- Russian Military Expo Starts With A 'Bang'
Russian Military Expo Starts With A ‘Bang’
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 02:45The International military-technical forum “Army-2020” outside Moscow, Russia, began this week with a ‘bang’, as high-tech tanks, new lightweight assault rifles, stealth drones, and other advanced weaponry were displayed to foreign clients and visitors, reported RT News.
On Sunday, as the week-long annual defense expo began, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said this year’s event would merge military forum and an international military sports competition.
A record number of defense companies are attending the expo this week, showcasing more than 28,000 products. The Russian Defense Ministry has already said 39 contracts worth $15.6 billion have already been signed.
Here is some of the military tech featured at the expo this week:
Kalashnikov’s new lightweight assault rifle called the AK-19.
Russian-made military drones
Drone weapons
Iranian officials are getting acquainted with helicopters and the S-400 missile system.
Called the “CyberBoat-330,” these vessels appear to be fully autonomous.
The MPT-2 ‘Terminator’ and T-90MS tank exhibit.
Amphibious military vehicle
Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopter
Here’s an overview of the facility housing the weapons expo.
The 6th International Military-Technical Forum #Army2020, one of the leading exhibitions of armaments, military & special equipment launched today in #Russia and will open until August 29, 2020. Stay tuned ➡️ https://t.co/HYKJIvb79l#ArmyGames2020 pic.twitter.com/KJwN32E8ac
— Dmitry Solodov 🇷🇺 (@SolodovDmitry) August 23, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
New dune buggy
More tanks and anti-aircraft weapon systems.
A stealth aircraft of some sort.
As for the competition side of the expo – the first round of annual tank biathlon competition was hosted on Sunday in Alabino, Moscow region.
“The 16 tank crew are divided into two divisions, depending on their results in the Army Games-2019. The Chinese crew showed the best result in Sunday’s individual races, finishing in just 19 minutes and 20 seconds, with the Belarusians coming in second, and the crew from Azerbaijan coming third.
Teams from 32 countries are expected to participate in this year’s International Army Games in Russia, which consists of several contests involving tanks, snipers, and several aeronautical and naval disciplines. Notably, a team from South Ossetia will take part in the competition for the first time,” Ruptly said.
Watcch: Tank biathlon kicks off International Army Games 2020
The defense expo will conclude on August 29 and the competition will end on September 5.
- Are Turkey And Greece Heading For War?
Are Turkey And Greece Heading For War?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 02:00Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,
The Greek Armed Forces are on high alert on land, sea and air, closely monitoring Turkish movements in the Eastern Mediterranean, according to Greek media. After Turkey last month restarted prospecting for oil and gas in an area overlapping Greece’s continental shelf, Greece deployed warships between the islands of Cyprus and Crete. Since then, tensions have run high between Turkey and Greece.
On August 12, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned about the possibility of an “accident” in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greek and Turkish naval forces deployed in the area after Ankara sent a vessel to conduct seismic research south of Kastellorizo.
“The risk of an accident lurks when so many naval forces gather in a limited area, and responsibility in such a case will be borne by the one who causes these conditions,” Mitsotakis said in a televised address.
Turkey has threatened to invade the Greek islands in the Aegean since at least 2018. A recent Egyptian-Greek maritime deal appears to have escalated Turkey’s regional aggression.
The maritime deal, which was signed on August 6, set the Mediterranean Sea boundary between Egypt and Greece. It also demarcated an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for oil and gas drilling rights. The Egyptian-Greek move was widely seen as a response to a disputed agreement between Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli-based administration, according to the newspaper Kathimerini.
Meanwhile, Turkey has been systematically violating the territorial waters of Cyprus and Greece. In May, the foreign ministers of Egypt, France, Cyprus, Greece and the UAE issued a joint declaration “denouncing the ongoing Turkish illegal activities in the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone and its territorial waters, as they represent a clear violation of international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
On May 15, the European Union announced that it “condemned the escalation of Turkey’s violations of Greek national airspace, including overflights of inhabited areas, and territorial sea, in violation of international law.” But the condemnation has not stopped the violations by Turkey. On August 5, for instance, eight Turkish military airplanes carried out a total of 33 violations of Greece’s national airspace over the course of one day, Greek military authorities said.
After the deal between Greece and Egypt, Turkey again deployed a seismic research vessel to prospect for potential oil and gas reserves within Greece’s continental shelf. Greece has again placed its armed forces on high alert. Warships were sent to the spot between Crete and Cyprus, demanding the vessel’s withdrawal.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, continues defying Greece and Cyprus. On August 14, referring to Greece and other Western states, Erdogan said:
“They sent all terrorist organizations against us. We gave our response to these attacks in the language they understand through our operations in northern Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the Eastern Mediterranean. We gave [an answer] today too! We told them, ‘Look, don’t attack our Oruç Reis vessel. If you attack it, you will pay a heavy price’. And today they got the first answer.”
“No colonialist power,” Erdogan said on August 19, “can deprive our country of the rich oil and gas resources estimated to exist in this region.”
Turkey is a colonialist power that has been occupying Northern Cyprus since 1974. The Turkish government does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus as a state, and claims 44% of the Cypriot exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as its own. Another sizable section of that zone is claimed by the so-called “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” in the island’s occupied north — recognized only by Turkey.
“Turkey has adopted a revisionist policy in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Dr. Giorgos Kentas, Associate Professor of International Politics and Governance at the University of Nicosia, said in an interview with Gatestone.
“Turkey’s policy is part and parcel of a broader strategy to expand Turkey’s influence in the Middle East, the Gulf, and Africa. The aim is to impose geopolitical dominion: an undisputed regional hegemonic regime whereby Turkey is be able to determine big and important developments. That revisionist policy is pursued by a mixture of soft and hard power instruments.
“With regard to Greece and Cyprus, Turkey clearly maintains an offensive posture. It appears willing to use military force in order to impose its revisionist plans. For almost two decades now, Turkey (under the leadership of Erdogan) has been developing a strategy to dominate over large maritime zones. [This] strategy is known as the ‘blue homeland’. It begins from the Black Sea and extends through the Aegean Sea towards the maritime zones of Libya, Egypt, Israel, and Syria. Turkey believes that Cyprus and Greece must voluntarily submit to the parameters of the blue homeland, otherwise they must face the consequences of its military might. Turkey plans against Greece and Cyprus under a strategic doctrine of a unified front.
“As of the early 2010s, Turkey started an illegitimate program of seismic surveys in the maritime zones of Cyprus, supported by considerable aeronautic forces. In May 2019, Turkey launched an offshore drilling program in Cyprus’ EEZ. So far it started and/or completed 7 drillings, at least one in Cyprus’ territorial waters. Turkey has actually de facto extended its military occupation of Cyprus from the land it occupies as of 1974 to island’s maritime zones. All that went mostly unanswered with the exception of some statements by third states and some symbolic sanctions by the EU.
“Turkey is currently attempting a similar policy of revisionism against Greece. The aim is to impose a hegemonic regime over Greece’s maritime zones and/or maritime zones that Greece claims in Eastern Mediterranean.
“Turkey has developed the military might, and acquired the means, to challenge and revise the geopolitical momentum created by a series of delimitation agreements between Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon and Israel. [Turkey] also undermines the hydrocarbon program of Cyprus. Greece now tops the agenda of Ankara in the framework of the blue homeland dominium.”
According to Harris Samaras, an expert on the Cypriot EEZ and chairman of the international investment banking firm Pytheas, Turkey’s foreign policy in eastern Mediterranean is largely an extension of its Islamist domestic policies.
“Turkey is an authoritarian country increasingly shaped by ultranationalist and Islamist forces,” Samaras told Gatestone.
“Inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have pursued policies that furthered the Islamization of the country, promoting religion, fundamentalism, and limiting individual freedoms and rights. Turkey globally supports Islamism and jihadism as in the cases of ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram, al Qaeda and the Iranian regime, among others. It is thus accurate to state that Turkey is today among the most anti-American and anti-European countries in the world. It operates as a polarized engine of religious radicalism with a global reach.”
According to Samaras, there are three main causes of Turkey’s aggression towards Greece and the general Turkish jingoistic behavior in the Eastern Mediterranean:
“1. Erdogan desires to lead the Islamic world, a project aimed at fulfilling his ambitions – and better regional supremacy complexes – to seize the Muslim world’s political leadership legitimated by consciously assuming the mantle as successor of the ‘glorious’ history of the Ottoman empire. ‘Turkey’, as Erdogan has repetitively stated, ‘is a continuation of the Ottoman Empire’. This infers that as its leader, Erdogan is analogous to the Caliph. Note here the similarities with statements by ISIS leaders.
“2. While the vast majority of European and US leaders from all parties, including the intelligence community and the Pentagon, recognize the reality of Turkey, certain EU leaders, US diplomats and appointees continue to apologize for and rationalize Turkish behavior. They dilute measures to hold Turkey to account. Their denial of evidence about Turkey’s regional malfeasance not only weakens the West and its credibility, but also benefits Russia, Iran and terrorism.
“Furthermore, and over and above, those elements who intentionally turn a blind eye to Turkey’s violations of the Rule of Law not only encourage Erdogan to intensify his bullying and jingoistic policies, but also pressurize Greece (like they do with Cyprus) to strike an energy and sovereignty ‘sale’ deal. This is contrary to international law and an attempt to delaying to convicting Turkey, eventually justifying its atrocities.
“3. Erdogan’s (and his AKP) popularity has slumped to the lowest level ever since his autocratic reign. This is a result of his systematic power grabbing, nepotism and corruption. The economy for one is in dire straits. Theatrics like the one with Hagia Sophia and the gunboat diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as bursts about the ‘tyrannical’ EU and Israel, are ‘required’ to direct the interests of his polarized compatriots elsewhere and away from the misery his foul administration has inflicted. Wrapping himself in a cloak of patriotism is part of Erdogan’s agenda and his regime’s propaganda narrative.
“Erdogan, however, is now anticipating that Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, his best ally and in many ways his ‘accomplice’, will compel Greece into discussions. He is hoping that under Germany’s pressure Greece will ‘conform’ to selling part of its sovereignty. However, the Western world has to face and address the Turkish reality, the strategic reality that any possibility of a Western-leaning Turkey is gone.”
Meanwhile, the US State Department has issued a statement concerning Turkey’s activities in the region. “The United States is aware that Turkey has issued a notification to other ships of survey activity in the Eastern Mediterranean. We urge Turkish authorities to halt any such plans for operations and to and to avoid steps that raise tensions in the region,” a State Department spokesperson said on August 10.
“Turkish aggression against Greece is really nothing new,” Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, a Senior Fellow and Member of Advisory Board of the Center for European and International Affairs of the University of Nicosia, told Gatestone.
“For example, there have been myriads of air space violations in recent years. Turkey is just taking everything to a different level nowadays. This gradual tension spiral, first, aimed at testing the waters, both literally and metaphorically. But Greece has proven it will not go quietly, despite Turkey trying hard to set a maximalist agenda on its own terms, before negotiations ensue at some point. Turkey considers her use of force both a carrot and a stick for Greece to succumb to its claims.
“Second, there is no doubt that all the neo-Ottoman, anti-Lausanne rhetoric which Erdogan and his ministers have been making good use of should be taken seriously. It is part and parcel of a hegemonic bid to master regional leadership, as well as an attempt to woo audiences at home. An authoritarian ruler reigns by bread and games. Bread seems to be running out in Turkey at the moment, so there also needs to be a focus on games.”
As for what the Europe and the US should do in the face of continued Turkish aggression, Procopiou said:
“There has been enough talk and little action. If Europe and the US are serious about halting Turkey’s aggression, they need to show that they mean business. Europe keeps feeding Erdogan money while he is making a spectacle of democracy, international law and human rights. [These are] fundamental values which the European Union supposedly stands for.
“In essence, Erdogan has been ridiculing the EU, NATO and the US with zero consequences. Why should he stop? If the only reaction he gets is a shamble of a sanctions list in Europe – with only two inconsequential individuals’ names on that list – and no enforcement of the American CAATSA [The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act], he is taking everyone for a ride. So, we could begin at least with that. The Turkish economy found itself on its knees last time US President Donald Trump cared to send Erdogan a message over the arrest of American Pastor Andrew Brunson. What is keeping President Trump from doing that now?”
- Escobar: For China, Everything Is Proceeding According To Plan
Escobar: For China, Everything Is Proceeding According To Plan
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/26/2020 – 00:05Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker (originally posted at The Asia Times),
The contours of China’s long-term strategy for the new Cold War are quickly coming into view…
Let’s start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit.
Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary session in October.
The Beidaihe ritual was established by none other than Great Helmsman Mao, who loved the town where, not by accident, Emperor Qin, the unifier of China in the 3rd century B.C., kept a palace.
2020 being, so far, a notorious Year of Living Dangerously, it’s no surprise that in the end Beidaihe was nowhere to be seen. Yet Beidaihe’s invisibility does not mean it did not happen.
Exhibit 1 was the fact that Premier Li Keqiang simply disappeared from public view for nearly two weeks – after President Xi chaired a crucial Politburo gathering in late July where what was laid out was no less than China’s whole development strategy for the next 15 years.
Li Keqiang resurfaced by chairing a special session of the all-powerful State Council, just as the CCP’s top ideologue, Wang Huning – who happens to be number 5 in the Politburo – showed up as the special guest at a meeting of the All China Youth Federation.
What’s even more intriguing is that side by side with Wang, one would find Ding Xuexiang, none other than President Xi’s chief of staff, as well as three other Politburo members.
In this “now you see them, now you don’t” variation, the fact that they all showed up in unison after an absence of nearly two weeks led sharp Chinese observers to conclude that Beidaihe in fact had taken place. Even if no visible signs of political action by the seaside had been detected. The semi-official spin is that no get-together happened at Beidaihe because of Covid-19.
Yet it’s Exhibit 2 that may clinch the deal for good. The by now famous end of July Politburo meeting chaired by Xi in fact sealed the Central Committee plenary session in October.
Translation:
the contours of the strategic road map ahead had already been approved by consensus. There was no need to retreat to Beidaihe for further discussions.
Trial balloons or official policy?
The plot thickens when one takes into consideration a series of trial balloons that started to float a few days ago in select Chinese media. Here are some of the key points.
1. On the trade war front, Beijing won’t shut down US businesses already operating in China. But companies which want to enter the market in finance, information technology, healthcare and education services will not be approved.
2. Beijing won’t dump all its overwhelming mass of US Treasuries in one go, but – as it already happens – divestment will accelerate. Last year, that amounted to $100 billion. Up to the end of 2020, that could reach $300 billion.
3. The internationalization of the yuan, also predictably, will be accelerated. That will include configuring the final parameters for clearing US dollars through the CHIPS Chinese system – foreseeing the incandescent possibility Beijing might be cut off from SWIFT by the Trump administration or whoever will be in power at the White House after January 2021.
4. On what is largely interpreted across China as the “full spectrum war” front, mostly Hybrid War, the PLA has been put into Stage 3 alert – and all leaves are canceled for the rest of 2020. There will be a concerted drive to increase all-round defense spending to 4% of GDP and accelerate the development of nuclear weapons. Details are bound to emerge during the Central Committee meeting in October.
5. The overall emphasis is on a very Chinese spirit of self-reliance, and building what can be defined as a national economic “dual circulation” system: the consolidation of the Eurasian integration project running in parallel to a global yuan settlement mechanism.
Inbuilt in this drive is what has been described as “to firmly abandon all illusions about the United States and conduct war mobilization with our people. We shall vigorously promote the war to resist US aggression (…) We will use a war mindset to steer the national economy (…) Prepare for the complete interruption of relations with the US.”
It’s unclear as it stands if these are only trial balloons disseminated across Chinese public opinion or decisions reached at the “invisible” Beidaihe. So all eyes will be on what kind of language this alarming configuration will be packaged when the Central Committee presents its strategic planning in October. Significantly, that will happen only a few weeks before the US election.
It’s all about continuity
All of the above somewhat mirrors a recent debate in Amsterdam on what constitutes the Chinese “threat” to the West. Here are the key points.
1. China constantly reinforces its hybrid economic model – which is an absolute rarity, globally: neither totally publicly owned nor a market economy.
2. The level of patriotism is staggering: once the Chinese face a foreign enemy, 1.4 billion people act as one.
3. National mechanisms have tremendous force: absolutely nothing blocks the full use of China’s financial, material and manpower resources once a policy is set.
4. China has set up the most comprehensive, back to back industrial system on the planet, without foreign interference if need be (well, there’s always the matter of semiconductors to Huawei to be solved).
China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten year plans and as the meeting chaired by Xi showed, 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049.
And continuity is the name of the game – when one thinks that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first developed in 1949 and then expanded by Zhou Enlai at the Bandung conference in 1955 are set in stone as China’s foreign policy guidelines.
The Qiao collective, an independent group that advances the role of qiao (“bridge”) by the strategically important huaqiao (“overseas Chinese”) is on point when they note that Beijing never proclaimed a Chinese model as a solution to global problems. What they extol is Chinese solutions to specific Chinese conditions.
A forceful point is also made that historical materialism is incompatible with capitalist liberal democracy forcing austerity and regime change on national systems, shaping them towards preconceived models.
That always comes back to the core of the CCP foreign policy: each nation must chart a course fit for its national conditions.
And that reveals the full contours of what can be reasonably described as a Centralized Meritocracy with Confucian, Socialist Characteristics: a different civilization paradigm that the “indispensable nation” still refuses to accept, and certainly won’t abolish by practicing Hybrid War.
- Photos Emerge Of 'Secret' Stealth Drone Made By Boeing
Photos Emerge Of ‘Secret’ Stealth Drone Made By Boeing
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 23:45For the last couple of years, we’ve kept readers abreast of new developments concerning the Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS), a combat stealth drone also known as “loyal wingman” for fourth and fifth-generation aircraft.
Boeing Australia announced in early 2019 that ATS would be manufactured at the Boeing Phantom Works in Brisbane. Since then, not much has been revealed about the ‘top secret’ stealth drone project until now:
Spotted on the tarmac at an undisclosed location, possibly at the RAAF Base Amberley, ATS was conducting taxi trials ahead of its first test flight, reported Australian Defence Magazine (ADM).
“The first ATS aircraft is currently undergoing ground testing, which will be followed by taxi and a first flight later this year,” a Boeing spokesperson told ADM and declined to provide a location and exact trial details.
ATS is a stealth unmanned aerial vehicle that can autonomously fly with RAAF aircraft, such as the F-35, F/A-18E/F, and E-7A Wedgetail, to provide defense and surveillance support while on combat missions. It will be the first aircraft designed and developed in Australia in over five decades.
Boeing ATS program director Shane Arnott told ADM that ATS’ payload would be dependent on the needs of the mission of the customer. He revealed the drone is powered by a commercial turbofan engine but wouldn’t disclose any other information.
Last week, DARPAtv held a live-streamed event that featured an AI-controlled virtual fighter jet beating a human pilot in a series of simulated dogfights.
The rise of Skynet continues…
- Attack Of The Tomato Killers: The Police State's War On Weed And Backyard Gardens
Attack Of The Tomato Killers: The Police State’s War On Weed And Backyard Gardens
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 23:25Authored by John Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,
“They came again this morning at about 8:00 o’clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened … I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state … I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.”
– Journal entry from a California resident describing the government’s aerial searches for marijuana plants
Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in the government’s war on drugs, especially marijuana.
In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts.
It’s happened before.
After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a multi-state, annual campaign dubbed “Operation Constant Gardener,” in which police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana possession.
By “investigated,” I mean that police searched through the family’s trash. (You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v. Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding “wet glob vegetation” in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince themselves—and a judge—that it was marijuana.
In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details don’t usually bother the cops when they’re conducting field tests.
Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, “it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to. A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.”
There’s a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid, because that’s all it takes—just the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activity—to start the ball rolling.
From there, these so-called “investigations” follow the usual script: judge issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.
It happens all the time.
As Balko reports, “Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.)”
Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right now—policing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns, quelling civil unrests over police brutality—that it doesn’t need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.
You’d be wrong.
This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed.
In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations.
Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.
Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes these joint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National Guard.
One woman reported having her “tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning.” Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police “showed up in unmarked SUV’s with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the ‘copter didn’t match what was growing.”
Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a 10-hour raid in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry and okra plants.
These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the country, part of the government’s multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as “Eradication Day.”
Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growers in California and Hawaii, the Eradication Program went national in 1985, right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “war on drugs.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:
The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP… In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes into the fields of California … In CAMP’s first year, the program conducted 524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants. Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398 raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to taxpayers of $2.3 million.
The area’s larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise, wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of “officer safety,” they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.
Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local boots-on-the-ground “war on drugs.” These grants (through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did incentivize SWAT team raids.
But how do you go from a “war on drugs” to SWAT-style raids on vegetable gardens?
Connect the dots, starting with the government’s war on marijuana, the emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer “vast amounts of military equipment—machine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored cars—to local police departments,” and the transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.
Each year, the government spends between $14 and $18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants. These sweeps are even being carried out in states where it’s now legal to grow marijuana.
The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of different sectors. Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission.
Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common.
For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel writes for The Atlantic: “When it comes to law enforcement, police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.”
There have been a few notable exceptions.
In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that surveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The court reasoned that “when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground—most commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise, and sheer panic—then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less.”
In Philip Cobbs’ case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia native’s 39-acre family farm.
Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother. By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him.
Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.
What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs’ little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.
Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs’ case, which revealed that police hadn’t even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs’ property—a raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very least—part of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations.
Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesn’t matter.
A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on two different occasions. The Washington Post reports: The SWAT team “broke down Betton’s door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon, bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet shattered his leg.” After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie, the cops settled the case for $2.75 million.
Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.
Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.
Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets (there’s the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.
SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.
Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana, the government’s profit-driven “War on Drugs”—waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has not abated.
Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise to a “police industrial complex” that routinely devastates communities, terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.
No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.
Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.
In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.
SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.
All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.
Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs.
SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn. Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner—especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses—a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their door.
That’s exactly what happened to Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted “no-knock” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.
This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have essentially done away with the need for a “no-knock” warrant altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.
Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, something must be done.
When the war on drugs—a.k.a. the war on the American people—becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it’s time to revisit our drug policies and laws.
“You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to have—when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate. They open that door, your life is on the line,” concluded Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the family’s trash and mistook it for marijuana.
“Our family will never be the same,” said Addie Harte, recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles. As The Washington Post reports:
Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. “Are there kids?” the officers were yelling. “Where are the kids?” “And I’m laying there staring at this guy’s boots fearing for my kids’ lives, trying to tell them where my children are,” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. “They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children’s house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.”
It didn’t matter that no drugs were found—nothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable, according to the courts.
There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: “If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid.”
- Portland Businesses Leave Due To 'Lawlessness Endorsed By Mayor'
Portland Businesses Leave Due To ‘Lawlessness Endorsed By Mayor’
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 23:05All it took was nearly three months of often-riotous protests in Portland for business owners to pull out of the city or relocate outside its central district, according to local station KOIN (via Fox Business).
In a letter to Mayor Ted Wheeler and the Portland City Council, the Downtown Development Group said that the exodus of companies wasn’t related to the Black Lives Matter movement – “but does have most everything to do with the lawlessness you are endorsing downtown.”
“The number is like nothing I have seen in 42 years of doing business in downtown,” wrote DDG co-founder Greg Goodman.
Goodman said companies include Daimler Trucks North America, Airbnb, Banana Republic, Microsoft, Saucebox, and Google, which he claimed: “leased 90,000 square feet in the Macy’s building [and] has stopped construction of their improvements.”
“The list goes on and on. If you know a retail or office broker, give them a call and ask them how many clients they have are trying to leave,” he continued.
Goodman encouraged city leaders to “walk around downtown Portland in the morning,” adding that he would personally give them a tour. –Fox Business
“You aren’t sweeping the streets, needles are all over the place, garbage cans are broken and left open, glass from car windows that have been broken out is all over the streets, parks are strewn with litter,” the letter continues. “You are willfully neglecting your duties as elected officials to keep our city safe and clean.”
On Saturday, Portland PD said that just 30 officers were available to manage a crowd of several hundred people, while authorities say that the department “had to be judicious with our limited resources” due to many officers having already worked the previous night’s demonstrations, according to The Oregonian.
Meanwhile, Mayor Wheeler issued a statement regarding a Saturday skirmish between right-wing Proud Boys activists and Black Lives Matter demonstrators – completely taking the side of BLM and calling the Proud Boys ‘White nationalists.’
“I vehemently oppose what the Proud Boys and those associated with them stand for, and I will not tolerate hate speech and the damage it does in our city. White nationalists, particularly those coming to our city armed, threaten the safety of Portlanders, and are not welcome here,” said Wheeler. “We are at a critical place where police officers are needed to intervene in protests where police officers themselves are the flashpoint.”
- GOP Senators Demand FDA Explain Hydroxychloroquine Stance Amid Positive Studies And Physician Advocates
GOP Senators Demand FDA Explain Hydroxychloroquine Stance Amid Positive Studies And Physician Advocates
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 22:45Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,
The debate over hydroxychloroquine has faded from the forefront as big tech has worked to suppress information and silence the voices of doctors and researchers promoting it. However, it appears the controversy over the drug has encouraged some senators to take a closer look, and it seems they are asking the FDA the right questions.
Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn explicitly asking about the agency’s handling of information regarding the drug and its use during the pandemic.
Doctors and researchers advocating for hydroxychloroquine are recommending it be used in high-risk outpatients.
Texas Congressman Louis Hohmert, who was recently diagnosed positive for COVID-19, tweeted just this morning about the benefits of hydroxychloroquine:
Hydroxychloroquine protocols worked for me. Americans suffering from the Wuhan Virus deserve the right to consult with their doctors and try HCQ if deemed a safe and appropriate fit. Keep Big Govt out of this. Thank you Dr. Risch for your work and research on this.
In the letter to Hahn, the senators are asking about specific actions the agency has taken regarding hydroxychloroquine. The current FDA guidance is that it should not be used outside the hospital setting for COVID-19, and the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) has been withdrawn. Given the safety profile of the medication and the fact it is used daily on an outpatient basis around the world for malaria prevention, malaria treatment, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, this guidance is ridiculous on its face.
The recommended duration of hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19 is between five and seven days at FDA approved dosages. In a sane world, a doctor may prescribe drugs off-label at approved dosages if they think a medication may be useful for a patient’s symptoms. However, 2020 is not sane, and now the FDA interference has led to medical boards, hospital systems, and politicians banning the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. These actions are unprecedented in the doctor-patient relationship.
Finally, these senators are standing up for that relationship and demanding clarity from the FDA. From the letter:
However, we have heard from licensed physicians that have had a far different experience with the FDA’s approach. The physicians are concerned about the FDA’s decision to revoke the March 28th EUA for HCQ and CQ for treatment of COVID-19. They have described the clear differences between inpatient and outpatient treatments and how this decision has affected their ability to treat patients in different settings. The physicians have warned that the FDA’s EUA revocation of HCQ and CQ has led to misinformation and confusion across the country. Some states have restricted the ability of physicians to write and pharmacies to fill HCQ and CQ prescriptions under longstanding and well-established authority to prescribe FDA approved drugs off-label with a patient’s informed consent and according to their clinical judgement.
To better understand the FDA’s actions, the letter requests four specific pieces of information:
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Studies or data that definitively shows prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine within seven days of COVID-19 symptoms is ineffective or harmful.
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Produce studies or data on the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 in outpatient settings under a doctor’s care, including as a preventative. They specifically exclude late-stage studies involving hospitalized patients.
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Provide any public statements issued by the FDA to clarify the agency does not regulate the practice of medicine and explaining state governments may not regulate or prohibit the sale of the drugs.
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Information on potential treatments for COVID-19 that have been used internationally and whether the FDA has approved those for use in the United States. If not, the senators want to know what steps are being taken to ensure they are.
These requests are a kick in the derriere to the bureaucracy. It is unconscionable for the FDA not to clarify their role in the practice of medicine and even worse for them to remain silent in the face of other entities trying to interfere with it. While it does not appear they have ever made a statement like the one the senators are requesting, hopefully, one will be forthcoming.
It would be even more concerning if the agency withdrew the EUA based on the debunked Lancet study and has done nothing to correct their position. In an extensive search, I can find no studies indicating that short-term outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine at approved dosages is dangerous or deadly. It will be surprising if the FDA has one.
Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist from Yale, has done a review of these studies and arrived at the conclusion that treatment with hydroxychloroquine is effective for high-risk outpatients. Dr. Risch told Mark Levin on “Life, Liberty, and Levin” Sunday that it was some of the most convincing data he has seen in his career:
Continued… pic.twitter.com/HNNyF3B5NM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2020
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Clearly, President Trump has not given up on the potential this drug combination may hold. Dr. Risch’s assessment is clear. For high-risk patients over 65 or with pre-existing conditions, the outpatient use of the hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin combination has shown a significant reduction in hospitalizations and death rates.
He asserts that we have let politics overrule science, and it is costing thousands of lives. Hopefully, senators pressuring the FDA will cause significant movement and clarity. The FDA owes its response by the end of business tomorrow. If the misinformation can be effectively cleared up, it will be a game-changer. The senators must continue to press the FDA and restore the doctor-patient relationship.
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- Hamptons Concert Featuring 'DJ D-Sol', 'Chainsmokers' Raised Only $150,000 For Charity
Hamptons Concert Featuring ‘DJ D-Sol’, ‘Chainsmokers’ Raised Only $150,000 For Charity
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 22:25All that trouble for $125,000? That’s what a Goldman Sachs analyst might deem a “suboptimal” outcome, considering the public hiding GS CEO David Solomon endured a couple of months ago, when Gov Cuomo opened an investigation into a charity concert in the Hamptons that went viral over images of attendees violating social distancing norms.
Despite the fact that the crowd was in the open air, voluntarily, and no different effectively from the ‘peaceful’ protests that have thronged the US since the death of George Floyd, Cuomo banked precious political capital by bashing Solomon and all the other bold-faced names associated with the event, which also had the misfortune of taking place in the Hamptons, where NYC’s elite fled to wait out COVID-19.
Now, it looks like Solomon & Co. are in for another round of outrage and scrutiny, as Bloomberg just reported that the concert only netted $152,000 for charity, a pittance considering the $25,000 donations made by some attendees, including Solomon himself. BBG put it best when it described the figure as “un-Hamptonesque”.
Safe & Sound, as the July event was called, has gone down as the most tone-deaf musical moment of the Hamptons’ Summer of Covid.
State health officials launched an investigation after Governor Andrew Cuomo excoriated the organizers and well-heeled revelers for “egregious social-distancing violations.”
But the night’s real surprise turns out to be the sums that were raised for charity.
To some, $152,000 is very un-Hamptons-esque. This, after all, is where a beachfront estate originally built for the Ford family was recently listed for $145 million.
“I never would have gone if I knew how little it would be,” said Daniel Tannebaum, one of the Manhattan residents who’s been spending more time at the beach since lockdown, working remotely for a management-consulting firm.
Others tried to spin it in a positive light.
Others find $152,000 a fair amount considering the expenses of putting on such an event, and the scrutiny that has created legal and crisis-management issues as well as potential government fines.
“I feel a little sense of relief,” said Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who was born in Montauk and has lived on the East End full-time for more than 30 years. “I had the fear it would be zero.
But the fact remains: the physical event brought in less money than several virtual events that – as Bloomberg’s reporters dutifully pointed out – occurred the same night on social media.
The same night as the concert, a fundraiser for All Star Code honoring Robert Smith — held virtually rather than at an oceanfront house in East Hampton — raised $700,000, while Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s gala, with about 35 micro parties at people’s homes, brought in $750,000 the following week.
One reason for the shortfall after ticket sales brought in nearly 3/4ths of $1 million is that the event wasn’t organized by a non-profit, though the organization behind it specified that “all profits” would go to charity.
By now, we all know the story behind the event, but just in case you haven’t read it yet…
Granted, the Safe & Sound “Drive-in Fundraiser Experience” was not a benefit organized by a non-profit. It was put on after months of lockdown by for-profit companies to present live music, modified for Covid, in the style of a music festival (complete with Red Bull, tequila and CBD oil). In a summer with few such happenings, it was an opportunity for people to have fun and raise some money for good causes.
Attendees at the Water Mill event were supposed to stay near their cars in socially-distanced splendor while the EDM duo the Chainsmokers performed after warm-up acts by Solomon (the Goldman chief executive officer moonlights as a DJ) and Schneiderman and his band.
Publicity materials specified that “all profits” would go to three charities: Southampton Fresh Air Home, which runs a camp on the East End for disabled New York City kids; Children’s Medical Fund of New York, which supports a Long Island hospital; and No Kid Hungry, a group that works nationally to get meals to low-income children.
Here’s a breakdown of the money, according to Bloomberg.
When Bloomberg requested the information afterward, a spokesman provided the $152,000 figure, adding that an additional $90,000 of personal protective equipment also was distributed and about $575,000 was spent locally to put on the event.
“Our hope was to have a safe and enjoyable event during a difficult time and to raise some money for local charities, create jobs for the entertainment and events industries, and help local businesses,” said spokesman Joe DePlasco of Dan Klores Communications, who represents event producers In the Know Experiences and Invisible Noise. He added that neither took fees.
Southampton Fresh Air Home got $20,000, according to Executive Director Thomas Naro, while representatives of No Kid Hungry and Children’s Medical Fund declined to disclose the amounts received. No Kid Hungry said its contribution included Solomon’s performance fee, and the Children’s Medical Fund said its amount included that of the Chainsmokers.
At the end of the day, these details don’t really matter: at the end of the day, what’s the bigger transgression? Violating vague social distancing guidelines? Or rich people daring to flaunt the fact that they didn’t spend the whole summer cooped up in their closet-sized one-bedroom, angrily tweeting about every “New York is Dead” essay like a broke, irrelevant, wannabe Seinfeld.
- Here's How A Cashless Society Would Affect Day-To-Day Life
Here’s How A Cashless Society Would Affect Day-To-Day Life
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 22:05Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
Have you ever thought about the ramifications of a cashless society? I’m talking about the real, first-person effects, not some ephemeral conspiracy theory or possible biblical prophecy. This is bad news for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the ways it would affect day-to-day life.
Here’s my definition of a cashless society, so we’re all singing from the same songbook:
Cash would no longer be legal tender, therefore you could not make purchases with it, pay bills with it, or spend it in any way. You would not be able to deposit cash into your bank account so you wouldn’t be able to accept cash for an exchange of goods or services.
Therefore, cash would be nothing more than a worthless piece of paper. (I know, I know. Debt-based currency is a totally different article though.)
We’re heading this way.
Jose recently wrote that Venezuela is rapidly becoming cashless and here in the United States a concerning early sign is that there is a “change shortage” which is causing many stores to give you your change on a store loyalty card or invite you to donate that change to some cause.
Gifts
Think of all the times that cash is an appropriate gift. I’ve always given money, like stuffing a child’s birthday card with a $20 bill or giving a new graduate some cash to put toward college expenses. When I got married, we received quite a bit of money from various loved ones. My dad always gave my daughters some spending money of their own each time we visited and they were surprised and delighted every single time.
However, in a cashless society, there are two problems with this.
First of all, the recipient would not be able to use the cash. He or she would not be able to spend or deposit it.
Secondly, if a monetary gift is given, it would have to be done with a check or electronic transfer. This means that the government (and the Tax Man) would know precisely how much money any person is given. That might not be a big deal for the 7-year-old who got $20 from grandpa, but what about the graduate who raked in a couple thousand in gifts from family members to celebrate his or her accomplishments? At what point will the government have their hands out for “their fair share?”
Side Gigs
A lot of folks are really struggling right now with the COVID shutdowns. Jobs have been lost, hours have been cut, and financial problems abound. One of the ways that these people are making ends meet is with side gigs. Folks are cutting grass, cleaning houses, driving for Uber, delivering food, babysitting – they’re coming up with all sorts of ways to make some extra money. A huge percentage of these people are being paid in cash.
But if suddenly you can no longer spend your cash, you’d need to be paid electronically. How many people who don’t already have a business have a merchant account for taking credit or debit cards? There are options like Paypal and Venmo, which take a percentage fee, but they’re going to have to figure out something.
And then, as above, every single bit of this side gig money is traceable and trackable. This could quickly turn your 20 bucks from lawn mowing into $15 after taxes.
Selling Secondhand Goods
Raise your hand if you’ve ever sold something to pay a bill. Me too! I’ve sold jewelry, furniture, exercise equipment – all sorts of stuff to meet an obligation when in a pinch. Not only that, but I have a yard sale every single year to downsize the things that I found I don’t really use, which often brings in a few hundred dollars.
How will this work in a cashless society? Well, if you are selling just one larger item, you’d probably end up using some kind of payment app like Venmo or Paypal. On the other hand, a yard sale would be nearly impossible to conduct electronically. Who is really going to be able to sit there and do Paypal transactions all day, especially when folks are buying things that cost 25 cents?
And there we are, down another way of making some quick money.
Tips
Lots of folks who work in food service and the beauty industry, just to name two niches, depend on tips to make a living. Generally, tips are collected from tables or paid out at the end of the shift if they were put on a debit card. But…once there is no cash, these tips will have to end up going on a regular paycheck. One hundred percent of this money will be subject to payroll withholdings.
This will mean that a lot of people see a sharp decrease in their earnings, plus they’ll have to wait for their checks to get the money. It puts a lot of power into the hands of the management and it would not be difficult at all for someone to manipulate the amounts the workers have earned.
Children
I’ve written many times about the importance of allowing children to handle their own money. It teaches them responsibility and life skills that will serve them well in the future. (Learn more about talking to your kids about money in this article.) My daughters have had access to money since they were in kindergarten, and possibly before.
Now, how are you going to give a five-year-old access to money if it’s all electronic? Are they going to end up with their own bank accounts and debit cards? That hardly seems realistic. There is also the option of gift cards, but that means the money can only be spent at certain places, taking away the vital learning curve of saving your money to put it toward a Big Goal. Forget lemonade stands, gifts from Grandpa, or putting change in a piggy bank – these will all be things of the past.
The unbanked or underbanked
Eight million households in the United States are “underbanked” or “unbanked.” This means that they don’t have any kind of bank account due to fees, bad credit, or other obstacles. These people rely on check-cashing businesses that already take a hefty fee to give them the pay they’ve earned. What will they do when this is no longer an option?
Most of the people who are unbanked or underbanked are living under the poverty line already. This would mean that they can no longer pick up side-gigs to make ends meet, they can’t do odd jobs, and getting them any kind of assistance will be more difficult.
Slate reports how the coin shortage is affecting these Americans:
To the average American, this shortage may only cause minor headaches—a harder time paying at a parking meter or exact change required at a coffee shop. But some 8 million American households, or 6 percent of Americans, are “unbanked,” meaning that because of fees and other financial hurdles, they have no checking, savings, or money market account. Many rely instead on services such as money orders, pawn shop loans, or payday loans. According to Venky Shankar, a marketing professor at the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University, Americans who make $25,000 a year or less use cash for around 45 percent of their purchases. So those Americans might struggle to pay for essential services without change on hand. They also might find it more stressful to round up or donate their change, should stores ask for it. “For an unbanked or underbanked person, it could leave them in a horrible situation if they don’t have access to the cards,” saidAngela Lyons, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (source)
And this is just a coin shortage. Imagine how difficult it would be if our society became completely cashless.
There is an alarming amount of power in access.
So, we can see this isn’t an ideal situation for any of us.
But even these things are relatively minor in comparison to the potential for abuse against citizens in a cashless society. If every single dime you bring in is tracked and recorded, you will have no financial privacy, and you’ll also be at far more risk. Many of us keep some cash savings around the house for emergencies. Even if there is a bank holiday, we’ll be okay because we have the money sitting around to take care of any incidentals while we are unable to access our banked money.
But what happens when things are cashless? All that money we’ve stashed away over the years would have to go into the coffers and we’d lose a certain amount of control.
It’s all well and good when times are okay, but what happens when there’s a Cyprus-style event and the government decides a bail-in is in order? If you don’t recall, back in 2013, billions of dollars were seized from depositors to protect the small country’s banking system. This was done to make good on an $11.6 billion dollar debt owed to creditors outside the country.
If you think that sounds far-fetched – like something that could “never happen here,” it’s incredibly important to note that we already have language that allows for bail-ins here in the United States. After the bailouts for the economic crisis of 2008, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act of January 2010, which prohibits government bailouts but allows bail-ins. So, yes, the money in your account could indeed be used to save a floundering bank.
Not only that, but think about the outrageous phenomenon of civil asset forfeiture. If you aren’t familiar with it, that means that an entity can seize your property or money even when you have not been convicted of a crime. Civil asset forfeiture provides billions of dollars to the US Government and local police departments every single year. Imagine how much easier that would be if your wealth was all in one place.
And let me take it just one step further before I take off the tinfoil – think about how many websites, YouTube channels, and social media accounts have been purged and demonetized over the past few years. Is it that much of a stretch of the imagination that this could be taken a step further?
That perhaps unpopular opinions could be fined and money immediately be withdrawn from the accounts of those who dissent with the status quo?
Maybe I’m just another paranoid conspiracy theorist. But are you actually paranoid when “they” are really out to control you?
- China Blasts US 'Naked Provocation' After U-2 Spy Plane "Entered No-Fly Zone" During PLA Drills
China Blasts US ‘Naked Provocation’ After U-2 Spy Plane “Entered No-Fly Zone” During PLA Drills
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 21:45In the latest tit-for-tat South China Sea saga, China has denounced the United States, lodging “stern representations” with the US embassy, over Pentagon attempts to spy on live-fire military drills over what Beijing claims is its sovereign airspace.
Specifically, according to Reuters, the US is charged with “sending a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills on Tuesday, further ratcheting up tensions between Beijing and Washington.”
US Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane, file image. China’s Defense Ministry called the unpermitted U-2 flight an unsafe threat which constitutes “seriously interfering in normal exercise activities”.
The statement hinted at a threat as well, saying an “unexpected incident” could have easily resulted, which presumably means the spy plane may have been targeted as “drills” could have rapidly transitioned to becoming fully operational under a perceived US threat.
“It was an act of naked provocation, and China is resolutely opposed to it, and have already lodged stern representations with the U.S. side,” the Defense Ministry added.
AP file image of prior PLA Navy live-fire drills in East China Sea. “China demands the U.S. side immediately stop this kind of provocative behaviour and take actual steps to safeguard peace and stability in the region,” the statement said.
It’s as yet unclear precisely where the incident happened, also given China’s PLA military is engaged in multiple small-scale drills, notably in the Bohai Sea and some in the Yellow and South China Seas.
- Hillary Clinton Says Biden Should Not Accept Results Of The 2020 Election
Hillary Clinton Says Biden Should Not Accept Results Of The 2020 Election
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 21:25Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Former first lady and 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton said Joe Biden shouldn’t concede the election because the final results of the election will likely drag out due to mail-in ballots.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually, I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview on Tuesday.
“I think that [Republicans] have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting. They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on Election Day,” she claimed.
“So we’ve got to have a massive legal operation, and I know the Biden campaign is working on that.”
She went on:
“We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places,” Clinton said, urging people to become poll workers in November.
Hillary Clinton has some advice for Joe Biden: Don’t concede in a close race.
The 2016 nominee sits down with @jmpalmieri and @sho_thecircus to urge Dems to pay close attention to GOP strategy. pic.twitter.com/REwfLf1QjS
— The Recount (@therecount) August 24, 2020
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And even if you do concede, always blame the Russians?
President Donald Trump said Monday that mail-in voting access is a politically motivated plan hatched by Democrats.
“What they’re doing is using COVID to steal an election,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention. “They’re using COVID to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election. We can’t do that.”
“Eighty million mail-in ballots they’re working on, sending them out to people that didn’t ask for them,” Trump added. “And it’s not fair and it’s not right, and it’s not going to be possible to tabulate, in my opinion.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden accepts the Democratic presidential nomination during a speech delivered for the largely virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention from the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 20, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Some political observers have said that a winner of the presidential contest might not be declared on Election Day due to mail-in voting delays. The mail-in voting push is designed to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Trump, in recent months, has criticized mail-in voting efforts, accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) earlier this week asserted in an interview that Trump is trying “to scare people from voting, to intimidate them by saying he’s going to have law enforcement people at the polls.”
“But ignore him,” she said, “because his purpose is to diminish the vote, to suppress the vote.”
Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers questioned Postmaster General Louis DeJoy about whether recent reforms at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) were political in nature.
“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy told lawmakers. Last week, he announced that he would suspend some operational and organizational changes that he made, saying that he does not want to create the appearance of a conflict of interest.
- Columbia Journalism Review Explains How The Gates Foundation Manipulates The Media Narrative
Columbia Journalism Review Explains How The Gates Foundation Manipulates The Media Narrative
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 21:05Most of the feature stories published by the Columbia Journalism Review, a mostly-digital biannual “magazine” published and edited by the Columbia School of Journalism and its staff, is sanctimonious media naval-gazing filtered through a lens of cryptomarxist propaganda, written by a seemingly endless procession of washed-up magazine writers.
But every once in a while, just like the NYT, Washington Post and CNN, even CJR gets it (mostly) right. And fortunately for us, one of those days arrived earlier this month, when the website published this insightful piece outlining the influence of the Gates Foundation on the media that covers it.
Most readers probably didn’t realize how much money the Gates Foundation spends backing even for-profit media companies like the New York Times and the Financial Times, some of the most financially successful legacy media products, thanks to their dedicated readerships. For most media companies, which don’t have the financial wherewithal of the two named above, the financial links go even deeper. Schwab opens with his strongest example: NPR.
LAST AUGUST, NPR PROFILED A HARVARD-LED EXPERIMENT to help low-income families find housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving their children access to better schools and an opportunity to “break the cycle of poverty.” According to researchers cited in the article, these children could see $183,000 greater earnings over their lifetimes—a striking forecast for a housing program still in its experimental stage.
If you squint as you read the story, you’ll notice that every quoted expert is connected to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund the project. And if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.
NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.
And that speaks to a larger trend—and ethical issue—with billionaire philanthropists’ bankrolling the news. The Broad Foundation, whose philanthropic agenda includes promoting charter schools, at one point funded part of the LA Times’ reporting on education. Charles Koch has made charitable donations to journalistic institutions such as the Poynter Institute, as well as to news outlets such as the Daily Caller, that support his conservative politics. And the Rockefeller Foundation funds Vox’s Future Perfect, a reporting project that examines the world “through the lens of effective altruism”—often looking at philanthropy.
As philanthropists increasingly fill in the funding gaps at news organizations—a role that is almost certain to expand in the media downturn following the coronavirus pandemic—an underexamined worry is how this will affect the ways newsrooms report on their benefactors. Nowhere does this concern loom larger than with the Gates Foundation, a leading donor to newsrooms and a frequent subject of favorable news coverage.
It’s just the latest reminder that all of NPR’s reporting on the coronavirus and China is suspect due to its links to Gates and, by extension, the WHO. Back in April, we noted this piece for being an egregious example of a reporter failing to make all of the sources links to China explicitly clear. Though a few clues were included.
Of course, even CJR left out certain salient examples of the media’s penchant for protecting Gates. He was reportedly a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s, even reportedly maintaining ties after the deceased pedophile’s first stint in prison.
That photo never gets old.
Of course, the Gates Foundation is unusual in the level of heft it exerts, but it’s not alone. The Clinton Foundation has benefited from equally light-touch treatment from the mainstream press, if not more so. Little unflattering reporting was done on the Clinton Foundation until Steve Bannon helped Peter Schweizer produce “Clinton Cash”.
Read some more of the CJR piece below:
I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate.
The foundation even helped fund a 2016 report from the American Press Institute that was used to develop guidelines on how newsrooms can maintain editorial independence from philanthropic funders. A top-level finding: “There is little evidence that funders insist on or have any editorial review.” Notably, the study’s underlying survey data showed that nearly a third of funders reported having seen at least some content they funded before publication.
Gates’s generosity appears to have helped foster an increasingly friendly media environment for the world’s most visible charity. Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gates’s initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works.
During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac.
In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculture—a level of influence that has landed Bill Gates on Forbes’s list of the most powerful people in the world. The Gates Foundation can point to important charitable accomplishments over the past two decades—like helping drive down polio and putting new funds into fighting malaria—but even these efforts have drawn expert detractors who say that Gates may actually be introducing harm, or distracting us from more important, lifesaving public health projects.
From virtually any of Gates’s good deeds, reporters can also find problems with the foundation’s outsize power, if they choose to look. But readers don’t hear these critical voices in the news as often or as loudly as Bill and Melinda’s. News about Gates these days is often filtered through the perspectives of the many academics, nonprofits, and think tanks that Gates funds. Sometimes it is delivered to readers by newsrooms with financial ties to the foundation.
The Gates Foundation declined multiple interview requests for this story and would not provide its own accounting of how much money it has put toward journalism.
In response to questions sent via email, a spokesperson for the foundation said that a “guiding principle” of its journalism funding is “ensuring creative and editorial independence.” The spokesperson also noted that, because of financial pressures in journalism, many of the issues the foundation works on “do not get the in-depth, consistent media coverage they once did.… When well-respected media outlets have an opportunity to produce coverage of under-researched and under-reported issues, they have the power to educate the public and encourage the adoption and implementation of evidence-based policies in both the public and private sectors.”
As CJR was finalizing its fact check of this article, the Gates Foundation offered a more pointed response: “Recipients of foundation journalism grants have been and continue to be some of the most respected journalism outlets in the world.… The line of questioning for this story implies that these organizations have compromised their integrity and independence by reporting on global health, development, and education with foundation funding. We strongly dispute this notion.”
The foundation’s response also volunteered other ties it has to the news media, including “participating in dozens of conferences, such as the Perugia Journalism Festival, the Global Editors Network, or the World Conference of Science Journalism,” as well as “help[ing] build capacity through the likes of the Innovation in Development Reporting fund.”
The full scope of Gates’s giving to the news media remains unknown because the foundation only publicly discloses money awarded through charitable grants, not through contracts. In response to questions, Gates only disclosed one contract—Vox’s—but did describe how some of this contract money is spent: producing sponsored content, and occasionally funding “non-media nonprofit entities to support efforts such as journalist trainings, media convenings, and attendance at events.”
Over the years, reporters have investigated the apparent blind spots in how the news media covers the Gates Foundation, though such reflective reporting has waned in recent years. In 2015, Vox ran an article examining the widespread uncritical journalistic coverage surrounding the foundation—coverage that comes even as many experts and scholars raise red flags. Vox didn’t cite Gates’s charitable giving to newsrooms as a contributing factor, nor did it address Bill Gates’s month-long stint as guest editor for The Verge, a Vox subsidiary, earlier that year. Still, the news outlet did raise critical questions about journalists’ tendency to cover the Gates Foundation as a dispassionate charity instead of a structure of power.
Five years earlier, in 2010, CJR published a two-part series that examined, in part, the millions of dollars going toward PBS NewsHour, which it found to reliably avoid critical reporting on Gates.
In 2011, the Seattle Times detailed concerns over the ways in which Gates Foundation funding might hamper independent reporting…
* * *
Source: CJR
- Literal 'Battle-Zones' Are Erupting All Over America
Literal ‘Battle-Zones’ Are Erupting All Over America
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 20:45Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
Part of the “new normal” in America seems to be battle zones erupting across the nation. I’m not just talking about protests, but full-on sieges that may last for days, weeks, or even months. Some of these began due to acts of police brutality, while others have taken on lives of their own with wholesale looting and violence.
The United States of America we see today is incredibly different from the one we saw at the beginning of the year. We’ve been wracked by a pandemic, a subsequent economic catastrophe, and massive, widespread civil unrest.
Let’s take a look at these pockets of violent behavior. (WARNING: This article contains videos with violent content.)
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Yesterday, police officers shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back as he tried to enter the vehicle where his children were. Blake is in stable condition and expected to live, but the shocking video has spread virally across social media. You can see the cell phone footage below. (Violence Warning)
This is in Kenosha , Wisconsin spread the word. They are still killing unarmed black men for no reason we need to fight for this injustice #blm #Kenosha #Wisconsin #Milwaukee #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/3laibzeQet
— Brandon Fragoso (@BrandonFragos12) August 24, 2020
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Kenosha, a city in Wisconsin of about one hundred thousand people, quickly erupted in protest of the shooting. (Never think these things only happen in large cities – here is an inside look at the Ferguson riots of 2014.)
Escape the cities… https://t.co/iTuuObjJQq
— TheMadPrepper (@TheMadPrepper) August 24, 2020
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Kenosha, Wisconsin
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 24, 2020
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Protests, riots, and looting are expected to continue in Kenosha.
Denver, Colorado
Not only is Colorado currently beset by wildfires, but it’s also plagued with violent civil unrest. Over the weekend, rioters set out to destroy property in downtown Denver.
Antifa are smashing the windows of every storefront in Denver, Colorado. pic.twitter.com/mhw2xxeSjw
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 23, 2020
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One Twitter user reported that a group of protesters had gathered in front of a police department in Denver, and that a van pulled up to hand out shields.
A protest in front of Denver Police headquarters is small but has escalated quickly. About 50 protesters are here right now, many with shields and helmets. A van pulled up and passed out shields to protesters. Protesters are at a standoff with a SWAT team now #9News pic.twitter.com/XlzmcenfG9
— Marc Sallinger (@MarcSallinger) August 23, 2020
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The Denver “protesters” called for the abolition of police.
A group of about 40 people protested outside the Denver Police Department headquarters Saturday night and marched through streets in the area, blocking traffic. Some clashed with officers, set fires and broke windows…
…Chemical agents were deployed to control the crowd and eight people were taken into custody…
…Copter4 was over 13th and Delaware when people in the group were breaking windows.
People in the group set two small fires, which were quickly extinguished. (source)
Portland, Oregon
Riots have been ongoing in Portland for months, and this weekend, several notable events occurred.
On Saturday, rioters fought one another in the streets.
Protesters at Portland rallies to show support for police and President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign engaged in physical combat repeatedly with counterprotesters Saturday without police intervention. Members of the chaotic crowd used an array of weapons, including baseball bats and firearms to beat and threaten those they opposed…
…Pro-Trump demonstrators, people carrying shields with references to the QAnon conspiracy theory and members of the Proud Boys — a self-described chauvinist group that regularly engages in violence — all gathered around noon, some carrying rifles…
…Counterprotesters from anti-fascist groups like Popular Mobilization PDX also gathered Saturday, and the two groups quickly began shouting at each other and engaging in tense, face-to-face confrontations in front of the Multnomah County Justice Center.
Within an hour of meeting, protesters began to push each other and throw objects. Some demonstrators on the pro-police side fired paintball guns and deployed pepper spray on counterdemonstrators. Other protesters used baseball bats. Many people wore helmets and body armor as they punched, kicked and tore at each other. (source)
This isn’t just a few people yelling and chanting. This is outright fighting – physical violence.
Fighting in the streets pic.twitter.com/8EnuhN5V4q
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) August 22, 2020
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Conservative rioters left the area in the afternoon, but the remaining rioters continued to become increasingly violent into the night until teargas was released to disperse crowds.
The police did not declare an event because they “didn’t have the resources to handle one.”
In a press release distributed Saturday afternoon, Portland police said its officers did not intervene to stop the fighting because those involved “willingly” engaged, its forces were stretched too thin from policing 80+ nights of protests, and the bureau didn’t feel the clashes would last that long.
“Each skirmish appeared to involve willing participants and the events were not enduring in time, so officers were not deployed to intervene,” the release states. (source)
On Sunday night, the NY Post reported that rioters set fire to a police precinct.
Black Lives Matter militants set fire to a police station in Portland Sunday night during yet another night of violence in the Oregon city.
The march on the Portland Police Bureau’s north precinct had already been declared an unlawful assembly as police say they were pelted with “rocks and bottles” and had “powerful green lasers” pointed at them.
But a mob of at least 300 continued to advance despite repeated warnings by police — and lit an awning on the precinct ablaze… (source)
The fire was extinguished without injuries.
A week ago, a man was seriously injured when he was pulled from his vehicle and brutally attacked during an “otherwise peaceful demonstration.”
A crowd gathered around him and repeatedly punched and kicked him in the head until he was bloody.
Witnesses told police the man had been helping a transgender female who had an item of hers stolen, and he was dragged out of the car and beat by nine or 10 people. When police arrived the man was unconscious.
Portland police said their response to the assault was “complicated by a hostile group.” (source)
Shockingly, only one person has been charged in the attack, 25-year-old Marquise Love.
It’s important to note that Portland’s new district attorney, Mike Schmidt, has refused to prosecute protesters that commit criminal acts. The New York Times reports that since he took office on August 1 of this year, he has dismissed charges against half of the more than 600 people who have been arrested for crimes like interfering with the police, disorderly conduct and trespassing. Charges that involve assaulting officers will “require closer scrutiny, with prosecutors taking into account in filing charges whether the police fired tear gas into crowds.”
Unsurprisingly, local law enforcement believes that Schmidt’s policies are making matters worse.
Mr. Schmidt said Portland police leaders told him that they were concerned the directive would lead to more police injuries, though he said nothing prevented officers from making lawful arrests they deemed necessary. (The Portland police chief, Chuck Lovell, said the force “will continue to do the job the community expects of us.”)
The sheriff, Mike Reese, warned Mr. Schmidt in an email that some protesters were bent on “starting fires, damaging property and assaulting police, community members,” adding, “They may feel even more emboldened if there is a public statement that appears to minimize their activities.” In response to one of the sheriff’s concerns, Mr. Schmidt said he revised the policy to greenlight prosecutions for rioting in cases where a defendant was accused of serious offenses.
The Oregon State Police also took a parting shot at Mr. Schmidt as troopers pulled back after a two-week deployment at the protests this month, saying they preferred to put resources in “counties where prosecution of criminal conduct is still a priority.” (source)
The violence in Portland shows no sign of relenting.
Seattle, Washington
Seattle has been the site of some of the most destructive and violent riots in the country – and considering everything I’ve just written about – that’s saying a lot. Riots began back in
A group of protestors took over a six-block area near the Capitol in Seattle, initially naming it the CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) and then changing the name of the area to CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupy Protest) – a move that some have considered extremely meaningful. Riots have taken place on a regular basis and the hands of responders have been tied by the local government.
Initially, the local government in Seattle agreed to slash the police budget by 50% in response to the riots protests, but interestingly, most of the politicians have walked back their initial statements.
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, and widespread police brutality and anti-racist protests, a veto-proof majority of council members voiced their support for defunding the police, slashing 50% of the department’s budget.
But since then, they’ve faced a series of logistical roadblocks and clashed with other city leaders, and ultimately all but one of them have walked back their statements.
The council instead voted for a much smaller round of cuts, including reducing the salaries of Carmen Best, who is Seattle’s chief of police, and members of her command staff as well as trimming about 100 of the department’s 1,400 police officers. (source)
Two days ago, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan vetoed the cuts, but this didn’t stop Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best from announcing her immediate retirement. It’s possible that part of the reason Mayor Durkan changed her tune is, hypocritically, that hundreds of angry protesters arrived to protest in her own neighborhood.
That march prompted the mayor to ask the City Council to investigate Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who took part in the June demonstration. Because Durkan’s address hasn’t been publicly disclosed due to her background as a former U.S. attorney, she said the march was organized with a “reckless disregard of the safety of (her) family and children.” (source)
At the time of publication, protests and riots have been ongoing in Seattle for 87 days.
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago has long been the site of carnage and gang violence, but things have escalated to an entirely different level. On August 10th, an upscale shopping district was pillaged after this shooting occurred.
Hundreds of people swept through the Magnificent Mile and other parts of downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores and confronting police after officers shot a suspect in Englewood hours earlier.
The mayhem marked the second time since late May that the city’s upscale shopping district has been targeted by looters amid unrest, reigniting the debate over policing as city leaders continued to point fingers and downtown again was shut down overnight heading to Tuesday. (source)
The response sounds positively medieval – Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot locked down the city by raising drawbridges to prevent looters from accessing the area. The move has been deeply criticized.
Over the last week, for the second time in three months, Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered most of the bridges up at night to limit access to the Loop, Gold Coast and surrounding areas after an outbreak of property destruction and unrest.
The move was among a number of measures the mayor announced to protect businesses and reassure residents. But it was the image of the bridges being raised that offered the clearest symbol of Chicago’s divisions.
In a time of crisis, in one of the most racially and economically segregated places in the country, the bridges connecting north and south and linking east and west — sides of town that serve as proxies for wealth versus disinvestment — were made uncrossable, like drawbridges over a castle moat.
Longtime Chicagoans say they can’t remember any other time the bridges were raised in the name of crime prevention or public safety. “You’re basically saying you’re protecting one part of the city from another part,” veteran political strategist Delmarie Cobb said. (source)
The most enlightening thing about the loot-fest in Chicago, however, is the justification. According to a Black Lives Matter activist and organizer, Ariel Atkins, it was just “reparations.” Atkins believes that anything the looters wish to damage or steal is owed to them. She made the radical statement at a solidarity rally in front of a Chicago police station, where people were gathered to support those who had been arrested.
“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci’s or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes,” Ariel Atkins said at a rally outside the South Loop police station Monday, local outlets reported.
“That’s a reparation,” Atkins said. “Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance.” (source)
At a time when more people than ever in the United States were willing to get on board and protest police brutality and racial violence, entitled statements like the one made by Atkins have served to return us to a place of absolute division.
New York, New York
New York City has been labeled a “warzone” as violence escalates rapidly. The violence in the Big Apple isn’t directly tied to protests or riots, but instead, appears to be a deadly new way of life.
This brings NYC to more than 1,000 total shooting incidents across the city year to date, already double all of last year, and the summer is not even over — a summer which ironically has witnessed a supposed heightened consciousness and awareness of police shootings of black Americans given the ongoing George Floyd and Black Lives Matters protests.
But in the case of New York City’s explosion of gun violence, people are being killed with the police far away from the scene, though in one instance over a week ago, it was a black police officer shot in Queens while looking for a parking spot merely a mile from his home.
And this weekend, according to local PIX11 News:
Citywide, there were at least 25 shootings that injured 31 people on Friday and Saturday, police said. Officers responded to 16 shootings on Saturday and nine on Sunday.
At least three of those shootings happened within just blocks of each other in Coney Island, according to police.
Among these, there were seven deaths between Friday and Sunday morning, according the NYPD, including a 25-year-old mother of three children.
Priscilla Vasquez was described in local reports as shot in the back of the head by an unknown gunman in the early morning hours of Saturday while standing on a sidewalk in front of a public school, just around the corner from her Bronx home.
Underscoring the senseless and often random nature of much of the violence, her friends and family don’t think she was the intended targeted, also given the gunman appeared to fire wildly and haphazardly. (source)
Police released the following footage of a shooting in Brooklyn.
And it isn’t just shootings and assaults. So many windows have been smashed on NYC subways that the MTA can’t keep up with replacing the glass.
Things aren’t calming down.
If you aren’t already prepared for civil unrest in your own backyard, it’s high time you began to do so. To learn more about surviving riots and civil unrest, check out Selco’s course.
It is not an exaggeration to say that any act of violence by police officers, whether justified or not, is the potential spark for an explosion of unrest. While I certainly agree that the police should be held to very high standards of behavior, it’s unfortunate now that the first thought of most people isn’t, “Why did this shooting occur?” It’s now, “Oh, crap, how close am I to this looming riot?”
I don’t foresee this situation calming down any time soon. In fact, as we draw closer to the election, I expect we’re going to see this type of violence and wholesale destruction reaching smaller and smaller population zones. There have been many rumors about protesters being bussed to smaller towns. It begs the question, are they just testing the waters to see what kind of response will occur when they’re out of urban population centers?
- Watch Live: RNC Day 2 "Land Of Opportunity" – Pompeo, Paul, Sandmann, & Melania
Watch Live: RNC Day 2 “Land Of Opportunity” – Pompeo, Paul, Sandmann, & Melania
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 20:25After last night was mass-media-reprted as having a “darker tone”, the RNC begins night 2 with the theme “Land of Opportunity.”
Living the American Dream
This week, the world witnesses President Trump’s historic pledge to continue putting America first for four more years as he accepts his re-nomination for President of the United States. Part of that pledge is his fight to keep the American Dream alive for future generations. And, I know the importance of the American Dream. I know because I have lived it.
As a first-generation Korean American, my life reflects that the American dream is built on opportunity. I grew up with strong conservative values and have lived them every day as I have worked for a life only the United States of America can offer. I have lived on both coasts, worked for the then-Mayor of New York City and the President of the United States and now have had the opportunity – as the first Asian American to serve as President and CEO of either the RNC or DNC convention – to lead this historic, and unconventional convention. I know the value of hard work, but I also know the worth of opportunity. We have President Trump to thank for championing opportunity and paving the way for the American Dream to continue.
We remember life before this pandemic and the incredible, record-breaking jobs numbers, historic unemployment lows and our booming economy. It was President Trump who led us into that incredible era, and he is doing it again. As he works to revitalize our economy, fight for American businesses and usher in new opportunities for the American worker in these unparalleled times, we know the American Dream is alive and well.
Because of President Trump’s leadership, this country remains the land of opportunity. It’s the land of opportunity for the single mom working to provide for her family and for grandparents who are finally able to plan for their retirement. America is the land of opportunity for the veteran who is jumping back into the workforce and for every American working to build a better future for their children and grandchildren. This land of opportunity has welcomed countless immigrants, like my parents, who sought to follow the law and create a new life for themselves and their families here in the greatest nation in the world. In the United States of America, we know and have lived the American Dream because of the opportunity uniquely found in a nation of people that never stops dreaming.
This land, our land, truly is the land of opportunity. During this historic week, we celebrate all that means for us and for every American still to come.
Tonight’s highlights include Rand Paul, Nick Sandmann, Eric Trump, Mike Pompeo, and Melania Trump:
In order of appearance
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Norma Urrabazo, pastor and executive at the National Latina/Latino Commission
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Myron Lizer, Navajo Nation vice president
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Richard Beasley, former FBI agent
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Jon Ponder, founder and CEO of HOPE for Prisoners, Inc.
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Senator Rand Paul
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Jason Joyce, Maine lobsterman
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Cris Peterson, Minnesota dairy farmer
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Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council
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John Peterson, CEO of Schuette Metals
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Cissie Graham Lynch, granddaughter of Billy Graham
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Robert Vlaisavljevich, mayor of Eveleth, Minnesota
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Abby Johnson, anti-abortion rights activist
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Mary Ann Mendoza, mother whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant
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Nicholas Sandmann, student who sued news outlets after confrontation with Native American activist
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Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general
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Tiffany Trump, daughter of Mr. Trump
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Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds
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Ryan Holets, police officer known for adopting opioid-addicted baby
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Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez
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Eric Trump, son of Mr. Trump
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Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
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First lady Melania Trump
Watch live here:
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- Russia Declassifies Footage Of Biggest Nuke Ever Tested: "Mushroom Cloud 7 Times Higher Than Everest"
Russia Declassifies Footage Of Biggest Nuke Ever Tested: “Mushroom Cloud 7 Times Higher Than Everest”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 20:24Russia has for the first time released full declassified footage of the Soviet Union’s monster nuclear bomb known as the ‘Tsar Bomba’ hydrogen bomb (codenamed “Ivan”).
Widely considered to be the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested, it was detonated 4,000 meters above a sparsely populated archipelago in the Barents Sea on Oct. 30, 1961 as part of a secretive test nevertheless detected by US intelligence.
The bomb had a yield of an estimated 50 megatons, or the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT, and though poor-quality images had already been released, just days ago the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation published a 40-minute full documentary featuring the new declassified video of the bomb detonation after being dropped by a Tu-95 Bear bomber on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Russia’s nuclear industry.
As shown in the new footage, the physical dimensions of the Tsar Bomba was unprecedented at a length of 26 feet and height of 7 feet.
BBC had previously profiled it as “too big to use in war” given the thermonuclear bomb was so powerful it could potentially wipe out any nearby Soviet outpost along with the enemy (the Soviet long-range bomber that dropped it was said to have been impacted by the shock wave even though it was already at least a couple dozen miles away at the moment of detonation).
New declassified footage shows the detonation of the Soviet Union’s 50 megaton Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested https://t.co/kRndXfZzPs pic.twitter.com/v4mFPOAg1b
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) August 22, 2020
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Aspects of the Tu-95V Soviet bomber that dropped it over the Arctic test site had to be modified to accommodate it.
The new footage features never before seen images of the massive bomb being carefully transported by train.
Screenshot via Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation newly released footage. As The Drive details, the footage reveals multiple never before seen angles to the blast which produced a shock wave felt at least 75 miles away and created a mushroom cloud that reached 42 miles into the air, or seven times taller than Mount Everest:
The documentary shows us inside the cockpit of the Tu-95V, where aircrew don protective goggles before we see the 26.5-ton bomb falls away gently under a parachute towards its intended target — the Russian Defense Ministry’s State Testing Site No. 6 — close to Novaya Zemlya’s Matochkin Strait. The detonation itself is recorded from several different aspects, including from the air.
The ‘covert’ Soviet test ended up not being so secret after all, given reports say the blast and resulting mushroom cloud were visible up to 621 miles away, further shattering windows in nearby Finland.
Below is the full declassified video published by Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation:
It was considered the Soviet Union’s final great “doomsday weapon” and thankfully was never to be replicated, though Soviet leaders later boasted they could produce a blast twice as large in any final nuclear showdown with the United States.
For years analysts have said the detonation was so large as to make the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki appear like mini-nukes in comparison.
And The Drive describes further of the new footage:
According to the video, the Tu-95V was 28 miles away from the release point, and the detonation produced a fireball visible 621 miles away, despite cloudy conditions. “The explosion was accompanied by a bright flash of unusual strength,” the narrator explains. Within seconds, a column of dust had risen to a height of around 6 miles.
“The footage then returns to the aircraft, at a distance of 155 miles from the detonation and we see the huge fireball, rising slowly and expanding to reach a maximum of 12 miles across,” the report adds.
New footage shows the moment tha massive ‘Tsar Bomba’ was dropped over the Arctic Barents Sea region. And the cloud ends up reaching an unbelievable forty miles into the atmosphere: “Forty seconds after the detonation, the fireball has reached a height of approximately 19 miles, after which a mushroom cloud begins to form, reaching a maximum height of 37-40 miles and a diameter of 56 miles.”
* * *
Clip focusing on the new blast footage showing multiple angles and distances from detonation site, which makes up the final minutes of the full declassified documentary:
- The Russiagate Hoax Is Dead… But The Fake News Media Can't Admit It
The Russiagate Hoax Is Dead… But The Fake News Media Can’t Admit It
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 20:05Authored by Brian Cates via The Epoch Times,
It’s nothing short of amazing watching the usual “fake news media” suspects still flogging the long-dead Russiagate Hoax when U.S. Attorney John Durham has begun rolling out indictments from it.
Anybody who thinks this stops with the conviction of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith hasn’t followed SpyGate at all for the past three years like I have.
Think about what the Clinesmith indictment reveals: It reveals that Durham and his investigators are going right to the very heart of the fraud perpetrated on the FISA Court.
This very first indictment shows the FBI Crossfire Hurricane team and the Mueller Special Counsel team were well aware by June 2017 of the compelling necessity of hiding from the FISA Court Carter Page’s longstanding relationship with the CIA.
Why did they need to hide that relationship from the court?
Because their “evidence” for the warrant alleging Page was a Russian agent came from a political propagandist named Christopher Steele who was
1) being paid by the Clinton campaign, and
2) misrepresenting the key source providing the Page allegations (who turned out to be a low-level research assistant at the Brookings Institute named Igor Danchenko).
What if the FBI admits to the FISA Court all the relevant facts that
1) Steele is a paid employee of the Clinton campaign,
2) who is using a Brookings research assistant disguised as a top Russian intelligence official as his source,
3) but that the CIA itself says Page is not a Russian agent but is instead a CIA intelligence asset reporting all his Russian contacts to their agency?
FBI Knew Steele’s Fake Evidence Would Not Withstand Real Examination
The moment the FISA Court was alerted to the fact the CIA claimed Page as one of their own, the judge would have had to take a closer look at the Steele information. If that happened, the entire carefully managed fraud would begin unraveling.
How could Page be a Russian agent if he’s been keeping the CIA up to date about his contacts with top Russian officials, the very same contacts the FBI is attempting to use in this warrant in order to claim he is working for the Russians?
If that happened, Steele’s hearsay allegations against Page would be exposed and the FBI was very likely not going to get the warrant approved.
So not only did the FBI end up hiding at least three key relevant facts from the FISA Court to get the original warrant, they kept the fraud going all through the three subsequent renewals of the warrant.
Durham Will Prove Most Involved in the Fraudulent Warrants Knew the Truth About Carter Page and the CIA
Clinesmith altered the key email that stated Page was a CIA source so that it read he wasn’t a source. Clinesmith’s motivation for doing that is readily apparent: Admitting Page was a CIA good guy destroys the entire basis for the surveillance warrant.
Clinesmith altered the one copy of the CIA email that was being sent up to the FISA Court for the fourth renewal in June 2017 while he was also sending other FBI/Mueller team members accurate copies of the same email.
Guess what that’s going to allow Durham to prove?
It’s going to allow Durham to prove with documentary evidence that, just like Clinesmith, other FBI/Mueller team members knew the truth about Carter Page, and yet they still hid this from the court as they continued to obtain warrants through what can only be described as acts of deliberate fraud.
It’s right there in the Department of Justice IG Michael Horowitz’s FISA abuse report from last December that FBI Special Supervisory Agent (SSA) Stephen Somma deliberately hid several things from the FISA Court to get the Page warrant—including Page’s relationship with the CIA.
According to the Daily Caller:
“The report identifies six areas where the agent withheld information that contradicted the FBI’s working theory that Page was an agent of Russia. According to the report, Case Agent 1 withheld exculpatory statements that Page and another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, made to [Stefan] Halper. The agent also withheld information from Justice Department attorneys about Page’s longstanding relationship with the CIA.”
There’s a section in that report that details six separate issues where Somma deliberately withheld evidence to ensure the original warrant and its three renewals were granted.
It’s Not Possible to Limit the Russiagate Hoax to Only Clinesmith
It simply isn’t possible to say that prosecutions for deliberately withholding evidence to fool the FISA Court into granting a warrant based on acts of deliberate fraud can be limited only to Clinesmith. There’s far too much evidence that’s already gone public that clearly shows this goes far beyond and above just him.
Durham is starting his prosecutions by demonstrating that many of the officials involved in this Russiagate Hoax knew from the beginning the basis for claiming Page was a traitor to his country was based on fraud, and they knew they were deliberately framing a CIA source as a Russian agent.
You’re about to see over the next several months the DNC Media propagandists disguised as journalists suffer from cognitive dissonance as they keep trying to claim the Russiagate Hoax is still alive and well even as U.S. Attorney Durham is rolling out indictments of the people that perpetrated it.
- "Stand Down!" – How One Navy Seal Killed A Multi-Billion Hedge Fund
“Stand Down!” – How One Navy Seal Killed A Multi-Billion Hedge Fund
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 19:45It has now been revealed that the fall of Dan Kamensky’s Marble Ridge Capital was at the hands of a former Navy SEAL, turned trader.
Joe Femenia, the head of distressed-debt trading at Jefferies Financial Group, is the man who was outlined in court filings as having taped conversations that brought the hedge fund down, according to Bloomberg. The fund fell after Kamensky urged Femenia to not submit a bid for part of bankrupt retailer Neiman Marcus.
Jefferies and Marble Ridge had been involved in a standoff regarding Neiman Marcus, as they both sought to bid for a portion of the company’s online business, MyTheresa.
Femenia sounded the alarm on the dubious tactic and raised the issue with a U.S. trustee. Highlighting the issue forced Kamensky to acknowledge he had committed a “grave mistake” and forced him to ultimately shut down his fund.
Legal filings show Kamensky telling Femenia to “Stand DOWN”. Probably not a bright thing to say to a Navy SEAL…
Photo: Bloomberg They continued with Kamensky telling Femenia: “DO NOT SEND IN A BID.” This was followed by a “confrontational” phone call between the two, according to court filings.
Femenia took the altercation to Jefferies’ general counsel, who then disclosed it to an official creditor committee that was supervising the sale. Kamensky then urged Femenia, on a second phone call, to “treat the conversation off the books”. He also urged Femenia to “change his recollection” of how their first call went but, by then, Femenia was recording the call.
Kamensky pleaded: “[I]f you’re going to continue to tell them what you just told me, I’m going to jail, OK? Because they’re going to say that I abused my position as a fiduciary, which I probably did, right? Maybe I should go to jail. But I’m asking you not to put me in jail.”
Veteran trader Eric Rosen said: “I have known Joe and always found him to be an honest, upstanding guy and a straight shooter. He risked his life for our country and he seems to have done the honorable thing here.”
Femenia’s track record includes graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy before being a SEAL and spending “much of his 20s” fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He previously worked at the elite trading group at Goldman Sachs before moving to Jefferies in 2016, where he worked as the head of
- LBMA-COMEX Collusion Intensifies As CME Mass Approves 267 LBMA Gold And Silver Bar Brands
LBMA-COMEX Collusion Intensifies As CME Mass Approves 267 LBMA Gold And Silver Bar Brands
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 19:25Submitted by Ronan Manly of BullionStar.com
In a move which has gone entirely unnoticed in the precious metals markets, but which signals gold and silver bar delivery constraints for the COMEX gold and silver futures contracts, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME), operator of the New York based COMEX, has quietly and under the radar, hugely expanded its lists of eligible refinery gold and silver bar brands that can be delivered against the massively traded flagship GC 100 (100 oz gold) and SI (5000 oz silver) contracts.
These changes, which were implemented on 27 July and which are detailed below, also look to be serving an even bigger agenda of preparing for a radical change in the delivery procedures of these two famous contracts so as to facilitate gold and silver stored in London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) vaults in London, England, to be used in settlement against the GC 100 oz and the SI 5000 oz COMEX contracts. Note that the COMEX 100 oz gold futures contract is currently deliverable as either one 100 troy ounce gold bar, or three 1 kilo gold bars, while the COMEX 5000 oz silver futures contract is currently deliverable as five 1,000 troy ounce cast silver bars (with a weight tolerance of 10% either higher or lower).
To reiterate, these changes are to the gold and silver refiner brand lists of the big boy contracts GC 100 and SI. You may recall something similar happening for a new 4GC contract when it was rushed out in late March, but that was just a trial run. This is the main event.
From New York to London
As a reminder and as some background, CME (COMEX) and the LBMA began explicitly colluding on 24 March this year in an attempt to try to reign in the global precious metals markets following an Exchange for Physical (EFP) gold delivery failure in London which caused both a blow out between gold futures and gold spot spreads, as well as a bid-ask spread blowout in London spot gold, and which prompted the LBMA in a public statement to say that it had:
“offered its support to CME Group to facilitate physical delivery in New York”
On the same day, 24 March, Reuters, the embedded LBMA mouthpiece, reported that:
“The LBMA and executives at major gold-trading banks asked CME to allow 400-ounce bars to be used to settle Comex contracts, said the two sources, both of whom were involved in the discussions.”
Again, on the same day, 24 March, the CME Group hurriedly launched a new gold futures contract called the “Gold (Enhanced Delivery) futures contract” (ticker 4GC), a contract which is structured to allow delivery via 100 oz gold bars, or kilo gold bars, or 400 oz gold bars.
Notably, in the 4GC contract, a 400 oz gold bar can be delivered via “Accumulated Certificates of Exchange” (ACEs), a fractional paper construct created by the CME to, in its words, “facilitate the conversion of 400 oz bars in fractional units which can be used for delivery” where “the Clearing House will issue four ACEs. Each ACE will represent an equal share of ownership of the larger bar.”
Cutting the Desk with Sleight of Hand – COMEX ACEs. Source: CME website Importantly, in late March, CME created an entirely new and huge list of eligible gold refiner brands whose bars would be acceptable for delivery against this new ‘Enhanced Delivery’ 4GC futures contract, a list which comprised every gold refiner brand on both the current and former LBMA Good Delivery lists of gold refiners, and every gold refiner brand already on the GC 100 contract eligible gold refiner list at that time.
Whatever it Takes – Add the whole Goddam List
As the CME said in its 24 March press release for the 4GC contract:
“The approved brand list for this product will have complete convergence with the approved brand list for CME Group’s existing gold futures and the LBMA gold good delivery list.”
While this 400 oz 4GC contract launched in late March has hardly traded since then, its primary purpose now looks to have been a trial run to test out linking COMEX precious metals contracts to the London vaults and to the LBMA Good Delivery refiners lists, and to test implement the construction technique for the expanded eligible gold and silver bar brand lists of the GC 100 gold and SI (5000) silver contracts.
As the CME and the LBMA said in another joint statement on 1 April, they “will continue to coordinate efforts as market circumstances evolve”. And continue to coordinate they have.
For those who might not be familiar, the COMEX approved brand list for gold and the LBMA Good Delivery lists for gold were (up until recently) two entirely unrelated lists and concepts. The same was true of the COMEX approved brand list for silver and the LBMA Good Delivery lists for silver – they were two entirely unrelated lists and concepts.
The COMEX approved gold refiner brand list (up until 27 July) was a list of refiners which produced either 100 oz gold bars or 1 kilo gold bars which COMEX judged to be of a sufficient standard to be physically deliverable against the GC 100 gold contract. On the other hand, the LBMA Good Delivery List for gold lists those gold refineries around the world which produce the far larger 400 oz gold bars (central bank gold bars) and whose gold bars are deemed by the LBMA Good Delivery referees to be of a high enough quality for inclusion.
Likewise, the COMEX approved silver refiner brand list (up until 27 July) was a list of silver refiners which produced 1000 oz silver bars, bars which COMEX deemed worthy to be deliverable against the SI silver contract. In contrast, the LBMA Good Delivery List for silver is a far larger list of silver refineries which produce 1000 oz silver bars, including many CHinese refineries, that have been accredited by the LBMA Good Delivery referees.
When at the end of March, CME rushed to create a new gold bar refiner list for the 4GC (400 oz) gold contract, there were 68 gold bar brands listed on the existing GC 100 approved gold bar brand, and this list had not changed in any material way for a long time save for a few additions and deletions of refineries along the way.
In late March for the new 4GC contract, CME took this existing COMEX GC 100 refiner list and merged it with the LBMA Good Delivery List for gold, adding in all the gold refinery brands that were on the LBMA Good Delivery list that had not already been on the GC 100 list. This was a whopping 51 bar brands on the LBMA Good Delivery gold list that were not on the GC 100 refiner list. When these two lists were added together and merged, it resulted in a combined list of 119 approved bar brands, an exact 75% increase over the 68 refineries which were on the GC 100 COMEX gold bar brand list.
4GC Test Run
Next, and this too is very important, the CME also added to the 4GC list all of the gold refineries that are listed on the former LBMA Good Delivery List for gold. For those who don’t know, the LBMA maintains two refiner bar brand lists for gold as well as another two refiner bar brand lists for silver. The current LBMA Good Delivery List for gold lists gold refiners which currently produce 400 oz gold bars which have been accredited by the LBMA.
The former LBMA Good Delivery List for gold lists gold refiners which at some point in the past produced 400 oz gold bars which had been accredited by the London Gold Market referees, such as the Royal Mint’s refinery and Johnson Matthey, which previously administered the London Good Delivery list. This former list is a list of refineries, including historic and long gone refiners, which don’t currently make Good Delivery gold bars (400 oz gold bars) but whose gold bars, before they stopped making them or were taken off the list, are still accepted as London Good Delivery. Note that the history of the Good Delivery list stretches back all the way to 1750. The LBMA has only been in existence since 1987.
There are, wait for it, 111 additional refiners on the former LBMA Good Delivery List for gold that are not on the current LBMA Good Delivery list for gold. This means, in total, when the COMEX 4GC contract went live in early April this year, its approved refiner list of gold bar brands contained the names of a massive 230 refiner bar brands, 68 + 51 + 111 = 230. That’s a 238% increase in the number of refineries compared to the 68 refiners which were on the pre-April GC 100 approved refiner gold list. Ironically, the new 4GC contract has never traded, but was it ever meant to, or was it a red herring to set up the 400 oz London deliverable infrastructure for the GC 100 contract?
GC 100 and SI 5000 – A Live Exercise, Conjob-27
Now fast forward to 27 July, and what do we find? Well on 27 July, the CME (COMEX) in a very low key way and without any media announcements or press releases, quietly slipped in a market regulation filing (MKR) on its website titled “Regularity Approvals for Gold and Silver Brands”, with a short statement as follows:
“From Registrar’s Office
# MKR07-27-20
Notice Date 27 July 2020
Effective Date 27 July 2020
The Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“COMEX” or “Exchange”) has approved certain London Bullion Market Association (“LBMA”) good delivery brands for delivery against the Exchange’s Gold Futures (GC) and Silver Futures (SI) contracts. The list of brands are located in the “Gold (GC) Brands” and “Silver (SI) Brands” tabs in the service providers table at the end of Chapter 7 of the COMEX Rulebook.
These approvals will increase the brands of available material that can be used to satisfy delivery requirements of the Gold Futures (GC) and Silver Futures (SI) contracts and will afford market participants expanded delivery options.
These approvals are effective immediately.”
When one consults the said “Gold (GC) Brands” and “Silver (SI) Brands” tabs of the latest CME service providers table (which is published as a spreadsheet in XLS format here), one sees the following.
On the Gold (GC) Brands worksheet for the flagship GC 100 oz contract, we now find that:
- 51 LBMA approved gold refineries have been added to the eligible brand list for the COMEX 100 (GC 100) gold futures contract. These 51 additional refinery brands are listed directly under the existing refiner list with a subheading of “(Added as of 27 July, 2020)” There were 69 brands on this list prior to 27 July. There are now 120 current brands on the GC 100 gold list. 69 + 51 = 120
- Of the 51 refiner brands, the top three countries represented are 12 refineries are from China, 10 from Japan, and 7 from Russia.
- An additional 111 gold bars brands from the LBMA ‘former’ Good Delivery List for gold have been added to the Gold (GC) brands tab as a separate list beside and to the right of the first list. In total 162 LBMA approved gold bar brands have been added to the COMEX approved gold bar brand list.
- Overall, there are now 231 brands on the COMEX approved gold bar brand list. That’s a 235% increase in the number of gold bar brands that are now on the GC 100 list compared to the 69 that were listed before the 27 July change.
Note that the current LBMA Good Delivery List for gold lists 71 refiner gold bar brands. The former LBMA Good Delivery List lists 115 refiner bar brands.
Silver Panic – Under the Radar
An even bigger bombshell arguably is that the CME and LBMA’s actions are now signaling panic about future physical silver delivery. Turning to the Silver Futures (SI) Brands worksheet, we find that on 27 July, the COMEX SI eligible silver refiner brand list, which up until then had listed 75 silver bar refiner brands, has also been hugely expanded.
On the Silver (SI) Brands worksheet tab of the same service providers XLS, we now find that:
- 65 LBMA approved silver refineries have been added to the eligible brand list for the COMEX SI (5000 oz) silver futures contract. These 65 additional refinery brands are listed directly under the existing refiner list with a subheading of “(Added as of 27 July, 2020)”
- There were 75 brands on this list prior to 27 July. There are now 140 current brands on the current SI silver refiner list. 75 + 65 = 140
- Of the 65 silver refiner brands added, the top three countries represented are 26 silver refineries from China, 11 from Japan, and 5 from Russia.
- An additional 40 silver bars brands from the LBMA ‘former’ Good Delivery List for silver have also been added to the Silver (SI) Brands tab as a separate list beside and to the right of the first list.
In total, 105 LBMA silver bar brands were added by COMEX on 27 July, taking the COMEX SI silver list to a total of 180 eligible silver bar brands. That’s a 140% increase in the number of silver bar brands compared to prior to 27 July, or in other words, 2.4 times more brands on the SI silver brand list than there had been prior to 27 July.
Note that the current LBMA Good Delivery List for Silver lists 84 refiner silver bar brands. The former LBMA Good Delivery List lists 82 refiner bar brands.
In summary, on 27 July, across the GC 100 contract and SI contract refiner lists, COMEX stealthily added 267 LBMA gold and silver refiner brands to the COMEX approved refiner lists using one small paragraph in an obscure hidden filing on its website. Critically, these changes were approved and ‘effective immediately’ on 27 July, the same day that they were announced. How’s that for covert behind the scenes dealings? With COMEX and LBMA hoping no one would notice.
267 gold and silver brands added to the COMEX GC and SI contracts – Nothing to See! The Old Normal
Previously, CME always announced each addition or removal of an approved gold or silver refiner brand separately in a distinct filing, for example, when the ABC Refinery (Australia) brand was added to the GC 100 gold approved refiner list on 5 June this year, or when, CME removed the approval of the gold bar brand of the North Korean central bank from the 4GC approved brand list on July 23 July (the Pyongyang gold bar brand had slipped through the cracks in COMEX’s rush to blanket list all former LBMA brands, this obviously did not go down well in New York, or perhaps in Washington DC).
Another example is the tragicomic addition and subsequent removal of Dubai DMCC’s Al Ethihad Refinery from the GC 100 gold brand list in July, approved and added by CME on 9 July, and then mysteriously removed by CME three weeks later on 31 July without explanation, but market rumor has it that Al Ethihad was kicked off the COMEX gold refiner list due to intervention by JP Morgan.
In contrast to all of these individual additions and deletions, now COMEX has added 267 gold and silver bar brands to its approved in one fell swoop. Nothing like this has ever happened before. So why now?
New Normal – We’re Going to Need A Bigger List
Traditionally, the COMEX futures markets in New York has been known around the world as a venue which trades gargantuan volumes of futures contracts (GC 100 oz gold and SI 5000 silver) that while deliverable, were rarely delivered. This therefore gave the COMEX the reputation of being a relative backwater for physical gold and silver activity. But with contract holders now demanding physical delivery of both gold and silver, that is increasingly less the case.
Huge increase in COMEX GC 100 gold contracts delivered in 2020. Source: www.GoldChartsRUs.com Since late March 2020, a net 879 tonnes of gold has arrived into COMEX approved New York vaults, with total gold stocks more than quadrupling from 271 tonnes to 1151 tonnes. Of these net additions, 461 tonnes have ended up as registered gold inventories, the eligible gold inventories have swelled by other 418 tonnes.
Since April inclusive, a massive 155,430 GC 100 gold contracts have been delivered (warrants changing hands), predominantly across the April, June and August contracts, representing 483 tonnes of gold.
Silver net inflows into COMEX vaults since 23 March have been more subdued, both in terms of size and a percentage of existing stocks, with the net additions totaling about 16.8 million ozs of silver, which has raised total COMEX silver holdings from 323.4 million ozs to the current 340.3 million ozs. But within that, there has been a marked increase in registered silver stocks from less than 3000 tonnes to currently over 4000 tonnes.
Silver SI 5000 oz contracts moving to delivery have also increased massively in the last few months, with vault warrants 9,044 contracts changing hands in May and 17,294 contracts in July. Between April and August to date, 28989 SI contracts, each for 5000 oz of silver have gone to warrant delivery, that’s 144.95 million ozs of silver, or 4500 tonnes. The next active delivery month in SI silver is September, followed by December. Both months currently have huge Open Interest, 59,000 contracts and 120,000 contracts respectively, far larger than available COMEX silver stocks.
Kilo Bars Do Not Explain the Changes
The billion dollar question now is why, on 27 July, did CME blanketly and surreptitiously add 162 LBMA gold bar brands to the COMEX GC 100 eligible gold refiner list and 105 LBMA silver bar brands to the COMEX SI 5000 eligible silver refiner list?
For the GC 100 gold futures contract, the deliverable unit of the 100 oz gold bar is not only not common, it is not usually a gold bar size produced by gold refineries around the world. While the 1 kilobar unit is popular, many of the gold refinery brands added to the GC 100 approved list on 27 July, not to mention those on the former gold LBMA Good Delivery gold list, don’t and never did produce kilo gold bars, let alone 100 oz gold bars.
For example, there is a gold kilobar Good Delivery List maintained by the Singapore Bullion Market Association (SBMA) which only lists 15 refinery brands of gold kilobar. The Dubai Good Delivery Standard (DGD), a 1 kilogram bar standard operated by Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) in Dubai only lists 13 refiner gold brands on its active DGD list, and another 18 on a former list.
So why were 162 LBMA Good Delivery refiner bar brands added to the COMEX list? The large Swiss gold refineries of PAMP, Valcambi, Metalor and Argor-Heraeus were already on the GC 100 gold brand refiner list. As were the Perth Mint, Royal Canadian Mint, Rand Refinery, and Johnson Matthey. Adding a large list of refiners could give a bit of juice in terms of extra kilobar gold brands that could be delivered against GC 100. But not hugely. Besides, looking at the daily COMEX gold inventory reports shows that no gold moved from the 4GC Enhanced Delivery category to the normal reporting category in any of the COMEX vaults after the mass approval of all the extra bar brands, which means there were no previously GC 100 contract ineligible bar brands of 1 kilo or 100 oz units sitting in the vaults waiting to be reclassified.
Plug in London
The more likely and logical explanation is that the COMEX, in conjunction with the LBMA, is planning to change the GC 100 delivery procedure to allow delivery of 400 oz gold bars in London, and the associated paper fractional scheme of Accumulated Certificates of Exchange (ACEs). That’s what they originally wanted and that is the holy grail for the bullion banks.
A telling sign it that CME specifically added 111 gold bar brands on the former LBMA Good Delivery List for gold when many of these refineries are no longer in existence and never ever produced 1 gold kilo bars or 100 oz gold bars. Are the COMEX and LBMA bullion banks that desperate that they are now scraping the proverbial bottom of the London gold vaults, planning to deliver the GC 100 contract into long forgotten 400 oz gold bars in deep storage under the Bank of England?
As noted by Bloomberg in an article in early July:
“CME, which owns Comex where the main gold futures contract is listed, said in March it would offer a new futures contract with expanded delivery options that included 400-ounce bars, which is the size that’s accepted in the larger spot market in London.
On Tuesday [30 June], it announced that traders will also be able to deliver gold in London vaults against the new contract, saying the move would “provide market participants greater opportunity to make and take delivery.”
However, the move falls short of what some market participants had been hoping. The main “GC” gold contract is still only deliverable in the US using 100-ounce bars or kilobars.”
Huge increase in COMEX SI 5000 silver contracts delivered in 2020. Source: www.GoldChartsRUs.com Why too has COMEX added 65 LBMA silver bar brands to the approved silver bar brand list for the SI contract? This entire change in the deliverable brand list for the SI silver contract has completely come in under the market’s radar. Does COMEX plan to push through silver delivery in the London vaults for its SI contract too? It would appear so.
The same question can be asked about why CME (COMEX) has added 40 former silver refineries to its SI approved silver brand list. Is there such an upcoming shortage of physical silver that the COMEX needs to approve every silver refinery on the planet, both current and former, so as to have a large enough universe of silver bars to tap including long forgotten silver bar brands?
The LBMA – CME spin from March to May was that coronavirus lockdowns caused gold delivery logistical delays which were responsible for the price spread blowout between COMEX gold futures and London spot gold. This was also, said the duo, the reason why they needed to launch the 4GC (400 oz) contract, to give market participants ‘enhanced’ delivery options in London from an extended refiner brand list.
Then why has this 4GC contract never been used? And why has COMEX now railroaded through the exact same refiner list changes to the GC 100 contract, as were implemented for the 4GC contract. The only logical explanation is that as the GC 100 refiner list expansion has now occurred so too soon will the additional of London gold vaults as a GC 100 delivery option.
If it wasn’t for those Pesky Rules
As to why COMEX created the 4GC contract in March and didn’t change the GC 100 contract specs to allow 400 oz gold bar delivery, the official line from was that CME cannot change contract that have Open Interest. As CME said in its 4GC FAQ:
“There are significant legal and regulatory concerns with making changes to any existing contract with significant open interest, and we always work to preserve the integrity of each contract for all open interest holders – short and long”
According to the Stone X daily gold market commentary on 1 July, changes to permit gold bar delivery in London against the 4GC contract also require a contract that has no Open Interest:
“The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has announced that it will permit delivery against its new 4GC contract into London vaults. This will be effective as of the September contract, which is the earliest contract in which there is no current open interest (or beyond). Contracts are not allowed to be modified where there is open interest.”
COMEX has already added in the reference to London depositories (vaults) for the 4GC into chapter 7 of its “Delivery Facilities and Procedures”, where the relevant section now reads as follows, with the sentence in bold having been inserted:
“The depository for gold deliverable against the Gold futures (GC) contract must qualify and be designated a weighmaster and must be located within a 150-mile radius of the City of New York. The depository for gold deliverable against the Gold (Enhanced Delivery) futures (4GC) contract must qualify and be designated a weighmaster and must be located within a 150-mile radius of the City of New York or in London, UK.”
A previous version of this Chapter 7 text, from 23 April, had no mention of London, nor of the Gold (Enhanced Delivery) 4GC contract.
It will be interesting to see how COMEX, the LBMA and the bullion banks will get around the “significant legal and regulatory concerns with making changes” to GC and SI contracts that have significant open interest, but with the expanded approved refiner lists now done and dusted, the next step will be to get the CME lawyers, in league with an as always compliant CFTC, to change the GC and SI contract specs. As they used a stealthy and covert approach when implementing the refiner list changes, expect similar such attempts with the contract specs.
This article was originally published on the BullionStar.com website
- Elon Musk's Neuralink Plans To Unveil "Real Time Neuron Demonstration" This Week
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Plans To Unveil “Real Time Neuron Demonstration” This Week
Tyler Durden
Tue, 08/25/2020 – 19:05All we can say is if this Neuralink “reveal” is anywhere as realistic as Tesla’s solar roof tiles – or anywhere as disruptive as putting a Tesla on skates and pushing it through a tunnel under goofy neon lights – we’re glad we’re not signed up as test subjects.
But regardless, Neuralink presses on. The brain-machine interface company that Musk has claimed will be able to cure everything from Alzheimers to compulsive shopping has scheduled an event for later this week to “update the public on its progress” since last year’s presentation.
“Will show neurons firing in real-time on August 28th. The matrix in the matrix,” Musk had tweeted at the end of July.
“Wait until you see the next version vs what was presented last year. It’s *awesome*,” Musk wrote in February. “The profound impact of high bandwidth, high precision neural interfaces is underappreciated. Neuralink may have this in a human as soon as this year. Just needs to be unequivocally better than Utah Array, which is already in some humans & has severe drawbacks.”
Uh, right. Smells like a capital raise could be close, if you ask us.
Neuralink plans on using its own surgical robot for inserting electrodes into the brain to make the leap. So far, the design has been tested on 19 different animals with “around an 87% success rate”. That doesn’t seem too promising, if you ask us – but we’re not brain surgeons.
Come to think of it, neither is Musk.
Regardless, the company’s long term goal is “obtaining human symbiosis with artificial intelligence (AI)”, according to Teslarati. To do that, the company needs to connect electrodes throughout the brain. From there, data is collected from brain signals and analyzed by Neuralink’s software.
Musk has said in the past that installation of Neuralink chips could “restore limb function, improve human movement, resolve issues with eyesight and hearing, and help with diseases like Parkinson’s.”
Human trials could be on the schedule for 2020, according to the company. And yet, we still don’t have full self driving.
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