Nov 27

Today’s News 27th November 2020

  • Power Is An Illusion, Control Is A Facade
    Power Is An Illusion, Control Is A Facade

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 23:15

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    This past year in numerous countries the public is being bombarded with lessons in power and control that have been forgotten for generations. I think the majority of westerners in particular have long believed themselves “safe” from totalitarian government, from collectivist micro-management and from communistic cultism. They thought we had moved beyond the nightmares of the 20th century. They thought that the “new world” was going to be more Utopian, and that freedom would grace us naturally along with technological progress.

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    Sure, in the back of everyone’s subconscious there is the fear that the good times are an illusion and that dystopia is just behind a thin veneer of economic stability and false optimism, but most people do not really think such catastrophes will happen in their lifetime. We are now in the midst of a deliberately over-hyped pandemic, strict national lockdowns, civil unrest, riots, aggressive tech censorship, intrusive government censorship, unprecedented corporate and treasury debt, stagflationary central bank stimulus and the collapse of massive financial bubbles. Yet, I still don’t get the impression that many in the public really grasp the extent of the danger; they still believe that the situation is going to heal itself without any effort or much sacrifice on their part.

    This is the first lesson of power: Entire societies can be easily influenced when they suffer from delusions that the bad times will be fleeting, and that governments will keep them safe no matter what.

    It is a historically proven pattern that governments tend to CREATE problems instead of solving them, and this is because the power dynamic of government never changes. The politicians we “vote” for are not in control, rather, the elites who fund their campaigns and who permeate their cabinets are in control. Political representatives come and go, but the establishment elites never leave. Therefore, the problems our society faces will remain; they are a direct result of the subversive and perpetual power structure that serves the interest of a select minority rather than the public. The decline of our society into tyranny will not stop until this power structure and the people behind it are erased.

    This would actually be a simple thing to achieve if enough people were to accept the truth and take action. The elites, the globalists, the establishment, the “new world order”, whatever you want to call this organization of power mongers, is but a collection of mostly weak and feeble psychopaths and parasites. They are completely out in the open; they proudly proclaim their affiliations and intentions on a regular basis through their host institutions, from the Council on Foreign Relations to Tavistock to Bilderberg to the World Economic Forum, the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, etc. There is very little that is hidden about these people anymore.

    But, it is also a sad reality that most people have to hit rock bottom before they embrace the idea that they cannot rely on the corrupt system to save them from harm. And as long as they continue to have blind faith that the system will self correct, they will never act. The elites operate in the open with impunity because they know that human beings are more likely to seek out help from the system than they are to fix a problem for themselves. If someone was to switch off that single mass fantasy, the elites would be gone tomorrow.

    The second lesson of power is that perception of consent creates legitimate consent. To put it another way – When people believe that their peers and neighbors have accepted a certain level of tyranny, they too will often accept it so that they don’t stand out or draw attention to themselves as “aberrant”. People seeking power only need to create the illusion of mass consent. Even when the majority of people are against them, the perception of compliance can sometimes overwhelm logic.

    Control is usually achieved passively without force. Sometimes you don’t even need the threat of force; sometimes you only need to inspire a fear of standing out among the crowd.

    For example, the pandemic has been used the past six months as a tool for creating such a narrative. Mask wearing “rules” are particularly insidious as they conjure illusions of compliance and submission. “Everyone” is wearing a mask, therefore everyone must support medical tyranny. Mask wearing is a complete farce when it comes to the actual science of virology and viral spread. The CDC still does not recommend cloth masks to their own employees and only allows them to use N95 filtered masks. A recent and censored Danish study confirms the reality that masks are mostly useless.

    Strictly enforced cloth mask rules have done nothing to stop renewed spikes in infections in multiple countries and US states. The fact that in many places masks are required OUTDOORS despite endless scientific evidence showing that UV light and open air kills microorganisms including viruses shows that the lockdown response has nothing to do with science or saving lives. It is about control.

    We can take all logical factors into account, but, for a lot of people, if they see others wearing masks they too will wear a mask simply because they are afraid to be judged by what they perceive to be the majority. The reality is that a majority of people are wearing the masks grudgingly, and they would take them off tomorrow if they knew other people would do the same.

    This is why the mainstream media pushes mask wearing propaganda everyday, 24/7. News journalists stand on street corners or in open air parks and wear masks on camera. Politicians wear masks even when on camera in their own homes. Celebrities and companies try to sell the idea that mask wearing is “cool”. Hey, if you don’t wear a mask you could be putting hundreds or thousands of other people at risk and killing their grandmas, right?

    The masks do nothing. They achieve nothing in terms of stopping the virus spread or saving lives. This is a fact made obvious by the very infection numbers the establishment holds up as a rationale for the masks. But if the establishment elites through propaganda can convince you to wear a mask everyday, then this opens the door to them dictating many other aspects of your life. The masks are just a gateway into more destructive mandates.

    The solution to this type of tyranny is to stop caring what other people think, especially when the facts are on your side. In the town where I live, the vast majority of people have said no to the mask restrictions. If someone wants to wear a mask because they believe it will protect them, that’s fine. But, no one is going to tell us we have to wear them “for our own good”. That said, even if I was the ONLY person not wearing a mask around town, I would not care if it bothered others. Your credo has to be “try and force me to wear a mask, and watch what happens…”

    The third lesson of power is that force only leads to control if you respond with submission. A group of people can beat you or even kill you, but they can’t force you to comply if you do not fear for your own life.

    I find that the use of force by tyrants is predicated on the assumption that the people they are seeking to control will not fight back effectively. As soon as people do fight back effectively, the tyrant is shocked. Most tyrants rise to power, not because they have won multiple battles and subdued their opponents, but because they never had to fight in the first place. Or, they win a handful of easy battles, often staged to look more victorious than they really were, and then use those mediocre wins as a means to terrify all future opposition into not fighting. The tyrants start to believe their own lies and presume their own invincibility.

    Predators do not seek out hard targets, they seek out weak targets. The solution to tyrants is for the hard targets to seek them out and strike them in the midst of their confidence. When predators get hit back they have a habit of running away.

    But, this requires people who do not live in fear of what might happen when they fight back. The concept of sacrificing comfort (or much worse) can’t be an issue. Fear fades away when a person fights for something more than himself. It’s not always about personal survival, sometimes it’s about the survival of future generations, or the survival of a set of principles. As that fear disappears, so does the illusion of control that tyrants rely on.

    The fourth lesson of power is that ideals either stem from human conscience, or they do not. And if they do not, then they are not ideals worth adopting or fighting over. The conscience of the average person is not as ambiguous and changeable as the establishment would like you to believe. A lion’s share of human beings operate on a certain set of inherent morals and principles that are universally shared; they do not need to be taught these principles, they are born knowing them. If these rules were not ingrained into our psyches our species would have self destructed thousands of years ago.

    Establishment elites would like you to believe that all ideals are a product of environment, and that those who control the environment control the morals of the people by extension. This is a lie. Values such as freedom exist even in the most oppressive environments, and people seek it out even when the risk is overwhelming. Empathy is also inherent for most of us, but a certain percentage of people are born without the capacity for it. The REAL fight in the middle of any power struggle is the fight between those who are born with conscience, values and empathy, and those who are born without these grounding characteristics.

    Psychopathic tyrants desperately want to prove that all other people are just as devoid of humanity and soul as they are. They want to prove that the voice of conscience that guides us is a mask we wear to pretend that we are not evil at our core. Control comes from the fallacy that we are dependent on our environments to tell us who we are as individuals. Control comes from the notion that morals are relative, and that principles are social constructs.

    Conscience is inherent, but it is also a choice. You have the free will to listen to it, or ignore it. If a tyrant can convince you to ignore the voice of your own conscience then the only other guide in life is your environment. And, if that tyrant dominates every aspect of your environment, then he now has the power to rewrite your moral code, at least temporarily. You can be made to do terrible things you would not otherwise do, or support destructive causes and ideologies you would not otherwise support.

    The ultimate totalitarian power is the power to make people forget their own inner voice. The ultimate tool against evil is to listen to that voice and to not be afraid of the supposed consequences.

    The question of the facade of power is about to become the defining question of our epoch as the elitist establishment accelerates their agenda for greater centralized control of our lives. The truth they do not want you to understand is that they have no power. They have nothing. We could defy their mandates anytime we wish. We could do away with them tomorrow if we wanted. They are of no use to humanity, they serve no valuable purpose. They only seek to feed like vampires on the masses and fulfill their deranged fantasies of conquest. Sooner or later they will have to be dealt with – The sooner the better.

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  • Solomon Islands PM Defends Temporary Facebook Ban 
    Solomon Islands PM Defends Temporary Facebook Ban 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 22:40

    Last week, the Solomon Islands government approved a temporary block of social media website Facebook across the tiny island nation of 650,000, a move that top government officials said would protect people from cyberbullying and online defamation, according to Australian ABC.

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    By Monday, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare doubled-down on his government’s temporary measure to block the social media website, “as it was a necessity to preserve national unity.” He said Facebook undermines social cohesion. 

    “Cyberbullying on Facebook is widespread, people have been defamed by users who use fake names, and people’s reputations that have been built up over the years [are destroyed] in a matter of minutes.

    “We have [a] duty to cultivate national unity and the happy coexistence of our people … [Facebook] is undermining efforts to unite this country,” he said. 

    Australian ABC notes the ban has yet to go into effect, though the prospect of the ban has caused an uproar among younger people. Sogavare stands by the new measure, saying it was aimed at protecting the youth from “vile abusive language” and not a way to silence them. 

    It’s still unclear how the temporary ban will be enforced. The government still needs to determine whether it will use a firewall or utilize some other technique to block Facebook. 

    The move to ban the social media website comes as reports began to spread on the platform, accusing the government of misappropriating virus pandemic funds for social programs – prompting calls for an audit of the virus pandemic relief program.  

    This isn’t the first time a Pacific government has mulled over the idea of blocking Facebook – leaders in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Samoa have all considered similar options. 

    Besides Facebook, governments in Asia are also blocking Pornhub. Thailand’s government banned more than 190 porn sites, including Pornhub, earlier this month, prompting outrage among the younger generation. 

  • Joe Biden: Return Of The CFR
    Joe Biden: Return Of The CFR

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 22:05

    Submitted by Swiss Policy Research,

    A Joe Biden presidency means a “return to normality” simply because it means a return of the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

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    In 2008, Barack Obama received the names of his entire future cabinet already one month prior to his election by CFR Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman, as a Wikileaks email later revealed. Consequently, the key posts in Obama’s cabinet were filled almost exclusively by CFR members, as was the case in most cabinets since World War II. To be sure, Obama’s 2008 Republican opponent, the late John McCain, was a CFR member, too. Michael Froman later negotiated the TPP and TTIP international trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.

    In 2017, CFR nightmare President Donald Trump immediately canceled these trade agreements – because he viewed them as detrimental to US domestic industry – which allowed China to conclude its own, recently announced RCEP free-trade area, encompassing 14 countries and a third of global trade. Trump also canceled other CFR achievements, like the multinational Iran nuclear deal and the UN climate and migration agreements, and he tried, but largely failed, to withdraw US troops from East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, thus seriously endangering the global US empire built over decades by the CFR and its 5000 elite members.

    Unsurprisingly, most of the US media, whose owners and editors are themselves members of the CFR, didn’t like President Trump. This was also true for most of the European media, whose owners and editors are members of international CFR affiliates like the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, founded by CFR directors after the conquest of Europe during World War II. Moreover, it was none other than the CFR which in 1996 advocated a closer cooperation between the CIA and the media, i.e. a restart of the famous CIA Operation Mockingbird. Historically, OSS and CIA directors since William Donovan and Allen Dulles have always been CFR members.

    Joe Biden promised that he would form “the most diverse cabinet” in US history. This may be true in terms of skin color and gender, but almost all of his key future cabinet members have one thing in common: they are, indeed, members of the US Council on Foreign Relations.

    This is the case for Anthony Blinken (State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security), Janet Yellen (Treasury), Michele Flournoy and Jeh Johnson (candidates for Defense), Linda Thomas-Greenfield (Ambassador to the UN), Richard Stengel (US Agency for Global Media; Stengel famously called propaganda “a good thing” at a 2018 CFR session), John Kerry (Special Envoy for Climate), Nelson Cunningham (candidate for Trade), and Thomas Donilon (candidate for CIA Director).

    Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, is not (yet) a CFR member, but Sullivan has been a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (a think tank “promoting active international engagement by the United States”) and a member of the US German Marshall Fund’s “Alliance For Securing Democracy” (a major promoter of the “Russiagate” disinformation campaign to restrain the Trump presidency), both of which are run by senior CFR members.

    Most of Biden’s CFR-vetted nominees supported recent US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as well as the 2014 regime change in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, neoconservative Max Boot, the CFR Senior Fellow in National Security Studies and one of the most vocal opponents of the Trump administration, has called Biden’s future cabinet “America’s A-Team”.

    Thus, after four years of “populism” and “isolationism”, a Biden presidency will mean the return of the Council on Foreign Relations and the continuation of a tradition of more than 70 years. Indeed, the CFR was founded in 1921 in response to the “trauma of 1920”, when US President Warren Harding and the US Senate turned isolationist and renounced US global leadership after World War I. In 2016, Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign reactivated this 100 year old foreign policy trauma.

    Was the 2020 presidential election “stolen”, as some allege? There are certainly indications of significant statistical anomalies in key Democrat-run swing states. Whether these were decisive for the election outcome may be up to courts to decide. At any rate, Joe Biden may well be the first US President known to be involved in international corruption before even entering office.

    Why are most US and international media hardly interested in this? Well, why should they?

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  • Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog Builds "Radiation Map" Of Chernobyl Reactor
    Boston Dynamics' Robot Dog Builds "Radiation Map" Of Chernobyl Reactor

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 21:30

    Spot, the autonomous robot dog, from Boston Dynamics, was equipped with radiation sensors to create a map of the radiation coming out of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to news agency Ukrinform.  

    Researchers at the University of Bristol and nuclear experts from the State Specialized Enterprise “Central Enterprise for Radioactive Waste Management” recently deployed the four-legged robot to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone that has been abandoned since the catastrophic meltdown in 1986. The site has since been covered up with layers of steel and concrete to keep nuclear material from escaping into the atmosphere. 

    Weekly measurements around the Chernobyl site are mainly done by humans, which puts them at risk, unlike Spot, a robot who could do so without putting humans in grave danger of radiation poisoning. 

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    Dr. Dave Megson-Smith, a researcher at the University of Bristol, was one of the scientists aiding Spot on its nuclear power plant adventure. Megson-Smith specializes in sensor development and equipped Spot with a collimated radiation sensor. 

    “We built a map of the radiation coming out of the front wall of Chernobyl power plant as we were in there with it,” Megson-Smith told IEEE Spectrum. 

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    Spot was able to wander around the Chernobyl nuclear site, as well as into the New Safe Confinement structure, which is a steel dome that contains hazardous radioactivity. The robot surveyed radiation levels in the area, creating a 3D map of the distribution. 

    According to Megson-Smith, there’s a lot of uncertainty on how much radiation Spot is capable of handling. He said Spot is a “system that we can send into places where humans already can go, but where we just don’t want to send humans.”

    Video: Spot’s Chernobyl Adventure 

    Engineering a completely radiation-proof robot is challenging – as was seen after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 when robots were sent to die as they surveyed the damaged nuclear power plant. 

    The future purpose of Spot at Chernobyl could be autonomous radiation mapping to detect radiation leaks. 

    Not too long ago, a different Spot was assigned to a BP Plc oil rig to “read gauges, look for corrosion, map out the facility, and even sniff out methane.” 

    While Spot conveniently completes tasks that may endanger humans – the most important takeaway is that robots will displace millions of jobs over this decade. 

  • This Thanksgiving, The Government Gifts Us COVID-19 Sex Advice
    This Thanksgiving, The Government Gifts Us COVID-19 Sex Advice

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 21:00

    Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

    Politicians and petty czars have canceled Thanksgiving across the nation.  What have government health departments offered in lieu of a family gathering? Endless idiotic advice for “safe sex” during COVID.

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    The Vermont Department of Health captured the ethos of many health departments across the nation: “Decisions about sex and sexuality need to be balanced with personal and public health.” COVID Federal Superstar Anthony Fauci reflected that judgment when he declared in April that those who meet strangers for sex via Tinder or other dating apps are entitled to make their “choice regarding a risk.” Many government officials have been far more tolerant or even encouraging of risky sexual relations during the pandemic while mercilessly suppressing other social and economic relations.

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an Emmy-award winning hero of the COVID pandemic, regardless of the ten thousand elderly New Yorkers who died after he ordered nursing homes to admit COVID patients. Cuomo’s endless restrictions have been spurred by his view that “government can be a force for good,” as a New Yorker profile recently noted.

    While Cuomo has vehemently condemned synagogues that disobeyed his orders to disperse, other officials in New York give their blessings to behavior which is reckless even by “woke” standards. The New York City Health Department recommended that people who organize orgies should “Limit the size of your guest list. Keep it intimate.” The guidance does not quite specify “rooftop” but it is clearly implied: “Pick larger, more open, and well-ventilated spaces.”

    Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, New York City’s deputy health commissioner, boasts, “Our health department has a really strong record of being very sex positive.” At the same time that New York cops have violently assaulted people for not wearing face masks, the city government officially sanctioned “glory holes.” The Big Apple’s health department urged people to “be creative with… physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face-to-face contact.”

    California Governor Gavin Newsom has become infamous for his bizarre list of Thanksgiving prohibitions to fight COVID. But the pandemic has uncorked other official weirdness in the Golden State.

    The San Francisco Department of Public Health took preemptive action to re-define “premature” out of existence. The local bureaucrats advised: “Quicker can be better. The longer we are within 6 feet of someone, the greater the risk.” Will health departments take the next step, promoting Revolutionary Era imagery celebrating the return of the “Minute Man”?

    As part of its recommendations for “navigating the landscape of love,” San Francisco bureaucrats urged to “embrace dirty thoughts. And clean surfaces.” The guidance stresses the importance of cleaning “shared toys,” especially when switching “collars” and similar items from one body to another. The department also noted: “When it comes to COVID-19 risk, outdoors is better than indoors.” Considering that the local government already permits homeless people to perform any other bodily function on Market Street, adding copulation might not be that much of a change in the local scenery.

    The Fenway Health Center, a “Federally Qualified Community Health Center,” served up bad news to spatially-challenged Bostonians: “Using the social distancing recommendation of 6 feet, oral sex may still put you at risk of COVID.” Bizarrely, the Fenway Center urges people NOT to wear masks during hook-ups: “Leave the protective gear to the medical professionals and those who have the virus.”

    The Austin, Texas Health Department alerted local residents: “COVID-19 has been found in fecal matter. Avoid activity that could allow virus from feces to enter your mouth.” In the COVID era, “Eat shit and die” has gone from being a juvenile taunt to being an ominous government health warning. Similar warnings on the dangers of “rimming” occurred in other health department recommendations.

    The City of Milwaukee Health Department advises, “Masturbation will not spread COVID-19, especially if you wash your hands (and any sex toys) with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after sex.” But if you wash your hands for only 15 seconds afterwards, then ‘Rona wins. Actually, if people need to be told to wash their hands after taking their pleasure, they are probably beyond redemption. Besides, do post-game prophylactics make any sense after a solo performance?

    Many other government agencies have become cheerleaders for self-reliance, as if there was a dire need for officialdom to specify how hundreds of millions of Americans should let off steam. At last report, the World Health Organization had not yet added masturbation to its Five Heroic Act list though it may soon qualify for a #ThanksHealthHeroes honorable mention.

    In the same way that politicians focused myopically on COVID transmission risks to justify inflicting vast collateral damage on the economy, health departments offer recommendations that might avoid COVID transmission but could be otherwise ruinous.  Instead of meeting sex partners online, the New York City Health Department recommends, “Video dates, sexting, subscription-based fan platforms, sexy ‘Zoom parties’ or chat rooms may be options for you.” Other health departments made similar recommendations.

    So maybe invite Jeffrey Toobin to your Zoom party? (Toobin was fired after masturbating during a New Yorker zoom call.)  Many of the “chat rooms” that bureaucrats recommend are stockful of jailbait, police and FBI agents masquerading and looking to entrap people for underage sex or other offenses.  Maybe someone should ask Jeff Bezos about his billion dollar emailed pictures of his private parts? The National Security Agency and foreign governments vacuum up a huge amount of online activity; anything that people reveal to a group of people online could easily turn up in their dossier.

    Since the pandemic began, politicians have claimed a prerogative to micro-manage citizens’ lives with one harebrained edict after another. For instance, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf decreed on November 17 that people must wear masks in their own homes whenever someone visits who does not live in that household. On Monday, Gov. Wolf banned all alcohol sales in bars and restaurants on Thanksgiving Eve – a completely arbitrary edict that sows havoc and will do nothing to make COVID vanish.

    Wolf would never dare to outlaw sex outside of wedlock but somehow politicians captured the right to throttle almost every other aspect of people’s lives. But a “copulation exemption” to the de facto COVID cancellation of the Bill of Rights makes no sense. People deserve as much freedom to drink rancid Rolling Rock beer on Thanksgiving Eve as they do to throw the Philly dice for a Tinder Thanksgiving treat. When politicians are permitted to selectively nullify freedom, the injustices will be exceeded only by the absurdities.

  • Thanksgiving "Ask Me Anything" with Ed and Jack
    Thanksgiving "Ask Me Anything" with Ed and Jack


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 20:55

    Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison welcomes Jack Farley for a Thanksgiving “Ask Me Anything” special edition of the Daily Briefing. Sourcing questions from the Real Vision Exchange, Jack asks Ed questions about whether the U.S. will enter a second round of lockdowns, and whether the equity market could once again undergo a major crash. Ed shares his views on the future of debt, deflation, and commodities, over the next 30 years, as well as his technique learning new languages. Jack and Ed share the ways in which they follow market news, as well as their views on the difference between accounting antics and downright fraud. Lastly, Jack and Ed give an inside look at Real Vision’s ongoing mission to democratize finance.

  • These Are The Best (And Worst) Places To Live During The Coronavirus Era
    These Are The Best (And Worst) Places To Live During The Coronavirus Era

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 20:30

    The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the shortcomings of the global health-care system, while also exposing how developed and developing world economies could demonstrate such unexpected responses. Tiny South Korea has managed to suppress the virus with mass testing and tracing. The US, meanwhile, has recorded the most deaths, while China has already vaccinated more than 1 million people before its leading vaccine effort has even been approved.

    With so many variables at play, Bloomberg has tried to develop a ranking for which countries fared the best during the coronavirus outbreak. While crunching the numbers, reporters asked questions like ‘where were the best places to be during the coronavirus pandemic’? and ‘where was the virus handled most effectively?’

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    The rankings were based on two broad categories, COVID status and quality of life.  Additionally, Bloomberg introduced what it called the “Covid Resilience Ranking scores” for the economies, which purported to measure how resistant a given economy was to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus. There were 10 key metrics: from growth in virus cases to the overall mortality rate, testing capabilities and – importantly – whether the country had managed to secure any supply agreements for the COVID-19 vaccines that are about to hit the market in the west.

    Unsurprisingly (this is Bloomberg, after all), the top three finishers were New Zealand in first place (the country used a massively costly economic lockdown to quash a few mild flareups), Japan in second (the country has seen remarkably few cases and deaths despite Japan’s perceived slowness in implementing measures to prevent the virus from spreading, and finally Taiwan, which has been hailed as having one of the most successful approaches to combating the virus.

    To try and simplify things, Bloomberg kept the ranking to economies with a GDP of at least $200 billion. According to Bloomberg, the three top performers all took early concrete steps to stanch the spread of the virus.

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    Ironically, Bloomberg noted that border control was a critical component of the most successful countries’ strategies, beginning with Beijing’s decision to cordon off Hubei Province and the city of Wuhan.

    Here are the complete rankings, courtesy of Bloomberg:

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    Finally, Bloomberg pointed out that authoritarian countries generally outperformed democracies like the US and UK. And while lockdowns have been deployed around the world with mixed results, Bloomberg claimed that there’s nothing more effective than when citizens have faith in the authorities and their guidance. When that happens – and Bloomberg cites Japan and Sweden as examples – lockdowns aren’t necessary to stanch the surge in cases.

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    But while the US has lagged in several aspects of its response to the virus, it holds the lead in the number of vaccine agreements it has forged.

    In the end, whoever has the vaccines will likely be in the best position moving forward.

  • Watch: Obama Blames Trump For His Own Border "Cages"
    Watch: Obama Blames Trump For His Own Border "Cages"

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 20:00

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Barack Obama took a shot at President Trump in an interview Wednesday, blaming him for border ‘cages’ that were actually instituted and used under the former President’s administration.

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    Obama was decrying the level of support that Trump received from hispanic voters during the election campaign.

    “But there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans,” Obama said during the interview with with The Breakfast Club radio show.

    “Or puts detainees, you know, undocumented workers, in cages — they think that’s less important than the fact that, you know, he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion, right?” Obama claimed.

    It is more than a tad ironic that Obama begins by talking about how metropolitan elites can be out of touch with the rest of America, and then immediately goes on to pigeon hole Hispanic voters as only caring about abortion.

    Are hispanic voters incapable of caring about economic issues or crime? Just because they are brown?

    That isn’t the most egregious aspect of his comments, however, given that he completely ignores the fact that for many years the so called ‘cages’ were used by the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration.

    It was in 2014, two years before Trump was elected, that the ‘cages’ story reached its peak, with overcrowded and squalid conditions at holding facilities making headlines.

    While leftists pretty much ignored the story while Obama was in the White House, it suddenly became a major issue when Trump took office.

    Indeed, the very same photos from 2014 were recycled and presented as if they were taken during Trump’s tenure.

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    Democrats and leftist celebrities hammered Trump, using the footage and photos that were taken under Obama and Biden’s regime.

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    This continued right up until the election.

    When the conditions at the border facilities again made headlines in 2018 and 2019, particularly because children were being separated from their families, Trump asked that pressure be put on House Democrats to pass a law to end the practice:

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    When Democrats failed to do so, Trump signed an executive order demanding that the practice of separating children be immediately halted:

    Democrats then complained that the EO wouldn’t fix the issue, while still doing nothing themselves:

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even used the story as a photo-op, fake crying while wearing designer clothing and an expensive watch.

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    It was later revealed that the “cage” AOC was behind concealed nothing but a parking lot.

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    When news organisations, including Infowars, attempted to highlight this, the photographer who took the images claimed copyright and demanded they be removed from the story.

    If Joe Biden takes office in January, expect photos of kids in cages to return. He has repeatedly promised to rapidly send an amnesty deal to the Senate within the first 100 days of his presidency that would give amnesty to 11 million immigrants who currently reside in the US without documentation.

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Mark Morgan has warned that if President Trump’s enforcement priorities on illegal immigration are abandoned, the US will see a huge “invasion” at the border.

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    Indeed, reports suggest that the Biden border rush has already begun.

  • Black Friday Shoppers Expected To Spend More Online Than In Stores For First Time
    Black Friday Shoppers Expected To Spend More Online Than In Stores For First Time

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 19:35

    The coronavirus has accelerated a trend in American holiday-season consumption: the shift away from packing malls on Black Friday, and toward shopping online, placing some orders as early as “Prime Day” (which Amazon held in October this year). Instead of braving the elements and the lines, a growing number of Americans instead place most, or all, of their holiday gift orders via Amazon.

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    In recent years, the trend was attributed to  bitterly cold weather and other impediments. But old habits die hard, and up until last year, millions of Americans continued to pack into stores on Black Friday, with many big box stores opening earlier and earlier (eliciting public backlash over pulling workers and shoppers away from their families).

    But as COVID-19 infections peak and governors tighten restrictions on ‘non-essential’ businesses like retailers, analysts are bracing for e-commerce sales to finally eclipse brick-and-mortar sales for the first time.

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    Why? Because according to a survey from Deloitte, for the first time ever, more American holiday shoppers are planning to spend a total of $189 billion, which would be a staggering 33% from last year. That’s equal to two years’ growth in one season. “This year is unlike anything else,” said Ken Perkins, president and founder of Retail Metrics. “People are going to be really adverse to come into stores on Black Friday, so traffic will be relatively more modest. Curbside pick will be extremely important this holiday season. Impulse buying will also fall off as online shopping tends to be very targeted.”

    Retailers (including specifically department stores) that rely on mall traffic have been particularly hard-hit this year. Just the other day, we reported that America’s brick-and-mortar stores owe a staggering $52 billion in rents.

    What’s even more worrisome: department stores even reported steep declines in online traffic ahead of Thanksgiving, according to CFRA Research analyst Camilla Yanushevsky. That could be a sign that consumers are focusing on proven e-commerce platforms like Amazon and a select few others, while the laggards are doomed.

    However, there are exceptions, as with every trend. Bloomberg points out that Williams-Sonoma and TJX Corp – owner of HomeGoods and TJ Maxx – could outperform as the rush to the suburbs has led to heightened demand for furnishings, while TJ Maxx’s everyday bargains typically attract more shoppers in hard economic times (though according to the economic wizards on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, the Dow’s latest milestone has NOTHING to do with central bank liquidity injections and EVERYTHING to do with the “wonderful engine of prosperity” that is the American economy).

    “Even with the vaccine coming, people are moving out of the city, into the burbs, and they need to fill their homes,” one analyst at RetailMetrics said.

    Other potential beneficiaries, according to Bloomberg, include Best Buy, Conn’s Inc and Acco Brands, as demand for hot gadgets like the PS5 and new phones from Samsung and Apple leads to a surge in sales. Bloomberg also cited Mattel, Hasbro, Amazon and Walmart as other potential holiday season outperformers.

    According to Bloomberg and CNBC, COVID has helped to separate the wheat from the chaff in the retail space, compounding the problems of retailers who neglected their digital business, while rewarding companies that did, via increased opportunities for synergies (like order online, pickup in store functionality).

    This holiday season should put all that to the test.

    As the start of the holiday shopping season arrives, some analysts are getting worried. JPMorgan Chase’s Matthew Boss recently cut his estimate for Q4 same-store sales – one key metric for retailers that’s closely watched by analysts – to below-consensus levels. If the shift to ecommerce is as dramatic as the Deloitte survey suggests it might be, then that might prove to have been a prescient move.

  • Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth Are Among The Book Burners Happy With Big Tech Censorship
    Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth Are Among The Book Burners Happy With Big Tech Censorship

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 19:10

    Submitted by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    Democracy is subverted when the free exchange of information and opinion is suppressed.

    That subversion is now reality in America and much of the world thanks primarily to censorship by big technology platforms and our unapologetically dishonest and biased national media.

    Last week, the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate held hearings on one of those causes, big tech censorship. If you are unaware of how pernicious and common that censorship has become, particularly by Twitter and Facebook, you are dangerously uninformed. Comedian Bill Maher, hardly a right-winger, said it right: The censorship is “evil” and “f—ed up.”

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    The new media gatekeepers

    This is not about Trump. He and censorship of him are now in mostly in the rear view mirror. Though censorship was blatantly targeted at him, it’s the future that matters now,  — whether the marketplace of ideas can survive in a world where big tech’s authoritarianism is broad and growing.

    For example, Twitter and Facebook last week censored Oxford University scientists who posted an article about a recent study questioning the effectiveness of face masks to stop COVID-19. One of the censored authors said such censorship is “one of the reasons we face a global meltdown of free thinking and science.” His name, sadly ironic, is Thomas Jefferson.

    Question big tech censorship and even prominent liberals face retribution. For example, Glenn Greenwald, a respected liberal journalist, dared to question big tech’s brazen suppression of stories about Hunter Biden’s emails and foreign influence peddling. His story on it was killed by The Intercept. Commendably, Greenwald then resigned from that publication.

    With hundreds of other examples readily available, it was therefore entirely appropriate and urgent for the Judiciary Committee to take up the matter. Aside from the meltdown of free thinking and science that Prof. Jefferson described, many of America’s razor-thin elections beyond the presidential race could easily have been turned by false narratives rigged by big tech. Easily.

    But how did Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a Judiciary Committee member, preface his comments?

    It’s a big waste of time and a political stunt, he told us. “I think there are more important and timely questions…but we are trying to determine whether or not the social media instruments of America are fair to the Republican Party.”

    What’s more important? Oh, national security, the pandemic and the possibility that Trump would refuse to leave when the election is certified, Durbin said.

    No, Senator Durbin. The Judiciary Committee is the top legislative oversight body on the rule of law in what is supposed to be the world’s leading democracy. National security and coronavirus are not within the committee’s charge. And a speculative case on presidential transition is premature for a hearing. What is within its jurisdiction, and should be top priorities, are freedom of expression and the hotly debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives big tech immunity and central the censorship issue.

    As for the censorship, bring it on. Durbin wants more.

    He wants more censorship to combat hate crimes, he said. That means stifling hate speech. Citing numbers on hate crimes, he said, “It’s clear to me that it’s more important that social media combat this more than ever.  “Are you looking the other way on that?” he asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

    We’ve seen repeatedly that hate speech, to many on the left, is pretty much everything said by anybody on the right.  Would Durbin include among his concerns the endless labeling of some 72 million Republican voters as white supremacists and fascists or violence by radical leftists who are encouraged by that kind of labeling? No, Durbin made it clear he didn’t mean that. “This is not Antifa. These are documented hate crimes from the FBI…”

    Under the First Amendment, hate speech is permitted as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of provoking violence. That’s as it should be. Everybody should be free to express hatred towards, for example, those they regard as fascists or communists, provided they don’t incite violence. But the First Amendment does not cover private entities like big tech and Durbin, like many on the left, showed no interest in letting First Amendment be the precedent for big tech censorship, provided it is targeted selectively at the right.

    Some of Durbin’s colleagues on the Judiciary Committee joined him with calls for more censorship by big tech. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), for example, asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey why Twitter doesn’t have a standalone climate change misinformation policy. “Helping to disseminate climate denialism in my view, further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world.”

    Illinois’ other senator, Tammy Duckworth, earlier had a particularly stupefying response to concerns about big tech censorship. Regarding a previous hearing on the topic by a different Senate committee, she said it was Repubicans “aiding Trump’s and Russia’s efforts to use social media for misinformation campaigns” and “undermine confidence in our democracy.”

    Got that? You’re helping Russia if you’re against censorship.

    Despite such attitudes, the Judiciary Committee hearing uncovered a major turn for the worse on tech censorship: They collude on who and what to censor. Facebook, Twitter and Google use a software communication tool called Centra to communicate on who and what they want to stifle, which magnifies the impact of any decision by any one of them. What’s clear, however, is that a solution must be found because a keystone of open society is shattered.

    A telling postscript to the hearing is that NBC, ABC and CBS all refused any coverage of it.

    How to address the problem of big tech censorship is challenging and reasonable minds differ. Their platforms are more powerful than any other public forum in history, yet their censors make no pretense of selectively enforcing their dictates or applying any of the time-honored principles our courts have developed under the First Amendment. And Section 230 is a complicated matter.

    Pending a solution, here is where we are:

    First, what tens of millions of people read for news is determined by the two people shown here.

    Second, the subversion of democracy by suppression of the free exchange of information and opinion is no longer just a threat. It’s here.

  • Massive Armada Of IRGC Boats Mobilize In Gulf Amid Rumors Israeli Strike Imminent
    Massive Armada Of IRGC Boats Mobilize In Gulf Amid Rumors Israeli Strike Imminent

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 18:45

    The naval forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Thursday conducted large-scale exercises in the Strait of Hormuz at a moment Tehran believes Israel will launch a preemptive strike aimed at drawing Trump into ordering US military action in the region before he leaves office in January.

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    According to state-run English language PressTV, “The event saw sailors, enlisted with the popular volunteer Basij force, taking to the waters aboard more than 1,000 light and semi-heavy-lift vessels.”

    Photos showed an impressive number of small but fast military boats that are typically used by the IRGC Navy (which is separate from the much larger national navy of the Islamic Republic) to harass and encircle larger ships, whether tankers or foreign warships.

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     IRGC Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri, who oversaw the maneuvers, called it a display of strength and a showcasing of Iran’s “maritime power” which provides security in the Arabian and Oman Seas. 

    Crucially the ‘show of force’ comes amid widespread reports that Trump is mulling some of kind of preemptive action against either Iran or its regional allies, such as the powerful Shia militias in Iraq.

    Earlier this month The New York Times reported that Trump’s advisers talked him down from ordering a strike, which they argued would certainly spiral into a larger war. 

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    Included in the “strike options” were most likely plans to hit the Natanz enrichment facility, according to the report, which suffered sabotage and damage last summer in a likely Israeli covert operation but which is being repaired and rebuilt.

    Israel too is said to be preparing for such a scenario, with its armed forces said to be in a high state of readiness. Iran is apparently taking these reports very seriously. 

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    Axios reported Wednesday based on unnamed senior Israeli sources: 

    The Israel Defense Forces have in recent weeks been instructed to prepare for the possibility that the U.S. will conduct a military strike against Iran before President Trump leaves office.

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    Middle East war correspondent for Al Rai Media, Elijah Magnier has cited unnamed Iranian military sources who say they believe Israeli leaders are planning to create a “pretext” designed to trigger US intervention just weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden:

    In an unprecedentedly high level of military readiness, the “Axis of the Resistance” led by Iran has declared a maximum alert on all fronts, as a preparation for a possible battle or war breaking out in the Middle East prior to the arrival in office of President-elect Joe Biden.

    Sources within the “Axis of the Resistance” say that “the US may not be planning for a war against Iran with President Donald Trump leaving office soon. However, it is not excluded that the “bully of the neighborhood”, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, would like to carry out a swift hit on the Iranian nuclear facilities in order to sabotage the nuclear deal ready for when Biden takes over. In the case of an Israeli bombing followed by an Iranian retaliation, the Trump administration can then intervene with the pretext of “defending” Israel.

    This means that it’s more than likely we’ll see Iran ramp up its military exercises and shows of strength as the weeks wind down on the Trump presidency. 

  • YouTube Attempts To Silence The Mises Institute
    YouTube Attempts To Silence The Mises Institute

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 18:20

    By Jeff Diest of the Mises Institute

    YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. This decision apparently lasts for all eternity, cannot be appealed to an actual human, and comes with this friendly admonition: “Because it’s the first time, this is just a warning. If it happens again, your channel will get a strike and you won’t be able to do things like upload, post, or live stream for 1 week.” 

    The video, a talk by Tom Woods titled “The Covid Cult” with more than 1.5 million views, was recorded at our live event in Texas two weeks ago. It offered challenges to the official narrative surrounding the coronavirus, particularly with respect to mask mandates. Woods’s talk featured several charts showing rises in Covid “cases” across multiple cities and countries not long after imposing mask rules, demonstrating how such rules apparently have little effect on slowing transmission of the virus.

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    The speech was nothing less than a heartfelt tour de force against the terrible lockdowns and pseudoscience plaguing the debate over Covid, and a call to reexamine tradeoffs and priorities. It was, as you might imagine, a mix of unassailable data combined with our friend Tom’s strong prescription for liberty and personal choice rather than centralized state edicts.

    In other words, YouTube had no earthly business removing it. This kind of discourse seems to me the best and highest use for YouTube, its most important function.  

    “Big Digital,” as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms tech companies, have become “governmentalities”: supposedly private enterprises turned into instruments of state power and state narratives. This sordid process is different for each company, (some are more complicit than others, a few are heroically non-compliant) but it involves a mix of early start-up funding; connections and contracts with state agencies, particularly relating to defense and surveillance; and propaganda campaigns in service of state narratives. Rectenwald explains this phenomenon in his own recent talk titled “The Google Election“:

    In short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly private sector entities; they are governmentalities in the sense that I have given to the term. They are extensions and apparatuses of the state. Furthermore, these platforms are governmentalities with a particular interest in the growth and extension of governmentality itself. This includes championing every kind of “subordinated” and newly created identity class that they can find or create, because such “endangered” categories require state acknowledgement and protection. Thus, the state’s circumference continues to expand. Big Digital is partial to the interests and growth of the state. It not only does business with statists but also shares their values. This helps makes sense of its leftist bent and their preference for the deep state Democrats. Leftism is statism.

    We encourage readers to consider the entirety of Rectenwald’s talk, and his sobering book Google Archipelago for his thorough treatment of the facts and realities behind tech companies and the US state. This is not alarmism or conspiracies, but documented examples of how Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others actively participate—including financially—in a melding of corporate and state power. 

    This, then, is real fascism. Big Digital—what writer Ilana Mercer calls “Deep Tech”— is not a collection of private companies in the sense we think of such. They are partners of the federal government, committed to ideological service as part and parcel of their own bottom line.

    Thankfully, the sneering call to “build your own platforms” is being answered. Companies like Bitchute and LBRY (its video platform is Odysee) continue to host Mises Institute content, and promise to continue doing so. In fact, you can view Dr. Woods’s forbidden talk at those respective source here and here.

    Truth tellers matter more than ever. It’s time for our own institutions and platforms, which is precisely why the Mises Institute exists.

  • Vornado Pulls $5 Billion Office Sale Plans On Buildings It Co-Owns With The Trump Organization
    Vornado Pulls $5 Billion Office Sale Plans On Buildings It Co-Owns With The Trump Organization

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 17:55

    The Trump Organization’s real estate partner, Vornado Realty Trust, reportedly had to shelve its plans to try and sell off office buildings that would have helped the Trumps pay off $400 million in upcoming debt. 

    Vornado co-owns an office tower in San Francisco and another in Manhattan and “couldn’t attract a buyer” at the price it was seeking, according to an exclusive by The Wall Street Journal. It had hoped to raise $5 billion from the deleveraging in total, of which $1.5 billion would have made its way to The Trump Organization. 

    Vornado Chief Executive Steven Roth had said this month there was “active interest from investors” for the deals. It looks as though the “active interest” may not have been at the right price, however. 

    The news comes as no surprise since both San Francisco and New York have been disproportionately clobbered due to the pandemic. At the beginning of the year, they were the most expensive markets in the U.S. 

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    Building co-owned by TTO and Vornado (Source: WSJ)

    Trump’s organization was hoping to use the windfall to pay off more than $400 million in debt it owes over the next few years. The refinancing picture for the organization seems hazy, especially due to the commercial real estate climate. Some banks have been reluctant to do business with Trump given his political activities, as well, the Journal notes. 

    The Trump Organization attests that its business is financially sound, stating: “The Trump Organization is an incredible company with tremendous cash flow. We have never been stronger.”

    Since Trump’s Organization holds a minority stake in the buildings, it has “no control over the sales decision making”. 

    Vornado says it is now focused on refinancing the assets. Doug Harmon, an investment adviser at Cushman & Wakefield, said: “We are now focusing more on refinancing both assets. When international investors can travel with less restrictions, and the path back to normal is under way.”

    With the pandemic looking more likely than ever to “end” now with a President Biden in office and vaccines on the way, perhaps Trump will find his first foray back to the private sector met with a stroke of luck. 

  • A Thanksgiving Worthy Of America
    A Thanksgiving Worthy Of America

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 17:30

    Authored by Michael Warren via RealClearPublicAffairs.com,

    Turkey and stuffing. Detroit Lions Football. Turkey trots. Parades and the arrival of Santa followed by frenzied shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Maybe a bit of charity on Giving Tuesday. Thanksgiving is the ultimate American holiday. What more could you need?

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    How about this: gratitude, blessings, and humility. Unfortunately, the annual celebration has been overshadowed by consumerism and entertainment culture.

    Let’s explore the origins of Thanksgiving in colonial America, which centered around the virtues that are crucial to sustaining our way of life.

    The Pilgrims were English religious dissenters who settled in Plymouth in 1620. They made history by seeking asylum and signing the Mayflower Compact – quite possibly the first written agreement among men that founded a new government. They were quickly struck with a great sickness and began to starve; in the first year, nearly half died.

    In 1621, with the help of Wampanoag tribe – especially Samoset and Squanto – the Pilgrims survived and even flourished. They held a huge three day feast. But that multicourse meal is not the precursor to the Thanksgiving that we will celebrate later this week. That would come two years later when the Pilgrims faced a brutal drought.

    Then, Governor William Bradford led the people in fervent prayer to the Almighty for relief, and in a few hours, the heavens opened with torrents of rain. To commemorate that event, Bradford declared a day of Thanksgiving, which included a large feast and regular homage to God for His blessings.

    Afterwards, colonial governors periodically proclaimed days of Thanksgiving in response to favorable events and conditions. The first continent-wide celebration was in 1777 when the Continental Congress declared a Thanksgiving in light of the colonists’ victory at the Battle of Saratoga.

    When George Washington became President, Congress asked him to declare a Thanksgiving to honor the first Congress’s many accomplishments, which included the Bill of Rights and setting up a functioning federal government.

    Washington declared a Thanksgiving for the fourth Thursday in November. His proclamation recommended that the people devote the day “to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all that good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may all unite in rendering Him our sincere and humble thanks for his Kind care and protection . . . for the signal and manifold mercies and favorable interpositions of His providence” during the American Revolution, in creating the Constitution, and protecting the “civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.”

    Presidents Adams and Madison followed suit – but presidential encouragements of Thanksgiving soon stopped. 

    Thanksgiving’s resurrection occurred when Sarah Josepha Hale convinced President Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving during the Civil War. Despite the carnage, Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation explained several reasons why the nation should be thankful, remarking, “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

    Lincoln recommended that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience . . . fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

    Since Lincoln, Thanksgiving has become an annual tradition. But like so much of our civic calendar, it has been gutted of its original meaning. Perhaps now, in the wake of the most contentious election in modern times and in the grips of the worst pandemic in a century, we can return to the foundations of this magnificent holiday.

    This Thanksgiving, take stock of our great blessings, including our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and prosperity. Give thanks, express humility, and pray for your family and us all. That would be a Thanksgiving worthy of America.

  • 'Kraken' Lawsuit Accuses Iran Of 'Monitoring And Manipulating' 2020 Election, Stoking Deep Dive By Journalist
    'Kraken' Lawsuit Accuses Iran Of 'Monitoring And Manipulating' 2020 Election, Stoking Deep Dive By Journalist

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 17:05

    An interesting thread has popped up on Twitter in the wake of attorney Sidney Powell’s recently filed lawsuits alleging widespread election fraud in Michigan and Georgia (‘the Kraken’) – which claims in part that China and Iran monitored and manipulated elections, “including the most recent US general election in 2020.”

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    Journalist and Iran expert Heshmat Alavi, who describes himself as a “political activist and supporter for regime change in Iran,” has compiled a lengthy exposé in response to this claim, and brings readers down the rabbit hole regarding Iran’s penetration into US politics.

    The thread is heavy on media, so it will be embedded in its entirety:

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  • Doctor Who Demanded Mandatory Mask Law Pictured Partying Maskless On Boat Surrounded By Bikini-Clad Women
    Doctor Who Demanded Mandatory Mask Law Pictured Partying Maskless On Boat Surrounded By Bikini-Clad Women

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 16:40

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    The world’s so-called “hottest doctor,” who has repeatedly called for mandatory mask laws and social distancing, was pictured maskless partying on a boat in Miami while surrounded by bikini-clad women.

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    Mikhail Varshavski, known as ‘Dr. Mike’ online, completely contradicted his own advice by throwing a ‘super-spreader’ 31st birthday party for himself on November 12.

    “A picture of Varshavski on a boat in Sunset Harbor surrounded by 14 other people — most of them bikini-clad women — has since done the rounds with his fans calling him out for hypocrisy,” reports the Daily Mail.

    Another video shows the doctor massaging a woman’s neck on the deck of the boat while wearing a face scarf that isn’t even covering his nose.

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    Varshavski behavior is completely hypocritical given that he has repeatedly lectured others for ignoring social distancing and demanded mandatory mask laws to save lives.

    “If by not wearing a mask you put other’s lives at risk it might make sense to make it mandatory. Wouldn’t you agree?” Varshavski tweeted back in June.

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    A month later, the doctor appeared on Fox Business and asserted, “Wearing a mask decreases the spread of this virus and that is of utmost importance for people’s health and the health of our economy.”

    “So please, if you’re going outside in public and are going to be around other people, wear a mask,” he added.

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    During a YouTube interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Varshavski also said, “Social distancing is incredibly important. That’s how we control the spread of this virus.”

    Varshavski has also appeared on CNN numerous times telling Americans to abide by coronavirus rules to which he is apparently not subject.

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    Varshavski’s fans savaged him after the embarrassing photos were leaked.

    “You are supposed to be the example. I admired and respected you. Now that is all lost,” said one.

    “I never cared about my health, I never trusted doctors before him, now I don’t know what to believe or do anymore,” added another. “I was able to bring my family back to reality only with the information and arguments he has provided in his videos.”

    Apparently for Varshavski (and numerous other prominent figures as highlighted in the video below), it’s very much ‘do as we say, not as we do’.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. 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.

  • Politico Exposes Secretive Consulting Firm Set To Dominate Biden Cabinet
    Politico Exposes Secretive Consulting Firm Set To Dominate Biden Cabinet

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 16:15

    A shadowy consulting firm which openly brags about its ability to connect clients to the White House is set to prominently feature in the Biden administration, according to Politico.

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    Vice President Joe Biden and former Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken

    Founded in 2017 by Tony Blinken – Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of State – WestExec Advisers advertises itself as “quite literally, the road to the Situation Room,” adding “and it is the road everyone associated with WestExec Advisors has crossed many times en route to meetings of the highest national security consequences.”

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    Another WestExec executive, Michèle Flournoy, is a top contender for Secretary of Defense, while former WestExec principal, Avril Haines, is Biden’s pick for director of national intelligence.

    Meanwhile, WestExec’s client list is just as secretive.

    Because its staffers aren’t lobbyists, they are not required to disclose who they work for. They also aren’t bound by the Biden transition’s restrictions on hiring people who have lobbied in the past year.

    Such high-powered Washington consulting firms are “the unintended consequence” of greater disclosure requirements for registered lobbyists, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight.

    By not directly advocating for federal dollars on behalf of their clients, they don’t have to publicly divulge who is paying them and for what activities, such as the connections they make with government agencies, she said. But it is also impossible to assess the influence they have on federal expenditures. –Politico

    “They avoid becoming registered lobbyists or foreign agents and are instead becoming strategic consultants,” said Smithberger.

    What’s more, WestExec employs a ton of former Democratic national security and foreign policy officials who have been involved in fundraising for Biden’s campaign, have joined his transition team, or have acted as unofficial advisers. In fact, 21 of the 38 WestExec employees listed on the firm’s website donated to the Biden campaign – with Flournoy raising over $100,000 alone.

    Five WestExec staffers — all veterans of the Obama administration — are on leave from the firm to help staff Biden’s review teams for the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the Council of Economic Advisers and other agencies, which are charged with coordinating the transfer of power between outgoing Trump officials and Biden’s appointees.

    Two other WestExec principals were among those who briefed Biden last week on national security: Bob Work, who served as deputy secretary of defense in the Obama administration and was asked to remain on for the first few months of the Trump administration, and David Cohen, a former deputy director of both the CIA and the Treasury Department who is also in the running for a top post.

    Former Obama White House communications director Jen Psaki – also a WestExec employee – is also advising Biden’s transition team, while two former WestExec’ers – Lisa Monaco and Julianne Smith – are under consideration for potential Biden administration hires.

    The firm was so well positioned to take over in a Democratic administration that they negotiated a clause in their office lease that they can break it if members are called back to public service, according to American Prospect.

    WestExec isn’t the first DC consulting firm staffed by former administration officials who “serve as the government in waiting for the party that’s out of power” according to Meredith McGehee – executive director of Issue One, a Washington good government group (per Politico), adding that while there’s nothing wrong with it – Blinken and other potential Biden Cabinet picks who have worked for firms such as WestExec should go further than the law requires and publicly disclose any clients for whom they’ve done significant work.

    Read the rest of the report here.

  • "Stand Down Officers!": Angry Crowd Heckles Cops After Toronto BBQ-Owner Arrested For Ignoring Lockdown
    "Stand Down Officers!": Angry Crowd Heckles Cops After Toronto BBQ-Owner Arrested For Ignoring Lockdown

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 15:50

    Authored by Lauren O’Neil via blogto.com

    The sauce has hit the fan at Toronto’s Adamson Barbecue restaurant, where, after opening for a third day in defiance of multiple lockdown orders, owner Adam Skelly was just taken away in handcuffs by police.

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    “A 33-year-old man was arrested for Attempting to Obstruct Police,” reads an update issued by TPS Operatins shortly after 1 p.m. on Thursday.

    “He has been taken into custody. More details will follow. Officers remain in the area. We continue to ask for calm.”

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    It is unclear if any other new charges have been laid against Kelly today (in addition to nine announced yesterday against he and his incorporated restaurant chain), but the anti-maskers who’ve been supporting him are straight up freaking out right now.

    Livestreamed video posts from the scene of Skelly’s restaurant at Queen Elizabeth and Royal York Roads show police, some of them on horseback, surrounding the building in a united front.

    Hundreds of histrionic protesters have positioned themselves in front of the cops and are screaming things like “FREEDOM!,” “SHAME!” and “STAND DOWN OFFICERS! STAND DOWN!” 

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    Police first arrived to the Texas-style BBQ joint early Thursday morning to change the establishment’s locks after Skelly vowed that he would once again reopen his restaurant for indoor dining after being ordered to close by Toronto Public Health.

    Flanked by crowds of people wearing Trump 2020 hats and carrying anti-lockdown signs, the infuriated restaurant owner eventually managed to gain access to the building and start serving meat.

    Police stayed on scene in an attempt to control the crowd of protesters, who have collectively come to be known in recent days as “BBQAnon.”

    Skelly was arrested and taken away for police obstruction shortly before 12:30 p.m. this afternoon.

    His supporters remain camped out around the Etobicoke location of Adamson Barbecue, however, where they are now starting to tussle with police.

    At least one additional male has been arrested so far for assaulting a police officer.

    Meanwhile, four days after Toronto and Peel were put into the “grey zone” of Ontario’s COVID-19 restriction framework, a massive anti-lockdown protest has broken out at Queen’s Park.

    The hashtag #IStandWithAdam is trending on Twitter in the U.S. and people on both sides of the debate are growing increasingly distressed over how the situation is being handled.

    Many are criticizing Skelly for blatantly flouting public health restrictions amid a deadly viral outbreak, while others are calling him  a “patriot” and a “hero.”

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    Skelly is expected to appear in court on March 19 of 2021 to face multiple charges for hosting illegal gatherings, breaching indoor dining regulations and operating without a business license on both Tuesday and Wednesday. “Top to bottom, this thing stinks — it reeks of corruption,” said Skelly of the lockdown in an Instagram post announcing his plans to reopen earlier this week. “How many businesses — how many people — are going to lose everything? Enough is enough.” “We’re opening for anybody who is a fan of freedom and sovereignty,” said Skelly at the time. “The right to choose what you wear, where to go, who to have over at your house, what businesses you can go to.”

  • Comcast To Impose 1.2TB Data Cap On Northeast Customers 
    Comcast To Impose 1.2TB Data Cap On Northeast Customers 

    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 11/26/2020 – 15:25

    More people than ever have shifted to the digital economy as remote working becomes standard across corporate America. Internet service providers (ISP) have reported record internet traffic this year due to the online shift, with some warning that computer networks have been stressed due to the rapid increase in data usage among households. 

    Demand for online video and chat tools, such as Slack, Zoom, and GoToMeeting, have been off the chart this year. Many of these online tools make work-at-home possible for millions of folks. Many of these tools are incredibly data-intensive, which is likely why Comcast has introduced data caps for customers. 

    According to The Verge, Comcast will charge Xfinity customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, as well as parts of North Carolina and Ohio a fee of $10 per 50GB of data if they exceed 1.2TB in a given month. Customers will be eased into the data cap program in early 2021. 

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    The good news for customers fretting about a data cap and additional charges if the 1.2TB is breached is that 95% of the customer base has yet to exceed the level over the last six months. Median monthly data usage for customers this year has been around 300GB. Still, as the second wave of the virus pandemic continues to ravage many parts of the country and remote working continues to become a dominant working situation for many, Comcast expects data usage to surge during the COVID winter. 

    “Comcast has quietly updated its online customer support website to reflect the forthcoming introduction of data caps to the last remaining major regions of the country where it has avoided imposing them for years,” wrote Stop The Cap, an advocacy group against the ISP data cap. 

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    Stop The Cap said Comcast’s data cap in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states could push customers to competitor Verizon FiOS. 

     

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