• Soros, Thornton, Hawke: New Book Details How Beijing Manipulated Western Elites
  Soros, Thornton, Hawke: New Book Details How Beijing Manipulated Western Elites

  Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,

  Beijing’s highly secretive Ministry of State Security (MSS) leveraged and manipulated leading Western political and business elites to deepen the Chinese Communist Party’s influence around the world, according to a new book by Alex Joske, an expert on Chinese foreign interference.

  The early pages of “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World” detail how billionaire George Soros, inspired by his work establishing the Open Society Foundation in post-communist Hungary, carried out similar work for China during Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform era.

  The vehicle devised by Soros, and partner Liang Heng, was to establish the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China (the China Fund) to support cultural, business, and scientific research to assist with the country’s opening up, according to Joske, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

  Yet amid political manoeuvring between factions in the 1980s, the China Fund was forced to partner with the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), an organisation claiming to be under the control of the Ministry of Culture.

  

  George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, arrives for a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on April 27, 2017. (Olivier Hoslet/AFP/Getty Images)

  Joske alleges that Soros and Liang soon discovered, however, that CICEC had its own motives for the China Fund, and that was to support political initiatives rather than activities associated with liberalising China.

  Soros later closed the China Fund with CICEC co-chair Yu Enguang, revealed to be a “high-ranking official in the external police” or the MSS.

  “The MSS seizure of the China Fund was an impressive display of the agency’s confidence in engaging with one of America’s best-connected and wealthiest men. What it learnt could be applied to future operations as the agency grew more aggressive and internationally focused over the following decade,” Joske wrote.

  CICEC itself would continue to be a “custom-made organ” for meeting and secretly influencing recruits from around the world.

  “Politically sensitive missions like engaging directly with George Soros or posing as liberals with the Party in order to gain the trust of foreigners are home turf for these officers,” he said.

  Exploiting Ambition

  Joske also notes that the MSS was very adept at exploiting the ambition of Western elites and cites the example of the former co-president of Goldman Sachs, John Thornton.

  After quitting the banking giant, Thornton held several prominent positions with major Chinese institutions, including a directorship at the well-known Tsinghua University.

  Journalist Josh Rogin alleged Thornton developed one of the “most reliable and high-level networks with the families that run the CCP,” which shaped Thornton’s views on how to manage China relations.

  

  John L. Thornton, guest professor and director of Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua SEM and chairman of the board of the Brookings Institution, speaks during the 2011 Tsinghua Management Global Forum at Tsinghua SEM Auditorium in Beijing on Oct. 25, 2011. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

  “Thornton’s beliefs about China’s future have been characterised by the same false narratives the MSS Social Investigation Bureau pushed on foreign scholars, diplomats, and elites. In 2008, he argued in an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine that the Party was actively considering moving towards democracy,” Joske wrote.

  “Thornton’s writings reflect the same optimism about China that Party leaders and the MSS learnt to capitalise on decades earlier.”

  The former Goldman Sachs executive went on to encourage the Trump administration to befriend Chinese leader Xi Jinping directly. Yet these efforts at diplomatic engagement with the Chinese leadership would eventually give way to tough sanctions on China to correct years of intellectual property theft and unbalanced trade.

  Thornton, along with several major Wall Street figures, also allegedly attempted to sway the Biden administration on its China policy, but these efforts have also fallen to the wayside as scrutiny of the Chinese Communist Party becomes more widespread.

  Exploiting a Love of China

  Joske also draws attention to the Chinese regime’s use of people’s love for China outlining the example involving former Australian Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

  Hawke was distraught in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and famously responded by granting 42,000 Chinese nationals’ asylum.

  Joske says four years after the massacre, Hawke received a message from the Chinese consul in Sydney inviting him to visit China.

  

  Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Brisbane, Australia, on Aug. 16, 2010. (William West/AFP/Getty Images)

  Hawke felt it was important that Australia-China relations grew, so agreed to do so. There he was received and welcomed by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and then-Premier Li Peng.

  “The special bromance between Chinese and Australian leaders was back on track. Hawke thought the fate of [former Premier] Zhao Ziyang, who eventually died in house arrest, was ‘extremely sad,’ but the importance of building ties to the Party leadership came first,” Joske wrote.

  He further added that the issue of Tiananmen was eventually “swept under the rug,” and Hawke would go on to play a valuable role in selling China to the rest of the world.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 23:30

• Visualizing 20 Years Of Top Trending Google Searches
  Visualizing 20 Years Of Top Trending Google Searches

  For decades, Google search has been a go-to source for many when looking up directions, keeping up with the news, or seeking information on new and unfamiliar topics.

  Today, Google processes about 3.5 billion searches per day. Because of its dominant market share, Google holds a vast archive of keyword searches that, when analyzed, provide an interesting glimpse into the key themes that have captured the world’s attention over the years.

  Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang and Nick Routley show in the infographic below, using data from Google Trends going back 20 years, some of the top keyword searches since 2001.

  

  Visual Capitalist’s editorial team dug through hundreds of top trending search terms from global and U.S. data and hand-selected their top picks, which are featured in the graphic above.

  Trending vs. Volume

  Before diving in, it’s worth emphasizing how top trending searches differ from popular searches, which are measured by sheer volume.

  Trending searches are terms that have recently spiked in popularity. They focus on growth rather than total volume, and in this dataset, trending terms gauge year-over-year growth.

  A good example is Donald Trump, who popped up in the news cycle during the 2016 presidential campaign. After the election, interest in Trump remained high. But his name doesn’t pop up on the Google trends list after 2017, since by that point, search volume for Trump had plateaued.

  What are the most popular Google search terms, by volume? To be honest, they’re slightly less interesting than the top trending searches — YouTube is number one, followed by Facebook, then WhatsApp web.

  The Globalization of Search Trends

  The people and topics featured in Google’s top trends lists evolves as time goes on, reflecting broader adoption of the internet (and Google Search) around the world over time. Early themes are tied to mainstream U.S. pop culture and tech trends.

  As time goes on, social media and smartphone adoption increase the granularity and volume of searches, resulting in top trends that are more participatory, diverse, and global in nature.

  One final variable to keep in mind is that Google itself began to share more detailed search highlights with each passing year.

  Two Decades of Google Searches: Macro Insights

  Now that we’ve explained what trending searches actually measure, let’s dig into some of the key themes that have emerged over the last two decades of Google searches.

  ① People Love Sports

  Over the last 20 years, sports have remained a continuous trend.

  Every four years, the World Cup shows up as a top trending keyword across the globe. The Olympics also makes a regular appearance, along with Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps and McKayla Maroney.

  Although the U.S. dominates the list, particularly when it comes to athletes, there’s still a good variety of international sports that go viral, especially as time goes on. In the last two years, cricket, rugby, and soccer have all made the top five trending lists.

  ② The Emergence of Celebrity 2.0

  Over time, you can also see a transition from the conventional celebrity to celebrity 2.0, also known as the social media celebrity. 

  In the early 2000s, pop culture icons like Britney Spears, Eminem, and Jennifer Lopez flooded the trending searches, and traditional media forms like TV shows and Movies dominated the mass media categories.  

  But by 2011, YouTube stars like Rebecca Black started to make their way on the trending search lists. And in 2014, Meme emerged as a top trending category.

  This transition nods to a larger shift in media, as digital has gradually overtaken traditional media as the dominant form of entertainment.

  ③ Natural Disasters are Top of Mind

  Natural Disasters are a key trend throughout this data set as well.

  Hurricanes are a particularly trendy word, showing up almost half the time—in eight of the 20 years. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ranked second in the most searched category across the globe.

  It continued to gain global attention—by 2006, Hurricane Katrina was still in the top five trending news searches.

  Dig Deeper into Trending Google Searches

  Our team enjoyed sifting through 20 years of Google data, and we hope you enjoyed this blast from the past too. If you’d like to dive deeper, you can explore Google’s full dataset here.

  Happy searching.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 23:00

• Alaskan Locals Pointing Fingers At Causes Behind Record Number Of Marauding Bears
  Alaskan Locals Pointing Fingers At Causes Behind Record Number Of Marauding Bears

  Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Spotting a bear in the Alaskan wilderness is an exciting and terrifying prospect for nearly 2 million visitors who make the trip up north annually.

  

  However, dealing with bears is a chore and just part of life for locals.

  On a good day, that means constant vigilance and being conscious about little things—like where you stash your fishing gear and old take-out containers.

  On a bad day, dealing with bears can be dangerous and very expensive.

  Nestled in the winding waterways of Southeastern Alaska is the town of Haines. Touted as the “adventure capital” of the state, it has the spirit of a true frontier outpost.

  

  It’s the kind of place where you can buy hunting rifles and liquor directly across the street from the cruise ship dock.

  It’s also the location of a record-high number of bear killings out of self-defense in 2020.

  That year, police received an astonishing 452 phone calls requesting help with bears breaking into homes, restaurants, and cars in search of food.

  Haines police chief Heath Scott indicated the number of calls was eight times higher than in 2019.

  The outcome was grim.

  Official counts stated a total of 46 bears—an unprecedented number—were culled out of necessity to protect human life and property. Some Haines locals say the unofficial number was closer to 60 bears.

  Last year, Haines police received more than 50 bear-related calls. That’s still above the average, which is around 35-50 calls per year.

  Quick to sound the alarm, some climate alarmists cite lower fish populations resulting from rising water temperatures as the cause for higher numbers of bear rampages over the past two years.

  But some Haines residents aren’t so quick to sweep marauding bears under the rug of climate change.

  Locals say fluctuating fish populations are not unusual.

  Compounding this is irresponsible trash management and nearby fish farms. The latter is something many Alaskans assert has quietly fueled this problem for years.

   Bear Necessities

  “This isn’t anything new. It’s an ongoing thing,” Shori Long told The Epoch Times.

  Long has had more than her fair share of encounters with intrepid bears in the past 36 years. She grew up fishing in Alaska’s vast wildlands around the Aleutian Islands and Haines.

  “I remember playing on the beach as a kid and never really worried about bears,” she said, adding there was no electricity where she grew up until 2009.

  Long described sunny days as a young girl spent catching salmon barefoot with her dog. But since then, she’s noticed increasingly bold behavior among the local bear population.

  She attributes this to a shift in perception where bears now associate humans directly with food.

  Much of this derives from negligent behavior with trash and fish scraps.

  Uneducated fishermen—many of whom are visitors—will often feed bears directly or leave scraps nearby. After years of this dangerous practice, bears now see humans as walking food trucks.

  “They would throw their fish to the bears or leave the chum on the beach. Bears have learned from this and now they think, ‘Oh hey, there’s another human with a pole. That means food,” Long said.

  She also noted there were two key elements behind the historic 2020 bear rampage. They’re the same factors that underscore any year with a higher than average amount of bear damage.

  

  “That was a really bad year for fish and berries combined. The berries weren’t there, and the fish just weren’t there,” she said.

  Other than fish, wild berries provide another important food source for Alaska’s ursid population. A combined scarcity can force hungry bears to shift from regular hunting and foraging to full-blown ransacking.

  “It’s the availability of natural foods. In 2020, it was a very low fish year and there weren’t many berries around,” Roy Churchwell, told The Epoch Times.

  Churchwell is a biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said the fish and berry supply was a little better in 2021 but “still not great.”

  He also says that bear rampages aren’t on the rise, per se. It completely depends on food availability, which varies from year to year.

  “For example, if wild foods become available again, it’s very common for bears to go back to those wild resources,” Churchwell said.

  

  When hungry bears can’t find enough to eat in the woods, they often wander into cities and towns.

  Every year, they cause thousands of dollars in property and vehicle damage. They tear open doors to homes and cars, break through windows, and demolish storage sheds.

  Churchwell noted that Haines has problems with both black and brown bears, which are the species normally encountered in Southeastern Alaska.

  Confrontations with grizzlies are more common in the interior portion of the state.

  Despite the fierce reputation of Alaskan grizzlies, black bears alone account for upwards of 40,000 damage complaints to agencies throughout North America every year.

  Trash and Fish Farms

  Preventing bear damage goes far beyond rookie stuff like leaving unsecured food out in the open. A black bear’s scent capacity is estimated to be seven times greater than that of a bloodhound.

  That means leaving something as simple as a recently used fishing pole in your car will entice unwanted attention from bears. Moreover, things like empty fast food boxes and wrappers offer a nearly irresistible temptation.

  Though sometimes even smelling “too fishy” after a day on the water is enough to prompt an attack, according to Long.

  She recalled an episode in 2019 where a bear attempted to maul her after she returned from a pleasant day of beach fishing. Long said the prompt response of her dog, which launched a counterattack on the aggressive bear, proved to be enough of a deterrent to allow her to escape.

  Long laughed while recalling the incident. “When I saw that bear reaching for me, I thought, ‘here we go.’”

  Other locals in Long’s circle have had their own ugly run-ins with local bears.

  “One of my best friends and her neighbor had their cars totally destroyed because a bear got in and just tore it apart,” she said.

  In addition to cars, garages, mudrooms, and storage sheds, sunrooms are inviting targets for bears due to the prevalence of food storage in deep freezers along with hunting and fishing equipment.

  

   

  “We’ve learned how to deter them,” Long explained. “You store your crab gear, your longline gear, outside in a shed. Then use plywood with screws sticking out that will injure the bear’s paws if they try to press on the door. It works as a fantastic deterrent.”

  Gear storage aside, there’s still a trash problem to address.

  Haines local Charlene Jones told The Epoch Times area bears near town have literally been “trained by the trash.”

  Jones says that 2022 has been a better year for fish and berries, which allows residents to breathe a little easier.

  This year, all she had to do was yell at the bears nosing around her property to make them leave.

  Yet even with a more abundant food supply, vigilance must still be maintained. Jones said that, along with her neighbor, “We tame our trash like we’re on a mission from god.”

  “Because all the bears taught their bear children to go and eat human trash. It’s a generational thing,” Jones said.

  Churchwell agrees that appropriate waste management is critical. “It’s difficult to get people to secure their garbage … and other bear attractants. If we can do that, it goes a long way.”

  Though looming in the backdrop of food supply and waste management is the impact of nearby farms on Alaska’s aquatic culture.

  Research suggests farmed fish is linked to spawning issues, disease, and smaller subsequent generations. Finfish farming isn’t legal in Alaskan state waters, but only up to three miles offshore. Also, in neighboring Canada, fish farming is a booming industry.

  That means fish farms may inadvertently contribute to the lower populations impacting bear behavior.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 22:30

• 401(k) Contribution Limit Leaps By Record Amount As Inflation Rages
  401(k) Contribution Limit Leaps By Record Amount As Inflation Rages

  The IRS on Friday announced that contribution limits for 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) are rising in 2023 in response to price inflation that’s running at the fastest pace in about 40 years.

  The limits are linked to the headline Consumer Price Index, or CPI-U, and September’s reading saw an 8.2% year-over-year increase. 

  The boost to the 401(k) maximum is the biggest one ever in both dollar and percentage terms, as retirement investors will be able to contribute $2,000 more in 2023 than they can this year. The limit on so-called “catch-up contributions”– available to those age 50 and over — is rising by $1,000, to $7,500. 

  That puts 2023’s annual 401(k) limit at $22,500 for workers under 50, and $30,000 for those 50 and older. The same new maximums apply to participants in 403(b) and most 457 plans, as well as the Thrift Savings Plan for federal government employees.  

  IRA investors will be able to put away an extra $500 in 2023, as the limit rises to $6,500. Unlike most other contribution amounts, the IRA “catch-up” for the 50+ crowd isn’t indexed to inflation and will remain at $1,000. 

  The income ranges that drive eligibility for deductible contributions to Traditional IRAs and contributions to Roth IRAs are also rising. See the IRS announcement for those and other details. 

  Of course, higher limits are only useful to the extent Americans can actually find the extra money to put away — at the same time when rising prices for gasoline, energy and food are hammering their cash flow. 

  Hey! The IRS is raising the 401k contribution limit by a record amount! Just what the American people who are struggling to afford basics need.

  — David Allen (@davidallen595) October 21, 2022

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

  It’s not as if Americans are even treading water against inflation — they’re already sinking: August saw revolving credit balances soar by 18%, as Americans continue to pay for inflation with credit cards. “Americans are burning up their plastic in order to make ends meet,” writes SchiffGold’s Michael Maharrey.  

  Meanwhile, a boost in workplace contribution limits is of limited use when salaries and wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation. In a recent Bankrate survey, only 39% of people who received a raise in the past year or moved to a higher-paying job said the boost had kept up with rising prices. 

  Only about 14% of 401(k) contributors maxed out in 2021, the Employee Benefits Research Institute’s Craig Copeland tells Bloomberg: “It’s really the people making $100,000 and especially those making $150,000 or more who save the maximum.”

  All that said, if you’re among those with the capacity to put away more money for retirement, it could make a difference down the road.

  • Assuming a 5% return, a 40-year-old who boosts his 401(k) contribution by $2,000 a year ends up with roughly an extra $100,000 at age 65. At an 8% return, it’s an extra $159,000. 
  • For a 50-year old who’s already maxing out and takes advantage of the new limits by increasing 401(k) contributions by $3,000, it yields roughly an extra $67,000 at age 65 at a 5% return, and $87,000 at 8%.  

  Of course, we realize the more fatalist readers of these pages will be more inclined to invest in food, brass and lead.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 22:00

• Illinois Now Has The Worst Unemployment Rate In The Nation
  Illinois Now Has The Worst Unemployment Rate In The Nation

  Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

  We’ve warned consistently that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s inaction on Illinois’ biggest fiscal problems – pensions, property taxes, unbalanced budgets – would eventually come back to bite the state. Sure, he’s used the near-$200 billion in federal Covid bailout money to cover the state’s financial cracks in the short-term, but the governor can’t hide from the reality of his failures on jobs and growth.

  At 4.5 percent in September, no other state has a higher unemployment rate than Illinois, according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics release. 

  

  Illinoisans have been suffering in one the worst five states for unemployment for several months, but now the state has jumped to the number one position. This is what comes from pursuing policies that drive out companies like Boeing, Citadel, Caterpillar and Tyson.

  Gov. Pritzker’s administration is already attempting to spin the data. Below is a quote from today’s press release from IDES:

  “Today’s data is a clear indicator that the Illinois labor market continues to remain strong and stable,” said Deputy Governor Andy Manar.

  Nothing state officials say can change the fact that Illinois is an extreme laggard both regionally and nationally when it comes to creating jobs.

  Nor does it change the fact that Illinoisans are now poised to suffer the most during the next economic downturn. Bloomberg says there’s a 100% probability of a recession within the next 12 months and Illinois’ jobs climate is now the worst-positioned to deal with the impact. 

  All of Illinois’ neighboring states are in far better shape. Their unemployment rates are significantly below those in Illinois, most notably in Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, where unemployment is 1 to 2 percentage points lower.

  

  That difference in jobless rates represent a big difference in Illinoisans’ lives. Catching up with states like Missouri would mean 130,000 residents back at work – equivalent to the entire population of Springfield and then some.

  Illinois’ worst-in-nation jobs climate was never preordained. With its central location, abundant resources and hard-working residents, it should be leading the nation in jobs and growth.

  Illinoisans should blame the difference on state lawmakers’ many failed policies, from not addressing crime to ignoring the nation’s biggest pension debts to papering over the state’s financial problems to letting public unions dominate state policy to fostering rampant corruption.

  Until those policy failures are finally addressed, expect both businesses and Illinoisans to continue to leave for better prospects. Which, as of September, means every other state in the nation.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 21:30

• China's CPC Congress Passes Resolution To Boost Armed Forces, Speed Up 'Taiwan Reunification'
  China’s CPC Congress Passes Resolution To Boost Armed Forces, Speed Up ‘Taiwan Reunification’

  A final Congress resolution issued Saturday by the Communist Party of China spelled out that the national armed forces will continue to be modernized and expanded with an eye toward preventing Taiwan independence.

  While praising efforts over the past half-decade of Beijing devoting “great energy to modernizing” its “national defense and armed forces”, the CPC called for “resolute steps to oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ and promote reunification, maintain the initiative and the ability to steer in cross-Strait relations, and unswervingly advance the cause of national reunification.”

  

  Importantly, Congress spokesperson Sun Yeli said last week leading into the Saturday resolution that China does not rule out the possibility of using force, but it would only be in response to interference from outside countries. 

  “We do not promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the possibility of taking all necessary measures against the interference of external forces and the extremely small number of pro-Taiwan independence separatist forces and their separatist activities,” Sun had said says before the opening of the 20th National Congress.

  President Xi Jinping, who emerged from the Congress even more powerful, securing a precedent-breaking third term, emphasized China reserves the right to use force in certain scenarios regarding Taiwan: 

  Chinese President Xi Jinping said China reserves the option of “taking all measures necessary” against “interference by outside forces” on the issue of Taiwan.

  In a wide-ranging speech Sunday, Xi spoke firmly about China’s resolve for reunification with the self-governed island, which Beijing considers part of its territory...

  “We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort,” Xi said in Chinese, according to an official translation. “But, we will never promise to renounce the use of force. And we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

  Consistent with prior statements on the issue, he stressed they key caveat that “This is directed solely at interference by outside forces and a few separatists seeking Taiwan independence.”

  BREAKING: Xi Jinping opens CCP summit by announcing full control of Hong Kong has been achieved, that Taiwan is next pic.twitter.com/Y5PGVXg9Sj

  — ShapiroExposed.com (@JackPosobiec) October 16, 2022

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

  With this context being laid out in Xi’s speech, the newly passed resolution reads: “We must enhance the military’s strategic capabilities for defending China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests and see that the people’s armed forces effectively fulfill their missions and tasks in the new era.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 21:00

• 17 Out-Of-Place Artifacts That Suggest High-Tech Civilizations Existed Thousands (Or Millions) Of Years Ago
  17 Out-Of-Place Artifacts That Suggest High-Tech Civilizations Existed Thousands (Or Millions) Of Years Ago

  Authored by Tara Macisaac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  According to our conventional view of history, humans have only walked the Earth in our present form for some 200,000 years. Much of the mechanical ingenuity we know of in modern times began to develop only a couple hundred years ago, during the Industrial Revolution. However, evidence today alludes to advanced civilizations existing as long as several thousand years ago—or possibly even earlier.

  

  “Oopart”—or “out-of-place artifact”—is the term given to numerous prehistoric objects found in various places across the world today that show a level of technological sophistication incongruous with our present paradigm.

  Many scientists attempt to explain these ooparts away as natural phenomena. Yet others say that such dismissive explanations only whitewash over the mounting evidence: that prehistoric civilizations had advanced knowledge, and this knowledge was lost over the ages only to be developed anew in modern times.

  We will look at a variety of ooparts here, ranging from millions to hundreds of years old in purported age, but all supposedly demonstrating advancement well beyond their time.

  Whether these are fact or merely fiction we cannot say. We can only offer a glimpse at what’s known, supposed, or hypothesized regarding these phenomena, in the spirit of being open-minded and geared toward real scientific discovery.

  17. 2,000-Year-Old Batteries?

  Clay jars with asphalt stoppers and iron rods made some 2,000 years ago have been proven capable of generating more than a volt of electricity. These ancient “batteries” were found by German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig in 1938, just outside of Baghdad, Iraq.

  

  “The batteries have always attracted interest as curios,” Dr. Paul Craddock, a metallurgy expert at the British Museum, told the BBC in 2003. “They are a one-off. As far as we know, nobody else has found anything like these. They are odd things; they are one of life’s enigmas.”

  16. Ancient Egyptian Light Bulb?

  A relief beneath the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt, depicts figures standing around a large light-bulb-like object. Erich Von Däniken, who wrote “Chariot of the Gods,” created a model of the bulb which works when connected to a power source, emitting an eerie, purplish light.

  

  15. Great Wall of Texas

  In 1852, in what is now known as Rockwall County, Texas, farmers digging a well discovered what appeared to be an ancient rock wall. Estimated to be some 200,000 to 400,000 years old, some say it’s a natural formation while others say it’s clearly man-made.

  

  Dr. John Geissman at the University of Texas in Dallas tested the rocks as part of a History Channel documentary. He found they were all magnetized the same way, suggesting they formed where they are and were not moved to that site from elsewhere. But some remain unconvinced by this single TV-show test and call for further studies.

  Geologist James Shelton and Harvard-trained architect John Lindsey have noted elements that seem to be of architectural design, including archways, linteled portals, and square openings that resemble windows.

  14. 1.8-Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor?

  In 1972, a French factory imported uranium ore from Oklo, in Africa’s Gabon Republic. The uranium had already been extracted. They found the site of origin to have apparently functioned as a large-scale nuclear reactor that came into being 1.8 billion years ago and was in operation for some 500,000 years.

  

  Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel Prize winner for his work in the synthesis of heavy elements, believed it wasn’t a natural phenomenon, and thus must be a man-made nuclear reactor.

  For uranium to “burn” in a reaction, very precise conditions are needed. The water must be extremely pure, for one—much purer than exists naturally. The material U-235 is necessary for nuclear fission to occur. It is one of the isotopes found naturally in uranium. Several specialists in reactor engineering have said they believe the uranium in Oklo could not have been rich enough in U-235 for a reaction to take place naturally.

  13. Sea-Faring Map Makers Before Antarctica Was Covered in Ice?

  A map created by Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis in 1513, but sourced from various earlier maps, is thought by some to depict Antarctica as it was in a very remote age before it was covered with ice.

  

  A landmass is shown to jut out from the southern coastline of South America. Captain Lorenzo W. Burroughs, a U.S. Air Force captain in the cartographic section, wrote a letter to Dr. Charles Hapgood in 1961 saying that this landmass seems to accurately show Antarctica’s coast as it is under the ice.

  Dr. Hapgood (1904–1982) was one of the first to publicly suggest that the Piri Reis map depicts Antarctica during a prehistoric time. He was a Harvard-educated historian whose theories about geological shifts earned the admiration of Albert Einstein. He hypothesized that the land masses shifted, explaining why Antarctica is shown as connected to South America.

  Modern studies refute Hapgood’s theory that such a shift could have taken place within thousands of years, but they show it could have happened within millions of years.

  12. 2,000-Year-Old Earthquake Detector

  In 132 A.D., Zhang Heng created the world’s first seismoscope. How exactly it works remains a mystery, but replicas have worked with a precision comparable to modern instruments.

  

  In 138 A.D., it correctly indicated that an earthquake occurred about 300 miles west of Luoyang, the capital city. No one had felt the quake in Luoyang and dismissed the warning until a messenger arrived days later, requesting aid.

  11. 150,000-Year-Old Pipes?

  Caves near Mount Baigong in China contain pipes leading to a nearby lake. They were dated by the Beijing Institute of Geology to about 150,000 years ago, according to Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com.

  

  State-run media Xinhua reported that the pipes were analyzed at a local smeltery and 8 percent of the material could not be identified. Zheng Jiandong, a geology research fellow from the China Earthquake Administration, told state-run newspaper People’s Daily, in 2007, that some of the pipes were found to be highly radioactive.

  Jiandong said iron-rich magma may have risen from deep in the Earth, bringing the iron into fissures where it may have solidified into tubes; though he admitted, “There is indeed something mysterious about these pipes.” He cited the radioactivity as an example of the strange qualities of the pipes.

  10. Antikythera Mechanism

  A mechanism often referred to as an ancient “computer,” which was built by Greeks around 150 B.C., was able to calculate astronomical changes with great precision.

  

  “If it hadn’t been discovered … no one would possibly believe that it could exist because it’s so sophisticated,” said Mathematician Tony Freeth in a NOVA documentary. Mathias Buttet, director of research and development for watch-maker Hublot, said in a video released by the Hellenic Republic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, “This Antikythera Mechanism includes ingenious features which are not found in modern watch-making.”

  9. Drill Bit in Coal

  John Buchanan, Esq., presented a mysterious object to a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on Dec. 13, 1852. A drill bit had been found encapsulated in coal about 22 inches thick, buried in a bed of clay mixed with boulders about 7 feet thick.

  

  The Earth’s coal is said to have formed hundreds of millions of years ago. The Society decided that the instrument was of a modern level of advancement. But it concluded that “the iron instrument might have been part of a borer broken during some former search for coal.”

  Buchanan’s detailed report did not include any signs that the coal surrounding the instrument had been punctured by drilling.

  8. 2.8-Billion-Year-Old Spheres?

  Spheres with fine grooves around them, found in mines in South Africa, have been said by some to be naturally formed masses of mineral matter. Others have said they were precisely shaped by a prehistoric human hand.

  

  “The globes, which have a fibrous structure on the inside with a shell around it, are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel,” said Roelf Marx, curator of the museum of Klerksdorp, South Africa, according to Michael Cremo’s book, “Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race.” Marx said the spheres are about 2.8 billion years old.

  If they are mineral masses, it is unclear how exactly they formed.

  7. Iron Pillar of Delhi

  This pillar is at least 1,500 years old but could be older. It remains rust-free and is of astounding purity. It is 99.72 percent iron, according to professor A.P. Gupta, head of the Department of Applied Sciences and Humanities at the Institute of Technology and Management in India.

  

  In modern times, wrought iron has been made with a purity of 99.8 percent, but it contains manganese and sulfur, two ingredients absent in the pillar.

  It was made at least “400 years before the largest known foundry of the world could have produced it,” wrote John Rowlett in “A Study of the Craftsmen of Ancient and Medieval Civilizations to Show the Influence of their Training on our Present Day Method of Trade Education.”

  6. Viking Sword Ulfberht

  When archaeologists found the Viking sword Ulfberht, dating from 800 to 1000 A.D., they were stunned. They couldn’t see how the technology to make such a sword would have been available until the Industrial Revolution, 800 years later.

  

  Its carbon content is three times higher than other swords of its time and impurities were removed to such a degree that the iron ore must have been heated to at least 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

  With great effort and precision, modern blacksmith Richard Furrer of Wisconsin forged a sword of Ulfberht quality using technology that would have been available in the Middle Ages. He said it was the most complicated thing he’d ever made, and he used methods not known to have been used by people of that time.

  5. 100-Million-Year-Old Hammer?

  A hammer was found in London, Texas, in 1934, encased in stone that had formed around it. The rock surrounding the hammer is said to be more than 100 million years old.

  Glen J. Kuban, a vocal skeptic of claims that the hammer was made millions of years ago, said the stone may contain materials that are more than 100 million years old, but that doesn’t mean the rock formed around the hammer so long ago.

  He said that some limestone has formed around artifacts known to be from the 20th century, so concretions can form fairly quickly around objects. (Concretions are masses of hardened mineral matter).

  Carl Baugh, who was in possession of the artifact, has said the wooden handle has turned to coal (evidence of its great age) and that the metal its made of has a strange composition. Critics have called for independent testing to verify these claims, but so far no such testing has been conducted.

  4. Prehistoric Work Site?

  Workers at a stone quarry near Aix-en-Provence, France, in the 18th century, came across tools stuck in a layer of limestone 50 feet underground.

  The find was recorded in the American Journal of Science and Arts in 1820 by T. D. Porter, who was translating Count Bournon’s work, “Mineralogy.”

  

  The wooden instruments had turned into agate, a hard stone. Porter wrote: “Everything tended to prove that this work had been executed upon the spot where the traces existed. The presence of man had then preceded the formation of this stone, and that very considerably since he was already arrived at such a degree of civilization that the arts were known to him, and that he wrought the stone and formed columns out of it.”

  As stated in the case of the hammer above, limestone has been known to form relatively quickly around modern tools.

  3. Million-Year-Old Bridge?

  According to ancient Indian legend, King Rama built a bridge between India and Sri Lanka more than a million years ago. What appears to be remnants of such a bridge have been seen from satellite images, but many say its a natural formation.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 20:30

• Last-Mile Automation Carnage: Fedex And Amazon Give Up On Delivery Robots
  Last-Mile Automation Carnage: Fedex And Amazon Give Up On Delivery Robots

  October has been a rough month for the last-mile delivery robot industry as Amazon called it quits on their six-wheeled robot “Scout” for home deliveries. Now FedEx is doing the same. 

  Robotics 24/7 has obtained an internal memo written by Sriram Krishnasam, chief transformation officer at FedEx, who told employees its last-mile delivery robot, Roxo, will be scaled back. 

  “Although robotics and automation are key pillars of our innovation strategy, Roxo did not meet necessary near-term value requirements for DRIVE,” Krishnasam wrote in the memo. “Although we are ending the research and development efforts, Roxo served a valuable purpose: to rapidly advance our understanding and use of robotic technology.”

  

  FedEx launched Roxo in 2019 in collaboration with DEKA Research and Development Corp. The robot uses multiple sets of wheels to traverse steps and obstacles while hauling up to 100 pounds. It navigates sidewalks and city streets using cameras and LIDAR sensors. Human operators can intervene with remote controls if need be. 

  “We are immensely proud of our role in working with DEKA to advance this cutting-edge technology that has put it on the path to future implementation, and we remain committed to exploring last-mile innovations that align with our business strategy,” the company said. “The collaboration with DEKA has been outstanding, and we will continue to explore compelling opportunities arising from the technologies we have developed together.”

  FedEx and Amazon are some of the largest shippers moving packages around the country and the world. When these two companies simultaneously decide to axe their last-mile delivery robots, it indicates the program has been a complete and utter failure. This is excellent news for the humans working at FedEx, Amazon, UPS, USPS, Uber Eats, Instacart, and other last-mile companies that your jobs will be safe for now. However, when the Federal Aviation Administration clears airspace for delivery drones, that could be a different story but won’t happen at scale until the end of this decade. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 20:05

• Weaponized Governmental Failure: A Primer
  Weaponized Governmental Failure: A Primer

  Authored by Scott McKay via The American Spectator,

  Democrats rule over a ruin, but they rule…

  

  The following contains an excerpt from Scott McKay’s book The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win the Next American Era. It discusses a key concept which has appeared in several of his more recent columns to describe the decline of America’s cities.

  With the 2022 midterm elections less than three weeks away and the alarming dysfunction of urban areas run by Democrats contributing in large measure to the public’s unease as expressed in countless right track/wrong track surveys, Scott says nothing about any of this is accidental.

  *  *  *

  Let’s call it Weaponized Governmental Failure. It’s the single most explicative factor in the breakdown of American political consensus in the 21st century, even though it’s been around since the latter part of the 20th century.

  The simple definition of Weaponized Governmental Failure is this: it’s the deliberate refusal to perform the basic tasks of urban governance for a specific political purpose.

  The crime and the graft and the potholes and the bad drainage, not to mention the spotty trash collection or nonexistent snow shoveling, aren’t incompetence. In fact, none of what you see in the American public sector is incompetence. The people responsible for it are quite highly educated and well-trained in their craft. You just need to understand what their craft is.

  It’s a choice to do a poor job with the more mundane tasks of running a city, and an educated and purposeful choice at that. If you do those things effectively, after all, what you will get is middle-class voters moving in. Middle-class voters tend to choose to live in places where they can expect to get actual value out of their tax dollars — good roads, safe streets, functional drainage, decent schools, a friendly business climate, and a growing economy, among other things — and those things are hard to produce when you govern the way the Left does.

  Put a different way, middle-class voters are a pain in the ass.

  They want lots of things that make for unrewarding grunt work for a mayor, and a Democrat blowhard like a Mitch Landrieu or Ted Wheeler of Portland would rather spend his time on vacuous cultural aggressions like “social change” and offering wealth redistribution and excuses for the bad personal habits that cause so many people to be poor.

  Not to mention tilting at bronze statues of better men long dead and nearly forgotten as a means of “making a difference.”

  For a Landrieu, or a Kwame Kilpatrick, Marion Barry, Bill de Blasio, or Lori Lightfoot, it is no great loss if those middle-class voters declare themselves fed up and decamp to the suburbs.

  Their exodus simply makes for an electorate that is a lot less demanding and easier to control.

  That “white flight” is a feature. It’s not a bug. And it isn’t all that white either. Those suburbs the folks are leaving for? Their minority population share usually increases as their population does. Why do you think that is? Simple: the black middle class has no more use for these woke urban Democrats than the white middle class does.

  And it’s quite a mutual sentiment, to be sure.

  The urban socialist Left wants a manageably small core of rich residents and a teeming mass of poor ones, and nothing in between. That’s what Weaponized Governmental Failure produces, and it’s a wide-scale success. New Orleans votes 90 percent Democrat. Philadelphia is 80 percent Democrat. Chicago is 85 percent. Los Angeles? Seventy-one percent. None of those cities will have a Republican mayor or city council again, or at least not in the foreseeable future.

  Because there are very few middle-class voters left in the cities.

  Rich voters don’t really ask for anything, because they can generally pay for whatever they need out of pocket (for example, their kids go to private schools, and they’ve got private security in their neighborhoods). All they require is that the WGF politicians give them access and the occasional favor, and they’ll not only vote for them but write campaign checks.

  Poor voters? Please. They’re generally unsophisticated and susceptible to government dependency, and thus manipulating them is no great task. Give them the occasional crumbs from the table, and keep them busy with stupidities like bowdlerizing old monuments, or midnight basketball, or Black Lives Matter “defund the police” pandering, and you can get them to vote however you want without ever lifting a finger to provide real opportunity for social and economic advancement.

  Or even by vigorously promoting policies and outcomes that actively hold back the social mobility of the urban poor.

  You don’t really think the public schools in those cities spend $15,000 or $20,000 per student per year to turn out functional illiterates because the people involved in making all that money disappear are all idiots, do you?

  Louis Miriani was the last Republican mayor of Detroit. He left office on January 2, 1962. When Miriani gave up the mayor’s gavel to Jerome Cavanagh following a major upset in the 1961 elections, Detroit was the richest, most productive city in the world with a population of nearly two million. It had the richest black community in the world and an industrial output that dwarfed the vast majority of nations on earth.

  By 1967 Detroit was in flames thanks to the 12th Street Riots. Coleman Young, elected as the city’s first black mayor in 1973 and the third in a string of Democrat mayors, which as of this writing appears impossible to break, would oversee such an economic rout that a peculiar tradition called “Devil’s Night” was born. Arsonists would descend upon the city and burn large swaths of its dead industrial base the night before Halloween, with little response from the fire department. This went on for years.

  Today, Detroit’s population stands at 639,000, less than a third of what it was when Miriani said his farewell. It’s one of the poorest cities in America; the poverty rate in Detroit in 2019 was 31 percent, compared to 13 percent in Michigan as a whole and 10.5 percent nationally. Detroit’s public schools spend some $14,750 per student per year, ranking among the top ten most expensive in America, and yet in 2018 just 5 percent of fourth graders were proficient in reading and 4 percent proficient in math, the worst scores in the nation.

  The more middle-class voters you drive out of the city, and the fewer middle-class voters your public school system creates, the more pliable the electorate becomes.

  A pliable electorate is one you can rule forever without successfully governing.

  They rule over a ruin, but they rule.

  And the Democrat Party barely exists outside of the ruins those urban machines produce. Check out any county-by-country or congressional district-by-congressional district electoral map from the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections, and what you’ll see is a few islands of blue in a sea of red. Even in blue states like Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Minnesota most of the territory is solidly Republican; it’s the dense population of Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, and the other big cities that always, or at least often, overwhelms Republican votes in the suburbs, exurbs, and small towns.

  *  *  *

  Scott McKay is publisher of the Hayride, which offers news and commentary on Louisiana and national politics, and RVIVR.com, a national political news aggregation and opinion site. Additionally, he’s the author of the new book The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, available at Amazon.com. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 19:40

• Judge Blocks Los Angeles County's "Unconstitutionally Vague" Eviction Moratorium
  Judge Blocks Los Angeles County’s “Unconstitutionally Vague” Eviction Moratorium

  Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

  A U.S. District Court judge has granted a preliminary injunction against Los Angeles County’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium.

  

  The Oct. 19 ruling by District Court Judge Dean Pregerson requires the county to end by Dec. 1 its policy of allowing residents to forego paying rent.

  The Apartment Owners Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Apartment Owners Association of California filed a lawsuit in March asking the judge to stop enforcement of the rent moratorium, saying the policy was “unconstitutionally vague.” They also asked for monetary relief.

  “There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years especially since the health crisis ended long ago,” Jeffery Faller, president of the Apartment Owners Association of California, said in a statement.

  In the ruling, Pregerson granted the preliminary injunction based on the vagueness of the policy and lack of specific standards for how to legally apply the moratorium.

  

  A “For Lease” sign is posted outside a house available for rent in Los Angeles on March 15, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

  Los Angeles County enacted the eviction moratorium in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As a result, many landlords have been unable to collect rent and have lost their properties to foreclosure or fire sales, according to Faller.

  Some renters have taken advantage of the situation by not paying rent as they claimed COVID-related impacts and used their money to travel or purchase cars and homes for themselves, Faller said.

  The county’s Board of Supervisors voted in January to extend the moratorium through the end of the year while leaving in place some protections until June 2023. California’s mortarium ended in September 2021.

  The state’s COVID-19 state of emergency is also expected to end Feb. 28, 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Oct. 17.

  

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, speaks to reporters during a visit the Antioch Water Treatment Plant in Antioch, Calif., on Aug. 11, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

  The county is reviewing the court’s decision and has no comment on ongoing legal matters, County spokesman Jesus Ruiz told The Epoch Times.

  The county encourages renters and property owners who have questions about the county’s COVID Tenant Protections Resolution, which is still in effect, to visit its website or call 800-593-8222 to speak with a counselor at the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, Ruiz said.

  The extension allowed COVID-affected tenants to withhold payments and declare themselves unable to pay rent beginning April 1. Landlords were also prohibited from evicting tenants for causing a nuisance, allowing others to live with them, or keeping unauthorized pets.

  For landlords, the court’s ruling—coming two months before the moratorium’s end date—is overdue.

  “While this ruling is certainly great news for rental housing providers in Los Angeles County, the Court’s decision comes a little too late,” Apartment Owners Association of Greater Los Angeles Executive Director Daniel Yukelson said in a statement.

  

  Graffiti calling for a rent strike is seen on a wall on La Brea Ave in Los Angeles on May 1, 2020. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

  The groups intend to continue pursuing the case and to obtain a final order declaring the county’s ordinance unconstitutional to allow association members to seek compensation to cover billions of dollars in losses, he said.

  Cheryl Turner, president of the Apartment Owners Association of Greater Los Angeles and State Senate candidate, said the county “used the excuse of the global pandemic to wield unlimited power over private property owners.”

  “No business other than the rental housing business had been singled out and forced to provide services for free,” Turner said in the statement.

  There have been other challenges to eviction moratoriums across the United States but none of them have been successful, according to attorney Douglas J. Dennington of Rutan & Tucker of Irvine, who represented the landlord groups.

  The Apartment Owners Association of Greater Los Angeles has also filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles challenging the constitutionality of its moratoriums on evictions and rent increases. The case is still pending.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 18:30

• Justin Trudeau Uses "Administrative Action" To Ban All Handgun Sales In Canada
  Justin Trudeau Uses “Administrative Action” To Ban All Handgun Sales In Canada

  Using mass shooting events in the US as an excuse, PM Justin Trudeau has been tinkering with the idea of banning or “freezing” firearms in Canada since this summer and now it appears that he is ready to take unilateral measures.  Trudeau is placing a nationwide freeze on the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns, effective immediately and sidestepping legislators and political opponents in parliament. 

  The measure is considered an “administrative action,” much like executive orders used by presidents in the US as a means to circumvent the constitution and checks and balances in government.  Such direct restrictions are often subject to extensive legal obstacles and, at least in the US, can be ignored by states and the public at large (as we witnessed with the covod mandates over the past two years).    

  “When people are being killed, when people are being hurt, responsible leadership requires us to act,” Trudeau said at a news conference on Friday, announcing the new measure. “Recently again, we have seen too many examples of horrific tragedies involving firearms.”  

  

  Again, the trigger for Trudeau’s war on firearms rights in Canada started with mass shootings in the US, not Canada.  Though, it might not be far fetched to point out that the Prime Minister and regular attendee of the World Economic Forum took a sudden strong interest in gun control not long after the enormous Trucker Convoy protests against Canada’s draconian attempts at vaccine passport laws.

  The trucker protests inspired widespread dissent in Canada and the refusal of freight workers to comply could have paralyzed the country’s supply chain.  This led to an attack campaign by the government and the mainstream media, seeking to portray the anti-passport movement as “terrorists” simply for not wanting what they felt was a suspect mRNA cocktail injected into their bodies.  As pharma giant Pfizer recently admitted under oath, they never tested the vaccine to see if it prevents transmission.

  A realization that non-compliance was far more prevalent than the establishment assumed resulted in numerous bizarre narratives and legislative actions in the US and Canada in an attempt to suffocate rebellion.  Gun control has been consistently broached as a primary goal of the same people that were desperate to enforce mandates and passport requirements but failed.  It is unlikely that this is pure coincidence.      

  Canada is one of the few countries in the world with gun access on a wide scale similar to the US, though permits are still required, making firearms more of a privilege than a right.  Trudeau is hellbent on whittling away Canadian gun ownership, and seems to be following a model similar to the UK. The UK banned the majority of guns starting with handguns and then incrementally restricting the rest.  

  Propagandists in the UK and the EU will claim that gun ownership is “legal” when calling for further limitations in the US.  This is a bit of a con based on the fact that permits can be had, but are rarely given by the government.  In most countries in Europe the ownership of a firearm is relegated to the upper middle class and the rich – People who can afford the permit process, classes and high fees involved.  These people usually have a spotless record, own property and must be able to provide a “reason” for owning a gun that government bureaucrats will accept.

  A large portion of firearms in private hands in the UK are shotguns, perhaps the most useless weapon for rebellion given its limited range, which is why most authoritarian regimes will still allow citizens to own them long after banning everything else.  Permit holders in the UK are only around 3% of the total population. 

  At bottom, gun control laws tend to follow a pattern which gives the public a false sense that they still have firearms access when the majority of them actually do not and never will.  The rich get the guns while the middle class gets nothing, and this is by design.  The differences with the US in terms of individual rights is vast.  Canada may be going in the same direction as the UK and Europe if Canadians do not act accordingly.          

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 18:00

• Lawmakers Seek To Pass $50BN In New Ukraine Aid Before Next Congress
  Lawmakers Seek To Pass $50BN In New Ukraine Aid Before Next Congress

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Amid talk that it may be harder to push Ukraine aid through a Republican-controlled House if they win the majority in midterms, lawmakers from both parties are considering passing a new massive piece of legislation before newly elected members are sworn in this January.

  NBC News reported Thursday that the bipartisan idea under consideration would be to pass a bill for Ukraine aid that could cover an entire year during the lame-duck period. The bill is expected to be worth roughly $50 billion, which would bring total US spending on the war to over $115 billion.

  The new aid would likely be attached to an omnibus spending bill. An unnamed Republican senator told NBC that the legislation would make $12 billion of Ukraine aid that was included in a recent stopgap funding bill “look like pocket change.”

  

  News of the plan comes after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested that Ukraine aid may be more difficult to pass in a GOP-majority House by saying they’re not going to “write a blank check” for Ukraine. Other Republicans have insisted that most in the party support shipping billions in aid to Ukraine and that the concerns are more over the lack of oversight.

  So far, the Biden administration has not asked Congress for more Ukraine aid. President Biden on Thursday said that he was “worried” a Republican majority House would “cut” Ukraine aid, signaling that a request may be coming soon.

  Over in Ukraine, David Arakhamia, the leader of Voldymr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party in parliament, said he was “shocked” by Mcarthy’s comments. 

  “Just a few weeks ago, our delegation visited the US and had a meeting with Mr. McCarthy. We were assured that bipartisan support of Ukraine in its war with Russia will remain a top priority even if they win in the elections,” Arakhamia said.

  Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov brushed off McCarthy’s comments, chalking them up to campaign rhetoric. McCarthy himself has been very supportive of spending billions on the war in Ukraine, but questioning the policy could appeal to voters in the US as Americans are facing high inflation and gas prices.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 17:30

• CDC Director Infected With COVID, Despite Max Vax And Boosters
  CDC Director Infected With COVID, Despite Max Vax And Boosters

  CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky – who confidently lied last year when she proclaimed “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus and don’t get sick,” has come down with Covid-19 just one month after receiving the latest bivalent ‘omicron-tuned’ booster for the disease.

  

  The CDC said on Saturday that Walensky will isolate at home and attend meetings remotely.

  September 22nd: CDC director Rochelle Walensky gets updated bivalent booster that “provides added protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant”

  October 22nd: CDC director Rochelle Walensky tests positive for COVID-19 https://t.co/9DtXocvC9l

  — Ian Miller (@ianmSC) October 22, 2022

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

  Which makes this clip particularly infuriating in light of revelations that Pfizer never tested their experimental mRNA therapeutic to see if it actually prevented transmission.

  5x vaxxed CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky infected with COVID.

  Walensky one year ago: “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus and don’t get sick”.

  Fact check: False.pic.twitter.com/5kq3le8lkp

  — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) October 22, 2022

  Walensky took over at the CDC in January 2021 after President Joe Biden appointed her. 

  I hope she said the thing pic.twitter.com/8v6leDE2Er

  — Mindless Droid 🇺🇸😃 (@Mindlessdroid) October 22, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 17:00

• US Taxpayers Funding 'Drag Theater' Shows In Ecuador To Promote 'Diversity And Inclusion': State Department
  US Taxpayers Funding ‘Drag Theater’ Shows In Ecuador To Promote ‘Diversity And Inclusion’: State Department

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The U.S. State Department has given $20,600 in taxpayer money to an organization in Ecuador to promote tolerance, diversity, and inclusion through a series of initiatives that include hosting “12 drag theater performances.”

  

  The funds were awarded on Sept. 30 to a non-profit called Centro Cultural Ecuatoriano Norteamericano Abraham Lincoln, a U.S.-Ecuadorian cultural center in Cuenca, Ecuador, the State Department confirmed to The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

  Among its various programs, the Ecuadorian center runs English classes for children aged 8–11, teenagers, and adults.

  The money for the initiatives, which besides drag theater performances also includes three workshops and a 2-minute documentary film, was provided under the 19.040 Public Diplomacy Programs scheme, the State Department said in a grant summary fact sheet.

  The aim of the 19.040 scheme is, according to the State Department, “to support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.”

  Asked how the State Department considers this particular grant as furthering the objectives of the 19.040 program, the agency told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that it “supports a wide range of strategic programs in Ecuador that incorporate concepts from diversity, inclusion, and representation to equity and accessibility.”

  “The program’s goal is to promote tolerance, and the arts provide new opportunities for LGBTQI+ Ecuadorians to express themselves freely and safely,” the spokesperson added.

  “The program will advance key U.S. values of diversity and the inclusion of LGBTQI+ communities as well as promote the acceptance of communities that are disproportionately affected by violence,” the spokesperson said, adding that recent data suggest “an alarming and deadly rise in violence against LGBTQI+ persons in Ecuador.”

  The Epoch Times has also reached out to the Ecuadorian North American Center “Abraham Lincoln” with a request for comment on the target audience of the initiatives but did not receive a response by publication.

  Over the past three years, the State Department has awarded $388.2 million in funds for a variety of 19.040 programs to recipients across the globe, according to Govtribe.com.

  The State Department spokesperson noted that, in fiscal year 2021 and 2022, U.S. public diplomacy programs supported 18 grants totaling nearly $900,000 for educational programs and entrepreneurship capacity building programs to reach traditionally marginalized communities in Ecuador. This includes women, at-risk youth, indigenous and afro-descendent communities, LGBTQI+ populations, and persons with disabilities, the spokesperson added.

  While it remains unclear who the target audience is for the drag theater performances at the Ecuador center, it comes amid national controversy over drag queen shows in the United States oriented at young children.

  While some proponents have argued that exposing kids to drag performances “can be a good thing,” a child advocate told The Epoch Times that drag shows for children are part of a dangerous push to normalize inappropriate behavior for youngsters.

  House Republicans, meanwhile, introduced a bill on Oct. 18 that would ban the use of federal funds for drag queen performances and other sexually oriented programs aimed at young children.

  The Stop the Sexualization of Children Act of 2022 bill (pdf) would prohibit federal, state, and local governments and private organizations from using federal tax dollars to expose children under 10 to sexually explicit material.

  “The Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), said in a statement.

  “This commonsense bill is straightforward,” Johnson continued. “No federal tax dollars should go to any federal, state, or local government agencies, or private organizations that intentionally expose children under 10 years of age to sexually explicit material.”

  According to the bill, federal taxpayer dollars have been used to fund sexual education for children under 10, including the purchase of literature and materials that teach preadolescent children about masturbation, pornography, sexual acts, and gender transition.

  Patricia Tolson contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 16:30

• Fauci, Biden Officials Ordered To Be Deposed In Social Media Collusion Case
  Fauci, Biden Officials Ordered To Be Deposed In Social Media Collusion Case

  A federal judge on Friday ordered Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and other officials from the Biden administration and the FBI, to testify under oath at depositions in a lawsuit over alleged collusion to censor information on social media during the pandemic.

  

  District Court Judge Terry Doughty granted a request by the National Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) for depositions in the lawsuit, State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Biden, et al. 

  🚨 🚨🚨 The court has granted our request to depose Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI Supervisory
  Special Agent Elvis Chan, and other Biden Administration officials relating to collusion with social media to suppress free speech.

  — AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) October 21, 2022

  The NCLA joined the states’ lawsuit in August, representing renowned epidemiologists Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, as well as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and Jill Hines.

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

  Earlier interrogatories in this lawsuit identified 45 federal officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the CDC, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID, the Office of the Surgeon General, and others who communicated with social media companies about “misinformation” and censorship.

  …

  The plaintiffs believe those named have specific individual details by virtue of their position. For example, CDC Chief of the Digital Media Branch Carol Crawford leads the agency’s digital media activities. Interrogatory responses revealed Crawford was holding regular “Be On the Lookout” meetings with staff from the social media companies. In these meetings, attendees reviewed specific social media posts containing “misinformation.” –PJ Media

  For example, a look at the timeline shows that in February of 2020, Fauci, former NIH Director Francis Collins, and several other advisers were discussing a ZeroHedge article on a pre-print paper out of India suggesting that Covid-19 had similar features to HIV. Within a day, Twitter suspended us for publishing evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology – which was conducting NIH-funded experiments to make bat Covid more transmissible to humans – might have something to do with the exotic new Covid-19 strain that broke out across town at a wet market.

  Twitter’s excuse? That we ‘doxxed’ a Chinese scientist, using publicly available information (i.e. not doxxing), who created a job posting related to his research on bat Covid.

  Well this should get very interesting… https://t.co/rPfGWO55eo pic.twitter.com/sVAyTMiYZQ

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 21, 2022

  And then of course there’s the case of Alex Berenson, who sued his way back onto Twitter and obtained evidence of top-down censorship of his opinion (and receipts) that mRNA vaccines were a failure.

  Also notable is that Peter Daszak, head of New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, was both deeply involved in manipulating bat Covid at the WIV – and also wanted to create ‘chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily,’ but his $14 million request to DARPA was declined for being too risky.

  

  And after Sars-CoV-2 broke out in the same town where Daszak was manipulating Bat Covid, The Lancet published a screed by Daszak (signed by over two-dozen scientists), which insisted Covid could have only come from a natural spillover event, likely from a wet market, and that the scientists “stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The Lancet only later noted Daszak’s conflicts of interest.

  Did Fauci or the NIH play a role in Daszak’s attempt at damage control and narrative-shaping?

  In the case of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the plaintiffs seek specific underlying information regarding some communications that are already public. Younes cited the email exchange between Fauci and former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins discussing a takedown of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration and NCLA clients Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff. Fauci also did not complete or sign his own interrogatory as is customary.

  Judge Doughty noted this breach of custom in his ruling (emphasis added): “Lastly, Plaintiffs argue that Dr. Fauci’s credibility has been in question on matters related to supposed COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ since 2020. Specifically, Plaintiffs state that Dr. Fauci has made public statements on the efficacy of masks, the percentage of the population needed for herd immunity, NIAID’s funding of ‘gain-of-function’ virus research in Wuhan, the lab-leak theory, and more. Plaintiffs urge that his comments on these important issues are relevant to the matter at hand and are further reasons why Dr. Fauci should be deposed. Plaintiffs assert that they should not be required to simply accept Dr. Fauci’s ‘self-serving blanket denials’ that were issued from someone other than himself at face value. The Court agrees.” -PJ Media

  “For the first time, Dr. Fauci and seven other federal officials responsible for running an unlawful censorship enterprise will have to answer questions under oath about the nature and extent of their communications with tech companies,” NCLA attorney Jenin Younes told the Epoch Times.

  More via The Epoch Times;

  Fauci’s ‘Self-Serving Blanket Denials’

  In his ruling, Doughty said he agreed with plaintiffs that Fauci’s previous “self-serving blanket denials” about his role in censoring views on social media couldn’t be taken at face value.

  “Plaintiffs argue that even if Dr. Fauci can prove he never communicated with social media platforms about censorship, there are compelling reasons that suggest Dr. Fauci has acted through intermediaries, and acted on behalf of others, in procuring the social-media censorship of credible scientific opinions.

  “Plaintiffs argue that even if Dr. Fauci acted indirectly or as an intermediary on behalf of others, it is still relevant to Plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motion. The Court agrees.

  “Lastly, Plaintiffs argue that Dr. Fauci’s credibility has been in question on matters related to supposed COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ since 2020. Specifically, Plaintiffs state that Dr. Fauci has made public statements on the efficacy of masks, the percentage of the population needed for herd immunity, NIAID’s funding of ‘gain-of-function’ virus research in Wuhan, the lab-leak theory, and more.

  “Plaintiffs urge that his comments on these important issues are relevant to the matter at hand and are further reasons why Dr. Fauci should be deposed. Plaintiffs assert that they should not be required to simply accept Dr. Fauci’s ‘self-serving blanket denials’ that were issued from someone other than himself at face value. The Court agrees,” Doughty said in his ruling (pdf).

  Censoring Lab Leak Theory

  The plaintiffs argued that Fauci allegedly insisted on the censorship of “speech backed by great scientific credibility and with enormous potential nationwide impact” that contradicted Fauci’s views.

  Fauci, for example, communicated in a long-shielded phone call with some scientists to discredit any theory that COVID-19 was the result of a “lab leak” in Wuhan, China. The scientists went on to write a paper severely reprimanding others who were open to the theory.

  If the lab leak theory were true, in turn, it would mean Fauci could be potentially implicated in funding the research on viruses that caused the pandemic which killed millions worldwide, plaintiffs argued. This is because Fauci funded risky “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through intermediaries such as EcoHealth Alliance.

  In late January 2020 and early February 2020, Fauci was also in touch with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in oral communications about the government’s COVID-19 response. Facebook then allegedly went on censor the lab leak theory, plaintiffs argued.

  ‘Overwhelming’ Need to Depose Officials

  The court also found that Flaherty, Slavitt, Psaki, and other officials also have personal knowledge about the alleged censorship issues and ordered them to be deposed.

  Doughty said there is an “overwhelming” need for Flaherty to be deposed to determine whether fundamental rights to free speech were “abridged” as a result of alleged collusion between senior Biden administration officials and Big Tech.

  Plaintiffs argued Flaherty had “extensive” oral meetings with Twitter, Meta, and YouTube on vaccine hesitancy and combatting misinformation related to COVID-19.

  The judge said there is a “substantive need” for the deposition of Slavitt, who served as the White House’s senior COVID-19 advisor. Doughty noted Slavitt’s remarks on a podcast which “showed he has specific knowledge as it relates” to the issues in the lawsuit.

  The court order cited a series of public comments made by Psaki when she served as White House press secretary, including calling on social media platforms for consistency in banning disfavored speakers.

  “Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Doughty said in his ruling.

  *  *  *

  Of course, nothing like a realist to put things in perspective…

  NOTHING WILL HAPPEN

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 22, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 16:00

• Tverberg: Why Financial Approaches Won't Fix The World's Economic Problems This Time
  Tverberg: Why Financial Approaches Won’t Fix The World’s Economic Problems This Time

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

  Time and time again, financial approaches have worked to fix economic problems. Raising interest rates has acted to slow the economy and lowering them has acted to speed up the economy. Governments overspending their incomes also acts to push the economy ahead; doing the reverse seems to slow economies down.

  What could possibly go wrong? The issue is a physics problem. The economy doesn’t run simply on money and debt. It operates on resources of many kinds, including energy-related resources. As the population grows, the need for energy-related resources grows. The bottleneck that occurs is something that is hard to see in advance; it is an affordability bottleneck.

  For a very long time, financial manipulations have been able to adjust affordability in a way that is optimal for most players. At some point, resources, especially energy resources, get stretched too thin, relative to the rising population and all the commitments that have been made, such as pension commitments. As a result, there is no way for the quantity of goods and services produced to grow sufficiently to match the promises that the financial system has made. This is the real bottleneck that the world economy reaches.

  I believe that we are closely approaching this bottleneck today. I recently gave a talk to a group of European officials at the 2nd Luxembourg Strategy Conference, discussing the issue from the European point of view. Europeans seem to be especially vulnerable because Europe, with its early entry into the Industrial Revolution, substantially depleted its fossil fuel resources many years ago. The topic I was asked to discuss was, “Energy: The interconnection of energy limits and the economy and what this means for the future.”

  In this post, I write about this presentation.

  

  The major issue is that money, by itself, cannot operate the economy, because we cannot eat money. Any model of the economy must include energy and other resources. In a finite world, these resources tend to deplete. Also, human population tends to grow. At some point, not enough goods and services are produced for the growing population.

  I believe that the major reason we have not been told about how the economy really works is because it would simply be too disturbing to understand the real situation. If today’s economy is dependent on finite fossil fuel supplies, it becomes clear that, at some point, these will run short. Then the world economy is likely to face a very difficult time.

  A secondary reason for the confusion about how the economy operates is too much specialization by researchers studying the issue. Physicists (who are concerned about energy) don’t study economics; politicians and economists don’t study physics. As a result, neither group has a very broad understanding of the situation.

  I am an actuary. I come from a different perspective: Will physical resources be adequate to meet financial promises being made? I have had the privilege of learning a little from both economic and physics sides of the discussion. I have also learned about the issue from a historical perspective.

  

  World energy consumption has been growing very rapidly at the same time that the world economy has been growing. This makes it hard to tell whether the growing energy supply enabled the economic growth, or whether the higher demand created by the growing economy encouraged the world economy to use more resources, including energy resources.

  Physics says that it is energy resources that enable economic growth.

  

  The R-squared of GDP as a function of energy is .98, relative to the equation shown.

  

  Physicists talk about the “dissipation” of energy. In this process, the ability of an energy product to do “useful work” is depleted. For example, food is an energy product. When food is digested, its ability to do useful work (provide energy for our body) is used up. Cooking food, whether using a campfire or electricity or by burning natural gas, is another way of dissipating energy.

  Humans are clearly part of the economy. Every type of work that is done depends upon energy dissipation. If energy supplies deplete, the form of the economy must change to match.

  

  There are a huge number of systems that seem to grow by themselves using a process called self-organization. I have listed a few of these on Slide 8. Some of these things are alive; most are not. They are all called “dissipative structures.”

  The key input that allows these systems to stay in a “non-dead” state is dissipation of energy of the appropriate type. For example, we know that humans need about 2,000 calories a day to continue to function properly. The mix of food must be approximately correct, too. Humans probably could not live on a diet of lettuce alone, for example.

  Economies have their own need for energy supplies of the proper kind, or they don’t function properly. For example, today’s agricultural equipment, as well as today’s long-distance trucks, operate on diesel fuel. Without enough diesel fuel, it becomes impossible to plant and harvest crops and bring them to market. A transition to an all-electric system would take many, many years, if it could be done at all.

  

  I think of an economy as being like a child’s building toy. Gradually, new participants are added, both in the form of new citizens and new businesses. Businesses are formed in response to expected changes in the markets. Governments gradually add new laws and new taxes. Supply and demand seem to set market prices. When the system seems to be operating poorly, regulators step in, typically adjusting interest rates and the availability of debt.

  One key to keeping the economy working well is the fact that those who are “consumers” closely overlap those who are “employees.” The consumers (= employees) need to be paid well enough, or they cannot purchase the goods and services made by the economy.

  A less obvious key to keeping the economy working well is that the whole system needs to be growing. This is necessary so that there are enough goods and services available for the growing population. A growing economy is also needed so that debt can be repaid with interest, and so that pension obligations can be paid as promised.

  

  World population has been growing year after year, but arable land stays close to constant. To provide enough food for this rising population, more intensive agriculture is required, often including irrigation, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

  Furthermore, an increasing amount of fresh water is needed, leading to a need for deeper wells and, in some places, desalination to supplement other water sources. All these additional efforts add energy usage, as well as costs.

  In addition, mineral ores and energy supplies of all kinds tend to become depleted because the best resources are accessed first. This leaves the more expensive-to-extract resources for later.

  

  The issues in Slide 11 are a continuation of the issues described on Slide 10. The result is that the cost of energy production eventually rises so much that its higher costs spill over into the cost of all other goods and services. Workers find that their paychecks are not high enough to cover the items they usually purchased in the past. Some poor people cannot even afford food and fresh water.

  

   

  Increasing debt is helpful as an economy grows. A farmer can borrow money for seed to grow a crop, and he can repay the debt, once the crop has grown. Or an entrepreneur can finance a factory using debt.

  On the consumer side, debt at a sufficiently low interest rate can be used to make the purchase of a home or vehicle affordable.

  Central banks and others involved in the financial world figured out many years ago that if they manipulate interest rates and the availability of credit, they are generally able to get the economy to grow as fast as they would like.

  

  It is hard for most people to imagine how much interest rates have varied over the last century. Back during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the early 1940s, interest rates were very close to zero. As large amounts of inexpensive energy were added to the economy in the post-World War II period, the world economy raced ahead. It was possible to hold back growth by raising interest rates.

  Oil supply was constrained in the 1970s, but demand and prices kept rising. US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker is known for raising interest rates to unheard of heights (over 15%) with a peak in 1981 to end inflation brought on by high oil prices. This high inflation rate brought on a huge recession from which the economy eventually recovered, as the higher prices brought more oil supply online (Alaska, North Sea, and Mexico), and as substitution was made for some oil use. For example, home heating was moved away from burning oil; electricity-production was mostly moved from oil to nuclear, coal and natural gas.

  Another thing that has helped the economy since 1981 has been the ability to stimulate demand by lowering interest rates, making monthly payments more affordable. In 2008, the US added Quantitative Easing as a way of further holding interest rates down. A huge debt bubble has thus been built up since 1981, as the world economy has increasingly been operated with an increasing amount of debt at ever-lower interest rates. (See 3-month and 10 year interest rates shown on Slide 14.) This cheap debt has allowed rapidly rising asset prices.

  

  The world economy starts hitting major obstacles when energy supply stops growing faster than population because the supply of finished goods and services (such as new automobile, new homes, paved roads, and airplane trips for passengers) produced stops growing as rapidly as population. These obstacles take the form of affordability obstacles. The physics of the situation somehow causes the wages and wealth to be increasingly be concentrated among the top 10% or 1%. Lower-paid individuals are increasingly left out. While goods are still produced, ever-fewer workers can afford more than basic necessities. Such a situation makes for unhappy workers.

  World energy consumption per capita hit a peak in 2018 and began to slide in 2019, with an even bigger drop in 2020. With less energy consumption, world automobile sales began to slide in 2019 and fell even lower in 2020. Protests, often indirectly related to inadequate wages or benefits, became an increasing problem in 2019. The year 2020 is known for Covid-19 related shutdowns and flight cancellations, but the indirect effect was to reduce energy consumption by less travel and by broken supply lines leading to unavailable goods. Prices of fossil fuels dropped far too low for producers.

  Governments tried to get their own economies growing by various techniques, including spending more than the tax revenue they took in, leading to a need for more government debt, and by Quantitative Easing, acting to hold down interest rates. The result was a big increase in the money supply in many countries. This increased money supply was often distributed to individual citizens as subsidies of various kinds.

  The higher demand caused by this additional money tended to cause inflation. It tended to raise fossil fuel prices because the inexpensive-to-extract fuels have mostly been extracted. In the days of Paul Volker, more energy supply at a little higher price was available within a few years. This seems extremely unlikely today because of diminishing returns. The problem is that there is little new oil supply available unless prices can stay above at least $120 per barrel on a consistent basis, and prices this high, or higher, do not seem to be available.

  Oil prices are not rising this high, even with all of the stimulus funds because of the physics-based wage disparity problem mentioned previously. Also, those with political power try to keep fuel prices down so that the standards of living of citizens will not fall. Because of these low oil prices, OPEC+ continues to make cuts in production. The existence of chronically low prices for fossil fuels is likely the reason why Russia behaves in as belligerent a manner as it does today.

  Today, with rising interest rates and Quantitative Tightening instead of Quantitative Easing, a major concern is that the debt bubble that has grown since in 1981 will start to collapse. With falling debt levels, prices of assets, such as homes, farms, and shares of stock, can be expected to fall. Many borrowers will be unable to repay their loans.

  If this combination of events occurs, deflation is a likely outcome because banks and pension funds are likely to fail. If, somehow, local governments are able to bail out banks and pension funds, then there is a substantial likelihood of local hyperinflation. In such a case, people will have huge quantities of money, but practically nothing available to buy. In either case, the world economy will shrink because of inadequate energy supply.

  

  Most people have a “normalcy bias.” They assume that if economic growth has continued for a long time in the past, it necessarily will occur in the future. Yet, we all know that all dissipative structures somehow come to an end. Humans can come to an end in many ways: They can get hit by a car; they can catch an illness and succumb to it; they can die of old age; they can starve to death.

  History tells us that economies nearly always collapse, usually over a period of years. Sometimes, population rises so high that the food production margin becomes tight; it becomes difficult to set aside enough food if the cycle of weather should turn for the worse. Thus, population drops when crops fail.

  In the years leading up to collapse, it is common that the wages of ordinary citizens fall too low for them to be able to afford an adequate diet. In such a situation, epidemics can spread easily and kill many citizens. With so much poverty, it becomes impossible for governments to collect enough taxes to maintain services they have promised. Sometimes, nations lose at war because they cannot afford a suitable army. Very often, governmental debt becomes non-repayable.

  The world economy today seems to be approaching some of the same bottlenecks that more local economies hit in the past.

  

  The basic problem is that with inadequate energy supplies, the total quantity of goods and services provided by the economy must shrink. Thus, on average, people must become poorer. Most individual citizens, as well as most governments, will not be happy about this situation.

  The situation becomes very much like the game of musical chairs. In this game, one chair at a time is removed. The players walk around the chairs while music plays. When the music stops, all participants grab for a chair. Someone gets left out. In the case of energy supplies, the stronger countries will try to push aside the weaker competitors.

  

  Countries that understand the importance of adequate energy supplies recognize that Europe is relatively weak because of its dependence on imported fuel. However, Europe seems to be oblivious to its poor position, attempting to dictate to others how important it is to prevent climate change by eliminating fossil fuels. With this view, it can easily keep its high opinion of itself.

  If we think about the musical chairs’ situation and not enough energy supplies to go around, everyone in the world (except Europe) would be better off if Europe were to be forced out of its high imports of fossil fuels. Russia could perhaps obtain higher energy export prices in Asia and the Far East. The whole situation becomes very strange. Europe tells itself it is cutting off imports to punish Russia. But, if Europe’s imports can remain very low, everyone else, from the US, to Russia, to China, to Japan would benefit.

  

  The benefits of wind and solar energy are glorified in Europe, with people being led to believe that it would be easy to transition from fossil fuels, and perhaps leave nuclear, as well. The problem is that wind, solar, and even hydroelectric energy supply are very undependable. They cannot ever be ramped up to provide year-round heat. They are poorly adapted for agricultural use (except for sunshine helping crops grow).

  Few people realize that the benefits that wind and solar provide are tiny. They cannot be depended on, so companies providing electricity need to maintain duplicate generating capacity. Wind and solar require far more transmission than fossil-fuel-generated electricity because the best sources are often far from population centers. When all costs are included (without subsidy), wind and solar electricity tend to be more expensive than fossil-fuel generated electricity. They are especially difficult to rely on in winter. Therefore, many people in Europe are concerned about possibly “freezing in the dark,” as soon as this winter.

  There is no possibility of ever transitioning to a system that operates only on intermittent electricity with the population that Europe has today, or that the world has today. Wind turbines and solar panels are built and maintained using fossil fuel energy. Transmission lines cannot be maintained using intermittent electricity alone.

  

   

  Basically, Europe must use very much less fossil fuel energy, for the long term. Citizens cannot assume that the war with Ukraine will soon be over, and everything will be back to the way it was several years ago. It is much more likely that the freeze-in-the-dark problem will be present every winter, from now on. In fact, European citizens might actually be happier if the climate would warm up a bit.

  With this as background, there is a need to figure out how to use less energy without hurting lifestyles too badly. To some extent, changes from the Covid-19 shutdowns can be used, since these indirectly were ways of saving energy. Furthermore, if families can move in together, fewer buildings in total will need to be heated. Cooking can perhaps be done for larger groups at a time, saving on fuel.

  If families can home-school their children, this saves both the energy for transportation to school and the energy for heating the school. If families can keep younger children at home, instead of sending them to daycare, this saves energy, as well.

  A major issue that I do not point out directly in this presentation is the high energy cost of supporting the elderly in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. One issue is the huge amount and cost of healthcare. Another is the cost of separate residences. These costs can be reduced if the elderly can be persuaded to move in with family members, as was done in the past. Pension programs worldwide are running into financial difficulty now, with interest rates rising. Countries with large elderly populations are likely to be especially affected.

  

  Besides conserving energy, the other thing people in Europe can do is attempt to understand the dynamics of our current situation. We are in a different world now, with not enough energy of the right kinds to go around.

  The dynamics in a world of energy shortages are like those of the musical chairs’ game. We can expect more fighting. We cannot expect that countries that have been on our side in the past will necessarily be on our side in the future. It is more like being in an undeclared war with many participants.

  Under ideal circumstances, Europe would be on good terms with energy exporters, even Russia. I suppose at this late date, nothing can be done.

  A major issue is that if Europe attempts to hold down fossil fuel prices, the indirect result will be to reduce supply. Oil, natural gas and coal producers will all reduce supply before they will accept a price that they consider too low. Given the dependence of the world economy on energy supplies, especially fossil fuel energy supplies, this will make the situation worse, rather than better.

  Wind and solar are not replacements for fossil fuels. They are made with fossil fuels. We don’t have the ability to store up solar energy from summer to winter. Wind is also too undependable, and battery capacity too low, to compensate for need for storage from season to season. Thus, without a growing supply of fossil fuels, it is impossible for today’s economy to continue in its current form.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 15:30

• Putting All The Pieces Together
  Putting All The Pieces Together

  Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

  We start our podcast today more than 2,500 years ago at a time when the dominant superpower in the western world was the Achaemenid Empire of Persia.

  Their civilization had reached an unfathomable level of wealth and sophistication; historical records show that, at peak, the Persian treasury had more than $300 BILLION in savings (in today’s money).

  They had an intricate road network, a highly-functioning postal system, impressive engineering works, and had even invented a crude form of refrigeration and air conditioning.

  Most of all they had a fearsome military. It was huge. And it was terrifying. Simply put, an invading Persian Army had never been defeated.

  And yet, early in the 5th century BC, when they went to war against a rapidly rising power in Greece, the Persians suffered a humiliating defeat. Then again. And again. And again.

  The losses changed the perception of their Empire forever.

  Practically overnight their reputation sank, and they were no longer viewed as a terrifying superpower able to dominate the world.

  We’ve seen this story over and over again throughout history, from Ancient Rome to the Mongols to Imperial Portugal in the early 1800s.

  Simply put, dominant superpowers almost invariably have an equally dominant, fearsome military that inspires awe and intimidation in the rest of the world… and especially in the superpower’s adversaries.

  But superpowers have a life cycle. They rise, peak, and decline. And at some point during the decline, the military begins to show signs of weakness.

  Often times there’s some specific event– something happens that’s so humiliating to the superpower that it shocks the world.

  This is what happened to the Persians in 490 BC. And it’s what happened to the United States in 2021.

  As a West Point graduate and US Army veteran, I still hold in my heart that the US military is the finest fighting force on the planet.

  But facts are facts, and the US military is showing clear signs of decline. Most of it is due to incomprehensible failures of leadership.

  Today we discuss that decline; I reference a brand new report by the Heritage Foundation, its 2023 Index of US Military Strength, which provides an extremely honest (and distressing) analysis of the US military’s capabilities, capacity, and readiness.

  The report spells out in nearly 600 pages of painstaking detail how the US military is rapidly losing (or has already lost) its technological advantages. It shows how there are not enough forces to defend American interests against a major adversary like China. And most importantly, the report concludes that the military is simply not ready.

  These conclusions have far-reaching implications.

  

  History has shown over and over again that once a superpower’s veneer of invincibility is pierced, it rapidly loses its status. And that’s even more true when another competing power is on the rise.

  Loss of status as the world’s sole superpower goes far beyond reputation and military conflict.

  The economic consequences are devastating.

  That’s because dominant superpowers also tend to own the world’s primary reserve currency– in this case, the US dollar.

  Being the world’s reserve currency means that commercial and financial transactions around the world are conducted primarily in US dollars.

  So for example, a Brazilian merchant and its supplier in India do business with each other in US dollars. Futures contracts for gold, copper, crude oil, etc. that are traded in foreign commodities exchanges (like the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange) are denominated in US dollars.

  The dollar is so dominant that when Airbus (a European aircraft manufacturer) sells its jets to European airlines, they typically close those deals using US dollars instead of euros. And giant European companies (like Nestle, BP, and Volkswagen Group) issue corporate bonds in US dollars.

  You get the idea.

  All of these USD financial and business transactions around the world mean that foreign investors, corporations, governments, and banks HAVE to stockpile US dollars, simply because the dollar is the global reserve currency.

  And foreign institutions tend to hold the majority of their dollar assets in US government bonds (which is the largest and most liquid USD asset class in the world).

  In total, foreigners collectively own $7.5 trillion worth of US government bonds, equivalent to 25% of the national debt… because they HAVE to own the world’s reserve currency.

  This allows the US government to get away with the financial equivalent of murder.

  The US government can run outrageous budget deficits, fund endless wars, and pay people to NOT work… and foreigners will still hold US dollars and buy US government bonds.

  But this unparalleled privilege would dry up very quickly if the US dollar loses its status as the world’s dominant reserve currency.

  I wrote about this briefly earlier in the week. But in today’s podcast, we put all the pieces together.

  Specifically, I show you how US military dominance is linked to US superpower status… and the US dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.

  We look at the lessons from history to examine the trajectory of a superpower in decline. And we try to connect the dots to see where our currency trajectory will lead us.

  This fate is not necessarily imminent; strong leadership and better performance from government could arrest the decline.

  Unfortunately, the US government seems completely incapable of solving problems.

  Their entire approach to problems, in fact, is very cyclical. It goes something like this:

  1) The government does something stupid that creates a problem.

  2) They ignore the problem they just created and let it fester.

  3) When the problem becomes obvious, they offer a symbolic gesture– ‘thoughts and prayers’

  4) When the problem becomes so extreme, they panic and do “whatever it takes”

  5) “Whatever it takes” is reckless, expensive, and usually destructive, causing the cycle to start over again.

  We cover all of this, and more, in today’s episode, which you can download here, or access in iTunes and Spotify…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 14:30

• Former China President Abruptly Escorted From Party Congress
  Former China President Abruptly Escorted From Party Congress

  The former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was ushered from his seat beside General Secretary Xi Jinping during the final session of the 20th National Congress Saturday.

  As WSJ reports, midway through the otherwise carefully-choreographed closing session, Hu Jintao, 79, Xi Jinping’s immediate predecessor, was helped out of his chair next to Mr. Xi and inexplicably led out of the hall.

  

  Footage shot by foreign media in the hall, which wasn’t included in the official China Central Television broadcast, showed Mr. Hu seemingly reluctant or unable to stand up when an aide tried to lift him off his chair.

  In the commotion, Mr. Xi leaned toward Mr. Hu and appeared to speak with him.

  Mr. Hu was ushered off the center dais, briefly looking back at Mr. Xi and patting outgoing Premier Li Keqiang on the shoulder as he departed.

  

  It wasn’t clear why Mr. Hu left or where he went. The incident has gone unmentioned in Chinese state media coverage of the event.

  By Saturday evening, however, the comments section of almost all Weibo posts containing Hu’s name were no longer visible, according to a Reuters review.

  On Twitter, Xinhua news agency suggested Mr. Hu’s issue was health related.

  In English, indicating the report was aimed at an international audience, the government-run agency said Mr. Hu “was not feeling well during the session” and left to rest in a room next to the meeting venue. “Now, he is much better,” the account said.

  When he was not feeling well during the session, his staff, for his health, accompanied him to a room next to the meeting venue for a rest. Now, he is much better.

  — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) October 22, 2022

  Reuters also adds that Hu had appeared slightly unsteady last Sunday when he was assisted onto the same stage for the opening ceremony of the congress.

  As some China-watchers have noted, if Hu were really “purged” as some are speculating “i highly doubt that CCTV would show him like this in the report.”

  further on this, the sequence of leadership appearance matters greatly. in this cctv report, which they had plenty of time to arrange after the ceremony, the shots of leaders starts with xi, then hu, then the rest of current and retired standing committee members. https://t.co/X17npjTQgx

  — Bill Bishop (@niubi) October 22, 2022

  Still… does this look like the face of a man who ‘wants’ to leave for health reasons?

  

  Meanwhile, Xi has set the stage to extend his rule into a second decade, and on Saturday the Communist Party announced new names for some top spots as some of his rivals head toward retirement.

  Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, warned China’s human rights situation would deteriorate in a statement issued on Oct. 12.

  “Another five years of Xi’s leadership is bad news for the cause of democracy and freedom, and worse news for the Chinese people,” Abramowitz said.

  “If past is prologue, a third term for Xi will result in more human rights abuses within China and more aggressive suppression of free speech globally, even as his domestic and foreign policies backfire and public outrage intensifies.” 

  As a reminder, Hu advocated maintaining good relations with the U.S., and was also an opponent of a military solution to the Taiwan issue. As SouthFront suggests, the former CPC Chairman’s escorting out of the hall is a clear demonstration of the renewed anti-Western foreign policy of Beijing, which, apparently, is ready for all measures, defending its sovereignty and the role of a superpower in the modern world.

  Of course, the question remains, is it now in the Deep State’s favor to make it seem like there is political discord at the top in China – remember, an unstable China is a ‘dangerous’ China, that will require much bigger State and Defense Department budgets to battle not to mention serve as a generous source of revenue for the Lockheeds and Raytheons of the world for years to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 14:02

• Container Imports To Los Angeles And Long Beach Are Plummeting
  Container Imports To Los Angeles And Long Beach Are Plummeting

  By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

  September is usually a strong month for West Coast imports as U.S. companies bring in their year-end holiday goods. Not so in 2022.

  On Wednesday, the Port of Los Angeles reported its lowest import total for September since 2009, amid the Great Recession. The day before, the neighboring Port of Long Beach posted its weakest import total for September since 2016.

  Imports to Southern California ports are falling fast because shippers have shifted volumes to East and Gulf coast ports, fearing disruptions from West Coast port labor negotiations. Simultaneously, volumes are now pulling back nationwide due to falling demand.

  

  Holiday imports ‘dropped precipitously’

  “In the month of September is where the real story lies,” explained Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, during a news conference on Wednesday. 

  Earlier this year, imports of durable goods bought heavily during the pandemic — furniture, appliances, etc. — began pulling back. In September, declines were heavily driven by reductions in holiday goods, as well.

  “September is traditionally a high-volume month for end-of-year products,” said Seroka. “Think toys and games, clothing, footwear and other products. Those holiday gift items dropped precipitously compared to last September, mainly because they came in earlier. This year our peak season was in June and July, as savvy importers moved up the arrival of these goods to bring some certainty back to when they could get to market.”

  Commenting on the shift to East and Gulf coast ports, Seroka said “concern over the dockworkers labor contract negotiations [was] a major factor contributing to volume declines.” He believes the shift “is likely to continue until a West Coast labor contract is in place — and that can’t happen soon enough.” The previous contract expired July 1.

  Asked by American Shipper how October’s volumes are shaping up versus September’s, he said they will be “probably about the same or a little bit lighter. It’s going to be a soft October.”

  LA September imports down 15% vs. August

  The Port of Los Angeles reported total throughput of 709,873 twenty-foot equivalent units in September, down 21.5% year on year (y/y). Exports came in at 77,680 TEUS, up 2.6% y/y, while empties totaled 288,731 TEUs, down 19.8% y/y.

  Loaded imports to Los Angeles totaled just 343,462 TEUs, down 26.6% y/y. Imports fell 15.1% sequentially versus August, following a 16.7% drop in August versus July.

  Los Angeles’ imports reached their highest level this year in May. September imports were down 31.3% compared to that month. Imports in September were the lowest for any month since May 2020, when the U.S. was in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns.

  

  Long Beach September imports down 11% vs. August

  The Port of Long Beach reported total throughput of 741,823 TEUs for September, down 0.9% y/y. Exports came in at 112,940 TEUs, up 1.9% y/y, and empties totaled 286,212 TEUs, up 7% y/y.

  Long Beach handled 342,671 TEUs of imports in September, down 7.4% y/y and down 10.9% sequentially versus August. As in Los Angeles, Long Beach’s imports peaked this year in May. September was down 27.5% from that high. Monthly imports have not been this low since June 2020.

  

  Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero blamed the import decline on consumer and retail concerns about inflation, “leading to warehouses filled with inventory and fewer product orders from Asia.”

  Fewer ships being worked at berths

  The focus during the supply chain crisis was on the massive number of container ships at anchorages or loitering offshore as they waited for berths in Los Angeles or Long Beach. Statistics from the Marine Exchange of Southern California show a steep drop throughout this year, from a high of 109 waiting container ships Jan. 9 to just four on Wednesday, the lowest number since October 2020.

  The Marine Exchange also collects data on the number of container ships at the berths in the two ports. This data also shows a major — and more recent — change.

  As the supply crisis intensified, there were often over 30 ships at the two ports’ berths each day. Between August 2021 and February 2022, there were an average of 28.8 container vessels alongside in Los Angeles and Long Beach daily.

  In recent weeks, however, the numbers have sunk to much lower levels. The average from Sept. 1 through Tuesday was 19 ships alongside, down over 30% from peak levels. There were 18 ships at the ports’ berths Tuesday. There were only 10 ships alongside on Sept. 12.

  This is getting closer to pre-COVID levels. The average number of ships at the ports’ berths daily in full-year 2019 was 14.8.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/22/2022 – 13:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest