” One of Andersen’s Proximal Origin co-authors, Edward Holmes, put that figure even higher, at “80 percent.”
Garry, who told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference group that he “really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus” to SARS-CoV-2, received $7 million in NIAID grants in 2020 as compared to $5.7 million in 2019. Garry also received $6.6 million in grants in 2021. The new CREID grant (co-awarded with Andersen) accounted for approximately $1.9 million of his 2020 grant proceeds and $1.8 million of his grant proceeds in 2021.
During the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Garry cited the remarkable sequences of mutations that would have to occur for SARS-CoV-2 to arise naturally, telling the group, “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.” However, Garry noted that a lab-created virus would easily explain the virus data he was seeing, telling Fauci’s group that “in the lab, it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”
Notably, Garry recently admitted in written correspondence with The Intercept that he had been advised not to discuss a lab leak in the Proximal Origin paper, stating, “The major feedback we got from the Feb 1 teleconference was: 1. Don’t try to write a paper at all—it’s unnecessary or 2. If you do write it, don’t mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists.”
Garry—along with Andersen—must have heeded that directive because on Feb. 1, 2020, the same day as Fauci’s teleconference, both men had helped to complete the first draft of Proximal Origin promoting the idea that the virus had originated in nature. That paper became the media’s and the public health establishment’s go-to evidence for a natural origin for the virus.
The choice of Andersen as a lead author for Proximal Origin is particularly curious as Andersen had no material experience in researching coronaviruses. His stated focus was related to the Zika virus, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and Lassa virus. It wasn’t until sometime after the Feb. 1 teleconference that he changed his biography to incorporate SARS-CoV-2.
A screenshot of the Proximal Origin paper. (Screenshot/Virological) Proximal Origin was published online on Feb. 16, 2020, and sought to exclude the possibility of a lab leak. The article would prove to be highly influential and has been extensively used by Fauci and media organizations in their promotion of the natural origins narrative.
Another recipient of funding under the CREID initiative was EcoHealth president Peter Daszak, who received a total of $1.5 million in both 2020 and 2021. Unlike either Andersen or Garry, proceeds from his CREID grant make up the entirety of his listed NIAID grants in both years. By way of comparison, Daszak had received approximately $662,000 in NIAID grant money in 2019. Put another way, Daszak’s post-pandemic funding increased by approximately 130 percent.
Daszak, who heavily promoted the natural origins narrative, was personally involved in gain-of-function work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which continued until at least April 2020. Most prominently, Daszak authored a 2018 research proposal which details the creation of a virus in a lab that bears a remarkable similarity to the defining features of COVID-19.
That proposal, dated March 27, 2018, details EcoHealth’s plans, in conjunction with the Wuhan Institute, to create entirely new coronaviruses through the synthetic combination of preexisting virus backbones. It describes how those viruses were going to be made more virulent in humans by the insertion of a furin cleavage site, a feature that distinguishes COVID-19 from all other SARS-related coronaviruses.
Another scientist who advised the Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, Michael Farzan, received $9.9 million in grants from Fauci’s NIAID in 2020, followed by another $7.9 million in 2021 and an additional $919,000 at the start of 2022. By comparison, Farzan had received $3.8 million in grant money from NIAID in 2019. Although Farzan received substantial increases in grant funding, none of that money appears to have come under grants provided by the CREID initiative.
Medics wait to transport a woman with possible Covid-19 symptoms to the hospital in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 7, 2020. (John Moore/Getty Images) Farzan, an immunologist who in 2005 discovered the receptor of the original severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, had told the senior members of Fauci’s teleconference group in emails that the pandemic likely originated from a lab in which live coronaviruses were passed repeatedly through human-like tissue, accelerating virus mutations with the end result being that one of the mutated viruses may have leaked from the lab. Farzan told Fauci’s group that he placed the likelihood of a leak from a Wuhan lab at 60 to 70 percent.
But in an Oct. 5, 2021, paper, Farzan appeared to agree with conclusions put forth in Proximal Origin, when he claimed that a “comparison of the S protein sequences indicates SARS-CoV-2 may have emerged from the recombination between bat and pangolin coronaviruses.” Farzan, like Andersen, works at the Scripps laboratory.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:40 - COVID Won't Stop Global Elites From Hobnobbing In Davos As Economic Forum Set For May
COVID Won’t Stop Global Elites From Hobnobbing In Davos As Economic Forum Set For May
We doubt anybody was surprised when the “climate-conscious” organizers of the World Economic Forum postponed the annual gathering in Davos for the second year in a row (last year’s event was ultimately canceled after an unsuccessful attempt at moving it).
And in a sign of just how important the Alpine confab is for the business and political elites who actually run the world to see each other face-to-face (instead of virtually in the metaverse like they’re doing this week), the WEF has just released a statement affirming that this year’s event will eventually take place…so long as all safety precautions can be taken.
Right now, the tentative dates are May 22-26, according to a statement emailed to members that was obtained by Bloomberg.
Though we can’t say for sure what the COVID numbers will look like then, the fact that it’s only a few months away suggests the elites are ready to return to “normally” living their lives – even if some of their restrictions on businesses and socializing remain intact.
However, while the letter focused on the “safety” factor, there’s also the more important question of optics. After all, last year’s event was canceled because politicians and billionaires couldn’t be seen hob-nobbing without masks and social distancing. As two year’s worth of scandals featuring a rotating cast of politicians, public servants and even the chairman of a certain Swiss bank, can attest: the elites have largely ignored the restrictions they found unpalatable (even if they tried to hide that fact). But clearly that has grown tiring, so they’re ready to return to doing it all out in the open.
With the likes of Bill Gates and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla already trumpeting the notion that life will likely return to “normal” after the omicron wave subsides, the justification for holding the event in Singapore or some other emerging metropolis has already been laid.
But why must Davos go on? We’re pretty sure if you ask “the elites” who attend every year, they would be more than happy to tell you (for better or worse).
The World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Conference: “The good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more… the bad news is that the majority of people trusted that elite less…” pic.twitter.com/c4I4zlew1p
— James Lindsay, watching narratives crumble (@ConceptualJames) January 21, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Professor Ngaire Woods of Oxford University (which regards itself as an “elite” institution of higher learning) offers a surprisingly candid explanation of this dynamic in a viral clip from a few years back.
“At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman Survey showed us that the good news is that the elite across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of the people trusted the elite less.”
If there was ever an example of ‘saying the quiet part out loud’, this is it. In just a couple of sentences, Woods manages to aptly convey the “elites” mindset in a way that the proles can understand.
Unfortunately for “the elites”, the 2021 version of the survey Woods is referencing shows that not much has changed. In fact, public trust in “elite” institutions has only continued to deteriorate during the pandemic, as the 2021 survey shows.
Maybe now you can understand why they’re all just itching to get together and hash this out behind the scenes – no matter how much carbon dioxide their private jets spew into the atmosphere.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:20 - This Is Your Last Chance, Part 2
This Is Your Last Chance, Part 2
Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,
Supposedly collectivists will reap the rewards of the only things they produce—destruction and death. After the collapse, a global collectivist government will replace the current multiplicity of collectivist governments. Most of the collapse’s survivors will become slaves living on subsistence doled out by the small aristocracy that will rule the planet. The real work will be done by artificially intelligent machines. The slaves will be pacified chemically and electronically through ubiquitous virtual reality technologies and monitored ceaselessly while the aristocrats live in unimaginable splendor. Those who resist pacification and enslavement will be “corrected,” or if that fails, murdered.
This is simply a straight line projection of the present and recent past that ignores a fully evident counter-trend still gathering steam. After a centuries-long, bull-market run, government as an institution has topped out. The plans and predictions of the global totalitarians are the overconfident rationalizations of newly minted millionaires at the top of bull markets—the “permanently high plateau” in 1929, the “new economy” in 2000, “house prices only go up” in 2007, and “the Fed’s got our backs” now.
We already have shining examples of totalitarian collectivist failure in really big countries with lots of people—the Soviet Union and Communist China. The former collapsed after tens of millions died, the latter made a mid-course correction towards more freedom after tens of millions died.
Blithering idiots attribute those failures to incomplete control by the totalitarians or claim collectivism can only work when the whole world is completely enslaved. They ignore the core quandary of collectivist control—it produces nothing. Collectivist governments steal, they don’t produce. A global collectivist government will produce exactly what the current multiplicity of collectivist governments produce: nothing. Yet, this government will supposedly build the world back better from the ashes of financial, economic, and political collapse.
Collectivists have perfected a demand management technique that obscures but does not solve the productive inability of the economic systems over which they presided: murder a lot of people. People are producers so production shrinks faster than populations, exacerbated by the collectivists’ unerring ability to kill the most productive people. Today’s collectivist killers plan to use the same demand management technique, but this time AI machines will make up the shortfall.
Current AI technology isn’t there yet but somehow a slave society will produce the innovations necessary to get it up to snuff. The absurdity of this presumption is captured in the contradiction in terms that will supposedly fill the gap: state science. State science is the approved propaganda of the moment propagated by state functionaries and cohorts mislabelled as scientists—for instance the rampant convolutions, contortions, corrections, and prevarications that characterize the Covid travesty, climate change, and green energy.
As for slavery, Alexis de Tocqueville had the last word on its economics in 1835.
It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay the slaves whom they employ, but the derive small profits from their labor, while the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid but he does his work quicker than the the slave; and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but they are purchased only when they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well as in manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth, in sickness as well as in health. Payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men: the free workman receives his wages in money; the slave in education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived; the salary of the free workman is paid in a round sum and appears to enrich only him who receives it; but in the end the slave has cost more than the free servant, and his labor is less productive.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume One, 1835
The slaves will own nothing because they’ll produce next to nothing. It’s doubtful they’ll be any happier with that state of affairs than slaves have been in the past.
Turning again to the historical record, the accomplishments of state science and industry are an almost undetectable molehill compared to the Everest of innovations and wealth flowing from free scientific inquiry and production. Picking through this meager molehill, one finds that many state “accomplishments” are merely new and improved ways to kill people.
Setting aside straight line projections, what’s actually coming is a history’s greatest trend change: total financial, economic, intellectual, and moral collapse. The staggering sum of global debt, unfunded liabilities, and derivatives is in the quadrillions, a double-digit multiple of global production. The numbers are so large and opaque that a more precise estimate for that multiple cannot be derived. Every asset and stream of income is already pledged as collateral—often several times—or will be de facto collateral as governments’ bankruptcies and rapacity mount; they’ll steal whatever they can get their hands on. What most of the world reckons as wealth is somebody’s debt or equity, so insolvency will quickly work its way through the daisy chain. So much for financialization.
Like financial and economic collapse, intellectual and moral collapse will center on governments. Billions of people indoctrinated in some version of statist dogma will look to governments as the solution for the government-created apocalypse. Courtier intellectuals, media lights, corporate shills, and other minions and toadies will be scurrying like cockroaches in a filthy kitchen when the lights are turned on. Their voluminous output of putrid, state worshipping dreck will have the same value as fiat debt and currencies.
Today’s “thought leaders” are circling the drain. They’re on the wrong side of history and they’ll take billions of devout believers in government omniscience and omnipotence with them. Fat cat crony collectivist corporations all the way down to those subsisting on some form of state-granted transfer payments will find the government teat withered and barren. The delusory notion that bankrupt governments can provide universal basic incomes will be treated with the universal derision it deserves.
Government has been collapsing under its own weight for decades. If one were to graph its overall strength, the U.S. government at the end of World War II was peak government—the U.S. empire was at its unchallenged economic, political, and military apex. Vietnam, Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard, the fall of the USSR, the war on terror, the Patriot Act, and the Covid insanity would mark some of the downward inflection points since.
History will probably look back on the Biden camarilla’s fraudulent ascension to power as the final sharp break, the demarcation of the vertiginous crash. It’s hard to imagine that the institution that plays such a huge part in all our lives will simply be rubble amidst the chaos and ruins, but few people foresaw the end of the Soviet state either. Straight line projections don’t yield such predictions.
To those who rule and are trying to implement their global consolidation: This is your last chance to save your own skins. Nothing will stop the collapse, but you can at least abandon your nefarious project and its totalitarian blueprint. It’s your only chance to avoid the Sarlacc pit, and that’s a slim chance indeed. Collapse will focus your victims’ attention on their ruination and your responsibility for it. You’ll be lucky to escape their retribution. Your odious class has always hid your failures and tried to shift the blame, but that game is up.
As always happens after cataclysms, the survivors will rebuild. The human race is a hardy bunch. With previous equity, debt and its corresponding credit assets wiped out, and many real assets destroyed in the mayhem and chaos, there will be little capital to fund their efforts. Capital will be earned and rebuilt the old fashioned way—consumption less than production generating savings invested in enterprises whose returns compound the savings.
With governments either broke or wiped out, emergent groups in smaller geographic areas will have to look to their own resources for protection. On the other hand, they’ll be unencumbered by the confiscatory taxes, stifling laws and regulations, rampant corruption, Big Brother surveillance, perpetual violence, and general idiocy we now take for granted among governments.
There will be a decentralized multiplicity of new political arrangements and subdivisions, from chaotic black holes to well-ordered enclaves. The success of the latter will be due to the freedom they embrace, the individual rights they protect, and their ability to defend their enclaves. New industries, technologies, modes of commerce, and ways of life will emerge. This will be the true great reset, not the Klaus Schwab version, which only recycles failed concepts of centralized power and collective subjugation on a larger scale.
Brace for impact, the collapse is well underway and will soon hit its inflection point, if it hasn’t already. It will be a test of character unlike anything we’ve faced before. It was Jabba the Hut and his creepy cohorts—Planet Tatooine’s establishment—who were blown to smithereens and cast into the Sarlacc Pit. Our enemies’ greatest weakness: the arrogant stupidity of evil and the crumbling bulwark of lies behind which it hides. These are the allies of Samuel Adams’, “irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” Our greatest weapon: the magnificently defiant human spirit that stands on the plank above the abyss and shouts: “Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 19:00 - Pennsylvania Middle School Teacher Caught In Photo Taping Mask To Student's Face
Pennsylvania Middle School Teacher Caught In Photo Taping Mask To Student’s Face
A teacher at North Penn School District in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania has come under fire after photos leaked her physically taping a mask to a small child’s face during school hours.
The photo has been shared “thousands” of times on social media and it shows the masked teacher putting what appears to be masking tape on the side of a small child’s black mask, while the child sits in the classroom in front of his laptop.
Officials from the Montgomery County school district confirmed that the photo had been taken in one of their classrooms, according to the Courier Times.
Former candidate for Florida’s 3rd Congressional District, Chuck Callesto brought attention to the image on his Twitter account, where he has almost 300,000 followers.
“Teacher at Pennsylvania’s Pennfield Middle School caught taping mask to young child’s face in class,” he wrote.
“An image taken in one of our classrooms last week and circulating on social media does not represent the universal values that the North Penn School District strives to instill in both our students and staff,” the district’s statement read this week.
North Penn School District continued: “After an immediate investigation, it was determined that while the incident was isolated and no malice was intended, the actions of the teacher were entirely inappropriate and unacceptable, no matter the context. We understand that the act of taping a mask to a student’s face is concerning to many and apologize that it occurred. The matter is serious and it is being addressed with the employee.”
North Penn Stronger Together, a local Facebook group of parents, encouraged them to speak up at the next school board meeting: “Pro-mask or anti-mask, I hope we can all agree that taping masks to children’s faces crosses the LINE. This was not a joke for the child or the parents.”
It is still unknown who took the photo or who wound up releasing it on social media, the report says.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:40 - Luongo: How Scared Of November Are The Democrats?
Luongo: How Scared Of November Are The Democrats?
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,
Since the day she announced she wouldn’t be running for re-election in 2020 I knew Tulsi Gabbard was distancing herself from the Democratic Party for a potential Presidential run in 2024.
Gabbard is supposed to be everything the Democrats want. A strong, ‘progressive’ female of ‘color’ who backed Bernie Sanders’ runs for the nomination, implying she’s a useful Commie. She was groomed early on as a WEF Future Leader and put on important House Committees which landed her default invitations to CFR meetings, while also being a member of the Democratic National Committee.
It was clear she was being schmoozed by the DNC and Davos to become a major player from the moment she was first elected to Congress in 2012.
But something happened on the way to Gabbard’s ascension to the top of the U.S. political scene, her conscience got the better of her. I’ve followed Gabbard for years and watched her carefully, knowing full well about her past associations with Davos.
Now, for the New Statesman to run a schlocky piece about her as a GOP Dark Horse last week at a pivotal moment in the shifts in Congress against the Democrats’ domestic policy is telling of just how scared the Democrats and Davos are of the 2024 vote getting split along populist lines.
She’s fostered a cult of personality among her supporters, who either refuse to acknowledge that Gabbard holds right-wing positions or, more often, go on to adopt those positions themselves. Lately, Gabbard’s pivot to cancel-culture pundit, complete with undertones of worries about anti-white “racism”, has inspired her followers to take on the same pet issues. They’ve gone from iconoclastic left-leaning upstarts to “American patriots” without a blink.
And here I thought she was a Davos stalking horse to lead stupid libertarians away from the GOP because she’s hawt and anti-war?
It gets so confusing to keep the narrative straight anymore, but, asking for consistency from the loony left is like asking Joe Biden to remember what he had for breakfast yesterday,
The rest of the article is nothing more than a hit piece to smear Gabbard through guilt-by-association to keep control over the soccer mom set from jumping from the sinking ship that is the Democratic Party. It’s that same ship Gabbard was two years ahead of everyone else in leaving I remind you.
The Populism Problem is that it’s Popular
Remember, folks, populists are the new Nazis in the New Normal and everyone not ‘down with the Commintern’ has to be painted with that brush as often as possible.
The Department of Justice just told us this is the case. They’ve created a new specialized unit to combat ‘Domestic Terrorism’ which amounts to spending non-existent tax money on investigating and intimidating pretty much anyone reading this blog post.
This response from the DoJ is just part of the fallout from the false flag operation that was January 6th, 2021. Even a milquetoast like Jonathan Turley can see what’s happening here and is now concerned about it.
The Democrats know they have zero chance of retaining the House or the Senate in the fall and what they are doing now is using 1/6 as the means by which to limit who can and cannot run for office this fall and beyond.
If you can’t win at the ballot box then create a permanent arm of the bureaucracy to stifle dissent. It’s the new version of “nuts and sluts,” folks. I wrote about this during the Kavanaugh hearings.
“Nuts and Sluts” is easy to understand. Simply accuse the person you want to destroy of being either crazy (the definition of which shifts with whatever is the political trigger issue of the day) or a sexual deviant.
This technique works because it triggers most people’s Disgust Circuit, a term created by Mark Schaller as part of what he calls the Behavioral Immune System and popularized by Johnathan Haidt.
The disgust circuit is also easy to understand.
It is the limit at which behavior in others triggers our gut-level outrage and we recoil with disgust.
So, today there are multiple political issues conflated to create one big tent under which to house all the challengers to Davos and the demons running the DNC. From being unvaccinated against COVID-9/11, supporting Trump still, to questioning any part of the benevolent government’s narratives about race, sex, COVID-9/11, election fraud, false flag operations, Russians, the filibuster etc.
It doesn’t matter what it is. If Davos is against it and it will hurt the Democrats’ chances this November then you are a dangerous domestic terrorist. Full stop.
And woe to anyone who strays from the political orthodoxy. They will be denied basic protections under the rule of law, because they are sub-humans who don’t respect civil society enough to enjoy its benefits.
It’s as clumsy and dangerous as it is insane. But it is also, sadly, reality.
So, into this mess New Statesman, probably paid for by the Hildebeast herself, runs a hit piece on Gabbard to trigger the disgust circuit in every squishy mid-wit in the burbclaves of the rapidly draining cities of Blue States.
The main reason they are doing this is to bring charges against Donald Trump so he can’t run again in 2024.
But, I also think it’s deeper than that.
Crying Wolf Creates Natural Narrative Immunity
Davos is losing the war of the narratives. Support for 1/6 as some kind of ‘insurrection’ is failing as more people realize this is just another ridiculous bit of divisive politics, the kind which Gabbard has been outspoken about since leaving Congress.
As they clumsily pivot off COVID-9/11 Davos is in dire need of a new existential threat to society.
By the fall all they’ll have left in the U.S. is their control over legacy media, which is hemorrhaging audience faster than Germany is burning through its natural gas supplies, and their operatives in the various alphabet agencies.
They will lose substantial support in Congress as the country now has ‘crisis fatigue’ to the point where even another virus outbreak would get half the effect it got with COVID, regardless of its lethality.
That’s because they have cried wolf too many times now. What was a strategy for destroying our confidence in our political system has now morphed quickly into reflexive distrust of everything all politicians say, to the point where it’s impossible to use public health’ as a means to political control.
It’s early days of this emerging shift in the zeitgeist, but it’s palpable. I assure you it’s real.
If my instincts on this are correct then what we’re seeing now with the 180 degree shift away from “OMG Omicron! is teh killarz of all the lil’ childrens!” by Bill Gates and company is a form of political desperation as the mood of the country turns ugly against those that stole more than two years of our lives.
And there is nothing more indicative of this fear than them running an extended trial balloon on resurrecting the Hildabeast as their savior going forward.
And that brings me back to Gabbard. Remember it was Hillary stealing the nomination in 2016 that pushed Gabbard off the Davos career track. It’s why she resigned from the DNC and set her squarely at odds with Hillary.
Once you cross Hillary there is no going back. And if Davos is looking to Hillary to try and salvage what’s left of Biden’s first term then they also have to be positioned against her.
So this article in the New Statesman tells me two things.
1) Hillary is definitely in the mix as the Democrats’ Hail Mary because Hillary would have commissioned this piece to keep the Progressives from jumping ship.
2) Davos is terrified of what comes in 2022, because they may not be able to split the Republican vote come 2024.
Consistency Sells
I just can’t see Gabbard now as the Trojan House to fulfill #2. Her past involvement with these folks is what holds lot of people back from supporting her, and I’m more than okay with them remaining skeptical. Trust, but verify and all that.
But, if anything, looking at the political landscape and her consistently attacking the Democrats on core issues where they have betrayed the country and put it in those terms, she’s more likely to split the Democrats even further. Sanders is done. He played ball, got the paycheck and is now dead to Progressives. These people are turning on AOC now.
And the purity spiral will only get worse. Ace Clinton strategies Paul Begala is now, right on cue, blaming Democrat voters, because it’s hard to do any self-reflection when you don’t cast one in a mirror.
Gabbard wants none of that crowd and she’s laying a foundation for a campaign outside of either party that reaches across all the right issues to build a real following.
That’s the dominant theme in this New Statesman article, fear that there is no hope for their 2024 strategies to be successful. They are all but admitting now they have no chance in 2022 and are hoping with the Fed going on a strong tightening cycle that they can blame the recession and/or financial crisis which emerges on Congressional Republicans.
If the GOP was smart, as big an ‘if’ if there ever was one, they would begin the process of saying this recession is regrettable but necessary. Embrace it and build on the anger at Brandon for screwing everyone in the wake of COVID.
They can see Gabbard coming in to pull centrist votes from Hillary (or whomever) back towards the GOP or worse, advocating for real fiscal and foreign policy reform in D.C. as she runs as a kind of John Anderson figure against Jimmy Carter.
In fact, the more I think about this the more likely John Anderson is the best analogue for her role in 2024. She’s the sane Democrat who’s interested in practical solutions, pulling in a very important 5-7% of swing voters tired of the outright lying, the destruction of communities and leadership turning a blind eye to violence and the coming rape of those same suburbs by Larry Fink and Blackrock.
If you go one step further and revisit the actions of FOMC Chair Jerome Powell, the set up is there for him to morph into the second coming of Paul Volcker. The GOP candidate, possibly Ron DeSantis, then becomes the analogue of Ronald Reagan.
Gabbard running as an independent siphoning off the centrist Democrats who just can’t pull the lever for a Republican would be enough to ensure there’s no chance of a DNC steal in 2024.
Anderson got 5% of the vote in 1980. He ensured that Reagan won states he wouldn’t have otherwise. With the Libertarian Party fully neutered and stuck in logic traps of their own devising, there’s room for a real, honest populist to build a bipartisan ticket with Gabbard and a libertarian type strong on non-interventionist foreign policy and fiscal reform (read; Social Security and Medicare) that would get a lot of votes.
It’s what Bernie Sanders promised but never intended to deliver on.
If Davos keeps pushing for a potential hot war with Russia and/or China, which is still a real possibility, and Biden succumbs to this, or worse, they install Hillary mid-term to pull it off, then a populist of Gabbard’s anti-war but strong patriotic bona fides is a real threat to the future of the DNC long term.
I find the timing of this article very very interesting as much for that as to what it actually says. Because what it says is “Fear Tulsi Gabbard.”
* * *
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Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:20 - "War May Be Necessary": Russian Lawmakers Push For Donbass Independence Recognition
“War May Be Necessary”: Russian Lawmakers Push For Donbass Independence Recognition
The speaker of the Russian State Duma is calling for parliamentary consultations over the question of the status of the Donbass region of Ukraine. In a move the West would without doubt see as a huge political provocation, there’s a push among pro-Kremlin lawmakers to formally recognize the independence of the war-torn, Russian speaking region from Ukraine.
Further, such an action would likely trigger the biggest flare-up in fighting since 2014 and 2015. Reuters reports additionally that “Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine would expect Russia’s army to fight with them against Ukrainian government forces if Moscow follows through on a parliamentary proposal to recognize their independence, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker said on Thursday.”
Near front lines in Eastern Ukraine, via Atlantic Council. Should parliament move forward with such a proposal, it would be subject of Vladimir Putin’s approval, and for now might remain among “options on the table” for dealing with the crisis.
Alexander Borodai, a Russian law-maker who is among about a dozen now proposing the move to recognize independence, has acknowledged bluntly that war would surely follow:
Borodai, a former Donetsk political leader who is now a member of the Russian parliament, said the separatists would look to Russia to help them wrest control of parts of the territory they claim that are now held by Ukrainian forces.
“In the event of (the republics) being recognized, a war will become a direct necessity,” Borodai told Reuters.
“Russia would have to take on some security responsibilities” and defend the territories, he said, as it did after recognizing the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions after a 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged caution in light of these reports, but admitted it’s under serious consideration. The discussions could also be aimed at building further leverage amid talks with Washington and NATO. After all, the Biden administration on Thursday approved US weapons deliveries to Ukraine via Baltic allies Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Thus the Kremlin appears to be signaling that if the West wants to escalate, it has a ‘nuclear option’ guaranteeing immediate escalation too. Likely Russia will hold off on any kind of independence recognition for now, given that on Friday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, where both agreed to continue open dialogue toward de-escalation.
Russian media accounts of the Friday meeting presented the engagement in a generally positive light, as both sides set out on “a clear path to understanding.” For now it seems the Kremlin got what it wants – namely for the Biden administration to take its demands concerning NATO expansion seriously.
“Our American colleagues once again tried to put the problems on the Russian-Ukrainian border at the forefront, tried to condition everything else on the need for so-called de-escalation,” Lavrov said immediately following his meeting with Blinken. “But we ended with an agreement that we will be provided with written answers to all our proposals next week”.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 18:00 - Biden Wanted To Spend $30 Billion On A Civilian Climate Corp In 'Build Back Better'
Biden Wanted To Spend $30 Billion On A Civilian Climate Corp In ‘Build Back Better’
Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClearPolicy.com,
On January 27, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order (EO) to combat climate change. The EO officially began research into the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps.
The Corps “shall aim to conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.”
In 1933, Franklin D Roosevelt created a similar program called the Civilian Conservation Corps. They cut trails, built roads, and solidified infrastructure, and had about 500,000 annual members at its height.
The CCC lasted until 1942, built 100,000 miles of roads and trails, 318,000 dams, and tens of thousands of bridges, and employed over 3 million citizens over its lifetime. Since then, there have been various smaller decentralized programs like the Corps Network and AmeriCorps, all which received some federal funding, but nothing at the scale of the CCC. President Obama tried to expand AmeriCorps to 100,000 members, but ultimately failed, and its membership was about 75,000.
In Biden’s Build Back Better proposal, he calls for hiring 300,000 Americans at a cost of anywhere from $10 to $30 billion for his Climate Corps, at a cost of between $40,000 to $70,000 per member.
That’s low for some Congressional Democrats. Sen. Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have introduced the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, asking for $132 billion for a corps of 1.5 million members.
The CCC is currently in Biden’s Build Back Better proposal that passed the House of Representatives on November 19, 2021, and includes about $7 billion for staffing the CCC.
The bill stalled in the Senate after Sen. Joe Manchin announced he wouldn’t vote for it, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to call a vote on it again.
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/21/2022 – 17:40
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