Apr 27

Today’s News 27th April 2021

  • Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To "Open Vaccine" Movement
    Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To “Open Vaccine” Movement

    Roughly one year after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seized control of the global response to COVID-19 with the goal of providing “equitable access” to a vaccine, Bill Gates & Co. have accomplished the opposite:  The Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator mechanism, backed by the Gates Foundation, has a stated policy of respecting the exclusive intellectual property rights of western drugmakers. At the same time, the WHO-backed alternative solution, known as Covid-19 Technology Access Pool, or C-TAP, which was supposed to foster an open-source pool of vaccine and drug technology, has mostly faltered.

    As India’s second-wave COVID-19 outbreak spirals out of control, more parties have come forward to criticize Gates for his support of IP protections. Considering the scarcity of the medicines, there have been increasing calls from countries like India and South Africa, international relief organizations and other public figures to waive IP protections so that poorer countries can get faster access to the vaccines. WTO Director General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has led a host of emerging-market nations in a push to waive IP protections, arguing that numerous facilities exist that could ramp up production in the coming months.

    But as pressure to reconsider this stance mounts, Gates insisted during an interview Monday with Sky News’ Sophy Ridge that stripping IP protections from vaccine recipes wouldn’t be helpful. Asked point blank about the issue, Gates responded with an emphatic “no”.

    “The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way,” Gates explained. “There are all sorts of issues around intellectual property having to do with medicines. But not in terms of how quickly we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here.”

    Watch the full interview below:

    As Gates sees it, his foundation has helped to accelerate the pace of vaccine testing and design by years. In the past, it would likely have taken decades for poor nations to get supplies from rich states that designed them. “Typically, in global health it takes a decade between when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets into the poor countries,” Gates said.

    While Gates apparently can’t see past how things were done in the past, critics quickly pointed out that countries like the US are already stockpiling more vaccines than they can use. And while Gates insists that there aren’t any factories in the developing world capable of making patented western jabs, India’s Serum Institute is an obvious example of how this simply isn’t the case. Plus, many of the countries pushing the vaccine IP waiver at the WTO have identified facilities where vaccine production can be ramped up quickly.

    Opponents of this approach from within the pharmaceutical industry are scrambling to lobby the Biden Administration to oppose the waiver push at the WTO after a recent speech by Katherine Tai, Biden’s top trade official, stipulated that Washington would “consider what modifications and reforms” can be applied to intellectual property rules. Among other risks, Big Pharma is arguing that an “open” vaccine would benefit American rivals like China and Russia.

    But the reality is that billions of denizens of the developing world stand to benefit, while drug companies and the international pharmaceutical industry stands to miss out on some profits.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:45

  • UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment
    UK Carrier Strike Group To Embark On 6-month Indo-Pacific Deployment

    Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

    Britain will send a Carrier Strike Group to the Indo-Pacific region next month in a massive show of force aimed at countering the security challenges posed by the Chinese regime.

    The Carrier Strike Group, which will be led by the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be the “largest concentration of maritime and air power” in the UK, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a press release.

    During its 28-week deployment, the Carrier Strike Group will visit more than 40 countries and conduct engagements with Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and India as part of the UK’s “tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region, said the MoD.

    Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “When our Carrier Strike Group sets sail next month, it will be flying the flag for Global Britain—projecting our influence, signalling our power, engaging with our friends, and reaffirming our commitment to addressing the security challenges of today and tomorrow.

    “The entire nation can be proud of the dedicated men and women who for more than six months will demonstrate to the world that the UK is not stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the international system of the 21st Century.”

    Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, leaves 10 Downing Street in London on Feb. 13, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

    According to the MoD., the Carrier Strike Group will seek to achieve the UK’s goal for “deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific region in support of shared prosperity and regional stability,” which was set out in the government’s recently published Integrated Review into foreign, defence, security, and development policy.

    The review, which was published in March, said the UK will invest in enhanced “China-facing capabilities” and improve its response to “the systemic challenge that it poses to our security, prosperity and values—and those of our allies and partners.”

    HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful surface vessel in the Royal Navy’s history, will be carrying eight F-35B Lightning II fast jets of the Royal Air Force, four Wildcat maritime attack helicopters, seven Merlin Mk2 anti-submarine helicopters, and three Merlin Mk4 commando helicopters. A company of Royal Marines Commandos will also be based on the carrier.

    A new F-35B Lightning fighter jet takes off from the deck of the United Kingdom’s new aircraft carrier, The HMS Queen Elizabeth on Sept. 27, 2018. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

    The carrier will be joined by a surface fleet of Type 45 destroyers, HMS Defender and HMS Diamond, Type 23 anti-submarine frigates HMS Kent and HMS Richmond, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s RFA Fort Victoria and RFA Tidespring.

    A Royal Navy Astute-class submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles will be deployed in support of the surface fleet.

    A U.S. destroyer, USS The Sullivans, will sail as part of the Group and providing it with air defence and anti-submarine capabilities. A squadron of 10 F-35B Lightning II aircraft from the U.S. Marine Corps will also be integrated into the fleet.

    The Royal Netherlands Navy’s frigate HNLMS Evertsen will be providing further air defence.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 02:00

  • Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century
    Will Canada Be A Bridge Of Cooperation Or A Platform For War In The 21st Century

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Canada could play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole…

    The arctic remains the world’s last frontier of human exploration. It is also a domain of great potential cooperation among great civilizations, or inversely a domain of militarism and confrontation.

    In recent years, Russia and China have increasingly harmonized their foreign policies around the Framework unveiled by President Xi Jinping in 2013 dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative. Since its unveiling, this megaproject has grown in leaps and bounds winning over 136 nations, accruing $3.7 trillion of investment capital and evolving new components such as the “Digital Silk Road”, “Health Silk Road”, “Space Silk Road”, and of course the “Polar Silk Road”. In March 2021, the Polar Silk Road, first announced in 2018, was given a prominent role in the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan with a focus on Arctic shipping, resource development, scientific Arctic research and conservation.

    With the enthusiastic support of Russia, China has increasingly become a leading force in icebreaker technology, northern resource development, arctic infrastructure construction, with an aim to be a world leader in shipping across the rapidly melting Northwest Passage cutting between 10-15 days off of goods moving between Asia and Europe. The recent clogging of the Suez Canal and over congested Straits of Malacca have been stark reminders that Arctic shipping is a domain of global strategic significance during the 21st century.

    Russia’s role as Chair of the Arctic Council between 2021-2023 will also put a major spotlight on the evolving Russia-China paradigm for win-win cooperation of the north as a territory of dialogue and development which is the theme of the upcoming St. Petersburg Arctic Summit later this year.

    The Threat of Confrontation Heats Up

    Despite these positive strides, many geopoliticans in the west have repeatedly attacked such developments as “efforts to conquer the world and replace the USA as global hegemons”. Those promoting this Hobbesian outlook not only choose to ignore the countless olive branches offered to the west by the Eurasian powers for mutual development, but have also accelerated a policy which some have dubbed a ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ ballistic missile encirclement of both Russia and China. This latter policy was recently called out by Foreign Minister Lavrov on April 1, 2021 who said:

    “We now have a missile defence area in Europe. Nobody is saying that this is against Iran now. This is clearly being positioned as a global project designed to contain Russia and China. The same processes are underway in the Asia-Pacific region. No one is trying to pretend that this is being done against North Korea… This is a global system designed to back U.S. claims to absolute dominance, including in the military-strategic and nuclear spheres.”

    Instead of acknowledging the fact that Russian and Chinese military strategies are defensive in nature, advocates of full spectrum dominance have chosen to push an opposing narrative painting both Eurasian nations as competitors and rivals with ghoulish secret intentions to annex the world. Under this confrontational paradigm, both NORAD and NORTHCOM continental defense systems are undergoing a reform under General Glan van Herck who stated in his Declassified Executive Summary of NORAD’s New Strategic Vision:

    “Both Russia and China are increasing their activity in the Arctic. Russia’s fielding of advanced, long-range cruise missiles capable of being launched from Russian territory and flying through the northern approaches and seeking to strike targets in the United States and Canada has emerged as the dominant military threat in the Arctic.”

    Why the general believes this to be the dominant cause of military threats rather than the USA’s unilateral withdrawal from all confidence building measures such as the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 1987 INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty is beyond the capacity of this writer’s imagination.

    An important part of this continental reform involves an upgrading and expansion of the U.S.-directed Ground Based Midcourse Defense system of 44 silo-based interceptors located in Alaska and California with an additional 20 in response to both China and Russia’s development of hypersonic, maneuverable warheads as well as a new generation of submarine and land-based ICBMs. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle recently attacked this upgraded GMD program by stating not only is the system woefully inept (only half of its 18 tests since 1999 hit their targets), but is also unnecessarily provocative, forcing Russia and China to upgrade their own systems in response to a threat that never should have existed in the first place. In a 2019 interview Coyle stated:

    “All of this is causing Russia and increasingly China to build more and more offensive systems, so that they can overwhelm U.S. missile defence- assuming that they would work… We have no way of dealing with more and more missiles from Russia or China and so building up more and more missile defense is backfiring”.

    General van Herck has also championed Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technology across all domains of data collection and even supplementing human decision making as part of the goal of achieving “global integration, all domain awareness, information dominance to reach decision superiority”. Dubbed Pathfinder, van Herck has stated “I absolutely believe it can be a model for the Department of Defense. It lays the foundation for improved data-driven decision making and enhanced capability”. Whether it is wise to strive to cut decision making on matters such as thermonuclear war down to 12 minutes as is currently celebrated by Pathfinder supporters while leaving strategic decision-making protocols in the hands of soulless algorithms, or whether it is a living prophecy of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove can be left up to debate. The fact remains that this is the game plan.

    Since both unipolar and multipolar paradigms gripping the Arctic are creating an objective tension which threatens humanity and since appreciation for the origins and evolution of the Russia-China alliance is misunderstood and mischaracterized in the west, a few words of context are in order.

    A Brief History of Russian Chinese Arctic Synergy

    In 2015, Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union first signed an MOU to integrate with the Belt and Road, and as of 2019, China and Russia signed a series of major programs to extend the Belt and Road Initiative into the Arctic. The synergy between what Prime Minister Medvedev called the “Silk Road on Ice” and Putin’s Great Eastern Vision were obvious and in April 2019, both nations released a joint statement “Joint efforts will be made in Arctic marine science research, which will promote the construction of the ‘Silk Road on Ice.” The statement asserted that both nations “look forward to more fruitful and efficient partnerships worldwide to contribute to the sustainable development of the world oceans and a shared future for mankind.”

    During an April 2019 BRI forum, President Putin laid out his concept of Russian and Chinese foreign policy doctrines saying:

    “The Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.”

    In recent months, the Russian-Chinese Joint Statement on Global Governance of March 23, 2021, represented the clearest response to the collapse of diplomatic bridges uniting west and east whose already weak edifices have been set ablaze in recent months. This diplomatic arson took the form of increased anti-Russian and anti Chinese sanctions, accelerated NATO war games on Russia’s perimeter, increased efforts to consolidate an anti-Chinese Pacific NATO, not to mention Biden’s infamous remarks that Putin was a “soulless killer”. These diplomatic disasters culminated in the infamous ambush of Chinese officials in Alaska on March 19, 2021.

    Economic Cooperation and Shared Interests

    Russia and China’s collaboration on Arctic resource development has seen both nations focus on transportation corridors, energy and research with a consistently open offer for all nations among their western counterparts to join at any time. Among the most important of the Arctic Projects now underway as part of Russia’s Arctic 2035 Vision announced in 2019, the 6000 km Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline is at the top of the list which will make Russia the primary supplier of China’s energy needs by 2030. This project will be joined by a Power of Siberia II doubling the natural gas output to China via Mongolia and both projects are part of the historic $400 billion energy deal signed between China and Russia in 2014 with the aim of sending 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China for 30 years.

    A similar strategic project is the LNG-2 involving Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Russian companies on a joint project showcasing the importance of Polar Silk Road thinking in alleviating tensions among Pacific neighbors. Global energy analyst Professor Francesco Sassi of Pisa University stated that this project “will see an unprecedented level of cooperation between Japanese and Chinese energy companies in one of the most important Russian energy projects of the next decade”.

    Additionally China’s 30% stake in the Yamal LNG pipeline which involves the Silk Road Fund ties China’s energy interests ever more deeply into the heart of Russia’s north east.

    Russia’s program of expanding Trans Siberian Rail traffic 100 fold from the current 3000 twenty foot units/year to 300 000 twenty foot units/year by upgrading and doubling rail is vital as well as the program for the completion of the Northern Latitudinal Railway connecting west Siberian ports to the Arctic. On the strategic point of shipping, Russia is not only expanding its fleet of icebreakers to include new models of Project 22220 nuclear powered icebreakers, but also will increase freight traffic to 80 million tons/year by 2025 (up from the current 20 million). Several of Russia’s 40 icebreakers are nuclear powered, making it the only nation in the world enjoying this claim… a title it will enjoy until later this year as China rolls out its first 33,000 ton nuclear icebreaker which will join its growing inventory (already far advanced of both Canada’s and the USA’s dismal capacity).

    Part and parcel of Russia’s new 15-year plan for the Arctic are plans to commit state support for broad transport and energy infrastructure via direct investments as well as the creation of “economic preference zones” giving private sector actors tax incentives. State support will also be directed towards efforts to mitigate climate change, scientific research, monitoring of environmental damage and pollution clean up.

    The Rise of China as an Arctic Powerhouse

    China deployed their first Arctic research expedition in 1999, followed by the establishment of their first Arctic research station in Svalbard, Norway in 2004. After years of effort, China achieved a permanent observer seat at the Arctic Council in 2011, and by 2016 created the Russia-China Polar Engineering and Research Center to develop better techniques to access Arctic resources. In 2012, China rolled out its first icebreaker (Snow Dragon I) and has quickly surpassed both Canada and the USA whose two out-dated ice breakers have passed their shelf life by many years.

    As the Arctic ice caps continue to recede, the Northern Sea Route has become a major focus for China. The fact that shipping time from China’s Port of Dalian to Rotterdam would be cut by 10 days makes this alternative very attractive. Ships sailing from China to Europe must currently follow a transit through the congested Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal which is 5000 nautical miles longer than the northern route. The opening up of Arctic resources vital for China’s long term outlook is also a major driver in this initiative.

    In preparation for resource development, China and Russia created a Russian Chinese Polar Engineering and Research Center in 2016 to develop capabilities for northern development such as building on permafrost, creating ice resistant platforms, and more durable icebreakers. New technologies needed for enhanced ports, and transportation in the frigid cold was also a focus.

    The Questionable Role of Canada in the Arctic Great Game

    Amidst this dramatic rate of Arctic development both towards militarization and towards economic cooperation, the Canadian government has managed to remain remarkably aloof and non-committal.

    Despite the fact that a 2016 Foreign Policy Review called for Canada’s integration into the northern missile defense shield last championed by Dick Cheney in 2004, Canada’s policy establishment has not committed to any course and while the field remains open for a potential Arctic policy based on diplomacy and cooperation as a bridge between East and West, time is running out.

    On the one side, high ranking war hawks among Washington and Ottawa’s policy elite make every effort to court Canada as a participant of the NORAD/NORTHCOM Strategic Vision as the war drums continue to pound. On the other side, Russia has made its desires for Russian-Canadian Arctic cooperation known as Russian chargé d’affaires Vladimir Proskuryakov stated on April 6:

    “Despite political difference between our two countries, prospects for Russia-Canadian Arctic cooperation look wide and generally positive. We should only use our possibilities properly.”

    Proskuryakov continued: “Being neighbours across the Arctic Ocean, we want to make maximum use of the Arctic potential as a territory of peaceful dialogue and sustainable development, which naturally combines realities and technological solutions of the 21st century with cultural and historic traditions of the indigenous populations.”

    If Russia’s hopes for collaboration are to make any headway, then it is certain that Canada’s September 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework will play a role. This framework was an honest attempt by the Federal government to create a “long term strategic vision for activities and investments for Arctic 2030 and beyond”. Having committed to an $800 million fund for Arctic development and amplifying the National Trade Corridors Fund of $2.3 billion/year for 11 years devoted to transportation infrastructure, Canada’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau called for northern infrastructure proposals in October 2020 with a March 2021 deadline saying:

    “Efficient and reliable transportation networks are key to Canada’s economic prosperity. Enhancing Arctic and northern transportation will support trade diversification and social development and ensure greater connectivity for Northerners. I encourage eligible transportation infrastructure owners, operators and users to apply for funding under the National Trade Corridors Fund.”

    Sadly, months later, the deadline came and went with no concrete projects placed on the table and no mechanisms established to carry out any potential construction. No funding mechanisms were set in place and without a vision the potential use of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank or Bank of Canada continues to go untapped.

    The only concretized policies for the Arctic put in place by the Trudeau government during this time are a stark inversion of actual development with three omnibus bills C-48, C-69 and C-88 passing in short order under the fog of a climate emergency declared by the Parliament. Under these bills, a moratorium was placed on all oil tankers in Northern BC stretching from Vancouver to Alaska (C-48), total bans on offshore drilling were passed declaring Arctic waters off limits to development (C-88) and environmental review processes-already among the most elaborate and bureaucratic among developed nations, was expanded (C-69), making new energy projects in the Arctic nearly impossible.

    The Private Sector Steps In

    When opportunities to connect Canada’s interests with China were advanced, as seen in the case of China’s efforts to purchase Canadian construction giant Aecon Inc in 2018 or the Hope Bay TMAC Resources in Nunavut in 2020, the Federal Government swept in at the last minute to kill the deals ensuring that no Chinese capital would have any influence in Canada’s development prospects.

    Stephen van Dine (VP of Public Governance at Canada’s Institute of Governance) wrote that pension funds, the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and Bank of Canada should be used to play a positive role in arctic development. Van Dine wrote in January 2021: “The Canadian arctic is almost investment-ready for the next 50-100 years with a reliable, predictable infrastructure program for schools, public housing, health centers and power generation. What’s missing is a long-term plan.”

    Frustrated with this commitment to inaction, Canadian business leaders at various times formed consortiums outside of the influence of Ottawa as seen in the Alaska-to-Canada Railway Development Corporation which won the support of both the Albertan government as well as former President Donald Trump in September 2020. The A2A Program called for building 2500 miles of rail and finally closing the gap separating Canada from Alaska, which to this day remains one of the most underdeveloped frontiers on earth. Despite the billions of dollars of annual federal transfers to the native bands of each of the northern territories, drug abuse, suicide rates, depression and school drop out rates are magnitudes higher among the static, disconnected northern communities of Canada relative to the national average.

    Many were curious if Biden would continue Trump’s support of this program but considering the new president’s swift killing of the Keystone XL pipeline and his passage of Executive Orders ensuring a total halt to all economic development of Arctic resources, the answer has become less ambiguous. These orders made Biden’s ideological stance on Arctic economic development and the A2A Project transparent, and also defined what should be expected of the Biden-Trudeau “Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.-Canada Partnership”.

    Another group of thought leaders representing interests in the public, private and academic centers, frustrated at the plague of stasis recently formed a group called Arctic360 with the mandate to drum up support for a positive vision for Canada’s High North. Comparing Canada with other members of the Arctic Council, Jessica Shadian (President and CEO of Arctic360) wrote:

    “When it comes to Canada’s truly competitive advantage for becoming a global leader in innovation it is time to break out of the usual mould and go where few Canadians go: the North. One just needs to glance at Canada’s Nordic Arctic neighbours to see that there is precedence. The often-made arguments as to why the North is an inopportune place for everything from living to working to starting a business or building a road is its real advantage. That the North is vast, cold, remote, dark six months of the year, has harsh weather and a critical infrastructure gap is one of Canada’s biggest innovation assets. Add to this, that the North is home to many of the critical minerals that China and others want for building technologically advanced infrastructure. The North could be Canada’s unrealized key to leap-frog existing infrastructure and industries and play a global leadership role in 21st Century innovation. The question is whether we have the ambition or the conviction to lead.”

    A True Vision for Inter-Civilizational Cooperation: The Bering Strait Corridor

    It was in March 2015, foreseeing the Arctic extension of the Belt and Road Initiative by a number of years, that former Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin, brilliantly called for a Trans-Eurasian Development Belt with rail stretching all the way up to the Bering Strait crossing and integrating into Asia. Yakunin, who for years has been a proponent of the connection of the Americas and Eurasia by rail, said the project should be an “inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current (neoliberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world ‘future zone,’ and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.”

    Having been originally conceived in the 19th century as outlined by Governor William Gilpin in his 1890 Cosmopolitan Railway, and supported by Czar Nicholas II who sponsored feasibility studies on the project in 1906, the Bering Strait tunnel connecting Eurasian and American continents fell from general awareness for decades. It was briefly revived during discussions held between FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace and Russian Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 but was again lost under the fog of Cold War insanity. This century-old idea again resurfaced when Russia signaled its willingness to construct the project in 2011 offering over $65 billion towards its funding, which only required the cooperation of the United States and Canada. China put its support behind the Bering Strait Tunnel in May 2014.

    While such a grand design would provide the most direct pathway for the west to synchronise our development paradigm with the Polar Silk Road, and Greater Eurasian Partnership, it is admittedly a far cry from the realities plaguing current geopolitical thinking.

    The best that can be hoped for in the short term would be a successful war avoidance strategy adopted by Ottawa in alignment with Moscow’s desires for cooperation on the field of anti-coronavirus programs, education and arctic medical needs and environmental management. If these simple trust building mechanisms can begin to take hold, and if war hawks are kept at bay, then perhaps Canada can eventually play the role of intermediary and diplomatic bridge both for the benefit of its own citizens and the wellbeing of the world as a whole.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/27/2021 – 00:00

  • Company Weaponizes Soldiers' Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets
    Company Weaponizes Soldiers’ Smartphone Data To Expose US Military Secrets

    As pressure mounts on Big Tech firms to curb their invasive data-harvesting practices first implemented to cultivate valuable personal data that can be packaged and sold to advertisers for a premium (indeed, this is how the “free Internet” was built), WSJ has just published a shocking story about how one firm (a defense contractor called “PlanetRisk”) discovered it could track sensitive movements of American troops in Syria via data generated by apps on their smartphones.

    After making the discovery, the firm used the data to build a surveillance tool that could monitor the travel of refugees from Syria to Europe and the US. The goal was to sell the finished product to the counter-terrorism and intelligence communities.

    But, as WSJ pointed out, “buried in the data was evidence of sensitive US military operations by American special-operations forces in Syria.”

    The fear now is that this data can be bought and sold by America’s adversaries to gain valuable intelligence insights into the movements of American forces. Many vendors now sell “global location information from mobile phones to intelligence, military and law-enforcement organizations.” The US has struggled to effectively monitor what “software service members are installing on devices and whether that software is secure.”

    “Our country’s intelligence leaders have made it clear that putting Americans’ sensitive information in the hands of unfriendly foreign governments is a major risk to national security,” he said.

    This isn’t a new issue. Back in 2019, the Trump Administration moved to force the divestiture of Grindr, the LGBTQ-friendly dating app, which the military and CFIUS – the Commerce Department’s board that reviews foreign deals – largely over concerns that data gleaned from the app might be weaponized to track US troops.

    What PlanetRisk revealed could easily be replicated by an American adversary. The company simply traced cell signals from US bases in Syria to an abandoned cement factory back in 2016. This was before US special forces use of the area as a staging ground had become public knowledge. What’s more, PlanetRisk could monitor the movements of American troops even while they were out on patrol, a serious operational security risk that opened units up to being targeted by enemy forces.

    When PlanetRisk traced telephone signals from US bases to the Syrian cement factory in 2016, it hadn’t been disclosed publicly that the factory was being used as a staging area for U.S. and allied forces.

    PlanetRisk resolved to use its discovery to build a new tool and sell it to intelligence agencies, but it was beaten to market by a competitor and the firm eventually dissolved. But in its reporting, WSJ managed to replicate PlanetRisk’s findings, tracking movements at the same cement factory in 2017 and 2018 from a commercial data broker and analytics company that wished to remain anonymous. The Journal tracked the movements of people who appeared to be American special ops, just as PlanetRisk had.

    WSJ also tracked the data to US facilities such as Fort Bragg, Fort Hood in Texas or tiny desert outposts such as the US-run Camp Buehring in Kuwait before later traveling to the Lafarge Cement Factory in northern Syria.  Although these data sets don’t contain personalized names, each individual is assigned an alphanumeric identifier designed for advertisers. But, as WSJ points out, the places associated with a device can offer clues that can in turn be weaponized. While the US has allowed personal data to become a commodity – which led to the backlash in 2018 and 2019 in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

    Source: WSJ

    While the US government has taken steps to teach operational security best practices to troops, there’s little doubt that the US system’s approach to commercializing data on behalf of the advertising and technology industries has created massive security holes. And unsurprisingly, China is getting better at exploiting them, while at the same time banning the export of data on its own citizens to prevent any rival countries from tracking its citizens and military personnel in the same way.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:40

  • Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting
    Jailing Of 4 Doctors For Illegal Organ Extraction In China Casts Spotlight On Forced Organ Harvesting

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    A criminal case involving unauthorized organ procurement surgery conducted in an unlicensed ambulance in China is casting a spotlight on Beijing’s continued efforts to cover up its state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.

    Last July, four doctors from eastern China were sentenced to between 12 and 28 months in prison after being found guilty for their roles in illegally extracting the liver and two kidneys of Li Peng, a hospital patient, after her death.

    According to China’s state-run media, Li’s liver ended up at a military hospital in China’s capital Beijing, and her kidneys went to a hospital in neighboring Tianjin for transplant. Both hospitals have been identified by a U.S.-based nonprofit as suspected centers for the forced extraction of organs from living political prisoners.

    The doctors, as well as two other accomplices, were charged after Li’s son, Shi Xianglin, alerted authorities that his mother’s donation record was not registered in China’s official donation database. Shi began to suspect that something was amiss after he found out that his cousin Shi Zijun was paid 200,000 yuan (about $30,780) two days after his mother’s organs were removed. Under China’s official organ donation program, donors are not compensated, according to Chinese authorities.

    The money was paid by local businessman Huang Chaoyang, who was also sentenced to 10 months in prison last year over his role in the unauthorized organ extraction. According to China’s state-run media, Huang Chaoyang was a businessman selling medical equipment.

    The four doctors later appealed their sentences, arguing that what they did was a “state-endorsed” duty since they were simply following orders from their hospital supervisors.

    Illegal Organ Extraction

    Li, a 53-year-old woman living in Huaiyuan County in eastern China’s Anhui Province, died at the local hospital, the People’s Hospital in Huaiyuan County, on Feb. 15, 2018. Four days earlier, she had been rushed to its intensive-care unit (ICU) after being wounded by her stepson during an axe attack.

    On Feb. 12, 2018, after spending one day in the ICU, Li was determined to be in a life-threatening condition with signs of imminent respiratory failure.

    Yang, a deputy chief physician and director of the hospital’s ICU, was the doctor looking after Li when she was admitted to the unit.

    It was Yang who persuaded Li’s husband and daughter to sign a voluntary organ donation form, after promising that they would be paid. Initially, Yang promised that the family would be paid 160,000 yuan (about $24,630) but increased the payment to 200,000 yuan at the demand of Li’s nephew Shi Zijun. Li’s husband and daughter signed the form on Feb. 14, 2018, one day before Li’s death.

    Authorities in China, however, claim that all organ donors are non-remunerated donors.

    After getting the family’s approval, Yang called Huang Xinli who worked at a hospital in nearby Nanjing City about an organ extraction, and Huang made the decision that Li’s organs would be suitable for organ transplantation surgery.

    At the time, Huang was a chief physician at the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, which is affiliated with Nanjing University Medical School. Prior to his employment there, Huang had worked at Jiangsu People’s Hospital, a state-run hospital located in the eastern Jiangsu Province’s capital Nanjing.

    Huang then arranged to have his former colleague Lu Shen, and another doctor Wang Hailang remove Li’s organs in an ambulance. Lu was the chief physician in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery at the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. Wang was a doctor in stomatology at the Huaibei Miners General Hospital in Anhui.

    Li’s organs were removed immediately after her death, but it was unclear where the ambulance was parked when the surgery took place.

    The unlicensed ambulance was owned by Ou Yang, who received a one-year-one-month sentence in the same trial as that against businessman Huang Chaoyang and the four doctors. According to China’s state-run media, Ou bought the ambulance from a government health center in Anhui’s Suzhou City in 2015. Since then, he got a new license plate for the ambulance and began using the vehicle to transport patients from areas near local hospitals.

    At the trial at a local court in Anhui in July, all four doctors were convicted of the crime of intentional destruction of a corpse.

    While Lu was found liable for extracting organs from Li only, the other three doctors were found guilty of engaging in unauthorized organ procurement surgeries on 10 other individuals in Huaiyuan County between 2017 and 2019.

    Details of these 10 individuals are not known, but Huang was found to be the main surgeon behind the procurement surgeries on these people. Ou, the owner of the unlicensed ambulance, was also involved in the illegal removal of organs from seven of the 10 individuals.

    Lu was sentenced to one year in prison, while Huang, Yang, and Wang were sentenced to two years and four months, two years and two months, and two years in prison, respectively.

    The four doctors appealed to an intermediate court in Bengbu, a city in Anhui. The court rejected their appeals and upheld the lower court’s ruling in August. They had argued that their actions were authorized as they were following orders from their hospital superiors.

    On April 19, Chinese news portals Tencent and NetEase reported that Lu Dahai, an alias for Lu Shen, said that he had appealed his case to the province’s highest court, the Anhui’s Higher People’s Court.

    Organ Harvesting

    The two hospitals that took Li’s liver and kidneys respectively—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) No. 302 Hospital and Tianjin First Central Hospital—have been named by the U.S.-based World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) for their suspected roles in forcibly harvesting the organs from prisoners who practice Falun Gong.

    The PLA hospital has carried out a large number of liver transplant surgeries. According to the WOIPFG, the number of these surgeries reached 310 between April 2005 and April 2010, and 146 between May 2010 and December 2012.

    Adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual exercise also known as Falun Dafa, have been targeted for persecution by the Chinese regime since 1999. Millions of practitioners have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, psychiatric wards, and other facilities, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

    In the 2000s, reports emerged that the Chinese communist regime was systematically killing detained Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to use for transplantation. At the time China did not have an official organ donation program, and Chinese officials said organs mainly came from executed prisoners.

    Amid the growing scrutiny of China’s organ transplant system, the regime announced that starting Jan. 1, 2015, it would stop sourcing organs from executed prisoners and claimed that it would executively rely on a new system of voluntary donations. However, Beijing’s claim was refuted by a 2019 report by a London-based people’s tribunal.

    The report concluded, after a year-long investigation, that the stated-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting was happening on a “significant scale” in China, with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

    An investigative report by The Epoch Times in 2016 concluded that tens of thousands may have been killed at the Tianjin First Central Hospital, as the hospital carried out more transplants than the supply of organs from executed prisoners could support.

    On April 13, the WOIPFG released an investigative report into the Jiangsu People’s Hospital. In November 2018, a doctor at the hospital did not deny that they sourced transplant organs from Falun Gong adherents when answering a phone inquiry by a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. The doctor also said that a liver transplant surgery could be arranged in less than two weeks.

    The report also included a 2017 audio recording of a phone conversation between a WOIPFG investigator, who posed as someone making inquiries about liver transplant surgeries, and an unnamed liver transplant doctor at the hospital. The doctor said an organ was available as soon as two weeks, a waiting time shorter than that at the nearby Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital.

    The Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital is also on WOIPFG’s list of hospitals likely to be involved in forced organ harvesting.

    Shifting the Narrative

    That Li’s case was widely reported by China’s state-run media and not censored is significant, said WOIPFG’s Chair Wang Zhiyuan in a recent interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

    Wang said that the CCP was trying to use the news to spin a narrative around organ harvesting in China—by trying to create a story that these crimes are all committed by individuals and that it is the Chinese authorities who are trying to stop them.

    In reality, China’s state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience is an expansive endeavor involving cooperation among government agencies affiliated with the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Chinese military, police units, military police, as well as regional Party and government agencies, Wang said.

    He said the sentences handed down on the doctors were quite lenient because, while the CCP wanted to use the case for propaganda purposes, it also did not want to draw too much attention to the matter because the doctors were likely acting on orders from their hospitals.

    Based on recent findings, Wang said some Chinese hospitals are clearly still engaging in live organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents.

    Organ harvesting in China has attracted greater scrutiny in the West in recent years, especially as the United States and other democracies are stepping up their criticism of the CCP over its array of severe human rights abuses.

    In the United States, eight counties in Virginia have passed a resolution condemning China’s ongoing practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. On April 15, the Texas Senate adopted a similar resolution.

    In early March, U.S. lawmakers in both the Senate and House introduced legislation to seek accountability for China’s organ harvesting. If enacted, the bill would allow the U.S. government to impose sanctions on individuals and government officials responsible for organ trafficking or organ harvesting. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:20

  • Is Joe Rogan's Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?
    Is Joe Rogan’s Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance?

    Joe Rogan made the headlines last year when his highly lucrative exclusivity deal with Spotify was revealed. The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most successful podcasts in the world first appeared on Spotify on September 1 and from December 1, all episodes were released exclusively on the streaming platform, having previously boasted a huge following on YouTube.

    While the financial benefits for Rogan and the show are undeniable, Statista’s Martin Armstrong asks (and answers) has restricting his reach led to a drop in relevance? Google Trends data for the U.S. suggests that this may be the case. As originally covered by TecTalk, there has been a clear dampening of search interest for the term ‘Joe Rogan’ since the episodes were moved over to Spotify. Previous spikes of interest generated when the show was more widely accessible have largely disappeared, relatively speaking.

    Infographic: Is Joe Rogan's Spotify Exclusivity Damaging His Relevance? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As noted by TecTalk “In the six months leading up to the show’s December 1st exclusive start, [there was] an average search index for ‘Joe Rogan’ of 57.9. After the week of December 1 that index value has dropped to 34.6, which constitutes a 40.2 percent drop in search volume.” Although the podcast is not behind a paywall, Spotify’s popularity and accessibility is still nothing compared to that of YouTube and, despite the integration of video, the chances of an episode going viral are clearly lower at the moment.

    All that said, his latest discussion with libertarian comedian Dave Smith is a much-watch/listen as the two cover everything from America’s regime change foreign policies to Alinksy-ite domestic policy shifts, to COVID corruption, to diversity training, to vaccine passports, to running for president (as a libertarian candidate) and, quite frankly, everything else in the current zeitgeist…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 23:00

  • Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses
    Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses

    Authored by ‘Techno Fog’ via The Reactionary substack,

    The FBI continued to spy on Americans without a warrant…

    A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

    This opinion includes these findings:

    April 2019 – July 2019: An FBI technical information specialist was involved in “Compliance incidents” by conducting 124 queries of Section 702-acquired information on (1) Volunteers who had requested to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy”; (2) Persons who needed to enter the field office to perform repairs; and (3) Persons who reported they were victims of a crime.

    August 2019 – October 2019: An FBI Task Force Office “conducted approximately 69 queries using names and identifiers of individuals…” The redactions keep secret the identity of the victims.

    Other Violations:

    • One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”

    • Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

    Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

    “[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

    HOWEVER – Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

    In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

    “Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

    As we previously reported, Boasberg declined to sentence former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith to prison – not even a day – after Clinesmith altered a CIA email and lied about it to others within the FBI in furtherance of a Carter Page FISA renewal. The FISA heightened duty of candor doesn’t come with heightened punishments for violating that duty.

    After the latest revelations of abuse and unaccountability, perhaps it’s time for FBI Director Wray, Judge Boasberg, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:40

  • New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party
    New Chinese Decree Forces Religious Leaders To Actively Support Communist Party

    China has rolled out with a new policy which requires all religious leaders in the country to show open support to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The new decree goes into effect May 1 and orders all religious heads, including Christian pastors and bishops, to “follow the lead of and support the Communist Party.”

    While Chinese state interference in religious affairs of citizens is far from anything new, this particular decree appears far reaching and is also aimed at rooting out “foreign” influence, with significant legal repercussions that are threatened.

    Government-approved Catholic Mass in Beijing, via VOA

    According to an unofficial translation of Article 3 of the decree: “Religious professionals shall love the motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support the socialist system, abide by the Constitution, laws, regulations, and rules; practice the Core Socialist Values, uphold the principle of religious independence and self-management, persist in our nation’s direction of the sinification of religion, and preserve national unity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and social stability.”

    The full decree entitled “Measures on the Management of Religious Professionals” also purports to define “rights” of “religious professionals” – or rather their extreme limitations under the law.

    It also requires religious clerics to resist the infiltration of foreign forces through religion. Violators of the new decree will also be subject to criminal charges and other sanctions, which is a strengthening of older policies. Instead of just state-controlled practices, there’s now more legal basis for criminalizing religion that’s been “unapproved”.

    Critics are already pointing out it constitutes a further severe crackdown on freedom of religion and worship. One large ‘house church’ leader in Beijing commented to US-funded VOA News, “This decree goes against our religious beliefs, and the separation of politics and religion.” The representative said additionally, “There will be a further narrowing of religious freedom and more severe crackdowns on believers.”

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    It also further tightens oversight of official government-sanctioned Catholic communities in the country.

    Below is the relevant section from the document…

    Catholic bishops are to be approved and consecrated by the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China shall complete a form for recording Catholic bishops within 20 days of consecrating them, send it to the State Bureau of Religious Affairs for filing, and submit the following materials:

    1. Copies of the bishop’s household registration booklet and resident identity card.
    2. An explanation of the circumstances by which the provincial, autonomous region, or directly governed municipality religious group democratically selected that bishop;
    3. The approval documents from the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China;
    4. An explanation of their consecration by the bishop that presided over it.

    * * *

    According to VOA, the new decree is related to a recent push to force various religious communities into integrating official CCP propaganda and history into their religious teaching curriculum: “The issuance of the decree coincides with a push by the government-controlled national religious associations of Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam to require all believers to study topics such as the histories of the CCP, the People’s Republic of China and socialism to mark the 100th anniversary of the CCP in July.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:20

  • Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan "Cannot Be Discounted"
    Aussie Defence Minister Warns Conflict Over Taiwan “Cannot Be Discounted”

    Authored by Daniel Yeng via The Epoch Times,

    Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton is warning that conflict over Taiwan is a possibility and has vowed to work with allies to maintain peace in the region.

    “People need to be realistic about the activity,” Dutton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday.

    “There is militarisation of bases across the region. Obviously, there is a significant amount of activity, and there is an animosity between Taiwan and China.”

    “If you look at any of the rhetoric that is coming out of China from spokesmen, particularly in recent weeks and months in response to different suggestions that have been made, they have been very clear about that goal,” he added.

    “I don’t think it should be discounted. I think China has been very clear about the reunification, and that’s been a long-held objective of theirs,” Dutton said.

    The minister added that “nobody wants to see conflict” between China and Taiwan and added that the Australian Defence Force was prepared to meet any threats in the region and that they would work with allies in the region for peace.

    Earlier this month, Michael Goldman, charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, revealed that the United States and Australia were working on “contingencies” if conflict were to erupt around Taiwan.

    In recent months, Chinese military jets have made near-daily incursions into Taiwanese airspace, with the largest being in late March, when 20 Chinese military planes entered its Air Defence Identification Zone.

    J15 fighter jets on China’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during a drill at sea in April 2018. (AFP/Getty Images)

    U.S. Admiral Philip Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, also issued a warning in response to Beijing’s increasing military build-up, saying he believed China could invade Taiwan “in the next six years,” while other analysts believe the timeframe could be shorter.

    Beijing sees Taiwan as its own territory, even though the island state has been governed as a distinct territory for more than seven decades.

    Recently, the communist regime has upped its rhetoric against the island, vowing to bring it into the fold—by force if necessary.

    Meanwhile, throughout 2020, Australia has endured a year-long economic coercion campaign from Beijing targeting key exports to China, including coal, beef, wine, barley, lobster, timber, lamb, and cotton.

    The Chinese trade strikes were launched in response to calls by Foreign Minister Marise Payne in April 2020 for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

    Australia has encouraged exporters to find alternative markets to China while passing several laws to shore up the country’s national security against interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Last week, Foreign Minister Payne exercised powers granted to her by the Foreign Relations Act and terminated the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative signed with the Victorian state government.

    The Chinese Embassy in Canberra criticised the move, labelling it “unreasonable and provocative.” While Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin urged Australia to “revoke” the decision or Beijing would “resolutely take strong actions.”

    Dutton responded, saying, “We’re not going to have our values compromised. We aren’t going to surrender our sovereignty.”

    “We are standing up for who we are. We’ve got very important diplomatic relations with many countries, including China, but we aren’t going to be compromised by the principles of the Communist Party of China.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 22:00

  • Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation
    Corn Prices Touch 8-Year High As Albert Edwards Worries About Food Inflation

    Chicago corn futures are up 3% Monday as supply concerns drive prices to an 8-year high. 

    “Corn is in the driver’s seat as there are supply worries as well as strong demand,” a Singapore-based feed grains trader told Reuters. “Corn is pulling prices of wheat and soybeans higher.”

    Besides corn, wheat tagged a seven-year high, while soybeans are at eight-year highs. The entire agri-complex is on fire. 

    Traders are looking at the dryness in Brazil and cold temperatures in the US that have supported prices. 

    BAMWX meteorologist Kirk Hinz outlines dryness in Brazil “continues to be a big concern ahead.”

    Also, “fuel is being added to the fire by reports that the Argentinian government is considering raising its export taxes on grains and oilseed (products), which would further tighten the situation on the world market,” Commerzbank said in a note.

    Commerzbank continued: “This is because Argentina also plays a very important role in supplying the world markets, especially as the world’s largest soybean meal and oil exporter.”

    In the US, a cold spell in early April adds to additional supply concerns. 

    We noted earlier this month that freezing temperatures could have a profound impact on seedling development this spring. 

    The cold blast has likely delayed seeding across the Corn Belt as farmers wait for warmer temperatures. Planting corn in cooler climates is still possible, but colder soil can take corn kernels much longer to germinate and increases the risk of seedling death. 

    Combine weather woes and possible export taxes in Argentina, and increasing demand from China has developed into a perfect storm of higher prices. 

    Rising agri commodity prices prompted SocGen’s resident permabear Albert Edwards to provide yet another warning (read his first warning here) about soaring food inflation and what social ramifications it could mean for emerging economies. He pointed out central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy after the financial crisis a little more than a decade ago. It resulted in an eruption of food prices that led to the Arab Spring revolutions – something he believes could happen again. 

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    “I’m not sure if central banks will ever realise not only do their QE polices increase inequality and fan the embers of popularism, but after having done that, rocketing food prices ignite that discontent into raging infernos as occurred during the Arab Spring a decade ago,” Edwards said in another tweet. 

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    Food prices are undeniably soaring faster than inflation and incomes around the world. It’s only a matter of time before social instabilities begin in low-income countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:40

  • Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To "Black And Other Racialized Populations"
    Canadian City Offers COVID Shots To “Black And Other Racialized Populations”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The city of Hamilton in Canada posted a tweet offering the COVID-19 vaccine to “black and other racialized populations” over the age of 18, prompting questions as to whether this was discriminatory.

    “COVID-19 vaccine appointments are now available for Black and other racialized populations/people of colour ages 18+ who live in postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N and L9K at the COVID-19 vaccine clinic at FIRSTONTARIO CENTRE, Friday to Sunday this coming week,” stated the tweet.

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    This was followed up by another tweet that said appointments are now full, further advising, “Black and other racialized populations/people of colour, who are ages 18+ live in eligible postal codes L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N, L9K can call the Public Health COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7 for an appointment at other clinic locations depending on availability of vaccine.”

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

    Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, “prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability.”

    By apparently excluding white people from being offered the shot, the city’s policy appears to be in violation of this act.

    Respondents to the tweet expressed their confusion.

    “How is this even remotely fair? I live in L9C, over 40 and compromised immune system but I can’t get an appointment!!! Ridiculous,” commented Shelly Petrie.

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

    “Imagine this same tweet but with “white” instead of “black” and the outrage it would cause,” remarked another respondent.

    “You will be relying on these spanish colonial race charts to determine priority, yes?” joked another.

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

    “While a white 56 year old with a rare disease that has caused scarring in both lungs, compromised immune system, heart palpitations and hypertension, is still awaiting their first shot. I sense a serious level of racism by our elected officials,” said another.

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

    Governments and health bodies across the west have funded public relations campaigns to encourage ethnic minorities to take the jab because of their historically lower than average uptake in those communities.

    However, in directly offering the jab to certain racial groups before others, authorities may find themselves in hot water if a discrimination case is brought before the courts.

    *  *  *

    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. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:20

  • Biden's Stimulus Checks "Wreck Labor Pool" As People Get Paid To Stay Home 
    Biden’s Stimulus Checks “Wreck Labor Pool” As People Get Paid To Stay Home 

    There are new concerns that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package is already harming the labor market recovery. 

    While job openings and postings are increasing, there is an issue with the number of applications as labor participation currently stands at 61.4%, with an unemployment rate of 6.2%. People are not applying for jobs as they should be as they collect stimulus checks and enjoy a work-free lifestyle, all on the backs of taxpayers.

    There are many jobs available in manufacturing, trade and transportation, logistics, and the professional sector. But employers have difficulty sourcing workers. 

    The latest comments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City provide a chilling insight this month into the labor shortage developing at manufacturing firms across Denver, Oklahoma City, and Omaha: 

    “Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

    So, lower-level employees are making more money collecting stimulus checks and other handouts under the Biden administration. This was very similar when former President Trump dished out helicopter money during the early days of the pandemic. 

    What this creates are more bottlenecks for the supply chain as labor becomes scarce. 

    “It is very difficult to handle the increased business with supply chain issues across all materials and finding anyone who wants to work. The federal government has incentivized people to stay home and not be productive.”

    Other employers report: 

    “Unemployed workers have no incentive to return to work given the COVID bonus payments.”

    What this means is that entry-level pay will have to increase to get low-level workers off the couch. This will create more cost pressures for companies that will either be absorbed or pass onto the consumer. 

    The Biden administration effectively destroys the labor market, resulting in significant repercussions for the real economy, such as a labor shortage that could stall the recovery. 

    In particular, a McDonald’s in Tampa, Florida, offered $50 last week to anyone who would show up to a job interview. 

    WSJ said labor shortages in the food industry affect nationwide and independent eateries as they can’t source enough workers for the front and backend. Some fast-food chains are offering signing bonuses. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is offering free college who work at least 15 hours a week. Taco Bell is giving paid family leave to company store managers. Other operators are boosting pay. 

    But even with all the perks, a labor crunch affects many businesses in various industries to retain workers as the stimulus money adds a barrier to bring back low-level workers. 

    JPMorgan recently warned clients of a massive labor shortage in the US. 

    However, JPMorgan did not expand on what may be causing this unprecedented schism within the economy – after all, for normalcy to return, people must not only be employed but must want to be employed – it did suggest that the “robust” government stimulus may be keeping workers on the sidelines. 

    In a letter sent to the White House Friday, WSJ explains Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for the Biden administration to make the jobless benefits permanent, the onset to universal basic income. 

    While politicians on Capitol Hill have cheered about people’s QE since the pandemic began, the consequences of paying low-level workers more to sit at home than to work could derail the economic recovery.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 21:00

  • Beijing's 'Big Tech' Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant
    Beijing’s ‘Big Tech’ Crackdown Continues With Anti-Trust Probe Into Food-Delivery Giant

    Two weeks after China’s State Administration for Market Regulation – Beijing’s paramount anti-trust regulator – fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion for abusing its market dominance, capping off the country’s first major anti-trust action to rein in one of the tech giants dominating the Chinese domestic economy, the CCP has just launched its next major anti-trust investigation.

    The SCMP reported that China’s antitrust regulator on Monday officially launched a probe into food-delivery service provider Meituan, citing alleged monopolistic business practices like forcing merchants to “pick one from two” – that is, forcing merchants to either pick its platform as its exclusive distribution channel, or find themselves banned.

    The probe reportedly resulted from a public tip. Though it’s not yet known how long the investigation will last, it’s worth remembering that the Alibaba probe was launched on Christmas Eve of last year, and ended earlier this month. Meituan has pledged to cooperate (though of course it has little choice in the matter).

    “The company will actively cooperate with the investigation by the regulatory authorities to further improve the level of business compliance management, protect the legitimate rights and interests of users and all parties, promote the long-term and healthy development of the industry, and earnestly fulfill its social responsibilities,” Beijing-based Meituan said in a statement. “At present, the company’s various businesses are operating normally.”

    According to the SCMP, this tactic of forcing merchants to choose just one platform is widespread in China, suggesting that the crackdown – like other antitrust actions – is more about humbling China’s upstart tech giants and keeping them subservient to the will of the CCP. The company’s shares declined on the news in Hong Kong markets.

    The new probe proves that Beijing’s crackdown on Alibaba and Ant Group wasn’t isolated, and that there will likely be more investigations into other Chinese tech giants before this is over, the SCMP hinted. “It’s not a surprising decision. After Alibaba’s record fine, no big tech players should be immune from monopoly investigations,” said Li Chengdong, the chief executive of e-commerce consultancy Dolphin Think Tank. “The regulators need to also show that the investigation is a fair move for everyone, it’s not only about Alibaba.”

    Meituan, which was founded by 42-year-old Wang Xing, has been dragged into court over allegations of unfair competition before. A local court in Jiangsu this month ruled that Meituan had to pay 352,000 yuan ($54,180) as compensation to Ele.me. a food-delivery adversary owned by Alibaba (as fate would have it) for asking merchants to shun the competing service. Aterward, Meituan issued a public statement claiming it wouldn’t make such demands in the future. Another similar lawsuit played out in February. Then, Meituan and 33 other tech companies were brought in front of SAMR and other regulators earlier this month, and given a deadline of May 13 to rectify anti-competitive behaviors, or be “severely punished”. While the company says it doesn’t practice “one of two”, sources told the FT that Meituan practices a more scaled-down approach whereby it lowers commissions on merchants who exclusively use its platform.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:40

  • "Apocalyptic" St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 
    “Apocalyptic” St. Vincent Eruption May Halve GDP 

    There’s no doubt the Caribbean island of St Vincent is experiencing a humanitarian crisis as chronic food and water shortages develop amid ongoing volcanic eruptions at the northern part of the island. Volcanic ash blankets the island and has heavily impacted its agricultural economy. 

    According to Bloomberg, St. Vincent and the Grenadines could experience a halving of gross domestic product due to the near-continuous showering of ash across the island since April 9.

    “The damage on the north of the island is bordering on apocalyptic,” Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves told Bloomberg in a telephone interview. “The country is not recognizable as a Caribbean island in the north of the country.”

     Before And After 

    Before And After 

    La Soufriere volcano, located in the northern part of the island, has erupted numerous times in the last couple of weeks. At least 20,000 people have been displaced, or about 19% of the island’s population. Much of the economic devastation is situated in the country’s farm belt where agriculture represents about 15% of the economy and is the largest employer. 

    The Eastern Caribbean island is one of the world’s top producers of arrowroot and other exotic fruits, vegetables and root crops. Bananas are another huge crop for the country. 

    Such reliance on an agriculture economy is proving to be disastrous following La Soufriere’s volcanic eruption. 

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    Preliminary estimates show the farmland near the volcano wiped out 100% of the vegetable crop, 90% of tree crops — like mangoes – and 80% of root crops.

    “This means, essentially, that agriculture has been wiped out on the island,” Gonsalves said.

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    Tourism has also become an integral part of the island’s economy. Even before the violent eruptions, tourism and travel were down due to the virus pandemic. 

    Scientists don’t know when the dangerously active volcano will stop erupting. In 1979, La Soufriere erupted for four months. In 1902, the eruption last about one year. 

    “The true economic toll of La Soufriere remains unclear, but Gonsalves estimates the volcano caused $150 million in infrastructure damage and $150 million in agriculture and housing losses. In addition, it will require $20 million to $30 million to clean up the islands and about $15 million per month to feed and house evacuees,” Bloomberg said. 

    “The longer people have to stay in shelters and the longer it takes for the volcano to stop erupting, the more precarious our financial situation will be,” he said.

    St Vincent has the third-highest debt-to-GDP at 81% among any other Caribbean nation and faces at least a halving of its economy this year. 

    “Undoubtedly, our debt is going to increase as we try to rebuild and recover from this disaster,” Gonsalves said. “We need our friends to stand by us at this time.”

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:20

    1. ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM
      ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From Online Censorship Controversy: This Time Over BLM

      Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com

      Enormous sums of money have poured into racial justice groups since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. “The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year,” according to a February Associated Press review, while at least $5 billion was raised by groups associated with that cause in the first two months alone following Floyd’s death.

      A person holds a placard with he words No Pride without Black Trans Lives at the Black Trans Lives Matters’ march in London. (Photo by Dave Rushen/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

      Two weeks after the Floyd killing, The New York Times said that the “money has come in so fast and so unexpectedly that some groups even began to turn away and redirect donors elsewhere,” while “others said they still could not yet account for how much had arrived.” Propelled by the emotions and nationwide protest movements that emerged last summer, corporations, oligarchs, celebrities and the general public opened their wallets and began pouring money into BLM coffers and have not stopped doing so.

      Where that money has gone has been the topic of numerous media investigations as well as concerns expressed by racial justice advocates. AP noted that BLM’s sharing of financial data in February “marks the first time in the movement’s nearly eight-year history that BLM leaders have revealed a detailed look at their finances.” That newfound transparency was prompted by what AP called “longstanding tensions boil[ing] over between some of the movement’s grassroots organizers and national leaders — the former went public last fall with grievances about financial transparency, decision-making and accountability.”

      In December, ten local BLM chapters severed ties with the national group amidst questions and suspicions over the handling of activities and finances by one of its co-founders, Patrisse Cullors, who had assumed the title of Executive Director. On April 10, The New York Post published an exposé on what it called Cullors’ “million-dollar real estate buying binge.” The paper noted that as protests were unfolding around the country, the BLM official was “snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records,” including a California property valued at $1.4 million. The article also revealed that the self-described Marxist and her partner “were spotted in the Bahamas looking for a unit at the Albany,” an “elite enclave laid out on 600 oceanside acres,” which “features a private marina and designer golf course.” The Post included photos of several of the properties obtained from public real estate listings.

      In an interview about that Post story with Marc Lamont Hill, Cullors — except saying she has not visited the Bahamas since the age of 15 — did not deny the accuracy of the reporting, but instead justified her real estate acquisitions. She denied she had taken a salary from the BLM group, pointing to other income she earns as a professor, author, and a YouTube content creator as the source of this sudden outburst of real estate purchases. She denounced the Post reporting as “frankly racist, and sexist.”

      So that seems like a perfectly healthy cycle for covering a controversy, obviously in the public interest. In the wake of concerns from activists about where this massive amount of BLM money has gone, The New York Post did its job of unearthing the splurge of real estate acquisitions by the person who controls and directs BLM’s budget and who has been a target of accusations and suspicions from activists. Cullors then had the opportunity to publicly provide her side of the story concerning her aggressive and ample financial investments.

      But then something quite unhealthy and unusual occurred. Five days after publication of that Post article, the Substack journalists Shant Mesrobian and Zaid Jilani reported that Facebook was banning the sharing of that article worldwide on its platform — similar to what Twitter and Facebook did in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election to The New York Post‘s reporting on the Biden family’s business dealings in China and Ukraine. The Substack reporters noted that Facebook ultimately confirmed the worldwide ban of the Post‘s reporting to The New York Times’ media reporter Ben Smith, justifying it on the ground that the article “revealed personal details about [Cullors] and her residence in violation of Facebook’s community standards.”

      Message received by Facebook users attempting to post The New York Post article about Cullors’ real estate acquisitions

      In his weekly New York Times Sunday night media column, Smith returned to this subject. When a Facebook lawyer justified the censorship by citing an alleged policy that the tech monopoly will ban any “article [which] shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it,” Smith expressed extreme skepticism:

      The policy sounds crazy because it could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles every day — indeed, to a staple of reporting for generations that has included Michael Bloomberg’s expansion of his townhouse in 2009 and the comings and goings of the Hamptons elites. Alex Rodriguez doesn’t like a story that includes a photo of him and his former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez, smiling in front of his house? Delete it. Donald Trump is annoyed about a story that includes a photo of him outside his suite at Mar-a-Lago? Gone. Facebook’s hands, the lawyer told me, are tied by its own policies.

      Presumably, the only reason this doesn’t happen constantly is because nobody knows about the policy. But now you do!

      Smith was additionally disturbed that Facebook was, in essence, overriding the editorial judgment of news outlets, which grapple every day with how to strike the balance between ensuring the public knows of information in the public interest and protecting a person’s right to privacy. For obvious reasons, public figures and organizations — which both BLM and Cullors undoubtedly are — are deemed to have a lower expectation of privacy when it comes to what is newsworthy. That is why, for example, the extramarital affairs of Donald Trump or Bill Clinton are deemed newsworthy whereas, outside of the dead-but-returning Gawker sewer, the sex lives of private citizens are not. Yet Facebook accords no deference to the editorial judgments even of the most established media outlets. Instead, they told Smith, “Facebook alone decides.”

      Whatever one’s views are on this particular censorship controversy, there is no doubt that it is part of the highly consequential debate over online free speech and the ability of monopolies like Facebook to control the dissemination of news and the boundaries of political discourse and debate. That is why Smith devoted his weekly column to it. And yet, when Smith approached the standard free speech advocacy groups for comment on this story, virtually none was willing to speak up. “Facebook’s usual critics have been strikingly silent as the company has extended its purview over speech into day-to-day editorial calls,” he wrote.

      Among those groups which insisted that it would not comment on Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s BLM story was the vaunted, brave and deeply principled free speech organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time,” emailed Aaron Madrid Aksoz, an ACLU spokesman. Smith said “the only criticism he could obtain came from the News Media Alliance, the old newspaper lobby, whose chief executive, David Chavern, called blocking The Post’s link ‘completely arbitrary’ and noted that ‘Facebook and Google stand between publishers and their audiences and determine how and whether news content is seen.’”

      How is it possible that the ACLU is all but invisible on one of the central free speech debates of our time: namely, how much censorship should Silicon Valley tech monopolists be imposing on our political speech? As someone who intensively reports on these controversies, I can barely remember any time when the ACLU spoke up loudly on any of these censorship debates, let alone assumed the central role that any civil liberties group with any integrity would, by definition, assume on this growing controversy.

      In lieu of the traditional, iconic and organization-defining willingness — eagerness — of the ACLU to defend free speech precisely when it has been most controversial and upsetting to liberals, what we now get instead are cowardly, P.R.-consultant-scripted excuses for staying as far away as possible: “We don’t have anyone who is closely plugged into that situation right now so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time.” That sounds like something Marco Rubio’s office says when asked about a Trump tweet or that a corporate headquarters would say to avoid an inflammatory controversy, not the reaction of a stalwart civil liberties group to a publicly debated act of political censorship.

      In this particular case, it is not difficult to understand the cause of the ACLU’s silence. They obviously cannot defend Facebook’s censorship — affirmatively defending the stifling of political speech is, at least for now, still a bridge too far for the group — but they are petrified of saying anything that might seem even remotely critical of, let alone adversarial to, BLM activists and organizations. That is because BLM is one of the most cherished left-liberal causes, and the ACLU now relies almost entirely on donations and grants from those who have standard left-liberal politics and want and expect the ACLU to advance that ideological and partisan agenda above its nonpartisan civil liberties principles. Criticizing BLM is a third rail in left-liberal political circles, which is where the ACLU now resides almost entirely, and thus it again cowers in silence as another online act of censorship which advances political liberalism emerges. Indeed, BLM is an organization which the ACLU frequently champions:

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

      Like so many liberal-left media outlets and advocacy groups, the ACLU was suffering financially before they were saved and then enriched beyond their wildest dreams by Donald Trump and the #Resistance movement he spawned. “The American Civil Liberties Union this week laid off 23 employees, about 7 percent of the organization’s national staff,” announced The Washington Post in April, 2015. But in the Trump era, the money flowed in almost as quickly and furiously as post-Floyd money to BLM. In February, 2017, said AP, the group “is suddenly awash in donations and new members as it does battle with President Donald Trump over the extent of his constitutional authority, with nearly $80 million in online contributions alone pouring in since the election.” So that is the donor base it now serves.

      The ACLU’s we-know-nothing routine for abstaining from commenting on Facebook’s censorship of the BLM article is, for so many reasons, preposterous. The group funds what it calls its Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and some of its best lawyers oversee it. Clearly they focus on these issues. And the ACLU in general has taken a firm and borderline-absolutist position against online censorship by Silicon Valley monopolies: principles whose application to this particular case would be easy and obvious. The ACLU has a section of its website devoted to “Internet Speech,” and its position on such matters is stated explicitly:

      The ACLU believes in an uncensored Internet, a vast free-speech zone deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to traditional media such as books, newspapers, and magazines….The ACLU has been at the forefront of protecting online freedom of expression in its myriad forms. We brought the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared speech on the Internet equally worthy of the First Amendment’s historical protections.

      In a July, 2018 article published on the group’s site entitled “Facebook Shouldn’t Censor Offensive Speech,” the group praised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial pledge “to keep Facebook from diving deeper into the business of censorship” as “the right call.”

      Unlike in response to the BLM controversy, the ACLU had no trouble back then recognizing that “what’s at stake here is the ability of one platform that serves as a forum for the speech of billions of people to use its enormous power to censor speech on the basis of its own determinations of what is true, what is hateful, and what is offensive.” The ACLU’s stated policy on these controversies could not have been clearer: “given Facebook’s nearly unparalleled status as a forum for political speech and debate, it should not take down anything but unlawful speech, like incitement to violence.” In light of that principle, how is it remotely hard to denounce Facebook’s censorship of the Post‘s article given that it does not even arguably fall within the scope of those narrow exceptions?

      Because the ACLU still employs a few old-school civil libertarians among its hundreds of lawyers and staff, those employees manage to do work and express views that are consistent with the ACLU’s old-school civil liberties agenda even when contrary to the interests of liberal politics. But the tactics used by the ACLU in those cases to downplay or hide those aberrations are as transparent as they are craven.

      When three Silicon Valley monopolies united to remove the social media app Parler from the internet in January, 2021 after influential Democratic lawmakers demanded it — one of the most brute acts of monopolistic censorship yet — an ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, was cited in The New York Times as labelling Parler’s destruction “troubling,” telling the paper: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.” But on the ACLU’s highly active and influential Twitter account — the group’s primary platform for promoting its work, expressing its views, and soliciting donations, where it has two million followers and often tweets up to fifty times a day — the group said absolutely nothing about the removal of an entire social media app from the internet:

      Indeed, the ACLU — outside of a few token, hidden statements — has chosen to play at most a minor role in the key free speech controversies of the day, ones focusing on such weighty matters as internet freedom and online censorship over our political debates by Silicon Valley monopolies. Over the last four years, as Facebook’s censorship has expanded rapidly, the ACLU has said little to nothing about it — including remaining in utter silence about the extraordinary decision to censor pre-election reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and what it revealed about Joe Biden’s business dealings. Last month, Substack reporter Michael Tracey reviewed the ACLU’s prior 100 tweets and found that 63 of them were about trans issues while a grand total of one was about free speech and none about due process. A comparison of the number of ACLU statements on online censorship controversies to its manifestations on trans issues similarly reveals a fixation on the latter with very little interest in the former:

      It goes without saying that the ACLU has every right to devote a huge bulk of its institutional resources and public advocacy to the cause of trans equality if it chooses to do so. But what that reveals is that the group is becoming exactly what its leaders always vowed it would never be: just another garden-variety liberal political advocacy group. After all, there is no shortage of extremely well-financed LGBT groups doing the same advocacy on trans issues. Those LGBT groups shifted their focus almost entirely to trans issues when they won the entire agenda of gay and lesbian equality with the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in all fifty states, and supporting trans rights is the mainstream, standard view of Democratic Party leaders and liberal activists.

      The ACLU’s refusal to engage with growing online censorship is baffling even from the perspective of its liberal politics given that radical leftists are increasingly (and predictably) the targets of tech censorship alongside anti-establishment right-wing voices. Just yesterday, the highly popular trans YouTube host Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints complained that one of her past episodes had just been demonetized and urged: “Free speech should be reclaimed as an essential leftist issue. We should not surrender the most fundamental civil right to Google LLC in the name of deplatforming rightists and curtailing harassment.” Wynn’s last video, rebutting the views of J.K. Rowling on trans issues, featured Wynn’s list of the telltale signs of “indirect bigotry” toward trans people, and she included “free speech advocacy,” but — as happens to so many people — Wynn has apparently reconsidered that view and has discovered the centrality of free speech values now that her own speech is targeted. But agitating for more online political censorship still remains a cause deeply popular among establishment liberals, further explaining the ACLU’s reluctance to involve itself in these controversies on the side of free expression.

      ACLU page touting its advocacy of trans and nonbinary rights

      What always distinguished the ACLU in the past — and what gave it credibility with judges in courtrooms — was its devotion to and focus on non-partisan free speech, free press and due process causes that were too unpopular or controversial for other groups to touch, particularly liberal groups who could not afford to offend the political sensibilities of Democrats. There are still some isolated occasions when the ACLU does such things — such as when it spoke up in defense of the NRA against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to target the group with destruction or when the ACLU recently denounced parts of the Democrats’ H.R.1 “reforms”— but the ACLU largely hides those exceptions on its most popular public platforms, and they are becoming increasingly rare.

      And now we have arrived at the truly depressing and tawdry place where the ACLU is afraid to apply its long-stated principles to denounce Facebook’s censorship because the censorship in question happened to be an article that reflected poorly on the sacred-among-liberals BLM group. In the place of brave lawyers and activists defending the constitutional rights and civil liberties even of those people and groups most despised, we have instead a corporate spokesman emailing The New York Times with excuses about why it cannot and will not speak up about a major censorship controversy that has been brewing for two weeks. In that decline one finds the ACLU’s sorry trajectory from stalwart civil liberties group into a lavishly funded arm of the Democratic Party’s liberal political wing.

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 20:00

    2. Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted
      Recall Newsom Election Officially Triggered In California After Signatures Counted

      A recall effort against California governor Gavin Newsom (D) gained enough signatures to trigger a special election, according to the latest count by the Secretary of State’s office, which says 1,626,042 submitted signatures have been verified – surpassing the 1.495 million signatures required.

      According to KTLA, California voters will face two questions; “Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him?” If there aren’t enough votes on the first question, votes on the second question will be discarded.

      Among the most prominent Republicans running to replace Newsom are former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, who has never run for elected office. Businessman John Cox, who lost badly to Newsom in 2018, and former Congressman Doug Ose, also are running.

      In 2003, voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s the only other recall of a California governor to qualify for the ballot. –KTLA

      “The People of California have done what the politicians thought would be impossible. This recall movement to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office has reached yet another milestone,” said Orrin Heatlie, Lead Proponent of the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign and founder of the California Patriot Coalition.

      According to the petition, grounds for the recall are as follows: “Governor Newsom has implemented laws which are detrimental to the citizens of this state and our way of life. Laws he endorsed favor foreign nationals, in our country illegally, over that of our own citizens. People in this state suffer the highest taxes in the nation, the highest homelessness rates,  and  the  lowest  quality  of  life  as  a  result.  He  has  imposed  sanctuary  state  status  and  fails  to  enforce  immigration  laws.  He  unilaterally  over-ruled  the  will  of  the  people regarding the death penalty. He seeks to impose additional burdens on our state by the following; removing the protections of Proposition 13, rationing our water use, increasing taxes and restricting parental rights.”

      Newsom, who’s into “double masking,” is also a giant hypocrite – breaking his own lockdown edict last November by dining with medical industry lobbyists at an opulent dinner at the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California, while small business owners across the state died on the vine from stater and local lockdown policies. Newsom’s pandemic restrictions have notably been struck down by multiple judges for lack of legal or scientific justification – while several California sheriffs from major counties also publicly announced that they wouldn’t be ‘blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle’ to enforce Newsom’s ‘dictatorial’ lockdowns.

      According to Newsom, and in spite of the above, responded to the recall as an effort by the ‘extreme right wing’ to take power, saying “This is a Republican effort…this is a Donald Trump effort.”

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:40

    3. China's E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan
      China’s E-Commerce Giant JD.Com Starts Paying Some Workers In Digital Yuan

      China’s e-commerce giant, JD.com which directly competes with Jack Ma’s Alibaba, said on Sunday that it has started paying some staff in digital yuan, the virtual version of the country’s physical currency which according to some is set to overtake the US dollar and become the world’s next reserve currency.

      JD said that it has provided technology and service support for China’s e-CNY trial programs in Suzhou, Beijing and Chengdu, since partnering with the People’s Bank of China last September.

      As we have reported extensively, China has been busy experimenting with digital currency over the past few months and is on track to become the world’s first major economy to issue a digital version of its fiat money, which could see a wider rollout at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. In October, Shenzhen, a southern city known for its progressive economic policies, doled out 10 million yuan worth of digital currency to 500,000 residents, who could then use the money to shop at certain online and offline retailers.

      Several other large Chinese cities have followed Shenzhen’s suit. The residents in these regions must apply through selected banks to start receiving and paying by digital yuan.

      As TechCrunch notes, the electronic yuan initiative is a collective effort involving China’s regulators, commercial banks and technology solution providers. At first glance, the scheme still mimics how physical yuan is circulating at the moment; under the direction of the central bank, the six major commercial banks in China, including ICBC, distribute the digital yuan to smaller banks and a web of tech solution providers, which could help bring more use cases to the new electronic money.

      Of course, that means that the digital yuan is anything but a cryptocurrency, and is merely a more digital version of the currency already in circulation. In fact, all that the digital yuan is achieving is the forced conversion of all paper currency into digital token format, which allows Beijing infinitesimal control over every single transaction, and revealing the identity of every single currency holder – precisely the opposite of what cryptos stand for.

      Of course, since China is an authoritarian regime where companies have to comply with Beijing’s demands to be “Jack Ma’d”, China’s major tech companies have actively participated in the buildout of the digital yuan ecosystem, which will help the central government better track money flows even better.

      Aside from JD.com, video streaming platform Bilibili, on-demand services provider Meituan and ride-hailing app Didi have also begun accepting digital yuan for user purchases. Gaming and social networking giant Tencent became one of the “digital yuan operators” and will take part in the design, R&D and operational work of the electronic money. Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which is undergoing a major overhaul following a stalled IPO, has also joined hands with the central bank to work on building out the infrastructure to move money digitally. Huawei, the telecom equipment titan debuted a wallet on one of its smartphone models that allows users to spend digital yuan instantaneously even if the device is offline.

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:20

    4. NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 
      NYC Records Most Violent Week This Year With 46 Separate Shootings 

      A summer of gun violence could be nearing for New York City as Mayor Bill de Blasio, a symbol of America’s ultra-progressive left, cannot stop a wave of shootings and homicides. 

      According to NYPost, NYPD data reveals the metro area endured its bloodiest week so far this year as shootings and homicides erupt.

      About 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over seven days ending Sunday (April 26). Compared to the same time last year, violent crime has skyrocketed 300%. To be fair, the metro area was in lockdowns last year around this time, but still, de Blasio’s liberal policing policies are failing.

      This weekend alone, there were two dozen people shot and three killed. A weekend from hell could be the first course of many more as warmer temperatures bring more people outside and into the streets. 

      In response to the mayhem, de Blasio has unveiled a plan to stop gun violence with new efforts to place more police officers in high-crime districts and convince gangs to trade in their weapons for jobs. 

      Ahead of the summer months, a surge in violent crime and reopening could be a perfect storm to fuel a violent crime wave. 

      De Blasio’s inability to stop gun violence is very troubling. A spike in crime has given city dwellers a reason to move out of the city for peace and quiet as they remote work in the suburbs. 

      Nearly three decades of declining violent crime have reversed thanks to de Blasio and his liberal band of progressives who think they know best when it comes to how policing should work. Certainly, defunding the police and dismantling the NYPD anti-crime unit has backfired. 

      New York City faces an absolute disaster of failed liberal leadership and an example for the next mayor of what not to do to move the city forward.

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 19:00

    5. Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC "Swarming" Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf
      Pentagon Reveals 3-Hour Long IRGC “Swarming” Incident Of US Vessels In Gulf

      US Navy officials have revealed to The Wall Street Journal that a pair of Coast Guard ships were recently “swarmed” by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fast boats in the Persian Gulf earlier this month as they conducted patrols in international waters.

      The report says “The incident occurred April 2, just as the U.S. and Iran announced they would conduct negotiations toward renewing the 2015 multilateral nuclear accord.” It was considered by the Pentagon to be a major incident (unlike the more frequent, minor exchange of “warnings” between rival military vessels in the region) given the IRGC boats encircled and “buzzed” the US vessels for up to three hours.  

      A US Navy spokesperson condemned the “unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers” and underscored the Iranian side failed to back off after multiple radio warning attempts communicated. 

      It’s rare that such an incident occurred with US Coast Guard ships… naturally we wonder what United States Coast Guard ships were doing so far away from… the US coast.

      The US Navy apparently provided a photo of the incident in progress…

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

      The incident is recounted in further detail by the WSJ as follows:

      U.S. Navy officials confirmed that three fast attack crafts and one ship known as Harth 55, a 180-foot, twin-hulled support vessel, swarmed the two Coast Guard ships while they were patrolling international waters in the southern portion of the Persian Gulf.

      The larger vessel repeatedly crossed in front of the bows of the two U.S. vessels, the Monomoy and the Wrangell, coming as close as 70 yards away, officials said. That forced the Wrangell to have to make defensive maneuvers to avoid collision, Navy officials said.

      The Harth 55 is perhaps the most distinctive somewhat recent addition to Iran’s Navy, considered a high-speed vessel capable of carrying a helicopter and up to 100 troops.

      The timing of the public disclosure of this “new” swarming event revelation is interesting given it comes a day after leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif surfaced. In it he candidly admits that the IRGC often overrides government decisions, even suggesting the late IRGC Quds Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani tried to sabotage Iran’s seeking to restore the JCPOA nuclear deal.

      Could the IRGC’s April 2 swarming event in the Gulf (just as the Vienna talks were about to get started) have been part of an attempt of hardliners leading the military establishment to derail attempts of ‘moderates’ at engagement with the US? 

      Tyler Durden
      Mon, 04/26/2021 – 18:40

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