May 23

Today’s News 23rd May 2021

  • Escobar: The Disintegrated States Of America
    Escobar: The Disintegrated States Of America

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. A third wave baby boomer, born in the early 1960s in Baku, in the Caucasus, then part of the former USSR, he’s arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere, living and working in the US, writing in English for a global audience, and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.

    I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Martyanov’s previous two books. In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, nearly three years ago he conclusively proved, among other things, how the missile gap between the US and Russia was a “technological abyss”, and how the Khinzal was “a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically”.

    He extensively mapped “the final arrival of a completely new paradigm” in warfare and military technology. This review is included in my own Asia Times e-book Shadow play.

    Then came The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, where he went one step beyond, explaining how this “revolution”, introduced at the Pentagon by the late Andrew Marshall, a.k.a. Yoda, the de facto inventor of the “pivot to Asia” concept, was in fact designed by Soviet military theoreticians way back in the 1970s, as MTR (Military-Technological Revolution).

    His new book, Disintegration, completes a trilogy. And it’s a stunning departure.

    Here, Martyanov, in meticulous detail, analyzes the imperial decline thematically – with chapters on Consumption, Geoeconomics, Energy, Losing the Arms Race, among others, composing a devastating indictment especially of toxic D.C. lobbies and the prevailing political mediocrity across the Beltway. What is laid bare for the reader is the complex interplay of forces that are driving the political, ideological, economic, cultural and military American chaos.

    Chapter 3, on Geoeconomics, is a joy ride. Martyanov shows how geoeconomics as a field separate from warfare and geopolitics is nothing but an obfuscation racket: good old conflict “wrapped in the thin shroud of political sciences’ shallow intellectualism” – the stuff Huntington, Fukuyama and Brzezinski’s dreams are made of.

    That is fully developed on Chapter 6, on Western Elites – complete with a scathing debunking of the “myth of Henry Kissinger”: “just another American exceptionalist, mislabeled a ‘realist’”, part of a gang that “is not conditioned to think multi-dimensionally”. After all they’re still not capable of understanding the rationale and the implications of Putin’s 2007 Munich speech that declared the unipolar moment – a crude euphemism for Hegemony – dead and buried.

    How not to win wars

    One of Martyanov’s key assessments is that having lost the arms race and every single war it unleashed in the 21st century – as the record shows – geoeconomics is essentially a “euphemism for America’s non-stop sanctions and attempts to sabotage the economies of any nation capable of competing with the United States” (see, for instance, the ongoing Nord Stream 2 saga). This is “the only tool” (his italics) the US is using trying to halt its decline.

    On a chapter on Energy, Martyanov demonstrates how the US shale oil adventure is financially non-viable, and how a rise in oil exports was essentially due to the US “pickin up’ quotas freed chiefly as a result of Russia and Saudi Arabia’s earlier cuts within OPEC + in an attempt to balance the world’s oil market”.

    In Chapter 7, Losing the Arms Race, Martyanov expands on the key theme he’s the undisputed superstar: the United States cannot win wars. Inflicting Hybrid War is another matter entirely, as in creating “a lot of misery around the world, from effectively starving people to killing them outright”.

    A glaring example has been “maximum pressure” economic sanctions on Iran. But the point is these tools – which also included the assassination of Gen Soleimani – that are part of the arsenal of “spreading democracy” have nothing to do with “geoeconomics”, but have “everything to do with the raw power plays designed to achieve the main Clausewitzian object of war – ‘to compel our enemy to do our will’”. And “for America, most of the world is the enemy”.

    Martyanov also feels compelled to update what he’s been excelling at for years: the fact that the arrival of hypersonic missiles “has changed warfare forever”. The Khinzal, deployed way back in 2017, has a range of 2,000 km and “is not interceptable by existing US anti-missile systems”. The 3M22 Zircon “changes the calculus of both naval and ground warfare completely”. The US lag behind Russia in air-defense systems is “massive, and both quantitative and qualitative”.

    Disintegration additionally qualifies as a sharp critique of the eminently post-modernist phenomenon – starring infinite cultural fragmentation and the refusal to accept that “truth is knowable and can be agreed upon” – responsible for the current social re-engineering of the US, in tandem with an oligarchy that “realistically, is not very bright, despite being rich”.

    And then there’s rampant Russophobia. Martyanov sounds the definitive red alert: “Of course, the United States is still capable of starting a war with Russia, but if it does so, this will mean only one thing – the United States will cease to exist, as will most of the human civilization. The horrific thing is that there are some people in the US for whom even this price is too small to pay.”

    In the end, a cool scientific intellect cannot but rely on sound realpolitik: assuming the US avoids complete disintegration into “separatist territories”, Martyanov stresses that the only way for the American “elite” to maintain any kind of control “over generations increasingly woke or desensitized by drugs” is through tyranny.

    Actually techno-tyranny.

    And that seems to be the brave new dysfunctional paradigm further on down the road.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 23:30

  • US Army Shows Soldier's New View With Futuristic Night-Vision Goggles 
    US Army Shows Soldier’s New View With Futuristic Night-Vision Goggles 

    The US Army continues to modernize its forces as a great power competition between China rages. The latest technology the service branch revealed to enhance nighttime lethality on the modern battlefield is next-generation night vision goggles. Such goggles resemble something from Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon video game. 

    The video was posted by the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery’s Facebook page on Monday. The battalion is assigned to the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division. Members of the battalion were recently firing 155mm artillery pieces out of an M777 Howitzer under cover of darkness at Yakima Training Center in Washington state.

    Scenes from the live-fire exercise were shot via the Army’s new Enhanced Night Vision Goggles – Binocular (ENVG-B).

    ENVG-Bs have more of a white phosphorus background than traditional night vision goggles that illuminate the darkness with a green tint. Soldiers in the video appear to have an outline like from the movie Tron. The reasoning is to allow warfighters better distance and depth perception at night to be one step ahead of enemy combatants. 

    Other videos show solider’s using ENVG-Bs during a recent live-fire training exercise at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

    The goggles are also capable of being wirelessly integrated into the soldier’s weapon sights.  

    The Army began fielding ENVG-Bs in late 2020 at Fort Riley in Kansas to replace older night vision devices.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 23:00

  • DeSantis On Critical Race Theory: "Offensive" To Expect Taxpayers To Pay To Teach Kids To "Hate Their Country"
    DeSantis On Critical Race Theory: “Offensive” To Expect Taxpayers To Pay To Teach Kids To “Hate Their Country”

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he opposes teaching critical race theory in the state’s public schools, calling the ideas pushed by its advocates as “based on false history” and “teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Juno Beach, Fla., on May 7, 2021. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

    DeSantis made the remarks at a Friday press conference in Pensacola, where he announced the signing of a bill temporarily establishing several statewide tax-free periods on items like storm supplies and back-to-school products.

    “It’s offensive to the taxpayer that they would be asked to fund critical race theory, that they would be asked to fund teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other,” DeSantis said.

    Floridа Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen during a meeting at the governor’s office in Tallahassee, Fla., on April 1, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

    In a recent interview on NTD’s “Focus Talk,” Yiatin Chu, an Asian mother of two and co-chair of the New York chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), described critical race theory as pushing the idea that disparate outcomes, such as academic competency scores, can be reduced to a single variable—race.

    Advocates of the theory, which she said is increasingly being taught at pre-college levels, push the socialist notion of equality of outcome, and blame differences in outcomes on entrenched privilege while dividing people into “oppressors” and their victims, the “oppressed.”

    Republicans across the nation are trying to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms.

    Recently, South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem took aim at both the “1619 Project” and critical race theory and, like DeSantis, voiced opposition to their incorporation in school curriculums.

    “The 1619 Project relies upon the concept of Critical Race Theory to further divide students based on the color of their skin,” Noem wrote in a series of tweets Friday.

    “This is inappropriate and un-American. It has no place in South Dakota, and it certainly has no place in South Dakota classrooms.”

    In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 26, 2020. (Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

    The “1619 Project,” inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, attempts to cast the Atlantic slave trade as the dominant factor in the founding of America instead of ideals such as individual liberty and natural rights. The initiative has been widely panned by historians and political scientists, with some critics calling it a bid to rewrite U.S. history through a left-wing lens.

    Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, responded to the GOP criticism of the project during an interview with MSNBC on May 3, saying the 1619 curriculum being allowed in schools is a matter of free speech.

    “This isn’t a project about trying to teach children that our country is evil, but it is a project trying to teach children the truth about what our country was based upon, and it’s only in really confronting that truth—slavery was foundational to the United States, we, after the slavery, experienced 100 years of legalized discrimination against black Americans,” said Hannah-Jones.

    “Mitch McConnell and others like him want for our children to get a propagandistic, nationalistic understanding of history that is not about facts, but it is about how they would want to pretend that our country is.”

    Proponents of critical race theory have argued that it’s needed to demonstrate what they say is “pervasive systemic racism” and facilitate rooting it out.

    Critics draw parallels between critical race theory and Marxism, arguing that the concept advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the critical race theory ideology.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 22:30

  • Subscription Law Enforcement Service Piloted In LA Amid Defunding Police 
    Subscription Law Enforcement Service Piloted In LA Amid Defunding Police 

    This year, violent crime across liberal-run Los Angeles County is out of control amid the “defund the police” movement. A private security firm that describes itself as a “subscription law enforcement service” has launched a pilot program in the metro area to fix this. 

    Motherboard reports Citizen, a neighborhood watch app, partnered with LAPS, or Los Angeles Professional Security, a private security firm, to provide a “subscription law enforcement service” to residents and businesses. 

    From neighborhood watch app to now a Citizen-branded vehicle driving around Los Angeles, providing security services to clients is a business idea that will likely flourish considering defund the police has crushed Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), unable to manage the metro area as shootings and murders skyrocket so far this year. 

    On its website, LAPS defines itself as a “subscription law enforcement service.” An internal email observed by Motherboard said the company is “an additional response partner.” 

    A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard that “LAPS offers a personal rapid response service that we are testing internally with employees as a small test. For example, if someone would like an escort to walk them home late at night, they can request this service. We have spoken with various partners in designing this pilot project.”

    Subscription law enforcement services will probably flourish in liberal-run cities as defunding the police movement is backfiring as these metro areas become more dangerous. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 22:00

  • Is The Pentagon's UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?
    Is The Pentagon’s UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?

    Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There are reasons to be skeptical. After decades of stonewalling on the issue, suddenly American military chiefs appear to be giving credence to claims of UFOs invading Earth.

    Several viral video clips purporting to show extraordinary flying technology have been “confirmed” by the Pentagon as authentic. The Pentagon move is unprecedented.

    The videos of the Unidentified Flying Objects were taken by U.S. air force flight crews or by naval surveillance and subsequently “leaked” to the public. The question is: were the “leaks” authorized by Pentagon spooks to stoke the public imagination of visitors from space? The Pentagon doesn’t actually say what it believes the UFOs are, only that the videos are “authentic”.

    A Senate intelligence committee is to receive a report from the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force next month. That has also raised public interest in the possibility of alien life breaching our skies equipped with physics-defying technology far superior to existing supersonic jets and surveillance systems.

    Several other questions come to mind that beg skepticism. Why does the phenomenon of UFOs or UAP only seem to be associated with the American military? This goes back decades to the speculation during the 1950s about aliens crashing at Roswell in New Mexico. Why is it that only the American military seems privy to such strange encounters? Why not the Russian or Chinese military which would have comparable detection technology to the Americans but they don’t seem to have made any public disclosures on alien encounters? Such a discrepancy is implausible unless we believe that life-forms from lightyears away have a fixation solely on the United States. That’s intergalactic American “exceptionalism” for you!

    Also, the alleged sightings of UFOs invariably are associated with U.S. military training grounds or high-security areas.

    Moreover, the released videos that have spurred renewed public interest in UFOs are always suspiciously of poor quality, grainy and low resolution. Several researchers, such as Mick West, have cogently debunked the videos as optical illusions. That’s not to say that the U.S. air force or naval personnel were fabricating the images. They may genuinely believe that they were witnessing something extraordinary. But as rational optics experts have pointed out there are mundane explanations for seeming unusual aerial observations, such as drones or balloons drifting at high speed in differential wind conditions, or by the crew mistaking a far-off aircraft dipping over the horizon for an object they believe to be much closer.

    The military people who take the videos in good – albeit misplaced – faith about what they are witnessing are not the same as the military or intelligence people who see an opportunity with the videos to exploit the public in a psychological operation.

    Fomenting public anxieties, or even just curiosity, about aliens and super-technology is an expedient way to exert control over the population. At a time when governing authorities are being questioned by a distrustful public and when military-intelligence establishments are viewed as having lost a sense of purpose, what better way to realign public respect by getting them to fret over alien marauders from whom they need protection?

    There is here a close analogy to the way foreign nations are portrayed as adversaries and enemies in order to marshal public support or least deference to the governing establishment and its military. We see this ploy played over and over again with regard to the U.S. and Western demonization of Russia and China as somehow conveying a malign intent towards Western societies. In other words, it’s a case of Cold War and UFOs from the same ideological launchpad, so to speak, in order to distract public attention from internal problems.

    However, more worrying still is that there is a dangerous reinforcing crossover of the two propaganda realms. The fueling of UFO speculation is feeding directly into speculation that U.S. airspace is being invaded by high-tech weapons developed by Russia or China.

    U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Pentagon about whether the aerial “encounters” are advanced weaponry from foreign enemies who are surveilling the American homeland at will. Some U.S. air force aviators have recently expressed to the media a feeling of helplessness in the face of seeming superior technology.

    At a time of heightened animosity towards Russia and China and febrile talk among Pentagon chiefs about the possibility of all-out war, it is not difficult to imagine, indeed it is disturbingly easy to imagine, how optical illusions about alien phenomena could trigger false alarms attributed to Russian or Chinese military incursions.

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

    The stoking of UFO controversy appears to be a classic psyops perpetrated by U.S. military intelligence for the objective of population control. Its aim is to corral the citizenry under the authority of the state and for them to accept the protector function of “our” military. The big trouble is that the psyops with aliens are, in turn, risking the exacerbation of fears and tensions with Russia and China.

    With all the Pentagon-assisted chatter, it is more likely that an F-18 squadron could mistake an errant weather balloon on the horizon for an alien spacecraft. And amid our new Cold War tensions, it is but a small conceptual step to further imagine that the UFO is not from outer space but rather is a Russian or Chinese hypersonic cruise missile heading towards the U.S. mainland.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 21:30

  • Doctors Claim A Cocktail Of Cheap Drugs Could Help India Extinguish COVID Crisis
    Doctors Claim A Cocktail Of Cheap Drugs Could Help India Extinguish COVID Crisis

    Last week, we reported that several increasingly desperate communities across India have been embracing a controversial (at least, in the US) strategy for trying to mitigate the fallout from the crisis. Communities have been doling out inexpensive anti-malaria drugs as a prophylactic against COVID-19, citing scant data showing it could help lower mortality and hospitalization rates – which is critical given India’s nationwide shortage of hospital beds and oxygen to sustain seriously ill patients.

    The drug in question, ivermectin, is in some ways similar to hydroxychloroquine, which also showed some evidence of being an effective prophylactic to protect the most vulnerable against COVID-19 (President Trump memorably informed the press that he was taking it daily at one point). But since India is mostly cut off from adequate supplies of vaccines and therapeutics like Gilead’s remdesivir (which studies have shown isn’t all that effective anyway), public health officials have been forced to improvise.

    The Times of India published an editorial this week signed by Dr. Vikas Sukhatme and Vidula Sukhatme, two American academics and medical professionals,  suggesting a handful of cheap, commonplace drugs that could be taken as prophylactics by the most vulnerable patients in India. The drugs aren’t approved to treat COVID, but nevertheless have shown “remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus.” Deploying them would likely reduce mortality and hospitalizations. While some of the drugs are currently being tested in large-scale randomized trials, there’s no time to wait for the outcome.

    Instead, Indian health authorities should issue guidelines recommending use of the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to prescribe them as interventions. The resulting data should of course be tracked for any insights it might show.

    The two main drugs cited by the doctors, ivermectin and fluvoxamine, have proven effective, and anecdotal unpublished data from more than 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients suggests that prescribing fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

    While daily case numbers have retreated from the peak in India, hospitalizations and mortality remain near all-time highs. Of course, as developing nations fight to waive IP protections for COVID vaccines, the notion that cheap existing drugs might be effective at combating COVID would represent yet another threat to Big Pharma’s bottom line.

    Read the full editorial below:

    The COVID-19 humanitarian calamity unfolding in India is on a scale not seen in this pandemic. This is an extraordinary situation – and it may benefit from an extraordinary response.

    There exist affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs approved for non-COVID-19 use which show remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus. Deploying these drugs in India is likely to rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.

    Some of these drugs are being tested in large-scale randomized clinical trials in the US and abroad but in most cases, definitive efficacy data is pending. With the current COVID-19 situation in India, we do not have time to wait for results of these studies. Importantly, currently available safety and outcomes data on these drugs is strong enough that it is time to incorporate them into national practice guidelines. Indian authorities should issue such guidelines on the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to use these interventions. The resulting real world data from a few healthcare settings in select cities should be tracked in real time and guidelines suitably revised. If such measures were adopted, we could see effects in 3-4 weeks. This strategy might be unusual but it is not unheard of: France has the Temporary Recommendation for Use, a “regulatory instrument which aims to allow, on a temporary basis, the use of a medicinal product to allow its effectiveness to be evaluated on the basis of its use.”

    The choice of drugs is critical. We have worked closely with personnel at the Food and Drug Administration and have connected with the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the merits of repurposed drugs. Based on a mechanistic rationale, data in animal models, human retrospective analyses, clinical trials (some randomized, others not) and anecdotal human data, we created a prioritized list of interventions that hold the greatest promise and that could be deployed at scale. For instance, there is strong data from a randomized trial and a real-world study that administering fluvoxamine sharply reduces the need for hospitalization in COVID-19 outpatients. Moreover, anecdotal unpublished data in over 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients from several community practitioners suggests that administering fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

    Intervention as early as possible after symptom onset is key. Ivermectin is already listed as a “MAY DO” on the ICMR and Indian government guidelines for treatment of acute mild COVID-19 and we suggest that fluvoxamine be added in this category. Also, ivermectin in the prophylactic setting merits serious consideration. For the hospitalized, there are treatments currently used for other conditions that might reduce the need for ventilator support and lower the risk of death. These include inhaled adenosine, cyproheptadine and dipyridamole. For ideas for which there is rather limited human data, the government should offer pre-approved pilot protocols and funding for rapid implementation in select centers rather than issue a recommendation for use.

    To be clear, it would be ideal to pursue large clinical trials to test the efficacy of all promising interventions. A randomized adaptive design could efficiently sift through the many possibilities. It may be possible to rapidly set up parallel protocols in India if government authorities can expedite the regulatory process and offer funding. US trial investigators can be persuaded to provide protocols and web-based data collection tools.

    We hope that the Indian government will take advantage of repurposed drug research and use temporary use authorizations or guidelines to rapidly promote the most promising therapies at a national level while in parallel aggressively encourage pilot studies and large-scale clinical trials with shovel-ready protocols and funding. Given the current situation, India has little to lose in piloting these approaches: the potential gains could benefit not just the country but the world.

    * * *

    Source: Times of India

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 21:00

  • Happy Anniversary, Taper Tantrum
    Happy Anniversary, Taper Tantrum

    By Nick Colas of DataTrek Research

    Three Markets topics to discuss today:

    Issue #1: What are US markets trying to tell us? It would be tempting to say “Nothing” … That we’re only 3 percent off the S&P 500’s record close of 4,233, set all of 8 trading days ago. That there’s plenty of good news to come. That Europe is just now reopening … All these are true, but they are also broadly known and therefore already in asset prices.

    The way we see it, the real issue simply is that US equities are seemingly priced for perfection in a world that investors know will always be imperfect.

    • The S&P 500 is up 60 percent since the start of 2019, just 29 months ago.
    • Corporate earnings power, assuming Wall Street’s 2022 estimates are reasonably correct ($163/share 2019A, $210/share 2022E), is up just 29 percent.
    • That 2x differential reflects optimism about everything from Federal Reserve policy to a fiscal stimulus-charged US economy and corporate earnings leverage.

    Takeaway (1): as we’ve been discussing with you recently, seeing an S&P 500 materially higher than today at the end of 2021 is a tall order. Three years of double-digit gains are relatively rare in the historical record, and we’ve just had 2 (31 pct in 2019, 18 pct in 2021). Year to date the S&P is up 9.7 percent, and it has stalled out every time it has breached a 10 percent YTD gain. We remain optimistic on US large cap (but not small cap) equities because we believe earnings estimates are too low. But we’ll repeat our message from last week: if you want to lighten up on equity exposure here, history is on your side.

    Takeaway (2): if you’re of the mind to trade this market, then watch the CBOE VIX Index for reasonable entry points. The numbers to look for are 28 and 36-40. These are 1 and 2 standard deviations from the long run mean, and VIX closes at/above these levels have been a good entry point over the last year.

    Takeaway (3): we’ll remind you of our “5 percent rule”, namely buy every S&P 500 close where the index sees a 5 percent one-day decline after the first such drop. See the first one, don’t buy it. See the second, third and so forth – those are your opportunities for buying when there’s the proverbial “blood in the streets”. This approach worked well on a one-year forward basis both in 2008/2009 and 2020.

    * * *

    Issue #2: The latest money flow data for US-listed mutual/exchange traded funds as a barometer for retail investor confidence in asset prices. (Information courtesy of the Investment Company Institute’s weekly flows report).

    The key fact about the most recent data (week ending May 12th) is that fund investors are back to buying US equity funds. Last week saw $9.7 bn of inflows into these products, and the prior week had $5.1 bn of inflows. That puts the MTD total at $14.9 bn, enough to offset April’s $7.8 bn of outflows. February and March flows were both strongly positive ($45 bn, $53 bn), so for the moment we’re back to seeing fund investors embrace US equities.

    Also notable in this week’s flow data: commodity funds (mostly physical gold) are catching some retail investor interest again. Inflows totaled $1.1 bn for the week ending May 12, following on from $550 mn of inflows in the prior week. We see that as consistent with increasing investor concerns about inflation and, as mentioned in last night’s note we do like gold as a hedge against rising prices.

    * * *

    Issue #3: The 2013 “Taper Tantrum” – a brief history.

    How it started (8 years ago this Saturday): At a Congressional hearing on May 22, 2013, then-Fed Chair Bernanke said in response to a question: “If we see continued improvement, and we have confidence that it is going to be sustained, in the next few meetings we could take a step down in our pace of asset purchases.” This was the first time the Fed had discussed tapering, and it wasn’t even in Bernanke’s prepared remarks of that day.

    Important: The Fed then spent the rest of the year deliberating when and how to curtail asset purchases. It did not actually start “tapering” until December 2013, and Treasury yields actually fell in 2014 from 3 percent at the start of the year to 2 percent by the end. The 2013 “Taper Tantrum” happened before anything actually “happened”. It’s fair to say it was a tantrum about Fed miscommunication rather than actual Fed policy.

    How it went:

    The chart below shows that 10-year Treasury yields (the solid red line, left axis) broke 2 percent the day Chair Bernanke uttered those words (highlighted by the info box) and essentially went directly to 3 percent by early September 2013.

    The S&P 500 (dotted black line, right axis), which had already rallied 16 pct YTD, stalled out from May 22nd all the way to October 8th (same price both days, 1655) before rallying another 12 percent into the end of the year. The maximum drawdown from “Taper Day” was 5 percent – the low you see in late June.

    Takeaway: 2013’s capital markets “tantrum” was in Treasuries much more than US equities. The rapid rise in Treasury yields did throw a little cold water on stocks, yes. But let’s keep some perspective about that: 2013 as a whole was the best year for US stocks of the entire 21st century to date.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 20:30

  • Cactus If You Can: Traffickers Are Cleaning Out Deserts Of Rare Succulents 
    Cactus If You Can: Traffickers Are Cleaning Out Deserts Of Rare Succulents 

    Some of the world’s rarest cacti are found in the deserts of South America. A recent raid in Italy uncovered a smuggling network of thorny succulents, according to NYTimes. 

    The year’s long operation, dubbed “Operation Atacama,” was a collaborative effort that began in February 2020 by Italian and Chilean authorities to return some of the rarest cacti to Chile. 

    Andrea Cattabriga, a cactus expert and president of the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation, told NYT that Operation Atacama was absolutely stunning when 1,000 of some of the world’s rarest cacti (all from Chile) were seized in Italy. 

    Cattabriga said the 1035 seized cacti from genera Copiapoa and Eriosyce were worth $1.2 million on the black market. All of the cacti were protected plants in Chile and were illegally exported to Italy. Some of the plants were more than a century old. 

    NYTimes said most of the cacti had been returned to Chile, calling it “the biggest international cactus seizure in nearly three decades. It also highlights how much money traffickers may be earning from the trade.” 

    From seizure to repatriation, the succulents were housed in the Città Studi Botanical Garden of Milan, Italy, then shipped in boxes to Servicio Agrícola y Ganadero and Corporación Nacional Forestal in Santiago de Chile on April 19. 

    The massive seizure highlights the growing black market for rare cacti – comes when 30% of the world’s 1,500 cactus species are nearing extinction. 

    And who is to blame for smugglers clearing out deserts of rare cacti? Well, social media, of course. 

    These prickly succulents have been trending on social media for a few years, promoted by indoor plant influencers promoting cactus plants as the hottest look for any hipster home. The work-at-home transition during the pandemic only accelerated demand for cacti. But the average hipster’s cactus collection won’t include the rarest ones like ones seized in Italy because those plants cost thousands of dollars. Seasoned collectors from the US, Europe, Japan, and China demand the rarest cacti.    

    So add rare cacti to the black market of living wild animals, birds, and reptiles, along with body parts of rhino horns, elephant tusks, antelope scarves, and tiger bones. 

    “Just about every plant you can probably think of is trafficked in some way,” said Eric Jumper, a special agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said rare cacti and other succulents extremely sought after, along with orchids and, more frequently, carnivorous species.

    NYT points out the black market for plants is overlooked, calling it “plant blindness” because humans focus more on animals. 

    “The basic functioning of the planet would effectively grind to a halt without plants, but people care more about animals,” said Jared Margulies, a geographer at the University of Alabama who studies plant trafficking. “A lot of plant species are not receiving the amount of attention they would be if they had eyes and faces.”

    Virtue-signaling hipsters who seek rare cacti in their homes as a fashion statement don’t realize that their demand in other parts of the world incentivizes smugglers to find these plants and consequently destroy the local ecosystem. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 20:00

  • CDC's Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian "Fun"
    CDC’s Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian “Fun”

    Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities,

    The Center for Disease Control’s major easing of its mask-use recommendations was a welcome development, giving Americans hope that logic can triumph over the CDC’s bureaucratic inertia and its Covid-era tendency to push the most severe restrictions on human activity at every turn.

    Next, let’s hope this outbreak of rationality proves contagious within the CDC, and brings a major overhaul of the agency’s absurd guidelines for summer camps.

    Via North Carolina Health News

    CDC Trapped in March 2020 Mindset

    In April, the CDC published guidance for operating youth camps that was the latest eye-rolling example of CDC maximalism that conflicts with what we’ve learned about Covid-19.

    Before we examine the CDC guidance, let’s review some of the key things that we now know about Covid-19 that we didn’t in March 2020:

    • Covid-19 presents little risk at all to children. According to CDC data, only 295 children age 0-17 have died with Covid-19. Compare that to the CDC’s estimation that 600 died of the flu during the 2017-18 season.

    • Outdoor transmission pretty much never happens. An Irish study of more than 232,000 Covid-19 cases found only 0.1% of cases were transmitted outside.

    • Surface transmission isn’t a material source of spread. The CDC has declared the risk of contracting the virus by touching surfaces or objects is low, and that rather than cleaning with disinfectant, “soap and water is enough to reduce risk” (unless there’s a known or suspected Covid-19 case in a community setting).

    • Vaccines are abundantly available. According to the CDC’s vaccination data, 60.5% of U.S. adults have have received at least one vaccine dose, and 48.4% are fully vaccinated. Gone are the days when finding the vaccine was a challenge; today, anyone who wants the vaccine can readily find it.

    • Covid-19 cases and deaths are in a free fall. The 7-day averages for cases and deaths have respectively fallen 89% and 83% from their peaks. On Sunday, the entire state of Texas reported not a single death from the virus. Today, San Francisco General Hospital has no Covid-19 patients for the first time since March 2020.

    With that knowledge in mind, here are some key ingredients in the CDC’s recipe for dystopian summer fun:

    • Two-layer masks should be worn at all times—indoors and out—except for eating, drinking and swimming

    • Don’t allow close-contact games and sports

    • Avoid sharing of objects such as toys, games and art supplies

    • Separate children on buses by skipping rows

    • Divide children into “cohorts” and then keep them away from other cohorts

    • Children should stay three feet away from kids in their cohort and six feet away from those outside their cohort; campers and staff should stay six feet from each other, as should fellow staff members

    • While eating and drinking, stay six feet away from everybody—even your own cohort

    Who exactly are these draconian, fun-killing guidelines meant to protect? The children aren’t in any meaningful danger—the number of children who typically drown in a given year is more than double the number of child Covid deaths we’ve observed in 15 months.

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    Meanwhile, against a backdrop of rapidly-vanishing Covid-19 infections across the country, camp staff will have had more than ample opportunity to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before the first kids arrive.

    We’re told to “follow the science,” but what is the CDC following? The agency’s guidelines read like they were written during the early dark ages of the Covid outbreak, when the peril was still filled with overwhelming mystery, and “erring on the side of caution” still had a trace of credibility.

    As Columbia University pediatric immunologist Mark Gorelik told New York Magazine, “We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain the spread of illness. However, the CDC’s recommendations cross the line into excess and are, frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a mask. Period.“

    Read more and subscribe at https://starkrealities.substack.com/

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 19:30

  • Australia's Defense Chief Bans All "Woke" Events Which "Distract" From Military's Mission
    Australia’s Defense Chief Bans All “Woke” Events Which “Distract” From Military’s Mission

    After last month’s hugely embarrassing raunchy and cringeworthy twerking dance routine incident at a formal military ceremony attempted by top officers in Sydney, Australia’s military is apparently attempting to crackdown on appeasing “wokeness” and awkward attempts at ‘keeping up with the times’ – especially when it comes to those things that have nothing to do with training, defense preparedness, and national security. 

    The latest controversial or perhaps even embarrassing incident to draw media attention reportedly involved a Monday morning tea event attended by top brass of the Defense Ministry to mark the “International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia” (or “IDAHOBIT”…no really). Attendees were encouraged to wear rainbow clothing to mark the occasion, or also “ally pins” in order to show “support for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) colleagues, friends and family,” according to a memo that was circulated.

    Not a fan of rainbow clothes: Defense Minister Peter Dutton

    “Defence ADF and APS employees are encouraged to acknowledge IDAHOBIT in a COVID-safe manner. Examples for activity include hosting morning teas, encouraging discussions regarding the importance of IDAHOBIT, raising awareness of LGBTI rights and wearing visible rainbow clothing or ally pins,” the memo had said.

    “As this circular notes, the public service serves the community and it should therefore reflect what our community looks like,” the directive had read. “Diversity strengthens us and celebrating our diversity encourages safer and respectful workplaces.”

    But Defense Minister Peter Dutton in response issued a blanket ban on such “woke” events within the military. He circulated a strongly worded memo on Friday which has unleashed a storm of controversy as it was seen as a “sin” against diversity. Previously Dutton vowed to “refocus” the defense department on its core mission of protecting the country, and slammed the “woke tea” event as having nothing to do with the military’s essential values…

    “To meet these important aims [of defense readiness], changing language protocols and those events such as morning teas where personnel are encouraged to wear particular clothes in celebration are not required and should cease.”

    “I’ve been very clear to the chiefs that I will not tolerate discrimination. But we are not pursuing a woke agenda,” Dutton wrote in the order. “Our task is to build up the morale in the Australian Defence Force and these woke agendas don’t help.”

    Via ABC.net.au

    As for those accusing the defense chief of not representing “diversity” well, his response as spelled out in the ban order pointed out that the nation’s military “represents the people of Australia” and therefore “must at all times be focused on our primary mission to protect Australia’s national security interests.”

    Dutton emphasized, “We must not be putting effort into matters that distract from this” – suggesting that ‘rainbow tea events’ certainly do distract from the mission.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 19:00

  • India Demands Social Media Networks Remove References To "Indian Variant" Of COVID
    India Demands Social Media Networks Remove References To “Indian Variant” Of COVID

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Authorities in India are now demanding that social media networks remove references to the “Indian variant” of COVID-19, despite the fact that it originated in India.

    New Delhi’s information technology ministry is claiming that mentions of the Indian mutant strain are misleading and “without basis” because there is no scientific reason to link it to India.

    “It has come to our knowledge that a false statement is being circulated online which implies that an ‘Indian variant’ of coronavirus is spreading across the countries. This is completely FALSE,” the letter said.

    That claim itself is manifestly false given that the B.1.617 strain was first reported in India.

    Other countries such as South Africa and the UK (with the so-called ‘Kent strain’) have also had their name attached to mutant variants of the coronavirus.

    Despite the stupidity of India’s demand, some left-wing politicians are already acquiescing to it.

    On Friday, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would no talk about an “Indian variant” and would instead refer to it as “April 02”.

    However, during the same press conference, Sturgeon went on to refer to the ‘Kent variant’ – thereby completely contradicting herself.

    Health Secretary Humza Yousa also insisted that the Indian variant shouldn’t be called the Indian variant because it is “important for us not to allow this virus to divide us as communities and people.”

    The WHO and the establishment media in America blasted President Donald Trump for referring to the original outbreak of COVID-19 as the “China virus” despite China being the origin of the virus.

    The notion that correctly pinpointing where a virus originated is somehow bigoted or racist even extended to travel bans in the early weeks of the pandemic, which the WHO warned against, saying it could lead to the “stigmatization” of Chinese people.

    As we highlighted last week, an independent scientific panel ruled that the World Health Organization could have saved 3 million lives if it had advised countries to impose border controls earlier.

    Apparently, not being seen to be racist was more important at the time.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

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    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:30

  • ​​​​​​​"Evacuation Activated" After Nyiragongo Volcano Erupts In Eastern Congo
    ​​​​​​​”Evacuation Activated” After Nyiragongo Volcano Erupts In Eastern Congo

    All of a sudden, volcano activity worldwide has increased in recent months. The latest eruption occurred on Saturday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reported BBC News. 

    Lava from the Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the eastern part of sub-Saharan African country is spewing into the night sky. Panicked residents of Goma, a city of 2 million people located 6 miles from the volcano, are being evacuated. 

    “The evacuation plan for the city of Goma has been activated. The government is discussing urgent measures to take now,” a government spokesman Patrick Muyaya tweeted. 

    Dario Tedesco, a volcanologist based in Goma, told Reuters that a new fracture has formed, and the lava flows south toward the city. 

    The last eruption occurred in 2002 where more than 250 people were killed, and 120,000 were left homeless. 

    The New Times in Rwanda tweeted a short clip of the eruption. The close proximity of Goma to the volcano could result in disaster. 

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    Conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu tweeted a stunning video of the lava flow.

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    Lava is flowing onto streets. 

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    From afar, the eruption is terrifying. 

    Building structures burned by lava flows. 

    Some say lava flows are moving towards the Rwanda border, and the main road from Goma to Rutshuru has possibly closed. 

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    People are fleeing Goma. 

    Goma residents headed in droves to Rwanda to escape the eruption. 

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    *This story is developing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:15

  • DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who 'Stormed Capitol' And Sold The Footage
    DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who ‘Stormed Capitol’ And Sold The Footage

    US authorities have seized approximately $90,000 from a far-left BLM organizer who ‘stormed the capitol’ right alongside Trump supporters and sold footage he took of US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt being shot dead by a Capitol Police Officer.

    John Earle Sullivan of Provo, Utah, was also hit with additional criminal charges and now faces a total of eight criminal counts, including weapons charges, according to Reuters. Sullivan is one of more than 440 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 ‘insurrection’ in which Trump supporters who rejected the outcome of the 2020 US election stormed the Capitol with the full support of several Capitol Police officers – some of whom took selfies with the protesters.

    After breaking into the Capitol through an open window, Sullivan was heard encouraging protesters to climb a wall to gain entrance.

    During one conversation with others while inside, Sullivan said, “We gotta get this [expletive] burned.” At other times, he said, among other things, “it’s our house [expletive]” and “we are getting this [expletive].”

    h/t @Cernovich

    Sullivan told U.S. Capitol Police officers to stand down so that they wouldn’t get hurt, according to the court filing (pdf). He joined the crowd trying to open doors to another part of the Capitol, telling people “Hey guys, I have a knife” and asking them to let him get to the front. He did not make it to the doors. He later tried to get the officers guarding the Speaker’s Lobby to go home, telling them: “Bro, I’ve seen people out there get hurt.”

    Following the riot Sullivan appeared on several mainstream television networks CNN and MSNBC, which paid him for the footage.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 18:00

  • Four Myths About Money That Ought To Die Forever
    Four Myths About Money That Ought To Die Forever

    Authored by Robert Murphy via The Mises Institute,

    With the possible exception of international trade, no topic in economics contains more myths than monetary theory.

    In the present article I address four popular opinions concerning money that suffer from either ambiguity or outright falsehood.

    One: “Money represents a claim on goods and services.”

    Although there is a grain of truth in this view, it is quite simplistic and misconceives what money really is. Money is not a claim on goods and services, the way a bond is a legal claim to (future) cash payments or the way a stock share is a claim on the net assets of a company. On the contrary, money is a good unto itself. If you own a $20 bill, no one is under any contractual obligation to give you anything for it.

    Now of course, in all likelihood people will be willing to exchange all sorts of things for your $20 bill; that’s why you yourself performed labor (or sold something else) to obtain it in the first place. Nonetheless, if we wish to truly understand money, we must distinguish between credit liabilities on the one hand, and a universally accepted medium of exchange (i.e., money) on the other.

    Two: “The purchasing power of money equals the supply of real output divided by the supply of money.”

    As with the first view, this one too has a grain of truth. Specifically, if everything else is held equal, then the “price level” (if we ignore the problems with measurement and arbitrariness) will go up if the money supply grows by more than real output, and will go down if real output grows by more than the stock of money.

    However, other things need not be equal, in particular the demand to hold money. As with every other good, the “price” of money (i.e., its purchasing power—or how many units of radios, televisions, etc. people offer in order to receive units of money) is determined by the supply of dollars and the community’s demand to hold dollars. A given stock of money can be consistent with any price level you want, so long as you are allowed to change the demand for money.

    For example, even if output and the stock of money stayed constant, all prices could double if everyone in the community wanted to cut in half the purchasing power of his or her cash balance. How is this possible? Initially everyone thinks he or she is holding “too much” cash and so tries to spend it. But since the merchants too think they are holding too much, they agree to sell only at higher prices. (If this seems odd to you, consider: Even if you are uncomfortable with $1000 in your wallet—maybe you just won big at the casino—if someone walked up and offers you another $1000 for your shoes, you’d probably accept.)

    If we ignore all of the real world complications caused by timing issues, it’s easy to see that in the new equilibrium, where everyone is content with his or her cash holdings, nothing “real” will have changed. Instead, the unit price of everything (in terms of dollars) will have doubled, so that even though the per capita quantity of dollar bills is still the same, now the average person can only buy half as much real stuff with the money in his wallet. Of course this type of example (which I picked up from Milton Friedman) is very unrealistic, but it does serve to illustrate the point that prices are not a mechanical function of physical stocks of goods and dollar bills. On the contrary, people’s subjective valuations are also critical.

    Three: “Under a gold standard the money is backed by something real, whereas under our present system dollar bills are backed up by faith in the government.”

    Again, I sympathize with this type of view, but when my upper-level students write such things on their exams, I have to take off points for imprecision. Strictly speaking, under a gold standard the money isn’t backed by anything; the money is the gold. Now if we have a government that issues pieces of paper that are 100% redeemable claims on gold, I wouldn’t classify those derivative assets (i.e. the pieces of paper) as money, but perhaps as money certificates. Yet this is a minor quibble.

    My real objection to the view quoted above is that it denies that our current fiat currency is really money. Although (as a libertarian, Austrian economist) I fully condemn the monetary history of the United States, and deplore the means by which the public was forcibly weaned from the gold standard, nonetheless it is simply misleading and inaccurate to deny that the green pieces of paper in our wallets and purses are genuine money. They satisfy the textbook definition: They are a medium of exchange accepted almost universally in a given region. No one is forcing you to accept green pieces of paper when you sell things. (If you don’t want anyone foisting pictures of US presidents on you, then just charge a billion US dollars for everything you sell.) The fact that government coercion (past and present) is necessary to maintain this condition is irrelevant; cigarettes really circulated as money in World War II P.O.W. camps, even though this wouldn’t have occurred without the artificial and coercive environment in which those traders found themselves.

    Four: “Deflation is undesirable because it cripples investment. If prices in general are falling, no one will invest in real goods because he can earn a higher return holding cash.”

    Although this last myth is understandable when espoused by the layperson, it is inexplicable that some trained economists believe it. (For three examples: An NYU professor used it to “shoot down” my Misesian friend in class, Wikipedia’s entry on deflation mentions this argument, and even Gottfried Haberler advances a version of it in this essay.) For one thing, the argument overlooks the fact that there were many years of actual deflation in industrial economies on gold or silver standards; I don’t think investment fell to zero in every single such year. So clearly something must be wrong with the argument.

    Specifically the argument fails because it carelessly assumes that the relevant data for an investor are the spot prices of a particular good from one year to the next. But this is wrong. For example, suppose someone is considering investing in bottles of fermenting grapes that will be ready for sale as wine in exactly one year. The rate of return on this investment concerns the 2005 price of the grapes and the 2006 price of wine. So let us further refine the example and suppose that all prices fall 50% every year; i.e., there is massive deflation and presumably no one should be willing to invest in wine or anything else.

    Yet there is no reason to jump to this conclusion. For example, the 2005 price of the bottle of fermenting grapes might be $100 and the 2005 price of a wine bottle might be $400, while the 2006 price of the bottle of grapes will be $50 and the 2006 price of a wine bottle will be $200. (Notice that, as stipulated, all prices have fallen by 50% per year.) Would our investor prefer to hold his cash, which in a sense appreciates at a real rate of 100% per year? Not at all! With our numbers, the investor would earn a 100% nominal (not just real) return on his money if he invests in the wine industry: He pays $100 for a bottle of fermenting grapes in 2005, then waits one year and sells the resulting bottle of wine for $200.

    Had our investor sat on his $100 in cash in 2005, its purchasing power would have risen from 1/4 of a bottle of wine (in 2005) to 1/2 of a bottle of wine (in 2006). But by investing the cash, his purchasing power goes from 1/4 of a bottle in 2005 to 1 bottle in 2006. Once we allow for the prices of capital goods and raw materials to adjust to expectations of deflation, there is no reason for falling prices to hamper investment whatsoever.

    Conclusion

    Most of the myths concerning money are easily exposed when we consider what money is. Some of the more subtle myths, especially those concerning price deflation, are exposed once we consider the intertemporal price structure. On both counts, the Austrian School of economics serves us well.

    *  *  *

    [Originally published February 28, 2006, as “What Money Isn’t”]

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 17:30

  • China's Mars Rover Rolls Off Lander, Begins Probing Mission 
    China’s Mars Rover Rolls Off Lander, Begins Probing Mission 

    Around 10:40 a.m. Saturday Beijing time, China’s first Mars rover officially drove down its landing platform ramp and began roaming the Red Planet, China National Space Administration (CNSA) said. 

    CNSA release another photograph (here’s the first) of the rover, called Zhurong, which touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a large plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars, last Saturday. 

    Landing on the Red Planet is dangerous – CNSA said last week it was “nine minutes of terror” as the lander descended toward the planet’s surface at a high rate of speed, and the thin atmosphere didn’t have enough friction to slow the descent. 

    Only NASA has reached the surface of Mars intact on multiple occasions. According to the diagram below, the lander (with Zhurong encased inside) relied on parachutes and rocket engines to slow the descent. This method is similar to NASA’s, who has landed Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars.

    Space is no longer limited to the original Cold War superpowers (US & Russia). China has to been thrown into the mix after being the second country to land a rover on Mars. 

    China is becoming more active in space, especially on the Red Planet, alongside the US, which already has NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance probing for life. The US rover recently launched a helicopter, called Ingenuity, already performing five successful flights. 

    Zhurong will spend three Martian months, about 92 Earth days, probing the surface of Mars for evidence of life. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 17:00

  • Oregon First State To Require Vaccination Proof For Maskless Entry Into Businesses, Workplaces, & Churches
    Oregon First State To Require Vaccination Proof For Maskless Entry Into Businesses, Workplaces, & Churches

    Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

    The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is requiring that people in workplaces, businesses, and religious sites show proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to be allowed maskless entry to the facilities.

    The state’s health authorities updated their masking guidance on May 19, following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) rollback of strict mask mandates.

    “Businesses, employers and faith institutions now have the option to adjust their masking guidance to allow fully vaccinated individuals to no longer wear a mask in their establishments,” the OHA declared in a statement.

    “Businesses, employers and faith institutions doing so must have a policy in place to check the vaccination status of all individuals before they enter their establishment. Businesses, employers and faith institutions who do not create such policies will maintain the same masking guidance listed below, regardless of an individual’s vaccination status.”

    The statewide policy is the first of the kind in the country and is raising concerns for those who don’t want to wear masks or take the vaccine due to a number of concerns including safety, side effects, efficacy, mistrust in pharmaceutical companies, and a lack of full FDA approval. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in late March flagged vaccine passport systems’ potential problems in an opinion piece, arguing they would create two tiers of unvaccinated and vaccinated people.

    A spokesperson for business group Oregon Business and Industry, Nathaniel Brown, told the New York Times that they “have serious concerns about the practicality of requiring business owners and workers to be the enforcer.”

    “We are hearing from retailers and small businesses who are concerned about putting their frontline workers in a potentially untenable position when dealing with customers,” Brown said.

    On May 16, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that local governments, but not federal, will be driving “vaccine mandates” of this type.

    “We’re not counting on vaccine mandates at all. It may very well be that local businesses, local jurisdictions will work toward vaccine mandates. That is going to be locally driven and not federally driven,” Walensky told NBC.

    New York, which is offering free vaccination and incentives to get the shot, released in March an application that could act as a COVID-19 vaccine passport.

    The application is named “Excelsior Pass,” and local authorities are thinking about requiring it for sports events, weddings, and businesses.

    In this undated photo, provided by NY Governor’s Press Office on March 27, 2021, is the new “Excelsior Pass” app, a digital pass that people can download to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. (NY Governor’s Press Office via AP/File)

    “New Yorkers have proven they can follow public health guidance to beat back COVID, and the innovative Excelsior Pass is another tool in our new toolbox to fight the virus while allowing more sectors of the economy to reopen safely and keeping personal information secure,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement.

    With the move, Oregon is the first state to implement a system that requires people entering workplaces, businesses, and religious sites to show proof of vaccination.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 16:30

  • GOP Congressman 'Forgot' To Cast Proxy Vote Which Would Have Tanked Democrats' $1.9B Security Spending Bill
    GOP Congressman ‘Forgot’ To Cast Proxy Vote Which Would Have Tanked Democrats’ $1.9B Security Spending Bill

    California GOP Rep. Ken Calvert somehow “forgot” to cast a proxy vote last week on behalf of Texas GOP Rep. John Carter which would have tanked the Democrats $1.9 billion supplemental security bill in response to the Jan. 6 ‘insurrection,’ according to Just The News.

    ‘Forgetful’ Rep. Ken Calvert (R?-CA)

    Carter authorized Calvert to cast the proxy vote for him in a May 14 letter to the House Clerk, Cheryl Johnson – and successfully had a proxy vote cast for him on “the motion to recommit” which preceded the final vote that Calvert ‘forgot’ to cast.

    A spokesperson for Carter told Just The News that “The congressman included a statement in the record that he would’ve voted no,” while a Calvert spokesperson said he “had been voting by proxy for Rep. Carter throughout the week,” adding “Rep. Calvert made a mistake and simply forgot to cast Rep. Carter’s vote.“

    “Simply forgot” to kill the Democrats’ virtue signaling legislation intended to cast Trump supporters as violent criminals. Right.

    More via Just The News:

    House members now have the option to vote by proxy in lieu of in-person voting due to rule changes that the House passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    In the House, a tied vote can sink a bill, so a no vote from one or two of the GOP members who didn’t vote would have blocked the bill from passing. 

    Florida Republican Rep. Daniel Webster was against the measure, but he’s opposed to using proxy voting and was unable to vote in-person on the bill.

    “Rep. Webster missed votes because he was unavoidably detained in the district and wasn’t able to make it to D.C. in time to make the votes,” a spokesperson for Webster told Just the News on Friday. “He likely would have opposed the bill — he didn’t proxy vote on principle as he is on the record opposing proxy-voting and was part of the original lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.”

    Aside from the two GOP members whose votes were not recorded, all other Republican House members voted against the bill. The Democrat-led House passed the bill 213-212 on Thursday. There were three Democrats that voted against the bill and 3 Democrats that voted present. 

    Of course, the bill would have also died had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a spine. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 16:00

  • China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief's Attempts To Hold Military-To-Military Talks
    China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief’s Attempts To Hold Military-To-Military Talks

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    According to a report from Reuters, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been unable to speak with China’s top military official despite multiple attempts to set up talks.

    Tensions have been high between the militaries of the two nations due to the increased US military activity in sensitive areas like the South China Sea. US warships are regularly patrolling the disputed waters and frequently shadow Chinese ships. US spy planes are also constantly buzzing near China’s coast.

    Via USNI News/PLAN

    An unnamed US official told Reuters that there was a debate within the Biden administration about whether Austin should speak with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe or the vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, Xu Qiliang. Xu is a member of China’s politburo and is said to have more influence with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    US officials told the Financial Times that Austin had made three requests to speak with Xu, but China has decided not to engage. While a high-level military meeting has not happened between the two countries during the Biden administration, there has been communication between the armed forces at lower levels.

    Beijing certainly has reasons to be hesitant to engage with Austin. In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a high-level meeting with China’s top diplomats in Alaska. Blinken opened the talks by accusing China of threatening the “rules-based order,” and things quickly fell apart from there.

    The rhetoric out of the Biden administration has been harsh when it comes to Beijing, and the Pentagon has identified China as the top “pacing threat” facing the US military. In his first address to Congress, President Biden said the US was in a competition with China to “win the 21st century.”

    He also said that he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US will militarize the Indo-Pacific “just as we do with NATO in Europe.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 15:30

  • Utilities Are Building New Gas Plants Despite Biden's Promise Of 'Zero-Emission' Electric Grid
    Utilities Are Building New Gas Plants Despite Biden’s Promise Of ‘Zero-Emission’ Electric Grid

    As a recent study from the IEA showed, achieving the emissions goals laid out in the Paris Accords would require oil and gas companies to halt all new projects. Among other things, the report included a daunting timeline of milestones that must be met to achieve net zero by 2050.

    But if anything, the world is moving in a different direction, as a Bloomberg story published Friday shows. Because while President Biden has decided to re-enter the Paris Climate Accords and vowed to take steps to place the US electric grid on the path to net zero emissions by 2030, American utilities are continuing to pursue new gas projects that would far outlast Biden’s administration. Expansions have even been authorized for goal and oil plants.

    It’s just the latest evidence that Biden’s green rheotic doesn’t square up with reality.

    The red-and-white flue stacks of the James M. Barry Electric Generating Station tower over the Mobile River, belching steam into the Alabama sky. The sprawling complex of coal and natural gas plants already spews more than 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent every year. Now it’s about to get even bigger, with a seventh unit estimated to cost $635 million by the time it starts service in 2023.

    The new gas plant, and others like it, has a 40-year lifespan. That means it will still be there in 2035, the year that President Joe Biden has promised a zero-emission electricity sector, and in 2050, the deadline set by its owner, Southern Co., to reach carbon neutrality. It could even burn past 2060, more than a century after the first coal facility opened on the site — making the complex a testament to the endurance of fossil fuels.

    The decision by one of the biggest U.S. power companies to develop new fossil fuel assets is hard to square with a low-carbon future. But it’s not unusual. At least eight large utilities in the U.S. are building new gas plants right now, and another five are thinking about doing the same. That lays bare an uncomfortable truth about the sector’s commitment to fighting climate change: All those carbon-neutral pledges don’t necessarily mean quitting fossil fuels.

    “It seems like false advertising or greenwashing,” said Drew Shindell, a professor at Duke University who studies climate change. “We can’t be building gas infrastructure in the 2020s and 2030s. We need to be closing it down.”

    As BBG notes, if all of the plants under consideration are ultimately completed, they would release 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the emissions of every car in Florida.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Source: Bloomberg

    Why is this? Power companies insist that gas is an important “transition fuel” since it’s both relatively cheap and reliable. California learned the hard way that aggressive restrictions on gas capacity feeding the state power grid can lead to problems: the state was forced to resort to rolling blackouts last summer when a heatwave taxed the electric grid at night when solar was offline.

    Solar simply isn’t reliable enough to be relied upon, as one source pointed out.

    “Cloud cover comes and goes,” said Katharine Bond, vice president of public policy and state affairs at Dominion Energy Inc. “The winds slows. We’ve got to have something that we can ratchet up.” Dominion, which has a 2050 net-zero pledge and is required by Virginia to be 100% carbon free by 2045, is also considering building a new natural gas-fired plant.

    At least one of these plants – Southern’s new Barry plant – will support the 2050 goal because it’s designed for both carbon capture and mixing hydrogen, said CEO Tom Fanning.

    Utilities claim they’re committed to getting “to zero”. Southern, Dominion and others say they plan to eventually invest in green technology to capture and dispose of their emissions, or rework those facilities to burn cleaner fuels like biogas or hydrogen made from renewable sources. However, neither of these strategies has been implemented at scale, and both remain uneconomic at today’s prices. Which means the exact plan for getting to zero still isn’t clear. And two companies, DTE Energy and Xcel Energy, have acknowledged that their carbon goals are based on technology that doesn’t really exist.

    Another option being considered by at least one utility is retiring these gas plants after 25 years instead of 40. Duke Energy, the biggest utility in the US by customer count, is weighing considering building 15 more gas plants, but if the company moves forward with these plants, it will set its climate policy goals to retire them early.

    Amusingly, Duke customers like Apple, Facebook and Google have complained that these new plants could become a “financial albatross” for decades.

    So far, utilities have announced plans for over $70 billion-worth of new gas-fired power plants through 2025, nearly all of which will cost more than clear energy projects,according to a 2019 RMI report. As the cost of clean energy falls, these plants are all expected to become uneconomic to operate by 2035. Despite this, alternatives just aren’t ready yet to stand on their own, so utilities have no choice but to continue investing in natural gas, even as the steady transition to renewables appears unlikely to reverse.

    The takeaway: ignore politicians’ lofty targets. The reality is that by forcing utilities to transition to clean energy before the technology is ready and prices have adjusted will force consumers to incur higher power costs while also putting energy grids at greater risk for a Texas-style collapse.

    Only progressive wingnuts like AOC would be willing to risk the political blowback that might ensue.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 05/22/2021 – 15:00

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