May 25

Today’s News 25th May 2021

  • Russian Vessel Enters German Waters For Last Leg Of Nord Stream 2 Pipelaying
    Russian Vessel Enters German Waters For Last Leg Of Nord Stream 2 Pipelaying

    Late last week the Biden administration slapped yet more sanctions on Russian entities, including 13 vessels and their owners, which are in the final stretch of laying the Russia to German natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 (said to be well over 90% complete). Just days prior the administration sent contradictory signals when it removed sanctions against the German overseer of the project Nord Stream 2 AG and CEO Matthias Warnig, in an attempt to mend relations with Berlin.

    As expected, the conflicting actions has thwarted neither side of the project, as on Monday for the first time the Russian vessel Fortuna began laying pipes in German waters. While the Fortuna itself is under US sanctions, initially put in place under the Trump White House, Germany’s Waterway and Shipping Authority proudly confirmed that it’s begun work on this final section.

    Via MarineTraffic.com

    “All works are performed in accordance with the available permits,” Nord Stream 2 said a statement, according to Reuters. “Fortuna will be working in German waters from May 22 to June 30, having earlier laid pipes in Denmark.”

    On the Russian side state energy giant Gazprom has overseen the $11 billion dollar project, and months ago warned that should the US sanctions noose tighten further, the pipeline could see significant delays.

    Germany has along with Russia fought back against Washington efforts to see the construction halted, long rejecting US punitive measures as interference in its domestic affairs, but with last Wednesday’s removal of sanctions for the German overseer of the project – this served to drastically ease tensions with Berlin over the matter, with German foreign minister Heiko Maas thanking the Biden administration for doing so. 

    “We understand the decisions that have been taken in Washington as taking into account the really extraordinarily good relationship that have been built with the Biden administration,” Maas had said.

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    But as we noted at the time, Biden was immediately slammed for the act of “capitulation” after long vowing to get “tough” on Russia by Republicans but also Democrat hawks, including in conservative and independent media outlets which pointed out that Trump would have no doubt been accused of being under “Russian influence” had he been the one to relax sanctions.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 02:45

  • UK Health Secretary Suggests Critics Of Vaccine Passports Are "Crazies"
    UK Health Secretary Suggests Critics Of Vaccine Passports Are “Crazies”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested critics of the vaccine passport policy were “crazies” after he retweeted a post which disparaged those who have security and privacy concerns about the program.

    Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges urged people to “ignore the crazies” as he effusively praised the NHS tracking app for being a centralized surveillance hub.

    “OK, ignore the crazies. Just downloaded the NHS App,” tweeted Hodges.

    “It’s amazing! You take a photo of your drivers licence, do a cool face scan, and everything’s there. Covid records, medical records, everything. I now want Covid passports just so I can use it…”

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    Hodges subsequently suggested that the app was a “fantastic” way of avoiding anti-vaxxers.

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    His tweet was subsequently retweeted by Matt Hancock, who over the last year has become the face of the UK’s coronavirus response.

    “Why did @MattHancock RT a contrarian, ratioed tweet disparaging “crazies”?” asked Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo.

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    “He shows profound disrespect to the MPs, many from his own party, who reject Covid passes & want a serious debate; & the anti-ID British public. His attitude will fall down on him like a ton of bricks,” she added.

    As we document in the video below, attempts have been made to discredit opposition to the vaccine passport by demonizing critics as anti-vaxxer extremists.

    However, the program would serve to introduce a Chinese Communist-style social credit score system with potentially horrendous implications for basic liberties and freedoms.

    The British government lied for months in claiming that no vaccine passport was being developed for domestic events, despite that being the plan all along.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/25/2021 – 02:00

  • Leaked State Department Memo Indicates Official Support For BLM Agenda
    Leaked State Department Memo Indicates Official Support For BLM Agenda

    Authored by Jack Posobiec via HumanEvents.com,

    A source within the Biden State Department wishing to remain anonymous has shared with Human Events News a document that indicates that all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” are being encouraged to display shows of support for Black Lives Matter on Tuesday, May 25, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death.  The memo reads in part, “The Department supports the use of the term ‘Black Lives Matter’ in messaging content, speeches, and other diplomatic engagements with foreign audiences to advance racial equity and access to justice on May 25 and beyond (italics added) We encourage posts to focus on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact.”

    The memo, which is in part a woke statement on social justice, part an apology for U.S. actions, and part an endorsement of all BLM materials, expressly encourages the display of the BLM flag or banner at U.S. facilities (except on the actual flagpole that holds the American flag). It reads, in part:

    This cable constitutes a blanket written authorization for calendar year 2021 from the Under Secretary for Management (M) to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole to any Chiefs of Mission who determine such a display is appropriate in light of local conditions.

    Despite the documented actions of BLM protestors during the riots of 2020, and despite the New York Times reporting on their organization’s declining popularity with American voters, our federal  government has nonetheless decided to endorse and promote an organization with admitted Marxist roots as one having ties to our official foreign offices.

     

    The entirety of the State Department memo has been reproduced below. 

     

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    UNCLASSIFIED Action Office: ALDACS, PAS, POL, MGT, ECON_EXPANDED, HR, DAO, LEGAT MRN: 21 STATE 53304 Date/DTG: May 22, 2021 / 222307Z MAY 21 From: SECSTATE WASHDC Action: ALL DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR POSTS COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE E.O.: 13526 TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PHUM, PREF, SMIG, SOCI, EAID, KDNI, APER, AMGT, KPAO, KWMN, KLGBT, KJUS, KDEM Reference: A) E.O. 13985 B) 21 STATE 47544 Subject: COMMEMORATING GEORGE FLOYD: DIPLOMATIC ENGAGEMENT AND USE OF BLACK LIVES MATTER (BLM) LANGUAGE AND MATERIAL 

    1.  (U) This is an action request. Please see paragraphs 13 – 15. 2. (U) 

    Summary: May 25 marks one year since the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year, the horrific video of Mr. Floyd’s final 9 minutes and 29 seconds went viral and spurred Black Lives Matter protests worldwide, in response to his senseless killing and to demand an end to systemic racism and police brutality. One year later, many in the international community will honor Mr. Floyd and acknowledge the long journey nations face to advance racial justice. Leading up to May 25, the Department has issued guidance on the use of Black Lives Matter language, banners, and flags. End Summary.

     Context 

    1.  (U) May 25 marks the one-year commemoration of George Floyd’s murder. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the world saw firsthand how police officers brutally took the life of an unarmed Black man in the United States. These viral images ignited national and global Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and demonstrations. This tragedy joined a long line of Black men and women who have suffered at the hands of police brutality. These national and global protests sparked a movement to confront systems perpetuating deep-seated inequities rooted in colonialism and the oppression of racial, tribal, ethnic, and other minority communities. Mr. Floyd’s murder prompted an international outcry to seek racial justice and equity by dismantling systemic racism and eradicating police brutality affecting communities of color, most acutely, people of African descent. 

    2.  (U) On January 20, as one of his first official actions, President Biden issued Executive Order 13985 to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities (reftel 21 STATE 47544). This effort is a top priority for the Administration’s domestic and foreign policy; the United States cannot credibly message on human rights abroad if it does not address these same issues at home. To achieve his policy objectives, President Biden issued several additional executive actions to support underserved communities and advance racial equity, which notably include: • Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States • Executive Order #14020 on Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council, and • Presidential Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Persons Around the World. 

    A National Security Priority: Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities 

    1.  (U) The Department’s policy efforts with respect to advancing racial equity as part of supporting our national security interests are as follows:  • Partnering with like-minded nations and civil society stakeholders to counter disinformation, propaganda, and the concerted malign influence of state and non-state actors which sow racial discord among communities, undermining democratic norms. • Promoting democratic principles, fighting corruption, increasing access to justice through reform efforts, and raising awareness of the prevalence and effect of discrimination against members of racial, ethnic, and underserved communities. • Combating violence and discrimination against members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities. • Building coalitions of like-minded nations and engaging international organizations in the fight against systemic racism and discrimination, to include swift and meaningful responses to human rights abuses and violations of racial, ethnic, and other underserved and mainstream racial equity issues throughout the multilateral system. • Expanding efforts to ensure regular U.S. federal government engagement with foreign governments, citizens, civil society, and the private sector promotes respect for the human rights of members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities. • Empowering local movements to advance the human rights of members of racial, ethnic, and other underserved communities through efforts that strengthen the capacity of civil society. 

    Press Guidance and Statements: Black Lives Matter and Commemoration of George Floyd’s Murder 

    1.  (U) The documents below provide talking points and press guidance on racial inequity and discrimination: • Press Guidance: Racial Justice in Foreign Policy in Content Commons, dated 1/28/2021. • Press Guidance: Thematic Guidance – Human Rights Report and Toplines for the Human Rights Reports in Content Commons, both dated 4/2/2021. • Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, Human Rights Council 46th Session, dated 3/19/2021. • Statement During the Adoption of the Third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States, as delivered by Lisa Peterson, DRL Acting Assistant Secretary, dated 3/17/2021.• Remarks by Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, dated 3/19/2021. 

    Background of Black Lives Matter Movement

    1.  (U) According to the Office of U.S. Special Counsel, “As a social movement, BLM gained prominence following a series of high-profile killings of Black Americans in 2013 and 2014 and, in particular, the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The movement appears to have begun organically on social media. The phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ then became a rallying cry for protesters and organizations seeking to raise awareness of, and respond to, issues associated with racism in the United States. BLM is thus an umbrella term for a constellation of ideas, objectives, and groups. There is no ‘leader’ of the BLM movement. Rather, there are numerous organizations that use BLM terminology to varying degrees, including some whose names include the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Of these, the most prominent is the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN).” 

    Use of Black Lives Matter Language in Diplomatic Engagements

    1.  (U) The United States remains concerned about the racial inequities of underserved communities, both domestically and abroad. The Department supports the use of the term “Black Lives Matter” in messaging content, speeches, and other diplomatic engagements with foreign audiences to advance racial equity and access to justice on May 25 and beyond. We encourage posts to focus on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact. 

    Participation in Black Lives Matter-related Activities 

    1.  (U) As outlined by 2020 guidance from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the “Hatch Act generally allows employees to engage in BLM-related activity while on duty or in the workplace. But, as described below, employees are still prohibited from combining BLM-related activity with ‘political activity’ while on duty or in the workplace and from engaging in partisan political fundraising in connection with BLM-related organizations. ‘Political activity’ is an ‘activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.” 

    Guidance on Black Lives Matter Banner Displays 

    1.  (U) Any BLM-related displays within the interior of the mission, or exterior displays other than the display of a BLM flag on the flagpole (e.g., a banner over the door, BLM spotlights, projections, etc.) are at the Chief of Mission’s discretion. 

    2.  (U) As outlined below, Chiefs of Mission may decide to hang BLM flags, as appropriate and depending on local context. This cable constitutes a blanket written authorization for calendar year 2021 from the Under Secretary for Management (M) to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole to any Chiefs of Mission who determine such a display is appropriate in light of local conditions. This is an authorization, not a requirement. 

    3.  (U) U.S. law at 4 U.S.C. section 7(f) provides that “[w]hen flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs, the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to the right of the U.S. flag.” The Black Lives Matter flag, and/or any other types of affinity flags, should be treated as pennants of societies in accordance with this provision, and accordingly, when displayed alongside the U.S. flag either indoors or outdoors, should always be placed in a subordinate position. Regarding the external, public-facing flagpole of all U.S. missions, the written approval of the Secretary, through the Under Secretary for Management (M), is necessary to display any flag other than the U.S. flag, a Foreign Service flag, or a POW/MIA flag. As noted above, this cable constitutes blanket written authorization to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole during calendar year 2021. 

    Action Request 

    1.  (U) Posts are strongly encouraged to make full use of Department and Interagency tools and resources to promote policy objectives to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities throughout the year, including with a particular focus on May 25 and during June to commemorate Juneteenth and lesser-known racially motivated attacks such as the Tulsa Race Massacre – the 100th anniversary of which will take place May 31 – June 1, 2021. On May 24, GPA will release a compilation video featuring messages from activists around the world on the importance of global racial justice as part of a playbook with language for the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. This video compilation will also feature senior Department leaders to demonstrate the Administration’s commitment to racial equity and support for underserved communities. 

    2.  (U) Posts may pull from DRL’s library of evergreen content, including its civil rights toolkit and its Juneteenth toolkit, the latter of which will have new material in early June. DRL is creating a mini toolkit to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre and will send that to Posts during the last week of May. Posts should also look for articles from GPA’s Share America office on both topics. Content Commons may also contain resources. Public Affairs sections should leverage ECA programs to advance this priority at post. The following are a few programming suggestions: • Use resources at American Spaces, including digital resources; • Work with Alumni Coordinators to engage networks of alumni and current U.S. and incountry exchange participants to draw on their experience and expertise; • Hold open conversations with target audiences using ECA-curated racial inclusion films; • Request an in-person or virtual expert from the ECA U.S. Speaker Program, actively recruit professionals for International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and IVLP On-Demand Programs from underserved communities as well as those working on efforts advance racial equity incountry. It is important for us to continue planning events, activities, and messages to demonstrate the commitment of the U.S. government and efforts by American communities to overcome racism, including by acknowledging historical events and tragedies and their lasting impact today. 

    3.  (U) The Department stands ready to assist Posts in their efforts to develop and implement equity-related programming, outreach, and events.  Posts are requested to use the Diversity and Inclusion (KDNI) tag when reporting these activities via front-channel as appropriate. The Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, and regional bureaus will collect information to be included for reporting to the White House required by E.O. 13985 to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities.  Posts may contact D-MR staff with questions at equity@state.gov. 

    Signature: Blinken

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    You can read the original document here.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:50

  • Wisconsin Police Tell Residents "Do Not Call 911" When Starlink Satellite Train Passes By
    Wisconsin Police Tell Residents “Do Not Call 911” When Starlink Satellite Train Passes By

    The Outagamie County Sheriff’s office told residents of Appleton, a city just north of Lake Winnebago, to avoid calling the police when a train of lights appears in the night sky because they’re just satellites. 

    “We have seen a lot of questions about the long strings of lights appearing in the night sky lately. These lights are satellites, and are part of a new internet service called, Starlink. Starlink provides internet to rural and typically hard-to-service areas,” Outagamie County Sheriff Facebook post read. 

    The post continued: “There is no concern to the publics safety and we ask that you please do not call the Outagamie County Communications Center – 911 about them.” 

    The Facebook post was likely prompted by an uptick in 911 calls when a train of Starlink satellites illuminate the night sky that may frighten some people into believing an alien invasion is imminent. 

    Starlink satellites are providing internet to rural America and are reportedly faster than land-based internet. But with the Starlinks so bright, it hasn’t just frightened some people but also become an optical nuisance to astronomers. 

    Over the next few years, SpaceX plans to launch at least 12,000 Starlink satellites. The increase of UFO sightings could due to Starlink satellites gliding through low Earth orbit at thousands of miles per hour. 

    Here’s footage of Starlink satellites over the skies of Mississauga, a city neighboring Toronto on Lake Ontario.

    To the average person unfamiliar with Starlink could easily mistake the satellites for an alien invasion and warrant a 911 call. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:30

  • The Real Big Lie: You Can't Question Elections
    The Real Big Lie: You Can’t Question Elections

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Liz Cheney doesn’t get to decide what is true for the rest of us; neither, as hard as it is for some of them to believe, do the media pundits and philosopher-kings whom our society breeds like rats in a junkyard.

    But they sure do try, and for the most part they have gotten away with it for decades.

    Cheney has become the darling of the oligarchs the last several months because she first voted to impeach Donald Trump and because she then elected to condemn the Republican Party for disagreeing with her.

    Cheney, the lone Wyoming representative in Congress, has deemed herself the conscience of the GOP. Of course, what is obvious is that she is the latest in a long line of self-appointed saviors of the party who believe the way to save the village is to first destroy it.

    Her pretend friends in the media take offense when Cheney is described as a traitor, but anyone who still thinks the Republican Party stands for something fundamental and principled certainly is within their rights to question her loyalty, as her obsession with destroying Donald Trump and excising the 75 million Americans who voted for him has only one effect — to give aid and comfort to the Democrat Party and to its agenda of transforming America into a post-constitutional Marxist regime.

    Listen to her preening speech the night before she was stripped of her title as chair of the House Republican caucus:

    “We must speak the truth. Our election was not stolen. And America has not failed. Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”

    Cheney’s arrogance is only exceeded by her ignorance. The only truth is Cheney’s truth, which just so happens to coincide with the Democrats’ truth. “Our duty as Americans” is apparently to accept election results without question, and to sacrifice our rights and responsibilities on the altar of the “rule of law.” But despite her certainty that the 2020 election was not stolen, many of us remain unconvinced. According to Cheney and her media champions, we are being deceived by the former president. Apparently, it is impossible for the elitist establishmentarian to conceive of an electorate that thinks for itself.

    There have always been politicians like Liz Cheney, those who see their role as protecting the people from themselves, but it is a much more recent phenomenon for the media to take the side of politicians over the people, and in particular to accept the word of politicians without testing it against the evidence. The Watergate break-in’s connection to President Nixon never would have been discovered if the media were as obeisant to authority then as they appear to be now, but there is virtually no mainstream reporter who has done a deep dive into the many anomalies that marred the last election.

    What we have instead are dutiful pundits who parrot the official party line of Democrats and call it journalism. They never tire of repeating the provocation that this was the most secure election in American history. You can read their mournful condemnations of Trump and anyone who still believes in him virtually every day at RealClearPolitics and other political websites.

    At the heart of every such story or column lies one fundamental fact — the authors were too lazy (or too biased) to investigate the evidence of a corrupt political process for themselves. It’s as if they had never heard of Watergate, or the alleged weapons of mass destruction that justified a deadly invasion of Iraq, or the Steele dossier. Last week, I read one such condemnation of Trump — and paean to St. Cheney — by an author who should have known better.

    Elizabeth Drew covered Watergate, and hundreds of other stories of political and government malfeasance, in a long and celebrated career as someone with a reputation for objectivity and common sense. I grew up watching her on PBS and “Meet the Press” and thought I could trust her to keep her head when others were losing theirs. But it turned out that Drew was more in love with Washington than with her job. When Donald Trump came into office on a pledge to rip the guts out of the bureaucratic Deep State that was auctioning off our American heritage, she instinctively sided with the politicians over the man she called bombastic, crude, and “manifestly unprepared” to be president.

    Her lengthy list of articles attacking Trump was unknown to me at the time I read her recent column, but the title of her new piece told me everything I needed to know about Drew’s politics: “The Big Lie and Its Consequences.” The teaser declared that “By questioning the very integrity of America’s electoral system, [the Republican Party] now represents an open threat to the U.S. constitutional order.”

    Talk about a Catch-22! If you fear that someone is tampering with elections, you are a threat to the Constitution, but if you actually are tampering with elections, you have nothing to worry about because those who figure it out will be denounced as enemies of the Constitution. That’s a sweet deal for the bad guys.

    Still I plowed on, hoping that this childhood hero of mine wasn’t completely out of touch with reality. That hope was dashed by the second paragraph when Drew informed a gullible public that “the U.S. constitution’s promise and central premise — that the people elect the president — has never been totally fulfilled.” I have two issues with that sentence. First, Drew and/or her editors lower-cased “Constitution,” which gives some suggestion of how low a view they hold of that remarkable document. Second, what bizarre theory is she advancing when she claims that popular election of the president is the “central premise” of the Constitution?

    That proposition does not exist in the Constitution, not even as a “promise,” and certainly not as a “central premise.” It is well known – Drew certainly knows it — that the nation’s Founders feared the results of allowing direct election of the chief executive, and installed the Electoral College as a protective mechanism to guard against demagogues and democratic (small d) mobs.

    So here we have Elizabeth Drew, who can’t even tell the truth about a basic historic fact, scolding millions of Americans for supposedly promoting a “Big Lie” because we have questions about what happened on Nov. 3, 2020. The underlying assumption of Drew’s column, like that of all the columns that paint Trump as the author of the so-called Big Lie, is that election fraud is impossible, and that therefore anyone who tries to prove it is a fraud or worse. In Drew’s case, this is not a guess. She admits it:

    “To question the veracity of the official election result is to undermine the assumption of the integrity of the election system.”

    To me, that sounds like top-down Soviet-style orthodoxy. But that is what the Democrats and their fawning phalanx in the media most passionately desire. In their perfect world, they talk and the rest of us just shut up and listen. Or even better, we are supposed to dutifully embrace the party line and become true believers like Liz Cheney. Free thought and free speech be damned.

    Drew ends her column by invoking the “rule of law” as her presumed ally, just as Cheney did in her speech to Congress. But Drew makes it clear that for her, the rule of law is nothing but the yoke of subservience. For her, “democracy cannot succeed without voluntary cooperation, trust and restraint.” What she doesn’t grasp is that the same can be said much more accurately about dictatorship.

    The real Big Lie is that America is great because Americans are obedient. In fact, America is great because Americans are independent, rebellious and rowdy — just like Donald Trump. “Voluntary cooperation” be damned. Let the evidence speak for itself, and let the people make up their own minds. We certainly don’t need Liz Cheney and Elizabeth Drew to tell us what to think.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 23:10

  • Prosecution Can Argue Elizabeth Holmes' "Lavish Lifestyle" Motivated Her To Commit Fraud, Judge Rules
    Prosecution Can Argue Elizabeth Holmes’ “Lavish Lifestyle” Motivated Her To Commit Fraud, Judge Rules

    When it comes to the forthcoming trial of disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, her “appetite for fame and fortune” can and will be used against her as a potential motivator to commit fraud, a judge ruled late last week.

    Holmes’ trial, which has already been delayed several times (due to the pandemic and to Holmes’ pregnancy), is finally set to commence in August. Prosecutors are keen to paint a picture of Holmes as someone who traveled on private jets, stayed in luxury hotels and relied on multiple personal assistants, Bloomberg Law wrote late last week.

    Her association with celebrities and “other wealthy and powerful people” could be used as evidence she had incentive to commit fraud, the government wants to argue.

    And that seemed OK with U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who agreed to allow that line of prosecution, but for “some limitations”. 

    The judge’s ruling, issued Saturday, said the government could compare Holmes to other tech CEOs. The judge wrote: “This includes salary, travel, celebrity, and other perks and benefits commensurate with the position. Each time Holmes made an extravagant purchase, it is reasonable to infer that she knew her fraudulent activity allowed her to pay for those items.”

    The judge did, however, ask that the government refrain from getting into the weeds and “referring to specific purchases, brands of clothing, hotels and other personal items”.

    Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney who teaches at the University of Michigan law, commented that the ruling was fair: ”People should not be punished merely for being wealthy, just as they should not be punished merely for being poor, but if someone profited from a crime, then the fruits of their crime is fair game to show their guilt and motive.” 

    Holmes’ lawyers had argued that using her wealth against her would “inflame” the jury and that it should be off-limits: “The real value of the evidence to the government is to paint a misleading picture of Ms. Holmes as a woman who prioritized fashion, a luxurious lifestyle, and fame, and to invite a referendum on startup and corporate culture.”

    The government countered: “Theranos’s stock — both literal and figurative — soared as a result of” Holmes’s fraud, prosecutors said in a court filing. “The evidence at trial will show that these benefits were meaningful to the defendant, who closely monitored daily news to cultivate her image.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:50

  • Imagining The Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, & The CDC
    Imagining The Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, & The CDC

    Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets.com,

    People didn’t need government, or entities created by government. They also didn’t require force to protect themselves. Let’s never forget this.

    Better yet, let’s make this truth clear over and over again.

    Ok, what truth? The truth that the American people along with people around the world adjusted to the spreading coronavirus much more quickly than did their self-appointed political minders.

    As I point out in my new book When Politicians Panicked, New York City mayor de Blasio was encouraging increasingly cautious New Yorkers to go see movies at a time when more and more of them were staying home, plus he was riding the city’s subways to encourage ridership that was on decline as a consequence of fear about the virus.

    In the U.S.’s allegedly science-denying red states, as in the states that locked down last, citizens had become more than cautious well before the wholly superfluous and destructive lockdowns reared their ugly heads. They were dining out less, washing their hands more, avoiding crowds more. It’s funny how fear of potential hospitalization or death focuses the mind on avoiding either outcome. 

    Notable about this very human desire to cheat illness, it wasn’t just an American thing. Holman Jenkins pointed out last summer that masks and hand sanitizer were scarce in Germany at a time when Angela Merkel was still downplaying the virus.

    The people are a market. Repeat this truth too, over and over again. While processing limited information, they began to take precautions. Government force in 2020 was wholly unnecessary.

    XPhyto Therapeutics Corp.

    This company is on its way to being a market leader in the psychedelic industry

    Which raises a basic question about Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, USIAID and the CDC.

    What if the two political bureaucrats lacked their well-funded taxpayer-funded perches? Would Americans have dropped dead in high numbers? The question itself insults the American people, along with human nature.

    Up front, people respond to incentives. They respond to reality. If the virus had been an indiscriminate killer, the lengths Americans would have gone to in order to avoid infection would have well exceeded what any politician or government drone could have ever imagined. At the same time, it’s worth pointing out that if the virus had been a rabid life ender, we would have known it well in advance of it reaching the U.S. Think the internet. Think the smartphone. China is dense with them. If its people had been dying en masse, there’s no way this could have been hidden.

    After which, it’s useful to point out the obvious; that Redfield and Fauci didn’t invent communications, the internet or smartphones, so without the two functionaries word about a spreading virus would have just as easily reached the American people. Some will point out how contradictory Fauci has been over the last 14 months about the virus, masks and other things related, but that’s shooting fish in a barrel.

    The better answer is that Fauci, Redfield, USIAID and the CDC weren’t needed in the first place. No doubt such a statement would cause the heads of lefties like David Brooks to explode, but Brooks’s feelings don’t alter reality. In Brooks’s case, “national plans” excite him endlessly, which means national government organizations excite him, but it perhaps hasn’t occurred to Brooks to consider a world without Fauci et al. Better yet, Brooks might ask himself if dead Americans would be piled up on city streets around the country absent Fauci et al. Probably not. Actually, definitely not.

    That’s the case because the same profit motive that continues to bring us closer to cancer cures (along with advances that make it possible to live with cancer) also ensures that capitalism would have produced all manner of virus-mitigating strategies. Ludwig von Mises described profits in Human Action as being a consequence of the motivated removing “unease” from our lives, so does anyone seriously think the wealth-focused would punt on creating information about and solutions for a situation like the one that was presented to us in 2020 when a globally spreading pathogen had red and blue state Americans alike on edge, along with the rest of the world? The question answers itself.

    What form would a private version of the USIAID or CDC take? There’s no way of knowing, and that’s the point. Government is constrained by a static known, while the desire for profits always and everywhere results in the unexpected. All anyone really need say is that a capitalist system capable of producing Amazon, or Apple and its iPhones, could put together myriad innovative ways to deal with a virus.

    Which brings us to the tragedy that was and is Fauci, Redfield, USIAID and the CDC. Not constrained by market signals, or profits, Fauci and Redfield quite simply “felt things.” Emotion guided them. So did fear. In possession of swagger that was not their own, they created fear all the while pushing the easily gulled (think politicians) toward panic. In other words, government creates the very crises it aims to avoid by trying to avoid them. Please think about this.

    The virus had been in the news for months, and had been spreading for months. During this time American stock markets reached all-time highs as the virus spread. Free people don’t cause crises. Crises are born of panicky politicians “doing something” that always and everywhere involves replacing the marketplace that is the people with the narrow knowledge of the very few. It’s called central planning, and its imposition always creates a crisis.

    So it did. Scared of their own shadow politicians let experts like Fauci and Redfield terrify them into a command-and-control stance.

    The rest is tragic history as jobs and businesses vanished in a climate of fear created by politicians and bureaucrats who would never miss a paycheck or a meal.

    So what would the world and life have been like sans Fauci et al? Your answer can be found in February of 2020 before expert-reverent politicians panicked.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:30

  • Dems Urge Justice Breyer To Step Down Before Midterms To "Avoid Another 'RBG' Situation"
    Dems Urge Justice Breyer To Step Down Before Midterms To “Avoid Another ‘RBG’ Situation”

    As President Biden and Nancy Pelosi slow-roll Democrats’ plans to pack the Supreme Court (even as they insisted that they don’t have a position on the issue but agree it should be “studied further”), the Democratic grass roots is trying to ensure that Democrats don’t make the same mistake twice.

    The mistake we’re referring to here is, of course, the decision by former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to stay on after President Obama left office (though, to be fair, the fact that Obama couldn’t get a vote on Merrick Garland, it’s unclear whether her retirement would have ultimately stopped the seat from being filled by a Republican).

    Still, a growing number on the left see RBG’s decision as a critical error and a strike against her legacy. While few Democratic lawmakers have spoken out directly in support of Breyer retiring now, progressive groups are growing increasingly vocal about suggesting him to “consider” stepping down before the next election, to ensure that President Biden and the Democrat-controlled Senate have a chance to confirm his replacement before the start of campaign season.

    At 82, Breyer is the eldest justice on the court.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The campaign to oust Breyer is being led by a group called “Demand Justice”. According to Bloomberg, DJ is “using social-media hashtags to get its point across, and also drove a truck-mounted electronic billboard around Capitol Hill last month, urging Breyer to retire.”

    In an interview with Bloomberg, “Demand Justice’s” founder Christopher Kang, a veteran of the Obama White House, said the campaign isn’t so much about forcing Breyer out as it is about galvanizing progressive attention (and, of course, donations) for the cause of pushing the Supreme Court back toward the progressive end of the spectrum and undoing President Trump’s most enduring legacy.

    “I don’t suspect that Justice Breyer is going to look out the window of the Supreme Court and see one of our trucks driving by and say, ‘They’re right! I should retire now!'”

    Instead, Kang said he and co-founder Brian Fallon, press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, want the group to focus liberal voters on the “importance of every single vacancy, and the need to start building a more enduring bloc on the court.”

    But we suspect he’s being facetious. In reality, Demand Justice sees itself as a kind of ersatz Federalist Society: Liberals have long envied the political machine that the GOP built up around building a conservative majority on the nation’s highest courts. This infrastructure was leveraged to great effect during Trump’s presidency, as he filled hundreds of federal court vacancies. Democratic justices, by comparison, have marched to the beat of their own drum, instead of doing the right thing for Dems’ overall political strategy.

    Democrats had no such grass-roots effort with voters or with judicial-minded think tanks before 2020, except to sound the alarm when a confirmation fight was brewing, like after Ginsburg’s death in September.

    “It’s about reminding people that the Supreme Court is an inherently political institution. And in this moment, when we have a 50-50 Senate, part of this is about preserving Justice Breyer’s legacy and making sure that he’s succeeded by a like-minded justice,” Kang said.

    And at least as far as Democrats are concerned, the most important issue that progressive politicians deploy to scare voters to the polls is the undoing of Roe v. Wade. The court’s decision just to hear a case about a Mississippi abortion law has once again got pro-choice activists up in arms, even as the conservative Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to embrace the most restrictive path available when it comes to shifting abortion rights.

    As one twitter user pointed out, Dems need to avoid “another RBG situation”.

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    Notably, the push for Breyer to consider retirement is escalating just as the Supreme Court’s term is ending (it will end late nest month). Typically, decisions about retirement have been held until after the end of session.

    Should he chose to stay on, Breyer might be forced to retire mid-term, or shortly after the next term ends in the summer of 2022, right in the middle of campaign season.

    Bloomberg noted that the pressure campaign “is unusually high profile for the judicial branch, an arena that has typically been seen as beyond the realm of politicking. So far, only two Congressional Dems, NY’s Mondaire Jones and California’s Jared Huffman, have suggested that Breyer should retire. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has offered a more subtle hint, saying that Breyer should consider the political reality during a recent interview with the Washington Post.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 22:10

  • "Man-Made Catastrophe" – China Race Organizer Blamed After 21 Ultrarunners "Froze To Death" In Extreme Weather
    “Man-Made Catastrophe” – China Race Organizer Blamed After 21 Ultrarunners “Froze To Death” In Extreme Weather

    Authored by Nicole Hao via The Epoch Times,

    The Chinese communist regime announced on May 23 that 21 athletes, including China’s marathon champions, died at the Gansu ultramarathon due to the extreme weather.

    The death list includes Liang Jing, 31, China’s ultramarathon record holder, Huang Guanjun, 34, winner of the men’s marathon for hearing-impaired runners at China’s 2019 National Paralympic Games, and famous ultramarathon runners Huang Yinbin and Cao Pengfei.

    “All elite ultramarathon runners died,” a Chinese netizen wrote on Weibo on Sunday.

    From videos and photos that surviving sportsmen shot onsite and shared on social media, the athletes dressed in shorts were stuck in no man’s land and couldn’t procure clothes to stay warm or food to keep going.

    “This is definitely a man-made catastrophe!” a Chinese netizen from Guangdong Province commented on a news report of the official’s statement on May 23.

    “These 21 people were frozen to death!” wrote Chinese media The Economic Observer in a commentary on Sunday asking the Chinese regime to reflect on the tragedy. “If the organizer can set  up a medical tent every five kilometers, the disaster can be avoided to a large extent.”

    Tragedy

    The Gansu ultramarathon is held at Yellow River Stone Forest Park in Baiyin city, northwestern China’s Gansu Province by the local government, together with a five-kilometer and a 21-kilometer run.

    The mountain race is 100 kilometers (62.14 miles) long, and is between 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet above sea level, according to the official announcement. The race started at 9:00 a.m. on May 22, and the organizer estimated that all athletes could finish the race on the second day.

    “At around noon, the high-altitude section of the race between 20 and 31 kilometers was suddenly affected by disastrous weather,” Baiyin Mayor Zhang Xuchen said at Sunday’s press conference.

    “In a short period of time, hailstones and ice rain suddenly fell in the local area, and there were strong winds. The temperature sharply dropped.”

    Chinese runner Jing Liang competes during the 170 kilometres Mont Blanc Ultra Trail (UTMB) race around Mont-Blanc, crossing France, Italy and Swiss, in Chamonix, France on Aug. 30, 2019. (Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP via Getty Images)

    State-run The Time Weekly on Sunday interviewed three surviving runners who presented a more complete picture.

    There were 172 athletes who participated in the ultramarathon. All of them are professional runners because “the mountain race needs to be finished within 20 hours. Non-professional ones can’t make it at all,” Gao Shuang told the outlet.

    It was windy and cloudy in the early morning, but the organizer didn’t suggest the runners carry warmer clothes, such as outdoor jackets.

    “The weather wasn’t good when we started. But I followed others because they kept on running,” Feifei (anonymous) told the Weekly. “At 1:00 p.m., the rain became heavier and the wind was likely to blow me away at any time.”

    The best runners were at the phase between station CP2 to CP3 of the race, which “is the most difficult part. It’s about eight kilometers (4.97 miles) long, but the altitude increased 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). The road is very steep, mixed with rocks and mud. We had to use both hands and feet to climb,” Gao said.

    Li Liang (anonymous) was between station CP 1 to CP2 and was among the runners who decided to leave the race as soon as the weather got bad. He ran into the CP2, where he could find hot water and food as quickly as possible.

    “The rain hit my back like needles. We (runners at CP2) shared our concerns and decided to quit,” Li said.

    Tourists ride the camels in the Gobi near the famed tourist attraction Jiayuguan Pass, in China’s northwestern Gansu Province on Oct. 13, 2005. (Liu Jin/AFP via Getty Images)

    At that time, Gao was in the middle between CP2 and CP3 with many better runners in front of him. He didn’t give up because he didn’t receive the notice from the organizer that the race should be stopped, and he wanted to win.

    However, Gao quickly changed his mind due to the cold.

    “All my ten fingers lost their sensation. I put my finger into my mouth, but my tongue was cold as well,” Gao said. He decided to go back to CP2 because “even motorbikes can’t cross the road, so there’s no supplement at CP3.”

    On the way back to CP2, Gao met many runners who were on the edge of death.

    “I saw a large number of them lying on the ground who couldn’t stand any more. About six or seven of them had white foam in their mouths.”

    Gao said he was sad that he couldn’t help others because he himself was almost frozen and had limited energy to keep going.

    “The runners who were rescued were the ones who were still conscious and could walk back themselves,” said Feifei. She went back to rescue others after warming up.

    The race was called off by 2 p.m. Saturday, but it was too late.

    On the afternoon of May 23, local time, Baiyin city government announced 21 athletes had died, eight had been injured and hospitalized, and others were rescued.

    Peng Jianhua celebrates after crossing the finish line to win first place in the men’s category during the 2021 Beijing Half Marathon at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China on April 24, 2021. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

    Man-Made or Natural

    On May 23, state-run media tried to explain that the disaster was caused by weather and that forecasters were wrong. However, a large number of Chinese netizens started to question the organizers’ preparation.

    The Economic Observer compared the Gansu ultramarathon with other cross-country races. In the Gobi desert marathon in Mongolia, organizers prepared watermelon and other food and drinks for athletes along the way. But in Gansu, the athletes had nothing for most of the race.

    The article pointed out that local weather is unstable in spring and the organizers know clearly that some parts of the race can’t be reached by any vehicles. However, they didn’t arrange standby helicopters either.

    Private media Kuai Tech reported on Sunday that shepherd Zhu Keming was herding goats nearby when the catastrophe happened. He set up a fire in a cave that he owned, and rescued six runners by moving them to the warm cave and covering them with quilts.

    The Economic Observer suggested the regime reflect on the tragedy and organize the competition in a professional way in future.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:50

  • Morgan Stanley Settles High-Profile Lawsuit Alleging It Discriminated Against Black Women
    Morgan Stanley Settles High-Profile Lawsuit Alleging It Discriminated Against Black Women

    Just days after anointing four white men as the most likely contenders to succeed CEO James Gorman…

    …Morgan Stanley has settled a lawsuit filed by the bank’s former chief diversity officer alleging that the bank discriminated against black women. The terms of the settlement (including the dollar amount) weren’t immediately disclosed.

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    It wasn’t immediately clear how much Morgan paid to settle the lawsuit, which was filed against the bank and two top executives by Marilyn Booker, the former diversity chief who claimed she was fired in December of 2019 after pushing for a plan that she said would help promote career advancement for Morgan Stanley’s Black employees.

    The suit, filed roughly one year ago, alleged that Booker’s firing reflects a pattern of widespread discrimination against Black and female employees at the investment bank.

    “Clearly, Black lives did not matter at Morgan Stanley,” the suit stated.

    The original complaint included allegations about instances where Booker was allegedly discriminated against during her 26 years at the firm, including one time when she and another black employee brought in a deal, only for white colleagues to get the credit.

    The suit notes that, until recently, just three of Morgan Stanley’s operating committee are women, and none are Black. As for its board of directors, the suit says that 10 of 14 board members are men, while only one is Black.

    The settlement likely won’t go unnoticed by the financial press, just as Morgan Stanley’s recent personnel shift notably bucked the trend at American megabanks to promote women to take over as the next generation of CEOs. Citi’s Jane Fraser took the reins earlier this year becoming the first female CEO of a Wall Street megabank. And JPM’s latest shakeup suggests that a woman will likely succeed CEO Jamie Dimon.

    But as both Investment News and Bloomberg pointed out, Morgan “defied the diversity trend.”

    In an editorial published Monday afternoon, shortly before news of the Morgan diversity settlement hit, Bloomberg excoriated Morgan for being too white and too male, asserting it was “not a good look” while declaring that improving diversity should be “an urgent task.”

    But in an era in which executives are being judged not just for their ability to turn a profit but also for their firm’s role in society, a lack of diversity among senior managers in a position to lead the firm in the future is not a good look. Contrast Morgan Stanley’s top CEO candidates with JPMorgan’s, where two women are competing head to head for the No. 1 job. While the potentially combative setup isn’t ideal, at least there has been a concerted effort to groom a CEO beyond the usual suspects.

    Improving diversity is an urgent task Gorman needs to tackle well before his successor takes over, if the data is anything to go by. As of 2018, the firm’s most recent numbers, of about 1,700 executives, just 23 were Black men and 14 were Black women. Women held about 18% of those jobs. And the firm’s operating committee is still dominated by White men, as is the next level of management, where 60% are White men.

    To be sure, Morgan’s recent slate of promotions didn’t completely neglect women: Sharon Yeshaya, the head of investor relations, will become Morgan’s new CFO. But her photo wasn’t included with the four men who are likely to succeed Gorman, because she’s very clearly not in the running.

    That doesn’t mean she won’t ever be CEO of Morgan Stanley. But definitely expect to see more of Yeshaya as the bank rolls out the next wave of its diversity PR response.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:30

  • 17 GOP Attorneys General Back South Dakota's Lawsuit Over Mount Rushmore July 4 Fireworks Cancellation
    17 GOP Attorneys General Back South Dakota’s Lawsuit Over Mount Rushmore July 4 Fireworks Cancellation

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Seventeen Republican attorneys general have filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit brought by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem against the Biden administration over its decision to deny a request to hold a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in July to celebrate Independence Day.

    The Biden administration made the decision to cancel the fireworks display in March. Herbert Frost, a regional director for the National Park Service, cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a key factor in making his decision, stating that public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “currently recommends that large gatherings be avoided, particularly those in which physical social distancing cannot be maintained between people who live in different households.”

    Noem is suing the administration over the decision, calling Mount Rushmore “the very best place to celebrate America’s birthday and all that makes our country special.”

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

    Now her lawsuit has the backing of 17 attorneys general, including the top legal officers from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. In a court document (pdf), filed on May 21, the attorneys general called the Biden administration’s decision to cancel the fireworks display “arbitrary and capricious.”

    “Given the importance of the Fourth of July holiday and the special role of Mount Rushmore as a national monument, amici States have an interest in seeing the fireworks display take place again this year,” the attorneys general said in the document, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota.

    They argued that there is a strong public interest in holding a Fourth of July fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, while “the Department of Interior’s flimsy and unsupported rationale for refusing to allow a fireworks display is arbitrary and capricious.”

    They argued that last year’s celebration at Mount Rushmore was held when the pandemic was worse and before vaccines were developed.

    “More than seven thousand visitors attended, and contact tracing has failed to identify even one case of COVID-19 tied to the event,” they wrote.

    President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pay their respects as they listen to the National Anthem during the Independence Day events at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D., on July 3, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    The National Park Service also cited opposition from local tribes as factors in rejecting South Dakota’s bid to display fireworks.

    The attorneys general acknowledged tribal objections, but argued that “the mere fact that some people may oppose a fireworks display is not a sufficient justification for cancelling an important national celebration.”

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment following the filing of Noem’s lawsuit in April.

    Following the announcement of the lawsuit, Ian Fury, communications director for Noem, told The Epoch Times via email that the governor “is going to do everything in her ability to ensure that we can celebrate America’s birthday with fireworks at Mount Rushmore.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 21:10

  • Biden Staffers Issue Open Letter Demanding "Accountability" For Israel As Blinken Heads To Region
    Biden Staffers Issue Open Letter Demanding “Accountability” For Israel As Blinken Heads To Region

    At this point the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears to have held firm for four days, and now US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is en route to the region in hopes of solidifying the truce. His itinerary beginning Tuesday will include Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo and Amman – and through Thursday he plans to hold separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. 

    Just ahead of his embarking from the US on Monday the White House said that Blinken will stress to Israeli leaders “our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” President Biden said in a Monday morningn statement: “Following up on our quiet, intensive diplomacy to bring about a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas … Blinken will meet with Israeli leaders about our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He will continue our administration’s efforts to rebuild ties to, and support for, the Palestinian people and leaders, after years of neglect.”

    However, there’s growing pressure within his Democratic administration to get “tougher” on Tel Aviv – especially given the huge civilian death toll in Gaza from the eleven days of fighting: “At least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes during this month’s conflict, including 66 children. Hamas rocket attacks killed 12 people in Israel, including one child; Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system blocked many salvos,” France24 tallies.

    Via the AP\

    Following last week’s revelation that Biden had approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel just ahead of this month’s outbreak of hostilities, there’s been anger and disunity within Democrat Congressional ranks, particularly by progressives including ‘the Squad’.

    But it should have come with little surprise given official US policy and actions have long appeared to be a “blank check” approach to Israel across administrations stretching back decades. The some $3.8 billion in annual foreign military aid given to the Jewish state doesn’t appear to come with any strings attached in terms of human rights.

    And now increasing numbers of influential Democrat voices, including many who helped get Biden into office, have issued an open letter demanding accountability, as The Guardian details:

    More than 500 Biden campaign alumni and Democratic staffers have signed an open letter calling for the president to do more to protect Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its actions in and over Gaza, where a ceasefire currently holds.

    The staffers and former staffers write that they “commend [Biden’s] efforts to broker a ceasefire. Yet, we also cannot unsee the horrific violence that unfolded in recent weeks in Israel/Palestine, and we implore you to continue using the power of your office to hold Israel accountable for its actions and lay the groundwork for justice and lasting peace.”

    …We should note that we struggle to see in what ways he’s “used his power” at all to hold Israel accountable.

    Further the letter emphasized that a “power imbalance” exists, which the authors said should naturally result on more US pressure on Israel to reign in its devastating civilian casualties during Gaza airstrikes, not less. 

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    Here’s more from the open letter:

    The very same values that motivated us to work countless hours to elect you demand that we speak out… we remain horrified by the images of Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed or made homeless by Israeli airstrikes. We are outraged by Israel’s efforts to forcibly and illegally expel Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. We are shocked by Israel’s destruction of a building housing international news organizations. We remain horrified by reports of Hamas rockets killing Israeli civilians.

    While Israelis had to spend nights hiding in bomb shelters, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had nowhere to hide. It is critical to acknowledge this power imbalance — that Israel’s highly-advanced military occupies the West Bank and East Jerusalem and blockades the Gaza Strip, creating an uninhabitable open-air prison.

    Blinken’s trip is unlikely to produce this desired “accountability” but appears an exercise perhaps in “saving face” with regional allies like Jordan and Egypt while appearing to be “doing something” before the increasingly skeptical Democratic progressives back home, and then there’s also the task of seeking to better the current horribly deteriorated relations with the Palestinian Authority. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:50

  • Google Aims For Commercial Quantum Computer By 2029, What Would That Do To Bitcoin?
    Google Aims For Commercial Quantum Computer By 2029, What Would That Do To Bitcoin?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Let’s explore quantum computing, problems it might solve, and what it will do to current security protocols and blockchain.

    What is a Quantum Computer?

    The New Scientist answers the question What is a Quantum Computer?

    Classical computers, which include smartphones and laptops, encode information in binary “bits” that can either be 0s or 1s. In a quantum computer, the basic unit of memory is a quantum bit or qubit.

    For instance, eight bits is enough for a classical computer to represent any number between 0 and 255. But eight qubits is enough for a quantum computer to represent every number between 0 and 255 at the same time. A few hundred entangled qubits would be enough to represent more numbers than there are atoms in the universe.

    In situations where there are a large number of possible combinations, quantum computers can consider them simultaneously. Examples include trying to find the prime factors of a very large number or the best route between two places.

    That last paragraph above exposes the problem for not just Bitcoin security but virtually all public-private key password encryption. 

    How Can 7 Bits Represent So Much?

    Technology review describes superposition.

    Qubits can represent numerous possible combinations of 1 and 0 at the same time. This ability to simultaneously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate them using precision lasers or microwave beams.

    Researchers can generate pairs of qubits that are “entangled,” which means the two members of a pair exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state of one of the qubits will instantaneously change the state of the other one in a predictable way. This happens even if they are separated by very long distances.

    Nobody really knows quite how or why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described it as “spooky action at a distance.” But it’s key to the power of quantum computers. 

    It takes supercooled computers and vacuum chambers to keep qubits stable long enough to perform a complex calculation. 

    The potential is immense. 

    Airbus, for instance, is using them to help calculate the most fuel-efficient ascent and descent paths for aircraft. And Volkswagen has unveiled a service that calculates the optimal routes for buses and taxis in cities in order to minimize congestion. 

    Google’s Aim 

    The Wall Street Journal reports Google Aims for Commercial-Grade Quantum Computer by 2029

    Alphabet Inc.’s Google plans to spend several billion dollars to build a quantum computer by 2029 that can perform large-scale business and scientific calculations without errors, said Hartmut Neven, a distinguished scientist at Google who oversees the company’s Quantum AI program. The company recently opened an expanded California-based campus focused on the effort, he said.

    “We are at this inflection point,” said Dr. Neven, who has been researching quantum computing at Google since 2006. “We now have the important components in hand that make us confident. We know how to execute the road map.”

    Google is interested in many potential uses for the technology, such as building more energy-efficient batteries, creating a new process of making fertilizer that emits less carbon dioxide and speeding up training for machine-learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, Dr. Neven said.

    For those and other use cases, Google says it will need to build a 1-million-qubit machine capable of performing reliable calculations without errors. Its current systems have less than 100 qubits.

    What About Bitcoin?

    Deloitte discusses Quantum Computers and the Bitcoin Blockchain.

    Since Google announced that it achieved quantum supremacy there has been an increasing number of articles on the web predicting the demise of currently used cryptography in general, and Bitcoin in particular. The goal of this article is to present a balanced view regarding the risks that quantum computers pose to Bitcoin.

    All known (classical) algorithms to derive the private key from the public key require an astronomical amount of time to perform such a computation and are therefore not practical. However, in 1994, the mathematician Peter Shor published a quantum algorithm that can break the security assumption of the most common algorithms of asymmetric cryptography. This means that anyone with a sufficiently large quantum computer could use this algorithm to derive a private key from its corresponding public key, and thus, falsify any digital signature.

    The prerequisite of being “quantum safe” is that the public key associated with this address is not public. But as we explained above, the moment you want to transfer coins from such a “safe” address, you also reveal the public key, making the address vulnerable. From that moment until your transaction is “mined”, an attacker who possesses a quantum computer gets a window of opportunity to steal your coins.

    In such an attack, the adversary will first derive your private key from the public key and then initiate a competing transaction to their own address. They will try to get priority over the original transaction by offering a higher mining fee. 

    In the Bitcoin blockchain it currently takes about 10 minutes for transactions to be mined (unless the network is congested which has happened frequently in the past). As long as it takes a quantum computer longer to derive the private key of a specific public key then the network should be safe against a quantum attack. Current scientific estimations predict that a quantum computer will take about 8 hours to break an RSA key, and some specific calculations predict that a Bitcoin signature could be hacked within 30 minutes. 

    There’s much more to the article including some advice for Bitcoin holders about public keys that needs to be addressed now.

    But if quantum computers ever become fast enough, the security of the entire blockchain will melt down.

    Deloitte notes the only solution is ‘post-quantum cryptography’ to build robust and future-proof blockchain applications.

    That caution applies not only to Bitcoin but to any existing application that uses public-private keys.

    [ZH: We agree Mish’s fears are warranted and maybe yet another driver behind the push for proof-of-stake over proof-of-work blockchain platforms]

    How Does This Work?

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    Post Quantum Cryptography

    Wikipedia has an excellent discussion of Post-quantum cryptography

    One of the simple proposed solutions is to double the key size but there are practical considerations.

    A practical consideration on a choice among post-quantum cryptographic algorithms is the effort required to send public keys over the internet.

    The Open Quantum Safe project was started in late 2016 and has the goal of developing and prototyping quantum-resistant cryptography. It aims to integrate current post-quantum schemes in one library.

    The Open Quantum Safe project currently supports 6 algorithms. 

    Beyond that, Forward Secrecy allows the use of one-time keys, generated at random.

    Forward secrecy protects data on the transport layer of a network that uses common SSL/TLS protocols, including OpenSSL, when its long-term secret keys are compromised, as with the Heartbleed security bug. If forward secrecy is used, encrypted communications and sessions recorded in the past cannot be retrieved and decrypted should long-term secret keys or passwords be compromised in the future, even if the adversary actively interfered, for example via a man-in-the-middle attack.

    The value of forward secrecy is that it protects past communication. This reduces the motivation for attackers to compromise keys. For instance, if an attacker learns a long-term key, but the compromise is detected and the long-term key is revoked and updated, relatively little information is leaked in a forward secure system.

    Things may not be quite as simple as simply saying double the key size.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:30

  • Thousands Of TikTokers Have "Project X" Style Party In Huntington Beach
    Thousands Of TikTokers Have “Project X” Style Party In Huntington Beach

    What started as a birthday party in Huntington Beach, California, quickly descended into chaos over the weekend. 

    A TikTok video promoting a birthday party went viral, and thousands of people showed up on the beach and in the streets Saturday night. Riot police were called as the unruly crowd launched fireworks and threw rocks and bottles. An emergency curfew was implemented through early Sunday with 150 arrests. 

    A TikTok post (now taken down) called Adrian’s Kickback by user “adrian.lopez517” swelled to more than 2,500 people on Saturday night. In the days before the meetup, the post went absolutely viral, gaining more than 200 million views on the app. 

    The post read: “Date:may 22nd, Time:7:30pm, BYOE!! Slide thru this Saturday we finna turn up!! !!” 

    Police arrested 150 people Saturday night. Jennifer Carey, a police spokesperson, told NBC Los Angeles that the charges ranged from vandalism to failure to disperse to curfew violations to launching dangerous/illegal fireworks. 

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    Huntington Beach Police Department was well aware of the prospects of the party: 

    As is the case with ALL large gatherings in #HuntingtonBeach, we have taken steps to prepare for a potential increase in visitors this weekend due to a promoted gathering that has received significant interest on social media.

    Then by early Sunday morning, the police department declared an emergency curfew in an attempt to disperse the crowd. 

    Unlawful assembly has been declared in #HuntingtonBeach due to unruly crowds. An emergency curfew has been put into place effective 5/22 at 11:30pm through 5/23 at 5:30am for all individuals within the downtown area.

    TikTokers were trying to leave their mark on Huntington Beach – in a very similar way to the 2012 movie “Project X” where a couple of teens threw an unforgettable party that spiraled out of control.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 20:10

  • Washington Reality Versus American Reality
    Washington Reality Versus American Reality

    Authored by Newt Gingrich, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    Washington reality reflects the fevered conversation over lunch, cocktails, and dinner between the Washington press corps, lobbyists, and government officials.

    Washington reality reflects the narcissistic self-absorption of the Imperial Capital.

    Rep. Liz Cheney’s fate consumes days and days of gossip and speculation. Is her dismissal as House Republican Conference Chair a sign of House Republican unity or an alienating event that will weaken the GOP?

    House dictator Nancy Pelosi’s fight over wearing masks with pro-freedom Republicans is a major chapter in the evolution of Washington.

    Washington says when 35 House Republicans bolt to vote with Democrats for the Pelosi Commission to investigate Jan. 6, it brings into question Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s control of the House GOP. Of course, when McCarthy gets Senate Republicans to agree to block the investigation, it highlights Speaker Pelosi’s partisanship and failure. Which narrative is more important?

    All these Washington-centered conversations are like a mild spring rain behind which a mammoth hurricane is building.

    That hurricane is the concerns and attitudes of the American people over what’s happening in the American reality.

    The fiercest band of the hurricane is the looming acceleration of inflation. One report compared the average price of various commodities in May 2020 under President Donald Trump to those in May 2021 under President Joe Biden. Here are some staggering numbers:

    • Gasoline: $1.77 under Trump vs. $3 under Biden.

    • Lumber: $332 per 1,000 board feet under Trump vs. $1,570 per 1,000 board feet under Biden.

    • Home sales: $283,500 under Trump vs. $329,100 under Biden.

    • Coffee: $0.96 a pound under Trump vs. $1.50 a pound under Biden.

    • Wheat: $5 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.42 under Biden.

    • Corn: $3.19 a bushel under Trump vs. $7.22 a bushel under Biden.

    • Copper: $2.33 a pound under Trump vs. $4.76 a pound under Biden.

    This is an exhaustive list—verging on overkill because I want to drive home that the rising inflation is across the board. Yes, some of the increase in prices is due to pent up demand and hamstrung supply chains. However, the sheer volume of cash the government has poured into the economy over the last year-and-a-half is now driving rising costs. The inflation rate has tripled from 1.4 percent in January to 4.2 percent in April.

    The gas lines triggered by the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline (probably by a Russian-based group) led millions of Americans to flashback to the President Jimmy Carter years. One woman said to me, “I remember sitting in line with my parents as they hoped to get gasoline before the station ran out.”

    Inflation is real in people’s lives. The Cheney gossip, the Pelosi Commission, and the squabble over masks on the House floor simply do not matter. Washington trivia is in the Washington reality—not in American reality.

    The behavior of the schools, however, is part of the American reality, because it affects people and their children.

    • First, the culture of work in America is built around the assumption that schools would be available to watch children. When this breaks down, American lives are reshaped in a way which particularly impacts women, who are the most likely to stay home with children. (This is not a statement of misogyny or any sort of “ism,” it is a statement of American reality.)

    • Second, the quality of education will affect children for their entire lives. The decay of the big city schools has been devastating for poor children. The current pattern of trying to eliminate magnet schools so no one will feel bad because all will be equally mediocre is a mortal threat to the economic future of American children.

    • Third, the new cycle of radical indoctrination of left-wing values about race, American history, sexual issues, and “wokeism” directly threatens parents, who find their own personal beliefs being ridiculed and attacked by teachers who are authority figures in the classroom.

    The erosion of education and teachers’ union arrogance, radicalism, and incompetence are driving more and more people to favor the right to pick what school they send their children to (81 percent of Americans favored school choice in a recent McLaughlin & Associates survey).

    It is this gap between the triviality, pettiness, and partisanship of the Washington reality and the personal impact of American reality which explains why—despite everything the media has done to prop up Biden and the Democrats—two polls in the last week (one Democrat and one Republican) have shown the generic vote for the House tied.

    Larry Sabato now has 19 incumbent Democrats in toss-up races and only two Republicans.

    If inflation, education, and other real-world issues continue going badly for the Democrats, the Washington reality will be drowned by the American reality. In that world, McCarthy will be Speaker of the House and Sen. Mitch McConnell will once again be Majority Leader.

    The challenge for Republicans is to ignore the Washington gossip and focus on the potentially giant hurricane of anti-leftwing repudiation looming on the horizon. American reality must drown the Washington reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:50

  • Robert Shiller: "In Real Terms, Home Prices Have Never Been So High" 
    Robert Shiller: “In Real Terms, Home Prices Have Never Been So High” 

    “In real terms, home prices have never been so high. My data goes back over 100 years, so this is something,” Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” 

    Shiller is the co-founder of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index. He is worried about a housing bubble forming where the “Wild West” mentality pushes prices higher. He also is concerned about stocks and cryptocurrencies.

     “I don’t think that the whole thing is explained by central bank policy. There is something about the sociology of markets that are happening,” he said. 

    Shiller has noticed that housing starts drive home prices. But last week, despite a shortage of homes and buildable property, home builders are easing production, paralyzed by surging commodity prices. 

    In April, single-family housing starts plunged 13% compared with March. This was the sharpest downward move since last April when the pandemic began. Despite Shiller’s euphoric housing bubble warning, the latest data shows an emerging pattern in housing starts that is quite ominous from the past. 

    However, Shiller points out there’s “a lot of upward momentum in housing markets and prices may not come down in a year.” He believes the current housing market environment is similar to 2003, five years before the housing market crash in 2008. 

    “If you go out three or five years, I could imagine they’d [prices] be substantially lower than they are now, and maybe that’s a good thing,” he added. “Not from the standpoint of a homeowner, but it’s from the standpoint of a prospective homeowner. It’s a good thing. If we have more houses, we’re better off.”

    Meanwhile, on an intermediate basis, Glenn Kelman, CEO at Redfin, told Bloomberg last week that housing prices are set to cool. He said the housing market is in a frenzy, with most houses selling above the asking prices, which has never happened before. 

    After record gains in the first quarter, some home prices may stall. 

    According to the National Association of Realtors, nationwide, the median existing-home sales price rose 16.2% in the first quarter to $319,200, a record high in data going back to 1989.

    According to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we recently reported that home sales prices in the country’s hottest markets had risen by their highest level since 2006. The index showed home prices in 20 major cities are up a shocking 11.10% year-over-year.

     

    But outside the major metro markets, demand was even more robust, translating into the most significant YoY increase in median sales since 2006.

    Kelman warned: “I think you’re going to see a little bit of air come out of the ballon,” referring to the housing market bubble the Federal Reserve engineered by sending mortgage rates to record lows at the start of the virus pandemic in 2020. 

    Shiller’s and Kelman’s warning comes as home-buying sentiment has collapsed to its weakest since 1983…

    Between Shiller and Kelman, both believe housing prices are in a frenzy. However, Kelman’s view is that housing prices will cool on an intermediate timeframe, and Shiller is on a multi-year view. The broad consensus is that today’s environment is not sustainable. But as we all know, the Fed can sometimes maintain bubbles for quite sometime. 

    … and who may deflate today’s housing bubble?

    Well, the Fed, of course, who has been hinting about tapering of bond purchases. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:30

  • "Fact-Checking" Takes Another Beating: Taibbi
    “Fact-Checking” Takes Another Beating: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    The news business just can’t stop clowning itself. The latest indignity is an international fact-checking debacle originating, of all places, at a “festival of fact-checking.”

    The soul of rectitude testifies in the Senate

    The Poynter Institute is perhaps the most respected think tank in our business, an organization seeking to “fortify journalism’s role in a free society,” among other things through its sponsorship of the fact-checking outlet PolitiFact. A few weeks back, it held a virtual convention called the “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.”

    The three-day event featured special guests Christiane Amanpour, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Brian Stelter, and Senator Mark Warner — a lineup of fact “stars” whose ironic energy recalled the USO’s telethon-execution of Terrance and Phillip before the invasion of Canada in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Tickets were $50, but if you wanted a “private virtual happy hour” with Stelter, you needed to pay $100 for the “VIP Experience.”

    During the confab, PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders asked Fauci, “Are you still confident that [Covid-19] developed naturally?” To which the convivial doctor answered, “No, I’m not convinced of that,” going on to say “we” should continue to investigate all hypotheses about how the pandemic began:

    Conservatives in particular were quick to point out that Fauci last year said, “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.” At that time last May, of course, the issue of the pandemic’s origin had already long since been politicized, with Donald Trump’s administration anxious to point a finger at China for causing the disaster. Mike Pompeo went so far as to say there was “enormous evidence” the disease had been created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci was touted as a hero for pushing back on this and many other things.

    Fauci’s new quote about not being “convinced” that Covid-19 has natural origins, however, is part of what’s becoming a rather ostentatious change of heart within officialdom about the viability of the so-called “lab origin” hypothesis. Through 2020, officials and mainstream press shut down most every discussion on that score. Reporters were heavily influenced by a group letter signed by 27 eminent virologists in the Lancet last February in which the authors said they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and also by a Nature Medicine letter last March saying, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct.”

    The consensus was so strong that some well-known voices saw social media accounts suspended or closed for speculating about Covid-19 having a “lab origin.” One of those was University of Hong Kong virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who went on Tucker Carlson’s show last September 15th to say “[Covid-19] is a man-made virus created in the lab.” After that appearance, PolitiFact — Poynter’s PolitiFact — gave the statement its dreaded “Pants on Fire” rating.

    About a half-year later, in February, 2021, the WHO made a visit to China. Apparently some of the delegation left with a few doubts about the natural origin of the virus, even though the WHO’s report declared a lab-origin theory “extremely unlikely.” From there came a procession of scientists demanding that the lab origin possibility be taken seriously, including a letter signed by 18 experts in Science. When the Wall Street Journal came out with a story that a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report detailed how three Wuhan researchers became sick enough to be hospitalized in November of 2019, the toothpaste was fully out of the tube: there was no longer any way to say the “lab origin” hypothesis was too silly to be reported upon.

    That’s not to say the “lab origin” theory is correct, at all. However, that’s irrelevant to issue at hand. Despite what you might have been led to believe, fact-checkers don’t exist to get things right 100% of the time. They’re there as a threadbare, last-ditch safety mechanism, which news organizations employ as a means of preventing public face-plants.

    In any case, by May 17, just days after its “Festival of Fact-Checking,” Poynter/PolitiFact had to issue a correction to its September, 2020 “Pants on Fire” ruling on the “lab origin” story, writing:

    When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact’s sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review.

    Fact-checkers probably saved my career on at least a dozen occasions. When I was just starting to report on Wall Street, Rolling Stone often had to assign multiple people to to go through every line of my articles to make sure I didn’t make a complete ass of myself. I joked once that an RS fact-checker nearly flunked the infamous line about Goldman, Sachs being “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood-funnel into anything that smells like money” by correctly pointing out that squids don’t have blood-funnels. That happened, but the bulk of the work those poor checkers did for me was a lot less humorous and more thankless. The person who had to review my pathetic explanation of a Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) in this article probably deserved hardship pay and a lifetime supply of Thorazine. Like all writers I complain about fact-checkers, but I’d be the last one to say their jobs aren’t important.

    However, the public is regularly misinformed about what fact-checkers do. In most settings — especially at daily newspapers — fact-checking, if used at all, is the equivalent of the bare-minimum collision insurance your average penny-pinching car renter buys. There’s usually just enough time to flag a few potential dangers for litigation and/or major, obvious mistakes about things like dates, spellings of names, wording of quotes, whether a certain event a reporter describes even happened, etc.

    For anything more involved than that, which is most things, fact-checkers have to scramble to make tough judgment calls. The best ones tend to vote for killing anything that might blow up in the face of the organization later on. Good checkers are there to help perpetuate the illusion of competence. They’re professional ass-coverers, whose job is to keep it from being obvious that Wolf Blitzer or Matt Taibbi or whoever else you’re following on the critical story of the day only just learned the term hanging chad or spike protein or herd immunity. In my experience they’re usually pretty great at it, but their jobs are less about determining fact than about preventing the vast seas of ignorance underlying most professional news operations from seeping into public view.

    Unfortunately, over the course of the last five years in particular, as the commercial media has experienced a precipitous drop in the public trust levels, many organizations have chosen to trumpet fact-checking programs as a way of advertising a dedication to “truth.” Fact-checking has furthermore become part of the “moral clarity” argument, which claims a phony objectivity standard once forced news companies to always include gestures to a perpetually wrong other side, making “truth” a casualty to false “fairness.”

    Here’s how Amanpour put it at the Poynter Festival:

    [Objectivity] is not about taking any issue, whether it be about genocide, or the climate, or U.S. elections, or anything else happening around the globe — Covid, for instance — and saying, ‘Well, on the one hand, and on the other hand,’ and pretending there is an equal amount of fact and truth in each basket…

    Amanpour went on to note her career took off reporting in Bosnia, where one side was being “aggressed” and another side was not, and it would have been an offense against decency to say otherwise. This is a nod to the “objectivity doesn’t mean giving equal time to Republicans” bit that has become so popular in the industry of late (Fox institutionalized the same argument in reverse three decades ago).

    But objectivity was never about giving equal time and weight to “both sides.” It’s just an admission that the news business is a high-speed operation whose top decision-makers are working from a knowledge level of near-zero about most things, at best just making an honest effort at hitting the moving target of truth.

    Like fact-checking itself, the “on the one hand and on the other hand” format is just a defense mechanism. These people say X, these people say Y, and because the jabbering mannequins we have reading off our teleprompters actually know jack, we’ll let the passage of time sort out the difficult bits.

    The public used to appreciate the humility of that approach, but what they get from us more often now are sanctimonious speeches about how reporters are intrepid seekers of truth who sleep next to God and gobble amphetamines so they can stay awake all night defending democracy from “misinformation.” But once you get past names, dates, and whether the sky that day was blue or cloudy, the worst kind of misinformation in journalism is to be too sure about anything. That’s especially when dealing with complex technical issues, and even more especially when official sources seem invested in eliminating discussion of alternative scenarios of those issues.

    From the start, the press mostly mishandled Covid-19 reporting. Part of this was because nearly all of the critical issues — mask use, lockdowns, viability of vaccine programs, and so on — were marketed by news companies as culture-war narratives. A related problem had to do with news companies using the misguided notion that the news is an exact science to promote the worse misconception that science is an exact science. This led to absurd spectacles like news agencies trying to cover up or denounce as falsehood the natural reality that officials had evolving views on things like the efficacy of ventilators or mask use.

    When CNN did a fact-check on the question, “Did Fauci change his mind on the effectiveness of masks?” they seemed worried about the glee Trump followers would feel if they simply wrote yes, so the answer instead became, “Yes, but Trump is also an asshole” (because he implied the need to wear masks is still up for debate). By labeling whatever the current scientific consensus happened to be an immutable “fact,” media outlets made the normal evolution of scientific debates look dishonest, and pointlessly heightened mistrust of both scientists and media.

    Fact-checking was a huge boon when it was an out-of-sight process quietly polishing the turd of industrial reportage. When companies dragged it out in public and made it a beast of burden for use in impressing audiences, they defamed the tradition.

    We know only a few things absolutely for sure, like the spelling of “femur” or Blaine Gabbert’s career interception total. The public knows pretty much everything else is up for argument, so we only look like jerks pretending we can fact-check the universe. We’d do better admitting what we don’t know.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 19:10

  • Tow "Range Anxiety" Builds For Ford's All-New F-150 Electric Truck  
    Tow “Range Anxiety” Builds For Ford’s All-New F-150 Electric Truck  

    There was a ton of hype last week when Ford Motor Company unveiled its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. As of Friday, Ford secured more than 44,000 reservations for the new truck. 

    Ford’s first all-electric truck is expected to have a targeted range between 230 and 300 miles depending on the version the customer chooses. Ford said the truck could haul up to 10,000 pounds. 

    Auto blog Jalopnik points out that Ford failed to release data on how hauling or towing would affect range last week. 

    In an emailed response, Vice News had a similar question and asked a Ford spokeswoman. 

    Here’s the response:

    Ford spokesperson Said Deep did not share any specifications regarding the vehicle’s range when towing or hauling, but said the F-150 Lightning will “come equipped with ‘Intelligent Range’, which more accurately predicts range with factors including payload, towing information and weather so the customer knows how many miles they have left.”

    The Ford spokesperson skirted around the question without giving specifics. Still, there are no estimates of how different payloads would affect the vehicle’s range. 

    Jalopnik believes the reason Ford hasn’t release those figures is that it will likely affect the range “a lot.” 

    Ford is aware decreased range while hauling or towing could cause complications for drivers, hence this Intelligent Range system, but the seriousness of those complications in part depends on how much shorter the range is. The truck is already pretty beefy, coming in at 6,500 pounds (according to MotorTrend); increasing weight the motors need to push forward to 16,500 pounds — the weight of the truck itself plus up to 10,000 pounds being towed behind it — is going to require significantly more power.

    Of course, it’s not just about weight. Many trailers aren’t particularly aerodynamic and, to get the biggest range possible, aerodynamics is very much on the mind of EV designers these days (ask Mercedes).

    Designing an EV to tow is tricky. A big difference in the electric F-150 compared to the ICE version, is that the battery alone is very heavy, or 1,800 pounds, according to Joe Biden. Increasing battery size might improve towing range, but it will also add even more weight, weight that the truck’s electric motors will also need to push around. It will also add more cost. So that leads us to the question: Is it worth compromising the vehicle’s packaging space, weight (and thus efficiency), and cost in order to produce a stellar tow vehicle with lots of range? Modern trucks do require buyers to make compromises in order to have a good tow vehicle (suspensions are a bit stiff in the rear, frames are a bit heavier/stronger, tanks take up a bit more space), but with an EV, the compromises to achieve good range would likely be too large. – Jalopnik

    For a reference point, Jalopnik said there had been multiple examples of Tesla-powered vehicles losing anywhere from 30% to 60% of range while towing a trailer. 

    I would expect that the big drop-off in range on Teslas is in part because towing anything with a Tesla adds weight but also disrupts the car’s aerodynamics, but aerodynamics on the F-150 Lightning already look pretty compromised. – Jalopnik

    For the everyday driver, range anxiety is unlikely a problem, but if you’re towing or hauling things around town, range anxiety could be your worst nightmare. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 18:50

  • Support For Black Lives Matter Drops To Two Year Low
    Support For Black Lives Matter Drops To Two Year Low

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Despite relentless positive promotion by the media and political elites, support for Black Lives Matter in America has dropped to a two year low.

    An essay written by academics Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson published by the New York Times analyzes how support for BLM soared to +20% in mid-2020 but rapidly dropped to only +5% – which is where it was in mid-2019.

    The authors note that the figures serve to contradict “the idea that the country underwent a racial reckoning.”

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    The academics note that despite a high level of outrage at what happened to George Floyd amongst whites and Republicans, such groups subsequently “actually become less supportive of Black Lives Matter than they were before the death of George Floyd.”

    Gee, I wonder why that happened?

    The collapse in support began at around the time when violent BLM riots spread to 140 cities around the U.S. – despite the media erroneously reporting the disorder as “mostly peaceful protests.”

    As Joel B. Pollak notes, while blaming Donald Trump’s the academics completely omit the real reason for the massive decline in support.

    “They do not seem to consider the effect of violence, rioting, murder, and looting — except as reflected in Trump’s rhetoric — in alienating potential support,” writes Pollak.

    As we highlighted last week, BLM suffered another political defeat after it was announced that a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford’s Oriel College won’t be removed.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 05/24/2021 – 18:30

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