Jul 23

Today’s News 23rd July 2021

  • Volkswagen CEO Says EV Margin Parity With ICE Vehicles Will Be Reached In "2 To 3 Years"
    Volkswagen CEO Says EV Margin Parity With ICE Vehicles Will Be Reached In “2 To 3 Years”

    Ever since the forced adoption of EVs by governments worldwide, all eyes have been on when the electric vehicles would finally make economic sense to produce.

    According to Volkswagen, that milestone is still years away, but is moving closer. CEO Herbert Diess said at the company’s annual general meeting this week that its EVs would see margins at the same level of combustion cars “in two to three years”. 

    The company also disclosed that its shift to EVs continues on schedule, as it delivered 170,939 all electric vehicles in the first half of the year. This number is twice as many vehicles as the company delivered last year, according to Bloomberg. 

    Diess also stressed that electric mobility is seen as the “only way” to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in road traffic over the next 10 years.

    And the company is now also incentivizing its board and executives for its “green” initiatives: Volkswagen adopted a new management board remuneration system that “includes ESG targets”, Bloomberg commented. 

    Recall, back in March of this year, Volkswagen made its intentions of becoming a key player in EVs known, aspiring to compete with companies like Tesla. 

    At the time, the company laid out plans for expanding its EV offerings through 2030, which included dethroning Tesla as the reigning EV world champ. VW hosted its “Power Day” in Q1 and revealed plans to build six “gigafactories” with a total capacity of 240 gigawatt hours per year. 

    “The company is aiming to achieve an operating margin between 7% and 8% after 2021. VOW also confirmed it is looking to finish the year at the upper and of a 5% – 6.5% range in 2021. Higher profitability will be achieved through lower costs with as much as 2 billion euros savings identified for 2023 compared to 2020,” the company said in Q1, according to StreetInsider. 

    Chief Executive Herbert Diess said on CNBC at the time: “This period is probably the most crucial for the whole industry. Within the next 15 years we will see a total turnover of the industry. Electric cars are taking the lead and then software really becomes the core driver of the industry.”

    “Electric cars already today are very, very competitive and they’re becoming more competitive over time. that gives us the certainty that this is the right way going forward. Electric cars actually will bring down the cost of individual mobility further,” he continued.

    VW also disclosed at the time that it was working on a “new unified battery cell” to be launched in 2023. Diess said: “The one size fits almost all cell design will radically reduce battery costs … by up to 50% compared to today. Lower prices for batteries means more affordable cars, which makes electric vehicles more attractive for customers.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 07/23/2021 – 02:45

  • List Of UK Venues That Could Mandate "Vaccine Passports" Already Expanding
    List Of UK Venues That Could Mandate “Vaccine Passports” Already Expanding

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The list of attractions that could be forced to mandate vaccine passports as a condition of entry is already growing, with minister Nadhim Zahawi listing other “crowded venues” that may have to ban the unvaccinated.

    On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a mockery of ‘freedom day’ – when all coronavirus restrictions were supposed to be lifted – by announcing that nightclubs would be made to check for vaccine status on the door.

    Despite widespread backlash to the idea and the potential for a defeat when it comes to a vote in Parliament, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi indicated today that the program could be extended further.

    During a speech to the Commons, Zahawi said sporting and business events, churches, music venues and festivals would also be subject to the rules, which are expected to come into force at the end of September.

    “We reserve the right to mandate its use in the future,” he said.

    Zahawi also asked venues to make providing evidence of taking the jab or a negative test a condition of entry before September despite the fact that it’s not the law.

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    “Although we don’t encourage its use in essential settings like supermarkets, other businesses and organisations in England can adopt the pass as a means of entry where it is suitable for their venue or premises when they can see its potential to keep their clients or their customers safe,” he said.

    As we previously highlighted, some nightclub owners are already saying they will refuse to follow the law because the system will be unworkable and wipe out profit margins.

    It remains to be seen whether the entire issue is just a PR stunt to bully younger people into taking the vaccine or whether it will actually be implemented.

    The government previously assured the public that vaccine passports would not be introduced for domestic purposes, even going so far as to label the practice “discriminatory.”

    Despite widespread unruly protests in France forcing President Macron to walk back part of a similar plan, a vaccine passport will still be required to access a multitude of venues, including bars, cafes and public transport.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 07/23/2021 – 02:00

  • Transhumanism: Immortality, Anyone?
    Transhumanism: Immortality, Anyone?

    Authored by Aden Tate via The Organic prepper blog,

    You’ve likely heard a word tossed about in the narrative of late that has you somewhat dumbfounded: transhumanism.

    What on earth does that mean?

    What is Transhumanism? 

    While the term has been around for decades, it’s always been a fringe aspect of the scientific community. And by fringe, I mean fringe of the fringe. Nobody knew what transhumanism was. However, now the movement is growing like never before, and the well-informed American needs to know what it encompasses. 

    The end goal of transhumanism: defeat suffering, pain, disease, inequality, and death through biotechnological implants.

    Do you remember the Borg from Star Trek? While perhaps not as grotesque, transhumanism seeks a similar path to reach its end goal. In some cases, you can see aspects of transhumanism in today’s culture. Ever seen anybody with a prosthetic leg? Transhumanists would claim them as one of their own.

    But that only scratches the surface of the situation. A true transhumanist wants to see things go much further. Brain implants, neural links to the internet, and much more are all part of their ultimate goals.

    And what is the ultimate goal?

    Posthumanism.

    The Difference Between Posthumanism and Transhumanism

    It’s important to note that there is a difference between transhumanism and Posthumanism. Yet, just as socialism is the stepping-stone to communism, one is the stepping-stone to the other.

    • Transhumanism seeks to use technological implants to improve the human condition.

    • Posthumanism aims to eradicate humanity as we know it altogether.

    Within the realm of Posthumanism, the ultimate end goal is the death of death – to become immortal. And for that to happen, you have to become a machine. Such is the end goal of Posthumanism.

    What Are the Aspects to Usher in a Transhumanist World?

    There are several talking points transhumanists will reference when discussing how to reach their end goals. Chief of these are:

    • Nanotechnology – If you’ve ever seen Johnny Depp’s Transcendence and witnessed how nanotechnology was used in medicine there to make the sick well, the injured whole, and the weak strong, this is precisely what they are talking about.

    According to transhumanists, using nanotech to become stronger, smarter, and teleport are all potential uses for such science.

    • Molecular assemblers – This is the creation of living material or lifeforms. 3D bioprinting could somewhat be an aspect of this. If you have a burn victim who needs a skin graft but whose burns are so complete that he doesn’t have any locations to harvest from, then 3D bioprinting could print the skin graft for him.

    Designer babies would probably fall under this umbrella as well. Imagine the notion of showing up to a fertility clinic and choosing the traits you want your child to have (boy, blue eyes, athletic, intelligent, etc.) and then having a scientist compile those genetic traits together for you into an embryo. According to transhumanists, the end goal is a healthier child that meets your expectations and wishes.

    • Epigenetics – This is the act of changing genes. While this is already possible (and happens) by the lifestyle you live, transhumanists want to take things a step further. They actively want to change your DNA to improve your disease resistance, to make you stronger, smarter, and so on. If you’ve seen Iron Man 3 with the fire people, it’s pretty much the same concept.
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Regularly touted as a means for improving our knowledge base, AI is argued as being the perfect scientist, and thus, the ideal means of further improving our condition. Done via the generation of a ‘superintelligence,’ a self-conscious AI connects to the internet. The AI quickly gains more knowledge than all of humanity combined, throughout all of history. This type of knowledge would mean we’d get sooner access to improvements in surgery, medicine, fuel, and the like.
    • Uploads – This is a concept considerably pushed by Ray Kurzweil, likely the most famous transhumanist around. It’s the point at which mankind melds with machines, entering a virtual world.

    What’s the Background Story Here? 

    To my knowledge, the earliest notions of transhumanism can be found in a 1929 article by JD Bernal titled The World, The Flesh, and The Devil.  Bionic implants, cognitive enhancement, and space colonization were all discussed here. While there are arguments made for transhumanism being a thought process even further back, I think this paper is the most modern example.

    However, the first self-described transhumanists didn’t meet until the early 1980s in Los Angeles at the University of California. The movement continued to spread as Nick Bostrom founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 (now Humanity+).

    Milestones were made for the movement. Among those were: 

    • Kevin Warwick has a 100-electrode array implanted into the nerves of his left arm in 2002 that directly linked his nervous system to the internet. 

    • Artist Neil Harbisson had a curved antenna implanted into his brain, allowing him to see infrared and ultraviolet colors.

    • The Journal of Posthuman Studies was started in 2017 by Penn State Press. 

    As you can see, transhumanist thought has been around for quite some time. As time goes on, it will become more frequently and openly discussed. You can check out Steve Quayle’s book on the subject for more information.

    Are There Moral Conundrums With Transhumanism? 

    Just as with anything, there will be pros and cons, and transhumanism is no exception here.

    What are your thoughts on:

    • George Washington having wooden teeth?

    • What about a little girl getting a cochlear implant?

    • Are you ok with a little boy getting a prosthetic leg after a freak accident leaves him missing his original?

    • What are your thoughts on braces?

    All of these situations had a problem solved by an implant/addition created by current technology. It’s hard to have a problem with such.

    But do transhumanists take things a step further? I believe they do.

    How Far Are Transhumanists Willing to Go?

    Uploads: Remember, this is the melding of man with machine. Ray Kurzweil points out in his book The Singularity is Near, this is when your consciousness is uploaded to a cloud. Uploads enable a person to theoretically teleport and manifest anywhere on earth. These capabilities are made possible by an ever-present cloud of nanobots that reassemble the person.

    Can the soul be transferred out of your body to a machine, though? Nope. To me, that is mass murder/suicide. A simulation may predict how you would react in every situation. However, it wouldn’t be the real you. The real you would have died at the moment of upload.

    Nanotechnology | Epigenetics: If ever-present nanotechnology is a goal, what about those who don’t consent to such. Is this not akin to a sheddable vaccine? Is it not a violation of informed consent? If I don’t want nanotechnology interacting with my body, what right does anyone have to force me to do so?

    Molecular Assemblers: What could be the cost of tinkering with genetic material? What if problems arise we can’t undo? Could we very easily end up with a Will Smith I Am Legend type scenario? Or, humans being genetically engineered to be tiny dolls, super polite waitresses, or other one-shot entities like those in Cloud Atlas?

    Artificial Intelligence: How much of your autonomy are you willing to give up to a machine? Eventually, one should ask, “How much government control should we hand over to artificial intelligence?”

    Are There Dangers to Transhumanism? 

    Aside from the moral qualms, there are some veritable dangers to transhumanist philosophy as well.

    The Singularity: As pointed out above, this would be mass suicide/murder. In a world where climate change is a chief concern, though, it could be argued the more uploads we have, the more negligible effect we’ll have as a whole on the planet. Could mandatory uploads result? This point is most certainly very remote and far out. However, if transhumanists are going to raise it, we should think of some response aforehand, should we not?

    Nanotechnology: Both Michael Crichton and Nick Bostrom have pointed out the dangers of self-replicating nanotechnology – something many transhumanists favor. How do you get self-replicating nanotechnology to stop? Does it reproduce indefinitely, becoming a new problem? Could nanotechnology be hacked? What’s to stop somebody from using your body’s nanobot to drill a hole through your heart, eat your pancreas, or cause a blood clot? What if you were given nanotechnology with capabilities you weren’t entirely made aware of?

    Epigenetics: DNA is notoriously complex. While one may believe they’ve created a solution, what if they’ve made a bad genetic trait that’s not revealed till 30 years down the road? Puberty is genetic, striking 13 years or so after birth. Baldness is genetic, striking decades after birth. Who’s to say they won’t create something more severe like psychosis that spontaneously demonstrates at the age of 25?

    We literally have no idea. Why? Because it’s never been done before? What if the bad trait created becomes inherited? Perhaps it’s that somebody’s arm rots off when they turn 38. We end up with a whole generation of kids who are bound to suffer the same fate. Once more, while that’s an extreme example, it gets us to think about the host of potential possibilities that need to be considered before engaging in such an action.

    What is the Future of Transhumanism? 

    According to Klaus Schwab, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to a fusion of our physical, digital, and biological identity.” 

    Istvan’s Coffin Shaped Immortality Bus

    Some wonder if this is verification the Great Reset is foundationally driven towards transhumanism. We’ve most certainly seen it’s a growing movement. In 2016, noted transhumanist Zoltan Istvan actually ran for US president.

    So where are we going to turn next? It’s hard to say. I believe that nanotechnology will be one of the prime movers in the near future. However, I do know this: transhumanism is here to stay, and it is only going to gain even more momentum within the next few years.

    It pays to stay well-informed on what is happening here. This movement is going to impact your life.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 07/23/2021 – 00:00

  • Taliban Boasts Control Over 90% Of Afghan Border Areas
    Taliban Boasts Control Over 90% Of Afghan Border Areas

    The Taliban told Russian media on Friday that it now controls approximately 90% of Afghanistan’s border with neighboring countries as its fight for control against US-trained Afghan national forces continues. 

    Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid made the claim to Sputnik, saying “The borders of Afghanistan with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran — about 90% of the borders are under our control … The border with Turkmenistan and the border with Iran are completely under our control. The borders of Pakistan (with the exception of a few small sections) are also under our control.”

    Map source: Alcis Geographic Information Services

    There’s at least some degree of confirmation that the sweeping claim is partially true, given recent videos to come out of the Pakistani border region alongside Reuters reporting that some major crossings have been seized by the Islamist group.

    Earlier this month an alarmed Tajikistan government called up 20,000 reserve forces to protect the border from the advancing Taliban, and this week US Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley admitted the Taliban now has “strategic momentum” as the Pentagon enters its final days of the total troop draw down before Biden’s August 31 “complete” departure deadline. 

    The top general estimated the Taliban now controls 50% of the geographic country, though this doesn’t necessarily represent the dense population centers. The Taliban in contrast has said this month it possesses 85% of territory.

    The Daily Mail summarizes of Milley’s Wednesday comments at the Pentagon:

    Milley said the Taliban now held 212 or 213 of the country’s 419 district centers – last month the number was 81.

    ‘A significant amount of territory has been seized over the course of six, eight, 10 months by the Taliban, so momentum appears to be – strategic momentum appears to be – with the Taliban,’ he said.

    He added that the Taliban strategy appeared to be to isolate population centers, such as Kabul.

    So the Taliban strategy is likely to keep methodically advancing around major urban centers, waiting for the moment to strike big cities like Kabul after the final and full American troop departure.

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    The US is however keeping a large security force of 650 or more to protect its sprawling embassy complex in Kabul, but it’s still being debated the degree to which the US would respond in a ‘counter-terror’ capacity once the official mission and occupation is deemed over (ultimately Biden’s symbolic final deadline is Sept.11).

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 23:40

  • Victor Davis Hanson: These Aren't The Democrats Of Old
    Victor Davis Hanson: These Aren’t The Democrats Of Old

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via  AmGreatness.com,

    In the old days, Democrats had predictable agendas, supposedly focused on individual rights, the “little guy,” and distrust of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. 

    The Left, often on spec, blasted the wealthy, whether the “lucre” was self-made or inherited. The old-money rich were lampooned as idle drones. 

    If the rich were self-made, they were deemed sell-outs. A good example was ’70s pop icon Jackson Brown’s “The Pretender,” whose lyrics railed about “happy idiots” who “struggled for the legal tender.”

    Democrats talked nonstop about the “working man.” They damned high gas and electricity prices that hurt “consumers.”

    Almost every liberal cause was couched in terms of “The First Amendment”—whether it was the right of shouting obscenities, viewing pornography, or bringing controversial speakers to campus. 

    The Supreme Court was sacred. Thanks to the holy, liberally packed court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, enlightened, progressive justices supposedly restrained the harebrained ballot initiatives of hick right-wing populists.

    Once upon a time, leftist congressional officials investigated the CIA and FBI nonstop. 

    Progressive political cartoonists cruelly caricatured the Pentagon’s top brass as obese, buffoonish looking clerks with monstrous jowls. Even their uniforms were mocked as festooned with ostentatious gold braids, shiny medals, and ridiculous peaked hats, smothered in gold and silver insignia. 

    The “revolving door” was a particular leftist obsession. Democrats blasted generals who retired into defense contractor boards and got rich.

    For the Left, elite professional sports were the opiates of the middle classes. Wannabe jocks supposedly wasted hours in front of the TV watching grown men toss around little balls. 

    Unions were sacred.

    So United Farm Worker kingpins like Cesar Chavez headed to the border to physically assault any would-be illegal alien “scabs.” 

    Politicians like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bill and Hillary Clinton railed against illegal immigrant “cheap labor” that “drove down” American wages.

    That was then; this is now. 

    Liberals soon became rich progressives who transmogrified into really rich hardcore leftists.

    Suddenly not just millionaires, but multibillionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jay-Z, Oprah Winfrey, and a host of other celebrities and CEOs were cool and hip. 

    Deified Silicon Valley monopolists ensured the leftist candidates were usually better funded than were conservatives. “Dirty money” disappeared from leftist invective. 

    The Fortune 400 became mostly a list of billionaires who did not make their money in the old way of manufacturing, assembly, construction, farming, transportation, or oil and gas production. 

    The Left got drunk on the idea that they now had their hands on the money and influence in America. So they systematically began targeting institutions. And they leveraged them not from the noisy street with empty protests, but from within. 

    Suddenly the once revered Supreme Court, with a majority of conservative justices, became an “obstacle” to “democracy,” and had to be packed or restructured. 

    The First Amendment was redefined as a bothersome speed bump that slowed “progress.” It needlessly protected noisy conservatives and their backward values. 

    In contrast, the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon were suddenly OK—if staffed with the right people. 

    Their clandestine power, their chain-of-command exemption from messy legislative give-and-take, and their reliance on surveillance, were now pluses once in the correct hands. 

    These institutions now became allies, not enemies, and so their powers were augmented and unchecked.

    Sports were cool, given they offered a huge platform for social justice players to damn the very system that had enriched them. 

    The higher gas and electricity prices, the better to shock the clueless bourgeoisie that their club cab trucks and home air conditioners were anti-green and on the way out. 

    The union shop was written off as a has-been enclave of old white dinosaurs, an ossified, shrinking base of the Democratic Party. Its new hard-Left successor party wanted a bigger, better Democratic demographic—if illegal, indigent, and non-diverse immigrants, all the better.  

     

    The media glitterati were no longer to be mocked as empty suits and pompadour fools, but useful Ministry of Truth foot-soldiers in the revolution. 

    So what happened to turn the party of Harry Truman, JFK, and even Bill Clinton into a woke neo-Maoist movement? 

    Globalization created a new $8 billion consumer market for American media, universities, law firms, insurance groups, investment houses, sports and entertainment, and the Internet, social media, and online gadgetry. 

    In contrast, work with arms and hands was passé, the supposed stuff of meth heads, deplorables and clingers—and so better outsourced and offshored. 

    Traditional Democrats were seen increasingly as namby-pamby naïfs, who rotated power with establishment Republicans. 

    Now with money, institutions in their hip pocket, and cool popular culture, the Left would not just damn American institutions, but infect them: alter their DNA, and reengineer them into revolutionary agencies. 

    So here we are with a near one-party system of a weaponized fused media, popular culture, and the administrative state—confident that all Americans will soon agree to love Big Sibling. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 23:20

  • "Hundreds Of Thousands Have Disappeared" – Inside China's Largest Detention Center
    “Hundreds Of Thousands Have Disappeared” – Inside China’s Largest Detention Center

    President Biden is ramping up pressure on Beijing over its alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which include – according to human rights groups – warehousing the Uygher Muslims who populate the far-western region in prisons that double as reeducation centers. The CCP says the Uyghers are receiving job training under the generous supervision of the state.

    But while that excuse might fly in China’s state-controlled press, thanks in part to President Trump, the US no longer has illusions. Even President Biden has been forced to burnish his tough-on-China credentials by following through on his threats.

    His latest round of Hong-Kong-related sanctions and the international condemnation over Beijing’s alleged role in organizing massive cyberattacks including the infiltration of Microsoft Exchange has greatly irritated Beijing. The fact that they rug-pulled the Didi IPO shows how serious China is about weening its economy off of American capital and markets (while simultaneously propping up its own markets).

    As Biden pushes ahead with the crackdown (much to the chagrin of those intelligence assets who partnered with Hunter Biden in that thinly -veiled influence-peddling operation) Beijing is apparently trying to convince the American public that claims of human rights abuses are overblown. 

    For that reason, it appears, the Chinese authorities granted reporters from the Associated Press a guided tour of Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center, one of the biggest detention centers in the country. It’s located in Dabancheng, a city in Xinjiang.

    According to the AP, the Detention Center is one of the largest in China, and possibly one of the largest in the world. It can hold an estimated 10K people, and many more if they are crowded in (like in American prisons). The compound itself is spread across 220 acres. The AP is the first western media outlet to be allowed inside (although the BBC and Reuters have reported from outside the facility).

    That China allowed the western journalists in suggests Beijing was trying to send a message: that it isn’t trying to hide the program, and expects t continue locking up and “reeducating” Uyghers (and, presumably, any other troublesome minorities) for as long as it takes.

    China insists the campaign of imprisoning and terrorizing more than 1MM Uyghers over the past 4 years is a “war against terror”.  The campaign was preceded by a series of attacks organized by radical Uygher separatists. The prisons, which, according to China, double as “vocational training centers” soon followed. Beijing has made some changes after being confronted with international condemnation. Many Uyghers have been released over the past year. But many others have simply been moved to prisons.

    China at first denied their existence, and then, under heavy international criticism, said in 2019 that all the occupants had “graduated.” But the AP’s visit to Dabancheng, satellite imagery and interviews with experts and former detainees suggest that while many “training centers” were indeed closed, some like this one were simply converted into prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. Many new facilities have also been built, including a new 85-acre detention center down the road from No. 3 in Dabancheng that went up over 2019, satellite imagery shows.

    The changes seem to be an attempt to move from the makeshift and extrajudicial “training centers” into a more permanent system of prisons and pre-trial detention facilities justified under the law. While some Uyghurs have been released, others have simply been moved into this prison network.

    Many Uyghers have been imprisoned for the crime of attending a religious gathering, or traveling abroad.

    “We’re moving from a police state to a mass incarceration state. Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared from the population,” Byler said. “It’s the criminalization of normal behavior.”

    During the April tour of No. 3 in Dabancheng, officials repeatedly distanced it from the “training centers” that Beijing claims to have closed.

    “There was no connection between our detention center and the training centers,” insisted Urumqi Public Security Bureau director Zhao Zhongwei. “There’s never been one around here.”

    One of the reporters’ Chinese minders offered a telling comment.

    They also said the No. 3 center was proof of China’s commitment to rehabilitation and the rule of law, with inmates provided hot meals, exercise, access to legal counsel and televised classes lecturing them on their crimes. Rights are protected, officials say, and only lawbreakers need worry about detention.

    “See, the BBC report said this was a re-education camp. It’s not – it’s a detention center,” said Liu Chang, an official with the foreign ministry.

    However, a local contractor shared a dramatically different story with the AP.

    Records also show that Chinese conglomerate Hengfeng Information Technology won an $11 million contract for outfitting the Urumqi “training center”. A man who answered a number for Hengfeng confirmed the company had taken part in the construction of the “training center,” but Hengfeng did not respond to further requests for comment.

    A former construction contractor who visited the Dabancheng facility in 2018 told the AP that it was the same as the “Urumqi Vocational Skills Education and Training Center,” and had been converted to a detention facility in 2019, with the nameplate switched. He declined to be named for fear of retaliation against his family.

    “All the former students inside became prisoners,” he said.

    We can’t help but point out that the description of the site doesn’t sound like any school we have ever seen: it’s surrounded by a concrete wall with watchtowers, and electric wire. In one corner of the compound, the journalists could see masked inmates sitting in rigid formation. When the “students” consult with their lawyers in special rooms, they are strapped to their seats.

    The AP reported on documents showing some detainees were arrested for sharing religious texts, or even just downloading a file-sharing application to their phones – or simply just for being deemed an “untrustworthy person.”

    All in the name of fighting terrorism.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 23:00

  • Critics Pan Newsom's New Retail Crime Bill
    Critics Pan Newsom’s New Retail Crime Bill

    Authored by Drew van Voorhis via The Epoch Times,

    A newly approved California bill seeking to reduce the spread of retail theft is being slammed by critics, with some accusing Gov. Gavin Newsom of enabling crime.

    “In Los Angeles County alone homicide rates are up 95 percent this year,” said Rescue California campaign manager Anne Dunsmore in a July 21 statement.

    “He has dismantled the criminal justice system and blames local jurisdictions while rendering them helpless in the fight against crime. He says he is an advocate for public safety, but his policies are literally killing innocent people. He blames it on gun laws, yet California has the most restrictive laws in the nation. Los Angeles alone has experienced a 111.9 percent increase in criminal homicide over last year, yet he says that California is the best place to live and do business.”

    Her comments were in response to a bill Newsom signed July 21 that seeks to reduce the spread of retail crime.

    Prior to signing the bill, the governor held a press conference to discuss the bill with more than a dozen mayors and police chiefs of the state’s largest cities.

    “We’re here … to highlight the issues that our retail community is facing,” Newsom told reporters July 21.

    “This is not new to the state of California. … We’ve been organized in a very deliberative manner to address the issue of organized retail crime for a number of years. That said, we are doubling down on those efforts today with this bill.”

    The governor said the rise in crime is not always due to individuals looking to steal, but rather organized crime rings.

    “We’ve all seen the images of people rushing in [to retails stores to steal]. … You’re seeing them all across the state of California,” Newsom said.

    “We want to go after those rings, we want to go after those well-organized teams of folks that are connected, not just within communities but all across the state of California.

    Assembly Bill 331 will expand the California Highway Patrol’s (CHP) retail crime task force to focus on geographical areas of high retail crime, including the Bay Area, San Diego, and the Inland Empire. Under the bill, a CHP tip line will be established for the public to report retail crimes.

    Newsom said that “millions of dollars” were put into the state budget in anticipation of the successful passing of the legislation.

    Critics of Newsom and proponents of his impending September recall election say he has done far more to allow for the continuance of crime through lack of consequences for offenders than he has done to stop it.

    Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said that the introduction of Prop 47—which allows thieves to steal $950 worth without being arrested—is the cause of the spike in retail crime.

    “This cliché-ridden press conference did nothing to address the theft crisis, organized or otherwise, plaguing California,” Cooley said in a statement following Newsom’s press conference.

     “Newsom and his DA appointee George Gascon, and their ‘baby,’ Prop 47, are at the very root of California’s crime problems including theft. Quite frankly, the whole thing was pathetic from beginning to end and an insult to all crime victims and law-abiding Californians.”

    CHP Commissioner Amanda Ray said the reduction in illicit proceeds garnered from retail crimes will help stop the funding of other illegal activities.

    “I’m extremely proud of the collaborative efforts of the task force members, the Department of Justice, and our local law enforcement partners,” Ray said during the July 21 press conference. “Organized crime retail theft has become a $30 billion criminal industry that often uses the illicit proceeds that they get from that to fund other crimes. Some of the other crimes that those monies are used for are vehicle theft, identity theft, human trafficking, and narcotics trafficking.”

    The retail crime task force already in place, which started in November 2019, had assisted law enforcement with 668 investigations, 252 arrests, and $16.3 million in recovered stolen merchandise, Ray said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 22:40

  • "Sabotage, Disrupt, Delay": Mossad Reportedly Planning Expanded Strikes On Iran's Nuclear Facilities
    “Sabotage, Disrupt, Delay”: Mossad Reportedly Planning Expanded Strikes On Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

    The New York-based Algemeiner newspaper, a Jewish publication focused on American and Israel-related news, has issued a detailed report unveiling Israeli intelligence contingency plans to ramp up sabotage efforts against Iran’s nuclear facilities at a moment Vienna negotiations remain stalled into August.

    The publication cites Hebrew media sources to say “the IDF and the Mossad have emphasized to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the government generally that while it is necessary to prepare for the possibility of an Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, such an approach would be greatly complicated by a renewed nuclear deal.”

    Spate of mystery explosions have rocked Iran over much of past year, via Washington Post.

    This strongly suggests that Tel Aviv sees the window as closing on efforts to derail Iranian nuclear production capabilities, should Tehran and Washington inch closer to a restored JCPOA after Iranian president-elect Ebrahim Raisi takes office August 3rd. Iran, however, has maintained all along that its nuclear development is solely for peaceful domestic energy purposes.

    In the scenario of a future ‘done deal’ being reported out of Vienna amid the upcoming 7th round of talks, Israeli officials have expressed that any aerial bombing campaign would become too politically problematic – and could further risk a wider war, hence the need for smaller “surgical” operations.

    The report provides the following details on plans to expand the IDF and Mossad’s counter-Iran capabilities: 

    Given all this, the IDF and the Mossad stressed that Israel should develop multiple operational plans, which could be put into operation whether the US signs a new deal with Iran or not.

    The goal of such operations would not be to destroy Iran’s nuclear program in a single blow, but to sabotage, disrupt, and delay the program indefinitely through surgical strikes and intelligence operations.

    This would be in keeping with current policy, which has seen major accidents, sabotage, and assassinations related to Iran’s nuclear program, most of which are believed to be the result of Israeli intelligence activity.

    Such covert espionage campaigns would begin with greater black budget funding, according to the Israeli sources cited in the report. 

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    More details are as follows:

    IDF sources said that further operations are already in the planning stages, saying, “There are big plans and small plans.”

    The purpose of the operations is not solely military, but also to “humiliate the Iranians” and harm their morale, giving them the feeling that they are under siege by Israeli operations they are powerless to stop.

    Last summer especially saw major sabotage operations disrupt key infrastructure across Iran, which was widely blamed on Israeli intelligence, as well as more recent cyberattacks on the Natanz nuclear facility which caused fires and possibly explosions. Fires at oil facilities and factories have also been on the rise in recent months, making it hard to know what’s an ‘accident’ and what’s not.

    For example, in the month of June…

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    There was also last November’s almost unbelievable Hollywood-style assassination of the Islamic Republic’s top nuclear scientist, which involved a one-ton remote automated gun – which Israeli officials and sources appeared to openly boast about. If this latest stunning report out of Algemeiner is accurate, there’s likely a lot more Israeli ‘dirty tricks’ inside Iran to come in the next weeks and months.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 22:20

  • Republican Hawks Want To Increase Biden’s 2022 Military Budget By $25 Billion
    Republican Hawks Want To Increase Biden’s 2022 Military Budget By $25 Billion

    Authored by Dave DeCamp Via AntiWar.com,

    The Senate Armed Services Committee is debating military spending for 2022 this week, and some lawmakers want to massively increase the budget that President Biden has requested.

    For the 2022 fiscal year, Biden requested about $753 billion for national security spending, including about $715 billion that will be the base budget for the Pentagon. According to a report from Military Times, one amendment being pushed by Republicans on the committee would increase the Defense Department’s budget by a whopping $25 billion.

    Image via Foreign Policy

    Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the committee, said he believes the $25 billion increase might have bipartisan support. “I feel very confident about getting support, from Democrats too,” he said.

    The increase in funding would be meant to give military services’ weapons and training programs that are not covered by Biden’s budget. For example, the Army wants an additional $1.1 billion for training and another $1.9 billion for aviation platforms and combat vehicles.

    Biden’s massive budget request is not enough for Republican hawks who don’t think the administration is doing enough to compete with China, although the Pentagon has agreed that Beijing is the top “pacing threat” facing the US military.

    Military Times comments that:

    The $716 billion budget proposal represents a 1.4 percent increase over fiscal 2021 spending levels, a figure that Republicans say does not keep up with inflation costs. Numerous GOP members have publicly attacked the plan, saying it failed to keep pace with the threats presented by China and terrorist groups around the globe.

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The draft budget puts a focus on new weapons technology research, which US military leaders see as vital to compete with China.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 22:00

  • Here We Go Again: Toyota Shutters Factory In Thailand Due To COVID 'Delta' Variant
    Here We Go Again: Toyota Shutters Factory In Thailand Due To COVID ‘Delta’ Variant

    Today in “are we going to do the entire lockdown again for the Delta variant despite the entire world having access to vaccines” news…

    Toyota says it is halting operations at three of its factories in Thailand as a result of the Delta variant disrupting the supply of automotive parts globally. The stoppage began on July 21 and will last until at least July 28, according to a report from Nikkei. 

    The report says that Toyota “has sourced wire harnesses to connect electrical components from an external factory, which was recently forced to shut down”. 

    The annual production capacity of the factories that have been shuttered is 760,000 units. They produced only 440,000 units in 2020 and Thailand is the 3rd largest overseas hub for Toyota, after China and the U.S.

    The shuttered factories are mainly responsible for producing the Corolla and the company’s Hilux pickup. It is the second time the company’s Thailand factories have been closed down, with the first being in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.

    The Delta variant is “overwhleming” southeast Asia according to the report and the Thai government has “resorted to a business lockdown of affected provinces to contain the situation”. 

    Similarly, Malaysia also went into a nationwide lockdown in June, forcing auto factories there to close. “Indonesia has now overtaken India as the Asian epicenter of the pandemic,” Nikkei concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 21:40

  • Montana Attorney General Provides Legal Basis For Rejecting Critical Race Theory: Activists
    Montana Attorney General Provides Legal Basis For Rejecting Critical Race Theory: Activists

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Putting the fight against critical race theory –which holds that white people are inherently racist— on a firmer footing by emphasizing that teaching it in public schools violates the Constitution and civil rights laws is an excellent tactic, supporters of traditional patriotic education told The Epoch Times.

    Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, (Montana Department of Justice)

    Their comments came after Austin Knudsen, Republican attorney general of Montana, wrote a legal opinion about whether Marxist-invented critical race theory (CRT) violated the U.S. and Montana constitutions as well as various federal civil rights laws. He was responding to an inquiry by Elsie Arntzen, Montana’s superintendent of public instruction, also a Republican.

    The opinion came as public resistance to CRT grows and intensifies among parents in communities across the country who are fighting back by protesting and taking over local school boards. In 26 state legislatures bills have been introduced or other steps have been taken to prevent CRT from being taught, according to Education Week.

    But those measures have rarely offered a comprehensive rationale for banning CRT, which is something Knudsen’s legal opinion provides, sources consulted for this article told The Epoch Times. Without tying objections to CRT to the Constitution or state constitutions, CRT opponents had left their laws more susceptible to being overturned.

    Acknowledging resistance to CRT in education is “absolutely grassroots” and led by parents at the local level, Ian Prior, a parent who helped to found and is executive director of Virginia-based Fight for Schools, said Knudsen did the right thing.

    “Whenever one is taking action against policies being pushed downstream from the highest levels of government authority, having a rock-solid legal basis for those actions is absolutely necessary to accomplish required change and do so in a way that will not fluctuate with changes in political power,” Prior said.

    David Randall, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, told The Epoch Times that in his view “there has been a sudden spike of outrage by ordinary people, that the professional political class has been caught off-guard by it, and that they are struggling to catch up with popular outrage rather than fanning it.”

    Although legal opinions like Knudsen’s are needed, much more is required for the fight, he said.

    “Our elite institutions have practiced unconstitutional race discrimination for decades, regardless of the Constitution and the law. They will continue to do so until the people reassert control over their authoritarian elites. The solution must be political as well as legal. We need Knudsen, but we also need an effective political movement to remove all the elite discriminators from the chokepoints of power.”

    Adam Waldeck, founder of 1776 Action, a nonprofit group, said “the tighter and more grounded these anti-CRT laws are the better, and there are no doubt preexisting laws on the books against discrimination that CRT opponents should look to as well.”

    “That said, the opposition to CRT started at the local grassroots level and that must continue, particularly in regards to school boards. It’s up to voters to make sure that their officials (and relevant candidates) state exactly what they believe and support, which is exactly why we created The 1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools.”

    In his legal opinion, Knudsen wrote that in many instances the use of CRT and so-called antiracism programming does discriminate “on the basis of race, color, or national origin in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Article II, Section 4 of the Montana Constitution, and the Montana Human Rights Act.”

    CRT, he noted, calls for teaching students how white people are supposedly by their nature racist and for engaging in racial discrimination in the name of combating it.

    What Is Critical Race Theory?

    “The driving force behind CRT and antiracism is the complete and total acceptance of a specific worldview—one that encompasses very specific notions about history, philosophy, sociology, and public policy. Being a so-called ‘antiracist’ requires individuals to accept these premises and advocate for specific policy proposals. Individuals who do not comply cannot truly be ‘antiracist,’ and are, therefore, considered racist,” Knudsen wrote.

    “By its own terms, antiracism excludes individuals who merely advocate for the neutral legal principles of the Constitution, or who deny or question the extent to which white supremacy continues to shape our institutions,” he wrote. “To that end, no one can be antiracist who does not act to eliminate the vestiges of white supremacy, i.e., embrace the specific public policy proposals of CRT and antiracism.”

    “For example, critics have suggested that there is one, and only one, correct stance on standardized testing, drug legalization, Medicare for All, and even the capital gains tax rate. This paradigm is conveniently constructed ‘like a mousetrap,’” Knudsen wrote, quoting Christopher Rufo.

    “Disagreement with any aspect becomes irrefutable evidence of its premises of systemic racism, bias, fragility, or white supremacy. … CRT and antiracism are not merely academic ideas confined to university critical studies courses. These ideologies have begun to infiltrate mainstream American dialogue and permeate our institutions.”

    Compelled Speech

    Knudsen argues that, “Trainings, exercises, or assignments which force students or employees to admit, accept, affirm, or support controversial concepts such as privilege, culpability, identity, or status, constitute compelled speech,” which is something the First Amendment forbids the government from forcing people to do.

    “It is obvious that CRT and antiracism programming take strident positions on some of the most controversial political, societal, and philosophical issues of our time. Compelling students, trainees, or anyone else to mouth support for those same positions not only assaults individual dignity, it undermines the search for truth, our institutions, and our democratic system.”

    Some schools have proposed separate housing and advisors based on race, as well as separate professional development training, he wrote. Some universities have been sued for diversity programs in which “they make people get down on the floor and apologize for being white.”

    Key elements of CRT and antiracism education and training, when used to classify students or other Montanans by race, run afoul of the U.S. Constitution and federal and state civil rights laws, Knudsen wrote.

    “The term ‘antiracism’ appears reasonable and innocuous on its face. After all, our Constitution, our laws, and nearly all our citizens are ‘antiracism,’” he wrote. But “antiracism,” when used to describe radical activists’ worldview, is “an Orwellian rhetorical weapon.”

    Knudsen added that the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s website had a page dealing with “Whiteness,” that bizarrely claimed traits such as “individualism,” “hard work,” “objectivity,” “progress,” “politeness,” “decision-making,” and “delayed gratification” were hallmarks of “white culture.”

    Teaching CRT

    CRT supporters have lashed out at critics. Michelle Leete, Vice President of Training at the Virginia PTA (Parent Teacher Association) wished death on CRT opponents at a public event on July 15. Two days later Leete, who is also a vice president of the NAACP’s chapter in Fairfax County, Virginia, was forced to resign her PTA post. The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association have vowed to defend their members who teach CRT.

    After he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden promptly rescinded former President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13950, which banned teaching CRT to government contractors. Trump said the ideology was “divisive and harmful” and “like a cancer.”

    Critical race theory—whose proponents frequently denounce American culture and history as “Eurocentrism” and “whiteness”—is “a variation of critical theory applied to the American context that stresses racial divisions and sees society in terms of minority racial groups oppressed by the white majority,” according to the report of the 1776 Commission, an advisory body created by Trump, which sought to move U.S. education away from a radical curriculum that unduly emphasized race-related injustices of the past.

    “Equally significant to its intellectual content is the role Critical Race Theory plays in promoting fundamental social transformation,” the report states, “to impart an oppressor-victim narrative upon generations of Americans. This work of cultural revolution has been going on for decades, and its first political reverberations can be seen in 1960s America.”

    Trump unveiled the commission last year as the New York Times-promoted 1619 Project gained widespread acceptance among elites as it rode a wave of national revulsion over the death in Minneapolis police custody last year of black suspect George Floyd which was popularly blamed on anti-black racism by police.

    The 1619 Project claims real American history began when the first African slaves arrived in colonial America in 1619, and not on July 4, 1776, when the colonists declared independence from the United Kingdom. Educators helped to lay the foundation for the revisionist history project years ago by teaching the ahistorical “A People’s History of the United States,” by academic Howard Zinn, who was a member of the Communist Party USA. Millions of copies of the book have been sold.

    Leftists claim CRT promotes racial equality by highlighting the supposed damage that white people have done to others in society. Left-wing sociology professor Robyn Autry of Wesleyan University, praised Biden for killing the commission, falsely claiming it promoted a “dangerous alternative history,” instead of seeking a return to the traditional way the country’s history has been taught.

    Subversion

    But critical race theory “is designed to subvert our system of government,” Mary Grabar, resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization told The Epoch Times.

    “Distorted history, such as The 1619 Project, is used to make CRT seem plausible. CRT is inherently anti-Constitutional … and cannot be justified at the K-12 and even undergraduate levels because students are still learning history in terms of fundamentals and facts. They cannot perceive its Marxist underpinnings.”

    Grabar’s new book, “Debunking the 1619 Project,” will be published by Regnery on Sept. 7. She is also author of “Debunking Howard Zinn,” published in 2019.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 21:20

  • UK's Sending 2 Warships To Japan Infuriates China – Warns Against "Flexing Muscles"
    UK’s Sending 2 Warships To Japan Infuriates China – Warns Against “Flexing Muscles”

    China is urgently warning Britain against “flexing muscles” in and around its claimed territorial waters after the UK confirmed it is sending two warships to be permanently stationed off Japan to patrol Asian waters.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in the wake of the announcement earlier this week that Beijing “firmly opposes the practice of flexing muscles at China.” His Wednesday comments to reporters further described that any ‘permanent’ UK military presence “undermines China’s sovereignty and security, and harms regional peace and stability.”

    HMS Queen Elizabeth and escort ships, via Royal Navy.

    As we described previously, Britain’s Defense Minister Ben Wallace this week unveiled that the UK will keep two warships in the region while in Tokyo meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Nobuo Kishi. “Following on from the strike group’s inaugural deployment, the United Kingdom will permanently assign two ships in the region from later this year,” he had said. 

    It broadly demonstrates that Britain has of late joined Washington in deepening its security ties with Japan at a moment tensions with China over Taiwan and other contested islands are at their highest in years. The US-UK military build-up appears centered on growing rumors of a near-future Chinese military move on Taiwan, also as the PLA military has of late sent unprecedented numbers of aircraft to breach Taiwan’s Defense Identification Zone. 

    Rabobank had this to say as the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is en route to the region – first taking part of joint exercises with regional allies including the US Navy:

    …The UK just announced its two new aircraft carriers will be based in Japan from now on, with the first due to arrive in September. Think about that for a moment. Two vastly-expensive pieces of military equipment, full of US-made F-35s, and British sailors and sausages, kept on the other side of the world. It says a huge amount about the UK’s intentions to go global in at least one dimension – alongside the Quad. Expect new trade architecture to eventually flow as a quid pro quo, or else the UK isn’t doing diplomacy right. (And that is admittedly a real possibility with the current UK bridge crew, as we see with Northern Ireland.)

    Britain is indeed describing a “realignment” to the Indo-Pacific based on its “commitment to collective security”.

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    Japan is of course welcoming this at a moment the historic Senkaku Islands dispute with Beijing in the East China Sea is again heating up, while an anxious China looks on with growing anger, as Newsweek details: 

    The Queen Elizabeth Carrier Strike Group, which also has U.S. Navy and Royal Netherlands Navy escorts, is scheduled to transit the contested South China Sea on its way to Japan. China claims almost all of the energy-rich sea as part of its expansive “nine-dash line.”

    Earlier this summer China warned the Western allies – specifically the US, UK, and NATO that its military will not “sit by and do nothing” if “challenges” arise. No doubt Beijing will see any new US and UK ‘permanent’ military deployment off Japan as reason enough to act with its own ‘muscular’ deployment in response. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 21:00

  • Secessionist, Border Realignment Movements Gaining Traction In US
    Secessionist, Border Realignment Movements Gaining Traction In US

    Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The American Civil War is often thought of as being the deciding historical factor putting to rest any future ambition of individual or groups of states wanting to secede from the union.

    (Angelique Johnson/Pixabay)

    Well over a century later, the idea of secession appears far from settled in the minds of millions of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike.

    In fact, secession mindedness has been gaining ground following the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, which showed the nation to be more politically divided than ever.

    A newly released poll found that two-thirds (66 percent) of Republicans living in southern states, including Texas and Florida, would approve of seceding from the United States to join a union of southern states.

    That number is up from 50 percent from a similar poll conducted earlier this year.

    Among southern Democrats, 20 percent are in favor of breaking away and forming a new country, according to the latest poll by YouGov and Bright Line Watch of 2,750 Americans.

    For Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, founded in 2005, the poll numbers are revealing but not surprising.

    Similar polls conducted in the Lone Star State have also shown a willingness among Texans to leave the union and establish their own nation—a Texit, if you will.

    “You look at the size of our movement—we are literally the largest political advocacy organization in the state” with over 400,000 members, Miller told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

    At the very core of the state’s secessionist movement is the belief that Texas is “past the breaking point” in terms of dealing with a liberal Washington establishment and its unfavorable policies regarding border control, immigration, culture, and finance, Miller said.

    “We are being crushed by 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations every single day. What we want is a basic fundamental right of self-governance. Texans want to be able to create policies that can’t be overridden [by Washington politicians],” Miller said. “That is what this movement is all about.”

    Throughout his speaking engagements, Miller said, “I couldn’t find anyone that would vote to join the union.”

    Miller said Texas House Bill 1359 would have allowed Texans to vote in a referendum on the question of whether the state should leave the union and establish an independent republic. The bill died in committee.

    In the aftermath, the Texas Nationalist Movement has been “quietly” recruiting secessionist-minded candidates to run in the 2022 primary.

    The organization is also working to garner 80,000 signatures necessary to petition for a non-binding advisory ballot vote on the Texit proposal. The measure would need a simple majority to pass.

    Miller, however, said it would be up to the newly configured legislature to “put the next steps in place for full withdrawal.”

    “This is not a ‘mother may I?’ movement,” he said. “If the federal government needed a new motto, it’s ‘one size fits none.’”

    The Calexit movement in California is another breakaway effort whose goal is to divide the rural portions of the state from the coastal and liberal bastions to create the 51st state.

    In Arizona, the liberal-led Baja Arizona movement in 2011 sought to split the state into two separate states over the increasing partisan divide between the more conservative north and liberal southern areas.

    The non-binding initiative failed to gather the required number of signatures to place the measure on the 2012 election ballot.

    Other lesser known separatist movements in the United States have sprung up in states such as Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska, though not all currently active movements desire secession from the United States.

    The Greater Idaho movement, for example, seeks a political merger of the rural eastern and southern counties in Oregon with neighboring conservative Idaho.

    “After Trump was elected the first time, in January 2017 Oregonians submitted a petition to place secession from the U.S. on the state ballot, and were only convinced to retract the petition by death threats,” according to a Greater Idaho statement to The Epoch Times.

    “One of our concerns is that after an economic depression, or after a more muscular Republican is elected president, conditions might deteriorate to the point that Oregon may choose to secede from the U.S. Eastern and southern Oregon certainly wouldn’t want to join northwestern Oregon in such an adventure, because our counties belong with Idaho.”

    The Cascadia secession movement, which proposes a union of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia in Canada as a single “bioregion,” in Oregon is broadly supported, and “held back by the ‘normalcy bias’ of people expecting the future to look like the present,” the Greater Idaho statement added.

    “We admit that if the border of Oregon and Idaho were relocated as we propose, that northwestern Oregon would be more likely to be able to secede from the U.S., but that’s a chance we’re willing to take because our counties certainly don’t want to be stuck with [liberal] Portland.”

    The organization added, “We are confident that we will convince Idaho to accept our counties. Congress usually approves interstate compacts approved by both blue and red state[s]. We expect that the chances of the Greater Idaho movement being successful [will] depend entirely on whether we are able to convince northwestern Oregon to let our counties go.”

    According to Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, which promotes conservative public policies, the question of state secession was settled by the Civil War.

    However, while border realignments between states are within the realm of congressional approval, he said, “the practical difficulties are so great” that they are unlikely to occur.

    Regarding state secession, “it’s not an area where we’ve been keeping our fingers” on recent activity, von Spakovsky said.

    In West Virginia, state Rep. Gary Howell, a Republican, is sponsoring a resolution inviting conservative Virginia counties to dissolve their borders and join West Virginia.

    Such a “Vexit” measure would require the approval of both states’ legislatures. Howell added that the benefits of the proposal are many.

    “You can elect every liberal you want and have the liberal utopia you want,” he said regarding the liberal counties in Virginia.

    “There won’t be anybody standing in their way. This is a very serious offer to them. We have looked at the numbers. We want Virginia to make an actual request and hold a referendum in all counties [involved]. If they don’t make the ask, [the counties] have to be released from Virginia in some form.”

    “You’ve got cities in the western part of Virginia saying, ‘We’re done with you,’” Howell added. “Is [Vexit] unlikely to happen? Probably. It’s a long shot, but the odds are not zero.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 20:40

  • "He Totally Distorted Reality" – Fauci Accuses Paul Of Slander During Congressional Showdown
    “He Totally Distorted Reality” – Fauci Accuses Paul Of Slander During Congressional Showdown

    Rand Paul’s skewering of Anthony Fauci during a Congressional hearing earlier this week – followed by the senator’s announcement that he planned to write a letter to the DoJ asking that Fauci be investigated for lying to Congress – emerged as a major story. Even mainstream reporters like the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin asserted that Fauci hadn’t been truthful in his characterization of the NIH’s role in financing dangerous research involving bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    The incident has clearly had an adverse impact on Fauci’s already tarnished reputation, and we imagine if the administration wasn’t in such a panic about the Delta variant, WaPo, CNN and NYT would be printing anonymously sourced stories about the administration’s growing frustration with Fauci and his – as Paul put it – potential “moral culpability”.

    For those who haven’t been following along, here’s a quick summary: in the years before SARS-CoV-2 first started infecting people in Wuhan, the Fauci-led NIH gave grant money to an organization called EcoHealth Alliance. That group then turned around and funneled money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to help finance ‘gain-of-function’ research on bat coronaviruses. ‘Gain-of-function’ research involves manipulating viruses to make them more virulent and infectious against humans in the hopes that the scientists will deepen their understanding of how they work, and how to prevent them. However, the Obama Administration made it illegal to finance this type of research with federal dollars, lifting the ban just days before President Trump took office.

    As Sen. Paul pointed out before Congress, the report describing the research underway at the WIV involved “viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans. This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014-2017, a pause in funding on gain-of-function. But the NIH failed to recognize this.”

    Reporting from the Australian shows Fauci has (in the past) been an outspoken proponent of this type of research, even claiming that pursuing it was “worth the risks” of a deadly pandemic. We suspect he feels different today.

    Some have suggested that this is why Fauci pushed back so hard against the lab leak theory (until he finally acknowledged the theory’s ‘plausibility’). And Sen. Paul said during an interview on Fox News that Fauci is clearly too “conflicted” to be running the country’s COVID response.

    Now, it looks like Fauci is fighting back once again. In a headline that will almost certainly be picked up by the MSM, Fauci is claiming that Paul’s “inflammatory” comments amounted to slander.

    Both men accused one another of “lying” during a heated back-and-forth abotu the level of the National Institute of Health’s role in funding gain-of-function research at China’s WIV. Fauci made the remarks during an interview with MBNBC’s “The Beat” Wednesday evening.

    “I don’t any take great pleasure, Ari, in clashing with the senator,” Fauci said. “I have a great deal of respect for the institution of the Senate of the United States.”

    “But he was completely out of line,” the doctor continued. “He totally distorted reality. And he made some inflammatory and, I believe, slanderous remarks about lying under oath, which is completely nonsense.”

    “I mean, and some of the things he says are so distorted and out of tune with reality, I had to call him on that,” he added. “I didn’t enjoy it, but I had to do that because he was completely out of line. Totally inappropriate.”

    Watch the clip below:

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    Of course, Fauci didn’t get into the details of Paul’s claim, nor offer to explain exactly why Paul is incorrect. And MSNBC’s Ari Melber seemed just fine with that.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 20:20

  • Mississippi AG Asks Supreme Court To Overturn Roe v. Wade
    Mississippi AG Asks Supreme Court To Overturn Roe v. Wade

    Mississippi’s Attorney General on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, calling the right to abortion “egregiously wrong,” while also asking the court to uphold a state law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    According to the New York Times, “The court will hear arguments in the case in the fall, giving its newly expanded conservative majority a chance to confront what may be the most divisive issue in American law: whether the Constitution protects the right to end pregnancies.”

    Mississippi’s 15-week abortion statute was struck down by lower courts, which called it a cynical and calculated assault on abortion rights which are at odds with precedent set by the Supreme Court.

    In May, the USSC agreed to hear the case, several months after anti-abortion Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the panel – replacing abortion rights advocate Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

    “The Constitution does not protect a right to abortion,” wrote Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, adding “The Constitution’s text says nothing about abortion. Nothing in the Constitution’s structure implies a right to abortion or prohibits states from restricting it.”

    The new filing, from Attorney General Lynn Fitch, was a sustained and detailed attack on Roe and the rulings that followed it, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that said states may not impose an “undue burden” on the right to abortion before fetal viability — the point at which fetuses can sustain life outside the womb, or about 23 or 24 weeks. –New York Times

    According to Fitch, the scope of abortion rights should be determined through a political process.

    “The national fever on abortion can break only when this court returns abortion policy to the states — where agreement is more common, compromise is often possible and disagreement can be resolved at the ballot box,” she wrote.

    At issue is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, enacted in 2018 by the GOP-controlled Mississippi legislature. The law bans abortions if “the probable gestational age of the unborn human” was medically determined to be 15 weeks or more, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies or “a severe fetal abnormality.”

    The precise question the justices agreed to decide was “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Depending on how the court answers that question, it could reaffirm, revise or do away with the longstanding constitutional framework for abortion rights.

    Ms. Fitch urged the justices to take the third approach, saying it would bolster the legitimacy of the court. –New York Times

    “Roe and Casey are unprincipled decisions that have damaged the democratic process, poisoned our national discourse, plagued the law — and, in doing so, harmed this court.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 20:00

  • Iranian Officer Killed In Worsening Water Crisis Protests – Internet Shutdowns Imposed
    Iranian Officer Killed In Worsening Water Crisis Protests – Internet Shutdowns Imposed

    Water and power shortage protests in Iran have now been raging continuously for one week, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries particularly out of the restive southwest oil-rich province of Khuzestan, including the death of a police officer. 

    State media by mid-week has reported a death toll of three: “According to the state-run IRNA news agency, gunfire killed the officer in the city of Mahshar and another suffered a gunshot wound to his leg,” the AP reports citing state sources. 

    Iranians protest again water shortages in the Khuzestan province

    Tehran has presented the violence and killings as the fault of “rioters” while the State Department early in the week referenced reports of security forces indiscriminately opening fire on peaceful protesters.

    “We support the rights of Iranians to peacefully assemble and express themselves… without fear of violence, without fear of arbitrary detention by security forces,” State Dept. spokesman Ned Price said.

    Chants saying “down with the Ayatollah” have also been reported based on widely circulating social media videos, also with external Iranian opposition groups as well as Saudi-funded think tanks in the West attempting to seize on the protests as an “opportunity” to weaken and overthrow the Islamic Republic regime.

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    Behind the crisis are US-led sanctions, severe government mismanagement of resources, but crucially what’s being dubbed the worst drought in 50 years.

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    One opposition group called Human Rights Activists in Iran was cited in AP as saying:

    “As nearly 5 million Iranians in Khuzestan are lacking access to clean drinking water, Iran is failing to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to water, which is inextricably linked to the right to the highest attainable standard of health,” the group said.

    And in a sign of the growing fierceness of the security response and crackdown, the global web-outage monitor Netblocks has reported widespread internet outages in Khuzestan for days, place of multiple protests across towns and cities, that are part of “state information controls or targeted Internet shutdowns.”

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    The monitor said outages began on July 15, with outages still being reported into this week…

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    Already throughout the summer other parts of Iran have witnessed protests over severe electricity shortages leading to unplanned, intermittent blackouts – which Tehran officials have actually in some instances admitted is due in large part to mismanagement and neglect, while also blaming US-led sanctions.

    Both the energy and water crisis are deepening the outrage of the Iranian populace, particularly during a hot summer, and given apartment high rises in places like Tehran and other big cities are not designed to go long periods without air conditioning. The water protests have reached several cities in the oil rich southwest. And in the balance are the Vienna nuclear talks and a new incoming Iranian president – the former said to be “stalled” till later in August. Thus the crisis is likely set to get worse for the time being.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 19:40

  • North Carolina State Board Of Election Denies Audit Request
    North Carolina State Board Of Election Denies Audit Request

    Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Citing overriding federal authority under the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the North Carolina Board of Elections (BOE) has denied a North Carolina House Freedom Caucus (HFC) request to examine voting machines.

    Morgan County election officials sort ballots during an audit in Madison, Ga., on Nov. 13, 2020. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)

    Chairman of the caucus, Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort), told The Epoch Times that although there is a statute that requires state employees to comply with requests for data from the North Carolina General Assembly, Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the elections board, declined the request to inspect voting equipment used in the November 2020 election in a July 7 letter.

    During a July 15 press conference, Kidwell said the HFC had been responding to public concern regarding transparency in the election process.

    Before the denial, the HFC met with the BOE twice, and Kidwell added that Elections Systems & Software (ES&S), the largest election vendor for North Carolina, agreed to provide access to three voting systems it manufactures.

    At the time, ES&S indicated that they would be willing to take any inspected system at a randomly selected precinct by the HFC and recertify the equipment so that there would be no cost to the BOE or county, Kidwell said.

    ES&S, he said, “seemed eager” to have the inspection to relieve the public concerns about the equipment.

    “We would not invade, compromise, or damage the machines,” Kidwell said in the press conference. “The only thing that would happen is the ES&S service technician would open, show us and allow us to see that there are no modems in the machines.”

    According to Bell, in her statement to the HFC, neither ES&S nor the machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic (Hart) have modems, which are prohibited by state law.

    After speaking with ES&S officials, Bell said in the statement that “they [ES&S] were unaware of any commitment by the company to take any accessed machines back to their headquarters for recertification.”

    ES&S didn’t respond immediately to The Epoch Times in request for a statement.

    Critical Infrastructure

    CISA, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, classifies voting equipment as “critical infrastructure,” Bell said.

    She included a letter from Geoff Hale, director of the Election Security Initiative (ESI) at CISA, in which he said “allowing unknown, unauthorized, or inexpert actors” to access the machines could risk damage and manipulation, which would compromise the security of the equipment.

    Bell said that the ESI would not “partake in, nor perpetuate, myths and falsehoods about the voting system or elections.”

    Kidwell said he wouldn’t classify members of the General Assembly as “unknown, unauthorized, or inexpert actors.”

    The goal of the HFC is to show the public that voting equipment is not a problem, Kidwell said.

    “I want to point out that first, we seek transparency in the election process,” Kidwell said. “The North Carolina House Freedom Caucus believes that every legal vote should be counted, but not a single illegal vote should be counted.”

    The HFC has made no false or “misleading statements about the machines, processes, or staff,” Kidwell said.

    “In fact, we have sent out press releases and made social media post that clearly stated we thought—from what we had seen to date—our system did not have modems, and appeared to be secure,” Kidwell said.

    Up until the statement from Bell, Kidwell said the HFC had been “impressed by the cooperation” from the BOE.

    “Now we’ve hit a wall,” Kidwell said in the press conference. “That wall—they’re seemingly hiding behind. Miss Bell, tear down that wall, unless you have something to hide.”

    The BOE told The Epoch Times that it’s not aware of a statute that allows a member of the General Assembly access to voting machines.

    Because county boards of elections are legally responsible for the voting equipment, access must be restricted to prevent tampering, said the BOE.

    North Carolina General Statute 120-19 states that “all officers, agents, agencies and departments of the State are required to give any committee of either house of the General Assembly, or any committee or commission whose funds are appropriated or transferred to the General Assembly or to the Legislative Services Commission for disbursement, upon request, all information and all data within their possession, or ascertainable from their records.”

    “Here is the key,” Kidwell said. “This requirement is mandatory.”

    Kidwell added that, at this point, he’s not asking for a “full-blown audit,” which is what took place in Arizona when Florida-based tech firm Cyber Ninjas performed a months-long forensic audit.

    Last week, Arizona’s GOP-led state Senate held a hearing in which Cyber Ninja CEO Doug Logan spoke, telling senators that, among other discrepancies, auditors could find no record of the county sending more than 74,000 mail-in ballots.

    After the hearing, some Republicans called for Arizona’s 11 electors—who went for Biden—to be recalled, to which Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said that the state Senate can’t recall electors.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 19:20

  • Facebook Moderators Demand Company Shred NDAs So They Can Share PTSD Horror Stories
    Facebook Moderators Demand Company Shred NDAs So They Can Share PTSD Horror Stories

    Dozens of Facebook content moderators from around the world are calling for the company to put an end to ‘overly restrictive nondisclosure agreements’ (NDAs) which discourage workers from speaking out about horrific working conditions, according to The Verge.

    “Despite the company’s best efforts to keep us quiet, we write to demand the company’s culture of fear and excessive secrecy ends today,” the group of at least 60 moderators wrote in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the CEOs of contracting companies Covalen and Accenture. “No NDA can lawfully prevent us from speaking out about our working conditions.”

    The news comes amid escalating tension between the company and its contract content moderators in Ireland. In May, a moderator named Isabella Plunkett testified before a parliamentary committee to try to push for legislative change.

    “The content that is moderated is awful,” she said. “It would affect anyone … To help, they offer us wellness coaches. These people mean really well, but they are not doctors. They suggest karaoke and painting, but frankly, one does not always feel like singing, after having seen someone be battered to bits.”

    The letter asks that the company give moderators regular access to clinical psychiatrists and psychologists. “Imagine watching hours of violent content or children abuse online as part of your day to day work,” they write. “You cannot be left unscathed. This job must not cost us our mental health.” -The Verge

    Horror stories from Facebook’s PTSD-stricken content moderators are nothing new – as anonymous mods have leaked several times in the past, or had conditions revealed via lawsuits. In 2018, a California woman sued the social media giant after she was “exposed to highly toxic, unsafe, and injurious content during her employment as a content moderator at Facebook.”

    Selena Scola moderated content for Facebook as an employee of contractor Pro Unlimited, Inc. between June 2017 and March of this year, according to her complaint. 

    Illustration by Corey Brickley

    “Every day, Facebook users post millions of videos, images, and livestreamed broadcasts of child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide, and murder,” the lawsuit reads. “To maintain a sanitized platform, maximize its already vast profits, and cultivate its public image, Facebook relies on people like Ms. Scola known as content moderators to view those posts and remove any that violate the corporations terms of use.“

    As a result of having to review said content, Scola says she “developed and suffers from significant psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” – however she does not detail the specific imagery she was exposed to for fear of Facebook enforcing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she signed. 

    “You’d go into work at 9am every morning, turn on your computer and watch someone have their head cut off. Every day, every minute, thats what you see. Heads being cut off,” another content moderator told the Guardian at the time.

    Moderators also want to be official Facebook employees – not held at arm’s length through contractors where they don’t receive the same pay or benefits as full-time Facebook moderators.

    “Facebook content moderators worldwide work grueling shifts wading through a never-ending flood of the worst material on the internet,” wrote Foxglove director Martha Dark in a statement. “Yet, moderators don’t get proper, meaningful, clinical long term mental health support, they have to sign highly restrictive NDAs to keep them quiet about what they’ve seen and the vast majority of the workforce are employed through outsourcing companies where they don’t receive anywhere near the same support and benefits Facebook gives its own staff.”

    Facebook pushed back against the moderators, saying in a statement: “We recognize that reviewing content can be a difficult job, which is why we work with partners who support their employees through training and psychological support when working with challenging content,” a spokesperson said. “In Ireland, this includes 24/7 on-site support with trained practitioners, an on-call service, and access to private healthcare from the first day of employment. We also use technology to limit their exposure to graphic material as much as possible.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 19:00

  • Who Will Own Economic Populism? Biden's New Competition Order, Antitrust Policy And Their Future
    Who Will Own Economic Populism? Biden’s New Competition Order, Antitrust Policy And Their Future

    By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    “This is from the Biden Administration?”

    If you’re a believer in free enterprise and the virtues of robust competition, that may be your initial reaction if you read through the fact sheet on President Biden’s new executive order to promote competition in the economy.

    More importantly, if you review reactions to the order, you’ll see the issues that may determine both political control and direction of part of the populist surge in America, both nationally and at the state level. Resolution of those issues may fundamentally reshape our economy.

    The driver is the huge majority of Americans who are now fed up with large corporations, particularly big tech platforms. Seventy-three percent say they are dissatisfied with major corporations, including 42% who are “deeply dissatisfied” with them, way up from earlier years. By numbers at least that large, Americans say big tech must be reined in and, most importantly, they support breaking up Amazon, Google and Facebook.

    The matter is playing out in a broad debate about antitrust policy and what to do about tech companies, which may significantly change what America’s economy looks like.

    Team Biden has noticed the space left empty after Trump. As reported by Politico, one of Biden’s lead campaign pollsters said Trump engaged repeatedly in cultural warfare but also weaved in economic populist threads. Now, however, they seem to be only doing one right now. “That’s surprising and it’s ceding a lot of terrain to us,” she said.

    Who will ultimately hold that terrain? At the national level, it’s unclear because deep fissures are already apparent within both the left and right.

    Failing national consensus, some of the answer may default to the states, including Illinois.

    But the most recent headlines are on Biden’s executive order on competition, so let’s start there.

    The order covers 72 distinct matters, some very specific and some broadly thematic. It’s written in language free marketeers probably will be comfortable with, not the leftist crazy talk so common in Washington today. That’s thanks no doubt to its primary author, Tim Wu, who is no stranger to free market thinking. He was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner, who is regarded as perhaps America’s leading legal scholar on free market virtues (though Posner’s devotion thereto has diminished in recent years). Wu says Posner is “probably America’s greatest living jurist, and Posner called him Genius Wu.  “He’s very, very, very smart,” says Posner.

    Most free marketeers will find some of the order’s 72 items at least directionally appealing. For example, a Wall Street Journal editorial endorsed the order to expedite deregulation of the hearing aid market by allowing Americans to purchase hearing aids over the counter rather than by prescription. Retailers and other cargo owners cheered the order to crack down on what they see as rigged pricing by freight carriers. And most conservatives will applaud the effort to limit occupational licensing restrictions, which are widely criticized as barriers to labor mobility.

    But, geez, what a philosophical clash with the rest of what’s coming out of the Biden Administration and Congress!

    If the sting of competition is healthy, why are we paying millions of Americans not to work? What sense is there setting a minimum, worldwide corporate income tax, which the Biden Administration supports? Why is the administration trying to federalize most everything, undermining the competition among states that has served America so well since its founding? Why are government mandates of all sorts micro-managing huge parts of the energy sector? Why are so many in Washington enthralled by the concept of universal basic income – money for nothing at all?

    That clash is reason enough to worry how the new order will be implemented in practice. That worry is heightened by some of the vagueness in the order. Much of it requires later rule making, which means who-knows-what. It calls for creation of a new White House Competition Council ”to monitor progress on finalizing the initiatives in the Order and to coordinate the federal government’s response to the rising power of large corporations in the economy.” Who will be on it and what will they do? Nobody knows.

    Far more important than the specific items in the order itself, however, is the broader policy on competition and antitrust of which it is a part. The order calls on the leading antitrust agencies, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to enforce the antitrust laws vigorously and “recognizes that the law allows them to challenge prior bad mergers that past Administrations did not previously challenge.”

    That’s a repudiation of antitrust policy that has been in place since the Reagan Administration. It’s a reference to a new approach whose champions will hold the two key positions – Lina Khan,who has already been sworn in as Chair of the FTC, and Jonathan Kanter, recently nominated to lead the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Khan and Kanter, like Wu, want tougher legislation and stricter enforcement of competition and antitrust laws, particularly against big tech companies. Also like Wu, they are different from so many others in the Biden Administration – they are smart, credentialed and respected by many on both sides of the aisle.

    Real change, however, requires legislation. Biden’s new order has limited scope.

    Broadly speaking, the new call for tougher antitrust legislation is in line with many congressional Republicans. Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, recently formed a new “Freedom From Big Tech Caucus” along with a handful of other GOP lawmakers who supported antitrust bills advanced by the committee last month. The caucus will aim to unite Republicans in Congress to “rein in Big Tech” through “legislation, education, and awareness,” as reported by The Hill.

    On the Senate side,  Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is pushing a bill block big tech mergers and acquisitions outright.

    That makes for an unusual alignment with progressives, at least in broad terms. For months, many progressives have been posting images with mugs emblazoned with “Wu, Khan & Kanter, reports CNBC.

    But agreement on specific legislation has been elusive, no doubt stemming in part from each side hoping to claim ownership of any results. Moreover, many in both parties are beholden to big tech contributors.

    On the conservative side, however, there’s further reluctance. “There are some Republican members that are concerned with any proposal that might give the Biden government more authority to harass businesses along ideological lines,” Rachel Bovard, senior director of policy for the Conservative Partnership Institute, told Axios. “It’s Republicans thinking the cure is worse than the disease in terms of giving the Biden DOJ and Biden-controlled FTC broad powers to rework corporate America in their vision,” a GOP aide told Axios.

    Those are legitimate concerns that apply to Biden’s new order as well. Selective prosecution for political reasons has become a major concern, for good reason. Wu, Khan and Kanter didn’t come out of the Washington swamp, but the swamp corrupts people and the swamp has final say.

    Perhaps most importantly, there’s a fundamental disagreement coming from adherents to the hands-off attitude toward antitrust that has been in place since the 1980s. Big is by no means bad, under that approach, and the government should stay away absent solid evidence of harm to consumers. That has been the thinking from the Reagan Administration through Obama’s.

    As a result, between 2009 and 2019, antitrust enforcers did not block a single one of the more than 400 acquisitions by the five biggest online tech platforms. The Obama administration failed to prevent Facebook from acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp — “enabling Facebook to co-opt its most promising potential competitors,” as The Hill put it.

    A less charitable characterization of that old approach is summarized by what a former colleague of mine told me about his antitrust class when he was at Stanford Law School. It was taught by William Baxter, who championed the old approach and later headed DOJ’s Antitrust Division under Reagan. Students called his antitrust class “protrust.”

    In stark contrast, the new, aggressive approach of Wu, Kahn and Kanter “identifies concentrated corporate power — something both parties previously encouraged — as actually contributing to a broad range of harms for workers, innovation, prosperity and a resilient democracy overall,” said Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project.

    Democrats are particularly anxious to embrace the new approach to shake the growing perception that they are now the party of wealth and big corporations, not populism. It’s not just perception, as Victor David Hansen recently documented nicely.

    What if Congress is unable to overcome its differences and no legislation is passed? The struggle then may devolve to the states. To a significant extent, it already has, as catalogued here.

    Illinois, for example, already passed a law restricting the use of covenants not to compete in employment contracts, which is one of the items in Biden’s competition order. Legislation is pending in Illinois that would prevent certain technology companies from requiring use of their own preferred payment system, which is also the subject of an antitrust case brought against Google by 36 states. Legislation is also pending in Illinois on “right to repair,” another item in Bidens’s order.

    I’m not about to make any predictions on how this will all shake out. However, it’s clear that much is at stake, for both the economy and politicians.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/22/2021 – 18:40

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