Oct 26

Today’s News 26th October 2021

  • Germany To Launch EU-Wide Military Force As Frustration Grows After Afghan Debacle
    Germany To Launch EU-Wide Military Force As Frustration Grows After Afghan Debacle

    Ideas for a European Army have long been debated within the EU, which has as its purpose a civilian alliance – thus many have long argued it doesn’t need a military force – which would also be controversial as a parallel force to NATO. 

    But Germany along with four other European Union countries are now seeking to establish a new EU “rapid reaction force” in order to respond quickly to any future military crisis. The group including Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia is pursuing the initiative, citing the lessons learned from Afghanistan and the disastrous pullout which saw many European nationals get stranded in the Taliban-controlled country, with not enough flights or personnel available to evacuate them.

    Image: AFP

    German media outlet dpa days ago confirmed the plan after it obtained new internal documents, describing that the five countries are aiming “to expand the existing EU battle groups, which are multinational military units of 1,500 personnel each on standby to respond to crises.”

    “The new force is expected to include space and cyber capabilities, along with special forces and air transport,” the report indicated.

    Currently, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is in favor of the initiative, saying in a recent interview that EU forces within NATO are only able to conduct defensive operations within the context of United States support. Thus there’s a desire for a more independent force that can deploy rapidly without seeking broader US and NATO approval first, or going through NATO hurdles.

    When rumors of the plan were circulating earlier this year, one EU official was quoted as explaining that “What we have in mind is… to be able to deploy quickly this response force if for instance you have a legitimate government in a specific country which is afraid of a possible takeover by a terrorist group.”

    However, there’s this interesting pushback by Germany’s Left Party cited in Deutsche Welle:

    Meanwhile, Germany’s far-left Left party immediately denounced the plan, saying that leaders were drawing the wrong conclusions from Afghanistan.

    “The EU does not need a new intervention force. The EU should be a civilian alliance,” deputy party head Tobias Pflueger told dpa. The problem in Afghanistan was that nations had attempted to “democratize a country by military means,” he said.

    In the end it sounds like an EU reaction force is an attempt to regain control of foreign policy among some European countries recently frustrated at being dragged along by US interventionism abroad within the context of NATO, with Libya being another foremost example.

    It seems the heart of the problem could be EU nations’ inability to stand up to the United States or more powerful NATO states like France, when it comes to decision-making on situations such as toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or far-flung battlefields in central Asia.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/26/2021 – 02:45

  • Polish PM Says EU Holding 'Gun To Our Head' Over Funds; Could Start 'WW3'
    Polish PM Says EU Holding ‘Gun To Our Head’ Over Funds; Could Start ‘WW3’

    via southfront.org,

    On October 24th, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki vowed to take apart a disciplinary chamber for judges that the European Court of Justice found to be illegal by year’s end.

    Still, he accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head”, urging Brussels to withdraw threats of legal and financial sanctions if it wanted to resolve the country’s rule of law crisis.

    Morawiecki warned that if the European Commission “starts the third world war” by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal”.

    The crisis of the rule of law in Poland has jeopardized the allocation of EU funding to Warsaw. Recently, the Constitutional Court of Poland confirmed the superiority of the constitution of the republic over the legislation of the European Union against the background of several verdicts of the EU Court, which condemned the actions of the Polish authorities.

    As a result of the conflict, Brussels has already postponed approval of a €36 billion package of measures to restore the Polish economy from COVID-19.

    Several member states of the commission have called for additional measures that could jeopardize the tens of billions of euros paid by the EU to Warsaw every year.

    “What will happen if the European Commission starts a third world war? If it starts a third world war, we will defend our rights with any weapon that we have at our disposal,” Morawiecki said.

    Morawiecki added that any action aimed at cutting funding will be met with harsh retaliatory measures.

    Earlier, on October 19, the prime minister said that Poland by the end of the year will liquidate the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, which the European Court has declared illegal. According to the newspaper, the move is aimed at easing tensions in a protracted dispute that has raised concerns over Poland’s exit from the EU.

    The leaders of the EU member states at the summit in Brussels in December 2020 agreed on a multi-year EU financial plan and a fund for the recovery of the European economy, which were previously blocked by Poland and Hungary.

    The claims of Poland and Hungary concerned the intention of other countries to link the allocation of money from the EU budget to the rule of law in individual countries. In July 2020, EU leaders agreed on a €750 billion package to fund the recovery of Europe, whose economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    This emergency package is linked to the EU’s multi-year financial plan of 1.08 trillion euros and includes the possibility of providing concessional loans and subsidies to the countries of the union.

    Western and Northern European countries have pushed for the introduction of a “conditional mechanism” to ensure that the recipient states of the pan-European funds adhere to the values ​​and norms of the European Union, and that the EU has a mechanism to stop such financing in the event of a departure from the norms.

    The “conditional mechanism” was introduced against the background of many years of disagreements in the EU, primarily due to the actions of the authorities of Poland and Hungary, which are criticized by Western European countries for the inconsistency of policy with the principles of the rule of law.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/26/2021 – 02:00

  • Public Health Or Private Wealth? How Digital Vaccine Passports Pave Way For Unprecedented Surveillance Capitalism
    Public Health Or Private Wealth? How Digital Vaccine Passports Pave Way For Unprecedented Surveillance Capitalism

    Authored by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Bluemnthal via TheGrayZone.com,

    The titans of global capitalism are exploiting the Covid-19 crisis to institute social credit-style digital ID systems across the West…

    The death by starvation of Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow from the rural Indian state of Jharkhand, might have passed without notice had it not been part of a more widespread trend.

    Like 1.3 billion of her fellow Indians, Devi had been pushed to enroll in a biometric digital ID system called Aadhaar in order to access public services, including her monthly allotment of 25kg of rice. When her fingerprint failed to register with the shoddy system, Devi was denied her food ration. Throughout the course of the following three months in 2017, she was repeatedly refused food until she succumbed to hunger, alone in her home. 

    Premani Kumar, a 64-year-old woman also from Jharkhand, met the same demise as Devi, dying of hunger and exhaustion the same year after the Aadhaar system transferred her pension payments to another person without her permission, while cutting off her monthly food rations. 

    A similarly cruel fate was reserved for Santoshi Kumari, an 11-year-old girl, also from Jharkhand, who reportedly died begging for rice after her family’s ration card was canceled because it had not been linked to their Aadhaar digital ID.

    These three heart-rending casualties were among a spate of deaths in rural India in 2017 which came as a direct result of the Aadhaar digital ID system.

    With over one billion Indians in its database, Aadhaar is the largest biometric digital ID program ever constructed. Besides serving as a portal to government services, it tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status, and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India.

    Having branded Aadhaar’s creator, fellow billionaire Nandan Nilekani, as a “hero,” initiatives backed by tech oligarch Bill Gates have long sought to bring the “Aadhaar approach to other countries.” With the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, Gates and other mavens of the digital ID industry have an unprecedented opportunity to introduce their programs into the wealthy countries of the Global North.

    For those yearning for an end to pandemic-related restrictions, credential programs certifying their vaccination against Covid-19 have been marketed as the key to reopening the economy and restoring their personal freedom. But the implementation of immunity passports is also accelerating the establishment of a global digital identity infrastructure.

    As the military surveillance firm and NATO contractor Thales recently put it, vaccine passports “are a precursor to digital ID wallets.”

    And as the CEO of iProove, a biometric ID company and Homeland Security contractor, emphasized to Forbes, “The evolution of vaccine certificates will actually drive the whole field of digital ID in the future. So, therefore, this is not just about Covid, this is about something even bigger.”

    For the national security state, digital immunity passports promise unprecedented control over populations wherever such systems are implemented. Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada has described the vaccine passport system already active in her province as “a new, inescapable web of surveillance with geolocation data being tracked everywhere.” 

    For tech oligarchs such Bill Gates and neoliberal institutions such as the World Economic Forum, digital ID and digital currency systems have already enabled the extraction of unbelievable profits in the Global South, where hundreds of millions of people remain “unbanked” and therefore outside the sphere of electronic payments systems. 

    Now, with grassroots protest building against an exclusionary regime of vaccine passports, the captains of global capitalism are campaigning with more urgency than ever to bring digital ID to the West.

    For these elite interests, the digitization of immunity passports represent a critical tool in a long-planned economic and political transformation.

    “With no Covid Pass, my wife and I are banished from society”

    Across the globe, the certification of vaccination against COVID-19 is already a requirement to participate in daily life. 

    In Indonesia, COVID-19 vaccines are mandatory, and those who refuse may face fines or be refused access to public services. In Greece, residents must present immunity to work in or enter bars, theaters, and other indoor public spaces.

    France has similarly required residents to carry a health pass for access to all restaurants, bars, trains, and any venue accommodating more than 50 people, a decision that has stoked widespread protests throughout the country. The socialist French former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has blasted the new restrictions as “absurd, unfair and authoritarian.”

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

    Italy has mandated its Green Pass for all workers, threatening them with termination from jobs and suspension of pay. Italy also requires the pass to use Italian public transit. Scenes of private security over-enforcement of the Green Pass and the exclusion of Italy’s elderly from vital services have already begun to go viral on social media.

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

    Restrictions for Lithuanians who are not double vaccinated or unable to demonstrate recent prior infection from Covid-19 represent some of the harshest in the world. They are banned from restaurants, all non-essential stores, shopping centers, beauty services, libraries, banks or insurance agencies, universities, inpatient medical care, and train travel.

    Gluboco Lietuva, a self-described “Lithuanian father” who has refused vaccination, stated on Twitter: “With no Covid Pass, my wife and I are banished from society. We have no income. Banned from most shopping. Can barely exist.”

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

    Four out of ten Canadian provinces currently require citizens to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter indoor public venues like restaurants and theaters. All federal public servants and some other workers must be vaccinated to keep their jobs.

    The government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also requires all air travelers and interprovincial train travelers to be vaccinated. Canada’s Alberta province took the measures a step further this September when it announced that those who cannot prove full COVID vaccination will no longer be allowed to socialize indoors in groups of more than 12.

    In Israel, meanwhile, only those who have received three doses can work or shop indoors and go to restaurants; citizens who received two shots over six months ago are now considered unvaccinated. This rule has consolidated what even the New York Times has deemed a “two-tier system for the vaccinated and unvaccinated … raising legal, moral and ethical questions.” 

    In the US, President Joe Biden is “moving forward with vaccination requirements wherever [he] can.” Biden, who declared that his “patience is wearing thin” with unvaccinated Americans, recently announced new federal requirements mandating that about 80 million Americans – including all those who work at companies with more than 100 employees – must either be vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 weekly. 

    Biden has also mandated that those working at facilities which receive Medicare or Medicaid must show proof of immunity to keep their jobs. According to AP, President Biden is considering proof of immunity for interstate travel, a restriction his former public health advisor, Ezekiel Emanuel, has clamored for. 

    In the state of Colorado, the UCHealth hospital system has announced that it will not allow organ transplants to be performed on unvaccinated patients, prompting some to travel to Texas for life-saving procedures.

    New York City offers a glimpse of the program in store for the rest of the country. The city’s “Key to NYC” requirement, which went into effect September 13, requires proof of vaccination to work at or attend indoor dining, indoor fitness, and entertainment venues like museums, stadiums, arcades, and theaters.

    “If you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” Mayor De Blasio stated. “[New York City] is a miraculous place literally full of wonders … if you’re un-vaccinated, unfortunately, you will not be able to participate.”

    COVID-related mandates could be permanent

    While outlets like CNN have referred to vaccine passports as a “useful, temporary measure,” it is increasingly evident that the proof of immunity restrictions imposed on Western populations may not go away any time soon.

    Australia’s New South Wales Ministry of Health Dr. Kerry Chant has stated that citizens “need to get used to being vaccinated with COVID vaccines for the future… it will be a regular cycle of vaccination and revaccination.”

    Albert Bourla, CEO of the Pfizer corporation that has seen its stock skyrocket during the pandemic, remarked that the “most likely scenario” is coronavirus vaccine shots mandated on an annual basis.

    As a February Nature headline read, “the coronavirus is here to stay.” Or, as Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Emergency Program, put it: it is “very, very, unlikely” that COVID-19 will ever go away. 

    “Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “It’s unrealistic.”

    “This is our life from now, in waves,” Israel’s Coronavirus Czar, Salman Zarka, acknowledged. 

    Already, Zarka has prepared plans to mandate a fourth dose for Israelis.

    COVID mandates to be digitally enforced

    While a state-mandated treadmill of boosters may seem unappealing to many, if not outright hellish, for others the nightmare presents the opportunity of a lifetime. As early as May 2020, only seven weeks after the pandemic was declared, US tech billionaire Bill Gates predicted that “eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” 

    Now, over a year later, a growing number of local and national governments require some form of digital proof of vaccination or natural immunity against COVID-19. 

    Those who want to travel to Canada, for example, are required to download an app that verifies the vaccination status of incoming travelers. The government also plans to introduce a federal, Canada-wide digital vaccine passport in the coming months.

    When the European Union (EU) opened up to foreign tourists this summer, it introduced a “Digital COVID Certificate” which granted entry to those vaccinated against COVID-19, those who have had a negative test, or those who recently recovered from an infection. Its proposed “Digital Green Certificate” has been branded as a means to facilitate safe free movement inside the EU during the pandemic.

    The government of France is partnering with a biometric technology company called IDEMIA to “make it easier for its citizens to prove their identity and complete online transactions using a smartphone.” The new app will “enable French citizens to place their national electronic identification cards [introduced to France as a COVID-19 response in August 2021] …  on the back of their smartphones and have their identity instantly confirmed.” IDEMIA is also helping France certify travelers immunity data with their Health Travel Pass suite. 

    The US is still accepting paper vaccination records, and President Biden has insisted no national app is in the works. However, seven U.S. states (California, New York, Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, and Hawaii) have already implemented apps certifying vaccination against COVID-19 and have various degrees of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in place.

    ImmunaBand, a wearable wristband, whose company mission is “to bring the world a little closer in a time of the COVID-19 pandemic and for you to demonstrate to the world your vaccination status,” has also been approved by New York City as proof of vaccination.

    “In typical American fashion, the US government is relegating the creation of digital vaccination certifications to the private sector,” stated the non-profit Data & Society. 

    Indeed, behind the push for digital vaccine passports is a coterie of supra-national neoliberal institutions guided by oligarchic tech industry donors.

    Elite corporate interests behind digital COVID passports

    Mega-corporations, international finance institutions, and billionaire-backed private foundations have played a vital role in lobbying for and implementing digital immunity passports.

    The burgeoning global health passport system has been coordinated under the umbrella of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO). However, this institution is so intertwined with wealthy private interests it can hardly be characterized as a “public” health body. 

    As former WHO director Margaret Chan told filmmaker Lilian Franck, “only 30 percent of my budget is predictable funds. The other 70 percent, I have to take a hat and go around the world to beg for money. And when they give us the money, [it] is highly linked to their preferences, what they like.”

    Chief among those private funders is the second wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which happens to be the second largest donor to the WHO.

    Bill Gates with World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom

    The Gates Foundation recently helped fund a WHO paper providing “implementation guidance” for proof of vaccination certifications across the world. The authors crafted the paper alongside the Rockefeller Foundation and with guidance from several high-level representatives of the World Bank.

    According to Foreign Affairs, “few policy initiatives or normative standards set by the WHO are announced before they have been casually, unofficially vetted by Gates Foundation staff.” Or, as other sources told Politico in 2017, “Gates’ priorities have become the WHO’s.”

    Also at the forefront of the shift to digital credentials is the World Economic Forum (WEF). “The Forum is involved in the WHO task force to reflect on those [vaccine credential requirements] standards and think about how they would be used,” reads a May WEF article.

    On paper, the WEF (also known as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation) is an NGO and think tank “committed to improving the state of the world.” In reality, it is an international network of some of the wealthiest and most influential people on the planet. The Forum positions itself as the thought leader of global capitalism.

    The organization is best known for its annual gathering of the global ruling class. Each year, hedge fund managers, bankers, CEOs, media representatives, and heads of state gather in Davos to “shape global, regional and industry agendas.” As Foreign Affairs put it, “the WEF has no formal authority, but it has become the major forum for elites to discuss policy ideas and priorities.”

    In 2017, German economist and WEF founder Klaus Schwab introduced the concept of “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” with the title of the book he published that year. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) denotes the current “technological revolution” that is changing the way people “live, work, and relate to one another,” and with implications “unlike anything humankind has experienced,” according to Schwab.

    For him, the 4IR is the “merging of the physical, digital and biological worlds.” Schwab has even said that the 4IR will inevitably veer into trans-humanism, or human genome editing.

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

    In January 2021, several WEF partners, including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and several other “heavyweights,” announced a partnership to launch the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI) to develop digital immunization authentication tools, according to Forbes.

    Aiming to institute a single “SMART Health Card” for the world, the VCI intends for its SMART Health Cards to be recognized “across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.”

    In the US, some states are already deploying the SMART Health Cards developed by the VCI. These SMART Health Cards have laid the basis for a de-facto national standard for vaccine credentials.

    “If enough states embrace the technology, it could become a de facto nationwide standard and relieve the Biden administration of having to lay out federal requirements for domestic purposes,” Politico noted.

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

    The latest version of Apple’s iOS, iOS 15, even includes SMART Health Card support.

    As of today, those who received a vaccine in California, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, or certain counties in Maryland can obtain a SMART Health Card from the state.

    In most other states, a SMART Health Card is available to those who were vaccinated at one of more than 17,100 CVS, Walgreen’s, or Rite Aid pharmacy chains nationwide.

    “More states, pharmacies, and health systems will begin issuing SMART Health Cards very soon,” promises the site of the Commons Project, one of the founders of the VCI initiative.

    Commons Project CEO Paul Meyer happens to be a WEF “young leader.” 

    Commons Project CEO and World Economic Forum Young Leader Paul Meyer

    In India, tech oligarchs use digital ID to force social credit on rural poor, spawning exclusion and even death

    In 2015, The Gates Foundation provided seed money to a Yale School of Public Health project that would become known as Khushi Baby. Now a non-profit, Khushi Baby makes microchip-equipped necklaces for a child to wear at all times to track their vaccination status and establish continuous monitoring from their first immunizations through adulthood. The non-profit says it is now using data from over 35,000 villages in India to create algorithms that “predict health outcomes for mothers and children.” 

    From the website of KhushiBaby.org

    In 2016, IDEMIA, the security firm now working with the French government on vaccination and identity verification, designed the microchip-equipped necklaces. The necklaces have been used to track health data for 13 million people in India since the beginning of the pandemic.

    These programs have been marketed by corporate consultants as essential tools for improving equality and inclusion in the Global South. “Digital identification is key to inclusive growth,” claimed McKinsey, the global consulting firm, in 2019.

    “Something like 1 billion people could be more financially included and participative,” said Mike Kubzansky, managing partner of Ebay founder and media mogul Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network during a WEF panel exploring how “Digital Identification Provides a Significant Opportunity for Value Creation.”

    Like Gates, Omidyar is heavily invested in the advancement of digital ID and currency systems through his Omidyar Network, which collaborates with the World Economic Forum on the Good ID initiative.

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

    A closer look at the push for “inclusion” by corporate behemoths reveals their altruistic language as little more than public relations cover for raw profit motives, resulting in marginalization and even death for many of those roped into their digital ID systems.

    Besides serving as the staging ground for the Khushi Baby venture, India has become a laboratory for digital tracking and identity systems. With support from Western capitalist outfits like the Gates Foundation and the World Bank, the country has become the site of the world’s largest digital ID database, known as Aadhaar.

    The Aadhaar system is named for a 12 digit number that serves as a proof of identity and address, among other markers, anywhere in India. To date, a whopping 1.3 billion Indians have been enrolled in the system, making it the largest biometric ID database ever constructed. It contains iris scans and fingerprints from both hands of each user. The technology for this system was provided by none other than the French security firm IDEMIA.

    Nandan Nilekani, creator of the Aadhar digital ID system, with Bill Gates

    Aadhaar was implemented in 2014, the year that the free marketeering, tech-centric Narendra Modi entered the prime minister’s office. Its creator, tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani, has been branded “the Bill Gates of Bangalore,” celebrated by globalization enthusiasts like Thomas Friedman, and hailed by none other than Gates as an altruistic “hero.” Gates’ foundation has collaborated with Nilekani through its “Co-impact” project alongside billionaire eBay co-founder Jeffrey Skoll’s Skoll Foundation.

    “Aadhaar is a huge asset for India,” effused Gates in a 2019 interview with the Indian network Times Now. “The fact that you can make digital payments and open a bank account so easily, India is a leader in that. There are huge benefits in being able to get digital government money to the beneficiary.”

    But behind the neoliberal spin, Nilekani’s Aadhar digital ID system has wreaked havoc on the lives of India’s most vulnerable and stigmatized populations.

    In the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, a wave of deaths took place in 2017 when impoverished citizens were cut off from government-subsidized food rations by the Aadhaar system. In several cases, aging widows were denied rice for several months because the system rejected their fingerprint scans.

    Around the same time, three brothers died of starvation after they failed to properly register with Aadhaar and were subsequently denied rations for six months. The same cruel fate was visited on the Kumari family, which was unable to obtain an electronic Aadhaar ID, lost its ration card, and saw its 11-year-old daughter, Santoshi, die of hunger.

    “Many people in Jharkhand have been victims of similar deprivation of food entitlements during the last few months,” reported India’s Scroll. “The main reason is that Aadhaar-based biometric authentication is now compulsory in about 80% of ration shops in the state.”

    According to Scroll, a random sample of 18 villages where biometric authentication was compulsory found that a staggering 37% of cardholders were unable to buy their food rations.

    Besides making Aadhaar the key to obtaining government services, the Modi government has integrated data collected by Aadhar to establish a “360-degree database” that “automatically track[s] when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, or buys a new property,” according to the Huffington Post. 

    When Covid-19 first reached India in early 2020, Nilekani proposed employing Aadhar as the basis for an anti-Covid vaccination and tracking program. “We must ensure that everybody gets a digital certificate with the date of vaccination, name of the vaccine and through which vendor and at what location,” he declared in 2020.

    Unsurprisingly, Nilekani’s system of mass surveillance has proven much more effective at harvesting data than it has been at protecting it. In 2018, the Indian Tribune newspaper was able to purchase the personal information of nearly every Aadhaar user through anonymous sellers over WhatsApp. The process took only 10 minutes and cost about $6 USD, the paper reported.

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

    The system’s serial breaches of privacy even prompted some HIV-positive Indians to drop out of antiretroviral treatment programs that require the Aadhaar card. Though the Aadhaar is said to be voluntary, individuals with HIV have complained to Indian media that they were pressured into enrolling into the ID program, and had been threatened with the loss of medical services.

    US privacy advocates have pointed to digital national identity programs like Aadhaar as gargantuan surveillance tools that establish the basis for a social credit system.

    Addressing the US House Committee on Financial Services in July 2021, Elizabeth Renieris of Notre-Dame’s Technology Ethics Lab warned, “The Aadhaar number in India is able to track your activity across all facets of your life, from employment to healthcare, to school, to pretty much everything you do. You can’t retain autonomy over specific domains of your life. You can’t separate your personal and professional reputation. You can’t have this kind of contextualized personal identity. I think that’s really problematic.”

    “We must avoid building digital identity systems and infrastructure in a way that further expands and entrenches the surveillance state, as does the national identity system in India,” Renieris continued. 

    But it is the all-encompassing social credit aspect of Aadhaar that has made Gates so fond of the system. 

    Addressing India’s top policy makers in 2016, the world’s second wealthiest man declared, “Over time, all of these transactions create a footprint and so when you go in for credit, the ability to access the history that you’ve paid your utility bills on time, that you’ve saved up money for your children’s education, all of those things in your digital trail, accessed in an appropriate way allow the credit market to [score the risk properly].“ 

    ID4D expands digital ID to track more human activity than ever

    In 2016, the Gates Foundation ponied up funding for a World Bank project called the Identity for Development (ID4D) Initiative for the declared purpose of bringing the “Aadhaar approach to other countries.”

    To date, the World Bank has invested $1.2 billion into the ID4D initiative, with the official aim of creating “identification systems using 21st Century solutions.”

    Among the four financial partners that established the initiative were two familiar Big Tech-backed operations: The Gates Foundation and The Omidyar Network, along with Australian Aid and UK Aid. According to the World Bank, the Gates Foundation’s “catalytic contributions” in particular transformed the project from an idea to a functional World Bank initiative.

    Aadhaar’s Nilekani currently sits on the ID4D Initiative advisory council.

    According to the World Bank, ID4D “promote[s] the use of digital ID systems for free movement and service delivery, by creating linkages across systems that allow users to authenticate themselves for key services such as receiving social transfer payments, completing financial transactions, and crossing borders.”

    Promotional materials frame this venture as a humanitarian cause centered on helping poor women and making sure ”unbanked” individuals (those without a bank account) such as refugees and migrants are included in the modern economy. 

    Yet a closer look at the initiative’s backers and their agenda reveals a longstanding goal of the captains of global capitalism: creating a digitally centered identity system that enables powerful public and private institutions to track more human activity than ever.

    “Digital ID … can be leveraged by government and commercial platforms to facilitate a variety of digital transactions, including digital payments,” explains the World Bank. 

    In an August 2021 white paper, the World Bank called on African nations to achieve a “single digital market” and loosen regulations on digital infrastructure to lower the risk for investors. The paper revealed the real intentions behind the World Bank’s push for a closure to the digital divide: opening up the continent for foreign investment. “Government regulation,” the paper declared, “needs to smoothen the path to digital transformation in the region.”

    “By accelerating Africa’s digital transformation, businesses can reap the benefits,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) proclaimed in a 2020 article titled, “Africa has the potential to boost global growth.”

    “There will […] be lucrative opportunities in Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia … a good bet for companies seeking to enter new markets,” the WEF advised.

    As the World Economic Forum recently wrote, “COVID-19 has highlighted the advantages of creating a digital economy.” Yet the advantages the group speaks of will likely fall on the side of its stakeholders. 

    Partners of the World Economic Forum’s “Platform for a Good Digital Identity ” include the biometric ID firm Accenture, Amazon, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank, Mastercard, the biometric technology firm Simprints, and the credit giant, Visa. 

    The initiative’s stakeholders represent the key beneficiaries of a biometric ID system imposed on the Global South, with Western multinational financial firms functioning as the gateway for its inhabitants to participate in the global economy.

    The WEF has also made clear that the “end goal” of its agenda is expanding the model it established in India until every person in the world holds a unique digital ID. 

    In an article titled “Digital ID is the Catalyst of Our Digital Future,” Mohit Joshi, a WEF ‘young leader,’ argued that “governments should use [Aadhaar] to streamline the delivery of services and payments, and massively increase financial inclusion.”

    In a separate paper, however, the WEF conceded that the new digital system will not necessarily provide users with the liberation they have been promised: “Fourth Industrial Revolution digital identity will determine what products, services, and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us,” the WEF stated.

    ID2020 leverages vaccinations to push “beyond dystopian” digital ID’s and payments

    Back in 2016, Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), Microsoft, Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation established a new consortium to provide digital ID certificates to infants when they receive their routine immunizations. They called it ID2020, incidentally naming it for the year that a global pandemic would be declared.

    ID2020 says it is “dedicated to spearheading a global digital biometric identity standard,” and claims Digital IDs will lead to “financial independence.”

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

    Partners in the ID2020 initiative include the credit card giant Mastercard and Simprints, a biometric technology firm supported by the US Agency for International Development, a traditional front organization for US intelligence.

    From video of USAID’s May 2018 introduction of biometric data at refugee settlements in Uganda

    Mastercard’s ‘community pass’ project aims to capture the biometrics of 30 million individuals in remote parts of Africa over the next three years and issue them a Mastercard Community Pass biometric smart card, which will in turn provide Africans with a digital biometric identity and a digital bank account. 

    ID2020 is currently operating in Bangladesh, where it administers biometric enrollment and digital ID to infants when they receive routine immunizations. GAVI CEO Seth Berkely has said he plans to expand the program across the underdeveloped world, working with mega-corporations such as Facebook and Mastercard to tie vaccination status to a biometric identification system.

    “Eighty-nine percent of children and adolescents without identification live in countries supported by Gavi,” Berkley stated. “We are enthusiastic about the potential impact of this program not just in Bangladesh, but as something we can replicate across Gavi-eligible countries.”

    With the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic in March 2020, an unprecedented opportunity arrived for the forces advancing digital IDs. As Andrew Bud, the CEO of biometric tech company and Department of Homeland Security contractor iProov, enthused, “The evolution of vaccine certificates will actually drive the whole field of digital id in the future. So, therefore, this is not just about Covid, this is about something even bigger.”

    By the following year, ID2020 and the USAID-partnered biometric ID firm, Simprints, had leveraged funding from Gates Foundation to publish an article entitled, “COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery: An Opportunity to Set Up Systems for the Future.” The authors argued that COVID-19 vaccines in the Global South could be used as a “potential lever” to deliver digital biometric IDs.  

    They went on to admit that such digital biometric systems would stay in place long after the COVID-19 pandemic was over, and would be exploited for an array of purposes after the rollout: “Biometrics have the advantage of being agnostic to use case,” the co-authors wrote, “meaning they can connect different systems during or even after rollout.” 

    From Simprints.com

    Elizabeth Renieris of the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab resigned from a technical advisory role on ID2020, citing “risks to civil liberties” after the initiative teamed up with tech giants to design COVID immunity passports backed up by experimental blockchain technology. 

    Renieris went on to denounce the burgeoning ID system as a civil liberties nightmare: “The prospect of severely curtailing the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals through ill-thought-out plans for ‘immunity passports’ or similar certificates, particularly ones that would leverage premature standards and a highly experimental and potentially rights-infringing technology like blockchain, is beyond dystopian.”

    Digital ID mavens prey on the global poor

    While linking a digital biometric ID to individuals’ finances is almost certain to exclude masses of people, and has even killed some by cutting impoverished citizens off from government services, predatory financial and credit institutions see the technology as the perfect means for capitalizing on untapped and developing markets. 

    A September 2021 report by BankservAfrica, the largest automated digital payments clearinghouse in Africa, which is headed by former executives at MasterCard, VISA, and IBM, urged South Africa to adopt a biometric digital ID system.  

    The report proclaimed, “The time has come for consumers, investors, and the private and public sectors to work collectively to achieve the common goal of enabling a robust, secure, and trusted digital identity for South Africa.”

    BankServAfrica’s digital payment platform is currently being tested in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania with financial support from the World Bank, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown just how critical a digital ID is,” BankServAfrica’s Chief Business Officer insisted.

    BankservAfrica’s report argued that a robust biometric digital ID system will help South Africa achieve “simpler FICA [credit score] processes” and “a fair, transparent, competitive, sustainable, responsible, efficient and effective consumer credit market.”

    But behind the lofty neoliberal rhetoric deployed by the financial industry lies a sordid record of profiteering and privacy invasion on a massive scale.

    In 2007, Vodafone and Safaricom launched mPesa, a system that allows users to digitally deposit, withdraw, transfer, and pay with money. The project was “able to make credit and growth capital available to millions of people who have never had access to credit before,” according to Areiel Wolanow, who led the team that designed and built the credit scoring engine for mPesa in Kenya.

    But a study by economist Alan Gibson revealed that it was the financial sector – not the rural population of the Global South – that truly benefited from mPesa. Meanwhile, the living conditions of the system’s mostly impoverished participants failed to improve at all:

    “What is indisputable is that the supply-side of the finance market has benefited greatly from the last ten years. Banks’ sales have increased by 2.5 times and profits by 3.5 times, with profit margins also increased; the inclusion years have undoubtedly been good years for the banks. This apparent contrast between conspicuous supply-side success and a still-poor economy … raises questions on the role of the finance sector. In particular, it begs questions on who/what it is there to serve, and on the incentives that drive behavior.”

    In a further indictment of supposedly “inclusive” digital payment schemes, the Review of African Political Economy found that “the bulk of this [mPesa] value does not go to the poor. Rather, such fintech is very clearly designed to hoover up value and deposit it into the hands of a narrow global digital-financial elite that are the main forces behind the fintech revolution.”

    Despite the evidence of widening inequality, Bill Gates – whose foundation spends hundreds of billions of dollars promoting digital financial services for the poor – gushed praise for mPesa. 

    “M-Pesa is an excellent program,” Gates effused on Twitter in one of several tweets hailing the digital payments system. 

    Gates linked to an article promoting the program by NPR, the US public broadcaster which has received upwards of $17.5 million from Gates while producing hundreds of articles praising the tech billionaire and his initiatives around the world.

    Back in the US, meanwhile, Gates’ ID2020 campaign has collaborated with the forces advancing a system that registers Americans’ vaccination status with the same corporation that calculates their financial credit score.

    The US credit industry and digital immunity ID outfits collaborate on “huge opportunities for the commercial sector”

    In Illinois, residents are currently required to verify that they have received the COVID-19 vaccine through an online portal called Vax Verify which will work in concert with Chicago’s soon-to-be-implemented vaccine passport.

    To register their proof of vaccination, Illinois residents must turn to Experian, the world’s leading credit score service. 

    Already, the Vax Verify portal is facing backlash for providing inaccurate vaccine status information. It is also the subject of serious security concerns given Experian’s record of breaches that leaked the personal data of millions of citizens from Brazil to South Africa.

    Further, the online portal requires that any resident with a freeze on their credit must unfreeze it with Experian before registering a vaccination. 

    “Using Experian is definitely one of the worst [vaccine passports] I’ve seen yet,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock commented to Yahoo News. 

    After Illinois became the first US state to forge a formal relationship between vaccine certifications and Experian, Illinois Congressman and financial industry darling Bill Foster introduced legislation that would foist a digital biometric ID onto the entire American population. 

    The Improving Digital Identity Act of 2021, introduced by Foster in July, calls for the public sector, and particularly the Department of Homeland Security, to work with the private sector to develop a new biometric digital ID infrastructure for the United States.

    In November 2020, the Gates-sponsored ID2020 provided an online forum for Foster to promote his bill. During the event, the congressman advocated for a “trusted biometric digital immunity certificate system” while explaining that his bill would obtain biometrics from every citizen so private corporations could then “leverage” it to generate enormous profits.

    Rep. Bill Foster headlined the Gates-backed ID2020’s November 2020 webinar

    “Once the government has [taken] those fairly serious biometrics from you – there will be huge opportunities for the commercial sector to leverage that,” he said. “And to try to get this all started, I introduced the ‘Improving Digital ID Act.’”

    Banking and credit card companies are among the many “commercial sectors” that Foster’s bill will benefit through digital biometric IDs. The bill plainly states that the corporate ID system will give “under-banked and unbanked individuals better access to digital financial services,” cloaking the opening of markets for finance giants in the same woke language that ID4D and ID2020 employ. 

    But as tech oligarchs and their partners in the financial and national security industries leverage the coronavirus epidemic to institute a lucrative apparatus of digital monitoring, dissent is erupting in the countries where vaccine passports have begun to exclude millions.

    Protests erupt against vaccine passports and “people who have very little to do with parliament”

    In New York City – ground zero of the US vaccination passport roll-out – where over 80 percent of all Covid social distancing arrests were conducted against Black residents in 2020, simmering tensions boiled over when three Black diners initiated a brawl with staff at Carmine’s, an Upper West Side restaurant that prevented them from dining without their vaccination proof.

    The incident spurred condemnation from a local Black Lives Matter chapter, which accused city authorities of exploiting mask mandates and vaccine passports to exclude and incarcerate Black residents. “What we are seeing here is the NYPD and restaurants using vaccination proof as a reason to discriminate against Black people,” declared BLM activist Kimberly Bernard.

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

    France has been the site of some of the world’s largest protests against the vaccine passport system imposed under the watch of former banker and President Emanuel Macron. On August 14, over 210,000 people took to the streets in over 200 protests across France against the nascent biomedical security regime. 

    Puncturing the corporate media’s pigeonholing of the demonstrators as far-right shock troops, France’s Le Monde described them as “alone, coupled up, here with their family or friends, of all ages, white, Black, employed, retired, some vaccinated, others who refuse to get the shot.” 

    French journalist Pauline Bock noted that in her country, “the only trade that’s exempt from mandatory vaccination — the police — will be the one to make sure everyone else obeys. The policy is ripe for authoritarian misuse.” 

    In Italy, meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister and former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has mandated that all employees of both public and private businesses produce a Green Pass proving vaccination in order to enter their place of work. 

    The Green Pass vaccine passport system has already excluded unvaccinated individuals from restaurants, gyms, as well as trains, buses and domestic flights across the country. Official government numbers show the pass has failed to increase vaccine uptake.

    With the expansion of the Green Pass to places of work, Italians have risen up in some of the largest protests the world has seen against the nascent biosecurity regime.

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

    On October 9, hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into Italian streets from Rome to Trento to voice their rejection of Draghi’s policy. In Rome, where police repressed peaceful demonstrators with batons and riot shields, a group of about 20 far-right hooligans attacked a local union office while police stood by. Interior Minister Carlo Sibilia exploited the incident to claim that “neo-fascist groups hide behind the so-called anti-vaxxers.”

    The secretary of a faction of Italy’s Communist Party, Marco Rizzo, who has condemned the passport system as “a discriminatory, divisive tool that pits one against the other,” cast suspicion on the incident. 

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

    In an October 10 statement, Rizzo warned that the incident of “fascist violence” the day before played directly into the hands of the neoliberal government, and questioned whether a new “strategy of tension” was in play. The communist leader was referring to the Italian state’s covert weaponization of far-right militants during the 1970’s “years of lead” to foment violence and neutralize Marxist organizations.

    The demonstrations have now spread to the port city of Trieste, where union dock workers have refused to offload goods until the Green Pass is revoked. On October 18, Italian police attempted to break the workers’ strike with water cannons, tear gas, and heavy repression.

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

    Two days before anti-Green Pass protests exploded across Italy, the renowned philosopher Giorgio Agamben appeared before the Italian Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Commission to issue a dramatic statement of opposition to the Green Pass. 

    Agamben is most famous for his concept of Homo Sacer, or bare life, in which an individual is stripped of rights and reduced to their biological essence in an extra-legal regime justified by war or other emergencies. When Italian authorities declared the first lockdown in March 2020, the philosopher applied the theory to his own country’s heavy-handed restrictions.

    “The defining feature…of this great transformation that they are attempting to impose is that the mechanism which renders it formally possible is not a new body of laws, but a state of exception – in other words, not an affirmation of, but the suspension of constitutional guarantees,” the philosopher explained in the foreword to his collection of 2020 writings on Covid-19, “Where Are We Now: The Epidemic As Politics,”

    In his remarks before the Italian Senate, Agamben pointed to a sinister agenda behind the official rationale for vaccine passports: “It has been said by scientists and doctors that the Green Pass has no medical significance in itself but serves to force people to get vaccinated. Instead, I think we must say the opposite: that the vaccine is a means of forcing people to have the Green Pass. That is, a device that allows individuals to be monitored and tracked, an unprecedented measure.”

    The philosopher concluded his address by taking aim at the supra-national forces – Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, and Rockefeller Foundation, among others – determined to impose a system of digital identification and high-tech social credit as much of the human population as possible. 

    “I believe that in this perspective,” Agamben warned, “it is more urgent than ever for parliamentarians to consider the political transformation underway, which in the long run is destined to empty parliament of its powers, reducing it to simply approving – in the name of bio-security – decrees emanating from organizations and people who have very little to do with parliament.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:50

  • Amnesty International To Close All Hong Kong Offices, Citing Beijing's Oppressive National Security Law
    Amnesty International To Close All Hong Kong Offices, Citing Beijing’s Oppressive National Security Law

    In an unprecedented move and huge indictment of pro-China policies and the mainland, Amnesty International has announced plans to shutter all of its Hong Kong offices, citing the oppressive ‘national security law’ that Beijing imposed on the city implemented in June 2020.

    The foremost international human rights group has had a presence in the city for over four decades. Operations will be moved elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, after the local Hong Kong office will close by this month, and the regional office expected to be shuttered by the end of the year.

    Image via AP

    An official Amnesty statement specifically called out the effective impossibility for the organization to do its job given the national security law opens up staff members to legal reprisal from the pro-China government.

    “This decision, made with a heavy heart, has been driven by Hong Kong’s national security law, which has made it effectively impossible for human rights organizations in Hong Kong to work freely and without fear of serious reprisals from the government,” Amnesty International’s board chairperson Anjhula Mya Singh Bais said.

    The statement further described a dangerous atmosphere where “authorities campaign to rid the city of all dissenting voices.” Thus Amnesty says “It is increasingly difficult for us to keep operating in such an unstable environment.”

    Since large-scale anti-China protests gripped the semi-autonomous island-city in 2019 into 2020, Amnesty has cited “a rapid deterioration in the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, expression and association as the Hong Kong authorities increasingly adopted mainland China’s vague and all-encompassing definition of national security.”

    This position has been vehemently rejected by China and pro-China HK lawmakers, with the national security law further potentially criminalizing the advancement and online social media promotion of such a stance. 

    Amnesty has further blasted the ability of China to extradite Hong Kong citizens: “Faced with mass protests, the government first suspended and then in September formally withdrew a proposed Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Bill (the Extradition Bill), which would have allowed the handover of persons in Hong Kong to mainland China,” a prior public statement said.

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

    Likely the immediate result of Amnesty’s retreat from the city will be for smaller human rights organizations to follow suit. In this way the precedent will create a chilling effect, given that if such an organization which is as well represented by a large group of international lawyers can’t survive there, the smaller ones won’t risk it either.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:30

  • "Identifiable Harm": Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement
    “Identifiable Harm”: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

    Authored by C.Douglas Golden via WesternJournal.com,

    Thanks to President Joe Biden, JFK assassination records set to be released this year will be going back and to the archives. Back and to the archives. Back and to the archives….

    In a statement on Friday, the White House announced that long-classified documents regarding the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until Dec. 15, 2022 — over 59 years after Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas.

    According to CBS News, despite federal law which mandates all records on the event “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination,” Biden said the federal archivist needs one more year to make appropriate redactions to minimize “identifiable harm.”

    While former President Donald Trump released several thousand pages of files under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, he held back others, citing national security concerns.

    According to a Friday statement from Biden, the federal government has been reviewing these redactions since 2018. They apparently need more time, because this is the federal government under the Biden administration and did we, like, expect them to do their job in an expedient manner?

    The statement noted the act allowed a postponement of record release when it “remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

    It went on to say that the national archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration said “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and that NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released.”

    The archivist added that “making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste” and recommended Biden “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” eventually “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public.”

    We’re already a good four years past the deadline from the federal government to turn in the assignment, so to speak. The JFK Act is clear: “Each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act.”

    The only exceptions are, of course, if the records cause “identifiable harm” and that harm is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” Well, whaddya know …

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

    What do you think the early odds are that this information actually comes out next December? Anyone? Do you think we’re going to see what the federal government has been sitting on all these years, or are we going to be reading a statement about how the Omega-Sigma variant of SARS-CoV-2 knocked NARA off its schedule again and that it’ll be ready next year, pinky-swear?

    If there’s an actual betting market on this one, my money is going on the latter. I mean that literally — as long as it’s legal to do so, my proceeds from writing this story (and then some) will be plunked down on a bet that these files won’t see the light of day on Dec. 15, 2022.

    In fact, I’d be willing to bet the only way this these files see the light under a Biden administration is if Hunter Biden stays clean, paints a mural in the Gaza Strip so moving that Israel and Palestine hold hands and sing “Kumbaya,” works his way up the political ladder and then gets elected president in another decade or so. Generally speaking, that’s not the kind of futures bet that bookmakers allow, so I’ll stick to what I can get.

    In 1964, 10 months after the assassination, the Warren Commission delivered a report which found Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter and acted alone when he allegedly killed Kennedy. In 1978, a House Panel concluded JFK “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” but that it was “unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy,” according to The New York Times.

    These diverging narratives have turned theorizing about JFK’s assassination into a low-level national pastime.

    I happen to be on team Warren Commission; despite no lack of effort, the 58 intervening years since the assassination has produced as many credible suspects for a second shooter or co-conspirators as O.J. Simpson’s hunt for the real killers has produced credible alternate suspects for the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. (How is that going, by the way? I haven’t heard many updates from the Juice lately.)

    However, the fact the U.S. government jealously guards documents regarding an assassination that’s now well over a half-century old feeds into fever dreams like Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK.”

    In the most famous scene from the movie, Kevin Costner’s character — Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison, a colorful-yet-outré JFK conspiracy theorist who became the only prosecutor to try a case related to the assassination — tries to explain why the Zapruder film proved there had to be more than one shooter. Instead, Costner ensured “back and to the left, back and to the left” would become a running joke about conspiracy theorists for decades to come:

    Never mind that the “back and to the left” theory has been debunked. The point is, perhaps you believe in the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s slaying. Perhaps you’re like me and you’re tired of them. Either way, the fact the government refuses to release information on the assassination that’s the better part of a century old doesn’t help matters, whatever you believe.

    Perhaps the documents will contain embarrassing revelations about Cuba — originally suspected of being behind the assassination by many and a country the Biden administration would like to make nice with now. That’s my best (and only) guess on the matter. If I don’t end up with an inbox of other theories, I’ll be disappointed.

    The point is, however, that this speculation only persists the longer that the government holds on to documents legally required to be released four years ago, and which should have been in the public domain for far longer.

    The baffling part about this decision is that the White House is both creating and enabling a whole army of laptop Jim Garrisons. For an administration that seems unusually concerned about conspiracy theorists in other areas, usually when they concern conservatives, one might think they would consider this a pretty significant “identifiable harm.”

    Guess not.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 23:10

  • Public Schools In Boston Suburb Sued For Excluding White Students From Events
    Public Schools In Boston Suburb Sued For Excluding White Students From Events

    In the latest example of fighting racism in the bizarro world, Wellesley Public Schools, located in the Boston suburbs, is facing a federal lawsuit claiming that the district violated the constitutional rights of some of their students. 

    A non-profit group representing three Massachusetts families is responsible for filing the suit, according to CBS Boston. 

    The suit alleges that the schools “held racially segregated events for students where certain students were invited but white students were specifically excluded” – also known as the left’s answer to racism…more division, segregation and, well, racism. 

    The suit is also alleging that the district suppressed the First Amendment right of students citing, among other examples, an instance where students were told the phrase “Blue Lives Matter” was associated with white supremacy. 

    The group assisting with the lawsuit is called “Parents Defending Education”. 

    Nicole Neily, the group’s President, said: “This is not how public schools that operate with public tax dollars should be conducting themselves. It is fundamentally un-American to discriminate against students or separate students, segregate students, treat them differently, on the basis of race. It’s un-American and also it’s unconstitutional.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:50

  • Orwell's 1984 As Manual For The Woke
    Orwell’s 1984 As Manual For The Woke

    Authored by David Zukerman via AmericanThinker.com,

    On learning that Twitter sanctioned Rep. Jim Banks for daring to refer to Assistant Secretary of Health R. Levine as a man (and that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also referred, but without sanction, to Dr. Levine as a man) I turned, for insight on this peculiar assault on the concept of objective reality, to a classic novel on the nature of totalitarianism:  1984, by George Orwell.  Here are, I believe, relevant passages from the novel, from a torture scene, with torture applied to Winston Smith by O’Brien.

    O’Brien to Winston Smith, undergoing torture: 

    “Who controls the present, controls the past…” Signet Classic (paper), p.248

    This is what Critical Race Theory is all about.

    O’Brien to Winston Smith, undergoing torture, on the nature of reality:

    “Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see  something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external.  Reality exists in the human mind,  and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”  Ibid, at p. 249

    The Party says R. Levine is a woman; therefore, he is a woman.

    And through torture, O’Brien later has Winston Smith seeing five fingers when O’Brien held up four, with thumb hidden. At p. 258.

    O’Brien to Winston at p. 253:

    “The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”   Cf. Obama’s goal of transforming this country.

    The mindset of the Woke-media. 

    O’Brien to Winston at p. 255: 

    “We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission.  When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.” 

    Compare this to demands that it is impermissible to say that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

    Orwell, in 1984, teaches us that the Leftist Party will not be satisfied until Republican Congresspersons Jim Banks and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all their GOP colleagues, agree that R. Levine is a woman — and, once the woke bring the GOP over to their side, they will, certainly, destroy it, and with it, the American spirit of freedom.

    And that is why, quite simply, the Democrat party and the woke media that would control the past by their control of the present, are the genuine threat to democracy.   They don’t have us immobilized, like Winston Smith, on a cot, attached to a machine that inflicts unbearable pain, but they use their power to inflict social and economic sanction on those they regard as heretics. 

    But they can and must be defeated.  How will  freedom prevail?  The way by which it always wins out: through commitment, and common-sense, and, not least of all, courage on the part of what the Constitution calls “We, the People.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:30

  • Striking Workers Decry "Suicide Shifts" As Pandemic Burnout Takes Toll
    Striking Workers Decry “Suicide Shifts” As Pandemic Burnout Takes Toll

    As protesters across the United States voice their opposition to vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions, overworked employees – stretched to the brink of exhaustion, are also fighting for their sanity, according to Bloomberg.

    From Hollywood sets to snack factories, and heavy-equipment makers to hospitals, employees are fighting back against what they see as a pernicious encroachment on their personal life — with work restricting their ability to relax, or just to get a good night’s sleep.

    Deere & Co. employees, who launched a 10,000-person strike Oct. 14, cited the mandatory overtime that can stretch their shifts to 12 hours. At Kellogg Co., the union went on strike this month after decrying the toll of seven-day workweeks that had kept cereal flowing to stuck-at-home customers during the pandemic. And at Frito-Lay Inc., workers have this year challenged what they called “suicide shifts”: being made to leave late and return early, with only eight hours of turnaround time in between.

    At present, there are more than 100,000 workers who have recently advocated for work stoppages around the country – while a record 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August alone – putting more pressure on an already tight labor market.

    According to Professor Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings Law School, workers are reacting to paycheck insecurity and instability in their schedules.

    “The issue of time as a workers’ rights issue has really come of age,” Williams told Bloomberg. “Workers being sped up, deprived of weekends, deprived of sufficient rest time, with extremely unstable schedules and long and erratic work hours — they’ve had enough.”

    Pandemic effect?

    Early on in the Covid-19 pandemic, essential workers were championed as heroes (and now summarily fired if they don’t take the most rushed vaccine in history). Yet, the accolades were largely lip service according to many of said workers, who say they didn’t receive the enhanced pay or protections they feel they deserve.

    Other workers, meanwhile, were largely able to work from home, spending time with their families while they ‘reassessed’ what they’d been sacrificing. Now, they’re resisting long hours and undesirable working conditions.

    “You’re only existing to do that job,” said 49-year-old Hollywood cameraman Hassan Abdul-Wahid.

    Several years ago, Abdul-Wahid arrived on a set and learned some horrifying news. A co-worker, driving home after an exhausting super-sized shift, dozed off, flipped her car and killed a friend. There wasn’t much time to reflect, Abdul-Wahid said. “We took a two-minute moment of silence and went back to work on some stupid music video.”

    The Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal both reported on Friday, citing people familiar, that the movie set on which Alec Baldwin discharged a prop firearm that killed a person was plagued by complaints over pay and conditions, leading some workers to walk off. The movie’s production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, called safety its top priority. -Bloomberg

    Meanwhile over at Amazon – apparently due to a host of errors within the company’s HR system – errors caused by underinvestment, according to company insiders – some Amazon workers have been routinely underpaid, and some have also been fired by what appears to be a mostly automated system mistakenly marked them as “no shows”.

    What happens when an entire class of workers reach their breaking point and there’s nobody to replace them?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 22:10

  • Rand Paul: Fauci Will Never Stop Lying; Fire Him Now
    Rand Paul: Fauci Will Never Stop Lying; Fire Him Now

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Continuing his relentless effort to expose Anthony Fauci for lying about funding dangerous ‘civilisation ending’ gain of function research, Senator Rand Paul warned Sunday that the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will never stop lying about it and should immediately be fired.

    In an interview with Axios, Paul urged “He’s probably never going to admit that he lied,” adding “He’s gonna continue to dissemble, and try to work around the truth, and massage the truth.”

    “He [Fauci] should be fired,” Paul emphasised, adding “just for lack of judgment if nothing else.”

    Paul reiterated “We’re calling for an investigation and hearings on this. We’ve been calling for that for months.”

    “There has been a great deal of resistance from the Democrat side. Do we not want to know the origin of the virus or to know if it came from a lab? Particularly since this research still goes on,” the Senator further urged.

    Watch:

    Responding to Paul, Fauci claimed in an interview with ABC News that “He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, lied or misled about what we’ve done.”

    Fauci further claimed that it is “molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into SARS-CoV-2,” referring to the manipulation in the Chinese labs.

    “They were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2,” Fauci claimed:

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

    During the interview, Fauci also stated “There’s all of this concern about what’s gain of function or what’s not.”

    Which is particularly interesting since he keeps changing the definition:

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

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

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

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

    *  *  *

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:50

  • "We're Losing Everything" – Amazon's Automated HR System Commits Wage Theft On Massive Scale
    “We’re Losing Everything” – Amazon’s Automated HR System Commits Wage Theft On Massive Scale

    As Amazon waits to see if workers at its Bessemer, Ala. fulfillment center will be given a second shot at a vote to unionize following allegations of improper conduct on AMZN’s part – allegations made by the National Labor Relations Board – the NYT has just published a shocking story seemingly calibrated to galvanize public anger at the $1 trillion market cap behemoth founded by Jeff Bezos: Apparently, due to a host of errors within the company’s HR system – errors caused by underinvestment, according to company insiders – some Amazon workers have been routinely underpaid, and some have also been fired by what appears to be a mostly automated system mistakenly marked them as “no shows”.

    Per the NYT, Amazon’s management remained oblivious to these problems despite numerous complaints from workers until finally, one year ago, warehouse worker Tara Jones sent a desperate email to then-CEO Jeff Bezos himself asking him to rectify the fact that Amazon had been withholding $90 from her paychecks every cycle, repeatedly, despite her complaints.

    “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up,” she wrote weeks later. “I’m crying as I write this email.”

    Unbeknownst to her, the email set off an internal probe at Amazon. Eventually, that investigation determined that the company had been committing wage theft on a massive scale, as well as abusing its lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers in a host of other ways. The company still hasn’t finished identifying and repaying workers impacted by the mistakes, which Amazon is blaming on an automated software.

    Tara Jones

    Across the US, Amazon workers were underpaid, fired and abused as doctor’s notes were mysteriously deleted from systems. When they tried to complain to their case managers, they were routed through byzantine phone systems that were mostly automated. What little staffing there was involved outsourced call center workers in Costa Rica, India and Las Vegas who were overwhelmed themselves due to the immense volume of HR complaints.

    When it came time for some workers to return from medical leave, Amazon’s knotted HR system often took weeks or even months to register them and reinstate them on the schedule. In many cases, this resulted in weeks of lost income.

    Administrators were aware of these flaws, and were often met with similar resistance when they tried to take these issues up the chain. But Amazon has always been so focused on serving the customer, that the company failed to realize its treatment of its workers was starting to verge on abuse.

    One worker who was being paid disability by Amazon after a heart attack said his payments stopped abruptly for months. The financial strain essentially brought him and his wife to their knees.

    And when they sought help from the company, they were met with chilling silence.

    “Not a word that there had ever been a problem,” said James Watts, 54, who worked at Amazon in Chattanooga for six years before repeated heart attacks and strokes forced him to go on disability leave. The sudden loss of his benefits caused a cascade of calamities: Because he was without pay for two weeks, his car was repossessed. To afford food and doctors’ bills, Mr. Watts and his wife sold their wedding rings.

    “We’re losing everything,” he said.

    These issues have been known to managers across Amazon for some time. In internal correspondence, company administrators warned of “inadequate service levels,” “deficient processes” and systems that are “prone to delay and error.”

    The extent of the problem puts in stark relief how Amazon’s workers routinely took a back seat to customers during the company’s meteoric rise to retail dominance. Amazon built cutting-edge package processing facilities to cater to shoppers’ appetite for fast delivery, far outpacing competitors. But the business did not devote enough resources and attention to how it served employees, according to many longtime workers. “A lot of times, because we’ve optimized for the customer experience, we’ve been focused on that,” Bethany Reyes, who was recently put in charge of fixing the leave system, said in an interview. She stressed that the company was working hard to rebalance those priorities.

    However, the sad reality is that Amazon devotes seemingly endless resources to monitoring workers’ behavior down to the minute. But when it comes time to compensate those same workers, who have been subjected to what some have described as a kind of psychological torture on the floors of the company’s warehouse, Amazon couldn’t care less.

    These revelations are particularly shocking considering former CEO Bezos publicly proclaimed in his final letter to shareholders that Amazon would “do a better job” taking care of its workers.

    And while Amazon has seemingly appointed an executive – Bethany Reyes – to oversee the overhaul of Amazon’s HR system, there’s one obvious, glaring problem: The company is already having a hard enough time finding workers for its warehouses.

    Where is it going to find workers to fill out its workforce in HR?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:30

  • The Gaslighting Of America
    The Gaslighting Of America

    Authored by Bob Weir via AmericanThinker.com,

    I remember a comedy skit several years ago in which a woman comes home unexpectedly and finds her husband in bed with another woman.  Shocked, she demands to know who the woman is and why her husband is doing this.  The couple get out of bed and start getting dressed as the man says to his wife, “Honey, what are you talking about?” The wife, perplexed at the question, says, “I’m talking about that woman!”  Meanwhile, the other woman, now fully dressed, heads for the door.  The husband says, “What woman?  Honey, are you feeling okay?  There’s no woman here.”  Feeling dazed and confused, the wife begins to question her own sanity.

    That’s a pretty good example of what the Biden administration is pulling on the psyche of the American people.  

    What they’re doing is not merely “spin,” which has become SOP whenever a political party does a clever sales job on the public in order to keep certain facts from them.  No, this is much more than shrewd marketing; this is blatantly lying in the public’s face and telling them they’re crazy if they believe their own eyes.  

    When we look at videos showing thousands of migrants coming across our southern border with impunity, while Biden and his cohorts tell us they have the situation under control, we’re being gaslighted.

    When thousands of Americans and Afghan allies are abandoned to be tortured and killed by Taliban terrorists, while Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, tells us the war ended successfully, we’re being told not to believe what we’re seeing.  

    President Trump made our country energy independent, only to have his success overturned by Biden on day one of Biden’s presidency.  That forced our country to once again be dependent on foreign oil.  Biden said his action would help protect the environment.  We scratch our heads and wonder how it makes sense to ship millions of barrels of oil on cargo ships from thousands of miles away, only to be used the same way it was used when it was processed here.  

    Does foreign oil have less environmental effect than American oil?

    When Biden proposes a $3.5-billion “infrastructure bill” that is heavily weighted toward social engineering and radical “Green New Deal” initiatives, we’re told that everything is infrastructure.  

    We’re also told that the massive spending bill will cost “zero dollars” because the new taxes will be assessed only on the wealthy.  

    Then, to add more consternation to a public getting groggy trying to keep up with twelve-digit numbers, Biden and his accomplices want another $80 billion for the IRS so its agents can check into every bank account that has transfers of $600 or more.  As if the IRS weren’t already a liberty-crushing organization, Biden wants to provide it with more ammo to use against those who oppose him.  Nevertheless, we’re told it’s going after only tax cheats.  Why would these people need $80 billion more to do what they’ve always done?  Don’t ask, lest you get audited for questions they don’t want asked.

    When the supply chain of cargo ships, carrying about a half-million shipping containers filled with goods from all around the globe, are stalled in the waters outside major American port cities, we’re told by White House chief of staff Ron Klain that it’s just “high-class problems.”  

    In other words, only the wealthy are waiting for the goods to arrive at stores.  Moreover, Jen Psaki mocks it as the “tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed” — another elitist poking fun at the reasonable expectations coming from the working class.

    The list of gaslighting incidents is growing longer than Pinocchio’s nose. 

    Each time we are faced with another destructive lie, our attention is diverted to the latest Trump investigation or the probe of one of his supporters.  Keeping the January 6 imbroglio alive is one of those diversions.  The radical left has come to power by a sinister display of distractions from reality.  A major part of that distraction is using accusations of racism to muzzle opposition.  Most people will cower in fear of such labeling, even when they know in their hearts it’s not true.  That’s precisely what makes the accusations so useful to those who seek power through intimidation and distortion of reality.  

    President Trump called out situations for what they are, without the odious and murky filtration of political correctness.  That’s why the entrenched powers of Deep State corruption despised him.  

    Now we’re stuck with a president who says “what inflation?” as we pay higher prices than ever at the gas pump and the supermarket.  I seriously doubt that shoppers are questioning that reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 21:10

  • Israeli Official Threatens To Cut Power & Water To Proposed US Consulate For Palestinians
    Israeli Official Threatens To Cut Power & Water To Proposed US Consulate For Palestinians

    Two years ago as part of Trump’s drastic US foreign policy shift on the Israel-Palestine issue which changed decades of a status quo understanding, the US administration had shut down the longstanding US consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem as part of the Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as exclusively the recognized capital of Israel.

    As we detailed earlier, a showdown is brewing between the Israeli government and the Biden administration, given the US is now planning to reopen the consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in a stark reversal of the Trump policy – a move which has angered some Israeli officials to the point that there are now discussions and threats of shutting off water and electricity to the US consular building in the event it formally reopens. 

    The building in Jerusalem that previously functioned as a US consulate to Palestinians, AFP/Getty Images

    “No way would Israel agree to have the United States reopen its consulate dedicated to Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, said Israeli Justice Minister Gideon Saar,” The Washington Post reported earlier this month of the Israeli reaction to the plans.

    The building in question was used for many years as the American representative office to east Jerusalem and the territories of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Overseen by the State Department separately from what was at the time the main embassy in Tel Aviv, local Palestinians typically saw the consular presence as their only way of directly engaging with the US government, or a means of notifying or lobbying Washington on crucial issues affecting the Palestinian population.

    According to the latest statements of resistance to the Biden plan, which was initially laid out months ago by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israel’s Foreign Ministry sees the move as alarmingly tantamount to Washington’s formal recognition of the PLO once again:

    The professional echelon at the Foreign Ministry has described the expected American measures as an “introduction to the division of Jerusalem.” They stress that the effect of such a measure, which is backed by President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will be to undermine, if not to completely withdraw from the measures taken by President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

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

    The report cites that the Palestinian side too sees it as a de facto walking back of Trump policy toward Israel, which the Palestinian Authority is welcoming of.

    Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told the Israeli publication – likely echoing the perspective of a number of Israeli leaders – that one possibility being mulled in Tel Aviv is cutting power and water to the Jerusalem consulate building:

    Oren is also convinced that if the administration takes unilateral steps and reopens the consulate unilaterally, Israel will have to fight the move. “Theoretically, one could stop providing electricity and water to the building. And it is possible to do other things that we shouldn’t talk about right now,” he says.

    He further said Israeli leaders have to show Biden “there will be a price to pay; perhaps condemnations and perhaps sanctions.”

    In 2014 at the height of the war in Syria, the same Amb. Michael Oren voiced that Israel policy-makers see Sunni terrorist group in Syria – including ISIS – as a lesser evil compared to the Shia Iran threat…

    “Therefore, we have to weigh carefully whether we can bear those costs,” Amb. Oren said. “It is a strategic question, but, if, God forbid, the Americans decide to break all the rules, the battle at one level or the other will have to continue.” Thus Biden could be starting a fight with America’s closest Middle East ally, which could get very interesting – and would no doubt be used by the Republicans in the 2022 mid-term elections, and without doubt for the next presidential election in 2024.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:50

  • A $10K Bank-Snooping Threshold Would Intrude On Millions
    A $10K Bank-Snooping Threshold Would Intrude On Millions

    Authored by Andrew Wilford via RealClearMarkets.com,

    Bowing to pressure from banks and taxpayers concerned about a proposal to require financial institutions to report to the IRS gross inflows and outflows for just about every account in the country, Democrats have attempted to quell concerns by raising the threshold. Unfortunately, even the raised threshold is still laughably low to accomplish Democrats’ stated purpose of cracking down on wealthy tax cheats.

    The original proposal would have required financial institutions to report on any account (be it a checking account, savings account, stock portfolio, etc.) which handled more than $600 in inflows and outflows in a given year.

    Obviously, that’s just about every account.

    But the new proposal isn’t much better. This time, the threshold would be set at $10,000, and exempt payroll deposits. In other words, if a given taxpayer received $20,000 in payroll deposits, they would only exceed the threshold were other deposits and spending, taken together, to exceed $30,000.

    That sounds at first glance like a big difference, but unfortunately it would still affect millions of Americans of modest means. After all, $10,000 a year comes out to just over $830 a month in spending. And while payroll deposits would be exempted, many Americans don’t make their income through traditional biweekly payroll deposits.

    Small business owners and the self-employed, for example, often don’t receive a payroll check. With the rise of the gig economy, freelance work has exploded – Gallup research found that 44 million Americans were self-employed at some point during a given week in 2019. Meanwhile, there are well over 30 million small businesses in the United States.

    Workers in traditional employment situations can have money to deposit that doesn’t come from a payroll check as well. Tipped cash wages, gifts from family, or proceeds from the sale of assets like a car could all result in deposits that would count against the $10,000 threshold.

    While $10,000 sounds like a lot of money, it’s not when considering the amount of money average Americans need to spend just to get by. Federal Reserve Economic Data shows that every income decile, including the bottom 10 percent of American families, spends over $10,000 (over $12,000, in fact), every year on average on housing alone. In total, American households in every income decile spend over $28,000 a year.

    And even taxpayers who only receive payroll income could still get caught up in the IRS’s dragnet by saving up for a large purchase. Taxpayers who save for a down payment on a house, or the purchase of a new car, could easily end up spending $10,000 more than they take in in a given year.

    In short, you don’t need to be anywhere close to a wealthy billionaire hiding your resources away in secret offshore accounts to be caught up in the IRS’s snooping. Normal spending habits can easily mean that the IRS would be receiving access to your financial data — whether the threshold is set at $600 or $10,000.

    Democrats shouldn’t be taken seriously with this counteroffer to “ensure” that their bank monitoring scheme would go after their stated target of wealthy taxpayers only. A $10,000 threshold would still represent a broad-based effort to snoop on the financial affairs of average American taxpayers.

    Instead of giving the Internal Revenue Service new methods of spying on people, Congress should focus on fixing the agency’s broken systems and processes.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:30

  • Taiwan Earthquake Interrupts Micron Semiconductor Factories 
    Taiwan Earthquake Interrupts Micron Semiconductor Factories 

    A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan Sunday and reportedly knocked some of Micron Technology Inc.’s facilities offline, according to Bloomberg. 

    On Sunday, an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 struck northeastern Taiwan. The quake was large enough to affect Micron’s facilities in the northern Taiwanese city of Taoyuan. 

    Micron is still evaluating the impact and “determining the appropriate steps to return to full production.” The statement by one of the top computer memory and computer data storage companies was vague and didn’t detail what exact product lines were impacted. 

    Micron is a top producer of semiconductor chips, and the ongoing shortage in the industry and new developments arising from Taiwan could darken the outlook for chips. Expectations for the chip shortage to normalize could be at least another year. 

    “The semiconductor situation is going to take a long time to fix,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week. “This is one I feel confident saying it’s not going to be fixed in a month or two, or six, or 12 months.”

    Also, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, evacuated some workers on Sunday as the earthquake shook buildings across the island. Taiwan resides near two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes. 

    Suppose the production of Micron chips isn’t brought up to full capacity in the near term. A supply chain analysis shows companies such as Apple, Dell, Intel, HP, LG, Hewlett Packard, and Cisco Systems could face order issues. 

    Already, Apple, Tesla, and Ford, among many others, have complained about chip shortages. Shown below is the number of times “semiconductor shortage” has been mentioned in Bloomberg news stories has hit a record high this month. 

    Add earthquakes to unexpected issues plaguing supply chains that could exacerbate the great semiconductor shortage.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:10

  • 2 Killed, 4 Wounded, Including Local Cop, During Mass Shooting In Boise
    2 Killed, 4 Wounded, Including Local Cop, During Mass Shooting In Boise

    Even as the US national murder rate climbed substantially during 2020 as the pandemic transformed American society into a pressure cooker, school shootings still haven’t made a comeback. In fact, they’ve been far less infrequent this year. 

    However, while school shootings have fallen in frequency, a different type of spree killer has emerged, exemplified by the disgruntled self-professed sex addict murdered a bunch of mostly asian massage parlor workers.

    The shooter, who is now in custody, killed two people and injured four, including a police officer, in a shooting at a shopping mall Monday in Boise Idaho.

    Authorities said officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect, during the news conference. The majority of the mall had been cleared, but police were still looking for any additional victims.

    Police didn’t release any other information, saying the investigation was ongoing, and asked police to avoid the area.

    Police didn’t provide any additional information about the incident to the press, they were interviewing dozens of people outside the entrance to Macy’s, one of five large department stores at the mall, which has 153 stores in all. Police are also investigating another crime scene that occurred nearby: there’s no clue yet as to whether they’re related.

    Cheri Gypin, of Boise, was in the mall with a friend where they walk for an hour three or four times a week. She said she heard several large bangs, but thought something had fallen from the ceiling. Then about 60 people, including families pushing strollers, came running at them, some of them shouting that there was an active shooter.

    “My friend was trying to process it,” said Gypin, 60. “I just looked at her and said, ‘We’ve got to run.’ So we just ran and kept running until we got to the outer perimeter of the parking lot.”

    They made their way back to their car, where police told the crowd of people who had fled the mall to leave the parking area.

    Calls of shots fired with one person down came in at 1:50 p.m. from the Boise Towne Square Mall, Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee said at a press conference.

    Lee said it “would be premature to make assumptions,” of the shooter’s motive, and the investigation is ongoing.The chief refused to take additional questions from the media.

    “I cannot stress enough how traumatic this event is for the community at large as well as for those that were witnesses or are the families of all who were involved,” Ryan said.

    No information on the identities of the victims or shooter has been released. We now await more details about the shootingl

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 20:00

  • California Decriminalized Shoplifting For Amounts Under $950, Guess What Happened Next
    California Decriminalized Shoplifting For Amounts Under $950, Guess What Happened Next

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Walgreens closed 22 stores in San Francisco where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized…

    Shoplifter’s Paradise

    Please note San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise

    “Theft in Walgreens’ San Francisco stores is four times the average for stores elsewhere in the country, and the chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. 

    Earlier this year, a spokesman for CVS, which has closed at least two stores, told CNN that of its 155 locations in the Bay Area, the 12 in San Francisco account for 26% of all shoplifting incidents in the region.

    Much of this lawlessness can be linked to Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, under which theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted.

    Meanwhile, politically progressive local prosecutors from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and New York compete to see who can prosecute the fewest people.

    Just Plain Crazy

    This is just plain crazy. And it’s another reason for the big backlash I expect in the 2022 midterm elections.

    School boards, crime, racist college admissions that favor blacks who cannot read, and critical race theory crammed down kids throats are all part of the extreme Left madness sweeping the country.

    In February, I noted Coca Cola Confirms Training Employees ‘Try To Be Less White’

    In July, I commented Critical Race Theory Should Be Banned, and a Black Parent Explains Why

    “Educators use CRT as their own agenda, to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other,” said one black parent to a rousing round of applause at a school board meeting.

    In May I noted College Entrance Exam SAT Score Racial Profiling: 964=1223

    Welcome to new math that says an SAT score of 964 equals a score of 1223.

    “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT,” claim college administrators.

    To compensate for the fact that Blacks score lower on average than Asians and Whites, SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’.

    And so here we are. Shoplifting is the fault of Walgreens, not the shoplifters. 

    This makes about as much sense as everything else sweeping the country.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:50

  • One Bank's "Persistent Inflation" Meter Just Hit A Record 96 Out Of 100
    One Bank’s “Persistent Inflation” Meter Just Hit A Record 96 Out Of 100

    Earlier this year, as Wall Street first became obsessed with distinguishing transitory vs non-transitory (i.e., permanent) inflation, Bank of America launched two trackers – a transitory and a non-transitory inflation meter. Initially, it was mostly good news: while the bank’s transitory inflation meter was at 100, or the highest reading possible, non-transitory inflation was subdued, at just 37 back in May.

    However one month later, an ominous trend emerged: while “transitory” inflation was stuck at the highest reading possible, “non-transitory” inflation doubled to 75 in June.

    Needless to say, this was the time when the so-called “transitory inflation bros” starting to lose the argument that soaring inflation would fade away in just a few months, with sticky inflation such as rent and housing pushing sharply higher even as some transitory components such as used car prices and airfares eased off somewhat.

    Alas, since then prices have only continued to rise, and in September core CPI rose 0.24% in September, just barely rounding down to a 0.2%; here one of the biggest stories was the surge in owners’ equivalent rent (OER) and rent of primary residence to a 0.43% and 0.45% mom clip, far above the prior 0.2-0.3% mom trend. This pointed to much stronger persistent price pressures.

    Meanwhile, transitory drivers of inflation were more muted. On one hand, reopening-related components were a drag, as were some commodities such as apparel and used cars. On the other hand, new car prices and household furnishings & supplies gained. However, as we noted recently, used car prices tracked by the Manheim Used Car Index just soared to a new all time high, suggesting that upcoming CPI prints will see both transitory and persistent inflation components rising sharply.

    So consistent with the move in rents, the BofA US persistent inflation meter finally gave up all hope that inflation is coming down any time soon, and surged to 96 in September from 80 previously “suggesting historically elevated cyclical price pressures.” Meanwhile, even though transitory inflation cooled somewhat on a % yoy basis in September, it remained historically elevated. As such, the BofA US transitory inflation meter printed 100 for the sixth straight month.

    And as the next chart shows, never in the history of the data (which sadly goes back only to 1995) have both transitory and persistent inflation readings been at an all time high at the same time.

    And while this should put to rest the debate about whether the current episode of runaway inflation will fade away any times soon (it won’t), the bad news is that should economic growth continue to shrink at the current ominous pace – as a reminder the Atlanta Fed sees Q3 GDP growing just 0.5% – America is about to be reminded just how miserable life is under stagflation (for a quick preview of what is coming, please read “Is Stagflation Here: Comparing The 2020s With The 1970s…”).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:30

  • Biden Plays Chicken With Semitruck Drivers
    Biden Plays Chicken With Semitruck Drivers

    Authored by Jackson Elliott, Cara Ding, Allan Stein, Steven Kovac, Jannis Falkenstern and Nick Ciolino via The Epoch Times,

    American truckers don’t like taking orders. But the Biden administration has increased pressure on them to take the vaccine—willing or unwilling.

    All through the pandemic, truckers endured hardships to keep America’s infrastructure running. They waited in line for hours in sight of bathrooms they weren’t allowed to use. On the road, some died alone of COVID-19.

    Now, with supply chains disrupted, Americans need them more than ever.

    But faced with the prospect of a forced vaccination, many drivers are considering quitting.

    “I’d fight it,” said veteran trucker Mike Widdins, referring to vaccine mandates.

    “I think a lot of us will be quitting. Who likes to be forced to do stuff you don’t want to do?”

    Widdins isn’t alone in his willingness to leave trucking if forced to vaccinate. Polls by trucking publications Commercial Carrier Journal and OverDrive indicate that up to 30 percent of truckers will seriously consider quitting if forced to vaccinate. If they quit, the consequences for America may be massive. US Transport estimates that 70 percent of American freight goes by truck.

    “It would hurt shipping big-time,” Widdins said.

    Narrowing Lanes

    The Sept. 9 mandate establishes an “emergency standard” which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is allowed to issue if it determines workers are in “grave danger.” Currently, the White House Office of Budget and Management’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is reviewing the mandate. The review process can take as long as 90 days.

    Most of the trucking industry will be unaffected by the Biden vaccine mandate, which demands that all companies with over 100 employees require vaccination or weekly COVID-19 tests.

    Most truck companies have six trucks or fewer, according to the American Trucking Associations. Independent drivers make an average of $50,000 more per year than drivers at large companies.

    Some experts say the selective reach of the mandate makes it ineffective. Barbara Smithers, vice president of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, told The Epoch Times via email that it makes little sense to “cherry pick” who to vaccinate based on company size.

    “Truck drivers spend most of their work hours alone in the cab of a truck—literally one of the safest places possible during a pandemic—so why do they need to be regulated in this way?” she said.

    “Testing hundreds of thousands of truck drivers moving across the country every day is a virtual impossibility.”

    For mandate-affected companies, Biden’s decision may drive away employees at a time when America needs them most. The American Trucking Associations estimates that America needs 80,000 more truckers to meet transportation needs.
    Recently, supply chain crises have left many Americans in need. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said the shortage will last as long as there’s a pandemic.

    With backups unloading goods at America’s ports, shortages already threaten consumers. But if long lines of trucks waiting to ship goods suddenly become shorter, the crisis will become far worse.

    Whether America runs short on trucks depends on the Biden administration’s orders and how truckers respond.

    Joe Trucker and Joe Biden

    The average trucker is a big, bearded guy with a sturdy, American name like ‘Joe.’

    Joe Trucker is friendly given the chance, and he thinks of his job as his little service to America. He has a relative in the military somewhere, or he served himself. Toward government, he holds a strong suspicion that increases the more pressure he feels from it.

    Joe Trucker doesn’t usually like interviews. If he doesn’t feel open to talking, he drops four-word answers like he tosses peanut shells from his window. In exchange for long hours away from home, he gets low pay, independence, and the nation’s best sunsets.

    The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus hasn’t been kind to Joe Trucker. At a time when many Americans hunkered down at home, he was still on the road.

    Trucking life during the pandemic was a series of frustrating restrictions, said trucker Victor Morales at a Georgia One9 truck stop.

    Morales has driven trucks for 25 years.

    After a long day on the road, Morales would wait for hours to drop off a truckful of deliveries at a warehouse. But warehouse owners didn’t allow truckers to leave their cabs for any reason.

    “You’re almost forced, like a second-class citizen,” he said.

    “They want the goods and services you got, but they don’t even want you to get out of your truck.”

    If they arrived hungry, they waited hungry, he said. They weren’t even allowed to use the toilet only steps away.

    “You can literally see a bathroom right there behind the glass. But you can’t get out,” said Morales.

    In the eyes of drivers, Biden’s mandate is the last step in a long line of restrictions that don’t consider their needs or wants.

    “It’s unconstitutional,” said one trucker who preferred to remain anonymous. “We’ll just buy our own damn trucks and run our own company. All we’ve got to do is shut down and the country doesn’t exist no more.”

    For many drivers, the vaccine mandate may prove the final straw. Some drivers don’t trust the vaccine because of how new it is. Some distrust it for personal medical reasons. Others distrust it because they don’t trust the government.

    “I had cancer years ago,” said trucker Jack McGregory. “I don’t want to put something that I don’t know exactly what it will do into my body. If I die, I want to die with a little more time on my hands than that.”

    McGregory said that he would rather quit than vaccinate.

    But even those who take the vaccine say they oppose the mandate.

    At the Pilot Truck Stop at I-69 and Wadhams Road in Michigan, all 10 truckers interviewed by The Epoch Times said they took the vaccine but oppose a vaccine mandate.

    Kevin Hambrick, a longtime driver with Fortune 500 transportation company J.B. Hunt, opposes the mandate.

    “Each guy should make his own choice,” Hambrick said.

    In Arizona, Florida-based truck driver Juan Martinez said that he knows life without freedom, having lived under Cuban communism. He also received a COVID-19 shot and opposes the mandate.

    “You have to decide for yourself,” he said. “People should do whatever they want to do.”

    Many drivers feel pressured by their employers. After a year of difficult pandemic restrictions, it seems to them that COVID-19 rules grow ever more invasive.

    In Flagstaff, Arizona, a long-distance truck driver in his late 20s asked not to be identified, fearing reprisal by his employer.

    “There’s no place in the middle right now,” he said, adding “if you want to put something in your body, it’s your personal choice.”

    Other truckers who did not want to be named said they felt angry at those who mandated the vaccine.

    “We run our country,” one said. “They don’t give a [expletive] about this country.”

    Roads to Health

    According to the Biden administration, America needs the new vaccine to increase protection against the CCP virus.

    “The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing,” president Joe Biden said in a press conference. But more people should get vaccinated, he added.

    The current available vaccines block COVID-19 in most cases, according to CDC statistics.

    Today, 79 percent of Americans over 18 are vaccinated, according to the CDC. Experts say that this number might be enough to achieve herd immunity. But as the number of unvaccinated people has dwindled, pressure to increase vaccination numbers has increased.

    “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said to unvaccinated people. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

    Some medical experts say clusters of unvaccinated people allow the virus to mutate into a form that can bypass the vaccine.

    “It’s perhaps just a matter of time,” University of Alabama at Birmingham medicine professor Dr. Michael Saag said. “A new variant could emerge where we won’t be so fortunate, and the existing vaccines won’t work.”

    Another recent executive order suggested that the White House fears a truck shortage.

    On Oct. 20, Biden announced an executive order that temporarily lifts weight restrictions on trucks and encourages more people to become truckers. The White House announced this order soon after the vaccine mandate.

    Neither the White House nor the Department of Transportation responded to repeated requests for comment on this story.

    Collision Course

    Truck industry experts say that truckers with the option to quit will do so if forced to take the vaccine.

    Joe Sculley, the president of Motor Transport Association of Connecticut, said that he sees a scenario playing out for those who oppose or refuse to comply with the mandate.

    “Drivers will leave bigger companies and look for smaller ones that do not have to comply with the mandate, or they will quit altogether and look for another profession,” he said.

    Right now, the supply chain crisis, the number of drivers who oppose forced vaccination, and the driver shortage leave the best cards in the hands of drivers, Sculley added.

    “Drivers have leverage,” he said. “It won’t be an empty threat. Nobody is going to be quickly replaced.”

    Jim Ward, president of D.M. Bowman and Chairman of the Truckload Carriers Associations, agreed that truckers are serious about quitting because of vaccine mandates.

    “With driver availability already limited, any exodus due to compliance with a vaccine mandate would put our nation and its economy in an even more precarious situation,” he said.

    Ward added that drivers who quit can’t easily be replaced. They require training.

    “Our nation’s professional truck drivers are the safest, most well-trained operators on the road today. Replacing any driver who leaves the industry is not an overnight process,” he said.

    Biden’s best chance to bring in new drivers comes from a pilot program in his recent infrastructure bill. The program would create a “test group” of 18- to 21-year-olds who would be followed to “see how they would perform,” Sculley said.
    However, the American trucking industry has long faced a driver shortage. Long hours away from home and mediocre pay doesn’t attract new drivers to the business, even when they have the right skills.

    Impact

    New workers also might not compare with longtime professionals. Experienced truckers thread their trucks through a complex ballet of traffic conditions and federal regulations to arrive on time.

    Football games, the Kentucky Derby, hurricanes two states over, and other issues can all mean higher traffic along a route, said Morales.

    “I’m not a sports fan. But I know when the playoffs are,” he said.

    If Biden’s mandate goes through, the most experienced truckers are most likely to quit, Morales said.

    In 10 years, nearly 30 percent of truckers will be 65 or older, according to Department of Transportation statistics. Often, these drivers make more money and have cash saved up, said Morales.

    “The mandate is going to affect the older drivers that have been here a while,” he said. “They’re gonna have a choice.”

    If these drivers retire early, it will be a challenge to replace them. To become a trucker, a driver must pass his commercial driver’s license (CDL) test, a process which usually takes four to seven weeks. During the pandemic, many truck driving schools closed, and training schools issued at least 100,000 fewer CDLS.

    Short-term truckers are often unreliable, said small truck company owner Pete Falkenstern. He calls them “cowboys.”

    “If somebody’s done it for a long time and hasn’t had a lot of accidents, they’ve been pretty safe,” he said. “They probably take some pride in what they do.”

    If 20 percent of truckers quit because of the mandate, America will lose about 15 percent of its transportation capacity.

    America’s infrastructure relies most on trucks. As a transportation system, trucks are incredibly flexible. They can go anywhere at any time, can carry many kinds of goods, and are the most cost-effective form of transportation over short to medium distances.
    “I love this industry, but without us this country would shut down in three days,” said trucker Jack McGregory.

    Even so, the trucking industry has a high turnover rate.

    Backing Up

    The vaccine mandate will only directly affect companies with over 100 people, but small truck companies won’t have the required resources to absorb many additional drivers, Falkenstern said.

    “I would love to be able to accommodate 30 people, but the work is not here to support that many,” he said. “I don’t want to operate any more than what I have because of insurance regulations.”

    Large truck companies also tend to be cheaper, said Falkenstern. They can buy things in bulk and self-insure.

    “A lot of the bigger companies can keep prices down,” he said. “They can get a lower cost because it’s in bulk.”

    Cathy Roberson, the founder and president of Logistics Trends and Insights LLC, said it’s unclear right now what the long-term impact of the vaccine mandate will be.

    If truckers quit, the mandate could damage America’s logistics system, Robertson said. But if they switch to smaller companies, Biden’s executive order might only reshuffle employees.

    “It really hurts the larger trucking companies more than anything else,” Robertson said.

    Whatever the case, the mandate will exacerbate current supply chain issues, she said.

    Already, logistics workers wrestle with the worst supply chain issues ever seen, said Lisa Anderson, the president of logistics group LMA Consulting.

    “It’s unprecedented. It’s never happened before,” she said.

    Right now, logistics issues have made it difficult to find replacement parts for trucks, she said. Businesses find themselves in a catch-22 situation; To fix their trucks, they need trucks to transport parts. The supply chain feeds itself.

    Anderson said the vaccine mandate will almost certainly worsen the driver shortage. Truckers are independent-natured.

    “They are more of a lone wolf, always navigating complex situations on their own,” she said. “They don’t like to be told what to do.”

    Delays Ahead

    If truckers follow through with what they say they will do, America’s supply chain crisis may soon become far worse.

    From a perspective based purely on material benefits, it seems like it’s only logical to obey the mandate. Truckers can take an effective vaccine, keep their jobs, and keep the national supply chain running.

    But human beings often want to assert that they amount to more than mere links in a chain, pulling on command from the federal government. The logic of individual freedom doesn’t calculate for material benefits.

    “It’s just that shoving-it-down-your-throat part,” Morales said. “Our first instinct will be to push back.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 19:10

  • SEC's Gensler Wins 'Battle Of The Regulators' To Oversee Stablecoins
    SEC’s Gensler Wins ‘Battle Of The Regulators’ To Oversee Stablecoins

    Just days after stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd paid a $41 million penalty after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found the company had falsely claimed it had adequate dollars in reserve to back its tokens (following an $18.5 million settlement paid in February to the New York attorney general’s office over a similar probe), Bloomberg reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has won the ‘battle of the regulators’ to move ahead as the main watchdog over stablecoins.

    SEC Chair Gary Gensler is supportive but politically careful when he expresses his views on the crypto-space

    “I taught this and studied it for many years at MIT and I wouldn’t have dedicated my time to it if I didn’t think it was interesting and innovative,” Gensler said in September.

    “But, at the same time, I don’t think technologies last long outside of a social and public policy framework and in this case, we have to insure for investor and consumer protection.”

    And now Bloomberg reports, the Treasury Department and other agencies will specify in a highly-anticipated report, expected to be published this week, that the SEC has significant authority over tokens like Tether, said people familiar with the matter.

    The report will also urge Congress to pass legislation specifying coins should be regulated similarly to bank deposits, one of the people said, asking not to be named because discussions are private.

    The revisions he sought make clear that the government will take an active role in regulating stablecoins even as it waits for longer-term plans to be implemented, but, of course, any broad regulatory bill faces long odds in a divided Congress and could take years to enact.

    This is, relatively speaking, being seen as a positive development since 1) it avoids the one-upmanship that could have occurred from various random government entities attempting to curry favor with the likes of Yellen and Warren who have made it clear they are not fans of the decentralized crypto world’s potential ‘breaking’ of the centralized financial system they rely on, and 2) SEC Chair Gary Gensler is, again relatively speaking, not in favor of any sweeping China-esque crypto ban (and some have argued previously he recognizes its value) even though he has made it clear in the past that there is need for regulation:

    “We’ve got a lot of casinos here in the Wild West,” Gensler said.

    “And the poker chip is these stablecoins.”

    Bitcoin ticked higher on the headline…

    While headlines over the coming weeks – as the negotiations begin over exactly how to control these ‘poker chips’ – are likely to cause volatility, the fact that the SEC is taking it under their wing entirely removes the deep left tail of an outright ban and the liquidity-related chaos that could cause in a hurry.

    If cryptocurrencies are to become the backbone of a modern decentralized financial system, then accepting the need for regulation is necessary.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/25/2021 – 18:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest